Young mutant Hisako Ichiki enrolls at the Xavier Institute and hopes to one day join the X-Men. Training with the best of the merry mutants, she becomes a formidable fighter with the help her psionic exo-skeleton. With the alias Armor, she protects mutant and humans alike.
Meeting Idols
Not much is known about Hisako Ichiki, other than that she’s from Japan and is an ambitious young mutant. She enrolls at the Xavier Institute with altruism and armor at her back, aspiring to be an X-Man.
Protective Armor
Hisako can generate a psionic exoskeleton around her entire body by drawing strength from the line of her ancestors. Originally blue, this exoskeleton enhances her strength and durability, though she can only maintain it for short periods of time lest the effort leave her drained.
In situations of extreme emotional stress, Hisako can significantly enhance her exoskeleton’s size, strength, and durability, but she can only do so briefly as the strain can render her unconscious. Such an instance occurs when she protects a friend from danger and her armor turns red, and eventually stays red.
X-Allies and X-Enemies
Aspiring to be an X-Man, Hisako joins up with the merry mutants to use her powers for good. She assists the New X-Men against Bennet du Paris, AKA Exodus, and joins James Howlett/Logan, AKA Wolverine, to face off with several threats.
One of Hisako’s earliest enemies is Ord, an alien from Breakworld who depowers her friend Eddie, AKA Wing. She ends up abducted to his home planet alongside him by S.W.O.R.D. agents.
Defending the Helpless
When the alien Ord depowered Ichiki’s friend and classmate Eddie, codenamed Wing, Hisako saved Wing’s life; however, Wing later committed suicide in the X-Men’s sentient Danger Room. This act liberated the Room’s sentience from its programming, and, after Hisako found Wing’s body, the Room known as Danger briefly terrorized the students and teacher Kitty Pryde using horrific holograms.
When the mad Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch, depowered most mutants on “M-Day,” Hisako was among the few mutants who retained their powers. She then participated in a battle royale with fellow students to determine who would join the New X-Men class, but failed to be chosen. Nonetheless, she remained at the Institute, and was among the students menaced by Belasco.
Hisako also helped the New X-Men, Kitty Pryde, and Piotr Rasputin, AKA Colossus, battle Exodus’ Acolytes, clashing with the similarly powered Carmella Unuscione. Later, she saved fellow student Blindfold from a feral Beast and then opposed both Ord and Danger alongside Wolverine. When the X-Men, Ord, Danger, and Hisako were abducted by S.W.O.R.D. agents and taken to Ord’s home planet Breakworld to oppose their intended destruction of Earth, Hisako crash-landed on the planet alongside Wolverine, who appointed her a member of the X-Men. Taking the codename Armor, Hisako helped the X-Men save Earth.
After returning home, Armor joined the New X-Men’s attack on the Purifiers, encountering Yuriko Oyama, AKA Lady Deathstrike, and her Reavers. After Julian Keller, AKA Hellion, was fatally injured, the New X-Men members were separated. Armor reunited with Bobby Drake, AKA Iceman, and others but when Predator X appeared, Armor and Nezhno Abidemi, AKA Gentle, battled it until Pixie teleported them to Laura Kinney, AKA X-23 (later Wolverine), on Muir Island in hopes of Laura defeating it.
When Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, declared the San Francisco area a haven for mutants on the West Coast, Armor joined him and other mutants there. During this time, she helped repel the Skrull Invasion, and had it out with Danger over the loss of her friend Wing. But the sentient Danger surprised her, revealing that she could see Wing in her program’s eye and seemed to express a sense of guilt over causing Wing’s death as well as an interest to learn more about mutantkind. Surprised that Danger showed emotions, Armor realized she was a mutant as much as she was and let her guard down. She offered to help Danger understand mutants better.
While she was training with Wolverine, her exoskeleton increased in size to a degree not seen before. She felt something was wrong and as a phone call came in on her belt, she surmised that someone in her family had died. She was right. Her mother and brother were gone and in learning this terrible news, she broke down in tears. Wolverine, Emma Frost, and Cyclops took her to Japan to attend the funeral. While there, she assisted her father with greeting and thanking guests. Struggling with guilt over the fact that she wasn’t there to protect her family, she left and discovered that her X-family was being attacked by the gigantic alien Fin Fang Foom, who was being controlled by Mentallo, and departed to meet them. She showed up just in time to protect them from suffering a fatal fall.
When a schism formed between Cyclops and Wolverine, Armor followed the latter to reopen Xavier Institute as the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning. She had difficulty controlling her armor for a time and when Wolverine died, she felt his death.
When Nate Grey, AKA X-Man, created a new reality on another plane of existence, Armor was one of many mutants whisked away to an idyllic place where Xavier’s dream of mutant harmony came to fruition. Though everyone had their memories replaced. Armor studied at the Summers Institute for Higher Learning and defended bullied students like Glob Herman, who was a fan fiction writer. After Armor saw Department X arresting students, she sought out Glob, needing someone to talk to about it. Glob believed she deserved to know the truth. Engulfing his hand in flames, he covered her in his protective bio-wax and revealed the truth to her that the world they lived in wasn’t real. He explained how he was the only one who kept his memories of their former world thanks to his bio-wax, hence the need to cover her in it. He also revealed that his fan fic was actually an account of their real lives. She didn’t believe him at first but eventually came around. They enlisted Rockslide and Anole, and together searched for the Life Seed, which Glob believed would help them prove their world was a lie. But it was too late. Their friend Pixie, using his fan fic against him, reported them to authorities and they were taken to Department X where they had their memories wiped. Except Glob of course. X-Man eventually returned everyone to themselves and to their world, including Armor, Glob, and Anole.
When the independent, mutant-only island nation of Krakoa came to be, Armor was a citizen and helped spread the sentient island’s reach by planting one of its flowers on Mars.
Alongside the New Mutants, she visited Angel Salvadore and her husband Barnell Bohusk, AKA Beak in Nebraska to help Beak’s ailing father and convince them to join them in Krakoa. Once in Nebraska, she met Angel and Beak’s flock of children and helped cure Beak’s father with Krakoan medicine. But before the celebration began, drug dealers from the Bohem Cartel burst onto the farm with power-dampening missiles. Their leader, Túmulo, demanded access to the Krakoan drugs and locked up the mutants, holding them hostage. Thankfully, fellow mutant Tabitha Smith, AKA Boom-Boom, arrived and distracted them with an explosion so they could make their escape to Krakoa. On their way out, one of the cartel shot Beak. Túmulo then killed Beak’s newly cured father and then himself. They finally made their escape, the threat over, and several days later, Armor and Glob visited Angel and Beak in the Healing Gardens on Krakoa. They soon discovered that Beak and his family had altered memories of what had happened with Beak’s parents, thanks to the memory manipulating twins, Maxime and Manon. Armor taught them that it wasn’t right to take away people’s grief like that and to never do it again.
Armor later rescued a mutant who showed her visions of her dead family, and fought against Amenth’s forces. She also joined the newly reformed S.W.O.R.D. and trained as an ambassador, put her name in the hat to become an X-Man twice, losing the election both times, and helped rescue Shi’ar Empress Xandra Neramani.
