I always thought Decimator should have a story...so here it is.
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DECIMATOR
Bugg Driver and General for the Deaths Head
File name: Ika, Johnny R.
Birthplace: San Francisco, California
First class speciality: Cobra Hammerhead Driver/Diver
Second class speciality: Desert survivorlist
Johnny R. Ika was the son of a Japanese WW2 soldier and a German-Iranian housewife who survived the holocaust. The youngest of six kids, He was born during the summer of 69 in San Francisco and enrolled both in the Peace Corp. and the Navy Seals after high school. In high school, he was the kind of kid whom everyone thought was dead because he stayed underwater for so long. He suprised everyone by coming back to life just to get a kiss from the lifeguard. His college deception was only the beginning to the man who would become DECIMATOR. Ika eventually defected from the Navy citing them as "too controlling" and joined a guerilla group in Greece as a "pearl diver".
In the early 80s, Ika embraced the Beatnik scene where he met up with Adolf Joseph...the man who would later become Cobra Commander....A failed poet and revolutionary. Joseph and Ika saw the hedonism of the decade as a chance for them to get ahead....Ika became a certified diving instructor as Joseph started the Cobra Organization. They went their separate ways, but would soon meet again.
During the AIDS epidemic of the late 80s...the two crossed paths again on the beaches of San Francisco as Cobra was benefitting from the mass paranoia offering "snake oil" cures for the plague. There, he met Ika whos girlfriend has been diagnosed with the mysterious disease known as AIDS that she acquired from a blood transfusion years earlier
Ika was desperate...His diving business had failed and his parents were mysteriously murdered in their Mission district home. Ika was desperate and begged Cobra for a cure. Poor and pennyless, he had no choice but to join the Cobra Organization as an Eel. He couldn't afford his girlfriends medical bills. Cobra Commander payed for her treatment...But she died much later.
Along with Ika's initiation into the Cobra organization, came his son...the man who would later lead the Deaths Head(a rebel group of Range Vipers). Ika was determined to get back on his feet and all the time he spent as a hermit in the sand dunes of Nevada had taught him a thing or two about how to drive vehicles.
But for Cobra Commander, that wasn't enough. Ika was put on difficult assignments against the Joes as a Lamprey...Soon, he commanded the Lampreys...He got his name DECIMATOR for sucessfully rigging up landmines in San Francisco bay which killed over 200 hundred NATO civilians at an Olympic party in 1986. He was also a sucessful BUGG driver driving from city to city destroying small fishing villages and collapsing the local economy. Decimator also was working for a diving helmet manufacturing firm in Silicon Valley known as "Deaths Head diving helmets and equipment"...Here he developed the prototype for the helmet he was known for..."The panhead".
Johnny Ika was rechristened DECIMATOR and put on the new vehicle development project known as the HAMMERHEAD. Meanwhile, his young son spent several years with Major Bludd in the Sierra Nevada mountains on "BOY SCOUTING TRIPS"....Both fought in the Cobra Organization until it was revealed that Ika's girlfriend and Death's Head mother had not died of AIDS but rather from an experimental disease Mindbender had developed.
Decimator was furious...He took his son and moved into an apartment in Fresno. Cobra threatened his life and Decimator moved again until they ended up back in San Francisco. The range viper boy scouts which his son and Bludd had commanded moved to SF as well. All shared a commune house in the city with a bunch of working class anti-war hippies. Meanwhile, Decimators son...Had met a girl named Jinx. The two dated in Japan town as both were from half Japanese decent. Deaths Head hadn't known that she was part of the GI JOE organization until she dumped him for his murderous behavior(he shot two Televipers in cold blood for fun because he said they were monitoring his phone calls). When Deaths Head learned about Jinx's joining of the Joe Organization...He seeked to destroy her.
That was until the Crimson Guard invaded the house killing all the hippies and a large portion of the Haight district...DECIMATOR, Death's Head, and the range viper squad fled to the hidden BUGG which was stored in a bunker near the Oakland estuary....
They soon met up with Wayne Gravy...a Defective WORMS driver and entymologist from ...Elias Dukshu...the pilot known as VAPOR and a few hippies who had put on Rock & Saw viper uniforms to avenge the deaths of their commune leaders at the hands of the Crimson Guard. Together they formed the Deaths Head....a small guerilla specialty team dedicated to both the destruction of GI JOE and COBRA.
