Firetail Taragon Jr.

"No need for introductions. You know who I am and I don't really care who you are."
 -- Firetail Taragon Jr. to Star Liner in Sonic: Top Speed--Part 1: Hanging with Thieves
Firetail Taragon Jr. (also known as Firetail the Halfbreed) is a 17-year old anthropomorphic half breed gray and fennec fox. He was created by R.M. Hunter on Fanfiction.net and appears on the Sonic OC RolePlay Station. He is the leader of a pirate band called The Krait, the members of which are himself, Zack "Volt" Gage, and Krysten "Gobi" Taragon.
== Physical Appearance ==
Firetail has mostly neutral grey fur but his lighter fur is sandy colored instead of the normal white. Another strange defect is the bright orange tip of his tail, which probably gained him the name Firetail. His ears are notably larger than those of a normal grey fox. He stands just under 4 feet and has blood-red eyes. He is almost always seen wearing a bulletproof vest, black combat boots, a heavy utility belt, a rifle sheath on his back, and his chrome knuckles. He is sometimes seen wearing pilot's goggles as well.
== Description ==
=== Personality ===
Firetail thrives on and is almost addicted to action and combat. He arms himself very heavily almost all the time and never is too slow to go for his blaster pistol. He is so used to being hyper-active that when he slows down he gets very irritable and unpredictably violent.
In addition to his trigger-happy state, he is cocky and impulsive. Often he runs into situations without even thinking, incidentally getting himself and his team into deep trouble and then not knowing how to get out. Most of his flaws are countered by his teammates however, but his arrogance still shows strong even then. He also shows extreme disrespect for his superiors.
Aside from his flaws, Firetail is loyal, cautious, and very compassionate as well. Everyone knows that he draws a very definite line between pirating, as he and his teammates do on a regular basis, and murder, an atrocity that even he would never commit. Therefore, when he sees a being murdered, or about to be murdered, he does his best to stop the killer, even at risk of his own life. This has multiple times spared him the death sentence.
Firetail does not like to speak about his past and grows hostile when pressured on the topic.
=== Combat Skills ===
* Assault Rifle - 16 rounds, 35 lbs., range 400 yards, semi-automatic
* Medium Range Laser Pistol (MLRP) - 6 laser shots, 4 lbs., range 120 yards
* Metal/Laser Rings - 2 rings, can be charged with laser, 5 lbs. each, range approx. 40 yards
* Chrome Enforcers - 2 chrome knuckles, 0.25 lbs. each, spikes
* High-Explosive Grenades - 0.875 lbs. each, range 19 yards, blast radius 8 yards
* Toi-Ki - Martial art that improves mobility, utilizing mid-air jumps, flips, rolls, and leaps. Firetail has mastered this art and is now extremely agile.
* Sunami - Martial art that utilizes fist punches and tail swipes over kicks, as well as pressure points. Firetail has mastered this art and, combining with his Chrome Enforcers, is now very lethal.
=== Strengths ===
Firetail has always had the natural talent of imagining something and putting it down on paper. Usually it is in the form of a weapon or likewise. Firetail has designed his own fighter, hoverboard, and even made blueprints for modifications to his blaster.
Although he is not very buff, Firetail has mastered the art of intimidation, utilizing eye contact and gesturing with weapons to make himself an extremely formidable sight. He also has an efficient command voice and is good at striking an intimidating pose.
Firetail owns a small but extremely fast hoverboard that he used to get to and from his job when he worked at TerraStar Industries. He is very proficient with it, mastering tricks and even hoverboard racing skills. He also has a few dirty tricks up his sleeve when racing.
Firetail created his own fighter to suit his own needs and to compliment his own skills, so of course he would be efficient with it. He is the second-best fighter combatant of the group, Gobi being the best. Firetail knows the full abilities of his craft; he designed them! So of course he is not afraid to push the fighter to beyond what it looks like its limits are.
