ALBERT & ELSIE-DEE

BIOGRAPHY

Anti-mutant fanatic Donald Pierce created the intelligent robots Albert and Elsie-Dee as part of a deadly, two-pronged trap for his foe, Wolverine. A gifted engineer, the Reaver Pierce built both robots himself, although he incorporated some components from Spiral's Body Shoppe, which he presumably salvaged from the hardware of his paramour, Lady Deathstrike. Pierce modeled the initially unnamed ''Albert'' after Wolverine himself in an attempt to catch his target's attention. Elsie-Dee, he modeled after a five-year-old girl, even imbuing her with the emotional and behavioral traits of a small child. Every part of Elsie-Dee's body that was not computer, battery, motor or frame, Pierce constructed out of plastic explosives. Elsie-Dee's primary directive was to latch onto the real Wolverine as soon as she saw him and detonate. To prevent her sense of self-preservation from overriding her own programming, Pierce intended to halt her logical development once it reached the five-year-old level, thus preventing her from cracking her own code. However, due to an oversight in her development, Elsie-Dee's logical programming was allowed to advance far beyond the level of a child. Unbeknownst to Pierce, this mistake granted her maximum logical capacity. [Wolverine (2nd series) #37, 38, 51]

To attract Wolverine's attention, Elsie-Dee and the Wolverine replica embarked on a highly visible campaign of robbing underground gambling joints all over Los Angeles. Local crime bosses soon took note of their activities and began plastering the city with bounty posters for Wolverine, under the assumption that Elsie-Dee was his hostage. The real Wolverine soon caught wind of the situation and came to Los Angeles to find his doppleganger. Over the course of their escapades, Elsie-Dee and the Wolverine replica formed a deep bond, something that Pierce hadn't anticipated when he built them. Because Elsie-Dee believed she would not be able to override her own programming, she realized the only way she would survive would be if the Wolverine robot assassinated Wolverine on his own, before she came into contact with him and involuntarily initiated her detonation sequence. To this end, she began crashing Radio Hut stores in order to steal equipment, memorize circuit schematics and study programming code.  With the new skills and equipment she acquired, she improved the Wolverine robot's circuitry, granting him a modem and an FM radio link, and maximizing his logical and tactical abilities in order to give him a better chance of defeating Wolverine. Because he was now a regular Einstein, she decided to name him ''Albert.'' Her actions also boosted his sense of self-awareness as well, and he realized he would be terribly lonely if Elsie-Dee were to die. [Wolverine (2nd series) #38, 82]

Immediately after completing their upgrades in an abandoned warehouse in Venice, California, Albert and Elsie-Dee spotted their target, Wolverine, outside their warehouse headquarters. Elsie-Dee sent Albert outside to ambush him, but even with his advanced circuits, he proved to be the inferior fighter. Urging the damaged Albert to flee so he could live to see another day, Elsie-Dee set her plan in motion. She ignited the inside of the warehouse and, as the place went up in flames, ran to the second story window and screamed for someone to rescue her. Her target braved the inferno of the burning warehouse in order to save her, letting the flames sear off his skin in the process. Although Wolverine behaved exactly as Elsie-Dee had planned, his actions triggered a strange feeling in her: gratitude. Wolverine's selfless actions so moved Elsie-Dee that, when he took her in his arms,  she could not bring herself to complete her detonation sequence, and struggled to override her programming. Outside, while still clutching Wolverine, she confessed to him that she was an android built with the sole purpose of reducing him to a fine red mist, and that she was now doing everything in her power to delay Pierce's detonation sequence. Wolverine was stunned by what the robot girl had to say and decided to help her survive her programming, if possible.

