earth-93

[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: QUICKSILVER

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.15]

C:\login\Buddy_Holly

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Avengers

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\Avengers

04/27/2006 12: 37 PM Total Files Listed: 16 File(s) 538, 687 bytes

Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\Avengers\MAXIMOFF_PIETRO.txt

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Main Alias/Moniker: Quicksilver

Legal Name: Pietro Matheo Maximoff

Other Aliases: Pretty Boy, Silver Head, Speedfoot

Date of Birth: May 31st, 1985 (Age: 19)

Status: Alive

Species: Mutant

Sex: Male

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 6' (1.83m) / 175 lbs (79.38kg)

Hair/Eye Color: Silver / Blue

Timeline (1985 - 1990): Pietro and Wanda grew up in a Romani ghetto in Transia, raised by their maternal aunt and uncle. They never met or knew of their father until they were adults, and their mother Magda only visited them once when the twins were five. Magda spent most of her time with Wanda, and though Pietro was the last person she met with before departing, she was reportedly cold and sparse on words with him. Wanda has suspected it was because Pietro reminded Magda of their father.

In spite of this, Pietro was not bereft of affection in his formative years. Well before gaining his powers, he was an energetic child. One of the few things that could reliably relax him was his uncle Django's puppeteering. There would be less time for these puppet shows following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, radically altering Transia's economy and forcing Django and their aunt Marya to work long hours to keep the family afloat. Pietro's rambunctiousness would shift to bitterness and rebellion as he got older.

Timeline (1990 - 2000): As true as it is today, Pietro had a short tolerance for insults, especially ones lobbied at Wanda, and was unafraid to pick fights with anyone should he feel slighted. Depending on the person, this attitude made Pietro a hero, a laughing stock and a bad egg all at once. In the case of his aunt and uncle, they were distraught over who Pietro could provoke, should he pick a fight with a non-Roma outside the ghetto. They kept Pietro out of trouble for a time by arranging him to help with the cooperative farm out in the countryside. He complained at first, but quickly found the fresh air and open spaces extremely uplifting.

Such a luxury was once more revoked due to radical changes in Transia. Following General Novoty's rise to power, Transia's economy was remade to serve a small aggregate of oligarchs, one of whom bought the cooperative farm out from the Romani. The rampant injustice of the world became cruelly apparent to Pietro and he soon fell into petty crimes with other young hoodlums, participating in the sweep of criminality in Transia following the fall of Communism.

Timeline (2000 - 2003): To quell Pietro yet again as well as bolster the family under desperate times, Marya took Pietro and Wanda with her to England to do seasonal work. Pietro continued his thievery, where he first earned the name "Quicksilver" for his uncanny evasion of the law. Pietro had reportedly been quick since he could walk, but his knack for speed became more and more uncanny until one day, where he and his group's getaway car was sputtering out and the authorities were on their tail. In his fluster, Pietro ran down the street faster than the car could have--entirely on foot.

Having resented the lowly status he had been forced to live all his life, Pietro reveled in his newfound powers. Such elation gave him little patience for the opposition he encountered among his gang almost immediately, be it anti-mutant bigotry or Pietro's own ego as he sought to take more active leadership. One supporter of Pietro was Toad, a fellow hoodlum that Pietro thought little of before.

Mortimer divulged to Pietro of his own mutant status and introduced him to the London chapter of the Brotherhood. The organization's rhetoric of mutant superiority was tantalizing to Pietro, but much to his chagrin he was barred from membership until he could convince his sister to join alongside him, explained away as the likelihood that she was a powerful mutant as well. Pietro had been aware of his sister's "hexes," as she called them, but was adamant that they were not a mutant ability, but some sort of witchcraft first taught to her by their estranged mother. Regardless of this, he begrudgingly carried out the request of the Brotherhood representative, who was none other than Wyndgarde.

Wanda was defiant of Pietro's cajoling for a few days until they returned home one night to see it in flames. Pietro witnessed Wanda break down in anguish, and in a state of distress himself could think of nowhere else for them to go but a Brotherhood safehouse. Neither sibling was aware that the flames were but a convincing illusion conjured by Wyndgarde, and that their Aunt Marya was sleeping soundly in the home the twins abandoned. The deception nonetheless succeeded, as by the time Wanda awoke from her grief had turned to wrath. For the first time in their lives, the roles were reversed, and Pietro found himself having to keep Wanda in check.

Timeline (2003): In spite of their youth and relative inexperience, the Maximoff twins were brought onto the Santo Marco mission. Pietro and Wanda were among those tasked with sniffing out intruders, aka the X-Men. Pietro personally confronted me, blocking me away from the rest of the team and wearing me down with rapid blows from all directions. The stride in his step was swerved courtesy of Bobby, while Wren took his feet off the ground altogether.

Pietro attempted a rematch with us in the city square during Magneto's confrontation with the Stranger, but that left him vulnerable to capture once the military swept through the country. He and Wanda were arrested and remained in captivity in the Neverland Containment Center for the next few months. They were among the many inmates who fled during our jailbreak, but in the chaos of it all a falling out apparently occurred between the siblings, and Pietro and Wanda went their separate ways.

Pietro's tenure going solo did not last long. Shortly after we had regrouped back at the Mansion, he had appeared to begrudgingly ask our help in finding Wanda. We were still quite shaken ourselves, with the Professor still in a coma and Wren being MIA since Neverland. We eventually agreed to help, with Jean and Hank staying behind to tend to the Professor while Bobby and I accompanied Pietro. Hy happenstance, our respective missing persons problem was mutual, as Wren had given Wanda sanctuary in her family cabin in Colorado.

Pietro was understandably hesitant to go back to prison, though we swore we would vouch for both of them (At the time, he bluntly told us that didn't make it much better). With his relationship with Wanda relatively mended, however, he ultimately agreed to finally step away from the Brotherhood. The twins were given sanctuary on Muir Island for a time, and when Steve Rogers headed a reserve team of Avengers that would grant a pardon to convicted super-villains in exchange for service, the Maximoffs were quickly put through. That project is still underway, but if there's anyone on the planet who can take Pietro's bad attitude and whip him into shape, it's Captain America.

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[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: HULK (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.14]

C: \login\Nowhere_Man

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Avengers

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\Avengers

04/27/2006 11: 43 AM Total Files Listed: 16 File(s) 538, 687 bytes

Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\Avengers\BANNER_BRUCE.txt

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Main Alias/Moniker: Hulk

Legal Name: Dr. Bruce Robert Banner

Other Aliases: Doc, Big Guy, Hulkster, Greenfoot, Jade Jaws, Green Giant, Shrek

Date of Birth: May 19th, 1975 (Age: 30)

Status: Alive

Species: Human Mutate (Gamma Mutate)

Sex: Male

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: [Bruce] 5'8'' (173cm) / 125 lbs (57kg); [Hulk] 7' - 8'5'' (2 - 2.5m) / 1,150 - 4,000 lbs (680 - 1,815kg)

Hair/Eye Color: [Bruce] Brown / Brown; [Hulk] Black / Green

Timeline (1975 - 1985): My past with Bruce aside, I don't think you need me to tell you that most of what's been written about the Hulk is bull. Nothing but conspiracy rags that make parsing the fact from the fiction even harder (If I were a more paranoid type, I'd say it's on purpose. I wouldn't put it past Ross or SHIELD to keep the public on their toes about Bruce, no matter how much good press he gets. I'm just as biased as any other guy, but I'm biased in the sense that I was just some kid that a so-called monster tried to help. Do with that what you will.

