#pelley

Pelley: Can we take a picture?

Palos, taking out his phone: Sure

Pelley, grabbing a painting hanging on the wall: Ok, QUICK let’s go before they catch us!

So like what if Ray’s crew, plus anmi for the drama, became the guardian angels for the next tournament 3 years later?

Ray, as the arbiter, naturally only wears caution tape for a shirt.  Unlike Daniel’s focus on barriers and long distance separation to deëscalate situations, Ray will simply squash naughty competitors with Raytheon or fry them with a bolt of lightning.  It’s easy to tell where he is by the pillars of electric discharge which accompany his displeasure.  Lacks a halo but has horns with an illuminating centre strip.  He takes his job as arbiter seriously, but often delegates control room functions and rabbot wrangling to Camil. Ray prefers to deal with problems in a direct manner where they occur, and does not waver or crack under stress.  Despite interacting well with the Aotu competitors both in and out of conflicts, he makes for a lousy host who hates interacting with the audience, a position where Palos and Anmicius excel in his stead.  When dealing with his angels and rabbots to curate Aotu and facilitate its competitions, he inspires them with both strong action and buoyant oratory.  In his mind, he has to be the true winner of Aotu as its arbiter, judging a smooth show as proof of his victory.  Dangerously, he actually views himself as closer in importance to the envoys themselves instead of as their servant.  And his ambition is to realise that presumption.

Camil the angel continues to be cautious, strategic, and intensely loyal.  However his loyalty is now only to the divine envoys and his position as the handler of their law within the tournament.  He will follow arbiter Ray’s orders diligently, but still quietly keeps tabs not only on the competitors but also on the angels working beside him.  He is certain that they’re all either trying to undermine the tournament deliberately, or breaking the rules through extrajudicial actions to have fun, which is also the opposite of duty.  His design leans into the chartreuse highlights of his former outfit, plus a prehensile binding power for his scarf and belt which can increase in weight to pin ne'er-do-wells.

Pelley continues to be the only emotionally stable member of this whole group, and on top of that he’s just having a great time thanks to receiving carte blanche to beta up any competitor who breaks the rules.  And if a competitor is strong enough, he might interpret those rules very loosely as a pretext to get more exciting fights!  He can form glowing claws on his hands and feet at will to rip and tear until it is done. Also, he gets to be a real dogboy now.  Good for him; in general, good for him.  However, his preternatural ability to smell and intuit evil disturbances have been bugging him all tournament, hinting that Aotu itself may not be what his superiors told him it was.

Palos knows what’s going on because he survived death by being rebooted from a meta seed backup that was erroneously assumed to have already been memory wiped.  Which I say exists because I am going to weep and scream forever about season three, because how dare you separate him and Pelley, they are besties, Do Not Separate, I am very upset.  Anyway, despite having his memories, Palos is taking advantage of his teammates’ amnesia to get away with everything he did before and to get away with more malfeasance in the present.  Akin to Fox-G, he often trades in artefacts and rule workarounds with the competitors, all for his own personal gain or to simply sow chaos which can cover his tracks.  Like before, he can sic Pelley on people at will and guide the dog’s path of destruction.  His ultimate goal is as usual to run away from the inevitable ego-death promised to all levels of Aotu.  And maybe if he confides in Pelley a bit, and lets all the others in on what he knows, they could actually form a coalition and break free from their fate.  But communication has never been the pirates’ strong suit, so who knows.

Anmicius was added to the angel roster by the envoys for two reasons: he is an honorable and reliable servant at heart, and also it would be just so funny to have him working alongside the group he once disdained to its very core.  Envoys love that ironic drama.  He’s a good egg, though he doubts the righteousness of some of the rules. How can it be right for the tournament to result in so much death and suffering, he wonders.  As such, he often bends the rules just as much as Pelley, but to the opposite end: mercy.  Since he sees the others as being on the same team, with a unified purpose and an inherent goodness as angels, he tries his hardest to get along with them and often thinks of gifts and kind actions to make their lives better during down-time.  He respects and even admires Ray, whom he sees as a fair arbiter and charismatic leader for group morale.  If Anmi’s group ever has to work with Xander, there would be absolutely no drama due to Anmicius having forgotten all betrayals.  Though perhaps it’s strange how he faintly remembers the sound of purring.