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Fahrenheit (Lauren Pennington)
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Real Name: Lauren Jeanette Pennington
First Appearance: StormWatch Vol 1 #2
Affiliation: Stormwatch PHD
Vital Stats
Species: Human/Seedling
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 131 lbs
Date of Birth: 1974
Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Known Family:
- Father: unnamed
- Sister: Tara Pennington (deceased)
Powers/Abilities:
Fahrenheit can agitate molecules in objects, quickly heating them. She can project fire blasts and create thermal updrafts and fly.
SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT!
Bio:
Early Life
Lauren's latent powers were revealed when she found herself trapped in a burning building as a young woman. The building was ravaged by the fire, reduced to ash and cinders, but when firefighters combed through the wreckage, they found her unconscious but otherwise unhurt. Hearing of her miraculous survival, Synergy tracked her down and activated her powers. After undergoing the rigorous training required of a StormWatch operative, Lauren was offered a position in StormWatch Two, the reserve team.
StormWatch
Her first documented mission with StormWatch Two was a disaster. They investigated the intrusion of the powerful extradimensional lord Regent in the ruins of Chernobyl, but were ambushed and slaughtered. Mission leader Cannon had to flee, and Fahrenheit and Winter survived, but team members Ion and Lancer were killed. StormWatch One and Winter eventually defeated Regent ; Fahrenheit was not seen for a while, presumably spending time to heal her wounds and train so she could graduate to the main team ; the more powerful and better-trained Winter joined said main team almost immediately.
When Synergy (Christine Trelane) became the new Weatherman (the commander of the StormWatch organization for the Security Council), she assembled a team of Cannon, Strafe and Fahrenheit under the leadership of Winter to inspect a Red Army base in Siberia, which had just gone offline under obviously violent circumstances. Once again, the team was quickly taken apart by the armoured M.A.D.-1, but Lauren told Winter to leave her wounded in the rubble and confront the villain ; Winter eventually prevailed.
After Siberia, Fahrenheit started being deployed more regularly with the rest of the team ; Synergy eventually made her an official part of StormWatch One. She was sent to Rwanda, and then with the team that fought Maul in Hawaii. In Rwanda, she rescued a young teenager, Mayinga, and arranged for the girl to be taken care of by UN services. Lauren apparently played the role of the big sister toward Mayinga for much of her career with StormWatch, helping her recover from her trauma in her homeland.
Fahrenheit later helped confront the WildC.A.T.S. before the big plot by Helspont and Lord Defile to retrieve the crashed Kherubim ship in Nicaragua was revealed, and StormWatch allied with the Cats to fight the Daemonites. During the crisis, however, the powerful, uncontrollable villains of the Warguard were freed from suspended animation on SkyWatch, the StormWatch satellite, where they were kept as a last-ditch weapon against the Daemonites. The Warguard soon took control of SkyWatch, slaughtering many of the personnel and ambushing StormWatch when they got back. StormWatch was likely saved from being destroyed by Spartan, their newest member, though they had to abandon the satellite at the hands of the Warguard. Synergy crashed SkyWatch on Earth in an attempt to destroy the Warguard, but they escaped and were beating StormWatch until StormWatch's old leader, Battalion, came back and defeated the Warguard.
By that point, Fahrenheit was a mainstay with the leading StormWatch team. She was sent to Iraq to fight local super-group Heaven's Fist, who had hijacked nuclear weapons and killed several trainees of the new StormWatch Two. This mission eventually took the team to Yugoslavia and then France to prevent Heaven's Fist from detonating their nukes. Along with the rest of StormWatch, an increasingly professional Fahrenheit fought other superheroes during the Fire from Heaven crossover.
The secretly insane Henry Bendix then returned as Weatherman, and reorganized StormWatch. Fahrenheit was promoted as the leader of a unit called StormWatch Red, commanding Flint and Rose Tattoo. She barely had time to slip into a new, white and red body suit before StormWatch Red and StormWatch Prime (Winter's unit, tasked with taking down major threats) were deployed against Father, a thoroughly insane artificial German superhuman which they eventually had to kill.
