PERSONAL

Gender: None

Kit: Alien

Location: New Eden

AFFILIATION

Alignment: Villain

Team: The Fallen

VITAL STATS

Strength: supreme (rank 3)

Agility: superior (rank 2)

Mind: supreme (rank 3)

Body: supreme (rank 3)

Spirit: (rank )

Charisma: (rank )

RECORD

Infamy Points: -25

Personal Wins: 18

Personal Losses: 21

Team Wins: 0

Team Losses: 0

Tourney Wins: 0

Tourney Losses: 0

STATUS

Status: Active

treacherous

Excerpt from actual sound recordings of the battle between Fallen ally, Epoch and SLJ member, General Mars moments after the former’s slaughter of several small Argentinean cities and his “defeat” by the SLJ and later disappearance. (1985).

General Mars: “What could you possibly seek to accomplish by the massacre of so many?”

Epoch: “Evolution.”

Superheroics and You, September 1990, p. 30.

"Clinging to the Wreckage: A Conversation with General Mars" by Stewart Howard

I remember it like it was yesterday; that look in his eyes as he gazed into my soul. You look at me as if I were just using some classical turn of phrase. You don’t understand me, to see his gaze…to see that look… It was as if he knew my entire life, my every thought and…my despairs. The worst thing is, he DID know my despairs – and he enjoyed creating them.

My mind was an ambiguous haze. I mean…he had just slaughtered so many: casually, without hesitation or remorse? As for myself…I don’t think there was any part of me that he didn’t hit, break or punish. Why? That was the question I asked myself through the agony. I didn’t need to ask him. He read my expressions like an open book. His face would lean to the side and those ancient eyes…

“You are asking yourself why.” He said. “You know…” He began to say; his rasping voice, like whistling wind. “…In my world I was once a hero like you?” He said. But, I could hardly listen. I remember his breath smelled like that of a rotting carcass. It made my mind race with madness; I knew the smell of rotting flesh. I had been to Hades and back…I knew. As I sat drifting in and out of consciousness while he destroyed, I often thought I heard the sound of bones crunching, chewing... I had no doubt that he…

I believe he was aware of this as well: my fear was his joy. He leaned in close to add insult to injury. The smell was vomit-inducing. “On my world, it was survival of the fittest.” He said. “For centuries that had been the way. Hundreds, thousands, millions died in monumental battles of conquest and might. In the midst of this, I was an unchallenged scourge of destruction. On my world, the strong were the heroes. The weak were so much food stuff like…” He looked around. “Like them…” He pointed to the dilapidated homes of the Argentinean city. Twisted metal, impaled bodies, wreckage…the smell…his breath echoed that horrid smell…

…

He looked at me again with blood dripping from his forehead, someone else’s blood. I believe it was Epsilon Knight’s blood? Or perhaps Voodoo Queen? …no matter. They were all…dead. He continued, “Our people are nigh invulnerable. Our lifespan is ten times the extent of one of your human lives. After eons of battle… When the dust finally settled… In the end-times… There was only me. The victor. The sole survivor. The Epoch.” He scowled as if to burn a hole right through me. The expression made me feel as if I didn’t exist. It was the variety of air a scientist would give some microscopic little thing in a Petri dish: distant, scrutinizing and as if at any moment he could lose interest and throw you away forever. That is when I realized that he was not talking to me, but he was like that scientist talking to the non-sentient life-form in the Petri dish. He probably felt like I should have been honored that he was even talking to me to begin with… Then, he noticed me again. “Yes…” He says.

“You should feel honored that I am speaking to you at all.”

“I am old.” He said. “In my time, I have been to many worlds. I have had a hand in toppling them all. Some, I have even crushed alone. Yours will be no different.” As he said this, he kicked over a nearby ant hill. “You…and your kind are not unlike this little ant colony. See how simply I destroyed their austere little world. To them, I’m sure this structure is a complex arrangement of ant ingenuity. To me, it is a mound of dirt. To me, you are the ants. Your world is the colony. These cities are so many mounds of dirt…waiting for my foot to kick them over.” I grimaced at his arrogance. My face must have given me away again as he spoke to me, “Go ahead. Ask your feeble little question.” He said knowingly. I do. “What could you possibly seek to accomplish by the massacre of so many?” I asked.

“Evolution.” He said flatly.

He smiled at my confusion then continued on his tirade. “I must admit, your kind is stronger than any I have encountered before. There is potential here. So much potential…” A look of contemplation grew on his face, but quickly faded as he continued, “There are many varieties of you creatures. Amongst your heroes, I admit, you were one of the strongest I’ve encountered. I believe your name is symbolic of one of your obsolete tribe’s deities? Mars, god of war… If you are representative of that tribe’s quality, then it is no wonder they are treasures of antiquity. I must admit that amongst the bugs, you are more the spider. You might be the apex predator amongst your kind, but to me you are still but a bug.” This was the moment when I began to…I mean I tried. Really, I tried to honor them: my fallen comrades, the other heroes that I had contacted before he hit me. I tried to gather some…something.

