App for Smash Academy

[redshirted]

Out-of-Character Information

Name: Col
Are you over 15?: Yes indeed
Time Zone: EST
Personal Journal: col
Reliable Method of Contact: AIM: ColTheAwesome and colster are the easiest ways to contact me
Other characters in the game: None (yet)!
Link to slot request if 6th, 7th slot: N/A

Tegaki: None at this moment
Anything Else?: This app is pretty much gratuitous head canon, yep.

In-Character Information

Name: Ian Malkovich
Game/Series: Adventures with Vampire Jellyfish in Space (Alternatively known as METROID)
Teacher/Student/Other: Other Staff
Canon Point: Literally right after he dies in Other M
Age: 19
Grade Level/Class Taught/Job: Maintenance/Repair Man
Dorm or Living Arrangement: Dorm for now

Personality:

Ian has all the qualities you would look for in a good friend (alternatively, all the qualities you would look for in your golden retriever…). He’s loyal, dependable, and can be surprisingly compassionate in the rare moments he thinks before he speaks. Ian values his personal relationships above all else. He loves his work, but it's also very clear that he cares about people. He’s the sort of friend who would go the extra mile to try and put a smile on your face. He’d wake up early to help you move. He’s the guy you’d call to bail you out of jail if he probably wasn’t sitting in the holding cell, sitting next to you.

He’s got a genuine smile that lights up the room and a laugh that can probably be heard several doors down. He just exudes the air of a guy who is pretty okay with his life at this moment because, when it gets down to it, he is. He’s very grateful for what he has: a (small) family, friends, and a job he loves… Life is too short for him to get caught up in somber details and the hardships. As far as he’s concerned, he’s really got enough to be happy, and he’s very satisfied with it. He’s a low maintenance, easy-going sort of dude.

As much as he does value his personal relationships, Ian is not a verbal touchy-feely sort of guy. That is, he isn't going to outright say “Hey, I care about you,” unless he has the good sense to realize that’s what someone really needs as their pick me up. It’d be rare, though, especially coming from a military culture where outright spoken kindnesses was probably fairly unusual. He practices his own brand of affections, letting his actions speak for him. In contrast with some of his staunch, stuffy military brethren, Ian is energetic. He leads by example when he thinks others need to lighten up or cut loose. He has no apprehension with physical touch. He’ll hug or high five or wrestle with or noogie his squad mates without a second thought.

He can express his affections verbally, but instead, they just happen to come out as teasing or antagonizing. He’s constantly surrounded by people, superiors, or other soldiers who all generally have their guard up. He finds the best way to break through to these people is to chip away at these barriers by joking with them or teasing them. This is his way of putting people on equal footing as just fellow humans. Of course, he has been known to take it a bit far. He’s still got, well, the sense of judgment of a teenage boy, which is usually not so great at evaluating the consequences of his actions. That same sense of judgment (or lack-there-of) that’s responsible for almost every trip to the medbay is also equally responsible for some hurt feelings or accidentally butting into a very sensitive spot in a bought of what was meant to be playful teasing. Hurt feelings are a result of just his ignorance rather than outright malice, though, and he’d be quick to apologize, especially to one of his friends.

While he wouldn't go out of his way to pick a fight, he’s definitely protective of those close to him. Considering who he runs around with, though, he usually doesn't need to fight other people’s battles (though he’d do it in a heartbeat). More than likely, he ends up fighting next to them rather than for them.

Despite the fact that he’s probably been written up more than once for overstepping his bounds as a soldier or making jokes on radio during a mission, Ian’s good-heartedness and dependability make him an excellent soldier. He’s not overly stubborn as to not accept orders (it’s even easier when they come from someone he deeply loves and respects: his brother). As much as he cares for his squad mates and brother, that’s doubly so for the citizens of the galaxy. He’d leave himself behind to push others forward, and he takes his duty as a soldier extremely seriously. This is his opportunity to do true good in the universe. Whether or not the military is actually the path to that doesn't matter, as Ian wholeheartedly (and maybe naively) believes it so. He goes into every mission knowing it may be his last, and harbors no regrets when it actually does come to that on his final moments in the Lusitania. While he’s not exactly happy that he’s about to die, he takes a lot of comfort in the fact that it meant so many others could live.

