History: Laurel Gander hailed from a Canadian/US military outpost called 'Rock Reef Point' in the desolate Canadian shield where there were potential deposits of an ore that could produce an indestructible alloy dubbed 'Inertron'. This attracted the attention of Zander Roxxas and his terrorist organization White Triangle, who stormed the compound and stole the samples of Inertron. None of the occupants survived - save for Laurel, who activated the self-destruct of the base, which destroyed the Inertron samples and half of Roxxas' raiding party.
The shock of seeing her parents killed activated Laurel's latent meta-gene that gave her powers very similar to the fictional hero "Superman". Her only living relative Elton had her placed in the orphanage for her own safety.
There, super-powers did nothing to stop bullies verbally ripping her to shreds. Indeed, some of the worst taunting came from people who caught her practising her powers when she thought no-one was around. They could see her trying to restrain herself, and the knowledge that she'd basically have to ignore them or kill them seemed to embolden them rather than the reverse. Over time, this caused Laurel to force herself to learn not to react, or to show when she was scared or nervous, putting on an unshakeable veneer of confidence and certainty, no matter what.
Then, on the day after her sixteenth birthday, she was feeling especially depressed, when a discarded newspaper caught her eye. The announcement of the Legion of Super-Heroes by the billionaire R.J. Brande. Tired of staying put, too old to be adopted and too young to be released, Laurel grabbed her few belongings and snuck out of the orphanage, to seek out R.J. Brande and the Legion of Super-Heroes.
It was not to be. After she had been flying for hours, she began to lose hope. She didn't want to go through officialdom to get to the team - that would be begging for a rejection and for someone to try and send her back to the orphanage, but she didn't know where they were, and even with her speed and sight, she needed some idea of where to look to find them. The announcement hadn't said where their first mission was, only that they were "setting out." Still, she had time - she didn't actually need to eat, and she was flying high and fast enough not to be spotted. Or so she thought.
A McCauley "metahuman recruitment van" had been returning to base, four of it's five stasis pods full, when it caught a glimpse of her on their radar, and they managed to bring her down, knocking her unconscious with their laser cannon. They bundled her into the last free stasis pod, and returned to base.
The "base" was one of McCauley's metahuman storage facilities, where she stayed, in stasis, for around a week. In that time, McCauley chose her. as possibly the most photogenic of his captives, to be the leader of his public "Workforce." And this decision would genuinely change her life forever.
Because she was still, technically, a minor, she wouldn't be able to participate in all the activities McCauley desired for her. His solution to this was brutal.
First, she received a more intense brainwashing than any of the other Workforcers. Now, although her personality was essentially unchanged apart from the standard McCauley-loyalty inserts, she was the "nineteen years old" Laurel "Gand", with birth certificates and a new US citizenship under that name, obtained by McCauley through various bribes and blackmails.
Next, McCauley arranged for a young female subject of his program of experimentation, with uncontrolled pyrokinetic abilities to be adopted by the orphanage Laurel had escaped from. As expected, within a day, the building was ablaze. Between the fire itself, and McCauley men equipped with fireproof suits and flamethrowers, the only survivor was the girl who had unintentionally stated the blaze, who was immune to her own flame, and was retrieved in a near-catatonic state by the men in question. As the home had been tardy in reporting Laurel's disappearance, Laurel Gander was presumed to have died in the blaze.
Finally, McCauley arranged for Elton to be assassinated in an apparently random shooting, along with a few others in the same town to disguise the reasoning. His existence had been blocked from Laurel's mind in the brainwashing.
Now, with all those likely to recognise her dead, McCauley was free to announce Andromeda to the world as leader of the Workforce, and direct her as he would. In the end, she proved to be a capable, if slightly nervous leader of the team (although she hides it well), and a stabilising influence.
One thing that was not blocked from her mind, however, was what Roxxas' organisation (which remains active and headed by Roxxas himself) did to her, and the years in the orphanage this caused. Something which both McCauley and Laurel herself may have cause to regret eventually, as it remains the most traumatic event of her life, with a recent attack by the Triangle on a US Army depot causing her to cry for the first time in over five years at the memory of what happened and it's effects on her life.
Eventually, under orders from McCauley, she posed semi-naked for a men's magazine. Profoundly embarrassed by the event, and disturbed at herself for having done it, it led Spark to dare her to go to the comic-book superhero-themed Legion Hallowe'en party in a costume with a large cleavage hole to confront it - which she eventually succeeded in jostling her into doing after she said "you wear that [costume], and I wear a costume you pick for me, no questions asked. I back off, you can back off". Laurel chose a red leather with spikes for her, knowing Spark would hate it and hoping that it would cause her to "back off." While Spark indeed didn't want to wear it, she refused to back down, and the deal was sealed. Despite her embarrassment at the costume, however, the party passed without any great incident for Andromeda, save for a minor issue between Reflecto and Quislet.
Shortly afterward, Ultraboy was left comatose by an attack on the Workforce training ground, which disturbed her somewhat. Next, after being briefly introduced to his replacement, Inferno; she went to visit her parents' graves on the anniversary of their deaths, reminding her of how alone she felt, while her team threatened to fall apart as Spark and Polarity fell out as Enrapture preyed on Paul, Inferno didn't fit in and Dragonmage remained aloof. Then, a couple of days after giving Inferno a flying lesson, her own feelings came to a head explosively.
