Jean

Jean is a bad-tempered, bitter-hearted, and power-hungry squirrel serving as Nyxstra's advisor and right-hand man. Formerly a bodyguard on a research spaceship, he was left stranded on Fog Star years ago when the ship's operation went down entirely.

He's very physically strong and clever, using both to his advantage to impress Nyxstra as much as possible. He tends to do almost anything she tells him to even if he personally finds it incredibly stupid to keep his role safe. He is entirely in it for the cushy lifestyle, and he feels no need to keep this a secret. He cares very little what others think of him, as long as they don't get in his way. He looks down upon those he deems too cowardly to get what they want, and while Nyxstra has given him an enchanted sleeping cap to ward off nightmares, he doesn't wear it because he thinks that bad dreams "build character."

Appearance
Jean is a squirrel that's bulky and as tall as Dedede, with a dark bushy tail larger than his entire body. His fur is a dark bluish-gray with some markings in lighter or darker shades. His ears usually stick straight upwards. His inner ears and feet are reddish-orange. He has grey eyes with yellowed schleras, and there are perpetual dark circles under them. He has sharp black claws and messy zig-zagged whiskers.

He has some different sets of armors and vests, but he rarely wears them outside of combat.

Abilities
Jean does not have any particular powers, but his physical strength is nothing to be laughed at. In terms of brute strength, he's a bit below Dedede. While he's somewhat trained in a few different kinds of weapons - swords, spears, simple firearms - he prefers to just use his claws and fists because he considers weapons a liability. Also, despite his bulk he's actually very nimble. He has great climbing skills (even able to climb up metal walls, though he much prefers not to because it's painful,) and often uses this in conjunction with his speed and strength to take down his opponents before they even realize what's going on.

Outside of combat skills, he's also sly, willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants and often being able to figure out how. His planning skills have dulled a little over time as Nyxstra is so easy to manipulate that he barely even has to try, but he's still a cunning strategist and he knows it. However, this leads him to be so incredibly confident in his own plans that if there actually something wrong with it, he'll never notice, and if someone were to speak up to him about the flaw he would outright ignore them. This is a problem with him in combat as well - he is so self-assured that if he believes himself more than a match for someone, he'll go into the battle already certain of his victory.

Aside from all that, while he's admitted this to very few people, he's very good at baking and loves to paint detailed, peaceful landscapes. Nobody who's actually caught him doing either of these have admitted to him that they know, for obvious reasons.

History
As a child, he grew up in a family of artists (not the magic bring-stuff-to-life kind, just regular artists), and was taught to paint at a young age. He always had a love for beautiful landscapes and mostly focused on painting those. However, the town he lived in was often ravaged by bandits and wild animals, so he also learned quickly how to defend himself. While he honed his skills in fighting, evasion, and painting, he still kept to his life in the small town making and selling landscape paintings to the other townsfolk.

One day, he heard about a project a town away - a spaceship of archaeologists meant to travel the universe and research the histories of planets throughout the galaxy. The captain of the project was seeking strong people to act as bodyguards in case of danger off-planet, and Jean had always dreamed of seeing distant lands and considered himself overqualified for the position so he applied. The captain seemed hasty and Jean was easily accepted onto the crew with little application required.

During the very first week into the expedition, Jean noticed something was off. There was a lot of tension among the other crewmen, and the captain always seemed anxious as though they felt something was about to go wrong at any minute. As things turned out, Jean's application felt rushed because it was: the entire project was a rush job, as before the plans even went public there was a lot of infighting between the different organizers of the archaeology expedition, and by now the captain cared more about getting the ship off the ground in the hopes that everyone would be satisfied instead of making sure everything ran smoothly. Fights started to break out on the ship near daily - first over major things, like who would get what share of the pay, and then over more ridiculous things. Jean would watch these tensions growing increasingly miserable on the ship with each passing day, and would confide in the other person hired as a bodyguard about his concerns.

Disaster struck months into their expedition, when the captain found the ship's rations entirely depleted far ahead of schedule and cussed out the entire crew, accusing even those who hadn't done anything for everything that had gone wrong. Jean could only find himself watching in frustration as the other bodyguard went off on the captain out and ended up getting into a fistfight. When the rest of the crew tried to break it up, things only got worse, and eventually someone ended up smashing the ship's controls. Everything went out of control and everyone scrambled for the escape pods. Jean managed to get into one alone, but he found himself completely lost and eventually ran out of fuel over Fog Star and crashed there. Weak, miserable, and wishing he had throttled the captain when he had the chance, he only managed to survive thanks to some concerned civilians in a local town getting him medical help immediately.

While he already wasn't the nicest person before all this happened, he became incredibly bitter after the incident and while one of the townsfolk offered him a home to live in, he mostly shut himself in. He would try to soothe his nerves by trying to paint again, but it would never come out right, only making him even angrier.

When Nyxstra showed up and took over Fog Star, where others saw a great disaster Jean saw an opportunity. He applied as soon as possible to Nyxstra's tower and when he got the job, he took to sucking up to Nyxstra as much as possible, rising through the ranks incredibly quickly but becoming incredibly hated by the populace. In fact, some people consider him even worse than Nyxstra, because where she's stupid but dangerous, he's cunning and dangerous.

Out in space, the other bodyguard he had befriended along with a handful of other crewmates who felt guilty about what had happened are still looking for him. Jean doesn't know this, but at this point maybe it would be better if they never found him, anyway.