Ethan Joseph Alderan

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IamLEAM1983
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Ethan Joseph Alderan

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Name: Ethan Joseph Alderan
Age: 83 years old
Gender: male
Species: anthro Bald Eagle, superhuman

Strengths: like most “supes” in town, Ethan is blessed with a relative form of agelessness. On average, naturally endowed citizens can expect to live two hundred years, sometimes three. However, the near-complete stasis of genetic senescence this involves can spring into being at various moments in life. Ethan's agelessness didn't really kick in until he reached his sixty-third birthday. While he is in fairly good shape for a senior superhero, his wizened exterior and generous gut provide a nice cover to his abilities.

His immune system is rock-solid, and it can be expected that he'll be on a slow and graceful downward slope for the next century. This doesn't stop him from being one of the most experienced “flyers” on American soil and from displaying a level of visual acuity and natural magnification that would challenge modern-day satellites. While his younger days' Mach 5 blitzes across the skies of the State, country and hemisphere alike are definitely gone, he can still rack up fairly impressive speeds averaging Mach 1, or a little over a thousand miles per hour. In normal circumstances, however, he tends to operate well under the cruising speed of your average passenger plane, choosing to conserve energy by maintaining a steady three hundred miles an hour.

Reflecting this, analyses have proven that nearly everything about him is designed to favour not so much the natural gaining of speed, as simple resistance to it. No longer being as streamlined as before seems to have no incidence whatsoever on his flight capabilities, and he remains able to withstand tremendous impacts or high-speed mid-air clips. His skeletal system appears to be less dense than the norm, but the material comprising his bones has been determined to be preternaturally hard. Raw force cannot break his limbs – supernatural speeds are required to pair that immense strength with enough torque to produce your average closed break. He bruises and experiences pain as much as anyone else, he can be cut or shot or burnt – but attempts to bisect, dismember him or tear him asunder have all failed. No matter how torn his muscles and ligaments may have become, his bones will almost impossibly hold.

Considering, being knocked out of the sky, falling immense distances to the ground at terminal velocity and almost ending up forcibly embedded in the pavement as a result will only result in coma. He can be killed rather easily – his observable physical integrity is simply hard to compromise. While his internal organs also seem to have some resistance to continuously applied speeds, short penetrating bursts akin to those of bullets or sharpened blades are still a danger to him.

No one knows exactly what it is that powers his flight ability, but he maintains a rather impressive array of acrobatic manoeuvers despite his elderly girth. Swan dives, dive bombs, hair-pin turns, swerving between skyscrapers at high speeds – or just plain cruising along with his back to the ground, barely a meter or so above it, are all fairly common tricks of his. People associate breakneck chases to him, but he's just as capable of metaphorically puttering or literally hovering alongside someone who's walking at a leisurely pace. Add to this the fact that his bifocals are only ever needed to read, as his eyesight is worthy of his native animal species'. It won't surprise anyone to know he used to forbid himself from participating in the central precinct's gun club. Avian anthros are generally noted for their keen visual acuity, but this goes so far in Ethan's case that he could give a sniper a run for his money with nothing but your standard service handgun.

By far, however, his greatest power doesn't come from his past as a superhero. As the Police Chief for the Hope Police Department, Ethan has the last word on all mundane law enforcement activities in town and operates closely with Percival of Evergloam for Fae affairs. His veto can be used to oppose the re-election of his own Deputy Chiefs as well as all Inspectors who work below them. As the public spearhead for the entire law enforcement service, his job is to maintain healthy public relations, to relay pertinent information concerning various cases to the public and to see any and all instances of extraordinary commendations for one or more officers to their logical conclusion. He doesn't wear a badge and rarely, if ever needs to carry a gun in the course of his duties – but his job is to reflect the entirety of the cops in Hope, as well as what they're expected to stand for.