Bruce has said that his earliest memory was being pulled out from a car wreck by his dad during a rainy night. Brian Banner went back to get his wife, but by then the car had sunk so deep into the muddy earth that he couldn't find the strength to pull her out. That moment was totally where Old Man Banner's obsession with strength first came from. Once the media got a hold of the Hulk's identity, a lot of those write-ups loved to embellish Bruce's childhood. Don't get it twisted, Brian Banner wasn't the Devil, but he was a mean sonuvabitch. He would at least have his stepmom Rebecca in his life, once the Banners moved to New Mexico. To this day, Bruce still thinks of her fondly.

Brian himself was almost never home, instead toiling away at his gig at Desert State. See, Brian Banner was a physician with a specialty in glands. After he failed to pull his first wife out of that wreck, he became fixated on the theory of "hysterical strength." You know those stories you hear about moms being able to lift whole cars to save their babies? No scientist has ever been able to square away how and why that happens, but Old Man Banner was hellbent on being the one to crack it. When the higher-ups are Desert State shot down his research, he decided to keep going at home.

Timeline (1985 - 1991): To this day, Bruce has never said what really went down that night. As far as I know, his mind just blocked it out. I have my theories, but if I'm resorting to speculation I'm no better than one of those rag pieces. All I know for sure is what was put on the police report: The morning after a nasty storm, authorities swept through the Banner household smashed up, Rebecca beaten to death, and Bruce left in a shock in the same room as the body. A few days later, Brian was found in the middle of the desert, naked and hysterical. He was charged with murdering Rebecca and was given life.

Another misconception about Bruce is that his anger issues only came about once he went green. What he went through, that's where it all started, and you don't even have to trust me on that. His aunt and uncle would back me up, since they were the ones who took Bruce in. Back then, Bruce was unresponsive, quick to anger, and would throw a fit if he ever felt cornered or too agitated. He wasn't too responsive to treatment at first, either. What turned it all around for Bruce was his cousin, Jen. She was born a year before his aunt and uncle took him in, and even though they did their best with him, they had understandable worries about Bruce being around Jen. He says this is what first made him try to take treatment seriously. Earning that trust from his aunt and uncle. To this day, the two see each other more as siblings than cousins.

He put a lid on his anger issues, but Bruce's social skills never really picked up. His brains, though, they never seemed to stop growing. So when he got an in at the Tomorrow Academy across the country, his aunt and uncle couldn't see a downside. I have my theories Ross had his eye on Bruce all the way back then because of who his old man was, but I can't back that claim--yet. Even if I can't make a direct connection, Ross still definitely had his finger on the place. That meant having an extended stay in New York, and his kid popping in the Academy from time to time. That's how Bruce first met Betty. In spite of himself, Bruce managed to strike something up with Betty, and they kept in you well after the Academy's shutdown. Even when Bruce had any school in the world to nab his PhD, he went with NJIT so he would be closer to Betty. Neither of them could have imagined this would seal Bruce's fate.

Timeline (1991 - 1998): Betty was in Jersey because she was one of the first recruits for the newly-minted SHIELD Comm School. She wanted to keep up the family military tradition by getting into spy work, but even back then she was a sleuth at heart. Case in point, when she and Bruce got close enough he started opening up about his past, Betty couldn't just leave it be. I don't know if it was empathy to help Bruce get closure, or just a fixation on solving a mystery. Whatever it was, Betty put together an investigation on what Brian was researching before he killed Rebecca and showed it to Bruce.

In turn, a switch went off in Bruce when he poured over his old man's work in hysterical strength. Like father, like son, Bruce became obsessed with finishing his old man's work to tap into the hidden strengths that all humans have. SHIELD was either desperate, or Bruce made one heckuva pitch, because in no time at all a new Super-Solider project was in the works. The ink on Bruce's pHd wasn't even dry before a base in the desert was installed to further explore his theories.

Call it trauma, shame, fear, or even some lingering loyalty to the powers that victimized him, but Bruce has never come clean about what went down at Project Gamma. From what I personally know, their experiments went well past any ethical boundaries. A young man looking for some closer was quickly finding things spinning out of his control, that's a lot on your conscience. And that all came crashing down on that one fateful day, when an internal sabotage caused a radiation leak, then a breakout of its test subjects—helped by a big, green giant barrelling through the walls and security for them.

continue data? y/n]

[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: UNUS THE UNTOUCHABLE

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.13]

C: \login\BuddyHolly

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Xmen

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\Xmen

04/27/2006 10:19 AM Total Files Listed: 15 File(s) 168,248 bytes

Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\Xmen\UNUSCIONE_ANGELO.txt

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Main Alias/Moniker: Unus the Untouchable

Legal Name: Angelo Unuscione

Other Aliases: Gunther Bain

Date of Birth: November 8th, 1968 (Age: 36)

Status: Alive

Species: Mutant

Sex: Male

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 6′1″ (1.85 m) / 220 lbs (99.79 kg)

Hair/Eye Color: Black / Blue

Timeline (1968 - 1987): Angelo was born in Milan, but primarily grew up in Caracas. His family fled the political violence in Italy at the time of Angelo's birth and resumed their careers as artists in Venezuela. Angelo was apparently not as deft with a pencil or paintbrush as his parents or siblings, which made him the black sheep of the family. He instead sought to continue the family tradition of the arts through an acting career, and through those pursuits took up bodybuilding and wrestling.

The Unusciones lived comfortably across Angelo's childhood, but were among those affected Venezuela's economic collapse in the 1980's. This is most likely when Angelo's fixation on material wealth in his youth first came about, as did his mutant abilities. It stands to reason that Angelo did not understand himself to be a mutant at the time, but even back then superhumans still permeated the global zeitgeist enough that he was able to reconcile suddenly having the ability to generate force fields.

Whatever the case, Angelo most certainly was quick to capitalize on his newfound powers. With his acting talents, formidable physicality and the ability to render himself untouchable, Angelo reasoned that American wrestling was the best venue to showcase his talents and earn the wealth and fame he desired. With Venezuela's situation only worsening through the decade, Angelo had little inclination to stay. With money likely stolen from his parents, he acquired a fake identity and immigration papers forged and fled to the US.

Timeline (1987 - 1992): After stints in various promotions under his fake alias of Gunther Bain, Angelo enlisted in the Midwest-based Ultra Class Wrestling Federation (Now known as the Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation). Through Hank's diligent investigations, we now know that the UCWF (As well as, most presciently, its holding company the Brand Corporation) scouted and pursued performers with observable superhuman traits for high-spectacle matches and tournaments. It was under his contract with the UCWF that Angelo first gained his title of "Unus the Untouchable."

Though he finally gained fame and fortune, he also found an organization eager to exploit him. After numerous arguments with the UCWF'S promotion over his matches, Angelo sought to walk out and bring his celebrity into a different promotion. Curtiss Jackson, the UCWF's owner, overbooked him without his awareness, and his string of no-shows effectively blacklisted him with any other promoter or territory. With both this and the threat to expose his falsified documents, Angelo was consigned to Jackson's whim, and spent the next few years strung along various international matches—which is most certainly where Angelo first caught word of Magneto and the Brotherhood.

