So, as everybody can see, I got distracted from this for a while. But now I’m back with some more entries!
Since I already have the Freedom Three, the next most logical characters to do is some more of their villains, beyond Baroness Information:
The Vengeful Four
After Baroness Information gained new powers in the form of reality manipulation and a superhuman physique, she decided to put together a team of villains to finally take down the Freedom Three. After all, the heroes had always used teamwork to foil her plots in the past, so why shouldn’t it work for her? So was born the Vengeful Four, a team of villains all with grudges against individual members of the Freedom Three, and with powers and abilities that could counter those of the heroes.
(And yes, they do have more members than the Freedom Three. Villains don’t play fair.)
Stoat
Ermine + Spite
To the world, Cassandra Donovan was just one of Megarookopolis City’s many idle socialites. Maia Parsons, who ran in those same circles when not patrolling the streets of her city as The Shadow Patriot, certainly thought so. But what nobody knew was that Cassandra was also a thrill seeker with a sadistic, bloodthirsty streak. She satisfied these impulses by donning her secret identity of Stoat and stealing some of the most famous and valuable items around, and if she ever encountered anyone during one of her heists, she’d ruthlessly murder them. But Stoat’s crimes were put to a stop when the Shadow Patriot successfully captured her, unmasked her, and left her for the authorities. Her public image was ruined, and more to the point she was sentenced to death for her crimes. But while she was on death row, a shady pharmaceutical company made a deal with the prison she was being held in, and instead of being given her sentence, Stoat was put in an experimental chemical trial. None of the other test subjects survived the trial, but Stoat was given fantastic powers by it, broke out, and resumed her crimes, now with a heightened hatred for the Shadow Patriot who had defeated her before.
Stoat is a master thief and cold blooded serial killer. She’s cunning, agile, stealthy, able to blend into a crowd, excellent at infiltration, and kills with sadistic glee. Being experimented upon has also granted her strange powers, including inhuman strength, telekinesis, and the ability to feed on the life force of others. However, if she goes too long without her special experimental chemical treatments, she begins to mutate into a horrific abomination.
Stoat has short light brown hair, and wears a red full-face mask fitted with yellow goggles, a high-collared, sleeveless blue and brown catsuit with a low cut neckline and belt, black gloves with white fur trim, and brown high-heeled boots. Her powers often manifest as fiery purple energy in her hands, and her eyes glow purple when using them.
While Baroness Information of course considered herself the one true nemesis of the Shadow Patriot, she also knew that her foe was exceedingly powerful, and that it would be a good idea to have a second villain to attack her in addition to herself. Stoat’s hatred of the Shadow Patriot, combined with her agility and strength, made her the perfect counter to the hero. And she would also serve as someone who the Shadow Patriot would focus on, allowing Baroness Information to work behind the scenes until she chose to reveal herself.
Notes: Stoat is atypical because she’s just a fusion of two Wraith villains, and doesn’t include any Legacy ones. This is because, after merging Blade with Miss Info, Legacy just doesn’t really have any other notable villains. The Wraith, meanwhile, had not just one but TWO notable villains left, so I decided to combine them. This does result in the odd situation of having the Vengeful team have one more member than the Freedom team, but like I said, villains don’t play fair. Besides, I think the two meld together well enough. They were both sort of less important until they suffered a defeat at the Wraith’s hands, and then they become bigger deals. And Spite’s powers let her go toe to toe with the strength that Shadow Patriot gets from Legacy. And she’s called “Stoat” just because it’s another name for an ermine and it has the s and the t sounds in “Spite.”
Bullet Train
Friction + Fright Train
Krystal Graves and Meredith Vance had been army squadmates, though there had always been a rivalry between them, as each one competed to prove that she was the better. Krystal, in a way, looked up to Vance. She viewed her as a worthy rival, and desired her respect as an equal. Though when Vance made lieutenant, it seemed that the winner of their rivalry had been decided. After both were discharged from service, Vance landed a job at Eaken-Rubendall Labs, while Graves struggled to find employment, until Dr. Vance offered her an internship. She took it, thinking it’d be her chance to prove herself. But Krystal Graves proved to be a terrible intern, doing sloppy labwork, designing inventions that routinely failed to function, and even damaging valuable equipment with her carelessness. Meredith Vance had no choice but to let her go. Bitter that she had been declared unworthy by her rival, she stole an experimental speed suit that Dr. Vance had been working on that was supposed to grant others the super-speed that her accident had granted her and her suit. Armed with this device, Graves went into the private security sector. But her resentment simmered, and she eventually reached out to Baroness Information to join her team as the villainous Bullet Train and exact revenge on Dr. Meredith Vance, now operating as the hero Particle Cannon.
Bullet Train was a capable soldier and security enforcer, which gave her skills and experience she now directs towards her villainy. She also had some experience with science and technology, but lacked true talent with it, and was always better at repurposing others’ inventions than creating her own. The speedsuit she stole from Particle Cannon grants her speed and reflexes comparable to the hero’s own, but trying to go too fast risks her burning herself out. And after joining Baroness Information’s team, the Baroness treated Bullet Train with her Progression Serum derived from Shadow Patriot’s superior genetics, which granted Graves superhuman strength and durability. The combination of her swift speed and her unrelenting strength allows her to charge across the battlefield, leaving a trail of destruction.
