Tu Shanshu Application

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Player Information:
Name: Amicitia
Age: 29
Contact: amicitia652@gmail.com
Game Cast: None

Character Information:
Name: Hamato Donatello
Canon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 2003 cartoon series
Canon Point: The end of Season 4, as the Turtles are being dragged away by mysterious wooden soldiers
Age: 18
Reference: Wiki article

Setting:

Donatello is from New York City. Just normal, real-world, 2008-ish New York City. There's absolutely nothing unusual, except for the four mutant turtles and their rat master living in the sewers. Oh, and I guess there are some magic crystals, and a bunch of aliens, and once in a while people travel to different times or dimensions.

Back up. Centuries ago, a race of aliens known as the Utroms crash-landed on Earth, thanks to the interference of a prisoner they were transporting: an abnormally evil Utrom named Ch'rell. Using technology salvaged from their ship, the Utroms built robotic exosuits and blended into Feudal Japanese society, masquerading as ordinary humans.

Ch'rell, however, obtained one of these exosuits and escaped, remaining on the loose until present day, despite the other Utroms' efforts to recapture him. The Utroms were aided in these efforts by the Guardians, a group of humans let in on the aliens' secret and entrusted with protecting them.

One of these humans was Hamato Yoshi, an orphan raised by an eccentric ninja master known only as the Ancient One. Sadly, Yoshi's foster brother, Mashimi, chose to fight on the side of Ch'rell, now a powerful warlord known as the Shredder.

As a result of this war, Yoshi was forced to flee to America, bringing little other than his pet rat, Splinter. Yoshi and Splinter lived in a small apartment in New York, until a group of Shredder's followers, including a mountain of a man named Hun, found Yoshi and killed him.

Distraught and homeless, the unusually-intelligent Splinter wandered the streets of the city, taking to the sewers as a refuge. There, one day, he saw a surprising thing: four baby turtles had fallen through a sewer grate, along with a mysterious canister of green ooze. The canister had broken open, and the turtles were crawling in the ooze. As Splinter plucked them out of it, some of the ooze got on him too.

The next morning, to Splinter's amazement, both he and the turtles were much larger: the ooze had caused them to mutate to human-like shape, size, and intelligence. All of this was inexplicable to Splinter at the time, but fate works in mysterious ways: it later turned out that the ooze was a byproduct of the Utroms' attempts to return to their home world.

Nor was this the only part of the mutants' past that had followed them to America. As the Turtles grow and begin to emerge from the city's literal underworld into its figurative one, they quickly become mixed up in the affairs of various criminal elements. They encounter the Purple Dragons, a gang of thugs led by Hun, and the Foot, a ninja clan led directly by the Shredder.

Much of this is not obvious to the ordinary citizens of New York; very few know of the Turtles' existence. However, in the course of investigating their past, the four mutant brothers take actions that ultimately result in the Earth being invaded by another group of aliens, the Triceratons - an event that could hardly be missed by anybody.

Following the invasion, the citizens of New York become much more aware of the previously hidden elements in their city, and react with fear and anger - mobs, gangs, and extremist groups all declare their intent to rid the world of aliens, and some attempt to act on this declaration.

In the confusion, Ch'rell - now a powerful New York businessman operating under the name of Oroku Saki - literally launches a plan to escape from Earth, revealing a spaceship in the midst of a party he was hosting for the city's elite. He does not get away, however: the Utroms intercede, finally capturing him and banishing him to an ice asteroid.

Other powerful elements in this version of New York often seem uninformed and incompetent, frequently being manipulated by Saki, but one man stands firm in his mission to rid the Earth of aliens: Agent Bishop, the head of the clandestine government agency known as the Earth Protection Force. After Shredder's banishment, Bishop steps up as a primary enemy of the Turtles, lumping them in with the aliens he has sworn to eliminate.

In this environment, mutants of all types are potential targets: the Turtles, Splinter, and their friend Leatherhead are in great danger, being transformed from ordinary animals and having no "cure" or home to fall back on. The citizens of the underground city of Y'Lyntia, humans mutated into strange cave-adapted creatures for the Foot Clan's nefarious purposes, have also suffered greatly. Aliens are definitely not welcome, nor do the victims of various bizarre experiments receive much sympathy.

Oddly, the public heroes of this New York, such as Silver Sentry and the members of the Justice Force, remain popular. They are not referred to as mutants, despite their superhuman abilities.

Personality:

Donatello's personality is primarily defined by his brain: he is one smart guy. While his interests are far-ranging and his love of "studying" unbounded, his primary intellectual talents lie in the realm of engineering. He has demonstrated the ability to build everything from cell phones to submarines, apparently out of garbage, and he greatly enjoys doing so. He is frequently seen in his lab, engaged in one project or another.

Don is enormously productive in inventing things to aid his family, such as vehicles, security systems, and spy gear. There seem to be few material things in the Turtles' home that can't be credited to him, and their lives are surely better for his efforts. Don seems happy to provide this service, showing obvious delight every time he unveils a new contraption. His brothers don't always understand his projects, or the words he uses to describe them, but Don usually doesn't mind.

What Don does mind is being repeatedly asked to fix toasters and hot water heaters. When his brothers expect him to make such repairs with hardly even a "please" or "thank you", Don does not hesitate to show his annoyance. Despite his calm and agreeable demeanor, he is able to deploy a truly threatening glare or a painful head-whack when he feels it's deserved.

All it takes to change his mood, though, is a little bit of appreciation. Donatello is a truly caring person, easily fitting himself to the needs of whoever he's around. This doesn't just apply to his family, either. He worked tirelessly to find a cure for the victims of the Y'Lyntia experiments, helps out the local homeless people, and was deeply upset by the loss of Kirby, despite having known him for only a few hours.

