Armor

Unfortunately, Armor never quite stuck and was under-used by other writers. Which is a shame since she’s cool.

This profile includes S P O I L E R S about X-Men stories from 2004 to 2014.

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Ms. Ichiki can draw psionic  strength from her ancestors to generate a psychic exoskeleton  around her.

This armour isn’t composed of conventional energy. Its reaction to the Muramasa blade indicates that it is somehow made of memories.

Hisako’s segmented virtual armour is nearly impenetrable using conventional means. Wolverine’s Adamantium  claws can pierce it, and since it is translucent lasers will pass through it.

However, maintaining her exoskeleton is tiring and she likely cannot remain armoured up for more than an hour or so.

Armor’s psychic exoskeleton grants her superhuman strength in the 30-to-50 tons range. She can lift most armoured vehicles, but is not comparable to a “Class 75” brick .

Early on she was probably closer to a 20 tons lifting ability but that progressed with age and training.

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Armoured

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 demonstrated superior pain resilience while armoured up – apparently the exoskeleton increases the durability of her organic body.

Armor can slightly alter the appearance of her exo . She’s manifested short decorative claws on the “gauntlets” and often adds 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 Wolverine-like claws. By 2010 these claws have became an actual combat asset and slashing weapon, up to a metre a length. She can extend these claws with her full force – for instance when putting her fist against an obstacle then going snikt.

Armor has also learned to manifest lighter boots and gloves for sparring. These extend a centimetre or so from her skin and are much slimmer than her full armour manifestation.

Growin’ up

Armor’s shell can greatly grow in size.  She first reflexively performed this in 2006, but this so surprised and exhausted her that she passed out within seconds.

When her mother died, the influx of ancestral psychic energy made it possible for Armor to assume a Gojira-sized form. This represents a terrible physical and psychic strain, and Armor can seldom do this. Howbeit it can be maintained for several minutes if she’s experiencing particularly intense emotions.

The giant-sized Armor is incalculably strong. She was able to defeat Fin Fang Foom in a straight brawl – though the immense dragon was psychically controlled and thus much diminished. However it is chiefly useful to engage kaiju . Being that tall is disconcerting and Hisako has trouble seeing things smaller than a tank, especially since the giant form is so stressful.

Armor once saved the crashing Blackbird by hugging the deck and manifesting the giant version of her exo around the plane, then passing out from exhaustion. She has stated that with extraordinary effort she could expand her armour to protect a person she’s hugging.

Skills

Ichiki is a natural at brawling, especially when armoured up. 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 that this martial talent is also psionically  derived from her ancestors.

Wolverine has been training her in the martial arts for several years, presumably a hard-hitting Japanese style such as Shorinji kempo .

Hisako is an excellent student who greatly benefited from the Institute’s intensive education program. She’s particularly interested in astrophysics, aerospace engineering and chemistry. Armor has also dutifully studied the X-Men’s vast archives, including hundreds of past missions and hundreds of hours of Danger Room training footage.

By 2013 she is capable of building a little gadget generating a small protective force bubble, though a good chunk of the design was done by a friend.

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

History

Ichiki Hisako was born circa 1989. She developed superhuman mutant powers at puberty. Her parents apparently decided to send her to the US, where tutors could be found for mutants, as soon as it would be reasonable. While still in Japan Hisako intensively studied American English and cultures, quickly becoming fluent.

Part of her interest in moving abroad may have been her unease with the position of women in Japanese society, and her awkwardly distant relationship with her dad.

During the early 2000s, the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning publicly announced a curriculum for young mutants, covering the usual academics plus training in mutant powers and self-defense. Hisako successfully applied. Though the girl felt awkward, stressed out, homesick, scared of Wolverine and a poor student, she actually excelled in her studies.

The school wasn’t as safe as the Ichikis hoped, though. In 2004 Hisako ran into the alien warrior Ord. Though her efforts to repulse him met with but limited success, she saved the life of her best friend, fellow student Wing (Eddie Tancredi).

However and to Hisasko’s horror, Wing later committed suicide as Ord had permanently robbed him of his powers.

Wing’s death was part of the awakening of the Danger Room. It became the artificial lifeform Danger. Danger arranged for an attack on the school, and as per procedure the students found refuge within the Danger Room.

There, Danger used the room to terrify and batter the students. Miss Ichiki assisted the only teacher present, Ms. Pryde, and none of the students was killed.

Decimation

In 2005, the Scarlet Witch shut down the powers of most mutants in the world. Though Hisako wasn’t directly affected, this crippled the emergence of a mutant culture and political community. Homo superior was suddenly back to being a small embattled minority, and anti-mutant bigots seized that opportunity.

