Character-Trencher

Character Details

Character Details
Real Name:	Jason Merchant
Birthplace:
Specialty:
Team Affiliation:	Midnight Men

Character Biography

It was World War I, and the human race had found a new definition of hell...trench warfare. The countryside was separated into lines of ditches, barbed-wire, mud, shrapnel, and corpses. A man's life expectancy was measured in minutes, and the Germans were winning.

The United States was fresher into the war than their European allies, but even so, it was a costly campaign...one that called for new ideas to turn the tide in favor of the allies. Thus, the American Super Soldier program was born.

Candidates were selected from all across the armed forces, and experimenting began in earnest. Steroids, chemical testing, pharmaceuticals, performance enhancers, the whole gamut. It was a nightmare. Most of the test subjects went completely insane or died of varying heart attacks, rapid cancerous growth, or horrible mutation. In the end, only one man came through it intact.

His name was Jason Merchant.

When he entered the program as an enlisted grunt, he'd been a lean kid with a go-get'em attitude. On the other side, he had completely transformed. He was now a full head taller, and rippling with muscles...some even that hadn't been there before. But his muscles weren't the only things that'd changed. His hair, once blonde, had turned coal black. His eyes, once blue, were now a cold, gun-metal grey. His tan skin had gone pure white, as though he hadn't seen the sun in decades.

But he was now America's poster-boy...the kind of soldier specially engineered to lead men in the harsh conditions of Trench Warfare.

The cover of Life magazine showed a titan of a man, ready to leap into the war carrying the flag as he went. His interview was completely written by the war department. His radio comments were delivered by an actor who sounded a lot like the way he did before undergoing the program. The truth was, Jason's brain had changed, too.

The program's director had certified that he could still follow orders to the letter, but his personality had degraded. He was prone to somber ramblings when no one was around, reciting a free-verse stream of conciousness on the ironies of life, and where a man stood in it. He rambled on about making his father proud, and how he would miss his mother's laughter. But when other people were around, he said almost nothing.

More than once, his superiors had second thoughts about his deployment, but the bottom line was that they had spent a lot of money on the program, and all the other candidates had died to get to him. And, to be brutally honest, what could it hurt to send him to the front lines?

His case officer went with him, passing line after line of horrors to get to the eastern front. The soldiers who had been told that he was coming were thrilled until he actually arrived. Though he was an imposing figure physically, he seemed almost dead inside. No one dared to talk to him or shake his hand. When the order came to finally charge, their unit leapt out of the trench with Jason in the front.

A machine-gunner mowed down most of the soldiers before they could get 10 feet. Jason took 4 bullets in his chest and stomach, and he went down into the mud as well.

The Germans took that opportunity to counter advance, and began their charge toward the trench the Americans had just left. That was when Jason climbed back to his feet. The advancing soldiers attacked him with their bayonettes, and he collapsed to the ground again. The Germans swarmed over him and poured into the trenches, engaging in close quarters combat with the remaining Americans.

That was when Jason descended back down into the Trench with them. With an inhuman strength, he began beating the German soldiers with his rifle. Each blow shattered bones, skulls and spines. When his rifle shattered from the impact, he started grabbing Germans with his bare hands and snapping their bodies like kindling. Before they knew what was happening, Jason had shattered most of them into screaming, broken tangles of limp appendages. The few remaining retreated back the way they came.

Jason gave chase, plodding through the mud after them. Their machine gunner unloaded his belt into the approaching man, but each time he fell, he got back up and surged forward again until he reached the gunners. Crushing their skulls with his bare hands, Jason picked up the two-man gattling gun and began strayfing the trench below him.

The Americans watched in horror from the safety of their ditch as he stood not 200 feet away, firing repeatedly into the enemy embankment. When he was finally out of ammo, the man gave out a blood-curdling scream that seemed to last for minutes. He didn't sound human anymore.

Jason raised the machine gun by the barrel, holding it above his head like a club, and then jumped into the enemy trench. German screams were heard for upwards of fifteen minutes before they went quiet. The Americans then saw Jason crawl out of the trench and begin tromping through the mud into the smoke beyond. Just before he was out of sight, they saw him drop down into another trench. Again, there was more German screaming further away.

The Americans pressed forward, cautiously throughout the day, descending into trench after trench, and finding the broken and mutilated bodies of German soldiers every step of the way. On occasion, they would hear the gunfire off in the distance as Jason came to another Trench. On occasion, they would hear his blood-curdling scream from further away. Eventually, they lost him all together.

Three days later, a scouting party found him half buried in the mud, two miles north. He was cut all over his body. His eyes were wide and blood-shot. He hadn't slept the whole time, and it appeared that his body had just given out entirely. The men pulled his dog-tags off to take back to base when he screamed at them. The man was still alive!

According to the army, Jason Merchant was a complete, if not imprecise, success. To the press secretary, he was a complete and utter failure. They had wanted a hero...a face they could plaster on posters and newspapers. What they got was a man lost in the horrors his own mind, capable of killing large numbers of the enemy in about as brutal a way possible. He was the personification of Trench Warfare...the horror made flesh...the true face of the war and all its ugliness. The newspapers quit covering him, but the soldiers, for as much as he reflected the abomination of the situation they were in, were always happy to see him. They came to call him "The Trencher," and though he wasn't mentioned in any speeches or commemorations, he was instrumental in winning the war.

After Germany surrendered, the state department was in a quandary as to what should be done with Jason. Fearing that his family would go to the papers criticizing the army for the creature he had become, they issued a letter saying that he had died overseas.

Jason was taken to a private mental facility in Utah where a host of doctors kept watch over him. On occasion, he'd show some moment of clarity, but on the whole he mainly just mumbled about memories of a childhood half-forgotten. They did, however learn early on that certain stimuli would spontaneously send him into a battlefield rage once more. Things like the smell of burning sulpher, rotten eggs, rancid meat, and the site of rats. The rats were the worst of all. That was when he'd let-out that blood-curdling scream of his, and only a barrage of sedatives would bring him out of the berzerker rage again.

The Trencher was the one choice Dax made for the Midnight Men that the others couldn't figure out. He was a war-hero to be sure, but he was uncontrolable, and good for little aside from wholesale slaughter. Dax assured them that Jason would only be deployed as a last-resort weapon. As far as could be told, the man was incapable of dying in combat, and the Germans would think twice about pitting themselves against The Trencher a second time.

In private, Dax confided to Sam that it was MR. LEGACY who asked him to fill the final position with Jason Merchant. There was something about Jason's condition that spoke to him, and he thought that with his care and the right treatment, he might be able to bring Jason back to the world of the living. So, Dax weighed the decision heavily, and decided to grant Mr. Legacy's request, provided that the Trencher be his responsibility solely. Mr. Legacy agreed.

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