Having the last veto, Ethan can choose to carefully examine just about any and all Internal Affairs cases or any regular case file if he so chooses. Hope can count the occasions in which the eagle's generally poised and congenial self turned somber on the fingers of one hand, and his right to promote or demote deserving members of the force is very sparingly used. Knowing his past, however, and how incorruptible this makes him, most crooked cops in town are careful not to earn too many commendations – or too little.

As this former caped crusader knows his cops, and he knows them well. A beat cop who suddenly becomes indispensable to his precinct will generate attention. A beat cop who becomes indispensable overnight after several years of soft reprimands will generate much more than simple interest.

Overall, hanging the cowl and tights allowed Ethan to develop his latent PR and investigative skills. He knows how to stand back and how to look proud and regal and, well, Chief of Police-ish, but he also isn't afraid to take some time off from the mayor's office to run his own investigations. In this, Hope has been noted to have an unorthodox figurehead on top of its police service, as Ethan doesn't quite sit around waiting for papers to sign or interviews to conduct. He keeps a casual, permissive but very alert eye on the city, like a wizened parental figure who knows when to tighten the leash and when to slack off. Considering, it isn't rare for him to act independently, at the risk of weathering the mayor's irascible temper at a later date.

Typically, Doherty turns right around and realizes the man he's justifiably left in charge of his citizens' protection is right.
Weaknesses: bullets, impacts in exposed areas of his body (like the abdomen), toxins, hexes and more can all quite easily end his life. As said above, as hard as he is to slice and dice, there's still quite a few things on the menu for whomever would want to take a slice from one of America's Golden Age superheroes.

Then, there's the fact that with being fundamentally old, having the hearty eating habits coming with his initial metabolism and considering the fact that old age tends to slow you down; he's fairly overweight. Perhaps as a kind of return of the proverbial pendulum, Ethan's digestive system seems to have slowed down to a crawl. Gala events usually include the sight of the eagle pushing himself a bit too much, without ever reaching Doherty's levels of culinary excess. He'll go back for seconds, briefly grimace as heartburn he almost never plans for takes him by surprise, and then grow rather drowsy. It used to be that he could put down an impressive quantity of food to fuel his incredible top speeds. Now, eating a fraction of what he used to, he very easily sends himself into unplanned snore-fests. Thankfully, these only occur during meals which are expected to be a little richer than the norm, like get-togethers for the Holidays, charity fundraisers or family reunions. Seeing Grandpa zone out in front of the Super Bowl tends to be more of a source of affection than embarrassment.

He obviously can be jostled awake in the middle of one of these digestion-induced torpor episodes and could be shown the need for immediate action, but expect his response to be a bit confused and sluggish for the first few minutes. Ethan apparently sinks like a stone into REM sleep, out of which being awakened can trigger fairly common cases of disorientation. He also sinks back in fairly easily, so thinking ahead and bringing anything from a shoulder-shake and a few words to some strong coffee usually helps.

Considering how easily jostled his night-time hours were in his youth and how hectic they tended to be, Alderan's also developed into what you'd call a “sleep-flyer”. Frequently enough for him to literally anchor himself to one of his bed's feet using some rope, he'll gently rise off of his mattress' surface while sound asleep. What typically follows is a partial, muddled state of wakefulness. In the best cases, his disassociated self won't think to try and undo the knots keeping him anchored. In the worst?

Let's just say some construction workers got used to finding a snoring eagle in pyjamas lying atop a partially secured girder, some sixty storeys above-ground, during the last few phases of Hope's restoration... Ethan has never any idea where he'll go or what kind of Golden Era scenario he'll try to reproduce, somewhere in his subconscious. His somnambulist monologue is as muddled as you'd expect it to be, so he tends to notify his friends and family in advance. You can't find a why or how behind any of it, even if his eyes are opened and just a little glazed-over. It doesn't help that he seems to lack an awareness of danger, while sleepwalking.

