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Numinous had a very conventional middle class upbringing. His mothers, a civil rights lawyer and a high priestess, adopted him (always referred to in the family as “bought him off the rack”) when he was six hours old. His birth mother was invited to be part of the family but made only occasional appearances during his childhood. He knows nothing about his birth father. They lived at Sunny Rabbit commune in the Pacific Northwest until Nick was twelve, when his lawyer mother received a job offer that would mean a lot more money and opportunity but also a substantial relocation. They had a family meeting and decided to try life in Coast City.

Numinous’ priestess mother was without a coven after the move and decided to use the opportunity to start a new age bookstore, Skyclad Wonderments. Since both Moms would have day jobs, it was time for Numinous to graduate from homeschooling to public school. It wasn’t an easy transition. By happenstance, they settled into a district with a large military population. Most of the other kids decided Numinous was weird, at best. They didn’t like his attitude, his personal style, his religion, his politics, or even his name. He made a few friends, but mostly they were embittered outcasts that Numinous found hard to take sometimes. He didn’t like getting picked on, but he didn’t like how they were always down on everyone else too.

Ultimately, getting picked on turned things around. About a year in, one of Numinous’ many bullies started teasing him about how he didn’t care about sports. His Moms didn’t like competition and Numinous always felt uncomfortable around anything that involved uniforms. He got angry about it -he was getting angry more and more often, like his friends- and sat through most of a day fuming about the teasing and everything else. After school he joined his friends for an epic complaint session for the first time...and it didn’t make him feel better. Numinous’ moms also raised him to be accepting of other people and open to new experiences. He was not doing that at all.

The next day Numinous went back to school and went through the flyers for all the sports teams. They all looked more or less the same to him, except that some seemed really violent and those were right out. His Moms would be mad anyway, but they might literally kill him if he signed up for football or wrestling. Rifling through the other options, the swim team came to the top.

Numinous knew it was the right one. He deliberately didn’t ask any questions or try to find out anything about it except for the try out time. He walked into the locker room and found a good portion of his usual tormentors, maybe not the worst ones but kids who hated him pretty seriously. They hated him even more because he didn’t have a swimsuit (at the commune, such things simply were not used) and swam in an old, but clean, pair of boxers.

Coach almost didn’t let him in the pool at all, but he did and Numinous was a natural at it. He just knew what to do and how to best do it. None of that won him friends, but it shut the team up when his fourth lap put him right in the middle of the team’s personal best times. Coach sent him home with a pack of forms and information for Moms.

Moms were extremely uncomfortable, but priestess mom swung the family meeting in his favor when he promised that he would make the most of the opportunity but also not forget his values to fit in with his new team. Numinous spent the rest of his junior high and high school career racking up championships and winning over former enemies. Getting to know them and being around them so much inevitably rubbed off. He worked hard to like them and be a good team player, always supportive and friendly. It wasn’t easy, but he made it work. Along the way his long hair turned into a shaved head. He started going by Nick. He got comfortable with uniforms and excited by competition. He dressed more conservatively, like the guys. When the military recruiters came by, they said stuff that started to make sense to him. Nick lost touch with his old, angry friends and the swim team became an extended family.

The Moms watched all of this with considerable dismay, but couldn’t deny how happy Nick had become. His life had turned around and seemed to be going places. Eventually they decided that he was becoming his own person and he wasn’t being hostile or difficult at home or getting into much more than normal trouble, so it was something they needed to accept. The swimming scholarship that actually got Nick, always an average student, into UC-Coast City helped.

Nick was under no illusions about his university career. He was there to swim and he fully embraced that. Classes came second but they did come and he applied some of the discipline he learned in the pool to keeping up with them. He aimed to become a professional trainer or PE teacher.

Nick met Daniel Michael Ray when he almost failed a math class and got assigned Dan as a tutor. Dan thought tutoring a dumb jock was beneath him and “tutored” by handing over finished assignments. Nick didn’t want that; he actually wanted to learn. He also didn’t like that Dan would insert all kinds of elementary spelling errors into the work to make it look more “authentic”. They clashed often, despite Nick’s best efforts to bury the hatchet. It was like Dan wanted to be hated.

