User:AlwaysAPrice/10-8
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| 10-8 | |
| |
| "Back in service." | |
| Mutant Scrapper - 42 | |
| Dark Melee/Regeneration | |
| Player: AlwaysAPrice | |
| Activity Level: Occasional | |
| Real Name: | Randall Quincy Berg |
|---|---|
| a/k/a: | Rand, Cube |
| Physical Identifiers | |
| Species: | Human |
| Sub-Type: | Caucasian |
| Gender: | Male |
| Apparent Age: | 40s |
| Height: | 6'1" |
| Weight: | 196 lbs. |
| Build: | Slender |
| Complexion: | Fair/Varies |
| Eye Color: | Grey (L), Blue (R) |
| Hair Color: | Ash platinum |
| Distinguishing Features | |
| Facial disfigurement, skin discoloration | |
| Biographical Data | |
| Birthdate: | October 3rd, 1962 |
| Birthplace: | Denver, CO |
| Nationality: | American citizen |
| Residence: | Paragon City, RI |
| Occupation: | Registered Crimefighter |
| Marital Status: | Single, Divorced |
| Legal Status: | Convicted in 2005 as an accessory after the fact to five counts of murder; sentence commuted December 2007. |
| Relatives & Associates | |
| Susan Berg (ex-wife)
Ursula Daniels (daughter) Taylor Berg (daughter) Ani Hess (ward, 2003-2005) | |
| Additional Information | |
| From 1997 - 2003 served as the lead detective of the Paragon Police Department's Threat Assessment Unit. | |
Last Updated: 10/28/2010
Contents |
Powers & Abilities
Det. Randall Berg always had a gift for human interaction, a talent that contributed greatly to his ascension to the elite Threat Assessment Unit of the P.P.D. He established an easy rapport with witnesses and victims, coaxing them into recalling the seemingly minor details that could make or break a case, reassuring them and earning their trust that he would see justice done. His insight pierced many a suspect's attempts at deception, and his calm but dogged interrogations led to more confessions than any other investigator on the squad. What neither Berg nor the P.P.D. ever suspected was that this talent was not just a social gift, but a physical one -- the result of a low-grade mutation manifesting as a form of enhanced empathy.
When Berg's ward, Ani Hess, snapped and unleashed the full power of eir own mutant abilities at eir homecoming dance in 2005, Randall was one of eir victims. Thanks to his empathic abilities he was the only survivor, but he and his powers were forever changed by Hess' transgenic radiation.
Regeneration
Randall's own mutation kicked into overdrive as Hess' radiation rewrote his DNA to mimic eir own; it filled in the dimensional anomalies in Ani's genome that led to a swift and agonizing death for eir other victims. Randall's own mutated genes fused with those restructured by the radiation, internalizing the ability that had once helped Berg form connections with victims and suspects, transmuting it out of necessity into a regenerative ability that kept him alive against all odds.
The ability was triggered too late to reverse much of the structural damage done, however, and Randall's body and face were left drastically altered -- damaged, discolored and structurally identical to Ani's, though his face retains some small amount of its own character. As far as his ability is concerned this is the body Randall has always had, and so this is the state to which he regenerates.
Threads of Fate
Randall's empathy had given him trace glimpses of what Ani Hess referred to as "the threads of fate", which e perceived naturally: insubstantial ropy coils of reflective, refractive darkness that connect one person to another. Hess referred to them as such because their prominence seems to be directly proportional to the significance of a person to eir life and they become strongest and most manipulable as confrontation approaches.
Surviving the radioactive onslaught left Randall with a limited ability to perceive and manipulate these threads himself, though his perception of them is so limited that he often must have physical contact if he is to exert his will through the threads as Hess is able to. His ability is growing, however, and he has mastered lesser forms of many of the Androgyne's most reliable methods of manipulating the threads of fate to one's advantage.
Background
T.A.U.
The Paragon Police Department's Threat Assessment Unit was established in the mid-1980s as super-powered crime rates throughout the nation skyrocketed with the introduction of Superadine to America's streets. As more and more heroes turned to questionable methods to bring criminals to justice, so more and more of those criminals escaped justice on technicalities inherent to a system that for too long had relied nearly exclusively on those empowered by the Citizen Crime Fighting Act. Paragon City's District Attorney pushed for the formation of a special police task force whose sole focus would be the investigation of crimes committed by super-powered perpetrators.
