☼ A_Facility Application ☼
OOC Information:
Name: Nekky
Age: 22
AIM: xnecronomical
MSN: NA
Y!M: NA
E-MAIL: x_violetprison@yahoo.com
Are you new? If not, list your current characters: Nope, I currently play Tommy Shepherd and Bucky Barnes.
IC Information:
Name: Apollo
Fandom: The Authority | DC/Wildstorm Comics
Timeline: During the Revolution trade, just before Jenny aged herself up.
Age: Apollo's age is uncertain, but he's probably somewhere in his 40s. I’d estimate about early 40s, anyway.
Appearance: Apollo is rather tall, and statuesque - he stands at probably around 6'6" or 6'7" (An estimate, because his actual height is never given, but Midnighter is listed at 6’5” and Apollo is just barely taller than him.), with broad shoulders, trim waist, and defined musculature. He looks like a man in his prime, at his physical peak. He has blue eyes, and his hair is so blond it's white, slightly wavy, and usually it's just past his shoulders, though sometimes he's cut it shorter to the base of his neck. He usually wears his costume, which is basically a tight, white and gold body suit that covers him from the neck down, with a design on the chest that resembles a sun. It doesn't exactly leave much to the imagination, which has actually been remarked on in canon. He does dress like a normal person sometimes, though, in fairly nondescript and somewhat conservative civvies. When he’s just hanging out around the Carrier, he seems fond of track pants or sweatpants and tank tops in different combinations of yellow/gold and white.
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Abilities: Apollo is basically Wildstorm's version of Superman, so he's essentially one of the most powerful beings in the world. He serves as The Authority's main powerhouse, able to lay waste to large areas in short amounts of time if necessary.
☼ 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: Bitch can walk in lava and vacation on the sun. 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 actually being able to cut him), he can walk in lava and on the surface of the sun, etc. Heat doesn’t seem to bother him at all; Jenny Sparks once put her cigarette out on his shoulder and he mostly looked annoyed that she put a hole in his costume. 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 leaves 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. Once he was held captive and beaten daily - his face was swollen beyond recognition, but a few minutes in the sunlight healed him up completely.
☼ Laser Vision: Yes, like Superman, he has laser vision. His can be 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 do little things like light a cigarette.
☼ 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 turn and stop, however. He’s actually pursued someone so quickly that he had to be teleported to another dimension where kinetic energy is converted to music just to slow him down and keep him from going splat against a force field. 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. Baby he's a fiiirework-
☼ Self-Sustenance: Breathing? Breathing is for bitches. 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, because it’d look pretty silly if he tried to breathe in space, right? At least, that’s how he explained it to Angie. 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.
☼ 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.
☼ Hand-to-Hand Combat: Apollo mentions that he was trained by the Midnighter, his husband, in hand-to-hand combat, so he's quite skilled, though he generally relies on his powers more than close physical combat.
☼ Radiotelepathy: (I think Kaitie / Midnighter-mun has already talked to Desh and gotten mod approval for them to have this in Fac, but I’ll put this here for future reference.) 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).
Personality: When we first see Apollo, he is young and confident, a seemingly natural-born leader, head of Bendix's secret team. He gives orders smoothly and authoritatively, but when the mission starts to go bad and the true horror of what they've been sent after becomes clear, Apollo wavers, sickened by the sight of melting, half-formed bodies, becoming temporarily incapacitated as he vomits. In truth, he probably wasn't ready to be a leader in a life or death assignment, and to this day, he isn't exactly the take-charge kind of guy. He does what he has to without complaint and he doesn't need to be told what to do all the time, but he doesn't tend to step up and give the orders to the rest of the team either. When we first see him, he's also prone to taking heroic poses, believing himself a hero, but that first mission, and all the ones after with Midnighter and then the Authority, probably showed him that heroism is a lot more than an ideal - he's definitely toned it down as he gets older, though to an extent, the idealism remains. He constantly fights for a finer world, doing whatever he thinks is right, even if his methods are a little extreme at times (though never as extreme as his husband - which is something, because extreme for Apollo is blowing up heads with his eyes). He has no problem with this violence as long as the target is deserving of it, and he isn't afraid or squeamish about dishing it out, but he doesn't go looking for a fight, he lets it come to him. He also shows a remarkable amount of restraint - after being raped by the Commander, when he bests the man in their next confrontation, he doesn't kill him himself, he gives him to Midnighter (to gore with a jackhammer) instead. As angry as he was, extracting physical vengeance on his attacker for his own sake just wasn't important. Though when Midnighter was captured and then tortured by a crazy cult, Apollo was more than happy to lay the smack down personally on the cult leader, giving him a physical beating like he doesn't often do. He doesn't look down at his husband's methods at all. Often when things get serious he mentions that he'll "just have to be more of a bastard", referring to the way Midnighter refers to himself as a bastard.
Off the field and on, Apollo has been described as 'polite and mild-mannered'. Midnighter was probably only half joking when he said it; Apollo curses a lot less than everyone else (though he doesn't shy at foul language) and for the most part, he is a fairly mild-mannered man. He isn't prone to fits of anger over anything less than his friends and family being attacked or horrific evil being done, and there's a kindness about him. He makes friends easily, like Jenny Sparks and Angela Spica, to whom he was a friend and confidant. Early on in their relationships, they were comfortable talking to Apollo about personal matters. For a man as strong as he is (able to easily lift a hundred tons - he's definitely the Authority's powerhouse), he is always gentle with his husband and their daughter; he and Midnighter have several tender moments on-panel. Each one makes it obvious just how deeply Apollo's love for Midnighter runs, from the way he kisses his cheek before leaving to his possible death, to the way they hold each other. As a couple, they’re very loving and can almost be called ‘mushy’, a contrast to their (especially Midnighter’s) on-the-field selves. They've never been subtle about their relationship - Apollo and Midnighter are very openly gay, and they hate homophobes, even putting one (a guy named Kev that no one likes) in the hospital for calling them poofs to their faces. Unsurprisingly, Apollo isn't terribly shy or easily embarrassed: on one page, Midnighter leaves the room to take a shower, asks if Apollo's coming, and in front of the entire team, Apollo darts off with a cheery "Duty calls!"
Apollo is an excellent, very loving father. He and Midnighter adopted Jenny Quantum as a baby, and while the whole team took care of her to an extent, the couple almost immediately latched on as her parents. They got married and raised her together in what was a very stable (if abnormal because of their jobs) family up until Bendix intervened and made Midnighter believe he had to leave Apollo and Jenny for three years to keep a terrible future from happening, an event which tied in with the breaking up of The Authority for a while. While Apollo was no doubt angry and hurt, he kept things together and raised their child, potentially the most powerful being on the planet, on his own as a single parent. He eventually forgave Midnighter when he returned, letting go of any negative feelings he had for three years thinking his husband abandoned them (He says once to Jenny, “He knows where we are. He’ll come home if he wants to.”) to get back together with him and fix their relationship. It helped that it was all Bendix’s fault, of course, but he truly loves his family, and he seems able to easily forgive any personal affronts to himself. The only person he will probably never forgive for hurting him in some way is his maker, Henry Bendix (he really, REALLY hates that guy).
