Characteristic

Cost

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Cost

4

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Tadeusz grew up as a Pole under the oppressive rule of Soviet-friendly East Germany.  His father ordered his family to turn away from their Polish heritage and embrace their stark future, so when the Wall fell in the late 1980s Tadeusz was confused about his place in the world.  His father was even more betrayed and bewildered by the changing times, that when he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died in 1991, the entire family saw it as a blessing.  Tadeusz's mother soon remarried, and Johannes Weiss became Tad's role model and new father.  Weiss was a former intelligence officer for East Germany who had moved into the field of mercenary services just before Unification.  Weiss maintained influential ties with South Africa and was a major player in the rising neo-Nazi movement of Germany.

Tad was a tall, blonde-haired and blue-eyed Aryan, and Weiss convinced the teenager to read up on the greatness of Adolf Hitler, and so it was that as Tad moved into adolescence, he did so under the manipulative and charismatic eyes of Johannes Weiss.

In 1998, Tad (who was now calling himself Johannes) attended a school trip to a nuclear power plant in the East of France.  He had already shown a keen interest in physics and had been chosen to attend an international student seminar on nuclear non-proliferation.  He fell into an argument with the mentor of his group and was ridiculed for being a 'fascist'.  The insult hurt, and Tad was unable to let it pass, so for the next three days he simmered quietly while the remaining members of his study tour enjoyed the sights.

While being shown around nuclear research facilities, Tad found himself embroiled in another dispute with the mentor.  His anger had been fermenting for days and he lashed out at the university student, sending him into a glass panel which contained an active experiment.  The mentor grabbed Tad's arm and together the young men fell into the room and were bombarded with radiation.  An investigation of the incident uncovered massive safety concerns throughout the facility and it was closed down by the French government soon after.

The mentor was killed immediately, but Tadeusz Jerzejczak did not die.  Instead, he began absorbing the radiation as well as the electricity from surrounding labs until he started to glow.  He felt wave after wave of intense heat but it did not hurt him.  It was like a rebirth and as the radiation continued to fuel him he slowly became accustomed to the unusual process that was occurring.  His anger and frustration had been searching for a way to vent, and it had somehow tapped his active ubergene and produced an incredibly powerful transition.

Tad stumbled out of the shattered lab with the ability to harness the devastating power of nuclear fire.

Naturally, the seminar and Tad's school wanted to keep the accident out of the media, and so he returned home with only a few explanations for his concerned family.  Johannes Weiss, however, saw the opportunity to promote the link between the Aryan ideal and godhood.  Here was an example of the pure race becoming the next gods.  He took Tad to Berlin, which was kidnapping in all but name, and hooked up with a man who had once served Hitler himself, Dr Mengele.  Although Tad was only 14, Mengele had already ear-marked him as a powerful addition to the Kinder der Zukunft.

Mengele, who was now known as Vaterschmerz, took responsibility for Tad's education and began an even more rigorous campaign of indoctrination.  Tad was a perfect being, blessed with the powers of gods for the sole purpose to wrest control back from the savages that currently oppressed their people.  He learned that America was the enemy, that it was the Dark Country, and that he would need to wreak vengeance on behalf of all the oppressed sons and daughters of Nazi Germany.

The history of the world had been perverted.

The Kinder were charged with the responsibility to turn the tide and write a new chapter in the history of mankind.

The story began well.

Tad took on the mantle of Polestar.

The Kinder der Zukunft launched blistering attacks across Europe, including the bombing of Parliament in London and severe damage to the Eiffel Tower in Paris.  They crossed swords with many groups of uberhumans, and carried out vast kidnappings of other uber children.  And then they crossed the Atlantic and laid siege to the New York Library.  Vaterschmerz wanted to burn books, or so he said, but in reality he wanted to call down the wrath of Sanction, the United States' patriotic team of uberhumans.

Polestar and half a dozen other Kinder tore up the streets of Manhattan.  Polestar had blasted the Library and fires had sprung up in many of the levels.  Leibwächter had taken the fight to the street, hunting down half-breeds in the alleys.  Vaterschmerz and a small band of Kinder were on another mission, perhaps the real mission, to steal an arcane sceptre from the Museum.

And then Polestar found himself face to face with a librarian who had not fled the building.  She was an African-American, perhaps in her late thirties and her eyes were wide with terror and determination.  She stood between Polestar and the books.  He didn't think.  The fire erupted from his eyes and hands, and before he had even thought of the consequences the woman was consumed in the fires.

Another librarian ran into the room and shouted at him, but he couldn't hear the words.  All he saw was a pile of ash.  He looked to the new librarian and his fires leapt out and consumed him as well, reducing the balding man to ash and dust.

