Layla Miller (Earth-616)
From Marvel Database
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History
House of M
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When Layla Miller’s parents died in a tragic automobile accident, she was placed in the Saint Joan Orphanage on the Bowery in New York City. Soon after relocating to the orphanage, Layla’s mutant power manifested as she grew horns and discovered she could breathe fire, frightening the human orphans and causing them to reject her. Layla quite possibly did not exist in this capacity at all before the House of M crisis. Layla may have been a manifestation of Scarlet Witch's powers.
When the delusional mutant Scarlet Witch used her powers to remake reality into a world in which mutants were the dominant species, everything changed for Layla. In this rewritten reality, Layla was a normal student attending Brooklyn’s Public School 45 and her parents were alive again. Plus, a new set of mutant powers manifested and enabled her to perceive divergent realities, allowing her to remember the old reality as a world where the Mutant-Human War never occurred, where mutants were still persecuted for being genetically superior to humans, and where she was an orphan. Seeking the help of Daredevil, Layla instead found Luke Cage, Hell’s Kitchen’s most powerful crime lord and leader of a human resistance movement in this altered reality. Layla showed Cage glimpses of his life prior to Scarlet Witch’s reality warp, as a hero with a girlfriend expecting a child, and she was allowed to remain with Cage’s group. A day later, after rescuing Wolverine, a mutant who also remembered what life was like before the reality warp, Cage’s group set out to use Layla’s powers to unlock the unconscious memories of other heroes, unaware that Layla had lied to them about her life prior to the warp. Under the guidance of telepathic mutant Emma Frost, Layla restored the memories of many of Earth’s heroes, who then led an assault on the Scarlet Witch in Genosha. The attack on Genosha prompted the Scarlet Witch to restore reality to its former status quo, in an event later dubbed “M-Day”, only with a significantly smaller mutant population due to her belief that mutants were the cause of her dysfunctional family.
With reality restored, and very few aware of the cause of M-Day. Layla woke up and found herself back in the orphanage she hated - only without her mutant powers. Shortly thereafter, she showed up at the offices of X-Factor Investigations, a private investigation firm based out of New York’s Mutant Town, intending to prevent them from ever learning the truth behind M-Day. Claiming that she “knows stuff”, Layla informed X-Factor’s employees that one of their informants was killed by an agent of Singularity Investigations, an enigmatic security agency secretly funding the recreation of the mutant-killing Legacy Virus, and announced that she was joining X-Factor. Layla discouraged X-Factor from directly confronting Singularity, stating that doing so would be disastrous for X-Factor. Instead, Layla began using her knack for predicting the future to give X-Factor advice and steer them in the right direction. When Singularity sent an assassin to X-Factor’s offices to kill Rictor, Layla was waiting and electrocuted him. But when X-Factor member Siryn was severely beaten by an agent of Singularity, Layla was blamed for not warning X-Factor and voluntarily returned to the orphanage. When Layla sustained two black eyes upon her return to the orphanage, the headmistress allowed her to return to X-Factor’s custody. Since then, Layla has declared herself the nemesis of Quicksilver (whom she believes escaped his intended death) and has dedicated herself to his elimination.
She claimed she and Jamie Madrox would eventually marry. Since Layla was his junior by at least a decade, this utterance caused Jamie repeated and considerable discomfort. This, however, may be a somewhat possible outcome for the two as Rahne Sinclair (Wolfsbane) recently saw a future in which she had murdered both Layla and Jamie, apparently on their wedding night. This is still uncertain however as it is unknown if this was really a vision of things to come and even if it was, the future has been known to suffer multiple changes.
Times of War
When the Inhumans came looking for Quicksilver, Layla advised him that Black Bolt wasn’t going to kill him during the confrontation and that he should take a small trip to the future to see the outcome of what happened to them. She and Jamie went to the meeting where she revealed to Jamie that she tried to kill Pietro but couldn’t because he escaped and that his actions were meant to happen.[1]
A group made up of ex-mutants by the name of X-Cell, who believed the government had depowered mutants, were hiding in Mutant Town. When Siryn and Monet returned from (???) they brought an ex-mutant called Nicole, which shocked Layla because she didn’t know of her arrival. Layla visited Quicksilver who had restored most of X-Cell's powers. She revealed to Callisto and Marrow that it was he and Wanda Maximoff who caused the Decimation, the government did not depower them, and Pietro had lied. After a failed attempt on Layla's life, Nicole was tripped by Layla and fell in front of a train, which destroyed her, revealing she was actually a robot.