Timeline (1992 - 2003): It's unclear how and when Angelo was officially approached by agents of the Brotherhood, but it's safe to say when his recruitment finally occurred Angelo was more than amenable to their agenda. Angelo has heavily credited the Brotherhood and Magneto's revolutionary rhetoric that made him into a better person. Having not only been personally exploited by the UCWF but witnessing many others caught within the same exploitation, Angelo claims to have become disillusioned with his younger drives towards material wealth and found a more noble cause to live his life by. His unique cultural background made him especially attuned to the Brotherhood's anti-nationalist views. Today, Angelo identifies more of a mutant that he does a Venezuelan or Italian.

Angelo was so committed to the Brotherhood that he maintained his celebrity and contract for the UCWF for several more years, acting as a scout and recruiter for other mutants across his travels. Fred Dukes was among those recruits, and Hank was of course was another attempt. Following our intervention of Santo Marco, Angelo finally went off the grid. Our first direct confrontation with him was a few months later when he, Dukes and Toad pretended to be X-Men, terrorizing people and causing property damage to sully our reputation.

That instance in itself ties back into Angelo's inconsistent code of honor. He believes in the cause of the Brotherhood wholeheartedly, and thus views the X-Men as an obstruction to their goals. However, unlike some members Angelo claims to wish no ill will against us, perceiving us more as misguided than betrayers or frauds. Even as the brief leader of the "Factor Three," Angelo repeatedly professed to us he wasn't anything personal.

This "no hard feelings" act was far more credible later that year, when he saved Jean and Hank's life. When they were abducted by the Brotherhood, even Angelo could see how the trial arranged for their crimes against mutantkind were unfairly rigged, and aided Jean and Hank in evading their death sentence and making their getaway. At time of writing, Angelo remains at large, though reports indicate he is among the loyalists of Magneto who have found sanctuary within the island nation of Genosha.

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[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: MIMIC

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.12]

C: \login\BuddyHolly

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Xmen

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\Xmen

04/27/2006 9:48 AM Total Files Listed: 15 File(s) 168,248 bytes

Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\Xmen\RANKIN_CALVIN.txt

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Main Alias/Moniker: Mimic

Legal Name: Calvin Montgomery Rankin

Other Aliases: Cal

Date of Birth: February, 19th 1987 (Age: 19)

Status: Alive

Species: Human Mutate

Sex: Male

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 5'10 (1.78m) [Varies] / 173 lbs (78.47kg) [Varies]

Hair/Eye Color: Brown / Brown

Timeline (1987 - 1997): I don't have a personal connection to Calvin. Bobby and Logan have more of a bond with him than I. Still, our lives were intertwined for a brief but critical point. It's this among other reasons that I took it upon myself to draft his file, despite some of the subject matter still creating discomfort for me. For someone who has had so little control over his life, I felt I owed it to him, the closest person who can relate to his experience, to try and put it on record.

According to retrieved medical documents, Calvin inherited a glandular disorder from his mother. A genetic defect that can affect one's heart rate and blood pressure. Calvin's mother was diagnosed with the condition posthumously, as she suffered cardiac arrest shortly after giving birth to him. As a single parent whose child was in need of full-time care, Dr. Rankin was put in a vulnerable spot, one that was eventually exploited by Essex.

I don't know enough about Ronald Rankin to confidently judge his character. Even him taking employment under Essex could stem from financial insecurity, and his disappearance and presumed death could further suggest he eventually objected to Essex's treatment of his son, and was promptly disposed of. The full details will forever be lost, and whatever the circumstances the outcome was that Calvin ended up in the same lower levels of Essex's hospital that I was around that time, conducting the experiments on mutant traits that wouldn't compliment his public persona of "Nathan Millbury."

I've suspected that, through Calvin, Essex sought to refine his "chimera" experiments: The grafting of mutant genes, that he had long ago applied to himself, into a non-mutant body. Rather than splicing specific genes into Calvin, Essex altered his endocrine system to make his body able to absorb and mimic not much mutant traits, but potentially all superhuman traits. If my suspicions were true, them Calvin was nothing but a guinea pig. A trial run of a procedure Essex intended to then apply on himself. Fortunately, his plans never went that far, as Calvin escaped Essex's captivity the same way I did, when the first manifestation of my optic blasts blew a hole in the wall.

Timeline (1997 - 2003): The specifics of Calvin's activity between his escape and his first interactions with us are unclear. I can attest that Essex and his contacts made great efforts to scrub the children he experimented on from public records, so any accomodations Calvin might have fallen into have been difficult to find. It can be inferred that whatever living situation Calvin found himself was brief, and he largely spent this period mobile. Due to his trauma, his glandular condition as well as his newfound powers, Calvin's threshold for stress was considerably low, and as a means of survival his interpersonal skills were boiled down to either manipulation or confrontation. Though his powers more closely qualify him as a Mutate, as this was the peak of mutant-related discourse Calvin came to recognize himself as such. So once the X-Men came into prominence, Calvin developed a fixation on us.

Timeline (2003): Calvin's first encounter with us was through Bobby. He befriended him privately, under the half-truth of being a mutant runaway who looked up to Bobby. Bobby felt alienated with the rest of the team at the time, and was susceptible to Calvin's manipulations. Calvin's intentions were to mimic the entire team's powers, and he very nearly succeeded. The more he tried to absorb, the more taxing and unwieldy it became for him to maintain all of them. What broke Calvin was when he attempted to drain and mimic Jean's powers—specifically, her powers without the mental blocks she still had at that point. Calvin was so clearly in pain, we all dropped our guards and offered to help him, but Calvin instead overpowered us in one last feat and fled.

The powers Calvin absorbed eventually regressed from inactivity, but it nonetheless took a toll on his body. He went on a brief robbing spree, breaking into pharmacies and stealing sedatives to try and numb his pain. Before any of us could track him down, he was first found by Phillip Masters, aka The Puppet Master. Masters used Calvin as a stratagem, threatening his life if we didn't make use of our contacts with the Fantastic Four and give him access into the Baxter Building. Jean and I played along with this, bringing Calvin into the Baxter Building under the pretense of requesting consultation with Dr. Richards, while the Professor and the rest of the team tracked down Masters' psychic signature.

Masters' goal was to acquire an android built by him and an associate that the Fantastic Four was in possession of at the time. We did have to feign being the aggressors for a brief moment, but once the rest of the team tracked down and detained Masters, Calvin's life was no longer under threat and the act could be dropped. Even when Masters attempted to retaliate with the unleashed android, its own mimicry powers were cancelled out once confronted by Calvin, thus ending the threat of the situation completely. Calvin briefly resided at the Mansion with us, where we first got the best sense of his powers.

Though understandably shaken in the aftermath, Calvin appeared responsive enough to nod along to the Professor's offers to provide him care. He would mimic Jean's powers, this time with a greater sense of control, and glee yet again. Calvin would later say of this that his involvement with Masters left him in a state of despair, unwilling to trust anyone but himself lest he be taken advantage of once more. He resumed his life on the run, but maintained his fixation on us in spite of his supposed mistrust. When we went mobile after Bobby fled to San Francisco, Calvin trailed behind us, and only intervened when we nearly approached our destination.

