ooc information / relationships [ ooc ]

[jawbite]

[ heine rammsteiner ]

For anyone unfamiliar with his canon, it is probably unclear exactly what Heine is, what he can do, what the Black Dog is and how it affects Heine's personality and actions. I thought I should make a post to clarify any and all information regarding Heine's powers (in this case, what the chip is suppressing and how much of it is suppressed) and how he deals with things.

[ kerberos ]

First of all, Heine is a human being, but he has been genetically modified. When he was a child, Heine was kidnapped with a group of other children by a woman named Angelika Einstürzen and taken to a lab where they were all experimented on. The experiment Heine was a part of was called the Kerberos experiment, where a metal "spine" (a collar fused into the back of the neck) was implanted into each child, granting them superior fighting abilities, the power to regenerate wounds at a very fast pace, and an alteration to their personalities which forced them to become consumed with bloodlust in the heat of battle. Basically, the children were turned into human weapons and forced to fight other genetically-mutated creatures until they became used to fighting and came to relish it. Towards the end of the experiment, Heine went into a rage and slaughtered all of the other children involved in the experiment. He also killed the child he had been the closest to during the experiment, his "sister" Lily, by ripping her spine out of her body.

[ powers ]

Regeneration - He can replenish lost blood, mend bone, replace tissue and fix damage to organs. He can get a hole put through him by a bullet and completely regenerate the wound back to normal in a matter of seconds. Serious damage to his body might take a little longer to regenerate, but typically still doesn't take much longer than a few minutes. If his heart is stopped by a "killing" blow, he will be incapacitated for the short amount of time it takes his body to regenerate him out of critical condition and restart his heart again. It is unclear whether there is a limit on how many times he can restart his heart, but he has "died" in the manga at least twice and gotten back up on his feet shortly afterward, completely healed.

Strength/Speed - Are both obviously enhanced, though it isn't completely clear how much. People have mentioned things out loud while fighting him to the effect of "DAMN, HE'S FAST" or "SHIT, HE'S STRONG", so it's understood that Heine at least has superhuman strength and speed.

Other - Not really a power granted to him by the Kerberos spine, but Heine has incredible aim with his guns. He can literally shove his own arm behind his back and shoot a man through the forehead while still looking in the opposite direction. So even if he doesn't have his superhuman strength and speed, as long as he keeps enough distance between them, he probably wouldn't have to worry that much about his target surviving long enough to attack him unless they also have superhuman abilities.

In Discedo - Because Heine currently has his chip in, his abilities are very different in Discedo from what he's capable of in canon. His ability to regenerate is pretty much gone, along with his ability to survive death. He doesn't have superhuman strength or speed, but he still does have his superior aim and all of his battle experience. So while it would be completely possible to hurt, maim or kill Heine, he's still far from helpless and he would be perfectly capable of defending himself and putting up a good fight so long as his guns are available to him. (Of course, if Heine has crossed over into the Black Dog persona during the fight, he most likely won't use the guns very much, if at all. For more explanation on how Heine fights as the Dog, see the Black Dog section.)

[ women ]

As a result of killing Lily, Heine developed gynophobia, an abnormal fear of women that causes him to mentally break down when a female touches him or comes within close proximity to him. When a female comes within Heine's personal space, it triggers the Black Dog persona inside of his head and control over the Dog becomes nearly impossible. A notable exception to his gynophobia is Nill, a girl who has also been experimented on genetically. Heine does not seem to fear Nill at all, instead seeming to react to her presence by calming down or becoming highly protective of her. Nill is also the only person Heine seems to trust, as he talks to her freely about his nightmares, his feelings about the Dog and his regrets.

[ black dog ]

Note: A lot of this is going to be theorizing because there hasn't been a whole lot explained about the Dog so far. So this might be edited as further chapters come out.

From what has been presented in the manga, the Black Dog is a persona that exists inside Heine's mind that can be triggered by Heine's mental instability, especially during combat or when females get too close. It does not come out every time he fights or every time a girl nearly touches him, but Heine seems to struggle with it more visibly at times where he is under significant mental stress. It has also surfaced unexpectedly when doing other things, such as once while riding the subway, where Heine hallucinated seeing Giovanni and Giovanni taunted him about Lily and the Dog, causing him to turn and snap at the other unsuspecting people on the subway (and look completely insane in the process).

It's been hinted that Heine is most likely constantly aware of the Dog's presence in his mind, but he is also constantly suppressing it either by keeping himself as void of emotion as possible, to avoid feeding fuel to the fire, or by keeping himself distracted with other things, such as taking on jobs with Badou and taking the extra aggression and violence out on those targets. The Black Dog is probably predominantly quiet or at least just a small voice in the back of his mind unless something happens or someone comes around to trigger it into activity.

When the Black Dog does come out, though, there are ways that it changes Heine's appearance, personality and behavior. Heine seems to grin a lot more, his pupils dilate, he bares his teeth a lot and he makes...creepy faces, for lack of a better description. Personality-wise, he becomes incredibly focused on one thing and one thing only: the desire to kill. Or maim, or decapitate, or bite someone's face off, but mainly just kill. As far as behavior goes, he normally decides to drop his guns and use his hands and nails and teeth to fight instead. On one occasion, BlackDog!Heine bit a man's lip and part of his face clean off, ripping the chunk of flesh out and spitting it onto the floor with a grin. If he isn't fighting, BlackDog!Heine is probably taunting, trying to incite a fight or thinking about killing you.

