|| PLAYER INFORMATION ||
| PLAYER NAME: Laure
| AGE: 34
| PLAYER'S JOURNAL:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
quixotic_dreamer
| EMAIL ADDRESS: reflected.stasis@gmail.com
| OTHER CONTACT INFORMATION (AIM/plurk): reflected.stasis@gmail.com
| PLAYED CHARACTER(S): Zelman Clock
|| CHARACTER INFORMATION (NEW BABYLON NATIVE AU) ||
| CANON: No. 6
| NAME: Kobayashi Nezumi (Surname name given for AU character)
| AGE: 18
| APPEARANCE: Nezumi is a man of average height, standing at 182cm, and a pale ivory complexion. He has long blue-black hair that reaches down to his shoulder-blades when down, though he usually wears it twisted up into a knot at the back of his head, save for the layers of long bangs that surround his face and piercing gunmetal-gray eyes framed in thick black lashes that rarely reflect any emotion at all. He has a lithe, lean yet muscular build that lends him a natural grace in movement of most any kind.
He does have what appears to be burn scarring across his back; however he has no memory as to how he received it. The old Lady never said and Nezumi never bothered to ask.
When he’s not at work, he’s usually dressed in some form of cargo pants, boots, and long sleeve shirts, sometimes adorned with light jewelry, most of the time not. When working as ‘Eve’, he usually dresses in soft, flowing gowns with only a touch of makeup to highlight his rather androgynous looks.
| CANON HISTORY (OPTIONAL): The Wiki
| AU CONCEPT & HISTORY: According to Nezumi’s earliest memory, his mother’s stories, their family had once lived outside the dome. They’d lived in a quiet village far removed from the large cities and their wars, under the true sky and a canopy of trees, in the serene shadow of a white-capped mountain. It was a place where technology was the exception rather than the norm until the last great nuclear war.
He always hated those stories.
Because for Nezumi, his reality has always only ever been New Babylon and the atrocities that were carried out in the name of Branch Industries, most especially by Harmonia Industries. In truth, Nezumi’s clan had once been one of the largest in New Babylon, back when it had been formed, before they’d even reached above ground – and they’d been one of the first to naturally develop mutant powers.
Most died at the hands of Harmonia ‘energy research’, but the vast majority of those remaining died in the civil war brought about by the Fire Bringers, save for a small, scattered handful – one of which was his grandfather and his young daughter. His mother, whose voice carried like an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and was capable of shutting down entire blocks around her when focused enough.
She disappeared during the last Mutant March somewhere on L7 and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Nezumi was around four at the time. After that, the old matriarch of their broken clan took him in. She had all traces of his true name and lineage removed from all the records, including his own memory cortex, save the ones she couldn’t reach at Branch and Harmonia. She gave him a new history and name: Kobayashi Nezumi.
From the day she took him in, to the day she died when he was sixteen, she trained him, educated him, and carefully sculpted a wholly independent, emotionally bankrupt being. Her words, her lectures and commands were engraved into his deepest memories:
”Never sigh. Never cry. Or the demons will take advantage of your weakness. Sighing makes you vulnerable, so it’s best to keep your mouth shut. Don’t let your heart fall for anyone. Trust no one inside it.”
She was the one that taught him how to hone his connection with the mice and rats of the lower levels, and ensured he had the best instructors from near god-level hackers. She was the one that never let him forget the stories passed down, generation after generation, of the things that were done to their people in the name of New Babylon… and she was the one that got him involved with the remnants of the Fire Bringers, of whom hold his tenuous alliance.
When he was fourteen, and after his guardian died in a rather suspicious accident, Nezumi attempted to break into Branch Industries main office on Level 8, in order to try to find information on his parents or his guardian. He barely got past the first few levels of security before he was discovered and his escape was little better. Had it not been for a young man named Shion, he might not have escaped at all. But that boy, the same age as he, had hidden him and helped him escape back down below... and for that, Nezumi has always felt he owed that boy a priceless debt that hangs over his head.
