Bootstrap is a Thundercloud Belza, currently self-employed as an explorer, adventurer, bounty hunter, and freelance engineer and repair technician. Having migrated from his homeworld, Traveler, onto the gas giant's colony-moon of Sargasso, Bootstrap seeks to ply his trade and gather as much information about the universe around him as possible.

• 'Body' - Bootstrap is, essentially, a sentient cumulus cloud. The specific coloration changes with his mood - however, this is rarely seen.
• 'Head' - The most recognizable part of Bootstrap is his 'head', the primary component to his pressure suits. Effectively, it consists of a roughly basketball-sized burnished sphere, akin to a ball bearing, with all of the sensitive computer parts, life support, and interfacing components kept safely within. If removed from a pressure suit, the sphere can roll to safety at a fairly quick pace.
• 'Eyes' - Belzan vision uses LiDAR to see the world - this manifests as a pair of ethereal, glowing, viridian ovals of light on the face of Bootstrap's 'head'.
• Pressure Suits Given that Bootstrap would die a horribly painful death if he were to attempt to enter a normal atmosphere, the Bezlan uses a variety of modular, humanoid, robotic suits to get around and explore the world. His 'head' is the modular control component for each of the suits, and can be readily transferred between them as needed.
  • I:3 Civilian Module - The robotic suit is designed to give the appearance of a finely-dressed human (Albeit one with a ball bearing as a head) wearing a dapper, if metallic, suit and tie. Given Bootstrap's propensity for magnetic engineering, the Civilian Module has no arms - the suit's hands float freely under a magnetic field, though tend to keep within a human range of expression for purposes of not disturbing human clients.
  • I:25_C Combat Armature - When the situation calls for action, Bootstrap dons a humanoid suit of custom-designed powered armor. The heavy-duty and heavily-armored frame retains fairly humanoid proportions despite it's imposing design. As free-floating arms would be impractical as weapon mounts or in close combat, the frame's primary arms are still attached - however, a secondary set of hands floats freely for tasks requiring fine manipulation. Bootstrap's 'head' is kept safe behind an angular helmet, his 'eyes' peering out from behind a transparent Helenium visor.
• Voice - Greetings! I am the monitor of installation zero four.

Theme: Bootstrap's abilities arise from a union of his peculiar Belzan nature, his in-depth engineering knowledge with regard to magnetism and electricity, and expert powered-armor piloting skill.

