#earth93

[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]

I guess I'm getting to a point where I can start sharing some of the art I've been commissioning for Earth-93 😚

Here's Scott's character profile, for any curious about the lore behind this art.

My take on a young Cyclops was brought to life by the wonderful Vin Lopez. He does some great redesigns, so he sure to check his stuff out if you dug this!

IG: vinicuslopez_artwork

Twitter/"χ": @lopez_artwork

[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.

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[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: MARVEL GIRL

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.07]

C: \login\Sprite

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Xmen

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\Xmen

04/22/2006 4:34 PM Total Files Listed: 15 File(s) 168,248 bytes

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

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Main Alias/Moniker: Marvel Girl

Legal Name: Jean Elaine Grey

Other Aliases: Jeannie, Little Red Hen, Red

Date of Birth: June 28th, 1986 (Age: 19)

Status: Alive

Species: Mutant

Sex: Female

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 5’6” (1.68m) / 130 lbs (58.97kg)

Hair/Eye Color: Red/Green

Timeline (1986 - 1996): Scott delegated yet another write-up onto me. I hope he knows he can't use this "conflict of interest" excuse forever. This whole project is one big conflict of interest, but whatever. I, for one, don't need an excuse to talk about the second-coolest lady mutant I know. And Jean lived with the first on my list, so I know she won't take it personally.

Jean was the middle child of five to two college professors in Annadale-on-Hudson. Her parents doted on her, her big sis and little brothers loved her, she was the happiest little girl north of Broadway. Then one day, when Jean was ten, something horrible happened. Jean and her friend Annie were playing outside, when Annie ran out into the road and was struck by a car.

As Annie was clinging to life, Jean's mutant powers emerged prematurely, using her telepathic powers to try and hold onto Annie, but she didn't make it. Jean felt someone die more closely and directly than most people ever will, and on top of that Jean's powers were like an open wound, her mind taking in every stray thought and feeling around. Eventually, Jean couldn't take it anymore and fell into a catatonic shock.

Timeline (1996 - 1997): Eventually, Jean was admitted to the Millbury Clinic, at the time was one of the top pediatric hospitals in the country. The Greys were worried for their littlest, and who and what "Millbury" was connected to and had done wasn't yet exposed, so let's not hold it against them. After all, even after admitting Jean, they didn't call it a day. They kept looking into what had happened to their daughter, and that eventually got them in contact with Professor Xavier, who was still holding down his residency at ESU at the time.

It would be easy to give Xavier the credit of bringing Jean out of her coma, entering her mind and having a psychic counseling session, but right before Xavier went down to the Millbury Clinic, Jean had a brief anchor for her powers. The mental image of a boy her age with fire blasting out from his eyes altered the empathetic side of her powers. Xavier at least put in some mental blocks on his way out, to help curb the flow of thoughts and sensations Jean would be overwhelmed with otherwise.

Timeline (1997 - 2002): Jean was given a clean bill of health (Something "Millbury" didn't hesitate to take credit for publicly), but the incident with Annie still left an effect on her. As a teenager, the formerly outgoing Jean grew more withdrawn and introspective. She cut her hair, started wearing more muted clothes, and while supportive with others almost never opened herself up to someone else.

This is the time Jean's artsy side started to grow. This all wasn't too long ago, but it was still long enough for being an outed mutant was unthinkable, and though Jean can be quiet and shy, she is absolutely not the type to bottle herself up. That need for visibility is probably where her modeling and performative art stuff first came from, and trying to make sense of her powers is probably why she's so fond of more abstract art and music. All of it is just kinda static to me, but you do you, girl.

Her interest in behavioral science also came up around here. Even with her powers under control, a great deal of maintenance was still needed, and even though Xavier's blocks cut down Jean's telepathy, she had enough to grow fascinated with why people are the way they are. Speaking of Professor Xavier, he and Jean kept in contact over this time, doing check-ups and psychic training both in-person and across the state.

Around the end of her junior year, Xavier approached Jean's parents to ask her involvement in a pilot study of his, one that was meant to test out what would become the school. Jean had managed to graduate early and was ready to go to college down in the city, but she swore to her parents she could handle both. To try and sweeten the pot, Xavier offered to cover Jean's housing, which is how she first met Ororo. The two hit it off, both being beauties with big hearts who love all that artsy stuff. Ororo's influence definitely helped get Jean out of her shell, too.

Timeline (2002 - 2003): Jean was at the mansion the day Scott first arrived. She had told Xavier about her visions of him while in her coma, which helped him to track him down years before. Jean thought giving Scott a telepathic greeting would be a cute reunion, but Scott himself didn't seem to agree. Apparently, Scott said he wasn't used to having someone poke around in his head, but he'd also been in contact with the Professor for years up to that point, so I don't buy it (Nor does anyone else).

Jean did much better next time around, when Dr. McCoy first showed up at Xavier's doorstep. He stumbled in in a fugue state, one that even Xavier didn't know what to make of. Fortunately, Jean had been honing her empathy since then, and was able to get Dr. McCoy out of his funk. Wren, that was a different story. Being such a type-a personality, there was a sort of pecking order made by Wren with the only other girl in the group, but thankfully Wren learned to chill out before long. And Bobby, Jean said that he reminded him of one of her little brothers, so it wasn't all that hard to buddy up with him. So before they were even legit, Jean had been the heart of the team from the start.

