JIGOKUCHO APPLICATION

[rank1]

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Jenn
ARE YOU AT LEAST 18 YEARS OLD?: Yes
CONTACT: PM superheroine or victoryfanfare
CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Travis Touchdown
CANON: No More Heroes
CANON REFERENCE: Travis Touchdown at the Suda51 Wiki
CANON POINT: Beginning of No More Heroes 3
CRAU HISTORY: Yes; Travis was in returnjourney for just shy of six months. TRJ was a space prison game where characters were brought in as either inmates in need of redemption or wardens in need of a contract payment as a reward for redeeming inmates. As an inmate, Travis didn't get anywhere close to redemption, nor has he changed dramatically from canon beyond a few well-placed conversations about accountability and being honest with himself and others, but I'm interested in continuing to explore this idea that he does have a choice in what he does, and maybe those choices could be better made –– for his benefit, for the benefit of his children, for the benefit of his wife, etc –– and these are simply not things he's going to dig into on his own without that initial push.

(Also, it's just really fucking on-brand for Travis to be like "oh yeah, that time I was in space prison", that shit might as well be a side plot in No More Heroes.)
AGE: 39
APPEARANCE: 5’10”, athletic with a slim build, dark hair worn in punky spikes, ice blue eyes, and a scar over his left eye. He’s never without a pair of aviator sunglasses, even indoors or at night. His wardrobe is a rotating collection of skinny jeans, studded leather jackets in obnoxious colours, vintage t-shirts, and skater shoes. The best Johnny Knoxville vibes, basically.
CONTRACT PAYMENT: A guarantee his kids will never find out what he does for a living. (He’s an assassin.)

QUESTIONNAIRE:
Your Faction leader, not just your boss but the leader, has asked you to carry out a hit. The target is a non-affiliated public leader, well-liked by the people of the city. Do you carry it out? Why or why not?

Huh? Yeah, sure. I'm an assassin, you think I'm gonna get twitchy about the details? It better be a good fight, though. I'm not the kind of guy who sneaks in and kills someone in secret and then creeps out a window. I want it to be good –– I wanna fight this guy head-on. Hell, let's do it in front of the people. Make it a show!

What is the most frightening thing you've ever done? What part of you did it test the most?

My second rank match –– the second kill that mattered. Don't get me wrong, the first left a weird feeling in my gut, but the rush of it overpowered all my senses so much I couldn't think. I just wanted more. But by time I was trading blows with that second guy, oh man... part of me was shitting my pants. I wanted to win so bad, but I knew the minute I killed that guy, there wouldn't be any going back. Two makes it a pattern. Two writes it into my blood. Two makes it the rest of my life, killing people. You gotta be a real sicko to go into that, don't ya? But proving myself was the only thing that mattered. I'd never been the best at anything before, and I knew if I could fight my way to the top, I'd be number one. That was worth pushing through, right?

[Right?]

You've worked with your Faction awhile now and you feel like the reward of your contract is within reach. But at the last moment, you are told you have even more service to pay beforehand, an obscure clause in the contract being exploited to keep you under your boss's thumb even longer. Your Faction Leader hasn't spoken on this, and might be able to dispute it. Do you go to your leader? Do you argue the dispute yourself? Do you begrudgingly accept the additional work? Something else?

... What? More of this? [With rapidly increasing fury:] Are you fucking kidding me? It's bullshit, actually. What kind of fucking bookkeeping are these motherfuckers doing that you don't know everything I've done to-– I wanna talk to the guy! [When told no, he rapidly accepts the reality of the situation:] Oh... Jeez, there was another clause? Damn... I guess that's what I get for not reading the fine print. [Or reading it at all.] How much more did you say? As much as it takes? Shit. Well, pony up the next assignment, then, I'm gonna get this shit done.

[He's done far more for far less explanation, after all, and he's never been one to question jack shit. And hey, ten years ago he got scammed into murdering hundreds of people for basically no reward, so surely he'd notice if someone tried to pull his strings again.]

What is your favorite diversion? Hobbies, indulgences, vices? Would you put off important things for that diversion, or would you be more strict about how you spend your time and/or money?

My wife hasn't let me see the kids in years 'cause I, quote [finger quotes, bad French accent] only put down the controller to jerk off. [Back to normal:] Which isn't wrong, exactly. I've always been a big hobby guy. Video games, anime, manga, slasher/horror movies, tokusatsu, Japanese collectibles, punk music, lucha wrestling. It's my life! But maybe there's more to life than that, you know? Whole reason I went back home to Santa Destroy was to figure some shit out, so I guess we'll fucking see! We can––one sec, I just got an email. [A beat as he glances down at the screen.] No fucking way! There's a showing for Chainsaw Man over in the entertainment district? I can see it in a theater? Shit, when do tickets go up?

POWERS & ABILITIES: There's a wiki section here, but given that Travis is a video game character, I'm not interested in a literal interpretation of gameplay mechanics –– which is to say, Travis is a normal (albeit skilled) human, but he cannot survive being decapitated, cannot randomly gain powers by rolling a mental slot machine, and cannot turn into a full-sized 300kg tiger. (No More Heroes gets a little nuts.)

