Name:Personal Journal:Contact: exitmouse[at]gmail[dot]com, oncemorewithfeeling at plurk
Other Characters Played: Demyx (
dancewaterdance)
Are you 18 or over? Yes.
Canon: Katekyo Hitman REBORN!
Character: Gokudera Hayato
Timeline: Chapter 409 / The end of the series.
Personality: The flames of 'Storm' have the attribute of disintegration, "Continuously at the heart of the attack, the furious Storm that never rests." Hotheaded and brash, this describes Gokudera in a nutshell. He's extremely passionate about everything he does, often without consideration for the consequences if he gets properly riled up before hand.
Gokudera is the kid that never really learned how to properly control his emotions. His personality is as explosive as the dynamite he uses, every feeling coming in quick, loud bursts that he never attempts to suppress. When Gokudera is angry, he yells, he flips tables, he basically freaks the fuck out. The first couple times it was scary, having a guy with so much explosive power and such a short fuse on him, but soon it became apparent that even though he gets spitting angry Gokudera is essentially harmless to his friends outside of hurling a lot of insults, so they just found it tiring and/or funny (a real blow to his dignity there). At the same time, he smiles and laughs just as loudly when you can get it out of him. No emotions are done halfway with Gokudera.
Although Gokudera is very smart he has a very bad habit of talking before thinking which makes him look like a huge dumbass even when he does know what he's talking about, which is often. Not only the top of his class, Gokudera has written his own code-language (for funsies), and is often seen modifying new equipment and techniques that come from technology that the main characters were only introduced to hours before. If Gokudera has something that can be taken apart, there is a damn good chance he can break it down to its component parts and figure out how to not only build a second one, but rebuild the first one even better.
He's found it hard to trust people after a very short lifetime of doing that and having it come back to bite him in the ass, facing rejection at every turn. Before the start of the series, he had spent years attempting to join a different mafia family, seeking someplace to belong, but even with his extensive training under Doctor Shamal and his keen knowledge of explosives, Gokudera was seen as a musician first and 'a little too foreign looking' second. So starved for care and friendship, Tsuna's simple act of caring whether or not Gokudera lived or died went
miles with the boy, leading to him to basically declare himself no longer Tsuna's enemy but his strongest supporter and closest ally - something that hasn't lost any speed even a year later at the end of the manga. Up until that point, he had a self-destructive streak that also bordered on suicidal. While he never attempted to take his own life, he put it on the line for his goals without any care for doing so. Through Tsuna's friendship, Gokudera started taking better care of himself, not wanting to worry Tsuna (his very first friend) by causing injury to himself.
While he'd be loathe to admit it, over time he has come to see Tsuna's other 'core' guardians (Yamamoto, Ryohei, and Lambo) as friends as well. Well, Yamamoto and Ryohei, Lambo's kind of like the annoying kid brother he never wanted. Unlike his loud UNDYING LOYALTY to Tsuna and the cause, Gokudera is far more discerning when it comes to showing his worry about the others. He grumbles and grouches, but when push comes to shove his real feelings shine through - when Yamamoto (always called 'baseball idiot', constantly bitching about) took a potentially fatal injury, Gokudera was the one who was on the verge of tears, alerting all their friends to the incident. When the penitent attacker was on the verge of death, it was Gokudera who held Tsuna back from helping, arguing "He's the one who hurt Yamamoto." and to let him be beaten.
When it comes down to it, along with Lambo and Mukuro, Gokudera is one of the ones that was actually raised within the mafia... Lambo is five years old, and Mukuro is a convicted murderer. Tsuna and his friends have been a positive influence on him leading to more of a moral high ground than he had at the start of the series, and a stable and non abusive family (at least to the level Mukuro had to suffer) kept him from going full sociopath, but Gokudera is still one of the core heroes that's willing to be ruthless at times. He knows how standard mafia families work and that this isn't really a game they're playing, even if Tsuna's caring and nonstandard style are what makes Gokudera willing to go to any lengths to follow him.
Background: http://reborn.wikia.com/wiki/Hayato_GokuderaAbilities/Additional Notes: Being one of the main supporting cast in a shonen manga about little boys fighting, Gokudera's got quite a bit. I'll condense as much as possible.
EXPLOSIVES: Gokudera's main 'weapon' are explosives - from fireworks to straight-up dynamite. He has various techniques involving bombs of various sizes and combinations. He makes his own explosives as well - usually lighting them with his cigarettes (he's a chain smoker).
Storm Dying Will Flame: Similar to chakra or magical willpower, 'dying will flames' are how almost all special attacks within KHR are powered. It's your willpower to fight until you die, more or less. All people have specific 'types' of flames, though some have more than one type. Storm is Gokudera's primary flame and natural predisposition, but he actually holds the ability to use Rain, Lightning, Cloud, and Sun flames, to a weaker extent. His Storm flames are the strongest, allowing him to use advanced Storm-based rings and box weapons. Storm is the element of disintegration.
