Alita

Gary
A.K.A.	Killing Angel #99, G-1, The Angel of Death, Octopus-Lips, Yoko von der Raiserklinge
Age	It's complicated...
Voice Actor
Relatives	Daisuke Ido (adoptive father, sort of--amnesiac)
Series	Gunnm(Gun Dream)
Player	Paul (Exacerangutan)

• Name: Gary
• Age: 220 (16 years as Yoko, 191 years in stasis, 13 years as Gary)
• Sex: Female (cyborg)
• Parents: Unknown
  • Place of Birth: Somewhere on Mars
  • Nationality: Martian/Surfacedweller
  • Specialty: Cyborg/anticyborg martial arts
  • Hobbies: Music, history, philosophy
  • Likes: Quiet time among friends, books, music, self-knowledge, fighting
  • Hates: Philosophy turned to justifying meanness and brutality
  • Favorite Music: Rock, pop (probably)
  • Favorite Sport: Motorball
  • Most Valuable Possessions: Damascus glaive, TUNED equipment
  • Level of Education: Self-taught

• Physical Stats
  • Height: 4'10"
  • Weight: 100 lbs
  • Eyes: Brown
  • Hair: Black
  • Special: Metallic facial markings like eyeblack

Appearance

Gary is an unusually short girl with a characteristically pouty expression which has lead to her being teased for her "octopus-lips" more than once. Together with her large, innocent eyes, this makes her more cute than alluring--except when she gets wrapped up in combat, and slips into a berserker frame of mind, when she just looks rabid. The Soft-Machine body in which she would arrive is apparently designed to be not only fast and flexible but more anatomically correct than a cyborg body would need to be, although there are a number of telltale hardpoints where the soft outer shell seals up, and the extremities have a number of advanced alloy components, especially on striking surfaces. Much of the torso is a flexible but extremely strong nano-engineered polymer substrate with a relatively skinlike texture but far greater toughness. The TUNED body includes a tight-fitting polymer bodysuit resembling black leather.

Personality

Gary has suffered from total amnesia since she was awakened and named by Daisuke Ido about 13 years ago. Only in the heat of battle has she been able to tap into her lost memories--first welling up unconsciously in the form of techniques from the legendary cyborg martial art Panzer Kunst ("armored technique") which had been almost unheard of for 200 years, followed by glimpses of Mars, half-remembered faces, and eventually her original name, Yoko. Through a string of personal tragedies, Gary has always been driven by a fierce will to live, a desire to protect those people precious to her, and a compulsion to learn more about herself. She has begun to gain some modicum of inner peace, although she remains profoundly torn between her fiery, vivacious nature and the weight of all she has lost since her Scrapyard experiences.

Background

Most of Gary's background is a mystery to her. What she has learned is that, a long time ago, she was a member of a secret martial arts society employing a style known as Panzer Kunst, that her name at the time had been Yoko, and that she had been on a terrorist mission when she failed in some way and was thrown to Earth from orbit. She survived only because of the nanotech emergency stasis treatments carried out on her brain tissue. Besides this and some very sparse details of her youth, however, all her memories are those of being revived by the cyberdoctor Daisuke Ido in the Scrapyard, a vast half-city half-trashheap serving essentially as a dedicated refinery for the sky city Tiphares.

Ido had been exiled from Tiphares, probably due to lacking the mental limiter system implanted in most Tiphareans in order to make them more dedicated to upholding the Tipharean social order. Having been a physician on Tiphares, he eventually became a cyberphysician once in the Scrapyard, and would often dig through the trash heaps looking for useful parts to salvage; on one such trip, he found the mostly-intact head and upper spin of a girl, with the brain still intact, and decided to revive her and name her after his recently deceased (male) cat, Gary. Ido was also a Hunter-Warrior, a sort of freelance law-enforcement mercenary, and despite intending to shelter her, his moonlighting as a fighter soon drew Gary into battle as well, where she exhibited a talent he couldn't have dreamed of.

Unfortunately, this talent also earned her dangerous enemies and thrust her deep into the violence of the Scrapyard. Within two years of being awakened, Gary had become a Hunter-Warrior, fallen in love with a criminal wanted dead or alive, mourned his death, made a mortal enemy in the Hunter-Warrior Zapan, and left Ido to lose herself fighting in the Motorball arena. In the selfless surge of battle, she learned that she could recapture glimpses of her old memories, and she pursued them relentlessly until she narrowly won a tightly contested match against the champion (and otherwise peerlesss martial artist) Jashugan, finding some measure of peace in their peculiar relationship. Afterward, her troubles multiplied--another Tipharean living on the surface, known as Desty Nova, had bought a dangerous military technology cyborg body which Gary had left in storage during her motorball career.

