Androgyne/History

History
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2000: The High Park Five

The Androgyne's powers first manifested on the afternoon of September 29th, 2000. Ani, 13 at the time, was walking home from school when five other students of High Park Junior High dragged em off the street and into an alley. There they delivered a beating, at first intended only as punishment for the razor-tongued retorts with which each had been humiliated at one time or another. Once their anger was unleashed, however, it took them over completely. What began as punishment became a savage assault that would have ended only with Ani's death had e not for the first time in eir life seen the threads of Fate binding em to eir attackers.

Ani, beaten so badly e could no longer stand or see, nevertheless perceived the threads. E grabbed desperately for them, felt them seethe in eir grasp as if enraged by being restrained, and refused to let go. Instinctively e understood how to steal back the life being taken from em, healed eir nearly fatal injuries by siphoning vitality from eir attackers. Tearing at the threads e grasped released the darkness wrapped within their coils and as they stood dazed and blind around the newly empowered Ani, e saw their fate.

As e had seized upon the threads, e also seized onto a defiant rage -- one which demanded that these monsters know eir pain themselves. In that moment eir most devastating power was awakened as well and lethal radiation cascaded outward from eir body, searing and corrupting eir attackers. Each suffered a varying level of exposure, but in all cases the damage was fatal. The boys, who would be known collectively as the High Park Five in the press, died slow and agonizing deaths as their flesh tried to reshape itself into a crude mockery of Ani's own.

Horrified -- but also vaguely thrilled -- by what e had done, Ani fled home through the alleys of Kings Row to wash off the blood, eir own, that still coated em.

The case of the High Park Five was investigated by the Paragon Police Department's Threat Assessment Unit, an elite squad tasked with assembling the evidence that would be needed to follow Hero apprehension with legal conviction. Lead detective Randall Berg's investigation would eventually lead him to Ani, but not before the savage apprehension of the Eidolon Suture by a grief-stricken Kingswoman, whose eldest son had been among the dead, based upon the initial suspicions of Vazhilok involvement due to the grievous disfigurement and signatures of organically generated radiation. For reasons that even Berg has not yet sufficiently explained, he chose to suppress his own evidence in light of the fact that the killings had been both accidental and committed in self-defense.

Berg agreed to keep Ani's secret from eir parents as well, and in time became something of a family friend and a mentor to Ani, the one person e could talk to about eir power. In his own way, Berg tried to nudge Ani towards carefully exploring eir potential, with an eye to a future using eir power to better the world, but the traumatic circumstances in which Ani's power was awakened left em extremely reluctant to ever take those initial steps. E emerged from the ordeal with a new confidence, fearless with the understanding that within em, in a place e never wished to visit again, there was the power to destroy anyone who might cross em, but e refused to actually use eir power until circumstances forced eir hand with the coming of interdimensional war in 2002.

2002: The Rikti

The Rikti first invaded Earth the afternoon of May 23rd^[1], 2002 -- Ani's 15th birthday. Eir parents, who worked together as night janitors in an office tower in Skyway City, left work early to rush to Ani's school as the invasion began, but both were killed when a Rikti vessel crashed into the supports of the highway they were driving on. Ani knew instantly that they were gone, seeing and, more agonizingly, feeling the threads of Fate that connected em to them snap away in an instant and dissolve. Panic-stricken and overwhelmed with grief, Ani ran from the school auditorium, where students in after-school programs had collected to await evacuation.^[2] E ran without any sense of direction or purpose, ignoring the emergency services trying to evacuate the city amid the chaos.

Ani ended up in the Garment Works, laying low with a group of others left homeless or otherwise unable to evacuate and those who refused to abandon the Row -- including the Kingswoman and her surviving son, Kenneth. As the fortifications that would eventually become Paragon City's War Walls cut off the Row from the major battlegrounds of the Rikti offensive in Paragon, those left behind began to eke out a living in abandoned factories, warehouses, and tenements, fighting from cover with what weapons they could scavenge or retrieve from the fallen when Rikti ground troops made it past the barriers or tried to cut through the Row to join the larger battles.

