Name: Lorna Durgo Hair: Brown Eyes: Purple and Orange (originally brown) Height: 5' 9"
History: Lorna Durgo is the adoptive daughter of Raymond John "R.J." Brande. An only child, her mother died in childbirth. Her father never recovered from the loss, and blamed Lorna until the day he died when she was ten, but even before this point she had spent as much time as possible with her only surviving grandparent, her frail maternal grandmother, who doted on Lorna and spent much time reassuring the bright but troubled girl that she did have a place in the world, and that her father's anger at her was misplaced, in an attempt to offset the low self-esteem and difficulty in making friends it had left Lorna with.
When her grandmother died on a cold and wet November day, only a day after Lorna's fifteenth birthday, she ran away, taking only a small bag of possessions, rather than be taken into care. Walking away from the suburb and city which had been her home, on her second night, hungry and tired, she found her way into a stable on the city's outskirts before collapsing. The following morning, R.J. Brande went out with his stableman to see the horses, as he did every day in life he was able, and found the feverish girl collapsed on a strawheap. He and the stableman got her into a spare bedroom in his mansion and called a doctor immediately, who found her to be suffering from flu, exacerbated by the effects of exposure and slight malnutrition.
Brande had her taken to a hospital immediately, where he ensured she had a private room, checking her in as "Lorna Brande" (having obtained her first name from her scanty personal effects), and made time in his busy schedule to visit her twice a day for the first couple of days until she regained consciousness. Initially scared, she was eventually convinced that Brande's fatherly concern was genuine, and went home with him, as he began the process of formally adopting her. While this was going on, she showed interest the billionare's work, mostly now in non-executive positions. Then, after the adoption process was complete and he'd arranged for private tuition for her, she insisted on helping him as much as she could - and, much to his surprise, she was revealed to have a natural talent for it, far more than some people who had trained all their lives and were in good jobs! As a result, in the summer, he let her work as his personal assistant, while in her private time, by careful buying in auctions (online and otherwise) and antique shops, she used the generous allowance (and summer salary) Brande gave her to build up a superlative collection of ancient oil lamps, made famous as "genie" lamps in stories.
In her third summer of working for Brande as such, Brande suddenly became interested in three teenagers, a year or two younger than Lorna, who had just saved his life, asking that she arrange for them to meet him in his personal office the next morning. Working late to catch up after fulfilling the order, she absent-mindedly wished that she could be in three places at once to speed the work up while stroking her newest lamp... and her wish was its' command, as three of her suddenly stood where one had been!
She/They were understandably shocked, and the lamp which one of them still held clattered to the floor. Panicking, they wished they were one again... And it happened. Falling into her chair, wondering if she should tell R.J. about the episode, she looked into the mirror on her wall, and saw that her brown eyes had been replaced by one of orange and one of purple.... Cautiously, she tried splitting again, saw the three of her in the mirror, one with two purple eyes, one with two orange eyes and one with one of each, and fainted, remerging as she hit the ground.
Ironically enough, after Irma - the telepathic one of the three teenagers Brande had called upon - had helped her accept her new power, becoming three people helped heal a lot of the emotional wounds left by her father's treatment of her. Much of her anger at it was channelled into her purple-eyed body, and many of the introverted tendancies it left her with were channelled into her orange-eyed body, and being able to, literally, discuss it with herself in this fashion left the merged Lorna happier. What also made her happier was R.J.'s suggestion that she join the "Legion" the three teenagers he had recruited were founding, and the easy acceptance they gave her, giving her friends her own age for the first time in her life, which only increased as the number of Legionnaires did.
Lorna fitted in well with most of the Legionnaires, and proved a capable field member, and became close friends with Tina Wazzo and Irma Ardeen, although when Gene Allen, a First Lieutenant in the US Marines, was imposed as the leader, he initially tried to freeze her out as a "weakling". Later, she was identified as the target of an assassin (unbeknownst to the Legion, sent by Jeanne Chu, the UN Secretary general) by Val Armor, after he'd stopped the assassin. If Val was not mistaken, exactly why Chu would target Lorna in such a way is unclear.
She also devised most of the Legionnaires' codenames, after Gene/Leviathan proved unable to do so.
However, one day in New York, Mano and Wolf of Leonard McCauley's second, covert, Workforce captured her on instructions from McCauley himself. Thereafter, she was left in a sealed, unlit room for a day, before the three of here were teleported out by a lilac-skinned, elven girl into the hands of a doctor and nurse, who drugged them, leaving them groggy but not enough to knock them out. She managed to reintegrate and, her single mind and body clear of the drugs, escape into the complex, but found no way out of the apparently sealed unit.
