Akihiro was the son of Wolverine and his Japanese wife, Itsu. In 1946, Itsu, while in the last stages of her pregnancy, was murdered by the Winter Soldier in an attempt to draw Wolverine out and return him to the custody of Madripoor. After Itsu's death, the ancient mutant warlord Romulus took the baby, cutting him from his mother's womb and leaving her body behind. The baby survived the incident, possibly due to his mutant healing factor, which he inherited from his father.
Romulus left the baby on the doorstep of Akihira and Natsumi, a wealthy, young, and traditional Japanese couple. They took the child's arrival as an answer to their prayers and raised him as their own. Though he was named Akihiro by his father, the servants and other families of the town secretly referred to the boy as Daken (駄犬, "mongrel"), a slur on his obvious mixed heritage. As Akihiro grew up, he was often teased by the other children of the town. This harsh treatment and his adoptive mother's indifference toward him caused Akihiro to develop a very cold persona for all except his adoptive father.
As a child, Akihiro's pheromone powers began to manifest. He lacked control over them, and they caused others to mimic his moods. His mother began to believe him cursed and one night, she confessed to Akihira that she didn't love their adopted son and that, after years of trying to conceive, she was pregnant. Akihiro overheard this and felt his position in the household was now threatened. In 1955, after the birth of the baby, Junichiro, Akihiro confronted his mother, telling her that he had killed her son. When Akihira found out he disowned Akihiro, taking him into the forest behind their home and telling him to leave and never return. Daken furiously responded that "Akihiro" was not his true name. Natsumi then appeared, running at Daken and trying to kill him with a rifle's bayonet. The attack caused Daken's claws to extend reflexively, and with a flail of his arm, he accidentally slashed Natsumi through the chest, killing her. Unable to force himself to harm his son, Akihira instead committed suicide with the discarded rifle. Romulus then appeared to the boy for the first time since infancy, saying that he was what Daken would someday become.
Romulus took the boy in, and in 1959 sent Daken to a boot camp in Canada run by Frederick Hudson, the same camp where Wolverine had first trained more than forty years earlier. Daken was also trained by the same man as his father, Silas Burr. Burr trained Daken for nine months before Daken disappeared one night. While two search parties were sent out to find him, Daken, at the behest of Romulus, reappeared in the camp and killed every man there before confronting Frederick Hudson and Silas Burr.
Daken killed Hudson and then fought Burr. Burr knocked Daken out, and believed he had killed him, but was unaware of Daken's healing factor. Daken revived, fired three shots into Burr's back, and then prepared to fire one into his head, only for Romulus to appear and stop him, telling Daken that he had plans for Burr. Romulus then decided to bond the indestructible metal called Adamantium to Burr's skin, Burr survived the surgery and became known as Cyber years later.
In 1967 Akihiro met a man named Carl Valentino in Toronto, Ontario. He believed they lived an entire life together until he woke up and realized Carl's mutant dream powers allowed him to live a lifetime in one night. After that one-night stand, he would not see Carl again for decades.
In 1977, Romulus revealed to Daken that his father was still alive, but lied at the same time, telling Daken that it was Wolverine who had killed Itsu in an attempt to prevent Daken from being born because he feared what Daken would become. This lie sowed a seed of vengeance in Daken that Romulus continued to feed in the following decades.
After this revelation, Daken discovered that a strange man also sought revenge on Wolverine, after being wronged by him in the past. Daken decided to help this man and joined his criminal organization: The Red Right Hand. It was also on this day that Daken saw his father possibly for the first time. Daken then tracked his father's other children all around the world for years, turning them over to the Red Right Hand and on his advice, the criminal organization trained them in order to use them as weapons against Wolverine. Daken knew that they wouldn't stand a chance against Wolverine but having his father kill them would hurt him in the worst way possible. Those children would later become collectively known as the Mongrels.
In modern times, Daken finally met Wolverine face-to-face for the first time. After Wolverine was captured by S.H.I.E.L.D., Daken disguised himself as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. He stabbed a Dum Dum Dugan LMD before confronting his incarcerated father. He deemed him weak, then slashed him across the stomach, leaving him to bleed out on the floor, as his mother had been left many years before. Daken's action also "aided" his father in escaping from S.H.I.E.L.D., but not for benevolent reasons.
Daken next arrived in Berlin at the home of a woman he had been playing as a patsy. He led her to believe that he had been cheating on her with a man that he was actually just planning to kill for a passport. Knowing that she would drink an entire bottle of burgundy which they had purchased together, Daken secretly poisoned it with sleeping pills, making it appear that she had committed suicide as he stated that she was a footprint he was erasing.
While walking through the streets of Potsdam, Germany, Daken was contacted by an anonymous messenger who reminded him of his displeased master's "ultimate goal". Daken dispatched the messenger in anger that he was being prevented from having the opportunity to confront his father on open ground as his master had promised him. Later he was on a train to Brussels, watching his father in a nearby stolen car. He then received a phone call from an unknown "friend", who was actually Daken's former combat instructor Cyber. Cyber confirmed his father's destination. After "helping" him escape from S.H.I.E.L.D., Daken lured his father into a bank vault in Brussels that contained a Carbonadium synthesizer, Daken engaged Wolverine in battle, with Daken demonstrating great fighting prowess similar to his father. The fight was interrupted, however, by Cyber. He challenged Daken, his finest student, to combat in hopes Daken would take him to his supposed "master".
