Sister GrimmNico Minoru

As a member of the Runways, Nico Minoru banded together with the other children of the evil organization known as the Pride to stop their parents' evil ways.

Uncovering her magical abilities after taking hold of the supernatural Staff of One, Nico has become a mighty mystical fighting force.

The Magic Within

The daughter of powerful magicians Tina and Robert Minoru, Nico had no idea that mystic abilities existed in her family at all—until after she saw her parents sacrifice a young woman along with their fellow villains in the Pride.

Having absorbed the Staff of One when her mother tried to stab her with it, Nico soon learned that it would only appear when she bled and that the talisman could perform a spell only once. In response to these shocking events, Nico decided to run away with the other children of the Pride.

With Witchcraft

Nico controls an incredibly powerful magical implement called the Staff of One. The Staff responds to verbal commands, but can only respond to any given spell once. If the user attempts to cast the same spell twice, the results have unforeseen consequences. To summon the Staff itself, Nico must bleed—as all magic comes with a cost.

After working with the Witchbreaker, Nico develops the ability to cast spells without the Staff and upgrades her own abilities. In the wake of her resurrection in Murderworld, Nico jumps up to another power level and even receives a magical arm replacement that can channel supernatural energies more powerful than the Staff.

Enemies Within

Like her fellow Runways, Nico develops a quick hatred for her parents when she sees them taking part in the sacrifice of a young woman. She has also had bad run-ins with boys, ranging from the vampire Topher, to Alex Wilder, the betrayer of their group.

Nico has fought plenty of villains, ranging from the Wrecking Crew to Swarm, but no one quite scars her like Arcade. He kidnaps her, Chase, and a variety of other young heroes to torture them in Murderworld, before releasing the footage online for everyone to see.

Chosen Family

Nico goes on the run with her fellow Pride offspring Gert Yorkes, Chase Stein, Alex Wilder, Molly Hayes, and Karolina Dean. She loves and cherishes all of the Runaways and does her best to protect them. After Alex shows his true colors as a traitor, Nico becomes the leader of the group that grows to include Victor Mancha, Xavin, and Klara, a girl from the year 1907. Along the way, Nico and her team encounter other Super Hero groups like Cloak and Dagger, the Young Avengers, the Avengers, the X-Men, and Doctor Strange.

Over the years, Minoru has romantic relationships with several people, including Alex Wilder—by whose treachery she is devastated—and Victor Mancha. She has a confusing and frustrating time with the mutual feelings between her and Karolina, however, as their timing never seems to work out.

The Novel of Nico

Before she was a powerful mystic figure, Nico Minoru just thought she was going to her parents' boring yearly party. Like always, she and the other kids would hang out in the game room, talk and watch movies. She would even get to show off her new Goth style, complete with homemade clothes.

But Nico and the rest of the kids had their lives turned upside down on this particular party night. As a group, they snuck into a secret passage and witnessed their parents—members of a villainous group calling itself the Pride—kill a young woman in a ritual sacrifice.

That night, the kids (without the eleven-year-old Molly) met at the Griffith Observatory to talk over their options. The group was split on whether they should call the police on their parents, leaving Nico as the tiebreaker. Feeling bad for the young woman that had been killed, she voted in favor of turning them in. Unfortunately, the police didn't take their call seriously.

To find evidence against their parents, they decided to look for the sacrificed body inside a trunk at Gert's house. There, they stumbled upon a genetically engineered dinosaur named Old Lace who had a psychic connection with Gert, along with a copy of the Pride's handbook, the Abstract. After hitting up Karolina's house and discovering that she was actually an alien, they all broke into Chase's parents' lab, where the Steins and Minorus confronted them head on. Nico was surprised yet again when her mom tried stabbing her in the chest with the Staff of One, before the young woman's body absorbed the mystical object.

From there, the kids responded to a call from Molly's and Karolina's parents, who were threatening the Molly. They took the fight to them and saved the young girl, who was understandably confused and upset about the whole situation. During the confrontation, Mr. Yorkes sliced Nico with a battle axe which brought the Staff of One out of her chest for the first time. After getting away with Molly, the kids found out that their parents had framed them for murder and kidnapping. This led them to Chase's hideout, an underground missing mansion he dubbed the Hostel, which would play home for them for quite some time.

