Allies of the Superwomen of EVA #17: Wolverine

"At the beginning of the 21st Century, some time after the global catastrophe known as Second Impact, a top-secret program was initiated and tasked with replicating the original Weapon X experiment that bonded the rare metal Adamantium to the skeleton of a mutant with a powerful healing factor that enabled him to survive the process. The program's head, Dr. Martin Sutter, recruited a pair of well-known geneticists specializing in mutant biology, Dr. Sarah Kinney and Dr. Deborah Risman, to take the experiment in a different direction by developing a clone of that same mutant; further assisting them was Sutter's former student, Dr. Ragyo Kiryuin, whose father had been killed by the original Weapon X subject. With the only genetic sample on file damaged, rendering its y chromosome unable to be salvaged, Kinney and Risman proposed creating a genetic female twin of Weapon X. Kiryuin at first opposed the idea, until realizing that this would enable her to create a perfect weapon to use against her father's killer. Thus, after 22 failed attempts at recreating the DNA with a duplicate X chromosome, the 23rd sample was deemed viable enough to be combined with a human embryo. Kiryuin volunteers to be the surrogate mother of the specimen, and nine months, she gave birth to subject X-23.

Seven years later, Kiryuin began conditioning X-23 by first subjecting her to radiation poisoning to trigger the activation of her mutant genetics. From there, she underwent the same Adamantium-bonding process as the original Weapon X, followed by Kiryuin creating a 'trigger scent' that would drive X-23 into a murderous rage on sniffing it. She is then trained as an assassin-for-hire, with Kiryuin pressing her underworld contacts for any information related to the long-missing Weapon X. Kinney and Risman, disgusted by their colleague's treatment of X-23, especially when Kiryuin uses X-23 to kill Sutter, allowing her to become the new head of the program. When the two confronted Kiryuin over this, she dismisses their concerns and reveals to them a chamber full of incubation pods...all for subjects X-24 through 50. Desperate to keep this from coming to pass, Kinney and Risman use a letter to X-23 that tasks her with destroying the pods and killing Kiryuin. X-23 succeeds, but with her dying breath, Kiryuin exposes Kinney to the 'trigger scent' that sends X-23 out of control, killing Kinney in the process. Risman flees with X-23 from the lab complex (codenamed 'the Facility') to Japan, where she leaves her in the care of her old colleague Isshin Matoi while she herself would go into hiding, eventually landing in the protective custody of the international peacekeeping and espionage organization S.H.I.E.L.D. Isshin would raise X-23 as if she were his own, giving her the name Ryuko Matoi as the first step of trying to build a normal life for the genetically-engineered girl.

Ryuko would be enrolled at Honnouji High School in Tokyo-2, where she would befriend a fellow student named Mako Mankanshoku, the daughter and older child of her adoptive father's neighbors. Mako proves to be a good friend, as aside from Isshin she's the only one able to calm down the fiery-tempered Ryuko whenever she gets angered, especially whenever the popular girls at school teased and made fun of her. (She was also the one who encouraged Ryuko to dye a streak of her hair half-blue and half-red, as a way for her to try figuring out her own sense of style.) Ironically, Ryuko would end up saving her own tormentors when they were abducted by thugs working for Zebra Daddy, a notorious underworld figure with clientele comprised of members of a majority of Japan's yakuza clans. Donning an improvised mask made by Mako, Ryuko tracked down the thugs (as well as Zebra Daddy himself) using her enhanced senses to a dilapidated apartment complex where they were holding the girls; due to Isshin instilling in her a desire to no longer kill, Ryuko instead wounded Zebra Daddy and his goons enough to keep them immobile for the police to pick up. When the girls asked who their savior was, Ryuko 'humored' them by referring to herself by one of the names they called her at school that riffed on her short stature: Wolverine.

