Player nickname: MaxSalsa
Player DW: maxsalsa
Way to contact you:
AIM: ultimatesalsa (preferred!)
Plurk: MaxSalsa, but be warned - I have no idea how it works, and no friends on it. Show me what it does, and I can use it.
Are you at least 15?: Aye.
Current Characters: Nothing at DDD.

Character: Rita Mordio
Fandom: Tales of Vesperia

Character Notes:
History: Rita grew up in the Sealed City of Scholars, Aspio, as an orphan, and as the smartest girl most of the researchers had ever seen. At the age of 15, she is arguably the most senior, and most intelligent, Imperial blastia researcher, known far and wide for her theories and developments. Of course, being highly intelligent at a young age means everyone else in Aspio hates her, so she isn't very social. The girl lives as a hermit in a hut on one end of the Sealed City: nobody bothers her, and she doesn't mess anyone up (too badly), plus she only explodes her own hut when she botches research. The rest of Aspio considers it a win-win situation.

Rita's peaceful(?) life is shattered when Flynn Scifo, Imperial Knight, appears before her seeking help to fix Halure's tree blastia. She sends him away, claiming she can't do anything about it (which is true), and he reluctantly leaves. A few days later, Yuri Lowell reaches Rita, in search of a blastia thief calling himself "Mr. Mordio" and that wears a cloak and lives in Aspio. She is, needless to say, angered and nearly burns her own house down venting at Yuri and his friends. Eventually, though, Rita joins Yuri's team to explore a nearby set of ruins in search of the missing aque blastia core, and stays with them from then on; when she hears Karol's slip of the tongue in Halure mentioning that Estelle somehow fixed the tree barrier, she's intrigued to no end, and it only gets worse from there for her. (This catches Rita up to the current canon point of Tales of Vesperia in DDD; let me know if you need more information.)

Personality: Rita takes the traditional definition of a tsundere and runs a marathon or two with it. She's sarcastic to everyone, and isn't above physical violence when annoyed (or scared). It'll take a lot to make her worried about someone, too. But if she gets comfortable enough, she starts to relax. She'll start to display legitimate concern, and her sharp edges (and tongue) get softer. If she really likes you she can smile and get along just fine... it just takes a while. It takes quite a lot longer if you don't demonstrate basic intelligence on important topics. Like blastia.

Rita's approach to problems is typically "shoot first, ask questions when it's dead" where the problem isn't a blastia. Ragou? Kill it. Dragon freak? Kill it with fire. Barbos? Kill it dead. She's fond of Fire Ball, her starter spell, and can be seen using it all the way through endgame; it'll explode things just fine, and it threatens surprisingly well. Where blastia are concerned, however, she makes an exception; they're her friends on some deep, personal level. She gives them names, associates with them, and is fiercely protective of them. She's made it her life's mission to fix any broken, overloading, or otherwise damaged blastia she comes across in her travels.

That's not to say Rita isn't intelligent; you don't get to be the top mind in Aspio if you're slow on the uptake, after all. She's great at solving puzzles, and in general she's got the plan for things that swords and Fire Ball can't solve. She does have issues understanding ideas that rely on brute strength or sheer dumb luck, though; thankfully, that's Yuri's job, not hers, and when Yuri has a plan she's more than happy being the siege support.

For all her attitude and bravado, Rita's big weakness is the supernatural. She hates ghosts and anything a combination of science and magic can't explain. On a slightly lesser level, she hates magic and constructs that don't make sense; she's nearly gotten herself killed on more than one occasion because she couldn't let something go that was about to explode, take a swing at her, or otherwise put her in danger. This one, at least, she's working on; she is an Imperial blastia researcher, though, so she's not putting too much effort into that.

Additional Links: Rita's entry on Aselia (Tales wiki)

First Person (audio only, clumsily locked from ToV cast):
I just want to make sure everyone knows, I'm starting to get really pissed off. We just got back from this ghost ship, I think it was called the Atherum. While we were there... [There's a pause. Rita sounds spooked... which is weird.] I let Yuri go off with the others, and I stayed behind with Estellise and Karol to watch the ship in case the blastia fixed itself, and...

