Electrode

*"Throughout history humans have evolved from such basic things like making fire to swords and steel to weapons of modern warfare but it was when humanity discovered how to harness power through electricity and other resources we had evolved quicker and bigger than any of our ancestors, I would simply use these same methods to once again bring humanity into a golden age of evolution."* - Josef speaking about his ideas to his fellow Sparrow colleagues

Electrode otherwise known as Josef Gruber is a genetically enhanced Austrian scientist who was at one point one of the best and brightest minds within Austria with his brilliant mind seeking to help the country garner a safer and more sustainable energy source due to the world's growing environmental problems, after going through and passing his studies in physics Josef would at some point early on found his own company naming it Gruber Electronics which around the early 2000's would become the country's top company for everything involving electricity. The major problem that Josef had to continue his experiments on sustainability was funding and finance in which he received little from his own government considering that they had claimed to have helped him with his goal to the local press, this problem would lead Josef to grow to despise his own leadership but he would receive a large portion of funding from a singular investor that represented an organisation called Sparrow who sought to form an alliance with the scientist however this would be unknown to him at the time. Despite the funding that he had been given Josef struggled to actually find suitable ways to conduct electricity in an environmentally friendly way and sustainable way which alongside seeing the great success that the American company Apollo had been seeing in their goal of sustainable energy would be enough to drive the Austrian scientist slightly insane becoming obsessed with inventing a new way for humanity to use energy rather than trying to make it sustainable. This obsession would lead Josef to make some backdoor deals with Sparrow being his primary funder to trade equipment that might help his experiments, one of these deals included him sending them energy conductors that were able to conduct energy and a quicker and more efficient pace which would later be used to power Shriek whilst he received new experimental enhancing drugs that he would use to prove a new theory of humans being able to harness electricity. At the risk of his own sanity and mind Josef would inject these new drugs that would rapidly change his body mass making him large and muscular enough for him to carry his large energy pack that he could carry on his back, combined with many wires and large metal gloves to fit his now massive hands Josef was able to for the first time conduct electricity through shock powered gloves. Whilst this was a brand new invention and had become something that Josef could attribute to his company the Austrian government would see this new invention as dangerous and could potentially be weaponised should it fall into the wrong hands and so they would immediately order him to destroy the device and shut down the project. Josef would be infuriated by having to shut down his project and destroy his device and began plotting to punish those who he deemed were trying to stop him and steal his ideas however he would be convinced by Sparrow to secretly shut it down and give them his device to work on with them freely, due to his own insanity and reluctance to destroy his own creation he would accept their offer which involved him in maintaining his company's front whilst working under Sparrow in which he would eventually join the organisation's secret council that ran the group as a whole.

## Biography

### Early Life

Josef Gruber grew up in Vienna within the country of Austria with a fairly average upbringing having a fascination in his younger years in school for science so much so that it sometimes became a detriment to his other classes but nonetheless he would manage to go through school with good grades, being engrossed with science he would eventually find his true love for the physics side of science learning everything he could about electricity such as conducting it and how it is controlled for everyday items. After finishing his main education Josef immediately enrolled into college studying advanced physics hoping to become even more well versed in his knowledge surrounding energy and its properties, during his time studying physics in college it became a large recognised problem across the world about things such as climate change and global warming with many countries using a lot of resources which increase and add to these problems. This became apparent to Josef Gruber who changed the direction of his studies to instead help reduce the world's carbon footprint by using cleaner energy, this idea would continue into his university studies where he would graduate straight into becoming a physicist.

