ATARAXION;

[haikus]

PLAYER INFORMATION
Your Name: kirsten
OOC Journal: deadite
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: n!
Email + IM: netsrikeel1@gmail.com + on request
Characters Played at Ataraxion: n/a

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: kasumi goto
Canon: mass effect
Original or Alternate Universe: ou
Canon Point: post me2, pre me3
Number: rng me!!

Setting: wiki here, and kasumi's page in particular!
History:

Start with Earth.

Now jump ahead one hundred sixty-nine years. Humanity has discovered that what was once thought to be one of Pluto's moons is in fact a Mass Relay, a device that can move matter at faster-than-light speeds and launched the race headlong into the future. And into the galactic community, which humans share with the Asari, Turians, Salarians, Krogans, and a bevy of other alien species. There are more than a few spots of bad blood between the various races, and between constantly brewing war and political intrigue, the mercenaries, the slavers, the con artists, the occasional homicidal race of AIs, and the shadowy government organizations, it's a wonder anybody comes out on top at all.

Commander Shepard is a soldier with the Alliance navy - with an indomitable will, courage, and the nerve to remain undaunted by her superiors' skepticism, she uncovers a plot by rogue Spectre (the Council's - a governing body of the Alliance composed of figureheads from the most powerful and present races in Alliance space - agents operating outside the law for Alliance benefit) agent Saren to sell out all of humanity to the soon-to-be invading Reapers, blends of artificial intelligence and organic elements that routinely wipe out all but the basest organisms every fifty thousand years. Assembling a team to help her on her mission, she eventually overcomes Saren and the Reaper manipulating him, Sovereign, and prevents the Reapers from entering Alliance space.

Some time later, Shepard is killed and her ship, the Normandy, is destroyed in an attack by an unidentified ship. The crew is scattered and, in her absence, the Council denies the Reapers' existence and covers up the entire incident as best it can. Until two years later, when the shadowy human supremacist organization Cerberus and its figurehead, the Illusive Man, bring her back to life to tackle the Reaper threat. It's discovered that the Collectors, a mysterious and rarely seen alien race, are abducting colonists for unknown reasons, and Shepard sets out to assemble a new crew on the new Normandy to take them down.

This is where Kasumi comes in - an enigmatic master thief, wanted in over a dozen star systems for her crimes, Kasumi Goto's origins are unclear. She shares a few details with Shepard once brought onto the Normandy - she grew up on Earth, discovered she had a knack for stealing things and ran with it, and had a grandmother who made great ramen - but nothing else. Most of her history, family, and personal details are similarly glossed over, with the exception of her late lover, Keiji Okuda.

She discovers Cerberus is trying to find her and, interested, tracks their information to find out why. It turns out that Cerberus intends to hire her for Shepard's campaign against the Collectors, with a considerable signing bonus. She accepts, on the condition that Shepard assist her in a personal errand; the retrieval of her late partner's graybox, a neural implant that holds both all of his memories and information that could turn the entire galaxy against humanity in a heartbeat, from a man named Donovan Hock. Shepard agrees and, in time, they crash Hock's party, break into his vault, and take back the graybox. And blow his attack chopper out of the sky, for what it's worth.

It's only when they get back on the Normandy that Kasumi realizes Keiji's last message to her is asking her to delete all the information on the graybox - the dangerous info on humanity and his memories altogether. She tearfully states that the idea of deleting his memories is like losing him all over again, and Shepard allows her to keep it on the condition that she drop off the grid entirely. Kasumi agrees wholeheartedly, and goes on to assist Shepard in the suicide mission against the Collector base. She survives, as does everyone else. Shepard is grounded by the Alliance soon after, and Kasumi disappears as promised.

This gap between the Normandy team's breakup and reunion is where she'll be taken from.

Personality:

Kasumi Goto is wanted in over a dozen systems for sabotage, hacking, theft, and a laundry list of other crimes. ...In addition to her expertise with electronic security systems, Goto can acquire important technology thought lost or stuck deep in enemy territory.

No one dares ask how she acquires these items.

Kasumi Goto grew up on Earth with a grandmother that made great ramen. At a young age she realized she had a knack for thievery, and took to it wholeheartedly. At some point in her life, she left Earth. At some point later, she became the enigmatic thief she is today.

This is all that's publicly known about Kasumi, and "public" is used for lack of a better term. In reality, the number of people that know this much about her is slightly less than the number of people who can actually connect her name to her face, much less her crimes to her name. Even Cerberus, the series' token shadowy all-powerful organization, admits to having trouble tracking her down "at great cost and effort". After all, Kasumi is the greatest thief in the galaxy - not the most famous. It's an important distinction.

