Kinross, Moira

Dr. Moira MacTaggert is a Scottish mutant with the ability of reincarnation.
== History ==
=== Moira's First to Third Lives ===
Moira Kinross was born to powerful Scots nobleman Lord Kinross. When she was thirteen years old, Moira's mutant powers activated, but they didn't manifest, since her gift was that of reincarnation. She led a simple life, marrying a man named Kenneth Cowan and having three children: twin boys, Callum and Dean, and a girl named Abigail. Kenneth died when Moira was sixty-eight years old, and she passed away from congestive heart failure at age seventy-four, ending her first life.
Moira's second life began in utero, having already become fully sentient and possessing a perfect recollection of her prior life. This allowed Moira to appear intellectually gifted, and she was pushed in the direction of academia. She didn't fight her parents' wishes, since she intended to understand her true nature. When she was forty-four years old, Moira learned of Charles Xavier and deduced that she was a mutant; however, she died in a plane crash when she tried to fly to the United States of America to meet him.
In her third life, Moira dove into anthropology and genetics. She actively sought out Charles Xavier when they both attended Oxford University, but she became reluctant to approach him because she found him arrogant and selfish. Due to her distaste for her powers, Moira devoted her life to developing a mutant cure. She succeeded, but caught the attention of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, who attacked her laboratory. The precognitive mutant Destiny warned Moira against following the same path or trying to kill her in her next lives, since Destiny's precognitive powers would allow her to stop Moira in every lifetime. She additionally revealed to Moira that she would only live a total of ten lives; eleven at the most. Afterwards, Destiny had Pyro burn Moira to death.
=== Moira's Fourth to Eighth Lives ===
After being reborn to her fourth life, Moira threw herself into fully understanding the human-mutant dilemma. Becoming open to the potential benefits of mutants, she gave Charles Xavier a second look during their time in Oxford and they fell in love. They married and established Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. She stood by Xavier's side for years until they both died at the hands of the mutant-hunting Sentinels.
In her fifth life, Moira decided aggression was the only acceptable response to the violent tendencies of humankind. She ran away from home at a young age and sought out Xavier a decade before they were supposed to meet. Moira shared the knowledge of her past lives and it radicalized him. Instead of a school for mutants, Charles created an army and isolated it from the rest of the world in a nation called Faraway. It was eventually targeted by Sentinels and Moira fell into a coma due to injury. She died a year later when Faraway fell to genocide.
Her sixth life continued one thousand years in the future, where mutants had lost the war against technology and were nearly extinct, except for Moira, Wolverine and a few others, who were preserved in the personal zoo of the Librarian. The Librarian visited the preserve, revealing to Moira and Wolverine that while mutants had believed the Sentinels to be their greatest threat, their purpose was merely to buy humanity time to bring about the birth of a new species: the so-called Post-Human, representing humanity's absolute control of both biology and technology. Now these homo novissima were preparing to transfer their consciousnesses to machines in order to be absorbed by the Phalanx the following day. Moira realised that neither man nor machines were the enemy, but man's ability to control his own evolution and the surrounding environment. After Wolverine surprised and killed the Librarian, she let him kill her in order to reincarnate and use this knowledge in her next life.
Because of the events of her previous lives, Moira spent her seventh life eradicating the bloodline of the Sentinels' creator, Bolivar Trask, hoping that preventing the creation of Sentinels would allow mutantkind to become the dominant species before humanity could unlock the secrets that would turn them into the Post-Humans. However, Sentinels were still invented in this world, and Moira was killed after discovering a Master Mold Sentinel factory. This experience radicalized her further.
In her eighth life, Moira embraced the philosophy of mutant terrorist Magneto and helped him conquer America and establish the House of M. But during the War of M, Magneto was defeated and killed by the combined might of Earth's human and mutant heroes while Moira was imprisoned. She was later killed during a failed prison escape.
