Sly

[Nail Strafer]

Name: Mike “Sly” July
Age: 28
Sex: Male
Species: Cheetah

Appearance: Typical cheetah coloring. Yellow with many black spots all across his body. Sly frequently dresses in camouflaged clothing as well, meant to reflect whatever environment he happens to be working in. He wears a special light kevlar vest, which offers lower protection against firearms and other weapons compared to a normal vest. Two or more gunshots in the same spot, and the protection will be gone in that area. However, it weighs less, which means he can move much faster compared to if he wore the regular vest. When he's in a setting like a city or a town, he dresses unassumingly, in an effort to blend in and not be noticed. The nicest outfit he wears is a plain gray suit for meetings with clients.

Personality: Sly's main goal in life is monetary profit. He's always looking for a good deal or a chance to make big bucks. Thus, most of his friends and acquaintances are those who can help him the most in achieving this goal. Quite often, it's difficult for him to concentrate on anything but his next scheme. While others are off having fun he's often analyzing spreadsheets detailing new plots, and coming up with plans to boost the bottom line. It seems to be the only thing he really takes pleasure from.

Because he's mostly interested in money, it's not unusual for him to betray others, if it would let him get further ahead. So, he's learned to become incredibly self-reliant, in the event he has nobody else to count on but himself. Every week he has a strict training regimen for fitness, combat skills, and the like.

Despite his backstabbing reputation, he is very good at rallying people and resources to what he wants to accomplish. He's a very smooth talker and quite good at convincing you that he's on your side, and you'll never know he was planning to betray you until it's too late. Sly could make a killing as a car salesman if he weren't so interested in bigger things. Sly's ambition has also earned him close friendships with a number of the financial elite on the planet, which means large amounts of capital are never far away if he needs them.

As a general rule, he rarely trusts anyone to a significant degree, and considers almost everyone expendable. However, there are rumors that there is a father figure in his life that he deeply reveres. But no details other than that are known, and Sly denies it any time anybody asks him about it.

Transport: Sly has a personal helicopter with enough seating inside for six. It's painted white with blue stripes, and meant to be rather generic and unremarkable. For defense, it has a heavy machine gun concealed in a compartment on the underbelly. The machine gun can rotate a full 360 degrees, and it is equipped with a camera connected to a monitor in the cockpit, so that the pilot can see what it's pointing at. When not in use it can be retracted and hidden in its compartment.

While Sly is a licensed pilot, he rarely flies his own helicopter. Typically that's up to one of his henchmen, who will chauffeur him around. He frequently uses his chopper as an escape vehicle too, and often keeps it close on hand if he thinks he'll need it. When in danger that Sly can't handle, he will press a button on his keychain. That will activate a tracking device in the keychain that signals his pilot on where to go to save him.

Weapons: He frequently uses his claws as a weapon, considering he's always got them at hand and they're very easy to use.

However, when that won't do, he often fights with an assortment of knives and blades. Most frequently, he carries the following weapons:

1)Two Bowie knives, which Sly is quite proficient with. He uses them for quick, silent assassination-type strikes, in addition to straight out duels. It's rather difficult to get a blow past them with how fast he strikes with them.
2)An assortment of small throwing daggers (each with about a two-inch blade), for distance attacks. He carries 30 daggers in two small pouches on his belts, and he can throw up to six of these at the same time (three from each hand), or several in succession.
3)Thirdly, he has six exploding throwing daggers. They look like the regular throwing daggers, except there's a small red notch at the tip of each blade's point. The inside of the knife is hollow and contains an explosive powder. When the dagger strikes something, it creates a small explosion. It's not up to a grenade's level of explosion, but at short range it's excellent for blasting through defenses like heavy armor.

Biography: Nobody knows how, but Sly rose through the ranks of F4 surprisingly quickly, for such a young member. He started working for the faction at about the age of 18. At the time he was a general foot soldier, but he also took time to learn how to fly aircraft. His exceptional skill with knives, daggers, machetes, and swords was also noted.

But despite the modest beginnings, he was already one of the main leaders in the faction by the age of 22...put in charge of managing F4's money and resources. Somehow, Sly seemed to have lots of experience and training in these sorts of things. His experience level could have belonged to someone ten years older than him. Rumors circled around that he had some sort of powerful friend looking after him, but nobody could identify him, and Sly certainly wouldn't say anything. Many in F4 were initially skeptical of letting such a young man wield so much influence over the faction...but after he proved himself in helping to build the Mystic Ruins base, he came to be trusted.

Because of the charisma and respect F4 had for him, he became the one who reorganized F4 under his own leadership, after Sarath's forces destroyed the same Mystic Ruins base. Sly has long since abandoned F4's old mission to enslave or destroy humanity. Now he operates F4 as a type of mercenary organization that can be hired out for any sort of mission, at the right kind of price. F4 also does quite a bit of looting and plundering on the side, in order to keep themselves busy when they don't have work.

