X-FORCE III: Page 2 of 2

Team Appearances: Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #493, X-Factor (3rd series) #26, New X-Men (2nd series) #45, Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #494, X-Factor (3rd series) #27, New X-Men (2nd series) #46, X-Men (2nd series) #207, X-Force: Ain’t No Dog #1, X-Force Annual (2nd series) #1, X-Force (3rd series) #1-6, Secret Invasion: X-Men #2, X-Force (3rd series) #7-11, Cable (2nd series) #7, Cable (2nd series) #9-10, X-Force: Sex & Violence #1-3, Hulk #14-17, Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia #1, Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #514, Dark Avengers #8, X-Force (3rd series) #12-13, X-Force/Cable: Messiah War #1, Cable (2nd series) #13, X-Force (3rd series) #14, Cable (2nd series) #14, X-Force (3rd series) #15, Cable (2nd series) #15, X-Force (3rd series) #16, X-Force (3rd series) #17-20, X-Necrosha #1, X-Force (3rd series) #21-25, X-Men: Second Coming #1, Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #523, New Mutants (3rd series) #12, X-Men Legacy (1st series) #235, X-Force (3rd series) #26, Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #524, New Mutants (3rd series) #3, X-Men Legacy (1st series) #236, X-Force (3rd series) #27, Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #525, New Mutants (3rd series) #14, X-Men Legacy (1st series) #237, X-Force (3rd series) #28, X-Men: Second Coming #2

 

Before

 

 

 

• In the aftermath of the House of M, most of the world’s mutants were depowered and any hope of new mutants appearing seemed lost forever. [House of M crossover]
• The Purifiers, a fanatical, mutant-hating group led by Reverend William Stryker, executed a devastating attack on the Xavier Institute, killing 45 students. After Stryker’s death at Elixir’s hands, his disciple Matthew Risman ascended to the leadership role. [New X-Men (2nd series) #20-27]
• After having his wings amputated by the Marauders, Warren Worthington III was taken into Apocalypse’s custody and transformed into his blue-skinned, steel-winged Horseman of Death. Warren lived as Archangel for years afterward, first as one of Apocalypse’s henchmen, and later as a hero, after he reformed. His metallic wings eventually sloughed off and his natural skin color later returned, seemingly completing his transformation back into his original form. [Thor (1st series) #373-374, X-Factor (1st series) #18-19, 21-25, Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #338, 411-413; see the Archangel Spotlight for details]
• Bastion, a sentient Master Mold/Nimrod hybrid given human form after passing through the Siege Perilous, once tried to destroy the X-Men and mutant kind, but was eventually defeated, and his head was taken into custody by the U.S. government. [Operation: Zero Tolerance, X-Men: Declassified; see the Bring on the Bad Guys entry on Bastion for more details]
• The ancient mutant sorceress Selene took the young mutant Wither under her wing after he fled the Xavier Institute following a tragic occurrence on M-Day. She also recruited a group of mutants with lethal abilities to serve as her Inner Circle. [New X-Men (2nd series) #31, X-Necrosha: The Gathering]
• A female clone of Wolverine created illegally and in secret, X-23 spent most of her life in the Facility, where she was trained and raised to be an assassin. While there, she underwent cruel conditioning at the hands of Kimura, a ruthless woman with impenetrable skin, who took special delight in tormenting her subject. [X-23 (1st series) #1-6, X-23: Target X #1-6]
• Against all odds, a new mutant birth occurred in Cooperstown, Alaska, which the X-Men detected via Cerebro. They rushed to retrieve the new mutant but were beaten to its location by the Purifiers, the Marauders, and—to their surprise—their ally, Cable. Unfortunately, the X-Men had no clue as to the nature of Cable’s motives, and refused to entrust such an important mutant solely in his care. Meanwhile, the combination of the Purifier attacks, a failed ambush on the Marauders and a Nano-Sentinel invasion in their own home dwindled the ranks of the X-Men. [X-Men: Messiah Complex #1, Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #492, X-Factor (3rd series) #25, New X-Men (2nd series) #44, X-Men (2nd series) #205]

