Allies of Fallout

Ground Zero

Born and raised on the streets of Detroit, Paul Beauchamp knew he wanted to be an Army Ranger from an early age. His father had been a Ranger and Beauchamp worshipped the man, the only adult figure to keep the boy’s respect as the temperamental youth grew up. Beauchamp excelled in his chosen profession and following a tour in Latin America as part of a black ops unit was handpicked for NINE TANGENT APPLE.   As Ground Zero, Beauchamp’s physical form is superhumanly durable. He converts incoming energy into both physical strength and accelerated healing. He’s more commonly known for his ability to discharge the energy generated by his internal nuclear reactions as explosions, particularly a devastating and immense explosion on par with some lower-end suitcase nukes. His BOOM! power wipes out his stored reserves of converted energy, though, and it triggers terrible flashbacks of his initial transformation—occasionally leaving him shaking and insensate under the emotional trauma of those flashbacks for a short period of time.   The transformation also seems to have greatly amplified Beauchamp’s naturally quick temper, and he’s driven by a raw, seething rage to a greater extent than any of his companions.  

Half-life

Evan Keeler was never the nicest or most empathic person, even when he was human. A borderline sociopath with a keen intellect and enough social awareness to fool one psych profiler after another, Keeler’s naturally analytical bent and need for control led him into military intelligence. From there, the halls of Langley were a short step.   After his transformation, Keeler was the first of the four to start setting off red flags among his handlers. His descent into delusional psychosis in which he was an avatar of death judging the flaws of inconsequential mortals scared the hell out of the program’s administrators. After he started losing himself in intense periods of meditation (which he called “contemplating the directions and messages of the universe”), the psych experts redoubled their analysis of the other survivors, leading to the decision to lock them all away.   Half-Life is a being of living radioactive decay that exists partially out of phase with the world around him; he must actively will himself to stay in tune enough with the real world to physically interact with his surroundings at all. He has fast, almost fluid, movements, and his peculiar relationship to reality also defeats most effects aimed at altering or occluding perceptions. His signature ability is that he can cause matter to disincorporate in a cascading chain reaction through mere physical contact. Molecular bonds lose cohesion and things (or people) he touches simply fade from existence. Anything that impedes radioactive processes (large water volumes, lead shielding, radiation-tamping hazmat foam, etc.) will end the cascading aspect of this effect.  

Meltdown

The son and grandson of Marines, Stephen Hoskins’ eventual career was chosen for him at an early age. His trivial bit of rebellion amounted to joining Force Recon instead of following his family’s tradition of infantry command. General Riley Harcourt, one of the high-ranking officers behind NINE TANGENT APPLE, was an old friend of the Hoskins family and had watched Stephen’s career with interest. A small exercise of influence and the young man was inducted into the program. After the four men were locked down, Harcourt took personal care in constructing a fictional (and honorable) death to give the Hoskins family a sense of closure regarding Stephen. Unlike the other survivors of the program, Hoskins has more than an impersonal set of names and faces from the program staff to target. His sense of betrayal is very personal and focuses heavily on Harcourt.   Meltdown generates an active nuclear reaction controlled only by the suit he wears. Without that suit, his powers would be constantly and omni-directionally venting into his surroundings. As long as he wears the suit, however, he can choose when the plasma field actively expresses around him, and also focus that emission into intense directed discharges either outward as a wave or slightly more narrowly vented as plasma shooting directly in front of him.  

Tactics

  In combat, Ground Zero, Half-life, and Meltdown generally act separately from each other, almost ignoring their allies on the field until assistance is necessaryWhen faced with effective opposition, the three begin operating with great efficiency as a single unit—after all, each was a decorated combat veteran prior to their transformations, so those combat skills are there when they need them. Their favorite tactic is for Ground Zero and Meltdown to unleash a confusing volley of their powers in unison, destructively altering the structure and layout of the environment, disrupting visibility around the battlefield, and leaving their opponents off-balance while Half-Life zips through their opponents using his destructive aura to take out targets until the opposing force breaks and runs. Fallout normally provides aerial support before physically confronting his enemies. Fallout and Ground Zero occasionally like to double-team particularly resilient targets in hand-to-hand combat.

Regardless of their backgrounds and former professions, none of these men are planners; even Fallout, seldom has the emotional stability to see complex strategies through to their ultimate ends. This means that even acting together, the four men have a difficult time working together for long and their plans eventually all become “hurt the people who hurt us.” Some plans may seem more complex than that in the initial stages, or to outside observers, but they deteriorate quickly. On the one hand, this makes the actions of Fallout and his allies difficult to predict; on the other, it’s a certainty the group will eventually become frustrated and go on a spectacular rampage of destruction, having abandoned their initial plan.   When working apart from one another, Ground Zero and Meltdown wander aimlessly around the country until they randomly hit or are confronted by targets of opportunity. They try to stay below the radar until those episodes of violence occur, with mixed success. Half-life, when he isn’t wrapped up in one of his bizarre states of meditation, applies a greater degree of precision in selecting and removing targets, whether those are human or otherwise; however, the actual logic behind his choices is baffling and makes sense only within his delusional fantasies.