Amanda Waller

## Background

### 1966 - Present: Amanda Waller

Neither of Amanda's parents were involved in her life for whatever reasons so she was raised by her maternal grandmother in the southside of Chicago. She was eventually kicked her out when she was a teenager & moved with her boyfriend's family in Midway City. At the age of eighteen, she married her boyfriend Joseph Waller.

The two quickly expanded their family as Amanda took night classes to get her political science degree. First they had a son Joe Jr, next was Damita, then the twins Martin & Jessie, then Coretta & lastly, her youngest daughter Odalys. Their lives were a financial struggle as they relied on social programs but they were happy. Their eldest son was able to go to college for free on a basketball scholarship. Unfortunately, he was killed in a mugging gone wrong. The next year, the Wallers lost their daughter after she was raped & murdered in an alleyway on her way home from church. The police arrested her killer "Candyman" but were unable to convict him due to a lack of witnesses. Her husband went after the man himself, leading to the deaths of both men.

Done with Chicago & all the pain it brought her, Amanda got herself a job in the government & moved her family out of the city. She worked hard to put all of her remained through college while getting a job promotion as a campaign director for a congressman.

With her tactics & skills, Amanda caught the eye of few government officials. When the United Nations founded ARGUS in 2003, Waller was brought on as Deputy Director under Director Maxwell Lord. With her new found power, she started the off the books team Task Force X, otherwise known as the Suicide Squad. She used the metahuman prison Belle Reve to gain new members, profiling the super-criminal inmates & putt them through an initiation process. Whoever made it through to the end was assigned to the team. After the prison's shut down due to the task force becoming public knowledge, Waller began using Arkham Asylum (where all the criminals were moved to) as her new base.

Despite her non-threatening physical appearance, she is almost universally feared as one of the most ruthless women in espionage & politics. To this day, she continues to run the Suicide Squad; is a high ranking member of ARGUS & Checkmate; and once led the Secret Six as Mockingbird.

## Romantic Relationships

* Joseph Waller: Boyfriend (1981 - 1984); Husband (1984 - 2004)

## Personality

Amanda Waller is an exceptionally intelligent & resourceful woman, especially in the fields of tactics & political science. She is not above using questionable & even outright amoral methods to achieve her planned goals. She is a manipulative & devious leverager, priding herself in being able to frequently get people to act against their self-interests by gaining leverage over them, rather than simply attempting to out-fight them. Her nickname is "The Wall" due to how ruthless, dominating & unrelenting she is when dealing with others, which makes Waller one of the most feared & respected people in the US government.

However, Waller's leverage-based power is also her greatest weakness. Occasionally, it makes her arrogant & overconfident, believing that her perfect leverage over everyone she wishes to control, makes her supremely powerful. Hence, Waller is somewhat caught off-guard when an unexpected turn of events causes her plans to not work out the way she indented. When such catastrophic errors occur, she is forced to turn to other genius tacticians (i.e. Batman) for help. While she is amoral, unempathetic, ruthless & strict, everything Waller does is ultimately for the national safety of the United States.

