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EACHDRAIDH.
( PLAYER ★ INFORMATION )
NAME: Qing
AGE: 27
CONTACT: queen_qing @ plurk
CURRENT CHARACTERS & LATEST AC: Johnny Storm | LATEST AC
RESERVATION LINK: here.
( CHARACTER ★ INFORMATION )
DOES THIS CHARACTER MEET SKELETAL BASICS? Yes.
NAME & AGE: Mako Mori, 22.
CANON & CANON POINT: Pacific Rim, Post-Operation Pitfall
CANON INFORMATION: here & the official Pacific Rim novelisation, to supplement more information.
PERSONALITY:
Tokyo's Daughter. The iconic survivor.
Mako was born a swordmaker's daughter, and had suffered incredible trauma at a young age when Onibaba, a Category II kaiju, attacked Tokyo and she'd lost her parents as a result. The kaiju had come after her, and young Mako had fled for her life until Coyote Tango came to her rescue.
The pilot in Coyote Tango was Stacker Pentecost. She would later be adopted by him, and start her life in the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, moving up through the ranks with an unyielding, ferocious speed. Mako entered the prestigious Jaeger Academy at 17, and not only survived its extremely harsh and rigorously demanding program: she became the best and the brightest student in the batch.
"Meet Mako Mori, our best and brightest."
While Mako might be quiet and polite, she is as fierce as they come; a young genius who had taken the lead on a Mark III Jaeger Restoration project at 20, single-mindedly determined to do her job to the best of her ability.
Mori Mako is, in a word: driven. There are many other adjectives, terms, metaphors that can be used to describe her, but this single word is the entire foundation of who she is. She is a force of nature when she chooses to be, a character with many different layers, subtleties and nuances.
As a character, she is respectful, quiet and polite, although there are the occasional lapses, like when she converses casually with Stacker in Japanese (imeji to chigau instead of imeji to chigaimasu, the former a much more informal and friendly comment) while addressing him formally in English. She's also initially presented as a little rude, speaking to Stacker about Raleigh in Japanese about how she thought he wasn't like she thought he would be, while Raleigh was standing right there.
She's very perceptive, intelligent and competent, unafraid of doing and saying what she thinks is right. She's also a quick study and more than capable of reading Raleigh's movements. The kwoon is the best example of that; she fact that she hand-picked candidates for him speaks volumes of just how advanced she is, the fact that she sits down and watches and absorbs and makes judgements and predictions on just how Raleigh and/or the candidates move speak volumes of her understanding of him. She doesn't even hesitate in showing her stark displeasure when she knows he could do better when he went against the other candidates. He's better, and they both know it; Mako hadn't chosen them because he was competing against them; Mako chose them so that Raleigh could compete against hers and Stacker's idea of what Raleigh Becket should be. She even sheds light on this with her comment:
"It's not their performance, it's yours. You could have taken all of them two moves earlier."
Even when they are going at each other, she first tests him out, drawing the fight out into a conversation that is so much less about words than it is about their moves before she ends the fight by pinning him down.
But even in this, she is no cocky gunslinger, no arrogant, typical Hollywood Action Girl. Mako is her own woman, with her own strengths and most definitely her own baggage, the hatred she carries for the kaiju, who killed her family. She has her own share of drawbacks, her own traumas that she's fighting to come to terms with, her fears and her weaknesses.
Mako is usually quiet, and chooses her words wisely; subscribing to the philosophy that there is wisdom in keeping silent and listening, getting a read on the situation before she acts. And as a result, when she does speak up, she's more likely to be taken seriously. She's damn good at what she does, and she knows it, she might be quiet, but she's no wilting flower, and she has no time for bullshit -- she communicates less in words and more in body language, nothing she says and does is by accident, and there is meaning in every move that she makes.
Mako's personality is not built on the fact that she's female; it's mainly built solely on what she can do, and the results she can obtain. Most of her motivations stem from that fateful day in her childhood when she'd lost her parents, and had almost been killed by a kaiju. From the aftermath of that came an orphaned little girl who had to grow up far too quickly, latching onto vengeance and anger to become a sharpened blade, lethal and honed and full of purpose. Sharp and no-nonsense, Mako views herself a weapon against the kaiju. She's sure of herself, assured and confident without the arrogance; she's also aware of her weaknesses but she's young and brash enough to want to try anyway. Because of her perfectionist nature and her status as Pentecost's adopted daughter, Mako holds herself to a very high standard of behavior, and works harder than everyone else to dispel the notion that she receives special treatment because of her relation to him.
"He... after my parents were gone, he took care of me. Guided me. I am here because of him." She looked at him, challenge in her eyes. "But I deserve everything I have gotten. He does not play favorites."
