Tower of Animus Application [DeSu Protag, AU]

[sawthelockdown]

Player Information

Name: Delphi
Personal Journal: LJ - delphinova
Age: 24; will be 25 on July 24th.
Contact Info: AIM - IvyMidnighter, plurk - endlessskies
Other Characters Played: Breath of Fire IV, Mami [OU] - brokenstove

Character Information

Character Name: Asako Minegishi (aka the protagonist, catphones, etc.)
Character Series: Devil Survivor
Character Age: 17
Character Gender: Female
Alternate Universe
Canon Point: Day 8, Naoya's Route (aka King of Demons - or in this case Queen of Demons), Humane Ending - i.e. while she is definitely rebelling against God, she isn't going to try to kill all humans while she's at it, and she just managed to wrangle the divine forces into leaving Earth out of the war.
Background Link: Here.
AU Background: The main differences from canon are as follows:
1) Asako is female, meaning that she isn't the object of any female romantic attentions (unless you count repeated attempts to hug her because she is small and kind of adorable with those cat-shaped headphones.)
2) Asako has very strong oracular abilities that have left her frequently ill and headache-ridden; human bodies aren't meant to hold that kind of power, after all. As a result of knowing the future and being unable to do much of anything about it, Asako's grip on sanity has become tenuous at best. She is also very cynical about society and its order, which led her to choose what she thought was the best path - the path of demons.
3) Finally, as basically stated above, Asako chose to rebel against God rather than becoming the Messiah, as the protagonist from Animus's OU!Naoya's world did.

The details of her story are otherwise very much the same as the background link above. However, I'm also adding details from the 3DS re-release, Devil Survivor: Overclocked, into the mix here, which means we've got the Eighth Day to contend with.

The Eighth Day is the day after the Tokyo Lockdown was supposed to end; unfortunately, the angels didn't see fit to do that, seeing as their supposed chosen one decided to go against them. To make matters worse, the angels spread some bad publicity, turning humanity against the fledgling Overlord. However, despite having the option and despite it being the easier option, Asako chose to fight only the angels rather than fighting both angels and humans.

This paid off, as eventually the friends who had left her side in fear returned, expressing regret that they hadn't done so sooner. Humanity as a whole chose to side with the new demon overlord, who really wasn't as bad a person as the title might suggest.

The eighth day of the Tokyo Lockdown came to its climax with the Overlord and her forces squaring off against Metatron. Yes, THE Metatron. They defeated him, but he chose to summon the four archangels of myth - and as Naoya explained, if those four arrived, the world would die. At the very last minute, Asako awakened to her true powers as the Queen of Bel, the Overlord, and summoned demons to her side without the aid of the COMP. These demons included her previously defeated foes Beldr and Belial. In the end, Metatron was truly defeated and the angels chose to leave and take the fight to the outer planes - away from Earth.

Asako, of course, had to leave as well in order to raise an army in the demon world, and she had to do it alone, as no human could follow her there. Her cousin Naoya, being the mastermind behind the COMPs and basically everything else, swore to aid her as mission control during this time--

And so the Overlord left, and humanity resumed its normal life, just as it was before the Lockdown. However, as the epilogue of the Eighth Day states, no one could forget that there was someone out there fighting for them...and as Naoya's note in said epilogue also states, in a month's time, she's already won several victories. She'll probably be able to return soon.

Personality: Asako is what happens when you put a spacey, yet cynical girl in charge of the world's destiny. For the longest time, she has resented everything - humanity for being so twisted as to cause the evil things she sees, herself for being able to see them and thus not being able to live a normal life, and whatever entity gave her her powers in the first place. Because of her strong and, quite frankly, disturbing oracular abilities, she has some difficulty operating in the here and now or making much sense to other people.

In the past, she's played up her lack of sense and silliness in order to keep people off their guard, keep them from figuring out that she's actually a very, very troubled little girl. The only person who's ever seen past that is her cousin Naoya, who she's affectionately called "Nao-nii" - kind of like saying "big bro," and she never really grew out of it, even if he did know how to push all of her buttons and send her into a rage fit. And yet, she was scared to even let him in, because she knew all too well what happened when you claimed to have these powers: either you're called crazy or you become a freak show. As a result, she's always been scared to truly reach out to people; while she's cherished the few connections she has, she's always held everyone at arm's length in a way, too scared of alienating them to truly let them in.

