finklestein (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
finklestein) wrote2014-03-12 09:47 am
finklestein) wrote2014-03-12 09:47 am
Apprentice App
PLAYER INFORMATION
Name: Trinam
Timezone: CST
Personal Journal:trinam
Player Contact: kwikkidus@aim, trinam@plurk, m.prather42@gmail
Characters in Game (previously too): None yet!
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Edward Finklestein
Canon: OC, 'Momijigaoka Academy'
Gender: Male
Age: 22
Suitability: N/A, dude's 22.
Species: Human
Canon Point: End of history section.
World/Setting: Tens of thousands of years ago, in another dimension called Reverse World, dark gods appeared and attempted to take over. They were opposed by an army of highly advanced magic users, led by their king, a master of magic and hero without peer. The battle continued for nearly half a century, with neither side gaining any distinct advantage over the other. The stalemate finally ended when the king, knowing his life was near its end while the dark gods' could last until eternity, made a final gambit to seal the dark gods away at the cost of his own life.
First, the king rounded up the dark gods and sent both himself and them to Earth, a planet in another dimension, well out of reach of any of the dark gods' followers. There, he bound the dark gods to the planet itself, and created seven Seals from his own soul that would hold them in their prison forever.
The Seals represented the raw elements of the universe: Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, Light, Darkness, and Magic. Each Seal contained a portion of the king's power, and had the ability to bind itself to the soul of a living being. While bound, the Seal would take a part of the host's psyche and imprint it onto itself, allowing it to grow alongside them. In exchange, in times of crisis, the host would be allowed to access their Seal's power.
As time passed and the planet grew, magic and monsters eventually became the things of legends, forced into hiding due to humanity's focus on science and fear of the unknown. Their modern-day Earth became much like our own, only with supernatural phenomena hiding in its nooks and crannies. The existence of the Seals themselves are only known to a handful of people, and their purpose to even less; those who seek them tend to only do so to obtain their great powers. For all intents and purposes, as far as most humans were concerned, magic just didn't exist.
That changed thirty three years before present day, when Tokyo disappeared in a massive column of darkness as part of the plans of an organization known as the Council of Seals. They sent the entire city into Reverse World using an ancient ritual in order to hold it hostage against the few people who may be able to stop them—the people they had reasoned would be most likely to be carrying one of the Seals.
Although it was hard to piece together everything that happened inside the city, one story persisted among the survivors. They talked about a man that merged with a dragon and fought all manner of monsters, day and night, protecting the city to the best of his abilities. His greatest battle, they said, was against a fiery-haired demon; the battle itself resulted in half of Shinjuku being leveled to the ground. He wasn't the only one that fought to protect the populace, however. All kinds of so-called "monsters," super-powered humans, and magic users came out of the woodwork, and not all from Earth.
When the city returned, over a million people were dead or missing, and millions more were wounded. The event, eventually called "Tokyo Reverse," forced the entire world to admit to two truths, one old, one new: Magic was real, and the Earth wasn't prepared for it. To correct the latter truth, the world's governments got together and, with the help of independently wealthy investors and other parties, created departments and institutions to train people to fight against otherworldly threats. One such institution, the focus of our story, was a high school.
Momijigaoka Academy, named after its founder, is a high school located far off of the coast of Japan. It is not the only school of its kind, but it is the first, and considered to be the best. Opening a mere four years after Tokyo Reverse, it is a self-sufficient facility that employs the best it can get its hands on, which has resulted in a staff consisting of some of the best minds and powers the planet has to offer. Many have been "in the know" about magic their whole lives, some know about the Seals, and at least one is in possession of one.
Students at Momijigaoka Academy (or MA, or 'Momien') are expected to be just as exceptional as the faculty. They are to maintain good grades in their regular classes, as well as exceed in the special classes—those aimed towards dealing with magical and superhuman threats through either combative or diplomatic means. Graduating from the combination high school/college leads with rare exception to an offer from at least one national military's anti-paranormal assault or 'APA' teams. The top 5-10% of any class are usually scouted and given lucrative contracts not unlike what professional athletes make. A completed stay at MA is synonymous with living comfortably, as magic research groups and private security companies alongside the military itself all highly value the high pedigree the school's degree carries.
The technology employed at the school is some of the best found in the world, which is fairly similar to our own, but slightly more advanced. Some functions, like cleaning and maintenance, are relegated to robots. Mechanical exoskeletons ("mech suits") exist, and are being improved on all the time. Students whose talents lay with science are encouraged to explore their talents, and various projects with focuses to improve humanity overall are carried out all the time.
History: Ed's important history starts at the moment he was born, when, thanks to his strong innate magical talents, he was chosen by the Seal of Magic to be its next host. His father, a moderately accomplished mage himself, recognized the "birthmark" on his shoulder for what it really was, and shared the happy news with his family, including Ed's older half-sister Lila. Unbeknownst to him, however, Lila was the sort of person who viewed life not as something to be cherished, but as a game that could be played and won. To her, the answer to "Why am I here?" was "To grow, consume, and get as much power as you can until you croak!" To that end, the Seal of Magic became just another prize for her to take from someone weaker (and therefore less deserving) than her.
Her plan was as simple as it was cruel. During one of her regular visits to the Finklestein home, she would murder Ed's parents and take his Seal. Then, she would call the police, hysterical—her father and stepmother had been killed! Thanks to her testimony, they would conclude that it had been a burglary gone wrong. Once all the dust had settled, she would become Ed's legal guardian.
To prove to herself that the Seal's powers only would have been wasted on Ed, she used the money he received from his parents to pay for his upbringing. She left him to be raised by others, who would cater to his every whim and judge him based off of his decisions. While she finished her education at MA, she also established a global anti-paranormal arms dealing empire that dealt with both national governments and shady organizations alike.
Growing up wanting for nothing, Ed found himself fascinated at an early age by magic and lore, and devoured piles and piles of books on the subject. When he wasn't busy eating, sleeping, or being tutored, he would spend his time rereading them over and over again, until he practically had them memorized.
While reading one day, he was approached by a spirit who introduced herself as a dryad. The two ended up becoming fast friends, and she served as something of a mother figure to the lonely boy. He learned as much from her as he could from any book, but because she existed on a plane just out of touch with Earth, only someone with magical capabilities could even sense her, let alone see her. The staff tending to him thought nothing of it at the time—he was just a secluded little boy who'd dreamt up an imaginary friend. He was eight. It was cute.
Years later, it wasn't so cute, and the community of the small town he was raised in started to gossip that Lila's little half-brother was holed up not because he was special, but because he was 'special.' He never heard any of this, though, as his head was only full of magic and books.
While the rumors flew, the dryad encouraged him to practice his magic as he grew. She always tactfully declined to actually teach him, though, saying that she was not qualified. While practicing, he ran into the same problem all self-taught mages did—he was unable to properly regulate his power. He took to practicing magic in a large field far away from his house simply because of the unpredictable nature of his spells, which were as likely to work as not and tended to fail in a spectacular and explosive fashion. More than once he ended up dragging himself back home with wounds all over his body and his clothes in tatters. When he failed, he cried, but when he succeeded he came back with the biggest grin on his face. (Naturally, this did not help his 'special' reputation.)
He rarely ever saw his guardian in person. She always stopped by on his birthday to personally grant him a birthday wish, but never stayed long, citing that she had work to do. He believed her, of course. A corporation that large and powerful as Lila's required a lot of supervision! He did convince himself, though, that she wanted to be with him... she just couldn't. She was working hard, and to him, that was just fine.
On his 15th birthday, Lila came to see him, just as she had every other year. And just like every other year, she asked him what he wanted. Instead of asking for the usual rare book or magical artifact, however, Ed requested to attend the school that all the world's foremost magic users came from: Momijigaoka Academy. Having graduated at the very top of her class many years ago from the same school, Lila took it as a prime opportunity to let herself see just how much better she was than the brat she'd stolen the Seal of Magic from. She agreed to let him take the entrance exams, and, almost just like that, he was off to the island to go and prove himself.
