Merge:Surge

Surge is a mutant in the Marvel Universe, one of the student body in the Xavier Institute, and a member of the former New Mutants squad therein. Her real name is Noriko Ashida, and she first appeared in New Mutants (volume 2) #8.

Character biography
Noriko Ashida was born in Japan (possibly in Tokyo, where her family still lives, but this is not confirmed). She was close to her brother, Keitaro, but she ran away from home when she was thirteen-years-old, after her powers manifested (she's said that her father "doesn't believe in mutants"). How she came to the United States is unknown, but she was living homeless on the streets of New York when, four years later, she went up to the X-Mansion gates - only to be turned away by Hellion for being homeless.

Later that night, she broke into the Grind Stone café that the New Mutants often frequented, and shocked the owner (literally) when surprised. The following day, Elixir, who had seen Hellion turn her away the previous day, saw her outside the café, saying "Ididnotmeantodoit" (sic) rapidly and repeatedly. He looked away for a second to call over his fellow New Mutants, but when he looked back, she was gone.

Led by Wolfsbane, Josh gathered the rest of the group to try and find Nori that night, and they reluctantly went to try and keep him out of trouble. They eventually found her buying drugs, and assuming that was what was causing her to go out of control, Sofia blew the capsules away. In reality, it was the other way around, and without the pills, Surge completely lost control of her powers. Between Laurie's powers, and the fact that she was mostly discharged by that point, they managed to subdue her and take her back to the X-Mansion. There, Beast designed gauntlets that could regulate her absorption of ambient electricity, and that she could discharge through/into as required to prevent further mental overloads - to her less-than-complete gratitude.

She is currently a student at the Xavier Institute, and reluctantly sharing a room with Dust; the two young women disagree upon the "accepted" role of women and tension arises from their disagreement. After the student body was reorganised into six-member squads, she was placed on the New Mutants squad, with whom she's now on better terms.

After the House of M crossover event, over 90% of the world's mutants lost their powers, including many students in the Xavier Institute. Iceman, while talking to Noriko's father on the phone, confirmed that she was one of the "lucky ones" who retained their powers. The results of this and her friends' loss of powers have not been revealed yet. It was revealed during this time, however, that she is involved in a relationship with Prodigy.

Recently, a skirmish was set up by Emma Frost in order to decide who of the current student body at Xavier's would move on to become X-Men. A team was chosen consisting of Surge, Hellion, Elixir, Dust, Mercury and Rockslide, with a last minute addition by Cyclops of X-23. Emma announced that Surge would lead this team, an odd choice seeing as Julian has experience as a team leader and several team leaders from the former squads still have their powers.

Powers
Surge absorbs electricity at all times: from static in the air, electical appliances, outlets, etc (often causing lights to flicker, etc). She can't control the absorption, and thus must wear specifically-designed gauntlets at all times to regulate it. She can discharge the energy through lightning blasts or channel it into bursts of superspeed. If she takes in too much energy, it causes mental overloads which cause her to speak too fast, scatters her thinking and worsens her control over the blasts. Her blue hair is not related to her power - according to Nori, it "came in a bottle" (and, indeed, she debuted with black hair).

Trivia

 * According to her creators, Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir, she was seventeen-years-old at the beginning of the first series. As an entire school year has passed, it might be assumed that she is now eighteen.  However, given Marvel's floating timeline policy, that may not be the case.