( save the earth ) app

[featherduster]

TW: SUICIDE - The canon history/preincarnation section of this app contains some dark themes and descriptions, so please proceed with caution.

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OOC Information:

Name: Mel
Are you over 15? Yup
Contact: aelesti
Current characters in the game: N/A

IC Information:

Name: Preincarnation: Vash the Stampede / Reincarnation: Eriks "Ace" Saverem
Canon and medium: Trigun Maximum (manga) - the anime also follows the manga to a certain point and adds some filler that I may reference in the cases where it doesn't contradict the manga in any way.
Age: Preincarnation: 150+ / Reincarnation: 23, nearly 24
Preincarnation Species: Plant (NOT the kind that photosynthesizes- basically an artificial, sentient humanoid species that humans created to act as a semi-infinite power source)
Preincarnation Appearance: Boom. Tall and lanky, with blue-green eyes and hair that sticks straight up. He's perpetually wearing his trademark red duster, and occasionally a pair of tiny yellow sunglasses with zig-zag temples. His hair is either blonde, black, or a mix of the two depending on canon point. Missing his left arm above the elbow and is absolutely covered in scars, with bolts holding his spine straight and mesh keeping patches of skin together, etc.
Any differences: He won't appear too physically different, since he basically looks human already.

The spikey hair of his preincarnation appearance is actually gelled that way, so his reincarnation self would probably just allow it to do its messy thing, and it will also be entirely blonde rather than the mix of blonde/black it is in canon.

He'll obviously wear sane, modern clothing/uniforms rather than an elaborate red duster. Might still have a propensity for red clothing where applicable, though.

NO SCARS AND EVERY LIMB IS PRESENT, HALLELUJAH

Otherwise, he's roughly the same tall, lanky, blonde-haired, blue/green-eyed dork.

Starting Location: Locke City, NJ, USA

Preincarnated History:

He actually has a surprisingly comprehensive wikipedia article if you want it.

In some distant future, humans have depleted the Earth's natural resources and have taken to the stars in colonization ships — "Project SEEDS" — in search of new planets to settle. Each ship contains hundreds of thousands of humans who have been put into cold sleep, awaiting the day their ships touch down on their new home. They're aided by the usage of a species of artifical humanoids, called Plants, who are kept within glass domes (that look like light bulbs) and are exploited for their ability to generate enormous amounts of power—enough to power entire ships and cities.

It's on one of these ships that a Plant mysteriously gives birth to twins; "independents", meaning Plants who can safely exist outside of their glass capsules. A crewman named Rem Saverem rescues the babies and takes it upon herself to raise them as one would normal human children, naming one Vash and one Knives. They age and acquire knowledge at a rate far outstripping humans, so by the time they're one year old, they're physically around 10. The twins spend their time reading about the sleeping people and visiting the cold sleep rooms, dreaming up a future where they get to live hand-in-hand with humans other than Rem.

It's around this time that the two find their way into a remote portion of the ship and discover a computer terminal. It contains an encrypted file — which Vash and Knives hack into with very little effort — that relays the story of an independent Plant born before them, code-worded "Project Tessla". The crewmen of the ship, excited by the possibility of learning more about their strange companion species, performed excessive tests and experiments on her until the physical toll was too much and she died a slow and traumatic death. To add insult to injury, they also find her mutated and tumor-ridden remains within a test tube nearby.

Understandably, the twins don't... take this very well...

The two lock themselves away in the lab, both eventually succumbing to hunger and falling unconscious. Knives remains in a coma, but Vash awakens when Rem arrives to drag them both back for medical care. He spurns all of her offered meals and begs her to kill him. She refuses, obviously, and he accuses her of intending to continue the experiments on himself and his brother. All of her objections fall on deaf ears, and their conflict culminates some days later when Rem brings him a rare fruit in the hopes that he'll finally eat, and uses a fruit knife to peel it. Vash makes a dive for it in an apparent suicide attempt, and near-fatally stabs Rem in the ensuing struggle. Though he's initially relieved at having apparently killed her, Vash very quickly breaks down in a panic and helps her get patched up. It's only after this that he allows Rem to reason with him. She tells him that the ticket to his future is always blank, that his opportunities are endless, and he absolutely must not throw that away under any circumstances.

