application for ryansgulch

[emboldened]

☞ Player Information;
Name: Ink
Player Journal: inkpens
Age: 25
Contact: AIM; commandgold, E-mail; commandgold@gmail.com
Other characters currently played at Ryan's Gulch: None at the moment, though I previously played Alex(seawall) from Sea Wall.

☞ Character Information;
Character Name: James T. Kirk
Canon: Star Trek AOS
OU or AU?: OU.
Canon point: Towards the end of Star Trek: Into Darkness

Setting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Into_Darkness (contains spoilers for recent film)
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Into_Darkness (contains spoilers for recent film)

History:
Kirk was born merely seconds before his father died saving eight hundred lives aboard the USS Kelvin. His mother took the death hard, and suffered post-partum depression after her son was born, gaining help from her sister and raising both an infant James and a three year old Sam while simultaneously performing Engineering tasks for Starfleet. While she was easily able to work at the Riverside Shipyard, she never had been comfortable staying on Earth long, and often was gone for long periods of time into space.

James and Sam grew up together and were close, especially when their mother brought them to live with their uncle, Frank. Frank was a simple man when Winona was off planet -- he was angry, sometimes, especially when he drank -- and Sam suffered the brunt of most of the man's rage. At age thirteen, Sam promised Jim that they would get out of under Frank's roof, and promised Jim that he would come back for him, leaving behind a broken-hearted eleven year old kid to wash his father's car just so his uncle could sell it for a pretty penny.

This was when an eleven year old James T. Kirk decided it would be an absolutely great idea to throw a 1966 classic Corvette over the cliff, an act of anger and frustration wrought by a kid who had problems with authority from the very beginning.

Throughout his teenage years, Jim was a rebellious, whip crack-smart kid - getting into trouble more often than not, that car incident having never quite left his mind. He drove motorcycles that his dad had restored, had a tendency of breaking the law once or twice or several times, and mostly managed to talk his way out of it(He was, as Pike called him, the first genius-level repeat offender that Iowa had ever seen). Jim grew to find out that he liked sex, liked sex a lot, liked women, liked women a lot, and tended to go on his way impressing them with his charm and wit. From about age eighteen until he was twenty-two, seedy bars held this certain kind of allure for him - the women were usually loose and fast and easy, and Jim liked drinking piss poor beers and chatting up the ladies.

Soon enough, one fateful night, he managed to meet Miss Uhura, and proceeded to have the living shit beaten out of him by her fellow cadets. This wasn't exactly unusual -- but tonight seemed to be the exception to the rule. Despite having his nose broken and bleeding out on a table with probably a few cracked ribs, Jim felt everything lift up off him at once with a loud, loud whistle. It took him a few minutes before he determined that he probably didn't have a concussion despite the pounding he'd taken, thanking Captain Pike and offering to buy him a beer for his trouble. The two of them talked for a good ten minutes or so, Pike making remarks about Jim's aptitude tests being off the chart, reminding him of the man that Jim Kirk had been reminded of all his life - his father, and his father's legacy. Sure, Jim knew the story by heart, heard it every damn day it seemed, but when Pike talked about it, talked about his father and then turned right around and told him - dared him to do better, Jim had to shut up and stare away from him, contemplating the next step, contemplating for those precious few hours of the morning exactly what and exactly who he was going to be.

At 0800 hours, bright and early, Jim drove up to the Riverside shipyard and threw the keys of the restored hover bike to a passing security man who'd admired his bike, and walked into the shuttle, out of uniform - one of only two people who were. Jim barely noticed an argument as a woman dragged a drunken man out of the lavatory, only barely hearing it through a hungover haze when she told him to sit down, barking orders at him, and the mollified doctor had a seat next to him, warning him about possibly throwing up on him. A conversation started, and continued all the way to San Francisco - where both Jim Kirk and Leonard McCoy were colleagues in Starfleet Academy. The two of them were fast friends, remarkably, the gruff doctor a decent doctor and an even better drinking partner. Jim started calling him Bones - after 'sawbones', an old, ancient term used to describe doctors.

