Ikaika Kaomi

deuteragonist

has gone by a ton of different names, often variants of his name, something including "kai"

male

he's actually in his late twenties but if you go based off the year he was born he'd be in his mid thirties. he accidentally traveled forward in time

5'8"

ectomorph, thin, not very muscled, if his (bionic) arms and legs look slightly muscular it's so there's space in them for all the augmentations and stuff he has

mixed (pacific islander, southeast asian)

medium brown/dark tan

115 lbs
(his bionic limbs are light, and he's underweight because he often forgets to eat)

black

buzz cut

he shaves but only if he remembers so there's usually some stubble

dark brown

missing tooth 5 (he knows lack of tooth can make him easily identifiable so he temporarily replaces it when he needs to, but he usually chooses to be short a tooth)
his torso, arms, and neck are almost completely covered in tattoos
the tattoos on his bionic arms aren't real, and he can change them whenever he wants

does not give a single fuck about what he's wearing as long as it's functional and comfortable enough, very likely wearing dirty clothes, loves jackets with secret/inside pockets, almost always has short sleeves or sleeves rolled up so he has easy access to all the functions on his arms, has no regard for dress codes and would wear the same thing he'd wear to meet a drug dealer to a formal event

really really bad
he wasn't always this unhealthy
at the beginning of the story, he's spending just as much time making things to keep himself from dying as he is making new things

overall: absolute shit
would be barely functional without his tech (terrible coordination, bad hearing and eyesight, his arms and legs are bionic so he's fucked without them, he's sustained quite a few injuries over the years, so some of his tech is necessary for him to say alive), doesn't eat enough and when he does it isn't healthy, either doesn't sleep (sees it as a waste of time) or passes out and oversleeps, is only active when he's trying to get something done, addicted to various drugs and has heart issues because of it (tech is keeping it under control)

overall: part great, part awful
good parts: constantly learning and teaching himself new things, achieves goals he sets, productive (but only when he wants to be), very confidant in his abilities, doesn't care what people think of him, creative, incredibly intelligent, stays calm in stressful situations
bad parts: kind of hates himself yet is kind of narcissistic (he knows he's messed up and very flawed but he can't/doesn't know how to change so he tries to ignore it and be arrogant and overly confident but it doesn't always work), doesn't cope healthily, substance addicted, takes a lot of risks, has little regard for his own safety, gets distracted easily, prone to depression, anxiety, and paranoia because of drug addiction, occasionally hit with bouts of self-loathing

overall: poor
has good emotional control but uses his skill to ignore and suppress emotions, uses drugs to cope with feelings he can't suppress, avoids attachments, can control himself but often chooses not to, both loves and hates himself, one good part - doing science-y shit makes him happy/feel better about himself so he does that a lot

overall: mostly abysmal
trust issues, hates showing weakness/being vulnerable around others, avoids forming real friendships or any other relationships with people, emotional unavailability prevents him from being truly close with anyone, when he needs to socialize he'll find a big event or party and just show up, doesn't have anyone he can/is willing to go to for support, doesn't respect people if he isn't feeling it, good bits - he's great at adapting to social situations and talking to people, charismatic if he chooses to be

ENTP

confident, likes to experience new things, impulsive, ambitious, persistent if he's committed but will give up if he doesn't think it's worth it, analytical, highly intelligent, curious, inventive, clever, charismatic when he wants to be, intuitive, good at manipulation, adaptable, active (as in not passive, things don't happen to him - he happens to things), can be very insensitive and vitriolic, direct, independent, logical, knowledgeable, quick learner and thinker, original, doesn't like routine, structure, or rules, creative, resourceful, fractious, seditious, wants to be the best at everything all the time, comes off as a dick and kind of can be but deep deep down he isn't truly a bad person

talks over people, swears a lot, rambles and talks too fast when he's high, picks at lips when nervous, pulls on bottom lip when thinking, stares off into space a lot, leans back in chairs (has fallen and will again), known to accidentally destroy things (like how i ripped max's eraser in half over the course of a day without meaning to), rarely says please or thank you

drug addict, doesn't trust people, has become apathetic, can be really lazy, disorganized, stubborn, cynical, will lie and manipulate if he wants something, can be pretty mean, will use people, terrible at dealing with emotions, not actually a sociopath or narcissist but he's known to act like one

terrible at learning languages, no time management skills, bad at being nice to people he doesn't want to be nice to, can't deal with emotions in a healthy way, doesn't remember things if he doesn't care about them/isn't interested

drug addiction, ADHD

there isn't really anything physical he's afraid of (ex. spiders, snakes, heights, small spaces), but he's terrified of the concept of not having autonomy. he hates the idea of someone/something else controlling him and him not having the opportunity to resist to the point that he would rather die that experience that.

