Post by yaksha on Jun 26, 2019 22:37:53 GMT -5
<Horus B. Vespa>
Other Names:–
Horus
Epithet:–
"Striped Legion"
Height:–
Eighteen Feet
Build:–
Lanky and lean, Horus brings to mind a gymnast or someone who has spent a large portion of their life without eating.
Age:–
43
Gender:–
Male
Race:–
Human
Occupation:–
Bounty Hunter
Bounty/Rank:–
Total X-Poinz:– 300
Used X-Poinz:–
100
Personality
Horus seems at first glance like a man you would run from when you saw him walking down the street, and he's usually perfectly fine with that reaction. He walks with a rigid, closed-off posture that gives the sense that anyone or anything touching him would leave him ill at-ease, and he generally seems to treat most conversations as bothersome. He's capable of lengthy conversations, but generally considers them to be a waste of his time or energy, and will retire to a nearby secluded area after more than a couple minutes of talking. Every bit the introvert, Horus is perfectly comfortable with the fact that he's alone at sea for very long periods of time.
Outside of this, Horus has a particular disdain for children, of nearly every kind. Whether human, fishman, or sky islander, if Horus runs into large groups of unattended children, he'll go from closed-off to outright hostile, exuding a sort of constant low-grade irritation that, to his dismay, seems to be like nectar to children. He holds no true grudge against children, and will never cause them harm or put them in genuine harm's way, but he knows no shortage of unique and colorful threats to make towards children that send them giggling away, rather than terrified.
Despite his natural antisocial tendencies, Horus is actually a very altruistic and reasonable person, always willing to give advice or assistance when needed. He's a great person to have around when things are going awry, and will always be the first to spring into action when hearing a plea for help, or a cry of pain or fear. Even burning buildings don't scare him, or at least not as much as having to talk to someone about buildings.
Horus's interactions with others can almost always be characterized as 'laissez-faire', in that he will watch from a distance without much input or concern at all unless prompted by someone else. He doesn't much enjoy mentoring or bodyguarding specific people, typically because they expect some degree of rapport with him, and he rarely finds much in common with others.
To those he does share common interests with, Horus can brighten up into a very witty, pleasant person, capable of making jokes and participating in jokes with just as much gusto as anyone else. He's not above slathering someone's seat with honey, or putting a bee down their clothing if he's goaded into it by someone he enjoys the company of, and he's even got a good selection of jokes to tell most of the time.
All in all, it seems that Horus's primary issue is being stubborn. He seems to consider any island besides his homeland to be "foreign", and he will be very quick to tell people about the decadent ways of other islands, even when they're remarkably close to his own. He takes a great deal of pride in his own island, and scoffs at those who imply that he needs to 'see the world' or 'expand his horizons'; the closer he can get to the simple comforts of home, the happier Horus is.
--
Appearance
Horus is a man that sends people running at a glance, both due to what looks almost like a permanently-set-into-place scowl, and a face covered in tiny scars and no small amount of wrinkles. He does not look good at all for his age, and it's easy for him to pass for 50 or older most of the time, a fact that he is not pleased with. His eyes are very large, and always give off the impression of someone who doesn't want to be there. His gaze darts about during most conversations, he often takes up postures of boredom or distrust, and he will sometimes out of the blue insist others join him in a change of scenery if they want to continue talking.
His nose looks as if it were broken a few times and not set back into place properly, being somewhat lumpy and reminiscent of a cauliflower or a head of broccoli. His lips are very thin and almost always pursed into a scowl. In stressful circumstances he'll chew on it, sometimes to the extent that his entire chin will start to deform. His ears are both very long, extending from the top of his head to his neck, and both of them look like they've been bit or mangled by dogs or some other wild beast a long time ago. All in all, Horus gives off the impression of someone who lived in the deep wilds, fighting off attacks from wolves and bandits almost all the time.
All of this is heavily contrasted by his choice in dress, which is downright silly no matter how hard he tries to hide it. His preferred costume is a very large, bulky bee costume that makes him look downright obese. His legs are jet black, giving the impression that they're the "stinger" of the bees costume, and he even has four extra arms, made of a very soft felt substance attached to the torso and hip that bobble about amusingly when he walks. His own hands tend to move in ways that could best be described as histrionic, flailing about and gesticulating in ways that are beyond grandiose. It's not at all unfair to say that Horus lets his hands do the talking for him, and speaks extremely softly and carefully as a result.
