Name: Bryan Shriver
Age: 20
Gender: Male
Appearance:Shriver is of average height and weight, with slightly more muscle on his upper arms and legs than his torso. He pays attention to hygiene, although his very short black hair and slow general hair growth makes it a lot easier. His blue eyes are accompanied by bushy eyebrows, and his large jaw makes it easier to look intimidating than if he were more effeminate. He generally looks almost presentable enough for a job interview, although he’s usually the one doing the interviewing. It helps that he has no noticeable scars on his face, and the rest of them are hidden under long sleeves and pants.
Since Shriver has absolutely no sense of how to colour-coordinate his clothing, but doesn’t want to seem careless, his wardrobe is almost entirely black and white. To look moderately professional, he wears businesslike black slacks, a white button-down shirt, and when outside of a combat situation, a black tie. When cold he might wear a light black jacket. However, he wears black running shoes so that he can comfortably walk several kilometres a day and run when necessary. Most things he might need quick access to are in his messenger bag, while other possessions are kept in his backpack.
As Shriver is moderately skilled with knives, he sometimes carries two
combat knives on a belt or sheathed in his pocket. He also has a Swiss Army knife that is generally not used for fighting, and a laptop that is never used in combat.
Personality:Shriver is generally friendly and cheerful, albeit with a morbid sense of humour, and optimistic even in the worst of situations. He doesn’t like making enemies or standing out, but if he has to, at least the impression will be of a nice one. He’ll try to put people at ease and make them feel respected by striking up meaningless conversations, being polite, and paying attention to what they say. He sees no problem with lying, but mostly does it to defuse situations and avoid conflict. However, because he tends to be very literal, interaction with others often does not go as he intends.
Shriver can easily shrug off any insult with good humour, allowing him to interact comfortably with a wide variety of people. This is partially because he can’t always tell when someone is joking, and partially because he’s apparently incapable of being sad. When he knows he should be unhappy or else it’ll anger other people, he’ll try to pretend; since he can’t exactly secrete tears at will, he has become good with feigning expressions. Except when he doesn’t bother, and just acts as cheerful as he’s always been, because for whatever reason it’s better that way.
Shriver has two drives he cannot ignore: the need to kill and the need to write. He has a general respect for life and understands all of the reasons killing is wrong and harmful to society, but he can’t help the need. If he tries to suppress it, he just starts thinking about it more and more, the pressure building in his mind until he can’t look at anyone without feeling a strong urge to kill that person. However, regular access to mild violence can keep the need from rising, so pokémon battles or sparring with his partner are acceptable and can keep him at a comfortable four kills per year at best. Dealing with his need to write is much easier, since he made not only a career out of it, but he has plenty of time to work on his own projects.
Like Vogel, Shriver believes himself emotionally separate from everyone else, but Shriver is just hiding it. He is convinced that his constructed personality is just a collection of learned behaviours that help make his life easier, and show him how to interact with people. He believes that in reality he doesn’t care about anyone or anything else, except for how it affects him. He doesn’t feel particularly strong emotions, in response to anything, and he doesn’t feel real sadness or joy. Sure, he can feel pleasure from simple things like food, exercise, and the thrill of battle, but those are physical feelings more than emotional. He doesn’t let other people know he doesn’t care, but it is rather important to him to remain properly objective and selfish. However, he can’t assert this anywhere but in his head or to Vogel, because that would break the character he’s constructed.
Biography:Shriver was born in the region of Tomoghy, in a town best known for never having gone a decade without a serial killer at least trying to kill once, although it otherwise had a low crime rate. As such, the children were taught to defend themselves and to be suspicious of any strange behaviour. Shriver did not fit in very well, because he was unable to naturally pick up the societal expectations of manners and politeness, so the children feared him. Even the adults thought he might grow up to be the next serial killer. When Shriver pointed out that most serial killers came from another town, they were more disturbed by his lack of denial that he might possibly be murderous on the inside.
This was mainly because he couldn’t deny it—he thought he might, too, although it was possible he only ever started thinking of the possibilities because of the rest of the townspeople, and had simply become obsessed with the topic of death. He had an active imagination, and people doubted he could make a clear mental distinction between story and reality. Since he thought he might write stories about death, but he wanted it to be realistic, he tried to research somewhat suspicious things on the internet and in the library. His explanation that he was going to be a writer was not accepted by his teachers and fellow students.
