Power Gem (Joint Venture)

Danielle Cage is the daughter of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. This is the version of the character who appears in the Joint Venture Universe's "Days of Future Past" timeline.

Champion in Training
On the streets of New York, well beneath the notice of the cosmic-threat-stomping Avengers, the science of the Future Foundation, and outside the mutant concerns of the X-Men, a small team of "street-level supers" fights crime in New York City, using their various powers and their street-smarts to solve the problems of the common man. These Champions of the common man tend to stay separate from the larger concerns of the superhero world, instead focusing on what they believe really matters: the protection of the citizens of New York. Over time, the team grew into a small family, the bonds of friendship and camaraderie going deeper than blood.

Danielle Cage was born into this small family, the daughter of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. Froma very early age she displayed a desire and an aptitude for joining "the family business" training under her "uncle", Danny Rand, the master of the K'un Lun fighting style known as the Iron Fist, and her "cousin" former FBI Angela del Toro, the White Tiger. Her mother, a former private detective, made sure to nurture a healthy degree of inquisitiveness and intelligence in Dani, and her father kept her in touch with the people, trying to give her as normal a life as she could have. Unfortunately, normalcy was a luxury that would soon be ripped from her, along with much of her family.

Days of Future Past
When anti-mutant politician Graydon Creed was assassinated by an unknown mutant, the American people turned against all mutants. When the Sentinels -- mutant-hunting robots and cyborgs that came in a variety of sizes -- first began taking over, equipped with scanning technology that identified baseline humans and mutants alike, most of the Champions were safe; their powers were either artificial or mystical in nature. They used this to their advantage to smuggle innocent mutants out of the country to safe havens in Canada, Britain, Spain, Madripoor, and the newly-liberated Genosha, while simultaneously weakening the Sentinels' forces with hit-and-run tactics. This was in stark contrast to the X-Men and Avengers' flashy, attention-grabbing open warfare, and by coordinating their attacks with the larger superteams', the Champions could operate far more effectively at the street level than either of the other two teams. Nick Fury, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D, was so impressed that he offered the Champions a base -- not aboard the Helicarrier, as that would have been counterporductive to their M.O. and goals, but an old SHIELD headquarters under the United Nations building.

Sadly, it was only a few short years after the Champion moved into the U.N. SHIELD base that Danielle was coming into her own mutant powers -- as the daughter of two artificially augmented humans, it was almost preordained that she would inherit some powers, but the timing could not have been worse.

Fallen Champions
To Dani's horror, the Sentinels tracked her mutant signature to the Champions' hideout and attacked, destroying the UN building and burying their HQ under tons of rubble. Countless civilians died in that Sentinel attack, with nearly all of the Champions buried under the rubble. Only Dani, a grievously wounded Iron Fist, and his wife Misty Knight escaped the disaster, Danny expending the last of his Chi to teleport them to K'un L'un. There, he succumbed to his injuries, dying in the arms of the love of his life and the girl who'd been named for him.

Dani blamed herself for the death of her family, cursing her powers for not being enough to save them. She immediately wanted to go back, to avenge their deaths by taking out as many Sentinels as she could, but Misty stopped her. Alone, Danielle might take out a few, maybe a few dozen, but there were hundreds of Sentinels -- and their human-sized cybernetic sleeper agents, Prime Sentinels -- with more being built all the time. What was needed, Misty argued, was for Danielle to be part of a greater whole, as she had been with the Champions.

Avenging the Fallen
Months would pass in K'un L'un, Danielle training day and night, honing her powers, developing her fighting skills. Eventually, the day came when she would be approached by none other than Captain America himself. The US, he said, was taking a beating from the Sentinels. They had lost many good people to the android invasion -- Iron Man, Namor, Black Widow, most of the Inhuman Royal Family, the Black Knight, all of the Fantastic Four, a good number of X-Men, even the Hulk and the SIlver Surfer -- and mutants like her were being corralled by the dozens and shipped to internment camps. Steve told Danielle that they needed every hand on deck that they could get, and Danielle had not only great power, but a level of martial arts mastery few had even approached since Iron Fist's death. Seeing this as her chance to avenge the deaths of her parents and family, Danielle joined the Avengers under the name "Power Gem," in honor of her father Luke (who had once been called Power Man), and her mother Jessica (the heroine formerly known as Jewel).

Desperation, Revelations
To Be Disclosed

Powers
Danielle Cage is a mutant, the daughter of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. Both her mother and her father had been artificially enhanced to superhuman levels -- Jessica by accident, Luke by an experiment conducted on him when he was in prison. Danielle's mutant nature seemed to suggest these powers were genetic in origin; however, due to the unpredictable nature of genetic mutation, Danielle's powers were unlike either her mother's or her father's.