When Jean first agreed to work with Xavier on mutant activism, she said she was planning on doing it in a sort of capacity Xavier was doing at the time. Helping from a distance, but not too far that her safety or anonymity could ever be put at risk. That's to say that she was probably the last person to ever see herself doing what they would do in Santo Marco that March.

But, believe it or not, while it was Scott and his rousing speech that convinced Xavier to intervene, and Dr. McCoy who told the rest of them the bad blood between Xavier and Magneto, and the whole idea of a mutant response team was first pitched between the two ex-friends years earlier, it was Jean that got all those moving parts together.

She's the one who lent the emotional support to get Scott to make that rousing speech in the first place. Just a few hours later, she and the rest of them were flying into an in-progress international incident. Talk about getting out of your comfort zone, huh?

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[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: THE WASP

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.06]

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\VANDYNE_JANET.txt

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Main Alias/Moniker: Wasp

Legal Name: Janet Van Dyne

Other Aliases: Jan, ジャネット(Janetto), The Unstoppable Wasp, The Wonderous Wasp, The Winsome Wasp, Waspie, Fashion Fly, Giant-Woman, Tinkerbell

Date of Birth: March 5th, 1981 (Age: 25)

Status: Alive

Species: Human Mutate

Sex: Female

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 5'4'' (1.63 m) / 110 lbs (49.9 kg)

Hair/Eye Color: Auburn / Hazel

Timeline (1981 - 2002): Jan was born in the Big Apple while her parents, scientists Vernon Van Dyne and Nozomi Akatsuki, were staffing the Tomorrow Academy. Jan would spend her earliest days a fly on the wall to her future teammates and a bunch of other movers-and-shakers, but of course she doesn't remember any of that. Most of her time in the Academy was spent being playmates with the other baby of the Academy, Johnny Storm. The two of them were looked after by Johnny's big sis, in what Sue called "Yester-Daycare." Jan's parent's marriage didn't last long outside of the Academy's eventual shutdown, calling it quits when she was ten. Jan spent her adolescence bouncing between Japan and America between her parents. She says this played a big part in her wanderlust and love of art and culture.

For all her landmarks in the field of nanorobotics, Akatsuki-san is, evidently, a bit of a pill. She nudged Jan all her life to become a scientist like her, and allegedly discouraged Jan from keeping in touch with her father. By the time she was college-bound, Jan shot back at both of these burdens, enrolling in school in the US to be close to her old man. Going to UCLA with eyes on an art major, Jan made fast friends with her dormmate, fellow future heroine Jen Walters. Jan made sure to head up to San Fran once a month to check up on her dad, which since he was such a workaholic was often just PymTech HQ. This is how Jan met Hank, and the two started to go steady after a beat.

Timeline (2002 - 2003): By Jan's senior year, things started to smell fishy over at PymTech. Vernon stopped answering Jan's calls, as did Hank. Strolling up to the joint herself, Jan was informed a change in management barred non-employees from touring the premises, which only got Jan's dander up even more. Evading security, Jan made her way to her father's lab, where she saw him chewing out the newly-minted CEO, Elihas Starr. Now, not to speak too ill of the dead, but by all accounts Vernon Van Dyne was a real pushover. He was exactly the type for someone like Starr to keep on hand in his scheme at the time to take over the company, but when it came time to start cooking up the company founder's signature shrinking particles to be weapons of war, Vernon finally grew a spine, and his defiance to Starr was what Jan walked in on.

Jan's stealth slipped at that point, but when Starr noticed her, he suddenly lightened up, chumming it up to her like an old friend. He told Jan he and her father were hashing out a test run to a new particle accelerator and offered her to be an audience. Probably out of fear of Starr exposing him in front of his daughter, Vernon went along with this cover, and out of want to uncover what was really going down, Jan went along with it. Unfortunately for father and child, Starr was exactly the type of person to waste two people who might interfere with his business, and he over-calibrated the accelerator. Vernon was vaporized almost instantly. Jan was a bit more lucky and fell into a coma. Even luckier for her, Starr was unable to finish the job, as quickly after the "lab accident" Jan was found by Hank and put up in his family home for personal care.

Timeline (2003): For the next few months, Jan remained bedridden while Hank and his family staged a heist to expose and discredit Starr from their company. Jan would awaken the night of the job, and would unwittingly botch up those plans. Jen Walters and Bill Foster were tending to Jen at the time, and they reported seeing Jan spring up from her coma, and shortly after her bed would collapse from underneath her. By the time she got to her feet, she had doubled in size, and had kept growing. As the Pyms would determine later, the bombardment of Pym Particles Jan endured months earlier had altered her body, making her the first living organism to produce and process the previously synthetic particles. A mix of that and some hazy memories through the Jan into a flurry of vengeance against Starr, and she leapt out the window and made a mad dash for PymTech, growing bigger as she went along. By the time she tore off the roof of the building, she was well over fifty feet tall. Hank managed to subdue her and bring her back to proper size, but at the cost of Starr making a getaway.

On Hank's insistence, Jan remained a guest of the Pym estate, going through physical and psychological therapy all while Hank ran a million different tests before concluding what I had said earlier. Eventually, Hank got a second opinion, which just so happened to be Jan's own neesan, Sue Storm. Finding out that her old babysitter had become a super-scientist, expectant mother and, most pertinently, leading a team of super-people with super-powers herself, Jan couldn't care less about her own condition and pleaded for Sue to catch her up on the last few months. By the end of it, Jan was certain a new wave of superheroes was rolling, and with the powers she had been granted wanted to get in on it.

