Scott Summers
Scott Summers is the headmaster of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, and was the first field leader of the X-Men. Though currently on stress leave after the 'year from hell', he is slowly but surely making his way back.
Contents
Details
Character Journal: x_cyclops
Real Name: Scott Summers
Codename: Cyclops
Aliases: None
First Appearance: May 18th, 2003
Date of Birth: Sept 22nd, 1977
Place of Birth: Anchorage, Alaska
Citizenship: American
Relatives: Alex Summers (brother), Summers Family: Phillip Summers (grandfather), Deborah Summers (grandmother), Christopher Summers (father, deceased), Kate Summers (mother, deceased).
Education: B.Sc in mechanical engineering, B.Ed.
Relationship Status: Married (as of December 2005) to Jean Grey.
Occupation: Headmaster, teacher.
Team Affiliation: X-Men
Biography
Childhood
Scott was born in Alaska to Christopher and Kate Summers, the first of two children. His father's Air Force career necessitated a cross-country move when Scott was fifteen and his brother Alex was eight. While flying to their new home, their family's plane ran into difficulties over Nevada, and Scott's parents pushed him and Alex out of the plane, strapped into a single parachute. Scott's powers chose that moment to manifest, allowing him to slow his and Alex's descent, but Scott suffered a severe head injury that would later prevent him from controlling his optic blasts.
Scott was in the hospital for some time, and by the time he was released, his brother had already been placed with a foster family. (For unknown reasons, authorities were unable to locate the boys' grandparents, still living in Alaska.) Deemed 'unadoptable' because of his brain damage, Scott remained in the system. Regarding himself as damaged goods, Scott displayed increasing behavioral problems and had several run-ins with the police.
He also faced increasing difficulties with his mutation as his manifestation continued and his lack of control became obvious. Eventually, the optic blasts were permanently 'on', and Scott was rendered effectively blind because of the need to keep his eyes closed, which at that point was the only way to restrain the blasts. It was around this time that Charles Xavier found him and brought him to the school, where he and Erik Lehnsherr, then still a friend and colleague, discovered that ruby quartz worked to restrain Scott's power and constructed Scott's first pair of ruby-quartz glasses.
Living At The X-Mansion
In his early years at the school, Scott devoted himself to his studies, determined to prove to the Professor that he was worthy of all the help the man had given him. He was soon introduced to two of Xavier's older students, Hank McCoy and Jean Grey, for whom Scott quickly developed a youthful adoration. Some time later, they were joined by Ororo Munroe. The four of them would later constitute the first team of X-Men.
Scott, much to his surprise, found himself taking a leadership role with the team. He was also being groomed for a similar role within the school, and after doing an engineering degree, completed his bachelor's in education. His early assumption of these responsibilities caused him to develop an overly serious, sometimes humorless demeanor which, years later, is only now beginning to mellow.
His relationship with Jean Grey continued to develop, despite the age difference. After completing her internship and moving back to Xavier's full-time, Jean moved in with Scott, and shortly thereafter, he proposed.
Alkali Lake and After
When Jean 'died' during the Alkali Lake incident, Scott was devastated, but continued his work with the school and the team. He was soon to be reunited with his brother Alex, and found himself drawn to a fellow staff member, Betsy Braddock. But he also began to spend more time out of the school on various errands for Charles, including contacting new students, such as Angelo Espinosa, and gathering the information necessary to rescue Pyro.
His relationship with Betsy was complicated by her worsening medical condition and involvement with Dr. Nathaniel Essex. He faced additional stress when a mission went badly, leading to the X-Men being branded killers on national television. Shortly thereafter, he returned to the mansion and discovered that Betsy was having episodes of lost time and strange behavior following her surgery. Around the same time, Alex had a powers accident that injured Lorna seriously, and ran away from the mansion. Scott attempted to address both situations, looking unsuccessfully for Alex and taking a wait-and-see approach with Betsy, although numerous other staff members soon found themselves sharing his concern about her well-being.
These concerns proved to be well-founded, as Betsy fell increasingly under the control of Kwannon, a malignant personality that developed following the surgery Essex performed on her. It was around the same time that Emma Frost discovered that Alex was being held by Selene at the Hellfire Club and used as her personal battery. Though he was rescued and returned to the mansion, he was traumatized by the events of his captivity.
Back at the mansion, Kwannon enlisted Manuel de la Rocha to help her gain control over Betsy's body and wreaked a considerable amount of havoc at the mansion until she was caught and Charles freed Betsy, returning her to control of her own body. Scott's inability to do anything to help either Betsy or his brother would later come back to haunt him.
Cracks in the Foundation
The next few months were quiet for Scott, with little in the way of demand for the X-Men's services, save for rescuing Sarah Morlocke after her abortive attempt to seek vengeance for the deaths of the Morlocks and facing a Mistra retrieval team that had kidnapped Moira in an attempt to get Nathan to trade himself for her. Gradually, he attempted to reestablish his relationship with Betsy, although his guilt over having been unable to help her and his anger at Kwannon's continued existence in her mind interfered with this. He was stunned when Alex revealed to him the details of what had happened to him while he was in Selene's hands, and while he managed to provide the support his brother needed, Scott's own emotional state started to spiral downwards.