as a child: learning new things
older: freedom for himself and others
beginning of story: nothing
later in story: freedom for himself and others

overall: he want to feel like he's made some kind of difference in such a massive universe

(don't think this part is canon it's a tad too sociopathic but i'm still gonna leave it here)
his main motivation is fighting for his own freedom but if he can help other people while he's at it, he's not necessarily against it. however, he won't do anything that he thinks is too risky/dangerous to him unless he's getting something out of it (ex. if there's a remote planet with an oppressive government, he'd be willing to take it down because he could do it without too much trouble, but if it was a confederation with five other planets, he'd only do it in exchange for something)

thinks everyone is nowhere near as smart as he is, hates government and people who work for it

coding, decent in combat but only when he has all his tech and/or some weapon he made (incapable of winning a fight normally), building electronics, robots, weapons, machines, etc., problem solving, adapting, he's good at a lot of different things but especially those in the STEM field

great with electronics, cybernetics, robots, machines, just about anything that falls into STEM

making robots, electronics, etc., learning and teaching himself new things, makes weird abstract art if he's high enough (but he'd never show it to anyone), doing drugs

he's worked with people all over the galaxy, rebels, criminals, scientists, so he has a lot of people he'd be able to get help from/work with if he needed it but he's not really close to any of them

his friends were the people he overthrew governments with (i don't know their names yet), but the ones who haven't been killed are in hiding

he doesn't actually consider a lot of people he talks to friends (he's chill and funny there's a chance it could be glib or it could be real)
he likes to have fun with his friends (like [unnamed istp] and [unnamed esfp]) and he's down to spend a lot of time with them and talk to them and do things but he doesn't do emotions
the only person he shares feelings with is [unnamed infp]
(he might share a feeling or two with random people if he's high or drunk enough but that doesn't count)

he and amari travel together for most of the story
how they affect each other:
ikaika’s recklessness (and his tendency to get high when he definitely should not) forces amari to take over on some of their misadventures, seeing how capable she is helps her confidence, also just throughout the story her successes make her more confident, he helps her stop caring so much about what people think and not blindly do what she’s told, she gets so sick of him that she finally stands up for herself, other characters help her with not taking her selflessness too far
amari snaps and she calls him out on how reckless and “apathetic” he is, he tries to be better briefly, falls back, she snaps again, forces him to see how his behavior is hurting the people he cares about, and he finally starts to change, stop doing drugs, consider how his actions affect other people, and open up a little (in the sense of letting himself care about things again)

lots of governments hate him, so do plenty of cops, drug dealers, gangsters, pretty much anyone with any power won't be a huge fan of him because he refuses to be controlled, sort of enjoys acquiring enemies

he's terrible at learning new languages so he only actually knows one, but his tech can allow him to use almost any language

at the beginning, he's making money selling things (usually weapons or other illegal stuff), sometimes does crime for money

when he's overthrowing governments, he makes weapons and technology, sometimes participates in attacks, goes on solo missions

atheist

he despises politics, enjoys anarchy but knows it can't actually work for people

pansexual

a color outside of what the normal human eye can see

i was about to come up with some little thing he got from his parents or siblings or someone but he would never let himself keep something for sentimental reasons

his left arm

crows

poetry, astrology, really hates when people hold pencils weirdly, useless pets

March 31

this has no significance as it's an earth-free galaxy it's just the vibe i get

went to school briefly when he was young (up to high school) but he got expelled so the scientists who raised him educated him and taught him a lot
he has also taught himself a lot/learned from experience

he always makes up tragic backstories so no one is 100% sure about the events of his past

however i am his creator and i know all

all ages are earth ages

he can't remember his birth parents (they died when he was very young), but it doesn't really bother him. he and some other orphans were raised by kind old scientists.

he went to school up until his early teens, but it really wasn't for him. he constantly caused trouble while simultaneously being at the top of his class, and teachers hated him. he got expelled when he was 16, but because of the scientists and his ability to teach himself, he got a better education than most.

he and his sister, zakiya, figured out that their parents were creating weapons, technology, and other stuff and giving it to people across the galaxy, and when they confronted them about it, they told them that they were helping people fight oppressive governments. they let them work on some stuff with them, but they kept their involvement limited. ikaika tried to learn more about what they were doing, but he wasn't able to sneak much by two geniuses.

