Captain Ash (Asemu Asuno) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
captainash) wrote2012-10-05 08:16 pm
captainash) wrote2012-10-05 08:16 pm
Entry tags:
Route Application
Player
Name: Hecate
Personal Journal: None
E-mail: scarlet_hecate at hotmail dot com
AIM/MSN: None
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route: Cecil Harvey (paladinlost)
Character
Name: Captain Ash (aka Asemu Asuno)
Series: Mobile Suit Gundam AGE
Timeline: Immediately after the final battle in episode 49
Canon Resource Links:
Mobile Suit Gundam AGE
Asemu Asuno/Captain Ash
Personality:
Let’s put it bluntly: Asemu Asuno spends most of his own generation with an inferiority complex the size of Australia. He feels inferior to his father, a war hero and army commander with excellent pilot skills and powerful psychic powers, and to his rival/enemy/best friend, the commander of the enemy forces with excellent pilot skills, powerful psychic powers and quite possibly their mutual female friend’s love. (Why yes, there might be a pattern there.) And this feeling of inferiority pushes him to make decisions that are just plain stupid, such as wearing a Vagan helmet that gives him powerful psychic powers at the very low cost of permanent brain damage. Even before he got that far, he kept training and angsting and training again, even if it meant taking over his teammates’ time, all for the sake of catching up to the people he loves. No pep talk manages to get through to him for more than a few hours.
Until his beloved mentor dies saving him. Spends his last breath telling him he has amazing potential, even without being an X-Rounder, and that he should become the best super pilot the world has ever seen. At that precise moment, ten episodes’ worth of lessons get through Asemu’s head, and they get through damn well. He proceeds to completely demolish one of the best enemy pilots, and even matches his best friend in battle. From then on he takes pride in matching more powerful opponents with nothing but his piloting skills (and his Gundam, of course, but as it’s already the end of his generation that doesn’t stay an advantage for very long). This confidence remains when we next see him as Captain Ash, over twenty years later. In fact, one could even say it’s grown; his first contact with his family in thirteen years happens when he decides to test his father and son’s worth with a full scale battle. He cheerfully tells his opponents off in battle for getting in the way of his reunion with his son, nevermind that they’re trying to kill him. Even his father telling him that their last opponent is the strongest X-Rounder he’s ever felt just gets a smirk and a casual ‘So it seems’ out of him. But do note that his confidence is fully justified. With a twenty-five year old machine, he manages to keep up with the latest Vagan model piloted by the strongest X-Rounders they have, and his last battle with Zeheart is terrifyingly one-sided.
Throughout the series, Ash has one great goal: to protect. He comes to realize that during the battle at Nortram, and from that moment on it directs his entire life. Yet it’s not a static goal; it starts with Asemu’s desire to protect the people he loves, and evolves into Ash’s wish to protect everyone, whether they be Earthers or Vagan, though he still wants to protect his family most of all. In fact, he’s one of the very few people in the series to realize that protecting everyone means protecting both sides, not just the one he was born on. And thus, he protects. When rescuing Kio from the Second Moon, he very carefully does not kill any of the pilots within the colony and mostly evades them with his superior piloting. During the final battle, he makes a point of telling his men to avoid friendly fire. And, of course, by that time he’s spent thirteen years systematically steal information and supplies that would lead to large-scale battles and cause overwhelming casualties. However, his methods are not perfect and he admits it. His attacks against the Federation have not brought any true change to it, and his stated aim is to keep the war at a stalemate until both sides get sick of it. Still, he keeps going and trying throughout the last part of the series.
