Lightning

Thunder (Older Sister)

Green Lantern (2) (Uncle)

Vixen (Aunt)

## **History**

### **Jennifer Pierce: 2002 - 2015**

Jennifer is the daughter of Jefferson and Roselynn Pierce, and the younger sister to Anissa Pierce. Seconds after Jennifer was born, her first cry caused an electromagnetic pulse in the hospital. This prompted Jefferson to take some time off from Black Lightning to help contain the nascent powers of Jenny.

Later on, as Jenny learned to use her incredible powers, she would love to hear her father's stories of his past adventures. Jenny proved to be a great student when it came to her father's lessons on power, her grasp was lacking when her father tried to instill her with a sense of responsibility. This led to a lot of interesting moments and many uncomfortable close-calls for the Pierce family.

At age seven, when Jenny's sister Anissa finally discovered her own powers, Jefferson sent Anissa to the Titans for training. But even with one daughter often out of the house, Jeff and Roselynn still had their hands full with Jenny back home. Since her sister was now heroing and her dad was beginning to dip his toes back into heroing after a period of semi-retirement, Jennifer was often forced to become her mother's shadow.

Since her mother is a busy attorney, this meant Jennifer spent a lot of time in her youth sitting in the law firm's copy room. It also meant she spent a lot of her youth sneaking out of the copy room to go have fun. Usually, this meant harmless pranks, sometimes it meant pranks with a little extra mischief, and a few times it meant Jennifer went off to go explore Gotham. This is how the Pierces discovered that Jenny's powers surpassed her father's own as she found a way to force herself to become pure electricity and channel herself through the city's power grid. On one instance, she went from Gotham to Hall of Justice because she wanted to ask her dad for a birthday pony.

This sort of behavior frightened the Pierce family and for their daughter's benefit, they asked the Batman to scare her straight. I am not sure what Bruce did exactly and neither is Jeff; but he swears it put Jenny on the straight and narrow for the better part of five years. I asked Dick what he thinks Bruce might have done, he told me "I don't want to know... Now *I'm* scared."

### **Lightning: 2015 - Present**

While whatever Bruce said to Jennifer remains a mystery, we do know what Bruce told Jefferson: "the best way for her to learn to use her powers responsibly is to learn what it means to be responsible." Jefferson interpreted that to mean he needed to bring Jennifer with him on some patrols. So, Gambi fashioned a suit for Jennifer and so began the brief partnership of Lightning: Black and Blue (Jennifer was briefly calling herself "Blue Lightning").

The two patrolled the streets of Metropolis on the weekends and holidays (Jefferson chose Metropolis as he felt Gotham was too hard a city for a novice crimefighter such as Jennifer). At first, Jennifer continued to be reckless and even though she would get the job done, it came with collateral damage and plenty of bruises for bystanders, Jennifer herself, and her father. But eventually, Jefferson and his daughter came across the men in the employ of Tobias Gervais.

The gang was known among the people of Suicide Slums as the Hundred and they weren't kidding around. The Hundred were in the process of modifying AmerTek BG-60s with alien tech to make them even more destructive and also undetectable. Even worse, the gang was kidnapping people to use for live demonstrations of the weapons' power.

Unable to watch one such execution, Jennifer charged in before her father was in position. While she saved the life of the Hundred's prisoners and bought them time to escape, she left her father open to attack. When Jennifer returned, she found her father unconscious and being dragged away. Jennifer intervene she even defeated the boss of The Hundred, metric ton of metahuman. Tobias Gervais, the Whale himself, Jennifer laid the beatdown on him. This proved herself to her father making him proud of her seeing how she was a terrific hero, Jefferson told her she could join the Titans.

## **Personality**

Jennifer is a strong, independent young woman with a wild streak. She loves to party and have fun, sometimes to the point of lying to her sister and parents. She also has a tendency to be a bit arrogant and stubborn, especially in regards to how others view her. Her temper can also cause her to make rash decisions, as she is quick to jump into a fight to defend herself and other times others. An example of this was when she quickly got into a fight with Lana. In spite of those negative qualities, Jennifer does have a caring side, which she mostly shows to her best friends and family. She is, in her own words, a "ride or die" type of person for the people she cares about, loving them unconditionally and doing everything she can to protect them. She loves the fact that she had powers when her meta-human nature was first revealed, and love that her powers could be potentially helpful in defense of her loved ones continues to use them to protect those she cares about.

Jennifer has also demonstrated that she is not only academically gifted (as seen by the fact that she intended to apply to Harvard University for college), she also has a great deal of street-smarts, as evidenced by how she managed to save Khalil from being attacked by the 100, break into a Pyxis to steal medication from a hospital to treat his injuries, figured out that Cutter was using poisoned knives and had the antidote nearby, and realizing that Khalil had a tracker placed into the back of his head by Tobias Whale, all qualities that helped her survive while she and Khalil were on the run.

## **Powers, Abilities, and Weaknesses**

**Metahuman Physiology:** Jennifer inherited the metagene from her father, Jefferson Pierce, granting her superhuman powers. The raw strength of Jennifer's powers were described by Perenna as "like nothing she's ever seen" in all of her years counseling meta-humans, suggesting that Jennifer is extraordinarily powerful even among her fellow meta-humans. According to Agent Odell, her powers help her achieve abilities that are beyond what her father could do. In addition, her powers even helped her survive the Crisis all on her own, while the multiverse's greatest heroes needed outside help. It is implied that her powers are unique among her dopplegangers as she was the only one to survive being hit by the antimatter wave. Due to her unique powers, Jennifer is one of the most powerful beings in the entire multiverse, and, while she has gained a great deal of control over her powers, it is possible that she has not yet reached her full potential.

