Allegiance or death,
Q-384
Intelligence and Records Division

Name: Laura Kinney
Known Aliases: X-23; Laura Arcane, Mistress of the Unknown; Fang the Unconquerable; Silent Emerald
Place of Birth: "The Facility", Fourth Ward, Omega
Date of Birth: May 1, 2320

Species: Human (see below)
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 184 lbs.
Eyes: Green
Hair: Black

Physical Description:
Laura Kinney is a human female who appears to be in her late teens or early twenties. Slightly below average height and slender, she has black hair (which she customarily wears long), striking green eyes, and pale skin. Her taste in clothing runs to dark colors (apart from a fondness for brightly colored socks), simple styles, and sturdy materials.

Biographical Notes:
Of all the founders of the Magnificent Ten, none is more mysterious today than the assassin Thomas Logan (aka Logan the Furious, 1830?-2357), whose exact origins were unknown even to his colleagues and whose many secrets presumably perished with him. From the notes of Zangetsu the Scribe, we know that he was born on Earth long before Contact, that his innate superpowers stemmed from a genetic variation, and that because of those powers he was the subject of a 20th-century military experiment.

We also know that Furious Logan had no known descendants - at least, not directly. The woman now known as Laura Kinney began life as the 23rd attempt made by a GENOM Black Operations team, operating out of an installation codenamed "The Facility" on Omega Station, to clone him. Since they were working from a damaged sample of Logan's DNA, they had great difficulty developing a viable subject; only when one of their researchers hit on the idea of combining the intact parts of the Logan sample with her own genome, creating an individual who was essentially their offspring, did the attempt succeed.

Weapon X-23 was raised in an environment of absolute emotional sterility and trained from the earliest possible opportunity to be a perfect, and perfectly obedient, killing machine: a goal which our own Childhood Acclimation Project has demonstrated is not so attainable as it seems on paper. Even so, they might have succeeded but for the intervention, in 2335, of an individual our Historical Reconstruction Department is now 95.57% certain was the fugitive ex-Wedge Defender Benjamin Hutchins - none other than the future Chief Gryphon of the IPO himself. Details are extremely hard to come by, but it appears that Gryphon arrived on Omega in the fall of 2335 searching for Largo and found X-23 instead. Whatever happened thereafter, it ended with the Facility reduced to a radioactive pockmark in Omega's hull and Gryphon absconding with X-23.

She next appears in the record on New Snowdonia, where Gryphon evidently left her in the care of Furious Logan's estranged half-brother, Sir Victor Creed. Under the name of Laura Kinney, she joined the local Girl Guides regiment, graduated salutatorian of the Philip Wilding High School Class of 2337, and generally conducted herself startlingly like a normal person, given her background to that point, if you disregard the unconfirmed reports of superhero activity in Greater Llanfairpwll at the time.

Then in 2341, after earning two degrees from Ynys Môr Regional College, she departed the planet with a pack on her back, a few credits in her pocket, and no fixed goal or destination. There is a record of her having told someone later in life that, before leaving her on New Snowdonia, Gryphon had advised her to "grab [her] life with both hands," and over the next seven decades or so, she proceeded to do exactly that. The manifest of her careers in that time reads like a rundown of an entire high school class's plans after graduation.

To take a random but representative sampling, she's worked as a firefighter/EMT on Meizuri, a motorcycle cop on Nova Italia, and a salvage diver on Caledonia; been Giovanni Zatara the Elder's lovely assistant Laura Arcane (Mistress of the Unknown); operated a boulangerie-pâtisserie in the XIVème Arrondissement of Paris; taught chemistry at a public high school on Concord Dawn; played accordion in a Newfoundland folk-punk fusion band; and led the elite corps of ninja teppanyaki chefs at the Ninja World theme park on Tomodachi. We believe she may also have studied art at the Atelier Georges Laplace during her time in Paris, audited lectures on architecture on Londinium Prime, and played semiprofessional billiards on New Brisbane.