=== Weaknesses ===
Firetail has suffered several concussions over the years that have limited his natural resistance to mental attacks. He succumbs almost instantly to a psychic wave and has absolutely no defense against any type of mind control.
Firetail has no special powers against magic, sorcery, or possession, though the former he is more resistant to. He is fairly vulnerable to Chaos Control but has quite a large amount of resistance to the beings that use Ki.
Firetail is neither right nor left handed, and this can be a problem since he often gets his right and left mixed up. He also lacks major strength in either of his arms and can't land a solid punch like most others can. Therefore he lets his Chrome Enforcers do his damage for him.
Being born with no dominant eye, Firetail found it hard to focus on faraway targets. To solve this problem, he paid for a cybernetic implant; his right eye was to be modified into a mechanical lens that can zoom in and focus on targets at any given range. However, as he usually confuses his left and right, he sometimes forgets which eye has the camera and ends up nauseating himself.
Overall, Firetail's greatest weakness is his lack of a greatest strength.
== History ==
=== The Hidden Years ===
Firetail's past is vastly unknown, mainly due to his complete refusal to share information on the subject. However, he does occasionally hint to his origins, but such instances are rare. He is definitely an orphan, as he sometimes states aloud.
Firetail might have been born on the planet Blenteflork, a technologically behind planet that orbited Epsilon Kronis, the fifth star of the Kronis Constellation. Blenteflork was completely destroyed in the Third War of Kronis by the Draykeon Armada. The theory states that his parents were killed in the catastrophe but sent Firetail away on a starship.
Another spot that people define as his homeworld is Cyris, a much more advanced planet that orbits Alpha Kronis. The disastrous fire that erupted in Cyris City only a few years before the war would explain the death of his parents and his flight to Draykeon.
The final theory is that he was born on Draykeon and his parents found their deaths in the perilous mineshafts. This theory is unsupported as Firetail obviously does not look like a Draykeonian.
=== The Third War of Kronis ===
Firetail's story picks up when he is 14 years old. The Third War of Kronis was coming to a close at that time as the freedom fighters, the Imperial Meiton Navy, were attempting to overthrow the dictator of Draykeon. When the dictator saw that his fleet had been almost completely destroyed, he gave the infamous Order 189.
Order 189 demanded all persons on Draykeon at the time of the decree that were between the ages of 12 and 40 were to be drafted into the Draykeon Armada and trained as fighter pilots for the final defense. Firetail fell victim to the decree and was placed in a lower-tech fighter. His only order was to destroy as many I.M.N. ships before he exploded.
The hastily-assembled defenses were no match for the trained Meiton Navy and were thus utterly destroyed. Somehow Firetail escaped the incident and appeared three months later on Cyris.
=== Post-War Times ===
After the dictator had been removed and Draykeon was back under peaceful rule, Firetail, now 15, stowed away on a star liner that was headed to Meiton. When he arrived on Meiton, he applied and earned the job as a messenger boy working for TerraStar Industries.
Firetail had always had a knack for designing things, and his superiors saw it. Eventually he was promoted to the rank of chief designer and was known as the hardest-working employee of the year. He was happily employed for seven months. During his free time he trained on a hoverboard and designed new combat spacecraft.
=== Formation of The Krait ===
As Firetail was the only 15 year old chief designer the firm had ever had, he started to become prideful and arrogant. Often he disobeyed his superiors' direct orders, demanded better pay, and even used the firm's facilities for his own purposes. Eventually all the tension that he caused led to a huge strike which stopped all production for three weeks.
After the strike was settled, Firetail was discharged from the firm and sent on his way. Angry at TerraStar Industries, he began to believe that all mega-corporations were evil; that they were the ones who started the war in the first place. He began to plot his revenge against the mega-corps for destroying thousands of innocent people (probably referring to the Order 189 incident), killing even more military personnel in the past 3 wars that the Kronis Constellation has had, and for killing his parents, who obviously died in the Third War.
