Post by riri on Dec 8, 2009 13:02:10 GMT -5
~ U S E R | I N F O R M A T I O N ~
[/u][/size][/center]Username: I adopt personas, it’s my thing, so I’m gonna go by Riku on here. If you take issue with that, feel free to call me Riri
Age: 20
Notes about yourself: I’m a changeling. I go to one site and I’m Sora, another site I’m Naminé, another one I’m Axel. Axel’s really my main muse, but it’s been awhile since I’ve had a Riku. Most of the time I write a lot, but it depends on who I’m RPing with and what the situation is, really. If there isn’t a lot going on, I struggle, and I generally try to match the other person’s posts if I’m not able to just write out one of my usual around 300-450 words.
Any other characters?: Nope.
Any of them Canon Characters, please list who: N/A
{CANON CHARACTER INFORMATION}
Who are you applying for?: Riku
Have you roleplayed as them before, possibly on another site?: Yes, but I no longer have him on either site.
If yes can we have some links to see how you roleplayed them, much preferred roleplaying with another person and your profile:
Chocolat Academy (my posts are under “r,” as Riku has been dropped):
I Call UNO!
.:Feel the rhythms, Hear the noises:.
Memories
It’s Not Like Home, But…
At Least the Waves Sound the Same
Key to Your Heart (now Loose Ends, under new management, and undergoing a restructure, so these links will not be here forever): Getting up to date – My fault, I dropped the ball, but the site was dying at the time.
Old Habits – Our Vexen went into hibernation and then the site died.
Why do you think you should have this character on Door of Destiny?: I need a change. I’ve gotten to explore Axel’s character deeply, and more recently I’ve been getting into Roxas’s, but Riku is still difficult for me to translate except as a quieter and more aloof version of Roxas. Since this profile alone is so thorough, I want to take the time and use the site to really delve into Riku, reconnect with him, and channel his voice properly.
~ C H A R A C T E R | B A S I C S ~
[/size]Character's Name: Riku
Age: 19
Race: Human
Affiliation: Light (rarely Neutral)
Class: Something of a dark knight
~ I N | D E T A I L ~
[/u][/size][/center]Picture:
Physical Description: Riku has always grown like a weed compared to his friends, towering over them alternately like a harbinger of misfortune or a protective influence. He’s much more built than Sora and appears to be stronger overall, though he doesn’t necessarily use that strength as effectively as Sora does, and it’s hard to say whether this is due to biochemistry or simple dedication. His hair, silver and spiked, falls everywhere—in his aquamarine eyes and past his shoulders. He may be hiding behind it, but it doesn’t seem to hamper him enough in battle (not that a guy who fought reliably with a blindfold would find much difficulty with some pesky bangs).
Despite being an introvert, Riku’s sense of style is somewhat extroverted when he’s not adhering to necessity. He’s given to sleeveless shirts and vests that make no secret of his sculpted arms and baggy pants that turn his legs into a blur, but his collars tend to be high enough to serve as barriers if he ever needed them. His hands, too, are often bare or scantily clad where Sora’s are normally fully protected. Overall, Riku seems to prefer colors that emphasize the juncture of land and sea—yellow and blue. He’s also not opposed to a smattering of black in his wardrobe, but it’s hard to say whether that’s an indication of character or a symbol of pride (as Riku has delicate-looking skin, likely due to his social standing, and the black makes that stand out).
Personality: When he was younger, Riku was extremely stubborn and easy to rile up. But after being in the darkness for so long, he’s more level-headed and looks before he leaps, even if he’s still just as stubborn about it when he does. The darkness has also left him even more anti-social than he already was. It takes him a long time to make friends, but he’s determinedly devoted to them—unless it feels like they’ve betrayed him. Riku has anxieties about being replaced that have gotten him in trouble in the past.
Unlike Sora, Riku has no illusions about the world and knows that people look to use him more often than they may look to help him. While this has him jaded, it hasn’t pushed him past the point of no return, as Sora is still a strong influence on his life and he mirrors Sora in a different way from the one Sora uses to mirror him—though his best friend never realized that. As he told Sora, he was definitely jealous of Sora’s frankness for a time and is still envious in a way that’s more admiration than spite. Sora’s world is simple; Riku’s must always be complicated.
