The pre-teen clone of Laura Kinney, AKA X-23 (later Wolverine), Gabby Kinney, becomes fiercely loyal to her clone-siblings, and fights for their liberation from those that seek to take advantage of their DNA.
From Clone to Covert Vigilante
Gabrielle “Gabby” Kinney is one of the 10 clones created by Alchemax Genetics from the genetic material of Laura Kinney. The clone project was run by Dr. Robert Chandler and his security head Captain Mooney. During the project, the clones are trained as bodyguards to protect diplomats and humanitarian organizations. They also suffer abuse from their handlers, especially Mooney, but Gabby’s sisters protect her from the worst of it. Her sisters believe Gabby to be fundamentally good and innocent.
Gabby loses most of her sister clones, whether in the field or in Alchemax’s demonstrations. With help from Kimura, Gabby escapes Alchemax along with her remaining sisters, Zelda, Bellona, and X23-3PAR, and the facility explodes. But Alchemax wasn’t about to let go of their investments who allegedly blew up their facility, and tasks X-23/Wolverine to hunt them down, telling her that the clones did not develop the same healing factor and claws that she possesses. Gabby and her sisters go on a revenge campaign against Alchemax, but Gabby wasn’t so sure about the extreme measures her sisters were taking and sent Laura an anonymous note, tipping her off to a planned assassination to take out Mooney’s son. When Laura stops the masked assassin, it’s 3PAR who looks just like her, and she commits suicide to evade capture.
Gabby visits Laura in her apartment, revealing that she was the one that sent the note and denies the allegations that her and her clones blew up the Alchemax facility. Laura begins to question Alchemax’s story and joins her to help her sister clones. They meet the others deep underground, in the sewers of New York, and Bellona shoots her several times, thinking her an enemy. After she comes to thanks to her regenerative healing factor, Alchemax’s security force attacks them, and the sisters beat them back, that is until the mercenary Tony Masters, AKA Taskmaster, shoots them all, except Laura giving her an opportunity to knock him out.
After surviving the attack thanks to their body armor, Laura and Bellona fight about how to leave the Taskmaster, dead or alive, with Laura advocating for his life and the lives of the security force that she just beat up. Laura claims that one of them could be a parent, and Bellona retorts that another one could be a part-time classical pianist and she cut off half of his fingers. Zelda ends the argument by shooting Taskmaster in the kneecaps so he doesn’t follow them, and Gabby thoughtfully places the man’s cut-off fingers next to his body in case he plays the piano. Shortly after climbing into Laura’s tank, they drive off and are followed by several vehicles with Alchemax forces shooting at them with armor-piercing bullets. Laura tells them to go on without her and she’ll track them down. The girls end up in a warehouse and after Laura rejoins them, the clones tell her that they are dying. Alchemax took away their ability to feel pain but it also took years off their life. Gabby also denied the allegations that they blew up the Alchemax facility.
To protect them from Alchemax and help determine what’s killing the girls, Laura takes them to the securest place she knows: the Sanctum Sanctorum, home of Dr. Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange. He teleports them to a hospital and discovers nanites in Zelda’s body that are killing her. He also revealed that the cure may be found in an Avenger’s lab. He teleports them to Pym Laboratories, and Laura attempts to steal an Ant-Man suit, that is until Janet Van Dyne, AKA The Wasp, stops her. Laura informs Janet of the situation and that the only way to beat the nanites is for her to become small enough to fight them. Janet agrees to help and they enter Zelda’s body together and while fighting, Gabby and Bellona speak with a now alert Zelda, with Gabby offering her reassurance. Though their conversation ends abruptly when Mooney arrives and fatally shoots Zelda in the stomach. Janet and Laura leave Zelda’s body and disable Mooney, but Zelda doesn’t survive her wound and dies. The remaining sisters sneak into one of Alchemax’s bunkers and there Zelda kills Mooney and says her goodbyes to Gabby and Laura. Gabby and Laura find Chandler whereby Gabby asks Laura for some alone time with him. Gabby admits to him that she wants to hurt him, but her sisters want her to be a good person and she wants that for herself too. In revealing one claw to Chandler, she stabs it at him, only to miss and to prove a point at how close he came to death. Shortly afterward, Laura’s ally Doreen Green, AKA Squirrel Girl, dropped by with a wolverine named Jonathan whom Gabby swiftly adopted. Laura then invites Gabby to live with her.
