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Player
Name: Chesca
Personal Journal:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cries
E-mail: bubblebang@gmail.com
AIM/MSN: AIM: punchingturtles
Timezone: GMT
Current Characters in Route: None!
Character
Name: Zia
Series: Bastion
Timeline: Post-Tazal Terminals, immediately before the Kid’s return. So I don’t have to say if any of the ending choices are canon or not. Also after several restorations, which affects all of nothing except a vague sense of deja vu but I like to mention it.
Canon Resource Links: There’s not a lot of information available in one place, mostly because Bastion’s plot is told bit by bit over the game. And partly because nobody’s really put the info together. I do have a very tl;dr ‘this is all the details of Basion and Zia’s role in it’ written up, but I won’t subject you to it unless these links aren’t enough!
In which Supergiant Games release their first game and it is excellent.
In which there is a normal Ura girl.
In which she falls in love and accidentally the end of the world.
In which the discovery of her father’s journal drives a good man to do terrible things.
Personality: Zia makes bad decisions. A lot of bad decisions. And they cause a lot of problems for a lot of people, including people she’d really rather not cause problems for. Every last one of these decisions is made with the best of intentions, but they all lead to unfortunate results.
Let's back up a little.
Caelondia isn’t the best place in the world to be an Ura since the war. There are, in fact, few places to be an Ura that are worse than Caelondia, even if you include the inside of a Scumbag (incidentally also a place Zia has been!). Unfortunately, the importance of the city’s secrets and general distrust of Ura refugees mean there’s no real way to stop being an Ura in Caelondia.
From the day she was born, Zia hasn't belonged. She was the only child a pair of refugees in a city that still bore the scars of a war with her people. She was brought up in a world where people who looked like her were monsters at worst, and foreign and terrifying at best. Somewhere along the line, years of being told people like her were wrong and destined never to do anything but hurt others stuck fast. She developed the kind of self confidence one needs to be absolutely willing throw away one's family and life and risk being sentenced to death without question for the first person who says they'll love you for it (this went poorly). Which is to say. What is a sense of self-worth? Because Zia has never experienced this strange and wonderful thing.
In her attempts to be useful to anyone at all and atone for what she's always been told are the crimes of her people, she became something of a people pleaser. If the 'willingly throw away etc etc.' thing above wasn't a big enough hint. She does what she's told, she tries to help people any way she can and she'll give anything to ensure the happiness of others. She's also semi-deliberately fashioned herself into the kind of person who you cannot hurt without feeling like you're kicking a puppy. She can't intimidate but she can look as scared and hurt as possible in an attempt to guilt people into not hurting her, or at least to convince them it isn't worth the effort. She wins hearts quickly, given half a chance, with her cheerfulness, her kindness and her voice.
Her freedom means more to her than she really has the means to express. After a life trapped inside the city and prevented from learning with no foreseeable hope of the situation changing, her freedom is the most precious thing she has. She's called out on it a few times by the narrator, who accuses her of travelling to Prosper Bluff just because she's always been told that good girls don’t. Notably, when the world ended, she chose to take her chances in a very hostile environment full of monsters and poisonous plants and air that isn’t always 100% breathable rather than go to the safe haven within the city. Unfortunately because she's been trapped and deliberately kept ignorant for so long she really struggles with the idea that maybe sometimes actions have consequences. She values her freedom above all else, but she has a lot to learn about responsibility.
This wouldn’t be quite as much of a problem if she had the slightest grasp of how caution is supposed to work. She isn’t immune to fear, but neither that nor common sense inform her actions as much at they really should. This is a girl who happily agreed to housetrain a giant underground alligator/drill monster. And whose opinion on mad science and gun turrets was ‘well it’s not like things can get any WORSE’. She’s also more than happy to egg the Kid on into doing very stupid things (see the ‘mad science and gun turrets’ example, where her response was essentially DO IT DO IT DO IT’). She’s cautious around people, new people scare her and acting hostile toward her (or even just in her presence) can instantly reduce any confidence she’s managed to gain to nothing.
She also has a strong curious streak, if that wasn’t already clear. At one point in the narration, Rucks actually has to demand she stops asking questions about the Kid and his complete inability to handle pipe smoking. She’s keen to learn, she manages to listen to all of Rucks’ story in one sitting, asking questions the whole time and she at least learns enough of the Ura’s language from Zulf in their short time together to understand a letter later. Sadly she’s not as well-learned as that curious streak would imply - it’s only very recently that there have been people around willing to teach her. She has her father’s quick mind but it’s wasted, she’s not book smart, she’s not street smart and she’s not sensible.