Chronology

Once Cyclops learned that Cable was in possession of the newborn mutant “messiah,” he summoned a reserve force of cutthroat, discrete operatives, which he dubbed “X-Force,” to retrieve her—giving them permission to kill anyone who stood in their way, if necessary. This squad consisted of Wolverine, X-23, Warpath, Wolfsbane, Hepzibah, and Caliban. Using Caliban’s tracking ability, X-Force pinpointed Cable’s location in the snowy tundra of Canada, and arrived in time to intervene in his losing battle with Lady Deathstrike and the mutant-hating Reavers. Although their arrival quite possibly saved the lives of both Cable and his infant charge, Caliban died during the battle, and Cable fled. Wolfsbane, meanwhile, learned from one of the Purifiers that her father, the fundamentalist anti-mutant zealot Reverend Craig, was involved with the Purifiers as well. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #493, X-Factor (3rd series) #26, New X-Men (2nd series) #45]

After reconvening with the X-Men, X-Force learned that the Marauders had kidnapped the baby from Cable and taken it to Muir Island. X-Force traveled to Muir and landed in the middle of a Marauder ambush. Backup soon arrived, but so did the mutant-hunting monster Predator X. Wolverine let the nigh-indestructible Predator X devour him whole so he could kill it from the inside. In the midst of all this, X-Force and the X-Men defeated the Marauders, recovered the mutant baby, and made peace with Cable. However, just as the X-Men allowed Cable to take the baby to the future so he could raise it away from those who wanted it dead, their ally Bishop, now revealed to be on a single-minded mission to kill the child before it reached adolescence, fired on them and accidentally shot Professor X in the head. Bishop somehow escaped in the confusion that followed. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #494, X-Factor (3rd series) #27, New X-Men (2nd series) #46, X-Men (2nd series) #207]

Devastated by their heavy losses, Cyclops decided to “revise” the X-Men’s long-standing no-kill policy, and ordered Wolverine and X-Force to eliminate the rest of the Purifiers before they could do them any additional harm. None of the other X-Men were to know about these orders. To this end, Wolverine began performing discrete missions to eliminate Purifiers. [X-Force (3rd series) #1, X-Force: Ain’t No Dog #1]

On a somewhat related mission, X-Force tracked down the estranged father of a terminally ill mutant girl in order to persuade him to give her a critical bone-marrow transplant. Somewhat problematically, the father worked for HYDRA, and the agency refused to release him. However, as he was led away, the man let Wolverine slice off his arm in order to retrieve his bone marrow for his daughter. [X-Force Annual (2nd series) #1]

The brutality of these missions reaffirmed Wolverine’s belief that this strike team was too severe for anyone but himself. He tried to dissuade Warpath, X-23 and Wolfsbane from continuing with X-Force, and made his stance plain to their leader, Cyclops. However, Warpath wanted revenge on the Purifiers for killing Caliban, while Wolfsbane desperately wanted to find Reverend Craig and break him from the Purifiers’ hold. Meanwhile, Cyclops had already circumvented Wolverine and dispatched X-23 on a solo mission to recover a potent weapon the Purifiers had stolen. Wolverine and Warpath rendezvoused with X-23 outside their hideout in rural North Dakota, and together they attacked the Purifiers. When they reached their de facto leader, Matthew Risman, they discovered that he had taken their teammate Wolfsbane hostage. Risman shot Wolfsbane in the leg and fled with her. X-Force began a national manhunt to recover their captive teammate, slicing their way through Purifier hideouts across the country. They eventually found her in the throes of a nearly lethal heroine overdose, and took her to their hiding place at Angel’s Aerie for medical treatment. [X-Force (3rd series) #1-3]

