Updated BioName: Alistair Edward Smith Age: 30 Sex: Male Zoids: Rev Raptor, Slash Liger, Blade Liger, Storm Sworder, Geno Saurer
History:
A name, date of birth, registration number and a photo from a pilot`s license.
That about sums up the amount of information one could expect to find on the man known as Alistair Edward Smith. According to records, most of which are based on his own accounts as a child, Smith was born and, for a time at least, raised in Romeo City. Supposedly, his mother and father were scientists, and he was the youngest of two. His mother apparently died as a result of complications during childbirth, leaving his sister and father to raise him for several years.
Unfortunately, the destruction of Romeo City during the early war years killed his remaining biological family... And it also wiped out any records that could confirm or disprove Smith`s own accounts of his early childhood. To this day, there remains no proof that a family of scientists by the name of Smith ever even existed in the first place.
That said, Alistair was saved from the fate of an early death by a Rev Raptor pilot whose name has since been lost to history. Following that, he was handed off to a Zoid pilot and a doctor, and, in the carnage of the Twenty Year War, adopted and raised as their son. The Zoid pilot was a man by the name of Marcus Harlock, who had won the original Shadow Fox from Brad Hunter and was formerly a Class A-ranked pilot who had fought, and lost, in the Royal Cup against Angel. The doctor was a woman by the name of Abigail Summers, who tripled as an army medic, mechanic and supply chief among a Gustav convoy.
Like a child who had actually been born to them, they raised him as their own, even amidst the strife of the single most violent conflict in living memory. Not only did they give him a proper education through something similar to homeschooling, they also handed him access to the kinds of skills that would eventually define his character, both as a pilot and a man. Alistair`s father introduced him to piloting at an early age, and while Alistair never actually killed as a child during the war, many of his first experiences in the cockpit came as trials by fire at the controls of the Shadow Fox. Among those incidents is one where he had to literally pilot for his father, who had taken bullets to the shoulders and was literally unable to do it himself.
Outside of that, Alistair became a competent cook, mechanic, medic and even learned how to sew from one of the Gustav drivers in the convoy. He never had any formal training in the martial arts, but still learned the basics of self-defense and how to use a firearm. He took to the violence of combat in all forms like it was natural, something that both alarmed and relieved his parents, who in turn became some of the only people he has any attachments to in the present day.
Eventually though, the war that had defined virtually all of his life drew to a ragged, brutal close. On the day of his eighteenth birthday, the war officially ended with the Battle Commission`s final victory at the island of Bardel. Alistair knew it was time to move on. Though his parents still cared deeply for him as their first child, he now had three younger siblings - two brothers and a sister - that needed their attention. In a bid to repay the debt he felt he owed to them, Alistair struck out on his own after he and his father rennovated an old Shield Liger to working condition.
For eight years, Smith wandered the world. He fenced his services as everything from a bodyguard to a cook to a construction worker, and while his hands were undeniably dirtied with blood during this time, authorities were often infuriated by the fact that he could always claim self-defense, and never once served so much as a day in jail because of it. Along the way, he helped pay for his siblings to lighten the load on his now-married mother and father while each of them started their own small businesses in support of each other.
His father went back to life as a Gustav transporter, his mother set up a doctor`s office in one of the better-off villages in Delpoi and life went on.
During this time, Alistair also ended up making his fair share of enemies as well. Chief among these were a number of encounters with one Christoph Siegfried Schubaltz, almost all of them ending in violence. Also among them were several meetings with a ZBC officer by the name of Gerard Cooper, though Alistair never ended up coming to blows with him.
For the most part though, during this eight year period, Alistair`s life was generally uneventful. He picked up skills, refined his piloting and his abilities as a fighter outside the cockpit, formed a bond to the Shield Liger and mostly spent life wandering around with no permanent goal in mind.
Then, in the eighth year of the new era, the Zoid Battle Commission announced a return of the Leagues. Where many were understandably hesitant and apprehensive, Alistair jumped at the possibility, blinded by a mixture of greed, thrillseeking and the desire for the power and prestige that come with being a Zoid pilot. Where so many noble youths just 'wanted to be the best,' at the age of twenty-seven, Alistair joined solely for his own personal reasons...
