paavo
“Our spirit is what will protect us”
gentle giant
Paavo is a large Polynesian man who was born and raised in Finland. He protects his battlefield teammates with his large size. Paavo knows a lot about the street criminals and gang politics in Helsinki, having been part of that scene for several years and it was there that he first started using his combat techniques. Paavo is dismissive of fashion and over-hyped brand names and prefers to use Zhang and Bobby Jack’s weapons. He is also a frequent client of the John Doe weaponsmith studio.
Paavo believes in the UltraHorse Towers plan to build a better world. Meeting Dash at the Global Commerce conference in Seattle, battling the police alongside her, and then joining her crew was the single most “formative” event in Paavo’s life and led to him becoming an UltraHorse fighter. Paavo really likes the high collar on his main combat suit, and feels that it gives him a critical extra bit of protection, which increases his confidence and therefore his performance.
love and anger
Paavo is a giant with anger issues. He is quiet and speaks with few syllables most of the time. He was timid as a child and bullied due to his unusual size. He got in trouble several times when he lashed out at his tormentors and harmed them seriously. As a result he spent several years of his youth in homes for troubled boys. Paavo now tries very hard to repress his anger and channel his fury towards fighting ferociously and protecting his teammates.
Paavo really doesn’t like all the mosquitoes in Finland, and that’s ony one of the reasons he seldom visits his family there. He left a slightly simmering romantic life behind in Helsinki when he left to attend university in London and he often wonders what could have happened. And Paavo’s best friend was killed in a knife fight in an alley in south Helsinki. He still sometimes writes messages to the old email address.
Paavo loves Finnish food, particularly the dark rye bread and Karjalanpiirakka, the rice pudding pastry. Paavo tries to make Karjalanpiirakka for himself sometimes, but he’s really not very good at it. Paavo really likes to order Finnish dishes from an online restaurant with long-distance drone delivery. He knows this is against UH regulations, but he schedules deliveries to the abandoned sentry tower a few miles south of the UH complex.
callsign: paavo
ability: guardian shield
name: paavo fifito
origin: pacific born in finland
affiliation: new dawn
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Last Thursday, after returning late to the towers following a hard morning battle at the Petrolith drilling station, Paavo was standing impatiently in the lunch line at the UltraHorse cafeteria, still wearing his combat gear as there was no time to change before the next mission that was due to be launched in a half hour. He was hoping the Mahi-Mahi wouldn’t run out before he got to the head of the line.
Suddenly a loud hissing noise came from one of the nearby salad serving table refrigerators and Paavo smelled the telltale acrid odor of burning plastic that precedes an electrical fire.
Seeing somebody’s equipment bag sitting next to the serving table with a bunch of guns and ammunition inside, he jumped out of line and ran to the bag, hoping to move it out of the way.
But he was too late, and while he was still six feet away, the compressor exploded, sending the lettuce, tomato, and cucumber trays filled with an assortment of salad fixings flying upwards. At the same moment the exploding compressor sent a jolt of sparking electricity coursing through the equipment bag on the floor, which quickly began to smoke.
Paavo understood what was likely to happen next, and he instantly backed up, holding his arms wide and moving the people behind him. Quickly triggering his combat shield, he was relieved that it sprang open just as the ammunition container inside the equipment bag erupted, sending bullets flying in all directions. The salad serving table blocked most of the rounds going south, but those going north bounced harmlessly off Paavo’s shield, saving perhaps as many as twenty lives inside the cafeteria.
As the UltraHorse Incident Crew and Rescue Teams rushed to the scene, Paavo powered down his shield and stepped around the debris to approach the hot entree serving table and happily put the last serving of Mahi-Mahi on his plate.
