Ryik

Chronicles of the Six: Magic’s Awakening: A Magical Boy RP.

Niles

"I'm sure everyone is getting cold by now so we should be getting a campfire going soon,"

"You're right, we shouldn't keep everyone waiting." He said, jumping on the excuse like a starving man, then cringing as he realizes how hypocritical and ironic it is to be phrasing it like that. He moves around Ciel, as if to walk back towards camp, but pauses as he passes by Deuel, speaking quietly. "Let's... talk about it later." After he's had another can of Red Bull. And maybe another. And maybe Dinner. And another.

He leads the way back to camp, plotting out ways he can avoid Deuel, just until he has some kind of presentable answer. At least he doesn't have to worry about not seeing Deuel again after the camping trip.

...wait.

Chronicles of the Six: Magic’s Awakening: A Magical Boy RP.

Niles

"Wait, I'll come with you."

He gave Deuel a nod of acknowledgement as they walked about the many trees that preceded the sand, falling into a companionable silence as they gathered firewood. It didn't take too long before Deuel decided to speak up again.

"I'm coming with you. Not just here, but where you're going. I want to take a bigger role in my family's charities, but I want to be with you too."

At that, he smiled. He hadn't even finalized which college he was going to yet, and while there would be no sacrifice in terms of Deuel's professional aspirations in following him, it meant he'd have to leave his home and all of their shared friends behind. It... honestly made something inside him clench, a sucker punch of emotion that hit him hard enough to leave him reeling. He had to put conscious effort into making sure his breathing remained even and his expression remained neutral, because the last thing he needs at this moment is to make Deuel instantly regret his choice by acting like a needy child.

Before he can come up with a response, a way of expressing how much it means to him without creeping Deuel out, Deuel continues.

"I can afford to follow you, and I'd be a fool not to. Don't get me wrong, I like Conner and Ciel and the others as well, but I love you -"

It's words that Niles has always wanted to hear. Deuel is perhaps one of the last people he expected, much less fantasized, about hearing it from - at least relative to the other members of their shared circle of friends and his parents. He's always regarded Deuel's attitude towards him as more competitive if not antagonistic, compared to the rest of his friends, but evidently he'd missed the part where Deuel started regarding him as family. He's heard it's like that for siblings. He wouldn't personally know.

Before Niles can tell his bro that he loves him too, Deuel keeps going.

"I gave this some thought, pondered it over days and weeks and months. But what I feel for you, this yearning, this warmth and fire, it's love."

...Wait a second.

Wait wait wait wait wait hold on that's not - that - that can't be what he is saying, why would he- is this a prank? Who confesses like that? Is this real? Did he pass out from caffeine withdrawal or did he finally go into hypovolemic shock due to caffeine-induced ventricular fibrillation?

"But if you think you're not ready or if you don't want it, just forget what I said. If what I said burns what we have now, just forget about it."

No no no wait he hasn't even had time to give the idea proper thought. The idea of... h-him and... r-romantically...

"I don't want to lose you, or anyone, but I don't want to lose you."

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

You won't.

You won't.

Fucking say it, he tells himself, but his throat feels tight, like saying one thing would mean he has to say everything, and he doesn't have the foggiest clue what to say - what he even wants to say, beyond that.

This is Deuel we're talking about, the one who effortlessly matches his career prospects - the kind you need to be groomed for after having the good fortune of being born into it - the kind of person even his parents would approve of a relationship with. This is Deuel, who has all the grace and confidence he himself scrambles to pull off despite not breaking half the sweat that he does. This is Deuel, who has a philanthropic heart of gold that the inky lump of coal in his chest couldn't hope to even form a pale imitation of if he tried - which he usually doesn't. How could he even consider something beyond friendship with someone like that? If they ever got together, what will happen when Deuel realizes that, underneath it all, he's a selfish black hole of anxiety held together by scotch tape?

He stands there, in front of Deuel, unmoving. Throughout Deuel's confession, his face goes from a calm smile to wide-eyed bewilderment to thinly veiled distress if not panic. By the end of it, his lips are twitching upward in a desperate attempt to keep his clenched jaw and rigid posture from reading as anything negative, but the end result is closer to a grimace than a smile, and his eyes are wandering towards anything but Deuel himself.

The silence stretches on long enough to be awkward, before Niles finally regains a vague semblance of composure and chokes out, "you won't."

There. Nailed it. Niles mentally high fives himself. Excellent work today, I'll see all of you here tomorrow. Bye.

Deuel is staring at him but he still doesn't have an answer - can't even think of one. Even as he regains his outward composure, try as he might, his thoughts just race in circles like a hamster on a treadmill that is also on cocaine. He... he needs more Red Bull for this. He needs more Red Bull right the fuck now.

Chronicles of the Six: Magic’s Awakening: A Magical Boy RP.

Niles

Camping.

He's always hated the concept. At the end of the day, he felt like camping trips mostly boiled down to a number of self-imposed inconveniences. He's never been the type to stop and smell the roses, a fact he is both perfectly cognizant of and completely comfortable with. As such, the idea of spending days on end doing just that, almost literally, didn't exactly fill him with excitement. As tempting as it might have been to dig in his heels and aim to become the world's biggest stick in the mud, he'd be lying to himself if he were to pretend he wasn't looking forward to spending more time with his friends. Unfortunately, there was a good chance that this would be their last opportunity to do so, and while growing apart over time was an inevitability he saw coming miles - years away, he can't help but clutch desperately at his friends, as if holding onto them tightly enough would keep them from leaving and forgetting all about him.

Metaphorically of course. The touchy-feely stuff is Conner's schtick...

...

Honestly, if anyone's to blame, it's him. None of the colleges in the state come close to meeting his parents' exacting standards, and it's not like they didn't give him a decision when it came to inheriting deRo tech. His friends had all known he was getting sent off to some exclusive rich kid college well before they began picking out a college for themselves, so if they gave up on trying to stick together then it's obviously because he set the precedent. This was probably his only opportunity to try making up for that, not that setting up a campsite could ever make up for single-handedly destroying their friend group. He didn't even get the chance to set everything up by himself. As much as he's gotten proficient in just about every aspect of camping that matters thanks to numerous YouTube tutorials he's watched years ago, before their first camping trip, there was just too much work to be done for him to keep his friends out of it without making a big deal over it. Can't even do that for them.

He took another swig of his breakfast, a 16 oz. can of Red Bull he cracked open on the drive over. He brought an entire cooler of the stuff, plus a few cans of other brands like monster and bang for variety, but he'd still have to hide and ration it all to make it last him the entire trip. Doing so might have been easy if everyone didn't ignore him when he tells them to bring their own tent. It's become a bit of a tradition for everyone to just share his tent. It's hilariously large, so there's plenty of room for all six of them, and he enjoys the company, but it is kind of heart-warming annoying when he occasionally catches sight of tents they didn't even bother to unpack from their car. 'I forgot' indeed.

He can't let them know that he knows. It's... a nice tradition.

When the tent is standing tall and his cooler full of energy drinks has been hidden somewhere Kieran will never find it, Conner asks if anyone knows how to start a bonfire. It was admittedly pretty paranoid for him to go so far as to learn how to start a fire with just some rocks or sticks, but hey, it's not like he forgot to bring a firestarter, and he wasn't the only one who could get it started. Besides, a proper bonfire needed more than just the ignition. "I'll go gather some tinder."

If there was one thing he liked about camping, it was tossing things into a bonfire and watching them burn.

Noble Arms - The ASEAN War [Moved to New Thread]

Jason

Theme

Name: Jason Valenovich Etalin (Джейсон валенович эталин)
Age: 24
Appearance: 6’1”, 190 lbs and perpetually youthful. His black hair matches the permanent dark circles under his eyes. Wears a red plague doctor mask on field assignments to hide his facial expressions and make it harder to trace his identity, since both could potentially be used against him in accordance with his ongoing personality disorder.
Nationality: Russian

Noble Arm Name & Appearance: Razlyubit, a black wedding band that Jason typically manifests on his index finger.

Noble Arm Rank: A

Category Rankings

Power: B- (Hemokinesis)
Speed: A- (Hemokinesis)
Range: D+ (Viral Blood Autonomy)
Persistence: A
Precision: C
Potential: A

Noble Arm Type, Element, and Range: A versatile Noble Arm whose main abilities necessitate close range and thus a Melee fighting style. Based on Blood, Life, Emotions, and Promises.

Noble Arm Abilities:

Superhuman - Jason possesses a heavily augmented physiology. He is mostly ageless, having stopped and even partially "undone" senescence, and possesses physical speed and strength beyond that of an olympian athlete. His top running speed is approximately 30 mph and he can deadlift a few thousand pounds without too much effort. Could lift several thousand pounds overhead with exertion.

• Thick Skin - Jason’s skin and flesh are relatively sturdy, able to stop most bullets and mundane weapons from causing deep wounds and/or heavy damage. Noble Arms with mostly mundane properties will similarly struggle to do significant damage.
• Pain Immunity - Jason feels absolutely no pain, able to sense the sensation and where it comes from, but not feeling it as pleasant nor unpleasant.
• Regeneration - The ability with the greatest power among Jason’s abilities, Jason’s healing factor is fast-acting and very difficult to counter even without his Thick Skin protecting him. It renders him immune to most forms of toxins and illnesses, including radiation and, surprisingly, cancer. He is capable of surviving otherwise fatal wounds to the heart and brain, as well as extreme loss of body mass via dismemberment. He can replenish his blood rapidly and regrow limbs and organs as if from nothing, though extended use of this ability without caloric intake will cause its effects to gradually slow down. That being said, even starving, his regeneration will never completely stop unless he is dead, and no wound or injury is permanent. It is capable of pushing bullets and other foreign objects out of the body, and could theoretically be directed to grow out Jason’s hair or nails on command. (It doesn’t by default as a sort of customizable parameter) With enough recovery time, (~6 hours under ideal circumstances) Jason could theoretically survive a beheading, his Noble Arms repositioning to the greatest remaining chunk of his body and working on autopilot as long as it has enough of a physical basis for his soul to cling to. Destruction of his body and severe damage to the disembodied head or vice versa would likely finish him off for good. The same goes for full-body burns to the fourth degree or being atomized, and tossing his body into a freezer after severe damage would slow the healing process enough that he’d never realistically become a problem again, assuming the damage is extensive enough and the freezer cold and reliable enough.

Hemokinesis - Jason can exert weak telekinetic force over blood in a short range. Despite being his longest-range ability, his blood control is limited to several dozen meters, and he can only move the blood around with speed and force if it’s within about ten meters. He is incapable of generating blood ex nihilo nor exerting significant force on blood in a foreign body without near touch range and concentration. He is incapable of shaping blood with particular precision, and without his other abilities, his ability to throw blood around is largely harmless. His ability to move around objects that are covered in blood is slightly more dangerous, but loses effectiveness at greater ranges.

