ste; application

[darkinferno]

OOC Information:
Name: Abilene
Are you over 15? Yep!
Contact: darkinferno/journeys

IC Information:
Name: Preincarnation: Riku | Reincarnation: Dante Rantanen
Canon and medium: Kingdom Hearts
Age: Preincarnated, 16/17; in this world, 18.
Preincarnation Species: Human
Preincarnation Appearance: Appearance as of the end of KH2; in KH3DS he pretty much looks the same, but with the haircut of his dream-world model.
Any differences: Riku’s hair is still going to be pretty pale, but it’s white-blond, rather than silver-white. His eyes are more an icy blue than bright turquoise. He looks in general more Nordic than Game Genetics. Otherwise about the same.

Preincarnated History: How about some wiki links?
(Note: In the first game the main bad guy is called Ansem. ...then in KH2 suddenly he wasn't Ansem, suddenly he was a Heartless of this other guy, Xehanort, who had stolen the real Ansem's name, and you've got the fold of Xehanort-Xehanort's Heartless-Xemnas-Ansem-Ansem the Wise going on. For simplicity's sake, I will refer to Xehanort's Heartless as Ansem, as A) this was how he was originally known, B) the real Ansem is always referred to as "Ansem the Wise" anyways, and C) Riku himself still refers to him as Ansem, even in the most recent installments.)

So. To fully understand Riku, we have to go back to when he was five years old. When he was five years old, he met this guy. Baby Riku, apparently having never been taught the fine principles of Stranger Danger, proceeded to talk to said guy about worlds outside of his own, and how he wanted to get out and become stronger so he could “protect the things that matter. You know, like my friends!” The stranger, Terra, performed a short ceremony with Riku that day that would mark him as an eventual Keyblade wielder and give him that opportunity.

Cut to nine years later. Riku and his friends are still stuck on the islands, and Riku’s getting pretty stir-crazy, to the extent that the three of them decide to build a raft and sail away to the outside worlds, because nothing could possibly go wrong with that, right?

(Spoilers everything goes wrong with that.)

The night before they’re supposed to leave, a storm hits the islands—not a natural storm, lightning and thunder and winds, but a storm of Heartless that ultimately devour their world. Riku makes it out all right, helped by a hooded figure to escape, and winds up in Hollow Bastion where he meets the witch Maleficent. He starts looking for Sora and Kairi immediately, certain that they made it off the islands too, but when Maleficent starts manipulating his emotions he winds up falling into darkness. She convinces him that Sora has abandoned him for new friends, and that only she can help him find Kairi. Riku doesn’t trust her entirely (“Silly boy, you’re like a son to me. I only want you to be happy.” “I seriously doubt that.”), but as his choices become more and more limited by his own actions he turns to her more often, her flattery and her power attractive in light of his mounting uncertainty. She builds him up, telling him that he is the true Keyblade master and giving him the ability to control the Heartless—but that only sets him up to fall even deeper into darkness when Sora bests him.

Not knowing what else to do, Riku gives himself to the darkness entirely, thinking it’s the only way he can become strong enough to beat Sora. Instead it makes him the perfect vessel to host the wandering spirit of Ansem, the hooded figure that helped him to escape the islands so long ago. Ansem possesses his body, and shortly thereafter Riku winds up in the realm of darkness, where he wanders until a voice leads him to meet a King. When Sora defeats Ansem in the realm of light, just outside of a pair of doors that link the two realms, the King and Riku help him to close the doors and end the threat to the worlds from the Heartless.

This leaves Riku in darkness. He is separated from the king, but even Riku himself doesn’t know what happened to cause that—all he knows is that next he was waking up, in a place described as “between light and dark,” with a voice telling him to stay asleep. The voice offers him a choice: to sleep, or to take the first steps of a long and painful journey toward the truth. Riku chooses to search for the truth, and is brought to the very bottom basement of Castle Oblivion. As he fights his way upward, at first oblivious to the fact that his friend Sora is doing the same thirteen floors above him, he has to face the fact that the darkness is still in his heart, and that trying to ignore its presence there will only make him lose control of it. Throughout his journey through the castle, Riku accepts the darkness in his heart, acknowledging its presence but refusing to let it control him, continuing to fight its influence even as he uses its power. As he reaches the conclusion of this journey he finds a comatose Sora, his memories (and by extension, his heart) shattered by the ordeals he faced in the castle. Riku decides to go on another journey to help his friend, taking the first step to repairing the rift he opened between the two of them.

