al-Hayyat (Desert Wind (if Super-Speed), Desert Eagle (if Flight), Desert Ghost (if Teleportation))

The man now known as ‘the Serpent’ was once many things. Most recently he was an undercover operative for Mossad, infiltrating the local Palestinian resistance and using his skills and ruthlessness to do his duty to Israel, while seeming to his erstwhile allies the very picture of a devout Moslem. Truth told, he has spent more time masquerading as a Moslem in his life than as a Jew, and over the years he caught himself too many times suggesting plans of action against his own nation, caught up in the role that he now wore as a second skin. Slowly he realized that he had lost all loyalty to the ‘side’ he worked for, that he had come to know and respect many of the individuals he had been working with, and felt a little more of his soul slip away with each act of betrayal his job required. But he despised the terrorist acts of some of his allies, and understood the need for his duplicity. And so he endured, for years, until he had no love, nor respect for either his own birth people, or those he had been masquerading as so long that they were far more ‘family’ to him than his own parents.

Who knows how it would have ended, and indeed both sides now treated him warily, having noted suspicious behavior, or improper sympathies. He most likely would have been brought in for questioning by his Mossad allies, but a Palestinian assassination attempt beat them to the punch. He survived only barely, through a mutant talent that he had shared with no one. Since his teen years, he had been able to call things to his hands, small items, personal items that he had handled in the past. He never lacked for a pencil, always reaching into a pocket and drawing one forth. Or a pocket knife, or some money, or a gun…

He saw the primitive mine a second before it detonated, and he desperately tried to get away. He succeeded, for the first time in his life, teleporting himself, instead of a tiny object, appearing deep in the desert, at a hiding point that he had set up years before to drop off items or directives. He was unconscious for days from this unprecedented display of power, and when he awoke, his eyes glowed with brilliant blue energy, effectively ending his days of secrecy. Wearing thick sunglasses, he traveled into neighboring Syria to read of his untimely demise in the explosion, and later corroborated that Mossad as well regarded him as dead.

He realized that he could never return, that both sides would think him a traitor, and even if they didn’t, his life, or either of his lives, where no longer an option with his mutant eyes shining forth for all to see. So he traveled under a false name to Paragon City, where many mutants were said to dwell openly, and there took the name al-Hayyat, the Serpent, maintaining his guise as an Arab, which by this time felt more natural to him than his own long-neglected Jewish heritage. (He practices no religion, as he has lost faith in his own Abrahamic upbringing, but does not feel comfortable ‘pretending’ to follow the teachings of Mohammed, now that he does not need to maintain a charade of piety.)

He openly uses his mutant gift now, and shows his glowing eyes proudly, to aid in his disguise. He appears unarmed most times, but his weapons appear in his hands when he needs them, and vanish back to whatever place he stores them on command. New clips of ammunition appear as they are required. Many of his super-powered allies have special weapons that require no ammunition, or that deploy from their armored forms, but he uses an assortment of traditional weapons, simply calling up the ones he needs from his own personal armory of black-market goods. He has discussed in falsified details his first personal teleportation, and Antonio Nash has confirmed that with training, he will someday be able to teleport himself at will, and perhaps even allies, or foes.