• Universality - Jason can modify blood for compatibility and adaptability as well as clean and rejuvenate it, functioning much like a dialysis machine as well as a blood oxygenator. This makes Jason and any blood he gains control over viable for universal donation, even without knowledge of who the recipient is.
• Viral Blood - Jason’s blood, without modification, (as well as foreign blood modified to match) hosts a functionally autonomous supernatural virus that, upon entering into a foreign body, will quickly begin to accelerate their heart rate. Major symptoms begin to manifest approximately one minute after blood to skin contact, and can manifest in seconds if he gets blood into the mouth or mucus membranes. Secondary infection via body fluids (e.g. the sweat of the infected) can manifest after five to ten minutes through skin contact. By default, infection will inhibit the victim’s emotions and conscious thought processes, putting them into a dazed trance that puts greater emphasis on their baser instincts. (The infected seldom make use of their Noble Arms) The infection causes hallucinations and a chronic craving for raw meat, though, notably, the infected do not react aggressively towards each other. Left unchecked, the virus can spread into a typical zombie hoard. Jason has no fine control over the zombies, nor the virus, though the infected ignore him by default considering the virus is already in his blood. With concentration, Jason can cause those nearby to be excluded by the zombies, albeit only while they remain within a few dozen meters of him, and he requires line of sight to establish the exclusion. Infection typically lasts three days, petering out right as severe dehydration begins to set in, though it can last longer if Jason is able to manually refresh the virus through further exposure. The virus has no mundane cure, and its dynamic nature means one cannot realistically be developed, but it can nonetheless be countered by specialized Noble Arm abilities.
  
  • Emotion Control - By modifying the virus, Jason can alter its symptoms. The only unifying symptom is the initially accelerated heart rate. While the zombie virus iteration is generally the best for incapacitation and infectivity, he can instead make the virus induce:
    
    • Crippling fear, an effect compounded by hallucinations. This version robs the victim of the ability to distinguish friend from foe, and makes the victim a danger to themselves and others. This version often induces fight or flight reactions and involuntary crying. Infection from this version is largely limited to bodily fluids and their inability to distinguish friend from foe means that they are liable to attack Jason as well.
    • Crippling loneliness, accompanied by pervasive paranoia. Victims will typically exhibit uncharacteristically clingy behaviors, getting touchy with if not directly latching onto the nearest uninfected (not including Jason) in an attempt to soothe their symptoms. In the absence thereof, their symptoms gradually get worse, causing them to suffer panic attacks, mild hallucinations, and potentially cardiac arrest. Often more infectious than even the zombie virus, though it does not immediately incapacitate an enemy. Through concentration, Jason can make the infected identify him as uninfected. If left alone long enough, their symptoms will gradually become bad enough to mistake Jason for an ally, though Jason personally hates dealing with victims afterwards, since pushing them away can snap them out of it.
    • Crippling apathy, often in the form of catatonia. Victims will generally give up on whatever they were doing immediately, and may struggle to respond to basic questions or even stand under their own power.
    • Seething anger, an all-consuming need for immediate violence against anything and everything within reach. While infected, victims become rash and beyond reasoning. Although the victim is still able to prioritize the direction of their anger, their ability to do so deteriorates as time goes on, and even the smallest non-justifications become worth spilling blood over while in this state. Tends to burn out quicker than the other variants, lasting only one or two days, though it also tends to have a greater toll on the body.
• Panacea - Jason is capable of modifying his blood into a cure for the virus as well as certain minor illnesses such as colds or hangovers. It can maintain its potency away from him for much the same duration ordinary blood would - eight hours at room temperature, a week in cold storage.

Knife Manifestation - Jason can materialize mundane knives made of Iron, to his specifications, albeit they must conform to his conception of what a knife is. He is only capable of materializing them stabbed somewhere into his back.

Planned (Undiscovered) Abilities

Blood Pact - Jason is capable of enforcing supernatural contracts through the exchange of blood between two (or more) parties. He need not participate in the pact himself for it to be valid, and the contract can be literal or as simple as a verbal agreement. Pacts last until a point that has been agreed upon, a point Jason assumes they intended it to end on, until Jason's death, or until Jason is able to undo the pact manually, if and only if both parties agree to end it. Undoing a pact manually cannot be done remotely. Once the pact is established, the exchanged blood goes on to infect all blood in the bodies of all parties, rendering all of it and any future transfusions subject to the effects of the pact. Violating the pact will cause an immediate, violent implosion of all blood in the violator's body, causing almost certain death. The pact then ends for that person, and will typically but not always end for the remaining party if there is only one other, depending on what was agreed upon and Jason's assumptions. Jason's judgment (no conscious thought required) serves as the final arbiter of any subjective terms of a pact.

Miscellaneous Abilities: In addition to his extensive medical knowledge and largely abandoned capabilities as an OPL practitioner, Jason is an excellent cook, a force to be reckoned with at Darts and Billiards, and fancies himself a master tactician based solely on his prowess in games of online chess.

Personality: Silent, serious, pragmatic, and almost robotic in nature. He obeys orders, keeps to himself, and at times seems as if he has the patience of a saint. He's unflappably stoic, calm and detached, except sometimes he can't seem to help but break character, as if without thinking. An illogically friendly gesture, a snarky comeback that accomplishes nothing. It's there one moment and gone the next, and he'll either pretend it didn't happen or apologize for it and expect everyone to move on. He wears no facades, yet his control over himself isn't always the best, and he seldom understands the way he acts at those times himself.

Strong emotional stimulus tends to cause his higher thought processes to stall until he calms down, entering a state of fight or flight, without the flight, acting like a cornered animal regardless of whether he's trapped or not. If left alone, he'll likely snap out of it soon enough, though his ability to accurately gauge threats becomes exceptionally poor while in this state.

His personality disorders are theorized to be due to conflicts between his OPL code and Noble Arm functionality, possibly each defining different ideal states for his regeneration to leave his brain chemistry in. Since the two have apparently become part of the same whole, the accuracy of this theory is debatable.

Likes: Peace and quiet
Dislikes: Lies, cigarettes
Fears: That there is no solution. No cure, no way of coping, this is his life now.

Bio: When Jason was born, it was unto a single mother who, for all her life, never once fully understood Jason, right up until her death four years ago. Jason, in turn, never fully understood all her quirks and logically inconsistent behaviors, just as he seldom understood those of seemingly everyone else. Lying is wrong, except when it isn’t. Duress justifies anything, except when it doesn’t. Killing animals is wrong, except when you eat them, and even then, arbitrary lines in the sand are drawn about which animals and why. Jason was surrounded on all sides by rules upon rules that seem to bend and twist based on convenience, culture, or irrational cowardice. If his absentee mother, overworked and underpaid, ever noticed the ways in which he was different from other kids, she never made mention of it, much less did anything to address it.

Jason, growing up, had always been an intelligent child. Even without the support of his mother, once he found out that skipping a grade was less about personal capability and more about learning the next year’s lessons in advance, he began climbing an extra grade every other year through nothing but personal study, give or take adjustments to new schools. His only regret lay in how long it took him to realize that, but he still managed to graduate at the young age of 15 wherein he immediately began his college studies majoring in Biology. He slowed down a bit compared to his previous schooling in an attempt to learn Occult Programming Language at the same time through illegal channels. Both seemed necessary for his long-term goals.

There at college, he went on to meet the woman who would later become his wife, Lena. His relationship with Lena was like his relationship with any other person who decided to insert themselves into his life: complicated. She cared for him, for some inane reason he could never fathom and she could never explain, in ways not even his mother had, and yet, she was wrapped in all the frustrations that seemed to follow that mother and everyone else. It was not all pleasant for either of them - they almost broke up when Lena found out that Jason was younger than her, for despite being larger than her since the day that they met, he was still only 17 then, a fact he did not feel pertinent to mention the night they decided to get intimate. Perhaps it was his reaction to her confrontation that made it an issue rather than the act itself - after all, why would he mention it? She never asked, and there would never be any benefit to turning her over to the police. For some reason, such reassurances only seemed to make her angry, even though it was one of his most blatant declarations of affection; an admission that nothing would be worth losing her. If she couldn’t understand him, then it wasn’t his fault… right?

After graduation, Jason was scouted for Government Occult Research and Development thanks to his, at the time, frankly pitiful grasp of OPL and useful degree in Biology. For the first few years, he did nothing but learn from them, which, top-secret facilities aside, made it not particularly unlike his regular schooling, which he pursued in parallel. It was there at medical school that he met up with Lena again. They ignored each other at first, but seeing each other day in and day out, they eventually had to acknowledge each others’ presence again and it… wasn’t awful. They gradually fell back into familiar patterns. When Lena had trouble with something, she’d come to Jason, and when Jason had to miss a class, he went to Lena. Eventually they made up one afternoon, mending their relationship through a series of back-and-forth blunt admissions that only spurred on more and more of them. Just like that, they were a couple again.

On his 22nd birthday, Lena took him out for drinks after hearing him mention that he's never had alcohol before. After not 'getting it' after the first two glasses and Lena suggesting that he try drinking more, Jason ended up drunk off his ass and offhandedly proposed to her. She didn’t take it seriously, but after coming back to his senses, Jason didn’t forget, and he did take it seriously, at least after the fact. No matter what, he never wanted to lie to her, to confuse the one person who knew what kind of person he was and accepted him anyway. Thus, only days afterward, he presented her with a modest engagement ring, and she answered his question with a yes.

The wedding itself was a small, intimate affair. His mother had died the year before, and the only person on his side of the family to attend had been his aunt, a woman he had barely interacted with up until that point. She was friendly enough, he supposed. Lena’s family on the other hand, were a whirlwind he could never fully grasp, from her brother’s strange threats to her mother’s suspicious flirting. When he brought it up with Lena, she would just laugh it off, as if that were a perfectly normal thing to do when your family makes death threats to and tries to seduce your husband.

It didn’t really matter in the end. Lena became his, and they were both better off for it. She even got him to admit it, out loud. He never did use the L word. He refused to willingly lie to her, even if he had no way of knowing if it was a lie. He had to be sure, even if he never thought he would be.

They both graduated from medical school around the same time Jason graduated from his position as an intern in OPL R&D. By then, Jason was 23, and he soon began to work on occult bioaugmentation research proper, funded by the Russian military. Lena had always pursued her career as a doctor out of her desire to save lives, but Jason never had the same inexplicable passion about philanthropy that she did.

From the start, Jason had pursued such a career path because of his fascination with the rules underlying life, death, and reality itself. From many angles, it seemed orderly, but once you peeled away the skin and dug deep into the flesh and viscera, you could catch a glimpse of the roiling chaos below. Occult Programming Language was much the same, operating on specific, predictable rules, yet the irreconcilable deficiencies compared to Noble Arms and glaring flaws that led to the latter’s existence in the first place begs the question of how much any of it could be trusted. The Noble Arms themselves were the worst of all, each individually finding new, unique ways of spitting in the face of comprehension just for the sake of doing so. Through Noble Arms, death could become a triviality, and thus the basis underpinning so many rules of society would crumble to dust with the wave of a hand.

Don’t even get him started on the concept of love. He’s pretty sure that bullshit’s somewhere in the OPL code too.

