➠ application (animus)

[kungfubomber]

Player Information

Name: Sora G. Silverwind.
Personal Journal: cinnamonical
Age: 24.
Contact Info: PMs to either the character journal or my personal journal, please!
Other Characters Played: None.
Do you need an invite? Nope!

Character Information

Character Name: Bomberman. (Real name: Shiro Yogeki [SHIH-roh yoh-GEH-kee, hard "g"])
Character Series: Bomberman 64: The Second Attack. (...primarily. I'll explain below.)
Character Age: 22.
Character Gender: Male.
Alternate Universe
Canon Point: Post-Good Ending of TSA — he prevented the universe from being erased by the Angel, and has returned home to Bomber Star with Pommy.
Background Link: Bomberman 64: The Second Attack on Wikipedia
AU Background:

GENERAL
The most obvious change is that this Bomberman (as well as many other characters from his world) is human. To be more specific, he's 5'9" with white hair, dark brown eyes, pale skin, and a fit build. (Here's a semi-decent drawing of him.) This ends up opening a lot of opportunities for changing or expanding or throwing out elements from the original world, with one consequence being that the overall tone of this world has shifted from being lighthearted and cartoony to something more closely resembling relative realism (as can probably be seen in Bomberman's backstory below). Not that it's HARDCOREGRIMDARK all the time or anything. It's just that the potential for such things is a lot easier to delve into here, so I do so at times to keep things interesting.

Additionally, though I specify this Bomberman as being from Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, that's only because his world stems from things I came up with in a fanfic WIP of mine called Fateful Meetings, which reimagines/expands/bastardizes the plot and world of TSA according to two Verrah Important criteria: the aforementioned "nearly everyone is human" factor, and the "it would've been really fucking cool if things went like this instead" factor. In truth, the entirety of this particular world also drags in a lot of characters and concepts from games other than Bomberman 64 and Bomberman 64: The Second Attack (which are actually canonically connected to each other — something that can't be said for many other Bomberman games). For example, Mujoe and the Hige Hige Bandits (notable for being the first criminals that Bomberman ever apprehended) are characters who first appear in Saturn Bomberman, and the events/characters of Bomberman Hero also factor into this Bomberman's backstory, occurring almost immediately before the events of TSA/FM. The Bomberman franchise is known for repeatedly recycling characters and concepts in its games without establishing canonical/causal relationships between them, so in building the 'verse of Fateful Meetings, I like taking a bit of a kitchen sink approach with things.

If anyone does deign to start reading that fic, please to excuse the uneven writing quality and tone at the beginning ;A;


BACKSTORY OF A BOMBER

Shiro, better known to most people as "Bomberman", is a young man hailing from Kokaida, Sakihara on the planet Bakusei (more commonly known as Bomber Star). He is a bomber, a person able to create bombs from his chi/ki/life energy/whatever you want to call it. The bombs he creates are naturally fire-based, though he temporarily had the ability to create six other types of elemental bombs when he acquired the appropriate Elemental Stone inside the BHB Army's artificial black hole, and there are water/ice- and electric-type bombers who exist on Bakusei as well.

He was born on the planet of Bakusei (known more colloquially as Bomber Star), in Kokaida, Sakihara, a suburb north of the capital city of Diamond City. His parents are Shinichi Yogeki and Fei-Lin Song, both retired members of Bomber Base task forces. It is primarily from them that Shiro inherited a desire to do good in the world somehow.

As a young child, Shiro was extremely outgoing and energetic. He liked to spend a lot of time outside, and his energy was spent training in martial arts, learning how to control and use his bombs, and taking gymnastics classes (which his parents enrolled him in when the first two activities didn't seem to be putting a dent in his hyperactivity).

Then Shiro was enrolled in an elite primary school where practically all of the students were from backgrounds far more affluent than his. As a result, he endured outright teasing and harassment from a few of them, and shunning from nearly everyone else. When he tried to fight back once, he ended up severely hurting a student, and was reprimanded for it (while the provocateurs in question got off scot-free). After that incident, Shiro became quieter and more withdrawn, trying to keep out of everyone else's way. The only thing making his experience at the school more bearable was that Kuro and Megumi, both from very highly-regarded families in Sakihara, befriended him and used their influence to the best of their ability to keep other students from bothering him. Shiro was extremely grateful for their support, but he frequently felt as though he should be fighting his own battles and not relying so much on the help of his friends. He swore one day he'd stand on his own two feet.

