Hometrail App [VS: 1.0] (12-4-10 version)
character info.
character name: Heine Rammsteiner
canon & medium: The Manga DOGS and its continuation DOGS: Bullets and Carnage (There's also an anime OVA that covers the events of DOGS as the proverbial chapter zero, but it's exactly the same from what I can see except for being colorful, and rather relaxed in terms of action in the animation, so eh. Manga preferred by far.)
age & species: Mm...Anywhere from late teens to early/mid-twenties I'd say? Hard to tell. Nobody knows since Heine himself has amnesia in places, and probably doesn't know his own age with any precision. (More on that below in History) And he's Human. Well...sort of. Heavily experimented-on human. Ask him his age, or his species and he'll give you different answers in a bored voice with the undercurrent: serves you right it's none of your business. Bring up Brave New World and he'll probably stick the muzzle of his Mauser in one of your kidneys and let that give you an answer. Our boy is s a kicker...
appearance:
You can always tell, because in any comparison he's "the pale one".
Not for nothing does he get tired of getting called "White Hair".
But he's cuddly and good-tempered as long as you don't call him names~
True-blue albino "young urban guy" type with too many earrings, sunglasses at night, neck-bandages, and a taste for bad leather coats and fetishwear-looking stuff covered in spikes. Killer platform boots~ He tends to run through a lot of different clothes, because they get shot full of holes, but his things tend to be more durable and "tough" than flimsy.
Unlike the ten billion other anime characters with white hair, Heine actually is an albino, saving lots of unoriginal fans a lot of the senseless questioning that always seems to occur whenever some man (who usually looks like a woman) shows up with his anime bleach job. Heine's definitely unusual-looking, and yes, has red eyes, but they're legitimate red eyes for once.
Without the neck-bandage, he has a pretty nasty-looking contraption actually bolted into his neck which would definitely be something to comment on if you're someone not into losing your lunch. You try to sneak a peek, and you might lose that other kidney to a friendly Luger.
There's a scar stretching down Heine's spine about mid-back, going past his hairline stopping about level with his earlobes in the back. It's the only one he'll ever keep, and it goes under that bolt in the back. If you look real hard at the back of his head, you might notice the scar going up and through, because he can't bandage himself like a mummy. Mostly the bandages are there to hide the collar, not the scar.
Here. Have a neck-shot and some naked people. (G'darnit Badou.)
Also, there's a sort of uhm...waist-up naked shot for the original DOGS book "0" (because hey, it's M-rated anyway. Sorry, but I'm not putting it up because Naoto's distracting with her chest-scar and...well...chest.) That shot makes clear that Heine's about 172 cm tall. That's just under 5'8" even if his hair might give him another inch or two. So he's not that big of a guy. He just has an attitude. Since a lot of people go on toughness based on size at least in part, that might be good to know.
timeline: I'm taking him from just after Campanella Fruhling and the "pack of dogs" attack the underground, and just before they atack other portions of the city. It's after Naoto and Heine meet, after Giovanni does mysterious stuff, and more or less while Badou goes off for his "night at the opera", and Bishop makes things complicated by revealing things just enough to be confusing. Just after/in about book four. It's hard to find scans now, okay? And we're only out to book four here in America. >/////< So he's a fairly "early" Heine by most fandom standards. Fun, fun.
(He's in the exact same timeline as Badou due to epic coordination, actually.)
Plans for while on the caravan:
Blow stuff up. Sleep. Actually get some time to relax. (Which he has a different definition of than most...) Totally out-troll Church for everyone else's sake? *shot*
...To be honest, I sort of want to play someone other than Gau all the time here. Hometrail's like the Canterbury Tales of LJ and it's great here, surrounded by fun events and skilled people who genuinely like their characters. But playing someone as...hands-on as Gau runs me kind of ragged with his high energy and brick wall-ness. (I'm very much not type A and he is. Plus I'm disorganized and kind of secretly shy and he's very much not.) Not to mention there's the fact his lack of a sense of humor always makes me somehow need to make snarky narrative commentary in my prose logs which probably gets tiring for everyone else after a while. Gau's not really designed to be approached seriously, and has a lot of action-related comedy to his position, but situational comedy is less my thing than irony and wordplay.
