Profile
Mallet
About
Mallet is a sabertooth raccoon who works as a field agent in an anomaly correction agency on Zephyr. He has a lighthearted and often reckless attitude towards his tasks, but his undoubtable skill and cartoon-like abilities in reality manipulation more than make up for it. He is almost always accompanied by at least one or two other agents, and loves to banter and joke around with them.
Design
Notes
- Two large saberteeth fangs
- Vertical scar over his right eye.
- Typical Raccoon markings - Black mask and lighter gray underbelly
- Brighter colors accent him as streaks: Purple on his ears, blue leading up his forearms from his wrists, and red on the tips of his neck ruff.
- His tail is black and blue stripes with a few longer red streaks of fur, tipped with white.
- Often wears an off-yellow tanktop with torn black pants and a red belt. Can also be seen in sweatervests in more casual settings. Prefers loose clothing.
Personality
Mallet is a very close thing to a real life cartoon character. Even beyond his unusual reality altering abilities, he always behaves in a goofy and exaggerated manner, throwing caution to the wind and playing things up for laughs in any situation.
His overbearing slapstick attitude gains mixed reception - some people find him very fun and cute, while others find him grating and annoying. Unfortunately for the latter, and even Mallet himself, switching this persona off is borderline impossible because he relies on it as a coping mechanism to mask himself from the fear and distaste he feels in response to some of the more messed-up situations his job puts him in.
Despite being a highly friendly and sociable individual, Mallet has a very difficult time opening up to others regarding how he feels beneath the surface. This is unintentionally so, as he even has himself convinced that there isn't much more to him than how he presents himself. Because of this, he highly prefers group interaction to one-on-one conversations with other people.
Mallet tends to respond to adversity and negative emotions by doubling down on his humor, but there are occasions where he will express genuine annoyance, particularly when tired or worn down, or if his walls are lowered for some other reason.
Likes
Jokes
Mallet enjoys finding the humor in the world, with no regard of when it is and isn't appropriate. He puts a lot of thought into the jokes he makes and even the slapstick routines he puts on show, trying to remain creative and entertaining with it. He also enjoys when other people joke around with him, and will even give encouraging pointers on how other people can be funnier if their jokes don't land.
Pranks
Pranks are like more personal jokes in Mallet's eyes. He always keeps them lighthearted, silly, and creative, and views them as a primary way to bond with people he likes - both collaborating on pranks, pranking friends, or being pranked by friends. He also will occasionally prank people who find his attitude annoying, out of a desire to crack their stern shell and get them to laugh and open up to the humor in the world. Which... is often not the end result.
Social Events
Mallet loves big social events such as parties, and absolutely eats up being the center of attention and entertaining large groups of people. He can put down a lot of alcohol, and absolutely puts in the effort to make himself drunk despite his high tolerance.
Dislikes
Obligations
Mallet hates feeling like he "has to" do anything, much preferring to do whatever comes up in his whims and sounds the most fun, and avoids feeling tied down by obligations and commitments as much as possible. He doesn't mind rules as a concept, but he often forgets they exist and feels annoyed when there's any expectation on him to follow them to the letter.
Deeper Conversation
Mallet finds deeper and more serious conversations uncomfortable and will almost always attempt to steer the conversation into lighter jokes and quips about the concepts at hand, deflecting from any sort of introspection or discussion that would have him leave his usual persona. If he cannot successfully steer a conversation away from heavier topics or if someone clearly really needs it, he will provide a quiet listening ear, but he cannot bring himself to offer much input in response.
Cruelty
Despite being a carefree prankster, Mallet ensures his pranks are never done at the expense of another person. Annoying, sure - but never outright malicious. If someone around him is making mean-spirited jokes about someone else, he will attempt to steer them clear from that behavior, and stop associating with them if they continue. He also has zero tolerance for cruelty and will physically stand up for people if they need it.
Skills & Abilities
Cartoon Resilience
Mallet has passive reality-altering effects that cause him to physically react to things as though he is a cartoon character. One of these traits is his reactive shapeshifting as a response to physical damage, ranging from subtler changes such as elastic-like squashing and stretching from impacts or pulling force, to more extreme and "impossible" alterations like becoming cleanly severed into two autonomous pieces, or being reduced to a pile of ash with a pair of blinking eyes.
These altered states are typically recovered from very quickly and allow him to survive otherwise lethal hits without picking up lasting injuries or disfigurement. However, the recovery process is much slower if he is being actively observed by someone else ("on-screen," as he describes it) and will require active effort on his behalf in such a case.
On the flipside, this also means Mallet will have exaggerated effects to completely harmless events, such as being startled by a sudden noise and jumping so high up he flattens on the ceiling or becoming melty when the weather is too hot. This can lead to him becoming temporarily and unpredictably incapacitated during inopportune moments.
