Badfic Manor app

[eternal_night_ends]

OOC Information:

Name/Alias: Birdy

Age: 28

E-Mail//MSN//AIM: kyanve@gmail.com (email), shirhanblade (aim)

Personal LJ: shirhan_blade

IC Information:

Character Name: Soma Cruz

Character Journal: last_dracula

Canon: Castlevania: Aria/Dawn of Sorrow

Point in Canon: Mid Dawn of Sorrow, just after the doppelganger event.

Age: 19

Birthday: August 19

Appearance: Soma is 5'10", with bright white hair that doesn't look like it should be natural for a human, and pale steel blue eyes, known to fade silver depending on the light. He usually wears a plain black shirt, jeans, boots, and a long white trenchcoat. When something doesn't have his attention too obviously or he's not talking to people, he often gives the impression of a quiet, introspective stoic and can seem much older than he actually is. This lasts until the moment he opens his mouth, at which point he still has the vibe of something very old, dangerous, and powerful, but otherwise acts like a fairly typical eighteen year old socially-awkward dork. If he's particularly agitated or there's a lot of blood around, his eyes start turning almost luminescent yellow, and he gains visible fangs and a more "feral" feel to the "aura".
In wolf form, he's a large solid-white wolf that's just coming out of the "awkward adolescent" age, with legs slightly too long and paws slightly too big; in bat form, he's a solid white Egyptian fruit bat with about a three foot wingspan. He's also capable of a white-fog mist form for a few seconds, but that's rarely seen and tends to give him migraines. He can't speak in any of those three forms, but often forgets this, resulting in a lot of confused barking and squeaking. In theory he has a malleable demon form, but that's never been seen, and he doesn't know how to trigger it, nor is he exactly tempted to find out.

Abilities: Oh dear god. His abilities in canon are a sprawling mess that depends on what souls of monsters he's absorbed! There's a long list of possible powers. A Very. Long. List.
(Links for emphasis/future reference, there's really no need to try to read them for the app.)
To start with, there's the standard RP fudge I have: it's referenced several times that his abilities are similiar to Adrian/Alucard/Arikado's, so one of the simplifications I've resorted to is a base set of tricks that's keeping with that and him being "Dracula" reincarnated - he can teleport short distances, summon small fireballs, heal himself slowly by feeding off someone else's blood/spirits of monsters (which skidges him out immensely), and there's a couple familiar summons that're entirely Mod-option and will be discussed in detail in a minute. In addition to that, he has the alternate forms listed in Appearance - he can turn into a bat that can fly, breathe very small fireballs, and navigate in the dark by sonar; a wolf that can run at a top speed of probably ~70 mph (His ability to do silly things like stop and maneuver TANKS, and he runs into things a LOT), and a mist-form that's a loose grey fog-cloud that can pass through very small spaces, grates, door gaps, etc. that he hates. He also heals a bit faster/cleaner than normal for a human, and has EXCELLENT night vision. (On the flipside, the sun is the Evil Daystar; he can actually go snowblind from bright direct sunlight.)
In theory he also has a much better sense of smell than normal, and possibly better physical abilities than normal for a human, but he hasn't exactly learned to pay attention to that very well, nor has he really trained it; he'll occasionally pick out things humans shouldn't, and will notice the smell of blood from a half-mile away, but it's another in the list of things he's just not that good at yet. The durability does show up, in that he doesn't give himself massive concussions when he runs into things at top sprint in wolf form, and can drop/jump down a few stories without any injury. It seems to selectively work; maybe there's some kind of built-in safeguard against self-injury, maybe the reflex for it only kicks in on instinct when he's dealing with self-made environmental hazards, but it doesn't kick in very well when he's being attacked.
After that comes the soul abilities. Oh dear god the soul abilities. For now I'm going to assume a random mixed bag of abilities from the list; some of them are underwhelmingly useless and may remain, some of them wouldn't translate very well to something other than a side-scrolling action-rpg and would need to get re-written to something that makes sense, some of them are slightly "oh btw he can blow shit up" - though he only has a few that're high-power attacks, and I'm fudging away from the most ridiculous ones. (no six-foot beams of lasery death or swarms of devouring locusts for Soma.) If the mods want, I can sit down and compile a list of which ones he has/might do that anyway given time. Also, I do tend to play him derp-teenager/awkward; his control is a little skidgy sometimes, and they don't necessarily do what he wants. He actually does BETTER in high-stress situations when there's honestly serious threat to him or people around him, mostly because he's thinking about it less and relying more on past-life instinct at times like that.
He'd really like to learn to do that less.

