[APP] Wonderful Worlds

[halflight]

Player

Name: Neko
Personal Journal: dreamfleet
Contact Info:
     plurk: dreamfleet
     aim: frozenbutterflys
Timezone: EST or GMT - 5 in standard terms
Characters Played: None so far!

Character

Name: Roxas
Source: Kingdom Hearts II // OU
Type: Player
Canon Point: At the end of the intro section of Kingdom Hearts II, just after Roxas has been absorbed into Sora. He has faded out of consciousness. (“Looks like my summer vacation is... over.”) He knows of his time in the Organization, but naturally not of Xion, who has faded from memory.

History: Roxas’ wikia page
Kingdom Hearts II wikia page
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days wikia page

Personality:
Roxas, a boy newly aware of himself. His light shines as bright and brief as the setting sun.

The first and seemingly most important thing to know about Roxas is that he is a Nobody. A Nobody is born when someone with a strong heart loses their heart to the darkness. They are the shell left behind, the body and soul without a heart. Because their hearts are locked away by the darkness, they are incapable of feeling. They are shells with willpower, as described by Master Yen Sid, but only the desire to regain their hearts at any cost.

So the actual most important thing to know about Roxas is that while he is a Nobody, he fits approximately 5 percent of that description of them. From the time he was born he was strange. For one, Roxas was born of willing sacrifice, of Sora unlocking the darkness in his own heart to free his friend Kairi’s, which was being held inside his. Roxas awoke with no memories at all and no knowledge of who he was: this is fundamental difference from all other Nobodies, and holds important through the timeline of his life. Roxas was born different, and Roxas stayed different.

This showed from the very beginning of his life, soon after he was recruited to join the Organization. At first he was little better than a Dusk Nobody, hardly saying a word, simply following orders. On his first mission with Axel (who did have memories of who he used to be), the older Nobody had to explain what a chest was. Put simply, Roxas didn’t really get much. But on that same mission, his spark of personality, what made him different, started to show. After being essentially led through the mission by Axel, he was asked what he thought of it. His mumbling answer took a bit to understand, but Roxas, showing the bit of smug confidence that would later blossom, finally looked up at Axel with a tiny smirk on his face and told him “I could have done that blindfolded.”

That sarcasm and smugness is only a small part of who Roxas is. His sense of humor is notably subtle: he likes to tease his friends to a degree, and he does laugh easily when he feels comfortable. He’s a social kid with a work ethic: he’ll do what he has to, but throughout Days his favorite thing to do after missions was kick back and relax on top of the clock tower in Twilight Town with his two best friends and more ice cream than any one person should need to consume. On his day off, where Xion was training and Axel went to go sleep, Roxas decided he wanted to hang out on top of the clock tower like always rather than do anything productive (he was pretty confused that Xion wanted to work, too.)

Roxas is also an extremely curious person: he’s constantly full of questions, trying to learn about the world around him. Many days on the clock tower are spent asking Axel questions (ranging from “what is that ha-ha sound those kids were making” to “what’s a best friend”) and listening intently to the answers. He likes to know what’s going on: the one thing guaranteed to make Roxas (who is rather quick to anger anyway, further setting him apart from other Nobodies) mad in an instant is to confuse him. He hates not understanding what’s going on, he hates not knowing and he snaps and yells many times in Twilight Town in part because of this.

He’s a fairly impulsive person on top of all this: while Roxas will sit and think about issues of life, when it comes down to decision making he will generally go with the feelings he isn’t supposed to have, acting quick. He reacts strongly and instantly; this follows his fighting style, which is fast and hard. He doesn’t tolerate people talking down to him or being in any way patronizing or condescending; Roxas is fiercely independent, especially by the time I’m taking him from at the end of Twilight Town. When DiZ tells him he doesn’t have rights Roxas immediately reacts with anger which doesn’t really fade. In fact, it leads to him smashing the Twilight Town computers because he’s so angry and confused at everything happening to him as the memories of his time in the Organization rush back into his head.

Roxas is also highly defensive of his friends, and extremely loyal in that. He won’t tolerate Saix casting slurs against Xion (calling her useless and a puppet) and gets extremely angry at him for doing so. Rank doesn’t matter: no one insults his friends like that. When Axel was thought to be dead, terminated along with the rest of Castle Oblivion, Roxas was devastated, and thrilled when Axel came back like nothing was ever wrong. Despite his initial anger at everything that happened to him, Roxas is a friendly person: he will make friends easily, sometimes even without meaning to. He’s a good person, after all. He likes to help, he likes to do things that will make people happy without even thinking about it.

While he participates actively in conversations with his friends, that quietness from the beginning of his life never really goes away: Roxas will never be described as chatty, especially after Twilight Town and the betrayal of the Organization matured him a little bit. He prefers to listen and talk only when necessary, when he has something to say. In the same vein, he’s also not necessarily antisocial, just more on the introverted side, letting the easy banter of his friends flow around him.