At age 14, while visiting a traveling museum exhibit displaying priceless artifacts, Shiro successfully thwarted a heist by Mujoe and his Hige Hige Bandits. The news of this caught the attention of General Junichiro "Jun" Ibaraki, who at the time held the title of Bomberman and was actively looking for a successor. He saw potential in Shiro's natural combat abilities and friendly personality, and his youth and mixed heritage (Sakiharan and Chenrinese) were also deciding factors on a political level.

Understandably, Jun's colleagues and Shiro's parents were dubious about conferring the title and its responsibilities upon someone so young, but Shiro was enthusiastic about the idea, for reasons ranging from genuinely believing he could do good in the position to believing that the celebrity status would shut his grade-school tormentors up. Shinichi and Fei-Lin, despite their worries, threw their full support behind Shiro, and Shiro was soon named the new Bomberman -- the youngest to ever hold the title since it was first established about 300 years ago.

For the next three years, Shiro would be put through the media wringer, providing an outlet for the outgoing side of him he had to repress in school. He made frequent appearances, giving interviews or demonstrations of his abilities. Fictional media like comic books and TV shows were created about his role as Bomberman, and he spent a fair amount of time promoting Bomber Base and whatever other things Jun wanted him to do. When he wasn't doing that, Jun was running him through a high-intensity, condensed version of core Base training in law enforcement and combat, using simulations at first and then sending Shiro into the field with older, more experienced agents, who used him as a wildcard if necessary. This allowed Shiro to gain necessary hands-on experience while also making sure he was protected. Whenever a team he was working with successfully apprehended a criminal, Shiro's involvement would be emphasized to the news in order to build his reputation as a force of justice, regardless of how much he actually was involved.

Given his suddenly busy life, not to mention being admitted into Bomber Base early thanks to Jun, Shiro missed out on attending secondary school with Kuro and Megumi. He grew distant from them even as he tried his best to keep in touch. He had his first girlfriend at around this time, but the relationship was short-lived, as Shiro had some difficulties dealing with the lack of privacy that came with being a rising star. Nevertheless, he kept his head up, confident he'd be able to handle anything that came his way.

When he was 17, Shiro was sent on a mission to apprehend the Masked Trio, a group of B-list space pirates who threatened to wreak havoc on Bomber Star with a strange device called the Omni Cube. Though he had the backup of professional task forces, Shiro was ultimately the frontman of the mission, needing to personally take down the members of the Masked Trio himself. To aid in this, Jun pulled some strings and loaned Shiro the Fire Stone, a powerful artifact thought to be only legend until it was discovered a few years ago. Its properties were still poorly understood, but research discovered that it could amplify the power of a bomber's bombs. Though Shiro was an unusually powerful bomber, having the extra firepower was enough to temporarily placate those who protested sending him on this mission. The decision was also incorporated as a part of Project Inferia, the research team studying the Fire Stone: lending Shiro the stone would allow them to get an idea of how it actually performed on the field.

He soon found himself with the blood of two members of the Masked Trio (Artemis and Orion) on his hands, entirely by accident. While reeling from the shock of that, he faced a formidable opponent in the form of Regulus, a temporary member of the Masked Trio. The fight against Regulus forced Shiro to his limits, and the only reason he gained the upper hand and pushed Regulus back was because Shiro entered berserker mode -- a poorly-understood phenomenon in which bombers temporarily gain a power boost to their explosives and a higher tolerance for pain, but at the temporary loss of some of their mental and rational faculties, acting reckless and wild. Despite this mental breakdown, Jun forced Shiro (and to be honest, Shiro forced himself as well) to continue the mission once he was more or less back to himself, so as not to lose face or credibility with others.

Shiro eventually apprehended the leader of the Masked Trio, Altair. The arrest, however, was interrupted by two things: Regulus swooping in to save Altair, and then Sirius (a mysterious benefactor who appeared to Shiro earlier with an offer to help him against the Masked Trio) killing Altair and taking the Omni Cube from him, saying that it originally belonged to him. Shiro and Regulus teamed up to take down Sirius. Against Shiro's efforts and wishes, Regulus killed Sirius, before leaving Shiro with a promise that he'd come back to fight Shiro again one day.

