OOC INFO
CHARACTER INFORMATION-
Canon Character and Series: Giovanni / Pokemon Special
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Position & Ship: 4423: Passenger
Appearance: Even Giovanni’s enemies will admit that he’s got style, even if he doesn’t appear to have any other redeeming qualities. He’s always dressed to the nines, even in situations that don’t require it. Outside of the traditional black suit and meticulously polished black shoes, he’s usually either wearing a white turtleneck or a high-collared shirt. He rarely, if ever, wears any kind of neckwear, though. For any particularly shady business that requires going out in public, he opts for a black overcoat and a fedora.
Physically, he isn’t too shabby either, though he does have an undeniably shady (and smug) look at almost all times. His black hair is always slicked back, and he has piercing gray eyes. He’s also very fit, although there are slight hints that he’s not as well as he used to be-while he’s still rather muscular, he looks somewhat pale and worn.
Personality: Giovanni is very much what one would expect of the head of a far-reaching criminal organization. He’s cold, calculating, and cruel, and will do whatever it takes to reach his goals-which mainly involve gaining large amounts of money and power. Of course, it’s entirely possible that one wouldn’t know that upon first meeting him-when interacting with those who don’t know of his illicit dealings, he can come off as affable, intelligent, cultured, and even charming… if a bit dorky and easily pushed around. Of course, in all probability, it’s an act designed to throw those people off their guard so he can figure out what makes them tick. He’s not entirely above attacking family members of his opponents to get them to comply with his plans or using similar underhanded tactics.
Oddly enough, though, he does have something of a sense of honor. He respects powerful enemies rather than considering them worthless, and will even offer that they join his organization rather than suffer inevitable defeat at his hands. Of course, if they refuse, he won’t pursue it-while he’s incredibly stubborn, he doesn’t go after things that are very obviously impossible. If he’s simply outmatched, he’ll swallow his pride and retreat until a more opportune moment, but he won’t give up on it. He’s usually rational-minded, but there are a few occasions where his emotions can get the best of him.
He’s also not unnecessarily cruel; he does what he deems necessary to accomplish his goals. He’s also of the belief that well-treated subordinates produce better results. While he will berate them for failure, he doesn’t abuse them, and he firmly believes in rewarding good service. Rather than offing subordinates who fail him, he usually sends them off for more training. Of course, all bets are off if you actually betray him, in which case you can expect something far worse than a baseball bat to the kneecaps. He also cares deeply for his family members, and if they are kidnapped or somehow harmed, he will do whatever it takes to get them back… or take revenge on whoever harmed them.
Abilities/Weapons: Giovanni’s main strength is in his intelligence. He’s very good at figuring out the psychology of his enemies, and is exceptional at planning. In most cases, he can even tell you how long it will take for his plan to take effect, right down to the second. Also, he has the charisma necessary to run a far-reaching criminal organization, and can be pretty charming too. He’s also relatively physically fit despite horrible wasting disease, and knows his way around a gun. If caught unarmed and unaccompanied, he's somewhat experienced at the sort of no-frills street fighting that involves taking whatever advantage presents itself and using improvised weapons.
Of course, his main strength is his experience with training monsters. It’s nothing superhuman, but it definitely counts as a talent, and when it comes to certain kinds of monsters-primarily ones that are along ground elemental lines. Granted, it does take him a lot of work; he has to earn their respect in some way before they consider him their ‘trainer,’ although the fact that he almost exclusively focuses on a select group of monsters makes it easier for him to figure out what, exactly, they’re looking for. While he does have quite a few large, powerful monsters that answer to him, they’re extremely impractical to bring on a ship, so while traveling he relies almost exclusively on a monster that’s essentially a giant bee with extra stingers on its front feet. Appropriately named Beedrill, the wasp is a combination living weapon/bodyguard/butler. Its intelligence is on the level of a fairly clever dog, and it can take much more abuse than regular insects. It’s immune to most poisons, and its own venom is quite potent.
Other than that, Giovanni is quite wealthy, and has quite a bit of influence in Vohemar. The fact that he’s the head of a far-reaching criminal organization is a pretty decent advantage in and of itself, as well.
