Application for Empatheias

[rosettawall]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Ken
Contact: Plurk: mugennoken
Age: 29
Current Characters: N/A


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Alice Yotsuba
Age: 15
Canon: Dokidoki Precure
Canon Point: Post-Canon

Background: Alice is the heiress to the Yotsuba Corporation, a vast and powerful company that has its fingers in the pies of various different interests. The short of that comes down to basically - Alice's family is very rich, controls a lot of things, and she was pretty much set for life even before she was born. Yet, that did not mean she was set for living that life.

Looked after by her personal butler, Sebastian, when her parents were away - which was often - Alice as a little girl was frail and weak. She lived completely in her family's massive estate, until the day that Mana Aida snuck inside chasing after a butterfly. Alice was quickly befriended by Mana, and her best friend Rikka. From that day on, she was practically joined at the hip to both girls, running, playing... Eventually, from the motivations they gave her and the experiences she had, her body actually grew stronger, as did her own personal resolve, making her father see what it was she wanted to do.

And so she stayed with Mana and Rikka, even enrolling in public school to be closer to them. Until one day Mana tried dealing with some bullies picking on other kids, and wound up being upset herself.

See, the other thing about Alice is that even as a little girl she had also been trained in numerous forms of martial arts. Seeing her friends threatened brought out a certain rage in the young girl, and she basically beat several kids and their big brother into the ground. This ... sort of scared the crap out of her, and she vowed to never do such a thing again.

Flash forward several years, the girls are now teenagers. Creatures born of human selfishness, commanded by beings called Selfishness, further lorded over by King Selfishness (catch a theme) attack the Clover Tower owned by Alice's family. Though Alice escapes unharmed, the security cameras pick up what happened. Alice discovers Mana had that day become a warrior known as the Precure Cure Heart, and that another Precure had appeared there as well - Cure Sword, who was in actuality the popular idol, Makoto Kenzaki.

After Rikka had become a Precure as well, Cure Diamond, Alice approached her childhood friends as they were trying to find the third fairy that had come with their own, Cheryl and Raquel, both of which were responsible for allowing the girls to transform. In fact, Alice and Sebastian had found that fairy, Lance, and had been tending to him. While Alice offers to become her friends "producer" and help them behind the scenes in their battles, she rebuffs Lance's offers to become a Precure herself, too afraid of hurting others again with her ... considerable skills. With words of encouragement from Sebastian, she does eventually agree and becomes Cure Rosetta.

Eventually the girls track down Makoto, who tries to push them away until all of them are transported to the Trump Kingdom, Makoto's home which was decimated by the arrival of King Selfishness. Though the King rested in a frozen state, thanks to Makoto's Princess, Marie-Angie, it would only be a matter of time before he awoke again and spread his evil into Mana, Alice, and Rikka's world. Makoto finally joins forces with them to combat Bel, possibly the most dangerous of King Selfishness's generals, and together the four of them form a team.

When trying to find out about Joe, the Precue's mysterious benefactor that had granted them their Loveads to transform, they find an egg... which hatches into a baby. That baby, "Ai-chan," begins to show mysterious powers that catch the attention of their enemies. When Bel tries to outright kill Ai-chan after also trying to outright kill Mana, the Cures are granted a new weapon: the Love Force Arrow. They soon also become aware of the existence of the Royal Crystals, items tied to the missing Princess Marie-Angie.

As they seek these out, they run into a strange girl named Regina, who over time is revealed to be one of the Selfish herself. And worse, the King's daughter. However, Regina is not a clear cut enemy, as she attaches herself to Mana, who likewise tries to befriend her. After Joe is revealed to be Marie-Angie's betrothed, Regina steals one of the Royal Crystals and seems to be full on out to get at the Cures.

Eventually, they are able to obtain all of the Crystals as Regina also appears to come to their senses. They discover Marie-Angie, sealed away, but both Regina and the Princess are taken by King Selfishness. The Cures end up having to save the both of them, and appear to succeed. Though Marie-Angie is still sealed and sleeping, and Joe takes her off to a secure location, at the very least it appears they'd gotten Regina to her side...

...until the King's generals manage to brainwash her, and she nearly annihilates the team until they're saved by the arrival of a seemingly older, veteran Precure, Cure Ace. As it turns out, Ace is in fact a girl YOUNGER than the four of them named Aguri Madoka, yet far more experienced as a warrior. She puts the other Precures through a harsh series of trials, even as other, even more ruthless Selfish Generals arrive to strike out against them. Through their trials, though, Alice and the others are able to attain even more power, and eventually they are able to crack through Aguri's shell and befriend her as well, bringing their team total to five.

Aguri then takes the team to seek out the ancient fairy of Cure Empress, one of the original Precures of their world. There, they earn one of the three legendary items of those original three Cures... which is promptly broken when two of King Selfishness' strongest warriors merge their power against them. Mana's resolve allows them to recover however, and the legendary item splits into five, forming their Magical Lovely Pads and new finishing attack.

