Origins As revealed in the first issue of
X-Men: Phoenix – Warsong, the sisters are grown from ova cells harvested from telepath
Emma Frost while she lay comatose after a
Sentinel attack that killed her students, the original
Hellions, and are only five of many cloned daughters. They state that over a thousand eggs were stolen from Emma's ovaries during her coma, and the remaining hundreds (if not thousands) of clones reside within incubation chambers inside a hidden underground laboratory at The World, a complex housing the
Weapon Plus program. They were created by
Sublime to be powerful weapons able to kill every mutant by combining their telepathic abilities. The Cuckoos were designated Weapon XIV
. Xavier Institute They were first introduced as the protégés and favorites of Emma Frost, and were unaware of their true purpose. A telepathic block was used to mask their placement in the school, causing anyone who questioned their origins to lose their train of thought. They, along with student
Quentin Quire, were noted as the strongest
telepaths among the new students at the
Xavier Institute of Higher Learning. Although Quire and the Stepford Cuckoos were rivals, Quire had a crush on Sophie. Sophie and the other Cuckoos considered him to be disgusting and rejected him completely. Partly as an expression of adolescent rebellion, partly under the influence of a mutant
drug called Kick, and partly out of a desire to impress Sophie, Quire incites a student riot at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. Sophie dies stopping Quire, overexerting herself after using the same drug to boost her powers. The Stepford Cuckoos hold Frost to be partially responsible for Sophie's death - with Frost having "inspired her to heroism" - and disassociate themselves from her. Secretly, Esme Cuckoo had been collaborating with X-Man
Xorn, who would later turn out to be
Magneto in disguise. Taking control of the Cuckoos' group mind, she telepathically forced
Angel Salvadore to attack Emma Frost, completely shattering her diamond body into fragments. Jean Grey managed to
telekinetically reassemble Frost and return her to life, whereupon Emma revealed Esme's involvement in the attack. Esme then abandoned her sisters to join Magneto's new
Brotherhood of Mutants. Later, losing faith in Xorn, the Brotherhood turned on him and Esme, who attacked him, angry that Xorn did not return her affections. Xorn then killed Esme, and she died in Emma's arms, stating with her dying breath that she never wanted to end up like Emma.
Corsairs Soon afterwards, the institute is rebuilt, with Emma Frost and Cyclops as headmasters and leaders of the
X-Men. Frost and Summers divided the older students into several six-person training squads, each taught by a staff member. The remaining three Cuckoos, now calling themselves the "
Three-in-One," were assigned to the
Corsairs squad, advised by Cyclops. The three girls were the co-leaders of the squad. In
X-Men: Phoenix Endsong (March–June 2005), the cosmic entity known as the
Phoenix Force came back to Earth seeking to inhabit the body of Jean Grey. Quentin Quire, still in love with Sophie, sensed the Phoenix and
exhumed Sophie's body. He sought the Phoenix, which resurrected Sophie, but she promptly chooses to die again rather than be with him. The X-Men defeat the Phoenix, though a shard of it locates Celeste.
Weapon Plus and Phoenix—Warsong In
New X-Men #154 (May 2004), the Stepford Cuckoos are identified as Weapon XIV (each girl being units 1 to 5, ordered alphabetically by their first names), the living weapon code between Weapon XIII (
Fantomex) and Weapon XV (
Ultimaton). Manipulated by both the shard of the Phoenix and Sublime, the Cuckoos reanimate Esme and Sophie as corpses and return to the
World. At the World, they are greeted by a computer image of Sublime and learn of their thousands of cloned siblings. Their true purpose was to collect data on the X-Men and transmit it to the other clones through shared
nanotechnology in their bodies. It is revealed that the Phoenix fragment has manifested in order to destroy the Cuckoos and all of their clones to prevent them from being activated as a weapon and killing all mutants. The Phoenix manifests most strongly through Celeste, using her as its avatar, but is then diffused according to Sublime's plans among each of the cloned telepaths, boosting their powers. The Cuckoos then learn that they also shared Emma's ability to turn into a diamond form. Now referring to themselves as the
Thousand-in-One and under Sublime's control, the cosmically empowered psychics proceed to enact their programmed destiny of mutant destruction. Celeste, at Emma's behest, accepts her role as a Phoenix host and wrestles control of the Phoenix, freeing the clones from Sublime's control for the first time. However, the Phoenix goes on to destroy the thousand clones, despite their newfound freedom and desire to experience life, by shattering their newly manifested diamond forms as well as Esme and Sophie. Disgusted by the destruction, Celeste casts the entity out of her body. However, it refuses to depart causing Celeste to reabsorb it into her own and Mindee and Phoebe's diamond hearts to end the Phoenix's destruction. Unlike Emma's diamond composition, which contains a flaw, the Cuckoo's hearts are flawless diamond. As such, the Phoenix fragment is literally sealed within their hearts. The price the sisters must pay for this is that they can never again feel emotion, leaving them more detached from others than they were before.