Horus still has all of his own hair, though it's begun graying now. giving him somewhat of a salt-and-pepper look to it. He wears a headband that ends in two black pom-poms, just like a bee's antennae, and are once more made of that soft fuzzy substance. He styles his hair back in a rudimentary widow's peak that shows off how much of his natural hairline he has; one of the few signs of his relatively young age that he still shows off with great pride.
Beneath his ridiculous bee costume, there are yards and yards of black cloth, and not much else. Black is always fashionable, and he almost never wears it out and around long enough to worry about stains. He prefers a surprisingly professional buttoned-up black suit beneath his outfit, and a pair of black pants that are larger than most people's actual bodies. The few times that he wants to go around unnoticed, he will simply don a pair of shades and tuck away the suit and headband, just walking around town as an old man wearing far too much black. He's far more at ease when out of his costume, and exudes a far smaller bubble of personal space. He also believes his 'disguise' to be nearly fool-proof, despite the fact that his height itself is a dead giveaway.
--
Traits
Inhuman Strength
Thanks to natural bulk or intense training regimes, you have physical might that far surpasses the human norm. You can lift boulders and other great weights that no normal man could hope to.
Poison Resistance
Thanks to a long lifespan of interacting with poisonous substances, your body has developed a naturally powerful immune system, allowing you to filter out poisons far more effectively, and ensuring that most poisons run their course far faster than they should.
--
Fighting Styles
Horus's fighting style brings to mind a boxer or a martial artist, though most people wouldn't say that he's very skillful. He employs a good deal of straightforward punches and kicks, without a lot of variation on their actual delivery: indeed, most of them are telegraphed, and he expects them to be blocked or dodged pretty readily. In the early parts of most fights, Horus simply takes the opportunity to test out his enemy's reflexes and defenses, in the event they have a devil fruit or any other form of overly-convenient defense methods.
The main complexity of Horus's fighting style is in his love of delivering savage, crippling blows when least expected. He'll elbow a person trying to grapple him, with no concern for decorum or fairness, and his bones are a lot harder than most people expect. He'll stomp on someone as they're trying to stand back up, and otherwise take every opportunity to land a strike that most other people would tell very quickly are meant to kill. The closest martial art to what Horus performs is Krav-Maga, a horribly pragmatic and efficient fighting style that prioritizes making your opponent stay down through any means necessary.
In particular, Horus loves to make use of his elbows and knees, treating them in a way very similar to how most would additional limbs; while he lacks the full flexibility of a longarm or a longleg, he has a very impressive reach as a result of his size, and that lends itself very well to blocking, deflecting, and capturing people's limbs, then punishing them for that mistake. It's not uncommon for him to simply extend out an arm and catch someone's attack on the forearm, and then kick them quite hard.
Name: Apis Assaut
Focus: Crippling strikes, long reach, and mixed offense/defense.
Class: E
Name:
Melissa
Fighting Style:
Apis Assaut
Rank:
1
Description: This technique, meant to emulate the very same stinger that a bee uses, involves Horus thrusting his foot forward, with the tip of his toes aimed directly at his opponent. It focuses a great deal of force into a small, precise area, allowing him to very easily force openings into enemy defenses.
Name:
Mellona
Fighting Style:
Apis Assaut
Rank:
1
Description: A beloved technique of Horus to buy himself breathing room or distance in a fight, Horus aims to use the hard ridge of bone on his elbow to either follow up after a landed blow, or to turn a narrow dodge into a new blow: By sliding forward or back with his legs as the blow is being followed through on, and bending his arm properly, he can add a new direction to his strike and ensure that he can force them out of his impressive reach.
--
Background
Horus grew up on a relatively new addition to the world government's influence, one that had scraped together a truly significant sum from each individual household to make sure that the citizens would be protected and given an opportunity to grow and progress in relative peace. Horus's youth was fairly uneventful, and he would himself say that he had one of the happiest childhoods he's heard of.
His father was a carpenter and his mother a gardener, often hired and employed by royals of nearby islands to sail off and tend to their topiary or gardens. He was very used to one or both parents being gone for long times, and began to develop very good relations with all of his neighbors as a result of their absence. While he was often left to his own devices and given free reign in his life, his parents were still kind and loving when around, giving Horus a great deal to look forward to every month, when he went down to the docks in the hopes of seeing their ships return.
