(no subject)
Name:: Rodney St. Andrew
Age:: 23
Gender:: male
Physical Appearance:: Rod stands roughly 5'6 with brown hair that tends to spike all around his face in a fashion that looks as if he got out of bed and just ran his hands through it. His uniform is the standard Turk issue, white shirt with black pants and suit coat along with the tie. Unlike most of the other Turks, he does not wear any sort of gloves. Blood tends to make leather slick, and Rod is the sort who will resort to fists just as easily as his weapon. He doesn't want any sort of slippage.
Despite the fact that he wears a uniform, within a few minutes of meeting him, most people are aware that he's little more than a jumped-up street thug. He doesn't stand as much as he slouches, looking like someone that would be outside a liquor store, waiting for dark so he can rob it later. Hands shoved in his pockets, he doesn't care much about the uniform as far as wrinkles and the like go. His way of walking and holding himself is more of a predatory stalk than anything; an alley-cat that isn't worried about anything in particular but is smart enough to keep an eye out for potential danger.
When not at work, he tends to lay around in ripped up jeans and shirts that would probably do best in the rag bin. He really has no sense of fashion, nor does he care in the least about such things.
And he will loudly proclaim that he is not Reno, damn it.
Personality:: What Rod lacks in height he makes up for in self-confidence. This is not a man with any self-esteem problems. Even as a small child, if Rod wanted it, he had no doubt that he would get it. If he couldn't trade for it or buy it (which was rare given money conditions), he would steal it. This was a pattern that would continue on in his life.
Rod considers himself to be fearless. While this isn't exactly true (he fears being seen as weak, being ridiculed by his co-worker, being frozen, being useless, and drowning) he will put off the façade of not being afraid of anything even at the risk of danger to himself. He's the sort that during a game of chicken would prefer a head-on collision to being the one to pull out.
Rod is sly. It's a good idea to watch him because if someone has pissed him off, he'll get even somehow. Grudges are something he carries and nurses for a long time. This is evident in his long-standing one with Reno. If he were given the opportunity, Reno would be scrubbing every toilet in the bloody world for the rest of his life. With Reno's own toothbrush. And then Reno would have to use it on his teeth. Repeatedly. This is one of the many revenge fantasies that he nurses after a particularly hard day.
For now, he doesn't mind being the Turk's go-fer despite the teasing and all that comes along with the position. He looks at it as proving his worthiness. After all, someone has to do the drudge work. There's also that knowledge that without him, very little would get done. Come raise time, he's expecting all that work to pay off. His sights are set on Veld's job.
If the opportunity does arise, he will sabotage someone with his fetching duties. There's been more than one person that's discovered that their coffee gave them the runs or ended up for a week or two down with poisoning. The worst of those was when he was ordered to clean a superior's guns and he did enough cleaning that it would pass an inspection knowing full well that the gun probably would jam with frequent use. He did grin when he heard of that particular one receiving a terrible wound during a battle with an enemy when said jamming stopped the man from killing.
History:: Rodney was born in Junon. With the undersea Mako reactor poisoning the sea and land, his family moved to be above the plate. Just who his mother is would be anyone's guess. All he ever heard as a kid was that she dumped him off on his father's doorstep and left. His stepmother wasn't too fond of him considering that he took whatever he pleased and didn't listen to her. His father did try with him, but Rod's own sense of self overrode him eventually. In time, he began to leave his eldest child to his own devices and concern himself more with his children by his second wife who was more receptive to his fatherly advice and actions.
Life on the plate didn't suit Rodney much. His father had barely been able to support the family on his wages on Junon and now here above the plate, things were stretched threadbare. At the age of fourteen, having been estranged from his family since twelve or so, he left. There was no fanfare or big fight. He merely gathered all his things that he wanted take up and walked out the door. The family was having money trouble still and after a cursory search was made, they left it be. It wasn't uncommon for kids to go missing, either run away or to just vanish. Another drop-out from school was marked on the books and forgotten. (He made it up to seventh grade and then quit)
Head full of plans and schemes, Rodney headed out into the world. On the plate, there was no life to be made, at least not for a teenage kid runaway from home. That left only the underside. While most kids his age might have been afraid, Rod was enthusiastic, looking forward with an optimistic joy that only the young and clueless can to life of easy riches and quick money. He did find such eventually, working as a lookout for a gang in Midgar. It was the fast and easy money he wanted, but it did have structure, something he could understand and want to take over.
Within a year, he had managed to work his way up to a lieutenant in the gang. Another year came and went, seeing him as a captain. There was nothing he thought that he couldn't do. The most daring robberies, the broad daylight money laundering scams, and the million other money-making ideas were committed by his gang. Other gangs did oppose theirs, ones that he would order gunned down at their very homes or merely crippled so that they would remember why it was a bad idea to cross him. One night, he and his people stole a rival's bikes right out from under them, roaring off into the night with roughly twenty that he had sold as quick as possible on the black market. For a time, he made the wanted list for Midgar, although there was no picture of him, only the name 'Rod'.
As they say, pride goeth before the fall.
