Malikus
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| "Any sufficiently advanced scientific breakthrough is indistinguishable from magic to the average person." - Dr. Albrecht Gerard, AKA Malikus | |
| Malikus | |
| Player: @Iceciro | |
| Origin: | Science |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Stalker |
| Threat Level: | 35 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Dr. Albrecht Gerard |
| Known Aliases: | The Dark Doctor, Doctor Disgrace, The DoD's Depraved Son (and anything else that the newspapers attribute to him.) |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 38 |
| Height: | 6'2" |
| Weight: | 190 lbs |
| Eye Color: | Silver |
| Hair Color: | Black |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | None (United States citizenship revoked) |
| Occupation: | Villain, Leader/Member of R.U.I.N. |
| Place of Birth: | King's Row, Paragon City |
| Base of Operations: | The Rogue Isles |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Relocated under United States Witness Protection Program |
| Known Powers | |
| Ability to shift between our dimension and one of dark energy at will. | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Doctorate of Meta-Physiology (D.MPs), Doctorate of Meta-Physics (D.MPy), Doctorate of Science (D.Sc)(All Revoked by issuing Colleges) | |
| Equipment | |
| None | |
| No additional information available. | |
The once respected doctor now known to the world as Malikus has one of the most well-known stories. Children fear going to the doctor to this day after hearing accounts of what Doctor Gerard had done to his patients and "test subjects", and the outing of his methods caused a shakeup within medical communities and caused the dissolution of the Meta-Medical Affairs Bureau of the US Government. To this day he remains one of the FBI's most wanted, and has additionally been given the death penalty in absentia by the International Criminal Court on behalf of the many nations enraged by his actions.
Contents |
Early History
A Promising Start
Albrecht Gerard was born on March 21st, 1970, to two German-American immigrants, Dominik and Gertrud Gerrard. Albrecht was an abnormally happy little boy, but took much faster to learning about his world than playing with other children. One of the first landmark moments of his life happened when he was six years old. While most children his age were too young to grasp the severity of the situation, Albrecht did. The world was poised on the brink of a nuclear disaster in 1976, and only the actions of the Heroes of the world prevented an all out nuclear exchange. (The Cold War Crisis) This was the moment that changed his life. Albrecht decided he would become a doctor, and save people... and as he grew older, he realized he wanted to do more than just save ordinary people, he wanted to help heroes. He wanted to be there for the people who saved the entire world from destroying itself.
Albrecht had a stellar school career, though he was labeled somewhat of a recluse by his peers - his parents however, only saw the bright career of a doctor in his future, and didn't listen to Albrecht's guidance counselor. For two immigrants who made their lives through menial labor at King's Garment Works, the idea that their son would need to "socialize" before working to get the career of his dreams was pure insanity to the hard working immigrants. And in a way, it was good. At the end of the 1970s, as the USA entered a recession, the activities of teenagers mostly centered around illegal drugs and vandalism, and Albrecht's studies kept him well away from these things. While the rest of his peers were, for the most part, one step away from jail or the maw of angry mob members, Albrecht has graduated two years early, as valedictorian of the class of 1986. He was instantly picked up by Brown University, the premier educational institution for studies relating to meta and super-humans, influenced by its proximity to Paragon City, which also played into the still family-oriented Albrecht's mind.
College Life
Albrecht's incredible grades and early graduation streamlined him into Brown University's fledgling Meta-Medicine program - a program practically tailor made for him, that focused on the differences in biology between heroes and how to treat them. Albrecht poured his very heart and soul into the tough curriculum, once again dropping any social obligations for his studies. The young boy at the university was odd enough, even more odd was his lack of interest in people compared to books. The few times he did try to socialize ended in abject failure, especially concerning the opposite sex. But his grades continued their upward climb and, importantly to him, so did his parent's pride.