Camping outside of Las Vegas for the night, we unwittingly came into contact with the Hulk, and a fight broke out. Calvin intervened when it appeared the Hulk was gaining the upper hand, boldly grappling the Hulk and absorbing his Gamma radiation. It was enough for us to be able to disarm the Hulk, but it also left Calvin suddenly deathly ill. Hank's quick thinking led to Logan making contact with Calvin, and by mimicking Logan's healing factor was able to naturally process the radiation.

After we all gathered our bearings, an idea had formed amongst us: That through a more focused application of Calvin's absorption and Logan's healing factor, we could potentially cure Dr. Banner of being the Hulk altogether. There was some brief contention on whether to go through with this idea, but what settled it was Calvin's consent in his role in the procedure. He said to us he was ready to repent his past misdeeds and sought to do good, and by all accounts he was sincere in that claim. In the middle of the procedure, however, his fight or flight instincts compelled him to attempt to absorb Dr. Banner's Gamma entirely, likely thinking that gaining the Hulk's nigh invulnerability would end any concern over his survival.

Jean intervened when this subterfuge became clear, and through that telepathic contact Dr. Banner's Gamma was inexplicably transfered into her. While the rest of us fell under the influence of Jean who then went out to confront the military convoy out searching for the Hulk, it ended being Logan, out of all of us, who met Calvin at his level and succeeded in reasoning with him. Once the situation with Jean and Dr. Banner was resolved, Logan stayed behind with Calvin as the rest of us continued our journey into California.

At time of writing, Calvin is residing on Muir Island, receiving treatment both for his powers as well as his antisocial tendencies.

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[earth-93]

Russell Dauterman

[earth-93]

this interview with andre braugher has lived in my head rent free since i first read it - that concept of "army emotions" helped me understand a bunch of things. what a tremendous talent and a great loss.

[earth-93]

Brian's death makes me so sad, because he was a minor character throughout the main book and didn't have much development, but in the Hellions mini and in House of M it seemed like you guys were really setting him up to have some serious depth.

Personally I really like the contrast in when Julian is his best friend vs when Quentin is in House of M. You can see in both examples that he attaches himself to his friends very easily and would do anything for them. I remember you saying in a post that he sort of forms his personality after his friends and doesn't know who he is outside of that (which, mood, as someone with BPD) and I can really see that both of these things. He kind of tags along (no pun intended) with whoever is his best friend and does whatever they do, and supports them however they need. With Julian that meant being his right hand man, and his agent in the Hellions mini, and with Quentin that meant sticking up for him when people were rude to him, assuring him that he had friends.

I really love Brian and I really wish he had gotten to be developed more as a character, I think his story would have been something I really related to. <3

It made us sad too. A lot of the deaths hit us hard, almost as a personal loss. But his was more of a regret. We hadn't gotten to do much with him, and just when we started exploring him in the Hellions mini (and hinting at other versions of him in House of M), our time with him was done, and it became clear no one else wanted to do much with him and that potential would go to waste.

We think people got lost in his powers - didn't know how to make them work (as writers) or what to think of them (as fans). And that was on us - we went weird and obscure when devising them. Still, we liked them.

As we've said before, the downside of work for hire is that when you leave the characters, they're not yours anymore. They're in someone else's hands. So you make your peace with it. We're glad he came back, though. Hope he stays that way.

[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: ANT-MAN (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.11]

C: \login\Nowhere_Man

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Avengers

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\Avengers

04/21/2006 11: 43 AM Total Files Listed: 16 File(s) 538, 687 bytes

Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\Avengers\PYM_HANK_JR.txt

[file data =

Main Alias/Moniker: Ant-Man

Legal Name: Henry Jonathan Pym, Jr

Other Aliases: Hank, Hanku, Junior, Bug-Man, Party-Killer

Date of Birth: September 5th, 1976 (Age: 27)

Status: Alive

Species: Human

Sex: Male

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 6' 0" (1.83 m) / 185 lbs (83.91 kg)

Hair/Eye Color: Blond / Blue

Timeline (1976 - 1987): It's wild to think now, what with how so many of us these days are carrying around a piece of tech with his name on it, but when he was first born Hank Pym was living closer to the rest of us. Hank Pym Jr, I should say, though these days I don't know if the distinction is needed anymore. Hank was still in training pants when his folks were first running PymTech out of their garage. That might be why Pym is less of a chav in my book than Stark. Building and programming in their garage. Reminds me of my mom, but she was just trying to make a living. The Pyms had far loftier ambitions, and living snack dab in the Valley they had the means to seize it.

Before Hank had even finished grade school, his family were millionaires, and PymTech had become the hot new thing on the commercial tech market. Those good vibes in the Pym workplace didn't trickle down into the Pym household, though. By all accounts, was the kind of father who would give a sneer and a shrug to anything short of an A+ grade. Hank's mom Maria was the emotional crutch of the whole family, who Hank himself was really fond of. So when he was bluntly informed by his old man that Maria had died in a plane crash when Hank was eleven, he went numb to it all, even when his sister Hope got into a shouting match with Hank Sr. The siblings spent the rest of their childhoods in separate boarding schools, where Hank kept his head down and largely kept to the books or his ant-keeping hobby.

Timeline (1987 - 2002): For Hank, one of those "boarding schools" was the Tomorrow Academy in New York. The three people of note Hank would meet up with during this stretch would be Elihas Starr, Tony Stark and the future big guy himself, Bruce. All four of them had the mutual baggage of growing up with bad dads and quirky hobbies, but Starr wasn't so much a part of the group as he was a tag-along with Hank. They all went in different directions once the Academy was shut down in '91, but Hank and Bruce would keep in touch.

Hank spent the 90's on the academic grind, and in-between racking up a slew of consultancy gigs. He did his best to keep an arm's length from PymTech, eager to carve a name for himself. This caused some beef between Hank and his sis. While Hank kept away from their old man's business like the plague, Hope firmly planted her roots there. All the while, the siblings kept working long-distance to find ways to apply Pym Particles in the new millennium. Hank would only help his sis so far. He knew his way around Pym Particles, sure. But if PymTech blipped into the air the next day, he likely wouldn't have lost a wink of sleep.

So when Starr, who had spent the last decade more on the business end of the tech world, had been climbing the corporate ladder back at PymTech, Hank didn't use his minimal influence as a shareholder to ward Starr off from booting his dad out of the head chairman's seat. As far as Hank saw it, his old man was the big roadblock to what Hope wanted to do with Pym Particles, and he assumed the best of intentions in Starr. Just one of many regrets saddled onto Hank Pym. Before things really hit the fan, he finally set up shop in PymTech, through an offer made by Starr. Hank took up a spot in the company's AI division, all while Hank kept workshopping his own AI projects in the basement of his family's estate.

Timeline (2002 - 2003): After the "lab accident" that kvaporized Vernon Van Dyne and put his daughter (And Hank's beau) in a coma, Hank could no longer deny his old buddy Starr was trouble. He kept up appearances within the company, all while Hope and her group made a plan to ouste Starr and foil his plans for PymTech to get into the arms racket. In the end, they only succeeded in one of those things, thanks it part to Jan's now-infamous 50-Foot Woman incident. But Starr was gone and Jan had sprung back to life, so as far as Hank was concerned it was a win.

