Characteristics: Name: Raul Lupei Calderón
Aliases: Nighthunter, The Jade Spirit, Agent Hamilton
Identity: Secret
Age: 26
Hair color: Black
Eye color: Green
Birthplace: Chicago
Ethnicity: Half Mexican, half Rumanian
Species: Human
Marital Status: Single
Group Affiliations: Nighthunters tribe, The Telluric
Direct family: Sophia Calderón (mother), Emilian Lupei (father)
Close associates: Quidam (Deceased), Agog, Ocelotl, Amnesty, Cerulean
Known enemies: Domenic Mayer, Frondeur, Afreet, The Crimson Bandit
Memoirs of a brighter life “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard
No great hero is born. Most importantly, there has never been a hero that reached the top by doing it alone. Long before he was Nighthunter, Raul used to be the sidekick of Quidam.
Unlike any of the other heroes of the world, especially his mentor, Raul didn´t fight crime due to a personal tragedy or a freak accident. Raul never had any powers, only the will to carry on fighting to make a positive difference in the world.
The son of two illegal immigrants, he grew up in the streets of Chicago knowing the importance of being there for the lesser fortunate. Raul´s parents were always the moral compass that made him seek the continuous well being of everyone around him. His mother, Sophia, is the greatest role model he ever knew and the one that helped him take the next step into helping the world.
It was this desire that made him create the superhero identity of the Jade Spirit and fight alongside the Outsider in Gothic. For years, the two of them worked together behind the spotlight, more of a spooky tale for heroes and criminals alike than actual superheroes but everything changed when Quidam was found murdered in the middle of a street without any clue about his killer.
Baptism by death "When I discover who I am, I’ll be free."
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man )
Gothic was shocked by the death of Quidam, mainly because no one truly believed that he existed. Raul, however, entered into a self-destruct phase where he tried to find any clue about the death of his mentor.
Long gone was the young man that made sure that Quidam never went too far into the light. Where once hopeful eyes lived, there was only hate. This made the gangs of Gothic start to make arrangements to fight back against the Jade Spirit, the death of the Outsider had also exposed the mere existence of Raul and retribution was in order.
The whole situation escalated to the point where Gothic wasn´t safe as long as Raul still lived there. Having also realized that the clues of his mentor´s death wouldn´t be found in his home, Jake decided to travel across the world in search for an answer, any answer.
Though his operations as the Jade Spirit weren´t public knowledge, he still made a lot of friends over the years. Friends who were also sick and tired of crime and violence taking over the city. That is the reason why leaving was such a difficult choice to make, Raul would miss them all...but he would miss Verenisse more than anyone else.
Meeting Domenic Mayer It was hard, he felt like he was quitting on the mission and even disrespecting the memory of his mentor by leaving before they restored order to the city. It was more than the escalating situation though, he could see it in the eyes of not only his enemies but the people he helped...there was fear in their eyes, Raul wasn´t the Jade Spirit anymore, he was something else. That´s the biggest reason Raul left, he didn´t know who he was anymore.
His travels took him to Mexico, specifically the Sonora desert, he thought that going back to the place where his mother was born would help him find perspective. He wandered across the desert, he visited every town too small to be found on the map looking for the mirage of his own identity. And when the moment came to finally give up on his aimless chase, there was a man named Domenic Mayer waiting with an offer he couldn´t refuse.
The great leap The Telluric "I know you feel inhuman, and as if you are set apart, away from life and love, but... I promise you, the right man won't care."
— Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1) )
Domenic Mayer was the leader of a black ops organization known as "The Telluric". The Telluric was an initiative created by governments that were unease with the notion of the escalation in superhuman population, particularly when it came to American superhumans. Seeing them as the possible catalyst of a new arms race and an eventual third world war, a secret collision of countries united to try to gain as much intel as possible in people with the metahuman gene.
Domenic came with evidence that the person responsible for the death of Quidam was a metahuman criminal with the codename Cerulean. This criminal had the ability to fly and control the air surrounding both her and anyone in her field of vision.
The proposition was simple: Unlimited funds and Raul´s own team if he joined The Telluric to chase down metahuman criminals and help track and monitor the growing range of super-powered individuals in the world. His first mission: Track the person responsible for killing his mentor.
After taking Domenic up on his offer, Raul was introduced to his two new partners inside Telluric: Daniela Arias (Ocelotl) and Aran ibn Evan ibn Arda al-Fulan (Amnesty). Aran was an Iraqi citizen who was considered as the best tracker in the world while Daniela was actually a Mexican metahuman who had the strength, speed, and reflexes of a jaguar but who had seen first hand how people with power abused the innocents when given free reign.
