OOC: Vatheon app ----> Edited for Bastion

[findsrisks]

☆ Player - - -

( Player Name ) : Mandy
( Personal DW ) : maplepancakes
( Age ) : 26
( Timezone ) : EST
( Other Characters ) :
Ryuuji "Bon" Suguro | kyotoprincess | Ao no Exorcist

☆ Character - - -

( Character's Name ) : Bekku Nanaki
( Character's Age ) : 16
( Series ) : Ann Cassandra
( Canon Point ) : Chapter 9, just before the timeskip
( Playability ) : N/A

( History ) : The canon itself is very short and doesn't have a wiki, so I'm going to sum it up here. The series itself has been scanslated and can be found online (not sure if I should link, but I can if you need it). Just as a note, the manga itself is only 9 chapters long, and not much of the history is covered, so I'll write out what we are told in the manga.

Many, many years ago, there was a beautiful woman named Cassandra. She was the daughter of a king, and she lived within the great city of Troy. However, Cassandra's life was not an easy one. Cassandra could see the future, but this was a curse to her. Nobody believed her when she tried to warn them of calamities, and eventually she watched Troy fall despite her best attempts to save it. As she was dying, she cursed those who had not believed her.

Sometime later, Cassandra's body was found, and her remains were used to make a mask. Through this mask, Cassandra's curse lived on. Her powers had changed, though. Instead of merely predicting future calamities, she could change the future and cause calamities. All she needed was a host to give up their life for her to use her powers.

However, the changes that the Cassandra mask made did not go unnoticed. Certain humans gained the ability to see the future that the Cassandra mask was making, thus giving them a weapon to fight back. Some chose to stop these calamities, while others chose to help make these calamities happen. All of this continued for a long time without the true source of the predictions ever being found.

In a more modern time, a family of predictors was able to find the cause of these calamities and visions. They worked to make a seal mask, which would seal away the Cassandra mask's powers and prevent any changes to the future. But the Cassandra mask was aware of this family's efforts, and it did everything in its power to stop them, killing off the family members one by one until only the youngest daughter remained.

Backing up a bit, Ann Cassandra is actually told from the point of view of two prediction-breakers, Bekku Nanaki and Kizaki Banjou. Nanaki has the power to see visions of the future in reflections, but nobody believed her when she told them about what she saw, so she eventually stopped trying. Then one day (in chapter 1 of the manga, conveniently) she meets Banjou, who had actually seen a prediction of her death and ended up saving her life.

Banjou's method of prediction was different: any pictures he took turned out to be predictions when they were developed. Since his method of prediction wasn't as useful as Nanaki's, he convinced her to work with him to finish breaking all of the predictions he had made. The reason Banjou was breaking all of these predictions was that one of the predictions he had made showed his own death, and he felt that he could prevent his death if he stopped every other death he saw.

From then on, the two worked as a pair. Nanaki, having the more accurate predictions, relayed the information to Banjou. And Banjou, being 'protected' by the prediction of his own death (since his death had already been foretold, he couldn't die before the time of the prediction), took all the risks in breaking the predictions. Working together, they stopped 39 calamities, and the only one left was the one of Banjou's death.

That was when Nanaki and Banjou met Chiasa, the last member of the family who had made the seal mask. They found out the truth behind their predictions, and they agreed to help Chiasa find the Cassandra mask and seal it away. Eventually they did find it, but the Cassandra mask took control over Nanaki, forcing her to wear the mask and cause new calamities. It took a great effort from Banjou and Chiasa, but they were able to free Nanaki from the influence of the Cassandra mask and seal the mask away.

The series ends on Banjou's 20th birthday, the day he was supposed to die, with all three of them meeting up for a birthday party.

( Personality ) :

The first thing you need to know about Nanaki is that she has many different fronts she puts up. She is very careful to guard her heart, and she puts up layers of indifference and cheerfulness to protect herself from getting hurt. Because of this, it's not always easy to see just the kind of person Nanaki is.