She doesn’t seem to be as laden with guilt as the other characters. That isn’t saying much, admittedly, but despite her role in the calamity she doesn’t seem to blame herself for it (or rather it’s never mentioned whether she blames herself for it while the Kid’s survivor guilt and Rucks’ desire to undo his mistakes are both very big deals. It’s likely she does feel some guilt, but not even close to as much as others in the cast). She doesn’t blame anyone else for it, either. Her backstory reveals that a man seduced her and then framed her for treason to manipulate her father and create an excuse to attack the Ura, but she’s never shown to be angry about it. She doesn’t fault the Ura for being hostile toward her later on either, simply saying that she’s glad the Kid came to help her, and she’s shown to care deeply about Zulf, putting herself into danger to try to ask him to come home. The things she does express guilt about are linked to individual people - her failure to talk Zulf out of fighting them, for example. It’s not eluded her that every single thing she tries to do ends in disaster, and it does upset her, but she’s not yet decided that it’s a good reason to stop trying.
Despite her cheerfulness - almost irrepressible cheerfulness, she is a person who is able to look at the ruins of the world and comment on how pretty the stars are - she does tend toward negativity sometimes. Usually when she’s talking about herself, the result of a lifetime of being taught that Caelondia was right and the Ura were wrong and told she’s a traitor waiting to happen. She doesn’t have a very high opinion of herself at all, saying ‘I’d hate to be in your shoes’ to the Kid when offering him the option of staying with her. It’s said in-game that all Ura are deeply religious and she’s never mentioned as an exception, though the fact that she allows Rucks to insult the gods when talking to her with no reaction (no mentioned reaction, at least) suggests that she probably isn’t as devoted a worshipper as others.
Not belonging weighs heavily on her. After not belonging in Caelondia all her life as a result of being physically an Ura, she finally finds herself at the Tazal Terminals and finds that, being culturally Caelondian, she isn’t welcome there either. When she finally realizes she has a place where she is welcome and wanted in the Bastion she doesn’t want to lose it, going as far as to turn her back on the rest of the world to stay with the only two (or three) people who’ve ever wanted her around.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
+ Amiable - Zia wins hearts easily. This is obviously a difficult thing to work with in RP, since everyone else is totally welcome to go ‘actually my character doesn’t like her very much’. I’m not going to get pissy if people don’t like her. But she’s kind and polite and really, really good at puppy faces and avoids confrontation like the plague and as a rule this generally means that she stays on people’s good sides.
+ Virtuoso - She’s a brilliant singer and just as skilled at playing the harp guitar. Which is actually significantly closer to a Lyre Guitar. Either way it’ll probably be a pain to get hold of one in the pokemon world, but her skills should transfer pretty easily to a normal guitar (which I’d assume she’d eventually be able to get hold of in one of the bigger cities, but I’ll put in an official question to the mods about this when it comes up).
+ Good with Animals - She’s ridiculously good with animals. Without any training, she manages to take care of two creatures that are in-canon considered near impossible to tame. I figure this would probably translate to being pretty good at ~BEING BESTEST FRIENDS WITH POKEMON~.
+ Famous Cookin’ - And she’s a pretty good cook. Rucks never actually says if her cooking is ‘famous’ in a good way or a bad way, but considering that she can make food that fills stomachs out of what’s left after the calamity without poisoning anyone, I’m guessing it’s the former.
+ Surviving - And on that note, she’s pretty good at surviving in general. She can throw together edible food with very little in the way of ingredients, she can run and hide from danger and set up a safe camp and not die in general with minimal tools. She survives in the Wild Outskirts, a very hostile environment, with very little in the way of tools for what is probably a few weeks and isn’t particularly suffering for it when the Kid finds her. She also survives for at least a week in an area filled with people who don’t particularly care for the idea of her being alive with nothing.
+/- It Killed the Cat - Zia is very curious. She’s been kept from learning for a long time and wants to know as much as she can. On the one hand, this means she’s a fairly quick and eager learner. On the other, it means she’s willing to do some very stupid things just for the experience.
