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Avalanche---real name Dominic Petros---is a Cretan-born mutant, an original member of both Mystique's Brotherhood and of Freedom Force, and as such, one of the criminals working towards a pardon. His powers are vibratory, though there's been a great deal of confusion as to what exactly he can do; sometimes he's been depicted as mentally setting up vibrations in objects, other times sending out beams of force from his hands, sometimes crumbling things and other times manipulating matter to suit his needs. He's also once been seen causing earthquakes by hitting the ground with his fists (like Arclight), and another time had his powers described as "molecular liquification". His Official Handbook entry states that he releases "powerful waves of vibration from his hands", and although it ought to be the authority on the subject, it's been contradicted in enough ways so as to be nearly useless---especially as it implies that his powers can only destroy things (which is dreadfully outdated). It is known that he cannot affect living tissue---the bones in his arms shattered when he tried to pulp the Hulk and the beams/vibrations bounced back at him. Avalanche's personality is difficult to pin down, as unfortunately he's had very little character development aside from a small blip of several issues which occurred during FF's last mission and immediately post-FF. He's not the world's brightest guy though he's far from stupid, but tends to make poor decisions and as such this may be why he often allows others to make them for him. Specifically, he often followed Pyro in particular, and at some point they became best friends, an alliance which existed until Pyro's death.
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Avalanche has not been seen much since the collapse of FF, but there was an underlying theme to pretty much all of his post-FF appearances until the year 2000: redemption. On the final Kuwait mission, he abandoned Pyro and Blob in order to save Crimson Commando, and later felt guilty about it; Pyro then contracted the Legacy Virus, which only made matters worse. So although Avalanche and Commando went right back to working for the government after their return from Kuwait, they temporarily defected to hang out with Pyro and Blob and their new BoEM. Later Avalanche went back to federal service, though he then went AWOL again to help out Mystique. Ever since then, however, he's been helping Pyro with various endeavours related to Legacy, proving himself to be a pretty good friend. It's unclear what direction (if any) his character will go in, though, especially now that Pyro has died from Legacy.
In recent times, he became a part of Mystique's new Brotherhood of Mutants, and assisted in the second attempt to kill Senator Kelly. Despite this, his next appearance had him part of the legitimate X-Corps team, but he and his fellows went rogue and attacked Paris on Mystique's orders. Avalanche escaped after destroying the Eiffel Tower, had an unfortunate run-in with the Weapon X team, and recently was taken down by an unpowered Wolfsbane after tearing up New York City for no apparent reason. He then joined a new Brotherhood, led by Black Tom and/or Exodus, until being sucked into the black hole in Shen Xorn's head. He is one of the few mutants to have kept their powers after the mass depowering, and is currently running his own bar in San Francisco, called Nick's.
Issues which highlight his character (during the temporary blip, anyway): New Mutants annual 7, Uncanny X-Men annual 15, X-Factor annual 6, X-Men annual 2, X-Factor 102, X-Factor 109.
First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #141
Most Recent Appearance: X-Men: Legacy Annual 1
