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This article, Elizabeth Braddock (Earth-61615), is property of MarvelousMarty. |
James Braddock, Sr. (father; deceased),
Lady Elizabeth Kannon-Braddock (mother, deceased),
Brian Braddock (twin brother),
Jamie Braddock (brother);
Kocho Kannon (maternal aunt; deceased)
Maggie Braddock (niece),
Tenia Braddock (niece);
Warren Worthington III (boyfriend)
Vol 1 43
History
Morals? You really reckoned we accomplished those bloody missions — where most men and women could not make even out alive — 'cause we stuck to our morals..? What frightens me is that my elation at the opportunity to repay these devious devils. It makes me think that maybe... I'm no different than them.
- — Psylocke
- — Psylocke
Early Years
Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock was born at the Braddock Manor around the final days of December 1983, her family's ancestral home in the town of Maldon, Essex, England. The only daughter of Sir James Braddock and Lady Elizabeth Braddock-Kannon, she grew up and caringly bonded and bantered with her twin brother Brian and both their older brother, Jamie. While Brian and Jamie pursued their education and career into becoming scientists like their father, Betsy chose another path the moment she found out her mutation through her parents' laboratory, something that made her depressed after discovering how much mutants were being frowned upon and discriminated during her childhood. However, upon further encouragement from her mother and twin brother, Betsy learned to fight and fend for herself rather than conceal her nature through her mother's experience as a martial artist, albeit she was unaware that her older brother Jamie was also a mutant who preferred to suppress his mutation by working with their father in the E.D.I. regularly.
Embracing her mutant powers of psionics (mainly telepathy at first) as early as her teenage years, Betsy protected and befriended some of her close classmates and acquaintances from bullies. However, she became an outcast at her high school when rumors spread fast, leaving her cold and alone even by most the people whom cherished her at first, merely because she was a mutant. Thus, she would often cut classes and eventually used her family name to fight and advocate against Trask Industries' launch of the Sentinel Program around the late 1990s, a controversy which ended in the United States with its justified dismantlement due to Trask's exposed involvement with international crimes, something that was thwarted and investigated by the X-Men, a heroic team of mutants. Proving herself to her family about being proud of her identity as a mutant, she was granted to enlist and join S.T.R.I.K.E., the counter-terrorist special mission unit of her family's organization, the European Defense Initiative, swiftly rising to the rank of Sergeant when she was eighteen.
When Brian Braddock already pursued post-graduate studies in Physics at Thames University, Betsy was studying her program of interest: fashion design, at a university in Brussels, Belgium, which was near the E.D.I.'s headquarters, the Dome. Soon after Brian began his training and serving in the E.D.I. to take the mantle of Captain Britain in the following years, Betsy graduated from university and focused on her operations as S.T.R.I.K.E.'s best known agent. However, ever since their mother died from a flight accident after a trip to her home in Japan, things changed. While the family grieved for their loss during the funeral and was able to move on healthily, Betsy took this loss as it scarred and embittered her heart, losing a loved one who was the closest to her the moment she was born. It was within these years finally molded the psychic and physique of the middle adolescent Betsy into becoming a more efficient yet colder, more distant, nigh-soulless agent of S.T.R.I.K.E. who isn't hesitant to kill targets in every stealth operation she partook in, using the Shurayuki, a special katana that was given to Betsy by her mother months before her passing. Her reputation was considered infamously efficient in the eyes of her colleagues, superiors, and subordinates that they gave her a nickname: Revanche.
An X-Treme Team-Up
Revanche, Agent of the E.D.I.'s S.T.R.I.K.E. Division
Around the New Year's Eve of 1999, in the night of the "millennium celebrations," her first major joint operation and collaboration with fellow agent Lionheart and the X-Men had begun in infiltrating the Hellfire Club, whose goal at the time, under the leadership of Shinobi Shaw, was to bring down the most powerful countries in the world by launching nuclear warheads so the club ends up running the world from the shadows in the absence of first world countries. During the mission, she was dumbfounded to found out her father had been a member of the London Branch's Inner Circle, holding the position of Black Bishop, although this only gave her the advantage to gain enough intel on how to sabotage the main mission of the Hellfire Club sailing in a ship across the Atlantic Ocean, located between North America and Europe.
