Aeris Gainsborough (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stopcallingmemommy) wrote2013-11-03 07:08 am
stopcallingmemommy) wrote2013-11-03 07:08 am
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cityofariel Application
→ IC
□ Name: Aeris Gainsborough (I'm choosing to use the original English spelling to differentiate her from her alternate Kingdom Hearts version in case she's apped in the future)
□ Journal: stopcallingmemommy
□ Series: Final Fantasy VII
□ Canon point: Post-Advent Children (classic, not Complete, although the only significant difference here is that she'd remember the battle between Sephiroth and Cloud as shorter: Aeris contacting the children as she does in ACC is already implied in AC, simply kept off-screen.)
□ History: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough#Story
Note: the novellas are not generally considered canon and thus I won't be including them.
Further, on the question of whether or not Aeris knew when or even if Zack died pre-Gongaga, I choose to interpret the end scene of Crisis Core to mean that she sensed 'something' terrible happen but not what. This is using the theory that without help from another Cetra or Cetra blood himself a person can't manifest separately once they're taken into and fully absorbed by the Lifestream.
Aeris thus continues to believe he simply left her until Gongaga, when Zack's parents make it obvious he must have been killed and she runs out of the house to deal with her emotions on the matter. This reaction indicates she really did believe he'd found a pretty girl and ran off with them, rather than knowing that he died and pretending otherwise; retconning her knowledge would tamper with subtleties in her personality due to words and actions she makes pre-Gongaga.)
□ Personality: Aeris holds an indomitable spirit and a persistent optimistic kindness that defies her upbringing. Throughout her life, she has been exposed to the very worst humanity has to offer; her father was murdered before she reached one month old, and she and her mother were kept in a lab and experimented on until she was seven. Despite the horrors she's no doubt seen, the kindness of a few key characters in her life; Elmyra Gainsborough, who took her in when her mother died in their escape from ShinRa; the Turk Tseng, who went out of his way to help and protect her despite ShinRa's orders; Zack Fair, who helped her to overcome her fear of the sky and gave her a method to make money and spread happiness in the slums; and her connection to the Planet, she has maintained a gentle outlook. One would not be able to tell her harsh upbringing through the quiet serenity and bubbly happiness she projects throughout all of her experiences. She is far from naive, having grown up with her life and freedom in almost constant danger, yet she is quick to forgive nearly any offense.
While outwardly she maintains a calm and cheerful demeanor, at times she finds herself quite self-conscious, especially concerning serious relationships. When her first love stopped responding to her letters, she concluded this must have meant that he ran off with some pretty girl he met on one of his missions, despite their relationship lasting for two years previous to this. This small sign of insecurity is, perhaps, because her experience with such lasting relationships have been almost universally cut short thanks to constant interference by ShinRa. As something of a more positive extension of Shinra's involvement in her life, Aeris deeply cares for orphaned or endangered children, and would give up her own freedom for the sake of one. When a girl Aeris had never met was threatened, she willingly gave herself up to ShinRa--the people who killed her parents and experimented on her throughout her childhood--just for the promise of the girl's safety.
Aeris has a wry sense of humor, and despite her fragile appearance is fully capable of defending herself should the need arise, but she generally prefers to avoid conflict. If she feels she must face conflict, however, she never shies away from danger. In fact, she is often offended by a person attempting to 'protect' her or shield her from danger she believe she can handle. She defies both her adoptive mother and Cloud, her 'bodyguard's, wishes when he attempts to sneak away through Sector 6 alone rather than endanger her with roaming monsters, and later in their travels she even makes fun of Cloud's tendency to keep her away from 'dangerous situations' when speaking with another member of AVALANCHE.
Her confidence shouldn't be confused with arrogance; a lifetime hiding from ShinRa has actually given her firm knowledge of when to run and how to make herself unnoticed. Furthermore, the roving mutant monsters she consistently had to fight through simply to get from her house to the broken down church she frequented, and then to sell the flowers she grew there, meant that she possessed more than enough skills to handle herself on her own. The further experience of traveling across the world with AVALANCHE eventually even enabled her to handle a solo trek across the world with only her weapon and a piece of armor to help her.
Growing up in the slums of Midgar, hunted by ShinRa from birth, and weighed down by her responsibilities to the Planet, luxuries and indulgences have largely been unavailable to Aeris; simple things like a boat or plane ride can thrill her with her inexperience. Perhaps due to her sheltered--rather, caged--life growing up, or perhaps to a certain (though incomplete) knowledge of her potential fate due to communication with the Planet and her mother teaching her about the White Materia, Aeris is always quick to embrace new experiences and charge into adventure. Whether the adventure is crossing a great ocean for the first time, pretending to be a soldier to stowaway on a boat, or helping Cloud pretend to be a woman and sneak into a crime-lord's house, Aeris rarely hesitates to experience and explore new things. It's never fully clear whether this is entirely due to a love of life and a driving curiosity to learn new things or if it's encouraged by the frequency in which her life, and those opportunities for new experiences, are threatened.