• Racial abilities - Bezla are offered a few extraordinary abilities due to their gaseous composition, and Bootstrap's thundercloud nature expands upon these traits further.
  • LiDAR Vision - The ghostly lights in Bootstrap's 'head' aren't just for show; Bezla 'see' using a process very similar to LiDAR imaging, and are able to 'see' using a wide variety of wavelengths ranging through the visible, infrared, and ultraviolet spectra.
  • Accelerated Learning - Bezla benefit from exceptional intellect, alongside an inherent knack for picking up new information; it is not uncommon for a Bezlan to be able to speak, albeit in a very broken manner, in a previously unknown language after as little as a day of exposure.
  • Electrostatic Generator - Bootstrap's body, as a result of his Thundercloud biology, generates a great deal of electrostatic energy. Under normal circumstances, this electrostatic energy would continue to build within his body until it catastrophically exploded - fortunately, Bootstrap's pressure suits siphon off and store this energy to power both themselves and the various weapons they utilize.
  • Ejectable Head - Bootstrap's pressurized 'head' interfaces with his armored frames via a near-field magnetic lock - this is easily released in emergency situations, where the head can roll swiftly away from an incapacitated 'body' and toward safety.
• I:3 Civilian Module - Bootstrap's preferred 'body' in non-combat situations, the Civilian Module is still equipped to defend itself, if necessary.
  • Smooth Looks - The Civilian Module is dressed to impress, offering a fairly human range of motion and expression (Aside from the spherical head preventing true facial expression, of course) alongside the metallic 'suit' designed into its chassis.
  • Electrical Insulation - The Civilian Nodule, as with all of Bootstrap's creations, are sufficiently insulated from electrical interference that the Belzan's own biology, and his electrical weaponry, won't damage or interfere with their systems.
  • Sensor Suite - The Civilian Module is equipped with a compact yet efficient sensor suite, including a chemical sensor, directional and omnidirectional microphones, and tactile sensor arrays.
  • Concealed Lasers - A pair of infrared pulse laser apertures is installed into the Civilian Module's shoulders, which expand slightly into firing position from behind sliding panels on the shoulders themselves. While lethal to most humans in the same sense that a traditional handgun would be, these weapons are a fallback option at best - the concealed nature does not lend itself to an exceptionally efficient cooling system.
  • Electrostatic Discharge - If necessary, Bootstrap can discharge his capacitors to fend off melee attackers, either sending the arc through his free-floating hands from linked nodes at his shoulders or discharging it directly across the Civilian Module's body. This discharge is a short-lived, pulsing electrical burst, designed to stun and incapacitate the target without causing substantial damage.
  • Superior Agility - For a robotic suit, the Civilian Module has an alarmingly quick reaction time, and Bootstrap is able to pilot it with exceptional speed and grace.
• I:25_C Combat Armature - Bootstrap's proverbial 'Big Gun', the Iteration:25 Combat Armature is both heavily armed and heavily armored, bearing an array of weaponry and defensive systems designed to tackle a wide variety of potential combat situations.
  • Electrical Insulation - Bootstrap took great care insulating the Combat Armature from electrical interference, particularly given the suit's much higher needs for electrical consumption and output.
  • Sensor Suite - The Combat Armature is equipped with directional and omnidirectional microphones, a localized sonar array, and chemical sensors.
  • Extra Hands - A pair of supplementary hands are stored in compartments roughly where the combat armature's 'kidneys' would be. The hands hover freely under magnetic suspension, and are used for tasks requiring fine manipulation.
  • Directional Boosters - The Combat Armature is also equipped with back- and shoulder-mounted directional boosters, allowing it to make swift, yet short-lived, bursts of movement in three dimensions. Unfortunately, only three such bursts can be made consecutively before the system needs to recharge and cool down.
  • Magnetic Shielding - Bootstrap uses a magnetic field to help defend the Combat Armature from projectile attacks, diverting metal and plasma rounds from their initial trajectory and increasing the likelihood that they will not do appreciable damage to the Armature itself, simply glancing off the beveled armor instead.
  • Combat Armor - The Combat Armature is heavily armored, fashioned with angled and beveled surfaces designed to divert physical projectiles and treated with a polarized, reflective coating to offer similar protection against light-based attacks.
  • Combat Claw - Taking up the Combat Armature's right arm, the Combat Claw is exactly what it says on the tin - a four-fingered, exceptionally durable 'fist' designed with close combat in mind, able to deliver harsh melee strikes with aid from a pneumatic ram and readily grip and crush both foes and solid substances alike.
  • Magnetic Attractor - Set in the center of the Combat Claw's crushing 'fingers', this device is able to generate a magnetic field strong enough to draw in unattended objects from afar and wrench weapons from their wielders' hands at close range.
  • Arc Rifle - This heavy weapon takes up the lower portion of the Combat Armature's left arm, and has a straightforward purpose: the Arc Rifle induces an arc flash phenomena by manipulating the electrical charge in the atmosphere surrounding its target and ionizing the air between it and the Arc Rifle before discharging the stored electricity directly into the target - in layman's terms, the Arc Rifle fires a powerful bolt of lighting toward the target area after a two-second charge-up period. The weapon needs time to cool afterward and build charge once more, resulting in a fifteen-second cycle time overall.
  • Integrated Pulse Laser - Swivel-mounted on the Combat Armature's right shoulder is a modified PLPC "Rebuke" laser pistol, fitted with a more durable focusing lens and modified to tap into the Combat Armature's capacitor bank.
  • Electrostatic Discharge - The Combat Armature can briefly discharge its capacitors, sending a snap of current across its outer shell to stun or incapacitate targets in physical contact with the armature.

Psychology: Bootstrap is driven by two central principles - a hunger for new and unfamiliar information, and a desire to utilize the gathered knowledge to the fullest extent he can. He is always seeking perfection in his creations, even though he realizes that perfection is a moving goal, and therefore an unattainable one; in his mind, this is all the more reason to strive toward 'the perfect system'.

While he does not object to killing other sentient creatures under the premise of his profession, he upholds the standard that he will not take bounties to kill for the sake of killing alone, forbidding himself from taking bounties on people he finds to be 'generally decent, upstanding people'.

In addition, while he has a fairly solid grasp on human and humanoid culture and interactions, Bootstrap has a slight difficulty understanding metaphors.

• Likes - Efficiency, successful prototypes, gathering new information, a good bounty
• Dislikes - Inefficiency, metaphors, failure, liars
• Goals - Achieve the perfect system, learn as much as the universe has to hold - potentially learn about the nature of other universes, if they exist and are accessible.

• Bezlan Telekinesis - Bezla possess low-level telekinesis, largely used for field-repairs and construction of their pressure suits - it doesn't possess enough force to be useful in combat, but it is precise enough to be used for tasks requiring fine manipulation.

Personality - Bootstrap is chipper and polite to a fault when interacting with others - while he is not above the occasional biting remark at the expense of a target, he handles himself quite seriously and professionally. However, he prefers his own company under most circumstances, opting to sift through his collected knowledge or tinker on one of his creations rather than interact with other sentients. He also possesses a strong, if idealistic, moral code which dictates his duties as a bounty hunter.

• Unity Protocol - Bootstrap is considered a citizen in the vaguest sense, and admires the Units themselves both for their assistance they offered him in leaving his home and for the efficiency they exemplify.

As a Belzan, Bootstrap is only able to inherently speak the Belza's own tongue - with electronic assistance, however, he can quite fluently speak Aleph Basic and Common, and is well-versed in a number of machine languages.

