MIRAGE

 

MIRAGE

Real Name: Danielle Moonstar

First Appearance: Marvel Graphic Novel (Vol. 1) #4, September 1982

Powers: Danielle "Dani" Moonstar developed two mutant powers during puberty: Animal telepathy and image projection. Her animal telepathy allows her to establish a quasi-telepathic rapport with animals and insects, allowing her to read their minds, project images from their minds, and see through their eyes. She can communicate with animals and insects, exchanging thoughts and empathic impressions with each other, as well as psionically asking creatures for their assistance. She can use this power to maintain a psychic link with Wolfsbane she is in her wolf form.

Her image projecting power can manifest three-dimensional images of visual concepts from her own or other people’s minds. This power operates by summoning psionic energy into our environment and allowing the subconscious minds of other people to guide the form it takes. Initially, Dani used her power solely to summon up someone's greatest fear and project it for them to experience, creating illusions based on a person, animal, or situation they fear most of all. These fear images lock on to the mind of her victim and trigger anxiety and panic reactions, compelling them to accept the image as if it were real. Because the image is keyed only to a specific victim, Mirage and anyone else in the area can easily see the fear-image is an illusion, even if someone observing shares the same fear, like arachnophobia. As time passed, Mirage learned to create a wider variety of images by tapping into different areas of the mind, hers and others. She began creating images of someone's greatest desire, the perfect man, the things they think of in terms of "home" or "friends", etc. By causing people to see what they expected to see in a situation, Mirage could even disguise her appearance and that of others behind her illusions.

After being chosen by the winged horse Brightwind, Dani became one of the Asgardian Valkyries. This gave her a presence of death, detectable and feared by Asgardian races and others sensitive to such things. Her powers as a Valkyrie interacted with her mutant power, allowing Mirage to forecast someone imminent death by perceiving their own personal, private image of death looming over them (an angel, a priest reading last writes, etc). If she chose to act, she could sometimes prevent these deaths from coming to pass, or even fight the personification of Death itself to preserve the life of someone it had come to take. When she was affected by one of the High Evolutionary's machines, the psionic energy she generated now acted as a tangible psychoplasm, forming into a physically solid shape by the subconscious mind directing it. Thus, she could now literally create someone's greatest fear or wish out of thin air. Her powers seemed to be modified so that she would only create fears or wishes anymore, and then only ones that were objects or constructs, instead of situational illusions. Her power constantly sustained one and only one construct at a time -- the only way she could get rid of a psychoplasm construct was to create another one, causing the previous one to de-materialize just as the new one appeared. In order to work with this change in her powers, she trained her mind so that she could focus on intensely wanting something at will. Normally, she tended to maintain an arrow's head necklace when she wanted to hide her power, and would reform the necklace into a full-sized spirit lance for combat.

After spending an extended period of time in Asgard, Mirage returned with her power having taken on a secondary mutation, apparently having adapted itself to her time with the Valkyries. She now generated psychoplasmic energy as a charge from her hands, which she could then reform at will into different shapes, like an energy dagger or, most commonly, a bow and arrows formed out of mental energy. Striking a target with these psi-plasma arrows would cause them to be overwhelmed by their own greatest fears, painful memories, or psychological trauma, triggering a neurosynaptic shock that temporarily incapacitated her opponents. Unlike previous versions of her power, only Dani and her victim were aware of the specific fear being produced. When the Psi-War unleashed a wave of energy that diminished every psychic on the planet, Dani received a power boost from an unexpected source. After coming into contact with the reality-warping girl named Arcadia DeVille, Mirage accidentally became linked to the quantum energy Arcadia commanded, giving her new powers that developed over time. Dani's power signature now caused her skin to glow with a blue light, with flickering stars visible on her flesh. She developed sensory powers allowing her to detect distortions in the elements or the planet's electromagnetic field. She could expel a rush of concussive energy that would blast through most barriers. Danielle could also affect matter on a sub-molecular level, which she did to disintegrate or liquefy solid objects, and heal the wounds of other people. Ultimately, Arcadia evolved into the Queen of the Star Swords, was defeated, and Dani lost her quantum powers. Danielle's powers regressed after this, in part due to the death of Brightwind, who was her link to the Valkyries. Without him, she had been slowly losing the psi-arrow and death sight aspects of her powers, a weakness accelerated by the Psi-War. Reverting back to her fear and wish image-casting, Mirage did maintain her death sight powers for a time. She was even capable of incorporating it into her image power, allowing her to recreate someone's death by tapping into residual death energy at the murder scene and using her powers to replay the events leading up to the death itself.

Upon her return to the Xavier Institute and teaching assistant job, though, Mirage was totally limited to her original image-projection power and animal telepathy until being depowered on M-Day. She later merged with her teammate Warlock as part of the "Moonlock" techno-organic collective, infecting her with the Transmode Virus. The cure provided by the Dark Beast had the unanticipated side-effect of restoring her mutant powers.

Dani Moonstar is an excellent archer, tracker, swimmer, and equestrienne. Her training in S.H.I.E.L.D. has made her an experienced unarmed combatant and marksman. She is also Cheyenne and well-versed in her tribe’s history, language, customs, etc.