To avoid presenting a big tempting target, Emma Frost decided to only keep the best fighters among her students and send the rest home. She set up a battle royale to decide who would stay.

This irrational initiative resulted from the trauma caused by the slaughter of her Hellions years before.

Though Hisako was among those still standing at the end, she wasn’t selected. She felt furious, as it was obvious to her that those students closest to Frost had been unfairly favoured.

The rejected students were bused out a few days later. Hisako wasn’t on the bus, though. Presumably, returning her to Japan couldn’t be arranged that quickly. This likely saved her life, as Reverend William Stryker’s Purifiers shelled the bus.

42 students were killed, and 15 had to be buried at the Mansion as the parents refused to claim the corpse.

The faculty took further measures to protect the current and former students – but the Purifiers nevertheless murdered more pupils. For unknown reasons Hisako resumed her studies at Xavier’s, and was clearly expected to spend at least months there.

Miss Ichiki was among the schoolkids kidnapped by Belasco as he searched for Illyana Rasputin, but she returned to Earth unharmed. She 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. Hisako also helped repulse a Predator-X attack against the campus.

Break on through

In 2006, Cassandra Nova mentally attacked the faculty. Ichiki was trying to soothe fellow student Blindfold, who was hurt by the psionic backlash, when they were attacked by a bestial Beast (Dr. Henry McCoy). The Japanese student beat back then scared Beast away, but passed out from the strain after having reflexively enlarged her psychic armour.

Though scared out of her gourd, Hisako remained capable and collected. Wolverine thus had her assist him in ambushing Ord and Danger. She performed remarkably well, but was wounded when Danger used Wolverine’s claws to slash her. The Canadian staunched the wound, but had to leave Ms. Ichiki deal with the pain and shock alone.

The law enforcement S.W.O.R.D. had been trying to placate Ord to prevent an interplanetary conflict, and had to move in. They teleported all belligerents — including Hisako — aboard a starship rushing toward Ord’s native planet Breakworld in the hope a brokering a last-ditch peace there.

Mutants in space

Given the lack of options, the bewildered Hisako was made a provisional X-Man and deputised by S.W.O.R.D.. She was given a spare X-Men uniform and paired with Wolverine, who had a good track record with young protégées.

The duo’s shuttle was shot down, though they both survived. Hisako was scared and wanted to talk, but Logan curtly told her to butch up and that he knew that she had the spirit and fighting skills to handle the situation. Bolstered by these words, Hisako spontaneously claimed “Armor” as her X-Men codename.

Armor performed excellently during the complex Breakworld crisis. When the team returned to Earth, Hisako noticed that her mentor had been devastated by the loss of Kitty Pryde. She responded by punching him in the face to let him work through his grief and anger through full-contact sparring.

Earth’s cry Heaven’s smile

At Wolverine’ recommendation, Armor joined the main X-Men team – Cyclops, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Storm, and Beast. She fought in the battles that followed the birth of the first mutant since the Scarlet Witch’s spell, once clashing with the similarly-powered Carmella Unuscione. Being the team’s brick, she practiced the Fastball Special with her mentor.

In 2008, Armor was part of the team as it investigated the mystery of the Ghost Boxes. They 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. She later accompanied Cyclops and a small group of X-Men attempting to capture Wolverine (Akihiro), but he ambushed them then escaped.

Utopian

In late 2009 Cyclops (Scott Summers) arranged for the creation of an island off the San Francisco coast – a refuge for mutantkind. This isle was called Utopia and run by his X-Men. When Osborn’s “Dark Avengers” invaded, Hisako and her roommates (Pixie (Megan Gwynn) and X-23 (Laura Kinney)) informally formed the “girls power squad” and defeated Wolverine (Akihiro).

Danger had joined the X-Men on Utopia. In 2010 Hisako cracked and confronted the murderer of her friend Wing. As they fought, the Japanese student realised that Danger was guilt-ridden over the death of Wing, but had no way to understand or express her feelings. With this realisation, Armor gave up on trying to chase Danger away.

Armor was part of the counterstrike against the mad genius Kaga, then part of the team that investigated the newborn warpies in M’bangawi.

When Bastion and the Purifiers summoned endless waves of Nimrod-class combat androids to kill the “mutant messiah” (Hope Summers), Armor was part of the force fighting a desperate delaying action to protect Hope and San Francisco.

At Logan’s side, Hisako witnessed Hope manifesting the Phoenix Force to destroy Bastion. Hope then made mutant births possible again, but Hisako missed this as she was being hospitalised after the battle.