Wrestling with his workload and his growing awareness of Betsy's alcoholism, Scott was also troubled by frequent headaches and vivid, disturbing dreams. A alarming number of near-disasters and close calls for staff and students in the fall of 2004 only increased his stress and sense of futility, leading to Alison and other team members organizing a sort of intervention that wound up with Scott sedated in the infirmary after yet another demon attack turned out to be one catastrophe too many for him. While he was unconscious, Betsy discovered that his old link with Jean was still somehow active, the reason for his headaches and nightmares.
Afterwards, Scott was somewhat philosophical, but still questioned his path in his life and his role at the mansion. When he and Alex were returning from Hawaii after checking out a prospective college, the brothers were jumped by former associates of Colonel William Stryker, who dosed Scott with the mind-control serum from Alkali Lake. Scott escaped, but was left with amnesia, and wandered New York for a day until the X-Men retrieved him. The experience left him with a certain amount of perspective on his life, but events would only strain that further, with more 'unfortunate incidents' befalling students and staff. Betsy slipped into yet another coma after catching the feedback from Alison's powers overload and woke up a month later, cold and distant. They mutually ended their relationship that December, Scott recognizing that she needed time to rediscover who she was and recover from her ordeal without any pressure from him.
More happily, Scott was soon to be surprised by news that the Professor had located his and Alex's grandparents, and the brothers spent Christmas with their family.
Jean's Return
After Christmas, Scott spent a quiet couple of months, even finding a certain amount of inner peace as the stresses of his job eased somewhat and allowed him some time to finally process the events of the last several months. The X-Men's missions during that time were largely successful, and the students refrained from breaking themselves in any significant fashion.
March brought momentous events, as an amnesiac woman calling herself Jane Smith arrived at the mansion seeking the Professor's help with the strange abilities she seemed to be manifesting. Upon seeing Scott, 'Jane's' memories and true personality emerged, and Jean Grey was officially returned from the dead. Scott handled this as poorly as could be expected, but the final assault on Mistra, during which he nearly perished, gave him some perspective on life (and death) and he and Jean began rather cautiously to talk things out.
Scott and Jean reestablished their relationship over the course of the summer, and she rejoined the X-Men. Scott led the team a number of very stressful missions in close succession, and after being injured in Hungary, agreed to a brief vacation, during which he re-proposed to Jean.
The One-Eyed Man
When the G8 summit in Seattle erupted in violence, Scott took the team in to provide riot-control support after a direct request from the President. Though they very effectively helped to defuse the situation and prevent the violence from spreading, one of the final incidents of the day would take a serious personal toll on Scott. When the monorail track was damaged and the train was in danger of falling, the X-Men converged on the site to help evacuate the train. Scott helped hold back a crowd of rioters threatening the rescue efforts, and when one threw a Molotov cocktail at him, blasted it mere inches from his head. The explosion shattered his visor, damaging one eye beyond repair.
Scott was stunned to discover that the loss of his eye had the unexpected consequence of giving him control over the optic blasts in the remaining eye. He spent the next couple of months recuperating and learning how to control his power for the first time. While still recuperating, he helped plan a mission acting on intelligence from Pietro Maximoff. The X-Men destroyed a machine built by Toad and kept a list of newly manifested psis (their true objective) out of the hands of Magneto, who might have used one of the new telepaths to run a third Cerebro.
That Christmas, Jean and Scott eloped while spending the holiday with his grandparents in Alaska, reasoning that if they didn't get married when they had the chance events were liable to keep conspiring against them.
Scott was medically cleared for active duty in the New Year. Despite having a falling out with his brother over the X-Men, Scott threw himself back into X-Men work, leading one of the teams involved in the successful attempt to set up Gideon. For a time, it seemed like both his personal and professional life were in harmony.
Jane and Lyman
After a mental assault by a mutant by the name of Parker Matthews, connected to the Hellfire Club, a long-simmering psychically disassociated part of Jean's personality took control of Jean and promptly began to wreak havoc on the life Jean had rebuilt for herself since returning to the school. Approaching Sebastian Shaw to take Selene's place as Black Queen, Jane left Scott, doing a hatchet job on his self-confidence in the process. Bewildered and depressed, Scott tried to figure out a way to cope, an attempt that was brutally interrupted when Jane slept with Bobby Drake and sent him the tape. A chance and violent encounter with Jane soon after led to her altering his memories, and a confused Scott fled to Alaska for a week and came back calmer, but still wrestling with the situation. The stress was taking its toll and Scott was soon diagnosed with an ulcer. Thankfully, the truth of Jean's situation was soon revealed and the rescue attempt, involving Scott going into her mind to find her core personality, was successful. Unfortunately, their link was broken in the process, complicating the process of Jean's recovery and the rebuilding of their relationship.