As Wolverine, Ryuko became something of an urban myth for her strikes against some of the more notorious gangs that populated the city. Unfortunately, her seemingly-covert activities caught the attention of Nui Harime, a sociopathic agent of the Facility who worked as Ryuko's handler under Kiryuin's orders. Nui murders Isshin to get Ryuko's attention, and the two fight it out in an abandoned warehouse, both proving to be evenly-matched. Before the fight can go any further, the warehouse is stormed by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who manage to subdue Nui. Leading the squad of agents was one of the so-called 'superwomen' of Tokyo-2's sibling city Tokyo-3, the new Captain America (secretly Mari "Illustrious" Makinami, a former Evangelion pilot for the now-defunct U.N. special agency NERV). Mari offers Ryuko the opportunity to help bring down the Facility for good, and with encouragement from Mako and Dr. Risman (who'd been consulting S.H.I.E.L.D. on the operation), she agrees, providing any information surrounding the program that created her. With that, Ryuko was able to get some closure as she bore witness to the dismantling of the Facility, which included being cured of the 'trigger scent' conditioning; she would also be taken in by Mako's family.

A year following the superwomen's thwarting of the dueling world-ending conspiracies of SEELE and Gendo Ikari (in the background of NERV's battles with the otherworldly menaces codenamed 'Angels'), during an incident where the time-traveling despot known as Kang the Conqueror temporarily trapped the Avengers (a group formed by the superwomen) in a temporal void, Wolverine was one of a number of superpowered allies of the team brought together via their 'New Avengers' protocols to defeat Kang and bring the team out of the void. Ryuko, along with the others, was then given reserve Avenger status by the team's leaders for her efforts. Ryuko would later accompany the team when a number of their members ventured into the mysterious Negative Zone in order to rescue the staff of the American-based NERV-2 facility, who had been accidentally sent there after their experiment with an artificial S2 Organ went wrong. It was there that Ryuko would meet the man whose genetic material she was created from: Colonel James 'Logan' Howlett, NERV-2's tactical operations director who also turned out to be the long-MIA Weapon X. Upon bringing the staff back to the real world and learning of NERV's disbandment, the Canadian-born Howlett opted to take an early retirement of his commission in order to get to know his newfound daughter better, as well as deal with some long-unfinished 'business' of his in Japan.

In her adult years, Ryuko, on recommendation from Avengers members Spirit (secretly Hikari Horaki, a good friend of the former Evangelion pilots) and Storm (secretly Mayumi Yamagishi, another friend of the pilots), wound up becoming a physical training instructor at the Kyoto-2 campus of the Xavier International Institute for Higher Learning. On the side, as Wolverine, she would act as an occasional S.H.I.E.L.D. operative, whose missions would sometimes find her in the Southeast Asian island nation of Madripoor, known as something of a criminal's haven in the international community. Ryuko would eventually work to cleanse the island nation of its criminal element, becoming its ruler in the process."

*Author's Note(s)*

Again, the theme for this wave is 'unsavory and antiheroic', the more crude and crass kind of characters our heroes will call upon when something drastic is required. For the Marvel half of this wave, I decided to come up with an interpretation of one of the House of Ideas' most famous yet overexposed antiheroes in Wolverine. The only difference is, I chose to forgo Logan in favor of bringing a variation on his clone, X-23, to the forefront. (She did take up the Wolverine mantle in 2015, after all.) This also let me throw a bone to a small story element of Mike313's "Spirit", specifically their take on what happened to NERV's Nevada base in the wake of the ill-fated artificial S2 organ experiment. I also threw in elements of stories like Target Xand "Old Woman Laura" from the All-New Wolverine title.

As for the anime character to use as a basis for this take on X-23/Wolverine, an inkling of this idea a while back came when I saw a still of Kill La Kill's central character, Ryuko Matoi. (And not just because both she and Laura Kinney have dyed streaks of their hair different colors.) The more I read up on the Kill La Kill mythos, the more I was able to blend characters into my take on X-23's backstory; I.E., Ragyo Kiryuin filling in for Zander Rice, Nui Harime being the story's version of Kimura, etc. Speaking of, Ryuko, in this take, definitely has her own major nemesis aside from the forces of the Facility, to further the Wolverine parallels. Let's just say a remnant of the Facility was able to make one last clone (aged a few years older than Ryuko), only for it to be taken in and 'raised' by a fugitive ex-wetworks operative named Victor Creed, another long-lived mutant. The clone, under his guidance, proves to be a thorn in Ryuko's side over the years...Her name? Satsuki Kiryuin, better known by her alias whenever she's 'on the job': Sabretooth.

Once again, the inimitable Zair-dacorus handled the visuals for the entry on my DeviantArt profile, and once again they provided some very sharp work.