Powerglove
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Powerglove, aka Jumper, is an inter-dimensional refugee from Earth 267, which was unofficially nicknamed 'Gangland' by certain database interns who shall remain unnamed. Unlike many dimensional refugees who have found themselves in Millennium City through accidents or misdirected planar spells, Powerglove, or 'Cam' as he prefers to be called, arrived under his own power. Cameron is able to travel between alternate realities without the assistance of any technology or magic, though when he arrived to this world his power was uncontrolled and volatile. It has since been stabilized. He generally fights on the side of justice, but has been known to bend or completely disregard the law of the land in pursuit of what he feels is 'right', or his own agenda. He is considered a refugee and legal resident of the United States, and has no citizenship status with any country. See: Case-File: [CLASSIFIED].
History
Cameron Martinelli was born June 1, 1985 in a medical clinic in Boston, in a parallel reality where society has developed a socioeconomic polarization between arguably-evil mega-corporations and arguably-violent organized crime groups (see below). Cam's father was Don Leonardo 'Big Lou' Martinelli, the leader of one of the major crime groups in Boston, the Dockside Mafia. His mother was a Québécios immigrant named Marceline, birth name unknown. While his family was not as well-off as a Corporate family, Cam's childhood was still a relatively privileged one, economically speaking. Cam never wanted for food or comfort, and his father was very concerned with appearances and kept the family clean and well-dressed. This did not, however, mean his life was easy, or simple.
When Cam was very young, he and his mother were out walking alone, and were ambushed by members of a rival gang. Cam escaped, but his mother was shot and killed. After the incident, Lou Martinelli raised his young son alone. He never remarried, and if he ever saw any other women seriously, Cam never knew about it. Lou managed to balance being a single father and being a mafia crime lord by inducting Cam into the family business at a very young age. He was taught hand-to-hand, martial arts (a variation of Tae Kwan Do), and street-fighting, and small useful skills such as how to pick locks and disable security systems. By the age of 12 he was tagging along on jobs with the Dockside men. At 14 he was one of their major getaway drivers. At 15, he drew his first real blood. He was made to kill a man, execution-style, in order to be officially accepted as a full member of Dockside. The incident left him rattled, and unsure of what he really wanted to do in his life.
Around the same time, Cam was exploring things he was assuredly too young to be exploring. He had a few girlfriends in high school, for appearances' sake, but was unable to deny that his attractions were strongly biased towards his own gender. It caused him no small amount of anxiety. Homosexuality was far from accepted in the society he was raised in. It was demonized, criminalized, and those who were caught or even suspected of being homosexual tended to be met with violence. Despite the danger, young Cam let himself be drawn into the underground subculture, and had many experiences he refuses to go into any detail about. Toward the beginning of his junior year, Cam felt daring enough to begin a tentative, and highly secretive romantic pursuit of a male classmate. Unfortunately, they were not secretive enough.
Cam had invited the boy, Mathias, to his home, to work on a group project for school. They ended up getting into what teenagers who are alone and attracted to each-other tend to get up to. Cam's father came home unexpectedly, and walked into the middle of it. Lou became enraged, and attacked the boys. Cam took the beating, allowing Mathias to escape. The boy and his family reportedly fled the city to avoid retaliation, and Cam never saw him again.
The beating was severe. 16 year old Cam was put in the hospital, and spent a month recovering. His father never visited while Cam was conscious. A few of the Dockside men did visit, and gave the boy some threatening warnings. Cam decided that it was time for him to leave. When he felt he could walk well enough, Cam broke himself out of the hospital. He walked to a nearby railroad yard, and hopped in a freight car on a train bound for Philadelphia. He never returned home or saw any of his family again, and he never managed to finish high school.
Philadelphia was a primarily corporation-run town. The young and still-injured teenager had hoped to find simple work once he arrived, but it proved difficult to get any legitimate employment without company connections and references, neither of which Cam, as a 'gang kid', had access to. As much as he disliked the idea of going back into street crime, Cam saw no other option. He would have to steal, or starve. He started using his skills to break into abandoned buildings, shoplift food and necessities from local shops, and generally try to keep himself afloat.
His actions gained him the attention of a local vigilante group, the Union. These were some of the rare people who fought both against the corrupt corporations *and* the violent street criminals. The leader was a man named Jacob Morr, a former Security Investigator for one of the larger corporations. One day, Morr was eating lunch at his favorite deli, when he noticed the skinny teenage Cam get a sandwich and leave without paying. He trailed the boy for a few streets, and waited for him to be busy ravenously devouring the food before confronting him. The teenager put up a fight, enough to impress Morr. He decided to bring Cam back to his team's HQ, instead of turning him in to the authorities. When The Union learned of Cam's plight, and particularly that he was a runaway from a crime family, they took pity on the boy and decided to take him in.
Cam worked with the Union from then on, learning to be a vigilante. He perfected his fighting and infiltration skills, and his time with the older members helped shape his philosophy. He found a peace in helping people, though much of what he did with the Union was still illegal. After a few years in the team, Cam was befriended by, and fell into a relationship with, another Union member named Daniel. They became very close, and were even considering moving away somewhere they could live together in peace. Unfortunately their plans were put on hold when war broke out.
The Invasion, And The Accident
Cam was around 22 years old when the invaders came. They were silver-gray creatures, that looked like robots but moved like organic beings. Cam does not know how they got to his world, and does not know where they came from, other than that they were most likely from another dimension. In remote and abandoned places around the world, strange structures would be built, apparently from nowhere. No one ever saw any workers, and it was as if the structures built themselves. Once finished, the structures turned out to be gateways, portals to somewhere *else*. And through the completed portals, the creatures would swarm, like ants. When killed, they would explode into a fine mist, and anyone unlucky enough to breathe the mist would soon sicken and die. Earth 267 had completely missed nanotechnology, and so no-one had any idea what the creatures were, and had little to no defense against the gray mist that spread through the portals and began killing plants, animals, and humans. World governments, the sleeping giants, mobilized anyone who could fight.
The Union was sent on guerrilla assaults against portals and groups of the creatures. One of their assaults on an alien portal went badly. Cam was caught in an explosion, and thrown directly onto the portal structure. He was impaled through the abdomen, leaving a scar he still carries. Apparently, when Cam's blood mixed with *something* in the portal structure, it caused it to become unstable. The gateway collapsed, and Cam was pulled into the event horizon.