We know all this because, as far as the Research Division has been able to determine, she has never once employed an alias or attempted to hide in any way. During the period from 2350 to 2360 alone, various GENOM splinter groups made no fewer than 27 attempts to recapture her. The list of company assets destroyed in the retaliatory raids can be found in Appendix A. Ultimately, GENOM's highest management levels - some say the Master of the Company himself, Maximilien Largo - decreed that no further company assets were to be expended and the matter was to be permanently dropped. Oddly, this seems to have coincided with her move to Tomodachi. Our best guess is that Largo preferred to avoid the possibility of open war with the Shiranui Heavy Industries and Ninja Company Combine, operators of the Ninja World theme park, where she was employed at the time.

Kinney's first open clash with Big Fire, or rather the organization that would ultimately become Big Fire, unsurprisingly came when her path crossed that of Furious Logan in 2356 on Earth. Much of this incident is available on film, as he struck while she was performing as a magician and escapologist under the stage name "Fang the Unconquerable". No doubt the audience member with the video camera thought it was part of the show. This file is available in Appendix B. Suffice it to say that her stage name was well-chosen. It was their only meeting; Logan perished the following year in circumstances that had nothing to do with her.

Fig. 2 Fang the Unconquerable. Detail from a poster advertising
a double bill with The Amazing Psylocke, Mistress of the Mind, at
the Royal Albert Hall in 2372.

One thing we do not know is why, if she has such a long-standing connection to Chief Gryphon, she did not seek him out upon his well-publicized return to this dimension and exoneration in 2380, nor when he founded the IPO, nor on the occasion of any of the several calls for special agents he's made since then. Instead, she maintained her habitual pattern of spending five to seven years in one place, living in a particular way, and then moving on to a completely new milieu. This doesn't seem to be restlessness, per se, but more a propensity for living in the moment - obeying the whim of the Great Magnet, to use Raoul Duke's words. Since she is known to have studied Duke's philosophy, this is perhaps not surprising.

At any rate, as far as we can determine, her path never once crossed Gryphon's between 2335 and last year, when, for reasons we're also still unsure of, she turned up in New Avalon. We have unconfirmed reports from Q-NA that she was involved in some kind of incident involving significant IPO mobilization in early November, but nothing official has ever appeared in any of the channels we have access to and no further details have turned up.

Known Documented Qualifications:
- Bachelor of Arts, Philosophy, Ynys Môn Regional College
- Bachelor of Science, Chemistry, Ynys Môn Regional College
- Honors Graduate, Woody Creek Survival Academy
- Bachelor of Professional Studies, Baking and Pastry Arts, Culinary Institute of America
- Master of Science, Organic Chemistry, Pacific Institute of Technology
- Master of Education, Secondary Science Education, Concord Dawn University
- Starship master's certificate, Republic of Corellia
- Offshore Salvage and HAZMAT Aquanaut, Vega Sector Crown Colony Health and Safety Executive
- Certified EMT-P (Aero), DocWagon International
- Cavaliere del Ciclone, Nova Italia Arma dei Carabinieri

Other Titles and Awards:
- Gold Dragon Ranger, New Snowdonia Council of Girl Guides
- Lifetime Member, Galactic League of Illusionists and Escapologists
- Member, Interstellar Federation of Stunt Performers
- Jônin, Ninja World Teppanyaki All-Stars
- Corellian Bloodstripe First Class for Valor
- Distinguished Service Medal, Nova Italia Carabinieri

Tactical Briefing:
Laura Kinney possesses a genetic anomaly that gives her a remarkable facility for regenerative healing. She can recover from even serious injuries in minutes, shrug off traumas that would put a normal person into fatal shock, and has even spontaneously self-resuscitated following full cardiac arrest. It's unknown whether anything can truly kill her, though she does take longer to recover the more serious and numerous her injuries are. Her healing factor also renders her effectively immune to poison and disease, and she has not seemed to age since reaching full growth.

In addition, her senses are preternaturally acute, particularly her hearing and sense of smell. This gives her a facility for tracking and situational awareness which is hard for even cybernetically augmented individuals to match.

