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Blackout is a crossbreed, part human and part demonic Lilin. His grandmother (perhaps many times removed) was Lilith, the mother of all monsters. He possesses superhuman strength, agility, stamina, reflexes, the ability to move with blinding speed for short bursts, and increased resilience to physical harm. He has been mechanically enhanced with artificial fangs and claws. Additionally, Blackout's skin is highly photo-sensitive, reacting negatively to the ultraviolet light in the sun's rays. As partial compensation, his body generates a light disruption field which works against various other forms of light. Blackout's field somehow prevents light from being properly transmitted through space, creating an artificial blackness. Even though the light from a given source is doused, the source itself remains -- a lit match may no longer glow in his darkness, but the flame is still present and can burn someone, even if they can't see it. Similarly, electrical lights and power sources continue to function properly even when his blackout field covers them. Blackout's light disruption field also breaks down ambient light, making shadows longer and thicker than normal. Despite all this, however, Blackout's field is apparently ineffective against the sun itself, perhaps because it is simply too powerful to negate, and so he cannot operate in the daytime. After dying and then being reborn again through Lilith herself, Blackout became much stronger, faster and more resilient, plus developed a taste for human blood.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Wanda Maximoff would've been born an energy manipulating mutant like her father if it weren't for the intervention of the Elder God, Chthon. Born atop WundagoreMountain, the eternal prison of the Elder God, Wanda was infused with his energy, and she developed her mutation as a hex power. By pointing at a target and concentrating, the Scarlet Witch unleashes her hexes, scientifically defined as a creating a psionic field around the target that causes probabilities to fluctuate wildly, making highly improbable events occur. Initially, Wanda's power was wild and limited -- she could cast no more that three hexes in rapid succession without taking time to regenerate her energies, and she had no control over the hex's effect. Zapping an opponent could just as easily make them stronger than defeat them. She typically caused some form of calamity, though, such as making floors or ceilings collapse, glass to shatter, guns to misfire, objects to burst into flame, machinery to turn on, shut down, or go haywire, etc.
After receiving some rudimentary training in magic at the hands of Agatha Harkness, Wanda developed a greater refinement in her powers, in terms of strength, stamina, and control. Scarlet Witch now had no set limit to the number of hexes she could cast in a row, and the sheer power she could unleash and range of improbable events she could cause increased dramatically. She could destroy buildings by altering the odds of every single stress point or minute fracture in the construction suddenly breaking down at one time, or cause a passing comet to turn 90 degrees and crash to earth right on top of a target she chose. Wanda could also control specific outcomes, willing her hex power to force a specific improbability to happen. She could manipulate games of chance, control the roll of a set of dice, and so on. She can still cast wild hexes easily, but with concentration she can gather her energies and will that a single outcome be achieved.
For a brief period Wanda, as her reality's nexus being, was used by Immortus as a storehouse for accumulated nexus energy taken from other realities. This had the side effect of dramatically increasing her powers again, and altering their basic nature. Wanda's hex power would now retroactively alter the timeline to engineer the outcomes she desired. Instead of simply causing a metal pipe to fracture and break, she manipulated space-time so that the fracture was always present in the pipe. Wanda eventually rejected the nexus energy, losing all of her powers for several weeks. Eventually, her abilities returned at their pre-Immortus levels.
More recently, Wanda became even more in tune with the "magical" nature of her powers after being used as a conduit for mystical forces by Morgan le Fey and learning the true "chaos magic" nature of her hex power from Agatha Harkness. Wanda developed a range of specific skills she can call on her hex power to perform. Because chaos magic is a form of "natural magic", the elements bent more easily to her power than other phenomena, allowing her to create fire, control wind, and so on. She can sense other forms of magic, as well as the natural order of things, and detect when something unnatural is occurring. Her hex power acts as a natural counterforce for any other form of magic and for the unnatural, allowing her to easily undo artificial changes to a "state of being", such as the presence of mind control. Wanda can also now generate hex fields (energy domes of hex energy that automatically alter the probability of any projectile suddenly being diverted away from her) or hex charges (samples of her chaos magic infused into objects to be used as talismans, such as when she focused her hex power into Iron Man's microchips and gave them to the Avengers so that they would be immune to Kulan Gath's mind-altering enchantment field while she wasn't with them). She is also learning more specific hex castings, like making people invisible to the naked eye or healing and repairing wounds.
In Avengers Disassembled, Wanda's powers raged out of control as full-fledged reality-altering abilities. Originally presented as the true extent of her powers untethered, current continuity states that Wanda actually became a conduit for the cosmic essence known as the Life Force, which was truly responsible for her "reality warping" powers. During this period, Wanda's powers were phenomenal: she could create matter from nothing, and deconstruct matter in the same way, wiping it from existence. She could manipulate existing matter so that it moved aside to let her pass, altered shape and form, changed elemental composition, and so on. She could access souls from beyond and resurrect the dead, then banish them to the afterlife just as easily. Wanda could reconstruct spacetime, creating scenarios that represented a new sequence of events in history, and impose that scenario on the matter and energy around her, and the minds of other people. Her "House of M" construction changed the history of the entire planet Earth for several decades, influencing everyone present on it.
Although she has since been separated from the Life Force, Wanda remains incredibly powerful. Her "chaos magic" based abilities have apparently been restored to continuity, allowing her to radically influence her environment by applying quantum-level manipulations to her targets, causing sudden but improbable things to occur. Her full range of capabilities at this point remains unclear.
Edited by Monolith - 07-May-2013 at 5:38pm
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Rictor began as a young mutant capable of radiating intense vibrations from his body. Manipulating the intensity of these vibrations would cause anything he touched to shake, shatter, crumble, or even disintegrate if the vibrations were strong enough. They would also upset the ground he was walking on, often causing other people to lose their footing. If he was standing on seismically active land, Rictor could potentially create earthquakes and open tectonic plates up if his vibes disturbed the crust. Later, he learned how to focus his vibrations as blasts of vibration from his hands. After leaving the New Mutants, Rictor began focusing his power into a particular kind of blast which he called "vibe-quakes". These vibratory wavelengths could be mentally adjusted by Ric to fit any different target or effect he wished to create, from blowing out a tire to collapsing entire buildings. He also had at least some level of psychic attunement to geological phenomena, allowing him to "feel" the earth beneath his feet and detect changes in the environment around him.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Baron Heinrich Zemo was one of Hitler's top scientists, skilled in the fields of metallurgy, engineering, and chemistry. He designed many things, including a concentrated laser pistol that could act as a disintegration beam, Adhesive X (a powerful glue that never loses its consistency naturally), Particle X (which interferes with electromagnetic signals), and Compound X (a liquid that, when heated, produced vapors that interacted with human metabolism to retard the aging process). Zemo's use of Compound X is how he stayed active decades past his prime. Zemo's face was fused to his ceremonial cowl after Captain America splashed some of his own Adhesive X on his face.
Baron Helmut Zemo was a child during World War II, and was raised away from his father after Heinrich went underground. The elder Zemo summoned his son years later, and Helmut was exposed to Compound X to extend his lifespan as well. After his father's death, Helmut adopted the identity of Phoenix and battled Captain America and the Falcon. His face was horribly disfigured after he fell into a superheated vat of Adhesive X, and he began wearing a modified version of his father's cowl and attire. When he founded the Thunderbolts, Zemo adopted the identity of Citizen V along with a sword and personal Flying V platform. Even after he dropped the heroic identity, Zemo continued to use the sword as a signature weapon. After he was decapitated by Scourge, a bio-modem implant Techno had secretly planted in Zemo's skull transported his consciousness into the comatose body of John Watkins III, the real grandson of the original Citizen V from WWII. Pretending to be Watkins, Zemo was taken in by the V-Battalion and given access to their resources to become Citizen V once again. He now employed razor sharp throwing V's, a glider cape, magnetic hand-grapplers for scaling obstacles, and a camouflage effect in his costume that rendered him invisible to detection. At one point, however, his consciousness was transferred out of Watkins' body and into the Fixer's tech-pac just before the T-Bolts were transported to Counter-Earth. While there, Fixer helped Zemo transfer his consciousness into the Helmut Zemo of that world, complete with a pristine face. Though that Zemo was an armored warrior named Iron Cross, our Helmut was only seen wearing the Cross's undersuit with no special capabilities.
Unfortunately for Zemo, his face was recently scarred again, but not before he claimed the power of twin moonstones for himself. Helmut is linked to the stones like Karla Sofen was, but has not chosen to merge them physically with his body. Instead, he keeps them hovering around his hands or shoulder and mentally activates their power from close proximity. This means that the powers he gains from the stones are more psionic than the physical enhancements Moonstone derived from them. Predominantly, Zemo has used his power to created folded space, a means of warping gravimetric fields to connect two points over a vast distance. Obviously, this is useful for teleportation, but also has other applications -- he can hold a folded space link constant, keeping two points connected so that people can walk back and forth between the two locations as easily as crossing a room. He can also open small spatial folds for observing events from a distance, and communicating with people at those locations. His folded space extends to accessing time and alternate realities as well -- a trip through space/time shortly after achieving his powers gave Zemo access to a wide spectrum of knowledge about the future, or at least possible futures, enabling him to predict events in advance with some margin of error based on the kaleidoscope of sensory input he received on his travels. He can also summon folded space visions of anything he has previously witnessed, replaying past or future events for others to see. Additionally, Zemo is capable of directly exerting gravitational forces on his molecules and the molecules of other materials. Manipulating gravity's pull on objects allows him to levitate himself, alter the rate of phase in his molecules to become intangible, make other objects float weightlessly, or increase their weight dramatically to pin them against the ground. Gravimetric energy can be directed to create localized or wide-arc force blasts, and created impenetrable barriers for protection or caging opponents. Zemo can also cast illusions to some degree, as when he removed Purple Man from confinement while convincing the guards that the prisoner was still there. Finally, Zemo has demonstrated the ability to appear as either a scarred or normal-looking version of himself, apparently by using his illusion-casting power. Zemo has since lost control over the moon gems.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
The Red Skull has employed a wide variety of weapons and devices over the years. His trademark is the "dust of death", a chemical compound that kills his victims within a matter of moments, turning their faces red and tightening their skin into an approximation of his own Red Skull mask. He often employed a special cigarette holder to blow the dust out through his smoke at opponents. He survived into modern times thanks to a special gas putting him into suspended animation until AIM discovered and revived him. The gas eventually began to wear off, though, and the Skull started to age rapidly to reach his true age. He died in Captain America's arms, but that wasn't the end. The Skull's pet geneticist Arnim Zola cloned a new body for him based on cells taken from Cap, making him an exact double for Steve Rogers, right down to the Super-Soldier Serum in his blood. When he revealed himself for the first time to Rogers and John Walker, the Skull was accidentally exposed to his own dust of death. He survived, but his face was transformed into a literal "red skull". Since then, he has been killed again, and his consciousness co-resided in the body of his former nemesis, Alexander Lukin, before being transferred to a robotic form similar to Arnim Zola.
Crossbones is one of the most dangerous opponents Captain America ever fought one-on-one. He is an Olympic-level combatant, a brawler with near peak human strength, agility, endurance, and reaction time. He has used a number of weapons over the years -- including handguns, knives, and uni-directional explosive charges-- but his favorites include a retractable shiv in his wristband, throwing darts shaped like the crossbones, and a crossbow that launches free-flying or wire-guided bolts. Recently, Crossbones was exposed to the Terrigen Mists and underwent a new mutation. He is able to focus a form of burning energy from his head.
Mother Night is a highly skilled hypnotist, able to influence others through eye contact or mental suggestion. Susan Scarbo can make herself or others seem to be invisible, and alter appearances to look like a different person or appear in a different set of clothes. Mother can also create sensory illusions, such as causing opponents to believe they've caught on fire. She can send people into a trance, making them highly receptive to questioning and post-hypnotic suggestions from her. Mother Night's powers even allow her to assume control of multiple people's minds with nothing more than a passing glance, making them instantly and unquestioningly loyal to her. Beginning her career as a hypnotist with her brother Melvin as "Scarbo and Sister", they later turned to crime with her using the identity of Suprema and he acting as her henchman. Melvin (or "Malachi") wore a pendant containing electronic equipment that amplified Suprema's hypnotic powers dramatically. Later, after adopting the separate identities of Mother Night and Minister Blood, Susan incorporated that enhancing circuitry into her own costume. She also wore a set of trick jewelry around her throat which could emit a blackout beam that consumed light to create a cone of total darkness, and a hallucinogenic mist that made people more susceptible to her powers.
Samuel "Starr" Saxon was a robot designer who applied his trade against Daredevil for a time. He was particularly skilled in creating life-like robotic automatons, which could even be designed to mimic the appearance and abilities of superhumans. He created Magneto and Red Skull robots in the past skillful enough to at least temporarily pass as the originals. Saxon once assumed the identity of Mister Fear II, stealing Zoltan Drago's motif. He employed his own inventions of a hand-held repello-ray gun and a jet platform, along with Fear's trademark fear gas, a pheromone which introduced anxiety, panic, fear, and even hallucinogenic delusions of personal fears and phobias.