Death in the family

Armor continued to serve Utopia. When the mutants warred against Xarus son of Dracula, Cyclops formed a special unit out of mutants that couldn’t be bitten, which included Hisako. Armor and her comrades were victorious, destroying dozens of vampires as they tried to storm the island.

Mere days later she was ambushed and poisoned by a sort of giant spider-squid from another dimension. 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. Cyclops, Emma Frost and Wolverine accompanied her to Japan – to her relief, as she had no idea of what she was supposed to say to her stony-faced dad and what he expected from her. Shortly after the funeral, a mind-controlled Fin Fang Foom attacked Tōkyō.

Hisako felt obliged to leave the ceremony despite her father’s orders. She defeated the dragon in downtown Tōkyō after expanding her armour to the size of a skyscraper. Armor and the other X-Men then flew to Monster Island to take down Mentallo, who was behind the attack

Though Armor dreaded confronting her father, he had changed his mind while watching her fight a 怪獣 to defend Japan, and welcomed her back.

Schism

Legion (David Haller) then took over Utopia. This lasted for a week, but all islanders were plunged in a fake reality where they experienced a whole alternate life. Armor suffered less than most in this fabricated world, but like most Utopians she had these horrible memories psychically deleted.

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

In 2011 a grave rift appeared between Cyclops and Wolverine about their policies for young superhuman mutants. Everybody had to pick a side, and Armor joined Wolverine’s new venture, the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning.

The field team she had worked with (Cyclops, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Beast, Storm) disintegrated during the mutant schism. Hisako refocused on her studies rather than field work. Still, she continued her crack of dawn sparring sessions with Logan.

During one such lesson, renegade student Quentin Quire trapped the pair in a simulated reality. This was a run-down atompunk dystopia inspired by his favourite video games such as Fallout. In this reality, Hisako and Logan were an impoverished couriers operation transporting sensitive goods.

Logan and Hisako quickly realised that their world wasn’t real. Yet the youth had a harder time to orient herself. Many of their enemies wore the face of her brother, whom she knew was important to her but that Quire’s power prevented her from identifying.

Quire eventually lost control and Wolverine and Armor got out.

Recent years

In 2012 Armor was part of the X-Men forces fighting the Avengers ; she engaged Giant-Man (Dr. Henry Pym) in the Arctic. However, when it became clear that the Phoenix Five had been corrupted by the Phoenix Force, Armor and Pixie were among the mutants who were ordered by Storm to leave and stay clear of the Five. They returned to Wolverine’s school in upstate New York.

In 2013, Armor assisted Ms. Pryde and other students in repelling an intrusion by the primordial microlifeform Arkea. She also attempted defend the school against Supergiant and Corvus Glaive, but they and their Black Order detachment overran the X-Men there.

After this crisis was over, Hisako and her fellow student Bling! (Roxanne Gilbert) teamed up for a personal technology project to protect Shogo Lee, the baby adopted by Jubilee (Jubilation Lee). The baby pendant they built could generate a force bubble around Shogo, and saved the baby mere minutes after they gave it to Jubilation.

In 2014, Armor was recruited in the teenage army assembled by the Young Avengers to take on Mother, a parasitic entity that adults were unable to perceive as a threat. She also graduated and started working at the Jean Grey School as a T.A..

Description

Hisako originally dressed conservatively, like a dutiful Japanese student. After being made an X-Man she wore a slightly customised X-Men black and gold uniform. By the time she settled on Utopia, she was wearing modern Californian outfits. At the Jean Grey School she’s usually wearing a typical school uniform.

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, which she presumably watched it as a kid in Japan.

Still, much 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

(These notes describe a merged Whedon/Ellis characterisation of Hisako. Due to the number of writers handling X-Men characters, Armor’s characterisation has been chaotic. Some of her appearances (particularly those written by Fraction) thus do not match the material below.)

Hisako was originally well-meaning, polite, slightly awkward and intimidated by adults. She joined the school wanting to become a real X-Man and a A-list badarse, but actually experiencing the awful crises afflicting the X-Men made her reconsider this wish. She no longer thought she had it in her to face *that*.

However, having the dreaded, legendary Wolverine telling her to shut up and fight as his trusted partner turned Ms. Ichiki from a scared student to an X-Man.

Hisako is a serious, hardworking student. She thus knows a lot more about the world than her less focused friends, such as Pixie. She is also a cell phones enthusiast and Twitter  aficionado, but doesn’t let that interfere with her studies and training.

Her relationship with her father has been complicated, but most of these difficulties are self-inflicted. 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.

