X-23/Laura KinneyWolverine

A clone of Logan/James Howlett, the original Wolverine, Laura Kinney, AKA X-23, is trained as an assassin by a shadowy organization that also controls her. It isn’t until her surrogate mother, Sarah Kinney, who treats her as her own daughter and names her Laura, helps her escape a life of being controlled and she forges her own path to reclaim her humanity. She seeks out Wolverine, whom she eventually comes to respect. Upon his death, Laura takes on his codename to honor him.

Bred as an Assassin

Hoping to reproduce the Adamantium bonding process used on the mutant Logan/James Howlett, AKA Wolverine, by the clandestine Weapon X program, the Facility, an organization that produces advanced weaponry, directs their agent Dale Rice to infiltrate Weapon X and steal samples of Logan’s DNA; though Logan slew Dale while he was trying to escape, so Facility head Martin Sutter retrieves the sample. Dale’s son Zander grows up to become the Facility’s surgical head, driven by a consuming hatred of Wolverine, but each new bonding attempt ends in the test subject’s death. Eventually, much to Zander’s resentment, Sutter took the project in a new direction, hiring leading genetic mutation expert Dr. Sarah Kinney to clone Logan.

Damage to the samples’ Y chromosome led to repeated embryo failure, and, against orders, Sarah finally replaces it with a duplicate of the intact X chromosome, to generate not a clone, but a female genetic twin with identical mutant abilities, producing a viable embryo on the 23rd attempt. As punishment for her insubordination, Zander vindictively pressures Sarah into being the embryo’s surrogate, but during the pregnancy Sarah finds herself increasingly thinking of the baby growing within her as her child, rather than the weapon the Facility wanted.

Named X-23 and born with retractable claws, the child’s young life is filled with a series of tests and assassination training, while her instructors are directed to prevent her developing a sense of self by treating her only as a weapon. Sarah secretly ignores this directive, as did X-23’s martial arts instructor, Tanaka, becoming the only people X-23 cares about. Meanwhile, Zander develops a chemical trigger scent that sends X-23 into a murderous, targeted frenzy, and gives sadistic Facility agent Kimura indestructible skin so she could be X-23’s invulnerable handler.

When X-23 was seven, Zander gave her radiation poisoning to trigger her mutant healing abilities early, then extracted her claws, coated them with the indestructible metal Adamantium, and reimplanted them. Five days after this, X-23 was introduced to Kimura, and a few days later Zander tested his trigger scent, making X-23 murder Tanaka, punishing both of them for the friendship they had formed.

Living Weapon

X-23’s healing factor regenerates injuries at a superhuman rate; even fourth degree burns heal or severed limbs regrow within a couple of days. She is highly resistant to disease and most poisons or drugs, and her body processes fatigue poisons swiftly, providing her with enhanced endurance and stamina; presumably, like her genetic twin Wolverine, she has a slowed aging factor. Incredibly agile and with enhanced reflexes, she is an expert acrobat. All her senses are superhumanly acute, and can recognize and track others by scent. Her skeleton has two retractable bone claws in each arm and one in each foot, which she can extend at will; naturally sharper and stronger than normal bone, they are coated with the nearly indestructible metal Adamantium. 

Trained from infancy in assassination arts, X-23 is a master strategist and tactician, highly skilled martial artist, expert with most firearms and close quarter weapons, knowledgeable about poisons and torture, and fluent in many languages, including English, Japanese and French. She has been trained to resist telepathy, although a strong enough telepath can eventually penetrate her shields.

Fierce Foes

Doctor Zander Rice, surgical head at the Facility where X-23 is created, has a grudge against Wolverine for killing his father and that grudge extends to X-23. He develops a chemical trigger scent designed to send X-23 into a murderous, targeted frenzy, and gives the Facility’s sadistic agent Kimura indestructible skin to effectively handle and train X-23 in assassin arts. She and other agents of the Facility like Adam Harkin and Desmond Alexander as well as the head of the X-23 project, Martin Sutter, are fierce enemies that never stop to control X-23 until she kills them, though Kimura still lives.

