Following her rescue from Murderworld, Laura somehow ended up wandering the streets of Miami in an amnesiac state, where she was rescued from a Purifier attack by Kitty Pryde and the time-displaced original X-Men. They returned her to Cyclops's base, where she panicked upon awakening inside a Weapon X facility and attempted to flee, the situation being exacerbated by confusion over seeing younger versions of Scott Summers, Jean, Iceman, Beast, and Angel. The teenaged Scott managed to catch up with her and calm her down. Though still confused, her memories started to return. Jean began to read X-23's mind and learn about her torture, but Kitty warned Jean that this was a mind she should stay out of. Cyclops surprised X-23 with a hug, explaining that it looked like she needed one.
Based on Laura's intelligence the team launched an attack against William Stryker, Jr., which failed catastrophically and the entire team was captured, though upon recognizing them as having come from the past, Stryker refrained from killing them to prevent damage to the timeline. Laura, however, he tortured by showing her the footage from Murderworld that Arcade released to the internet, including prominent imagery of her attacking the other kids in a trigger scent-induced rage. Seeing herself in that state, and the knowledge that the entire world had also seen it, finally broke her control, and when Cyclops broke free and rescued her, she threw herself into his arms for comfort.
After the team returned to base following their escape from the Purifiers, the Shi'ar, having learned that Jean Grey had returned, attacked and took her captive. Laura fought in her defense along with the rest of the team, but was neutralized, and the Shi'ar escaped to put Jean on trial for actions her elder self-committed while in possession of the Phoenix Force.
The Guardians of the Galaxy arrived just as the Shi'ar fled, and the teams joined forces to bring her back. The Guardians' ship was attacked by a Shi'ar warship covering the kidnappers' withdrawal, and though Laura intended to join in the defense, Gamora declined her assistance, though praised her courage, leaving her and the rest of the X-Men to sit and wait. The arrival of Corsair and the Starjammers turned the tide of the battle, and the teenaged Scott was stunned and overwhelmed to learn his father was still alive. As he went to digest this in private, Laura followed after him and, after a brief conversation, returned the hug he gave her when they first met, noting that he needed it.
Upon arrival at the Shi'ar homeworld, Quill helped to formulate the plan of attack. X-23, knowing Jean's scent, volunteered to track her. However Gladiator, having anticipated their arrival, met them upon disembarking, and a fight between the combined forces of the X-Men, Shi'ar, and Starjammers against Gladiator's forces began.
Upon returning to Earth, Cyclops chose to remain with his father and left the team, asking Laura to help keep an eye on his friends. Distraught by his leaving, Laura decided to leave the team herself, with only the teenaged Warren realizing she was doing so. She rebuffed his attempt to convince her to return, however, and continued on her way. Much to her surprise, she ran into Cyclops, who claimed to have returned. However, this turned out to be a ruse, and with her guard down, the shapeshifter Raze gutted her, before disguising himself as her in turn and infiltrating the X-Men's base.
Laura, nevertheless, survived his attack and hurried back to find the X-Men under attack by the future Brotherhood. Jean used her telepathy to mask Laura's presence, and enabled her to catch Xavier, Jr. off guard, at which point she severely wounded him with her claws, breaking his control over the X-Men and enabling them to fight back. During the conflict it was discovered that Molly Hayes, Deadpool, and Beast had been mentally controlled by Xavier, and that Xorn no longer existed. While Laura fought Raze to a standstill, Xavier attempted to flee, only to be captured.
In the aftermath of the battle, Warren asked Laura on a date to unwind, to which she reluctantly agreed. Their first date led to a deeper relationship between Angel and X-23.
After Logan's demise, the news eventually reached Laura. Angry and upset and questioning her role in life now that the man she looked to most for guidance was gone, she left the X-Men to do some soul-searching. After a heart to heart with former Alpha Flight member Colin Hume, in honor of Logan, she dyed the forelocks of her hair blue and gold. Laura remarked to Kitty that she no longer felt angry about Wolverine's death, just sad, but that she had also found a source of pride in their relationship.