Malletspace
Mallet can manipulate enclosed storage spaces in such a way that he can store and retrieve items of much higher mass and volume than what should be able to fit inside. A common example of this is that he keeps his two-handed gun hammer in his pants pocket, able to retrieve it seemingly out of nowhere.
In addition to this, Mallet can use any obscured "off-screen" space to spontaneously generate certain objects that weren't there before. These objects are limited in their influence, however, as their potential effects are limited to being mundane, cosmetic, or temporary. An example being that he can manifest a sword to successfully cut a rope or food, but if he were to try to use this sword in combat, it would be guranteed to befall a fate such as its blade being cut off by the opponent before he could land a hit, or making a seemingly successful stab, only for it to be revealed that the blade was simply tucked under the opponent's arm as they disarm him.
Generated guns, meanwhile, are similarly limited to either firing out a flag that says "BANG!," coating the opponent in a thin layer of ash, propelling a small stream of water, or slowly extending a gloved hand that can do simple tasks such as snuffing out a flame on a candle. As such, generated "gag" objects are primarily used by Mallet for the sake of light utility, distractions, or jokes.
Physics Bending
Mallet can also bend the laws of physics now and then in various other ways, such as briefly walking on nothing if he unwittingly walks over a ledge, or walking through a tunnel he paints on a wall while other individuals will still bonk into it as a solid wall, to name two examples.
These tricks are often used for jokes, but can genuinely come in handy if used creatively on the field, which he often does.
Gun-Hammer
Mallet's go-to weapon is a custom-made gun hammer, functioning as a huge melee weapon while having the capability to fire six large bullets from its head, which is functionally a giant gun cylinder. These bullets can be fired into a target, or fired strategically to greatly increase the hammer's physical velocity for the sake of transporation or stronger impacts.
It is also worth noting that due to the absurd size of the bullets, the gun-hammer does not make for a good ranged weapon, as gravity and drag from the air quickly slows the projectiles down; thus, they are only really effective at very close ranges.
Summary
Edgy Hero Phase
Mallet was raised by his father, who he inherited his reality manipulation powers from. His father is a performer, using his abilities to entertain people as a real-life cartoon star. As he is quite popular, he often finds himself quite busy and away from home for long periods of time, leaving Mallet at home in the care of others - deciding this was better than bringing him away from home and making it difficult for him to make friends in school.
Unfortunately, Mallet didn't quite understand it this way, and ended up resenting the silly and friendly cartoony aesthetic in his younger years, viewing it as a soul-sucking fake persona for the sake of earning a profit, and attributing it to his parents' frequent absences.
Younger Mallet strove to do what was right and kept a somewhat edgy persona while doing so, feeling that plainly speaking about what he felt was better without any unnecessary flourishes. During this time, he felt a lot of frustration with the particular quirks of his abilities; it is quite embarrassing to befall some sort of slapstick gag and gain a scar while trying to fight people off with his then-trusty katana, after all.
The Misadventures of Mallet and Granpappy Musket
Eventually, Mallet was so fed up with being unable to control his abilities. Feeling his father would be too busy and inexperienced to help (and him being so far away filming another TV show), he seeked help instead from his grandfather Musket - who, of course, also has these powers. Musket hasn't had anything to do with television since before they added color, and he has fought in a historical war so many years ago, so Mallet thought he'd have an easier time learning from him.
Musket was more than happy to help guide Mallet with his abilities, but he definitely picked up that something was up with him from his edgy persona. He decided to show Mallet the world and gradually guide him to being more fun-loving and friendly in the process. And of course, through their adventures, Mallet would eventually open up more and more to having fun with the world and finding humor in things. He discovered the importance of making people laugh and be happy.
At the end of this journey, Musket revealed to Mallet that they were traveling to go see Mallet's father this entire time. Mallet was taken aback, but after taking the time to speak to him, they had a genuine heart to heart as Mallet realized his father genuinely does like to make people happy, and his father realized he should've been there for Mallet more often; never meaning to let him feel uncared for, but just being very absentminded and never realizing it.
From all of this, Mallet has found peace with himself and is much happier as a silly individual, leaning into his cartoony side.
Agency Recruitment
During their journey, Musket realizes that Mallet shows exceptional capabilities with his reality altering powers and is very proud of the friendly and kind individual he has become. On the way home, he speaks to Mallet about an anomaly correction agency an old friend of his works at. He tells Mallet he would be a great addition to the team, as he hears they could use an uplifting individual like him.
Mallet accepts, and joins the team where he now works with Vires and their other teammates to fight, correct, and capture various anomalies that threaten the world. This job would sometimes take a toll on him and he would end up using his newfound humorous persona as a bit of a defence mechanism at times, and he is unsure how else to possibly act after finding this part of himself.
Musket sometimes picks up on Mallet struggling to cope with things a bit, and often reminds him that he can quit at any time if it's too much for him, but Mallet puts the smile back on his face and explains that he still wants to help people out as much as he can. He has expectations he wants to live up to, after all.