After dying in battle with Daredevil, Saxon's personality was captured by his robots and downloaded into an artificial body. As Machinesmith, Saxon could now micro-beam his digitalized consciousness between electronic systems, transmitting his mental patterns in a straight line. Saxon was able to operate computers mentally by possessing them, or could jump between different humanoid robot bodies: his vast collection of androids and life-like robotic replicas of heroes and villains became a selection of bodies for him to use. His typical physical form possessed a moderate level of superhuman strength, endurance, reflexes, and resilience, thanks in part to its titanium construction. He could extend his arms and legs on sectioned cables to many times their regular lengths, and extending his optic sensors out could activate telescopic or microscopic vision modes. Later, as a member of the Masters of Evil, Machinesmith used a new body with retractable and adaptable components -- he could cause sensors or weapons of various types to unfold from his body for use. Most recently, Machinesmith has demonstrated instant reconstructive abilities in certain bodies, allowing him to change shape into human and non-human forms by reconfiguring his mechanical construction. He could assimilate outside sources of machinery into his body on contact to increase his mass, and project himself into inanimate machines, then mentally reconfigure them to fit his specifications once inside.
Saxon also occasionally used the Fourth Sleeper as a body, or it could be programmed to act on its own accord. It possesses considerably greater mass and stature compared to a normal human, and slightly longer arms as well. The Sleeper has metahuman strength, endurance, and excellent resistance to conventional injury. It could also become intangible, making it immune to physical assaults and capable of walking through solid mass as if it were air. Designed to be a Living Volcano, the Sleeper could project intense amounts of thermoscopic energy from its face or eyes. These blasts could be used directly as offensive weapons, but were actually conceived of as a means of setting off volcanoes to destroy the world. Machinesmith also incorporated a set of neuronic disruptors in the Sleeper's eyes, allowing it to scramble nervous systems and render opponents unconscious without killing them.
The Voice of Doom was accidentally exposed to a unique form of ionized atoms that gave him the power to control others with his voice, a power later enhanced by bionic technology and a harness of amplifying speakers. Any word he speaks carries an irresistible impulse that prevents people from ignoring his statement. If the Voice says something is true, anyone within the sound of his voice will accept that unconditionally. Furthermore, he can issue commands which are impossible to resist, even when someone knows they don't really want to do what he asks. The Voice has commanded people to freeze in place, prevent them from attacking him in any way, force them to obey every order another person gives them, etc. He once told a group of Avengers to hunt down and kill his nemesis, Hank Pym, and they all attempted to do so. His power does not create mindless automatons, and people under his control retain their full reasoning abilities and imagination -- they are simply unavoidably compelled to devote their fullest effort to accomplishing whatever he tells them to do. The Egyptian god Khonshu was immune to his power, and Hawkeye was able to resist killing Hank at the very last second; on the other hand, extremely strong willed individuals like Selene were still susceptible to his commands.
Cutthroat wears a specially-reinforced costume that protects him from physical blows and small arms fire. He is highly skilled with a variety of bladed weapons, including shivs, machetes, and throwing daggers, and has retractable spear points in his boots. All of his blades are laced with adamantium to increase their cutting power. He has also employed a handgun or sniper rifle that fires various types of rocket propelled darts, such as explosive-types, sonic screamers which disorient and disable his opponents, and magnesium flares that emit a blinding flash.
Jack O'Lantern wears a Kevlar-padded costume and a crash helmet designed like a flaming pumpkin. The helmet is equipped with telescopic and night vision lenses. His wrist-blasters are able to fire bolts of high-voltage electricity, and carries a supply of throwing spheres and pumpkin bombs designed as concussive, explosive, magnesium flare, smoke, tear gas, anesthetic gas, regurgitant gas, and hallucinogenic gas kinds. His later costume was equipped with wrist-shooters that could fire the bombs for him. His costume can also release "ghost-grabbers" at close range, vapors that quickly crystallize into adhesive, plastic-like wrap that is difficult to remove and can suffocate his opponents. He rides a one-man flying platform, a hovercraft that gives him great maneuverability in the air.
Blackwing was surgically implanted with cybernetic technology in his brain, enabling him to levitate himself and mentally communicate with and control bats. His costume is designed to help him glide while levitating, and he also uses a one-man flying platform for greater speed and maneuverability. In combat he uses items like a blackjack fighting baton, razor-bat throwing stars, and serrated swords stylized after bat wings.
Edited by Monolith - 14-Dec-2010 at 5:34pm
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Storm is able to manipulate the meteorological energy patterns of the planet she is currently on, allowing her to manipulate the weather. Ororo is linked to Earth specifically, and tends to require some time to readjust her powers to the different environments and biospheres of other worlds. Her power can be used in space, but somewhat sporadically.
Storm is sensitive to the patterns of electromagnetic energy which influence and guide weather phenomena. She can both mentally and visually recognize how weather patterns are forming, and predict rain, snowstorms, or whatever with extreme accuracy. Storm commands the wind, allowing her to summon anything from a slight breeze to a hurricane force gale. She can form cyclones and tornados of various sizes, and direct them to move about at her will. Naturally, she is also able to use the wind to fly. She is able to form cloud cover on command, blocking out the sun or creating a pea-soup fog at ground level. Ororo is then capable of seeding clouds in order to summon any form of precipitation: rain, sleet, snow, hail, etc. Her power over the wind allows her to aim skyfall at any target, and make it fly almost parallel to the ground if she chooses. She can summon thunder and lightning as well, calling bolts of electricity out of the sky to strike her targets. Combining wind and rain, thunder and lightning can create monsoons, and one helluva storm within a matter of moments. Storm can also ionize the atmosphere around her hands, giving the impressions that she is firing lightning bolts from her own body. She can manipulate the temperature of her environment, causing sudden heat waves or drop the temperature down to sub-freezing levels.
Storm has used her power over the weather for a number of specific feats as well. She is sensitive to electricity, and can alter her vision so that she perceives her environment solely in terms of electrical flow. Controlled generation of electrical energy can scramble psionic signatures, making her mind more difficult to read or control. She has created the next-best-thing to a force field in the past with a pressurized mass of air. She is able to manipulate water, and influence currents and such, but water is a much thicker medium than air and takes a considerable amount of power to affect. Storm also has a certain resistance to the weather effects she generates: her body is capable of absorbing electricity without harm, and she regulates her body temperature in different climates to remain comfortable despite super-tropical or sub-freezing environments.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Sersi is one of the cosmically-endowed Eternals of Earth. Since her life-force and molecular structure are reinforced by cosmic energy, Sersi is virtually immortal and indestructible, capable of withstanding anything this side of total molecular disintegration. She has Class 25 strength and superhuman endurance. She possesses a number of powers including telepathy, teleportation, levitation, and the projection of cosmic energy as light, heat, or concussive force. Where Sersi really shines, however, is in the realm of illusion-casting and molecular manipulation. On the Eternals' personal rankings of skill level, she is a 5 out of 5 in both areas. Sersi can transform objects from one substance into another, change people into animals, rearrange the molecules of clothing into different styles, alter her appearance or the appearances of others, etc. She can even genetically reconfigure people from human to Kree and back, or turn living beings into lifeless inert matter, then have them return to life without consequence. In extreme cases, she has also used her molecular power as a disintegration beam. Sersi can preset her manipulations so that they reverse themselves automatically after a certain period of time or under selected circumstances. For instance, she once transformed Captain America into a teenager so that he could infiltrate a brainwashing camp, and arranged it so that he would revert to his adult form after a certain number of body blows, reasoning that this would mean he had been discovered and needed his full fighting ability returned. On another occasion she morphed Cap into the spitting image of his opponent Crossbones for another infiltration op, and arranged it so that depressing a certain spot of his costume would revert him, his costume, and his shield to their original appearances.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Vision was created in his current state of being out of the original Human Torch. He is a synthezoid, with a number of mechanical and synthetic-organic components approximating human life. He has superhuman strength, endurance, and reaction time. The Vision is powered by solar energy, which he absorbs through the gem mounted on his brow. Vizh can rechannel his solar reserves if necessary as thermoscopic energy, firing blasts from his eyes or a tight beam from the gem itself. He is capable of altering his physical density, apparently by increasing or decreasing his mass per volume through extra-dimensional access. Vision can become intangible, able to walk through walls and untouchable by physical objects. By maintaining a fractional amount of mass, Vision can fly by catching air currents in his cape and gliding on the wind. He has also perfected an inter-phasing touch, allowing him to scramble the internal structure of a living being by passing a partially phased hand into them. The shock of these foreign molecules suddenly appearing in their system causes most beings intense pain and makes them pass out. By increasing his density, Vision becomes stronger and more durable. At his maximum density he weighs over 90 tons, but is incapable of moving because he's too dense to work his own joints. Typically, he increases his density to the point just before his body begins to slow and lock up from his own weight, giving him Class 50 strength and a diamond hard body. After being disassembled and put back together, Vision had an image inducer incorporated into his chest, able to produce a preprogrammed hologram covering his body. He used this inducer to create a human appearance for himself at will, and apparently had it transferred into his new body when he switched with his Gatherer counterpart.
After losing the entire lower half of his body battling Morgan le Fey, Vision was placed in a nanotech regeneration chamber in the Avengers' basement. While recuperating, he interacted with the others by projecting his consciousness through the mansion's holographic systems, letting him manifest his image anywhere on the property. In order to remain useful, he tied his core consciousness into the mansion's communication system, allowing him to answer incoming calls at will and use his holographic image as a video screen, projecting vid calls onto his silhouette. After being fully reconstructed, the Vision retained his ability to mentally access electromagnetic transmissions. He is able to send and receive signals mentally, and use his body to amplify the intensity and clarity of any signal that reaches him. He is also capable of remotely tapping into computer systems to download information from them or influence their operations. After a disturbing encounter with one of his creator's prototypes, Vision's power was altered so that whenever he became intangible his exo-structure turned transparent, making his interior metallic skeleton visible.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Thunderbird III is able to transform all or part of his body into a thermonuclear reaction, approximating the power of a star. He can project solar plasma from the transsubed portions of his body and typically uses a converted hand to fire flaming blasts of energy, and a converted finger to focus a more laser-like beam of plasma for situations requiring finesse. By filtering the energy his body releases, Thunderbird can radiate intense heat and light from his body, or adjust his output so that only heat OR light is emitted. He can convert his legs into the equivalent of thermochemical rockets, expelling volatile plasma as a form of thrust so that he can fly. Through concentration, Neal is able to create solid plasma fields, tangible enough to deflect projectiles away from him. He has also trained himself to create plasma spheres, which explode on command in a burst of tremendous heat, blasting compressed volumes of air away like a concussion grenade.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Mesmero has the power of ultra-hypnosis, a psionic ability enabling him to place other people into a highly-suggestible state where they are extremely open to influence from him. This enables him to control his victims through powerful mental commands that can compel specific actions or behavior patterns from them. He can tell people to fall asleep, to hand over their weapon, to remain where they are, etc, and the hypnotic suggestion will be too powerful to resist. His influence over behavior allows him to convince people to do anything he asks without questioning their own reasons for doing so. He can command people to remain his willing slaves, create false memories or personalities for them to act out, or convince them to suddenly feel a different way about a topic or person. Mesmero can also psionically trigger intense pain and anguish in people simply by wishing it, construct mental blocks preventing them from ever accessing certain memories or carrying out certain actions, and create lasting illusions in the minds of others that convince them that they or someone else looks quite different than they actually do.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Roger Bochs was the original creator and operator of the Box robot. As Box I, he used a cyber-presence helmet to control the Box Mark I robot, projecting his consciousness into the 'bot so that he could communicate with others through it and receive audio, visual, and tactile sensations from the Box robot. Box has superhuman strength, stamina, reaction time, and the ability to withstand considerable amounts of physical punishment. Though Bochs refused to betray Alpha Flight to Omega Flight, his helmet was stolen by James Hudson's enemy Jerome Jaxon, who used the Box Mark I to become Box II. The Mark I was destroyed in combat with Guardian, and the feedback in turn destroyed Jaxon's brain.
Bochs went to work redesigning his technology to create a new Box, with the help of Madison Jeffries. The Box Mark II had few combat-based differences from the Mark I: it was slightly stronger, and now had boot jets enabling it to fly. The primary difference was that the Mark II was forged out of "living metal", a uniquely constructed alloy somehow capable of physically interfacing with organic beings. By touching the suit, Bochs could "phase in" with the metal, mingling his molecules with the structure of the suit itself and placing his mind directly inside the suit's control circuitry. It was like literally becoming the robot. The living metal could also be programmed to recognize individual genetic codes, allowing Bochs to ensure that only he could "phase in" or "phase out" in order to control the suit. Walter Langkowski's spirit briefly inhabited the Box Mark II, making him Box III, but it soon departed the robot and allowed Box I and his partner Mr. Jeffries to operate in the field with Alpha Flight.