While scanning an arms depot with Enrapture for potential spy devices and infiltrators, she saw a White Triangle pendant around the neck of someone, who was immune to Enrapture's power and about to kill her. Before he made his move, Andromeda had punched through his head at a speed which shattered it into a million pieces. Mortified at her own actions, she left as soon as Dragonmage arrived to replace her at the scene, and heard as soon as she arrived back at Workforce HQ that any charges against her had been ruled out. She then sealed herself in her room, and curled up on her bed.
The next morning, Spark was sent to fetch her, and found her still cowering on her bed in her blood-stained costume. She forced her to wash and change to a fresh costume, and suggested she ask for a holiday. When they arrived downstairs, McCauley refused; even as her voice grew more frantic with each request. The mental strain led to her programming abruptly breaking. As soon as McCauley realised this, he had Blink send her away - to which Blink, guilty at her unwilling part in what had happened to Trinity, sent her to Legion HQ.
Her crash-landing into their lobby caused some disconcertion, with Leviathan almost ordering an attack before Cosmic Boy, seeing Laurel's confusion at her change of surroundings, stopped him. After Laurel told them what had happened from her perspective, Tela warned Cosmic Boy that while Andromeda was telling the truth, she was so angry that she would probably "kill McCauley and then herself", and Cos thus had Tela put Laurel to sleep for a while while he put together an unofficial team - including Livewire, Spark's twin brother, and Trinity, another McCauley victim - to save Spark, Polarity and any others they could.
When Andromeda awoke, she immediately realised what had happened, and started heading for Workforce HQ at high speed. There, she arrived just as McCauley was about to kill Gates. She immediately picked McCauley up by the neck, forcing him to drop the insect-like hero, and would have killed him, had Gates not talked her down by pointing out how she could hardly deal with what she'd already done. After knocking him out instead, she heard the ongoing fight between a great green monster and a group formed from Gates' friends and some of Cos' group just as the battle began to turn against the Legionnaires and their allies, and proceeded to take her frustration out on the "Hulk", knocking him for miles with a full-strength blow, before bursting into tears in the wreckage of the fight.
Thereafter, she chose to leave Earth for some time; only to crash back to the planet from lack of air and overexertion within a day. Sitting half-conscious in the crater of her own making, she was interrupted by a stranger. Her angry order to leave as she flew up to him was belied by her weakened condition from the crash, and she quickly fainted.
She awoke on board his time machine, where he'd scanned her and pronounced her fit to go, pointing toward the door. Still weak, she limped over to it, before one look at the crater caused her to slump down as she realised that she had nowhere to go. "The Doctor", as he called himself, then offered her the chance to travel with him for a while - albeit with some seeming reluctance - and she accepted.
She continued travelling for some months, during which time she healed from what had happened - both physically from her crash-induced weakened state, and mentally from the traumas of the Workforce. Then, finally, he brought her - much to her surprise - to meet and say goodbye to her young mother. Angry, she ended up bumping into her mum, and the quick scan she did to ensure she hadn't injured her mother led to a surprising revelation for her - her mother had been pregnant over half a decade before Laurel had been conceived, and almost two years before her parents had even met. They followed the trail for some time, discovering that her half-sister had been named Catherine, and adopted by a family called Masters. Over the years, they had ultimately moved across the border, to the town of Cathingham in the northern USA. There, only weeks after her crash, but after months of travel from her perspective, she and the Doctor said their goodbyes.
Laurel first made a base in Cathingham, finding a job with rich solar recluse Lydia Grath (who, unknown to Laurel, was the vigilante "Nightwatchman") and managing to find an apartment share with silver-skinned model Toni, who had plasma-generating powers of her own. Even after this, however, she continued dithering about contacting the person who had led her to the town to begin with, fearing rejection, until one day Toni had had enough and forced her to make the call. She arranged to meet Catherine in a public place, only to find that Catherine was a fan of hers from her Workforce days, and had super-powers of her own. After calming her down by going for a flight with her, they talked for some time, and agreed to keep in touch.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Andromeda has Superman-category powers - notably flight, significantly enhanced speed, strength & durability, "heat vision," telescopic, microscopic & "X-ray" vision and super-hearing. However, she needs to concentrate a little to dampen her super-hearing at all times, as unrestrained, she can hear and comprehend every conversation in a ten-mile radius, but can't deal with such a sensory overload any better than any other human.
Her characteristic star-shaped earrings are lockets, each containing a picture of her parents.
Name: Eileen "Ella" Raines Hair: Red Eyes: Blue Height: 5' 6"
History: "Ella" Raines is the twin sister of Garth Raines, the Legion's Live Wire. Throughout their childhood they were very close - and always suspicious of their older brother Mark.
One day, while the whole family was on holiday in the Carribean, they tagged along with him, aiming to keep a watchful eye on him. Unfortunately, the batteries on their electric speedboat ran out. Using oars, they managed to paddle to a small isle nearby, where they found guardian robots, able to electrocute intruders, as they noticed when a small animal touched them.
Rather than questioning why such a small, deserted island needed such robots, she desperately suggested that maybe they could use them to recharge the speedboat. While they technically succeeded, all three recieved massive electric shocks whcih should have killed them. At the end, Garth and Ella were left in a coma, while Mark, panicking, took them to the mainland, dumped them in a hospital and scarpered, discovering that the shock had granted him electrical powers in the process.
Ella spent a month in a coma, during which her and Garth were airlifted back to the USA. When she finally awoke, she found Garth had awoken a week earlier and had already been discharged from the hospital. When he came to visit her that day, he cautiously revealed the electrical power the incident had imbued him with, which he had discovered the day before. She tried to do the same, but, still weak, was only able to manage a few sparks, something which was a source of amusement to her brother.
When she was discharged from hospital herself the following day, she found Garth had packed his bags and was ready to leave in search of Mark, on the basis that he probably had the same power and who knew what he was doing or if anyone could stop him. Despite her protests to either stay or take her with him, he maintained she was still too weak and left without telling their parents. He would shortly go on to co-found the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Enraged by this, she took time to recover and ensure her power fully developed. Then she began to pack her own bags to follow Garth, intending to prove that twins should stick together - against the protests of her parents, with two of their children having already run away.
On the night she planned to leave, though, disaster struck in the form of a McCauley recruitment van. They gassed the whole house, rendering both her and her parents unconscious, then took her (and her luggage), placing her in a statis tube. Her parents believe she deliberately left without saying goodbye.
She was one of those chosen for the Workforce, and brainwashed accordingly. Her closest friend on the team is Polarity, although she is completely oblivious to his crush on her.
While, consciously, she believes herself to be happy on the Workforce, her subconscious resentment at being kept from following Garth has built up, exacerbated by his lack of attempts to contact her. This eventually boiled over when he (along with several teammates, including Polarity's brother, Cosmic Boy), finally visited her at workforce HQ, and she began a blazing row with him, which the Kline brothers managed to calm down. However, after this, when pressed as to exactly why he left her, he answered that he "didn't want you getting hurt again." This was the last straw, and she turned away from him without another word, while he realised the mistakes he'd made, unsure if she'd ever speak to him again.
Since then, he's attempted to call her on a frequent basis, but has been put on hold every time without even managing to speak to her. While this isn't directly Ella's doing, she has deliberately held off from calling him, and exactly how the two will react to each other at the Legion Halloween party (to which the Workforce have been invited) remains to be seen.
Most recently, after Andromeda posed semi-naked for a men's magazine under orders from McCauley, Spark made a crack at her about it, leading her to see how embarassed Laurel was about it. Trying to make her confront it, Spark dared her to go to the comic-book superhero-themed Legion Hallowe'en party as Power Girl ("peekaboo" costume) - which she eventually succeeded in jostling her into doing after she said "you wear that [costume], and I wear a costume you pick for me, no questions asked. I back off, you can back off". Laurel chose Rachel Summers' red leather, spiky Excalibur costume for her, knowing Spark would hate it and hoping that it would cause her to "back off." While Spark indeed didn't want to wear it, she refused to back down, and the deal was sealed. While each hope the other will give in before Hallowe'en, both know they won't.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Spark has the ability to generate electricity, and direct bolts of it accurately (the exact mechanism in her power which prevents the bolts taking the path of least resistance to Earth is not understood), which she has been known to refer to as "lightning."
Name: Paul Kline Hair: Black Eyes: Blue Height: 5' 5"
History: Paul Kline is the younger brother of Rex, the Legion's "Cosmic Boy." Both of them have identical powers to direct magnetic energies, which have been dubiously attributed to their father's laboratory experiments which he engaged in before their conception.
The boys were close growing up and maintained good relations even after Paul's conscription into the Workforce (where, beyond the McCauley-loyalty part, no apparent changes were made to his mind). During that time, he became good friends with Spark, and developed a crush on her without her realising. This lasted until the joint Legion/Workforce Hallowe'en party, when he revealed his feelings for her. After she didn't reciprocate, their friendship became strained, and he entered a relationship with Enrapture which Ella attributed to the latter's telepathic powers.
After the collapse of the Workforce and Tela's repairs to the McCauley-altered areas of their minds, the two reconciled before joining the Legion, but have since drifted apart again as Paul made every effort to integrate himself with the team, drawing on relationships with his brother, while she chafed at being defined by her brother.
After a lengthy probationary period caused by doubts over his post-brainwashing mental stability, assuaged by lengthy therapy sessions with Dr. Ryker, he - along with Spark - finally joined the team as a full member at the opening of the Earth War. The two were then placed on the team set for Coast City, where - after the non-McCauley-afflicted members were captured through the use of a mythological siren, apart from his brother who Trinity knocked out to prevent his joining them - he fell into a leadership role until his brother recovered. Afterward, despite being trapped on a collapsing building, he was relatively uninjured and served with distinction amongst the reinforcements for the Asian front.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Polarity has the ability to induce and direct magnetic energies. It has been shown that he can absorb electricity without direct harm, but that it causes his power to supercharge, and he loses control of it until the effect passes, drawing all ferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic objects within range (which varies depending on the exact charge) to him.
He occasionally carries an amount of soft chrome, which he can shape and harden with his power.
Name: Steve Arnold Hair: Blond (Shaved) Eyes: Black Height: 6'
History: Reflecto was born into a perfectly average middle-class family, and was an average boy until he went to Summer Camp at the age of 14. There, during a rock climb, he fell, having failed to put his safety harness on properly. He fell over 100 feet.
And bounced,
He bounced all the way to the top of the cliff and landed there perfectly unharmed. Physically. The effect of escaping unharmed from a fall which should have killed him, however, had a disastrous effect on his mental health.
He began to seek danger everywhere, from taunting potential bullies at school to leaping from tall buildings, all the while spouting a seemingly endless stream of devil-may-care talk. Where there was an aggressor, all the force of their blows was reflected upon them, but every time he escaped completely unharmed.
