Cerebra's Files

As a young child, Rachel attended Xavier's along with Franklin Richards and other neo-mutants under Banshee's tutelage. However, when the government finally turned on mutants, Rachel was unwilling to leave Professor X, and watched helplessly as he was murdered. She was taken into custody and given to Ahab, who turned her into a Hound, a mutant programmed to hunt down her own kind. Rachel tracked down too many of her race, including friends and family like Nightcrawler, before her mind reasserted itself and broke Ahab's programming. In the process she also slammed Ahab into a computer bank, causing severe damage to his limbs. Rachel was then put into an internment camp with Kate Pryde-Rasputin, her husband Piotr, a wheelchair-bound Magneto, Storm and Franklin Richards, with whom Rachel (re-?)kindled a romance. Following the deaths of the last X-Men, Rachel projected herself back to the 20th Century to see if the mission had succeeded, but she was unable to tell. The Phoenix found her at this time, and back in Rachel's timeline, Kate Pryde witnessed the Phoenix's appearance before Rachel awoke and she convinced the Phoenix to save Rachel from her fate. When Rachel and Kate infiltrated Cyberbiotics to destroy the Nimrod sentinels, Kate activated the Phoenix with a code-phrase, and the Phoenix amplified Rachel's powers, allowing her to time-jump physically back to the twentieth century. The Phoenix also muddled Rachel's memories at Kate's request, to lessen the trauma she had endured.

Rachel was found by Selene who sensed her power, but luckily was rescued by the X-Men, whom she joined. She revealed her identity to them soon after, but kept it a secret from her "father" Cyclops for a long time. Rachel soon accessed the power of Phoenix and took that name, but then went off on a quest for vengeance to kill Selene, who had already tried to enslave her a second time. Wolverine went to stop her, and stabbed her through the heart with his claws. Dying, Rachel was approached by Spiral, who offered to save her life in return for signing a contract with Mojo. Rachel agreed and became a slave to the TV-crazed madman.

She later escaped, and ran into her friends Nightcrawler and Shadowcat in London while being pursued by Mojo's Warwolves After forming Excalibur following her escape from Mojoworld, Rachel discovered a sympatico nature in teammate Meggan, which sometimes led to their minds and bodies merging when their guards were down. Rachel's power and headstrong nature also caused some problems, as when she inadvertently powered Widget up and caused her team to be sent on a "Cross-Time Caper" through the multiverse. Eventually, Rachel realized that the Phoenix Force was holding back her memories, and she shut it down in order to reintegrate her mind. However, when Necrom threatened to destroy the multiverse, Rachel had no choice but to reactivate the Phoenix, even though its power was exactly what Necrom desired. Rachel was able to open stargates and move asteroids with her powers, but Necrom, who had accessed a piece of the Phoenix stored in the Anti-Phoenix for millennia, proved too powerful, so she grabbed him and fed him the entirety of the Phoenix, causing him to explode. Rachel herself was severely injured, and only the Phoenix Force saved her, but it was forced to effectively re-grow her body from scratch, and it left Earth to explore the stars while Rachel recuperated.

When Rachel's body finally healed, it was just as the Phoenix discovered that its actions on the physical plane were causing potential life to be used up, so it woke her and told her that her powers would be somewhat lessened, as the Phoenix was returning to its natural state. Returning to Earth with all her memories, Rachel finally managed to get back to the future she had come from. While she couldn't change her past, she and her teammates were able to change the directives of all the Sentinels of the era to preserve all life, thereby ending the genocide that had prevailed for years. On the way back to our time, however, Captain Britain was lost in the timestream and Rachel was eventually forced to switch places with him, because she really didn't belong in our time, anyway. (She emerged from the timestream about 1900 years in the future and formed the Clan Askani, which was responsible for bringing her brother Nathan to their time to fight Apocalypse.)

However, since the recent defeat of Apocalypse in the present has apparently negated Cable's entire timeline, Rachel did not ever become the head of the Askani. Instead, she telepathically communicated with Nathan from the end of time, where she was being held prisoner by the despot named Gaunt. Cable traveled to the end of time to save his "sister" and defeated Gaunt in single combat to win her freedom. Upon arrival back in our time, Rachel chose to keep her return secret, and asked Cable to do the same. She went to college, but was forced to leave after the group "Students Against Mutants" was revealed to be an agency of the Dark Sisterhood. Rachel helped Cable defeat the Sisterhood and then disappeared.

