Nexus

Nexus, aka Caleb Winters, is a dimensional manipulator, artist, and sometimes-superhero.

Description
A man in his 20s with mid-length white hair, unnaturally pale skin and eyes, and a tuft of beard which he dyes various bright primary colors. He's 5'10" and about 210 pounds with a gymnast's build. He has a brightly colored bird tattooed on the inside of his wrist and a two-inch long scar on his neck. He wears four small stud earrings in his left ear (ruby, emerald, diamond, and sapphire), a reddish-silver pendant hanging from his neck, and an irridescent bracelet on his left wrist.

Less obviously visible, depending on what he's wearing, are a cobalt-blue nipple ring, several rather nasty-looking scars all over his body, and several tattoos: an anatomically correct heart on his right bicep, a bronze half-mask of a woman's face with an enigmatic smile on his left bicep, a brightly colored bird on his left wrist.

History/Origin
The following is public record:
 * In the late 2030s, Caleb parents worked for Universal Power Systems on an experimental reactor that tapped into another dimension. Caleb and his younger brother Scott were subsequently born with profound birth defects. The Winters sued UPS. UPS fired and blackballed them.
 * In 2047 Dr. Lawrence Furmano became Caleb's physician and ran experiments on him.
 * In 2048 the Winters family won the UPS suit, receiving a multimillion-dollar settlement, and moved to Colonial Bay.
 * In 2049 Furmano sent Caleb to a juvenile detention center on fake charges.
 * In 2052 Norma and Alan developed cancer and died. This is blamed on the same reactor exposure that caused their children's birth defects.
 * In 2054 something attacked Caleb's detention center. Police investigated, discovered what Furmano had done, and cleared Caleb's (falsified) criminal record.
 * Between 2054 and 2056 Caleb attended Colonial Bay High School. He was generally considered a delinquent.
 * In 2056 Caleb left Colonial Bay to attend a little-known art school in London, receiving his GED there.
 * There's no record of his doing anything at all between 2057 and 2065. This is unexplained and mysterious.
 * In 2065 Caleb returned to Colonial Bay and set up shop as a sculptor.

The following is NOT public record:
 * In 2054 Caleb developed superpowers, went berserk, and trashed the facility.
 * Later, as "Midnight," he helped found the superhero team New Blood.
 * In 2057, Caleb was sucked into another dimension. He spent years wandering from one dimension to another, until 2065.
 * He re-established his life in Colonial Bay, creating a new superhero identity as Nexus. (That said, he doesn't work especially hard at keeping his identity secret, lots of people know, and it's not too hard to find out.)
 * His old nemesis Furmano is still around, and still looking to experiment on him, and has found some powerful new allies in the villain organization Next Generation.

Powers
Caleb's essential ability is to manipulate dimensions; all of his powers are applications of this ability, and anything that drains, suppresses, or otherwise interferes with that ability will affect all his powers equally. This is represented by the Unified Limitation where applicable, but applies more generally.

Specific applications are:


 * Dimension sense: He can perceive dimensional anomalies, events in the corresponding point in the nearest adjacent dimension (see Teleport-xdm below), and his own location in this dimension in both absolute and relative terms.

(anomalies) This includes portals and gates, fixed locations for teleports and other powers with dimensional SFX, objects and beings from other dimensions, and stuff like that.

Analyze is an intuitive sense of what it does.

''Tracking mostly allows him to track dimensonal-SFX teleports to their sources/destination, but can have other uses at GM discretion. Takes a full turn to activate, but he can take other actions in the interim... it just takes a while for the general impression of interdimensionalness to coalesce. (This is mostly to avoid cluttering up combats with GMs describing stuff only to him; this is mostly a noncombat power.)''

(relative locations) This is useful in conjunction with teleportation, allowing him to travel precisely 101043.2 meters in that direction to appear next to an item he previously saw, but is not nearly as reliable as a memorized location.


 * Displace: He can teleport nearby things to some other location, not travelling with them.

''(willing) This is bought as "recipient controls" because the target has to be willing to be sent there, but for SFX reasons Cale nevertheless has to know the destination somehow.

''(martial) He doesn't throw the target normally, he teleports them a few meters away, adjusting their velocity in the process.

''(precise) This represents him doing things like teleporting objects into and out of people's pockets, juggling objects by changing their location/velocity, teleporting wires from place to place, looking and poking directly at the guts of security systems, and generally pulling clever fussy little power stunts.


 * Phase strike: His attack can phase past/through defenses to strike especially vulnerable targets, bypass defenses altogether, or strike normally intangible targets. Note that these are mostly bought as Blast, but are actually H2H strikes through a portal.

''(NND) He partially materializes his hand inside the target's body. This is blocked by having an especially dense body (e.g. Density Increase or similar special effect).


 * Portal: he can open small limited-use portals allowing him to strike and perceive targets at a distance.

''Note that Portal (clairvoyant) and (telescopic) can work together; when they do, there's only one portal actually created.


 * Shift Mass: He can shift most of his mass out of this dimension altogether, making him difficult to perceive and/or interact with.

