Hoshi

my ant baby ^^

BACKSTORY/PERSONALITY

Fun Facts!

• • He has two sharp mandibles on either side of his mouth. These are used to bite and chew through hard materials. He has a habit of cleaning them with his tongue.
  • He has four arms. The lower pair is smaller and assists in carrying and digging.
  • He has a long slender tongue with a natural adhesive that he can use to pick up food crumbs. He also has a proboscis at the end of it that he likes to use to sip up tasty drinks and soft foods.
  • He has a set of sharp teeth that are made to chew food. After he chews and swallows it, the softened food travels into a special pouch in his thorax that turns it into liquid before it enters the abdomen, or stomach. Or the thing on his butt.
  • He has two antennae that he uses to smell, taste, and feel things. They can also sense vibrations in the ground, predicting thunderstorms, earthquakes, and other disasters hours before they happen.
  • He has sharp hairs on each of his arms and legs that help him stick to walls. He can fold them in and out.
  • His abdomen is his stomach. Its not like a human abdomen, where the stomach is located, but its the compartment on an insect's hind side. It expands the more food he eats and is slightly transparent, so you can see the color of the food he ate. For example, if he drank water, it'd be filled with clear liquid. If he ate strawberries, it would be filled with red liquid, and maybe some seeds. Out of the end of the abdomen comes poop, of course, in a sandy, powdery form.
  • He glows and changes color under ultraviolet rays! This color variation can be viewed in his gallery.
  • At the ends of his fingers, he has slits for retractable claws shaped like hollow mandibles. These are very sharp and hard, as they are used for digging, climbing, and loosening hard dirt. The slits can be hard to see at times.
  • Hoshi is very flexible! The spaces between his joints are soft and have a high range of motion, allowing him to move freely.
  • His skin is covered by a thick, hard shell, like a crab's. His shell is durable enough to be shot with a handgun and sustain little to no damage. His shell hardens with the presence of adrenaline, when he's angry or afraid. Along his skin, he has smaller hairs that allow him to feel.
  • Hoshi, like all ants, is a very skilled architect. He works best when the dirt is wet so he can dig and mold together a decent-sized home for himself. And like a wasp or a bee, he has the ability to secrete a sticky material from his mouth and use it to further support his home. This material is only found in ant hominids and is called ant wax. It serves as a natural sealant/adhesive that works well in helping the dirt stick together and stay supported. It's a combination of sugar, pollen, and saliva, and has a stretchy gum-like texture, along with an orange hue. Ant hominids tend to coat the insides of their homes with this sweet wax to prevent holes and insulate, and it serves more purposes altogether than any human or insect material. It's designed purely to withstand the worst kinds of weather, wind, and water erosion.
  • In addition, Hoshi is very strong. With his four arms, he can lift over 100 times his weight; 25 times with each arm. For example, he could lift two small pick-up trucks stacked on top of one another with a single arm.
  • Despite being the tall giant that he is, Hoshi is skittish and easily frightened by loud noises. 
  • Hoshi does not talk. Instead, he makes little chittering sounds. He also makes clicking and trilling sounds depending on his emotions.
  • Christmas is Hoshi's favorite holiday. It's when the beautiful snow comes, the city is quiet, and best of all, plenty of candy and gifts are in his midst. Christmas always feels magical to Hoshi. He even picks out a tree to decorate his den with, at Christmas tree sale areas. They're not too hard to pick up and carry off to his mound in the cover of the night.
  • When he's overwhelmed and reaches a peak of tremendous stress and frustration, Hoshi goes into a state of shock for about four minutes until he has a surge of aggression. This makes him wild and violent, fueled purely by fear and adrenaline. During this frenzied state, he'll be unable to recognize anyone dear and will make loud screeching sounds, scratching and biting at anyone who appears to threaten him. His senses and instincts are heightened, accompanied by incredible speed. Each of his motions are so fast and mechanical, he appears to zip around from wall to wall. This is an emergency reflex that he can't control, meant to provide him with self defense and a last-resort escape from tough situations. He only kills when absolutely necessary. Similar to a panic attack, it simmers down shortly after Hoshi's heart rate decelerates. It can be hard to completely calm down, so he must have a strong catalyst. After that, he'll be fatigued and out of energy for a while and must rest. All of the energy spent will be recovered well with plenty of time, love, food, and water.
  • Similar to what was described in the point above, Hoshi has a state of rage as well. But instead of protecting himself, this phase is meant to protect others. The instinct boost in this state is not as high, but he usually gains more strength in this state, depending on how angry he is. And contrary to the fear state, he can recognize those dear to him, and those who have angered him. Various physical attributes are changed as well. His muscles become hyper-active and his mandibles grow, making him appear larger and more intimidating. He grows around nine inches in height, and several dozen pounds in weight. Overall, Hoshi looks much less like his friendly self, and is transformed into a killing machine. As a result, he tries his best to hold back from entering this state at all costs. Hoshi doesn't wish harm on anyone, and would never want to be seen as a terrible monster.

