Rail

If you have any comments or criticism on how I play Rail, or you just need to get in touch with me, here's the post to do it. Feel free to contact me! Anon comments are screened.

Name: Dante
Contact: teenysanguini or TheIrradiated@gmail.com
Character Name: Rail
Character Series: Baccano!

[For all texting, video, and voice messages!]

player.
NAME/HANDLE: Dante
PERSONAL JOURNAL: falconpawnch
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: Yes
CONTACT: TheIrradiated@gmail.com or teenysanguini
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a


character.
CHARACTER NAME: Rail
SERIES: Baccano!
Canon information about Rail can be found here and here.
CANON POINT: The beginning of the 1935-A novel.
AGE: Looks around 11 or 12, but her real age is about 15 years old.
APPEARANCE:
Here
PERSONALITY:

Rail is one of the youngest homunculi created by Huey Laforet as well as one of the younger members of Lamia, Huey's group of homunculi that does his dirty work for him. On the outside, people will notice right away that Rail has a very distinct appearance. She's covered from head to toe in numerous scars and stitches, which gives her a very frightening appearance. Her face is torn up in a way that it looks like she's always smiling. She's also a very androgynous child who is often referred to as a boy, not only by her companions, but she does it herself as well. Despite the confusion, she never corrects anyone regardless of what gender they call her.

In a lot of ways, she acts like a very bratty teenager. She has a very laid-back, nonchalant attitude and tends to be very unapologetic and brutally honest. She rarely feels guilty, especially over what she considers to be small stuff, like showing up to a Lamia meeting late or insulting someone. She also approaches missions with a lazy attitude, like being briefed on a mission and then telling the rest of the Lamia members to have someone contact her while she goes off to do her own thing. One of her biggest flaws that gets her in trouble is her reckless and overconfident attitude, like going into town despite knowing there's people out looking for her. She just assumes that she'd be able to take on whoever decides to attack her.

She's also frequently either smiling or laughing, sometimes over things that aren't considered appropriate to laugh at, like when someone points out that she isn't being loyal to Huey, she laughs and suggests she might be killed for it. And while someone giving her odd looks because of her appearance might normally be considered hurtful, she fully accepts this and is amused anytime someone gets weirded out by how she looks. Often she'll use self-depreciating humor to expose how she really feels about herself. That she feels like she has no worth in the world and there's no place for unnatural creatures like herself. She tells Chi that she "doesn't plan to be remembered throughout history".

Out of all terms that could be used to describe Rail, "bomb freak" would fit her perfectly. She is the Lamia's bomb expert, and obviously it's her main weapon in fights. She knows how to make explosives herself, and she's willing to use them anywhere without even a second thought. The reason she favors bombs above any other weapon is very personal to her, because despite the resentment she has towards the rest of the world, she also desperately wants to be noticed (and eventually accepted) by it. This is symbolized by the kind of weapons she uses, because everyone will turn to notice and react when a bomb goes off. Or in an extreme case, the damage done to a person by a bomb is something that can't be forgotten. It's her way of trying to carve out an existence in a world she knows she doesn't belong in, but wants to be included too. Even though she says she won't be remembered by history, she looks for ways to make sure she wouldn't be easily forgotten about by the rest of humanity.

Also unlike the other Lamia, she's the only one who has and doesn't bother to hide her hatred towards her creator, Huey. During the Lamia meeting, she openly insults him and doesn't bother calling Huey "master" like everyone else does. Later, she even admits to Christopher that she'd gladly turn traitor and that she's been wanting to blow up Huey for a long time.

And speaking of Christopher, there's two homunculi that Rail feels particularly close to and only two that she'll allow herself to reveal her true feelings towards - Frank and Christopher Shouldered. Despite her nonchalant attitude towards most things, Frank is someone she'll get protective of in an instant and is someone she views as something like a younger brother. Another homunculi around her age, Frank was with her when she had to endure experiment after experiment, and when he was captured, she ends up having a breakdown and practically rips apart a city using her bombs in order to rescue him.

And then there's Christopher Shouldered. If Frank is considered her younger brother, then Christopher is the older brother in this family set-up. They first bonded after Rail went through a particularly traumatizing experiment, and since then she's looked up him as a role model and older brother figure. Others even note that her personality is becoming a lot similar to Chris', in that she's picking up on his odd way of behaving and speaking. She's also one of the Lamia who took his disappearance the hardest.