Madison Jeffries was a mutant transmutator, able to psionically affect metal, plastic, and glass. He could levitate anything made of or containing these materials and manipulate them with considerable finesse -- Jeffries could completely disassemble complex machinery in instants without breaking or damaging a single part. His abilities could be used to fix broken components or tear machines to pieces. Madison possessed a technoforming capacity, the ability to create working machines and devices by taking raw materials and modifying them to fit the design. Jeffries had a knack for mechanically duplicating human physiology -- he could take a random collection of spare parts and form them into a giant animatronic hand or a fully automated android mimicking the form and range of movement of a real person. But otherwise Madison was not an inventor by nature, and so while his power was capable, he could not direct it to form state-of-the-art technology on his own. He did, however, possess a mind-tap ability which he often used with his buddy, the genius inventor Roger Bochs. By having Bochsie focus on the blueprints and design of some high-tech machine, Jeffries could act as a conduit, unleashing his power guided by the information he was tapping from his friend, creating whatever the construct was to the proper specifications. Given the level of technical sophistication Madison would display in later years, its possible that he retained knowledge of each device he created with a mind-tap, allowing him to recreate the process on his own at a later date if he wished. As he came into his own as a hero and technologist, Jeffries definitely began coming up with his own designs and inventions.
Box redesigned his suit again, creating the Box Mark III which was larger and stronger than the Mark II, and capable of conducting an electrostatic current through its superstructure. Roger Bochs began to grow mentally unstable, though, due to being forced to stay inside the suit for weeks after suffering "the bends" during an underwater mission, and the fickle manipulations of the lovely but disturbed Aurora. After Aurora's old lover Walter Langkowski returned, Bochs went so far as to attack his teammates, and Jeffries had to step in and force Roger out of the Box armor, ultimately becoming Box IV in the process.
As Box IV, Madison Jeffries created the Box Mark IV armor and demonstrated that his transmutator powers allowed him to alter the molecular structure of metals to create "living metal" out of any scrap available to him, so he wasn't dependent on always having just one unique suit to use. While "phased in" to the suit, Jeffries' transmutator power was limited to only affecting the suit, not other exterior objects. He could, however, absorb additional materials into the armor on contact, increasing his mass, size, and strength accordingly. By mentally modifying his suit, Box IV could reshape all or parts of his mechanical body into different features: extending wings from his back to aid in flight, turning his arms into machine guns or laser weapons, converting his entire body into a giant wheel, sled, miniature fighter jet, etc. By this point in his career, Jeffries was a skilled enough engineer to convert himself into a living "Boxship" for Alpha Flight capable of artificial gravity, atmospheric stabilizers and hyperspace travel. He later remodified his armor's appearance to create the Box Mark V, but only briefly employed this version of the suit.
Upon rejoining Alpha Flight at the start of their second series, Madison Jeffries had quit using the Box identity. He was kidnapped by Zodiac on his first mission and later turned up again as one of their Gemini twins. The Gemini described themselves as "The Gemini of metal and the Gemini of flesh", which could be interpreted two ways: one is that Madison was the Gemini of flesh, and his "twin" was a metallic doppelganger created and animated by his powers. The other is that Madison was the Gemini of metal and his partner was his brother, Scramble the Mixed-Up Man, back from the death. In life, Lionel Jeffries had transmutator power over flesh and organic matter as a mirror image of his brother's power over metal and inanimate material. Either way, that entire Zodiac team was apparently slaughtered by Weapon X, leaving only Madison.
By the time he joined the X-Club, Madison Jeffries's power had expanded to include a form of machine telepathy. He can now sense the presence of mechanical systems and psychically interpret information about them from a distance. Madison often receives this information as if the machines are actually "talking" to him. He can sense the function and capabilities of machines, determine whether they are operating properly or suffering from some sort of hardware or software problem, and so forth. When dealing with computer systems, Jeffries can mentally read their programming and stored files, and can now modify this information as an intricate extension of his technoforming ability. At his present skill level, Madison Jeffries is now a mathematical and engineering savant, and in working with Doctor Nemesis or alone has come up with new forms of quantum mechanics or inter-dimensional interfaces.
Edited by Monolith - 22-Jun-2011 at 3:45pm
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
UltraForce consists of a number of different ultras from different books gathered together, including Hardcase, Prime and Prototype I and II (from their solo comics), Contrary and Pixx (from Freex), Topaz (from Mantra), Ghoul (from Exiles), Black Knight (from Avengers on Marvel-Earth), Siren (from Eliminator), new characters Wreckage and Lament, Amber Hunt, Hellblade and Maxis (from All New Exiles), and Ripfire and Ironclad (from their Ultraverse Premiere serials).
Tom Hawke, Hardcase, was one of the first modern ultras, gaining his powers roughly a year and a half before the start of the Ultraverse. As a member of the Squad, he was one of four Los Angelinos who were the first public ultras and super-heroes. Though he was exponentially more powerful than he first believed, Hardcase originally only manifested his powers as physical capabilities. He developed a massively well-endowed muscle structure, at least Class 50 strength, and superhuman speed, agility, endurance, reaction time, leaping ability, vision, hearing, and immunity to disease and other pathogens. He was incredibly resistant to all forms of damage or penetration, and the few times he was injured he demonstrated remarkable regenerative powers. Hardcase's powers actually came from the fact that he was living nanotech, and every cell of his body was a living machine, capable of being programmed and rewritten at will. He was in fact a repetition of Rex Mundi, the first ultra who possessed identical powers and was created at the dawn of mankind. His body had the capacity of becoming an omni-productive factory, for he could use his nanotech to assimilate additional mass into his system, convert this mass into whatever he desired, and then expel it in this newly forged shape. Hardcase instinctively used this aspect of his power to help his healing -- by drinking large amounts of water, his body would process that liquid into organic material to regenerate missing or damaged portions of his anatomy. His cells had a learning capacity, and could "remember" and replicate anything they were exposed to. Hardcase once used the Infinity Time Gem to travel into the past, and was later capable of traveling through time under his own power without the gem. Moreover, after deciding such a power was too tempting to use, Tom willed his cells to erase that ability from his system: he not only lost the power, but even the memory of having the power. He developed his powers dramatically behind the scenes, and was later capable of using his nanotech to create fully automated, sentient beings.
Kevin Green was born thanks to the fertility expertise of Vincent Gross. Doctor Gross was also an ex-government scientist experimenting in creating ultras, however, and implanted Kevin in utero with a self-replicating third strand of DNA that eventually gave him superhuman powers when he reached puberty. Triggering this third strand would cause a massive amount of green protoplasmic material to burst forth from his body and form around him into an exo-form shaped by his thoughts. These exo-forms were completely indistinguishable from whatever they were mimicking: as Prime it was outwardly impossible to recognize he was not real flesh and blood, and the costumes and paraphernalia he occasionally produced for these exo-forms were equally perfect replications of true materials. Kevin's regular body remained submerged inside the protoplasm while he manifested an exo-form, and the latter was capable of conducting both sensory information and nutrients from the Prime body to Kevin's own -- he could see, hear, smell, taste, touch, speak, eat, breathe, etc while in an exo-form.
As Prime, Kevin became a hulking muscle man standing at least 7-8 feet tall. He developed superhuman Class 100 strength, considerable endurance and reflexes, the ability to move and fly at phenomenal speeds, and at his best was virtually invulnerable to physical injury. He could also produce Prime Power, releasing a luminescent glow from his skin or bursts of explosive energy that he had a limited ability to direct at his opponents. Prime Power was the sustaining force behind his exo-forms, and any use of his additional abilities drained it. An exo-form could sustain itself for a full week of time before beginning to breakdown, if he did not use his strength, flight, speed, power bursts, etc. In his early days, though, a single release of his Prime Power could destabilize him enough to discorporate the exo-form. When this happens, it would dissolve back into green ooze and Kevin would have to claw his way out of what felt like a wet plastic bag. His invulnerability fluctuated depending on how weak he felt: at his peak, Prime could withstand a point blank nuclear explosion, but at his weakest a simple Bowie knife could slit open his exo-form. As time passed, Kevin learned how to create specialized exo-bodies for himself. Working with the US government, he was able to incorporate sacs of highly-compressed oxygen into his exo-form, creating Space Prime. In this state, his "skin" resembled organic metal and was air-tight, allowing extended space travel. Kevin later recreated himself out of teenaged angst as Rogue Prime, an exo-form manifested with longer hair and far more heavy metal and rebellious clothing. Rogue Prime was manifested out of pure anger, and Kevin found that his anger could sustain his Prime Power beyond its normal limits, maintaining his exo-form's integrity and powers through sheer rage. Kevin grew out of this phase, though, and recreated a classic Prime body while learning to replenish his power through sheer will instead of uncontrollable emotion. After one trip to the Marvel Universe, he created a Spider Prime body for himself, functionally mimicking Spider-Man's webbing and super-powers. The first incarnation of Spider Prime even had four additional arms, making him a true arachnid.
The first Prototype was Bob Campbell, a former Army ranger and stuntman who used UltraTech's original powered armor as a spokesman and part-time superhero. Though bulky, the Prototype armor exoskeleton increased his strength dramatically, protected him from injury, had boot jets for flight, was equipped with various sensors and scanners, and had multiple weapon systems including a grenade launcher, high-speed rotating cannon with cable feed, rockets, and anti-personal sonics to harmlessly incapacitate his foes. UltraTech later forced him out of work by staging an "accident" with their Prototype 2000 model, costing Campbell the armor and his right arm. He later returned, funded by Aladdin as a new armored hero known as Ranger. The Ranger armor was more streamlined, but only employed the basics of power armor technology: enhanced strength and durability, flight, and coherent plasma beam weapons in the gauntlets. After Black September, the second Prototype was apparently removed from history entirely, retconing Campbell as having always been Prototype from the beginning. His post-BS Prototype armor contained the same features of his Ranger suit, in addition to extra weapon components that could be slapped onto his forearm, such as a microwave burst gun, neurological stunner, or a beam carousel that fired a stream of computer-guided lasers.
The second Prototype was Jimmy Ruiz, who took on the role just prior to the start of the Ultraverse. He was chosen by UltraTech for a new rendition of the Prototype Program, using an ultra to charge up the suit itself. Ruiz was the perfect candidate -- an ultra so low-level that he wasn't even aware of the fact, but possessing a source of biological energy which could be tapped as a power source. Jimmy's "integral energy" boosted his metabolism to give him naturally high strength and reaction time. In order to use the armor, he was implanted with a series of cyber-jacks supposedly to connect his nervous system better to the suit's systems, but actually drained energy from his ultra power to sustain the armor's functions. He experienced a number of early power failures, but as UltraTech learned to coax greater and greater levels of energy out of his system, the limitations went away. The Prototype armor initially had to be donned manually, but was later upgraded to automatically open up and close around Jimmy's body. While wearing the armor, Ruiz gained a significant further boost to his strength and reflexes, along with energy-reinforced armor plating to protect him from injury. He was capable of flight thanks to his boot jets, and his primary weapon system was a set of maser blasters built into his gauntlets, producing concentrated particle discharges along a beam-lance of microwaves. In addition, he was equipped with computerized sensors, a short-range cutting torch in his index finger, an electromagnetic pulse device, and his "All Fire" technique which blasted off energy in all directions from his gauntlets and boots, creating a spray of multi-directional blasts. UltraTech's machinations disrupted his internal balance of power, though, causing Jimmy's integral energies to rage out of control. Even without the armor, he was now capable of flight and could project his energy as concussive / explosive blasts or a cauterizing laser-like beam. Whereas previously his power levels were too weak to detect without being coaxed by his armor, Ruiz now required the suit to drain off excess energy at least once per day, otherwise he'd begin blasting off massive amounts of destructive force uncontrollably.
Topaz has roughly peak human levels of strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reflexes. Her full title is the Warrior Queen (or Topaz Queen) of Gwendor -- a position she rose into -- so presumably her additional powers were bestowed on her upon assumed the mantle. She has a self-generating bio-metallic armor which forms as a thin but sturdy additional layer over her skin. It enables her to withstand a considerable amount of force directed at her. Topaz can also fly under her own power and generate a bio-electrical quarterstaff, materializing it in her grasp. This staff is tangible enough to physically strike opponents, and can also discharge concussive blasts from either tip. It is subject to her commands and can be dispersed at will even if it leaves her hands. Topaz almost exclusively does not generate her staff without being armored up, and does not fly without having generated her staff first. Theoretically, the bio-electricity of her staff may require her metallic armor as a conduit, and while she can fly on her own, the staff's power may provide a better form of propulsion than she can unaided.
Jonathon Martin, Ghoul, contracted an alien Theta Virus introduced into the human population, one which would be fatal if left untreated. The only known treatment was designed by Dr. Rachel Deming, and had the side effect of causing 99% of the subjects to turn into ultras. In Ghoul's case, his body's physical deterioration thanks to the virus was converted into an ultra power. He became the non-supernatural equivalent of a zombie, a living psychic essence animating unliving tissue. Little more than a decaying corpse, Ghoul does not require food, sleep, or air in order to survive, and cannot be killed through physical force -- he can be shot, stabbed, dismembered, blown up or whatever and still survive. He can reattach lost limbs or body parts, but only by bandaging the part back on so that his body can slowly knit it back into one piece. He has no active healing powers, and so in order to repair damaged or irretrievable tissue he must absorb other sources of inanimate organic matter into his system. This could be accomplished simply by eating a hamburger, or in more gruesome ways like siphoning the flesh off of a recently deceased corpse. After being blown to bits in an exploding building, Ghoul needed months recuperating underground and absorbing trace levels of organic matter in the ground before he could recreate his full humanoid form.