Post-Civil War The Stepford Cuckoos were considered as "potential recruits" for the
Initiative program. The girls were next seen helping
Elixir master medical and anatomical knowledge given to him by
Beast. They are soon after teleported to
Limbo with the other students and captured by
Belasco, who has helmets placed on them to keep them asleep and prevent them from using their powers. They were freed by a newly revived
X-23 and turn the tide of the battle against Belasco. When the
Hulk attacks Xavier, the
Astonishing X-Men, and the
New X-Men, the Stepford Cuckoos contact several other X-teams such as
Excalibur, the Uncanny X-team, and X-Factor to get their help. They then help
Prodigy access all his forgotten knowledge and abilities to compensate for his power loss as thanks for saving them when anti-mutant terrorists known as the
Purifiers attacked the school.
Messiah Complex The Cuckoos use Cerebro to track down
Cable, who has the missing mutant baby for whom the X-Men are looking. When the X-Men arrive at the location indicated by the Cuckoos, the baby had already been stolen by the
Marauders. The Cuckoos are unable to relocate the baby telepathically, so Emma Frost orders them to focus on finding the Marauders who kidnapped it.
Manifest Destiny Following the events of the Messiah Complex, the Cuckoos rejoin the X-Men in their new home of
San Francisco, along with many of their former classmates. The girls later agree to help erase Josh Foley's memory of his work with the newly reformed
X-Force team, so as to help the team maintain a sense of a secrecy from the main X-Men team. They agree to keep the team a secret, primarily out of loyalty to Cyclops. The girls have recently begun to dress more individually than before, no longer wearing matching outfits. Each of them also have different hairstyles, with only one of the Cuckoos keeping their prior hairstyle.
Secret Invasion The Cuckoos help oppose
Skrull invaders in San Francisco. When the Skrulls place a blockade on all telepathic communication, they channel their telepathy through
Cerebra into Emma as she attempts to find the psychic blockade and destroy it. Emma's psyche is briefly disconnected from her body and as she fights the Skrull psychics, the Cuckoos, on orders from Cyclops, use their telepathy to keep Emma's
autonomic functions going. Afterward, the Cuckoos appear as supporting characters in
Uncanny X-Men.
Nation X During a pitched battle between the X-Men and a pack of genetically altered versions of
Predator X, the Phoenix fragments contained in the Cuckoos' diamond hearts leave them and depart into space for reasons unknown. During their time on Utopia, the Cuckoos begin to experience boredom and start sneaking off the island to buy DVDs of horror films. Influenced by the movies, the girls start mentally torturing their classmates using scenarios from
The Twilight Zone and
Ring among others. After Emma discovers this, she reveals that as a child she was a fan of the film
Clash of the Titans, and that she occasionally daydreams of being in the movie herself. Realizing that she always loved teaching, Emma decides to make the Cuckoos into teachers for the island's school, thus giving them something to do with their time.
Chaos War During the "
Chaos War" storyline, Esme and Sophie are among the deceased X-Men members who escape from the underworld. Sophie confronted Esme about her death with little resolution. During this time, Sophie befriended
Thunderbird. While searching for answers among the remains of the Xavier Institute, the former X-Men were attacked by Carrion Crow: Eater of the Dead. Esme later sacrificed herself to save her sister from Carrion Crow. In the aftermath of the defeat of the Chaos King, Sophie is returned to the afterlife after reality is restored by
Hercules. Thunderbird even commented that the next time that he is resurrected, it would be with Sophie.
