Rashmi

Rashmi "Summoner" Franklin
Portrayed By	Poonam Bajwa
Gender	Female
Date of Birth	September 24, 1992
Age	27
Zodiac Sign	Libra
Aliases	Summoner
Place of Birth	New York, NY
Current Location	New York, NY
Occupation	Guerrilla Strike Leader
Known Relatives	Gulzar Franklin (Father), Ananda Franklin (Mother)
Significant Other	???
Identity	Secret
Known Abilities	Orbital Force Spheres, Spatial Sense
First Appearance	???

I always knew I'd be fighting to change the world. I just never thought I'd be fighting to change the world back.

History

Electing to put off law school for a couple years in favor of training for/with X-Force, Rashmi found that she had a knack for tactics, logistics, and strategy, and spent her time with them training for herself, coordinating schedules for the teams in general, and now and again substituting in Mutant Ethics when needed. It was a point of amusement to her, that the year she began to attend law school, was the year Lucas would return to the Mansion, degree in hand, to teach. After her first year of school, when she'd gotten the routine down and was satisfied things were going the way she'd always intended to, Lucas threw a surprise of his own into the works; a diamond ring, and a simple question.

They were married in the church that had stood as safe haven during the Inferno, with James as Best Man, a wheelchair-bound Robyn as Bridesman, and at least half of the Institute's residents in attendance. A little less than a year after the ceremony, Baby Jessica Heathe was born, named at Rashmi's insistence after Lucas' deceased mother. Despite the little struggles that tended to crop up with a pair of headstrong, willful spouses and their headstrong, willful daughter, life was as ideal as Rashmi could hope for.

But it couldn't last.

Perhaps it was coincidence, fate, or providence, that she would be in New York while Lucas was at the Institute. Between them, they were able to help make sure both ends of the initial exodus succeeded, it wounded her deeply to hear of James' death. But they'd done what they could, and Jessica was yet safe. The family went into hiding in the Morlock tunnels with the rest of the free mutants, and thus began the first major strain on their relationship. Rashmi maintained that they ought to be freeing other captured mutants, while Lucas was bound and determined to go on the attack. Arguments began to crop up nearly every other day, often growing vicious once Jessica was out of earshot. Even still, Rashmi was determined to make it work, and keep as much together as they could manage for all their sakes.

Which was why James' reemergence shattered the couple so deeply; with a killer's grin, and an unassuming pop of displaced air left behind him, he betrayed their trust, tore apart their friendship, and murdered their only daughter by leaving the five-year-old Between.

Everything changed after that. Lucas, already deeply angry at a world that could let itself go to pieces so completely, went over the edge, and stopped giving any thought to collateral, stopped gaining any satisfaction from battling Sentinels. He would kill any Hunter or Hound he could find, and to hell with whoever or whatever was caught in the crossfire. Rashmi, shattered by the loss of their daughter and growing her own core of cold, hard fury, still found no way to tolerate these tactics, and turned her back on her husband. 'When you get your head back together,' she said as she walked away from him for the last time, 'maybe then we'll talk about us.'

The conflict between battlefield realities and her still-enduring ideals has her bouncing between Rebel and Redeemer, often pulling double duty when possible. She leads a small guerrilla strike team, mostly focused on throwing Hunter, Hound, and Sentinel teams in disarray, to cover the escape of their captives or quarries. Often, she works with Jericho's people in planning and strategy, and routinely relays information gathered by Robyn to those cells that can make use of it.

Timeline

• 2013: Began law school
• 2014: Married to Lucas, Jessica born late November.
• 2015: Assisted the exodus of the Xavier's mutants, joined the Redeemers
• 2018: Daughter murdered, separated from Lucas

Quotes

• "I said it!"

Trivia

• Still wears her wedding ring, but has resumed use of her maiden name.
• Wears unstable-molecule bodysuit under her combat gear, a leftover from her days in X-Force. Too often she's owed her life to this nostalgia after a close call.
• Amidst the gear, pouches, and preparations clipped to her belt, a dented metallic speaker-box. This is Mike's voicebox, deactivated after the robotic mutant's self-imposed upgrade. She keeps it, she says, to remind herself of the need to hold back the worst of her aggressive impulses.

Powers

Orbital Spheres

Her spheres remain more or less unchanged, power-wise. However, her degree of control is fine enough that their conscious control is a simple matter, whether as one or separately, or in any combination. Her spheres can strike with up to 2 tons of impact-force, and change vector in literally the blink of an eye. Should she wish to, she can maintain a sustained barrage of such blows almost indefinitely… or at least as long as concentration and range holds.

Multitasking

Plotting, guiding, and altering orbital vectors on the fly for half a dozen objects, simultaneously, while retaining the standard reflexes and mobility of the average human is a daunting task for any normal person. With much time and practice in the use of her powers, Rashmi has more or less slipped into a default state of processing multiple lines of thought simultaneously. While as a student this caused a lot of mental traffic jams, as a resistance fighter it has become an invaluable resource. It's become habit for her, to create backups and contingencies for every plan created, often purely in her head and altered immediately to account for the reports given by the person currently speaking.

Spatial Awareness

A subtle, but major growth in her powers came in the form of extraordinary spatial and kinesthetic awareness. At any given time, always, she knows exactly where she is in the center of a 30-foot radius sphere around her, in relation to any and all given objects, up to and including her directional orientation. This might not sound useful, until one realizes that such pinpoint knowledge of the space around her allows her to move exactly as she wants within that space. Coupled with her orbital spheres, this allows her to survive being thrown, for example, from the top of a building by arranging for her spheres to be in the right place, at the right speed, to act as a series of renewable stepping-stones, and simply hopping from one to another until she reaches safety.

Further, her awareness extends to the limit of her area of control, about 60', but beyond the 30' range her sense is limited to a crude motion-tracking instinct. This makes it difficult, but by no means impossible, to take her by surprise; one simply need to attack from a distance, under stealth. This is mitigated, somewhat, by two years of X-Force training and five years of practical combat experience. One does not, after all, survive the Sentinel takeover by being inattentive.

Gallery

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