Alexander Van Garde

**Alexander Van Garde**, known as **'Van'** to his friends as well as his moniker **The Glitch**, is a major supporting character in *A Few Cruel Twists of Fate.*

## Story

### Early Life

Van was born on February 8, 2002.

Van became popular across online gaming communities for his skills and gimmicks.

### Genesis Event

Van was affected by the Genesis Event, turning him into a videogame avatar.

## Appearance

Van is the tallest male in 11-S. He’s slightly chubby, has a peachy complexion, and slight acne. His hair is dark green and styled in a slightly-messy, puffy two-block cut. He has emerald eyes. He has a 2D floating nametag hovering above his head, displaying his current Level and Health bar. It passes through solid objects, and is gray when doing so.

### Outfits

In school, Van wears the standard NCPS male uniform. In addition, he also wears a faded green sweater with bands at the bottom of the sleeves.

### Costume

Van wears a green bomber jacket. When in combat, he also has lime-colored, transparent digital armor which manifests itself in shoulder guards, wrist guards, and shin guards with integrated knee pads, as well as padding on his chest and abdomen. His equipped broadsword of choice also floats behind him. He also wears a green, bulky rucksack.

## Personality

Van is the youngest in the classroom, and as expected, is immature, impatient, reckless, and short-tempered. He feels as if he always has to prove himself, and likes showing off. He receives constant praise for his flashy powers. In fact, his whole personality is based off of his powers. He is dependent on them, and feels as if they are a testament to who he is. Which doesn't amount to much, really.

It’s likely his short fuse comes from his familiarity with speed-runs. He loves the thrill, and quickly loses motivation when things are slow, lacking, or uninteresting to him.

## Powers & Abilities

### Powers

* **Cyber Attribute**
	+ **Videogame Avatar Physiology:** Van has one of the most unique abilities in 11-S - he's basically a living videogame character.
		- **Heads-Up Display:** His vision displays relevant information about himself like his HP meter and Ultimate meter, his surroundings, and the people around him.
		- **Level-Up Progression:** Van levels up after exerting physical effort. The more physical effort required to perform an action, the more XP he gains so that he can reach the next level. In contrast, if Van performs an action that he is already very much used to and doesn't take much effort to perform, he doesn't get as much XP. There are three physical traits, namely STRENGTH, AGILITY, and DEFENSE, that he can hone and perform appropriate exercises for to enhance.
			* **STRENGTH:** Exercised when Van exerts physical effort demanding raw strength and power. It also increases the power of his Ultimate.
				+ **Superhuman Strength**
			* **AGILITY:** Exercised when Van exerts physical effort that involves agility and dexterity.
				+ **Superhuman Agility**
				+ **Superhuman Reflexes**
				+ **Superhuman Stamina**
			* **DEFENSE:** Exercised when Van exerts physical effort requiring endurance, or how much damage and fatigue Van can take.
				+ **Superhuman Endurance**
				+ **Regenerative Healing Factor:** A slow but nonetheless exceptional healing factor that only activates when he is idle or has not taken any damage within 5 seconds.
			* **Teleportation:** Van doesn't actually use interdimensional or spatial methods to teleport, and he can't just teleport anywhere. Van is able to perform a skill wherein he lunges with a sword in the blink of an eye while slashing the enemy, but Van is able to exploit this and teleport without the use of the sword, blinking out of existence and back again while teleporting to a nearby location in a straight line.
			* **Hyperspace Inventory:** Has a digital pocket dimension in his rucksack where he can store items of any size.
			* **Selective Blade Sharpness:** His digitzed swords cannot exactly 'cut' or 'pierce' through organic matter. Instead, they merely pass through enemies, dealing damage in the process.

### Techniques

Van is a master of exploitation, despite the clear boundaries and limitations that his abilities might present.

* **Attack Form (ATK):** Focused on attack, strength, power, and damage.
	+ **Ultimate:** Upon filling his Hit Meter, Van can unleash a flurry of high-damage attacks within a short period of time.
* **Speed Form (SPD):** Focused on stealth and speed. This form enhances his dexterity, agility and stamina.
	+ **Double Jump**
	+ **Dodge Dash**
	+ **Wall Running**
* **Defense Form (DEF):** Focused on endurance and survivability. This form enhances his armor, and extends his HP.
	+ **Firewall:** Van can create a digitized wall of solid cyberspace matter.
* **Final Form (FNL):** A 'last resort' form that combines all the benefits of the previous three forms without any of the sacrifice, but it only activates when his HP is on the brink, and doesn't last long.

### Abilities

* **Videogame Expertise:** Van is quite experienced with videogames, having collected and played so many over time. He has also participate in competitive events, and is a well-established personality in some of these communities, especially the speedrun community. In fact, he earned his moniker by being an occasional beta tester and finding exploits in games he plays, which he has also become notorious for.

## Limitations & Weaknesses

### Internal

* **Impatience**
* **Aggression**

### External

* **Convoluted Powerset:** Van's powers are quite complicated and broad, and could be distracting or tricky to make full use of in the heat of battle.

## Equipment

* **XLCalibur (Vol. 1 - Vol. 3):** Van's default melee weapon. An oversized, reliable digitized broadsword, despite being worse for wear. The lack of many special gimmicks that his other swords possess give it the unexpected benefit of simplicity and pragmatic technicality. Though Van struggles to use it at first, he eventually masters it as he levels up his STRENGTH trait.
* **Chaos Razor (Vol. 2)**
* **Unrelenting Vengeance (Vol. 2):** An over-designed edgy sword.
* **Dark Divider (Vol. 2):** A sword made of raw Obscurium, or dark matter.
* **All-Slayer (Vol. 3):** A mythical weapon known to transcend the laws of our reality, and capable of piercing through any dimension - meaning it could theoretically kill any entity its blade comes across.
* **Inventory:** A bulky rucksack that seems to have its own pocket dimension. Van uses it to store any item, no matter how many or big.