MANIFOLD

BIOGRAPHY - Part 1

Eden Fesi was born in Australia as a mutant with cosmic significance. Demonstrating powers of teleportation, Eden is actually a universal shaper, whose abilities as a “Manifold” exist throughout all versions of reality. As Victor von Doom and Molecule Man sought to prevent the Beyonders from destroying the multiverse, they traveled back in time to kill versions of Molecule Man himself. Owen Reese, the Molecule Man, was a being of great power forged by the Beyonders as a universal constant and intended as a living bomb that would go off in every reality simultaneously. Owen Reese counseled Doctor Doom to sacrifice his alternate selves earlier in the timeline than intended to “blunt” the force of his detonation. With Doom primed to scour the multiverse as Rabum Alal, the Great Destroyer, Molecule Man helped his quest by seeding the multiverse with a constant of his own – a Manifold for each reality, possessing the inherent power to seek out that which is needed. Doom could use the Manifolds to find a Molecule Man in these realities if he could not manage it on his own. [New Avengers (3rd series) #33]

As his powers manifested themselves, Eden came to the attention of Gateway, a wise man and similar mutant teleporter from the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. In the course of his training, Eden was approached by Nick Fury, former agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., to join one of his teams of Secret Warriors. Eden enjoyed the idea of being a secret agent, but he respected the wishes of his mentor when Gateway said his student could not go with Fury. Sometime later, however, Fury’s agents Daisy Johnson and Sebastian Druid also came to Kata Tjuta to recruit Eden for the Secret Warriors. Gateway surprised him by agreeing to let Eden join Fury this time. The wise man had foreseen Fury wanted Eden for one of his other Caterpillar teams first, which wasn’t right. Daisy, though, would protect Eden on her squad and keep him safe. [Secret Warriors (1st series) #4]

Nick Fury and Daisy Johnson were in the middle of a covert war with the forces of Hydra, with many assets in play. Eden was deployed almost immediately with Daisy’s team, teleporting to the Dock to assist Fury and the Howling Commandos as they battled Hydra and H.A.M.M.E.R. to reclaim S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Helicarriers. He kicked a Nazi in the face. It was nuts. [Secret Warriors (1st series) #5-6]

Later, Eden got into some trouble with his new teammates J.T. James and Alexander, son of Ares. While Fury was away, they intercepted a call for help from the Black Widow to him, and decided to go out to rescue her from her H.A.M.M.E.R. pursuers. This led into a direct confrontation with Norman Osborn and some of his Dark Avengers and Thunderbolts. Eden created a portal to teleport them back to base, sealing it so that their pursuers couldn’t follow. However, he was unprepared for the enchanted might of the God of War, and Ares forced open the portal against Eden’s will. This led to the destruction of the Secret Warriors’ current base, but Eden managed to teleport them all to a fallback site even with the invading H.A.M.M.E.R. soldiers getting in the way. [Secret Warriors (1st series) #7-9]

Matters accelerated when a third faction entered the war between Fury and Hydra – Leviathan, an extremist faction of the Soviet intelligence network, hibernating for decades. Fury began making calls Daisy didn’t agree with (such as dismissing their squad member Sebastian for being a liability), and cracks started to show in the Caterpillar team. [Secret Warriors (1st series) #13-15] Open war broke out between Hydra and Leviathan, and Fury wanted to bring them both down permanently. He brought the Secret Warriors to an orbital station called Heaven’s Hell, circling the planet over Hydra’s main base of operations, Gehenna. The plan was for Eden to teleport them in, set a mountain-breaker bomb to bury the entire installation, then bug out. The entire op was supposed to be over in under two minutes, but J.T. had been compromised by Hydra, and Baron Strucker knew they were coming. Eden was targeted just as the bomb was activated, knocking him unconscious and removing the team’s exit strategy. [Secret Warriors (1st series) #20]

Eden did not regain consciousness, and the entire mission fell to disaster. Alexander and J.T. both died at Gehenna, with Nick Fury personally killing J.T. for his betrayal. Sebastian returned (having been trained in secret by Fury’s ally John Garrett all this time), and provided the team with a new opening to depart, but the Secret Warriors were broken. Eden had to be kept in a medically induced coma because of his injuries, and Daisy couldn’t continue on after learning J.T. betrayed them. [Secret Warriors (1st series) #21-23] Fury finished the war himself, crippling Hydra and Leviathan before matters came to a close. At the same time, his allies in Washington had used the crisis to negotiate the funding of S.H.I.E.L.D. again, replacing H.A.M.M.E.R. which had recently crumbled. Eden eventually recovered from his coma and had returned to training with Gateway when Daisy came for him. Fury disappeared again, leaving her in control of his teams and assets, his legacy to forge a new S.H.I.E.L.D. [Secret Warriors (1st series) #28]

Despite his initial recruitment, Eden did not remain with the new S.H.I.E.L.D. He felt like his attempt at chasing heroism had gone poorly, and cost him some friends. However, the time came

when Captain America and Iron Man arrived in Kata Tjuta. They were looking to build an Avengers Machine, larger than any previous attempt, a team capable of handling all possible threats to the Earth and its people. Impressed and curious, Eden came aboard. Taking the codename “Manifold” for the first time, he held to his heritage by using a spear as a personal weapon and to direct his power. Acting as the Avengers’ deployment specialist, his first mission brought the team to a garden on Mars. The Gardeners, a “System” created by the ancient Builders, used the red planet as a staging ground to remake Earth using “origin bombs.” [Avengers (5th series) #1-3]

