Smoke

Smoke is a major ally in The Scratched Universe. They are introduced in Episode 06 – Smoke & Mirrors.

Smoke is a Pyro class mercenary who lived the life of a Fragger and Scrapper before a certain day changed their life because of their stand, Switcheroo.

During the last moments of EP:05, Smoke was seen as a passenger aboard the train where Heavy Guy and KIA embarked on, with the intentions of travelling to her next tour of duty.

In the events of EP:06, Smoke joins up with Heavy Guy and KIA in their plan to recover power to the train station, so that the train could move once again without risking everyone being trapped in the server.

At the end of these events, the three stand users had survived the Distorted’s trap and escaped the server with an elaborated plan; goals; and personal motivations.

Smoke joined Heavy Guy and KIA’s team as a way to accept herself by being who she truly wants to be – an archer called Smoke; explore and learn more about herself and stands, as she is now deemed as an anomaly just like her team; and destroy the Distortion as a way to make amends with all the people that unfortunately were affected by her stand during fragging matches.

## Biography

### Early Life

It is known that Smoke lived a rather busy but normal life while switching between two roles: Fragger and Scrapper. As time went on, he grew more attached to scrapping duty as it allowed mercenaries to use custom weaponry, thus allowing Smoke to practice his archery skills – a hobby and interest he had acquired during his days.

At some point in his life, Smoke began to suffer from class remorse: a quite difficult problem to solve when a mercenary regrets choosing their preferred class – as they cannot switch classes and are permanently stuck with what they have chosen when creating their profile.

This problem began to manifest in Smoke’s fragging duties, as he grew less and less motivated and was quite fed up of the Pyro’s role in the matches.

### Meeting Cinder

After some undetermined amount of time, Smoke met a female Pyro named Cinder during one of his many scrapping duties – during an advanced operation. Cinder was quite fond of Smoke’s archery skills, and the two worked very well together during the missions of the operation. They went through all of the missions together, back to back. After this, Smoke and Cinder decided to add each other’s contacts.

From that day forward, they have been in a romantic relationship: sharing each other’s houses; doing matches together; and getting acquainted with Cinder’s small but quite rebellious friend group made up entirely of Pyros.

Smoke got the Burning Bandana that he wears to this present day as a gift from Cinder.

### Stand Awakening

Soon after a global catastrophic incident had occurred, Smoke woke up during his sleep after a fever dream, at his home.

Feeling a strong headache, Smoke had gone into the bathroom and was shocked at the reflection in the mirror – his body had been transformed into a female equivalent. All of his equipment and cosmetics remained intact, but physically speaking – the changes in his body were healthy and flawless: no malformations or any kind of illness happened to his body during the transformation in his sleep.

This body transformation greatly confused and agitated Smoke, but not to a panic inducing degree as commented by himself – stating that it “felt normal as if he’d always been this way”. The bizarre situation grew when he noticed a floating figure wearing medieval archer attire was following him around. Smoke freaked out over its existence, but it also felt oddly familiar to him as if he had known this Pyro forever.

This event marked the awakening of Smoke’s stand, and Smoke herself was now considered as an Anomaly.

### Consequences

The awakening of Smoke’s stand caused massive changes in his life, some for the better, others for the worse.

Fortunately, Cinder was completely supportive of Smoke’s new look and even amusingly “switched sides faster than auto balance”, according to Smoke herself. Nothing changed between them, although it seemed to have made their bond even stronger. The awakening of Smoke’s stand did not distress Cinder, although she was initially confused by it at first. As time went on, she quickly grew fond of it: often calling it pet names or even throwing friendly quips regarding the “ghost in the room” – even though she could not see it at all, Cinder felt its presence and physical touch.

As Smoke’s stand awakening happened very recently, she was very inexperienced in controlling and utilizing her stand to its potential. This fact made drastic changes in Smoke’s professional life for the worst: the stand would kill threats on its own; capture or assist Smoke during objectives, giving her an unfair advantage; making sure Smoke would not die from threats by utilizing its ability out of instinct if possible.

Smoke’s lack of control over her stand caused her to be banned in several servers by the many upset mercenaries for an undetermined amount of time in Fragging Duty. To avoid making matters worse for herself by getting permanently banned and possibly arrested by the VAC, Smoke abandoned fragging duty all together.

As a last resort, Smoke became a full-timer on scrapping duty, which had different rules under the law: as long as the mercenary was using an unfair advantage ***against*** Gray’s robots, nobody would bat an eye. Thus, Smoke could freely use her archery skills, and learn more about her stand.

### Aftermath

Months went by, and Smoke had fully learned how to control her stand, which she had now named Switcheroo. Her archery skills grew greatly and deadly in combat, along with slowly healing her mental state of guilt and class remorse, as Smoke could become more of who she wanted to be – an archer.

