Post by Atlas on Mar 22, 2016 13:03:48 GMT -5
Name: Atlas
Secret Identity: Ajax Cohen
Age: 17
Base of Operations: New York City
Appearance: At a whopping five ten, Ajax is incredibly average in terms of height. How average? The national average! However, he is not what one would necessarily call unassuming. Even before he gained his powers, Ajax looked incredibly powerful, with shoulders as broad as any man much taller than him. He has been considerably muscular since joining a local gym at the age of thirteen.
Post gaining his powers however, his physique has changed quite a bit. He is still a comparable size, his chest does not jut a mile away from his ribs, but he has grown considerably. Ajax now looks more like a short Arnold Schwarzenegger than a bulldozer in human form. However, his powers of strength and their ability to grow do not threaten to greatly change his musculature further, as his powers are a rare breed. His cells are still human in nature, and do not have some strange foreign quality that gives him his strength, instead, they are growing smaller but keeping their same relative function and power. In essence, Ajax’s strenght is derived from have countless incredibly compact cells compared to others.
In his face, Ajax is considered by many to be rather good looking. He has skin that is either a shade or two darker than pale or sunburnt, and pale blue eyes like a husky. His nose is broad, with his nostrils open but facing down. He has a broad mouth surrounded by deep laugh lines, and Ajax’s hair is a light brown, despite his facial hair coming in as an odd dark copper. Oddly enough Ajax cannot grow a mustache that is not the pale colorless hair most boys have when they’re around thirteen.
Powers: Ajax’s power is that of prodigious strength, prodigious durability which also improves his recovery speed from injury, and the ability to improve both. His strength works similar to a normal man’s strength, his muscles just the same. When Ajax takes something of considerable weight and moves it about, it tears at the fibers of his muscles. When his body mends itself, at an accelerated rate due to his powers, his muscles come back stronger, and harder to tear again. His body, in order to manage his gained strength will also adjust, with his bones, skin, and organs becoming more durable.
With his strength comes other things however. His moving and reactionary speed are imporved, and will continue to do so as his power grows.
In summation:
Strength
Durability
Potential
Personality: Despite a harsh early life, Ajax is an incredible optimist. He has always had a few close friends that care for and protect him, and through them he has learned to see the best in people, almost to a fault. In fact, certainly to a fault, he doesn’t just when people can improve, he wants them to improve. He’s incredibly trusting, bordering on naive.
As the oldest kid at many of the foster homes he stayed in as a child, Ajax developed a very protective mindset, and it has developed greatly over time, causing him to have quite a savior complex, which is made even stronger in a certain section of his origin story.
Perhaps the next most important part of Ajax’s personality is his sense of humor. One of the only possessions he kept from his parents was a collection of Marx Brothers movies on VHS. The boy’s first hero was Groucho, and as he aged Bugs Bunny, Eddie Izzard, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks, and Mitch Hedberg would later join that list along with others. For that, Ajax has always been rather loud, and most people who know him would consider him to be funny. Most others would call him annoying.
Origin Story: (Things Ajax/Atlas doesn’t remember or know).
Lieutenant General Justin Cohen volunteered to run a series of experiments to see if a human being could be given artificial superpowers in the late eighties. Due to the harsh nature of the study, no free US citizen would be used in the experiments, instead they would make use of the techniques pioneered by a young doctor named Lian Hui, cloning. Justin was incredibly pleased, for he had the perfect subjects, his brother Martin, sister-in-law Joan, and Nephew Diomedes, all of whom had died in a car accident months before the experiments were meant to begin.
Many questioned the General on using his own family, thinking he would not want to see his own blood go through the rigorous testing, but he dismissed the criticism, and insisted that his brother must be used as a test subject, and wanted to use Joan as the female subject with their son as a control. So the testing began, with all of the clones made as identical copies, though most lacking any brain function that would allow them to express or feel most emotions or rational thought. In truth, they were beasts, unable to speak, and doing as they were told with no real drives other than to eat and avoid pain.
The tests were different for each, “Family” of clones, shock therapy, exposure to radiation, different types of gases, extreme diets, Eastern medicine, testing different animal genes, but none would prove effective. Eventually, Cohen lost interest, and left. A year later, the program stopped being a test on creating superpowers in humans, and became a study in other fields. One doctor decided to do something dangerous, and created a Family of clones that were unlike the rest, they were exact copies of their “Codex” counterparts, meaning they had all the memories and functions of each person they were based off of.
They were observed for a number of months, with tests done to see how the human brain responded to different forms of imprisonment. The Cohens were told they were the original family, and that they had all gone into something that was more like a hibernation than a coma. Their tests yielded incredible results, showing the difference in how subjects react based on their history.