But for the galaxy's greatest thief - a title that seems to come stock with being ruthless, slimy, greedy, and willing to screw over others for one's own gain - Kasumi Goto is surprisingly... well, none of that. She's sentimental. Optimistic. She likes to read (a lot). She writes haiku. She even shares a little gossip about other Normandy crew members. She's also a technical genius, undeniably enigmatic, and a veritable ghost when she wants to be. She'll go to great expense and personal risk to save a child for no personal gain. She'll also tear down the defenses of an advanced gunship and then shoot it down, if provoked. And she's got a bit of a weakness for guys that fit the "tall, dark, and handsome" profile and aren't assassins.

As stated, not exactly what a person might expect from someone with her reputation.

At heart, and despite her "bad" profession, Kasumi is not a bad person. A thrill seeker, yes (she's openly admitted to stealing the local heavily guarded and absolutely priceless whatever on dares), and with a bit of an abrasive streak she owns, but not bad. Not malicious. In fact, she's quite affable, even to the point where a Spectre hunting her down admits he admires her work. She's easy to talk to, and has a tendency to respond to high stress situations with good humor - like being locked in the enormous carcass of a dead machine god. That has a tendency to brainwash the people inside it.

She's also undeniably, admittedly, painfully sentimental, which manages to be one of her greatest weaknesses. All of her personal effects on the Normandy are really just reminders of what she's done, where she's been, and who she's known - from the painting the child prodigy she rescued gave her to the shelves of priceless books Keiji found for her to the red rose on her desk, they're all really things she clings to for the memories associated with them. It's what makes Keiji's greybox so hard for her to part with. And, if Shepard allows her to keep it, Kasumi reappears in ME3 with some worrying commentary on the greybox - namely, how much time she spends in it reliving her memories with Keiji, which is apparently quite a bit.

(Worth noting is that while Kasumi hasn't really come to terms with her grief in a particularly healthy way, she's anything but a death seeker. Why scorn Shepard for trying to drag her and other unrelated people into another conflict if that was a goal in the first place?)

Her sentimentality manages to be both her greatest strength and most crippling weakness; her memories are what she draws her personal strength from, and they're what can potentially drag her down. The greybox issue is undoubtedly her biggest, and when faced with having lost Keiji forever, she's more than likely to just... slip back into his memory rather than deal with the loss.

(Doubly worth noting is that, despite losing Keiji, Kasumi isn't grim or ascetic about romance. In fact, she's a bit of a romantic herself - and not just because she used to think leaving a red rose in the place of whatever she'd stolen was was cool. She's got a crush on fellow Normandy crew member Jacob Taylor, to the point of cloaking herself and watching him work out, and has written a series of haiku about him. When asked about this in comparison to her devotion to Keiji's memory, she replies with an off-the-cuff "I'm sentimental, Shepard, not dead.")

On the opposite half of the sentimental, optimistic, haiku-writing coin is Kasumi Goto, master thief - a skilled hacker, technical genius, and master of the art of breaking into shit. She's not the most stereotypical thief in the galaxy, but she is the best. (She's also incredibly observant, which is undoubtedly a boon from her lifestyle and helps in noticing things about the crew to gossip about with Shepard later.) She has the professional restraint to look Keiji's killer in the face and not betray her emotions, the strategic ability to overcome his state of the art security systems, and the capability to tear him to pieces when appropriate.

Kasumi Goto, the galaxy's greatest thief, is a lot of things - sentimental, intelligent, dangerous, and maybe just a little bit fond of the romantic. She has canonically stolen the Mona Lisa, the Koh-i-Noor diamond, and countless other priceless treasures. She is currently embroiled, along with the rest of sapient life, in a galaxy-spanning war against unimaginable forces, with a terrifyingly low chance of survival. But... well, it could be worse.

There could be rats.

Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:

x physical attributes; kasumi is very quick, very light on her feet, and very, very athletic. she's capable of shows of athleticism that most others would probably find impossible, such as scaling tall surfaces quickly, leaping and falling great distances without injury, and taking motherfucking gunships out of the sky.

x mental attributes; kasumi is extremely observant, noting details and small reactions from others that might otherwise be missed. she's very aware of the space she takes up in relation to other objects due to her work, and has a great deal of experience in just barely slipping past others. she's a damn good hacker and a master thief; along with a lifetime of experience in removing things from the possession of others, she's got a long list of successful jobs under her belt to back her up.

x implants; kasumi has a neural implant called a "grey box"; basically, it records all of the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of its owner. it also (presumably) allows her to connect to and use other ownerless grey boxes, like keiji's.