Laura was kidnapped by subjects of the Weapon X program as recreated by Doctor Abraham Cornelius immediately preceding Logan's death. The subjects were looking for people with healing factors to try and help them destroy the genetic time bombs in their system, and so formed the Wolverines, which consisted of Laura, Daken, Sabretooth, Lady Deathstrike, Mystique, and Elixir. Elixir was quickly disabled by Siphon, and Laura saved Daken from being killed by him although he had already been drained of his healing factor.
Their kidnappers threatened the Wolverines with "control words" of which there were four; one to control, one to sedate, one to kill, and one to release. They were told to retrieve Logan's adamantium-encased remains, but during the mission they encountered the Wrecking Crew, hired by Mister Sinister, and Daken had his left arm and eye taken from him. Laura demanded that Shogun use their healing serum to save him, since he had lost his healing factor, and she stayed by his side while he recovered.
The team fought Mister Sinister, and several of the Weapon X subjects decided to join him. Later, Fang appeared in front of the Wolverines, apparently blaming one or all of them for Logan's death, and Laura was the only one of the group to attempt to reason with him. Fang knew that Laura was not responsible and said that she was the only one of the group that Logan had actually liked, and he therefore would not mess with her in the same way he had for Daken and Sabretooth. Laura felt bound by her circumstances, but Fang asked her why she was content to sit back and let herself be controlled when she nearly took his head off for mentioning the Trigger Scent.
Following manipulation by Mystique, Daken leaped from the Changeling over Death Valley in pursuit of Siphon, and Laura followed, worried for his safety. On the ground, they encountered Blade fighting Siphon and a nest of vampires and worked together to fight them. During the fight, they learned that the more healing power Siphon absorbed, the more conscious and rational he became, and if forced to heal himself would revert further to a savage state. Siphon and Daken vowed a fight to the death, but once Daken lost the upper hand, Laura interfered to save him. This put Laura in danger of losing her healing factor along with Daken, and he stepped in, saying the duel wasn't over yet.
Daken and Blade worked together to defeat Siphon, but Laura convinced them not to kill him, since she knew he was an unwilling participant in an experiment and wanted to find a way to help him get control of his body again. Later on, Mystique disguised herself as Daken and tried to talk to Laura while she was training, but she saw through the disguise immediately.
After Endo and Skel were supposedly kidnapped by the Arcadia Group, Laura agreed to help Junk find them, "Even though you think I'm a monster." The "kidnapping" was a trap, and the Wolverines fought Mister Sinister for a third time. To save himself from an influenced Laura, Shogun released Laura from her control words. While Ogun fully took control of Sharp's body following his death and bought them some time against Mister Sinister, Mystique resumed giving orders to the Wolverines. Laura was reluctant, and suspected Mystique of foul play, but did as she was told. Laura's task was given to her to keep her out of the way while Mystique manipulated Daken into letting Siphon loose so that she could finish the final stage of her plan.
The Wolverines, minus Mystique, were left alone with Siphon. Laura was not happy to let Sabretooth get his healing factor drained and tried to interfere although it just resulted in a fight that got the entire group drained of their healing factors. Once Siphon regained his rationality from draining them, Portal removed him from the scene. They tracked down Mystique and tried to fight her. She threw smoke bombs which allowed her to trick Laura into getting close enough for "Daken" to wound her, and the entire group was felled in a similar fashion.
Sometime after taking up the Wolverine mantle and regaining her healing factor, an anonymous tip about an assassination planned in Paris led Laura to the city to investigate. She was shot through the head protecting the intended target, but healed, and tracked the shooter to the Eiffel Tower. Laura managed to defeat the masked assassin after a short fight, but rather than be taken alive the woman called in a predator drone to finish the job before jumping off the tower to her death. Laura and Warren pursued the drone through the skies over Paris, and she was able to bring it down before it could finish off its target. Laura then returned to the Eiffel Tower and located the corpse of the assassin. Removing her mask confirmed Laura's hypothesis: the woman was her clone. She and Warren fled the scene, with Laura determined to both stop, and save, the assassins.