Much of F4's resources and members were destroyed in the Mystic Ruins base attack. However, they also have a significant number of smaller bases across the planet, and it's at these bases where F4 takes its current stock of weapons and supplies. They're definitely down, but far from out. Even a modern military would have difficulty locating and destroying these bases, especially considering F4's a lot more mobile than it used to be.

Moves/Combat Style:
Knife Storm – With how Sly has two packs of knives on his belts, one for each hand, he can quickly get up to three throwing knives in each hand. Then, he tosses them rapid fire style at his target. He can also discreetly mix in the explosive-tipped knives, so that it's hard to tell which ones merely need to be dodged, and which ones an opponent really needs to get far away from. The problem is he needs a second to get the knives in his hands, and this move can also drain his throwing knife stock very quickly.

Knife Tornado – In this move, Sly takes out his two Bowie knives and basically slashes them all over the place with his arms, so that it would be difficult for a melee combatant to attack him from the front. It's in an unpredictable, speedy pattern so it's difficult to defend against with a melee weapon...therefore it's best avoided by the opponent. He mostly uses it to force an aggressive opponent to back off or when he's got them cornered, to where they can't get away. However, it's useless against someone who happens to have a gun or some other projectile weapon.

Throat Slit – This move is for use only on NPCs. If Sly encounters an NPC that's unaware of his presence, and the NPC is not more than five feet away, Sly can quickly jump behind him and attempt to slit the enemy's throat with a Bowie knife, thus quickly eliminating the foe. However, this only works on NPCs, and it requires him to get very close without being detected.

Speed Jump – With how he is a cheetah, Sly is very fast over short distances. This move allows him to jump a distance of up to fifteen feet within one second from his current position. He can do it forwards, backwards, or side to side. The further the jump, the more it wears him out. For example, he couldn't perform it about three times in a row, and if he did it two times in a row he'd be waiting about five posts to try it again. This also cancels out his Vertical Jump move (below). He can also jump in straight lines only.

Vertical Jump – Sly is also good at jumping high in addition to jumping horizontally. He can leap up to seven feet in the air easily, then land delicately in a small area, like on top of a brick wall. Once again though, this isn't something he can do rapid fire. He can do it twice in a row, then he must wait five turns to do this jump again. It also cancels out his speed jump move (see above).

Skills:
Charisma – Sly was one of the old F4's most popular leaders, especially with how young and yet skilled he happened to be. This hasn't changed at all, and he's very good at swaying a sympathetic crowd to his ways. It's how he was able to take control of F4 once the Mystic Ruins base fell.

Leadership and Organization – Somewhere, Sly has come across training that's allowed him to know how to properly lead and organize a massive effort like F4. And it wasn't F4 itself. Even from day one at being on F4's leader board, he seemed to have gotten some pretty good experience from an unknown source. Rumors abound as to where he got it... Although some think it may have to do with the unknown father figure in his life.

Combat skills – Sly is a specialist in bladed weaponry, in addition to having knowledge of some assassination techniques. He can strike very silently and quickly, when he combines his speed and the silent nature of blades. It's his style to attack quickly and ferociously, then back off before his opponent has time to launch a counterattack. He has only an average understanding of guns, and prefers only to use them when absolutely necessary.

Helicopter pilot – Sly is a licensed pilot, and he knows enough to fly basic aircraft like helicopters and propeller planes on his own. But he is not a master by any means, and would easily be bested by a veteran pilot.

Strengths:
- Because he is a cheetah, he's extremely fast at short range. He can be standing about twenty feet away from you, but in the space of a second he can be right next to you...or in the same space of time he can jump away to that distance. This is a big asset for him in close range combat.
- He's also very quiet and stealthy when needs be. He walks on padded feet which allow him to move rather quietly, not to mention his weapons make hardly a sound too.
- Sly never trusts anyone very far. On the good side, this means he always prepares ahead of time in the event he is betrayed or walks into a trap. One can't be too careful in a world where the law's always looking for you...
- Sly's got connections. With his friends among the financial elite, he's got the ability to pull some strings and accomplish things that even a president or two may be envious of. These things include things like amassing lots of capital in a short amount of time, engineering elaborate escape routes and plans at the last minute, bribing government officials, etc.

Weaknesses:
- Sly may be fast, but he cannot go running for long distances like Sonic or Shadow can. His speed is mostly for close-up fights. He tires quickly if he uses his speed too much in a short period of time.
- Sly is not built for extended battles. If he can't finish off an opponent quickly and there's not an opportunity for him to run away, he's in trouble.
- Not trusting people far can prove to be his undoing. He doesn't have many close, trusted friends to count on in times of crisis. No matter how good he thinks he is at handling things by himself, the fact is you sometimes need true friends to survive in this world. Not to mention there's all the missed opportunities for not keeping an alliance with someone for very long.
- Money is not often the answer to everything. So there will inevitably be situations where having financial elite behind him won't do him any good...like when he's got his back up against the wall and several people have assault rifles aimed at him. Again, sometimes he really does need true friends, like ones that can actually help him with something a bit more simple and direct. His rich friends are also the only ones that are in a truly good position to betray him.