Kinetix

Kinetix Legion of Super-Heroes member Reboot » Post-Zero Hour Kinetix, art by Jeff Moy Real name Zoë Saugin First appearance Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #66 Initially joined Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #66 Left / rejoined took leave of absence Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #70 rejoined Legionnaires #36 left Legion Worlds #6 (team disbanded) rejoined The Legion #17 Stats Status Unknown Home planet / Species Aleph Other teams joined Science Police Aliases N/A Powers Telekinesis As Terrorform, undefined. Other versions

Biography

Origin

Zoë Saugin is the daughter of Azra Saugin, an archeologist who often travelled from world to world in search of artifacts. While pregnant with Zoë, Azra found the sorceress Mysa, almost frozen to death, on Tharn. Mysa, delirious, moaned something about a sceptre that could restore her, which Azra would have written off as madness - had she not had the very sceptre in question in her bag. Mysa begged Azra to give her it when she brought it out, when she did, and a healing glow encompassed them - which, unbeknowst to Azra, affected her unborn child too.

After Zoë and her brother, Tharot, were born, Azra continued to travel from world to world in search of artifacts, taking her children with her. While Tharot was openly resentful of this, Zoë - though happy when her mother found the things she was looking for - tried to conceal how she, like her brother, was usually "too hot or too cold, too hyper or too bored - and always too useless" on the digs, although her mother was good to them when the work was done.

Just before she turned ten, however, her life changed when her mother was caught by a booby-trap of poisonous gas on a dig. With her mother bedridden and the doctors seemingly useless, Zoë searched through her mother's books. There, she found a reference to a spell involving the Moon of Kroll, an artifact her mother had retrieved some time before, which could "transform a drop of love to a wellspring of health once a generation." When her brother laughed at her, she did the spell alone. Though it terrified her mother, it worked, and gave the young Zoë a taste for power.

For the next three years, she appointed herself her mother's apprentice, searching for more magic. Then, as a young teenager, she found it in the form of an energy pool on Titan which gave her telekinetic powers, and while her mother was initially scared, Zoë peeling away a week's worth of digging in seconds to find the idol her mother had been looking for seemed to assuage her fear.

Kinetix in her original costume. Art by Alan Davis.

Legion

Several years later - during which she tried and failed to find more power on fifteen seperate occasions - Zoë was inducted into the Legion as Aleph's draftee - although she rejected their suggestion of "Morpho" as a codename, preferring Kinetix. Leviathan would develop an immediate crush on her. Outgoing and vivacious, she quickly made friends in the team - in particular with the reserved Shrinking Violet. After a relatively short time on the team, however, she took Violet on a dig where she found the Star of Akkos - which instead of empowering her further, as intended, drained her existing power away.

Devestated at being left useless again, President Chu refused to allow her to leave the Legion, since Aleph didn't have a replacement super-being available. Instead, she took a leave of absence in an attempt to restore her powers or find new ones - but disaster struck again when, while her Legion Cruiser was in transit between Stargates, the destination gate was destroyed by the White Triangle as part of a program of Stargate-destruction. Despite the computer saying her survival chances were nil, she managed to slow down into normal space without being ripped apart - but the Cruiser's life support was critically damaged in the process. She tried to find a planet to land on, but eventually fell unconscious under the failing life support, and the other systems failed until she was left, standed and dying, in space.

Pointed ears and a tail

The Mysa-transformed Kinetix, by Jeff Moy

Before she finally expired, however, she was retrieved by Mysa, who had been following her progress, and teleported her to her home on Zarrox. Without revealing her connection to her, she said she'd cast a spell to keep the Legionnaires from worrying about her - except perhaps Violet, who had a strong bond with her. Mysa then told Kinetix half-truths about her own history with the Emerald Eye - which even an image of fascinated Kinetix, but Mysa insisted had to be destroyed.

After this, Mysa took her out to the wasteland that was Zarrox's surface, and reempowered her, which had the side effect of turning her into an albino with pointed ears, a tail, and a distinctive tattoo on her left cheek. After this, she teleported her away and told her not to come back without the Eye.

