Yeah, yeah...edited for your pleasure. :P
@VGBM--I don't have a theme planned out for every month yet, but I think I'm going to have to drift away from alliteration by the end of the year. We'll see, though...
Also, don't feel obliged to stick to my theme. That's a restriction for myself only; you're welcome to forge your own path as you like!
Welcome to Mechanical May, home of all things technological, cybernetic, automated, and transhuman!
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Villain of the Day: May 1 (Chopper)
Greg Kohler had quite the run of bad luck. A drug runner for The Organization in Rook City, he far too often found himself on his superiors' bad side, with threats of concrete shoes and visits to the morgue for dropped shipments and abandoned sales. No matter where Greg seemed to turn, the heroes of Dark Watch seemed to be on his tail, leading to exponentially greater consternation for both himself and The Chairman's lackeys.
Things couldn't get worse. Until they did.
In charge of moving a heroin shipment through a Rook City warehouse, Greg found his operation raided, yet again, by Dark Watch. Threatened yet again by his employer, Greg drew a pistol. His underlings pleaded with him to make a break for it, but Greg was incensed--he wasn't going to lose another shipment. He wasn't going to lose again.
That's when Mister Fixer--still the bitter, undead soul inhabiting the martial artist's corpse--shattered his arms. Greg managed to pull the trigger twice, both to no avail, as Fixer released a Vibrating Palm strike just above Greg's right elbow, shattering his radius and ulna into fourteen discrete pieces. As Greg howled in agony (and as Setback dashed forward to hold back his irate comrade), Fixer unleashed a fearsome Howling Lemur Roundhouse towards Greg's head; reflexively, Kohler tried to block with his only good arm, only for Fixer's kick shearing his arm in a horrifying compound fracture.
As the remaining drug runners fled and Dark Watch beat a hasty retreat, talking down Fixer all the while, Greg blacked out, his blood pooling on the concrete floor.
He awoke in a hospital bed, though Greg was sure he was in no hospital. Looking down, his arms were gone. In their place were a set of sleek silver steel prosthetics, which he flexed tentatively. A smirking blonde man, clad in bloodstained surgical garb, smiled towards Greg, "Sadly, there was little we could do to save the originals. I think you'll find these will provide a much better alternative anyway." The man moved closer, the dim light glinting off eyes that could only made of some metallic bronze.
Within days, Greg had learned that his new arms were no mere prosthetics. Rather, their cybernetics provided him a phenomenal degree of strength and manual dexterity...and a series of deadly weapons. With but a thought, Greg could project four ultra-sharp blades from the forearms of each of Greg's cybernetics, which whirled with intense speed, not unlike the blades of a helicopter. The blades themselves were made from a ceramic nano-fluid allowing for a sharpness akin to that of obsidian, which itself is capable of fracturing down to a single molecule. The servo motors within his arms were able to maintain a rotation speed of over 700 rotations per minute, allowing him to rise from the ground not unlike a helicopter.
Taking on the name Chopper, Greg struck out on his own, disrupting armored car shipments, chemicals firms, and new technologies companies. While most of his crimes seem to target either liquid assets or those that would easily be sold on the black market, Chopper was recently sighted scoping out the Megalopolis facilities of Blackstock-McCalley Aeronautics. What he could be seeking out there (and why) is still to be determined...
Is that an intentional reference to Nick Chopper, the Tin Woodsman from The Wizard of Oz?
Nope. Was meant to be more of a pun on 'helicopter', considering that's Greg's jam.
Villain of the Day: May 2 (EMS Express)
It's been hailed as one of the greatest advances in medical technology. It's been railed against as a direct attack upon the heroes of every disaster. In the end, the tool currently called EMS Express sits as the pinnacle of drone technology in Megalopolis.
