Darrius Manson, The Man-Lizard

Real Name: Darrius Manson
Hero Name: The Man-Lizard
Title: N/A
Alignment: Heroes
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Race: Mutated Human
Hair: N/A
Eyes: Yellow, slit
Height: 12 feet tall
Weight: 1000 pounds
Blood type: B positive







Being a former professional wrestler, Darrius is a real crowd-pleaser, throwing cocky insults and making one-liners, poking jokes at his opponents and so-forth. He believes, as a hero, that there should be some pizzaz when fighting the bad-guys, just to give the people that much more confidence that everything is going to be okay. At heart, Darius is a good person, despite his fearsome appearance, being more than willing to put his life on the line to save someone who might otherwise suffer a gruesome fate! He has a thick skin, appropriately, when it comes to insults, instead throwing them back on someone either to hurt them first... or to crack wise and make someone laugh.

He's a lizard with a sense of humor... but that doesn't mean he doesn't have limits.

Darrius resents the lucid who somehow come to the conclusion that it's okay to subjugate and control others. The crazies, he can let slide a little, given they don't know right from wrong. It's those smarties in their ivory-towers, sending their mobsters out to stomp on the little-guy that gets his cold blood boiling! Darrius also has an animalistic side that gnaws at the back of his mind, only growing more prominent as he gets hungry... or angry. He becomes less reasonable, more feral, willing to do things he wouldn't otherwise do! While the motivation to do good is still there, its somewhat dulled by his animalistic senses persuading him to take the quicker and easier path! Until now he'd been able to pull himself back from the brink before he had done anything stupid!...

...But who knows how long that lasts?

Deep in his heart, a great sadness resides within Darrius. After his daughter's death, a wound bored deep into his heart, something that both further motivates his heroic-side... while stabbing at him from the inside. He blames himself for his daughter's death, doubly-so since he wasn't there to do anything and, as a result, Darrius has a great soft spot for children and, to a lesser degree, their parents.



Darrius was once a GREAT professional wrestler known as "The Hammer," an ol' fighter from another time that was nearing his retirement! While he had many opportunities to quit before hand, to end his career rich and famous but his daughter, the only person in the world he truly had, was sick with a terminal illness. If he stepped out of the game now, the money wouldn't come soon enough or in big enough figures to pay for his daughter's treatment and so... he kept fighting. It wasn't as if he disliked his work. If anything, he very much enjoyed it! Making the crowd cheer, entertaining them, and it kept him fitter than a fiddle! There were a lot of things to enjoy about his job!

...One day, after a particularly hard match, Darrius got home, only to find his daughter... was not there. Alarmed, he searched everywhere for her and it was only at the peak of his anxiety that he received a call from the local hospital! His little girl had been hospitalized and was in critical condition! Without a care from himself, Darrius rushed to the hospital... and arrived too late. His daughter had died mere moments before he had arrived. The doctor said something about a radical flareup in her condition, something else about his apologies but Darrius heard nothing of it. His world had shattered, his little girl was gone... and his life was over.

It didn't take long for everything else to come crumbling down after that. His career tanked after he stopped putting his heart in it. The money stopped coming so his home was soon repossessed. For Darrius, it was like the world had become a nightmare, real enough to burn him with every next thing he lost... but not real enough for him to do anything about it. One day, Darrius discovered, while absently flipping through a paper, an add for potential experiment-subjects, offering big money for participating... though with a high-chance of mortality. Seeing that add gave Darrius his first smile in the years after his daughter's death. It was like life was telling him he had suffered enough.

When he arrived at the lab, he was given several injections and told to stand in a glass chamber in the middle of the room. He had learned that the men had been attempting to bond key aspects of the Komodo Dragon to human DNA, specifically their healing-factor and venomous bite to human subjects in an effort to improve them! All this mattered not, the only thing on his mind being that 80% mortality rate...  and that 20% "Failure" rate, whatever that was. An 80% chance of seeing his daughter again... Heh. He'd take those odds.

...And somehow, even with those odds, fate just wouldn't let him win.

Darrius awoke after the experiment... a monster. When his now-yellow, reptilian eyes opened, he saw NOT his reflection in the glass of the chamber, but a reptilian FREAK! He yelped, but his voice was not his own, but a throaty, growl, his teeth replaced with dagger-like protrusions, making it hard to talk, his body... so heavy as if it had been filled with concrete! He looked down and saw... scaly claw-like hands, nails elongated into blackened hooked talons, his skin like thick, scaled leather...

"Another failure." Darrius heard over his shock. "...But this one appears... Lucid. Let us try communicating with it."

...It was a long handful of weeks since his awakening, Darrius having been moved to a cell in the lab. He... He still felt like himself in his head but... there was this feeling behind it, a mindless drive that almost whispered in his ear. When he considered the bars of his cell, it got louder, almost forming the words to COMMAND HIM to free himself! Whenever he saw the scientists... he felt... rage. ANGER for what they had done to him, ANGER for the fact they couldn't KILL him with an 80% mortality rate... and ANGER for trapping him in this box! ...But even with this feral rage building up inside, Darrius remained quiet... compliant... He didn't know why. All he would have to do is lunge for one of the lab-coats when they passed by and he'd be with his daughter again. They would kill him and he'd be free of this... mutant body.

...But he just couldn't bring himself to do it. These guys... looked just as old as him. Probably dads. Probably had kids... a daughter. If he screwed up, actually hurt them...

