Battlestone

Background

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Powers and Abilities

Stone is dead, which makes him quite hard to kill.

Having been exposed to the works of Project : Rebirth, he’s extremely agile, coordinated and has peak human reflexes. Unlike most other subjects, he’s also superhumanly strong and, for most practical purposes, he never tires.

History

John Stone was a U.S. Army soldier during WWII. He was one of the few volunteers working for Professor Erskine’s Project : Rebirth, which culminated in Captain America. Erskine’s serum did not function properly on Stone. In fact, it seemed that the injection had absolutely no effect, and he was shipped back to the front.

(This profile is too old to mention them, but Stone presumably came after Isaiah Bradley and at the same time as Protocide.)

There, his physique slowly began to develop itself, and he began to know very early signs of what would later happen to Captain America V. Without the vita-rays treatment, the Super Soldier serum augments the subject’s strength to superhuman levels, but begin to slowly erode his mental stability.

However, Stone was killed at Anzio  before these effects could fully blossom. He was sent back to the States for analysis, where it was discovered that he wasn’t truly dead, but in an extremely deep state of hibernation.

(This state similar to what would later happen to Captain America (Steve Rogers). This would tend to prove that Cap’s hibernation had nothing to do with the coldness of the waters he plunged into, but his rather a built in power of the Super Soldier serum).

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Morgue

However, the medical science of this day was not up to resuscitating him. Therefore, he was stored in a morgue. The Super Soldier serum continued to work while Stone was “dead”, modifying his body and making him unmatched by any other subject. Yet there were no damaging effects on his sanity, since he was pretty much deceased.

In the late 1980’s, S.H.I.E.L.D. made the necessary discoveries to wake Stone up. They wanted to use him for a new Super Agents program. But US representatives within S.H.I.E.L.D. managed to take custody of him after S.H.I.E.L.D.’s psychiatric teams helped Stone handle his leap from 1943 to 1988.

They had an ulterior motive, of course. The US Government was just beginning its Youngblood program and needed more superhumans soldiers/agents.

We crave Youngblood

For a time, John Stone, code named Battlestone, played a role as a Defense Intelligence Agency representative with Youngblood. In fact he took command of one of the first Youngblood teams during the Gulf War. However, in Iraq, he accidentally took the life of one of his agents.

Not being employable anymore by the government, Stone turned to Roxxon Oil. Roxxon was attempting to create a new cadre of super-agents. Battlestone thus created and started to lead the Brigade team, which managed to tangle with the US government, Project: Pegasus, various eco-terrorists, the New Warriors and Deathlok (Michael Collins), among others.

Description

See illustration.

Personality

John Stone is a talented strategist and a great warrior. He acts in a cold, methodical, rational way, and will always give the highest priority to efficiency and his personnel’s protection.

Ever since he died, he has been even more mercenary, cold and scary.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Alternate version of the character seen in Brigade (Image).