Manny Kovacs [Midnight]

[Prometheus]

Player Nickname: Prometheus

Name: Emanuel "Manny" Kovacs
Codename: Midnight
Age: 18

Height: 5'8
Weight: 185
Hair Color: Dirty blonde
Eye Color: Gray
Place of Origin: Bosnia
Nationality/Race: Bosnian, mixed with Croat
Classification: Occult

Status: Trainee, vigilante
Occupation: Audiovisual tech, electrician

Personality Profile: Manny has a tough, cynical shell around a warm core of idealism. He's a strong believer in equal rights and respect among the different genetic cohorts and socioeconomic classes but realizes that the reality is harsher than his dreams. He's too restless not to fight for his ideas but has too much perspective to think that he's making a difference on a larger scale. This often leaves him frustrated. It is also one of the reason he has come to Cobalt Hill.

Physical Description: A few inches short of average, with a stout frame, Manny isn't the paragon of male beauty but he works out frequently enough to have well developed muscles, even though they're sometimes hidden beneath an extra tub of ice cream. He's got an Eastern European's granite jaw, a close-buzzed haircut, clean-shaved face and a convincing stare in his pale gray eyes.

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Powerset: Any time between sunset and sunrise or if he is underground and completely out of indirect solar rays, Manny gains the ability to transform into a nine-foot-tall, djinn-like humanoid of living darkness. Shadows wreath around his body like armor, increasing his mass, dropping his body temperature and giving him several powerful attributes:

Ability One: Damage Resistance: Fists, blades and even bullets find their inertia slowed and their harm weakened when they encounter his shadowy boundary. He is not immune to damage and if he sustains enough punishment, he will fall unconscious, go into shock or revert back to his human form, bleeding. The amount of punishment he can take, however, rises dramatically. A baseball bat would snap in half but a full clip from an assault rifle would knock him back and moderately injure him. An exploding grenade wouldn't end his life but would still deal serious damage.

Ability Two: Super Strength: Enough to lift a large steel girder and swing it around but probably not strong enough to lift an eighteen-wheeler. Combined with his damage resistance, this means that he can shatter bricks, punch holes through concrete or send a man flying with his ham-sized shadowy fists.

Ability Three: Dark Healing: As long as he is in darkness, Manny can draw on it to accelerate his body's natural healing to twice the normal human rate.

Drawbacks & Weaknesses: Any man who draws strength from the night will have trouble in daylight. He is unable to access his powers any time the sun is in the sky unless he is completely out of its rays whether direct or indirect. Furthermore, whenever he is in direct sunlight, his metabolism drops like a stone, rendering him sluggish, tired and incapable of naturally healing any damage, even from a papercut.

Projected Power Growth & Development: There is one of two directions he can take his development. On the one hand, he can learn to do even more with his darkness-based powers, increasing his strength, damage resistance and possibly gaining super speed in his shadow form. Or he can try to develop more as a normal person and reduce his limitations in broad daylight.

Skills: Audiovisual editing, electrician, some drawing skills, some freestyle rhyming talent

Background: Though Manny has always considered himself a mutant, his powers come from a complicated midnight ritual cast on him by his witchy mother and aunt circa the start of the Bosnian war when he was just a toddler. They wanted to protect his life at any cost which arguably saved his life but led to severe changes to his lifestyle as he matured and the midnight gift took on a life of its own. His father died in the war while his mother, unable to get an immigration permit, remained in the old country, sending little Manny to the land of opportunity alone, to live with his uncle in New York City.

Assimilating was hard enough and his pagan blessing didn't make things any easier. He found himself struggling through grade school, especially if sat near a window, grew irritable, paranoid and antisocial. He was in and out of detention frequently and was repeatedly sent to therapy upon entering high school. He told his therapists nothing of his powers and refused to take the medications prescribed to him, preferring to sell them at five bucks a piece outside school instead.

Growing up poor and picked on while attending a school in the ghetto quickly wised Manny up to the facts of life. He tried to avoid rampant inner city violence whenever he could but fate pushed him headlong into making a decision as he saw a gang of teenage human purists beating up a mutant one evening. He transformed and sent most of them to the hospital. By the time he came home, he realized that he was one of the freaks and his calling in life was to be a vigilante on their behalf. Thus began his brief career on the streets which put him in touch with several other mutants in the inner city underworld who would become his first true friends.

With his newfound confidence, he somehow managed to graduate high school and finish several trade school courses, starting to work for his electrician uncle as an assistant. Around this time, he started growing disillusioned with vigilantism, seeing violence beget only more violence, with no end to the discrimination mutants and metahumans faced. In his soul-searching, he learned of Cobalt Hill and decided to pay the place a visit, to see what he else he could do.

Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts: Manny is a huge fan of hip hop in general and gangster rap especially. He wrote a few rhymes himself but considers himself not good enough to produce them.

He often sends remittances to his mother and the rest of his extended family who still live in Bosnia. This means that he is often broke.

His last name is pronounced "Kovach" but most people mispronounce it. He has since given up on correcting them.