Now, he does what he must to get whatever ‘ins’ he can get with the upper levels, all in the hopes of bringing them down. He makes enough hacking to support himself on Level 4, but works for the twins at the HostWorld, and has for the past two years, both as a host, a sometimes hacker, and a spy on his fellow workers for the twins, though he reports directly to Kaoru.
Due to his diligent efforts of attending school all the way through high school, he’s managed to catch the eye of the scholarship board at Harmonia and has received a full-ride sponsorship to UNB from them, which he started this last term with a dual major of Bio-engineering and English Literature. The irony that they’re the ones paying for his education, just so he can find a way to tear them down from the inside, is one he relished with absolute delight.
He’s currently living in his mentor’s old apartment on Level 4 - which is nothing more than a small loft-style apartment crammed full of old books and texts (Many of which are in various states of ‘damaged’ from the acid water before they were retrieved from the remains of the Level 2 Library). These books have been collected and passed down in secret for generations and Nezumi... doesn’t share them willingly.
| PERSONALITY: Nezumi is, in a word, a survivor. He made a choice early on, to dig in deep and claw his way forward - to hold fast to this life he has by any means necessary. And he made that choice, again and again as he grew older. When circumstances, uncertainty, or exhaustion wore him down, he chose to continue to live no matter what. He learned to do whatever it takes in order to ensure his own life reached the next day, and discovered all too soon what the weight of having to take a life felt like, accepted the realities of having to kill another to reach that goal of survival.
He truly believes the axiom ‘Survival of the fittest’.
It’s because of this that he learned to shut people out, to distance himself from them as much as possible to avoid attachment or perceived weakness on his own part. Jagged and jaded to the extreme, he became the perfect example of a hard-hearted loner, utterly cool, aloof, and uninvolved.
Experienced and unaffected on every level.
From his actions and reactions, it’s obvious that Nezumi is a seasoned close-combat fighter with reflexes honed in experience rather than simple instruction. He has an above average grasp of situational awareness, thus can easily take ‘stock’ of the moment and plan accordingly – a skill that makes it exceptionally difficult to catch him off guard. While he is proficient with using whatever is at hand in a fight, his weapon of choice is the switchblades that he always carries on his person.
He’s confident without being cocky in his fighting skill, and doesn’t brag or boast unnecessarily to appear greater than he is (at least in that respect). He’s self-aware enough to recognize his strengths and weaknesses… and how to hide them all.
And yet.
He befriended a trio of mice early on, introduced to him by his guardian - going so far as to call them his companions, and developed a deep, abiding passion for literature. Especially tragedies. He would spend all of his free time in the safety of his home – nothing more than a run down, two bedroom apartment on Level 4 left to him by the old woman that had cared for him after his parents were killed – reading every single book and tome that he managed to salvage from the lowest storage rooms of the abandoned library on Level 2 and what he can reappropriate from the upper levels.
Books on science and technology, on mathematics and engineering, classics and religion. Shelf after shelf, he lost himself in a wealth of knowledge contained in his run down apartment, all stacked in haphazard piles against walls, around his bed, in the hallways and the miniscule kitchen so that the place was little more than a bed, a piano, a couch and a small coffee table, and his interface equipment - all surrounded by his amassed treasures.
He’s mechanically inclined, having developed his own miniature AI that looked like mice, complete with warm fur and fluid movements that he used to both infiltrate the government on the upper Levels and to find Shion again because for him...
Shion is the only one that can evoke such a confusing mix of frustration, irritation, exasperation, joy, and bemusement in Nezumi.
In canon, he can’t help the sarcastic teasing that he used with the other, nor the sharpness with which he berated him for clinging to the bonds Shion still held in No. 6. While talking to Shion, Nezumi revealed a rather telling bit of advice that shows how he views survival:
"Back there, you threw away your citizenship card because it was a danger to us. So are feelings for other people. You get dragged around, pulled this way and that, and before you know it, you're in dangerous territory. Your mama, papa, your grandma, whoever― they're all strangers now. There's no emotional room in you to be concerned about strangers. Your hands are full enough trying to keep yourself alive."
And yet.