He barely passed the written exam, but excelled at his interview, which allowed him to show off his knowledge of all things magical as well as the talents he'd developed himself. Even his normally explosive inability to regulate his spells worked in his favor, as it was the strongest display of magic they'd seen that year. One of the panelists, a mage, commented that once he learned to control his powers, he could easily graduate as one of the school's strongest magic users.
"That's to be expected," another panelist said. "He's Lila Daughtily's little brother, after all."
As Ed would soon discover, remarks of that kind would come all too often. By the time he got accepted and moved into the school's dormitory, he went from being proud of the fact to quietly moving on from it as quickly as possible. He wasn't angry about the comparison; he just wanted people to see him for his own talents. And, he swore, one day they would.
Then, things started happening.
In his first-ever harrowing experience, he wound up being dragged into an incident on the school grounds. A third-year student had created a small cult that abducted others and attempted to indoctrinate them through the use of a combination of drugs and torture out of a belief that pain led to enlightenment. Ed "befriended" one of the cult's members, who led him out into the woods and to a shelter that had been converted into the cult's base of operations. There, he was attacked by a girl who claimed to be possessed. He believed her, of course, but because he couldn't figure out how to help her without hurting her, he wound up running away. He did, however, tell another group of students what was going on. They took care of things after that, and in the process Ed began to make his first real friends.
All was well for a while, and Ed resumed his studies. While his scores for most classes were passable to average, he showed an incredible aptitude for anything involving magic or its use. His teachers for his magic classes were impressed at how quickly he seemed to grasp how other people did spells just by watching them a few times, and he developed a reputation among them for being a very gifted imitator. He still hadn't shown any creative ability outside of casting other peoples' spells, but he was given slack due to only being a first-year student. Creativity could come later.
The second major incident on the island hit Ed far closer to home, in the form of a pair of demons named Munos and Desdemona that had infiltrated the school by possessing the bodies of three students (a pair of twins and one other). Together, they amassed a crew of disillusioned or easily persuadable students to bring chaos to the school. Their goal was to harness the energy created by the unhappiness among the student body to break the seal on an orb that held back the powerful demon possessing the twins.
Desdemona in was responsible for most of the conversions amongst the student body. With a little magic and wicked demon logic, she twisted people's wills in order to convince them that the world was against them, and that they had to fight back. This technique didn't work on Ed, but it worked on a few of his friends, and he was forced to face them in order to win them back.
One such friend was a mechanical-minded genius, Mylene, who was as much into science as Ed was into magic. Convinced that Ed was definitely out to get her, she ambushed him with a gun that could digitize extradimensional entities and seal them into special cards. Naturally, she demonstrated it on Ed's friend the dryad. She walked off, confident that Ed wouldn't attack her. After all, she was a "friend," and she was holding his precious dryad hostage. When he proved her right, she called him a waste of space and left him to despair.
Once he was able to move, he searched around the island for allies. He eventually found them in the form of a group called Ryuuoumaru, labeled as a 'first response' club dedicated to protecting the students of the island from any evils that might arise. He saw this as the answer to his problem, and joined right away.
Shortly after doing so, he ended up getting into a fight with another one of his recently made friends who had been turned by the demons. The friend was under orders to attack the infirmary, as the nurse who worked there possessed an unusual healing ability that made it too easy for the students fighting them to recover. Ed stepped up to fight, but his friend's mastery over wind and lack of fear of confrontation proved too much for Ed, and he wound up being brutally beaten. He did, however, manage to buy enough time for the nurse to return, and by the time he woke up the infirmary was as safe as it ever was.
Times became so desperate that the teachers themselves were finally authorized to step in and fight against their students. While those fights raged on, Ed went to find Mylene and bring her around.
In the heat of battle, she raged at him about how unfair life was. How, though she could spend her entire life learning all about how to build things and make wonders that would advance the human race, people would always be more enamored and impressed by magic.
"Any random idiot can possess magic. I mean, just look at you!"
Rather than fall into despair again he argued that she was incredible in her own way. He also admitted that, as he was, his magic couldn't hold a candle to her technology.
Neither was sure quite what happened, but in the end Mylene wound up confessing to him, and he to her, and the demons' control was broken. She quickly freed the dryad, but the dryad took off soon after, saying that Ed had grown up enough to not need her anymore.
Ed and Mylene dated for a while, but like most high-school romances, it didn't last very long. After taking up an offer to intern at Lila's company, she broke things off with him.
"Long distance relationships just don't last, y'know?"
Before he even had a chance to feel sad that they were no longer an item, Ed was approached by a student who identified himself as Lucas. Lucas was merely an avatar, however, for an entity called the Balance Dragon, who was in turn responsible for protecting and overseeing the growth of the Seal of Magic. He explained that he had sent the dryad to Ed, then explained why, revealing to Ed the truth of the existence he had come to know.
In his explanation, he told Ed that the universe was in a precarious position. Not being trained in magic herself, Lila had performed the ritual to transplant the Seal incorrectly, and only managed to take most of it. The remainder of it was still with Ed. Thankfully, Lila's overconfidence in her abilities and the dryad's interference made it so that Lila herself didn't notice. The Seal would be fine, he said, as long as he and Lila remained alive, but it really needed to be put together again because if something did happen to either of them, "bad things" would happen.
When Ed asked what exactly it would do, Lucas told him that even he didn't know, and that was why the situation was so dangerous. Thinking that everything would be fine if he did, Ed then offered to give up his portion of the seal to Lila, who he reasoned would be way better at using it than himself. Lucas told him that this would be a terrible idea, as she'd forced her way into leading an old and powerful organization known as the Council of Seals, and granting her that kind of power would be like handing her the world on a silver platter.
"It has to be you," he insisted. "You were the one the Seal chose for itself."
Ed finally agreed to help the Lucas to take back what was his by birthright, and started receiving supplemental magic lessons after school from him.
With that, Ed's first year on the island ended largely uneventfully, with him spending his daytime in class and nighttime lost in more extracurricular magic practice. He then spent his summer on the island as well, dedicating himself entirely to the art of magic and getting stronger while everyone else was busy having fun. He was psyched up to show his friends all the cool stuff he'd learned while they were all away. As luck would have it, the academy decided to welcome the new crop of students with an expository sparring match between any student who wanted to enter. Without thinking too much about it, Ed signed up.
It was as he stared down his first opponent that he realized that he still really didn't like the idea of hurting his friends. He forfeited the tournament in the first round without throwing so much as a spark at his opponent, an upperclassman who Ed only barely knew at all. In the stunned silence that resulted from the unexpected result, Ed apologized with a quick bow and a "Sorry!" to each of the four sides of the room before dashing out the door fast enough that if you blinked you'd have missed that he was there at all. The tournament concluded without him, and Ed spent the next hour or two in his room banging his head against the wall and looking at the ceiling until one of his friends dropped by to check on him. Not wanting to disappoint them, he just went to the tournament's after-party and laughed the whole thing off, even though it still felt really embarrassing.
The school year continued to have its share of events, from teachers going rogue and trying to take the Elemental Seals from other denizens to a series of incidents revolving around a thief who stole magic. Ryuuoumaru dealt with all of them just as they had the year before, but Ed stayed in a mostly peripheral role, supporting the others as they fought the major threats and as it became more and more clear that the Council of Seals was targeting the island as the most likely location for them to find the remaining Seals. Three times that year alone Ryuuoumaru foiled their plans, and a group of teenagers beat back an organization famed as incredibly powerful. The third time they defeated a lieutenant in the Council itself, a senior member whose powers nearly rivaled one of its seven leaders.
The fourth time the Council decided to make an example of them all. The attack came with barely any notice, a sudden electronic and communications blackout being the only precursor to a sudden attack by the full force of the Council. The island was prepared for attacks from radicals and even monsters, but this force was the equivalent of an army. Ryuuoumaru did what they could to stop the Council, and in doing so Ed finally came face to face with his sister Lila for the first time since he'd left for MA. He asked if she was working with the Council. She laughed and said there no way she'd ever work with people like that.
