Neuron

"Great, more problems. Can't you see I'm trying to launch an invasion here?"

- Neuron Praetor Steven Berry, code named Neuron, is a villain of City of Heroes. While initially introduced hero-side after the game's counter point, City of Villains, came out, Neuron is expanded upon greatly in the game's final additional sister game, Going Rogue, came out. Going Rogue allowed players to start off in the alternate reality of Praetorian Earth - in the pre-established arcs a reality where the heroes of Paragon City decided to use their powers to take-over the world rather than protect it. Like all such Praetorian versions of the game's signature heroes, Neuron wishes, among other things, to take over Primal Earth, as they call it. But even among his allies and fellow Praetors Neuron was always the least trust-worthy, scheming member of the Praetors.

Neuron ≠ Synapse
In the City of Heroes main reality of "Primal Earth", heroic players are sure to meet Synapse, the super-speedster with a grudge against Crey Industries for torturing him for weeks on end in their gene-splicing experiments. Crey has never paid for those crimes and covered up all evidence to officially corroborate Berry's story, so Synapse uses the powers Crey gave him to protect other normal citizens from meeting a similar fate by being abducted and abused by the callous company or others like them. After helping fight the alien invasion against the Rikiti, Synapse and his friend Raymond Keyes, code named Positron, a former Crey scientist who quit when he found out what they were doing to his friend, were welcomed to join the Freedom Phalanxas official heroes of Paragon City.

In Praetoria Steven Berry's story is a bit different. Berry always wanted to be a great scientist but was unable due to the collapsing infrastructure of city at the time. He was good friends with Raymond Keyes in his reality as well. Dr. Keyes was a scientist, like his Primal Earth counter-part and Berry used the connection to observe other scientists and did his best to imitate them. Eventually Synapse created his own experiments, though not an officially licensed doctor of any kind, he created a harness that would supposedly give him great intellect by increasing his nervous system response time, it worked better than expected and his entire nervous system was able to function at incredulous speeds granting him movement at speeds far faster than anything thought possible.

Becoming a Praetor
With Steven Berry dreams of genius realized he would come to be tested in a great event that came to be known as The Hamidon War. A geneticist named Hamidon, who had ecological concerns would inadvertently mutate himself into a massive ameba like creature with elemental control and the ability to give off spores that took over the minds of other life-forms and mutated them into elemental monstrosities sharing in Hamidon's will. Hamidon exists in both Primal and Praetoria's reality, but while the heroes of Paragon have fought off their version of Hamidon successfully, in Praetoria the hive-minded Devouring Earth, minions of Hamidon, managed to catch Paragon unawares. For in Praetoria the Rikti did not invade, the creatures were from their own reality and so they could only cross-over into one other reality, but in so doing Hamidon was forced to wait for a more opportune time to strike and the heroes of Paragon found him before he did, preventing the invasion. In Praetoria, since there was no Rikiti invasion, Hamidon invaded instead, striking the man-kind in the name of the planet, which Hamidon concluded, could not survive without the planet striking back, something he gladly did in it's name. Hamidon's strike was devastating the elemental giants of the Devouring Earth, struck all major cities, the spores they gave off infected and converted many who, turned on and killed the rest.

Marcus Cole, lead the charge against the Devouring Earth, as his counter-part, Statesman, had lead against the Rikti and called for all able bodied meta-humans to join in. Cole had in both realities ushered in a new age of super-humans by releasing Pandora's box after finding the fabled Well of the Furies - the Well made him a demi-god, and the box released all the bound-up potential in humanity, leading to various strings of fortune which lead to the meta-human explosion. With Cole as a symbol and leader the Praetorian meta-humans joined in the fights with formal militaries to drive back the Devouring Earth. Neuron and Dr. Keyes, who went by the code-name Anti-Matter, were some of the stronger meta-humans and joined Cole on his personal attack team. Cole gained something of a victory but in a stalemate, most of the world was over-run with Hamidon's forests, but the beast had learned not to press the attack any further in and what few cities remained were safe. Cole stepped forward to declare himself emperor of the remainder of human civilization claiming only he could protect them and the previous world governments clearly were either too weak or already destroyed and thus he would lead the remainder of civilization. Cole reached out to those who had fought by his side to join him, those on his personal task-force were made Praetors of the new society he named after the Roman statesman/generals "Praetoria".

Preator Berry
Neuron soon dropped his code-name, preferring the prestigious title of "Praetor Berry". Unlike many others Berry was not overcome with any sort of tragedy at what had happened, because he was overwhelmed with opportunity, he would have the chance to carve out a new society largely in his own image. Berry was assigned Cole's head of urban renewal - redesigning and literally rebuilding society. Praetor Berry and Praetor Keyes were Coles top scientists, however Berry did not want to be one of the best scientists, but rather -the- best scientist. Neuron began subverting Keyes at every turn, when Keyes began forming an invention, with a little base observation Berry would mentally put-together the project first, then actually put it together in a flash and present it as his own. This caused the two to go from friends to rivals and soon enemies, though officially still both Praetoria. When Berry saw Keyes carrying on an affair with Emperor Cole's grand-daughter, Megan, Duncan AKA, Dominatrix, Berry set-up Keyes to admit his feelings for her in-front of the Emperor, but Praetor Duncan, being a manipulative vixen played ignorant and so Keyes looked not only like someone who was stirring up trouble with Berry but, was also someone willing to besmirch the Emperor's grand-daughter, and had lusty ambitions for her, as a result Cole removed Keyes's Praetor title and began relying solely on Berry for scientific advice.

