Yuriko OyamaLady Deathstrike

The cybernetically and Adamantium-enhanced Lady Deathstrike is bent on taking back her father’s stolen work on the metal alloy, fighting tooth and nail to do so, often as an assassin and mercenary.

Claws Her Way to the Top

The daughter of Kenji Oyama, a former kamikaze pilot during World War II, Yuriko Oyama and her two brothers are tutored in childhood by Marcy Stryker, wife of United States soldier William Stryker, who comes to love the Oyama children as his own. When they are older, Yuriko and her siblings undergo strict martial arts training and are inflicted with ritual scars by their father, symbolizing his own severe scarring in a failed suicide assault on a U.S. battleship. Becoming the criminal scientist Lord Dark Wind, Kenji develops a method of bonding the virtually indestructible metal Adamantium to human bone, hoping to create supersoldiers to avenge what he perceived as Japan’s corruption by the U.S. and others. However, his notes are stolen and their secrets eventually used in the Weapon X program’s transformation of mutant spy Logan/James Howlett, AKA Wolverine, leaving Dark Wind to spend years redeveloping the process. Although a later theft attempt, by Raven Darkhölme, AKA Mystique, her foster daughter Anna Marie, AKA Rogue, and others, fails, Dark Wind grows more obsessive and instills similar fanaticism in his private army, including Kira, the man Yuriko loves.

Following her brothers’ deaths in Lord Dark Wind’s service, Yuriko, fearing for Kira’s safety, develops her own obsession, to avenge her brothers’ deaths and the scars, physical and otherwise, their father had inflicted upon all three. Before she can pursue vengeance, however, the assassin Bullseye, injured in a battle with Matt Murdock, AKA Daredevil, is brought to Dark Wind’s island base, where Dark Wind replaces the sociopath’s broken bones with Adamantium. Dark Wind expects him to, in gratitude, assassinate Japan’s minister of trade. When Daredevil arrives in Japan, intent on recapturing Bullseye, Yuriko guides him to her father’s island, hoping the pair can destroy both enemies. Following a romantic interlude while hiding from Dark Wind’s army, Yuriko and Daredevil penetrate Dark Wind’s sanctuary but fail to prevent Bullseye from escaping. Enraged by the betrayals of Yuriko and Bullseye, Dark Wind confronts Daredevil, who, weakened by earlier injuries, is defeated and almost slain before Yuriko slashes her father down his back with her sword, apparently killing him and avenging her brothers.

Following Daredevil’s return to the U.S., Kira commits suicide in despair over Dark Wind’s death. Yuriko can find solace only in re-dedicating herself to her father’s work, but she focuses not on his long-term goals, but on his initial achievement, the Adamantium bonding process. Learning of Wolverine’s Adamantium skeleton, Yuriko, garbed in samurai armor and calling herself Lady Deathstrike, tracks Wolverine to Canada and leads her father’s warriors against him, determined to acquire his skeleton for study. Holding her own in battle with Wolverine, she is ultimately defeated by his friend Heather Hudson, who, in her new costumed identity Vindicator, shatters Deathstrike’s sword.

With Dark Wind’s soldiers apparently abandoning her, Deathstrike resolves to better match Wolverine on his own terms and strikes a deal with Donald Pierce and his cyborg mercenaries, the Reavers. With Pierce as a middleman, Deathstrike undergoes transformation at the multiple hands of the extradimensional Rita Wayword, AKA Spiral, whose advanced technology bonds her with Adamantium in ways beyond even her father’s process; the ritual scars inflicted by her father are surgically eradicated in the process, effectively erasing Yuriko’s last ties to the woman she once was. Now possessing superhuman strength and claws to rival Wolverine’s, she sets out to take him down.

Adamantium Bones and Claws

Lady Deathstrike’s cyborg nature grants her sufficient superhuman strength to lift at least one ton, with proportionately enhanced speed, agility, endurance, and reflexes. Her skeleton is laced with molecules of Adamantium, rendering her bones virtually unbreakable, and her fingers replaced by foot-long Adamantium claws, which she can retract to resemble normal fingers or extend to twice their original length. She can convert her fingers into data ports and cybernetically link her consciousness directly into computer systems, allowing her to access information and remotely operate robot bodies. 

She is a remarkably skilled martial artist, considered an expert in the art of kenjutsu and other samurai warrior skills. She is fluent in both English and Japanese and is an accomplished pilot of various aircraft and seacraft.