Ed's relief had only a second to set in before she tried to shoot him.
"I'm their leader, moron."
So began the first time Ed had ever found himself fighting seriously with all he had.
As they fought, she confirmed what Lucas had told him earlier about having murdered his parents and stolen his Seal from him. That Seal of Magic that she'd stolen from him had made her incredibly strong, capable of ripping control of spells from their user and allowing her to absorb them and fire them back out as her own. If not for the timely help of several of his friends, Ed would have been quickly overwhelmed by the sheer difference in power between the two. Even with them it was a close battle, and after a concerted effort Lila successfully managed to take out one of his allies, leaving her bloodied and unconscious on the ground. In his anger Ed accessed the small part of the Seal he still had with him, and it resonated with Lila's portion to bring him on par with her for a moment. In that moment, he burst through her defenses and landed a punch right in her gut that left her wide open.
Lila replied by talking about how before stealing the Seal of Magic she was completely unable to use it, in a world that suddenly had valued its use above anything else. She told him she felt inferior, and she felt like their parents had replaced her with someone who had magic, who had so much magic just by virtue of being born. She'd taken some of it for herself because of it, and when his parents had tried to stop her, she'd been pushed too far when her father had hit her for it and ended up killing them both.
"I just wanted someone to be proud of me like dad should have... that's all."
Wanting to believe that she wasn't really evil but instead misunderstood, Ed ignored the obvious holes in her story. Accepting what she'd said as truth, he nodded and told her he'd believe in her so long as she was willing to give the Seal back to him and face justice for what she'd done. Lila slowly stood, staggered towards him, and grabbed Ed in a tight hug.
Then she stabbed him in the back and called him a dumbass who failed at life for not being able to see through such an obvious ruse.
Defeated, Ed ended up falling unconscious thinking that maybe, just maybe, Lila wasn't someone he should trust. While he was out, the battle raged on for a while longer. Lila didn't quite have the chance to finish him off before the island itself was ripped apart by the sheer amount of incredibly powerful magic being thrown around on all sides. The boundaries between Earth and the Reverse World came undone, flinging everyone on the island to the far reaches of both. The island and the academy were both destroyed. The once formidable Council of Seals was also decimated in the process, the only surviving members being Lila herself and those who worked directly for her.
But they had won.
Ed awoke inside a secluded cabin a week later, and the dryad, who had found him and nursed him back to health, gave him a stern talking to over how he had acted in battle. Ed apologized quickly, but was told that the one he really needed to apologize to was Balance Dragon himself, as Ed had just wasted his best chance to get the full Seal back. Knowing he was in trouble because dryad had called him 'Balance Dragon' and not 'Lucas,' Ed nodded in understanding and headed out with a map to the dragon's home.
As Ed traveled, he met a demon girl. She introduced herself as 'CD,' and proudly stated that she was one of Lila's top trained assassins, specializing in wide-range demolitions. She'd been on the island in another area before it was destroyed. She then announced that she fully intended to take his map to find her way to civilization. Not able to give up the map, but not wanting to leave her hanging (because Lila was the bad guy, not CD), he made a deal with her. Ed had no clue how to navigate by map, and CD didn't want to face a dragon or be stuck with a dryad in the middle of nowhere (the only two locations clearly marked on the map), the two agreed to travel together until they reached the Balance Dragon's cave.
Despite their differences in personality, Ed and CD made a good team, and made it to Balance Dragon safely. Ed delivered his apology, then listened to the dragon's lecture, and, once they'd all agreed that a lesson had been learned, the dragon presented Ed with a list of things he would have to do in order to atone for his spectacular mistake. (Naturally, this all doubled as special training for Ed, a fact even Ed himself caught onto fairly quickly.)
The first task was a simple one. Balance Dragon needed to rest, and while he rested he wanted Ed to keep an eye on his cave. Specifically, he wanted Ed to look after the magical pool therein, which had the ability to show anyone looking into it any portion of history. While he looked after it, he wanted Ed to look into it and see for himself what kind of person Lila was.
Ed agreed, and as soon as the dragon departed, set himself by the pool. He left it only to eat and sleep. With disappointment fresh on his mind, he mostly kept to task, but every so often he'd gaze to other portions of history (like CD's, whose story he was interested in learning but she herself refused to tell), or to check and make sure his friends were safe. For the first time, he saw how genuinely terrible a person could be, and vowed that, one day, he would personally apologize to all of her victims.
More importantly, though, he finally appreciated just how much Lila had to be stopped. The idea of killing her didn't occur to him, however, until he came across Lila researching how to extract the Seal of Magic from Ed and discovered that, no matter the amount of Seal in a person, if it was removed entirely, it would almost certainly kill them.
Whereas Lila had simply shrugged and said "Oh, well," Ed's response was far less glib. He stormed away from the pool and up to Balance Dragon, interrupting his rest to shout at him that he wanted to stop his sister, but he didn't want to kill her. The resulting argument lasted for an hour, with Ed yelling and Balance Dragon calmly countering. Despite the sense the dragon was making in his argument for ending Lila, or perhaps because it made sense, Ed finally reached his boiling point and exploded.
"I don't care that she stabbed me, and I don't care if killing her would solve all the problems in the entire world forever! I'm going to do everything I can to save her along with everyone else!"
"And what if she refuses to be saved?" the dragon asked, his voice moving throughout the cave with a quiet echo.
"Then..." Ed hesitated, clenched his fists, and gritted his teeth. "If it comes down to that, and she doesn't leave me with any other choice... then... It's not my choice anymore! But I'm never going to choose killing someone!"
Though he feared for Ed's safety in such a situation, the dragon chose to accept that this was the path Ed wanted to walk on, and decided to allow him to do so.
Before he went back to his rest, the dragon informed Ed that CD had come to him and made a deal. In exchange for a healing spell she could cast on herself, CD would train Ed in his place over the course of his journey. She had extraordinary skill in manipulating energy that Ed needed to learn, and though he could have taught Ed himself, the recovery from the exertion of his power (to make sure that everyone flung from the island made it somewhere safe) would take too long, and they just didn't have the time to wait.
The two ended up traveling together for three years. She taught him what she knew about magic, and how to draw it from his surroundings instead of forcing it out of himself. As they worked their way through their assigned tasks (all of which helped Ed to even further his abilities), they found themselves becoming true friends, which surprised the both of them.
By the time their tasks were complete, they received word from Balance Dragon about a fighting tournament being held in the magical capital city of Endymion. The prize was that the winner would be granted one wish. Now being able to accept that it was okay to fight for something he truly believed in, he decided to participate and, if he won, use his wish to bring everyone who had been taken from Earth back home.
However, he wasn't the only one with the same idea, and he was finally reunited with his friends after three long years. After tons of hugs, laughter, and shouts of glee, Ryuuoumaru became reunited once more and practically dominated the tournament. Ed fought alongside them at full strength, finding his resolve bolstered by the presence of his friends.
However, as they climbed their way to the top, they discovered a sinister plot was in the works. One of the participants was cheating his way to the top, and once he'd won, he planned on using his wish to take over the city of Endymion. The final round, a battle royale between the top four participants, had Ed and two of his friends facing off against the powerful enemy mage. Once he realized that there was a good chance the enemy could win, even against all three of them, Ed sacrificed himself to take them both out of the tournament.
Ed's friend made his wish: A ship capable of holding all those who'd been stranded in Reverse World, with the ability to safely travel between dimensions and quickly anywhere within whatever world it was in. After dubbing it the Timaeus Ruber, the group gathered up the last of the missing students and finally set sail home.
While they were gone, however, Lila had been preparing for war. In a series of six coordinated assaults within a month of Ryuuoumaru's return, she managed to weaken the six complete Seals. Once they were weakened, she managed to release some of the dark gods being held back by the Seals. Some she set on the Seal holders themselves, having them possess them so their Seals couldn't regenerate. Others, she set on bringing chaos throughout the world. The rest were burdened with the task of eliminating the rest of the seal that still held their strongest members back.
