Cale "Kaylee" Black
Cale "Kaylee" Black
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Portrayed By Bill Kaulitz
Gender Male
Date of Birth April 1, 1996
Age 16
Zodiac Sign Aries
Aliases Kaylee, Gecko
Place of Birth Denver, Colorado
Current Location 'Xavier's School for the Gifted' Westchester, New York
Occupation Student
Known Relatives Amy Black (sister), grandparents, Baxter Black (uncle).
Significant Other None
Identity ??
Known Abilities Wall crawling, sticky prehensile tongue, active camouflage.
First Appearance April 17, 2012

Cale Black is a mutant with lizard-like abilities that attends Xavier's School for the Gifted.

History

Cale Black was born to Trisha and Stanley Black on April 1, 1996, in the town of Denver Colorado – the second of two children, and younger than his sister Amy Black by a little over a year. The two siblings got along well, despite not having a lot in common – Amy being the 'go getter' of the pair and typically being far more aggressive and adventuresome than Cale.

In fact, Cale wasn't very competitive or independent at all. He had few close friends as a kid; except for another boy about his age. When he wasn't hanging out with his friend, he was hanging out with his mom and his sister; he loved to help them with their various projects and didn't see anything hugely wrong with it; he'd also share his toys with his sister and vice versa; he enjoyed her dolls and 'girly' toys just as much as he enjoyed his GI Joes and hot wheels. Their parents were fairly open minded and didn't really see anything wrong with this. For Cale, it was pretty simple – he didn't see, or at that point understand, the difference between male and female gender roles.

As time went on and he got a little older, this would prove to become a problem. Other boys became involved in competitive sports, and were constantly bragging and boasting about who was cooler and tried to be manly, and of course rough-housing. Cale did not, choosing follow his own path (as his parents told him to) and do whatever he enjoyed. Problem being; this got the boy labeled as a wimp among his peers and made him a target of both a subconscious fear of the different, and derision for not aspiring to be 'cool' or 'badass.' Several times, this resulted in Cale getting nearly beat up, were it not for his older sister stepping in and ending things before they got too out of hand. Of course, that only made the situation worse as he soon got the reputation of someone who needed to be protected by a girl.

As for his father's role in all this – well, he loved his son very much, as most fathers do, but he was simply puzzled by Cale's behavior. They were pretty much nothing alike – in fact, Amy probably shared more in common with him than his son. It was all he could do to be there, but it was obvious that Cale was Trisha's favorite (as much as parents play favorites) and vice versa.

As Cale approached puberty, he stuck with interests that he'd had in elementary school; helping his mom out with dinner every night, and sticking with the school choir while the few other boys who WERE in it had dropped out. It wasn't long, therefore, until the horseplay he'd endured as a kid turned into a much more nasty form of bullying; especially since his sister couldn't be there to protect him all the time anymore. 'Faggot,' 'queer,' 'fairy,' 'poof.' There seemed to be no end to the creativity of the terms that people could come up with to call him. Getting the school staff, or his parents involved only made matters worse, and while nobody dared to rough him up TOO much because of Amy, getting pushed down the stairs or tripped, or sucker punched in a crowd when nobody could tell what was going on were nearly daily experiences for him.

It was a long nightmare, and growing older didn't seem to make any difference. Many kids would have just shrugged off the insults and bullying, but Cale began to believe that they were right; not that he should change and be more masculine… he didn't WANT to be like them, after all. His sister, whom he looked up to, grew beautiful and and was capable socially… she didn't have to act like anybody but herself; SHE didn't have to put up with what he went through. He felt hideous; neither big and strong and handsome like his father nor feminine and pretty like his mother or sister.

Thus began his fantasies and confusing (to him) urges; when none of his family was home, he would often sneak into his sister's room and 'borrow' her old clothes; sometimes spending afternoons in his room as 'Kaylee,' which is who he called himself on the internet, where he would often pose as a teenage girl in his favorite online games and chat rooms. As careful as he was about it, there were of course clues – whether his family picked up on them is anybody's guess, but he was never outright caught doing it and he never dared go out nor tell anybody about it – it was his deepest kept secret and not even his best friends knew about it. At least, he HOPED they didn't.

This went one for quite some time and it got to the point where Cale's time as 'Kaylee' was one of the only things that kept him going, especially in his last year in middle school when his sister ended up being in high school.

By the time Cale himself was in high school, the majority of people including his close friends had him pegged as gay; he'd made no overt advances at girls at all during his entire middle school time, and even went so far as to turn down the advances of a quite pretty and fairly popular girl who asked HIM out – it was a mark that he would probably now never be rid of, but all the constant abuse had done was to make it so that he didn't actually care.