The next few years after this mission were some of Shiro's lowest points in his life ever. He had, for all intents and purposes, gone crazy, and was dealing with not only the direct emotional ramifications from it, but also with the stress of having to hide it from the public and pretend to everyone -- including himself -- that nothing was wrong with him. He began seeing a therapist, but that only helped so much. Shiro lost a lot of faith in the role he had taken on, and become disillusioned with the seeming callousness and ruthless pragmatism of Jun, whom he had previously looked up to as a mentor. He wasn't sure anymore whether he could help people as Bomberman, or whether he wanted to, but it was all he knew how to do at that point.

About four years later, Shiro was sent to rescue Princess Millian of the neighboring planet of Primus Star, who had gotten herself captured by a criminal overlord named Bagular when she stole four data disks that would complete the digital recreation of his ego and personality into an android sleeve. It was supposed to be a classified mission, partially as a result of both the precariousness of Millian's political position as well as strained ties between Primus and Bakusei, but somehow word of the mission got out and a media firestorm exploded.

In order to escape the immediate fallout in light of revelations from the Garaden incident, Jun sent Shiro on a "vacation" to a hot springs resort located in a different stellar system from Bakusei and Primus. On his way back home, Shiro's spaceship became sucked into an "artificial black hole" created under the orders of the space pirate Rukifellth, who had been possessed by Sthertoth, the god of evil. Under Sthertoth's influence, Rukifellth was using the device to trap planets so that he and his BHB Army could search them for the seven Elemental Stones of legend. Shiro soon found out that his Fire Stone was the last stone they needed to complete the set when he ran into Baelfael, the Astral Knight of fire. A fight ensued between the two men, and Shiro ended up accidentally killing him — his first kill since the mission with the Masked Trio. In his quest to escape the artificial black hole, he ended up having to face the remaining six knights in one-on-one life-or-death battles, one of whom was his old enemy Regulus. Not long after that, Shiro had to fight his friend Lilith, whom he had met early on in his time in the black hole and who had been possessed by the goddess of justice, Mihaele, who would stop at nothing to retrieve the Elemental Stones that Shiro now held in order to use them against Sthertoth. Unfortunately for her, the demonic heritage in Lilith's blood reacted badly to Mihaele's divine presence, causing Lilith's body to break down. Sensing that her time was short, Mihaele abandoned the fight with Shiro in favor of trying to find Sthertoth. Shiro found him — or Rukifellth, rather — first, and entered a showdown with him.

The struggles didn't end there. Once Rukifellth's body was weakened sufficiently, Sthertoth used the power of the Elemental Stones to release the seal on his earthly body, allowing him to regain his true demonic form. Despite this, Shiro managed to weaken him enough so that Mihaele was able to come in and merge with Sthertoth to become the Angel of Light and Shadow, the creator of the universe that Shiro lived in and the original form of both Mihaele and Sthertoth. The Angel demanded that Shiro go through a set of trials in order to determine whether or not she would remake the current universe. Said trials consisted of a fight with the Angel herself, and then facing simulations of his Past, Present, and Future selves. Only after all of this was cleared was Shiro finally allowed the chance to collapse for some rest.

After some time spent recuperating in the hospital wing of Rukifellth's ship, and talking over the recent events with Lilith, Rukifellth, and the resurrected Elemental Knights (previously Sthertoth's Astral Knights), Shiro returned home to Bomber Star, with Pommy in tow. He was in the middle of re-adjusting to his regular life when he was taken to the Tower of Animus.


Personality: Shiro's such a sickeningly typical hero that it makes me vomit cliched shonen inspirational quotes (complete with the appropriate soundtrack) to have to describe him. For instance, he willingly (and constantly, considering his job) puts himself in danger to save innocents (and sometimes even non-innocents!). While in the city of Nereid on the planet Aquanet in the BHB Army's black hole, he was warned by a servant girl named Moira that he was about to be turned over to the local dictator by her mistress, Nadine, whose house he was currently staying at.