Aeris carries an open smile and bonds easily with those she interacts with, and, due to the involvement of ShinRa in her life, has gained some experience in reading personalities. Despite this, she is quick to trust almost anyone and slow to anger, although she does not tend to hesitate to express her feelings when she is angered. It should be noted she immediately takes a liking to the ShinRa spy Cait Sith, but it's difficult to say whether she trusted him due to his cover, or whether she correctly judged his character underneath both it and his allegiance to ShinRa, and thus never suspected him as a spy until he revealed himself as one.
Both due to her traumatic childhood and due to the Planet teaching her from a young age at least some of her grave responsibilities, she is very mature under her bubbly persona, and is not afraid to make difficult decisions. She values life, and would give up her own for another without a second of hesitation. That is not to say, however, that she is reckless with her own life. Although her actions can appear to be reckless to the outside eye, she usually only offers or insists on doing things she believes can actually accomplish, unless her goal is to protect someone else at the cost of herself. She can be both quiet and outgoing by turns, but outwardly she will almost always maintain an optimistic perspective, no matter how dark the situation. When trapped in an Escher-style maze, she cheers up her friends by joking that they would all find the adventure hilarious in retrospect; even when she knew she was walking to her death, she spoke cheerfully with Cloud about her plans and warns him not to push himself too hard rather than focusing on her own fate. Few things can truly crack through her shell of cheer and nonchalance, but those that do, such as the realization of Zack's ultimate fate, can be sure to have cut deep into her personal emotions and left hidden marks long after her cheerful facade returns.
Still, no matter what succeeds in getting her down, whether a little or greatly, Aeris has always been able to quickly bounce back to her old self. When recaptured by ShinRa, she was more concerned for AVALANCHE and Marlene than herself; when almost force-bred with a sentient cat in one of ShinRa's awful experiments she almost immediately shrugs off her distress once the danger is passed; and when she flees Zack's house following the news of his death, she is able to overcome the pain and sadness almost immediately after Cloud finds her. Even in death she chooses to die wearing a smile, and flippantly rejects the concept of blaming her teammates for their inability to save her.
After her death her personality remains much the same, although some of the louder aspects of her bubbly shell tone down somewhat and level off into a deeper and more encompassing wisdom brought on by the knowledge and memories embedded in the Lifestream. Whether her ability to remain herself and assume control of the Lifestream rather than be completely assimilated by it or having her presence rejected by the Planet is due to her use of the Materia, her Cetra ancestry, or perhaps even uniquely her personality is unknown. Regardless, she uses this ability consistently to protect life, the Planet, and her friends. Her first act after her death is to summon the Lifestream from all across the planet to one point to destroy Meteor when the White Materia isn't enough to destroy it. After defeating the Black Materia, rather than move on and allow herself to be reborn with the Lifestream, she continues to devote her 'afterlife' to helping others: fighting the lingering taint of JENOVA inside it and healing those she can, and even offering personal comfort and support inside and out of battle to Cloud.
Finally, it's worth noting that Aeris will never use the term 'Gaia' when referring to the Planet. It will always be 'the Planet' or 'Lifestream', though she will acknowledge the existence of the name 'Gaia' for it. The reasoning behind this is that it is a name assigned to the Planet by humans, just as 'Ancients' are the name assigned to the Cetra. Because Aeris is capable of speaking with the Planet directly, she perceives the Planet as a sentient being (although slightly more complex and difficult than one single human) and would never assign a name to it which it didn't choose for itself. It's important to note that she never indicates that she finds the name offensive, any more than she finds 'Ancients' offensive. She simply doesn't use it.
□ Age: Physically twenty-two, but she's been conscious post-death for two more years, so technically twenty-four.
□ Gender: Female
□ Appearance: Aeris is soft spoken, and open faced. Her gentle features would not stand out in a crowd of people, but her bright demeanor might.
She stands at a mere 5'3''; has pale, smooth skin; deep brown hair that parts into thick, sharp bangs on either side of her face; and vividly emerald eyes. She tends toward tying her hair up into a long braid with her favorite pink ribbon (or an approximate pink/red ribbon if that's unavailable or inappropriate for the situation), and wearing loose, casual dresses that allow free enough movement to travel and use her quarterstaff in. Most often, she can be found wearing her favorite color, pink, but on occasion she will wear white or red as well.
