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Special Force Profile: GI JOE
SEARCH COMPLETE: FEBRUARY 12, 2409

Overview

In the mid-22nd century, GI Joe was the code name for Earth's daring, highly trained special mission force. Its purpose: to defend human freedom against Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the Solar system.

At the time, Earth had no world government. The GI Joe team began in 2138 as Task Force A, a branch of the armed forces of the United States of America, to combat what was at the time seen as a threat primarily to American national security. Within a few years, however, the global - indeed, full-system - threat posed by Cobra became apparent, and other countries began kicking in funding and support personnel in exchange for access to the team's services.

Still, almost all of the team's frontline operators were Americans, and when its operations were expanded in 2140, its new code name reflected the notional "typical American soldier" character who originated in the Second World War (1939-1945). These facts gave rise to the team's press-assigned tagline, "A Real American Hero". Press accounts of the day somewhat peculiarly tend to treat the unit as a single entity, as though all its exploits were attributable to one daring soldier - hence the oddly singular phrasing of the tagline.

When the GI Joe unit was officially founded in 2140, several of its key operatives were chosen for a special government project dubbed Operation Rebirth II. This ambitious undertaking was an effort to re-create the Erskine Super-Soldier Formula, which was used during the original Operation Rebirth in 1940 to create the super-soldier known as Captain America. Since many of GI Joe's founding principles were adapted from the writings of that legendary soldier, most of the Joes tapped for Rebirth II were eager to participate.

Unfortunately, the operation was not a complete success. Though it did produce a treatment that had the same basic effect as Erskine's original Super-Soldier Formula, it was not an exact duplicate. All of the test subjects experienced unexpected side effects, a few beneficial, most not. The project was suspended in 2141 and its research data placed under permanent seal.

GI Joe's operational structure was based closely on that of the Howling Brigade, the elite special action branch of the Royal Salusian Armed Forces. Several Howling Brigade operatives, most notably then-Sergeant Niklaas Furij (now Colonel Furij, commander of the Howlers), were assigned to work with the Joe team and help with its operations. A contingent of Autobot soldiers under the command of Autobot Intelligence Officer Bumblebee were also assigned to GI Joe by Autobot Commander Optimus Prime after reports surfaced that Cobra was receiving technical and military aid from the Decepticons.

The Joe team's main operational mission came to an end in 2152, when Joe-led regular military forces met the Cobra army in an all-out assault on the terrorists' island fortress. Although the Cobra Commander and most of his core entourage apparently escaped the fall of Cobra Island, they were never seen again, and within two years the decision was taken to disband GI Joe.

Some members of the team remained on active duty with the U.S. armed forces for the rest of their careers; others retired immediately upon the team's disbandment. A few, including most of the former Rebirth II subjects, were offered transfers to the Howling Brigade.

Today, few members of the GI Joe operational group remain; most have lived out their natural lifespans or been killed in action plying their dangerous trade. A few, however, survive - agents whose lifespans were extended by the flawed Rebirth II treatments or other means.

Where Are They Now? The Surviving Joes Today

The whereabouts and activities of all former GI Joe members are not known. It is possible that there are other survivors of the team besides those noted here.

Scarlett
(Shana M. O'Hara)

Shana O'Hara came to GI Joe from the Defense Intelligence Agency, where she started as an analyst and eventually became a highly-regarded counterintelligence field operative. An Atlanta native, the redheaded O'Hara inevitably picked up the code name "Scarlett". She graduated summa cum laude from Brown University before beginning her military intelligence career and is a non-teaching master of several martial arts, making her equally at home with the intellectual pursuit of intelligence gathering and analysis or the vigorous, dangerous business of field operations. In the field, her signature weapon is a 3/4-scale Wookiee bowcaster modified with a self-cocking device.

As a recipient of the Rebirth II treatment, O'Hara is a perfect human physical specimen, her strength, agility, reflex speed, and coordination all balanced for optimal performance under the widest range of conditions. Her Rebirth II treatment was initially thought to have been one of the most successful in the program, granting her the expected super-soldier abilities along with the common side effect of aging freeze but without any of the more extreme side effects manifested by some of the other test subjects. Not until late in GI Joe's operational period did her treatment's true flaw show itself.