He seems to occasionally express a desire for normality, but he’s likely conflicted on it (because of different writers, I think). He’s the one who brought himself and Midnighter out of retirement to join the Authority, to do some good, but at the same time, he’s the one who wanted to buy a house and move off the Carrier, and to give their daughter a somewhat normal childhood. It’s hard to explain this personality quirk of his, but it’s likely because he changed after becoming a father. When it was just him and Midnighter, he probably had trouble adjusting to normal life, life without some kind of greater purpose. He seems the type who always seems to be doing something, whether it’s ridiculous like watching TV, painting or origami, or saving the world. After he and Midnighter adopted Jenny Quantum, though, he got another purpose - taking care of their daughter. He’s very devoted as a father, and any desire for normality was likely for Jenny’s sake, because he wanted to do things right for her.
Generally, he has a good sense of humor, and often engages in playful teasing or banter with his husband and friends, and he meets things head-on with a smile. He's probably one of the most good-natured people in The Authority; sometimes you can go as far as to call him 'laid back' in a way. He enjoys little things like TV shows and pop culture, despite the constant seriousness and constant horrors of his job (he's been known to watch "Friends", for one, enough that Midnighter teases him about it: "So is this the one where Phoebe really pisses you off, or the one where you realized they're all 35 and actually kind of creepy?"). He is also extremely unapologetic about how he has terrible taste in everything. The aforementioned "Friends", he listens to the Backstreet Boys (and even had a poster of them up in his and Midnighter's room, next to the gun display), and men. Well, not Midnighter, that's one of his wins, but in a flashback to the original team of 7 that Bendix put together, Stalker, a half alien who didn't really look human, had some somewhat suggestive comments he made at Apollo, who only replied with "Shh shh" in an almost playful attempt to be professional and get back to business. So yes. He has terrible taste in everything, but he doesn't care. He'll keep watching bad TV if he wants to.
All the good qualities don't mean he's perfect, though. Apollo is just as human as anyone else, and he does have his flaws. For one, he has a bit of a jealous streak. When Midnighter tells him that he kissed another man, he tosses his husband through four walls in anger - the very first, and the last, time the couple has ever been shown to be violent with each other. He doesn't usually lash out when he's upset, as shown when he was raped and simply withdrew a bit and brooded, but that one time was significant, a moment of weakness, a temporary lack of his usual restraint. And that lapse in restraint was probably caused by the goings-on at the time, someone was infecting the world with hopelessness and affecting moods. He also occasionally has a problem with cockiness. One time he took off in pursuit of a baddie before the team could tell him not to, and he would have gone splat against the destination island's force field if the Doctor hadn't managed to slow him down (he moves EXTREMELY fast - halfway around the globe in 30 seconds, though another comic says all around the world in 8 minutes, so...) by teleporting him to another dimension temporarily. He didn't react to it with anger though, just grinned and got back to work.
Essentially, at the heart of everything, he is, or tries to be, a good man, and no matter what the world throws at him to keep him down, he comes back with a smile and continues to fight for the greater good.
History: As far as Apollo knows, his life begins with a man named Henry Bendix. He has no memories of who he used to be, doesn't know what his real name is. His old name and old life were taken away completely, along with all his memories, when he spoke his codename and put on his uniform. In a way, his story begins in 1993, when Bendix, leader of the global organization Stormwatch, put together a highly secret team of seven genetically altered superhumans, created in his own labs. A young and, perhaps unprepared, Apollo was put in charge of the team for their first mission. Bendix teleported them out to retrieve a piece of tech, but he neglected to tell them that it wasn't his tech they were retrieving. He was using his own personal little team of superhumans, Apollo, Midnighter, Stalker, Amaze, Impetus, Lamplight, and Crow Jane, to steal weaponized medical tech that was growing its own guards.
The mission went to hell. Stalker, whom Apollo was somewhat attached to somehow, and eventually all the others, were killed in the line of duty. Bendix never told them that he rigged their devices so they wouldn't be withdrawn from the situation unless they had the tech with them. With the rest of their team dead and no easy way out of the complex, Apollo and Midnighter escaped on their own steam and went underground, managing to avoid Bendix's eyes in the sky (literally, as Skywatch, Stormwatch's orbiting base, can monitor the entire planet) for five full years.
During those five years, they grew close, living on the streets together with nothing but the uniforms on their backs, often not eating for months and sleeping in boxes and doorways. But they were doing the work they wanted to do, taking down arms smugglers and drug rings with the sole goal of making the world a finer place. In 1998 though, after Bendix's fall from grace, files about Apollo and Midnighter were recovered, and the new Stormwatch was ordered to bring them in, which they did via teleport fetishes (pendant things, not sexual kinks). Apollo and Midnighter were tracking down high-tech weapons in something called the Nevada Garden - when the new leader of Stormwatch matched intel with the pair, he gave them a chance to help retrieve the garden and keep it from being used to make more weapons. After they did so, they were given new lives away from Stormwatch.
Then Stormwatch basically went and fucked up and got invaded by Aliens (yes, like Alien vs. Predator aliens), and then it got completely shut down, but Apollo wasn't involved in any of that. At least not until 1999 when Jenny Sparks, a former leader of the Stormwatch Black black ops team and the Spirit of the 20th Century (essentially a person born at the turn of the century, who lives for that full century and dies and is reborn when the next one begins; someone who embodies the spirit of that particular century, it's complicated stuff that isn't too important right now) formed up a new team to protect the earth - The Authority. She recruited Apollo and Midnighter to this new team, along with Shen Li Min / Swift, Angela Spica / The Engineer, Jack Hawksmoor, and The Doctor (Jeroen flavored, the predecessor to the current-canon Doctor, Habib), Earth's shaman. Their base is the Carrier, a shiftship (basically a transdimensional spaceship as big as a large city or bigger that travels the space between worlds, the Bleed) powered by a caged baby universe.
The team's first mission was stopping an evil dictator and his army of superhuman clones from taking over the world. Kaizen Gamorra and basically all of his island are bastards. Next they took out some alien dudes trying to impose their military rape-and-pillage culture on Earth. The next big event came around when the giant alien that created the Earth came back to inhabit it again; in a sense, it was God. The Authority, including Apollo, snapped into action and with Jenny Sparks, they managed to electrocute God’s brain to death. With the world saved, on the eve of 1999, Jenny Sparks died and was reborn in Singapore as codename Jenny Quantum, the spirit of the 21st century.
As soon as the child was found, a battle broke out for custody of the child between the Authority and an Avengers analogue group led by a scientist named Dr. Krigstein. Krigstein originally wanted the child dead, but during the battle, her natural defenses activated and blew the legs right off the size-changing member of the opposing force at giant-size. During the battle, Apollo was severely weakened, and was then beaten and raped by The Commander. Krigstein's men eventually escaped with the child, and the Authority returned to the Carrier to find another game plan. Apollo didn't take being brutalized lightly; the usually good-natured hero turned brooding and angry, thinking "about how I'm going to snap every bone in that clown's body and shove his friend's mace so far up that he'll need eight years physiotherapy and a good proctologist to walk again." (To which Midnighter replied "I just love you to bits sometimes." Their relationship is clearly interesting.) He coped with his ordeal mostly by spending some time alone circling the world and likely thinking. Later, when he bested the Commander in another confrontation, Apollo didn't kill him - he only offered him up to Midnighter, who gored him with a jackhammer.
After another series of superhuman battles against more of Krigstein's creations, they safely get baby Jenny Quantum back by offering Dr. Krigstein a job with them.