Upon returning to New York, she visited Alchemax Genetics to discuss the clones with its director and security chief. Laura then encountered one of the clones, Gabby, hiding in her apartment, who she realized was the one who tipped her off about the assassination. Gabby denied Chandler's accusations before fleeing. Laura tracked her to a hideout in the sewers where she was captured and interrogated by the remaining Sisters - Bellona and Zelda. Alchemax, however, followed her and attacked. Laura managed to subdue them and prevent Bellona from killing them, before they were ambushed by Taskmaster. Laura subdued him, and she and the sisters fled through the streets of New York with Captain Mooney in pursuit. She disabled his vehicle, allowing the girls to escape, and issuing a warning to Mooney that they were under her protection, before leaving him bleeding in the street to meet up with the Sisters. However, upon arrival she learned a new piece of the story: the girls were dying. Unable to turn to any of her usual contacts, she instead took them to the Sanctum Sanctorum, seeking the aid of Doctor Strange.
After an altercation with a portal to evil in Strange's living room, he teleported them all to a hospital to investigate what was killing the girls. After examining Zelda, Strange discovered nanites inhabiting their brains that were responsible both for their inability to feel pain, and their declining health. Unable to operate on them directly, Strange teleported the girls to one of Hank Pym's labs to borrow an Ant-Man Suit. They were interrupted by Wasp, who agreed to help Laura enter Zelda's blood to fight the machines. They were successful, however attacking the nanites triggered a distress call alerting Mooney to their location. He tracked them down and fatally wounded Zelda before Laura and Jan were able to escape her body and subdue him. With her dying breath Zelda begged Laura to stop holding back, and to go after Alchemax. Jan offered the help of the Avengers, but Laura refused, insisting it was her and the surviving Sisters' responsibility to punish Alchemax for their transgressions.
Wolverine and the surviving Sisters allowed Mooney to escape and lead them back to Alchemax's bunker. Laura infiltrated the base by disguising herself as Bellona and allowing herself to be "killed" as a ruse. Upon awakening in the morgue, she captured the scientists there and forced them to upload all data on Chandler's activities to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s servers and contacted Maria Hill to call her in to clean up. While Bellona and Gabby dealt with Mooney, Laura intercepted Chandler and hobbled him before he could escape, ensuring his capture when Hill's forces arrived. She and Gabby then left the bunker together.
Following the destruction of Alchemax Genetics, Laura allowed Gabby to stay with her while it was decided what was to become of her. Gabby preferred to stay with Laura, however Laura intended to find a safe place elsewhere that Gabby could live a normal life, away from the chaos and danger of a superhero. Gabby's resistance and fear of being left alone dredged up painful memories of Laura's own desire to be a family with Logan; it took a visit by Squirrel Girl, who arrived bearing an actual wolverine she had named Jonathan, for Laura to realize the best place for Gabby all along was with her.
Following an incident off the coast of the United States, in which several S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives vanished while disrupting an arms deal, Maria Hill contacted Laura to request her assistance investigating the disappearances. The only clue was the wreckage of the boat the arms dealer used, and a box pulled from the water. Hill specifically contacted Laura because the first person she called in, and who also disappeared, was Old Man Logan. When Agent Fitz opened the box at Hill's direction, Laura caught the scent of its contents and realized what happened, warning Hill to pull her helicarrier to a safer altitude. However the warning came too late, and the carrier came under attack by Fin Fang Foom, who was attracted by the pheromone — a synthesized aphrodisiac — contained within the box, and likely attacked both the missing S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and Logan as well. Laura resolved to rescue Logan, and leaped down Foom's throat while his mouth was open.
While Laura climbed down through Foom's digestive tract, Iron Man and Captain Marvel arrived to assist but Hill had to ask them to avoid attacking Foom while Laura was inside; when Foom destroyed one of the helicarrier's props the two slowed its fall to the ocean. Laura managed to rescue the half-digested Logan, escaped back up to Foom's mouth, and instructed Gabby, having arrived via S.H.I.E.L.D. Flight Pack to take him somewhere safe. Meanwhile, she covered her clothing in the spilled pheromone and used it to lure an amorous Foom out to sea. Laura was distressed when she returned home that evening to discover that Gabby brought Logan there to recover, as she adamantly refused to accept that he was her Logan. However Logan awoke, and struck her speechless when he revealed that he recognized the apartment and that it was where he raised her.
