Sami and Jay Hakara

[Kitty O'Brien]

THIS PROFILE IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. I WILL DELETE THIS LINE ONCE IT IS COMPLETE. HOWEVER, IN THE MEANTIME I AM OPEN TO CRITIQUE REGARDING WHAT I ALREADY HAVE FILLED IN, AS WELL AS ADVICE REGARDING HOW TO COMPLETE WHAT I HAVEN'T.

(Note: Yes, this is technically two characters; however, they function as one, and neither is less important than the other. Their profiles are written as one because the characters are blended enough that I felt it appropriate.)

Name: Samantha "Sami" Hakara / Jay Hakara
Age: 34 (Sami), 9 (Jay)
Sex: F (Sami), M (Jay)
Species: Kangaroo mother and child

Faction: None
Alignment: Hero

Appearance: Sami and Jay both have white as their primary body color. They have a similar build, slightly taller than the average-for-their-age Mobian with long, skinny ears, bare tan chests, slightly muscular legs, and kangaroo tails about the same lengths as said legs. Sami has brown eyes; Jay has blue (presumably inherited from his father).
Sami has average-sized breasts, over which she wears a black bra. Over that she wears a green camo vest, never zipped up, with many pockets in which she keeps her medical supplies and personal items. She also wears black fingerless gloves. Other than the above, she is unclothed. Her marsupial pouch is located between her waist and her genitals; it's slightly elastic, and somewhat roomier than it looks.
Jay has gloves like his mother's, but wears nothing otherwise. He keeps his personal items stashed in Sami's pouch, which is a good place for them since he's almost never outside of it.

Personality:
Sami's personality reflects her militaristic upbringing. She always has trouble relaxing, and prefers to keep just about everything all business. She can't really seem to adjust to a life where people aren't typically trained to be soldiers from youth, and can't help but find it peculiar for anybody to spend time with leisurely activities. She also has a heavy sense of justice, and will defend what she believes in to the bitter end.
Jay is an odd mix of youth and maturity. On the one hand, he's as serious and passionate as his mother is, and has trouble playing the way other kids his age do. On the other hand, he's still a child, and isn't quite as understanding as Sami of many subjects. Often Jay will ask Sami to clarify big words when they're being spoken to... it's kind of cute, actually.
Both kangaroos share an unconditional love for one another, and will protect each other at any cost. They also share a liking for peanut butter, curiously enough.
(Will add more details later, if necessary)

Family: Sami and Jay are mother and son. They have no other living relatives that anybody knows of.

Transport: No vehicles of their own besides what the military provides for them.

Weapons:
"Firefly" - A specially made stun rifle that Jay wields, pale white and built to be usable by children (er... scroll down to the biography if you want an explanation). When the trigger is pulled, it generates a pulse of electricity that jets out in the direction fired. Said shot is essentially a weak and controlled bolt of lightning, capable of causing paralysis but typically not death. It has a cooldown of about 5-10 seconds (about two posts) between each shot.
The Firefly can be folded into a more compact form, about the size of a pencil case, when not in use. It takes about ten seconds to go from storage to ready to fire, or vice-versa. Since its payload is electrical, its recoil is practically nonexistent, and it uses rechargeable battery power rather than any sort of ammo. It can be plugged in and recharged at any normal electrical outlet; it takes about sixty shots to discharge a full battery completely, and about three hours of uninterrupted charge time to recharge it. (That's one shot every three minutes.)

Biography: (Note: All verb tenses correspond to time from the character's perspective. An event that the character has already lived through will be referred to in the past tense even if they've since gone back in time to before then.)
Sami and Jay hail from a militaristic, slightly dystopian future, about two or three centuries ahead of the present. Whether this is the true future or an alternate timeline, nobody can say. In their world, peace is a distant memory, and everyone is constantly at war. People are literally born and raised as soldiers; it's a necessity for survival. Instead of dolls and blocks, children are given guns and grenades for toys.

Sami was determined at birth to be a medic, and was given a medicine kit as her first toy. She quickly learned how to use it to patch up the other children when they got injured playing with their toys, and as she grew up she continued to aid the soldiers. When she was in her twenties, she was chosen to produce offspring. (Reproduction, too, was highly regulated; there was no time or place for love.) She was paired with a male soldier and entered pregnancy.

As the birth drew near, someone in a high position had a crazy idea. As a female marsupial, Sami had a pouch for her child-- essentially a built-in sniper's nest. So when her son Jay was born, they gave him a gun and let him train with it. He, too, quickly grew accustomed to it. It was quickly decided that the Firefly was the best weapon for him, since most guns carried the risk of harming Sami with the recoil.

Together, Sami and Jay were unstoppable. While Sami treated wounded soldiers, Jay would remain stationed in her pouch and shoot anybody who tried to attack. (What became of Jay's father is irrelevant; for relatives to grow attached to one another was quite uncommon and discouraged in this setting, for obvious reasons.)

Then it happened. Sami and Jay were on a transport helicopter prepping themselves for yet another mission out in no man's land, when suddenly they vanished in a flash of light. Those that witnessed it concluded that a spy had set off a flashbang and knocked them out of the copter, although exactly how they did it remained a mystery.

What had really happened, of course, was that the two kangaroos had been pulled back in time by a stray pulse of energy from the Shattering. Sami suddenly found herself in mid-air hundreds of feet above Soleanna, but managed to make a perfect three-point landing on a rooftop thanks to her strong kangaroo legs. Jay remained hidden in her pouch the entire time, and survived as well.