Eventually, it became too much for his parents, who had him removed to a mental institution. A short time later, a pair of "metahuman recruiting agents" in the employ of Leonard McCauley arrived in the town. Upon hearing of the boy's power, they made their way to his parents' house, who were convinced with little effort to release him to their "care." Experimentation on the boy increased his power still further, to defend against toxins as well as physical attacks.
Later, when Leonard McCauley was choosing which metahumans would make up his Workforce, he chose Steve Arnold as one of them, believing his power to be sufficiently demonstrable so as provide sufficient PR to justify his place.
The brainwashing to create loyalty to McCauley and the Workforce that all Workforce members have suffered seemed to have little other effect on the self-proclaimed "crazy guy," who had an ongoing friendly competition with Ultraboy as to who has more female admirers (well, Ultraboy thought it was friendly) until the latter was discharged from the Workforce after being shot.
When last seen, his powers had interacted with Quislet's to apparently break him free, allowing him to exit from the Workforce during its collapse. He has since attempted a career as a mercenary, though what level of success he has achieved on the matter is unknown.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Reflecto is functionally invulnerable to any physical harm, including blows, gas or any other blunt trauma, projectile or inhaled/ingested poison. This is accomplished because of a field which surrounds him and will return any injury-generating force in the direction from which it came with equal or greater magnitude, and expels any toxin from his mouth, airway and oesophagus. His skin is, however, not impenetrable, and can be pierced by slow-moving, sharp objects; or he can be pinned down if approached with sufficient care - though he is sufficiently agile, and due to his power, difficult to pin down, that these are generally only practical options where he is either already unconscious or actively allows it to happen.
He generally carries two shoulder-holstered firearms and a sword, sheathed on his back (not depicted).
I promise to one day soon get back to the plotline that Juan and I were working on! I was hoping he'd come in and add more to give me some inspiration, but he said he'd be very busy with work for some time...
Maybe I'll jump back in soon...
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
These are great Som, you've really thought about the characters and all your hard work shows!
As they about these parts more, more, more!
-------------------- "Tempus Fugitive" the final part of the Adventures of Dream Boy series, set in the Three-Boot Universe. Read it only in the Bits o' Legionnaire Business Forum.
From: here, more often than not | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Ta Everyone. This is mostly stuff I've had bouncing around my head for a while, and am finally getting down.
quote:Originally posted by Cobalt Kid: I promise to one day soon get back to the plotline that Juan and I were working on! I was hoping he'd come in and add more to give me some inspiration, but he said he'd be very busy with work for some time...
Maybe I'll jump back in soon...
Hope ya do
quote:Originally posted by Lightning Lad: Can't wait to see Garth's. *nudge, nudge, wink, wink*
Heh. Maybe after I get through all "my" characters
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Name: Meta Ure [born Meta Corbett] Hair: Brown Eyes: Green Height: 5' 10"
History: Born to a famous pop star and her aristocratic husband, she was named "Meta," meaning "Ambitious" by her parents. She certainly lived up to the title.
Taking her demeanour more from her father than her mother, from an early age she was primed to go far in life. She went to the best schools, and excelled in many subjects - notable among which was Psychology. It was expected that she would become an eminent member of the field. Then her powers emerged.
It may be expected that telepathy would be helpful when it came to doing well at school, especially when your speciality was understanding the human mind. However, that presumes a degree of control such that you can examine only the data you want to in others' minds. Initially, Meta did not have that advantage.
For six months, she was kept in complete isolation, being trained in half-successful attempts to control her powers via. videolink. Eventually, after she was allowed contact again, her mind developed defences, and she began to recover - and there were suggestions from her father's lawyers that the isolation had done more harm than good. What could not be denied, however, is that she had been damaged by the experience. And that she'd been kicked out of school, because they now presumed that she couldn't not cheat, in addition to the risk of being sued by other pupils for permitting her to invade their privacy.
She left home shortly after this news was announced, determined not to exist on "charity" - although her parents managed to persuade her to at least accept a moderate stipend. Shortly after, she took a small flat and threatened to have another breakdown. This time however, she managed to pull herself together before it became serious. Determined never to allow "weakness" to take over again, she changed her surname to "Ure," and began to actively use her powers to her own benefit.
This, unknown to her, brought it's own risks. When she was walking home alone one night, she was jumped by two McCauley recruitment men. She successfully mindblasted one into unconsciousness, but the other shot her with a fast-acting tranquiliser dart and she fell.
As a beautiful girl with useful powers, she was one of the subjects McCauley chose to indoctrinate into his Workforce, albeit making sure that her brainwashing contained severe restrictions against any harm coming to himself.
More than any other member of the team, Enrapture loves the adoration she receives as a Workforcer, although she is particularly contemptuous of their fans in every other manner - if never in public, of course. She is also particularly manipulative, and has recently coerced Ultraboy into a sexual relationship - although she cares nothing for him beyond the simple gratification this brings.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Enrapture is a full-spectrum telepath, able to communicate telepathically, read and alter minds, and control the movements of other people, including their speech.
One of her signature uses of her power is to briefly activate the victim's pleasure centres (in a move Reflecto has dubbed a "love tap") with the aim of weakening both the ability and desire of the subject to resist. In all but the strongest minds (a group primarily composed of other telepaths), this works.
Due to mental blocks imposed by McCauley's brainwashing, she can not enter his mind or do anything to it without explicit, voluntary, verbal permission from him. She is also unable to incite others to attack him. Lesser versions of these restrictions apply to other Workforce members - she is merely unable to kill or seriously injure (mentally) them, significantly alter their minds (although she can influence them) or make others attack them. Should they ever overcome their brainwashing, these restrictions will vanish.