In the summer of 1988, he hit upon an incredible chance - a chance so rare and valued to him that it made him forgo time home with his family. A man named Doctor Brian Webb, a former member of the Freedom Phalanx, spoke to Albrecht regarding his field of study on the last day of school, and offered him a summer job. But this was no ordinary summer job. Dr. Webb wanted Albrecht to work as a field apprentice to his medical doctor - at the newly formed Portal Corp. Albrecht eagerly took the job - and as he worked for Webb, he seemed to soak up information, about the way the portals worked, about the physiology of metas, and about everything he possibly could. Additionally, in a setting with such incredible minds as Dr. Webb and his team, Albrecht was finally able to come out of his social shell because, to himself, he was for once among equals. Albrecht was one of the first people from our dimension to travel to others, though school started and Albrecht had to excuse himself from the job. Indeed, it was very fortuitous for the young man, now 19, that he chose to go back to school, because two days later, Dr. Webb's fated expedition to Axis America where he was captured by Reichsman occurred. Albrecht took his first full week off from school ever that week - traumatized by the fact that Dr. Webb had died and that such power had been used to bring such destruction to his home city. (The full story is here)
The week over, though, Albrecht threw himself into his studies with new effort, nearly cloistering up in his room, living a life divided between study and classes. His unhealthy obsession was still paying off, however - his grades were perfection and remained so for the next three years. At the age of 22, after writing a thesis paper deriding the practices of Meta-Medicine and its current broad-spectrum treatments, instead focusing on splitting the types of heroes into distinct groups, much like triaging a group of patients in a warzone. The distinctions Albrecht made in this paper are, though little known to the world at large, the foundations for the groupings of heroes and villains into distinct origins. (In Albrecht's paper, due to his focus on injury treatment, he did not separate Technological and Natural origins.) Albrecht's paper was circulated among medical establishments, and changed the way heroes were treated after brutal battle. The changes effected in these hospitals and clinics drastically increased the number of heroes who were able to return to the streets, and increased the speed of their recoveries. This would prove ironic later in Albrecht's life.
Albrecht is still remembered in many books as the first established Doctor of Meta-Medicine - despite his dark future.
A Second Degree
After his thesis was disseminated, hospital directors throughout the USA and especially Paragon City, as well as his parents, began wondering where he would work. But for the first time in his life, Albrecht defied his parents high hopes. Instead, he went back to Brown University and signed up for another course, using his clout to reduce the fees. He threw himself directly into these new studies, to the shock and dismay of all who'd hoped he'd join their hospitals, and embarked upon a new and unrelated field, but the influence on the choice was clear.
Albrecht was one of the first students in the new course of Meta-Physics - a course which required him to take his much more advanced physics prerequisites at breakneck speed so as not to miss the cut off for the brutal studies of the second year. Albrecht aced his physics courses, naturally, but at a new price. His parents did not see or hear from him more often than once a month. Rumor has it that it is during this period of intense study Albrecht's eyes first lost their brown shade, and became an unearthly silver. This myth may have some grounding, as it is during this year that Albrecht first began to wear glasses.
The Berlin Wall fell. The Hero Corps was founded. New hospitals using his previous theories were cropping up, and heroes were really turning the tide, by virtue of the fact that they could repeatedly get back into the fight while the villains would go directly to jail, beaten and exhausted. And every month new job offers came, and they would go directly into the garbage. People who would see Albrecht walking by would almost be fearful of the way he looked at them as he passed - as though the most important thing in the entire world was to learn, to study, and to understand that which his first mentor, Dr. Webb, died working with - and that the people around him didn't matter at all. Eventually, this would prove to be a true assumption.
The First Crime
It was during these years that the very first inclination of the damage done by all these years of social dissociation reared its ugly head. While Albrecht had mostly been blessed with calm, understanding roommates, due to his age he was shifted in dormitories during his second year of his degree in Meta-Physics. This left him rooming with a student athlete there on a football scholarship - someone with whom Albrecht's personality clearly did not match. While nothing happened for the first month, one night, the dormitory was awakened by the sound of a scream as the large athlete bounded down the halls, clutching his hand and leaving a trail of blood as it dripped down his hand. At the doorway to their room stood Albrecht, a pen clutched in his hand. Later accounts (which quite probably were tainted by the viewpoints of the witnesses when the questions were asked) stated Albrecht was looking at the man as he ran, the "fury of the devil himself" in his eyes, before walking calmly back inside.
