[[OOC: Profile Meme]]
[Character Name] Raiden (Real Name: Jack Sears)
[Canon] Metal Gear Solid
[Age] 30
[Gender] Male
[Sexual Orientation] Heterosexual (bite me guise)
[Eye Color] Icy Blue
[Hair Color] Platinum
[Height] 5'10" (With cyborg high heels he is 6' even)
[Other] RAIDEN IS A ROBOT. Except for his head and his spine.
[Clothing] Clothes? Who needs clothes??? Though he does like to wear a black trench coat atop all of that machinery. God knows why.
[Background] Raiden grew up on the battlefields of Liberia during the civil war. A child of the 1980s, he was adopted and named by Solidus Snake, who killed both of his parents and brought him up to be a young soldier. And truth be told, he excelled at killing. He was given his first AK when he was six; became commander of the Small Boys Unit by ten. Raiden earned the nicknames “White Devil” and “Jack the Ripper” with his skill and prowess. When the Liberian Civil War ended in 1996, he was rescued by an American NGO, brought to the states, and given a new life. Eventually he had forgotten his past as a child soldier.
But Raiden was always destined to live the life of a soldier. After acclimating to the states, he joined the United States Army’s Task Force XXI Corps, a special initiative designed to train members via cutting-edge military technology. There, Raiden underwent extensive virtual reality training and mental reconditioning to wash what remained of his childhood clear from his mind. Raiden was later chosen as a member of the covert ops team FOXHOUND, which specialized in solo sneaking missions and boasted such ‘alums’ as the legendary Solid Snake. Between Task Force XXI and FOXHOUND training, he successfully completed over 300 virtual reality missions (and I could only complete about 10 in Metal Gear Solid 2 - damn!), including several based on Solid Snake’s real missions.
Raiden met Rosemary on April 30, 2007. Rose, a missions data analyst at the FOXHOUND Manhattan base, quickly became his girlfriend. They remained a couple over the next two years, though not without its fair share of bumps and hardships; they often got into fights, and Raiden, plagued by nightmares and fragments of his childhood, was stubbornly unable open up to her as a genuine intimate partner. Their relationship grew more and more tense until, on April 29, 2009, Raiden was deployed on his first solo sneaking mission, an incident that became known as the Big Shell Incident. Rose was assigned as his mission data analyst.
The Big Shell incident was a major turning point in Raiden’s life. It was there that he was given the codename, “Raiden.” He was originally instructed by his commanding officer, Roy Campbell, to take down the leader of a terrorist organization (then thought to be Solid Snake) holding the United States President hostage in a large water purification facility located off the Manhattan coastline. The Big Shell was later revealed to be a secret weapons development lab containing mobile nuclear devices and innumerable metal gears. Ultimately, the terrorists planned to launch a nuclear strike from the Big Shell to Manhattan. The terrorist leader was later revealed to be none other than Solidus Snake, a.k.a. Ex-President George Sears and Raiden’s adoptive father.
During the Big Shell mission, Raiden joined forces with his longtime soldierly idol, the real Solid Snake, and the mysterious Cyborg Ninja. The three of them worked together to take down the three freaks of nature working with Solidus and became close soldierly buddies. By the end of the incident, Raiden discovered that most of his life and the mission was a gigantic lie devised by The Patriots, an AI-run organization that wanted to experiment with how far their influence and control could go. They used Raiden as a guinea pig in a conspiratorial plan to control the minutest aspect of the American citizen’s everyday life; and, truth be told, Raiden became exactly the man the Patriots intended for him to be.
Raiden’s final showdown with Solidus triggered his memories as a child soldier; it all came flooding back to him at once, and he was able to put together his fragmented nightmares. He explained to Rose why he could never expose her to what he really was: a cold-hearted killer. He didn’t want to hurt her, so he tried to hide his true self from her. The tables were turned yet again when she revealed to him that she had been working as a Patriot spy for the full two years she’d been with him. She was chosen to be his girlfriend because she could shape herself to fit Raiden’s conception of the perfect woman. However, this had been tearing her up - her act started to crumble when she realized she had actually fallen in love with him. When she finally learnt of Raiden’s true past during the Big Shell mission, she broke down into tears and, before the Patriots A.I. finally cut her off, told him that she was pregnant with his child.
