The Darkness Existing

Name: Jackie Estacado
Age:22
Skills: master marksman
Weapons:dual 9mm handguns or any other weapon formed from darkness
Powers:Magical Powers,Darkness & Shadow Manipulation,
Superhuman Strength,Superhuman Speed,Superhuman Agility,
Superhuman Endurance,Superhuman Vision,Superhuman Hearing,
Night Vision,Wallcrawling,Pyrokinesis,Hydrokinesis,Biological Manipulation,
Immortality,Power Sensing,Omnipresence,Water breathing,Merging,
Duplication,Resurrection,Teleportation,Disintegration,Mediumship,
Elemental Transmutation,Reactive Adaption & Evolution,Acid Generation,
Power Mimicry & Absorbtion,Shapeshifting,Psychometry,Density Manipulation,
Portal Creation,Summoning,Telepathy,Precognition,Invulnerability,Flight,
Healing Factor,Sensing of Death,

~~~~~~~Darkness Background~~~~~~~
The Darkness as an ancient elemental force that allows those who wield it access to an otherworldly dimension and control over the Darklings who dwell there. When the host of The Darkness conceives offspring, The Darkness bounds into the newly formed vessel and leaves his old host to die. The living vessel of The Darkness then assumes his eternal, infernal birthright on the eve of his twenty-first birthday when he is at once blessed and cursed by the power of The Darkness.




~~~~~~Jackie Estacado Background~~~~~~
Jackie Estacado. He is the current wielder of The Darkness.
Jackie, a former hitman for the Franchetti Family mob lives life on the wrong side of the law and can kill without remorse, although he has a strict set of morals and a fierce loyalty to those that earn it. Yet the only thing keeping him from being purely evil is his true love Jenny as well as his love for his daughter Hope and others.

Jackie was never easily intimidated, even as the smallest orphan at Saint Gerard's. He joined the Mafia at the very early age of 6, after being adopted by mafia don Frankie "Kill-the-children-too" Franchetti, who was told by Sonatine that Jackie's presence in his mob would make Frankie powerful. He was picked up at Saint Garald's orphanage after Frankie was prompted by Sonatine, who told Frankie that Jackie would make him mighty. Jackie came to the mafia life easily, witnessing his first point blank bullet to the base of the skull assassination of a close "family friend" at age 10, losing his virginity to a female officer during interrogation at age 14, and making his first hit at 16. He matured very quickly, and soon enjoyed the life of sex and violence. His actions within the mob caused Franchetti to become the most powerful don in the city, fulfilling Sonatine's prophecy. However, when he turned 21, he was both blessed and cursed by the power of The Darkness and he learned of his eternal, infernal birthright. His powers served him well in the role of mob enforcer, dealing death with careless grace.

Early on, Jackie spent much of his time escaping from or fighting the Angelus (who wants to kill him), and Sonatine and his Brotherhood of The Darkness (who wish to capture him and either control him or steal his powers). Eventually, Jackie realized that he could use his powers for more noble ends and chose to quit the mob, but found it easier said than done. Jackie had turned on his adoptive uncle, Don Frankie Franchetti, to get a clean slate and exit from his life of crime. However, after Frankie kidnapped Jenny, a childhood friend of Jackie's, Frankie killed her and sent a videotape to Jackie in revenge. Jackie could not take this and called out Franchetti's mob, leading them to an abandoned warehouse covered in gasoline. When the crew arrived to kill Estacado, Jackie and the darklings threw down their lighters and blew the place, and all its occupants, to bits, killing Frankie and burning Jackie alive. Over the course of this series, Jackie makes uneasy and often flirtatious alliances with Sara Pezzini, the current user of The Witchblade.

Jackie spent two days (or what seemed to him like 'a million years') afterward wandering around Hell, searching for Jenny, until Tom Judge came and gave him hope, a gift that allows men to exit Hell. Jackie's body was then reconstructed by The Darkness.

Jackie returned to find the Franchetti mob taken over by Frankie's amateur cousin, Paulie. Paulie was able to discover Jackie's secret as well as a long-lost sister of Jenny's. Using this information, Paulie blackmailed Jackie into doing hits for him. Along the way, Jackie learned how to construct a gun out of The Darkness. Later, Jackie discovered the identity of the hitman following Jenny's sister, killed him, and took his revenge on Paulie as well. This led to Jackie taking control of the Franchetti family. With control of the Franchetti family, Jackie vastly expanded his mafia, taking on the Triads, and fought the Russian Mafia in Atlantic City.

Being the Don of the Italian Mafia in New York did not last long however. In searching for revenge, the new Angelus once again confronts Jackie, and with the help of Patience the Magdalena and Witchblade wielder Danielle Baptiste, Estacado manages to crush her, losing everything he had gained. He flees to Sierra Muñoz in hope of establishing a new empire there.

