Application for fellden

PLAYER

NAME: Silver
AGE: 27
PREFERRED CONTACT: saratogaroad
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a

CHARACTER

NAME: Claire "Lightning" Farron
AGE: 21
CANON & CANON POINT: Final Fantasy XIII; just before the final battle with Orphan.
RESERVATION LINK: HERE.
HISTORY: Please ignore everything below the header of -Episode i- as Lightning is from the end of XIII alone.

PERSONALITY: The first glimpse we get of Lightning paints her as a soldier, and it's easy to see why. Besides the uniform, she's got years of military experience and training under her belt, leaving her cool and calculating. Practically fearless even against monsters or machines five times her size, she easily forms tactically sound plans on the fly, not letting anything get between her and her goal. She's incredibly driven to succeed: once Lightning has a plan, she sticks to it and lets nothing stop her from completing it. One the one hand, this is great: she's fiercely independent, self-motivated, and takes a leader role fairly easy in order to get the job done. On the other, this drive sometimes leaves her with no idea what to do; "still your mind and move on instinct" is great in a combat situation when you're facing down something that wants to turn you into lunch, but when it comes to big plans? It's not really that good. It's also terrible for dealing with emotions, but then...what soldier needs emotions? A soldier follows orders and nothing more. Emotions don't matter.

Except that Lightning wasn't always a soldier. Once upon a time, Lightning was a happy little girl named Claire Farron. She had loving parents, the easy life of a Cocoon citizen, and a sister she loved deeply. Serah Farron came into the world three years after Claire herself, and she quickly found herself under Claire's protective nature. The sisters, even from a young age, were clearly close and spent a lot of time together. Thier bond only strengthened after the death of their father when they were young, but when their mother died as well...things began to change. Don't get me wrong: Claire was still devoted to Serah. Hell, Lightning's main driving force--really, her entire reason for being is her sister. She is wholly devoted to the girl, doing everything it takes to keep Serah safe and make her happy...but this is a clear case of missing the forest for the trees. In order to be strong for Serah after their parents died, she threw off her given name and her childhood in what she thought was the adult thing to do. Only it wasn't. Becoming Lightning, while done with the best intentions, was a wholly childish gesture. It was a way to cope with things that she couldn't handle, to push the loss of her parents under the rug and call it the best thing she could do for Serah when it's entirely the wrong thing. She still cared for Serah, yes, but she was so focused on keeping her safe and content that she forgot to care about her. Serah responded by finding companionship in the arms of Snow Villiers, a man Lightning couldn't stand, and this is where Lightning really starts to to devolve. Having had to grow up so fast, Lightning doesn't really know how to deal with circumstances in an adult manner. Sure, she seems to know what to do most of the time, but underneath that soldier exterior is a young girl still crying out for someone to notice her. But instead of talking or dealing with this, she buries it and her abandonment issues under her duty, and in time, her anger.

To say that Lightning has a temper is an understatement. While on the surface she is cool and closed off, her private and tense body language serving as plenty of warning to stay away, underneath she is roiling anger and loss and grief. Her way of dealing with emotions is to not deal with them. She just shoves them away, shutting them out and focusing on a goal. Really, Early game Lightning is a case study in how not to deal with emotions. Late-game and Post-game Lightning less so, but that's only after a good deal of time spent learning and having everything she knows thrown right in her face. Early on, Serah's loss throws her into an absolute tailspin. Her goal is gone, seemingly forever out of reach, and she has no reason to continue. So she implodes into a mess of anger, grief, and destruction. She swears to destroy the fal'Cie Eden, and damn anyone who gets in the way. As a l'Cie and without Serah, without her purpose in life, she has no reason to keep living and she knows it. But what life she has left is up to her, and she's determined to not be a slave of the fal'Cie. She makes her own path through life, no matter the consequences and no matter who gets pulled along with her.

Only when Hope Estheim, a young boy also marked by the fal'Cie, ends up getting dragged in her wake does she realize exactly how wrong she's been. Through the course of their journey, Hope forces her to realize just how wrong she was, and just how much at fault she was for driving Serah to Snow. He forces her to realize that all her anger is doing is hurting the people she cares about...including him. Though at first she wants to leave him behind, unable and unwanting to take care of anyone else after what happened to Serah, Lightning and Hope quickly bond. They become partners, and it isn't long before she starts to see him as a sibling, much like Serah was. She cares for him deeply, and there's little she wouldn't do for him. She'd even give her life just to give him a chance to survive, despite saying that she wouldn't abandon him. But that's not to say that Hope softens her, not at all. He just brings out what she'd shut away when her parents died. She's still blunt and realistic, choosing to not give a speech when a handful of words will do instead. She's still the same stubborn woman who will pick her path and keep moving, tearing through whatever gets in her way...only now, she's doing it as a leader, and doing it to protect the people she cares about. She's no longer letting them get caught up in her wake, and is instead clearing the way for them as best she can. She fearlessly will throw herself into the front of the charge, and will just as fearlessly fight alongside her comrades no matter the foe they fight. She's no longer fighting alone, after all. She has people she trusts once more.