Kinetix emerged into a pitched battle between the Legion and the Fatal Five. Confused, she was just in time to save Violet from the Empress, who herself displayed interest in the Eye. Shortly after, the Five teleported away, and she was reunited with the team. In the midst of the greetings, Spark discovered her new tail, much to Kinetix's own shock and Gates' bemusement.

After the Five - along with their benefactor, President Chu - were dealt with, she interviewed the captive Empress to no effect - the Empress, though desperate to find the Eye for herself, had no idea of its' whereabouts. Thereafter, when then-leader Cosmic Boy had gone to Titan with Saturn Girl and Live Wire, and Leviathan, as Deputy, had been sent to Xanthu with a team to let Star Boy stay with the Legion, Leviathan appointed her acting leader until either him or Cosmic Boy got back, or the ongoing election was done.

Two hours later, Brainiac 5 had quit, with an ongoing feeling that the Legion was over-relying on his brainpower brought to a head by Kinetix's attitude. Several promises and the hiring of Doctor Gym'll to handle medical work were required before he withdrew the resignation, and Triad was installed as acting leader until the election process was complete, with the increasingly-confident Shrinking Violet chosen.

In the meantime, her search for the Eye, even with the Legion's resources behind her, was proceeding fruitlessly, until, on a mission to Gallen, strange things started to happen, including the three Triads suddenly becoming physically different and unable to remerge, and the mission ended with Leviathan's heroic death. Distraught, Violet knelt beside him and started to glow green...

Openly revealing her possession of the Eye, Violet teleported them back to Legion Plaza. Kinetix fruitlessly said they needed to get the Eye away from her, but Violet ignored them and teleported all the Legionnaires, including those who had not been on Gallen, to the meeting room. She then compelled them to go through the rigmarole of a meeting, before announcing that they would bring Leviathan back to life and sent several Legionnaires on missions to that effect. After, as expected, they failed to find a way, the Eye controlled Violet into transforming the team into an Emerald Legion.

Saturn Girl escaped the hive-mind they were formed into thanks to Apparition flying through her, but had no effect on the rest of the group. However, after some time during which they relocated to a jury-rigged satellite, Kinetix managed to fracture the group mind enough for Gates' personality to reassert itself, and although Violet quickly reverted him to an egg, Kinetix openly challenged Violet for the Eye, paralysing the rest of the group. Saturn Girl then took that opportunity to invade the mind once more, successfully restoring the rest of the group. As a result, M'Onel intervened, severing the Eye's connection with Kinetix, and Violet used her connection with the Eye to leave Kinetix near death. Shocked at what she had done, and the fighting that had broken out between the freed Legionnaires and the Emerald Legionnaires, she commanded the Eye to turn back time...

Restored

Kinetix being restored by Mysa, as the Star of Akkos crumbles in front of her. Art by Jeff Moy.

As a result of Vi's command, the Eye sent half the Legion back to the 20th Century, took Violet into deep space, and left the rest of the Legionnaires, including Kinetix, now as they were before the Eye first transformed them, in the satellite - which was now rapidly falling out of orbit. Between Live Wire's leadership, M'Onel slowing the fall just enough, and Kinetix herself casting a protective field around them, they survived the fall and were retrieved by the United Planets Solar Fleet, lead by President Brande. After filling them in on what had happened while they were controlled, they returned to headquarters, where Kinetix was distraught over what had happened to Violet and Leviathan, blaming herself for what had happened.

Shortly after Leviathan's funeral, however, a more pressing matter intervened. While Zoë began to tell her mother and brother how she had been transformed, Mysa intervened and teleported Kinetix, the Cruiser she was on and everyone else on it to Zarrox. There, she contained the team, revealed how she had planted the Star of Akkos to arrange for Kinetix's depowerment and subsequent rempowerment as her agent. She then would have killed Kinetix with the Star for failing her if Azra hadn't intervened, pointing out how Mysa owed her for saving her life before Zoë had been born. Reluctantly, when reminded of her debt, Mysa restored Kinetix to her original form and power and banished them from Zarrox.

Terrorform

Kinetix as a Terrorform. Art by Oliver Coipel.