Masaryk is a highly trained spy and soldier. Even before he was enhanced, he was incredibly strong - during his initial appearance he throws ex-boxer ’Happy‘ Hogan around like a rag doll. He was also highly dedicated. After being enhanced he could easily crush large steel slabs or wrestle with the classic Golden Avenger suit of Iron Man armour - in other words, he performed well above his official Class 15 listing. His resistance to fatigue was also tremendous - he could swim for miles at a fairly high speed, and he was durable enough to withstand repulsor blasts even at close range. The Unicorn also noted that he had a superhuman power of recuperation.

The Unicorn technology was quite powerful and versatile even from day one. Attack modes include power beams that rival those of Cyclops, adjustable heat beams (which he has occasionally used to melt metal or weld metal surfaces together), some sort of disintegration beam, magnetic telekinesis over metallic objects as heavy as a main battle tank, and a radiating energy shield capable of protecting him against most everything (though he could not initially attack while the force field was activated). His jet boots are also rather powerful, and between those and his powerful beams he could easily intercept and shoot down a SHIELD aircraft. After having been enhanced by the Titanium Man, his horn could magnetically manipulate items of debatable conductivity, such as quarry stones.

Against lesser opponents the Unicorn will often erect his force field, do nothing during the first Phase as people pointlessly shoot him, then win Initiative, switch off the force field and blast everybody to smithereens.

History

Although he was Slovak (back when Czechoslovakia was still one country), military man Milos Masaryk was quite involved with the Soviet military and law enforcement - that was before 1968, too.Eventually he became a KGB agent, headquartered in Arsenal Tomska 44, where many of the best Soviet engineers and scientists were working on special military projects. Perhaps the greatest, Anton Vanko, was working on several such projects ; among his works was a special, very heavy harness and power-projecting helmet which he gave to his friend - the large, exceptionally strong Masaryk. With contributions from others (likely including Alex Nevski for the jet boots), Masaryk’s equipment eventually became the Unicorn gear. Some time after Vanko defected to the US, the full Unicorm costume and equipment, and Masaryk’s training, were completed.

The Unicorn’s first mission was fairly straightforward - he came to the US, attacked a Stark Industries plant, took a suitable hostage (Stark’s secretary) and brought her to a rented house nearby, making sure he would be followed. When Iron Man came, they clashed briefly, though the Unicorn chiefly wanted him to free the hostage. Iron Man flew away with his secretary, not realising he was being followed by the Unicorn. Now certain of Iron Man’s location, the Unicorn seized the occasion and planted powerful explosives in one of the main factories. He then ordered Iron Man to surrender within 15mn, or the factory would blow up ; unable to find the bomb in time, Stark complied. However, once he was aboard the plane headed toward the USSR, Iron Man destroyed it and flew back to the US. At this point, the Unicorn apparently decided against going back to the Eastern Bloc, and stayed in the US as a super-criminal for a time.

The Unicorn was next seen as a part of the army of villains who, semi- controled by Doctor Doom’s technology, attempted to disrupt the marriage of Susan Storm and Reed Richards ; they were opposed by an army of heroes, and eventually chronoported away by Reed Richards.

Soldier of fortune

No longer working as a Communist agent but as a simple merc, the Unicorn entered the employ of Count Nefaria, who had a daring plan to create a whole new Maggia. The Unicorn and Nefaria’s other lieutenant captured the X-Men in the mistaken belief they may want to become their allies.When they declined, the criminals and the Unicorn proceeded with the next phase of their grandiose plan - taking the entirety of Washington, D.C., hostage ! Nefaria did so by creating an unbreakable dome over the entire city, a dome he could use at any point to crush Washington. He then used holograms of the X-Men to state his conditions for ransom to the government. Since the world now believed they were behind the crisis, the X-Men pretended to agree to collaborate after all, and Nefaria sent them into Washington to get the ransom.