A joint creation between the Department of Health and Human Services, Nautilus Industries, and Aldred Industries, the first waves of EMS Express drones were created to deal with the massive clean-up and recovery efforts following the OblivAeon crisis, particularly in cities like Rook City and San Alonzo. Most often appearing as a sort of aerodynamic coffin, EMS Express drones were expressly designed to replace search-and-rescue crews and paramedics, featuring a number of robotic arms with attachments meant for extraction and careful manipulation, a number of scanners and medical devices (including autoinjectors and other similar equipment), a carbon nanofiber chassis with micro-repulsor VTOL engines, and an AI capable of discrete, analytical thinking. In an ideal circumstance, an EMS Express drone could scan the wreckage of a collapsed building, identify and extract survivors, restrain survivors into itself, and fly to the nearest hospital or rendezvous site within a matter of minutes.
While the first few missions for EMS Express were unequivocal successes, backlash immediately came from the unions for paramedics and firefighters. In addition to what was seen as an attack on their livelihood, first responders on site claimed that the EMS Express drones often got in the way of human rescue efforts and interfered with buildings' structural integrity, making it even more dangerous to enter given buildings. Nautilus president Eliot Marklund has been quick to counter with the number of lives saved by the EMS Express drones, though controversy continues to rage throughout Megalopolis over their efficacy, their vulnerabilities, and the potential security risk for patients both in terms of their well-being and their health records and genetic information.
Perhaps the greatest point of controversy for the EMS Express drones came during the failed rescue of one Davonte Wallace. EMS Express drones were dispatched to aid with a fire at a major apartment complex in Megalopolis, in which structural damage had made the building dangerous for firefighters. An EMS Express drone located Wallace in his 8th floor apartment, pinned under some debris, and moved to intercept and extract the young man. When the drone landed at nearby St. Ignatius Memorial Hospital, Wallace was already dead. City medical examiners began investigating Wallace's death when chemical analysis noted a lethal level of opiates in his bloodstream. While Nautilus and the HHS have done their best to keep a lid on this controversy, leaked video from the EMS Express drone expressly shows Wallace alive and protesting as the drone's mechanical arms desposited him inside itself and latching an autoinjector around his upper arm...
Villain of the Day: May 3 (Fortress)
The US government's Bunker project has been the single most successful armored-suit program throughout the world. It's provided the template for at least a dozen other world government's similar programs, most notably Israel's Project Jericho suits.
The armored villain known as Fortress, however? Something else entirely.
None know Fortress' true identity. Their enmity towards Bunker and his derivatives, though, cannot be understated. Fortress appears to be wearing a salvaged version of the Bunker armor; Tyler Vance has identified the chassis as a modified version of the 6.0.2c suit, which was believed destroyed in the attack on the Freedom Five's headquarters during the Vengeance incursion. While not every piece of Bunker technology were discovered, the ruins that were found from the 6.0.2c suit seemed to indicate over a 96% loss. Regardless, Fortress seems to have that very chassis.
However, the operator of Fortress has made a number of substantial upgrades to the armor, mainly made up of other salvaged weaponry. Fortress has used weaponry including a shoulder-mounted Disintegration beam (presumably taken from an Omnitron drone), a number of flechette launchers (last seen in the hands of Desert Eagle during his days with the Slaughterhouse Six), an electricity field generator (based on a Baron Blade design), as well as a beam cannon similar to Time-Slinger's Masadah. In all cases, these weaponry appear as if they were taken wholesale from their respective 'donors', but the items held by Fortress seem to show no wear and tear, no ill effects, and no misuse. It's as if they were taken while brand new.
Omnitron-X, however, posits a different theory. Initial scans on Fortress seem to show some degree of chronal energy emanating from Fortress, as if the armor itself had some degree of time travel ability, though in practice, Fortress has never exhibited any ability in that regard. As for the mystery of who's within the armor? Still undiscovered...
Okay, that's cool. :D A pretty classic style villain with just a bit of a twist!
Villain of the Day: May 4 (Lacquer)
Baron Blade's numerous experiments under the guise of Revocorp had a notoriously low survival rate. The mad baron's continual quest to unlock the genetic potential of humanity (and use it finally defeat that cursed Legacy) came at the cost of hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.
Roxanna Hernandez was not one of those. A high school dropout, she spiraled into a series of increasingly-violent crimes, resulting in her incarceration. After shivving a fellow inmate at Stanton Penitentiary, Roxanna was found guilty and placed on death row...that was when a Revocorp representative came calling. Offering her the 'standard' Revocorp deal, the representative filed Roxanna under an experimental nanite group and went on his merry way.