Pre-cyborg, she wields a five-foot-long, electromagnetically tempered steel katana. She also uses a high-powered long-range blaster that fires armor-piercing explosive bullets, grenades of great explosive force, and a wristband whose instrumentation can detect and track Adamantium.

Fight Tooth and Claw

Lady Deathstrike’s long-time nemesis is Wolverine, whom she first hunts down to take his Adamantium skeleton in honor of her father’s work. She strives to match him in battle and undergoes the painful transformation to bond Adamantium to her own bones. In a fierce battle with Wolverine, he is appalled that Deathstrike willingly underwent the transformation that had been forced upon him, so he declines to grant her a mercy killing, cementing a vendetta that endures for years. Her vendetta extends to any of Wolverine’s allies, including the X-Men.

Claw Me, Claw Thee

Lady Deathstrike often teams up with the Reavers, and even former Hellfire Club mercenaries, to take down Wolverine, but despite her numbers, she more often than not suffers defeat. There are times, however, that she aligns with Logan if it serves her interests. 

She also joins Stryker’s Reavers and his Purifiers, the Thunderbolts team, and the more heroic Weapon X.

Digging Her Claws In

After bonding with Adamantium, she followed a path to take down Wolverine. She led three of Pierce’s Reavers—Cole, Macon, and Reese, former Hellfire Club mercenaries with grudges against Wolverine—in an attack on Wolverine, who, despite being outnumbered, defeated all four cyborgs. Seeing that she had willingly transformed herself with the metal that coated his own bones, Wolverine declined to grant her a mercy killing, resulting in a years-long vendetta.

When Wolverine and his X-Men teammates relocated to a former Reavers base in Australia, Deathstrike, her supposed dedication to Dark Wind’s work superseded by sheer vengeance-seeking, accompanied Pierce and his Reavers to ambush him in his teammates’ absence. Overwhelming him, they crucified him on an X-shaped cross and left him to die. Wolverine survived the ordeal, however, and was freed by young mutant Jubilation Lee, AKA Jubilee, soon to join the X-Men herself. Learning of her enemy’s survival, Deathstrike joined the Reavers in searching for him at the Muir Island mutant research facility, only to be driven off by X-Men allies and the government super-team Freedom Force, but not before inflicting casualties on both groups.

After a battle with Frank Castle, AKA Punisher, and attacks on Hellfire Club property, Deathstrike, growing impatient with Pierce’s schemes, struck out on her own and forced the mutant Gateway to teleport her to Wolverine’s location, only for Wolverine and herself to be sent back in time to 1937; caught in a Spanish Civil War skirmish, the pair naturally took opposite sides, but during battle they were pulled back into a time vortex, passing major moments in Deathstrike’s life before returning to the present. The literal lessons of the past lost on her, Deathstrike, aided by entrepreneur Ronald Parvenue, later tracked Wolverine to New Jersey, as did his far more ferocious enemy Victor Creed, AKA Sabretooth. The two villains double-teamed their mutual foe, but the mysterious Hunter in Darkness joined the fray on Wolverine’s side, ending the combat.

After the Reavers, among others, were attacked by giant robot Sentinels summoned from the future by Trevor Fitzroy, himself a traveler from the future of Earth-1191, Pierce vowed to rebuild their losses, and Deathstrike, having learned in the interim that Wolverine’s Adamantium had been forcibly removed, followed his lead in search of purpose. Pierce sent her to capture Milo Thurman, a former government employee whose remarkable prophetic abilities might foresee future attacks, but his plan to convert Thurman into an enslaved cyborg was opposed by his target’s ex-lover, mutant mercenary Neena Thurman, AKA Domino. While Deathstrike battled Domino, Pierce downloaded almost 60% of Thurman’s consciousness into his own mind before the Reavers’ base was destroyed. Dissatisfied with the debacle, Deathstrike again struck out on her own, clashing with Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, when he visited Japan following his return from an extradimensional exile.

Deathstrike found that feuds with the X-Men were not easily avoided. However, when she was the head of the world-renowned Oyama Design Group, she was targeted by time-traveler Stryfe, who knew her cybernetic programs contained control codes for creating powerful Sentinels. Pursued by Stryfe’s Prime Sentinels, mutant-hunting cyborgs formerly used by Operation: Zero Tolerance, Deathstrike set pride aside and sought help from Wolverine and the X-Men, who defeated Stryfe and returned the Omegas to normal. Although the shared victory led her to consider redemption, Deathstrike was drawn back to her vendetta by Sabretooth, who recruited her and Russian super-soldier Arkady Rossovich, AKA Omega Red, to attack Wolverine’s loved ones in exchange for valuable information. The group crippled Wolverine’s friend Yukio and abducted his ward Amiko Kobayashi, luring Wolverine into a trap, but Sabretooth, preferring to keep both vengeance and payment to himself, betrayed his co-conspirators and teleported away with their enemy, who ultimately survived the incident. 

