Name: Taahir Alli
Nickname: 22, for his position in the Forty Thieves.
Age: 23
Gender: Male
Species:Human
Position: Chaotic Good, not part of any organizations just yet. Formerly associated with the Forty Thieves.
Powers/Abilities/Techniques/Skills: Royal Swordplay: This is Taahir's fighting style, jokingly named Royal Swordplay in mockery of the corrupt guards he outfought with it. Instead of fighting with heavy strokes and guards, Taahir prefers to dart around, one hand behind his back, making quick and precise strokes with his knife. He's good at it, too.
Streetwise: Taahir is good at living in a city. He can find information, hide from pursuers in the crowd, and navigate without so much as touching the streets. In the wilderness, however, he is much more lost.
Thief's Agility: Just another skill developed in the company of the Forty Thieves. Taahir is very agile, a necessary part of his fighting style. He's very good at something rather similar to parkour, though not quite as defined. It's just running to him, and it's the only reason he survived Agrabah and stayed a step ahead of the guards.
Fire Magic: Using his knife, Taahir can summon and control small quantities of fire. The most he can actively control is a volume that, when gathered into a sphere, is comparable to a basketball. He can release his control of the flames to summon more, but he cannot regain control of them after that, nor can he control fire that he did not create. The catch: the knife can and will burn him up should he return to the tomb where the spell giving it this power triggered.
Weapon/Items: Knife: Taahir's knife doesn't look like anything special. The hilt is wire-wrapped and gold-leafed, with a small emerald on each side near the blade. The blade is steel, with an eight-pointed star adorning one side. This star produces the flames for his fire magic. Also, the weapon is bound to Taahir by a spell that he doesn't quite understand. No matter what happens to it, the knife will always find its way back to him, no later than the next morning, and always intact no matter what happened the day before.
Picture:
Alibaba Saluja - Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Taahir has messy blond hair. Despite all efforts to the contrary, there is a distinct spike in the front that refuses to be flattened. His eyes are a light brown, almost amber in color, and usually shining with determination. He wears two red earrings on the top of his left ear, and a green one on the lobe of his right.
Taahir's clothing consists of loose brown pants and a blue shirt. Over that is a red and yellow sash wrapped around his waist, with a long end trailing down his right leg, stopping just below his knee. He keeps his knife tucked into the front of this sash. He wears a flat shoe on his right foot, with a black boot with blue stripes covering a scar on his left. Occasionally, he augments this clothing with a light brown coat to keep the sun and sand off.
Personality: Taahir, at his core, is a serious person. However, he's also a layered type of person. He reveals more of himself as the pressure on him increases. The outermost layer is that of a mild joker. He makes wisecracks, acts at ease, and generally tries to look happy. Underneath that, there's a defensive layer of sarcasm, where the ease and happiness are gone but the wisecracks remain. Thirdly there is a layer of anger, where he lashes out at the source of the pressure. Fourth, there is his sense of justice, where he rails against the oppression necessary to create this much pressure on him. Fifth and finally, under even more pressure, one reaches the innermost layer of determination and severity, where he hardly says two words in a row not related to the task at hand and pursues his goal as swiftly as possible.
The worst thing one can do near Taahir is to treat another human like dirt. He was a thief, yes, but he never hurt an innocent man. He fears that to do that would make him no better than the monster who killed his parents. Needless violence is just as bad, which leads him to have a deep-seated hate of Heartless in particular. Growing up with thieves has given him a grudging respect for good law enforcement, and a serious grudge against corrupt ones. Being "let off" is one of the biggest insults you can give to the Twenty-Second Thief.
Having been a part of the best guild of thieves in the desert, Taahir works extremely well in a group. His skills lie most in coordinating plans beforehand and setting up contingencies that still accomplish the goal. Basically, his philosophy goes as such; if you plan to do something five different ways, the sixth one will work. He performs well in dangerous situations as well, again a product of his upbringing in a guild of thieves. Every day was hazardous. In fact, the hardest thing he had to do after being forcibly relocated was to get used to not running for the hills whenever law enforcement showed up.
Original World: Agrabah
Current World: Traverse Town
History:Taahir was born as the only child of a lower-class family in the slums of Agrabah. As a child, he had a remarkable talent for sneaking about and getting into things he shouldn't, most often in the pursuit of his next meal. He managed to consistently dodge the royal guards and escape with whatever food he took, with help from his father and mother. The family continued like this until Taahir was 13.
The Forty Thieves were currently a problem in Agrabah. However, they had recently come under new leadership; Cassim's leadership. With the prohibition on harming innocents, the guild of thieves was losing its reputation as the terror it had once been. However, one thief, enthusiastic about his heist, forgot the regulation and killed Taahir's parents when they were witness to it. Taahir tried to escape, but the thief chased him into a dead end. Before he could take the child's life, however, another thief executed the lawbreaker.