Losing the fight due to Cyber's superior strength and being impervious to harm, Daken fled, leaving his father and his former instructor to deal with each other. Later, on a train through Eastern Europe, Daken was tortured by his cousin Victor Hudson through continuous whipping with a gasoline-soaked rope, while Wild Child delivered a warning from their master to avoid future confrontations with his father.
Despite the warning, Daken continued to monitor his father and when Logan secretly took a hit out on himself, Daken became outraged that somebody else should kill his father before Daken had the chance. Daken was lured into the open when Deadpool attempted to kill his father, just as Logan had planned. Daken was then shot in the back of the head by the Winter Soldier, with a bullet made from carbonadium which dramatically decreased the speed of his healing factor, incapacitating him. With Daken unconscious, Logan cradled his son in his arms and carried him out of the warehouse.
Daken regained consciousness after being brought to a cave somewhere in Japan that was filled with the disfigured remnants of men used in various Weapon X experiments. When Daken awoke he apparently panicked and killed most of the men. When Logan arrived to find him standing amid the bodies, Daken faltered, attempting to explain that he'd killed the creatures because he felt threatened and asking who he was and what had happened, revealing that the head-wound seemed to have caused him to lose most of his memories, much like his father had in the past.
Logan identified himself only as 'a friend', promising to take Daken to someone who could help him. When Logan decided to steal a truck to get them back to San Francisco, Daken helped unbidden, sneaking up on the driver and pulling him from the vehicle. Logan initially believed that Daken was going to kill the man, but when told that he didn't have to, Daken simply tossed the man to the ground. Logan reflected that Daken didn't seem to have an ingrained bloodthirst, and wasn't too far gone to help like Sabretooth.
While Wolverine was attempting to track down Charles Xavier to aid in Daken's recovery, Daken was captured and recruited by Miss Sinister and her partner Sebastian Shaw who offered to help him regain his memories. After they tricked Xavier into triggering the "psychic trap" implanted in Daken's mind, Miss Sinister attempted to manipulate Daken by implanting false memories of a shared childhood with her; however, the implanted memories failed to take root, and Daken thanked her for the beautiful story and then stabbed her with his claws. As he turned his attention to Xavier, he was stopped by his father, who refused to fight him. Xavier then used Wolverine's memories to show Daken the truth that Romulus was behind Itsu's death and Daken became enraged at having been manipulated. Against Xavier's protests, Logan then decided to take Daken with him to seek out revenge against Romulus.
The duo then planned to find what Cyber knew about Romulus. Logan instructed Daken to 'betray' him to Cyber in order to get close enough to double-cross and capture him, which Daken did before triple-crossing Logan and leaving with Cyber. However, after learning all of the information Cyber had on Romulus, Daken provoked him until Cyber's deteriorating health caused him to have a heart attack, and then revealed that he had pickpocketed Cyber's heart medication. Daken then taunted Cyber by telling him that the world belonged to him and he had no intention of sharing it with anyone. He planned to work against Romulus on his own in order to usurp his empire. Daken then left Cyber to die and disappeared before Logan caught up to them.
Upon becoming the new head of S.H.I.E.L.D., Norman Osborn put together a new group of "Avengers" and approached Daken to play the part of "Wolverine". Daken agreed. Nick Fury then found Logan and told him that he believed Daken was going after the Muramasa Blade that Wolverine had left in Cyclops' care. The sword has various mystical properties, including the ability to disable superhuman regenerative powers and cut through even adamantium. Fury believed that Daken intended to have the metal bonded to his bone claws by the Tinkerer who had last been spotted in New York City.
Daken served with the Dark Avengers on various missions but always did so pursuing his own agenda, playing Osborn against the Fantastic Four in order to ingratiate himself with both parties and rigging situations to ensure he would always come out on top. Using both his powers and simple psychology, Daken constantly manipulated his teammates. He was aggressive and threatening toward Sentry, jeering, teasing, and flirtatious toward Bullseye, and gossipy toward Ares. With Moonstone he even performed an about-face, originally presenting as being shyly smitten with her, but when she began stalking him, he convinced her that he was a particularly dangerous psychopath, scaring her off.
Cyclops, seeing Daken as a danger and a liability, planned to use the Muramasa Blade to kill him, since Daken's assumption of his father's identity on the Avengers could be used to discredit the already vulnerable X-Men. However, Emma Frost, believing that this would drive a wedge between the two X-Men and seeking to prevent Daken's death, warned both Logan and Norman Osborn before Cyclops led a team against Daken. Having had advanced warning, Daken prepared an ambush and managed to fight the team of X-Men to a draw using stealth and cunning. As he was about to kill Cyclops, Logan intervened and fought him but in the end, the Muramasa Blade was shattered, and Daken escaped with a shard of it.
Daken had the Tinkerer coat the inner-wrist claws on each hand with the metal of the Muramasa Blade. The Tinkerer had to anchor Daken's claws to an adamantium sheath and even then they were not very durable since they couldn't be bonded to his skeleton like his father's. Wolverine was able to find him but it was too late, the bonding process was already over. Daken then revealed to his father that he intended to use his new claws to kill Romulus, he then stabbed Wolverine through the chest (but without using his new claws) and escaped.
When Spider-Man entered Avengers Tower pretending to be Mac Gargan, Daken ambushed him, stating that he knew he was not Mac by his scent. Initially, Daken had the upper hand in the fight, as Spider-Man seemed to be especially vulnerable to pheromones, to the point that they entirely disoriented his senses; however, he eventually prevailed and threw Daken into an electric generator.
