Chatterbox

Chatterbox is an original fictional character who first appeared in New Mutants: Last Class.

Background
When Monet Chiu's parents emigrated from Shanghai to San Francisco, they were sure that they had thought of everything. They saved every penny, obtained all the necessary documents, found the perfect Chinatown apartment to call home, and even arranged to have two jobs waiting for them when they arrived. In America, they reasoned, their soon-be-born daughter would have the all the best opportunities in life. But no matter how cautious they chose be, the one detail they could not possibly have predicted was Monet herself.

Monet was an exceptional child from the beginning. Always curious, always fascinated, she seemed to soak up new information like a sponge. Unfortunately for her parents, who had difficulty adjusting to the American way of life, Monet took to her native culture with ease. She spoke Mandarin at home, but made English-speaking friends at school; she breezed through piano and violin lessons, but listened to rock music on the radio; she was dutiful with her chores, but chose to spend her allowance on violent comic books and science fiction DVDs. It seemed that the more Monet developed, the less her own parents understood her.

Monet knew it, too. She knew she was loved and that her parents were always proud of her, but in moving to America they had sent her down a path that they themselves were unable to follow. And so little by little, Monet learned to walk that path alone - so much so that when her mutant abilities first surfaced, she told no one.

As a side-effect of her growing telepathic abilities grew, Monet rapidly lost her ability to speak. While this did not bother her in the least (she still had her texts,e-mail, Facebook, and about a dozen instant messengers to choose from, after all) it gravely worried her parents.

In the following weeks Monet was pulled from school and subjected to a battery of tests. She got to meet all sorts of interesting doctors and specialists, each of which had a different approach: some had fun puzzles and brain teasers to play with; others just talked to her, though those conversations were rather one-sided; on one occasion she even got to have an MRI and saw pictures of her own brain. It was a constant adventure, and while she felt guilty about putting her parents through so much worry, but when she read their minds she couldn't help but notice that rock music and comic books were the furthest things from their minds. All they wanted was for their daughter to be happy and healthy. And she was. If only they could see it.

New Mutants: Last Class
Then, one rainy night, Monet felt a presence in the distance, unlike anything she had ever known before, yet so completely familiar. It was like a needle in a haystack bumping into another needle. She knew it right away: it was another mutant.

His name was Ryan - she read that right out of his mind. The poor boy had lost both his way and his memory of how he got there, but at least he wasn't alone, now. Hesitantly, she introduced herself, holding a two-way conversation for the first time since her powers truly surfaced. She explored her new powers, using them to help Ryan regain his memories and find his way home.

As they discovered together, Ryan's misadventure had started with a hit and run that left him unconscious and badly injured, and which triggered his mutant ability of astral projection. His unconscious mind had left his body upon impact and simply drifted all the way from his home in Chicago to Monet's in San Francisco - he may even have kept on going had she not discovered him.

With her help, Ryan found his way back to his body, though in the process the two lost telepathic contact. Instantly, Monet was overcome with loneliness. Using her powers to their fullest had been unexpectedly thrilling, and she couldn't wait to do it again.

For lack of other mutants in her area, Monet began to contact strangers at random, only to find that her powers frightened and angered them. It wasn't long before her telepathic intrusions earned her some unwanted attention.

One mind that she happened to contact turned out to belong to an avid member of Purity, the anti-mutant group that had been growing in popularity and power over the last several years. Believing she had finally found a new friend to talk to, Monet eventually let her address slip.

Purity was on her doorstep in a matter of hours. What began as a protest quickly spiraled out of control. Some of the more violent protesters broke into the apartment building in search of the mutant threat, and wound up cornering her on the rooftop. When one of them pulled a gun, Monet lost it.

Her cyberpathic scream was so powerful that it knocked out half of the city's electronics like an enormous electromagnetic pulse, taking out everything from cell phone towers to traffic lights to radio and television signals. The already chaotic protest swung even further out of control, leading to riots as panic spread through the city.