Jackie Estacado is also the biological father of Hope Pezzini, Sara Pezzini's mystical child. He himself could not explain it properly apart from saying that it had to do with 'Darkness wanting to tip the balance'. The Darkness entity itself confirms this to Patience by saying that it used Jackie as raw material to settle the matter with Angelus once and for all. Recently, Jackie has established a drug cartel in Sierra Muñoz with a narcotic made from his own bodily fluids thanks to the help of a demented, but brilliant, scientist named Professor Kirchner. With the Darkness, Jackie is able to take control of the small tropical republic, build himself an impenetrable fortress, an army and, eventually, even a lover he calls 'Elle'.

Most of these come at a price since the residents of Sierra Muñoz do not take very kindly to him. To express their distaste, they perform various acts of guerrilla warfare and suicide bombing in their struggle for liberation. They manage to find themselves a sponsor in their struggle: The United States military, who wish to capture Jackie for both experimentation and to learn about his "armor". Jackie went to fight the army head-on and, using The Darkness, he was able to take out the entire fleet. Returning to his fortress, he is betrayed by Kirchner and loses control of all of his power, with his darklings turning on him. Jackie is left for dead after being shot in the neck and falling down a waterfall. Upon his capture he makes a deal with the local rebels agreeing to rid the island of the drug he created. In doing so he crosses paths with Elle and she reveals to Jackie that she is pregnant with his baby: a spawn of The Darkness itself.

The Darkness, however, killed Elle upon birth, grew to full maturity and killed Professor Kirchner. A fight between Jackie and The Darkness ended when Jackie left the creature in the upper atmosphere just as dawn was breaking. The Darkness was then destroyed by the rays of the morning sun.

After crashing to Earth following this battle, Jackie was weakened and battered. He flees Sierra Munoz and heads back to the States. But the road home is no easy journey as he runs afoul of Mexican witches and wannabe gangsters. During one such fight, he was knocked out and soon discovers his battle with The Darkness cast his soul into Hell while leaving his body and mind on Earth after he meets and makes a deal with a devil who calls himself The Sovereign, an arch-demon who promises, in return for a number of assassinations, to reunite Jackie's body and soul.

The assassinations Jackie was sent on were meant to return to Hell evil souls, who had previously made a deal with The Sovereign to take over human bodies. After one such mission in Africa, Jackie was enticed by a beautiful woman with a red scarf, who motioned for him to follow. As he was about to follow her into a house, he was stopped by The Foreigner, a mysterious African man who once wielded The Darkness, but had completely discarded the power over ten thousand years ago without it killing him. He warned Jackie of the trap laid hundreds of years earlier by an angry sorcerer who created a powerful Djinn to kill The Darkness, who had defiled his wife. The Foreigner was able to kill the Djinn over two thousand years ago, but his curse is so potent that even his decayed remains can rise to strike at The Darkness.

Inside the building where the woman waited, the Djinn responded to Jackie's presence, resurrected, and attacked Jackie. Eventually, Jackie understood that both the woman and the Djinn were cursed themselves, to live only to lure and kill The Darkness. By strangling the woman, both were released. Outside, Jackie was once more confronted by The Foreigner, who explained that Jackie can call The Darkness and his soul back at any time, so long as he desires it. Through a series of insults and physical attacks, Jackie once more drew on the full power of The Darkness and fought the old Darkness wielder, claiming to be sick of people who tried to mess with his head. Together with the always talkative Darklings, he stated his desire to return home.

Attacking the building where The Sovereign held his base, Jackie found himself caught in a room flooded with artificial sunlight and a score of bodies controlled by The Sovereign. With the help of the Darklings biting the power lines outside, Jackie destroyed all the bodies, leaving only one man alive, Leonard Kim. Jackie, impressed by Kim's ability to stay calm where all the other mercenaries had panicked, offered him a job.

Jackie quickly brought together a group of people with distinct skills for a single purpose: to destroy each and every statue that might be used by The Sovereign, effectively removing his presence from Earth. During this time, Jackie was called by Sara who suspected him of robbing a number of New York banks. During a meeting in broad daylight, Sara warned Jackie to stay away from the city, not wanting to tell her daughter Hope that 'mommy had killed daddy.' Jackie agreed and instructed his new employees that under no circumstance were they to enter the city of New York.

Jackie and his team then go on a world tour finding and destroying stone bodies that The Sovereign could use as hosts. One of these trips takes him to Fort Knox where a host statue is held. During the raid, Jackie discovers that The Sovereign has already taken over the statue as it is radiating light. Jackie is forced to take the Sovereign-possessed statue with them and he orders his team to detonate the explosives they had set earlier. Unfortunately for Jackie, he falls from the van and is left helpless as tanks and marines surround him on orders by Major White, who survived the explosion back in Sierra Munoz.