+/- Stop Helping Me! - She’s desperate to be useful and quick to act when faced with the distress of others. This is both positive and negative because her intentions are always good but her plans tend to end badly.
- Ill-Fated - Pretty much everything Zia does ends in disaster. She is astonishingly unlucky.
- Civillian - She doesn’t fight. This isn’t much of a weakness in route’s setting (though she’s probably going to need a lot of convincing about the whole ‘pokemon battles’ thing. Which kind of defies the point of making her a trainer a little but.) but compared to the rest of the Bastion cast, she’s probably the only one who couldn’t kick some butts if she needed to. Unless someone is severely allergic to being sadfaced at, she doesn’t have many ways to stick up for herself.
- Fear of Conflict - Or much desire to stick up for herself, really. In fact, she doesn’t really do conflict at all. She hates it. She isn’t going to express opinions that aren’t ‘I agree entirely’ unless faced with something really really awful, and even other people arguing about something she isn’t involved in makes her very uncomfortable.
- Impulsive - Thinking before you act is for losers. The biggest threat to Zia at any given time is very likely to be Zia herself. She has a lot of very bad ideas and she is very, very impulsive. For the record, letting people you trust know about your excellent plans so they can bail you out if needed is also for losers.
- Not used to Thinking - Thinking in general is yet another thing that is for losers. Zia isn’t stupid. Somewhere in there is a very sharp mind. But she’s been deliberately kept ignorant and had people’s beliefs forced on her for so long that despite being very curious and eager to learn, she has difficulty reaching conclusions on her own. Even given all the information she needs to have an informed opinion, she’ll have difficulty coming up with something on her own and is much more likely to wait until someone else tells her what she’s supposed to think.
- Passive - While she’s quick to take action for the sakes of others, when faced with a situation she doesn’t like it rarely even occurs to her to try to get herself out of the situation. She’ll cope with it and survive it as best she can and wait for someone to rescue her, even if resolving the situation would be a lot easier. She’s good at surviving bad situations but resolving them isn’t something she does, she’s still not really at all used to being in control of her life.
- Clingy/Selfish - She’s willing to turn her back on the plight (...well. Dead-ness rather than plight) of an entire country in order to stay with the three people who mean the most to her.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Trainer
Starter: Absol
Password: Raspberry Lemonade!
Samples
First Person Sample: I wasn’t much expecting this development.
[It’s a slight understatement, but for now the pokégear is too interesting to say anything more. She turns the device in her hands, revealing New Bark Town, her knees in the grass and a black and white creature staring at the device as intently as she is, before finally showing her face. She’s eyeing the touchscreen of the pokégear rather than the camera, giving the distinct impression that the fact that she’s started to send a message out is the only thing keeping her from pressing all of the buttons to see what those ones do.
The girl’s pale. Very pale, actually, and little on the scruffy side, there’s not always enough water to spare in the Bastion for baths or washing clothes. Her skin almost looks gray and an onlooker could be forgiven for thinking that she was very unwell as a result, but her eyes are wide with curiosity and her face practically glowing underneath the dirt with amazement. Her expression changes after a moment, as it dawns on her that people can see her, to one of unease. After a little more staring at the touchscreen, one hand hovering above the pokégear, the communication abruptly switches to voice only. Her voice suddenly becomes more cheerful when it does, filled with the kind of pride that comes from victory over an inanimate object.]
I’m looking for a man called Rucks. Caelondian. He kind of- he has an old man face? [She is great at describing people shut up.] He walks with a stick and he wears Micia’s star.
And I’ve lost my harp guitar. If anyone’s seen it, it’s very important to me. I’d appreciate its return.
[If it bothers her much that she’s suddenly in a new place full of monsters, she’s not showing it. If she can just find Rucks then he’ll know what to do, after all. There’s not much sense in panicking, not when she’s all but certain that there’s nothing she can do. There’s a long pause, in which she starts singing along to the music cheerfully, before she finally finds the button to end the communication.]
Third Person Sample: Zia was finally starting to find her feet. As much as she ever did. The music took some getting used to, but it seemed to quiet down whenever she started singing. Didn’t throw her off. Didn’t keep her awake at night, now she was used to it. Everything else - well, she’d adapted to it all more quickly than she really ought to have. She still felt more comfortable with the monsters than with people, still felt the need to camp outside of cities so not to sleep in the buildings there, still needed the Absol that followed her like a ghost to snatch berries out of her hands when she decided to try eating them despite all the warnings, but she didn’t feel lost or out of place and she could walk for more than a minute or so in any given direction without reaching the edge of the world, so all was good.