Laura found herself drawn into the conflict over the precognitive Inhuman Ulysses Cain, when Ulysses had a vision that Logan would kill Gabby. Captain America was dispatched by S.H.I.E.L.D. to detain Logan to ensure the girl's safety, but Laura, Logan, and Gabby all objected to imprisoning him for something he hadn't done. However, a fight broke out after Logan fled with Gabby under the guise of collecting his belongings and cooperating, with Rogers breaking away to pursue. With Logan and Gabby escaping using a pair of S.H.I.E.L.D. Flight Packs, Hill elected to shoot Logan down before he could get away. This, combined with S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives firing on him with tranquilizers drove him into a feral rage. Gabby attempted to calm him, but in the confusion, he confused her for the Gabby of his home reality, and Laura watched helplessly as Gabby was impaled on his claws. Mad with grief, Laura tracked Logan into the sewers where he fled, still in his maddened state, and engaged him in a brief fight. Just as she was preparing a killing blow Logan snapped out of his berserk state and pleaded with her to stop, but it was only Gabby's arrival, revealing she survived her injuries because of her hidden healing factor, that convinced her to back down. However, she rejected Logan's attempt to justify his actions because of his knowledge of Gabby in his universe, and she permanently severed contact with him, demanding he leave them alone and never approach them again. She then regrouped with Rogers, advising him she was letting Logan go — she refused to blame him for his actions, accepting that he was driven to it by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s carelessness. Laura then departed, warning Rogers of the probable consequences of the conflict over Ulysses' visions and demanding that she and Gabby be left out of it.
While packing up the apartment, Laura received a package containing a vial of the trigger scent, which spurred Laura into leaving with Gabby and Jonathan the wolverine. They drove to one of Logan's cabins out in California. As Laura ventured into a nearby town, overhead planes released the trigger scent, making Laura blackout and awaken to the town destroyed with its population killed. Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. arrived on the bloody scene to apprehend her, but she escaped and planned a course to Madripoor for answers. Reluctantly, Laura brought Gabby and Jonathan along.
They voyaged to Madripoor on a pirate ship under the charge of Captain Ash, whom Laura was once sent to kill. Upon arrival, Laura turned on Captain Ash because she was transporting children as her cargo. Captain Ash suddenly shot her in the stomach, but Laura ultimately threw her overboard as several helicopters hovered overhead, out of which Kimura's newest henchmen Bellona and Roughhouse appeared. Laura surrendered in order to avoid any of the children getting hurt and was taken to Kimura, while Gabby and Jonathan were being held captive on the ship to be transported back to the States.
Using the knowledge of Megan and Debbie's location against Laura, Kimura confined her in a torture chamber for a week to ensure that she came out angry. Kimura planted the trigger scent in the bloodstream of Tyger Tiger, whose leadership Kimura would fill once Tiger died, and set a frenzied Laura after her. Luckily, an escaped Gabby intervened, and Gambit had to explode Laura in order to stop her completely. Laura woke up to see Gabby, young Warren, and Young Jean was also brought there to help erase the trigger scent's effects from Laura's mind. While telling Laura that she loved her, Gabby poured the trigger scent on herself to begin the reconditioning. As Laura lashed out at Gabby, Jean mentally found Laura's consciousness hiding with her younger self who was being read Pinocchio by her mother, Sarah Kinney, when she was still with the Facility. Jean said she understood why Laura's mind retreated to a safe memory in order to block out the pain associated with the trigger scent. Laura broke the trigger scent's control over her just in time to join the fight against Kimura and her forces, who had tracked the S.H.I.E.L.D. planes that had arrived also searching for Laura. During the battle, Laura used an old Iron Man suit to ambush Kimura and eventually drown her in the ocean's shallows. A defeated Bellona surrendered to S.H.I.E.L.D., having revealed that it was she who slaughtered the Californian townspeople with her now adamantium-laced dual claws as a contingency because Laura had stabbed herself in the skull to stop herself.
