Ms. Ichiki can draw psionic strength from her ancestors. She uses this power to generate a sort of energy exoskeleton around her. This translucent, segmented armour is nearly impenetrable. However, maintaining her exoskeleton is tiring and she likely cannot remain armoured up for more than an hour or so.

Wolverine’s primary Adamantium claws can pierce Ichiki’s armour, but his fist cannot go through (and there’s enough clearance between Armor’s body and her psionic carapace for the claws not to cut her open too badly).

Armor’s psychic exoskeleton grants her superhuman strength - likely in the thirty-to-fifty tons range. She can probably lift most armoured vehicles, but is not comparable to a “Class 75” brick. Her strength seems to have improved over the years - early on she was probably closer to a twenty tons lifting ability.

Armor ’floats’ in the middle of her virtual power armour. Since she has survived impacts including atmospheric entry and planetfall, the inside of her carapace is likely filled with some sort of inertia-dampening field. Hisako also demonstrated remarkable pain resilience while armoured up, and it seems likely that being armoured somehow increase the durability of her organic body.

Armor stated that she could expand her field to protect somebody else if she strained hard enough. It wasn’t dactually demonstrated (except in a simulated reality), but the statement was almost certainly true. In game terms, Pushing (DCH) or Extra Effort (DCA) are probably sufficient in the absence of further information. Note that the shell doesn’t seem to expand from her body, but rather appears around her - so she could almost certainly hug somebody then manifest her exo to protect herself and the hugged person.

Armor can alter the appearance of her exo, but this is mostly cosmetic. She’s been manifesting short, mostly decorative claws on the “gauntlets” and often add details to the “helm” such as stylised horns and, later on, stylised eyes - she occasionally forms simple versions of traditional mempo patterns.

With time she learned to manifest longer and sharper claws, which are essentially a replica of Wolverine’s - though adjusted for the size of her shell. By 2010 these claws have became an actual combat asset and slashing weapon - and can even be extended to more than a metre in length. Though the latter is not a practical combat length, the claws elongate with her full force - so she can put her shell’s fist against something and snikt through.

Armor has also learned to manifest lighter boots and gloves for melee combat practice - these extend a centimetre or so from her skin and are much slimmer than her full armour manifestation.

An incident involving the legendary Muramasa blade indicates that Armor’s exoskeleton is built of memories - hers and her ancestors’. What this actually means is unknown, but the blade reacted to Armor’s shell very differently than it would react to a physical or even energy construct.

Growin’ up

Armor’s shell can assume a larger size, but actually doing so is not something she has much control over yet. In 2006 she reflexively assumed a mecha-sized form without having an idea how, and the strain made her pass out within seconds.

When her mother died, Armor gained a considerable influx of ancestral psychic energy that make it possible, with extraordinary effort, to assume a Gojira-sized form. This is a terrible physical and psychic strain, and Armor can seldom do this - though it can be maintained for several minutes if she’s in the right emotional state. The giant-sized Armor is incalculably strong, and was able to defeat Fin Fang Foom in a straight brawl - though the immense dragon was psychically controlled and thus much diminished.

Not only is the giant form very difficult to manifest and stressful enough to knock her out, but it is chiefly useful to fight kaiju. Hisako lacks experience with operating as a being of that size, and seeing things smaller than a tank is probably quite difficult, especially with the stress.

Armor once saved the crashing Blackbird by lying on the deck (effectively hugging the airplane) and manifesting the giant version of her exo around the plane, though she then passed out from exhaustion.

Skills

Ichiki is a natural at brawling, especially when armoured up, and Wolverine is confident that she’s a talented fighter. She’s good enough to engage in superhuman melee fighting, or spar full-contact with Logan. It is possible, but never mentioned, that this martial talent is also psionically derived from her ancestors. Wolverine has been training her in the martial arts for several years now, presumably picking a hard-hitting Japanese style to teach her (Shorinji kempo, maybe).

Though she has a poor opinion of her academic skills, Hisako is actually an excellent student who has been learning a lot from the Institute’s intensive education program. She’s particularly interested in astrophysics, aerospace engineering and chemistry and will likely become a scientist and/or engineer. Armor has also dutifully studied all sorts of archives kept by the X-Men, from their old cases to their old training footage.

Armor is training to master the Fastball Special. It’s harder than it looks - Wolverine is not an ideal projectile.