Bullet Train has black hair, which she usually keeps up in a ponytail, and wears a cowcatcher over her head (she had always liked trains, hence her codename), a sleeveless red top with one strap on the right and a bare midriff, green pants, black fingerless gloves, and sneakers. While using her super-speed, her eyes and circles on her thigh glow blue, and blue lightning trails behind her.
Baroness Information selected Bullet Train as her foil for Particle Cannon because the two had bad history, and because her might and speed could counter Particle Cannon’s speed and firepower. But after the Baroness’s team dissolved in failure, its members all struck out on their own. However, Bullet Train and Stoat eventually crossed paths again, and decided to resume their teamwork. They formed a villainous duo, as their skillsets complemented one another well: Bullet Train would zip and crash around, making a big distraction, while Stoat would subtly accomplish her villainous goals in all the chaos.
Notes: This mashup was pretty obvious. I already mixed Bunker and Tachyon, so it was only natural to mix Fright Train and Friction. I did have a bit of trouble merging the two villains’ attitudes towards their nemeses. Fright Train was a rival of Bunker, while Friction admired Tachyon, and rivalry and admiration aren’t easy to merge. The best I could come up with was what you can see above: Bullet Train admired Particle Cannon, but also wanted to prove herself better than her. And I do think that their powers synergize well: Friction’s reckless speed and Fright Train’s unstoppable momentum go together well. And she’s called bullet train because it’s the only term I could think of that has connotations of both “trains” and “fast.”
Steel Soldier
Chokepoint + Proletariat
Evelyn Tsarev was an exemplary Soviet soldier. She was so skilled, in fact, that she was enrolled in a secret super-soldier program, in which she was exposed to cosmic radiation from a fallen meteor, which granted her two different superhuman powers: she gained the ability to manipulate any metal, and the ability to split herself into identical duplicates. She put her new abilities to good use fighting the Axis powers as the Steel Soldier, but when WWII ended, she was cryogenically frozen so that she would not age out of her fighting prime. Decades later, the villainous Baroness Information found her, and used her manipulative skills to convince Evelyn that the Freedom Three were instruments of oppression who needed to be taken down. She stoked a particular enmity for Snow-Shaper in the Steel Soldier, knowing that her powers would be an excellent foil to the heroine’s. But during the confrontation between the Baroness’s team and the heroes, the Steel Soldier was brutally impaled by an energy-wielding space hero, and rendered comatose. Years later, while comatose, her powers drew a strange crystal left behind from an alien being’s attack on Earth to her, and it merged with her, healing her and boosting the potency of her powers. Also, after awakening, her mind seemed altered from the ordeal. She could always feel the metal around her, but now she could hear it speak to her, and it asked to be liberated from the forms that humanity has trapped it in. So the Steel Soldier began a new mission to free the metal of the world, now not driven by loyalty to any leader.
In addition to being a skilled combatant, the Steel Soldier was given a pair of powers by her exposure to cosmic radiation. By concentrating, or in response to injury, she can create a duplicate of herself. And she can also manipulate metal, and often coats herself in metal armor. All her clones share a single consciousness, so they all share her metal-manipulating power, but the more clones she makes the greater toll it takes on her mind, and likewise the strength of her metal power is dividend between them all. Merging with the strange alien crystal, however, has much enhanced both of her abilities.
The Steel Soldier wears a red full-body costume that covers everything, including her head, though it doesn’t conceal her short hair, which is in shades of silver, pink, and black. The costume has a yellow star on the face and a yellow sickle design on the chest. She typically also plates herself with metal, covering her legs and torso with black metal and her arms with silver, both up to just below her shoulders. And she usually carries a large hammer and has small pieces of metal floating around her head.
Baroness Information chose Steel Soldier to counter Snow-Shaper’s powers. Snow-Shaper always wears a metal cryosuit, and often builds metallic golems. Steel Soldier’s metal-manipulation powers can dismantle both, and her duplication power can make her a match for the hero’s army of icy robots. It was true that Steel Soldier had no particular hatred for Snow-Shaper, as the two had never even met before the Baroness recruited her, but implanting such hatred was easy enough for a mastermind like Baroness Information.
Notes: Proletariat is AZ’s nemesis, and Chokepoint is an enemy of both him and Unity, though more Unity in my opinion, so I combined them. Unfortunately, Steel Soldier’s backstory reads a little like just Proletariat’s backstory, and then with Chokepoint’s tacked on at the end, instead of a weaving and blending of the two. But the two characters’ powers do actually synergize a little when it comes to battling their nemesis, as Proletariat’s duplication can counter Unity’s bots. And the fact that each individual clone’s metal manipulation powers are reduced proportionally to how many clones there are just seemed like a natural outgrowth of the fact that Proletariat experiences more mental distress the more clones of him there are.
