History: David Alleyne has always been the smart one, but when he was a teenager, the answers just started appearing in his head - so long as he was in the same room as the teacher. He started to figure out that he was a mutant, and that he now had the ability to know anything that the people nearby knew. Feeling this made him a cheater, and knowing the knowledge would fade, David was driven to study even harder. He took college-level courses while finishing high school. But he kept his mutation a secret, until the hate group Purity outted him to his parents and attempted to attack him. David was rescued by the librarian at his school, the former New Mutant Karma, and her former teammate Danielle Moonstar. The two offered David a place at Xavier's.

David went to the school in order to learn at a place that would understand his unique learning situation, not so he could become an X-Man. He wants only to lead a normal life. He resented the formation of training squads, and only reluctantly agreed to share leadership duties of his squad when he realized that there were valuable things to be learned from training as junior X-Men. He also became close friends with his roommate, Elixir, overcoming an initial dislike based on Elixir's headstrong ways and his past as a member of an anti-mutant hate group.

David has recenty attempted to become more useful by removing the mental block that keeps him from retaining the knowledge he absorbs after the target leaves the vicinity. With the combination of Moonstar and Emma Frost's powers, David was shown a vision of what it was his mind feared, and why it constructed the block. He saw himself becoming the smartest man on the planet, but with stolen intelligence and no sense of the cost of his actions. In his vision, he took over the world and had to be stopped by his friends, at the cost of their lives. This vision also made him aware of a crush on Moonstar and a deeper romantic connection with teammate Surge. David opted to keep his mental block in place.