Conrad Wozniak was born in New Orleans. That was his first mistake. His second mistake was having a deadbeat dad who skipped out on his unwed mom (her name is Ginny) before he was even born, although he overheard Grandpa (mom's dad, of course) saying once in a hushed voice not meant for young Conrad ears that Ginny could never be sure who the dad was exactly. Strangely, it was overhearing this news and immediately processing it at a tender gradeschool age as Something He Should Keep To Himself that taught Conrad one of his first major life lessons: Keep your stupid trap shut. Equally as strange, Conrad has since lived a life punctuated by instances of violating this exact rule.
He did what he was supposed to do and graduated high school. Conrad was average. He played volleyball in school and saxophone in the band. To this day Conrad has his old sax that he worked to pay for in high school, even if he can't play it worth a damn. It just looks sexy. After high school he didn't have the money or grades for college, so Conrad went into the Army. It was in the Army that he earned the nickname Con Man, which in retrospect should've been an obvious one. It had nothing to do with Conrad's personality and everything to do with his first name starting with Con. In some cases a name defines a person, though, and with Conrad this ended up being partially the case. There's an old saying in all military organizations that there is only one thief in that organization. Nobody knows who that thief is, but everybody's trying to catch him. Conrad knew who the thief was though, because it was him.
Conrad's job in the Army was actually one of the cooler ones. He joined the infantry, thinking it'd be the best way to get out and see the world and do things. Unfortunately for him his particular unit never saw much other than the backside of training and didn't do squat. What few operations other than war occurred (because no wars occurred) did so with the participation of units other than Private Wozniak's. It's not like Conrad wanted to kick in doors or get shot at, or shoot at other people. He just wanted excitement. He was young. It was about the time he turned 21 that Conrad discovered another kind of excitement.
Quite by accident, Conrad discovered he was vocally talented in ways that did not compute for normal people. Most people are able to talk in a falsetto if they try. Very few are able to do it where only dogs can hear. It was from what he realized was a form of superpower that Conrad began experimenting with his voice, and true to form he abused it for his own amusement. Discovering one can perfectly mimic any voice and then convincingly throw it is only half as good as realizing you can do one better and mimic any sound at all. This of course leads to intensifying sounds, and then to finding out that you can dampen sounds all together. The more Conrad played with it over the years, the scarier it got. What at first was a prankster's delight metamorphosed into an ability that almost seemed too powerful to handle. Though he only did it when he was certain nobody could see or know, Conrad discovered he could obliterate brittle objects through sonic resonance and even set specific spacial boundaries past which sound could not pass. This evolution of skill happened gradually though, and didn't reach the scary level until a few years after Conrad's enlistment in the Army was up.
By the time Conrad was well into making himself Super Larvell Jones he was trying to get a new job. He didn't want to go home to New Orleans and mom, who of course never moved away, so he went where everybody else goes to be societally marginalized, exploited, and proud of it: New York City. Conrad's first job out of the service was at a Taco Bell. It didn't get any better after that. It got more interesting after he became a used car salesman, but it didn't get better. A guy just can't make a living doing dumb jobs like that these days, especially in New York, so he took to supplementing his income. See, car alarms are only effective if someone can hear them. When you can dampen sounds to utter silence, it's nothing to bust a window with a brick, clean the vehicle out, and leave without anyone hearing a peep. It's even better when it's some rich snooty jerk's ride and you just know he's been evil and has it coming. Alas, controlling the forces of sound does not erase fingerprints, nor does it eliminate witnesses who see you in the act. The miracle is that Conrad wasn't fired from his auto sales job after the first arrest, but he was after the second. And of course his information was taken down by the cops, including the unique abilities he had.
Having a criminal record puts a huge ding in your marketability for getting a job, so Conrad got in deeper to make ends meet. He just became a better crook, although he kept it all down to theft. After a while Con got to be great at boosting cars, jimmying open doors, picking locks, even picking pockets. There were and are much more talented thieves out there, but the Con Man's special powers gave him an edge. He did still get caught now and then because nobody's perfect, but it got to where he'd go to jail, get magistrated and released on bond, and just never turn up for the court date. Really it's like almost every other criminal out there does it anyway. He survived pretty comfortably really, always in the parts of town that were not too shady. Conrad didn't like being around the dangerous crooks, because when it came to beating up and hurting people or selling dope, that was just crossing a line.
In 2006 when the bomb went off, Conrad was cooling his heels in jail. Now he'd known for years about his own powers, and thankfully was covert enough about using them that they hadn't become a public issue before. Suddenly politics changed regarding those now termed Evolved, and when he was next handled by the police Conrad found himself registered quite without his own consent. Apparently being arrested gets you registered as an added bonus. Who knew? Also of course Conrad never kept up with his registration. Who the hell did these bureaucrats think they were anyway, trying to track him down all day? It was just too fascist and anyway it's not like Con didn't mind breaking a law here or there. General resentment over the whole register-everybody policy plus its ominous implications eventually made Conrad a ready recruit for PARIAH. They've made good use of his skills, since thieves are pretty popular in semi-terrorist (or just plain ol' terrorist) groups. After a while it became apparent to Con that PARIAH was going too far, and he wanted out. Once that out presented itself, he joined the members of PARIAH who split and became Phoenix. They're a lot less bitter a pill to swallow, his kind of lawlessness.