For all that he continuously claims that he and Shion are strangers, he always follows harsh criticisms with almost gentle words or actions that reveal the shades of a lie beneath the assertion.
To Nezumi, reality is something that betrays people every day, with a disturbing ease even as it pulls people's lives in unanticipated directions. Reality is something that can coolly and casually fling them into despair, was equally cruel and violent, and utterly absurd. Reality isn’t to be trusted - it could make anything happen at any time, or take anything that was of value without hesitation.
Personal questions are ignored outright by anyone, and downright anger him if asked with any measure of persistence - because by his estimation, they’ll break down the safety barrier of ‘strangers’ that he has set between him and everyone else. It’s in these moments that people see the harder edge to Nezumi, an animalistic quality that bespeaks of a stubborn fight or flight instinct to avoid human attachments.
For all that Nezumi’s actions and words reveal a special case for Shion, this skittishness and wariness has become something too far ingrained within Nezumi. He also reveals, in constant subtle ways, that his own grasp on reality is often suspect. In canon, when spoken to by Shion with a blunt honesty, Nezumi automatically assumes Shion is quoting lines from a book or play. He doesn’t always connect sincere words and action to the truth or feeling, as he’s never really had the experiences in his life that would indicate those things exist outside of said book and plays.
It’s a weakness that only Shion has been unwittingly gifted the right to see by Nezumi, though Nezumi himself is quite unaware.
He uses harsh, often cutting words to maintain that distance between him and everyone else, then turns right around and softens the blow with an act of kindness or softer reassurances if that person is Shion. He’s a constant contradiction, but only with Shion.
And the reason? Nezumi firmly believes that he and Shion will become enemies one day. Because of Shion’s strong desire to still keep and protect those few bods he holds within No.6 (or in this case, New Babylon) and Nezumi’s intense hatred for all that No. 6 (New Babylon) stands for, Nezumi can’t see or accept that there will be a middle ground.
It’s one of the many ways Nezumi shows that his world view is very much ‘black and white’. Upper Levels, Lower Levels, holding onto those bonds or cutting all ties, survival of self over acts of kindness to others. All things he views in strict lines, save for the few instances he crosses those lines.
| POWERS & ABILITIES: He’s a survivor with a photographic memory - he can fist fight down and dirty with the worst of the street rats from the lower levels and specializes in close combat knife fighting... if he fights at all. But he can also spin escape plans on the fly given the fact that he’d rather slip away and survive another day, than fight someone for what is probably a pointless reason to start with. He has a heightened sense of his surroundings, a sixth sense that detects dangerous situations enough for him to beat a hasty retreat before things get life-threatening... usually.
As a descendant of one of the first families to develop mutant powers, Nezumi has a few unique ones of his own. The first being that he’s capable of commanding and controlling mice and rats with his thoughts, an animalistic form of telepathy, though he’s more prone to use this ability to communicate with them like companions than anything.
The second being his voice. Or more specifically, his singing voice, which is capable of either hypnotizing his target, calming them, or evoking other strong emotional responses from them. And more importantly, if focused enough, he can emit a frequency to disrupt the normal function of vital organs so that his voice can give them that final push over the edge - he can help them die.
Nezumi is quite competent with technological engineering. He specializes in building small, miniature AI mice that have a ‘living’ skin complete with heat sensor. These mice can be used to track people or items, or for audio/visual surveillance, or to create 3D imagery of secured locations, thus he’s a Level 16 Hacker and makes the majority of his contacts for hacking jobs through his mice.
No one’s ever met him in person, at least not while he’s working as the hacker known as VC-103221.
| ECONOMIC STANDING, EQUIPMENT & PETS: For all intents and purposes, he appears to be nothing more than one of the many struggling members of Level 4. He works four days a week, goes to school five days, and manages to maintain his inherited apartment. In truth he has a little more breathing room with finances hidden under false names and chips in order to support his other, more dangerous goals.