Hank was the only one among the group to support Janet's aspirations to get into the superhero game, calling it "unconventional therapy." He even volunteered to go out on patrols with her, and was the one to come up with the whole bug schtick for the two of them in the first place. It was out of the box behavior, something I'm sure Hank himself would admit to. The few times Hank has been pressed on it, he's cited what Dr. Richards and his whole crew had been doing over in New York around the same time. Me, I think that drive to carve something out for himself was what pushed him into something so out-there as dressing up in a red suit and a shiny helmet. The influence of Jan, who was probably the best thing he had going for him at the time, didn't hurt either.

After about six months of "Ant-Man & The Wasp" becoming a big west coast sensation, Bruce was apprehended and detained by SHIELD. That following summer, a plan was brewing to surgically resolve Bruce's condition, and Hank volunteered to help his old Academy alum, and Jan tagged along as well. Being seasoned heroes by them, Hank and Jan held their own once all hell broke loose later that day, and they both were on the ground with Fury while Thor was duking it out with Graviton above them. They got it out of Fury the connections SHIELD had with Graviton, which really got under Hank's skin. So when the smoke cleared and Fury made his offer, Hank shot it down and sided with Stark, even though Hank barely trusted Stark much better than Fury. Enemy of my enemy, I guess.

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[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: ICEMAN (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.10]

C: \login\BuddyHolly

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Xmen

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Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\Xmen\DRAKE_ROBERT.txt

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Main Alias/Moniker: Iceman

Legal Name: Robert Louis Drake

Other Aliases: Bobby, Bobii, Dairaku Bō-chan, Frostbite, Frosty

Date of Birth: June 14th, 1987 (Age: 18)

Status: Alive

Species: Mutant

Sex: Male

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 5'4'' (1.62m) / 115 lbs (51.8kg)

Hair/Eye Color: Brown / Blue

Timeline (1986 - 2002): Bobby was overprotected by his parents growing up. He was named after an uncle who died in Vietnam, and spent the first few weeks of his life in intensive care after being born premature. His parents reportedly harsh and disapproving of the slightest of behaviors—which, according to Bobby, included skateboarding and pop-punk music, so the Drake's standards for bad behavior were decidedly low. Their discipline only grew harsher as the family expanded, and his parents overexerted themselves with Bobby's other two siblings. This home life led to Bobby growing up with poor self-esteem, paired with a fixation on excitement and leaving his life in suburbia behind.

Timeline (2002): Bobby's powers first manifested at a classmate's birthday party. He and several others were in the home's heated pool, and all but Bobby eventually crawled out citing the water growing prohibitively cold. The adults involved chalked up the incident to a fault in the pool's heater, but the incident made Bobby realize he always had a high tolerance to cold weather. In addition, by that point the Fantastic Four had formed within the last few weeks, and Bobby was among the many New Yorkers swept up in the mania over the return of superheroes. Even with the word "mutant" not yet in his mind, it was enough to convince Bobby that there was more to him than just environmental tolerance, and he was right.

Over the next few weeks, he began to experiment in private, learning to not just affect temperatures around him, but freeze bodies of water and even the humidity. Bobby was priming himself to become the next big superhero, but even as he perfected his ice-slides, courtesy of his skateboarding skills, he was still too far out to get in and out of the city without drawing his parent's suspicion. Thus, most of Bobby's earliest tenure as a superhero was largely patrolling his Long Island neighborhood.

On one such patrol, Bobby oversaw a submarine rising out from the coast. Investigating, he ran into Johnny Storm, who was also staking out the sub. Bobby had his first team-up, helping the Human Torch save an unconscious Sub-Mariner from a gang of pirates, and Bobby went back to the Baxter Building, where he first gained a more proper understanding of his powers. The Fantastic Four did not give Bobby the recruitment offer he was hoping for, but he returned home early that morning feeling his big break was finally coming. Those hopes were cut short by the time he made it home, where his parents were awake and waiting for him.

The only member of Bobby's family who knew about his powers was his little sister, Aurora. The two siblings had conjoined rooms and Aurora ventured into Bobby's one night after being awoken by a chill to find her brother's room filled with snow. Aurora was amazed and delighted by Bobby's powers and was his first fan and confidante, but she ultimately buckled when the eldest Drake, Ronny, grew suspicious of Bobby and confronted Aurora. Ronny in turn told their parents, who grounded Bobby but were apparently evasive to acknowledge his abilities. When Bobby relayed him being a mutant from Richards, his only response was his mother sheepishly asking Bobby to try "not being a mutant."

Timeline (2002 - 2003): The whole experience left Bobby in a fowl, despondent mood. So much so that when Rocky Beasely, a frequent bully of Bobby's, began taunting him one day, Bobby lashed out, freezing Beasely solid. The incident was quickly swallowed by anti-mutant hysteria, with Bobby detained by the authorities and his assault trial becoming a local news event. That was when we first got involved. The Professor arranged for Agent Duncan to act as Bobby's legal defense. In addition, both Wren and the Fantastic Four navigated the public discourse around Bobby's case. It was Richards who first theorized that Bobby would be a able to unfreeze Beasely with no health complications. The theory ended up becoming true, and with it the assault charges were overturned.

The Beaselys dropped charges, but the stigma surrounding Bobby remained. The Professor once more intervened, offering for Bobby to finish his education under his tutelage. To the surprise of most of us, they agreed, though we had our suspicions it had more to do with distancing themselves from the acrimony Bobby's arrest had caused than it was his well-being. Out of all of us, Bobby started out with the most stress and negative feelings towards his mutant identity, but the fresh environment of the Mansion also gave him the opportunity to test his limits without burden.

Looking back, in his earliest days Bobby hadn't yet so much embraced being a mutant than he thought he could get his dreams of superheroism back on track among the rest of us. This is probably why, despite having the least personal investment to intervene in Santo Marco, he was the most enthused among us to form what would become the X-Men, and to save the world as a bona fide superhero. That enthusiasm did a lot to convince the Professor for Bobby to come along, what with him being the youngest and still a minor at the time. And it's a good thing he did, as Bobby ended up being our secret weapon in Santo Marco.

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[earth-93]

Mystic's Musings: Untitled Horror Crossover YA Treatment

Hey, y'all.

I've been wanting to make more use of this non-E93 section of my posts ever since my New Warriors treatment. I have a few on hand, but decided in the spirit of the season share something on the spookier side.

The concept first came about way back in 2016, when like a lot of people I was morbidly fascinated by Universal Pictures' pitiful attempt to make a cinematic universe out of their library of classic monster characters. I thought to myself, if I were handling something like this, I'd probably not make it so damn serious.

Something a little more irreverent, more tongue-in-cheek, not unlike what the Percy Jackson series did for Greek mythology. The idea has been floating around in my head ever since, never coalescing into solid plan, but always changing, always being added and updated in-between my other projects.

Around that same time, I was also really into the supplemental work of the Wold Newton Universe. Originally conceived by pulp writer Phillip Jose Farmer in the early 70's, the premise of WNU posits that the great literary figures of serialized and pulp novels were capable of such extraordinary feats because a handful of their ancestors were all riding in a carriage one night in the late 18th century when a meteorite struck down into the English countryside (Based on the real-life meteorite that crashed nearby Wold Newton, England around that some time), the radiation of which affected their genes and the genes of their descendants.