In order to get more answers, above all, what Jason needed was time. Time that he didn’t have. Time that no one he knew of had. He needed immortality, or at least some functional approximation of it. It wasn't for some grand ideal like advancing human progress, but rather for simple and selfish reasons. Life is short, and nothing short of government funding with minimal ethical oversight would suffice for the progress he needed. Now that all the distractions and obstructions were finally out of the way, he doggedly pursued a proverbial elixir of life, because every year he spent approaching entropy was a year he may never get back. Lena wasn’t pleased with her husband growing more and more distant with her, but Jason knew that her youth if not her life was on the line too.

With all of his drive and intelligence fully leveraged, he thought it could take him his whole life to barely complete something usable. Instead, barely a year after he started working under the government, he had a working prototype of OPL code that could render lab rats mostly immortal, capable of regenerating towards an idealized form regardless of whether it had the physical means to do so or not. Not wanting to waste a second more, he broke protocol, lying about the code in order to get the necessary collective use of OPL running. It was supposedly just another experiment, but the caged rat they brought along was never the designated target.

Just as he began to feel the OPL influence his body, his magnum opus made manifest, his life’s work coming to fruition, Jason began to form a Noble Arm that blended and mixed with his hitherto human-untested code. A simple black wedding band had appeared over his ring finger, next to his actual wedding band, and from then on, Jason was never the same.

He remembers having a splitting headache thereafter, like two sets of instructions were competing over which way to rewrite his brain. He felt things he had never felt before; anger, fear, and a bizarrely painful fluttering in his heart that reminded him of Lena. He was delirious, barely cognizant, and so it took him until he was shown a video feed of the test chamber to realize he had killed all the other OPL practitioners there using nothing but his bare hands.

Afterward, he had stumbled towards his lab space, destroying all traces of his utter failure, desperately hoping that ridding the world of the source would make the pounding in his head stop. His coworkers were alarmed, but he fought them off, leaving trails on the walls as he steadied himself on them by his bloodied hands.

He… he needed to see her, to know if what he was feeling was what he had been trying so desperately to understand. He drove like a madman, getting tailed by the police almost immediately, but he ignored them, going straight home and bursting through the doors, only to find Lena in bed with another man.

After that, all he can remember is seeing red and feeling no pain.

His body count that day had nearly reached the triple digits before he was apprehended by a Noble Arms user. He was tied up and sedated, more animal than man at that point, and taken in for containment and confinement by the Russian government.

When he next woke up, he didn’t feel quite the same, like a mixture of the new and old. He could feel the sensation of his head aching, but not the ache itself, and his memories felt fuzzy and unclear. He was restrained, and, upon waking, quickly taken around to interrogation. Not comprehending his current situation, he stuck by his policy of honesty, though his inability to remember crucial details frustrated his interrogators. It didn’t particularly bother him, since he couldn’t feel the torture in the slightest. It was kind of funny seeing some of their tools fail to break his skin. They wanted him to surrender the OPL code he had destroyed, but he couldn’t remember most of it. They wanted him to explain how the code worked, but he only remembered the broad strokes. They discussed the events that led up to his arrest, from his psychotic break at the research facility to his mad drive home and the eventual murder of his wife, Lena. Lena… Lena, Lena, Lena…

His breathing quickened, and the words the interrogators spoke didn’t mean anything to him anymore. He could feel the sensation of a headache, and very pointedly noticed the way it kept him from thinking clearly. He decided to wait it out, until someone - an enemy, tried to zap him again for insubordination. He lunged forward within his restraints, biting the man, and there was just so much blood. It spilled out, floating around him in circles like a protective blanket. That’s right, he had a Noble Arms now, right? He should…

…He couldn’t finish that thought. It was like being underwater, hearing but deaf, even to his own thoughts. The interrogators left, and he just sat there within his restraints and breathed, in and out, as the imaginary pain in his head gradually faded away.

Why was he circling blood around himself exactly?

He tried using the blood to get out of his restraints, but he didn’t have very good fine control over it, just feeling like he was making a mess. It was rather annoying, so when a Noble Arms user entered the room, he greeted them amiably. They demanded he put down the blood, so he asked them where he should put it, since it was likely to leave stains. When they just told him to drop it again, he somehow found himself inexplicably understanding, apologizing to them out of politeness and complying.

It took the Russian Government a while to determine the extent of his abilities and the quirks of his condition. His powers seemed to remain on permanently, even while asleep. When Razlyubit is pried off his unconscious fingers, it simply returns there as if nothing happened. They had always known about his sociopathy, but he was showing signs to the contrary now, and strong emotions seemed to cause his higher thought processes to stall until he calmed down, becoming a creature of nothing but instincts and aggressive self-defense measures. It was, in his opinion, dreadful, and he’s come to hate the new emotions he’s been saddled with. The new humanity he’s forced to feel. The OPL code that started this whole mess, the idea of such a cursed form of immortality. Even after his memories came back, only lost in the first place because of a bullet wound to the brain apparently, he feigned ignorance on the matter, refusing to let anyone else suffer through his own personal hell. It was cold comfort, since, from the start, he’s the only one he knows to have ever been outside of that hell. The human condition was maddening, but at least the few others like him would be safe from it.

Even after discovery, or rather, development, of his Viral Blood ability, and despite his usefulness as a willing soldier deployed against Ukraine, (After all, it's not like he could go back to his old life) Jason remained a problem child; a thorn in Russia’s side. What good was a soldier that would just go unresponsive for minutes at a time in the heat of battle? What good was his zombie virus when it was so easy to end up with friendly fire? Although he was a known quantity and proved himself a loyal soldier, rising up the ranks in spite of his shortcomings, he was eventually traded off with China, since they claimed they could make better use of him. There, he was assigned Ai Chen as his handler. She would tell him where to go and what to do, and in turn when her hands wandered down his chest he would simply remind her of his chronic inability to respond to compromising situations appropriately. Didn’t stop her from trying, and the resulting fight earned her a reprimand from Ren Huo, so despite taking one of her plasma arrows to the gut and gaining a temporary hole in his stomach, it took her longer to recover from the punch he gave her to the same spot, and in the end their working relationship ended up pretty cordial.

Current Goal: Find or develop a cure or improvement to his current condition, with the development of his Noble Arm being viewed as the most promising avenue.

Military Rank: Lieutenant General

Noble Arms - The ASEAN War [Moved to New Thread]

Making a villain with @Letter Bee's permission

Jason

Theme

Name: Jason Valenovich Etalin (Джейсон валенович эталин)
Age: 24
Appearance: 6’1”, 190 lbs and perpetually youthful. His black hair matches the permanent dark circles under his eyes. Wears a red plague doctor mask on field assignments to hide his facial expressions and make it harder to trace his identity, since both could potentially be used against him in accordance with his ongoing personality disorder.
Nationality: Russian

Noble Arm Name & Appearance: Razlyubit, a black wedding band that Jason typically manifests on his index finger.

Noble Arm Rank: A

Category Rankings

Power: B- (Hemokinesis)
Speed: A- (Hemokinesis)
Range: D+ (Viral Blood Autonomy)
Persistence: A
Precision: C
Potential: A

Noble Arm Type, Element, and Range: A versatile Noble Arm whose main abilities necessitate close range and thus a Melee fighting style. Based on Blood, Life, Emotions, and Promises.

Noble Arm Abilities:

Superhuman - Jason possesses a heavily augmented physiology. He is mostly ageless, having stopped and even partially "undone" senescence, and possesses physical speed and strength beyond that of an olympian athlete. His top running speed is approximately 30 mph and he can deadlift a few thousand pounds without too much effort. Could lift several thousand pounds overhead with exertion.

• Thick Skin - Jason’s skin and flesh are relatively sturdy, able to stop most bullets and mundane weapons from causing deep wounds and/or heavy damage. Noble Arms with mostly mundane properties will similarly struggle to do significant damage.
• Pain Immunity - Jason feels absolutely no pain, able to sense the sensation and where it comes from, but not feeling it as pleasant nor unpleasant.
• Regeneration - The ability with the greatest power among Jason’s abilities, Jason’s healing factor is fast-acting and very difficult to counter even without his Thick Skin protecting him. It renders him immune to most forms of toxins and illnesses, including radiation and, surprisingly, cancer. He is capable of surviving otherwise fatal wounds to the heart and brain, as well as extreme loss of body mass via dismemberment. He can replenish his blood rapidly and regrow limbs and organs as if from nothing, though extended use of this ability without caloric intake will cause its effects to gradually slow down. That being said, even starving, his regeneration will never completely stop unless he is dead, and no wound or injury is permanent. It is capable of pushing bullets and other foreign objects out of the body, and could theoretically be directed to grow out Jason’s hair or nails on command. (It doesn’t by default as a sort of customizable parameter) With enough recovery time, (~6 hours under ideal circumstances) Jason could theoretically survive a beheading, his Noble Arms repositioning to the greatest remaining chunk of his body and working on autopilot as long as it has enough of a physical basis for his soul to cling to. Destruction of his body and severe damage to the disembodied head or vice versa would likely finish him off for good. The same goes for full-body burns to the fourth degree or being atomized, and tossing his body into a freezer after severe damage would slow the healing process enough that he’d never realistically become a problem again, assuming the damage is extensive enough and the freezer cold and reliable enough.

Hemokinesis - Jason can exert weak telekinetic force over blood in a short range. Despite being his longest-range ability, his blood control is limited to several dozen meters, and he can only move the blood around with speed and force if it’s within about ten meters. He is incapable of generating blood ex nihilo nor exerting significant force on blood in a foreign body without near touch range and concentration. He is incapable of shaping blood with particular precision, and without his other abilities, his ability to throw blood around is largely harmless. His ability to move around objects that are covered in blood is slightly more dangerous, but loses effectiveness at greater ranges.

• Universality - Jason can modify blood for compatibility and adaptability as well as clean and rejuvenate it, functioning much like a dialysis machine as well as a blood oxygenator. This makes Jason and any blood he gains control over viable for universal donation, even without knowledge of who the recipient is.
• Viral Blood - Jason’s blood, without modification, (as well as foreign blood modified to match) hosts a functionally autonomous supernatural virus that, upon entering into a foreign body, will quickly begin to accelerate their heart rate. Major symptoms begin to manifest approximately one minute after blood to skin contact, and can manifest in seconds if he gets blood into the mouth or mucus membranes. Secondary infection via body fluids (e.g. the sweat of the infected) can manifest after five to ten minutes through skin contact. By default, infection will inhibit the victim’s emotions and conscious thought processes, putting them into a dazed trance that puts greater emphasis on their baser instincts. (The infected seldom make use of their Noble Arms) The infection causes hallucinations and a chronic craving for raw meat, though, notably, the infected do not react aggressively towards each other. Left unchecked, the virus can spread into a typical zombie hoard. Jason has no fine control over the zombies, nor the virus, though the infected ignore him by default considering the virus is already in his blood. With concentration, Jason can cause those nearby to be excluded by the zombies, albeit only while they remain within a few dozen meters of him, and he requires line of sight to establish the exclusion. Infection typically lasts three days, petering out right as severe dehydration begins to set in, though it can last longer if Jason is able to manually refresh the virus through further exposure. The virus has no mundane cure, and its dynamic nature means one cannot realistically be developed, but it can nonetheless be countered by specialized Noble Arm abilities.
  
