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Published: 2019-10-30 01:16:40 +0000 UTC; Views: 1430; Favourites: 20; Downloads: 0
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Description For you who don't feel like reading the quite long but still CliffsNotes type version of her back story I'll start with the contest essentials.
Weapon: Your Face
Ammunition types: Ceramic alloy-tipped mini flechette rounds for hardened glass visors and cameras.
Explosive and deforming high impact rounds for use inside spaceships and tungsten/titanium armor piercing rounds for when piercing a hull isn't an issue.
Tear gas, sticky foam, stun, incendiary and explosive grenades.

Hat: Mom's Hat
Practically bulletproof, heatproof and self-healing.
Amplifies her ability to sense emotions and intent; when the chinstrap holding it up is released it unfolds and hardens for better protection and more powerful directed sensory abilities.

Family crest: The heart marking of the Tiki on her forehead, together with the symbols, make up her name and personal crest.


Captain Lovebug, Ke-Tiki-Teka.

Born in an incubator chamber on a corporation battlecruiser and trained for war, combat and blind obedience was all she had ever known.

That worldview was drastically altered on the day she lost her leg.

As she was slowly bleeding out on the battlefield, a human man approached her from the out of the thick smoke. The very same man that had taken her leg with a well-aimed grenade shot from his triple barrel hand cannon that she later would be gifted and name "Your Face" (During her pirating career she had often shoved it in the faces of the human soldiers she fought and to her the front of her weapon bore a striking resemblance to the face they most often made.).

As she looked up at the shiny green mirrored helmet of the man standing over her she was ready for her life to end.

Abandoned by the people who had brought her to the battle she for the first time felt lost and afraid, no longer knowing her place or purpose she felt alone and couldn't fight back with her usual ferocity. She just froze.
But death didn't come. Instead the man asked her two questions.

"Why do you fight for the ones that kill your people? Do you not know who you are?"

She thought she did know, she had been told her purpose in life since her birth.

She was the leader of her unit; her purpose was to lead the Clickers assigned under her into battle, to carry out the will of the wise council.
She had never questioned what she had been told as she felt in her inner core that she was supposed to lead and care for all the different Clickers in her unit. She knew this as an absolute truth.

A truth she was to find out had been warped and twisted to maintain her obedience.

She hesitated for a second and thought about the questions, but quickly came around and with pride in her voice said, “I know who I am, and I am prepared for my end.”

The man lowered his weapon and said, "So you have no idea? Huh, I guess it was obvious as we too were told lies about you. I'm Ace by the way, and you are? "
She hesitated and was quiet for a minute, "My designation is Leader 17" she replied.

Ace took care of her wounds and found a replacement leg for the one he had taken from her.

This was the beginning of a friendship that would grow greatly, as they together discovered the truth of their somewhat similar origins, as well as learning each other’s differing ways of combat (he from her better close quarters tactics and she from him the piloting of assault fighters). They fought together against The Corporation they shared their origins with for some time, but eventually the need to learn further of her true purpose became too consuming, and thus they parted ways, with her to return to her home planet.

She found out that she was a giver (potential queen) from the Tiki brood and that the heart shaped marking on her forehead was proof of that, as all of the Tiki had that same exact mark.

She learned that the Queen of the Tiki had been taken away by humans along with the 5 other queens of her planet and all eggs that could hatch new ones.

The name Clickers was given by the humans, based on the clicking sounds in their accent as they spoke human tongue. Their real name was the Kiko.

On her planet she visited the world mother, a fungal organism that the humans had not known of, a being that had spread its mycelium deep down into and all throughout the planet and had a connection with all life that existed there.

She was told that she would have to sacrifice a part of herself and if she was deemed worthy then great gifts would be bestowed upon her. If she was not then basically that would just suck for her but would serve as a lesson to live a more righteous life.

She offered one of her arms, and as the being looked upon her sacrifice favorably she was given a new power and a tool assisting in its use.

The tool was a hat made with thick cloth spun by the spider Kiko, leather made from the shed skin of a furnace beetle larva, and mycelium from the world mother. The power gained was the ability to sense the fears, needs, and desires of all sentient life forms, a power she up until now only had with other Kiko. She often jokes about how it had cost her an arm and a leg to become the person she now is.

The same way that she had been assigned a designation rather than a name, so had Ace. He had urged her to choose a new name for the new person she had become but insisted that he had his reasons for keeping his, and just dropping his number was fine for him.

She chose a name based on her native language, a language that is nearly impossible for humans to understand spoken as it is extremely fast and requires the Kiko ability to sense each other’s intentions and to emphasize the intent of what’s felt.

Between the Kiko it is an extremely efficient form of communication and misunderstandings are rare.