Turning to outright mercenary work, Deathstrike was again cheated by gangster Nicopetti, but her new vendetta was interrupted when a weary Wolverine offered her an easy opportunity to kill him. Realizing Wolverine’s death would destroy what little purpose remained to her, Deathstrike instead killed Nicopetti and his underlings.

With so many other ties to her past cut, Deathstrike reunited with William Stryker, now a minister who led the Purifiers’ extremist anti-mutant crusade. More dedicated to Stryker than to his goal, she freed her former mentor from imprisonment and put her industrial resources to the Purifiers’ use. While aiding Stryker, however, she was controlled by Paul, a sentient computer entity protective of the mutant community Mount Haven, Washington. Under Paul’s control, Deathstrike fought both Purifiers and X-Men, once more dueling Wolverine and, ironically, meeting better success than she ever had on her own. Escaping when Paul’s control was broken, she resurfaced after learning of Mystique and Rogue’s attempted theft of Dark Wind’s secrets, the very secrets that had set her against Wolverine to begin with. This second vendetta in her father’s name proved fruitless, however, when she learned the theft had failed, but not before clashing with Rogue, Shiro Yoshida, AKA Sunfire, and Rogue's former associate Blindspot.

Arrested and imprisoned under unrevealed circumstances, Deathstrike was recruited for government service by the Commission on Superhuman Activities during the “Civil War” between United States Super Heroes following passage of the Superhuman Registration Act. In the Thunderbolts, she joined other superhuman criminals in attacking Captain America’s anti-SHRA forces. Following Cap’s surrender, Deathstrike was re-arrested, but she escaped custody before being transferred to the Negative Zone prison 42. 

When the Purifiers hunted a potentially powerful mutant baby, Deathstrike, though caring little for their cause, felt honor-bound to slay the infant in honor of Stryker, who had died in the interim. Leading a new army of Reavers, she set her forces against the X-Men and others who sought the child, only to fall in battle with Laura Kinney, AKA X-23, the altered clone of Wolverine. Paralyzed when her cybernetic systems were disrupted, Deathstrike was gutted by X-23’s own Adamantium claws, but Spiral reclaimed and rebuilt Deathstrike once more. Both Deathstrike and Spiral joined Madelyne Pryor’s Sisterhood of Mutants soon afterwards.

With the Sisterhood, Deathstrike helped Madelyne with tracking down Jean Grey’s dead body so she could house her consciousness in it. The effort led them into direct conflict with the X-Men and their subsequent defeat.

Lady Deathstrike later attacked Utopia with the Reavers under her leadership, but faced defeat by X-Force. She then allied with her brother and Sabretooth against Wolverine, but was soundly defeated in a fight with her forever foe. 

Deathstrike was later targeted by Father for being a cyborg and then Abraham Cornelius for her Adamantium. While being hunted by a man named Ogun, she tracked Logan to Madripoor and saved him from Sabretooth who had taken his eye. She informed Logan that she and others like them were being hunted, hoping he could help her, but took notice of Wolverine’s failed healing factor. Realizing he couldn’t help her, she chose to trade his life for hers but before she could make her move, she was stopped by the phase-changing Katherine Pryde, AKA Kitty Pryde, who put a hand through her chest. The pair fought, but Kitty defeated her, leaving her injured and running away. Little did she know that Ogun had possessed Kitty’s body.

When she had heard Wolverine had died and was entombed in molten Adamantium, she sought the Yashida Blade, a sword which the Yakuza had stolen from him. She battled Yakuza who were tattooed with nanite ink and as their tattoos came to life, she fought and defeated them. Acquiring the sword, she also liberated girls who were taken and forced into servitude. She visited Logan’s grave and laid the sword upon it, vowing to be a blade of her own mark and making. 

Deathstrike was then taken captive with other heroes and villains closest to Wolverine–Mystique, Akihiro, AKA Daken, Sabretooth, and X-23 by Shogun. Shogun and his allies—lost weapons from a revived Weapon X program—desired Wolverine’s remains and thought the above listed “Wolverines” could help. Shogun threatened Lady Deathstrike and the others with “control words” that could leave them coerced, sedated, or dead. Forced to help, they attempted to liberate Wolverine’s remains from Nathaniel Essex, AKA Mister Sinister’s lair in Finland, but they faced the X-Men, who made away with his metal-encased body, hiding it, and keeping its location secret. Meanwhile, Yuriko was attracted to Shogun who also harbored Ogun’s spirit inside of him. This relationship came in handy when Mystique turned on all of them to restore her love Irene Adler, AKA Destiny. Mystique removed the “Wolverines” healing factors, and pitted them against one another, but Yuriko and Shogun were able to avoid killing one another.