Everything changed for what had come to be called “Project Roanoke” when the shadowy corner of the military and government that were working on it were discovered, and it was set to be shut down. Most of the clones were viewed as unfit for a real life, and would be put under real protection in something like a secret hospital, but there was one family found by the investigators that frightened them. The family that insisted they were not clones, able to speak and feel like any humans. That family was placed in a witness relocation program, and taken to New York. Unbeknownst to any but this clone of Joan, there would soon be a fourth Cohen.
(What Ajax knows).
Born on April Tenth, 1998, Ajax Cohen was a very fat baby. The grip he took on his father’s hand was strong, and so Martin chose to give him a name that fit his great strength, Ajax, an Achaean name to match his brother’s Trojan one. For six years, the family was happy, with the parents and brother of Ajax keeping what they believed was their imprisonment a secret.
They never even contacted Martin’s brother, for they believed they’d either put the general or themselves at risk. In truth, Justin had taken great pains to hide his involvement in the project, and had done so so well that he was one of the few men given knowledge that the secret hospital of clones existed. He was not, however, made aware that one family of clones was living a normal life in New York city, unaware that they were not in fact, normal.
However, a few weeks after Ajax had turned six, his whole family was taken from him. Driving home from a school play he had performed in, their car as well as another was hit by a drunk driver. Joan and Martin died instantly, while Diomedes was able to hang on just long enough to get Ajax out of his car seat and shove the door open for his little brother to get out of the car. Ajax had a broken arm, but he was otherwise unharmed. The other car hit by the drunk driver was driven by a young man in his early twenties visiting his family from college, and he had been taking his teenaged sister to a party. He died at the hospital, and the girl was barely saved after hours of surgery. The drunk driver was unscathed physically, but was so wrecked by his guilt that he pleaded guilty and took a twelve year sentence.
So young Ajax was placed in a foster home, and then another and another. With him almost always being the oldest kid. Whether it was at school or at home, he always had to defend his smaller foster siblings. A number of times, he defended them against the ‘parents’ who were supposed to be taking care of them. When he turned fourteen though, things changed, and his cousin on his mother’s side moved to Brooklyn. Ajax’s social worker found out about the relationship between the two because of an error made when hiding Ajax’s family away, and he was sent to live with Richard Maxwell, his cousin who agreed to take him in.
Things began to look up for Ajax then, he got to stay at one school all through High School, Maybell High, and made a few close friends he knew he’d get to keep. He played fullback on the football team and ran track, and got to excell at his studies for the first time in his life because he was finally in a safe and steady environment.
One night, at seventeen, he was walking home from a game, when a fight broke out between a costumed hero and a villain right in the middle of a street. The super villain was a raging mass of powers, designated Titan by the group who had created him, through what was known as “Project Jamestown. The hero, Jolt, an older hero who had been operating quietly for quite some time. In the fight, an apartment caught fire, and not thinking, Ajax charged into the building to start helping the residents get out.
Through something, destiny, or maybe luck, everyone got out, and managed to get away from the fighting. Except Ajax. A stray bolt of Black lightning struck him in the chest moments after he exited the burning apartment for the first time. As Jolt came to his side, and through his own powers pulled the energy out of the young man he had blacked out.
When he awoke in a hospital bed two days later, he had no signs of injury other than a circular burn mark on his chest, and was more muscular than he had ever been. A few weeks after he was allowed to leave the hospital, Ajax went to the dump with his friend Chester to look for any junk worth salvaging. Chester excitedly told him he saw a sword under a junk car, but couldn’t reach it, and convinced Ajax to move the body enough that Chester could try grabbing it. Ajax placed his hands on the car, and tried to lift it only a few inches. The car flipped over completely.
The sword stopped being interesting, and Chester excitedly demanded that Ajax try and lift the car altogether. To both of their shock, Ajax managed it. He held it straight up above his head, and both laughed, with the phrase, “Dude!” passing between them a number of times. However, the fun stopped when suddenly Ajax collapsed, the car on top of him. Once more, “Dude!” was exchanged a number of times.
Ajax assured his friend that he was actually unhurt, but simply couldn’t move the car again. Chester paced back and forth, trying to decide who to call or what to do, until after about three minutes, Ajax suddenly felt as if he was sore, and decided to lift the car again. It was even easier picking it up again, and Ajax set it down, not feeling any of the collapse. Excitedly, the friends agreed not to tell anyone their secret, and Ajax headed home, though uncertain of the specifics, certain he would do one thing: Be a Superhero.
