X-Force Cannonball: Sam's father died when he was young, and as the oldest sibling he felt responsible for supporting the family. Giving up college, he followed in his father's footsteps as a coal miner. When Sam was trapped with a co-worker in a collapsing mine, the stress of attempting to escape triggered his latent mutant power, enabling him to blast them both free. Professor Xavier subsequently invited him to join the New Mutants as Cannonball.

X-Force Shatterstar: Shatterstar is Gaveedra Seven, the product of bio-engineering on another dimensional world, who was at one point merged with an Earth mutant named Benjamin Russell. Shatterstar possesses super-human abilities relating to the absorption of sonic and vibrational energy, as well as an intuitive learning capability. Shatterstar eventually served with X-Force, and has been involved in numerous superhuman conflicts.