Hearing that Logan was alive but old and from a future timeline, she had to see for herself and tracked him down to a mining town, Killhorn Falls in Canada. She brought her Reavers, who started killing people in the town. From afar, she saw this Old Man Logan, who was from a future timeline, with two people: a mother and her daughter Maureen, whom she dangled in front of him to find out which one of them he loved most. She thought he cheated death and forced him to choose, and the mother made Logan promise to take care of Maureen. He promised but then the town’s sheriff shot Deathstrike through the stomach, catching her off guard. Deathstrike and Logan fought, as , but ultimately Old Man Logan won, leaving Deathstrike without hands, though she crawled away to safety. 

Lady Deathstrike survived and traveled to Japan, where she was captured by warrior monks known as the Silent Order. Meanwhile, Old Man Logan hunted her down but ended up caught by the Order as well, which was led by a young mutant boy, the Silent Monk, who saw the future and his and the Order’s demise. In a pit, Deathstrike allied with Logan against the Order and said she owed him if he could get them out of there, but he offered to make her an X-Man. She wasn’t interested even if he paid her. The Silent Monk sent out a telekinetic blast that sent Deathstrike into the air, allowing her to escape.  

Later, Lady Deathstrike was captured by a revitalized Weapon X program led by Reverend William Stryker. She was experimented upon, dissected over and over, and ultimately her DNA was stolen to create more cyborgs to kill mutants. She and her fellow captive James Proudstar, AKA Warpath, were liberated by super-genius teenager Amadeus Cho, Old Man Logan, Sabretooth, and Domino, and in joining forces with them, they endeavored to shut down this new Weapon X before they could systematically kill all mutants. Deathstrike worked with Cho to track down an aspiring Weapon X test subject in hopes of keeping him from being recruited, but they failed. 

Meanwhile, Stryker’s Weapon X program created a new weapon, combining the DNA of the Hulk and Wolverine and using cybernetic enhancements similar to those of Deathstrike, dubbed “Weapon H”, which turned on its creators and destroyed their facility before escaping. Stryker survived but was revealed as a cyborg when Deathstrike and the team found him and retrieved his remains to get information on Weapon H. Meanwhile, Weapon H’s creator Doctor Aliana Alba used post-hypnotic verbal commands to set Weapon H on a killing spree, but Deathstrike and the others intercepted them, helping to break Dr. Alba’s control over the man within Weapon H. Dr. Alba was captured and sent to the X-Club Headquarters to be interrogated.

Deathstrike was soon a target of the Orphans of X, who used the famous Murumasa Blade to make bullets that could kill her as well as Old Man Logan and Sabretooth. After their assassination with said bullets, Laura Kinney removed them, restoring them to life. She also reached an agreement with the Orphans of X by joining them and offering to take down the system that created them. 

Later, Deathstrike and the Weapon X team helped liberate mutants on the island nation of Santo Marco from an oppressive government and a squad of soldiers hooked on Nuke Pills (a pharmaceutical cocktail of adrenal stimulants and suppressants). Deathstrike stole some Nuke Pills as she was tired of playing hero. 

When Deathstrike’s associates, the Reavers, broke into Wolverine’s grave and found it empty, it piqued her interest. Upset that Wolverine had possibly escaped death, Deathstrike joined Sabretooth and Daken to hunt him down. They followed the trail of Logan’s Adamantium skeleton to a desert town where a militaristic organization called Soteira had been conducting experiments. But the experiments went wrong and turned everyone into vicious zombies. As soon as the trio arrived in the town, their healing factors were deactivated by something nearby. Daken was separated from the group but once they reunited, he mentioned a green glow coming from one of the nearby buildings that could be causing their problems. In an effort to investigate the glow, they fought the zombie horde, but Deathstrike soon encountered her dead father, Lord Dark Wind. He stabbed her but before he could make a killing blow, Daken intervened, suffering a katana through the chest for his trouble that seemingly killed him. Deathstrike rose from her injury and found herself face-to-face with her father once again. A zombie attacked and though Lord Dark Wind saved her from it, he also sliced her hand off with his katana. Realizing he was under some kind of thrall, she used her remaining clawed hand and stabbed him through the neck. She rendezvoused with Sabretooth, informing him that they were tracking her father’s Adamantium signature, not Wolverine’s. Sabretooth shared that Daken was dead, and how he encountered his dead son, Graydon Creed. The pair soon came upon a glowing green object, which they surmised was the source of their problems and destroyed it, restoring their healing factors but not enough for Deathstrike’s cybernetic hand. Deathstrike and Sabretooth stole a car and departed to get her a new hand from the Reavers.