Name: José "Surfer Jo" Rimbaud Hair: Brown Eyes: Brown Height: 5' 11"
History: José Rimbaud lived in Carlsbad, California, and lived for surfing. One day, however, he went too far, and was swept out to sea. That may, perhaps even should, have been the end of the story, but such was not to be his fate.
As he was on the verge of drowning, he was swallowed by a giant, apparently radioactive, sea creature. Seriously.
Enough oxygen was trapped within for him to survive and clamber onto a raft of debris that had clustered on the stomach acid. He settled there, and prepared for a long, slow death. Again though, fate was to intervene in the shape of a Japanese whaler. They harpooned the beast, and it vomited up the contents of it's stomach as it wrecked the hapless ship. The only conscious survivor could talk about nothing more than this "Godzilla" on his rescue. But even before the beast fell beneath the waves, something headed in the other direction.
Like a phoenix, Jose had risen from his grave, bursting out of the water. Weakened in shock and surprise, he managed to spot his surfboard, which the creature had also swallowed, and held on to it for dear life. The whaler had sent off a mayday message, and a US Navy helicopter spotted him and took him aboard and into sick bay. There, they discovered an odd, self-regenerating energy coursing through his system. When José awoke however, he was terrified by the men in uniform surrounding him, and fled, discovering his super-speed in the process. He ran so fast, he ran off the ship, and across the surface of the water. When he realised this, he stopped and began to sink, but when he thought he needed to get out, he started flying again. After several hours, he began to get the hang of his powers and flew back to land.
Once he reached the coast, however, he became completely lost. And, since his luck had to run out eventually, in trying to spot a way home, he himself was spotted by a McCauley recruitment van. Since he hadn't realised how to turn his invulnerability on yet, one blast from the van's laser cannon brought him down.
When he arrived at the base, in a standard procedure, he was scanned to determine the limits of his powers. After he had been selected for the Workforce, in the pre-scans to prepare him for brainwashing, it was discovered he knew nothing about these limits, and hence information about this was included in the brainwashing.
After Enrapture, Ultraboy revels in the attention he gets as a Workforcer most, although he's less two-faced about the fans than she is. He has a friendly (he thinks ) competition with Reflecto going about who has the most female fans.
Recently, Enrapture manipulated him into a sexual relationship - although he never realised that was all she was interested in him for.
Subsequently, an animal rights activist shot him in the head while he was flying, leaving him comatose, and his fate is currently unclear.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Like Andromeda, has Superman-category powers (see Andromeda). At their optimal levels, each power is slightly higher in intensity than Andromeda's - but, unlike her, he suffers from the severe limitation that if he wants to use more than one power at a time, each power will function at far, far lower levels - if he uses two, they will function at less than half the intensity, if he uses three, they will function at less than a quarter, and beyond that any enhancement is negligible. He is unable to fly, and can merely slow a fall if he uses more than that power. Generally, he restricts himself to one power at a time for that reason.
Name: Jin Xiong ao (Jin is the surname, chinese name ) Hair: Black Eyes: Brown Height: 6'
History: Jin Xiong ao was born in China, the youngest of four brothers. He is a direct descendent on the male line of a great Mage who lived around 1000 BC, and every child of the firstborn male in his direct line since has had great magical potential (except where the firstborn son dies before siring a child, in which case the secondborn's sons recieve the potential).
When the boys with this potential reach the age of five, they take part in a ritual, which brands their chest with the symbol of one of the animals in the Chinese Zodiac, chosen apparently at random. This activates their potential and links their spirit to this animal, and all their spells thereafter will involve an apparition of this animal. No two boys of the same generation may recieve the same brand, and if the father-mage has more than twelve sons, only the first twelve to acheive the age of 5 may participate, which severly limits the amount of magic these younger sons may draw upon.
When Jin Xiong ao took part in this ritual, the symbol of the Dragon was seared into his flesh.
He proved an excellent student in his magical studies, but at around the time he came of Age, he began to grow restless and irritable. Since, as the youngest son of four, he was exceptionally unlikely to be the one to continue the dynasty, he was thus permitted to become the first sorceror since his great-uncle, some sixty years before, to leave the commune.
He travelled for over a year before arriving in America. There, he cast a spell to see what course he should take, which lead him to call upon Leonard McCauley in his office. After the Dragonmage dealt with all attempts to have him removed, he offered his service to McCauley in return for aid in travel. With great hesitiation, McCauley agreed.
While Dragonmage appeared to voluntarily undergo the brainwashing all Workforce agents receive, he actually prepared defences against this in advance, which McCauley was unaware of since no telepath can read or affect Dragonmage's mind in any way. However, he held honestly for the most part to the agreement he made with McCauley.
Exactly why McCauley placed someone he didn't fully trust on his PR team remains unclear, although it is quite possible that Dragonmage influenced McCauley to do it; or that similar, but lesser factors were in play as with his feud with Mano, and that he believed the brainwashing to be sufficient and the position on the Workforce was essentially a means of control.
In his time with the Workforce, he mostly preferred to remain in the background, associating little with his teammates beyond the strictly necessary - although he did arrange a fake attack on the team at McCauley's request to get the team back in the news at a time when coverage of the Workforce was flagging. He also experimented with cells taken from Trinity during the capture, helping to achieve a workable partial-replica of the spell that allowed her to split into multiple persons, which McCauley later used to empower himself.
