Captain Jaws MacTaggart (born Keiko Kaizoku) is the lead protagonist of Space Pirate Captain MacTaggart, and one of the main characters of the Tails from the Federation franchise as a whole.
Persona[]
Jaws MacTaggart is the Captain of the pirate cruiser Stellar Typhoon. She is the Captain MacTaggart of the series' title, and it would be fair to say that she is the main star.
Being the Captain of the Typhoon, Jaws holds a great deal of responsibility, but she never lets this go to her head. She is very kind and caring towards her crew, and always has their best interests at heart. However, she accepts that sometimes she has to be hard on them to succeed, but she rarely loses her temper at them.
Though Jaws can come across as menacing at first due to her appearance, she's actually very friendly, if a bit silent and stoic sometimes. However, other times she's as energetic and excitable as a schoolgirl, especially when it comes to something (or someone) she's passionate about. This does not mean that Jaws isn't a force to be reckoned with, of course. When challenged, she'll easily relish the chance for a fight, especially against the Stellar Federation.
It's possible that Jaws' fiery personality stems from her being descended from a Hinode shogun clan, who were well known as the de facto rulers of the former Hinode Empire, and also as famous warlords. This also means that Jaws is very good with a katana.
Though we rarely see the other half, Jaws is happily married to Finbar, a raccoon from the Scottish/Canadian-settled Procyon System. They met back in 2986, when Finbar was transferred to the same ship as Jaws. After a few years of procrastination, Jaws plucked up the courage to propose to Finbar, and they've been together ever since. Jaws loves Finbar dearly, and though they do have the odd bicker now and then, they're always happy to help each other through difficult times.
Physical Description[]
Jaws stands at nearly four feet in height, with a top heavy build. She has blue eyes (well, a blue eye) and coal black hair.
Jaws' main distinguishing features are a gold tooth, an eyepatch over her right eye (which is merely for show) and an artificial right arm (which is not). Her actual arm was lost in a katana duel with her arch rival Princess Midori. She was able to have a new arm constructed by her niece, Kyoko Mori.
In more recent years, Jaws has added retractable claws to this paw, which can be activated á la Wolverine. These claws can be used for fighting, but are generally employed as a scare tactic. Jaws' favourite thing to do with them is to reveal one claw at a time, while naming each one as a reason that she shouldn't be messed with.
Other physical features include a burning silver tip on her tail, and a similar silver mark over her patched eye. These identify Jaws as a descendant of the famous Howaitoshadō Clan of shoguns, the famous warlords of former Imperial Hinode, whose members had the same silver tail tip.
Jaws wears a variation of the Stellar Federation Military uniform, but with some casual touches, like a pair of skinny jeans. A large trench coat adds to her imposing appearance, and it also covers her artificial arm. Her paw is covered by an old biker's glove, whenever she wants to surprise her enemies with it. Somewhat unnecessarily, she sometimes wears a pair of sunglasses during confrontations with her adversaries.
Background[]
Keiko Kaizoku (as Jaws was known back then) was born in the Port of Minato, a city on the planet Tenchō, in the Hinode Cluster. She's the second oldest of five children, being born 34 minutes after her twin sister Kumiko. Growing up throughout the 60s and 70s, Keiko considers her childhood to be the zenith of her life so far. Not even the arrival of three new siblings (Kenji in 2964, Koso-Koso in 2970, and Kenta in 2976) could dampen her spirits.
In school, Keiko was alright (not bad, but not good either). She was the Arthur Daley of the classroom, conning her classmates out of their money, for school supplies and junk food, among other things.
When Keiko wasn't stirring up trouble at school, she had aspirations of a career in the Stellar Federation Military Police. By the time Keiko had left high school in 2981, the imminent threat of war meant that there was a sudden recruitment rush in Kokoro City, which Keiko gladly took advantage of.
Joining the Federation[]
Keiko signed up for the Hinode Division of the Military Police, and underwent rigorous training. After her training was completed in 2983, by which time the Third Galactic War had kicked off, Ensign Keiko Kaizoku was posted onboard a battlecruiser, the HDS Ōshan Akuma (Ocean Demon), after a short period aboard a minehunter, the HDS Sutera Kushi (Star Comb).
It was around this time that Keiko first started wearing her famous eyepatch. Ostensibly, this was to assist with the adjustment to darkness when moving from light to dark areas of the ships she worked on, but in actual fact Keiko wore it in tribute to the hero of her teenage years, Captain Harlock.
In 2986, the Ōshan Akuma was sent out on a patrol deployment in the Procyon System. During a routine embarkation at the Glenfalcons base on Procyon VI, Keiko-by now a Lieutenant-happened to literally bump into one Finbar MacTaggart, a rather dashing local raccoon who also happened to be a Lieutenant in the Military Police. Keiko fell in love with him at once, being taken by his cool-headed charm (and his Scottish accent), and it didn't take long for Finbar to confess that the feeling was mutual.
