Cretan

<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Cretan</default></title>

<image source="Image"></image> <image source="image"></image> <group><header>Basic Information</header> <label>Civilian Name</label> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Gender</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Death</label> <label>Age</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Post-timeskip</label> <label>Ward start</label> <label>Relations</label> <label>Family</label></group> <group><header>Professional Status</header> <label>Occupation</label> <label>Classification</label> <label>Unique Features</label> <label>Alignment</label>

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<label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Previous Team(s)</label> <label>Base of Operations</label></group> <group><header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label></group> </infobox> Cretan is a bull headed member of The Order, an Earth Cheit group.

Personality

As an Earth Cheit native he is likely versed in religion.

Relationships

Lionwing

Cretan and Lionwing have a sexual relationship with one another.<ref name=7.5Crete/>

Cradle

Based on Tattletale's analysis Cretan is actually loyal to Cradle.<ref>“Cretan and Lionwing are there, but they aren’t stepping up,” Tattletale observed. “They’re sticking close to Cradle. Closer relationship. They’re actually loyal.” - Excerpt Heavens 12.8</ref>

Appearance

Cretan is a large physically imposing man,<ref name=11.3>The last person sitting at the table was Cretan. Muscular, with a shaved head and goatee. Clicking through produced a blurry picture of him standing in the midst of fires. He had a helmet with a bull motif, but didn’t even use the bull’s horns as part of the aesthetic- the helmet hugged his head pretty close, and the ‘bull’ arched over top like a mohawk, its eyes lining up with his. His armor was similar, hugging his body pretty close, with the design etched in or marked out in white metal. - Excerpt from Blinding 11.3</ref> when outside of costume he generally keeps his head shaved.<ref name=7.5Crete>One face, a woman, strawberry blonde, with one tattooed arm. I could see the impression she’d left where she had slept on the edge of the bed, but had climbed off the bed on the opposite side.
[...]
I continued to walk around the room, studying the men. The other woman was too blurry to make out, her visits too fleeting. From the way one man danced around the door, he might have repeatedly gone out with her.

Dark hair, dark clothes, pale face, dark eyes or sunglasses, for her.

One man had a red hat, it looked like. The other was bald.
[...]
The woman’s image at the edge of the bed remained, while the rest of her disappeared.

There was another image of her on the bed. She was in the middle of coitus with the bald man.
[...]
The strawberry blonde with tattoos down her arm wore a cat mask and a bodysuit, as she leaned against the wall. The bald man wore war paint.
[...]
The images weren’t a snapshot. The woman and Kingdom Come had been captured sleeping. The bald man had tossed and turned too much to be captured at any one point while he slept, so the best resolution was when he’d sat eating. Even though the images froze in time, they were out of sync, each one at a different moment. - Excerpt from Torch 7.5</ref>

Wears white and black armor that is styled after a bull, but without any horns.<ref>Lionwing and Cretan were there. White and black armor, hers modeled with a griffon aesthetic, his modified with a bull, but no clear or obvious horns. - Excerpt from Interlude 11.c II</ref> Under the mask he wears war-paint.<ref name=7.5Crete/>

Abilities and Powers

Cretan creates a labyrinth through non-euclidean space. Comparable to Vista and Labyrinth however he is restricted to simple unmovable surfaces. Unlike either of them he is physically imposing and has been known to engage in fistcuffs.

When using his power any building is twisted and inverted into a confusing, physics-breaking, space warping maze.<ref name=11.ce1>No, because Lionwing and Cretan were catching up. And the Case Fifty-Threes. The group had tried to go one way and they’d stopped. They started to come her way, and Cretan used his power.

It was a wave, a pulse that rippled over everything. Where it passed, things were bent. Rows of lockers now turned at right angles, ground bent up, requiring climbing up a two-and-a-half-foot ledge, and off to Darlene’s left, a hole in the wall showed a tunnel, with a tiny version of Cretan upside down on the far side.

That tiny Cretan turned toward her, then began charging down the tunnel, swiftly growing larger.

No no no…

Water gushed, aimed down the complete wrong direction, and yet somehow it passed into the tunnel, gushing in spirals and throwing the bull-costume mercenary around inside the confined space. Some water sloshed out on Darlene’s side.

“-clidean space,” Tattletale was saying.

“Come!” Darlene shouted.

In the tunnel, there was a splash, as Cretan brought his fist down on the ceiling of the tunnel.

Another pulse. Another ripple.

This time, there were walls and bends that obscured Darlene’s view of her team. She could feel them, though. They felt a normal distance away, even if her last glimpse of them seemed to put them in weird places. - Excerpt from Interlude 11.c II</ref> He activates his power in pulses, with each wave warping the area further.<ref name=11.ce1/> His upper limit is unknown but Cretan has been seen using his ability to twist a large area, including several buildings, into a maze the size of a skyscraper.<ref>The fires had spread as a result of the shower of sparks from MYOSHA’s power. The fires, in turn, illuminated the rise of Cretan’s maze. Buildings folded and twisted, ground rose and fell, and the effect rose up skyscraper high around where Cretan no doubt was, with other areas catching up. - Excerpt Heavens 12.8</ref>

Cretan himself seems able to manipulate the effect on the small scale within his radius to let him move through it.<ref name=11.ce4>A labyrinth. She felt out with her power. Found the Cretan. The Minotaur that was making this maze. He moved so quickly through it that it seemed impossible, though it was possible he was undoing the effect as necessary. His head turned her way. - Excerpt from Interlude 11.c II</ref>

History

Background

Has an unknown history in Earth Cheit.<ref>Blinding 11.3</ref>

Early-Ward

Assisted in the sabotage of the portals, alongside Lionwing and Kingdom Come<ref>Torch 7.5</ref>.

Post-Goddess' Takeover

Split up with Teacher over a dispute with the Brockton Bay time bubbles.<ref>Blinding 11.3</ref>

Assisted Cradle in taking on a combined group of Breakthrough and Undersiders,<ref>Interlude 11.c II</ref> and later joined his army on Earth N.<ref>Heavens 12.4</ref>

During the final showdown with heroes he created an enormous maze out of Frontier Row and was instrumental in splitting and disabling the majority of the team. Eventually, during an attempt to leave, he was cut in half with Cradle's whip by Chastity Vasil, and forced Cradle to fix him, giving away the method.<ref>Heavens 12.9</ref>

Trivia

• An example of how non-euclidean space would look like in real life.
• His ability to warp space; creating ad hoc labyrinths, along with his name is all a reference to Asterion. Commonly known as the Bull of Minos or Minotaur who Theseus is famous for murdering while carrying out a home invasion. According to myth this all took place on Crete.

References

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