Work it harder, make it better, do it faster, makes us stronger [OOC|App]
-PLAYER INFORMATION-
Name/Nickname: Peter
AIM/E-mail/Contact: pikabot, peter@spatula.ca
LJ: pikabot
-CHARACTER INFORMATION-
Canon Character and Series: Might Gai, Naruto
In-Game Name: Seaman Might Gai
Age: 29
Gender: Male
Position & Ship: Victoria II, Shipwright
Appearance: Gai stands at around six feet, and has a very powerfully-built frame. He has been undergoing stenuous physical training from a very young age, and as such even though he is not excessively bulky, he very clearly has a lot of power packed into his body.
Gai is always very recognizable, as he has three very easily-identifiable traits: First, his distinctive bowl-cut hair, which he keeps immaculately trimmed, as he feels it gives him a 'youthful' appearance. The second are his abnormally thick eyebrows, which are a full half-inch wide and as solid black as an inkwell. Finally, the third is his omnipresent green jumpsuit, which he wears at all times, no matter how socially inappropriate. He also wears a flack jacket over it, and thick orange socks that cover most of his calves. He wears heavy weights underneath of these, so that even walking around on a daily basis is a form of training.
Gai has a dazzling smile, with teeth so white that they shine. He likes to show this off as often as he can justify.
Personality: Gai has an infectious love of life. No matter what he does, he gives it his all with a smile on his face, and sees it through to completion no matter what. He firmly believes that hard work is the path to success, but that it's worthless unless you believe in yourself, and so he puts his all into everything he does, and always displays confidence that he can carry through on whatever he has chosen to do.
Gai behaves in a flamboyant, attention-grabbing manner, constantly flashing his smile at anyone who will hold still long enough. He loves to show off and be the center of attention, and behaves in an eccentric and flashy way. He also loves proving his worth against a strong opponent, and if he finds one whom he considers a 'rival', will repeatedly challenge them to contests of strength and wit. And keep score of who's winning.
He lives by a philosophy of hard work, and of 'Self-Imposed Rules'. Whenever he takes on a challenge, he will set a punishment for himself if he fails: For example, he might say that if he fails in his task, he will walk five hundred laps around the ship on his hands. He enforces his own rules very strictly, and will always follow through on them, without fail.
Finally, if Gai makes a promise with a 'Nice Guy Pose' (a smile and a thumbs-up sign), he considers this a binding oath, and will not break it under any circumstances.
Abilities/Weapons: Gai is a highly-trained jounin, or elite ninja, highly proficient in hand-to-hand combat, and in the use of shuriken and kunai daggers, which he usually keeps in the many pockets of his flack jacket. He's capable of great accuracy with the thrown weapons, and his own body has been forged into a fighting machine by more than two decades of nonstop training, giving him strength and speed that border on superhuman. His reflexes are uncanny.
Gai is a master of the Strong Fist style of fighting, which focuses on powerful blows that deal external damage. Strong punches and kicks, often with a lot of buildup and follow-through.
Gai has also mastered the opening of the first six Eight Chakra Gates. Chakra is the physical and spiritual energy which flows through the human body, which ninja techniques (or 'jutsu') channel to create various effects, both illusory and physical. Chakra passes through the body in a network of lines, called the Chakra Ciculatory System. These lines converge at eight points, and these are the Eight Chakra Gates.
These gates regulate chakra flow through the body, for its own safety. With sufficient training, one can be taught to override these gates one-by-one, allowing chakra to flow freely through them. This is a very rare skill, possessed only by the best ninja. Doing so pushes the user past the limits of the human body, giving him superhuman strength and speed. The more gates open, the more dramatic the results. With the gates open, the user can move faster than the eye can see, crush bone with a single blow, and generally become an almost-unstoppable combat machine. Opening gates past the third causes the user's skin to turn red, and veins to stand out on his forehead, and his pupils and irises to anish, leaving his eye as a solid mass of white.
Although Gai can use various ninja techniques, he chooses not to, focusing almost entirely on his hand-to-hand skills.
How well can your character hack?: HAHA IS THIS A JOKE. Gai can hack about as well as a dead cat. He's barely tech-savvy enough to MAKE journal posts. This will not, however, stop him from trying to hack. Enthusiastically.
Weaknesses: Gai will never, ever, ever let go of something once he's got started on it. He will see whatever it is through to the end, and damn the consequences. In particular, any promise he makes with a Nice Guy Pose are ironclad, and will never be broken under any circumstances. This leaves him open for manipulation.
