Name | Felix Edward Pernass
Alias | Nightingale
Age | 27
Gender | Male
Appearance | Notoriety |Nightingale watched by N.O.V.A. but yet to uncover his real identity. Pariah Underground completely aware of identity.
Danger Level/Variant Type | Level 1 Amplifier
Abilities | - Biological Manipulation - Felix can restore biotic organisms to their optimal health, curing damaged or withered organisms, wounds, broken bones, low vitality, and diseases/poisoning. Currently, Felix can do anything that normal healing and modern medical knowledge could achieve. His powers have no effect on dead tissues or mental states. He can only heal himself if he can concentrate well enough.
- Can heal external wounds, including fractured bones and deeper burns, disregarding of severity.
- Severed limbs can be reattached (just regrowing tissue connections)
- Minor damaged internal organs may be healed, but more severity may be beyond repair and may take more time to heal.
- Nerves may remain damaged.
- Possible future developments
- Lost limbs and internal organs are completely healed.
- Damaged nerves can be healed to a certain extent.
- Semi-Immortality by rejuvenating cells to keep them at their optimal prime.
- Youth Inducement by reversing the effects of aging.
- Genetic alterations and physical distortion and/or augmentations of biological functions.
- Manipulating in a negative fashion e.g. causing cells to augment to induce advanced or declined biological healing, induce diseases like cancer, induce appearance alteration, manipulate pheromones, or even increase physiological maturity.
[Gear]
Attire | Normally found in smart casual attire. As Nightingale, a wholly black outfit consisting of jeans, boots, t-shirt, hoody, jacket and baseball cap.
Armament/Equipment | Medical supplies, either bought himself or purloined from… somewhere.
[Temperament & Lifestyle]
Affiliation | None - current an occasional vigilante
Personality/Habits | Initially bookish and quiet growing up, Felix really game out of his shell at college and found his true character hard to conceal once more when he returned home. Now, whilst taking care not to draw attention to himself, he is mostly a normal outgoing guy in his twenties. A respected teacher, a trusted friend and dance floor loving gay.
However, loneliness is a dark shadow he can never truly shed. Sure he is loved by his students, colleagues, friends and lovers, but his past actions mean that he can never open himself up to fully love others, as he has not yet truly accepted himself. He daren’t even dream of finding anyone, let alone a group of people that he could be his true self with.
Occupation/Trade | High School Teacher
Skills/Talents | First Aid, Swimming, Baking, Research, Crosswords, Science
Family | Parents, Martyn and Claudia, and younger sister Holly, all living in his hometown of Gadsden, AL.
Background | Born into a middle-class family, to a technical engineer father and cardiac-physiology technician mother, Felix had a very standard ‘All American’ upbringing. He was brought up in a very conservative religious community and found himself starting to question certain beliefs and ethics as he got older but was never courageous to speak up against his entire family and peer group. However, in his teens, he discovered three things that made him not… fit in. Firstly, he worked very hard at school, losing himself in books. His growing knowledge of evolution, genetics and natural history led to increased conflict with his beliefs. Secondly, he discovered that he was far more interested in the guys on his swim team than the cheerleaders that his peers dated. Finally, after finding an injured bird on his way home from school one day, he manifested his ability to heal.
Teenage years can be tricky for anyone, but Felix became very withdrawn and introverted as a liberal, gay, atheist variant in a conservative, homophobic, religious and anti-variant community. His parents were accepting of his interest in science (as they were themselves given their professions) College would prove to be Felix’s release and he relished his newfound freedom, however, it would also prove to be his downfall. It only took one stray punch to catch him as he struggled to avoid the drunken fight in a crowded house party to reveal his powers. At his swim meet early the next morning his team-mates were amazed to see him with not only a lack of any black eye but also void of any bruise or cut from the glass side table that broke under him as he fell - healing all your small abrasions and bruises is not such an unnoticeable concept as his inebriated brain had concluded. Unfortunately for Felix, his family had come to support him at the meet and his sister had heard all the gossip.
Despite his pleading, he told his parents and at the end of the semester he was quickly whisked back to his hometown where he was surprised to find his community now accepting of variants when they found one amongst their own. However, Felix quickly found himself a catalyst for increased religious fervour - his healing abilities a sign of God’s blessing upon their way of life. Soon believers were travelling from great distances to be healed by Felix’s touch, but he never strayed further from correcting minor ailments, removing blemishes or easing chronic pain (even though from his experimentation on roadkill and his own self-harm that he was capable of much much more). Thus, he avoided detection from NOVA as he was reported as just another con artist, a puppet used to make money for a struggling church. But his begrudging existence as both a high school teacher and local celebrity could never have lasted.
He still remembers the night he left his family home for good in stark clinical black and white imagery. He’d arranged to meet his ‘friend’ Matt in their usual spot. The jasmine in full bloom and a bright full moon were set to make it romantic. The trampled undergrowth. Pained gasps for breath. The metallic taste of blood. The horrific feeling of soft broken flesh that should be taught muscle and strong bone. The upwelling of power building inside him as he braced himself to rebuild his lover’s broken body. The pleading look from Matt’s swollen, bloodshot eyes as they opened to warn him. The blinding pain from the back of his head as he collapsed into the long grass.
Their relationship had been found out by his sister and her friend, who’s brother, a local brute and good-for-nothing hacker, led a small band of the congregation to kidnap Matt and set the trap. Threatened into secrecy and forbidden from contacting his friend, Felix could only watch through a pane of glass as Matt’s parents held their dying son as the ECG flat-lined for the final time. The horrific irony of him feeling powerless was not lost upon him, however.
That night he left, vowed never to use his powers again and fled to New Haven, renting a small apartment in te the Warehouse District. It took only a year for Felix to break his vow when nursing a stray cat back to health and he soon found himself wrestling with his conscience once again. He has taught in The Shanty and is all too aware of the troubles his students and their families face with the healthcare system, poor lifestyles, addiction and crime. It was the death of a member of his form that birthed Nightingale. He got a new job more local to him and (always one for history and birds), Felix adopted the monicker as his vigilante persona and visits different areas of New Haven sporadically to heal those in need. After two years of this, he has learned to master his powers even further but despite his services remaining a well-kept secret by the desperate communities he helps, they have not gone unnoticed by either NOVA or the Pariah Underground (of which he has no knowledge).