And it ended up costing him. Dearly.
Sometime early on in his Zoid battling career, Alistair went up against the Geno Breaker Psychosis, accompanied by a Slash Liger. In the ensuing melee, not only did his team-mate abandon him, but the Shield Liger, Amadeus, was killed when the Breaker`s pilot blacked out and the Zoid was allowed to go insane. It was, in all likelihood, one of the blackest moments in Alistair`s life when the Liger ejected him of its own free will in order to keep him from being killed outright.
The pilot of the Psychosis was a man named Alistairis Alnoir. Alistair has maintained a known, but uneventful grudge against him ever since.
Following the death of Amadeus, Alistair briefly faded into obscurity. He went underground, and when he returned, he was carrying a new sword and piloting a Blade Liger. Since then, his career has gone through both the floor and the roof, as has his personal life. In official Zoid battles alone, he`s taken down a Liger Zero one-on-one, helped contribute to the defeat of a King Gojulas and set at least two records for legally owning more battle-capable Zoids than any other pilot in the leagues at any given time - seven in all. He`s acquired a Slash Liger, a Geno Saurer, Storm Sworder and briefly sparked a trend among pilots by piloting a Rev Raptor, now considered to be his trademarked Zoid.
He`s even piloted a Giga Gojulas...
Which was subsequently used to defend Twilight City from a monstrosity in the form of a Liger Zero gone horribly wrong. The Giga Gojulas, dubbed Mordeus the Ruiner, was killed in the fighting, and Alistair himself was severely wounded with a concussion, cracked and broken ribs, bullet wounds to the shoulder and a pair of burning cuts to his stomach, almost all of them coming from a virtual death match with an Organoid. While the public at large is currently unaware of Alistair`s role in this incident, Smith himself rebounded from it with alarming speed.
Alistair has also added time in the military to his already impressive record. He mysteriously entered the Commission`s armed forces at the rank of a Major, something which only served to further his enmity with Christoph. Since then, he`s served with distinction in several major missions and battles -- leading the failed defense of the ZBC`s Elesian beachhead and driving his men to fight so furiously that they wiped enemy forces down to eight Hammerheads before reinforcements came and took them out. He also had the gall to escape from Elesian custody and return to Delpoi without so much as a scratch, much to the likely chargrin of his former captors.
As of today, Alistair is a Brigadier General. Formerly the acting commander of the Elesian beachhead, he`s since been reassigned to domestic duties in Twilight City. Specifically, he`s working as the newly placed head of the Military Police in and around the city, with authority over local law enforcement and even ties to the CSA as well. He`s also acting as the test pilot for the very Liger Zero that killed Mordeus, as well as the custodian of the Organoid that ended that terrible battle. He`s developed a number of new enemies in his meteoric rise to his current station...
And it`s only a matter of time before he has to deal with them.
Physical Characteristics:
The Alistair of today is little different than the Alistair of three years ago. He`s a rough 6'5", weighing in at around 245 pounds. His body is limber, athletic and flexible, with no discernable scars in spite of the kind of fights he`s been involved in. His hair is naturally an extremely dark shade of brown, but it isn`t unusual for him to keep it dyed jet black for appearance`s sake. His eyes are navy blue and his skin is a bit on the pale side. His face is long and handsome, with a strong nose and chin, slightly thin brows and an almost eternally neutral expression.
In terms of clothing, Alistair tends to go out of his way to leave a marked impression on people. Naturally charismatic and almost aristocratic in appearance, he usually wears a handmade replica of an old Guylos Imperial uniform, colored dark grey and lacking only in medals and badges. Ever the pragmatist though, the uniform also boasts a number of hidden pockets, holsters and thin armored plates, along with the fact that it`s made out of a material with properties not too different from kevlar. In effect, he wears body armor wherever he goes, and he wears it well.
As of late, Alistair`s also added a second uniform to the batch. This one closely resembles the original Imperial uniform, but differs in several places. For one, it was originally colored an almost solid shade of blue, with white trim along the cuffs, chest and the edge of the jacket. It also boasts a shin-length cape, secured to the sides and back of his belt, left open in the front. This is his ZBC uniform, and it also bears his name, rank and serial number, though Alistair has been a bit miffed about having to re-dye it lately. As it turns out, the Republic of Zi`s military uniforms are all blue-based, and the last thing Smith wants is to have anything in common with Alistairis Alnoir. As such, the uniform has recently been dyed red and gold, the standard colors of the Zoid Battle Commission.
