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 c. 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 archaeologist who often travelled from world to world in search of artefacts. 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, unbeknownst 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 artefacts, 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 artefact 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 separate 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. She immediately proved her worth as a Legionnaire, being chosen as part of the team that pursued Tangleweb, while other more experienced, yet "weaker" Legionnaires were left behind. She also stood against the Composite Man, delaying him with her telekinesis and buying time for the team to regroup. 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.

Devastated 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, stranded 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...

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

Restored

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.

While Kinetix missed Violet, and spent much of her time searching for her while on monitor duty, she began to form strong friendships with XS and Lori Morning.

Mordru

The costume in which Kinetix participated in the fight against Mordru, art by Jeff Moy.

However, this lack of contact between Mysa and the Legion would not last long. After a tryout session where Kinetix sat as one of the judges, which lead to Magno, Sensor and Umbra's admission, the three rookies would discover a broken tomb on their first mission, which had contained the legendary sorcerer Mordru. While M'Onel searched for Violet and the Eye, Kinetix worried - only to be grabbed through a portal by Mysa and her new student Dragonmage at the same time a Legion team was comprehensively defeated and forced to watch the destruction of Sklar.

Kinetix was reluctant to listen to Mysa after her previous manipulation of her, but abruptly changed her tune when Mysa said that Mordru was searching for the Eye - and thus, by extension, Violet - and agreed to help, even defusing Invisible Kid and Brande's initial reactions to seeing Mysa.

When Violet and the Eye merged to become Veye shortly after, Zoë was shocked. In the first group attack on Mordru was teleported by Mysa, Kinetix, Sensor and Veye were teleported to another dimension by Mysa in an effort to convince Violet to separate from the Eye. When they finally did though, Mysa appeared to pull the Eye separate when they were only partially demerged, and Violet vanished. Shocked, Zoë was forced to continue fighting as Mysa and the Eye staggered Mordru. When Mordru reversed his aging of Mysa, costing her much of her power in the process, the Eye temporarily went mad until Violet appeared, having been shrunken on its' surface and ordered it to go. After that, she played a crucial part in the final assault, cutting off his air supply until the airtight globe they had brought could permanently do the same thing, returning him to dormancy.

Thereafter, Kinetix combined with M'Onel and Andromeda to destroy Mordru's talismans to prevent him using them once more, then demanded more answers from Mysa, including why the deaged Mysa had a tattoo identical to the one she had given Kinetix when she transformed her. Mysa reluctantly explained that it denoted mystic power - and a blood kinship to Mordru, momentarily terrifying Kinetix until Mysa restated that it was a copy of hers rather than an indication that Kinetix herself was a Mordru scion. She then demanded a further answer for why Mysa had manipulated her as she had, rather than simply asked, and received the answer that you asked for help from friends, and Mysa had had no friends for a century, everyone she ever loved or trusted having been killed or corrupted by Mordru. Although maintaining it was no excuse to herself, Kinetix finally felt sympathy for Mysa after that.

Zoë then went to visit Violet in the hospital, but had only been there a short time when Violet began convulsing - and even as Kinetix went for a doctor, Violet suddenly grew to giant size. Kinetix helped restrain her - and kept her gown modest - but couldn't go much else but worry as Violet's size and temperature fluctuated rapidly, and reflect from the image Sensor pulled from Violet's subconscious showing her love for Leviathan that she'd had no idea how Violet had felt for Leviathan. When Brande offered to help, she aided in providing light for them to see while Umbra's darkfield kept outside distractions away, and hugged Violet as soon as Brande woke her up.

Kinetix in her post-Anomaly costume. Art by Jeff Moy.

Anomaly

Soon after though, an event that was devestating to Kinetix's mind occurred. While investigating a space Anomaly, being so close to so much power, combined with the odd physics of the Anomaly caused her mind almost to shut down. While she continued to function as a Legionnaire - barely - she became monosyllabic and reclusive.