Knives awakens after all of this has transpired, and feigns complete amnesia of the events in the lab. He successfully fools both Vash and Rem into believing he's utterly unaffected, but this is a farce; disgusted and afraid of humanity — and determined to exterminate them entirely, to protect himself, his brother, and their species — he maintains his innocent act just long enough to alter the programming for the SEEDS ships' trajectories. In what becomes known as "The Big Fall", almost the entire fleet of colonization ships crash land (or disintegrate) on an inhospitable, desert planet that will come to be called Gunsmoke. Rem gets Vash and Knives into an escape pod fast enough to save them, but she dies when the ship explodes upon entry.

Knives' actions become clear to Vash soon enough, and the two, understandably, fight. But they're essentially all alone on a foreign planet, so Vash resigns himself to staying by Knives' side, despite his misgivings. This goes on for about 80 years, with the two aimlessly traveling the desert planet, and humanity using what's left of its numbers and its technology to cobble together a haphazard existence on planet Gunsmoke. The twins eventually split, Vash going to live among humans and his brother continuing his solitary trek of the planet. Over time the two become entirely estranged and Knives’ genocidal maniac streak reaches its peak. During their one brief reunion after many decades apart, Knives activates Vash’s “angel arm”—a Plant weapon contained in his right arm with the ability to raze cities and blow holes in other planets, among other things. The ensuing fight leads Vash to inadvertently vaporize the entire city of July, and all of its 100,000 inhabitants, excluding himself and Knives.

From that point onward, “Vash the Stampede” becomes the most well-recognized and feared name on the planet, and he earns a $$60,000,000,000 (sixty-billion double dollars) bounty for his head, dead or alive. A legend gets passed across the planet of a blonde-haired man standing amid the rubble of a decimated city.

Fast-forward several years, and this is roughly where canon opens, with Vash traveling from one human city to the next, dodging bounty hunters and thugs and mysteriously defusing every situation without killing anyone — or allowing anyone else to kill anyone. This normally leads to an excessive amount of property damage wherever he goes, and he ends up being dubbed the "Humanoid Typhoon" for insurance filing purposes—as in, he's literally considered a natural disaster. These relatively light-hearted shenanigans go on for some time, and put him into contact with people who will come to comprise his major support network: two insurance agents named Meryl and Millie, and a preacher named Wolfwood.

The “vacation” ends when Knives amasses a group of assassins he calls The Gung-Ho Guns and instructs them to make Vash suffer, in the hopes that Vash will finally turn away from humanity if he’s abused enough. Knives continues his systematic destruction of humanity all the while, going so far as to travel the planet collecting the Plants that are being exploited to power human cities. And, if that weren’t enough, Knives makes it a goal to annihilate any salvation vessels that come from Earth to save the residents of the dying desert planet.

Vash proceeds to defeat each Gung-Ho Gun that comes for him — though they each certainly succeed in their mission to make him suffer — and after some personal losses of his own (the death of Wolfwood, who had been a near-constant companion, despite being a Gung-Ho Gun himself), he hunts Knives down and confronts him once and for all. Conveniently, this final battle occurs just as the Earth fleet is arriving to rescue Gunsmoke's dwindling population.

Almost three volumes of dramatic seinen gun and spaceship fighting goes down, but to summarize: Vash successfully prevents humanity from destroying the Plants Knives has accumulated, prevents Knives from destroying humanity, and prevents everyone from destroying him. But the battle leaves him mortally injured, and a soundly-defeated Knives decides to save his brother as his final act before dying. He takes Vash to two humans, begs them to save his brother's life, and then uses the last of his powers to create a fruit tree in their yard.

Six months later, Earth forces have brought Gunsmoke's population back from the brink of destruction using their Plant technology. Vash is being sought by Earth's newly assembled Federation Peace Force, believing him to have been Knives' accomplice. Bounty hunters are soon hot on the trail as well, and with humanity effectively saved, Vash enthusiastically deflects everyone's efforts to arrest him and happily returns to his life as a ridiculous wandering outlaw, dodging thugs and TV reporters alike.

