IndividualCharacter's full name: Hezekiah “Zek” Covington
Alias/ Nickname/ Code name: Zek (it's like Zack but with an "eh"), Pitcher and, for some reason, Trainer
Gender: Male
Age: 25
Date of Birth: February 17, 1995
Birthplace/ Home/ Place of origin: Columbus, Ohio
Nationality: American
Ethnicity/ Cultural Heritage: American Mutt (a little bit of everything)
AppearanceHair color and style: Brown, usually heavily styled with plenty of swoosh
Skin Tone: Pasty white.
Eye Color: Dreamy brown, when they're not glowing with various colors.
Height: 5’7
Build: Lean and wiry.
Visible mutation: Zek has a dark blue tongue. He also has some extra bones in his neck, letting him turn it nearly 180 degrees. As of 7/13/21, he's grown a transparent, nictitating membrane over his eyes, a Cheshire smile that can stretch all the way back to his jawbone, and any part of his eyes can glow red, blue, white, or gold as he desires.
Scars/ Tattoos/ Piercings: He has a diamond stud in each ear. He also has a scar on his left calf from a dog attack when he was a kid. Now he proactively catches and releases big dogs that approach him.
Other features: He gets freckles easily in the summer. People tend to think he looks younger than he is.
Everyday clothing style: A t-shirt, gently ripped jeans, fingerless gloves, and Vans. Casual chic.
Uniform: His work uniform is a no-nonsense suit.
Sleepwear: Underwear, if that.
Miscellaneous clothing: He loves wearing a trenchcoat, especially when hunting a bounty or otherwise trying to look and feel all menacing. Also, he gets cold easy.
CharacterPersonality: Zek doesn’t really go by the rules. When he does, it’s usually in an ironic or mocking way, or just because the rules just happen to align with his interests. He likes toying with people and is a native speaker of Sarcasm and Troll. He tends to focus on the moment and his own self interests. He loves needling people, provoking them, and starting trouble. Bonus points if it can’t be tracked back to him.
He’s almost always smiling (except when working). There’s the easy smile of enjoying some good fun, the casual smile he gives to acquaintances, the fake smile he gives annoying people, and sickly-sweet predatorial smile he gives people who’ve just crossed a line. Otherwise his main expressions are boredom or glaring.
Zek gets bored easily and likes to amuse himself. Usually this emerges in the form of practical jokes, pranks, and trolling folks. Sometimes it manifests as pettiness and instigation. He likes seeing people get exactly what he thinks they deserve, which is one reason he loves being a bouncer: he gets to make the rules and throw out anyone he wants (within reason. Stupid reason).
Zek doesn’t like people getting too chummy with him and employs a number of defenses to keep people at bay, including hurtful insults, ghosting them, deflecting the conversation, practicing the Irish goodbye, or twisting the topics back around to them. He also really likes messing with people, which is why he’s never owned a TV: the real drama is all around.
Hobbies/ Interests: Job or part time job and description: Zek is a bouncer for an upscale nightclub and sometimes dabbles in private security, bounty hunting, and Robin Hood adventures.
Fears/ phobias/ concerns:Special talents: Zek is pretty good at reading people. He’s good enough at baseball to warrant university scholarships and excels at pitching fast and true. He’s developed a fantastic glare that just promises fast and intense violence. He likes to whip it out for intimidation and carefully crafts a murderous aura, to make up for being so short and not physically threatening. He’s great with his hands and has picked up a lot of handyman and sleight of hand tricks.
MoralityGood/ bad/ neutral/ other: Chaotic good. He prefers to do the right thing, even if he’s the only one who thinks it’s the right thing. But most of his jobs revolve around upholding some kind of order so he mostly sticks to that.