Acting on X-Force’s orders, Angel retrieved the X-Men’s healer Elixir and brought him to his Aerie to heal Wolfsbane. Immediately after she recovered, however, Wolfsbane caught a glimpse of Angel’s wings, went berserk and savagely attacked the man, amputating the wings in the process. She took the wings back to the Purifiers, leaving X-Force to conclude she was under the influence of some sort of mental conditioning. Meanwhile, Angel’s ravaged body transformed back into his old, Apocalypse-engineered Archangel persona. Now in a berserker rage, Archangel took to the skies to attack the Purifiers, while X-Force followed. They arrived at the Purifiers headquarters in Chicago in the midst of a Purifier civil war between the group’s two warring factions: Matthew Risman’s “Choir” of Purifiers infused with Archangel’s blood, and Bastion’s cadre of undead, techno-organic, anti-mutant fanatics. X-23 managed to assassinate Risman while he battled a mysterious, demonic man called Eli Bard, but Bastion escaped with his cabal of mutantkind’s worst enemies. Wolfsbane confronted her father, Reverend Craig, who wanted her dead. Although she didn’t intend to kill him, an optical illusion triggered her berserker mental conditioning, and she ate him alive. With their mission complete, the traumatized members of X-Force returned home to report their unsettling discoveries to Cyclops. Cyclops tasked X-Force with eliminating Bastion and his underlings, a veritable rogues gallery that included Donald Pierce, Graydon Creed, Reverend William Stryker, the Leper Queen, Stephen Lang, Bolivar Trask and Cameron Hodge. [X-Force (3rd series) #4-6]

Before they had the chance to pursue the next target on their list, Cyclops summoned their help for other purposes. X-Force assisted the X-Men in staving off the Skrull invasion in San Francisco, and shortly thereafter, Cyclops dispatched them to deal with Bishop, the X-Men's former ally. Bishop, it seemed, had been traveling through the timestream in pursuit of Cable and the messiah baby, desperately trying to kill her. He made a seeming tactical mistake when he returned to the present and made his presence in Montana known. Acting on Cyke’s orders, X-Force confronted Bishop in Montana and apprehended him. While the X-Men had him in custody, Emma Frost psychically tortured Bishop to find information about his plans. She discovered in his mind the location of a buried box. Cyclops immediately sent X-Force to retrieve it. When they landed and opened it, however, it triggered a trap Bishop had laid, releasing a nonlethal but incapacitating nanovirus in the X-Men’s headquarters. Bishop seized this opportunity to seize something he needed from the compound, and fled back into the timestream just as X-Force returned home to neutralize him. [Secret Invasion: X-Men #1-4, Cable (2nd series) #7-10]

After the trauma of their latest encounter with the Purifiers, Warpath decided to take a leave of absence. X-Force quickly determined that Wolfsbane’s current mental state rendered her unfit to serve, especially since she could not be anywhere near their newest addition, Archangel. Elixir, fearing Cyclops would eliminate him to prevent him from revealing what he knew, asked the Stepford Cuckoos to erase his memories of what he saw with X-Force. Before they got the chance to proceed with the operation, Cyclops received word that their old enemy, the Vanisher, had stolen a sample of the Legacy Virus from one of Mr. Sinister’s abandoned labs. He sent Wolverine, Archangel and X-23 to confront the Vanisher and retrieve the sample. They ambushed him in Tokyo, but their operation was interrupted by sniper fire from a mercenary who turned out to be their old friend Domino, who was also in pursuit of the Vanisher. After agreeing to work together to accomplish their common task, X-Force ambushed the Vanisher at his safe houses, at which point Elixir implanted him with an inoperable brain tumor that assured he would comply with their orders. The Vanisher told them that he dropped the Legacy Virus sample when the Marauders attacked him. X-Force went to retrieve it, fighting their way through hordes of Marauder clones, as well as Cameron Hodge’s the Right, in the process. They succeeded in destroying the sample and escaping with their lives intact. [X-Force (3rd series) #7-10]

