Tracer-bios OOC ENTRY
You know I've had some form or another of this up and running since April Fools? In typical Skunky fashion, I've kept fixing it up (for cat info mostly) and forgetting about it every time I have it.
I'm putting it up here, not to make peopel feel guilty, or like they should write bios, but to note that Tracer is an obscure character in an obscure manga. He gets eight pages total, and isn't even referred to by name except in an end-note. Talk about pathetic.
But I NEED to put up a bio for those literate in said obscure fandom because character-types of Tracer in his "canon" form can very so broadly from person to person. My own take on him has been evolving for at least three years, so he's pretty well fleshed in, but still...very...er...hand-tailored, I should say.
Eventually, I'll have a story entitled "Wrath" over on my creative journal. That was the fruit that spawned Tracer POV before this journaling ever happened. Most of his storyline is touched on in his own words in that.
So this is here for information--because Tracer doesn't intend to give out his background any time soon. He's actually a bit darker than you might expect, he just deals with it better than some people would. I've tried to make the bio comprehensible to people outside the fandom, too.
Character sheet:
Tracer-- (Fandom: Juvenile Orion)
Real Name: Kurai/Tsuki Arisugawa (See Below for Details)
Age: 28
Gender: Male
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 140 lbs (((Dude. He's asian. Asian men are not normal. Plus he's a manga character. I should have remembered this sooner...)))
Languages: Japanese (Native), English, Spanish (broken conversation)
Sexual Preference: Homosexual (Particularly likes younger men with glasses)
Marital Status: Single and cheerfully prowling for casual hookups (Not particularly interested in long-term relationships)
Town of Origin: Tokyo, Japan
Race: Human (Extraordinary--see "powers")
Story-Role: Antihero/bystander/nuisance/general-stirrer-of-the-pot
Class: Wanderer/Commoner
Profession: Mercenary (Hired Gun, Tracker, and Bounty Hunter as the case may be)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (morality for sale)
Appearence: A slim, tall asian man with waist-length black hair and multiple silver rings in both ears, all along the cartilege, and his shirts worn open at the neck. He often dresses in long black coats, and smokes almost continuously. He's often seen on rooftops, staring at the sunsets or the clouds, or the people below, and appears to have an expression of strange amusement or deep thought on his face. His voice tone and demeanor varies with his company, but when fairly comfortable, he'll tease. He insinuates often, swears occasionally, and more rarely yet, insults, or abuses, all with the same apparent thoughtful watchfulness and amusement, enjoying the party.
Skills:
Strategist --(He's clever with petty tactics as well as having a knack for making things go his way in a "battle" setting, whether on his own, or with a small group.)
Subtrefuge --(One must be cunning and deceptive enough to hunt their quarry well enough as a bounty hunter. See "Ettiquitte" section for Tracer's personality particulars)
Athelete --(Fairly good physical stamina, but fights best with firearms/handguns in particular, which probably require their own sort of atheleticism)
Powers:
Psychic (Precog)
Connotes--
--Mild clairvoyance
Tracer sees a few seconds into the future during moments of extreme change or danger, but he's only really given a reflexive action in response, so most of his strategist abilities don't apply in the actual situations where his clairvoyance acts up. It's basically enough to duck the beer bottle as it's tossed before anyone else even realizes what's happening, but the aftermath as people try to piece out what's happened? Those few seconds he gets an edge on, since he's just barely ahead of the rest of the people in the room for reactions and plans. When near psychics with mental abilities, his clairvoyance actually proves crippling, since other psychics occasionally magnify his abilities inadvertantly, and consequently may give him multiple outcomes in his foresight, hampering or affecting his reflexive actions. In most cases, though this ability gives him a reactionary edge. Tracer can occasionally use this ability to see actions affecting others. (Ie: if a comrade will be shot.) But only within a close distance.