Related
Musket
Musket is Mallet's grandfather, and the one who helped Mallet figure out his abilities and find peace with his goofier side, helping him out of his edgier phase. The two had many misadventures together, and Musket is the one who petitioned for Mallet to be added to the anomaly correction agency he now works at.
Mallet's Father
Mallet's dad was quite distant during his childhood, due to being a popular television star. This lead to Mallet going through an edgy phase, but he would later come to understand that his father had no ill will, and simply likes to make other people happy and can be very absentminded at times. The two are now on good terms.
Vires
Vires is the lieutenant of the team Mallet has been recruited onto in the Anomaly Correction Agency. He is a longer-standing superior and is extremely serious when it comes to rules and protocol, to a degree that Mallet finds irksome as he very often sternly expects him to follow procedure to the letter. Mallet still jokes around with him however, intentionally poking at him and trying to get under his skin in hopes of cracking his stern exterior and helping him learn to laugh at things like he did. However, this only leads to Vires finding him even more annoying.
Despite their issues with one another, however, Vires and Mallet eventually develop a better understanding of one another with time, and end up forming an inexplicable bond. They still can't stand how one another act, but they understand why they are this way, and provide unspoken support for each other when they need it.
Mavra
Mavra is another field agent Mallet works with. She is notably more serious than Mallet, but not without humor of her own. She often finds herself grinning at Mallet's antics, and will now and then smugly utter a deadpan joke or quip to Mallet, which never fails to make Mallet howl with laughter - which sometimes gets exclusively Mallet in trouble from Vires.
Despite getting along quite well, though, Mavra finds it annoying when Mallet pranks her. In response, she pranks him back in an attempt to get even or teach him a lesson, but this instead encourages Mallet to do more pranks, now viewing it as a mutual activity.
K.A.K.L.
Originally encountered as an anomaly his team was dispatched to contain, KAKL would eventually end up joining Mallet's team as an ally. When it is present along with Vires and Mallet, it often functions as a sort of mediator between the two, able to interpret Vires's orders and explain them to Mallet in a way that makes them sound good to him, or even convince him it was his own idea, to make it so he is more likely to actually follow them.
Mallet finds KAKL to be very endearing and entertaining, and loves joking around with it. Its somewhat edgy yet humorous demeanor reminds him a lot of his own past self, in a lighthearted and entertaining way.
Sye
Sye is a longtime friend of Mallet's, having known him during his edgier times and helping him do good as a sort of sidekick for a while. Sye was always a bit sillier, which younger Mallet tolerated in an endearing way.
Once Mallet became in tune with his sillier side, Sye was thrilled by this development. While the two don't go around as a crime-fighting team anymore as they used to due to them both finding different specific ways to help people, they still often hang out together and love to pull harmless pranks on one another, friends, or random bystanders.
Since Sye is mute, Mallet often communicates with him with sign language both to make him feel more comfortable and so they can more sneakily coordinate their pranks on people. Sometimes Mallet will also manifest giant cartoon signs with text written on them to hold up in favor of hand signs.
Karren
Karren is a longtime friend of Vires's, knowing him from way before he joined the Anomaly Correction Agency. Eventually, she tracks down and meets Mallet while doing some nosey digging on what Vires actually does, as he has to keep the details of his job a secret due to the anomalous nature of things.
Vires is terrified and humiliated to see Mallet and Karren talking together, as he already regrets letting her know about the organization at all and keeping her knowledge a secret from higher-ups so they wouldn't wipe her memory. Mallet, however, also keeps this a secret from the rest of the organization. He does joke around about Vires's rebellious past after learning about it from Karren, but it makes for an important step in him and Vires learning to understand each other better and eventually care for one another.
Mallet and Karren get along quite well and match each others' senses of humor perfectly, quite frequently hanging out together. Mallet even invites Vires to hang out with Karren more often as a group now and then.
Lillith
Lillith once worked as a former agent in the Anomaly Correction Agency for a brief time before resigning when she felt it was a bit much. Mallet wasn't a part of the team while she was around, but he learned about her through Vires, who remained close friends with her after her resignation. Because Lillith hadn't progressed very far in the recruitment process, she never learned of the anomalous nature of the organization, and it is important that she doesn't end up learning about it - if she is told about it, she would have to have her memory wiped and Vires would likely no longer be permitted to speak to her.
Eventually, Mallet would end up meeting Lillith while she is hanging out with Vires. The two get along decently well, but Vires ends up absolutely panicked as if his life was over, if Mallet ever told her about the anomalies they face. However, much to his surprise, Mallet never mentions a word of it to her, and never brings it up or even jokes about it to Vires.
Mallet and Lillith never hang out one on one, but Vires eventually starts almost tolerating Mallet tagging along when hanging out with her now and then.
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