H.A.M.M.E.R.’s agents Young and Alisande Morales also attempt to capture and control X-23, but Morales realizes the error in aligning themselves with the Facility and helps X-23 escape their grasp.

While X-23 fights many battles against her creators and those that want to control her, she goes up against Super Villains like Arclight, the Leper Queen, Claudine Renko, AKA Miss Sinister, Nathaniel Essex, AKA Mister Sinister, Raven Darkhölme, AKA Mystique, Nimrod, Victor Creed, AKA Sabretooth, Selene, Siphon, Stryfe, Riptide, William Stryker, Vertigo, and Zebra Daddy.

Familial Relationships and Allies

Sarah Kinney, a leading genetic mutation expert creates a genetic twin, X-23, to Logan/James Howlett, AKA Wolverine, in embryo form but this action goes against her superior’s instruction. She is punished by being made into X-23’s surrogate mother who bonds with the child and names her Laura Kinney. Through Sarah, X-23 has an aunt Deborah, cousin Megan and grandparents Ron and Leslie Kinney, though Ron is deceased.

Eventually X-23 seeks out and meets her progenitor Wolverine and over many years of working alongside one another, they forge a familial bond and become protective of each other. After his death, X-23 adopts his codename “Wolverine” to honor him. 

Akihiro, AKA Daken, is Wolverine’s son and the first time X-23 meets him, they square off until he learns about her history. They share a brief alliance and he helps her realize that her fate is her own.

When Alchemex Genetics clones X-23, she discovers she has multiple clones that call themselves “sisters”:  X23_1BEL, AKA Bellona, X23_2ZEL, AKA Zelda, X23_3PAR, X23_4GAB, AKA Gabby, as well as six others. X-23 forms a kinship with Gabby and they live together with a pet wolverine named Jonathan.

After being an agent of the Facility, the organization that created her, X-23 joins groups like the X-Men; their strike team X-Force and X-Men-In-Training. She attends the Xavier Institute as well as the Avengers Academy and graduates as an Avengers Third Grade.

A Mission to Right Wrongs

As her training progressed, X-23 practiced alongside Wolverine holograms, learning his fighting style. When she was 10, Sutter deemed X-23 ready for field testing; wanting to sell X-23’s assassination services, to obtain maximum publicity he picked Presidential hopeful Greg Johnson as her first target, having her slaughter his entire family and retinue too. Over the next three years, X-23 killed hundreds worldwide while working for numerous clients, never failing to complete a mission; she became Wilson Fisk, AKA Kingpin’s favorite assassin. Though showing no outward emotion at what she was doing, X-23 took to cutting herself; Sarah mistakenly believed these wounds to be Zander torturing X-23. Shortly after X-23 returned from a dangerous mission against Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.), despite Zander having secretly abandoned her to die. 

Sarah learned her niece Megan had been kidnapped in San Francisco; without permission Sarah had X-23 rescue Megan and slay the serial child killer who had taken her. Deferring Sarah’s punishment, a stressed Sutter was convinced by Zander to sign over control of the project to him; Zander then had X-23 murder Sutter and his wife, Rachel, but X-23 spared Rachel’s young son, Henry, and revealed her actions to Sarah. Unaware she knew what he had done, Zander gloatingly informed her of Phase 2, incubation pods growing fetuses X-24 through 50, then fired her, secretly dosing her with the trigger. After writing a letter to X-23 detailing her history, a copy of which she posted to Wolverine, Sarah slipped new orders into X-23’s cell, to slay Zander and all the project scientists, destroy the incubators, then rendezvous with her outside so they could start a new life as mother and daughter. However, when X-23 emerged on completing her mission, the trigger provoked her into fatally wounding Sarah; as she died, Sarah renamed her daughter Laura.