History

Ichiki Hisako, a teenage Japanese mutant, came to the USA in the early 2000s to study at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning in upstate New York. At that point, the Xavier Institute was openly recruiting young superhuman mutants to give them an education that covered all the usual subjects - plus training in the use and mastery of mutant powers, in self-defense, and in superhuman combat.

Hisako’s parents likely sent her there since it was one of the very few places in the world where a young superhuman mutant could obtain some guidance and training from specialists. Since Miss Ichiki already spoke perfect English and knew a lot about American culture, it is likely that she and/or her parents had an interest in living in the US for years. From context it seems that Hisako had a very uneasy - but not hostile - relationship with her father and was uncomfortable with her position as a girl in Japanese society.

What the Ichikis may have underestimated was the danger inherent to residing at Xavier’s. During her studies, Hisako was confronted by the alien warrior Ord, who had broken into the Mansion looking for the X-Men. She tried to repulse Ord with limited success, but did manage to save her fellow student and best friend Wing, whom Ord had injected with a mutation-neutralising compound.

Despite Hisako’s efforts and friendship, Wing later committed suicide in the Danger Room over the loss of his powers.

Wing’s tragic death sparked the resurgence of a hostile sentience within the Danger Room. During the next attack, the student body took refuge in the Danger Room as per normal procedure, and the hostile AI threatened and battered them. Miss Ichiki assisted the only teacher present, Ms. Pryde, and none of the students was killed.

Despite this success and being a product of the harsh Japanese educational system, Hisako came to feel that she was a failure at the Institute. Her grades were not high enough and she was scared of Wolverine, one of the combat teachers - especially after he turned out to speak perfect Japanese as he overheard her swearing about him in frustration.

Decimation

In late 2005, the Scarlet Witch erased the vast majority of the world’s homo superior mutations, seemingly leaving but a few hundred mutants planetwide. Hisako retained her mutations, but the global situation of mutants suddenly degraded. Whereas mutants had recently picked up momentum and were becoming culturally and politically more influential, their much reduced ranks made that unsustainable. Anti-mutant ideologues and other bigots seized the moment and worked to finish mutants off once and for all.

Sensing where this was all headed, Emma Frost decided to drastically reduce the number of students at the Institute. To her, keeping them there was simply offering a tempting concentration of targets to anti-mutant extremists. She opted to set up a battle royale to determine which were the most combat-capable students - the ones who could help defend the Institute against attacks. Much of this surprising methodology was motivated by prior trauma when previous charges of hers, the Hellions, had been slaughtered.

Hisako was still standing at the end of the fight, yet she wasn’t on Frost’s shortlist. The Japanese youth felt very bad about it - especially since she grew certain that the students closest to Frost had been unfairly favoured.

Most of the students who had to leave boarded a bus within days of the battle royale, but Miss Ichiki wasn’t among them — presumably since returning to Japan required extra preparation. This likely saved her life - the bus was shelled by the Purifiers, Reverend William Stryker’s organisation. Most of the students aboard were killed ; the final death toll was 42 dead. Fifteen of those had to be buried at the Mansion since the parents refused to claim the corpses.

The security conditions being worse than anticipated, further preparation was needed not to turn the students and ex-students into targets. Nevertheless more students were murdered by the Purifiers. It is unclear how long Hisako was supposed to say at the Mansion, but her education continued normally and she was seen preparing for chemistry exams - implying that she expected to be there for several months. It might also imply that she wasn’t welcome back in Japan.

During this period she was among the young students kidnapped by Belasco as he searched for Illyana Rasputin, but she returned to Earth unharmed. Hisako also participated to an ill-fated retaliation strike against the Purifiers led by student Surge (Noriko Ashida), during which student Hellion (Julian Keller) was nearly killed. Ichiki further helped repulse a Predator-X attack on the Mansion.

Break on through

In 2006, Cassandra Nova took psychic control of Emma Frost, who in turn telepathically buried various X-Men within their worst fears. Being one of the few students present, Ichiki was trying to soothe fellow student Blindfold, who was in pain from the ambient psychic backlash. The two young women were attacked by an animal-like Beast, who also hunted a child-like Wolverine. As she tried to repulse Beast, Hisako instinctively made her armour grow to a larger size, scaring him off but knocking herself unconscious.

Though scared out of her gourd, Ichiki never froze and took generally correct actions during the whole crisis. Beast and Wolverine soon regained their normal personality.