This journey leads Riku to Organization XIII, a band of Nobodies. Nobodies are the remnants of hearts; when a Heartless is created, a Nobody is as well. The strongest hearts leave behind human-shaped remnants, who remember everything about their pasts. Riku’s target was the Nobody created from Sora, a boy called Roxas. However his mission was made more difficult by the appearance of a second Nobody called Xion, a blank slate of a puppet created by the Organization, who was siphoning Sora’s memories from Roxas. Riku convinced Xion to give up her memories willingly, so that Sora could become whole again, but Roxas took a little more persuasion: Riku had to fully release all of the dark power in his heart, “even… if it changes me forever.” This trapped him into Ansem’s form, a physical change so complete that Riku started going by Ansem’s name, casting away everything of who he used to be. He continued to work in the shadows as Sora awoke, investigating the Nobodies and doing whatever he could to help his friends without revealing himself to them, ashamed of what he’d done in the past and what he’d become. He even gained a Keyblade of his own, a modification to the blade he’d carried for so long that turned it into a weapon of light. Everything was going well! Until Naminé, Kairi’s Nobody, blew his cover.

Kairi had been kidnapped by a member of Organization XIII, who had planned to use her as leverage against Sora. When Kairi escaped, Saïx came to stop her, only to find himself stopped by Riku’s own appearance. He escaped through a Corridor of Darkness, but when Riku moved to follow him, Kairi called for him to wait, tipped off by Naminé: “You can take it from here, Riku.” Kairi is the first to discover Riku’s new appearance (King Mickey doesn’t count as Mickey knows more about Riku’s journey than even his friends do), and rather than turn away from him for everything he’s done and all the mistakes he’s made, she expresses how glad she is to see him. This is Huge. Riku fights in the light for the rest of the game, first fighting alongside Kairi as they search for Sora and then, shortly after they find him, becoming a full party member. Near the top of the Organization’s castle/base, an explosion results in Riku regaining his normal appearance, discarding the cloak and blindfold he’d been using to block the darkness and returning for good to the light. He and Sora go after the Big Bad, Xemnas, and fight a long dramatic battle. Near the end of this battle Riku gets pretty grievously injured protecting Sora, to the extent that even after they’ve defeated Xemnas he isn’t quite sure he’s going to make it through. (Given how Riku’s acting, admitting to childhood secrets and voice obviously much weaker/less substantial than just before or even during the battle, combined with how Sora’s humoring him and trying to keep him pepped up, it’s not a far stretch to imagine that Riku was actually pretty close to dying, or at the very least thought he was going to.)

But Sora isn’t having any of this, and off he drags Riku (almost literally)! The two of them reach a beach in the realm of darkness and decide that if the world of light is safe, it’s all right for them to be the shadows there. Enter Kairi, whose letter-in-a-bottle to the boys helps open the Door of Light to bring them both home.

Their respite doesn’t last long, though. Very soon after, Riku and Sora are both called up by King Mickey and Master Yen Sid, who want the two of them to take the Mark of Mastery exam, which would give them the ranking of Keyblade Master. To this end they had to dive into the dreams of what are called “sleeping worlds,” worlds that didn’t come back after the Heartless were defeated in the original Kingdom Hearts. They were to find the Keyholes of these sleeping worlds and bring them back into the waking world. However, their enemies had predicted their movements, and Riku finds himself running into both a younger version of Xemnas (Xehanort) and Ansem himself as he proceeds through the worlds. (To be honest Riku isn’t even surprised by this point when Ansem shows up. Given how much he’s fought against him it’s just par for the course by this point.) Once he finishes his journey through the worlds, he winds up in The World That Never Was, where he finds that not only has Sora been taken and put to sleep by their enemies, he’s been moving through Sora’s dreams this entire time, rather than through the dreams of the sleeping worlds.