Now lost in a strange world with little idea what to do, Sami had little choice but to scout around. She flashed her military ID to the first person she saw, confusing him greatly as her faction technically didn't exist yet. He did, however, point her to Soleanna's military HQ.

The military, too, reacted to Sami and Jay with confusion, but agreed to take them in as a special agent team after they passed the appropriate tests with flying colors. She now eagerly awaits her first major mission into the new enemy's territory.

Moves/Combat Style:
Sami and Jay work as a team. Sami plays defensive, dodging by jumping from place to place and staying put whenever possible; Jay, meanwhile, stays put in his mother's pouch and keeps the Firefly in ready position, firing on the enemy whenever he can.
If her foes get too close, Sami will clear them away with a straight or roundhouse kick with her powerful kangaroo legs. If she has injured allies, she'll tend to their wounds whenever necessary instead of dodging.

Skills:
Medic - Sami was a combat medic before the Shattering, and still possesses all the skill her training taught her. With the help of her kit, she can dress small or moderate wounds quickly.
Gunslinger - Jay is trained in the art of a number of different guns; although the Firefly is his favorite, he can easily pick up and quickly figure out just about any gun. His training is equal to that of the average soldier, and for someone his age that's saying something.
Kangaroo legs - As befits her species, Sami and her son possess exceptionally strong legs capable of some pretty high jumps. Sami can reach the roof of a five-story building from ground level, and cross a canyon just as wide in one bound; Jay isn't anywhere near that strong, but nothing to sneeze at either. Both are also capable of busting out some rather powerful one- and two-legged kicks; Sami's are capable of breaking bones.

Strengths and weaknesses:
(I plan to fill out this section last.)

[Nail Strafer]

Well, there’s a lot of different sniper rifles and a lot of different kinds of ammo. What kind of rifle and ammo you use depends on what you intend to do with the rifle. For example, if you plan to kill a person, you’d use a smaller, lower caliber rifle like a Walther 2000. If you’re using a rifle meant to fire at vehicles, it’d be something huge like the Barrett .50 cal.

In any case, it’d have to be a tiny little rifle to fit into that pouch, so I don’t think it’d have enough punch to really do the job of a sniper. The caliber would have to be smaller to match the gun. Whatever you’re shooting at, it needs to die in one shot, because your cover will be blown afterwards and you likely won’t have time for a second shot. Small caliber means higher chance of the target surviving.

Also, sniping from a pouch? Bad idea. When you are a sniper, your goal is to be like a ghost. You don’t want anyone to know you’re there until it’s too late for them. So in general, you wouldn’t shoot from a standing position. Or in this case, you wouldn’t shoot from the pouch of someone who is standing up. Standing makes you a highly visible target. You’d want to be lie down in the grass or hide in some trees in a ghillie suit, which is a suit covered with grass, leaves, etc. to make you blend in.

By the way, let me speak a little from personal experience roleplaying here. In the past, Nail’s main weapon used to be a high-caliber sniper rifle too. It ended up being a really bad idea in terms of roleplay combat. No player wants to get shot at long range and taken out of a fight before the battle’s even started. That spoils the other player’s fun. So I only got to hit NPCs with the rifle, and I only got to use it like once or twice over the course of a couple years of being on the site. I would have been much better off and more effective in combat if he’d stressed something like close quarters combat instead. Other players don’t mind getting hit by melee weapons near as much compared to guns.

It’s rather ironic really. The less deadly something is in real life, the more players are willing to get hit by it in combat, since there’s less chance of them dying. Thus less deadly weapons actually end up being more useful in the long run in a roleplay.

I guess you can keep that sniper rifle if you want, but as I’ve outlined above it doesn’t make sense from a tactical or a roleplaying perspective. I would rethink how you plan to approach combat in this profile.

[Kitty O'Brien]

...Well, I knew I was taking a lot of risks with this concept. One of my support ropes was probably bound to snap. I just wasn't sure it'd be that one.

I'm guessing I'd solve most if not all of the problems you brought up if I ditched the sniper rifle and replaced it with a different ranged weapon. Probably something more useful in melee combat, but still usable from a distance. I'm just not sure what to go with... like I said in the profile, I know practically nothing about guns.

[Kitty O'Brien]

Wow, has it really been over a month since I've looked at this profile? I didn't realize I was that easily distracted.

I've swapped the sniper rifle out for something less deadly and more useful in melee combat. Hopefully that should solve the majority of the problems Nail noted.

[Gerald Robotnik]

The only thing I see wrong with the fun so far is the cooldown time. Please say in posts rather than seconds. <3

(Rose)

[Kitty O'Brien]

(07-28-2011 01:54 PM)Gerald Robotnik Wrote:  The only thing I see wrong with the fun so far is the cooldown time. Please say in posts rather than seconds. <3

(Rose)

I would, but I really don't know what the conversion standard is.

[Rose Fox]

Well, there's not much of a standered. But if you need help go and look at Ramapage and Rose's profile for an idea of how many posts cooldown should be; along with other things.

[Kitty O'Brien]

Changed. And I'll ignore that post about Tinnitus and pharmaceuticals.

[Giichi Twinkieland]

Well, the parts you have finished now look OK I guess. I mean, I think the idea of a joey shooting a gun from a kangaroo's pouch is really weird, but it's not my place to not allow it just because I don't like it.

If you pick a faction, it's looking like you'll want to be in the Soleanna faction with the way the profile is written.

[Gerald Robotnik]

Well, you don't have to join a faction if you don't want too. Plus, Soleanna's been dead. >: