Marie-Ange Colbert

PHASE 1

PHASE 2

Marie-Ange Colbert
Portrayed by Alicia Witt
Codename:	Tarot
Affiliations:	X-Force
Birthdate:	August 18, 1987

Journal:	Marie-Ange Colbert
Player:	Frito

She has gone from a quiet and shy French schoolgirl to a ruthlessly efficient spy with X-Force and a trained assassin. Even without the consideration of her two potent mutant abilities, Marie-Ange Colbert is a force to be reckoned with.

Details

Aliases: Vision (X-Men trainee name), Francine Morrison

First Appearance: May 30, 2003

Place of Birth: Lyons, France

Citizenship: French

Relatives: Duvall (father), Jeanne-Michele (mother); Jean-Phillipe (cousin).

Education: High School diploma, currently completing degree in architecture via correspondence.

Relationship Status: Dating Wade Wilson.

Occupation: Employed by Snow Valley Research Center to research ADA regulations for mutants.

Team: X-Force

Biography

Childhood

Marie-Ange is the only daughter of Duvall and Jeanne-Michele Colbert. Duvall was a kind, if rather distant man and largely left Marie-Ange to the care of her mother, who was something of a religious type. Raised as a good Catholic girl, she was sent to an all-girl's school when she reached secondary level. She manifested in her early teens and managed to hide her powers for several years until the Great Headache resulted in her being exposed to her classmates. There was concern for the safety of the other students, given not much was known about mutants in France at that time, but one of the nuns knew of Charles Xavier and his school and it was arranged for Marie-Ange to transfer under a student visa to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.

Phase 1

Living At The X-Mansion

Marie-Ange came to the school at the end of May 2003. Aware of only her imaging power at that point in time, she quickly adapted to the school, making friends among the many new students at that time: Jamie Madrox, Everett Thomas and Doug Ramsey. She was also one of the students who came under the wing of Dr. Nathaniel Essex, resulting in her being recruited to kidnap Betsy for further surgery, an action that resulted in her receiving punishment duty in the medlab. It was during this duty that she met Manuel de la Rocha, with whom she had an on-again, off-again friendship.

It was in September 2003 that Marie-Ange's precognition surfaced, usually in the form of prophetic dreams. She began keeping a regular dream journal when it was discovered she had foreseen over the months several events, including Mystique's impersonation of Bobby Drake, Emma Frost's kidnap and escape, the nature of Doug's powers and Alex Summers being held hostage by Selene. She began testing with Moira MacTaggart - Phase 1 to refine this troublesome power, using tarot cards and other means of divination (with the help of Amanda Sefton's exposure to the mystical) to focus it. She also forsaw the attack by Jamie's twisted dupe, but was unable to interpret the vision until too late: she was forced to kill one of the dupes, something which caused her to lose faith in her Catholicism and question her pacifism.

In the wake of the love potion disaster, Marie-Ange and Doug began a relationship, which was only strengthened by their separation in Asgard. During her time in Asgard, Marie-Ange was taken in by Odin, who had her trained in the warrior's art. He also gave her one of his ravens, Memory, as a means of keeping tabs on her during her journeys through his land. On her return it became obvious Marie-Ange's precognition had become more refined as a result of her interaction with Odin. She began sharing a suite with her now-friend Amanda, the two girls' powers and temperaments interacting unexpectedly well.

When Doug interpreted one of Marie-Ange's visions and nearly got himself killed trying to protect Rahne Sinclair from a sniper's bullet, Marie-Ange made the decision to become an X-Man trainee and received the codename "Vision", with Doug joining her on the trainee roster not long afterwards. However, problems arose with her precognition, eventually leading to her to almost have a psychotic break, only seeing the deaths of those around her. Remy LeBeau was the only one exempt from this, and eventually he was able to get her help from Tante Mattie, a houdon in New Orleans.

Tante's hard-learned lessons about her precognition came back to haunt Marie-Ange when her roommate was targeted by Selene. In order to ensure that worse events did not happen, Marie-Ange had to stand by and let Amanda gradually be drawn to the Hellfire Club. This, combined with her increasing frustration with the limits imposed on her as a trainee and her increasing knowledge that she was harder and more ruthless than many of her fellows, served to create doubt in her mind as to her place at the school and the team.

