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This page covers the Marvel comicbook hero X-23 also known as Laura Howlett , Laura X , Weapon X , Talon , Captain Universe . If this is not the page you were looking for check here.
Cloned from Wolverine's DNA, X-23 has had anything but an easy life. Now in the New X-Men, she is beginning to find her place.
Origin
A secret government program wanted to recreate the Weapon X experiment (that produced the mutant Wolverine) in order to make super soldiers. There were problems in locating a suitable test subject that could withstand and survive the bonding with the unbreakable metal known as Adamantium. Abandoning the search, the program director hired the renowned mutant geneticist, Dr. Sarah Kinney, and decided to create a clone from old, damaged genetic samples of the original Weapon X.
The attempts failed to create a clone 22 times because the Y chromosome could not be salvaged. Geneticist, Dr. Sarah Kinney suggested they try to create a female clone but her proposal is denied. When she creates a successful embryo Sutter reconsiders but his apprentice, Dr. Rice is angered and so he said to her, be the surrogate mother or her little project doesn't move forward (he honestly thought she wouldn't go through with it). After nine months she gave birth to X-23.
Dr. Rice hates X-23 as her "father", Wolverine, murdered his own father and so he tortures her throughout her training. At seven years of age she is subjected to radiation poisoning activating her mutations. With no care he extracts her claws, coats them with adamantium and re-inserts them in her body never once giving her anesthesia. He also produces a "trigger-scent" that causes her to go into a murderous rage upon inhaling it as she was trained to do so, with torture, for many years.
A killing machine.
When she was around thirteen, she was sent on her first mission to assassinate a Presidential candidate. The numerous missions that followed left her emotionally stunted. She was, for the most part, a killing machine, barely clinging on to her humanity.
Rice finally decided to get his revenge by setting up X-23. She was given a dangerous mission and was left behind to face overwhelming odds. Yet to his disappointment X-23 survived and made her way back to The Facility. Rice decided to have X-23 kill his superior, Dr. Martin Sutter along with Sutter's family and then ordered her to keep it secret. He also revealed to Kinney that they had clones X-24 to X-50 waiting to be "born" just before she left.
Dr. Kinney then decided to leave The Facility with X-23, after drafting a letter to her daughter. But before they left, she ordered X-23 to destroy the clones and to kill Rice. Rice got in the final word as he exposed X-23 to the berserker chemical and she ended up killing her "mother", Dr. Kinney. With her final words, she gave X-23 the name, Laura, the drafted letter and pictures of Charles Xavier (Professor X), Wolverine (her father) and the Xavier Institute.
New Life
Laura traveled to San Francisco where she tracked down Debbie, her mother's sister and Meggan, her cousin. But Meggan experienced vivid nightmares about her abduction, her own family brushing these off as complete fantasy.
Laura lets her cousin know these events did take place and that the man haunting Meggan's dreams is real and that Laura killed him, and from that moment onward the two shared a bond as best friends. But Debbie's boyfriend is a Facility agent who is ordered to have X-23 succumb to the trigger scent and kill Debbie and Meggan, he fails however and is killed himself.
So Facility agents storm their living space, easily beaten off by X-23 until Kimura takes care of her, as her skin is invulnerable to X-23's adamantium claws. Laura gets Debbie and Meggan to safety by handcuffing Kimura to a radiator and creating an explosion, buying them at least a little time. She sends them on a plane giving them plans for their safety and knowing she will never see them again she decides to confront the man who is the reason for her creation, Wolverine.
She tracks her father down to the Xavier Institute where she engages him in combat, holding her own. It turns out he is aware of her predicament thanks to her mother. He lets her beat him, and then tells her that Xavier is her only hope for a normal life.
But as her options are being discussed she is captured by SHIELD agents, Captain America and Daredevil who tranquilize Wolverine and kidnap her. They then proceed to interrogate her to learn of her past. Daredevil accepts her murderous past, while Captain America seeks retribution, eventually wiping her slate clean to avoid the truth that she was the government's weapon.
Eventually in New York City she is taken in by the pimp, Zebra Daddy. Laura then becomes a prostitute specializing in cutting the masochistic patrons. She also continues to cut herself with her adamantium claws, remains untalkative and seems unable to free herself from Zebra Daddy. But when she meets Kiden Nixon, she begins to gain some humanity again and so she runs away from Zebra Daddy, only to be tracked down. X-23 eventually kills Zebra Daddy, and with the help of her friends (Felon, Kid, Catiana and Cameron Palmer) his thugs are defeated.
X-23 attacks Wolverine
She later takes a job at Wannabee's mutant-themed nightclub in District X of New York. She saves Don Parisi's daughter from a gang of thugs whom she kills to settle the problem with the girls father, who was a mob boss. These murders seem to point to Wolverine and so the X-Men must investigate.