Regenesis After "Schism" Phoebe wanted to go to
Westchester while Irma wanted to stay at Utopia, leaving the deciding vote to Celeste, who chose Utopia after learning that Quentin Quire was going to be at Westchester. Following the death of Charles Xavier and the appearance in the present day of the original five X-Men, the Cuckoos decide to join Cyclops's new iteration of the Xavier School.
Wolverine and the X-Men During
AvX the Stepford Cuckoos came to stay at the Jean Grey School. When Cyclops and his team came to confront Beast about bringing the original X-Men forward in time the Cuckoos left with them.
X-23 The remaining Cuckoos, feeling empty without their sisters, opted to seek out and employ a genetic regeneration specialist who did work at The Facility behind
Laura Kinney's genesis. They manipulate Dr. Helen Marks into creating cloned bodies for Sophie and Esme to inhabit. The process was flawed however, as the clone bodies rejected the psychic imprint of their mortal hosts; causing their bodies to deteriorate at an accelerated pace. Esme — carrying an ailing Sophie by her side — demanded they go through with an alternative plan: securing the healthy body of an X-23 program subject,
Gabby. In reality however, Esme had been manipulating both her sisters and their engineering assistants from behind closed doors the entire time. Subtly pushing her three living relatives into mind controlling several biophysical manipulation experts to giving herself a new lease on life, as well as having Helen create a cellular degeneration compound with which she used to murder her sister Sophie behind everyone's backs again. All while pleading that the former head of the five-in-one died over night. A chase would ensue after the three-in-one managed to send out a false text to call Gabby to their location at an abandoned church, wherein they put Laura under psychic hallucination as the three made off with their prize. As Mindee was sent out to find whether or not Laura had died in the blast. The newly rejuvenated Gabby/Esme began discussing her plan of ascendance to her two remaining sisters Phoebe and Celeste. Meanwhile, the former leader of the quintumvirate, Sophie, would communicate with Laura in the mental plane, explaining to her and Cuckoo family's life story just as Irma would run into Laura thinking it was Sophie in the physical world. After some harsh coercion by the former and more nuanced explanations by her deceased sibling, Mindee is appalled at the discovery Esme had schemed, lied and killed her only kin once more after returning from beyond the grave. Reluctantly offering her assistance to the Laura/Sophie amalgam in their efforts to stop the current three-in-one from reaching Cerebro before Esme can gain control of it. As Esme and the other Cuckoo's make their way to the Xavier Institute, they are intercepted by a bazooka packing Beast riding a helicopter while their leader rants about how the X-Men wasted their time and their lives protecting worthless humans. Esme is dismayed to discover the adversary before them was merely an illusion conjured up by Sophie waiting at the school of gifted youngsters. Sophie went onto reveal the depth and extent of Esme's betrayal to her other siblings, when the both of them questioned why she would do such a thing after all they went through just to bring them back. Esme coldly rebuts such claims while admitting she compelled their actions thus far from start to finish. Retorting that the Cuckoos were little more than mindless drones without her to think their thoughts for them, Esme then stabbed Phoebe with Gabby's bone claw. While Laura got into a brutal fight with Esme with Sophie keeping their shared mind free of her psychotic sister's mental influence, Irma managed to make her way to Cerebro to galvanize the other Cuckoo's psychic powers through herself and Laura. All these efforts were towards the purpose of excising their deranged number from Gabby's body, where afterwards the equally disembodied Sophie would bury her twisted psyche so deep she would never resurface again. In the aftermath, the remaining Cuckoo clones would disappear for a time. Laura would hear that they are squatting in Paris, something they know that Sophie would have enjoyed.
From the Ashes Sophie is enrolled at
Empire State University (ESU) and is taking the "Examinations of Post-Krakoan
Diaspora" class with
Kamala Khan. The other Cuckoos have joined a new iteration of the
Quiet Council which is now located in New York City. ==Powers and abilities==