When her mutant powers manifest, the half-faerie Pixie attends Xavier Institute for Higher Learning where she studies under veteran New Mutants and X-Men, and becomes a heroine in her own right.
Faerie Heritage
Megan Gwynn is apparently the daughter of the magical faerie Mrs. Gwynn and evil mutant illusionist Jason Wyngarde, AKA Mastermind, but somehow comes to be cared for by her alleged human grandparents, whom Megan believes are her parents, in a small Welsh mining town. Though, while Megan’s young, her grandfather, Barry, is killed when shoddy board and pillar work in his mine collapses.
When her mutant abilities develop, Megan wins a scholarship to Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X’s Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, where she attends classes and, as Pixie, becomes a member of the Paragons training squad under the training of alumni Rahne Sinclair, AKA Wolfsbane, and later, Xi’an Coy Manh, AKA Karma, and Amara Aquilla, Magma. Pixie trains in the use of her powers, wearing a bicycle helmet as a part of her costume, presumably to protect her head while flying. She quickly becomes well-liked among the members of her squad, which includes Ben Hammil, AKA Match, Hope Abbot, AKA Trance, Nicholas Gleason, AKA Wolf Cub, Mark Sheppard, AKA DJ, Jessica Vale, AKA Preview. Her upbeat and positive outlook helps bolster her squad’s spirits when they lose a training competition to the New Mutants squad. She’s voted “friendliest student” by the student body, and develops a crush on X-Man Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops.
Flying High
Pixie has fly-like wings sprouting from her back that initially resemble butterfly wings, later changing to a more fly-like resemblance under unrevealed circumstances. Pixie can fly, although her top speed and distance are unrevealed. She wears a bike helmet for protection while flying at first, but through practice and training, she becomes a competent flier who sometimes sparkles during flight.
She generates a dust that causes hallucinations, but she does not control what the hallucinations are or know what is seen, but generally the hallucinations are pleasant, featuring unicorns, bunnies and cute animals. When she says the words “sihal novarum chinoth,” she casts a teleportation spell over herself and others, although her maximum range is undetermined.
She can summon a portion of her soul, which takes the shape of a dagger and is harmful to her target’s psyche or to magical beings. Pixie can also sense and track magic, with or without her Soul Dagger. She has some hand-to-hand combat training from Logan/James Howlett, AKA Wolverine, and other X-Men, and due to the darkness in her soul, she has some immunity to magic and can sense evil. It’s theorized that she has great magic-wielding potential.
Enemy Forces
White a student training in her powers, Pixie battles the demonic N’Garai and single-handedly defeats their leader. She faces off with sorcerer-turned-demon Belasco and his forces in limbo, defeating him with her Soul Dagger. While at school, she experiences attacks by Madelyne Pryor and her Sisterhood as well as anti-mutant Reverend William Stryker’s Purifiers. She also battles other mutant-hating organizations like Orchis as well.
X-Allies
Megan learns from New Mutant mentor Wolfsbane, Karma and Magma. She learns fighting techniques from X-Men veteran Wolverine. She’s also coached in teleportation by X-Man Kurt Wagner, AKA Nightcrawler.
For a time, Megan has a strong hatred for Illyana Rasputin, AKA Magik, since she took part of her soul, but when her friend Victor Borkowski, AKA Anole, reminds her that she’s a good person and a hero, she does what she can to save Magik’s life when it’s under threat.
She joins the X-Men facing many foes as well as Nightcrawler’s Legionaires against demented mutants, Celestial wrath, and the anti-mutant organization Orchis.
A History of Heroism
After an insane Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch, used her powers to erase the mutant genome from the majority of mutantkind on “M-Day,” Pixie was one of the few mutants to retain her powers and was present when the United States government stationed a squad of Sentinels around the Institute grounds to monitor the campus. Not long after, Institute headmistress Emma Frost staged a battle royal among the remaining powered students, with the winners becoming X-Men-In-Training. Pixie participated in the battle, but was not among the winners. Shortly after, a bus transporting 42 departing depowered students was destroyed by anti-mutant Reverend William Stryker’s Purifiers, killing all on board, including a number of Pixie’s friends. Pixie was on campus when the Purifiers later assaulted the school, but did not participate in the conflict.