If anything, his therapist tells him this is nothing if the reflection of the stress of keeping a city like Hope safe and orderly that's weighing down on him. Somnambulism seems to be a way his subconscious has found to try and even out the pressure, as if a part of him found the idea of waking up with a start with your head and feet dangling in mid-air, several hundred meters above-ground, somewhat cathartic. Not being a naturally fearful person, this could be understood to be something like his Id trying to cause an emotional discharge by forcing vertigo onto him.

Considering, he likes to say that the reckless pre-teen he used to be is still kicking around in the back of his head, waiting for his conscious mind to clock out before doing anything from clearing out his fridge to confusing Buck Tower's radio antenna for the City Hall's conference room. He then wakes up with a start, nonsense dying out on his lips, and realizes he's standing in precarious balance at the very top of the world's newest tallest structure...

Thankfully, passing out in relaxed circumstances doesn't seem to trigger any of this. As long as he remains calm, his nights remain fairly standard. If stress piles up past a certain degree, his nights will become increasingly reckless, setting the stage for a slippers-wearing aerial jaunt while muttering flight paths for escorting F18s that aren't really there.

The funny thing is, he's actually managed to bust a few crimes while technically out. His being the Police Chief in town and a fairly celebrated national hero has been enough to keep his semi-conscious bursts of vigilantism out of newspapers or courtrooms alike. With the Shield Act instated, however, things have gotten fairly easier for whatever tension-releasing and adolescent corner of his mind that thinks it's a good idea to try and look serious with a blue-and-white striped nightshirt.

Appearance: With a brownish-black body of thick and lustrous feathers and the distinctive white head of his species, it seemed he was destined to carry some sort of primeval iconic mystique. A lot of superhumans try and look suitably American, but very few actually are lucky enough to be an American symbol. With his wide, yellow eyes and his sturdy yet flexible beak, his face's neutral expression seems uncharacteristically stern, giving him a look that's usually a lot more decisive and gutsy in appearance than what he really feels like. Anyone who knows him knows that while he has his moments of boldness and bravery, they're not the core aspects of his personality. Younger, those used to be his bookish nature and the long-lasting teenage awkwardness he kept hiding behind his cowl. As of the last few decades, he seems to have re-centered on his well-earned wisdom and his oodles of personal experience to create a professional image that still manages to look casual and approachable. If Aldergard is the fairly terrifying eidolon of rigid legal pursuit and Percy the strong-backed and unflappable bulwark of Goodness; Ethan is the Cool Grandpa for the entire city, the reassuring presence everyone seems to intrinsically like, without the least bit of pretense or self-aggrandisement.

A little too much good food, lots of sunlight, exposure to strong, high-altitude winds and at least enough sense to put on some sunblock every day in case he'd go way, way up there have created a figure that's just large enough to look authoritative while still evoking a professional amount of self-control. At six feet two and a comfy two hundred and sixty-five pounds, he really doesn't look the part of the former tight-wearing superhero. A sort of interplay between his pleasantly flexible beak and eminently expressive eyes makes his tempered, good-natured self absolutely perceptible. Kids and a few women around town seem to find him eminently huggable, and he doesn't object at all. To Wallace go the overzealous displays of managerial passion, he's plainly and simply okay with loving the city for everything it's worth. Considering, don't be surprised to see that his house tends to act as the neighbourhood's last-minute semi-daycare for kids old enough to appreciate sipping a can of Coke with “Mister Eagle”, while he turns news bulletins into Story Time or Collective Nap Time.

On a weekday basis, however, you won't see much of his Cool Old Guy leanings. With a marine-blue three-piece suit and some seasonal additions, he tends to look as professional as you'd expect him to. He'll stand straight, hands behind his back, and let his fairly big and striking eyes do the talking. Outside of official business, however, he loosens up a fair bit, his unrestrainably nice nature making it difficult for him to keep up any sort oft straight-up No-Nonsense act going for too long. He'll always smile at some point, find himself adding a bit of weathered and comfortably fuzzy humanity to the most dreary of meetings.