Breaking it down to Build it up

     Power Manipulation: supreme (rank 3)

• Ranged Attack
• Long Ranged Attack
• Area Affect
• Super Area of Effect

“We will stop you.” I forced myself to believe…to say through a discharge of mucous-filled and blood-tinged spittle. “We will keep fighting until we stop you. Even if you bring down all but the mightiest of us, you are just one being who will one day fight against the culmination of the entirety of the human spirit in those few.” He laughed a bit. At least, I believe it was a laugh. As he did so, he spat in my face slightly. That smell…so rancid…forever burned into my psyche now. He picked me up by my neck with one hand. He held my broken body there like a mother cat holds a kitten in her mouth. This was the second time I marveled at his size. The first time was upon our initial contact with him over New Ed…that place. Although his aged face carried the wisdom of a thing that had seen ages come and go, his physical nature rivaled…no overthrew those of the most powerful beings I had ever seen. “Look down.” He said casually. I did.

The shame I felt at what I saw…

The sheer and utter humiliation… I had long wet myself. Amidst the beatings, I had hardly noticed. The ground was a muddy mess of blood vomit and body waste. He turned my pummeled carcass towards a broken window pane from a nearby collapsed building. My face was unrecognizable. My arm hung as if it were no longer attached. Truth be told, I no longer knew if it were. “Where is your dignity now human?” He said. “Where will theirs be after I come for them? This is no fairy tale, no epic adventure of your archaic heroes. This is reality. Your reality is of my conception and at my disposal. As soon as I stepped foot on your pitiful planet, the human spirit was destined to be trampled forever. Let your heroes come and let them perish.”

As he stood there seething in his superiority over me…over us all, he noticed a spider crawling amidst the ruins. He eyed it casually as it attempted to flee his outstretched hand. It failed miserably as he promptly scooped it up and examined it. The spider ambled directionless around his hand. Slowly, he began to pull off its legs. It bit him…or at least it tried. He smirked and let it go. The thoughtless spider climbed up his neck and directly towards his open maw. The alien being clamped down his jaws and ended the spider’s life, then promptly returned to me. “Don’t be so downcast. If anything, I am the best thing to happen to your world since the destruction of the dinosaurs. With open candor, I can tell you that I am intrigued by your world’s life. I do not wish to destroy it merely for destruction’s sake. No…that would be hollow and meaningless. I am a warrior, the zenith warrior of my world. As such, I am intrigued by your world’s ability to evolve.” He picked up a nearby skull with half its flesh burned away. He viewed it akin to that scientist discussed earlier. “Our world does not evolve, yet we live longer lives than you. While my world grew to its utmost and then collapsed upon itself, your world has simply grown stagnant. You are numerous and live flat little lives. Just like nature wiped the slate clean of your world’s ancient lizards, I too will wipe this generation’s slate clean of you. Not immediately…no. But over time of course; I will mold your species like clay. I will terrorize your kind for generations: beating them, crushing them and shaping their very genetic memory to effect the next line to come and the next after that, and after that, and after that and so on. In the end, your kind will be a proper challenge for one such as me. I will make you better. Yes… You should thank me.” I can only look on in utter dread. How strong is he? I wondered to myself through the haze. He destroyed three cities here already. He defeated an entire dispatch team of Sentinels. He took out a small local army. Could he accomplish what he says? Surely not.

“You have water coming from your eyes. Our kind cannot do that? I never understood that function of humans. Weakness… Once I destroy your kind, I hope that I will return to something better than the sniveling wretches such as yourself that fill this world. That is your greatest power as organisms…evolution. Over time, I will shape your destiny and control your fate. I will harass your world until it becomes something worth its place in the universe. Yes…” Then he looked off into space with a smirk. He then turned to me again with that look. Remember what I told you about the scientist who grows bored of the miniscule life-form in the Petri Dish? Just like that, he had lost all interest in me. The last thing I heard was the wind-blast of incoming help…the Sentinels. I strained to turn my head to see them, and then he then promptly snapped my neck. After that I remember nothing until they woke me in the SLJ labs. Now, I sit here before you more machine than man…”

At this moment, General Mars proceeded to wave away the recording devices, signaling me to stop the interview. I did. General Mars was/is a hero and deserves his privacy. His million dollar genesis as the cybernetic Mars Volta was nothing if not remarkable, but it was obvious…he was not the man he once was. The Sentinels may have given him a stronger body, but they could not fix his broken spirit. After the tragic incident that changed Mars’ life; the arrival of a few of the Sentinel leagues more powerful cosmic defenders changed the tide of the battle. Whether overwhelmed or by tactical retreat, no one knew, but Epoch made his escape. To this day, the whereabouts of Epoch are unknown. Sightings of the bold alien being that made heavy claims of human annihilation are heard everyday, but still he remains a mystery. We later asked Mars if he knew anything about the location of this despot. His only answer was this last ominous message:

“Never look for New Eden.”