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[img]https://i.ibb.co/Jwk0zvfN/Niko.jpg[/img]
[b]Nikos “Niko” Karalis | 25 | Male | Ares Successor[/b]
[b]Sexuality:[/b] Bisexual
[b]Power:[/b] Super Strength
[b]Weapon:[/b] Spear
[b]Appearance:[/b] Niko is broad-shouldered and visibly athletic, with the look of someone who has spent more time in gyms, back alleys, and late-night shifts than anywhere polished or comfortable. He has dark hair usually worn messy or cropped short, bruised knuckles more often than not, and an intensity in his eyes that makes him look angrier than he usually means to. His style is practical: hoodies, boots, worn jackets, gym clothes, and anything he can move in.

His spear appears as an ancient bronze weapon with a dark iron core, the haft wrapped in red-brown leather. It is not elegant or ornamental. It looks old, brutal, and purposeful, like something made to draw a line in the dirt and dare the world to cross it.

[b]Personality:[/b]
Niko is young, hot-blooded, and too quick to take a threat personally, especially when someone vulnerable is involved. He has a temper and a dangerous instinct to answer fear with violence, but beneath that anger is a genuinely good heart. He is protective to the point of recklessness, the sort of person who steps between a stranger and danger before he has had time to think about whether he can win.

He does not see himself as heroic. If anything, he is afraid that the worst parts of him are the truest. Being chosen by Ares has only made that fear worse. Niko wants to protect people, but he also knows there is a part of him that enjoys the moment when he finally stops holding back. His struggle is not learning how to fight. It is learning when to stop.

[b]Short Bio:[/b]
Niko grew up in a working-class home where being strong was useful long before it was admirable. He was the kid who got into fights for other people, the teenager teachers called “trouble” even when he was defending someone else, and the young man who learned to take a punch before he learned how to explain himself. As an adult, he works around a local boxing gym and takes security jobs when money is tight, quietly looking out for younger kids and vulnerable people who remind him too much of himself.

He has always had a particular hatred for men who use fear, size, or power to corner women. It is not a polished belief or something he talks about with noble words. It is simpler and angrier than that. He has seen people look away too many times, heard too many excuses, watched too many threats get dismissed until it was too late. Niko does not look away. Sometimes that has made him a problem. Sometimes it has made him exactly the problem someone else needed.

His Awakening came after closing time at the gym, when he heard a woman screaming in the alley behind the building. At first he thought it was an ordinary assault and the kind of thing that made his blood turn hot before his thoughts could catch up. Then he saw what was really there.

Harpies.

They clung to the fire escape, the walls, the roof above, all talons and ragged wings and shrieking laughter. One had already dragged the woman to the ground, while the others circled and mocked her panic in voices almost human enough to be worse. Niko did not understand what he was seeing. He only understood that she was terrified, hurt, and alone.

So he ran in.

He fought like an idiot, because that was all he had. Fists, elbows, broken bottles, anything he could grab. He managed to tear one harpy off her, but another opened his side with its claws and a third slammed him hard enough into the wall that something in his ribs gave way. He should have stayed down.

He did not.

When the woman tried to crawl away and one of the harpies dropped toward her, Niko got between them again. Bloody, shaking, barely able to breathe, he still raised his fists.

That was when everything went black.

In the void, a voice like bronze, blood, and thunder spoke to him. It did not praise conquest. It did not ask for cruelty. It told him that war was not always glory, and rage was not always shame. Sometimes war was the hand that closed around a spear because someone had to stand between the predator and the prey.

When Niko woke, no time seemed to have passed. He was back on his feet in the alley, bleeding and shaking, but no longer empty-handed. A spear of ancient bronze and dark iron rested in his grip, and the harpies’ laughter died in their throats.

(If I could [@MintRolls] I'd love to maybe have this as another power, only if you like it:

[b]Protector’s Wrath:[/b] Niko’s strength increases when defending someone who is weaker, wounded, restrained, terrified, or outnumbered.)
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