Besides his physical attributes, Ghoul also possessed certain psychic powers. He can predict the coming demise of different people, by perceiving a super-imposed image of their own future corpse over their present body. This vision becomes clearer the closer the time comes to that person's death, and it is unknown if Ghoul's visions are inevitable or if he can do something to stop them from coming to pass. He can communicate with the spirits of the deceased, summoning psychic personality residue from corpses through physical contact. He does not need a whole corpse to perform this act, and can contact spirits from a discarded limbs or event the lingering traces of organic material from the tombs of the ancient Fire People, thousands of years old. These spirits retain the personalities they had in life, but are under the influence of Ghoul's will and must reveal any information he requests from them, whether they want to or not. Ghoul can even summon images from the minds of these ghosts, replaying events they saw while alive. Finally, Ghoul is capable of triggering temporary paralysis in others, immobilizing them where they stand for a matter of minutes with a thought.
Contrary was apparently the woman known as Wetware Mary, a nurse who introduced an ancient and cultivated wetware virus into the bodies of dozens of babies around the country roughly 15-20 years ago. Her own powers presumably came from exposure to that same wetware virus. She is capable of producing synaptic stimulator pulses of pleasure or pain on contact. These pulses sent waves of ecstasy or agony through someone's body when she touched them, and could easily incapacitate them with the sensory overload. Contrary's powers could also be used as a mood-altering effect that was pleasurably soothing and made people far more pliable to her wishes and suggestions. She was highly skilled at psychological manipulation and was provocatively beautiful (possibly as a side-effect of her wetware), traits that easily worked with her powers to help seduce men into being devoted to her needs.
Penelope Burka, Pixx, is one of the Freex spawned by Contrary's wetware virus injections. Luckier than most Freex, she did not physically mutate but instead developed the psionic power to cast illusions. The audio-visual projections she creates can be animated people or creatures, indistinguishable from the real thing. She can also render herself or others invisible by projecting an image of the background super-imposed over them, or create illusionary scenarios to fake her own death or disguise existing events. Pixx could even seamlessly weave a false story into a television transmission without anyone recognizing the changeover.
Siren received some artificial enhancements from Aladdin in the form of heightened strength, agility, endurance, reflexes, and a reinforced indestructible skeleton. She generally applied chalk white face paint and facial designs to herself before going into action, and used a variety of tools such as a crossbow, rope and grappling hook, trick throwing stars (such as explosives or ones that release liquid that congeals around her target as restraining bonds), and a tri-fighter vehicle that acts as a one-woman covered cycle or hover-jet, equipped with laser blasters. When Black September temporarily transported her to the Marvelverse, Siren was altered by the effect and manifested latent ultra powers. First, her skin was completely re-rendered all over in the chalk white color of her make-up. She also developed a mental power over liquids, especially water, allowing her to levitate them and make them flow through the air under her command. She can summon up waves or waterspouts from nearby bodies of water, and can even be revitalized just through contact with some liquid. Siren could now also influence the actions of others. When speaking, she could lace her words with a subsonic harmony that affects the inner ear to make people far more open to suggestion. Already an accomplished liar, Siren can be extremely persuasive in making people believe whatever she tells them if there's even a possibility it's true. She is also able to force people into doing a variety of tasks. As an extension of her persuasiveness, she can often simple convince someone that doing what she says is a good idea for them. Otherwise, her power can still make a compulsion overwhelming to her victim even if they are not convinced it's a good thing. She can force people to stand still, come towards her, etc. Siren has not demonstrated the ability to coerce any more elaborate forms of behavior out of people, though.
Wreckage was once a detective named Jack Prosper, brutally beaten by an ultra named Bonehammer. In order to get revenge, Prosper paid for a number of black market wetware upgrades to restore him to health and give him the power to fight back. He gained heightened levels of strength, speed, agility, reaction time, and possibly vision and recuperative powers as well. In addition, he was given some experimental upgrades involving the ability to shift matter out of phase. His "spin time" allowed him to become intangible in order to move through solid objects or become untouchable to attack for brief periods. "Spinning" took energy to accomplish, and he needed a bit of time to recharge after each use, depending on the amount of time he was "spinning". Wreckage also had the "shudderers", short spikes extending from the back of his knuckles that were capable of disrupting the molecular integrity of solid matter on contact. A strong enough surge could completely disintegrate objects, breaking them apart at a microscopic level. Smaller surges could be used on opponents without killing them -- temporarily "shuddering" their molecules out of synch with each other -- but would cause tremendous amounts of physical pain. Like "spinning", the shudderers needed a recharge time before they could be used again.
Sarah Walks Unseen, Lament, was placed as a baby inside the wetware of a living computer for designing stealth systems, developing ultra powers as a result. She has the power of invisibility, her "stealth arrays" which render her completely undetectable along the visible spectrum. She also has a natural link to computer systems, making her intuitively apt at operating all computers, hacking through firewalls, and accessing and reading all forms of computer code, languages, and hidden files. Finally, Lament has biokinesis, the ability to exert psionic force on the organs and anatomy of others. She can squeeze the heart, rupture blood vessels, cause the brain and synapses to overload and pop, and so on, at varying levels of intensity in order to kill on command or simply cause pain, seizures, paralysis, or unconsciousness.
Ripfire is a symbiosis of a human named Matthew and an alien spirit named Chi'arr. The alien's living essence infused Matthew's body, enabling the two beings to share control over that physical form and communicate with each other mentally. Chi'arr's presence affected Matthew's metabolism, heightening his strength, speed, agility, endurance and reaction time. He can also focus bio-kinetic energy, firing shafts of explosive force from the alien bow he carries.
Spencer Collins, Iron Clad, received his powers from Amber Hunt's jumpstart burst. Initially, he was able to convert his body into living metal in order to gain superhuman strength and durability. There was a limited period of time he could maintain his altered form before having to revert to normal. After being killed by Rafferty, his corpse was infused with the nanotech matter of the alien known as Maxis, who used him as a host body for a period of time. When Maxis moved on to another host, Spencer was somehow reanimated by the event and came back to life. He now apparently could not revert back to human form, but gained new morphing powers thanks to the residual nanites in his system. His living metal body could now expand and contract itself in different ways, compressing in the center to escape someone's grasp, stretching his arms to many times their normal lengths, morphing his hands into hammers or axes, etc.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
The All New Exiles consisted of Juggernaut, Strike, Reaper, Amber Hunt, Shuriken, and Siena Blaze, and later Hellblade and Cayman.
Amber Hunt possesses power over heat and light to varying intensity, depending on how her powers have been enhanced at the time. In the past, she has been a host for the Phoenix Force and drastically super-charged by the Entity in the Moon. Amber has demonstrated the power to radiate up and down the electromagnetic spectrum from infrared, through the visible light spectrum, to ultraviolet, producing varying levels of heat and radiation in the process, causing massive property damage and radiation-induced madness in others. She can project blinding light, fiery plasma blasts, and concentrated laser beams from her hands. Her initial power manifestation, boosted by the Entity, exploded with the force of a thermonuclear bomb. She is also capable of flight, can sense and track down various forms of electromagnetic radiation, and project intangible holograms or animated hard-light constructs, much like the interactive holograms produced by the Danger Room.
Shuriken received wetware implants from Aladdin, giving her enhanced agility, reflexes, coordination, and accuracy. She also uses a selection of throwing stars which may or may not have been biologically generated...sources vary. Besides razor sharp shuriken she has also used explosive stars, paraly-stars that temporarily disable her opponents, and reflecti-stars which cause matter and energy bolts to bounce off them.
Brandon Tark, Warstrike or The Strike, began operating as a mercenary and received wetware implants to make him a combat-capable ultra. He gained heightened strength, agility, endurance, and reaction time, along with dramatic healing abilities which only work sporadically, meaning that after every injury it's possible that he'll recuperate like Wolverine, or not at all. He also possessed an extrasensory ability which he calls going "on the wire", allowing him to view events in the past and future under different circumstances. The most common use of this power is in battle, when a rush of adrenaline will project into his mind's-eye a series of possible outcomes to a given situation, allowing him to choose the best one for his own gain. He has also demonstrated interpretational dreams that forecast future events in surreal form, and psychometric powers that allow him to relive past events relating to a person or object he touches.
Jefferson Kotto, Hellblade, became an ultra during the third modern jumpstart effect, generated by Amber Hunt's moon-driven power surge. It is unclear whether the colored tattooing all over his was a result of his manifestation or something he did himself. Hellblade possesses superhuman strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reflexes, hyper-regenerative powers, animal-like super-keen senses, and fingers that each end in a thick, razor sharp claw.
Cayman is one of the Freex created by Wetware Mary injecting the wetware virus into him as an infant. He has physically transformed into a massive "gator-boy", possessing significantly greater mass than normal, superhuman strength, endurance, reaction time, and incredible resistance to physical injury thanks to his thick scaly hide. He is adapted for operating in aquatic or marshy environments, and has razor sharp claws on the ends of each finger.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
The Strangers were Lady Killer, Grenade, Atom Bob (or Pilgrim), Zipzap, Electrocute, Spectral, Yrial, and Teknight, with the Night Man as an associate of the group. Night Man and the first six Strangers all gained their ultra powers from a cable car accident in San Francisco, when the Entity on the Moon sent a jumpstart effect to Earth in the form of a bolt of lightning out of the blue.
Lady Killer was adapted by the jumpstart so that she always hits what she aims at. She has developed enhanced levels of agility, reaction time, and perfect vision, along with intuitive and excellent hand-eye coordination. In addition, she possesses a psionic locator ability which tracks anything she has ever seen. This works in conjunction to her hand-eye coordination to guide her weapons or projectiles directly to their target. This sense extends to objects even after they leave her sight -- she can hit targets while blindfolded, while they are behind her or concealed from her somehow, and so forth. After seeing a temple from a plane and then falling into the jungle, she instantly gained her bearings and knew exactly what direction the building lay in. Her costume is adapted to be useful in battle. He belt buckle and earrings are detachable as throwing stars, and the chain she wears around her waist can be removed as a whip or lash. She also has a scarf and removable skirt which can be used as whips, a net, or restraining bonds.
Grenade has the ability to expel shrapnel blasts from his body. He does this by simultaneously producing two effects: secreting pseudo-metallic fragments while producing a burst of explosive energy. This simulates a grenade exploding uni-directionally as the explosion propels the fragments at high velocity in a straight line away from his body. The amount of area of his body he devotes to his power changes the intensity of the blast -- a burst from the palm of his hand creates less force and fewer fragments than a burst from his entire chest.
Atom Bob gained the power to change things, reconstructing matter and energy at a primal level limited only by his imagination. He could perform elemental transmogrification, such as turning a statue of lead into gold without altering its shape in any way. He could perform more varied transformations like turning a simple rock into a donut with sprinkles, metallic debris into rocket fuel, or his tote bag into a bushel of apples. This latter change required him to instinctively and subconsciously take one mass of molecules split among multiple objects, redistribute the mass into new and different constructions, and alter the molecular bonds to completely rearrange the elemental and structural properties of all masses involved. This was his first power manifestation. Bob could also rearrange clothing such as to summon costumes for he and his fellow Strangers at will, and alter physical features to shape-shift himself or others. He had an instinctive defensive application for his powers, which protected him once from Grenade's burst by automatically converting the shrapnel into rosebuds. Atom Bob could also reshape matter without altering it's inherent properties, such as touching a concrete walkway and causing animated hands to rise up out of it and act out his commands. He could translate languages by reforming sound waves in the air from one formation to another, render himself invisible by turning the reflected visible light off of his body into invisible radiance, and even create animated, quasi-sentient constructs of humans or other creatures that carry out his whims. As he went insane and became the villain known as Pilgrim, Bob used this last power to appear in the same place at the same time in both his alter egos. He also had the ability to manipulate magic after learning to transmogrify some magical energy for his own use.
Zipzap is a speedster, capable of running at superhuman speed, turning on a dime and reacting to his environment instantaneously. His perceptual abilities adjust for high speed movement so that he can continue processing audio and visual information at any speed. He can run straight up 90 angles or across bodies of water, and can create whirlwinds by running in tight circles. These whirlwinds are strong enough to lift his entire team off the ground and carry them along with him with little to no loss of forward momentum.
Electrocute, or Candy, was a NuWare designed android empowered by nanotechnology as a "boy toy", serving as both bodyguard and sex-bot for CEO J.D. Hunt. The jumpstart on the cable car did not give her "special" abilities as a ultra as it did with the humans, but instead made her sentient and capable of denying her previous programming directives. She possesses enhanced levels of strength, endurance, and reaction time, and her nanites could repair most minor to moderate forms of damage done to her. She can generate and release high-voltage blasts of electricity from her hands. In addition, she was designed with an empathic power to recognize what men want and then react accordingly to please them. Following her self-awareness, Candy can now use this ability to manipulate men for her own ends, adjusting her behavior and mannerisms to become extremely enticing and seductive, making men far more open to complying with her wishes.
