Apollo

Player Information
Player name: Nekky
Contact: nekky, AIM: xnecronomical
Are you over 18: Yes
Characters in The Box Already: NA

Character Information
Character Name: Apollo
Canon: Wildstorm Comics
Canon Point: Post-"The Lost Year"
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Alive.
History:
@ DC Wikia
@ Comicvine
* Neither history is entirely accurate about his name. I'm playing the Earth-50/Wildstorm Universe version of Apollo, who does not have a known real name or history pre-Bendix. The bit about him being a soldier and his name being Neil Sinclair are just fan speculation and probably incorrect since it's based on Flashpoint, which is a DC event and not part of the Wildstorm continuity. "Andrew Pulaski" refers to the DCnU Apollo, who is a different person.
Personality:
"Well now. My colleague doesn't like your guns. That means he doesn't like you. But he's polite. A mild-mannered man. That's as angry as he gets."

Apollo is described by his husband, long before their marriage, as a 'polite and mild-mannered' man. Compared to Midnighter, he's certainly that, and it shows very obviously on the surface - Apollo doesn't pretend to be anything else. He doesn't curse as much, though he doesn't shy away from foul language, he's rarely harsh with his words, and there's a kindness and approachability about him. He's really very friendly off the field, making friends easily with his teammates and others. He's a big, big man with a big, big heart and a little love for anyone who isn't walking human garbage. This is often tied in with his sense of idealism, which is subdued compared to other superheroes from other companies, but he's an optimist at heart, and wants to believe that the Authority can protect the Earth and its people and create a finer world. Maybe his idealism has been tarnished over the years by terrible happenings, but there will always be a spark of it there that wants to do good. He was on board with his team taking in thousands of refugees onto the Carrier (their home, not just their shiftship base of operations) and he never complained about sharing their space with so many people in need. He knows what it's like to have nothing and to have everything. He and Midnighter spent five years living on the streets, filthy, eating every few months maybe, sleeping under awnings and in abandoned warehouses, and they have also been celebrities at one point with the Authority, appearing in magazines and on TV talk shows. Apollo enjoyed the celebrity life, but he also knew they were doing good in their homeless life, and he feels deeply for the less fortunate, wanting to bring them justice and peace and better standards of living.

His idealism is why he does what he does. He kills for his ideal - rapists, pedophiles, corrupt politicians, dictators, they don't belong in a finer world, and if they're taken out, they can't hurt anyone else. Apollo doesn't lose any sleep over most of those kills, though he doesn't think of himself as a bad person, just a man getting his hands dirty for the world's sake, so people can live freer, better lives. The three things he wants in life, in his first appearance, are a finer world, Henry Bendix's head after what he took from Apollo and Midnighter, and his life back. The only thing he really gets is Henry Bendix's head much later on, but he always strives for that finer world. Cynicism occasionally takes its hold on him, but Apollo is always one of the more optimistic in the Authority. Still, he's not morally perfect. Killing is wrong, but he'll kill if he believes the person deserves it. He's arrogant enough to name himself judge, jury, and executioner in these cases. He also stands by while Midnighter, his husband, tortures and kills deserving people horribly, and it doesn't seem to bother him.

Basically, he's a flawed man with the powers of a god, though as he's aged, he's toned down a lot. Adopting his daughter, Jenny Quantum, changed him a lot for the better. He's always tried to be a good, responsible father, and sometimes it's hard for him to tell Jenny and Midnighter how much he loves them, but he loves them more than anything else in the world - they're his life, quite literally. He has no memories of his life before Henry Bendix made him into the sun god Apollo, and so after his escape from Bendix, he had to make his own life. He got it, a husband and a little girl and friends and teammates, and he treasures it over everything else. They did their best raising Jenny, but you could call him a bad father in a lot of ways. She was exposed to a lot of super-violence and monsters growing up, though Apollo once tried to take her away from it all by trying to get a place somewhere normal, and he tried to give her a normal life after Midnighter left them under duress for three years. Still, he's a bit of a hypocrite, because he was also the first one of them to want to return to action when Jenny Sparks first started the Authority, and even with Jenny around, they always went back to the hero life. He did the best he could, though, and Jenny was always, always loved and protected and taken care of.

As a person, Apollo is a loving father and husband, and he's a good friend to his teammates. He has a good sense of humor, and likes cracking jokes, even in serious situations, and putting people more at ease with his strength and brilliant smile. He's easy to talk to - both Jenny Sparks, his former boss, and Angie Spica, his best friend, usually confided in him more than anyone else because he's very personable (and approachable), a good listener and tries to give good advice when they're having problems. He also teases them lightly and banters back and forth with them easily. Apollo also enjoys mundane things like pop culture, bad music, and crappy TV shows. FRIENDS is one of his favorites, along with the Backstreet Boys and Doris Day music-wise, and he reads celebrity magazines and gossip rags. He's also a very casual person, often dressing like he's going to the gym, and treating his friends and family just as casually and comfortably. He's at ease in his own invulnerable skin, and utterly without shame for his sex life and his sexuality.

