Origin

Armor's real name is Hisako Ichiki. She originally came to the Xavier Institute with the hope becoming one of the X-Men. She would usually hang around her friend Wing, a mutant capable of flying. She talked to him about his choice to ask Kitty Pryde if she was "a retard" and admitted to him that she knew he had "the hots" for her. Shortly after her talk with him, Armor and her trusted friend Wing are attacked in the Xavier Institute during an assault by Ord, an alien villain from Breakworld. Ord overpowers the two and injects Wing with a mutant "cure". Luckily, they both survive.

Creation

Hisako was created by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday and first appeared in Astonishing X-Men #4 in October 2004.

Major Story Arcs

Dangerous

Although Hisako and Wing survive Ord's assault, Wing becomes depressed due to having lost his power of flight. Lost in his own sorrow and goaded by a holographic recreation of Hisako from the Danger Room, Wing kills himself. Shortly afterwards, Hisako and Kitty Pryde, her teacher and a few students find themselves locked inside the Danger Room, which had since developed self-awareness. Danger creates an image of Wing's reanimated corpse to torment and attack his friends. After the ordeal, the Danger Room's AI takes the form of a female robot known as Danger, and flees the Institute.

Breakworld

During Cassandra Nova's attempted takeover of the X-Mansion, Hisako and another student, codenamed Blindfold, are assaulted by a mind controlled Beast. Hisako defeats the primal Beast by blasting him with a wave of psionic energy, an ability which had not manifested previously, although it leaves her unconscious. After waking up, she and a brainwashed Wolverine search for Kitty Pryde, in an effort to figure out what is happening in the mansion. Wolverine is incapacitated, however, when a returning Danger crashes through the ceiling. After finding that Ord is with her, Hisako attacks, determined to avenge Wing. Wolverine, whose memory was restored after he was knocked unconscious, joins in the fight, although they are not victorious until a rejuvenated Beast arrives and incapacitates the two villains.

Immediately after witnessing the confrontation between Cassandra Nova, Cyclops and Kitty Pryde, Hisako, and the rest of the X-Men, are unexpectedly teleported to a SWORD ship where an agent, Abigail Brand, and her crew are waiting. Brand informs the X-Men that they are en route to Breakworld, where they are to prevent its leader, Powerlord Kruun, from launching a missile towards Earth. During the mission, Wolverine inducts Hisako into the X-Men, and she takes the codename Armor.

Since then, she has proven to be a valuable, and trusted member of the X-Men. Armor helps fight the Acolytes alongside Kitty Pryde, Colossus and the other students. Armor has been specifically engaging Unuscione, who has very similar powers.

Messiah Complex

During Messiah CompleX, Armor joins forces with the mutant team known as the New X-Men and goes along with them to take down the Purifiers secretly without informing Scott and Emma. Unfortunately, the New X-Men fail and their presence is detected. Armor then battles Predator X with Gentle as the creature rampages through the Institute, but is then teleported away to Muir Island with Beast and the New X-Men by Pixie, where she takes part in the final battle.

San Francisco

On Muir Island, Predator X is defeated, but unfortunately so is Professor X. After this, the X-Men decide to relocate to San Francisco. Armor is assigned to a room with X-23 and Pixie. During Secret Invasion, Armor fights off the Skrulls from San Francisco along with Cannonball and Colossus. Hisako gets a new outfit and a new hair cut. Hisako becomes a full member of the Astonishing X-men team and helps them track down a mysterious " Ghost Box", finding their way to Champaragna Beach, also known for being the place space ships go to die.

This leads them to China where Hisako and Wolverine confront a man who can fire lasers from his fingers. The man surprisingly fires lasers through Hisako's armor and shoots her through the arm. After this she receives medical attention from Beast and joins the X-Men when they confront Forge, who is behind all the insanity. After the Sisterhood attacks the X-Men, X-23 finds a scared Armor who's hiding from the villains. The two are attacked by Chimera before Pixie teleports them to safety.

Utopia

Armor is seen with the X-Men watching the news about the protests between Pro-Mutant Rights protestors and Humanity Now. Cyclops makes Hisako part of a team to defeat the Dark Avengers, and she participates in the last fight against Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers and Dark X-Men, fighting Daken with Pixie and X-23, her room-mates. She calls Daken out by calling him a jerk, then all three girls attack him at once, defeating him, which prompts Armor to simply state, 'girl power'.

Pixie Strikes Back

Hisako is thrown into the adventure of a life time when she, Pixie, X-23, Mercury go to Oakland on Pixie's euro bike. Pixie doesn't reveal her plan to them but they were supposedly going to Oakland to a secret Dazzler concert. Also invited was Ruth but she declined because she couldn't dance.