He has three mice that are his companions: Cravat (the tan one), Hamlet (The white one), and Tsukiyo (the black one). They’re descendants of a breed that had been native to the village that Nezumi’s clan had been from, way back when, and have a higher than normal intelligence. They can understand human speech to some degree and while they have no ability to articulate responses to anyone else, Nezumi can communicate with them quite easily. He can use them to deliver messages via encrypted messages in a small digital capsule they carry in their mouth.
Unlike these three, he has two miniature AI mice that he uses to go where it would be otherwise difficult or impossible for him to go. Both of these are small, pale gray mice with dull red eyes in contrast to his living companions, whom all have grape-colored eyes. The first one is used for surveillance and is capable of audio and visual recording as well as transmitting his own voice either as is or through a voice disguiser when needed. The second he uses as both a guide when setting up deals or to track a person’s location for... whatever reason. This one is equipped with a miniature 3D imaging system that can show maps and directions of anything from a street path to a building schematic.
His bike, the Sparatanni Shark is a medium-range sidewinder model hover bike that utilizes anti-matter gravity generation and computational friction to scale walls outside of its maximium yaw. Sacrificing safety for aerodynamics, the Shark boasts agility over heavier models and is ideal for navigating through street-level alleyways and the lower world's nooks.
| COMPANY AFFILIATION: Harmonia Industries, since they’re paying for his education.
| ANYTHING ELSE?: Nope.
| WRITING/VOICE SAMPLE: “Must you leave so soon, mi’lady?”
Nezumi sighed softly before he offered the woman sprawled out on the table a soft laugh, his hands never stilling as they kneaded their way back up a slender back. Long, slender fingers traced a light path along smooth, glowing shoulder blades up to curl around one delicate shoulder as he brushed damp strands away from the nape of her neck. His voice dropped low, the tone smooth and lilting as he murmured beside her ear, “I lament the days between partings and rejoice in your return, as always.”
He paused just long enough to brush a feather-light kiss along the edge of her jaw, then pushed to his feet so that he could catch the plush robe and hold it out for her to step into. He watched with a faint, teasingly playful smile as she stood and walked towards him. “I pray you don’t make me wait so very long this time.”
She said something appropriate to the tease; he returned it with that same light tone – easy banter with a regular, a little over the top because it always made her smile.
She was an easy read that way.
It was a dance, a familiar performance that took little effort to see through and once he’d helped her into her dress and styled her hair, lavished her with the simple attentions of one being pampered to the highest degree and escorted her to the exit...
He lost the smile and slipped back to his dressing room to shed his last costume of the night – a plush towel and little more – and slipped into a nice, hot shower. He wasted no time then, simply washed the lingering ghost of well-manicured fingertips from his skin then stepped out to dress properly in boots, black cargo pants and vest over a white long-sleeve tee-shirt. He was still toweling his hair when he heard a high, excited chittering and glanced up to look at the little gray mouse before him.
He blinked, paused just long enough to ensure they were alone, and then accessed the recording within the mouse through the airwaves between them. He watched the 3D projection flicker to being above the mouse, watched as a fellow employee actually slipped a ring off of the hand he was kissing before he pocketed it.
Fucking amateur.
With a thought, he skimmed the rest of the video just to make sure it wasn’t a game of theirs but no – she left and he pulled his stolen goods out of his pocket with a grin and Nezumi snorted derisively as he pushed to his feet. He snagged his backpack out of his locker, laughed softly when one a little white mouse chittered with a much lighter note as it leapt from the bag once it settled to scurry around to his other shoulder. The gray one, however, darted to the door and slipped out to the hallway, its signal warning Nezumi when it came across others in the corridors and stairwells as he made his way up to the top floor and right into Kaoru’s office.
The code was different – it took him a fair minute to gain access to the man’s office, but no more for their little game. Once inside, he settled in an indolent slouch into one of the plush seats before the desk, his ankle hooked on his knee, and waited in the dark silence for the door to open.
And when it did, he wasted no time.