Unit 31 Taking advantage of the funds of The Telluric, as well as all the training he ever had with Quidam, Raul started to work alongside Daniela and Aran. They neutralized metahuman threats that most of the world never even found out about, while superheroes would get all of the glory, Raul was saving the world from the shadows with a smile.
Raul would then take the agent alias: Jake Hamilton and start operating alongside Daniela and Aran as part of The Telluric´s unit 31. They neutralized metahuman threats that most of the world never even found out about, while superheroes would get all of the glory, Raul was saving the world from the shadows with a smile. Soon, unit 31 was considered the top team inside the organization, motivating Domenic to take an even bigger interest in Raul.
It was this same rising career in The Telluric that led to Raul taking a bigger role in the organization. Raul had always been a great fighter, but more than that, he was a genius that had studied under one of the greatest heroes the world had ever known. Having a natural talent for learning in the fields of science, mostly in mechanical and computer engineering, Raul would grow to create some of the organization ´s biggest and best equipment.
Through the looking glass Out of all the creations of Raul in The Telluric, it was the creation of "The Source" that took the most attention. It was a cloud computing program with what was probably the first 5G internet ever integrated in any kind of hardware, it was a state of the art of computer science; but even more important than that it was a gigantic database that compiled all of the official and not official information of every metahuman on earth.
Using an algorithm of Raul´s creation, "The Source" gave an ever-updating file instantly to the user for the better study of the metahuman and even calculated the risk that said metahuman represented. As soon as anything on the internet came about a possible metahuman, a data file was created and kept on growing using machine learning and photo recognition software. Every single time a photo was posted on social media, every time someone made a video on their cellphone, every time a local newspaper did an article that matched a recorded metahuman; the ever-growing data created the perfect database about metahuman behavior in the world.
For Raul, this was a program that would help keep secure the innocent civilians of the world since monitoring the metahumans was easier than predicting natural disasters with his new program. Little did he know that the source would unleash a series of events that endangered more lives than any metahuman ever could.
Ocelotl, Raul´s partner, revealed to him what she had discovered about The Telluric. While the organization did indeed have the backing of many governments, unknowing to them there was a small council determined to use that funding not to protect the world and apprehend metahuman threats but to kickstart a metahuman cold war while using the metahuman gene to create new superpowered individuals.
It was also Raul´s creation, the source software, that would let this council finally have the means to obtain their goal. As if this revelation wasn´t enough, there were two new surprises awaiting Raul. The first one was that the man leading this secret council and exploiting Raul´s technology was Domenic Mayer himself. The second and most shocking realization was that this intel came from Cerulean, who unlike what Domenic had stated before, wasn´t a metahuman criminal who killed Quidam, but a former agent of the Telluric that went rogue after learning Domenic´s machinations.
Cerulean and Raul Cerulean revealed that he had taken this information to Quidam before his death, trying to recruit help from outside the agency and expecting him to join and work as a double agent for her in order to expose Domenic and his secret council. Once Domenic learned this however, he tried to get them both killed, only being successful with Quidam.
The mere realization that he had been working not only for a fraud but also the person responsible for killing his mentor took a toll on Raul. He knew that he had to make it right by not only stopping Domenic from exploiting his technology but also to fulfill the last mission of Quidam before his death.
Oathkeeping "The promises of yesterday are the taxes of today."
— William Lyon MacKenzie
Raul´s odyssey had begun with a simple mission: finding the person responsible for the death of his mentor. He had traveled the world, he had fulfilled missions for the Telluric that never seemed to end, he had grown past the youthful enthusiasm of the Jade Spirit and emerged a new man.
Now, in order to fulfill his promise to bring justice to Quidam, he had to overthrow his new mentor. He had to expose his schemes and take back his technology. The Telluric had been his home the last couple of years, but his home was wrecked from within.
Along with his allies; Ocelotl, Amnesty, and Cerulean, Raul started an operation to expose Domenic. However, when they started to execute their plan it all came crashing down. Domenic upgraded Raul´s technology and incorporated it into a helmet which he used to maintain himself connected to the source at all times.
Domenic used this same technology to gain what he had wanted all alone, to feel like a metahuman, with the source program´s continuing update, Domenic would be able to keep learning from the metahumans that he faced, knowing what they would do based on their powerset, instinct, psychological profile, etc. He had become the ultimate metahuman nullifier and he had done it with a few mechanical enhancements and some stolen software.
Raul vs Domenic Domenic orchestrated the defeat and capture of unit 31, with only Raul being able to get away by improvising an escape route. Completely outside of his element, Raul wondered how he could possibly beat someone that anticipated his every move.
It was then that he remembered one of the first lessons that he had with Quidam back to when he was the Jade Spirit. While smarter than anybody his age and with an amazing physical condition, Raul kept screwing up at every single one of the training practices. He knew how the moves were supposed to be and he respected completely his teacher, yet he couldn´t help but fail at trying to repeat a routine.
