MirageDani Moonstar

As one of the original members of the New Mutants, the Cheyenne-born Danielle “Dani” Moonstar is a brave warrior who teaches the next generation of mutants at Xavier’s Institute. She becomes a Valkyrie and uses her skills and knowledge to protect humanity and her fellow mutants. 

Mutant Powers Manifest

Dramatic change has always been a part of Danielle Moonstar’s life. Raised in Boulder, Colorado, when her mutant powers manifest she begins suffering from terrible nightmares, one of which involves her parents’ deaths. Soon, her parents disappear in the mountains near her home, and Dani begins to dream of a demonic bear, whom she believes had killed her parents. Eventually, Dani learns she could create illusions of people’s greatest fears, and her grandfather, Black Eagle, contacts mutant educator Professor Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X, for assistance; however, agents of the Hellfire Club’s Donald Pierce kill her grandfather. Dani subsequently teams up with other young mutants and Xavier to locate and defeat Pierce, and these youths become Xavier’s latest students as the New Mutants. Xavier offers Dani a place at his school to help her learn to control her fear-based abilities. Honoring her grandfather’s last wish despite her mistrust of Caucasians, she grudgingly agrees, joining the New Mutants as Psyche.

Telepathic Illusions 

Danielle is an excellent archer and an experienced unarmed and armed combatant, tracker, marksman, swimmer and equestrienne. Before being depowered on M-Day, her mutant powers enable her to telepathically draw forth three-dimensional images from others’ minds (herself included), often either a feared or desired image. She can generate images from the minds of certain animals and insects, though only the minds from which she pulls the image could see them. In battle, Dani uses this power to frighten or distract her enemies. 

She can also form telepathic and empathic bonds with higher animals, such as primates, horses, canines, avians, and felines, and often uses this ability to communicate with her former teammate, Rahne Sinclair, AKA Wolfsbane, while in her wolf form. 

When the High Evolutionary’s machine alters her powers, Dani generates solid forms of psionic force—however, she can only generate one at a time, each projection vanishing as she creates a new one. Dani later focuses her power into “psychic arrows” formed of psionic energy which she can fire, causing various effects of her own choosing—including stunning an opponent, forcing them to relive a past trauma, or even potentially causing death (although she never actually used them to kill).

As a Valkyrie, Dani can sense when people were about to die, as well as perceive Death itself, even battle it if she so chose. Whenever Death is near, she sees a vision floating above the victim of that person’s particular conception of Death. She can also sense if an opponent is any sort of undead being, and can sense if death had occurred recently around her. By combining this ability with her illusion powers, she can “replay” an illusion of recent deaths. This ability persists after Dani left Asgard for good, but vanishes with that realm’s destruction. 

After Arcadia DeVille alters her, Dani temporarily gains the ability to channel quantum energy. Able to affect matter on a molecular level, she can liquefy solid objects, altering the nature of energy fields, or project the energy outward as concussive blasts. She can also view the world in terms of light and energy spectrums, allowing her to detect or track others based on their specific energy signatures and patterns.

At a later point, Dani makes a deal with the Queen of Hel, Hela, to restore her Valkyrie powers for a time to defeat the god Ares. Hela agrees, with a warning that it won’t be free and also bestows upon her superhuman strength and a supernatural sword. She uses these borrowed powers to stop Ares and it works, and she can call upon her Valkyrie powers without asking Hela for permission. She later becomes exposed to the techno-organic Transmode Virus, merging her with Warlock and she becomes Moonlock, obtaining his abilities to shapeshift and infect others by touch, but loses her sense of individuality. She receives a cure from Dark Beast which un-merges her from Warlock, and restores her mutant powers.

Family Ties, Mutant Allies, and Foes

Growing up in the Cheyenne Nation with her parents William and Margaret “Peg” Lonestar and grandfather, Black Eagle, Dani remains close to them even after her mutant powers manifest and her community alienates her as a result. 

She joins the New Mutants under Xavier’s leadership, and forms an empathic, quasi-telepathic bond to her lycanthropic teammate Rahne, and can hear her while in her transitional wolf form. Alongside the team, Dani battles the Hellfire Club, and its leader Sebastian Shaw, and even Emma Frost, with the latter becoming her ally. Dani and Emma later share a rivalry while at Xavier’s Institute when their two training squads are pitted against one another.

