Generation VIPER
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Kids are the future, and VIPER has finally decided to seize the future where it starts. Generation VIPER is a worldwide program to bring VIPER ideals to the next generation. For much of its existence VIPER trusted society and base human nature to create the kinds of people who made good recruits, but in recent years it's decided to take a more pro-active approach and create these people from the ground up. The advantages are obvious: amoral adults rarely make loyal agents, but with childeren VIPER can give them a moral code in keeping with the organization's precepts and philosophies while instilling them with loyalty to the organization.
Contents
Background
The McClosky Tunnel Nest
The newest group of super powered teens in Generation VIPER is located in Millennium City under the instruction of Mrs. Garter. VIPER leadership has high hopes for these teens, and Mrs. Garter is determind to prover her worth to her superiors.
The Team
Mrs. Gartner
"Today we'll take a field trip. It's high time you learned how to conduct a successful bank robber."
Mrs. Garter is a femme fatale put in charge of a class of young men who can't help but be infatuated with her, and young women who can't help but be jealous of her and feel insecure in her presence. She's intelligent, sophisticated, witty, and wholly amoral. Her love for teaching has little to do with any desire to work with youth or shape young minds. It has everything to do with the fact that she relishes playing games with people and manipulating them. Adolescents possess a combination of youthful naivety, inexperience, and zeal that makes them particularly delightful toys.
That said, she's an excellent instructor, if one judges an instructor by how well the students remember their lessons. She has a deep insight into what rewards and punishments motivate a student to succeed. To her, manipulation and teaching are the same thing. To some extent she's right, but few people would find her methods acceptable despite the results she often achieves.
Mrs. Garter looks at Generation VIPER as a means to an end. She knows as superhumans graduate from her classes, they'll go on to important positions within the organization, and she plans to instill in each of her students a deep personal loyalty to their former teacher. With the power of her students at her command, she's certain she can lever herself into a position of leadership within VIPER.
Dogfight
"I'll get him ma'am!"
With foresight unusual to the organization at the time, VIPER ordered its Nest Leaders to secure the services of woman to mate with its superhuman agents, and then by any means necessary procure any offspring that resulted from the couplings, also known as Project Mating Season.
One of the children resulting from Project Mating Season both had powers of his own and stayed with the organization until it initiated Generation VIPER. He was raised by a Nest, but few of the agents ever paid attention to him. His education was spotty at best, though occasional an agent took him under his wing. As he grew he found himself ignored because the agents feared him. He became an eight foot-tall adolescent, stronger than any normal human. The agents in the Nest called him Larry Lizard because of his scaly skin and reptilian wings, and the name stuck.
Unlike some of his classmates, Dogfight isn't evil through-and-through. He just doesn't know any better, having only been exposed to VIPER agents an the organization's methods all his life. Because of his appearance, his old Nest Leader never let him out of the Nest, and Dogfight is curious about the outside world.
Jeepers Creepers
"And then the monster jumped out, and its eyes bugged out of its head, and it bit out the throat of the stupid girl - Wait! Let me show you... it looked just like this! Yeah! That's perfect! The stupid girl screamed, too!"
Ingrid Tannhauser, daughter of Major General Lorelei Tannhauser, acts like a bright and chirpy young fourteen year-old who doesn't have a care in the world and thinks everything is just peachy. But she brings fear and horror into the lives of everyone around her. After growing up constantly exposed to all sorts of horror, she finds fear cheerful and thrilling. Just like a good-humored person tells a joke or shares a funny story to make friends, "JC" shares a horrifying image or fearful experience. Sadly for most of the people Jeepers meets, she doesn't just tell the story, she uses her mental powers to drive home the fear, to make it like the person was there in the flesh.
Despite playing the youthful innocent, Jeepers knows that what she finds funny and entertaining, other people find absolutely terrifying. She always pleads that she doesn't understand, and comes across as a naive waif, but she knows full well the effect her vision have on most people. She was a terror to the researchers at her old home, and now she's become the terror of her fellow students. The truth is Ingrid Tannhauser has a sadistic streak that would do her mother proud, if her mother ever bothered to spend any time with the girl, and relishes the fear she causes.
Spoilsport
"Man, you look like a loser, and now you really ARE a loser!"
Project Lucky Roll, a research that theorized that luck was genetically inherited, and that via selctive breeding one could isolate the luck gene and strenghten its influence to create someone who never lost games of change, who never experienced bad luck. The successful result was Jack Fallows.
Growing up among VIPER agents exposed Jack to some of the worst humanity has to offer, and he's learned his lessons well. He's conniving, manipulative and greedy. If he hadn't been so spoiled he'd be scary, with his preternatural luck plus a talent for manipulation making a menacing combination. But he was spoiled. He's lived a charmed life and it's turned him into a spoiled brat. To make matters worse, the agents he grew up around doted on him, since they considered him their lucky charm, and he expect every other adult to treat him the same..
Spoilsport is lucky and has the ability to make others unlucky. Tactially, he's far from sophisticated, since the intuitive nature of his powers makes him a sloppy thinker who depens on his luck to win the day.
Trashmouth
"#$%$ you, superhero! You just picked the wrong guy to mess with, you "#$%$!"
Trashmouth is an @$$#@&%. He's intensely unlikeable, and five minutes around him makes a person understand why the other kids used to pick on him in school. But times have changed since then, now it's Jimmy Koch who does the bullying. As hard as it is to believe, he's become even more obnoxious now that he's stronger and tougher than everyone else. He's crude; he's coarse; and he has absolutely no sense of decency.
That said, Trashmouth does possess a sort of grating, acerbic, tough=love loyalty towards VIPER in general and his classmates specifically. VIPER gave him his powers, and although he went through inhuman amounts of pain to get them as the only survivor of Project Inner You, that replaced his bones and muscles with an endo-skeleton. It is the best thing that's ever happened to him. As for his classmates, Trashmouth considers them his personal preserve. Only he gets to pick on the runts; anyone else messing with them has to go through him. Trashmouth considers himself the leader of Generation VIPER, an assertion no one's disputed though no one agrees with it.
Turnabout
"P-please...don't fire! I don't want to hurt you!"
Samantha Drier had always thought her father was an electrical engineer at a firm that made toasters. She only learned he worked for VIPER once she came to reside in the McCloskey Tunnel Nest. It was a shock, to say the least.
Samantha is a mutant with powers of psychokinesis, the ability to move object with her mind. At first, her powers were weak and she had little interest in developing them. Occasionally, when alone, she might grab a book or a pencil and bring it to her across the room, but outside ofthat she never used her abilities. She preferred studying, dating boys, and doing all the things a normal 17 year-old does.
But VIPER had a use for Samantha's powers, even if she didn't. They left Samantha's father with no choice, if he wanted his family to live, so he did the only thing a father could do. He sent his daughter, who had such bright prospects, to Millennium City where her new teacher would beMrs. Garter and her new classmates, Generation VIPER. Now everyone calls her Turnabout and expect her to be a supervillain, but all Samantha wants to do is go home.
