Monet St. Croix (Earth-616)

M
Name	Monet Yvette Clarisse Maria Therese St. Croix
Current Alias	M
Aliases	Penance
Affiliation and Relationships
Affiliation	Magneto's X-Men; formerly X-Men (Jean Grey School member), X-Factor Investigations, Generation X, X-Corps, X-Corporation (Paris branch)
Relatives	Louis St. Croix (grandfather); Lenore St. Croix (step-grandmother, deceased); Cartier St. Croix (father); Jamila St. Croix (mother, deceased); Marius (Emplate) (older brother); Claudette and Nicole (M-Twins) (younger sisters); Hollow (genetic template)
Marital Status	Single
Physical Characteristics
Gender	Female
Height	5′7″ (1.7 m)
Weight	125 lbs (56.7 kg)
Eyes	Irises: Brown
Hair	Black
Unusual Features	M has spent considerable time merged with her siblings.
Origin and Living Status
Origin	Mutant
Living Status	Alive
Reality	Earth-616
Place of Birth	Sarajevo, Bosnia
Personal Information
Identity	Secret (Secret also as Penance)
Citizenship	French, Yugoslavian Algerian
Occupation	Adventurer, former Private Investigator, Socialite, student, registered hero
Base of Operations	War Room X, Savage Land Formerly Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, Salem Center, Westchester County, New York; X-Factor Investigations Headquarters, New York City, New York; Detroit, Michigan; Mutant Town, Manhattan, New York City, New York; Massachusetts Academy, Snow Valley, Massachusetts; Monaco; Algeria
Creators and Appearances
Creators	Scott Lobdell, Chris Bachalo
First	Generation X #1 (September, 1994) (as Penance) Generation X #40 (May, 1998) (as Monet)
First	Generation X #1 (September, 1994) (as Penance) Generation X #40 (May, 1998) (as Monet)

 You just put six holes in a Louis Vuitton shirt and you expect me to 'wait'? For what? The 'fashion police? 

—M

History

Early Life

Monet St. Croix was the second child of a rich and eccentric father, Ambassador Cartier St. Croix, a Monegasque wealthy former president of several corporations, and his wife, a descendant of Algerian royalty. She was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia. She grew up with an older brother, Marius and two younger twin sisters, Claudette and Nicole. Monet became her father's favourite child.

Turned into Penance

When his mutant gifts manifested, Marius was overcome by his hunger for the genetic marrow of mutants and killed his mother. Cartier kicked his son out. Marius travelled different dimensions, growing in power, and returned to offer Monet a place at his side, so that they might conquer dimensions together. Monet scornfully rejected him however, and fed up with her high-handed attitude towards him, Marius magically trapped her in the form of a mute creature with razor-sharp, diamond-hard red skin; Penance.

Claudette and Nicole walked in on this, and with their sister no where to be found, they assumed that Marius had killed her. Claudette opened up a dimensional portal and banished Marius. Before he was pulled away, Marius told Penance that only he could restore her true body, prompting her to jump in with him. As Penance, Monet would become her brother's slave. In order to satisfy his hunger for genetic marrow, he would repeatedly feed on her. Despite not showing it, the experience would scar Monet deeply, leaving her suicidal years after being freed.

Nicole and Claudette, knowing Monet was their father's favourite, used their mutant powers to merge into one body with the appearance of Monet. Everything about the twins' version of Monet was like normal, including her physical body, personality, and powers. Everything would have been perfect if it weren't for Claudette's autism. Since both the twins' personalities were combined, Claudette's autism would sometimes take effect, leaving "Monet" in catatonic states.

Shortly after the formation of the mutant teen team Generation X, Penance was dropped onto the front lawn of the Massachusetts Academy by Gateway, who identified her as Penance. She was brought inside by headmaster Banshee, who discovered her powers as he cut his hands by trying to pick her up. As Penance could not communicate, and seemingly didn't understand anything, Banshee placed her in the infirmary as he and Emma Frost attempted to discover her identity. Teen member M, her relation to Penance unknown to the others, told the adults that Penance was perhaps a prisoner of Emplate, as Marius had begun calling himself. "Monet" claimed to have reached this conclusion through logical deduction, rather than her secret past encounter with Emplate and Penance.

As the team left the infirmary, Penance awoke with one thought on her mind: survival. Tearing apart her (in her mind) cell and escaping, she was free. Hearing the alarms of a breach, the team rushed to the infirmary and saw the extensive damage she caused during her escape. The team split up to find her before she could cause further damage to the Academy. Team member Chamber, feeling a bond with Penance due to his own mutilated body, left the group to search for her alone. Feeling that another deformed soul would seek him out, he waited for her arrival. After Penance fought her way past the rest of the team (Husk, Synch, Jubilee, and M), she approached Chamber, who spoke to her telepathically in an attempt to convince her that he knew how she felt and eventually succeeded in calming her down into staying with the team.