At first, Nanaki appears to be a friendly and cheerful person. She is often found smiling, and she is quite the social butterfly as well. Even on her first day of school after transferring at a weird point in the school year, she was able to make friends with a group of girls and eat lunch with them. When Nanaki is like this, she is also a very helpful and responsible person. If someone is having trouble with something, she will try her best to help that person. She also has a strong sense of duty, and if she messes up she will do her best to repair the damage she has done. During all of this, she usually is trying her best to keep a smile on her face. Throughout most of the series, anyone who doesn't know her personally gets to see this side of her, and this is the first impression that she usually gives off.

However, along with this friendly demeanor, Nanaki has a bit of a temper. It's really easy to rile her up, and she gets very mouthy when she's annoyed. She tries her best to stay composed and use her words to express her displeasure at a situation, but she has been known to throw a punch or two when someone does something exceedingly ridiculous around her. This is the side of her that pokes through her masks most easily, since she has trouble keeping her temper under control. She can also be a bit loud when her temper has been set off.

But deep down inside, Nanaki is a lot more complex than she lets most people see. Because of her history with her future-sight, Nanaki has lost many friends to tragic deaths, and she has scared off even more with her warnings of calamities to come. In fact, the first chapter of Ann Cassandra opens with Nanaki making a fresh start in a new city because she had been chased out of the small town she came from. All of this has left many deep wounds on her heart, which is why she guards it so closely and keeps up an act of a helpful young lady.

For the longest time, Nanaki stopped letting people get close to her. She acted friendly, but she never really became friends with anyone. And deep down inside, Nanaki felt lonely. She wanted friends, but she was afraid that if she opened up again then she would just be welcoming another chance to get hurt. So she suffered in silence, smiling on the outside while her loneliness ate festered.

You see, up until she met Banjou, Nanaki was a defeatist. She had accepted her fate, and she had accepted that nothing she could do would change the future. The visions still came to her, but she did her best to ignore them, even though that meant people would die. She stopped getting close to people, because if she saw their deaths then there was nothing she could do. Nanaki was very pessimistic, and she was the very embodiment of the saying "it can't be helped."

But even then, Nanaki felt guilt over how she lived her life. After being rejected by so many people, Nanaki stopped trying to help them, and instead she tried to avoid her visions at all costs. A lot of people died because of that, and Nanaki felt responsible for their deaths. Even though she felt the future couldn't be changed, it still weighed on her heart, and she questioned why she got those visions if there was nothing she could do. All of this made her an emotional wreck, which is another reason why she started pretending to be happy all the time.

All of that changed when she met Banjou. Despite predicting his own death, Banjou sought to change the future. Nanaki saw Banjou change the fate of a young girl, and she realized that the future isn't set in stone, that she really could save people if she tried hard enough. Meeting Banjou changed Nanaki, and it made her into a better person.

Sure, Nanaki still had her pessimism. Whereas Banjou jumped into any situation with little regard for himself, Nanaki stayed back and evaluated the situation before rushing in to save someone. She often met Banjou's genuine cheerfulness with her genuine annoyance , playing the straight man in their duo. Nanaki also carries a lot of guilt with her, mostly from having let so many people die without trying to help them. But just being around Banjou and working with him to save the lives of others planted a seed of hope within her, which blossomed and grew within her. It's also taught her to stop wallowing in the past and to look to the future instead. While the mistakes of the past can't be corrected, they can be learned from, and Nanaki is doing her best to learn from her mistakes and become a better person.

By the end of the series, Nanaki has become a much more open person, more willing to accept people into her group of friends and to show her true self around them. She still gets annoyed easily, and her temper still gives her problems, but she has also become a genuinely happy person, and her mask of happiness that she presents to everyone has some truth to it. She still guards her heart from most people, but she doesn't close it off completely anymore.


Time in Vatheon:

Nanaki was in Vatheon from February to October, so about seven months. During that time, she started to learn to warm up to people, gradually dropping her masks as she got to know people. She still puts up a cheerful and tolerating front to anyone she doesn't know well, but she has begun to expand her group of trusted people to include more friends, so more people see what she is really like.

However, she has also developed some anxiety regarding those friends. She knows they are from other worlds, and she doesn't expect to see them ever again after she goes home. This made her a bit anxious when the impending threat of being sent home loomed closely. Now that she finally has friends, she is very reluctant to let go, and only her promise to Banjou (to help him break the prediction of his own death) is what drove her to leave Vatheon. So when she arrives at the Bastion, she will feel very guilty for her choices, and miss her friends a lot.