But Rose was not the only woman manipulated by the Patriots. The Cyborg Ninja, revealed to be a woman by the name of Olga Gurlukovich, was blackmailed into being a part of the mission by the Patriots. She had to assist Raiden in his goal or risk the death of her child, who was kidnapped by the patriots at birth. Olga originally wielded the high-frequency blade that would later go to Raiden. After Solidus revealed his plot to take down Manhattan and the Patriots, Olga implored Raiden to survive the mission and save her child from Patriot clutches. She was then killed by Solidus Snake.
The Patriots’ final instruction for Raiden was to kill Solidus Snake, his own adoptive father. Raiden didn’t have a choice; if he failed to follow through, his death would result in the death of Rose and the death of Olga’s child. He successfully defeated Solidus in blade-to-blade combat, said his farewells to Solid Snake (who promised to search for Olga’s child), and met up with Rose once more. Together they promised to start a new life together with their unborn child.
However, their happiness was not meant to be. Shortly after the Big Shell incident, Raiden became plagued with a nasty case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. His memories of his days as a child soldier resurfaced and his nightmares worsened. He spent days away from home and stuck in bars, drinking his woes away. When he did come home, he’d be covered in cuts and bruises - evidently bar brawls became his main hobby. Rosemary became terrified of him. Frightened and concerned for the child’s well-being, she informed him that she had a miscarriage. Shortly after that, Raiden never returned home to her, opting instead to dive into his missions and spend most of his free time piss-ass drunk. Rose pretended to marry Roy Campbell, Raiden’s former FOXHOUND commander, so that she and her son would remain shielded from Patriot eyes. Since she was no longer a part of Raiden’s family, Raiden had no ties to her, and thus, they could not be used as weapons against him. Rose, from this point onward, is waiting for the day the Patriots are destroyed to tell Raiden the truth. She still loves him to this day.
Meanwhile, Raiden tried to keep busy to force himself to forget his past. As Solid Snake’s health declined with his accelerated aging, Raiden took it upon himself to find and rescue Olga’s child. He managed to receive information on the child, Sunny, from Big Mama, the leader of the Paradise Lost Resistance Group constructed to take down the Patriots, in exchange for the location of a legendary soldier’s (Big Boss, whom all the snakes were clones from) remains. Raiden saved Sunny from the Patriots and delivered her to Solid Snake and his nerdy friend, Otacon, for them to raise as their own.
Raiden, with no home to return to, decided to dedicate his work to Big Mama’s cause. While attempting to retrieve Big Boss’s remains from the Patriots in 2011, he was captured and held in the mysterious Area 51. The Patriots subjected Raiden to brutal torture and human experimentation, slowly replacing his organic body with an enhanced cybernetic exoskeleton. By the time he was rescued by Big Mama’s resistance in 2013, all that remained of his battered body was his head and spine, severed at the jaw. Big Mama took him to Dr. Madnar, who fixed up his body and replaced his Patriot nanomachine-laced blood with artificial white blood.
With Big Boss’s body in Big Mama’s hands, a new body to get him by and no further assignments for the time being, Raiden traveled the world. During his stay with the Alaskan natives, he learned the epic ways of the ninja and developed super keen tracking skills.
In 2014, he received a new mission from Big Mama: find Solid Snake, instruct him to seek out the Paradise Lost Resistance in Eastern Europe, and help him with his cause. The last cyborg ninja Raiden remembers of his life in the waking world is traveling to South America, where he had last heard Solid Snake was headed.
[Personality] Raiden is a stubborn ass. He’s often confused about his life. He doesn’t know for sure what’s real and what isn’t, he doesn’t know for sure what he should be fighting for or if his existence even has a purpose. But once Raiden has convinced himself of something, he is set and others will be hard-pressed to change his mind. Usually this applies to little things, as he’s too damn confused and muddled about the big picture to be stubborn about it.