At the end, however, seeing McCauley's fall as inevitable, he thus didn't bother to confront the Legion founders when they attempted to retrieve Spark and Polarity in particular, and the other Workforcers in general after finding out about the brainwashing. While Cosmic Boy and Inferno were the only two still fighting, with the others all either unconscious or gone, he decided to leave himself, rather than enter a fight he knew to be pointless, even if he won as was likely.
He attempted to return home, but there he found that, having left, he was now permanently exiled. Exactly what course he will follow now remains to be seen...
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Dragonmage is a genuine Mage, who can employ magic to a variety of uses. The spells he uses most often are ones of telekinesis (where the dragon apparition which comes with all his spells appears to pick up the object(s) in question), and of Tongues (translation spells), although he has many other spells at his command.
He has a discrete amount of magic he can use over the course of a day (running from sunrise to sunrise) - a limitation which has never proved an issue thus far.
He cannot invisibly cast a spell - the dragon apparition will always appear, in a size proportional to the amount of magic a spell requires.
In addition to any spells he may cast at any given time, he has several permanent enchantments about his person (which would remain present even if he were to exhaust his daily supply of magic). The most notable of these protect his mind against outside intrusion, and prevent him being injured in a suprise attack (so he can never be stabbed in the back, figuratively or literally).
Method/Background: The McCauley Brainwashing Process works by specifically overwriting sections or adding specific data to the subject's mind, while leaving the subject's basic personality otherwise intact. In that sense, it is somewhat limited - the more data which it is attempted to overwrite, block or add (especially where the originals are core memories or values which define them), the higher the risk of rejection. An attempt to overwrite large chunks of a subject's mind would lead to almost certain rejection - although the precise amount which a subject can tolerate varies depending on both the person in question and what experiences they undergo under it's influence. A command which is never triggered can not be rejected, except as part of a rejection of the whole program - although that is the statistically most likely form of rejection.
The commands and data inserted into the minds of both Workforce team were deliberately limited so as to keep the calculated risk of rejection to 1% or below. No-one has yet undergone a degree of the process which takes the risk of rejection above 5%.
The process itself is exceptionally traumatic, and thus a command is almost always included to forget the fact that it happened - the only exception so far, due to a personal intervention by Leonard McCauley himself, is Mano.
Heightening the trauma is the fact that the subject him/herself must be conscious during the process. Early versions of the process used unconscious subjects, which were all complete failures. In the best cases it didn't stick, but more often than not their minds shut down completely, leaving them effictively brain-dead.
During the process, the subjects are tightly strapped down to a metal table, and power-inhibitors are used on metahuman subjects - both with the aim of preventing injury to either the subject or those performing the operation.
Once the subject is awakened, electrolyte jelly is smeared on their temples before a set of electrodes are placed on top of this surface and taped in place. The electrodes are then connected to the machine which performs the process itself, and the machine is activated.
Often, the subject in question will scream and their limbs will thrash around as much as they are able (as in an epileptic fit). Eventually, this will subside, and the final few minutes are usually spent in silence, with the subject's mouth and eyes wide open. Once the machine is finished, they are easily led and remain in a trance-like state for eight to twelve hours. If this state lasts beyond eighteen hours, then the treatment has failed and they are almost certainly never going to come out of it, although this is rare. Once the trance-state ends, they will fall into a deep sleep for another six to ten hours. Once they awaken, they may still be easily confused and suffer from short-term memory problems for a couple more hours (around half of the subjects suffer from this), after which they are almost always fine and - new programming permitting - are back to their old selves (although slight errors of memory may creep in, notably of timings), and risk of rejection should, unless the programming is exceptionally over-ambitious, be low.
Whether or not rejection has taken place, however, a second attempt at programming should not be attempted, as the chances of success are low and it will either damage existing programming or leave the subject in a Persistent Vegetative State.
Use: The process has thus far been primarily used to induce or increase loyalty to Leonard McCauley and McCauley Industries.
Other uses have included rewriting sections of the Workforce's memory, to ensure they think they joined up voluntarily* & to make Andromeda think she's three years older than she is, among others; to prevent Enrapture from reading McCauley's mind and other, related reasons. Non-Workforce uses have primarily centred upon making people more subversient to McCauley, as with the winged girl he currently has as his personal slave.
* - all the Workforce's entries above follow their genuine history, except where noted.
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Name: Tikhik Julijovitch Miraz (Тикчик Юлиёвич Мираз) Hair: None (originally blond) Eyes: Green (no visible pupils) Height: 4' in a walking position Length: 9' when at full stretch, 5' in a walking position.
History: Tikhik Julijovitch Miraz was a Russian student who, while on a foreign exchange trip to the USA just over a year ago, was abducted along with a group of his friends. He would say that was the day he was murdered.
He was subjected to an obscene number of painful and dangerous experiments. Most of his friends didn't survive. He was one of the "lucky" ones. His body twisted to resemble that of an insect, he developed a teleportational ability that made him valuable enough to keep alive.
He was kept for months in a dark, dank cell, one of four cells in a room. The other three held a girl with uncontrolled pyrokinetic abilities, the terrorist Mano, and Tellus, another survivor of his exchange group. His and Tellus' cells were equipped with power inhibitors, but with Mano kept stupefied & sealed in an inerton suit, and the girl's flame useless, they didn't bother with the expense for their cells. Given that Tellus required his power for communication, however, and the girl was scared of people thanks to her "ability," even his conscious cellmates provided no conversation. The only time he got out of his cell was for their insidious "tests," and the only time he was spoken to there was when he had orders barked at him, huge electric shocks from the demeaning collar he was forced to wear waiting if he disobeyed.