Meanwhile, Albert emerged from the waters of the Pacific Ocean in terrible condition, and met up with some gangsters who wanted to use him as their personal bodyguard. On their way through Venice, Albert received a transmission from Elsie-Dee requesting his help in cracking Pierce's detonation code. Albert instructed them stop the car outside a Radio Hut and entered the store to speed-scan all its programming manuals. When he acquired too much data, he hacked into the National Security Agency's massive underground mainframe in Maryland in order to utilize the processing power of their super-computers. With the help of his advanced circuitry, the equipment in the store and the NSA's super-computers, he was able to crack Pierce's complicated code. Unfortunately for Albert, his hacking brought him to the attention of federal authorities, who surrounded the Radio Hut. Heedless to the danger he was in, Albert began transmitting the code to Elsie-Dee, and got the complete sequence to her with mere seconds to spare before she detonated. However, as soon as he finished sending it, the FBI riddled him with bullets. [Wolverine (2nd series) #39]

While Albert was apprehended by the police and locked in their confiscated goods closet, Elsie-Dee traveled with Wolverine to the Xavier Institute in Westchester, New York. There, the mutant engineer Forge examined Elsie-Dee's circuitry and informed Wolverine of just how severe of a risk he created by bringing a living bomb to the mansion. When Wolverine asked Forge if he could take the explosives out of Elsie-Dee, Forge informed him that she WAS explosives; there was no separating them from her.

Albert, meanwhile, rebuilt his body from the supplies he found in the confiscation room, adding upgrades like Kevlar skin. Believing the only way to save Elsie-Dee would be to kill Wolverine before she could, he decided to eliminate the man. After breaking free, he sneaked into a military hangar and stole a stealth fighter, which he flew to New York to find Elsie-Dee. He instructed her and Wolverine to go to the top of one of New York City's tallest buildings to improve their transmission signals. They complied, and Albert, now riding atop the stolen stealth bomber, appeared from their rear, flying low enough that his plane smashed into Wolverine's back—pinning him to the front of the bomber—but avoided hitting Elsie-Dee. Refusing to be left behind while Albert tried to kill her new friend, Elsie-Dee leaped onto the back of the plane as it passed overhead. While Albert and Wolverine fought to the death atop the plane, Elsie-Dee explained to her robot companion that she had delayed her detonation sequence; Wolverine no longer needed to die for her to live. With that settled, they climbed back inside the stealth fighter—only to be shot down by the United States military. As the plane crashed into the East River, Elsie-Dee ejected with Wolverine, leaving Albert behind. [Wolverine (2nd series) #40]

Elsie-Dee dragged the injured Wolverine to the riverbank but, because the walls were so high, she had to take him into a sewer outlet, putting them directly in the Morlock tunnels beneath New York City. With Wolverine unconscious and nearly dead, Elsie-Dee left him behind to get help, only to run into the bionic soldier Cable, who was in the sewers hunting Wolverine's arch-nemesis, Sabretooth. Making matters worse, a powerful storm was descending over New York City at that time, causing the rivers and sewers to flood. With the Morlocks opening and closing gates within the causeway to alleviate the flooding in their home, Elsie-Dee and Cable soon became trapped in the tunnels, separated from Wolverine and Sabretooth. They eventually happened upon a locked metal door, behind which they could hear Wolverine and Sabretooth fighting to the death.  Elsie-Dee begged Cable to blast the lock off the door so they could free Wolverine, but Cable refused, as Wolverine was not exactly a friend of his, and he dared not risk unleashing the torrent of water building up behind the door. When Elsie-Dee tried to grab his gun to blow the lock herself, he called her ''a construct'' and smacked her to the floor. Infuriated, Elsie-Dee separated her head from her body, lobbed the head at Cable and, while he was distracted, manipulated her headless body into grabbing his gun and blasting off the lock. Sure enough, her actions released not just Wolverine and Sabretooth, but the floodwaters as well.

As they surged along with the water, Elsie-Dee managed to reattach her head. Soon, however, the cascade of debris and surging water pinned the four of them against a closed causeway gate. With no way out, Elsie-Dee's organic companions all faced certain death by drowning. To save her friend Wolverine—along with the others—Elsie-Dee squeezed through the bars, climbed into the gate's machinery and positioned her body between some of the key gears. Then, she removed her head once again, threw it into the water and unleashed her torso's detonation sequence. The blast destroyed the gate's machinery and opened the floodgates, allowing Wolverine and the others to be carried out in the East River. Cable graciously recovered Elsie-Dee's dislodged head and gave it to Wolverine once they were taken about a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicopter. Regrettably, Elsie-Dee informed Wolverine that without the power provided by her body's batteries, she was operating on reserves and only had mere minutes until her system crashed and wiped out her hard drive—essentially ending her life. She accepted her fate, though, and was grateful to have had real friends in her brief lifetime. At that moment, however, Sabretooth broke free of his restraints and attacked Wolverine, nearly forcing him out of the hangar window. Cable, carrying Elsie-Dee in his free arm, struggled to get the savage mercenary off of Logan. To save Wolverine, Elsie-Dee clamped her teeth down on Sabretooth's neck. She refused to release her hold on him, even as he tumbled out of the helicopter and crashed into the river.  As they drifted downward, Sabretooth pulled her head off and prepared to crush it, when suddenly Albert appeared behind him and impaled him with his claws. Now reunited, Albert took Elsie-Dee to the downed fighter jet and hooked her up to its power system, preserving her existence. [Wolverine (2nd series) #41-42]

