Save The Earth Application

[belphe]

OOC Information:
Name: Katie
Are you over 15? Yes
Contact: AIM (Kanatta), Plurk (gaga_san)



IC Information:
Name:
Preincarnation: Her name was Belphegor of Sloth, fourth of the Seven Sisters of Purgatory

Reincarnation: Belle Goldman


Canon and medium: Umineko no Naku Koro Ni manga/sound novel, with only her voice artist borrowed from her anime adaptation.

Age: close to 1,000 (preincarnation), 24 (reincarnation)

Preincarnation Species: a demonic figment of a witch's imagination

Preincarnation Appearance: http://static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111219201030/umineko/images/3/35/Belphegor_reference.png


Any differences: Belphe looks more or less the same. Her body proportions are a bit more realistic for a young lady her age as she is no longer someone's mental ideal. With a truly human form comes no longer being perfectly symmetrical or unblemished. She does not adhere to any sort of uniform, but prefers business-casual dress when in public. and flannel pajamas when in the privacy of her apartment.
Also wears a pair of rimless eyeglasses which, while she is not blind without, are needed for reading, writing, and other more delicate tasks throughout her day as the cosmetic brown lenses she has worn since her first echo decrease her vision slightly.

Preincarnated History: http://umineko.wikia.com/wiki/Belphegor
It is unknown, exactly, when Belphegor came into being, presumably the fourth of seven sisters to be summoned from the nether by The Golden Witch hundreds of years ago. She makes her first appearance on Rokkenjima in Chapter Three of her canon, following Lucifer's failure to defeat Kanon and appears intermittently in a collective with the other Stakes of Purgatory - Asmodeus, Beelzebub, Mammon, Satan, and Leviathan.

Near the end of Chapter Three, in a power-move to force the story's protagonist, Battler Ushiromiya, to either finger one of his family as the guilty party who had murdered the entire Ushiromiya clan or accept that a witch had killed everyone, Belphegor and the other stakes are handed off to a young Ushiromiya Eva along with the Golden Witch's powers in general. When Battler angriy rejects this change-up and nearly resigns as Beatrice's opponant, the former Golden Witch recognizes that her game is in jeopardy. She summons her once-furniture to issue them a final order - act with refinement and kill without cruelty.

When Eva-Beatrice calls upon Belphegor and Leviathan to take care of Rudolf and Kyrie as the next two sacrifices for her resurrection ceremony, they remind her that they cannot act with cruelty, but will try to play with their victims a bit to entertain her. Belphegor's confrontation with Rudolf ends in a devastating defeat when, during what had been a clearly-won battle in her favor, she makes the mistake of granting Rudolf his dying wish of going out in a Western-style duel. After complimenting her on her honesty and fairness, he reveals his true intentions of attempting to gun down the golden witch while Belphe is distracted. Recognizing it as her duty to protect her master at all costs, Belphegor takes the bullet meant for Eva and is killed.

Eva-Beatrice is furious that her so-called powerful furniture could lose to a human and abandons the Stakes of Purgatory in favor of more violent and cruel minions, leaving Belphe and her sisters to wait in limbo for years to be called upon again. In Chapter 4, the stakes are resurrected by Ange Ushiromiya, the last surviving member of the Ushiromiya family and heir to the powers of the Golden Witch, as playmates to keep her company in an otherwise-hostile boarding school.

When Ange's grades start to suffer because she's spending too much time playing with her newfound friends, her classmates turn on her with cruel insults and mockery. Enraged, Ange orders Belphegor and the others to kill them all. They state that this is impossible for them unless Ange is prepared to strike first and allow them to follow her lead. They cannot do anything that Ange herself can't do. Ange turns her anger on the seven sisters, calling them out as useless delusions and shattering them from existence one by one with her denial.

It is not until quite some time later that Ange resurrects the seven stakes, apologizing for her cruel denial, and promises she will never abuse her power as a witch in such a way again.   In return, the stakes re-establish themselves as Ange's staunch allies.


Reincarnated History: From the start, Belle seemed to take care of herself. She was a quiet. agreeable baby, and an almost comically-serious child, born to Elaine and Steven Goldman. Unfortunately, no brothers or sisters would be in Belle's future as, a few weeks after her 12th birthday, her mother was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

While the family held together at first, eventually his wife's worsening condition and the fifteen year prognosis she'd been given before she would succumb to her disease was more than Steven was able to handle. He left during Belle's freshman year in high school, and she was delegated to the role of caretaker for her mother. Teachers and classmates handled her with care, pitying her for being burdened with such heavy responsibilities at her age, but Belle found fulfillment in being able to juggle her mother's well-being, the upkeep of the house, and her schooling.