Eventually, while studying materials she had retrieved, she realised that most of them mentioned McCauley Industries or the Workforce. Combined with her plight, she realised at least part of what was being done to the Workforce members and, throwing her own safety to the wind, broke into an office in an attempt to call and warn Cosmic Boy what she thought was going on with his brother and Live Wire's sister. She didn't get an outside line, instead she heard a voice saying that they'd been waiting for her to call, and the covert Workforce appeared in front of her, teleported by the elven girl. Even in one body against four superpowered beings, she put up a good fight, shrugging off Tellus' telepathy, breaking Mano's helmet - rendering him helpless - and stunning Wolf. However, as she pleaded with the teleporter to get her out of there, the teleporter couldn't break her programming to save her, and Micro knocked her out.
She was then subjected to the McCauley brainwashing process, but exactly what happened in the rest of her time in captivity is uncertain. After slightly more than a fortnight, she was teleported and left just outside Legion HQ, with no knowledge of her capture of anything since. Since then, she has uncharacteristically avoided Tela, and spent far more time "alone", trying to remember what happened to her, while only Cosmic Boy's intervention has prevented her being suspended from active duty due to her trauma.
What more will be revealed in the future, including the details of what was done to her mind in the brainwashing, remains to be seen...
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Trinity can split into three separate people, who can be physically distinguished only by eye colour -- the integrated Trinity (and Trinity-Neutral) have one orange and one purple eye, Trinity-Orange has two orange eyes, and Trinity-Purple has two purple eyes. In terms of personality, Trinity-Orange tends to be shier, and Trinity-Purple more aggressive, than Trinity-Neutral, with the integrated Trinity behaving similarly to Trinity-Neutral.
When split, the three share a psychic link, so that each is constantly aware of what the other two are thinking and doing, a fact which they can use to communicate without speech. As a downside, when any one of the three is knocked unconscious, they automatically remerge into one unconscious person in Neutral's position, unless the distance between them is beyond their merging radius.
She tends to wear clothes which make it clear which of her is which unless circumstances demand otherwise, and uses brown contact lenses if undercover.
(NB: If anyone who contributed has any corrections to this, especially for her period as a Legionnaire, please post them)
Name: Tom Kallor Hair: Brown Eyes: Grey Height: 6' 3"
History: Tom Kallor was born in Parkes, New South Wales, son of the physicists Fred and Myra Kallor, who were working as part of the team assembling a "gravito-scope," a device to manipulate gravimetric fields, in the surrounding area near the Parkes radio-telescope, and spent the first nine months of his life there, staying in the creche while his parents worked. However, one night during an early test, the machine malfunctioned, hugely increasing the gravity in the localised area and effectively snaring a meteorite, a fraction of a comet entering the Earth's atmosphere, which had been heading for the South Pacific Ocean. While it missed both the project and major population centres, three people were still killed in the impact. Shortly thereafter, the news was leaked and public pressure forced the Australian government to shut the project down, although the Kallors had already departed, shaken by the realisation that what they had been working on could be so deadly - a potential weapon, capable of massive destruction - and had moved to Sydney. However, regular exposure to the device as both a foetus and infant would create a remarkable effect in Tom...
Throughout his life, Tom chafed at the restrictions placed on him by his now overprotective parents. He grew into a tall teenager, and became an excercising fanatic, building muscle in an attempt to offset his reputation as a "mummy's boy," and also became fascinated by imports of US superhero comics. This didn't make it any less surprising when he one day crashed through the floor of the gym he frequented while skipping in his warm-up. Basically unharmed, the gym manager was more concerned with his health (and the complaints his parents would make) than the possibility it might have been Tom's fault.
After reassuring the manager that he was unharmed and wouldn't tell his parents, he skipped the rest of his session in the gym and went to a deserted piece of ground to practice what he thought he had done. After a few false starts, he found he could not only increase his own weight, but the weight of other objects, rendering even an empty crisp packet too heavy to lift. He kept his new power secret from his parents.
Then, one day, while on his way home from the gym, he made himself heavy and jumped, to scare a few birds in anger at his parents' overprotectiveness. This happened to coincide with the exact moment that Tikhik Miraz (Gates) was teleporting halfway round the world, to the limits of his powers and beyond, to escape Leonard McCauley's tortures. Gates' power, affected by gravity, homed in on the anomoly, shocking Tom when the giant insect fell from the glowing green circle which appeared out of nowhere, and said "help" in English and Russian before collapsing, unconscious.
Partly though curiosity, Tom carried him back to his house, managing to sneak him into his room without his parents noticing, and concealed him in his old toybox, holding him there until his mum left. After establishing that he was intelligent, and happy to meet a fellow "freak," he eventually introduced Gates to his parents. Who, after much freaking and quick talking from Tom, allowed him to stay for a while.