“Since I am one to say ‘I told you so’, it took me three minutes and fifty-two seconds to get in this time. Less than the five you bet last time, your majesty. And I have the video proof you requested on Sebastian’s thieving little fingers. So! Time to pay up, so I can slink back down to the trash heap, my lord~”
| PLAYER NAME: Laure
| AGE: 34
| PLAYER'S JOURNAL:
quixotic_dreamer| EMAIL ADDRESS: reflected.stasis@gmail.com
| OTHER CONTACT INFORMATION (AIM/plurk): reflected.stasis@gmail.com
| PLAYED CHARACTER(S): Zelman Clock
|| CHARACTER INFORMATION (NEW BABYLON NATIVE AU) ||
| CANON: No. 6
| NAME: Kobayashi Nezumi (Surname name given for AU character)
| AGE: 18
| APPEARANCE: Nezumi is a man of average height, standing at 182cm, and a pale ivory complexion. He has long blue-black hair that reaches down to his shoulder-blades when down, though he usually wears it twisted up into a knot at the back of his head, save for the layers of long bangs that surround his face and piercing gunmetal-gray eyes framed in thick black lashes that rarely reflect any emotion at all. He has a lithe, lean yet muscular build that lends him a natural grace in movement of most any kind.
He does have what appears to be burn scarring across his back; however he has no memory as to how he received it. The old Lady never said and Nezumi never bothered to ask.
When he’s not at work, he’s usually dressed in some form of cargo pants, boots, and long sleeve shirts, sometimes adorned with light jewelry, most of the time not. When working as ‘Eve’, he usually dresses in soft, flowing gowns with only a touch of makeup to highlight his rather androgynous looks.
| CANON HISTORY (OPTIONAL): The Wiki
| AU CONCEPT & HISTORY: According to Nezumi’s earliest memory, his mother’s stories, their family had once lived outside the dome. They’d lived in a quiet village far removed from the large cities and their wars, under the true sky and a canopy of trees, in the serene shadow of a white-capped mountain. It was a place where technology was the exception rather than the norm until the last great nuclear war.
He always hated those stories.
Because for Nezumi, his reality has always only ever been New Babylon and the atrocities that were carried out in the name of Branch Industries, most especially by Harmonia Industries. In truth, Nezumi’s clan had once been one of the largest in New Babylon, back when it had been formed, before they’d even reached above ground – and they’d been one of the first to naturally develop mutant powers.
Most died at the hands of Harmonia ‘energy research’, but the vast majority of those remaining died in the civil war brought about by the Fire Bringers, save for a small, scattered handful – one of which was his grandfather and his young daughter. His mother, whose voice carried like an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and was capable of shutting down entire blocks around her when focused enough.
She disappeared during the last Mutant March somewhere on L7 and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Nezumi was around four at the time. After that, the old matriarch of their broken clan took him in. She had all traces of his true name and lineage removed from all the records, including his own memory cortex, save the ones she couldn’t reach at Branch and Harmonia. She gave him a new history and name: Kobayashi Nezumi.
From the day she took him in, to the day she died when he was sixteen, she trained him, educated him, and carefully sculpted a wholly independent, emotionally bankrupt being. Her words, her lectures and commands were engraved into his deepest memories:
”Never sigh. Never cry. Or the demons will take advantage of your weakness. Sighing makes you vulnerable, so it’s best to keep your mouth shut. Don’t let your heart fall for anyone. Trust no one inside it.”
She was the one that taught him how to hone his connection with the mice and rats of the lower levels, and ensured he had the best instructors from near god-level hackers. She was the one that never let him forget the stories passed down, generation after generation, of the things that were done to their people in the name of New Babylon… and she was the one that got him involved with the remnants of the Fire Bringers, of whom hold his tenuous alliance.
When he was fourteen, and after his guardian died in a rather suspicious accident, Nezumi attempted to break into Branch Industries main office on Level 8, in order to try to find information on his parents or his guardian. He barely got past the first few levels of security before he was discovered and his escape was little better. Had it not been for a young man named Shion, he might not have escaped at all. But that boy, the same age as he, had hidden him and helped him escape back down below... and for that, Nezumi has always felt he owed that boy a priceless debt that hangs over his head.