While later accounts would say different, the viewpoint of Brown University was that Albrecht was not the type to rise to anger easily, and therefore the athlete must have harassed him during his study. This was the explanation offered to them by Albrecht, who agreed to the University's terms - a written apology, and payment for the man's treatment. As Albrecht was not working at this point, his parents agreed to help him pay for the bill. The two were separated, and Albrecht's new roommates found him nothing but a calm, hardworking student in an incredibly tough field few even considered work in. Another urban legend swirls about this incident, however - that Albrecht carries that pen to this day, and even that he wrote his apology with the same pen he stabbed the man with.
After a relatively uneventful three more years, Albrecht graduated ad the head of his class once again, to the applause and secret jealousy of his classmates. On the same day he would have received his Bachelor, he turned in his new thesis, based in Meta-Physics and looking at the dimensional ties between some heroes and their powers, and showed empirical proof some of them tapped into other dimensions to draw forth their energies. This new idea was quickly taken up and expanded upon by others. (For a very brief period of time there was another Origin considered, Extradimensional, but it was subsumed by the others in the face of discoveries over what originally CAUSED the ability to manipulate the energies.)
An Unlikely Employer
With a plethora of job options pouring in, Albrecht had a problem - his father was sick, a victim of a ravaging cancer that had started to attack his body even as Albrecht was completing his second college course. Torn between the need to be with his father in his time of need, and earning the money to pay for the treatment. As Albrecht thumbed through resumes, a knock at his door pulled him out of thought. Two men in jet-black suits, with dark sunglasses and an official attitude greeted him. After a short discussion and a discussion of terms, Albrecht had an answer. He would take a year off to be with his father, and the United States Government would foot the bill for his father's treatment. In exchange, he agreed to work for five years at the Department of Defense's new Meta-Medical Affairs Bureau.
Within two years, he had been promoted to a Department head. Like all the departments of the Meta-Medical Affairs Bureau, his department was unnamed - better to conceal the things that truly happened there. Deputy-Director Albrecht's sole concern, as relayed to him by the Director, was to investigate new ways to give super-powers to normal humans... soldiers in particular. As relayed to him by his Director, he was "authorized and encouraged" to do whatever it took. These words would come back to haunt the entire U.S. Government years later, as Albrecht would claim them to be his authorization for the things he did.
What happened between those years is still being fought in courts to be declassified fully, protected on the grounds of "State Security." What has been leaked, though, is the tale of a bright young man who became twisted in his desire to learn about his subjects, ignoring moral and ethical obligations whenever they reared their heads.
The Collapse of Sanity
Now Deputy-Director Doctor Gerard had been at his work for three years of his five year "payment" term, and had been termed a bit of a recluse by those who were near him. Shortly after gaining control of his department he moved a majority of his staff to other wings, leaving only himself and a skeleton crew. Officially, his department was in charge of examining defeated villains when the military could wrestle the bodies away from the local hero groups. Over time, the unnamed department acquired the in-house moniker of simply "The Morgue." Albrecht Gerard soon saw to it that the department received its own guards - a very unusual step. Even the other guards from the facility were disallowed access - only the three black-suited ex-military guards patrolled there. Often, the Deputy-Director would not be seen leaving his labs - most simply assumed on many nights he worked clear through the night, his feverish desire to eek out every bit of information consuming him. As time went on, more staff was "relocated" and more corpses were moved in on a nightly basis. The staff began to suspect something "odd" was going on, but any comments were quickly laughed down by the Director. Of course the Government wouldn't sponsor anything wrong - it was merely a manner of National Security.
The Leak
The first real proof of anything came in a leaked document from the Department of Defense headquarters to the Paragon City Times. The paper detailed the results from a "Vivisection of a Regeneration-type Metahuman." Most of the work was censored by the paper and the document itself was highly blacked out, but apparently someone snuck out with enough of it to really shake things up. The paper was able to publish enough to clearly implicate a Deputy-Director at the Meta-Medical Affairs Bureau in the testing of this, and in the vivisection proper.