During this time, he only maintained his sanity by concentrating on revenge. He deliberately "sandbagged" in the tests to lull them into a false sense of security. Finally, he had it planned - he could snap the collar off with a small but well-placed gate, and he was sure he was strong enough that the inhibitors in the surrounding rooms couldn't stop him. Then, he could announce to the USA - the world! - what was going on here. He would have succeeded, perhaps, if he'd finalised the plan two days earlier.
On the day before he planned to make his escape, Leonard McCauley, who owned and ran the complex, picked Gates as the team "mascot" for the Workforce, who would teleport them from place to place. Mutely - his tongue and voicebox, given Gates' own views, were seen as a liability to his role and his masters.
So, when the man came into his cell bearing a syringe and casually mentioned that McCauley's Workforce was in the future, Gates expected to wake up a dumb servant. Fortunately for him, they misjudged the dose his altered body would need. He woke up in the middle of Spark being brainwashed. Despite the power inhibitors, despite the guards who were busy watching the girl writhe in pain, he swore he would not suffer the same fate and managed to summon more willpower than he even suspected he possessed to, after several minutes of intense concentration, override the inhibitor enough to open a gate out of the complex. They didn't spot him vanishing until all but the tip of his tail was through the shrinking portal. McCauley has obsessed about getting "the insect" ever since his escape, between ego and the genuine risk posed by someone who experienced what he was doing. Even when satellite scanning and various other scans of the USA have shown no sign of him in his expected teleportation radius, leading them to think he teleported into the sea & drowned. McCauley wants him dead or alive.
Gates fell into the desert, still with the complex just in view. Exhausted by his feat, he crawled behind a group of rocks and collapsed into unconsciousness. He awoke just as night was falling. Seeing the complex outlined by the setting sun, and several McCauley "recruitment vans" out looking for him since they judged he couldn't have teleported that far, he panicked. Deciding to get as far as he could away, he opened a portal to do exactly that. He didn't realise just how far it was.
Teleporting halfway round the planet, he homed in on a gravitational anomaly who happened to be at about his maximal distance in his undirected gate. An object who weighed too much for his mass*, given the planet's gravitational field. Because he happened to be using his powers on himself at that moment. In any event, Tom Kallor was shocked when the giant insect fell from the glowing green circle which appeared out of nowhere, saying the Russian word for "help" before collapsing, unconscious.
Taking him in out of curiosity, after establishing that he was intelligent and happy to meet a fellow "freak," he eventually introduced Tikhik to his parents. Who, after much freaking and quick talking from Tom, allowed him to stay for a while. The two became close friends, and Tom helped him through the worst of his depression - even though Tikhik, embittered by what had happened to him and his inability to teleport after overstretching himself, was often annoyed by Tom's lighthearted attitude to life.
While his powers initially appeared to have vanished, they began to heal after an extended period of rest, and his drive to expose McCauley for what he did to him, his friends and others didn't waver. Attempts to get the Australian press involved came to nothing very quickly, so he began to plot a course of travel back to the USA, via Asia so as to avoid further excessive strain on his powers, on which Tom would insist on accompanying him. On their way, they would pick up the restless Ming Sul in Hong Kong, before running into Noriko "Nori" Ashida in Japan. Nori's near-disablement from her electrical powers began to make Tikhik think of life beyond McCauley, where he could help others with their power-related problems, a line of thought which continued even after they managed to gain the help of Igor Kuria in Canada to temporarily resolve Nori's problems.
They finally reached the USA when they arrived in Metropolis on the day McCauley's plans were finally crumbling, as Tikhik and his group discovered from "Drake Burroughs", an energy being formed from the minds of two students. Immediately, he opened a gate to Workforce HQ and the group headed through, with Drake tagging along. Once there, Tikhik left his group to aid a group of Legionnaires in a fight against a huge green monster, so as to after McCauley personally, who had imbued himself with various super-powers, including a version of the Legionnaire Trinity's ability to replicate herself. His arrival came at a fortuitous time for Trinity, who was struggling against an increasing number of McCauleys, though and the distraction of his arrival caused two McCauleys to be shorn in half by their own, revealing them to be mere animated dummies.
While the two managed to discover the real McCauley, however, he quickly knocked out Trinity and was on the verge of killing Tikhik when Andromeda arrived, picking McCauley up by the neck. Tikhik in turn, however, was unable to let her murder his nemesis out of fear for her own sanity, and successfully talked her out of killing McCauley, who was subsequently imprisoned, where he died under mysterious circumstances.
In the aftermath, rather than joining Tom and Igor in the Legion, he opted to become a teacher in the use of powers at the "Legion Academy" set up to deal with many of McCauley's former captives, where Sul and Nori chose to enroll as students. While a teacher there, he arranged for his fellow teacher Danielle Moonstar's adoptive daughter Sofia to room with Sul, and has been "dragged into" a number of side endeavours. These included an incident where his Dani and Shikari, the third "powers" teacher, found a young woman called Rachel forced to pretend to be a young girl by an alien symbiote. He aided the two in moving around, including bringing Rachel for Tela to check, and their attempt to deal with the symbiote's original host - and was also cajoled into retriving the injured Spark and Livewire after a fight with their brother Mark on the same day, before bringing Sofia to visit the injured Dani, unprompted. He hopes not to be used as such "a bus" in future.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Gates has the ability to open green teleportation "gates." Anything which passes through them is instantly transported, via an unknown dimension, to a partner gate at a location he himself defines mentally (it is also possible to make the trip in reverse, travelling from the partner gate to the original gate).
