Okay! Narrowed down my concept a little and I've decided to go with my sports-themed hero (though I'm desperately trying to avoid calling him Sportsman
). His powers are the result of genetic engineering and augmentation, not unlike the program the BDP has been developing and I see him acting as a potential foil for St. George, his powers being comparable in level but with a somewhat more refined focus. He's been masquerading as Reggie Augustine, twenty something rising star in the realm of British sports, careful to limit his exploits on the field in order not to attract too much attention, but he's still an olympic candidate and well respected in the right circles.
The twist is, he's not British at all. He's spent years cultivating this identity at least in part as a way to get closer to the BDP and investigate into any potential human experimentation they might be doing, and shut them down if necessary. Being a product of such experimentation himself, he abhors it's use for nefarious purposes, and doesn't believe mankind is ready to delve into such fields. Who is he though and why should he have such an abiding zeal against genetic tampering, and where did he receive his own magnificent powers?
In truth, Reginald 'Reggie' Augustine was born August Reinholt, Berlin, Germany, 1921. A soldier during World War II for the Wehrmacht, he was chosen for his exceptional performance on the battlefield for some of the Nazi's own super soldier experiments, and was subjected to all the manner of gene treatments and bizzarre experiments in the name of the Fatherland. Eventually, the experiments were a success and August Reinholt, performing special operations for the German military under the psuedonym of Reichson
As the war progressed, his powers continued to develop, not just physically, but mentally as well, and as they did his eyes were opened to the years of propaganda growing up under the Nazi Regime, and he began to think past the indoctrination and conditioning he was subjected to as part of the experiments performed on him. Where before he had reveled in the glory of battle, he now could see only the horror of war, and still the atrocities the Nazi regime were willing to commit continued to mount.
No longer a puppet of the High Command, August defected, providing the Allied powers with key intel in their war efforts, especially where the nazi super-science programs were concerned, and intervened personally against the creation of any more super soldiers like himself, destroying the labrotories and liberating others in the early stages of indoctrination before they could share in his fate. Unable to stand the idea of fighting any further in a war he had helped perpetuate, August withdrew to Switzerland, and began to cultivate for himself a new identity, learn more about what had been done to him, and reflect on how to live his life to atone for his transgressions. He became a scholar in the field which had given birth to him, but a recluse. He worked in relative anonymity till he was approached by East German agents who mistakenly believed him to be one of the Nazis who had originally worked on the very project which had created him. They wanted him to begin experiments anew, this time for the Soviet Union to create a crimson elite to lead the forces of Communism to victory across the globe.
Initially horrified, August came to realize this was his calling. To root out those organizations who would subvert human decency and dignity for the sake of more perfect soldiers, more perfect killers, and so he would subvert them from within, sabotaging experiments and souring any goverment (regardless of creed) against such programs all through the Cold War. He became an expert in manipulation and cultivating new identities to ingratiate himself with such programs, building off his previous incarnations reputation, promising to succeed where they had failed and over the decades worked for nearly every major world power on the globe! Things were fairly quiet since the 90s, so the advent of the BDP more or less caught him by surprise. Thus he has taken a different tack, masquerading as a British national and star athlete, acting subtly in an attempt to attract the attention of any who might be interested in where a potential Genetically Engineered individual such as himself might have come from.
Topic: British superheroes! (Read 2629 times)