Sal Vidón

"There are very few things in life that can't be fixed by a Cuban feast."

- Sal & Gabi Break the Universe

Salvador Alberto Dorado "Sal" Vidón is one of the main characters of the Sal & Gabi series along with Gabi Real. He's a troublemaker and self-proclaimed magician.

History
Sal was born in Connecticut and was bullied for his light brown complexion at school. He dealt with bullies in h old school, making two of them cry.

When he was eight he and his mother were in a car crash and both had only minor injuries. When he was nine his mother died of diabetic ketoacidosis and his father remarried his elementary school‘s vice principal after he tried to get the two together.

He also moved to Miami, due to unicorns turning his house into a stable from a rip that could not close and alternate versions of his mother destroying the house, and attended Culeco Academy of the Arts. On his first day he was sent to the principal to inform her of his diabetes. The following day he was sent to her again for eating candy in gym class, the principal explained to the gym teacher that Sal has type-one diabetes.

Sal & Gabi Break the Universe
Sal is in his first week at Culeco Academy of the Arts. On his third day he goes to his locker to get his diabetes bag as he was feeling a little light head in his last class. As Yasmany Robles is having trouble with his locker, Sal offers to help him. Yasmany gets offended by this and knocks Sal’s diabetes supplies on the floor. In retaliation, Sal says Yasmany keeps dead animals in his locker. Yasmany calls his bluff until a girl sees blood drip from the locker. He works the lock, since Yasmany keeps the combination on the back, and steps back to let Yasmany open the locker. When he does a dead chicken falls on the floor. The students scream and flee before a teacher arrives. He and Yasmany are soon in Principal Torres’ office. He explains that Yasmany knocked his diabetes supplies bag on the floor. She apologizes and turns towards Yasmany, who she expels, however seconds later Gabi Real enters the office. Once she explains that Yasmany was unable to op his locker all year, but Sal could, Principal Torres turns her attention back to Sal. He claims it was an illusion, Yasmany protest and Principal Torres calls the janitor, to check in on the cleanup, but he says it vanished. Principal Torres concludes that it was an illusion. This causes Gabi to lash out to try and win, but he stamps her palm with his GOTCHA ring and impress everyone. As Yasmany is about to be expelled, he convinces Principal Torres to give him another chance, she agrees.

Sal heads to his locker to eat something in the last nine minutes of lunch when Gabi chases after him to apologize. He speeds up and trips on the stairs. When Gabi catches up to him he says he does not want to talk to her for defening Yasmany and tryng to get him in trouble. When he hears the bell he heads to class. He arrives in his textile class and sits with his group, with Gladis Machado and Juan Carlos Chaviano calling him brujo, sorcerer. At gym class Coach Lynott tries to get Sal to do yoga instead of the hardest of the three rock climbing walls. He convinces the coach to let him do it and he even spots Sal. Halfway up he decides to do a trick, but he decides not to since he thinks he will be branded as a brujo for the rest of his time at school. He slips and is lowered down. A tall boy, Octavio Murillo, calls him mago, magic user before the bell sounds.

During interpretive theatre workshop, the teacher asked her students to put on a performance. When he asks to go first she denies this and wants Sal to go last. The performances are well received and when Gabi is up, she chooses Sal for her lie detector. He walks up onto the stage and Gabi hooks him up to her lie detector. When she gets to the chicken incident, he reveals that he pulled the chicken from another dimension. Everyone thinks this a collaboration act between the two and applauds them.

He tells Gabi he wants to speak with her later, much to her excitement, and goes to his locker to get something to eat. He stops when he sees Yasmany, but decides to go anyway and tricks Yasmany into accepting his help. After he opens his lock and goes to detention, Sal looks into the locker to see the rip is still there. He finds and reads a note Gabi wrote before Mr. Milagros finds him and points out a camera. Sal puts the note back and heads home.

On the way home he remembers the car crash he and his mother were in, he starts to breath hard and heads home to eat. When he got home he hears a woman singing in Spanish. He realizes that she is an alternative version of his mother and they spend hours cooking. Later, when his fath and stepmother return he tries to tell them that his mother is back, but they figure it out before he can tell them. The four eat dinner and he tells his step-mother that he told his mother she was an architect renting a room. The four enjoy the meal and he puts on one of his father‘s records. His two mothers dance and he passes out and wakes up in the hospital. He wakes up and, pretending to still be asleep, overhears his parents talking about his abilities. His father scans him and finds nothing out of the ordinary. He “wakes up” and his parents come over to him. He falls asleep before eating and wakes up later when his parents are asleep. He goes to the vending machines to get a snack and disracts two of the three nurses there. The third, Dulce Sotolongo, takes him to a family party to perform. They give him a plate of food before Gabi arrives, he wishes her brother happy birthday. After the Real family introduces themselves to him he tells Gabi he’s jealous of her family, unknowingly becoming her friend. The atmosphere in the room darkness when he asks about her brother. Gabi takes him to the intensive care unit to see her brother who was born with a week immune system. Sal feels this is unfair as no child should have to go thr this. At Gabi’s urging, he puts his hand in a sterile sleeve and Iggy grabs his finger. The doctor says he can go home and go to school. The Vidóns get home and shower and have hot chocolate. They ask him if he brought his mother back intentionally and he says no. He asks his father about his device to fix rips in the universe, he says he does not know. He goes up stairs and gets ready.