Sometime later, the demon Belasco became obsessed with resurrecting his former apprentice Magik, and succeeded in raising her body but not her soul. Convinced Xavier’s students knew where Illyana was, Belasco kidnapped them to limbo (Otherplace). Sensing this, Illyana’s body, now called Darkchilde, diverted some of the students (including Pixie) to the wilds of limbo, demanding one of their souls to recreate her most powerful weapon, the Soulsword, in order to kill Belasco. Sensing purity in Pixie, Darkchilde coerced her into giving her soul, but before Darkchilde could complete her sword’s forging, Xavier student Anole attacked Darkchilde, interrupting the spell. However, the incomplete spell left Pixie able to summon her soul as a dagger. While in her quest to reclaim her soul, Darkchilde created a bloodstone gem of power from part of Pixie’s soul. The missing part of her soul’s hole apparently became filled with black magic. Despite her anger about this, Pixie allowed Darkchilde to teach her a teleportation spell so she could transport Darkchilde and the Xavier students past the magical wards protecting Belasco’s castle. During the subsequent battle, Pixie thrust her dagger into Belasco, facilitating his defeat. Before Darkchilde could take the rest of Pixie’s soul to gain more power, the X-Men arrived, stopping Darkchilde’s advance. Darkchilde then returned the X-Men and Xavier’s students back to Earth; Pixie was dismayed over the damage done to her soul. Due to her heroic actions in limbo, the X-Men-In-Training’s Santo Vaccarro, AKA Rockslide, insisted Pixie be promoted to the team; Cyclops agreed, granting her a place on the roster. Sorcerers Amanda Sefton and Dr. Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, examined Pixie, giving her a clean bill of health, saying she had enough soul to spare. Strange also agreed to mentor the talkative Pixie in magic once she turned 18, if she took a vow of silence.
When an extremely powerful mutant girl (later named Hope) was born in Cooperstown, Alaska, the first mutant birth after “M-Day,” a war erupted among Nathaniel Essex, AKA Mister Sinister’s Marauders, the X-Men and the Purifiers. After learning of the Purifier’s involvement, the X-Men-In-Training went after them, seeking revenge for the murder of their friends. During their attack on the Purifiers, Julian Keller, AKA Hellion, was severely wounded by mercenary Yuriko Oyama, AKA Lady Deathstrike, while the others survived when Pixie teleported the team away.
When the mutant-devouring Predator X exhumed the bodies of the deceased Xavier students, then attacked the living students, Pixie remembered that Xavier student Laura Kinney, AKA X-23, once defeated a Predator X, and teleported the monster and all the X-Men-In-Training to her, unwittingly arriving during a massive battle between the Marauders and X-Men.
Following the war, Cyclops disbanded the X-Men, sending all the students to their respective homes; Pixie returned to Wales. When over 20 people in her hometown disappeared, Pixie notified her former X-Men teachers, then investigated on her own, learning the demonic N’Garai were feeding on her townspeople. After killing a N’Garai, Pixie was captured by them, but was rescued by the reunited X-Men, who then used her ability to sense the evil demons in the mines, despite her fear and loathing of the place that killed her father. Deep in the mine, the team found Kierrok, lord of the N’Garai host, preparing a N’Garai infestation of Earth. Remembering the shoddy support work that killed her father, Pixie lured Kierrok to strike at her, causing him to destroy the mine walls, burying him and preventing the invasion. Teleporting the X-Men to safety, Pixie returned to America with them, her performance against Kierrok earning a spot on the X-Men’s San Francisco-based roster.
Once in California, Pixie chose to live in Oakland with a group of art school students in a warehouse. After attending Alison Blaire, AKA Dazzler’s live performance, she was mugged by members of the anti-mutant Hellfire Cult street gang, severely damaging her wings. During her hospital stay, Pixie was visited by Dazzler, who invited Pixie to dance and use her dust to make Dazzler’s shows more spectacular. Ashamed of what happened, Pixie turned down Dazzler’s offer, and after a period of self-doubt, returned to the team to confront her fears, personally defeating the emotion-manipulating Manuel de la Rocha, AKA Empath. Regaining her confidence, she accepted Dazzler’s offer, and after moving into X-Men headquarters to room with X-23 and Hisako Ichiki, AKA Armor, became active with the team. Pixie assisted the X-Men in their battle against the Skrull invasion of San Francisco and began training with Nightcrawler in the use of her teleportation abilities.
Later, when Nightcrawler pushed Pixie to summon her soul dagger for the team to learn more about it, her repressed emotions regarding her damaged soul and limbo experiences surfaced. Her dark side took control, making her stab Nightcrawler, but her normal personality returned when she let go of the dagger. When she retrieved it, Magik’s Soulsword was pulled out of Nightcrawler, where it had been hidden by Amanda Sefton much earlier. Darkchilde sensed this and teleported into X-Men headquarters to retrieve her sword. Pixie fought the Darkchilde, trying to reclaim the bloodstone Darkchilde created from Pixie’s soul, but Pixie was defeated; Darkchilde transformed to Illyana Rasputin when she reclaimed the Soulsword from Pixie and returned to limbo, after which the X-Men journeyed to limbo to reclaim Pixie’s soul and find Illyana. When Belasco’s daughter Witchfire gained control of the bloodstones to summon her “elder god” masters, Pixie brashly confronted her. Witchfire pulled more of Pixie’s soul to create another bloodstone, which transformed Pixie into a monstrous demon form, and Witchfire tried to claim Pixie as her apprentice. Working with Illyana, Pixie helped defeat Witchfire, the new bloodstone bonding to Pixie’s soul dagger in the process, which temporarily grew the dagger. However, Pixie lost her original bloodstone when Witchfire grabbed it as she magically vanished.