Daken became a member of Osborn's team of X-Men briefly, before returning to the Dark Avengers following Emma Frost's defection from the Dark X-Men, taking half the team with her.
Following repeated failed attempts to kill the Punisher, Norman Osborn sent Daken and a platoon of H.A.M.M.E.R. troops to complete this mission. After a bloody round of hand-to-hand combat, Daken dismembered and decapitated Castle before kicking his remains from a rooftop. Castle's body parts were collected and spirited away by Moloids seemingly operating under the protection of Man-Thing. Castle's body was put back together and revived as FrankenCastle.
After learning of Skaar, the son of the Hulk, Daken sought him out to recruit him to the Avengers, believing that having a "kindred spirit" on the team would be helpful. Daken used his pheromones to calm Skaar down, reverting him to his human form. Now a child again, Skaar asked Daken to kill him due to guilt over the destruction he had caused back home, but Wolverine and Banner intervened. The two father-son teams battled, but the fight was stopped when Banner threatened to kill Wolverine, prompting Daken to back off.
Daken's loyalty to Osborn and true motives remained in question. This put him at odds with Bullseye, who initially was the only member of the team to recognize that Daken was manipulating everyone. He secretly assisted the Fantastic Four in breaking into Avengers Tower. They planned to steal incriminating evidence against Norman Osborn while trying to clear their own name, but they were foiled by Bullseye.
A tape showing Daken brutally disemboweling an armed robber was leaked onto the internet, and Osborn contrived a plan to fix Daken's public image by having him defeat an invented terrorist team. Osborn's plans backfired when Daken got overconfident and was beaten on camera by the "terrorists" led by Emmy Doolin. When Daken was sent after the "terrorists" a second time, Osborn arranged for an explosion to destroy the residential building with both the "terrorists" and Daken inside of it. After the explosion, Daken emerged from the burning building carrying a baby girl whom he'd shielded from the blast with his own body, and then collapsed in front of live news cameras, being declared a true hero.
During Osborn's Siege of Asgard, Daken had visions of killing Osborn forced upon him by the Norns who wished to bring about Ragnarok with Daken as the vessel. Daken chose not to seize upon this destiny. The Dark Avengers were defeated, and as they were being arrested, Daken was the only one who managed to escape by killing and replacing an army soldier.
Daken was then contacted by his father for help in defeating Romulus, detailing a plan for luring him into the open. Before that plan could be enacted, however, Romulus surprised Daken in a hotel in Paris. After Romulus briefly gaslit him, Daken related everything his father told him about his plan. When Logan later confronted Daken in Ankara, he told Daken that he had counted on him revealing everything to Romulus and that the plan he'd told him was false. He then stabbed Daken through the heart with a replica of the Muramasa Blade, making Romulus believe that Daken had been killed to lure him out of his hiding place.
When Daken recovered from being stabbed, he helped Romulus to escape. However, once they were alone Daken attempted to kill him. He claimed that he had an epiphany, realizing that Romulus had always been lying about his intention to make Daken his successor and that Romulus had always intended it to be Logan instead. Out of anger and a need to prove himself better than his father, he slashed Romulus's chest open before Logan arrived with Cloak to transport Romulus into the Dark Dimension. Daken and his father fought each other until Logan was able to break both of Daken's arms due to the Muramasa claws not being properly anchored. He then rendered Daken unconscious by stabbing him through the heart once again, then cut the Muramasa claws out of Daken's wrists and buried them, along with the rest of the blade.
Daken stayed in Rome for a time as he suffered an existential crisis following these incidents. He sank into depression and nihilism as he attempted to rationalize Romulus' teachings about power and control against both their defeats at Logan's hands. When a grifter attempted to rob him, he came to the conclusion that those who hurt or attempt to hurt him have done nothing wrong because the world lacks any meaning beyond survival.
Eventually, he left to go to Tokyo, in search of the Muramasa blade. However, when he was there he encountered the newly revived Franken-Castle.
Castle's new form made him far more dangerous than ever before. Wolverine interfered but Daken nearly killed both of them by using the bloodstone to recreate the alien Exo-Mind before having to abandon the bloodstone and the battle due to a negative interaction between the bloodstone and his healing factor.
He then went to Milan, where he had a fashion designer make him a new costume. When the suit was finished, he killed the designer to preserve his anonymity and traveled to San Francisco, now home to the X-Men and a refuge for mutants. In San Francisco, he observed two opposing groups protesting mutant rights and concluded it was a waste of time and decided he was on his own side.
Soon after, he ended up going to a fortune teller to see his future. The fortune teller revealed three cards to him: The Emperor, The Tower, and Death. Daken began stalking Melita, his father's current love interest. He followed her all the way to a bar and touched the back of her neck. She quickly looked behind her only to find no one. Daken thought to himself how small his father's world was and how it had no vision or scope. Daken wanted something more.
After finding Melita Garner, Daken helped the Red Right Hand in their plan to send Wolverine's soul to hell, he then decided to tell Mystique that both he and the Red Right Hand intended to have Wolverine kill his own children after he escaped from Hell. Shocked by this revelation, Mystique betrayed the Red Right Hand afterward.