All of Huey's homunculi in some way have had their personalities influenced due to the experiments they've had to endure in the lab. In Rail's case, she was cut open over and over without any anesthesia until she eventually lost her sense of touch. She remembers that when the scientists were ordered to cut her up, she came to the realization that she wasn't anything more then an object. Before that moment, she knew her existence wasn't natural, but thought that made her special. After seeing the scientists who worked on her didn't have any trace of emotion while they operated, this view of herself was shattered. She became bitter and hateful, especially towards scientists, at the realization that she didn't have any worth other then just being a "thing" to be experimented on over and over. And while she understood her role as a test subject, she didn't want to accept it. She didn't want to be an object, and if she can't be a human, then she would instead view herself as superior to all humans.

What's kept her going for so long is her feelings of superiority towards humans. When she tried observing humans herself, she was disappointed by how weak they were, both physically and mentally. Since all homunculi created by Huey have accepted that they could never exist as normal humans because of the trauma they've all gone through, it gave her some strength when she realized they didn't meet her expectations or impressed her at all. In fact, it even cemented her opinion that she was better then them, and why would she ever want to be something so pitiful? So hanging onto this belief, she used it to survive her experiences in the lab. She refused to believe otherwise, because if anything challenged her view of the world, her coping method was to deny it exists. Something that she would be forced to change later on when she meets humans that are more powerful then the Lamia.

As far as death and violence are concerned, Rail is incredibly desensitized to both. This has a lot to do with her living a life of death and violence, since homunculi in Huey's lab have to fight and struggle for a right to survive. Whenever she's using her bombs, Rail normally doesn't care who gets injured or dies, and if she's under orders or has to fight for her life, she'll kill without question. While death and violence don't really bother her, she has a few things that will set her off - mainly anything that resembles a lab or scientists, or anything that even slightly reminds her of the trauma she went through in the lab. This is a pretty common reaction among all of Huey's homunculi - all of them associate scientists and lab work with pain and suffering, but Rail is the only one of Lamia who will react violently and do everything she can to get away. Just bringing up subject will cause her to feel disgusted and fearful. It's the quickest way possible to set her off, despite how she normally tries to keep her emotions hidden.

ABILITIES:
Due to how their bodies are and the experiments they went through in the lab, homunculi in Baccano! are built to take a lot more damage then normal humans and are able to withstand a lot, making them difficult to kill. Also after a certain point, all homunculi stop aging. While they're technically immortal, they can still die from being shot, strangled, etc. But as long as nothing fatal happens to them, they can actually live as long as they want.

For Rail's abilities, she's invulnerable to pain after she lost her sense of touch several years ago during an experiment. She's also incredibly skilled with bombs and knows how to make her own explosives.

POSSESSIONS:
Just her clothes (which are fireproof), and enough bombs that she can fit into her pockets.

samples.
JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE:
Meme thread!

THIRD-PERSON SAMPLE:

The sound of a child's laughter brings different images to people's minds when they hear it. Maybe that child is playing with a new toy, or they're spending time with their friends. What they normally don't expect, is a loud explosion in the distance when they hear said child's laughter.

Rail watch the smoke billow as she stood a safe distance away from the blast with a huge grin on her face. Her expression could be described as identical to a kid who liked to tie firecrackers to the tail of a stray cat just to see what would happen, or strap plastic soldiers to bottle rockets and fire them into a neighbor's yard. Except Rail was a little more destructive then that. In her mind, the bigger the explosion, the better.

To her credit though, she had picked a spot where not too many people would be in the way, instead of just picking the busiest area and setting bombs off. As long as no one was stupid enough to wander into the blast, no one should get hurt. But it's not her fault if they were dumb enough to walk into an explosion anyway.

There was another reason behind the explosions, other then just being a bomb freak. She's a little on edge from not only being dumped in a strange town, but then there was that COMPASS Inc. announcing that they were participants in an information gathering operation. She wasn't really sure what that meant, but it sounded like something Huey would order the Lamia to do for him. She didn't think Huey was responsible for whatever COMPASS was or her ending up in this town, but it wasn't like there weren't other people like Huey Laforet in the world. She didn't have any intention of doing whatever this COMPASS thing wanted her to do, but the whole thing had her feeling incredibly uneasy. And the best way to relieve that?

She pulls a pin, letting an egg-shaped bomb roll into an alleyway before getting a safe distance away. It's not like anyone's going to miss those trash bins, or maybe they would. She didn't really care either way. Another explosion rocks the alleyway, and she gleefully watches. COMPASS was pretty stupid if they thought they could force her into these missions while leaving her with all her weapons. If it came down to it and they tried to keep her from leaving, she'd level this whole town. Simple as that.