As luck would have it, Finbar was to be transferred to the Akuma (along with a few other personnel) from his frigate, the HMCS Mull Of Kintyre during the embarkation, so the happy couple were not doomed to be apart. Finbar joined Keiko as a commanding officer on the Akuma, and their relationship blossomed (of course, the pair didn't allow their love for each other to overshadow their duties...). Any worries about cultural differences were evidently quelled, with the promise that they would teach each other the ways of their respective cultures.
Incidentally, the embarkation was immortalized in a training film for the Military Police, and Keiko herself can be seen at various points.
Marriage[]
The Third Galactic War finally came to an end on Christmas Day 2991, and among other things it meant that Finbar and Keiko (both now Lieutenant-Commanders) could relax a bit. They were both given a month's leave to recuperate from the War, and in that time Keiko saved up to buy an engagement ring for Finbar. However, it wasn't until the end of 2992 (a full year to the day since the end of the War) that she finally plucked up the courage to actually propose to him. Obviously, Finbar accepted the proposal, and by February 2993 they were happily married.
The 90s were a quiet decade for the newly married MacTaggarts, with only the odd coup d'état or civil war to keep them on their toes. The turn of the new millennium passed without much thought, and even the outbreak of the Fourth Galactic War in 3001 wasn't anything to sneeze at. However, it was four years into the war, in 3005, that things began to take a turn for the worse.
The Green Fox Incident[]
In June 3005, Captain Keiko MacTaggart was sent out to capture Princess Midori, the heiress to the throne of the terroristic Midori Empire, who'd broken out of prison with the help of a bogus Red Cross official. On paper, the mission sounded quite easy, but as it was to turn out, the task was much easier said than done. Over the course of four months, Keiko tried time and time again to catch Midori, without success.
It was around this time that Keiko's vicious bite, cold heart and bountiful track record earned her the nickname of Jaws, coined by Princess Midori, and later adopted by her family, friends and adversaries.
Things came to a head in September 3005, when Jaws finally managed to capture Princess Midori. She would have succeeded in having her locked up or executed, had it not been for the intervention of a Midori-controlled luxury cruiser, who freed the Princess, and left Jaws to contend with her irate superiors.
After her constant failure to capture this single criminal, this incident was the final straw, and Jaws was stripped of her command and sent into exile (the only alternative being execution). Finbar voluntarily deserted his position to be with his wife, as did Lieutenant Leslie Kennedy, a young squirrel from the Sorados Cluster who had loyally assisted Jaws during her last few years with the Military Police.
The Stellar Typhoon[]
It was after Jaws' dismissal that Finbar revealed his true colours; he was also a Captain in the Galactic Liberation Front, a resistance movement against the Stellar Federation. He secretly commanded a small, ex-Federation prototype battlecruiser, the Stellar Typhoon, operating it under the guise of a space pirate ship. Wishing to get her own back at the Federation, Jaws agreed to join Finbar as the Captain's Assistant.
After several months of fighting alongside her husband, Jaws ended up gaining full custody of the Typhoon, though it's unknown under what circumstances. In any case, Finbar was not there when, in the winter of 3006, Jaws came under attack from Princess Midori again. The battle culminated in Midori reaching the bridge of the Typhoon, and duelling katanas with Jaws.
Midori ended up chopping Jaws' right arm clean off, but unfortunately for her, Jaws was ambidextrous, and so was able to simply carry on and win the fight.
At some point prior to this, Finbar had had his own arm chopped off by a rival space pirate by the name of Captain Darkblade (as Jaws recalls, 'I broke Darkblade's heart, Darkblade broke Finbar's arm'). Jaws decided to take a leaf out of her husband's book, and have an artificial arm of her own constructed. She called upon her teenage niece, Kyoko Mori, who'd been studying robotics at her school at the time, to construct such a device. The arm was an unusual rush job for Kyoko, who completed it in time to give it to Jaws as a Christmas present. Impressed by her niece's speed and skill, Jaws took Kyoko on as her resident tech-girl, employing her services to create several gadgets to use on her enemies, as well as to maintain and improve the Typhoon's various weapons and systems.
Between then and 3009, life was relatively quiet for Jaws, with only the odd crisis to break up the monotony. But then in that year, Jaws conducted one of her regular raids (which were actually conducted goods transfers in disguise) on a freighter from Procyon VI. One of the crew members she captured was a young technician named Alasdair Geddes. The young raccoon had grown tired of his dreary existence in the city of Glenfalcons, and begged for Jaws to take him away from it. Realising that Alasdair's technical expertise (and his apparent liking for Kyoko) could be of use to the crew, Jaws gladly accepted his pleading, and the events that followed on after that are well documented...
Trivia[]
- Producer Jordann Edwards hinted that Naoko Mori (of Absolutely Fabulous, Doctor Who, and Torchwood fame) would be ideal for this character, as he vows for authenticity in terms of voice casting.
Images of Capt. Jaws[]