The two became close friends, but Gates, embittered by what had happened to him and his inability to teleport after overstretching himself, was often annoyed by Tom's lighthearted attitude to life. Eventually, after Gates recovered enough to teleport again, the two secretly formulated a plan. Donning a makeshift costume and dubbing himself "Starboy" after his T-shirt (much to Gates' annoyance), they broke in, via Tikhik's "Gates," to a classified Australian government installation which had a direct line to the Legion of Super-Heroes, which ultimately came to nothing.
He is currently travelling through Asia with Gates on their way to the USA, inadvertantly picking up additional companions on the way.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Starboy has the ability to manipulate gravimetric forces, usually to increase the force on an object (i.e., it's weight), although he has recently discovered that he can also reduce the weight of an object, although the object will toss around in air currents. Theoretically, he could reduce the weight to near-zero, though not beyond.
Name: Irma Ardeen Hair: Blonde Eyes: Blue Height: 5' 8"
History: Irma Ardeen was orphaned as a young child, which activated nascent telepathic powers. When Checkmate, a US government black ops agency, started planning to recruit superpowered children from orphanages around the US, Irma was one of those chosen. After she accepted the offer, unaware of the consequences, she was handed over to Cadmus, Checkmate's scientific division, who - with the aid of STAR Labs, a private contractor - activated her potential with chemical treatment. In the blink of an eye, she found herself being able to hear and manipulate the thoughts of thousands of people. Thereafter, she underwent years of training, mediation and chemical therapy at their hands to help deal with her new power, having to live in the most strict isolation in the deepest part of Cadmus to avoid being constantly overwhelmed by the sensory overload.
Even then, however, a few voices still reached her. One was that of Maizah bint-Mordru bin-Ahmad Al-Nayal, a Yemeni mystical adept, and another soul isolated from human contact. Despite the physical distance between them, Maizah quickly became Irma's best friend, and together with Nura, her sister, who Maizah managed to "open" to Irma's telepathy, helped each other cope with their isolation, and the three shared their innermost thoughts for years, with Irma - as her control increased - eventually learning to bring a selected few others into their group, including Tatiana Mallor, a "dark lady" from England, Sara, the self-dubbed "empress of Venegar", who both became good friends, and a shy girl called Jacquie who Irma didn't get along with, and kept in only at Maizah's insistance.
Eventually, became the premier telepath at Cadmus, and one of the most successful subjects overall, when Checkmate came to recruit her into the active group. Unfortunately for Checkmate, thanks to the contact with her friends, she'd kept her conscience, and became more powerful than their psi-baffles. After she had begun to be used to spy on foreign dignatries and found it disgusting - as were the plans for the information - she "borrowed" knowledge from their computer science division, writing a virus to erase all trace of her from the Checkmate, Cadmus and STAR computers, then used her power directly to achieve a similar effect in the minds of those in each place, and slipped away with several thousand dollars in cash and an air ticket to Metropolis while "cajoling" a Checkmate employee to take her to the airport.
On the plane there, Garth Raines, a Kansas redhead, caught her eye, and when she caught a mental image from two assassins planning to kill R.J. Brande, the billionare transportation mogul, it was Garth and his new friend Rex she called out to, having "heard" their powers, to stop them. After they'd done it, she slipped away, getting used to the idea of existing as a "ghost," thinking about possibly arranging to meet up with her telepathic friends, especially Nura and Maziah, in the flesh, but not having counted on the gratitude of Brande and the determination of Lorna, his adoptive daughter and PA. Lorna found her and arranged for her to meet R.J. the next morning, while giving her a bed for the night in R.J.'s copious mansion.
After the unexpected detour of having to help train Lorna to accept her sudden ability to split into three people and the consquences thereof, passing on some of her lessons in dealing with thoughts running through her head, she - and Rex and Garth - readily accepted Brande's offer to found a "Legion of Super-Heroes."
Still, "life on the outside" was stressful, and she kept in close contact with her telepathic circle. She also met Quentin, another "graduate" of the same programme, who had developed heightened intelligence - and green skin. Initially fearful of meeting anyone else from Cadmus or STAR, once she found out that he had been another victim, to her surprise, she found that she got along with him well enough.
Suddenly, however, Maziah broke contact with her, while leaving Nura behind on her trip to New York with only a message that she had "to help Jacquie". Irma couldn't contact Sara or Jaquie, and Tatiana knew nothing more than her or Nura about the missing half of their group until she abruptly broke contact too.