He takes everything in stride and with a smile on his face. When he arrives at Smash Academy, he’ll be quietly thankful, but he won’t see it as much of a second chance as just a continuation of moving forward.

Backstory:

Ian's childhood was relatively normal. He had a mother, a father, and a brother (albeit, there was a bit of an age gap between the two boys). Ian looked up to his older brother, Adam. For a long time, he tried very hard to emulate his older brother. He looked up to him. They'd play catch together.

Ian comes from a military family and often found himself looking to his older brother for guidance while his father was deployed. While being the man of the house maybe caused Adam to grow up a bit too quickly, Ian was shielded from many of the harsh realities. He grew up with a much greater sense of freedom than his brother (though he did miss how he used to smile).

Enlisting was pretty much a given for the younger Malkovich. His father was a military man and eventually Adam joined the Federation as well. Ian never really had great aspirations to climb the ranks of the military. He cared about his family and he cared about protecting the galaxy, and joining the Federation was just the most obvious path to that. He surprised just about everyone when he scored incredibly well on the Galactic Federation equivalent of the ASVAB. Ian wasn't exactly known for having his nose in a book 24/7, but his more than casual interest in spacecrafts and willingness to get his hands dirty lead to a promising future in engineering. Ian was more than excited to get a chance to study and work on spacecraft engines.

By chance, Ian came under the command of his brother Adam, a rising officer with a lot of promise. Often, Ian would hear the two of them compared. It was common for him to have to explain "Yes THAT Malkovich." He didn't mind, though. Ian had a great sense of pride in all that his brother had accomplished. It took quite a bit of getting used to calling him 'sir,' though! Of course, he did his best to adhere to strict military standards and obey the chain of command. It didn't always work. More than once Adam had to scold Ian for skipping out on paperwork or remind him not to be so casual. Not wanting to jeopardize his brother's reputation or have him accused of favoritism, Ian half toned it down and half just increased how often he teased other soldiers.

It was also in the Federation where Ian encountered Samus. She was sort of intriguing to him. She was always scowling and stand-offish. She acted like she had something to prove. Ian, in his good judgement (or poor judgement), took a liking to her. He might have been a bit reluctant to outright express his fondness for her, but... it was sort of obvious how he would go out of his way to tease her or make sure to try and pull her into goofing off with their fellow soldiers. She needed to cut loose more than his brother did, and that was saying a lot.

She didn't talk very much. She wasn't very open. That's probably okay, because Ian talked enough for the both of them. He'd try an entertain her with goofy stories of him and the commander as children. He took it as a victory every time he got her to stop scowling. The smile was even more illusive, but he never stopped looking for it.

Mostly Ian worked on in-house repairs and served as technical support during missions. He was trained for combat, but that wasn't where his specialties lay. He was invaluable during rescue missions. The brothers and the rest of their squad set out to tow a ship with a malfunctioning drive unit. They couldn't risk the drive unit going critical while still attached (resulting in a massive explosion that would no doubt kill not only the passengers of the towed ship, but the military ship as well), so Ian was dispatched to make the necessary repairs-- quickly if he could.

Unfortunately, shortly after Ian docked and started on repairs, the unit went critical. His brother was left with a terrible choice, but ultimately had to detach the unit, sacrificing his brother, in order to save the lives of everyone else.

And Ian was 110% aware that choice was made. In his final moments on the Lusitania, he wasn't scared (after he frantically tried every last attempt at stopping the drive unit from exploding). This was, after all, a risk that he willingly took. He felt more sympathy for his brother having to make that choice than anything.

