Anita Matter and the Truth Behind the NY Bombing of '64
Everyone knows what happened on June 16, 1964. The battle between Devastator and Superior. The explosion and the destruction that it caused. But not everyone knows the rest of the story.

The story starts with Anita Matter (that's not her real name, but all her old records have been purged). Back in the early 60's she was a young, new recruit in the NYPD bomb squad. Fresh faced and eager to make a difference, she was the darling of the bomb squad. All of the guys thought of her as their little sister and worked hard to get her training up to speed.

Then the hot day of June 16th came. Superior and the Devastator engaged in another of their titanic battles over the skies of New York City. This was reportedly the longest battle ever fought between the two. Everyone thought the Devastator gave Superior a run for his money, but the truth is that Superior let the battle drag out on purpose.

The NYPD had learned of the Devastator's plan and (this is the part that most everyone doesn't know) they had learned about Devastator's doomsday bomb. Deep under NY City the Devastator had planted a specially constructed anti-matter bomb set to go off if he was defeated by Superior. The NYPD knew about this, but didn't know the exact location, so they radioed to Superior to drag the battle out.

They sent teams of two from the bomb squad to scour the sewers and tunnels, looking for the bomb. Anita and her partner John were the lucky ones (so to speak).

They found a secret room and in it, Devastator's latest toy. But when they went in they tripped some type of alarm. Next thing they knew the room had slammed shot, John had been shot by a sentry-gun and Anita was wounded and a 5 minute countdown on the bomb had begun.

Anita crawled to the bomb and started working. It was complex in the extreme and Anita was way out of her league, but she did her best. She got the outer casing off and was able to isolate the triggering mechanism, in the end it came down to 5 seconds and two wires to choose from. As the clock ticked down Anita got nervous and she did the one thing that she was trained never to do... she hesitated. This would not have been so bad, except that as some kind of cruel joke/trap the Devastator had set the bomb to detonate when the timer read 3 seconds left.

When the smoke cleared everything was leveled in a 6 mile radius and the inner mile of the blast was incinerated and rendered un-livable for generations (from radiation and worse fall-out left behind). There was no sign of Anita or the Devastator, or anyone else for that matter.

Life (what was left of it) went on and eventually people started moving back into the out-skirts of the blast area (although only those that couldn't afford to live anywhere but in the blasted out husk of a building).

It wasn't until 30 years later that it happened. All of the sudden Anita woke up in the dead center of the explosion. She had no idea what had happened to her or that 30 years had passed in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Dazed and confused she dug her way out of the rubble and stumbled her way back to her old precinct. Of course no one there had any idea who she was or what was going on.

It took some time for things to be cleared up. Anita had been killed (almost) in the blast and had come back (or whatever you call it) as a delta. A bomber to be specific. To this day no one knows why it took 30 years for her to come back (that's unheard of, even in our day and age).

As a side note her powers have generated a lot of debate. Basically her powers manifested as the ability to convert part or all of her body into anti-matter. This seems to clearly have come from her interaction with the Devastator's bomb. The issues has turned into a real "Nature vs. Nuture" debate. Needless to say the scientists spent a good long stretch studying her, with no real conclusions of any value coming out of it.

Anyway, after the shock had worn off and Delta Prime had arrived (and the NYPD explained why Anita shouldn't be hauled off to New Alcatraz) things settled down some for Anita. Like a good little soldier she registered and joined up with the New York office of the DP.

She spent about ten years in DP, watching them kidnap people in the middle of the night, kill poor slobs who just didn't know how to control their powers and sending 18 year olds to jail for life. She had finally had enough and just one day up and left. She walked off into the Pit (that's what they call the blast crater these days) and has been on the run ever since.

These days Anita lives in the Pit and spends most all of her time in the Pit and the Zone. Over the years she and her team have become quite the heroes to the locals that live in the Pit and to the many non-gang members that live in the Zone. She somehow managed to find a passage between the two that didn't get blocked off when the Zone was built. I've tried to convince her to show me the passage a few times, but no matter how much she may trust me, that is one secret she only gives out to her team.

Anita's Junkers
Anita's gotten together a tight little crew over the past ten years or so and they call themselves the Junkers. I'll get into specifics later, but basically you've got:

Blast Furnace- He's a scientist turned blaster. From what I've heard he was involved in some type of accident at a particle accelerator that burned a hole into his chest. Now his whole chest if covered with glowing plasma that he can shoot out at will. He was forced to move into the zone because he doesn't believe in DP, and there was no way to hide his powers.

Shifty- Shifty's a gadgeteer that moved into the Pit to get away from a bad scene back in his old neighborhood (he doesn't like to talk about it, and most folks are polite enough not to push). He goes for the less flashy kinda gadgets, and reportedly has a suit that lets him hide in plain sight. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

Turk- Turk's a wierd guy, he's not turkish (he's a white-guy) for starters, and he picked his name because (stay with me here): He's a teleporter -> which some people call a blinker -> and there's this band called Blink 182 -> But there was also a movie (which he really liked) callled Turk 182 -> So he took the name Turk specifically because he is a teleporter (???) If this logic makes sense to you then you should get along great with Turk. Otherwise he'll probably seem kinda screwy to you.

Null- I don't know a whole lot about Null, and he likes to keep it that way. I did some checking around the Pit and no one even knows what he looks like (or they won't admit it). He's a snuffer, and he's also paranoid as hell. Evidently he generally hides during most fights and picks out the toughest bad-buy delta to snuff. At least that's what I've been able to gather, gives the Junkers a real edge though.

Tiny Tina- Tina's a real giant of a woman! She must stand 7 ft. tall and weigh close to 230 lbs. and not an ounce of that is fat. Of course she's only that big when she wants to be, she used to joke that when she went out on dates she would shrink down to a more normal 5'6" or so. That way she wouldn't scare off potential boy friends. If you haven't figured it out yet Tina's a shrinker, and a real nice gal too boot.

Guides can see more details on the Junkers here.