APPLICATION @ ZODION

[kainandfarishadakid]

✖ PLAYER:
Name & LJ: tegu, magitek
Birthdate & Age: May 27, and currently 24.
Characters played in Zodion: None!

✖ CHARACTER:
Name: Caius Ballad
Canon: Final Fantasy XIII-2
PB/Image:
Info links: Heart of Chaos
Canon Point: After his apparent death in the ending of XIII-2
Gender: Male in a biomale body
Age: Actual age? Millennia. He however appears to be in his late twenties/early thirties.
Birthdate/Sign:
November 9th, Scorpio. MADE UP BY ME because 1. November 9th is Chaos Never Dies Day, and he has the Heart of Chaos which makes him immortal, and 2. he is so Scorpio it hurts. He is protective--his raison d'etre is to keep Yeul safe. He's extremely intense--he puts a lot of energy into his actions, especially when fighting. And he is absolutely ruthless, and dangerous, being a terrifyingly powerful adversary who is more than willing to destroy life in all timelines if it will accomplish his goal. Moreover, the life/death/regeneration attributes fit him well--in canon Caius is immortal, when he 'dies' he simply is revived by the Heart of Chaos in his breast. He's very magical, and transformation/metamorphosis are strongly associated with him given his fondness for turning into dragons.
Tattoo: Located over his heart, and large enough that he could not hide it fully with one hand.
Suitability: n/a as he is an adult human.
Power:
Hoo boy. First off, brother is ridick overpowered in his game (Word of God is that he's most powerful in the entire series) so all that's getting stripped, but what remains to him is his ability to turn into a dragon. Specifically (because ridick man transforms into multiple dragons) he will turn into a version of Jet Bahamut (the purple one). When Caius turns into Jet in the game, it's...well, it's the final boss, capable of resurrecting the other dragons, using a wide variety of spells and skills, physical and magical, and is generally horrifically powerful. For Zodion, though, his Jet form will be scaled down tremendously. It can't use any magic or special abilities anymore, and it's no longer skyscraper-sized but more like garage-sized as even without abilities Jet Bahamut's sheer canonical size makes him untenably dangerous. But here, he is just your standard overlarge flying lizard. Of course, if this is not sufficient I can scale back further.

(Also to be perfectly clear on something: I mentioned above that Caius has the Heart of Chaos which makes him immortal, however this will not be an issue in Zodion as his canon point is after the Heart is destroyed, therefore he'll be reviving in Zodion without it and thus mortal without having to do any fancy shenanigans).

Personality:
Let me explain Caius of the Ballads.

...No, there is too much. Let me sum up: Caius is the enigmatic villain of Final Fantasy XIII-2, a horrifyingly powerful, ancient, immortal time traveler, set to defend the seeresses of Paddra and preserve the timeline from fracturing and splitting--in no small part because these have adverse effects on the seeresses and he has a really unhealthy obsession with them--who by the time of the game has reached utter despair after living only to watch the seeresses die and thus hatches a plan to end all of time so that they'll be as immortal as he is, despite the negative effect this has on every other living thing.

This describes what he does, but not what he is. Unfortunately, the game gives us less to go on from that, but I will try my best.

The defining trait of Caius, the one that trumps everything else, is his devotion to Yeul (the name of the Paddrean seeresses; when one dies another is born, and she is always called Yeul). Everything he does, not only in the game but for the hundreds of years preceding (and following, silly timey-wimey ball), is to protect her. He is loyal to her above all else--the human race, the fal'Cie, the world, even the goddess who granted him immortality, can all go to hell. This has several ripple effects--first, it makes him a toxic companion to anyone who is not Yeul--Noel learned this to his sorrow, after Caius essentially ditched him in the end of days, when he was the only person left alive in a dying world, once that era's Yeul was dead and Noel made it clear he had no intention of succeeding Caius. Secondly, while he is toxic and dangerous, completely merciless--he also is contained by Yeul. More than once he has not killed the player party of FFXIII-2, despite being very capable of doing so, simply because Yeul told him not to.

His relationship/obsession with the Yeuls, despite being profoundly creepy (The Yeuls' seeing capabilities kill them all around the age of fifteen, so...), does a great deal to humanize him. He loves each Yeul deeply, and is more than once shown weeping over a dead Yeul. In the final battle, he rages at Noel and accuses him of not truly caring about the Yeul he knew if he would generalize from her--he says every one was unique, and lists off different Yeuls through the ages. His relationship with Yeul, as messed up as it is, proves that he is capable of 'positive' emotions like loyalty and love--which is necessary, as he almost never exhibits such emotion in other circumstances.