After sending several of his men after Daken in order to get his attention, the leader of the Red Right Hand angry about Daken's actions asked him why he told Mystique their plan, to which Daken responded: “Because I want it all. And the only way to have it all is to make sure that no one else has anything.” The leader of the Red Right Hand then told Daken to kill Mystique but instead, he decided to use her for another purpose and invited her to dinner. During their dinner, they were attacked by Hellverine who burned Daken alive while Mystique was able to escape believing Daken to be dead. But unknown to her it was all a setup as Hellverine had other plans in mind for Daken and allowed him to live while Daken used this opportunity to disappear making the world believed he was dead while letting the Red Right Hand finish their revenge against his father.
Despite Daken not being present to witness the success of the Red Right Hand's revenge against his father, Wolverine had a vision showing him how Daken had been involved in the Red Right Hand's horrific plot.
Now believed to be dead, Daken went to see the Fantastic Four where he obtained a glove from Reed Richards that produced energy claws so that he would be able to conceal his identity and continue to be "dead" to the rest of the world without his claws giving him away. While on a ferry in New York City, Daken learned from a newspaper story that Bucky Barnes, the current Captain America, had been the Winter Soldier.
Daken then traveled to Madripoor where he confronted Tyger Tiger, beginning to undermine her control of the island in an effort to seize it for himself. When X-23, his father's clone and adopted daughter, arrived hunting a shadow from her past, she found herself facing off against Daken, the new king of Madripoor's criminal underworld. The two battled briefly but neither could gain the upper hand due to their shared healing factor but impressed by Laura's skill, Daken offered her a place at his side, which she refused.
Unbeknownst to Laura, Daken was also working with Malcolm Colcord and allowed him to run several experiments in Madripoor in order to imbue him with a power beyond Weapon X, but this alliance also resulted in the kidnapping and the deaths of several persons, several of them children. Knowing that Colcord was up to something else, Daken decided to use Laura to learn more, and let Colcord capture her and used her as test subject. With Laura now inside Colcord's laboratory, Daken decided to free her and gave her a Weapon X file containing information about her past. Together they then faced several of Colcord's mutate experiments. The duo then found Colcord, discovering that he had planted a bomb that was about to go off. Daken and Laura allowed the bomb to go off, knowing they would survive.
Unbeknownst to X-23, Colcord survived the explosion as well, having used a serum to grant himself a healing factor. This healing factor was not as effective as Daken's or X-23's, leaving him in constant pain. Daken handcuffed him to a radiator and refused his pleas for death, leaving him to suffer.
When Deadpool decided to kill himself and sought out Daken's help in finding the serum that could negate his healing factor. He asked that Daken shoot him with it on him once he found it. Daken believed this was too good to be true and turned him down, wishing him luck. Daken later spoke with Tombstone who originally ordered the hit on Deadpool as he tried to find out about the serum which negates mutant powers. Tombstone refused to speak about it.
Daken kept consolidating his power in Madripoor by having the heads of the several criminal organizations remaining on the Island recognize him as their leader. All agreed except one old man: Tan Kim Seng. After meeting him, Tan Kim Seng dismissed Daken, telling him all he was capable of was destruction and imitating his father. After killing the old man and becoming the indisputable ruler of Madripoor, Daken was still shaken by the old man's words and decided to prove him wrong. To that end he broke into Avengers Tower in order to see his father. Daken bid his father farewell, in an effort to leave his old grudge behind and start a new life. Daken then left Madripoor and went to Los Angeles to build a new life for himself away from his father's shadow.
Daken's actions in Madripoor made the island fall into chaos and during his rule, several criminal ventures such as child prostitution, gun running, slavery, and drugs ran rampant again on an unbelievable scale which would later force Tyger Tiger to allow ivory trade in order to put an end to those criminal activities.
Now in Los Angeles, Daken tried to take over the city's criminal underworld in the power vacuum left behind by the fall of the Pride. While attending a party at the home of prominent movie star Marcus Roston, Daken was given a drug called Heat, which he was very surprised to discover had a stronger effect on him than any drug ever had before. He began a relationship with Roston, who turned out to be the distributor of Heat] Soon after, Donna Kiel, an FBI agent who was determined to arrest Daken, attempted to confront him at Roston's home, but Daken evaded her.
Daken became rapidly addicted to the Heat, and during his attempt to become the head of the criminal underworld by pulling off a more audacious heist than any in L.A.'s history, he failed due to hallucinations and a failing of his healing factor caused by the drug. While attempting to escape the scene of the botched heist, Daken was caught by Donna. Rather than alerting the other authorities, she began interrogating him regarding a string of grizzly homicides, and Daken discovered that somebody was deliberately framing him for a murder spree.
After being convinced that Daken wasn't behind the serial killings, Donna agreed to team up with him to solve them. The 'Claws' serial killer continued to cause carnage in the dark areas of the Hollywood Hills and the Heat's grip on Daken was growing daily, scarring his mind and body. Local superhero Moon Knight came after Daken, initially believing him to be the killer. During their fight, a combination of the effects of the Heat and taunting by Moon Knight caused Daken to become badly triggered and believe that he was fighting his father.
The killer was revealed to be Roston. He used the addictive properties of Heat to take control of Donna. At Roston's direction, Donna reported to her superiors that Daken was the Claws Killer and made him the most wanted man in America, putting the LAPD and the FBI on his trail, even calling in an air strike on the house where he was living.