Naturally, when his mother was killed on her way home from work, he was the number one suspect of anyone not involved in the investigation. He hadn’t done it, of course, and it was eventually revealed that it was just the latest serial killer, but the general hatred of the Shriver family caused his father to move to Llegir City, which contained several vast libraries and would be perfect for Shriver’s ambitions. His father also joined a company that was supposed to test the security of various locations, by violating rules (with permission, but the security guards didn’t know that) and seeing how well the guards followed protocol or common sense. His father became an excellent source for how someone was to commit a certain crime without being caught, and research took care of the rest of that.
Shriver met Vogel while researching pokémon anatomy, wanting to learn how to best to kill a pokémon—for a story, of course, although he played the scenes in his mind far more than necessary for just writing them. Vogel, wanting at the time to be either a vet or photographer, was a good source of information, and they easily became friends as they researched together.
He encountered the vigilante group, Lightless, at the age of fifteen. He had come to his own conclusion that if he was going to kill someone, it should probably be the bad guys; in what could have been an unfortunate incident, he managed to track down a man who had been leaving low-level pineco in public places and having them use selfdestruct a while later. Being armed only with the odor sleuthing growlithe that had found the pineco and tracked the scent trail in the first place, and a knife his father used in the kitchen, Shriver found himself hard-pressed to counter a poliwrath and a gun. The ninjask that saved him had no such problems, slicing the man’s arm muscles and proceeding to distract the poliwrath. Shriver, believing himself safe because the man had dropped the gun, attacked the man. He received a fair share of injuries, although he successfully killed the man. The trainer that saved him—a man who only introduced himself as Ivan V—offered to teach Shriver to not suck at fighting, and later, introduced Shriver to Lightless.
The trainer explained that members of Lightless always had one partner they could trust implicitly, and that Shriver was not to go after criminals without his partner. They also didn’t kill very often, so Shriver would have plenty of time to bond with his partner. Since Shriver didn’t know how else to find a partner, he asked Vogel, his library friend. They soon were able to build the normal Lightless-partner relationship, as far as Shriver could tell. Since Shriver was on track to becoming a newspaper reporter already, and Vogel had some skill in photography, Vogel developed her skill and took pictures for his articles so they could create a convincing public relationship as well. However, when they both graduated from school, she went into pokémon research while he just started working for newspapers, working his way up to the
Tomoghian Times. They didn’t kill often, although they sometimes helped out the Tomoghian Rangers when there were criminals around, so they had plenty of time to advance on their career paths. Shriver even managed to write a couple of books, although neither was published.
Shriver was informed of two criminals allegedly headed to Kutho. The Metronome Mass Murderer, a collector of metronome-users who had become enamoured with the idea of destroying a city ever since he heard the news from Kutho, succeeded only in destroying part of Llegir, since his pokémon weren’t very powerful, but evaded police. The Port Albini Butcher was a once-local serial killer who chopped each victim’s legs to pieces and took the victim’s shoes. There were also predictions that more criminals would head over there because it was
the place for criminals to go, with the rather lax recruiting procedures for police officers in the region and the lack of an army, and the apparently significant presence of the foreign criminal group Team Rocket. Rather interested in travelling to a new land, even if he’d have to leave his pokémon behind, Shriver agreed to travel there.
He suggested to his superiors at the
Tomoghian Times that he could write several articles about Kutho, particularly about the strange set-up of the government and government organisations. They were interested enough to let him go, pay for his and his partner’s (for the photography, he assured them) plane ticket, and partially reimburse his expenses when he returned.
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Rival’s Name: Nina Vogel
Rival’s Age: 21
Rival’s Gender: Female
Rival’s Appearance:Vogel is a tall, thin woman, with the general appearance of someone who doesn’t take very good care of herself. She has short, messy, greasy blond hair and apparently black eyes hidden behind dirty glasses. She has several scars from claws on her face and arms, and a bite scar on her left leg. Her teeth are clean, but her breath isn’t particularly pleasant. Dirt collects under her fingernails, and most of her clothes have various stains from food and, occasionally, blood. Her usual expressions are a smirk and a scowl, but her small mouth makes it difficult to look menacing when she occasionally glares, snarls, or simply gives a cold killer stare.