He goes to school and sees everyone reading the school paper. Gabi comes up to him and gives him a copy. He reads it and scolds her for defending a bully and cementing his reputation as a brujo. He goes inside to cool off but Gabi stops him. In response he summons a bouquet of flowers in the news paper and, when he asks again to lean in closer, a tarantula launches at her face. She starts to scream and cry once she realizes what hit her. Sal reveals that it was fake and she cries. He goes over to her and apologizes. She has him carry her backpack while she rixes herself up in the bathroom. While he waits he talks with Yadmany, who tells him his paper is going good. When Gabi gets out she asks for an interview after school and he agrees to do one at his house. He watches as Gabi playfully attacks Yasmany for suggesting they are romanticly interested in each other. He wishes he has a friendship like that. At his textile arts class, he sees that Gladis is afraid of him. To try and make her lik him more, he searches the multiverse and sees and alternate Gladis and himself. They trade out her scarf with the alternat dimension scarf which had a muerto ojo on it. This freaks her out and he goes to Principal Torres’ office for the fourth time that week. Principal Torres gives him two days detention and has him write Gladis an apology letter and help Yasmany with his paper. He plays with a goat mask during interpretive theatre workshop and Gabri takes him to the detention room in the library. He has Gabi read his apology note out loud and everyone is captivated by it.

He and the others help Yasmany with his paper and gives him a demonstration of the blo glucose meter. After they finish Sal is both surprised and thrilled that he has to come the next day. He and Gabi head to his locker for the interview and, when she sorts Yasmany’s locker, she backs up in fear, Sal realizes that she can see the rip and pulls a chicken from the other side. He explains that he can open rips in the universe and takes things out of them. Just then an alternate Principle Torres comes partly through and demands the chicken back. They give it back and Gabi eagerly demands an interview.

As they walk to his house Gabi asks him how his powers work, to which he says he is not sure himself. She asks him to open a rip into another universe and he creates a peephole, she sticks her head in it and he tries to get her out. She tells him what they see and they head to his only to find an eighteen wheeler out front and unfamiliar voices inside. They barge in and find scientists working on a computer. His dad comes in and says this is the machine he was working on. He helps his father with Sundaes and his father explains the he thinks Sal can fix the rips, but he just needs to know how to fix them. During ice cream he eats beef jerky and notices Bonita, one of Gabi’s dads, isn’t eat. She says she is a robot but he does not believe it as everyone tries to convince him, he finally believes it when she gets a text in her head telling Gabi to go to the hospital as Iggy‘s condition just got worse. The others leave soon after and, to keep his stepmother from freaking out, they take her out to dinner and tell her about the machine in the living room when they are out. Later that night he goes over the th machine and sees calamatrons in the shape of his mother. As he is about to get rid of them, Lucy comes over to him and they talk. He asks Lucy what he could do about Iggy and she suggests he text Gabi, he does and she asks him to take notes for her from her classmates since she will not be in school that day.

Early the next day, he sneaks into Culeco with his father‘s Entropy-sweeper to check out Yasmany’s locker. After distracting Mr. Milagros he heads to it and scans it for calamatrons. It senses thirty-seven, but the measurement drops when he thinks of how to lower it. The sweeper tells him that he inhaled one of them. He stashes the Entropy-sweeper in the prop room and heads to the court yard. He sees Gladis under a tree and goes over to her, after talking to her, and realizing she is friendlier and has a thicker Cuban accent, that this is the Gladis who gave him the scarf. He asks what happened and she says her Sal switched the two. They learn from the alternate Sal that his Gladis is freaking out. He has Gladis and two other girls agree to give Gabi their notes. He sees Yasmany being dragged to the Principal‘s office and goes to defend him, but is kicked out. In gym he sees that the climbing walls are all set to easy. Everyone is upset but Sal gets the red wall to it’s old self.

Appearance
Sal Vidon is a Cuban boy with light brown skin. He has brown eyes and brown hair, which he keeps pretty long, as it gives him a place to hide stuff in the middle of a trick.

He wears canvas pants and a cargo vest, each with four pockets brimming with pretty much all his having a lot of pockets to help in his magic performance.

Personality
Sal is shown to be quick thinking and witty when in the right situation, as shown when a raw chicken appeared in Yasmany’s locker.

Abilities

 * Spanish: Sal knows some Cuban Spanish.
 * Illusions: Sal is good with magic tricks, as he cleaned the blood off of Yadmany’s shoe and stamped Gabi’s palm with out either of them noticing.
 * Spatio-Chronokinesis: Sal is able to control the space time continuum to a degree.
 * Dimensional Summoning:  Sal can summon objects from different dimensions.
 * Seeing Dimensional Rips: Sal can see tears into the space-time continuum into other dimensions, he can even see into different dimensions.
 * Dimensional Clairvoyance: Sal can see into other dimensions.
 * Dimensional Telepathy: Sal can telepathicly speak to alternate versions of himself.
 * Dimensional Rip Creation: Sal can open tears to other universes.
 * Calamatron Absorption: Sal can absorb calamatrons. 

Items

 * Diabetes Bag: Sal’s bag for managing his diabetes. It contains insulin, syringes, a blood glucose meter, a sharps disposal container (for used needles), band aids, and a fun-sized pack of candy.
 * GOTCHA Stamp Ring: Sal owns a stamp in the form of a ring.

Trivia

 * Sal has type-one diabetes, making him the second diabetic character under the Rick Riordan Presents imprint after Jazz in the Storm Runner series.
 * Sal's favorite foods are ropa vieja, plátanos, bacalao, and pernil.
 * Sal Vidon is the first human protagonist of a story to begin the story with a grasp on how his powers work at the start of the story as opposed to discovering them during the story.
 * Min is the first character under the Rick Riordan Presents imprint to be born with her powers but she is not human.
 * Sal was based on a grown-up theoretical physicist in The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria, a short story also written by Carlos Hernandez that was published in a collection of the same name.
 * His favorite book is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.