While seeking answers for how to defeat Roston, Daken stumbled into the home of the Runaways. Chase Stein knew of Roston as a former agent of the Pride, and the Runaways made an alliance with Daken and together they took him down. Donna, who has left an emotional wreck after her experiences with Daken, Roston, and Heat, met Daken at a diner to discuss their future. Donna believed she was in love with him but was convinced he was a monster. Daken suggested she was the same and provided her with an opportunity to kill three men involved in human trafficking. She instead turned her gun on Daken who reacted because his healing factor was not working, slicing her hand off, and escaped.
The Heat had ravaged Daken's body, costing him his healing factor, and his control over both Madripoor and the L.A. underground, and would soon cost him his life. He returned to New York to "go out with a bang", drugging his father and taking him to watch his "show". He bombed the headquarters of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, installed bombs around the city, and drugged and easily subdued Mr. Fantastic. After a long battle with the heroes of the city, he began to succumb to his illness. Confronted by his father, he hugged him and asked him to forgive him. Before Logan could say anything, Daken scornfully told him he had placed a bomb on a timer at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning and blew himself up, leaving nobody to bury. Wolverine rushed to his school to find nothing but a little doll of him, as Daken's plan had been to leave Wolverine to forever wonder what his son's true intentions had been.
Daken somehow returned from the dead and was one of several villains invited to Sabretooth's birthday party in Madripoor. Wolverine heard about it and decided to crash this party. He defeated Daken and the other villains present before wishing a "Happy Birthday" to Sabretooth, in honor of Sabretooth's tradition of thrashing Wolverine every year on his birthday.
Daken then formed a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in secret alongside Sabretooth, Mystique, the Skinless Man, the Blob from the Age of Apocalypse, the Shadow King, and the Omega Clan. He told X-Force that they planned to reveal its existence to the world and to turn Evan Sabahnur into their own Apocalypse.
The goal of Daken and the Brotherhood was to torture Evan long enough for him to become the new Apocalypse, then to use the Shadow King to mess with his mind in order to force Evan to destroy the Jean Grey School, to kill all the students, to kill all of Logan's friends and then blame X-Force for everything.
To that end, Daken and Sabretooth then decided to take Evan to the farm where he grew up but Evan jumped out of the car and tried to warn his parents to get out but found them both killed by Sabretooth and Daken. Evan attacked them but refrained from killing them, refusing to become like them. They commended him on his control before revealing that they didn't really kill his parents because they never existed in the first place.
Due to the betrayal of Earth-295's Nightcrawler, Wolverine was captured by Daken's new Brotherhood. Daken tied his father up and began taunting Logan with insults and telling a likely apocryphal account of his youth. Logan attempted a dialogue and apologized to his son for failing him, but Daken had no interest in hearing it. Daken then trapped him in a drowning chamber, as the only way to kill Wolverine is to deprive his brain of oxygen. He forced Evan to watch Wolverine drown at the same time he punched and screamed at Evan, trying to make him get angry.
Finally, Evan donned the Apocalypse armor. Wolverine was trapped underwater, forced to watch while drowning as his son corrupted his student. Daken told his father that the Shadow King would take control of Evan and use him to destroy Wolverine's school, his friends, and his world. Then the Brotherhood would spread the word that this was all due to Wolverine's black ops kill squad, destroying his reputation. Daken told his father that he believed in the end, bad people did bad things simply because they were bad.
Wolverine lost consciousness, but Deadpool found him and resuscitated him. Wolverine immediately rushed to find Daken but told Deadpool to find the rest of the team and get them out. He found Daken outside the base and the two men fought to the death. As the fight went on, Wolverine acknowledged to himself that he was holding back his animal side, as Daken deserved to be killed by a man in full control of his actions. Meanwhile, Daken was considering what he would say to his father, how he would explain that he had years of Romulus' torture to imagine what his life would be with the love of a father and mother.
Knowing he had no choice after what his older self revealed to him when he was in the future, Wolverine managed to get the upper hand by slashing Daken. He then drowned him by holding his head down in a puddle of water in order to save the lives of his students. At the end of the fight, as Wolverine knelt over the drowned, beaten corpse of his son, he was approached by Sabretooth, who revealed that he had been behind the Brotherhood and staged the confrontation because he wanted to trick Logan into killing his own son, knowing it was the one wound he'd never heal from. An angry Evan almost killed Sabretooth as a result but Logan told him to let him go, as revenge would only lead him to a path of destruction just like what happened to Daken.
Daken's body was later taken to Japan by Wolverine and he was buried in the village of Shirakawa-Go.
Daken was later brought back to life by the Apocalypse Twins, using the Life Seed and made a Horseman of Death with the Death Seed, in order to serve, alongside Banshee, Grim Reaper, and Sentry.
The Twins' plan to destroy Earth failed after the Avengers Unity Division traveled back in time from a divergent universe where their plan would have succeeded. As a result, their ark was destroyed by Sunfire, but Daken and the Grim Reaper managed to return to Earth along with the corpses of the Apocalypse Twins, and evaded capture.
After learning of his father's death, Daken went to an auction in Madripoor that was selling the remains of his father. He killed everybody present at the auction except Viper, Mystique, and Agent Kim, whom he let live in order to pass on a message; that Daken would kill anyone seeking any piece of his father's remains. Daken later went to Okinawa with a priest and buried his father's remains there.
Daken was then kidnapped with several other people including Mystique, Sabretooth, X-23, Lady Deathstrike, and Elixir by Shogun after his father's death.