During the mission, Revanche paired up with the the young and brand new X-Man, Angel, as he helped her disrupt the missiles from ever launching. During the ordeal, the two were able to briefly bond and get to know each other's background, provoking a friendship between the two mutants from two different worlds which would last for the following years, despite their polar opposite personalities. Their infiltration was successful, only for Shaw to launch one powerful missile into the sky as their true plan, which most of them failed to notice nor read within his thoughts all the telepathic teammates, including Revanche who sensed a barrier blocking telepaths from reading Shaw's mind.
It was Angel's determination that encouraged him to make the sacrifice to take the missile into the Earth's orbit with him despite realizing his body and wings couldn't handle it for too long, finally detonating when it reached the thermosphere. Much to his teammates' horror, the unconscious Angel was falling kilometers from the sky into the Atlantic Ocean, but was caught by his the efforts of his teammates, Marvel Girl's telekinesis and Iceman's ice generation. Fueled with vengeance, Revanche would've killed Shaw with her psionic blade after thinking her teammate and newfound friend was dead, but was intervened by the rest of the X-Men when they told her the positive news, with Marvel Girl telepathically talking Betsy out of succumbing to her bloodlust for once, reading the personal tragedy and oppressions which rooted her into becoming the coldhearted impression she emanates to most.
As the X-Men had the guilty members of the Hellfire Club apprehended into the authorities assisted by the E.D.I., the X-Men and S.T.R.I.K.E. celebrated their belated New Year's party in the the Dome for the rest of the day. Betsy was invited by Angel to join the party, listening to Marvel Girl's advice to reconnect with people as a means of slowly recovering from her deep scars, leading to the rest of the X-Men offering Betsy a spot to hang out and train with them in the X-Mansion if she ever found the time to visit them.
Adventures with the X-Men
It was in the early to mid-2000s that Betsy became more involved with the X-Men when she was given the chance to be on-duty leave by taking summer classes and training in the X-Mansion as well as travel across the United States. Betsy had to heavily assist the team in a battle against the Morlocks, wherein was initially charged with helping the wounded and staying in telepathic contact with the members of the X-Men who were in combat with the Marauders but was subsequently forced to utilize her deadly skills when most of her teammates were weakened. After the first strike, Betsy faced the savage Sabretooth, who at the time had taken a break from the Brotherhood of Mutants, in a brawl throughout the X-Mansion which resulted in Betsy's victory against the final Marauder. Impressed by Betsy's courage, the battle-ravaged X-Men offered her a position on the team, which she accepted as a part-time member, encouraging her to officially adopt the codename Psylocke, something that was first teased to her by Angel in New Year's Day of 2000, as well as her other teammates later on. Psylocke would partake with the X-Men on adventures such as facing the anti-mutant media mogul Mojo Adams in his island and fighting their way out off his show dedicated to hunting mutants. That very adventure was only one of the many unimaginable quests with the X-Men, which Betsy never imagined would fuel her enthusiasm besides her vengeful spirit.
Around early 2010s, Psylocke eventually bid farewell from the X-Men and return to her operations in Europe to deal with mutant threats which began to surge her neighboring countries, assisted by her brothers and fellow agent Lionheart. In early 2015, she finally confronted the fellow psionic mutant Exodus and his group of experimented mutant assassins and mercenaries known as the Marauders, which later turns out to be the European branch of the same group Betsy had fought alongside the X-Men a few years earlier. After Exodus was sentenced to incarceration in a supermax prison under the supervision of the E.D.I., Psylocke interrogated the mysterious, centuries-old mutant and upon receiving unsatisfying answers, she ventured to the Americas once more to investigate a series of similar of discreet mutant-related criminal activities in different countries before reaching the United States that were connected to Exodus' dismantled crew, formulating a hypothesis that the Marauders that are still operating in the American continents, mainly the North, may have been years older than what she had taken down on with her S.T.R.I.K.E. team.