He also has the ability to say completely ridiculous things without suffering for it. Nobody’s really sure how he can manage to say “Raid on the city knock out evil tusks” without bursting into laughter halfway through, but he does it.
How well can your character hack?: Medium. He usually has people to do it for him, but he’s learned to do it in the event that he’s ever in a situation where that would be impossible. He’s never really been as good as it as he’s been with other things, though, and it annoys him to no end; it does take him quite some time to clear medium difficulty, and he’s never been able to clear hard at all.
Weaknesses: When it comes down to it, Giovanni is only human. Without Beedrill, he’s much less effective at fighting, although he can usually think his way out of things. He’s also very bad at dealing with highly unpredictable opponents. While he isn’t too bad at adapting to changing situations, it does tend to throw him off his game long enough for the other person to work in a few decisive blows.
Beedrill has its own weaknesses. While it is a strong, effective fighter, it’s still rather fragile compared to many other monsters; if they can connect, it will generally go down in a few hits. It also doesn’t handle cold well at all; in mild cold, it will become rather sluggish and ineffective, and if left in extreme cold, it won’t last long at all.
Giovanni isn’t… exactly well, either. He has a chronic, eventually fatal disease that degenerates the function of his heart and lungs. Large amounts of physical and emotional stress can bring on severe chest pains and coughing that leaves him incapacitated anywhere from fifteen minutes to an entire day. At present, these episodes are rather infrequent and usually not too severe; however, that will likely change as the disease progressively gets worse, and it’s still something of a hindrance.
Giovanni also has a great deal of enemies, which should be… rather obvious, considering his line of work. He’s almost entirely remorseless about what he does, as well, so anything he does to people with whom he’s already had some… run-ins, it’s highly unlikely that he’s going to do anything to make them any less competitive. He also has a tendency to start off fights at a disadvantage-granted, he does this on purpose as a means of challenging himself or throwing this opponents off, but it’s entirely possible that at some point he’ll lose too much ground early on and be unable to catch up.
He also can’t come up with a decent-sounding motto to save his life.
History: Team Rocket isn’t exactly a new organization, but in the grand scheme of things, it hasn’t been around that long. Giovanni’s grandfather started it as an organization specializing in the illegal trade of monsters and using said monsters for other criminal activities. When he died, the organization was passed down to Giovanni’s mother. By then, it was a force to be reckoned with within Vohemar, expanding from its initial location in the forests around Bydan to having bases of operation in Colvus and Licere. His father was… well, Giovanni never really knew him or knew much about him. He proved to be… a bit to incompetent for the Boss of Team Rocket’s tastes, so it’s likely that she disposed of him.
While none of that seemed to have rubbed off on Giovanni, his relationship with his mother was… strained, at best. She always considered him to be a bratty, disagreeable boy, while he considered her rather petty and ineffectual. Their enmity reached a breaking point when Giovanni was fifteen, when he vocalized the thought that he could probably run Team Rocket himself. Needless to say, this upgraded their relationship into mutual loathing. At that point, he was essentially forced to leave until he became more… agreeable. He was given a monster as a companion, at the very least-but… well… it was a small, yellow caterpillar. This was made doubly insulting due to Giovanni’s interest in ground-elemental and rock-based monsters.
Nevertheless, rather than abandoning the seemingly pathetic little thing, Giovanni decided to make the best of a bad situation. He took it with him and headed out into the Badlands… and came back five years later. In that time period, he’d gained a team consisting of rugged Badlands monsters and the caterpillar, which had since metamorphosized into a fearsome-looking wasp.He also seemed to have gotten something of an attitude adjustment-at least, outwardly. He’d mostly learned to save his gloating until he actually had an opportunity to do so.
In any case, he eventually worked his way up to a reasonably high position in the organization. His mother’s opinion of hadn’t changed beyond considering him tolerable enough to allow back in, so there wasn’t enough nepotism to make it easy for him. It didn’t really help that he received dangerous missions that nobody else wanted to take, but those had the unfortunate effect of just causing him to come back stronger. At that point, he was biding his time, waiting for an opportunity to take over…
And then, the opportunity came.