The WNU received a boost of supplemental writings in the early parts of the web, were people would add onto Farmer's original writings and continue both the Wold Newton Family Tree and additional crossovers in the WNU. While a fun connect-the-dots sort of crossover venture at the time, in hindsight I can admit that the supplemental works did a lot of jumping through hoops to incorporate every prominent fictional character into the same handful of family trees, all to endow them with the same abstract genetic lineage (Most egregiously, when they try to incorporate non-white characters into the family tree), but the general idea of taking the many adaptations of literary characters and spinning it into a family tree rather than one uniform person always stuck with me, copyright be damned.

So with all that backstory out of the way, let me finally lay out the thoughts and ideas I've developed over the years with this premise of mine.

Setting

In terms of rules and worldbuilding, I've flipped back and forth on this one. At first, I was leaning more towards something like Percy Jackson or Artemis Fowl, where the supernatural is a heavily guarded secret society, or guarded some mystical veil that conveniently obscures it from the masses.

Later, I was more fond of something along the lines of The Southern Vampire Mysteries (Which would be adapted into the series True Blood) or Anno Dracula, where the supernatural is an open fact to the public and has created major social, cultural and even historical deviations from the real world.

At present, I'm aiming for a mix between the latter and Supernatural and The Dresden Files, where such fantastical things are more an open secret. The average person is aware, but the level by which it's acknowledged differs based on region and community. Monster hunting, seances and cryptozoology are less niche than in reality, but still not as reputable to completely block hucksters, opportunists and showmen from flooding the spaces.

The triumph of Abraham Van Helsing over Count Dracula opened the floodgates for monster hunting towards the end of the 19th century. The horrors wrought upon by the Frankenstein and Jekyll families have created generation-spanning stigmas over so-called "mad science." (The more this project develops, I would absolutely love to put more of a spotlight on the fact that these stigmas and literary legacies laid out thus far stem from European, primarily British, sources, and how different such things are perceived and addressed elsewhere in the world).

By modern day, the things that go bump in the night, while relatively normalized, still hold a degree of superstition and misunderstanding, which is where we find our starting protagonist at the beginning of the story.

Plot

The starting protagonist (Let's call him "Shaggy," for reasons I'll explain in the next section) has been taught since childhood to stay clear of all things monster, to the degree where it's become a point of crippling anxiety. As a young adult, "Shaggy" is mostly floating through life, unsure on what he wants but evades everything he's been told he doesn't want. "Shaggy's" superstition ends up saving his life when shadowy figures no one but he seems to notice turn out to be real and have been preying on him.

As he flees, "Shaggy" runs into a completely different group looking for him, albeit with the intention of protecting him. They give "Shaggy" the truth: He is the latest descendant of the infamous Dr. Frankenstein, and the other group pursuing him are agents of Dracula, who has been preying on the Frankensteins for generations as part of his many avenues to continue his immortal life.

The bulk of the story involves the group escorting "Shaggy" to a safehouse, all while the question as to why he's so important to the Lord of Vampires floats overhead. Sure, "Shaggy" might be a Frankenstein, but he has none of the mad ambition or brilliant acumen of his forebears, so even if Dracula's agents were to apprehended him he couldn't fashion a new Monster. The twist in the first story would reveal that "Shaggy" is not just a Frankenstein, but technically also a Monster.

As a nod to my old affinity for WNU, I have it planned that every major depiction of Frankenstein (The novel version, the Universal version, the Hammer version, etc) is a successive member in a greater family tree. "Shaggy's" absent father, the Gen X Frankenstein, was a cross between Weird Science and Frankenhooker. Ergo, he was a creep who had sex with his female Monster, and being a human/Monster hybrid, "Shaggy" potentially constitutes as a sort of post-human, making him especially significant to Dracula's ambitions for full immortality.

By the end of the first story, "Shaggy" reconciles the truth about himself and overcomes his fear of the supernatural through the camaraderie formed among the group. Dracula and his minions will remain the Big Bad for the series, but the team will have all manner of misadventures down the line.

A spotlight arc getting into the sordid Jekyll & Hyde families. Stopping a private military firm from bringing about a zombie apocalypse, because despite repeatedly almost doing so across the last half-decade, various people and groups continue to try and weaponize the undead. A trip to Mexico and a team-up with the Los Campeones Justicieros, who have been fighting against the forces of mad science for generations. A Bigfoot solidarity club, made up of the many, many ape-men cryptids that exist across mythology. And probably more, once I get around to writing it.

Characters

As you might have picked up on by now, the principal cast of this series is loosely inspired by a mix of the archetypes of the Universal Monsters and the Mystery Gang of the Scooby-Doo franchise. Let's wrap this post with a brief spotlight on each:

As previously mentioned, "Shaggy" would be the latest Frankenstein. A lanky former layabout who is perpetually in existential trepidation over his circumstances. A hectic familial arrangement led to "Shaggy" as a boy being put exclusively into the care of his stepmother, who out of a misguided sense of protection would terrify "Shaggy" over supernatural forces and inflict brutal punishment whenever she suspected him of engaging with it.

While the truth about himself and his family is partially shocking, to an extent it actually brought about a sense of relief, the idea that his life isn't as aimless as he once thought. Of course, through his misadventures "Shaggy" will realize being a post-human isn't exactly all that it's cracked up to be, but he will still find comfort and communion not just with his new gang of friends, but of the supernatural at large, an aspect of the world he was taught to fear.

"Shaggy" isn't a complete nervous wreck, though. After failed stints of using drugs, both medicinal and recreational, to cope with his anxieties, "Shaggy" turned to spiritualism, something that was still taboo to his stepmom due to it often running parallel to mythology and folklore. Through this, "Shaggy" has not only found a core sense of control he can generally rely on, but he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the supernatural, and can often help the rest to parse out what are genuine threats and what is just smoke and mirrors.

What "Shaggy" lacks in bravery he makes up for in determination. Owing to his enhanced post-human physiology, "Shaggy" can run several miles without fatigue or exhaustion, is virtually immune to all poisons and toxins, and naturally process and digests (Stress-eating was often a point of coping for "Shaggy" though neither he nor anyone around him could fathom why he never seemed to gain a pound). Since most of their enemies are after him anyways, "Shaggy" quickly finds a groove where he becomes the bait, evading the gang's pursuers while they hatch a scheme to defeat them.

"Daphne" would be our Wolfman stand-in. Going off of the Universal homages, one would assume "Daphne" to be part of the infamous Talbot family. However, coming from cajun ancestry myself, I'm going instead to make her a part of the "Rougarou" pack, a clan of lycanthropes native to the Louisiana bayou and whose wolf forms evoke the near extinct red wolves native to the American Southeast.

"Daphne" is the glue that holds the team together, the most emotionally healthy and mature of her friends who can keep morale going even in the most dire of circumstances. She is a "casual naturist," jer lycanthropy making nudity a recurring thing to contend with, but she also is very enthused about her sense of fashion being another aspect of her self-expression.