Raul felt that he had to quit. He felt that there was no way he could fulfill Quidam´s expectations, he had even talked to both of his parents about leaving his crimefighting intentions. It was then that his father remained Raul that ever since he was a young boy, he couldn´t be normal, he couldn´t follow the same instructions that everyone else followed because his brain was wired differently. "Your brain will dry itself before allowing you to think like everyone else" said his father and those words echoed in Raul´s mind.
He had to improvise, he had to think creatively even when he thought he wasn´t thinking. He had to flow with the moment and take decisions in a mini-second, decisions that could easily be confused by instinct or gut calls, but that when the time came, the whole world stopped while Raul was thinking.
He used this to be an unpredictable fighter, Domenic´s program was enough that he would gain an advantage over any metahuman, but Raul was the most dangerous human alive. Raul defeated Domenic by fighting like only a peak human could do against a superior opponent, using both the arrogance and his strength against him, during the fight Domenic was greatly wounded up to the point that the helmet couldn´t be taken off, thanks to him being exposed he would be stripped of his position as director of The Telluric and kept in the prison of the organization.
After the incident with Domenic Mayer, Raul left The Telluric but kept a close relationship due to the new council compromised of Cerulean as the new academy trainer, Amnesty as the new head of operations and Ocelotl as the director of the whole agency.
The Nighthunters tribe "As the light pales, I seize the night. It shall not end until my name fades. We are the pen and the sword. We are civilization unbowed. We are the hunters in the crowd. We bear the burden of the torch until they are ready to claim it back. "―The Nighthunters tribe´s oath
Having fulfilled his years´ long mission to Quidam, but still disappointed by the way that he had been manipulated for so many years by the Telluric, Raul realized that after all his travels and experiences, he was yet oblivious of who he was and who he wanted to be. Was he supposed to remain on The Telluric as agent Jake Hamilton? Was he supposed to go back to being the Jade Spirit? Was he supposed to find a new identity or retire of the crimefighting life?
Raul kept fighting crime on an international level without any kind of secret identity. He wouldn´t choose one until the moment he finally realized who he really was. His travels were interrupted when Ocelotl asked him for a favor regarding some rumors regarding weird events that occurred in Morocco.
The rumors regarded the mysterious disappearance of several individuals across the world. The men and women that disappeared didn´t have anything in common; they came from different countries, backgrounds, ethnicities, different ages, etc. While the kidnappings appeared random and singular, Ocelotl believed there was a secret invisible operating due to how effective and professional all of the kidnappings were and when you could see the secret web, you could realize that it all led to Morocco.
Raul´s investigation led him to a bazaar which allegedly ran another set of secret operations at night. While investigating he was ambushed by a man in a mask who proved to be a greatly skilled fighter. The fight kept going until they were interrupted by a group of men with the same kind of masks who used gas to knock off Raul.
When Raul woke up, he was next to many of the people that had been kidnapped and surrounded by over 200 men and women with identical masks. "Welcome to the Nighthunter tribe" they announced to the people kidnapped.
The draconic trials "AURIBUS TENEO LUPUM"-holding a tiger by the tail," it is used to describe an unsustainable situation, and in particular one in which both doing nothing and doing something to resolve it are equally risky. "EX NIHILO NIHIL FIT"-nothing comes from nothing," and is used as a reminder that hard work is always required in order to achieve something. "IMPERIUM IN IMPERIO"-a group of workers in an organization who, despite appearing to work for themselves, are still answerable to an even larger corporation. Through the years Nighthunter
Homecoming "Through others we become ourselves."
— Lev S. Vygotsky
Nighthunter reborn "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre )
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Skills & Abilities Intellect
Raul Lupei is considered by many as the greatest human mind on the planet due to his great knowledge of chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, tactics, etc.
Nighthunter is famous for combining this intelligence with his fighting skills and inventions making him survive and even win the fights he has had against some of the world's greatest powerhouses. Jake is considered as the world's greatest tactician and one of the top five minds of the twenty-first century.
Raul is also the man that is usually asked the develop any equipment or machine that the heroes of the world need, making him spend most of his free time in his laboratory where he is constantly creating new inventions.
Fighting skill
Nighthunter is regarded as one of the top fighters in unarmed combat among the superhero community. During his short life, he has learned and mastered a great number of techniques thanks to his fast brain which enabled him to learn faster than a normal human.
His fighting style is a combination of every single one of the martial arts he has learned used as an amalgam to try to prevent his enemies from predicting his moves. He usually combines them with his weapons and agility to get the upper hand against his enemies.