Jan cajoled Hank to join in on this venture with her, and with the help of Sue and her formula for Unstable Molecules, Jan lent her eye for aesthetic to making custom suits for the two of them. She worked her beau's ant-keeping hobby into his suit, and wanting to compliment the bug gimmick (And probably also wanting to get some distance from being the "50 Foot Woman of Sam Francisco"), hatched her new identity as the Unstoppable Wasp. The duo would patrol the Bay Area over the following spring and summer, with special attention on fighting back on tie influx of super-weapons Starr was looking to facilitate. But all that would be small potatoes compared to what would play out that following September.

When Bruce was finally caught and locked up by the feds, a small team that included Hank volunteered to assist on a procedure that could potentially cure him of the big green monkey on his back. Jan tagged along, wanting to give Bruce a smile and a hug as a favor for Jen, who was too choked up about the whole thing to go herself. While the surgery was underway and Jan was left to wait and twiddle her thumbs, some folks at SHIELD tried to schmooze her up, get her to fight for them. Before Jan could even be talked into a handshake, the Breakout went down. Jan scoffed at the call for containment and sprang into action. She, Hank, Stark and Thor eventually came together to try and settle down the Hulk, but all five of them found a mutual threat in the rampaging Graviton. Once the day was saved, it was Jan who first coined the name for the house the five of them would build, though Jan herself admits there wasn't much thought behind "Avengers" just sounding colorful or dramatic.

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[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: CYCLOPS (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.05]

C: \login\Sprite

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Xmen

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\Xmen

04/19/2006 2:33 PM Total Files Listed:

15 File(s) 168,248 bytes

Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\Civilians\SUMMERS_SCOTT.txt

[file data =

Main Alias/Moniker: Cyclops

Legal Name: Scott Daniel Summers

Other Aliases: Cyke, Slim, Scotty, Summers, One-Eye, Shades, Hot Shot, Risky Business, Ray Charles, Buddy_Holly

Date of Birth: August 13, 1986 (Age: 19)

Status: Alive

Species: Mutant

Sex: Male

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 5’9’’ (1.75 m) / 162 lbs (74 kg)

Hair/Eye Color: Hair/Eye Color: Brown / Brown (Glowing Red Almost Constantly)

Timeline (1986 - 1996): Scott didn't want to write up his own file. Something about a conflict of interest. So here I am. I choose to believe that means he sees me as capable as himself, since Scott otherwise takes his duties as a TB pretty seriously. There are still a ton of personal details I wasn't able to get from Scott directly, but I did get from Jean with Scott's consent, and I'd say that's about as good a verification as any.

Scott has had a rough life, but what he went through wasn't what entirely made him into who he is. When corresponding with Alex, it sounds like Scott was always a bit of a quiet kid, the kind who preferred to play around with his LEGO bucket than go outside. The family moved around a lot, which probably didn't help Scott with making friends. That's probably why he seemed to cling to Alex in these days. Even though Alex was super-young back during this time, he still vividly remembers Scott being very protective, helping Alex with his math homework and cleaning him up whenever Alex got scuffed up. Poor Scott might have been able to catch up on his social skills, were it not for everything that came next.

Timeline (1996 -1998): Now, even those among us here on Stars & Stripes, the full details of what went down at the Starcore Incident remain unclear. We have a prevailing theory, but pending the approval of an actual, real-life alien onto the Brigade (Rick himself has been vouching pretty hard for this Marvel guy, so it shouldn't be too long), all we know for certain was that Canadian billionaire Peter Corbeau wanted to get humankind into space, and someone else didn't want that. And because Chris Summers was the chosen pilot for the spacecraft and invited the rest of the family to the lunch site to watch him fly off, they all got caught in the crossfire.

First, Scott watched the spacecraft carrying his dad get shot out of the sky. Next, his mother rushed him and Alex into a convoy and rushed off the launch site as it was being bombarded from above. Scott's mom didn't get far and was swerved off the road. Pinned to the car from the wreck, she pleaded to Scott to lead Alex into the woods and keep him safe, but the brothers only made it out a little bit before Alex broke down in hysterics. As Scott tried to tend to Alex, he saw from afar two figures aiming a shot. When Scott shoved Alex out of the way, the blast that hit the ground then flung Scott into the air, striking his head against a boulder and knocking him out cold.

What happened next is much less speculative, but no less nasty. That monster Essex, he somehow found Scott and took him to his clinic in Arkansas. Over the next year, Scott was kept in the clinic's basement, sedated but conscious enough to be subjected to Essex's experiments, all to extract and toy with Scott's X-Gene. What finally pulled Scott out of it was Jean, when she became a guest of the clinic herself. The connection was hazy, but the mental impression of a red-headed girl around his age gave Scott enough focus to finally escape. His optic blasts cleared an entire concrete wall, and Scott blindly ran off into the Ozarks.

Waking up a year later, clear across the country, and suffering not only from intense migraines, but what seemed like lasers bursting out from his eyes to say that Scott was overwhelmed would be an understatement. This was how he fell prey to Jack Winters, a jewel thief who was operating in the area at the time. Winters came up with half the solution to Scott's optic blasts, and gave him a nice pair of Ray-Bans. They weren't as effective as his later custom ruby lenses, with Scott literally burning through his shades over time, but it was enough to entrust Scott to Winters, who became his lookout and accomplice in his crimes.