Kinney is equipped with six bionically actuated blades, two in each forearm (which extend through the backs of her hands in use) and one in each foot. These blades are made of the nigh-indestructible exotic alloy adamantium and can cut through nearly anything. In addition, we have reason to believe that she recently underwent the Weapon X process, by which the subject's entire skeleton is laced with adamantium. If this is true, she is only the second person in the galaxy known to have survived the process, which is highly traumatic but leaves the subject with effectively unbreakable bones.

Coupled with her extensive training and experience, these abilities (even if the Weapon X report turns out to be false) make Kinney one of the most accomplished and deadly hand-to-hand combatants known. She is known to be conversant with at least a dozen martial arts, more than half of them at a level that could be considered mastery, and is always looking for more. She also has extensive training in small unit tactics, tracking, infiltration, espionage tradecraft, small arms, defensive and security technologies (and the circumvention thereof), and survival/escape/resistance/evasion techniques. She was designed to be, and effectively is, a commando, spy, saboteuse, medic, and combat engineer all at once - a one-woman army corps. Whoever it was at GENOM who had the shockingly limited vision to consider this creature useful only as an assassin should have been - and ultimately, probably was - stabbed.

Personality Profile:
NOTE: This profile was assembled by the Psychology Unit using the results of Class D ("soft/covert") interrogations of people who have known the subject in her various lives since the file was originally opened in 2379.

Bred to be the ultimate "smart" weapon, Kinney possesses a quick and agile mind to go with her finely honed, nearly indestructible body. Her genius-level intellect, originally intended to absorb nothing more than ways of killing, getting into position to kill, and escaping after the kill, has instead been turned to... well, just about everything else, really. She's always open to learning new skills and is generally quite good at them once she does.

Though most of the various jobs and educational paths she has pursued have had nothing to do with conflict, she has given much thought to what might be called the philosophy of violence, initially in an attempt to make sense of the first 15 years of her life and then as a way of exploring and enhancing her own ethical understanding of the universe. Though never formally trained in the Asagiri Katsujinkenryû, she has studied the writings of that form's masters from Tetsuo Asagiri and Talar Kem to Gryphon intently, and fully taken on board the philosophy of satsujinken, katsujinken (the essential dichotomy of swordsmanship as viewed by the Asagiri, perhaps best translated as "the sword that kills is the sword that saves").

That principle, along with another piece of martial philosophy often espoused by Chief Gryphon - Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparat bellum (Vegetius: "Therefore whoever desires peace, let him prepare for war") - forms the backbone of Kinney's view of herself and her place in the cosmos. Though built and trained to be a weapon, and never shy of battle, she fights on her terms or not at all. She carries in her pocket a card with the words of Miria Fallyna Sterling, WDF Academy Class of 2001, meticulously calligraphed on the back:

We do not fight because we hate, nor because we wish to control. We do not kill for killing's own sake. We fight because we love - love life, love freedom, love decency. We kill so that others may live, free from oppression, terror, and pain.

A quiet, self-contained woman of few words, Laura Kinney can seem cold, stand-offish, perhaps even borderline autistic to those who don't know her well. Though capable of great presence - she has worked as a stage magician and a musician, after all - she still finds it difficult to interact with most people on a direct personal level. Or perhaps she simply doesn't see the point in sociability for its own sake. On the other hand, with those she deems her friends, there is no one better at the companionable silence, she's an outstanding listener, and she is fiercely, selflessly loyal. It is safe to conclude that her air of restraint comes of carefully controlling deep and powerful currents of emotion, not from their absence.

Present Whereabouts and Disposition:
Though Kinney recently moved to New Avalon and evidently re-established contact with Gryphon, there are no indications at this time that she has joined, or is even interested in joining, the IPO. She lives in the Claremont district, not far from the boundary with Salutown, and works as an artist for the Bacon Comics Group, providing inks and colors for Piotr Rasputin and Phil Moyer's work on Rahne Sinclair's Valkyrie Adventures and Gryphon's Furies. She also moonlights as a test rider for the motorcycle division of the Avalon Small Arms Company, a job in which it tends to be helpful to have unbreakable bones and a talent for shrugging off soft tissue injuries.

Recruitment Prospects:
Zero. Seriously, the historical record is very clear on this point. Everyone who has ever attempted to force this woman to do anything is dead.