A specific listing of the Soul abilities is on a comment off this entry.

Personality: Soma is known to many as "cold, standoffish, and a bit creepy". This is largely a mix of the aura that comes along with being a Lord of Darkness reincarnated, and growing up with people's reactions to said aura; he reads to 99% of people as a VERY LARGE PREDATOR/thing that goes bump in the night of some authority, and people generally react very badly to that. So, around most people he doesn't know, he's generally quiet, socially awkward, and will hang around the sidelines and keep to himself until either he feels like it's safe to try to approach someone or he has a reason to, or unless someone approaches him first. Even then, he tends to reflexively assume he'll get at least mild hostility until proven otherwise, unless someone's obviously also of the supernatural and creepy persuasion. Not that being supernatural necessarily means the aura isn't off-putting, it just means he's likely to put off a vibe of at LEAST "large and dangerous", if not also "trying to be in charge" whether he is or not. He can be very pointy and smarmy when he's ruffled or getting the usual "creepy bad thing stay away" treatment. If it gets bad enough, he'll occasionally lapse into some mannerisms that would give anyone else from his canon the screaming creeps for familiarity; he's not exactly cynical about mankind, and puts real effort into being an optimist about human nature, but damned if people don't make it hard sometimes.
If someone manages to get him to relax, or approaches him with enough open lack of hostility, they very quickly get to see what he actually is:
A basically fluffy-friendly, socially awkward, good-natured derp of a teenager. He's extremely intelligent when he chooses to focus, but tends to skip steps in thought processes and get distracted unless he feels like there's a reason for it, so he can manage some pretty amazing moments of foot-in-mouth and Sheer Derp. ("Whoa whoa, what do you mean my powers are dark? D: D:" <- said after A QUARTER OF A GAME of absorbing and using the powers of monsters and feeding off their souls.) He can be occasionally moody and temperamental, but it's a sharp, fast-burn temper, and once it's over, he tends to forget he was even upset; it takes real effort to actually get him to dislike you. He's not exactly NAIVE, but he will assume someone is Not That Bad until given a reason to think otherwise, and while he's learned to be a little more wary than he used to, he's still prone to occasionally saying too much and being too open to all the wrong people, or not reading clues that most people would pick up on as "this person is bad news". (He's so used to people erroneously assuming HE'S some kind of evil monster/creep on reflex, after all...) He's not stupid, and will catch on sooner or later if he's being duped - and he won't be happy about it.
The comedy is that while he's capable of being more paranoid and calculating, he actually will consciously shy away from it when he starts falling into that pattern; he's all too aware of what he used to be in his previous life, remembers almost being possessed and falling back into that darkness twice, and doesn't want to turn into the Lord of Darkness again. It is possible to push buttons enough to get him showing more monstrous traits, but odds are good he'll start reining it in even if such means putting himself at risk as soon as he realizes his control's going a little funny...
And it's takes a lot of stress and work to get him to actually start behavior-lapsing into Dracula mode past the occasional subconscious mannerism.
If he ever starts falling into it (which is very difficult, especially since he does have the talisman for suppressing it), he'll start getting much less fluffy, much less derpy, and much more venomous. He can be perfectly charming and sociable in that mode, to an extent, but it's a means to an end, and he'll start picking up a sadistic streak.

History: So way back in the eleventh century, during the first Crusade, there was a knight named Leon Belmont and his strategist, childhood friend, and bestest buddy, Matthias. When they came back from the Crusade, Leon's fiancee (who logically by that day and age's standards should've already been his wife but I'm not going to quibble historical accuracy here), who'd been holding down the castle, was waiting for them...while Matthias's had died of an illness in his absence.
Matthias, having always been the guy actually minding that people were scum etc. to keep his best, fluffy and trusting buddy Leon intact, was kind of devastated by this, and a bunch of other little psychological tics piled up, and next thing anyone knew, a mysterious forest appeared in their territory, and things came and kidnapped Leon's wifefiancee Sara. Matthias disappeared in the chaos too, and Leon went dashing off to save his best buddy and his girl, apparently having given the local church the impression he was crazy to the point of him being stripped of his title and everything, necessitating him dashing off alone and unarmed.
Leon was given an enchanted whip made by an alchemist and artificer who'd been stuck in the grounds of the creepy forest and creepy castle. Yes a whip. It's a perfectly good weapon for fighting the forces of darkness. Don't ask me, I don't know. Maybe Walter'd been taking pleasure in destroying anything resembling a NORMAL ACTUAL WEAPON his pet pissy vengeful alchemist made? idk. With that, he battled through the castle, ending up with the wonderful revelation that Sara'd been warped by the Master and was becoming one of his monsters; she sacrificed herself so that her soul, and her tie to the Master, could go into the whip to make it something that could actually HURT the bastard. Leon stormed in to confront him and rescue his bestest buddy and avenge her!
And when Walter fell, his bestest buddy claimed the Master's power, congratulated Leon on helping him with his plans, said something vague about oh maybe we can find a way to fix Sara later too, by the way how about ruling the world at my side from my new Demon Castle? Oh yeah he'd been turned into a vampire and been conning the Master of the Castle who he'd been planning on double-crossing from the beginning but the whole thing was necessary because Leon was MUCH more capable of beating the guy than Matthias.
Leon, understandably a leedle pissed, tried to take a shot at Matthias, only to be interrupted by Death, who decided it was time for him to get shooed off; that manifestation of the castle crumbled, and Leon swore to hunt Matthias to the end of the Earth, a vow that would carry on to further generations of his family.