He doesn't have much of a temper, only rarely does he show much anger. The times he's angriest are the times Midnighter or Jenny have been hurt, because they're his whole world. He also tends to lose his temper on homophobes, because he's not ashamed of who he is and who he loves. His anger is like a sunburst, sudden and bright and hot, but gone as soon as the catalyst is. He doesn't tend to hold grudges outside of Henry Bendix, who stole his life from before and used him and Midnighter and got the rest of their team killed horribly. Otherwise he tends to let things go eventually, like he did when he was assaulted and brutalized (even if his "letting go" in that case was handing the guy over to his husband to be gored with a jackhammer). There are til

Apollo can also be insecure. He's mostly sure of himself, but during the Lost Year arc, every alternate dimension except one that he visits shows that his counterparts are all dead and his teammates and family warped, changed, at war with each other. When they get back, it bothers him, because if all of those other Apollos can die, why not him? This was likely his first taste of mortality, because while he's been weakened and beaten and battered before, he always pulled through. But none of the other Apollos had. Still, those thoughts are most likely laid to rest, for the most part, when his husband embraces him and tells him how the only thing he'll let him die of is old age. The two of them support each other like that all the time; it's Apollo who tries to comfort Midnighter when they get close to knowing who they might have been Before but the answers all slip through their fingers again.

Perhaps his biggest flaw that will show up in the game is his codependency on his husband Midnighter. They've literally been at each other's sides their entire lives (that they remember) save three years where Midnighter took to the streets to fight crime again because he thought he had to to protect Apollo and Jenny. He never seems quite himself without Midnighter, and when Midnighter left, he focused on Jenny and her safety and protection instead of the state of the world. At his canon point, they've made up a while ago, though, so he'll still want to protect people most likely, but he will still be at a bit of a loss without Midnighter at his side. They're two halves of a whole, dark and light, so that will be something he'll have to get through. He tends to get restless on his own and in times of inaction, as shown in the Midnighter series and elsewhere (like when, during Lost Year, he takes on the role of the "are we there yet" annoyance). When he's not heroing, he'll find other things to do (origami and painting are two examples from canon), whether useful or not.

At the heart of it, Apollo is a devoted family man, and a kind human being who genuinely wants to do the right thing and make the world better. He wants to protect and help even if he has to get his hands dirty to do that. But he's also flawed, sometimes a little insecure, sometimes unsure of himself and occasionally a man who has trouble expressing his deepest, most personal feelings. Still, he faces the worst times with a smile and even when he's broken, he comes up fighting again, because more than anything, he is resilient.

Abilities/Strengths and Weaknesses:
ABILITIES
Apollo is a genetically engineered SPB (superpowered being) created in a lab by Henry Bendix, though no one knows whether he was cloned and grown in a tube or if he was a man who allowed himself to be modified beyond recognition. The records are lost to time, but he knows what he is, and that is the Sun King, nearly a god by human standards. All of his abliities come from tangible physical modifications: he can shoot lasers out of his eyes because his eyes are constructed differently than a human's, he can store energy from the sun because his cells have been modified to store and convert sunlight, etc. He's described in-universe as Majestic-class - a rank given because he's approximately as strong as Wildstorm's resident powerhouse Mister Majestic (another Superman analogue, and a ridiculously powerful alien).

He has a laundry list of abilities as befitting of a ridiculous comic book character, including:

¤ Solar Absorption: Apollo has something called 'solar cells' that absorb solar energy and convert it to energy useable by his body. His body essentially works like a battery - he grows weak when his solar energy levels are depleted, and he can charge them up again with exposure to sunlight. He runs entirely on these convertible energy reserves; unlike Superman, if he doesn’t get sunlight, he eventually withers and dies, like being starved in fast-forward. It’s possible to reduce him to entirely human levels and worse. In direct sunlight, he takes about two hours to fully charge.
¤ Nigh-invulnerability: When he's at full power, he is pretty hard to kill - his skin is hard and impervious to bullets and blades both (He’s shown surprise at a special sword, an alien sword, actually being able to cut him), he can walk in lava and on the surface of the sun, etc. However, as his solar reserves drain, his invulnerability depletes; he can be reduced to human vulnerability just by being held in the dark for extended periods of time. Another thing that makes him vulnerable is extreme cold. While he can survive it, rapid changes in temperature like that drain his solar reserves and leave him weaker, like when he was blasted with liquid nitrogen. It doesn’t cripple him entirely because he can survive the chill of high altitudes, but it does take it out of him.
¤ Rapid Healing: He heals extremely quickly when he has sunlight, recovering in a matter of minutes or hours from injuries that might kill a regular person.
¤ Laser Vision: What it says on the tin. Apollo's eyes are constructed oddly to be able to "induce collected light to lase", so this is a difference that would be noted in any sort of medical scan. His laser vision is extremely powerful, able to blow apart and incinerate heads in the blink of an eye. He was once sent to sterilize the surface of the moon with said laser vision when aliens were coming out of it. However, he also has enough control over it to vary the intensity to an extent.
¤ Solar Energy Blasts: He can release solar energy from parts of his body other than his eyes (hands, mouth, etc) or in an omnidirectional flare to basically instantly incinerate something. This is more taxing on his convertible energy reserves than laser vision, and presumably his control over it is not as finely-tuned. He only uses this ability when he definitely wants something destroyed or dead.
¤ Flight: He can fly, and it doesn’t take much out of him to do. He only needs a minute or so of sunlight to regain this ability. His speeds are incredible in the air – canon is a bit conflicted on this, as he’s been said to be able to cross half the globe in thirty seconds, but another point said he can fly around the entire world in eight minutes, but either way, he’s an extremely fast flier. Going at such high speeds, it becomes difficult to maneuver, turn and stop, however. He nearly splattered himself on a forcefield once because he couldn't slow down in time, or change direction quickly enough. Whenever he’s flying or using his powers, he often has a soft halo of light around his head, somewhat like a lens flare, and he’s been shown to trail light like a comet. Stealth isn't his thing.
¤ Self-Sustenance: Apollo doesn’t need to breathe, eat, or drink. His body survives entirely on his convertible energy reserves, charged up by solar energy. Because of this, he can survive in deep space by simply not breathing. He’s also gone months without eating anything or using the facilities when he lived on the streets with Midnighter. However, he does enjoy food, drink and oxygen, so he usually does those things like a normal person. He does start to have regular human needs when his solar cells are depleted, but usually at that point, he's also worrying about dying.
¤ Superhuman Strength: His strength levels are pretty much standard ‘off the charts’ as far as superhumans go. He can easily lift 100 tons.
¤ Superhuman Speed and Stamina: As stated above, he flies at incredible speeds, but he isn’t a speedster and hasn’t been shown to run at the same speeds. Stamina-wise, his body is extremely durable, and he can survive the pressures of deep space without discomfort.
¤ Radiotelepathy: Not an innate ability. Their teammate, the Engineer, has given the team telepathy of sorts via nanite implants; it happens on a radio frequency and allows for speech-free, device-free, hands-free communication between Authority members with the same implants. It does not allow them to read minds or communicate with anyone who doesn’t have the nanite implant, just allows them to deliberately communicate with each other privately. Between them, they can speak to just one other teammate (on a “private line” of sorts) or all of them at the same time (like conference calling).

STRENGTHS
As far as strengths go, obviously his powers are his biggest strength. There isn't much that he's afraid of simply because he can survive things that would obliterate regular human beings, and so he has no problem putting himself in the line of danger for other people's sakes. He also isn't afraid to do what he feels needs to be done - unlike other superheroes, he won't lose sleep over barbecuing a pedophile or evil dictator. He's also surprisingly mentally stable and steady considering all the trauma he's been through in his life. It does affect him, some of the things he's been through, but being a hero and protecting those who can't protect themselves means more to him, so he tries not to let his own issues get in the way. He also is fairly intelligent; he might not be building advanced machinery, but if given an advanced weapon, he can probably figure out what it does.

WEAKNESSES
His biggest weaknesses are physical: long, extended periods without sunlight will weaken him to human frailty and worse, rapid drops in temperature (such as being hit with liquid nitrogen) will sap his solar reserves in an instant as his body tries to adjust and weaken him similarly. A thick smog over the globe during World's End once trapped him in the upper atmosphere to get sunlight, because dipping below the smog would rapidly suck up his reserves and harm him. He also can't venture to some other dimensions or spend too much time in space - his survival is literally tied to the sun.