### Gruber Electronics

#### CEO of Physics

After finishing and graduating university with his physics degree Josef fully focused on his efforts to help the world but specifically his own country first to become more eco friendly with their energy and electrical usage by using more sustainable energy sources, he did this at first by working for many different electric and energy companies in the hopes of being able to make a difference however he would come to the realisation that these companies did not seek to help the world but rather to monetise it through selling off power without a care of the consequences their effects had on the world. This would eventually lead Josef to found his own company with the sole goal of helping the country improve the environment through sustainable energy and electricity naming it Gruber Electronics which he would grow from a small company to one of Austria's biggest electrical companies, Josef began by implementing different types of conductors that could help him power energy using safer materials which provided a more eco friendly touch whilst trying to renew the current energy he was using making the need for more energy irrelevant. The Austrian government began taking notice of Josef Gruber's efforts and would elevate his popularity and his company's popularity to a national scale whilst claiming to the news that they had helped fund most of his efforts, Josef was indeed funded by his own government however he knew that it was not as much as they were claiming to the public and that instead they were trying to claim his work for their own by taking credit which made grow to dislike them for trying to overshadow his own efforts. During this time Gruber wanted to make a name for himself without the government taking as much credit as they had been and so began working on projects on his own with nobody knowing, despite the discretion Josef was eventually approached by two representatives of the Sparrow organisation who wanted to help fund him and become investors promising a lot more money than he had been given. Having known little of Sparrow he was slightly hesitant to ask about why they were interested in investing into his company but due to the amount he was being given he did not ask those questions, the two representatives of the organisation stated that they only wanted any new project to be handed to them for proper testing insinuating that they knew about some of his secret projects already.

Whilst working on his new projects Gruber began getting more annoyed with some projects making little progress and some making none at all which would all culminate when the company named Apollo would be the first company to manage to obtain a sustainable energy source using light technology, this would drive Josef slightly insane seeing that his company and his work was now being overshadowed by a company that had numerous advantages that he believed he should of had. This would lead Josef to begin taking a new direction instead of having the idea of creating sustainable energy he would work towards using electricity to usher in a new evolution for mankind not caring how he achieved it only that he did, by doing this he would make backdoor deals with Sparrow giving them new prototype equipment that could conduct electricity at a quicker and efficient pace and in return they would give him a new experimental drug said to enhance the body's physical attributes. This deal would help Gruber harbour the correct body mass to wield a new portable electricity pack that he had been working on using large gloves to act as electrical gloves.

### Sparrow

#### Electrode

With his new device made Josef would finally have a new invention that could be attributed to his company gaining much needed traction and popularity alongside a new way to evolve mankind as was his new goal and drive for making the pack, he would be able to present his project at the next meeting with the Austrian government who after analysing what it did would deem the device to be too dangerous should it fall into the wrong hands and would order for it to be destroyed and anything like it to be shut down. This would infuriate the slightly mad scientist who returned to his office ready to use the device for the purpose of a weapon when he would be called once again by Sparrow who informed him that they had heard about his device to be destroyed which they would offer him an alternative to pretend to destroy it and secretly send it to them where he could work on it anytime he wanted, the organisation would go on to share that they believed in his ideals of helping mankind usher in a new age and evolution which whether they actually believed in it or not would not matter to Josef as he would accept their offer continuing to use his company now acting as a front for his secret involvement with Sparrow serving them as one of their top scientists helping them work on their own project named Shriek. Eventually after proving to be a valuable asset to the organisation Gruber would be officially put on the secret council that ran the company alongside having many other investments and secret goals they had hoped to achieve which Josef was more than happy to help them with.

During his time in serving Sparrow the Austrian scientist observed the UN conspiracy and witnessed the first plan for controlling the world to fail due to the greed of one man which only furthered his realisation that mankind had to evolve, Josef would propose the idea to the rest of the secret council of Sparrow by them allowing him to work on the AI chip Shriek that the organisation had recently acquired from The Warden a former operative. The plan would be to instead create one robot that contained the AI intelligence and deadliness of Shriek but to create thousands who would be able to help in controlling the world through force with Gruber's own secret plans believing that using a robot army against mankind will force them to evolve their warfare, Sparrow would allow Gruber to conduct this experiment giving him access to his own personal lab in Egypt and a building owned by their organisation in Rome to be converted into a data centre to store the replicated AI. Alongside these two new locations being gifted to Josef Sparrow saw the need to ensure that this plan was kept as protected and as secret as possible providing both the Iron Fighter and Caliber at Gruber's command to help protect his interests, it would be during this time that Josef began replicating the data and building a good robotic suit for Shriek to be equipped with shortly before The Warden would go onto steal the AI chip.