His wife Wanda used to compare him to an old wool shirt, in fact. It's battered, it's filled with holes, you probably should throw it away – but it's so damn comfy and it does the job so well you can never bring yourself to do it. In tone with that, his after-hours wardrobe tends to include old gabardine pants, a slightly frayed white shirt and a dark blue pull-over. In true Old Guy fashion, he tends to feel almost constantly nippy, even in the middle of July. Expect to see that comfortable and scraggly-looking blue wool shirt on him while everyone else will be rocking short-shorts and flip-flops.

Considering, he's not much for pool parties. His idea of cooling off involves finding the right umbrella or the right hammock – or maybe nursing the barbecue. A lot of folks assume his being a bird would prevent him from developing a serious liking to meat, but his waistline and memories of Wanda's prepared meals speak of his love for your average classics, like mashed potatoes, steaks, beans and gravy.

As to what he used to look like – Hope's reconstructed self isn't without its generous expanses of symbolic Art Deco leanings. It's not quite Metropolis, but its intricately woven homages to the Golden Era are legion. Head for any Mom-and-Pop store and chances are you'll find an old framed clipping on the wall, showing a young avian anthro in skintight white leather and possessed of the kind of inhumanly athletic frame that can only be the result of a via-based mutation. Long story short, Seraph used to make distance swimmers drool with envy, while today's Mister Eagle looks like Mister Wilson's Negaverse twin – rather comfortable, eminently lovable, obviously loved and utterly contented with his lot in life.
Behaviour: if there's a thematic villain, if there's an archetypal form of dire straits; if there's a form of everyday corruption, an example of disappointing yourself or someone else or some sort of basic criminal concept that's supposed to shock the uninitiated, Ethan Joseph Alderan has seen it. He's lived it, he's gone through it and come out of it a better vigilante. From the starting bold idealism that characterized him, he's lost every scrap of jingoistic schmaltz, every ridiculous and forced sunny disposition, every single illusion about defeating Evil “once and for all” that superheroes could be expected to carry in his younger days.

Where losing all of this should have made him bitter, cynical, world-weary and irascible; he's instead shrugged off the festering corpses of these unrealistic expectations. It was hard, it took time and he did have his grittier moments. He did reflect upon and take some things out of the nineties' resurgence of superheroic involvements, but he didn't let these new notions overwhelm or redefine him. Fundamentally, the man who was Seraph remains a product of his era. He's optimistic, supportive, patient, relatable and, unlike Amazo, didn't drown in his own mystique. At the risk of sounding tacky, he never forgot the gawky pre-teen who wasn't sure if girls or Science class textbooks warranted the most attention. In a sense, you could say that his real self is the comfortably heavyset grandfather who bounces five year-olds on his knee and who's starting to miss his wife's regulating presence in the fridge. He's ballooning a little, but he doesn't care. He's fought long and hard for several decades, so he tends to shrug off the bathroom scale's glare with an amused scoff and a glance at Wanda's photograph, and goes back to tending to his vegetable garden or to wrestling with his rather meagre inner demons in an attempt to win the ever-so-daunting fight to not go and get another slice of pie or to ruin his supper with a few cookies. In contrast, “Chief Alderan” feels like another disguise to him, only it's one that doesn't hide the upper half of his face.

In public, all that's left of the great-grandfather of four children is his golden voice and pleasant demeanour. Speaking for the entire Police Department, Ethan's perfected the art of looking commanding yet reassuring, and to do so without any perceptible pretense. He radiates approval while handing out well-deserved medals, and also knows when to clamp down on his good vibes and to look anything from simply professionally distant to downright glacial.

