Arkea (Earth-616)

Origin[]

Arkea is a sentient bacterium created over a billion years ago by the first ever mutant society Threshold as a bioweapon alongside her brother, Sublime. Eons ago, they were created to assist the Thresholders in their war against the Unbreathing, parasitizing mutant bodies, but later on they became self-aware and turned on their creators.

Infecting the sea where new mutants were born, both Arkea and Sublime sought to bring down Thresholds, but the Marauders from the future came to intervene. Despite Bishop's attempt to stop the bacteria, it was Cassandra Nova who succeeded by allowing Arkea and Sublime to infect her body which paved way for her to lobotomize each of their cells, momentarily deterring the two. After the Threshold's downfall, Arkea and Sublime engaged in a microscopic battle to decide who would inherit the planet Earth and dictate the flow of life, with her sibling emerging victorious. Cast out into the abyss, she traveled to alien worlds and evolved separately over the coming millennia.^[2]

Arkea's Return[]

Eventually, she returned to Earth in modern times by riding a series of meteors, intent on exacting revenge on her brother and claiming her birthright. To this end, she used her technopathy to possess the body of Omega Sentinel.^[4] Upon her awakening, Arkea/Karima opened an uplink to the Jean Grey School's vast A.I. database for her own primordial purpose of contagious planetary conquest and revenge against her brother, who just so happened to have given himself up to the X-Men for protection against her.

While in the schools' core hub, Arkea was making conversation with Beast over the various modifications made to her current host body. Eventually, a great battle erupted within the training ground of the danger room as Rogue flew in, smashing the Arkea-possessed Karima into the central training room per Hank's point-to-point coordinate data burst. As the bacteria's control over the system machinery had Rogue pinned down, Arkea continued to scope through and download the entire database pertaining to the X-Men personnel. Realizing her brothers' impressively wise decision to seek their aid, she took a particular interest in the one mutant who could expose flaws within their current host.

Said mutant was none other than Kitty Pryde, who phased through the building and into the basement, passing through Karima's arm cannon and shorting it out. While Kitty was debating with Storm via telepathic relay on whether or not to fry Arkea's host body along with her, Arkea proclaimed Karima was dead and that only her collective remained. Yet when Shadowcat presented the ultimatum of phasing through her killing the core functionality of her host as well as the Arkea entity along with it, the gestalt bacteria soon made haste for a tactical retreat by repairing damaged circuitry, enabling the Omega Sentinel's Spatial Motion function to port them over the Atlantic ocean, all the way to Budapest.^[5]

Sensing the X-men and Sublime's presence within the 'Szent Margit Institute', which was host to countless patients who have undergone neuro-prosthetic surgery, Arkea prepped for battle and spread her infectious entirety among the numerous inmates subjected to medical cybernetic implantation. This was done in anticipation for her conflict with her adversaries, as well as collecting her pieces from the meteor crash not far from the current base. After a lengthy battle, Psylocke had the core host body of Arkea pinned with her psi-blade, but was hesitant to finish her due to conflicting consensus from her fellow female X-Men. The decision was made moot, however, when an inkling of Karima's core personality reasserted herself over her infection, and she the mental dagger into herself, presumably purging and killing Arkea.^[6]

Survival[]

Despite this, pieces of her bacterial being from the meteor she arrived on were still at large; for some time, Sublime spent the majority of his attention and his hosts' resources on tracking and sterilizing any such fragments he could find. Soon, it became evident that he wasn't the only one interested in the bio-technical entity. After hiring a skilled thief/leg breaker to steal an exorbitantly safeguarded bio-technical cache with all known files, notes and data on Arkea's remains from the X-Men's home base, the symbiotically-refitted Deathstrike sought out Sublime and to test her own theories on the alien entity.^[7] Though that piece had been long since rendered disabled, it only took a search elsewhere to find another piece of her, which had landed near a cottage in Norway, where Amora had recently been banished to by Thor as a punishment for past crimes. After taking the fragment back to Dubai, Deathstrike had Reiko build a new Body Shop; the bacterial piece within the sample suddenly became active and jumped ship to the now biotech-enamored Reiko. Having sensed and assimilated with the technology within the new Sisterhood, the alien became fully aware that the X-Men were on their way to stop her, and that her brother Sublime was very much alive. Arkea proceeded to utilize her abilities to augment the Sisterhood, from cybernetic enhancement mods for Deathstrike to the integration of Typhoid Mary's alternate personas, and undid the Odin-Force-powered spell that stripped The Enchantress of her powers. She then assumed leadership of said cabal at the behest of Yuriko in preparation for the oncoming battle. As Amora and Yuriko kept Monet occupied in their heated battle, Arkea and Mary retreated to a lower level of the Shoppe quarters to reconnect with the scattered pieces of herself worldwide. Arkea further spread her viral influence over cadres of Sentinels rendered inanimate at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and across the globe, effectively declaring war on both the X-Men and the rest of mutantkind.^[10]