''(martial) This is bought as a HTH maneuver but is a power use.

''(partial) Using this power sometimes prevents Cale from using certain attacks. This represents limits on what his control bracelet can simultaneously manage (cough, cough). Bought as a -0 "Limited by balance" Limitation because getting points back for following the rules feels cheesy. Specifically: 1) If Shunt (DamRed) > 25% AND Shift Mass (partial) > 2 levels:	Cannot attack at all.

2) If Shift Mass (partial) > 2 levels	Cannot use High DC attacks (Phase Strike NND)

3) If Shunt (DamRed) > 25% AND Shift Mass (partial) > 0 levels	Cannot use Med or High DC attacks (Phase Strike AP & affects desolid & NND)


 * Shift position: He can change (or anchor) his position within a dimension by force of will. There's no propulsion or force or anything, he just moves (or doesn't).


 * Shunt: He can teleport some of the force of attacks away from him.

''(damred) Using this power sometimes prevents Cale from using certain attacks. See Shift Mass above for details.


 * Summon: He can teleport something to him.

''(object) He has no way of knowing or controlling which _specific_ object he gets or where it comes from... it might not even come from this dimension. But he can specify the general class of object, what it looks like, how it works, etc. He can summon a high-end laptop, or a chicken, or a chocolate ice cream sundae, or a statue of Alexander the Great, etc. As with all Transforms this can't be used to summon things that should cost Character Points, for handwavey reasons, unless a GM allows it for a particular scene. The object eventually disappears... presumably returning to its origin point... when a standard human would have RECed the BODY. He can also get rid of it through a similar portal.

''(outfits) He can change outfits by teleporting new clothes directly onto his body, displacing the old ones. Usually they're clothes he already owns.

''(weapon) Bought as a martial maneuver, but it's really a power; the weapon (or whatever) is teleported from the other person's hand into his.


 * Teleport: He can exit this dimension for an instant, reappearing at some other location.

''(bulk) This also includes unconscious people, 6ed notwithstanding, based on my discussions with Amp.

''(locations) He has 5 fixed locations: his brother Scott, a cabin on a practically inaccessible island in the tropics, the lobby of a Starguard base on the moon, and 2 of his earrings. He has 2 floating locations, which he sets to various things, depending on what he's up to.

''(snapback) Cale does something and then teleports away immediately after doing it... e.g., detonates the bomb and is gone before it explodes, or a half-phase port into the room, grab the hostage and port out. Think of it like a moveby with teleport. He has to set both the trigger and the teleport destination _before_ performing the action.

''(xdm) Once a day, he can with patience travel to the corresponding point in the nearest adjacent dimension. (What dimension is "nearest adjacent" at the time and what is present at the "corresponding" point varies, and is entirely based on GM whim.)


 * Teleport block: He can suppress teleportation (incoming and outgoing) in a 500m radius area. Note that this is a tiny effect magnified through autofire, so even trivial amounts of Power Defense protect against it completely.

He has two magical artifacts he was given by mages during his exile: a bracelet that helps him control his powers, and a pendant that helps him understand and communicate compellingly with people.

Skills/Talents/Perks
Cale has an artistic bent, which he's practiced over the last decade's journey... sometimes for money, sometimes out of boredom, often to stay sane.

He learned a number of thieves' tricks during his ill-spent youth (acrobatics, computer hacking, sleight of hand, stealth, security systems, streetwise). As his teleportation talents developed he's learned to use them to augment some of those skills.

He's travelled through hundreds of different dimensions in the last decade, usually spending no more than a few days in each before moving on. As a consequence he has an almost-completely-uselessly broad knowledge of a lot of different dimensions (AK, Survival). He's also developed some understanding of how dimensions connect (Dimensional Navigation).

In the course of his travels he's lost much of his youthful arrogance, learned the art of gentle persuasion, and developed a certain bad-boy charm that sometimes comes in handy.

He's a competent but mostly untrained fighter, who has learned to use his power to augment his fighting style. Note that most of his "martial arts" are not the usual fighting-skill special effect, they are powers purchased as MA maneuvers.

The legal settlement his family received allows him to not worry about money much.

Personality
In high school Caleb was, to put it bluntly, a punk: rude, boorish, hostile, stubborn, sometimes downright mean, with a profound violent streak and a sometimes-debilitating case of survivor's guilt. His experiences over the last decade or so have taken some of the edge off of that, he's grown up a bit and learned to control himself when needed.

However, at core he remains the same impulsive, often tactless, fiercely loyal young man he always was. He'll pretty much do anything for a friend, however impractical or frankly stupid it might be.

He's seen way too much death in his travels, and would strongly prefer not to see any more of it.

Relations
Although most of Caleb's family is now dead, he retains two brothers: Alex (aka Rebound) and Scott, to whom he is very close. Even outside his immediate family he takes his friendships very seriously, and is loyal to a fault.

Caleb continues to be hunted by Dr. Lawrence Furmano, who wants to use Caleb's interdimensional abilities to power and advance his technologies. Furmano has found some powerful new allies in the villain organization Next Generation.