Fighting in the Ultimate War
Psylocke, circa early 2015
In the spring of 2015, when the mysterious and diabolical Movement Alliance conducted a series of massive terrorist attacks all over the world destroying several famous and sacred landmarks. Consequently, all the Movement's opposing adversaries, the heroes, were united into creating their own Ultimate Alliance, in order to stop and prevent the Movement from commencing its schemes upon world domination and authoritarian rule, before its too late. As the attacks all over the world have continued for days and then weeks, more and more casualties are starting to increase in numbers, due to the extreme terrorism and serious devastation committed by the conflict between the Movement Alliance and its seemingly unstoppable forces against the combined forces heroes (including the X-Men and the E.D.I.) of the world, the Ultimates, who are not stopping their fight against the villains until they find a way to make them pay for their irreversible actions and restore back peace across the world.
In the event, the infamous and notorious villain of the X-Men known as Mister Sinister would intentionally led most of Magneto's loyalists into causing wreak and destruction on the city of Novi Grad, in Sokovia, without having any orders from Magneto, which immediately has gotten the attention of the X-Men, who went at the scene to figure out the situation. Little did the know, this strategy was one of the first known steps of Essex's plan as he would later unleash a larger event along with some the Earth's most powerful and villainous leaders, leading the Great Superhuman Movement. Setting their differences aside in the span of one month, Psylocke rejoined the X-Men, who sided forces with Magneto's Brotherhood as the core members plan how to take out and defeat Sinister's Brotherhood faction, one of the core factors in forming the Movement.
During these conflict that Psylocke came to a realization that investigating on the crimes of Mister Sinister and his Marauders were barely scratching the surface. The answers to her investigations were being unveiled right before her eyes, revealing the larger conspiracy of Sinister as he infiltrated the Brotherhood and co-founded the Movement Alliance. When the late Archangel swiftly placed an undetectable tracker onto Sinister in the former's last moments. Warren's lifeless body was eventually founded by the X-Men. In a pursuit for vengeance, Psylocke and the rest of the X-Men successfully confronted and defeated Sinister, along with his clones and his Brotherhood faction, during the bloody and enormous final battle of Genosha.
In the aftermath of the global war against the Movement, Betsy tearfully flew back to Dome, Belgium in a hurry when she found out through her older brother Jamie that their father was gone, being one of the notable casualties when Hydra infiltrated the E.D.I. which led to his sacrifice his own life to save his sons and subordinates. The core team of the X-Men caught up with their flight on an X-Jet and visited the Braddocks on Sir James' wake and funeral, where they respectively paid condolences to each other's losses. Confinding other each other's losses, Betsy gave Ren (Angel) the advice to leave the X-Men and the mansion for an indefinite time, which Professor X further encouraged for the sake of his and his other students' mental and physical recovery, to try taking over the family company, just as his relatives had once expected him to do in his father's passing. Mourning her father's death, the Braddock siblings confided in each other's comfort as they grieved and endured struggle of the losing their father and some of their comrade-in-arms, although Betsy was the most resilient among the siblings to continue the operations of the E.D.I. by leading S.T.R.I.K.E. in hunting and apprehending escaped criminals who went into hiding across different parts of Europe after the Movement's defeat.
