Daedalus
'History
The Beginning
Axon Daedalus was born on the island of Crete as part of an experiment sponsored by ARGENT to create their own "super soldier" process that they would later market. It used data stolen or bought from various other projects along the same lines. The project had two goals, first; to create a reliable process for creating super humans, and two; creating a group of super powered soldiers to work for ARGENT. Being a completely new and experimental process, several groups of subjects were created using slightly different methods. One group of six subjects was created by an in-vitro process combining the DNA of 6 carefully chosen genomes from across the world with a sample of anomalous DNA the company had acquired on the black market. Although they could not determine the exact nature of the sample, preliminary testing had shown it to have various advanced characteristics. Simply cloning the sample had proven to be unsuccessful. The resulting fetuses were grown in artificial wombs and born on August 1 1987 in a secret compound in western Crete known as "The Hatchery". The initial data regarding the result was inconclusive, therefore it was decided to progress with other experiments in psychological conditioning, education and obedience training while the subjects grew and could be tested further later. It quickly became apparent that the DNA they all shared was dominant as they were all generally alike in appearance and mannerism. Within 2 years it became apparent that they were all extremely intelligent, learning to speak fluently by age 1. By age 5 it was clear that physically they were superior, but not yet showing any signs of being super human. Their psychological conditioning was proving to be less and less effective as their intellect matured and they began to be more difficult to control.
With other projects at the Hatchery seeming to have the desired superhuman results, it was decided to terminate the unruly children to save money but by this time, they had come to the attention of a Dr. Hesslein. Hesslein had had success in programming sleeper agents for ARGENT to perform industrial espionage against a few of their competitors. One of those agents had been so successful in increasing profits, that Dr. Hesslein had been given carte blanche for his next project. When he learned of the newly engineered children, he saw an unprecedented opportunity. He convinced the board that despite their not being superhuman, the new humans as he called them, were talented enough to be desirable recruits for any company or governmental agency in the world given the proper conditioning. They could be inserted into advantageous situations at such a young age that they would be virtually undetectable by any investigation and their advanced intellect would make them effective agents even before adulthood.. Given his past success, the board agreed to his plan.
What no one knew at the time, was that Dr. Hesslein owed his success at psychological conditioning not to any scientific regimen, but to the fact that he himself was a powerful psionic. While he had no particular aspiration to be some sort of conqueror, he did enjoy discovering new ways to use his powers on other people. The 6 young boys presented a unique challenge, finding ways to influence their personalities, without destroying their intellect or creativity. He knew it would takes years of painstaking work, but the rewards would be unbelievable if it worked. He made a show of using various drugs and sensory manipulation techniques while he started with inserting various mental blocks to curb their innate rambunctiousness and instill loyalty to himself. He treated them like any other laboratory subjects at first, but decided the best way to control the boys without damaging them, was to insert himself as a father figure. His initial plan for total control was to build up a secondary personality inside the mind of each subject. Namely, it would be more or less a copy of himself that would nudge and push the boys to follow their assigned roles, and at times even being able to assume total control in times of emergency, with the boys being completely unaware of it. Aside from this secret mental conditioning, they were also educated and induced to follow aptitudes in assigned fields ranging from electrical engineering to ecology in order to be suitable recruits for ARGENT's rivals and competitors. As time wore on, Hesslein grew to marvel at the amazing potential of the boy's minds. While they did not seem to have his actual psychic gifts, their minds were marvels of order and sophistication.
The boys had been named in alphabetical order, Axon, Batian, Clavius, Darius, Eryx, and Flavian and so Dr. Hesslein tended to experiment on them in much the same order, with Axon receiving the most experimental techniques before they could be refined for use on the others. The consequences being that Axon tended to be the most erratic and unstable of the group. Dr. Hesslein eventually determined that Axon would likely be of little use as an agent and might be better suited to working directly for ARGENT, maybe even for himself when he matured. It wasn't until he made that decision, that Hesslein realized that he had inadvertently developed his own attachment to the boys and was beginning to have second thoughts about how they were going to be used. When the boys reached the age of 12 it was time to begin inserting them into their deep covers. They were assigned to be placed into the origin countries of their original human genomes. Flavian was the best conditioned and was the first to be sent to his origin country of the United States. When Flavian left, Dr. Hesslein felt like part of himself was leaving as well. He began to experience extreme anxiety and concern for his boys. He quickly decided that he would devise a new Psychic program to erase his presence from the boy's minds and free them. It took time, time he didn't have. One by one the boys were shipped out to India, Algeria, Brazil and Japan till only Axon remained.