Though things were never "good" for StormWatch, they started turning into a new kind of bad. It slowly became apparent that Bendix had a sinister and possibly insane agenda, and that the UN was partially controlled by a secret cabal of billionaires called the Special Security Council, which was the only reason why the chronically underbudgeted UN could afford StormWatch and SkyWatch. Further, to Pennington's distress and anger, StormWatch started getting into conflict with the American administration and it slowly apparent that StormWatch Red had been assembled to be a weapon of mass destruction. They were unleashed against Gamorra as payback following a terrorist attack, used along with StormWatch Black to destroy an apocalyptic terrorist cult in Japan, and sent with StormWatch Prime to annihilate what turned out to be an ancient, horrific Daemonite nest.
When the High woke up and decided to change the world, StormWatch Red was on leave. They were immediately reactivated by Bendix, and participated in the catastrophic battle against the High's allies. To her dismay, she was then heavily involved in a series of American terrorist plots involving bio-weapons and spooks, policemen and soldiers with low-level genetic enhancements ; the International Operations intelligence agency was behind most, if not all, of those. During that time she became romantically (or at least sexually) involved with her colleague Hellfire.
StormWatch ran into a crisis after they confronted a version of themselves from a parallel universe, and was left shaken. While Fahrenheit was not personally affected by those events, they were a strange forerunner of the impending destruction of StormWatch. A StormWatch human crew which was planting explosives on a large asteroid on a possible collision trajectory with Earth was attacked and killed by 'alien' xenomorphs, and several aliens at the facehugger stage were taken in SkyWatch for analysis. Soon, aliens slaughtered everyone inside the station, popping up so fast that the troops and superhuman operatives did not have a prayer. Fahrenheit was disemboweled and killed by one of the aliens, who kept her corpse and somehow started replicated her DNA, giving itself the ability to belch streams of flame.
The only survivors on SkyWatch were Battalion (then the Weatherman of the organization), Synergy, Winter and about thirty soldiers, technicians and scientists. The WildC.A.T.S. teleported in and helped rescue the survivors, and Winter decided to sacrifice himself and destroy the alien infestation by sending SkyWatch straight into the sun.
Rebirth
After the Wildstorm reboot (in Captain Atom), Fahrenheit along with Fuji, Hellstrike and Winter, are alive as seen in the Stormwatch: Post Human Division series. At one point, however, the new Doctor contacted Battalion and told him he thought he could bring Winter back. The Authority had discovered Winter was still alive and had been turned insane by the power he had absorbed while within the sun, but could not manage to save him. However, the new Doctor thought he could achieve what his predecessor could not and brought back a sane Winter. He discovered, however, that three other people were somehow linked on a quantum level with Winter, and had no choice but to bring back Fahrenheit, Fuji and Hellstrike, all as they were moments after the fatal blows struck by the aliens. The Doctor saved the lives of everyone and Fahrenheit explained feeling the presence of a mysterious man as she died, linking her existence to Winter's. A scan of Fahrenheit's memories seemed to indicate The Monitors were involved. Later, however, in the Stormwatch: PHD issue of Wildstorm: Armageddon it is suggested that it may in fact be a possible future version of Jackson King.
StormWatch PHD
A StormWatch unit was reconstituted with the four miraculously recovered operatives and the previous three members (somebody looking like Diva was also seen, causing some confusion about the exact impact of the 'soft reboot' before this person was revealed to be the original Diva's sister). During a fight with Lord Defile, Lady Decadence and their mercenaries and servants, Fahrenheit was engaged by the Cooler, a psychotic supervillain with ice powers and a mad-on for her. During the fight she fell from twenty stories while wrestling with her opponent ; although she slowed her fall with updrafts, saving the Cooler, she landed on her head and and stayed in a coma for three weeks. The brain damage was slight, but made her unable to access her superhuman powers - though she retained her innate post-human toughness.
No longer a living flamethrower, Fahrenheit was discharged from StormWatch. The battle on First Avenue against Defile and his accomplices and minions had been a catastrophe and one of the worst massacres in the history of New York, leaving hundreds dead. Soon after, a clash with Deathtrap left Blademaster and at least four Stormforce soldiers dead. StormWatch came under heavy political fire and its budget was badly cut. In the meanwhile, Fahrenheit discovered she was shunned by other posthumans since she no longer had powers ; her relationship with Hellstrike also ended at that point when Hellstrike, in a weird mood after having been dead for a while, cheated on her with an version of Fahrenheit from a parallel universe.
