Fervor

Fervor is an original fictional character who first appeared in New Mutants: Misspent Youth.

Background
Presley Harvard was accustomed to living a double life long before she learned she was a mutant. At home she was the model daughter of her strict Roman Catholic minister father - innocent, humble, studious and mild-mannered; everywhere else, and at every other possible occasion, she was her real self. Presley had a hair-trigger temper and was born with a wild streak a mile wide; she was hooked on boys, cars, and thrash metal, and kept motorcycle magazines under her mattress.

It was a delicate balancing act and Presley couldn't keep it up forever. Her father eventually started to put the pieces together and confronted her early one Sunday morning. In the insuing argument, as Presley lost control of her temper her latent mutant ability suddenly and painfully boiled to the surface. Unable to control the intense build-up of raw thermal energy, Presley blew up half of her own church, and what remained quickly caught fire, trapping her father within.

Feeling another explosion building inside her, she realized she could do nothing to help her father. Instead, she ran, desperately trying to get away from buildings or people, and eventually hid on an abandoned dairy farm. Only when she allowed herself to rest did she feel her power begin to slowly subside. There she hid for the rest of the day and into the night, until the Purifiers tracked her down.

Armed men in black coats arrived in trucks and began to search the farm for her, and immediately she felt her explosive power building painfully again. Presley hid for as long as she could, then resorted to using her power to defend herself, but she was badly outnumbered.

She likely would have died then and there were it not for the Waywards, a small paramilitary team that hunted Purifiers in the same fashion that Purifiers hunted mutants. The Waywards had been waiting for a mutant to make a big enough splash to draw out the Purifiers, and seized the opportunity that Presley had presented them. Though it hadn't exactly been their goal, they wound up saving the young mutant in the process.

Presley was eventually inducted into the bizarre team, joining Jessica "Jessie" Vale, a former mutant, Olivie Desmarais, a self-styled witch, and a cyborg and former Reaver calling himself Junkyard. Together they used salvaged Purifier tech to repair and upgrade Junkyard and help track down the next mutant in distress. Olivie even prepared an enchanted necklace that helped Presley control and focus her power offensively, though each use still caused her tremendous pain. Junkyard assigned her the codename "Fervor", inspired in equal parts by her temper, her faith, and her fiery mutant ability.

New Mutants: Misspent Youth
Using a boosted version of a Purifier's hand-held mutant detection device, the Waywards located and rescued Arturo Pena in Brazil, and Madelyn Mayhew in Australia, adding both to their roster, along with a significant amount of stolen weapons and tech. With a little eavesdropping over stolen Purifier communication channels they managed to track down what Junkyard felt would be their "big score": a clandestine cargo transfer taking place on an abandoned airfield in northern France. Two Purifier squads in the same place meant double the rewards. With three powerful young mutants added to their ranks, they seemed to have a decent chance.

But the mission went wrong. The cargo the Purifiers were shipping wasn't weapons or technology, but two mutant prisoners. What should have been an easy hit-and-run turned into an impromptu rescue mission, and the Waywards were forced to beat a hasty retreat via a teleportation spell. Wounded by gunfire, Olivie botched her spell, scattering the team across the globe.

Presley found herself in South America with the two mutant prisoners, Bryan House and Tyler Traxum. The boys had freed themselves and fought back during the clash, and apparently were the only reason anyone made it out alive. A chance run-in with Allison Andrews, another mutant teen who lived in near-by Johannesburg, was their ticket to survival. Allison put the odd collection of young mutants up in a hotel while they collected themselves and figured out what to do next. Presley was immediately attracted to Tyler, but kept her feelings to herself.

Contacting the surviving Waywards seemed like the logical next step, but Bryan and Tyler had other ideas. Bryan's mutant girlfriend was in greater danger, as he feared that she, too, was being hunted by the Purifiers and was all alone with a new and uncontrollable power - a very familiar story that Presley could empathize with. Eager to help Bryan's girlfriend in the same way the Waywards had saved her, Presley helped them track her down in Japan. Meanwhile, Tyler left for America in an effort to find his lost little sister; Allison agreed to go with him. The four promised to reunite once both missions had been completed.

Timeskip and the Last Stand
Together, Bryan and Presley managed to save Hasegawa Miho from a Purifier assault team. The battle made the global headlines and attracted the attention of the X-Men - or, at least one X-Man: Noriko Ashida, codenamed Surge. Surge had been searching the world for troubled mutants, and invited Bryan, Miho and Presley to join her at the Xavier Institute. Miho accepted, hoping the X-Men could help her learn to control her mutant power, but Bryan refused, believing that the Purifiers were still targeting him specifically, and that it would be safer for everyone if he remained in hiding. Presley accepted on the condition that Surge help her find her friend Arturo, who she knew would be eager to join the X-Men. A one-way trip to New York was also her best chance at reuniting with Tyler.

Presley, Miho and Arturo all joined Surge's training squad, which was appropriately The Waywards. Chatterbox and Fauna made up the rest of the squad, and Presley was elected to lead.

To her surprise, Presley grew to love her time at Xavier's. Notorious for her competitive streak, she became engrossed in the weekly intersquad competitions, and worked hard to learn to focus and control her power without the use of Olivie's magic trinket. She performed well academically - much better than she had back home in New Zealand - and made many lifelong friends. Though she learned that her father had survived the church fire, she never could muster the courage to contact them beyond sending a simple letter explaining that she was alive and well.

However, she did manage to get in touch with Tyler, who had found his little sister and was living with her in New York. He, too, believed the Purifiers were after him specifically, and preferred to live in hiding rather than join her at the Xavier Institute. But Presley is nothing if not stubborn, and the pair remained in close contact and even began a romantic relationship.

As the war between the X-Men and the Purifiers intensified, Presley fought to be fast-tracked onto a proper X-Men team, citing her record of leadership and experience in combat, but was repeatedly denied. During the event that would come to be known as The Last Stand of the X-Men, Presley and Tyler were among the students sent into the future to the safety of Wakanda under Anole's leadership.

Anole suggested that mutants who could pass for human try to live out their lives in hiding, and Presley took him up on the offer. She and Tyler quickly returned to the United States under a false identity, and tried to lead a normal life. It didn't last. The Initiative soon caught up with them, and in the ensuing battle only Presley managed to escape. Tyler was taken into custody and was never seen or heard from again.

Presley returned to Unity and attempted to rally together a team to help her find where the Initiative was holding Tyler and mount some sort of prison break, but Anole forbade it. Stubbornly, she tried to find him on her own, but with no success.

Ever since she has maintained irregular contact with Unity, using their secret base in Wakanda as a place to lie low whenever her search for Tyler gets a little too hot. She is hopeful that the the repeal of the Superhuman Registration Act will result in Tyler's release and their long-awaited reunion.

Powers and Abilities
Presley is an Alpha-level mutant. She is capable of generating "beads" of plasma which detonate with incredible destructive force. Prior to detonation this plasma can reach temperatures in excess of 5,000 degrees Kelvin, equivalent to the temperature on the surface of the sun. Initially Presley lost control of this ability when agitated, but she has since overcome this weakness through extensive training and is capable of carefully modulating the payload of each detonation.

Even with full control, however, using her mutant power causes her intense pain. This may have something to do with the fact that Presley does not generate this thermal energy herself, but rather her body acts as a conduit to some unknown external power source.

Presley is experienced in hand-to-hand combat and has at least basic training in the use of a variety of firearms. She is also a skilled driver and mechanic, and has strong leadership skills.

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