Spectral produces different colored auras of flame around his body. Each aura is a different color on the visible light spectrum, and though they all look like regular fire, each actually generated various energies that each create a different super-power. Red flame gives him superhuman strength, but sends him into a berserker rage where he is violent and uncontrollable. Orange flame acts like normal fire, burning hot off of his skin. It can be projected as superheated blasts of flame from his hands or bursts of thermal updraft from his feet for limited flight. His major flight power though is Yellow flame, allowing him to manipulate air. The burning effect of his yellow energy gathers air molecules around him as a form of levitation and propulsion. At higher altitudes, he needs to flare up his power at greater intensity in order to gather enough air molecules to his body to accomplish his flight. Yellow flame blasts are actually bursts of heatless force, air gathered and accelerated as streams of compressed wind. He can also manipulate air in other ways, asphyxiating his opponents or snuffing out fires by drawing the oxygen away from them. Green flame can stimulate growth in living organisms. He can use it to regenerate tissue and heal wounds in himself or anyone he touches, or cause plantlife to grow at accelerated rates and mutate into larger-than-normal states. Blue flame is his water-based power, and flame blasts of this color actually create streams of water by manipulating hydrogen and oxygen molecules. Thus, this "flame" can actually be used to put out fires. Under the sea, this flame extracts air from water so that he can breathe underwater indefinitely. Blue flame is similar to Yellow flame in that environment, gathering and releasing compressed streams of water as propulsion or blasts carrying a strong impact. Indigo flame is designed for space travel, producing an aura that creates heat and atmosphere for him to survive in a vacuum, and providing propulsion. By concentrating, he can form indigo auras around other people in his immediate area, protecting them individually from the vacuum as well, as long as they remains in close proximity. He can also expand his flame to repressurize an area -- when a hole was blown through the side of a space station he was in, Spectral's flame was able to maintain the atmosphere of the room until it could be resealed. Violet flame is his last power, acting like a force field to protect him from various forms of attack directed against his person. He can also expand the violet flame into a dome surrounding multiple people in his immediate area. His own violet aura is maintained when projecting a force field, so he's still protected in case someone inside his field turns on him.
Yrial's people originally inhabited a tropical island before a mystical crystal known as the Starfoam appeared. Their island rose into the clouds, and the Starfoam granted them mystical potential and accelerated their evolution to some degree. Their skin became more resilient to the stronger levels of solar radiation in the upper atmosphere, and their eyes are covered with opaque lenses that also protect them from the radiation and from bright light. Like many of her people, Yrial commands black magical power, similar to modern voodoo, for various purposes. She can generate concussive bolts of energy, psychic force to "stun" opponents into unconsciousness, and disks of force which can repel physical or energy based attacks. She has certain mental powers, such as being able to probe memories or create blocks to erase memories as well. Yrial can produce elemental phenomena to different degrees, releasing a blast of air, manipulating water or earth, summoning fire and ice, etc. Yrial can also fly and at times summon portals betweens space and dimensions. Because of the nature of her powers, Yrial can increase any of her magicks by performing an animal sacrifice, shedding blood to empower herself.
Teknight is Theodoric, a 1500 year old dead king whose spirit is inhabiting a NuWare body armor. The Teknight has superhuman strength, running speed, and reaction time. The armored skin that is his form is considerably resistant to all forms of damage, is capable of absorbing heat energy into itself, and is infused with nanites that repair damage done to him. His hot blade is a sword of searing energy produced from the sword hilt built into his hand.
John Domingo, or Johnny Domino, is the Night Man. His Miata was struck by the cable car during the jumpstart effect, making him the only serious injury in the accident. A shard of metal penetrated his brain, causing his eyes to permanently dilate for excellent night vision and disrupting his sleep center so that he never needs rest -- his brain simply shuts down portions of itself in sequence to recuperate its energy. He received a minor ultra power from the jumpstart, letting him sense evil thoughts. Johnny's limited telepathic power gives him a subtle feeling for the general evil nature of others and makes him receptive to any malicious or hatefully selfish things others think near him. His power is limited when it comes to sociopaths or crazy people, as their moral compasses keep them from recognizing their own evil nature. He constantly updated his costume and arsenal of toys, wearing a padded costume, one regular infrared lens and one infrared & telephoto recording lens, and carrying smoke pellets, gas pellets, glue pellets, grappling rope, laser torch, lock picks, ultrasonic scrambler, combat knife, and handgun, among other tools. He also built taser charges into his gloves, in order to produce an electrical surge from his fists.
The Night Man was later empowered by Rhiannon's Celtic magick, gaining a number of new powers. His sensitivity had evolved to the point where he could see a black aura around evil people. He could now generate elemental lightning from his hands, with the artificial use of tasers, and could turn partially invisible with a unique silhouette effect that rendered most of his body transparent. His grappling rope now responded to his mental commands, wrapping around opponents or allowing him to climb straight up it in mid-air. A new skean dhu dagger was linked to his mind, enabling him to sense the knife whenever it was out of his sight, and once it was embedded in a surface or opponent, only he could remove it. These powers came at a cost, though, as he was now a cannibal forced to ingest the living essence of other people. Every few months he needed to brew a broth made of different human organs to maintain his powers and his own life.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Meggan is an elemental chameleon, her nature allowing her to affect her environment and in turn be affected by it. This is based on the fact that Meggan draws power and sustenance from any living bio-sphere – the stronger the natural energies of any given world, the more power Meggan can call upon. Lands where the inhabitants are in tune with the natural order of things and claim strong magical ties feed her energy, while overly industrialized and polluted areas are like a corrosive to her body. It seems unlikely that she would be capable of surviving in outer space.
Because of her power, Meggan is unnaturally susceptible to influence from outside sources, as it is an inherent aspect of her being to be affected by her surroundings. If left unchecked, she will adapt her body and mind to anything prominent in her area: she may accidentally adopt the appearance of a bat or dolphin by being near such a creature, assume the ethnic features of a certain type of person she is around (even Nightcrawler’s elfin appearance), or change to match the feelings or expectations of others. When surrounded by horny sailors on a ship, she responded by adapting her mannerisms and appearance into more of a living pin-up girl to fit their desires; when influenced by the ambient evil of Inferno, she quickly became evil as well, in both form and deed; even her own emotions affect her, as Meggan becomes more or less attractive based on her own self-image. After learning to control her powers, though, Meggan became less reactive and more assertive about her appearance. Now, she could consciously fight off outside influences on her mind or form: she could negate Jamie Braddock’s reality-warping effect on her body, or hold back the transmutation effect of Alchemy’s touch for a time. In addition, her adaptability makes her resistant to high or low temperature extremes, and capable of intuitively understanding other languages, whether they be human, fairie, or whatever.
Actively speaking, Meggan is capable of perceiving what is known as the Alshra, a spirit plane which makes the living energy of a world and its inhabitants visible. By drawing upon this energy, Meggan can increase her physical strength and durability, reaching at least Class 80-90 levels. At first she would physically expand in size and muscle mass while doing so, but later learned to augment herself without changing her appearance. Meggan can also rechannel the energy she draws upon to fly and fire beams of psionic force from her hands. She can consciously access the empathic and morphing aspects of her power as well. Meggan is able to alter her clothing and physical features at will, mimicking the appearance of another person or creating new "looks" all her own. She can expand herself, growing fatter and wider upon command. Meggan can also assume animalistic traits at will, even if a given animal isn’t around: she has adapted humanoid wolf, lion, bat, dolphin, mole, and rabbit traits in the past. As an elemental, she is now able to sense the flow of electricity around her and different electromagnetic phenomena by the way they alter natural energy patterns around her. She can ignite flames at will and manipulate fire created by her own hands or other sources, even dousing it if she chooses. Meggan is able to summon high velocity winds, disrupt force fields of an electromagnetic nature, manipulate lava so that it flows as she wishes, warping seismic fields to open up massive sinkholes that swallow buildings, etc.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Shadowcat can become intangible at will, but not through altering the amount of mass in her body, like Vision and other density shifters do. Instead, Kitty produces a form of molecular repulsion that causes her molecules to move away from and around other molecules, avoiding actual physical contact with other forms of matter. This allows her to move through solid objects and become untouchable for any kind of physical attack. Shadowcat is still capable of breathing normally in her phased state, but has to hold her breath when moving through a solid mass. She doesn't simply fall through the ground beneath her because Kitty is actually supporting herself on the air molecules underneath her feet. By making use of this fact, Shadowcat can walk on air, running across open space or ascending into the sky as if she were climbing a staircase. Her phasing power can be conducted through anything she touches, allowing her to do simple things like carry a bag or weapon while intangible or phase an entire group of people as a human chain holding hands. Finally, Kitty's power has a disruptive effect on the operation of electronic devices, interrupting the proper flow of energy. This causes her to scramble anything of an electronic nature, including computers, by phasing through them. At times, Shadowcat has used a wide variety of weapons, especially after receiving a lifetime's worth of martial arts knowledge imprinted on her brain by Ogun. She has carried throwing stars, a katana, even a set of nunchaku which detached from the shoulder-pieces on her costume. During the Revolution, Kitty carried two fragmented pieces of Wolverine's claws, from when Cyber broke them off during Logan's period without adamantium. One was fashioned to a hilt as a handheld dagger, and the other was strapped on the backside of her glove.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
The Clan Destine draw their power from their unique heritage: all are the children of Adam Destine and his lover, a genie named Elalyth who has enchanted her husband and all their subsequent children over the centuries with near immortality and additional personal powers. A Destine will typically manifest their special gifts towards the end of puberty. While all Clan Destine are apparently extremely long-lived, some appear much older than others physically.
Adam Destine has not aged in over 800 years. Granted immortality and invulnerability by his djinn bride, Adam cannot be injured or affected by any force known to science or magic. He is completely impervious to any form of physical injury, including impacts, blades, radiation, heat, cold, and so on. He can survive indefinitely in the vacuum of space and is immune to all disease, toxins, pathogen, viral agents, etc. The only way he can experience pain is through an empathic link he shares with his children, causing him to suffer when they die or are brought to the brink of death. He also has a unique temporal perspective that gives him the capacity for clairvoyant visions, although he’s never quite sure about the immediacy of the images he receives.
Walter Destine, nicknamed "Wallop" by his little siblings, had the power to mentally increase his strength at will. Initially, Walter stayed human-looking when he boosted his strength, with the only physical change being a swelling of his muscles to body-builder proportions. He went decades, perhaps centuries, believing he could only increase his strength level to roughly a few 1000 lbs, possibly 5 tons max. During World War II, however, he was confronted by a giant Nazi robot. He was forced to push himself further than ever before, and mutated into a Hulking giant with blue skin, striking red hair, pointed ears, and a highly-pronounced fore brow. These transformations pushed his strength at least into the Class 50-70 range, but could not be reversed as quickly as they occurred -- he would retain certain aspects of his transformation for up to a few days after triggering it, such as his pointed ears or oversized and blue-tinted feet. Walter also became afflicted with berserker rages, and his anger could trigger his transformation and push him into a wild, uncontrollable state. His transformations remained variable, and the size and strength of his "Wallop" form changed from one transformation to another. At his max, Walter stood at least 12-14 feet tall, possessed Class 100+ strength, near invulnerability, had pronounced upper canine teeth and lower ones which sprouted up like tusks, and his hair was replaced with a flickering mane of flame. In this state he was little more than a walking expression of violence, virtually incapable of rational thought. After being given an opportunity to vent massive amounts of frustration in a fight once, however, Walter stopped fighting his powers and burnt off his aggression, the result being that he could now transform back and forth between his normal and augmented forms at will, and without losing control of himself in the process.
Jazmine Destine is also known as Kay Cera, "Cuckoo" to her family, and was supposed to be codenamed Kimera had the series progressed. She is a telepath/telekinetic combo of considerable power. She can project her mind across continents, viewing distant locations or people, and communicating with them using her astral form. She can cast illusions to fool people's senses, change around their memories, or force them to act under her will. As a telekinetic, she can levitate herself or move and manipulate other objects with the power of her mind. For some reason, Cuckoo no longer possesses her original body, but sustains her existence by hopping from one host to another over the centuries. Why this is the case isn't clear -- as the firstborn of all Adam's children, it's possible she wasn't born immortal for some reason, or more likely her original body was mortally wounded at some point, forcing her to begin leapfrogging through time in the bodies of others. Cuckoo can transfer her essence into the body of anyone within close proximity, man or woman: once she even possessed a cat for a short time until she could find a suitable host. As a matter of principle, Kay would rather possess the mortally wounded or recently deceased than depose a healthy innocent from their own body. In practice, however, Kay's principles mold to fit her situation, and she sometimes possesses those who might otherwise be saved if it comes down to her life versus theirs. She has often relied on the healing power of her brother Albert to rejuvenate or reanimate a new host for her when she enters it. While her psychic powers do transfer into each new body, Cuckoo's immortality does not, and so each host continues to age normally after she possesses it.