Scott's blasts would still sometimes get out of control, and enough random arsons made in this stealing spree caught the attention of Agent Duncan, who then reported the situation to the Professor. It all came to a head when Duncan assembled the local law enforcement to corner Winters in his latest raid. Desperate, Winters opted to hold Scott hostage, only to find his body becoming immobilized. The Professor then telepathically instructed Scott to exit the store, where the two then had a more proper introduction once the cops rushed in to detain Winters.

Timeline (1998 - 2004): With the help of Agent Duncan and Professor Xavier, Scott was sent to live with his grandparents in Alaska, where he lived a much more stable Iife for the next few years. Scott still wasn't much of a social butterfly, but his traumas didn't completely cripple him, either. During this time, Scott got super-introspective, getting into meditation and martial arts (Huge fan of Bruce Lee). He also got involved in his school's sailing and journalism clubs, which is how he met his one and only high school friend and confidante, Lee Forester. Speaking with Lee, Scott around this time didn't sound much different from how the rest of us know him for, save for being even more stiff and reserved. And, knowing what he just went through back then, I honestly don't blame him.

This was also around the time Scott first got into sleuthing. Not only having been victimized by forces he didn't understand, but also just insanely curious about his mutant nature, Scott first fell into his habit of never being able to leave things be. It's probably what ended up having him become one of Rick's earliest recruits into the Brigade. Scott never managed to uncover the full truth of what truly went down at Starcore, but he did at least track down Alex. He chose to remain with his adoptive family in Vancouver, but the two brothers remained in touch.

Speaking of keeping in touch, Scott maintained contacts with Xavier all throughout this time. The Professor hooked Scott up with his first pair of ruby shades, and frequently held check-ups on Scott's condition and his own private testing of his mutant power, and Xavier was completely open to any and all questions Scott had about mutants, of which there was apparently a lot. I can personally attest to this, the Professor is one of the few people Scott can become an absolute chatterbox about. He trusts him out of all of the original team. So when the Professor called Scott to come to New York following graduation to help him with a social study on the mutant experience, Scott left Alaska without a second thought.

The first day he stepped foot into the Mansion, Scott was met with his literal dream girl. Apparently, his face grew as red as his glasses, and then when Jean attempted to greet him telepathically he then rushed out of the room. The two tried again with the introductions eventually, but it would still take a bit more time for Scott to open up to Jean. All the other non-mind-readers of the First Class, it was a whole lot smoother. Scott got along with Hank pretty well. The two bonded not only on mutant issues (Scott with the social aspect, Hank with the genetics), but also because the two now had a sparring partner with their martial arts hobbies. There was a brief pecking order once Wren entered the picture, one that Scott didn't feel like dignifying and let Wren believe she was the leader of their little group, for the time being at least. The two even worked together when Bobby got into his legal troubles, and because of that Bobby was especially fond of the two of them.

Soon enough, Scott found himself in a friend group he could trust and depend on, and he believed in the Professor's whole dream wholeheartedly. So when the Brotherhood invaded Santo Marco and created an an international incident, it was a lot for Scott to take in. He looked for the Professor for guidance, only for Xavier to shut himself off entirely, taking the whole situation even worse. Hank told Scott and the others of the whole history between Xavier and Magneto, and the story sparked something in Scott. With a little encouragement from Jean, Scott first rallied the rest to take action, and then cajoled Xavier to let them take their training to the test. It took a lot of convincing, but eventually the group piled into the Professor's fancy private jet, ready to sneak into Santo Marco and change history.

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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]

BRIGADE FILES: ICEMAN (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.10]

C: \login\BuddyHolly

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Xmen

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\Xmen

04/26/2006 9:19 AM Total Files Listed: 15 File(s) 168,248 bytes

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]

BRIGADE FILES: ANGEL (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.09]

C: \login\BuddyHolly

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Xmen

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\Xmen

04/25/2006 7:27 PM Total Files Listed: 15 File(s) 168,248 bytes

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: MISTER FANTASTIC (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.04]

C: \login\Artisan

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\F4

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\F4

04/17/2006 8:48 AM Total Files Listed: 6 File(s) 67, 335 bytes

Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\Civilians\RICHARDS_REED.txt

[file data =

Main Alias/Moniker: Mister Fantastic

Legal Name: Dr. Reed Roderick Richards

Other Aliases: Dr. Richards, Stretch, Slim

Date of Birth: February 4, 1975 (Age: 31)

Status: Alive

Species: Human Mutate

Sex: Male

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 6' 1'' (1.85 m) / 180 lbs (82 kg)

Hair/Eye Color: Black / Brown

Timeline (1975 - 1980): Reed was born in the African nation of Niganda, exiled at a young age through a mandated expulsion of Asian-Africans from the country. He was separated from his birth parents and spent the first four years of his life in the British foster care system, where he was eventually adopted by the Richards. Nathaniel and Evelyn had struggled to conceive a child of their own, and after learning of the quiet child's tumultuous story agreed to take him in. The Richards named their new son "Reed" after the boy's spindly physique.

Reed was warmly accepted by the rest of his extended family. In particular, his eccentric uncle Ted told dramatic stories to Reed and his cousins, which Reed said years later would help his inquisitive nature first begin to flourish. On the flip-side of that, whenever Reed's own parents read him bedtime stories, he would keep them up with incessant questions about the logic of old fables. Through that, a question about why all the king's horses and men couldn't put Humpty back together again led to a breakdown of the conversion of mass, which to both their astonishment and delight, Reed was astute and attentive to.