Gai has a near-total lack of common sense, and will very frequently say incredibly stupid and annoying things. This sort of eccentric behavior alienates most people.
Although opening the Chakra Gates can give him incredible power, it is also extremely risky: the human body was never meant to withstand that sort of power, and using it causes damage as the muscles and bones are pushed beyond their limits. The more power gained in this manner, the greater the damage to the body. In general, opening the Gates will only allow you to perform one absolutely devastating combo before you are forced to either open more of the gates in order to continue, or the fight is over; whether you win or lose, the damage to your body would be too great to continue the fight. For this reason, opening the Gates is a last-resort move, and Gai only uses it in life-or-death situations, or when he is protecting someone important to him.
History:
Gai was born in downtown Melior, to a pair of museum curators. He did not, however, have the dull and mundane life that one would expect; The museum that his parents ran was a mere front for a shadowy organization of ninja, one of several across the city and beyond. Both of his parents were well-known and highly successful ninja, and Gai grew up surrounded by people who had great expectations for him; it was assumed that he would follow in their footsteps and become one of the elite ninja of the 'Leaf Village' (as the Melior ninja organization was known).
However, as he grew old enough to begin the rigorous training involved in joining the ranks of the Leaf Ninja, it became apparent that he had no special talents. Athough he approached his training with unmatched enthusiasm, he was not particularly good at performing ninjutsu and genjutsu techniques, and his hand-to-hand skills were mediocre at best. In addition to this, his serious-minded parents and instructors had no idea how to deal with his wild enthusiasm, or his bizarre personality, and in the end gave up on him.
Gai's parents never came out and said it, but it was very obvious that they were disappointed with him. His fellow students, however, were merciless, and the instructors were only slightly more tactful. He had the words 'failure', 'loser', and 'washout' thrown at him so many times that he came to believe it; believe that he really would never amount to anything, that he was worthless as a ninja and he might as well give it up. His enthusiasm waned, and then died out altogether, and for a time he was just going through the motions. His heart wasn't really in it anymore.
There was another student Gai's age, named Hatake Kakashi. He was like a mirrored version of Gai: they both had parents who were famous in ninja circles, and both had been the subject of great expectations as they grew up. But whereas Gai had consistently failed to meet those expectations, Kakashi had met and in fact exceeded them, graduating through the training at an almost unprecendented rate.
Gai grew increasingly resentful as he watched Kakashi pass through the training with seeming ease, while he struggled with the basics. It seemed patently unfair that everything should come so easy to the one, while the other suffered. Eventually, in true childish fashion, Gai snapped and attacked Kakashi one night, in a Melior backalley, while he was returning from an assignment.
He was, of course, handily defeated.
But afterwards, lying facedown in the dirt, tears of frustration streaming down his face, he demanded to know...why was Kakashi so gifted? Why had he been given everything he needed, while Gai was nothing but a failure?
Kakashi's only response was to roll his eyes and ask why Gai didn't train harder, if he wanted to be strong.
It was nothing but a taunt, a dismissal of Gai's anger, but it struck a chord with him. He turned the words over in his head time and time again, and eventually came to the conclusion that Kakashi was completely right: Even if he lacked natural talent, that was no excuse. It just meant that if he wanted to be a great ninja like his parents, he needed to work harder at it than he otherwise would. If he wanted something, he would have to work for it.
And so he decided that he would do exactly that. If Kakashi trained for one hour, he would train for three. If Kakashi ran ten laps, he would run thirty. He would work, and work, and work at it, until he was better than any other ninja in the village.
It was exhausting, hard labor, but it began to pay off: first in small amounts and then in greater and greater amounts. He gradually went from being a failure and washout to an elite ninja on par with the legendary Kakashi, and as he did his enthusiasm returned, and he redoubled his efforts once more. He reached the rank of jounin, which officially named him one of the Leaf Village's elites, and then eventually he began to take on students of his own.
However, fate conspired to force him to leave the Village, and enlist in the Ivona navy: In the course of training Rock Lee, his favorite student, he imposed a rule on himself that if he did not successfully leap three rooftops in a row, he would go enlist as punishment. He made the first two with no problem, but when he went to jump to the third one, children set off some fireworks below him, sending him tumbing to the ground. It wasn't his fault, but Gai's conviction was absolute, and so he departed immediately.
No ship captain could possibly deal with his eccentric style and his bizarre behaviors, and so he transferred from ship to ship until eventually he was assigned to the Victoria II, where they knew that either von Karma would kill him, or he would be the death of that miserable old goat. It was considered a win-win situation.
