Neena ThurmanDomino

The Hand She Was Dealt

Neena and Thurman fell in love and eventually married. However, their relationship was short-lived after a raid by A.I.M. forced the scientist into even deeper government cover, and his superiors told him that Domino had been killed. She left the NSA and returned to her mercenary ways. On a mission in El Salvador, Domino disabled a prototype combat droid codenamed Jericho with an electromagnetic pulse, unaware that the machine was being neurologically controlled by rogue CIA agent Ekatarina Gryaznova and that the resultant feedback left the operative comatose. Later, Domino joined the Wild Pack (subsequently renamed the Six Pack) led by the mutant soldier Cable (Nathan Summers). When a mission in Uruguay went awry after Cable was forced to place his own needs above those of the team, Domino and her allies barely escaped with their lives.

Domino was captured by Tolliver (who was secretly Cable’s estranged son Tyler) and had his agent Copycat (Vanessa Carlysle) impersonate the mercenary in his father’s new X-Force team. Held prisoner for more than a year, Domino was freed by Cable who tasked her with finding and protecting the missing X-Force. Domino sought help from her old Six Pack teammates Grizzly (Theodore Wincester) and Hammer (Eisenhower Canty), eventually reuniting with Cable (who had already found X-Force) and the remaining members of the squad, but all opted to not work with Cable again, whom they could not trust.

Cable later asked Domino to help train X-Force and she joined the team as co-leader. On the eve of Earth being overlapped with Reality-295 during the Age of Apocalypse, Domino and Cable confessed their true feelings and kissed. After reality was restored, Domino helped Cable restructure X-Force before investigating a series of murders committed by a feral Grizzly, who forced her to kill him. Domino agreed to share a psionic link with Cable as a sign of their mutual trust. Later, Domino and Cable received a call for help from former Six Pack teammate Garrison Kane and discovered him with Copycat. The emotion-manipulating Psycho-Man made Domino attack Copycat, whom she already resented for her role in her year-long captivity, after which he kidnapped the mutant shapeshifter to the Microverse. Domino, Cable, and Kane teamed with the Micronauts to oppose the villain.

Domino soon learned Milo Thurman was alive when Donald Pierce and his cyborg Reavers captured him to gain his alleged prophetic abilities through cybernetic conversion. Domino was forced to kill Thurman to defeat Pierce's plans. Domino was then asked by G.W. Bridge to help prevent S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Danielle Moonstar from being exposed by the government’s Operation: Zero Tolerance. Moonstar was undercover acting as a member of the Mutant Liberation Front (MLF) who had taken control of a medical research center they believed was engaged in anti-mutant research. Posing as a camera crew, Domino, Sunspot (Roberto Da Costa), and Siryn infiltrated the facility, unaware that Zero Tolerance forces had discerned their true identities. After being assaulted by Prime Sentinels, Domino was captured by their commander, Ekatarina Gryaznova, and a neural inhibitor was planted at the base of her skull that created a synaptical static which caused her reflex and reaction times to become increasingly erratic. Seeking to overcome the device’s effects and reclaim her fighting prowess, Domino left X-Force, broke up with Cable, and returned to her mercenary ways.

She was later contacted by mutant Jesse Aaronson, who sought her help in finding his brother. In exchange, Aaronson offered to reveal Gryaznova’s whereabouts and took Domino to the Aguilar Institute in California where she was captured by her old foe, now calling herself Gryphon. Aaronson turned to X-Force for help rescuing his ally and then used his technology disrupting power to deactivate Domino’s implant, after which she defeated Gryaznova.

Subsequently rejoining X-Force, Domino quit when Pete Wisdom offered to turn the team into a proactive black ops unit. She was later possessed by the Undying alien Aentaeros who sought to use her to kill its rival Semijan. However, Cable intervened and forced Aentaeros to release Domino. She drifted back into freelance work and took an assignment that marked her as a target of mutant assassin Marcus Tsung, who killed her. She was soon revived by alien technology grafts, then turned to X-Force for help in defeating Tsung. Wisdom’s sister Romany had the alien tech removed from Domino to create a techno-organic world engine, then sent British mutant Corben to kill X-Force. But he failed, and the team confronted their tormentor. The engine was destroyed in an explosion that seemingly killed all of X-Force except Domino, though the others soon resurfaced.

When Domino discovered Project Armageddon was still active, she infiltrated the base and was shocked to find that she had a younger brother named Lazarus. The Armajesuits, led by Domino’s mother Beatrice, arrived to kill Lazarus to prevent his mutant emotion-controlling ability from being used to destroy civilization. However, Domino defeated them and left Lazarus with the same priest that had cared for her as a child. Domino soon joined Xavier’s X-Corporation in its Hong Kong branch where, with the X-Men’s help, she hindered John Sublime’s Third Species mutant organ harvesting movement. After learning that mutants were being executed in a concentration camp by Malcolm Colcord's clandestine Weapon X program, Domino and Cable formed an underground resistance, working with the traitorous Weapon X agent Brent Jackson to depose the organization’s depraved director. Domino was later recruited by Bridge to join a new S.H.I.E.L.D. incarnation of the Six Pack in investigating Cable after his powers increased markedly and he began affecting change on a global scale. After Cable lobotomized himself to control his powers, the Six Pack tracked him to a Swiss safehouse where they became trapped in his mind. After Cable was healed and the Six Pack freed, Domino helped him oppose and defeat the ancient mutant-devouring Skornn entity. Later, the Six Pack was hired by the Thin Man to determine the state of affairs in Rumekistan, which had been taken over by Flag-Smasher (Karl Morgenthau) and his anti-national terrorist ULTIMATUM group. Domino assassinated Flag-Smasher, allowing Cable to take control of the country. Fearing his return to messianic-like behavior, Domino confronted Cable, threatening to kill him if he spiraled out of control again.

After an insane Scarlet Witch depowered the majority of mutants during “M-Day,” Domino reformed X-Force with Shatterstar (Gavedra-Seven) and Caliban to liberate mutants sequestered by the Office of National Emergency (ONE). Later, the Six Pack was tasked with sabotaging both Rumekistan and Cable’s island paradise Providence in an effort to tarnish their one-time leader's international reputation, but ultimately failed. Domino publicly confessed her role in the mission, after which she joined the staff of Providence until the island was decimated in a battle between the X-Men and the alien Shi’ar weapon the Hecatomb. Domino was later recruited by Bridge to join a S.H.I.E.L.D. strike team assembled to take down the Punisher (Frank Castle), but instead aided the vigilante against magical Hand assassins and the Wrecking Crew.

Domino encountered Wolverine’s X-Force strike team while tracking down mutant criminal Vanisher (Telford Porter) and joined the group. X-Force then clashed with Code Red after Leonard Samson manipulated Domino into apparently learning the Red Hulk’s true identity. Domino then accompanied X-Force to the Reality-80521 to help Cable safeguard the first mutant born since “M-Day” from Lucas Bishop and Stryfe (Cable’s clone). Returning to Reality-616, X-Force rescued mutants from the Leper Queen's Sapien League, then aided the X-Men in opposing Madelyne Pryor’s Sisterhood, kept an eye on a visiting Deadpool (Wade Wilson), and battled Selene’s zombie mutant army.

While the X-Men were based on the island of Utopia, Domino joined Storm’s security task force to help safeguard the mutant haven. She later linked up with yet another incarnation of X-Force and had a brief romance with veteran X-Man Colossus. Following recent encounters with Cable and Deadpool, Domino has once again struck out on her own.