When asked about how he manages his tasks, he says he doesn't. Not consciously, at the very least. A Police Chief has to be ready to shoulder everyone else's burdens and to consider that the slightest of decisions can have far-reaching consequences down the deep hierarchy of the local police structure. If he makes a mistake, thousands of people will feel the resulting sting. A good move on his part ripples throughout the entire system. If he had to consciously consider this fact all day and every day, he'd go insane. Instead, he believes that being true to himself and to his Deputy Chiefs – as well as to anyone else who knocks on his door – is the best available path to efficiency and success. If authority demands that he pockets the warm smiles and lets his predator's eyes look as piercing as they can, he will. If, on the other hand, being a good boss demands taking a few minutes to hash it out with Crystal Tala or just about anyone else – he will. His policy is inclusive, in that he's been known to pocket the Police Chief's pretenses for a few minutes in front of simple officers he'd never met before, but who were in obvious need of a more personal contact with him.

Considering, his disapproval of certain individuals and ideals is something he's learned to voice carefully, yet clearly. Having spoken to Weasel Biggs before, he knows how to adhere to courtesy by sticking to small talk on the surface, while certain word choices and looks indicate a deeper level of awareness of what's going on. He's seen enough courtroom debates to get fairly good at spotting out lies, but is seemingly more interested in the why behind falsehoods. Taking it personally gets you nowhere, he holds. Trying to understand why someone would try to bamboozle him is what matters most. He's been known to forgive repeat and outright liars, like Baverley Walton, as it was clear that the poor idiot had been suckered into a web of falsehoods of his own making. In keeping with his decidedly gentle and paternal approach to the city's protection, he tends to be more disappointed than hurt or offended, when this happens. Being a firm believer in giving everyone a chance, his mood gets brought down a little when a promising officer starts showing signs of having been swayed by outside interests.

All of this naturally culminates in one of the earlier assertions. He honestly loves Hope, as chaotic as it can be. He was born and raised there, was bullied in one of her schools, studied in her halls, worked her streets and saw her rooftops. On the ground floor, he likes to take long, placid walks around Centennial Park, only to choose a bench somewhere that's in sight of the Tree but out of Sophia's own field of view. He'll just – look, happy to stop reading or smoking his pipe to watch kids playing frisbee or maybe making a few bones pop as he'll get up to recover some overeager dog's misplaced ball. He likes looking at how everyone, from all walks of life, tend to come together into a complex and yet simple ebb and flow. He has respect for the Karthians' dispassionate nature even if he doesn't understand it. On the other hand, he understands the Drifter ethos and knows that beyond his need to act as a representative of the law, they're all just trying to live out their lives. On some level, he asserts that Hope wouldn't be Hope without his occasionally catching a tipsy Zebediah Buck on a street corner and gently forcing him into his car. Hope wouldn't be what it is without the sense that Biggs, Winters and Sarvin and trying to further their own grass-roots interpretation of a civil society. Hope wouldn't be the same without its occasional power-hungry types, scheming immortals or just plain overeager supervillains trying to make a score.

He loves the city's action and its lack thereof. He likes snoozing afternoons away in his easy chair as much as he does straightening himself up for the camera. It'd be fair to say that Ethan Alderan has anything and everything he could ever want – including a happy family.

A few years before cancer took his wife, Ethan was able to see his son and daughter marry their respective loves. Both produced two children of their own. With Wanda gone, all seven of them frequently fill his house with lively discussions, everyday arguments, happy screams and victory cries when this or that Board Game Night concludes. A very eager grandfather, he spoils his four great-grandkids to death and finds every excuse he can to babysit one or more of them. Failing that, Tuscany Terrace, his street, is chock-full of young families who know perfectly well who's living alone at Number 247. On some of his off days, Ethan's bungalow becomes an unofficial daycare center of sorts – which has caused for a fair bit of amusingly awkward doorbell greetings. Cordatus would probably chuckle at the retelling of “Captain Yellowbeak” and his very pirate-appropriate door-opening attire, eyepatch and dollar-store foam-core rapier included.