Timeline (1980 - 1990): The Richards would eventually move to America for more lucrative job opportunities, but not before a nasty falling out between Reed's father and his Uncle Ted cut ties with the family back in England entirely. Reed's brilliance only kept growing, to the point where Nathaniel elected to take Reed out of school and give him personal tutoring so as to properly challenge his genius. Through Evelyn's insistence, however, Reed was also signed up for the Boy Scouts, to try and help his fledging social skills keep up with his academic ones. It wasn't a perfect solution—in addition to his awkwardness, Reed was the only South Asian child in troupe, which only made him stick out more—but Reed still looks fondly to his time as a Scout to this day.

Despite his lack of social graces and his seemingly aloof nature, Reed was far more perceptive than almost anyone gave him credit for. So much so that when shape-shifters from space attempted to impersonate Nathaniel among other figures, Reed was among the first to see past the ruse. The real Nathaniel was immensely proud of his son, and though he was sparse on the full details of the event, Nathaniel did not mince words that Reed very well might have saved the world. From that point on, Reed concentrated his studies into physics and engineering, wanting not just to protect humankind from alien invaders, but also hoping that the first true first encounter might not be a hostile one.

Timeline (1990 - 1991): By the time Reed was sixteen, he had acquired multiple doctorates and was then working on his PhD at Empire State University. During that same time in New York, he was also tutoring on the side, a volunteer practice Reed had been doing on-and-off since his Boy Scout days as an additional means to socialize with his peers. It was through this that Reed first met Ben, and despite the two being so wildly different managed to strike up a friendship. Reed helped Ben all the way through his GED training, and the two kept in touch as pen pals.

Reed also assisted his father with the Tomorrow Academy during that same time, and was asked to personally try to get through to the most difficult student in the project: A certain foreign prodigy by the name of Victor Dohmann. With enough diligence, Reed appeared to succeed, at least enough that Viktor would let Reed in on his dream project, which sought to breach planes of reality. While Viktor's theories came off as pseudo-science to most others, through Reed's eyes he found the final answer to to his tireless study into space travel.

In his excitement, Reed would base the thesis of his PhD on this theory, that of the properties of dark energy, and he talked both Viktor and Nathaniel to hold an experiment to try and harness it. Little did Reed know that Viktor changed the schematics of the experiment at the last minute, and backfired terribly. Reed was left unharmed, but Viktor's apparent injuries as well as Nathaniel's seeming complete vanishing left Reed horribly shaken, blaming himself for the whole incident.

Timeline (1991 - 2002): Feeling aimless and unfocused, Reed traveled around for a bit, doing consultancy work or briefly holding academic residency at universities. Somewhere in the midst of that, he encountered Alyssa Moy, who cajoled Reed into traveling Asia with her on a series of excavations. The two had a hot and heavy romance all the while, and though Alyssa's firebrand energy helped to pull Reed from his stupor, her blunt and tactless "means to an end" approach to scientific discovery ultimately overtaxed Reed's own sensibilities. Reed clumsily broke things over with Alyssa and moved back to New York, where he rented out the penthouse suite to the Baxter Building and first founded his laboratory, Fantastic Solutions.

True to form, Reed attempted a hundred things at once. He sought not only for his business to perform consultancy work and have a revolving door-type of form of enjoyment for overall public advocacy for science, but Reed also aspired to recreate the dark energy experiment. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Reed also had to pay the bills, which is how he landed a commission to help design the engine to SHIELD's Helicarrier. It was a job Reed feels to this day as a conflicted one to take, but he says the silver lining to it was being able to get reacquainted with an old friend. Ben turned out to be the military liaison to supervise Reed's construction of the engine, and he arranged to earn a more long-term residency in the Baxter Building for all of Reed's future government contracts.

With Fantastic Solutions largely only making money to keep the lights on and Reed's long-term plans being esoteric to most other people, it was a struggle for him to acquire a full-time staff. Reed tried reaching out to various Tomorrow Academy alums, but they were either unresponsive or busy with government contracts and private businesses. A major exception to this bad luck was when a certain someone took up a specialist position in biology and public health. Reed has admitted he didn't pay much attention to Sue when she was a part of the Tomorrow Academy, but he was very quickly smitten in their reunion years later. Not just by Sue's beauty, but her big brains and passion and dedication to her work.

It was a perfect fit, really. Sue had little to no patience for insincerity, amx for all his other faults, Reed is achingly sincere. After some time awkwardly navigating their working relationship with their mutual romantic feelings, the two apparently made themselves official when Reed treated Sue with a custom sound system in her lab. After getting him to dance with her, Sue allegedly first came up with the name the rest of the world would come to know Reed for, as a playful nickname. Moreso than when his father vanished before his eyes years ago, Reed had more of a certainty of his future than ever before...which is probably why Reed took the second attempt at his dark energy experiment so harshly.

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[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: BEAST (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.08]

C: \login\BuddyHolly

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Xmen

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\Xmen

04/23/2006 9:19 AM Total Files Listed: 15 File(s) 168,248 bytes

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.