=== Moira's Ninth Life ===
In her ninth life, Moira abandoned the hope that her previous endeavors could save mutantkind. With few lives left, Moira awakened Apocalypse who killed both Xavier and Magneto. Apocalypse and Moira later formed the X-Men, and waged an endless war against humankind and their machine allies that came to be dubbed the "Apocalypse War," which eventually led to the rise of the Man-Machine Supremacy and the birth of Nimrod; an intelligent and adaptable Sentinel that was virtually indestructible. Moira and Apocalypse formulated a plan to eliminate Nimrod, but during an assassination attempt on Apocalypse, Moira was grievously injured before she and Apocalypse could destroy Nimrod and placed into stasis.
Moira remained in suspended animation for sixteen years, until the X-Men -- now consisting of Apocalypse, War, Rasputin IV, an unnamed Cardinal, North, Cypher possessed by Krakoa, and Xorn -- attempted to acquire the exact date and circumstances of Nimrod's creation. With the rest of the team dead, War delivered all the information Moira needed to reset the timeline, this time with the exact knowledge of where and when to intervene in order to stop Nimrod from ever being created. Moira was then killed by War himself, allowing Moira to reincarnate. After all the lives lived and lost, Moira decided to approach her tenth life differently.
=== Moira's Tenth Life ===
In her tenth and potentially last life, Moira decided to return to Charles Xavier, met him again at Oxford, and allowed him to read her mind to learn everything that had happened to her in her previous lives. In this new life, Moira wished to unite all of mutantkind, including the three great mutant leaders she had cast her lot with during previous lives; Xavier, Magneto and Apocalypse, however, she secretly did so in order to de-power them all, hoping to save them from humanity and AI. To this end, she would manipulate all of them, in the hopes of shaping them into the people she needed them to become.
Moira was dating Joseph MacTaggert at the time, but soon separated from him to see Charles exclusively, and their romance lasted for years. Eventually they became engaged, but Joseph got into Charles' head and convinced him that he needed to serve in the armed forces before being a man worthy of Moira. She promised to wait for Charles until he was released from military service, but Joe weaseled his way back into Moira's heart once Charles was absent. Xavier received a letter from Moira breaking off their engagement without explanation and stating that she was returning to Scotland. Moira and Joe were soon married. Joseph MacTaggert proved to be a brutal husband. Moira eventually fled from him to New York City, but Joe tracked her down, beat her and assaulted her sexually, causing her to be hospitalized for a week and leaving her pregnant. From then on, Moira lived apart from her husband, although he refused to grant her a divorce, and she kept the fact that he had a son secret from him for twenty years. Moira's journals would later reveal that she had re-engaged Joseph romantically as part of a plan formulated by Xavier to create a mutant with the power to warp reality, that might one day be used in tandem with other mutants to overcome death itself. Moira identified potential matches for both herself and Charles that might produce such a mutant, which eventually resulted in the births of Proteus and Legion respectively. She also ended her romantic relationship with Xavier due to fear that she was breaking him, rendering him useless for her future plans. This was presumably a great factor in the creation of Onslaught when Xavier snapped and psychically lobotomized Magneto.
==== Genetic Scientist ====
Moira MacTaggert led a brilliant career as one of the world's leading geneticists, earning a Nobel Prize for her work. She founded a Mutant Research Center on Muir Island off the coast of Scotland. She eventually renewed contact with Xavier during a period he spent in England working on a degree in psychiatry. Xavier and MacTaggert discussed the possibility of establishing a school for training superhuman mutants in the use of their powers. Eventually, MacTaggert became Xavier's "silent partner" in founding this school, which trained the team of mutant adventurers known as the X-Men.
When Moira's son began to manifest destructive mutant powers, she attempted to cure him, but her efforts were in vain, and she was forced to keep him imprisoned at her Mutant Research Center. Moira took as her ward the orphaned Scottish girl Rahne Sinclair, who would herself demonstrate mutant powers in years to come. Moira considered Rahne to be her own daughter, as much as if she was biologically so.