She eventually teaches young mutants coming into their powers at Xavier’s institute. Recruiting students into her training squad, she names the team after the New Mutants. She often guides her students by teaching them how to use their powers and acts as a confidant and guide, helping them through their formative years. 

When one student’s parents disown him because of his mutant powers, Josh Foley, AKA Elixir, Dani becomes his legal guardian and acts as a parent to him. During this time, Dani’s bond with Rahne is broken once Rahne loses her powers, and their friendship tested when the 19-year-old Rahne, also a teacher at the institute, becomes inappropriately close with Dani’s adopted son and student, Elixir.

Dani also joins X-Force and S.H.I.E.L.D. for a time, and acts as a double agent within the Mutant Liberation Front. She also becomes an honorary member of the Asgardian’s Valkyrior, and later rejoins the New Mutants, this time as their leader. 

After Donald Pierce kills her grandfather, Dani comes into contact with him but in disguise, though she doesn’t take revenge. She dates Pierce’s nephew Justin for a time. She also has a romantic relationship with her New Mutants teammate Sam Guthrie, AKA Cannonball.

Despite her early negative attitude, Dani quickly developed a close friendship and unique bond with her lycanthropic teammate Wolfsbane, thanks to another aspect of her powers—the ability to form psychic rapports with animals. Dani soon became the team’s co-field leader along with Cannonball and discovered that her illusion-casting abilities could also manifest a target’s greatest desire. The Demon Bear soon began haunting Dani once more, and she decided to confront it; donning war paint and arming herself, Dani physically battled the bear, but it critically injured her and she was rushed to the hospital. The New Mutants battled the bear when it returned to finish the job, and ultimately defeated it; Illyana Rasputin, AKA Magik’s soulsword split the Bear in two, revealing Dani’s parents, who had months ago been transformed by the true Demon Bear into its physical form on Earth. Dani’s reunion with her parents was joyful, but although they asked her to return home to Colorado, she elected to remain at Xavier’s school.

Changing her codename to Mirage, Dani shared numerous other adventures with the New Mutants. Eventually Loki, the Asgardian god of mischief and evil, kidnapped the team to Asgard, where Dani saved a winged horse from a group of hunters. Bonding with the horse, Dani named it Brightwind—and when the horse chose her as its rider, Dani was shocked to discover that she had been made a member of the Valkyrior, Asgard’s legendary choosers of the slain. Upon returning home with Brightwind, Dani learned that her new Valkyrie status enabled her to sense the approach of death. When she began to see looming avatars of death over all of her teammates, she tried to alter their fates—but to no avail, as the cosmic Beyonder slew the entire team, including Dani herself. He soon after resurrected them, but the experience left the New Mutants emotionally crippled. Dani pulled herself out of her deep funk thanks in part to an inspirational visit from Thor, but her teammates were not so lucky—and their new headmaster, Max Eisenhardt, AKA Magneto, unsure of how to help them, was manipulated into closing the school and transferring the New Mutants to the rival Massachusetts Academy for psychic therapy by that school’s telepathic headmistress Emma Frost, the White Queen of the corrupt Hellfire Club. Refusing to accept this, Dani quit and returned home, where she sensed Death coming for her old friend Pat Roberts, and briefly battled for his life before coming to terms with death’s inevitability and its place in the grand scheme of things. Following this revelation, Dani returned to Xavier’s, which had re-opened after Magneto and Frost successfully healed the New Mutants’ psyches.