A week later, Laura, Warren, Gabby, and Jonathan arrived at Megan and Debbie's house. Warren commented that he'd never seen her more scared. Laura was embraced by her family as she reassured them of their safety and that there was no need to hide anymore.
Following their discovery of the child trafficking operation in Madripoor, Laura and Gabby began dismantling the operation by force. During one of these such raids, on the East River in New York, an alien craft was deflected from Manhattan and into Roosevelt Island by Ironheart. The vessel was carrying a very ill alien child from the Shi'ar Empire and said the name "Laura Kinney" to Ironheart before she died. S.H.I.E.L.D. sent Captain Marvel to retrieve Laura to try and understand what was going on and stop the virus the alien child was carrying from killing the whole island.
Dr. Monica Rappaccini stole the child's body from the hospital and attempted to see if she could glean anything about a possible cure from it. Laura apprehended her but agreed to let Dr. Rappaccini run some tests on Laura's reaction to the virus. Gabby, thinking Laura was in danger, destroyed Dr. Rappaccini's equipment. Working with Beast, Bobbi Morse, Amadeus Cho, Nadia Pym, Peter Parker, and Stephen Strange, they determined that Laura's healing factor could absorb and destroy the virus from other hosts.
Laura set about trying to cure the island and asked that Gabby not try to help since she couldn't feel pain and wouldn't be able to tell when she reached her limit. Worrying that she was taking on too much by herself, Doctor Strange sent in Daken, Old Man Logan, and Deadpool to help spread out the workload. She was surprised that Daken would come to help, and he said that he wasn't doing it for the island, only her. Deadpool, meanwhile, said he had been offered a gigantic amount of money.
Although Laura was reluctant to talk to Logan at first, he apologized for what had happened during their last encounter and Laura told him that she was glad he was sorry. Although they were both weak from absorbing so much of the virus, he said it still felt pretty good to be helping people instead of stabbing them. Laura managed to eradicate the last of the virus on the island, although she was unconscious for two weeks after doing so.
Once she regained consciousness, Gabby told her that they had been offered an apartment on Roosevelt Island. Laura said she didn't accept rewards, but Gabby said that she had already accepted the offer and that technically it was her apartment, although she'd love to have Laura stay with her. Captain Marvel came to see Laura and let her know that a cure to the virus was being developed, and Laura said she would take the cure to the Arfesia's planet to try and eradicate the virus entirely with the help of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
After a week of space travel, they reached a moon on which a Shi'ar base was being constantly swarmed by The Brood. Once they landed on the moon, Gabby, Jonathan, and Baby Groot stayed behind on the ship while Wolverine and the Guardians tried to make contact with the moon base. Gabby became enraged after the Brood attacked Jonathan and was subsequently captured. Drax prevented Laura from going after Gabby, believing that she was dead, and she and the Guardians entered the base, where Fang was waiting for them.
Arfesia had been sent to Earth with a list of names, including those of the scientists that had eventually developed the cure for the virus. She had only been able to give Laura's before she died. The virus had been engineered to try and control the Brood but had backfired and not only made the Brood angrier, but infected the Shi'ar people as well.
Laura insisted on going after Gabby, and even when she saw her turn into a Brood Queen, refused to let the Guardians destroy the moon with her on it. After Gabby's healing factor purged the Brood Queen and everyone was safely off the planet, Laura asked Rocket if he could still blow up the moon. Rocket said he could do it at the click of a button, and at the protests of Chief Scientist Rankine, Gabby did the honors.
Laura and Gabby were made aware that Daken's left arm had been found hanging from a bridge, and a scent left at the scene led Laura to believe that he had been taken to the Facility. Sneaking out of the apartment and asking Jonathan to look after Gabby, Laura got Warren to fly her out to the Facility. She found a tank in which a figure was submerged and smashed it, believing it was Daken. Instead, it was her mother, Sarah Kinney.