==== Deadly Genesis ====
During the early years of Xavier's Academy, Moira founded and ran a secondary facility not far from the Xavier School, in which she had her own students - gathered together youths who she took out of bad situations and adopted as her wards, training them in their abilities without the highly militant regimen of Charles' X-Men.
When Krakoa captured the original X-Men, it was Moira's children whom Charles went to first - not the second team of X-Men, as it was originally believed - putting them through the psionic equivalent of boot camp and allowing them to believe they were being trained over months as X-Men. Charles took them from Moira's care immediately. Moira's children were apparently all killed, and Xavier suppressed even the memory of them from his own students, to keep them from going back to save them. Significant portions of Moira's history were apparently blocked from her memory by Charles Xavier. Only Moira's project tapes, one made directly after the event, before Xavier could suppress the memories, and an abandoned research center remained as clues.
When Magneto was de-aged into a baby, Xavier placed him in Moira's care. As part of her attempts to shape him into the person she needed him to become, Moira altered his genetic structure, hoping this would allow him to better control his vast powers rather than doing so at the cost of his sanity. Sometime after Magneto had been re-aged into a man in his prime, Moira and Xavier recruited him into their scheme. Xavier showed him visions of his failures in previous lives Moira had lived, convincing him to join them. Moira MacTaggert finally made her presence known to the X-Men when she arrived at their doorstep claiming to be their new housekeeper. The X-Men soon learned her true profession and visited her Muir Isle research center. Moira fell in love with Sean Cassidy, the X-Man known as the Banshee, and their relationship persisted.
==== Proteus ====
Moira's son, Kevin, who was code-named "Mutant X" but called himself Proteus, escaped from confinement at Muir Isle and began using his powers to possess the bodies of others and drain their life energies and to warp people's perceptions of reality to terrorize the Scottish countryside. The X-Men attempted to stop Proteus, and Moira warned Joseph MacTaggert about him. (At this point it had been twenty years since she had left him.) Proteus took possession of his father's body, ravaging it, and attempted to kill his mother. Instead, however, Proteus was himself apparently destroyed by the X-Man Colossus. Joseph MacTaggert died as a result of being possessed by Proteus.
==== New Mutants ====
Sometime afterward, Moira discovered that Rahne Sinclair had the mutant ability to transform herself into a wolf-like form. Dr. MacTaggert brought Sinclair to Xavier and persuaded him to establish a new team of superhuman mutant trainees who became known as the New Mutants.
In her laboratory on Muir Island, Moira was assisted by Multiple Man. She took in Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander, following their transformational encounter with the Demon Bear.
Moira also became acquainted with another of Xavier's former lovers, Gabrielle Haller, and learned that Charles had an unstable mutant son of his own, David. Moira treated the powerful but seemingly autistic David Haller for months before finally convincing Gabby to let Xavier see his son and help with the case. After Xavier arrived, though, David attacked Moira and Rahne, catapulting them into his warring mindscape, and rendering their bodies comatose. After they were rescued by Xavier and the New Mutants, Moira resumed her work to help David.
When David's Jack Wayne personality resurfaced, Moira and Rahne were again put at risk, but the New Mutants arrived and contained the threat, placing David back into Moira's care once more. Moira hoped that as David aged, he would be able to reintegrate his different personalities into a whole.
==== Muir Island X-Men ====
Following the Mutant Massacre, several Morlocks came to Muir Isle to recuperate - including Callisto, who became Moira's bodyguard. It also became home to many of the children known as warpies.
Moira and Sean also rescued Polaris, whose powers were in flux and granting her increased size and invulnerability. Moira began testing Lorna to uncover why her powers were acting this way, but she remained unaware that another side-effect of these powers was to amplify negative emotions such as anger and hatred in those around Lorna.
When Muir Island came under attack from the Reavers and Banshee was shot, Moira organised a team to defend the island, including Polaris, Tom Corsi, Sharon Friedlander, Amanda Sefton, and Alysande Stuart. She had Healer bring back Banshee and immediately asked for him to rejoin the battle.
