BIOGRAPHY - Page 16
In the meantime, the X-Men publically reformed in San Francisco, California. Openly invited to act as resident super-heroes by the mayor, the X-Men established themselves at “Greymalkin Industries” in the Marin Headlands. In addition to his covert activities with X-Force, Wolverine remained a member of Cyclops Alpha Team in San Fran. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #500, Astonishing X-Men (3rd series) #25] Logan continued to train the younger members of the X-Men, such as Pixie, and also did some active recruiting when he approached Northstar to add his speed to the X-Men on a permanent basis again. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #508] He also established a regular local meeting place for the X-Force missions on Alcatraz Island. [X-Force (3rd series) #12]
Logan knew that living in San Francisco was risky due to his past in Chinatown with the Black Dragon Tong, and history would eventually catch up to him. He decided to confront the problem head-on, walking into Chinatown and publically announcing that the Fist of Legend had returned. Logan hoped to make peace with the neighborhood, but he was caught by surprise when he learned that Lin became the Black Dragon in his place, and still nursed a fifty year old grudge for his abandonment.
Logan suffered one of his worst beatings ever at the hands of her Black Dragon Death Squad, and eventually crawled away into the sewers to heal. He was rescued by Master Po, who offered to teach Logan the ways of kung fu. Logan’s fighting skills had atrophied over the years due to his over reliance on his healing factor. Fighting alongside the X-Men for so many years had conditioned Wolverine to take a hit he might otherwise have avoided, in order to keep an opponent focused on him instead of his more vulnerable teammates. Master Po and a young street urchin named Yuen Yee helped Logan relearn his agility, balance, and martial arts skills. Alongside the Sons of the Tiger, Logan conquered the Black Dragon Tong a second time. This time, he did not abandon his responsibilities, but accepted the title of Black Dragon as protector of Chinatown. [Wolverine: Manifest Destiny #1-4]
In order to locate his son Daken again, Wolverine arranged through Bucky Barnes to hire Deadpool for an assassination attempt on his life. Reasoning that Daken hated him too much to allow anyone else to kill him, Logan correctly assumed Deadpool’s attack would draw Daken into the open. Once he showed his face, Daken was shot in the head by the Winter Soldier, using one of the carbonadium bullets Logan had previously constructed. [Wolverine: Origins #21-25] Logan soon discovered that the carbonadium bullet damaged Daken’s mind, causing him to suffer from the same sort of healing-induced amnesia Logan frequently experienced. [Wolverine: Origins #27]
Wolverine saw Daken’s circumstances as an opportunity, and sought out Charles Xavier. He hoped that Xavier could do for Daken what he once did for Logan: purge his mind of Romulus’s programming and conditioning. Before he could bring them together, however, Daken was kidnapped by Sebastian Shaw and Miss Sinister. Wolverine and Xavier tracked down Shaw, and the professor infiltrated Daken’s mind and pushed his way through the psychic traps and mental conditioning Romulus left inside his favorite weapon. What’s more, Xavier managed to show Daken the truth: that Romulus was responsible for his mother’s death, not Logan. Daken was able to experience memories of his mother for the first time inside Logan’s mind, and the two of them formed an uneasy peace. They found common ground in their shared desire to see Romulus pay for the death of Itsu, and set off together to find him. [Original Sin crossover]
As they hunted for Romulus, Logan and Daken came across Cyber in North Africa. Cyber also claimed he wanted revenge against Romulus for killing his last incarnation, and offered to trade information. Wolverine didn’t trust Cyber, so he had Daken pretend to betray him in order to gain Cyber’s trust and find out what he knew that was useful. Unfortunately, Daken decided he didn’t just want revenge on Romulus – he wanted to take over his old master’s organization. Daken killed Cyber and left Wolverine behind to pursue his interests alone. [Wolverine: Origins #31-32]
Logan continued to oversee X-Force operations with Cyclops. After Cable took the mutant baby into the future, Cyclops determined that Bishop fled into the timestream after them. Bishop believed the child would ultimately be responsible for the Sentinel crackdown on mutants in his timeline, and the concentration camps he grew up in. When Bishop came back from the future once to grab supplies, Wolverine and X-Force managed to capture him. He ultimately escaped, 
but this encounter gave Beast the readings necessary to relocate Bishop (and hopefully Cable) in the future, given time. [Cable (2nd series) #7-10] X-Force expanded their roster with the mercenary Domino, the healer Elixir, and the thief Vanisher, whose teleportation powers proved useful after Wolverine blackmailed him onto the team with an incurable brain tumor caused by Elixir’s powers. Despite their new allies, however, X-Force failed to prevent Bastion’s human council from recovering a sample of the Legacy Virus from Sinister’s labs. [X-Force (3rd series) #10] They also learned from Warpath that a supposedly low-level Purifier named Eli Bard was actually a millennia old creature called Eliphas, who also sampled the Magus’s techno-organic virus and planned to present it as a gift to his former lover, the Black Queen Selene. [X-Force (3rd series) #11]