Laura took Sarah to Debbie and Megan's house, and Gabby met her there with Jonathan. Sarah claimed that someone had saved her after Laura had left her in the snow outside the Facility, and stored her in a tank. She told Laura that whoever it was that had saved her was looking for a way to kill the Wolverines, and Laura called Carol Danvers to ask her to throw the Muramasa Blade into the Sun.
Hearing gunfire, Laura ran from the house and saw Daken recklessly driving a car down the street. Confused at the lack of people pursuing him, Daken came inside with Laura, but was acting agitated, saying that he had been tortured for days by the Orphans of X and had seen them monitoring this house.
Daken was suspicious of the timing of Sarah's sudden return from the dead. At Laura's mention of Sarah's regular heartbeat, Daken aimed a gun at her, and, not hearing a change and concluding that she was not human, shot Laura's mother. This caused Laura to attack Daken, and Gabby and Megan to follow suit. He tried to explain that it wasn't Sarah, but Laura refused to listen until she knelt beside Sarah and her eyes started to glow green, saying that the Orphans of X were coming for her. Laura called Captain Marvel to call off her pursuit of the Muramasa Blade, but she was too late to warn her and suicide bombers from the Orphans of X incapacitated Carol, and the Blade was retrieved by Amber Griffen.
Laura, Daken, Gabby, Jonathan, Megan, and Debbie called Danger, the AI and pilot for the X-Men, and she helped them to evade helicopters sent by the Orphans. Realizing that Madripoor would not be safe for them, Laura instead asked Danger to take them to Tokyo, after which they travelled through the sewers to get to Muramasa himself.
Once there, Muramasa forged a set of armor using pieces of Laura, Gabby, and Daken's essence as well as the piece of Logan's that he already had from forging the Muramasa Shield. Laura was reluctant to rest afterwards, but Debbie insisted on keeping her in bed. Days later, the Orphans of X found them, and Laura was able to put the Muramasa Armor to the test, using it to protect her family from the Hand, who had been employed by the Orphans, as well as the Orphans themselves.
Daken allowed himself to be captured and killed so that Wolverine and Honey Badger - which was Gabby's new superhero name at his suggestion - could track his location to find the Orphans' base. Laura was able to revive him along with Old Man Logan, Lady Deathstrike, and Sabretooth. Wolverine asked that Sabretooth and Deathstrike not kill anybody, and they questioned the last Orphan conscious, who told them that they were the families of the Wolverines' victims. They had decided to come together in organized violent action after the incident on Roosevelt Island, because they were sickened by the sources of their nightmares being hailed as heroes.
Laura learned that Henry Sutter, who she had spared from assassination while she was still an assassin for the Facility, was the one who had organized the group. She decided to talk to the Orphans directly and help them see that she was a victim as well. As she talked, she shed the Muramasa Armor and explained what she had been made to do. She also revealed to Amber that Henry Sutter's father had been the one that ordered the hit that collaterally killed her father. The Orphans of X took a vote and decided to accept the help of Wolverine, Honey Badger, Old Man Logan, and Daken to bring the real people responsible to justice.
After Laura recovered from the wounds she sustained during the confrontation, a funeral was held for Sarah Kinney. Daken had helped to arrange it by asking the Orphans for Sarah's true body, because he wanted Laura to have a chance to say goodbye.
After Gabby didn't return from taking Jonathan for a walk, Laura tracked her down and found that she and Deadpool had started to destroy the lab where Jonathan had been abused. Gabby said she didn't call her because she was worried that Laura would try to stop her, but Laura assured her that she would have come. Together, they set the building alight and watched it burn.
After going over the files Henry had obtained about his father's work, Laura discovered a connection from Martin Sutter to a lobbyist for a Neo-Nazi organization named Chad Newman. Newman was the man who had targeted Greg Johnson on X-23's first mission and was therefore indirectly responsible for the death of Amber's father. Laura advised that Amber pack a pair of extra-large Nazi-stomping boots on their trip to Vanatu to find Newman. Amber took this advice to heart, and when they tracked him down, she offered to lend Laura the right foot so that they could get their justice together.