Polestar looked at his hands.

Nuclear fire crackled across his palms, but he thought he could detect a dark stain there.

Murder.

He had never considered his actions to be murderous before.  He had destroyed monuments and buildings.  He had scarred superheroes and wrought great devastation upon cities.  But he had never looked into the eyes of a victim and seen the fire burst forth from within.

He reasoned that she had been a black woman.

He reasoned that she was worthless.

But the stain on his hands remained and he knew that reason could not absolve him of guilt.  Vaterschmerz would admonish him, strap him with barbed leather; but even fear of his leader could not pull Polestar away from the stirrings of regret.  He thought back to the accident at the nuclear facility: the young man who had died there, all because Tad couldn't take an insult.  In all the time since the accident, Tad had never even thought of the young man.  It was as if it meant nothing.

He realised he had been wrong.

And that feeling spread throughout his body, almost like a virus, until he began to question everything.  Why did they have to burn books?  Why did he have to punish a people who were genetically inferior?  If they were inferior, it wasn't their fault.  With his power he should help those less fortunate than himself.

He shook his head at those thoughts.

They weren't his.

He remembered his grandmother telling him that people should always help those less fortunate, that it was humanity's responsibility to leave the world in a better state than when we arrived.  She had been in Warsaw during the Second World War, and she had seen humanity's pale shadow of evil.

He thought of the librarian, of both librarians.  They sacrificed their lives to preserve knowledge in the form of books.  He was sent to destroy knowledge.

Polestar couldn't decide what to do.

In retrospect, Polestar was defeated by the librarian's death, but the newspapers credited the capture of an international terrorist to the timely intervention of Sanction.  Captain California, Doctor Spin, Lady Liberty, Major American and Speedway arrived in New York and quickly dispersed the Kinder.  Major American discovered Polestar, still standing above the two piles of ash, and after a short battle Polestar was thrown through two walls and into the daylight outside.

Tad remembered seeing the blue sky and wisps of cloud before he was rendered unconscious.

When he awoke he was incarcerated, although the rest of Kinder had escaped.  The trial was brought forward quickly and Tadeusz Jerzejczak was found guilty of murder, although he offered a heart-felt apology to the families of the deceased which was generally taken as sarcasm.  The media was fuelled by anti-Nazi sentiment and the jury was dismissed twice before a verdict could be reached.

Throughout the court case, Tad refused to contact his former team mates and even eventually turned one of his former team mates away when she organised a meeting with him in her secret identity.  She said she was a cousin, but Tad only talked with her briefly before telling her that it was over.  She smiled at him and whispered that the vater never gave up on his soldiers.

Tad wasn't so sure.

He was sixteen years old.  He served five years in prison while being interrogated by SAGE who probed him for information on Mengele and Kinder.  His case was re-examined and leniency granted because of his youth, the severe level of brainwashing and torture involved with his adolescence, and Tadeusz was released on his 21st birthday.  He returned to Europe and was greeted by Steppenwolf and Armstrong of the Brotherhood, a group of independent heroes.  They invited him to join, both as a way to monitor his activities as well as a chance to start a new life.

Tadeusz is self-centred and racist, although both of these qualities have been tempered by his recent experiences.  He was raised as a Nazi and was revered as a god by two successful role models: his step-father Johannes Weiss and Dr. Mengele.  His form, both human and metahuman, was the embodiment of the superior race.

But his ideology has been dealt a crushing blow.

Tad questions the Nazi ideals and, although he is still racist, he believes that those who are not pure deserve pity rather than death.  He cannot understand why someone so superior would feel the need to murder and kill those who cannot physically, mentally or spiritually defend themselves.

Polestar is able to generate incredibly powerful nuclear energy which manifests itself as nuclear flame.  He possesses one of the world's most devastating weapons in his energy blast, and complements this capability with defensive force fields, the ability to absorb fire and disrupt radio communication.  He is also capable of increasing the temperature in his vicinity to unbearable levels, produce intense and blinding light, and soar through the air at high speeds.

While covered in his nuclear flames, Polestar is invulnerable to the effects of  most dangerous environments and is able to produce his own oxygen for breathing.

Tadeusz Jerzejczak could be a pin-up for Nazi propaganda, and possibly has been in some circles.  He is tall and has dark blonde hair which is currently cut short in a crew-cut.  When he triggers his sheath of nuclear fire, Polestar is covered in flames which crackle with nuclear energy.  In costume he wears a high-collar red kevlar jacket which has the Polish flag on its back, over a form-fitting white bodyglove.