Desty Nova unlocked this Berserker Body's full battlefield potential and placed into it the half-destroyed brain of Alita's old enemy Zapan, but the combination of the body's extraordinary power and Zapan's mind stripped down to the pure will to take revenge against Gary was far more than he had anticipated. Ido was killed, and the Scrapyard was nearly obliterated by Zapan's mad rampage, until Gary managed to stop him using a nanomachine-collapser weapon given to her by Desty Nova. In the aftermath, her execution for the illegal use of a firearm was narrowly halted by the director of the Ground Investigations Bureau (GIB) of Tiphares, who gave her an ultimatum: work for Tiphares, or die. What convinced her to cooperate, however, was the assignment: to track down Desty Nova, who claimed that he would be able to resurrect Ido--a claim made credible by his persistent healing even after she had "killed" him.

For the next ten years, Gary pursued Desty Nova across the wasteland outside the Scrapyard, tearing through entire regiments of the rebel military known as Barjack, rumored to have adopted Desty Nova as a cybernetics expert. When she finally found Ido, however, he had erased his own memory, and had no idea who she was; worse still, the GIB sent a replica of Gary, G-2, based on records of her combat data, to test whether a purely artificial and mass-reproduceable replica could best the much less reliable original. Already in a state of turmoil and with little will to fight, Gary only narrowly won thanks to the self-sacrifice of her Tipharean handler Lou. The GIB Director ordered her to continue on her mission, and despite the loss of an eye, an arm, and a foot, she followed through and confronted Desty Nova, desperate to know what had driven Ido to erase his memories of her--however, it was revealed that her true mission was to make contact with Nova so that Tiphares could ask him to return.

In response, Desty Nova demonstrated to Gary--and by videophone, to the GIB Director--the discovery that had tormented Ido: that all Tiphareans, including Ido, Nova, and the Director, had had their brains removed upon reaching the age of majority, and replaced with a brain chip. This discovery was too much for the Director to handle and he went mad, bringing the GIB down with him. In the resulting confusion, Desty Nova attempted to escape, and Gary pursued him down into the core of his laboratory complex; but when she confronted him, he used her internal link to Tiphares' to force her into a lifelike dream through the Ourobouros program he had implanted in the GIB's supercomputers. He attempted to create a peaceful dreamworld to destroy Gary's will to fight, but instead her personality split into "Alita," a peaceful, bookish girl, and Gary, Ido's feisty cat who even in the dreamworld, terrorized Nova at every turn. When her friend Kaos used his psychometric abilities to invade the GIB supercomputers, however, he disrupted the dreamworld enough that Gary could return to herself and break free--and cut off Desty Nova's head.

Shortly after leaving the ruins of Desty Nova's hidden laboratory, now free of the GIB's control but at the same time somewhat directionless following the loss of both the man she saw as a father and the man who had taken him from her, Gary was recruited by Paradigm. Given the change to learn more about herself through battle, the offer was impossible to refuse.

Skills

(These include all learned skills, as well as a relative rating from Abyssmal to Amazing. The character's level of mastery in something that can be taught or at least rated by other people follows the scale: Abyssmal, Novice, Good, Very Good, Incredible, Amazing)

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PUT A RANK FOR -EVERY- SKILL. Just fill out the stuff you think your character would have! Feel free to add other skills that you think your character should be noted for. (Ex: Speaking French)

Physical Skills:

• Alertness: Amazing (+5)
• Athletics: Amazing (+5)
• Stealth: Incredible (+4)

Social Skills:

• Subterfuge: Good (+2)
• Streetwise: Very Good (+3)
• Intimidation: Incredible (+4)
• Leadership: Novice (+1)
• Expression: Very Good (+3)
• Performance:
  • Music (Singing, Keyboard, Guitar, Harmonica): Incredible (+4)

Mental Skills:

• Computers: Incredible (+4)
• Investigation: Novice (+1)
• Medicine: Very Good (+3)
• Law (Scrapyard): Good (+2)
• Occult (Legends): Novice (+1)
• Science: Very Good (+3)
• Technology: Very Good (+3)

Other Skills:

• Driving: Very Good (+3)
• Survival: Very Good (+3)
• Empathy: Incredible (+4)
• Animal Ken: Novice (+1)