The X-Men rallied and turned the table against Nova despite the harrowing circumstances. A recovered Wolverine took Ichiki with him to ambush further attackers - Ord and Danger. Armor performed excellently in the brutal melee, though she was wounded when Danger used Wolverine’s claws to slash her. Wolverine staunched the wound, though he had to leave her to deal with the pain and shock on her own.

Ord’s attack was a part of an ongoing interplanetary crisis. The S.W.O.R.D. agency was attempting to contain it and hurriedly teleported Ord, Danger, the X-Men and the nearby Ichiki onto one of their spaceships as it was rushing toward the Breakworld. Without any warning, the bewildered student thus found herself in space on a ship full of aliens and soldiers trying to contain a dire emergency.

Given the lack of options Hisako Ichiki was made a provisional X-Man and temporary S.W.O.R.D. deputy, given a spare uniform, and was placed under Wolverine’s authority - as he had a good track record with young protégée like Hisako.

The job began poorly as their ship was shot down and Logan and Hisako crashed on Breakworld. Though the student was scared and wanted to talk, Wolverine curtly told her to butch up and spare him the whining, as he considered her a capable fighter after seeing her in action. Greatly bolstered by these words, Hisako spontaneously picked “Armor” as her X-Man codename.

During the complex Breakworld crisis, Armor performed excellently as one of the heavies on the team. In the wake of the case, she saw that Wolverine had been devastated by the sacrifice of Kitty Pryde to save the Earth. Armor forced him out of his funk by punching him in the face and letting him work through his sorrow and sense of loss through full-contact sparring.

Earth’s cry Heaven’s smile

Wolverine vouched for Armor, who joined the main X-Men team - Cyclops, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Storm, and Beast. She served along with them in the battles that surrounded the birth of the first mutant since the Scarlet Witch’s spell, and fought the similarly-powered Carmella Unuscione. Being the strongest member on the team she also practiced the Fastball Special with Wolverine, which she had seen in archived training videos.

In 2008, Armor was part of the team as it investigated the mystery of the Ghost Boxes, then went to China as they investigated Jian, a lost mutant city. Between missions she continued her intensive training regimen with Wolverine, improving her fighting techniques and learning to function as his partner - both as a fighter and as a scout.

During the Skrull invasion of Earth, Armor fought in San Francisco along with the full X-Men contingent until the Skrull army there was forced by the mutants to destroy themselves. She later accompanied Cyclops and a small group of X-Men attempting to capture Norman Osborn’s Wolverine (Daken), but he ambushed them and managed to escape.

Utopic

In late 2009, partially in reaction to the Norman Osborn-directed security regime in the US, Cyclops (Scott Summers) arranged for the creation of an island off the San Francisco coast - a refuge for mutantkind. The island, called Utopia, was run by his X-Men. When Osborn’s “Dark Avengers” invaded, Hisako and her roommates (Pixie (Megan Gwynn) and X-23 (Laura Kinney), two former students also considered to be active X-men) informally formed the “girls power squad” and defeated Wolverine (Daken).

In 2010, Hisako could no longer stand seeing Danger on the island, as she still blamed the artificial lifeform for the death of her friend Wing. She confronted Danger in its basement, wanting to beat it up and convince it to leave. During the brawl, Armor realised that Danger was actually guilt-ridden over Wing’s death, though it had no way to frame its feelings. She gave up on trying to oust it.

Armor was part of the counterstrike against the mad genius Kaga, then part of the team that investigated the situation with superpowered newborns in M‘bangawi. During this engagement she fought a small squad of powerful Fury cyborgs, though even her strength couldn’t lastingly damage these.

Hisako also continued to serve in the larger battles for the survival of mutantkind. When Bastion and the Purifiers sent from the future endless waves of Nimrod-class combat androids to kill the “mutant messiah” (Hope Summers), Armor was among those who fought the desperate delaying action in the San Francisco area to prevent extermination. She was still standing at Logan’s side to witness Hope manifesting the Phoenix Force to destroy Bastion.

Days later, Hope’s energies restarted global mutant births, saving the species. Hisako missed this, though as she was recovering in the sick bay from the stress and battering received during the battle.

Death in the family

Armor was recovered by the time the mutants got into a war with Xarus, son of Dracula, and his vampire army. Cyclops had her join a force that would frontally engage the vampire army, along with other fighters who were nigh-immune to vampire bites. This unit was successful, destroying dozens of vampires attempting to storm Utopia.

A short time after this battle, Hisako was among those ambushed and poisoned by a sort of giant spider-squid from another dimension, but she and other captives collaborated to lend their powers to Rogue, who destroyed the monster.