For a time, Scott concentrated on on the team, leading a rescue mission when the FOH headquarters in New York was attacked by a strange mutant, and another to rescue Kyle Gibney when he became caught up in an underground fighting circuit and got in over his head. Scott was clearly not processing the events of the last few months, however, and eventually he and Jean decided to take their much-delayed honeymoon.
They returned after nearly a month just in time for the manifestation of Julio Richter and the disaster in San Diego. When an exhausted Jean returned to the mansion after helping Nathan and Haller stop the tsunami, Scott remained in San Diego supervising the X-Men's work in the clean-up efforts.
Shortly after his eventual return to the mansion, Scott was out running errands when Daniel Lyman, Colonel William Stryker's lieutenant from Alkali Lake, approached him. Lyman informed him that they had captured Alex in Hawaii and threatened to have him killed unless Scott agreed to come with them and reveal information he had apparently come into possession of while brainwashed at Alkali Lake. Scott agreed and Alex was released safely. Lyman immediately took Scott out of the area, and tortured him for the next five days when it became clear that Scott did not consciously remember the information he wanted about the adamantium bonding process. The X-Men eventually rescued him after an extensive search. In the process of the rescue, Jean displayed a dangerous lack of control over her temper and after consultation with Charles, decided that she needed to leave to work through her experiences as Jane and reestablish the level of control someone with her powers required.
Scott was left to concentrate on his own recovery. Though he is making steady progress, he's also determined not to rush things. He returned to his headmaster's position at the start of the new fall term, and has since taken on some training responsibilities with the team. He has recently begun to regard returning to active service as a 'when', not an 'if', but is cautious, wanting to make sure that he won't fall into any of his old bad habits when he does return to the X-Men.
Physical Characteristics
Height: 6'0"
Weight: 165lbs.
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Brown
Other Features: Scars on the left side of his face.
Powers
Scott projects beams of concussive force from his eyes, known to his teammates and students as 'optic blasts'. Initially, he was unable to control the blasts due to the head injury he suffered when saving himself and Alex, and for most of his adult life had to wear ruby quartz glasses or visors to restrain his powers. Since the events of the Seattle riots where he lost his eye, he has been in conscious control of his power and has since trained himself back to his old level of skill. He has a suprising level of flexibility with his blasts. For instance, he can open a locked door doing damage only to the lock and not the door itself - but he can also, very easily, level a building. The outer limits of his powers remain unexplored.
His optic blasts are powered by sunlight, which Scott's system absorbs and transforms into concussive force. Lack of sunlight has an effect on him similar to Seasonal Affective Disorder, and has been hypothesized by more than one of the mansion's medical staff to be the reason behind Scott's problems with depression. Total sunlight deprivation has a much more serious effect on Scott, initially causing delirium, later leading to coma and death if he is not promptly exposed to full-spectrum sunlight. Excessive amounts of UV have precisely the opposite effect, leaving Scott in a euphoric state and occasionally making his optic blasts strobe.
A secondary mutation related to his primary power is what Scott jokingly refer to as his 'mutant power of geometry'. He has an intuitive grasp of angles and a greater-than-normal spatial awareness. This allows him to control the trajectory of his optic blasts very precisely, and has the fringe benefit of compensating for his loss of depth perception.
Equipment
For most of his adult life, Scott needed to wear either ruby-quartz glasses or a special visor to control his powers at all times.
Scott also has a prosthetic eye, built by Forge, which helps compensate for his partial loss of vision by alerting him to the proximity of an object or person on his blind side.
Trivia
Scott is devoted to all things that Go Fast. His bike, the Blackbird, and his car are his three favorite ways to spend his spare time, either driving/flying or making them Go Faster. He is a brilliant pilot, and has a standing job offer from his grandfather, who runs an air service in Alaska.
He has also recently returned to playing the saxophone, after leaving the instrument to gather dust for several years in a storeroom.
Plots
2003
2004
2005
X-Men Mission: Things That Go Boom
X-Men Mission: Hole in the World
X-Men Mission: Scary Little Blonde Girls
X-Men Mission: Merry Christmas Magneto
2006
X-Men Mission: Trans-Siberian Hustle
Meta
Player: Alicia
E-mail: antiochene @ gmail . com
AIM: cablewriter
Player Icon Base: Michael Vartan
Meta Trivia
Scott was originally played by Jules, one of the game's original players and first mods. After her departure from the game early in 2004, he was unplayed for nearly six months before being picked up by his current player.
James Marsden was the icon base for Scott until the Mutants and Molotovs plot, at which point Alicia switched to Michael Vartan because of an inability to find enough suitable pictures of Marsden without the glasses. The choice was inspired by similarities between the Scott and the character Michael Vartan played on 'Alias'.