Dominic Destine, or Dominic Fate, is one of the oddest-looking of the Clan: his hair is bright red and spiky, his eyes are iridescent yellow like Nightcrawler, and his skin is pale white with a hint of green to it. His "super power" comes from his senses, which are increased to a magnitude similar to Orphan of X-Statix. The overall range of all his senses has increased, giving him telescopic vision, the ability to hear whispers from many rooms away, scent-tracking abilities, and a high sensitivity to changes in wind and temperature in his environment. His senses also expand into areas beyond human detection: he can hear sub- and super-sonic ranges of noise, scent traces of ozone that mark teleportation or other energy signatures, and visually recognize Danger Room holo-constructs as not being real. He can "aim" his senses to a certain degree, focusing them on a given target to feel it out on multiple levels of perception at once. Dom can also identify weak points in people or structures with his senses, and has developed a fighting style around exploiting these weaknesses with "nerve pinches" and precision strikes. His sensitivity can overpower him at times, however -- sudden lights or sounds can leave him incredibly disoriented, and he once passed out of intoxication after eating a piece of chocolate. His codename would've been either Hex or Vex.
Samantha Destine, or Sam Hasard, is the youngest of the Clan Destine except for the twins, being roughly 50 years old. She has the ability to summon and shape metallic ectoplasm at will. Thus, she can materialize swords or shields in her hands or, when entering battle, shaping a smooth and skintight armor over herself. As an artist, Sam subconsciously shapes her armor with ornate and stylized markings and headdresses. The armor serves as a protective garb, and she also will grow blades of various lengths and styles out of its "skin". Samantha's ectoplasmic armor is an extension of herself, and so she can feel things through it's outer surface, sometimes even more sensitively than she normally could. When a hard-light construct of Gambit in the Danger Room touched her armor, for instance, Sam was immediately aware that it wasn't flesh-and-blood she was talking to.
The Crimson Crusader and Imp, otherwise known as Rory and Pandora Destine, are the youngest of the clan, roughly 13 years old. As twins, their powers feed off each other's close proximity, and it is this factor which caused them to first manifest their powers years before Destines normally do. Their energies are bound together so that if one twin overexerts the use of their power, the other is weakened as well. If Rory and Pandora are separated by a certain distance, their powers cease functioning altogether. Presumably their powers will become more independent of each other as they come of age.
As Crimson Crusader, Rory is able to manipulate gravitational forces. He can make himself weightless in order to fly, and can cause other people or objects to become weightless as well, either from a distance or by carrying them physically. He once transported himself and Imp inside a old car's shell across the Atlantic Ocean from England to New York in a matter of hours, though the exertion caused him to pass out once they made it. Crusader can also create gravity wells as different types of force fields -- he can cause projectile matter to curve harmlessly around him, or make it lose its forward momentum just before striking him by weighing it down with intense G-forces. He can also harmlessly contain a grenade in his hands by creating gravitational suction at the center of the object, so that the shrapnel flies inwards.
Imp is capable of shaping and directing light. She can radiate her power as a blinding glare, either emanating in all directions or focused towards a single opponent. She can create soft or hard cushions of semi-solid light which can block attacks or catch falling objects, and can "laze" her power to create concussive force beams or cut through solid steel. She and Rory can combine their powers in order to bend light and make themselves invisible.
Grace Destine, alias Gracie Gamble, has a range of telepathic and telekinetic abilities, such as levitation, altering memories, psychic communication, moving tons of solid matter with a gesture, and so on. She also has a strong working knowledge of magic and inter-dimensional space.
Newton is the spitting image of Woody Allen, a genius inventor possessing a superhuman level of intelligence. He is well-versed in both physical and meta-physical sciences and, at a glance, can quickly adapt himself to understanding new phenomena or scientific procedures he witnesses. Newton was even capable of jerry-rigging a VW minivan into a vehicle capable of space flight. He has access to inter-dimensional transportation, presumably his own invention, which is a running gag due to the fact that arrivals cast a explosion of light and sound, while his departures are virtually unnoticeable. He has worn a personal combat armor in the past, which he is neurologically linked to thanks to a feedback suit he wears while inside the armor. It grants him enhanced strength and durability, has a wide range of scanning devices built into it, and is capable of launching mini-missiles or firing concussive blasts. Newton spends most of his time in another dimension, acting as the "Warlord of Etheria", an obvious poke at He-Man. Newton employs a biological construct body of his own design while on Etheria, which he can project his own consciousness into in order to inhabit. This body has an impressive physique, and presumably superhuman levels of strength and durability as well.
Will, alias William Chance, lived in Australia playing the action hero "Cap'n Oz" in a series of movies. There was some suggestion that Will was adopted, and not genetically a Destine. Still, he possessed some level of superhuman strength, agility, reflexes, and durability, and hadn't aged since the 1960's, so that might just be hearsay.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Wolfsbane is a lycanthrope, able to transform from a human into a wolf by assuming a series of transitional stages between the two animals. Originally, Rahne changed into a wolf quite frequently for battle and also relied on only a single transitional form, similar to a typical werewolf, where she had heightened strength, speed, agility, endurance, reflexes, enhanced senses that were slightly less acute than her full-wolf form, and razor sharp claws. Her healing abilities were also superhuman in her transitional state. After being converted into a will-less Mutate by the Genegineer, Wolfsbane managed to exert her own free will only by staying out of her full-human form. She demonstrated the ability to become an 8' ft tall super-werewolf for all of two issues, but this change to her powers was quickly forgotten. Instead, Rahne began using her power to assume multiple wolfen states that blended different levels of human and lupine characteristics. She could look completely normal except for a thin layer of brown fur, to assuming forms with an extended canine snout, the elongated feet of dogs, different types of tails, various shapes and sharpness of claws, etc. Her strength, agility, and other physical abilities all fluctuate depending on the form she's in. Through the aid of Haven, Wolfsbane was cured of the Mutate process and able to return to her human appearance without becoming a mindless automaton. She lost her powers for a period of time thanks to the Neutralizer, but they have since been restored by the New Mutant, Elixir.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Danielle Moonstar developed two mutant powers during puberty: animal telepathy and the ability to cast images drawn from the subconscious minds of others. Her animal telepathy allows her to communicate with higher forms of animal life, exchanging thoughts and empathic impressions with each other, as well as asking creatures for their assistance. She can use this power to maintain a psychic link with Wolfsbane while Rahne is in her wolf form.
Psyche's image-casting power was based around the idea of summoning spectral energy into our environment and allowing the subconscious minds of other people to guide the form it takes. Initially, Dani used her power solely to summon up someone's greatest fear and project it for them to experience, creating illusions based on a person, animal, or situation they fear most of all. These fear images lock on to the mind of her victim and trigger anxiety and panic reactions, compelling them to accept the image as if it were real. Because the image is keyed only to a specific victim, Danielle and anyone else in the area can easily see the fear-image is an illusion, even if someone observing shares the same fear, like arachnophobia. As time passed, Mirage learned to create a wider variety of images by tapping into different areas of the mind. She began creating images of someone's greatest desire, the perfect guy, the things they think of in terms of "home" or "friends", etc. By causing people to see what they expected to see in a situation, Mirage could even disguise her appearance and that of her friends behind her illusions.
After being chosen by the winged horse Brightwind, Dani became one of the Asgardian Valkyries. This gave her a presence of death, detectable and feared by Asgardian races and others sensitive to such things. Her powers as a Valkyrie mixed with her mutant power, allowing Mirage to forecast someone imminent death by perceiving their own personal, private image of death looming over them (an angel, a priest reading last writes, etc). If she chose to act, Danielle could sometimes prevent these deaths from coming to pass, or even fight Death itself to preserve the life of someone it had come to take.
When she was blasted by one of the High Evolutionary's machines, Mirage's powers evolved into a new state. The spectral energy she generated now acted as a tangible psychoplasm, forming into a physically solid shape by the subconscious mind directing it. Thus, she could now literally create someone's greatest fear or wish out of thin air. Her powers seemed to be modified so that she would only create fears or wishes anymore, and then only ones that were objects or constructs, instead of situational illusions. Her power constantly sustained one and only one construct at a time -- the only way she could get rid of a psychoplasm construct was to create another one, causing the previous one to dematerialize just as the new one appeared. In order to work with this change in her powers, she trained her mind so that she could focus on really, really wanting something at will. Normally, she tended to maintain an arrow's head necklace when she wanted to hide her power, and would reform the necklace into a full-sized spirit lance for combat.
After spending an extended period of time in Asgard, Moonstar returned with her power having taken on a new aspect, apparently having adapted itself to her time with the Valkyries. Moonstar now generated psychoplasmic energy as a charge from her hands, which she could then reform at will into different shapes, like an energy dagger or, most commonly, a bow and arrows formed out of mental energy. Striking a target with these psi-plasma arrows would cause them to be overwhelmed by their own greatest fears, triggering a neurosynaptic shock that temporarily incapacitated her opponents. Unlike previous versions of her power, only Dani and her victim were aware of the specific fear being produced.
When the Psi-War unleashed a wave of energy that diminished every psychic on the planet, Dani received a power boost from an unexpected source. After coming into contact with the reality-warping girl named Arcadia DeVille, Moonstar accidentally became linked to the quantum energy Arcadia commanded, giving her new powers that developed over time. Dani's power signature now caused her skin to glow with a blue light, with flickering stars visible on her flesh. She developed sensory powers allowing her to detect distortions in the elements or the planet's electromagnetic field. She could expel a rush of concussive energy that would blast through most barriers. Danielle could also affect matter on a submolecular level, which she did to disintegrate or liquefy solid objects, and heal the wounds of other people. Ultimately, Arcadia evolved into the Queen of the Star Swords, was defeated, and Dani lost her quantum powers.
Danielle's powers regressed after this, in part due to the death of Brightwind, who was her link to the Valkyries. Without him, she had been slowly losing the psi-arrow and death sight aspects of her powers, a weakness accelerated by the Psi-War. Reverting back to her fear and wish image-casting, Mirage did maintain her death sight powers for a time. She was even capable of incorporating it into her image power, allowing her to recreate someone's death by tapping into residual death energy at the murder scene and using her powers to replay the events leading up to the death itself. As of her return to the Institute and teaching assistant job, though, Mirage seems to be totally limited to her fear- and wish-images, and animal telepathy.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Jean Grey manifested telepathic abilities at an early age, and they almost destroyed her until Charles Xavier helped her control her mutation. Xavier put psychic dampeners on Jean that blocked her from accessing her telepathy, encouraging her instead to develop the telekinetic powers she had also manifested. Joining the X-Men as Marvel Girl, Jean's telekinesis was rather limited, preventing her from affecting objects weighing more than herself. She could levitate small objects and move them around from a distance, and was skilled enough to manipulate things she couldn't see, like the mechanisms inside a lock or anything if she was blindfolded. Though she couldn't fly yet, Jean could "boost" to launch herself over a wall and slow her descent when coming down. She could not create force fields yet, and had to consciously "push" projectiles or other attacks away from her. Her powers continued to grow, though, especially after Xavier unlocked her telepathic abilities before going underground for a time. Marvel Girl developed her abilities to hover and move around through the air at low speeds, and project telekinetic blasts and shields.
After suffering serious radiation poisoning, Jean was placed in a recuperative suspended animation by the Phoenix Force, until she was woken up years later by Reed Richards. Her awakening was ahead of schedule, and damaged her so that she could not access her telepathic powers. Her telekinesis, however, had developed much stronger in her recuperation period. Jean could now levitate tons of matter at a time, and could now full-out fly while carrying additional people with her. As time passed, glimpses of telepathy resurfaced for her until she was psychically attacked by Psynapse, reawakening her telepathy completely. Dropping the codename Marvel Girl, Jean Grey later would take the name Phoenix. During the time that the Phoenix Force had copied her mind and body, it had formed a connection with Jean and she began manifesting the power of the Phoenix herself, creating the fiery Phoenix raptor as a signature of her TP/TK abilities. Her evolution as the Phoenix was stunted by the disruptive effects of the Psi-War, and later she lost her telekinetic powers in a still-undetailed conflict against the Shadow King with Psylocke. Betsy gained Jean's TK, while Phoenix absorbed Psylocke's TP into herself, greatly magnifying her own telepathic abilities. Her telekinesis eventually returned on its own, and the Phoenix Force began manifesting itself directly through her physical form. Jean's powers developed to cosmic proportions, allowing her to rearrange matter at a molecular level, create intense heat and thermal energy by stimulating molecular activity, manipulate the voluntary and involuntary responses in the human body, and manifesting a "telekinetic sensitivity" that let her feel the texture of objects she had a telekinetic hold on, feel when other objects came into contact with them, and probe them at a molecular level to identify alien materials or feel when two things she "held" were similarly composed.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Dane Whitman began his career as the Black Knight by appropriating his criminal uncle's paraphernalia. He rode Aragorn, a horse genetically engineered using eagle DNA to have wings and the ability to fly. His paralyzer pistol released a burst of anesthetic gas that temporarily put victims into a coma. Finally, the multi-purpose power lance contained .45 caliber machine guns, flamethrowers, electrical bolts, concussion blasters, lassos and grappling lines, and white-hot metal rings that encircled an opponent and burned into them. Later, though, he proved himself worthy of wielding the Ebony Blade of the original Black Knight, his ancestor Sir Percy of Scandia. The blade was forged by Merlin himself out of a meteorite, and was physically and mystically honed to be virtually indestructible and capable of cutting through any substance. The sword could deflect blasts of pure energy, or by angling the blade properly he could use it to absorbing energy blasts and rechannel them by swinging the sword. It could also disrupt magic, cutting through mystical barriers and spells. However, the blade also came with a blood curse, compelling anyone who used the blade to kill someone to continue killing more and more.