Raiden is loyal to a fault. Once he makes a real connection with another human being (a very rare thing), he is dedicated for life. For example, despite their difficulties, Raiden has never cheated on Rose. Raiden feels like he owes a debt to Snake for helping him during the Big Shell mission; if he were to ever meet Snake again, he would dedicate his life and his entire being to protecting him. At this point in his life, other’s lives mean a lot more to Raiden than his own existence. To this extent, he kind of has a death wish. If protecting Snake meant dying in the process, he would do it without hesitation.
Raiden is emo. There’s so much angst in his existence it’s borderline comical. Hell, it even rained the day he was born. I feel like that says it all. But basically, although he’s mostly coped with his childhood, he kind of hates himself as the cold-blooded killer he never wanted to be. To solve this dilemma he chooses not to be himself - Jack the human no longer exists; Raiden, the soldier, has taken his place.
Raiden can be quite selfish and self-absorbed, probably the nature of his depressed/PTSD tendencies. He’s not very cognizant of how other people feel or perceive him. Instead, he’s too preoccupied with his own miseries and woes (in his rainy corner of the room) to understand how he comes off to other people. He probably comes off as fairly whiny and emo, but that’s because he honestly just doesn’t understand that there are other people out there who think, feel, and have their own issues to deal with. It’s all about how bad he’s got it; he has nothing, everyone else is bound to have something more than him.
Raiden is an emotional wreck. As cold and in-control as his exterior may be, when it comes down to it, Raiden is a sobbing mess on the inside. Poor baby! He's been burned far too many times for him to be unguarded. But push the right buttons and it’ll be pretty obvious that he’s not the most mentally/emotionally stable man on the planet. Rose is a good pressure point if you want to see him crumble.
Although normally quite serious (robotically so), Raiden has a nasty sarcastic streak in him. When he’s annoyed or offended, he will get quite snippy. He also has a fairly dry sense of humor. Most might take his jokes seriously, or find his idea of a joke rather mean-spirited or in bad taste. This goes hand-in-hand with his inability to recognize how he appears and sounds to other people. ☺
Raiden is also extremely avoidant. He would rather forget about everything wrong in the world and push forward in blissful ignorance. As a result, he will never openly talk about himself to anyone… except Solid Snake. Snake is special like that.
If there's one thing that Raiden is randomly passionate about, it's classic monster movies. KING KONG is his favorite. Don’t get your facts wrong or he will ramble on forever about it.
TL;DR - RAIDEN IN A NUTSHELL: Kind of crazy, very stubborn, extremely loyal yet paradoxically self-absorbed, Raiden no longer thinks of himself as a person but as a soldier whose sole purpose is to carry out the mission and protect others. He’s a ticking time bomb; push the right buttons and he’ll probably have a breakdown.
[Specialties/Abilities] Ninja Breakdance Fighting.
I’m not joking. Seriously.
Okay, to elaborate, since he is essentially a cyborg ninja, he has enhanced abilities compared to a normal human. He has pretty ridiculous physical strength, and though he was acrobatic in his original body, it’s nothing compared to the capabilities of a machine.
He can wield his High Frequency blade like a natural and has some pretty damn sweet knife skills. He’s quick enough to deflect some bullets with the blade.
Raiden can also get stabbed like a billion a times and live, though he’d probably need one hell of an artificial blood infusion after that. Raiden is capable of dying, but he would need to be decapitated, struck in the head or left to die of severe blood loss.
[Affection] Raiden is such an emotional wreck that he'd be hard-pressed to make any intimate relationships with many other people. Rose is/was the love of his life; there really isn't anyone else out there for him. Other people are welcome to try some advances on him (if lower-jaw-less cyborgs is your thing O_O), but I doubt it'll end well.
[Fighting] Anything goes. Maim him, beat him up, stab him fifty times, I don't care. All he'll need is some time to recover from the blood loss and a means to repair him. I prefer to prearrange/pre-plan deaths, though, so if you're thinking about killing him or a fight is leading up to death, just drop me a line in AIM before you do it.
[Other Facts] NINJA NINJA NINJA NINJA.