  • Emotion Control - By modifying the virus, Jason can alter its symptoms. The only unifying symptom is the initially accelerated heart rate. While the zombie virus iteration is generally the best for incapacitation and infectivity, he can instead make the virus induce:
    
    • Crippling fear, an effect compounded by hallucinations. This version robs the victim of the ability to distinguish friend from foe, and makes the victim a danger to themselves and others. This version often induces fight or flight reactions and involuntary crying. Infection from this version is largely limited to bodily fluids and their inability to distinguish friend from foe means that they are liable to attack Jason as well.
    • Crippling loneliness, accompanied by pervasive paranoia. Victims will typically exhibit uncharacteristically clingy behaviors, getting touchy with if not directly latching onto the nearest uninfected (not including Jason) in an attempt to soothe their symptoms. In the absence thereof, their symptoms gradually get worse, causing them to suffer panic attacks, mild hallucinations, and potentially cardiac arrest. Often more infectious than even the zombie virus, though it does not immediately incapacitate an enemy. Through concentration, Jason can make the infected identify him as uninfected. If left alone long enough, their symptoms will gradually become bad enough to mistake Jason for an ally, though Jason personally hates dealing with victims afterwards, since pushing them away can snap them out of it.
    • Crippling apathy, often in the form of catatonia. Victims will generally give up on whatever they were doing immediately, and may struggle to respond to basic questions or even stand under their own power.
    • Seething anger, an all-consuming need for immediate violence against anything and everything within reach. While infected, victims become rash and beyond reasoning. Although the victim is still able to prioritize the direction of their anger, their ability to do so deteriorates as time goes on, and even the smallest non-justifications become worth spilling blood over while in this state. Tends to burn out quicker than the other variants, lasting only one or two days, though it also tends to have a greater toll on the body.
• Panacea - Jason is capable of modifying his blood into a cure for the virus as well as certain minor illnesses such as colds or hangovers. It can maintain its potency away from him for much the same duration ordinary blood would - eight hours at room temperature, a week in cold storage.

Knife Manifestation - Jason can materialize mundane knives made of Iron, to his specifications, albeit they must conform to his conception of what a knife is. He is only capable of materializing them stabbed somewhere into his back.

Planned (Undiscovered) Abilities

Blood Pact - Jason is capable of enforcing supernatural contracts through the exchange of blood between two (or more) parties. He need not participate in the pact himself for it to be valid, and the contract can be literal or as simple as a verbal agreement. Pacts last until a point that has been agreed upon, a point Jason assumes they intended it to end on, until Jason's death, or until Jason is able to undo the pact manually, if and only if both parties agree to end it. Undoing a pact manually cannot be done remotely. Once the pact is established, the exchanged blood goes on to infect all blood in the bodies of all parties, rendering all of it and any future transfusions subject to the effects of the pact. Violating the pact will cause an immediate, violent implosion of all blood in the violator's body, causing almost certain death. The pact then ends for that person, and will typically but not always end for the remaining party if there is only one other, depending on what was agreed upon and Jason's assumptions. Jason's judgment (no conscious thought required) serves as the final arbiter of any subjective terms of a pact.

Miscellaneous Abilities: In addition to his extensive medical knowledge and largely abandoned capabilities as an OPL practitioner, Jason is an excellent cook, a force to be reckoned with at Darts and Billiards, and fancies himself a master tactician based solely on his prowess in games of online chess.

Personality: Silent, serious, pragmatic, and almost robotic in nature. He obeys orders, keeps to himself, and at times seems as if he has the patience of a saint. He's unflappably stoic, calm and detached, except sometimes he can't seem to help but break character, as if without thinking. An illogically friendly gesture, a snarky comeback that accomplishes nothing. It's there one moment and gone the next, and he'll either pretend it didn't happen or apologize for it and expect everyone to move on. He wears no facades, yet his control over himself isn't always the best, and he seldom understands the way he acts at those times himself.

Strong emotional stimulus tends to cause his higher thought processes to stall until he calms down, entering a state of fight or flight, without the flight, acting like a cornered animal regardless of whether he's trapped or not. If left alone, he'll likely snap out of it soon enough, though his ability to accurately gauge threats becomes exceptionally poor while in this state.

His personality disorders are theorized to be due to conflicts between his OPL code and Noble Arm functionality, possibly each defining different ideal states for his regeneration to leave his brain chemistry in. Since the two have apparently become part of the same whole, the accuracy of this theory is debatable.

Likes: Peace and quiet
Dislikes: Lies, cigarettes
Fears: That there is no solution. No cure, no way of coping, this is his life now.

Bio: When Jason was born, it was unto a single mother who, for all her life, never once fully understood Jason, right up until her death four years ago. Jason, in turn, never fully understood all her quirks and logically inconsistent behaviors, just as he seldom understood those of seemingly everyone else. Lying is wrong, except when it isn’t. Duress justifies anything, except when it doesn’t. Killing animals is wrong, except when you eat them, and even then, arbitrary lines in the sand are drawn about which animals and why. Jason was surrounded on all sides by rules upon rules that seem to bend and twist based on convenience, culture, or irrational cowardice. If his absentee mother, overworked and underpaid, ever noticed the ways in which he was different from other kids, she never made mention of it, much less did anything to address it.

Jason, growing up, had always been an intelligent child. Even without the support of his mother, once he found out that skipping a grade was less about personal capability and more about learning the next year’s lessons in advance, he began climbing an extra grade every other year through nothing but personal study, give or take adjustments to new schools. His only regret lay in how long it took him to realize that, but he still managed to graduate at the young age of 15 wherein he immediately began his college studies majoring in Biology. He slowed down a bit compared to his previous schooling in an attempt to learn Occult Programming Language at the same time through illegal channels. Both seemed necessary for his long-term goals.

There at college, he went on to meet the woman who would later become his wife, Lena. His relationship with Lena was like his relationship with any other person who decided to insert themselves into his life: complicated. She cared for him, for some inane reason he could never fathom and she could never explain, in ways not even his mother had, and yet, she was wrapped in all the frustrations that seemed to follow that mother and everyone else. It was not all pleasant for either of them - they almost broke up when Lena found out that Jason was younger than her, for despite being larger than her since the day that they met, he was still only 17 then, a fact he did not feel pertinent to mention the night they decided to get intimate. Perhaps it was his reaction to her confrontation that made it an issue rather than the act itself - after all, why would he mention it? She never asked, and there would never be any benefit to turning her over to the police. For some reason, such reassurances only seemed to make her angry, even though it was one of his most blatant declarations of affection; an admission that nothing would be worth losing her. If she couldn’t understand him, then it wasn’t his fault… right?

After graduation, Jason was scouted for Government Occult Research and Development thanks to his, at the time, frankly pitiful grasp of OPL and useful degree in Biology. For the first few years, he did nothing but learn from them, which, top-secret facilities aside, made it not particularly unlike his regular schooling, which he pursued in parallel. It was there at medical school that he met up with Lena again. They ignored each other at first, but seeing each other day in and day out, they eventually had to acknowledge each others’ presence again and it… wasn’t awful. They gradually fell back into familiar patterns. When Lena had trouble with something, she’d come to Jason, and when Jason had to miss a class, he went to Lena. Eventually they made up one afternoon, mending their relationship through a series of back-and-forth blunt admissions that only spurred on more and more of them. Just like that, they were a couple again.

On his 22nd birthday, Lena took him out for drinks after hearing him mention that he's never had alcohol before. After not 'getting it' after the first two glasses and Lena suggesting that he try drinking more, Jason ended up drunk off his ass and offhandedly proposed to her. She didn’t take it seriously, but after coming back to his senses, Jason didn’t forget, and he did take it seriously, at least after the fact. No matter what, he never wanted to lie to her, to confuse the one person who knew what kind of person he was and accepted him anyway. Thus, only days afterward, he presented her with a modest engagement ring, and she answered his question with a yes.

The wedding itself was a small, intimate affair. His mother had died the year before, and the only person on his side of the family to attend had been his aunt, a woman he had barely interacted with up until that point. She was friendly enough, he supposed. Lena’s family on the other hand, were a whirlwind he could never fully grasp, from her brother’s strange threats to her mother’s suspicious flirting. When he brought it up with Lena, she would just laugh it off, as if that were a perfectly normal thing to do when your family makes death threats to and tries to seduce your husband.

It didn’t really matter in the end. Lena became his, and they were both better off for it. She even got him to admit it, out loud. He never did use the L word. He refused to willingly lie to her, even if he had no way of knowing if it was a lie. He had to be sure, even if he never thought he would be.

They both graduated from medical school around the same time Jason graduated from his position as an intern in OPL R&D. By then, Jason was 23, and he soon began to work on occult bioaugmentation research proper, funded by the Russian military. Lena had always pursued her career as a doctor out of her desire to save lives, but Jason never had the same inexplicable passion about philanthropy that she did.

From the start, Jason had pursued such a career path because of his fascination with the rules underlying life, death, and reality itself. From many angles, it seemed orderly, but once you peeled away the skin and dug deep into the flesh and viscera, you could catch a glimpse of the roiling chaos below. Occult Programming Language was much the same, operating on specific, predictable rules, yet the irreconcilable deficiencies compared to Noble Arms and glaring flaws that led to the latter’s existence in the first place begs the question of how much any of it could be trusted. The Noble Arms themselves were the worst of all, each individually finding new, unique ways of spitting in the face of comprehension just for the sake of doing so. Through Noble Arms, death could become a triviality, and thus the basis underpinning so many rules of society would crumble to dust with the wave of a hand.

Don’t even get him started on the concept of love. He’s pretty sure that bullshit’s somewhere in the OPL code too.

In order to get more answers, above all, what Jason needed was time. Time that he didn’t have. Time that no one he knew of had. He needed immortality, or at least some functional approximation of it. It wasn't for some grand ideal like advancing human progress, but rather for simple and selfish reasons. Life is short, and nothing short of government funding with minimal ethical oversight would suffice for the progress he needed. Now that all the distractions and obstructions were finally out of the way, he doggedly pursued a proverbial elixir of life, because every year he spent approaching entropy was a year he may never get back. Lena wasn’t pleased with her husband growing more and more distant with her, but Jason knew that her youth if not her life was on the line too.

With all of his drive and intelligence fully leveraged, he thought it could take him his whole life to barely complete something usable. Instead, barely a year after he started working under the government, he had a working prototype of OPL code that could render lab rats mostly immortal, capable of regenerating towards an idealized form regardless of whether it had the physical means to do so or not. Not wanting to waste a second more, he broke protocol, lying about the code in order to get the necessary collective use of OPL running. It was supposedly just another experiment, but the caged rat they brought along was never the designated target.