The T.A.U. was tasked with investigating and identifying new super-powered threats and collecting the evidence needed to prove their guilt, while the actual arrest in most cases would be executed by heroes tipped off through official channels. The T.A.U.'s investigations have provided the backbone for hundreds of rock-solid convictions since their formation.
In 1997 Randall Berg was appointed lead detective of the T.A.U., working directly alongside Blue Steel in coordinating investigations and apprehensions. He held the position until 2003, when the T.A.U. was disbanded amid other changes to the P.P.D.'s operational structure that accompanied the city's recovery from the First Rikti War.
Ani Hess
On September 30th, 2000, Randall Berg and the T.A.U. investigated the unusual radiation-based murders of five youths found in an alleyway in the High Park neighborhood of Kings Row. One of the victims was Shawn Adams, the son of a local hero known as the Kingswoman. When the early analysis conducted pointed to Vazhilok involvement, she took it upon herself to apprehend the Eidolon Suture, nearly beating him to death in her rage and grief until Blue Steel and the T.A.U. arrived on scene to take the broken villain into custody.
In the meantime, Berg's own doubts and suspicions led him to carry on the investigation on his own time. His hunches led him to 13-year-old Ani Hess, a classmate of the five and one whom, by many accounts, all five regularly tormented for eir unusual appearance and genetic condition -- Ani was born genderless. Though Ani had no indication of superhuman mutation in eir medical records, and seemed to have an alibi for the time of the murders, it quickly became apparent to Berg what had happened -- Ani Hess had been beaten within an inch of eir life by the High Park Five, some kind of latent mutation had been triggered by the trauma, and e had killed them all in self-defense, likely completely by accident.
What precisely led to Berg's decision to suppress the evidence he uncovered of Hess' culpability remains unclear to anyone but Berg himself, and perhaps Hess. Some suspect Berg hoped to guide the scared young mutant in learning to use eir powers for heroic purposes. Others close to Berg and Hess have suggested Berg's estrangement from his own wife and children played a role. Whatever the reasoning, the outcome was that Suture was convicted of the High Park Five murders and Ani Hess eluded all suspicion.
On May 23rd, 2002, Ani Hess' 15th birthday, the Rikti invaded Earth. Eir parents were killed in a Skyway City bridge collapse on the first day of the invasion. After the war drew to a close that November, Randall, who had become a close friend to the Hesses and a mentor to Ani, elected to become Ani's legal guardian with eir out-of-state family's permission.
Lewis High Homecoming Massacre
In 2005, at the Homecoming dance for Ani's graduating class at Lewis High, masked gunmen took to the stage as Ani was being crowned Homecoming "Regent" and took the gathering hostage. They subjected Ani to actual and figurative exposure, beating, stripping, tarring and feathering em as autopsy photographs of the High Park Five were projected for all gathered to see.
Desperate for help, Ani used the threads of fate in an entirely new way, pulling on the one that bound em to Randall and pulling Berg through the spaces between dimensions and onto the stage in the hopes that he could calm the situation. Berg tried, but could not make Adams see reason, and the situation only escalated until finally, Ani Hess surrendered to eir power's potential and irradiated the gymnasium, killing eir assailants and dozens of those who had not been able to escape before Adams' men chained the doors.
The exact details of how the situation got so out of hand are not included in the publically available records from the ensuing investigation, other than that Randall Berg put an end to it by putting three bullets in Ani's chest.
Release
Berg's sentence was commuted near the end of 2007, in light of Hess' 2006 escape from the Zig and subsequent embracing of eir rechristening by the media as a costumed villain, the Androgyne. The process did not go without significant protest from families of Lewis Massacre victims, but ultimately the FBSA won out. The Federal Bureau for Super-powered Affairs had initiated the request as prison medical exams and interviews revealed the extent to which the Androgyne's DNA had bonded with Berg's. Berg would be released for the express purpose of tracking down and apprehending the Androgyne.
He registered under the handle "10-8", a common radio code used to announce a return to duty, but otherwise offers no nod to what is typically expected of "capes", fighting crime in jeans and his old T.A.U. windbreaker. Despite the threat posed by the Androgyne, Berg has found his efforts thus far to be heavily restricted. The Androgyne has proven emself again and again to be a valuable asset in Earth's defense against the second Rikti incursion, and as a result Vanguard has explicitly forbidden 10-8 from pursuing the Androgyne in the War Zone.
