Kazhanik Valensky

Kazhanik, "Batling," is the son of Sonia Valensky and Andriy Miller, and was born visually transhuman at least in part due to his mother's deliberate influence on her unborn child. He has the shape of an anthropomorphic giant golden-crowned flying fox, with his arms and hands forming his wings, leaving only thumb and forefinger as the only human-like fingers free to manipulate objects on each hand.

Kazhanik is close enough to a bat, physically, to be capable of flight, and aside from his physical transformation he also is blessed with a language ear far beyond normal human capabilities; his ability to quickly pick up new languages through immersion is so strong it would be easier for him to learn pig latin by rote rather than by connecting it to a language he already knows. Along with this, he's also capable of producing any human language sound. His native language is Ukranian, but as he learns all languages the way a child learns a native tongue he doesn't have any discernible accent and it's unlikely any outsider would notice.

The trade-offs to these abilities are, on one hand, a childhood spent in a cage to be shown off to strangers, much like his mother, and on the other, extreme photosensitivity. Anything much beyond the "complete" darkness of a clear-skied night is going to cause him physical pain if measures aren't taken to protect his eyes, and his reactions to e.g. being touched while thus blinded are unpredictable.

While capable of eating any normal human food, he has a marked fondness for fruit, and especially likes figs.