A story proposed late November 2012, following the lives of a group of reforming supervillains as they try to integrate into a world they once terrorized.
Story Conception[]
The concept was born out of a Cheetah appreciation thread, depicting the original Wonder Woman villainess as a bookish professor and devolving into jokes about how Wonder Woman's villains were all reformed and only wanted to be left alone. Later in the thread, the concept was proposed that a group of "5 supervillains, pastiches, OC DUNOT STEEL, anything's good" team up together following a bank robbery and determine to go straight, and have to deal with the repercussions of doing so.
A second thread fleshed out several of these characters to form the titular five, as well as a group of secondary villains, assorted heroes, and supporting cast.
Primary Characters[]
Leopard[]
Geeky archeologist assistant turned cat-god avatar by an unfortunate series of events and by a simple mistranslation became a supervillain. She teaches at a university now that she's clean. Her attempts to be taken seriously as an academic are somewhat undercut by her unique predicament. Described as somewhat meek and relatively girly, she takes pride in her appearance though it sometimes works against her.
Tundra[]
Tundra, the Frost Mistress
A child prodigy who rose to become a professor in thermodynamics, Joan Smith was a short, dumpy and unattractive woman well on her way to become a Nobel laureate. However when conducting a supercooling experiment to study subatomic particles in near 0K conditions, an accident overloaded the machine, and she was struck by extra-dimensional radiation liberated by the experiment. The disaster also wrecked millions of dollars worth of equipment and seriously injured several other researchers.
Waking up in a hospital, Joan found herself mutated by the accident into a tall, leggy beauty with blue skin, white hair and powers to manipulate cold. When she was told her entire research was being shut down due to the accident and her funding ended, and that she faced possible prosecution for causing the accident through negligence, Joan snapped. Lashing out, she adopted a slutty demeanor and became the costumed supervillainess Tundra/Glacier. Despite her original motivation being the betterment of mankind, Joan slipped into this role, playing a seductress who reveled in bad ice puns and constantly pilfered scientific equipment. Running afoul of crime-fighters, she landed in metahuman prisons more than a few times.
However, during a prison sentence, an independent commission researching her original accident concluded she she had been entirely free of guilt of the accident, and her academic record was cleared (though her criminal record of course wasn't). Suddenly having the chilling (ha ha) realization it had all been a giant mistake, Joan snapped out of it, regretting her actions and swearing to turn over a new leaf. Unfortunately for her, she had already acquired a reputation as the alluring siren of sub-zero crime which was now far more wide-spread than her academic merits.
Two-By-Four[]
Two-By-Four, the Mutant Hillbilly
Two-by-Four was a redneck hick with a passion for ATVs who one day tried to jump the uncharacteristically glowy marsh that had been growing since "that there darn factory" set up shop near it a year or so back. The jump failed and our "hero" found himself swimming in the swamp, and when he came out four hours later, he had grown a new pair of arms, a burning hatred for all mankind, and the most horrifying case of halitosis ever recorded.
His villainous career as the terrible Two-by-Four, bane of all who dared "pizen muh lawnd", wasn't particularly spectacular... or long. And after a brief stint in prison he returned home only to find his family had long since moved away to the city, leaving behind only a note chastising him for his stupidity.
Determined to turn his life around, Two-by-Four followed suit and ended up working a menial job flipping burgers while also attending a high school for adults in hopes of learning to write. His studies were encouraged and aided by Tundra and Leopard, though the knowledge gap was occasionally frustrating. Prone to spouting some profound quotes from time to time as a result of his developing reading skills.
Quick Fix[]
Quick Fix, the Gentleman Assassin
Super-powered assassin, getting on in years, wants to retire to the Bahamas or hawaii or something like that. Fat chance. Dead tired of killing people, just wants to be left alone. No super will actually leave him alone once they recognize him. Used to and still does have a thing for Countess Desdemona, but they had a falling out when "the good old days" of robbing banks and escaping on blimps fell through. He chose the darker path of hired killer, while the Countess elected to stay more theatrical. A sort of James Bond-for-hire.
Toolbox[]
An as-yet unnamed cyborg who has a crazy array of technical gadgets and absolutely no technical aptitude. Mostly just used his mechanical eye and built in gun, despite a rather impressive arsenal. Everyone asks him to help out with their broken TVs, he always tries but has yet to ever fix one, though whether this is due to maliciousness or inability is anyone's guess. Biggest established personality trait: he is a gigantic douche. Like, mega-cunt. Douche canoe. Twat waffle.
Secondary Characters[]
Countess Desdemona[]
Self-proclaimed leader of the reform group back when they were true evil-doers, she's the Dr. Doom of this universe. Back in her heyday, she and Quick-Fix used to be an item, robbing banks together and escaping to their blimp through the perfectly-timed hole in the ceiling. Their turning point came when the normally huge stack of bills from a robbery dwindled to just a few handfuls, due to the wide use of electronic transfers for money. She's since maintained her theatrics, as her actress' soul called her to, but she's starting to get on in years and the villain gig isn't what it used to be. She fondly remembers the good old days, even if only to herself or in a shared joke with Quick-Fix.