## Powers & Abilities

* **Genius Level Intellect**: Amanda Waller is exceptionally intelligent & resourceful, which extends to her immensely formidable political science, leadership, tactical, demagogic, investigative, manipulation, hacking, exploitative networking & leveraging skills.
	+ ***Computer Operation***: Waller is a fairly skilled hacker, as she is able to hack into several security cameras to monitor the Suicide Squad during their missions (reminding them that she's watching & "can see everything").
	+ ***Indomitable Will***: Although she has no metahuman powers herself, she more than makes up for it with her tremendous determination & willpower, which make her an extremely formidable opponent.
	+ ***Leadership***: As Deputy Director of ARGUS, she is a superbly skilled leader & has led the organization for years, as well as occasionally leading other agencies' operatives, inspiring fierce loyalty from her subordinates.
	+ ***Network***: As a very high-ranking US government official, with ties to several other espionage & law enforcement agencies, she superbly uses a dense network of professional & social contacts to further her power ambitions. This is notable in her influence of other espionage & law enforcement agencies, the US army, powerful companies & certain prisons. Hence, Waller can discreetly keep tabs on numerous people & things that interest her.
	+ ***Manipulation***: Waller is a superbly skilled demagogue, since she intends to come off as a pioneering altruist concerned with United States national security, so she therefore masterfully appeals to popular desires & prejudices when addressing fellow US government officials, championing the cause of covert metahuman exploitation as a contingency against impending threats of incredible power, with her usage of seemingly rational arguments making Waller's method even more effective. Her most notable demagogic demonstration was when she presented her Task Force X pitch to the US government, managing to swiftly convince the entire council.
	+ ***Political Science***: She is an extremely skilled political scientist, understanding the inner workings of political structures and their intended goals. Hence, Waller fully understood the paradigm shift that the goals of modern politics took (referring to it as "World War III"), such as the metahumans' emergenc.
	+ ***Tactical Analysis***: Waller is an immensely skilled manipulative tactician, being effective enough to have built up a fearsome reputation among US government officials. Given her lack of superpowers, Waller often uses cunning & planning to successfully outwit stronger & more powerful foes, gaining leverage over them rather than simply attempting to out-fight them, often using any of their exploitable weaknesses (such as Deadshot's daughters or the threat of activating the nano-bombs implanted in the Suicide Squad) to her advantage, though Waller's methods are considerably amoral. Due to this, Waller can extend her authority over the extremely dangerous Suicide Squad members (something many considered impossible). Even when caught off-guard with hiccups in her plan, Waller can swiftly regain control of the situation.
* **Marksmanship**: Amanda Waller is a skilled markswoman (though nowhere near on par with Rick Flag or Deadshot), swiftly shooting down some of her opponents.

### Weaknesses

* **Arrogance**: Amanda Waller's greatest weakness is her overconfidence & arrogance, with Waller believing that since she has seemingly perfect leverage over everyone she wishes to control, that this makes her supremely powerful. Hence, Waller is somewhat caught off-guard when an unexpected turn of events causes her plans to not work out the way she indented.

### Ratings

* **Intelligence:** 6 - Expert / Advanced
* **Strength:** 3 - Average / Basic
* **Speed:** 3 - Average / Basic
* **Occult:** 1 - Nonexistent
* **Weapons:** 3 - Average / Basic
* **Range:** 3 - Average / Basic
* **Strategy:** 7 - Master / Elite
* **Combat:** 3 - Average / Basic
* **TOTAl:** 85 - Threat Level 2 / Low Threat

## Trivia

#### General

* Rick Flag once said that one can get used to Waller's ruthless personality after a while.
* She knows the identity of Batman & Barney Fife.
* Waller believes everyone has a weakness that can be leveraged.
* Waller respects Superman's benevolence & selflessness despite seeing his level of power as a threat.
* Many people have said they've been warned about Waller via frightening stories but most disbelieve them until they actually have to work with her.
* Harley Quinn compared Waller to the Devil.

#### Activities

* She is well aware of Zari Tomaz's connection to Black Adam. Instead of bringing her in for questioning as Zari assumed, she offered her the position of a Special Agent in ARGUS' Research Division so she could keep an eye on her.
* Waller was involved in the formation of The Losers.

#### Suicide Squad

* Despite being amoral & ruthless, she is not ungrateful for the things the Suicide Squad has done. She rewards the surviving members with taking years off of their respective prison sentence & has even generously granting them some personal requests. She gave Harley Quinn an expresso machine, gave Deadshot a punching bag & longer visits then gave Killer Croc access to cable TV.
* When Pooch was on the Suicide Squad, a mission put him in a compromising position. When he returned home, Waller told him that he would have to cease to exist in order to protect his family so they would not be used as leverage against him. During his return home, Waller set up for Andy to be "assassinated" by Deadshot. Once it was believed by his loved ones & enemies that he was dead, Andy was reinvented as Linwood Porteous. As soon as he recieved his new identity, Pooch was attached to a black ops cover unit led by Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Clay. The quick reassignment led Andy to question whether his life was ever truly in danger for him to fake his death or did Waller just need him for a different assignment he would never agree to.
* She wants Taylor Narie to join the Suicide Squad.
* In 2009, the Suicide Squad was sent to Vlatava to handle a group of American right-wing extremists that are intending to spark open war with Russia by funding a revolution led secretly by brutal Vlatavan General Kaligari. The revolutionaries attempt to hire Deashot to kill Waller for $100,000 but Waller counters with an offer $100,001 to shoot Kaligari. Killer Frost stops the revolution by kidnapping Kaligari, who Deadshot then kills.

## Notes

* In the comics, Claudia & Celine Patterson are her daughters.
* Lucien Crawley is the Mind Grabber Man.