Meanwhile, Matthias became the Lord of Darkness, and went on to take out his frustrations on the human race, sowing chaos, destruction, and disaster wherever he could get power, gathering followers, and generally being a right villain. One way or another he started being known as Dracula because the original game wasn't very thought out and was made of a bunch of horror movie tropes and attempts at making its own mythology came later so they kinda had to lol and roll with what they'd already done. Somewhere in this, Matthias got attached to a lady from a village he'd parked outside who worked as a herbalist and healer; he kinda went head over heels, and even started being less hostile to all mankind and existence, and that little village was left alone for her sake, and they had a son! All was set for the Power of Love to save the world from the Lord of Darkness's potential reign.

Then the villagers decided the nice herbalist lady was obviously a Witch in League With The Devil and burned her at the stake while Matthias wasn't looking.

With his loathing of all makind confirmed, he redoubled his efforts to Plunge The World into Chaos and Darkness, raising his son to be good help in that; his son kinda took after Mom, unfortunately, and took pity on the humans, and went off to fight against him.
A good thousand years of time go here, with a lot of various fights between Dracula and the Forces of Darkness and the Belmonts, his son, and the Forces of Light.

Soma spent a good chunk of his childhood pulling exchange programs to Japan, and half of his time in school was spent living at the Hakuba shrine with the shrine-keeper's family. Their daughter, Mina, quickly became his closest childhood friend, and one of the few people that associated with him regularly, since most people found him "creepy and unsettling", leading to him being avoided by his peers. He actually had a reputation for being standoffish, quiet, and antisocial, since he didn't feel like turning the ostracism into confrontations; he had a few people he got along with, and was pretty happy being self-sufficient as long as he wasn't harassed too much; he got good grades, got to go out and do things with Mina, and managed to find other entertainment.
Just after his graduation from high school, he went up to the shrine with Mina to watch a total solar eclipse; right about when the eclipse happened, things went utterly pear-shaped, as he and Mina found themselves not in the shrine, but in a weird extradimensional demon castle. A strange and suspicious figure going by "Genya Arikado" (Because dear Adrian/Alucard FAILS AT ALIASES FOREV4RZ) informed them that they were inside the eclipse; or well, he was suspicious to Soma - Mina recognized him as someone that nebulously was a friend of the family. They were attacked by some of the undead resident in the castle; Mina collapsed, more to the effects of the castle's energy than the attack, while Soma found himself absorbing the souls of some of the dead monsters. "Arikado" filled him in halfway that he'd inherited a power of dominion, and that the only way to save Mina was to go investigate the Castle and figure out his own situation.
During that investigation, he managed to run into a nice polite guy (who was the leader of a very dangerous cult), a witch from the Vatican and ally of Arikado's that warned him the nice guy was bad news, and a total amnesiac Belmont who'd disappeared years ago. Apparently, around when Soma was born, there had been an expedition into the Castle to confront and destroy Dracula Once And For All that had kind of sort of succeeded! They'd managed to seal the castle into the eclipse, and shatter his power, scattering the shards of his being. The problem was, the crazy cult leader had gotten one of the power-shards, and was convinced he was going to be the second coming of Dracula, destined to plunge the world into darkness.
Soma, being the derp teenager that he was and trancing out a little into a weird not-himself state, challenged Graham-the-cult-leader on meeting him again, and made the wonderful mistake of mentioning his own powers, which caused Graham to freak out just a bit.

See, Graham wasn't the reincarnation of Dracula Destined To Plunge the World Into Darkness.

Soma was.

