X-23
History[]
From the ashes of the failed Weapon X project, that revolved around the feral mutant, Wolverine, came Laura Kinney. Though, as a child she was never known by that handle. Treated like an animal from birth, X-23 was designed to be the perfect, controllable weapon. Seeking to take the project in a newer direction, the director, Dr. Martin Sutter brought on the renowned mutant geneticist, Dr. Sarah Kinney.
The only available sample of Weapon X's DNA was damaged, and so it proved a difficult project to bring to fruition at first. Dr. Kinney made numerous attempts to successfully recreate Weapon X, but the Y chromosome was unsalvageable. After twenty-two failed attempts, Dr. Kinney suggested that they remove the Y chromosome entirely, and recreate a female clone of Weapon X. Dr. Sutter's protégé, Dr. Zander Rice (whom he had adopted after the catastrophe with Weapon X, that resulted in Rice's father's death) steadfastly refused to allow her to make an attempt at creating a female clone.
Despite her proposal's denial, she secretively went ahead and produced a viable female subject. With her successful recreation, Dr. Sutter had a change of heart and allowed her to proceed further, but Dr. Rice cruelly forced her to carry the subject to term for her insubordination. On August 3, 1991, Dr. Sarah Kinney gave birth to her daughter: Designation X-23.
Dr. Rice wanted all of Kinney's ties to the child cut, wanting there to be no transference or any sort of human emotion spared on the new subject. Keeping the young X-23 in a featureless room within The Facility, and giving staff strict instruction not to interact at all with her. Dr. Kinney petitioned to Dr. Sutter, asking for more time with her "daughter" in order to "control" her better. She was allowed this, and often took to reading to the child (Mostly tactical manuals and the art of war and fighting, but on rare occasion Sarah was able to sneak in a fairytale or two).
Despite the small kindnesses Sarah showed X-23, along with her master known as "Sensei", she was more feral animal then she was human. Emotionally detached from everyone and everything. Her lack of nurturing left her cold, and often quick to anger, flying into rages easily. The small child was quickly becoming the living weapon that Dr. Rice and The Facility wanted her to be.
Her Sensei, who spoke only in Japanese to her, treated her as a human, and with kindness, trying to repair some of the damage that was being caused to this innocent child. The Company was not at all pleased with this, and in particular, Dr. Rice, who began working out a "trigger scent" that would send X-23 into a berserker's rage, causing her to lash out and kill whatever was in her path. But we'll get to that later.
At the age of eight, Dr. Rice and others at The Facility were growing impatient. They felt they had waited long enough for the girl's mutation to manifest. And so - despite much protest from Dr. Kinney - Dr. Rice subjected her to massive amounts of radiation, trying to force her mutation, and to see if the girl would really follow in her "father's" footsteps, so to speak. Luckily, X-23 survived the process, her regeneration and bone claws finally making themselves known. Due to the feminine aspect of her genetic manipulation, however, it gave X-23 an odd setting of bone claws. Tandem claws on each hand, and a third on each foot. Once her mutant gene was active Dr. Rice forcibly extracted her claws and put the small child through Adamantium process.
The first time the trigger scent was unleashed was on her master. X-23 did exactly as Dr. Rice had planned for her to do, she lost complete control of herself, flying into a vicious rage and killing her Sensei in cold blood. With his blood still on her hands, Kimura was brought in to be her new handler. Kimura was a completely new torture for X-23. Having gone through an unspecified procedure that granted her physical invulnerability, density control, and reconstruction. This made her the perfect handler for X-23, allowing her to be immune to whatever attempts of rebellion the young weapon would try to exact on Kimura. The new handler was vicious, to say the least. Taking out her own, issues and revenge for being bullied as a youth on X-23, finding any excuse possible to punish the girl, whether she made a mistake or not.
A few years later, at the tender age of twelve, X-23 was sent out on her first field mission to kill Presidential candidate Greg Johnson. She was assigned the mission as somewhat of an "advertising" ploy. Numerous other missions followed, as X-23's services were sold to the highest bidder, starting at one million per hit. X-23 was left emotionally stunted as a result, the small attempts Sarah tried to make to keep her daughter's humanity at least somewhat intact, seemed to be in vain.
Her missions took her to locations all over the world, including Saudi Arabia, Las Vegas, Japan, Colombia, the Congo, and many others. For one mission she was assigned to pose as the Kingpin's daughter and kill the ones who had captured her, bringing the head of their leader back. Rice, in an attempt to avenge his father's murder, abandoned X-23 on a particularly dangerous mission, but she survived against overwhelming odds and managed to return to the facility. After her return to the facility Kimura punished her for not coming back with Rice.
Finally having enough of watching the hollow existence of her "daughter", and realizing that Rice was using the "trigger scent" to send X-23 into berserker rages to kill his higher up's, Sarah Kinney, freed X-23, giving her one last mission to kill everyone inside The Facility, and destroy it completely. She was to meet her mother on the snowy hills outside of The Facility, and together, they would flee to go stay with Sarah's family. Unfortunately, the plan did not going as Sarah had hoped. Rice, setting off the "trigger scent" on Sarah, and once X-23 had completed her mission, and met up with her mother, she flew into a violent rage and stabbed her.