Their enemies are planning on using Sora as a new vessel for Xehanort’s heart, just as Riku had been for Ansem’s long ago. They’d originally planned on using Riku, but Riku had proven over and over that he wouldn’t fall to the darkness again—so the onus had shifted to his friend. Knowing this, Riku sets out to recover Sora, doing so with the help of a few friends. But even after they’ve rescued Sora, he won’t wake up. Riku plunges back into Sora’s dreams, fighting through the last Nightmares to awaken his heart once more. As the two of them come back into the waking world, Yen Sid bestows the title of Master upon Riku, and the heroes of light begin preparations for their final battle against Xehanort and his various incarnations.

Reincarnated History:

Dante Rantanen was born to famous parents. Well, relatively famous. Famous enough that they met on the performing circuit, a pianist and an opera singer who made magic when the two of them were together, in more ways than one. The two of them became close when they initially did a performance together, continuing to work together both inside and outside of performance halls as well. It was about when Mama Rantanen got back from her second doctor’s appointment that she and Papa Rantanen were told that they’d better be prepared to tie the knot or do something similarly drastic, because what would it mean for their careers otherwise? They chose to get married, but it was a marriage of convenience, and only a few short years after Dante and his twin brother were born, the couple mutually decided to split. Papa Rantanen took one child, Mama Rantanen took the other, and within months Dad Rantanen was married to his new wife, who just so happened to have been his publicist for the past five years. Whoops.

With this new marriage, Dante basically grew up an only child. His parents (he grew up seeing his father’s second wife as his mother, even though he knows she’s technically his stepmother) were loving enough, but not altogether involved in his life. The two of them were frequently absent, whether due to his father playing concerts or his mother working events and taking on clients. As a result, Dante grew up raised mainly by his grandmother, a woman who loved to spoil him rotten. She encouraged him to think for himself and play and explore, and cultivated in him a desire to take care of the people around him. Dante lived with her in a small house near the woods until he was ten years old—at which point his parents realized how little they saw him and how much of his life they were missing. On his tenth birthday, he left his grandmother’s house to travel with them, forced into spending all his time with people he barely knew, who barely knew him.

That year was not fun in the slightest. With his grandmother he’d been able to explore, to follow whatever fancy caught his attention at the moment and to be a silly, lighthearted little boy. With his parents, Dante was expected to behave, to show poise, to appear their dutiful son with all regard for the world and its restraints.

Dante hated it.

Sure, he got to go interesting places—but he never got to explore. Most of the time he saw everything from a car window as they drove between concert hall, or bookstore, or restaurant. If he was sightseeing it was with his tutors, all the light side of the city and the sights you were supposed to see. The Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building—not the road blocked off by statues or the trees covered in crochet, or the river where the new artists’ installation of floating houses made of garbage was drifting by. Phantom of the Opera, not off-Broadway fringe theatre. It was all very white upper-middle-class suburbanite vacation boring. To make matters worse, his parents wanted to bond with him—only instead of that meaning things like going out to games or movies, it meant piano lessons with dad during sound checks, or press events with his mother. (These weren’t so bad, depending. If it was something like a book signing he could hide away with a book of his own until it was time to go; even better were the times he was able to sneak out into the city proper to explore on his own.)

They meant well, but Dante chafed under the sudden attention. As they were usually on the move he never really got a chance to make friends with others of his age, and as the months passed he found himself giving his tutors the slip more and more often, relishing the time alone to explore the different cities. But he couldn’t do it all the time. If he disappeared too often, that would be the end of that.

They visited his grandmother at Christmas. “Look at you, my well-traveled boy!” she’d crow, holding him to her, but he could detect the hint of sadness to her voice.

That was how the next few years went: constantly on the move, visiting his grandmother for holidays and birthdays if they were lucky. As he grew Dante retained his love of exploring each new city they came across (when he could get the opportunity), but he came to also enjoy the status his parents’ stations afforded him. He liked being treated like a little adult, able to accompany them to concerts or theatre or opera, able to speak to adults who, if they didn’t take him seriously, at least let him speak as though they did. Where before he had been an innocent little boy with an ornery streak, Dante grew into a self-confident (if not downright cocky) young man with the world at his fingertips. His parents would buy him anything he wanted, so long as he was still keeping face, and Dante grew still bolder, skipping out on his tutors and other obligations in search of other, more interesting pursuits.

When Dante was fifteen, they sent him back to live with his grandmother again.