Eden’s horizons continued to expand dramatically while fighting on the Avengers’ level. He confronted a space fleet alongside the Shi’ar Imperial Guard, teleporting invaders into each other to wreck their ships. Another Builders’ System produced Nightmask of the White Event, and Manifold clashed his space-folding abilities with that glyph-wielder’s. When an Omega Flight team was lost in Regina, Saskatchewan while investigating one of the origin bomb sites, Eden and the Avengers were called in for a rescue mission. Nothing else could penetrate the dome surrounding the origin bomb site, but Manifold could bring Agent Michaud and the Avengers through because Michaud “needed” to be there and find his daughter, Validator. [Avengers (5th series) #5-10]

Another origin bomb site started acting up in Perth, Australia and Manifold transported the Avengers there to confront the insect-like manifestations. However, he was then recruited by Captain Universe for a greater mission. The Universe herself had joined the Avengers for reasons of her own, but she was damaged and therefore didn’t always make sense. She brought Eden to Galador to help him understand the scope of the Builders’ threat, which was approaching Earth. Manifold indeed saw how the Builder planet-killers could potentially annihilate entire worlds, and he brought the Universe’s message back to the Avengers. In Perth, he found the team being assaulted by Superia and the scientists of A.I.M., and quickly dispersed the science-terrorists. After Eden’s report, Captain America and Iron Man saw fit to expand the Avengers Machine, adding the powerful but unknown quantities of Ex Nihilo and Abyss of the Garden and Nightmask and Starbrand of the White Event to the Avengers, in anticipation of facing the Builders. [Avengers (5th series) #14-17]

As the Builders advanced on Earth, Manifold and the Avengers journeyed into the stars to join the Galactic Council in opposing the enemy fleet. Eden fought in the Battle of the Corridor, helped coordinate a rescue mission when half their team was captured near a singularity, and guided away teams to seize control of Builder planet-killers to turn them against the arrogant conquerors. The Builders were defeated when the Universe herself confronted her wayward children. The Avengers turned home, only to discover Thanos had invaded Earth in their absence. A shell-shocked Eden received little comfort from Captain America and Captain Marvel, who gave him a “good soldier” speech. Thor, God of Thunder, saw Manifold’s uncertainty, and gave a different speech. He told Eden Fesi of the glory of warriors doing great deeds which would be remembered in song for generations untold. Spurned on by Thor’s words, Manifold led the retaking of the Peak station for S.W.O.R.D. as the Avengers kicked the invaders off their planet. [Infinity crossover]

What Captain Universe had warned him about wasn’t stopped with the Builders, though. The universe itself was degrading and, with it, Eden’s connection to the universe. That connection was what allowed a Manifold to fold space properly and, without it, Eden’s teleporting was becoming erratic or failing entirely. He communed with the Universe in the Dreamtime to find answers. Captain Universe brought Eden and her host Tamara to an Incursion site outside the universe they knew. Both were powerless in this new reality, but Eden was still a fighter and kept them alive facing against the Sidera Maris. By observing the universe from the outside like this, Manifold regained his bearings and was able to return to action. [Avengers World #5]

Eden loved being an Avenger, but he still held strong loyalties to his first team. Daisy Johnson was on the outs with S.H.I.E.L.D. after some bad plays as director, and her mind was vulnerable to a remote memory-wipe by Reverie tech. In order to keep ahead of Maria Hill, she asked Manifold to transport her to one of Tony Stark’s memory back-up facilities in secret. Eden helped her as Daisy managed to record 62% of her top secret memories before Hill detected her and triggered the mind-wipe. [Secret Avengers (2nd series) #9]

Battle lines were drawn when the Incursion crisis was uncovered. Universes were crashing together with Earth as the juncture point, leading to a Devil’s choice between destroying one Earth to end the Incursion or seeing both universes annihilated when the Earths struck. Iron Man and his Illuminati had kept the Incursions secret for months, even wiping the morally superior Captain America’s memory to prevent him from interfering in their work. Cap regained his memories just as the Illuminati were finally forced to destroy an occupied Earth to save their own, and the crisis became public knowledge. A furious Steve Rogers merged the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. to hunt down the Illuminati as war criminals, but Eden and many Avengers quit instead of hunting their friends for Cap’s vendetta.

Manifold spent some time in space, and learned that space itself was compressing due to the relentless Incursions afflicting other universes. Sunspot made the lateral move of buying out A.I.M. and turning his organization of scientists into a third-party of new Avengers, with Eden as one of his supporters. They helped negotiate a détente between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Illuminati just as the crisis reached its final stretch. Less than two dozen universes remained when Yellowjacket of the Illuminati returned from a long-term research mission to discover the origin of the Incursions. Pym had learned the mythical Ivory Kings behind the Sidera Maris and Mapmakers were the Beyonders, and the Builders had assembled across several universes to confront them. In particular, Pym described to Eden how the Builders used a Manifold to guide them to their target, for all Manifolds had an inherent quality for moving people and things where they “needed to go.” [Time Runs Out]

With this principle as a starting point, Manifold became a player in the Illuminati’s final plan to save something of the human race. Reed Richards, T’Challa and the others intended to populate a life raft with scientists of varied disciplines who could potentially restart humanity in whatever emerged after the final collapse of the multiverse. The last Incursion began before the life raft was filled, and it became a race against the clock. T’Challa rigged Manifold to a machine that would harness his power as a failsafe, guiding those who were “needed” into the life raft if they couldn’t make it on their own. When Black Widow and Courier-One were shot down over Manhattan by the invading S.H.I.E.L.D. of another world, Manifold became the last option. Eden’s power, guided by need and instinct alone, began pulling heroes from the battlefield and transporting them into the life raft as it launched. Eden Fesi refused to leave the machine even after the raft was gone, using its boosting effect on his power to continue saving people until there was, literally, nothing left to save. The Manifold of Earth-616 stayed behind and died with his planet in order to save at least one more person. [Secret Wars #1]