After successfully finding and kidnapping the “Wolverines”, Shogun threatened them with the hypnotic "control words" (that manipulate, sedate or even kill each of them), in order to force them into helping Shogun and his group of allies find the adamantium-petrified body of Wolverine in the burnt-down Paradise facility. Before they could leave on this mission however, they were attacked by Siphon, who killed Elixir and drained Daken's healing factor, leaving it nonfunctional. They proceeded with the mission, and Daken and X-23 initially kept Daken's inability to heal a secret from their impromptu teammates. They encountered and fought the Wrecking Crew, hired by Mister Sinister, who were also looking for Wolverine's body. When Daken and X-23 found the body, Mister Sinister appeared, took Wolverine's body, and also ripped an eye and arm from Daken, leaving him mortally wounded.
On the Changeling ship, Sharp used a Regen Serum made by Dr. Cornelius that he found in the wreckage to stabilize and save Daken, against Ogun's wishes. Daken remained infirm on the ship as the others made plans to continue their mission by stealing Wolverine's body back from Mister Sinister.
But their mission was a failure and Wolverine's body was recovered by the X-Men. Later Fang, an Imperial Guard member who had befriended Wolverine years prior, easily defeated the Wolverines and kidnapped them one by one, taking them on adventures, both teaching them important lessons but also causing them great pain and duress, as revenge for them causing Wolverine so much grief. He took Daken to Jotunheim.
In Jotunheim, Fang took Daken to face a Frost Giant. When Daken initially refused to fight the giant, told him that Daken was his estranged father. Despite lacking his healing factor, Daken managed to gain the upper hand and tried to kill the giant, only for Fang to save it.
Fang spoke to Daken, touching on his obsession with gaining revenge on his father, even briefly restoring Daken's lost arm and eye. Just as Daken believed that his lost limbs had been restored, Fang snatched them away, as part of punishing him for what he had done to his father.
Afterward, the team was able to finally defeat Fang but he managed to escape, Daken was then manipulated by Mystique into going after Siphon as revenge for what it did to him, and Laura decided to follow him for his safety. Along the way, the duo encountered Blade who was fighting against Siphon and several vampires. After helping him and learning the truth about Siphon's powers, Daken decided to fight Siphon to death. Siphon overpowered Daken and was about to kill him until Laura intervened and saved him.
Daken and Blade then worked together to defeat Siphon, but Laura convinced them not to kill him since she knew Siphon was just a victim, who only wanted to find a way to get control of his body again. Siphon was captured, and Daken and Laura then regrouped with the rest of the team.
But not long after the team was betrayed by Endo, Neuro, and Skel and had to face Sinister and his army. In the midst of the battle, Junk was killed by a feral Sabretooth and Mystique manipulated Daken into turning Siphon loose. Siphon then drained Mister Sinister's healing factor before being shot by Mystique. Mystique then sent Siphon, Shogun, and the rest of the team through a Portal to somewhere in Florida.
The team was betrayed again by Mystique who, thanks to Siphon, drained Sabretooth, X-23, and Lady Deathstrike's healing factors. Mystique was the only one left with a healing factor, so the team used Siphon to track her in order to get their revenge. After finding her, Lady Deathstrike killed Siphon and the team confronted Mystique, but she proved to be too powerful for them and she single-handedly defeated all of them.
Not long after the newly emerged mutant Zach ran away from the Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach, Daken, whose healing factor seemed to have returned and regrown his arm, took him under his wing, dazzling him with displays of wealth and a laissez-faire attitude that fascinated the teenager and helping him control his powers. When Iceman caught word that his student had run away via video post, he set out to find him at Greenwich Mean Time in Upper East Side New York.
Upon learning that Daken was the one Zach had fallen in with, Bobby attacked him, freezing Daken's flesh and leaving him immobilized while going to search the building for Zach. Daken's healing factor helped him to recover quickly from the attack and he caught up as Zach was arguing with Bobby, adamant about not going back to the Xavier Institute. Daken, furious at having been blindsided by Bobby's first strike attacked, only to be easily overpowered by the omega-level mutant and pinned against a wall by a snowflake-shaped blade through the abdomen, which left him immobilized and bleeding heavily. Upset, Zach used his powers to dampen Iceman's long enough for making a getaway in a helicopter.
Daken put Zach through extreme combat and survival training, including periods of outdoor living and picking fights with random toughs around Madripoor. Zach would initially raise complaints about exercises seeming pointless but later be impressed by Daken's manipulation when the 'real' meanings behind lessons were subsequently revealed to him. Although the training he received under Daken's tutelage was intensive, Zach's fascination with Daken only seemed to grow.
Once Daken deemed Zach's progress to be sufficient, the two returned to the X-Mansion. Daken set up a distraction using fake Purifiers to attack the school, drawing away the rest of the X-Men leaving Iceman alone with his boyfriend Judah, while Zach led the students into the Danger Room and tampered with the control settings using his powers. When the five of them were alone, Daken reveals that the reason he took an interest in Bobby on their first meeting was because of his previous contact with a Death Seed some years prior. Daken stabs Judah, badly injuring but not killing him, and then Zach uses his energy-channeling abilities to control and differentiate the energies of the Death Seed inside Daken.
With the Death Seed energy coursing through him, Daken easily dominated the fight with Bobby while Idie helps get Judah to safety. Eventually, Iceman overcame Daken after Michaela had disabled Zach, causing Daken to lose control of the Death Seed and himself. Bobby attempted to freeze the Death Seed into dormancy within Daken, who then escaped before the rest of the X-Men returned.