What Travis is is a skilled swordsman and a trained wrestler, proficient enough to have been a professional using both for more than a decade. None of this is innate ability; it is gained entirely through well over a decade of intense physical regimens and hitting the gym. As he is a baseline normal human being, I don't believe any of this needs to be nerfed.

At home he has as sizable collection of beam katanas (light sabers, basically). This is his primary tool of the trade. He also has something called the Death Glove, which is a glove with a mechanism on it that allows him to do minor teleportation (ie across a room), fire energy projectiles, control others' speed and knock people back. This is functionally just a tool and a piece of tech, and can be used by anyone who wears it.

SUITABILITY: Being a professional assassin, Travis has an incredibly robust relationship with violence. He's the kind of guy who is very comfortable with cutting off heads first and asking questions later, and the shit he's done doesn't make him lose sleep at night. He wants out of the life as an assassin, but only in an abstract way; he doesn't think it's possible or likely, so he meets opportunities to get covered with blood without any resistance.

On the other hand, he doesn't have much first-hand experience with crime. Travis's wife, Sylvia, is a longtime con-artist, and she generally orchestrates his work: where to go and when, and who he's going to kill. Outside of very particular exceptions, Travis doesn't usually associate with other assassins or his targets outside of the work Sylvia sets up for him, and since these fights are planned in advance, Travis has seldom had to deal with law enforcement, either –– generally just the cronies of whoever he's about to kill at most. This leaves him in the strange position of being a rather "casual" criminal, getting up once in a while to kill someone while knowing fuck-all about living any sort of criminal life day-to-day. He'll be right at home in a criminal underworld, and yet completely unprepared to handle it himself –– it should be a nice challenge for him.

Also, he's an incredibly horny motherfucker. He's not about to cheat on his wife easily, there's some morality stuff there, but there is nothing this game can throw at him sex-wise that would disturb him.

FACTION SUITABILITY:
In the Shuten clan, Travis would be right at home with the might element. Appetite, too. Maybe money, too –– Travis used to dream of wealth –– but being realistic, it's the kind of thing he wouldn't know what to do with it if he had it. He is also a man with his own strict moral code –– he doesn't do lying, either, except maybe to himself. He also had an ex-Yakuza for a master, so he knows the life! On the other hand, Travis doesn't really buy into strength being all that important, at least not for everyone. There's gotta be some space in the world for the innocent, for the sweet, and fuck anyone who tramples on that.

In the Tamamo clan, Travis could be their pet moron. Look, he's a hedonistic guy. He is easily distracted by food, sex and indulgences, to the point of being easily manipulated. He'd sink right into anything the clan had to offer, which makes him a very, very helpful grunt. He'll do anything and everything! But the flip side is that Travis doesn't have a cunning bone in his body, and indulgences make him lazy. He'll fit in to the point that he'll probably never get out, but hey, he'll be pretty thrilled.

In the Sutoku alliance, Travis might struggle. He's atrocious with money. Before they got hitched, his wife scammed him out of $3.2 million –– given he's never been able to manage his money well enough to afford a security deposit on an apartment, you can imagine just how fucking bonkers that got. He's also never paid a utility bill, given he lives in a motel, so he won't have a clue what they're even doing. But you know what? Ideologically, Travis loves the hell out of a merit-based hierarchy. Challenging the influence of others is one of his favourite things, because people who take advantage of their authority deserve to be taken down a peg. He knows there's people at the top and people at the bottom, and that's fine, but if people at the top suck, then something's gotta change. Also, he thinks the mask thing is incredibly fucking cool.

In the dept of the Enma, Travis can get along. He cares a great deal about justice –– and maybe his concept of justice isn't perfect, but it's at least built around this robust idea that assholes need ass-kickings, and good people should be at the top –– but he's never known order in his life. He's an overgrown weirdo who speaks in pop culture references and dresses like a teenager, and that's just on the first impressions. If he's getting paid reliably he'll do whatever he's asked and do an okay job of it, but he's also likely to shirk order on whims because he doesn't really understand order. He could stand to learn some, though. It'd be great for him personally to cut down on the chaos in his own life!

Realistically, almost any faction could get him chafing. He expects the world to be entirely as sincere as he is and as righteous as possible. It never is, but he still keeps expecting things to get better. I find it really, really fun to play out Travis in situations that really grind on him and challenge him, but at the end of the day, he is also someone who is easily manipulated into going with the flow, even if it's bad for him or others –– I think there's something juicy to explore in him in any faction.

SAMPLES

TDM w/ Kamui
TDM w/ Nero

NOTE

Travis is a huge fucking nerd and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of nerd shit and tropes –– anime, video games, horror/slasher movies, etc. This genre-savvy stuff often manifests in canon as deliberate fourth wall breaking; obviously that's out for the game, but I wanted to clarify that I understand the fourth-walling rule upfront given he might be nerding out a bit in this particular setting. And, fortunately, he's more "your life is fucking cool" rather than "I know who you are".

The early NMH games substituted in alternate names for everything (ie Star Wars becomes Staff Wars) so that's what I'm going to go with for simplicity's sake.