PRESTIGE

 

PRESTIGE

Real Name: Rachel Anne Summers

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #141, January 1981

Powers: Formerly known as Phoenix III and Marvel Girl III, Rachel Summers is a mutant originally possessing moderate-to-high telepathic and telekinetic abilities inherited from her mother (Jean Grey of Earth-811). She can read minds, broadcast her thoughts, create realistic illusions in a person’s mind, project her astral form, control a person’s mind, communicate mentally, and project bolts of mental energy used to stun or kill a person. She can telekinetically move or manipulate objects with mental energy from her mind, erect force fields of telekinetic energy, and create bursts of telekinetic energy.

Her mutation also includes a time-shifting power. Through a psionic act, Rachel can take the astral consciousness of a living being and cast it through time and space. This allows Rachel or any other person she chooses to view the past as an invisible and intangible spectre before returning to their present. Rachel was also able to switch a person's mind with their own past counterpart, sending the future Kitty Pryde's mind to possess her Earth-616 past body and vice versa.

After becoming the host for the Phoenix Force, Rachel's powers expanded considerably. Her mutant powers dramatically increased in power and scope. She became capable of projecting the Phoenix Raptor around her body to shield herself from harm, survive in the vacuum of space, travel faster-than-light, and use the raptor's cosmic flame as a focus for tremendous energy to disable opponents. Her time-shifting power was also augmented so that she could physically travel through time. Rachel was now capable of jumping ahead a few second in the timeline in order to avoid attacks, or transport herself and others into completely different temporal eras. She also could rearrange molecular structures, and generate temporal shields as protection from time- or reality-based distortions.

After the Phoenix Force abandoned her body and she returned to the 616 timeline, Rachel's powers were greatly diminished back to roughly their original levels. Later, she was the pawn of Elias Bogan for some time. It remains unclear how this may have affected her long term, but Rachel came to possess a new power signature (a visible sign of her psychic abilities being used): Her skin turned jet-black in coloration and a Phoenix symbol appears over one eye. This effect faded after being exposed to Korvus' Blade of the Phoenix and she later manifested her power through the blue Phoenix flame of Rook'shir. This returned her to her Phoenix-potential power levels. However, the Phoenix fragment mysteriously left her once more.