When Deathstrike and Sabretooth returned to the Weapon X team, Old Man Logan resigned from field leadership, leaving Sabretooth in charge, who deemed the group mercenaries. Deathstrike was happy to partake in this new iteration of the team known as Weapon X-Force. Omega Red and Mystique were also added to the team’s ranks. Deathstrike helped dismantle Russia’s mutant registry and faced off with a cult led by Reverend Stryker and Marvin Flumm, AKA Mentallo, that led them to Hell. Once there, they fought Stryker, defeating him as Sabretooth sacrificed himself to resurrect his own son, Graydon Creed, in Stryker’s place while the others were returned to Earth from Hell.

Lady Deathstrike soon stole the Equinox Blade from the British Museum and used it to take the souls of the museum’s guards. She was confronted by Shang-Chi, who defeated her in a fight for the sword, returned the guards’ souls, and shattered the blade. But Deathstrike got ahold of one of the blade’s pieces and clandestinely absconded with it.

Seeking to join Atelier, a secret society of elite assassins which her older brother, Kazuo Oyama, AKA Lord Deathstrike, was part of, Lady Deathstrike sets out to earn her place in Atelier’s ranks. Paired up with regenerating degenerate Wade Wilson, AKA Deadpool, to assassinate Otto Octavius, AKA Doctor Octopus, the Merc with the Mouth ultimately ghosted her, but really was kidnapped by Harrower who implanted a symbiote into his body. When Deathstrike attacked Doc Ock, she found Deadpool there and chastised him for abandoning her. Though Deathstrike was injured and defeated as was Deadpool, whose symbiote hatched into a regrown Cletus Kasady, AKA Carnage. Though a secondary symbiote in the shape of a dog emerged from Deadpool’s chest and swallowed Carnage. Shortly thereafter, Deathstrike’s brother convinced Atelier to give her another chance by adding Deadpool to her assassination to-do list. When she attempted a double assassination, Deadpool’s doggo symbiote, Princess, stabbed her multiple times, leaving her vulnerable to Deadpool’s newfound love and Atelier agent Valentine Vuong, who injected her with a healing substance that could also poison her. Without much of a choice and dependent upon Valentine’s antidote, Deathstrike joined her to save Deadpool but eventually betrayed them both as Atelier’s agents captured the lovebirds and Princess. Welcomed into Atelier’s ranks, Deathstrike helped liberate Valentine and Deadpool, who managed to kill Atelier’s leader, the Horned Emperor, but the mantle fell to Valentine. Meanwhile, Deathstrike freed Princess just as her brother tried to stop her. Seeing that Kazuo was her only older brother, she left him alive and absconded with Princess to join the others, who had taken out Atelier’s remaining agents.

Sometime later, Lady Deathstrike was one of several unlucky superhumans who had been kidnapped, mind-controlled, and sold by the Power Broker. X-Men members Rogue, Remy LeBeau, AKA Gambit, and Eden Fesi, AKA Manifold, interrupted the sale of Deathstrike but their powers were drained temporarily by a strange device. Deathstrike later gave the Power Broker the cybernetic means to empower himself but in a subsequent battle with Rogue and Gambit, Gambit got ahold of the Power Broker’s remote control and shut off the mind-control to nearby superhumans, including Deathstrike. Entering the fray, Deathstrike stabbed Power Broker in the back and removed his cybernetic enhancement, leaving him open to retaliation.

Back in Kyoto, Japan with a group of men assigned to protect her, Deathstrike soon came under attack from Silas Burr, AKA Cyber, who killed all her men. Deathstrike engaged him in hand-to-hand combat while noticing the new golden gleam to his Adamantium skin. When her Adamantium came in contact with his gilded arm, she was infected with the Adamantine, an ancient and powerful Earth spirit. Deathstrike became the Adamantine’s thrall as a golden-eyed zombie with golden claws and did its bidding to rid the world of Adamantium, the false metal, and anyone involved with it. After a battle against Laura Kinney, Deathstrike was released from the thrall and collapsed.