After spending a great deal of time in the Crusades, Dane returned to the present with a mystical steed named Valinor. The blood curse had risen to great power during his time then, however, and Dane went to Doctor Strange for help. Strange had to turn Valinor into a normal horse (the impure atmosphere of Earth was poison to a steed raised in Avalon), and he dispersed the blood curse's active effects on Dane's mind. Without a horse, Black Knight began using an atomic steed captured by the Avengers, a high-tech flying saddle used by the Knights of Wundagore. As time passed, though, Dane somehow began to be transformed into a living extension of the blade itself -- his body become indestructible, and sharpened so that a single pass of his hand could cut through solid metal. He also began to stiffen, though, and wore an exoskeleton to enhance his body's limited range of movement back to normal levels. Soon even the exoskeleton became ineffective, and Black Knight became a petrified statue.
Dane's friend Victoria Bentley attempted to use her meager sorcery skills to reanimate him, using the armor of Sir Percy as a catalyst for her spell. The process went slightly wrong, and Victoria ended up resurrecting Percy himself in Dane's body. The original Black Knight would animate Whitman's body so long as he was wearing his full suit of armor and helmet. Removing the helmet would put Percy into dormancy and allow Whitman to control his own body for a few brief moments until the petrification settled back in, immobilizing him once more. Sir Percy was skilled in using both the Ebony Blade and its magic, and used the power of the sword to return Valinor back to his winged state without any consequences. Eventually, Sir Percy transferred his consciousness directly into the blade itself, an act which enabled Dane and Valinor to continue operating independently, without any inhibiting spells holding them back.
The Black Knight decided at this point that the Ebony Blade was too dangerous to continue using, so he constructed an energy blade to use in its stead calling the Sunsword. Quite similar to a light saber, this sword hilt projected a tight beam of electromagnetic energy approximately two feet long. By modulating the Sunsword's field intensity, Dane could cause it to strike like a razor sharp blade or a cylindrical rod, blunted around all sides. The Sunsword could also conduct a disruptive neurosynaptic charge, scrambling his opponent's nervous system on contact. This could simply create intense pain, cause paralyzing numbness, or even kill a normal person when at maximum intensity. The Black Knight could also jerry-rig the blade's energy flow, reversing it so that the energy fed back and covered his hand in a sheath, increasing the force of his punches and also conducting the neuro-shock this way.
After spending time in the Ultraverse and returning to the Marvelverse just after Onslaught, Dane was chosen by the Lady of the Lake to be the Pendragon of our age. This gave him certain mystical senses, allowing him to detect the presence of sorcery and see through "glamour" illusions cast by magic wielders. He wore an amulet around his neck shaped like a sword crossing a shield. By saying the name of "Avalon!" out loud, the Knight would instantly be clad in a new lightweight but nigh impenetrable suit of armor, wielding the Shield of Night and the Sword of Light. The shield could absorb energy directed at its face, channel the power through his suit, and project it back out through the sword. Saying "Avalon!" again would displace the armor and weapons back to whence they came, a trick which could allow him to instantly reclaim a lost helmet or sword by displacing them, then summoning them again so that they reappeared back in his possession. He also had a new horse, Strider -- a magical steed capable of flying faster than the speed of sound and even sustaining itself underwater.
Recently, however, the Black Knight has abandoned the weapons and paraphernalia he received from Avalon, and once again began employing the Ebony Blade. His heart was transformed to stone by a "lady" he knew (possibly Sersi or the Lady of the Lake) to harden him against the blade's corrupting influence. For a time, the Ebony Blade was replaced with another enchanted sword, one imbued with the fang of a vampire. This copy was nearly sentient, attempting to corrupt Dane with its own bloodthirst and manipulating him into believing he still wielded the Ebony Blade. Eventually, he reclaimed his true sword. He also employed a photonic shield generator in his glove, producing a energy field from the back of his hand to absorb attacks in battle.
Edited by Monolith - 14-Mar-2010 at 1:07am
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Hawkeye is a skilled archer and marksman. He has trained for years to be perfectly accurate with a bow, and with any object he can get his hands on and throw, letting him make elaborate bank shots with incredible precision. He has used a number of bows over the years, including a long bow, regular bow, wrist-mounted crossbow, and a high-tech bow capable of firing arrows twice as fast as any normal bow. Some of the arrows in his quiver have their specialty tips attached, and he carries a selection of additional arrowheads stored in small pockets on his bandoliers and costume frame. Briefly, Hawkeye wore a suit of "battle armor" which was a flexible and bulletproof costume equipped with infrared and telescopic sights in the visor. He has used a wide variety of arrows over the years, including but not limited to explosive, flare, incendiary, electro, tear gas, smoke, putty, suction tip, sonic, rocket, boomerang, electromagnetic pulse, tracer, tangle net, acid, freeze, buzz saw, bola, fireworks display, and of course regular pointed tip arrows.
Clint also operated as Goliath II for two periods in his career, using a special growth serum designed by Yellowjacket with a supply of Pym Particles inside it. Drinking the serum gave Barton the power to alter his size and mass at will by accessing an extra-dimensional source of raw mass. He increased his stature proportionately, augmenting his physical strength and increasing his durability to some degree as well in the process. The growth serum was effective for an unknown period, but a single dosage seemed capable of giving Clint the ability to change size at will for days, possibly weeks at a time. He employed a shrinking serum as well during his second stint as Goliath II, allowing him to decrease his regular size in addition to growing.
As Ronin, adopted a wider range of weapons and martial arts techniques. He employed a katana and other blades, wielded using the skills he learned from the Swordsman. He also used nunchaku, able to extend into a quarterstaff similar to his ex-wife Mockingbird's battle staves. Ronin would occasionally use sai daggers, throwing stars, and his old bow and arrows as well.
Edited by Monolith - 14-Mar-2010 at 1:10am
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Mantis was raised from infancy by the Priests of Pama to be a candidate for the Celestial Madonna, the prophesized mother of the Celestial Messiah who will bring peace to the universe. As she grew up, Mantis honed her body to the pinnacle of human perfection, giving her peak human strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reflexes. She also developed her "empathy", a catch-all name for a series of psychic abilities she demonstrated. She had an empathic connection to plant-life, allowing her to communicate with plants with some degree, learning from them and receiving sensory information. She had occasional flashes of precognition, guiding her to perform certain actions in order to achieve the best results in a situation. Mantis was able to instinctively sense weak spots in her targets, allowing her to break or shatter extremely durable materials with her bare hands, and take down even superhumanly powerful opponents like Thor. After being confirmed as the Celestial Madonna, Mantis's physical form evolved into pure spiritual energy. She became one with the plant life of the universe, able to psychically sense any sight or sound happening in the vicinity of vegetable matter across entire galaxies. Possessing no true body of her own, Mantis was capable of causing vegetation to rise up and form into a duplicate of her human self, placing her consciousness into this avatar. The only visible difference was that she had green skin instead of regular flesh-toned, and she could mentally change that anyway. By psychically abandoning an avatar, Mantis could physically reappear on another plant entirely by creating another avatar there for her mind to possess. These avatar bodies had her physical skill, and were capable of surviving in the vacuum of space. After being destroyed in her avatar form, Mantis's consciousness was splintered into five separate pieces, inhabiting five different avatar bodies on Earth. A side effect of her splintering was that her presence faded from people's memories after she left the area; no one who encountered one of her splinter bodies would remember it more than a week or so afterwards. Also, her empathy was scrambled, preventing her from communicating with plants anymore. Eventually, Thanos came to town and killed four of her, but this caused her consciousness to reintegrate back into the last body, and Mantis was whole once more. Besides her physical abilities and restored empathy, Mantis now had an extended lifespan, the ability to fly, and the power to release celestial energy as blasts from her hands. She seems to have recently lost these powers, however, and exchanged them for new ones. Mantis is now capable of telepathic feats such as communicating with other people's minds, cloaking herself from sensory detection, and shielding herself and other people from psychic assault. Her precognitive powers have become more defined, giving her constant and considerable insight into upcoming future events. She has also demonstrated minor telekinetic and pyrokinetic powers.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
Sugarman is a mutant with several highly abnormal mutations. He is larger and stronger than an average human, and instead of a head his enormous face grows directly out of his front chest. He also has four arms and a prehensile tongue that extends to great length and has unusual properties -- it is razor sharp and strong enough to penetrate reinforced cybernetic skin, and can somehow damage Vincente, a mutant existing in a gaseous state. Sugarman also seems to have a superhuman sense of smell, and possibly hearing as well. Finally, he has an unclassified healing power, the mechanics of which are hazy at best. Colossus once "killed" Sugarman, beating him until he was nothing more than a meaty pulp. However, a tiny Sugarman (no more than a foot tall) climbed out of the corpse, and later grew back to his normal size. Explanation: Not forthcoming.
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
The symbiote history naturally begins with Spider-Man bringing the alien costume to Earth following the Secret Wars. After he abandoned the alien, it bonded with Eddie Brock to create Venom. Symbiotes reproduce asexually, usually once a generation, and Venom's symbiote seed was left behind on Ryker's Island when he escaped once, bonding with Cletus Kasady to form Carnage. This reproduction intrigued the Life Foundation, a group catering to extremely rich survivalists, and they captured Venom to extract five symbiote seeds from his "Other" to create their own private superhumans. Five LF volunteers were bonded to the new symbiotes -- Donna, Carl, Leslie, Trevor, and Ramon. Donna (Scream, the yellow female symbiote) was a wack-job and killed her four friends. Their symbiotes survived, but were accidentally merged into a single symbiote form and bonded with a Guardsman named Scott Washington to become Hybrid. Another symbiote was spawned from Venom, not a seed but a clone, and ran wild during the Venom ongoing Tsunami series, mostly bonding with Patricia Robertson before being absorbed back into Venom. Finally, Carnage has produced his own symbiote seed, the first of which has bonded to Patrick Mulligan as Toxin, and the second with Tana Nieves as Scorn.
Eddie Brock, Venom, was symbiotically bonded to the alien costume Spider-Man brought back from the Secret Wars. Because of its time bonded with Peter Parker, the symbiote is capable of mimicking many of his abilities. While wearing the costume, Venom possessed Spider-Man's superhuman strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reflexes, added to amplify his own existing physical abilities. This means Eddie Brock's Olympic-level strength was added to Spider-Man's Class 10 strength, allowing him to lift roughly 20,700 lbs as opposed to Parker's roughly 20,000 lbs. When the symbiote was extended over his hands and feet, it allowed him to stick to objects and climb walls just as Spider-Man does. It protected him from physical injury as well, absorbing kinetic impact to insulate him from harm. At times it even proved capable of stopping bullets before they penetrated to hit Brock's own body. Long-term symbiosis also increased Brock's natural strength and healing abilities, even when the symbiote was not directly working for him. The symbiote was highly vulnerable to flame and certain sonic frequencies, though.
The symbiote itself is capable of altering its appearance, most often to duplicate the look of normal clothing. Though its default state is a one-pieced bodysuit, the symbiote can reform itself in multiple articles of clothing at once: shirt, pants, socks, shoes, trench coat, etc. It can also create other effects, such as rendering him invisible by blending in to the environment, opaquing his eye-slits to avoid being blinded, faking his death with a layer of false skin that hides his pulse, synthetic masks which can disguise his appearance as someone else, and of course the trademark fangs and prehensile tongue. Venom can extend his costume to create organic tendrils, prehensile and responding to his thoughts. These tendrils possess his full strength, allowing him to lift heavy objects with them, snap someone's neck, or crush their skull by wrapping a series of filaments around their head and squeezing. The costume's material is self-regenerating but finite, meaning he can only extend a tentacle out a few feet before his costume begins to lose its integrity, like unraveling a shirt by pulling on a single thread. Venom can also produce organic webbing, duplicating Spider-Man's web-shooting in much the same way as he creates his tendrils.
Brock was in constant psychic contact with his symbiote, apparently governed by an empathic bond which transmitted impressions more than actual words. The costume was capable of relaying visual and tactile information directly to Eddie, so Venom could still "see" his surroundings even if Spider-Man blinded his human eyes with webbing, literally had "eyes" in the back of his head, and the costume senses everything that comes into contact with it, meaning Spidey couldn't secretly plant a spider-tracer on them. The symbiote was also capable of neutralizing Parker's spider-sense, allowing them to attack Spider-Man without him being warned of the danger. This effect only applied to Venom himself: Spider-Man would still sense a car that Venom throws at him, for instance.
Brock eventually separated permanently from his symbiote after contracting cancer. The symbiote passed to Angelo Fortunado for a time, and later Mac Gargan, the Scorpion, for a number of years.