During this period, to protect emself and eir fellow survivors, e began to allow emself to tap into the dangerous power that lurked within em -- and found that it was just as devastating to the seemingly alien invaders as it was to humans. The Kingswoman saw em use those powers, and in time began to realize the truth about her son Shawn's death two years before. She pushed her personal feelings aside for the sake of the other survivors, however, and only confronted Ani about the truth after the two of them were trapped alone and weaponless as they tried to sneak through a dilapidated warehouse to get past a squadron of Rikti. Though she could not forgive em, she did know about her son's anger and did believe em after e told her what had happened in the alleyway. Only moments later a group of Rikti investigating the ruins cleared a path to where they had been trapped -- the Kingswoman, acting on instinct, then saved Ani's life in the ensuing desperate combat by intercepting a plasma bolt meant for em with her body as she pushed em to safety.

After Omega Team put an end to the war, Ani remained homeless, but nevertheless helped out where e could in the relief camps that dotted Paragon for months while rebuilding took place. Randall Berg returned to Paragon City shortly thereafter, having been trapped in Denver where he was visiting his ex-wife and daughters when the war broke out, and with permission from Ani's out-of-state family took custodianship.

2005: Lewis High Massacre

At some point in his grief over losing his mother to the Rikti, Kenneth Adams had begun to look into his brother's death. After uncovering autopsy photographs of the High Park Five, and seeing the resemblance of the dead to the Rikti Ani Hess had slain during the War, he realized the truth. Ani Hess, with whom he had survived the Rikti invasion and in the process formed a brotherly bond with, who had remained in his life ever since as a close friend, had also murdered Shawn -- and was the only witness to his mother's death. Feeling both betrayed and humiliated by the realization that his best friend was also responsible for the greatest pain in his life, Kenneth put into motion a plot to bring Hess to justice, and to exact a measure of revenge in the process.

Since the discovery of eir powers, Ani's confidence had skyrocketed. Though in many ways e always remained an outsider, e had moved among eir school's social scene as a kind of chameleon, following a new interest every few weeks. Over time, e had made at least a couple of friends in every clique on campus. Though not quite popular, Ani was well-known, even if only for eir unique appearance. That made it easier for Kenneth Adams to use his influence as class president in their senior year to see Ani Hess receive the unusual honor of being elected Homecoming Regent (the sufficiently gender-neutral term the Homecoming Committee decided on after they saw the number of write-in votes Ani had collected between both sides of the polling).

The completion of Adams' scheme came the night of Lewis High's Homecoming Dance. Just after the coronation, masked gunmen stormed the stage and took the entire gathering hostage with most of their weapons trained on Ani. They were led by Adams, himself carrying a crossbow once used by his mother. What ensued was a humiliating display, Ani stripped to put eir deformity on display as Adams projected photographs from the autopsies of the High Park Five, as well as photographs of Rikti Ani had slain during the War, for all to see.

Ani, seeing the looks of horror and realization on the faces of those who had not fled before Adams' accomplices chained the doors, most of whom had stayed because they were friends to em, tried to explain but was silenced with a rifle butt to the mouth. Terrified at the prospect of what this night would mean to em but far more terrified of being pushed to eir breaking point and losing control of eir power again, Ani grasped in desperation at the threads for help from the only other person who knew the truth: Berg. Ani seized on Berg's thread, which was already slackening as Randall raced to Lewis High after word of a hostage situation had gotten out, and pulled him through the dark spaces between dimensions to the school gymnasium in the hopes that he could help defuse the situation.

The exact sequence of events after Randall was seen to disappear from outside the high school at the moment he was teleported in remains unclear, even with his later testimony. Though Berg tried to make Adams see reason and end the situation, he was unsuccessful and the situation only escalated. Something caused Ani to snap, to lose -- or surrender -- control of eir radioactive power and flood the gymnasium with eir transgenic rays. The end came only when Berg, barely clinging to life thanks to his own minor mutation being amplified by the effort of repairing the damage Ani's radiation wrought, saw for the first time the thread that Ani said connected them. He seized onto it, and with it managed to distract Ani from eir onslaught just long enough to fire three shots into eir chest and end the ordeal.