This man took Taahir back to the hideout, giving him the knife that had been part of the murderer's take from the job. The thieves were, for the most part, ashamed of their fallen brother, and took Taahir in to fill the man's place as the Twenty-Second Thief. He grew up under their tutelage, learning how to defend himself and how to use the streets and rooftops to his advantage. He developed his unique fighting style during this time as well.
One job took Taahir and some other thieves into an old tomb, rumored to belong to a dark wizard from long ago. The place was rigged with all kinds of traps, but a valuable treasure waited at the deepest chamber. The five of them struggled past the traps, until finally they reached the last one. Jets of fire filled the hallway leading to the treasure room, with a lever at the end, seemingly to deactivate the trap. Confident in his abilities, Taahir dodged and wove through the corridor. As he reached the end, flames caught his right leg, searing it and leaving a scar. He fell, grabbing the lever on his way down. It did stop the flames, but it also triggered one last trap, forcing the thief through a corridor of darkness.
Taahir came back to consciousness in Traverse Town. Someone had bandaged his leg. He didn't know who, and he didn't much care. He managed to survive, fighting off the Heartless that infested the town. Whatever trap had sent him here had marked him, and his weapon. He didn't know why, but he couldn't get rid of the knife, and it had obtained an eight-pointed star on the blade. More importantly, it could create and control fire. In the next few years, he practiced with that skill, as well as refining his swordplay. However, his curiosity is now driving him to explore outside of Traverse Town. He wants to know what else is out there besides Agrabah and the mysterious town of drifters.
Role Playing Sample: Taahir walked out into the arena, smiling at the crowds as they picked him apart.
"Is that knife his only weapon?"
"He doesn't look like a spellcaster."
"He's scrawny! Won't last two seconds!"
His brown coat and light clothing concealed no weapons. His only tool for the upcoming match, a small knife, was on full display, sheathed in the front of his sash. He wore no armor, conjured no magic, and generally looked like a man out for a stroll in the streets of Olympus, as opposed to a combatant in the tournament. He watched gleefully as the odds stacked up against him and people all placed their money on his opponent. His newfound friends were in that crowd, betting money on him at now-astronomical odds. He'd split the take with them after the match. It would make the prize pale in comparison.
The gate opened and a single enemy exited. A Heartless, restrained by magic, an attendant carrying its scalloped sword behind it. The creature was shoved into the arena, its weapon deposited on the ground in front of it, and the announcer did his job.
"
Ladies and Gentlemen! We have a special show for you today! A one-round match between this Invisible and a newcomer to our arena, Taahir Alli! Don't worry, we'll find the man's next of kin after this is over."
The crowd laughed at the jest, but not once did Taahir's smile shift. A one-on-one fight with an Invisible. Tricky, but doable. The magic restraining the monster dissipated as the announcer yelled. "
FIGHT!"
Taahir drew his knife in his right hand, holding his left arm behind his back. The message this style gave was clear; I don't need both hands. The crowd just kept laughing, and the Invisible armed itself, then rushed forward, clearly aiming to cut the man in front of it in two and eat his heart for a treat. The only problem with that plan is that Taahir didn't stay there for long.
Before anyone could notice, the thief had already moved under and past the sword, striking the Heartless for what would be first blood, if the creatures could bleed. The Heartless wasted no time with pain, turning and increasing the speed of its attacks. Taahir ducked and weaved, forward and backward, side to side, dodging so narrowly that the edge of the blade opened razor-thin, shallow cuts in his clothing. Some of those cuts just ever so slightly carved little lines into his left arm and leg. They burned, but the thief had felt worse.
Seeing his chance, Taahir leaped into the air, backflipping over a horizontal swing so close that it shaved some of his trademark hair spike off. His dagger lit in the air, trailing a ring of fire behind it that became a trail as he fell. The thief came down on the sword's hilt, hard, forcing the Heartless to drop it. Taahir stabbed up, then, forcing the blade into the Heartless's gut as his flames wrapped around it, searing it and entangling it before finally making the creature of shadow dissipate.
Taahir was greeted with the stunned silence of the crowd as the numerous cuts reasserted themselves, each dripping a slight trickle of blood that added up to a not-insignificant amount gathering at his feet. He flicked the flames onto the ground, where they quickly died, not being sustained by magic or fuel on the hard stone, and sheathed his weapon as they finally started to cheer. Then he walked out, eager to meet with his acquaintances and collect his share of a job well done.
Questions/Comments/Suggestions? Perhaps you could add a face-claiming system for those of us not able to draw our own characters? Prevent 10 Ichigo Kurosaki-lookin dudes from running around. (Yes, I do speak from experience.)
