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Feb. 22nd, 2015 11:10 pmConnection established with
CAGE ►
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Jan. 30th, 2015 11:27 pmUNPLUGGED
OOC
Name: Samm
Age: 26!
Contact details: neveryourmask @ plurk
Characters already in Systemwide: Bruce Banner (MCU) in reserve.
BASIC PROFILE
Name: William Cage
Age: 41 (and now 44)
Canon: Edge of Tomorrow
Appearance: Bill Cage is portrayed by Tom Cruise. He is 5'7", give or take the height of his Republican haircut, starting to go grey at the seams, smile lines and crows feet deepening. His teeth are so white.
Extraction point: After the events of the movie.
OVERVIEW
Personality: Hundreds upon hundreds of same day iterations can have a grave affect on a man, but much of who Cage is is still defined by who he used to be before he had to help save the world. Untested, he was a salesman -- one with his own advertising firm, and when that fell through due to the war, he became a media relations expert as an officer of the United States Army. He has a trustworthy affect in the same way a good car salesman is convincing when he says he's giving you a really good deal, he might even get in trouble, ha ha. His job was to sell the possibility of victory when the certainty was catastrophic defeat, and he was successful at this.
This part of him has been honed and sharpened like a blade thanks to his time loop events. He is much better at reading people, discerning what they want, and figuring out how to deny it or give it to them and when in order to get what he wants, as there are several aspects of his same-day-repeats that meant codebreaking how to handle people. These days, Cage is also substantially less concerned with being liked or being likeable -- in fact, it might not even register -- despite the fact that charisma is certainly a part of his arsenal.
The biggest change is his attitude about his role in things like global conflict, and it has certainly carried over into the Real. Back in the day, he saw the alien invasion of Earth as a little remote -- certainly, he felt the average citizen's urgency for it stopping, he watched white faced as attacks leveled whole cities and crumbled historic human architecture, he felt that fear and anger of seeing planes shot out of the sky, but he was, like most people, a spectator. His place was in Washington, in territories that were not being targeted, and he made damn sure he never had to get his hands dirty, the kind of person who professes to faint at the sight of blood. The time loop events changed this -- saving himself from eternal repeated days was tied directly into ending the war, but eventually, he just wanted to end the war, and witnessing the United Kingdom's invasion as the alien threat advanced was a turning point.
In Zion, nothing is stopping him from sinking back into some political role, a civilian life style, but he is too used to getting back up and facing the frontline. His has a dogged determination, now, that has the same kind of ruthlessness he was forced to cultivate in his past life. There is probably a swimming shark quality to it -- if he stops, and looks around, he might never start again, because this is the worst thing ever. It's easier to just keep going, and three years into service with Zion Defence Grid is nothing -- he spent far longer than that repeating the same terrible day over and over again, and this bears a lot of resemblance.
The carry over is not as neat as all that -- he knows these two wars are different animals, and that technically, humankind is more or less in a stalemate with the machines. But he has the baffled anger of someone who was relatively recently unplugged at the concept of sharing Earth with giant deadly toaster ovens, and his politics are in part dictated by the fact he helped reclaim Earth in his Matrix when it was all but impossible, and believes, deep down, they have no choice but to try again. He's patient enough and also individual in spirit enough not to make a lot of waves to this effect, at least, not yet. For all that he is a lot of things, he's never been a leader.
Day to day, this aspect of him isn't always apparent. He comes across, a lot, as that salesman, occasional moments of haplessness still ingrained in him. Occasionally, if you've known him for a while, you might catch a thousand yard stare, or moments of near reckless bravery and brutality in given missions. He is more competent than anyone would give him credit for, and he works to maintain this, training almost every day, and training others. And he's definitely gotten used to the sight of blood.
Matrix: The Matrix that Cage hails from is one resembling contemporary Earth, but one in the late and after stages of an alien invasion that has totally devestated Europe over the past decade or longer. These aliens are known as Mimics (supposedly because they mimicked the first organism they liked the look of, the starfish) -- they are incredibly difficult to kill, supremely fast, and spell death for any human they look at twice. Or just once.