Firetail looked to the stars to execute his plan of revenge. He had already designed a new type of combat fighter and paid a rival company to build it for him. He dubbed the fighter class Colubrina, named after the genus of the venomous yellow-lipped sea krait, which was to become his team name.
Taking his brand new craft back to Cyris, Firetail met his best friend Zack Gage at the Cyris City Spaceport. The two had previously worked together at TerraStar Industries. Zack had quit his job when Firetail was discharged, and Firetail revealed his plan for revenge: he was going to use his new fighter to disrupt trade between all of the mega corporations. Zack agreed.
Eventually teaming up with his half-cousin Gobi, Firetail formed The Krait, a pirate group of Colubrina fighters that raid transports and liners for money and food. They have recently been working as bounty hunters as well, but only choosing targets that are already wanted by the law.
== Relationships ==
Krysten "Gobi" Taragon
Gobi is Firetail's only surviving family member; she is his half-cousin. Because of this he is almost always protective over her, placing her in areas that he feels are safe while he and Volt go out and do the 'man' stuff. However he does not overlook her abilities as some are better than his own. They are very close and Gobi even allows Firetail to call her by his pet name for her, Krys.
Zack "Volt" Gage
Firetail and Volt have been best friends ever since they met at TerraStar Industries. Volt has always been the sidekick of sorts, while Firetail often takes the spotlight. However this doesn't stop Volt from sometimes completely disobeying Firetail's orders. When left unsupervised (without Gobi) they can be more rowdy and destructive than a late Friday night party.
== Forum Appearances ==
=== Play: OC Area ===
Firetail's first and most prominent appearance was as the himself. As the leader of The Krait who have been forced to remain on Mobius due to an Imperial blockade in the Kronis region of the galaxy, he and his crew have set up base in a remote section of the forest surrounding Empire City. After a fierce rival battle between him and Nico resulted in an apparent draw, the two became allies and Firetail joined the group to fight the Factory operation.
=== Play: Science Fiction ===
After a failed reboot of the topic, Firetail appeared once again as himself, the lead wingman of The Krait, in his natural habitat, the Kronis stars. Before actually entering the Kronis system his group and another ship, the Winter Fang, clashed in the Polaris System briefly, as well as having some curt but not unfriendly conversation with the Aremorica.
=== Play: NEZ Cyber Knights ===
Firetail and his crew take the role of a Street fighter group who are sympathetic to the Fennian cause in this future-style role play. Firetail is the only one to actually appear in the topic, as he conversed with Slate Doashi, a daughter of one of the Yakashima Executives, before running into and sparring off with a cat named Hei.
=== Play: Between the OC and the Authors ===
Firetail has appeared intermittently in this role play, but his first and probably major appearance was during a discussion about Valentine's Day when he expressed his distaste for the holiday.
== Trivia ==
* Firetail's original concept was a red fox with a yellow tail named Phoenix. His name was later changed to Firetail before becoming Firetail Taragon Jr.
* In the original first book in which he appears (which has not been published as of yet), he hints that he has a brother that still lives.
* Firetail is in the universe of Sonic the Hedgehog, but he has hinted that he is in the same universe as Star Fox, with the quote, "Last time we went coreward, we got chased off by those mercenaries!" 
* His spacecraft, the Colubrina class fighter, was originally a large, cumbersome battle platform.
* The company that made Firetail's hoverboard is LiteTek, a rival company to TerraStar Industries.
* The name TerraStar is a spinoff of the originally intended name TerraCutter.
* The Kronis Constellation was originally named the Meiton Constellation, but the name was later used for the name of the major planet in Alpha Kronis.
* The Octostar System used to have eight stars until one collapsed on itself and formed a black hole. Despite this, the name was never changed.
* Firetail appears to have absolutely no desire for a sexual relationship. This is not hard to believe because his desire for action has practically taken over his whole life. Volt often teases him about his decision.
Category:Characters