--Sees Auras
Tracer can detect the presence of other extraordinary beings by sight, and recognize them despite disguises by their auras of power. It's how he guesses that Cole's a shapeshifter. However, he has to guess the particular alignement of those auras in comparison to other auras he's seen, and make a judgment, which is how he guessed wrongly that Wolfram was a half-demon. (Since Wolfram is a different sort of demon than the ones Tracer is used to, he judged his aura incorrectly.) This ability doesn't affect his normal sight, or color range. Depending on who a person he meets is around in turn, their auras may be affected or "tinted" by those of others. Some people even have auras that react to strong emotions, but seeing auras gives Tracer a minor edge in his line of work insofar as avoiding dangers goes.
--Photographic Memory
A Self Explanatory minor quirk, but this overlaps unusually well with his Aural Sight. Tracer memorizes the faces of his clients, and his bounties equally. As with most peopel with photographic memories, Tracer can memorize large amounts of information by sight, but calling specific details to mind amidst a large quantity of information takes as long as referencing an actual book unless otherwise memorized in a different organization.
--"Magical" Heritage, but little true Magical Talent
Tracer is perhaps capable of simple potions or more "concrete" elements of magical theory at best. At worst, he's quite incompetant with things possessing a magical element, or can even produce harmful effects if faced with a different sort of magic than he's used to. Tracer's background, little as there is, is largely in "Western" magic, though he is a rare person in that he has some training in both the Eastern and Western branches.
--Binding Magic
Like all Psychics in the Aquarian Age, Tracer is capable of setting a binding spell, and taking those with power outside of time for battle. Normal humans within the vicinity behave as though caught within a temporal vacuum. Angels, demons, magical creatures or constructs, and other exemplary humans are unaffected, and can move or act freely. Binding spells are continually in effect until lifted by the caster or until the caster steps out of the area of the spell. (Low powered exemplary humans can only affect small areas with a binding spell.)
Ettiquitte (And Brief Background Philosophical Origins):
As a hired mercenary, Tracer's used to being hired for all manner of work. He's worked as both a mercenary and a male escort; a thief, a hired killer, a tracker, and a demon hunter. He has a reputation as a maverick, but honors his contracts. He usually does the best he can to test out the waters, allowing his employer to set the terms, and only rarely offering protest. He does like to barter on theother hand, and might guide a client's requests to reap the benefits of a particularly lucrative or desirable payment. (Particularly with clients paying in information.) He never as a rule rejects a client's requests, but he might not return for things he finds a bit extreme or demeaning, and despite his background, he doesn't offer his other services to female clients, in holding with his own personal preferences. (Particularly, his taste for explicitly human young men with glasses) He also pointedly refuses offers of questionable companionship from demons, angels, or ambiguously gendered creatures--and his work has taken him into previous contact with all the above for various reasons and tasks. Despite this refusal, Tracer seems to have no qualms or troubles in accepting quite different beings from himself as acquiantences. He handles this with a remarkable poise and lack of bias, and seems quite comfortable with the supernatural.
In his consideration, information itself is the highest form of payment, Tracer very rarely offers his own history, or even his real name, but he often gives out little hints, or bits to keep people interested in being around him, or interested in doing business. He never actually lies, but he does refuse to share information, or steers conversations away from places he doesn't want to go. He dislikes needlessly dishonest people, and while he'll deal with them to a point, he may avoid them afterwards. Deliberately "poisoning" information is, after all, one of the worst crimes one can commit in his particular ethic. A spy's deceptions are necessary, and he understands a job requiring a lie. Lying for reputation, or lying for "no purpose" on the other hand, is a different and detestable matter. (Lying under the pretense of honesty in other words. Being honest and somehow unbelievable, on the other hand, is an entirely different story to him.)
