Being born from the Phoenix Force merging with Jean, Rachel inherited both her mother's potential for telepathic and telekinetic powers and the ability to tap into the limitless power of the Phoenix Force. Raised at Professor Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Rachel met and befriended fellow mutant Franklin Richards, the son of Fantastic Four members, Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman. When her powers manifested, Rachel joined the New Mutants, a younger generation of X-Men brought together to carry-on Professor Xavier's dream of a peaceful co-existence between humans and mutants.
In the mainstream reality, the X-Men prevented the assassination of anti-mutant Senator Robert Kelly; however, in Rachel’s timeline, Senator Kelly was killed. The assassination caused intense widespread public paranoia against mutants, and, in the next presidential election, an anti-mutant candidate won. Around this time, Rachel's mother was killed in a nuclear explosion in Pittsburg reportedly caused by the X-Men's old enemy, Mastermind. The anti-mutant outrage led to a genetic purity act, rendering the X-Men fugitives. The Mutant Registration Act further resulted in a dystopian future as the mutant hunting Sentinel robots, unleashed by the anti-mutant president’s administration to contain and eliminate mutantkind, decided that the best way to do so was to take over the United States. Over the subsequent years, they killed or imprisoned virtually all known superhuman beings within North America, including Rachel's father.
Hound: One day, while Rachel was still a child, the X-Men's base of operations, at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, was attacked and demolished by federal troops. One of the only survivors at the school was Rachel, whom the soldiers found by the side of Prof. Xavier's body. The soldiers used drugs to neutralize Rachel's developing psionic powers, before she was tortured and brainwashed in the laboratory of the sadistic Ahab. Following extensive behavior modification, Rachel became a mutant "hound", using her psionic powers to hunt down other mutants for the authorities. Rachel's superiors branded her face with a grotesque, irremovable pattern of tattoos to mark her as a Hound and forced her to wear a leash. Rachel occasionally killed mutants herself and it is known that some of those were people she loved. Rachel's grief and shame at what she was forced to do as a hound and her anguish over the deaths of her parents and friends deeply scarred her soul, leaving her bitter and intolerant toward humans who persecute mutants. During one sadistic torture session imposed on her by Ahab, the pain helped Rachel break her brainwashing, letting her rebel and attack, Ahab, permanently scarring his face.
Powers:
Rachel is a mutant classified as a Omega Level Mutant, as well as the daughter of the Phoenix. Rachel inherited enormous psionic powers from her mother and has limited control over her powerful telepathy and telekinesis. Marvel Girl has developed an electric blue Phoenix emblem energy signature, which appears over her left eye whenever she uses her powers. According to Jat Vor-Thrul, Rachel measures a 11-Tau-11 on the Kiatna Psi-Scale. She is one of the most powerful psychic in the entire Marvel Universe. Not only does this imply that there is a measurable scale for beings of her impressive power, but that people with such power are considered valuable, as the Salvagers seemingly took her for profit. After blacking out while fighting the Sentinel Alpha, Rachel tapped into her full potential. In her own words, the dial had been cranked on all of her senses.
Empathy -On many occasions, Rachel has shown incredibly strong empathic powers that enable her to control, manipulate and alter the feelings, sensations, and emotions of other sentient beings.[citation needed]
Telepathy -Rachel is an Omega-Level telepath, similar to her mother Jean Grey, meaning she has limitless telepathic power. She can read minds and project her thoughts into the minds of other humans or animals within a vast, potentially limitless radius. She has not always had access to her telepathy due to fear of losing control. Even when her powers are inhibited, Rachel possesses potent telepathic abilities.
Telepathic Defense -Rachel's telepathy can manifest in a number of ways.
Telepathic Cloak -Can mask her presence from being detected by others. Her abilities can at times go undetected or be counteracted by other more powerful telepaths depending on their level of skill in using their own psi abilities. She can extend these defenses to others around her as well.
Trauma Healing -The ability to heal mental trauma through "psychic surgery", the power to stimulate or deaden the pain and pleasure centers in a person's brain.
Mind Control -Ability to control the minds of others upon mere concentration.
Psionic Shield -Ability to erect a psychic shield for protection of herself and of others minds.
Mind Transferal -The ability to transfer both her mind and powers into other host bodies should her own physical body somehow be destroyed.
Neural Jumpstart -The ability to increase the speed of synapses in the brain, allowing her to increase another's powers to incredible levels, with a temporary effect.
Telepathic Illusions -Ability to create illusions to make herself seem to be invisible, look like someone else, or make others experience events that are not truly happening.
Mental Paralysis -Ability to induce temporary mental or physical paralysis.
Mental Amnesia -Can erase any awareness of particular memories or cause total amnesia.
Psionic Blasts -She can project psionic force bolts which have no physical effects but which can affect a victim's mind so as to cause the victim pain or unconsciousness and turning someone brain-dead.
Dilate Power -The ability to place "psychic inhibitors" in the minds of mutant adversaries to prevent them from using their powers.
Astral Projection -Can project her astral form from her body onto astral planes or the physical planes. In the physical plane she can only travel in astral form over short distances. In the Astral Plane, she can mentally create psionic objects and manipulate the aspects of her environment. She can communicate with others astrally through her own will, or through contact with the thoughts and memories of others.
Telepathic Tracking -The ability to track other sentient beings by their unique psionic emanations (thought patterns contained in the psionic portion of the spectrum), especially if they pose a threat to her well-being in her immediate vicinity.