The Secrets of the Hand
In late 2017, Betsy started feeling the presence of a older yet similar psionic energy in her heirloom katana, Shurayuki, as if another psionic mutant was making contact through it. Determined to find the source of her blade's unusual energy, Psylocke traveled overseas with Wolverine and Yukio Ashida, with Psylocke's investigation has led to her flying to Northeast Asia, finding her mother's cultural roots and ancestral home in Japan. In one of her more bizarre encounters, crimelord and Hand assassin Matsu'o Tsurayaba captured her and had her switch bodies with his master and lover, Kocho Kannon. Locally known as Kwannon, the Hand faction master deceived Betsy by revealing that the former was the latter's long lost maternal aunt. Kwannon revealed to Betsy her mother's unrevealed past, in which long before Lady Elizabeth Braddock came to settle in Europe, the wealth and influence of the Kannon family were mostly built on blood fueled by crimes the Hand had executed for generations.
When her emotions started to trounce Betsy from using any of her psychic powers, she was vulnerable enough to be brainwashed, initially preparing Betsy into becoming the Hand's Revanche in an attempt to strengthen their Hand faction in establishing dominance against the leadership of Tomi Shishido, who was currently based in North America. However, the original process changed when Kwannon decided that she wanted to have her and Betsy physically switched bodies and mentally merged, with Kwannon believing that her senile body is beginning to accelerate its decomposition ever since the Hand lost their source of immortality elixir in of their bases across the globe. Despite being paralyzed by her aunt in a psychic duel, Betsy regained her free will after learning the truth of her mother's death, that the plane crash was orchestrated by the Hand when she finally decided to turn her back on her first family in order to spend her time with her current one in Europe.
Learning about the painful truth helped Betsy gain enough willpower to commit seppuku while inhabiting her aunt's body before they would've fully swapped bodies, interrupting the process. Once freed, Psylocke's psyche was in a state of fury that she singlehandedly clashed the ninjas of the Hand within the isolated temple wherein she was being held captive, Kwannon's headquarters. Using her rage-fueled psionic blade, she killed Tsurayaba with a swift decapitation and fried her aunt's brain, lobotomizing Kwannon into an irreversible vegetative state after a simultaneous duel against the two. Making it out alive when Yukio and Logan came to her aid in dealing with the remaining ninjas, the three came to an agreement to finish off what remains of Kwannon's Hand faction across Japan and save the people who were being oppressed by their rule from the shadows, assassinating Hand members who are considered too powerful and influential to be touched, while turning in those who are still willing to surrender and renew their lives in the long run. Their final mission gave Betsy a form of closure, spiritually avenging the passing of her mother.
Putting her newly-gained powers into better us, Psylocke contacted the Defenders later on around mid-2018 to help them defeat Shishido, whose powerful and influential faction already taken a large area in the United States when Norman Osborn rose to executive power as H.A.M.M.E.R.'s director, using Kwannon's knowledge and memories which she absorbed during their duel. Another discovery which she learned from her aunt was that it wasn't the first time Kwannon had taken over a body, having transferred her consciousness to at least six people in her lifetime as a member of the Hand, revealing that her original body was long gone. Thus, Betsy had to cope with the burdening experience of having to possess the knowledge and a few memories of more than one person besides Kwannon. Thankfully, assistance from her two allies who were powerful telepaths, Jean Grey and Legion, helped eased Betsy's condition by silencing the memories from her mind, albeit retaining their valuable knowledge and skills which she could use in her future missions and adventures.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
Homo Superior Physiology: Psylocke is classified to be an Omega-Level Mutant, thanks to her vast telepathic and telekinetic powers, which the former are on par with Jean Grey and Charles Xavier. Psylocke has the ability to psionically manipulate and control the physical aspects of reality.
- Telekinesis: As a part of her telekinesis, Psylocke can also move and levitate other people. While she can move objects from a distance and fly as other telekinetics do, she has shown little inclination to do either in combat situations. She can also create telekinetic shields of various sizes and strength. Psylocke can manifest a telekinetic katana blade composed of raw psi-energy, which at its lowest intensity, functions to disrupt neural pathways and sever the bonds between molecules, and at its highest level, her katanas can slice an armored opponent and cut through the armor, but leave the attacker physically unharmed.