While they were gone, Wolfsbane ran away with an old flame of hers, the Asgardian Wolf-Prince Hrimhari. Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the Camp Verde reservation in Arizona, a spirit resembling the demon bear ambushed Warpath. Warpath teamed up with Ghost Rider to battle the creature that was haunting his people’s land, eventually setting the tortured spirit free by removing the arcane blade lodged in its side. Upon doing so, he discovered something horrible: Eli Bard had used the Techno-Organic Virus to resurrect the Apache people—including Warpath’s brother Thunderbird and his friend Caliban—and taken them as a gift to Selene, despoiling the Apache totems in the process. With the demonic blade in hand, an enraged Warpath returned home to X-Force to tell them what he had learned. [X-Force (3rd series) #7-11]

Domino returned home one night in secret and asked Elixir to heal her—specifically demanding that he not tell Wolverine. Because Elixir couldn’t keep his mouth shut, however, Wolverine confronted Domino and demanded to know who shot her up so badly. She fed him a cockamamie lie about how she double-crossed both the Hand and the Assassins Guild in order to liberate some sex slaves, but when Wolverine agreed to help her sort things out, he learned that she had actually stolen millions of dollars from the Guild. He begrudgingly assisted her in settling things with the Assassins Guild, while the rest of X-Force acted as backup. X-Force eliminated the Hand ninja who were plotting against them and ambushed the Guild headquarters just in time to save Wolverine and Domino from succumbing to overwhelming odds. Later, Domino donated most of the money she stole to charity, but kept a good chunk of it for herself, much to Wolverine’s displeasure. [X-Force: Sex & Violence #1-3]

Wolverine and X-Force also had to intervene in another of Domino's foibles—this time, because she accidentally caught a glimpse of the secret identity of the mysterious Red Hulk. With this ultra-secretive Hulk determined to kill her in order to shut her up, Domino went to X-Force for help in retaliating. The Red Hulk confronted her at a bar with his team of hired mercenaries—Deadpool, the Punisher, Thundra, Crimson Dynamo, and Elektra—but Domino caught him by surprise by revealing she had Wolverine, Archangel, Warpath, and X-23 at her back. The two groups brawled, but eventually reached a truce when they discovered that Domino and Elektra had gone missing during the fight. They later got to the root of the problem when they met with the Red Hulk and realized they had both been set up. In exchange for keeping his identity secret, the Red Hulk promised not to reveal to the world the truth of X-Force's existence—a revelation that would have proved disastrous for the X-Men, the Avengers, and all of mutantkind. [Hulk (3rd series) #14-17]

When the X-Men found themselves targeted by Norman Osborn's H.A.M.M.E.R. and his makeshift Dark X-Men and Dark Avengers teams, Cyclops dispatched X-Force on a daring rescue mission to free their people who had been taken prisoner. With the help of Magik's teleportation and a Trojan Horse in the form of Mindee Cuckoo, X-Force pinpointed the location of Osborn's mutant prisoners and transported them out from under his nose. They returned to the rest of the X-Men in time for the final confrontation with Osborn's forces, all while managing to keep the existence of their team a secret. The final battle with Osborn resulted in the X-Men relocating from their previous base in the Marin Headlands to their sovereign island Utopia on the waters outside of San Francisco. [Utopia crossover]

News on the mutant front soon turned worse when X-Force discovered, to their horror, that the sample of the Legacy Virus they destroyed had not been the only one: the Purifiers had apparently recovered others, and were now using the virus to turn mutants into involuntary suicide bombers in a ploy to turn public opinion against mutants. One such attack, involving the mutant girl Beautiful Dreamer, took the lives over 1,100 people at an anti-mutant rally in Montana, including Dreamer herself. Cyclops immediately dispatched X-Force to prevent additional such attacks at other anti-mutant events. Archangel and X-23 were “lucky” enough to be at one such rally that was bombed using the virus-infected mutant Fever Pitch, but they escaped with their lives intact after failing to stop the slaughter. [X-Force (3rd series) #12]

Cyclops, fearing Bishop would find Cable and the messiah baby in the timestream before they did, ordered Beast to construct a time-travel mechanism that would allow them to both pinpoint Cable’s location in timespace and send X-Force to retrieve him. The shoddy technology only allowed the subjects to visit another point in time for 33.2 hours before their bodies decomposed, though, and the tracking technology was sporadic at best. Regardless, Cyclops outfitted X-Force with these time travel devices, just in case they were needed.

