| Introduction
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xxxxxJoe is a loser. Always has been, and probably always will be. This has led to a remarkably sour, and negative personality. If there's a downside, Joe will find it and point it out. If there is no downside, Joe postulate about the /hidden/ downsides.
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| History
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xxxxxJoe has had a rough life. He learned close-up magic as a child growing up in Atlantic City, and never grew out of it. It may come as no surprise that he had trouble making friends in high school, where magic was decidedly uncool among his fellow teenagers. He made a little progress when he started playing Magic the Gathering competitively, in tournaments around the boardwalk city. But once again these accomplishments were generally unappreciated by his peers, and more importantly, the women who spurned his interest. So high school was a drudgery to be survived, which he did at the barest level.
xxxxxWhen his mutation began to manifest though, things started picking up for Joe. About half way through high school, Joe discovered his ability to teleport things within range of himself. It was another day of being bullied, but the guys had come up with a new idea. They had filled condoms with milk, and were throwing them at Joe as he walked home from school. He got pelted and soaked by one, when his ability actually kicked in. Most of the following 'balloons' came into range, and just blinked behind him. He experienced a revelatory moment when he realized what was happening, and even managed to teleport one of the projectiles back at his attackers. He was thrilled with his accomplishment for about 10 seconds, which is about how long it took his attackers to recover from his counterattack. They rushed him, and beat him to within an inch of his life. They were chased off by a passerby, who rushed Joe to the hospital. Joe's family was able to press charges against the families of the boys responsible, since the whole thing registered as just a bullying crime, instead of being about his mutation. Joe's aging parents were awarded a sum for medical and other damages, but Joe would never fully recover from the collapsed lung, and damaged kidney. To this day, Joe is weak, frail, and asthmatic, often in great discomfort when the weather changes.
xxxxxJoe went on to get his GED via a home school course, and then skipped college entirely to become a stage magician in Atlantic City. There were a few problems with this plan. One, Joe has the charisma and stage presence of a toad. Two, he has already been blacklisted from a couple different casinos as a younger man, and had a reputation in town as someone proficient in cheating at cards. They could never prove it of course, because Joe was just teleporting the cards he wanted, exchanging them for the cards he was dealt, but he was black-flagged anyway. Additionally, Joe had no work ethic. He would be late to rehearsals, rude and demanding to staff, or even show up drunk. He even got into trouble with local mafia types. They liked him because he was a terrific thief and cat burglar
xxxxxEventually, a few years ago, Joe moved to New York for a change of pace, and to disappear into a place where no one knows him.
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| Powers
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xxxxxNothing Up My Sleeve:
Joe has a telekinetic sense making him aware of each and every discrete object within about three feet of his body. Most of the time he is only peripherally aware of all these things, but with focus, he could mentally identify even a specific playing card in a deck of cards, however something that complicated would require him to sit still with his eyes closed.
xxxxxJoe has the ability to teleport anything within his field of awareness, to anywhere else within that aura. He could port something out of someone's hand, or even move their underwear to his pocket. The object must fit entirely within his aura, and cannot be heavier than something Joe could physically lift - heavy objects are still /mentally/ heavy, because he believes they are. Teleporting objects around him takes a toll as if he moved it by hand. So moving a heavy thing is taxing, or moving a number of small things requires the same amount of focus and dexterity as doing it by hand. So he could shuffle a deck of cards, but not while doing anything else. Lightweight, single objects that he can see however are as easy as breathing for him.
xxxxxBy moving something in this way, he can change it's attitude, and vector, but not it's velocity. This means if something were thrown at him, he could teleport it once it's within range to continue past him, fly up into the air, or even back at the thrower, but he could not teleport it and have it land still. He could teleport it into his hand, as if he caught it, but he would still need to be able to absorb the impact. Joe can only redirect slow-moving objects which he can focus on, and is aware of. However his unconscious mind, and sense of self preservation is capable of passing fast moving objects to the other side of him, without him even being aware of it. His subconscious awareness is so sharp, that if a bullet were aimed at him, as soon as it was within three feet of him, it would be teleported to a spot three feet behind him, directly in line with the bullet's original path. Only Joe's subconscious mind can redirect something as fast as a bullet or an arrow and therefore it only works on projectiles he's unaware of. If Joe is looking at the person shooting at him, his conscious mind actually hampers his subconscious, and it would not be able to create the pass thru. This also doesn't work at all if he's unconscious.
xxxxxJoe's ability to redirect a projectile is directly related to it's speed and mass. The 'pass-thru' effect is easy for him, changing direction by 90 degrees or less is moderately difficult, changing direction by more than 90 degrees requires a relatively slow moving and/or low-mass object.
xxxxxJoe also has incredibly fine-tuned control over this teleportation, and has gained a complete sense of awareness within the field of effect. Joe could teleport a single, desired card from a deck, and swap it with a card in his hand. He could port a business card into or out of a wallet. He can teleport things out of someone's hand, or even the water out of a water bottle, and into a glass, but he can't detach anything connected to something else, or something that extends beyond his teleportation aura. He can't blink a door off it's hinges, and if his razor were plugged in more than three feet away, he wouldn't be able to move that around either, just because he can't cut the cable. Due to an insurmountable (without help) mental block, Joe does not realize he's actually capable of porting /part/ of something, by just shearing it off where he wants. At his age, learning how to do this would require a significant outside influence, and is not something he could just practice on his own. However, if he did develop it, he would even be able to shear someone's hand right off their arm, as they reached for him.
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| Connections
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Pick a Card
Any Card
Not That Card
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| Gallery
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| Joe Zerah
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| Codename
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Blink
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| Birthdate
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Dec 17th, 1973
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| Species
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Mutant
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| Affiliation
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Citizen
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| Powers
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Localized Item Teleportation
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| Occupation
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Cab Driver / Street Hustler
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| Alts
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Aloke Suresh, Lorna Dane, Kaori Takahashi, Luke Cage
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| RP Hooks
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| Cabby - Need a ride?"
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| Magic - Joe is a skilled magician, both on and off the stage. He xxxxx has a thorough understanding of how most close-up magic tricks work and are performed, including just about any sort of card or hand-held prop trick. He's also practiced the art of Mentalism, which in his case has tuned his perceptions to the height of human capacity. He has a memory like a steel trap, and can perform complex mental calculations in a flash. He's often able to intuit things in a way that people might think he can read minds. He can also perform street hypnosis on willing subjects, and over time, with a repeated subject, would be able to plant a deep hypnotic suggestion.
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| Sleight-of-Hand - Even without his mutant ability, Joe would be one of the best pick-pockets in New York. He had to learn things the right way, so the magicians teaching him could watch him do it, and then he started to enjoy the very act of performing sleight-of-hand. Very little gives him more pleasure than plucking the wallet from the pocket of some meathead giving him a hard time on the subway.
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