X-Force:

Here's where things get...ugly. After the fall of his former team, Cable went on to start X-Force, a strike team built from embittered young mutants. Cable enlisted Domino's help with the team, unaware that his former teammate had been kidnapped months earlier by an arms dealer named Tolliver--who was secretly plotting revenge on Cable. In her place, the shape shifter Copycat (Vanessa Carlyle) waltzed into X-Force's home--and Cable's affections. (It was later revealed that Tolliver was really Cable's adopted son Tyler, thus adding to everyone's general misery.) By the time the deception was revealed, Copycat had succeeded in destroying X-Force's Adirondack base and the real Domino had been Tolliver's prisoner for over a year. Not much has ever been revealed about that lost year.
     Despite all this, Domino decided to follow the favor Cable asked of her before vanishing in pursuit of Tolliver--namely tracking down the wayward X-Force (X-Force 15). Along the way, she assembles some of her old teammates (Grizzly, and Hammer ) to help, as well as forcing Copycat to give them her aid in the search ( XF 20-24). Unbeknownst to them, however, Cable and the other two pack members ( Bridge and Kane) are on their trail (Cable 4) in order to keep Hammer from using X-Force to get revenge on Cable (are we sensing a pattern here? Don't be friends with Cable. Someone will want to use you for revenge.) Everything comes to a head at X-Force's new base in Arizona--and falls apart just as quickly. The results of which being that Domino is on her own again, until Cable calls her back--for good-- in X-Force 30. Domino provided the team not only with her impressive fighting skills, but also a counter-balance to Cable's sometimes grim attitude, a witty, sarcastic, somewhat dysfunctional den-mother to accompany Cable's surrogate father status.

Cable:

Together, Domino and Cable formed a force to be reckoned with--their deep friendship and years of fighting side by side honing them into a well-oiled fighting machine, both independently and as a part of X-Force. Less well defined, however, was the status of their relationship off of the battlefield. The topic was made more tricky both by Domino's apparent reluctance to let people get close to her (an issue that turns up again and again) and Cable's previous relationship with Vanessa--who he'd thought to be the real Dom. They seemed content to take their sweet time dealing with it--until the crisis with the M'Krann Crystal forced them to admit how they really felt. They thought the world was going to end, after all. Must have been quite the shock when it didn't.

Even if they'd been inclined to try and sort their crap out and act like normal, functional, people at this point (like that was ever going to happen) there wasn't much time--life was gearing up to kick them in the teeth. Guess that'll show her what happens when she dares to be happy. The string of events Domino finds herself tossed into are truly gut wrenching ones. She's forced to leave Xavier's upon hearing news of serial murders in the Colorado Rockies--and recognizing a disturbingly familiar set of footprints. Her awful suspicions are confirmed when she encounters a crazed and tormented Grizzly, an apparent victim of Tyler's manipulations (remember that 'revenge on Cable thing? Dom really gets the short end of the stick). In the end, Grizzly forces her hand, literally, causing her to fatally wound her long time friend (Cable 24). Without even a moment to mourn the loss, Domino finds herself swept away from the house in the Rockies and into Cable's future, courtesy of the mysterious (and truly obnoxious... but I digress) Blaquesmith.

Out of the frying pan, into the fires of hell. Domino is now faced with helping Cable save his past/future self--with the help of Jenskot, Cable's dead wife. Ouch, talk about a kick in the gut. She's forced to watch as Cable struggles with his own emotions--and attempts something that's nothing short of mind boggling when one considers the repercussions. Unsure of her true purpose in the future, she takes it upon herself to kill Stryfe, thus preventing the death of Cable's wife and the kidnapping of Tyler. Cable stops her, however, preventing her from giving him a shot (no pun intended) at a better life, even at cost to herself (Cable 25). From there it's on to Genosha, back to Xavier's to reclaim a mind controlled X-Force, and various other missions that constitute the every day life of a hardened mercenary trying to fight 'the good fight.'

A Downward Spiral:
Some time afterward, Domino learns that her ex-husband has been kidnapped by Donald Pierce, formerly of the Reavers, in order to siphon off Milo's intellect for his own purposes. Domino hears of the kidnapping (though she doesn't know Pierce is behind it) from Alpha Flight's Puck (a long-time friend) and goes to rescue Thurman. She encounters resistance in the form of Lady Deathstrike, and later Skullbuster and Pierce himself, and is, sadly, unable to rescue her former love (Domino LS: 1-3).

The next significant, and one of the more horrific events of Domino's life (which is saying something, given everything she'd faced up until this point) comes at the hands of Operation: Zero Tolerance's prime sentinels. After setting of an explosion in order to let X-Force escape, Domino is taken prisoner by the group of altered humans. As revenge for a previous slight (finally, revenge for something Dom actually did) Ekatarina Gryaznova has a device implanted at the base of Domino's skull that emits random electrical impulses, effectively disrupting her nervous system and thereby throwing off her reaction time, destroying the very abilities that Domino has used to define her life. Traumatized, head shaved, she's dumped on the side of the road. For the first time ever, Domino's luck has betrayed her. Unable to cope with what has happened, Domino does what has always come natural to her. She runs away, leaving behind both her affiliation with X-Force, and her relationship with Cable ( XF 70) .

After a volatile run in with Cable at his new safehouse in Hell's kitchen, and an almost fatal encounter with the assassin Blockade (Cable 55-56), Domino finally rejoins X-Force, and the effects of the device in her head are finally negated by Jesse Aaronson, a mutant with the ability to disrupt anything mechanical or electronic. She takes up her former role with the team, but there's a marked change in her personality. Gone are the wise-cracks and sarcasm, replaced with only the occasional angry outburst. In the end, she loses the leadership of the team to Pete Wisdom (formerly of Black Air and Excalibur) who X-Force believes will take them in a new direction.

Some time after rejoining the freelance mercenary circuit, Domino is possessed by an otherworldly entity named Aentaros, who plans to use her body as a means to take out another of the Undying--believing Cable will be unable to harm her. Cable finds a way to stop the Undying despite this, and Domino is once again free--but not for long (Cable 83-84). Shortly afterwards, she finds herself on the run from a man named Marcus Tsung, an assassin with the ability to kill by mere line of sight. Even all of Domino's experience is insufficient to save her--she's found by Tsung and killed, only to be resurrected by a strange bio-organic (yes, I know that's repetitive, it's Marvel's dumb name for the thing, not mine.) device, which not only restores her to life, but apparently wipes several years of age from her body. In what must be a fit of morbid humor, she nicknames the device 'Junior.' Still hunted by Tsung and now doubly afraid, she finally returns to X-Force, now mourning Wisdom's apparent demise, and asks for their help. Tsung is finally stopped and Junior removed, but not before X-Force is drawn into a web of black ops and secret dealings that finally leads to the team's destruction, with an injured Domino as the only apparent survivor (XF 106-115).

An unspecified time later, Domino accepts an offer to be part of Charles Xavier's new Mutant Rights watch program called the X-Corporation. Along with Risque (Gloria Muñoz), it's her job to moniter mutant rights violations in Asia--which makes it rather unfortunate when Risque is killed only two weeks into the operation (remember what I said about the dead teammates? The woman's a walking curse!). With the help of the X-Men (in this case, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Beast, and Wolverine) the people responsible for both Risque's death and a grotesque trade in mutant organs and other body parts is shut down (New X-Men Annual 2001).
Where Domino will go from here remains to be seen.

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