At seventeen, she obtained her GED to bow out of high school early with intentions of devoting her time to staying home and caring for her mother full time with no immediate prospects for college.   This prompted a confrontation with her mother. Elaine did not want to be the reason her daughter did not continue to better herself when she'd already watched as Belle had not been afforded a normal teenaged social life due to her ailing condition. Despite Belle's insistences that she, really, did not mind and would really PREFER to take care of everything herself, Elaine made arrangements to move into an assisted living facility. With her familiar obligations stripped away from her, Belle had no excuse not to put in college applications.

Belle majored in psychology while attending a university in Locke City and set her sights on a master's degree in counseling. One of her teachers, a softspoken woman named Virginia Beatrou, saw particular promise in Belle due to her gentle, patient nature and fastidious devotion to her tasks and took it upon herself to mentor her privately to ensure that she was prepared for her future career.  She urged Belle to, if she felt she could handle it, get on a fast-track PhD program that entailed working through summers and taking expedited courses.   In addition,  she suggested that she enter into a residency program alongside a more seasoned counselor. . A glowing recommendation from Virginia helped her to secure a position alongside Dr. Glen Korai, who immediately spotted a glaring fault in her methods.

Belle, Glen noted, was quick to become overly-invested in her patients. In the short-term, it was not a bad thing...a doctor involved enough to remember things from prior visits without having to consult notes gave an appearance of someone who genuinely concerned themselves with their clients' well-being, which was good for building trust. In the long-term however, it blurred the patient/doctor boundary and ruined the professional relationship. She was not there to be anyone's friend, Dr. Korai stressed with her. People could go and visit their friends any time they liked...worse, they were free to dismiss advice a friend might give them that they didn't want to hear instead of considering it to be clinical orders.

Glen's point was driven home after she abruptly lost a patient due to overstepping her boundaries. A middle-aged man she had been counseling through the drinking problem he had developed following his sister's passing had broken down during one of his sessions with Belle, lamenting that his fortieth birthday was coming in a few days and he knew that no one in his family would remember. Belle felt sympathy for him, and had a plate of gourmet cookies delivered to his home as a birthday gift, thinking it to be a harmless gesture. When he did not show up for his next session, Belle called to check on him and was given a frosty reception by the man's wife, who made it clear that neither of them appreciated their private information being exploited that way, and not to expect him back. She resolved, following this incident, to remain firmly distanced from those who sought her advice.  

As she continued to work toward her doctorate, Belle began to settle into Locke City as a permanent resident and, with her mother's consent, arranged to have her transferred to a facility that was closeby so that they would be able to visit on a more regular basis while she finished her schooling.


First Echo: Occurred during college orientation while meeting with a career guide to discuss her aspirations and future job prospects so that her courses could be planned out accordingly. When asked what she believed her strengths were, Belle rattled off a list of the housework she was responsible for at home. This prompted him to laugh and tell her, teasingly "You'd make a good wife"

This is the exact thing Rudolf Ushiromiya said to Belphegor upon engaging her in their fateful struggle that would ultimately kill her while in the command of Eva-Beatrice. Following this echo, Belle found the following morning that her irises had transitioned into a pronounced shade of red. After confirming with a physician that it was nothing to worry about, just a very -strange- manifestation of an eye color usually only associated with ocular albinism, she began wearing brown cosmetic lenses out of self-consciousness.

Preincarnation Personality: To begin, let me explain the concept of "furniture" in the Umineko canon. While a servant remains their own individual, lending their services to the one who hired them, furniture has surrendered itself down to its very soul as its master's property. Furniture does not desire things like love, respect, or dignity, finding fulfillment instead in being useful to their owner in any way they are needed. As these are obviously not human traits, most furniture in the Umineko canon is not human and has a warped sense of self, identifying as objects rather than as people. Most are summoned into being by particularly powerful witches and wizards, their former occupation on whatever plane they came from laid aside (ie - Beatrice's personal butler, Ronove, is boasted to be a high-standing earl of hell...which means exactly nothing in his current line of work).

Furniture that learns to love, and experiences the heartache and despair that comes along with it, is said to have become human. While they may retain the extraordinary powers imbued within them, they are far more sensitive than they were before. While it may make the world seem more beautiful and vibrant, it also puts them at the extreme disadvantage of presenting an easily-exploited weakness. The object of their affection may become the focus of torture, brutal killing, or whatever other unpleasantness their master sees fit to inflict to torment both them and their lover. While it's not unheard of for an especially-benevolent master to recognize and honor their furniture's love, granting them their blessing and recognition of becoming human, it is such an unlikely occurrence that it is, rightly, deemed a nigh-impossible happening. Furniture, therefore, sees becoming human as a lowly aspiration and wall themselves off from giving or receiving affection.