O'Hara worked closely with the Autobot intelligence officer Bumblebee during her GI Joe career, serving as a sort of unofficial liaison between the Autobot contingent under his command and the rest of the Joe team. Many of the Joes developed a real affection for their robotic allies, but O'Hara became especially fond of them, taking the time to learn about their culture and even visit their homeworld, Cybertron, on leave.

It was while O'Hara was on Cybertron in 2151 that the flaw in her Rebirth II treatment made itself known. What began as a slight loss of muscle control rapidly developed into a form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as the failed Super-Soldier Formula attacked her nervous system. To save her life, the Autobot surgeons Ratchet and Mercy developed a nanotechnological process that replaced her degenerating nervous tissue with a new material adapted from Minicon neurotransmission fiber.

Several months of intensive therapy followed in which O'Hara essentially had to learn to use her body all over again. It was during this time that she and Bumblebee were binary-bonded.

The experience left several permanent changes. Her artificial nervous system gives her by far the fastest reaction speed of any Rebirth II participant, but it also makes her vulnerable to ion-pulse weapons, which affect Transformers like neural stunners but have no effect on normal humans. Though she is not a transforming cyborg like many humanoid binary partners (such as Headmasters and Targetmasters), she does have a few Autobot bionic implants, including a communications system and a device which permits her to extract energy from direct energon ingestion, as Transformers do.

When the Joe team was disbanded, O'Hara went back to Cybertron with her partner rather than join the Howling Brigade or return to DIA. They still work together as the Autobot forces' top counterintelligence personnel.

Snake Eyes
(Slade O. Wilson, left)
Deadpool
(Wade J. Wilson, right)

The Wilson brothers, Slade and Wade, have been an inseparable team for most of their lives. They joined the Army together, went through Ranger school and Airborne school together, served together in the mid-2130s brushfire war in Corporate Indo-China, and were wounded together in a sneak attack by Renraku forces in 2134. They disappeared for nearly four years and emerged from the jungles of Southeast Asia changed men, having been inducted into a Japanese secret society while recuperating from their wounds.

Slade Wilson had always gone by the nickname "Snake Eyes", and when the two returned from the jungle and were assigned to Task Force A, his younger brother Wade took the codename "Deadpool" - an ironic reference to the bets their comrades had made as to whether they were still alive out there somewhere during their missing years.

Operation Rebirth II changed the Wilson brothers still further. They suffered the worst side effects of any of the volunteers. While both acquired accelerated regenerative powers enabling them to recover from minor wounds in mere minutes, they were terribly scarred, both physically and mentally. Snake Eyes was rendered mute and retreated into utter inscrutability, while Deadpool, always known for his wisecracks, became a manic chatterbox in combat, as if to compensate for his brother's silence.

Neither Wilson is what a person would call entirely sane any longer, but both remain extremely effective soldiers. When GI Joe's mission was complete, both joined the Howling Brigade and have served with distinction ever since.

The Wilson brothers are masters of personal combat, expertly adept with all known weapons, from small arms to blades to crew-served blasters to, at least in Deadpool's case, sarcasm and irony. Though their personalities are markedly different, the loyalty they share with each other and their teammates is unquestioned. There isn't anybody on the current Howler team who wouldn't unhesitatingly pick either one to watch his back in a fight - though most would probably pick Snake Eyes over Deadpool if subtlety were required. It's difficult to achieve surprise on an enemy position when your backup wears a bright red ninja costume and yells "HEEEEERE'S JOHNNY!!" while vaulting the barricades with an MP5P in one hand and a katana in the other.

Cover Girl
(Courtney A. Krieger)

Another ex-Joe now working with the Howlers, Courtney Krieger joined the Army after a successful career as a fashion model - hence her code name. Wishing to be taken seriously, she not only joined the Army, but selected armor as her occupational specialty. Before long she was one of the Army's top-rated tankers, an expert with the newly introduced M-76 Wolverine armored missile carrier. This distinction earned her a place on the GI Joe team and a shot at Operation Rebirth II.

Krieger's Rebirth II treatment was not a complete success; indeed, at first it appeared to have had no effect at all. She does not benefit from the formula's intended effect, optimizing and maintaining physical conditioning, nor did she acquire regenerative abilities like some of the others. However, she did receive an apparent lifespan extension. She has not aged appreciably since 2141.

