Ramen

A super-stellar smash hit superstar!!! Easily the coolest guy you've ever met, if you can get past his massive ego, that is. He's calm and level headed in a fight, combined with having extremely sharp and well-refined skills, making him an incredible challenge to defeat. Clocking in at 6'11" (210cm) and weighing well over 100kg with an extremely chilled out, lazy and self-congratulatory demeanor, many slingers new to the competitive scene will dismiss him as a large, stupid oaf. However, despite his looks (and some extremely dumb and very public past mistakes), Ramen is extremely shrewd and cunning, knowing how to manipulate and swindle his way to the top. He also possesses extremely high intellect, however, this is often overshadowed by his natural impulsiveness and his ego cultivated by success. 

Ramen holds very few people in high regard. If he deems someone unworthy of his respect (which is the case with most people), he'll become extremely rude and dismissive, almost condescending toward them. It's this that makes him extremely tough to live or work alongside, with Ramen becoming increasingly insufferable over the course of the relationship. This leads to him often burning bridges as quickly as he builds them. 

Like his master Theresa before him, for all his public sporting life, he's stayed single and available (leading to him receiving some rater...risque fan letters).  

Ramen was born somewhere in a far flung cavern, in a small, arid town, tucked away from mainstream civilisation. The people living there were generally tall and heavyset, thus Ramen's physique, and it was a place thrumming with life and culture. However, due to continental disruption in that area, and Ramen's hometown's complete isolation, only a few months after Ramen's birth, his home was completely flattened by consecutive landslides. This killed  or mortally wounded most of the residents. But Ramen, being the child of the village leader, was kept in relative safety, surviving a majority of the disasters and eventually found by Theresa and Will Shane. The fate of his parents is still unknown. 

From that point on, Ramen was raised by Theresa, and shared an extremely close and parental relationship with her. Under her care and guidance, Ramen flourished into one of the best slugslingers Slugterra had ever seen, second only to the likes of Will Shane and Theresa herself. At seven, he won his first tournament, absolutely decimating the competition and instantly establishing himself as a champion for the ages. He has since, with very few exceptions, won every single competition he's entered.  

Everything was going well, until, when he was 12, Theresa was almost killed whilst on a peacekeeping voyage with Will Shane. After spending 6 months in a comatose state, Theresa awoke, severely weakened albeit determined to return to the competition scene. Although she had the motivation to return, she was in no physical condition, and rejected all attempts made to help her, even from Ramen. The countless hours Ramen spent waiting, watching Theresa destroy herself in a vain attempt to become able to compete again almost broke him. Despite his begging and pleading, she refused to back down, this leading to the end of her sporting career in a fiery loss to Will Shane. Because of this, Ramen possesses an extreme hatred for Shane. 

 However, when she was 37, Theresa killed herself, and Ramen was almost destroyed. A charred, unrecognisable corpse was all he had left of his idol, his master, his mother. In response, he took two years off the competitive scene to grieve, before finally having the courage to open the will Theresa left for him, realising what Theresa had been searching for preceding her demise. All of her time, following the untimely end of her sporting career, was spent pouring over books and manuscripts, trying to find something that would grant her 'ultimate power'. In her will, Theresa specified multiple hypothetical locations for the 'object', and Ramen almost immediately took off to find it. 

After spending almost six months on the road, and scratching almost all locations off, having found nothing, Ramen narrowed the object's location down - a cave that led to the surface, blocked off. 

But fear not!! He then heard of a group, a whole group, dedicated to finding the surface, which he immediately sought out to find. 

When he got there, it became apparent to him that this "Burning Syndicate" was just a bunch of kids. He joined anyway, imposing himself and throwing his weight around in order to get his way. There were three members in the group; there was Rhoden, or Rat, a technical specialist and a burning world fanatic, Cyprus, who didn't seem to know what he was doing, and then there was Ketch. Ketch seemed to be the dumbest out of the entire group, with slow wit and seemingly no common sense whatsoever. 

Ramen found him hard to understand. It seemed like he was just in this group by proximity to Rat, who he had been living with since moving out from his family home. Every now and again, he would express some interest in the "Burning World", however, he didn't seem awfully knowledgeable about it, and mostly stayed to the sidelines whilst the group conducted research. But there was something about him, that blissful naivety, that Ramen found himself wanting to protect. He seemed unaware of what he was getting himself into; the can of worms the group could be prying open, should they arrive at the "Burning World". However, despite his demeanor, Ramen came to respect Ketch as a slinger. Ketch moved erratically, his movements hard to predict, his bows hard to dodge. Ramen became sure that if they were to fight in the competitive scene, he would only just scrape through. More than this though, Ketch was easy to talk to, and Ramen found himself wanting to lay himself bare, discuss things he'd never discussed. Theresa. Shane. His origins. His insecurities (which he'd thought he'd long since buried). Above all else, Ramen wanted to be close to Ketch. He decided that he'd protect him at all costs. 

For the most part, he got on well with Cyprus, the short little dude who just seemed to vibe. They talked about a lot of stuff, especially late at night (both were fond of late-night snacks), and in general, Ramen found it easy to mosey up against him. In his head, Ramen rationalised that Cyprus would be easy to manipulate and use as a pawn in Ramen's quest to the surface. However, as time went on, Ramen found himself liking Cyprus more and more, and wanting to spend more time with him. Cyprus was becoming friends with him, and Ramen wasn't sure how he should feel.

However, he didn't share the same cordial relationship with the leader of this gig, Rhoden or Rat. Right off the bat, Rat seemed to smell a, well, rat. A rat in the form of Ramen. Rat just didn't trust him, and Ramen didn't like it. Rat was extremely shrewd in character, cold, calculating and analysing, and completely untrusting. He watched Ramen like a hawk, tailing his ever move and listening in on conversations. Of course, Ramen was selective about what he said and did, and Rat never found out. But he's still ever-suspicious, trying to catch Ramen out on a lie. But Ramen is shiftier than that, sneakier than that. He'll never let himself be caught, least of all by a measly Rat. 

He'll avenge Theresa. He has to. 

~ 

Eventually