[hider=Steel ball run? What's that?]
[center][h1][b]Joaoquim Calaquerero[/b][/h1]
[img]Haha, no. No image for you.[/img][hr][hr]
[h2]⦋ [b]24[/b]  || [b]Costa Rica (by birth)[/b]  || [b]Male[/b] ⦌[/h2]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPhXKak_bHw[/youtube][/center]

[h3][b]APPEARANCE & PERSONALITY[/b][/h3][hr]
[indent]

[u][b]APPEARANCE          [/b][/u]
[indent]Picture a halloween pumpkin stuffed on top of a scarecrow. Dress that pumpkin in clothes that wouldn't look too out of place in the american frontier; Khaki-coloured slacks and collared shirt, a dark waistcoat, a hat, a belt with way too many buckles and brass on it, and some sweet leatherette boots. Then run that scarecrow ass-backwards through a hedge and slap a poncho on it. That's Joaoquim. From the glint and glimmer of his off-white permanently grinning teeth to the spikes on his boots, thats him. You could probably stick that pumpkin on a lost and found poster and find him before the day's out.[/indent]

[u][b]PERSONALITY TRAITS          [/b][/u]
[indent]

■ Grinning.
■ Smug. 
■ Grinning.
■ Obnoxious.
■ Grinning.
■ Upbeat.
■ Grinning.
■ Devil-may-care attitude.
■ Did we mention he smiles a lot?

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[u][b]BACKSTORY & MOTIVATION          [/b][/u]
[indent]Joauquim was born to a reasonably middle class set of people. Not too poor as to not afford travelling, but not too rich as to want to stay where they were, the Calaquereros were exactly the sort of people to seek their life in a new land full of exciting opportunities some 400 years ago. They sailed across great oceans, crossed plains and over mountains, slept under lone trees and over deserts, desecrating and destroying anything in their path, and headed far more south then they'd really intended. Once they'd decided that enough was enough, they'd landed somewhere near Nicaragua, a country with two beachfronts where a quarter of the gross domestic product was bovine meat. The family unpacked, and set to work establishing a ranch.

Casavacía, as the manor house eventually became to be known, was a large, empty house made of strong Carribean Pine. No one in the family cared for it much. Not Emilio Calaquerero, who herded cattle on horseback and shot vermin for fun. Not Cayetano Calaquerero, who preferred knapping stones together on horseback in the open air to standing around inside a dusty old mansion, and certianly not Joaoquim. He inherited his forefathers wiry constitution along with their permanent grins and saddle sores, even if he didn't inherit their nationality - having been born across the border due to a quirk of fate.

Joaoquim grew up as the middle child of three siblings. Their life was about as pleasant as three kids living on a rural farm on a literal beach can be. None of them were ever formerly educated. Most of their lives were involved in the various day-to-day activities of cow breeding, meat packaging, the process of flash freezing, animal husbandry, pretty much everything that could happen from calf to sirloin barring them being taken up in flying saucers.

One technique he's taken pride in mastering is the art of throwing Bolas. It's hardly a weapon as much as it is two big rocks tied together with rope, but there's a certain art to throwing. If you do it right,  as Joaoquim discovered, you didn't quite have to throw it as far as you think. With practice, the initial rotational energy of the bolas themselves are enough to propel it anywhere you need them to go. Joaoquim has had 15 years of practice, 8 hours every day to get good at tossing these things, not to mention tying the Monkey fist's knots and making one out of a length of paracord. He personally likes to use just two rocks, and holding the thing by the middle, almost but not quite like the chinese [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_hammer]Meteor Hammer[/url]

Joaoquim might have been around 10 when he first tried to break the fabric of spacetime with his fists. He was bored, and he'd spent way too long trying to coax some lazy cows into switching from this side of the meadow to that, and frankly he would have preferred to lie down on the grass and join them. He'd seen the technique done, of course. Even his little sister was starting to get good at using her hands at an extremely long distance to tip over the cookie jar at the top of the kitchen shelf. He knew the action they'd been doing, and it's not like his family to lie to him en masse like that. He tried mimicking the way they'd been doing it, pushing their hands forward while twisting in the air, like grabbing an invisible door handle. Time after time he couldn't manage it. He ended up grabbed onto his trusty bolas, and tried doing the technique with it in his hands. It worked. He's not really been able to do it without them since, swinging them up to speed before jutting out with his hands as quick as you like. And with the power to shape and bend reality at his fingertips, he put the bolas down and got back to work herding cattle. 

Of course, life wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. Joaoquim was born at the tail end of a certain conflict involving political coups and deception. Casavacia has been sold off piecemeal to keep the acres of land in backroom deals on both sides, the late Cayetano being a guy who believed in hedging his bets. What would have been enough property to keep with three kids for themselves had become barely enough to support one, and when the eldest son, Joaoquim's brother Mauricio Calaquerero, took over the ranch from his father, he made it very clear to his two siblings that they needed to get a job and move out. The lazy bums. 

Joaoquim decided it was better to bite the bullet rather then try and argue the point. The central american beef trade just wasn't what it had been, and while he loved his brother he also knew that love wouldn't put any bread on the table, and for the first time since his great-grandfather before him, traveled south. Unlike his forefathers, he hitchhiked his way down south to the Pampas of argentina - prime cattle country. He's found that the life on the road suits him, and he's only been tied up and left for dead in the desert five times.