In response, the United Defense Force was formed, a global military presence completely committed to fighting this particular war in tandem with other military forces. It is particularly known for its utilisation of hydraulic battle suits, worn by trained soldiers, bristling with weapons and guidance systems as well lending the wearing enhanced strength and speed provided they are trained to make the most of this technology. Even with this advancement, the chances of winning one on one are dubious at best without an extensive amount of training, and full scale battles are quickly lost in the aliens' favour.
Cage's story is about the media relations US army poster boy falling into dire circumstance when he is ordered to go to the frontline to help sell the war. Upon trying to run, he is arrested for desertion, stripped of his rank, and forced to go anyway.
He encounters what makes this Matrix particularly strange -- the aliens possess the power to time travel, which they use to ensure they win every battle they encounter. An Alpha ranked alien carries this power in their blood, and upon their death, are brought back in time by about a day, and the entire army of aliens (all of which are linked, like a central nervous system, to the brain-figure known as the Omega) are able to anticipate the tide of the battle and ensure their own victory, or reset the day via the Alpha's repeated death until they do. Unfortunately, there's a catch -- a human is able to absorb this power for themself if they kill the Alpha and get covered in its corrosive blood. This is what happens to Cage, and has happened to the woman that mentors him, Rita Vrataski.
In fitting into the universe of the Matrix, it's proposed that the alien invaders are artificial intelligences, designed as such to simulate war scenarios, to what purpose can remain a mystery -- maybe to create a Matrix wherein the defeat of the human race scenario is meant to play out over time, or to test drive simulations for use in real world warfare. The time reset would be a code written into their programming to reset the battle continually to ensure their win, but the accidental transfer of this code to human hosts was unexpected. They managed to shake Vrataski from her loop through a blood transfusion, and instead decided to use her image as the Angel of Verdun only to kill her on the battlefield and continue the defeat scenario.
Cage's obtaining of the code is similarly unexpected, and together with Rita, they manage to change the course of the war. Whether the reality that Cage wakes up to (the Omega dead, the war won) is a temporary reprieve or permanent is unknown, because he is unplugged shortly after.
Real World: Cage has been unplugged for over three years, destined for a straight and narrow career as a member of the Zion Defence Grid before things took a turn for the off kilter two years in. His initial rehabilitation didn't last too long, but he didn't integrate very thoroughly into the human race's day to day society concentrated in Zion itself before he got back to work. He spent some time learning his way around training simulations, and helped adapt technology native to his world into loading programmes for the sake of training and maybe future improvement to the battle suits of the Real.
He joined the Nidhoggr, a ship manned by Simon Metzger, a captain notorious for running a tight ship and being scary, and took a generalised approach to learning his way around the ship, never so good at a single task, but skilled in trying out all of them. He engaged with as much conflict in the Real as he did carry out Matrix operations.
He was promoted to First Officer after two years, which was the result of a messy attack that thinned out their crew as well as his cooperation in the fall out. Metzger had been lured out to respond to a distress signal, when it turned out to be a trick -- the ship, called the Sigil, appeared to have suffered enemy fire from a pirate ship, but was in fact a lure. A new crew member of the Nidhoggr, apparently in on it, shot the current First Officer (and was quickly killed by Metzger in turn), and it became apparent that an old acquaintance of Metzger's, on the Sigil, offered the chance for them to stage the destruction of their ships and free lance their freedom fighting out of Irkalla, away from Zion's influence.
While Metzger appeared to consider acceptance, Cage fired an EMP charge. The Sigil powered down swiftly enough to avoid damage, but the pirate ship went down. At the same time, sentinels attacked, and the Nidhoggr was not able to trigger a second EMP blast -- they took flight, fended off hull breaches, lost some lives, but ultimately escaped. The Sigil was last seen going down.
Metzger disclosed the truth to the Council, and Cage gave his honest report as well. In the end, the event was made classified, and Cage was promoted to First Officer, and has continued to act in this capacity for the last year. He is known for being the good cop to Metzger's bad, and is better at making professional acquaintances than he does friends.