The final death tally was 67, all students, faculty chaperones, or hostage takers. The press seized on the story of the dangerous, outcast mutant and the detective who had shielded em from discovery -- the media headlines referred to Ani as "The Androgyne". Berg was tried and convicted as an accessory after the fact to the High Park Five murders.

2006: The Rogue Isles

In late 2006, after nearly a year and a half of being kept in a stupor by power-suppressing drugs in a Zig containment cell following the Lewis High Homecoming Massacre, the Androgyne was freed during an Arachnos raid on the Brickstown superpenitentiary, loaded onto a Flyer and transported to Fort Darwin on Mercy Island for rehabilition and indoctrination.

The Androgyne was one of many marked by the visions of the Fortunata Kalinda as a potential "Destined One", and Arachnos' understanding of the potential for destruction inherent to eir powers made em a valuable acquisition. As Arachnos helped restore em to fighting form following the atrophy of eir imprisonment, Kalinda's agents assuaged Ani's fears and doubts with promises of fulfilling the potential that had always been within em.

During the time that Ani was kept sedated in the Zig, something came to em, pierced the pharmaceutical haze and spoke to em of eir potential, eir destiny. This Voice lurked in the darkest corners of eir dreams, comforted em during the frequent nightmares in which eir murders were relived, encouraged em to embrace the power e had for so long struggled to suppress. Ani has never been sure of who, or what, that entity was^[3], (indeed at first it never occurred to em to suspect it originated from without at all), but it was these whispers that prepared Ani to accept the offer of freedom -- in return for certain "favors" -- that Arachnos extended.

After eir first encounter with Ghost Widow, early in eir career, the Androgyne attached emself to the idea that the Voice had been her, preparing em to serve her interests; she made no effort to dissuade em from that assumption. After e found emself working more directly under her command however, having pledged eir allegiance within Arachnos to her faction, e began to have serious doubts. The true origin of the Voice remains a mystery, one Ani has never spoken to anyone about.

In gratitude to Arachnos for giving em eir life back, Ani Hess embraced the persona of "The Androgyne" that the press had constructed for em in the wake of Lewis High. With all that had transpired e was convinced that there could be no purpose to eir gifts but to provoke death and devastation -- a belief fostered and nourished by eir masters in Arachnos for their own gain. It would not be until the Second Rikti War began, and Ani began to realize eir full potential as a weapon in Earth's defense, that e began to have deeper thoughts about eir real destiny.

2007: The Rikti Return

When the long dormant Vanguard comm frequency flared to life the morning of July 24th, 2007, and announced that Rikti vessels were in the skies throughout the Rogue Isles, Paragon, and the rest of the world, the Androgyne did not believe what e was hearing. Rushing out of the sewers of St. Martial, where e had been pursuing the Freakshow, and seeing the sky churning that familiar sickly green, e realized that the Earth's worst fears had indeed come true. The Rikti were back, in force, and it soon became apparent that their tactics had changed -- they were specifically targeting metahuman threats, hunting heroes and villains across the globe.

The Androgyne, now nearly fully in control of eir abilities and magnitudes more powerful than e was in the first war, met the incursions head-on alongside hundreds of other Rogue Isle denizens who were no more eager to see their stomping ground defiled than were those who defended Paragon City out of duty rather than greed. By the end of the first day of the Second War, Arachnos Arbiters upgraded the Androgyne's Threat Level to 35 in recognition of eir contribution to the decimation of the first waves of invaders. No sooner had e received that clearance than e answered the call put out by the Vanguard for supers of all stripes to join the Earth's defense effort. From that day forward eir commitment to seeing the Rikti driven from this world has only grown.