MutationsPokeballs
Mutation description: Zek creates hammerspace orbs. These are baseball-sized orbs of glowing golden energy manifested in his hands that, when they make contact with something, instantly pull the person or thing into a pocket dimension, with the orb immediately vanishing in a brief flash of light. The orbs can be thrown with the same physical properties as a baseball (including how far and hard they can be thrown) and if Zek makes the orbs inert (so they don’t “capture” anything) then they’ll hit as hard as a thrown baseball. Orbs vanish after 5 seconds, if Zek loses consciousness, or if he dismisses them.
As soon as he’s captured something in an orb, it vanishes, but can be manifested at any point as a pulsing red “full” orb. Full orbs have the same properties of inert orbs when thrown. Zek can trigger a release anytime after manifesting a full orb. The released person appears right where the orb is, so he often throws it a couple feet away before releasing someone.
Strengths:Catch ‘Em All - Zek can capture something up to the size of an elephant (including an elephant) and anything inside of it (like a minivan Girl Scout cookies). If thrown at a person, their clothes and things they’re holding are taken as well, basically because Zek unconsciously thinks of them as connected. He can also choose to not capture specific things (like someone’s gun) in order to prevent them from having it when he releases them.
Timeless - Nothing in an orb is affected by time. A wounded person won’t bleed out, nobody will starve, nothing will die or go bad. Yes, nothing will age either, but only for up to a day.
Preservation - When something is captured, it’s pulled into a pocket dimension where time does not pass. Inertia and momentum are preserved as well, so when the person or thing is released, it’s in the same action it was when captured. A person completes their word, their footstep, a thrown chair continues flying, etc. To that person or thing, they’re immediately somewhere else. And they may be facing a different direction. Like up. It’s up to Zek.
Vague Dimension Awareness - Zek knows what’s in his hammerspace dimensions. It’s an extra sense. He doesn’t learn anything about what he has captive, though. It’s a storage place, not an MRI machine. So he can tell you he has an angry drunk in there, but can’t tell how much he weighs, exactly how tall he is, how many layers of clothing he’s wearing, etc. If he didn’t know that stuff going in, he won’t know it while it’s in. But he still knows what’s in what hammerspace pocket and never confuses what’s in which one.
Weaknesses and Limitations:Only Six Spots - He can have a maximum of 6 “full” orbs, and when he reaches that limit, he can’t capture anything else or even manifest an inert orb.
Size Matters - Capturing anything more massive than a large human starts to mess him up and the symptoms are remarkably similar to those of a hangover, including how it scales and how long it takes to recover. For example, capturing an empty car will probably make him dizzy and nauseous for about ten minutes, but an elephant could make him fall down shaking and super sensitive to light and sound for the next couple of hours. There’s a reason he’s only captured an elephant once. Also, he can’t seem to capture anything smaller than an orb. Everything he tries, he ends up hitting it with an inert orb.
Eternity For A Day - Zek can only keep something captured for a 24 hours period. After the 20-21 hour mark he starts gaining hangover symptoms and at 24-25 hours, he’ll vomit and vomit up any full orb that has reached that point, where they’ll immediately release their captive. He usually passes out at this point.
Selfless - Zek can’t capture himself or take advantage of the stasis effect of the pocket dimensions.
People Are Tricky - If two people are holding hands, he’ll only be able to capture the person he hits with his orb. If someone is riding in a car, he’ll capture the car but the person will be left behind, just as capturing the person in the car will leave the car behind. Best Zek can guess is that he fundamentally doesn’t consider people to be part of other people or furniture, buildings, vehicles, etc. This applies to animals, too, so he can’t capture multiple people or animals with one orb.
Power Growth, approved 7/13/21ZekworldGrowth description: Zekworld is a permanent hammerspace dimension in Limbo, separate from the six slots Zek uses for his typical pokeballs. It is a dimension he is able to enter himself, leaving behind Dullworld (Zek’s new term for the Material Plane) or whichever dimension he happens to be in via a portal. Zekworld is the size of and has the appearance of Yankee Stadium and can be manipulated and changed in various ways.