ABILITIES AND SKILLS
Anomalies: Cage has experience with anomalies without actually possessing any. Anymore. For a time (and what seemed like a very long time, to him), he was infected with a piece of coding that reset the last day upon his apparent death. Rather than suffering mental death, his Matrix looped back to a point of waking consciousness for him. However, he was set free of this loop, but is not without some lingering familiarity with anomalous power.
Skillset: Having completed ROTC in college and that being the extent of Cage's army training, he went into advertising, and was entrepreneurial enough to build up his own firm. This fell apart during the long, weary war his planet was afflicted with, with all of Europe crumbling to invasion, and he was brought back into the military fold as a media relations expert. This kept him safely off the battlefield, until one day, it did not, and he was asked to participate in frontline battle to help sell the war. He objected to this so strongly that he tried to blackmail his way out of it, and upon his imminent arrest, attempted to flee. It didn't go so well.
But once he was caught in a timeloop, he was trained for many, many days, and longer still, to become not only combat ready, but combat amazing. He became familiar with using a battle suit that allowed him to fight with superior strength, speed, and agility, along with an array of automatic weapons, from machineguns to mini missiles.
He also, by now, has an excellent eye for detail and a second to none memory. Nothing preternatural or terribly off the charts for a normal human mind, but he is skilled at recollection to the point of uncanniness, thanks to the necessity of it during his time skip era, as well as sharply observant, for the same reasons.
Upload Capabilities:
SAMPLES
1:
"It's not enough to know where they are."
If Cage is taking any small amusement from standing where Rita had once stood, repeating her words, it's communicated in the half-smile on his face that is ever present anyway, only a private joke to himself. He's off on the sidelines, now, with a hand on the switch that stops and starts the training, as he watches the latest recruit fathom the machines put in place to test their reflexes, strength.
They're the same as his world, impossibly fast, devestatingly ruthless, spinning four legged starfish mechanical monsters whose only objective seems to be slamming with lethal force into people and sending them flying.
"You have to know how to kill them."
His thumb depresses red button, and the machines twitch to life, whirl in place.
"Again."
2:
"We get it, you didn't want to be that guy. Lucky for you, you don't have to be that guy."
OOC
Name: Samm
Age: 26!
Contact details: neveryourmask @ plurk
Characters already in Systemwide: Bruce Banner (MCU) in reserve.
BASIC PROFILE
Name: William Cage
Age: 41 (and now 44)
Canon: Edge of Tomorrow
Appearance: Bill Cage is portrayed by Tom Cruise. He is 5'7", give or take the height of his Republican haircut, starting to go grey at the seams, smile lines and crows feet deepening. His teeth are so white.
Extraction point: After the events of the movie.
OVERVIEW
Personality: Hundreds upon hundreds of same day iterations can have a grave affect on a man, but much of who Cage is is still defined by who he used to be before he had to help save the world. Untested, he was a salesman -- one with his own advertising firm, and when that fell through due to the war, he became a media relations expert as an officer of the United States Army. He has a trustworthy affect in the same way a good car salesman is convincing when he says he's giving you a really good deal, he might even get in trouble, ha ha. His job was to sell the possibility of victory when the certainty was catastrophic defeat, and he was successful at this.
This part of him has been honed and sharpened like a blade thanks to his time loop events. He is much better at reading people, discerning what they want, and figuring out how to deny it or give it to them and when in order to get what he wants, as there are several aspects of his same-day-repeats that meant codebreaking how to handle people. These days, Cage is also substantially less concerned with being liked or being likeable -- in fact, it might not even register -- despite the fact that charisma is certainly a part of his arsenal.
The biggest change is his attitude about his role in things like global conflict, and it has certainly carried over into the Real. Back in the day, he saw the alien invasion of Earth as a little remote -- certainly, he felt the average citizen's urgency for it stopping, he watched white faced as attacks leveled whole cities and crumbled historic human architecture, he felt that fear and anger of seeing planes shot out of the sky, but he was, like most people, a spectator. His place was in Washington, in territories that were not being targeted, and he made damn sure he never had to get his hands dirty, the kind of person who professes to faint at the sight of blood. The time loop events changed this -- saving himself from eternal repeated days was tied directly into ending the war, but eventually, he just wanted to end the war, and witnessing the United Kingdom's invasion as the alien threat advanced was a turning point.