Bootstrap's early existence was one of isolation. As one of the first few Thundercloud Belza, Bootstrap quickly found himself forced to dwell within the confines of Traveler's abandoned research station - the true birthplace of the Belza themselves - or risk having himself die in an exceptionally catastrophic explosion. As the Belza are traditionally aloof, carefree beings, known to drift freely throughout the atmosphere of their gas-giant home, such restriction was suffocating to the young Bootstrap, who resolved himself to leaving this world behind and exploring what lay beyond. To do so, however, there was a lot of learning ahead of him.

The computers aboard the research facility were a wealth of knowledge to the young Belza, who acquired his name from a mathematical procedure within the mathematical database. He learned quite readily that Traveler was one of the few worlds that would not kill him outright - as such, he would need protection before he could venture unto the unknown. Bootstrap drank heavily from the research on magnetics, electrodynamics, chemistry, physics, and topics beyond, using the knowledge acquired to forge his first pressure suit and signal the Units to request transport off-planet. The Unity Protocol responded readily, and Bootstrap - alongside a few other Belza who hadn't caught the first transport ship off-world - finally escaped the cage which was his birthplace.

While the environment of Sargasso was extremely toxic to his kind, Bootstrap reveled in the sheer freedom he was afforded from the confines of his pressure suit. He wandered the streets freely, taking in all the information he possibly could. He quickly picked up Aleph Basic and Common, learning to not only speak but also read in both languages. He tore through Sargasso's libraries, devouring the information within to expand his knowledge further. Truly, Sargasso was Bootstrap's paradise - but it was not always such peaceful bliss.

Not long after Bootstrap's arrival, the Belzan ran afoul of a group of street thugs, who mistook him for a robot and tried to scrap him for parts. Bootstrap barely made it out alive, having to use his telekinetic abilities to seal a leak in his pressure suit before retreating to a machine shop for repairs. As he worked to repair his broken body, Bootstrap came to realize that Sargasso was not the perfect paradise he once thought it was - there were those who would seek to destroy him, and any others they came across who they thought they could take advantage of. Bootstrap vowed that he would protect his new home by defending it from such threats to society, using his engineering knack to begin creating and modifying pressure suits to meet this end, installing self-defense measures and creating the first iteration of his modular 'head'.

Years passed, and prototypes rose and fell, with Bootstrap establishing himself as both a bounty hunter and brilliant mechanic, making enough credits to purchase a bunker outside Sargasso to house his personal workshop and a pressurized environment for the times when modifications to his Control Sphere need to be made. Now, Bootstrap seeks to test his latest iterations against a much larger foe - and the Kaiju sightings in Sargasso seem like the perfect opportunity for such a test.

Bootstrap's thirst for knowledge has led to an equally strong desire to put that knowledge to the test - the Belzan is always tinkering with his modular suits, weapons, and any degree of technology he can get his proverbial hands on, always seeking to bring it closer toward the 'perfect system'.

Bootstrap has lived most of his life from the confines of one pressure suit or another, and has become quite adept at pushing them to their limits both in and out of combat.

Bootstrap's ingenuity would be for naught if he couldn't repair his creations when they are damaged - as such, he takes a great deal of care to make sure that they are all in working order, and uses this knack as a source of secondary income.

Bootstrap has honed his inherent telekinetic abilities to the point where he can use them for very fine manipulation, aiding in the construction and maintenance of his powered armor and in the creation of other assorted trinkets.

Bootstrap learned the necessary chemical knowledge to ensure his survival in the relatively hostile environment that was his home, and went on to expand this to broader horizons once he arrived on Sargasso.

To compliment his other fields of study, Bootstrap's delved deeply into the realms of calculus, statistics, and physics, gathering a great deal of knowledge in these regards.

• Technician
• Humanities
• Research
• Concentration

Weaponry

• Assorted half-baked weapons projects, kept at his engineering workshop.
• Integrated weapons, utilized in Bootstrap's powered armor suits.

Apparel

• Iteration: 3 Civilian Module (See Above)
• Iteration: 25 Combat Armature (See Above)
• Iteration: 391.05 Control Sphere - Bootstrap's 'Head' and the primary control unit for his powered armor suits.

Vehicles

• Gernsbeck Lorry - A three-doored van with double doors at the back, two seats in front, and a roomy back space which Bootstrap uses to transport his body frames.

Property

• A bunker outside Sargasso proper, Bootstrap's home on this world.

Tools

• Engineering workshop - designed to interact with Bootstrap's telekinesis, the workshop itself is an array of fantastical tools and gadgetry.
• Repair kit - A much more subdued ordeal, Bootstrap usually keeps a toolkit handy, stored within a compartment of his powered armor suits should he need to make adjustments or repairs in the field.

Trinkets

• Cannibalized Powered Armor Suits - Though the base frames remain, these largely inoperable husks are scavenged for parts when Bootstrap feels the urge to improve on his existent designs. Stored in his bunker.

Bootstrap's bounty hunting lets him live as comfortably as he needs, affording him a pressurized bunker outside Sargasso and a well-maintained engineering workshop within. By and large, the funding for his eccentric creations comes from a mixture of bounties and casual repair/modification work within the civilian sector.

Mad genius tinkerer gas cloud? What could go wrong!