Ed played two parts in this crisis: First, he, along with his friend, Lily, fought and freed the holder of the Water Seal of the dark god possessing her. Then, he traveled to the site of the seal of the dark gods and, with the help of the armies from Reverse World and the Earth's APA, helped his friends make it to the seal's core. There, he witnessed another, but permanent sacrifice as a powerful ally, the "Dragon Man" of Tokyo Reverse, gave his soul up to become the new seal to hold back the dark gods.
The worst-case scenario having been barely avoided, the group tried to figure out what Lila was trying to do, but were completely stumped. After she'd released the dark gods, Lila had practically disappeared. Eventually, the best they were able to come up with was that she must have had a way to disable the dark gods, so her target wasn't the world as much as it was the group itself—once she had weakened them, she would simply do away with the dark gods and continue on her conquest for power, unabated.
As they reached his conclusion, they also came to realize that it wasn't safe for them to be among regular people yet. In order to keep the general populace safe, they decided to travel back to the one place no one would go: Momijigaoka Academy. There, the members of Ryuuoumaru would help each other train and prepare for the final battle against Lila Daughtily and her minions, as well strengthen old friendships that had become weak, and forge new ones between those who had never really had a chance to get to know each other before. Once done, they launched their attack.
The fight was the stuff of shonen canon legend, with absurd spells and attacks being flung by everyone as they fought against, well, everyone on the other side. In the end, Ed and his sister squared off and while fighting literally inside his sister's soul, he fired off a technique he'd invented during his travels in Reverse world that would rip energy out of the world around it to expand infinitely. Leeching off of his sister's energy and utterly annihilating her soul proved fatal, and Ed won the fight. His Seal was complete, but in the process he'd had to kill someone. He wasn't all that happy about it, as you might expect.
After that, he started to clean up after his sister's work, and you'd think it was the end--except then the dreams started. He remembered something that might have not even been real, promising some girl... something. Either a date or a wedding and he wasn't sure which. Thinking with his usual amount of short-sightedness, he designed and cast a spell that would let him meet that girl because Promises Are Important. One incredibly short conversation later, and before he was entirely sure what he did he was suddenly First Consort to a guardian named Roze. He's still not entirely sure how that happened, but there's no going back on his word so he's definitely happy with it. At this point they have been happily 'married-ish' for a few months, and luckily for Ed it seems to be a lull point in his life. No major crises or anything have happened since their union yet, and if Ed had his way things would stay that way for a while. ...Naturally they never do.
Personality: If you only had two words to describe Ed, those words would be 'selfishly kind.' He has a very strong sense of right and wrong, and a hair-trigger reflex to act on what he thinks is right. He is naive, optimistic, and trusting to a fault. A severe fault. He genuinely believes that everyone on earth could get along if they really wanted to, and is constantly baffled by those who think differently. He tries so hard to get along with everyone and see the good in everything that he (unintentionally) deludes himself—it often takes a blatant act of malice in order to see a "bad guy" for what s/he really is.
He makes friends quickly, but some of his friendships are one-sided. If he thinks of you as a friend, then that's what you are whether you like it or not. He has no problem whatsoever going all-out for his friends... and strangers, too! Because of it, he tends to take on too many tasks and go in too many directions at once, and finds himself overwhelmed and burnt out in short order.
He originally enrolled at MA not because he sought a military contract, but to further his own research into magic. A magic otaku (or 'mahotaku') in the extreme, Ed has an encyclopedic grasp on paranormal phenomenon and magical theory and is seldom found without some kind of book in his hand, or his head buried in it. Though he detests fighting, he's come to grips with the idea of doing it in order to protect himself and others, which is the only fighting he's resolved to do. He does love a good scrap however, and if it's for fun he's a huge fan of sparring.
To say Ed has lived a privileged life is a vast understatement. Up until his admission to MA, his life has been spent with a constantly changing circle of nannies, all of which were instructed to leave him to do whatever he wanted. As a result, he's formed some very odd notions about how the world and the people in it work, which in turn allows him to come up with some of the most absurd reasons for the reasons why people do what they do. Because he was allowed to dedicate himself exclusively to the study of magic, he knows a great deal more about the subject than your average MA student. In terms of regular academics, however, he's average at best. He finds it difficult to motivate himself to do anything by himself outside of the subject of magic (and, by extent, the supernatural), which leads to a hyper-focus that often drifts into tunnel vision.
While he has a lot of friends, many of his friendships are shallow. This makes it difficult for him to honestly open up to anyone, for fear that his 'not nice' thoughts will drive them away. He doesn't like conflict, and when he does find himself in an argument, he tries to be as tactful as possible. Unfortunately for him, his "tact" is usually the sacrifice of his own opinion, because he believes he must understand the other person's point of view first. This often leads to evasive and weak counters on his part. He genuinely means well, but is emotionally evasive without realizing it. If you do get him talking, his mouth tends to move faster than his brain, making him phrase things badly and causing him to insult people without meaning to (his naivete about others' motivations doesn't help, either). If called out on it, he'll panic and start talking even faster, which only puts him deeper into the hole he originally dug himself into.
Having been brought up without ever wanting for anything has left Ed with some crazy ideas about the value of a dollar, or just "earning" things in general. He is terrible with money, and tends to spend or give it away in an act of charity as quickly as he comes into it since he's never been denied the privilege. The speed at which he makes friends and places trust in others can be taken as a warning to his impatience: He is very bad at having to wait for long periods of time for anything he really wants. He has gotten much better about this over time, thanks to school's environment and real friends, but an entire lifetime of instant gratification is hard to shake.
Abilities/Weaknesses: Ed is, magically speaking, a broken little asshole. There's no better way to put it. He specializes in elemental magic, and the creation of magical items using mana, but really if he puts his mind to it there's very little he can't do if only out of respect to how much energy he's able to hemorrhage into making his spells work. Other notable abilities may involve a voice in his head that quietly judges him, a Seal that grants 'dominion over magic' (Basically augmenting an already absurd talent for magic) and the ability to turn into a girl which he never uses because why would he want to be a girl he's a guy isn't he?
That is not to say he's without his weaknesses. Without his spells he's basically a particularly tough scrappy kid, and above all of that he is rather gullible, absurdly easy to sidetrack, and tends to get so wrapped up in what he's doing that he forgets to look ahead and play 'what comes next.' For a supremely powerful mage, he's kind of... dumb. He also has a problem fighting actual martial artists who are able to close the gap and keep pressure on him as it prevents him from getting any of his really big tricks off.
RP Samples:
Ed flew through the air and slid to a stop on the ground, letting out a 'Blargh!' as he rolled to a stop. A roar ripped through the air, and Ed stood up again to stare down his opponent of the moment: a dinosaur that was on fire. CD had told him to track down some kind of mount so that the two of them could travel more easily, and Ed's first thought was one of these local creatures. After all, if their mount was on fire it'd be harder for someone to hurt it, right? He squared off with the flaming Triceratops again, which charged him out of anger and opened its mouth, launching a gout of flame.
Acting quickly, he put his hand forward and called a wall of stone to block the fire. The Triceratops rammed through it, but Ed was ready for that and was waiting just past it with a rope. He slipped it over the dinosaur's mouth and tied it off there, cutting off its ability to breathe fire. He held on to the other end of the rope as it tried to buck him off. "Easy now..!" he said to it as he took flight, pulling the rope up and jerking back against its yanks and pulls. "It's okay. I'm not going to hurt y--"
Ed's thought was interrupted by the dinosaur's fire burning brighter all over and scorching right through the rope. It looked up at Ed and fired its breath at him again. He flew quickly to the side, but the fire caught his sleeve and he had to pat it down. By the time he'd finished, the dinosaur had run off somewhere into the distance. 'Oh, right.' he thought to himself. 'It's on fire. Even a magically treated rope would just... well, now I know!'
He smiled, reaching a hand forward and conjuring a rope out of thin air. 'This is perfect! It means I can practice making things totally fireproof. CD, you're a genius.'