Riku’s guilt over his treatment of Sora and Kairi both during the events of Kingdom Hearts I consumed him to the point of giving up all connection to himself when he took on Ansem’s appearance out of necessity. Even upon retaining his true form, he had no interest in returning home—and that hasn’t gone away. He knows Sora has forgiven him, but Riku is still weighted down by heavy regrets. In fact, despite everything he knows about his best friend, there’s a tiny, dark part of him that he hates that’s deathly scared Sora will seek vengeance for his betrayal.
Likes:
-Travel: Riku needs evolution and change in his life, things to make it interesting and keep the wonder going. He just doesn’t get anything out of repeating the same old stuff day after day and wants to be able to get out, lose his safety net and experience.
-Sora and Kairi: As his best friends, Riku is loyal to the end to them—for serious this time, that is. While manipulation might make him turn on others, his regret over the hurt he’s already caused Sora and Kairi both make them immune to further betrayal.
-Naminé: DiZ beat it into the boy’s head that Naminé was little more than a tool, and Riku tended to treat her as such when she misbehaved—but that didn’t stop him from sparing her, a less-than-nothing, when the time came. The two of them spent a year together, she compiling memories while he compiled information, and even without taking Sora into account Riku owes her his very state of being.
-Playing/Drawing: Imagination is a place, too, and Riku’s can take him anywhere. Spending time with Sora on the islands is one of the things that kept him sane all those years when he wondered about the worlds beyond, because they had their own little worlds.
-Sparring/Racing: Riku is extremely competitive and likes to show off. Plus, testing his skill against Sora’s is always much more interesting and exhilarating when the two of them have been developing independently.
-The paopu tree: That whole little island is more or less Riku’s personal spot, and while Sora and Kairi are welcome and others venture in whenever he’s not in it, it’s served as one of his many barriers against interaction—in addition to his demeanor itself, his exclusive relationships, and his tendency to shield his eyes.
Dislikes:
-People who misuse darkness: The darkness itself, now that Riku has it under control, is no longer an opponent of his. But people who use it the wrong way, endangering others for their personal gain, remain his enemies.
-Ansem (Xehanort’s Heartless): While technically a person who misuses darkness, this individual also misused Riku. He’s living with the guilt he carries now in part due to that Heartless’s interference, and the violation he experienced at Ansem’s hand is something he won’t soon forget.
-The ocean: This infuriating body of water has hemmed him in all his life. Upwards of the first ten years he spent sitting on the paopu tree, watching it change and change and change and yet remain the same. The ocean gets to go everywhere, while the ocean keeps Riku grounded right where he’s at.
-Losing: Riku is a sore loser, yes. He may try not to make a big thing of it, but the fact is it hurt his pride and that stings, which may result in snappy behavior.
-Authority: This depends on the situation. While he’s more than willing to cooperate with King Mickey and call him by formal title out of respect, that’s because he knows the King is trying to help him and has already saved him several times. On the other hand, Maleficent, whom he bragged to Sora about as a witch bound to help them both, was someone he instinctively didn’t trust from the beginning—so it’s safe to say that Riku is wary of and tends to shrug off authority until he sees the point of it.
-Roxas: Riku does not like Roxas.
~ B A T T L E | I N F O R M A T I O N ~
[/U][/CENTER]Weapon:
Riku carries the Way to the Dawn, a Keyblade that formed out of his original Soul Eater. It still has the basic appearance of Soul Eater to some degree as a red and blue wing with a greenish eye at the hilt, but there have been some aesthetic alterations. Now a white wing grows out of the blade to form the teeth, and a demon and angel wing both make up the safeguard around the base. The keychain is a repeating symbol in silvery black that resembles the signature zipperpull on Roxas’s Twilight Town outfit, leading up to a Heartless insignia.
-Dark Aura: Manifests in several spherical blasts of dark energy that knocks the enemy back.
-Dark Firaga: Similar to Dark Aura, but only one blast. Both attacks fall under the dark element.