Reincarnated History:

Eriks' life could be described as "unremarkable". He was born to middle class, military parents, so while he wasn't raised in the lap of luxury, he was never particularly wanting for anything, either. His siblings are ambiguous to allow for leniency with family CR, but he has several siblings that are considerably (~10 or more) years older than he is, which means they didn’t have an overly close relationship growing up.

Being in a military family meant moving frequently and attending many different schools. Between first and eighth grade, Eriks attended at least five different elementary and middle schools in various states around the country. The moves never bothered him, as he saw them as new adventures each time.

By virtue of being extroverted and well-liked among his peers (and being a perpetual class clown), he managed to make friends and acquaintances easily at every school he attended. He still keeps in contact with many of them whenever he can, and jokingly refers to the sprawling web of people he knows as his "network." It's through these many connections that he developed his love of people - their stories, dreams, desires, quirks, etc. His grades throughout elementary and middle school were mediocre at best, despite being quite bright, simply because he wasn’t particularly focused on studies in lieu of everything else: goofing around, trying every sport he could, composing journals upon journals of overly-dramatic poetry, or simply studying the behavior of the other students in class.

At the beginning of his freshman year of high school, however, his mother disappeared under mysterious, still-unresolved circumstances. He had always been a mother’s boy, and her loss had a strong impact on him. He sobered up some and withdrew from his myriad of various after school activities when he wasn't quite sure he could continue his usual antics and didn't want to face the concern or scrutiny of his friends. Without those usual distractions, though, he still needed something to focus on. So in an attempt to keep himself moving forward and distracted, he put his energies into schoolwork. His father returned home in light of the incident and the family settled down for Eriks’ final four years of high school, but he never had a close relationship with his father like he did his mother.

Much of his high school years were spent learning to live with his loss and considering things like life and mortality. He poured much of his free time into the writing he had a passing fancy for when he was younger — poetry, mostly — and used it as an outlet of sorts. He attended poetry slam competitions, not just to participate, but to listen and learn and absorb. Through this he could explore themes of life and death and love while also forming connections with people, and it became an integral part of his grieving and healing process. Through this he slowly managed to make steps back towards the brighter person he was as a child.

It was sometime in his Junior year that he decided he’d like to enter law enforcement of some kind, on the grounds that it might give him the chance to help other families avoid the situation his own found themselves in. Teachers and friends alike told him this was somewhat silly and unrealistic, but his motivations were unwavering. After graduating high school, he attended a local university and received a degree in Sociology because, as he put it any time someone asked, “I just love people.” The FBI did several recruitment events during his time at the university, and having already eked out law enforcement as an area of interest, he went on to apply to the FBI almost immediately upon turning 23 with his sights set on the CID.

He completed his 21 weeks with excellent performance in most areas, but firearm training most particularly. Though he was obviously inexperienced and had a long way to go in terms of improvement, he had what his instructors called a natural aptitude for it. He was jokingly dubbed "Ace" by those who watched him shoot, and though he laughingly shrugged it off at first, the nickname stuck to the point that he started introducing himself as such.

Eriks was fresh out of the Academy with only a few months of field work under his belt when the Wise Snake incident occurred. Still bright-eyed and enthusiastic, he’s yet another agent who’s been sent to Locke City to investigate the supernatural happenings there, partially at his own request to his overseeing officer.

First Echo: Eriks received his first echo at the Academy, on his first day of firearm training. When lifting a pistol for the first time, he received an impression of Vash's daily training routine. Though he cannot remember details, he's left with a sense of the training being incredibly grueling; there being a strong sense of routine to it, since it was something done every single day for over a century; and feeling comfortable enough with that particular gun that it was like an extension of his arm. Though he largely brushed this under the mental rug, so to speak, the experience colored his perceptions of firearm training and left him feeling somewhat uneasy about it. When asked why he doesn't care for the training (especially despite being rather good at it), he can never supply a very good answer.