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[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: PROFESSOR X (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.03]

C: \login\Buddy_Holly

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C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Xmen

Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\X-Men\XAVIER_CHARLES.txt

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Main Alias/Moniker: Professor X 

Legal Name: Dr. Charles Francis Xavier

Other Aliases: Professor, Prof, Dr. X, Chuck, Charlie, Wheels, Cue-ball

Date of Birth: January 12th, 1956 Age: 50)

Status: Alive

Species: Mutant 

Sex: Male

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight:  6' (1.83 m) [In Wheelchair: 3'4'' / 1.35 m]  / 173 lbs (78.5 kg) [With Wheelchair: 340 lbs / 154.2 kg]

Hair/Eye Color: Bald (Formerly Brown / Blue)

Timeline (1956 -1965): The Professor was the only child of a scientist and philanthropist. Brian Xavier fled his native Brazil, growing weary of the country's instability after World War II, and found easy sanctuary in the US by becoming a contracted scientist. He was initially set up in New York, where he first met Sharon Greymalkin. The Greymalkins were a wealthy and prestigious family until 1939, when Namor's attack on Manhattan left Sharon the sole survivor. She resolved to devote her inherited fortune to philanthropy, but the trauma over the loss of her family left her increasingly unstable and reclusive over the years, made worse when her daughter—the Professor's twin sister—perished in utero. 

Some of the Professor's earliest memories were of the desert, when the whole family was briefly moved out to the Southwest as Brian participated in a top-secret government project. The Professor's father was a virtual stranger to him growing up, so much so that he said he felt next to nothing when Brian died in a freak lab accident when he was nine. His mother, on the other hand, was a different story. The Professor has ruminated that the earliest manifestations of his mutant power were unconscious attempts to console Sharon, though the sheer emotional distress Sharon was wracked with often overwhelmed the Professor. This unconscious application of his powers was intermittent across his adolescence. He couldn't make sense of it, so he never confided in it to anyone. In turn, people would regard the Professor as being incredibly smart and perceptive or too nosy or intrusive, depending on the situation. 

Timeline (1965 - 1971): Less than a year after Brian's death, Sharon remarried.  The Professor's stepfather, Kurt Marko, came to prefer his meek, intelligent stepson over his own rowdy and rambunctious child, a preference that led to bullying and eventually outright abuse from the Professor's stepbrother, Cain. The first use of the Professor's powers in a hostile manner happened when he lashed out against Cain, sending a psychic shockwave that gave Cain an aneurysm. Cain miraculously recovered with no complications, and though he nor anyone back then had any proof of it, both Cain and the Professor had some sense of an understanding as to what happened. The abuse ceased after the incident, but Cain never hesitated to let the Professor know what a freak he was in Cain’s eyes. 

The Professor became more curious than ever of his “mind quirks,” and poured himself into whatever reading he could get his hands on. This led to his late father’s library and personal journals, where the Professor first learned that part of both Brian and Kurt’s contracted research was in studying mutant genes on behalf of the US government. The research was apparently done as part of a larger contingencies towards planning contingencies towards “the mutant problem,” which greatly disturbed the Professor at the time. When he was fifteen, Sharon finally succumbed to her substance abuse and Kurt, overwhelmed at the prospect of tending to two teenage boys by himself, cajoled the Professor to expedite his high school education and begin college early. 

Timeline (1971 - 1985): The Professor poured himself into his studies to avoid his familial anguish, as well as just keeping his powers in check. In three years, he had earned degrees in psychology, anthropology and psychiatry, and by twenty-five he earned his PhD in genetics. This tireless work effort came at a cost, both emotionally as well as physically. He grew cold, reclusive and detached, and grew thin and lost his hair prematurely before he turned thirty. He eventually took up a teaching position at Oxford, where he had resigned himself to the field of psychology, assisting people intangibly through his powers while never publicly outing himself as a mutant. 

That all changed when Dr. MacTaggert—or Moira Kinross, as she was at the time—came into the Professor’s life. A passionate genetics major specializing in mutant theory, Moira’s zeal radically changed the Professor's life and perspective, the degree to which only one other person can lay claim to. It was Moira who first convinced the Professor that better understanding mutants were a matter of civil rights, and the Professor was so enamored with Moira that they became as romantically intimate as they were intellectually. Moira evidently spoke often of she and the Professor getting married, and leading the charge together in mutant research and advocacy, but the Professor remained hesitant to expose himself in such a way. Not just as a mutant, but being so intimately involved with someone who was still his student and protégé at the time. 

Eventually, the Professor and Moira became intimately involved, during which time Moira would often speak of them getting married and leading the charge in research and advocacy. The latter fear came to pass once Joe MacTaggert, an admirer of Moira, uncovered their affair and blackmailed the Professor into leaving Oxford. The Professor complied, so filled with shame at the time he did not interact with Moira or confess the circumstances behind his sudden departure. He did, however, make sure to hold onto her lofty ambitions, going on an unofficial sabbatical traveling the world, seeking out and studying his fellow mutants. This is what brought the Professor to Cairo, where he detected the presence of another telepath and, assuming the best of intentions, wandered into the territory of crime boss Amahl Farouk. Saving the life of a man put in Farouk’s crosshairs, the Professor soon found himself locked in an intense psychic battle that he barely survived from. When he regained consciousness days later, he found himself in a small hospital in Tel Aviv. There, he met the man whose life he saved—and, in turn, saved the Professor’s. 