Getting lost had quickly become something between an unfortunate habit and her favourite pastime. She hadn’t checked the map once since she first set out, and she found herself going in circles a lot. She didn’t much mind it, the routes outside the cities were as green and full of possibilities and adventure and interesting bugs as the wilds had been, but far safer. Hearing word that people didn’t die here hadn’t done much for her ability to think before acting, though she’d managed to avoid succumbing to the temptation to test it for herself. Her progress was slow as a result. She’d waste days climbing trees or blindly attempting to explore the cave on Route 31.
But hunger eventually won from time to time, forcing her to stop playing around. To go back to the nearest town. Find somewhere to have a meal and a shower and get any injuries Absol had managed to get tended to. Take on a job for a few days for money for food. Inevitably have her attempts to camp outside the city interpreted as an attempt to run off and have to explain ‘not entirely comfortable sleeping in a building above ground’ to the police. Just as inevitably grudgingly go back to the local inn and get a room instead. It wasn’t much fun compared to days spent exploring and climbing things, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. It was nice, if overwhelming, to see so many people again, walking around and talking at each other and not being piles of lifeless ash, and she hadn’t once even been recognized as an Ura. The work was tiring enough that she slept well, but never grueling.
In short she was, she mused as she scooped up half her breakfast in her hands and leant down to let Absol eat from them (which was messy and probably not hygienic and earned some stares but he seemed to like human food well enough and she wasn’t about to eat it all anyway), happy. It wasn’t as much of a shock as it would have been back before the Calamity, but it still surprised her. It was new, and she wasn’t entirely sure what she was supposed to do about it.
Maybe she would finally get around to challenging that first Gym. She did have the vague sense that that was what was expected of her. Maybe she would actually attempt to catch a pokemon rather than leaving out food and letting them go on their way. Maybe she would even try to find a way to dispel the darkness in that cave rather than stumbling around with her arms outstretched and getting lost.
But probably not. Not until the novelty wore off.
Name: Chesca
Personal Journal:
criesE-mail: bubblebang@gmail.com
AIM/MSN: AIM: punchingturtles
Timezone: GMT
Current Characters in Route: None!
Character
Name: Zia
Series: Bastion
Timeline: Post-Tazal Terminals, immediately before the Kid’s return. So I don’t have to say if any of the ending choices are canon or not. Also after several restorations, which affects all of nothing except a vague sense of deja vu but I like to mention it.
Canon Resource Links: There’s not a lot of information available in one place, mostly because Bastion’s plot is told bit by bit over the game. And partly because nobody’s really put the info together. I do have a very tl;dr ‘this is all the details of Basion and Zia’s role in it’ written up, but I won’t subject you to it unless these links aren’t enough!
In which Supergiant Games release their first game and it is excellent.
In which there is a normal Ura girl.
In which she falls in love and accidentally the end of the world.
In which the discovery of her father’s journal drives a good man to do terrible things.
Personality: Zia makes bad decisions. A lot of bad decisions. And they cause a lot of problems for a lot of people, including people she’d really rather not cause problems for. Every last one of these decisions is made with the best of intentions, but they all lead to unfortunate results.
Let's back up a little.
Caelondia isn’t the best place in the world to be an Ura since the war. There are, in fact, few places to be an Ura that are worse than Caelondia, even if you include the inside of a Scumbag (incidentally also a place Zia has been!). Unfortunately, the importance of the city’s secrets and general distrust of Ura refugees mean there’s no real way to stop being an Ura in Caelondia.
From the day she was born, Zia hasn't belonged. She was the only child a pair of refugees in a city that still bore the scars of a war with her people. She was brought up in a world where people who looked like her were monsters at worst, and foreign and terrifying at best. Somewhere along the line, years of being told people like her were wrong and destined never to do anything but hurt others stuck fast. She developed the kind of self confidence one needs to be absolutely willing throw away one's family and life and risk being sentenced to death without question for the first person who says they'll love you for it (this went poorly). Which is to say. What is a sense of self-worth? Because Zia has never experienced this strange and wonderful thing.