When the X-Men learned that three of their own—Boom-Boom, Hellion, and Surge—had been kidnapped by the Purifiers to be turned into Legacy bombers, Cyclops dispatched X-Force to rescue them. They arrived at a Purifier base shortly after Hellion and Surge had been injected with the virus and taken to their target, the United Nations building in New York City, but Boom Boom was still present as a hostage of the Leper Queen. Acting quickly, X-Force subdued the Leper Queen and separated her from Boom-Boom. At that same moment, however, Cyclops located Cable in the timestream and told Wolverine he was sending them to the future right away. Wolverine screamed at him to wait a moment, but Cyclops, not wanting to miss the opportunity, activated their devices anyway. X-Force was pulled from the timestream mere moments before they could execute the Leper Queen, leaving Boom Boom at her mercy. [X-Force (3rd series) #13]

X-Force arrived at the same location hundreds of years in the future, enraged at Cyclops for making them leave their friend to die. When they tried to remove their time-travel armbands so they could return to the present, they discovered they didn’t work; something was blocking them. Resigning themselves to their mission, they set out to find Cable and Hope. As they traversed the apocalyptic wasteland the world had become, however, they came under sniper fire from a man who turned out to be a still-living (but heavily decomposed) Deadpool. He explained to them that Stryfe was now in charge, and joined them as they searched for Cable. Before long, they found Cable and Hope, but lost Archangel to the lure of Apocalypse and discovered that Deadpool was actually Stryfe’s double agent. Mere moments after this discovery, Stryfe ambushed them, capturing Hope and Warpath.

After Hope was taken, Cable and X-Force stormed Stryfe’s palace to reacquire her, splitting into two groups. One group went after the chronal net that was trapping them in the future, while the other searched for Hope. Archangel found Apocalypse recovering from injuries in a cave in the mountains. After healing him, the two of them went after the men who had injured him, Stryfe and Bishop. X-Force and Cable, after a protracted struggle, managed to recover Hope from the clutches of Stryfe and Bishop, just as Archangel and Apocalypse arrived. Apocalypse agreed to let X-Force keep Hope and took Stryfe with him to become his new vessel. Meanwhile, Domino, X-23 and Vanisher dismantled the chronal net, allowing X-Force to finally return home with mere moments to spare. The Vanisher returned home immediately, abandoning the team to their fate. The rest of them tried to hurry back to their starting point so they could return to the present in time to save Boom-Boom, Hellion and Surge. X-23 persevered long enough to make it back to their starting location, while the others had to flee to the present to save their lives. [Messiah War crossover]

X-23 returned to the present just in time to kill the Leper Queen and save Boom-Boom. She collapsed from exhaustion immediately afterward, and was taken into custody by her former captors at the Facility. The rest of X-Force, meanwhile, arrived in the present near the United Nations building. Miraculously, they managed to cut their way through the Sapien League and retrieve Surge and Hellion, both of whom Elixir healed with his mutant ability, though the overexertion left him comatose. Meanwhile, X-23 managed escaped from her demented captors with the help of H.A.M.M.E.R. Agent Morales and destroyed the facility. She met up with X-Force and they returned home together, while Archangel and Warpath traveled to Colorado to find Wolfsbane. [X-Force (3rd series) #17-20]