Genetic Clone with Claws
Gabby is a mutant, genetically cloned from X-23 and as such possesses her regenerative healing factor—despite retaining scars on her face. Thanks to Alchemax Genetics, the lab that created her and her clone siblings, Gabby does not feel any pain. Gabby’s skeleton also possesses two retractable bone claws, one in each arm that extend out from her knuckles. She also has super-human senses such as sight, hearing, and smell.
When Gabby is turned into a Brood Queen, her bone claws become as numerous as the number of legs that she possesses. She becomes connected to empires, voices beyond the stars, and hates it. As the Brood Queen, she wanted to lay eggs in people’s necks, but was able to telepathically communicate with Laura that she was still conscious within the Brood body. After Laura reassures her that she wouldn’t leave her alone, the Brood’s form opened up and she was able to step out of it.
Clone Comrades and Criminal Adversaries
Gabby is the clone of mutant Laura Kinney, while Laura is a clone of James Howlett/Logan, AKA Wolverine. Gabby has 10 other sister clones who she cares about deeply, but sees most of them die working for Alchemax Genetics. Alchemax surreptitiously plants nanite technology in each of them which slowly kills them. When she and her remaining sisters, Zelda, Bellona, and X23-3PAR, escape the Alchemax facility, Gabby tracks Laura down for help. They all work together taking vengeance against Alchemax for experimenting on them, but in the process lose 3PAR and Zelda. Bellona departs to go on her own path, one with Kimura, who ends up experimenting on her further until Gabby convinces Bellona to stop working with Kimura.
Gabby joins Laura on her adventures, often going up against anyone that’s adversarial to Laura, and she will defend her most fiercely, warning others against bringing her harm. When Laura teams up with Squirrel Girl, Doreen brings a pet wolverine named Jonathan to their home and Gabby adopts him immediately. When an alien plague spreads through Roosevelt Island in New York, Gabby joins Laura against her wishes to stop it, and they team up with other mutants Wade Wilson, AKA Deadpool, Akihiro, AKA Daken, and Old Man Logan—an aged Logan from an alternate future timeline known as the The Wastelands (Earth-21923).
A Clone’s Chronology
Gabby continued to grow close with her clone-sister Laura but still kept things from her about her abilities. After an aged Logan arrived from a future alternate timeline and declared that Gabby would cause Laura harm, based on his experience with her in his reality. Meanwhile, Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, received word from the Inhuman Ulysses about Logan’s arrival who predicted Logan would kill Gabby. Cap and S.H.I.E.L.D. arrived to prevent Logan from fulfilling this prophecy but doing so led him to kill Gabby anyway. She returned to life and stopped Laura from killing Logan, and apologized for not telling her the truth about her healing factor.
After Laura allegedly killed Daylesville, California’s population, she was arrested by S.H.I.E.L.D. Though it was discovered that a Madripoorian aircraft released a Trigger Scent—a chemical that forced her to go berserk—Laura escaped S.H.I.E.L.D. custody and met up with Gabby who, with her pet Jonathan in tow, wanted to help. They all caught a ship to Madripoor, evading S.H.I.E.L.D. and hunting the person behind the Trigger Scent. But they soon discovered that the ship’s captain was a part of a child trafficking ring. Gabby and Laura attempted to liberate the children though the ship’s captain betrayed them to Kimura, who originally released the Trigger Scent. It was then that Bellona and Roughouse captured Laura and Gabby was placed in a shipping container with the children.
Gabby soon convinced them that she could help and they worked together to get Gabby to the ship’s infirmary. There she revealed one of her bone claws to the nurse and demanded a satellite phone. While Kimura used the Trigger Scent and set Laura loose on downtown Madripoor, it wasn’t long until Gabby showed up to stop her with backup: Remy LaBeau, AKA Gambit, Warren Worthington III, AKA Angel, and Jean Grey, AKA Phoenix. They helped free Laura from the Trigger Scent’s influence and while they were successful, Kimura found their hideout. Bellona, Gabby saved her life and persuaded her to leave Kimura’s employ. Laura then drowned Kimura, despite her vow to not kill, and Bellona admitted to having killed the people of Daylesville, exonerating Laura, and was then arrested by S.H.I.E.L.D.