A year later, things are operating fairly smoothly and, after stopping a renegade Doctor who stole powers from their team's Doctor (Earth's shaman, not a medical professional), the Authority is on the cover of every magazine and appearing on all sorts of TV shows (they mention appearing on Conan O'Brien), basically living it up and trying to correct the status quo worldwide, to forcibly fix corrupt governments - to fight for the people, not corporations. The top 1% (the rich) were unhappy with this, and the government sent a superpowered, six billion dollar genetically engineered inbred homophobic pedophile of a hillbilly (yes, really) named Seth to eliminate the Authority. He encounters Apollo and Midnighter first, on their way home from a party, and bursts out of the stomach of a pizza delivery girl (yes, really). Fights ensue. The entire team minus one were defeated and captured aboard their own Carrier - Midnighter escaped with baby Jenny.
The governments of America, Italy, Germany, Britain, Canada, France, and Japan put together their own fake Authority to uphold their own interests. Respectively, these were Street (replacement for Jack Hawksmoor), Last Call (replacement for Midnighter), Teuton (replacement Apollo), The Colonel (replacement Jenny Sparks), Rush (replacement Swift), Surgeon (replacement Doctor), and Machine (replacement Engineer). Unlike the original Authority, the G7's Authority was essentially a group of high-paid douchebags who only cared about making sure the rich fat cats stayed rich and fat, and put on shows for the media. The original Authority members, minus Midnighter, who went MIA (and was assumed dead) during the fight with Seth, were all held captive, or brainwashed, or both. Apollo, though, was given to the homophobic Last Call, who replaced Midnighter and constantly, loudly proclaimed that he was straight, to use as a living punching bag. Drained of most of his solar reserves and left weak, Apollo was chained up in Last Call's dark gym and beaten, taunted, and abused mercilessly. For a time, the G7 Authority spent their days basically fucking everything up before Midnighter came back to kick ass with a baby strapped to his back (yes, really).
Midnighter found Apollo first, just as the closeted Teuton was about to "broaden his horizons" or some shit and rape Apollo. Midnighter offed Teuton with an electric screwdriver to the back of the skull, and caressed his husband's swollen cheek as he opened a small teleport door above him to give him sunlight. It's one of the few times Apollo actually cries (I think the only times he ever does are when it's an emotional moment with Midnighter), saying "I knew they couldn't kill you.", having been told that his husband was dead this whole time. Later, fully recharged, when Last Call comes back to beat on Apollo some more, he tells him to light his cigarette and instead, Apollo eye-lasers his head off.
Meanwhile, the other half of the real Authority are being rescued by Shen, who overcame her brainwashing. By now the G7 Authority know Midnighter is on the Carrier, so Seth comes up to finish the job. After Seth leaves Midnighter nearly dead and threatens baby Jenny (I guess Midnighter couldn't find a babysitter), Apollo rushes him through a Door to the Arctic Circle to fight him away from other people, but it doesn't go so well. Seth drags Apollo back by his head like a caveman and engages Jack Hawksmoor, but finally baby Jenny, just learning to talk, uses the failsafe phrase that Shen learned to turn Seth back to a normal, nasty hillbilly. The Doctor turns him into a bunch of chickens and hands him over to his hillbilly brothers, oops. Then they kind of send the president to a war zone in Iraq because goddamn it that Seth shit wasn't cool.
With that mess over with, Apollo and Midnighter finally get married in a lovely sunlit ceremony on the Carrier, and they officially adopt Jenny Quantum.
It isn't all sunshine and roses from there. One day, three Greek goddesses called the Erinyes descend to Earth and the Authority engages them in battle. Every single one of them are bested by the creatures to the point where Jack Hawksmoor's spine is shattered, rendering him a paraplegic, and supposedly Shen dies, but a martial artist named Danny Chan kicks the Erinyes to the proverbial curb and saves the remaining Authority members. He accompanies them back up to the Carrier. While Midnighter objects, Apollo asks Danny to join the team since they're down a few people, showing how much more trusting and less cynical he is than his husband. Their time with Danny on the Carrier is miserable, to say the least. Down below, the Earth has been thrust into a state of mass depression and hopelessness, and this obviously affects the Authority, too.
This is the first time Apollo and Midnighter are shown to have serious marital problems. They're shown arguing a bit, but it doesn't get serious until Danny kisses Midnighter after besting him in a spar. Apollo says that Midnighter can tell him anything, but when he hears about him kissing another man, he grows irrationally jealous and angry, and throws Midnighter through a few walls. It's the first, and last, time the couple is ever shown being violent with each other; Apollo normally doesn't react that strongly to things, and he's never again abusive to Midnighter. It's more than likely that the sense of hopelessness affecting the planet was affecting him, too. Later, he's shown being hostile toward Danny and Midnighter both, but the crisis on Earth calls them away before he can get violent with the man who kissed his husband. Turns out, the worldwide despair was caused by a blanking out of the future - one the Authority soon fixes, and from there, Apollo and Midnighter presumably fix their marital problems.
Next, The Authority stops an invasion of earth by a multiversal Las Vegas called Viceworld, where the stakes for betting have gotten so high that the people in charge of Viceworld stage wars on purpose simply so that their customers can bet on them. The team puts the kibosh on that little plot, though. Then they stop another invasion of Earth, this time involving human suicide bombs sent by a multiversal corporation that pillages worlds for profit and is run by a bunch of bug-human hybrid aliens. A lot of these plots involve invasion of Earth by a bunch of different things. That's The Authority for you. Anyway, when the Carrier is attacked by the bug-alien things in the final confrontation, Apollo and Midnighter try to fight their way down to the playroom to save Jenny, but her powers activate and she vaporizes all the intruders. Not bad for a girl who's like, four years old. And then there was a giant monster attacking the city that was actually a nine year old boy. They stopped it, of course, although to do so, the Doctor had to scare the kid into being a vegetable.
Then some crazy guy starts an anti-superhuman church, though it's really just a cult, called the Church of Transcendence. Meanwhile, Apollo and Midnighter go house hunting, having decided that it was time to try and give Jenny a normal life, though she protests that she isn't normal. House hunting doesn't go so well anyway, Midnighter and Apollo suck at keeping secret identities. Anyway, the cult thing was more like a psionic virus that enslaved the masses and basically brainwashed them into the "religion", including a couple of Authority members in a confrontation. Midnighter is captured and they torture him to try and get him to renounce his homosexuality - he fights it right up until Shen comes to save him and reverse the brainwashing. Apollo wasn't happy at all with his husband being kidnapped, of course, but since he's the team powerhouse, he had to go take on the stupid-powerful cult leader. And he probably got a kick out of knocking him around. Nobody messes with his husband and tries to get him to have sex with a woman, okay.
From there, the Authority stage a coup d’état and take over the American government. The most important part of this arc regarding Apollo is that their adopted daughter Jenny's biological mother comes forward and wants to take custody back after having been in a coma. Meanwhile, as the couple deals with Jenny's mother finally getting to come see Jenny, there are multiple fractures in reality across the globe causing disasters. Eventually it comes to light that the reality fractures are being caused by the visitor - not Jenny's mother after all, the woman was actually Jenny's twin sister raised by the Chinese government to be a killer. Jenny Fractal is angry that Jenny Quantum's life was so much better and she tries to kill the entire Authority; she succeeds and kills Jenny Quantum. Apollo and Midnighter are devastated at the loss of their daughter, but the Doctor pulled her spirit from her body at the moment of her death and they concoct a plan. Midnighter is sent back four years in time, to the hospital, and he murders infant Jenny F. in her bassinet. Jenny Q's spirit enters Jenny F's body in the present, and Jenny is essentially back to life - but Apollo's husband has to deal with the knowledge that he killed his daughter's twin sister as an infant. The reality fractures stop, and Midnighter and Apollo take a trip around the world as a family with Jenny to show her all the good things they're trying to protect.