Daken resurfaced later on during the outbreak of the Laura Kinney Virus on Roosevelt Island as one of the three people teleported in by Doctor Strange to help Wolverine quell the crisis. He told her briefly, that his healing factor, which was the key to curing the victims of the alien plague, came back since his adventures with the Wolverines. While he agreed to join Laura, Gabby, Old Man Logan, and Deadpool in their efforts to help as many of the stricken population as possible, Daken confessed that he didn't care for the island and was only there for Laura. He was eventually forced to stand down before the disease could overwhelm him, as his healing factor wasn't at its usual level yet. The crisis was averted, but Laura fell into a coma for two weeks.
Shortly after, Daken and other people whose powers were similar to Wolverine such as Laura, Old Man Logan, Sabretooth, and Lady Deathstrike came under threat from the clandestine organization called The Orphans of X. After Laura awoke from her coma and went to space, the Orphans of X decided to track Daken. Eventually, Daken got into a conflict with their contingent at the Defiant Platypus Bar before it was destroyed by a stinger missile resulting in his capture. He later escaped and met up with Laura and Gabby in order to find Muramasa because the Orphans of X had recovered the Muramasa Blade and created bullets from it that could kill them. After meeting Muramasa, all three donated a part of their spirit toward the creation of a mystical suit of armor capable of withstanding the Muramasa bullets.
When the Orphans of X caught up with them at Muramasa's compound, Daken threw himself into the fray to hold them off while his sisters escaped, but not before concealing a mobile phone inside of his abdomen so that they could use it as a tracking device to find him again. After rescuing Daken, the siblings discover the reasons behind the Orphans of X's hatred of them and Laura managed to reason with them and reach an armistice.
When the group of young time-displaced X-Men that Magneto was mentoring went missing on a mission in space, he sent his ally Briar Raleigh to meet up with Daken in Barcelona with the proposition to become allies. As a gesture of goodwill, she gifted him on Magneto's behalf a set of adamantium daishō swords. In order to assist Magneto's efforts to counter the global release of the power-bestowing and mind-controlling virus Mothervine by a cabal led by Havok, his allies temporarily banded together into a makeshift team of X-Men.
The crisis averted, Daken was then tasked by Magneto to murder Jimmy Hudson who was now possessed by the Poison, Daken confronted Jimmy and tried to kill him. But their fight was stopped by the time-displaced X-Men who just came back from space, and after helping Jimmy escaped Jean Grey demanded answers from Daken. Daken explained that after they disappeared during the Mothervine and Poisons incident, Magneto lost his patience and was done playing, he wanted to take care of Jimmy himself but he had bigger targets to eliminate and one of those targets was none other than Emma Frost.
Daken then somehow escaped from the X-Men and heard the news of the disappearance of Wolverine's body from Lady Deathstrike and Sabretooth. The duo asked him to help them investigated Logan's possible return and in case he was alive to kill him once again, Daken agreed and joined them. Using data from military satellites, the team tracked down an adamantium signature similar to Logan's in Maybelle, Arizona. They found the town overrun by zombies and their healing factors deactivated within the town's perimeter. Daken was captured by a kill team sent by the organization responsible for the town's state, Soteira.
He then managed to escape and met up with Sabretooth and Lady Deathstrike. When the trio tried to head back to the power station where Daken had been held prisoner to deactivate the mysterious glowing green orb that created the zombies and switched off their healing factor, all three were taken down by Soteira's soldiers. In the midst of the battle, Daken was fatally injured and died.[16] His body was left behind by Sabretooth and Lady Deathstrike when they escaped after destroying the mysterious glowing green orb, and it was later retrieved by Soteira.
Persephone, the mysterious leader of Soteira, then resurrected Daken as one of her undead killers. With Daken's reanimated corpse under her control, she used it as one of her enforcers. While traveling on a boat with other Soteira soldiers, Daken's reanimated corpse and Omega Red's reanimated corpse were made to attack his recently resurrected father and former Soteira employee Ana (who was in reality already dead and merely used as a vessel by Persephone) who were chasing them to get back Ana's son Perren. While Omega Red's reanimated corpse was taken out by Ana using a harpoon gun, Wolverine sprayed Daken's reanimated corpse with fuel from his boat's engine and set it on fire with his heated claws before tossing it into the water.
Daken was later resurrected by unknown means, or possibly just self-resurrected as his father did, he was eventually welcomed to the new mutant island of Krakoa, created by Xavier, Magneto, and Moira X. He entered through the teleportation gateway alongside other villainous and fractious mutants, who had been invited to join the nation in order to heal mutant-dom and start over as a whole species together.
He was later bonding with his father and little sister Gabby by playing spin the bottle at the Krakoan bar. Instead of kissing whomever it landed on, when Gabrielle spins it, either Logan or Daken had to unsheathe their claws from their arms right into their own head. Daken played against his father and lost twice in a row.
Daken, now more devoted to Krakoa, offered up his services to the newly minted X-Factor along with Northstar, Polaris, Prestige, her pet Warwolf Amazing Baby, Prodigy, and Eye-Boy. They were tasked by Northstar, with finding the missing (and most likely dead body of) his sister Aurora in order to make sure she was actually dead for the resurrection process to be applied by The Five. At first, Daken only offered because he was drunk, bored, and thought she was hot, but later proved to become a valuable team member along the way. After discovering Jeanne-Marie was actually dead and murdered by an anti-mutant human she was dating, they brought back her body to Krakoa. Afterward, the group officially banded together under the leadership of Northstar, with the approval of the Quiet Council of Krakoa and The Five.