It's obvious in the way she was the lead in the Mark III Jaeger reconstruction. Excelling both in academics and martial arts, Mako is practically your stereotypical overachiever; very clear with what she wants to do, forever buried in work with no hint of a social life (although in her defense, the world is going to shit and at that point making friends is pretty low on her ladder).
Mako is a grounded, steady, reliable individual. She's a perfectionist and her own worst enemy, in the sense that she hates failing; whether it's herself or anyone around her. It's clear that she takes failure very hard, and this can be seen in the way she asks to be dismissed from Pentecost's absence after the fiasco with Gipsy Danger and the RABIT-chasing. She does not make excuses for herself, and is ashamed of her mistakes, seeing it as failing Pentecost, as well as his trust in her.
She is extremely goal-oriented, and is very attached to the theories and strategies that she's learned in the academy. She possesses the ability to view things objectively (sometimes too objectively), and speaks her mind about many matters, honest and blunt to a fault -- cutting through the crap and getting straight to the point, even if it hurts the other person. One shining example of this is what she says, point-blank, to Raleigh.
"“I think you’re unpredictable. You have a habit of deviating from standard combat techniques, you take risks that injure yourself and your crew. I don’t think you’re the right man for this mission.”
She has her share of quirks, too, like her habit of slipping back into Japanese when she's agitated, showing that she's most comfortable with her mother tongue, and not English. She likes cute animals like dogs (e.g. her reaction to Max, cuddles, anyone?), and has pictures of cats on her wall that hints at a softer side that she doesn't reveal often. Mako is not as composed as she'd like to be, too, and for all of her objective observations, she can certainly be emotional at times, and the most important thing is that she is not ashamed of it.
She has an incredible passion and talent for jaegers and jaeger-tech, for engineering and robotics, and has an intimate knowledge of the machines, as well as her own ideas on how to make improvements on it. She doesn't socialise well, which can be seen in the lack of interaction with her peers, and she takes great pride in making things with her hands and tinkering with gadgets.
On her desk, one can find pieces of scrap metal and robots, things she'd been working with -- as well as the occasional pictures of cats and Japan, etc. Mako is a Japanese girl at heart, schooled in subtlety and more than capable of differentiating between obedience and respect -- but it doesn't mean that she's shy or demure. She is brave, capable of holding her own against anyone who looking to pick a fight with her.
Mako might be soft-spoken and quiet, but those traits must not be mistaken for submissiveness. She too, is incredibly tenacious, going after Stacker repeatedly when it came to piloting jaegers. It's in her blood, and getting to pilot a jaeger is one of the things she'd always wanted. She is a woman who knows exactly what she wants, and how to get it, to the point of demanding her right (albeit politely) to be a pilot from Stacker.
"We've talked about this, Mako. We are not talking about it again.
"You promised me. I should be the one piloting Gipsy with Raleigh."
Mako might have been a little girl when the kaiju killed her parents, but ever since then she'd been raised to think like a soldier, to be one, and she could never be happy standing by the sidelines while other pilots risked their lives. More importantly, she would never stand by the sidelines when there is an entire race of kaiju to exterminate.
"For my family, I have to do this."
"If we had more time."
"But we don't."
Her traumatic experience with Onibaba shaped her, shaped the person that she is today and what Stacker Pentecost has come to mean to her. Her world changed the day he stepped out of Coyote Tango and into her line of vision -- in that moment, Stacker embodied hope, and he became the most important person in her life.
" I thought you wanted to be a pilot. Mako, this is worth fighting for. We don't have to just obey him."
"It's not obedience, Mr. Becket. It's respect."
She became a soldier and he became her mentor, and to honour him and all that he had done for her. It must be noted that she does not blindly follow him; she understands and trusts that he has his reasons for the decisions that he makes. She respects him, and it's obvious in the way she obeys, not out of meekness but the conscious desire to protect his appearance and reputation, no matter how much she personally disagrees with his decisions. For all of her evidently solitary nature, Mako is a team-player, not a lone wolf. Saving the world, after all, is a collaborative effort; the burden of it lies on everyone in the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, and she knows it.
She behaves (and doesn't actually whomp on Chuck's ass outside of Stacker's office like she obviously wants to) because, in her mind, she would dishonour him as his student if she is caught in a brawl with Chuck. Mako works like she has something to prove, a debt to fulfill, and her debt is the life she owes to her adoptive father, Stacker.
Stacker Pentecost means the whole world to her. He is her savior, her teacher, her mentor, her father. She has loyally stood by him all her years, and for all her life she strives to do him proud, to repay the life debt that she owes him. However, he feels that she would be suited as a J-Tech instead of a pilot, which is the cause of more than a few struggles and arguments between them.
"Getting back in a Jaeger will kill you."
"Not getting in one will kill us all. You are a brave, brave girl. I'm lucky to have seen you grown up."