Special Abilities

(These are skills, things that can be learned or trained, like martial arts techniques, Jutsu or magic spells. Abilities that are outside the norm of regular humans, but only because they have not had access to them.)
Panzer Kunst (Armor Art): The first fighting style built around cyborg-versus-cyborg combat, Panzer Kunst covers armed, unarmed, and ranged combat, as well as zero-gravity and midair combat, employing agility with precision application of enhanced strength to tremendous effect. Panzer Kunst was one of the first systems to introduce vibrational attacks that can bypass armor and direct force to the most fragile components, and its techniques particularly take advantage of size differences to benefit small "Künstlers" against larger opponents. Another major focus is analysis of an enemy's fighting methods by quickly categorizing an opposing style's structure, making the user an exceptionally quick learner. Although Yoko's rank at the time of her "death" had been only Geselle (4th of 9), a higher-ranked Höher Krieger (6th rank) Künstler who had once been one of her instructors remarked that she exhibited bursts of ability comparable to a Meister (7th rank).

• Hertzer Hauen (Heart Strike): The foundational vibration-strike of Panzer Kunst, the Hertzer Hauen is generally delivered with a deceptively light palm strike or slap, but a high-frequency vibration at the moment of impact transmits the kinetic energy of the strike past armor and concentrates it to a target point, able to cripple or even liquefy a human's internal organs, and causing severe damage to most mechanical and electronic systems. The counter-maneuver is for the target to meet the Hertzer Hauen with a matching vibration.
• Ausser Stosse (Outer Thrust): One of many energy-redirection maneuvers, this technique takes the force of a strike delivered by an enemy, using it to rotate the body, and returning it through a counterstrike (usually a kick) which adds the force of the Künstler's enhanced limbs with some of the enemy's own power.

Geheimnis (Secret): The secret techniques of Panzer Kunst.

• Einzug Rüstungen (Armor Penetration): A passive/reactive method of observing and matching the ranging and pacing of an opponents attacks, followed by a single precise, powerful strike once the enemy has assumed a rhythm, taking advantage of the natural openings created by any pattern of attack.

Aside from these special techniques, there are many maneuvers which use the intense acrobatic training at the root of Panzer Kunst to make a practitioner extremely difficult to target, while delivering deadly strikes to multiple opponents.

There are also some techniques learned by Yoko, but which Gary has yet to remember. She may rediscover them at some point during combat, with GM and op permission, but this should be a dramatic moment when she's severely pressed to push her limits.

• Hertzer Nadel (Heart Needle): A two-part "übergeheimnis" (top-secret) combination in which a Hertzer Hauen-like vibrational strike called the Verschlag (Partition) is delivered with a knuckle strike, but the energy remains diffuse and much more difficult to block. This shockwave ricochets through the target's body, gaining energy as it moves outward, concentrating in narrow regions such as the extremities or joints; at this stage, a target will sometimes notice a ringing in their ears. If nothing is done, the shockwave from the Verschlag will damp out in less than a minute--but if a second Verschlag strike is delivered, the previously delivered shockwave breaks down like a cresting wave, releasing all of its energy at once. This separation in time between the initial strike and the followup makes Hertzer Nadel extremely difficult to defend against.
• Einsatzrhythmen (Rhythm-Insertion): By attuning his or her ki to the opponent's, the Künstler can block out the enemy's ki, deflecting, weakening, or even completely halting an incoming attack by dissipating the opponent's focus.

Gary also has some plasma techniques in her repertoire, but the soft machine body has no plasma-generation systems, so she cannot use these without an upgrade. Plasma Bissen (Plasma Bite): A millisecond arc of plasma is generated between two fingertips during a close-quarters exchange of strikes, creating microfissure cuts in an opponent's body. This damage appear at first to be superficial scratches from glancing blows, but once strain is applied to the resulting gouges, they yield, causing limbs to crumble and mechanisms to tear themselves apart.

Powers & Merits

Soft Machine Body (aka TUNED body): The soft machine body developed by Tiphares for the TUNED project employs cutting-edge 26th-century nanotechnology to make a body which not only has phenomenal strength, but remains extremely lightweight, making it far more agile and responsive than a typical alloy-heavy body while maintaining superhuman toughness. It is somewhat vulnerable to overheating in extreme environments, due to its reliance on more temperature-sensitive nanomachine/chemical organs.

