User Profile

NAME | TEQUILA // Shikaku Teki
SERIES | Original
AGE | 18
BIRTHDATE | AUG. 19
FACTION | Ex-Yurei

Teki's received all the appropriate training for a top-grade soldier - basic self-defense, physical endurance, all that jazz - and was also trained extensively in the art of being a sniper. Hand her a rifle (she prefers a Dragunov or Arisaka) and she can hit a coin from a hundred meters - of course, shooting in that short pause in between heartbeats for maximum accuracy.

But of course, that's not all - she wouldn't have been employed in the Lambert-Butler with just that.

The genetic engineering she received before birth combined human genes with the molecular essence of poltergeists, and granted her the ability of phasing - being able to pass through solid objects. And though a bit unorthodox, it turned out to be pretty damn effective skill for a sniper to have. Up in the woods, wait in position and shoot, then when the enemy searches for you, hide inside the trunk of a tree until they give up and leave, then shoot again. In the suburbs, shoot from the roof of a building, and by the time those soldiers look up at the roof, you've already phased through the floor and two walls, so you're shooting from the second floor two buildings over.

Not that it renders her invicible, as it's a skill activated only when she concentrates. Best way to kill her? Distract her while she's passing through a wall - she'll be stuck in the cement with no way out until she can get her concentration back. And she has the same vulnerabilities as other soldiers. Catch her unawares and stab her in the back when she's not looking - she won't be able to phase through that blade. Same for a bullet. Shoot her in the head while she's looking, and she'll make that bullet go straight through, but snipe her from afar, and all it takes would be one clean shot to kill her. Not to mention phasing gets terribly exhausting after a while. That time she hid inside the two-foot thick wall of cement in the wall of a bomb shelter for five hours straight to keep from getting caught by the Sphere? - she barely managed to make it back to base before collapsing with a fever and didn't wake up for two days.

But as long as her weaknesses aren't targeted like that, she'll outlive all the other soldiers - it's terribly hard to catch a person who can walk through walls, after all.

For the most part, if you met her on the street, you'd have no idea she's a soldier, since she's pretty much just like that kid next door. Cheerful, happy. Boyish, mostly - what with the way she dresses and acts and talks and holds herself, most people are surprised to find out she's actually a she and not a he. A little spacey at times - she takes a while to wake up in the morning, sits around still thinking about the weird dreams she had - and a little spazzy when she's had too much sugar - she gets hyper and twitchy and laughs a little bit too loud. But in general? You'd expect to see her sitting in a college classroom doodling in the margins of her notes, not running around a battlefield with a rifle over her shoulder and wiping blood off her cheek. Pass her on the streets and wave at her - she'll flinch, then grin and wave back. Friendly sort of kid, if a bit twitchy, a little timid.

And she's a little shy, a little scared a lot of time. Because that commander she was trained under back when she was like seven? He was known for being ruthless and mean and generally terrifying - and that sort of broke her, even six years after she graduated from under his training. Shout a command at her, and she'll usually listen out of instinct, or start yelling at her for something she did - or didn't do - wrong, and she'll apologize, flinching back. Scared obedient, perhaps. Really doesn't look like a good soldier, huh? Someone so shy, so nice, so almost-normal-you-wanna-get-to-know-her doesn't seem like fodder for a sniper, right?

But get to know her a little better and you'll see why she was part of the Lambert-Butler, that group of soldiers who were famous/infamous for being ruthless and deadly and completely insane, because the fact is that she doesn't quite have all the emotions and morales of a normal human. How else could she have killed all those people?

It's not that she doesn't like people - she has friends, and she loves them, she'd probably die fighting for them - but it's just that, what's done is done, right? Gotta fight to live, and one side's gotta die, so might as well do it, and might as well the other guys die than me. Desensitized, to put it simply. She used to have more friends in the army, but they usually died one way or the other, and she learned not to get too affected by deaths, or she'd never get over it. So if you're her friend and you get shot in the streets by a mugger? She'll mourn over you for a bit - damn, he was so nice and was a damn good opponent at video games - but after that, she'll leave you behind and move onto other things. And it's not like she didn't like you - she did, of course she did, if she calls you a friend she means it and she likes you for whatever reason you're cool - but it's just that she's terribly good at moving on. You were cool while you were around, but sorry, there's a lot more in life that needs to be done!