after he was expelled and before he was able to get a job that worked for him, he was pretty much just a shitty feral teenager. his parents made him get jobs, but he got fired from most of them. he did illegal shit all the time but was smart enough to not get caught. he got addicted to drugs, and his family helped him quit.

he worked at a company developing technology, and though he did well and enjoyed it, he felt like he could be doing more. he became more involved in the overthrowing bad governments thing, and he did that when he wasn't working. he and his parents learned about a group of planetary systems that they had tried to help that were united under one government. they were suspicious of it, but they didn't have any evidence that it was a corrupt government.

when he was older (early twenties), the scientists died of natural causes (old age or whatever), and even though they could have lived a lot longer, they chose not to. he's a little bitter over this and thinks it was stupid and emotional of them to do that.

he continued working with the technology company, but he became more and more dissatisfied with it and started to focus more on the government overthrowing thing. he took time off work to help a planet fight a civil war in which the good side was losing. right before he was supposed to go back to work, he learned that the intersystem government had clandestinely put down and covered up riots and protests against their power. he quit his job to focus completely on stopping them.

he and zakiya found their parents' contacts and began working with those people. within a short time, they were living out of spaceships and physically fighting in addition to providing weapons and technology.

they exposed a lot and aided multiple rebellions, and the government really hated them and wanted them dead. they tried to kill ikaika and his team but they had so many upgrades and augmentations and weapons that it was almost impossible to kill them.

in a fight against government agents, erika, who had worked with the group since it was formed, got them to go through a portal, supposedly to safety. it lead to a dwarf planet very close to the black hole at the center of the galaxy, and as soon as everyone but her was through, erika destroyed the portal, trapping everyone there. the team was able to get it fixed pretty quickly in their time, but because of the time dilation, it took eight years for them to get back in everyone else's time. they were ambushed as soon as they came through the portal, and while some got away, a lot of them were killed.

the government wasn't actively looking for them during the eight years because they knew where they were and they knew they spot they would come back in so they made sure they’d be alerted when they came back and they were able to get there quickly to attack when ikaika and the gang came back. they knew they weren’t dead because of erika and just because of who they were, they knew they were likely to come back at some point so they were ready for when that happened

the ones who survived learned that in the years they were stuck by the black hole, the government had gotten huge and had gone from having control over a few systems to many systems, giving them influence over the entire galaxy. the survivors, very wanted and having suffered heavy losses, were forced to split up and go into hiding. they kept contact at first, but the government was able to find and imprison/kill some of them because of that, so they had to cut off all communication with each other.

ikaika fell into a depression and became an isolated, nihilistic vagabond drifting around the galaxy. he lived in his spaceship (space rv!) and would stay on a planet for a few weeks to a month before moving to a new one. he started using drugs again, and because he had no one to stop him and no motivations, the addiction quickly became severe.

he spent a little while catching up with everything he missed, but after that he didn't really have anything to do. he continued to make stuff and develop new technology, but it wasn't nearly the same magnitude as the things he used to do. when he needed money for something, he'd steal or sell stuff he made (usually weapons). all he really did was occasionally make stuff, do drugs, and aimlessly wander the galaxy.

as time went on, he became less and less cautious, and the government was able to track him down. they sent a team to capture him (they would have tried to kill him but they wanted to try get information out of him), and because they knew he would not cooperate in any way, they sent amari, a crisis negotiator.

this is where our story begins.

random things that happened but doesn't need to be in the main background story
-he and the people he worked with overthrew a planet's government, only for an even worse one to take over. he had pushed hard for them to do it, so he blamed himself and tried to fix it, but everything he did only made things worse. the people he worked with had to stop him from trying anything else.

he's adopted so he's not sure of his exact birthplace
he grew up at his parents' house and lab outside of a city, but he spent a lot of time in the city
planet: auren
system: veshela
arm: etano

Zakiya, Andres, Janai, Teegan

all of these are adoptive relationships

parents
he was closer with his parents than most kids are, and they had a lot of influence on his interests and ambitions. they were good people but not the best at parenting, which is why ikaika is kind of feral.

zakiya (older sister)
he was closer with her than any of his other siblings. they have the same intelligence level (more or less, he's better in some fields, she's better in others), and they worked on a lot of stuff together when they were younger. they're very competitive, but they love each other. they both worked to overthrow the planetary federation, and both of them were teleported by the black hole. they both survived the ambush when they got back to the normal part of the galaxy, but they split up while escaping. they kept contact for a little while, but they learned the hard way that it would be safer to not have any interaction with each other whatsoever. they haven't talked in over a year.