X-Force’s respite was short-lived, however, as their home, the island facility known as Utopia, soon came under attack from hordes of the mutant undead techno-organic zombies Selene had exhumed with Eli Bard’s help. Archangel and Warpath returned to Utopia with a very pregnant Wolfsbane and Hrimhari in tow, only to find the island besieged by the unkillable corpses of their dead friends and enemies. While the majority of X-Force desperately battled to defend the living, Hrimhari took Wolfsbane to the infirmary for treatment, only to learn the unborn child inside her was killing her. In desperation, Hrimhari reached out to Asgard’s goddess of death, Hela, and made a deal with her to exchange his life for those of Wolfsbane and her unborn child. Hela accepted—but only agreed to save one life in exchange for his. Hrimhari cleverly chose to save Elixir’s life instead, so he could then save Wolfsbane and their son. Upon doing so, Hela whisked Hrimhari away to the afterlife, while the revived Elixir saved Wolfsbane by strengthening her body to the point that it could withstand the super-powered embryo within.

Elsewhere on the island, X-Force battled Selene’s Inner Circle. The group had come to Utopia to retrieve the demon blade Warpath had taken, which Selene needed to complete her ascension to godhood. The X-Men and X-Force fought Eli Bard, Senyaka, Mortis, Blink and Wither, but suffered a crushing defeat. Warpath, meanwhile, ran to his bunker to retrieve the knife and end the madness, but the Inner Circle captured him and whisked him back to Necrosha along with the blade. Cyclops ordered the remaining members of X-Force to travel to Necrosha to stop Selene’s ascension. After the Vanisher teleported them there, Elixir informed him he no longer had a tumor in his brain, implicitly giving him permission to leave; he had been healed. X-Force fought their way toward Selene’s temple, but didn’t arrive in time to stop her from harvesting the millions of souls on Necrosha. Luckily for them, the Vanisher had a change of heart about abandoning his friends, and teleported all of them, including Warpath, into the temple in time to spare them from Selene’s spell. Once inside, Warpath revealed to them that he knew how to defeat Selene, thanks to the training he had received from Ghost Rider. After preparing for the final battle, the team fought their way through Selene’s Inner Circle, then confronted the goddess herself. While the rest of the team restrained her, Warpath stabbed her in the chest with the demon blade, her one weakness. The wound proved fatal, ending Selene’s menace once and for all. [X-Necrosha #1, X-Force (3rd series) #21-25]

With Selene defeated and the world saved, X-Force returned home to Utopia. Wolverine informed Cyclops that Wolfsbane, Elixir, Warpath, and X-23 were now off the team. Cyclops acquiesced. However, when Cable and Hope finally returned home from the future, Cyclops had further need of X-Force, and kept X-23 on the roster. Because X-Force was still technically a secret from the rest of the X-Men, he distributed them evenly among his field squads. He put Wolverine and X-23 on his alpha squad for recovering Cable and Hope. When this squad subdued a group of Purifiers who were chasing Hope and Cable, X-23 slipped up and executed one of the prisoners they had taken. Her actions shocked the rest of the X-Men and forced the hands of both Cyclops and Wolverine, who were compelled to admit to the rest of the X-Men that they had a squad of killers working for them. None were quite as enraged as Wolverine’s best friend, Nightcrawler, who ended up giving his life to transport Hope back to the relative safety of Utopia. [X-Men: Second Coming #1, Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #523, New Mutants (3rd series) #12, X-Men Legacy (1st series) #235, X-Force (3rd series) #26]