He’s also a very straightforward individual. He doesn’t lie (he doesn’t really get the point) and he is blunt to a fault, saying what’s on his mind with no thought to whether it might get him in trouble. That isn’t to say he volunteers his opinion at every available opportunity, but if he thinks he should say something he won’t hesitate to come right out and say it. He doesn’t like nicknames, getting angry and defensive when Xigbar calls him “Tiger,” and doesn’t get along easily with nor even understand complicated people who say one thing and mean another. Roxas says what he means and means what he says, no ifs, ands, or buts. He’s not one for idle conversations with strangers, especially ones that go nowhere and don’t mean anything: Roxas likes to get right to the point of things, especially if he has something to do. When he concentrates on something, he concentrates on it to the exclusion of most else (unless Axel convinces him to stray from the path of the mission. He’s a bad influence like that.)

One of the things that becomes evident through all of this is, again, Roxas is by no means a normal Nobody. If Nobodies aren’t supposed to feel, only displaying emotion through what they remember of it, then how does Roxas get angry, or care for his friends, or react so strongly and quickly and not rationally as a proper Nobody should? He isn’t a normal Nobody. It’s part of having his Other, Sora, awake at the same time as him for part of his life (which isn’t possible with other normal Nobodies) and part of the fact that Sora had other hearts contained in his own heart and connected to his heart when Roxas was created. Axel, at one point after his death, actually asks Roxas if he’s sure he doesn’t have a heart. Roxas tells him if he did, he would feel it, wouldn’t he? But it’s still improbable that Roxas doesn’t feel at all. He even has the “ability” though of course he’s unaware of it, to make other people feel (Axel) much like Sora can.

So for a Nobody, Roxas is a very emotionally-driven person. While he likes logic and reasonable things as much as the next guy, his reactions are all rooted in the emotion he isn’t supposed to have. He spends much of his life searching for why he’s so different, why he has the Keyblade, what are these flashes of other memories not his own: with a single-minded determination that is also characteristic of Roxas, he intends to find out. He needs to find his own answers and find his own path in life. When DiZ tells him he’s only half a person, only half of Sora, or when people call him Sora, it angers him more than anything else thus far (to the point where he has to just scream because he doesn’t know what else to do, he’s so mad. He tries to slash DiZ’s hologram to pieces and it is the most disappointing thing ever when he just fizzes out.)

In the end, Roxas does the right thing. Though he’s independent, though he desperately wants his own life and his own existence untouched by the fact that he is a Keyblade wielder and the Nobody of Sora, he realizes when facing Sora in that white room in the mansion that everything is a lot bigger than just him and his own existence. This is where we see Roxas at his finest: beyond leaving the Organization to stay loyal to a friend and find answers, beyond fighting his best friend to follow her last wishes, Roxas gives up his entire existence to wake Sora up, because Sora can’t be awake without him. With a sad little smile and one last line to himself, he gives up everything he is, his future, in the interest of saving all the worlds and restoring everyone to light.

Abilities: Roxas is, by his current canon-point, a dual-Keyblade wielder as a result of his absorbing Xion, essentially absorbing her Keyblade along with her. These two Keyblades are Oathkeeper (representing the light) and Oblivion (representing the dark). They can both be summoned at will by simply calling them to him, and they possess all the powers of a Keyblade: the ability to open or seal any Keyhole, and the ability to open pathways between worlds, as well as being the greatest weapon against the darkness and the Heartless. He's a skilled fighter, very acrobatic and quick-moving, and can fight with another kind of makeshift sword if the need arises. (Including but not limited to: large phallic blue bats and sticks. Shh, he was improvising.)

All Kingdom Hearts protagonists and otherwise can use basic magic; Roxas is no exception to this. He possesses most of the basic elemental spells: Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, and Gravity, though by now they are the more powerful forms such as Firaga, Blizzaga, etc. He also has the use of Aero, an air-based shielding spell, and Cure, which heals a large portion of his health as the advanced form Curaga. However, Roxas doesn’t use these spells very often, preferring to attack with his Keyblades. Magic is not his preferred form of attack by any means, so while he knows the spells they don’t come out terribly often.

As a Nobody, Roxas has quite a few supernatural powers. He controls the element of light and with the use of his limit abilities, he can summon shields of light which surround the battlefield, forming essentially an array of light. His limit break in Days when he wields a single keyblade is called Event Horizon, during which his keyblade is enveloped in light and he darts at lightning speed around the battlefield, slashing enemies and dealing a great deal of damage. His Final Limit calls down pillars of light which destroy enemies on impact. With two keyblades, the limit changes to Magic Hour: Roxas floats and light beams are fired down at random, though in other games a symbol appears below him and he fires orbs of light which home in on enemies and destroy them.