Don's chameleon-like nature extends to other realms as well. When alone he is friendly and sociable, and has no problem being assertive. With his brothers, however, he is more likely to hang back and let them do the talking.

One thing Don never does well is lead. When forced to make decisions he is remarkably poor at it, delegating tasks in nonsensical ways. He is, however, a model follower, never disobeying the commands of his father or eldest brother (at least, not unless someone else does first).

Another of Don's weaknesses is his tendency to get distracted. The world is so fascinating to him that he can completely zone out of a raging battle in favor of examining some unfamiliar technology. This absent-mindedness also causes Don to take dumb risks, like that time he forgot to consider whether it was really a good idea to jump off a bridge with an untested hang-glider.

Despite his casual recklessness with himself, Don never purposely endangers other people. As a pacifist, he doesn't even employ his well-honed fighting skills if he can avoid it. When faced with a potentially dangerous situation, he would rather try to talk things out. He doesn't greatly enjoy fighting, though don't let that fool you: he is just as capable of beating up low-lifes as his brothers are.

Which brings us back to the beginning: at the heart of it, Don would do anything to protect his family. It's just that he prefers to do it by peaceful means. If that makes him an egghead nerd that none of his brothers really understand, well, that's just the life of a genius mutant turtle.

Appearance:



(If it's not displaying, it's the "Season 1" image from the wiki linked above.)

Abilities:

Donatello is highly-skilled in hand-to-hand combat, either unarmed or with his bo staff. He is physically strong, though not superhumanly so, and quite stealthy. His favorite weapon is his brain: in battle, his brothers often cover him while he makes use of any available technology. When he does fight, his style is elegant, using minimum force for maximum result, and taking advantage of physics to efficiently dispatch enemies.

As mentioned above, Donatello is able to turn garbage into implausibly-sophisticated machines. They usually work, too. Of particular note are his skills in both building his own security systems and hacking into others'.

Don frequently comes prepared for his inevitable adventures, but he learns on the go too. Several times in canon, he expresses confidence that he can learn something, such as a foreign language or how to operate alien technology, with just a few minutes of study. He never seems to get as far as actually doing it, though.

On the battlefield, Donatello's shell and thick reptilian skin give him somewhat greater physical resilience than a normal human, though he's hardly invulnerable. At home, he is skilled in the arts of interpersonal compromise, and can prevent his hotheaded brothers from killing each other with just a few calm words.

Suitability:

TMNT 2k3 is a children's cartoon with a lot of humor, but it has a lot of darkness too. Don is no stranger to gang activity, military movements, and all-out war. He's also encountered a lot of fantasy and sci-fi elements in the course of his adventures, so the mystical nature of Keeliai won't phase him.

He will be interested in investigating the stranger parts of his new world, especially the ancient continent-sized turtles. He will look to his brothers for direction on how to deal with political factors.

Inventory: Belt, mask, and pads; a bo staff; assorted generic ninja gear such as shuriken, climbing claws, and smoke bombs. Don possesses a duffel bag containing a variety of interesting tricks, but he was not carrying it at this canon point.

Suite: WA-3B

In-Character Samples:
Third Person:

Donatello usually remembers to return to the Water Sector at night, to his brothers and his home, but most of his days are spent in the garages of the Metal Sector. This is where he feels comfortable, among the scrap parts and power tools, the noise of a table saw and glare of a blowtorch. He swaps jargon with kedan and foreigner alike, laughing at jokes his brothers would never understand.

The community of inventors was cool to him at first - not because he's strange, simply because he's a stranger - but they had warmed up as he proved his intellectual prowess. He belongs here, as much as he's ever belonged anywhere, in this flourescent-lit space where if you build it, they will come and tell you everything you did wrong.

Don isn't used to that. At home, whenever he powered up a new invention, his brothers would sort of close their eyes and trust him. Almost every test run was a potential threat to life and limb - hardly the scientific method, but the best he could do.

Now, a dozen friends, his intellectual equals, circle around to check his calculations and inspect his technical work before he ever presses the on-switch. And every time they find an error, it feels like a stab: This could have killed someone you love.

But that, he is used to. It's just like in training, when his sensei would defeat him in a sparring match, and say, in that quietly terrifying tone: "Yame, Donatello, you are dead."

So he welcomes the critique of his peers as though they were his masters, and vows he will never make the same mistake twice.

Network:

[Don has heard of the Turtles All The Way Down myth. He thinks it is a fascinating and beautiful story, and yet to him it is only that: a story, soundly refuted by the theory of plate tectonics.]

[Here, though, it seems to be at least partially true. The city he is now living in is actually built on the back of a miles-long turtle, who has been swimming around this world's oceans for hundreds of years, if not longer. It used to be so with other cities as well, but now those continent-turtles are dead, and the one Don rides is the only one left.]

[He knows how that feels.]

[He tries to understand. He sits in places where the ancient carapace is exposed, and meditates. He goes to the Shell's Edge and watches the water, but can't say for sure that the waves are caused by the swimming of an enormous turtle, rather than by ordinary ocean currents. He suffers delusions of infinite regress, wondering if a tiny city is thriving somewhere on his shell.]

[Finally, he travels to the far end of the city, and out onto the head. Immediately, he senses it: a vast incomprehensible turtle-ness, hanging heavy but comfortable in the air. It's almost like the collective consciousness generated when he and his brothers meditate together, but so much more powerful than they could ever be, and so far beyond what any of them can reach.]

[He stays a long time, then walks slowly back into the city. On impulse, he stops into a console cafe to try to put his thoughts into words.]

Does anyone else… feel it? When they go out to the head?



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