When Layla Miller’s parents died in a tragic automobile accident, she was placed in the Saint Joan Orphanage on the Bowery in New York City. Soon after relocating to the orphanage, Layla’s mutant power manifested as she grew horns and discovered she could breathe fire, frightening the human orphans and causing them to reject her.

When the delusional mutant Scarlet Witch used her powers to remake reality into a world in which mutants were the dominant species, everything changed for Layla. In this rewritten reality, Layla was a normal student attending Brooklyn’s Public School 45 and her parents were alive again. Plus, a new set of mutant powers manifested and enabled her to perceive divergent realities, allowing her to remember the old reality as a world where the Mutant-Human War never occurred, where mutants were still persecuted for being genetically superior to humans, and where she was an orphan. Seeking the help of Daredevil (Matt Murdock), Layla instead found Luke Cage, Hell’s Kitchen’s most powerful crime lord and leader of a human resistance movement in this altered reality. Layla showed Cage glimpses of his life prior to Scarlet Witch’s reality warp, as a hero with a girlfriend expecting a child, and she was allowed to remain with Cage’s group. A day later, after rescuing Wolverine (James Howlett), a mutant who also remembered what life was like before the reality warp, Cage’s group set out to use Layla’s powers to unlock the unconscious memories of other heroes, unaware that Layla had lied to them about her life prior to the warp. Under the guidance of telepathic mutant Emma Frost, Layla restored the memories of many of Earth’s heroes, who then led an assault on the Scarlet Witch in Genosha. The attack on Genosha prompted the Scarlet Witch to restore reality to its former status quo, in an event later dubbed “M-Day”, only with a significantly smaller mutant population due to her belief that mutants were the cause of her dysfunctional family.

With reality restored, and very few aware of the cause of M-Day, Layla woke up and found herself back in the orphanage she hated-only without her mutant powers. Shortly thereafter, she showed up at the offices of X-Factor Investigations, a private investigation firm based out of New York’s Mutant Town, intending to prevent them from ever learning the truth behind M-Day. Claiming that she “knows stuff”, Layla informed X-Factor’s employees that one of their informants was killed by an agent of Singularity Investigations, an enigmatic security agency secretly funding the recreation of the mutant-killing Legacy Virus, and announced that she was joining X-Factor. Layla discouraged X-Factor from directly confronting Singularity, stating that doing so would be disastrous for X-Factor. Instead, Layla began using her knack for predicting the future to give X-Factor advice and steer them in the right direction. When Singularity sent an assassin to X-Factor’s offices to kill Rictor (Julio Esteban Richter), Layla was waiting and electrocuted him. But when X-Factor member Siryn (Theresa Rourke) was severely beaten by an agent of Singularity, Layla was blamed for not warning X-Factor and voluntarily returned to the orphanage. When Layla sustained two black eyes upon her return to the orphanage, the headmistress allowed her to return to X-Factor’s custody. Since then, Layla has declared herself the nemesis of Quicksilver (whom she believes escaped his intended death) and has dedicated herself to his elimination. She has also stated that she and teammate Multiple Man (Jamie Madrox) will eventually get married.