Jake Martinez

Jake Martinez is an incredibly powerful NEXT who was originally believed to be the leader of Ouroboros. Jake was released from prison when his organization threatened the destruction of Sternbild City for his freedom.

Personality
His main objective is to have NEXTs take over the world, with him as their leader. Jake also sees all humans as inferior to NEXTs and cares little about their lives. He views himself as the strongest NEXT of all, as he boasts about himself in battle and taunts his opponents.

In battle, he reads his opponents minds to know what his opponent will do. Jake does not seem to possess any fighting experience or beyond normal physical abilities, as an unintentional hit from Wild Tiger caused him great pain. He is also shown to be very unstable, as a little hit made him go insane. Jake relies on his mind reading ability a lot, making it easy for the heroes to outsmart him in battle.

The manga's take shows Jake welcomeing all NEXT; even if the NEXT has a useless power. One such NEXT, who could only change his skin tone, questioned if he could be of any use to Jake's ideal world; Jake smiled and offered the use of an exosuit to kill non-NEXT to make him feel better, showing his wish to empower NEXT.

History
Behind Jake's all high and mighty demeanor, he is actually a coward and ran scared when Barnaby Brooks Jr was able to beat him.

While trying to escape arrest, Jake jumped off the stadium roof. Hoping to land in the helicopter that Kriem was piloting, he was caught by Kotetsu. Jake then tried to shoot Kotetsu with his barrier ability, but Kotetsu managed to dodge it. The barrier hit the helicopter and the helicopter fell on Jake, causing his unintentional death.

Recently, it has been revealed by Kriem that Jake was not the real leader of Ouroboros. Instead, Ouroboros is a much bigger organization and he and Kriem were just a small fraction of Ouroboros. Kriem also tells Barnaby that Jake didn't kill his parents, that the day his parents died was when Jake kidnapped Kriem. But all this could be a lie and the only fact that is confirmed is that Kriem was kidnapped on the same day.

It is revealed in episode 19, that Maverick was the true murderer of Barnaby's parents. In truth the day that Barnaby's parents died, Jake had instead kidnapped Kriem.

This also reveals how Kriem and Jake met years ago, with Jake kidnapping a young Kriem for ransom. However when her parents didn't comply with his demands he ended up releasing her. Taken by his words and beliefs that NEXT are the next stage in human evolution and therefore superior, Kriem begs him to take her along with him. His involvement in this incident ended up proving he was truly innocent of the murder of Barnaby's parents.

Powers and Abilities
As a NEXT Jake possesses superhuman abilities, though from recent events it has been revealed that he has a second power; an unheard of characteristic amongst NEXT. He is also the only one (as of the moment) known to have an orange glow, possibly due to having two different powers.

At first glance, he appears able to fire short but deadly laser blasts from his fingers, powerful enough to pierce a thick concrete wall.

However, his true power is not creating laser blasts, but protective barriers that render him invulnerable to harm. He can then project these barriers offensively in a number of different sizes and intensities. As he normally makes them marble size and flicks them, they get mistaken for laser beams.

Jake's second power is the ability to hear the thoughts of others and use it to anticipate his opponent's attacks. Kotetsu was the first of the NEXT heroes to figure this out after realizing he never revealed his real name to Jake. Instead, Kotetsu thought to himself "Calm down, Kotetsu Kaburagi" and realized that Jake had to been able to hear his thoughts. This ability allowed Jake to discover that Origami Cyclone was posing as Hans Chuckman, thus negating Origami's shapeshifting powers.

Trivia

 * Jake possesses two powers which is rare, to the point it was thought impossible.
 * In the manga, Jake can only hear thoughts that are roughly three yards away.
 * Jake is killed by Lunatic in the manga.
 * Unlike other NEXTs that produce a blue glow when they are using their powers, Jake produces an red/orange glow, presumably because he has two powers. It can also be implied that he uses his mind-reading NEXT ability constantly to the point that he does not produce a glow using that power. Kotetsu glowed red/orange as well when he observed that his speed is much faster than usual when chasing the backstage thief in episode 14.
 * Jake can use his defensive barriers as offensive beams.
 * Jake has had three different hairstyles in the series. One while capturing Kriem, the second while in jail, and the third while battling the heroes.
 * It is possible that Jake's character is based off The Joker from the DC Universe, due to his unstable personality, and Magneto from the Marvel Universe, due to his ideology.
 * Kriem seemed to be one of the few (if any people) he seemed to care for. The relationship between the two seems to be reminiscent of Harley Quinn and the Joker, where the Joker seduced Harley Quinn into being his sidekick and Kriem fell in love with Jake, developing Stockholm Syndrome (though the relationship between Jake and Kriem seemed to not be an abusive one the way Joker and Harley Quinn was).
 * While not outwardly affectionate, Jake does subtly show he cares about her through compliments.
 * Understandably, Jake would put his goal before a romance.
 * Had Jake managed to escape, he would have been hunted by Lunatic. Or, had he been lucky enough to go into hiding, he would try to continue his plan through an heir; Jake himself was getting too old to carry out his plan.