It was mostly luck on his part; his mother was a competent leader, but even the best make mistakes; during a particularly risky mission that involved a personal appearance at a raid on Claiborne, Ivonian officials stepped in and arrested her. Of course, Giovanni wasn’t about to just let the organization die, so, due to his large support base and the fact that he was likely going to inherit the position anyway, he immediately took charge.
Quickly, the scope of the organization was changed. The previous boss had been more concerned with trafficking monsters for profit than anything very far reaching; however, Giovanni wanted something… more.A continent-spanning criminal empire would suffice. Team Rocket had already had a small scientific division under his mother, but he put a greater emphasis on it for the purpose of creating stronger monsters.
Of course, his personal life was going rather nicely as well. While he’d developed a minor-if chronic-cough, it really wasn’t anything to worry about. He married a high-ranking member of the organization, and about a year or so later they had a son who they named Silver. Things seemed to be going very well… but, all good things must come to an end.
And so they did when Silver disappeared one day. It was likely a kidnapping, but he just as easily could have wandered off or fell down into a ravine or… something. Team Rocket was mobilized into a search party for weeks, but… nothing came of it. Eventually, Giovanni gave up-or, at least, redirected his efforts into things that would likely accomplish something within the year. He never really gave up, though; he assumed that there was some way that he could find the boy.
It also became apparent that the minor cough was… not minor. In fact, it would prove fatal… eventually. Its progression could be slowed by medication, but it couldn’t be completely stopped. Giovanni didn’t take this particularly hard-after all… he’d just have to move things forward more quickly and leave something in place for his inevitable successor. So, Team Rocket’s expansion was put into high gear. The science division was expanded even more, and began working in earnest on even more experiments. Some monsters, which could naturally change forms due to a large amount of fighting experience or exposure to certain rocks in a process dubbed “evolution”, were given the ability to switch between divergent evolutionary paths. Unfortunately, this could usually only be done at great pain to the poor creature involved. One such creature (known among the scientists as “Eevee”) escaped, but it was of no real consequence. There were better things planned.
Like, for instance, Giovanni’s position in Bydan. Considering his criminal connections were generally rather well hidden, he managed to seem at least relatively trustworthy. His skill with taming and training monsters also made him quite valuable to the mayor; after all, there’d been an upsurge of monster attacks in the forest, so more people who knew how to deal with monsters were highly valued. (It never really occurred to them that some monsters might have been put there for just that purpose…) In any case, Giovanni was awarded a position in the Vohemar League... which he gradually abandoned. There were more important things to be done, after all; he’d mainly gone after the position to gain more access to the forest, which he used as a training ground for Team Rocket’s monsters. They were going to be used mostly for Team Rocket’s benefit. Although… when a rather lucrative-looking business deal came up, Giovanni wasn’t about to turn it down.
A group known as Denouement contacted Giovanni after the incident, wishing to engage in some business dealings-i.e., getting some illegal monsters. Being the head of the sort of organization that Team Rocket was, Giovanni didn’t ask many questions-after all, as long as they were there, he was quite sure that if worst came to worst, he could simply have his subordinates sic their monsters on their potential buyers if they attempted to play them. They were to meet at an abandoned base in the far north of Ivona that Giovanni had commandeered for his own use.
Unfortunately, things did not go as planned. When Giovanni arrived, it became apparent that Denouement had taken all the monsters there. After further digging, he learned that they hadn’t taken all the monsters; the Victoria II had attacked the abandoned base, and in their haste to escape, Denouement had taken the best monsters for themselves while leaving the rest to the Victoria II.
Needless to say, this was not the optimal result. Giovanni was… somewhat miffed, partially due to the fact that there did not seem to be any intention of any reimbursement for either the monsters that Denouement had taken or the ones that the Victoria II had taken, and partially because he’d let it happen in the first place. He redirected efforts into tracking Denouement down, but unfortunately, it was almost impossible to find any leads.
So, Giovanni decided to take matters into his own hands. He considered using an airship of his own… but it would be far too attention-grabbing, considering it had a big "R" painted on the side. Something smaller would have to suffice… and, as luck would have it, the 4423 happened to be in the town he was presently in.