Agent X has a powerful healing factor (inherited from Deadpool), which allows him to quickly recover from even fatal wounds, regenerating entire limbs within hours. He is a highly talented unarmed combatant, trained in the use of numerous weapons, and is a particularly gifted marksman (which he inherited from the Black Swan). He has also acquired the Black Swan’s fine tastes, and a smattering of memories from Nijo, the Black Swan and Deadpool. This patchwork memory provides him with a level of protection from psychic intrusion.

History

Believing Deadpool responsible for his brother’s death, assassin Nijo helped the German assassin, Black Swan, infect Deadpool with a mental virus. The Black Swan then stabbed Nijo, admitting that he’d been responsible for his brother’s death. Five minutes after Nijo died, a bomb Deadpool brought to the fight exploded, but the Black Swan’s mental powers allowed him to copy Deadpool’s healing powers. Unable to control the mental link, the Swan linked the minds of himself, Deadpool, and the dead Nijo, sharing their abilities and personalities, and reviving Nijo.

The revived Nijo, his body heavily scarred, and his mind confused to the point of amnesia, turned up in New York, where he found Deadpool’s former secretary, Sandi Brandenberg, who became convinced he was Deadpool due to his powers and demeanour. Adopting the name Alex Hayden (after a pair of composers he liked, Alexander Grieg and Josef Haydn), he decided to become the best mercenary alive.

Sandi recruited Taskmaster and Outlaw to train him, although Taskmaster’s training mainly involved using Alex as a target, as he developed a dislike for the amnesiac (probably due to his feelings for Sandi).

Deciding he was ready for business, Alex began Agency X, with Outlaw and Taskmaster occasionally joining him on missions, and he became romantically involved with Outlaw. His very first mission ended with him being paid with an abandoned theme park, which became his headquarters.

The Four Winds crime organisation, believing him to be Deadpool, who they believed responsible for killing their previous heads, sent a small army of super-mercenaries after him, attacking Agency X in the amusement park. They survived, and through a combination of blackmail and killing the current head enforcer, Saguri, on behalf of the Four Winds’ leader, Higashi, they cleared things up with the organisation, convincing Higashi that Alex wasn’t Deadpool.

Free of that threat, Alex was less than happy when Outlaw announced she was returning home to care for her dying father, and Taskmaster declined a full-time position with the Agency.

He worked alone for a while, but after accidentally spending the night with Sandi, decided to close down the Agency to avoid endangering her, but was unable to bring himself to tell her.

Before he could sort things out, Black Swan turned up with blank minded (more than usual, that is) Deadpool, revealing Alex’s origin. Alex learned he had a deep hatred of Deadpool, shooting him in the head as soon as he saw him. Black Swan proposed a three-way mind meld to restore them, but betrayed them, absorbing both of their powers to increase his own. They faced a tough fight, but eventually managed to blow Black Swan up, and Alex managed to reverse the absorption, feeding Black Swan his own memories of dying. They then shot Black Swan as much as they could. After having taxidermy performed on his body, they then took it with them on vacation.

Keeping the Agency going, Alex found himself going up against Deadpool again, resulting in them killing each other. Deadpool recovered first, making off with Alex’s pancreas. Enraged, he hunted him down to Switzerland where Deadpool was trying to revive Cable. Giving up on his contract, he got his pancreas back from Deadpool, and they parted on relatively amicable terms.

After a less-than-successful attempt to steal an experimental morphogenic actuator from Hydra, Alex was taken prisoner and used as a guinea pig to test the device, which gave him advanced degenerative arthritis and the “American gene”, which resulted in him gaining an insatiable appetite which saw him become morbidly obese in a short period.

The most embarrassing part of his captivity came when Sandi and Outlaw convinced Deadpool to rescue him. Add to that was the indignity of having to ask Deadpool to run the Agency while he tried to get back into shape, and it’s no wonder he’s taken so long without managing to shed all that weight.

Personality

Agent X enjoys shooting things, corn dogs and corn dog related condiments, and gigantism in women. His patchwork memory is reflected in his personality, his attention deficit disorder often leaving him bored at long explanations, happy to just be shown where to shoot.

He retained elements of Nijo’s sense of honour, has elements of Black Swan’s fine tastes and intolerance for rudeness, and has Deadpool’s sense of ’humour‘. He and Deadpool retain a dislike of each other, but this has become more of a knee-jerk reaction than any real hatred, and they can work together. Alex seems to have no interest in his history as Nijo, avoiding it whenever possible.

Writeup completed on the 9th of March, 2011.