Group Members:

• Raymond Collins - Agent Alpha
• Victoria Price - CLARA
• (Real name unknown) - Lightning (female)
• (Real name unknown) - Hawk- (male)
• (Real name unknown) - Sureshot (female)

CLEA Classifications:

• Cyborgs (All team members)

Specialist Properties/Skills:

• As the entire team are cyborgs they share many common traits in that they are faster, stronger and more resiliant than ordinary humans and cn think and act quicker to.
• CLARA was created by the Mechaniac and is well versed in the way he works. She is considered to be his biggest weakness since she knows much of his intel.
• Lightning (ex Raider) was created to become a walking weapon to not only hack into but also to damage electrical systems. She can discharge massive amounts of electricity, enough to stun an entire group of people.
• Hawk, (ex Raider) was given a jetpack by Lozen to act as an aerial warrior. He has learn to augment the usage of pack with ground based attacks so he can constantly change his direction of attack and thus keep an opponent off guard.
• Sureshot (ex Raider) was originally created to become a precision combatant. Specialises in long range weapons attacks, although her armour makes her equally powerful at close quarters.

Rap Sheet/Criminal Traits:

• Willful destruction of property/industrial sabotage (Lightning, Hawk and Sureshot as Raiders)
• Aggravated Assault/Attempted homicide (Lightning, Hawk and Sureshot as Raiders)

Potential/Known Weakness(s):

• As with all cyborgs, each member of the team must both maintain organic systems and electrical/mechanical systems. Failure of either system would result in death.
• Lightning has to spend several hours per day having excess electrical energy drained from her systems. If she des not do this she can overload and literally tear herself apart.
• The three ex Raiders tend to function as a family unit. Attacking one of them can result in the others acting instinctively rather than tactically in a battle situation.

The Ring of Steel is a group of heroes that are all classed as Cyborgs. Assembled by Agent Alpha the group chase down “machine” based threats and cyborgs they believe are uniquely qualified to deal with. Despite the fact the team operate from the Knight’s Forge base they do not consider themselves to be a crime fighting unit of the operations but do believe the close relationship between them and the Forge provide benefits for them both.

History

The origin for the Ring of Steel lies within the creation of Agent Alpha. Originally Alpha was a highly qualified CLEA senior agent, Raymond Collins. He was also a close friend of Stephanie Naylor and when the Raiders chose to attack CLEA Atlantica’s offices he led the defence of the building until heavy support could be brought in to chase of the attackers.

Alone against the Raiders, the office staff and junior agents stood little chance against the cyborg mercenaries but Collins insisted that the could not let the Raiders steal the data because if they succeeded then the information is sold could identify every single agent.

To try and buy them time before help arrived, Collins went after the Raider leader Lozen and despite his combat skills, bravery and tactical awareness he was no match for her power. She defeated him quickly and to take out some of her anger against an agency she hated, Lozen decided to teach CLEA a lesson. Aware of Collins friendship with Naylor, rather than kill him, Lozen had her people remove his arms and legs and then seal the wounds. She believed that in breaking Collins in that manner not only would he endure a living hell but Naylor would face the same fate due to guilt over her friend.

Somehow Collins survived and as Lozen had planned, Naylor was devastated. However Lozen was wrong about one thing, Collins spirit was not broken. He wanted to do anything to get him back in the fight to end the harm and devastation the Raiders and others like them caused. In his current condition though he could do nothing.

Desperate to help her friend and with few options, Naylor approached the Knights Forge for a solution to Collins’s injuries. The only solution to get him back in the field was by using tech they had “acquired” which could be reworked and used to convert him into a cyborg. Naylor refused to see her friend turn into a machine even if some of him was original but ultimately the decision lay with Collins himself.

Numerous procedures later and Collins was as near human as the Knight’s Forge could make him. Since he was now part machine he even allowed them to fit him with detachable shades which plugged into ports on the side of his head and gave him the equivalent of a HUD. Returning to service with CLEA he took the name Agent Alpha.

Some of the other agents were suspicious of him and gave him a wide berth since he reminded them of the Raiders and the wounds were still raw from the Atlantica incident. This despite the fact that Collins was also a victim. Eventually he found it easier to work alone than deal with the fear and prejudice.

Seeing how Wildcat had fitted in with Spearhead made him wonder why he was not so easily accepted but he could only conclude she had been “chosen” by Powell and it was a tight knit team whereas he had returned and expected the entire organisation to accept him. Feeling that his own presence had a negative effect on those around him and damaged morale, Collins elected in the end to leave CLEA and fight crime his own way without having to deal with people talking about him behind his back. Putting an end to his lifelong friendship with Stephanie Naylor was hard for him but slightly easy for her since all she saw was the machine.