I've debated and turned over the idea of playing DOGS characters literally for years, and Heine's been voice-testing really well. He'd be fun here. I like him. And while he's not the strategic fit Gau is, he'd mingle more roughly which would be nice too. And the poor puppy always gets put in all these post-apocalyptic places... So while I'll probably end up putting Heine someplace no matter what, this is really my first choice for him out of anything.
The fact that another version of him was here in the past, and Nill was there would be interesting to explore. I think you guys even had Badou for a bit.
Ooh. Ooh.
And we could have target practice on the caravan. With a live target. Church could learn to actually hit something. And superheroes!
Also? Blowing stuff up.
Plus I want to see people try to get Heine out of his shell without getting shot. (Or at least seriously cussed out in monotone.) Because I take a sort of grim, sadistic pleasure in that kind of thing.
Just general interesting antisocial CR? And vacation for sick puppies. ^^;; He's not a bad fit here, he's just not "perfect" the way Gau is for this setting, and I kind of want that.
history+link
Have a jellyfish, Eblis O'Shaugnessy
And to supplement in my own words on the interrelation of history and setting:
The world of DOGS is definitely post-apocalyptic sci-fi, what with references to a "climate disaster" (followed up with "You know this planet used to have four seasons?") and definite evidence of "genetic technology running wild." That aside, it seems to mostly revolve around an environment which includes subterranean mad-scientists, genetic fetish mutants, and petty mafiosi, with every man woman and child slinging a gun, a sword, or at least a set of adorably petite flightless wings. Heine himself is a collared and tagged experiment after a fashion, "built as a weapon" in the midst of all that with said feel of lapsed technology and disaster as (debatably) the most sci-fi-afflicted member of the main cast.
Much of his history is implied. For starters, Heine has selective amnesia for bits of his past. He doesn't remember anything before waking up in a dark room, wandering out, and seeing a bunch of other children with collars around their necks just like him, immediately thrown into a life as a living weapon after, slave to the "Spine of Cerberus" (Also translated "Spine of Kerabos") a fragment of which seems to have been embedded in his own spine, producing regeneration even from death itself. I'd say he could be anywhere from ten to thirteen at the starting point, maybe older, but the exact timing is still fairly fuzzy, and the purpose undeniably twisted.
Through the tales of other characters, there's record of a past mass disappearance of children in the area, giving a potential clue to Heine's pre-lab origins. Heine also feels kinship to the far younger, mute, winged fetish-mutant Nill, claiming "she's just like me, a thing created for someone else's desire." Even this statement is inconclusive however since there are a number of indefinite possibilities: that the children within the labs may have been genetically altered "in utero" in the loosest sense fertilized in test tubes or the like. (Glimpses of row on rows of "babies in jars", etc.) All in all, it's difficult to pinpoint Heine's exact origin from this point in canon with so many possibilities around. And as an experiment, and an "altered thing" if not an entirely artificial existence, having amnesia-blots in his memory is something Heine seems, if not comfortable with, then at least resigned to. Even if he is born naturally, his existance has a very artificial, "created" feel.
What we do know about him from his personality (excuse the overlap) is that his serious jumpiness around women stems from killing his sister in a particularly nasty way in this largely implied past. It's implied Heine was pitted finally against his fellow "experiments" after an undefined period and was the victor, outright killing his sister Lily. (The picture shown so far is of half a girl embracing him, torn in two, with only poor Heine's numbly horrified face visible, loosely holding her.) He's "thought" on at least one occasion of it as a nightmare where he lost control and punched his hands right through her. DOGS is M-rated for a reason. It's pretty violent.
On this note, Giovanni--one of Heine's fellow "Dogs"--mentions that Heine not only won against every other experiment (including Giovanni himself) but also killed all their "teachers". Though Giovanni, and their mutual "creator" (or perhaps "Engineer" is a better term) Doctor Angelika Einsturzen seem to be acting anyway possibly leading more weight to the theory of the experimental children being "home grown" or perhaps even cloned repeatedly if you want to speculate a step further. Giovanni battles with Heine while mafia-thugs get caught up in the background between two regenerating psychopaths... Heine refuses to follow Giovanni back into the underground, and...