One also gets the impression that she felt that her gender was disappointing to her dad. This would explain why she reacted so strongly to the approval of male authority figures such as Cyclops and Wolverine. Mr. Ichiki apparently didn’t mind having a daughter, but was so inexpressive that the uneasy Hisako assumed the worst.

勇婦

Hisako wants to be a super-heroine like some kids aspire to becoming soldiers or aidoru  – she seems to see it as a blend between the two. She has an idealised vision of the “job”, and strives to act heroically, save lives, and be super-cool.

Being a super-hero should be big, though she’s not quite sure about the specifics. But she knows that she wants to be a super-hero saving the day for everyone, not just a mutant adventurer defending her species.

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, but she generally finds it all awesome. Since most of her references are from popular fiction rather than personal experience, she can react to some situations as if they were fictional.

Hisako is a teenager and her personality isn’t sharply defined yet. But there are sudden burst where she behaves like a hardened samurai who’s on the same bushido wavelength as Wolverine. When she does that she seems to be channelling a mix of Toshirō Mifune  and Sonny Chiba .

It is possible that these moments are inspired by the psychic energy of her ancestors, making her much tougher and more intimidating than her usual self.

Her codename is super-important to her. It’s her brand, her identity, her face. She endlessly wonders whether the codename she impulsively chose on Breakworld is cool enough. Hisako’s constant hesitancy on the matter is comical, and her team mates often tease her about it.

She eventually decided that, while “Armor” was generic-sounding, that was also true of Big Bird  in Sesame Street – and Big Bird had decided that Big Bird was his name after all since nobody else was named Big Bird. While even her closest friends were puzzled by this odd pronouncement, she seems satisfied with her conclusions.

身内

Hisako enjoys trading one-liners with and taking the piss out of her mentor Wolverine. Logan responds in kind, and their mutual roasting is often quite amusing. Outsiders may be surprised to see a teenage girl making fun of the big bad Wolverine.

Through these quips, Hisako affirms herself as a full X-Man and a warrior, and as Wolverine’s friend. It also seems possible that she has a high natural aggressiveness and defensiveness, and that this is her way to keep these under control.

A recurrent theme is Hisako calling 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.

Armor is also a friend of Beast, due in good part to their shared interest in the sciences. They also occasionally mock each other. Hisako once mock-threatened to shave obscene kanji in Beast’s fur while he slept if he didn’t stop his horrible singing.

By contrast, she is polite and respectful with all other X-Men and faculty – particularly Emma Frost. Hisako and Emma have buried the hatchet as Frost came to appreciate Ichiki as a capable warrior and operative – though Frost’s constant sex jokes obviously sound icky to Ichiki. Frost often compliments Ichiki for her discipline, perhaps to apologise for her previous attitude.

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

Armor became part of the core X-Men team just like that. Everybody needed to have her fill the hole left by the loss of Kitty Pryde. As her teammates finished grieving Kitty and the X-Teams’ social dynamics went through major changes, she ended up sidelined just as fast – though the team continue treating her as a star student and former comrade in arms.

Quotes

(After disobeying Wolverine’s orders not to save civilians) “Have you looked the word ‘superhero’ up ? Like, googled it or something ?”

“Seriously, I need a better name. Magical Armor Girl X ?”

“You’re giving me crap about ‘Armor’, but this thing’s called the X-Plane ? Do we have an X-Mobile too ? Yes ! That’s what our new base is called ! The X-Cave !”

Cyclops: “Armour up, Armor.”
Armor: “See, this is why my codename sucks. You wouldn’t say ‘Wolverine up, Wolverine’, would you ? Maybe I should just be ‘X-Girl’. ‘Armour up, X-Girl’. That’s better. ‘Beat up Wolverine, X-Girl’.”

“Logan keeps making fun of ’Armor‘. I’m really tired, Dr. McCoy. He says that if my name’s ‘Armor’, then his name is ‘Claws’ and Ms. Frost’s name is ‘Brain’ and Ms. Rogue’s name is ‘Suck’.”

(Catching a burning Wolverine after he was blasted away by a Sentinel) “So how’s the whole ‘I’ll just run up the monster and be the stabby hero’ thing working out for you ?”
Wolverine: “Shaddap, tiny.”

(As things go bad) “That was not my fault ! It’s not like I said ‘what could possibly go wrong now ?’ or anything like that !”

Cyclops: “Armor, you’re up first. Secure the entry point.”
Armor: “Yessir.” (to Wolverine) “Me : important. You : fat.”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: X-Men books.

Helper(s) Tiago Quintana, Mike, Chris Cottingham, Frank Murdock, Ethan Roe.

Writeup updated on the 3Oth of April, 2014.