“Yeah.” Moira was oddly casual. “The soldiers were saying that if Nadine didn’t turn you over to them, the Sovereign Ice Lord was going to completely wipe out this part of Nereid. Needless to say, Nadine’s not happy. But she’s trying to reason with them right now ‘cause they’re offending her sense of hospitality or something.”

Bomberman frowned. “Well, that’s not fair to the innocent people that live here,” he said, worried. “Maybe I should just go and see what this what’s-his-name wants.”

It was Moira’s turn to stare. “You’re about to get arrested for no apparent reason and you want to go along with it just to save the losers here?”

“It’s not their fault that I’m here, is it? Anyway, I’ve been in similar situations before, so it should be all right.” If I have enough continues to spare.

Moira’s mouth dropped open. “You’re completely out of your mind.”

Bomberman laughed and shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve definitely been told that one before.”

— Fateful Meetings, chapter 10 (Night in Nereid)

Later on, when it was deduced that a hallway they had to get through was definitely booby-trapped, Shiro decided that the best course of action was for him to go first and set off all the traps, so that Moira and Pommy (a strange creature that he accidentally acquired from his trip to the hot springs resort) could safely traverse.

He also refuses to kill if he can help it at all. There has been only one instance in his life so far where he acted with the intent to kill, and it was a split-second moment motivated by trying to prevent Moira from being hurt/killed by her own brother, the Astral Knight of ice and water. Though Moira didn't seem to express any resentment towards Shiro for it, Shiro was still haunted by his choice as he continued to travel within the black hole, trying to save everyone and find a way out. He has a pretty terrible record with accidental deaths, come to think of it: there's at least four to speak of, all of which involve him underestimating his own power as a bomber. There's two more deaths that he feels personally responsible for in which the other party chose to kill themselves rather than be killed by Shiro. He knows that there are some things in this universe he has no control over, but his sense of justice and righteousness won't allow him to let his mistakes go without some semblance of a fight. That's not to say that he's naive about his choices — far from it. Shiro had clearly given the matter some thought when Pommy asked him whether he'll end up killing Ashtarth, the Astral Knight of wind.

"Does Bomberman think Ashtarth is the Astral Knight here?" Pommy continued.

Bomberman crossed over the edge of the platform and walked down its side. He hobbled slightly; his head was clear as day, but his stomach still had to do battle with vertigo. He hopped to a lower foothold. "I'm almost certain of that," he said. "The crap he's pulled in Philomel, suddenly stomping in and acting like the big boss...it reminds me of what I heard of Behemos in Nereid."

"Is Bomberman going to kill him?"

[. . .]

"No." A pause as Bomberman landed upside down on the underside of what used to be a roof. "No," he repeated, this time more firmly. "I don't do that sort of thing, remember?"

"Myu, Pommy remembers." Pommy looked away. "Pommy was just checking, that's all. Pommy thinks that's very noble of Bomberman."

Fwmp-fwmp! Two successive re-orientations. Bomberman stood on a wall, next to a crumbling window frame. "Call it what you will," he said, kicking at the climbing vines strangling the granite, "but that's how I was taught — how many bombers are taught. It's a hard thing to learn to do when you have the power to blow up half a building with a flick of your hand, but I fight to disable, not to kill."

"But Ashtarth killed those people when they went to go see him. Does he actually deserve to live for something like that?"

Bomberman sighed. "Pommy, you're asking painfully deep questions for a mindless living creampuff."

"Myu?"

"The answer to your question, in all honesty, isn't as easy as yes or no, even though I say it is." He somersaulted and zoomed clear across to the wall on the other side. FWMP! He turned to face Pommy, his white hair ruffled by a wind passing through. "I could kill the bastard, yes. But what good would it do in the long run?"

"He wouldn't be doing bad things to these people anymore!"

"But it won't bring back the shamans he killed. I could just as easily" — easily? — "put him out of commission in such a way that he won't be able — or want — to do things like that here anymore."

"But how will Bomberman do that?"

"...I don't know," Bomberman admitted. "And I never really do know until the last possible moment."