Tracer's hidden background is hidden for a reason. Both of his parents had very strong factional "gender" power regulations in the secret five-way factional war known as the Aquarian Age. (A war between two factions of magicians, a faction of telepathetic psychics, and the angels and demons, occasionally affected by free-agents with the power to control members of the other factions, known as Mindbreakers.) Tracer was raised in a situation where his mother treated him as a female--this being a position of honor from a Wiz-Dom witch--while his father treated him as a male--the spiritualistic Arayashiki house of eastern magicians being strongly patriarchal. Up until the age of fifteen, Tracer crossdressed intermittantly to follow this, and even if speaking to someone and offering his name, he actually had two first names, "Kurai" to women, and "Tsuki" to men. Since his first language is Japanese, he also had a tendency to switch into perfect female pronouns and honorifics if speaking to women, and masculine speech around men. In mixed company, this could prove confusing to say the least.
At the age of eight, the fragile diplomatic bonds
holding Tracer's family together shattered.
His father killed his mother in front of him, and Tracer in turn, murdered his own father in self-defense using his mother's pistol. From there, Tracer took to the streets, living with the dregs of the Aquarian age, a hybrid of two rival magical factions, uncertain of his gender, his morals, and his values, and pursued by one set of relations who would glorify him as a figurehead of war, and another that would see him dead, child or not. For all intents and purposes, Kurai--or Tsuki--Arisugawa disappeared, never to be seen again.
At thirteen, Tracer--already in the habit of pulling names on and off like clothing--gained his most well known pseudonym from a lover. He would go on to make it his only known alias afterwards.
At the age of fifteen, Tracer began to dress as a man permanantly, and kept only his long hair. His speech likewise solidified with hardly a trace of his fluid gender portraiture. Still, Tracer continues to express an extraordinary broadness of personal identity, and often alters his behavior depending on who he's around.
He does this unconsciously at this point, rarely to the point of changing underlying "personal" tone, or his expressed attitude of undercurring amusement, but nonetheless to the point of occasionally radically altering his body language and word-choices. If he realizes his attitude has an effect on another, it's not often that Tracer doesn't push his advantage, or pull back if he notices he's discomforting his new acquiantence. His profession and his personal search for information rely on a certain degree of charm, and he seems aware of this to some extent, and quite unaware to another extent. Tracer's sense of self seems remarkably independant from many of his personal traits when seen from the eyes of others.
In situations of aggression, Tracer rarely strikes the first blow--though he hardly needs to considering his powers allow him to literally see the blow before it comes, and avoid it. He's known to forget grudges entirely if he thinks the matters are unimportant on later consideration. In his line of work after all, he gains too many new clients to keep too close of a watch on the offenses of old ones. Also, as far as he's concerned, money is money, information is information. If desperate enough for either, he'll sink to whatever level he needs to to acheive what he considers necessary. And he seems no reason to be ashamed of sinking to levels other people would be shocked at. This part of his personality makes it virtually impossible to really mix too well with the upper crust once they get wind of his scandalous, bloody and dirty past--though of course, nothing settles better than a scandal at times, and Tracer likes to cultivate just enough scandal to keep things interesting, and keep the eyes off the more personal bits of his past, particularly his name, or the possibility of an ongoing bounty for his head under that name.
From the ages of eight to fifteen, Tracer spent his years living with a band of abandoned, and similarly extraordinary children in the urban streets, stealing and whoring to survive. Even those few who survived and grew up with him largely have cut their ties with him afer his rise back into society. He doesn't seem to think of them as any sort of particular family, or seem to think himself in their debt.
Tracer's first job as a mercenary was actually an accident. He was found by a group of bounty hunters, tying up their quarry--his own perverse hiree--with the man's wallet in his teeth. Tracer eventually gained enough money through similar lucky circumstances from there on in to scrape together his own means and stop his matter-of-fact escort work entirely and take up a job as a maverick hunter, building up his own information network, and his own connections. He's lived in this way ever sense, never speaking explicitly of his long-dead family, and leaving off his real name, for his best-known alias. He often likes to talk about having "a turbulent past" in such a self-mocking sense that many doubt it's actually true, and there's no doubt, were he to mention any of it openly, he'd do so matter-of-factly, and without any particular sense of shame or deprivation.