Goals: while Wanda's loss will always and forever trigger pangs of melancholy, the interested party would reply that there's honestly nothing left in this world for him to desire. He's lived life to the fullest, he's paid the price for it, he's loved and lost and grown and been knocked back down...

The only thing that's left is the kind of serenity a scant few seniors can ever truly find. Unless his city is in turmoil, Ethan sleeps like a proverbial baby and loves every minute of it. He works and plays intensely and loves every second of it. If anything, you could say he actively works to communicate this serenity to others. He isn't scholarly enough to try and apply this to the average perception of “being Zen”, and he does have quite a few more niggles and worries than, say, Shen Long, but his happiness is inversely proportionate to the fairly harrowing complexity of his life as a former superhero.

He's happy, and he wants others to be happy. That's really all there is to it. Considering, the prospect of having a century more of this left to live doesn't scare him at all.

A century's worth of watching happy descendants grow, of sleeping rainy days away and digging his clawed fingers in the dirt during sunny ones? A century's worth of tranquil walks by the Tree, of feeding ducks by the artificial pond and giving all that throbbing, thriving life filling his streets a satisfied look? Who knows, maybe a century's worth of cruises and leisurely travels? A hundred years' worth of books to write and knowledge to impart?

That doesn't scare him at all. That, instead, feels him with something that feels a lot like anticipation, but in a slower, more learned form. He's looking forward to it, but he also assumes that life is meant to be lived one day at a time.

One day at a time.

No wonder supervillains are so cranky, he realizes; they're always planning so far ahead!

History: born in 1942, Ethan was born the son of Jules Alderan and Thelma Williams, two bald eagle anthros. Jules was a police officer and Thelma a home-maker. Considering, he benefited from the sort of rearing you'd expect a product of the early forties to have. His father was fairly absent, cultivating the sort of pleasantly distant attitude the decade's social mores dictated. This left his mother to carry the torch, with an attentive, fittingly maternal, but always somewhat impersonal take on things. Any significant displays of affection were seen as coddling attempts. While he was undeniably loved, the arm's-length take on parenting he was subjected to would inform part of his future approach to what would become his fairly uncommon everyday practices.

Before his superheroics, however, Ethan was very much like every gawky and gangly kid in school; subjected to precise and fairly cruel instances of bullying and systematically demeaned by the jocks for lacking the muscle tone and physical capacity they did. Considering the decade, he grew up in an all-White neighbourhood, punctuated with a few dark-furred anthros that were arbitrarily considered “Caucasian” because of their proximity to humans.

After years of bruises, nosebleeds, crooked glasses, ruined textbooks and insolently excellent grades, his fifteenth year signalled more than the onset of simple puberty. His appetite went from fairly standard to utterly voracious, even as his muscle tone developed autonomously and at an impossible speed. Within two months and without spending more time in gym than his classes required, he'd gone from being scrawny to displaying a fairly prematurely mature silhouette, with wide shoulders and a trim waistline. Naturally, it'd be decades before gene-sequencing technologies would be developed in a sufficient way as to understand the strange forces at work in your average superhuman being. Nobody understood how scrawny, bookish Ethan Alderan could have turned so fit in a single semester, and he certainly didn't understand his body's stubborn desire to hover off his bed, whenever he fell asleep...

One year later, shortly before graduating from high school, he finally managed to harness his body's new and innate propensity to hover. It took a few weeks, but fairly Yoga-worthy sessions of levitation turned into floating around his bedroom at night, and they themselves turned into hovering along the ground below his backyad fence's tip. With the Vienna Accords still being nothing if a glimmer in Matthias d'Aubignier's eye, he couldn't simply step forward and notify his friends and family of his ability to hover.