So it is that X-23 attacks Wolverine instinctively but he manages to calm her down and X-23 then leads the X-Men to Don's daughter, whom she had rescued. After leading them there she helps them fight Parisi's enforcer, the mutant Geech and flees.
She later meets the X-Men again when she helps them save some victims of a vehicular accident. And so she is enrolled at the Xavier Institute and given a room with Rachel Summers (Marvel Girl) and Kitty Pryde.
Laura becomes protective of Logan, often watching him and eventually attacking Bishop when he defeats Logan during a training session.
One time while she watches the mansion's monitors an energy spike makes her curious and she decides to investigate. She finds Spider-Man at the source of this energy spike and believing him to be the enemy, attacks. Eventually the two team up in an effort to save Paul Patterson from Iron Maniac (an alternate reality counterpart of Iron Man).
Captain America and Black Widow arrive putting the odds in their sides favor and so it is that X-23 and Spider-Man succeed by using the Fastball Special to destroy Iron Maniac's equipment.
X-23 later follows Logan when he investigates some strange activity in the Canadian Rockies. They are ambushed by the Hauk'ka from the Savage Land. Laura escapes and alerts the X-Men so that the team travels to the Savage Land where they work with Ka-Zar and the Savage Land Mutates to stop the Hauk'ka from destroying the human civilization.
New X-Men
X-23 was also, for a time, empowered by the Uni-Power so that she became Captain Universe. She learned soon after that A.I.M were her enemies, seeking to use the Uni-Power and so she works with the SHIELD agent Carmilla Black.
They go to an AIM hideout where they discover information about the Uni-Power, but it was being transferred to another facility.
Scorpion attempts to copy this information but X-23 stops her only to have her companion ordered to take her into custody. Instead Carmilla allows X-23 (Captain Universe) to escape and so the Uni-Power leaves X-23 as they both go their own way.
Decimation/New X-Men
Though M-Day depowers multitudes of mutants, X-23 remains powered. She returns to the X-Mansion only at the insistence of Wolverine. Headmistress Emma Frost is reluctant to allow the murderer, X-23 into the school, but Scott Summers (Cyclops) stands up for X-23, she allows her to re-enter the Institute where Laura is given Dust as her new roommate.
The first night that laura spends in the institute in her new room with dust she is awaken by a sound, someone calling her name and asking why, she gets up out of her bed and walks out into the hallway, there she finds her mother, all cut up and bleeding saying "Why did you kill me-I loved you, but you killed me-why X-23" Laura sniffs and stands up "My mother gave me a name she would not call me X-23" she turns around to see Emma Frost.
But when Jay Guthrie arrives, beaten and bloodied, on the doorstep of the Institute, the students are placed in an all-out brawl to judge whose worthy to join the New X-Men team. Even though Emma tries hard to disallow X-23 joining, Laura is shown to be growing in power, during the exercise. So she is placed on the team along with Dust, Elixir, Hellion, Mercury, Rockslide and the team's leader, Surge.
When the depowered former resident of the Institute were leaving, a bus was bombed by William Stryker killing many. And when X-23 hears Dust talking to Icarus she learns of their intended meeting.
X-23 warns her roommate of the trap and so she takes her place by wearing her burqa. On arriving at Stryker's compound she is shot, returning to the Mansion, killing three Purifiers who had incapacitated her teammates, Surge and Hellion as well as Emma Frost.
When the New X-Men team battles Nimrod in Texas, after a distress call is received from Forge, it is X-23 who defeats him by using her claws to cut through the machine. Even after the Sentinel is disabled she is wounded beyond the ability to heal herself and it is only Hellion's sacrifice that allows her to reach the mansion in time, where Elixir heals her.
Later, when she is getting to know her teammate Mercury, the café they are in is attacked by Kimura, with her minions, who capture Cessily. Laura then returns to the school, partners with Hellion and the two head off to find The Facility's whereabouts.
X-23 kills a man after she interrogates him at gunpoint but Hellion tells her that killing will not be part of their interrogation technique anymore.
They manage to infiltrate the Facility after they learn of its whereabouts from Owl who reveals that X-23 was once Kingpin's top assassin.
At The Facility, Laura and Julian encounter Kimura but they manage to find Cessily, who is in a liquid form, finding it hard to hold herself together.
They are then attacked by Predator X, the creature that has absorbed Cessily's mercury skin. Laura and Julian decided to retreat but are pursued. They are then ambushed, yet again, but rescued by the Astonishing X-Men and New X-Men.
The two teams then gain then upper hand and defeat the troops of The Facility, Predator X manages to escape. Emma Frost later finds Kimura about to assassinate X-23, and erases the one happy moment in her life from her memory. Then she changes her mission to be that she hunt down members of The Facility so that she may kill them. Emma Frost had at that moment finally decided to help her student rid herself of her horrible past.