Gates cannot change the destination of a portal after it has been opened - he must close it and choose a new destination. Normally, Gates can hold a portal open for an indefinite time (provided it is in his comfort radius) with little effort - although creating a second, separate, portal simultaneously would cause great strain. The exact distance over which he can comfortably open a pair of gates is unclear - though he cannot teleport out of a gravitational field stronger than 1 metre/second (the path of his gate will curve to fit the surface of the body), nor can he open a portal to the inside of a solid object - although it is possible for solid objects to become trapped inside a closing gate, in which case the object will be split in two, with part left behind, and part arriving "safely." While it is possible to enter a gate at an angle, width/height permitting, the edges of the gate feel solid to the touch, and no level of strength can bend, stretch or break a gate, or hold open a closing gate. Only an object narrow enough (or the part of an object narrow enough) to fit into a gate can go unless Gates himself expands the portal size.
Due to the recent strain of teleporting first from within a dampening field, then (while still weak) teleporting all the way from the USA to Australia, his teleportational capabilities were highly limited for some time. They have now returned to almost their original levels.
Contrary to appearances, Gates remains a mammal, albeit with an insect-like appearance and exoskeleton, in addition to his warped internal skeleton.
* - no, that isn't a typo. Mass and weight are different but related concepts. The mass of an object is constant, but it's weight will vary depending on the gravitational field.
Name: Unknown Hair: None Eyes: White - no visible irises or pupils Height: 6' 6"
History: Three years ago, Mano attempted to assassinate Leonard McCauley as part of a concerted campaign of anti-capitalist violence. McCauley, as one of the worst examples, perhaps even the worst example of someone prepared to do anything for a quick buck, had been number one on their list.
Mano failed.
Ever since, he has been paying the price for his failure.
At first, McCauley was content simply to have him tortured. But then another option had opened - his fledgling program to create and control metahumans. He'd begun experimentation, but subjects with activatable metagenes were few & far between. Most of the victims simply died slowly and painfully in agony, and many of those with actual metagenes ended up heavily deformed or even killed by their own "power." McCauley didn't hesitate to throw Mano in.
To his shock and horror however, not only did Mano prove metagene-positive, he became the most successful subject to date!
He produced small organelles all over his body, which generate a disruption field which surrounds him completely, aside from his eyes. This field absorbs all light, and steals kinetic energy from nearby molecules, which disrupts the object they're part of - to what extent depends on the concentration of the organelles in the relevant part of his body. The highest concentration is found in his right hand, which disintegrates everything it touches except intertron. However, if he breathes in oxygen at too high a concentration (higher than ~10-15%, where air has ~20%), he enters a state similar to drunkenness.
On seeing these results, McCauley, in his panic, had him sealed in an intertron-lined suit in an intertron-lined cell, with bars of interton, with hyperoxygenated air pumped into the suit to keep him sedated. Lying barely-conscious but never unconscious, always looking at the same section of silver-coloured wall for almost three years. Three long years. Only his thoughts of vengeance on McCauley had kept him anywhere near sane.
Recently, however, Mano was 'freed' in order to act as leader of the Covert Workforce. Due to a personal intervention from McCauley, Mano is unique among the subjects in knowing about the brainwashing and remembering the process itself, although he can speak of it to no-one bar McCauley alone. As a final piece of revenge, McCauley stripped from Mano the knowledge of his own name - Mano is the only name he now knows.
In despair, the first time he was left alone he attempted to remove the gloves and destroy himself, leaving nothing of himself to be mocked, only to find that he couldn't remove the gloves. He couldn't even make the attempt. Other attempts at suicide failed the same way, and eventually he heard McCauley's laughter. He'd watched Mano's whole performance.
He currently resides in an opulent penthouse, supplied by McCauley with endless luxuries scattered about the room. He uses none of them and sleeps on the hardest bit of floor he can find in the deep carpets.
Despite hating every second of it, he is a competent leader of the covert team.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Mano has small organelles buried just beneath his skin all over his body, which generate a disruption field which surrounds it completely. This field absorbed all light, making him appear to crackle with jet-black energy, but it's primary function is to steal energy directly from the atoms of the air, most of which are merely slowed, but some have electrons ripped from their orbits, to be converted to pure energy which is absorbed by the field, and a few molecules are broken into their component atoms by the disruption.
As a side-effect of this, he no longer needs to eat or breathe - the energy provided by the organelles being sufficient to sustain him. Indeed, as his breathing reflex remains intact, normal air is moderately dangerous to him, as the oxygen levels improve the efficiency of the organelles' energy uptake enough that the surplus of energy leaves him in a state resembling drunkenness.
What prompted McCauley's choice of his current name though, is that the highest concentrations of organelles are in his hands. For an animal or human to touch most of Mano's body leaves them weak and dizzy. If his left hand, which has a tenfold concentration of the organelles, touches them briefly, it leaves them unconscious for hours (and disrupts machinery or electronics for hours), with prolonged contact leading to coma. But his right hand has a hundred-fold concentration of the organelles. His right hand is Death, disintegrating all it touches bar Inertron, the strongest, most durable substance known.
Mano must therefore constantly wear his black interton-lined suits and pure inertron gloves to guard against actively killing others at all times. Not that he'd mind, given his present companions, given the chance.
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This is mostly stuff I've had bouncing around my head for a while, and am finally getting down.
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