Thing two: This thing here
Name: Trinam
Timezone: CST
Personal Journal:
trinamPlayer Contact: kwikkidus@aim, trinam@plurk, m.prather42@gmail
Characters in Game (previously too): None yet!
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Edward Finklestein
Canon: OC, 'Momijigaoka Academy'
Gender: Male
Age: 22
Suitability: N/A, dude's 22.
Species: Human
Canon Point: End of history section.
World/Setting: Tens of thousands of years ago, in another dimension called Reverse World, dark gods appeared and attempted to take over. They were opposed by an army of highly advanced magic users, led by their king, a master of magic and hero without peer. The battle continued for nearly half a century, with neither side gaining any distinct advantage over the other. The stalemate finally ended when the king, knowing his life was near its end while the dark gods' could last until eternity, made a final gambit to seal the dark gods away at the cost of his own life.
First, the king rounded up the dark gods and sent both himself and them to Earth, a planet in another dimension, well out of reach of any of the dark gods' followers. There, he bound the dark gods to the planet itself, and created seven Seals from his own soul that would hold them in their prison forever.
The Seals represented the raw elements of the universe: Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, Light, Darkness, and Magic. Each Seal contained a portion of the king's power, and had the ability to bind itself to the soul of a living being. While bound, the Seal would take a part of the host's psyche and imprint it onto itself, allowing it to grow alongside them. In exchange, in times of crisis, the host would be allowed to access their Seal's power.
As time passed and the planet grew, magic and monsters eventually became the things of legends, forced into hiding due to humanity's focus on science and fear of the unknown. Their modern-day Earth became much like our own, only with supernatural phenomena hiding in its nooks and crannies. The existence of the Seals themselves are only known to a handful of people, and their purpose to even less; those who seek them tend to only do so to obtain their great powers. For all intents and purposes, as far as most humans were concerned, magic just didn't exist.
That changed thirty three years before present day, when Tokyo disappeared in a massive column of darkness as part of the plans of an organization known as the Council of Seals. They sent the entire city into Reverse World using an ancient ritual in order to hold it hostage against the few people who may be able to stop them—the people they had reasoned would be most likely to be carrying one of the Seals.
Although it was hard to piece together everything that happened inside the city, one story persisted among the survivors. They talked about a man that merged with a dragon and fought all manner of monsters, day and night, protecting the city to the best of his abilities. His greatest battle, they said, was against a fiery-haired demon; the battle itself resulted in half of Shinjuku being leveled to the ground. He wasn't the only one that fought to protect the populace, however. All kinds of so-called "monsters," super-powered humans, and magic users came out of the woodwork, and not all from Earth.
When the city returned, over a million people were dead or missing, and millions more were wounded. The event, eventually called "Tokyo Reverse," forced the entire world to admit to two truths, one old, one new: Magic was real, and the Earth wasn't prepared for it. To correct the latter truth, the world's governments got together and, with the help of independently wealthy investors and other parties, created departments and institutions to train people to fight against otherworldly threats. One such institution, the focus of our story, was a high school.
Momijigaoka Academy, named after its founder, is a high school located far off of the coast of Japan. It is not the only school of its kind, but it is the first, and considered to be the best. Opening a mere four years after Tokyo Reverse, it is a self-sufficient facility that employs the best it can get its hands on, which has resulted in a staff consisting of some of the best minds and powers the planet has to offer. Many have been "in the know" about magic their whole lives, some know about the Seals, and at least one is in possession of one.
Students at Momijigaoka Academy (or MA, or 'Momien') are expected to be just as exceptional as the faculty. They are to maintain good grades in their regular classes, as well as exceed in the special classes—those aimed towards dealing with magical and superhuman threats through either combative or diplomatic means. Graduating from the combination high school/college leads with rare exception to an offer from at least one national military's anti-paranormal assault or 'APA' teams. The top 5-10% of any class are usually scouted and given lucrative contracts not unlike what professional athletes make. A completed stay at MA is synonymous with living comfortably, as magic research groups and private security companies alongside the military itself all highly value the high pedigree the school's degree carries.
The technology employed at the school is some of the best found in the world, which is fairly similar to our own, but slightly more advanced. Some functions, like cleaning and maintenance, are relegated to robots. Mechanical exoskeletons ("mech suits") exist, and are being improved on all the time. Students whose talents lay with science are encouraged to explore their talents, and various projects with focuses to improve humanity overall are carried out all the time.
History: Ed's important history starts at the moment he was born, when, thanks to his strong innate magical talents, he was chosen by the Seal of Magic to be its next host. His father, a moderately accomplished mage himself, recognized the "birthmark" on his shoulder for what it really was, and shared the happy news with his family, including Ed's older half-sister Lila. Unbeknownst to him, however, Lila was the sort of person who viewed life not as something to be cherished, but as a game that could be played and won. To her, the answer to "Why am I here?" was "To grow, consume, and get as much power as you can until you croak!" To that end, the Seal of Magic became just another prize for her to take from someone weaker (and therefore less deserving) than her.
Her plan was as simple as it was cruel. During one of her regular visits to the Finklestein home, she would murder Ed's parents and take his Seal. Then, she would call the police, hysterical—her father and stepmother had been killed! Thanks to her testimony, they would conclude that it had been a burglary gone wrong. Once all the dust had settled, she would become Ed's legal guardian.
To prove to herself that the Seal's powers only would have been wasted on Ed, she used the money he received from his parents to pay for his upbringing. She left him to be raised by others, who would cater to his every whim and judge him based off of his decisions. While she finished her education at MA, she also established a global anti-paranormal arms dealing empire that dealt with both national governments and shady organizations alike.
Growing up wanting for nothing, Ed found himself fascinated at an early age by magic and lore, and devoured piles and piles of books on the subject. When he wasn't busy eating, sleeping, or being tutored, he would spend his time rereading them over and over again, until he practically had them memorized.
While reading one day, he was approached by a spirit who introduced herself as a dryad. The two ended up becoming fast friends, and she served as something of a mother figure to the lonely boy. He learned as much from her as he could from any book, but because she existed on a plane just out of touch with Earth, only someone with magical capabilities could even sense her, let alone see her. The staff tending to him thought nothing of it at the time—he was just a secluded little boy who'd dreamt up an imaginary friend. He was eight. It was cute.
Years later, it wasn't so cute, and the community of the small town he was raised in started to gossip that Lila's little half-brother was holed up not because he was special, but because he was 'special.' He never heard any of this, though, as his head was only full of magic and books.
While the rumors flew, the dryad encouraged him to practice his magic as he grew. She always tactfully declined to actually teach him, though, saying that she was not qualified. While practicing, he ran into the same problem all self-taught mages did—he was unable to properly regulate his power. He took to practicing magic in a large field far away from his house simply because of the unpredictable nature of his spells, which were as likely to work as not and tended to fail in a spectacular and explosive fashion. More than once he ended up dragging himself back home with wounds all over his body and his clothes in tatters. When he failed, he cried, but when he succeeded he came back with the biggest grin on his face. (Naturally, this did not help his 'special' reputation.)
He rarely ever saw his guardian in person. She always stopped by on his birthday to personally grant him a birthday wish, but never stayed long, citing that she had work to do. He believed her, of course. A corporation that large and powerful as Lila's required a lot of supervision! He did convince himself, though, that she wanted to be with him... she just couldn't. She was working hard, and to him, that was just fine.
On his 15th birthday, Lila came to see him, just as she had every other year. And just like every other year, she asked him what he wanted. Instead of asking for the usual rare book or magical artifact, however, Ed requested to attend the school that all the world's foremost magic users came from: Momijigaoka Academy. Having graduated at the very top of her class many years ago from the same school, Lila took it as a prime opportunity to let herself see just how much better she was than the brat she'd stolen the Seal of Magic from. She agreed to let him take the entrance exams, and, almost just like that, he was off to the island to go and prove himself.