X-23 fled to Sarah’s sister Debbie in San Francisco, soon befriending her “cousin” Megan, and witnessed news reports showing Wolverine at the public outing of the Xavier Institute as a mutant school and the X-Men’s base. However, Debbie’s partner Desmond Alexander was secretly a Facility agent, who called in Kimura; X-23 narrowly escaped, and after providing Megan and Debbie with new identities, she headed to Xavier’s, having come to the conclusion that both she and Wolverine were weapons that needed to be destroyed. Instead Wolverine convinced her she had another choice, asking her to come to the school and learn to be human. Before she could decide, X-23 was arrested by Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, for Johnson’s murder, and taken to Washington, DC for interrogation; upon learning her full history however, Cap elected to risk releasing her to return to Wolverine. 

Fearing that Kimura would find her at Xaviers’, X-23 chose instead to live on the streets in Manhattan’s Alphabet City, where pimp Zebra Daddy recruited her as a prostitute. Eventually, she befriended fellow mutants Kiden Nixon, Catiana and Felon, as well as Kiden’s teacher Cameron Palmer, and killed Zebra Daddy when he tried to slay them, seeking to stop her leaving his service. After taking a waitress job at Wannabee’s nightclub in Manhattan’s Mutant Town, X-23 killed thugs attacking her friend Jade Parisi; called in because the claw marks on the corpses resembled Wolverine’s, the X-Men tracked down X-23, and Wolverine arranged for her to be paroled into X-Men custody.

X-23 found it difficult to adjust to living at the Institute, and became highly protective of Wolverine, attacking his teammate Lucas Bishop, AKA Bishop, when he overpowered Wolverine during a sparring match, and covertly tagged along when he went to Canada. In the Canadian Rockies the evolved Saurian Hauk’ka ambushed them, but X-23 evaded them and summoned the X-Men; their battles with the Hauk’ka took them to the Antarctic Savage Land, where X-23 and the X-Men ultimately stopped the Hauk’ka using Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm’s weather-manipulation powers to destroy human civilization. X-23 soon quit the mansion, though she remained in phone contact with Wolverine. After briefly being empowered by the sentient cosmic Uni-Power and clashing with A.I.M. alongside S.H.I.E.L.D. super-agent Carmilla Black, AKA Scorpion, X-23 headed back to San Francisco.

When most of the world’s mutants were depowered on “M-Day,” Wolverine convinced X-23 to return to the mansion to join the remaining students. Telepathically learning X-23’s history and of the trigger, headmistress Emma Frost tried to block her admittance, and when co-headmaster Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, overruled her, Emma tried to drive X-23 away, haunting her with visions of Sarah berating X-23 for killing her. When that failed Emma arranged a combat test to split the students into two groups, X-Men-In-Training trainees and non-combatants, and then tried unsuccessfully to rig the contest to ensure X-23 ended amongst the latter. Initially her new teammates were similarly apprehensive of her, but began accepting her after her instincts saved the entire school when Reverend William Stryker’s Purifiers targeted it. 

After Stryker was defeated, X-23 was injured beyond her healing factor’s ability to cope while helping the X-Men-In-Training defeat Reality-811 Sentinel Nimrod; her teammate Julian Keller, AKA Hellion, saved her life, leading X-23 to develop a romantic attraction to Keller, unfamiliar feelings she struggled to cope with. Meanwhile, the Facility, hired by the Purifiers to create an anti-mutant weapon, had Kimura abduct X-23’s teammate Cessily Kincaid, AKA Mercury, whose metallic skin was needed to complete the mutant-devouring Predator X; X-23 and Hellion tracked down the Facility’s new lab and rescued Mercury. 