Now, he does what he must to get whatever ‘ins’ he can get with the upper levels, all in the hopes of bringing them down. He makes enough hacking to support himself on Level 4, but works for the twins at the HostWorld, and has for the past two years, both as a host, a sometimes hacker, and a spy on his fellow workers for the twins, though he reports directly to Kaoru.
Due to his diligent efforts of attending school all the way through high school, he’s managed to catch the eye of the scholarship board at Harmonia and has received a full-ride sponsorship to UNB from them, which he started this last term with a dual major of Bio-engineering and English Literature. The irony that they’re the ones paying for his education, just so he can find a way to tear them down from the inside, is one he relished with absolute delight.
He’s currently living in his mentor’s old apartment on Level 4 - which is nothing more than a small loft-style apartment crammed full of old books and texts (Many of which are in various states of ‘damaged’ from the acid water before they were retrieved from the remains of the Level 2 Library). These books have been collected and passed down in secret for generations and Nezumi... doesn’t share them willingly.
| PERSONALITY: Nezumi is, in a word, a survivor. He made a choice early on, to dig in deep and claw his way forward - to hold fast to this life he has by any means necessary. And he made that choice, again and again as he grew older. When circumstances, uncertainty, or exhaustion wore him down, he chose to continue to live no matter what. He learned to do whatever it takes in order to ensure his own life reached the next day, and discovered all too soon what the weight of having to take a life felt like, accepted the realities of having to kill another to reach that goal of survival.
He truly believes the axiom ‘Survival of the fittest’.
It’s because of this that he learned to shut people out, to distance himself from them as much as possible to avoid attachment or perceived weakness on his own part. Jagged and jaded to the extreme, he became the perfect example of a hard-hearted loner, utterly cool, aloof, and uninvolved.
Experienced and unaffected on every level.
From his actions and reactions, it’s obvious that Nezumi is a seasoned close-combat fighter with reflexes honed in experience rather than simple instruction. He has an above average grasp of situational awareness, thus can easily take ‘stock’ of the moment and plan accordingly – a skill that makes it exceptionally difficult to catch him off guard. While he is proficient with using whatever is at hand in a fight, his weapon of choice is the switchblades that he always carries on his person.
He’s confident without being cocky in his fighting skill, and doesn’t brag or boast unnecessarily to appear greater than he is (at least in that respect). He’s self-aware enough to recognize his strengths and weaknesses… and how to hide them all.
And yet.
He befriended a trio of mice early on, introduced to him by his guardian - going so far as to call them his companions, and developed a deep, abiding passion for literature. Especially tragedies. He would spend all of his free time in the safety of his home – nothing more than a run down, two bedroom apartment on Level 4 left to him by the old woman that had cared for him after his parents were killed – reading every single book and tome that he managed to salvage from the lowest storage rooms of the abandoned library on Level 2 and what he can reappropriate from the upper levels.
Books on science and technology, on mathematics and engineering, classics and religion. Shelf after shelf, he lost himself in a wealth of knowledge contained in his run down apartment, all stacked in haphazard piles against walls, around his bed, in the hallways and the miniscule kitchen so that the place was little more than a bed, a piano, a couch and a small coffee table, and his interface equipment - all surrounded by his amassed treasures.
He’s mechanically inclined, having developed his own miniature AI that looked like mice, complete with warm fur and fluid movements that he used to both infiltrate the government on the upper Levels and to find Shion again because for him...
Shion is the only one that can evoke such a confusing mix of frustration, irritation, exasperation, joy, and bemusement in Nezumi.
In canon, he can’t help the sarcastic teasing that he used with the other, nor the sharpness with which he berated him for clinging to the bonds Shion still held in No. 6. While talking to Shion, Nezumi revealed a rather telling bit of advice that shows how he views survival:
"Back there, you threw away your citizenship card because it was a danger to us. So are feelings for other people. You get dragged around, pulled this way and that, and before you know it, you're in dangerous territory. Your mama, papa, your grandma, whoever― they're all strangers now. There's no emotional room in you to be concerned about strangers. Your hands are full enough trying to keep yourself alive."
And yet.