He barely passed the written exam, but excelled at his interview, which allowed him to show off his knowledge of all things magical as well as the talents he'd developed himself. Even his normally explosive inability to regulate his spells worked in his favor, as it was the strongest display of magic they'd seen that year. One of the panelists, a mage, commented that once he learned to control his powers, he could easily graduate as one of the school's strongest magic users.
"That's to be expected," another panelist said. "He's Lila Daughtily's little brother, after all."
As Ed would soon discover, remarks of that kind would come all too often. By the time he got accepted and moved into the school's dormitory, he went from being proud of the fact to quietly moving on from it as quickly as possible. He wasn't angry about the comparison; he just wanted people to see him for his own talents. And, he swore, one day they would.
Then, things started happening.
In his first-ever harrowing experience, he wound up being dragged into an incident on the school grounds. A third-year student had created a small cult that abducted others and attempted to indoctrinate them through the use of a combination of drugs and torture out of a belief that pain led to enlightenment. Ed "befriended" one of the cult's members, who led him out into the woods and to a shelter that had been converted into the cult's base of operations. There, he was attacked by a girl who claimed to be possessed. He believed her, of course, but because he couldn't figure out how to help her without hurting her, he wound up running away. He did, however, tell another group of students what was going on. They took care of things after that, and in the process Ed began to make his first real friends.
All was well for a while, and Ed resumed his studies. While his scores for most classes were passable to average, he showed an incredible aptitude for anything involving magic or its use. His teachers for his magic classes were impressed at how quickly he seemed to grasp how other people did spells just by watching them a few times, and he developed a reputation among them for being a very gifted imitator. He still hadn't shown any creative ability outside of casting other peoples' spells, but he was given slack due to only being a first-year student. Creativity could come later.
The second major incident on the island hit Ed far closer to home, in the form of a pair of demons named Munos and Desdemona that had infiltrated the school by possessing the bodies of three students (a pair of twins and one other). Together, they amassed a crew of disillusioned or easily persuadable students to bring chaos to the school. Their goal was to harness the energy created by the unhappiness among the student body to break the seal on an orb that held back the powerful demon possessing the twins.
Desdemona in was responsible for most of the conversions amongst the student body. With a little magic and wicked demon logic, she twisted people's wills in order to convince them that the world was against them, and that they had to fight back. This technique didn't work on Ed, but it worked on a few of his friends, and he was forced to face them in order to win them back.
One such friend was a mechanical-minded genius, Mylene, who was as much into science as Ed was into magic. Convinced that Ed was definitely out to get her, she ambushed him with a gun that could digitize extradimensional entities and seal them into special cards. Naturally, she demonstrated it on Ed's friend the dryad. She walked off, confident that Ed wouldn't attack her. After all, she was a "friend," and she was holding his precious dryad hostage. When he proved her right, she called him a waste of space and left him to despair.
Once he was able to move, he searched around the island for allies. He eventually found them in the form of a group called Ryuuoumaru, labeled as a 'first response' club dedicated to protecting the students of the island from any evils that might arise. He saw this as the answer to his problem, and joined right away.
Shortly after doing so, he ended up getting into a fight with another one of his recently made friends who had been turned by the demons. The friend was under orders to attack the infirmary, as the nurse who worked there possessed an unusual healing ability that made it too easy for the students fighting them to recover. Ed stepped up to fight, but his friend's mastery over wind and lack of fear of confrontation proved too much for Ed, and he wound up being brutally beaten. He did, however, manage to buy enough time for the nurse to return, and by the time he woke up the infirmary was as safe as it ever was.
Times became so desperate that the teachers themselves were finally authorized to step in and fight against their students. While those fights raged on, Ed went to find Mylene and bring her around.
In the heat of battle, she raged at him about how unfair life was. How, though she could spend her entire life learning all about how to build things and make wonders that would advance the human race, people would always be more enamored and impressed by magic.
"Any random idiot can possess magic. I mean, just look at you!"
Rather than fall into despair again he argued that she was incredible in her own way. He also admitted that, as he was, his magic couldn't hold a candle to her technology.
Neither was sure quite what happened, but in the end Mylene wound up confessing to him, and he to her, and the demons' control was broken. She quickly freed the dryad, but the dryad took off soon after, saying that Ed had grown up enough to not need her anymore.
Ed and Mylene dated for a while, but like most high-school romances, it didn't last very long. After taking up an offer to intern at Lila's company, she broke things off with him.
"Long distance relationships just don't last, y'know?"
Before he even had a chance to feel sad that they were no longer an item, Ed was approached by a student who identified himself as Lucas. Lucas was merely an avatar, however, for an entity called the Balance Dragon, who was in turn responsible for protecting and overseeing the growth of the Seal of Magic. He explained that he had sent the dryad to Ed, then explained why, revealing to Ed the truth of the existence he had come to know.
In his explanation, he told Ed that the universe was in a precarious position. Not being trained in magic herself, Lila had performed the ritual to transplant the Seal incorrectly, and only managed to take most of it. The remainder of it was still with Ed. Thankfully, Lila's overconfidence in her abilities and the dryad's interference made it so that Lila herself didn't notice. The Seal would be fine, he said, as long as he and Lila remained alive, but it really needed to be put together again because if something did happen to either of them, "bad things" would happen.
When Ed asked what exactly it would do, Lucas told him that even he didn't know, and that was why the situation was so dangerous. Thinking that everything would be fine if he did, Ed then offered to give up his portion of the seal to Lila, who he reasoned would be way better at using it than himself. Lucas told him that this would be a terrible idea, as she'd forced her way into leading an old and powerful organization known as the Council of Seals, and granting her that kind of power would be like handing her the world on a silver platter.
"It has to be you," he insisted. "You were the one the Seal chose for itself."
Ed finally agreed to help the Lucas to take back what was his by birthright, and started receiving supplemental magic lessons after school from him.
With that, Ed's first year on the island ended largely uneventfully, with him spending his daytime in class and nighttime lost in more extracurricular magic practice. He then spent his summer on the island as well, dedicating himself entirely to the art of magic and getting stronger while everyone else was busy having fun. He was psyched up to show his friends all the cool stuff he'd learned while they were all away. As luck would have it, the academy decided to welcome the new crop of students with an expository sparring match between any student who wanted to enter. Without thinking too much about it, Ed signed up.
It was as he stared down his first opponent that he realized that he still really didn't like the idea of hurting his friends. He forfeited the tournament in the first round without throwing so much as a spark at his opponent, an upperclassman who Ed only barely knew at all. In the stunned silence that resulted from the unexpected result, Ed apologized with a quick bow and a "Sorry!" to each of the four sides of the room before dashing out the door fast enough that if you blinked you'd have missed that he was there at all. The tournament concluded without him, and Ed spent the next hour or two in his room banging his head against the wall and looking at the ceiling until one of his friends dropped by to check on him. Not wanting to disappoint them, he just went to the tournament's after-party and laughed the whole thing off, even though it still felt really embarrassing.
The school year continued to have its share of events, from teachers going rogue and trying to take the Elemental Seals from other denizens to a series of incidents revolving around a thief who stole magic. Ryuuoumaru dealt with all of them just as they had the year before, but Ed stayed in a mostly peripheral role, supporting the others as they fought the major threats and as it became more and more clear that the Council of Seals was targeting the island as the most likely location for them to find the remaining Seals. Three times that year alone Ryuuoumaru foiled their plans, and a group of teenagers beat back an organization famed as incredibly powerful. The third time they defeated a lieutenant in the Council itself, a senior member whose powers nearly rivaled one of its seven leaders.
The fourth time the Council decided to make an example of them all. The attack came with barely any notice, a sudden electronic and communications blackout being the only precursor to a sudden attack by the full force of the Council. The island was prepared for attacks from radicals and even monsters, but this force was the equivalent of an army. Ryuuoumaru did what they could to stop the Council, and in doing so Ed finally came face to face with his sister Lila for the first time since he'd left for MA. He asked if she was working with the Council. She laughed and said there no way she'd ever work with people like that.