Meanwhile, on her flight to New York, Nura had forseen a bomb going off on her plane, found it, and desperately called Irma for help. Using Brande's experimental star-drive teleportation technology, they had reached the scene in time... but came out of the blue portal at the wrong angle, on a collision course with the ground. After Rex (Cosmic Boy) and Kinetix tried to get them out, failing after Cos was knocked unconscious, she took charge after sharing a "moment" with Garth, and Kinetix and Rebound managed to break a hole in the fuselage, letting their newly-invented flight rings save them. Kinetix and Brock Bannon, who had travelled thousands of miles to join the Legion, managed to stop the plane killing anyone, while Spirit got Nura and the bomb out of her plane.
As Irma and Nura happily finally met face-to-face for the first time, Flash (Jenni Ognats) and Cos managed to dispose of the bomb. The two are worried about the rest of their telepathic friends, especially after hearing stories from Kinetix's mother and the new Legionnaire Jan Arrah's stories about an "Emerald Eye" that matched one of Nura's visions involving someone resembling her sister and a few other people fighting Sara in control of the Eye. While worried though, the two of them can do nothing but wait for news, or for Nura's talent to give her a clearer vision of what they should do...
Recently, she suffered much teasing after her allergy to many times of fabrics required her costume to be made of satin, unlike the spandex and cotton of the others, and the costume maker had addressed the box containing her pink and white costume to "Irma Ardeen, the Satin Girl." Most of the Legionnaires used it, often with a smirk, instead of Tela, her official codename, until she finally snapped and telepathically yelled at all the Legionnaires, in a "voice" that brooked no disobedience, that the next person to call her that would spend a week thinking they were a hamster. While they all promptly stopped calling her it, most of them still have it running through their heads (some deliberately), and it's left her on a short fuse of late.
She's also become concerned about Lorna (Trinity), who vanished for over two weeks - unbeknowst to any of them, kidnapped by Leonard McCauley and mindwiped of the time in question - and who has been unusually stand-offish since her return, to Irma in particular, who she was previously fairly close to and had spent some considerable time training to deal with her triple-mind and to resist psi-attacks with her. Even from a distance though, she can feel the buried trauma in Trinity's mind... and something out-of-place, that she feels explains Trinity's strange behaviour. Presently, she's tried to get Cosmic Boy to persuade Lorna to get help, be it from her or elsewhere, but knows that something will have to be done if Trinity will be able to deal with the experience any time soon.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Tela is a full-spectrum telepath, able to communicate telepathically, read and alter minds, and control the movements of other people, including their speech. This power diminishes with distance, but she can contact receptive minds even over thousands of miles.
(NB: Again, if anyone who contributed has any corrections to this, please post them)
History: Brian Landon was, and always had been, a loner. Born to Graham Landon, an army doctor who frequently moved from base to base, and his wife, an army nurse, he never felt settled enough to make friends, given that he would have to say goodbye to them within months.
Given that, he threw himself into solo activites - particuarly physical training and solo sports, including boxing, wrestling and gymnastics, using the army's training facilities - which he felt were the only good thing about being around the miltary.
One day, while his parents were stationed on the island of Diego Garcia, he was running alone on the island when he was bitten or stung with a deadly venom. While, somehow, he made it back to the base he was left in a coma for a month. In that time, his father and the other doctors tried a variety of antivenoms and other treatments to treat the unidentified venom's effects on him, in an attempt to save his life. Finally, something - or some combination of the treatments - worked, although exactly what was not determined.
One positive side-effect of the treatment, which he kept hidden, was that it had permanently supercharged his immune system. Every little injury he suffered healed almost instantly, he never felt sick, and he could train far harder and longer before becoming fatigued. Before long, he was faster, stronger and more agile than any human could hope to achieve.
Three months after he'd recovered, after a year in total on Diego Garcia his parents - and thus him - were reassigned to a base in Texas. A month after that, he was out climbing a sheer cliffface at midnight for fun - "technically" breaking curfew - when he saw a figure (Andromeda) flying above him. While recovering from that shock, he then proceeded to watch as the flyer was swatted from the sky by a laser attached to a van. Scrambling down, he chased after it.
While, even running at 30mph, he couldn't keep up with the van, he noticed the McCauley Industries logo and licence plate number of the van, and remembered a McCauley Industries facility twenty miles away, and snaked off the road to take a direct line toward it.
However, the metahuman detectors in the van had registered him, and noticing that the anonymisers were not active, the men in the van panicked, realising what would happen if they'd been IDed, and managed to bring Brian down with the laser, shooting him full of tranqulisers to keep him unconscious until they could reach the base, as all their statis pods were full.