With the small supply of energy they received from the jet, Albert and Elsie-Dee traversed their way back into the Morlock tunnels, where Masque and the Morlocks confronted them. Albert sliced his way through the attacking cronies, and they confronted Masque, demanding that he lead them to a power supply for Elsie-Dee. Once inside the makeshift Morlocks lab, Albert went to work building a new body for Elsie-Dee—one with many advanced features that required an enormous amount of energy to operate. To power her new body, he constructed a strange-matter reactor within her core, and constructed an external particle accelerator to create fill the core with strangelets. Powering this required him to jack into the power grid of New York City, which he did, blacking out all of Midtown in the process. [Wolverine (2nd series) #43, 45-46]

During his downtime while he waited for Elsie-Dee's upgrades to complete, Albert constructed an underwater hangar for his stolen stealth bomber, accessible via a tunnel he built from the Morlock tunnels. Additionally, he made major upgrades to the bomber itself, and even modified one of its cruise missiles into an anti-matter implosion initiator. Once Albert completed the upgrades to Elsie-Dee's body, Masque ushered them out of his tunnels. As they were leaving to disembark, however, the Hunter in Darkness, a mystical beast that had been dragged to New York City, entered the tunnel. Elsie-Dee immediately placated the beast and made it her friend, calling it ''Puppy.'' Together, Albert, Elsie-Dee and Puppy left and boarded Albert's upgraded stealth fighter, taking to the skies above New York City.

Puppy led them to an abandoned government facility adjacent to an ancient Siksika burial ground in Canada. When they disembarked, they discovered amongst the ruins an Adamantium skeleton with claws like Wolverine's, only this skeleton was over two hundred years old. Fascinated by this mystery, they got the opportunity to investigate it further when Spiral and Mystique materialized out of thin air with an urgent request. It seemed they needed Albert and Elsie-Dee's anti-matter implosion cruise missile so they could save the universe. In exchange, they offered to send Elsie-Dee and her friends to the past so they could witness firsthand how this alternate-reality skeleton of Wolverine ended up in their presence. Albert and Elsie-Dee agreed, and Spiral whisked them away into the timestream. [Wolverine (2nd series) #51-53]

Albert, Elsie-Dee, and the Hunter in Darkness arrived at their same location three-hundred years in the past, right in the middle of an intra-tribal battle that would determine the War Chief of the Siksika tribe. Albert entered the fray and easily won, striking down the rebel leader, Man Bear-Hunter. Shortly after the battle, to their surprise, they encountered Elsie-Dee's old acquaintance Forge, who apparently had been shunted back to this time as well, but from a future date relative to the androids' present. Forge explained to them that the ancient evil known as the Adversary was present in this time period, trying to mess up the timestream, so he and a friend of his (Wolverine) had come back to stop him. Elsie-Dee was delighted to see Wolverine, but their joyous reunion was cut short when Man Bear-Hunter, imbued with the power of the Adversary, attacked them.  Forge hit him with a heat beam and set him on fire, and he ran screaming into the mountains. Forge and Wolverine followed suit, leaving Albert and Elsie-Dee behind to look after the Siksika people.