Some time later, Rachel was revealed to have been the mysterious shadow telepath used by Elias Bogan against various mutants, including the (X-Treme) X-Men. She was finally saved by that team of X-Men and released from Bogan's hold. How Bogan got hold of her is still unknown. Returning to the Mansion with Storm's X-Men, Rachel joined the new X-Treme Sanctions Executive and changed her name to Rachel Grey and her codename to Marvel Girl, apparently to honor her "mother" Jean, who was recently killed by Magneto IV. Rachel now seems to have a shadow form (similar to that of Psylocke) with a gold Phoenix flare over her left eye. She appears to be immensely powerful, but no longer in the Phoenix-class she once was, and seems to lack a bit of training and subtlety in using her powers, as evidenced by the fact that a Hauk'ka (sentient dinosaur) telepath was able to brainwash her into thinking she was of his race. Interestingly, Rachel's telekinesis is so advanced that it began to rewrite her body's structure into becoming a Hauk'ka to match her subconscious self-image. Fortunately, Psylocke was able to break the Hauk'ka hold and Rachel's body slowly returned to normal.

When the Scarlet Witch unleashed a reality warp that re-wrote history, Psylocke remained unaffected and was able to maintain Marvel Girl III's status as well. The women found themselves in the White Hot Room (the core of the Phoenix Force), where Jamie Braddock told them they had to help set the world right. Strangely, Jamie's influence did not help the girls from being co-opted into the reality warp of the House of M when they returned to Earth:

Lady-in-Waiting Rachel Grey returned to England with her mistress, the Lady Elisabeth Braddock, who reunited with her brother and sister-in-law. Later that night, however, after Brian began having visions of Roma and the destruction of the Earth, Rachel joined the Braddocks in tracking down Nocturne and Juggernaut, two alleged terrorists. During the ensuing battle, Rachel, who was possessed by Nocturne, was forced to fight Elisabeth and the three mutants ended up near a rip in the fabric of reality. Betsy's mental link to Brian kicked in and they were able to see each other's surroundings, leading Brian and Meggan to the rift. There Betsy used her power to help maintain the rift long enough for Meggan to enter it and heal it from the inside, and Betsy, Rachel and Brian sealed it from without.

Rachel returned to the X-Men to find massive Sentinels on the grounds, and the Institute turned into a camp for the remaining mutants, basically her past coming to be in this timeline. She had some trouble coping with the curfew and containment, and would create psychic illusions of herself to fool the Sentinels' operators while she went out into town. Eventually, she was discovered when a Shi'ar Deathsquad came to Earth to kill all the Greys, who had come to John and Elaine Grey's house for a reunion. Rachel was marked with a Phoenix tattoo on her back (though she wasn't killed for some unknown reason). She was then sent to Chicago to meet with Kitty's former therapist, but when the O*N*E discovered she was gone she had to settle for telephone and psychic conversations.

After the return of Professor X, now powerless and walking, and the revelation that Vulcan, her missing (unknown) uncle, was alive and nearly insame, Rachel agreed to accompany Xavier's team to Shi'ar space to stop Vulcan's attack on the Empire. During the journey the X-Men were attacked by Korvus, bearer of the Phoenix Blade, but Rachel was able to absorb most of the sword's energy and defeat the Shi'ar man, who had been coerced into attacking them. Rachel and Korvus were then bound through the blade, and shared each other's thoughts, which brought them to the point of intimacy. Later, after confronting Vulcan, Deathbird and the revived D'Ken at the M'Kraan world, Rachel was among those left behind when Lilandra sent the X-Men's ship home in order to safeguard Professor Xavier. Stuck in Shi'ar space, and furious at Vulcan for killing Corsair, Rachel joined Havok and Polaris as members of the Starjammers, vowing to stop Vulcan, who had crowned himself Emperor after killing D'Ken.
203