NATHAN LEWIS
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
Nathan Quentin Lewis
{ AGE }
24
{ PROFESSION }
Ex-Cop, currently a government agent in training
{ FACE CLAIM }
Ryan Kelley
6'
{ WEIGHT }
157 lbs
{ SCARS }
Minor scars all over his arms and legs, but none too noticeable except for his appendicitis scar. He has "Semper Fi" tattooed on his upper back.
{ DISLIKES }
Because of his perfectionist nature, he isn't fond of mistakes. Even the smallest of faults can have him sulking for hours on end and he is especially affected by bad parkers for no apparent reason. As a pacifist, he despises unnecessary violence and conflict. Although he can be morally flexible when needed, Nathan is adamant about maintaining the Law and any who breaks it to the detriment of many will earn his disapproval.This is particularly obvious in the way he sees mutants. His upbringing has taught him to respect those who fight for the people and he will not tolerate those that shows disrespect towards them, but he has yet to acknowledge mutants are a group worthy of respect even if he does acknowledge that some are making good use of their powers. Too many wrongs are still outshining the good. Not to mention that he still feels extremely uncomfortable around them. This has led to subconscious self-loathing which in turn has made him quite reckless as he doesn't value himself as much as others.
{ FEARS }
>Water: As ironic as it is, Nathan has become afraid of water after being tossed into the sea in the middle of a storm. More specifically, he fears drowning so small amounts of water such as a cup-full will have no effect on him, but he tends to avoid ponds and even kiddie pools when he can. He hasn't gone to the beach ever since he almost drowned despite having been an avid surfer when he was younger.
>Ghosts:Despite having become an agnostic in the years following his time in the military, Nathan has kept his belief in the supernatural. He had always been superstitious, even as a child, and still believes in the existence of most cryptids. He believes that if it cannot be proven to not exist, there will always be a slim chance that it does exist and that is applicable to ghosts. Ever since his powers have manifested themselves, he has been able to feel shock waves telepathically through what water is placed around him. He still hasn't associated those shock waves to water though and believes he is either going insane and imagining things or he is being haunted by some poltergeist.
Other lesser fears include the fear of losing those he cherishes and the fear of failure. He also fears turning into one of those power crazy mutants who abuse of their powers to harm others.
Nathan is an optimist that can only see the good in people. Despite having taken part in an active albeit short military campaign and having spent a few years hauling the worst of the worst into jail during his time as a cop, he has still retained some of his childhood innocence and naivety. That is not to say that he is without snark or wit, but he is a very generous and open-minded person that can be a bit too trusting. He can be a big child at times and gets along particularly well with children. His fatherly instincts has made him extremely protective of them and he will go to great length to ensure that they keep their innocence. It isn't uncommon for him to give second or third chances to law breakers, but he is merciless when youths are victimized.
Despite his faults, he is a responsible and reliable individual when he gets down to business even if he has oftentimes been deemed too soft and reckless. As someone who has grown up around gun totting alpha males, he can be quite competitive if the right buttons are pressed and can be quite the perfectionist though the latter is more a result of the unhealthy relationship he had with his father and siblings. Mistakes are associated to disappointment and guilt and can make him particularly gloomy. It's a far leap from his usual positive demeanor and some have told him that he needs to forgive himself as easily as he forgives others.
He is still quite new to all this superpower business and can be easily overwhelmed by the more creative displays of powers. His view on individuals with power is still very ambivalent, but from the little he had been exposed to, it is leaning towards negative. This has led to some self-loathing issue even if he is not aware of it and he still naively believes that he can return to being normal one day. As idealistic as he is, he is capable of ignoring his conscience if push comes to shove. It will hurt, but he is very good at compartmentalizing his feelings, essentially numbing out any troubling thoughts that may slow him down or cloud his judgement. His way of coping with guilt usually involves abundant alcohol though.
Nate is the oldest of four children. He and his siblings grew up as military brats, travelling from one military town to another based one where their father would be stationed. It was a nomadic lifestyle that exposed him to many different cultures and an experience from which his optimism and open-mindedness is drawn from. When he was ten, however, his mother divorced his father after growing tired of the unstable life a military man could only provide. This put a damper on their family's mobility for, while there were plenty of support and services offered to single military parents, it would be too much of a drag to ship around four underage children all across the globe.