[She's being quiet all of a sudden...] And there was a loud crash, and I got worried about Yuri... not that anything can ever really hurt him, but it was bad all the same. And then Estellise got the bright idea that we needed to go in after him... Oh, I hated that, but there was no way I could let her go alone, and Karol doesn't count, so I went with them. I was scared out of my mind the whole time - ghosts? Seriously? I normally could care less about the supernatural, but it's hard to not care when things are happening and you don't know why! I tried not to panic too much, but I think Estellise noticed. I can never tell with Karol. [Sarcasm there, but she's back to being quiet in a moment.]

And then we found Yuri, and we fought through the rest of the ship, and we had to fight this... y'know what, I'm just going to not talk about that. Anyway, we found this red box with a crystal inside, but I can't get it open, and I've been blasting it with spells for half an hour now trying to force it. Nothing's working. And now I think Estellise is looking at me weird, like she's worried about me. I...

[Rita is silent for a moment, before she's back to her usual tone.] Ugh! I'm gonna go wait for an excuse to hit Karol to let some tension out. That, or keep blasting the box. Our ship's moving again, so I'll look at this later and see if anyone bothered to talk to me. Oh, and do not tell any of them about this! Or I'll find you! [She sounds serious... and seriously embarassed at the thought.]

Third Person:
Her first thought was, 'that shouldn't be there.' Her second was 'how the hell did that happen?'

She wasn't just following them back to Halure because she had agreed to go with them to clear her name, not anymore. It was clear something had happened, and that something was directly related to these four. Yuri, Estellise, the dog, and that brat Karol. Whatever they'd done, the tree was blooming early, and more than ever before, and she knew - knew, she was a scholar! - the tree blastia was dying in the first place. That knight earlier, Flynn, had wanted her help on it, but she'd gotten rid of him easily enough. Honestly, that work would have been below her at the time, and she wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. Why start something you already know you can't finish? Waste of time, both his, and her own.

But no, now that she was standing here drowning in luluria petals and getting a good look, she knew she couldn't just be following them. There were things to study that couldn't be found in her lab down in Aspio. She knew that on some level, before. But this proved it beyond all doubt. She was going to travel with Yuri and the others, and she was going to find answers. Sure, she'd tell them it was to finish the Rizomata Formula. She'd tell them it was to clear her name. But those were just excuses, and she knew it. Yuri would probably realize it too; he seemed pretty sharp with people.

Rita ran up the hill to the Great Tree of Halure with one purpose in her mind: to learn about this new thing she didn't understand, because it fascinated her, and when something got her attention she didn't let it go until she'd spent as long as physically possible analyzing it; until she understood, or died trying.

Sora is approved for play at srwug_alpha_rp!

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Player Name: MaxSalsa
Personal LJ: sunshine_maiden
AIM Contact: UltimateSalsa
Character Name: Sora Myoudouin, aka Lira Roliaron
Source Canon: Project PreDestiny: The Rainbow Jewel of Hope
Community Tag: sora myoudouin

Notes: This is the third character in the PreDESU canon, equivalent to Itsuki Myoudouin in Heartcatch Precure, with some further modifications from Astral Frontier. Parts of her character data pull from the Project PreDestiny setting and the Irgelion campaign.

Background: Sora grew up on a faraway world, a citizen of the Irgelion Empire, under the name Lira Roliaron. Her father served as an instructor in the Irgelian military, teaching basic martial arts to the troops to give them an edge in hand-to-hand combat, and taking gifted soldiers to the next level for specialty roles. After the war and subsequent surrender in 4 AI, her family moved to Earth as part of the reconstruction effort later that same year, naturalizing under the name Myoudouin, and Lira herself becoming Sora Myoudouin. She went by her Terran name as soon as she arrived, but as time passed she got more attached to it.