Eriks's first Echo was triggered by one of these pests shortly after being transferred to Locke City. The tape measure he'd been using to play furniture Tetris in his new apartment developed an insatiable urge to bind, trip, and otherwise harass the nearest victim. He was distracted enough by the Echo itself ( Unchanged from the above: 'Though he cannot remember details, he received an impression of Vash's daily training routine. He's left with a sense of the training being incredibly grueling; there being a strong sense of routine to it, since it was something done every single day for over a century; and feeling comfortable enough with that particular gun that it was like an extension of his arm' ) that the fiend managed to escape to continue its reign of non-metric terror.*

* Revised 4/4

Preincarnation Personality:

Vash is an extremely complicated and conflicting character, all bundled beneath a layer of slapstick humor and obfuscating cowardice and ineptitude. To the world, he presents himself as a lucky moron who somehow manages to safely flail around the bullets aimed at him before turning around and (poorly) flirting with the nearest pretty woman. He's a charmer (or so he thinks) and a busy-body, always floating into people's lives, depositing himself in their business, and enraging pretty much everyone around him with his tomfoolery. Half of this is an act and half of it isn't.

It's certainly intentionally disarming on his part; his name is enough to send dozens of bounty hunters after him, so if he presents himself as enough of a fool, people begin to doubt that he actually is the legendary outlaw. It's also something of a coping method — at the end of the manga, he reminisces to the early days of running from bounty hunters and escaping clouds of property damage as "the tough and tender days that I loved". He likes these dangerous antics, provided no one is being hurt, and approaches them as something of a light-hearted game. They help him continue living despite the weight of his past, and it's a way of life that he willingly chooses. He also falls firmly into Stepford Smiler territory as a way of dealing with his own sadness. At one point, while being stoned out of a city he had just saved, Millie asks him how he can go on smiling even when things are so painful. Still smiling, he tells her he just doesn't know what else to do.

The other half of his foolish behavior is... well, him. It isn't all an act. He's simply a goofy and light-heated person underneath all the trauma, and it's clear that he's at his happiest when he's crying in French about donuts, using someone's boxers as a handkerchief. He loves people, he loves humanity, and even when they're all two seconds away from pointing a gun at him, he loves being among them.

The other half of Vash's identity, the one the world sees only when Shit Has Gotten Real, is when he lets the foolishness slide away and faces things down with seriousness and determination. He's inhumanely skilled with his gun and good at improvising, which allows him to take out hoards of bad guys without killing anyone — sometimes without even seriously injuring anyone. When his attempts to defuse situations with comedy have failed, this is what typically results. When that fails, and someone has been hurt or killed in his presence, his nuclear temper makes itself known. This is far scarier and far more dangerous for those involved, and he very nearly willingly kills someone in his anger. So despite his ideals, he isn't above feelings of hatred or revenge.

But despite being over a century and a half old and having seen untold tragedies, Vash is a very childish character at heart. He genuinely — perhaps naively — believes in the goodness of all people, and their ability to better themselves. This combined with Rem's teachings form the foundation of his absolute pacifism. Vash absolutely will not kill another living thing, human or otherwise, and he goes a step farther in not allowing anyone else to kill. Recalling what Rem told him after his suicide attempt, he claims that anyone can change their life for the better, and the only way to steal that opportunity from someone is to steal their life. Therefore, all life is precious and no one ever has the right to take it from someone else. Other characters repeatedly point out how unrealistic his wide-eyed world view is, and the narrative itself also draws attention to the fact that Vash's need to save everyone has caused equal amounts of suffering, as in the cases where he let murderers and criminals walk free. Nor is his way of life realistic for normal humans who do not possess his skills and powers, and attempting to live by his ideals is suicidal at best for anyone else. But Vash does possess those skills, and thus refuses to budge on it.

The other most important thing to know about Vash is that he has a heart of gold, and that's the source of most of his suffering and his steadfast determination. Even setting aside his pacifist ideals, Vash cannot stand to see people hurt or killed, and repeatedly displays his willingness to lay down his body and soul to prevent complete strangers from being injured. When you live on a planet like Gunsmoke, where old western survival-of-whoever-has-the-most-guns is king, this outlook is stressful at best. It's outright dangerous at worst, and his body is littered (he literally has chunks of metal holding his skin together) with the scars of his pacifist lifestyle. But through a combination of stubbornness, superhuman luck and skill, and fanatical dedication to the values Rem instilled in him as a child, Vash never stops trying to save humanity from itself (and Knives).

