An Odd Couple, But With Six People Instead

I think I've officially abandoned trying to do these hypothetical teams every other month, considering this one is two months late. Oh well. Have to be in the mood to think about it. With this one, if there's a guiding principle, it was to try and push towards extremes on their personalities. A couple of the characters are extremely loud and hyperactive, and a couple of the others (one in particular) are much more reserved and serious. Just let them ping-pong off each other and see if they amuse or irritate the hell out of each other. Beyond that, I was just picking characters I liked, as usual.

The Leader: Balsa (Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit) - I don't know that Balsa would want to be in charge, but she's probably best suited for it of these five. Typically she's a bodyguard for hire type, but that does put her in the position of being responsible for the well-being of others, so she has to be able to think of what she needs them to being doing, and be aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Which aren't bad qualities for a leader to have.

But convincing her to rely on the strengths of others to get things done is another matter. She's used to doing most everything herself. Not that she won't accept help if she has no other choice, but she normally has to be in a situation where she has no choice. For example, being so badly injured she can't doing anything other than lie there and accept medical treatment.

She can be stern and unforgiving; she has certain rules she tries to live by, but she does show a sense of humor when there's a chance to relax. Given enough time around a person, she may loosen up and be friendly. Or if they give her enough grief, she may haul off and deck them.

Most of the other members of the team are as stubborn as she is, so there may be a lot of head-butting going on. Getting anyone on this team to sit down and take five minutes to heal is going to be a challenge, unless they all collapse at the same time.

The Rogue: Excel (Excel Saga) - Excel is the Rogue, not so much because she'll hold allegiance to another organization above this team, but because there is almost no way of knowing what she will do at any given moment.

Excel is a hyperactive idiot. Deadpool on greenies, but with much less competence. She works for a secret organization, ACROSS, dedicated to saving the world by conquering it. Recognizing that's a tall order, they opted to start by taking over one section of one city, as a trial run. Excel fails at most every mission she's assigned. Usually because she won't slow down and take five seconds to think about what she's doing before she does it.

And yet, this approach has led her to prevent alien invasions, zombie outbreaks, and keeping the secret base from being completely flooded. She's strong and fast when the situation requires it (and when she isn't on the verge of collapsing from starvation). She isn't likely to abandon ACROSS, not with her fanatical crush on her leader, Il Palazzo, so she's most likely here because the team has something Il Palazzo wants. Either that or this is somehow the part-time job she's stumbled into to pay the rent. For the team's sake, it's probably better if she's on a mission. Her part-time jobs don't last long before she destroys everything.

Since Excel can't keep her mouth shut, and will no doubt reveal she works for ACROSS in the first 5 minutes, the best chance the team has is to take the Inspector Gadget approach. Get her into a location under the auspices of carrying out her daily mission for ACROSS, then count on her to do something useful for the team by accident instead. As long as what you need from her is destruction, it should turn out alright.

The Muscle: Black Star/Tsubaki (Soul Eater) - Kind of a cheat to pick a duo. I could just pick one, make them half to function without their partner. But they're kind of a microcosm of this team overall, and so this way things are more balanced between the manics and the stoics.

Black Star hunts down people who commit vile acts before they can become a full-fledged demon, essentially. He's supposed to specialize in assassinations, but he likes being the center of attention. So rather than strike silently from the shadows, he will leap into the middle of his enemies and shout out his name and how he's going to surpass God. Tsubaki is his partner, who can turn into a variety of weapons he wields. She's calm, shy really, extremely patient and supportive of Black Star in spite of the fact he frequently screws up their missions. In turn, Tsubaki draws strength from his confidence in her and himself. If the guy thinks he's going to surpass God one day, and that you are the perfect partner to help him do it, then you must be pretty awesome too.

For all his over-the-top attitude, Black Star is extremely strong for someone in his early teens, and pushes himself constantly, at least physically. He's not so good on the intellectual side of things, but I think he's one of those people that is listening even when you think he's not. When things get truly serious, he'll show that he has learned the lessons others were trying to teach. This doesn't keep him from overreaching, challenging people outside his weight class, and he takes the losses hard. In the darker moments, it drives him to pursue power for its own sake, rather than with any greater purpose, which almost got him killed once (and did get basically his entire family killed when he was a baby). He seemed to have got his mind clear on that score by the end of the anime, but I suppose he could always fall back into bad habits if things go south for long enough.

The Lady of Mystery: Lala-Ru (Now and Then, Here and There) - She's much older than she appears, and has a pendant that has a massive reservoir of water inside it. She's the only one who can release the water, and it's tied to her life force. Release it all and that's it for her. Since she lived on a desert world, that meant people have been trying to capture and use her for most of her very long life.

So she tends to be very reserved, calmly accepting the greed and brutality of humanity, which is old hat to her by this point. Maybe resigned is a better word for it. The same patterns playing out again and again. She's patient, because the people after her generally know they can't kill her if they want that water. So they'll try to bargain or plead or threaten, but there's nothing she wants or that they can take. So it's really just killing time while she waits for an opportunity to escape.

That said, she can still care about people given time. She's received little enough kindness in her life that when people try to help or protect her, it can surprise her. Of course, the trade-off is that then there's someone she cares about that can be used as a lever against her.

I expect Lala-Ru is the one that draws everyone together. She was able to escape her world to another dimension briefly before being pursued and captured. In this version, she wound up in a different dimension, and met another person willing to defend, but better able to do it than the well-meaning kid she met originally. The ones initially chasing her aren't going to give up - they're following a lunatic of a king, so it's succeed or be executed - but I'd expect other people in her new home to get wind of her power and take an interest as well. ACROSS, for example.

The One with a Spaceship: Gene Starwind (Outlaw Star) - Whether he can use the starship is reliant on him having enough money to pay for fuel and upkeep. He was in massive debt pretty much throughout the entire series, always promising to pay people back when he 'made it big.' Also, if his crew is gone, then he's minus his tech genius of a partner, who handled a lot of the repairs himself to help keep costs down.

Gene was, like Balsa, a gun for hire. He's kind of a jack-of-all-trades, but calls himself an outlaw. Again though, he has his principles. There are jobs he's not going to take, and if he's trying to protect someone, he won't abandon them simply because things start to get ugly. He's very cocky, a smartass who tends to hide what he's really feeling behind a smirk. A lot of times, he can be very casual about big fights or threats against his life, but he doesn't want to die, he just tends to think he's invincible because he hasn't died so far. Plus, I think he knows his partner Jim would insist on them coming up with a strategy. He can treat it like he's just humoring his friend, but he appreciates it and he will stick to their plans for as long as he can. Hard to say whether, with Jim MIA, Gene will try to come up with plans on his own, or if he'll just trying winging it full-time. And if he does try to make an actual strategy, whether he can make it work without Jim. There isn't anyone remotely close to a computer or engineering whiz on this roster to fill that void.

He's not bad at improvising when necessary, adapting to new threats. He's fairly tough, as long as he doesn't get too cocky. I expect Balsa is probably going to kick his ass at least once during all this, whether Gene underestimates her or not. If he does, it'll just take less time. He's not as much of a ladies' man as he thinks, but he has enough charm that he can make friends easily, sometimes. Sometimes, it goes the other way and he just pisses people off quickly.