Time passes, and with the fall of those just newly appointed generals, utilizes their power to super charge his comrades... only making them obey him at the same time. No one else standing in his way, he strikes out against the Precures and abducts Ai-chan, trying to brainwash her to his side - luckily, they're able to rescue the young fairy and together beat Bel back.

Just in time for Regina to reappear, as the girls try to retrieve the second of the three legendary items - the Miracle Dragon Glaive, but are unable to remove it from where its stuck in the stone beneath Trump Kingdom's castle. Regina however is, and utilize its power, something only Marie-Ange should have been capable of. Regardless, this puts Regina in charge of their foes, resulting in a series of very difficult battles in which each girl attempts to get through to her - in Alice's case, this involves blasting off into space to fight a giant tree monster.

Never a dull moment.

Somewhere around the back quarter of the show, the movie takes place - the girls are attacked by a being called Marsh, gunning for Mana and trapping the Precures in old, modified memories of themselves. Alice's memory of the others is taken from her, however - up until she runs across a young Rikka, instantly feeling a connection but not knowing who she is - until their fairies arrive, smacking them in the head, and bringing them back to themselves. After a tough battle to destroy two of Marsh's flunkies, the Cures all escape and take the fight to Marsh. They discover he's being manipulated by an evil Clarinet (yes) and is in actuality Mana's old dog Mallow, who died when she was a little girl. Unfortunately, in battling the clarinet, he dies again before Mana destroys that particular bit of evil for good.

Eventually, Joe returns to reveal he's discovered the third legendary item - the Eternal Golden Crown. When the other girls touch it, nothing happens, but Aguri is struck with a torrent of memories - Marie-Ange's memories. The next day, Mana, Rikka, and Alice discover Makoto, Aguri and Joe gone. They pursue them to the Trump Kingdom, where they discover that Cure Ace was attempting to settle her score with Regina - and that the both of them are two halves of one whole, they are what's left of Marie-Ange, as it turns out her crystal "prison" was just a ruse.

Specifically, Regina and Aguri are two halves of her heart - the selfish and pure halves, respectively, while Ai-chan is her body reborn, and that Marie-Ange's father is trapped within King Selfishness. Who promptly awakens and begins to stomp through the Cures' hometown. Eventually rescuing the Trump King after a series of battles, the girls are then faced with Bel devouring the last of King Selfishness' power, becoming Proto-Selfishness. In the end the girls grant all of their powers to Cure Heart, who dispatches him.

Oh, and somewhere in this whole final battle, Mana managed to reveal to the world their identities. Whoops.

With that in mind, the Cures are subsequently on call by the Prime Minister himself, ready to take on any challenge that endangers the general public. Also, Alice leads the Yotsuba Corporation into making business deals with the newly accessible-to-the-world Trump Kingdom, ensuring she will continue to have more money than anyone on the planet.

[If the plot summary does not seem to focus much on Alice, that's true to form - Alice mostly lurks in everyone's peripheral, supporting everyone, but rarely taking the spotlight herself.]

Personality: Alice is very much a prim and proper lady. She is well mannered, polite to a fault, and almost always holds herself with utmost dignity. She avoids actions or mannerisms that would be unbecoming of her, and largely tries to keep a level head about matters - to the point she is largely unflappable no matter what she may run into, be it abrasive individuals or giant, city destroying monsters. To the point that - before becoming Cure Rosetta - at the sight of a Selfish monster attacking, she asked her butler if they could take it home, and later was quite excitedly impressed with the sight of a real live dragon.

She is actually very wise about people and their feelings, seeming to understand the how and why certain people - in particular, girls her own age - do the things that they do. At times, she has been shown to understand her friends' feelings better than they do themselves - when Rikka was feeling pangs of jealously towards Mana's friendliness with Makoto when the purple Cure joined their team, it was Alice who helped her understand what was going on with her own thoughts and emotions. When quizzed on this initially by her fairy, Lance, she merely told him it was "complicated." Later on however, she relates it to Rikka in a very simple manner - she understood those feelings because she too felt them.

Largely, she will be willing to put her friends' well being and happiness above her own, rarely taking the forefront of matters unless she has to. Even though she is an active participant in combat, she still continues to act in a way as the team's Producer even still. With her powers being largely defensive, she uses that, her own knowledge about people, Sebastian, and her vast resources to support the team at every turn without ever asking or expecting recognition for it. Even if she is perhaps one of the strongest fighters on her team, that becomes a last resort - to support others, to be their shield in every way she can manage, that becomes her priority.