In addition to her lycanthropy giving her enhanced feats, "Daphne" is also a skilled survivalist and horticulturalist, making her invaluable for prolonged periods living in the woods or off the grid. Her passion and loyalty, however, is as much a flaw as it is a virtue. Though the most emotionally composed out of the gang, "Daphne" can still be impulsive and quick to anger, especially whenever her friends are ever threatened or in perceived danger. Though she has mastered her lycanthropy where she can transform at will and at various stages, "Daphne" is still vulnerable to the various lunar stages, which enemies can capitalize on.

The "Fred" of the group is the only non-Monster. Rather, he is the latest generation of the Van Helsing family, trained from infancy to follow in the tradition of monster hunting. I absolutely love the interpretation over the years that Abraham Van Helsing and his cohorts were carrying out unreliable methods and who swindled the wealthy to achieve their goals. Loosely inspired by the anime series Helsing, by modern times the Van Helsing family have largely been coasting off of his slaying of Dracula, even as monster hunting has become more ubiquitous over the past hundred or so years.

That's not to say "Fred" himself is arrogant, or even blood-thirsty towards hunting monsters. The recurring shorthand I've described this character to people is that of "an Ash Williams-type," a sort of idiot savant who's not very good at anything besides monster hunting. Even then, it's largely a matter of sport to "Fred," unlike most of his family who hunt to kill. And I am absolutely going to lean in with the more recent iterations of Scooby-Fred being a trap-making himbo. In essence, "Fred's" ingenuity and capability are often a gambit, but if his skills are indeed applicable, its very high reward. In addition, "Fred's" conventional good looks, strong charisma and prestigious family name often helps the gang get into certain spaces or people. "Fred" is not the leader of the group, though many assume as much.

No, the true leader would be "Velma." Similar to "Shaggy," "Velma" is a hybrid of sorts. Her father was the revenant Imhotep, conceived during his time living incognito on the streets of Cairo under the name Ardath Bey. "Velma" has been endowed with longevity (Among other powers) through Imhotep's revenant heritage, so she is still in the young adult range as the rest of the group despite being nearly a century old.

Like her father, "Velma" is skilled in hypnotism and enthrallment, and has an intrinsic connection with arid climates and biomes (This has put a wedge from time to time with her friendship with "Daphne," as her native swamplands are conditions by which "Velma" is most physically vulnerable). "Velma" has dedicated her life to vanquishing evils such as her father, and her knowledge and analysis of the supernatural is more historical than "Shaggy," who goes about his research from a more spiritual angle.

Aside from her physical and environmental limitations, "Velma's" other main weakness are her poor interpersonal skills, mixed with long-standing issues with self-loathing. "Velma" often carries out her work to atone for the sins of her father, and having lived out so many years of fervent fear of monsters, has consigned herself to live by way of atonement, never finding true peace until she warms a righteous death. This is something "Daphne" and "Fred" have learned to accommodate, as upsetting as it makes them, though "Shaggy's" integration into the group will cause some flare-ups with this, especially as he experiences his own arc of self-affirmation. "Velma" might find love in the form of the gender-fluid descendant of Jekyll & Hyde I've been throwing around, we'll see.

Last but not least, there's "Scooby," who will be going in a different direction than some might expect. "Scooby" starts out as "Shaggy's" (human) childhood best friend, who took him in after his home life became too toxic to stick around. She clashes with the team before they go on the run, putting her foot down that she tag along as the rest of the gang escorts him to safety.

At first, "Scooby" is "Shaggy's" foot in perceived normalcy and familiarity, especially as his life and circumstances become increasingly more chaotic and fantastical. However, after the team has a brush with the Cult of Dagon, "Scooby" begins to exhibit several ailments: Nausea, dehydration, thinning hair, dry skin. After a check-up, the gang will discover that "Scooby" has ancestry tied to the Deep Ones, and is experiencing her metamorphosis into a Gill-Person prematurely. By the end of the story, she will have transformed fully.

Even after the loss of her humanity, "Scooby" will remain kind and affable, though much like the original Shadow Over Innsmouth tale, there will be left ambiguous whether "Scooby" remains fully herself, or if she is also becoming fanatical and subservient to Dagon (Which could be a main plot in and of itself). In addition to being able to navigate submerged and subaquatic terrain through her newfound amphibious nature, "Scooby" will also have the ability to communicate with non-humanoid monsters, the full extent of which the gang will learn along their travels.

Conclusion

And that's pretty much the short run of it. What do y'all think? Do you have any thoughts, suggestions or questions? Would you be interested in a more fleshed out plot with this premise and cast down the line? Feel free to let me know. Until then, have a Happy Halloween!

[earth-93]

Can’t wait for the next KHUx update: Ephemer learns what a gun is.

[earth-93]

Sketch pages

[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: ANGEL (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.09]

C: \login\BuddyHolly

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Xmen

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Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\Xmen\WORTHINGTON_WREN.txt

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Main Alias/Moniker: Angel

Legal Name: Wren Kathleen Worthington

Other Aliases: Warren III, The Avenging Angel

Date of Birth: December 21st, 1984 (Age: 21)

Status: Alive

Species: Mutant

Sex: Female

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 5'9'' (1.75m) / 135 lbs (61.2kg)

Hair/Eye Color: Blonde / Blue

Timeline (1985 - 2002): Wren is the heiress to the Worthington Airlines travel empire. Her grandfather Warren aided in the war effort along the likes of Howard Stark, but exited defense after the war to pursue commercial travel. Under his son's ownership, Worthington Airlines became one of the biggest luxury airlines in the world. Warren Jr was so dead-set on continuing the family name that he had no other names planned but Warren III. When the baby turned out to be a girl, Wren's name was a suggestion from her mother after her birth.

Wren was an energetic child, which prompted her parents to sign her up for extracurriculars after her excitability became too much of a nuisance to both them and the family house staff. Athletics and pagentry were the two most noteworthy ventures, and the former being one Wren held in high regard all through childhood. Wren has often compared it to her wings: It's something wholly her own, and is only limited by her own applications. By adolescence, Wren was enrolled into the Massachusetts Academy. She was pressured by her parents to involve herself with the Hellions, a school clique made up of children of Hellfire Club members such as herself. Wren maintained a minimal association with the Hellions, preferring the company of the school jocks. Wren became a prized track and field star while at the Academy, and by the time she was sixteen she and her parents were routinely speaking with college and Olympic scouts.

Timeline (2002): Around her eighteenth birthday, however, when Wren's mutant traits began to develop. It reportedly started off as cramps and strains in her shoulders, then visible bruises that grew all over her upper back. Wren eventually awoke in the middle of the night from a sharp pain and discovered nubs growing out from the bruises. Wren's family was already in the area to pick her up for holiday, and Wren's father refused to send her to a hospital for alleged concern over unwanted attention on the family, and instead hired two specialists to meet with them in the Worthington winter cabin up in the Adirondack Mountains for personal treatment.

One of those specialists was none other than the Professor. Even in the short drive from the city to update, Wren's mutation was rapidly growing. By the time he has arrived, her wings had fully grown, feathers and all. Though her parents were distressed, once the pain and shock of her growing wings faded Wren was reportedly elated with her changes. The Professor has said that his and Wren's earliest exchanges mostly occurred telepathically, as Wren opted to spend winter break soaring across the area rather than he around her parents.