She wears a variety of t-shirts with amusing slogans that tend to promote her greatness, insult the other person (or concepts like vegetarianism, religion, et cetera), or relate to math, science, gaming, sarcasm, or mental disorders. She also wears shorts, generally of a dark colour and with a lot of pockets, held up by her belt pouch strap. Her clothes tend to be a few sizes too large, slightly worn, and look like they were crumpled in a ball for storage. Upon arriving in Kutho she wears a shirt saying “NPC”, after her Я t-shirt was confiscated. Most prominently, she has an important-looking camera with a large lens hanging around her neck. Like Shriver, she carries a laptop in her backpack, for both communications with Lightless and her more official work.
While she was unable to bring even one of her many handguns to Kutho, her hatchet was classified as a tool and was allowed.
Rival’s Personality:In everyday interactions, Vogel acts like she believes herself higher than everyone else. She doesn’t care about her appearance and is willing to put herself in high-risk situations for a relatively low payoff. She is highly selfish and self-centred. With an amazing ability to rationalise any action ever, she feels no guilt. She also doesn’t care much for other people, being both antisocial and misanthropic. Shriver has gotten Vogel to admit that it’s simply that she doesn’t hold herself any higher than human beings, and humans suck… but she’s more enlightened than the rest of them and is therefore superior.
Rather bitter and antagonistic, Vogel doesn’t show much respect for authority or anyone else. In fact, she’ll go out of her way to mock people for their weaknesses, pick apart their beliefs and ideals, and generally insult them. She makes a show of not paying much attention to people, although she can remember their words and body language with perfect accuracy. She doesn’t particularly care for anything that’s not rational or purposeful, including things like societal etiquette. There’s no reason not to say what she means, so she’ll just speak her mind, but she tends to do this even when it would be prudent not to. She won’t say she’s sorry when she’s not, or even when she is, as she’s got too much pride for it. She also shuns uniforms, although that may be because she doesn’t like to be recognised as part of a group.
She is highly curious and, when presented with a puzzle, instinctively wants to solve it. Solving the puzzle takes greater priority over anybody’s rights… and so does anything else she wants, really. Including amusement—it’s the motivation for verbal insults, although she generally does not physically attack anyone for fun. She would if she wanted to, but she values intellectual pursuits over physical ones, and it’s much more satisfying to shatter someone’s mind over their bodies. She doesn’t like the way people have to be bound to the physical world, where an unfortunate accident or bad luck can permanently change a life for the worse.
Vogel has an unfortunate tendency to block out all sensations of pain when completely focused on anything, along with emotions and, apparently, any personality she might have. It might not be entirely unfortunate if it didn’t often increase the severity of her injuries, but it does seem to improve both physical and cognitive abilities. Both of these impressions are incorrect, since other than increased concentration, she only seems better because nothing slows her down unless it makes her physically unable to move, and she’s better able to spot openings so that she can fight
dirty. Her newfound incredible persistence and determination is only matched by an almost complete lack of inhibitions. This can be triggered by either extreme interest in something or a need to get something done, as she believes in “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well” (or in her words, “Effort is a terrible thing for a lazy person to waste”).
While she completely denies that she could have a shred of warm fuzz inside, she’s (probably) wrong, although it would also be incorrect to extrapolate that information and conclude she’s a nice person. She does the occasional nice thing for people she cares about, and will sometimes even admit she cares about anyone other than herself, but not directly. She doesn’t thank people often or follow any of the usual rules of politeness, so if she says it without sarcasm, she means it. Of course, she’s always ready with a justification. She also isn’t as unaffected by others (or at least good at hiding it) as she’d like to be, despite her disinterest in both compliments and insults. This is most commonly invoked by her tendency to look like a kicked puppy whenever something actually hurts her emotionally, if only for a moment. She is completely unaware of this, as Shriver is unaffected and nobody else has seen fit to mention it.