In her attempts to be useful to anyone at all and atone for what she's always been told are the crimes of her people, she became something of a people pleaser. If the 'willingly throw away etc etc.' thing above wasn't a big enough hint. She does what she's told, she tries to help people any way she can and she'll give anything to ensure the happiness of others. She's also semi-deliberately fashioned herself into the kind of person who you cannot hurt without feeling like you're kicking a puppy. She can't intimidate but she can look as scared and hurt as possible in an attempt to guilt people into not hurting her, or at least to convince them it isn't worth the effort. She wins hearts quickly, given half a chance, with her cheerfulness, her kindness and her voice.
Her freedom means more to her than she really has the means to express. After a life trapped inside the city and prevented from learning with no foreseeable hope of the situation changing, her freedom is the most precious thing she has. She's called out on it a few times by the narrator, who accuses her of travelling to Prosper Bluff just because she's always been told that good girls don’t. Notably, when the world ended, she chose to take her chances in a very hostile environment full of monsters and poisonous plants and air that isn’t always 100% breathable rather than go to the safe haven within the city. Unfortunately because she's been trapped and deliberately kept ignorant for so long she really struggles with the idea that maybe sometimes actions have consequences. She values her freedom above all else, but she has a lot to learn about responsibility.
This wouldn’t be quite as much of a problem if she had the slightest grasp of how caution is supposed to work. She isn’t immune to fear, but neither that nor common sense inform her actions as much at they really should. This is a girl who happily agreed to housetrain a giant underground alligator/drill monster. And whose opinion on mad science and gun turrets was ‘well it’s not like things can get any WORSE’. She’s also more than happy to egg the Kid on into doing very stupid things (see the ‘mad science and gun turrets’ example, where her response was essentially DO IT DO IT DO IT’). She’s cautious around people, new people scare her and acting hostile toward her (or even just in her presence) can instantly reduce any confidence she’s managed to gain to nothing.
She also has a strong curious streak, if that wasn’t already clear. At one point in the narration, Rucks actually has to demand she stops asking questions about the Kid and his complete inability to handle pipe smoking. She’s keen to learn, she manages to listen to all of Rucks’ story in one sitting, asking questions the whole time and she at least learns enough of the Ura’s language from Zulf in their short time together to understand a letter later. Sadly she’s not as well-learned as that curious streak would imply - it’s only very recently that there have been people around willing to teach her. She has her father’s quick mind but it’s wasted, she’s not book smart, she’s not street smart and she’s not sensible.
She doesn’t seem to be as laden with guilt as the other characters. That isn’t saying much, admittedly, but despite her role in the calamity she doesn’t seem to blame herself for it (or rather it’s never mentioned whether she blames herself for it while the Kid’s survivor guilt and Rucks’ desire to undo his mistakes are both very big deals. It’s likely she does feel some guilt, but not even close to as much as others in the cast). She doesn’t blame anyone else for it, either. Her backstory reveals that a man seduced her and then framed her for treason to manipulate her father and create an excuse to attack the Ura, but she’s never shown to be angry about it. She doesn’t fault the Ura for being hostile toward her later on either, simply saying that she’s glad the Kid came to help her, and she’s shown to care deeply about Zulf, putting herself into danger to try to ask him to come home. The things she does express guilt about are linked to individual people - her failure to talk Zulf out of fighting them, for example. It’s not eluded her that every single thing she tries to do ends in disaster, and it does upset her, but she’s not yet decided that it’s a good reason to stop trying.
Despite her cheerfulness - almost irrepressible cheerfulness, she is a person who is able to look at the ruins of the world and comment on how pretty the stars are - she does tend toward negativity sometimes. Usually when she’s talking about herself, the result of a lifetime of being taught that Caelondia was right and the Ura were wrong and told she’s a traitor waiting to happen. She doesn’t have a very high opinion of herself at all, saying ‘I’d hate to be in your shoes’ to the Kid when offering him the option of staying with her. It’s said in-game that all Ura are deeply religious and she’s never mentioned as an exception, though the fact that she allows Rucks to insult the gods when talking to her with no reaction (no mentioned reaction, at least) suggests that she probably isn’t as devoted a worshipper as others.