As you can expect, the need for secrecy grew even greater once hovering about turned into darting out of the neighbourhood. Very quickly, Ethan's inner ears, bones and internal organs seemed to adapt to the intense pressures and friction caused by his attempting to discover his newfound limits, well above the city. Unknowingly, Ethan would be the source of a small-scale Communist panic, as his breaking the sound barrier high above the city was mistaken for mortar drops... It'd be quite some time before the locals would get used to the sound of a sonic boom.

With his eyes growing ever sharper and his endurance expanding a little more each day, Ethan began to feel restless. He wasted a year in odd jobs and the aimless pursuit of a couple girls, unsure as to what to do with his new gifts. 1960 marked the year of Seraph's emergence : a run-in with Archie and Amazo inspired him more than most of his fairly mundane job prospects, and he vowed he'd give the vigilante business a fair shot. His stockpiled cash allowed him to commission the first version of Seraph's costume from a tailor he chose for her remote location from his home.

Very quickly, Seraph came to dominate the local paralegal enforcement scene. His lowering his voice and attempting to seem purposefully hammy didn't fool the snake or the Clank, who both saw through his cowl fairly easily and recognized the lean, solid and yet fairly confused kid they'd pulled out of one of Thomas Quint's large-scale displays of Infernalism. Instead of scolding him, however, and seeing how capes and cowls were definitely the “in” thing, they weren't too surprised by the notion of a superpowered eagle anthro seizing his available opportunity. If anything, he had the right combination of powers and physicality to do more than simply earn the average citizens' respect. Steered in the right direction, it was obvious that Ethan had the potential of becoming a national icon.

Amazo became personally involved in Alderan's tutelage, using the handy pretext of his teaching a bit of Criminal Psychology at the local university. With Ethan enrolled and supposedly on the fast track to becoming a police officer, it was easy for the snake and eagle to spend time together, trading homework and assignments for practice crime-busting stints. Even as Amazo was busy cutting and grooming Seraph into shape, Ethan met Wanda Richardson. Supercriminals not being too concerned about segregation, they occasionally captured the local African-American activist to make a point. Ethan also wasn't too concerned about it, to the point where the habit of rescuing her at least once a month blossomed into a relationship. The events surrounding Martin Luther King would need to come to pass before the two of them would become free to not only start living together, but to become engaged to one another, as well. Having studied in Journalism, Wanda had a remarkable eye for worthwhile stories and often served as Ethan's unofficial news ticker.

As luck would have it, the sixties were largely dominated by a more complex and some would say classier take on global terrorism. Superspies following in the wake of Archie Holden were on the rise, the USSR's supernatural shadows of old were stirring, and miscreants who profited from Anastasius Romanov's fall and of the power vaccuum that it created. The Red Scare might have ended, but its aftermath could be felt. Russia was the new proverbial Big Bad, political tensions seemed to regularly come from the Kremlin, and the Cuban Missile Crisis would do nothing to alleviate American fears. This formed a perfect backdrop for a slew of fairly thematic villainous organizations who would all precede Elysium, but fail to capture Gregory Rendell's patience, resourcefulness and deviousness.

For twenty years, Seraph would chase the Red Scourge's anorak-wearing and RPG-toting sexpots around and personally duke it out with the ice-controlling polar bear. He'd face against Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin about once a month, and spend weeks routinely thwarting daring, if sophomoric attempts at subterfuge by the Society of the Black Lotus. Investigations would later reveal that the entire ninja clan was an unauthorized secession from the Five Hundred Dragons, led by fairly unstable and frustrated kitaiteki who weren't quite in the mood to leave their victories to a being who coincidentally happens to be older than Japan itself.

More figures emerged, more villains were fought, more friendships were forged. His biggest personal fight would still involve the rather deceptively simple task of not fainting while his wife screamed her lungs out, twice in two years. James Edwards Alderan and Holly Laura Alderan were respectively born in 1966 and 1968.