No.

No body's losing their family. Not on his watch. He'd wait... and he'd figure this body out... And then...

...and then, they'd let him go!

At least a month into testing and Darrius had gotten used to his new body. Yes, it was bulky but it had its advantages! What's more, the scientists, seeing he had remained consistently stable throughout his testing and training processes, had been let go into the world! Granted, they promised to watch him from now on but... he was... free...?

...But what to do now? He couldn't go back to his own life, that's for damn sure. His mind, instinctively flashed back to his daughter, how she always looked up to him, smiled like sunshine despite how much pain she was in...

...Damn it, he couldn't just... let himself fall apart again... He needed to do something BE somebody... It was then, he saw a bank-robbery in progress across the street... And Darrius knew what to do.



Super Strength: Darrius, being a massive 12-foot tall monitor-lizard, has HUGE strength and power! He can lift MASSIVE boulders and smash through stone and even METAL with relative ease! His bites are even capable of crushing granite to dust!

Super Durability: Darrius, thanks to his enlarged muscle-mass and scaly hide, is INCREDIBLY durable. He can shrug off small-arms fire with ease, take being thrown through a building pretty easily and even take a point-blank rocket-blast to the face with only minimal damage!

Super Sprint: While on two legs, Darrius isn't much faster than he was when he was a normal man. But, when he drops down on all fours, Darrius can SPRINT towards a target at 50 miles an hour in short bursts!

Healing Factor: Darrius has a slow, but effective healing factor, able to heal gashes and cuts across his hide quickly. Deeper wounds, though, require exponentially more time to heal.

Super Senses: Darrius' sense of smell is so acute, it can detect a specific target amongst a crowd in a junkyard... or so he claims. His sense of hearing and sight are also enhanced beyond human abilities, able to hear through sound-proof walls by detecting the most minor of vibrations as well as see in infrared should darkness take over an area.

Spines/claws: Darrius's body is covered in elongated spines and spikes along his back which makes attacking from the rear a dangerous proposition, able to pierce the strongest steel-alloys! His claws, while duller, are able to dig into and shred granite with ease, curved inwards like shovels that make tunneling through tough material a cinch.

Venomous bite: Darrius possesses venom-glands at the roof of his mouth which possesses a poison so toxic, it can prevent clotting in the blood of those it gets into and cause accelerated exsanguination as it liquifies veins and arteries. This venom can be used or turned off at will.




Venom: Despite his ability to produce venom, Darrius isn't immune to it himself. If something of comparable potency to his own venom hits him, Darrius is going to suffer the full effects... if a bit delayed, given his massive physique.

Extreme temperatures: Hot and cold, like with most reptiles, effects Darrius radically! Extreme cold slowly drains Darrius slowly, robbing him of his energy and forcing him to remain stagnate and, if growing cold enough, putting him into a coma until the temperature is increased! Extreme heat, meanwhile excites him, causing him to move faster and lose control of himself before his energy radically drains and causes a massive crash in his system, making him pass out until the temperature is decreased.

Piercing-Weapons: Pikes, sniper-bullets, things that can pierce Darrius' hide and deal HEAVY damage to him, enough, potentially, to overwhelm his healing factor!

Acid: Darrius has no answer for acid and his scales provide no defense against it! A splash is guaranteed to do MASSIVE if not PERMANENT DAMAGE

Intense stimuli: With great senses comes great exploitation of them. MASSIVE explosions, BRIGHT lights and so on can BLIND or DEAFEN Darrius harshly if they're loud/bright enough! While his healing factor can repair the damage, it will take a bit of time that the opponent can easily exploit!

Feral Blood: The lizard-brain is incredibly active within Darrius and will come out if he is subjected to too much pain! Either emotionally or physically, his body will react to defend itself, becoming radically more feral and hostile... as well as predictable as his higher-brain functions cease to be!

Wrestling Background: As much as he does it for the crowd... it may not be a good thing for him. Showboating and posing for the people CAN and WILL leave him open for an opportunistic and nasty opponent!



Photo: Of his daughter. It helps him... stay grounded, seeing her face.







Darrius sauntered up to the much smaller men as they fired their little pea-shooters at him, their bullets bouncing off of him as surely as if they were throwing pebbles!

"Aw, come on, guy!" The reptile encouraged, his voice deep and throaty, a growl hanging off the end of his words! "Is this the best you can do!? Man, they don't do robberies like they used too!" He reached down and GRABBED the gun from the man's hand, holding it up to his face as if inspecting it... before smiling and opening his massive jaws! Without a second thought, Darrius CHOMPED down on the barrel of the weapon, offering the gun back to the robber before spitting out the now-mangled plastic at his feet!

"That's what I think o' yer gun. Now... how's about we fight like men, huh....?" Darrius cracked his scaled knuckles and grinned viciously at the man... who dropped his mangled gun and dropped to his knees in surrender! Darrius paused, staring the man down with a cold, hungry reptilian eye... before letting out a throaty chuckle!

"WHAT!? SERIOUSLY!? WAHAHAHAHAHA!" He chuckled, turning back to the cops who had been watching this whole time! "LOOK AT THIS GUY! UNLOADED A CLIP IN MY CHEST AND JUST GAVE UP! WHAT A JOKE!" Darrius reached down and wrapped his massive hand around the man's head, dragging him back to the cops!

"Take 'im in, coppers! Don't wanna see him in no banks for a while! WAHAHAHA!"