Application || gargleblasted
OOC:
Name: Nini
Are you over 16?: VERY
Personal LJ: iverin
Email: sharkinaditch at gmail dot com
Timezone: US Central
Other contact: AIM: LadyIverin, plurk: hotpants
Characters already in the game: Maribel Hearn (crosses_borders)
How did you find us?: I herped a derp on over.
IC:
Character name: Hot Pants
Fandom: Steel Ball Run/JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Timeline: Canon, taken from the beginning of vol 19, prior to attacking Diego Brando; memories from the 4th wall/Sif event NOT retained
Age: 23
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths: A "magical" ability called a Stand. Hers is called Cream Starter, and takes the form of a small aerosol-like sprayer that she keeps in a holster at her hip. Stands are sort of a manifestation of the user's soul; they are either innate, or granted--in this case, Hot Pants had hers given to her by the Devil's Palm, and the power of Jesus. I am not making this up.
Cream Starter is a spray that HP can use to disable or otherwise totally confuse her opponents... by spraying them with flesh. It can also gather flesh to then spray onto something else. Yeah. Gross. Specifically, it can be used to create a foamy fleshlike substance that can mold to whatever it touches (and can be used for, among other things, bandaging wounds), can transfer limbs that are captured by it to other places, can create disguises (especially on faces), and can be concentrated into a stream that is capable of cutting even human limbs. It abilities can be seen as a reflection of her innate qualities: willingness and need to disguise and be disguised being at the fore of this. As a note, Cream Starter is one of very, very, very few Stands that can be used by others, and also when the user is unconscious or deceased.
How would they use their abilities?: ...Well, she doesn't have her impetus to use it that she had in canon, so I DON'T KNOW! Probably just in emergencies. HP is pretty much chaotic neutral masquerading as lawful good AND lawful evil. Go figure. But she won't cause much mischief.
Appearance: Hot Pants is of average height, probably around 5'5" in boots, but her hat adds a good inch or so. She has a slight build, but she still hides it under layers of heavy fabric. Why? Well, she's masquerading as a man. Her main "dress" is more like a tunic, and she wears a decorated capelet over it to conceal her chest. Loose fabric at the wrists hides her thin bone structure, and she conceals her calves and ankles with knee-down boot covers; her hips are concealed through an easy trick--a low-slung belt. She hides the bone structure of her face under an ear-flapped hat and a severe, angular haircut. She also stands and moves like a man to the best of her ability. In fact, she is so successful at this, only three of the other race participants know she is female. Only her full lips, heavy lashes, and lush auburn hair give a slight hint to her true identity. At one point, she reveals herself to Johnny Joestar in a nun's habit, a symbol of the past she left behind to pursue the goal of the Steel Ball Run.
Background/Personality: "She's like fine sandpaper--rough, and you don't want to get too close, but on the reverse side she's smooth and just as fragile as anyone else in her situation."
The story of the woman who came to be known as Hot Pants starts in an Italian village, where two unfortunate children were cornered by a bear and forced to fend for their lives. One of them died; the other survived, and lived her entire life in the shadow of what she thought she had done. In the mind of a young girl, she had given her brother up for death to a wild, hungry animal, and all the blame lay on her shoulders.
She joined a convent, becoming a sister of the faith, turning all hope of independence and a life she would create over and counting on the Lord and her beliefs to save her from a lifetime of remorse. It didn't really work.
All her life, she sought forgiveness from the Lord for her "sacrifice" of her younger brother. Years upon years of searching from childhood led her nowhere; eventually, though, as a person of uncanny talent and ambition, she was led to the Vatican. There, by the grace of whoever was watching over her (as she assuredly thought herself unfavored by God), she was afforded an opportunity to go to America to participate in the Steel Ball Run (think Cannonball Run with less wackiness). During a top secret mission for the Vatican, a Holy Crusade of sorts, she would seek out the most precious relic of all: the body of Jesus Christ.
Adopting the persona of a male horse jockey of indeterminate origin, and riding an American horse, Hot Pants dominated most of the competition early on in the race. The "man" seemed driven to win at any cost, was rough around the edges and showed "his" competitors no mercy. Only when trapped in a forest by a mysterious ability called a "Stand" did the protagonists discover that HP was really not just grim or wicked--in fact, though ruthless, this mysterious rider offered them a glimpse into the far more sinister origin of the race across America.
During the race, riders began to acquire mysterious abilities while riding through a certain stretch of land, This area, which never seemed to be in the same place for very long, was called the Devil's Palm; from this (courtesy of the mummified body of Jesus Christ), Johnny Joestar (our HERO!) and Hot Pants, among others, gained an ability called a Stand. As described above, HP's Cream Starter is versatile, and it proves useful as she helps the protagonists narrowly avoid death at the hands of a mysterious man in a cabin. Johnny considered her a friend, of sorts, after the battle and actually checked to make sure she wasn't dead...
By grabbing her boob.