This isn't to say that his determination is unwavering, or that he never recognizes humanity's flaws. He carries around an absolutely tremendous amount of guilt: for not stopping Knives as a child, for the destruction of July, for everyone who's suffered after coming in contact with him. He bluntly states that he cannot forgive himself for these things, and therefore doesn't expect anyone else to forgive him, either. He also admits that not all humans are kind, and the constant abuse he suffers at humanity's hands absolutely does make an impact on him mentally and emotionally. He gets very upset (to put it mildly) when Knives goads him about how often humanity has thrown him under the bus, which implies he isn't as unaffected by Knives' words as he'd like to pretend. But he tells Knives that, while he wishes he could forget his regrets and the cruel things that have happened... he can't, so there's no sense dwelling on it. It's easier instead for him to focus on easing other people's suffering, because that in turn eases his own.

This reveals something subtle but contradictory about him: he holds humanity to one standard, and himself and Knives to another. He forgives humanity for anything and everything it does, and on a shitty planet like Gunsmoke, there's a lot that needs forgiving. In some ways this might show that Vash isn't devoid of Knives' feelings of racial superiority over humanity, but that those feelings manifest themselves differently. Vash believes that humanity needs saving, from both Knives and from itself, which is why he takes his activist approach to pacifism. But even while he excuses the terrible actions of humans, he doesn't forgive himself for the terrible things he's done and he certainly doesn't forgive Knives, either. As he faces Knives down for their final battle, he tells his brother that they need to take each other out - because they're too powerful and simply don't have a place in the planet's future. So while "all life is sacred"... when it comes to himself and his brother, he's willing to admit that their sacrifice might be for the greater good.

All of the above factors — his goofball act, his guilt, and his feeling of isolation from (and responsibility to) humanity — make him a surprisingly aloof person for how nosy and friendly he appears on a superficial level. He will absolutely butt into your business if he sees an opportunity to help or improve your life in some way, but anything that approaches the word "commitment" sideways never enters the picture. He flirts with women excessively and emptily, but actually goes out of his way to avoid sex when it's offered to him. He quickly endears himself to the children of every town he visits, and ends up spending much of his day playing with (and being beaten up by) hoards of little kids, but always ends up dismissing them when the time has come for him to move on. He makes friends almost against his will, and repeatedly runs out on them in the dead of night, without saying a word or letting them know when/if he'll see them again. His wandering outlaw lifestyle doesn't lend itself to long-term attachments, and though people certainly do become dear to him, he believes that they would be safer without him around and prefers to handle everything on his own, whenever possible. He gets chewed out for this repeatedly, but he never actually learns his lesson. The last chapter involves Meryl and Millie hunting him down and biting his head off for promising to return to them and then - well, completely disappearing for six months. His having lived for over 150 years is also a very likely factor in this behavior, because so many people have come and gone in the course of his lifetime.

Another character comments at one point that "his determination is greater than the regret that he carries". In the end, that's the punchline of his character. When abuse and tragedy are thrown at him, he takes it and takes it and takes it, and though he breaks down a few times, he always gets back up. Every time. Villains and allies alike are dumbfounded by how he can internalize things and come out smiling and goofing off, but it's simply who he is and who he's had to become to survive for so long. Even when things are at their bleakest, he always clings to the hope of a better tomorrow, and the belief that it is never too late for anyone to start over and find something brighter. He loves life, he loves humanity, and as long as he's still alive, the ticket to his future is always blank. He can go anywhere.

Any differences:

First and foremost, Eriks will be human, which is important because a whole lot of Vash's character in canon stems from his inhumanity. Some main points:

• Being human eliminates all the complexes that stem from Vash's race in canon. The conflict he feels over the danger of his own existence is gone, and along with it a very large chunk of self-hatred and self-reprimand. He'll also have lived a relatively normal life - with some ups and downs, of course, and a few personal losses - but nothing on the scale of what he endures in canon. As a result, Eriks will be a generally emotionally healthy person, versus the traumatized, stepford-y mess that Vash is. The antics, while still very often an act, will be for the simple fun of it rather than as a coping mechanism. tl;dr not depressed, not struggling with the ideological implications of his existence, not struggling to reconcile his own actions on a daily basis, and not smiling to cover all these things up.