Shortly thereafter, the X-Men were reduced to infancy and kidnapped by the extradimensional tyrant Mojo, and Dani took it upon herself to briefly “graduate” the New Mutants to X-Men status in order to rescue them; however, Magneto’s ties with the Hellfire Club began to deepen, and although the New Mutants and Emma Frost’s young Hellions grew closer—Dani sharing a brief flirtation with James Proudstar, AKA Thunderbird—Magneto grew harsher, forbidding the students to leave campus or use their powers without permission. When the New Mutants snuck out to rescue their former teammate Amara Aquilla, AKA Magma from the High Evolutionary’s Purifiers, Dani was thrown into a machine which evolved her powers—and she found herself able to make her illusions solid, although she could now only cast one illusion at a time. After Magneto allied himself fully with the Hellfire Club and Mr. Sinister’s Marauders demolished Xavier’s mansion, the New Mutants quit the school and merged with X-Factor’s young trainees, the X-Terminators; however, Dani’s mind was suddenly attacked by a spell cast by the Asgardian death-goddess Hela, who hoped to use the Valkyrior to conquer Asgard. Taking control of Dani, Hela armed her with the mystic Deathsword and sent her to slay Odin, ruler of the Asgardian gods, who was then undergoing his rejuvenative Odinsleep. Dani’s rampage was stopped when Cannonball took advantage of a defect in the Deathsword and she was freed from Hela’s control, but she elected to remain in Asgard to help repair the damage she and the Valkyrior had accidentally caused.

Dani eventually returned to Earth after an unspecified “fall from grace.” Brightwind was now a black, bat-winged horse renamed Darkwind, and Dani’s powers had changed again, into “psychic arrows” of psionic energy that could incapacitate any target she struck. The terrorist Reignfire, new leader of the Mutant Liberation Front (MLF), contacted Dani. Thinking that Reignfire was actually her former teammate Sunspot, Dani secretly joined elite intelligence agency S.H.I.E.L.D., who had her infiltrate the MLF and report back to them. Donning a mask and taking her last name as a codename, she aided the MLF in battling the militant X-Force, whose members included many of her former New Mutants teammates. Dani and X-Force were soon swept up in the Upstarts’ “Younghunt” contest to capture the former New Mutants and Hellions. She confirmed her identity to X-Force, but concealed her S.H.I.E.L.D. status. After Dani covertly aided both the Chinese 3Peace and X-Force, Reignfire punished her by killing Darkwind. X-Force ultimately defeated Reignfire, but Dani remained undercover with the MLF for a time, before returning to Asgard alongside X-Force to aid her Valkyrie sisters against Malekith the Accursed. Her S.H.I.E.L.D. status was eventually revealed, and Dani cut ties with the MLF and rejoined X-Force as they traveled across the country and settled in San Francisco. 

During an encounter with the Damocles Foundation, Dani’s powers were once again changed when the reality-altering mutant Arcadia DeVille briefly merged her with the cosmos. For some time thereafter, Dani could channel quantum-based energies and manipulate matter and energy; however, a mental bond had been forged between Dani and Arcadia, and Arcadia’s powers accidentally recreated the Demon Bear. The two defeated the Bear, but were then confronted by the Queen of Star Swords, the Reality-23100 counterpart of Arcadia who split Dani into five different aspects of herself. X-Force “reassembled” Dani, and she sacrificed her quantum powers to defeat the Queen. Following this battle, Dani left X-Force when the other members joined up with British intelligence agent Pete Wisdom.

Seeking a new purpose, Dani joined the X-Men on a part-time basis, training under the techno-smith Forge, and returned to college. When the Xavier Institute went public, Dani helped Xavier recruit mutant students, eventually becoming a teacher and heading up one of the Institute’s training squads, which she named after her old team, the New Mutants. After student Elixir’s parents disowned him, Dani became his legal guardian, doing her best to keep him out of trouble. Dani bristled at a reformed Emma Frost’s presence at the mansion, and her New Mutants developed a rivalry with Emma’s squad, a new Hellions team. Dani briefly dated FBI agent Justin Pierce, Donald Pierce’s nephew, but shortly thereafter experienced tragedy when her Valkyrie powers disappeared with Asgard’s destruction and her mutant powers vanished on M-Day. Unceremoniously fired from the school by Emma, Dani left Josh Foley behind and was later hired by the United States government’s Fifty State Initiative as a private tutor for one of their young recruits, Terry Ward, AKA Trauma. Despite interference from Henry Gyrich, Dani trained Trauma in the use of his own fear-based abilities, showing him how to use his powers as a counselor and help others overcome their fears. Disliking the Initiative’s exploitation of children as soldiers, Dani soon left the Initiative and returned home to Colorado. She was later attacked in her home by former members of the X-Men’s training squads, who had been told by a disguised Donald Pierce that the founding New Mutants had joined the Hellfire Club. Once Pierce’s scheme was exposed and he was apprehended, Dani accepted X-Man leader Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops’, offer to become a teacher to these “Young X-Men.”