Not belonging weighs heavily on her. After not belonging in Caelondia all her life as a result of being physically an Ura, she finally finds herself at the Tazal Terminals and finds that, being culturally Caelondian, she isn’t welcome there either. When she finally realizes she has a place where she is welcome and wanted in the Bastion she doesn’t want to lose it, going as far as to turn her back on the rest of the world to stay with the only two (or three) people who’ve ever wanted her around.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
+ Amiable - Zia wins hearts easily. This is obviously a difficult thing to work with in RP, since everyone else is totally welcome to go ‘actually my character doesn’t like her very much’. I’m not going to get pissy if people don’t like her. But she’s kind and polite and really, really good at puppy faces and avoids confrontation like the plague and as a rule this generally means that she stays on people’s good sides.
+ Virtuoso - She’s a brilliant singer and just as skilled at playing the harp guitar. Which is actually significantly closer to a Lyre Guitar. Either way it’ll probably be a pain to get hold of one in the pokemon world, but her skills should transfer pretty easily to a normal guitar (which I’d assume she’d eventually be able to get hold of in one of the bigger cities, but I’ll put in an official question to the mods about this when it comes up).
+ Good with Animals - She’s ridiculously good with animals. Without any training, she manages to take care of two creatures that are in-canon considered near impossible to tame. I figure this would probably translate to being pretty good at ~BEING BESTEST FRIENDS WITH POKEMON~.
+ Famous Cookin’ - And she’s a pretty good cook. Rucks never actually says if her cooking is ‘famous’ in a good way or a bad way, but considering that she can make food that fills stomachs out of what’s left after the calamity without poisoning anyone, I’m guessing it’s the former.
+ Surviving - And on that note, she’s pretty good at surviving in general. She can throw together edible food with very little in the way of ingredients, she can run and hide from danger and set up a safe camp and not die in general with minimal tools. She survives in the Wild Outskirts, a very hostile environment, with very little in the way of tools for what is probably a few weeks and isn’t particularly suffering for it when the Kid finds her. She also survives for at least a week in an area filled with people who don’t particularly care for the idea of her being alive with nothing.
+/- It Killed the Cat - Zia is very curious. She’s been kept from learning for a long time and wants to know as much as she can. On the one hand, this means she’s a fairly quick and eager learner. On the other, it means she’s willing to do some very stupid things just for the experience.
+/- Stop Helping Me! - She’s desperate to be useful and quick to act when faced with the distress of others. This is both positive and negative because her intentions are always good but her plans tend to end badly.
- Ill-Fated - Pretty much everything Zia does ends in disaster. She is astonishingly unlucky.
- Civillian - She doesn’t fight. This isn’t much of a weakness in route’s setting (though she’s probably going to need a lot of convincing about the whole ‘pokemon battles’ thing. Which kind of defies the point of making her a trainer a little but.) but compared to the rest of the Bastion cast, she’s probably the only one who couldn’t kick some butts if she needed to. Unless someone is severely allergic to being sadfaced at, she doesn’t have many ways to stick up for herself.
- Fear of Conflict - Or much desire to stick up for herself, really. In fact, she doesn’t really do conflict at all. She hates it. She isn’t going to express opinions that aren’t ‘I agree entirely’ unless faced with something really really awful, and even other people arguing about something she isn’t involved in makes her very uncomfortable.
- Impulsive - Thinking before you act is for losers. The biggest threat to Zia at any given time is very likely to be Zia herself. She has a lot of very bad ideas and she is very, very impulsive. For the record, letting people you trust know about your excellent plans so they can bail you out if needed is also for losers.
- Not used to Thinking - Thinking in general is yet another thing that is for losers. Zia isn’t stupid. Somewhere in there is a very sharp mind. But she’s been deliberately kept ignorant and had people’s beliefs forced on her for so long that despite being very curious and eager to learn, she has difficulty reaching conclusions on her own. Even given all the information she needs to have an informed opinion, she’ll have difficulty coming up with something on her own and is much more likely to wait until someone else tells her what she’s supposed to think.
- Passive - While she’s quick to take action for the sakes of others, when faced with a situation she doesn’t like it rarely even occurs to her to try to get herself out of the situation. She’ll cope with it and survive it as best she can and wait for someone to rescue her, even if resolving the situation would be a lot easier. She’s good at surviving bad situations but resolving them isn’t something she does, she’s still not really at all used to being in control of her life.
- Clingy/Selfish - She’s willing to turn her back on the plight (...well. Dead-ness rather than plight) of an entire country in order to stay with the three people who mean the most to her.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Trainer
Starter: Absol
Password: Raspberry Lemonade!
