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[wavekissedheart]

Player name: Ty
Characters played: Caleb James (6♣), Eden Harper (7♦), October Viljoen (2♠)
Character Name: Mano'ele Kapalakanaka Higa
Age: 31
How long They've Been in the Deck: 8 years
Character's Current Rank: 9♥
Face Rank Applying For: J♥

Personality: "Still waters run deep" is probably the phrase that best sums up Mano'ele. On the surface, he's the kind of guy who exudes a sense of peace. Raised with a very strong sense of family and civic pride, he's polite to everyone, respectful of his elders, and believes everyone has a duty to help and protect those in need. He's got a smile for everyone, a kind word even for strangers, and and is utterly at peace with his world and how he fits in it. Of course, being relaxed and calm in no way means he's lazy; quite the opposite, in fact. Teaching small children is hard work, after all, and requires a lot of energy and even more patience.
Beneath that calm surface, however, lies an incredibly passionate and focused heart. When Mano believes in a cause, he believes in it with everything he is, be it a person or an idea. This belief has led him to do some very morally questionable things in the name of what's 'right' in the past, leading up to an incredibly tough period just before his arrival on-Deck, when he fell in with a group of environmental terrorists. Since then, he's sworn to never again lose sight of the goal, and to remember that the ends do not always justify the means. The blood on his hands is a reminder of this.
Being 6'5" and close to 240 pounds, Mano is well aware of the imposing figure he cuts. He tries hard to present himself as harmless, but doesn't slouch or try to look smaller. He carries himself with an easy grace, and moves a little slower than he necessarily has to in order to avoid scaring new people. Despite his size, he's fairly agile, and can easily keep up with the kids he teaches. Also despite his size and darker looks, kids in particular seem to love him, often climbing him like a jungle gym. They are incredibly important to him, and the easiest way to piss him off is to threaten their well-being. That calm is slow to vanish when he's provoked, but not because he doesn't have a temper; years of meditation and quite a bit of self-control are responsible for keeping it in check, and though he dislikes violence, he will not hesitate to defend himself and those he loves.
When speaking, there's a slight lilt to his voice, often leaving out the last -g on words like evening and carrying. Occasionally, he substitutes the Hawai'ian word for the English one while speaking, partially habit and partially to keep a bit of home with him always. When proving a point, or angry, his accent hardens, becoming much closer to a midwestern standard with more precise articulation.

