SAGE

 

SAGE

Real Name: Tessa

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #132, April 1980

Powers: Sage’s mutant ability is a highly developed psychocentric power template that gives her an enormous capacity for absorbing, storing, and retrieving information.

She has a photographic memory, kinetic memory, and total recall: She perfectly remembers everything she has ever seen or heard, and can exactly duplicate any physical movement or action she has seen done before (within the physical limits of her human body). Sage can analyze body language in order to predict what an opponent's next move will be, allowing her to anticipate and counter attacks in combat almost instinctively. Her computer-like mind enables her to analyze situations and conceive of highly elaborate and efficient battle plans and strategies.

Sage's capacity for analysis extends to the genetic level, she is capable of visually probing living beings and determining what if any genetically-enhanced attributes they possess. She can not only detect mutants and latent mutants, her analyses also enable her to determine the mutant's full range of potential and possible capabilities. Using her jumpstart power, Sage is capable of activating any potential capability in a mutant's genes. She can temporarily increase power levels, boost a mutant's control and finesse with their powers, and even cause latent mutants' abilities to permanently rise to the surface.

Sage was also a telepath, possessing the full range of standard telepathic abilities. She could read the minds of people in her vicinity, and arrange communication between herself and other people psionically. Sage could create illusions to disguise or alter the environment, take full mental control over another person's thoughts and actions, and project her astral form in order to explore the psychic plane.

After encountering the dangerous mutant telepath known as Elias Bogan, however, Sage was "marked" by him and in order to escape his psychic touch she caused her telepathic powers to fold in on themselves. This effectively disabled any active telepathy by her, but it had the beneficial side-effect of rendering her phenomenally resistant to psychic detection and probing. Sage's mind from then on emitted a reflective effect that turned other psychic's abilities against them if they tried to attack her. Thus, a psychic blast would mirror off of Sage's mind and strike her attacker, or an attempt at mind control would end up allowing Sage to control her opponent's mind instead. After being imprinted with Roma's god-like knowledge, Sage's telepathy returned.

She later began demonstrating other powers, such as flight, before ultimately merging with the Panoptichron, losing her human form in the process. Sage existed as a being of pan-dimensional cybernetic energy as part of the Crystal Palace, operating as a matter-energy projection able to change appearances at will, fly and pass insubstantially through barriers, as well as cosmic awareness through her mental connection to the reality-scanning supercomputers of the Panoptichron. Combining the Panoptichron with her computer-like mind, she can record and analyze massive amounts of data at blinding speeds. She eventually reverted back to her human state.