Horus's education was very eclectic, and largely consisted of what he could convince either his neighbors or the travelling merchant ships to teach him. He learned about the world government and Gold Roger at a very young age, and had a period of about three years where he desperately wanted to become a pirate. He would constantly pester his parents to build or buy him a ship, and for a time he even joined his father in creating their own boat. It was a simple pleasure, one inspired by the kind of childish naivete that everyone expected from teenagers.
Horus even tried to go through with it for a time, sailing out for a full eight hours, before returning home. As the sun began to go down around him, and he looked out at the ocean and the enormous body of water surrounding him, he simply became too homesick to risk becoming lost, or having the ship break apart beneath him. He returned home, to find his father patiently waiting at the docks.
At the age of 20, Horus finally found love. His father and mother had been coerced by the king of a very distant island, one in an entirely other Blue, to become his exclusive servants. The pay was quite fair, and his parents had little attachment to the island itself: they were downright baffled by the outburst and wounded betrayal from Horus when they told him they were going to be moving away. The home was theirs, built by their own hands and paid for in full, so Horus was free to stay if he so wished. His objection was solely to their willingness to abandon their home so readily, and to leave their neighbors for the first opportunity. They spoke with him for the better part of three weeks, while Horus continued to grow more and more distant and depressed.
It was at this time that the king sent one of his finest diplomats, Sheri, to the island, to speak with Horus of the far-off land that his parents would be moving to. Her words were so very sweet, and the image she painted so vivid, that Horus was finally forced to begrudgingly admit that they had outgrown the island they had come from. Life there, however sustainable, simply wasn't prosperous enough. The world government had done precious little to aid them in any modernization attempts, and most of them still struggled even in making ship engines advanced enough for quick travel to other islands: the king had promised Horus a ship fast enough to traverse the Blues in only a day, ensuring he could visit his old stomping grounds and be back in less than a week.
Finally satisfied, Horus allowed his parents to set off to their new island home, only for their ship to sink on the way there. A stray sea king, chasing a pirate ship that had attempted to cross the Calm Belt, smashed both their ship and his parents', leading them to be eaten in the ensuing chaos. Thrown into an even deeper despair, Horus very nearly took his own life, until the king's diplomat once more convinced him to see clearly. She was able to cool his passioned temper, convincing him to see reason, and live on in their memory. He agreed, asking her to stay on the island with him and build graves for his deceased parents, and she readily agreed.
In the time they spent, Horus and Sheri grew extremely close, and fond of one another. Horus was a simple man, but a dependable one, and Sheri's indefatigable optimism was like a balm to his wounded heart. They grew closer, and agreed to marry with the king's blessing. The ceremony was to be held on the king's island, in two years' time. Horus, having remembered the ship he built with his father's aid, spent many nights repairing and reinforcing it, for a much longer and harder trip, confident this time that he would be able to make it with Sheri's help.
In those two years, Sheri grew pregnant, and the marriage was delayed even further. Horus, by now, had begun to blend his mother and father's talents, becoming a skilled hand at just about anything related to plants or wood. As time went on, however, he began to find himself growing bored with the profession, and the relatively simple tasks asked of him by his neighbors: the money was good, but the work was far from fulfilling. Horus began to spend more and more time trying to think up a suitably grandiose task to apply himself to, something that his parents could be proud of from the afterlife. In that time, he began to grow distant, more contemplative. He probed Sheri for more and more advanced stories about the island she had hailed from, attempting to find some way to make his own homeland just as impressive.
When the time finally came to be married, Horus had finally managed to find a plan, ambitious enough and impressive enough to make their island a household name. He sought to create a beehive, large enough to be seen from miles off, that would host enough bees to fertilize plants from entirely different islands, allowing for a degree of cross-breeding that would be beyond anything seen before. He even began to develop plans for the bees to become a manner of delivery, not unlike the seagulls that delivered mail to islands and ships alike.
He finally set off with Sheri, to be married and see the world she had promised him. The truth, however, was far less promising: The king, in the intervening two years, had fallen into a self-indulgent spiral, renovating his castle and its surroundings without end. As soon as one project ended, another began. He, too, had grown despondent at Horus's parents' death, and had sought to find carpenters and gardeners that could take their place. In his obsession, he had taxed his citizens to the degree that they were simply unable to afford basic living necessities, all to continually remodel his bedroom and throne.
Horus's first experience with the world outside of his own home had shattered the bubble of hope and dreams that he had lived in since his parents' death, and he immediately sought to call off the marriage, returning home with his wife. Sheri, horrified by his refusal to help the citizens of the kingdom, stayed behind. Horus returned home, his goal to create a hive large enough to become the world's supplier of bees the only hope he had anymore. The world outside of his island was nothing like he had been promised, and trying to leave home had gotten his own parents killed. He had no intention of following in their footsteps.
