HEROES INCORPORATED

HISTORY

Heroes Incorporated is corporation that maintains a roster of individual super-heroes that are available for hire to municipal and state governments in the United States. The company is the brainchild of the hero Mindblade, leader of the super team Justice Inc. and CEO of the corporation that funds the team (the corporation is also known as Justice Incorporated). Heroes Inc. is considered a subsidiary of the parent Justice Incorporated and is a sister business to Sidekicks Inc.

Mindblade felt that while many of the larger American cities had local super heroes and hero teams to help deal with super villain activity, there were many more cities that had none and whose local law enforcement agencies were ill-equipped to deal with those kinds of threats. Using the financial resources of Justice Inc., Mindblade created Heroes Inc. to serve as something like a temp agency, maintaining a roster of heroes that a city or state government could recruit from to provide superhuman law enforcement assistance.

Heroes Inc.'s head office is located in the Justice Tower in New York City, and most of the heroes available for hire are based on the east coast, mainly in New York but with some in Metropolis and Empire City as well, and on the west coast in Los Angeles, Pacific City, and Superior City. To accommodate rapid deployment of resources to locations further from the coasts, Heroes Inc. has started setting up branch offices in other cities. The first of these is located in Detroit and is the home base for the trio of heroes Tank, Boa and Video, the first two having formed the original Heroes Inc. as a small business in New York City before being bought out by Mindblade.

TANK

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Jeff Ramsey was a warehouse worker in New York City when his metagene was activated when the Dominator Gene Bomb was detonated at the end of the alien Invasion of Earth. Jeff gained super strength as well as becoming nearly indestructible. Jeff was not sure what to do with his newfound abilities, and actively rebuffed a few offers from criminals to serve as muscle for them.

For the next few years Jeff continued to work a variety of manual labor jobs. He generally tried to keep his super strength a secret, though it would always eventually come out and more often than not get him in trouble if it was a union job. Finally Jeff was approached to become a member of the corporate-sponsored super team called the Conglomerate. Jeff had dismissed becoming a super hero soon after gaining his powers, but as the Conglomerate was a paying job he accepted and was given a costume and the codename Tank.

Tank served with this incarnation of the Conglomerate for a few years before it was eventually dissolved. While many of his teammates went off to join another super team, Jeff was keen on keeping performing super heroics as a job that paid. He took out an ad looking for a partner to start his own for-profit hero business. The ad was answered by a metahuman calling himself Boa and together he and Tank formed the initial version of Heroes Inc.

The duo operated out of a small office in lower Manhattan where they offered their services as super heroes for hire, focusing on individuals who had problems that superhumans could help with but were not the sort that most other super heroes would commonly deal with. The pair did well enough despite the large number of heroes operating in New York City who would usually help for free, mainly because they were in the phone book and could be reliably reached by most people and the pair did not charge very much for their services.

After operating for a couple of years the pair were approached by Mindblade from Justice Inc. Mindblade was looking to provide the sort of service that Tank and Boa were, but on a national level. Mindblade bought the two out and started turning Heroes Inc. in the business it is today. Tank and Boa were made the co-heads of a new Detroit office of the company where they have been joined by the hero Video.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Tank possesses superhuman strength and has been observed lifting objects weighing nearly 100 tons. In addition to his strength, Tank's endurance also increased to superhuman levels, meaning he can engage in strenuous physical activity for an extended period of time without tiring and is resistant to disease and poisons. As part of his overall superhuman physique Tank's body density is also enhanced, making him highly resistant to injury and his skin has the tensile strength of high-density steel, making him completely bulletproof.

BOA

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Eddie Franks was a night worker at the Brooklyn Zoo when he was kidnapped by operatives of the group of scientific villains called H.I.V.E. along with several animals from the zoo. The scientists were attempting to duplicate the process that had produced the hero known as Cat, unaware that their science had not actually been responsible for her transformation. Eddie and several other involuntary test subjects were subjected to a variety of painful experiments; of which Eddie was the only one to survive.

The secret H.I.V.E. lab where Eddie was being kept was eventually discovered by the hero team Justice Inc. and during the chaos of the heroes assault Eddie escaped the cell he had been imprisoned in. Though there had been no indication up to that point the experiments had had any effect on Eddie, as he fled some H.I.V.E. soldiers he found himself at a dead end and was shocked when he was able to squeeze through an impossibly small gap in the wall that led to a pipe. Eddie crawled, or rather slithered from how he describes it, through the pipe until he emerged in a sewer line. Following the sewer Eddie eventually found himself at an outflow pipe on the East River.