History: Mano'ele was born to loving parents in Hilo on the island of Hawai'i in April 1981. The firstborn of six, he was followed in rapid succession by Noa ('84), Akela ('87), fraternal twins Makani and Mela ('92), and Kimo ('95). His family was very tightly knit; his mother and father lived on the same street as both sets of grandparents and a multitude of aunties and uncles. As such, family was always important to Mano, who grew up shepherding the younger generation, keeping the kids out of trouble, and helping the elders with anything they needed, family or not. Thanks to the efforts of all these people, Mano'ele grew up a respectful, energetic young man with a deep and abiding love for the islands and the people who populated them.
At 15, shortly after his youngest sibling was born, Mano's father was hurt in an accident at work. A fire at a nearby chemical plant left Keanu Higa, a local firefighter, with third-degree burns over half his body, leaving him bound to a wheelchair and unable to provide for his family. Disability checks as well as the help of the family got them by, but somehow the company that owned the plant (despite clear evidence of several major safety protocol violations) managed to get off with only a minor fine and the barest of payoffs for the families hurt by the incident. This lit that first real fire in Mano'ele, that need to do something good. To help his father, and others like him, and to right the wrongs perpetrated not only on the islands but other places as well by companies like RDX Industrial. Which was why, three years later, he ended up almost 3,000 miles away at the University of Washington.
Seattle was very different in a lot of ways from Hawai'i. It was much colder, rainier, and the people not quite as outwardly friendly. He spent most of that first semester feeling incredibly homesick and out of place, despite loving his professors and his chosen majors--Environmental Sciences with a focus on conservation law, and Early Childhood Education. But he stuck it out, wanting to make his parents proud, and early in his second semester he found Earth First. Earth First was a student organization at UDub, led by grad students and determined to find peaceful solutions for problems just like the one Mano faced back home. They believed in protest and letter-writing and supporting scientific advances in clean energy and environmental restoration, all in efforts to find a way to save the world without eliminating corporations entirely. It was here that Mano finally found those kindred spirits he'd been looking for, learning that many of the people here he'd first thought cold and distant actually held the same deep, fierce love for their world he'd always held. Writing letters, speaking at local assembly meetings, and recruiting more students to their cause, Mano discovered an eloquence he never knew he had. His Hawai'ian accent never completely faded, but he learned to use it to his advantage, developing a clearer, more concise Midwestern accent for everyday use. The work gave him happiness, a cause, one he spoke excitedly about when he went home that first summer for break. It also gave him the courage to finally ask out Lani, a girl he'd grown up with and had a thing for all through high school. Even with him leaving for college again that fall, it seemed like things were finally on track for Mano. He'd finish his degree, get a job with the Hawai'ian division of the EPA, and move back to marry Lani.
While he'd been gone, though, things had changed for Earth First. The old crew was still there, but there were new voices among them. Voices that were dissatisfied with the slow progress they were making, voices that spoke quietly of other ways to change opinions and sway votes. At first, Mano was loudly opposed to these voices. What they were doing was working. It had to. Until the protest. Just a routine thing, out by one of the factories near Mt. Rainier. Everything was going according to plan, until the private security firm hired by the factory started laying into them. It was a completely unprovoked assault, resulting in dozens of injuries from tear gas, batons, and even fists. Mano himself sustained several broken ribs and a torn rotator cuff while defending a fallen girl. Later, the security chief in charge of the squad would claim that one of the Earth First kids had thrown a rock and started a riot. The group was forced to disband by the college and local law enforcement, and their leaders expelled.
It was easy, after this, for that other group to recruit Mano'ele. Disillusioned, hurt, determined to still make a difference, the Earth Liberation Front provided a way for him to strike back against these companies. They would hit them where it hurt--the profit margins. Chris Wylie, the third-year chem student who recruited Mano, was an incredibly persuasive speaker with a knack for building explosives and incendiary devices. What they were doing, he said, hurt no one but the company. The housing developments they sabotaged were empty. The equipment they stole from logging sites would never be used to harm another forest or person. It was all justifiable. With his guidance, Mano became a very persuasive speaker himself, recruiting further people to their cause. He didn't go home that Christmas, staying in Seattle to work on further plans with Chris and the other cell ringleaders instead. His family missed him, and he missed them, and those phone calls with Lani lasted hours, but he genuinely believed he was doing the right thing. What these companies were doing was unforgivable, and he would stop them by any means necessary.
Two years passed like this. He maintained a 3.5 GPA, volunteered at the local science museums, and every so often went out with his ELF cell to sabotage sites and destroy corporate holdings. Those events occurred more and more frequently over those years, until by his final semester his grades had dropped to a 2.5 and his volunteering stopped, the work with ELF taking precedence. It looked like he'd be consumed by the ecoterrorist lifestyle, ending up in jail or dead. And he would have gone believing he was doing the right thing the entire way, if it hadn't been for the bomb.
The last two years had proven Wylie more and more radical, more and more unstable, but it wasn't clear just how unstable til January 2002. Mano had been working late in the science labs on a project, and was heading back to the dorms around nine. It was sheer chance he saw the dim light flickering under one door, heard a half-spoken curse, and only luck that let him walk in on Chris as he set up his homemade bomb. This wasn't just an empty housing development or an unoccupied mill. This was a building with at least two dozen people still inside it, and the amount of explosives Chris had set up would blow the entire brick structure to bits, killing who knew how many and wounding countless others. Without hesitating, Mano threw himself at his former friend, attempting to stop him from setting it off. It was a vicious fight, and Chris had never been one to fight fair. Mano came close to losing when Chris hit him with a beaker to the face, slicing open his eyebrow and cheek, but managed to blink the blood out of his eyes long enough to land a punch to his jaw, knocking him unconscious. It was too late, though; the bomb already set, Mano had no time to waste. He grabbed Chris and began staggering his way out of the building. They barely made it out the door before the blast hit them, knocking Mano unconscious and tearing Chris out of his arms.
When he awoke, he didn't recognize his surroundings. Too warm for Seattle in January, and the wrong kinds of trees. It took him the better part of an hour to find his way into Town, finally being noticed and rushed to the hospital by a shocked Heart. The Deck had found Mano'ele, saved him from death or life in prison, as he learned shortly afterwards. In the aftermath of the explosion, eight people were found dead and twenty more injured. Two were missing, presumed dead, the creators of the bomb and perpetrators of this heinous act of terrorism: Chris Wylie and Mano'ele Higa. He could never go home, not without putting his family at risk or ending up in prison. And as much as he felt he deserved to be punished for what he'd failed to prevent, Chris was still out there, somewhere.
His physical recovery took two months, and presented a very different Mano'ele Higa to the Deck. His dreads, his one point of vanity, had to be cut off, too soaked with blood to save. A few scars marred his face, and more over his back and shoulders. Rehabilitation for a badly broken leg meant he had to put off his search for Chris, and gave him the few months he needed to come to a realization: there was nothing left for him Outside but more violence and revenge. Here, there was work, a way for him to try to atone for what he'd done, what he'd almost become. A quieter, more gentle Mano'ele began to return, to heal in both body and mind. Shortly thereafter, in the end of his first year on Deck, he took a job teaching children at the school. It was what he'd wanted to do, after all; to teach a new generation how to appreciate their surroundings, how to love the earth and each other and not make the same mistakes as their forebears. He settled in, made friends, and found the peace his life had been missing the past four years.
Now, nearly nine years later, the Deck is home and the Hearts are family. He still misses his own, back in Hawai'i, but it wouldn't be fair to them to reopen old wounds. They've buried him and moved on. Chris is still out there, and he's still keeping an eye out, but revenge solves nothing, he's learned. And he's earned his place here, through several challenges; proven himself up to the rank of 9♥, where he's rested for the last two years. Recently, though, with all the upheaval among the Hearts' faces, he's found himself thinking perhaps a conversation with the King is in order. They need a new Jack, and he's willing to do what it takes to help those who have helped him for nearly a decade now.