During her stay at the Academy, she would rarely interact with her peers, due to her animalistic nature and fear of being captured again. Fortunately, perhaps due to her time with the feral mutant Wolverine, Jubilee became a friend to her. Trusting the students at the academy more and more, Penance began to go on missions with the others.Generation X #8. In a subsequent mission, presumably to cover up their relation, Emplate refers to her as "Yvette" and the others grew somewhat weary of Penance.

Freed from Penance body

Finally, M revealed that she was a combination of Claudette and Nicole, and told the others the truth about Penance, and that they felt horrible about impersonating their sister. To "make things right", the twins, now split apart, merge once more into the form of Monet and swapped places with Penance, freeing the real Monet at last, with the merged twins taking over as Penance's body. Monet, free at last, continued to operate under the twins' codename of M, while the twins retain the identity of Penance. Both remained a part of the Generation X team, while still trying to cure the still mute Penance.

While all four St. Croix children possessed some form of power, Monet had a plethora of her own, including self-propelled flight, superhuman strength and reflexes, and telepathy to name a few. In addition to her powers, "Monet" tended to have a sizeable attitude and a large chip on her shoulder, to the say the least. She quickly clashed with many of her Generation X teammates and often earned their irritation with her condescending attitude and occasional arrogance. Her rival, Jubilee, often teased that her only power was simply to be "perfect". While the real Monet did not share these initial interactions with her teammates, she quickly fell into the same pattern of behaviour after being freed from Penance, including the rivalry with Jubilee.

In truth, Monet had survived an incredible series of ordeals, including enslavement at the hands of her brother Emplate. As a result, M became self-reliant and outwardly harsh and defensive to make up for her fear and insecurity. The only person she allowed to see her vulnerabilities was her teammate Synch, with whom she started a brief romantic relationship.

M was one of the most devastated of the Generation X team members when Synch sacrificed his own life to stop an exploding bomb that had been placed at the academy by Emma Frost's cruel sister, Adrienne. Soon after Synch's death, the team rapidly began to fall apart, even as Monet began to open up by acting a little more human and vulnerable around her fellow teammates. Following the bomb incident, Monet began to observe Emma Frost acting strangely villainous, causing the entire team to question her leadership abilities, particularly when combined with Banshee's relapse into alcoholism following the death of his lover, Moira MacTaggert.

X-Corps

The team soon parted ways, and Monet declared that she was going home. Monet would instead join Banshee's new venture, X-Corps, with fellow former Generation X members Husk and Jubilee, in order to look out for their former teacher, who was still suffering from the death of Moira. However, X-Corps was soon destroyed by Mystique, and M joined the X-Corporation's European branch located in Paris. Monet helped the X-Men battle Black Tom Cassidy and the Juggernaut before returning to her duties at X-Corporation Europe.

When a train crashed in the Channel Tunnel, Monet and her X-Corporation team went to investigate and help. They quickly discovered something strange however. The train had in fact been carrying two sentinel super-soldiers, Weapons XII and XIII. Weapon XII began attacking them. With the power to kill and take control over anyone he touched, the X-Corporation team was no match for him. Professor X and the X-Men intervened, and were able to subdue him with help from Weapon XIII, now calling himself Fantomex.

X-Factor Investigations

Following the events of M-Day, Monet then opted to join the motley crew of X-Factor Investigations, a private detective agency run by Multiple Man. Monet then later on completed her first mission on the team; by telepathically tricking the famous actor, Jack Vaughn, to confess to the murder of Gloria Santiago's sister.

Afterwards, Monet broke down and cried in Jamie's arms after empathizing with the victim, but quickly threatened to break him in half if he ever revealed her moment of "weakness". A comment made to Rictor implied that she no longer wished to go by the name "M".

However, in a therapy session with Doc Samson, Monet stated that she hid behind the "M" persona so that others would not see how vulnerable she had become due to the lengthy amount of time she was held captive by her brother.

...

Cartier St. Croix was kidnapped by Karl Mordo, who suffers from cancer. Mordo used Cartier to catch Monet, cause he needed her life energy to heal himself. Monet tricked Mordo by using her telepathy, and he went away.

X-Men

After the hell on earth incident that ended X-Factor, Monet found herself at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning as a sort of retreat from the life of superheroing and to wind down from her recent death & rebirth. Of which in said respect formed a kinship with the also recently brain deceased and now depowered Karima, During a quick and quiet little jog in the woods Both her and Karima were attacked by a whole new Deathstrike/Ana Cortes backed by her hired guns. Who in an impressive telekinetic display, single handedly averted their attackers.

Monet with the X-Men

After getting a better look at and into the mind of their assailant, Deathstrike had to plan withdrawal in the event that her new form still wasn't ready for combat. Monet, initially tempted to follow in pursuit; had her attentions turned towards a wounded Karima, injured during the firefight needing M to rush her back to the school where she officially joined with storms new X-Men team.

