Dani Moonstar is one of the people who makes this class feel like a team with a mind of its own. She is outspoken, competitive and willing to challenge authority. Putting Magnet…

Dani Moonstar is one of the people who makes this class feel like a team with a mind of its own. She is outspoken, competitive and willing to challenge authority. Putting Magneto in charge does not erase any of that, and it certainly does not erase her existing responsibility as a co-leader. Her powers bring somebody’s fears or desires into visible form. That gives her a way to reach an opponent which does not depend on matching their physical strength. It also means she is working with deeply personal material. The image she draws out can reveal something important, but dealing with the person behind it still takes judgment. By this period, Dani also has Brightwind and the additional responsibilities that came out of the team’s Asgard adventure. Those developments sit alongside her original mutant abilities. Treating everything she can do as one interchangeable power would lose the distinction between her own mutation and her connection to Asgard. The competition with the Hellions in New Mutants #54 is a good example of her leadership getting tested. Dani and James Proudstar’s rival teams pursue the same target, and the Hellions outmaneuver the New Mutants. She has to accept the result. Confidence gets her moving, but it does not guarantee that she has anticipated what the other side is doing. That matters in a class where the students are constantly trying to prove they can handle themselves. Dani often gives their resistance a voice. She can call for unity, argue a position and get personally invested in winning. Her growing experience comes from having to carry all of that into situations where her friends are relying on her, including the occasions when she gets something wrong.