Secret Identity: Ajax Cohen
Age: 17
Base of Operations: New York City
Appearance: At a whopping five ten, Ajax is incredibly average in terms of height. How average? The national average! However, he is not what one would necessarily call unassuming. Even before he gained his powers, Ajax looked incredibly powerful, with shoulders as broad as any man much taller than him. He has been considerably muscular since joining a local gym at the age of thirteen.
Post gaining his powers however, his physique has changed quite a bit. He is still a comparable size, his chest does not jut a mile away from his ribs, but he has grown considerably. Ajax now looks more like a short Arnold Schwarzenegger than a bulldozer in human form. However, his powers of strength and their ability to grow do not threaten to greatly change his musculature further, as his powers are a rare breed. His cells are still human in nature, and do not have some strange foreign quality that gives him his strength, instead, they are growing smaller but keeping their same relative function and power. In essence, Ajax’s strenght is derived from have countless incredibly compact cells compared to others.
In his face, Ajax is considered by many to be rather good looking. He has skin that is either a shade or two darker than pale or sunburnt, and pale blue eyes like a husky. His nose is broad, with his nostrils open but facing down. He has a broad mouth surrounded by deep laugh lines, and Ajax’s hair is a light brown, despite his facial hair coming in as an odd dark copper. Oddly enough Ajax cannot grow a mustache that is not the pale colorless hair most boys have when they’re around thirteen.
Powers: Ajax’s power is that of prodigious strength, prodigious durability which also improves his recovery speed from injury, and the ability to improve both. His strength works similar to a normal man’s strength, his muscles just the same. When Ajax takes something of considerable weight and moves it about, it tears at the fibers of his muscles. When his body mends itself, at an accelerated rate due to his powers, his muscles come back stronger, and harder to tear again. His body, in order to manage his gained strength will also adjust, with his bones, skin, and organs becoming more durable.
With his strength comes other things however. His moving and reactionary speed are imporved, and will continue to do so as his power grows.
In summation:
Strength
Durability
Potential
Personality: Despite a harsh early life, Ajax is an incredible optimist. He has always had a few close friends that care for and protect him, and through them he has learned to see the best in people, almost to a fault. In fact, certainly to a fault, he doesn’t just when people can improve, he wants them to improve. He’s incredibly trusting, bordering on naive.
As the oldest kid at many of the foster homes he stayed in as a child, Ajax developed a very protective mindset, and it has developed greatly over time, causing him to have quite a savior complex, which is made even stronger in a certain section of his origin story.
Perhaps the next most important part of Ajax’s personality is his sense of humor. One of the only possessions he kept from his parents was a collection of Marx Brothers movies on VHS. The boy’s first hero was Groucho, and as he aged Bugs Bunny, Eddie Izzard, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks, and Mitch Hedberg would later join that list along with others. For that, Ajax has always been rather loud, and most people who know him would consider him to be funny. Most others would call him annoying.
Origin Story: (Things Ajax/Atlas doesn’t remember or know).
Lieutenant General Justin Cohen volunteered to run a series of experiments to see if a human being could be given artificial superpowers in the late eighties. Due to the harsh nature of the study, no free US citizen would be used in the experiments, instead they would make use of the techniques pioneered by a young doctor named Lian Hui, cloning. Justin was incredibly pleased, for he had the perfect subjects, his brother Martin, sister-in-law Joan, and Nephew Diomedes, all of whom had died in a car accident months before the experiments were meant to begin.
Many questioned the General on using his own family, thinking he would not want to see his own blood go through the rigorous testing, but he dismissed the criticism, and insisted that his brother must be used as a test subject, and wanted to use Joan as the female subject with their son as a control. So the testing began, with all of the clones made as identical copies, though most lacking any brain function that would allow them to express or feel most emotions or rational thought. In truth, they were beasts, unable to speak, and doing as they were told with no real drives other than to eat and avoid pain.
The tests were different for each, “Family” of clones, shock therapy, exposure to radiation, different types of gases, extreme diets, Eastern medicine, testing different animal genes, but none would prove effective. Eventually, Cohen lost interest, and left. A year later, the program stopped being a test on creating superpowers in humans, and became a study in other fields. One doctor decided to do something dangerous, and created a Family of clones that were unlike the rest, they were exact copies of their “Codex” counterparts, meaning they had all the memories and functions of each person they were based off of.
They were observed for a number of months, with tests done to see how the human brain responded to different forms of imprisonment. The Cohens were told they were the original family, and that they had all gone into something that was more like a hibernation than a coma. Their tests yielded incredible results, showing the difference in how subjects react based on their history.