Name/Nickname: Peter
AIM/E-mail/Contact: pikabot, peter@spatula.ca
LJ: pikabot
-CHARACTER INFORMATION-
Canon Character and Series: Might Gai, Naruto
In-Game Name: Seaman Might Gai
Age: 29
Gender: Male
Position & Ship: Victoria II, Shipwright
Appearance: Gai stands at around six feet, and has a very powerfully-built frame. He has been undergoing stenuous physical training from a very young age, and as such even though he is not excessively bulky, he very clearly has a lot of power packed into his body.
Gai is always very recognizable, as he has three very easily-identifiable traits: First, his distinctive bowl-cut hair, which he keeps immaculately trimmed, as he feels it gives him a 'youthful' appearance. The second are his abnormally thick eyebrows, which are a full half-inch wide and as solid black as an inkwell. Finally, the third is his omnipresent green jumpsuit, which he wears at all times, no matter how socially inappropriate. He also wears a flack jacket over it, and thick orange socks that cover most of his calves. He wears heavy weights underneath of these, so that even walking around on a daily basis is a form of training.
Gai has a dazzling smile, with teeth so white that they shine. He likes to show this off as often as he can justify.
Personality: Gai has an infectious love of life. No matter what he does, he gives it his all with a smile on his face, and sees it through to completion no matter what. He firmly believes that hard work is the path to success, but that it's worthless unless you believe in yourself, and so he puts his all into everything he does, and always displays confidence that he can carry through on whatever he has chosen to do.
Gai behaves in a flamboyant, attention-grabbing manner, constantly flashing his smile at anyone who will hold still long enough. He loves to show off and be the center of attention, and behaves in an eccentric and flashy way. He also loves proving his worth against a strong opponent, and if he finds one whom he considers a 'rival', will repeatedly challenge them to contests of strength and wit. And keep score of who's winning.
He lives by a philosophy of hard work, and of 'Self-Imposed Rules'. Whenever he takes on a challenge, he will set a punishment for himself if he fails: For example, he might say that if he fails in his task, he will walk five hundred laps around the ship on his hands. He enforces his own rules very strictly, and will always follow through on them, without fail.
Finally, if Gai makes a promise with a 'Nice Guy Pose' (a smile and a thumbs-up sign), he considers this a binding oath, and will not break it under any circumstances.
Abilities/Weapons: Gai is a highly-trained jounin, or elite ninja, highly proficient in hand-to-hand combat, and in the use of shuriken and kunai daggers, which he usually keeps in the many pockets of his flack jacket. He's capable of great accuracy with the thrown weapons, and his own body has been forged into a fighting machine by more than two decades of nonstop training, giving him strength and speed that border on superhuman. His reflexes are uncanny.
Gai is a master of the Strong Fist style of fighting, which focuses on powerful blows that deal external damage. Strong punches and kicks, often with a lot of buildup and follow-through.
Gai has also mastered the opening of the first six Eight Chakra Gates. Chakra is the physical and spiritual energy which flows through the human body, which ninja techniques (or 'jutsu') channel to create various effects, both illusory and physical. Chakra passes through the body in a network of lines, called the Chakra Ciculatory System. These lines converge at eight points, and these are the Eight Chakra Gates.
These gates regulate chakra flow through the body, for its own safety. With sufficient training, one can be taught to override these gates one-by-one, allowing chakra to flow freely through them. This is a very rare skill, possessed only by the best ninja. Doing so pushes the user past the limits of the human body, giving him superhuman strength and speed. The more gates open, the more dramatic the results. With the gates open, the user can move faster than the eye can see, crush bone with a single blow, and generally become an almost-unstoppable combat machine. Opening gates past the third causes the user's skin to turn red, and veins to stand out on his forehead, and his pupils and irises to anish, leaving his eye as a solid mass of white.
Although Gai can use various ninja techniques, he chooses not to, focusing almost entirely on his hand-to-hand skills.
How well can your character hack?: HAHA IS THIS A JOKE. Gai can hack about as well as a dead cat. He's barely tech-savvy enough to MAKE journal posts. This will not, however, stop him from trying to hack. Enthusiastically.
Weaknesses: Gai will never, ever, ever let go of something once he's got started on it. He will see whatever it is through to the end, and damn the consequences. In particular, any promise he makes with a Nice Guy Pose are ironclad, and will never be broken under any circumstances. This leaves him open for manipulation.