Another piece of X-23's frail, tiny humanity broke off that day, and with her dying breath, Sarah named her daughter "Laura". X-23 found a letter addressed to her on Sarah's person, and it told of a plan to go to San Francisco to stay with Sarah's sister, Debbie and her daughter Megan. To put it mildly, X-23 did not fit in well, but claiming to be Sarah's daughter, and going by her now given name of Laura Finney, she moved in with them. It wasn't long before Kimura had tracked her down, though. She contacted Laura, threatening her that everyone she knew and care about would die. Kimura and a team from The Facility raided the Kinney's home, and only by the luck and skill of training she had received, was Laura able to trap Kimura, and buy her newly found family time to escape.
Parting ways from Debbie and Megan, Laura headed East, to New York. Her plan was to find her "father", Wolverine, and kill him and then herself. She blamed him for entire wretched existence. Though, once arriving in New York, where she was taken in by a pimp named Zebra Daddy. Here she worked as a prostitute and began to cut herself with her own claws whenever she was in a precarious situation. Confused, and choosing to remain mute, Laura was unable to free herself from this lifestyle until she befriended fellow mutant Kiden Nixon , who had the ability to freeze time when in danger. After escaping from Zebra Daddy , X-23 kills him in order to save her friends.
Powers[]
- Regeneration: Sharing in her "father's" ability, Laura has enhanced regeneration. It works fairly fast, with minor cuts clotting and closing up in seconds. More major cuts and flesh wounds heal in minutes, and things like broken bones set and mend themselves likewise in minutes. Her regenerative power can be overloaded, however, perhaps by being shot many, many times in a short period of time. When that happens, she loses consciousness, and drops into a fugue until her body stabilizes itself, and heals any major organ damage that occurs. The drawbacks to this power aren't too many, but she does tend to eat a heck of a lot more than your average person, particularly if this system was given a workout.
- Foreign Chemical Immunity: X-23's natural healing also gives her the virtual immunity to poisons and most drugs. She can be affected by some drugs, however, such as tranquilizers, if she is exposed to an extremely large dose.
- Disease Immunity: Due to her highly efficient immune system, X-23 is immune to all Earthly diseases and infections.
- Superhumanly Acute Senses: X-23 possesses superhumanly acute senses that are comparable to those of certain animals. She is able to see at much farther distances, and with near perfect clarity, than an ordinary human. She retains this same level of clarity in almost complete darkness. Her sense of hearing is enhanced in a similar manner, allowing her to both hear sounds that ordinary human's can't and to hear sounds that ordinary humans can, but at much greater distances. X-23 is able to use her highly developed sense of smell to track targets by scent with an impressive degree of success, even of the scent has been eroded by natural factors, such as the weather
- Superhuman Stamina: X-23's muscles produce a considerably less amount of fatigue toxins during physical activity than the muscles of an ordinary human. She can exert herself at peak capacity for about 24 hours before fatigue begins to set in.
- Superhuman Agility: X-23's agility, balance, and bodily coordination are enhanced to levels that are beyond the natural physical limits of even the most accomplished human athlete.
- Superhuman Reflexes: X-23's reflexes are enhanced to levels that are beyond the natural physical limits of the most accomplished human athlete.
- Enhanced Strength: Laura enjoys the blessing of enhanced strength. While not nearly as powerful as Wolverine's, she is getting stronger and stronger as she grows older. This helps her to jump higher, run a fair bit faster, and lift far more weight than her build and gender would suggest. If she wanted to push the limits of her ability, she could bench press about 600 pounds - but would feel far more comfortable carrying and pushing about 350.
- Claws: Tandem claws in each hand, and a third in each foot. The claws are about a eight inches in length in her arms, and about six to seven inches in her feet, curved at one end, and retractable, going back into her arm or foot or out as she needs them. They've been coated in Adamantium, something the rest of her skeleton the Weapon X project hadn't had a chance to do yet. Let's hope they never get a chance to finish the job. Because of these, getting through metal detectors at airports and the like is a real pain, and each time they cut through her skin when she 'draws' them, it does sting a little.
- Induced Berserker Rage: She has also been subjected to conditioning in which a specific "trigger scent" has been used to send her into a berserker rage, killing anything in sight. This can be seen as a strength or a weakness, depending on what side of things you're on.
Skills[]
- Can speak English French and Japanese, fluently. May be able to speak others, but with much less mastery.
- X-23 is an expert tracker. Because of her enhance sense of smell she can track almost anything and anyone, and has memorized many different scents.
- Raised in captivity, Due to her extensive training as a top-secret operative, X-23 has been trained to become a living weapon. She is highly trained in the use of long range weapons and explosives, and is an expert in assassination techniques.
- She is excellent at hand to hand combatant, with intensive training in numerous armed and unarmed martial arts techniques.