Everything changed for what had come to be called “Project Roanoke” when the shadowy corner of the military and government that were working on it were discovered, and it was set to be shut down. Most of the clones were viewed as unfit for a real life, and would be put under real protection in something like a secret hospital, but there was one family found by the investigators that frightened them. The family that insisted they were not clones, able to speak and feel like any humans. That family was placed in a witness relocation program, and taken to New York. Unbeknownst to any but this clone of Joan, there would soon be a fourth Cohen.
(What Ajax knows).
Born on April Tenth, 1998, Ajax Cohen was a very fat baby. The grip he took on his father’s hand was strong, and so Martin chose to give him a name that fit his great strength, Ajax, an Achaean name to match his brother’s Trojan one. For six years, the family was happy, with the parents and brother of Ajax keeping what they believed was their imprisonment a secret.
They never even contacted Martin’s brother, for they believed they’d either put the general or themselves at risk. In truth, Justin had taken great pains to hide his involvement in the project, and had done so so well that he was one of the few men given knowledge that the secret hospital of clones existed. He was not, however, made aware that one family of clones was living a normal life in New York city, unaware that they were not in fact, normal.
However, a few weeks after Ajax had turned six, his whole family was taken from him. Driving home from a school play he had performed in, their car as well as another was hit by a drunk driver. Joan and Martin died instantly, while Diomedes was able to hang on just long enough to get Ajax out of his car seat and shove the door open for his little brother to get out of the car. Ajax had a broken arm, but he was otherwise unharmed. The other car hit by the drunk driver was driven by a young man in his early twenties visiting his family from college, and he had been taking his teenaged sister to a party. He died at the hospital, and the girl was barely saved after hours of surgery. The drunk driver was unscathed physically, but was so wrecked by his guilt that he pleaded guilty and took a twelve year sentence.
So young Ajax was placed in a foster home, and then another and another. With him almost always being the oldest kid. Whether it was at school or at home, he always had to defend his smaller foster siblings. A number of times, he defended them against the ‘parents’ who were supposed to be taking care of them. When he turned fourteen though, things changed, and his cousin on his mother’s side moved to Brooklyn. Ajax’s social worker found out about the relationship between the two because of an error made when hiding Ajax’s family away, and he was sent to live with Richard Maxwell, his cousin who agreed to take him in.
Things began to look up for Ajax then, he got to stay at one school all through High School, Maybell High, and made a few close friends he knew he’d get to keep. He played fullback on the football team and ran track, and got to excell at his studies for the first time in his life because he was finally in a safe and steady environment.
One night, at seventeen, he was walking home from a game, when a fight broke out between a costumed hero and a villain right in the middle of a street. The super villain was a raging mass of powers, designated Titan by the group who had created him, through what was known as “Project Jamestown. The hero, Jolt, an older hero who had been operating quietly for quite some time. In the fight, an apartment caught fire, and not thinking, Ajax charged into the building to start helping the residents get out.
Through something, destiny, or maybe luck, everyone got out, and managed to get away from the fighting. Except Ajax. A stray bolt of Black lightning struck him in the chest moments after he exited the burning apartment for the first time. As Jolt came to his side, and through his own powers pulled the energy out of the young man he had blacked out.
When he awoke in a hospital bed two days later, he had no signs of injury other than a circular burn mark on his chest, and was more muscular than he had ever been. A few weeks after he was allowed to leave the hospital, Ajax went to the dump with his friend Chester to look for any junk worth salvaging. Chester excitedly told him he saw a sword under a junk car, but couldn’t reach it, and convinced Ajax to move the body enough that Chester could try grabbing it. Ajax placed his hands on the car, and tried to lift it only a few inches. The car flipped over completely.
The sword stopped being interesting, and Chester excitedly demanded that Ajax try and lift the car altogether. To both of their shock, Ajax managed it. He held it straight up above his head, and both laughed, with the phrase, “Dude!” passing between them a number of times. However, the fun stopped when suddenly Ajax collapsed, the car on top of him. Once more, “Dude!” was exchanged a number of times.
Ajax assured his friend that he was actually unhurt, but simply couldn’t move the car again. Chester paced back and forth, trying to decide who to call or what to do, until after about three minutes, Ajax suddenly felt as if he was sore, and decided to lift the car again. It was even easier picking it up again, and Ajax set it down, not feeling any of the collapse. Excitedly, the friends agreed not to tell anyone their secret, and Ajax headed home, though uncertain of the specifics, certain he would do one thing: Be a Superhero.