Just as he began to feel the OPL influence his body, his magnum opus made manifest, his life’s work coming to fruition, Jason began to form a Noble Arm that blended and mixed with his hitherto human-untested code. A simple black wedding band had appeared over his ring finger, next to his actual wedding band, and from then on, Jason was never the same.

He remembers having a splitting headache thereafter, like two sets of instructions were competing over which way to rewrite his brain. He felt things he had never felt before; anger, fear, and a bizarrely painful fluttering in his heart that reminded him of Lena. He was delirious, barely cognizant, and so it took him until he was shown a video feed of the test chamber to realize he had killed all the other OPL practitioners there using nothing but his bare hands.

Afterward, he had stumbled towards his lab space, destroying all traces of his utter failure, desperately hoping that ridding the world of the source would make the pounding in his head stop. His coworkers were alarmed, but he fought them off, leaving trails on the walls as he steadied himself on them by his bloodied hands.

He… he needed to see her, to know if what he was feeling was what he had been trying so desperately to understand. He drove like a madman, getting tailed by the police almost immediately, but he ignored them, going straight home and bursting through the doors, only to find Lena in bed with another man.

After that, all he can remember is seeing red and feeling no pain.

His body count that day had nearly reached the triple digits before he was apprehended by a Noble Arms user. He was tied up and sedated, more animal than man at that point, and taken in for containment and confinement by the Russian government.

When he next woke up, he didn’t feel quite the same, like a mixture of the new and old. He could feel the sensation of his head aching, but not the ache itself, and his memories felt fuzzy and unclear. He was restrained, and, upon waking, quickly taken around to interrogation. Not comprehending his current situation, he stuck by his policy of honesty, though his inability to remember crucial details frustrated his interrogators. It didn’t particularly bother him, since he couldn’t feel the torture in the slightest. It was kind of funny seeing some of their tools fail to break his skin. They wanted him to surrender the OPL code he had destroyed, but he couldn’t remember most of it. They wanted him to explain how the code worked, but he only remembered the broad strokes. They discussed the events that led up to his arrest, from his psychotic break at the research facility to his mad drive home and the eventual murder of his wife, Lena. Lena… Lena, Lena, Lena…

His breathing quickened, and the words the interrogators spoke didn’t mean anything to him anymore. He could feel the sensation of a headache, and very pointedly noticed the way it kept him from thinking clearly. He decided to wait it out, until someone - an enemy, tried to zap him again for insubordination. He lunged forward within his restraints, biting the man, and there was just so much blood. It spilled out, floating around him in circles like a protective blanket. That’s right, he had a Noble Arms now, right? He should…

…He couldn’t finish that thought. It was like being underwater, hearing but deaf, even to his own thoughts. The interrogators left, and he just sat there within his restraints and breathed, in and out, as the imaginary pain in his head gradually faded away.

Why was he circling blood around himself exactly?

He tried using the blood to get out of his restraints, but he didn’t have very good fine control over it, just feeling like he was making a mess. It was rather annoying, so when a Noble Arms user entered the room, he greeted them amiably. They demanded he put down the blood, so he asked them where he should put it, since it was likely to leave stains. When they just told him to drop it again, he somehow found himself inexplicably understanding, apologizing to them out of politeness and complying.

It took the Russian Government a while to determine the extent of his abilities and the quirks of his condition. His powers seemed to remain on permanently, even while asleep. When Razlyubit is pried off his unconscious fingers, it simply returns there as if nothing happened. They had always known about his sociopathy, but he was showing signs to the contrary now, and strong emotions seemed to cause his higher thought processes to stall until he calmed down, becoming a creature of nothing but instincts and aggressive self-defense measures. It was, in his opinion, dreadful, and he’s come to hate the new emotions he’s been saddled with. The new humanity he’s forced to feel. The OPL code that started this whole mess, the idea of such a cursed form of immortality. Even after his memories came back, only lost in the first place because of a bullet wound to the brain apparently, he feigned ignorance on the matter, refusing to let anyone else suffer through his own personal hell. It was cold comfort, since, from the start, he’s the only one he knows to have ever been outside of that hell. The human condition was maddening, but at least the few others like him would be safe from it.

Even after discovery, or rather, development, of his Viral Blood ability, and despite his usefulness as a willing soldier deployed against Ukraine, (After all, it's not like he could go back to his old life) Jason remained a problem child; a thorn in Russia’s side. What good was a soldier that would just go unresponsive for minutes at a time in the heat of battle? What good was his zombie virus when it was so easy to end up with friendly fire? Although he was a known quantity and proved himself a loyal soldier, rising up the ranks in spite of his shortcomings, he was eventually traded off with China, since they claimed they could make better use of him. There, he was assigned Ai Chen as his handler. She would tell him where to go and what to do, and in turn when her hands wandered down his chest he would simply remind her of his chronic inability to respond to compromising situations appropriately. Didn’t stop her from trying, and the resulting fight earned her a reprimand from Ren Huo, so despite taking one of her plasma arrows to the gut and gaining a temporary hole in his stomach, it took her longer to recover from the punch he gave her to the same spot, and in the end their working relationship ended up pretty cordial.

Current Goal: Find or develop a cure or improvement to his current condition, with the development of his Noble Arm being viewed as the most promising avenue.

Military Rank: Lieutenant General

Chronicles of the Six: Magic’s Awakening: A Magical Boy RP.

Niles

Themes

Casual

Combat

Name: Niles de Rochefort
Age: 18
Appearance: 5'7" with dark hair, brown eyes, and a smile that doesn't quite reach them. Niles deliberately cultivates an aesthetic of sprezzatura, with carefully styled hair that sticks up in wild yet deliberate arrangements. He never uses hair gel, though almost always uses some type of hair spray. In accordance with his business classes, he's required to dress up in formal attire, and always chooses to do so at the extreme lower end of business formal (no suit, black slacks, black tie) despite business casual being acceptable. Outside of school or on days without business classes, he tends to look like he's between photo shoots for typical men's fashion magazines. When attending high-profile events, he tends to dress in suits with small ornate designs on them, always making a statement albeit never a loud one.

Personality: Niles is high-strung, self-destructive, and powered almost entirely by red bull and spite. He's calculating, manipulative, and can't help but think that he knows better than most of the people around him. He has a tendency to take on the problems of those he cares about even if he isn't asked to do so, and will prioritize his friends over strangers and especially himself.

Niles tends to maintain a nonchalant attitude, and is slow to anger, albeit not annoyance. He's good at keeping his cool under pressure, but in emotionally difficult situations, he tends to get trapped in analysis paralysis, freezing up or resorting to avoidance. He has a deep-rooted need to prove his self-worth, and suffers horrible anxiety over his perceived failures and inadequacies. Claims to hate being touched, which isn't entirely untrue since he's scared of opening up to people, though, in reality, it's the complete opposite, a self-perpetuating problem originating from his abandonment issues.

History: Niles is the scion of the deRo tech company, a multi-billion dollar enterprise that spans the globe. From a young age, Niles has always been described by his parents as self-sufficient and independent, capable of taking care of himself even from the young age of eight. Niles is no stranger to modern high society, nor the constant networking amidst social vipers within, and he's become fairly good at it over the years, since securing opportunities for his parents are one of the few things he can do to earn their praise and momentary attention. He's been taught to know better than to bother his parents with trivial matters or his 'childish' habits. His parents are very busy people, and if it does not concern their enterprise or particularly meritorious schoolwork, then it is a waste of their time. His parents have always said he was too clingy, and, 'logically' speaking, he agrees that they're right. They really have better things to be doing than waste time sticking around at home.

Ms. Mariel, a housemaid hired by his parents, comes by once a week to clean their manor and restock their kitchen. She's quite nice, although they don't talk much, since she tends to grow upset whenever they talk at length. He tries not to bother her too much, since his parents told him that the last housemaid quit because of that a few years back.

Magical Form: When transformed, Niles' irises begin to exhibit a pair of squares that rotate around his pupils in opposite directions, and a single streak of hair in his bangs changes color to a dirty shade of orange. Niles' outfit changes to a dark brown three-piece suit, including a long coat covered in ornate darker brown geometric patterns, a waistcoat with a gold trim, and trousers with a golden angular pattern going down the sides, but detouring twice to wrap around his lower thigh and upper shin. It resembles yet contrasts with the ornate swirling pattern that appears in gold on his tie, the only patterns on his outfit that don't consist entirely of sharp angles.

Weapon: Niles is able to create and shape metal into daggers or swords when needed for close combat, though his weapons of choice are his throwing stars, which he can manipulate autonomously for as long as his concentration holds.

Abilities: Niles has the ability to create and manipulate Earth, including metals and fine particles. Although creation ex nihilo of large masses is not particularly fast, he can still create and shape weaponry on the fly provided he isn't pressured too heavily. By comparison, his manipulation of preexisting Earth is blisteringly fast and devastatingly powerful. Although not quite as fast as a gun, a speeding pebble compelled forward with great force can accomplish much the same against undefended soft tissue. Beyond that, no element is capable of throwing around more sheer mass than his, at least not with the ease he does it.

Niles' personal specialization lies in his ability to go underground, sinking through the Earth as if it were water or even air. Once there, he can manipulate the Earth around him to reposition and even launch himself out at his opponents at great speeds. Assuming he can't just let his shuriken do all the work, this is his preferred method of attack, and he can do it all without actually getting dirty, using his powers to keep him and his clothing utterly immaculate. He doesn't even need to let the Earth tousle his hair.

Companion's Name: Oro, so named because of her unwillingness to divulge her true name and her tendency to grab if not bite on her own tail to stay curled around a limb when Niles is in motion.

Appearance: Oro is a particularly large blind snake, about a foot long from head to tail and a diameter slightly less than that of an American Dime. Like most blind snakes, she's very round on either end, lacking the head shape or pointed tail of other snakes, though she still has the signature forked tongue used by snakes to test the air. She's mostly a dark grayish color, though the scales on her underbelly are a milky white, and all of her scales shine a bit under light.

Companion's Name: Oro is cripplingly shy as well as a rather unhelpful guide, owing to her abrupt loss of all limbs as well as almost all of her sight, only able to see changes in light levels. As blind snakes live mostly underground, she finds herself suffering from the mild instinctive photophobia of her race, and has generally taken to wrapping around Niles' arm at all times, under his sleeve. Trapped by the practical considerations of her perpetual disorientation, she lives in constant fear that she'll become lost and end up all alone, unable to find her way back to another intelligent being. She tends to remain silent when people other than Niles are around unless something important comes up, though when it's just her and Niles, she's pretty level-headed and sweet. She occasionally makes offhand mentions of her previous life as a sorceress that imply that she used to be an alarmingly different person.

Chronicles of the Six: Magic’s Awakening: A Magical Boy RP.

Yo.
I'm gonna go ahead and yoink the Earth slot.