Maybe it was because he’d skipped out one too many times to wander around the city on his own. He’d made a handful of friends online and was meeting them in person whenever they happened to be around. It wasn’t any big deal. Maybe it was because he’d hit his rebellious teenage years and was chafing again at his short leash, and though he tried not to he couldn’t help but argue with his parents when they protested his going out alone with kids he’d only just met. Maybe it was because one night he snuck out to hang out with his new “friends” and the lot of them were caught up transporting a number of art pieces that had been recently stolen from the downtown galleries. (Dante was able to claim ignorance, and his parents paid well to make sure the story never broke.)

Whatever the case, his parents were convinced that it was their nomadic lifestyle that was making their son grow up too fast, and in all the wrong ways. So it was back to grandmother’s house with you, my boy!

Dante didn’t mind as much as he’d expected to. His relationship with his grandmother was still good, and after she’d given him a stern look and demanded to hear his explanation for his behavior, she forgave him. He settled back into his life with her, his experiences over the past five years giving him both allure and popularity at the high school he enrolled in. Dante soaked it all up. “Golden boy” was a familiar role for him to play, and he liked the feeling of the rest of the world looking up to him.

But everything changed when the fire nation attacked his grandmother died.

She hadn’t even seemed sick. She’d been fit as a fiddle, laughing the night before as he’d told her about extra-curriculars at school, lively and asking all the right questions and reacting at the right moments. Then the next morning he woke up, and when she wasn’t already up and puttering about…

It was a stroke, they said, a stroke in the middle of the night. There was nothing that could have been done. Dante was in such a state of shock that he didn’t even protest when his parents packed him back up to leave with them. But this time, thinking the three of them needed to be a family, they moved to Locke City, into a large, drafty house with “character” (which was apparently code for old, dark, and creaky).

This lasted about a year and a half. Right after Dante’s graduation from high school, his parents were off again, promising to check in on him on the weekends and make sure everything was still functioning. As could only be expected though, this petered out pretty quickly—Dante only really sees them through Skype, which he slogs through once a month, a way to make them feel as though they’re still involved in his life.

First Echo: Exploring the mines when his phone, which he was using for light, died. As he tried to keep going through the tunnels, he remembered stumbling through the darkness once before. This Echo leaves him with only a few snatches of what was said back then (“Riku, can you hear me? I’ll be there soon.” And “I’ve been talking to you all along. But my words were hindered by the darkness in your heart.”), as well as a string of numbers that won’t leave his mind…


Preincarnation Personality:

Riku is a boy that used to be on top of the world.

Then he fell off.

Growing up, Riku was very much the king of his castle. It was a well-known fact that he was The Best—he could run the fastest, he could jump the highest, he could take on three people at once and beat them all in mock combat. Riku was the instigator, the one with the plan; he was the one everybody looked to when they didn’t know what to do next. Which was fine by Riku, because he always had an answer. He always had a plan.

As you might expect, this led to Riku becoming a fairly cocky boy. He was in control of every situation—until suddenly, he wasn’t. After the fall of Destiny Islands, Riku made a few boneheaded choices rooted entirely in his desire to be in control: regaining that sense of control by finding his friends was his main goal, and he did whatever was necessary to achieve it, in spite of the morality of his actions (see: kidnapping Jasmine). Eventually, he paid dearly for it.

And that’s a pretty common theme for Riku: he doesn’t do anything halfway. He commits himself to his decisions mind, body, and soul, no matter where that leads him. He’s willing to throw entire worlds into darkness (along with himself) to save Kairi, and to save Sora he not only plunges himself back into the darkness, but completely revokes the right of two Nobodies to exist along the way. Riku’s willpower is one of his most defining traits: if he sets his mind to something, he goes after that with everything he has. Unfortunately, this leads to him being very single-minded, to the extent that he doesn’t always remember to keep others in the loop. He’ll see something needing done and go after it without a word to anyone else—Riku cherishes his friends above all else but is very much a loner. He’s used to being on his own, if not by nature then by circumstance: after leaving Destiny Islands at age 15 he spent the next two years largely working alone, even if other hands guided his movements. After his initial mistakes he took his solitariness as a sort of both consequence and blessing—atonement for his misdeeds and a way to avoid facing those he felt he’d disappointed.