Eddie didn't tell anyone what had happened, mostly because he didn't fully understand it himself. He learned he had lost his job due to his disappearance, and did not have any way to prove what had happened to him anyway so did not fight the dismissal. Taking a few menial jobs to pay the rent, Eddie started to experiment with his new abilities. When he saw an ad looking for super-powered people he cobbled together a costume and replied to the ad, calling himself Boa due to how his powers reminded him of the snakes he had often observed at the zoo.

The ad had been placed by Tank and he and Eddie hit it off right away. Soon Boa was a partner in the new super-hero for hire business called Heroes Inc. Tank and Boa did alright, helping deal with problems that were often overlooked by other heroes. When the hero Mindblade offered to buy out Heroes Inc. and expand it to a national scope Boa and Tank agreed. Alongside his friend and new teammate Video, Boa is one of the founding members of the new Detroit office the expanded Heroes Inc.

POWERS & WEAPONS

The H.I.V.E. experiments that Eddie was subjected to were intended to create human-animal hybrids. In Eddie's case the experiments involved reptiles, mainly snakes, and as a result Eddie has developed powers that at least loosely resemble those of his namesake. As Boa, Eddie's entire body has become hyper-flexible, including his skeleton. Boa can twist, stretch and contort his body in a wide variety of ways. While not capable of assuming complex shapes, Boa can stretch his entire body, or just one of more of his limbs, letting him reach over distances of several dozen yards. Boa is also resistant to impacts and crushing damage, as his body simply distorts under the pressure. Because of his flexibility Boa can also squeeze his body through small openings such as vents, pipes, or flattening himself to under an inch thickness to fit under a door.

VIDEO

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Darren and his sister Alexis grew up in a religious family in a small town in Virginia. Both children were talented musically and were members of their church choir. When they were young teenagers they were performing at the church when both their metagenes activated spontaneously and their powers emerged. The churchgoers, including their parents, were terrified and, claiming the two had been cursed by the Devil, drove the 14 year-old Darren and 13 year-old Alexis out of town.

The two scrounged money and were able to buy bus tickets to get them as far as New York City, where they were forced to live on the streets and use their powers to steal to survive. After a year on the streets the pair were approached by the villain Thrasher, who was recruiting for a music-themed villain group and had heard of the two young metahumans. With the promise of food and shelter, Darren and Alexis took up Thrasher on his offer and became members of the first incarnation of the Backbeat. Darren was given the codename Video and Alexis was called Amplifier.

As part of the Backbeat the two participated in a series of robberies, though both were reluctant criminals at best. Eventually the Backbeat's crimes attracted the attention of the super-hero team Justice Inc. and the two teams battled. During the fight several bystanders were endangered and both Darren and Alexis broke off from fighting with the heroes to help protect the innocent people from harm. After Thrasher and the rest of the Backbeat were defeated the hero Quiksilver, having seen how the siblings had chosen to protect the bystanders, decided to let them go free rather than hand them over to the police with the rest of the villains.

Quiksilver's teammate Tarantula let his friend and former Justice Society member Sandy Hawkins know about Darren and Alexis and they were invited to come stay with him. Sandy had begun training super-powered kids in how to use their abilities and the two teens accepted his offer. They became part of the group of young metahumans that had started calling themselves the Justice Subsidiary, so named because of their association with Justice Inc. As part of this group the two found a new home and began to develop into true super heroes, fighting the occasional threat alongside their new friends, often in support of Justice Inc.

After a while Darren began to drift apart from his sister. He had seen himself as her protector for so many years, that now that they had a home and Alexis was capable of taking care of herself he was not sure of his role any more. His attitude was not helped when Alexis began dating their teammate Torch. Eventually the group's mentor chose to join the newest incarnation of his former team, the Justice Society of America. By this point he felt that his charges had learned to control their powers and so the Justice Subsidiary effectively disbanded.

For a short time Darren found himself on a team called Generation 2000 alongside his sister and Torch, but eventually he and Alexis left and they went their separate ways. On his own for the first time in his life, Darren struggled to decide what to do with himself. He initially tried to start a music career, but other than the occasional singing gig in a bar he had no luck. When Mindblade approached Darren about having Video join the new Heroes Incorporated venture, the young man agreed. He has now relocated to Detroit to serve alongside original company founders Tank and Boa in the first branch office of Heroes Inc.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Video possesses the superhuman power to project powerful illusions into the minds of anyone who can hear the sound of his voice. Video usually sings as a way to focus and control his power, and there are few individuals with a strong enough mind to resist his power. Due to his time living on the streets, Darren learned to pick locks and pick pockets with reasonable skill as well as how to move stealthily. As part of his training under Sandy Hawkins, Video learned Karate as a means of self-defense to supplement his powers.

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