For all that he continuously claims that he and Shion are strangers, he always follows harsh criticisms with almost gentle words or actions that reveal the shades of a lie beneath the assertion.
To Nezumi, reality is something that betrays people every day, with a disturbing ease even as it pulls people's lives in unanticipated directions. Reality is something that can coolly and casually fling them into despair, was equally cruel and violent, and utterly absurd. Reality isn’t to be trusted - it could make anything happen at any time, or take anything that was of value without hesitation.
Personal questions are ignored outright by anyone, and downright anger him if asked with any measure of persistence - because by his estimation, they’ll break down the safety barrier of ‘strangers’ that he has set between him and everyone else. It’s in these moments that people see the harder edge to Nezumi, an animalistic quality that bespeaks of a stubborn fight or flight instinct to avoid human attachments.
For all that Nezumi’s actions and words reveal a special case for Shion, this skittishness and wariness has become something too far ingrained within Nezumi. He also reveals, in constant subtle ways, that his own grasp on reality is often suspect. In canon, when spoken to by Shion with a blunt honesty, Nezumi automatically assumes Shion is quoting lines from a book or play. He doesn’t always connect sincere words and action to the truth or feeling, as he’s never really had the experiences in his life that would indicate those things exist outside of said book and plays.
It’s a weakness that only Shion has been unwittingly gifted the right to see by Nezumi, though Nezumi himself is quite unaware.
He uses harsh, often cutting words to maintain that distance between him and everyone else, then turns right around and softens the blow with an act of kindness or softer reassurances if that person is Shion. He’s a constant contradiction, but only with Shion.
And the reason? Nezumi firmly believes that he and Shion will become enemies one day. Because of Shion’s strong desire to still keep and protect those few bods he holds within No.6 (or in this case, New Babylon) and Nezumi’s intense hatred for all that No. 6 (New Babylon) stands for, Nezumi can’t see or accept that there will be a middle ground.
It’s one of the many ways Nezumi shows that his world view is very much ‘black and white’. Upper Levels, Lower Levels, holding onto those bonds or cutting all ties, survival of self over acts of kindness to others. All things he views in strict lines, save for the few instances he crosses those lines.
| POWERS & ABILITIES: He’s a survivor with a photographic memory - he can fist fight down and dirty with the worst of the street rats from the lower levels and specializes in close combat knife fighting... if he fights at all. But he can also spin escape plans on the fly given the fact that he’d rather slip away and survive another day, than fight someone for what is probably a pointless reason to start with. He has a heightened sense of his surroundings, a sixth sense that detects dangerous situations enough for him to beat a hasty retreat before things get life-threatening... usually.
As a descendant of one of the first families to develop mutant powers, Nezumi has a few unique ones of his own. The first being that he’s capable of commanding and controlling mice and rats with his thoughts, an animalistic form of telepathy, though he’s more prone to use this ability to communicate with them like companions than anything.
The second being his voice. Or more specifically, his singing voice, which is capable of either hypnotizing his target, calming them, or evoking other strong emotional responses from them. And more importantly, if focused enough, he can emit a frequency to disrupt the normal function of vital organs so that his voice can give them that final push over the edge - he can help them die.
Nezumi is quite competent with technological engineering. He specializes in building small, miniature AI mice that have a ‘living’ skin complete with heat sensor. These mice can be used to track people or items, or for audio/visual surveillance, or to create 3D imagery of secured locations, thus he’s a Level 16 Hacker and makes the majority of his contacts for hacking jobs through his mice.
No one’s ever met him in person, at least not while he’s working as the hacker known as VC-103221.
| ECONOMIC STANDING, EQUIPMENT & PETS: For all intents and purposes, he appears to be nothing more than one of the many struggling members of Level 4. He works four days a week, goes to school five days, and manages to maintain his inherited apartment. In truth he has a little more breathing room with finances hidden under false names and chips in order to support his other, more dangerous goals.