After the team was briefly abducted by the demon Belasco, the X-Men-In-Training learned the Purifiers had resurfaced, hunting the first mutant born since M-Day, and, ignoring Cyclops’ orders to stay on the sidelines, the X-Men-In-Training went after them. However, the novice team proved unready to battle the Purifiers’ cyborg allies, the Reavers, whose leader, Wolverine’s old foe Yuriko Oyama, AKA Lady Deathstrike, critically wounded Hellion before the X-Men-In-Training teleported to safety. To win the race to the child, Cyclops temporarily assembled the X-Men’s best trackers and most ruthless fighters, including Wolverine and X-23, to form X-Force; when her new team encountered the Reavers, X-23 avenged Hellion by apparently slaying Lady Deathstrike.

The race ended when Cyclops’ son Nathan Summers, AKA Cable, took the baby into the future (Reality-80521) for safekeeping, pursued by the now-renegade Bishop, but Cyclops decided

to reassemble X-Force to proactively eliminate the enemies trying to drive mutantkind extinct. Wolverine was angered to learn he had recruited X-23, feeling she was losing her chance to start a new life free of killing, but reluctantly accepted it was her choice to make. They hunted down many of the remaining Purifiers, but not before their new leader Bastion obtained a techno-organic virus that he used to resurrect many of mutantkind’s greatest foes. 

Meanwhile, having infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D., the Facility set S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Alisanda Morales after X-23. While Cyclops, and Hank McCoy, AKA Beast, scanned future timelines hunting for Cable, intending to send X-Force to aid him against Bishop as soon as they did, Bastion’s agent, the Leper Queen, began forcibly dosing captive mutants with a modified form of the mutant-killing Legacy virus designed to kill its victims in a massive power overload lethal to anyone nearby, then released them into high population areas, the resulting deaths stirring up anti-mutant feeling; X-Force raced to save her latest victims, including Hellion, but mid-mission were transported by Cyclops to Earth-80521’s 2973 AD. After helping Cable evade Bishop, X-Force returned to the present, with X-23 separating from her teammates to slay the Leper Queen. 

Moments later, agents of H.A.M.M.E.R. (S.H.I.E.L.D.’s successor) captured X-23; Morales delivered her to the Facility and Kimura, who proceeded to saw off X-23’s left arm. Morales then freed her upon learning of the Facility’s deception. With Morales help, X-23 destroyed the base and X-Force rescued her thereafter. Healed, X-23 rejoined X-Force just as mutant sorceress Selene deployed an army of techno-organic mutant revenants against the X-Men’s Utopia island; X-23 helped repel the assault, and accompanied X-Force to Genosha to slay Selene.

While fighting to safeguard Hope Summers, the first mutant born after M-Day, the X-Men learned of X-Force’s existence and strongly disapproved of their violent methods. After a final mission to a dystopian future (Earth-811 or a variant) to stop the mutant-hating Bastion’s planned Sentinel attack on the X-Men’s island base of Utopia, X-Force was publicly disbanded. Though Wolverine secretly formed a new X-Force, he refused to let X-23 join, wishing her a life free of bloodshed. 

Directionless and ostracized by many of her former classmates for her X-Force activities, X-23 relocated to a halfway house for depowered mutants at the suggestion of Cyclops, but the building burned down due to a gas explosion her first night. After being accosted by a demon possessing Wolverine’s body and being saved from his corruption by the Enigma Force that once empowered her as Captain Universe, X-23 opted to travel the world and determine her personal direction. Fellow X-Man Remy LeBeau, AKA Gambit, volunteered to accompany X-23 during her journey.

In Arizona, Gambit and X-23 encountered the female Mister Sinister clone Miss Sinister, who unsuccessfully attempted to transfer her mind into X-23’s body to forestall Mister Sinister’s mental takeover of her own. When Miss Sinister volunteered that Weapon X director Malcolm Colcord planned to revive his mutant weaponization program, X-23 and Gambit traveled to Madripoor to stop Colcord and encountered his benefactor, Wolverine’s son Daken who, unaware of Colcord’s true plans, had hired Colcord to enhance his powers. Once aware of Colcord’s duplicity, Daken, alongside X-23, destroyed Colcord’s laboratory. 