After that refusal, and after discovering his blind "caretaker" the lolita-happy priest known as "Bishop" seems to have an earlier version of the Cerberus-spine collar, identifying himself as "Ernst Rammsteiner, the first failed experiment" with the casually added, "I guess I should call you 'brother'...but you'd hate that, wouldn't you?", a train barrels out from the underground spewing monstrous troops in dogs-masks with matching katana out into the populace, and Heine rather reluctantly battles them, instructing others in how to kill the regenerating "troops"--troops that are created, or perhaps more appropriately "manufactured" the same way he is.
At the point he's taken from, the train's directors' modus operandi is yet unknown and Heine's tag-team partner Badou Nails is off investigating. Heine's private thoughts on the subject likewise aren't yet made known to readers in the selective omniscience of the story format, though the regeneration of the "troops" makes clear that they have something to do with Einsturzen, and, indirectly, Heine too, as the proverbial "escaped experiment". Where he fits in is a mystery, but it's certain he does fit in no matter how badly.
Personality:
Extremely long as ever. *sigh*
There's some element of cultivated external "badassery" at work here if that's a term I can use in a proper sense. In the proverbial young, rebellious "eff you and the horse you rode in on" sense that talks gutter-trash, lives in the big bad city, and sometimes gets involved with sundries and comes out on top due to being just that badass. It's the larger-than-life gunslinger, the urban mafiosa thug, and the shell-shocked soldier rolled all into one, coated in a light veneer of "coolness". He's that gloomy, grim, black-leather-wearing pale guy who walks out at night, sees pimps after their runaway prostitutes and shrugs to himself in a cool-headed gravel monotone that he can't get involved in every single little thing in a fallen, gritty world. It's bleak, monochrome, and with a touch of proper noir, and maybe a splash of blood here and there. In the end it's either unbelievably cheesy, or the very letter and note of cool.
Certain genre-saviness might be partly responsible for the leather-shell, but there it's unsurprising that Heine would identify partially in larger-than-life fictional archetypes--it's hard for him to be only human when you're debatably immortal and made to fill a role bigger than life, and his like is found in fiction more readily than in "reality" even as defined within his world. It is, indeed, a shell, even then.
Underneath the Noir-Emulation, Heine's strung out pretty tightly between the invariable backlash from the sheer volume of nasty in his past, and keeping his proverbial berserker switch off. His gynophobia (fear of women) is legendary enough--enough that even offering him coffee in a way that catches him off-guard will make him jump back like you're something dangerous, and touching him (God forbid) is enough to send him into a full-out head-grabbing fit to control himself while veins bulge in his throat and he has a literal fit, flashing back to memories of his dead sister, Lily. He just can't imulate a normal reaction to women except undeniable chilliness--more than his usual distance. And even that's an act of self defense. It's not that he doesn't like women, either (As Badou attempts to confirm on his end when trying to explain Heine and women to Naoto: "I'll say this once, we're not like that.") Heine doesn't like anyone with a few carefully grandfathered in exceptions. Badou's tolerated because he knows better to ask questions. Nill is literally unable to ask questions, and the only woman he'll get near, or even touch. Heine's world is them, Bishop, and that's it, and he doesn't care for it to be any other way. Even those three are a comprimise he'd prefer not to make: minor diversions on his driving path to find the underground he came from, and presumably destroy it.
Paradoxically in all the archetypical dragging are the mundane moments. He's the guy who stays up all night playing video games even though he's playing, not because he likes them, but because he can't sleep and doesn't want to dwell on much of anything. He has his tastes: old black and white movies, and pixilated first-person shooters... It's one thing to live your life being forged into a weapon, but another to live it in reality. There's a lot of space between, as he's learned over the years, and it needs to be taken up somehow, even if you don't have an interest in it. He's neither depressed nor content, but simply existing, waiting for the right scrap of information to lead him back, killing time like he kills everything else.