Sometime following her encounters with the Orphans of X, Laura became embroiled in the investigation into Logan's missing corpse purely by chance when she encountered a team led by Iron Man and consisting of Spider-Man, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage. Stark's team and Laura were both independently investigating the auction of genetic material by Mr. Sinister aboard his submarine.
After breaking up the auction and escaping the floundering vessel, Laura joined the other heroes in pursuing Sinister to his research base in the Kerguelen Islands. There they discovered that Sinister was compiling an enormous database of genetic material from everyone on earth.
Stark's interest in Essex's work caused a brief conflict with the rest of the group as they debated how to proceed; Laura and the others wanted to destroy the installation immediately, but Stark saw potential in what Essex had compiled. However, any further debate was silenced first by a handful of guards, and then the discovery that not only were mutants missing from the database, but someone else had beaten them there and wiped out the majority of the defenses.
They eventually discovered the location of the missing mutant information at another terminal, which was heavily encrypted. Stark observed while decrypting it that the mutant database had been recently copied, and again came to a disagreement with the rest of the team, who insisted they honor a wish by Logan to prevent his body from ever being used. Their debate was interrupted again when Sinister himself attacked, though weakened by the previous attack the team made short work of him. Sinister made a final appeal to Stark — scientist to scientist — to see the potential, but Stark relented upon remembering Logan's own appeal to be better than that and destroyed the database.
Back in Harlem, Laura noticed that Stark had been watching her since their escape from Sinister's base. She confronted him, and Stark admitted that before the database had been destroyed, he had decrypted and looked at the data, and that Laura's gene file was one of the files he had seen. Stark then told Laura that she was not a clone of Logan after all and asked her about Sarah. Taken aback, Laura related Sarah's role in her creation, and that she viewed her as her mother. Stark then told her when he looked at her file, he noticed that a substantial amount of her genetic makeup came from Sarah, making Laura her biological daughter, as well, leaving her stunned by the revelation.
After her time with Jean Grey's X-Men. Laura gave up the Wolverine moniker and returned to her X-23 codename. She specifically chose the name — which she had long come to hate — as a symbolic warning to those she was hunting that their own creation was coming for them.
Laura and Gabby, with the help of Hank McCoy, began to track down people who were involved in the cloning of Laura and subsequent projects. At the same time, Gabby became fixated on the idea of a birthday after learning the Cuckoos celebrated one. For their birthday the remaining three Cuckooss had planned to bring their two sisters back from the dead. Because their psychic powers were incompatible with the cloned bodies they constructed, Esme transferred her consciousness to a kidnapped Gabby, hoping to utilize her healing factor. Meanwhile, Sophie, whose body's destruction had been accelerated by Esme, contacted Laura psychically and offered her assistance.
When Mindee came to find Laura, Sophie persuaded her to their side, and they drove to the X-Mansion to face the others. In the midst of the fight between Laura and Esme, Mindee slipped into the mansion to use Cerebro, and together with Phoebe and Celeste, they trapped her in the psychic plane after being removed from Gabby. Later on, Gabby invited some X-Men friends to their apartment for a 'funeral party' for Esme, which included cake and party hats.
In the reality created by Nate Grey and a Life Seed, a world where everyone on Earth was a mutant and relationships were strongly discouraged or illegal, Laura became a member of that reality's X-Men, the primary response team to all matters of worldwide threats and danger. She unknowingly replaced Bishop on the X-Men after he was arrested by Department X for having a forbidden relationship with Jean Grey, and all traces of his existence were erased.
Nate Grey's illusion didn't take long to show some glitches and Laura started seeing glimpses of her past life with Gabby, during one of her first missions with the team. After talking to Nate about it, he confessed she had indeed a sister, but shoved it aside, claiming they all made sacrifices.
She remained with the team for a while, but her suspicion that something wasn't right never went away. After finding Bishop's secret armory in her place and talking with the other X-Men about it, the assembled X-Men began to plan how to confront their teammate. Although they had developed a peaceful approach to confront Nate, tensions spilled over at their meeting and the X-Men attacked him head on.