Ed's relief had only a second to set in before she tried to shoot him.
"I'm their leader, moron."
So began the first time Ed had ever found himself fighting seriously with all he had.
As they fought, she confirmed what Lucas had told him earlier about having murdered his parents and stolen his Seal from him. That Seal of Magic that she'd stolen from him had made her incredibly strong, capable of ripping control of spells from their user and allowing her to absorb them and fire them back out as her own. If not for the timely help of several of his friends, Ed would have been quickly overwhelmed by the sheer difference in power between the two. Even with them it was a close battle, and after a concerted effort Lila successfully managed to take out one of his allies, leaving her bloodied and unconscious on the ground. In his anger Ed accessed the small part of the Seal he still had with him, and it resonated with Lila's portion to bring him on par with her for a moment. In that moment, he burst through her defenses and landed a punch right in her gut that left her wide open.
Lila replied by talking about how before stealing the Seal of Magic she was completely unable to use it, in a world that suddenly had valued its use above anything else. She told him she felt inferior, and she felt like their parents had replaced her with someone who had magic, who had so much magic just by virtue of being born. She'd taken some of it for herself because of it, and when his parents had tried to stop her, she'd been pushed too far when her father had hit her for it and ended up killing them both.
"I just wanted someone to be proud of me like dad should have... that's all."
Wanting to believe that she wasn't really evil but instead misunderstood, Ed ignored the obvious holes in her story. Accepting what she'd said as truth, he nodded and told her he'd believe in her so long as she was willing to give the Seal back to him and face justice for what she'd done. Lila slowly stood, staggered towards him, and grabbed Ed in a tight hug.
Then she stabbed him in the back and called him a dumbass who failed at life for not being able to see through such an obvious ruse.
Defeated, Ed ended up falling unconscious thinking that maybe, just maybe, Lila wasn't someone he should trust. While he was out, the battle raged on for a while longer. Lila didn't quite have the chance to finish him off before the island itself was ripped apart by the sheer amount of incredibly powerful magic being thrown around on all sides. The boundaries between Earth and the Reverse World came undone, flinging everyone on the island to the far reaches of both. The island and the academy were both destroyed. The once formidable Council of Seals was also decimated in the process, the only surviving members being Lila herself and those who worked directly for her.
But they had won.
Ed awoke inside a secluded cabin a week later, and the dryad, who had found him and nursed him back to health, gave him a stern talking to over how he had acted in battle. Ed apologized quickly, but was told that the one he really needed to apologize to was Balance Dragon himself, as Ed had just wasted his best chance to get the full Seal back. Knowing he was in trouble because dryad had called him 'Balance Dragon' and not 'Lucas,' Ed nodded in understanding and headed out with a map to the dragon's home.
As Ed traveled, he met a demon girl. She introduced herself as 'CD,' and proudly stated that she was one of Lila's top trained assassins, specializing in wide-range demolitions. She'd been on the island in another area before it was destroyed. She then announced that she fully intended to take his map to find her way to civilization. Not able to give up the map, but not wanting to leave her hanging (because Lila was the bad guy, not CD), he made a deal with her. Ed had no clue how to navigate by map, and CD didn't want to face a dragon or be stuck with a dryad in the middle of nowhere (the only two locations clearly marked on the map), the two agreed to travel together until they reached the Balance Dragon's cave.
Despite their differences in personality, Ed and CD made a good team, and made it to Balance Dragon safely. Ed delivered his apology, then listened to the dragon's lecture, and, once they'd all agreed that a lesson had been learned, the dragon presented Ed with a list of things he would have to do in order to atone for his spectacular mistake. (Naturally, this all doubled as special training for Ed, a fact even Ed himself caught onto fairly quickly.)
The first task was a simple one. Balance Dragon needed to rest, and while he rested he wanted Ed to keep an eye on his cave. Specifically, he wanted Ed to look after the magical pool therein, which had the ability to show anyone looking into it any portion of history. While he looked after it, he wanted Ed to look into it and see for himself what kind of person Lila was.
Ed agreed, and as soon as the dragon departed, set himself by the pool. He left it only to eat and sleep. With disappointment fresh on his mind, he mostly kept to task, but every so often he'd gaze to other portions of history (like CD's, whose story he was interested in learning but she herself refused to tell), or to check and make sure his friends were safe. For the first time, he saw how genuinely terrible a person could be, and vowed that, one day, he would personally apologize to all of her victims.
More importantly, though, he finally appreciated just how much Lila had to be stopped. The idea of killing her didn't occur to him, however, until he came across Lila researching how to extract the Seal of Magic from Ed and discovered that, no matter the amount of Seal in a person, if it was removed entirely, it would almost certainly kill them.
Whereas Lila had simply shrugged and said "Oh, well," Ed's response was far less glib. He stormed away from the pool and up to Balance Dragon, interrupting his rest to shout at him that he wanted to stop his sister, but he didn't want to kill her. The resulting argument lasted for an hour, with Ed yelling and Balance Dragon calmly countering. Despite the sense the dragon was making in his argument for ending Lila, or perhaps because it made sense, Ed finally reached his boiling point and exploded.
"I don't care that she stabbed me, and I don't care if killing her would solve all the problems in the entire world forever! I'm going to do everything I can to save her along with everyone else!"
"And what if she refuses to be saved?" the dragon asked, his voice moving throughout the cave with a quiet echo.
"Then..." Ed hesitated, clenched his fists, and gritted his teeth. "If it comes down to that, and she doesn't leave me with any other choice... then... It's not my choice anymore! But I'm never going to choose killing someone!"
Though he feared for Ed's safety in such a situation, the dragon chose to accept that this was the path Ed wanted to walk on, and decided to allow him to do so.
Before he went back to his rest, the dragon informed Ed that CD had come to him and made a deal. In exchange for a healing spell she could cast on herself, CD would train Ed in his place over the course of his journey. She had extraordinary skill in manipulating energy that Ed needed to learn, and though he could have taught Ed himself, the recovery from the exertion of his power (to make sure that everyone flung from the island made it somewhere safe) would take too long, and they just didn't have the time to wait.
The two ended up traveling together for three years. She taught him what she knew about magic, and how to draw it from his surroundings instead of forcing it out of himself. As they worked their way through their assigned tasks (all of which helped Ed to even further his abilities), they found themselves becoming true friends, which surprised the both of them.
By the time their tasks were complete, they received word from Balance Dragon about a fighting tournament being held in the magical capital city of Endymion. The prize was that the winner would be granted one wish. Now being able to accept that it was okay to fight for something he truly believed in, he decided to participate and, if he won, use his wish to bring everyone who had been taken from Earth back home.
However, he wasn't the only one with the same idea, and he was finally reunited with his friends after three long years. After tons of hugs, laughter, and shouts of glee, Ryuuoumaru became reunited once more and practically dominated the tournament. Ed fought alongside them at full strength, finding his resolve bolstered by the presence of his friends.
However, as they climbed their way to the top, they discovered a sinister plot was in the works. One of the participants was cheating his way to the top, and once he'd won, he planned on using his wish to take over the city of Endymion. The final round, a battle royale between the top four participants, had Ed and two of his friends facing off against the powerful enemy mage. Once he realized that there was a good chance the enemy could win, even against all three of them, Ed sacrificed himself to take them both out of the tournament.
Ed's friend made his wish: A ship capable of holding all those who'd been stranded in Reverse World, with the ability to safely travel between dimensions and quickly anywhere within whatever world it was in. After dubbing it the Timaeus Ruber, the group gathered up the last of the missing students and finally set sail home.
While they were gone, however, Lila had been preparing for war. In a series of six coordinated assaults within a month of Ryuuoumaru's return, she managed to weaken the six complete Seals. Once they were weakened, she managed to release some of the dark gods being held back by the Seals. Some she set on the Seal holders themselves, having them possess them so their Seals couldn't regenerate. Others, she set on bringing chaos throughout the world. The rest were burdened with the task of eliminating the rest of the seal that still held their strongest members back.