With kids to take care of and being reminded of the forties' fairly numb approach to parenting, he vowed not to let his charge as a superhero tax his responsibilities as a parent. Seraph officially hung his cowl in 1969, his reveal as Ethan Alderan making national headlines. Still, in the same press conference, he promised he'd keep working to further Hope's security and well-being. His plans involved applying at the State's police academy and returning to Hope as a petty officer.

Unfortunately for him (or fortunately for Hope), few loved supes tend to be able to expect to be treated exactly like mundane individuals... The City Council very clearly wanted him to be seated in the supervisory track, and not in a squad car. Despite the obvious discontent of a handful of cops who'd felt ignored, Ethan entered the force as an Inspector, tasked with handling all superhuman affairs in town.

Time passed. He flew less and less, spent more time at his desk and never once felt the need to adjust his food intake to compensate. Even as his features grew older, wiser or a little nobler, his signature washboard abs were progressively buried in fat. A few jeers and taunts were thrown his way in the form of caricatures or stand-up routines, but everyone could tell he'd more or less deserved a switch of form to something more comfy, more relatable. Not having a mask behind which to hide, the energetic basso of the superhero of yesteryear was traded for something warmer, more natural. He didn't so much inspire raw leadership now, as he did confidence and a general sense of inner peace. The cheesy photo-op worthy smiles turned slight and warm, more knowing and less daring. Jim and Holly grew up in front of intermittent cameras, unknowingly presenting their father as more than the former darling of the American aerial corridors. The man who'd been Seraph was a family man, a lover of fine, yet simple things, and carried a deep and honest love for the city, born out of his decades of tribulations.

By 1990, the kids had left the house and started families of their own. For a while, Ethan and Wanda were free to return to their collegiate games, rediscovering the simple fun of not having grown kids around – or kids at all, to begin with. Like all aging and still-loving couples, they began to plan ahead. They were free, now, and could start their own projects. Ethan, being a superhuman, was already aware that he would inevitably bury his wife. Wanda had already survived to breast cancer once before, but her prognosis wasn't exactly shining.

True to himself, Ethan devoted himself to his wife while he still could. They shared one trip to Spain together, before metastases began to make Wanda's travel prospects difficult. He pushed his love for her so far as to marry her a second time in a little Roman chapel, and was all but a ghost throughout 1992, as Wanda's health had taken a turn for the worse.

Unfortunately, no amount of radiotherapy could save her. Accompanied by his two children and their respective lovers and counting on Amazo, Archie and Bucky as his pallbearers, he buried her in late April of that same year.

As nothing ever lasts, the eagle's grief would be fairly short. 1993 had barely turned that Jim and Holly both told him they were expecting! Jim and Holly each produced Julian and Kate, who themselves would go on to beget two children each. Now a happy great-grandfather, Ethan would spend the 2020's tending to four children, two on each side. Malia, Eric, Layla and Ethan Thomas would grace his living room with their happy cries and games, and generally help to seat his newfound reputation as the city's most eligible surrogate grandfather. Despite being three generations removed from the youngest children associated to him by blood, he maintains sufficiently close ties with them. Considering, the kids don't really care how remote he is from them and liberally call him Grandpa.

Through it all, he's obviously weathered the nineties' resurgence in superheroics and has maintained his tenure as Chief of Police. Eligible replacements are sometimes singled out in the force, but as long as the eagle will be sufficiently firm and healthy to keep his post, few people feel the need or desire to challenge him. The Centennial Tree's newest cycle finds him contented, relaxed – but definitely used to the game, by now. Being a former vigilante, he knows a thing or two about the appeal of unrestrained superhuman contributions to law enforcement and has been instrumental in the Shield Act's tone, structure and purpose. Doherty is too sanguine, too ebullient to think of a means to focus superhuman potential in town. Ethan, on the other hand, is well acquainted with the desired specifics of a new and fresh team of do-gooders.

With that in mind, he intends to offer his help in the process of familiarizing these mostly civilian individuals with the details of police procedure.
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