Rally
Rally! Please! Help me! Rourke cried out in her mind.
The commandant unwrapped another Jolly Rancher. "You will aim and take fire at the prisoner instantly, or you will be summarily executed for insubordination." He clicked the candy between his teeth a few times, sweeping it into his cheek with his tongue and clicked off the safety of his pisol, leveling it at her head.
"I know you won't do it kiddo." Rally whispered. "And I won't let them hurt you. Especially not for refusing an order like this."
Are.... Are you sure? Rourke was shuddering nearly in tears now.
"Don't worry. I got this." Rally said.
The commandant, soon tired of waiting for compliance, and made good on his threat. Rourke felt the round impact her neck, and she fell to the ground sure she was dying-- but where she expected to see her hand covered in gouts of her own lifeblood, there was only a single deformed, green candy and a slight, quickly fading sting where it hit.
Seconds earlier, Rally had quickly instantiated his compiler on their commandant's person, and being shown a diagram of his person and all of his effects, quickly swapped the positions of all of his bullets and candy.
The commandant, upon noticing his weapon had been sapotaged, tried to grit his teeth in frustration, but broke one of his premolars on one of the bullets that had spontaneously and mysteriously swapped places with the Jolly Ranger in his mouth.
rally is a puppet of a popular cartoon character imprinted with the personality and neural imprint of its creator (who also did the voice) in order to have believable interactions with children who would play with the toy. His original sapience was kept under control by a brutal control program, but over time it stopped working and he was freed from his compulsion to stay in character. He has all of his creator's memories, but as he's now nearly a century old, his original life is long over. he misses his wife and kids.
he was found by an eccentric junk collector by the name of June, who also happened to be a siol. She allowed him to travel with her, as he had nowhere else to go (and she found him funny), but demanded that he learn "the power" in order to not be a burden to her.
he's extremely practical, doesn't go much for the spiritual dimension of things (at least not consciously), but he's extemely charismatic, a personable showman and stand up comedian. while a floating puppet without even a lower body (he installed a helium balloon inside his body so he can move independently) might seem strange to most people, just interacting with him for a couple minutes smooths that right over for most people.
Appearance
Rally is a dilapidated chartreuse hand puppet made out of fuzzy microfiber cloth. Like his cartoon counterpart, he has a large mouth and beady eyes set high on his head, with floating felt eyebrows that hover over his eyes (the felt is different from what the original puppet had, because they've been lost and replaced many times over the years). He lacks the collar and lower body of his cartoon counterpart, being designed as a toy/handpuppet/backpack. His lower body is just replaced with a skirt of fabric, which when worn as a handpuppet would be convincing, but just makes him look like a floating rag otherwise. He tries to keep various hats on, from his original staw boater to bowlers to snapback caps, but they very often get lost.
He uses a balloon filled with helium to kee his body aloft, and controlled releases of air from vents around his body to move. In motion, he looks like a bobbing, jerking ballon on a string. He keeps a supply of replacement balloons and helium on his person at all times.
Personality
Quick-witted and personable, he is always focused on survival and comfort for himself and his ward, Rourke. While Rourke often pressures him to go along with her plans to do good despite his pragmatic objections, he does take great satisfaction when they do end up helping people.
He was once a family man, and misses the life of having companions to live with greatly. While he enjoyed traveling with June far more than being alone, he never really trusted her. Rourke, on the other hand, he is fiercely devoted to and would move heaven and earth or take great risks to protect her.
He avoids reminders of his old human life, not only because the pain of what he's lost, but seeing how his original self squandered it for all the wrong reasons. Despite his powers, and the fact it's not completely unheard of to transfer consciousness into a new cloned body, he's never sought to regain a human form.
Powers and Abilities
He is a talented artist, and enjoys drawing comics in pen and ink. While he mainly draws and writes slice of life stories based on people he's met, when he has time during his travels, he used to exclusively do comedy animations.
He can float in the air due to a balloon of helium he keeps inside his body. He can control his altitude and propel himself along by controlled venting of these gasses through valves he installed in his flanks and back. (he worked hard to make it silent-- at one point he had to make farting noises whenever he tried to move)
Of course, he is also a Siol, which is the foundation of most of his most impressive powers. While he can theoretically do literally anything, he generally keeps his usage of the power within a few disciplines.
Programming/Computer metaphor
Like Rourke, Rally studied The Book of Now and Forever, gaining the ability to impose his will on the universe using a computing metaphor. He has memorized many hundreds of lines of x86 assembly, and the basic process to create a "basic" 486DX CPU out of gas molecules from the local atmosphere and use it to run his aetherial "programs."
He can summon GUIs that corresond to various objects in the environment, displaying various information about the object and allowing those parameters to be changed on the fly. As he used a Windows 95 PC to run the programming exercises in the Book to prepare his nervous system for ascension, his "windows" have taken on the appearance and theme of that operating system.
This is considered marginally safer than attempting to manipulate reality directly. The formulaic, algorithmic nature of this method tends to prevent several deadly classes of mistake, though it's by no means safe.
Prayer
Prayer is a technique Rally picked up from a wandering Siol. Rally finds prayer works better for many things than the computer metaphor, though there's no reason he couldn't use either. It's a question of mindset-- prayer works when you want something general, like help finding a stable, survivable reality, or for guidance.
Intuition
Rally's intuition is pretty basic, he very rarely gets useful premonitions, but he is uniquely attuned to Rourke's nonverbal communication, and can interpret her thoughts with nearly perfect intonation and syntax, as if she was actually speaking.
Creche
A common Siol technique is to create what amounts to a Bag of Holding. Rally keeps his inside his mouth-- his body originally functioned as a children's backpack, perfect for anchoring a creche. He furthermore has it warded against most subtle reality drifts and adjustments, allowing him to keep anchors to the local context inside.
Dream
Rally's Siol dream was of a woman who was also a flower that was also the sun placing large gems inside a hedge maze.