X-Force and Snow Valley

Following the rescue of Romany Wisdom, Doug and Marie-Ange broke up following a public argument in the foyer of the mansion. Doug accepted a job offer with Snow Valley Memorial Center for Mutant Affairs and moved out. At college, Marie-Ange had an encounter with Quentin Quire, a telepath with a crush on her. The interaction of their powers when he tried to telepathically influence her resulted in a number of alternate presents appearing to the mansion residents. It was Doug who worked out the connection, but his treatment of Quentin drove a further wedge between them.

Following her assistance with the incident in Germany, Marie-Ange accepted a position with Snow Valley. It was awkward, working with Doug, but they managed to achieve a business relationship and later a friendship, brought on by the various missions they went on. She began dating newcomer, Garrison Kane, but an incident during the Christmas lockdown in the XF brownstone led her to question the finality of her feelings for Doug, eventually leading her to end things with the Canadian.

Despite the incident - a rather heated kiss under the mistletoe - Marie-Ange did not manage to get Doug to admit that he still had feelings for her, and eventually resorted to a risky and manipulative plan. She and Forge feigned a relationship for several weeks in March 2007, eventually culminating in Doug confronting first Forge, and then Marie-Ange herself and admitting that he still loved her.

2007 provided Marie-Ange a series of reminders that she is where she is supposed to be, and doing the right thing, even if the choices she has to make are not always easy. Beginning with confronting a radical fundamentalist Christian with intent on forcing the end of civilization and continuing through to going along with Doug's sketchy plan when they were stranded in Uganda.

Her decision to join X-Force and consider less scrupulous tactics were put to the test when Amanda was abducted and the team went to New Orleans to rescue her. While breaking into Candra's house in New Orleans, she was forced to kill in self-defense. Later, as the only member of X-Force who had not fully succumbed to their alter-egos, Marie-Ange made the decision to smother Ben DeRoy, killing him and putting an end to his subconscious use of his reality-warping powers.

In February, Marie-Ange's precognition was one of the causalities of the attack on and emergency reset of the astral plane, although she was not aware of this until spring, when the team believed Mark to have been killed in the collapse of St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery. While her precognition had always been erratic, she had never been wrong about a predicted death, and when she could get no consistent reading about Mark's return, she was forced to acknowledge to herself that the power was no longer functioning properly.

This theory was further confirmed when Amanda disappeared into London. In the fight with the city's guardian spirits, Marie-Ange was pulled into a Punch and Judy show, representing the tradition of the Saturnalia festival. She fought, was eventually having to play along with the show until she was presented with the right moment to act. She animated The Devil from a tarot card for Punch to defeat, as he traditionally does, and then finally animated - and mentally took over - an image of Death to kill the innocent bystander who had also been forced into the show and into the role of the Lord of Misrule.

The theme of death continued into the late summer, when Marie-Ange and Amanda were called upon to assassinate Hussar, a member of India's Imperial Guard. While accepting of the necessities of her chosen job, Marie-Ange came home exhausted, needing a few days to recover and reconcile herself with what she had done.

Fall came with the return of Marie-Ange's precognition, and a final pained reminder of what not telling her friends and co-workers about it being broken could cost her. While attempting to travel from the Brownstone to Silver with Jean-Phillipe, the cousins encountered Apocalypse's Hellhound, Caliban. Caliban's ability to enthrall others was uniquely effective on Marie-Ange, causing the violent return of her precognition, sending her into a catatonic state only broken by Jean-Phillipe's revelation that he had been working for Magneto.

The sudden return of the power caused Marie-Ange day-long migraines and waking nightmares, and it was only until a few hours before Silver was attacked by radical supports of Apocalypse that she finally regained some measure of control over it, predicting the attack, and giving Mark and the refuges at the club time to prepare. She had one last vision near the end of the fight, fleeing the club to run two miles to the New York Stock Exchange to help Emma Frost find Doug's reborn body.