Vogel is fiercely protective of her friends, team, and important objects. She will not only kill anyone that severely damages anything she considers important, but try to make them suffer, as well. Similarly to simply being focused on gaining something, she will apparently lack inhibitions, but in this case she’s less prone to doing what is
practical. She’d rather charge head-on at the opponent, and is likely to cut down anyone within reach on her way. In the case that the loss isn’t necessarily permanent, she will go to great lengths to get something of hers back. She won’t willingly admit anything is important to her, but will simply say that she doesn’t like change.
Rival’s Biography:Vogel grew up in Llegir City, a Tomoghian city known best for being the centre of learning and containing no less than three prestigious universities. The general belief of the area was that you were only worth as much as your mind. Emotional intelligence didn’t count even if it did typically lead to success, and everyone had to contribute something to the world if they were going to be worth anything. This was encouraged by her parents, both of whom worked in the main pokémon hospital to deal with serious conditions. They didn’t seem to realise it, but Vogel was scared of her father; he could get violent when angered, and although he never turned this on his wife or his daughter, he often left and came back with a variety of injuries. Vogel resented him for making her feel that way, and threw herself into her studies both to avoid his wrath and to give herself something else to think about. She acquired a growlithe starter and tried to take a pokémon journey, but returned before the summer break was over so that she wouldn’t drop behind the rest of the students.
Since she had skill in photography, she followed that as well as her main studies in pokémon biology, since she thought she would work in a pokémon hospital like her parents. She met Shriver in a library, and amused herself by asking him questions about his writing. Later he asked her if she’d like to fight crime and kill criminals; since she was already considering becoming a pokémon veterinarian for the army and had been learning to shoot so that she could accurately use both tranquilisers and rifles, Vogel expressed interest. She didn’t expect that he’d recruit her into a group of glorified serial killers, but since Shriver was really her only friend and it was justified murder, she agreed.
Vogel switched career paths in high school while interviewing a pokémon professor with Shriver; she realised she could be a pokémon researcher, and that would not only give her the chance to take really nice photographs of pokémon, but dealing with wild pokémon was a lot better than dealing with distressed trainers. With the universities conveniently right in town, she could become a pokémon researcher while still being in the same area as Shriver if he ever needed anything.
Shriver and Vogel managed to avoid conflict by virtue of not caring about the small mistakes, so they were never able to practise mending rifts in their relationship. Shriver wasn’t even used to seeing the signs of any conflicts, because he tried not to get into conflict with anybody. When Shriver had apparently disappeared in a random rain of energy beams that hit the library he’d been studying Tomoghian constitutional law in, only to inform her of his non-dead status by publishing an article about his role in the cleanup three weeks later, she was furious he never told her. He didn’t even really have a good reason for keeping it a secret, and he just told her he didn’t think it was important. Their relationship was built on communication and trust, since both felt they could say anything to each other, but Shriver had not found open communication a duty like Vogel had. Neither of them new how to resolve it, whether by compromise or apology—even when Vogel tried, Shriver pointed out that they would be lying if they apologised—and Shriver thought ignoring and forgetting the problem would work, as it always had before.
Vogel received the information about the Metronome Mass Murderer and the Port Albini Butcher at the same time Shriver did, and they made a joint decision to go—although Vogel was the only one that noticed the discussion didn’t have the usual undertone of the lack of doubt they’d be taking the mission. She knew the mission was only suggested to them because the practical exam was coming up, where she’d have to take a pokémon journey for research and write a paper on it. While most others took their journeys in Tomoghy, Vogel chose to travel to Kutho for the journey, a practise that was more expensive but allowed for more originality. Irritatingly, she’d have to pay for everything herself, and she didn’t particularly want to just help herself to Shriver’s money as she usually did.
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Although they can have a rival battle and everything, I intend for them to travel together at least some of the time, particularly when actively chasing criminals. Vogel doesn’t particularly want to hang around Shriver as much as she used to, though, so they don’t have to do things like try to stick around the same town.
The targets don’t fit the rival role too well since Shriver will never have a friendly battle with them. Not too much is known so far—you could create information on them from the content of Lightless’s emails or I could. They don’t have to be seen for a while, really, since I’m supposed to be killing them.
They could probably have been interesting without death, but I like death. >:(
This post has been edited by Kusarigamaitachi on Nov 7 2009, 07:46 PM
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Bryan Shriver And Nina Vogel, aka BS and Envy