Strengths:A Whole World In My Hands - Zek has learned how to create a white ball of light, that when thrown or mentally activated, can become a floating portal of solid white light edged in cyan energy. The portal leads to Zekworld and the exit portal is white and edged in orange energy. The portal can be as small as a baseball or up to ten feet in diameter, although its size can be scaled between the two extremes as long as its center point stays the same. The portal is one sided, meaning it doesn’t exist at all from behind and can’t be seen. Zek also has full control over what enters (or leaves) his portal and can whitelist or blacklist anything he wants. Anything ineligible or just too big will pass through the portal’s space and won’t travel through it. He can also make the white part of the portal transparent, allowing people to see into or out of Zekworld.
My World, My Rules - Zek has extensive control over the environment of Zekworld. Stealing ideas from his Danger Room visit, Zek can create solid light holograms and has full control over light, darkness, and sound within Zekworld, creating, warping, or nullifying any of the three as desired, and is even able to provide electricity by way of conversion from raw dimensional energy surrounding Zekworld. He has total control over Zekworld’s appearance too, but tends to keep it looking like Yankee Stadium. Zek can also increase or decrease the temperature, gravity, and friction of the world to whatever he can imagine. He can also shut down any other dimensional tamperings in Zekworld (such as teleporters, dimensionwalkers, mystics drawing magic from the magical plane, or other forms of connecting to other dimensions).
Timey Wimey - Zek has some control over time inside Zekworld. Time does not pass while Zek is not in Zekworld and the portal is closed. If he opens the portal, time in Zekworld immediately resumes and is in sync with the dimension Zek opened the portal to. If Zek enters Zekworld and closes the portal behind him, he can choose to slow time to any speed, even to the point of stopping time. His mind is never impacted by the speed of time flowing around him in Zekworld, even if his body is, preventing accidental eternal stasis.
Spacey Wacey - Zekworld has no inherent relationship with Dullworld, or any other dimension. It exists in Limbo but isn’t parallel to any other world. As long as Zek himself isn’t inside Zekworld, this means he can make portals appear with no physical correlation between Zekworld and whatever dimension he’s in. Sending someone through a portal in front of him can make them come out falling from the ceiling-sky of Zekworld, only for Zek to make a portal dozens of feet away in Dullworld but only two feet below the person in Zekworld, causing them to abruptly fall upward back in Dullworld. You don’t need a roller coaster with Zek around.
All-Seeing Eye - Zek has full spatial knowledge of Zekworld, an innate awareness of all activity inside it, and an itemized catalogue of everything he’s brought in. No matter where you go in Zekworld, no matter what you do, no matter what mutant powers of stealth you have, Zek can know where you are and what you’re doing. You can’t sneak up on him in his demesne. Zek maintains this knowledge whether he’s in Zekworld or not.
Weaknesses:Dimensionally Locked - The portal is completely immobile. While its size can be changed, it’s position cannot be and to make the portal move, Zek has to close it and reopen it somewhere else. There can only be one portal open at a time.
A Flawed God - Any hologram Zek makes is based on his imagination and attention to detail. As a result, he’s not good with creating super realistic people (other than himself). He can’t control the air or make actual weather phenomena (although he can make solid light raindrops or sound like it’s thundering). So no lightning bolts of his displeasure, although you can charge your phone at a wall outlet. Zekworld is set up for running water, albeit more holographic water. It’s good for flushing and washing, but not so good for hydration. Likewise, he can’t make real food, to his vast and unending disappointment, and nothing he creates in Zekworld can leave Zekworld. He also cannot simply expel a person from Zekworld, so he has to be careful who he allows in there in the first place.