On the last day of holiday, Week checked her phone to find a series of voicemails from a school friend, Amanda Cobb. Amanda had confided to Wren in a moment of great distress over being abused by a coach at the Academy (Weeks earlier, Amanda had walked in on Wren inspecting the bruises along her back and assumed she was being abused by the coach as well). This revelation threw Wren into a blind rage, putting her abilities to the limit by flying uninterrupted from Adirondack to Massachusetts in little under an hour. Wren hauled the coach high into the sky and let him plummet back down. By all accounts, it was only through the Professor's psychic intervention that Wren was restrained from letting the coach crash back down to Earth. It was certainly enough to coerce the him to confess his crimes.

Timeline (2003): By the time classes resumed at the Academy, the school was so swept up in scandal that Wren's wings barely registered to most. The school board did request that Wren conceal them out of concern of "distracting" other students, to which she begrudgingly complied. To Wren's astonishment, the Hellions accepted her with open arms, revealing that they were all mutants themselves. Wren took every opportunity to abstain from the Academy grounds and finish her education through the Professor's personal tutoring, though she kept tabs with the Hellions, both out of the Professor's request and Wren's own curiosity.

Integrating with the rest of the group, Wren quickly took it upon herself to become the leader, something I didn't object to at the time. She had a far more blunt and proactive personality than I did at the time, and her background made her far better at working crowds and being a public figure than I was. At the time, Wren was also the only one of us who was an open mutant, and to her credit she took jer newfound duties as a mutant activist very seriously. This is best exemplified when Wren swooped to Bobby's defense when his own powers briefly put him in legal trouble.

Where Wren did display hesitance was when we all set out to intervene at Santo Marco. Not because she objected to us intervening, but because she recognized how her usual tactics not suit such a sensitive situation. Over the course of that mission, our group dynamic was forced to shift and adapt, and by the end congealed into the X-Men that people would come to know later that year. Wren continued to be the face of the group, but tactical duties had effectively fallen upon me.

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[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: BEAST (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.08]

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Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\Xmen\MCCOY_HANK.txt

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Main Alias/Moniker: Beast

Legal Name: Dr. Henry Phillip McCoy

Other Aliases: Hank, Hankie, Link "The Beast" Phillips, The Missing Link, Beastie Boy, Golden Arm Hank, The Agile X-Man

Date of Birth: November 30th, 1983 (Age: 23)

Status: Alive

Species: Mutant

Sex: Male

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 6'3'' (1.9m) / 402 lbs (182.34 kg)

Hair/Eye Color: Black / Hazel

Timeline (1983 - 1998): Hank's mutant traits were apparent at birth. He was not only larger than average for a newborn, weighing in at over 12 pounds, but his hands and feet were already disproportionate in size. The doctors could find no trace of giantism in Hank or the health risks of any similar condition, but the McCoys couldn't leave it be.

They studied potential causes for Hank's condition, and became well-read on mutant theory. The McCoys had a good sense that life was going to be tough for Hank no matter what, so they resolved to provide as comfortable a childhood as they could. Hank's extended family also assisted with this. In particular, his aunts Edna and Gertrude, with how warmly Hank speaks of them to this day.

Hank received his share of taunts and jeers in school, but he claimed to have taken the attention in stride. He was a class clown in elementary school, and a prized athlete by high school, but on the whole Hank grew up preferring the company of books over people. At fifteen, Hank was reading and writing at a college level. His parents knew staying in their small town would only hold Hank back, but were hesitant to let him out onto the world without their supervision.

That's when the Professor entered the picture. He visited the McCoy's personally, divulging that, weeks earlier, Hank had sent an unsolicited paper on mutant theory to his office over in ESU. The Professor apparently laughed off Hank's forwardness, and offered to vouch for Hank should be and his parents choose to put him into college early.

Timeline (1998 - 2001): Hank spent most of his freshman year at ESU on campus, only venturing out into the city for the occasional exhibit or performance. Then on the first day of a genetics class, Hank met a fellow young student, Kavita Rao. The two became involved over the next year, but it was under the understanding that Kavita would eventually continue her studies elsewhere, whether or not Hank would come with her. Nonetheless, Hank took her eventual departure to London quite hard.

By then, Hank had already accumulated three doctorates, but lost the drive to stay and complete his PhD. He had offers from both the Professor and his own father as to what he could do next in life, but he ended up taking his own direction. Based on his love of athleticism and theatrics, Hank took to pro-wrestling. As the wrestling heel (or villain) Link "The Beast" Phillips, Hank was reportedly happy and content with where he was in life.

Timeline (2001 - 2003): Then one day, Hank showed up at the doorstep to the Professor's Mansion in a fugue state. It took Jean to pull him out of it and speak to us. He explained that he wasn't the only mutant performing in the Ultra (Later Unlimited) Class Wrestling Federation. One such wrestler was Gunther Bain, who became Hank's friend and mentor as they toured Hank's native Midwest. In actuality, Bain was a recruiter to the Brotherhood, and propositioned Hank when he had cemented their trust in one another.

Hank stressed to us that he was never tempted by Bain's offer, but he did rationalize he very well might have, had just a few things about him and his life had played out differently. The thought troubled Hank so greatly it put him in his fugue state that lasted all through his abandoning the UCWF circuit and the train ride to the Mansion. Once Jean got him back to his wits, Hank told the Professor he was fully on board with the pilot study that would eventually become the School.

Technically, Hank was more a staff member than a fellow student, brought on board as the Professor's assistant. But Hank very quickly slotted himself with myself and the rest of the "students." Being the Professor's confidante of sorts lent Hank a level of access to information that even I wasn't privy to. So when the Professor secluded himself on the news of the Santo Marco occupation, Hank was the one who gave the rest of us answers.

He told us the full history (Or at least as much as he knew about at the time) between the Professor and Magneto, and how the idea for the X-Men was one of many plans they made when they were still friends and allies. Hank was hesitant to intervene in Santo Marco, but probably due to his brush with the Brotherhood through Bain, he stood by me when I convinced the Professor that we needed to intervene.

continue data? y/n]

[earth-93]

Rereading Batgirl (2000) and it really is crazy how DC struck gold with such a strong ongoing centering a complex and nuanced protagonist, with strong ties to other characters in the mythos, and an interesting take on morality filtered through her trauma and guilt, and her deep desire to do good. And then just threw all that out for seemingly no reason other than racism and misogyny and let Cassandra’s character be neglected for years.

[earth-93]

More E93 fanart, this time for Jean. Here's her character profile, if you happened to stumble on this first. As with my earlier Cyclops piece, this was done by the wonderful Vin Lopez. Check out his socials: Instagram, or the site formerly known as Twitter.

[earth-93]

If you live in the USA and you're pleading for donations to pay your rent, bills, or get food then dial 211! Please dial 211 before the last minute!

It's a toll free service with people who will help you find programs in your community to pay those bills, find food, and find housing! They will give you numbers to call so you can get help.

It is not 100% foolproof. Their job is to direct you to a program they believe will help your current issue, but it's still a step up from praying random strangers online will give you enough cash before a deadline! The added benefit of these community programs, which get funded by the local government most of the time, is if there are more people using them then they can get more money to help more people.

You're not taking resources from other people if you use your community services. Your taxes pay for them. Use them.

Dial 211 first to see if they can help, and if for some reason they can't, then make your donation posts!

https://www.211.org/