andres, janai, and teegan (all younger)
he was never really that close with them. he got along with them well enough, but they were so different that they never particularly wanted to get close. they were nice enough to each other, but their relationship was like that with someone you're friends with at school but would never hang out with outside of school. he hasn't talked to them in over ten of their years, two of his years.

bionic arms (both)
-stronger and more functional than the real things
-can be turned into weapons (nothing too crazy but still very much lethal)

bionic legs (one and a half)
-his left leg is real up to slightly above the knee
-also stronger and more functional than the real things
-great at absorbing impact (jump off a building and it won't hurt [up to a point])

(how did he lose all his limbs?
he sees no downside to bionic limbs and prefers them to real limbs so any excuse to replace a real limb is a good excuse to him
left arm: got blown off. he’s into bombs
right arm: had to get rid of it to stop an infection or something from spreading
left leg: he got shot or injured in some way that broke his femur and it would have taken longer to heal than he wanted
right leg: top half is still real but the lower half got pinned underneath something and it was easier to just get rid of it)

improved vision
-can see in the dark
-can see more colors (more cones) (zakiya did this)
-can zoom in on things

improved hearing
-can make hearing more sensitive with mental command
-can hear below 20hz and above 20,000hz

can sense things around him (within a certain vicinity) without having to see or hear them
-he's alerted if something new comes up around him

faster reflexes

skin
-his bionic limbs look real and the "skin" can absorb kinetic energy from taking hits and keep him from being hurt
-his real skin is tougher and laced with some kinda thing that can shock whatever is touching him that he doesn't want

bones (the real ones, some have been replaced with a stronger metal) are strengthened with metal

something to keep his heart functional (drug addiction fucked it up)
-before drug addiction, the tech had it working better than a normal one (better blood flow, more oxygen, led to better endurance)

can safely send a fuck ton of electricity through his limbs and use it as a weapon

if he activates it, he has some kinda force field thing that can stop bullets

in the beginning, he had a cybernetic connection to the security system on his ship

can mentally hack some systems with a cybernetic connection, if not, he can usually plug himself in and take over that way

how is he not dead?
oh he definitely should be dead!
he never stays in one place for too long so he’s pretty hard to catch and he has a ton of advanced technology to keep any signals or whatever could be used to track him hidden
all his augmentations and tech in his body makes him pretty hard to kill and when he was out toppling governments he was with his super smart and talented friends and some of them were doctors who helped him survive some pretty bad injuries
he’s not afraid to defend himself and the weapons he has are much better than whatever his enemies have
he’s also kind of notorious and despite how much he's hated, people are afraid to go after him

the rest of the notes
he's always been on the reckless side and he's never exactly been kind, but he wasn't always a manipulative piece of shit with no regard for his or anyone else's safety.
he invented and innovated to make the galaxy a better place and to feel like he was making a difference in such a massive universe and this was the same reason he did the government overthrowing thing.
when he was a teen, he did drugs because he felt purposeless
he liked working for that company when he got older and he was doing great and inventing a lot of helpful stuff but he wanted to do more so he started helping rebels and when he realized how serious it was, he devoted all his time to it (he still made tech and stuff while overthrowing governments and shit though)
he's willing to do some bad things for the greater good and for the most part he was able to justify it to himself but he fucked up an entire planet beyond what he could fix and it kinda fucked him up and he started doing drugs again (not a lot but it still wasn't good) and he kept it hidden from everyone he was working with and close to
the drugs started to make him slip a little and he fucked up more and felt like he could be getting more done and the guilt just made the drug addiction worse
he blamed himself for the time travel thing because he felt as though if he hadn't been on drugs he could have figured out that erika was bad and could have gotten them away from the black hole faster and after they got back and realized it had been years and saw how much The Bad Government had expanded he felt even more guilty and blamed himself for it
when he and everyone left on the team had to separate, he spiraled and just gave into drug addiction and guilt and became nihilistic as hell and kinda sociopathic

became a vagabond after he was betrayed, basically lives in a spaceship trailer (has a workshop/lab inside), travels wherever he feels like, if he needs something he'll steal or make it and if he needs money he'll sell things he makes (often weapons and technology)

drug addiction, guilt, loss have made him close himself off to protect himself
he made himself stop caring so it wouldn’t hurt as much
he was really invested in what he was doing and the accidental time travel and loss of his friends really fucked him up
he doesn’t push people away because of self loathing, it’s because he doesn’t want to be vulnerable to loss again and he hates being vulnerable in general

he's lonely as fuck so when he's high or whatever he usually looks for someone to ramble to