Not So Above It All - Manipulating fundamental forces of temperature, gravity, friction, and time apply to everything at once in Zekworld (like adjusting a thermostat) and cannot be selectively applied to one thing or another. Zek can only alter these characteristics of Zekworld when he’s in Zekworld and the portal is shut. He’s subject to whatever effects he creates there as well. Time manipulations affect his body just like any other, although his mind is unaffected, allowing him to stop the effect at any point he chooses. Changes made to these forces revert to normal conditions as soon as Zek leaves Zekworld or he loses consciousness. He can still freely create or delete light, sound, and holograms inside Zekworld as desired, whether he’s in there or not, with no significant side effects except getting heavily distracted.
No Shortcuts For Me - The only time Zekworld is parallel to any other dimension is when Zek himself crosses over from it to Zekworld, in which case the home plate of Zekworld suddenly becomes metaphysically anchored to the point in Dullworld (or other dimension) where he opened the portal and left that world behind. Once in Zekworld, he can no longer move the dimension around. Also, when he opens a portal from Zekworld to Dullworld, the exit portal (edged in orange energy) automatically appears in the corresponding location in Dullworld. So opening a portal forty feet to the left of home plate in Zekworld will make the other end of the portal appear forty feet to the left of where he’d created the portal he used to enter Zekworld (although the orientation doesn't need to be the same). This means to travel any distance in Dullworld, he has to travel a corresponding distance in Zekworld, unlike the tricks he can pull for others. So no copycat teleporting for Zek.
Tunnel Vision - Zek has no awareness of Dullworld (or whatever dimension he’d been in when he left it to go to Zekworld) so opening portals while in Zekworld is mostly a guessing game. Hopefully he doesn’t open a portal right in front of a moving car or something. If it’s been more than a few seconds, he’ll need to open a small portal and peek through it to scope out what’s on the other side to ensure it’s still safe to leave through a portal there.
Physical AbilitiesGeneral Physical Capabilities: Zek is in pretty good shape since he regularly engages in outdoor pursuits and pick-up sports. He maintains his high school baseball athleticism.
Fighting Style: Zek doesn’t sully himself with fisticuffs. He either tries to convince people to fight each other while he just sits back and enjoys, or he’ll use his powers to catch people and then promptly release them into each other, doors, chairs, several feet off the ground, or a baseball throw down the street.
Fighting Style Pros/Cons: His method of non-fighting doesn’t do a lot of harm, but it does keep people away from him. Unfortunately, it tends to infuriate them even more and since he can only focus on one or two folks at a time, he can get overwhelmed by numbers. He also kinda has a glass jaw, since he hasn’t been in a real fight since he was a kind.
History Of Your CharacterZek’s parents were workaholics who had a tendency to let Zek and his older brother and sister run loose. They could generally do what they want, but if they messed up, the consequences would be swift and fierce. Their parents didn’t have time for short leashes and instead just gave their kids plenty of rope with which they could potentially hang themselves.
Zek never spent a lot of time actually at home, since his parents weren’t there much either and his siblings were significantly older than him and didn’t want to hang with their kid brother. He hung out with his friend down the street until the kid moved away in middle school. He spent time with and sorta had a mentor in the old man across the street, who was a combat veteran and a thousand stories about anything you could think of. The rest of the time he roamed the streets, seeing what he could get into or get by with.
This got him in trouble one day. Well, that and his smart mouth. It was after school one day and his day had been horrible. He was pretty sure he’d failed an exam, his best friend was completely ignoring him since he started dating a girl, he’d been getting a headache all day and he just felt weird. So when a neighborhood jerk, clearly bored and wantonly malicious, started trailing him home and spent most of the trip making fun of everything about him - both real and made up - and flinging small pebbles and pieces of trash at him, Zek, after repeatedly telling the guy off (which honestly just made things worse), snapped.
He’d stopped, spun, and swung at the guy who was just beyond arm’s reach. And a golden orb flew the extra few inches and in a brief flash of light, the guy vanished.
Zek’s day spiraled from there. He’d just killed a guy. He’d known he was a mutant (how else could he do that neck thing and have a blue tongue from birth?) but now he was a killer.