The change from a semi-sheltered life to hitching a ride on the open road had been trickier then he'd imagined. For instance, it turned out that not everyone in the world could warp space with their hands. The first time he'd shown that, to a devoutly catholic trucker somewhere west of Lima, he'd been nearly killed and exorcised as a demon. It took a lot of blagging to convince him it was just a trick of the light, and having learnt his lesson, he'd kept the old family trick a secret. Hence the poncho. People don't seem to notice half your arm missing through a hole in space if it's under a cloth.

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[h3][b]FIGHTING STYLE & ABILITIES[/b][/h3][hr]

[indent][u][b]FIGHTING STYLE: Spin to win.[/b][/u]
[indent]Joaoquim's only real weapon is the same one that his father and his grandfather before him used. Bolas. A set of round, heavy weights at the end of a arm's length of rope, swung around at high speed until they're launched at ankle height, usually to entrap and snare at long-legged plains creatures like cows and llamas. Conversely, his fighting style can be described entirely in terms of angular velocity. When he throws punches, he starts by moving his arms straight out like two miniature windmills attached to each of his shoulders, and all of his kicks involve spinning in place like some kind of Capoiera dance. Not efficient, and definitely not useful, without heavy weights to swing round, but it's a surprisingly effective at surprising the opponent. The real strength in his strategy is his Ki-enhanced fighting technique, which isn't precisely a martial art as much as it is spinning your arms around really damn fast to rip apart holes in space for fun and profit.

In fighting game terms, Joaoquim is a zoner, with most of the better attacks in his arsenal being designed to keep his opponent away from him and shutting them down mechanically.[/indent]

[u][b]SPECIAL MOVES & TECHNIQUES          [/b][/u]


[indent][u]■   [Hole in the wall (Down-to-left Punch)][/u]
[indent][The basic form of Joaoqium's Ki-enhanced attack. By spinning his arms all the way around, he creates a fist-sized hole in the air at around shoulder height, before striking through it usually right at the opponent's face from a decently long way away. Gauging the distance is hard.][/indent][/indent]

[indent][u]■   [Pachamama la Garra][/u]
[indent][A modified version of the attack as described before, except that the other side of the hole comes out at ground level and he aims to grab his opponents legs and lock him down. He can't really move away from the hole while he's grabbing somebody through it, but it's useful to annoy his opponent.][/indent][/indent]

[indent][u]■   [Ponchoblade (Punch+dash)][/u]
[indent][Joaoquim rushes forward, twisting his poncho as he moves so it spins around his neck. By the magic of sharpened pennies sewn into the rim, the frayed edges of the cloth garment strike the opponent.][/indent][/indent]

[indent][u]■   [Clackerrang (down-to-right punch)][/u]
[indent][Joaoquim throws one of his Bolas at the opponent. Once it reaches the edge of the stage, the projectile wraps itself around a tree or lamp post or leg, wrapping and winding itself tight. Can be recovered later. ][/indent][/indent]

[indent][u]■   [Rayos Del Sol (down-to-left kick)][/u]
[indent][Joaoquim lifts a magnifying glass into the air, relying on the mysterious powers of the great burning ball in the sky to come to his aid and burn his opponent like ants.][/indent][/indent]

[indent][u]■   [Rock in Rio (Down-to-up punch)][/u]
[indent][Joaoquim swings his fists like Pete Townsend. Has a chance of lifting the opponent into the air.][/indent][/indent]

[indent][u]■   [The Bum's rush. (Kick+dash)][/u]
[indent][Joaoquim runs, leaps, twists in the air, and hits his opponent with both feet, stabbing his spurs into his opponent. Strong knockback.][/indent][/indent]

[indent][u]■   [Priceless Family Heirloom. (down-to-right kick)][/u]
[indent][Joaoquim fires a revolver. Will almost certainly go high and cause some object to fall onto his opponent's head. ][/indent][/indent]

[u][b]SUPER MOVES          [/b][/u]
[indent] [u]■   [Hurricaneck-breaker][/u]
[indent][Joaoquim runs full tilt past his opponent, catching them in the crook of his arm and using the weight of his own body and the energy of his run to twist his enemies' head off.][/indent][/indent]

[indent][u]■   [Twist of fate.][/u]
[indent][Joaoquim leaps onto his opponent, creating one of his signature holes large enough to fit their entire body in, squishing them between it and the ground. The hole leads some 30 feet up in the air and would break the legs of any opponent who couldn't fly. Has a slight chance of dropping them right onto Joaoquim][/indent][/indent]

[u][b]WEAKNESSES & LIMITS          [/b][/u]
[indent]As a zoner, he's weak up close and personal, and will try to avoid being too close. His walking speed is both too slow and too twitchy: he doesn't so much walk and hop from place to place, which means his footsie game is abysmal. As a gimmick fighter who relies on toys and props to fight, a simple trip through an airport's metal detector and subsequent patdown would leave him even weaker then he already is, with his lanky and wiry arms with barely any muscle mass. [/indent]

[/indent]

[h3][b]OTHER[/b][/h3][hr]
[indent][indent]Travelling light is a myth to Joaoquim. He's spent far too long carrying odds and ends on his person to give it up now.[/indent][/indent]

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