In time whilst he found friends and allies in the hero community he felt they treated him “differently” although not as bad as the people he had once worked with in CLEA. This started to become a problem when it came to deal with bigger and more powerful enemies. Unable to find support easily meant he often had to let the “bad guys” escape. He once more desired to be part of a team where the workload could be shared but finding acceptance as a cyborg became a major stumbling block. The Knight’s Forge would however change that.

Since his systems and tech was relatively untested, Collins had been requested to return to the Forge at regular intervals for upgrades (and quite often repairs). The people at the Knight’s Forge did at least seem to accept him but he knew they could not go with him in the field. Their friendship did help though ease other tensions and give him some sort of a basic family. What he needed most though was his “own” kind and since CLEA were not going to make another cyborg, Collins considered that idea to be folly, until the ex-Raider “Hawk” turned up at the Forge, literally.

Since escaping Lozen’s control, Hawk, Sureshot and Lightning had managed to find each other. They like Collins had chosen to fight the evil produced by crime. Out of the three of them only Lightning regained her memories but since it was obvious to the other two that she was younger than either of them, they had taken on a strange sort of parental role towards her.

Fighting crime was easy for them and helped quell their anger at what Lozen had done to them but as time went by, without the Raider leader they began to suffer a whole host of breakdowns caused by their “careers”. Damage to their systems meant they had to learn to repair themselves and though tricky at first they managed to survive even if they were down to some basic functions in certain joints.

Once thing they could not cure though was when Lightning began to suffer severe overloads in her systems. These got so bad that her organic systems felt so much pain she literally shut down. Hawk decided he had to do something after learning of the Knight’s Forge he set out to find them.

His investigation took nearly a year, during which Lightning’s condition worsened. Determined more than ever he managed to find their base after successfully tracking the Knight’s Sword team. Showing up at the front door though did not make for the best idea for getting help, even more so after he destroyed the front door.

Once inside though he was partially disable by tech weapons specifically adapted to deal with cyborgs. Interviewed about his motives Hawk just stated he wanted help for his fellow Raider, Lightning. He expected the answer to be “no” but was surprised when they agreed, providing he allow the scientist to study him.

Since Hawk had nothing to lose he agreed and it was only then that the scientists realised just how bad a condition he was in. Knowing he had been acting as a hero since escaping Lozen, once the scientists had learned enough about Hawk they managed to repair him as best they could. He was then allowed to leave in order to bring back Sureshot and Lightning.

Once back at the Forge, Sureshot received a similar treatment to Hawk in that she was fixed up properly. Using DNA samples the scientists were able to identify who Hawk and Sureshot were before they were “converted” by Lozen. Knowing who they once were mattered little since their memories could never be restored.

Lightning though was a different problem. As Lozen’s ultimate weapon, her systems were far more advanced than the other two. She therefore required a lot longer period of study before the scientists could only conclude that Lozen had designed her to be part energy weapon and since Lightning was not actively in combat every day, her capacitors were never fully discharged. Over the months she had built up a charge to a level that was trying to shunt itself over all of her body which was causing the overload. Hawk was told if she continued with the build up and nothing was done then within a couple of months her organic body would be consumed.

The solution to the problem was to drain the excess charge, slowly and that meant sitting in a special chamber and be securely restrained during the sessions. Hawk was unsure and thought that there had to be a different way. Lightning though agreed to the procedure even though it meant going through absolute agony each session.

Having to return to the Knight’s Forge on a regular basis eventually saw meetings between Agent Alpha and the ex-Raiders. In them he saw himself and that’s when he had the idea of building a team. Before he could present that proposal, Knight’s Sword brought in another cyborg for study, CLARA. After allowing herself to be studied she in return wanted the mental code blocks that prevented some of her free will. She told them that the code prevented her going after her creator, the Mechaniac, but what she left out was the fact the code prevented her killing herself which she desired more since she hated what she had been changed into.

For the scientists to remove the coding they needed both Agent Alpha (Some of Alpha’s systems had been based on Mechaniac tech) and Hawks help. Working with the scientists Agent Alpha and Hawk managed to recode CLARA.

She then like the others had to return to the Forge for “maintenance”. Having lost his opportunity once, Agent Alpha has to wait until he, CLARA and the ex-Raiders ended up meeting at the same time.

More time passed but when the meeting eventually occurred he managed to persuade them all that they should form a unit. Rather than using a reference to the fact they were cyborgs they chose “Ring of Steel”.