In cooler climates she tends toward denim jackets over her dresses, but when warm she's often seen without them. She prefers sturdy traveling boots that give good traction and balance over shoes that look pretty, and when available she will usually use metal bracers (often layered in various ways) to help shield her wrists from the shock of her quarterstaff's blows. When traveling she will sometimes add a few leather belts to her dress to give her something to hang items and spare materia from or tuck them into. As a final touch, she often wears a black string tied in a simple knot around her neck as some form of a simplistic necklace, and will tie off the bottom of her thigh-length braid with whatever tie happens to be on hand.
□ Abilities/Powers: Aeris is half-Cetra, half-human. While Cetra appear human inward and outward, they have slightly different physiology than a normal human, allowing them to communicate freely with the Planet and utilize the White and Black materias in different forms than normal humans. (The former requires a Cetra to utilize, and it could be presumed that Sephiroth can only use the latter because of JENOVA's help)
Although it isn't explicitly made clear whether they're naturally a different species than humans to begin with or if they were humans whose DNA altered over time due to their constant exposure to the Planet, despite the fact that they can interbreed with humans and consider themselves only a separate 'lifestyle' they're almost universally treated as a different species (called 'Ancients' by most humans) and their unique genes apparently cannot be transferred elsewhere by artificial means. (It's not entirely clear whether Mako treatment is a failed attempt to copy Cetra physiology, but Professor Hojo makes it clear that breeding is the only option to reliably carry her abilities on to another generation). It's worth noting that without the genes Cloud is able to briefly 'hear' the Planet but not understand it, and Bugenhagen, a philosopher dedicated to studying and understanding the Planet, can decipher that an audible sound it makes is it screaming in pain, slowly dying, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Cetra are simply differently developed humans.
Specifically, Cetra physiology makes them innately more in-tune with the Planet they reside on. It's once again somewhat vague in game whether this is the Planet, or any planet they reside on, because the name 'Gaia' is not used in the original game. Further, excluding Sephiroth mentioning the Cetra being the 'native' inhabitants of the Planet who the humans uprooted, the mention of Cetra being 'nomadic' isn't completely clear over whether they simply travel the surface of the same planet, or to different planets across their different lifetimes. The information Sephiroth was referencing, however, came from erroneous reports which incorrectly shifted the blame of the Cetra's near-eradication on the humans (in truth it was JENOVA who caused it) and assumed JENOVA was a surviving Cetra, rather than a rogue alien menace. With these inaccuracies present in the reports, all other information involving their origins are thus called into question, including whether they were the original inhabitants born of the Planet or whether they simply existed on the planet before humans did.
It's implied at one point that Cetra care for a planet as long as they feel is necessary and then migrate on to another to care for that one when their job is done...but so many inaccurate beliefs and myths exist about Cetra that it's difficult to say whether this is actually true or not.
In a practical sense, this in-tune nature allows them to communicate with the Planet through some approximation of words, speak to those who reside in the Lifestream and by extension makes them more in-tune with magic and nature, as the magic of their world uses the energy and essence of the Planet like an electrical circuit; essentially an untainted form of the Mako (which is like liquified, irradiated lifestream. That is...something like semi-sentient, irradiated oil, if oil were Earth's lifeblood) energy that's used to power most of the electricity in modern culture. Aeris once says that she can 'feel the wind calling her', which suggests that she's in tune with nature as a whole as well as communicating with the entity that's generally accepted to be the Planet's consciousness.
Due to the nature of both magic and the way the Planet works, it's not really clear whether Aeris would ever experience a connection to Ariel's planet, whether she would be able to communicate with it, whether she could channel its energy to her own uses, or whether any of these things would require extensive time (years if not decades of dedicated study) adapting to it to accomplish even without the chip.
However, presuming that she will maintain some small connection to the Planet, or that her physiology will indeed be able to immediately adapt to a new planet, these would be the abilities she is capable of.
* Communication with the planet: Cetra, even half-Cetra, are able to hear the Planet's 'voice' innately and without any training. She can decipher how it feels, whether it's injured and sometimes how, and communicate with its sentience (On Gaia this extended to the dead in the lifestream, because the consciousness of the Planet and where 'souls' went were one in the same) at will. However, like any communication, this is a two-way street. She can't extract information the Planet isn't willing to give unless she's a part of the Planet itself (such as post-death) and she can't force it to speak. If it's choosing not to speak, then she will hear nothing. Likewise, if Ariel has a sentience at all and isn't simply empty, sensing anything more than how it's suffering or how it's feeling would be impossible without its consent.
Although there's nothing physically different in her brain, there is a portion of her mind which was in tune with the Planet, which is what allowed her to 'sense' the wind and communicate with the Planet. While her abilities are suppressed or if Ariel is a world without sentience (or perhaps if her connection to it is partly blocked by something unknown) she will feel an emptiness like an unused compartment in her brain, making her feel wrong and inexplicably alone regardless of her company, similar in a way to suddenly depriving a well-developed sense of any stimulation whatsoever.