Normally, Alistair doesn`t ever really wear anything else. He`s been spotted wearing sweatpants and a matching shirt, a blue shirt and khakis and several other outfits, but it seems like he avoids going into public wearing anything but his uniforms. This is probably due in part to a philosophy of appearance being half of any battle, and a paranoia that in turn demands that any encounter with any person is always a potential battle.
Psychological Characteristics:
Ill-defined just about sums up Alistair`s psychology. He`s been known to be a greedy, short-sighted son of a bitch on more than one occasion, but he`s also had a few moments of bone-grinding altruism as well. He`s known to be loyal and fiercely to protective of his adopted family, but virtually unconcerned with the lives of others - to the point that he was briefly suspected as a contributing factor to at least one suicide. In fact, his sense of humor is just about the only thing that has been defined when it comes to his personality...
To quote his oldest brother, Timothy: "He`s a fucking sadist."
That about sums it up. Alistair is a cynical, sarcastic asshole who delights in cutting down other people, squashing self-delusions and generally raining shit on someone`s parade. To make matters worse, he`s incredibly perceptive and equally intelligent, often assessing people almost perfectly within seconds of meeting them, and he has absolutely no qualms about using that talent to further his own amusement.
Outside of that, Alistair is also an extremely determined person, both in and out of the cockpit. He`d be dead by now otherwise. To add fuel to the fire, he`s also got access to an extremely vast amount of information, almost all of it up-to-date, and a good portion of it completely seperate from the Zoid Battle Commission`s networks. While he may not know everything about everyone, he knows more than enough to inflict massive damage on people, and he studies them as obsessively as a criminal profiler who`s gone over the edge and into the abyss of his target`s minds.
Beyond this, it`s known that Alistair is an unusual person when it comes to dealing with his Zoids. Where he treated Amadeus and Mordeus as completely sentient personalities in their own right, he presently treats almost all of his Zoids as extremely valued pets and little more. He believes that Zoids are neither inherently good, nor inherently evil, simply walking grey areas...
Just like he is.
Arsenal and Skills:
Of Alistair Edward Smith, one thing can always be said, regardless of where or what he`s doing at any given moment: The guy`s loaded. At least one of his associates commonly refers to him as 'a walking armory of all things pointy and shooty and hurty and lethal,' and it`s probably one of the most accurate descriptions of him there is.
As of today, Alistair owns his trademarked katana, the Legacy of Amadeus, an oddly made wakizashi that was found in the cockpit of his now deceased Shield Liger, at least one tanto and one handgun(the latter of which is often concealed in a special holster in his right sleeve) and more dirty tricks and other hidden gadgets than you can shake a stick at.
As a marksman, he`s extremely skillful. As a fighter, he`s got a multitude of skills and techniques he`s picked up or created himself through the years. While he`s still learning to wield a katana, his talents with the wakizashi are downright unnerving. Over the years, he`s developed a style similar to a mixture of street fighting, several hand-to-hand martial arts, knife and swordfighting through its use, and he`s alarmingly good at it.
Misc:
As of today, Alistair lives alone in a refurbished warehouse in Twilight City`s industrial sector. He also has only one companion, a pet cat. It`s a siamese by the name of Colt, and Alistair found the little runt during one of his runs through Twilight City. The cat`s been with him ever since, and has a personality almost matching his own...
In short: The animal`s an asshole. It detests everyone but Alistair and isn`t above reaving someone of their flesh if they try to touch it. While Colt used to accompany Alistair everywhere, he now finds himself staying at home more often than not.
Alistair`s pilot registration number(both in and out of the military) is 21-789-173. He`s also among the only people on Zi who can claim to own pieces of both Energy Ligers, though he happens to have a host of other odd souvenirs lying around as well, many of them occult in nature. Why or how he hordes these things is anyone`s guess, but it`s probably not entirely legal...