-Dark Shield: A clear, hexagonal barrier that protects Sora or others and enables Riku to move inhumanly fast to secure it.
-Cure Potion: A strong healing spell.
-Hyper Healing: A quicker way of healing one person in dire straits, but without the effectiveness of Cure Potion.
-Eternal Session: A prolonged and flashy attack he can perform only alongside Sora that begins with two quick flurries of attacks followed by a barrage of dark blasts, an undulating attack with XIII blades, and a finisher that sucks the enemy in and utterly destroys them with light.
Physical Power Up: Atlas Armlet, Angel Bangle, Black Ring
Standard Moves:
Aerial Recovery, Perfect Block (eliminating recoil but leaving him close enough to the enemy to make that a downside if they immediately attack again), ridiculously long combo (rarely used; takes him a few feet off the ground and into a series of relentless slashes that are devastating if they hit, but make him vulnerable to attack if they miss)
Mastered Skills:
-Darkstrom: As his Limit Break, this is only available when he’s on his last legs; at this point Riku attacks with fast strikes, lunging to tear through his opponent in a similar attack to the one that his Replica uses in the air but limited to the ground. While not physically or magically draining, it has a huge margin for error and carries with it great risk.
[/ul]
Physical Strength Power:
9
Magic Strength Power:
6
[/size]
~ S T O R Y | A N D | E X T R A S ~
[/b][/u][/size]Home World: Destiny Islands is a bit of a backwater world, mostly far removed from the action and complacent. This is why it frustrates Riku so much. It’s an island paradise, complete with cawing seagulls, white sands, blue sea, and bright sun. The play island looks a bit like a leftover set from Castaway, peppered with falling apart scaffolding, empty shacks, and windy caves, but the actually inhabited parts are much more homey.
History:
KHI:
Riku grew up with Sora and Kairi on Destiny Islands. Originally it was just Sora, and he seems to be much closer to Sora than he is to Kairi, but then she came along and got him interested in leaving the islands. He can tell that Sora is interested in Kairi as more than just a friend, and he’s used this to his advantage in the past, but he doesn’t seem to be very romantically interested in her himself.
On the night before the three of them were going to leave the islands, there was a storm as the Heartless attacked the islands. Riku realized that the door was opening to other worlds, and he tried to bring Sora with him—but Sora remained behind and inherited the Keyblade when Riku surrendered to darkness. Riku ended up in Hollow Bastion, where he fell in league with Maleficent. He never completely trusted Maleficent but sought to use her as she used him, and found his way to Traverse Town in time to encounter Sora. He’d told Sora that Kairi was coming with them back on the islands, but when Sora asked about her Riku admitted that he’d thought she was with Sora. At any rate, Sora was overjoyed to see him, but Donald wouldn’t let him come with them, and so Riku returned to Maleficent’s side and agreed with her that Sora had replaced Riku in his heart.
Riku then pursued the only other friend he had from the islands, which was Kairi. Maleficent found her body for him, but she was a heartless doll that would sleep forever unless he found the heart that would wake her up. So Riku went to Monstro and tracked down Pinocchio, a puppet that miraculously had a heart. He kidnapped Pinocchio to use it, but Sora stopped him and he returned to Kairi’s side in Neverland.
Sora chased him there eventually, and Riku created a dark form of Sora just to show off his newfound power. He also showed Sora that he’d found Kairi, succeeding where Sora had failed, and locked his best friend up. Sora fought his way through the ship, only for Riku to disappear on him with Kairi in his arms.
In Hollow Bastion, Riku was busy stopping the Beast from entering the castle when Sora showed up. Riku revealed that he was the true Keybearer and that Sora had only been the delivery boy all along, and when Riku acquired the Keyblade from him, he also got Donald and Goofy. The three of them moved on, but Sora chased after them, insisting that he wanted to see Kairi. Riku tried to take Sora’s heart, but the Keyblade changed hands on him again and Sora defeated him. He ran deeper into the castle, where the cloaked man he’d encountered on the islands merged with him and infused him with darkness.