He keeps trying because he loves people, gets along well with them and has faith in them. He’s one of the few who encourage Kio in his pacifism and believe he’ll achieve his goals that way. He willingly tells his father about a database that could completely change the stakes of the war, and is genuinely horrified when he realizes that he’d use it to commit genocide, yet even after realizing that he believes that he can be convinced to abandon his dreams of vengence. Both his discussion with Flit in episode 40 and the side manga Memories of SID say outright that he joined the pirates hoping that his actions would create a safe world for his wife and newborn son, knowing that it would mean turning his back on everything he’d ever known. It’s also obvious during the third and last arcs that his crew absolutely adores him, and that he greatly cares for them in return. He loses men during the escape from the Second Moon and the attack on the EXA-DB, and both times he looks genuinely upset. (Compare that to Remi’s death in episode 27, where only her fiance appears to care.) In return, their main worry after blasting the EXA-DB’s asteroid to bits is whether or not he escaped it safely. They also cheerfully agreed to invade a distant martian colony simply to help him save his son. Not only does he care for others, but they easily return the sentiment.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
+ Good driver/pilot: This one is obvious, as he’s a SUPER PILOT! But really, there’s more to it than that. Ash is good with vehicles; even at seventeen, he drives on his own motorcycle around a partially destroyed town with little trouble. The moment he climbs into his first mobile suit he shows potential, potential that others around him start seeing even when he does not. By the end of the series, or even the end of his generation, he can keep up with more powerful opponents and better machines through talent and quite a lot of creativity. Of course, this will matter little in Route... unless he somehow manages to hijack a police car. *cough*
+ Willing to do what must be done: Even at eighteen years old, he’s willing to die to stop the space fortress Downes from hitting the Earth. Then, ten years later, he willingly joins the space pirates Bisidian to ensure that the EXA-DB will not fall in the Federation’s or Vagan’s hands, as neither side would use it peacefully. And at the very end of the series, he takes responsibility for stopping Zeheart, his own best friend, knowing very well that he can only do so with lethal force. In fact, in the game version of the series he tells his father outright that this final duel is something he has to do himself. It doesn’t matter how much the act hurts him; it has to be done, so he does it.
+ Extremely good at gathering info: For most of the last part of the series, Ash is one of the most knowledgeable characters present. He confronts the Diva in Sargasso before the Vagan do, he finds out extremely quickly that Kio was captured, he knows a lot about SID and the EXA-DB... Some of it comes from a strong network of contacts, which he would not have in Johto without building it from scratch. But he’s also shown some talent for hacking the communication channels of both Vagan and the Federation, and he’d probably be able to apply that experience to the Pokégear.
+/- Willing to work outside the law: On the one hand, some moral flexibility is useful in most settings, and Asemu has plenty of it. Goodness knows he’s used to arguing against orders if he thinks it’s for the best (see Solon City or every single of his life choices after age 28). On the other hand, he is a space pirate with a rather impressive reputation, and he’s done everything to deserve it. He also sometimes seems to rebel against authority just for the sake of it, or at least to deliberately give the appearance of it. (“I’m a pirate, I do as I please”? Definitely said just to piss his dad off.) Some moderation would be good here.
- Not very good at sharing info: Even when he finally decides to tell his father why he didn’t call for thirteen years, he doesn’t mention quite a few important details. (Such as the fact that the Federation ships he attacked weren’t only threatening the balance of the conflict, they were also cooperating with the Vagan.) He tells the Diva about the war-changing database EXA-DB, but doesn’t mention its guardian even though it could kill them all. He keeps his cards very close to his chest, and he’s lucky this hasn’t backfired on him. (As a lighter note, it also leads to a short official gag manga where he wants to ask his son Kio to participate in a father/son gunpla contest with him, and ends up making up a whole riddle out of it because he can’t spit it out. Oh, Asemu.)
- Willing to ditch his family for thirteen years without a single letter or even a coded message saying that he’s alive, even though he has a wife and a newborn son waiting for him at home: ...Seriously, he might have had a few reasons and they might even be somewhat good, but that’s still a very big dick move. It proves that he’s more than willing to emotionally harm his family to keep them physically safe. In fact, the times when he’s called out on that are the only moments where he shows any form of regret for his actions.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Trainer
Starter: Houndour
Password: Scrambled Eggs
Samples
First Person Sample:
So, can anyone tell me how I ended up with a fire-breathing hellhound? Not that I don’t like it, but I was wondering why that one out of all those strange animals out there.
[The voice sounds more casually curious than surprised or alarmed or confused, which is exactly how he likes it. He keeps going, ignoring the puppy’s whines for the moment.]