He didn’t tell anyone. He spent that evening and night in torment. He only went to school the next day out of an attempt to build an alibi. It’d be suspicious if he vanished the same day that the jerk did, right? But he started feeling worse and worse, especially near the end of the day. By the time he was walking home, he had to stumble behind some bushes and spew his cookies.
And that’s when a glowing red orb appeared, spat from his mouth and flying towards the ground. And the jerk was suddenly there in a flash of light, his eyes still wide from leaping back to avoid Zek’s swing from the day before.
The jerk never bothered Zek again and they mutually avoided each other. The jerk found out he’d lost a day without knowing it and he knew Zek had something to do with it, but honestly it terrified him. He thought Zek had time powers and when he saw Zek again after being released, the kid was a hot mess, like the worst hungover drunk you’ve ever met.
Zek’s horror at thinking he’d killed someone soon passed and he spent the next few years transforming himself. He practiced and explored his powers, but also started to craft a persona that fit the fear that the jerk had felt towards him, but he kept this persona to himself, revealing it only when necessary. He instead showed everyone a casual, chill, fun-loving person that got along with everyone and most liked. The kind of guy you could never imagine terrorizing the major bully of the school over a several week period whenever there were no witnesses around and no proof.
Zek dabbled in a lot of things during high school. He made himself popular with many different groups of people and always had a lot of invitations to things (which he often didn’t attend), but still made sure nobody got too close or expected too much from him. He was on the debate team and was known for ripping his opponents to pieces. He played baseball and was good enough to get a few baseball scholarships, which he never used.
He chose not to go to college and instead, has bounced around all over the place, pursuing a lot of different jobs. He’s been a mechanic at a small town garage, worked maintenance at a baseball stadium, joined a small group of entertainers as a magician, bartended, waitered, a three-day stint as a telemarketer for a major phone service provider, is banned from Nebraska for what’s technically home invasion, and has had a variety of other short and long term gigs. He’s trying to find himself.
Zek’s been in NYC for about two years now and has been an officially licensed bounty hunter for most of it, although he hasn’t done much with that yet. He just recently picked up the bouncer gig, as unlikely as it would normally be for someone of his general demeanor and physique.
And Hezekiah Covington has never seen, read, or played Pokemon.
RoleplayWhat’s your OOC alias?: Zek (at least it is moving forward, I’ve used Liz until this point)
Where did you learn about this site?: I used to play, way back in the day
Do you have any other characters on MRO, if so who: The marvelous (and inactive) Liz Sundance
Sample RP:Zek pulled the door open and stepped aside to let the lady in pink walk into the grocery store. “Ma’am,” he said, affecting a Southern drawl he didn’t actually possess.
“Thank you,” she said mechanically, barely even noticing he was there. Zek just kept a pleasant smile plastered on his face - it even looked sincere! But he was used to this - people were just too busy most of the time to actually think about what they were saying and doing to give a genuine “thanks”. But at least the lady said something and didn’t just ignore him completely, like the other seven ladies that morning had.
Zek was performing a social experiment, one he was making up as he went along. What did it take to elicit a genuine “thank you” from someone? He lifted his shoulders in a brief shrug as the lady marched by him into the store. “You’re welcome,” he said, but the lady already seemed to think her part of the social engagement was over. He let go of the door and stepped out of the doorway.
Zek slouched against the brick edge of the storefront, one foot kicked up behind him to rest flatly against the same surface his shoulders were touching. For once, he wasn’t wearing a jacket and was thoroughly enjoying the sunshine. He lifted his slushie and started sucking the sweet beverage-food-thing through the customarily widened straw. It was like twice as much as he was used to paying, but it was a hot and sunny day and the advertisement on the glass of the small little grocery store had caught his whimsy. Besides, he didn’t work that evening so he could afford to just do nothing.