Aftermaths

The repercussions of Doug's death and resurrection, plus the return of her precognition proved difficult for Marie-Ange in a way that her work with X-Force was not, and she decided eventually to join Amanda and Wanda in babysitting Amahl Farouk during their Magical Mystery Tour of Europe. It proved to be prudent, as the apparent deaths of Pete, Garrison, Jay Guthrie and Danielle Moonstar in an attack by Sabertooth occurred shortly afterward and someone was needed to take the lead as a grief-striken Amanda and Wanda were determined to take vengence on the Brotherhood of Mutants. Marie-Ange had her own suspicions given her cousin's connection with the Brotherhood and she convinced him to confess his affiliations and change of heart to Charles Xavier in order to prove to her and mark that he was innocent of any role in the attack. Wanda's mystical illness again tested Marie-Ange's leadership ability, as she called in the team to investigate and rode herd on a distraught Amanda.

The return of the missing was marked by a vision and Marie-Ange warned Manuel to leave the mansion for a time for his own safety. Her readings also uncovered Emma's claim on Doug as her White Knight and over the next several months the telepath began undoing the blocks she'd created in Doug's mind. This improved things greatly for the couple and they eventually decided to take the next stop in their relationship and move in together.

Marie-Ange found herself working frequently with X-Force's new member David North, another pre-cog, over the next few months; their differing styles and ranges complementing each other and him assisting in interpreting her often obscurely confusing visions. This not only saved Bastion from assassination, but gave the X-Men the lead they needed to rescue a psychotic Shiro Yoshida, plus gave X-Force a lead on a mutant weaponisation program in Russia.

The end of 2009 was marked by several changes, as Mark, North and Jake Gavin all left X-Force for various reasons. Pushed perhaps by the strains of the year, Marie-Ange decided to spend the Christmas period with her family in France, taking Jean-Phillipe along with her.

Feeling the Strain

A reading that Marie-Ange performed for Amanda's new pupil Nico Minoru led to a whirlwind of events in 2010 that would cause enormous upheaval in both her personal relationships and her job with X-Force. Marie-Ange saw the rising of a dark power, possibly centered around Nico. In reality, that dark power was an all too familiar one - Selene. The vampire witch used Meggan as her bargaining chip, and in fact Nico was crucial to the plan for double-crossing Selene. Everything went well, except for one very large problem - the new Black Queen. Doug and Emma had both made a deal that involved supporting a woman that Marie-Ange, Amanda and Remy all had possibly more reason to hate than even Selene, and all without giving the rest of X-Force any warning.

That was too much for Marie-Ange, who moved back in with her old roommate rather than continue to share an apartment with Doug. She still had to work with him professionally, however, and was partnered with him and Sofia during the attack on D. Ken Neramani in India.

After the mission, Marie-Ange was plagued by recurring nightmares of death and destruction, centered around tragedy befalling the entirety of X-Force. The only path that seemed clear of the nightmare visions she had been having was to leave New York, her team, and her friends, and make her way to New Orleans on her own.

Once in New Orleans, she went to Daniel Boudreaux, the head of the Assassins Guild, and offered her services to him and the guild. As a test, she identified a traitor in the midst of Bordreaux's people and carried out the order to dispatch him herself. She spent eight months in New Orleans investigating Shirow Ishihara, brother of the the leader of the Forger's Guild, who was somehow the linchpin of the catastrophes Marie-Ange had seen.

By December, her options had grown more limited, and all seemed likely to lead to her death. She was pushed to action when members of Baron von Strucker's organization appeared to be preparing for a biological attack. The means of the attack was Shirow Ishihara's power - a potent gas - and Marie-Ange killed him so that it could not be used to kill millions. She was captured following the attack by Shirow's grieving sister Zoe, and was marked for death. But Tante Mattie, in her usual way, solved the problem by sending Amanda and Nico, who were visiting her, along with Remy, to rescue her.

Return to X-Force

Upon her return to New York, Marie-Ange moved into David North's old office, and after retrieving some items from the apartment she had shared with Doug, back in with Amanda. When she went to the mansion for an MRI and checkup, she ran into new arrival Wade Wilson, winding up with a stuffed penguin and a lunch date. Doug confronted her about whether or not she had foreseen the events regarding his sister, and the conversation highlighted the deep rift that had grown between them. Once again, they were professional colleagues, but any other discussion between them tended to lead to one or both of them angry.

After her return, Marie-Ange began taking more responsibility with X-Force, which was fortuitous when Remy was captured in a setup by HYDRA. With Doug now dating Jubilee, Marie-Ange found herself drawn to Wade, and they began dating. This led to a complication when, as part of leading the X-Force team in Remy's absence, she had to bring her new boyfriend along on a mission in Russia, and ask her ex to take up a sniper rifle. The gaps in the team were obvious, and Marie-Ange struggled with the increased responsibility, and worry that she was not performing as well as Remy would have in her place.