Monet could read the minds of her attackers - they would not tolerate a mutant in their city, and a few of them were conspiring to make an example out of her. As much as she loved her own abilities, suddenly she wished to have been given super strength or the power to simply fly away. She was helpless.

Until help arrived. They seemed to come out of nowhere, dispatching the bad guys left and right, rescuing her at the very last second like something out of her comics. They were the X-Men.. well, sort of. Not really, but good enough - better as far as she was concerned: It was Ryan, along with new friends he had made at his new school in New York.

That's where they took her: the Xavier Institute, a school just for mutants like her. It had become Ryan's new home, and so it became Monet's, too. There she met her other saviours, like Andrea, Alex, Nathan, Parker, and June. They would quickly become counted among her closest friends.

When the next semester began, Monet petitioned to be skipped ahead academically so that she could attend classes with her older friends. Headmistress Frost initially objected, but relented when Monet passed an equivalency test that Headmaster Summers prepared for her. Accordingly, she was given the codename "Chatterbox." She also joined Ryan and Andrea, and later June in Psionics class, where she learned to further master her telepathic and cyberpathic powers.

Timeskip and the Last Stand
Monet eagerly joined the school's new "squad" system, joining Amira Dasari in choosing Surge as her advisor. Inspired by the impromptu rescue mission that had saved Monet's life, Surge was determined to fill the rest of her squad with mutants who had not yet been given the chance to attend Xavier's. She left on a journey around the world, and returned two months later with three new students: Presley Harvard, Arturo Pena, and Hasegawa Miho round out the rest of the squad, which Surge dubbed the "Waywards".

Lacking in combat ability, Monet used her powers in a supportive role instead. Though this effectively left her squad a man short in most competitions, it also allowed them to coordinate their strategies in utter silence. In particular, this ability was of extreme importance to Miho, whose own ability also left her unable to speak. The pair soon developed close and lasting friendship.

Monet was among the handful of students who did not participate in the Last Stand of the X-Men. After being teleported to Wakanda, 2 weeks into the future, Monet waffled with the decision to return to life in the United States in hiding, or to remain in Africa with Anole's new team, Unity. She wound up dividing her time between both, trying to make a home out of each. Living with Alex and Kelly in New York was by far the most fun for her, but her face had been in the headlines only a few short years ago, and she feared that her inability to speak would once again draw unwanted attention. She would spend the majority of the next 8 years with Unity, but visited what she considered to be her real home as often as she could arrange.

Powers and Abilities
Monet is a Gamma-level mutant. Her telepathic powers are severely limited; advanced techniques such as psychic surgery and mind control are completely out of the question, as even reading anything more profound than surface thoughts and inner monologues can be a struggle for her. However, Monet's abilities in the realm of telepathic communication are unrivaled. Due to a combination of natural talent and endless practice, she is capable of maintaining and relaying dozens of simultaneous conversations over extreme distances without error with only minimal effort, allowing her to serve as a sort of "mental switchboard" for teams in the field.

As a cyberpath, she is able to "speak" with computers as easily as with people, though she is limited to communication with wireless technology, including cell phones, most modern computers, and even satelites if there is a dish within her range. She can pick up all manner of airborne transmissions, including radio, phone, and television signals; initially she used "hats" made of tin foil, and later a headband made of pure aluminum to help block these signals out, but has since learned to do so at will on her own. It is believed that her ease with telepathic communication may be explained by the ability to transmit telepathic signals through technological devices - though how this is accomplished is a mystery all on its own.

Monet is also able to detect the presence and location of other mutants at a range of up to a mile. This, in combination with her other powers, may also explain how she was able to go escape detection for weeks, even from Cerebra.

A side-effect of Monet's powers is the loss of her ability to form speach. Her telepathic powers have effectively taken over that part of her brain to the extent that attempts to speak out loud are simply broadcasted as telepathic thought instead.

Monet is a talented violinist, pianist, and ballet dancer, and has had basic instruction in self-defense.