And this sort of apathy is extended to when she's out in the fields killing people, because really, she seems to find it a bit fun. Because hey, what's gotta be done's gotta be done, and might as well enjoy it, right? She loves thrill and excitement, and what's more fun than going out on the battlefield, running around amid those explosions and gunshots. It's like a real live roleplaying game, just that it's not a game and it's actually really happening! Sure, she's scared of dying - dying would suck, since she kinda likes living and hanging out with her friends and all - and she doesn't like being hurt - being hurt sucks - but while the game's going, it's best to enjoy, after all. And if you see her grinning while she's phasing through walls, running away from those anti-sniper dogs, it's not that she's happy about the first-rank commander she shot through the head. It's more that she's caught in the thrill of the chase - c'mon, c'mon, run, run before you get caught! Killing people's bad, sure, she's not a sadist or anything, but it's still exciting as hell to run around with her rifle!

And those accusations of insanity? You can't really trust them. Sure, the Lambert-Butler guys did some pretty crazy stunts - blowing up buildings for kicks and playing shootings games in the middle of the war - but she's not insane in the purest sense of the word. She's reasonably bright - decent with logic and a quick enough thinker - and under most circumstances, she's normal enough. Loves comic books and videogames, jokes around with buddies, has a knack for drawing and often seen in the streets playing with abandoned kittens. She's a normal human for the most part thrust into a war and gotta adapt - added a bit of apathy and minus a bit of attatchment.

So. Wanna be friends?

→ Born in one of Yurei's baby labs, genetically altered before birth, in a batch of kids designed to become eventual soldiers. Never had parents, never had a name, only a serial number: 081989.
→ Grew up as a child soldier, and thought it was generally okay. A lot of the other kids seemed depressed and antisocial, and 081989 was sort of clueless and said, "oh well" and went with the flow. Go shoot people? Um, okay! Go fight? Uhhhh, sure! And started getting the hang of it after a while.
→ Soon afterwards taken out of the general reserve and placed in sniper training. The instructor there was known for being harsh, cruel, ruthless, and maybe that made her a bit more timid, a bit more shy, a bit more apologetic. But hey, she was still generally passively happy, and once training was over and she was given her first own rifle, she looked really happy. She named it Julian.
→ Fought in the Sphere vs Yurei war. And soon afterwards, lost count of the people she's killed, because, uh, there were a lot. She generally went from battle to battle with Julian slung over her back, humming a little song in that spacey-happy way of hers. It was pretty much routine - get in place, shoot a few people, then phase through the walls and floor as quick as possible, move to another location, shoot some more, phase away, wash, rinse, repeat. There was that one time she had to stay hidden inside the wall of a bomb shelter for four hours hiding from Sphere soldiers, that sort of sucked bigtime, and then that one time she accidentally spaced-out while phasing through a tree and got her leg encased in the wood and had to blast it out, she got in a lot of trouble for hurting her leg like that, but hey, it was just life, right?
→ Joined up with the Lambert-Butler squadron, one among many organized squads named after cigarette brands. A few front-liners, some snipers, an explosives expert -- you know, everything a balanced group needs. Tired of calling each other by long strings of numbers, they gave themselves code names, too: this time, after types of alcoholic drinks. 081989 became TEQUILA since it sounded nice. Not like she knew anything about alcohol anyway, so whatever sounded good was fair game.
→ Fought with them until the end of the war.
→ Once the stalemate happened and both sides collapsed and the Lambert-Butler soldiers found themselves needing to actually live in normal society, they realized they needed actual names. All of them took Shikaku as a family name, then adapted their old code names to fit. TEQUILA became Shikaku Teki.
→ Having had no money to their name (considering they were Yurei products to begin with and therefore were not paid for fighting), the Lambert-Butler soldiers resorted to mugging and killing and breaking and entering and basically taking over other people's stuff. Like -- sorry dudes, but we kinda need this. With no police force or military around any more to stop them, it wasn't like it was very hard or anything.
→ Currently living with the rest of the Lambert-Butler squadron (or at least, what remains of it) in a large house near the hospital.