FREE BORN

OOC

Name: MJ
Age: Yes.
Contact details: Don't.
Characters already in Systemwide: Stephen.

BASIC PROFILE

Name: Jomi (João Miguel) DaCosta
Age: 26
Appearance: A tall and lanky young man with medium-brown skin, short and spiky dreadlocks, varying amounts of facial hair depending on the week, and improbably perfect teeth. Like so:



But with more dystopian grime.

OVERVIEW

Personality: Jomi is midway through a metamorphosis from troublemaker to true believer, with all the inconsistencies that entails: he's learning to be serious in bits and pieces, as life forces him to, and strangers attempting to navigate a conversation with him may have trouble finding a pattern in what he takes lightly and what he takes with dead sincerity. Unhelpful, too, is the fact that he is upbeat, energetic, and chatty, without any noticeable temper to speak of, even when he doesn't think it's funny anymore and even when he isn't being especially nice. If necessary, he can keep a convincing smile on his face right up to the point he has to pistol-whip (or wrench-whip, more likely) somebody else in theirs.

He's always been a little bit of a troll, but never—with the exception of four-year angry spell after his father's premature death—an anti-authoritarian smart-ass. He doesn't have a problem with authority as long as authority doesn't mind some toothless, affectionate backtalk while Jomi is already on his way to do whatever he's complaining about being told to do. He is not and never will be a good leader in the style of a captain, or even a first mate, but he's a good leader on the third tier. The tier where everyone's equal and making a face behind the boss's back can diffuse tension instead of provoking insubordination. His sense of humor is gentle unless provoked, generally turned toward keeping people calm or steering them back into their proper place in the hierarchy without making a scene.

That's where true believer comes in: Jomi believes in Zion, in opposition to both the machines and some of the other human settlements and cultures that are evolving outside its borders. He has roots and extended family in Antioch, but he's never lived there himself, and he considers Zion the best of what humanity has to offer. He despises Irkallans—not the expatriots, they're all right, but he would absolutely shoot a pirate in the face and not lose any sleep over it. He's wary of the Oracle but trusts their leadership enough to trust the network. He's willing to get his hands as dirty as he's asked to. He also doesn't have a lot of patience for rabble-rousers and disunity in the ranks, and none at all for unplugged people who fail to assimilate or wax nostalgic about their past lives as batteries. He wouldn't be able to articulate that he believes their opinions about the real world and its governance count for less than free born people's, but he kinda does.

As one of the youngest members of his family, Jomi isn't protective of his family the way some of the older ones are; he cares, and if asked to help he always will, but he's used to them being able to take care of themselves. He is, also, not overly protective of his daughter. That isn't to say he wouldn't die and/or kill for her, and he generally knows where she is or who she's with at any given moment, but he's a big fan of letting her do things for herself, including making mistakes and handling her childhood-sized problems on her own. He wandered a lot as a boy without getting killed, so he tries to afford her the same courtesy.

Around Zion, he has a lot of friends and acquaintances and is a fixture at most community gatherings. He's quick to drag anyone who looks lonely or isolated along to a bar or on a small adventure. He's a little religious, but not overbearing about it; he's borderline dyslexic and not much of a reader, including Matrix code; he knows how to walk on his hands. Barring any unpredicted development in-game, he's on the long path toward council membership—not anytime soon, probably not before he's gone gray, but someday.

Background: Jomi is from a large family, on the younger end of a large brood of Zion-native siblings—he is, of particular note, the nephew of Seoraj Allaway and the son of Horse's deceased pal—and had a childhood as pleasant as any childhood in a sunless underground dystopian city could be. He grew up around hovercraft and began helping the two of his older siblings who ended up as dock mechanics early. Or "helping" them. He was always a little bit of a problem, but a harmless one, who many of his fellow Zionites recognized on sight and knew whose home to drag him back to by the shirt.

He would honestly probably have ended up a much less useful person than he is now, if not for two things. The first was his father's death at the hands of Irkallan pirates when Jomi was sixteen years old. The loss didn't make him more responsible or manageable, only sharper, with jokes meant to hurt instead of buoy the people around him and an increasing eagerness to put his fist in nearby faces. He joined the ZDG on a personal mission but with little discipline to back it up, and he bounced through a couple of crews/captains before he settled down.

That was all ten to seven years ago. The second event of note was the birth of his daughter, who's now a wild, willowy six year old. Jomi's relationship with her unplugged mother, Inanna, was never serious—they were good friends and remain such, with Inanna largely absorbed into his family and the two of them always signing off on one another's subsequent romantic prospects as Acceptable To Be Around The Baby, and Thaís is being raised largely by the village that is Jomi's giant family. She's softened him and imbued him with a lot more responsibility, without doing anything to dampen the drive he acquired after his father's death.

Jomi was working on the Erebus when Thaís was born, and he continued his hovercraft service until a year and a half ago, when Thaís woke up from a nightmare while he was home and insisted on being held by one of her aunts instead of by him. He asked for reassignment soon afterwards and has been working at the docks instead, often with tiny child in tow. With the fleet so recently gutted, however, he might be persuaded to go back out.

Skillsets: Jomi's talents include impeccable impressions of every council member, making toys for Zion's children out of scrap metal and spare bits and bobs, and hovercraft mechanicking. He can hold his own in basic combat to the extent necessary for hovercraft service and operate a small array of handheld weapons. He knows how to pilot, too, but it's rare that someone better at it isn't available. On the raw talent scale, he isn't a genius or even particularly a natural mechanic, but he's been turning wrenches since he was five years old and he knows his shit. He is a natural charmer, and his ability to keep his fellows calm and following orders smoothly under duress probably makes him more useful than any skill related to his actual job.

SAMPLES

ONE

He's working overtime, lately, to the extent Zion has a concept of overtime. He doesn't have a paycheck or a time card to measure it by. What he does have is the fact that this is the third time in a week Thaís has fallen asleep at the docks, curled up near his tools using his ragged sweater as a pillow. Jomi lets her wander when she's awake, but when she's asleep—helpless—he stays where he can at least see the sprawl of her curls around the corner of the hovercraft.

He's tired, too. He's humming to keep himself awake, drumming on the side of the machine with his free hand when he can spare the concentration. Now and then he pauses to rub his eyes. He has a side panel pulled open, wires spilling out like guts and oil on his hands like blood—and on his eyes, now, smudged like a rock star's make-up in one of the worlds he'll never see.

It's slow, careful work, despite the mess. Wire cutters and pliers work. Quiet enough for him to hear footsteps and turn his head to catch the source in his peripheral vision, and to follow her between two hovercraft. He hasn't seen her before, here or anywhere else. Her clothes are oversized. They've lost a lot of people recently, and a lot of machines.

He swaps the wire cutters for a hammer and walks out to meet her.

"Hey, pal," he says. He's all friendliness, lanky arms loose at his sides. He holds the hammer like it doesn't weigh a thing. "You look lost."

TWO

Here.