#### SHRIEK Crisis

Whilst he worked on creating Shriek he would only reveal to Caliber as to what was happening and what he was guarding as Caliber was a proper member of Sparrow whilst the Iron Fighter was only a hired mercenary but had requested alongside payment to receive the similar serum that Gruber was given to enhance his own body to perform more efficiently which Gruber would allow and provided the mercenary with what he asked so that he may protect his lab, as he worked on creating the deadly robot he knew that the only downside to building a robot army is that they would all have to be controlled by a central computer that was in a closer proximity so that they would all be connected. Josef knew that in order to maintain Sparrow's trust with him he would regularly send them updates with modifications to his report to hide his own programming into the robot's suits as he made his own upgrades to his own portable pack, during this time Gruber would go between Rome and Cairo where in Cairo he worked on upgrading Shriek and his own suit whilst in Rome he oversaw the programming and replicating of Shriek's data in order to recreate it thousands of times. Within the latter end of Gruber's experiments having completed both the blueprint for the robotic design and the data having been replicated he had been very silent and non responsive to Sparrow fully committing to his evolution plan using a factory within Chicago to construct these robots, however due to his lack of response to Sparrow Gruber would miss their warnings as they knew of Milton Nichols investigating their operations and had ordered him to destroy his lab and data building but he didn't. This would lead to a series of attacks on both Gruber's lab in Cairo and his data building in Rome by the Enigmas who were following up on Milton's investigations, at this point Gruber was prepping his robot army in Chicago having planned to launch a city scale attack during the president's speech in the hopes of occupying the city and killing the president forcing the people inside of the city to in his mind evolve to fight Shriek. The plan and prep would be ready but before Gruber launched his robots into action he would immediately take notice that all four of the Enigmas alongside Milton were present in the city with Blitzfire flying over the city and the others being near the president, despite knowing his plans could be stopped Gruber would launch the robots regardless and began attacking the city in different areas in hopes of dividing the Enigmas so that he would be able to target the president. As the Battle of Chicago raged on it wouldn't be long before his location was discovered by Orothos who Gruber knew as the young CEO of Apollo and his bitter business rival in the race for sustainable energy, the two would fight it out inside the building next to the central computer where Gruber realised that the computer is what she was really after and so chose to tackle her out of the building with both of them falling to the street level alongside Blitzfire who Gruber has previously blasted out of the building only moments earlier, whilst being face to face with the two women he would find himself surrounded seeing both The Warden and The Sentinel behind him who began attacking him. In the midst of the fighting both Orothos and Blitzfire made their way back up to the building whilst Gruber fought Jade hand to hand eventually besting her and disabling her large arms but only for The Warden to launch a surprise attack by cutting the electrical cords from Gruber's pack to his gloves disabling his suit allowing Jade to land a knockout punch, not long after he was beat the rest of Gruber's robots would be disabled and he would be arrested and placed inside a UN prison being branded as a terrorist.

## Powers and Abilities

### Powers

* **Portable Power**: Having built his own portable energy backpack alongside two magnetic gloves to control the electricity pulsing through the cables Josef was able to utilise it to act as a weapon being able to fire out large electric blasts and was able to absorb energy from anything that contained it such as electrical cars or even street lights, the gloves were also capable of sticking to walls allowing him to scale building and walls with ease including being able to overcharge something for a period of time.
* **Physical Enhancement**: During his time in making the new portable power pack Gruber was able to strike a deal with Sparrow to receive help from them to finish his project which included him receiving experimental drugs that would greatly enhance his body granting him unbelievable strength and durability to both deal and receive massive hits, this would also be useful for Gruber to wield the massive gloves he had built alongside the portable power pack.

### Abilities

* **Inventor**: Growing up Josef was obsessed with energy and always sought to invent new ways to make it sustainable for the planet hoping to be praised as a hero for his actions but his vast knowledge and training in the field would not be enough, during his time running his own company Josef would begin working on numerous projects of many ideas that he wanted to invent such as the current portable power pack that he uses to channel energy and electricity through.