It didn't take long for public outrage to build. Once the FBI got involved, it didn't take long for the other workers at the Bureau to point fingers at Doctor Albrecht. However, any investigations were stopped under the State Secrets Privilege, and the guards at the door to Albrecht's lab stopped all questions. That ended one fateful night, when Albrecht himself, quite literally, blew the cover on everything by blowing the southern wall of the building halfway across the street with a miraculous explosion.
Exposure
Once the explosion echoed out of the lab and ruble stopped an entire street side of traffic, there was no hiding from the inquires of Paragon City's super-powered vigilantes and some nosy cops. What they found in his notes was more than horrifying. The manhunt began shortly thereafter, with the U.S. Government in full backpedal mode, claiming no knowledge of the nature of the experiments, nor any authorization of Dr. Albrecht's methods. As quickly as they scooped up the genius from his schooling and put him to work for them they dumped him for the sake of PR. The newspapers and shows were full of stories about the "Mad Doctor" and his work, putting the few things out there deemed grizzly enough - or the worst things they could find if ratings started to slump. Heroes and Law Enforcement vowed to bring him in, while the lists of his exploits quickly made him the top of the Most Wanted list.
Under Construction
More to come soon.
Powers
"Hiding" and Striking
Malikus does not hide from view like most of his Archetype, nor is his silent, or unobtrusive. Malikus instead exists in two dimensions at the same time - our dimension, and another one made up of shadows and darkness, which he has referred to as "A place of no time and no space." His ability to "hide from sight" is actually himself stepping almost entirely into this dimension, making him more than just invisible - he is not there at all.
This second dimension is filled entirely with a substance which is highly toxic to all life, known only as "Void." To his knowledge, and even after much experimentation, he is the only being which is still alive that can touch, even grasp this substance without it having it disassemble them on the most basic cellular level. While the composition of the Void is unknown, it's effects on life, even such types of half-life as ghosts, is clear - it disassembles it on more than a genetic level. It also severs the ties that bind people to their bodies, effectively burning off pieces of that being's soul along with flesh. It is this substance of both scientific and magical curiosity which coats Malikus' hands in combat, until it finds its way to an enemy through contact, where it begins its grisly work. Void quickly burns off as it contacts flesh, bacteria and micro-organisms in the air, and thus does not lend itself particularly well to being a projectile. Malikus reaches his hand back at the beginning of a strike, reaches into this second dimension and grasps a hand of Void, then strikes his enemy with the hand, releasing the corrosive substance directly into his enemy, minimizing air contact and maximizing damage.
When he is mostly in the other dimension and bursts forth to strike a target, the void from his entire body often reaches out and grasps the enemy, making his first strike his deadliest. His most powerful known technique involves ripping a microscopic dimensional hole in the vicinity of his enemy, leaking massive quantities of Void out onto them for the few nanoseconds it remains open. The raw amount of damage this technique does makes it easy to determine what would happen were he able to do more with the toxic substance, or release more of it into the world. The unique dual nature of Void makes it an effective weapon against any enemy. While Void does not normally "attack" inanimate objects, it reacts oddly with electricity, and will try to destroy the electrified objects - causing it to leak into robotic systems and shut down parts of neural or electronic networks within them.
Defenses
As Malikus fights his enemies, he winks parts of his body into and out of dimensions as is necessary, causing him to seem as though parts are disappearing and reappearing. The obvious effect of all of this is very disorienting, meaning the longer someone fights with him, the lesser a chance they have of landing a hit. At the same time, the burning off of one's flesh and connection to the soul is excruciating, which adds another layer of pain disruption to attempted attacks. All this combines with the fact that often he is simply not where people want to put their strikes, making him able to walk out of large mobs of opponents unscathed.
Other
The place of "No time, and no space" is formless and without land, and Malikus may move through the Void effortlessly, with no friction or interferance of any type. His position in this dimension remains relative as he does so, enabling him to move through our world at breakneck speeds, using the speed he achieves in the frictionless other world. An odd effect of this movement is a bright orange cloud under his feet - the Void actually melting due to his speed of movement and the bright color as it leaks ever-so-slightly into our world. Sometimes the same effect can be seen from his hands if he begins to push himself to fight all out, as his fists whistle through the air, coated in Void.