Gabby and Laura then began tracking down the child trafficking ring, but they were interrupted after an alien child that crash-landed on Manhattan-adjacent Roosevelt Island Riri Williams, AKA Ironheart, intercepted the spacecraft and found that the child carried a deadly virus that swept through the island’s population. Just before the child died, she uttered two words: Laura Kinney. Laura traveled to the island and Gabby took it upon herself to infiltrate it against Laura’s wishes, and helped stop Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) from stealing the alien’s corpse. Laura discovered that through skin-to-skin contact with the infected, her healing factor was able to cure everyone infected, but in doing so, she didn’t make it far without collapsing. Gabby, determined to help, tried to assist Laura who reminded her that there were 12,000 people to cure, and she’d have to keep going. Gabby resolved to reach more people together and they received word from Ironheart that Doctor Strange sent in the cavalry, mutants Old Man Logan, Daken, and Deadpool to lend their healing factor. Deadpool removed his shirt to help facilitate the cure through skin-to-skin contact, and he and Gabby bonded over their scars, becoming best friends. Deadpool was then shot in the chest, and a reign of bullets started to come from a nearby building. The team found the culprits who were infected with the virus and resolved to heal everyone by beating them up. Gabby came across some people she couldn’t heal and cried over their bodies—Logan explained to her that the people were already dead. They continued to heal people but ended up taking on too much of the virus into themselves and had to take breaks to recover. Laura nearly died, but recovered and after saving those infected by the child, she, Gabby, and the Guardians of the Galaxy traveled to the child’s home planet, that of Moon of Rhittle, where they came upon the Brood. They were quickly overwhelmed and Gabby was taken by the Brood in the fight. The Brood then mutated Gabby into their new Brood Queen. While Laura and the Guardians fought off the Brood, Gabby telepathically communicated with Laura that she was still alive within the Brood Queen’s body, and after being reassured that Laura wasn’t leaving her, the Brood form exploded open and Gabby emerged. After telling Laura about the horrible experience as a Brood, Gabby reunited with her wolverine pet, Jonathan who had been given the ability to speak thanks to Rocket Raccoon, AKA Rocket. Jonathan speaks and thanks Gabby and the angry one (Laura) for adopting him, and says that he’ll die for them.
When a faceless group of maniacs known as the Orphans of X hunted Gabby, Laura, and Daken with a blade that could stop their healing factor, they found themselves on the run. They were attacked by the Orphans of X who shot Daken, and in escaping, they caught a ride from the X-Man known as Danger in the Blackbird, or X-Jet. Meeting danger for the first time, Gabby was impressed with their name and instantly decided she needed a codename too. Daken, recovering from his wound, dubbed her Honey Badger, because she’s sweet with claws. Gabby thought it was perfect.
When sisters Sophie and Esme of the mutant clones, the Stepford Cuckoos, survived death, Esme transferred her consciousness into Gabby with the help of a genetic regeneration specialist, Dr. Helen Marks who formerly worked at the Facility that created Laura. Though Laura tried to intercept the experiment, she ended up with Sophie inside her mind. Laura/Sophie soon got the Stepford sister Mindee on their side. A battle between Sophie/Laura and Esme/Gabby ensued where the Stepford sister Phoebe was stabbed with Gabby’s bone claw, while Mindee used Cerebro to amplify her trusted sisters’ powers (Phoebe and Celeste). The Cuckoos then expelled Esme and Sophie out of Gabby and Laura, respectively.
While investigating a string of seemingly connected murders, Gabby and Laura entrapped the killer, the X-Assassin, who looks just like them but with cybernetic enhancements. Before they could get any information, armed soldiers broke into the prison where the X-Assassin was being held. They were able to escape and brought the possible clone-sibling to X-Man Henry “Hank” McCoy, AKA Beast’s lab to help understand its origin. Gabby tried to find the humanity in its robot heart while Laura looked deeper into its origins. They discovered later that Dr. Robert Chandler, the villain from their past, was responsible for creating this new line of killing machines called the X-Assassins. They then faced an army of modified X-23 clones and to win the battle, Gabby used a kill switch, ending the lives of all Chandler’s clones, including X-Assassin who had been helping Gabby and Laura.
Meanwhile, they investigated a lead on a company called Harvest, Gabby and Laura found a strange shipment of cargo with their scent on it. Laura made it clear that she wanted to put an end to their DNA clones, except Gabby desired to save them. Their conflicting goals came to a head and they fought about it, resulting in Gabby running off. She was determined to track down mysterious cargo and prove to Laura that she could save the clones on her own. Gabby, with her sidekick Jonathan, tracked her scent to a location where a lab aboard a train full of turkeys carried their scent. Though the lab exploded and sent Gabby, Laura, and Jonathan flying, they all survived, as did the turkeys who were flame-resistant. Gabby learned that there was a switch to kill all the clones, and it was labeled “T.U.O.K.S.” Seeing it, Gabby realized that the reverse of the acronym was “Scout” and decided to take that as her new codename.