Sora's family operates a dojo, teaching Irgelion martial arts in addition to a judo-based style developed on Earth, with the Irgelion arts fading rapidly over the years; her older brother suffers from an illness that makes him physically weak, so since a very young age she's been training to succeed the family style, with a single-minded determination unheard of in most children, and a dedication to scholarly pursuits to match, consistently ranking at the top of her class. As part of this training, Sora cast off her feminine side, dressing and acting male in basically all respects, to the point where transfer students were unsure of her gender for years. As years passed, her strength grew, and her curiosity increased. Her grandfather warned her that her combat skills were already well honed, but she needed more life experiences, to temper her heart.

Years passed. Through visitors to the dojo she heard about special fighting mecha, PreDesus, that protected the peace of the world from those that would wish to do it harm. For the most part she'd dismissed them and continued her training, but on some level she wondered if they were real; what it would take to pilot one of those. And wouldn't it be lovely if she could? Flying around the world and being the guardian of those without power?

Then one fateful day, two fairies appeared before her. Calling themselves Apple and Pine, they told her that her strength was needed for a certain project elsewhere on Earth, and if she would be willing to leave, they'd train her to be a pilot for a Claimer-class PreDesu unit: Itsuki. After several nights of consideration, and debates with her family, Sora agreed to travel to Fairy Park and join Project PreDesu.

It was one year ago, five months before the White Chalice began its journey, that Sora Myoudouin arrived at Fairy Park to begin her training as a PreDesu pilot, and met Nanohana's grandmother for the first time. She was in the park on that day four months ago, when the Chalice arrived for the concert, and when Nanohana inadvertently became the pilot of Desu Tsubomi, which wouldn't move even for Sora; she could still barely get her own unit moving the way she wanted, so flying in a sortie against unknowns was very much a bad idea. But she kept improving as the weeks went by, learning the abilities of Desu Itsuki in and out. And now, finally, her training is finished, and Sora is ready to perform her duty as a pilot for Project PreDestiny.

Personality: Back at her old school, Sora was the student council president, with all the personality traits that were iconic of a benevolent president. She's kind and will happily talk to anyone about anything, with a seemingly permanent smile on her face. She knows about a wide array of topics, including scarily-accurate knowledge about what the various school organizations were doing, and she made it a point to know everyone in the building by name. But she'd been living an odd life until a year ago; she'd been posing as a boy at school, pushing away her feminine desires. She didn't have time for cute things or for dresses and flashy clothes; she was too busy practicing martial arts, or studying for classes, or running the student council, or doing one thing or another. It hurt inside, to know she was distancing herself from who she was, but she just kept telling herself it was for her older brother's sake, and some days she actually believed it.

When she had time for interactions, she was always formal about them, being careful to say just the right thing, and finding solutions that would make everyone happy, or at least less angry. She only had an opinion when the council had one; she tended to leave people to their own devices otherwise. Interpersonal relationships were out, as she just didn't have the time, and didn't want to hurt anyone with her ignorance. As an Irgelion in the Earth Sphere, she didn't really advertise her heritage either, not wanting to risk that getting out and being a problem for her duties, or for the dojo, and she resented it a little, though she understood that no matter what happened, she was still herself - even as Sora, she was still Lira inside.

The one thing she made an exception for was to protect those important to her. Sora is a protector by nature, stepping in to help those who can't help themselves, and she really only got angry on behalf of others, never for herself. It was that will to protect that got her into martial arts in the first place, to take the place of her brother who couldn't succeed the dojo in his condition, of her own accord, through her own admiration of him and a stubborn desire to keep him safe. And it was that will to protect that drove her to leave everything behind to go somewhere she'd never heard of to pilot a mecha she'd never seen.