Thus, his father was forced to take on domestic jobs. The man would still be absent the majority of the time, but his children would finally become sedentary. As the eldest, Nathan would shoulder the responsibility of caring for and protecting his siblings when father was not around. He wasn't exactly the best parental figure, but was just enough to keep his family out of trouble, something that he had always considered a miracle once his younger siblings hit puberty.
When he was in his late teens and early adulthood, his father was crippled while on a mission defending one of the government's facilities. Everything had been top secret and all important details were omitted from the report. If he were honest, Nathan had been glad to have been kept in the dark after seeing what had become of his father. Half of the man's body had been mangled in a way that should not have been humanely possible and he would be haunted by gory nightmares for the next few months.
The veteran took the blow much better than any of them had anticipated it, but that is not to say that he had not become an unpleasant bitter old man that would be constantly barking demands from his bed. The return of a figure of authority didn't sit well with a household full of rebellious teens and Nathan would struggle to keep their family together. His siblings newly found independence implied that Nathan could dedicate much more time to taking care of his father, but it also meant that they would constantly get into trouble and, while he was no stranger to fatigue, it did greatly affect him on an emotional level. During this time, his youngest sibling, at the tender age of 14, would find himself moved to a youth detention center after getting caught with the wrong crowd. This was a sort of wake up call for the Lewis household and Janice, the second child would become more cooperative, taking over household chores just in time for Nathan to enlist into the USMC.
Their father had finally come to accept his situation and had opted to urge Nathan to follow his footsteps. It was as though the veteran was hoping to live out his ambitions through his eldest son and would constantly push him to excel as a soldier. Without realizing it, the old man would vent his frustration on Nathan's siblings back home whenever he received news that his son did poorly. This was a good enough incentive for Nathan to lose himself in his training until he became a respectable recruit. It was an unhealthy relationship and Nathan's siblings would eventually leave the nest because of it, leaving the crippled old man to fend for himself. It worried Nathan because he had been about to be dispatched oversea, but to the surprise of many, his father, someone who had lost motility in both legs and left arm, simply laughed it off, claiming that he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself and that Nate should stop being such a "pussy." Against his father's wishes, Nathan still arranged for a competent caretaker to move in with his old man before he left the country.
Six months into his dispatch, he received startling news from his siblings: the caretaker he had hired had been brutally murdered and their father had vanished. Worried beyond belief, Nathan hurried to finish his term and returned back home to follow the investigation, but they came up with nothing and the trail had gone cold. To his horror, his father had actually become the suspect in the homicide. It made sense, of course, the man was ex-military which meant he knew how to kill and avoid detection... if one ignored the fact that he was...let's say...unable to move three out of four limbs?
It infuriated him, but he swallowed his indignation and cooperated with the officials. They were, after all, the ones best equipped to find his father. He will worry about clearing his name after he was found. In the meantime, he applied to work as a cop to get to know the system better and gain the resources and connection he needed to start an investigation of his own. The current case against his father made things a tad bit more complicated, but his exemplary track record in the USMC managed to win over the authorities.
For a few years, he would spend all his free time looking for his father. Janice was of much help to him for she had been hired as an intern in the FBI. Although all of her moves were monitored, years of eluding their father's controlling parenting had made her extremely skilled at avoiding detection. She may not be a fighter, but she was particularly eloquent and capable of subtracting the information she wanted out of people without them even noticing. It was through her and her connections that Nathan learned of enhanced humans and started connecting the dots together. The last place their father had been assigned to before his unfortunate accident had been near one of the locations where these mutants had been sighted. He wasn't sure what his father's connection to these freaks of nature was beyond that, but he was determined to find out.
He and his sister would go a little too far in one of their private investigation and would be attacked by rogue mutants thinking they were aiming to turn them in to the US government. These mutants had been hiding on a cargo ship en route for Southeast Asia where they hoped to be able to escape the hunters chasing them. Both he and her sister were thrown overboard when a storm struck. It was then that Nathan's powers first manifested themselves and saved their lives. The two siblings promised one another to never mention it again and, much to his chagrin, Janice asked for a break from their search. The event had rattled her to the bone. While she was in no way a desk-bound damsel in distress, she had just realized how dangerous powerful mutants were and needed some time to process all that.