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[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILES: INVISIBLE WOMAN (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.02]

C: \login\Artisan

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\F4

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\F4

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Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\F4\STORM_SUSAN.txt

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Main Alias/Moniker: Invisible Woman

Legal Name: Susan Lowell Storm

Other Aliases: Invisible Girl, Susie, Nancy Thompson

Date of Birth: August 28th, 1979 (Age: 27)

Status: Alive

Species: Human Mutate

Sex: Female

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 5'6'' (1.68 m) / 120 lbs (54.43 kg)

Hair/Eye Color: Blonde / Hazel

Timeline (1978 - 1986): Sue comes from a family of ranchers of mixed background. Through both her parents, she's told me she is of English, Dutch, Shoshone and Comanche ancestry. Her grandfather was a code talker during World War II, and her father had a military career of his own. He served as a weapons expert, and took up contractor work with Stark Industries after his service. Franklin Storm took up the glitz and glamor of California living, which is how he first met Sue's mother, Mary. Poor Sue wasn't given much of an opportunity to savor her childhood. As early as five, she was playing the role of peace-maker in the Storm household, as her parents would consistently butt heads over money. Sue's buoyant and affectionate playacting was infectious, and would often succeed in placate their arguments, if for just one evening.

After a while, Mary had the idea to put Sue's high energy and need to please into something more productive (As well as something that would earn the family an extra income, ahem). Thus, she used her connections to land Sue a spot on "The Wolfe Pack," later renamed "Patsy's Playhouse" and "It's Patsy!", a children's variety show produced by the Timely Company. As the renaming of the show suggested, Sue didn't become the rising star of the "Wolfe Cubs," as they were called, but she did become close friends with the titular Patsy Walker. Sue took to child acting quite well, preferring to put on an act and be among the other Cubs, especially as things continued to deteriorate back at home.

Timeline (1986 - 1998): The Storm's marriage wouldn't survive the decade, even after the birth of Johnny. A visitation arrangement made around Franklin's new position as an on-site staffer for the Tomorrow Academy in New York led to Sue and her brother hopping across coasts every few months. Sue did not start out as an enrolled student in the program, but Franklin and the other staffers made accomodations for her after she displayed a remarkable aptitude in the curriculum, particularly in the fields of biology. Eventually, Sue's show would enter its "It's Patsy!" era, effectively dissolving its original variety show format and no longer holding the rest of the Cubs under contract. With that, Sue leapt at the chance to move to New York and become a full-time student.

Sue's time within the Academy wasn't long, barely getting a year in before Howard Stark's sudden death closed it down in 1991, but it was enough to affirm to Sue that becoming a doctor is what she wanted to do with her life. Unfortunately, that goal was upended when her father was convicted of perjury and her mother coerced her to return to acting to keep the family afloat. Begrudgingly, Sue paused on her college courses and reunited with her former Wolfe Cubs to star in the hit teen drama "Young Romance," where Sue played the bookish Nancy Thompson. For the next five years, Sue bit her lip, did all the public appearances her agents and mother asked of her, and carefully invested her money. By the end of her three-season contract, Sue passed off all her residuals to her mother, washing her hands of her control over her life, and moved back to the East Coast.

Timeline (1998 - 2002): Sue didn't have many friends while at ESU, working for her doctorate. All the other Wolfe Cubs—especially Patsy, once her solo career reached its peak—didn't keep in touch, and in spite of Sue's best efforts, Johnny took all the wrong lessons from the Southern California lifestyle. All of that was to say nothing of the small but persistent paparazzi, as well as all the people in her daily life who couldn't see past the character she played. That wasn't much of an obstacle for me, which is probably why Sue and I hit it off like we did.

Big shocker, I'm not that much into television, nor into tabloids. But even outside of my disability, I've always done by best to see the good in people, and as guarded as she was back then, Sue's character shone through even to me. It didn't hurt that, as a starving artist, I'll take whatever patronage I can get, and something about my sculptures really resonated with Sue. Despite how in-sync we were, it completely went over my head that around the same time, Sue became the apprentice of one of Phillip's colleagues. I would have warned Sue if I knew, but he must have made sure he and I would have never met in-person, nor could Sue ever casually relay things to me to tip him off.

Still, it really speaks to how smart Sue is that she not only was considered a worthy apprentice, but didn't fall for what this "mad thinker" was trying in the first place. Thankfully, Sue didn't budge on his covert AIM recruitment, opting to stay on school and complete her doctorate. The Thinker recommended Sue take up a consultancy job at a certain lab called Fantastic Solutions. This was probably yet another strategem, trying to get an inside person into Reed's own operation. In the end, I guess a whole lot of good came out of that one moment of deceit.

Sue knew Reed before, at the Tomorrow Academy. She had a schoolgirl crush, but she swears she didn't keep that crush going years later when they began working together. How she told it to me, what made her fall in love with Reed as adults was the utter sincerity by which he applied himself. After spending her whole life contending with fakers and manipulators, the transparency by which Reed sought to make the world better, even to the point of naiveté, was immensely endearing to Sue. She spent a great deal of time struggling with whether to make her feelings clear, whether it would be worth risking per professionalism with a fellow colleague.

Thanks to some encouragement from my own future beau, Sue threw caution to the wind, and to her relief Reed was very much receptive. The two kept steady for about a year after that, following which Johnny fell into some legal troubles. Without Sue even needing to ask, Reed readily volunteered to put Johnny up in the Baxter Building. She would tell me that that was the moment she knew she wanted to spend her life with this man.