And then, everything changed when the Yamanote Line got locked down.

Being forced into a situation where she had to rely on others, had to make use of her powers to aid them, where there were stranger things than oracles and where she could prevent the horrible things she saw - all of this did more good than harm to her. She saw humanity at both its worst and its best, she was accepted by her allies despite her powers and perhaps because of how useful they were, and she was able to actually do something about the horrors she saw - she could change fate, rather than simply watching it. Having this agency, this understanding, gave her the strength to go through with what she had seen as the least damaging course of action: becoming the Queen of Demons.

The reason that she saw it as the least damaging path was, once again, thanks to her viewpoint about society and order, combined with her ability to see down the various paths. Had she chosen to run away, all would have been lost; had she chosen to side with God, humanity would chafe under ever stricter laws. Had she chosen to simply send demons away, everything would have continued as it previously was; had she chosen to, as Atsuro suggested, use technology to make demons work for humanity, things would have gotten progressively worse - after all, humans really shouldn't have that kind of power. Choosing to become the Queen of Demons might have left the demon hordes rampaging around, it's true, but she would be able to command them to not hurt humans - and for all of her professed cynicism, she really didn't hate humans. She didn't trust them, but she didn't hate them.

The fact that her decisions caused every human being in the Lockdown to side with her, to agree with her, was the final point in an odd sort of redemption for the girl, causing her to break down in happy tears near the end of the Eighth Day. She hadn't seen it, after all - it was a surprise, and a welcome one, and it gave her ever more reason to struggle to save humanity.

After all, that was what she had wanted to begin with - to be able to stop terrible things from happening. Cynicism and loneliness had caused her to forget, but in the end, she didn't fight for herself, as far as she was concerned - she fought to save humanity from a fate worse than death. For all of her volatile temper and her difficulty expressing it, she really does love people, both the ones she knows and the ones she doesn't. She even loves the demons, for they accept her despite the powers she has long hated, and she's able to use her powers to guide them to victory in their skirmishes against the forces of Heaven.

For the record, she doesn't exactly hate the Heavens. She just doesn't agree with their ideals or their methodology. She's sure some of them are okay, but the ones representing them have bene asking for it, as far as she's concerned.

... In summary, Asako is a massive goddamn tsundere.

Abilities: As noted, Asako is able to foresee the future. Depending on the strength of the vision, she'll end up with anything from just getting a minor headache to outright requiring hospitalization; as of becoming Overlord, however, it's just anywhere from a minor headache to a migraine. The Lockdown taught her another way to use it, a more active way, that allows her to scan enemies for strengths and weaknesses; it takes some concentration, but it can be done and has fewer repercussions than her visions. In addition, her time in the Lockdown has left her more than combat ready, both quick on her feet and skilled in magic.

As of her transformation into the Overlord/Queen of Demons, she is able to summon demons and use magic without the aid of the hacked COMPs her cousin Naoya created; she no longer requires them, and neither is she restricted by them.

As of her entry into Animus, she has the following spells and abilities on her:
Holy Dance (Inflicts moderate Almighty damage on random targets. Hits 2-5 times total, max 3 times on one enemy.) (Almighty is generally unblockable in Devil Survivor.)
Force Dance (Inflicts moderate Force damage on random targets. Hits 2-5 times total, max 3 times on one enemy.)
Elec Dance (Inflicts moderate Electricity damage on random targets. Hits 2-5 times total, max 3 times on one enemy.)

Anti-All (All damage taken is halved by 50%.)
Victory Cry (Some HP and MP is restored at the end of every battle.)
Elec Amp (Electric damage dealt by the user is increased by 50%; basically, if she uses Elec Dance, it's gonna hurt worse than it normally would.)

Blitzkrieg (Offensive ability increased by 25% during combat.)

Sample Entry: A thread originally intended as a test for another game.
A musebox thread.