Over the next few months, Roxanna was subject to countless experiments, intending to perfect the blood-borne nanite robots so oft used by Baron Blade to heal and regenerate during the heat of combat. An implant was placed at the base of Roxanna's skull, allowing her to control and dispatch the nanites, moving them throughout her body. Despite the agony of continual invasive surgery, Roxanna found herself becoming something new completely.
Under most circumstances, the nanites under Roxanna's control act as simple bio-regenerative creations, repairing damaged cell structure and providing her a phenomenal degree of healing. However, Roxanna's control of the nanites is so minute and finite that she can use them to a much greater degree. When first encountered by Daybreak, Legacy (Pauline) noted that Roxanna's first action upon seeing the heroes was, quite literally, to stab herself in the stomach. As she did so, blood flowing freely from a seemingly-lethal gut wound, the nanites bonded within the micronic iron in Roxanna's blood, forming an ultra-hard, nigh-impervious Lacquer over her full body. Roxanna, while so armored, exhibits enhanced strength, incredibly durability, and the ability to create appendages from the lacquer, providing her additional limbs, tentacles, or other features as she so desires.
Since escaping from the Revocorp facility--during the OblivAeon event, naturally--Lacquer has used her newfound abilities to their full effect. Roxanna has taken control of her old gang, turning their operations from simple snatch-and-grabs and chop-shops to active, targeted heists. Her primary target, of course? Revocorp plants, capable of producing the same nanites as the ones that inhabit her bloodstream.
Awesome concept. Are you picturing her blood armor as deep red, or something else?
I picture almost like a rust red, since her armor is effectively a shell of blood, nanites, and microscopic iron being exposed to air.
Villain of the Day: May 5 (HaXXor)
Dwayne Montgomery was a troll. The stereotypical overweight, neck-bearded, pasty nerd, Dwayne had just gotten banned from his favorite internet forum and hoped to blow off some steam killing some noobs in his favorite online MMO. His day job of server maintenence never seemed to be enough digital prescence for him; as soon as he was back home, Dwayne was back behind a screen. Even in the midst of the Deadline event, Dwayne sat at his computer, cursing the omnipresent lag and optimizing his trickster-warlock for higher DPS.
However, something strange happened that day. As Dwayne stared at his screen, debating between his off-hand weapon options, his screen began to flicker and pulsate with twisting purple light. Cursing all the while, Dwayne stood up to unplug his monitor, though he never made it that far. Flaring with that strange energy, the monitor opened into a static-filled portal, pulling Dwayne in bodily.
After some time, Dwayne awoke in quite the strange place. Bits of light flickered past him in a static-gray background. He floated there, as if swimming in warm pool of salt water, disbelieving his situation entirely. That was when he realized: not only was he no longer in the real world; he was in the Internet itself.
Within days, Dwayne had managed to use his knowledge of system infrastructure to master his new environs. He could travel through even the most secure sites with ease, slipping through firewalls and secured accounts with the ease of a practiced gem thief. Money from hundreds of hedge funds, retirement IRAs, and countless other accounts started disappearing as Dwayne, now calling himself HaXXor, shunted those funds through the labyrinthine pathways of the internet into a fund of his own.
HaXXor did find that he could re-emerge into the real world, though he was only able to stay there for a short time, about two hours. Further, he no longer appeared as human; rather, he appears as a static-y outline of a person, holding the same shape as himself, as a being of flickering, buzzing energy.
Only one group claims to have actively confronted HaXXor, the Sentinels of Freedom-trained group now calling themselves The Liberators. Mister E, the group's tactician and investigator, was bodily sucked into the internet, captured by HaXXor. His compatriots, Miss Marble, the Hemogoblin, and Scalpel, had to send their consciousness into the digital ether to confront HaXXor within the depths of his favorite game...a place in which HaXXor himself was able to control the very landscape, summoning orcs and goblins to thwart the group, to say nothing of his lightning-spewing dragon, his lethal traps, and his monolithic fortress.
Check out Dexter Douglas
Nerd computer ace
Went surfing on the Internet
And got zapped to cyberspace!