After using her Stand to heal his wounds.
Oh, and they stole her sandwiches.
From then on, she seemed an uneasy ally, or at least not an enemy. She made no overt moves to trounce the heroes, but always seemed suspiciously close by. As it turned out, that trust was poor judgement on the part of Johnny. Hot Pants was, in fact, after the pieces of Jesus' corpse that Johnny and Gyro had already collected on their way along the race path--and, helpfully, she was completely opposed to the activities of Gyro Zeppeli, who was an agent of Italian nobility sent to find the very same parts.
Through various foibles, including a run-in with a terrifying sound-based Stand and dinosaurs, we discovered HP's true aim: recovery of the corpse parts was the only way she believed she can find salvation. She went to extreme trouble hiding her identity and past just to get a shot at the corpse parts. Her tenacity became legendary in many aspects of the race, as she refused to compromise or ever give up. She had already gone that far, masquerading as a man and leaving her simple beginnings behind to attempt this inhuman feat of recovering the unrecoverable, and she pulled no punches when the opportunity came to deprive Johnny Joestar of his found corpse parts. Even holding them, crying, she noted that Johnny's slowly regained the ability to walk from the parts. In a rare show of mercy, she left him a very small piece, stating that she was not going to deprive him of what he had recovered.
On the run from Johnny and Gyro, HP learned more of the gruesome secrets of the race--America's President Valentine intended to recover the parts and use his new found powers to run the country and the world as he saw fit. Unwilling to let him do this, HP was simultaneously on the run for the protagonists of the story as well as Valentine's agents. Once caught in a chapel, the Stand Civil War gave her the scars and remnants of her past back, rendering her incapacitated while Valentine stole the pieces of the corpse. Here, we saw her faith shaken, as her deceased baby brother was brought back to life, attached to her flesh. Her confidence seemed lost at the end of the arc, never to return.
But, as all good secondary characters in JoJo's do, Hot Pants returned with a vengeance, helping young Lucy Steel infiltrate the sanctity of the President's living quarters disguised as the First Lady. Showing herself to be both generous and even-handed, she sent Lucy in with the gift of disguise, courtesy of Cream Starter, hoping to recover more corpse pieces. She was not yet defeated, despite the mental anguish and difficulty posed in the fallout of Civil War's effects. In a gruesome and quite bloody showdown, HP defended Lucy against a near-unstoppable enemy, gaining very little aside from good information and many new enemies. As Lucy proves to be invaluable later on, Hot Pants shows how discerning and forward-thinking she can be about the people she can use to attain her goals. (Let it never be said that she is entirely benevolent. Chaotic neutral.)
For a while, Hot Pants disappeared, dropping out of the Steel Ball Run race to pursue the corpse parts. However, in her final appearance, she assaulted and threatened the notorious jockey Diego Brando (an expy/alternate version of the JoJo's classic antagonist Dio Brando), making an uneasy and fearful alliance with a dangerous man that lasted only a few short minutes. Desperate and at the end of her stock of ideas, Hot Pants resorted to bribing, cajoling, and almost begging Diego to assist her, as well as revealing her true identity as a woman to him.
Together, they faced down President Valentine--with disastrous results.
Have you read up on how the game works?: Flaming ferret; mooch, steal, jobs.
1st person sample:
I don't understand the need for people to constantly communicate through this device. Do you all feel lonely? Are you isolated? Afraid of your thoughts and your goals? How many of you have something you are actually pursuing now? Perhaps you are just waiting for things to be recreated, perhaps for something to go back to. I would like to see what you all create when you stop thinking about what is not, and begin to focus on what is before you.
Whether we like it or not, we may not be able to be sustained by hope alone. Faith can help us, but what we fear the most now is ourselves.
Rebut me, if you can. Go on. It would give me something to do.
3rd person sample:
With her fingers curled loosely around the edges of her belt buckle, the woman who goes only by "Hot Pants" made her way cautiously through the belly of the ship. There must be something that drew her there, she reasoned, something that held her interest and gave her the motivation to stop snooping around other people's business. It was something she did out of boredom, seemingly uncharacteristically prying into people's lives, but without her life, her purpose, and her faith, what was she to become?
She found the spot with some great difficulty, a hidden place where the play of light gave a small nook the feel of a confessional, some place that cried out for secrets to be told, histories to be revealed, lives to be changed. There was no one around, this much she'd made certain.
Removing her hat, she sank to her knees in the small nook, forgetting that she was in this vast domain of space, forgetting that her world had ended and her purpose had ceased to exist, There, in that corner, she simply prayed fervently for meaning. Nothing held purpose. Nothing could redeem her. Nothing mattered but her own inner, terrible thoughts, grief and guilt and mental self-flagellation she would never escape.
All the bluster in the world, everything she held up before others, washed away in that moment. Bathed in small beams of artificial light, head bowed, hands folded, she looked every bit the part of the saints she prayed to.
Questions?: NEWP
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: SURE THING, MA!