With his place secured, Berry began selling the people of his newly built city his services. Berry's company was named after his original code-name, Neuron Technologies Unlimited. Berry helped new businesses rise from the ashes of civilization, the whole time either swiping the best of their ideas in passing, much as he had done to Keyes along with of-course charging exorbitant prices to fund his continued research. At the end of the reconstruction the city built around Praetor Berry's headquarters would be named Neutropolis.

Praetor Berry will reach out to Loyalists players (those who chose to ply their abilities for the city, as opposed to Resistance players who fight to end Cole's regime). However Berry is will only reach out to Power Loyalists (players whose pursuits are for personal prestige, not the safety of Praetoria). When encountered Praetor Berry is working on a new type of soldier, the genetic clone of Emperor Cole, The Olympian - so named because Cole had a propensity for Greek folk-lore and with Cole's power being reconstituted from Zeus, he whole-hardheartedly approved of the name and concept. The player will aid Berry in his experiments, but being as self-serving as Berry, the player will begin conspiring to make a name for him/her/it-self rather than be a go-fer. When Berry has the player recover a cybernetic brain for the clone-slug, the player will go to ask Keyes for help sabotaging it. Anti-Matter, while having no real fondness for any of Berry's lackeys, will take the opportunity and agrees to sabotage the brain. Keyes will give the player an up-link to install in Berry's automation, IVy, and use her as a alternate computer system so nothing can be traced back to either him or the player. Olympian eventually goes berserk and at the worst possible time, while impersonating Emperor Cole for PR duties on Cole's behalf. When discovering the blunder Berry is worried he will be blamed and scrambles to lead the player to defeat The Olympian. Emperor Cole is livid that "He" apparently went wild in public event, killing many civilians. Praetor Berry placates Cole with "the completely legitimate report" that The Resistance made some sort of clone of Cole and used it to cause havoc and both Cole and Berry wait for their media front-men to spin the story, never-the-less Cole wants The Olympian destroyed and Berry's project shut down.

Neuron has major reservations about Emperor Cole's order. He informs the player that the story will be that The Olympian has been dealt with so the major threat is at an end, mean-while he still intends to perfect the cloning process and try again once he figures out what had gone wrong. The player's final mission is a moral choice, either to destroy Synapse's cloning lab - which will hamper his further research but also allow him to get away scot-free with no evidence, or inform Emperor Cole of Berry's scheme, which will allow Berry to keep his resources but permanently expose him as the petty place-seeker he has been for years. Working for Praetor Berry is the final arc of the Praetorian story-line along the Power Loyalist alignment and so when completed, the player is sent to Primal Earth via portal to serve Praetorian interests. Either the player is sent as a proven friend of the empire by informing Cole, or as a useful pawn which has demonstrated enough patriotism to be excused for the mission to conquer Primal Earth. Either way, once completed the player will remove all ties with Praetor Berry and go to the alternate reality of Primal Earth to make a name for themselves. While on Primal Earth the corruption of the Praetorians becomes apparent, even that of Emperor Cole, who had actually made a pact with Hamidon in the first place where it could rule the wilderness and Cole the Cities, thus making even loyal Praetorians enemies of their manipulative government.

Invading Primal Earth
The previous arcs for Praetorians are still available from the contact Tina Macintyre though images and descriptions were updated with Going Rogue's release rounding out Praetorian backgrounds. In this operation, Keyes has found the extra dimensional signal used by Portal Corp, a research center who had invented portals that could explore alternate realities, back-traced the signals and tapped into them remotely to allow himself and all the other Praetorians to conquer Primal Earth. Neuron and his girl-friend, Bob Cat, Praetorian version of Synapse's side-kick Mynx, both are heading the attack to sabotage security and steal date on Primal Earth. Both are defeated twice and imprisoned after over the course of the invasion but escape thanks to Praetorian guards.

The final confrontation with Neuron and Bob-Cat is for Tin Mage II Task-force. Tin Mage III is an artificial intelligence created by Positron. Tin Mage II, is so named because it is based on the design of the A.I. super-hero, Tin Mage, who was destroyed in a suicide mission to end the Rikti War. Tin Mage II has been monitoring the situation in Praetoria and discovers Neutropolis's has a massive army of Clockwork robots, standing ready for an the immanent invasion. Neuron and Bob-Cat are arming the last of the titanic Goliath War-Walker class clockwork. Tin Mage II sends the players to dismantle the army and defeat Neuron once and for all.

Tin-Mage II's Task-Force is the last time Neuron is encountered in a story line. Keyes and Emperor Cole refer to him in the past tense when encountered in the task-forces organized against them, implying Neuron and Bob-Cat are not simply defeated but gone for good. No indication is given if this means that they are imprisoned some-where beyond Cole's inter-dimensional reach, or dead.