But the troubles for X-23 did not end then, life was just going to get worse. Belasco of Limbo sought Illyana Rasputin and as such kidnapped the majority of the students from the Xavier Institute, X-23 among them, trapping them in his realm.
With her sight, X-23 is able to see the Xavier Institute and so she convinces Trance to use her powers so that she can reach the Institute. Then she tells Elixir of Belasco's plans to kill David, Sooraya and Cessily and urges Sooraya and Cessily to fight the Demon Lord.
When she attacks, Belasco is unimpressed and sees are soul as worthless and so leaves her as nothing but bones with claws coated in adamantium with his energy blast.
Later on he resurrects her with his magic, tortures her and then explains that he will kill and resurrect the students again and again until Magik is brought to him. Elixir revives her at the orders of David and she then proceeds to free the Stepford Cuckoos.
During World War Hulk, X-23 goes up against the giant and along with several other students manages to pin him down, but when his strength returns he simply throws them aside. In a second attack she blinds him with the claw that protrudes from her foot.
Hulk recovers however, grabs X-23 and hurls her into the Institute, saying that he hopes she heals like Wolverine.
X-Force
Messiah Complex
In chapter eight, one of the New X-Men installments, Laura squares off with Lady Deathstrike during an encounter involving the new X-Force and the Reavers. Because Lady Deathstrike hurt Julian Keller, A.K.A. Hellion, badly in a previous fight, she seemingly killed the cybernetic woman by cutting one of her cybernetic arms and slicing through the older woman's body "faster than she can heal." Laura then proceeds to tell her, "You were dead the moment you touched Julian Keller..." She then fought in the final battle on Muir Island.
X-Force
X-23 is now a member of the new, modern incarnation of X-Force. When X-23, Wolverine and Warpath attacked a Purifier base, X-23 blows the place up and takes out several guards. After that, they all went to Angel's Mansion. The story's on-going.
Powers
Since X-23 is a clone of the X-Man Wolverine, she shares many of his abilities. These abilities include enhanced animal-like senses that grant her keener sight and hearing than a normal human, as well as an enhanced sense of smell that allows her to track by scent alone. She also has a similar unconscious ability to rapidly heal herself, which would presumably affect the way her body processes chemicals and would effectively slow the aging process.
Unlike Wolverine, her skeleton was not coated in the metal adamantium because it would impede her natural growth. Presumably, once she stopped growing, the skeletal adamantium bonding would be implemented. Unlike Wolverine who has three claws that come out between each set of knuckles, X-23 has two that come out between the outer knuckles of each hand, and one that comes out the front of each foot. The claws were bonded with adamantium, perhaps once it was determined that they would no longer lengthen as she aged.
While lacking the same life experience of her male counterpart, X-23 is trained to fight in a style similar to Wolverine, and due to their similarities may be his equal in combat. She has shown the remarkable ability to adapt to her lack of proportionate muscle mass and size (compared to Logan), even beating Logan's best time in a combat trial by a few minutes. She uses her greater flexibility, smaller size and her foot claws in a more acrobatic fighting style than Wolverine. Like Wolverine, she is also a master of unarmed combat.
X-23 is also trained in multiple skills to enable her to be a better assassin. She has shown herself to be an accomplished actress, skilled with disguise, can hot wire vehicles, has stealth skills, knowledgeable in multiple foreign languages and has a phenomenal memory.
Alternate Realities
Earth-295
In the Age of Apocalypse reality, X-23 went by the name Kirika, and was found by Magneto in one of Mr. Sinister's labs. She was the daughter of Wolverine (Weapon X) and Mariko Yashida. She had three claws on her hands in this reality and the metal was grafted on to them at her request, by Magneto.
Earth-6215
On Earth-6215 X-23 was a member of the League of Losers, a team of the few remaining heroes working to defeat the time-traveling Chronok. In this reality she was in a relationship with her team-mate Gravity.
X-Men: The End
In this reality, X-23 is an adult, as well as a prominent member of Xavier Security Enforcers and the X-Men. She helped capture Sage and rescue the LeBeau children and twenty years later stood behind Wolverine, as President Kitty Pryde speaks in remembrance of what the X-Men stood for in that bloody battle.
X-Men: Evolution
X-23 made her first appearance in the third season of the Evo series. She had escaped Hydra on a mission to break into SHIELD. X-23 then knew where Logan was. She attacked everyone that was in the Xavier Mansion and even fought Logan. But Logan eventually got her to calm down. X-23 then took off as SHIELD choppers were closing in. HYDRA tried to capture her and erase her memories, but X-23 destroyed the base.
Creators
X-23 was created by Craig Kyle
X-23 Appears in These Volumes
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