As Arkea feared being killed by the X-Men, she sought out powerhouses to join the Sisterhood. She first had Amora resurrect Selene.^[11] Then, using the genetic material of Jean Grey, she modified the dead body of Ana Cortés to resemble Jean Grey genetically. To complete this, she had Amora summon Madelyne from beyond the grave to complete the resurrection. Unbeknownst to her, Ana Cortés had contacted the X-Men before her suicide, and the X-Men attacked the Sisterhood. Storm offered Madelyne and Selene a deal, essentially letting them go free as they were only after Arkea at the moment. As Madelyne and the other members of the Sisterhood didn't particularly care for Arkea, they allowed the X-Men to kill her without putting up much resistance, and all of Arkea's samples perished.^[9]

Possession: Similar to Sublime, Arkea can possess the body other beings by dividing her bacterial substance and infecting them at will yet with a different twist. For while her sibling seems only able to possess fully organic beings, she is able to possess and interface with both technological devices and functioning sentient's. Further, still, the techno-organic like diseases semblance enables her to blend both together creating an effective cyber-flesh union.^[10]

• Cyberhive Mind: Similarly to her brother who can merge and move multiple hosts via intake of his biotic germ-like substance, the bacterium can possess and manipulate entire hosts of sentient beings through direct interaction with internalized mechanical parts. Arkea can even manipulate multiple host bodies like a fully functional swarm while retaining her core overshadow marker.^[6]

• Technomorphic Infection: Her powers revolve around hosting both organics and technology. Capable of controlling, reformatting as well as modifying inanimate material and machinery molding it into any form of her liking.^[5] She's proven capable of commandeering complex devices even from plenty of distance.^[6] Even hosting and altering full-on organic beings.^[10]
  • Technoformation: Being a techno possessive entity Arkea can branch out and manipulate any, every and all forms of technology or cybernetics at her leisure. This aspect makes controlling and manipulating the actions of numerous individuals with cybernetic modifications all that much easier.^[6] Her capacity in the skill is so powerful she easily repair and operate numerous defunct sentinels sitting at the ocean floor with ease.^[10]
  • Cyberpathy: Arkea's unique hive mind physiology has the capacity for storing and utilizing new techniques and old design schematics from the possession and studying of past technology and techno-mechanical beings she's possessed. To which she can incorporate it even within a new host.^[12]
  • Upgrading Subordination: Through the fusion of her technoactive sanguine self with others; Akrea is able to massively augment the powers and/or abilities of a great many whom joined her new Sisterhood.^[10] Being able to greatly enhance existing entities, significantly upgrading their inherent abilities or grant additional ones, having easily lifted the limitations brought upon Amora through a Norn caste Odinspell and removing the flaw of Typhoid Mary's schismatic personalities.^[10] In exchange, she establishes a master-servant bond between herself and any willing subordinates who accept her gifts, ensuring their obedience and loyalty.
  • Physical Restoration: Similar to a healing factor Arkea can repair most any and all machinery she comes in contact with, restoring it to complete functionality even enhancing its efficacy and potency to the point of activating entirely new functions altogether.^[5]

• Her name is likely a homonym of archaea, a domain or kingdom that includes microscopic, single-celled organisms, and separated from both eukaryotes (animals, plants, etc) and 'true' bacteria. Interestingly, it has been hypothesized that eukaryotes originally were a fusion of a bacterium and an archaean.