Brian then spent a considerable time in statis, while alerts, first private then public, were sent out for his return. Some of these reached the statis bank maintainers, who realised who he was and alerted their superiors, wherein the information eventually wound it's way to Leonard McCauley himself. It was clear to McCauley that releasing him was not an option - he'd seen too much, and his absence and inability to account for his time in statis would cause problems. Instead, he ordered Brian to be placed in the former metahuman creation program, which, given it's former inefficiency, had now become simply a metahuman enhancement program, and counted Gates, Mano and Reflecto among it's "graduates."
While the process rarely caused the level of mutation amongst subjects with already-active metagenes compared to those who underwent it as flatscans such as Gates and Tellus, it still mutated Brian's appearance, turning him into a humanoid wolf, giving him a claw on each fingertip and enhanced his speed, stamina, strength and agility still further. He was then subjected to the brainwashing process all active McCauley metahumans underwent, which reacted unusually with his mutated form to leave his prior memories "smudged" and vague. He was then placed on McCauley's covert Workforce team, seperate to the public team and intended to be completely deniable, while being used mostly for acts such as kidnapping and industrial sabotage. Orders not to kill were not included.
His conscious mind thus smudged and his baser instincts let free, "Wolf" enjoys what he has to do now, although some part of him still feels guilty, even if he doesn't understand why.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Wolf's regenerative capabilities are enhanced over a normal human, meaning that wounds heal rapidly and diseases don't take hold. Partially as a result of this, he has enhanced speed, stamina, strength and agility.
Since his further mutation, all of these are enhanced further, and he also possesses grey-white fur over the whole of his body, enhanced senses - especially smell - and permanent (i.e., non-retractable) claws on the tip of each finger.
posted
These are great Reboot, a lot of thought has gone into each one. I particularly like Gates and Starboy, and McCauleys sinister orkforce recruiting methods.
More, more, more!!!
Bxx
-------------------- "Tempus Fugitive" the final part of the Adventures of Dream Boy series, set in the Three-Boot Universe. Read it only in the Bits o' Legionnaire Business Forum.
From: here, more often than not | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Hey Reboot, nice Who's Who like entries - but one question, you mention "Kinetix" and Cosmic Boy having worked together to save some lives, but who is "Kinetix" or "XS", for that matter?
Sorry to get "editorial" on you at this early stage - i'm a writer of Legion fan-fiction myself, so i'd generally establish the "status quo" as soon as possible before you start introducing more characters for your scenario, which, should be submitted to DC...
See what they would think about introducing another Legion book, this time set in the present - and, as you obviously wrote the characters, as "ancestors" to the future Legion.
Quite possibly this could be a revival of the Vril Dox-led L.E.G.I.O.N. - but set years before that team's formation..
From: Adelaide, Australia | Registered: Jun 2005
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LAM, look at the story thread (linked in the first post on this thread). I didn't start it, it's just that I'm the only guy now adding to it on a regular basis, and I'm concentrating on bios for the characters I'm writing in the story thread (the "Workforce" thread, although I've started including some Legionnaires to varying extents).
And Kinetix and XS are both (based on, I suppose) postboot Legionnaires (although that XS should be "Flash", since that's the codename Jenni's meant to be using in this... where'd I miss that?). Ask about their in-comic counterparts on the Legion board if you really don't know.
And early? Bwa-ha-hah. The story thread was started in February 2004, and the first page of bios on this thread were written in August 2004 (although no-one added anything between Sep 04 and Jul 05 when I resumed. Come to think of it, a few of them need an update).
Name: Garth Raines Hair: Red Eyes: Blue Height: 5' 11"
History: Garth Raines is the twin brother of Eileen "Ella" Raines, the Workforce's Spark. Throughout their childhood they were very close - and always suspicious of their older brother Mark.
One day, while the whole family was on holiday in the Carribean, they tagged along with him, aiming to keep a watchful eye on him. Unfortunately, the batteries on their electric speedboat ran out. Using oars, they managed to paddle to a small isle nearby, where they found guardian robots, able to electrocute intruders, as they noticed when a small animal touched them.
Rather than questioning why such a small, deserted island needed such robots, Ella desperately suggested that maybe they could use them to recharge the speedboat. While they technically succeeded, all three recieved massive electric shocks whcih should have killed them. At the end, Garth and Ella were left in a coma, while Mark, panicking, took them to the mainland, dumped them in a hospital and scarpered, discovering that the shock had granted him electrical powers in the process.
They both spent weeks comatose, during which they were airlifted back to the USA. When Garth awoke, he found Ella still in a coma, and Mark gone. After being held a couple of days for further observation, he was discharged with a clean bill of health, before Ella had woken up. Alone for the first time in his life, he spent a few days sleeping a lot and kicking about the Raines farm, not talking to anyone, when he decided to take some of his anger at Mark out on a scarecrow in a remote field, and ended up blasting it with electricity. Amazed at this, he tested it out further, without telling his parents, and when Ella finally woke up the next day, a week after he had, he cautiously revealed his power to her when he visited her in the hospital. She tried to do the same, but, still weak, was only able to manage a few sparks, something which was a source of amusement to her brother.