It isn't really clear whether the Black Dog persona is part of the Kerberos spine and came from it being implanted into Heine or whether it came later and developed as a result of the traumatic experiences he went through in the lab. The only other survivor of the Kerberos experiment, Giovanni, clearly has a sadistic personality, but as far as I can tell the sadism is simply part of who he is as a person and he never really displays signs of having an alternate persona the way Heine does. Heine, however, does see the Dog as separate from him and he generally refuses to acknowledge it as his split personality, instead referring to it almost as if it is a completely different, unwanted entity that he can't get rid of, no matter how hard he tries to ignore it.

[ extra ]

Heine sees himself as different. Not in a good way. Definitely in a bad way. He'll think of people who are completely normal humans as better and therefore probably feel a little jealous of them and have much more difficulty getting along with them. He'll feel bitter about their "easy" lives without alternate personas and violent tendencies and the Black Dog will probably regard them as hardly even worth making the effort to tear them to pieces, though it might try to anyway.

He'll probably get along with other people better if they are similarly different in some way, whether they aren't human at all or whether they are human but have also been modified, genetically or otherwise. This isn't to say that he'll immediately become BFFs with them just because they share that connection, but it will make a difference in how much he can tolerate them and how willing he will probably be to learn more about them or spend more time around them. The Black Dog, on the other hand, will probably be more attracted to people with superhuman abilities and will want to kill them all that much more.

His mood might change depending on the weather. Because of his albinism, being out in direct sunlight will bother Heine quite a bit and he'll probably be more irritable, anxious and depressed during sunny weather. He'll remain indoors as much as possible during days where there aren't any clouds and the sun is out, or when it is very warm outside. It's been mainly cold and cloudy during his stay in Discedo so far, so he hasn't had to resort to hiding indoors quite yet and he's felt about as comfortable in the city as he felt in the Underground back home as far as weather goes.

Heine has nightmares. He dreams about Lily, reliving his time spent in Eins's lab, ripping people to shreds, all of the people he's killed in the past, etc. It seems that while he never bats an eyelash at killing a roomful of people while he's doing it and in that violent mindset, he still goes through a small amount of regret in his subconscious, enough that it bothers him so much he has to confess how he feels about it to Nill, questioning why he should be allowed to continue living when everyone else he's attacked has died.

He hates being touched anywhere near his neck. A pat on the shoulder will make him tense up a bit, straying too close to the neckline will earn a reactionary growl, his body jerking away or even a punch. He wears high-collared jackets to try to hide them, but he wears bandages wrapped around his neck at all times to hide the metal collar and he's constantly hyperaware of the proximity of his collar to other people's hands or wandering eyes.

[ relationships ]

TEMPLATE: NAME (STATUS; RECOGNIZES BY) | FIRST MET IN/ANY SIGNIFICANT POSTS | ADDITIONAL DETAILS

Xellos (neutral; voice, face) ➯ [ first gunshot ]
Sai (neutral; voice, face, name "Sai") ➯ [ first gunshot ] ➯ thinks of as female, therefore wary of her because she gets too close
Kamui (neutral; voice, face) ➯ [ first gunshot ] ➯ went for a bullet run with and fought some monsters with him
Patchouli (neutral; text) ➯ [ first gunshot ]
Nill (likes/trusts; face, "voice", name "Nill") ➯ [ first gunshot, canon ] ➯ very used to, gets along with, is protective of
Testament (neutral; voice, face) ➯ [ first gunshot ]
Jackie (neutral; voice, face, name "Jackie") ➯ [ first gunshot ] ➯ live together in Horton with Nill, slightly wary of, obtained a gun from that Jackie can make bullets for whenever he wants
America (neutral; voice) ➯ [ second gunshot ]
Meryl (neutral; voice, face) ➯ [ second gunshot ]
Mia (neutral; voice) ➯ [ third gunshot ]
Axel (neutral; voice, face, name "Axel") ➯ [ Axel's post ] ➯ surprisingly not terribly hard to get along with
River (neutral; voice) ➯ [ River's post ]
Denmark (neutral/annoyed by; voice, name "Denmark") ➯ [ fourth gunshot ] and [ Denmark's post ] ➯ argues with a lot and he thinks he's kinda nuts, but he's intrigued by Denmark's special abilities (not dying, not being phased by injury) because it reminds him of himself and he's never "identified" with anyone else before
Jake Marshall (neutral; text) ➯ [ fourth gunshot ]
[ LEFT DISCEDO ] Misumi Toshiya (neutral/wary; voice, name "Toshiya") ➯ [ third gunshot ] ➯ wary of because he thinks Heine's "Dog" is part of him and not a bad thing, whereas Heine hates it being there and sees it as a separate entity; also because he knows Nill
Grit (neutral; voice, name "Grit") ➯ [ fourth gunshot ]
[ LEFT DISCEDO ] Akira Inugami (neutral; voice, face, name "Akira Inugami") ➯ [ Akira's post ]
Falkner (dislikes; voice) ➯ [ Falkner's post ] ➯ tried to make conversation after the ghost event and got shot down terribly as well as challenged; he'll be on Heine's shit list for a whiiile

UPDATED: MAY 10, 2010

Am I missing you? Comment and let me know! Don't worry if he's only talked to your character once or twice; I'm using this to keep track of every single person he's talked to as well as any significant developments in CR, so I'll be glad to add anyone I've missed.