— Fateful Meetings, chapter 21 (It's All Relative)

Speaking of justice and righteousness! Shiro believes very strongly in all that stuff. (Obviously.) His parents, with their law enforcement backgrounds, encouraged it in him, and he's a do-gooder at heart anyway. There's also an element of "with great power comes great responsibility": Shiro knows that he's particularly strong for a bomber and a good fighter, so he found himself a way to put those skills to use. When he can, he tries to understand where the opposite side is coming from, as seen when he questions Ashtarth about why he turned his back on the people he was supposed to be protecting, and why Zhael (the Astral Knight of lightning) is working for the BHB Army. Shiro has his convictions and he'll stick to them as best as he's able, but by this point in his life he's well-aware of the shades of grey involved in everything. (After all, he also has a rather interesting confidante and trusted mentor figure in the form of Mujoe, the very first criminal he ever apprehended and one who has been painted in the media as his archnemesis.) His attitude towards justice, and towards life in general, could be described as a very well-tempered sense of cynical idealism.

Like many hero-types, Shiro also has a noted tendency to push himself through a lot of different crap, even when he knows he shouldn't because it'll probably screw him over later -- he repeatedly turned down Lilith when she offered to deal with the Astral Knights for him, saying that he was already too deep into things anyway, and that if the Astral Knights were gunning for him, well, it should be his battle to fight. He also doesn't like to get too many people involved with his problems even when he knows that they honestly want to help him and wouldn't mind at all. After his breakdown at age 17, he further isolated himself from his close friends and family out of shame and general lack of energy for anything more than breathing. He refused to say anything until his therapist Sheba managed to convince him to at least tell his parents about his ordeal. (He still hasn't said anything to either Kuro or Megumi.) Closer to his canon point, he was reluctant to let Lilith buy him a new set of clothes even though the ones he was wearing by that time were looking pretty grody and questionable, and there's an incident after his canon point where he's reluctant to let the super-rich Kuro buy him a new phone to replace the one he lost in the BHB black hole. It's not that he takes his support system of family and friends for granted, or doesn't trust them — it's that he values them so highly that he's very conscious of when he asks them for help and what for, as though their goodwill was something finite that he used up every time he asked them for something. It's also a matter of his personal pride, and wanting to know that he can get through certain things on his own. But with Sheba's help, he's starting to become a little more comfortable with letting important people in on things. Shiro knows, even if he doesn't always put it into practice, that he needs a support system in order to be able to face the work that he does as Bomberman. Otherwise, he faces the risk of becoming irreversibly disillusioned by the things he has to do and see, and slide into apathy or even outright criminality, as his Angel-simulated "future" self apparently did.

In truth, facing that version of himself probably wouldn't be niggling at him as much as it does at his canon point, had it not come at the end of a long sequence of ordeals in which Shiro had to regularly question whether a particular confrontation would be the one in which he knew he absolutely had to go into it with the intent to kill the other party. The accidental death of Baelfael at the beginning of his time in the black hole also triggered Shiro's past memories of the Masked Trio mission, and his horror at 1) having unintentionally caused the demise of two human beings (unrepetent criminals though they were), and 2) losing control of his mind and powers temporarily as a survival mechanism. It's caused him to question -- though not for the first time -- what his role is meant to be in the world and whether he should continue being Bomberman or not. Fortunately(?), being dragged to the Tower of Animus is going to forestall most of that for the moment, since being trapped there is going to engage his "save aaaalllll the things" hero mode. And really, that's the core of the matter, isn't it? Stepping down from being Bomberman wouldn't affect him from stepping up to do the right thing -- it would just affect the way in which he did it and the resources he could utilize in order to do so, none of which he'd have access to in the tower.

Shiro takes his heroic duties seriously, but it should be apparent enough from the two quoted excerpts that he does still retain a good sense of humor about life, the universe, and everything. A frequent target of his snark and teasing, aside from himself and his opponents, is his new companion, Pommy.

When he was able to see again, Bomberman realized that Procne, in her disorientation, had fixated on Kijra as her next victim. "Out of the gunpowder and into the nitro," he sighed, rubbing his side.

"Myu?" Pommy mewed from somewhere near his feet. "What does that mean?"

Bomberman glanced down at Pommy. Then up at Procne. Then at the banner hanging on a pillar nearby.