That night, still alone in his room, he made a decision. Mark probably had the same power - who knew what he was doing or if anyone could stop him. So, when Ella was discharged the next day, she found he had packed his bags and was ready to leave in search of Mark, and despite her protests to either stay or take her with him, he maintained she was still too weak and left without telling their parents.
Using his savings, he took a plane to the the city of Metropolis to look for Mark, based on an oft-stated desire of Mark's to see that city. On the plane, he met Rex Kline, a high school basketball champion who'd had his scholarship cancelled when his hometown hit recession, and was looking for work in Metropolis - and who was also superpowered, magnetically in his case. The two hit it off immediately, In addition, a blonde named Irma Ardeen caught Garth's eye, and he and Rex tried to strike up a conversation with her - until the telepathic teenager caught a glimpse of a couple of assassins planning to kill transportation mogul Raymond John "R.J." Brande. Having "heard" their powers even though they hadn't mentioned them, she "screamed" in their heads to stop them, which they quickly did, although the mercenaries had no knowledge of their employer for Irma to pluck out.
After this, Irma quickly and quietly slipped away, while Rex and the flamboyant Garth hung around a while longer before looking for a hotel room to share to keep their costs down. This made it easier for Lorna Durgo, Brande's PA and adoptive daughter, to find them after Brande said he wanted to see the three of them the following morning to thank them - and make them an offer. After a night staying in R.J.'s copious mansion - along with Irma, they found in the morning, who Lorna had also located - they had a slight delay while Irma helped Lorna adjust to her new ability to split into identical triplets, before Brande asked them to be the first of a potential Legion of Super-Heroes. Garth, Rex and Irma all said yes.
The three - and Lorna, who quickly joined up - swiftly bonded, while other members flooded in. Rex assumed the leadership role as if he'd been born to it, and Garth was the Legionnaire most angry when Gene Allen was imposed as the Legion's new leader - although Rex himself took it in his stride, and Gene eventually unofficially demurred to Rex as leader, while Lorna dubbed Garth "Live Wire" when a list of codenames were sought and provided.
Garth's relationship with Irma, on the other hand, has proven complex. While both clearly want to be more than "just friends", neither has as yet worked up the confidence to attempt to take the relationship further.
In the meantime, Ella had joined up with McCauley Industries' Workforce team as Spark, along with Rex's younger brother Paul, Polarity. Garth and Rex made several attempts to see them, usually with Dox and Trinity tagging along for reasons of their own, but finding the Workforce not at their headquarters.
Eventually, a couple of months after the Workforce's public debut, they caught the team just as they were returning to Workforce HQ. While Rex and Paul caught up though, Ella was cold to him, and when he pressed, she began a blazing row with him over his leaving her behind, which the Kline brothers managed to calm down. However, after this, when pressed as to exactly why he left her, he answered that he "didn't want you getting hurt again." This was the last straw, and she turned away from him without another word, while he realised the mistakes he'd made, unsure if she'd ever speak to him again.
Since then, he's attempted to call her on a frequent basis, but has been put on hold every time without even managing to speak to her. While this isn't directly Ella's doing, she has deliberately held off from calling him, and exactly how the two will react to each other at the Legion Halloween party (to which the Workforce have been invited) remains to be seen.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Live Wire has the ability to generate electricity, and direct bolts of it accurately (the exact mechanism in his power which prevents the bolts taking the path of least resistance to Earth is not understood), which he has been known to refer to as "lightning."
Name: Rex Kline Hair: Black Eyes: Blue Height: 5' 8"
History: Rex Kline is the elder brother of Paul, the Workforce's Polarity. Both of them, due to their father's exposure to an experimental form an electromagentic radiation in the laboratory where he worked, have "magnetic powers. The boys were close, growing up, and maintain good relations today, even after Paul's conscription into the Workforce
Rex was a high school basketball champion, who became known as "Cosmic Boy" for his amazing feats on the court. However, when his home town was hit by recession, he used the last of his cash taking a plane to the the city of Metropolis to look for work.
On the plane, he met Garth Raines, a living Live Wire who was looking for his similarly-powered brother Mark. The two hit it off immediately, In addition, a blonde named Irma Ardeen caught Garth's eye, and he and Rex tried to strike up a conversation with her - until the telepathic teenager caught a glimpse of a couple of assassins planning to kill transportation mogul Raymond John "R.J." Brande. Having "heard" their powers even though they hadn't mentioned them, she "screamed" in their heads to stop them, which they quickly did, although the mercenaries had no knowledge of their employer for Irma to pluck out.