Samples
First Person Sample: I wasn’t much expecting this development.
[It’s a slight understatement, but for now the pokégear is too interesting to say anything more. She turns the device in her hands, revealing New Bark Town, her knees in the grass and a black and white creature staring at the device as intently as she is, before finally showing her face. She’s eyeing the touchscreen of the pokégear rather than the camera, giving the distinct impression that the fact that she’s started to send a message out is the only thing keeping her from pressing all of the buttons to see what those ones do.
The girl’s pale. Very pale, actually, and little on the scruffy side, there’s not always enough water to spare in the Bastion for baths or washing clothes. Her skin almost looks gray and an onlooker could be forgiven for thinking that she was very unwell as a result, but her eyes are wide with curiosity and her face practically glowing underneath the dirt with amazement. Her expression changes after a moment, as it dawns on her that people can see her, to one of unease. After a little more staring at the touchscreen, one hand hovering above the pokégear, the communication abruptly switches to voice only. Her voice suddenly becomes more cheerful when it does, filled with the kind of pride that comes from victory over an inanimate object.]
I’m looking for a man called Rucks. Caelondian. He kind of- he has an old man face? [She is great at describing people shut up.] He walks with a stick and he wears Micia’s star.
And I’ve lost my harp guitar. If anyone’s seen it, it’s very important to me. I’d appreciate its return.
[If it bothers her much that she’s suddenly in a new place full of monsters, she’s not showing it. If she can just find Rucks then he’ll know what to do, after all. There’s not much sense in panicking, not when she’s all but certain that there’s nothing she can do. There’s a long pause, in which she starts singing along to the music cheerfully, before she finally finds the button to end the communication.]
Third Person Sample: Zia was finally starting to find her feet. As much as she ever did. The music took some getting used to, but it seemed to quiet down whenever she started singing. Didn’t throw her off. Didn’t keep her awake at night, now she was used to it. Everything else - well, she’d adapted to it all more quickly than she really ought to have. She still felt more comfortable with the monsters than with people, still felt the need to camp outside of cities so not to sleep in the buildings there, still needed the Absol that followed her like a ghost to snatch berries out of her hands when she decided to try eating them despite all the warnings, but she didn’t feel lost or out of place and she could walk for more than a minute or so in any given direction without reaching the edge of the world, so all was good.
Getting lost had quickly become something between an unfortunate habit and her favourite pastime. She hadn’t checked the map once since she first set out, and she found herself going in circles a lot. She didn’t much mind it, the routes outside the cities were as green and full of possibilities and adventure and interesting bugs as the wilds had been, but far safer. Hearing word that people didn’t die here hadn’t done much for her ability to think before acting, though she’d managed to avoid succumbing to the temptation to test it for herself. Her progress was slow as a result. She’d waste days climbing trees or blindly attempting to explore the cave on Route 31.
But hunger eventually won from time to time, forcing her to stop playing around. To go back to the nearest town. Find somewhere to have a meal and a shower and get any injuries Absol had managed to get tended to. Take on a job for a few days for money for food. Inevitably have her attempts to camp outside the city interpreted as an attempt to run off and have to explain ‘not entirely comfortable sleeping in a building above ground’ to the police. Just as inevitably grudgingly go back to the local inn and get a room instead. It wasn’t much fun compared to days spent exploring and climbing things, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. It was nice, if overwhelming, to see so many people again, walking around and talking at each other and not being piles of lifeless ash, and she hadn’t once even been recognized as an Ura. The work was tiring enough that she slept well, but never grueling.
In short she was, she mused as she scooped up half her breakfast in her hands and leant down to let Absol eat from them (which was messy and probably not hygienic and earned some stares but he seemed to like human food well enough and she wasn’t about to eat it all anyway), happy. It wasn’t as much of a shock as it would have been back before the Calamity, but it still surprised her. It was new, and she wasn’t entirely sure what she was supposed to do about it.
Maybe she would finally get around to challenging that first Gym. She did have the vague sense that that was what was expected of her. Maybe she would actually attempt to catch a pokemon rather than leaving out food and letting them go on their way. Maybe she would even try to find a way to dispel the darkness in that cave rather than stumbling around with her arms outstretched and getting lost.
But probably not. Not until the novelty wore off.