And so, in the many spaces between murder and mayhem, he comes off as apathetic. Or...perhaps just...waiting since if you give him just the right kick, you've opened up a can of Hell where giving a man what he calls "a kiss on the cheek" includes ripping said cheek clean off his face with nothing but his teeth, and screaming any dialogue necessary. (It usually isn't necessary aside from screaming the name of your opponant as you charge at them, guns blazing.) It's not his intent to be horrifying, though some aspects of him are. He grimly admits he sees himself as a monster, but there's no drama, or self-hatred to the statement. It's simply what he is. He's disgusted with the fact he's alive and others aren't, he admits to Nill, but it's likely due to what he's done to remain alive. On the hairline between accepting and submitting to his inner "dog" and those who would use him, self-desctructing in some misguided penance, or giving into his urges for violence for their own sake, Heine maintains control enough to stop at listless, gloomy introspection, and his fairly passionless attitude of waiting--killing time like he kills everything else.
For all that he plays up a "hair-trigger-about-to-snap" persona duality to those who actually do know about his reckless battle-style, and horrifying violent side, he still holds back. The violence is actually quite alienated from his "real" personality. Control is necessary to hold back the personality infused into him after all--and it is a separate personality indeed as it confronts Heine with a body like his own as he reaches the brink of death, asking to be let out, and refused time and time again. His violence is the weapon speaking through him, in a way. It's not to say he can't be set off and set off really badly, but for a situation to be bad enough for Heine to let himself go, and rely on that other personality is much more unusual than he'd let on: while he's quite messed up, he isn't stupid by any means, nor without conscience for all the methodical attempts made to deaden it in his brutal past. His collar, and the personality in it are the function he's "built" for, but they certainly don't control him. Attacking him, harming him, or particularly landing a blow and triggering an instance where he needs to regenerate, often trigger moments of brutal repayment, but they're single moments, solitary actions, and Heine himself surfaces soon after, blurring the lines
A sliver of that control in turn may be a latent spark of "goodness" or his aforementioned conscience. For all the times he'll let Badou get captured, beat up, and even mildly tortured, he never once actually lets his partner get seriously enough hurt to not lend him a hand in mopping up the situation. (Especially given Badou's own maniacally violent side when deprived of nicotine for long enough--usually about twenty minutes.) His self-speech about seeing pimps after runaway prostitutes and not being able to get involved in every single one implies that sometimes he does indeed get involved when it's not his business--as he does when rescuing Nill. And when Naoto feints, even Heine's legendary inability to even get near to women, while certain to make him step out of the way, can't actually let him allow her to drop the whole way and hurt herself. That little bit of him probably just makes the determination not to lose control that much stronger, stemming especially from his experience losing control absolutely and killing his sister Lily. And that little bit may inded be a mark of growing "softness" as he comes a little further out of the events of the past.
In short, his best kept secret is probably that Heine actually likes people. Some of them anyway, which is the same to him as liking people in general. He's got an undeniably interesting way of showing it, and sure doesn't think it's a good idea to try to show it outright, or in anything less than veiled, almost playful little moments of gravel-deadpan, but if he didn't like people he wouldn't have any qualms at all about letting them get hurt even though he'd rather everyone in the universe sit back and think of him as a monotone icecube.
There are exceptions to his apparent "hands-off" attitude, and demeanor, and there are things he jumps in for when he has no business doing so. It's something he's sort of privately irritated by: someplace in the recesses of killing machine, there's a beating heart that actually likes looking after Nill and making sure she has her frilly dresses. And there's part of him that likes listening to Badou whine about things in a satisfactorarily distracting manner even though he'll put on a show of retaliatory blunt insult and abuse. And there's a part of him still, which cares enough about what happens to those "like him" to protect them. Those parts don't really fit in with his "design", and he's aware of it in the most dimly, vaguely awkward way: it's too human. And he's still not sure what to make of it.
If anyone else ever points it out, or even insinuates it, they get a good solid psychopath glare at the least, and a tangible reasurance that he's still the badass character come to life, with a past Badou refers to dismissively as "like something out of a manga" and "one creepy-ass kindergarten".