Hisako dresses smartly along with the rest of the girls as they teleport into the middle of nowhere on Pixie's motorcycle. They are soon disturbed by a local thug with a pipe that threatens to hurt them if they don't give him their money, but Pixie takes him out with her special dust . After that they then enter a demon filled club and it is discovered that Pixie had been invited to a fake Dazzler show. Everything is going fine but once they enter the stage area things go weird. The world shifts...

The four girls, with a fake projection of Blindfold appear to be attending a high school seemingly filled with demons disguised as their fellow schoolmates. The group act casual and while in the bathroom discussing lunch plans, Cessily has a melt down seeing her appearance in a mirror. We see in reality they have on their X-Men uniforms, except Ruth (who isn't really in the illusion) but the other girls are seemingly unaware of who they really are. After this they go to the cafeteria where all is seemingly calm until a jock/demon flat out calls Cessily a lesbian, grabbing the attention of Laura who then gets annoyed as he turns to flirt with her or mock her, using a line from Twilight. A fight then breaks out, but anyone can do anything the football jocks arrive. Unaware of what is going on Pixie is stabbed in the back by a demon lunch lady and fed more of her own pixie dust to maintain the illusion world.

When Pixie returns to the school illusion, Hisako appears, being chased along with Laura by a large horde of demons. Pixie freaks out because there are "demons in her school!" The area shifts and Pixie appears to be the prom queen. All at once she starts acting weird and mean to the group including Hisako calling them her "So called friends" and is upset they aren't trying to fit in. Pixie is finally stopped just after she stabs the projection of Ruth with her Soul sword giving the real Ruth pain back on Utopia. This helps the X-Men figure out where the lost girls are.

X-23 is fights Pixie's powers but it's too late and she is thrown into the basement with Mercury and Armor. They awaken from Pixie's powers and have to find a way out. Mercury helps Armor into a metal pipe and they appear to accidentally kiss. Both not mentioning the kiss or seeming to acknowledge it, they quickly switch subjects. The two girls flirt while crawling in the air shaft with X-23 in front of them.

They get out of the basement and find an unconscious Nightcrawler. They help him to the front of the building they were kept in to find that the battle is already over, with the X-Men and Pixie's newly revealed half-sisters the Mastermind Sisters victorious over the demon Saturnine who was behind it all.

Confronting Danger

Armor confronts and attacks Danger in the X-Brig, and tells her that she is not wanted on Utopia, that she needs to leave. Armor is seeking revenge for what Danger did to Wing. They battle, until Danger reveals that she sees Wing inside her program everyday, and that she is trying to learn about mutants. Armor realizes that Danger feels guilty about what happened to Wing, and agrees to teach her about mutants, starting with Wing.

Second Coming

Armor was shown in Golden Gate Bridge fighting future sentinels along side the X-Men, during the battle she is badly injured and is saved by Iceman, who is severely burned in the process. She later recovers and re-joins the fight on the Bridge, where the X-Men are victorious.

Monstrous

Armor is having a special training session with Wolverine when she receives news that her mother and brother have died. Cyclops,Emma Frost, and Wolverine accompany her to Japan in the Blackbird, where she reconvenes with her father. He appears curt and unfeeling, but Hisako gets into a taxi with him and leaves. The others stay in Japan should she need them. After the funeral and helping the X-men fight against Mentallo and his army of monsters, Hisako decided to return with them to Utopia.

Schism and Jean Grey Academy

Following the fight between Cyclops and Wolverine, Hisako was one of the many students that followed Logan and became one of the first students of the Jean Grey Institute. There she focused more on her academic life, although she occasionally ended dragged in a couple of adventures, like when she and Wolverine ended trapped into a mental illusion created by Quentin Quire.

When she graduated, she became a junior instructor for the new generation of mutants, although this led to her to clash with some of her fomer classmates like Oya. During a fight against Honest John, he controlled the Bamfs to forcefully teleport Hisako out of her armor and for a time she was unable to control it.

She assisted Kitty Pryde's X-men in some missions like fighting against Mesmero's Brotherhood or travelling through the Negative Dimension to fight against Scythian.

Dissasembled and Age of X-man

Hisako and some of the other junior X-men were on a mission with Kitty Pryde when they were ambushed by the MLF. Although the students where rescued by the X-men, Kitty ended kidnapped by Apocalypse. Hisako and her friends were frustrated by the treatment that Jean Grey gave to them, as she barely respected nor valued their past experience. This led to Hisako to assemble her classamtes and team up with Legion in stopping Nate Grey on their own.