Her established intro so far is crashing the main cast's meeting early on, trying to recruit them back to "the old gang", only to finally be convinced that it's just not worth it anymore. After this intro she becomes a regular member of the cast.
Civet[]
Female super thief? Like, a catwoman pastiche. She was a high level burglar, and fell in love with one of the heroes, the broodier one. Then she broke a leg or something, and had to stay out of the game for a while. In the period, she put on a bit of weight, nothing too drastic to normal standard, some 5 or so pounds, but the skin-tight costume made them really noticeable.
The hero answered this development by cheating on her with her best friend AND her sister. So you have a former thief, with relations and body image issues, that is considerably sexy but is tremendously obsessed with her weight, never being able to lose those 5 pounds. they don`t really show, but the scales don`t lie. (Spoiler: They are in her butt, which is magnificent)
Dullahan[]
Dullahan, the Headless Horseman
A Dullahan is a headless horseman of Irish folktales. He should be a non-alcoholic Irishman. The heroes still make racist comments, though. He quit because his heroic foes took his head and played with it like highschool bullies with a back pack. So he got sick of the immaturity and decided to retire.
Despite having a violent, vengeance-filled history, behind the pauldrons and booming voice, Sean's actually fairly reserved. A devout Catholic in life, he tries hard to reconcile his beliefs with his existence, more often than not finding himself repenting for the actions he takes at the rare church where he can set foot. He decided to exit the villain business after a particularly rough beat down by the capes; despite being technically undead, getting one's head bashed in and thrashed by people who can squeeze coal into diamonds hurts.
His binding to the fae causes a lot of turmoil for him, but the two most prominent effects (besides relative immortality) are the need for chaos and the need for belief. To keep his immortality he needs to provide the fairy who revived him with payment, and the fae court's most valuable currency is entertainment; to that end, he has to be doing *something* interesting to earn his keep. Secondly, and this may be something that his fae benefactor gassed him up with, he's got the idea that the fairy court only exists because people believe in it. To that end, he spends a lot of his free time trying to convince people of the same. Now that he's out of villainy, he'd like to go into something to repent.
Obliterator[]
A megalomaniac Supervillain who once threatened to melt down every bank in the city in order to ruin the lives of the "Bougois Capitalist Pigs", Obliterator appeared after gaining superpowers in a self-made lab. Obliterator's mission was to bring down corrupt government and an unfair system by destroying all forms of authority and taking control, believing that only their rule would save humanity from stagnation. Because of this "I'm right you're wrong" mentality born from a history of being ignored, bullied, and shafted by society, Obliterator's insane destructive rampage came to a quick end when a team of superheroes bashed the volatile would-be dictator into submission and left the remains for the psychologists.
Belle woke up in a mental asylum, and the psychologist there tenderly plied her with questions, expecting some rampant maniac who would need to be locked away. However Belle was instead gripped by a profound, all-encompassing mental backlash of pure embarrassment of the way she acted, and pretty much agreed with everything the psychologist said. After a few weeks of therapy, Belle was not only cleared of her mental episode but even allowed to return home unmolested, provided she report in for a monthly evaluation. However, her very public bender ruined what little social credibility she had, as she was fired and banned from the library and even her online friends stopped talking to her. Belle finally found a job at a video rental store, and her shy, nervous personality is back, stronger than ever. Her only friends now are the store's owner, an ex-military man who is used to supers, her kitten, Faust, and a young goth girl who visits the store, finding her to be an interesting person to talk to. Her life is very slowly getting back on track, but because of her appearance, even going to the local convenience store results in getting molested by heroes. And they always bring up her rampage...
Mr. TV[]
Mr. TV, real name Thomas Valentine, former children's show host and edutainer for public access. Had the biggest kids show on television but lost it when meddling executives retooled the program into crap, causing the ratings to plunge and lose his show, his job, and most of his money, leading to a nervous breakdown. Believing his puppet sidekick VCR Jr to be talking to him, he went on a revenge spree, kidnapping and putting the executives who ruined his show into death traps based on themes/lessons from his show (IE sharing: having to share antidote, Fear of the dark, forcing them to navigate a pitch black labyrinth, etc.) Only to be beaten by a hero and sent to prison.
Mr. TV would once in a while escape or join a villain team up, but oddly enough found great success running a new show in the prison's local access, eventually being paroled on good behavior for it and teaching new lessons like why it's bad to rob banks with super strength. Now he wants to get back to entertaining kids... without the death traps of course.
Heavily inspired by certain bat-foes like Riddler/Ventriloquist as well as Toy-Man and in general super villains with childish personalities, I see him as Mr. Rogers/Wizard gone bad, but still well meaning toward the kids. VCR Jr being an outlet for his bad thoughts, the devil on his shoulder, but while taking his meds goes away or acts as a more benign voice.
(Note: These details are still incomplete as of June 2, 2013; I'll try to update on June 10, 2013 with more info)