"Ke", meaning gift/giver, used before a name means life-giver/female/daughter of that brood.
"Tiki" from "Ti", wise/reasonable and "Ki", protect/defend, together meaning the wise guardians, the name of her brood.
"Teka" from "Te", aggressive/violence/fearsome and "Ka", gain/take/obtain, together meaning violent taker.

Her full name being Ke-Tiki-Teka, the pirate daughter of the Tiki.

She engraved the symbols into the carapace of her face around the Tiki heart. They are now permanent as she lost the ability cocoon herself and emerge as a queen due to being rendered infertile by the corporation.

In some of her other adventures she: Found and modified a ship with salvaged parts from captured vessels. Intentionally making it look like a wreck proved to be incredibly useful in ambushes; convinced many Kiko to join her crew, and eventually even humans and other species of aliens; got a new arm from a mechanic she rescued from other, greed-driven pirates; obtained an undeniably cool feather for her hat from big space bird she punched, but lost it (not a huge adventure but she did really like it and thought all pirates should have one); returned with Ace to her home planet to meet the world mother. He exited the caves a changed man and left the planet after a quick and to her incomprehensible explanation about luck and fate, and she hasn’t heard from him since; had Your Face upgraded and altered by a gunsmith on a strange and changing world without a sun; set up a defensive grid around her planet of automated ships she had captured, all bearing her crest; obtained a much cooler ship; raged a fierce campaign against The Corporation which garnered her the mal-intended nickname Captain Lovebug due to the heart on her forehead and as an attempt to diminish and make her less formidable in the eyes of those who faced her. That backfired as instead she embraced it with pride, serving only to make her even more intimidating.

Today her life is dedicated to capturing resources taken by the corporation and returning them to their respective worlds, rescuing her taken people, finding Ace, fighting injustice, and locating the ultimate rad feather for her hat (it would be a real feather in her cap, she keeps saying). She doesn’t take any lives if it isn’t absolutely necessary, and with her powers to sense mind’s intentions she almost always knows when she can avoid it.

Made with Autodesk Sketchbook pro on a Huawei media pad (this process was a pain in the a** and took what felt like an eternity )
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Comments: 12

MarquisAmonArt [2020-01-28 15:54:49 +0000 UTC]

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Xenotopos In reply to MarquisAmonArt [2020-02-01 16:11:26 +0000 UTC]

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PitVanCalvinII [2019-12-04 02:46:38 +0000 UTC]

As a windsurf-pirate, I naturally like all pirate things and pirate (bay) stories. This looks like a whole story verse that comes with it, so fine with reading some background infos. The first impression I had was actually that little guy like the one in the movie "district nine" - you'll certainly know I would guess. ( Love that movie, too, always hope they'll continue some day)

I like the idea she has been saved by the man that actually attacked her, and going against that system that used both of their people. So I would guess you wrote a novel or story book about this?

It would read like a whole new franchise could be born out of this, I hope that people like Cameron & Co would get a discovery hint of sorts, whenever I come across someone spinning up whole worlds like that, almost Tolkien-esque in a way. Although I'm autistic and my use of words always sounds rather inflated, sorry for that.


My first hobby as a kid was collecting birds feathers, by the way. So I dig the feathers obsession, he he. So if Ke-Tiki-Teka ever were to stop by at my Ikurah-planet.verse I'd probably give to her the tail feather of a great Phoenix "fire bearer" bird. To sort of "enlighten" the asses of all the idiots that want to put her low.


In Maori her name would mean like "To get a lie" ... I just wondered, why them words would sound somehow familiar. Also could have been of northern athabaskan descend.

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Xenotopos In reply to PitVanCalvinII [2019-12-04 09:50:10 +0000 UTC]

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hiuhyio7y87hbi78ib [2019-11-19 23:10:28 +0000 UTC]

Cool design! Love all the little details in the outfit.

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Xenotopos In reply to hiuhyio7y87hbi78ib [2019-11-19 23:14:48 +0000 UTC]

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hiuhyio7y87hbi78ib In reply to Xenotopos [2019-11-20 15:57:18 +0000 UTC]

Looked for a good 10 minutes and couldn't find it lol

am I being bamboozled?  

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Xenotopos In reply to hiuhyio7y87hbi78ib [2019-11-20 17:34:42 +0000 UTC]

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hiuhyio7y87hbi78ib In reply to Xenotopos [2019-11-20 18:30:02 +0000 UTC]

Ah, I see. Also doesn't help that DA screws with the dpi on painted pieces like this I guess.

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Xenotopos In reply to hiuhyio7y87hbi78ib [2019-11-20 20:40:56 +0000 UTC]

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hiuhyio7y87hbi78ib In reply to Xenotopos [2019-11-22 18:58:39 +0000 UTC]

I'll try to give it a look when I get some time. and I lmao at the tree having abs in the salad fingers one

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Xenotopos In reply to hiuhyio7y87hbi78ib [2019-11-22 19:00:08 +0000 UTC]

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