A rival gang challenged him to steal a bike from Shin-Ra. It was a matter of honour and pride, two of Rod's biggest weaknesses. Getting into the place wasn't all that hard, at least in Rod's eyes. What he didn't realize was that along the way, he'd set off at least three silent alarms. He had no more gotten on the bike than Reno showed up. The resulting conversation went much like the following:
"Get off the bike, kid."
"Fuck you, man."
Within five minutes, Reno had Rod planted facedown on the cement, inhaling through a bloody nose the oil and grease off the floor. It was quite a shock for someone who had never been beaten in anything. Had it not been for Veld, chances were that Rod would have ended up killed and tossed out with the rest of the garbage. For the next year, he trained at the Shinra Military Academy, graduating and going straight into the Turks. When weapon training came around, Rod was most unamused that his instructor chose to give him an e-mag. He had already gotten an up-close look at this particular weapon and been introduced to just how much pain its electric shocks could produce in his fight with Reno in the Shin-Ra parking garage. He would have done better at the Academy if it weren't for the fact that he was in and out of fights as well as not having some of the finer points of intelligence needed for classwork.
After leaving the Academy, he went right to work with the Turks. To his annoyance, he found himself in the position of coffee-getting, mechanic, and general go-fer. If someone didn't want a piddling job, chances are it got dropped on Rod. He was basically their rookie.
Time and going underground really hasn't helped that much. He's still the youngest Turk, still the one that all the cruddy jobs get dropped on, and still referred to as 'the new Turk'. During the time of 'Before Crisis' until now, he has been on the other side of the Planet. What his job entailed was keeping an eye on the gangs there, any companies starting to rise, and (of course) any potential threats. Whatever Veld made up in the meantime, he got stuck with.
This, of course, extended to when someone needed to go back and re-establish contact with Shin-Ra, its president, and the other Turks. The job ended up squarely on him. Not at all too pleased to be the sacrificial lamb, he's going back on Veld's orders... and the promise of a pay raise eventually.
Specialized Abilities:: EMR - Like what Reno uses, has two places in it for Materia to be fitted. Currently there is none, but it carries an electrical charge all its own. I haven't seen materia used a lot in Epitath, but should he add some, it would be one Lightning and one Barrier. Unlike Reno, he doesn't keep his on a wrist strap. Why? He did try it once and when he went to drop the e-mag for close combat, it (of course) was still attached to his wrist and active since he hadn't bothered to switch it off. As expected, it zapped him in the ribs when it came swinging down and saved the guy he was fighting the trouble of beating him up. He ripped off the wrist strap, cursed Reno roundly, and went on with life. He will never again mention the infamous attempt at lighting his cigarette with his EMR. It ended again with him on the ground and then having to go down to Medical and explain why he had electricity burns on his face, especially in that area.
First person to call his weapon a 'fairy rod' he's kicking the crap out of.
One night Rod left his EMR in his open locker at Shin-Ra HQ instead of keeping it on him. Needless to say, this was just after he'd graduated and come to work officially for Shin-Ra. Otherwise, he would have known better. Rod walks in the next day and grabs his EMR, not realizing that most everyone is watching him intently. This continued through the whole day until near quitting time he was challenged to a sparring match. When he flipped on his weapon, sparkles shot out of the weapon instead of a crackle of electricity as if it were some demented party favour. A tiny little fairy on a spring popped out of the end, bobbing about. Said fairy bore a striking resemblance to Rod. Ever since then, he's taken a good deal of offense to any teasing. (This is also something of a Final Fantasy joke since there actually is a weapon called a fairy rod.)
One last note about his weapon, Rod is a street fighter. Because of that, he will sometimes not think to charge his baton but use it as a bludgeoning instrument. That was a small fact that had his instructors at the Academy pulling their hair out over. They didn't see the purpose of giving him an expensive piece of Shin-Ra technology if he was going to swing it like a lead pipe.
Fighting - He was already skilled in hand-to-hand combat from what he learned before joining Shin-Ra. While his styles don't have much polish such as with the martial arts, he is quite capable of going for an enemy's weak points (kidneys, stomache, throat) and not above such dirty tactics as eye-gouging and kicking at someone's knee to knock it backwards and potentially cripple an enemy.
Mechanic - Rod can fix just about anything mechanical, especially motorbikes and cars. If it isn't something he's familiar with at first, like a toaster, give him enough time and he'll get it working even if it requires copious amounts of duct tape and bubblegum. People are probably better off not asking how he gets something running. There's also a very good chance that to fix one thing that he'll 'borrow' parts from another. He might be able to get Veld's coffee maker running again, but later in the day, Tseng's will probably break down mysteriously.
Driver - He's a good driver, especially on a motorbike. It wouldn't be a good idea to let him drive a limo though. Those usually aren't made to go as fast as he would push it or to whip around cornres at said high speed.
Just FYI, Rod hates the snow. Hates it. With a passion. There is nothing (other than Reno) that he hates more than cold weather and snow. So you know he's just thrilled beyond belief to be coming back to Edge in cold weather