Despite growing patches of humanity, Heine's abilities and past still alter his way of approaching others in some ways, just as he still has his collar physically still bolted into the back of his neck. Only ever remembering a body that can't be harmed, beaten, or blemished with anything short of a headshot gives Heine a sort of morbid fascination with the wounds of others in his own disconnected way. He's still fundamentally numb to violence and the concept of injury. Pain is "just pain" and that pain doesn't last. When he regenerates, granted, it hurts, but he has an inadvertent insensitivity to the cumulative continuousness of pain and its effect on other people. It's something he finds curious. And that curiosity is perhaps a better reason he lets the constantly-whining Badou get a little roughed up before wandering in to snatch him out of perpetual trouble for the umpteenth time: Badou of all people definitely lets you know when he's hurt, and more than killing people outright or regenerating, the slow healing process of wounds is interesting to Heine in a way that's neither sadistic nor masochistic, but almost innocent for all the fact that he truly doesn't understand it and has to approach it with the odd bluntness and distance of any other relational aspect.
That said, his sense of humor might also have something to do with how he treats Badou. Humor's just another bit of his growing humanity shining through more than anything: It's said humor is the mark of an interrupted defense mechanism, and Heine's nothing but defense and attack instincts.
Heine's humor is decidedly dry, particularly appreciative of irony and he certainly derives amusement from putting other people in situations. (Particularly certain loud, constantly whining chain smokers.)
--While Badou's trying to blame his injuries on his "deadbeat partner" and convince the occupants of the Buon Viggiano Italian Restaurant that he was playing things cool, Heine will walk in concurring sardonically that yes indeed, he looks very cool in these pictures, plopping down a half dozen shots of Badou screaming for mercy as he's taken captive.
--In the middle of a battlefield while Badou's trying to negotiate peace, Heine will sit there calmly, remarking on the peaceful air of men gathering together to shoot pellets of lead at eachother, making a suggestion for empathy-inducing movies. (He recommends Requiem for a Dream. It'll make you cry.)
--He'll literally cough up bullets and say he had some cheap candy stuck in his throat.
In short, he'll troll you into next week if he's in the right mood--in a subdued, murmured, sometimes snarkily grinning sort of way, with all the added fearlessness of someone who's immortal and doesn't have to worry about offending others, and even then, wouldn't care.
Expect him to unrepentantly shut you down, insult your attempts at being clever, and tell you what he thinks of your suggestion that he at any time take his orders from you. Any of the above is a sign he's in a good mood, even. It might not last long, but it happens frequently enough...until something reminds him of the past, and he goes dark. He's still got more triggers than a gun shop there for mood-dampeners, but he's also clearly had some time to work out what's hanging over him so he's not the total inhuman basket case he might have been, and he can function somewhat normally in society...by his world's standards anyway. As long as strange women don't get too close to him.
Abilities:
Haah... Mods? I'll need to work out exactly how you'd like me to reduce this. Heine's personality kind of holds this stuff back a little, so...how you'd like to work that out...if the spine's just less effective then the "Awakened Cerberus" powers will be the things reduced, not the normal-state abilities since I don't know of Heine's exact potential modifications otherwise.
General abilities of all Cerberus-Spine-enhanced individuals are as follows. (Keep in mind that Heine supposedly has one of the highest if not highest peak snychro rates out of all Cerberus experiments.)
--Regenerative Ability
(Enough to heal bullet-holes and scratches, but not enough to regenerate limbs)
--Pathogen Resistance
(Not really elaborated on in the manga yet, but presumably resistance to biological weaponry/enhanced immune system.)
--Muscular and Skeletal strength.
(Obviously, he's tougher and stronger than most people considering he breaks through handcuffs with his bare hands despite being kind of skinny.)
--Neural Activity in Unused Portions of the Brain (Possibly used by Giovanni as he communicates with Heine without being there by causing him to hallucinate/dream, but possibly also referring to the spine incorporated into the brain stem, etc, or...other things. It's unclear, but I prefer to think his brain is being used for "reception" and commands and input from those running the Cerberus experiment.)
The speed of use in these abilities seems tied to just how much control he's given over to the Cerberus personality.
If something manages to neutralize his spine abilities entirely, given Heine's synchronization, he likely has a very low rejection reaction to substances in his body, perhaps even a fairly weak immune system in addition to all his current troubles with being an albino. (His eyesight's not great, he hates the sun, and he's totally noticeable.)
That said, in his normal state:
--Some basic Hand-to-Hand
(Heine seems to know enough basic bodily maneuvering to drop kick someone in the head, or kick them in the face. Though I can't really put my finger on if it's a specific style or not. Sorry.)