"What are you doing, Bomberman?" Pommy said, worried. "That gray-haired lady is in trouble! You should go — "

YANK!

Bomberman snatched Pommy and sprinted up the pillar, then let out the loudest whistle he could. "Hey!" he called, holding Pommy out by his ears and shaking him slightly. "Want a gourmet creampuff as an appetizer?"

"Pommy doesn't appreciate this, myuuu!" wailed Pommy, flailing his paws and feet.

--Fateful Meetings, chapter 25 (Saving Private Lilith)

But despite the extra work involved, he looks out for Pommy, feeling responsible for Pommy's welfare considering how helpless he is. Not to mention that he's also indebted to Pommy for helping him get back his Fire Stone, which was initially stolen after Shiro's ship got trapped in the black hole. And as much as he can be loath to admit it sometime, Shiro genuinely likes Pommy and appreciates the lighthearted atmosphere that he brings, which is why he agrees to let Pommy come home with him to Bomber Star.

Like many guys, Shiro can also be awkward around ladies that he's romantically interested in. Shiro was instantly smitten with Lilith the moment he first met her on the prison planet Alcatraz, which has led to a number of dorky moments on his part in interacting with her: freaking out after returning to consciousness in her arms because she just saved him from drowning, attempting to protect her from some oncoming monsters only to find out that she was perfectly capable of saving herself, blushing when he catches her stuffing classified documents down the front of her shirt. Their interaction eventually does take deeper and more serious turns, however: she was around to help Shiro deal with Zhael's betrayal and her ultimate (accidental) demise, and then Shiro had to cope with the one-two suckerpunch revelation that 1) Lilith was actually a notorious wanted criminal across several planets (even if she didn't do things like assassinations anymore), and 2) Rukifellth was her partner-in-crime and longtime lover, whom she'd been trying to save for the past few years. This was doubly awkward because there were hints that Lilith might be reciprocating Shiro's feelings for her. With the universe saved and Lilith and Rukifellth free from their divine possession, though, the matter is mostly closed by this point; there was a mutual discussion between the two of them to forget about any potential romantic feelings, and Shiro's too tired and conflicted to really argue. He's not opposed to a romantic relationship, and in fact likes the idea of starting a family, but he just doesn't know if he'll ever find the right girl or if it's a good idea for someone like him, who's always involved in dangerous work.

Really, Shiro's an eye-rollingly nice guy overall. He's a usually friendly, sometimes sarcastic, and occasionally dorky person who tries to help out whenever and whoever he can.

Abilities: As mentioned before, Shiro can create explosives out of his own chi. Functionally, they're sort of like concentrated, time-delayed, elemental-flavored energy blasts, so there's nothing like frag involved. At full strength, he's able to blast or melt holes into things like brick, concrete, and metal, to say nothing of what that could do to a regular person. But he has the ability to regulate both the pure chi (concussive) energy involved as well as how strong his fire element is, which both affect the kind of damage a particular bomb will do. If he adjusts things a certain way, he can also create smoke bombs or flashbangs, so his abilities aren't purely destructive. On top of all of that, Shiro can create a remote control for his bombs given enough time, energy, and a simple enough device to work with. The most common functions he uses for his remotes are manual detonation and switching back and forth between manual and automatic, but he knows how to also "program" countdowns and automatic detonation based on environmental conditions.

One perk of being a bomber that has nothing to do with blowing crap up -- Shiro is hardier and quicker to heal than a normal human, with higher pain tolerance. (This can also be partially attributed to his little sliver of divine heritage, which he doesn't know about yet in his canon point and which won't — or shouldn't — come into play much in Animus.)

Shiro's also a formidable fighter without his explosives, having trained in martial arts from a very young age and keeping up with it through the years so that he doesn't have to rely solely on his bombs. His gymnastics training comes in handy as well, allowing him a greater range of movement both in terms of physical flexibility as well as when being airborne and having to evade attack. His training at Bomber Base and his work over the years also means he's a physically fit person in general.

Lastly, Shiro has magickally enhanced jumping abilities granted to him as a reward when he saved the city-state of Philomel from Ashtarth. He can leap at least three stories in a single bound from a standing position if he wants to, and that distance holds true horizontally as well.

Sample Entry: Here at my musebox!