During this time, Jim continued along his reckless, carefree lifestyle. He went to classes, gladly, certainly, passed them with flying colors. Starfleet really was the place for him, he was challenged and the subject material was fascinating to him. But that didn't stop him from going out to bars on the weekends, bringing back women and for the first few times in his life, men. In his first year, Kirk developed somewhat of a nasty reputation as being a heartbreaker and a bit of a playboy, rumors of him sleeping with about half the academy flying around, only grains of truth amidst all of them.

The Koboyashi Maru changed everything. That test, that test that they said no one could pass - it got in Jim's head and twisted and turned, and he told himself that he wanted to pass it, screw the odds. The first time had been a failure, a random occurrence in his second year after Gary failed it, a test to prove he'd be better at being a captain. Jim obsessed over it, studied it extensively for a good four months as he finished out his second year at the academy, and then took it once again upon returning for a third year. This time, despite doing everything he felt necessarily correct, he missed the test by four crewmen dying out there in the middle of the simulation. Jim continued obsessing over it, finally realizing that there was no right answer, no particular way to beat the Koboyashi Maru...

Well, unless he cheated.

The fact that he was sleeping with one of the test's administrators, Gaila, at the time helped his case quite a bit. Gaila was smart, pretty, funny, and could keep up with him in bed - she was one of those rare girls that Jim liked to sleep with, slept with more than once. The plan was for him to tell her to open up the subroutine at three o'clock, to take a bit of advantage of her playful charm and see if she'd do it for him.

But then she told him that she loved him. And, well, that just made everything complicated. Jim kept his mouth shut, told her to check her messages at three for something special, and got shoved under the bed when an early Uhura came back to her dormitory.

He took the test - the subroutine worked, and passed it. After two failed attempts, the impossible became possible - Kirk passed Spock's "unbeatable" test. Thus began Kirk and Spock's animosity, and Spock took notice of the young Jim Kirk for the first time in his life.

At the resultant hearing of whether or not Kirk cheated, Starfleet received a distress signal from Vulcan that indicated the appearance of a lightning storm in space, and the cadets were mobilized to help crew the ships in orbit. In a moment's decision that could've expelled them both, McCoy smuggled the grounded Kirk aboard the USS Enterprise as a patient under his care. Kirk recognized the similarities between the Vulcan incident and the encounter that destroyed the Kelvin, and warned Pike that the fleet was heading into a trap.

Even still, it was nearly too late. The enemy ship captured Captain Pike, leaving Spock as first-in-command, and planet Vulcan destroyed by the red matter. Kirk's naturally argumentative attitude clashed with Spock's steady sense of logic, wanting desperately to seek revenge for both his father's death and the destruction of a planet. At threat of a mutiny, Spock had Kirk marooned on Delta Vega -- on which a rather odd series of events occurred. For one, Kirk met Spock -- but not the current one, who had only just gotten rid of him. No, Kirk met Spock Prime -- a wise, intelligent, older and a tad bit more rational version of Spock from the alternate dimension. He also met Montgomery Scott, a revolutionary engineer who could do the impossible, and Spock Prime supplied Scott with the formula he needed for trans-warp beaming. Both Scotty and Kirk transported back onto the ship at warp speed, and came face to face with Spock.

Kirk had to do what Spock Prime had advised him, making the younger version of the man emotionally compromised and incapable of being captain of his vessel. It was then that James T. Kirk finally took his rightful seat in the captain's chair - as Acting Captain of the USS Enterprise - for the first time, negating Spock's previous decision to go back and join with the fleet. With the help of Ensign Chekov and Spock's interjection, the complete crew of the USS Enterprise devised a plan to take the shot at the Narada, a last hope so-to-speak to save the Earth from certain destruction.

It worked. Kirk saved Captain Pike, the world, and the lives of millions and millions of human beings. He was commended on a job well done upon his return, and promoted to the rank of Captain of the USS Enterprise to replace the now-Admiral Pike. Those of his crew who had stepped into the positions set aside for them, were also promoted, and at the very last minute, Commander Spock came on board as his first officer.

Despite everything going remarkably well for him thus far, the next time we see our captain is running away from a species on the planet of Nibiru. The scene goes on to reveal that the crew of the USS Enterprise are working to save a planet from extinction from a volcano -- all going according to plan, until Spock is abandoned in a volcano to set off his device. Jim's slapdash decision-making comes into play again, and he's ordering the Enterprise to go back for him, to maintain a line of vision and be able to pull the half-Vulcan to safety. By saving his first officer's life, however, he has broken the Prime Directive - a fact which he keeps well hidden away in his Captain's log of the events, describing it as 'uneventful'.