When the X-Men learned that Bastion’s forces were specifically targeting teleporters, Domino and Cyclops made the tactical error of accidentally leaking this revelation to the Vanisher, who immediately panicked. Once again, he abandoned his teammates and fled to his safe house in Portugal, only to be ambushed by Bastion’s forces, who were lying in wait. He was shot and left for dead on the side of the road. With all their teleporters incapacitated, Bastion activated the next stage of his plan: enclosing Utopia—and all of San Francisco—in an impenetrable sphere and then transporting waves of Nimrod Sentinels from the future into this inescapable death prison. With their troops slowly falling to the Nimrod Sentinels in battle, the X-Men developed a solution to stop them before their inevitable defeat: using Cable’s last time-jump to send him, X-Force and the linguistic expert Cypher into the future to destroy the Nimrod Master Mold. Cable, Cypher and the remaining members of X-Force accepted this suicide mission, bid their farewells to their friends and loved ones, and took their one-way trip to the future to save mutantkind. Once there, they succeeded in fighting their way to the centralized mainframe, where Cypher reprogrammed the Master Mold and shut it down permanently, destroying both the Sentinels of the future and the ones that had traveled to the past. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #524, New Mutants (3rd series) #3, X-Men Legacy (1st series) #236, X-Force (3rd series) #27, Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #525, New Mutants (3rd series) #14, X-Men Legacy (1st series) #237]

X-Force found that they were unable to return home through the time-channel the Nimrods were using, as nothing organic could survive the transfer. To remedy this, and save his teammates, Cable chose to let the Techno-Organic Virus overwhelm his body, allowing him to create an inorganic tunnel through time through which X-Force could safely travel back to the present. The team returned home safely, at the cost of Cable’s life. [X-Force (3rd series) #28]

After Hope, the X-Men and X-Force finally stamped out the threat of Bastion and the Purifiers, Wolverine and Cyclops had a frank conversation in which they agreed to disband X-Force, its mission and tactics no longer being necessary now that Hope and mutantkind were relatively safe. Wolverine, however, kept a secret reserve roster of X-Force, unknown to everyone but its five members: himself, Psylocke, Deadpool, Fantomex, and Archangel. [X-Men: Second Coming #2]

Afterwards

• Cyclops and Wolverine’s disagreement over the ethics of using adolescent mutants in battle eventually leads to a rift that cleaves the X-Men into two. [X-Men: Schism #1-5]
• For some reason, Domino was not included in the next incarnation of X-Force. She still served with the X-Men on Utopia, though, and stayed on Cyclops’ side after his schism with Wolverine. [X-Men (3rd series) #20-onward]
• After leaving X-Force, Warpath resumed working with the non-lethal arm of the X-Men. [X-Men (3rd series) #20-onward]
• X-23, meanwhile, began searched for clues about her past and later joined the Avengers Academy. [X-23 (2nd series), Avengers Academy #23-39, Avengers Arena]
• Wolfsbane returned to X-Factor and delivered her baby, which turned out to be a prophesized Asgardian/mutant hybrid. Shocked by his birth, Wolfsbane abandoned her canine son, who was then taken into custody by Jack Russell. A guilt-stricken Wolfsbane managed to reunite with her son later, and eventually quit X-Factor so she could devote herself to raising him. [X-Factor (1st series) #208-onward]
• Elixir supposedly left X-Force so he could heal the wounded on Necrosha. He has not appeared since.
• Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Vanisher showed up again, alive and well, as a member of the Marauders. The circumstances surrounding his survival are presently unknown. [Astonishing X-Men (3rd series) #48]
• Cable reappeared in the present, alive and well, in order to prevent an impending disaster from befalling Hope. [Avengers: X-Sanction #1-4]
• Cypher returned to the New Mutants after his mission with X-Force.
• Hepzibah never returned to X-Force, but continues associating with the X-Men.
• Bishop continued pursuing Cable and Hope in the timestream, only to become stranded on a dying Earth in the distant future. He eventually found his way back to the present. [Cable (2nd series) #16-24, Uncanny X-Force (2nd series) #1-5]
• Hope did indeed turn out to be an important figure for mutantkind: her relationship with the Phoenix Force eventually reignited the X-gene throughout the world, albeit slowly at first. [X-Men: Second Coming #2, AvX crossover]
• The three members of the Choir who fled have not been seen since.
• The stories of Wolverine, Archangel, Psylocke, Deadpool, and Fantomex continue in Uncanny X-Force (1st series) #1.