Riku is a perfectionist. Keeping his unequivocal status as The Best on the islands meant he had to continually show everybody else up. It meant not being able to fail. Failure hits Riku hard, and he tries his hardest not to let anyone see him struggling. It’s a large part of why he spent so long after the events of Kingdom Hearts hiding away; Riku knows how badly he messed up and he doesn’t think he can face anyone because of it. When Kairi lowers his hood and he is revealed to her in Ansem’s form, he can’t meet her eyes—he’s afraid of finding rejection there. Screwing up is bad enough. Being rejected by one of his closest friends, which is almost what he expected to happen, would have been a million times worse.

Riku’s friends are the most important things in all the worlds to him. He makes acquaintances with ease, but it takes a while to become close friends with Riku. However as soon as you reach that level, the boy is one of the most loyal friends you could ever have. Riku will do Whatever It Takes to protect his friends. He will put himself in danger’s way without a second thought, and he will wreak unholy hell on anyone that gets in his way. In the first Kingdom Hearts, his sheer force of will is strong enough that he is actually able to fight back against Ansem’s possession of his body—Riku is the only person shown in the series to have been able to accomplish this feat, and he did it the moment it looked like Ansem was going to use him to attack his friends. “You won’t use me for this,” he said, fighting back and detaining Ansem long enough to ensure he wouldn’t be able to hurt Kairi.

His determination to protect his friends rolls straight back into his loner personality: Riku wants to be as strong as he can possibly be so that he can protect the people around him, and he doesn’t want to have to put anybody else in danger for his sake. Riku is all about being able to take care of himself; just before heading into the final basement of Castle Oblivion he tells King Mickey “I’ve gotta face [Ansem] alone. […] There’s no point in doing this if I can’t do it on my own.” He’s very focused on strength and the power gained by being strong; at first, he was mostly focused on physical and mental strength, but he’s since learned what it means to have a strong heart, too.

Competition was once a driving force in Riku’s life, and even though it’s not the same motivator that it once was, it’s still a large part of who he is. Riku was used to competition on the islands, running and jumping and fighting, and it’s what drove him to become as good as he is today. His competitive nature was a secondary influence throughout the events of the first game. While at first he was driven solely by his loss of control, as things between him and Sora deteriorated he became more and more determined to show that he was better than Sora, to find Kairi before Sora could, to prove that he was more worthy to carry a Keyblade than Sora was. Although after he falls into darkness, that facet of him fades (it’s tough to compete when there’s nobody to compete against), it still reappears from time to time: “Come on, Sora. I thought you were stronger than that,” he calls at the end of the first game, trying to goad Sora into not giving in to the darkness. A year later, he repeats that same line as he squares off against Roxas, speaking to the memories Roxas holds. (The fact that Roxas, without missing a beat, snaps back with what is indisputably a Sora Response—“Huh? Get real! Look which one of us is winning.”—speaks to how deep the competitive streak between the two boys ran.) Any more Riku doesn’t feel the same desire to show off and prove his superiority the same way that he once did, but he still finds it hard to back down from a challenge.

Riku today has changed a lot from the cocky, arrogant boy he was on the islands. Throughout everything that’s happened since the original storm hit Destiny Islands, he’s been knocked down numerous times, had to rebuild himself almost entirely from scratch. He’s come face-to-face with his own morality, and realized how much he was found wanting. With the shadow remnants of Ansem’s spirit living on in his heart, Riku’s had to examine every decision he ever made and remake those decisions time and time again, constantly pushing past the whispers of doubt and promises that one day he’d fall to darkness again. He’s had to dig himself out of his own grave, and with that has come a sense of seriousness and humility. He’s more willing to accept his own faults, to look critically at himself and to try and improve himself. Where before Riku worked tirelessly to repair the damage he’d caused, hoping to atone for his mistakes, Riku now works just as hard because he knows he can do the right thing. He’s seen the darker side of the mirror, and he wants to stop the darkness in its tracks before it can drag the rest of the worlds into that pit he lived in for so long. Riku’s goals aren’t any less daunting, and he’ll still go after them with everything he has, but there’s no longer the conflict in his heart that once ruled him. For now, he’s reached balance.