However, the Unicorn convinced his fellow criminal lieutenants that they did not need Nefaria, and that they should double-cross him.Thus, they intercepted the X-Men as they were coming back. Loudly pretending they were mutants to make sure the X-Men would take the blame, the lieutenants attacked the X-Men, and managed to push them back and grab the ransom. Then the Unicorn turned against even them, grabbed the ransom and ran, then flew away, defeating attempts by Nefaria and the X-Men to stop him. Everybody eventually ran into the Army, and in the commotion the Unicorn lost the ransom. Assuming Nefaria would find a way to get it back, he managed to intercept the crime lord’s fleeing yacht, but both then discovered they had been manipulated by Professor X and that the ransom was a mental image created with the technology Nefaria had previously used to create images of the X-Men.

Back in USSR

Under unclear circumstances, Masaryk returned to the Eastern Bloc.There, denounced as a traitor, he was thoroughly brainwashed back into a loyal servant of the State at the Pavlov Institute, then used as a Guinea pig for a new treatment called the Hyper-Activator, who could make permanent the strength humans rarely display in states of extreme hysteria. Perhaps due to his incredible strength and constitution, however, the Unicorn could withstand the treatments for far longer than anticipated, and built up a level of strength well beyond what was projected. The Hyper-Activator treatments, however, also weakened the brainwashing. By the time it was over, the Unicorn was gifted with great superhuman strength, had secretly recovered his free will….and had a dramatically reduced lifespan from the effects of the Hyper- Activator.

The Societ scientists then gave Masaryk a new Unicorn costume and helmet, the strength and durability of their agent allowing them to make his equipment much less bulky than before. As soon as he donned the helmet, the Unicorn turned against his would-be masters, razed the lab so no agent rivalling his power could be created, and flew away.At that point his priority became to force scientists to cure his lifespan issue, while keeping his strength. Learning of a huge international scientific congress in the Alps, he attacked the place, demonstrating his power and demanding a ransom and to be cured. Since Stark was attending the conference, the uncanny Unicorn soon clashed with the Golden Avenger - but the desperate villain proved to be more than a match for Iron Man. Iron Man managed to save himself in the nick of time, by crushing the Unicorn’s power reserve belt and throwing it from a very tall cliff. Unable to accept the idea of having lost a large part of his power, the Unicorn suicidally dove off the cliff to recover the (now crushed and useless) belt despite Iron Man’s pleas. Iron Man failed to find a body.

The Unicorn’s jet boots including an autonomous emergency booster rocket, he had not actually fallen to his doom, but managed to recover the destroyed belt and fly away. Flying blind, he eventually crash- landed near the new stronghold of the Red Ghost. Needing an agent, the Ghost used drugs to stabilise the Unicorn’s sanity, gave him tablets that he assured would prevent the degeneration of his body from the effects of the Hyper-Activator, and improved the alloy of the power reserve belt to make it much harder to destroy. Predictably, the Unicorn then refused to obey the Ghost, blasted stuff with his horn and prepared to fly away, until the scientist reminded him that he was the only person who could give him his meds against cellular degeneration. The Ghost then accompanied the Unicorn as they went after Stark’s newest invention, the Cosmic Ray, telling him there was a good chance he could fight and kill Iron Man during this mission.Unbeknownst to the raging Unicorn, the Red Ghost had actually lost his powers, and needed Stark’s cosmic ray to repower himself.

The Unicorn seemingly killed SHIELD agent Jasper Sitwell by blowing up the SHIELD transport carrying him and Tony Stark, stole the Cosmic Ray, gave it to the Ghost, then doubled back to kill Iron Man, whom he assumed was nearby. The Red Ghost delayed the Golden Avenger with combat-trained orang-utans while he repowered himself. As Iron Man and the Unicorn fought, the Red Ghost cosmically-powered a new set of apes (called Alpha and Beta), exulted in his new powers, then told the Unicorn that the tablets he had fed him were actually mere tranquillisers and mood stabilisers, not stopping his physical degeneration one whit. He then detonated his lab with Iron Man and the Unicorn still inside it.