Gai has a near-total lack of common sense, and will very frequently say incredibly stupid and annoying things. This sort of eccentric behavior alienates most people.
Although opening the Chakra Gates can give him incredible power, it is also extremely risky: the human body was never meant to withstand that sort of power, and using it causes damage as the muscles and bones are pushed beyond their limits. The more power gained in this manner, the greater the damage to the body. In general, opening the Gates will only allow you to perform one absolutely devastating combo before you are forced to either open more of the gates in order to continue, or the fight is over; whether you win or lose, the damage to your body would be too great to continue the fight. For this reason, opening the Gates is a last-resort move, and Gai only uses it in life-or-death situations, or when he is protecting someone important to him.
History:
Gai was born in downtown Melior, to a pair of museum curators. He did not, however, have the dull and mundane life that one would expect; The museum that his parents ran was a mere front for a shadowy organization of ninja, one of several across the city and beyond. Both of his parents were well-known and highly successful ninja, and Gai grew up surrounded by people who had great expectations for him; it was assumed that he would follow in their footsteps and become one of the elite ninja of the 'Leaf Village' (as the Melior ninja organization was known).
However, as he grew old enough to begin the rigorous training involved in joining the ranks of the Leaf Ninja, it became apparent that he had no special talents. Athough he approached his training with unmatched enthusiasm, he was not particularly good at performing ninjutsu and genjutsu techniques, and his hand-to-hand skills were mediocre at best. In addition to this, his serious-minded parents and instructors had no idea how to deal with his wild enthusiasm, or his bizarre personality, and in the end gave up on him.
Gai's parents never came out and said it, but it was very obvious that they were disappointed with him. His fellow students, however, were merciless, and the instructors were only slightly more tactful. He had the words 'failure', 'loser', and 'washout' thrown at him so many times that he came to believe it; believe that he really would never amount to anything, that he was worthless as a ninja and he might as well give it up. His enthusiasm waned, and then died out altogether, and for a time he was just going through the motions. His heart wasn't really in it anymore.
There was another student Gai's age, named Hatake Kakashi. He was like a mirrored version of Gai: they both had parents who were famous in ninja circles, and both had been the subject of great expectations as they grew up. But whereas Gai had consistently failed to meet those expectations, Kakashi had met and in fact exceeded them, graduating through the training at an almost unprecendented rate.
Gai grew increasingly resentful as he watched Kakashi pass through the training with seeming ease, while he struggled with the basics. It seemed patently unfair that everything should come so easy to the one, while the other suffered. Eventually, in true childish fashion, Gai snapped and attacked Kakashi one night, in a Melior backalley, while he was returning from an assignment.
He was, of course, handily defeated.
But afterwards, lying facedown in the dirt, tears of frustration streaming down his face, he demanded to know...why was Kakashi so gifted? Why had he been given everything he needed, while Gai was nothing but a failure?
Kakashi's only response was to roll his eyes and ask why Gai didn't train harder, if he wanted to be strong.
It was nothing but a taunt, a dismissal of Gai's anger, but it struck a chord with him. He turned the words over in his head time and time again, and eventually came to the conclusion that Kakashi was completely right: Even if he lacked natural talent, that was no excuse. It just meant that if he wanted to be a great ninja like his parents, he needed to work harder at it than he otherwise would. If he wanted something, he would have to work for it.
And so he decided that he would do exactly that. If Kakashi trained for one hour, he would train for three. If Kakashi ran ten laps, he would run thirty. He would work, and work, and work at it, until he was better than any other ninja in the village.
It was exhausting, hard labor, but it began to pay off: first in small amounts and then in greater and greater amounts. He gradually went from being a failure and washout to an elite ninja on par with the legendary Kakashi, and as he did his enthusiasm returned, and he redoubled his efforts once more. He reached the rank of jounin, which officially named him one of the Leaf Village's elites, and then eventually he began to take on students of his own.
However, fate conspired to force him to leave the Village, and enlist in the Ivona navy: In the course of training Rock Lee, his favorite student, he imposed a rule on himself that if he did not successfully leap three rooftops in a row, he would go enlist as punishment. He made the first two with no problem, but when he went to jump to the third one, children set off some fireworks below him, sending him tumbing to the ground. It wasn't his fault, but Gai's conviction was absolute, and so he departed immediately.
No ship captain could possibly deal with his eccentric style and his bizarre behaviors, and so he transferred from ship to ship until eventually he was assigned to the Victoria II, where they knew that either von Karma would kill him, or he would be the death of that miserable old goat. It was considered a win-win situation.