Around this time she was also offered a place among Nick Fury's Secret Warriors by Daisy Johnson but declined, claiming the mutants would need her more.
Messiah Complex
Layla went with one of Jamie's dupes to investigate an alternate future caused by the birth of the mutant messiah. While there, they discovered that the mutants were living in internment camps. While in an internment camp, the mutant scanners alternated between detecting Layla as a mutant and detecting Layla as human. They learned from a child version of Bishop that the mutant messiah had caused this world. Layla then proceeded to kill the dupe to send the information back to the original Jamie, leaving her alone and stranded in the future.
Despite being trapped in an alternate future, Layla still interacted with Jamie as a figment of his imagination. This figment served as "stuff [Jamie] knew deep down", appearing in moments of self-realization, such as when Jamie admitted to himself that he knew about Siryn's pregnancy.
The Summers Rebellion
Layla eventually escaped the camp and helped a new mutant called Linqon. After revealing to some people an operation called Operation Purity, which involved every citizen being tested for mutant genes, she went to Atlantic City and met up with Cyclops and his daughter Ruby. Together with Ruby, she initiated the Summers Rebellion.
Layla found a way back into the past but was now much older than she was before. She pretended to be a nun and worked with John Maddox, a duplicate who settled down to raise a family. When she arrived at John's church, she found Jamie about to kill himself. She stopped him and revealed who she really was, much to his shock.[2] She revealed herself to be a holographic projection and took Jamie into the alternate future.[3] When Layla and Jaime returned to the future, Jamie met Ruby, who berated Layla for traveling back in time when warned not to. The group was then attacked by Sentinels.
After Layla and Jamie argued about how they never came for one another, the two finally gav into their emotions and shared a kiss. Jamie was awkward about starting a relationship with Layla, feeling shewais still a child, though Layla told him she never really was.[4]
Powers and Abilities
Powers
Reanimation: Layla has the ability to reanimate dead beings, restoring their consciousness, but not their souls.[5]
The following "powers" are actually the result of her older self's memories being implanted into her head by that same version of her. Not a perfect process, it left gaps in her memory (the "blind spots"), but enabled her to seemingly "predict" the future (and also created a time paradox, wherein she was forced to carry out the actions in her "memory" to ensure she could later go back and implant the memories in her younger self) These faux abilities are:
Layla's powers apparently work on the concept of the Chaos Theory of Quantum Mechanics. In a jaunt through time (80 years into a possible future) she was scanned as both a flat-scan human and also a mutant within seconds of each other. Her only comment to this was "Yeah, it comes and goes."
Quantum Precognition: ability to see paths of causality to their ultimate conclusion, which allows her to alter events to prevent or cause certain occurrences; this gives her a sense of apparent omniscience. All she has to do is do one thing at one end, and it makes things turn out the way they should at the other end. Able to see the true reality. She is even able to view a person's real history at a detailed level. Ability to know very detailed sequences of events that will occur in her immediate area, causing her to say she "knows stuff." Whether her ability extends globally as well is still unknown.
Mental Awakening (formerly): Able to pierce the veil between divergent realities. She can enable others to see this, by clearing their minds in an unknown manner. Ability to restore the memories of individuals affected by changes to reality.
Reality Warp Immunity: Layla was immune to Scarlet Witch's reality warp, retaining memories of regular Earth-616 during the House of M storyline.Weaknesses
Chaos Theory Rebounding: Presumably according to her if she tells anyone what she knows she will be struck down dead on the spot. (If there is any truth to this it would mean that her powers most likely rebound back on to her).
Blind Spots: However, she only sees in the future, not the past, and a few times has exhibited 'blind spots'. Her abilities apparently do not work as well on Quicksilver, due to a chaotic influence, possibly caused by Quicksilver's relation to the Scarlet Witch, or those related to Singularity Investigations (like her brainwashed teammate Strong Guy), especially CEO Damian Tryp, whom she cannot read at all.
Links
- Appearances of Layla Miller (Earth-616)
- Character Gallery: Layla Miller (Earth-616)
- Images that feature Layla Miller (Earth-616)
- Fan-Art Gallery: Layla Miller (Earth-616)
- Quotations by Layla Miller (Earth-616)
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