Mendax

Joe Lett (also Joseph Mann, Bobby Hart and others) was an alt who supposedly survived human experiments preformed on him at secret labs by chemical producer Moore Industria. He became friends with Marc Stojanović when the Genetic Mistreatment Agency was formed.

###  History

Born in Chelmsford, England Joe grew up in an average, working-class family, however much of his family was involved in drug-dealing and thievery; but Joe studied medical care when he was at college. When he was 21 Joe attained a job as a labourer for Moore Industria to make money, where he acted as a porter and general dogsbody.

Unknown to Joe, the company had been conducting secret experiments on animal subjects, possibly as a front to Black Labs, and Joe accidently walked into a lift that took him down to an underground facility.

When Joe was stopped by security, they offered to pay him a lot of money to keep quiet about the incident, claiming that the experiments were top-secret government research that could save millions of lives, although he didn't buy it and Moore knew it.

Before the boy left he was subject to a series of chemicals, which rendered him unconscious, then to injections directly to his brain and spinal column, when he awoke he had no memory of the incident and carried on working at the complex. After a few days the boy began experiencing headaches and suspected it may be the chemicals that he was moving; claiming that they had "experimental" pills to give him to stop the affects of these chemicals, they gave him the medication and sent him home. The next day he felt great, but when people started seeing things around him Moore knew that the tests were a success.

The company wiped his memory again, but as this was happening the building was raided by Wildstar on one of her first missions who had been working with the police and had word that they were creating animalts, Joe, unconsciously using his powers managed to escape, and Wildstar lost the trail.

Later Joe learned to control his powers, although they would still give him headaches every time he used them, managed to get used to the pain, his abilities would also have a detrimental effect on his body, causing him to gain weight and often appear greasy, but used his power to cover this, as well as finding that he could use it to steal money and sell things for, where he got into black market retail.

At some point in 2005 he moved to America to continue his life of crime, calling himself Mendax, part of a Latin word meaning "deception" or "liar", ending up joining the Genetic Victims Society for a brief period before then moving to the Genetic Mistreatment Agency where he befriended Marc.

After the fall of the GMA and the riots that followed, Joe returned back to England, where he got involved with Octave's band as a roadie touring around the UK and Europe and becoming a good friend of Kalafel for a while, when he saw an opportunity to steal the secrets of Octave's sonitech systems and sell them for an enormous profit to what is now thought to be System-12 who contacted him concerning his time in Moore Industria, however when Elisabeth discovered his dealings she was furious. System-12, however had grown more powerful, and with a personal army attacked Elisabeth, who then fought back with a curiosity, Mendax, however, escaped in the chaos with a great deal of Octave's research.

The Mighty Brave went on the trail of Mendax and System-12.

### Personality

Despite appearing friendly and charming, Joe was deceptive, greedy, selfish, sycophantic, but surprisingly cunning and intelligent; he knew how to haggle and manipulate and one of his best skills was subterfuge.

### Appearance

Originally Joe's appearance was a young, fairly averagely built young man, often with green or pink died fringe, he often wore hoodies and metal-band shirts and loose fitting cargo trousers. As his power manifested he began to gain weight and his skin became greasy and clammy, but would often hide this using his power.

### Powers and Abilities

**Powers**

Mendax was an alt, purposefully altered by a secret lab using Moore Industria as a cover; it was likely that Black Labs may have been using the company as a front, and that he was originally intended to be mind-wiped and shipped to one of their main labs for whatever reason. His alteration gave him superhuman abilities;

**Hallucinogenic Psi-Leech:** Joseph developed the ability to leech on the mental energy of people's minds in his vicinity, partly absorbing it into his own mind to stop his headaches and body pain, particularly in the visual processing wavelengths and weaken their mental perception in the process, this energy is then redistributed back to the targets weakened mental concentration as distorted images that he has some control over.

* ***Self-Image Masking:*** Joe could use the brainwave energy of people around him to essentially cast a false image of himself, fooling their visual senses into seeing things that aren't there; he used this ability to cast an image of himself as a slim, more attractive man, but could also look like other people; this ability, however is not perfect and creates only visual distortions and overlaid illusions, and even then they are not always perfect; people of particularly strong will can break through this hallucinogenic effect. But using it in a subtle way, especially when people were not really paying direct attention to him, he could keep up these illusions for several hours with ease. He can also alter how people view objects nearby as long as they are in range of those people's own visual field and he is in range of them, which is usually around 2 meters. He uses this ability seemingly very subtly at all times, making himself look thinner
* ***Partial Mental Invisibility:*** He can use his power to obscure himself, creating the image that he is not there, or at least a blurred or hard to focus on spot in people's perception; in a crowd Mendax can be lost very easily.
* ***Mental Weakening:*** As his power works by literally leeching the mental energy from another's mind, this act causes a weakness in his targets' cognition and concentration but improves his, clearing his headaches and physical pain, which aids in the distortion of their perception when he loops the mental energy back; this seems to happen at all times very subtly and he cannot fully shut it of when he is conscious, the result being that people around him often get headaches and feel drained and mentally weak.

**Abilities**

* ***Skilled medic:*** Before working for Moore Industria he attended medical care courses at college.
* ***Thieving skills:*** He learned to steal and use his powers to trick people.
* **Computer skills/Hacking:** He could hack and program computer systems to a limited degree.
* ***Deception:*** Even without his powers can be deceptive and misdirect people's attention with some skill.
* ***Intelligent:*** Smarter than he looks, he is a fast learner and picks up skills pretty fast.

### Limitations and Weaknesses

Joe is essentially a compulsive liar, and his powers do not help his cause, at all times he uses his power to hide his image and stop his headaches and body pain, which has began to affect his glands, causing him to gain weight, increase his appetite greatly and causing him to sweat a lot.

Like most alts his powers are unstable and do not always work well, in fact as time passes Joe's headaches and pain have grown stronger, requiring him to absorb more mental energy at once, but also finds using it to cast illusions more and more difficult; he believes that at some point he will no longer be able to do this and will have to focus solely on leeching as much energy from people around him at once as he can.

Joe was a poor physical combatant, being both unhealthy and unfit, he lacked any skills in fighting and was somewhat of a coward when faced with violence, relying on using his powers in any way he can.

His current whereabouts is unknown but it is likely in a highly-populated area like a large city.