One of the most dangerous and psychopathic maniacs Bruiser has faced in the past. She is a sadistic psionic with the power to project hallucinations into her victims minds and to gain strength through the fear that radiates from them.
Her powers are officially listed as Empathic Strength, specifically a sub-category called Fear Induced Strength, and Induced Hallucination.
Empathic Strength.
A form of Superhuman Strength it works with the ability of Empathy. It allows the possessor of this ability to sense and feel the emotions of the people around them or when experiencing an increase in a certain emotion themselves are able to utilize this to increase their physical strength, after this conversion is made the strength itself functions like normal Superhuman Strength, however the major difference between Empathic Strength and Superhuman Strength is that with the more of the source of emotion that the Evolved Human is exposed to the stronger they become. This difference renders the Strength Scale obsolete when attempting to apply this ability to its criteria. In The Nightmare Queen's case, fear fuels the strength she absorbs from others.
Induced Hallucination
Induced Hallucination is a specialization some telepaths use to interfere with the visual cortex of another, forcing them to see whatever the telepath wants them to see. Unlike light-induced illusions, the induced hallucinations force the victim to see or feel something that does not exist by interfering with the visual cortex, rather than by bending light. Because the brain cannot distinguish these phantom signals from real sensory perception, the victim is completely incapable of distinguishing illusion from reality.
Even though the DNA Alternate can force the victim to perceive whatever they choose, they have difficulty maintaining such illusions in multiple victims. The Alternate may or may not be able to control more than the visual sense, and if not, the victim would be able to deduce that the illusion is not real. Induced hallucinations are easily pierced by telepaths, who can detect the influence of the Alternate trying to deceive them._________________________________________________________________________________
It was this lethal combo of powers that placed her in charge of The Nightmare Knights Gang as their de facto leader and she coordinated their attacks on the city.
When it became clear that they were unable to defeat The Bruiser, she traveled to the city to deal with him personally.It was this lethal combo of powers that placed her in charge of The Nightmare Knights Gang as their de facto leader and she coordinated their attacks on the city.
While the gang had been whittled down considerably by this point, the ones who were left rallied behind her and they set up a trap to for the hero.
By all accounts it was a normal night out for him. The thugs were out causing trouble around the city and the superhero jumped down to face them. The fight started off being fairly routine until she showed up and The Nightmare Queen unleashed her powers on him.
Then the whole world went insane. From his perspective it was as if a giant monster just sprang out of the ground and everyone started screaming around him. Blood rained down from the sky, the Earth split open, the people around him took the form of mangled burning corpses, the city started burning down, it was if the whole damn city just went to hell all at once. While he was freaking out over this she suddenly appeared in front of him and, now juiced up by his fear and the terror of everyone around them, proceeded to beat the hell out of the superhero, delivering a bloody, horrid beatdown to him before tossing him away into a building and leaving him for dead.
With the dominance of the gang effectively re-established, they took their leave.
Police arrived on the scene to find a bunch of bawling horrified civilians rolling around on the ground scared for their life
Hank Harrison found Matt bleeding out in a ditch covered in blood and shuddering with fear and mumbling incoherently.
When he regained consciousness he was at Hank's house where his best friend was cleaning his wounds. He was left mumbling in confusion for awhile before he got his bearings and he grabbed onto Hank and began ranting and rambling about what happened only for Hank to calmly explain that, whatever he thought he saw, the city was still there. He turned on the news to prove it to him and Matt's fear slowly gave way to confusion. It was just like he said. Everything was...fine. A bunch of people had to go to the hospital for panic attacks but other than that the city was just fine. The only real damage was from the beating he'd taken.
This lead to the realization that her strength likely came from the fear as well. Seeing as how she didn't attack until there was a large amount of people around and they were sufficiently scared by the illusions.
Now that he had a reasonable idea of what they were up against, Matt laid back down and rested to recover from his wounds and come up with a plan...
They manage to cobble together a device that would at least provide some measure of protection against her powers but it wouldn't be a perfect solution so he had to be careful. Meanwhile, The Nightmare Queen had been continuing her attacks on the city. It was getting bad out there. Despite not being completely recovered mentally or physically, Matt put the device on and set out to face her.
After delivering a revenge beating to the thugs he went after their boss. He broke the down the door to where she was hiding and was immediately assaulted by her hallucinations once more. The device held up enough that he could see through them to at least some extent though and he powered on through. Even with the device on though he still had trouble telling what was real and what was fake and as a result he had more trouble with the gang than he normally would have.
He eventually managed to make his way to her evil lair however, at least partially ready for the rematch.
At least this time the fight started out somewhat evenly matched. She still had plenty of people around to terrify, both hostages and her own men but Bruiser at least initially was able to somewhat see through her tricks...right up until she broke the device and was able to go all out on his mind, assaulting him with a barrage of nightmarish images.
It looked like the rematch was shaping up to be a repeat of their first fight after all but he pulled himself together. He told himself it wasn't real. That none of it was real and he stood up and fought back. She beat him down. He got up. She beat him down. He got up. This continued until he was able to tackle her through the wall of bones and blood and they fell down to the city streets below. The fight continued but he was able to slowly force her back and weather her punches. She kept pushing it but her tricks were having less and less of an effect. She looked around frantically for people to draw ear from but everyone was gone.
And The Bruiser was still coming at her!
As her powers weakened further and further from The Bruiser continuing to beat her down and fight through the fear, Nightmare Queen began to panic. She began flailing around and pushing her illusion powers to the limit but Matt had a solid grip on her now and he was not letting up.
Needless to say, Bruiser used this chance to give her a payback beating for everything she'd done to the people of Serenity City.
After she punched down the street, the battered and broken villainess dragged herself to her feet and began to run away, finally exposing the so called Mistress Of Fear for what she really was deep down: A coward who hid behind illusions and fed off of the fear of others.
She didn't get far before The Bruiser caught up though, smacked her down and then she got tazed by a bunch of taser bullets from a squad of police officers. She went down hard.
The Bruiser took a breather and he was approached by Officer Leon of the SCPD, who'd chased the superhero quite a bit in his early years. He informed the hero that they'd received a tip about how to handle the villainess which collaborated with their own data and plans to defeat her. Thus, while he was mopping them up and keeping her distracted, they cleared the streets knowing that, since a super strength fight was going on in the building, it was likely getting wrecked and when they crashed out to the streets, the villainess would start losing her power. Then, while she was distracted focusing on him, they could clear the civilians out of the warehouse, taking away more of her fear, giving him freedom to finish her off.
The tipper of course being Hank.
Despite the history between them, Bruiser and Leon shook hands and he gave the hero real credit for facing horrors like this after what happened the first time and saving so many people.
After some parting words between him and the police, the Bruiser pulled himself up to his feet and he went home to sleep this off.
The Nightmare Queen, real name revealed to be Joan Baxter, was subsequently institutionalized at Noble Gardens Asylum.
While Matt has had one or two repeat fights with other villains, Joan has yet to face him again after their last rematch.
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A bit of a different villain than my usual fare. For all of her power and posturing, Joan is a paper tiger at her core. She acts tough and horrifying when her powers are working on you but the moment the tables turn against her she starts panicking. She's not all that tough without her tricks.
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