Things didn't go so well when the US leaders made a stupid mistake and Jack Hawksmoor decided to completely remove the US executive branch and run the country the way they wanted. Takeover was smooth, occupation was not; people were already trying to remove them. Typical Authority stuff. Then some minor stuff happens, like having to stop a living embodiment of the sun that turned out to be an old Stormwatch member, Winter. Ironic. Then Apollo and Midnighter's old teammates from Bendix's failed operation way, way back when (remember those guys?) come back as zombies to destroy things. This is when Midnighter gets sucked out into space and Apollo rescues him, but then he comes back to fight the zombie girl (Amaze) who tossed him into space, gets his ass kicked, and Midnighter saves him in return. They're the most romantic.
Next, now in control of the United States, the Authority face opposition from geezer superheroes from the 40s, somehow made young again. When Midnighter goes to assist Jack, the Door (teleportation thing) takes him somewhere that isn't Jack's location - supposedly the future, in the world the Authority built. He meets an older Apollo there, who tells him what happened, namely that Midnighter kills Jack, institutionalizes Angie, and abandons Apollo when he isn't eye candy anymore, all the while ruling a fascist utopia as a dictator. Old!Apollo tells Midnighter that he has to break up the team or else this future will come to pass. He returns to his time, and the next confrontation with the patriotic geezer heroes goes badly - effectively nuking Washington DC. Midnighter quits the team and leaves Jenny and Apollo. The team breaks up and they go about their lives.
Apollo moves to San Francisco with Jenny, spending three years raising her as a single parent, having negotiated with the current government to keep their home location a secret and provide certain services for Jenny, the most powerful superhuman in the galaxy. Jeroen, the Doctor, dies from a drug overdose and only Apollo and Jenny go to visit his grave at the one year anniversary of his death. Apollo asked the others to come, but no one would, and Midnighter is still MIA. He doesn't go looking for his husband, telling their daughter "He knows where we are. If he wanted to be here, he would be." They visit Jeroen's grave, and Jenny gets the idea to visit the Garden of Ancestral Memory (where all the Doctors' souls reside) to visit him, but finds out that he isn't there. Later on, at home, after a doctor's visit during which Jenny spotted someone spying on her invisibly, Apollo orders Chinese as Jenny goes on a crazy trip with her fourteen year old self to discover from the dead Jenny Sparks what might be going on.
I'll be taking Apollo from somewhere in the time between the doctor's visit and before he finds that eight-year-old Jenny Quantum has aged herself up to fourteen.
Roleplay Sample - Log:
Apollo has seen things no man will ever witness. He has seen horrors beyond belief in his time with the Authority, yes, but he's also seen beauty beyond compare. He's seen the strange and fantastic, things man can only dream of. Like Icarus, he has flown close to the sun, only Apollo lives to tell the tale, as he will again today. Drifting in the photosphere, he lets the light wash over him, to normal man a burning inferno, to him a pleasant, comforting warmth that invigorates him, fills him with strength. The quiet vastness of space is ideal for stealing an hour or two of solitary thought; no one can come and fetch him back, not unless he wants it.
Blue eyes slide shut; he would exhale quietly if he were breathing, but it's pretty silly to try and breathe in space, so he simply doesn't do it. He doesn't need to, he just bathes in the light and lets it fill him, warm him, embrace him. Apollo could likely accomplish the same quiet at home on the Carrier, on the couch in front of the television, playing a terrible show that Midnighter would no doubt tease him about, but drifting in the Bleed, away from Earth, he needs to leave the Carrier sometimes.
Someone always brings him back, though, helps him find the ground again so his wax wings don't melt.
"Door," he commands the vast expanse of stars, and the glowing orange portal opens. He slips inside, drops down lightly onto the floor of his and his husband's bedroom. Midnighter is there, pulling on his mask, and as the leather slips over his eyes, Apollo leans in to kiss him lingeringly. The high of dancing across the sun slowly fades. Dancing on the sun is a thrill, but Midnighter's lips take him even higher. Here is where he really wants to be.
When their lips part, Midnighter gives him a wry grin. "Get enough sun?"
"More than," he answers cheerily, returning a soft smile of his own.
"Good. We've got a situation brewing."
His smile broadens. "Well then, what are we waiting for? Let's go save the world."
Roleplay Sample - Journal:
[When the camera switches on, it's on accident, from the 'berry tumbling out of the person's jeans. It lands just so, at the right angle to get a good shot of the man in question, surrounded by the typical sterile white of a once-empty room. He's tall, really tall, and broad shouldered, though it's hard to see the extent of his muscle definition in the nice, 3/4 sleeve, v-necked black shirt he's wearing with a pair of slim-fitting jeans. He's quite handsomely built, with chiseled features currently set in an expression of confusion and shoulder-length, wavy white hair.
Handsome, yes, but you might not guess he's kind of a superhero just from looking at him right now. When he speaks, it's in a stern, fatherly voice, though there's an undercurrent of gentleness.]
Jenny? Jenny, this isn't funny. [He pauses, as if waiting for a response, and then his frown deepens. He rests his hands on his trim hips for a minute.] Jennifer Quantum, you undo whatever it is you just did, young lady-
[He cuts off when he sees the 'berry on the floor, and picks it up, not noticing the recording light.] The hell...? A cell phone? [Apollo shakes his head once and the video shifts as he heads out into the hallway, looking kind of irritated. In his hand, the 'berry gets a wonderful shot of blue eyes glowing orangeish, and then he beams of light shoot out from his eyes at the wall. Must be an outer wall, because all it leaves is a slightly smoking scorch mark.
Apollo just sort of stares for a moment, the glow in his eyes dying down.] ...Okay, maybe this is something else...
[Radiotelepathy]
Angie? This is Apollo. Got a situation, can you pinpoint my location? ...Angie?...
This game includes horrible mental and physical torture of your character. After reading the rules/faq for clarification, how do you expect your character to handle this and continue to function?
Oh god, is there anything I can do to Apollo in A_Fac that he won't go 'been there, done that' to because it happened in canon? Seriously, he is one tough motherfucker, he's been tortured, raped, he's been experimented on, he's killed people, he's seen the end of the world, helped kill God, been infected by a crazy zombie cannibal virus (well, a few of those aren't at his current canon point, but still)... And none of it has broken him. I think he'll manage Fac just fine. Plus he'll also have his husband, so that'll help.
Questions? Comments? Crazed and creative statements? Those go here.
Yes, I had one question! Canonically, without sunlight to charge his solar cells, Apollo becomes severely weakened, and eventually starts to wither and die. In World's End, when the planet was covered with so much smog that it didn't let any sunlight in, Apollo physically couldn't live on earth away from the sunlight or he got all "heroin chic" as Midnighter put it. As seen here.
SO. Could the "sunlight" in the Biodome be close enough to the real thing to charge his solar cells? Albeit maybe half as fast as real sunlight? As in like, it takes him three to four hours to fully recharge (as much as the collar will allow) instead of two, in the biodome only?