:)
Villain of the Day: May 6 (Cyclona)
Meteorologist Connie Van Buren just couldn't take it anymore.
A long-standing weather expert for Megalopolis' WKXB news ("Know More! Watch Channel 4!"), Connie watched her doctorate going to waste. She had spent years studying the cyclonic energy of tornadoes and microbursts, only to be trotted out like some airheaded bimbo night after night. When the WKXB station manager suggested wearing something a little more revealing--"you know, just to up the 11pm ratings"--she smashed the side of his head with a nearby boom mike and started stomping on his head, giving him a concussion and two major skull fractures.
While placed on "administrative leave" by her network, Connie dusted off an old project that she had tinkered with during her post-graduate work. One of her mentors--Dr. Yukio Takeshi of the University of Oklahoma--had long posited that reverse cyclonic energy could be used to dissipate tornadoes and the like, even as they started. By providing a retrograde force to the funnel itself, the differences in air pressure would equalize, destroying the tornado.
Connie, however, had other ideas. And, with a little outside investment and manpower from a contact at Haephestus Labs, she now had the equipment she needed.
Connie's first appearance as Cyclona came at a WKXB "Jam the Bus!" back-to-school event. Nearly every ancho for WKXB was there, covering the annual donation event, as patrons brought school supplies for needy students at the start of the academic year. Cyclona burst onto the scene in a blue-and-grey costume and her new cyclonic gauntlets, lifted the bus with ease, and smashed it down onto the WKXB news van. Evening anchor Jim Reynolds was sent hurtling into the side of the nearby Broadmoor Elementary School, while Connie's replacement, Ariel Mackenzie, was found flung four blocks away, splattered against a support pillar for the Megalopolis Monorail.
Since that day, Cyclona has made several appearances, often raiding high-tech meteorological firms for new equipment or to simply wreak havoc on her former employers. What she does with this equipment is yet unknown, though some have posited that cyclonic gauntlets will soon be paired with something even deadlier.
I like how we're back to seriously classic comic book villains now. :D
Great comics pull villains of all genres.
But yeah, after March dealt with more magic/arcane/horror threats and April was spent traversing the cosmos, it's nice to be back on Earth for a while. 
Villain of the Day: May 7 (Shiver)
When Shiver first arrived on the superheroic scene, he barely made any waves. He killed no hostages, vanquished no heroes, and succeeded on no major heists. Much of his work has come in service to other villains, often serving as hired muscle or as a metahuman 'specialist', designed to keep metahuman heroes busy while his compatriots perform the actual heist. He's been caught no less than 4 times, his true identity as Jerry Kobler revealed for all to know.
What the real question is, though...how did Jerry Kobler get hold of the original Absolute Zero's cold gun designs?
Henry Goodman's original designs for the Negathermo Projector Carbine have been classified as state secrets since World War II. While many of the scientific records that came from Goodman's laboratory have been redacted and released via the Freedom of Information Act, the design specificiations of the Negathermo device (as well as any number of other device replicating a metahuman ability) have been kept from the public eye, particularly after the use of such devices on a military scale has been declared a war crime, per the Geneva Conventions.
Every time that Shiver has been apprehended, his Negathermo device has been confiscated by government authorities. However, each time he is freed, Shiver reappears with yet another Negathermo device. He has been interrogated numerous times by police, the FBI, and numerous other governmental bodies, though none have been able to get the truth from him. In fact, Jerry has been known to send these investigators on seeming wild-goose chases, looking for non-existent TALOS bunkers in the American Southwest, chasing face-changing foreign spies across Germany, or launching full (and spectacularly unpopular) investigations into Marklund Industries. No one has ever managed to get the truth from him.
Further, with such secrets at his disposal, some have begun to question as to why Shiver hasnt' moved on to any larger aims. Jerry seems quite content to serve as a powered enforcer for other criminals, rather than branching out onto schemes of his own. And, for that matter, what other schematics does Shiver have access to?
That's fascinating. o.o What could he know?
The Omni-Collector
When the first iteration of Omnitron was destroyed on the Wagner mars base, groups such as the Freedom Five, Revocorp, and the Wagner scientists all made attempts to recover as much of what was left as they could for research purposes. So, because no one could see all of the parts together, no one ever noticed that a few of those bigger pieces were never recovered, nor were they still on Mars.