### Present

During a normal day of work, Smoke and Cinder had planned to meet up in a fast travel point and do another scrapping duty operation. However, the plans were unfortunately cancelled by an ever-growing threat.

## Appearance

Smoke is a BLU Pyro wearing a Smog Guard mask, and a Burning Bandana wrapped around her neck. A Huntsman's Essentials quiver rests on her back. Unlike the normal Pyro physique, Smoke’s overall look is rather feminine by having a thinner but more physically built body than that of a usual Pyro.

Smoke’s facial region can be partially seen in certain moments, showing her somewhat stern look and green colored droopy eyes.

In the past, Smoke looked like a standard BLU Pyro wearing the same Smog Guard mask; a pair of Stark Slack pants; Arid Armor on his torso; and Parched Pockets over his body.

## Personality

Smoke is a relatively calm Pyro who is also a bit of a hothead if annoyed in specific situations. She is not afraid to speak her mind and will often do so recklessly without hesitating. This also includes authority figures like the V.A.C Security sector, but this will not happen if she realizes it'll brew up a storm towards herself. Another example of her recklessness was when Heavy Guy had asked Smoke what should he and KIA refer to her as, in which she spoke with assertiveness and was direct while being respectful to Heavy Guy and KIA's amusement.

Beside the hotheaded nature towards annoyances, Smoke has a good side to her. She is a calm, sympathetic, and friendly individual should someone be worthy of her trust and/or respect, either through experience or by having relatable traits such being a stand user like herself - to her genuine surprise and relief as she had considered herself to be alone before this was revealed to her by KIA's use of American Myth.

She even has a sense of humor which was evident when Heavy Guy told her his name, in which she responded with "*What's wrong, you don't have any weapons?*", getting a hearty chuckle out of him. Immediately after this, she reassured Heavy Guy that she wouldn't judge his playstyle of no weapons, as she herself does not use Pyro weapons.

In a combat situation, Smoke is a very crafty and strategic mercenary, keeping her cool during these moments.

As witnessed in the first part of EP6, Smoke suffers from *'Class Remorse'*. When asked by Heavy Guy if her bow wasn't exclusively a Sniper weapon, she acknowledged it with a sad and defeated tone in her voice, confessing that "this is who she wanted to be", further proving her lack of Pyro weapon usage.

When feeling anxious or nervous, Smoke has the habit to lighten up the mood by throwing quips, and/or be witty, ironic or sarcastic in general.

## Abilities

From an outside perspective, Smoke can be mistaken for a normal Pyro, and is logically assumed to utilize a Pyro’s weaponry. However, Smoke prefers using a Fortified Compound bow as her main weapon, with deadly efficiency and great skill. Her archery skills were demonstrated in EP6, such as:

* Being able to kill light to medium Distorted in a single headshot, with enough damage to cause their bodies to deteriorate immediately;
* Having fast draw and firing speeds, allowing Smoke to quickly dispatch of close targets or inflict massive damage to strong enemies,
* Having incredible accuracy and a keen eye on guessing the arrow’s trajectory, letting her kill quick targets such as Distorted Scouts, or snipe unsuspecting targets from afar even while inside somewhat thick fog;
* Several shooting postures that influence the trajectory of the arrow, such as going slightly around corners; in an arch to hit enemies behind cover; or in a straight line to deal maximum damage or punch-through several targets.

On top of these formidable skills she is also an anomalous mercenary, particularly a stand user. Her stand is Switcheroo – a medium/long range archer who can deal heavy damage, with the main ability of switching an attribute between two targets, or switch the properties of its arrows with corresponding items, such as a sapper.

With all these abilities and skills in mind, Smoke is a formidable mercenary and an incredible asset to any team.

Her one major weakness is close quarters combat, in which she cannot defend herself as fast and effectively as Heavy Guy, for example. The axe she uses for self-defense is a powerful tool, but because of her lack of experience and finesse around melee combat, it’s rather sluggish and unreliable. Allowing a group to get the jump on her will often force her to back up and use Switcheroo to provide supporting fire.

Before becoming an anomaly, Smoke had a puff-and-sting play style: using a Flare Gun to light targets on fire from a distance, and then finish the target with an Axtinguisher, which would deal guaranteed critical damage. According to Smoke herself, she does not enjoy using any kind of flamethrower - excluding the airblast.

## Trivia

* Smoke is the first female character introduced in the series;
* Smoke's gender is left as **ambiguous** by Blackimus - as both sides of the argument have good logic and reasoning behind them, due to Smoke's origins and backstory;
	+ As evidenced by Smoke, she does not care whether she is referred to as a 'She', 'He' or 'They', with the exception of 'It' due to her own personal reasons;
	+ The voice is rather masculine but has subtle hints of femininity behind it.
* Smoke is one of the few characters that make use of Blackimus as their voice actor.