Battalion continued to head the now dramatically reduced growth of StormWatch. Coming up with a new project, since none of the old formulas could fit the new budget, he assembled a small team of non- powered experts in New York City, researching inexpensive means to neutralize posthuman, alien, magical, etc, threats. He offered Lauren Pennington a job in the unit, along with Dino Manolis (a technology expert formerly known as the Machinist), Gorgeous (a psychologist and moll for supervillains), Professor Elizabeth Rowan (aka Black Betty, a supernatural expert), Dr. Mordecai Shaw (a forensics expert and human- Daemonite hybrid whose hated alien form is called the Monstrosity) and Liam Mendoza (aka Paris, a Stormforce soldier). StormWatch Prime continued to operate as a superhuman strike force, though the assets on the SkyWatch satellite had to be toned down. The new team was called StormWatch Post Human Division.
The new team had some success -- though they did not attain any big triumph, the techniques they were developing proved effective at repulsing several minor superhuman threats, and they even managed to arrest some C-listers. Predictably, Lauren made a pass at and slept with Paris, the most attractive single male on the team. This almost immediately proved a mistake, however ; in a moment of intimacy Paris told her about his monstrous childhood. Lauren immediately ended their relationship, which led to a awkward atmosphere within the team. Their NYPD liaison and handler, Officer Doran, send her on a night out with Gorgeous and Black Betty, an initiative that proved successful in salvaging the team's dynamics.
Lauren, however, was contacted by Lord Defile, who proved he could easily give her her powers back. She started faltering and providing information to the Daemonite, which eventually led to the invasion of Precinct 18, the police station hosting StormWatch PHD. To everyone's surprise, StormWatch and the cops actually prevailed during that confrontation, even though it was particularly brutal ; Fahrenheit almost fully regained her powers during the crisis. Crushed by guilt, Lauren confessed to her superiors (Jackson King and John Doran) and asked for punishment. King told her it wasn't her fault if she had been mind-controled by a powerful mentalist such as Defile, and sent her on her way. It was, of course, a complete lie - Lauren had actually betrayed the team during her depressive episode on her own free will, though she was all too eager to accept King's explanation. King chose that approach since he wanted to keep her and the team, which had just proved its worth, running, and explained his lie to Doran. Another wedge was later driven in after Void showed Doran the future of the WildStorm Earth, and he revealed what he knew to the humans on the team.
As soon as Lauren regained her powers, her social life with her StormWatch colleagues magically reappeared, including her issues with her ex, Hellfire. The two of them were berated by King for their jejune behaviour, however, and ordered to put an end to this.
World's End
After the end of the World, Fahrenheit leads StormWatch Team Omega.
Alternate Versions:
- The Bleed Universe: Fahrenheit was still a member of StormWatch and was apparently killed along with the rest of the team when they tried to stop a Kherubim invasion.
- World War 3: In this Marvel/WildStorm amalgamated universe, Fahrenheit was still a member of Wetworks but was killed early in the conflict against Dr. Doom, The Skrulls, and the Daemonites.
Trivia:
- Fahrenheit was created by Jim Lee & Brandon Choi
Appearances:
- The Authority Vol 5 World's End #18,
- The Authority: Prime #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6
- Backlash #8, #17, #18
- DC/WildStorm: Dreamwar #1, #2, #3, #4, #5
- Fantastic Four Vol 2 #13
- Fire From Heaven #1, #2
- Gen 13 Vol 2 #10
- Gen 13: Magical Drama Queen Roxy #3
- Grifter Vol 1 #2
- JLA/WildC.A.T.s
- Number of the Beast #8
- Shattered Image #2
- Sigma #2
- StormWatch Vol 1 #2, #3, #9, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18, #19, #21, #22, #23, #24, #25, #26, #27, #30, #31, #32, #33, #34, #35, #36, #37, #38, #40, #42, #46, #47, #50
- StormWatch Special #2
- StormWatch Vol 2 Preview, #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9 #10
- StormWatch PHD #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20, #21, #22, #23, #24
- StormWatch PHD: Armageddon #1
- Sword of Damocles #2
- Union Vol 2 #9
- Voodoo/Zealot: Skin Trade
- Wetworks #39, #40, #41
- WildC.A.T.s #17, #19, #28, #30, #31, Annual #1
- WildC.A.T.s/Aliens
- WildStorm! #4
- WildStorm Rising #1, #2
- WildStorm Spotlight #4
- WorldStorm #1
Sources
Categories:
| List of StormWatch Characters | List of StormWatch PHD Characters |
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