After a while, Nick started to suspect that Dan had more serious problems. He tried to inform Dan’s supervisor, asked after him with his roommate, talked to Coach, but everybody thought Dan just had a bad attitude. Knowing asking Dan himself wouldn’t get anywhere, Nick let it go. Things were tense for a few months, but then Dan turned over a new leaf. He finally accepted that Nick wanted to learn things and even accepted invitations to hang out a few times. Whatever was going on had to be over.

Then Dan arranged a private talk with Nick, at the pool after practice. It was a little weird, but Nick was happy to oblige. Dan was almost an hour late, not arriving until the pool was deserted except for the two of them. They had an awkward, meandering conversation where Dan explained that he’d had a hard life and he was sorry about being so mean to Nick. He hoped they were ok. They were. Dan was studying fluid dynamics and asked Nick if he would be willing to help with some tests. He had a new theory that could increase vehicle fuel efficiency if it worked out and if Nick would just wear some sensors and do some running and swimming in them, it would be enough to get started and maybe get a grant.

Nick was thrilled to help. He could be saving the environment! Dan wired him up with countless little bits of electronics and spent a few weeks putting him through his paces. The sensors made Nick’s head a little fuzzy, but it was fun and Nick got to see a whole new side of Dan. He was intense, but basically a good guy. Their research (Dan insisted it belonged to both of them) went on for a couple of months before Dan raised a new issue. He believed that the nuclear power plant just up the coast was dumping toxic waste into the ocean. He just needed proof and Nick could help him get it by planting a sensor package by the outlet pipes.

Nick leaped at the chance. By the time everything was ready, Dan had worked out a way to sneak Nick all the way into the plant by swimming up the pipes. They’d bring down the plant and be heroes! Nick just had to Trust Dan and Follow Instructions. It was the easiest thing ever, especially with Dan’s voice in his ears thanks to some waterproof earbuds. Nick swam through the pipes, past grates and through huge valves. The water felt funny and he was short on air a lot of the time, but Nick trusted Dan. He emerged inside the plant and Dan walked him through how to set up the bomb.

Dan called it a bomb now, but that didn’t seem important. There were instructions and Nick had to Follow Instructions. When Dan told Nick to hop back in one of the glowing blue pools and relax, Nick did it without hesitation. Then Dan explained: The sensors that Nick had been wearing for Dan’s research let Dan map his brain and train it to automatically accept anything Dan said. It was easy because Nick was so eager to make friends and so dim-witted. Any time Nick showed signs of resistance, Dan triggered the parts of his brain active when he was swimming to refocus him. Nick would have done anything for Dan after a few rounds of that.

Something about all that felt vaguely wrong. Dan must have noticed because he laughed and told Nick that the radioactive coolant he was swimming in would kill him in hours even if he got out that second. But Dan was kind at heart; the bomb would get to Nick first. He’d been too good of a friend to condemn to an agonizing death by radiation poisoning...which really should have started showing symptoms by now.

But the bomb would take care of it. Dan knew about this plant because his father died there in a radiation accident. Nick was the instrument of his revenge, and if half Coast City got irradiated in it then they had it coming for looking the other way for so long.

Nick lay in the glowing water and thought about Coast City. His friends. His Moms. All the innocent people. That was...wrong. It was hard to think with Dan in his ears, but Nick knew that. Dan was...making him a murderer. He had to...do...something. He couldn’t Trust Dan anymore. It was the hardest thing Nick ever had to do, but he pulled himself dripping out of the water and slipped and slided over to the bomb. He felt like he was melting as he lifted it up, dropped it a few times, and then finally dove back into the water with it to return the way he’d come.

He made it almost all the way, swimming faster and faster down the pipe. Nick could see the sand at the end of it just as the bomb clutched tight to his chest with one arm exploded. Nick felt himself rise up and spread, lost in an infinite, beautiful flow of Blue. It was the best swim he’d ever had; maybe he was in the Summerlands? He thought idly of Dan, standing beside the water. Nick left him with his shoes off, the waves washing up around his feet. Suddenly Nick could feel those feet around him, inside him. He just had to swim over and-

Nick reappeared in front of Dan, back in the world again. His former friend was cursing Nick’s name, oblivious for a moment before he drew a gun and shot Nick through the head. There was a splash and Nick felt waves race through his body as the bullet went through. Then a feral light gleamed in Dan’s eyes. He called Nick a metahuman and said he would be useful still. Nick just had to Trust Dan.