--He can gun-fight, and gun-fight well.
(He's not scrupulously accurate or anything, but that's to be expected since he doesn't have to survive on accuracy alone when he can depend on:
* The fact that at all times, when sustaining a wound, or even a killing blow anywhere other than the head, Heine regenerates. His clothes aren't so lucky, though. Uwah. He really is a troll. (Note: regeneration rate varies. See below.)
* The fact that he's pretty fast and dexterous even usually considering he totally does Matrix-style jumps off walls and/or breaks down doors by riding them down like increasingly-more bullet-laden skateboards.
Oh, and he tends to use two guns when he fights, so...that takes a bit more skill from the start. Possible ambidexterity.)
In the state of awakened Cerberus,
Heine can draw on some increased abilities below, at risk (Think Rage!Powers):
--Mild Super-Strength
(As above, only moreso. Enough to break open handcuffs or tear open flesh with his bare hands. At his worst, it's apparently enough to tear someone in half, bones, sinews, muscles and all, considering it's implied he did so to his sister.)
--Heightened Endurance
(How he got that close to the surface from that deep underground hasn't been really satisfactorily explained, but he keeps up with Badou on a regular basis, and Badou can run pretty fast if nothing else... Plus he routinely goes through gun-battles that span chapters and chapters and chapters. He's not one to be daunted by drawn-out battle.)
--FASTER Regeneration
(His synch rate goes up is the best way to explain it. If he's really holding back he seems to regenerate more slowly, and he really doesn't seem to like being so synch'd in with his spine. It's almost instantaneous when he's really ramped up, even when you shoot him in vital spots or "kill" him.)
At the cost of: (In order of severity of lapse for the most part...)
--Increased Violence
(It's like a bear who decides to play with you and pats you, but ends up breaking your ribs. He can fight "gently" in that state and still do horrifying amounts of damage to the human body. He's used to fighting other things that regenerate after all... Instead of just killing you with a bullet, he might pull off your arms and legs to see what happens and sit there watching. Keep in mind that it's still Heine to some extent, and Heine has his own twisted "playful" side. That comes out in a really bad way in other words when this shows up.)
--Absolute Berserk Bloodlust
(It's been implied that when he reached what's presumably his absolute peak synch, the spine takes over and he mindlessly kills everyone--both friend and foe.)
He can have bits of either in increments, too, then regain control of himself--though not before he's done some damage, generally speaking.
Possessions:
--Two guns in holsters. (White Mauser C-96 with chain, and a Black Luger P08) With two extra magazine clips each. (A mauser apparently shoots ten rounds, and a luger shoots nine.)
--Clothes.
(White jacket, neck!bandages, his ten billion seven silver earrings (six rings, one stud), leather gloves, rings underneath (One's shaped like an animal skull as near as I can tell. At least two rings.), pale gold sunglasses, white leather-coat-top thing, black undershirt, freaky buckle-pants, arse-kicker spiked platform-boots, belt, aforementioned gun-chain attached to the Mauser, spare clips, socks, undies of some sort or another... Not touching what kind in specifics, thank you. Why don't you ask him, hm? An arse-holster for both his guns. How he sits, I have no idea. And a wristwatch that he deliberately sets forward with perfect deadpan to try to keep Badou more on time.)
--One rather nasty pocketknife
(The one he pulled on Giovanni during their first recent!fight in the series? Yeh. That one.)
--A pack of emergency cigarettes for Badou
(Stupid addict.)
--Wallet with a few bills in it, no identification, and two keys.
(One goes to his weapons-locker, the other goes to his appartment.)
--A roll of spare neck!bandages.
Samples
First-Person Sample:
Hopefully these will work. If not, I'll be glad to put in another. He doesn't say much. >_> The first gives an example of his interaction-style, the second, an example of his net-interaction, and posting style.
I'll warn he's got a gutter-mouth, too, though.
-- Museboxing: in which Heine makes a fiery friend, and brushes off his little brother.
-- Dear_mun: In which Heine makes comment on the musebox events, and considers appage.
Third Person Sample:
*cough* Uhh...Hi? I'm the Gau mun. So...you don't actually need one?
*JEDI MIND TRICKS*