Is it a random decision? Did that woman look at me and tell the professor ‘Oh, that man looks like a dog lover’? Or did that lab just happen to have a few extra puppies around when I arrived?
[The whines grow louder as he speaks. In fact, by the end of his sentence they are replaced by a bark, followed by the sound of paws running through tall grass.]
...Well, I can already tell I’ll be in good paws until I reach the next town, at least. We’ll be fine until this little stay here ends.
[He hopes.]
Third Person Sample:
One day. It had taken a single day of traveling for Ash to run into a major problem. This had to be some sort of record.
"...I could pick it up and carry it until we reach Cherrygrove."
Besides him, Dark Hound snorted. He had a feeling the dog was laughing at him.
"Hey, we could hardly abandon the fruits of your hard work, could we? Besides, it was a pretty spirited opponent."
That it had been. Just like the pigeon, the rat, the ferret, the owl and the monkey he’d also found, battled and caught along the way. He’d battled everything he’d met on the road, of course; no need to waste valuable experience and information. But those had caught his eye the moment he’d taken out the Pokédex and looked them up. ‘Normal’-types? It was almost as if the name itself had been chosen to catch his attention. He knew how to get a lot out of what others considered ‘normal’.
However, those intentions had soon left him with one unconscious grey bird on the ground, no way to capture it, and no way to obtain more pokéballs. Not only that, but what little food had been in his back was already stretched thin, no matter how careful the rationing. That would take some adjusting. Even the Baronoke, for all of its troubles, rarely found itself with so few supplies, thanks to a few good allies. He’d have to improvise meals from the local plants, and find a way to obtain more balls as soon as possible.
It was a challenge he’d never faced before. He liked that.
"Let’s keep moving. The further we get before it wakes up and panics, the better."
The sun was shining, the air was cool but not windy; no better moment to start a journey, really. Not quite what he’d expected would happen after the Second Moon was saved, but he could deal with that later, in a safe room. After learning more about this place, the reason for his presence here, and how to get back home.
...A real, genuine fire-breathing dog would be enough to earn Kio’s forgiveness if this whole thing lasted too long. Probably.
Name: Hecate
Personal Journal: None
E-mail: scarlet_hecate at hotmail dot com
AIM/MSN: None
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route: Cecil Harvey (
paladinlost)Character
Name: Captain Ash (aka Asemu Asuno)
Series: Mobile Suit Gundam AGE
Timeline: Immediately after the final battle in episode 49
Canon Resource Links:
Mobile Suit Gundam AGE
Asemu Asuno/Captain Ash
Personality:
Let’s put it bluntly: Asemu Asuno spends most of his own generation with an inferiority complex the size of Australia. He feels inferior to his father, a war hero and army commander with excellent pilot skills and powerful psychic powers, and to his rival/enemy/best friend, the commander of the enemy forces with excellent pilot skills, powerful psychic powers and quite possibly their mutual female friend’s love. (Why yes, there might be a pattern there.) And this feeling of inferiority pushes him to make decisions that are just plain stupid, such as wearing a Vagan helmet that gives him powerful psychic powers at the very low cost of permanent brain damage. Even before he got that far, he kept training and angsting and training again, even if it meant taking over his teammates’ time, all for the sake of catching up to the people he loves. No pep talk manages to get through to him for more than a few hours.
Until his beloved mentor dies saving him. Spends his last breath telling him he has amazing potential, even without being an X-Rounder, and that he should become the best super pilot the world has ever seen. At that precise moment, ten episodes’ worth of lessons get through Asemu’s head, and they get through damn well. He proceeds to completely demolish one of the best enemy pilots, and even matches his best friend in battle. From then on he takes pride in matching more powerful opponents with nothing but his piloting skills (and his Gundam, of course, but as it’s already the end of his generation that doesn’t stay an advantage for very long). This confidence remains when we next see him as Captain Ash, over twenty years later. In fact, one could even say it’s grown; his first contact with his family in thirteen years happens when he decides to test his father and son’s worth with a full scale battle. He cheerfully tells his opponents off in battle for getting in the way of his reunion with his son, nevermind that they’re trying to kill him. Even his father telling him that their last opponent is the strongest X-Rounder he’s ever felt just gets a smirk and a casual ‘So it seems’ out of him. But do note that his confidence is fully justified. With a twenty-five year old machine, he manages to keep up with the latest Vagan model piloted by the strongest X-Rounders they have, and his last battle with Zeheart is terrifyingly one-sided.