- Telekinetic Weapons
- Tactile Telekinesis
- Telepathy: She possesses mental powers to affect and manipulate the minds of other sentient beings. Psylocke can read minds and communicate mentally with others over long distances. When she telepathically communicates with another person over a distance, that person often perceives her presence as a butterfly-like image bearing large eyes on its wings. Furthermore, she could intensely channel and focus her psionic powers to her hands to create “psychic blades”, razor-sharp edges of pure mental energy which are said to be the ultimate physical manifestation of her powers which she plunges directly into the minds of her targets.
- Telepathic Tracking
- Psionic Shadow
- Psionic Knife
- Mind Control
- Telepathic Illusions
- Telepathic Scanning
- Mental Paralysis
- Amnesia Inducement
- Psionic Blasts
- Astral Projection
- Precognitive Dreams
- Psionic Immunity
| Power Grid [1] | |||||
| Intelligence* |
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| Strength* |
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| Speed* |
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| Durability* |
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| Energy Projection* |
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| Fighting Skills* |
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| * Heightened stats through enhancements, during secondary mutation, and (temporary) telepathy-based amplification | |||||
Abilities
- Learned Intelligence
- Multilingualism
- Master Martial Artist
- Master Telepathic Combatant
- Advanced Telekinetic Combatant
- Knowledgeable Pilot
Strength level
Class 35+
Weaknesses
- Balancing Between Psionic Powers
Paraphernalia
Equipment:
- Current X-Force Uniform
- Traditional Ninja Uniform (formerly)
- S.T.R.I.K.E. Agent Uniform (formerly)
Transportation: None known.
Weapons:
- Katana Shurayuki
- Psionic Weaponry and Projectiles
- Psionic Energy Charged Weaponry
Notes
- No special notes.
- ↑ Modern Comics: Defenders Vol 3 6
Trivia
- During their momentary swapping of bodies, Betsy was able to absorb most of the knowledge of Kwannon's body before the latter's death during their painful and intense psychic duel. This feat gave Betsy the necessary information to help Defenders in dealing with the Hand in the United States throughout the rise of Tomi Shishido during Osborn's Dark Reign.
- Not to mention, the knowledge Betsy gained from the body of the six people from different lifetimes whom Kwannon had taken over gave Betsy at least hundreds worth of new skills, talents, and interests, which include but are not limited to: writing & speaking a few different Asian languages (enhancing her Japanese), knitting, sculpting, juggling, calligraphy, archery, different ancient martial arts, pottery, and playing various traditional Northeastern Asian board games.
- Throughout her countless attractions (e.g. Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Logan, Alison Blaire, Kelsey Leigh) and short-lived relationships (e.g. Yukio Ashida, Victor Creed, Xu Xialing, Marc Spector) with countless men and women, Betsy has not pursued a romantic relationship with any of them not necessarily because she wasn't interested, but because she either barely or has not felt any "spark" of romantic feeling, something that may have rooted from the loss of her mother and (later) father.
- Angel, however, gave Betsy a different story which let her become more open even to his other teammates in the X-Men. When Betsy tried to make a move on Angel, he turned her down too many times, knowing her too well that she was merely wanted to pursue a physical relationship when she finally read his mind about his feelings for her.
- However, Psylocke started to feel genuine romantic feelings for Angel during and after the events of Infinity Quest and Infinity War, respectively, with Ren jokingly remarking that all it took for her to realize it was the end of the universe, which ironically enough they were victims of the Snap for a year, before being restored back to life with the rest of half the universe. Although, it wasn't until late 2021 when Betsy decided to embrace and admit her feelings, resulting with the two officially hitting it off as a couple.
See Also
- Appearances of Elizabeth Braddock (Earth-61615)
- Character Gallery: Elizabeth Braddock (Earth-61615)
- Quotations by Elizabeth Braddock (Earth-61615)
Discover and Discuss
- Search News for: Psylocke · Elizabeth Braddock · Elizabeth Braddock (Earth-61615)
Links and References
- None.