In Paris, X-23, Gambit, Wolverine, and vampiric X-Man Jubilation Lee, AKA Jubilee, disrupted the sale of an enhanced version of X-23’s berserker-rage-inducing trigger scent. In New York, X-23 and the Future Foundation (FF, formerly the Fantastic Four) encountered the alien king of the Whirldemons; empowered once again by the Uni-Power, X-23 stopped the king’s plan to invade Earth. Impressed by X-23, FF member Susan Richards enlisted her to babysit her children, Franklin and Valeria; unfortunately, under X-23’s supervision, the kids wrecked the FF’s Baxter Building headquarters by unintentionally bringing a dragon-like beast through a temporal portal Valeria designed. As the attentions of classmate Hellion became increasingly unwanted, X-23 ended their potential romance. 

In Las Vegas, X-23 allied with Flash Thompson, AKA Venom, General Thaddeus Ross, AKA Red Hulk, and Alejandra Jones, AKA Ghost Rider, to stop demon-lord Mephisto’s son Blackheart from drawing Hell into Earth; though successful, the four formed a pact with Mephisto to perform an unspecified future task in exchange for resurrecting them after Blackheart and his minions killed them.

Pressured to choose a side when the X-Men split into two camps over a philosophical schism, X-23 chose to attend Avengers Academy at the invitation of Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow. Though initially reluctant to socialize with the Academy students, X-23 grew more accustomed to them, particularly Jeanne Foucault, AKA Finesse, who shared similar social challenges. X-23 ended their friendship when she learned that while X-23 was rendered unconscious during a battle, Finesse fatally stabbed matter-manipulating entrepreneur Jeremy Briggs with X-23’s claws to halt his research into depowering superhumans. 

After graduating as an Avenger Third Grade, X-23 and fellow students Ken Mack, AKA Mettle, Jennifer Takeda, AKA Hazmat, and Juston Seyfert were abducted with other adolescent heroes by brilliant inventor and game designer, Arcade, and pressured to fight one another to the death on his amusement park Murderworld. By the time of their rescue, many of the captives had been killed, including Mettle and Seyfert, and X-23 suffered severe injuries after being set against the captives by Arcade’s use of a trigger-scent derivative.

Amnesiac for unclear reasons and wandering Miami, X-23 was rescued by the time-displaced original X-Men from the Purifiers, who were hunting her in retaliation for X-Force’s murder of William Stryker. After the team helped her regain her memory and defeat the Purifiers, X-23 joined their ranks at the New Xavier School and eventually began a romance with the time-lost teenaged Warren Worthington, AKA Angel. She then began traveling the world with the rest of the time-lost teenaged X-Men. However, her recklessness in battle soon caused tension with Angel.

X-23 traveled to Toronto to absorb the news of Wolverine’s death and met cancer-stricken ex-Alpha Flight member Colin Ashworth Hume, now the costumed Chinook, who taught her the importance of a hero’s colors. X-23 returned to the school with her hair streaked with Wolverine’s yellow-and-blue uniform colors.

X-23 and several of Wolverine’s foes were later abducted by test subjects from the Paradise human-enhancement lab, who hoped their healing factors could disable their potentially fatal genetic fail-safes. The subjects commanded Wolverine’s associates through control words secretly planted in their minds by Weapon X scientist Abraham Cornelius, but X-23 was later released from the words by the rebelling subject Shogun. However, she lost her healing power when it was consumed by healing factor energy-feeding Siphon shortly before being gravely wounded in battle with Mystique. 

During the eight months following a collapse and subsequent restoration of the Multiverse, a somehow recovered and repowered X-23 adopted Wolverine’s costumed identity, learned the scientific firm Alchemax created clones of her. Laura effectively destroyed the firm with help from her surviving clones, who call themselves the Sisters. Laura’s younger clone, Gabby, comes to live with her as well as a pet wolverine, named Jonathan.