Ani's dedication to driving out the invaders drove a wedge between em and eir Arachnos overseers -- eir work with the Sword took precedence over any other mission e was assigned, and even being assigned a personal liaison to Arachnos did little to draw eir attention back to those who had freed em. In the Rikti War Zone, the Androgyne found something e had lacked eir entire life: purpose. For the first time Ani saw how even powers as devastating as eir own could be wielded towards positive ends, and began to consider that the potential Randall Berg had seen in em could in fact be realized.

As Arachnos' ability to influence em waned, the Androgyne began to toy with the idea of severing eir ties to them completely. Seeking clues to eir true destiny in the threads only confirmed eir doubts: e was bound to far more in Paragon than in the Etoiles. Ani turned to the Vanguard for aid in realizing eir goal, and began to experiment with eir abilities in the War Zone to see if e could in fact restrain the full lethal force of eir power.

2008: Reciprocator

At the end of 2008 the Androgyne, with support from eir handlers in the Vanguard Sword, defected entirely from the Arachnos power structure in the Etoile Isles. After lengthy negotiations between the Vanguard and the Federal Bureau of Superpowered Affairs, Ani Hess was granted temporary clemency for eir past crimes on American soil and an extremely limited provisional CCFA license allowing em to operate in a restricted capacity within the Paragon City area. The FBSA, being severely disinclined to base decisions of this nature solely on a U.N. organization's recommendation, attached the proviso that the Androgyne must seek out a permanent sponsor in the form of an American super-group willing to endorse and monitor eir activities.

To that end, e sought out The Reciprocators, an established group with a reputation for not playing lightly with the criminal element. E knew that if eir petition was to be regarded seriously, e would have to put emself in the hands of people who, were e being deceptive about eir motives, would have the conviction and collective strength to stop him. In eir own words from the application submitted to the Citadel of Defiance: "I can't kill all of you."

Ani began eir review period with the Reciprocators expecting to be met with the typical distrust and derision e'd seen most heroes and villains display towards each other in the War Zone. Instead, e was caught off guard by the respect shown to em. The support e received from both immediate teammates and Reciprocators e maintained contact with over the comm during eir own investigations made it hard for Ani to keep thinking of emself as the outsider. Indeed, the bonds Ani formed in eir time with the group have proven to be some of the most significant and enduring of eir life.

After three weeks of review during which Hess pushed emself far harder than e had expected to, nearing the brink of exhaustion on a nightly basis as e strove to make eir presence as their hunter known to Paragon's underworld, the Androgyne's status within the group was officially upgraded to Defiant Fist.

In March of 2009, the Androgyne disappeared for several weeks, believed to be engaged in a top secret operation for the Sword.^[4] Ani has not spoken at length to anyone yet about what happened during the time e was missing, other than to acknowledge that the operation e was sent on went wrong and e spent weeks trapped underground beneath Heartbreak Ridge until Vanguard recovered em. During this time the Vanguard deflected all inquiries as to eir whereabouts with the claim that they could not comment on ongoing operations. E returned to duty in April, wearing an advanced cybernetic cast on loan from Vanguard on eir right arm for a month, which had been severely injured during the cave-in.

In June, Ani's best friend Ron Clemens, a Peacebringer discharged from the Army after his bonding, was reactivated to investigate reports of Nictus fragments in the hands of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Ani, displeased that Ron was being sent alone to deal with the situation, chose to accompany him, determined to watch eir friend's back if the military didn't intend to. While the operation went almost laughably smoothly compared to the threats the two were accustomed to dealing with in Paragon City, they hit a rough spot when American reporters in the region captured footage of Ron and Ani emerging from a cave they had pursued insurgents into.

Public reaction to the incident, fueled by the footage being uploaded multiple times to YouTube to further various and contradictory agendas, drew immediate and unflattering attention both to the U.S. military, for their use of metahumans in an operation conducted on foreign soil, and to Vanguard, for their perceived interference in an operation far outside the scope of their narrow mandate. After a week's deliberation over the matter, the Vanguard Sword suspended Ani indefinitely -- a purely political move likely at the Helm's request, e thought, to appease the Vanguard's detractors until memory of the incident had faded. While Ani was frustrated by the decision, e at least understood their motivation, and in no way regretted eir decision to back up eir friend and teammate.

