RJ Cervantes

Category 3 Hemo (LXR)

**Ricardo Julio 'RJ' Cervantes**, also known as **Vein**, is a supporting character and later, recurring antagonist.

He's a student of NCPS in 11-Socrates. RJ is usually shunned by his peers for indulging in bizarre, unflattering interests like hentai doujins and super-villains, and is even a moderator in a secret web forum that discusses anything super-villains. He manages to stumble upon a Psychopede egg, and keeps it as a pet once it hatches, naming it **Crawly**.

## Story

### Early Life

At some point, RJ befriends his classmates Gin and Archie.

RJ wasn’t directly affected by the Genesis Event, and stayed human. As heroes and villains rose up and became mainstream, his interest was piqued, especially for the latter. He started researching about the different real-life supervillains and came across an Internet forum that shared his interest and passion for these criminals. He started learning more and more about supervillains as people would post leaks and things they uncover about these villains’ names, lives, crimes committed, their abilities, and their ensuing fights with heroes. Though he didn’t approve or resonate with these villains, he found himself being genuinely interested, especially when Gin revealed to him and Archie that he was planning to become an amateur hero. This interest concerned him, so he kept it secret. Eventually, he spent enough time participating and discussing in the forum that he became a moderator.

### Events of Volume 1

RJ happens to come across a Psychopede egg thinking it was bizarre villain memorabilia which he could show off to the people on his forum. He then tosses in the bin after the people on the forum claim that they don’t recognize what it is and suggest that it’s probably just trash. However, the egg then hatches, revealing the bizarre Psychopede larva within. RJ was horrified but also mesmerized upon discovering it, and decided to turn it into his pet, Barry.

### Cervantes: Vein Rising

In this specific episode, Mandy takes control of RJ’s recklessness and makes his pet Psychopede, Barry, invade him and take control, turning him into a disgusting, twisted villain called ‘Vein’. Under the effects of LXR, he also gained the new albeit arguably weak and self-harming ability of being able to control his own blood.

Vein hatches a terribly contrived plan that relied on too many coincidences to work. While it did result in the group’s capture and one of the girls and Riley almost getting violated and raped, his plan was so nonsensical and had so many plot holes that it was easily exploited in the end, and he was easily beaten. Once freed from villainification, RJ expressed serious guilt, regret and horror at what had happened, realizing that they would never see him in any other way again.

### Cervantes: Vein’s Revenge

RJ, after ingesting LXR, gains a slight boost to his powers, now being able to turn people who ingest his blood into demonic minions of his. It’s not revealed that he is behind this until the end, where people are shocked that it was actually him. While his plot was still foiled, it was clear that it had more weight and danger behind it than before.

### Cervantes: Vein’s Redemption

After being diagnosed with leukemia and realizing he had a few days to live, RJ goes all-out and finally establishes himself as a threatening, competent, and most of all, *twisted* villain. It’s implied that he dies due to his sickness after he committed the one act that finally cemented himself as a villain.

### Crawford: One More Mission, One More Enemy, and One More Life

Vein is the main antagonist of Victor’s character arc in Volume 2, revealed to have transferred his consciousness to another by transplanting his blood on one of his victims from his plan in Redemption. The reveal comes at a shock for Victor, and Vein had become even more twisted and evil in his mission to seek a nemesis in Victor. Vein tests Victor’s morals by attempting to push him off the edge, but Victor wins a pyrrhic victory. Vein is later imprisoned, facing a possible death sentence. However, it’s hinted that he’s freed by an unknown person.

### Alternate Timeline

This event took place in an aborted timeline. Despite his wounded relationship and image to the girls and the rest of the class, RJ finds solace in Germaine and started falling for her. Unbeknownst to him, Germaine was a Psychopede sleeper agent attempting to exploit him and get closer to the others, disabling them from within.

However, despite Germaine’s initial annoyance and perceiving RJ’s attempts to charm her as a hindrance to her mission and due to his charming determination to pursue her, the last vestiges of Germaine’s consciousness starts developing feelings for him as well. As RJ prepares to take her out for a date, Germaine gains the sudden urge to kill him to finally proceed with her goals of dismantling Lance and the others’ plans, but her inner consciousness decides she needs to save him and stop herself from enacting the plans. Germaine cancels RJ’s date plan and instead tells him they should make out, planning to both kill him and warn him at the same time due to her conflicting interests. Using a knife, she ends up stabbing herself instead to save him, and proceeding to disembowel herself on top of him to die quicker before she could get a chance to even harm RJ. RJ had become even more traumatized by the incident, and decided to take LXR and commit to villainy out of sheer depression and trauma.

## Personality

RJ is noisy and loud when comfortable with his friends. His humor is usually obnoxious, repetitive, and forced. He also tend to be a little too vocal about his thoughts/emotions and has a tendency to overshare, sometimes making his friends awkward or uncomfortable. RJ is infamous among his friend groups for having unorthodox interests that could put many people away. He is, as one would put it, a cultural degenerate. Nonetheless, they accept him.

He partakes in hentai (not just any porn, hentai) with passion, talking about it as if it is an art form. He also geeks out over villains, as opposed to public/indie heroes. This is seen as a taboo interest in their society, the same way the act of glorifying serial killers is seen in real life. He also has a few degenerate fetishes. He joins Internet forums and groups where he can discuss his interests with other people. One particular forum he’s active in is a part of the villain fandom, where he’s even a moderator. He takes it quite seriously and is even proud of it (even paying for Premium features).

RJ seems very manic when he’s deeply invested in explaining something.

## Powers & Abilities

* **Hemo Attribute**
	+ **Blood Manipulation**: RJ can freely control his own blood when it is outside his body. It has the color and consistency of viscous ink.
		- **Toxic Blood**: His blood is extremely toxic when consumed and can cause death if untreated.

### Abilities

* **Art**: RJ is very skilled at art. He also likes to practice by drawing hentai, even doing full-length doujins in his free time, which he never shows to anyone.
* **Knowledge about Supervillains**: RJ, being a supervillain geek, knows more about them than the average person.

## Limitations & Weaknesses

### External

* **Fatigue**: If RJ takes out and uses up too much blood, he is susceptible to fatigue and light-headedness.
* **Wounding and Bruising**: He has to keep wounding himself to use his blood out of his body. As a result, he has to either abstain from using his powers, or constantly have to wound himself. He usually wears bandages because of this very reason.
* **Reduced Coagulative Ability**: Due to the nature of his ability, RJ can freely control his blood as liquid, but the tendency for his blood to clot is lesser than average. The wounds that he has to inflict on himself also heal slower.
* **Blood Diseases**: RJ is not allowed to put the blood that he takes out of his body back into his body after using it, especially after it makes contact with another surface, as it will be harboring microbes. RJ is very prone to suffering from blood-related disorders, and can become immunocompromised as a result.

## Trivia

* He has several voice and physical tics.