Name: Nekky
Age: 22
AIM: xnecronomical
MSN: NA
Y!M: NA
E-MAIL: x_violetprison@yahoo.com
Are you new? If not, list your current characters: Nope, I currently play Tommy Shepherd and Bucky Barnes.
IC Information:
Name: Apollo
Fandom: The Authority | DC/Wildstorm Comics
Timeline: During the Revolution trade, just before Jenny aged herself up.
Age: Apollo's age is uncertain, but he's probably somewhere in his 40s. I’d estimate about early 40s, anyway.
Appearance: Apollo is rather tall, and statuesque - he stands at probably around 6'6" or 6'7" (An estimate, because his actual height is never given, but Midnighter is listed at 6’5” and Apollo is just barely taller than him.), with broad shoulders, trim waist, and defined musculature. He looks like a man in his prime, at his physical peak. He has blue eyes, and his hair is so blond it's white, slightly wavy, and usually it's just past his shoulders, though sometimes he's cut it shorter to the base of his neck. He usually wears his costume, which is basically a tight, white and gold body suit that covers him from the neck down, with a design on the chest that resembles a sun. It doesn't exactly leave much to the imagination, which has actually been remarked on in canon. He does dress like a normal person sometimes, though, in fairly nondescript and somewhat conservative civvies. When he’s just hanging out around the Carrier, he seems fond of track pants or sweatpants and tank tops in different combinations of yellow/gold and white.
Picture
Abilities: Apollo is basically Wildstorm's version of Superman, so he's essentially one of the most powerful beings in the world. He serves as The Authority's main powerhouse, able to lay waste to large areas in short amounts of time if necessary.
☼ 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: Bitch can walk in lava and vacation on the sun. 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 actually being able to cut him), he can walk in lava and on the surface of the sun, etc. Heat doesn’t seem to bother him at all; Jenny Sparks once put her cigarette out on his shoulder and he mostly looked annoyed that she put a hole in his costume. 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 leaves 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. Once he was held captive and beaten daily - his face was swollen beyond recognition, but a few minutes in the sunlight healed him up completely.
☼ Laser Vision: Yes, like Superman, he has laser vision. His can be 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 do little things like light a cigarette.
☼ 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 turn and stop, however. He’s actually pursued someone so quickly that he had to be teleported to another dimension where kinetic energy is converted to music just to slow him down and keep him from going splat against a force field. 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. Baby he's a fiiirework-
☼ Self-Sustenance: Breathing? Breathing is for bitches. 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, because it’d look pretty silly if he tried to breathe in space, right? At least, that’s how he explained it to Angie. 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.
☼ 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.
☼ Hand-to-Hand Combat: Apollo mentions that he was trained by the Midnighter, his husband, in hand-to-hand combat, so he's quite skilled, though he generally relies on his powers more than close physical combat.
☼ Radiotelepathy: (I think Kaitie / Midnighter-mun has already talked to Desh and gotten mod approval for them to have this in Fac, but I’ll put this here for future reference.) 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).
Personality: When we first see Apollo, he is young and confident, a seemingly natural-born leader, head of Bendix's secret team. He gives orders smoothly and authoritatively, but when the mission starts to go bad and the true horror of what they've been sent after becomes clear, Apollo wavers, sickened by the sight of melting, half-formed bodies, becoming temporarily incapacitated as he vomits. In truth, he probably wasn't ready to be a leader in a life or death assignment, and to this day, he isn't exactly the take-charge kind of guy. He does what he has to without complaint and he doesn't need to be told what to do all the time, but he doesn't tend to step up and give the orders to the rest of the team either. When we first see him, he's also prone to taking heroic poses, believing himself a hero, but that first mission, and all the ones after with Midnighter and then the Authority, probably showed him that heroism is a lot more than an ideal - he's definitely toned it down as he gets older, though to an extent, the idealism remains. He constantly fights for a finer world, doing whatever he thinks is right, even if his methods are a little extreme at times (though never as extreme as his husband - which is something, because extreme for Apollo is blowing up heads with his eyes). He has no problem with this violence as long as the target is deserving of it, and he isn't afraid or squeamish about dishing it out, but he doesn't go looking for a fight, he lets it come to him. He also shows a remarkable amount of restraint - after being raped by the Commander, when he bests the man in their next confrontation, he doesn't kill him himself, he gives him to Midnighter (to gore with a jackhammer) instead. As angry as he was, extracting physical vengeance on his attacker for his own sake just wasn't important. Though when Midnighter was captured and then tortured by a crazy cult, Apollo was more than happy to lay the smack down personally on the cult leader, giving him a physical beating like he doesn't often do. He doesn't look down at his husband's methods at all. Often when things get serious he mentions that he'll "just have to be more of a bastard", referring to the way Midnighter refers to himself as a bastard.
Off the field and on, Apollo has been described as 'polite and mild-mannered'. Midnighter was probably only half joking when he said it; Apollo curses a lot less than everyone else (though he doesn't shy at foul language) and for the most part, he is a fairly mild-mannered man. He isn't prone to fits of anger over anything less than his friends and family being attacked or horrific evil being done, and there's a kindness about him. He makes friends easily, like Jenny Sparks and Angela Spica, to whom he was a friend and confidant. Early on in their relationships, they were comfortable talking to Apollo about personal matters. For a man as strong as he is (able to easily lift a hundred tons - he's definitely the Authority's powerhouse), he is always gentle with his husband and their daughter; he and Midnighter have several tender moments on-panel. Each one makes it obvious just how deeply Apollo's love for Midnighter runs, from the way he kisses his cheek before leaving to his possible death, to the way they hold each other. As a couple, they’re very loving and can almost be called ‘mushy’, a contrast to their (especially Midnighter’s) on-the-field selves. They've never been subtle about their relationship - Apollo and Midnighter are very openly gay, and they hate homophobes, even putting one (a guy named Kev that no one likes) in the hospital for calling them poofs to their faces. Unsurprisingly, Apollo isn't terribly shy or easily embarrassed: on one page, Midnighter leaves the room to take a shower, asks if Apollo's coming, and in front of the entire team, Apollo darts off with a cheery "Duty calls!"
Apollo is an excellent, very loving father. He and Midnighter adopted Jenny Quantum as a baby, and while the whole team took care of her to an extent, the couple almost immediately latched on as her parents. They got married and raised her together in what was a very stable (if abnormal because of their jobs) family up until Bendix intervened and made Midnighter believe he had to leave Apollo and Jenny for three years to keep a terrible future from happening, an event which tied in with the breaking up of The Authority for a while. While Apollo was no doubt angry and hurt, he kept things together and raised their child, potentially the most powerful being on the planet, on his own as a single parent. He eventually forgave Midnighter when he returned, letting go of any negative feelings he had for three years thinking his husband abandoned them (He says once to Jenny, “He knows where we are. He’ll come home if he wants to.”) to get back together with him and fix their relationship. It helped that it was all Bendix’s fault, of course, but he truly loves his family, and he seems able to easily forgive any personal affronts to himself. The only person he will probably never forgive for hurting him in some way is his maker, Henry Bendix (he really, REALLY hates that guy).