During the confrontration against Nate Grey, Legion took the chance to trap him into a pocket dimension similar to the Age of Apocalypse, accidentally trapping Hisako, Pixie, Glob and Rockslide. As Jean seemed willing to let the students end permanently trapped and die, Bishop disagreed with her and rescued the students, although this meant that Nate would escape too. Nate then used his powers to trap all the X-men in a pocket dimension of his own and rewrite their memories.

In this new reality, Armor was part of the student body of the Hope Summers Institute and one of the top students. She discovered that Anole was part of the followers of En Sabah Nur and with the help of Glob Herman, who was immune to Nate's brainwashing, realized the truth about the pocket dimension. She and her classmates attempted to escape, but ended captured by the X-men and imprissoned. Once Nate Grey was defeated, Hisako and her friends returned to Earth.

Krakoa

Armor is one of the many mutants that joined the nation of Krakoa. She was recruited by Abigail Brand to be part of S.W.O.R.D. Hisako became one of the Six, a group of mutants who combined their powers to perform large space travels. During the first two Hellfire Galas, Hisako was one of the candidates to join the main X-men team, but she ended losing both elections.

Bishop trained her as part of the first batch of the War College, a group of young mutants trained to become war captains. Hisako and her friends were able to work together and avert an attack of Orchis led by Fenris.

Powers

Hisako's psionic armor acts as an extension of (although can be much larger than) her own body, which enhances her strength level and resistance to injury. While using her armor, Hisako has demonstrated the ability to hurl Wolverine and even assisted Colossus in restraining a small ship capable of breaking orbit from lifting off.

Her armor is generally impervious to most damage (as long as she can maintain it), but both lasers and Wolverine's claws have been shown to be able to pierce it, but he himself is unable too. Her armor is made from psionic energy, and has said it's her "ancestors", most probably meaning that's where the psionic energy comes from. It has also been mentioned that when someone with the same powers as her along her ancestry dies, then the armor grows bigger and stronger. Hisako can also release her force field into a concussive blast of energy, but it takes lot of concentration.

Characteristics

• Gender: Female
• Height: 5'4"
• Weight: 112 lbs
• Eyes: Black
• Hair: Black

Status

• Citizenship: Japanese
• Place of Birth: Japan
• Marital Status: Single
• Occupation: Adventurer, student
• Education: Various courses at Xavier Institute

Alternate realities

Earth-?

There is a possible alternate future version of Hisako in which she becomes the leader of a group of X-Men. This is revealed in Runaways when a time-displaced Gertrude Yorkes refers to a future team of X-Men led by Hisako who at that time calls herself "Iron Woman". In that future Hisako's X-Men as well as Gertrude's Avengers are decimated by the same villain, while Hisako and Gert are said to be the last survivors of their respective teams.

Ghost Boxes 1

Cyclops and Wolverine are taken out by the Annex. The Annex then open a Ghost Box and a Sentinel merged Magneto comes through and kills Emma Frost and Storm leaving Hisako the only member of the Astonishing X-Men.

Ghost Boxes 2

This is set 5 years after the Annex destroy the world. Hisako, Beast and Wolverine (who is confined to a wheelchair) are the last people on earth. Kitty Pryde apparently returns to earth and organises to evacuate it. After traveling to the evacuation point and finding out it was really a trap, Hisako breaks Beasts neck and burns Wolverine until his healing factor cancels out and dies leaving her the last person on earth.

Earth-90227 (Cyclops Committed Suicide)

In this reality, when Cyclops kills himself, she is shown with another group of X-Men. She only makes a brief appearance in this reality.

Other Media

Television

X-Men: The Anime

Hisako appears as a main character in the X-Men anime series, voiced by Yukari Tamura in the original Japanese version and Steph Sheh in the English dub. Hisako is captured by the U-Men and the X-Men must travel to Japan to save her. She manifested her powers only once in her childhood so her parents contacted with Emma Frost in order to teach her how to use her powers. In her rescue mission Emma was going to get hurt so she activate her powers and defend her.

Games

Marvel: War of Heroes

Armor appears in several cards in the mobile card game Marvel: War of Heroes. Her cards are:

• [Ancestral Power] Armor

X-men: Battle of the Atom

Armor is featured in the mobile card game "X-Men: Battle of the Atom" based on the comic book story with the same name. Her cards are:

• Armor
• [New X-Men] Armor

• [JGS Alpha] Armor