Missile ~ A Courageous Little Animal

[valiantdoggie]

basics

name: Missile
canon: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
age: 2 (in human years)
appearance: A brown and cream Pomeranian. Adorable.

history

Missile is the pet dog of one Miss Lynne and protector of Miss Kamila. Life was fairly uneventful aside from the lady next door pounding on the wall to make Missile shut up and Miss Lynne chasing after him with a broom, at least until one fateful night when a stranger with a gun came to visit and shot him, and then a ghost named Sissel saved his life.

He eventually ended up as a ghost himself. It's a long story.

personality

Missile is a dog, and a toy breed no less, which comes with its own brand of "excitable". He doesn't understand a lot of things, but that's okay: he expects to not understand a lot. One thing is certain, and that is that he will do anything to protect his mistresses. That is, when he's not busy barking "WELCOME!" at mysterious strangers with guns sneaking into the house.

Barking is really all he's good at.

While he's graduated from chasing after round things, he will chase after rats and little girls, barking excitedly all the while.

All the same, don't make fun of him. He might not get that you are, but he can still pick up when he's being mocked.

abilities

While barking is all he's really good at ("There really isn't much else in life!"), as a ghost, he can speak to other spirits in the land of the dead, even humans, as "speech" works more like thoughts being directly transferred into someone's mind. There are no hidden thoughts among ghosts, not that it matters since Missile always says what he thinks anyway.

As no time passes in the land of the dead, long conversations can happen in the matter of an instant. It is also in the land of the dead that Missile is able to travel around by cores, which for him appear on non-living objects. While his reach is fairly long, it is still limited, hence the need to travel in such a way.

He also gains the powers of the dead. These "ghost tricks" are abilities that can influence and manipulate things (usually objects) once their core has been possessed. They differ from individual to individual, and can and will change as time passes, with some skills getting weaker while new ones develop. These abilities can only be used while a spirit is in the real world.

"ghost swap"

Missile's main ability consists of being able to swap objects have the same shape. In-game, they actually need to look the same from a certain angle/direction e.g. a knit hat that can be swapped with a book when flattened can be swapped with a bullet when hanging from a hook.

This can only be used on non-living things. Corpses are also out.

"replay"

This ability involves possessing the core of a person who has recently died and then being able to rewind and replay the four minutes before their moment of death as many times as Missile wishes in an unusual brand of time travel. This is useful for trying to influence events to avert the person's original fate. It's also possible to travel further back in time by possessing the corpse of a person who has died recently before the death of the original person whose corpse was possessed.

Example 1: Possessing Person A's corpse and hopping around the cores of the events before their death can lead to the discovery of Person B's corpse. Saving B's life might not change A's fate too much, but if you save B, then "return" to save A, then both are alive when you return to the original time.

Example 2: Events caused by Person B's death led to Person A's death, so saving B means that the timeline of the events leading to A's death is erased and both are saved.

Timelines get a little complicated if you start thinking about them too much. Thankfully Missile isn't the type to do that.

When rewinding time, it is possible to take other ghosts along for the ride (or they can just tag along and not have anyone notice) even if they don't have the ability to do so, which can lead to a lot of hilarity from the peanut gallery watching the events unfold. Only the spirits "present" for the change will remember what the original timeline was like.

Regarding cores: non-living objects in general have cores. Living people tend not to unless you have the ability to manipulate them. However, corpses, as a sort of in-between, will develop a core if a user of "ghost tricks" is unable to see them when they were living.

Spirits of the recently dead will start off unconscious, but may "wake up" given time. They will also have trouble remembering who they are or anything at all (or actively try not to remember): seeing their own corpse can speed up the process of getting their memory back.

If they are conscious and happen to travel back in time with Missile when he averts their fate, they will continue to have a core which Missile (and other ghosts) can reach out to to speak with them in the land of the dead. Otherwise the core vanishes. However, it is important to note that when Missile is replaying a person's death, cores of people who he has rescued before do not appear so he can't directly interact with them.

misc.

As you can maybe see, since he's a video game character, he sometimes emphasises certain key words or phrases in red. Although for some reason, sometimes it's not actually that important and seems a bit random. At least he does it less than other characters. His thoughts might appear in (blue), although he's never shown to do that in canon so who knows.

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