In those other circumstances, his affect is often hard to read. He adopts a stoic facade frequently, hiding what he actually thinks and feels behind aloofness. Even with Noel, the person he is apparently closest to who is not named Yeul, he is stone cold.

The thing that seems to really excite emotion in him, more than anything else, is battle. He is immortal and has had millennia to hone his skills and increase his power, to the point where it is truly awe-inspiring. When fighting, he becomes almost a different person, drowning in lust for blood (one of his lines to Lightning is "Lose yourself in battle, and rejoice!") and...well, he really hams it up. As for his conduct in battle, he is as vicious as one would expect, not hesitating to resort to brutal tactics and pull out ungodly powers to assure his own victory. Just like his plan to turn all the world timeless, damn the people killed by it, he is ruthless, sadistic, and merciless. Fang and Vanille, who are centuries old, have even heard of his reputation--and they call him a monster.

In terms of manner of speech, Caius seems to communicate with the people around him through the Hannibal Lecture--he smirks in an infuriating manner, and proceeds to eloquently explain why he is right, and they are wrong, to rebuke them for their errors with scorn (and anger, if it's really bad), and to defy them to defeat him. He is well-spoken, and obviously very intelligent (as if the centuries-long scheming didn't already establish that), and just as obviously an enormous jackass.

And really, to summarize him, "enormous jackass" fits extremely well: He is an incredibly powerful man who has chosen to use this power to soothe his broken heart by making everyone else suffer, blind to anything that could convince him he is wrong, and dead set on making everyone else realize he is right, whether through persuasion, threats, or violent force. He is sometimes cruel and often unfeeling, occasionally treacherous, rarely decent, and overall...God, he's a jackass.

He also has sexual tension with every member of the cast he is ever on screen with. But that's a side detail.

✖ SAMPLES:
"Zodion" First-Person Network Entry:

[When the communicator turns on, it is clear that the person using it knows what he is doing--there is a minimum of fumbling, and clearly he knows he is being recorded. This man is giving the communicator an imperious look, disdain radiating from him....but at the same time, there is a subtle tiredness behind his eyes.]

This...letter. [He's holding his welcoming letter in his other hand, and he flips it over to double-check what it says.] 'For my strength'? If this is a joke, it isn't funny. [His eyes narrow at the screen.] And if they are sincere, these gods are as contemptible as the last one that revived me.

[And screen goes black.]

"Zodionlogs" Third-Person Prose Entry: (200 word min)

He waited. He waited for a long time, for the unbearable heaviness of being to lift, for the running of his thoughts to slow, for some kind of...of nothingness of death, of cessation of being, to close around him.

But this did not happen. And eventually, he grew tired of lying still, and opened his eyes. Once he did, however--he wasn't in Valhalla anymore. Where he was was...peaceful; beautiful, even. Confusion filled him, and he pushed himself upright quickly, looking around in a rare moment of bafflement. He had seen the world, in all its history and times, all its places, and he had seen the realms that laid beyond--the Void and Valhalla; he knew where the dead went. And this place was utterly alien to him.

He looked around, alert, waiting for something to happen--for this illusion to be dispelled, for space-time to distort or rend, for this to make sense. But nothing but nothing happened, and in the stillness he became aware of a...presence. Not human, not alive, but drawing him towards it all the same.

It drew, so he went. He had nothing else to do.

Caius stepped over the ring of water without thinking about it--and almost jerked when it rose around him; reflexively, his hand went to a sudden pain over his heart. Yet--nothing came of the pain, and he tamped down the instinct to do something, instead warily watching the rising water, as it formed a dome around him and...

He blinked and his eyebrows rose in surprise as he recognized the figure depicted in the reflection as his own, but nude...and, he realized with a sudden stab of cold through his core, with a new heart. Or at least, that is how he interpreted the glowing sigil over his heart. After all, his old one had been destroyed, and yet, here he was. Alive.

Alive.

He smiled, and it was a grim expression, and the water fell away from him, back into its rut in the floor. So, he had been revived, once more. Once more, he had failed, once more, there was a future, once more, Yeul would be born and would See, once more, Yeul would die...

Caius had to bite back a sudden, uncharacteristic urge to laugh and laugh and never stop.