BIOGRAPHY Page 9
The recent events with the messiah baby had caused Cyclops to consider his actions when it came to protecting the mutant race. Using Angel’s aerie in the Colorado Mountains, he set up a new X-Force team, with Wolverine as field leader, and had them tracking a group of Purifiers who had recently stolen the head of the human-Sentinel Bastion. Angel caught the team having a meeting after their first mission and immediately became suspicious of what was going on. Despite Cyclops trying to keep his involvement to a minimum, Warpath blurted out that Wolfsbane had been captured and they were trying to save her. Angel wanted to inform the rest of the X-Men but Cyclops made him keep quiet, because he didn’t want anyone to know about X-Force or how lethal their methods were. [X-Force (3rd series) #2]
Wolfsbane was found but she had been given a heroin overdose and she was seizing. X-Force brought her back to Warren’s aerie, where they also brought the mutant healer Elixir to save her life. Wolfsbane was healed but, when she woke up, she saw the winged Angel standing in front of her and something inside her mind snapped. 
Shifting into her wolf form, she viciously attacked before anyone could stop her and she ripped off both his wings. Taking the appendages, she ran off into the night to meet up with her father Reverend Craig, who was working alongside the Purifiers. Elixir managed to heal Warren’s battered body but, when he tried to regrow the missing wings, he found he couldn’t, as they weren’t organic. Warren was bandaged up whilst X-Force planned their next move but, before they could act, Warren began to change. The trauma had caused the modifications Apocalypse had made to him all those years ago to reactivate and heal him. Warren’s metal wings sprouted out of his back once more, his skin turned blue and he even developed a layer of armor over his entire body. Angel had become Archangel once more.
Archangel could feel his original wings calling out to him and, with X-Force in his way, he cut them down and flew off. X-Force followed him at a distance and he led them to the Purifier base, where his wings were being kept. When he got there, Archangel wasted no time and slaughtered any Purifier he came across. Inside the base, a different situation was playing out between the newly resurrected Bastion and Matthew Risman, the leader of the Purifiers. Risman had brainwashed Wolfsbane into taking Warren’s wings, so he could use the genetic material contained in them to create his own choir of angels. Bastion didn’t see the need for Risman anymore and the two forces clashed, with a very bloody outcome. 
Archangel landed in the middle of the battle and began killing indiscriminately, with X-Force following suit once they too arrived. When Risman was eventually killed and Bastion gone, the fight died down. X-Force managed to find an unconscious Archangel but, to their astonishment, they discovered his feather wings had regrown and he showed no outward signs on any change. Warren was taken back to his aerie where Elixir inspected him and discovered a fundamental and irreversible genetic change had occurred in him. The "Apocalypse Strain" of techno-organic cells in Warren's body could now become dormant or active, letting him morph from Angel to Archangel on command. [X-Force (3rd series) #3-6]
Wolverine decided to see what lingering effects remained in both Warren and Wolfsbane’s minds. The moment the two saw each other, they shifted into their more violent forms and had to be forcibly stopped from ripping each other to shreds. Because of this, and the fact X-Force was supposed to be a secret, Warren had to stay at the aerie and away from the X-Men for the time being. Cyclops also forbade him to reveal his transformation to anyone outside of X-Force, for fear of the questions that would be asked. [X-Force (3rd series) #7]
The time came soon enough for Warren to return to San Francisco when the Skrulls attacked the planet in a bid to take it over. Not expecting to find the X-Men on the west coast, the alien invaders were caught off guard by how organized the mutants were. In a bid to understand the mutants and inhibit their movements, the Skrulls set their sights on the young teleporter Pixie. However, when they attacked the girl, they found Warren and X-Force ready for a fight instead. Warren had switched to his Archangel persona and was seemingly in control of it now. His physical transformation was so extreme that Pixie didn’t even recognize him, which helped keep his secret quiet for the moment. The Skrulls were eventually defeated and the citizens of San Francisco were happy to have the X-Men defending their city. [Secret Invasion: X-Men #1-4]
None of his teammates knew the true extent to the transformation Warren had gone through and he was struggling to contain it. When the Vanisher stole a sample of the Legacy Virus, the team tracked him down and Warren was chosen to confront him peacefully. Under the surface, though, he was itching to unleash Archangel. 
So, when the Vanisher slapped him across the face in defiance, he transformed and attacked the man. Vanisher was soon coerced into revealing all he knew and the team headed off to the lab where the virus sample came from. Warren was still trying to ignore Apocalypse’s underlying conditioning that told him to rise up against the humans, but he was straining under the pressure. He got a chance to show his true colors when the team was attacked by numerous Marauder clones. If facing the group who injured his original wings in the first place wasn’t enough, Cameron Hodge’s team the Right showed up in the middle of the battle. Archangel didn’t get a chance to face off against Hodge, though, as they had to blow up the lab before any more Legacy Virus samples were stolen. [X-Force (3rd series) #8-10]
Since the mass depowering of mutants, Beast had been working on finding a cure but he had run into numerous dead ends. Warren saw this as an opportunity to broaden the X-Men’s horizons by setting up a science team that would look into the power loss, as well as numerous other scientific advances. Firstly, they met with the famed Nazi-hunter and inventor Dr. Nemesis and convinced him to join their fledgling team. 
After recruiting Madison Jeffries, they set off for a small island between Japan and Russia to talk to the next potential candidate. However, when the team arrived, the man in question, Dr. Yuriko Takiguchi, thought they had come to kill him and set a giant radioactive monster on them. With the monster bearing down on them, Angel saw no option but to turn into Archangel to defeat it. The monster was killed but Beast was now aware of Warren’s condition and was both concerned and furious that this had been kept from him. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #504-508]
The rest of the science team, dubbed X-Club, quickly learned of Warren’s secret but they all kept quiet about it. Warren became more comfortable switching between his two personas and it proved quite useful when he travelled back in time 100 years to investigate the beginnings of the modern age of mutants. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #512]
Unfortunately, other samples of the Legacy Virus found their way to the Leper Queen and the anti-mutant killer was using them in her own schemes. The virus was modified and injected into a number of mutants, causing their powers to quickly flare up and kill thousands of innocent people. When three X-Men were captured and injected too, it was up to X-Force to stop the Leper Queen before anyone else died. They found her base but discovered two of the victims had been sent to the UN in a bid to cause an international incident. The third, Boom Boom, was being used as a hostage by the Leper Queen herself. However, Cyclops had another mission for the team and he teleported them away before they could save Boom Boom. [X-Force (3rd series) #11-13]