(It’s worth noting though that even if Riku’s a lot more serious and mature than he started out the games, he’s still retained a good deal of his snarky nature. It just kind of slips out—at The World That Never Was, during a Serious Conversation about why Riku was hiding himself from everybody else, Sora asks him why he tried to do so much on his own when he’s got all these friends to help him out. It would be heartwarming, if not for Riku’s smirk and response: “I’ll tell you why. ‘Cause I’m not a total sap like you!”

Old habits die hard.)

Any differences:

The biggest change to Riku’s personality is that he’s never been burned by his arrogance. At least, not to the extent that he was burned by it in the original canon. His preincarnation pretty much lost his heart to the darkness and came face-to-face with not only his hubris but his mortality (and morality). In this incarnation the worst it’s done is lose him a few friends. In fact, his self-assuredness has actually helped more than hinder him—when he traveled with his parents, his air of confidence made him an instant hit with most people he met. So this Riku is in no way as contrite as his preincarnation. In fact, he’s kind of a jerk.

Canon Riku is an introvert, but this incarnation of him is even more so. Being uprooted at ten and never staying in the same place more than a couple months at a time didn’t exactly leave much time for making meaningful friendships. Even after he moved back to his grandmother’s, he only had a couple years before being uprooted again for Locke City. This has left him good at meeting people, but bad at forming long-lasting relationships. It’s not worth putting in the effort when he doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be around.

This also means that Riku isn’t moved by people as he once was. Off the top of his head there’s no one he would lay down his life for, and while he’ll joke around with others, he doesn’t expect anybody else to have his back either. Riku is a one-man show, and all his emotions are perfectly contained (at least, he thinks so). Anything that doesn’t mesh with the image he’s trying to project is balled up and shoved into the deepest corners of his mind, where he doesn’t have to deal with them.

Overall this version of Riku is a lot less intense than his preincarnation was. He’s not got a chip on his shoulder or something to prove to the rest of the world, and he doesn’t feel like he needs to go out of his way for any real reason. He’s pretty content to go with the flow, so long as the flow is headed in the direction he wants, at which point he’ll just saunter off and do his own thing without preamble or permission.

Abilities: Okay, so Riku is a Kingdom Hearts character which basically means he’s got a stupid amount of “abilities” which are basically different specialized attacks. A full list (of at least his abilities from Dream Drop Distance) is located here, but as that’s a pretty sizable laundry list, here’re the highlights:

• KEYBLADE. KEEEEEYBLAAAAAAAADE. Basically a shiny blade that functions as a deux ex machina when it comes to anything ever that can be locked or closed. (No seriously, apparently you can awaken people from comas with this thing.)  (Okay okay so it's by using the blade's empathetic nature to resonate with that person's heart but YOU GET MY DRIFT.) As such, it's able to open almost any lock it comes up against, from that lock keeping your diary from being read to the locks that keep the various worlds separate from one another.
  • Rustproof, dustproof, tarnishproof, bluntproof... basically doesn't require much upkeep, as it isn’t ever kept in the open when it isn’t being used. When the Keyblade is dismissed it goes back to rest in the wielder’s heart—it’s pretty much an extension of his own heart, as without a strong heart you can’t wield the power of a Keyblade, and Keyblades normally aren’t handed off; the power to wield or create one is passed on from those who came before.
    
    • Seriously, entirely bluntproof. They’ve been used to cut through skyscrapers before.
  • Can use Keychains to change the overall appearance and (to an extent) its capabilities.
• General swordplay/combat skills. Riku is very much a lightning bruiser; he fights one-handedly and hits hard and fast. He's able to take out Xion with a single well-placed hit to her lower back, so in addition to swordfighting he's got some experience in hand-to-hand combat as well.

• Acrobatics/movement. Some form of dance training. Nobody will ever convince me otherwise.
  
  • Also he can do things like one-handed back handsprings while still wielding his weapon against an enemy.
  • Equipped with KH physics, which means No Fall Damage and Ridiculously High Jumping. (In 3DS Riku starts out with a relatively "reasonable"  jump of about head-height. Then with High Jump he's able to clear semis. Add in Doubleflight (basically double jump), and suddenly he's able to come level with second floor windows. SURPRISE!)
• DARKNESS. Riku can do all sorts of things with it—he can sense it on people, he can utilize it as a tool to help him move faster, he can see through it no matter how dark the world around him, and he can't be harmed by it. Most of the dark-infused abilities he has are on the ability list above, but the big ones would be Shadow Roll, Shadow Slide, Dark Aura, Counter Aura, Dark Firaga, and Dark Splicer.