Throughout the series, Ash has one great goal: to protect. He comes to realize that during the battle at Nortram, and from that moment on it directs his entire life. Yet it’s not a static goal; it starts with Asemu’s desire to protect the people he loves, and evolves into Ash’s wish to protect everyone, whether they be Earthers or Vagan, though he still wants to protect his family most of all. In fact, he’s one of the very few people in the series to realize that protecting everyone means protecting both sides, not just the one he was born on. And thus, he protects. When rescuing Kio from the Second Moon, he very carefully does not kill any of the pilots within the colony and mostly evades them with his superior piloting. During the final battle, he makes a point of telling his men to avoid friendly fire. And, of course, by that time he’s spent thirteen years systematically steal information and supplies that would lead to large-scale battles and cause overwhelming casualties. However, his methods are not perfect and he admits it. His attacks against the Federation have not brought any true change to it, and his stated aim is to keep the war at a stalemate until both sides get sick of it. Still, he keeps going and trying throughout the last part of the series.
He keeps trying because he loves people, gets along well with them and has faith in them. He’s one of the few who encourage Kio in his pacifism and believe he’ll achieve his goals that way. He willingly tells his father about a database that could completely change the stakes of the war, and is genuinely horrified when he realizes that he’d use it to commit genocide, yet even after realizing that he believes that he can be convinced to abandon his dreams of vengence. Both his discussion with Flit in episode 40 and the side manga Memories of SID say outright that he joined the pirates hoping that his actions would create a safe world for his wife and newborn son, knowing that it would mean turning his back on everything he’d ever known. It’s also obvious during the third and last arcs that his crew absolutely adores him, and that he greatly cares for them in return. He loses men during the escape from the Second Moon and the attack on the EXA-DB, and both times he looks genuinely upset. (Compare that to Remi’s death in episode 27, where only her fiance appears to care.) In return, their main worry after blasting the EXA-DB’s asteroid to bits is whether or not he escaped it safely. They also cheerfully agreed to invade a distant martian colony simply to help him save his son. Not only does he care for others, but they easily return the sentiment.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
+ Good driver/pilot: This one is obvious, as he’s a SUPER PILOT! But really, there’s more to it than that. Ash is good with vehicles; even at seventeen, he drives on his own motorcycle around a partially destroyed town with little trouble. The moment he climbs into his first mobile suit he shows potential, potential that others around him start seeing even when he does not. By the end of the series, or even the end of his generation, he can keep up with more powerful opponents and better machines through talent and quite a lot of creativity. Of course, this will matter little in Route... unless he somehow manages to hijack a police car. *cough*
+ Willing to do what must be done: Even at eighteen years old, he’s willing to die to stop the space fortress Downes from hitting the Earth. Then, ten years later, he willingly joins the space pirates Bisidian to ensure that the EXA-DB will not fall in the Federation’s or Vagan’s hands, as neither side would use it peacefully. And at the very end of the series, he takes responsibility for stopping Zeheart, his own best friend, knowing very well that he can only do so with lethal force. In fact, in the game version of the series he tells his father outright that this final duel is something he has to do himself. It doesn’t matter how much the act hurts him; it has to be done, so he does it.
+ Extremely good at gathering info: For most of the last part of the series, Ash is one of the most knowledgeable characters present. He confronts the Diva in Sargasso before the Vagan do, he finds out extremely quickly that Kio was captured, he knows a lot about SID and the EXA-DB... Some of it comes from a strong network of contacts, which he would not have in Johto without building it from scratch. But he’s also shown some talent for hacking the communication channels of both Vagan and the Federation, and he’d probably be able to apply that experience to the Pokégear.