She later had Legion use Cerebro to try and locate the X-Men, but this allowed the Shadow King to possess him. By possessing Legion, whose Jack Wayne personality was already using Polaris' powers to corrupt everyone on Muir Island, the Shadow King was able to take control of even more people.
With all of Muir Island possessed by the Shadow King, Moira was the leader, presiding over gladiatorial matches in an area called the Arena. When Banshee returned with Xavier and the X-Men, the Shadow King made Moira shoot him. She was finally freed from the Shadow King's control by Forge.
==== Legacy Virus and the Fake Death ====
When Magneto eventually learned that Moira had manipulated his genetic structure, he lashed out at her. The knowledge caused him to abandon Moira and Xavier, and to once again set off on his own, more radical path. Moira would soon come to feel that she had become too involved in the world, and needed to take a step back into the shadows, where she felt she belonged.
As the first Homo sapien to contract the Legacy Virus, Moira was one of many frantically working on a cure, even to the point of self-quarantining herself at one stage. When the Muir Island facility was destroyed by Mystique and her Brotherhood of Mutants, Moira had discovered the cure to the new strain of the Legacy Virus that Mystique had created; one that only infected humans. Moira was heavily injured in the attack, and used a Shi'ar golem to fake her death, having it appear to cling on to life long enough to survive a transatlantic flight to transfer that information to Charles, then die in his arms.
== Personality ==
Originally, Moira had a friendly and caring personality, being visibly worried for her son transforming into a life-force draining mutant and raising Rahne Sinclair as if she was her daughter, she was shown to be devoted to mutants, to the point of seemingly sacrificing herself to help cure the Legacy Virus.
However, this turned out to be a complete lie, in truth, Moira originally had this personality in her first life, but after having witnessed multiple timelines thanks to her hidden mutant power and trying multiple times to hopelessly save mutantkind, Moira became more brutal in her approach. In her 3rd life, she became disgusted with mutants and tried to find a cure to the X-Gene in selfishness and mutantphobia, she murdered the entire Trask bloodline in her 7th life in fear of them creating the Sentinels, and resorted to violence and bloodshed in her 8th and 9th life after being radicalized by the implausible creation of the Sentinels in her 7th life.
In her 10th last human life, Moira presented a semi-facade of the personality presented above, but secretly planned to depower all of mutant king in order to save them from humans and machines, while also harboring a fear of Destiny who foiled her plan in her 3rd life.
After being depowered and exiled, Moira gave up to her selfish desires and anger and desired revenge against all of mutantkind.
== Attributes ==
=== Powers ===
Rewound Reincarnation: Moira is reincarnated upon death, resetting the timeline and allowing her to begin anew. From her second life onward, she could recollect all the memories she experienced in her previous lifetimes from as early as in utero.
* Undetectability: Moira's status as a mutant is invisible to mutant sensors and detectors. Mutant detectors will see her as a baseline human.
=== Abilities ===
Genius Intelligence: Dr. Moira MacTaggert was one of the world's leading geneticists and possessed special expertise in the study of superhumanly powerful mutants.
Military Training: Moira MacTaggert received military training in the British Armed Forces during her seventh life.
=== Weaknesses ===
Limited Reincarnations: Moira's reincarnation cycle is finite. When she encountered Destiny during her third life, she was informed that she would live tentatively only ten lives, or eleven at most. This does not appear to be due to a limitation in her powers, but rather a prediction by Destiny that Moira would eventually find herself in a situation where she would die without her powers active.
If Moira were to die before her mutant power manifested at the age of thirteen, the reincarnation cycle would end.
== Trivia ==
* Moira was the butt of a recurring joke about her coffee being too bad-tasting. Even Xavier mocked her about it sometimes.
* David Haller, the son of Xavier, called her the woman who caused him pain while he was a patient on Muir Island and lacked control of his power.
* Moira has the same rare blood type as Wolverine, type E, which allowed him to transfuse his blood to her and extend her life to the point that she was able to live one thousand years, until she had Wolverine kill her.