His use of light doesn’t stop at his limit breaks, however. Because light is associated with speed, Roxas has been seen to be very fast during battle. All his abilities such as Reversal (a quick little backstep that allows him to swirl around behind an enemy to attack) and Duel Stance (where he faces off with the enemy, then suddenly darts forward so fast he leaves trails of light to deal a great deal of sudden damage) are both based in his control of light. He moves very quickly when fighting, darting around and making it very difficult to actually land a hit: this is Roxas’ version of defense. He is a very aggressive fighter and doesn’t use abilities like Guard and Counter very often, preferring to simply dodge and then beat his enemy into submission. Being a Higher Nobody, he also controls the lesser Samurai Nobodies, which share two blades and an attack style with him (Duel Stance).

He also has the general Kingdom Hearts Protagonist ability to jump really high, especially when there are walls and / or air combos involved (meaning he can slash enemies in the air and stay in the air while attacking them) and he has been seen, in Deep Dive, to have the ability to run up skyscrapers, because, you know. Why not.

Roxas’ other skills include: skateboarding and all its various tricks, being a winner at Struggle tournaments (AKA literally beating the balls out of your opponent), beating off lots of bees, hammering trash up hills, mailing letters to birds, and keeping a ball in the air with a Struggle bat for the amusement of small children. He is also very good at dressing himself and buying silly impulse things he doesn’t really need. It’s a talent, really.

Entry Fee: Well, for starters, all of Roxas’ abilities, which includes all his light powers, magic, and Keyblade use, will of course be gone. That covers the first part of his entry fee.

Figuring out his legitimate entry fee was difficult, because Roxas has already given up so much: his memories of Xion are gone (though not through his own choice), his entire existence is gone, given to Sora because Sora needs to be awake. Roxas already gave up everything important to him (his sense of self, his ability to live and be his own person) when he let himself be absorbed into Sora at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II. Put simply, Roxas doesn’t have anything else left to give up that wouldn’t utterly change his character.

So the second part of his entry fee is going to sound strange, but in the context of his character, it makes sense: Roxas is going to give up sea-salt ice cream.

Sea-salt ice cream is not just ice cream to him. To Roxas, sea-salt ice cream symbolizes friendship. He decides in Days, the game chronicling his life in the Organization, that friendship is when you laugh together and share ice cream. In order to relax he shares ice cream with Axel and Xion on top of the clock tower; it’s what brought the three of them together in the first place, and it’s the one constant in his life no matter what else changes. When he thinks Axel is gone, Roxas receives an ice cream stick reading “Winner,” entitling its owner to one free ice cream. He saves it for Axel whenever he should return from Castle Oblivion, because that’s what a friend would do.

At the end of the game when Xion dies, Roxas’ last words to her are “Who am I going to eat ice cream with?” This isn’t insensitive; quite the opposite, it shows exactly how important sea-salt ice cream was to his life. It is friendship, it is his friends, to the point it carried over into his false life in Twilight Town as a constant thing that he shared with friends. By giving up sea-salt ice cream, Roxas is giving up that form of connection to his friends, and in fact his entire basic concept of friendship along with it. When he wakes up, he will hate the taste of sea-salt ice cream, and think he always has. They never shared it as far as he’s concerned.

If this isn’t enough please tell me, because I’m not entirely sure what else he could give up without completely changing who he is and essentially shifting his canonpoint personality back to early Days!Roxas. (Any ideas, again, if this isn’t acceptable, would be wonderful.)

Starting Pin: (Choose from the Pin List for Players OR Reapers with no supernatural abilities to carry over from canon. RGers start with Tin Pin Fire.)
I’d like to have Roxas start with Masamune, please!

Samples: an in-person post!
I don’t get it. They were just here... [Roxas is walking along the street, looking around warily with eyes narrowed and pins ready. There were noise there a second ago, but they all went chasing after someone else or something else all of a sudden.

Not that Roxas isn’t used to weird events happening like sudden disappearances, but that doesn’t mean he’s any more happy about it.

He stops with a huff, flopping back against a wall] ...hey! Is someone there? What’s going on? [It echoes; no answer. Great. Stuck in another weird place he has no memory of, fighting more things that want to kill him and apparently up and leave for no reason at all. Just what he needed.

Dusk is falling behind him, sending long shadows twisting blue along the ground. Roxas heaves a sigh and pushes off the wall, running irritated fingers through his already-messy hair] Guess I don’t really have a choice. Whatever.

[Good thing he got back up, too, because the noise are rounding the corner behind him and he hasn’t noticed quite yet.]

Also, Roxas on the test drive meme for further example!