Taking on the codename Sister Grimm, Nico used Chase's switchblade to bring about the Staff of One when their everyday grocery run turned into an attempt to stop a convenience store robbery. In the process, they met a young man named Topher, who claimed to be the child of the thieves. Bringing him into their confidence, as well as their home, the Runaways' new visitor caused quite a stir as he kissed Nico. Alex, with whom Nico had shared a kiss with before, saw this from a secret passage and confronted her about it. Nico responded by using the Staff to teleport away. Topher proved even more disruptive when he revealed himself as a vampire.

After a prolonged battle, Karolina managed to trick Topher into taking a bite out of her, which caused him to combust.

Later, while out trying to undo some of the evil their parents wrought, they ran into Cloak and Dagger, who were operating under the false assumption that the team had kidnapped Molly.

Then, Alex gave the group a history lesson about their parents, having deciphered the text in the Abstract. Essentially, their parents had been given extra powers by supernatural beings called the Gibborim. The Pride had to provide a pure soul to their overlords every year for 25 years, after which six of the Pride would earn a place in the paradise that would come about after the Gibborim razed the Earth. When the Steins announced their pregnancy, though, the others also decided to have children, to whom they would pass on their eventual place in paradise.

After escaping from the Pride's guy inside the Los Angeles Police Department, the Runaways decided to interrupt the Rite of Thunder as the Pride offered the sacrificed soul to the Gibborim. Nico got the Runaways into the Pride's underwater compound with a magic bubble, but Chase almost died and then Nico's parents used magic to freeze her solid. Alex then revealed himself as loyal to his parents when he swiped the Staff of One and woke Nico up to offer her a place in paradise alongside him, the Wilders, and the Minorus. Instead of accepting, she punched him in the face, giving Gert enough time to wake up and allowing Old Lace to return the Staff of One to Nico, who proceeded to fight back.

At that point, the Gibborim showed up and destroyed Alex for his arrogance. Chase broke in with their new ride, the Leapfrog, and got the Runaways out before the place exploded. Weeks later, after being shipped away, Nico broke out of an orphanage to meet up with her teammates, save Old Lace, steal the Leapfrog again, and head out for new adventures.

Now acting as the de facto leader of the group, Nico played hero while she healed from Alex's betrayal and death. Around this time, she tried using the Staff of One to bring him back, but found that it could not bring back the dead. Soon after that, they met a version of Gert from the future and ran into Excelsior, before meeting a teen named Victor Mancha. Victor was the son of Ultron, but despite his parent's evil deeds, the Runaways brought him into the team. Around this time, Karolina came out to Nico, but the Nico didn't reciprocate her romantic feelings. Very soon after, a Skrull named Xavin met the Runaways, explained that his parents and Karolina's had arranged their marriage, and requested that Karolina join it in a journey across the stars. The alien Runaway agreed, leaving the group behind for a time.

While on a mission in New York City to clear Dagger of Cloak's assault, Nico and Chase teamed up, leading her to kiss him for a moment before he pushed her away, as he was still with Gert. Back in LA, the kids found themselves up against a new Pride group, which consisted of Alex's old video game friends who managed to bring Geoffrey Wilder, Alex's dad, back from the past to the present. They also used Victor's electronics to spy on the Runaways, kidnapped Molly, and revealed that Nico and Chase kissed. This ordeal culminated with Geoffrey stabbing Gert through the chest, leaving her to die in Chase's arms. Afterwards, Nico considered killing Wilder to prevent Alex from being born in the past, but instead wiped his memories of his time in the future and sent him back to the 1980s.

Soon after, during the Super Hero Civil War, the Runaways teamed up with the Young Avengers to take down the Cube Warden. While Nico and the team fought a giant monster, Chase made a deal with the Gibborim to give them a pure soul in exchange for returning Gert to the land of the living. He then surprised Nico by tying her up and explaining that he planned to sacrifice his own soul to the Gibborim, which would erase all memory of him from existence. In the process of saving Chase, the Runaways kept the Gibborim from getting another soul long enough so that deities ran out of time and wound up in a void dimension along with Alex Wilder.

After a trip to New York City that introduced them to Kingpin and Punisher, the Runaways took an accidental journey back in time to 1907. There, Nico got captured and tortured by a woman called Witchbreaker who claimed to be her great-grandmother.

Witchbreaker told her that increased pain would lead to more power. Alhough she resisted at first, Nico eventually gave herself over to the process, which also gave the Staff a new look. Minoru then led the group back to the present, bringing a young super powered girl named Klara with them just in time to fight alongside the Young Avengers during the Secret Invasion of the Skrulls.