Eventually, though, X-Force managed to track down Remy, and retrieve him from HYDRA's clutches. Marie-Ange elected to use herself, Amanda, and new recruit Cammie as decoys, killing Swarm in the process by spilling some of Cammie's toxic blood. On Remy's return, they spoke about the cost of the job, but ultimately he reassured her that she did well.

Her team is whole again, and she has a new boyfriend. Things seem to be pretty good for Marie-Ange, but what will the future bring? If there's anyone who has an inside read on that, it's the precognitive...

The rest of 2011 brought with it one small almost disaster after another, first with Marie-Ange joining a team to investigate another clue in the Alpha Flight Disaster (which didn't end well), helping to fight off Nico Minoru's evil parents, and assisting in the rescue of a young mutant being used to rob a bank. All and all it was the typical end of the year for a precognitive superspy.

2012

2012 was a roller coaster from beginning to end. It started with Marie-Ange, along with mostly all of the Snow Valley crew, mentally regressing back to sixteen. Which was fun for a while, but not an age anyone wanted to repeat. After the disappearance of two Genoshan teens, Garrison Kane shared some information with X-Force that led them to take down a sex trafficker and drug dealer, which Marie-Ange assisted in.

The year really kicked off in May, with the disappearance of a large group of mansionites and other Xavier associates. A plan was hatched to rescue them which went horribly wrong and led to most of the rescuers being captured and imprisoned, including Marie-Ange. While imprisoned, Marie-Ange and the others were put through hours of torture and interrogation, and after a few days the group appeared to be breaking down. Eventually the real escape plan started, leading to the captured group breaking out. Along the way, Marie-Ange, Doug, and Terry Cassidy freed Philip Moreau, one of the two teens who had disappeared months earlier. The entire ordeal finally ended with everyone coming together to take down a monstrous Thomas Moreau.

There was no rest for the wicked, of course. Marie-Ange only got a few weeks of recovery before Garrison recruited her to assist in [Sonatorrek | an investigation of Thor's supposed presence in a small Minnesota town]]. This led to the group falling victim to a curse, which then led to Marie-Ange sleeping with Thor (something Wade didn't take well). October and November were no better, with Marie-Ange first helping to stop a magical war in London, and then helping Adrienne Frost to expose the Jason Wynegarde and the Black Court for the crooks they were. Finally in December, a one-night stand of Cammie's helped The Serpent Society, hired by Belladonna, to infiltrate the Brownstone, nearly killing everyone inside - including Artie Maddicks, whom Marie-Ange had been mentoring.

2013

Life could never be normal for a superspy, apparently. The beginning of the year saw Marie-Ange helping to rescue the New Mutants, who had been kidnapped by other-worldy beings known as Slendermen. She also helped Artie cope with the revelation of his biological parents by providing him with alcohol, and upon finding out that Angelo was dating her cousin she took it upon herself to issue a few friendly threats to Angelo should he ever hurt Jean-Phillipe. In April, Marie-Ange and an X-Force team went to rescue Artie, who had accidentally fallen in with Arcade after trying to scam his casino. Later, she helped Artie figure out his future, and he joined X-Force. In June, Marie-Ange experienced a precognitive fit, which led to X-Force going to a cursed hotel to rescue Jean Grey. While there, Marie-Ange found herself trapped in Dante's Inferno, and upon escaping the sin of lust she helped to distract Gambit, who had been set loose. Eventually they managed to escape no worse for wear (except for those who had been injured), and to find that only a few minutes had passed in the real world. In August she found herself faced with a unique problem - she found that Molly Hayes was acting awkward around her after being pulled into Rachel Kinross-Dayspring's bubble universe, and discovered that she had been Death in that universe. The year ended with Marie-Ange and an X-Force team going to Madripoor to recover Illyana's lost bloodstones.