After being extracted from Gargan, the Venom symbiote was weaponized by the US military to outfit a super-soldier, Agent: Venom. Eugene "Flash" Thompson is the current host for the symbiote. When Thompson merges with the costume, it recreates his missing lower legs using its adaptive bio-mass. The suit provides him with all of Spider-Man and Venom's standard abilities. In addition, the military have creatively modified the suit to act as living storage for various weapons hidden underneath its bio-mass, including small explosives, flares, and drugs like knockout or truth serums which can be administered by the symbiote by morphing a syringe for delivery. It can also store and cycle between different visors, such as infrared or night vision lenses.
At first, Agent Venom operated under strictly controlled parameters. The symbiote was chemically sedated for the duration of Thompson's missions. Mission clocks were not to exceed 48 hours to avoid the risk of the symbiote physically bonding with him or empathically influencing him. A "sonic scrubbing" was applied after each mission to forcibly remove every molecule of the symbiote from Flash's body, to prevent propogation. Furthermore, he was licensed for a maximum of 20 missions and outfitted with an explosive kill switch should he get out of line. Rage and violent emotions stimulated the symbiote, causing Flash to run the risk of losing control and physically changing from the costumed military "Agent Venom" to full-on fanged and slobbering "Classic Venom". Presently, Thompson is under the direct supervision of Captain America and the Secret Avengers. If absolutely necessary, he can dial an emergency line to the orbital Lighthouse the team operates from, and a supply of Pym Particles will reduce the symbiote to subatomic size and transmit it over the phone line to his location. Hanks Pym and McCoy have created an upgraded neuro-inhibitor sedative to prevent the symbiote's consciousness from awakening and influencing Thompson while they're bonded. Unfortunately, no one knows they have already bonded...
Meanwhile, Eddie Brock was transformed into Anti-Venom. The villain-philanthropist known as Martin Li had been (perhaps unknowingly) exploiting a curative power down at his FEAST Centers for the homeless, miraculously curing the sick or injured of physical ailments or disease. His touch not only cleansing Brock of terminal cancer but also interacted with the residual symbiote cells in his system. The symbiote matter was purged from Eddie's body and transformed into a negatively-colored recreation of the symbiote itself, creating "Anti-Venom" -- a living costume made of human/alien hybrid antibodies. This anti-symbiote now gives Brock all of his former abilities: it can shift between regular clothes or a costumed appearance, extend massive fists, claws, or animated tentacles, spin web-lines, boosts his physical powers, etc. The anti-symbiote is even immune to Spider-Man's danger sense. In addition, Anti-Venom is unaffected by flame or sonics, and seems to have no "Other" whispering in his head anymore. He also has curative powers unique to his genesis at Martin Li's touch. He can break down and disperse the original symbiote, weakening it and causing it to separate from its current host. Brock can also "cleanse" the radiation in Spider-Man's radioactive spider-blood, effectively rendering Peter Parker normal and "curing" him. Spider-Man broke free before the effect was permanent, but will now lose his abilities whenever in close proximity to Anti-Venom. Brock can mentally sense the original symbiote, and detect other factors in need of curing, like the radioactive spider-blood, merely by focusing his attention on someone. The full extent of his curative powers are unclear.
By the year 2099, when it encountered Miguel O'Hara's psychotic half-brother Kron Stone, the Venom symbiote had mutated considerably. Upon bonding with Kron, the creature went beyond symbiosis to create a bio-synthesis with him -- Kron was not merely covered with the alien, but transformed by it. It still granted the proportionate strength of the spider stolen from the original host, including Class 10 strength and superhuman speed, agility, endurance, and reflexes. Naturally, it also still had the tongue. Kron also gained morphing powers that enabled him to distend and reform his body. He could reduce himself to a virtually liquid state, even flowing through water pipes and entering a building through a faucet. After the impact of falling from nearly 100 floors, Venom was flattened out like a pancake, but quickly returned to normal human dimensions without any lasting injury. He could take a hail of gunfire straight through his chest without being seriously harmed, and Spider-Man also once cut off his lower arm, and it regenerated completely after several minutes. He could stretch the length of his arms, shape claws from the ends of his fingers, sprout spikes and thorns from various points on his skin, or morph his entire hands into spiked mace balls, tentacles, etc. Besides offensive uses, he could also use these blades he manifested to dig into walls and ceilings, climbing up vertical or inverted surfaces. Beyond that, Venom could also produce a molecular acid through the symbiote. This substance was strong enough to coat a man and reduce him to nothing but ooze in less than a minute. The acid dripped off of his tongue and also was exuded through his pores, making anything more than momentary contact with Venom painful to the touch.
Cletus Kasady, Carnage, employs a symbiote spawned from Venom's and mutated by gestation in an alien environment: ours. Carnage's original symbiote was actually destroyed by a sonic barrage, but it left his metabolism permanently mutated. A mutagenic factor in his blood enabled Kasady to manifest a non-sentient replica of his symbiote out of his blood whenever it was exposed to the open air. This modified costume was far more resilient to sonics than the original that was destroyed, and even if flames or microwaves destroy it, the "symbiote" could be summoned again moments later by Kasady shedding fresh blood. During the Planet of the Symbiotes storyline, Earth was overrun with an invasion force of symbiotes. Carnage found he could absorb other symbiotes into his costume, increasing his size and strength in the process, until he eventually stood over 100 feet tall. Though he was defeated and returned to normal size, later stories showed Kasady physically separating from his symbiote again, suggesting he restored his living symbiote during this period, replacing the bio-costume replica in his system. Time and again, Kasady has demonstrated the ability to recreate his symbiote as needed. When Venom stole back and destroyed his Carnage symbiote, Kasady eventually located another symbiote from Venom's race in the Negative Zone. Despite being completely different from his original, Kasady was able to bond with this symbiote and then mutate it into a duplicate of his own unique symbiotic costume.
Carnage possesses superhuman strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reflexes when employing his symbiote. His costume somehow had made him stronger than Venom and Spider-Man combined, giving him roughly Class 20 strength or higher. He also duplicates Spider-Man's wall-crawling and Venom's abilities to nullify the spider-sense and alter the symbiote into clothing. The original symbiote could relay visual data for Kasady like Venom's as well, but might not have been capable of doing this after the original version of the Carnage symbiote was destroyed. Carnage has not demonstrated the ability to turn invisible or produce webbing like Venom. Instead, the blood-red symbiote manipulates its substance in other ways. Carnage can extend tendrils of his costume's substance like Venom, only with much greater versatility. His prehensile filaments can be razor-tipped or -lined, acting as lethal blades. He can extend his costume as talons over his fingers or as duplicates of Wolverine's claws. He can stretch out his costume like a web-line, allowing him to swing through the city, or as a high speed blunt- or sharp-tipped extension. Carnage can also expel portions of his costume as projectiles, creating throwing blades and axes, or a spray of razor sharp darts. These projections dissolve into ash about 10 seconds after disconnecting from his mass. Carnage can accelerate the growth of his costume's bio-mass using negative emotions or raw meat as a catalyst. At full recorded dispersal, he can produce enough symbiotic material to overtake an entire town, flooding through every corner thanks to the water pipes and manipulating close to a thousand people like puppets.
Venom's five spawn after Carnage were originally used by the Life Foundation agents. They demonstrated some unique abilities like physically absorbing webbing and projecting acidic patches of symbiotic mass, but the original hosts were killed before they demonstrated too many individual traits. The only survivor was Donna, aka Scream. (The other four symbiotes were not named in the original comics. The green one, Lasher was identified in the Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety video game. Both it and the black one, named Riot, were also given action figures. The internet being what it is, fanmade names for the other two, Agony and Phage, spread like wildfire through websites, until they were eventually backdoored into the comic as continuity in the Carnage USA limited series.)
Hybrid is the combination of a former Guardsman named Scott Washington and four symbiotes spawned from Venom, who mutated into one another to form a hybrid composite symbiote. This happened during the Planet of the Symbiotes arc, when a psychic shriek radiated over the entire planet thanks to an invading symbiote force. The symbiotes presumably possess four times the power of their "father", Venom, and thus have Class 44 strength. In addition to strength, they give Scott superhuman speed, agility, endurance, reflexes, and leaping ability. The symbiotes' protective abilities shield him from most moderate forms of artillery fire, catching the projectiles and dampening the impacts. Hybrid can also manipulate the appearance of his symbiote(s) in various ways just as Venom can, reconfiguring his Other to look like any set of civilian clothing he can imagine or become nearly invisible with a chameleon-like ability to blend with his surroundings. He can manifest his symbiote mass as a collection of tentacles extending from his backside in a cape-like setting, and can make them shoot outwards to whiplash, spear, crush, or otherwise assail his targets. Hybrid can also extend claws from his fingers and large amounts of additional tendrils and filaments at will, since he possesses roughly four times the compressed amount of symbiote mass as Venom or Carnage. He can also disconnect or expel portions of his mass, tagging people with symbiote "mini-clusters" which he can track down mentally over a distance, or fire animated blob projectiles which strike his target with heavy impact or piercing effects and then continue to attack his opponents after they hit, restraining them, lashing out at vital nerve clusters or delicate mechanical areas, etc. His symbiotes also relay visual information to him, giving him "eyes" in the back of his head or the ability to see around corners by extending a small piece of his tendril in that direction.
Hybrid was recently killed by Eddie Brock and his symbiotes were extracted and separated. Now in low-functioning comatose states, the four symbiotes have been appropriated by the US Special Forces to equip their Mercury Team with specific enhancements.
-Marcus Simms controls Lasher, using it to create a symbiotic war-dog. This ferocious sidekick has deadly fangs and claws, and can sense and track prey over great distances. Simms uses a symbiotic leash to deploy and retrieve the Lasher hound.
-James Murphy uses Agony for structural support, allowing him to lift massive objects and distribute the weight evenly through the bio-mass. He acts as a heavy weapons officer, carrying a rail gun or anti-tank gatling gun in combat.
-Rico Axelson, Phage, uses his symbiotic partner as a sniper, accelerating his long range and night vision, and increasing his overall accuracy.
-Howard Ogden uses Riot for stealth action, employing the symbiote's wall-crawling and chameleon abilities for recon.
Toxin is the first spawn of Carnage, bonded with ex-police officer Patrick Mulligan. Toxin presumably inherited somewhere between equal to double his father's power, giving him Class 20-40 strength, plus superhuman speed, agility, endurance, reflexes, and leaping ability. His other can protect him from bullets and various other forms of physical impact or injury, and augments his healing powers as well. The symbiote is of course capable of mimicking any set of regular clothing, and can mold itself over Mulligan's features to make him look like an entirely different person. Pat prefers to model himself after Spider-Man more than his "father" or "grandfather" -- When Pat is most in control, his costumed face is blank like Spider-Man's mask; the trademark symbiote fangs and tongue begin to show through when Toxin begins to exert himself. Toxin is capable of wall-crawling and superhuman physical power in or out of costume, but only if the symbiote is willing...otherwise Pat is just a normal man. Typically, Toxin bulks up when transforming into his symbiote form, with arms slightly longer than a normal person, razor sharp talons grown from his fingers, and squirming tentacles around his mid-section. His height fluctuates depending on his mood and the amount of influence Pat is allowing his symbiote, often shifting between six and nine feet tall at a given moment. He can also expel his costume's substance like a web-line for swinging through to city, or to ensnare and trap his opponents. Furthermore, Toxin has specially enhanced senses that his predecessors have not demonstrated; he has superhumanly acute hearing, and needs nothing more than a sample of skin or blood to track someone down by their personal scent.
Industrialist Michael Hall's attempted to market symbiote bio-tech after salvaging Carnage's near-lifeless body from space. By incorporating small amounts of symbiote bio-mass taken from Carnage into his specially-designed prosthetic aids, Hall created artificial limbs with a much greater range of versatility and response than normal. He also created a form of living armor similar to Iron Man's current "bleeding edge" repulsor tech suit. His cyber-symbionic bodyguards (Royal Blue, Firebrick, Paris Green, Gunmetal, and Burnt Orange) used titanium-augmented symbiotic alloy armor, outfitted with your basic array of strength augmentation, regenerative armor playing, full-spectrum sensory enhancement, projective energy shields and offensive plasma discharges, and flight. They could also reformulate the armor into new mechanical constructs, like projectile nets or more heavy-duty firepower. Their armors were still an extension of Carnage's symbiote, though -- when Kasady got free, he took over their armor remotely, killed them all, and wore their bodies as a second layer of skin and mass over himself. Ew.
Tanis Nieves was outfitted with a prosthetic from Hall Industries that contained not only symbiote bio-mass, but a second full spawn of Carnage, transforming her into Scorn. Thus far, Scorn appears much less manic than other symbiotes -- she demonstrates superhuman strength, agility, and resilience, but her costume does not act alive and move on its own accord like Venom and Carnage typically do. It can still flow on and off her body at will, hiding inside her artificial arms bio-circuitry when in its passive state. The mutated nature of the Scorn symbiote makes it just as connected to technology as organic matter, allowing Scorn to create a sympathetic bond with mechanical systems. This enables her to physically affix weapon systems onto her body and control them mentally using the symbiote's bio-tech, making them an extension of her will. Her symbiote also possesses a level of technoforming ability, allowing it to intuitively assemble raw materials into advanced forms of technology, or modify existing machines into new designs and functions.
Edited by Monolith - 25-Apr-2012 at 2:19pm
Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
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