• Superhuman Physical Abilities: The soft-machine body has been shown to catch a falling block of concrete several tons in mass, suggesting it has the raw physical strength to lift at least ten tons one-handed, at least when given the opportunity to brace for impact. By comparison with the much bulkier (but markedly stronger and tougher) Berserker Body, the soft-machine body can accelerate to hundreds of miles per hour in short bursts, although maintaining traction and fighting wind resistance make it impossible to travel much faster than 100mph for any extended period. Unlike most cybernetic bodies, it has greater free range of motion and more precise control than most human gymnasts, allowing deft mid-air repositioning. Most blunt trauma delivered by human strength has little effect, but firearms can still penetrate it, and antimateriel weapons can shred its limbs, suggesting it has physical toughness comparable to a lightly-armored vehicle.
• Telescopic Vision: The soft machine body's built-in optics are capable of zooming in with great precision, allowing a TUNED agent to pick out a human target and deliver a head-shot from several kilometers away.
• Full Internal Control: Being a cybernetic system, the owner of the TUNED body can alter its performance parameters in a wide variety of ways, although there is a risk of damaging internal systems by overstressing design specifications. For example, damage indication can be disengaged to ignore the body's simulated pain response, and the lungs can be charged and biased to generate oxygen (and hydrogen) from water for a brief time.
• Monomolecular Wire: Nearly invisible to the naked eye, this filament is actually formed by the soft machine body's nanosystems as one contiguous molecule, making it sharp enough to slice steel and strong enough to support 2.4 tons of weight. The wire can be formed with Van der Waals anchors (similar to gecko feet), and can be flung several meters to fix against almost any surface.
• Electronic Interface: The fingertips of the TUNED body can unfurl several prehensile inductive electrode contacts, providing direct connection to any electronic device, although successful hacking depends on the agent's own training and ability.
• Internal Communications Link: Originally intended for silent communication with the GIB, this system can adjust to communicate with any radio frequency, and could in principle be upgraded to work with other telecommunications systems.

Ki: In the Gun Dream setting, ki abilities exist, although they take a more traditional form. These abilities generally confer something of a sixth sense or enhanced control over one's body, although in extreme cases it can extend to precognition, and ties in with psychic abilities such as dominating another's will, psychometry, and telepathic projection of illusions. This relates to what Desty Nova called "macrokarmatronics," the mechanics of destiny, the large-scale extension of his nanotechnology research which had mad him and his associates all but immortal. At one point, Nova claimed that the human brain has extraordinary potential as a macrokarmatronic dynamo, and that Gary's brain was exceptional in that regard. Gary's ki potential manifests as a superhuman sixth sense, subconsciously intuiting an enemy's next move and even extending to a transcendent awareness of her surroundings--at one moment of perfect mental clarity, she realizes she can feel the electromagnetic fields of the molecules in the air as she brushes them aside. In this particular manifestation of ki, Gary was surpassed only by Jashugan and Den (actually a manifestation of Kaos' suppressed violence), although it is suggested full-fledged Panzer Kunst Masters all accomplished similar abilities, even being able to strike with precision at invisible enemies. In most situations, this works something like a Jedi's force sensitivity, or like a more subconscious version of Spider-Sense, allowing Gary to employ her agility for astonishing feats of evasion and precision.

Indomitable Will: Gary has repeatedly shown an almost superhuman tenacity, and the ability to struggle through the most overwhelming opposition, including forcing her way out of a mind-control program even though it offered exactly the life she wanted, and the experience seemed to have lasted for years. The exception to this is when she is already emotionally exhausted, such as after learning that Ido's memory of her had been erased.

Unique Items

Damascus Blade: A weapon inspired by Damascus steel, this blade was forged by master craftsmen in the Scrapyard who had learned to use the correct blend of impurities to produce fantastic strength, such that the resulting weapon rivaled diamond for hardness, but retained the toughness of advanced alloys, and had to be honed using supersonic water jets and ultrasonic waves. Having owned the weapon since her motorball tournament days, Gary had the blade made into a glaive-sized balisong, able to fold up neatly for storage and them flip open quickly for battle. The edge is sharp enough to cut easily through the heavy combat armor employed by the Barjack rebel army's shock troops.

TUNED Pistol: A large-caliber pistol that fires specialized high-velocity rounds that shred through armor by delivering a payload of microflechette penetrators which bore through even the hardest conventional alloys and then fragment, effectively combining penetration with stopping power. The cartridge's charge is powerful enough to tear through nearly a foot of cybernetic body from at least a few kilometers' distance. The ammunition is limited, however, and unless Paradigm can replicate it, she'll have to switch to some other sort of firearms. The TUNED Pistol autolocks its safety on when held by anyone other than a TUNED agent, or if pointed at a TUNED agent.