Ed played two parts in this crisis: First, he, along with his friend, Lily, fought and freed the holder of the Water Seal of the dark god possessing her. Then, he traveled to the site of the seal of the dark gods and, with the help of the armies from Reverse World and the Earth's APA, helped his friends make it to the seal's core. There, he witnessed another, but permanent sacrifice as a powerful ally, the "Dragon Man" of Tokyo Reverse, gave his soul up to become the new seal to hold back the dark gods.
The worst-case scenario having been barely avoided, the group tried to figure out what Lila was trying to do, but were completely stumped. After she'd released the dark gods, Lila had practically disappeared. Eventually, the best they were able to come up with was that she must have had a way to disable the dark gods, so her target wasn't the world as much as it was the group itself—once she had weakened them, she would simply do away with the dark gods and continue on her conquest for power, unabated.
As they reached his conclusion, they also came to realize that it wasn't safe for them to be among regular people yet. In order to keep the general populace safe, they decided to travel back to the one place no one would go: Momijigaoka Academy. There, the members of Ryuuoumaru would help each other train and prepare for the final battle against Lila Daughtily and her minions, as well strengthen old friendships that had become weak, and forge new ones between those who had never really had a chance to get to know each other before. Once done, they launched their attack.
The fight was the stuff of shonen canon legend, with absurd spells and attacks being flung by everyone as they fought against, well, everyone on the other side. In the end, Ed and his sister squared off and while fighting literally inside his sister's soul, he fired off a technique he'd invented during his travels in Reverse world that would rip energy out of the world around it to expand infinitely. Leeching off of his sister's energy and utterly annihilating her soul proved fatal, and Ed won the fight. His Seal was complete, but in the process he'd had to kill someone. He wasn't all that happy about it, as you might expect.
After that, he started to clean up after his sister's work, and you'd think it was the end--except then the dreams started. He remembered something that might have not even been real, promising some girl... something. Either a date or a wedding and he wasn't sure which. Thinking with his usual amount of short-sightedness, he designed and cast a spell that would let him meet that girl because Promises Are Important. One incredibly short conversation later, and before he was entirely sure what he did he was suddenly First Consort to a guardian named Roze. He's still not entirely sure how that happened, but there's no going back on his word so he's definitely happy with it. At this point they have been happily 'married-ish' for a few months, and luckily for Ed it seems to be a lull point in his life. No major crises or anything have happened since their union yet, and if Ed had his way things would stay that way for a while. ...Naturally they never do.
Personality: If you only had two words to describe Ed, those words would be 'selfishly kind.' He has a very strong sense of right and wrong, and a hair-trigger reflex to act on what he thinks is right. He is naive, optimistic, and trusting to a fault. A severe fault. He genuinely believes that everyone on earth could get along if they really wanted to, and is constantly baffled by those who think differently. He tries so hard to get along with everyone and see the good in everything that he (unintentionally) deludes himself—it often takes a blatant act of malice in order to see a "bad guy" for what s/he really is.
He makes friends quickly, but some of his friendships are one-sided. If he thinks of you as a friend, then that's what you are whether you like it or not. He has no problem whatsoever going all-out for his friends... and strangers, too! Because of it, he tends to take on too many tasks and go in too many directions at once, and finds himself overwhelmed and burnt out in short order.
He originally enrolled at MA not because he sought a military contract, but to further his own research into magic. A magic otaku (or 'mahotaku') in the extreme, Ed has an encyclopedic grasp on paranormal phenomenon and magical theory and is seldom found without some kind of book in his hand, or his head buried in it. Though he detests fighting, he's come to grips with the idea of doing it in order to protect himself and others, which is the only fighting he's resolved to do. He does love a good scrap however, and if it's for fun he's a huge fan of sparring.
To say Ed has lived a privileged life is a vast understatement. Up until his admission to MA, his life has been spent with a constantly changing circle of nannies, all of which were instructed to leave him to do whatever he wanted. As a result, he's formed some very odd notions about how the world and the people in it work, which in turn allows him to come up with some of the most absurd reasons for the reasons why people do what they do. Because he was allowed to dedicate himself exclusively to the study of magic, he knows a great deal more about the subject than your average MA student. In terms of regular academics, however, he's average at best. He finds it difficult to motivate himself to do anything by himself outside of the subject of magic (and, by extent, the supernatural), which leads to a hyper-focus that often drifts into tunnel vision.
While he has a lot of friends, many of his friendships are shallow. This makes it difficult for him to honestly open up to anyone, for fear that his 'not nice' thoughts will drive them away. He doesn't like conflict, and when he does find himself in an argument, he tries to be as tactful as possible. Unfortunately for him, his "tact" is usually the sacrifice of his own opinion, because he believes he must understand the other person's point of view first. This often leads to evasive and weak counters on his part. He genuinely means well, but is emotionally evasive without realizing it. If you do get him talking, his mouth tends to move faster than his brain, making him phrase things badly and causing him to insult people without meaning to (his naivete about others' motivations doesn't help, either). If called out on it, he'll panic and start talking even faster, which only puts him deeper into the hole he originally dug himself into.
Having been brought up without ever wanting for anything has left Ed with some crazy ideas about the value of a dollar, or just "earning" things in general. He is terrible with money, and tends to spend or give it away in an act of charity as quickly as he comes into it since he's never been denied the privilege. The speed at which he makes friends and places trust in others can be taken as a warning to his impatience: He is very bad at having to wait for long periods of time for anything he really wants. He has gotten much better about this over time, thanks to school's environment and real friends, but an entire lifetime of instant gratification is hard to shake.
Abilities/Weaknesses: Ed is, magically speaking, a broken little asshole. There's no better way to put it. He specializes in elemental magic, and the creation of magical items using mana, but really if he puts his mind to it there's very little he can't do if only out of respect to how much energy he's able to hemorrhage into making his spells work. Other notable abilities may involve a voice in his head that quietly judges him, a Seal that grants 'dominion over magic' (Basically augmenting an already absurd talent for magic) and the ability to turn into a girl which he never uses because why would he want to be a girl he's a guy isn't he?
That is not to say he's without his weaknesses. Without his spells he's basically a particularly tough scrappy kid, and above all of that he is rather gullible, absurdly easy to sidetrack, and tends to get so wrapped up in what he's doing that he forgets to look ahead and play 'what comes next.' For a supremely powerful mage, he's kind of... dumb. He also has a problem fighting actual martial artists who are able to close the gap and keep pressure on him as it prevents him from getting any of his really big tricks off.
RP Samples:
Ed flew through the air and slid to a stop on the ground, letting out a 'Blargh!' as he rolled to a stop. A roar ripped through the air, and Ed stood up again to stare down his opponent of the moment: a dinosaur that was on fire. CD had told him to track down some kind of mount so that the two of them could travel more easily, and Ed's first thought was one of these local creatures. After all, if their mount was on fire it'd be harder for someone to hurt it, right? He squared off with the flaming Triceratops again, which charged him out of anger and opened its mouth, launching a gout of flame.
Acting quickly, he put his hand forward and called a wall of stone to block the fire. The Triceratops rammed through it, but Ed was ready for that and was waiting just past it with a rope. He slipped it over the dinosaur's mouth and tied it off there, cutting off its ability to breathe fire. He held on to the other end of the rope as it tried to buck him off. "Easy now..!" he said to it as he took flight, pulling the rope up and jerking back against its yanks and pulls. "It's okay. I'm not going to hurt y--"
Ed's thought was interrupted by the dinosaur's fire burning brighter all over and scorching right through the rope. It looked up at Ed and fired its breath at him again. He flew quickly to the side, but the fire caught his sleeve and he had to pat it down. By the time he'd finished, the dinosaur had run off somewhere into the distance. 'Oh, right.' he thought to himself. 'It's on fire. Even a magically treated rope would just... well, now I know!'
He smiled, reaching a hand forward and conjuring a rope out of thin air. 'This is perfect! It means I can practice making things totally fireproof. CD, you're a genius.'
Thing two: This thing here