It's through his mercenary work that he actually met his most noted friend. His only particular soft-spot, and particular tie of permanance beyond the client/mercenary relationship or the informant/payee relationship exists in the form of a young Exorcist by the name of Tomonori Nakaura, who among other things is a practicing catholic priest, and a high school math teacher at Seika High School in downtown Tokyo, Japan. Tomonori was apprenticed to Tracer as a young man due to his unusual abilities, his lacking aural sight, and shared half-Wiz-Dom heritage. Orphaned by a demon attack, Tomonori was put under Tracer's particular and eccentric form of training at the age of sixteen. Tracer was twenty, and by this time and accomplished mercenary, as untraceable in his origins as a ghost--except to a select few of the Wiz-Dom faction capable of not only seeing auras, but recognizing the unusual qualities of Tracer's hybrid aura in particular.
Tomonori remained reliant on Tracer as his only form of human familiarity until nearly six years later, when he took in a boy by the name of Tsukasa Amou--the amnesiatic angel of Judgment, and member of the Eraser faction, also known as Israfel to others of his kind. Tomonori's relationship to Tsukasa grew steadily and heartily, and remains ambiguous at best to even Tracer. Tracer has long wanted to meet Tsukasa. Tomonori has long refused. And ever since Tsukasa's appearence, Tomonori has grown more distant to his hired-on instructor. This relationship grew more distant still following Tomonori's mindbreaking.
Tracer occasionally paints himself--not altogether untruthfully, or without a hint of bitterness--as the only thing which kept Tomonori alive in his years of apprenticeship. He talks of him often. He vehemently reacts if called on his fairly obvious affection for the younger man--more vehemently than he reacts to nearly anything else. The denial deosn't seem to be intended as a deception. Tracer is the first to acknowledge that such a relationship would be entirely one-sided and doomed to being pathetically unrequited. He mocks this ideal openly, but in the end, it's clearly a hollow self-mocking. If he paints mild resentment on any angel he meets as a result of what's passed between him and his apprentice, he hides it well. And while perfectly prepared for the event of his death (he doesn't believe in Heaven of Hell, and practices Shinto and some nominal Bhuddism but no other religion) Tracer's worry for Tomonori should he die is quite pronounced, though rarely spoken out.
Tracer's only other source of affection is his cat, "Heartless Bitch", a non-morphing female werecat. Far from a pet, this undead creature seems fully sentient, though cat-shaped and incapable of speech. Tracer dotes on her like a family member, amidst good-natured complaints of her behavior and habits. He offers only the vaguest of stories as to how he acquired her, and for a man often called on for demon-hunting, and bent on refusing the intimate company of the inhuman, having a Darklore housecat seems to be at the least in unusually poor taste. Though the cat isn't the only unorthodox member of his household, Tracer seems far closer to his cat than to his dryad housekeeper, or his myriad other contacts. (The exception being Tomonori.)
Education:
Tracer is self-educated and street-smart. Up until the age of eight, he received some magical and bodily training in his abilities from both parents, but afterwards he received absolutely no education aside from what he taught himself. He knows first aid. He knows practical survival skills for the streets, but he has little understanding of higher eduactional matters relating to math, science, literature, or the like. However, he still claims to have a great deal of experience with anatomy. In darker moments, he might expand on this with, "I've always been good with anatomy. Human or otherwise. Alive, though? That's optional. But as a point of interest, you don't see a lot of sexy dead stuff." He sometimes claims to have a "doctorate in carnal knowledge" by way of a pick-up line.
His handwriting is poor, and he reads slowly (assuming he doesn't simply use his photographic memory on each page, and claim to have read the book), but one of the few subjects he'll actually care to struggle with is the occult, or other subjects which relate to his profession as a mercenary. He usually prefers discussion and personally-gathered information to book-learning, though. In this regard it's usually good that he has Tomonori accompany him on many of his hunts, since he has a quite different outlook than Tracer, and is an excellent researcher