The Hatchery had been the home of more than one super soldier program. Most had ultimately been determined to be failures, but had produced various other types of test subjects that had been retained for further experimentation, just like the boys. One of those subjects had been code named Chimera. The experiment had been successful in creating something superhuman but it was also monstrous. It continued to mutate over the years, the scientists in charge of it were not yet aware of the danger they were in until it was too late. Just after Batian had been sent to Japan, the Chimera broke free of it's containment and rampaged through the entire base. Destroying anyone or anything that got in it's way. One of those things, was Dr. Hesslein. Caught unawares, the doctor had no time to do anything but to send the incomplete mental program to Axon. Through the psychic link, Axon felt his father die at the hands of the beast. The trauma of death and the incomplete program had an unexpected result in Axon. His mind became a fusion of his original personality, the psychic clone of Dr. Hesslein and Hesslein himself. His memory became a disjointed mishmash of the two but his conditioned aptitudes in bio-mechancial engineering, psychology and electrical engineering remained. What was left of the psychic clone attempted to assert control but found it impossible and relegated itself to shoring up the ruptured personality and eventually completing the merger of all three.
Alive, alone
Axon was left behind in the wreckage following the Hatchery's destruction. He hid himself from the Chimera that now wandered the lower levels of the wrecked base and occasionally fed on other experiments that had been left behind. He had an overwhelming desire to destroy the monster and so did not flee from the base. He waited and watched and formulated a plan for killing it. He used what little equipment and the labs that were still intact to create a weapon to fight the monster. The beast was now huge, and far beyond anything he could contend with on his own. He pieced together a robot he named Bellerophon and sent it into the catacombs after the creature. The Chimera destroyed it and also mutated further, developing thicker bone plates and quicker reflexes. The beast had already been too large to exit the base through any of the heavily fortified doors, which is why it wandered the deeper tunnels. Finally though, it wandered into an empty cistern that was open to the sky. There it remained, trying to claw it's way out.
Axon built another robot, bigger and stronger than before, but before he could send it against the monster, he made a terrifying discovery. It was growing wings. Axon did not want the creature to escape, and so he fitted his new robot with hastily jerry-rigged flight capabilities and also decided to make himself an armored suit capable of flight, believing that in the air, his small size would be an advantage against the lumbering beast. As expected, the Chimera's wings grew into a usable size and it began to heave itself out of it's prison. Axon sent Bellerophon II to contend with it while still in the cistern, keeping himself in reserve in case the beast made it into the open. Bellerophon was able to wound the monster but it still made it clear of the cistern and flew towards the open ocean. Axon attacked, striking from above he slashed the webbing of the monster's wings, which just grew back. Suddenly it occurred to him that he had let his desire for revenge cloud his reason. He then directed Bellerophon to grapple with the chimera in mid-air and then simply detonated it's power source, destroying both in the process.
Upon his return to the base he regarded as home, he saw that there had been attempts to contact the base from ARGENT's central switchboard. In order to keep people away, he activated the base's extreme radiation hazard beacon that would warn them off. His damaged personality then tried to cope with his current situation. He felt the conditioned compulsions to excel as a scientist, he felt his fathers desire to dominate, he felt his own inquisitive nature and need for validation. The last vestiges of the psychic clone urged him to patience and research before acting. He decided to set about restoring the base as best as he could. There were considerable stores still available that the Chimera had not touched and many of the computer systems could be repaired. It took months of painstaking work. In the mean time his mind healed sufficiently to become less erratic. He became more self aware. Aware that he was not who he had been, he was someone new. He decided to call himself Daedalus as he intended to become as great a scientist and inventor as his name sake. He spent the next 10 years educating himself and experimenting in various fields of robotics engineering. As a diversion he continued to develop and refine his flight suit and various weapons associated with it, using it at times to fend off scavengers and reconnaissance teams from Argent.
