Radiopath/Vigilante
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Time passed, Fen returned to active duty. He had another run in with his heart, but the answer came quickly in the form of an overhaul from Will Carrigan. His reactor was replaced, his fingertips were upgraded. Stabilizers were implanted in his spine and legs. Meteor Howl was becoming a force to be reckoned with. He had learned to deal with sub-par tech and made the best of it, now he was given top-of-the-line military tech, so his abilities sky rocketed.
This got attention.
The military and Hyeller soon came to see that the surviving member of CERES may yet yield results. Fen's mutant gene adapted even more, and he was becoming closely attuned to his mods. Hyeller wanted tests, and the Military wanted their investment's worth. Fen became scared; he knew that if Hyeller was behind the knife, there was a chance he wouldn't survive the 'examination and sampling'.
A plan was quickly hatched with the woman who had claimed Fen as a younger sibling, Lia MacKay. Using Will's genius in robotics, a mechanical mirror of Fen was placed in the hero's apartment. There, Lia 'broke in' and opened fire with a throwaway Arachnos rifle, riddling the apartment and the double, with bullet holes. MacKay was a nurse, and was able to sign off the death certificate when the "body" was found.
Within the coming weeks, the vigilante known as 'Aaron Bringer' surfaced in the underground of Paragon city. An unregistered cyborg clad in retro-style tights and a mask began cleaning up crime in Faultline and the surrounding districts. While PPD usually arrests unregistered meta-humans and frown upon vigilantism, Bringer did good work under the alias. He dodged patrols and left thugs tied to lampposts and fire hydrants.
The change of pace was a breath of fresh air for Fen. It felt old school, a throwback to the old days of heroing before registration. It couldn't last forever, though. Fen knew he was living in a dream, and he'd have to wake up and face cold reality. That reality check came with a name...
Niska.
An old man came to the Pocket D one day and clued in on Fen's condition as a cyborg. He was greatly interested in how his cybernetics worked, and asked the cyborg to accompany him to dinner to discuss his body modification. Fen took the business card and an arrangement was made, but Fen never made it to the dinner meeting. The next day, he received a phone call.
"Am sorry that you were missing dinner last night, Mister Bringer. I am not fan of being made a fool. Please, come meet me as soon as you can in Faultline. Bring no armor and power your weapons down if you are wishing no harm coming to Miss Becca."
It was such a blatantly obvious trap, but Fenwick was caught. Becca Su'Cour Was Fen's girlfriend, a woman he loves very much. If there was any inkling of a chance that she was in harm's way, Fen complied with Niska's demands and met him beneath Faultline at a cafe. His armored shell was left behind at the B.R.O.F.I.S.T '09 station.
He met Niska and the trap was sprung. High voltage currents that were the opposite of Fen's shut down his cybernetic network. At the time, Fen's body couldn't support his own weight without the aid of his mods, so he was quickly overtaken by the man's thugs. He woke up in a dark chamber, deep beneath the district. Becca was never captured to begin with.
"Mister Bringer, I am interested in how you are working with such beautiful equipment." Were the first words he woke up to, and he was wired to a station that was keeping his mods offline'd. He was unable to offer any resistance, being crippled by both his own weight and the strain on his heart from having his reactor off.
Piece by piece, Niska removed Fen's cybernetics, the ordeal took the span of twenty hours of pain and torture as his body went into shock from having the mods removed so harshly. Fen died on the table once, but was resuscitated; he was no use to Niska dead. The next day, the old man made a call to one of Fen's friends, Nikki Reynolds. She handed the phone to William Carrigan and a deal was struck.
Fen's life in return for everything in Carrigan Industries data cache, which included the MX-2000 armor and weapons, as well as other blueprints. Fen was returned with his spine-mod, legs, fingertips, and chest reactors missing. Even the implants in the frontal lobes of Fen's eyes were removed, and one eye was damaged beyond recovery. The man was barely alive, his body struggling to remain functional without his cybernetics, and it was failing.
As if being tortured and pulled apart like an action figure wasn't enough, while Fen was recovering in the hospital, barely aware due to the painkillers in his body, Web showed up. Fen almost didn't recognize the now blue-skinned demon. Web's message to Fen was short, curt, and Fen got the vibes that he didn't even want to be there, but after everything was said, he understood.
"Lia's dead."
Lia MacKay, the woman Fen looked at as a loving sister- and frankly, the first woman in Paragon City he loved in any regard - was found dead, drowned in her car in Talos. It was a completely unrelated case, and happened at the worst time. Fen didn't know what to do, or what he could do. The cyborg knew he couldn't do anything from the hospital, so he waited.
The recovery process was lengthy, even for the advanced medical technologies Paragon had to offer. Fen spent most of his time in a wheelchair because the cybernetics that made up most of his legs were removed. His hands trembled due to nerve damage from his cannons being ripped out, a hospital-issued power source was issued to replace his reactor as a temporary measure. It was worse than his experience in '09; atleast then he could walk on his own legs. Now he was a cripple, relying on others to perform simple tasks. He had his friends, and Becca as a support network. After a series of surgeries to install new mods, Fen was finally up and running again.
The new parts came at a hidden cost. The cybernetics than then resided in Fen's body were alien, foreign, unknown. His biology didn't threaten to reject them, but it certainly made Fen not want them. He had an inconsolable longing for his old cybernetics, a side effect from his mutant gene. It was like a part of him was left in that torture station, and the hero was going to get them back; one way or another.
