The mutant Noriko Ashida can absorb electricity and discharge or internalize it as bursts of speed, and becomes a fierce defender of mutantkind on the super-heroic team, the X-Men.
A Runaway Mutant
Noriko Ashida is born in Toyko, Japan, and at 13-years-old, her mutant ability to absorb and discharge electricity manifests. With her dominating father, Seiji Ashida, refusing to believe in the existence of mutants and her mother, Suki, fearful of standing up to him, Noriko runs away from home. Fleeing to America, she lives on the streets, using prescription drugs to help control her powers.
Ashida seeks help at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning run by the mutant team, the X-Men, but student Julian Keller, AKA Hellion, who thinks her a panhandler, cruelly turns her away. During one accidental discharge, she badly hurts coffee shop manager Luna DePaula, then desperately steals money from the shop to buy narcotics. When fellow student Josh Foley, AKA Elixir, later sees her on the street, hoping to help, he leads other students to track her down and learns from other people experiencing homelessness that they call her Surge. Noriko is again near discharge when found, but is calmed through student Wallflower’s pheromone powers and taken to the Institute where instructor the Henry McCoy, AKA Beast, devises a pair of gauntlets for her that regulate her electrical intake and discharge.
With the gauntlets, Surge uses her powers to jolt Elixir awake after he was attacked by Rahne Sinclair, AKA Wolfsbane, and this allows him to use his powers to heal himself. She then apologizes to DePaula, admitting her theft, and begins working in the coffee shop to make amends. Xavier staffer Danielle Moonstar, AKA Dani Moonstar, becomes Surge’s faculty advisor, making her a part of the New Mutants training squad. During this time, Surge gains a new roommate, Sooraya Qadir, AKA Dust, and Surge helps battle Bruce Banner, AKA the Hulk.
Electric Abilities and Speed
Surge’s body automatically absorbs any electricity source near her, including static electricity. When her energy stores are full, she speaks, moves, and thinks at uncontrollable speeds, returning to normal after releasing the energy in a destructive burst. By using her Beast-designed (later re-engineered by Forge) gauntlets, she can use her electricity in regulated ways, such as defibrillation jolts or powerful offensive bolts. When drained completely, she becomes weak and feels ill. Surge is fluent in Japanese and English, and has little trace of an accent.
X-Allies and X-ceptional Enemies
While Noriko has a family, her parents and her brother, Keitaro, she feels rejected by them when her mutant powers manifest. As such, she ultimately creates a new family with the students at the Xavier Institute and the X-Men.
After Surge arrives at Xavier’s Institute, classmate David Alleyne, AKA Prodigy, tries to befriend her despite her initial rejection and gruff exterior, and the two eventually begin a tempestuous romance, which continues after Alleyne loses his powers during the “M-Day” incident that removes the majority of mutants’ abilities. She often butts heads with the Hellions squad leader, Julian Keller, but they ultimately work together against mutant threats.
With the New X-Men, Surge goes up against the advanced Sentinel known as Nimrod to save Forge. Using her powers of electrical discharge, she overloads the time device inside Nimrod. Surge also fights alongside the X-Men against Predator X, Nathaniel Essex, AKA Mister Sinister, the cyborg Reavers, the Acolytes, the Purifiers, and X-Men traitor Lucas Bishop, AKA Bishop, during a war over the fate of the first mutant born since “M-Day.”
Surge’s Story
Following “M-Day,” headmistress Emma Frost opted to create a core group of students to train as future X-Men by pitting all the remaining powered students against each other in a battle royal. Those that remained standing after the battle royal became official X-Men-in-training, including Surge, who was appointed squad leader. Not long after this, 47 former and current Xavier students were murdered by the anti-mutant Purifiers, earning Surge’s hatred. Surge was instrumental in saving mutant inventor Forge's life from Nimrod, the mutant-hunting robot from Earth-811, and with the X-Men, the students helped assault the Purifiers’ Facility and destroy all but one of their ultimate anti-mutant weapons, the Predator X creatures. Shortly thereafter, the demon sorcerer-priest Belasco, exiled sorceress Amanda Sefton, AKA Magik, from her limbo (Otherplace) realm and kidnapped the Institute student body, except for Surge and Hellion. Locating and reviving the comatose Sefton, Surge and Hellion forced her to take them to limbo where they helped the X-Men defeat Belasco, but not before Prodigy was killed. Luckily Elixir saved his life before any brain damage could set in. Upon returning to Earth, Surge lashed out to avoid being hurt and afraid for his safety, she drove Prodigy away by kissing Hellion and pretending she did not love Alleyne.
The students then joined the X-Men in battle against the remaining Predator X, Mister Sinister, the Reavers, Acolytes, Purifiers, and X-Men traitor Bishop during the Messiah Complex, a war to capture the first mutant born since “M-Day.” After this, Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, relocated the X-Men and the Institute to San Francisco. After the Leper Queen kidnapped and tried to murder her, Surge moved to San Francisco, and continues her training in protecting mutantkind with Cyclops’ X-Men. She defends the first mutant born after M-Day, Hope Summers, during the war between the Avengers and the X-Men, but it lands her and other students in custody at the Avengers Academy. When Cyclops was defeated, Surge moves into the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, and helped the Young Avengers in defeating the parasitic Mother.
During the Inhuman vs. X-Men war, Surge and many other mutants were sheltered at X-Haven, a protective sanctuary founded by X-Men Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm, against the Inhuman’s Terrigen Mist which caused M-Pox, a sickness to mutants. After the war ended, Surge joined Katherine Pryde, AKA Kitty Pryde’s school, Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach, as a student.
After Surge helped Jean Grey, AKA Phoenix, fight Nate Grey, AKA X-Man and his Horsemen of Salvation, she ended up in Nate’s new world in Age of X-Man, devoid of her life’s memories. Surge was an actress and while under the mental control of the Stepford Cuckoos confronted Kurt Wagner, AKA Nightcrawler, and Meggan Puceanu, AKA Meggan, about falling in love and having a daughter, which was outlawed in Nate’s world. The Cuckoos erased everyone’s memories of the incident and Surge stepped into Meggan’s leading lady role. Though Surge and all of the mutants were returned to their Earth eventually after Nate realized what he had done to them all.
When Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X, Magneto, and Moira MacTaggert, now Moira X, created the mutant island nation of Krakoa, Surge became a citizen of the sovereign nation-state and attended a party after the Quiet Council of Krakoa met for the first time.
