Merge:Aurora

Aurora is a Canadian superheroine in the Marvel Comics universe. She first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #120 as a member of Alpha Flight. She is the twin sister of Northstar and the former lover of Sasquatch.

Character biography
Jeanne-Marie Beaubier and her twin brother Jean-Paul were separated in infancy after their parents died. Jean-Paul was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Louis Martin, who were cousins of his mother. The Martins could not afford to adopt Jeanne-Marie as well and arranged for Jeanne-Marie to be raised at Madame DuPont's School for Girls in LaVelle, Quebec, a reactionary religious school. Soon afterward the Martins moved to Northern Quebec. The Martins were killed in an accident several years later and Jean-Paul was placed in a foster home, unaware that he had a sister.

Extremely nervous and introverted, Jeanne-Marie Beaubier was miserable at Madame DuPont's School and at the age of thirteen, she attempted suicide by throwing herself from the roof of one of the school's buildings. Instead of falling to her death, Beaubier discovered that she could fly at great speed. Unaware that she was a mutant, the deeply religious Beaubier believed that her flight was the result of a divine miracle. The next morning she explained to the school's headmistress, what she believed had happened. Believing the young girl to be guilty of blasphemy, the headmistress had Beaubier severely disciplined. This incident triggered a dissociative identity disorder in Jeanne-Marie. A second personality, extroverted and far more uninhibited, emerged. Under the influence of this second personality, Beaubier secretly left the school that same night. On returning three days later, she had no memory of where she had been or what she had done and she was again physically punished. The resulting trauma was so great that Beaubier repressed her second personality.

Five years later, Beaubier's application to become a teacher at the school was accepted. By this time Beaubier had adjusted to life at the school and her everyday personality was that of a prim, proper, repressed woman. But the same night that her application was accepted, her second personality re-emerged and she left to enjoy herself in Montreal. Confronted by muggers, she knocked one unconscious by moving at superhuman speed. This was the first time that she had used her superhuman powers in five years. The second mugger was halted by Wolverine, who had witnessed the attempted assault. Recognizing that Beaubier had superhuman powers, Wolverine invited her to go to Ottawa to meet James MacDonald Hudson, who was organizing a team of superhumanly powerful agents for the Canadian government's Department H. Hudson accepted her as a recruit and reunited her with her brother. After a period of training, both Beaubier siblings joined the team that Hudson created, Alpha Flight, under the code names Aurora and Northstar.

Aurora has suffered from dissociative identity disorder for some time: Jeanne-Marie represented her normal persona while Aurora represented Jeanne-Marie's "darker" repressed personality traits. The personalities were later merged into one healthy personality although her sanity has deteriorated in recent years and they resplit.

Recently, Beaubier underwent still further personality changes. For a time, her "Aurora" and "Jeanne-Marie" personae have each manifested traits of the other while nevertheless remaining distinctly separate personalities. Most of the time now, she manifests a third personality which is basically Aurora's but with more of a sense of responsibility than before.

Recently, Aurora became a mind controlled agent of Weapon X and was in an abusive relationship with the Weapon X director, Malcolm Colcord who beat her. Aurora managed to retaliate against her mind-control by creating a third personality that wasn't affected. She beat the director up and managed to escape.

In addition, an alternate Aurora from relatively early in her Alpha Flight career was recently brought to the present-day with her teammates, apart from Sasquatch. At last report, this group was continuing to act as Alpha Flight in the present day. Both she and Northstar are slated to appear in the 6-part "Supernovas" storyline beginning in X-Men #188



In X-Men #189, it was shown that Aurora's mental state has become more unstable than before as apparently one of her personas had nearly influenced her into killing herself. However, she was stopped by the arrival of Northstar, who is under the control of The Children, a mysterious group of heretofore unknown superhumans. One of the Children--Serafina has placed the twins under their control, largely repairing Aurora's fragile psyche and altering their powers, enabling them to generate not only light when in contact with each other, but apparently heat as well.

Powers and abilities
She has the powers of flight and superhuman speed (theoretically able to approach light-speed). Originally, while in contact with her brother, the pair could emit bursts of light, but, at one point, she had her powers altered by Walter Langkowski (Sasquatch), her lover at the time to "cloak" her from mutant-detection devices (such as Sentinels). She soon discovered that she could produce light independently, and touching her brother actually cancelled the ability. It appears that this may have become undone in recent years, returning this ability to its original state. Due to the machinations of Serafina, it appears that Aurora and Northstar can now generate explosive thermal energy on contact with each other as well.

Age of Apocalypse


In the Age of Apocalypse, Northstar and Aurora were part of Mr. Sinister's Elite Mutant Force (E.M.F.) and, as such, were assigned to patrolling the breeding pens. The siblings were rather snotty about their superior status as mutants and seemed to take great pleasure in punishing those prisoners who acted up or tried to escape. When the E.M.F.'s leader, Cyclops, switched sides, secretly helping some inmates to escape, he was caught in the act by the speeding twins. However, both of them were defeated by Cyclops and the prisoner he was helping to escape, which happened to be Polaris. When the series was revisited for the 10 year anniversery, it was revealed that following the fall of Apocalypse's regime, the Beaubiers became fugitives until they were killed in X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #2, by Weapon X and Kirika (X-23 in the Marvels main universe).

Appearances in other media
In the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends episode "Mission: Save the Guardstar," the mutant Lightwave is based off Aurora.

Aurora appeared in the X-Men animated series episodes "Slave Island" and "Repo Man". In the cartoon Aurora possessed the ability to fly and generate a blinding light when she slapped hands with her brother Northstar.