Niles

Name: Niles de Rochefort
Age: 18
Appearance: 5'7" with dark hair, brown eyes, and a smile that doesn't quite reach them. Niles deliberately cultivates an aesthetic of sprezzatura, with carefully styled hair that sticks up in wild yet deliberate arrangements. He never uses hair gel, though almost always uses some type of hair spray. In accordance with his business classes, he's required to dress up in formal attire, and always chooses to do so at the extreme lower end of business formal (no suit, black slacks, black tie) despite business casual being acceptable. Outside of school or on days without business classes, he tends to look like he's between photo shoots for typical men's fashion magazines. When attending high-profile events, he tends to dress in suits with small ornate designs on them, always making a statement albeit never a loud one.

Personality: Niles is high-strung, self-destructive, and powered almost entirely by red bull and spite. He's calculating, manipulative, and can't help but think that he knows better than most of the people around him. He has a tendency to take on the problems of those he cares about even if he isn't asked to do so, and will prioritize his friends over strangers and especially himself.

Niles tends to maintain a nonchalant attitude, and is slow to anger, albeit not annoyance. He's good at keeping his cool under pressure, but in emotionally difficult situations, he tends to get trapped in analysis paralysis, freezing up or resorting to avoidance. He has a deep-rooted need to prove his self-worth, and suffers horrible anxiety over his perceived failures and inadequacies. Claims to hate being touched, which isn't entirely untrue since he's scared of opening up to people, though, in reality, it's the complete opposite, a self-perpetuating problem originating from his abandonment issues.

History: Niles is the scion of the deRo tech company, a multi-billion dollar enterprise that spans the globe. From a young age, Niles has always been described by his parents as self-sufficient and independent, capable of taking care of himself even from the young age of eight. Niles is no stranger to modern high society, nor the constant networking amidst social vipers within, and he's become fairly good at it over the years, since securing opportunities for his parents are one of the few things he can do to earn their praise and momentary attention. He's been taught to know better than to bother his parents with trivial matters or his 'childish' habits. His parents are very busy people, and if it does not concern their enterprise or particularly meritorious schoolwork, then it is a waste of their time. His parents have always said he was too clingy, and, 'logically' speaking, he agrees that they're right. They really have better things to be doing than waste time sticking around at home.

Ms. Mariel, a housemaid hired by his parents, comes by once a week to clean their manor and restock their kitchen. She's quite nice, although they don't talk much, since she tends to grow upset whenever they talk at length. He tries not to bother her too much, since his parents told him that the last housemaid quit because of that a few years back.

Magical Form: When transformed, Niles' irises begin to exhibit a pair of squares that rotate around his pupils in opposite directions, and a single streak of hair in his bangs changes color to a dirty shade of orange. Niles' outfit changes to a dark brown three-piece suit, including a long coat covered in ornate darker brown geometric patterns, a waistcoat with a gold trim, and trousers with a golden angular pattern going down the sides, but detouring twice to wrap around his lower thigh and upper shin. It resembles yet contrasts with the ornate swirling pattern that appears in gold on his tie, the only patterns on his outfit that don't consist entirely of sharp angles.

Weapon: Niles is able to create and shape metal into daggers or swords when needed for close combat, though his weapons of choice are his throwing stars, which he can manipulate autonomously for as long as his concentration holds.

Abilities: Niles has the ability to create and manipulate Earth, including metals and fine particles. Although creation ex nihilo of large masses is not particularly fast, he can still create and shape weaponry on the fly provided he isn't pressured too heavily. By comparison, his manipulation of preexisting Earth is blisteringly fast and devastatingly powerful. Although not quite as fast as a gun, a speeding pebble compelled forward with great force can accomplish much the same against undefended soft tissue. Beyond that, no element is capable of throwing around more sheer mass than his, at least not with the ease he does it.

Niles' personal specialization lies in his ability to go underground, sinking through the Earth as if it were water or even air. Once there, he can manipulate the Earth around him to reposition and even launch himself out at his opponents at great speeds. Assuming he can't just let his shuriken do all the work, this is his preferred method of attack, and he can do it all without actually getting dirty, using his powers to keep him and his clothing utterly immaculate. He doesn't even need to let the Earth tousle his hair.

Companion's Name: Oro, so named because of her unwillingness to divulge her true name and her tendency to grab if not bite on her own tail to stay curled around a limb when Niles is in motion.

Appearance: Oro is a particularly large blind snake, about a foot long from head to tail and a diameter slightly less than that of an American Dime. Like most blind snakes, she's very round on either end, lacking the head shape or pointed tail of other snakes, though she still has the signature forked tongue used by snakes to test the air. She's mostly a dark grayish color, though the scales on her underbelly are a milky white, and all of her scales shine a bit under light.

Companion's Name: Oro is cripplingly shy as well as a rather unhelpful guide, owing to her abrupt loss of all limbs as well as almost all of her sight, only able to see changes in light levels. As blind snakes live mostly underground, she finds herself suffering from the mild instinctive photophobia of her race, and has generally taken to wrapping around Niles' arm at all times, under his sleeve. Trapped by the practical considerations of her perpetual disorientation, she lives in constant fear that she'll become lost and end up all alone, unable to find her way back to another intelligent being. She tends to remain silent when people other than Niles are around unless something important comes up, though when it's just her and Niles, she's pretty level-headed and sweet. She occasionally makes offhand mentions of her previous life as a sorceress that imply that she used to be an alarmingly different person.

Themes

Casual

Combat

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

Episode 5: Whodunnit?

As it does every year, the King of Games' deck went on tour. As usual, it made one of its pit stops at the Duel Academy, coinciding with one of the students' day off.

It was Chris' idea to throw a party on the same day to celebrate Roché's safe return. She couldn't remember how she ended up passed out in the woods, but she wasn't about to say no to a party, and since it was a day off, Professor Sartyr signed off on it, provided it ended by curfew and that the students would clean up afterwards. Several Ra Yellow students didn't participate, going to see the famous deck belonging to the King of Games, or just off somewhere else to get some peace and quiet. Rin in particular was buzzing about the King of Games' deck exhibit the whole morning to anyone that would listen.

The party continued through sundown, and Miles and Mina agreed to using the cover of night to slip away, meeting up with the man with the millennium eye.

5A: Farewell, Ra Yellow.

The party was in full swing - music blaring, video games up on the lounge's TVs, and several students dueling in and around the dorms. Some students from other dorms even came by to participate. By all accounts it was a huge success up until someone yelled out that there was a fire. The students were evacuated, and when the fire extinguisher was finally retrieved, it ended up being too little, too late.

Professor Sartyr stood outside the dorm, looking back at the raging pyre with a mixture of sadness and mounting dread at the possibility that he had missed someone in the evacuations. He did a headcount on his students and sent a message to all others who weren't there - After some agonizing waiting and several repeated messages, they each responded back. No one was hurt.

However, Ra Yellow was gone.

After contacting campus administration, the Ra Yellow students were all led to Obelisk Blue for shelter overnight.

5B: Not This Shit Again

On the same night the Ra Yellow Dorms went down in flames, the deck belonging to the King of Games went missing. The exhibit had closed for the day, but someone evidently snuck in and took the deck for themselves. In the chaos of the party and its abrupt end, many students were unaccounted for for long periods of time, and in the eyes of the staff, very few students have a proper alibi. The few that do, are mostly because of the saturation of the school faculty in the Obelisk Blue Dorms.

5C: Deal With a Homeless Person

Although Miles had already described the man as hobo-like, it was still jarring to see him eating instant noodles by a small campfire. He was wearing the same black eyepatch from yesterday, which hid the millennium eye surprisingly well. The man’s lower face was covered in a thin layer of stubble, and his hair - a striking shade of hot pink, was an unkempt mess.

Although he was initially concerned by Mina’s presence and the consequences thereof, he relaxed after Miles introduced her and explained the events of last night. Before they could discuss any more, however, the man launched into lecturing Miles about the dangers of using the ends to justify the means, and how he’d regret it. He went on for quite a while before offhandedly mentioning that the girl he was looking for was an Obelisk Blue student named Alexis.

---

The day after, a school assembly was called to go over the two incidents from the night prior.

Chancellor Sheppard started out with reassurances - that the Ra Yellow dorms were being rebuilt, that the thief behind the missing deck would be caught and punished, and that the mysterious figure spotted lurking in the woods would be caught and, if they were responsible for either incident, brought to justice. Ra Yellow students would receive new uniforms for free to replace the ones that went up in flames, and if they left their decks behind, that they would be able to get get a free replacement from the Duel Academy card shop. Other considerations are being left on hold while Duel Academy investigates, and he pledged that the teachers and staff of Duel Academy would support the affected students and get to the bottom of things.

Afterward, Dr. Crowler took the stage, and he immediately accused the Ra Yellow students of being behind the incidents from that night, followed by accusing the Slifer Red students of the same, just because. He then went on to declare that, until the true culprit behind both are found, that the Ra Yellow students would be camping out with the “Slifer Slackers.” Naturally, there weren't enough dorm rooms left in Slifer Red to accommodate all the Ra Yellow students, but Professor Sartyr and Ms. Hibiki came on stage to assure students that it would be a “fun camping experience,” and that they’d already set up tents next to Slifer Red for all of them. Audible groans and angry complaints erupted from many of the Ra Yellow students, though Dr. Crowler silenced them with threats of expulsion until Professor Fontaine intervened. She changed the topic, going on to announce a fundraiser to cover the costs of rebuilding Ra Yellow. Soon, Duel Academy would hold a globally televised dueling event where students would compete in tournaments for the chance to win rare prize cards. They were now taking suggestions for tournament categories - standard duels were already set, but they would hold a vote on what side tournaments to include, such as tag duels, deck swap tournaments, drafted deck tournaments, or whatever else the students could think of.

Chancellor Sheppard returned to the stage to say some encouraging words about “moving towards the future” before the students were sent back to class as usual. Ra Yellow students got an extension on their homework deadlines, at least.

Later that day…

Sina

The Masked Rabbit

Today would be the day that THE MASKED RABBIT can stand by no longer.

Too many have suffered. Too much was lost. Now was the time for action!

A girl clearly wearing a Lunalight White Rabbit Halloween Costume, or perhaps a cosplay, stepped out of Slifer Red dorm 103, in full view of the camping Ra Yellows and a couple of Slifer Reds. She caught the attention of many of them quite quickly.

“Fear not, my fellow - I mean, students of Duel Academy! Of which I am not one of! THE MASKED RABBIT will find the culprit behind the vile misdeeds committed upon you! AWAY!”

She gallivanted off towards the remains of the Ra Yellow dorm, ignoring the baffled stares of the onlookers.

Super Sleuth Sina I mean Masked Rabbit is on the case.

@Darkmoon Angel@Eviledd1984@Goose@King Cosmos@Psyker Landshark

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

Mina & Miles

Mina woke up from all the yelling “Shut the fuck up!” She yelled, now finding it hard to go back to sleep. After giving up, she quickly got out of bed and went to find out what was going on. Getting her Ra Yellow uniform on, she headed out towards the lobby. Noticing a few people that were meandering around before heading back to their dorm room. “Wonder what’s going on?” She said, shaking her head. She decided to head outside of the dorm room for a breath of fresh air, curfew be damned. She looked up at the night sky, feeling a strange sense of bliss looking at the stars. From the corner of her eye she noticed something strange, at first she thought it was an animal. But it didn't seem like any animal she had seen before.