Mastered fighting techniques:
Capoeira Karate Esgrima Tahtib Fanchento Maculele Defendo Ninjutsu Kickboxing Red Warrior style Small Circle Jujutsu Pradal Serey Kung Fu Five Animals Jujutsu Technique in which he is an expert:
Hung Fut Shaolin Quan Southern Praying Mantis Sun Style Wushu Gatka Silat Aikido Judo Boxing Agility
Nighthunter counts with peak human agility which he developed in order to avoid most of the attacks of his metahuman opponents to give him a better chance at facing them. Having used this ability for so long only made him better at it and turned him into the most agile man on Earth, at least in human standards.
Weapon Master
Nighthunter is a master of practically every weapon on Earth having been taught by Sovereign Son himself the use of all of them, as well as the best way to use them in battle. Even though he can use them all he still has a personal preference for swords and guns.
The Powersuit Probably the greatest invention that Nighthunter has is his legendary power suit which is conformed of nanobots injected on his skin. The powersuit has proven to be one of the best weapons on the planet and a real protector against damage. If a part of the resistant suit is damaged or destroyed new nanobots will get formed and replace the damaged ones making the impression of a self regenerating suit.
Since the original suit was created with prototype technology it didn't have much abilities beyond the ones that a normal costume would give, the biggest ones being the protection for damage, the self-repairing process and several basic gadgets included.
After returning from the dead Jake created a 2.0 version of the suit which was capable of teleporting to long distances but not short ones. Jake has now taken measures to make sure that the 3.0 version of the power suit has everything he is going to need when fighting super villains.
Self-repairing process
The same process of having nanobots cloning themselves and take the spot of the destroyed ones of the original two suits. The only difference being that these are faster in the process and adapt to the attacks of the opponent. For example if the first group of nanobots were destroyed by a fire attack the new breed to replace them gain the ability to resist greater temperatures.
The adaption process isn't as fast though and will take time and in most cases several destroyed nanobots to get to the desired levels.
The Source 2.0
The original Nighthunter developed a program into the first powersuit which told him all the recorded information of heroes, villains and anti-heroes in the world. This however wasn't as practical in a fight as he had hoped for he had to read all of the information and no mater how fast he did it always took him out of the battle for valuable seconds.
Jake's new version of the program went a step further and decided to use the subconscious to learn the information. The text and images that the source provide pass in front of Jake's eyes at a speed that he can't even notice them but slow enough that his superior mind is capable of analyzing it and learning it without him taking his attention out of the battle.
Worldwide connection to internet
The powersuit is capable of entering the internet on any part of the world, even in countries where they've never gotten that technology before. This enables Jake to have a constant entrance to the world's information and use them on missions whenever he finds himself in the rare situation in which he can't come up with a way to solve it.
This also helps him to connect to the various news websites to learn about new problems in the world and be ready to go to action. This connection has helped Jake become the center of the world of information. Nothing big happens without him knowing about it.
Interaction with machines
The new powersuit enables him to "communicate" with machines by giving them mental orders which help him hack, download information and even control machines close to him without having to touch them.
Teleportation
Nighthunter was able to achieve the means of teleportation a long time ago but it was until recently that he had been able to incorporate it into his powersuit successfully. He can now teleport to any spot on the planet as long as he visualizes it first in his mind and sends the mental order, he however cannot teleport to a place that is closer than 50 meters from his last position. Making this useful for escaping or getting inside places undetected but also pretty useless in battle for the most part.
Echolocation
Just like the process of the animals, the power suit is capable of sending a sonar which allows him to detect things that his human senses normally wouldn't on their own. This helps him to spot invisible enemies as well as move in the dark without being afraid of hitting something or needing his eyes.
Manipulation of the gravity field
Jake devised a way for his power suit to interact with the gravity field of Earth and change the way it affects his body as long as he has his powersuit on. He is capable of changing his mass and weight, making him jump higher and/or make his body heavier when fighting against an opponent and thus simulating super strength on a basic level.
Since this is still the prototype of this science it still has a long way to go and can only work on his own body and not extend it to someone else. What this means is that Nighthunter's suit can't alter the gravity field of his opponent, only his. The other disadvantage is that he can't hold the changes long before the Earth's gravity field turns it back and injures his body according to the change.
Light reflection
The nanobots can be ordered to stop reflecting the light upon them and thus making it seem as if Nighthunter had become invisible. This process can only take place 3 minutes at a time since it takes most of the energy of the suit.
Hologram Projection
The powersuit can project holograms of anything that Jake's mind visualizes. The holograms are convincing if the observer isn't paying too much attention and can only be projected close to him.
Regeneration serum
Otherwise known as project 311091. This serum which is conformed of nanobots that work as artificial white gloves was created by Jake back in the day. An injection of it can help him recover eight times faster than normal but causes headaches, extreme exhaustion and sometime even faints. Jake can only use one injection per day tops or it could kill him. It also shortens his lifespan every time he uses it as the human body only has a limited number of cells to generate.
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