Nate soon revealed his involvement in the creation and maintenance of the reality, and the physical and mental toll it was taking upon his body. While revealing the truth, members of the X-Tracts and the Danger Room prison (that included Gabby) attacked the gathered group, forcing the X-Men to protect Nate until matters could be sorted. After a brief skirmish, Nate revealed images of Cyclops and the other remaining mutants from the mainstream reality, using the images to highlight the pain and suffering caused by their relationships with one another and humanity, and taunting each of them with some fear or insecurity, with Laura attacked over a deep-seated fear that she could never escape Logan's shadow. Jean insisted that their bonds with others were what made them who they were and that they needed to be able to make mistakes together. After some discussion over what they were returning to and the ramifications of dismantling this reality upon its inhabitants, the X-Men eventually all decided to leave the manufactured utopia and returned home.
Later, Laura became one of the inhabitants of the nation of Krakoa. She teamed up with Psylocke and young Cable in investigating the new threat of Apoth.
Not long after, she resumed using the Wolverine codename and was picked along with Darwin and Synch to go into the Vault in Ecuador, as she was one of the few mutants who could survive the temporal disparity. As soon as the three entered the Vault, they seemed to lose contact with the X-Men, and because time moves much quicker inside the Vault, the trio were presumably stuck within for centuries.
During their first day, while engaging the Children of the Vault in battle, Laura killed Serafina and Fuego. After seeing her teammates killed, Aguja angrily killed herself by projecting a force field that destroyed everything around her in an attempt to kill her foes.
However, Wolverine recovered with her healing factor, as did her teammates. The team then spent 100 years inside the Vault gathering intelligence on the Children and learned that the City could resurrect any Children that were killed through cloning in order to continuously evolve them. Wolverine and Synch also became romantically involved. After Wolverine and Darwin were captured, Synch, who couldn't rely on Wolverine's longevity powers anymore, fled the Vault for a week and returned 100 years having passed. He managed to rescue Wolverine, but Darwin was killed by the City in order to learn how to create a new generation of Children. The couple then attempted to leave the Vault, but Wolverine had to stand behind to hold off the Children while Synch fled outside. Synch was also eventually killed by the Children but managed to make telepathic contact with X and ensure everything he'd learned about the Vault was passed onto his resurrected form. Wolverine and Darwin were also resurrected, but neither had the memories of their time in the Vault, leaving Synch with the burden of remembering their time together all alone. When Laura was resurrected, due to Proteus' mistake, her skeleton was made with adamantium.
During the inaugural Hellfire Gala, Laura and Ev were announced as members of the newest X-Men lineup. As members of the new team, they moved to a techno-organic Treehouse in Central Park, and it didn't take long for the team to have to protect the world from exterior threats: one by the Mind Reaver in Manhattan, the other by the Annihilation Wave in Kansas. This was the work of the intergalactic crime lord Cordyceps Jones who had been running bets on who could destroy the Earth first on his casino Gameworld.
Under the Facility, Laura was raised to be a living weapon and treated as a tool, with only her mother Sarah Kinney and her sensei treating her with kindness. Being forced to kill them under the influence of the Trigger Scent was a deeply traumatic experience for Laura, who internalized a deep sense of self-loathing and guilt. Without a healthy outlet for her depression, she began cutting herself with her claws - a habit that continued well into her teenage years, and was also prone to outbursts of extreme rage and violence similar to her father's. For much of her life, Laura struggled with her self-loathing and the belief that her past as an assassin made her unworthy of being an X-Man. Another source of angst for her was whether she could be considered a real person and had a soul, as she had been raised to believe she was an imperfect clone of Wolverine.
With the support of Logan and the rest of the X-Men, Laura was slowly able to work towards overcoming her traumas -- best seen when she cast aside her Facility-assigned codename of X-23 and took up the mantle of Wolverine after Logan's death; rejecting Kimura's attempts to gaslight her by affirming her identity as Logan and Sarah's daughter.