As Sloth, one would expect Belphegor to live up to her title by being the epitome of laziness. However, such assumptions couldn't be further from the truth. While her sister stakes have their patron vices made readily available to them to indulge in, the conditions for sloth most usually must be arranged. Belphe is, therefore, a hard worker, placing the needs, troubles, and desires of those around her on her own shoulders so that they will have little to do except sit back and let her take care of everything for them.

Depending on how one looks at it, she could be the least, or the most, sinister of the Seven Sisters of Purgatory. Her softspoken tone and gentle nature makes it very easy to want to trust her when she tells you that those important tasks you've yet to finish can be put off just a little longer. You still look tired, after all, you ought to rest some more. While this sort of treatment can be a welcome break for overworked friends and family, it just as easily serves as a trap for her targets, unmanning them of any will to exist on their own and leaving them fully vulnerable for a killing strike, or worse yet...being left alone to despair in their laziness as she abandons them for new goals.

When interacting with others, she comes off as cordial and quietly-neutral, sometimes to the point of seeming bored with whomever is speaking to her. It is, however, merely her nature to be subdued and to state things matter-of-factly without reacting much outwardly. In other words, she is not nearly as excitable or easily-upset as her sisters.

She responds with confusion and agitation if people show concern for her well-being or voice that they think she works too hard. She is not used to people worrying about her or showing her affection, and tends to find herself at a loss for how to react. This is illustrated quite clearly in the side-arc, "Stakes' Valentines Day", when she had stopped off to deliver a chocolate to Ushiromiya Rudolf in acknowledgment of his being a worthy adversary and he threw her off-balance by inquiring as to whether she had recovered well from their prior confrontation. Seeing that she was faltering, he decided to press his advantage by becoming physically affectionate. Belphe responded with alarm and by freezing up until his wife Kyrie (presumably) intervened.

As stated in canon, Belphegor's biggest weakness is her honesty (a trait that is, apparently, uncommon in witch's furniture). Her desire for fairness can, at times, lead to her downfall when thrust into a situation where it can be used against her. The best example of this is her confrontation with Rudolf. When he is badly wounded, and Belphegor is about to strike the killing blow to end his suffering, he beseeches her for a final request, saying that he'd always wanted to go out in a western duel. Belphe agrees to honor his wish and follows his rules, only to discover he'd used the entire setup as a diversion to gain the upper hand, resulting in Belphegor's death instead of his own.

When operating as a collective with the other stakes, Belphegor often serves as a sensible voice of reason and tries to keep the others level-headed if they start to falter in their assigned duties. As she's the most mature of the lot of them and least likely to be spiteful without provocation, her sisters often feel safe bringing their personal matters to her for insight. While patient, however, she is not a neverending well of tolerance and becomes angry if one of them threatens to get in the way of her work (ie - loudly cursing and gesticulating at Leviathan for implying she would complicate Belphe's plans to take advantage of Rudolf's White Day invitation to go shopping with him as an opportunity to make him a lazy slob)

Her opinion of humanity reflects Beatrice's...in that, it's not a highly-favorable one. Humans exist, as far as she and her sisters are concerned, as amusements and distractions that are easily-broken and constantly scrambling to top themselves in the small-minded ugliness they inflict on one another. As her main exposure to humans in general has been the twisted goings-on of the Ushiromiya family, and the cruelty of Ange's classmates, she has very little to base a positive opinion on, and isn't particularly driven to waste her time trying.

Under Beatrice the Golden's control, Belphe and her sisters are infamous for their cruelty, swarming their assigned victims like a school of mocking, giggling piranha and tearing them to pieces. When their ownership was relinquished to Ushiromiya Ange later in the canon, their role changed. They were no longer perceived by their young summoner as black-hearted assassins, but playmates and companions. This allowed the lot of them to explore a gentler, more amiable side to themselves more befitting of girls their apparent age and let their individual personalities shine.

Operating under the endless magic, as one might imagine, has given Belphe a skewed perception of death. "Permanently damaged" is not a phrase that she is well-acquainted with as anything or anyone that has been broken beyond repair is merely restored at Beatrice's will to what they were before. Even her own death she perceives as little more than a failure to fulfill her duties and a grave embarrassment.

Any differences: As someone born into the life of a human with ties of family and normality, Belle is far more stable than her preincarnation with a proper understanding of mortal desires and relationships. As she does not have the endless magic to fall back on, nor does she have a powerful master able to turn back the clock if she's killed, Belle has cultivated a normal, healthy fear of danger/death and tends toward a low-key lifestyle.