This extends beyond her friends and fellow Precures, too. She is a girl with her own wants and desires, yet places them all behind those of everyone else - be it her friends, or her family. As a little girl she had a wish of owning a flower shop, yet knows her responsibility is to take over and run the Yotsuba Conglomerate one day. Indeed, she has shown dissatisfaction with the day to day doldrums of the business world, brightened only by the arrival of her friends - but any dissatisfaction she may have is always kept to herself.

Alice holds her friends extremely dear to her heart. While this applies to Makoto, Aguri, and the fairies as well, her strongest bonds are those with Mana and Rikka. They were the ones who brought her out of her shell as a child, and it was their very friendship that made her a stronger person, both physically and mentally. This however once posed one particular chink in her mental armor, as once as a little girl, when an older bully loomed over Mana and insulted her, she sort of... left him and his brothers in an injured heap on the ground. This left her fearful of her own strength and ability, at the time vowing to not raise a hand again, BUT - this changed when she saw she could use her power to protect those precious friends. She is much better about controlling that as a teenager than when she was a young child, but it's still enough of a concern that her friends can start to get worried about someone who may be insulting them with Alice in earshot. That in consideration, she has said it herself - her bonds with her friends have allowed her to control her emotions. While it's a possibility if the situation got extreme enough, she could snap and really hurt someone, it would take an awful lot.

In spite of not seeing them much, Alice loves her parents very much. In addition though, she has Sebastian, her ever loyal butler, whom she probably cares about much like one WOULD love a parent. He is always at her side, and though he may be her servant, she really does care for and respect him. However, though she is fully capable of functioning on her own, she DOES rely on him an awful lot, something which will be an impediment to her a bit when she doesn't have that reliability to fall back upon. She never has to doubt his ability to be there literally in the nick of time at all times, so it will be a significant lack for him to not be present.

Alice wishes to make people smile, a desire she gained as a young child from seeing how Mana went about things and her own accomplishments. She has every intent on using her wealth and power towards that goal, to try and make everyone in the world smile. This largely speaks to how much she is driven by the friends around her. Mana and Rikka were the first friends she ever had, and probably some of the most important people in her life. She's close with Makoto and Aguri was well, of course, but if anything she probably ends up influencing them. She looks up to and greatly admires Mana, in spite of being the same age, striving to go about things as per the example the other girl sets.

Though not always at the forefront of their adventures, Alice is content with her role. She is quiet and reserved by nature, although she speaks her mind no matter how strange the thought may be, but is not to be trifled with. In the end, she wants to be the best friend she can to her fellow Precures, and that one fact alone continues to quietly make her stronger and stronger each day.

Abilities: Alice is a girl of many talents. With the best upbringing that money can buy, she has been taught numerous skills. Of most relevance here is the fact she is quite a skilled martial artist, trained as a young girl in karate, kendo, judo, and akido. As a little girl, she could take down teenagers three times her size. Though she chose to not act with those skills for many years, it's become clear through the course of the show she's not gotten rusty in them in the least. She also has more mundane skills, such as the ability to play the piano flawlessly and ballet - the latter of which she actually has used in conjunction with her Precure powers.

She is accompanied by her fairy partner, Lance. He has few abilities - he can fly even if he rarely does, shift into the human form of a little boy, and into the Lovely Commune. The Lovely Commune is a cell phone-like device which accepts "Loveads," the power up trinket for this particular series. All attacks are triggered by a Lovead, either in the Commune, her Love Heart Arrow, or Magical Lovely Pad.

Using her Lovely Commune device and a Lovead attached to it, Alice can transform into Cure Rosetta. In this form she is much stronger, much faster, and can resist much more damage than any normal human could. She can jump tremendous distances, and generally punch giant monsters in the face and knock them down with limited effort. All told, given her strength and skill untransformed, Alice is exceptionally strong even by Precure standards, and in particular on her team. She's proven this by breaking bindings on her own that were able to hold down her other teammates. Barring their extra member, Cure Ace, Rosetta is perhaps physically the strongest member of the team.

Unlike her comrades, though, Cure Rosetta's powers are not geared towards offense. Her primary power is "Rosetta Wall," generating two small clover-shaped energy shields on both hands. It can be used to deflect many sorts of blasts or attacks, so long as they can be caught in the space the shields take up. They can, and have, at times broken though, when Alice was overwhelmed by too much power from an enemy attack. Alice can also generate more than two shields, but rarely does.

Later, everyone attains a Love Heart Arrow, a device which allows her to access her next level attacks. She utilizes it to create a stronger barrier - the "Rosetta Reflection," a much larger, much stronger barrier. Like Rosetta Wall though, if overwhelmed by her enemy's attack it can stand a chance of shattering. However, the more power put into it, the larger the barrier can become. Using a separate Lovead, she can create TWO Reflections, which she has only used offensively to smash opponents between them, with her "Double Crush" attack.