During the Spring of 2011, Hisako lost her mother and brother in a car accident. To her surprise and relief Cyclops, Emma Frost and Wolverine accompanied her to Japan. Meeting with her father was difficult due to the man’s stony-faced behaviour and Hisako’s tangled conceptions of what her father expected from her - and shortly after the funeral itself a mind-controlled Fin Fang Foom attacked Tōkyō.

To her father’s consternation Hisako had to leave the ceremony despite his orders, and successfully engaged the immense dragon downtown after expanding her armour to the size of a skyscraper. Armor and the other X-Men then flew to Monster Island to take down the dragon’s controller, Mentallo.

Though Armor dreaded confronting her father after running from the funeral, he had changed his mind when he saw his daughter fighting to defend Japan, and welcomed her back.

Like everybody on Utopia, Armor was caught for a week in a fake reality created by one of Legion’s personality - though subjectively the experience in this horrible world lasted for a lifetime. Though Armor suffered less than others in this fabricated world, she requested to have the memories of it psychically removed since the experience was making her paranoid. Apparently, most Utopians also chose to have the horrible memories from their fabricated life in this fake world removed.

Armor also fought during a failed invasion of Utopia by the Neo, and the return of the Evolutionaries hours later.

Schism

After a huge rift appeared between Wolverine and Cyclops about the policies for young superhuman mutants, Armor and everybody else had to pick a side as to which mutant community to join. She went with Wolverine and relocated to the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, back where Xavier’s mansion used to be.

There she chiefly concentrated on her studies, as her team - Cyclops/Emma Frost/Wolverine/Beast/Storm - had utterly disintegrated during the big split of the mutant community in the US.

Hisako continued to practice her unarmed fighting skills with Wolverine, regularly sparring with him at the crack of dawn. During one such session, the powerful psychic and renegade student Quentin Quire mentally trapped them in another fabricated reality - a run-down utopia loosely comparable to an atompunk setting such as Fallout, and using elements from similar video games and comics.

In this reality, Hisako and Logan were an impoverished couriers operation transporting sensitive goods. They soon realised that the world around them was wrong, but Hisako had a harder time collecting herself as some of the enemies in the “game world” wore the face of her brother and she was unable to determine why it was so distressing for her. The fabricated reality eventually burst after a lengthy loss of control by Quire, and Armor and Wolverine woke up.

Description

Hisako usually dressed conservatively, like a dutiful Japanese student. After being made an X-Man she wore her own, slightly customised X-Men black and gold uniform. By the time she settled on Utopia, she was wearing modern Californian outfits.

Her English is completely fluent, with little in the way of an accent and a full American range of turns of phrase - one would think she has lived her entire life in the US. She’s even familiar with kid shows such as Sesame Street, though she presumably watched it as a kid in Japan. However, large swathes of her body language and facial expressions are more typical of a young Japanese female.

Though I’m too old to accurately assess the age of teenagers, I suppose she’s about 15. Get offa my lawn. Beside, her apparent age in the art varies considerably.

Hisako is not very big - her height/weight in this entry has been reduced slightly from official values to better match the art (and particularly Wolverine’s height). She often seems to be slightly underweight.

Personality

(Hisako’s characterisation is markedly different between Ellis and Fraction. The characterisation described therein is the Whedon/Ellis one.)

Hisako was originally a well-meaning, polite teenager, though slightly clumsy socially and intimidated by adults. She joined the school wanting to become a real X-Man and join the badasses on the A-list, but as she started getting exposed to the horrible, confusing, ultra-violent crises that marked the life of the X-Men she got scared and convinced she did not have it in her to be a part of such an awful existence.

When she accidentally ended up on Breakworld and was ’deputised‘ as an X-Man, everything changed. Suddenly the dreaded, legendary Wolverine was telling her he wanted her on the team after seeing her fight, and to just toughen up and soldier on. In those few instants Ichiki went from being a scared but level-headed student to being an X-Man.

Hisako is a cell phones enthusiast and Twitter aficionado, though she doesn’t let these distract her from her academic and paramilitary training. She’s a very serious student, and as a result is much more knowledgeable about the world than her less focused cohorts, such as her friend Pixie.

Armor has occasional bursts of eccentric behaviour - making out-of-the-left-field jokes with weird references, suddenly acting like a particularly tough and articulate adult for no discernible reason, becoming overwhelmed and more passive than she normally is or on the contrary treating a crisis as an exciting adventure where she gets to make all sorts of flippant remarks, etc. She might be a bit nuts.