In high school, Cale sat at his sister's lunch table, where he was tolerated and not abused, but expected by her peers to remain fairly quiet most of the time; as a result he was fairly current with whatever gossip was going around, without meaning to be (where you sat for lunch is obviously a big deal socially). Cale was still very good friends with his best childhood friend Jake, and sometimes he would try and return to that table. Although he had a good relationship with his best friend (rumor had it they were a couple; that wasn't true, but Jake put up with anyway), Cale was generally hated by his friend's peers, or at best pitied. The general atmosphere when trying to hang out with them was open hostility and insults; up to and including having his lunch dumped all over his clothes. It did not help his reputation when he grew his hair out pretty long and continued to be skinny when many other guys were making efforts to lift weights and 'bulk up.'

However, with many of the other guys now feeling more secure in their masculinity as they got older, the daily bullying had subsided some; most people just considered Cale gay and but no longer really cared. Except for the few true knucklehead jocks, of course, who would still make his life a living hell now and then. Cale continued his tenure in the school choir even up through high school, and found some solace when he began taking computer science courses – learning about Alan Turing, whom, despite the prejudices that he had faced for being homosexual, had made great progress in that field and helped make many modern technologies possible.

For the first time in Cale's life, things were beginning to look up – maybe there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah. That's what he thought. But fate, cruel as it always is, had other things in mind for its little puppet.

See, Cale's mother and father were both doctors – Cale's dad ran a general practice, basically your generic family doctor, while Cale's mom was a medical research scientist for a large pharmaceutical corporation, based in Denver, where they lived. She was involved in cancer research and the program that she was running looked promising – every night she would come home, telling them that she was a step closer to 'cracking the code' or… any number of other things.

Eventually, the drug WAS finished and the research proved to be successful; successful enough for FDA trials, at least. The problem was… The drug company had been doing the math, and figured out that it could make a lot more profit at selling treatments than actually selling a cure. Heck, there was even talk of the government getting involved to make sure that the 'wonder drug' as it was being called was handled properly – a surefire sign of a threat to the continued profitability of the company, especially after they'd invested all those resources into developing it in the first place. The board of directors agreed in an off the record, off site meeting that something had to be done.

Their solution was to get the criminal underworld involved – scare Trisha into stopping the research while putting subtle pressure on her funding at work. Cooking the books, as it were. Rather than 'scare' though, the plan went a little overboard. The plan was to 'nearly' kill Stan, Trisha and their children while they were coming back from a party – a party celebrating the end of the long research cycle and the possible approval of the drug.

While driving back into suburban Denver after dinner and an evening at a nearby ski resort, their car was sideswiped into a guard rail by a large black four wheel drive truck; they were only supposed to scare the blacks, maybe get out and threaten them that bad things would happen if they continued the research. However, the thugs had miscalculated and killed Stan instantly. Upon realizing the bloody mess they'd made out of things and that they were in over their heads, they opted to get rid of the other witnesses and simply use their vehicle's superior weight and horsepower to push the Volkswagen station-wagon over the guard rail.

Cale, for his part, was completely terrified – never before had he felt so hopeless. All he wanted to do was run and hide! He felt something inside of him snap, along with the various superficial injuries he sustained from the car crash. There was screaming as the entire inside of the car was bloodied, and then a crunch. Then the whole thing was rolling end over end in freefall towards the bottom of a canyon hundreds of feet deep. Apparently, he was the only one still conscious; without thinking, he climbed out of the car and made a leap, hands grasping at a rock which he got a palm on and somehow stopped his descent. As he looked back down, he saw Amy who'd been in the seat next to him falling with the car, and screamed at her; she was just out of reach.

Time at this point had slowed down massively; as he watched, horrified, and then suddenly felt something stretch out; to his surprise it was his own TONGUE that lashed out and snatched Amy out of the plummeting car, easily holding her weight. He hung there precariously in midair for a moment, and then yanked her up to him as if his tongue was some sort of rope. Holding her like that, he climbed up to the top of the cliff to find the murderers still waiting for them; as soon as he was able to get them both up to solid ground, however, he blacked from the exertion and blood loss during the accident.

It seemed like seconds later that he was opening his eyes again, and found himself in a hospital with his sister leaning over him, prodding him awake. He'd been out for some time. Over a week. He was unsurprised, though heart broken, to find out that both of his parents were dead; he was more surprised to find out that both he and Amy had tested positive for an active X-Gene; though it became obvious to him shortly as he began accidentally sticking to things and his skin seemed to change color of its own accord whenever he got too emotional. The lengthy tongue took the longest getting used to; it was like having an extra arm… if that extra arm was disgusting and slimy. Thankfully he was able to keep it hidden most the the time.