Additionally, her visions never triggered in Vatheon, so she went seven months without one. The first time she sees one will be a shock to her body, and she will have to get used to them again.

( Strengths/Weaknesses ) :

The most obvious strength Nanaki has is her prediction ability. By looking in a reflective surface, such as a mirror or a lake, she can see changes made to the future that would result in someone's death. This power has also been shown to work for changes which don't kill, but do cause a lot of injuries (in canon she is able to see an accident which leads to a riot, even though nobody died in it). Specifically, canon says she can see 'future calamities.'

Nanaki has other strengths besides her powers, though. For one, she has learned a lot of practical skills during her time as a prediction breaker. They are all mundane things, like tying knots, picking locks, basic first aid, and so forth. She has also been shown doing endurance training, so she's physically fit too. She's also developed a high tolerance for pain, after all of the time she's been injured breaking predictions.

Along with that, Nanaki has a very sharp mind. She often has to piece together her visions on the fly, so she's gotten good at making connections and figuring out puzzles quickly.

Nanaki's biggest weakness is her short temper. It's very easy to push her buttons and get her to react. Because of this, it's very easy to goad her into doing something, which is used to distract her and prevent her from helping Banjou on more than one occasion. She also isn't very good at telling just how much trouble she's in, and she has a tendency to run her mouth.

Additionally, Nanaki carries some pretty big scars from her past. She's working on healing them, and she tries to keep a positive attitude, but the hurt runs deep within her. This is how the Cassandra mask possesses her in the first place: it takes control of the darkness in her heart and manipulates her.

Powers while in Bastion: Nanaki's prediction powers will be subject to the '3 a day' rule. Everything else is more of a natural talent than special powers, so they will not be limited.

( Other Important Facts ) :

When Nanaki sees a vision, she can't see her reflection in a mirror. Because of this, her hair is often very messy, and it looks like she rolled out of bed without brushing it.


( Sample ) :

The city was nice. Nanaki had only been there a few days, but already she was fitting in well. The townspeople were very nice, and Nanaki had gotten along with them very easily. She had even found a job in one of the shops! It was all very exciting, and for the most part Nanaki couldn't have been happier.

But there was one thing that caused her constant trouble. Every moment she was outside, she had to worry about this one tiny detail which caused her an endless amount of trouble. What's worse, she couldn't explain her problems to anyone here; nobody would have understood it, and she was sure most people would think she was lying. It might have been bearable if Banjou or Chiasa were there too, they had prediction powers as well. But without her two friends here, she had to suffer through this problem alone and try to smile her way through it.

Why did the entire city have to be underwater?

Every moment she was outside, she was at risk of seeing a vision. Water, especially the still water that formed domes around the city, was just barely reflective enough for her to see visions in. At first she had thought she would be okay, since the sunlight didn't reach down this far with enough strength to make the bubbles reflective. But there were lights coming from inside the city too, and those bounced off the bubbles in just the right quantity to cause trouble for Nanaki. Because of this, every moment she was outside of her apartment was an exercise in staring at the ground and not letting her eyes wander to the limits of the domes.

This proved to be extra-difficult, since Nanaki was painfully short. When she spoke to most people, she had to look up to see them, and if she didn't focus directly on them then she ran the risk of catching a vision out of the corner of her eye. She had quickly found out that most people were freaked out by the unblinking, dead-eye stare she gave off when she was caught in a vision, too.

But Nanaki persevered. There wasn't much she could do about it, after all. No amount of whining would get anyone to change the very laws of nature that ran this city. So she just grinned and went with it, being extra careful to stay inside when she could and to focus directly on people and objects. It hurt her eyes a bit, but she was pretty good at pretending like everything was okay, so her behavior didn't raise much suspicion of her.

Still, as she went about her daily life acting as if nothing was wrong, she couldn't help but ask that same question over and over again.

Why did it have to be an underwater city?

---
Additionally, I have a sample of a couple RP threads with her. knockingdowndeathsdoor is a canonmate, which is why she's acting differently around him than around other people. The post is here.

( Questions? Comments? Concerns? ) :