Name: John ‘Cheeseman’ Simmons
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Nationality: Trillistani
Zoid: None
AIM: BlackOrpheusSSDD

Personality:
John is a casual and lighthearted kind of guy, always ready to crack a joke or make an attempt at getting people to smile. Despite this joking surface though, John has a heart of gold, and is willing to listen to anyone and everyone if they have a problem. He’ll listen quietly, offering only input where it is needed, and always tries to put things in the least hurtful way possible, though this sometimes means he can’t convey his point properly. If John does have to resort to using harsh words or upsetting someone to get his point across, he’ll suffer a lot of guilt soon afterwards, but this never lasts very long before he is back to his old self.

Due to joining a cult two years previously, as support for a friend who was quite disadvantaged at the time, John has come to believe in the preternatural, and is widely accepting of things like spirits, psychic powers and monsters. Because of this, his mind is open to accepting anything he's told in essence, and he tends to put faith in a 'higher being' or the spirits to help guide him.

Background:
John was born in NC 74, just before the Athenian League was established. He lived in a fairly good part of Atehns, with his mother and father, in a small three room apartment. It wasn’t the most spacious of places, but it was cheap and far better than living in the slums, so John has always been thankful for his home. He went to a free public school that was filled with a lot of more miserable people, mainly from the slums, and it is during his early years here that John developed his compassionate streak for others and learned to listen to their problems.

When John was turning ten, a special competition was held worldwide, to celebrate the tenth year of the reinstating of sanctioned battles, and the first Royal Cup in over forty years. John entered this competition as more of a casual thing than due to any real interest. He’d always found that while the Zoid battles were exciting, they’d never really been his thing. But he entered anyway, mainly because part of the prize was five thousand credits and his parents needed the money to pay the mortgage on their apartment.

Coincidentally enough, John was one of the five winners of the competition, which, aside from the five thousand credits, also meant he’d managed to earn a ride on the ZBC Great Whale King Icarus, which would be overseeing the Royal Cup. He and the four other prizewinners were given a tour of the Icarus, and he saw a side of Zoid battles that most people never see. John saw the scurrying, bustling team support units, including strategists, navigators, and even psychologists. John found this aspect of Zoid to be far more interesting than the actual battling, and decided he wanted to learn more about strategy.

Going into high school, John chose as one of his subjects Wartime History, due to the fact that he would learn many of the strategies used by the old militaries and get to see how collective battles happened. John studied hard at Wartime Studies and became quite accustomed to the various types of Zoids that have been and still are in use. Because of his extensive study in this area, John became accustomed to thinking strategically and looking at Zoid battles like a chess game.

When John was sixteen, he came to fancy a girl by the name of Jane. She was from the rough end of town, and lived in the slums. She seemed like a nice enough person, but a little spaced out and loopy. When John asked around, he found out she was part of some strange cult. As only teenage love will make someone do, John tried to join this cult on impulse, just to see more of her, and try to understand Jane better. The cult was strange to say the least, but John quickly became entranced by the various happenings and aspects of the cult. To him, it had opened his mind. He never took it too seriously, being only a casual member, but upon his initiation, he was tattooed with a third eye, in order to 'enhance his spiritual sight'.

When John was seventeen, he took up Psychology as a subject, wishing to learn how various aspects of the mind affected the types of strategies that people used. He passed the subject with relative ease, and decided that instead of going through the last year of school, he’d apply for an apprenticeship as a strategist for a Zoid team. The school investigated several options for him, until one team, lead by a crafty businessman by the name of Blaine Frazier, snapped him up. It wasn’t because of his skill that he was chosen, but more that the government offered the Vagrants a ten thousand credit grant for having an apprentice as part of their team. With a new job secured, John has packed up his few belongings and moved full time to the Vagrant base, depending on the meager government grants and assistance programs to survive financially.

Description:
John is five feet, seven inches tall, and has a large mop of sandy blonde hair. This is an unusual trait to say the least, because most Trillistanian people tend to exhibit ethnic traits, like dark hair. His hair hangs limply over his eyes, which are a deep soulful brown, and is long enough to tickle his straight and narrow nose. John has dark lips, and a stocky facial structure, with rich olive skin. On his forehead he bears a tattoo of an ornate eye, a symbol of a cult he was once part of, and still has ties to. On his left shoulderblade is a highly stylized tattoo of a wyvern, a tattoo John got on his eighteenth birthday, when he was reeling drunk. He wouldn't have done it had he been sober, but he sure as hell doesn't plan to pay to get it removed now he has it.

John has a rather stocky build, and this, combined with his relative height, makes him seem rather imposing and tough, but he doesn’t have much strength to back up the looks, and is a pacifist anyway. That said, he has broad shoulders and a good torso, kept in shape by labour he has done since he was thirteen to help the financial problems of his parents. He wears a polyester black tracksuit most of the time, which has green and whit stripes down the arms and the legs, and has a symbol of a bull on the left breast. When he pilots his Zoid however, he wears a light flak jacket, and a ZBC-approved piloting helmet, in bright red and blue colours. Safety first.

Trillstan is the noun, Trillstani the adjective. There's no such word as Trillstanian, although that doesn't stop Imps and Republic citizens from making the mistake.
I'd suggest having him wear his hair down over his forehead, lest he get the WTF? stares, but otherwise it's fine. I liked the contest thing.
Approved. 58k. I threw in a 10k bonus.