Mental Detection -Can sense the presence of another superhuman mutant within a small but as yet undefined radius of herself by perceiving the distinctive mental radiations emitted by such a being.
Precognition -Occasionally, Rachel has shown the ability to see visions of the future during a trance or through precognitive dreams.
Telekinesis -Rachel is a Omega Level Telekinetic, meaning she has limitless telekinetic powers. She can sense and manipulate matter and energy, even on a sub-atomic level. Rachel can use her telekinesis to affect and control molecules and particles, allowing her to fully control matter and energy for a variety of effects: Intuitive Aptitude: Can disassemble complex devices explosively (separating every last component, such as screws, nuts, circuit boards, etc.) and, just as quickly, easily assemble complex devices. This also has enabled her to even attain awareness and control over objects as small as individual electrons in an atom. For instance, Rachel could detect if a seal was hermetic or not by checking for the presence of penetrating oxygen molecules. Can even detect and discern individual oxygen molecules, and determine the atomic weight of molecules by the amount of atoms present.
Matter Alteration -As Marvel Girl, has shown the ability to alter molecular and subatomic structures and the ability to alter molecular valences, or even rewrite her own genome. Rachel has also been able to create a micro black hole.
Matter Transmutation -She can manipulate and transmute matter on a sub-atomic level (e.g. instantly altering her clothing, turning wood into gold, plant into crystal, and cause physical bodies to disintegrate by altering their molecular structure, etc).
Psionic Spikes -Ability to create destructive psionic spikes that destroy the physical objects that the spikes come into contact with.
Force Field Generation -Ability to create protective force shields that can deflect even the most powerful of attacks (even filter bacteria from the air, withstand Jovian atmospheric pressures, and even repel nuclear weapon attacks). The upper limits of this ability remain unknown. Rachel has also displayed such control over the fields as to shape them precisely, even to conform very closely to her body’s form. There does not appear to be any correlation between field strength and the thickness of the telekinetic fields.
Concussive Blasts -Can project telekinetic energies as powerful blasts beams directed from her brain that could apparently affect matter with concussive force.
Telekinetically Enhanced Condition -Rachel is capable of telekinetically enhancing her physical abilities to superhuman levels.
Flight -By levitating herself, she can “fly” for very long distances and at supersonic rate.
Psionic Firebird -The ability to manifest her telekinesis as a psionic firebird, whose claws can inflict both physical and mental damage.
Energy Manipulation -The ability to telekinetically manipulate various types of the energy from electromagnetic spectrum.
Time Manipulation -Possesses the psionic power to travel and manipulate time for a variety of effects, including: travel through time and space, stopping or greatly slowing down time in her immediate vicinity, etc.) Rachel can even send the awareness/consciousness/soul of herself or others to the past or future versions of herself, or possibly their ancestors/descendants.
Chrono-Shield -The unconscious emanation of a fourth dimensional pulse which creates a chrono-shield protecting her from changes in the timeline.
Psychometric Projections -Ability to mentally project past events into the minds of others.
Phoenix Force Avatar -For a time, Rachel was also bonded to the Phoenix Force as "the one true Phoenix", and had its cosmic powers at her disposal. As Phoenix, Rachel's abilities are enhanced to their ultimate levels, limited only by her force of will and breadth of imagination. As Phoenix, she has manipulated matter on an atomic and universal scale, generated and controlled any form of energy in virtually any conceivable amount, absorbed energy from sources as great as a supernova, manipulated time and space, created space warps for instantaneous travel, and enhanced her strength to immeasurable levels. Rachel demonstrated heightened psi-powers as well as the ability to manipulate energy and lifeforces, and a limited cosmic awareness. Rachel's connection to the Phoenix power was lost in the distant future. Rachel's connection to the Phoenix power was lost in the distant future and did not return with her when she traveled back to the modern era. Recently, Marvel Girl absorbed a residual echo of the Phoenix Force left in the sword of a previous host, a Shi'ar named Rook'shir. Its full effects are unknown at this time. It was revealed that the power Rachel has is not the true Phoenix Force, but a shadow or echo of it, it was easier to control, but less powerful. It has disappeared along with the sword.
Rachel created a psi-bond with her half-brother Nathan Summers shortly after his birth. It is unknown if that link still exists.
Abilities:
-Rachel Summers has trained with Nightcrawler in hand-to-hand combat, learned lock-picking skills from Storm, and has some experience in vehicular repair and the use of advanced weaponry and technology. She also on some occasions she has demonstrated to use her telepathy and telekinesis in her combat.
Strength level -Normal human female with intensive regular exercise. When possessing the Phoenix Force, Rachel had superhuman strength with an unknown upper limit.
Weaknesses -Even with the powers of the Phoenix, magic and magical objects prove to be an enigma for Rachel's powers. When the Soulsword appeared near the Excalibur lighthouse headquarters seeking Kitty Pryde to become its new wielder, Rachel attempted to remove it from the bedrock it had embedded itself into in order to alleviate her friend's apprehension. Despite using the full extent of power permitted by the Phoenix Force, Rachel was unable to remove the sword which she surmised only Kitty Pryde could remove. This could be the reason why Rachel has not telekinetically removed the Shi'ar deathmark on her back, although Nightcrawler theorized that this was only because Rachel didn't wish to remove it.