He became withdrawn, refusing to have any interactions with outsiders besides the amount necessary to survive, and to receive letters from his wife. She spoke to him of the king's son taking the throne in a coup, of the people prospering, and there was an unspoken message in each one, telling him to give her another chance. Not a single letter was answered, but she still sent them, several a year. Pictures of their daughter, Phila, were included with each one. These, Horus kept in his home, to remind him what he was working for; to create a place he would one day want his own daughter to see and praise the way her mother had her home.
Twelves years passed, and Horus's standing within the island fell further and further. He was beginning to become a laughingstock, a man that everyone spoke derisively of at the worst of times, and with pity at best. His obsession with bees was seen as unnatural, absurd, downright ridiculous. Most of them began to question how he had even managed to live so long without a proper job, simply studying bees without end. The answer to that one, if anyone had asked Horus, was simple: The bees fed him.
On his 35th birthday, he finally unveiled his plans for the island to a passing World Government representative. He outlined them carefully, and explained with the greatest passion and delight he could muster, telling them that if he could only get a small amount of money, he could change their island into a prosperous, verdant land that people would travel to constantly. The plea fell on deaf ears however: the World Government had no interest in investing in the word of one man from a small island in the middle of nowhere.
Horus once more retired to his home, defeated. He had spent the best years of his life trying to find some way to put his island on the map, and had failed horribly. It was at this time that someone else tapped upon a previously-unknown resource in their forests. A highly buoyant wood, one that could easily be used for a great variety of purposes. It was this discovery, instead, that began to bring newcomers to their small island, turning it into a vibrant tourist attraction. Yet again, people from across the world came, always comparing Horus's beloved home to some island he had never heard of.
Five years after this, Horus's island was beset by a pirate, seeking to ransack the tourists that had arrived on the village, and take the stockpile of wood to create a ship for himself, one he claimed could be used to reach the Grand Line. The villagers were all unprepared for such violence, all too panicked when they saw the pirate reveal his bounty, and the powers of a devil fruit he had managed to obtain. It was only Horus amongst them who was able to calmly and efficiently subdue the pirate by dragging him into the ocean and drowning him, with the same calm expression he used while buying food or listening to tourists speak about their homes.
The bounty money was enough to kickstart his plans for the island, and with it his dream was renewed. On the same day he received the money, he received a letter from Sheri as well, written in a shaky hand unlike her usual correspondence. In it, she detailed a fight she had recently gotten into with Phila, and how she had awoken the next day to find her savings stolen, and their daughter left. Fearing she had turned to piracy, she begged Horus to visit her and hear her story through.
Money in hand, Horus agreed to set out to the land that had once disappointed him, prepared for further disappointment. The land, however, had flourished well under new rulership, and the mother of his child had grown fat and prosperous as well, serving as adviser to the new king; it had been her, ultimately, who had convinced the son to overthrow his mad father. Horus agreed to stay and hear her story, expecting little to come of it.
In Sheri's story, Horus noticed one thing in particular: She avoided discussing the nature of the argument, until pressed by Horus. It was at this point that she confessed Phila had been fraternizing with the pirates that passed through the kingdom, showing an inordinate amount of interest in them, and Sheri had suspected her of sleeping with one of them. Confronting her daughter, she had ultimately forbidden her from going to the docks again, even threatening to have the king confine her to their home.
Horus agreed to use the money he'd made to track down their daughter and bring her home, before she took any needless risks. He sailed back to his own home, prepared to do anything in his power to get the resources he needed to stop his daughter from losing her own life in some reckless manner.
It took him the better part of a year to finish making a smaller model of the island hive he had planned to build, but he eventually succeeded, only to realize it wouldn't fit on the meager-sized boat he'd built with his father. With a heavy heart, he set out on that boat to find another pirate of sizable enough bounty to give him the income to buy a larger boat, and start integrations.
Finally, after another couple of years of behind the scene work, Horus was ready to set off into the world, and find his daughter. He had heard from Sheri that both she and Phila knew precious little about him, save that he was a "crazy bee guy" according to his own neighbors. He decided to embrace the reputation, effectively making for himself an identity as an easily-noticed bounty hunter, one the newspapers would spread the image of far and wide as his exploits continued.