He seems to occasionally express a desire for normality, but he’s likely conflicted on it (because of different writers, I think). He’s the one who brought himself and Midnighter out of retirement to join the Authority, to do some good, but at the same time, he’s the one who wanted to buy a house and move off the Carrier, and to give their daughter a somewhat normal childhood. It’s hard to explain this personality quirk of his, but it’s likely because he changed after becoming a father. When it was just him and Midnighter, he probably had trouble adjusting to normal life, life without some kind of greater purpose. He seems the type who always seems to be doing something, whether it’s ridiculous like watching TV, painting or origami, or saving the world. After he and Midnighter adopted Jenny Quantum, though, he got another purpose - taking care of their daughter. He’s very devoted as a father, and any desire for normality was likely for Jenny’s sake, because he wanted to do things right for her.
Generally, he has a good sense of humor, and often engages in playful teasing or banter with his husband and friends, and he meets things head-on with a smile. He's probably one of the most good-natured people in The Authority; sometimes you can go as far as to call him 'laid back' in a way. He enjoys little things like TV shows and pop culture, despite the constant seriousness and constant horrors of his job (he's been known to watch "Friends", for one, enough that Midnighter teases him about it: "So is this the one where Phoebe really pisses you off, or the one where you realized they're all 35 and actually kind of creepy?"). He is also extremely unapologetic about how he has terrible taste in everything. The aforementioned "Friends", he listens to the Backstreet Boys (and even had a poster of them up in his and Midnighter's room, next to the gun display), and men. Well, not Midnighter, that's one of his wins, but in a flashback to the original team of 7 that Bendix put together, Stalker, a half alien who didn't really look human, had some somewhat suggestive comments he made at Apollo, who only replied with "Shh shh" in an almost playful attempt to be professional and get back to business. So yes. He has terrible taste in everything, but he doesn't care. He'll keep watching bad TV if he wants to.
All the good qualities don't mean he's perfect, though. Apollo is just as human as anyone else, and he does have his flaws. For one, he has a bit of a jealous streak. When Midnighter tells him that he kissed another man, he tosses his husband through four walls in anger - the very first, and the last, time the couple has ever been shown to be violent with each other. He doesn't usually lash out when he's upset, as shown when he was raped and simply withdrew a bit and brooded, but that one time was significant, a moment of weakness, a temporary lack of his usual restraint. And that lapse in restraint was probably caused by the goings-on at the time, someone was infecting the world with hopelessness and affecting moods. He also occasionally has a problem with cockiness. One time he took off in pursuit of a baddie before the team could tell him not to, and he would have gone splat against the destination island's force field if the Doctor hadn't managed to slow him down (he moves EXTREMELY fast - halfway around the globe in 30 seconds, though another comic says all around the world in 8 minutes, so...) by teleporting him to another dimension temporarily. He didn't react to it with anger though, just grinned and got back to work.
Essentially, at the heart of everything, he is, or tries to be, a good man, and no matter what the world throws at him to keep him down, he comes back with a smile and continues to fight for the greater good.
History: As far as Apollo knows, his life begins with a man named Henry Bendix. He has no memories of who he used to be, doesn't know what his real name is. His old name and old life were taken away completely, along with all his memories, when he spoke his codename and put on his uniform. In a way, his story begins in 1993, when Bendix, leader of the global organization Stormwatch, put together a highly secret team of seven genetically altered superhumans, created in his own labs. A young and, perhaps unprepared, Apollo was put in charge of the team for their first mission. Bendix teleported them out to retrieve a piece of tech, but he neglected to tell them that it wasn't his tech they were retrieving. He was using his own personal little team of superhumans, Apollo, Midnighter, Stalker, Amaze, Impetus, Lamplight, and Crow Jane, to steal weaponized medical tech that was growing its own guards.
The mission went to hell. Stalker, whom Apollo was somewhat attached to somehow, and eventually all the others, were killed in the line of duty. Bendix never told them that he rigged their devices so they wouldn't be withdrawn from the situation unless they had the tech with them. With the rest of their team dead and no easy way out of the complex, Apollo and Midnighter escaped on their own steam and went underground, managing to avoid Bendix's eyes in the sky (literally, as Skywatch, Stormwatch's orbiting base, can monitor the entire planet) for five full years.
During those five years, they grew close, living on the streets together with nothing but the uniforms on their backs, often not eating for months and sleeping in boxes and doorways. But they were doing the work they wanted to do, taking down arms smugglers and drug rings with the sole goal of making the world a finer place. In 1998 though, after Bendix's fall from grace, files about Apollo and Midnighter were recovered, and the new Stormwatch was ordered to bring them in, which they did via teleport fetishes (pendant things, not sexual kinks). Apollo and Midnighter were tracking down high-tech weapons in something called the Nevada Garden - when the new leader of Stormwatch matched intel with the pair, he gave them a chance to help retrieve the garden and keep it from being used to make more weapons. After they did so, they were given new lives away from Stormwatch.
Then Stormwatch basically went and fucked up and got invaded by Aliens (yes, like Alien vs. Predator aliens), and then it got completely shut down, but Apollo wasn't involved in any of that. At least not until 1999 when Jenny Sparks, a former leader of the Stormwatch Black black ops team and the Spirit of the 20th Century (essentially a person born at the turn of the century, who lives for that full century and dies and is reborn when the next one begins; someone who embodies the spirit of that particular century, it's complicated stuff that isn't too important right now) formed up a new team to protect the earth - The Authority. She recruited Apollo and Midnighter to this new team, along with Shen Li Min / Swift, Angela Spica / The Engineer, Jack Hawksmoor, and The Doctor (Jeroen flavored, the predecessor to the current-canon Doctor, Habib), Earth's shaman. Their base is the Carrier, a shiftship (basically a transdimensional spaceship as big as a large city or bigger that travels the space between worlds, the Bleed) powered by a caged baby universe.
The team's first mission was stopping an evil dictator and his army of superhuman clones from taking over the world. Kaizen Gamorra and basically all of his island are bastards. Next they took out some alien dudes trying to impose their military rape-and-pillage culture on Earth. The next big event came around when the giant alien that created the Earth came back to inhabit it again; in a sense, it was God. The Authority, including Apollo, snapped into action and with Jenny Sparks, they managed to electrocute God’s brain to death. With the world saved, on the eve of 1999, Jenny Sparks died and was reborn in Singapore as codename Jenny Quantum, the spirit of the 21st century.
As soon as the child was found, a battle broke out for custody of the child between the Authority and an Avengers analogue group led by a scientist named Dr. Krigstein. Krigstein originally wanted the child dead, but during the battle, her natural defenses activated and blew the legs right off the size-changing member of the opposing force at giant-size. During the battle, Apollo was severely weakened, and was then beaten and raped by The Commander. Krigstein's men eventually escaped with the child, and the Authority returned to the Carrier to find another game plan. Apollo didn't take being brutalized lightly; the usually good-natured hero turned brooding and angry, thinking "about how I'm going to snap every bone in that clown's body and shove his friend's mace so far up that he'll need eight years physiotherapy and a good proctologist to walk again." (To which Midnighter replied "I just love you to bits sometimes." Their relationship is clearly interesting.) He coped with his ordeal mostly by spending some time alone circling the world and likely thinking. Later, when he bested the Commander in another confrontation, Apollo didn't kill him - he only offered him up to Midnighter, who gored him with a jackhammer.
After another series of superhuman battles against more of Krigstein's creations, they safely get baby Jenny Quantum back by offering Dr. Krigstein a job with them.