Then, without warning, Daedalus experienced an intense psychic assault. One of his brothers was experiencing incredible pain and was reaching out from halfway around the world. Over the years he had felt slight mental touches from his brothers across the world, having inherited some small part of his father's psychic link with the others, but he had never paid much attention to them. This was different. The assault triggered his latent concern for his brothers and he determined to discover where they were now, and who was in trouble. Daedalus delved into what records he could find, his father's memories were not clear on where the boys had been sent. He then realized how extensive and devious the original plan of infiltration was. After finding out where his brothers were, he determined that the cry must have come from Darius in South America. Darius had been programmed to infiltrate the Brazilian government or VIPER or both if possible. The records showed where Darius had been sent, but nothing after. Daedalus had to pick up the trail from there. After arriving in Brazil, he pieced together Darius's life and discovered he had indeed infiltrated a VIPER cell there while also taking up a career as a motorcycle racer. It was a small cell and Daedalus determined to raid their hideout to find out what had happened to Darius. He donned his now quite advanced armored flight suit and attacked. He took them completely by surprised and was able to secure the hideout before an alarm could be sent or records destroyed.
There was no sign of his brother. From their records he determined that Darius had been selected, apparently randomly, to be used in an another super soldier experiment against his will by VIPER command. Daedalus seethed at this information. He and his brothers had been used enough as it was. In a further twist of irony, VIPER was apparently instigating it's own sleeper agent program and was trying to use Darius for it. The only other data Daedalus could find was a list of subjects designated with Greek letters and the location of the experimental facility. He traced the facility to the United States. Once there he realized he was facing a much larger opponent and endeavored to have his robot Bellerophon IV smuggled into the States to support his next incursion. After further contemplation, he decided only a stealthy incursion would be successful and fitted his suit with stealth modules he had taken from the Brazilian cell. Inside the VIPER lab, he discovered what had been done to Darius. He had been injected with a number of different types of nanites that would augment his physiology and attempt to make modifications to his brain and personality to be a loyal soldier of VIPER. Darius's mental clone had let the experiment proceed to gain increased power, but did not realize the danger it was in until it was too late. The clone resisted the reorganization of the brain and personality which had led to the psychic outcry, as it failed to do so. Daedalus also discovered that the subjects were being augmented so that they could infiltrate the Superhero community in the United States. It was a daring plan. There were ten subjects listed with the Greek letters but Daedalus could not discover which one was Darius. He gathered what information he could about them and then set off to hunt for them and find out which was his brother.
He proceeded down the list alphabetically, tracking down the subject known as Alpha who was just beginning to establish his cover as a super hero at large known as "Shocking Blue". When Daedalus confronted him and revealed that he he knew he was a VIPER plant, Alpha reacted with extreme violence, evidently programmed to protect his cover in this manner. Alpha's nanites allowed him to project short range electrical blasts but Deadalus's suit was insulated enough to ward most of these blows off. The longer the battle went on, the more enraged Alpha became and Daedalus was forced to savagely rip his throat out with his clawed gauntlets. He had already determined that this was not Darius. The same scenario played out with Beta and Gamma. By this time however, his investigation had caught the attention of both VIPER and the Champions' super computer Socrates. When Daedalus tracked down Delta, he discovered that he had walked into an ambush. 6 apparent super humans were waiting for him and ordered him to surrender. He could feel that Darius was one of them but didn't want to allow himself to be captured till he knew which one. The battle was fierce and protracted as Daedalus did his best to elude his opponents going so far as to call in Bellerophon to help. Finally he got close enough to the hero known as "Theta" to make the psychic connection to his brother. Daedalus then allowed himself to be captured so as to remain near Theta and send the mental program to free his brother from his double set of psychic shackles. When he was sure the program had taken root, he effected an escape and returned to his own base in Crete. He was now a wanted man in the United States.
Once home, he contemplated his next course of action. His recent battles had highlighted some vulnerabilities in himself and his robot Bellerophon and so he decided to correct those first before setting out on anymore adventures. This took the better part of a year. During that time he also began contemplating war with the ARGENT and/or Viper and began designing new weapons and even androids to help with that endeavor. He also discovered that the mental link with Darius had grown stronger. They could touch each other over the vast distance between them on rare occasions. The mental program seemed to have done it's job and Darius was now acting on his own, not a slave to anyone. Just as Daedalus was preparing to begin searching for his other brothers. He felt a touch from Darius and a message, "We are coming." is all it said. Indeed a few days later, Darius and another man appeared at the perimeter of the his base. The sensors in the base could read that the other man exuded power on an altogether different scale than the two brothers but he allowed them to enter to hear what they had to say. The other man introduced himself as The Director and said that he was recruiting others to join him in battle against a common foe and that Theta had recommended Daedalus as a possible recruit, a most vital one. The Director went on to explain that his group had nearly everything they needed to wage war, except for a gifted inventor and technologist, both fields that Daedalus excelled in. Daedalus considered their proposal. It would mean relocating back to the United States at least on occasion, but it also meant that he no longer had to fight a war on his own. Theta urged him to join, his mental clone had been destroyed and he wanted nothing more than to take revenge on ARGENT for what had been done to them. In the end, Daedalus agreed to joining the group and brought along Bellerophon and his plans for new androids to fight ARGENT and VIPER.