Spock however, reports the activity and he and Captain Kirk are pulled into Admiral Pike's office. Kirk is hurt that Spock would file the report, angry that his recklessness in saving his friend's life is repaid by the first officer "ratting him out" in his accounts.("Never trust a Vulcan.") His meeting with Pike is ended with the Admiral telling him he's lost his ship, as is mandated, and that he's going to be on trial for his actions on planet Nibiru. He's obviously hurt by Pike's accusations - that he's "not ready for the position", and that he "doesn't respect the chair". We next see him in a bar, reminiscent of the scene wherein Pike first picked him up, drinking. Pike comes to him yet again, sitting between him and a gorgeous woman, giving him the news that he's taken over the Enterprise and demoted Kirk to his first officer.

While everything has been happening, a terrorist attack is seen taking place at the Kelvin Memorial Archive in London, a product of a man known as John Harrison. A session is called to convene of the Captains and First Officers in the region, and only minutes after the session begins, Kirk notices something strange - the destruction of an archive isn't damaging. It hardly seems like a place for a terrorist threat, the more likely target being a meeting in which important people are present - and just as he mentions the possibility of it being a trap, a hovership shines lights into the windows of Starfleet headquarters.

The attack on the building leaves at least one man dead, and John Harrison escaping through a specialized teleportation device aboard his ship. Kirk is reeling from the attack, returning from shooting the ship down only to find the casualty in Spock's hands - Admiral Pike is dead, the most influential father figure Kirk has ever truly had in his life. He cries on his chest for only seconds, seconds before pulling himself back up, motivated by his rage to find the man responsible. He begs Admiral Marcus to reinstate him as Captain and Spock as his First Officer, and asks to go after him. He's met with an almost surprising yes, and has his ship under his command once more, with the condition that he takes a total of seventy-two specialized torpedos in order to take Harrison out.

Upon closer inspection, his chief engineer refuses to allow the weapons on board the ship, throwing quite a fuss about it when Kirk orders him to sign for it. Scotty resigns his position as a result of the argument, his lasting words telling Kirk not to use those missiles, warning him one last time before heading away, the alien Keenser following him in short demand. Kirk is left somewhat drained by the past several days and encounters, snapping at Bones for having a tricorder in his face, and releasing his pressures on a slightly unwilling Uhura, telling her that Scotty's just quit and her boyfriend is second guessing him at every turn. It's obvious from this that Kirk is struggling with his power as a captain, more specifically, shaken by the fact that he might not be ready, as Pike had pointed out. He's pushing through the anger however, and his crew is en route to a Klingon planet that Harrison is stationed at.

Just before reaching enemy space territory, the ship drops out of warp, the newly promoted Chief Engineer Chekov scrambling to get things sorted. While they're stuck in enemy territory they have no other choice but to go after the man personally, Kirk deferring to Spock's insistence that Harrison have a trial. He and Spock and Uhura form a landing party into the uninhabited region, only to be swarmed down by the Klingons. Despite having a great chance of being killed, they are saved -- surprisingly, by John Harrison himself, the man dropping down, gun aimed towards the three of them, wild-eyed and asking just how many torpedoes are on board the ship. As soon as the answer is given, the man completely surrenders, dropping his weapons, refusing to fight back even when an angry, furious Jim Kirk punches and flails wildly at him, angry at Pike's death. There's no damage, even though each blow seems to hit, that impermeable face staring back at him like an adult with a foolish child.

John Harrison is taken to the brig, where he reveals his true identity. He is Khan, a three-hundred year old augment who, along with seventy-two members of his crew, was frozen in cryogenic sleep. It's revealed that he's been strong-armed by Admiral Marcus into helping create weapons for an upcoming war, his family and crew members used against him in order to blackmail into working on Starfleet's side. Upon what Khan believes to be the destruction of his crew, the disappearance of the torpedoes he's attempted to smuggle away, Khan has decided to declare his vengeance against Admiral Marcus and what he stands for, thus his actions against Starfleet. He provides insight on perhaps why Kirk may be stuck on the outer regions of enemy space, stating implicitly that Marcus has sent him here on purpose to rid him of both Khan and Jim Kirk, as well as start a rift between the Klingons and the Federation.