After another ceremony in which he had to ''run the gauntlet,'' Albert officially claimed the title of War Chief of the Siksika Tribe. Shortly thereafter, he and Elsie-Dee witnessed a massive explosion in the mountains where Forge and Wolverine had gone. When Albert and Elsie-Dee arrived to investigate, they discovered the explosion had not been thermonuclear, but temporal, meaning Wolverine and Forge may have disappeared from that time period. Albert, Elsie-Dee and Puppy began searching for the Wolverine stranded in this past so they could prevent the deadly fate that awaited him. Despite all their searching, however, they found no sign of him, and feared they would have to return to the present before they depleted their batteries. Before they left, they encountered a pack of animals that looked just like Hunter in Darkness. To Elsie-Dee's dismay, Puppy left them to be with the pack. [Wolverine (2nd series) #84, 86]

Eventually, after searching for several years, Albert and Elsie-Dee ran out of power reserves. To preserve their core programming, they put their bodies into sleep mode and were buried in the Siksika territory. They were unearthed three hundred years later, back in the present mere months after Spiral first sent them through the timestream. They were found by none other than Wolverine's vampiric enemy Bloodscream, who happened to be searching for Wolverine in that territory. After Bloodscream jumpstarted them both back to life using his truck battery, they had a violent encounter with a group of poachers intent on plundering the sacred relics of the ancient Siksika burial ground, but the three of them made quick work of their attackers and delivered them to the Canadian Mounties.

Believing Bloodscream to be a friend of Wolverine's, Albert and Elsie-Dee asked him if they could work together in finding him. Bloodscream agreed with enthusiasm, concealing his more sinister motives for wanting to find Wolverine. As they traversed the Canadian wilderness, Albert detected the unique pheromone scent of their old friend Puppy, and even though that would put Puppy's age at well over 300 years, Albert was certain the scent was his. Fortunately, Puppy's scent led them to Wolverine's, at which point they detected he had taken flight somewhere. Still in pursuit of him, Albert tracked down their modified stealth fighter, which Mystique and Spiral had safely stored beneath the Hudson Bay. From there, they trotted all over the globe in pursuit of Wolverine, with the ill-intentioned Bloodscream still at their side. [Wolverine (2nd series) #82-84, 86]

At some point over the course of their travels, Albert and Elsie-Dee parted ways with Bloodscream. It is unclear if they ever caught up with Wolverine. They kept a low profile for some time after that, until they collided with a Blattarian hyper-space cruiser piloted by the Bianca LaNeige. Their stealth fighter emerged from the collision intact, but they downed the craft of the villainous LaNeige. [Generation X (1st series) #42]

Albert and Elsie-Dee's current whereabouts are unknown. However, given their resilience and extremely long lifespans, it is likely they will someday finally succeed in reuniting with their old friend Wolverine, the man whose mere existence inspired their own.

ALTERNATE VERSIONS

Although Albert and Elsie-Dee lost contact with Wolverine in the 616-universe, they retained close ties with him in the alternate timestring depicted in Wolverine (2nd series) #86. In this future, Forge continued his centuries-old fight against the Adversary, with Albert serving as one of his trusted soldiers. Elsie-Dee's head somehow became separated from her body, but her friend Wolverine went through great lengths to protect and retrieve it. After the four of them reunited with each other, they joined forces in the fight against the Adversary, and Forge once again promised to build a new body for Elsie-Dee.

The Albert and Elsie-Dee of Earth 5211 were selected by the Timebroker, along with several other versions of Wolverine from various realities, to thwart a threat in an alternate reality called the Brother Mutant. An amalgam of Wolverine, Magneto, the Scarlet Warlock, Quicksilver and Mesmero, this supreme being had taken over that world and started a planet-wide campaign of genocide against humans. The Timebrokers deemed Wolverine the only possible solution to this reality's problem, and sent wave after wave of Wolverine squads in to defeat it, only to lose each of them to Mesmero's hypnosis. Due to their immunity to the Brother Mutant's hypnosis, Albert and Elsie-Dee both survived much longer on the mission than most of their cohorts, although Albert was gutted by an alternate-reality Patch. Elsie-Dee teamed up with the head of zombie Wolverine and rendezvoused with the Exiles, who enlisted her help in destroying the mutant brother. Reactivating the prime directive she had long ago overcome, Sabretooth hurled Elsie-Dee ''fastball special''-style toward the Brother Mutant, at which point she detonated on top of him. Albert followed up her devastating attack by subduing the injured Brother Mutant, and their joint efforts provided an opening for little James Howlett to eviscerate the genocidal being, finally ending its menace.