After Sora defeated Maleficent, Riku-Ansem turned her into a dragon—but Sora defeated that too and chased Riku into the main hall where all the Princesses of Heart were being held. The possessed boy informed Sora that Kairi’s heart was within him this entire time, and fought him with a Keyblade made from the Princesses’ hearts, only to be defeated again. When he appeared again, he knew that Ansem was possessing his form and was trying to stop him. He managed to hold Ansem back long enough to let Kairi and the others escape, but then he was cast out of his own body. It took King Mickey’s guidance to get him to Kingdom Hearts, where he helped Sora close the door on himself and murmured, “Take care of her,” in parting.
CoM:
Riku found himself in the basement of Castle Oblivion, waking to the sound of a mysterious voice that gave him the choice to keep sleeping forever or awaken. He chose to wake, and started moving up through the castle, encountering Ansem several times along the way. King Mickey was there to pull him through these encounters, but the King could only do so much from afar.
A brief battle with Vexen yielded a Replica of Riku, who seemed stronger at first and taunted him for not accepting the darkness. Riku wasn’t taken in by his Replica’s words and went on to defeat Lexaeus and then Zexion, who he faced in the memory of Destiny Islands. It took Naminé’s help to get him through that encounter, disguised as Kairi. When he moved on to Twilight Town, he encountered a man who looked like Ansem, but who Riku knew was not. The man proved to be DiZ, an ambiguous observer who’d had his eye on Riku since he got to the castle. DiZ told him to go find Naminé, and Riku made it to the mansion to do just that, only to encounter his Replica again. The Replica had a total breakdown and challenged Riku to what turned out to be the Replica’s last fight, as when Riku defeated him he faded away.
Riku moved on inside to speak with Naminé and discovered Sora asleep in a pod. Naminé offered him the same: a chance to seal the darkness away and erase his memory of it. Riku refused on the grounds that someone had to be up and about while Sora was being a lazy bum, and moved on out of Twilight Town to defeat Ansem once and for all. He encountered DiZ one last time, this time with King Mickey at his side, and they received Organization cloaks that would keep the Nobodies from detecting them. When they left the castle and reached the crossroads, Riku chose the road to dawn.
358/2 Days [SPOILERS]:
While Sora slept and Naminé worked diligently to restore his memories, Riku moved about the worlds, meeting occasionally with King Mickey and finding out more about Organization XIII from behind the scenes. He had a direct encounter with one of the Organization’s members, a girl he didn’t immediately recognize but who had Naminé’s (and thus Kairi’s) face. Recognizing her Keyblade for what it was—a fake—he told her so, and advised that she get out of the Organization while she still had the time. New information told them that this individual was the one inhibiting Sora’s development, and Riku sought to influence her. Something in him seemed to resonate with her that kept her coming back to him for guidance, and he took advantage of that, but not without taking care of her when the situation called for it. He could see that she was suffering, as only a vessel to the memories pouring through Roxas and even himself, and to Riku there was only one solution: to rejoin with Sora. But he wouldn’t force her hand—if it wasn’t her decision she might not be able to go through with it, and it was a hard one. One way or another, though, the doll would break.
She did. She ran to Riku and was dragged back to the Organization, and ran to Riku and was carried away comatose, and in the end she ran to Naminé and Axel hauled her right back to Roxas and her doom.
KHII:
Under DiZ’s instruction, Riku tracked down Roxas and fought him to get him to cooperate. But he realized that he couldn’t defeat Roxas without assuming what he knew now was the form of Xehanort’s Heartless and not Ansem. Once he’d defeated Roxas and DiZ loaded the Nobody into the data Twilight Town’s programming, he visited several times to take things that found their way into Roxas’s hands as a way to keep distancing the boy from his surroundings. He actually did feel pity for Roxas, but his position with DiZ didn’t let him do much except let Naminé and Axel escape when DiZ decided it was time to destroy them.
Riku also went to the Land of Dragons to warn the Emperor of danger, and encountered Sora on the way. The two of them fought briefly, but then Riku ran for the castle and Sora didn’t get there in time to stop him.
