Travis Touchdown

History
Travis Touchdown's past is somewhat explored in the first game, where it is at times deliberately (and humorously) muddled and filled with stereotypes. His parents were killed when he was young, apparently by his love (and in actuality, the daughter of Touchdown's father and another woman), Jeane, who had a traumatic and complex past, leaving Touchdown on his own. He had an older twin brother, Henry, he never knew, who apparently grew up in Ireland. Travis has apparently had interest in being a pro wrestler at one point, and practiced the use of the sword via a mixture of his trainer Thunder Ryu's teachings, correspondence courses and videotapes.

One night after winning a beam katana in an online auction, Touchdown meets Sylvia Christel in the local Death Match bar, where Christel ushers him into joining the United Assassins Association, so long as he can qualify by killing the eleventh ranked assassin, Helter-Skelter. Having run out of money to buy video games he accepts the job and easily snags UAA rank eleven. Nonplussed that he has now made himself a target for aspiring assassins, Touchdown only agrees to set out and secure himself as number one in the UAA when Christel teases him with the possibility of sex, so long as he can reach the top. He ultimately reaches the top, fighting and killing Jeane.

After the fight with Jeane, while in the bathroom, Ermen Palmer attempts to kill him while defenseless, presumably to take his rank as an assassin; in the game's "real" ending, Henry slices Ermen in half before he could harm Touchdown and challenges him to a fight outside the motel. The game ends as they dramatically jump towards each other, presumably to finish each other off. In Desperate Struggle both Henry and Travis seem to be dissatisfied with the fight since Sylvia had interrupted it before one could kill the other.

Three years pass and despite Touchdown having withdrawn from the ranks of the UAA, Santa Destroy continues recognizing him as a hero, thanks to whom the city "has never been safer," even erecting a statue in his honor. It is during this time that Touchdown and his friends become targeted by members of the Mafia. Mentor Randall Lovikov is slain, and after a preliminary Ranking Battle against Skelter-Helter, Touchdown's best friend Bishop Shidux's death follows. Touchdown fixates himself on reassuming first rank in the UAA to both avenge his friend and claim Christel once and for all. Touchdown slays [http://suda51.wikia.com/wiki/Jasper_Batt_Jr. Jasper Batt Jr.], the wealthy entrepreneur responsible for the deaths, and sometime afterward, locates Christel where she presumably disappeared to work in a brothel. The two rekindle their relationship and return to Santa Destroy.

Appearance And Personality
Travis usually wears a lightweight leather jacket, t-shirt, jeans and sunglasses, though his outfit varies slightly in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. Travis has dark spiky hair, and blue eyes. While Travis displays crude, punkish and immature behavior, and is especially cruel toward the male assassins he fights, he displays normal and decent behavior whenever he isn't on the job. Travis is relatively calm about killing people, and has been shown to be sexually stimulated by it in Desperate Struggle. In his starting days of the first No More Heroes, killing women made him feel uncomfortable, until Holly Summers told him that all assassins, no matter what gender, must die when they lose. He is capable of being touched by people's emotional and personal experiences, seeing that he didn't seem entirely settled after killing Dr. Peace, whose daughter was estranged from him. Travis also has a certain amount of honor and respect for people he believes to be "true warriors" as he tries to spare the assassin Ryuji in Desperate Struggle, and soon shows a great deal of his humanity after the death of Alice Twilight, weary of the arranged manslaughter he accidentally promoted and by the various corporations that took advantage of it. Touchdown is very driven to prove himself, is shown to be highly intelligent and a quick learner, and can be surprisingly witty and even poetic. Touchdown takes his friendships very seriously as well, as evidenced by his quest to avenge the murder of Bishop Shidux, after which he seems to learn something about the repercussions that death has on others aside from the one being killed.

Powers And Abilities
Touchdown is a very formidable assassin, being skilled in the art of swordplay and physical combat. After becoming acquainted with Randall Lovikov, the town drunk, Touchdown is able to rely on Lovikov to teach him special techniques that compliment his fighting and questing skills. Touchdown is able to snap into a "Dark Side" mode by lining up three objects in a slot machine mini-game after executing a Death Blow. Each trance of Dark Side Mode entails Touchdown with superhuman strength, speed, invincibility and other powers.

His preferred weapon is the beam katana, which he relies on scientist Dr. Naomi to design for him, and to optimize the models he already owns. Throughout No More Heroes, Touchdown acquires the Blood Berry, followed by the durable Tsubaki, the heavily upgraded and empowered Tsubaki Mk-II which is comprised of five rotating beams, and requires more finesse to wield, and finally the Tsubaki Mk-III, a very showy beam katana designed from the beam Samurai sword of his mentor, Thunder Ryu. In Desperate Struggle, Touchdown also gains the beam katanas Peony, a heavy, but powerful and potentially far reaching blade, and the dual katanas Rose Nasty, which gives Travis a powerful balanced edge to accomplish his ends.

His former experience of pro wrestling training through the use of correspondence tapes and some experience in Calgary allows him to use a great variety of wrestling moves to take down foes, and because of the dangerous nature of his career, Travis has taken creative incentive to allow his Beam Katana to haphazardly finish off his intended targets.

Touchdown also shows to have some resistance to firearms, one instance being when Helter-Skelter riddled him with bullets and rockets, which culminated with absolutely no effect. In the lowest difficulty of No More Heroes, Touchdown is able to automatically block ranged bullets as long as the player does not move the Control Stick. Furthermore, in all subsequent difficulties, all it takes for Touchdown to block oncoming bullets is to guard using the Z Button. Aside from bullets, Touchdown also survived an electric shock and several laser attacks from the assassin Destroyman as well as three concussive grenade explosions from the assassin Holly Summers.

Travis Touchdown is shown to have a high degree of durability, probably because it is just a game and the protagonist of a game can't die from outside means. But combat wise, Travis is extremely resistant to firearms as mentioned above. He is also extremely resistant to poison as shown when he does not die upon inhaling Cloe's mist of poison. In addition to that, he is able to withstand nearly, if not all attacks that common enemies or bosess deal to him. He is able to withstand the devastating blades of a chainsaw, beam katanas and the massive earthquake that Dr.Shake has created during in-game. In fact, he is able to withstand Jeanne's punch through the gut and still stand on his two feet, he is able to endure Bad Girl's endless hits and even withstand Alice's attack in which the beam katana pierces through his chest during the clash battle.

Travis also seems to be very lucky. He is always rescued from his untimely death. In the first series of No More Heroes, he could have died from Bad Girl's endless hits with her bat if she did not succumb to her wounds. During his battle with Jeanne, he could have been killed if it weren't for Shinobu's timely arrival to save him from being killed. In No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle, he is once again rescued by luck when Henry came crashing in at the right time when Jasper had Travis' life in his hands.