A Brief History . . . .

. . . .of Project Pegasus:
Project Pegasus is a USAF sponsored research group whose entire goal is to create effective armored air mobile soldiers. The project has had many recent successes, not the least of which is myself, Artillery MKV. The project itself was only recently declassified and I can now share with you some of its origins.

During the last days of World War II the Allies captured many Nazi scientists working on very advanced technology. We now know that many of these advances had been introduced by the alien Nictus among the Fuehrer's elite. Whatever the cause the Allies, especially the USA co-opted these scientists to keep the technologies for their own purposes.

It was also at roughly this time (1947) that the USAF was formed out of the US Army Air Corps. The DoD envisioned an armored flying soldier with the fire power of a tank and the maneuverability of a helicopter. They gave the fledgling USAF unprecedented access to the former Nazi scientists and some of the greatest minds in America, as well. Thus was Project Pegasus born. Other government projects had access to scientists who were looking to augment individual soldiers, Pegasus was viewed to be an entirely technological project with no changes to the pilots themselves.

A fully integrated armored suit trooper was long in coming. There were many advances, however. The popular Rocketman of the 1950s was a test pilot for the project. Unfortunately the chemical propellants and radioactive isotopes used as power sources ended that brave man's life too soon. But the working jetpack went through many modifications after that and became practical shortly thereafter. Unfortunately it wasn't strong enough to carry the weight of the armor available at that time, and the weaponry wasn't up to snuff, either.

Over the years the project had many successes such as:
-Jet Packs
-Small armored flying craft (sky Skiffs)
-Tractor/Pressor beams (used to transport very heavy items, float vehicles and move cargo)
-weak force fields- no immediate application, but proof that they were possible)
-Extremely powerful micro batteries

And many more. It wasn't until the 1980s when microprocessors made miniaturization truly possible that many of these products began to appear. Far too many of them were co-opted by the Sky Raiders when they split from the US Military.

By the year 2000 the project had a working prototype battlesuit, codenamed Artillery MKI. The suit, extremely bulky from the heavy armor, large jets, huge power supply and equally large cooling system was nowhere near the project's ideal, but it was a good testing bed. The suit was too bulky to fly, but the jets allowed it to make prodigious leaps. After a year of pilot testing and internal stress tests of the force fields (much stronger at this point) and weapons system (contact energy release) the project was looking for a place to do field tests. Paragon City seemed a natural place to do so, with it's super powered criminals and housing a base for the Sky Raiders (allowing the project managers to settle an old grudge), there was no better spot to test.

A new hero registered in Paragon City and the testing began!

Next: The Rikti War and an American Tragedy