Character's Goals/Ambitions: Mano's first and most important goal as Jack is to provide stability for his Suit after the turbulence of the last two months. There's been a lot of upheaval for quite some time, now, and the Faces are supposed to be the leaders of their Suit in more than name, he feels. They are the ones who protect their Suit, and guide them, and will be there whenever they are needed. He looks at a Suit as 'ohana, family, the kind that one chooses for oneself, and thus the kind one doesn't just abandon; in the time he's been here, he's seen the Hearts go through two Kings, a Queen, three Aces, and two Jacks. For someone who looks at the Suit as Family, and Family as Forever, this is a fairly sad and disturbing thing. He wants to be a knight, if not necessarily a leader, a good supporter of his King and hopefully their new Queen, to work in tandem with the Ace to keep the Suit together and happy. In order to do this, he plans to be more active, going out and talking to those of his suit to learn what can be done to help those under his protection and making sure they know his face and that he can be counted on.
Secondary to this, but only just, Mano seeks to improve the standards of education on-Deck, especially early childhood standards. Not to make public education mandatory, but to help build some kind of system where everyone is afforded the same opportunities and held to the same standards of learning, and required to prove themselves able to teach or tutor in a given subject.

Why should they be chosen for this position?: Mano has been on Deck for just over eight years now. Being a Nine already and having held that position for the last two years, he's no stranger to responsibility, and as a teacher of small children he's got boundless patience. In fact, the children are one of the main reasons why he's finally stepped forward and presented himself as a candidate; Mano's first thought is for the future of the Deck, and how to build the best world possible for the next generation.
Challenge: It's been two months since their last Jack left. In fact, the Heart Faces seem to be going through a lot of turnover in recent months; first the loss of their King thanks to the assassination attempt, then their Jack, followed a bare six weeks later by the departure of their Queen. Now, with only the Ace and a King suddenly bereft of two supporting Faces left, Mano has decided to step up and help the Suit that's become his new family. No challenge was necessary, of course, the position being open; only a long heart-to-heart with the King, wherein their hopes and goals for the Hearts were discussed, resulting in a mutual agreement and Mano'ele being awarded the position of J♥.
Character PB: Jason Momoa