Uri: Uri is the storm cat, part of Gokudera's advanced box weapon Sistema C.A.I. (more on that below). Uri takes the form of a leopard kitten with flames coming out its ears and the tip of its tail (Basically, Uri looks like a pokemon). When summoned, Uri can attack on its own (scratching or biting like a cat would) along with being used in conjuncture with the rest of the Sistema C.A.I. When exposed to Sun Flames, Uri grows into a fully mature leopard, with a greater strength to match. Although Uri is very protective of Gokudera, it is just as tsundere as its owner, often scratching Gokudera instead. Uri can also transform into an ornate bow, allowing Gokudera to fire Storm Flame arrows.
Sistema C.A.I. A series of rings and boxes that utilize flames of Storm, Rain, Lighting, Cloud AND Sun - all to the extent that Gokudera can use them. He wears the multiple small boxes around his waist like a Rob Liefield character with about thirty million pouches, with contact lenses that provide displays to ensure proper targeting that display everything from wind speed velocity to magnetic fields. The various tricks capable by the Sistema include shields that double as containment fields when used to surround the enemy instead of Gokudera and his allies and charged with other flames for additional abilities (such as Rain to partially neutralize enemy attacks), arrows charged with various Dying Will flames for different effect like a Hawkeye ripoff, and a Storm Disc, which functions as a hover board (can't actually fly, just hover. But it is very fast).
Buckle of the Storm Version X Gokudera's original Vongola of the Storm ring, updated and made better, faster, stronger, merged with Uri, and also not a ring. It looks like a normal if very ostentatious belt buckle when dormant, and when activated can summon Uri and go into 'Cambio Forma', which pretty much means Uri becomes an awesome outfit and weapons with even more belts and pouches than previously imagined. His bombs become self-replicating, and he gets sunglasses which appear to just serve the same function as normal sunglasses. Considering the amount of explosions Gokudera causes, that's probably the most useful thing they could do. When not in Cambio Forma, Uri's flame tail also now functions like a fuse. The cat explodes. The cat is okay after exploding, it more causes the explosions to form around it and then gets sleepy afterward.
Genius: While as stated before, Gokudera has the unfortunate habit of seeming like a dumbass from time to time, he's been shown to be a more tactical and intelligent fighter when his back is against the wall, able to defeat opponents much stronger than himself by out-thinking them. While almost all the other characters that are trying to balance the mafia shenanigans and school are shown to be doing very poorly at school, Gokudera has no trouble making good grades. He's constantly upgrading and improving his own weapons, and it seems like even ten years into the future his own code language he developed for himself for funsies hasn't been cracked.
Musician: He's also a trained concert pianist. He hasn't practiced so much recently, but there was a time in his life before Shit Went Down that he was going to go into music as a profession instead of the mafia.
First-Person Sample: [It's pretty clear when Gokudera turns on his device he's already got that figured out. The camera is perfectly focused and he's looking right at it. Silvery blonde hair, features a mix of Japanese and Italian. The microphone is picking up just his voice without any static interference.]So. I see that the network only shows people who are currently here, and it looks like they vanish from it if they leave. It's obvious that
Decimo isn't here currently, but I need to know if he ever has been - he's about this high
[Gokudera holds up his hand for frame of reference] bright smile, soothing voice, the very picture of leadership and humility. ... He'd answer to Tsunayoshi.
More importantly, if he was here and vanished, I need to know if Mukuro Rokudo had anything to do with that vanishing.
I know you're here, Mukuro! So where are you?!
Third-Person Sample: There was a soft rumble, a faint hissing sound in a block of decaying buildings otherwise silent as the grave, each tombs in their own right as nature and entropy threatened to overtake them. The leaves of a few plants that might have been Morning Glory or Ivy or some combination of both began to rustle as the rumbling and hissing got louder and louder still.
That was about when a wall blew out in an explosion of concrete and dust - clearing out a good side of the whole first story and crumbling much of the second.
A small herd of kittens with shark-like teeth ran yowling from the explosion, a tiny stampede of fur and far too many teeth.
Hot on their heels was another cat, hissing just as loudly with flames trailing from its ears and tail.
Not quite hot on those heels - in fact the heels were rather cool at that point, a third figure.
"URI!
URI!" Gokudera yelled, boots stomping against the pavement as he ran after his wayward box animal as fast as possible, hoping not to loose it in this strange (combustible) city. His calling for his animal was commanding only once, quickly edging on desperate, then straight-out pleading. It was clear who was the real master.
"URI THIS ISN'T YOUR TERRITORY - URI!
URI GET BACK HERE! URI!!"
Gokudera did, eventually, get his cat under control. Three hours of solid chase later, through an abandoned mall, falling down two stories onto some moth-eaten mattresses, blowing up four and a half walls, and ending up in a particularly shallow part of the river, soaked and miserable.
His cat sat on Gokudera's head and purring with dry contentedness.
Gokudera really, really needed a cigarette.