And as Soma came more and more into his power, it started being more noticeable that the old cockroach had some kind of contingency plan that involved returning via some poor sap inheriting his power over the Castle; the problem was that especially while Soma was still coming into it, it was possible for someone else to kill him, claim it, and become the Lord of DArkness themselves. Arikado and company, having noticed that Soma was sort of a fluffy derp, were banking on Soma to use the Castle's own power to put a stop to the whole psychotic cycle.
It very nearly didn't work; after a point, Soma got a little half-possessed, to the point that Julius, the Belmont, actually tried to kill him to make sure there was an end to it all. Soma managed to win the fight and restrain himself from losing control and killing Julius, giving them some respect for his stubborn tendencies and the possibility that he might actually pull it off.
After killing Graham in the castle's throne room, he very nearly did get taken over completely; a mix of Mina throwing some of her power at giving him an anchor and his own stubbornness enabled him to drag back from the brink and launch an assault on the heart of the Castle's chaos realm, the source of its power.
As far as anyone knew, it was destroyed, and his life returned to normal; his powers dropped off and seemed to be gone, all was well with the world and normal.
A couple years later, while he was visiting Japan, he got a wonderful wake-up call from another remnant of the chaos cults; not only did she manage to summon monsters at him, but as soon as his life was seriously in danger, his powers returned, albeit a little rusty from disuse. Turns out some other people with some of the little minor shards of power weren't happy that the guy capable of bringing the Castle back and ushering in the New Era of Darkness was off trying to be a normal teeanger, and had decided that clearly, the answer was to kill him and claim it for themselves/break him so he went psycho and did it anyway. They very nearly succeeded, as Celia, the cult leader, viciously murdered a doppelganger mimicking Mina in front of Soma; he only kept his sanity thanks to a talisman the real Mina had given him suppressing his darker powers long enough for "Arikado" to intervene and uncover that the corpse wasn't actually Mina, and that she was still safe elsewhere. This, unfortunately, led to one of the "candidates" for taking his power and the "Lord of Darkness" position that he'd inadvertently killed self-resurrecting by springboarding off his power. (The sad part is that as screwed up and convoluted as the timeline of his canon is, it's actually less nonsensically paced than Detective Conan, and CAN be made sense of.)
He's being dropped in from not long after this; he may be disoriented and a little residually rattled.
(Needless to say, it's likely that everyone who knows him has decided to make Mina's safety their top priority.)

First Person Sample: [Outside, part of the grounds is currently torn up, as if there were things clawing out of the ground.]

[The trail of disturbed earth is easily traceable to a group of about fifteen zombies.]

[The zombies seem to be in some kind of a formation; Soma is sitting on the fountain ledge about ten feet in front of them, concentrating hard and fairly obviously channeling...something.]

[There's an occasional odd, confused twitch from the zombies.]

[Trying to get them to do the Thriller routine just isn't working so well.]

[Especially when they scent warm flesh nearby and start shambling towards it.]

HEY HEY NO BAD ZOMBIES!! BAD!! GET BACK - AARRRGHHH!!!

[And dismissing most of them hastily in a shower of red sparkles, he's now stuck chasing down the last few with a sword.]

DAMNIT! - Sorry about tha- DON'T YOU EVEN! GET BACK HERE YOU STUPID SACK OF BONES! [HACKSLASHMURDER]

Stupid zombies...

Third Person Sample: It was too quiet, too calm, and too empty. Sure, he had the vague sense there were other people around, but that wasn't exactly comforting with where he'd last been; he wasn't exactly trying to find them exactly, so much as trying to get an idea where he was enough to tell if it was even safe to approach whoever-it-was.
And on getting outside, it was ...
Pretty obvious that this wasn't the environs of the cult headquarters, and that he was definitely not where he needed to be.
After a minute trying to get bearings, he decided to go with whichever direction seemed like it might be the right way, dropped down to wolf form, and ran.
For once, he actually managed pretty well at the dodge-derby that was keeping a top-speed sprint through trees.
Stupid trees.
They look so innocent, then they jump in front of you.
Stupid, painful ninja trees.
One of the problems with wolf form was a tendency to reflexively rely on scent over sight. This failing meant that while he was feeling quite proud of himself for managing to not run into any trees, he managed to not realize there was a much bigger obstacle until it was FAR too late to stop.
It didn't mean he didn't try, and it was a glorious cartwheel of flailing white wolf that smacked into the Fourth Wall at top sprint speed with a resounding crash, leaving one stunned teenager sprawled on the ground in front of it.
"OooowwwwwWWwwww...."

Links: Obligatory fandom wiki entry.

Notes: His icons seriously suck, are six-seven years old, and I need to remake them. ._.