Neal Shaara

Born into the wealthy family of a police chief, Neal Shaara no worries, until the day he returned home to find his brother, Sanjit, was missing. Not satisfied waiting for the authorities to track down Sanjit, Neal set off to locate him using clues he had uncovered in his brother's diary. Sanjit was a reporter, and Neal learned he had been working on a story involving disappearances among Calcutta's impoverished citizens. The trail led him into the arms of bandits, but Karima Shapandar, an operative of Neal's father, saved his life. The two began to fall in love as they searched together for Sanjit. Ultimately, their quest brought them face-to-face with Bastion, in the midst of Operation Zero Tolerance.

Bastion transformed Sanjit into a Prime Sentinel, one in a series of cyborgs bent on eliminating all mutants; the villain intended the same fate for Neal and Karima. While the process worked on Karima, it instead triggered Neal's latent mutant abilities. His power emerged in an explosive fury, decimating Bastion's hidden base.

Neal battled Bastion and the Prime Sentinels, but would have been overcome if his brother, fighting the Sentinel programming, had not saved him. Sanjit sacrificed himself so Neal and Karima could escape. However, Karima was beginning to succumb to the Sentinel programming, becoming an Omega Sentinel.

While with the X-Men, he struggled with the same difficulty the X-Men's Havok did years before - his fear of killing or hurting someone with his incredibly powerful plasma. Not only that, but he also fell in love with the X-Man Psylocke, even though she was in a relationship with Archangel. The two would break up and Psylocke was free to pursue a romantic relationship with Thunderbird.

  X-Treme X-Men

A short while, Thunderbird and five other X-Men formed a splinter group of X-Men (dubbed the X-Treme X-Men), cutting all ties with the rest of the team whilst searching for Destiny's Diaries. Psylocke would die at the hands of Vargas, leaving behind a grief-stricken Neal.

For a time he was seen working with Lucas Bishop, another mutant with energy-related powers, in an attempt to overcome his fears and gain greater control over his powers. During this time, it was revealed that his plasma, however powerful, could not burn through adamantium, a testament to the metal's already impressive durability.

Some time after, Neal started a relationship with Heather Cameron, who was also known as Lifeguard. She and her brother Davis (who would become Slipstream) joined the off-shoot group of the X-Men. After the inter-dimensional Invasion at Madripoor by the villain Khan, Thunderbird and Lifeguard left to search for her brother Slipstream, who left the team.

  X-Corporation

Neal and Heather would later be seen as a member of the X-Corporation, although Slipstream was nowhere to be seen. However this was short-lived as there was a synchronized attack on several of the X-Corporation offices after the catastrophic events of M-Day, leading Cyclops to call for the disbanding of all offices. If they aborted their search for Slipstream, or did find him, is as of yet unknown. 

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