Amanda Sefton arrives looking for people, then finds herself trying to keep people alive. Her connection to the X-Men through Nightcrawler has brought her back toward their worl…

Amanda Sefton arrives looking for people, then finds herself trying to keep people alive. Her connection to the X-Men through Nightcrawler has brought her back toward their world. The visit to Muir Island becomes an emergency before she has even finished the journey. When Banshee is shot, Amanda uses her magic to rescue him from the water and get him to help. Transformation and teleportation make her contribution unusually flexible. She can change the practical conditions of a rescue rather than relying only on the strength of her arms or the speed of a boat. That flexibility is easy to underestimate when thinking about a team in terms of who wins a fight. Getting a wounded person somewhere they can receive treatment may be the action that makes the later fight possible. Amanda has already justified her place among the defenders before the confrontation on the shore. Her magic then encounters a serious limitation against the Reavers’ artificial components. The story gives her something to discover under pressure: an opponent can be vulnerable in one respect and resistant in another. Having a wide range of abilities does not mean every spell is equally suited to every target. Her capture also prevents a comfortable reading in which the unfamiliar members merely fill out the background while the established X-Men handle the danger. Amanda takes risks and faces consequences. A useful contribution does not guarantee that the person making it gets to remain in control of the encounter. For this snapshot, her role is both rescuer and combatant. The same resourcefulness that gets Sean back to the island carries her into its defense. She is helping people she knows, with skills the others cannot simply reproduce, while discovering that those skills have limits she cannot wish away.