Jetstream is perhaps the fastest person in Hub City, and considering the powers of some of the heroes and villains in the large metropolis, that's saying quite a lot.  Blessed with the ability to move at several times the speed of sound, Noelle consistently uses that to her advantage when fighting crime... and, against some others' better judgment, when not fighting crime, as well.

Noelle has been charted by SUN Labs technical division as having a top running speed of a little over 3,000 miles an hour, topping her off at about Mach 4-- although she can only sustain such a speed for a short time.  Under ordinary circumstances, her standard 'cruising' speed while running is about half that. 

But Jetstream does more than just run fast.  As with most speedsters, her entire body operates at an accelerated rate, meaning that she can friction-heat metal with her hands, type at a couple thousand words a minute (assuming the computer keyboard can stand the stress and the CPU can keep up), and seems to others to have enhanced agility due to the fact that she can react faster to stimuli than most anyone. 

Her accelerated body seems to have adapted to superspeed by giving her a protective aura that protects her from windburn, friction heat and bodily stress at speeds no human was ever meant to achieve.  The aura also protects her to a large degree from speed-related injury, which is especially helpful in keeping her from having fatal or life-altering injuries from spilling or tripping while running at velocities in excess of the speed of sound.
 

The myriad heroes and heroines of Hub City often do their heroic acts for essentially altruistic reasons: out of a sense of moral or ethical duty; because of the immense responsibility of their powers; out of a sense of well-being for their common man, or a tightly-held sense of justice.  And then there's Noelle Ranier, who became the teen heroine Jetstream originally out of a sense of boredom and a need to showboat. 

Part of her need to grab attention stemmed from her father and mother splitting up and having a messy separation while Noelle was still at an impressionable age.  Convinced that she was the cause because she only could stand by and watch while her father walked out, Noelle did everything she could to make sure that she got attention from her mother.  Some people probably would have figured this to be an early warning sign of a cry for help.  Noelle's mother, who was busy holding down two jobs, didn't have the time to give all the attention that Noelle craved, however. 

That led Noelle to do what she could to get that attention at school, where she got nicknames like "Never Say No-Elle" for the daring-- often reckless-- stunts that she would often perform on dares.  (Hormone-laden teenage boys, on the other hand, found out that the term 'Never Say No' only went so far-- much to their disappointment)  To say that Noelle wasn't always an honor roll student is putting it mildly.  For the majority of junior high, and well into her sophomore year of high school, Noelle hung with a bad crowd, getting all the attention she could with more and more outlandish stunts.

It is believed that one of these stunts, riding a skateboard through a local chemical refinery, was a catalyst in her later gaining her powers.  During the reckless ride, Noelle inhaled fumes from a chemical spill that caused her to lose consciousness and remain hospitalized for a week.  When she arrived back at school, it wasn't long before the attention from her last dangerous stunt faded, and 'Never Say No-Elle' was back again.  Once she entered high school, her bad crowd got worse as they soon became tied up in drug use.  For a long time, even Noelle resisted peer pressure and shied away from trying anything that bad.  But eventually, she folded, and at a party thrown by a pair of her 'acquaintances', Noelle took a pair of tablets that she believed to be speed.

At its base, it was speed.  But it was a highly concentrated, experimental form of speed called Burn, which was just starting to hit the streets from the dealers.  Burn was supposed to react with the body chemistry at about twice the normal rate.  Four of the five teens who tried it wound up comatose, experiencing heart, lung, and nervous system seizures.  Noelle, the fifth, made it home, but couldn't stop violently shaking and could barely coerce herself into dropping into a restless sleep. 

When she awoke, it seemed to her that the world had suddenly shifted into slow-motion.  Rain outside seemed to drift downward like snowflakes in mid-May.  She knocked her alarm clock off her bedside dresser and watched it fall halfway to the floor in bullet-time before she plucked it out of mid-air.  She dressed and ran to school... in fifteen seconds.  It slowly began to dawn on her as the days and weeks progressed that she had somehow been granted superspeed.  For a while, Noelle toyed with the idea of doing what any attention-desiring girl with amazing powers would-- namely, anything she wanted.

But watching TV news stories of the four teens she'd partied with, all of whom were still in comas after taking hits of the drug Burn, caused her to have an epiphany.  Unlike them, she'd been granted a gift.  And with that gift came a responsibility to find the people who supplied the drug and make them pay for what they'd done.  In less than a week, Noelle had fashioned a costume and was a red-tinted blur making her way around Hub City, gathering up drug dealers and suppliers.  It worked out better than she could have hoped; people were thankful to see her, and in her costume, she generated an instant buzz... even though she refused to give her name for worry that drug lords she hadn't caught might target her mother.  

But the gratitude of the people she saved was like wine to her.  She decided that being a heroine was what she was meant to do.  When a thankful police officer she saved mentioned that the sonic boom she created making a quick turn was like a jet taking off, Noelle ceased the nameless heroism and began calling herself Jetstream.  And for a little more than a year, Jetstream dished out her own flamboyant form of quick justice, enjoying every moment.  That enjoyment grew exponentially recently, when she was approached to join Team:Teen.  She gladly did.

It's not unilaterally correct to call Noelle an action-junkie.  It's a lot easier to say that she tends to have an act-first-think-later mentality, that she still tends to call attention to herself a lot, and that the normal speed of life tends to leave her bored really quickly.  She doesn't have the patience for stakeouts, and she believes that actions speak a lot louder than words.  Given that, it's not surprising that she's the one drumming her fingers on the table at a mile a minute when Team:Teen gets down to its meetings, and that every so often, she comes into conflict with team members who tend to approach problems through more logical means than just 'bashing heads.'

One might think that because of that, Jetstream is not a highly regarded member of Team:Teen, or that she constantly is at odds with her teammates.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Despite her superspeed view of life, Noelle is happy to have friends to spend time with, and enjoys fighting alongside them on the side of good.  It almost feels like she's reached a turning point in her up-to-now tumultuous life.