* **Electricity Mimicry:** Jen can generate an electrical field, turning her into a being of sentient lightning.  At her greatest intensity, her transformation morphs from sentient electricity to what almost resembles plasma-like fire; Perenna refers to this aspect of her power as "the storm," as a reference to its similarity to an electrical firestorm. While in this form, Jennifer can make herself intangible if necessary, as evidenced when she and Brion fought against the ASA after they had broken out of the armored vehicle; despite dozens of assault rifle rounds being aimed and shot at her, they all passed harmlessly through her torso without causing so much as a twinge, indicating that she couldn't even feel them. This also grants her an enormous amount of internal power if she contains it within her body, allowing her to overpower metahuman power-dampening technology and even heat herself up to the point where she burned all of Painkiller's poison from her body before it could seriously injure her.
	+ **Electricity Absorption:** Similar to her father, Jen can absorb electricity from nearby electronics such as phones and light bulbs. She has also recently demonstrated an ability to absorb the electromagnetic energy that surrounds the earth, as evidenced when she flew high enough in the sky to absorb the cosmic energy in the magnetosphere using Odell's version of her suit. Absorbing this electrical energy from any source makes her more powerful and gives her more fuel to fight, just like her father, though her powers are not dependent on external energy sources. Jennifer after absorbing the electromagnetic energy from flying, Jennifer was seen involuntarily discharging electricity from her fingertips as her body tried to rid itself of the excess energy.
	+ **Electricity Attacks:** Just like her father, Jennifer can create blasts and bolts of electrical energy and project it at her opponents. This can be as mild as a small electrical shock or as severe as a fully-formed bolt of electricity.
	+ **Electrokinetic Flight:** Jennifer can generate an electrical field around her body that allows her to levitate by pushing her electrical power under her. This power was first shown to be an unconscious response to the growing power within her body, causing her to levitate several feet above her bed while she slept, but she has since learned how to consciously use it, as seen when she sat cross-legged in a meditative position several feet above the floor in an effort to concentrate on pulling the power back inside of herself. Jennifer is so in control of her powers that she could focus to the point that she can fly on command and endure doing so even into the higher reaches of the atmosphere.
	+ **Electroreception:** Similar to her father, Jennifer is able to sense and detect electrical signals in her immediate vicinity. She seems to also be able to "see" the electrical signals in a human body as they're being sent through the nervous system, allowing her to detect that Khalil was dying as a result of the decreasing number and slowed pace of the electrical impulses in his body. She was able to identify a power plant being used by the Markovian military by how much more electrical energy she saw in the facility compared to the surrounding area.
	+ **Electrical Constructs:** Using her electrokinesis, Jennifer can create constructs made of electrical energy. She first utilized this when she created an electro-rope/lasso to lift Martin Proctor into the air and bring him down. She is frequently seen using electrical whips to hold her opponents in place, to lash at them or to toss them around. She can also channel her electrical energy into ball shapes which are then thrown telekinetically at her target. Creating even electrical shields.
	+ **Electrical Telepathy:** Jennifer's powers are so far advanced than her father's. She's able to affect and control a person's neural impulses and their bio-electricity. Effecting motor functions and actions. Since she can turn her body into electricity she is immune to Peronna or Gravdigger's mind-control powers.
	+ **Electricity Manipulation:** Jennifer has the power to generate electric shocks and bursts from her hands. This power was first activated when her friend Keisha fell down a scaffolding. scaring Jennifer so much that she zapped the poster she was holding and caught it on fire. Later on, she accidentally lost control over her electrical powers and overcharged her cell phone with one of her shocks. Whenever she utilizes or is about to utilize her electrical powers, Jennifer's eyes glow the same bright blue/white color as her energy, and a blue glow begins to appear under the skin of her hands and face. Unlike her father, Jefferson Pierce, whose powers essentially make him a large rechargeable electrical battery, Jen is a generator - her body appears to create pure electrical energy from her own cells at all times, storing it so that she can use it at will. However, if she abstains from using her powers for long enough, the energy in her body builds until she is seemingly forced to discharge it in some way, whether she wants to or not; this type of reaction has been shown to occur most frequently when she's in an emotional state. She could even generate enough amounts of electricity to "power-up" her father after he was completely drained of his powers, though it left her momentarily exhausted. As her understanding of how her powers work has grown, so has the raw strength of the energy she produces; after losing control over her powers due to grief at the impending death of her boyfriend Khalil, Jennifer began generating so much electricity that her father was unable to absorb it all, forcing her to have to regain control on her own (albeit with Looker's help).
	+ **Light Manipulation:** Jennifer can generate balls of light of varying sizes and levels of brightness. These constructs were first shown to float in the air around Jennifer in a way that resembles fireflies during her bouts of sleep-levitation. She has also demonstrated an intense offensive use of this power that involves creating large, powerful balls of light that can be thrown some distance away, exploding and temporarily blinding those exposed to it. When Khalil asked her what she was upon first learning about her powers, Jennifer replied, "I am light", in reference to the photokinetic aspect of her powers.
	+ **Electrical Transportation:** Jennifer by turning herself into electricity allowing her to travel through lightning or electronics. This is achieved by her riding the flow of electrons or becoming electricity itself for travel. She is strong enough and/or skilled enough in this art of transportation, then they can also transport by the electrons in the air, static discharges and electrical components. She can make lightning strike herself to transport her own molecules from one point to another. Jennifer was able to unwittingly teleport to her "safe place" during the Crisis and helped her survive her world's destruction by the Anti-Monitor. After the Crisis and the multiverse were restored, she came to Earth-Prime and reunited with her family with her memories from the original multiverse still intact.
	+ **Electrical Regeneration:** Jennifer possesses an accelerated healing factor, allowing her to heal from wounds much faster than a normal human. Jennifer can use electricity to increase her healing factor.