At any rate, upon getting out of the hospital, both Cale and Amy were questioned heavily by the police; from there, they were turned over to child services and put in protective custody while they were psychologically analyzed; each of them having multiple sessions with a psychiatrist together and seperate. Cale chose to focus on the mutant aspect, because that seemed to be what the man was most interested in – he successfully kept his double life as 'Kaylee' to himself. After only a few sessions, the doctor revealed that he himself was a mutant, and recommended that they both be sent to Xavier's to finish their schooling and for their own protection… the alternative having been to go and live with their uncle (Stan's brother) in Missouri – something neither of them really relished doing, as he had a bit of a reputation for being a bigot.

Powers

Active Camouflage – Cale has the ability to manipulate the melanin in his skin. His melanin and skin cells are special in that they can become pretty much any color that exists. The small hairs all over his body have similar properties to fiber optic cable (even when shaved) and act like miniature cameras to sense the colors of objects all around him. When he wants to hide, or especially if he is scared, awkward feeling, or stressed, this translates into his skin, hair, and eyes taking on the properties of his environment around him. While the hair and eyes take on a general color of whatever is around him, his skin can become quite detailed and is able to change rapidly. A good example would be if he was wall crawling across a brick wall, his body would mimic the lines of the mortar and they would stay relatively lined up with the lines on the wall. His hair and eyes, however, would take on a reddish/gray color.

Prehensile Tongue – Cale has a lengthy retractable prehensile tongue. It can extend up to twenty-five feet from his mouth. It is very strong; Cale could hang from it should he feel so inclined. It is strong enough to lift an average sized adult male, or around 250 pounds, and Cale has increased muscle density in his neck/jaw/shoulder area to make this possible. In fact, his tongue is much stronger than his arms. It is coated in a thick, somewhat slimy saliva-like substance to keep it lubricated and from drying out while he uses it in such a fashion. His tongue itself is made out of a tough rubbery tissue that has a little bit of weight to it and is resistant to being cut or damaged. If it DOES get cut off, it will eventually regrow completely over the course of a month or so, but it's the only part of him that's like that. He can grab things with it, or use it like a whip to confuse/blind his enemies. When not in use it's able to retract fully into his mouth, though due to its length he can often be seen with it hanging out a little when he's not thinking about it, a bit like a dog when it pants.

Wallcrawling – Cale can stick to just about any surface and crawl up it, just like Spider-Man. When he climbs, his body alternately secretes a very thin layer of super sticky slime, and then releases a small amount of potent solvent that dissolves the chemical off of his skin, allowing him to 'stick and move' as it were. It leaves behind a slight residue that completely dissolves over the course of a few hours, much like Spider-Man's web fluid. As with his tongue, his muscles are mutated in a fashion that gives them high endurance to this sort of work; he can hang from a ceiling in camouflage, for instance, and then grab an unsuspecting passer-by with his tongue, lifting them into the air. He can probably lift around 250 pounds, which while not particularly impressive as weight lifting goes, is a lot for someone of his build & appearance – his muscles don't show it.

Hard to Track – Cale's body does not quite properly regulate its temperature like a normal human being. His average body temperature is far below what a normal human's would be and thus he has decreased signatures on thermal imaging. While this is fine and dandy most of the time, on cold days or environments (say 50f or below) he can have trouble functioning and his thoughts/actions will be muddled and slower. For this reason Cale is a bit of a coffee fiend, but his body rejects the caffeine so he doesn't end up getting a buzz. Finding a warm spot is an instinctual imperative that's also hard to resist. He also sweats very little, leaving him with little or no trackable scent most of the time (aside from places he's been).

Timeline

  • April 17, 2012: Cale arrives at Xavier's, a few weeks after the car accident in which his parents lost their lives and he and his sister both manifested mutant powers.
  • May 28, 2012: Cale's friend, Tara, assembles a team and with their help he finally reunites with his sister, Amy who is being held captive and experimented upon by Friends of Humanity cell.
  • June 10, 2012: Cale is caught cross-dressing by Skyler, an older returning student, and is encouraged to begin the process of coming out to his friends about being transgender; big decisions are made.

Quotes

  • Not yet!

Trivia

Favorite color: Purple
Likes: Video games, computer programming, anime, cooking… and cats!
Dislikes: Jerks, people who yell a lot. Bad food. Bigots and bullies. Possibly capitalism.

Gallery

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