TUNED Body Armor: Heavy armor able to absorb point-blank impact from conventional high-caliber weapons without allowing penetration, making up for the TUNED body's soft nanomachine construction. The armor covers the upper torso, the shoulders and upper arms, and the lower legs. Comprised of advanced alloy and ceramic laminate nanocomposite, the armor weighs nearly as much as the TUNED body itself; as such, it is designed to be discarded quickly if speed becomes more advantageous. However, extreme impact and weapons designed to counter heavy armor can still overcome this protection.

The soft machine body's internal memory also stores the designs for a high-power rifle, and other specialized TUNED equipment, but she doesn't have any of these devices with her, and many (e.g. the Solenoid Quench Gun) simple wouldn't be practical for most missions anyway. Access to any of these would depend on someone being willing and able to make them for her.

Items Of Note

Harmonica: Just a harmonica, although she's had it for more than ten years. TUNED Weapons: In addition to its internal systems, the TUNED body was designed to be supplemented by an array of advanced tools. However, she's already used most of these up, and will only have access to them if someone can fabricate more based on the designs.

• Arachno-bombs: Spider-like bombs which can be preprogrammed to deply with tripwires, hide and trigger by proximity, or detonate by remote command. Explosive power is comparable to a large high-explosive grenade.
• Missile-Bees: Miniature cybernetic homing missiles launched from a container at the waist of the TUNED body, which can be programmed with preset targets or set for independent target-selection to let the agent fire and forget. They automatically move using natural swarming tactics, and their appearance and characteristic sound are intended to disguise their true nature until it's too late to mount a defense. The explosive charge is smaller than a grenade, but their precision targeting allows them to deploy that charge to a weak point, and can still tear through conventional armor when used properly.
• Firefly: Another insect-like device that projects a high-temperature plasma field about two meters across for 5 seconds before burning out. This can be used for tunnel-boring, as a surprise weapon in close combat, or as a brief electronic countermeasures device due to the EM noise it generates while active.
• Laser bug: Another small insectoid device used to transfer TUNED radio communications between radio and laser messaging, for use deep in tunnels, or other situations where radio signals are locally jammed. The laser isn't strong enough to cut metal, but it could blind a person, or otherwise be used like a very strong laser pointer.
• Lice probes: Remote probes shaped like sea lice, these can spread across the ground to check for mines or other traps using sophisticated sensor suites, and can even serve as a surrogate for vision in the TUNED agent's vision is impaired. However, all lice probe functions require a connection to a supercomputer to process the vast amount of data generated by the probe sensors, and interpret it into overlay information for the TUNED agent.

Weaknesses & Flaws

Phobia (Dryad Butterfly): Gary has an irrational fear of minois dryas, a butterfly with eye-like spots on its wings, so overwhelming she will do whatever is necessary at the moment to most certainly remove the creature from her awareness, either by driving it away or obliterating it, with little regard to other sources of potential danger.

Recovering Amnesia: There is a great deal Gary still doesn't consciously remember about herself, her past, and the advanced techniques of Panzer Kunst. This lack of knowledge itself can be problematic, but her drive to learn more can make revelations about her past--especially disturbing revelations, such as the details of Yoko's terrorist missions, or her childhood before she was adopted by her teacher Gelda--extremely distracting. When memories do return to her, they sometimes come on vividly as flashbacks, and can be difficult to distinguish from her immediate surroundings until she has had the opportunity to process whatever memories have bubbled up. Wanting to learn more, however, Gary will take significant risks to learn more.

Emotionally Vulnerable: Although fiery and willful and tough as nails, Gary's long string of personal tragedies and lack of a concrete past or childhood has left her emotionally vulnerable. While she has grown and learned to cope, it makes her rather standoffish at first, and then extremely protective once she lets someone inside, making those she cares about extremely effective leverage. She also tends to take criticism rather hard when it comes from someone whose position she respects.

Berserker: Gary not only looks forward to learning more about herself in battle--she also loves the thrill of combat in its own right, even while she craves the opportunity to simply be happy among good friends. When the opportunity for a no-holds-barred battle comes up, Gary is prone to slipping into a berserker state of mind where although extremely ferocious and still dangerously cunning, she completely loses sight of any tactical concerns or contingency plans, running almost entirely on training and instinct.

NPC(s) to go with char

None