He has three mice that are his companions: Cravat (the tan one), Hamlet (The white one), and Tsukiyo (the black one). They’re descendants of a breed that had been native to the village that Nezumi’s clan had been from, way back when, and have a higher than normal intelligence. They can understand human speech to some degree and while they have no ability to articulate responses to anyone else, Nezumi can communicate with them quite easily. He can use them to deliver messages via encrypted messages in a small digital capsule they carry in their mouth.
Unlike these three, he has two miniature AI mice that he uses to go where it would be otherwise difficult or impossible for him to go. Both of these are small, pale gray mice with dull red eyes in contrast to his living companions, whom all have grape-colored eyes. The first one is used for surveillance and is capable of audio and visual recording as well as transmitting his own voice either as is or through a voice disguiser when needed. The second he uses as both a guide when setting up deals or to track a person’s location for... whatever reason. This one is equipped with a miniature 3D imaging system that can show maps and directions of anything from a street path to a building schematic.
His bike, the Sparatanni Shark is a medium-range sidewinder model hover bike that utilizes anti-matter gravity generation and computational friction to scale walls outside of its maximium yaw. Sacrificing safety for aerodynamics, the Shark boasts agility over heavier models and is ideal for navigating through street-level alleyways and the lower world's nooks.
| COMPANY AFFILIATION: Harmonia Industries, since they’re paying for his education.
| ANYTHING ELSE?: Nope.
| WRITING/VOICE SAMPLE: “Must you leave so soon, mi’lady?”
Nezumi sighed softly before he offered the woman sprawled out on the table a soft laugh, his hands never stilling as they kneaded their way back up a slender back. Long, slender fingers traced a light path along smooth, glowing shoulder blades up to curl around one delicate shoulder as he brushed damp strands away from the nape of her neck. His voice dropped low, the tone smooth and lilting as he murmured beside her ear, “I lament the days between partings and rejoice in your return, as always.”
He paused just long enough to brush a feather-light kiss along the edge of her jaw, then pushed to his feet so that he could catch the plush robe and hold it out for her to step into. He watched with a faint, teasingly playful smile as she stood and walked towards him. “I pray you don’t make me wait so very long this time.”
She said something appropriate to the tease; he returned it with that same light tone – easy banter with a regular, a little over the top because it always made her smile.
She was an easy read that way.
It was a dance, a familiar performance that took little effort to see through and once he’d helped her into her dress and styled her hair, lavished her with the simple attentions of one being pampered to the highest degree and escorted her to the exit...
He lost the smile and slipped back to his dressing room to shed his last costume of the night – a plush towel and little more – and slipped into a nice, hot shower. He wasted no time then, simply washed the lingering ghost of well-manicured fingertips from his skin then stepped out to dress properly in boots, black cargo pants and vest over a white long-sleeve tee-shirt. He was still toweling his hair when he heard a high, excited chittering and glanced up to look at the little gray mouse before him.
He blinked, paused just long enough to ensure they were alone, and then accessed the recording within the mouse through the airwaves between them. He watched the 3D projection flicker to being above the mouse, watched as a fellow employee actually slipped a ring off of the hand he was kissing before he pocketed it.
Fucking amateur.
With a thought, he skimmed the rest of the video just to make sure it wasn’t a game of theirs but no – she left and he pulled his stolen goods out of his pocket with a grin and Nezumi snorted derisively as he pushed to his feet. He snagged his backpack out of his locker, laughed softly when one a little white mouse chittered with a much lighter note as it leapt from the bag once it settled to scurry around to his other shoulder. The gray one, however, darted to the door and slipped out to the hallway, its signal warning Nezumi when it came across others in the corridors and stairwells as he made his way up to the top floor and right into Kaoru’s office.
The code was different – it took him a fair minute to gain access to the man’s office, but no more for their little game. Once inside, he settled in an indolent slouch into one of the plush seats before the desk, his ankle hooked on his knee, and waited in the dark silence for the door to open.
And when it did, he wasted no time.
“Since I am one to say ‘I told you so’, it took me three minutes and fifty-two seconds to get in this time. Less than the five you bet last time, your majesty. And I have the video proof you requested on Sebastian’s thieving little fingers. So! Time to pay up, so I can slink back down to the trash heap, my lord~”
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