Rapidfire & Impulse

Brothers Dylan and Graham O'Connor were the first costumed adventurers operating in Harborview in the modern era. While their powers were eventually discovered to be the result of exposure to alien radiation, they were at a loss when Dylan, the senior by two years, first began manifesting variant speed. A long time fan of variant heroes, they knew what he had to do. He designed a costume and took the name Rapidfire. His first appearance was the corralling of several gorillas escaped from Harborview Zoo. His next exploit was stopping a street gang armed with variant-grade weapons. While following up on this, his brother manifested his own variant powers and began working with him under the name Impulse.
    Shortly thereafter, they were approached by MEDUSA agent John Smith (who would later lead the organization). Smith's field agents had also been following the variant ordinance flowing into Harborview, and were impressed by the young variants. Seeing the potential in these young men from his agent's reports, Smith exercised his discretion and traveled to Harborview to enlist them. The pair accepted, beginning a career-long affiliation.
    At first, this was a limited connection; MEDUSA would contact them when troubles arose in the New England region, and the pair would act on it. While they worked with Ground Zero to halt menaces in Harborview, they were also apprehending agents of foreign powers and secret conspiracies bent on overthrowing the US government. When Split Second wanted Ground Zero to take an international focus, Rapidfire and Impulse were already there.
    Upon their high school graduation, they accepted jobs with MEDUSA full time, coinciding with the expansion of MEDUSA'S connections with Ground Zero. Their identities were not public knowledge, but nor were they truly secret. They had simply become two more members of MEDUSA's forces, joining the ranks of Wyld, Seraph, Orion and others, and were subject to the same benefits and restrictions.
    They were the youngest agents in MEDUSA, undergoing an extensive training regime once they joined full time. This included classes at Lancaster University and military training equivalent to Army Rangers. Graham excelled in the former, Dylan the latter; the pair made such an effective team that Smith removed them from the normal agent rotation in favor of perpetual partnership. This did hinder them socially amongst the MEDUSA agents; they were seen as being variant-elitist, since they never worked with the Normal agents.
    Between joining MEDUSA full time and the Daemonwar, Rapidfire became involved with two women: the international thief Dame Fortune, whom the pair opposed several times (while Dylan now downplays the relationship, he did once risk dismissal and an international incident to rescue Fortune from a Chinese concentration camp), and Wyld, another MEDUSA variant. This on again-off again romance lasted years, despite agency disapproval. The affair came crashing down after an encounter with The Host—Zachriel informed them of his deductions concerning Wyld's connections with the Brazilian Liberation Front. Dylan wanted to dismiss the allegations, but he couldn't stop his growing suspicions. Asking his bother to let him handle this alone, he looked into the affair. To his horror, he discovered the truth: she had been turned by the BLF years ago. When he confronted Wyld, she nearly killed him before vanishing.
    While Rapidfire was investigating this mystery, Impulse sank his teeth into another: the string of murders attributed to the vigilante called Concussion. This investigation was never finished, and Smith ordered the file closed after the Daemonwar; its outcome was never known.
    The pair joined Ground Zero and other MEDUSA agents in the war, but Dylan's mind was elsewhere, obsessed with Wyld's betrayal. His mind not on what he was doing, he was taken down by Coven forces and buried in a collapsing building. Impulse died clearing a path for Stryker, Wildcard and Grimour to enter the Coven command center; rescue forces found Rapidfire several days later. He spent three months recuperating, both physically and mentally, and still blames himself for his brother's death.
    Once released from the hospital, he found he was the only surviving member of Ground Zero; the others had died or vanished in the Daemonwar. Despondent, he threw himself back into work at the newly restructured MEDUSA, focusing on international activity. Rapidfire is seldom in the United States now, but is becoming a spy, and provides variant muscle for MEDUSA teams across the globe. A statue of Impulse stands with the other fallen members of Ground Zero in Harborview's Heroes' Square, and his name is appears on the wall of MEDUSA agents who gave their lives in the line of duty.
    Rapidfire's primary ability is his superhuman running speed and reflexes, tapping out at Mach 1, with an enhanced musculature and healing rate commensurate with the increased speed. In combat he accentuates this by accelerating his punch over the sound barrier when he strikes, adding the extra force of the sonic boom to the blow.
    Impulse's main variant ability was his power to generate radiation that disrupted atomic bonds, disintegrating matter and releasing light. This was an amazingly potent ability, and over his career Impulse became adept with its use. He was also a genius with a flare for deductive reasoning and linguistics. At his death he spoke six languages, mastered variant computer architectures, and was working on his masters in mathematics from the Boulanger Institute.

| Top |