From there, the team soldiered on, facing off against rogue Majesdanians, the negative effects of one of Nico's spells, plastic surgery monsters, and an attack on the Malibu dream house they were squatting in. Shortly after, Chase got hit by a car when chasing a girl he thought was Gert. And after run-ins with Daken and the Avengers Academy kids, Nico and Chase found themselves kidnapped and deposited in Arcade's Murderworld. He'd chosen sixteen kids and said that only one of them could walk out of the deadly locale in one month's time. Nico quickly realized that her magic acted even more strangely there, but did figure out how to use it to make edible food. Along the way, Chase picked up the Darkhawk amulet.

Though they initially took off on their own inside Murderworld, Nico and Chase soon allied with Hazmat, X-23, and Reptil. After a series of trials and shifting allegiances, Nico sent Chase away, only to wind up on the wrong end of Deathlocket's blaster after she'd been taken over by Apex. But that was nothing compared to the fight the next day when Nico took on Apex, Deathlocket, and a Sentinel all backed by Chase, who was controlled by Apex as Darkhawk. Chase sliced through Nico's arm and the Staff of One before kicking her off a mountain. Nico managed to crawl to the remnants of the Staff, but died soon after. However, the Staff of One used her blood as a sacrifice and brought her back with an incredible power boost as well as a mystical hand replacement and remodeled Staff.

Nico then swiftly dismantled the Sentinel and turned Chase back to normal before sending Apex and Deathlocket underground, where they discovered the inner workings of Murderworld. As the clock ticked down on Arcade's insane experiment, Apex took over Murderworld and sent repeated waves of attacks after the others before Deathlocket managed to kill her. She then broke Chase and Nico out, and they all agreed on the story that they would tell the public—but that all went out the window when Arcade released a video series showing exactly what happened.

When Chase started doing press and accumulating fame based on the videos, Nico paid him a visit. And when the survivors of the ordeal reunited to find Cullen Bloodstone, they decided to go into the villain nation of Bagalia as newcomers on the scene. Once they found Bloodstone, Nico tried talking him into returning home, but he said that he liked it there and that Daimon Hellstrom helped him learn to control his power. Most of the group then decided to stay there and bring Baron Zemo's organization down from the inside. Nico began hanging out with the recently resurrected Alex Wilder, who helped her hone her strategic abilities and focus her power, but eventually Zemo's true plan to lure in the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. so they could steal a Helicarrier came to fruition and the kids once again went their separate ways.

Nico then walked away from the Runaways, but found a new home with a different team called A-Force—first in the Doctor Doom-created Battleworld nation of Arcadia and then in the reconstituted reality that emerged at the end of Secret Wars. When team member Singularity landed on this new Earth, she brought together her teammates, including Nico, but they had no memory of their existence on Battleworld. The newly formed group worked well together to stop a being called Antimatter, but its defeat led to dimensional holes which they then had to band together to close.

A-Force then faced Countess, who used Nico against the team, and also met an alternate universe version of Dazzler from the Thor Corps. The team then fell apart during the second Super Hero Civil War, when Carol Danvers used one of Ulysses' visions to predict that Nico would kill a woman named Alice.

After the Civil War, Nico got herself an apartment, but had a difficult time personally. But that all changed when Chase appeared in her living room in a time machine with the dying Gert. He'd gone back in time to stop her from getting stabbed by Geoffrey Wilder, but only got there just after the attack. So, he brought her dying body to the present. Nico didn't have any general healing spells she could use, so she brought a doctor to Gert and assisted with her magic in time to save their friend.

Gert, now healed and in a time she had no familiarity with, didn't appreciate Nico and Chase's explanations for the Runaways falling apart. Nico went with Chase and Gert to visit their old teammates, though they failed to convince Karolina to rejoin before going to Molly's grandma's house. Nico seemed impressed by Molly's grandma, Dr. Hayes, and didn't worry when Gert decided to stay there with Molly. However, when the rebooted Victor Mancha told Chase they needed to save their friends from the old woman, the two picked Nico and Karolina up and went back to the house. There, they defended Molly and Gert from Dr. Hayes' psychic cats and the clone Hayes had made of Molly's mother.

After Karolina took both Hayes women out with her powers, the gang took off and most of them decided to move into the new Hostel. There, Nico did her best to figure out what to do with her life from that moment on.

Don't worry, though, given their pasts, these kids are bound to have adventure crash into their lives before long.