Meanwhile, Wolverine’s team of Avengers was still dealing with the ramifications of the possible Skrull infiltration. Spider-Woman abandoned the unregistered Avengers to bring Elektra’s corpse to Iron Man and the Initiative for analysis. [New Avengers (1st series) #32] Wolverine broke into Avengers Tower and confronted Jessica for betraying them, but she insisted Stark was better equipped than their rag-tag team for finding out the truth. [New Avengers (1st series) #36] Logan’s team continued to confront various menaces, such as the Hood and the time-warping threat of the Cosmic Cube, before the Skrull invasion switched into high gear. Trapped in the Savage Land with the Initiative Avengers and a crashed space ship full of Skrulls claiming to be escaped heroes who were replaced, Wolverine and the others missed the full scale invasion as it struck New York City, San Francisco and around the globe. They eventually fought their way back to the States and joined nearly all of Earth’s heroes and villains in opposing the invaders at Central Park, including their leader…Spider-Woman, actually a disguised Queen Veranke of the Skrull Empire. Norman Osborn of the Thunderbolts gunned down Veranke and the Skrulls were defeated. The prisoners they copied for their infiltration, including the original Spider-Woman and Elektra, returned to Earth as the invasion subsided. [Secret Invasion crossover]
Despite their necessary alliance, Wolverine’s Avengers were still wanted as unregistered vigilantes. As they quietly passed word around about the new meeting place at Bucky Barnes’ secret apartment in Brooklyn, Logan made a point of inviting the original Jessica Drew as well. Most of the Avengers (and the world at large) still saw Spider-Woman as the face of the invasion and a traitor to the human race. Wolverine vouched for her, securing Jessica a spot in the renegade Avengers. [New Avengers (1st series) #48]
Wolverine and the other Avengers were as surprised as anyone when Norman Osborn used his war hero status to wrest control of the Avengers Initiative away from Tony Stark and establish his own team of registered Avengers as the Iron Patriot. He replaced key Avengers figures like Spider-Man and Hawkeye with ringers under his own employ. The biggest blow to Logan was Osborn’s choice for the new Wolverine: Daken. [New Avengers (1st series) #50]
After Osborn’s live public announcement of his new team, Logan met with Nick Fury in a bar to discuss the ramifications of Daken’s latest move. They reasoned out that Daken was looking for the Muramasa blade, and intended to bond its lethal “metal” to his bones just as Wolverine's skeleton was bonded with adamantium. What’s worse, Logan contacted Utopia and learned Cyclops had gone proactive, going after Daken without Wolverine’s knowledge, and using the Muramasa blade to give him an edge. Realizing that getting the blade out in the open was exactly what Daken wanted, Wolverine rushed to intercept the X-Men squad hunting Daken. Despite his intervention, Daken managed to trounce the X-Men and make off with a fragment of the Muramasa blade.
Romulus wanted Daken to become his “perfect weapon”, and he orchestrated a meeting between him and the Tinkerer aboard a moving subway train. The Tinkerer’s experience with Cyber made him knowledgeable enough in the adamantium bonding process to recreate the effect using the Muramasa blade’s psychoplasmic metal analog. Logan managed to track them to the meeting site, and boarded the train. He saw this as his last chance to prevent Daken from becoming the weapon Romulus desired. 
Even after he learned that Romulus himself was on the train, Wolverine gave up on the chance to face the grand manipulator directly in order to go after Daken and hopefully stop the bonding process. He failed. Two of Daken’s claws were bonded to the Muramasa metal, making them lethal weapons even against Logan. Furious at his father for letting Romulus get away now that he was equipped to kill him, Daken stabbed Wolverine through the chest and made his escape, although he did hold back from using the Muramasa claws, and so Logan survived. Acknowledging Daken was likely a lost cause at this point, Wolverine renewed his resolve for the original mission: destroy Romulus. [Wolverine: Origins #33-36]
For nine days, Wolverine tracked Romulus’s enforcer, Victor Hudson, from their encounter on the train. Being both blind and mute, Victor was the perfect emissary for Romulus out in the world, for he never saw his master’s face and could tell no one where he had been. With Daken no longer in his way and Victor’s scent in his memory, Logan believed he could finally track Romulus down to confront him face-to-face. Romulus and Victor outsmarted him, however, leading Logan into a Russian prison where Omega Red was waiting for him. Paid off with the C-Synth, Red was eager to move in for the kill, and the prisoners acted as a captive buffet to refuel his death factor constantly against Wolverine’s attacks. Logan barely managed to temporarily trap Omega Red and escape, and he was captured by another of Romulus’s enforcers, Wild Child. [Wolverine: Origins #37-38]
As he secured Wolverine in his death trap at a metal foundry, Wild Child bragged about his victory and pointed out what Logan had been missing throughout his entire quest against Romulus: he was doing exactly what Romulus wanted. Romulus was searching for a successor to take over his criminal empire, and by pitting Wolverine against the various “applicants” (Sabretooth, Cyber, Daken, etc.), 
Romulus ensured that only the strongest would survive to take his place. Quod sum eris – I am what you will be. The selection continued as Omega Red arrived and killed Wild Child before turning on Wolverine. Logan initially refused to fight, determined not to give in to Romulus’s game. Arkady taunted Logan, saying he would just have to go after Daken instead. Despite everything that happened between them, threatening Wolverine’s son was a mistake. Wolverine retrieved the Muramasa blade and shoved its mystical killing edge straight through Omega Red’s heart. [Wolverine: Origins #39]
Now that Wolverine knew what was at stake, Romulus made a personal appearance for the first time. He and Logan clawed at each other for a time, but Romulus pointed out that regardless of how the fight turned out, he was still in control. Wolverine could not kill him without claiming his position as “king of the hill”. And while Logan didn’t want control of Romulus’s empire, Daken did. Logan would ultimately have to kill his son or be killed in turn, just as Romulus had planned from the beginning. Their battle ended in a stalemate, as Romulus left Wolverine to consider his fate. [Wolverine: Origins #40]