At the End of the World, Riku finally encountered Kairi and Naminé both when he intervened to protect them from Saix. Kairi stopped him and pulled back his hood to discover his new form. Then he rescued her from the Heartless when she got in over her head and dual-wielded in order to give her a Keyblade for a short time. When Sora came up to greet Kairi, Riku started to leave—but Kairi stopped him and insisted that Sora come and realize that as Naminé had told her, he was Riku. When Sora realized this he was overwhelmed with emotion to the point of going down on his knees in front of his best friend and shedding tears of joy over their reunion. Riku, embarrassed, told Sora to quit it. He wasn’t happy that Sora had found him and had been trying to keep this from happening because he didn’t want Sora to see him like this. But Sora insisted that he was still Riku, no matter what he looked like, and the three of them moved on.
Sora defeated Saix and then Luxord, with Riku protecting Kairi when he could and being held hostage himself when he couldn’t. Then they discovered the real Ansem with King Mickey and Xemnas. Ansem had a laser that he had charged and pointed towards Kingdom Hearts to destroy it, but the machine was malfunctioning and Ansem ordered the others to stand back when it exploded. He died with his experiment, but it turned Riku back to his normal form.
Then Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey headed up to the Altar of Naught to fight Xemnas. But Xemnas challenged Sora specifically and Riku and the others were left behind, screaming his name. Sora was returned to them and Xemnas presumably died—except that then he joined with Kingdom Hearts and created the same doors that had been at the End of the World. Riku passed though them this time with Sora at his side, and Kairi and Mickey were left behind when they got trapped behind the doors. Sora, Riku, Donald, and Goofy proceeded to defeat this Kingdom Hearts and Xemnas both, and were returned to the Altar unharmed. Then Naminé opened a portal to Destiny Islands and Kairi and Sora spoke with her and Roxas briefly before heading towards the portal with the others. Kairi got through, but Riku and Sora were left behind alone. Then they discovered that Xemnas hadn’t died and was still fused with Kingdom Hearts, and rushed to defeat him.
Once they had, Riku had been injured while protecting Sora and was on the verge of collapse. Sora helped him to the blackened beach, the only place the nothingness would lead them to, and together they talked and decided to become the darkness, knowing that Kairi was safe on the other side. But Riku discovered a letter in a bottle from her to Sora, and it led them to the door to light. Upon passing through, they made it home to Kairi and the others.
Family/Past or Present Relations: No actual known family; Sora and Kairi are his best friends and his closest thing to a relative would be his clone, Riku Replica
~ S A M P L E | A N D | F I N I S H ~
[/b][/u][/size]Role-playing Sample: Who WAS she?
The question tore at him like an ulcer, sore and burning and locked on the inside where he couldn’t get to the answer. She’d been familiar…so familiar…but in an unfamiliar way. Almost as if she’d been rearranged somehow.
Up on the castle’s roof and alone enough to do so, Riku clenched inward slightly, the fingers of his left hand curling into a fist.
I want to line the pieces up…
But Nobodies didn’t get tampered with, that didn’t happen. True, he hadn’t figured out why Naminé, who reminded him so much of Kairi, didn’t look just like her—and DiZ had assured him that Nobodies generally did closely resemble their Somebodies. Besides, Kairi was complete; Sora had seen to that. So there was no reason for Naminé or this other girl who looked so much like Kairi to have anything to do with…
“Why?! You’re the real sham!”
He couldn’t hear it. Her voice was so close to Kairi’s, and yet he couldn’t hear it from his own best friend…Kairi wouldn’t say that in that situation. Nor would Naminé, for that matter.
His lips parted.
Of course.
Sora.
Why hadn’t he seen it before? The Keyblade alone should have given it away…
But why is she…
A she.
“…Hmmm.”
He couldn’t explain that part, but he had a lead now. Naminé needed to know about this, whatever it turned out to be—Riku would have told her regardless just because the Keyblade complicated things, sham or no sham. The Organization had figured out another wrench to throw in their operation, and that made Riku’s lips twitch angrily.
He wore this cloak so that Sora would sleep.
But one day Sora would wake.
I promise.
Password: ADMIN BLOCK