• Vash is motivated by guilty, atonement, and escapism; Eriks is not. While both incarnations have a vested interest in helping others and learning their stories, Eriks is not trying to escape his own pain or atone for previous wrongdoings the way Vash is. He's simply doing it because he enjoys it.


• Devoid of his inhumanity/guilt/trauma/etc, he won't be the aloof, untouchable person he was in canon. He isn't opposed to making friends, forming intimate connections, keeping in contact with people, and otherwise just being a friendly, nosy busy-body. He would not actively side-step commitment, either. He loves people! In his reincarnated life, he has no baggage getting in the way of embracing that. Make all the friends.


• Less jaded/worldly wise. Though Vash is a wide-eyes idealist, he spends a whole lot of time forcing it, and sometimes struggling to do so, given that he's seen some serious shit. Eriks, in comparison... hasn't, at least not to that extent. If he's naive or just plain unaware of how the world works or how cruel the world can be, it's because he genuinely doesn't know, not because he's forcing the optimism.


• Eriks is intelligent and perceptive, but not superhumanely so. Vash is stated to be several times smarter than humans at multiple points in canon, and many of his more absurd feats prove this. But Eriks' intelligence is simply above-average, and often times foiled by his own naivete.


• The antics will still be present, but toned down a bit to fit with a modern/"normal" setting. Because in the real world, if you chase strange kids around with a dodgeball in your mouth, you'll probably get arrested.


• That Pacifism Thing: So it might be obvious by now that Vash's pacifism is huge, but also not particularly realistic. Eriks is absolutely a kind and gentle person, but he isn't inhumanly skilled. Nor does he live on a planet like Gunsmoke, or have the same formative childhood experiences that his canon counterpart did. As a result, while he is loathe to see people suffer or die, and would hesitate in pulling the trigger himself, he isn't going to throw himself in front of bullets or play the martyr. He's bound by the laws of practicality, basically, and he isn't trying to convince the whole world that they should set aside their guns.

Abilities:

Wiki is still here for me in my time of need but I'm M so I'll write it out anyway.

As a Plant, Vash has access to a variety of overtly superhuman/supernatural abilities. Some (not all) of these abilities require a massive amount of energy to use, and a Plant's internal energy stores are finite despite being enormous. A Plant's hair goes from blonde to black as they near death, so how much of his hair is black at a given time is an indicator of just how much energy he has left at his disposal before further energy use will kill him.

• He has the ability to regenerate/heal his wounds, though he willingly chooses not to use it outside of cases that would be otherwise fatal. Hence the many (many, many...) scars he sports. Were he to actually use it, it would probably be effective enough to regrow limbs and the like, since Knives manages plenty of that.


• Enhanced speed/reflexes. His reflexes are fast enough that he can willfully dodge bullets or do absurd things like flick rocks into bullets to alter their trajectories. In the manga it's stated that he's six times faster than a normal human.


• Plants are capable of telepathy among other Plants, sort of like a massive hivemind. Also has twin telepathy with his brother, specifically. I don't see this coming up unless someone randomly apps a Plant, because it doesn't work on any other species.


• "Angel Arm" - an absurdly powerful weapon housed in his right arm that can take out entire cities in one blast. Vash willingly uses this only in life-or-death situations, and never at full power. Enormous energy drain when fired at full power, though less so for smaller discharges.


• "Feathers" / "Wings" - Plants naturally look like odd, feather-y, angel-like creatures, and though Vash and Knives look human most of the time, they are not actually exceptions. In Vash's case the wings/feathers normally manifest inadvertently as self-defense, for such things as catching bullets. Power incontinence means he struggles to control these for a while, but he eventually manages to use them in a more deliberate fashion. They also come in an offensive/attack variety, but only when he's well and truly backed into a corner. Not as much of an energy drain as the other angel arm powers, if at all - they're essentially a normal feature of his body, and his hair never darkens from using them.