While SHIELD was busy saving Sitwell’s life (since the fearless bespectacled agent had bailed out of the exploding aircraft at the last second), the Unicorn and Iron Man found themselves forced to collaborate to get out of the rubbles, having both suffered significant damage to their systems (the Unicorn had his weapons online but no power, while Iron Man’s weapons were knocked out but he still could generate power). Both men were determined to get the Red Ghost, and they continued to operate with Iron Man’s generators plugged into the Unicorn’s belt via a power cable. Riding a transatlantic jet aircraft thanks to the Unicorn’s magnetic abilities, they invaded the Red Ghost’s base and almost fought off the super- apes, but Unicorn’s rashness and thirst for revenge led to failure as the power cable between them was disconnected. The situation suddenly changed as Alpha and Beta took over the Ghost’s base in order to launch their own scheme of world conquest ; in the ensuing confusion the Unicorn knocked Iron Man out with a kick to the face, karate- chopped the Red Ghost as he was stunned, and flew away with a nearby aircraft and the Red Ghost as a prisoner, intending to force him to work on a genuine cure.

Despair mounts

Even the genius of the Red Ghost failed, however (or perhaps he just misted away), and the desperate Unicorn soon found himself searching for a man of even greater scientific knowledge. Increasingly ill, he nevertheless managed to locate the Mandarin and reach him. It was basically too late at this point, however, and by the time the Mandarin had completed his tests the Unicorn was a mindless vegetable.The Mandarin considered discarding the body (who was still in excellent shape), but discovered his Makluan rings could actually take over the Unicorn’s powerful body and equipment and control him. The Mandarin kept Unicorn as a mindless battle-slave, calling him “the Mandarin’s Eleventh Ring”.

Some time later, the Mandarin clashed with Iron Man and, at a suitably dramatic moment, had his battle-slave blast his way onto the scene ; both villains attacked Iron Man and their combined blasts inflicted tremendous damage to Iron Man, forcing him to retreat with a torn armour and a rapidly-declining health. Stark narrowly survived to fight the Mandarin and the Unicorn again, but was not faring much better until a direct Uni-Beam hit had a weird effect : it transferred the mentality of the Mandarin into the mindless body of the Unicorn !Since the Mandarin knew his brain patterns would not last long in the Unicorn’s deteriorating brain, he was forced to flee with his unconscious original body under his arm. Some weeks later, the Mandarin managed to reverse the mind transfer, after kidnapping Sunfire and using the tremendous energies of the haughty Japanese mutant to power the machinery he had designed. He then just discarded the Unicorn to die.

However the Unicorn managed to resurface - literally. Left to sink under the South China Sea, he somehow regained his consciousness (presumably, the enormous energies of the machine used by the Mandarin did more than swap their mentalities and also healed the Unicorn to some degree) and swam to the surface. Pulling himself atop a floating debris, he drifted for an unknown length of time and, after hitting near-freezing waters, pulled a Captain America and entered suspended animation. He was somehow located by the Titanium Man, who snatched him from the water, brought him to his base and tried to cure him.Bullski’s efforts were somehow successful (likely because of the regeneration started by the Mandarin’s machine), but he could only go so far as to roll back the Unicorn to roughly the same level of degeneration he had early on during the efforts of the Red Ghost to cure him. Since ten years in real-world time elapsed between his being discarded by the Mandarin and his return as an agent of the Other, it is likely the Unicorn spend years unconscious in one of those transparent, liquid nutrients-filled tank. In the meanwhile, the Other rebuilt and enhanced the power horn.

The Other

Whilst the Titanium Man told the Unicorn he would finish curing him if he succeeded on a mission to kill Iron Man, the desperate Unicorn was once again being callously manipulated ; his new master, whom he only knew as “The Other”, knew that he could not reset the Unicorn’s degeneration further back. Still, hoping to survive and not sink back into mental degeneration as he had done while searching for the Mandarin, the Unicorn eagerly became a one-man strike force for the Other.

His first attempt occurred shortly after the Stark International campus was entirely rebuilt. Under instructions to blow up the Solar Convertor at the heart of the complex, the Unicorn did so, then engaged Iron Man as soon as he came to check the explosion. The Unicorn fought hard, but Iron Man eventually stumbled on a vulnerability of his force field, which imploded when the Unicorn was simultaneously hit by two heavy vehicles impacting him at full speed from opposing directions.