In Zion, nothing is stopping him from sinking back into some political role, a civilian life style, but he is too used to getting back up and facing the frontline. His has a dogged determination, now, that has the same kind of ruthlessness he was forced to cultivate in his past life. There is probably a swimming shark quality to it -- if he stops, and looks around, he might never start again, because this is the worst thing ever. It's easier to just keep going, and three years into service with Zion Defence Grid is nothing -- he spent far longer than that repeating the same terrible day over and over again, and this bears a lot of resemblance.
The carry over is not as neat as all that -- he knows these two wars are different animals, and that technically, humankind is more or less in a stalemate with the machines. But he has the baffled anger of someone who was relatively recently unplugged at the concept of sharing Earth with giant deadly toaster ovens, and his politics are in part dictated by the fact he helped reclaim Earth in his Matrix when it was all but impossible, and believes, deep down, they have no choice but to try again. He's patient enough and also individual in spirit enough not to make a lot of waves to this effect, at least, not yet. For all that he is a lot of things, he's never been a leader.
Day to day, this aspect of him isn't always apparent. He comes across, a lot, as that salesman, occasional moments of haplessness still ingrained in him. Occasionally, if you've known him for a while, you might catch a thousand yard stare, or moments of near reckless bravery and brutality in given missions. He is more competent than anyone would give him credit for, and he works to maintain this, training almost every day, and training others. And he's definitely gotten used to the sight of blood.
Matrix: The Matrix that Cage hails from is one resembling contemporary Earth, but one in the late and after stages of an alien invasion that has totally devestated Europe over the past decade or longer. These aliens are known as Mimics (supposedly because they mimicked the first organism they liked the look of, the starfish) -- they are incredibly difficult to kill, supremely fast, and spell death for any human they look at twice. Or just once.
In response, the United Defense Force was formed, a global military presence completely committed to fighting this particular war in tandem with other military forces. It is particularly known for its utilisation of hydraulic battle suits, worn by trained soldiers, bristling with weapons and guidance systems as well lending the wearing enhanced strength and speed provided they are trained to make the most of this technology. Even with this advancement, the chances of winning one on one are dubious at best without an extensive amount of training, and full scale battles are quickly lost in the aliens' favour.
Cage's story is about the media relations US army poster boy falling into dire circumstance when he is ordered to go to the frontline to help sell the war. Upon trying to run, he is arrested for desertion, stripped of his rank, and forced to go anyway.
He encounters what makes this Matrix particularly strange -- the aliens possess the power to time travel, which they use to ensure they win every battle they encounter. An Alpha ranked alien carries this power in their blood, and upon their death, are brought back in time by about a day, and the entire army of aliens (all of which are linked, like a central nervous system, to the brain-figure known as the Omega) are able to anticipate the tide of the battle and ensure their own victory, or reset the day via the Alpha's repeated death until they do. Unfortunately, there's a catch -- a human is able to absorb this power for themself if they kill the Alpha and get covered in its corrosive blood. This is what happens to Cage, and has happened to the woman that mentors him, Rita Vrataski.
In fitting into the universe of the Matrix, it's proposed that the alien invaders are artificial intelligences, designed as such to simulate war scenarios, to what purpose can remain a mystery -- maybe to create a Matrix wherein the defeat of the human race scenario is meant to play out over time, or to test drive simulations for use in real world warfare. The time reset would be a code written into their programming to reset the battle continually to ensure their win, but the accidental transfer of this code to human hosts was unexpected. They managed to shake Vrataski from her loop through a blood transfusion, and instead decided to use her image as the Angel of Verdun only to kill her on the battlefield and continue the defeat scenario.
Cage's obtaining of the code is similarly unexpected, and together with Rita, they manage to change the course of the war. Whether the reality that Cage wakes up to (the Omega dead, the war won) is a temporary reprieve or permanent is unknown, because he is unplugged shortly after.
Real World: Cage has been unplugged for over three years, destined for a straight and narrow career as a member of the Zion Defence Grid before things took a turn for the off kilter two years in. His initial rehabilitation didn't last too long, but he didn't integrate very thoroughly into the human race's day to day society concentrated in Zion itself before he got back to work. He spent some time learning his way around training simulations, and helped adapt technology native to his world into loading programmes for the sake of training and maybe future improvement to the battle suits of the Real.
