Tall Michael

> *"You are a speck. You are a sole-scuffing waste of oxygen. You are a denominator compared to us, and that space between you, me and the open air is where I draw the line. Mix with us and you'll be discovering cavities larger than the one between your ears. But if that's what you want, and you really wanna fuck around, then I'll acknowledge your sacrifice over Doghead's dead body when that pile of shit tower becomes ours."*
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**Tall Michael**, often shortened to **TM**, is the ornery leader of the Streetlighters and short-lived rival of the Thornz. As a Streetlighter, Tall Michael is inclined to roam the Gray Zone in squads, dispatching those below him with a mix of camouflage and high-power gunfire.

## Appearance

Tall Michael is a disheveled, young teenager covered head-to-toe to the point where his physical features are obscured. Over his black army fatigues is a dull grey puffer-jacket with cut sleeves. Various features of his head contribute to his dirtied appearance and camouflage; His hair is grey and flares out haphazardly, while his head is obscured by a unique mask that covers his head from front to back. Said mask appears to have been assembled from a spare traffic light, and is jury-rigged with electronics that seem to react to stimulus from and around Michael.

Tall Michael wears a unique pair of prototype stilts made from heavy rebar that activate based on buttons on his heels. This is opposed to his underlings' stilts, which activate either at the wrists or are active at all times. Though a more archaic design, and thus much more difficult to balance upon, TM is seemingly capable of walking with them as if they were his own two feet. The modular structure also allows near-infinite extension of the stilts' length; As a result, Tall Michael prides himself as the "tallest" living being in the entire Gray Zone.

His primary weapon is a high-power bolt-action rifle of indeterminate make. Street signs and other discarded traffic equipment adorn the gun as camouflage, and the weapon itself is capable of firing powerful concrete-piercing rounds. The counter on the gun's stock is actually an artifact of cataclysmic power, one of the "Dire Treasures of Szh'lanazauhnoshta", which has thankfully been neutralized with his efforts (and some others whatever) in the ''Szh'lanazauhnoshta Descends'' Arc of "Star Fetchers GT DX [ABC] DIRE, the Star Fetchers Fighting Game".

## Background

To know the origin of Tall Michael, it is known that an understanding of the 'Blood Michael Phenomenon' must be established first.

The Blood Michael Phenomenon describes an unavoidable event where 1/22 babies named Michael trigger the birth of another, unique baby named Michael on the exact opposite point of the planet. This other baby is denoted as a "Blood Michael". Blood Michael appears normal to a human child except for his neon red skin that sloughs off his body in annual moltings. From an age somewhere at 15 and beyond, Blood Michael will gain an urge to seek out and and meet their "Michael Counterpart", using any repository of information to discover their counterpart's location. Once the counterpart's location is discovered, Blood Michael marches unstoppably to their location through all terrain and, once colliding, form what is dubbed as a ''Complete Michael'' with their counterpart. Scholarly research describes the Complete Michael as the foremost threat to global security; Once formed, a Complete Michael is near-unstoppable and will kill indiscriminately unless it itself is killed.

This has nothing to do with Tall Michael, by the way. I lied

## Real Background

Tall Michael has a dark and mysterious past.

## Personality

Tall Michael is an egotistical beanpole piece of shit with a foul mouth that evidently doesn't appear to stay fucking shut. He constantly terrorizes open areas of the Gray Zone, the telltale boom of his rifle and metal-against-concrete stilts warning lesser gangs into hiding. His kind moments are few and far between; Mostly towards his gray pigeon Chalk, high-ranking members of his own gang and little to anyone else. He especially harbors a hate for "Sole-Scuffers", a mocking term for gangsters who repeatedly loiter in his territory. By extension, TM is more than happy to fire at any non-Streetlighter that walks within his vicinity. God what an asshole, I fucking hate him. It's a good thing he gets his head fucking twaincleaved in Chapter 1 or I would've had to fucking reach through the screen and strangle him myself

## Trivia

* It has been established that Tall Michael vomits a viscous black emulsion onto people's heads from above for fun in the Star Fetchers fighting game, executed via ↓↘→ + LP during "Tall Stance" (ファム, *lit. fam*). This feature hopefully does not appear in Chapter 1