The unconscious Unicorn was taken to Avengers’ Mansion, in the hope that Doctor Pym could cure him - or at least stabilise him enough to learn who the Other was. But, minutes after the Avengers left the unit where the Unicorn was being subjected to radiation, the madman burst free and blindly lashed out. The Avengers attempted to stop him, but the silent and hysterical Unicorn kept blasting at everything with his horn being almost always on, and the fight punched through a series of floors until they hit the lowest sub-basement. The combatants became separated and, alone, the Unicorn stumbled on the cache where the powerful robot Arsenal was being held. Arsenal flattened the surprised and exhausted Unicorn with one punch, then proceeded to hammer on the assembled Avengers.

Once the fight was over, Stark brought the Unicorn, still wounded and unconscious from Arsenal’s blow, back to Stark International. With no clear hope for a cure, the Unicorn’s body, put back in suspended animation, was kept deep in a Stark private lab. He stayed in stasis for a while, until the unpredictable happened - during a fight between Iron Man and the original Blacklash, a major fire was accidentally started in the lab where the Unicorn was held. Explosions and energy surges shocked the Unicorn back to consciousness, and somehow halted his physical degradation. Still, it took weeks for him to regain his mobility. Once he could move freely, he knocked out a lab technician and put him in the cryogenic coffin to cover his escape, then stole a sky-sled and decided that killing Iron Man would result in the Other somehow coming to cure him.

The Unicorn first blasted a building, but Iron Man moved too fast when rescuing civilians and the Unicorn could not target him. Coming up with a new plan, the madman scooped up dockworkers in a steel net, hung it to his sky-sled and threatened to drop them if Iron Man did not let him kill him. Iron Man countered by cutting the net free and rescuing the men, but the erratic and irrational Unicorn rammed him with his sky-sled, then crashed. While he was completely crazy, the Unicorn managed to blast Iron Man so hard he was thought disintegrated by the onlookers. Iron Man had actually been knocked underground, and when he burrowed his way back the insane Unicorn panicked, thinking the vibrations meant the end of the world. The fight resumed, and the Unicorn started burning HPs again, blasting Iron Man from the sky and then causing the destruction of an enormous transoceanic freighter.

Iron Man was left completely drained of energy and exhausted, and the Unicorn came to finish him, teetering and starting to bleed through the mouth. Iron Man told him that the Other was the Titanium Man, and had been deported to Russian months ago. Increasingly weak, the insane Unicorn came to the conclusion that, if the Other could not come to save him, he should go meet him. In a lunatic leap of logic, he shambled toward the sea eastward, and disappeared under the waves while Iron Man watched without being able to move.

Although he has survived somewhat similar circumstances in the past, the Unicorn is now believed to be deceased.

Description

See illustrations (which are incidentally, in chronological order).

Personality

Early on, the Unicorn was fanatically dedicated to his mission. A very noticeable trait was his great pride and confidence in his horn and suit - he always wanted to clash with the mightiest opponent to prove how powerful he was, and kept boasting of how awesome and powerful he was, as illustrated by the quotes.

When the Hyper-Activator damaged his mind, he thus easily escalated toward full-blown megalomania, with a tinge of paranoia slowly creeping in and developing. He was now utterly obsessed with how powerful he was, how much power he wielded, how tough and unbeatable he was, etc. as illustrated by the quotes of his constant rants. If he starts losing a fight or is otherwise made to look weak, he’s liable to react in a psychotic manner. His SIA also mean he strongly tends to ignore opportunities to do things sensibly and/or pay attention to what is going on if he can instead display his power and fight his enemies, such as the hated Iron Man. He will utterly despise anybody who ever defeats him, and endlessly seek vengeance. The Unicorn is very direct in his methods, and terribly impatient. At this stage he has lost pretty much all of the discipline he previously displayed, and acts more like a glory-seeking barbarian warrior.

As an agent of the Other, he has very limited initiative, as noted in the relevant stats block. He will spend most of his time talking with the Other on the radio, asking for orders and happily executing on them. He seems happy when the Other is satisfied by his performance, but is completely lost and will blindly lash out if he loses his radio uplink. When he came back for the last time, before walking into the sea, he was completely mad, coming up with weird plans, laughing hysterically unless he was having panic attacks, and seeming rather disconnected from reality.