When US Army Sergeant Nathan Adair was thirty-three years old, he and his wife, Avery, had a son named Nicholas. It was around this time, due to the perspective and pride accumulated over his career, he grew resentful toward the parahumans of the United States because they did not serve in the military. Retiring at the age of thirty-eight, he took his family and moved into a quiet corner of Nebraska in which he formed his own militia, with expectations of privacy so stringent that it bordered on cultism. The objective was to keep an eye on parahumans, even more meticulously than the federal and state programs. As for whether that was actually the result was inconclusive and complicated, to say the least.
When Nathan became aware of Nicholas' parahuman status, he bribed the relevant physicians to falsify his documentation so that he was legally considered well within the spectrum of biological normalcy. At that, they ran some tests and discovered that his eight year old son was biologically predisposed to become the ultimate surveillance asset, thanks to his inherent ability to piggyback the eyeballs of other people. Nic was then trained as the first junior private in Nathan's militia, being run through the equivalent of basic training and then some, all before he ever hit his double digits.
In spite of the pedigree for action, he was mostly deployed on missions to somewhat-literally "get eyes on" various parahumans in the area without the targets even becoming aware. Nicholas complied and always succeeded. No one ever demonstrated an understanding of his true function and seemingly few ever seemed to have noticed his antennae. Periodically Nathan and his fourteen man platoon would assassinate a parahuman they suspected of being disrupted or being particularly menacing. Nicholas watched all of it, participating and broadcasting the shared eyesight to the entire militia at times. He occasionally saw parahumans beaten down as though he were doing it with his own hands. Around the time that he was twelve, Nicholas had become complicit in several parahuman abductions, the victims of which were housed and restrained in the militia's recently annexed holding facility.
Around this time, Nicholas grew to understand and became somewhat calloused before his nightmares began. In order to cope, he began binge drinking. This illuminated his special relationship with alcohol: It totally decimated the tissue that allowed him to transmit and receive visuals. This proved, obviously, problematic due to its neutering of the essential function of his father's unit as a whole. Therefore, he was severely reprimanded every time alcohol was found in his possession.
Though it had been legitimately clandestine and, most succinctly, extremely effective in its operations, the militia met its end around the time Nicholas had become fifteen years old. There was a raid on the compound and the majority of the militia was arrested and charged with domestic terrorism, presumably dropped in Guantanamo Bay or a similar facility. They had mercy on Nicholas, however, due to his young age and fragile state. He was entered into constant therapy, and occasionally dosed with alcohol to prevent him from redeveloping his abilities. After threatening to sue his caretakers when he came of age, his treatment was stopped.
Nicholas Adair has recently turned seventeen years old and has been sober for 593 days. His antennae are three inches long, less than half of what they were before he initially turned to alcohol at his peak, when he was thirteen, and he has been deposited onto The Promise in an effort to further his rehabilitation and enable him to be a contributing member of society.
//Abilities:Superhuman Ability | Eyejacking
Nicholas is anatomically distinct from other humans on account of the retractable antenna that have grown in his brain and protrude through his skull. The base of his antennae are located in his occipital lobe and penetrate through a pair of parallel foramen, each being about two centimeters thick, along his lambdoid suture. That is to say that his antennae can pop out of the back of his skull above his neck, both telescoping and by pumping large quantities of blood into them, in the visual processing part of the brain. The antennae can nest all of the way inside his skull, or alternatively they can be extended to a maximum length of three inches at present, though they had used to be longer.
His antennae are extremely dense with nerve endings and are sensitive, much like whiskers, and can detect a sudden change in the wind, for example, but are more generally outstanding because they primarily function as receptors for a specific sort of electromagnetic wave. The other main function of his antennae is that they can release an invisible cloud of parasitic cells that can, if ingested by another human, take root within the brain and begin constructing an organ dedicated to transmitting and receiving the visual output of the host along the frequency that Nicholas' antennae are attuned to.
What this means in practice is that Nicholas' can see through the eyes of the people he's infected as long as they are in range of his antennae. He also has the option to allow them to see through his eyes or through the eyes of anyone else within range of his local infected network. Though it straddles the line between skill and superpower, he can use the input to create a very rough facsimile of a live overhead video feed, assuming he has some kind of an idea about the relative position all of his input is coming from.
Limitation(s) | First and foremost, he does not have telepathy. He can only transmit live visual input, though he is vulnerable to being affected by optical illusions seen by one of his transmitters by merit of piggybacking off of their perception.
If the person ingesting the virus has a particularly strong immune system, the virus may be deterred entirely. Though on average, it takes about twelve hours, four if asleep, for a person in average health to begin manufacturing the transmission organ, assuming that they are not actively starving to death. For those with a particularly healthy diet and plenty of nutrients to spare, particularly if they eat "brain foods", then they will likely have a functioning organ in as little as six hours, two if they happen to be asleep.
The range of effectiveness on a fledgling transmitter is largely limited by how long they have been infected. One thing to note is that his reception is crippled if there are concrete walls, or anything similarly dense, separating him from a transmitter. For a transmitting organ to fully mature, it typically takes two weeks, at which point it can transmit to Nicholas while he is actively receiving at a maximum of 1,000 feet within line of sight. Beyond that, signal decay is rapid and largely becomes unreliable. From the moment that an organ is initially operational, he has a working range of about 100 feet.
In addition to juggling his own sight, he can reliably keep track of about six other people's transmissions comfortably, simultaneously, though by his estimate he'll be capable of actively networking with as many as twenty people at once in a years time. If he's not paying attention to a transmission, he's still technically sensing it though he wouldn't really be perceiving it, most of the time. It's very easy for him to lose track and become distracted amidst all of the simultaneous input however and, for that reason, he is especially prone to jumpscares.
Weakness(es) | His kryptonite is alcohol. Alcohol disintegrates his transmission organ and causes rapid shrinkage and deterioration. That is to say, if he were to drink an entire fifth of vodka in a single night, he would have reset his entire development back to ground zero. While that is unlikely to happen, it's more of a problem because the people he infects with his virus can be "cured" by drinking or otherwise ingesting alcohol. Due to the fact that their transmission organs aren't nearly so integral to their being and usually haven't existed very long, it is extremely likely that they will be periodically diminished if the subject has a casual drink.
Otherwise, his antennae are extremely sensitive and have an extreme concentration of nerve endings. If they were struck while they were extended from his head, the pain would be debilitating and any impact on his occipital lobe would be even more likely to render him unconscious than it would any other person.
//Skills:Combat Training | Thanks to his time in his father's militia, he has been thoroughly prepared for hand to hand combat against both armed and unarmed opponents of biological normalcy.
Firearm Training | Nicholas is an abnormally precise shot with guns, obviously owing to the usual availability of enhanced perspective. He prefers rifles but will essentially work with anything he has.
Spatial Awareness | His access to multiple perspectives at once has generally heightened his spatial awareness and coordination, essentially training him to be extremely precise when performing tasks such as balancing or drawing.
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