A year later, things are operating fairly smoothly and, after stopping a renegade Doctor who stole powers from their team's Doctor (Earth's shaman, not a medical professional), the Authority is on the cover of every magazine and appearing on all sorts of TV shows (they mention appearing on Conan O'Brien), basically living it up and trying to correct the status quo worldwide, to forcibly fix corrupt governments - to fight for the people, not corporations. The top 1% (the rich) were unhappy with this, and the government sent a superpowered, six billion dollar genetically engineered inbred homophobic pedophile of a hillbilly (yes, really) named Seth to eliminate the Authority. He encounters Apollo and Midnighter first, on their way home from a party, and bursts out of the stomach of a pizza delivery girl (yes, really). Fights ensue. The entire team minus one were defeated and captured aboard their own Carrier - Midnighter escaped with baby Jenny.
The governments of America, Italy, Germany, Britain, Canada, France, and Japan put together their own fake Authority to uphold their own interests. Respectively, these were Street (replacement for Jack Hawksmoor), Last Call (replacement for Midnighter), Teuton (replacement Apollo), The Colonel (replacement Jenny Sparks), Rush (replacement Swift), Surgeon (replacement Doctor), and Machine (replacement Engineer). Unlike the original Authority, the G7's Authority was essentially a group of high-paid douchebags who only cared about making sure the rich fat cats stayed rich and fat, and put on shows for the media. The original Authority members, minus Midnighter, who went MIA (and was assumed dead) during the fight with Seth, were all held captive, or brainwashed, or both. Apollo, though, was given to the homophobic Last Call, who replaced Midnighter and constantly, loudly proclaimed that he was straight, to use as a living punching bag. Drained of most of his solar reserves and left weak, Apollo was chained up in Last Call's dark gym and beaten, taunted, and abused mercilessly. For a time, the G7 Authority spent their days basically fucking everything up before Midnighter came back to kick ass with a baby strapped to his back (yes, really).
Midnighter found Apollo first, just as the closeted Teuton was about to "broaden his horizons" or some shit and rape Apollo. Midnighter offed Teuton with an electric screwdriver to the back of the skull, and caressed his husband's swollen cheek as he opened a small teleport door above him to give him sunlight. It's one of the few times Apollo actually cries (I think the only times he ever does are when it's an emotional moment with Midnighter), saying "I knew they couldn't kill you.", having been told that his husband was dead this whole time. Later, fully recharged, when Last Call comes back to beat on Apollo some more, he tells him to light his cigarette and instead, Apollo eye-lasers his head off.
Meanwhile, the other half of the real Authority are being rescued by Shen, who overcame her brainwashing. By now the G7 Authority know Midnighter is on the Carrier, so Seth comes up to finish the job. After Seth leaves Midnighter nearly dead and threatens baby Jenny (I guess Midnighter couldn't find a babysitter), Apollo rushes him through a Door to the Arctic Circle to fight him away from other people, but it doesn't go so well. Seth drags Apollo back by his head like a caveman and engages Jack Hawksmoor, but finally baby Jenny, just learning to talk, uses the failsafe phrase that Shen learned to turn Seth back to a normal, nasty hillbilly. The Doctor turns him into a bunch of chickens and hands him over to his hillbilly brothers, oops. Then they kind of send the president to a war zone in Iraq because goddamn it that Seth shit wasn't cool.
With that mess over with, Apollo and Midnighter finally get married in a lovely sunlit ceremony on the Carrier, and they officially adopt Jenny Quantum.
It isn't all sunshine and roses from there. One day, three Greek goddesses called the Erinyes descend to Earth and the Authority engages them in battle. Every single one of them are bested by the creatures to the point where Jack Hawksmoor's spine is shattered, rendering him a paraplegic, and supposedly Shen dies, but a martial artist named Danny Chan kicks the Erinyes to the proverbial curb and saves the remaining Authority members. He accompanies them back up to the Carrier. While Midnighter objects, Apollo asks Danny to join the team since they're down a few people, showing how much more trusting and less cynical he is than his husband. Their time with Danny on the Carrier is miserable, to say the least. Down below, the Earth has been thrust into a state of mass depression and hopelessness, and this obviously affects the Authority, too.
This is the first time Apollo and Midnighter are shown to have serious marital problems. They're shown arguing a bit, but it doesn't get serious until Danny kisses Midnighter after besting him in a spar. Apollo says that Midnighter can tell him anything, but when he hears about him kissing another man, he grows irrationally jealous and angry, and throws Midnighter through a few walls. It's the first, and last, time the couple is ever shown being violent with each other; Apollo normally doesn't react that strongly to things, and he's never again abusive to Midnighter. It's more than likely that the sense of hopelessness affecting the planet was affecting him, too. Later, he's shown being hostile toward Danny and Midnighter both, but the crisis on Earth calls them away before he can get violent with the man who kissed his husband. Turns out, the worldwide despair was caused by a blanking out of the future - one the Authority soon fixes, and from there, Apollo and Midnighter presumably fix their marital problems.
Next, The Authority stops an invasion of earth by a multiversal Las Vegas called Viceworld, where the stakes for betting have gotten so high that the people in charge of Viceworld stage wars on purpose simply so that their customers can bet on them. The team puts the kibosh on that little plot, though. Then they stop another invasion of Earth, this time involving human suicide bombs sent by a multiversal corporation that pillages worlds for profit and is run by a bunch of bug-human hybrid aliens. A lot of these plots involve invasion of Earth by a bunch of different things. That's The Authority for you. Anyway, when the Carrier is attacked by the bug-alien things in the final confrontation, Apollo and Midnighter try to fight their way down to the playroom to save Jenny, but her powers activate and she vaporizes all the intruders. Not bad for a girl who's like, four years old. And then there was a giant monster attacking the city that was actually a nine year old boy. They stopped it, of course, although to do so, the Doctor had to scare the kid into being a vegetable.
Then some crazy guy starts an anti-superhuman church, though it's really just a cult, called the Church of Transcendence. Meanwhile, Apollo and Midnighter go house hunting, having decided that it was time to try and give Jenny a normal life, though she protests that she isn't normal. House hunting doesn't go so well anyway, Midnighter and Apollo suck at keeping secret identities. Anyway, the cult thing was more like a psionic virus that enslaved the masses and basically brainwashed them into the "religion", including a couple of Authority members in a confrontation. Midnighter is captured and they torture him to try and get him to renounce his homosexuality - he fights it right up until Shen comes to save him and reverse the brainwashing. Apollo wasn't happy at all with his husband being kidnapped, of course, but since he's the team powerhouse, he had to go take on the stupid-powerful cult leader. And he probably got a kick out of knocking him around. Nobody messes with his husband and tries to get him to have sex with a woman, okay.
From there, the Authority stage a coup d’état and take over the American government. The most important part of this arc regarding Apollo is that their adopted daughter Jenny's biological mother comes forward and wants to take custody back after having been in a coma. Meanwhile, as the couple deals with Jenny's mother finally getting to come see Jenny, there are multiple fractures in reality across the globe causing disasters. Eventually it comes to light that the reality fractures are being caused by the visitor - not Jenny's mother after all, the woman was actually Jenny's twin sister raised by the Chinese government to be a killer. Jenny Fractal is angry that Jenny Quantum's life was so much better and she tries to kill the entire Authority; she succeeds and kills Jenny Quantum. Apollo and Midnighter are devastated at the loss of their daughter, but the Doctor pulled her spirit from her body at the moment of her death and they concoct a plan. Midnighter is sent back four years in time, to the hospital, and he murders infant Jenny F. in her bassinet. Jenny Q's spirit enters Jenny F's body in the present, and Jenny is essentially back to life - but Apollo's husband has to deal with the knowledge that he killed his daughter's twin sister as an infant. The reality fractures stop, and Midnighter and Apollo take a trip around the world as a family with Jenny to show her all the good things they're trying to protect.