Secret Abilities (beware of spoilers!)

• • Hoshi can talk! His voice is deep and coarse, and actually comes from his chest and not his throat, making it even more amplified and booming. It's obviously not human, and can be pretty unnerving when you hear it off-guard. Every time he hears a human speak, he listens and watches their mouth as they form their words. And after years of studying, Hoshi has learned a good bit of the English language. He doesn't know what most of the phrases mean, and still must learn how to read, but he can articulate fairly well. If you heard his voice and didn't see him, you'd think a demon from the underworld was speaking.
  • Hoshi genuinely doesn't know what money is, and performs his thefts innocently. Later on in the story as the sum of what he's stolen adds up, the police notice the various holes and products going missing and they track him down. They send in armored officers to raid the unsuspecting ant's mound and arrest Hoshi, informing him that he is charged with many counts of theft. Discovering that he was actually stealing, and it all falling on him at once, he stresses out so much that he sheds tears and cries. Hoshi never wanted to do the humans such an injustice. He always thought that he was doing normal human things. After that, they restrain him and bring him to the prison where they throw him into a solitary cell. Hoshi sobs on the floor and grips the cold bars, realizing where he's just been taken. Out of the many times he'd been in grocery stores, he never even thought to wander to the checkout area. He never thought to take that five dollar bill instead of chewing it up and spitting it back out onto the sidewalk. He never thought to study the vending machine before he picked it up and carried it away to his house. Hoshi pulls the cell bar to see it easily bend. Feeling guilty and knowing that he should rightfully serve his time, he bends it back into place. Hoshi was grievous.
  • After (or before) that point in the story, Hoshi meets a little girl who shows him the way around the human world and teaches him things. I'm still working on the bigger plot, so this isn't canon just yet.
  • When Hoshi is filled with passion, his skin begins to glow and pulsate from his heart throughout his whole body. His skin is striped with bio-luminescent particles that react to soft intimate moments between him and another person. Like a comforting hug for example. The glowing is so bright that it shows through his shell, shifting its color to a more red hue. It happens unintentionally, but the ant can feel it happening. Every pulse delivers a wave of heat that warms the body, giving off heat as well. This can happen in both male and female ant hominids, although it's less likely for males. It's a beautiful sight whenever a human gets to see it.
  • Every year, Hoshi completely sheds his shell to make room for new growth. This process is called molting, and it happens to every ant hominid over the age of seven years. Normally, an ant's shell is slightly bigger than its body and limbs underneath, leaving just a bit of loose space for the skin to breathe. Only the ends of each segment are sealed to the skin tightly to prevent any fluids from entering the loose space in the shell and causing painful infections. But for Hoshi, his shell is skin-tight, and squeezes quite tightly on his body, giving his skin no space whatsoever. Because of this disorder, he appears thin, as if his size is nearly summed up to the thickness of his skeleton, with little muscle piled on. When he sheds his shell, it's a great relief because his body can revert to its original shape; huge and burly. Muscles upon muscles are finally released and given space to breathe. And to break the shell, all he needs to do is flex his muscles hard enough around shedding time, when the carapace softens. His figure is much bulkier than other ants, who think he's a shrimp until they see him without his shell. Hoshi is built like this because of the many years he's been alone, doing his own labor and living solo. He must build every home on his own, using the strength of his bare hands to compact the soil and keep it together, along with using ant wax to fortify the structure of his anthill. He must also find food on his own, sometimes having to climb trees or snap them in half, because it's just how strong the little ant is. He'd walk miles to find water, and walk back and forth to collect materials and food he needed in the wild. Digging, foraging, building, and hunting for around for ten years. That is, before he discovered the marvelous city.