Template:Featured Articles/22-2022

Moment of Awesome - Artie Maddicks/Facade: When the Brotherhood of Mutants appear on the scene of an extraction of an asset, Artie and Marie-Ange Colbert join forces to stall them. Artie nodded. He had a 9mm, not enough bullets, an extendable baton and a bad feeling. "Tag team." He signed quickly. "I'll echo you and do my best to blind them, at the same time. You lead it, I just make it harder to tell what's a threat. And Amanda juices your constructs up." He paused. "We're going to be targets as soon as they realise what we're doing." They'd drilled Tag Team. They both knew it and could do it with either leading but it worked better when he was the follower, given the interactions between their powers. "I'll keep enough magic to use the shielding spell if it comes to that," Amanda promised. "It should hold enough to get us out." I hope. "But adding sense surround to your illusions should be a lot easier than generating the real thing. "Yes, and if Artie can make images I can copy, those may be more realistic. The Brotherhood has that woman who influenced Nightcrawler. They have an illusionist too. We need psionic backup, and whatever can keep them busy. Let chaos reign, as it were." Marie-Ange said, nodding at Emma and Wanda in turn. "I'll find their weak link. Or their strong one," said Emma, coolly, her smile sharp. "Psionic back- up delivered as required. Perhaps," she raised an eyebrow at Wanda, "a combined attack? I open the gate…" Wanda's face was stone and showed no emotion - but the fury in her eyes was a totally different story. The presence of Magneto added another layer of complexity to the situation for her and she could almost taste her desire to both unleash her powers against him and, at the same time, run. Between her personal feelings towards her father and regarding the devastation the X-Men had faced, Wanda was grateful that her training was keeping her as balanced as she was. "You open the gate," she said instead of either of those things, "and I'll scramble anything beyond that. I cannot guarantee what impact that will have but it will have an impact." She and Emma had worked in tandem like that before - it wasn't easy with Wanda's powers but it certainly was satisfying. "Ready?" Marie-Ange glanced at Artie and counted down on her fingers. Not a moment later, Thor came from behind the truck. He stood tall and spun his hammer by its handle. Ducking next to the truck, Marie-Ange had one hand full of cards, and one hand holding Amanda's, fingers intertwined and luminous with the witch's energy. "If you can give them noise, I can keep three or four up and run the Brotherhood around in circles. Let them chase the Avengers around the field." “I was hoping for something a little simpler, but…” Amanda squeezed Marie-Ange’s hand before focusing on pushing power into the constructs which were appearing on the field. “At least we know what Thor looks like really well?” she murmured mostly to herself, with a small, wicked grin. Artie's illusions were based on psionic projection, not psionic manipulation. It was a subtle distinction but meant that his best work was still never as good, as real as what a true illusionist could do. The compensation was simple, however: he worked strobe lights into the display. Everyone moved marginally out of synch under that, flashing lights throwing everyone into stop motion. Thor swung his hammer over his head and rained lightning down on everyone.