Winston Koetke or Å

Dark Energy Messiah

Winston was born black in South West Africa in 1955. His rustic upbringing was peaceful, and and like his brothers and sisters, his quick mind was adequately trained at the hands of Lutheran missionaries. It was all fairly boring right up to the point that an arsonist destroyed his family home. He was the sole survivor. He was thirteen.

Winston was then sent to live on the coast with his uncle, an aging, bitter and unmarried hermit whose life philosophy was equal parts racism, traditional Namibian folk religion, and paranoid schizophrenia. He lived with uncle Mzukisi for four years of back-breaking toil and attempted indoctrination before he was able to sneak out, get to a pre-arranged job loading horse mackerel onto a truck, and then stow away on it to the city.

The next few years could have been very hard indeed for young Winston, but he was smart, he was at least modestly educated, and his uncle’s hospitality was excellent training for alertness and suspicion. Moreover, Winston was not afraid of hard work—at least in Keetmanshoop he was working for himself, not for the benefit of a crazy old man.

By the time he turned 20, Winston’s resentment towards his uncle had matured into distaste for injustice of all kinds, and he had come to understand that his family’s farm hadn’t burned as an isolated incident, but was part of a larger pattern of Ovambo repression. He had lost his family-by-blood, but was ready to find a family of choice in SWAPO. Politicized and radicalized, he fled from South West Africa to South Africa and traded his SWAPO activism for work with the ANC’s militant wing, the Umkhonto we Sizwe.

Politicized and radicalized, by 1976 he had a price on his head and was overjoyed to watch Howard “Reddy” March single-handedly throw South Africa into violent upheaval. When he met his idol, he tried to convince Reddy that the death and the massive carnage was not March’s fault—that the oppressor whites had pulled triggers and launched rockets, not March, and that of the blacks who died, most had half-lives at best. Though Howard never completely overcame his guilt, he took great comfort from Winston’s words, and when the police began closing in again, he did what he could to help Winston get away: He used his race-reversal ray to make Winston white.

Primarily, Howard had thought he’d be making it easier for Winston to hide from the cops. He was right, actually. But he did much more than that.

Along with the skin color, Winston Koetke also got a second set of memories—memories where his parents never died, where he had close friendships with his white sisters, where he was shielded from the brutal realities of apartheid policy by elite schools and a physics education at Université Paris-Sud 11. White Winston wasn’t on the run from the police after years as a gray-market street entrepreneur. White Winston was applying to graduate programs at Stellenbosch, Yale and MIT.

But even more important than the split perspective provided by his alternate self, Winston Koetke got some of Howard March’s dark energy.

In his flawless disguise, Winston traveled out into the wilderness, undertaking a private vision quest. When he returned, he immediately asked Howard to return him to his native skin—not because he cared about race any more, but because he knew he would need it to form an African army of faith. For the old self Howard knew had gone, and the new self Howard had created was only an image, a phantom, and the truth? The truth could speak through the storm, shake the earth with his will, banish lies with a touch. The truth had a new name, and that name was Å.

Lineage: Amanda Sykes - Lyndon Johnson - J. Edgar Hoover - Howard “Reddy” March
Power Level: Tier Five
Offspring: Refiliwe Kenana, Sipho Masango, Njabulo Malema, Mchinu Modisane, Thabo Moloi, Kenosi Dlamini

Personality: Black Winston was intelligent, suspicious, passionate and shrewd. White Winston was intelligent, curious, restless and creative. Å is intelligent, commanding, grave, ambitious and terribly sure of himself.

Values: Åism, Justice for Africa

Known Powers

  • Å has the power of being a Controlled Vector, meaning he can determine who gains Dark Energy powers from him. He can also determine what form their powers take.
  • He can also Control Weather and Control Earth which allows him to shape the land of the African Harmonic Gestalt as he wishes.
  • Å can also manifest as a Voice Heard in the Land which allows him to speak telepathically to any group he wishes.
  • As the leader and peacemaker of the African nations, Å also has Unmask Psychological Conflicts by which he can touch people and determine their deepest concern and show them the secrets of these issues.
  • For protection, Å has Heavy Armor, Hypercharm, and Hypercommand.
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