2014

Unlike years past, this year was amazingly quiet for Marie-Ange, who lived as normal of a life as she could possibly live. In October, she joined an X-Force team infiltrating a high-end party to try and rescue Laurie Collins and Hope Abbott, who had been kidnapped some weeks earlier. The rescue was a failure, however, and the group was forced to retreat empty-handed. The year continued in typical super-secret-spy-style when, in December, a sniper hired by Weapon X went after Wade, starting first with his friends. Doug was the first target, while out with Marie-Ange. She had a vision a split-second before it happened and managed to push Doug out of the way, resulting in him taking the bullet to the shoulder rather than the heart.

The End of the World

2015 started bad and got worse. It began with the destruction of Muir Island and went downhill when the end of the world became a very possible thing. Marie-Ange went with a team to Africa to try and find Apocalypse, whom they believed to be involved. The team found itself face to face with alternate cyborg versions of themselves, and barely escaped. Marie-Ange later went to India to try and rescue Jean Grey - while they succeeded, they suffered more losses, including Ororo and Remy.

When the mansion was leveled by The Dark Phoenix, Marie-Ange attempted to help defend what was left. It was all for naught, however, as the damage the Dark Phoenix had done proved to be too much, and the universe fractured.

Phase 2

Frankenberry Cat World

Waking up in the Frankenberry Cat World (coined by Marie-Ange) was odd to say the least, but Marie-Ange forged on. She threw herself into rebuilding X-Force, scolding Cammie and Jubilee when their way of coping become disruptive in the office. She also set to work with recruiting, getting Wade on the team and setting her sights on Gabriel Cohuelo.

In February she left for New Orleans, needing a break from the Frankenberry world. She spent some time as a frog while there, and finally returned at the end of March.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5’6”

Weight: 135 lbs.

Eyes: grey

Hair: naturally red, tinted to various shades from strawberry blonde to auburn

Other Features: Marie-Ange has an armband tattoo of the four suits of the standard tarot deck. She also carries a pair of scars from being shot in the chest - one under her heart and the other on her back.

Powers

Marie-Ange is a rarity among mutants, with two seemingly unrelated mutant abilities.

The first is the creation of solid images, formed directly from astral matter, or ectoplasm. Marie-Ange can form three-dimensional solid images based off of any two-dimensional representation that she can see. The simpler the structure, the easier it is to animate and control. While Marie-Ange can control the actions of her constructs, she can also endow them with a semblance of autonomy, such as animating an image of a farmer to clean out the stables without her direct attention. Her most powerful constructs still have a finite amount of structural integrity, and if breached, dissolve into the astral matter they are formed from, leaving behind a thin layer of viscous 'slime' that evaporates quickly.

Marie-Ange tends to use small playing-card sized representations of her constructs to create them, most often a personalized deck of tarot cards. She has also been able to construct temporary supports and shelters from building blueprints, and on at least one occasion create a simple support without any base image. The effort of this construction, however, exhausted her greatly and has not been repeated.

Due to the nature of Marie-Ange's images as psionic constructs, she retains a minimal link to them, limited only to tactile senses. She gets a very minor amount of feedback from what the images touch, or what touches the images. Because of this, the sudden dissolution of an image can cause her pain, and it requires an major degree of concentration to keep an image intact when it is under some kind of attack. In one event, Marie-Ange has used this link to mentally take over one of her images in an emergency, although she retains very little awareness of what exactly occurred, believing the hazy memories to be from a concussion.

Marie-Ange's second mutant ability is precognition, the ability to visualize future events. This ability was initially uncontrolled and nigh-incomprehensible before Marie-Ange trained with Tante Mattie, and learned the process of focusing her precognition through either her card reading or her art. While Marie-Ange can attempt to induce a precognitive episode through meditation and specific techniques, this process is not always reliable. Most of her "visions" come without warning, and are often difficult to explain or interpret without some form of focus such as her art.

On a few occasions, Marie-Ange's gifts have combined to create short-lived solid images of potential events that she had seen and drawn in her sketchbook.

Due to Marie-Ange's precognition she possesses no mental shielding and her mental landscape has been described as akin to a black hole. While this makes her vulnerable to psionic attack, the unique mental state caused by her precognition means that only the most experienced or equally uniquely minded of psions can enter her mind unwanted without serious repercussions.

Equipment

Marie-Ange owns more decks of Tarot cards then she does shoes or art supplies.

She has a considerable number of shoes.

Trivia

Marie-Ange had an army of animated imps who did her bidding in the brownstone. They are based off the Nac Mac Feegle from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels and the Imp pet as seen in World of Warcraft