Crux

Crux is the criminal mastermind who controls what remains of Oakland. He was a primary antagonist during Inbetween: Oakland.

## Personality

Crux is incredibly meticulous and paranoid, taking great lengths to safeguard himself and his plans at all times. He understands his weaknesses and is not so vain as to think himself without faults. That being said, he believes himself to be smarter and better than almost everyone. He is incredibly organized and keeps to a strict schedule to maximize his efficiency and productivity.

He has very few, if any, moral bounds and is willing to torture, kidnap and kill both adults and children if he needs to. He follows the information his power grants him to the letter, never deviating from steps needed to achieve his desired future. He is shut off from others, by choice, in order to limit possible leverage against him.

He dislikes having to rely on other people and made sure the people who worked for him understood their expendability.

## Appearance

Crux wears a black, skintight bodysuit with a red cross starting over his heart and wrapping around his body, meeting at a point on his lower back. The mask doesn’t have holes. The fabric is breathable and allows him to see through it but is an opaque gray black to outsiders. His ribs and joints are visible beneath the skin tight fabric.

## Abilities and Powers

Crux is a precognitive of sorts. By posing a desired end goal or consequence, he enters a dream-like state where he receives the steps he must take to achieve the desired outcome. His power gives him no indication *when* the steps must be completed, certain actions needing to be taken weeks or months in the future depending on the question. He has refined the process by breaking up plans into smaller, hour to day long chunks. If his misses an event, other planned events may not occur and ruin the possible future. He doesn't always understand why certain steps must be taken, only that they should be. His power tends to act in a disjointed, 'Rube-Goldberg machine' fashion, multiple inconsequential actions suddenly coming together to achieve the desired outcome. Not even Crux understood exactly how his power worked or what was and wasn't cased by his intervention.

While within the power induced fugue state, he scribbles down important information, drawings and symbols onto his environment around him. He has hundreds of journals and ledgers containing even the most minute detail of information his power affords him. His power gives him an exceptional ability to process and correlate data, his mind working far faster than a baseline human. He isn't smarter, he can just think far faster. It is possible he has an eidetic memory.

He was unable to predict the arrival of the Calamity Cetus, his power not registering its existence when determining the future. Similarly, his power is unable to compensate for certain Thinkers.

Crux is one of the more powerful members of the Elect, maintaining great influence over a number of villain teams, independent villains and rogues– including most of the Emeryville Conclave and its affiliates. He also heads a large mercenary force with access to top-of-the-line equipment, including some Tinker tech. He frequently used body doubles, particularly when interacting with people he did not trust.

### Tactics

Crux is overly cautious and paranoid, trusting virtually no one. He uses his powers on even the most mundane choices, such as what coffee to drink in the morning or what clothing to wear while in his civilian identity. He keeps information about his power secret, purposely misleading the very few people who know his capabilities.

He is an expert in various forms of emotional and psychological warfare, able to mentally break a person and bend them to his will, partially with assistance from his power. He has virtyually no ethical limits, taking any and every action his power deems necessary. He employs a number of supervillain teams and independent villains including the Outcasts, the Blacklisters, the Runners and a bulk of the Emeryville Conclave. He was able to predict the arrival of the Slayers and the Merry Band, creating plans that benefited him.

## History

Created the Emeryville Conclave with the help of Blue Blood and The Critic in early 2005.