Jackie holds his own against the marines but is shot down and captured. Linked to an electronic shock disc, Major White informs Jackie that members of Hunter Killer are coming to take him and study his powers. Meanwhile, The Sovereign tries to bargain with Jackie's team. Out of loyalty to Jackie, they refuse and The Sovereign attacks them. The team manages to destroy The Sovereign by hitting the brakes on the van, tossing The Sovereign into the windshield and detonating the C4 explosives on his back. White informs Jackie that The Darkness must not be used by anybody but Jackie. White shuts down the power in the base and willingly lets Jackie break his jaw and escape. Jackie makes his way to a parking lot building where the squad of Hunter Killers are after him. After a visit from the old Darkness host, Jackie manages to evade the squad by making copies of himself and fooling the team into thinking they had caught him, while Jackie hides and escapes by using The Darkness to shapeshift into an old lady.

While on a plane to retrieve another Sovereign statue from retired Russian mob boss Vasily Martynov, Jackie begins having strange dreams of himself as a teenager wearing a costume-like Darkness armor and chasing Capris through an orphanage. He then wakes up and dismisses the thought from his mind. During the meeting with Martynov, Jackie meets his mysterious deaf assistant, Arvo. Jackie then begins hearing the most beautiful voice he's ever heard, which begins to pull him into Martynov's complex after he sees Capris. He reaches her and finds her surrounded by illusions of The Sovereign and Sonatine created by the song. He battles the creatures and eventually submits after receiving a vision from an old knight. He wakes up restrained to a machine surrounding an angelic woman known as The Alkonost. The machine siphons The Darkness from him and into Arvo, who intends to use it to rule as a god. Meanwhile, Jackie's team are betrayed and sold out to Martynov by one of their own, Dev Ravada. Back within the machine, the old knight reveals himself to be the last member of The Order of The Holy Voice, an order devoted to the protection of The Alkonost. He also informs Jackie that "Capris" was in fact an illusion created by The Alkonost's singing. Arvo was intended to be the old knight's apprentice, but because Arvo wanted The Alkonost for himself he battled the old knight and has kept him strapped to the machine for centuries. While Arvo raped the helpless Alkonost, Jackie loses consciousness and only by killing "Capris" does he summon the strength to free both himself and the old knight from the machine. He is attacked by Arvo while the old knight attends The Alkonost and pulls the lance from her chest and impales Arvo, giving Jackie the chance to use The Darkness to heal Arvo's ears, making him vulnerable to The Alkonost's song. As the old knight lay dying in the weeping Alkonost's wings, Jackie offers to heal his wound. However, the old knight declines, as dying in The Alkonost's presence is his greatest honor. Jackie then lays the old knight to rest as The Alkonost flew into the sky and escaped. Martynov is devastated by the release of The Alkonost, just in time for Kim to kill him and for Jackie to kill Arvo.


~~~~~Powers&Abilities~~~~~~

Jackie wields the nearly limitless power of The Darkness, an elemental force of Chaos and Creation that allows those who wield it access to an otherworldly dimension and control over the veritable legion of Darklings who dwell there. While in the dark, Jackie can increase his own strength and endurance, create Darklings, and summon incredibly strong fanged/clawed tentacles to eviscerate his opponents and lift large objects such as vehicles.

Jackie most commonly uses The Darkness to craft a suit of mystical body armor about himself. While wearing the armor, he is invulnerable (able to harmlessly withstand high-caliber bullets, point-blank rockets from tanks, and high explosives). The Darkness armor also gives him superhuman strength, endurance, agility, and speed, to the point were he was able to overpower Batman with ease, make Superman's lip bleed with one punch, smash the turret of a military tank, and cover over six miles on foot, running faster than any transport could carry him. Jackie can also use his armor to grow a pair of giant bat-like wings, allowing him to fly out of Earth's atmosphere at high velocities.

Jackie has developed amazing powers of healing. He has been seen to quickly and fully recover from lethal gunshot wounds (including ones to his head and heart), skin and hair scorched off, torso impalement, and the explosion of a C4 vest strapped to his chest. Jackie can also transfer this power to others, such as when he reconstructed Arvo's eardrums to cure his self-inflicted deafness.

The Darkness's power is however limited: he does not function at all in strong light, which turns anything he created into dust. Jackie would appear to have some limited prescience, and has, on a few occasions, seen how, where, and when individuals will die.

More recently, Jackie has been shown to have the power to generate permanent, non-Darkness physical objects (such as water, and the drug known as Nightfall) as well as technically creating "life" in the form of his lover, Elle. He was able to create these things through practice, and the guidance of Professor Kirchner. During this time, Jackie became a drug lord, his powers evolving to form the goblin-like Darklings into larger, hulking, more powerful and more malevolent forms. The labyrinth in which he lived in was also constructed from The Darkness, and changes and reforms to Jackie's will, allowing him to technically shift through space and time and get to the places he wants to go faster.

On top of his seemingly unholy demonic abilities, Jackie's spiritual, mental, and physical abilities are at peak-human performance. His fighting skills are on par with that of Batman, as well as a master marksman (with a preference for dual 9mm handguns), all of which are the result of his hitman background and training.