The Custodes

Chapter 2 - Nexus

Every penny robbed from a random pedestrian on the street was somehow linked back to him, every golden wrist watch stolen off a wealthy man's arm was now his.

Thing is though, Nexus never sought out wealth or fortunes.

Despite what it may seem like, to him the purpose of the organisation he was running was not to become rich. If that were he case he would simply go out robbing jewellery stores or banks or whatnot.

What Nexus loved was the feeling of empowerment it brought him.

He enjoyed sitting above everyone else, knowing that he was in the position of power he was. The people who worked for him, his men as he would say, were all in it for their own reasons, most of them to do with making a living, which Nexus gladly fulfilled for them.

It was far less risky, you see, to threaten a middle aged man with a knife in an alleyway than say hold up a convenience store with a gun. Many people were convinced that working for Nexus was the best alternative to an honest pay without becoming extremely exposed to the possibility of jail time.

Secrecy was a key factor in how the organisation continued to thrive. Hardly anyone that was a part of it even knew Nexus' identity, and those that did wouldn't dare reveal it to either the police or others lower down the chain of thieves.

Plenty of people had been arrested in the group's history, which was tragically unavoidable, but not a single member of the police force had managed to put together that every petty thief they caught were all linked through Nexus and his men.

Sending either one man or a small group out to steal at a time was the best course of action, since if they did end up being caught it simply looked like another one off, and there wouldn't be enough people to interrogate to get any sort of hint as to what was going on behind the scenes.

The reason Nexus and his cronies were so well off was that the boy had friends in the selling and purchasing stolen jewellery industry. He knew a great deal of people that would buy anything valuable he gave them for a high price, with the added bonus of not asking any questions about how him or his group came about acquiring them.

Nexus had saved up enough money by the time he was nineteen to buy his own house, one near the outskirts of town far away from any main areas of operation for the group, and he made sure no one that would put his position of power at risk knew where it was.

As well as the thirst for power and being the leader of a hidden group of thieves, there was something else that set Nexus apart from all others he'd come across. His powers.

He'd had them all his life, and they were the sole reason he'd never been caught by the police in his early years.

The powers themselves were fairly complicated, but over the years Nexus had learn to completely master them, and use them to his advantage in almost any situation. It was difficult to define exactly what he could do, but it most definitely involved the atoms in the air that surround everyone.

Nexus could cause the atoms around his hand to come together tightly and form a sort of invisible, unbreakable barrier on command in the space of a second, as well as shoot concentrating bolts of solid sharp air wherever he wanted.

Those were his two favourites, but there were a multitude of things he could do with them.

Anytime the police came and cornered him in an alleyway, he could simply use his powers to create invisible solid blocks just below his feet in order to climb up to the rooftops and escape.

There were only three others he knew who also had powers, two of which he was close enough to for them not to be a threat.

One was Daigo, and since he was the only person on the planet Nexus confidently trusted with his life, he never once worried that he would use them against him. The other person with powers was a girl named Quinn, the same age as Nexus, who he had ended up meeting and befriending during his rise to power.