'Powers and Equipment
Axon is a bio-engineered human being endowed with superior physical and mental abilities. He is able to leap twice his own height, run a mile in 3 minutes and lift(press) 850 pounds. His reflexes, dexterity and senses are all preternaturally acute. Although he is an excellent marksman, Axon prefers engaging in physical combat. He has been trained in several modern unarmed combat techniques as well as Wing Chun Kung Fu.
He has a high genius level intellect capable of learning and understanding many fields of study. His initial conditioning focused on very specific subjects and he has had little contact with the outside world so is just beginning to learn non-technical subjects. He is already an accomplished roboticist and electro-mechanical engineer and inherited some advanced knowledge of psychology and mental conditioning from his father.
Daedalus has inherited a small part of Dr. Hesslein's psionic abilities, mostly concerned with mental links to his 5 brothers and their mental clones. He can initiate mental touches over great distances and in that way gain some sense of where they are and what they are doing. In close proximity he can actively read the minds of his brothers and make direct contact with them.
He is equipped with a light but powerful armored suit whose primary function is flight, quietly, at high speeds and high and low altitudes. It is primarily composed of a man-made isotope of aluminum and titanium, with other parts made of questionite. It is able to withstand impacts up to medium powered rifle bullets. It is designed to enhance the wearers strength allowing him to lift(press) 3 tons. It does not hinder movement in any appreciable way, affording the wearer high agility. It can travel at mach 2 for 3 hours before the fuel cells deplete. It is water and air tight with an internal air supply lasting 2 hours. It can survive depths of up to 800 feet. It is also equipped with tasers in each gauntlet that have a range of about 50 feet and produce 50,000 volts. The wings are semi retractable and are made of Questionite. Honed to a razor edge, they make excellent weapons.
The Mechanoids
Bellerophon IV is considerably larger and more durable than it's predecessors. It is approximately 12 feet tall and weighs in at 1.7 tons. Daedalus is constantly experimenting on and upgrading it's capabilities. It is able lift 80 tons and is fitted with razor sharp claws for close combat. It can fire a heavy particle beam from it's 'eye' and also has dual m32 gatling guns. It is now accompanied by two much smaller units that can aid in combat or serve as fields mechanics.
The Zephyr’s are the first attempt by Daedalus to replace the combat androids of the STZ. The Director was able to bring 5 of the Avenger androids with him and Daedalus based his first couple of prototypes on these. His initial impression of the androids were that they were overly complicated and would be difficult to reproduce. Especially their cognitive systems. The final design included flight capabilities and built in disruptor technology. Their cognitive system was pared down so that they would be easier to mass produce. Each android has small on board fission reactor that can power it for several days before refueling. They are moderately bullet proof and are designed to attempt to continue primary function even if 50 percent critical damage is sustained. Aside from medium range disruptors, they are equipped with 6-10 long range anti-personnel missiles. They also have a devastating plasma blade for close-quarter combat. While they have enough cognitive function to carry out tasks, they have no volition aside from the base commands of returning to base if no other command exists and self-destruction if captured. All other functions are directed by the Zephyr Primes.
The Zephyr Primes are command units for the basic Zephyrs. They have sophisticated AI and are capable of independently directing the actions of 10 - 20 Zephyrs simultaneously. The primes are built from the original 5 Avenger androids from the STZ. They are considerably more durable than the standard Zephyrs with greater power generation and armament. They have flight capability but are slower and less maneuverable than the standards. The primes are powered by fusion reactors that can last several weeks. They are programmed with a variety of tactical plans and can direct their platoons for several hours or until their objective has been reached, before requiring new input. If failure or capture seems imminent, they will sacrifice whatever troops they have left to ensure their escape. The primes are programmed to respond to any member of the Directorate but only the Director and Daedalus may override pre-existing commands. If a prime is destroyed in the field, it’s Zephyrs will carryout their last instructions then return to base immediately or self destruct if necessary. Daedalus is currently working on the first wholly new Prime Zephyr prototype with many planned improvements