• Magic. Riku’s not as big a magic user, but he’s got access to the full range of spells, which include elemental (fire/blizzard/lightning/wind/dark in varying levels), healing (cure/esuna), and status (blind/poison/mini/bind/slow/stop/sleep).  

Roleplay Sample - Third Person:

It’s curiosity that brings him to the mines, curiosity and the thrill that only comes from doing something to break the monotony of day-to-day life. Dante doesn’t consider himself stupid, not by a long shot, but there’s a definite voice in the back of his mind muttering darkly about how moronic this idea of his is, and how he should just turn back now because doesn’t he remember how the mines collapsed just a few short months ago?

Of course he does. He’d have to be an idiot to have forgotten. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to turn back. If he let himself be scared away by just the possibility of something going wrong, he’d never leave his house! He’s put off visiting the mines for several months already. He’s not turning back now.

But when his cell phone dies (…whoops), taking away his main source of light, it isn’t curiosity that drives him to continue exploring anyways. That? That might be the moronic part of him.

Whatever it is, Dante doesn’t plan on wimping out. He glances behind him (or where he thinks is behind him; he came out at night and the tunnels are dark), then shrugs and presses on. He’s got a pack of matches in his back pocket. Whenever he finds something worth looking at, he can use them. He’ll just have to keep careful track of where he’s headed.

But it’s when he starts back down the tunnel, absently reaching out for the wall every so often to keep his bearings, that he feels the unpleasant prickling at the back of his mind. Slowly he comes to a halt, concentrating on the sensation. It feels almost like…

Before the thought can complete itself, it happens. Dante gasps as the heartbeat echoes through him, feeling for an instant as though he is nothing at all as the moment freezes. He grabs at his chest, but just as soon as it begins it’s over, and everything goes back to normal.

It felt like déjà vu.

“Riku, can you hear me? I’ll be there soon.”

The words resound in his mind, bringing with them the memory of a similar darkness, with a seemingly endless road disappearing into it. Dante frowns, trying to place it. And whose voice is that…?

“I’ve been talking to you all along. But my words were hindered by the darkness in your heart.”

He pauses. That hadn’t—no. No way it was in answer to a question he hadn’t even asked aloud. “Fine, fine, I get it. I’m going back,” he decides, throwing his hands up. He’s going to go home, and he’ll go to bed and get some sleep, and all of this will just be one weird experience of what the fuck that he can chalk up to it being stupid-o’clock in the morning.

And in the morning, phone fully charged and only one match out of his pack missing, he mostly believes it. Or, he would if he could just get those damn numbers out of his mind.

Roleplay Sample - Network:

[It’s during his cursory skype call with his parents that Dante accesses the network for the first time, typing the numbers in while he’s got no other escape. He can’t help the look of surprise that crosses his face when the network appears before him, but they either don’t notice or don’t question, and he doesn’t offer any information as to what’s distracting him the rest of the call.

But his parents do try to keep involved in his life, and it’s almost a full half-hour later before Dante finally disconnects. By this point he’s read enough. He flexes his fingers over the keyboard, half-habit, half-hesitation, then types into what he feels like must be the abyss, but appears to be much less expansive.]

Numbers, huh? Numbers, aliens, gardeners, and conspiracies.

You know, if you’re trying to convince people that all of this is for real, you’re doing a piss-poor job of it. Whatever happened to easing into it, instead of throwing newcomers into the deep end?

[His text sounds a lot more casual than he really is. Dante doesn’t necessarily believe all this nonsense about the Secret Numbers Club and all that, but damn if it isn’t an intricate piece of work.

He pauses before adding anything more. Is he really planning on drinking this kool-aid?

…Shit. He wasn’t going to ask. But he read the FAQ posts a little more carefully than he did when he was skimming while skyping, and it’s been niggling at him for some reason. He’s going to ask.]

Has anyone found out what happens if a Vermini infects one of… you guys?

(And a short thread from the test-drive meme!)

Any Questions? Iiiiiiii think I'm pretty good!