x weaknesses; kasumi is a very sentimental woman, and can on occasion do things against her better judgment when it hits her. keeping keiji's grey box to keep and relive their memories together rather than destroying it and the potentially catastrophic for galactic peace information hidden in it (as her shepard let her keep it) is one such example, as is the later hint in me3 that she's been spending a more than healthy amount of time in it. additionally, she's very impulsive, and a bit of a thrill seeker: she tells shepard stories on board the normandy now and again about how she and keiji would undertake extremely dangerous or risky thefts on each other's dares, and on one occasion, urges shepard to take a potentially murderous active (if unconscious) geth on board the normandy, because nobody had ever done it before.

physically she's small and, while fit, has no supernatural strength to back her slim frame up in the case of a straight out fistfight. she's also got her grey box, which could potentially be open to technology-disrupting equipment.

as none of these are beyond normal human capability (and the grey box grants her no particular superhuman ability/is worthless to basically anybody not from her time period), i'm going to assume they don't require limitations!

Inventory:

x her suit, form-fitting and silent; it also grants her more or less complete invisibility, befitting a sneaky master thief. ostensibly, since it's advanced enough to have hi-tech cloaking capabilities, it also uses the same technology seen in some of shepard's equipment and channels her body heat into her feet and out through her footsteps, cloaking her from heat sensors.

also heavily hooded and shit, so she can be extra mysterious.

x one (1) kasa locust, ~*~the gun that killed two space future presidents~*~ along with three heat sinks (basically ammunition).

Appearance:

a slim japanese woman, graceful and self-described as "small", with a small purple tattoo on her lip and chin being her only notable facial identifiers. kasumi is never seen outside of her suit, a black and grey full body ensemble with a hood that covers the top of her head and heavily shadows her eyes; her eyes are brown and, ostensibly, her hair is very short. she appears in her early thirties, though she isn't exactly talking.

basically, some snazzy ass space shit.

Age: early thirties. probably.

AU Clarification: n/a

SAMPLES
Log Sample:

Kasumi. If you're seeing this, it's because I'm dead.

Skip.

If the Council ever got wind of this -

Skip.

- then I've made you a target, my love.

Pause. Her head cocked, breath pausing for the next few words. Somewhere outside of the dark neon world that composed the last few scraps of Keiji Okuda's existence, Kasumi Goto was strolling dumbstruck around the near empty room composing her current hideout, hands and fingers limp at her side.

I'm so, so sorry.

She raised her hand evenly, motions fluid. Skip. Next, she knew, because she had listened to this message more times than she could count, could mouth every word, would come his simple, sensible request, and that part always stung her. Always made her feel guilty, because it was so sensible, so heartfelt. He would ask her to destroy the files, wipe the graybox, and remind her that she didn't need some hunk of metal to preserve his memory. (She didn't.)

She kind of resented him, just a little bit, for that.

Unfairly so, but she resented a lot of things these days, because she knew how disappointed he'd be to see her in this current state. The Normandy had been busy enough to keep her attention, all the wildly different people and their wildly interesting problems and relationships, and that whole suicide mission thing, all the excitement, all the - well. Jacob. (She smiled a touch at the thought.) But then they'd come out of it, and no longer having a reason to hold them all together, they had scattered and been left to their own devices. Kasumi had been left with the great yawning void of the universe, and her work, and herself.

And the greybox.

Goodbye, Kasumi.

As she always did, Kasumi had made her way in this quasi-world back to Keiji's statuesque form, vainly tried to meet his glassy, fixed eyes. Her work kept her busy, but her free time was increasingly consumed by his memory. He'd be disappointed in her.

She was kind of disappointed in herself.

I love you.

"I love you too," she murmured, still aware of how thin the walls in her current hideout were despite herself, and allowed the entire thing to flicker back into the dull, spartan apartment (bad part of Omega, minimal hoop jumping, no questions asked) she would be abandoning tonight. Business deal. Probably quick and clean, but then again, it was Omega. No telling what was going to happen.

It'd be a nice distraction.

Greybox safely stowed away, she cloaked, and stepped out the door.

(Later she would remember the moment she stared into her locker on the ship, still wet and wildly disoriented, and realized it wasn't there.)

Comms Sample:

You know, I've been on a lot of ships in my time, but without a doubt this has to be the biggest. With everything going on here, sometimes I almost forget we're hurtling through space, dodging meteors, creepy crawlies, and... what was it? Boldly going where no man, woman, or weird alien jellyfish has ever gone before?

Heard it on an old Blasto vid. Kind of cheesy, but I guess it sticks with you.

[a beat. a few minutes later, she adds on another few lines.]

Probably a silly question, but there wouldn't happen to be any rooms with windows on board, would there?

I like being able to look out and see the stars. It's... comforting.|