Her powers may not built to be offensive, but that has not stopped Alice in that regard. She is, after all, resourceful. She has used Rosetta Wall in the past like cymbals, sending a shockwave of the enemy's own attack back at them. Likewise, after learning a lesson from Cure Ace, she learned she can LITERALLY reflect an enemy's power back at them with Rosetta Reflection. Rosetta Reflection has also been launched like a projectile - something she does more and more often as the series goes on - and when broken in half used as two giant, fan-like blades.

Lastly as far as solo abilities go, late in the series she obtains the Magical Lovely Pad, an iPad-like device. She obtains an attack called "Rosetta Balloon" which she claims has a different effect each time. Sadly, it has only been used twice - once, it created a bunch of energy butterflies which stunned the enemy, and the second time... Against their ultimate enemy, she created a duplicate, giant monster sized version of Lance. Obviously that last one isn't liable to be used for a very long time, if ever - and we see no other effects for the attack in canon. So if ever used, I am okay with limiting it to the first effect, unless you think there's something else which can be worked out.

When Cure Heart, Cure Diamond, Cure Sword, and Cure Rosetta are all gathered as one, they can combine their Love Heart Arrows into one giant, heart-shpaed blast. This will only work if all four girls are in the game. Similarly, with the addition of Cure Ace, all five girls can use their Lovely Pads to grant their power to Heart for a final attack.

Lastly, when Heart obtains a final Lovead from Ai-chan, she's able to summon a harp with her Pad, which grants wings to all five girls at once, and one more final attack. In their winged states, the girls' powers appear to be amplified at any given time. All team attacks are done to the end of cleansing Selfish monsters, and may or may not have effects on certain enemies, depending on what lies in their hearts.

Other: Alice will be accompanied by Lance, her fairy partner and key to becoming Cure Rosetta. Without Lance, though she is a very strong young lady, the limits of her powers are significant at the very least of things.

Lance - along with Cheryl and Raquel - is a very young fairy, born just prior to being sent to Earth to search for new Precures in the wake of the Trump Kingdom's fall. Unlike Cheryl and Raquel however, Lance very much acts the part. He is very childish and immature, prone to saying things of questionable intelligence, or that are just flat out wrong. Once in awhile, he will have a moment of clarity - such as when he tried to convince Alice to become a Precure - but they are few and far between. While Alice comes across as terribly not spoiled by her wealth, Lance is another matter entirely - he is completely spoiled and pampered. To the point that he most often opts to ride along on Alice's head or shoulder, not even exerting the effort to fly like his fellow fairies. His head is constantly stuck in the clouds, and he's also quite a bit of a scaredy cat - he will follow Alice anywhere, but he might be more than a little scared to do it a lot of times.

All told however, Lance will largely remain in the background. His human form isn't even terribly useful, so more often than not, expect him to just be perpetually parked atop Alice's head.


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
First Person Sample: Thread with Rikka in Test Drive and for just a bit more: Her own Test Drive Post.

Third Person Sample:It's at least pleasant out on this island, if nothing else. For where Alice is currently strolling, at any rate - strolling down a rocky little path away from the town, parasol out and keeping the sun's rays from beating down upon her too harshly. There is a decided weight on her head, that of her fairy partner Lance - a tiny, yellow bear with a perpetually spacey expression - and she can practically feel his tension. He'd been so quiet until now, she almost thought him asleep.

"I'm worried, Alice..."

A warm smile spreads across Alice's face. Yes, she is too. Extraordinarily so. She doesn't quite know what she'll do, should they discover themselves on this island alone, cut off from their friends. It may make her seem weak to others, but she draws so much strength from their presence - the thought of having to face this strange place, alone...

Well, there's little she can do to control it. So even as those worries might rise, and her chest might tighten... She maintains a sunny expression, for Lance's sake if no one else's.

"Do not fret yet, Lance-chan!" she chirps. "We have not gone very far around here yet. Mana-chan and the others could be just around the bend, after all! There is no telling who all has arrived, and where!"

A pathetic little groan comes from the fairy. It almost echoes how Alice is feeling in a way, but again - she won't let it get to her. Mana wouldn't balk in the face of something like this, and neither will she.

"...but if we are..."

"Then we will do as we must," she says quickly. She spins the parasol a little. "I am still a Precure, after all - we will hold our smiles strong until we can show them to our precious friends once more."

It's easy to say, but in execution? If it was weeks, or months, or... even longer. Alice isn't quite sure she knows what she'll do. But... she pushes on, all the same. Around that next bend, perhaps over the next hill. She's sure she alone wouldn't be the only one pulled her, she's certain that there must be some way to find some of her friends.

So she'll just keep that resolve alive. If it comes down to the worst case, she'll just work extra hard - she'll fight for the smiles here that Mana and the others would, and take that burden on her shoulders. Somehow, in this place, it feels like that would be right.

Perhaps, even necessary.

Questions: I think I'm good.