Iphedes "China-Shop" Burke

=• BIOGRAPHY •=

EARLY YEARS
Until the age of five, the childhood of Iphedes Burke was typical of an average middle class family, then his father died the creditors came and eventually he and his mother were left with nothing. Stuck in Chicago and unable to return to Greece, Leda took two jobs to support her son and continued to do this for most of his life. Leda never did fully grasp the language and often Iphedes was asked to translate if there wasn't something that could be said in a few simple words. During her working hours when Iphedes was not in school Leda often left her son with the neighbors across the hall, an arrangement that forged the most lasting friendship he would ever have with the neighborhood boy Kagen Davis. Both shy quiet boys the two brought each other out into the open, helping to bring them out of early tragedies and arguably causing the two to engage in more activities that would have been considered delinquent. At fourteen the two were introduced to Jonathan Theison by way of Soren Riddle and the four began to engage in extracurricular monster hunting. This went on for two years, eventually taking on fifteen year old Aluisus Blake before the events culminated into a final disastrous activity that is now known as "The Graceland Cemetery Incident" Iphedes never saw Soren or Aluisus again and Jonathan only intermitantly and with hostility. He managed to finish High School without further incident but a progressively worse delinquency eventually pushed him to join the army and he left home soon after graduation. He would not Re-connect with Kagen until a few years later.

MILITARY SERVICE
After the Graceland Cemetery Incident Burke began to grow progressively volatile. No longer combating monsters Iphedes instead turned to increasingly severe criminal behaviors from vandalism, theft and assault. In 2001 he was given the option; serve jail time, or join the military. Three months later he was on a flight to Afghanistan with the marines. To this day he has never shared what happened over there.

CAREER
The natural death of his mother was the end of any biological family that Iphedes knew of and after managing burial and funeral costs he left Chicago, taking the time to wander aimlessly across country before returning home and joining with the Police Department in 2005. The first year as an officer was mostly uneventful, until the urban werewolf...and then the Red Cap. Eventually Iphedes learned how to spin the story so it didn't end with a trip to the psychiatrist, but by then it was too late and he was already dismissed as the department crackpot. Rather than this being the end of his career though his case load just began to change in a not so subtle way. It took all of five minutes before he figured out he was being assigned all the 'weird' cases. No one mentioned the rapid decline of his car after this, this strange claw marks on the hood or the mysterious dents. For his part, Iphedes didn't seem to mind this at all. It was another year when he got a phone call from and Kagen and Iphedes were able to reconnect again. The two enjoyed the rekindling of their friendship, which sometimes resulted in Iphedes testing out one of Kagen's recent designs or Kagen assisting on a case. Graceland Cemetery was never mentioned, though it was reported by Kagen that Johnathan was now part of a shadow organization that operated itself out of New York. Things took a turn off the deep end in the summer of 2013 when Kagen discovered that a former employee had gained super powers and was out for revenge.

THE DONALD NESTOR EPISODE
on June 16, 2013 Donald Nestor, a former employee of Kagen Davis who had been fired over corporate espionage appeared at one of the facilities where he had been formerly employed, destroying equipment and killing three guards in the process. When Kagen discovered the situation was not normal he altered the evidence and called Iphedes in to help with the situation. The two had been deciding how to handle the problem when Kagen's home was destroyed, nearly killing him in the process. With the conviction of a man defending the closest person he still had to family Iphedes took the cue to raid Kagen's supply bunker, and with his friend's help lured Nestor to an unused warehouse to engage in a full scale attack. It took several rounds, charges, bombs and effectively destroying the building around him before Iphedes woke up next to a charred corpse of what was once Donald Nestor. The next day was uneventful, but gradually afterward Iphedes began to notice several problems which occurred mostly in the form of severe headaches and bad dreams. Over the week things steadily grew worse and as he would describe it later, felt like something was tearing at the seams. Two days later he just didn't show up for work and stopped answering his calls. The next day his apartment building exploded, killing five people. Iphedes credited Kagen finding him that kept him out of being a lab rat, or accused of murder as his friend was able to conceal him while he gained control of abilities he was sure got dropped off when Donald Nestor expired. It didn't help with the Dragon taking him as soon as he resurfaced, but still.

THE DRAGON
Iphedes doesn't trust the Dragon, nor does he like them, still hooked on the fact that he had been kidnapped and dragged to Seoul against his will for some weird shadow organization that doesn't take "No" for an answer. He's been trying to get out of it ever since and has taken the stance of being as difficult and uncoroperative as possible in the meantime. He will admit though the Dragon has helped in training further control of his new abilities, though that's about all he will admit.

RECENT HISTORY
With an aversion to staying in Seoul and being declared officially dead since his apartment exploded, Iphedes has taken up residence in London. By courtesy of a friend he has a flat just outside Ealdwic that is paid up for the year and he's gotten to the point of ignoring the Dragon who at this point have let him be and whether it is by design or disinterest is anyone's guess. At current he's taken up employment with the Phoenix group and attempting to locate Colonel Kyle Daklan, gain better control of his abilities and solve the mystery of why he now appears to have a birth certificate in Egypt.

=• ABILITIES •=

The Barrier
First Noticed by Jonathan Theison, little was known of the noticeably thick shielding that made Burke effectively drop off most psychic radars. Running theory was the shielding had been attached to him since birth and it's existence made him effectively invisible to the psychics and supernatural bogeymen. As added bonus this shielding had made him the equivalent to an anti-magical tank which allowed him to take a lot of punishment from the usual hard-hitting spells and still be able to stand. The downside of this is it may have prevented him from picking up on social ques and resulted may have caused him to be more emotionally distant than was natural. When the bees took residence Iphedes' barrier was shattered, exposing him to the world like a raw nerve, he's been trying to keep up and keep it together ever since.

Psychometry
To Iphedes the ability to feel too much is a bad trade off from the ability to feel nothing at all. If not for the surges it wouldn't be so bad, but the bees just make everything worse. When things are going well he can usually avoid picking up the history of everything he touches but on a surge even contact with people causes problems. In an immediate reversal of his non-bee days this has forced him to shy away from physical contact. Normally he will not wander around without being fully covered and always carries a pair of gloves just in case.

=• KNOWN ASSOCIATES •= Kagen Davis