• Can infuse his "power" into inanimate objects, such as bullets.


• Is extremely (super-humanely, apparently) intelligent, not that you'd know it most of the time - at only one year old both himself and Knives had intelligence on-par with the crew members of SEEDS, and his smarts primarily make themselves known in his perceptiveness, creative take-downs of bad guys, and aptitude with technology.


• He can also, presumably, be used as a power source much like his brethren if hooked up to the right equipment. idk let's not test it, that's awful.

On the less supernatural side, he has more mundane skills and actually prefers to fight with (almost) perfectly mundane human equipment.

He uses a silver .45 six-chamber revolver as his primary weapon.

In true shounen manga fashion, his marksmanship is superb, bordering on absurd. He can put a bullet down the barrel of an enemy's sniper rifle from at least a kilometer away, or shoot the fuses off of dozens of sticks of lit TNT; he's fast enough that he can fire three or more shots so quickly that they only sound like one; he can manipulate his senses to hit targets without seeing them, so his aim remains impeccable when he's shooting behind himself or around objects; he can count the number of bullets his enemies are using as they're using them, and says the he can recognize the smell of grease and gunpowder instantly.

His left arm, which is prosthetic, can fold out into a semi-automatic submachine gun.

Has a hidden knife tucked into the toe of his boot that he uses for such nefarious purposes as giving people flat tires.

Knows fairly advanced first-aid, at least enough to treat bullet and stab wounds.

Knows some level of hand-to-hand combat; enough to easily disable henchmen, at least.

It should be noted that despite having the skills to be a straight-up murder machine, he simply does not ever shoot to kill, and instead uses his marksmanship to defuse situations in a peaceful manner. Ideally, he doesn't even use his gun unless forced into it.

Samples

Roleplay Sample - Third Person: Sample thread, canon/preincarnation version. The whole post technically counts as the same, but that thread in particular dips into more than just superficial barfight comedy.

Roleplay Sample - Network:

[ Eriks doesn't know why he puts the number into his phone. It's always in the back of his head, sure, but he's made an art out of ignoring it. No, more accurately, he doesn't notice he's put the number into his phone until his thumb has already done it.

Waiting in front of the stove for his eggs to finish cooking, and having already scrolled through everything that needs reading in the morning (work emails, the news, Tumblr of course—), he's left with nothing to do but fidget. And fidget he does, right into a goldmine of information that his bosses would skin a man for.

He forgets about his breakfast completely and deposits himself in a kitchen chair, skim reading like no one has ever skim read before. Watches a few videos, listens to a few audio posts, and gleans too much and too little all at once. He can already tell his nights will be occupied with plenty of reading material for a long time to come. Sleep? Forget it. Not anymore.

Still... reading is one thing. Watching is another. But he needs to talk to these people if he truly wants to understand. He needs to meet them and learn them, and he needs to approach it carefully. Delicately. So he flips his phone camera to video, puts on his best charming smile, and takes this exactly as seriously as he should. ]

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, I guess! I admit my disappointment that this isn't the beautiful, mysterious girl's phone number I thought it was, since I was pretty sure I memorized it. I guess she gave me a fake number, after all...

But here's the good news: this eligible bachelor has just become available in your undercover supernatural neighborhood. I enjoy long walks on the beach and extended discourse on the virtues of life and love. Hours of illuminating conversation are 100% free of charge. Inquire within for further details.

[ A beat, as black smoke billows from the abandoned frying pan behind him. He doesn't turn, but there's a certain amount of tragicomedy to his expression when the smell of blackened eggs hits his nose. How long has he been... ah, hell. ]

—Also, anyone who knows a diner with good scrambled eggs. We seem to be having an eggmergency.

[ Flashes another terribly cheesy smile before shutting the video off — and drops all feigned dignity in lieu of scrambling to deal with what was once his breakfast. That wasn't quite what he'd been going for, but... maybe he'll rehearse next time. Mister seriousness, over and out. ]

Any Questions? WE GOOD