Things didn't go so well when the US leaders made a stupid mistake and Jack Hawksmoor decided to completely remove the US executive branch and run the country the way they wanted. Takeover was smooth, occupation was not; people were already trying to remove them. Typical Authority stuff. Then some minor stuff happens, like having to stop a living embodiment of the sun that turned out to be an old Stormwatch member, Winter. Ironic. Then Apollo and Midnighter's old teammates from Bendix's failed operation way, way back when (remember those guys?) come back as zombies to destroy things. This is when Midnighter gets sucked out into space and Apollo rescues him, but then he comes back to fight the zombie girl (Amaze) who tossed him into space, gets his ass kicked, and Midnighter saves him in return. They're the most romantic.
Next, now in control of the United States, the Authority face opposition from geezer superheroes from the 40s, somehow made young again. When Midnighter goes to assist Jack, the Door (teleportation thing) takes him somewhere that isn't Jack's location - supposedly the future, in the world the Authority built. He meets an older Apollo there, who tells him what happened, namely that Midnighter kills Jack, institutionalizes Angie, and abandons Apollo when he isn't eye candy anymore, all the while ruling a fascist utopia as a dictator. Old!Apollo tells Midnighter that he has to break up the team or else this future will come to pass. He returns to his time, and the next confrontation with the patriotic geezer heroes goes badly - effectively nuking Washington DC. Midnighter quits the team and leaves Jenny and Apollo. The team breaks up and they go about their lives.
Apollo moves to San Francisco with Jenny, spending three years raising her as a single parent, having negotiated with the current government to keep their home location a secret and provide certain services for Jenny, the most powerful superhuman in the galaxy. Jeroen, the Doctor, dies from a drug overdose and only Apollo and Jenny go to visit his grave at the one year anniversary of his death. Apollo asked the others to come, but no one would, and Midnighter is still MIA. He doesn't go looking for his husband, telling their daughter "He knows where we are. If he wanted to be here, he would be." They visit Jeroen's grave, and Jenny gets the idea to visit the Garden of Ancestral Memory (where all the Doctors' souls reside) to visit him, but finds out that he isn't there. Later on, at home, after a doctor's visit during which Jenny spotted someone spying on her invisibly, Apollo orders Chinese as Jenny goes on a crazy trip with her fourteen year old self to discover from the dead Jenny Sparks what might be going on.
I'll be taking Apollo from somewhere in the time between the doctor's visit and before he finds that eight-year-old Jenny Quantum has aged herself up to fourteen.
Roleplay Sample - Log:
Apollo has seen things no man will ever witness. He has seen horrors beyond belief in his time with the Authority, yes, but he's also seen beauty beyond compare. He's seen the strange and fantastic, things man can only dream of. Like Icarus, he has flown close to the sun, only Apollo lives to tell the tale, as he will again today. Drifting in the photosphere, he lets the light wash over him, to normal man a burning inferno, to him a pleasant, comforting warmth that invigorates him, fills him with strength. The quiet vastness of space is ideal for stealing an hour or two of solitary thought; no one can come and fetch him back, not unless he wants it.
Blue eyes slide shut; he would exhale quietly if he were breathing, but it's pretty silly to try and breathe in space, so he simply doesn't do it. He doesn't need to, he just bathes in the light and lets it fill him, warm him, embrace him. Apollo could likely accomplish the same quiet at home on the Carrier, on the couch in front of the television, playing a terrible show that Midnighter would no doubt tease him about, but drifting in the Bleed, away from Earth, he needs to leave the Carrier sometimes.
Someone always brings him back, though, helps him find the ground again so his wax wings don't melt.
"Door," he commands the vast expanse of stars, and the glowing orange portal opens. He slips inside, drops down lightly onto the floor of his and his husband's bedroom. Midnighter is there, pulling on his mask, and as the leather slips over his eyes, Apollo leans in to kiss him lingeringly. The high of dancing across the sun slowly fades. Dancing on the sun is a thrill, but Midnighter's lips take him even higher. Here is where he really wants to be.
When their lips part, Midnighter gives him a wry grin. "Get enough sun?"
"More than," he answers cheerily, returning a soft smile of his own.
"Good. We've got a situation brewing."
His smile broadens. "Well then, what are we waiting for? Let's go save the world."
Roleplay Sample - Journal:
[When the camera switches on, it's on accident, from the 'berry tumbling out of the person's jeans. It lands just so, at the right angle to get a good shot of the man in question, surrounded by the typical sterile white of a once-empty room. He's tall, really tall, and broad shouldered, though it's hard to see the extent of his muscle definition in the nice, 3/4 sleeve, v-necked black shirt he's wearing with a pair of slim-fitting jeans. He's quite handsomely built, with chiseled features currently set in an expression of confusion and shoulder-length, wavy white hair.
Handsome, yes, but you might not guess he's kind of a superhero just from looking at him right now. When he speaks, it's in a stern, fatherly voice, though there's an undercurrent of gentleness.]
Jenny? Jenny, this isn't funny. [He pauses, as if waiting for a response, and then his frown deepens. He rests his hands on his trim hips for a minute.] Jennifer Quantum, you undo whatever it is you just did, young lady-
[He cuts off when he sees the 'berry on the floor, and picks it up, not noticing the recording light.] The hell...? A cell phone? [Apollo shakes his head once and the video shifts as he heads out into the hallway, looking kind of irritated. In his hand, the 'berry gets a wonderful shot of blue eyes glowing orangeish, and then he beams of light shoot out from his eyes at the wall. Must be an outer wall, because all it leaves is a slightly smoking scorch mark.
Apollo just sort of stares for a moment, the glow in his eyes dying down.] ...Okay, maybe this is something else...
[Radiotelepathy]
Angie? This is Apollo. Got a situation, can you pinpoint my location? ...Angie?...
This game includes horrible mental and physical torture of your character. After reading the rules/faq for clarification, how do you expect your character to handle this and continue to function?
Oh god, is there anything I can do to Apollo in A_Fac that he won't go 'been there, done that' to because it happened in canon? Seriously, he is one tough motherfucker, he's been tortured, raped, he's been experimented on, he's killed people, he's seen the end of the world, helped kill God, been infected by a crazy zombie cannibal virus (well, a few of those aren't at his current canon point, but still)... And none of it has broken him. I think he'll manage Fac just fine. Plus he'll also have his husband, so that'll help.
Questions? Comments? Crazed and creative statements? Those go here.
Yes, I had one question! Canonically, without sunlight to charge his solar cells, Apollo becomes severely weakened, and eventually starts to wither and die. In World's End, when the planet was covered with so much smog that it didn't let any sunlight in, Apollo physically couldn't live on earth away from the sunlight or he got all "heroin chic" as Midnighter put it. As seen here.
SO. Could the "sunlight" in the Biodome be close enough to the real thing to charge his solar cells? Albeit maybe half as fast as real sunlight? As in like, it takes him three to four hours to fully recharge (as much as the collar will allow) instead of two, in the biodome only?