After this, Irma quickly and quietly slipped away, while Rex and the flamboyant Garth hung around a while longer before looking for a hotel room to share to keep their costs down. This made it easier for Lorna Durgo, Brande's PA and adoptive daughter, to find them after Brande said he wanted to see the three of them the following morning to thank them - and make them an offer. After a night staying in R.J.'s copious mansion - along with Irma, they found in the morning, who Lorna had also located - they had a slight delay while Irma helped Lorna adjust to her new ability to split into identical triplets, before Brande asked them to be the first of a potential Legion of Super-Heroes. Garth, Rex and Irma all said yes.
The three - and Lorna, who quickly joined up - swiftly bonded, while other members flooded in. Rex assumed the leadership role as if he'd been born to it, and Garth was the Legionnaire most angry when Gene Allen was imposed as the Legion's new leader - although Rex himself took it in his stride, and Gene eventually unofficially demurred to Rex as leader, while Rex's old high school basketball nickname became his codename when one was required.
Recently, Cos has become worried by the self-isolation of his teammate Trinity after her kidnapping and return, a feeling only deepened when Irma expressed similar concerns to him. While he's tried to bring her out of it, her situation and refusal to seek help still worries him.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Cos has the ability to induce and direct magnetic energies. He can absorb electricity without direct harm, but that it causes his power to supercharge, and he loses control of it until the effect passes, drawing all ferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic objects within range (which varies depending on the exact charge) to him.
While he cannot fly directly, he can lock on to his plate-mail vest and armoured gauntlets and boots to enable him to fly in a crude fashion.
Here's the full list of costumes the Workforcers and Legionnaires were wearing to the Hallowe'en party (part 1, part 2), not all of which were able to be referenced in the story.
History: Clarice Ferguson was born just outside Glasgow, Scotland, to an average, lower middle class family, daughter of Terence and Catherine Ferguson, with one brother, John, but no sisters. Born caucasian, with no sign of her distinctive skin colouring or facial makings, she was always painfully shy, but was a quick study in her schoolwork.
When she was fourteen, however, her life changed for the worse. First, her irises started to fade, albeit without impairing her sight, and she began to wear increasingly heavily-tinted glasses to cover this up. As her skin started to darken, turning increasingly lilac, with pink facial tattoo-like markings emerging and her ears growing elf-like, however, there was no hiding place, and she dreaded leaving her house, between the stares and the taunts.
The final straw, however, came after a row with her brother. The only person she'd ever been able to be aggressive at, they'd been having another blazing row about nothing in particular, when she felt something surge inside her, and she fainted a split second after it burst from her blank eyes.
She awoke to a scene of carnage.
Her clothes were drenched with blood. Her brother's blood.
His corpse looked as if it had been sliced into pieces with a very sharp sword.
She didn't even register the damage to the rest of the room. She didn't speak a word for full year thereafter. The official report on her brother's death assumed murder, but didn't point the finger in her direction, instead believing that the shock of seeing her brother killed and dismembered had rendered a repeat performance on her unnecessary.
For that year she didn't live, but merely... existed. Initially, her parents - not keen to lose their other child - attempted to care for her themselves, but they soon had to accept that they were not equipped to care for the catatonic girl. They surrendered her to Life Care, a division of McCauley Industries. Initially, they visited her frequently, but as time passed and her condition did not improve, their visits tailed off. Thus, when the institute proposed to use a "radical" and "experimental" treatment for catatonia on Clarice "as part of an early clinical trial" in America - at no financial cost to her parents, they stressed - they agreed.
The "treatment" in question was actually an early version of the McCauley brainwashing process, and Clarice was one of the first successes, with the lack of anasesthia required for her pointing the way for future successes. It was not long afterward that the Workforce were given the same treatment.
For Clarice herself, it did revive her - however, she was not permitted to return home. The reason she had been selected for the treatment was that scans had revealed her teleportation ability - something considered very useful. Instead, her parents were told that she had died, and recieved an urn of pre-cremated ashes under the excuse that, with the treatment apparently hazardous to humans, they didn't want to take chances. They threatened to sue Life Care, had the disclaimer they signed waved at them, threatened to go to the press, and eventually recieved a cash settlement and a Non-Disclosure Agreement.
She thus went into training shortly after her revival, combined with ongoing psychiatric care against a relapse of her catatonia. She didn't ask to see her parents, guilt from her brother's death still strong in her mind. She learned to focus her teleportation ability into "spears" she could hold in her hand, which proved more controllable than direct "blinks."