She also seems to have a complicated relationship with her father - which might be largely of her own making. When her mother and brother died she immediately experienced survivor’s guilt and assumed that her father would have preferred if she had been the one to die - which simply wasn’t true. From a latter bit of dialogue one gets the impression that Hisako has always felt guilty of being just a girl. This might explain her low self-opinion (for instance about her school grades) and why the approval of a father figure like Wolverine or Cyclops had such an impact on her.

勇婦

Hisako wants to be a super-heroine like some kids want to become idoru or soldiers ; in fact to her it seems to be some sort of blend between the two. She has an idealised vision of the “job”, and though she’s not quite sure what she’s doing, she’s fairly certain she has to act heroic, save lives, be super-cool and the like. She’s well aware that being a super-hero is *big*, though she’s not quite sure about the details.

As a result, Hisako enjoys the cool bits of the situations she’s deployed in - all the crazy stuff with ghost boxes, bio-sentinels, the Brood, etc. can scare her to an extent, but she generally finds it all awesome. However, a lot of her references are from popular fiction rather than personal experience, and she can react to some situations as if they were fictional.

Though it’s not always clear due to her youth and lack of experience, Ichiki seems to have a genuine warrior nature, and to be on the same wavelength as Wolverine when it comes to the bushido. It’s too early to tell, but she seems to have the right stuff - especially if properly directed and focused.

For now this is haphazard, though - sometimes she acts like a normal teenage girl, and there are sudden bursts where she seems to be channeling a mix of Toshiro Mifune and Sonny Chiba. This description might be close to what is actually happen - it is possible that her ancestors have something to do with those moments where Hisako acts much tougher and more intimidating than she usually is.

Since her vision of super-heroine-dom is influence by Japanese pop culture, she considers her code-name to be vitally important - it’s her brand. She chose it in the heat of the moment on Breakworld, and though it’s the most precious thing she has she wonders all the time if that’s the right code-name and whether she should change it. The importance of the ’Armor‘ name to her is comical, and her team-mates tend to gently rib her when she rambles about it and incessantly wonders whether she should change it and whether it’s cool enough.

Hisako eventually decided to accept her generic-sounding name just like Sesame Street’s Big Bird had decided that Big Bird was his name after all since nobody else was named Big Bird. This out-of-the-left-field explanation involving a kids’ show was thought puzzling even by her closest friends.

Note that Armor wants to be a heroine, not a mutant adventurer - she wants to respect strict moral standards, help people, behave in a fair manner, save lives, etc. rather than run around specifically defending her species.

身内

Hisako enjoys trading one-liners and friendly ribbing on her mentor Wolverine, and they are frequently roasting each other. This appeared as soon as Wolverine made her an X-Man, as a way to mark equality between them - though while still on Breakworld she also continued to call him “sir”. Those exchanges are frequently amusing, though outsiders may be surprised to see a teenaged girl making fun of the big bad Wolverine - and vice versa.

A recurrent theme is Hisako calling the highly athletic Wolverine fat because of all the beer he drinks. This strange choice seems tied to Miss Ichiki being irrationally concerned about her weight despite being skinny.

She’s also close to the Beast (perhaps in part due to her interest in the sciences), with whom she also trades teases - once mock-threatening to shave obscene kanjis into his fur in his sleep if he continued to sing so badly. It is entirely possible that those frequent bouts of ribbing and mocking remarks are her way to keep a high natural aggressiveness under control.

By contrast, she is polite and respectful with all the other teachers and team members - particularly Emma Frost. Hisako and Emma have buried the hatchet as Frost came to appreciate Ichiki as a capable warrior and operative… though Armor is a bit grossed out when the former White Queen makes remarks that are too sexualised for her taste. By 2010, Frost started making frequent comments about Ichiki’s discipline as a foot soldier, perhaps to compensate for her previous attitude.

Hisako tends to become quiet when there are multiple people talking, especially if they are adults.

Generally speaking, she has become one of the boys just like that - in part because she helped a lot in filling the void left by Kitty. Though this has gone unmentioned in order not to reopen painful wounds among the team, this dynamic is fairly obvious. Hisako’s youth, personality, intelligence and toughness allow everyone but Piotr not to have to face the hole of Kitty’s absence every day, and beyond her own qualities she is appreciated by the adults for that.

Writeup updated on the 31st of August, 2012