+/- Willing to work outside the law: On the one hand, some moral flexibility is useful in most settings, and Asemu has plenty of it. Goodness knows he’s used to arguing against orders if he thinks it’s for the best (see Solon City or every single of his life choices after age 28). On the other hand, he is a space pirate with a rather impressive reputation, and he’s done everything to deserve it. He also sometimes seems to rebel against authority just for the sake of it, or at least to deliberately give the appearance of it. (“I’m a pirate, I do as I please”? Definitely said just to piss his dad off.) Some moderation would be good here.
- Not very good at sharing info: Even when he finally decides to tell his father why he didn’t call for thirteen years, he doesn’t mention quite a few important details. (Such as the fact that the Federation ships he attacked weren’t only threatening the balance of the conflict, they were also cooperating with the Vagan.) He tells the Diva about the war-changing database EXA-DB, but doesn’t mention its guardian even though it could kill them all. He keeps his cards very close to his chest, and he’s lucky this hasn’t backfired on him. (As a lighter note, it also leads to a short official gag manga where he wants to ask his son Kio to participate in a father/son gunpla contest with him, and ends up making up a whole riddle out of it because he can’t spit it out. Oh, Asemu.)
- Willing to ditch his family for thirteen years without a single letter or even a coded message saying that he’s alive, even though he has a wife and a newborn son waiting for him at home: ...Seriously, he might have had a few reasons and they might even be somewhat good, but that’s still a very big dick move. It proves that he’s more than willing to emotionally harm his family to keep them physically safe. In fact, the times when he’s called out on that are the only moments where he shows any form of regret for his actions.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Trainer
Starter: Houndour
Password: Scrambled Eggs
Samples
First Person Sample:
So, can anyone tell me how I ended up with a fire-breathing hellhound? Not that I don’t like it, but I was wondering why that one out of all those strange animals out there.
[The voice sounds more casually curious than surprised or alarmed or confused, which is exactly how he likes it. He keeps going, ignoring the puppy’s whines for the moment.]
Is it a random decision? Did that woman look at me and tell the professor ‘Oh, that man looks like a dog lover’? Or did that lab just happen to have a few extra puppies around when I arrived?
[The whines grow louder as he speaks. In fact, by the end of his sentence they are replaced by a bark, followed by the sound of paws running through tall grass.]
...Well, I can already tell I’ll be in good paws until I reach the next town, at least. We’ll be fine until this little stay here ends.
[He hopes.]
Third Person Sample:
One day. It had taken a single day of traveling for Ash to run into a major problem. This had to be some sort of record.
"...I could pick it up and carry it until we reach Cherrygrove."
Besides him, Dark Hound snorted. He had a feeling the dog was laughing at him.
"Hey, we could hardly abandon the fruits of your hard work, could we? Besides, it was a pretty spirited opponent."
That it had been. Just like the pigeon, the rat, the ferret, the owl and the monkey he’d also found, battled and caught along the way. He’d battled everything he’d met on the road, of course; no need to waste valuable experience and information. But those had caught his eye the moment he’d taken out the Pokédex and looked them up. ‘Normal’-types? It was almost as if the name itself had been chosen to catch his attention. He knew how to get a lot out of what others considered ‘normal’.
However, those intentions had soon left him with one unconscious grey bird on the ground, no way to capture it, and no way to obtain more pokéballs. Not only that, but what little food had been in his back was already stretched thin, no matter how careful the rationing. That would take some adjusting. Even the Baronoke, for all of its troubles, rarely found itself with so few supplies, thanks to a few good allies. He’d have to improvise meals from the local plants, and find a way to obtain more balls as soon as possible.
It was a challenge he’d never faced before. He liked that.
"Let’s keep moving. The further we get before it wakes up and panics, the better."
The sun was shining, the air was cool but not windy; no better moment to start a journey, really. Not quite what he’d expected would happen after the Second Moon was saved, but he could deal with that later, in a safe room. After learning more about this place, the reason for his presence here, and how to get back home.
...A real, genuine fire-breathing dog would be enough to earn Kio’s forgiveness if this whole thing lasted too long. Probably.