During their first case, the team traveled to the Mojoverse to investigate Wind Dancer's disappearance, where Daken (deliberately) got rejected by the border control and went back to the Boneyard. There he made some advances toward Jeanne-Marie, but she fled the conversation once he brought up the circumstances of her death.
During the Academy X house party following Sofia's resurrection, he admitted to Lorna that he didn't understand how Eye-Boy's happy attitude could be anything but an act, but she reminded him that not all kids went through the amount of trauma they did. Later that evening he was seen drawing on the walls of his room using charcoal when Jeanne-Marie approached him and he reaffirmed that he was truly romantically interested in her.
Following Siryn's repeated suicides, X-Factor questioned the newly resurrected mutant and after she proved uncooperative, Northstar tasked Akihiro with tailing her. At this point, Siryn had been completely taken over by Morrigan, who had manipulated Lorna into disrupting Akihiro's communication with the team. Luring him into an abandoned village in Alaska, she brutally attacked him, while constantly taunting him for not being accepted by his team members, leaving him impaled on a steel beam, close to death. Luckily, Northstar found him in time to rescue him and get him back to the Boneyard. There, he healed and relaxed in the hot springs, where Jeanne-Marie visited him and the two of them shared their first kiss.
After she left, Morrigan started her attack on the Boneyard, throwing Akihiro into an illusion of being drowned by Jeanne-Marie. He pleaded with her and promised to "be good" until he eventually resurfaced and went to his bedroom, muttering "しっかりしなさいよ..." (jpn. "Pull yourself together"). Not much later he got woken up by the intense scent of Eye-Boy's fear, went to his room, and comforted him for a moment until the Morrigan came after them. After meeting up with Prodigy he attacked the Morrigan head-on to allow his living teammates to escape. Following his resurrection by The Five he admitted that his last memory was of being impaled in the snow; his recollection of being rescued and his following interactions were completely void (Aurora remembered the events of the evening).
Feeling particularly vengeful, his role in the retaking of the Boneyard was to directly attack the main manifestation of the Morrigan, while Polaris and Rachel drove her out of the building and temporarily kept her control over Siryn at bay. While exploring her memories the team discovered a geas (magical contract) between Siryn and the Morrigan. After reaching the heart of the curse, Daken offered his blood as a sacrifice for the geas to reveal the riddle leading to the warrior who could truly kill the Morrigan.
Aurora and Daken later attended the Hellfire Gala as a couple, where he was attacked by her ex-boyfriend Wild Child. During a dance he admitted to her that he knew about her split-personality and found out that her death had been a suicide to cover up that she had killed an anti-mutant bigot. Intending to keep this a secret, he went back and killed all the members of his anti-mutant hate group. Therefore if she was prosecuted, he would be too.
Following Prodigy's confrontation with his killer, Daken secured David's previous dead body, carrying it from the scene while flirting with Aurora.
Akihiro and Laura noticed that their younger sister Gabby was not attending the Gala. They found a letter she had written them both. He believed he saw her the next day while No-Girl was possessing her corpse. Martha, in Gabby's body, confronted Akihiro for his mistreatment of his younger sister and instead chose to focus on his relationship with Aurora.
At the end of the party, the team discovered the body of the Scarlet Witch. They investigated her murder with the help of the X-Men and X-Force and unanimously concluded Magneto was the top suspect.
Eventually, Akihiro learned that Carl Valentino had passed away, having lived a life surrounded by loved ones. After attending his funeral, Akihiro welcomed Valentino back to life in Arbor Magna, for he was resurrected. Valentino reshaped himself as Somnus, sharing the haven Krakoa represented with Akihiro. When doing investigative work for X-Factor in Greenwich, Connecticut, Akihiro was tricked by Carver. This led him to get captured in molten lava by Brimstone Love, who tortured him as an attraction for the Theater of Pain. As Akihiro was in need of rescue, Captain Kate Pryde's Marauders made finding him a priority mission. The Marauders contacted his lovers, past and present, Somnus and Aurora for help. With the Marauders' intervention, Akihiro broke free and attacked Brimstone Love, triggering the villain's escape. In order to stop predators like Brimstone Love, Akihiro joined the Marauders along with Somnus and Aurora. Akihiro coped with the trauma of being tortured by Love with Somnus' help.
The Marauder's next mission led them to sail through Shi'ar space to uncover a two billion-year mystery of the first generation of mutants being missing. During the space trip, they were attacked by Kin Crimson forces. During a challenging fight against Erik the Red, the Marauders were knocked out by Somnus to gain extra time, but captured by the Shi'ar Empire. In the prison-planet Krag, Kin Crimson betrayed the Shi'ar Empress Xandra by murdering her. Next, they executed Captain Pryde, prompting the Marauders to brutally counter the attack when looking for a "Chronicle" that contained information about the hostages they wished to save. When finding Chronicle, Akihiro identified it not as a file or a book, but as a Lupak member of Kin Crimson. Psylocke probed into Chronicle's mind to reveal the truth about the first generation of mutants as a prehistoric society, the Threshold.
Since some Thresholders were stored in Shi'ar timedriver devices, most of the Marauders decided to travel back in time in order to rescue the data through Krag. Akihiro and Aurora stayed behind to fight Chronicle. Akihiro triumphantly ended Chronicle. With Xandra resurrected on Krakoa, Akihiro was honorably granted the title of the Shi'ar guardian Fang for having finished a Lupak traitor.