Mako and Stacker both share a close relationship, as can be evidenced in this conversation. Mako cares deeply for him, shedding tears when she knows that he's going to die, uttering her last words to him before he ignites Striker Eureka's nuclear payload so that the path could be cleared for Gipsy Danger.
The last words she says to him is: Sensei, I love you.
Mako is not infallible. She is young, inexperienced and she has her vulnerable moments. She makes mistakes. For all her gifts, she has plenty of flaws; she is complex, and she is human; she was overwhelmed by her memories of Onibaba, and had almost destroyed the Hong Kong Shatterdome as a result. Mako is by nature intense and aggressive, and often runs the risk of losing control when pushed, requiring reminders to rein herself in. She's a person who doesn't trust easily, grasps anger and hate too tightly and too completely, and has a frightening tendency to hold on to a grudge, to let it fester to dangerous levels, so much so that there is a very real possibility that it could compromise her judgement. As Stacker says to her:
"Vengeance is like an open wound. You cannot take that level of emotion into the drift."
His words ring true when the past that she holds on to almost ends up destroying the Shatterdome when she chases the RABIT, plunging into her own memories so deeply that she'd almost fired Gipsy Danger's cannons within the Shatterdome's confines. She'd managed to be brought back, but by then Raleigh had seen everything that's happened, from the monster to the man who'd rescued her. In the novelization, the conversation between Raleigh and Mako followed, illustrating the depth of the tragedy and the loss she'd endured.
"I saw you standing there as a child. So alone. The kaiju took it all from you."
“It was a Sunday. We went to the park. My father bought me those shoes. My mother combed my hair. Then the attack started. We were separated by the crowd...and in a minute I lost them. I never saw them again.”
While disgraced for putting all of the Shatterdome in danger, Mako bears it gracefully. It has to be noted that she learns quickly from her mistakes, and she'd found a way to channel it into strength, to propel her forward instead of holding her back. She Drifts with Raleigh a second time, this time going to Striker Eureka's rescue against Leatherback and Otachi. Mako proves to be a strong and deadly fighter and co-pilot, with a surprise or two up her sleeve towards the end of the battle. In the novelisation of the conversation, the conversation had gone like this:
"There's still something left, one of my upgrades."
"One you didn't tell me about?"
"You would've seen it if you'd looked."
A chain sword created by her, elegant, efficient, but most of all deadly; and it gets the job done when they cut Otachi in half. Mako is known as the swordmaker's daughter; her father had taught her what she needed to know about the nature of swords and fighting. In the novel, it was further elaborated upon in the next two lines.
"My father was a swordmaker," she continued. "He made each one by hand. He said when a warrior names his weapon, they share a bond."
Raiju came at them again, but now Gipsy Danger could parry and counterstrike with the sword. Raleigh let Mako lead. She knew swords, even if she'd never fought with one seven-plus thousand meters under water.
For all of her emotional baggage and her emotional state, Mako is calm and collected in a situation, relying on all her training to get the job done. She's deadly focused, and this time in the novelisation, she even manages to pull her co-pilot back from potentially chasing the RABIT, showcasing her growth from her rookie mistakes.
Chuck screamed, and for a dangerous moment Raleigh flashed back to Knifehead, to losing one of his arms. "Don't reach back," Mako said. "Don't hold on. Ride in the moment."
Raleigh comes to be very important to her; she's studied him and his moves during all five of his kaiju kills, has learned to anticipate him -- but more than that, she connects with him on a much higher level, the way co-pilots did.
All in all, Mako is a bundle of strengths and weaknesses and quirks and motivations; she's not an easy person to get along with, and is relatively antisocial as far as being friendly goes, but Mako is not an abrasively vicious person, not by far. She's a product of her circumstances, and living proof that there are many ways to fight for what you want, and to overcome your fears. She doesn't allow her past to define her, she doesn't allow herself to be mired hopelessly in it and to continue to be afraid; instead, Mako uses the experience to forge her into someone better, someone stronger, deadlier, and hell-bent on destroying the kaiju to protect her family, to do her father proud, and to save the rest of the world. Mako is more than a survivor, more just Tokyo's Daughter, the face that peppered newspapers all around the world. Mako Mori is a fighter.
COURT ALLIANCE & REASONING:
Seelie. As a swordmaker's daughter and a Jaeger pilot, Mako prizes honor, discipline, courage to an immense extent. In the PacRim universe, to be a Jaeger pilot is to be a rock star, but more importantly, it's a heavy mission, because nearly all Jaeger pilots up to date have died violently, awfully, crushed and destroyed in their Jaegers.