But the weird thing was, death never really came. At least, not in any sort of way that was very apparent to him. He actually just sort of woke up, passed out on the front lawn of some school. A familiar one at that! He wasn't really sure why it seemed so familiar until after his grogginess had cleared up a bit. He had had an odd DREAM about this place! A couple of weeks ago, when he was avoiding his paperwork. A strange older Samus had asked him about the Lusitania.

He laughed about it.

Then he got up and set out to find her, but in the meantime he bumped into Headmaster Hand who was gracious enough to almost immediately offer him a job (Ian was neither surprised nor alarmed by this, as his first visit was already strange enough). Apparently the school was in desperate need of readily available maintenance man. Ian's good with his hands; he would be perfect for it.


Anything Else?:

-He tried to eat a sock when he was five and Adam never let him live it down
-He just had a massive, massive crush on teenage Samus Aran holy crap he silently vows to win her affections back

In-Character 1st person sample:

[Ian’s video feed has kind of an alarming start, he has a slight sheen of sweat and is trying to catch his breath. He is very clearly standing in front of a door to some sort of maintenance room.]

Hey, Sam, when you get the chance I could use your help with something. Well, I guess you specifically don’t need to handle it but I figure you’re really the only person I know here that’s decent with a gun and--

[He gets cut off by a loud THUMPING NOISE coming from the door behind him. He may or may not mutter an expletive and fiddle with his janitor keys to make sure the door is locked before returning to the recording]

Anyway, I was looking for some spare light bulbs and I found a closet full of these figurine things, and I sort of knocked them over, and this alien looking thing, the pinchery kind-- [Ian mimics pincers on his mouth with his fingers] --came to life. They don’t exactly give the maintenance guy the right equipment to deal with that. I've got him trapped in the utility closet but--

[A loud SKRREEEEEEEEE is heard in the background.]

--whenever you get the chance, meet me by utility closet B12. No rush.

In-Character 3rd person sample:

Despite a life of staunch military routine, Ian never managed to transfer the early morning wakefulness to his leaves from active duty. This morning was certainly no exception, aside from the fact that it was in a place he never would have even imagined: the couch of one (very adult) Samus Aran and her boyfriend(!!!).

He was sort of surprised he was able to sleep at all though yesterday’s activities left him exhausted. It was a day of his arrival and explanations and long conversations about what he remembered, though the details were still sketchy despite his best efforts to recall his last few moments on the Lusitania. Those were memories, he suspected, that were lost forever, having likely succumbed to oxygen deprivation in his final moments from what he could piece together from his own memories and what Samus had told him. He was a little bit relieved in a way. He guessed that facing mortality in an objective, almost analytical context was much easier than having active memories of it.

He slept pretty much like a rock, thankfully with no memories surfacing through the night, though his neck ached slightly from being a bit too tall for the couch. He stretched as wet-dog-nose-alarm-clock happily greeted him, and he reached over and offered scratches to his new companion, who was probably the only member of the house who was not entirely thrown off by his presence. The normality of that was nice, though not quite enough to counterbalance the fact that Samus Aran was old and settled enough to have a pet, a house, and apparently a long-term relationship and the even stranger fact that he was dead and gone and apparently had been so for quite some time.

But there was little point in dwelling on those facts because the reality of them was out of his control. He was here now, in this house were Samus Aran was settled and had a pet and a long-term relationship where she had instructed himself to make himself at home so he was going to do just that. He shuffled into the kitchen and located probably some juvenile, sugary toaster pastry and promptly tore open the foil and shoved one into his mouth while he heard the normal residents of this house start to rise.

“Hey Samus,” Ian was a paragon of politeness this morning, and he only spit a few crumbs out as he talked with his mouth full, “do you know if there’s some way I could call my brother? Or would that cause a time paradox or something.”

Yeah maybe it’d be weird to get a call from your apparently dead brother that got stuck in time, but, hey, this was already pretty weird. Why not just go with it?


Other samples 'n STUFF:
Spooky Ghost Reunion (Fourth Wall Event) Ian remembers this as a dream (if that's OK)

Ian has a last few tragic momments
Ian throws the commander a birthday celebration
Ian manages to kiss Samus without getting shot