When it became clear that she was not going to recover herself, Violet and Spark used Brainiac 5's new Anywhere Machine as a makeshift telepathic link to enter her mind. There, they felt Kinetix's own lust for power as they relived her experience in the Anomaly, and Kinetix's own personality reemerged to stop them. She managed to persuade them to leave, and followed her own advice.

Unfortunately, moments later they were overcome by Brainiac 5's malfunctioning Bizarro experiment. Only Invisible Kid's immunity to the Bizarrofying light and Bizarro-Koko's intelligence would save the group.

Thereafter, Kinetix was mostly back to her old self, creating beach outfits for everyone - including several different ones for herself - on Summer World and reassuring Vi, who had a feeling of dread over the Eye, fulfilled as the Eye - along with the Fatal Five, less Mano - stole the Legion Outpost at the same time while only Brainiac and Gates were present, requiring the whole team to help retrieve it.

She was then one of the many Blighted Legionnaires, but, unlike Umbra, showed no serious after-effects, and escaped the Rift shortly afterward in the same lifepod as Spark and Cosmic Boy.

Science Police

When the Legion was disbanded by now-President McCauley shortly afterward, seeing Magno in Science Police uniform at the memorial ceremony made her decide to join up in the absence of the Legion - much to Shvaughn Erin's discomfort.

Over the next year, she graduated to become a junior officer, reluctantly described by Erin as a "credit to the force". Even after the Lost Legionnaires reemerged, she remained with the SP, until a particularly disastrous event...

Terrorform

Kinetix as a Terrorform. Art by Oliver Coipel.

When "President McCauley" openly revealed himself to be the ancient enemy of Batman, Ra's al-Ghul, he set the Moon crashing into the Earth in an attempt to force-evolve the human race. A side-effect of this was that approximately one in every hundred-thousand humans would become a "Terrorform" - multipowered "midwives" to the new humanity. Despite her alien heritage, Zoë Saugin was one of those affected by this phenomenon - although her mystical and alien background made her a "hybrid", allowing her to retain a fragment of her mind, along with her flowing red hair - but even so, her intelligence was severely limited.

Despite this, as a Terrorform, she helped heal M'Onel from a fatal wound inflicted by Ra's under red light, then led the other Terrorforms to slow the Moon's fall long enough for Legion World to counterbalance it. When being studied by Brainiac 5 afterward in Metropolis, the Robotican attack hit Earth. In the process, she was heard to remark "Am not Zoë Saugin any more. Not Kinetix. Not sure." She was then overtaken by the machines herself, as the Terrorforms themselves became mechanical, but at Erin's prompting managed to open a hole for a group of Legionnaires to Threshold down to the Earth's surface, and Computo, their controller, was removed shortly afterwards, allowing the other Roboticans freedom - whereupon they withdrew to Warworld, returning Kinetix to her earlier Terrorform state.

When the other Terrorforms expended their energy on the decimated Xanthu shortly afterwards, however, she did not revert, perhaps due to the additional burst of energy she received when a residual Robotican drone reactivated and hit another Terrorform caused her and Sensor to be hit by an additional surge of Terrorform energy, which mutated Sensor uncontrollably.

When part of R.J. Brande's attaché to the Second Galaxy shortly afterward led to the team being captured by the Credo, and being fitted with power-neutralising collar though, she began to speak more normally, indicating that the real Zoë Saugin still exists within the Terrorform hybrid.

Powers and abilities

As a result of her exposure to an energy pool on Titan, Kinetix possesses telekinetic powers, most useful on a micro level, allowing her to reshape solid matter fluidly and generate light; although she is also capable of levitating limited amounts of matter, around three times her body weight, creating forcefields (though nowhere near as strong as Brainiac 5's) and unaided flight. She also often used her powers to alter her clothing or that of others, often coming up with new designs, and altering the fabric's colors and shapes as well.

As a Terrorform, she possessed the ability to generate almost any power needed at a time, but at the cost of most of her intelligence and a certain vulnerability to outside factors. Among the powers she has exhibited are: healing powers, enhanced strength and durability, flight, unaided survival in space, energy blasts and gravity control.