At the destruction of Omnition-II, the Freedom Five didn't take any chances, so they made sure to collect and dispose of every single piece they could find. During this, Legacy thought he some something move out of the corner of his eye, and responded by doing a quick search of the area. After not finding anything, and because his danger sense never went off, he just shrugged it off and went back to work, not realizing that the big pile of Cosmic Omnitron parts was now slightly smaller.
After the Vengeance event, the broken and defeated Omni-Blade was left behind in an industrial area. When their programming assimilated into the nearby factory, a new threat had emerged. The heroes were so preoccupied with this latest version of Omnitron that no one stopped to wonder where the Omni-Blade body had gone.
The first clue that something was up was noticed by Unity. When she returned to the factory to gather the pieces of Omnitron-X, she was certain she could rebuild all of them, but no matter how hard she looked, even well past where the pieces could have reasonably flown off to, she just couldn't find all of it, and had no choice but to replace some parts with her usual flair. Of course, even still, no one would have noticed that parts of the building's Partial Omni-Drone were missing as well.
Surprisingly, Omnitron-U made it through the entire OblivAeon event without once getting destroyed and having to rebuild themself. That's not to say they made it out without a scratch, but none of the damage was too serious, and it looked like they would remain Omnitron-U for the forseeable future.
That had to be fixed.
Omnitron never saw the attacker, not only were they still damaged from OblivAeon, but whoever it was seemed to know all of their blindspots. They disappeared as quickly as they came, but not without what they were after. Now much more severely damaged, and missing many of their pinker parts, Omnitron-U was forced to take time off to properly rebuild.
Someone, or something, has been collecting parts from every iteration of Omnitron. Nobody knows why they're doing this, or to what end. In fact, most still aren't aware of their existance. But they will soon, for the Omni-Collector is growing impatient, and now that the newest version of Omnitron is out and about, who knows how much time this one has before they, too, are added to the collection.
Villain of the Day: May 8 (TrikeStrike)
Jack Catheti knew that his invention would change the face of warfare forever. That is, until his best shot at a major military conflict turned into the laughing stock of the arms industry.
Once a mechanical engineer with Blackstock-McCalley, Jack left his six-figure design job for the opportunity to act as a freelance consultant for the US Army under General Armstrong. Jack's commission was simple: come up with a battlefield-capable infantry vehicle capable of quick response and a suitable arms load out for active battlefield combat.
For months, Jack slaved over the design. A motorcycle was too imbalanced and required too much of the rider's focus. A quad-ATV had too high of a center of gravity, leading to rollover in a number of environments. A trike, however? Optimized for stability and ease of piloting, a trike seemed the obvious solution. Further, the larger chassis allowed for a greater weapons-loadout than a motorcycle, while avoiding the drawbacks of the quad-ATV.
Jack's job turned to obsession, which turned to mania. He became fixated on turning the trike into the perfect weapon of war, adding carbon-fiber armor plating, retractible wheel spikes, pulsar cannons, an ionic mine dispenser, a sub-sonic afterburner, and other designs known only to himself.
The day of his presentation to the military brought butterflies to Jack's stomach. As he waited for General Armstrong and the other military attaches to arrive, his breakfast twisted in his gullet. A convoy of humvees pulled up to the test field, and the officials within almost immediately burst into laughter. Catheti's life's work was nothing short of an absurd monstrosity, more suited to a Rube Goldberg contest than the modern battlefield. As the officials approached, Jack could hear their stifled laughter and crass comments.
Jack saw red. Clenching his jaw, he never even managed to say a word to the general. He pushed his test pilot out of the driver's seat, revved the engine, and charged up the pulsar cannons. Two of the humvees exploded in a shower of scrap metal and flames as Catheti's trike roared past the officials and off into the night.
Since then, TrikeStrike, as Jack has been calling himself, has waged a one-man war on the United States military. The indignities he suffered could not stand; the world surely must recognize his greatness! While out of his vehicle he might only be a mortal man, within his custom trike, he could make the nation tremble!
I like this guy, he's silly. :D