Mako had taken up the cause not to be famous, and while vengeance is a large part of it, so is the desire to honor what Stacker Pentecost has done to save her, to repay a life debt. Mako might give in to her emotions and lose control of herself sometimes (in reference, that disastrous first simulated Drift in Gipsy Danger), but she ultimately conquers this, building the discipline and self-control necessary for a successful Drift to fight the kaiju.
ABILITIES:
- Master of a wide array of combat disciplines: in hand-to-hand and swordplay (inclusive of a complete mastery of the 52 positions of Jaeger Bushido).
- Incredible in-depth understanding of mech engineering
- Highly proficient in all sorts of tactics and strategies
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INVENTORY: Drivesuit, dogtags.
( WRITING ★ SAMPLES )
NETWORK SAMPLE: here.
LOG SAMPLE:
[ No one teaches you how to deal with the day after, to live through the aftermath and to come to terms with grief and loss. There's no manual for the days that come after apocalypses are cancelled, the surreality of achievement and the clamour for attention. Mako understands, at length, the need for the rest of humanity to celebrate that they're still alive, that the sun rises for them another day -- she understands it in an uncomplicated, detached way, because after losing so much for so long, having something still in your possession is still a luxury.
But the hurt is still there, the grief that is lodged in her ribs, undetached, right where her heart would be: she's lost too much to properly celebrate. She and Raleigh, they've lost everything but each other, and the pain of loss is a slow burn, the ache of knowing a loved one is no longer there scorches under her skin.
Outside, they cheer and congratulate each other and themselves, the subsequent victory parades and the memorials held in honor of all that had fallen. All around them, everyone is celebrating, and Mako is one of the few who grieves; for sensei, for Chuck, for the Kaidonovskys, for the Wei Tang brothers. Theirs was a pyrrhic victory, built on bones and ash, but it reminds Mako to honour their sacrifices, always. It makes Mako sick, but Raleigh is the only one who can understand, and she's the only one who can reach him. Raleigh understands it better than she does; he'd lived with his own pain for far longer.
She comes to miss him when he's separated from her for too long; there is a cruelty in keeping two co-pilots apart while they're on a drift-hangover, when they're still together in their minds, each a crucial part of the other, and the other, too far away to be reached. Raleigh's ache is her own, too, when she instinctively picks up on his thoughts, the gentle unfamiliarity that warms her heart in the moments between interviews, when she faces excited girls and women all wanting to know about Raleigh Becket, about what he's like, whether they're — would he date — is he a boxers or — when all she wants to talk about are Jaegers, about the components of their core, what it means to be one of the few female pilots, what it means for them, the ones with ambition, the ones who can go toe to toe with men and be just as good, if not better. She wants to talk about Stacker Pentecost, Chuck Hansen, the Wei Tang triplets, the Kaidonovskys, all the men and women who had fought the dragons and lost their lives, but not their legacies. Never their legacies, not when Mako keeps them close to her, the name of every jaeger and every pilot carried in her memory.
(— I walk with heroes —)
But all they want to know is what the younger half of the Becket brothers is like, and Mako bites her tongue. Swallows her fury, her sadness.
Mako guards Raleigh fiercely, politely, because his secrets are hers to protect, and he becomes as much a part of her when she keeps him safe and away from public consumption. While Raleigh charms with puppy-eyed, flirtatious radiance, Mako inspires a conflicting breadth of reactions, and with every interview that goes on, the hypocrisy of the world gets further under her skin.
This was the world that turned its back on her father in the name of cowardice and money-saving, abandoning the work he'd given his life to defend. Raleigh and Mako stand on the shoulders of giants, the heroes who had gone before them -- and yet all they can do is ask the asinine questions.
When one is in the Drift too long, words are clumsy constructs, plucked from the mind and given an inelegant voice; words are what she doesn't need with Raleigh, and Raleigh is who she thinks of when the final interview ends and she leaves the studio more exhausted than when she's entered. Tokyo's Daughter, they used to call her, the men and women behind cameras and pens and words who painted too many stories of her when she had been young, displayed her grief for the entire world to see. Some threads were embellished, some weren't nearly coloured in enough, and Mako's long extricated herself from it. She became her own woman, and became more than the name that the world had given to her.
Now, she is Mori Mako, jaeger pilot, daughter of the man who saved the world when the world turned its back on him.
They want to know too much; and when she politely concludes the debriefing session that comes after, her co-pilot's jacket is the first thing she takes, from his room in the Shatterdome. She anticipates without conscious contemplation, where Raleigh's thought process is as familiar to her as her own and she knows what he needs. She comes into the room where she knows he will be (he waits for her often and she doesn't ask why), and she exhales quietly when she sees him. They've spent far too much time with the press and far too little for themselves, to heal, to move on, and to bury their dead.
She drapes the jacket over his shoulders, and takes the seat beside him quietly, waiting for him to wake. ]