“What is that?” She muttered to herself. Craning her head to the side trying to get a better look at whatever it was. But she couldn’t see it very clearly, since it was obscured by the brush and treeline.

“...Damn.” Miles muttered to himself. Why was everyone in Ra Yellow awake at this hour? Unless they figured out he and Roché were missing. It was a pretty unreasonable logical leap, but Miles was stressed and paranoid, and he knew he’d be expelled immediately if people found what he did to Roché. Still, he didn’t like the idea of inadvertently holding her hostage, so he sat her down, taking her out from the sack and leaning her against a tree, then began rustling a nearby bush to get the attention of one of the Ra Yellow students nearby. He’d have to spend the night outside and pretend to wake up in the middle of the woods. That should roughly match what Roché would experience, he thought.

As Mina approached carefully, she made out Roché’s bright red hair first, then the rest of her unconscious form, sitting against a tree, as a separate shadowy figure darted away.

Mina once again tried to make out what the figure was, but the treeline was obscuring her vision. She crouched down beside the unconscious girl with red hair, recognizing her as another Ra Yellow student.

She looked back towards the retreating figure - someone wearing a cloak, she realized, and couldn’t help but be curious as to what the hell was going on. By all appearances, someone had kidnapped Roché for some nefarious purpose and was just dropping her back off now. She didn’t look hurt, but she had no way of knowing that for sure, and no time to find out. “Why the hell did I get out of bed…” She pinched the bridge of her nose with her hand before deciding to not waste any more time.

She ran after the shadowy figure, tailing them. “Hey, stop!” She yelled out, hoping that the person would stop. However, it only seemed to make them run faster. Still, Mina was evidently more athletic than the cloaked figure, because after running and running, Mina only gained on them over time. As the futility of the chase became apparent, they continued a bit until they came upon one of the many small clearings in the forest and the cloaked figure whipped around, readying their duel disk.

Miles had decided that his only hope of getting this girl off his tail was to duel her off. Sure, she didn’t have to agree to a duel in this situation, but what kind of barbarian wouldn’t? If she really wanted to act uncivilized, then he was confident his duel spirit could fight her off anyway. He recognized the girl - Mina, if he remembered correctly, but he didn’t know much about her personality or deck. All he knew about her was that she had a two-faced dog as her duel spirit, and that it wasn’t nearly as strong as his own duel spirit. He tried to recall the name of the duel spirit - it was something weird that didn’t fit it visually, like ghost retainer, or maybe revenant retainer. Some kind of zombie deck maybe? Whatever, it didn’t matter. He’d just have to beat her. He didn’t say anything, for fear she would recognize his voice, but he kept the cloak’s hood low over his face, and lifted his duel disk - his challenge was obvious.

Mina stopped when she noticed the figure pulling out a duel disk. “Fuckin hell, you wanna duel?” She was not sure dueling this person was the most logical idea. She could try to force the hood off of them, but she had an uncanny suspicion that they were stronger than they looked. She couldn’t explain the feeling, but then again, she couldn’t explain why she could communicate with Vampire Retainer. “I guess I’ve got no choice then.” She readied her duel disk, preparing to duel the figure.

Mina vs. Miles

Theme of Miles

Mina looked at her cards, trying to figure out what to put down on the field. After a few moments of thinking, she put a couple of cards face-down, then activated Vampire’s Domain. Though, lacking good options for it, she didn’t use its effect just yet. “Okay. I end my turn.”

As Miles drew for his turn, he frowned. Mina didn’t seem to have much of a hand to speak of, but unfortunately for Miles, neither did he. In fact, the only thing he had that could stop her from slapping down 8000 damage worth of attack and winning instantly was - “I activate Child’s Play and end my turn.” Only a second later did he realize there was a chance Mina would recognize his voice, but luckily for him, she didn’t seem to.

Mina looked annoyed as the figure put down Child’s Play - a promise for continual healing and a threat of much worse. It would be a pain in her ass if she didn’t deal with it ASAP. She placed her topdecked Vampire Familiar onto the field, then paid 500 LP for Vampire’s Domain to tribute summon Vampire Grimson. She then activated Vampire Takeover so she could activate Vampire Kingdom and special summon back her Vampire Familiar. Its effect activated, letting her search her deck for another Vampire, ensuring she’d have more she could do next turn. “Now we’re talkin’.” She grinned, placing Vampire Takeover into the graveyard. “Now, get ready for a pounding. Vampire Grimson, Vampire Familiar, attack this freak.” Her monsters swarmed forth, both gaining attack from Vampire Kingdom and taking 3500 LP off of the cloaked figure. “And thanks to my Vampire’s Domain, I gain just as many. Thanks for the life points asshole.” She chuckled. “I end my turn.”

Vampire Grimson - 2000/1400
Vampire Familiar - 500/0

Miles’ LP: 8000 > 8300 > 8600 > 8900 > 7900 > 5400
Mina’s LP: 8000 > 9000 > 11500

It was Miles’ turn again, and, at last, he drew what he needed. “I activate Gingerbread House.”

“Ha! I’ll negate it with Vampire Domination.”

Mina had a smug look on her face as she countered the figure’s spell, but this expression soon changed to anger as the figure put down another Gingerbread House.

“Fuckin bastard.” She thought out loud, biting her lower lip.

“Next, I activate Valhalla, Hall of the Fallen, and use its effect to special summon. Her.” There was a slight pause as he set down the duel spirit that had been haunting him since he’d lost the real one.

Guardian Angel Joan - 2800/2000

“I’ll equip her with United we Stand, and use her to attack your Vampire Familiar.” The angel’s attack and defense rose by 800, and for a moment, she looked back at Miles, her expression just as neutral and impassive as it’s always been. He hated it. The silent judgment. The patient expectation of more, even when he tried to push her away. The undeserved understanding and attempts to comfort him. It was coddling him, and she had no right. She wasn’t her. Ever since he’d had that talk with Mina, her stare seemed so much colder. Ever since he’d taken the sedatives from the nurse’s office, she - it seemed so much more persistent, yet it also refused to say a word. He’d even seen Mina’s monstrous dog speak, so why wouldn’t it? It was bullshit. She was bullshit.

Guardian Angel Joan - 3600/2800

Guardian Angel flew forward and, with a flourish, blasted Vampire Familiar with a ray of light from her palm like something out of Wyvern Orb Ζ. Mina let out a grunt, paying 1000 LP to keep it alive with Vampire Grimson’s effect. If nothing else, it prevented him from recovering LP with the angel.

“I end my turn.”

MIna’s drew, and as her standby phase rolled around, he activated Gingerbread House. Mina let out another annoyed grunt as she lost 1000 more LP keeping Vampire Grimson alive.

Mina’s LP: 11500 > 8700 > 7700 > 6700

At least it was buffed up for her troubles. Brushing off the setback, she activated Vampire Domain, paying 500 life points and tributing Vampire Familiar to summon Vampire Sorcerer and Shadow Vampire onto the field. Using Shadow Vampire’s effect, she special summons Vampire Red Baron from her deck. Then, using Vampire Familiar’s effect, she sends Vampire Lord from her hand to the graveyard to special summon the Familiar, and uses Vampire Red Baron to trade it for the cloaked figure’s buffed up Guardian Angel Joan.

“Eat this.” She had her Vampires Sorcerer destroy the familiar before having the rest attack the figure directly, feeling elated as she claimed victory. Although it was just overkill caused by her messed up duel disk, the final blow, oddly, didn’t come. Guardian Angel Joan faded out before the other holograms as the duel came to a close.

Miles’ LP: 5400 > 5700 > 6000 > 6300 > 6600 > 4100 > 1200 > -1900
Mina’s LP: 6700 > 9200 > 12100 > 15200

Didn’t quite beat her record from her tag duel, and, proportionately, she had the obstinate Angel to blame for that, which was now hovering over the cloaked figure as he fell to his knees.

A duel spirit.

The cloaked figure was covering their face with their hands, and, unbidden, the angel reached out and pulled the hood back, revealing Miles, his glasses askew, trying to keep himself from breaking down. The jig was pretty much up, and he’d go to jail with some modicum of dignity, at least.

Mina watched in confusion as the angel leaned down next to Miles, reaching out to wipe away a particularly insistent tear when he flinched back and batted her hand away. As usual, he phased right through her, her hand dispersing like smoke. He choked out a curse against the angel, almost too quiet for Mina to hear. “Fuck off.”

She was utterly surprised that Miles was the one underneath the hood. She didn’t know where to start, so she just voiced her thoughts out loud. “What the fuck is going on?”

Despite his better judgment, Miles scoffed, though he meant it more at himself than at Mina. “I messed up.” He shook his head. He did exactly what he had set out to do, and were he not such a damned idiot, he would have gone through with it. Had it actually been called for, he would have sacrificed Roché in a heartbeat. No, he was lying by omission just now, wasn’t he? He almost convinced himself he wasn’t. No, what he messed up was getting Roché back without anyone noticing. He took a deep shuddering breath. He couldn’t just fight off Mina after losing a duel. Duel spirits didn’t work like that. At least, he could tell that his would refuse to work like that. He supposes Mina was better than campus security. At least she, he would be able to confess his sins to.

“...And I don’t feel bad about it.”

“What do you mean you messed up? What were you gonna do to Roche?”

Miles answered her question with another question. “Have you ever wanted something so desperately that you’d do anything for it? Sell your soul, kill a person, doom the world - anything?”

There was something she did want, but she was able to do it with the help of the people around her. Their support is what helped her gain the resolve to complete her dream. “My goals don’t require that.”

Miles nodded. “Mine might not either, but I didn’t know that. I thought that they did. I was jumping to conclusions… I’m getting ahead of myself. How much do you know about the millennium items?”

“I know the King of Games had one, and dueled others with them.”

Miles nodded. “I met a man with the millennium eye. He wore this cloak-” He took the black cloak off, folding it in his hands. “-this cloak, so I couldn’t get a good look at him. I met him on the night the weird geyser of duel spirits appeared, hanging around the pillar, tenting his fingers like the most stereotypical villain to ever exist. The creep saw me, and must’ve looked through my memories or something, because he said he could relate to me.” He shook his head. “At the time, I thought he was just being manipulative, but now I think he was being sincere. Anyway, he made me an offer - he’d give me the millennium eye, a millennium item with the ability to grant wishes, in exchange for bringing a girl to him. I asked Guardian Angel Joan, and she confirmed the man’s eye was real. How he got his hands on it, I’d still like to know.”