Sora's time at Fairy Park has helped her immensely; she's begun to grow as a person, and as the girl she should have been all these years. She's still honing her martial arts skills, but she's also learned how to open up more, and her girly traits are coming to the front after years of being suppressed. Her old smile is now a bit more true, if still seemingly permanent. She's become somewhat outgoing, and can finally make friends, rather than just building a web of acquaintances. She's cautious about how she approaches new relationships, though, a side effect of not really having any friends in the past.

While her fighting experience before her training under Professor Himesaki wasn't exactly lacking, Sora's learned a lot, especially in how to operate her mecha as an extension of herself, and by now it's become second nature to her. Training in expressing herself directly benefitted her piloting, so she took to it with as much will as she could muster. She's also made good friends with its AI companion, Potpourri, that channels her feelings into Itsuki's power.

As the would-be Sixth Ranger of the team, Sora joins the girls after they've had some time to bond, and feels a little out of place, both among them and on the Chalice itself, and she doesn't have Eri's experience or Nanohana's sheer will and underlying rage. But her steady cheer and unbreakable spirit supplement the team and make her a cornerstone to keep her partners afloat no matter the circumstance.

Capabilities and Resources: Sora has trained from a young age in martial arts, particularly in her family's own style based on judo. Her Irgelion traits put her on the disturbingly fast track to mastery of the style; she's a very capable combatant even without her mecha, though with her hardlight suit she's amazingly powerful, and in Desu Itsuki there's no contest in melee combat. The additional Irgelion physical differences are also present; Sora eats noticably more often than her contemporaries with no ill effect, and she has improved muscle memory, to aid in learning new tasks, with its matching drawback of it being difficult to un-learn things.

Robot Name: PreDesu Series Operation Unit Claimer-Desu 05: Itsuki
Robot Description: The last of the Claimer-class units, Desu Itsuki is an all-around unit tuned to play to Sora's strengths: physical power and defense in balance. Like the other Claimer-class units, Itsuki is equipped with an AI, in this case Potpourri, that converts emotion into power; a large part of Sora's pilot training was encouraging her to express her emotions more to increase the unit's power. It also possesses thrusters for flight, though they're not particularly powerful, limiting their usefulness.

Desu Itsuki also has access to several special abilities, notably the Itsuki Aegis, a powerful shield that can reflect attacks and has high defensive ability; the Itsuki Aegis Impact, a variant shield that be thrown at an enemy for positioning and ranged defense; Itsuki Protection, a large and exceptionally resistant wall-type shield ability; Itsuki Dynamite, an explosion clearing an area around the machine without significantly damaging itself; and the Itsuki Flash, a ranged attack similar in function to her colleagues' Tsubomi Shower and Erika Shoot.

Unlike the other Claimer-class units, Itsuki is not equipped with a TACT. Instead, it carries the Itsuki Tambourine, a unique focus item that can be used readily as an energy-ringed chakram or a simple energy cannon. It also functions as a catalyst for Itsuki's finishing move, the Gold Forte Wave, which fires a great number of missile-like projectiles that lock on to one enemy and together form a flower-like restraining net, which can be detonated for extreme damage to the bound enemy. The Itsuki Tambourine is also used as a focus in Itsuki's shield abilities.

Itsuki, along with all the other Desu units, is equipped with the Hold HANDS link system to enable communication and synchronized actions with other Desu units, and can execute powerful team attacks by linking with Desu Tsubomi and/or Desu Erika. It also can equip a Desu Wing, an energy cape that manifests on the back of the unit and dramatically improves her flight capabilities.

Terrain Stats:
Land: A | Air: B | Sea: B | Space: B
After equipping a Desu Wing:
Land: A | Air: A | Sea: B | Space: A

Upgrades: None yet. Sora will probably gain a variation of the Endless-class unit Desu Gold, but that's down the road. I'll propose upgrades when I've got information ready for them.

Suggested Event List: No changes to the existing PreDESU mission list (right now). Ideally I'd like to have Sora in quickly so I can join existing PreDESU missions and not need to cheat her in. At some point I may propose another mission(s) for the list for her, but not just yet.

Sample Post: A testrun is available in testrun_box.