“Shut up, Dan,” Nick said. He punched the nerd in the face and Dan fell to the ground, coughing and choking as water welled up and out of his mouth and nose. The Coast Guard found them like that half an hour later. Every time Dan got his breath, Nick hit him again. He tried not to like it too much.

Nick expected to go to prison for a long time. He’d plead guilty; he did the crime, after all. But a search of Dan’s dorm room and lab locker found the electronics, the notes, and the computer programs that Dan had used on Nick as well as direct admissions by Dan in a grandiose diary that he had brainwashed a dumb jock into being his suicide bomber. STAR Labs confirmed that the science could work...but probably only on someone with Nick’s previously-latent metagene.

That was last year. It began with Nick at sea, unsure if he’d become a personal trainer or a teacher and fearing he might fail out of college. It ended with Nick as an uneasy test subject at STAR Labs, convinced that he had a higher calling. Someone, or something, out in that vast Blue flow wanted him to be a hero.

The radiation and bomb blast activated Nick’s metagene. Nick believes that the mysterious Blue he swims through when teleporting may be a conscious force that also took a hand in things. Initially his Living Water form was his default state and assuming a solid body required considerable effort. His training has largely remedied that, but when faced with trauma Nick’s watery nature makes itself known. Any sudden impact or penetration will cause a splash as his Altered Physiology defends itself.

Even when solid, Nick’s body displays a few signs of his metahuman nature. His irises are the blue of a tropical sea with visible waves rippling over its surface. The only hair on his body is atop his head, where a short, wavy coif appeared during the manifestation of his powers. It’s naturally blue and cannot be dyed. When cut, it reverts to water and reappears the next time Nick changes forms. He finds it annoying.

In Living Water form, Nick is recognizably himself but his hair orients into a row of short fins running down his head and spine. His hands and feet acquire webbing and gill slits appear on his neck. His body takes on the appearance of water around it, but is otherwise the same tropical ocean blue as his eyes. His water form is wet to the touch and soaks through to its surroundings in much the same way as a normal person’s body heat would.

Nick has the natural ability to Feel the Flow of water sources. He knows where they are and can sense if there is anything unusual or off about them. He finds the presence of flowing water decidedly pleasant and large bodies of it are calming to him.

Nick accesses The Blue through any amount of water, allowing him to dive into it and emerge elsewhere by accessing a place he believes is somehow the unity of all water. For Nick, this is a profoundly uplifting, spiritual experience where he briefly becomes one with the entire body whilst simultaneously swimming to his destination. He and anything that comes through the Blue with him will emerge soaking wet.

Nick’s Tsunami breath manifests with his gills flaring and the fins on his head rising; even if he’s in solid form they briefly appear, before a great torrent of water rushes out of his mouth at high speed and pressure. He believes that this extra water comes through the Blue to him from raging rapids, waterfalls, and rush tides somewhere else in the world. Anything in physical contact with Nick when he uses Tsunami Breath will be drenched.

Nick is a well-built, muscular man in his early twenties. He dresses in quick-drying, usually form-fitting athletic clothing unless circumstances dictate otherwise and becomes visibly uncomfortable when garbed otherwise. He was more at ease dressed up before his powers manifested, but now nice clothes are a sometimes expensive hindrance. He usually wears shades to hide his unusual eyes.

Nick is naturally outgoing, friendly, and laid back. His diverse upbringing has made him comfortable with a wide variety of people and situations, though since his powers manifested he has become less comfortable around scientists and technology. He has strong, generally left-wing beliefs on most issues, but long acquaintance and many positive experiences with conservatives of various (usually military) stripes have made him rather less strident than he once was and altered some of his previous beliefs, most conspicuously in giving him an abiding respect for the military and coming to appreciate the influence of strong authority figures. Nick believes “spirituality” is very important and loosely adheres to eclectic neopaganism, but if asked outright would tell you that swimming is his religion.

Nick has a powerful competitive streak when it comes to anything physical. He doesn’t insist he be the best at everything and shares the joy of a friend who bests him, but he believes in putting nothing less than his full effort in. He practices a rigorous fitness regime, pays careful attention to what he eats and drinks, and is a diehard partisan for all Coast City and UC-Coast City’s sports teams, except football.