He joined the Nidhoggr, a ship manned by Simon Metzger, a captain notorious for running a tight ship and being scary, and took a generalised approach to learning his way around the ship, never so good at a single task, but skilled in trying out all of them. He engaged with as much conflict in the Real as he did carry out Matrix operations.
He was promoted to First Officer after two years, which was the result of a messy attack that thinned out their crew as well as his cooperation in the fall out. Metzger had been lured out to respond to a distress signal, when it turned out to be a trick -- the ship, called the Sigil, appeared to have suffered enemy fire from a pirate ship, but was in fact a lure. A new crew member of the Nidhoggr, apparently in on it, shot the current First Officer (and was quickly killed by Metzger in turn), and it became apparent that an old acquaintance of Metzger's, on the Sigil, offered the chance for them to stage the destruction of their ships and free lance their freedom fighting out of Irkalla, away from Zion's influence.
While Metzger appeared to consider acceptance, Cage fired an EMP charge. The Sigil powered down swiftly enough to avoid damage, but the pirate ship went down. At the same time, sentinels attacked, and the Nidhoggr was not able to trigger a second EMP blast -- they took flight, fended off hull breaches, lost some lives, but ultimately escaped. The Sigil was last seen going down.
Metzger disclosed the truth to the Council, and Cage gave his honest report as well. In the end, the event was made classified, and Cage was promoted to First Officer, and has continued to act in this capacity for the last year. He is known for being the good cop to Metzger's bad, and is better at making professional acquaintances than he does friends.
ABILITIES AND SKILLS
Anomalies: Cage has experience with anomalies without actually possessing any. Anymore. For a time (and what seemed like a very long time, to him), he was infected with a piece of coding that reset the last day upon his apparent death. Rather than suffering mental death, his Matrix looped back to a point of waking consciousness for him. However, he was set free of this loop, but is not without some lingering familiarity with anomalous power.
Skillset: Having completed ROTC in college and that being the extent of Cage's army training, he went into advertising, and was entrepreneurial enough to build up his own firm. This fell apart during the long, weary war his planet was afflicted with, with all of Europe crumbling to invasion, and he was brought back into the military fold as a media relations expert. This kept him safely off the battlefield, until one day, it did not, and he was asked to participate in frontline battle to help sell the war. He objected to this so strongly that he tried to blackmail his way out of it, and upon his imminent arrest, attempted to flee. It didn't go so well.
But once he was caught in a timeloop, he was trained for many, many days, and longer still, to become not only combat ready, but combat amazing. He became familiar with using a battle suit that allowed him to fight with superior strength, speed, and agility, along with an array of automatic weapons, from machineguns to mini missiles.
He also, by now, has an excellent eye for detail and a second to none memory. Nothing preternatural or terribly off the charts for a normal human mind, but he is skilled at recollection to the point of uncanniness, thanks to the necessity of it during his time skip era, as well as sharply observant, for the same reasons.
Upload Capabilities:
Anomalous Skills: 1
Martial Arts: 2
Projectile Weaponry: 3
Technical Skills: 2
Wild Card: 2
Martial Arts: 2
Projectile Weaponry: 3
Technical Skills: 2
Wild Card: 2
SAMPLES
1:
"It's not enough to know where they are."
If Cage is taking any small amusement from standing where Rita had once stood, repeating her words, it's communicated in the half-smile on his face that is ever present anyway, only a private joke to himself. He's off on the sidelines, now, with a hand on the switch that stops and starts the training, as he watches the latest recruit fathom the machines put in place to test their reflexes, strength.
They're the same as his world, impossibly fast, devestatingly ruthless, spinning four legged starfish mechanical monsters whose only objective seems to be slamming with lethal force into people and sending them flying.
"You have to know how to kill them."
His thumb depresses red button, and the machines twitch to life, whirl in place.
"Again."
2:
"We get it, you didn't want to be that guy. Lucky for you, you don't have to be that guy."