Mentally, he doesn't tend to think before he acts. Apollo reacts quickly to things and while that's sometimes a good thing, sometimes it gets him into worse trouble because he doesn't stop to strategize, he barrels right in with guns a-blazin'. He doesn't like to take leadership roles because the first and last time he led a team, it ended in a horrible and traumatic disaster, so he often looks to others to make decisions and just follows them. His arrogance can also be a weakness. He's hard to kill and he knows it, and he thusly tends to underestimate most opponents. Also when his family, his husband and his daughter, are hurt or have been hurt, he lasers first and asks questions later, without even knowing the entire situation. They mean the world to him and that can cloud his judgement sometimes. He also isn't exactly the most tactical member of the Authority. While he can strategize to an extent if he stops and tries, other people are better at seeing the big picture and moving the chess pieces.

Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample:
[Force fields are frustrating. He felt the same way about the field around Gamorra as he feels about the one that surrounds these two strange little towns and this stretch of woods. Apollo must have measured the distance from side to side, front to back, and top to bottom about ten times now, hovering in the air above the tree line, peering at the invisible field irritably. Well, it's good there wasn't enough distance to really get his speed up, at least - he would have gone splat, and this time, there's no Jeroen (or even Habib) to slow him down in an alternate dimension.

Worse than the force field, though? The fact that he can't pick up a damn thing off his teammates through the radiotelepathy. That, more than anything, means that something is gravely wrong here, something he's not seeing in its entirety just yet. The radiotelepathy has never not worked, no matter where he's been, which has to mean that the Carrier can't reach here.] What kind of backwater hillbilly horror movie universe doesn't even get radiotelepathy reception? [He grumbles lowly, drifting down toward the ground again, running a hand idly through his hair.] And now that I've said that, I'm just waiting for this place to go all Deliverance on me. No more horror movies for Jenny, ever again.

[At least, he hopes this is just another bit of Jenny-reality. It's better than the alternatives - namely that he's cut off, stranded, and unable to contact Midnighter or Angie or any of the others. The one thing Apollo has never been is truly alone.]

Prose Log Sample:
There but for the grace of God go I.

The phrase has never really seemed more appropriate than it does now. A year spent richocheting around the Bleed in a malfunctioning shiftship, seeing more alternate dimensions and alternate selves than any of them ever wanted to, has worn on the entire team. They all have their issues to deal with after this harrowing experience, but Apollo takes a moment to deal with his own thoughts in quiet. This is their universe finally, their Earth, and he drifts in the upper atmosphere, soaking up the sunlight like he's starving for it. The warmth of the sun's rays, the unfiltered UV, has always helped him think.

In all those dimensions, their Apollos were dead. Long dead, usually, often the first to go, but it's such a hard concept to wrap his head around. Could that ever really happen? Bullets and blades bounce off his flesh, it takes days of darkness to so much as bruise his skin, taking a dip in lava is like stepping into a hot tub, and so many of his alternate selves are dead.

Midnighter's words earlier echo through his mind as he spreads out in the lack of gravity, skin warm and tingling with energy. What? You think I could turn on you just like that? Because some other Midnighter turned on his big dumb blond?

There but for the grace of God go we.

There had been hurt in his eyes, though, in his expression beneath the mask. Apollo is an expert at reading his husband after this many years together, even if sometimes it still feels like they don't know everything there is to know about each other. He hadn't quite understood Apollo's fear, Apollo's worry - they're all dead, Midnighter, all of them checked out early, they call me a god but how can I face my own mortality - but he had tried to help, tried to soothe. In his own way.

That, what we saw, that was what they made of themselves. We're different.

Are they, though? Are they any different from the power-mad dictators, the warring monsters that had once been the Authority in those dimensions? They took over an entire country once because they didn't like how it was being run. Look what that had gotten them: tragedy, broken lives, a broken team, a broken family. Three years of single parenthood in San Francisco.

His cells tingle with that sort of bright electric feeling that tastes like sunbursts. Apollo's reserves are nearly full of life-giving sunlight and his head is full of thoughts still. He turns slowly, changes course, barrels down through the atmosphere. He goes into freefall against the blue, blue sky of their Earth.

Maybe they can be different. Isn't that the point of alternate universes? Little differences that branch off from main timelines like the branches of the World Tree?

Could you possibly be more stupid? Do you really think I'm going to let you die of anything but old age?

Apollo soars before he hits the ground, streaking through the sky like a comet, feeling the wind in his hair.

"Maybe you're right, love." His words are lost to the whistle of the wind. Maybe all it takes is a little faith.

Later on, after putting a stop to another brewing war over territorial disputes, Apollo incinerates Jenny's cigarette and chides her about her language when she curses. He laughs with Angie over Jenny putting a stop to the dictator that started the war in the first place. He falls into his husband's arms that night and kisses him senseless. In the dead of night, on the Carrier drifting through a dimension he has no name for, he whispers out loud, "Maybe we'll be okay after all."