In contrast to the hustle of the surprisingly uncrowded sidewalk he was on, Zek slowly sipped on his slushie, enjoying the sweetness of blue raspberry as he swished it around in his mouth. He closed his eyes momentarily as he raptured in the simple comfort of a cold treat against the heat on a day when he didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything. Why, if he could use a bit of imagination, he could almost pretend he was back home on his neighbor’s porch, sitting on the--
“Help! He’s got my purse! Somebody stop him!”
Zek cracked open an eye and then rolled both his eyes. It was the lady in pink. Clearly, her purse has just been swiped. Following her frantically pointing finger, Zek saw a youngish, possibly male figure running down the sidewalk about fifteen feet away and increasing. He snapped his eyes to the lady again and stopped for a moment.
Then he sighed.
Zek straightened up and as a golden orb appeared before vanishing with his slushie, he stepped forward until he was within arm’s reach of the lady, who was not blocking pretty much the whole sidewalk with her franticness. Of course, Zek couldn’t really blame her, especially since she’d been screaming all of...three seconds? But he still wanted to blame her.
“I got this,” he said and turned his head to evaluate the situation. About forty feet away, running in a straight line, few people around to get in the way. Eh, pretty textbook. And cliche. But why did he care? It was still something to do.
Another orb formed in his right hand and before the lady’s eyes could fully widen, Zek measured the distance, aimed, drew back his hand and then whipped the orb forward like a perfect strike out. The orb zipped through the air right after the purse snatcher and a second later struck him.
Both vanished in a small flash.
The lady stopped screaming. The few pedestrians that had had the time or care to pay attention to what was happening and had just started reacting to the theft now froze.
Then the lady began to scream again, but this time in bloodcurdling fear.
Ah. Right. She thinks I just vaporized the guy. Okay, gotta fix this. Zek pivoted around and put a finger to his mouth in concentration. “Shush for a moment,” he said firmly to the lady.
She didn’t. “You, you just ki--you just killed him! I just wanted him stopped, not murdered!” she wailed. She was suddenly clutching a handkerchief to her chest. Zek spared only a blink to wonder if she had pocket dimensions too, since her purse was gone but a hanky was there. He blinked again and this time his whole demeanor changed.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said, sliding back into a stereotypical Southern drawl again. “Don’t you worry none, he’s not dead or nothin’, I just got him somewhere safe. Now, you just calm yourself down for a second and I’ll bring him right back Gotta get your purse from him after all, isn’t that right?” Then, before she could say anything else, he held a hand up to her and turned to face the wall he had just been leaning against. “This’ll do,” he said.
Zek backed up a couple of steps and then held up his other hand. A pulsing red orb appear and then he chucked it underhanded about a foot or so before triggering the release.
And the thief appeared, running full speed with purse in hand and covered the three feet to the brick wall in no time flat. Coincidentally, the thief then covered the wall and for just a second was completely flat.
Then came the rebound and the UUMPH of all the wind being knocked out of them before the thief fell backwards on the sidewalk and collapsed in a heap.
Zek waited a few seconds and in that time silence fell. Relative silence, that is. It was still New York. But the immediate people were quiet, clearly still trying to process things. Zek brought his slushie back from another red orb. And after a few more seconds of observation to make sure the thief wasn’t about to jump up again, Zek casually stepped forward and picked the purse from the ground.
“I believe this is yours, ma’am,” he said as he pushed the purse toward the woman. She immediately accepted it but now her mouth was just working like a fish outta water. Again, Zek had no cause to blame her. He had to agree, he was pretty impressive. So he smiled broadly and without waiting for anything else, turned and began strolling away, sipping at his slushie.
Then the woman found her voice. “Th-thank you!” she yelled after him, although she still sounded rather confused and possibly discombobulated.
Zek paused and took his mouth off the straw. He smelled victory. Slowly, like an owl, he turned to look over his shoulder. And then kept turning his head further, until it was squarely facing behind him and looking the lady straight in the eyes. “You’re mighty welcome,” he drawled and winked. Then he twisted his head back, took another sip, and proceeded to stroll off down the street.
Experiment concluded.
