Merge:Lila Cheney

Lila Cheney is a minor character in the X-Men Universe. She was created by Chris Claremont and first introduced in The New Mutants. She is a mutant with the ability to teleport, but only over vast intergalactic distances. Born in England, she is mostly known on earth as a musician, often performing with the band Cat's Laughing. (Another singer with mutant abilities, Dazzler, has performed with Lila in the past.) Previously, Lila also used her powers for personal gain as a thief.

The New Mutants first met Lila when Sunspot took them to one of her concerts, where they subsequently foiled an assassination attempt made upon her by an alien race called the Vrakanin. At that time, Lila had attempted to "steal" the Earth and sell its population on the intergalactic black market as slaves.

Lila was formerly romantically involved with Sam Guthrie, also known as Cannonball. The two have maintained an on-again, off-again relationship as seen in titles including X-Force (after New Mutants was revamped by Rob Liefeld) and X-Treme X-Men, particularly the TPB "Intifada." Lila was performing a concert in a nightclub in Valle Soleada one night when a young woman named Marie D'Acanto attempted to detonate a bomb to avenge the deaths of her parents, at the hands of mutants. Cannonball and Rogue foiled this murder attempt and took Marie D'Acanto into their custody.

The mutant Guido Carosella, aka Strong Guy, sometimes works as her bodyguard, although he often leaves to go on various adventures with other mutants, and he is most recently once more a member of X-Factor.

Lila maintains a home away from Earth in a Dyson sphere.

Powers
She has the ability to generate a teleportational field about herself with which can transport herself and other people/objects across interstellar distances, even across the Milky Way galaxy. But she can't teleport across distances shorter than several light-years. Hence, when she teleports from one spot on Earth to another, she actually teleports herself to her Dyson sphere from her starting point, and then teleports herself from the sphere to the other point on Earth. Apparently, she must specifically know any location to which she teleports herself in order to do so.

Notable Readings:

 * New Mutants Annual #1
 * Brief description of her powers featured in New Mutants #25, "Private Journal of Professor Xavier."
 * New Mutants #29; first appearance of Dazzler as Lila's backup singer
 * X-Treme X-Men, "Intifada," graphic novel
 * Gambit and the X-ternals Age of Apocalypse