The arrival of Admiral Marcus in a ship meant for the battalion, hardly the exploration of space, seems to confirm Khan's theories. Faced with a common enemy, Kirk agrees to work with Khan in order to gain access to the other man's ship and take him from the inside and stop what could be the destruction of them both and the beginning of a war with the Klingon empire. Despite Khan showing a kindness to him in making certain the both of them are able to aboard the ship, even though Kirk's displays have broken, he still does not trust him. As soon as they are a step behind, he turns to Scotty and tells him to stun him as soon as they get to Marcus, trying to avoid a more violent scene than necessary.

The plan backfires - Khan falls, but almost immediately gets back up, his superhuman capabilities to withstand making it all too easy to recover from his stunned position. Immediately there's a mad panic as he takes out Scotty, and then grabs Kirk, getting in a few blows to the captain before knocking him all the way across the bridge. He kills Admiral Marcus in the process, killing him

There's a transmission to the Enterprise, threatening to kill the entire crew unless Khan's torpedoes are returned aboard his ship. Fortunately, Spock has a plan, working with Dr. McCoy in order to remove the cryogenically frozen augments from the torpedoes before transporting them to the other ship, immediately firing upon them as soon as the trio is beamed aboard. The chase back to Earth is rocky, and with their shields at six percent, Spock gives the command to detonate the torpedoes on board. Despite damage done to the enemy ship, Enterprise is losing power and fast -- the culprit a misalignment with the warp core. Considering the engine power and shields are lost, it seems like a lost hope, the ship ensured to be incinerated upon re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere.

The Captain and the engineer, Kirk and Scotty are rushing as fast as they can to engineering, knowing that it's nearly impossible to stabilize the ship from anywhere else. Through gravity malfunctions and the slow oncoming ascent of Earth, the two of them race to try to stabilize everything - only to find the alignment entirely gone, the ship dead. As Kirk receives this news, able to make sense of schematics that show his ship, he races into the warp core, past a locked door to keep them from fatal radiation. He knocks out his Chief Engineer before climbing into the core itself to realign it manually with a grueling few kicks, nearly falling in the process, finally striking down and down again, swinging the conduit into place. When the coupling link is snapped into place and back to life, he's knocked down from the core, only barely able to crawl to the door that separates him from the rest of the ship.

In his final moments before the radiation poisoning kills him, he's notified that he's saved his crew, that Spock is his friend, and that his ship is saved.


Personality: James T. Kirk. He's bold, brash, and cleverer than he seems at first point, often times picking the most brilliant ideas out of thin air. At first glance, Kirk would be considered either childish or standoffish, depending on how you approach him and his mood. He's got a youthful enthusiasm that leaks through at every point in his being, nearly to the point of recklessness, which is shown at several points in his canon as being both a benefit and a drawback in his role as captain of his ship. While he is reckless, he does so in a way that at first may seem like luck. Most of what occurs seems to happen through sheer force of will, or proper circumstance when the stars align and things just seem to benefit Kirk and his crew. While Kirk is of course very lucky, a lot of what spurs his slapdash decision-making is a quick wit and a breadth of knowledge that very few people close to him are privy to.

In one of our first interactions with the captain, we see him take on an impossible task in his academy days - the Koboyashi Maru. A test that no one has yet won, a command simulation that Kirk manipulates the coding of to make certain that he's able to overcome(and therefore win) the simulation. We see from this example that he's not at all a saint by any means, willing to do whatever he can to make certain he can win - citing Pike's earlier conversation regarding his father and his no-win scenarios when brought in for question. Kirk is manipulative, going so far as to use another cadet to gain access into the testing system codes, but not in a way that's meant to be hurtful or cruel. He simply has a stubborn desire to win, a constant drive to succeed in his own particular situation, even if it's at a detriment to himself or someone else. We also can gather from this that he's again, highly more intelligent than he comes across, especially in a tech-savvy way - not many people can hack a test of Spock's own design, and Jim Kirk managed to do so with a shit-eating grin on his face and an apple in hand.

