Cal Rankin

## Personality

Cal is a very independent and competitive kid. He doesn't let people in easily and can come off as arrogant and intolerant of other people's flaws. These are just walls he's built to keep people out. He does not trust easily.

He is an overachiever who always wants to do more, to be more. He is extremely demanding with himself, and he hates not being in control. He is also extremely hot-headed, and will often react with his guts rather than his brain, a flaw he is very aware of once he has cooled down.

His arrogance is also a front for his lack of self-confidence. He is so demanding with himself because he never expects to be good enough. He'll often lash out like the jerkface he is because of that.

All of those traits have been magnified by the trauma of being experimented on by the Right for months on end. He definitely has survivor's guilt, and he hates the fuckers who experimented on them. When he first gets to Xavier's, he will still be full of a lot of the conditioning they put him through, and it will take him a while to relax, if he even ever gets there. Also, he won't want to talk about it with anyone except other survivors (at best), but he would 'talk' with Professor Xavier (telepathy is different, yo) if given the chance. Doc Sampson, not so much, at least initially. (This will likely change after his conditioning proves to be a problem. Cal also wants to take responsibility for his own actions.)

## Powers

Cal has the power of mimicry: he was originally able to share somebody's knowledge, skills and powers (when they had any) when they were within ten feet of him. His cells are extremely reactive and able to mimic a physical mutation with the same ease a shapeshifter would display. When mimicking a mutation, he is able to master it with the same ease as the person it belongs to, since he is also absorbing knowledge. When around a scholar, he not only knew what they knew, but his ability to learn grew, and when around athletes, he easily picked up their skills at whatever sport as well as their knowledge on how to play it.

When he first manifested, Cal had a lot of trouble retaining anything he mimicked. By the time he gets out of the Right, he is able to mimic up to five mutations (he used to be able to do more, but had too much difficulty handling them and his body eventually set its own limit), and retain them after spending as little as twenty minutes around them. But the downside of the experiments and the unnatural way they boosted that aspect of his mutation is that his ability to mimic knowledge and skills not directly linked to a mutation has been shortcircuited.

But no matter how much they tried to boost that, Cal's mimicked mutations were never *quite* as good as the original. For instance, his top speed when mimicking a speedster would never be as high as the speedster's, although it will come close.

## Talents

Cal is now left with the only things he has learned on his own. Top of the list are basketball and biosciences, although he's not likely to be really into either of them anymore, at least at first. He has also been trained to use all sorts of weapons and technological gadgets, for missions of assassination or infiltration.

## Interests

Getting back at the Right is on top of that list. He likes music (most forms of rock and indie) and will probably try to learn how to play the guitar. He will likely try to exhaust himself on a regular basis, because he's not used to anything else by now, and how else is he expected to sleep, so anything that will help him with that he will be seriously into.

## History

Cal's mother died in a car accident when he was a young boy. His father never remarried, so Cal grew up alone with a father who barely paid him any mind, focused as he was on his scientific experiments. Cal was mostly left to his own devices and became very independent from a young age. Moreover, he always felt as if he had to be his absolute best in order for his father to pay attention. While he was a decent pupil and a pretty good sportsman, it wasn't until high school that his grades and his sporting abilities rocketed up.

Unbeknownst to him at first, he had manifested, and started to mimic the knowledge, skills and abilities of the people around him. His father realized that something was going on when Cal suddenly held conversations with him about scientific theories that he did not expect his son to know about. From that moment onward, he started to study Cal and practice experiments on him. He took a leave from his job in a lab and focused solely on his research into Cal's mutation, telling Cal that he wanted to help him stabilise it, since Cal still had trouble retaining the things he mimicked.

In May 2017, Cal talked to his father about maybe getting in touch with one of the famous mutants, but his dad forbade it and they had a row. It was during that fight that Cal learned what his father's goal was: he wanted to suppress Cal's powers and make him normal. Cal left in a huff, and came back to his house on fire, and one of the firefighters telling him that they were sorry, but his father had died in the original explosion. Something had gone wrong in his lab, apparently.

But instead of being turned over to CPS, another organization reached out to Cal. They were scientists looking into mutants, and the doctor who got in touch with him said all the right things to convince him this would be more fulfilling by far than what the State had planned for him. His smile had a few too many teeth in it, but he played on Cal's desire to stabilize his mutation, and wielded his grief and his unresolved anger with his father to make him accept.

It didn't take very long for Cal to realize that something was wrong, but once he was within the clutches of the Right, there was no way out, and he became just another captive, albeit something of a star pupil of theirs, since his mutation gave them new leads in their attempts to create the super weapon they wanted. He was subjected to a lot of treatments, a lot of conditioning, and was forced to do things he would really rather forget. He's been toted to at least two different facilities, that he can really recall, and forced to mimic the mutations of many subjects there.