After GI Joe's dissolution, Krieger rejoined the Army and became a test pilot for new armored fighting vehicles. Eventually she transferred first to Destroids and then to the Howling Brigade, where she has the distinction of being the brigade's only MechWarrior. She and her MDC-7C Mad Cat heavy Destroid "Jolly Green" have been the hole card in many a Howler engagement.

Though she lacks the induced physical perfection of a true Super-Soldier, most observers would never know it from looking at Krieger. She works hard to keep herself in perfect fighting trim and is unwilling to yield an inch to her artificially enhanced comrades, even though she is a vehicle commander, not a foot trooper. She's no helpless 'Mech jockey outside her ride, anyway; Krieger is an expert with small arms and in hand-to-hand combat. She's also a fully rated Destroid technician who personally supervises all the maintenance and repair work on Jolly Green.

Flint
(Dashiell R. Faireborne)

Wade Wilson once jokingly complained that, with a real name like "Dash Faireborne", the last thing Flint needed was a cool codename to pull chicks. Truth is, the dynamic, charismatic, classically educated Faireborne didn't need much of anything to help him with that task back in the day. Flint's a modern Renaissance man - a Rhodes scholar with a degree in English literature, he joined the Army primarily because he was bored and sought new challenges. Before too long, he was Ranger-qualified, Airborne-qualified, a Green Beret, and a fully rated rotorcraft and aerodyne pilot - and one of the core members of Task Force A, which became GI Joe.

Of all the early Joes, Flint most closely embodied the ideals the organization inherited from Captain America (though his own background is much more cosmopolitan than that of Steve Rogers). As such, it is perhaps fitting that his Rebirth II treatment came the closest to complete success. He suffered no debilitating side effects, did not receive regenerative abilities, and though his aging rate was slowed, it apparently did not stop as the others' did. (His apparent age is now around 50, though, as with Captain America, this has not appreciably affected his physical prowess.)

A jack of all trades and master of quite a few, Flint served as the GI Joe executive officer and frequently led field missions - and found time to court and marry fellow Joe Alison "Lady Jaye" Hart-Burnett along the way. When the Joe team folded, he joined the Howlers, but eventually left the armed forces to take a job as an operative with the Royal Salusian Ministry of Public Security. There, he quickly became one of the top agents of the Ministry's elite counterterrorism strike force, Section 9.

Lady Jaye
(Alison R. Hart-Burnett Faireborne)

When Task Force A was formed, Sergeant Alison Hart-Burnett struck several of her teammates as basically the female counterpart to Flint - an impression that would later be regarded as prophetic. Tough but sophisticated, the intellectual Hart-Burnett had been educated at Bryn Mawr and Trinity College, Cambridge, before returning to her native United States and becoming an agent of the Army Criminal Investigation Division. From CID her career took her to the Army's intelligence corps, where she earned a reputation as an effective undercover operative. She was one of the first soldiers selected for Task Force A in 2138 and for Operation Rebirth II in 2141.

Like most, her Rebirth II treatment had a peculiar side effect. In addition to performing its designed function, the treatment also locked her biochemical profile into a virtual steady state. As such, she does not age and is unaffected by almost all drugs and diseases, but must carefully monitor certain factors in her blood chemistry to prevent a possibly dangerous imbalance.

In addition to her intelligence-gathering capabilities, Lady Jaye is a talented linguist (to date she has achieved fluency in 78 languages, including dozens of Earth languages, the three main Salusian languages and several subdialects, Klingonese, the chief Minbari dialect, and the fiendishly difficult North Continent strain of Vulcan), an expert hand-to-hand combatant and a master of most small arms.

Her most outstanding ability, though, is her exceptional talent for acting and mimicry. She can imitate voices and other sounds with uncanny accuracy, copy mannerisms and movements, and with the right tools, assume the identity of almost anyone with a vaguely-similar body type. Combined with her knowledge of espionage tradecraft and her linguistic facility, this talent makes her one of the most capable undercover operatives in the galaxy, and her fighting skills ensure that she can get out of pretty much any sticky situation she might find herself in.

Along with her husband Flint, Lady Jaye joined the Howling Brigade after GI Joe's dissolution and then transferred to the Ministry of Public Safety's Section 9. She's now field leader of Section 9's First Team, which makes her the Salusian government's number-two counterterrorism operative - not a bad showing for a human girl from Massachusetts.

End of Text Data Extract
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