A month later the suspension was lifted; plans were in the works for a coordinated assault against the Rikti's drop ships themselves as intelligence pointed to a sustained invasion over the course of a weekend in mid-July. The Androgyne was tapped to assemble a team for the invasion response over Paragon City, and gathered a force of Reciprocators and Misfits for the operation, which was an overwhelming success. E returned to active duty with the Vanguard after the assault, but eir affiliation with them -- and the Reciprocators -- would come to an end only weeks later.

2009: Renegade

At the end of July, a collection of hardships facing both individual Reciprocators and the group as a whole culminated in the revocation of the group's legal status as a hero organization in response to Black Starbeam's refusal to reveal the location of the Citadel of Defiance as demanded by a new, questionably orchestrated, city ordinance -- information he did not even possess. While the majority of the Reciprocators were able to go to ground and continue covertly to investigate the origins of the difficulties facing them, thanks to the hospitality of their allies in the League of Misfits, the Androgyne was left in a decidedly more precarious circumstance.

With the Reciprocators' super group licensing suspended, they no longer satisfied the terms of sponsorship as defined in the Androgyne's clemency agreement. Without a sponsor, the Androgyne was expected to turn emself in to FBSA custody and to eventually formally stand trial at last for the murders of the High Park Five and the Lewis High Massacre. Eir advocate with the Vanguard Helm was able to negotiate a brief grace period to allow em to tend to personal affairs before a planned surrender at City Hall's GIFT offices. The Androgyne was faced with an extremely difficult decision: consign emself to federal custody with a high probability of spending the rest of eir life in prison, useless to eir friends, or act to preserve eir own freedom so e could pursue the Reciprocators' enemies in eir own way, despite the personal consequences.

The Androgyne kept the assembled Longbow, PPD, Vanguard, and FBSA representatives waiting down to the wire. When e finally appeared, moments before the deadline for eir surrender, it was clear that e had made eir decision. Wearing eir own colors rather than the Reciprocator blue and black that had become eir second skin, head shaven and eyes aglow to remind those gathered of eir power, e appeared in the GIFT office as truly "The Androgyne" reborn. In a brief standoff that was finished even before the deadline struck, the Androgyne incapacitated the Longbow and PPD enforcers on site and made eir intentions crystal clear to Vanguard and the FBSA -- the Androgyne was done with the Reciprocators and Paragon City.

After the confrontation at City Hall, publicized as a much more violent assault then it had actually been by a scheming and corrupt city councilman who had been present in the hopes of seeing yet another Reciprocator brought low, the Androgyne vanished into the interdimensional ether along the threads of fate, and in the following weeks would make emself visible once again as an active threat in the Rogue Isles. In response to eir choice to renege on the clemency agreement they had backed, the Vanguard officially terminated their association with the Androgyne, though they have not issued any order for eir apprehension to their operatives should e choose to continue pursuing the Rikti without their support.

Since returning to the Isles, the Androgyne has divided eir time fairly evenly between tying up loose ends, rebuilding eir reputation as a villain, and keeping tabs on the Reciprocators through unlikely sources. Despite the piles of horrified, transmuted, wailing injured e may leave in eir wake during eir activities in the Isles e has yet to be responsible for a death. When asked about this adjustment to eir style, e has pointed out that it is merely how e chooses to use eir power now that e has that degree of control over it -- and that when e does next take a life, it will not be done indiscriminately, but rather as an act to be savored.

Of late e seems to have become especially interested in Crey Industries' facilities in the Etoiles, though the information-gathering outings e has been making to them have been executed with a minimum of flash, unusual for eir modus operandi of late.

2010: Reform

To come.

Last Updated: 12/29/2010