When Magik came from the near future with a warning that the world and the New Mutants would perish without her, cyclops gave Cannonball permission to change up the original New Mutants team. He didn’t initially support Dani’s membership until they fought and she proved useful. They then went on a mission to take down David Haller, AKA Legion. Later, while Norman Osborned attacked the X-Men in San Francisco, Dani went to Las Vegas to strike a deal with Hela to reaquire her Valkyrie powers, and then some, to fight Ares and Osborn’s Dark Avengers and Dark X-Men. As part of the deal, Dani agreed to be Hela’s Valkyrie during the Siege against the Dísir who were going to feast on the Asgaridan spirits. 

Later, the New Mutants’ faced the Inferno Babies, mutants trained in the Hell dimension to become merciless super-soldiers by Project Purgatory. During a fight with them in the daemonic Limbo (Otherplace), Dani suffered a broken arm by the mutant Loca and some of the New Mutants were captured. Others from Project Purgatory continued to beat Dani, while the New Mutants team leader Cannonball was forced to watch, but attacking demons gave her an opportunity to escape. Dani then killed Loca and the team made their escape only to find that their captors had unleashed the Elder gods, only to be destroyed by the freed Legion, thanks to the manipulations of Magik by using Karma to liberate him. The battered team returned to the X-mansion to recover.

Later, Dani and the New Mutants went up against Nimrod tech and defeated it thanks to her sound leadership while Cannonball stayed behind, feeling a need for a leave of absence as team leader. Dani checked in with him afterwards and he told her he ended to heal after events in Limbo but kissed her which she returned with delight. After the team seemed to be falling apart, Dani thought Cyclops would disband them. To her surprise, Dani was asked to lead the New Mutants and their first mission was to find Nate Grey, AKA X-Man, to bring him home.

When the Terrigen Cloud covered Earth and poisoned mutants with M-Pox, Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm’s team used Dani’s death-sense ability to track those impacted by it to get them to safety. Storm temporarily had the mutants relocate to her X-Haven in the Limbo dimension. In tracking down mutants, Dani and Magik found Lady Mastermind, the daughter of the villain Mastermind, who had been controlling party goers in a Los Angeles nightclub. Dani and Lady Mastermind battled, psychically, but Dani reached her over their shared issues with fear. Lady Mastermind let the party goers go and asked for help in ending her misery. Dani and Magik refused and instead teleported her to X-Haven where she received treatment. 

When she contracted the Transmode Virus she spread it to her fellow New Mutants, though she was ultimately purged of it thanks to a cure from Dark Beast, and her mutant powers were restored.

When the Dark Elf King Malekith and his War of the Realms reached Earth, Dani was called away by Odin to intercept the Elf hordes. But upon her return, she informed her fellow X-Men that all of her Valkyrie sisters were slain and Dani was the only one left. They remain in Flushing, Queens, helping human survivors escape. Some of their party goes missing and when Dani attempted to track them down, the group came up against more of Malekith’s forces. With help from Hrimhari and Magik, the horde was kept at bay. Though their battle was not over yet. In trying to portal away, Magik’s abilities were inhibited by a cursed relic. Sunspot sacrificed himself to destroy the relic and the X-Men used Magik’s portal as a distraction. Dani and Karma combined their powers of illusion to trick the forces into Limbo. It worked, and Dani paid last rights to her fallen Valkryor but struggled to leave them since she was the last of them, and it was her job to return them to Valhalla, but it was their spirits, including Sunspot, who encouraged her to live on. 

Later, when the mutant-only nation-state and island of Krakoa was formed by Xavier, Magento, and Moira MacTaggert, Dani joined her fellow mutants. The New Mutants were reformed, bringing together old and new members, and they embarked on a mission to the Shi’ar Empire to bring teammate Cannonball back to Krakoa.