Alpha

Benjamin Anderson II was a neohuman telepath and founder of S.T.A.R. Force, an organisation of "security enforcers" who were some of the first superheroes in the traditional sense of helping those in need without expecting some kind of payment in return. Benjamin and his partner Jane Kirk pooled their money and resources to create a safehouse and eventual training ground for enhanced or exceptionally talented individuals to help others and tackle extremist gangland and superhuman enemies in the West Coast of the United States.

### Personality

Benjamin was a serious and dedicated man, sometimes seen as a little too robotic likely due to his time in the Marines and was seen by his fellow teammates as fair-but strict, not often opening up to anyone but Jane, nevertheless he believed in charity above all else and claims to be not motivated by greed or money but does his work for the actual good of humanity.

After years in the Marines Alpha has a strict policy on not killing and avoiding collateral damage to anywhere they operate.

### Appearance

Benjamin was a tall, broad-shouldered, short-bearded African-American man of muscular physique and peak fitness, he had brown eyes, a bald head and often a stern and brooding look on his face. He wore buttoned shirts, sometimes with a tie, and liked wearing suit trousers tailored to his fit.

### History

An only child born into a well-off family of politicians and government officials in Los Angeles's Beverly Hills district in 1981, Benjamin's choice of becoming a Marine put him and his family at odds, with his parents expecting him to follow in their footsteps of politics, between this and his neonism that developed when he was 16 that allowed him to read the minds and true intentions of thoughts of everyone around him.

Using it to his advantage during marine training Benjamin kept his powers secret for years until he was a fully-fledged Marine, by which time he had become an extremely powerful telepath, but after fellow teammate James Lincoln tagged on that he was using his telepathy to sense and control nearby enemies during a conflict in Afghanistan, James threatened to report him. In an effort to stop him, knowing that he might be sent to a strange military lab and turned into a weapon, Benjamin tried to wipe James' recent memory, only to have it backfire and cause him to relive his troubled childhood. Screaming with trauma their position was given away and James wondered out into the field confused and in pain until he was gunned down and his unit forced to retreat and regroup.

When an investigation was carried out Benjamin felt he could no longer hide the pain and divulged the truth, the result was a discharge from the Marines, but after returning home was contacted by a strange government contractor who wanted him as part of a covert team for the CIA, however he denied the offer and instead went to work for a trauma centre for PTS in Los Angeles.

It was in the trauma unit that Ben met Jane Kirk who had worked there for several years, claiming she too suffered trauma in war, however when the two began discussing deeper, personal issues the two seemed to link minds and some kind of rapport was established and was, like him a neo, but a neo with a sensitivity to emotions that let her heal mental wounds.

Jane's inherited fortune eventually led her to invest more in her family's insurance and banking companies and she used this money to help Benjamin start his own privet security and charitable agency that they named S.T.A.R. Force.

### Powers and Abilities

#### **Powers**

Benjamin was a neohuman born with a series of latent neones that began activating when he was 15, these gave him superpowers by the time he was 16.

**Telepathy:** Alpha was a powerful telepath capable of a verity of mind-based abilities.

* **Mind Reading:** He could sense the thoughts and intentions of multiple people at once from nearly a mile away, this includes picking up images or accessing their sensory input.
* **Mind Control:** He could influence the thoughts and actions of others, but this depended on willpower; as he rarely used this ability for moral reasons, believing that everyone should have free will, this ability is actually underdeveloped compared to his other telepathic skills.
* **Mental Illusions:** He could manifest hallucinatory images in the minds of others that can seem extremely real, seeing, hearing and feeling things, people or creatures that aren't there or even cloud minds and cloak himself or others from their mind's-eye, although these cause no physical damage do have the potential to traumatise by causing pain receptors to fire.
* **Mind-Wiping:** A dangerous ability that lets him delete recent memories, this usually results in confusion, Alpha has stated that he could 'probe deeper' if he tried, but deleting core memories would utterly destabilize a person's mind, altering their personality or sending them into a spiralling madness.
* **Psychometry:** He could sense the psychic imprints left by people and use it to track and locate targets.
* **Telepathic Shielding:** He could protect himself or others from other forms of mind-reading or telepathic attacks, this included from spiritual and demonic entities.
* **Clairvoyance:** He could sense locations or places as much as 20 miles away and narrow down his mind's eye to several inches in that chosen area, this, however takes concentration to sustain for periods greater than a minute.
* **Ballistic Telepathy:** He could launch painful strikes of telepathic energy into the minds of others causing overwhelming sensory input, disorientation, pain, paralysis or knocking them unconscious all together. Alpha states that he could very easily use this ability to kill, but refuses.
	+ **Psionic Weaponry:** Recently Alpha has learned to manifest complex weapons composed of highly-focused telepathic energy, these constructs appear to others as ghostly white glowing apparitions that range from daggers, or handguns to rifles that seem to be reflexive psionic manifestations of the weapons he used during his time in the Marines. These weapons attack the mind directly and cause no physical damage, but would simulate the pain of being shot or stabbed in some form, even the pain of a gun-butt to the head or the faux-heat of an overclocked muzzle, these effects would be purely telepathic in nature.
* **Spirit Perception:** Alpha claims he can see, and commune with the spirits of those recently deceased, though he has to concentrate extremely hard, claiming he has spoken to his grandmother and helped her cross to what she called "The Beyond".

#### **Abilities**

* **Marine Training:** Benjamin has advanced combat, tactics, threat analysis and and firearms expertise from his 7 years as a US Marine.
* **Confident Speaker:** He has the ability to hold the attentions of large crowds and encourage them to action.
* **Near-Genius Intellect:** Although possessing no formal university-level education Benjamin is a gifted and highly intelligent learner, from an early age was already brilliant with mathematics, computer software and hardware, mechanics, physics and complex analysis systems, as well as being gifted with the capability to understand complex matters of business much of which he self-taught after being discharged from the Marines.

### **Limitations and Weaknesses**

Much of Alpha's telepathy requires concentration to sustain for extended periods, he also has strict moral codes regarding the use of extreme force and killing, the use his power and the powers and skills of his teammates.

He can be somewhat emotionless and perhaps a little too stoic, rarely opening up for anyone save his partner Beta.