Belle is more independent than Belphegor, having no summoner to answer to or siblings to compete with. While polite and patient with those she deals with on a regular basis, she still prefers her own company best at the end of the day. She does not share Belphegor's seeming aversion to intimacy, but Belle has no real inclination to seek romance, all the same, believing that love will either find her eventually when the time is right, or pass her by completely (either of which, she'd be equally fine with). While she has no deep-cut phobias, Belle is very uneasy around loaded guns and gunfire.

Where Belphegor was sinister and enabling toward her patron sin, Belle is prone to becoming too invested in others' problems in hopes of helping them win their independence from them. She is not content to simply sit at the sidelines and make judgement calls if she feels there is something she could do that might actually make a difference for the better and will work tirelessly if it might yield a positive outcome. Occasionally, however, she oversteps her boundaries without meaning to, making the person she is trying to help feel uncomfortable or as if she's obsessing over them. Thankfully, there has only been a single occurrence of this during her career.

Unlike Belphe. who was crafted specifically to be a killing machine, Belle is not violent. She will, in fact, avoid escalating a matter needlessly whenever possible, even deigning to let insects outside rather than crush them. On the topic of insects, she has a special fondness for giant silk moths and owns a small collection of items/statues depicting them (the luna and cecropia moth are, in particular, her favorites).


Abilities:

Levitation - Belphegor is able to hover and float on the air as if it were water. She is also able to fly short distances. While she prefers to hover rather than stand on her own two feet. it cannot be sustained longterm

Transformation - Belphegor is able to turn herself into a sentient, self-propelled, stake that becomes a deadly projectile when directed at a target. To be most effective, she relies on misdirection before striking by ricocheting off of every available surface to disorient her prey so that they will not quite see where she is coming from. If she sustains a considerable shock or painful blow, she can be startled out of this transformation and forced to resume her humanoid form.

Hand-to-hand locus blade combat - She is able to summon a blade of concentrated blue light over her forearm as a battle weapon and wield it effectively. When combined with her teleportation, especially, this method of combat is especially deadly as she can land a blow, and then relocate to land another in the blink of an eye. While she is still quite fast and deadly, Belphe is the slowest of her seven sisters at this method of fighting

Teleportation - While she cannot travel huge distances (from one city to the next) she is certainly capable of jaunting from room to room, or even from one edge of town to the other if she tries hard enough. Most usually, this ability is used to appear quickly when summoned.

Intangibility - Belphe is able to phase through walls and doors that are blocking her path. However, if someone has marked the room with a powerful black magic ward, such as the fifth seal of Mars ( http://www.jewels-empire.com/king_solomon_seals/seal12.jpg ) she will be barred from entering a locked room in the same way humans are.

Invisibility - In her proper world, Belphe is only able to appear to her summoner or to those that her summoner gives her permission to appear before. She is, otherwise, invisible and unable to interact with most of humanity. Once she has been revealed to someone, she is still able to disappear at will and remain hidden as she likes until such time as she feels like showing herself again.


Roleplay Sample - Third Person: Voice testing and CR brainstorming for STE in a musebox



Roleplay Sample - Network:

[She has taken the time to trail her number into the veil of steam currently clouding the bathroom mirror, and now people are treated to the sight of a shower-fresh Belle. Though she looks more than a little unnerved, she's at least thought to wrap herself in a bathrobe before making this broadcast]

I...has anyone ever--

[Belle pauses, taking a moment to collect herself with a few slow, cleansing breaths before trying again.]

I realize that echoes are not uncommon - even expected - among us. Though, up until now, their effects on me have been subtle. Nothing at all like...well...

[She casts a look behind her and the shift of posture allows everyone to see the shower where the curtain has been visibly torn in some places and a jagged scrape stands out across the tiled wall. Maybe it would be better just to show everyone instead of trying to explain. With her left hand, she reaches up to adjust the glasses balanced across her nose before bringing her right into view.
Currently, it is obscured by a blade-shaped swarm of blue light.]

The pipes started rattling during my shower, and then this happened. [she sounds a little more together now, gingerly reaching out a fingertip to the strange weapon to touch the flat of it. Instead of meeting resistance, her finger seems to pass through it instead, making her furrow her brow]

Strange...it was solid a moment ago. [she muses aloud. As if on cue, the blade seems to fade even further until it's ghostly in appearance and finally vanishes completely as if it had never existed. After a cursory examination to confirm that her hand is her own again, she places it on the sink's edge]

I'm curious to know whether anyone else has experienced something like this, and whether I can expect more of the same in the future...at least then, I'll know not to panic next time.