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[earth-93]

BRIGADE FILE: RICK JONES (Part 1)

Stars & Stripes Hotline [Version 1.01]

C: \login\Nowhere_Man

C:\Users\mini\BrigadeFiles\Civilians

Directory of C: \BrigadeFiles\Civilians

09/07/2006 10:34 AM Total Files Listed:

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Directory of C:\BrigadeFiles\Civilians\JONES_RICHARD.txt

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Main Alias/Moniker: Rick Jones

Legal Name: Richard Milhous Jones

Other Aliases: Buckaroo, Nowhere_Man, Lodi, Lizard_King, BobbyMcGee, Mr_Blue_Sky, Dancing-Bear

Date of Birth: March 2nd, 1985 (Age: 21)

Status: Alive

Species: Human

Sex: Male

Gender: Cisgender

Height/Weight: 5'9'' (1.75 m) / 165 lbs (74.84 kg)

Hair/Eye Color: Brown / Brown

Timeline (1985 - 1995): I don't like talking about my childhood. Not that I'm ashamed of it, or I have anything to hide. I just never found my story all that marvelous. I've never been the type looking for attention. I just figured if me and the other TBs are cataloging all this sensitive info on everyone else, I may as well stick my neck out along with them. Solidarity, free information. All that jazz.

If my folks were still here to tell this story, they would have told you they met twice. First in spirit, and only in person years later. Both of them went to Woodstock when they were kids. Neither of them were very religious, but they felt there was this "divine nudge," as they put it, that brought them together. To be but two drops in that massive ocean of people, brought together by the concert's message of love and peace, then going off and living full lives apart before being brought back together. Really idealistic people, my folks. I've always envied that.

I was an only child, and they doted on me. My mom was a freelance programmer who worked out of her garage, and it was through her that I first learned my way around a circuit board. My old man taught horticulture at Desert State, but he also played a mean guitar. I learned how to work with the elements through him, and I learned all the oldies from his record collection before I lost all my baby teeth. Between the two of them, I learned about integrity, healthy skepticism, and standing up for the little guy.

Timeline (1995 - 2000): After the accident, I was a hard sell for any potential guardians. After all, a moody kid who's parents just died is a sweetheart. A kid who won't look you in the eye and has a temper about him is a troublemaker. It didn't take long before that label stuck, and I tried joining in on all the other troublemakers. There was one group I ran with when I was twelve I felt I could count on. I counted wrong. One day, when we were out joyriding, I choked. Being put behind the wheel, it brought too many bad vibes from what happened to my folks. They ditched me when the pigs cornered us, and I was thrown in Tempest House.

It wasn't too bad at first. I could give a sour look at the staff, but I never caused any real trouble, so I was off their radar. I didn't make any friends there, either. Still way too bitter about getting ditched before. After a while, something about Tempest didn't sit right. Our food was dirt, the facilities were shoddy. The conditions were substandard, even by the already lowly standards of these types of joints. So I did a little digging. I found out Tempest's headmaster had been personally pocketing most of the budget given and running the place on a pittance.

Unfortunately, I didn't cover my tracks, and the headmaster figured out ally snooping. To keep me quiet, he sought to break my spirit, so he didn't just beat me, and didn't just stow me away in solitary for three days. No, the son of a bitch smashed my old man's guitar right in front of me. That weekend in solitary changed me, alright. All the rage that had smothered me since my folks died focused into a righteous fury. It's been carrying me, in one way or another, ever since. A couple weeks after coming out of solitary, I played nice, shaking off any suspicious minds, before I skipped out in the middle of the night. I went off on my own, but not before I made a house call on that headmaster. The pigs answered an anonymous tip the next morning, and found the man hogtied in his living room, and the security footage of him whooping my ass playing on loop on the TV.

Timeline (2000 - 2003): The next few years were a bit of a zigzag. I probably set my foot everywhere between Seattle to San Antonio. Never really heading any place in particular, and never staying anywhere for too long. If I caught a whiff of some bad business in town, I'd snoop around, and if I dug up something I'd send that dirt to the right people, then split. I'd also just do some digging on my own free time, whenever I could get my hands on the proper tech to do so. If a joint like Tempest could get away with what they did, I could only imagine what the bigger guys were hiding.

I was able to get myself a new guitar after a while, but street performing can only earn you so much. I learned quite a bit of skills to survive back then, but driving still wasn't one of them. One day, though, out in Vegas, I was desperate for cash, and I let a guy get under my skin. Next thing I know, I'm drag-racing into the desert, barely able to see fifteen feet ahead of me. Enough space for a couple of giants to sneak up on two punks doing eighty on a lonely highway. I skidded off-road, but the other guy wasn't so lucky and collided. The brawling of these two brutes continued, barely acting like getting a face-full of car threw them off, but one of them seemed to be trying to avert their destruction away from me, giving me just enough time to gather my bearings and get the hell out of there.

Living on the road, you hear about all sorts of cryptids and close encounters. Bigfoot, of course. Mothman. The Hopkinsville Goblins. The Incredible Hulk was a fresher one, barely five years old. In my private sleuthing, I made a habit out of debunking these types of sightings. Figuring out what were old wives tales, what were cover-ups, what truths were even stranger than fiction. After what I saw that night, or even what I thought I saw in the darkness and confusion of it all, I couldn't let it be. And what I dug up would change everything.

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