Losing his sister's support proved to be very inconvenient for she had been the one with the connections and resources that had gotten them this far. For a few months, Nate would see himself turn around in circles without any relevant new lead. Just as his frustration reached its peak, he was accosted by the military. They had found out about his powers and had cornered him for a talk. They recognized him as an asset and offered him training in exchange of his service in hunting down stray mutants. The idealist in him refused at first, but they showed him photographic evidence of his father, healthy and runnin', leading groups of mutants that were ransacking military bases with impossible ease. Pieces of the puzzle slowly clicked together; the reality was that it was well past the time to save his father and his name. As the government agents so eloquently put it, "It's either you who takes him down or one of our cold bullets." It was also a thinly veiled ultimatum and an offer he could not refuse.
Biting back his morals, Nathan accepted to undergo both physical and mental training. Before that though, they had needed to study his powers. His control over water fascinated the researchers and it could be said that their eagerness to poke at him with strange tools was what delayed his indoctrination. He was in no way the tool his superiors had planned him to be when the Shadow Isle forced the government's hand. He would be sent as backup to an Agent 16. The briefing would be...brief, but Nathan had learned that was usually the case when you had low clearance and were working with top government official. It didn't mean he was very happy about the setup though. It rubbed him the wrong way. How was he supposed to work with someone if the only thing he knew was his codename? Nevertheless, he would find it surprisingly easy to work with Agent 16. There was an air of familiarity about the gruff soldier, it was almost as though they had met before.
Esoteric Water Manipulation
- Manipulation covers levitation and phase changes of anything that is H2O (dihydrogen monoxyde). This ability will still work even with impurities in the water. He will simply be manipulating the water molecules around said impurities. Basic thermodynamics will influence the ease with which Nathan can transform the water at hand. In other words, if exposed to much heat, the ice he forms will have trouble staying in that form and, should he be in a place with subzero temperatures, keeping water in its vaporous form will be near impossible. The range of his control so far is limited to around 200 feet. The closer the body of water is, the more control he has and the easier it is for him to handle water with minute precision. This is an extremely an versatile ability and can be very deadly should it be properly used with knowledge of anatomy and physiology or should it grow stronger, something that is possible based on Nathan's emotions.
The "Esoteric" part of his power is where it gets complicated and is the part that defies sciences.
-Liquid surveillance & communication: Nathan has noticed that he can sense shock waves rippling through nearby bodies of water. It's akin to a 6th sense, like a nagging poke at the back of his mind. This can be used against him because he does not have the control to shut down this power yet. This aspect of his power can eventually evolve into tactile sensory and even empathy, but he still has a long way to go.
-Healing & soothing: The water he controls can be used to close small wounds and mend fractures it rests on. It can also act as a numbing agent and can sooth inflammation. This is mainly affected by his mood; he will find it impossible to heal or sooth others if he is feeling restless or angry. Applicable should the water be in solid or gaseous form.
-Serenity and Anxiety inducement: Another sub-ability influenced by his mood. Nathan can induce a state of trance-like serenity or paranoid anxiety in individuals in direct skin to skin contact with the water he manipulates. Applicable should the water be in solid or gaseous form.
-Water Mimicry: At the snap of a finger, Nathan will eventually be able to turn his whole body into water and shift it back at will. This ability can be as deadly as it is convenient for him. For one, whenever he transforms, all of his body does it at the same time. In other words, if he's lost track of a few mL's of water that once used to be part of his body, he may shift back with a few missing toes or organs. He can remain in water form for only so long, after which, he will cease to exist. Being frozen is the equivalent of being dead. On the bright side, it can be a life saver if he ever loses a limb in his human form. To reattach it, he will simply need to shift into water, reconnect with the puddle of water and voila! Well, if he's not too in much pain and can actually concentrate on the deed that is.
{ STRENGTHS }
His powers aside, Nathan has received basic training in a multitude of combat oriented fields as a cop and as a soldier. This includes close quarter combat and weapon handling where he specialized in sniping. He actually has a license to carry a concealed gun although he would much prefer if he never needed to resort to that. He also took on the role of a medic for a short while and knows how to administer first aid and manipulate the equipment necessary for it. He was taught how to drive military vehicles ranging from tank to helicopters and prides himself in being capable of parking them perfectly.
Relatively fit.
{ WEAKNESSES }
He can be harmed physically like any other human and, unfortunately, cannot breathe underwater.
Has become insomniac over the past few months.
Hilariously weak against alcohol.