While on a scouting job in Budapest; where the first Arkea piece latched onto baby Shogo, to find their adversary after an alarm went off alerting Rachel and the others to the reactivation of their believed to be dead enemy. Having been booted back up by a new Sisterhood of Mutants, which initially had been organized under Yuriko/Ana but then seceded leadership under the parasitic disease in exchange for upgrades.

Monet tore out of Budapest, Hungary at mach 3 flight in order to reach Dubai, UAE where the new Body Shop and lair of the sisterhood was; only to have a brief scuffle with and eventually be subdued by a now repowered Enchantress. Deathstrike's alien possessed Tech assistant had recently sent out a type of distress beacon that reactivated numerous non-functioning Sentinels to do battle with the X-Men.

Magneto's X-Men

In the wake of a massive rise of anti-mutant sentiment, and the discovery that the Terrigen Mists released into the atmosphere were toxic to mutants, Monet joined Magneto's team of X-Men, with the goal of protecting mutantkind at any cost.

Attributes

Power Grid

Powers

Monet St. Croix is a mutant with a wide variety of mutant powers at superhuman levels and representing a near-perfect human being.

• Superhuman Strength

• Superhuman Speed

• Superhuman Endurance

• Superhuman Durability

• Superhuman Reflexes

• Flight: Monet is able to fly through the air through sheer act of will. While her top speed is not currently known, it is at least 500 MPH. In X-Factor (Vol. 3) #4, she caught up with--and leisurely maintained the speed of--a passenger plane carrying a suspect while inducing a psychic illusion. Recently she reached flight speeds up to Mach 3 as she flew all the way from Hungary to the UAE.

• Telepathy: Ability to read minds and project her thoughts into the minds of others and defensively mask her mind against telepathic intrusion. Monet has also been shown to be capable of other basic telepathic abilities such as illusion casting and memory wiping.

• Accelerated Healing Factor: Despite her incredible resistance to harm, it is possible for Monet to be injured. However, M possesses a regenerative quality allowing her to heal and quickly recover from near-fatal wounds. The effect also has the added benefit of making her more resistant to toxins, disease and possibly the aging process.

• Enhanced Senses: M's senses are so advanced that she possesses telescopic and night vision, as well as superhuman hearing.

• Superhuman Intuitive Ability: Process information quickly, giving her vast knowledge and intelligence, an accelerated learning aptitude, a knack for quickly analyzing multiple information and operating machinery, eidetic memory, the ability to read at superhuman speeds, and incredible deductive and reasoning skills.

• Telekinesis: Recently displayed the ability to affect matter on a questionable scale projecting thought waves as concussive force. Some fans have theorized that Monet's powers are completely psionic in nature, not physical, meaning her strength and durability were always a form of tactile telekinesis, like DC's Kon-El Superboy. This "new" telekinetic ability may be an example of Monet merely turning her TK outwards for the first time, instead of inwards. This theory remains untested and unconfirmed, however.

File:M. Telekinesis.jpg

Telekinetic Blast

• Ability to perceive mutants' auras: Nicole and Claudette (as Monet) were capable of perceiving the auras of mutants, allowing her/them to distinguish them from normal humans. She/They chose to suppress this ability for fear it would lead her/them down the same path of her/their mutant-feeding brother, Emplate. It may be that the real Monet also possesses this ability.

• Gestalt Form: Monet and her siblings can combine into various forms, each with varying appearances and powers.

Abilities

• Genius Intelligence: Monet has a genius level intellect. She has perfect memory and superhuman intuitive skills. Capable of using computers and electronic devices with ease.
• Multilingual: Monet capable of speaking a variety of different languages.
• Hand-to-Hand Combat: Monet is formidable in hand-to-hand combat.

Notes

• Monet is a citizen of France, Yugoslavia, and Algeria, with passports from all three countries.
• Like her mother, Monet is a Muslim.
• Monet was initially thought to be autistic, but it was later revealed it was only Claudette's autism emerging on the impersonated M, and the real Monet had no similar limitations.
• Monet took ballet at a young age.

Trivia

• Scott Lobdell, the creator of M and Penance, never intended for there to be a "real" M - only the St. Croix twins.
• Monet revealed to Doctor Samson that she has suicidal thoughts everyday of her life due to the trauma that she suffered at the hands of her brother Marius.
• In early appearances, Monet had a much darker skin color than how she is usually portrayed now. The reason for this is not known.

See Also

• 318 appearance(s) of Monet St. Croix (Earth-616)
• 11 appearance(s) in handbook(s) of Monet St. Croix (Earth-616)
• 23 minor appearance(s) of Monet St. Croix (Earth-616)
• 19 mention(s) of Monet St. Croix (Earth-616)
• 9 mention(s) in handbook(s) of Monet St. Croix (Earth-616)
• 402 image(s) of Monet St. Croix (Earth-616)
• 28 quotation(s) by or about Monet St. Croix (Earth-616)

Links and References

• uncannyxmen.net Spotlight On... M