He thought back to Roché and shuddered. “If I’m being honest and optimistic, I expected him to take Roché as some sort of human sacrifice. When I met up with him, though, he seemed more like a hobo than some evil cultist. When he saw Roché, he flipped out on me. Kidnapping Roché wasn’t what he wanted. He said he was looking for a specific girl, and that he was just trying to ‘talk’ to her, because he has a personal history with her or something.” He grimaced. “What a grown man has to do with a teenage girl, I don’t know. Maybe he’s just an estranged dad or whatever. Either way, he’s not supposed to be on this island, so he can’t be seen looking for her on his own.”

An awkward silence fell as Mina processed what he’d done and why. Miles continued, “I’m still not sure I trust him, or the millennium eye itself, but every time I look at my duel spirit…” He paused, letting the sentence hang, unsure of how to continue it.

Mina filled the ensuing silence. “Why is your guardian spirit that angel anyway?” She asked. She was reminded of her own spirit who reminded her of her childhood pet.

Miles sighed bitterly. “I still haven’t thanked you for opening my eyes about that.” He looked at the angel floating placidly beside him. “I’ll do it now. Thank you, for exposing… for making me face reality when I denied it for so long.”

He looked back at Mina. “Guardian Angel Joan is a retrained version of St. Joan, a non-effect fusion monster based off of Joan of Arc.” He paused, remembering how he would pointlessly fixate on the card before his duel spirit appeared. “The real Joan of Arc is said to have had dark brown hair. She wasn’t a red head. Not like my mom.”

He stopped, shutting his eyes tightly. It was ancient history. This wasn’t the first time he’s talked about it with someone, but he was emotionally charged right now, and it took more effort than normal to keep himself together. He opened them again, blinking away the involuntary moisture. “Her first name was Joan, and in fact, the card and my mom look quite similar. This thing-” he gestured to the angel beside him “-showed up about a week after she died.” He let out another long-suffering sigh. “I was just a stupid kid, then, and for a long time, I got it in my head that she was… the real deal.”

He reached out, running his hand through the duel spirit as it faded into smoke entirely.

“I think I always kind of knew, but it was way easier to just deny it. It’s kind of pathetic it took me a decade and meeting your freaky dog to wake up and smell the roses. We - me and my dad - even paid Industrial Illusions a visit. Pure coincidence, they said. The hair was just an artistic liberty. Still, I ended up making a deck around her. Isn’t that hilarious?” Despite the light-hearted question, his tone was self-deprecating. “So yeah, I couldn’t forget about her. I couldn’t move on, and when that weirdo offered me a deal… Once I decided I believed him, I made my choice. I bet it all. I bet wrong, and it wasn’t even that guy’s fault.”

He sighed yet again before getting to his feet, stuffing the cloak into his bag. “I’m rambling. I just wanted to get all that off my chest before… before we go back.”

Mina looked in awe as Miles was spilling his guts out about his mom. Even though she hated her parents in stark contrast, she felt sympathy for the boy wanting to see his mother again.

“Look I understand that you wanna see your mom again, but murdering someone is not the way to go about it. Think about what your mom would think if she found out you were a murderer.”

Miles frowned, then, quietly, forlornly, answered, “I’d be happy she’d be able to think at all, again.”

Mina grimaced, then shook her head. “Who is this guy with the eye anyway?” The only person she knew with the Millennium Eye was Pegasus. And he didn’t have that thing for a long time.

“I’ve met him twice, and didn’t ask either time. The first time, he didn’t seem like he’d answer, and the second time, he was too busy yelling at me.”

“Can you take me to him?” She wanted to ask this mystery man some questions.

Miles hesitantly nodded. “I could, but I think we, or you, should go another day. Roché was left behind back there, and once we bring her back to Ra Yellow, I think it’ll be hard to go back out unnoticed.” He also just didn’t want to bother the man with another issue so soon after this shitshow.

“Yeah that sounds like a good idea.” The thought of forgetting about Roche made her want to smack herself. They began the walk back to Roché, carrying her back, claiming they had simply found her passed out in the woods. When asked why Miles was also missing, he said he liked the way tree bark felt against his face in the moonlight and went to bed, exhausted. For her part, Mina kept his secret. She’d decide what to do when she met the man Miles had mentioned.

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

Episode 4: A Deal With the Devil

As he arrived at the base of the volcano at night, he gently put down the sack he was carrying. He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it sure as hell wasn't this.

Miles knocked on the side of the suspicious windowless cargo van the man had self-evidently, by some miracle, driven through the forest. He would assume he had just levitated the thing over the treetops somehow if it weren't for the tire tracks. They were faded and hard to notice by now, especially in the dark, but the ones sheltered beneath the van were more apparent. He walked over and knocked on the side of the van loudly. There was some loud shuffling, followed by a bang, before finally, the driver's door opened on the opposite side. He walked around and, just like the van's exterior, the man was a bit of a disappointment. He made the decision to come here after guilt ate away at him from multiple angles, after days of sleepless nights and his duel spirit getting so much more annoying than usual, only to see that the mysterious cloaked figure with a millennium eye was... just some bum. The man winced at Miles' flashlight, yawning tiredly, a dark circle under his... eye. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an eyepatch, putting it over the millennium eye. "I've been practicing. I can't explain why, since I can see right through it, but the eyepatch helps remind me not to pry."

God, he was making a mistake.

"So why'd you come knocking at the break of midnight? I can barely get enough sleep with all the duel spirits harassing me as it is."

"I held up my end of the deal. You need to hold up yours."

"Your end of the...?" He noticed Miles gesturing to the sack he had left on the ground and watched as the man looked back at him, confusion on his face at first, followed by full-blown panic. "Jesus Christ, kid, this isn't what I fucking meant!" The man ran over to the sack.

Miles knit his brows. The man had definitely used his eye again, and he seemed like he was worming his way out of their deal. He had brought his backpack loaded up with stuff. His actual luggage would attract too much suspicion, but he was ready to never return. He needed this to work.

The man peaked into the sack. Sure enough, some red head girl was passed out inside it and despite seeing it in Miles' memories he grimaced. He was hoping beyond hope that that idiot didn't just kidnap some random girl because- because of him, but he was lying to himself by not looking into the bag with his eye to begin with. He stood back up, turning to stare at the boy. "What in the fuck!?"

"What do you mean, what in the fuck!? You're the one who asked me to do it! That was the deal!”

“No, no, no. That wasn’t the damn deal.”

Miles took a steadying breath before he lost his shit completely. “I bring you a girl, you let me use the eye to make a wish! That was what you said!"

"No, you fucking idiot! I said that I needed your help to find one of the girls on this island, not just any girl! What the fuck did you think was going to happen to her!?"

"I don’t know!" Pinpricks of moisture were assaulting his eyes already, because yeah, he was a fucking idiot. "I didn’t think about it, okay!? A human sacrifice! Some demon summoning ritual! Outright cannibalism! Maybe something worse! Is that what you want me to say!? I didn't want to bring her! I didn’t want to bring anyone, but you’re the fucking mind reader! You knew I’d give myself up, but that wasn’t good enough! So yeah, I didn’t think about it! I couldn't or else I knew I wouldn't go through with it! How was I supposed to know you were after someone specific!?"

"You were supposed to come talk to me first, like I told you to!"

"You didn’t tell me to do that!" He really didn't. "What was I supposed to think when some creep in a cloak who wouldn’t even show me his face offered me demon magic!”

"It’s a Millennium Eye! You’re in a duel academy for fuck’s sake! You should recognize it!”

"Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize the pharaoh’s brand of fucking shadow magic was supposed to make me trust someone I took for a fucking cultist as they hung around a literal pillar of tortured souls!”

"God, this is so fucked. What did you even do to her!?"

"Can’t you read my mind?”

“I’m asking you.”

He couldn't keep the moisture in his eyes from spilling over. He hated it, because he was still willing to go through with it. He was feeling guilty because he messed up, not because he felt bad about his actions. It was disgusting. "She's fine.” He said it a second time, “she’s fine. I stole sedatives from the school nurse. I gave her more than recommended, but I made sure it wasn't a dangerous amount."

The man pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting off an oncoming headache. "Ugh…"

"Why are you even looking for a teenage girl!?"

"BECAUSE! Because. I came to this island to talk to her. I messed up something of hers, and I wanted to make sure I didn't make things worse for her... and I need my van to do this, but as you might have noticed, I'm not supposed to be here. I had to bribe someone to get the van on the island to begin with, and I was only supposed to be here to tour the place for one day. I'm already a breach of security, and I've been flying under the radar, but people will probably begin to take notice after a fucking child abduction!” His words were laced with venom, and they stung just as much. It was deserved, honestly.

"..." He fell to his knees as if stabbed, the weight of his choices gradually settling onto his shoulders like a pile of bricks. The weight he had decided to willingly ignore. His duel spirit loomed over him, staring down at him with neither a smile nor frown. "FUCK YOU!" He stood back up to disperse the mirage, swiping through it as if to kill it. It was partially her fault for guilt-tripping him like this. Well, no. He hated the thing, but he was just looking for something to blame. He really fucked up this time. "What… what do I do?"

"What the fuck do you think? Take her back before anybody notices, and if you succeed, come back, because we're having a long conversation about this."

He took a deep breath, wiping his face clear. He picked up the sack, hoisting the drawstring over his shoulder carefully. Maybe he could take her back and pretend this never happened. Maybe no one, not even Roché, would notice.

Chris
"Roché and Miles are missing!"

Prof. Sartyr and damn near every student in Ra Yellow was woken up by Chris' yelling. It wasn't his fault, strictly speaking, but Professor Sartyr could sleep through a hurricane, and he needed to wake the man up. He was the only Ra Yellow student up and lounging in the Ra Yellow lobby at such a late hour, and while he didn't think much of his two friends...

...and while he didn't think much of his friend Roché and that Miles guy not showing up by the curfew - few students actually abided by it - he decided to call it in once it hit midnight. They've been gone all day, the school was warning them about mysterious figures spotted in the forest on the daily, and it did not take that long to find a good place to conduct a quality shag. He didn't want to narc on them, but he was getting tired and figured it was his moral obligation to say something before he went to sleep.

Professor Sartyr tiredly nodded as Chris repeated himself, called campus security to inform them of the situation, then went back to bed, simply thinking the students were up to adolescent mischief outside of his control.

The white hair brothers were still up. Although it was typical for Jon to be up this late, Kaison even stayed up to pay attention to his riveting tale of the star crossed Ra Yellow lovers who proceeded to stumble on a tree branch and land face-first in a cultist's demon summoning ritual. Chris sent them one last update before heading to bed.

Kaison
"We should go looking for them."

@Crimson Flame

All other Slifer Reds
The walls of the Slifer Red dorm are too damn thin.

Caleb
Damn. Jon's story was wild. He had to send it to Alexis.

Hmm. For some reason she wants to go looking for them. He texted her back, reminding her that that wasn't a very smart thing to do in this instance. They had campus security for exactly these situations, and arguing 'we should go looking for them' was pretty dumb, and could easily make a bad situation worse.

...

That girl and her hunches.

Caleb and Lexa discreetly left their respective dorms. That being said, they didn't necessarily go unnoticed.

@Darkmoon Angel@Eviledd1984@Goose@King Cosmos@Psyker Landshark@Scarifar