In the end, Lightning is a true duality. Though she's independent and clearly capable of caring for herself, she is also remarkably reliant on others. She draws strength from her comrades and in turn gives them strength as well, though she's still as blunt and to the point as ever. Lightning's not the coddling sort, nor is she the type to wear her heart on her sleeve. Despite opening back up slowly, she's still a remarkably private person and she chooses to keep most of her emotions to herself...though this is in part because of how awkward she is with emotions. While she'll snark and joke with the best of them, her dry wit easily keeping up with jokesters, she still has only the slimmest idea of what to do with more warm emotions. She's relearning quickly, however, and though she still lives by the creed of "It's not a question of can or can't. Some things in life you just do", her purpose has become clear. She's going to save Serah and Cocoon with these people. She's going to get her sister back with her family. And she's not going to let anything come between them and their goal.

At the end of things, Lightning cares. Sometimes she cares too much and gets hurt, which leads to the aforementioned closing off, but she cares. She supports her friends with strong words and pats on the shoulder, and always has their backs. By the time she comes to the point I pull her from, they're not just her friends. They're her new family, and for them, there is nothing she wouldn't do.

ABILITIES/SKILLS: Lightning is a Final Fantasy character, and one who has three classes of abilities available to her. In her game there are six roles; at the time I'm pulling her from, she has access to three of them. The first, Commando, is your basic attacking role. She has a sword and knows how to use it. The second, Ravager, is pretty much the Black Mage, and her third role, Medic, gives her access to a couple of healing spells. While I don't think Commando needs much further explanation, I'll list the spells she's able to cast below.

• Ruin (A non-elemental spell that strikes a single target


• Ruinga (A non-elemental spell that deals damage to all targets in range)


• Fire (Your basic fireball; hits one target.)


• Fira (A larger fireball strikes one target and explodes, damaging any nearby targets as well.)


• Blizzard (A shard of ice strikes the target)


• Blizzara (Larger ice shards strike multiple targets)


• Thunder (A single target lightning strike)


• Thundara (Multiple lightning strikes rain down in a small radius, striking multiple foes)


• Thundaga (Multiple larger lightning strikes rain down in a wider radius, striking multiple targets)


• Water (A burst of water strikes a single target)


• Watera (A large burst of water strikes a target and explodes outwards, hitting others nearby)


• Aero (A gust of wind strikes the target and sends it spinning)


• Aerora (A mini tornado strikes an area, gathering nearby targets and tossing them up into the air)


• Flamestrike (imbues her weapon with fire for extra damage)


• Sparkstrike (imbues her weapon with lightning for extra damage)


• Froststrike (imbues her weapon with ice for extra damage)


• Aquastrike (imbues her weapon with water for extra damage)


• Summon; through the use of her Eidolith, Lightning is able to summon the Eidolon Odin.


• Cure (Base level healing magic; can heal scrapes, bruises, and other minor injuries)


• Cura (Stronger than Cure; can heal gashes and probably seal bullet holes, but not fix broken bones or cure illness)


• Esuna (Removes status effects such as poison or paralysis)


• Raise (Brings a person back from KO; revives from unconsciousness, but not from death)


INVENTORY/COMPANIONS:

• Her peacetime uniform, holster, and thigh pouch.


• Her gunblade, the Blazefire Saber


• 2 X-Potions (Full heals. These things can bring someone back from the brink of death in her world, but can obviously be nerfed here if needed)


• 1 Vial of Painkillers (removes the status of Pain; essentially, a travel vial of aspirin)


• Her survival knife


• Odin's Eidolith (though this will be powerless at first.)

FACTION CHOICE: Moon Temple

REASON: Lightning is a doer. Willing to charge the ruling government of her world completely on her own (before sense caught up with her) she's more than ready and able to change the world with her own two hands. She doesn't waste time with dreaming, but rather gets the job done as fast as possible. While she's not jumping at the chance to save other worlds, saving her own--keeping her family safe--is reason enough for her to join the fight.

TATTOO: A left facing crescent moon in pale gray nestled in the hollow of her throat.

SAMPLES

NETWORK: 1, 2
LOG: 1, 2

NOTES, QUESTIONS, COMMENTS: Being that her Focus is on-going at this canon point, her Brand will need to be frozen. Thank you for being lenient, Gods! (and Mods too!)