He's an extrovert in a big way. Kirk feels most comfortable around people, in crowded places - when he goes to find solace, when he's got a troubled mind, the first place he'll jet to is a social place, usually a bar. He's great with social graces, fluid in social situations, but we do see that he keeps most people at a comfortably safe distance. He only has a few very close friends that he relies on constantly for validation and allows them to see his weaknesses, and tries to keep them near him. When he's on his own, he tends to over think, and tends to brood more than he likes - he somewhat needs people. For all his ego and confidence, he can still be brought down to proverbial Earth, and even he knows he needs that. He has a very hard time with abandonment, brought on by his father's absence in his life and lack of a decent father figure until Pike shows up. He's an attention-seeker, to the point where he gets bored easy if the spotlight's not on him, and when Kirk gets bored, he gets impulsive. He's a fighter, brought on by bar brawls and a more well-trained background in hand-to-hand combat experience in Starfleet, and he seems to have grown an ability to mostly ignore physical pain.

While he wouldn't be described as death-defying by any means, Kirk regularly throws himself into danger's way. He would rather himself be in the line of fire than anyone else, especially if that anyone else belongs to his crew. He also has a desire to protect life in general, evident by risking his first officer in a stunt to protect a planet Starfleet's never even had contact with in order to keep them from being eradicated by a volcano. He's at his core, a good-hearted person who wants what's best, despite whatever consequences he may render. He's still very young for a Captain in Starfleet, and some of his decisions have reflected that. He's humbled by his mistakes that he's made, and attempts to make good on them as best he can, despite the great cost it has to him.

Abilities: He has no extraordinary abilities that really would translate to Ryan's Gulch, other than a gift for technology and a gut feeling that usually works out for the best for him.

How did your character arrive in Rapture? Teleportation malfunction.

Network sample: [ The EZWave isn't exactly a PADD. Doesn't quite work the same way, but Kirk's been working on it for a while now, curiously picking it apart and putting it back together. He's not really used to this - technology that seems to be ancient yet smart all at the same time, it's kind of this place all over, isn't it? Kirk's put together how to use it well enough, and the video flickers on, showing a bright, beaming, blond captain. ]

This is broadcasting, isn't it? Good. James T. Kirk, here. I'm hoping one of you might be able to shed some light on the situation. [ He's not quite used to a handheld display, evident by the fact his camera angle sort of shakes, sort of shimmies from side to side when he moves. ] I've gone through some archives - asked around. There's a lot of people who haven't...been here a long time, if you know what I mean, which I'm sure a lot of you do. People that were put here. I'm one of those people -- I'm willing to help find a way out.

[ He's determined, not at all wavering in that decision. ] Even if there's not one, according to some. I need to speak to the person in charge here. There's got to be someone around that knows what's going on.

Log sample: He feels the same way about this place as he felt on his first day on a brand-new planet. Lost. The timeframe itself is confusing - Kirk is usually used to either primitive, uninformed tribalistic species - class M planets, mostly, or the more advanced, slightly-different alien worlds that they've explored. Very rarely does he feel like he's only dropped back three hundred years or so, with brightly colored advertisements blinking above, little mechanical vending machines tinkling melodies as he walks by. There's nothing that would indicate alien to him, really, the people he's seen have been human, all of them, if not slightly off, behavior-wise.

But he still feels lost. There's something strange about this place, something that throws him off balance. It might be the lack of the Enterprise, the fact that he's got no contact with his ship, not even a blip on the radar. That's never unsettled him before, but right now he feels trapped. Even on planets he has entire worlds to get lost in; he whips out a tricorder and starts searching for something that he's never seen before. This place seems stifling. Kirk already feels like he's walked the entirety of the city, even though he knows that's impossible at this point. He's fairly certain he's just walked in a circle - the world just all sort of looks the same, the same, dreary, underwater scene right outside the window, light beaming in. Sure. It's great.

But for a man who usually feels so small in the expanses of space, it's enough to suffocate. He's never been claustrophobic before, but he's starting to think he might be developing the signs. He takes a deep breath and stops in the bar (swears he's been by this place three or four times by now) and takes himself a seat, thankful that beer hasn't changed for God knows how long. At least they've got something right.

Or - not right. Jim takes one sip of the watered down bottled beer and makes an immediate face, glancing back up at the bartender with a pained expression. "Uh. You got anything else? Could really use something stronger, I think." Just what he needs.