After the anti-mutant Humanity Now! Coalition tried to introduce Proposition X to legislate mutant breeding, Pixie began training doubly hard as a method for working through her anger, then went out drinking with her teammates, with Cyclops not approving of her underage drinking. That night, when Cyclops’ vengeful ex-wife, Madelyne Pryor, and her Sisterhood attacked the X-Men, Pixie was instrumental in the resistance, personally defeating Empath by blinding him, disabling his power. Later, when Humanity Now! staged a march in San Francisco to promote their movement, Pixie was among the mutants that countermarched. During the subsequent riots, the insane Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin, head of the national peacekeeping organization HAMMER and leader of his own superhuman teams, attempted to arrest the X-Men. Pixie stood against Osborn’s forces, helping Cyclops lead mutants to an artificial island sanctuary, establishing their own country, Utopia.
Later, during a desperate battle to protect the “mutant messiah,” Hope Summers, Magik was cast into limbo by the mutant-hating Bastion’s forces. Pixie reluctantly agreed to take a team of X-Men into limbo to rescue her, despite her hatred of Magik. While there, the demon N’astirh tried to barter with Pixie, offering her missing soul in exchange for killing Magik. Pixie resisted N’astirh and helped rescue Magik, who apologized to Pixie for fracturing her soul, and promised to help try to restore it.
Unbeknownst to Pixie and the New Mutants, they weren’t the only ones to re-emerge from limbo. General Ulysses and his unit of merciless super-soldiers, Project Purgatory, kidnapped Pixie to harness the power of her Soul Dagger to release the Elder Gods so that they could destroy limbo. They captured pieces of Pixie’s soul into gems. Even though the New Mutants track Pixie down, they, too, ended up captives. Karma used her telepathic abilities to appeal to the General’s abused mutant soldiers, and Magik insisted they take Pixie and escape to better help the rest of the team. Once freed, Magik sent Karma after the unstable mutant David Haller, AKA Legion, to save limbo and their world. With Legion’s god-like powers, Magik had him destroy the Elder Gods. Following the triumph, Magik returned Pixie’s Soul Dagger and gems, righting the wrongs between them.
She soon recovered from the limbo ordeal and battled Sentinels, which ultimately left her injured. While she convalesced, she kissed Gabriel Cohuelo, AKA Velocidad, not realizing he was already dating Hope Summers and slapped him when she found out. Pixie joined Hope’s team, the Lights, and saved Hope from Kenji Uedo, AKA Zero.
After an attack by Exodus on Wolverine’s X-Men, Pixie and other students joined the battle that followed but refused to join the school when invited. She was soon captured by the Avengers and taken to the Avengers Academy but she returned to the Jean Grey School where she graduated and after all her training, rose to be an X-Man.
When the sovereign island nation-state Krakoa was established for mutants, and where resurrection was routine, Pixie joined them. She participated in international missions, one of which where she assisted the Runaways’ Molly Hayes, who had sent a distress call. When they arrived, Nico Minoru disabled Pixie’s teleportation with a spell and they soon discovered Molly didn’t send the message, so they teamed up to track down the messenger. They soon stumbled into a mysterious darkness filled with monsters. The group fought them and when Nico cast a spell to dissipate the darkness, a mansion appeared. They soon got called into it by a mother concerned for her daughter, Jodi, whose hallucination powers started negatively affecting her. Jodi’s mother revealed that she sent the distress call and Jodi eventually agreed to go with Pixie and Wolverine to Krakoa where they could help her learn to use her powers without any backlash.
Back on Krakoa, Pixie visited the Orchis organization’s anti-mutant museum, and her friends made fun of her for not having yet died nor been brought back by Krakoa’s resurrection protocols. Despite not wanting to experience it, her friends must have gotten to her and she goaded one of the museum’s security guards into killing her. When she was brought back, she seemed sad but when asked, she said it was nothing.
Later, she joined Nightcrawler and Dr. Jamie Bradley, AKA Doctor Nemesis, to save Legion, and during their rescue, they found his brain in an Orchis base. Kurt killed Legion so he could be resurrected into his body. Pixie and all other Krakoan mutants were soon attacked by Onslaught, a godlike psychic entity from the X-Men’s past. Nightcrawler and Legion freed Pixie so she could use her Soul Dagger to free mutants from Onslaught’s hold, and together they defeated their attacker.
As a result of this attack, Nightcrawler created a new type of justice fit for Krakoa and built a headquarters for his new team of Legionaires inside The Altar, a bubble-reality contained in Legion’s dreaming psyche and adjacent to the Astral Plane. With Pixie on point, Cain Marko, AKA Juggernaut, and Doctor Nemesis, the team was ready to protect mutants’ right to pursue happiness and hope.
With the Legionaires, Pixie helped bring justice to demented body-hopping mutant, Devon Alomar, AKA Switch, defended Krakoa and Arakko from Celestial wrath, and helped investigate morphologic changes in mutants, including Nightcrawler who grew a pair of horns. For the latter investigation, Pixie teamed up with the new Black Knight, Jackie Chopra, to find the source, Margali Szardos, Nightcrawler’s adoptive mother, who led them into a trap designed by her benefactors: Orchis. A battle ensued, leaving Pixie and the others down for the count, while Margali made her move against Nightcrawler by magically pulling the Hopesword from his body and escaped.