Her shyness led her to be passed over for the Workforce itself, combined with the fact that, while her prototype conditioning had included "McCauley loyalty" and "obeyance of orders" implants, it lacked the more sophisticted directives included in the Workforce conditioning, including a guard against self-discovery of the brainwashing (although these did increase the risk of rejection of the programming).
Subsequently, however, after Gates' escape, she has been used in an ancillary capacity to both Workforces - under strict orders not to be seen on camera (something she has no desire to happen anyway), and not to discuss the covert team with the public one - to teleport them to and from locations, but not to remain on-site.
Most recently, she was used in the capture of the Legion's Trinity, and subsequently to prevent her escape, a fact which has caused her to realise that she has been brainwashed, and has increased her burden of guilt still further after seeing Trinity beg her to help her escape and not be able to help, and then hearing her being brainwashed - with the screams that come with the process.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Blink is a teleporter, able to move people and objects, herself included, over both long and short distances.
Most commonly, she does this by the use of short spears she holds in a quiver on her back, and which are created out of thin air by her power. When she strikes something with them - usually by throwing them - by default that object will be teleported to wherever she is thinking of at the time - and thus, concentration is required to achieve a specific destination. However, with additional concentration she can cause a solid black portal to open where the spear struck instead - this portal will remain open only as long as she concentrates for it to do so. Distance does not affect her abilities - it takes the same effort to teleport something one metre as it does to teleport it a kilometre or a thousand kilometres.
She can also teleport objects without the use of the spears by staring at an object and blinking. However, this is less reliable in that her field of teleportation is hard to control, as with her first teleport's tragic results.
Name: Sandy Anderson Hair: Blonde Eyes: Black Height: 5' 4"
History: As a young child of 2-3 years old, "Sandy" was abandoned in what, at the time, was a high-profile case. Attempts to find her mother failed, and she was eventually placed into foster care. This went poorly, as even while still a young child, she was scarred and rebellious, moving from one foster home to another, running away entirely on several occasions. On the last of these occasions, she was found by a McCauley Industries van, looking for potential experimentees for attempts to induce super-powers.
Experimented upon, unlike most others, she survived and her latent metagene activated. Unusually for a successful subject, it didn't alter her physical form, but the ability to create and manipulate fire it imbued her with (along with immunity to its' effects) was uncontrolled. At random intervals of between a minute and a day, flame would spurt from her skin in a random direction. After this, she was caged up in a dungeon-like environment, the four-block of cells also holding Gates, Mano and Tellus, to keep her out of the way until she would be considered useful.
That did not come as a place on a Workforce, however, merely a "task". Knowing her abilities were uncontrolled, it was arranged for her to be taken in by the orphanage Andromeda grew up in, with hypnosis used to retard her power sufficiently to get her there. For herself, she was just glad to be out of the dungeon, and her unusually happy demeanour reflected this. However, in the middle of the night, a post-hypnotic suggestion took effect, and she let out a huge burst of flame.
As the orphanage burned, McCauley-hired hitmen posed as firemen to kill off escapees and retrieve her - the whole process designed to lessen the risk of anyone recognising Andromeda as a minor. After lying naked and traumatised in the flames, knowing that she was unintentionally responsible for the mass slaughter, she shut down and, instead of being returned to the dungeon, was placed in a stasis pod.
After Ultraboy's shooting, however, a replacement was required quickly, and Sandy was one of the few known quantities available. As the success of the hypnosis used in the orphanage had proven, her power-control problems were mental rather than physical, and so, along with being mindwiped of her time in the dungeon and her place in the orphanage incident (both of which took more securely than equivalent attempts before, due to her wanting to forget these), she was imbued with the ability to control her powers by the McCauley brainwashing program.
After hurried testing, she was therefore placed on the Workforce. Rather unsure of herself (potentially from lingering echoes of her true past) and conscious of being the "rookie" on the team, she didn't fit in particularly well.
After being defeated by Cosmic Boy, as the last Workforcer standing, she has been placed in statis pending a decision about what to do with her - as removing the programming entirely would reveal her true, traumatic, past to her, Tela was unsure as to the right course of action. Should she be made to remember her true past - which, while the most honest thing to do, could trigger a second psychological collapse on her part - should she simply be told about it without being made to remember, or should she be left in ignorance with only her programming rather than her false memories removed? A special Ethics Committee has been formed to render a final decision on this, since Irma felt unqualified to make such a horrendous choice.
Powers/Abilities/Paraphernalia: Inferno has pyrokinetic abilities - i.e., she can spontaneously create flame without combustant, and manipulate the size, shape and intensity of flames. She also cannot be harmed by fire or extreme heat.
She can fly by creating an updraft of flame to hold her up and a jet of flame to propel her forward, but she has yet to master this side of her abilities and can only yet do so in a very limited manner.
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