* Communication with the Dead: If there is an ambient magical/natural energy pool that she can tap into in the area, and there are 'ghosts' of some sort left behind, whether due to becoming a part of it such as with the Planet, or whether due to lingering around such as 'ghosts' would, Aeris would be able to use the same method she speaks to the planet with to speak to the consciousnesses connected to the energy. If there is no one around or connected to what she is, then the effort is useless, and of course just like with the Planet, she can't make them talk if they don't want to.
* Visions: Although this only happens once while Cloud is unconscious, she seems able to access a person's subconscious and communicate with them in a vision dream to speak to them in a telepathic manner. It's presumable that she used some form of mutual connection to the Planet to do this. It's also possible that it's some sort of unique ability of the Sleeping Forest, but this is unlikely considering that AVALANCHE seems to only be a short while behind her to the City of Ancients, and the Sleeping Forest is nearly there.
* Nature Manipulation: As a part of the Lifestream, she could manipulate all non-sentient life on the Planet. (Presumably force of will prevented her from manipulating sentient things, but it's also possible she simply refused to). Not only could she wield the Lifestream like a sword and shield all across the planet, but she could manipulate water and change its properties to healing and cleansing forms. She could also supercharge humans, giving them a boost of energy or curing their ailments. It's also implied she can heal from either near-death or death should she choose to, as well as help people meld into the lifestream and to a limited extent cleanse foreign entities from the flow.
* *Limit Breaks* *: These abilities are bursts of innate power she is capable of accessing only in bursts and only if she is experiencing an extreme surge or build up of stress at the time. While the 'need' for the ability can contribute to the rise in stress, she can't actually use them whenever she wants unless she has the bottled up energy/stress she needs to overcome her mental and physical blocks activate them.
Essentially, these are things she's able to use only with a considerable shot of adrenaline. They're also one-shot. She can only use one at a time, and her stress/adrenaline level must build all the way back up from nothing again before she can use another. There is no time frame to this, in extreme situations (particularly if she's under an 'upper' kind of influence) this could be minutes, or on slow and relaxed day (or she's under a 'downer'/tranquilizing influence) days. As a side-effect, using one of these will completely eradicate her stress until something begins to build it up again, so she could use it just for stress relief if she's not in a life or death situation.
...It's not really explained in canon why this exists the way it does. It just...does.
* Healing Wind: Using her own innate energy she can send out a wave of healing energy that will partly heal the injuries of those around her including herself. Severe injuries such as bleeding gashes, crushed organs, and shattered bones won't be healed all the way, instead they may simply 'advance' to halfway healed, but lesser injuries such as moderate burns, broken (not shattered or crushed) bones, and smaller cuts and gouges will heal. This extends about ten feet in a circle around her, but if she chooses she can avoid healing certain people even if they're within that circle.
* Seal Evil: With her force of will, she can send out a wave of pure energy that will pin down those around her so completely that they won't even be able to move their mouths or tongues to speak. Note that they will be able to breathe. The length of time they're kept that way depends entirely on their force of will verses hers (and how much of the chip is allowing her to access her powers). In the game there's no need for her to maintain 'concentration', but in the city it makes more sense if she has to retain her focus on everyone she wants to keep down to keep them that way. Thus, the more people in a ten foot radius she paralyzes, the harder it is for her to keep them all down, and if anyone breaks her concentration or distracts her, the spell will be broken or weakened.
* Breath of the Earth: Using her connection to the planet, she is able to flush out all impurities from her body; curing it of poisons, diseases, mental afflictions, or other ailments that aren't directly injuries. If she has no connection to the Planet, then this will have to use her own energy and will be a slower, more difficult process. Theoretically this could be used to turn a stone back to flesh if only part of her is petrified when she activates it, but overcoming mental domination would be a struggle between herself and the one doing the dominating.
* Fury Brand: Turning her stress outward, she can impart a massive adrenaline boost to up to two other people (not herself) within touching distance. For people with 'Limit Breaks', this would allow them to use their limit break immediately, even if they'd just used one, but it won't allow them to use it twice if they were close to one already. For those without them, it would work much like having a huge burst of adrenaline...and impart the stress on their body to match that.
* Planet Protector: By calling on her innate magic, she can reach out a shield up to ten feet around that protects everyone inside from any attack, including mental assaults. The duration of this is of course all dependent on the strength of whatever is assaulting her shield and how strong her will-power and ability is at the time. The stronger and more persistent the attack, the less time the barrier will last. Once again this is dependent on the how much of her magic the chip is allowing her to access.
* Pulse of Life: In a moment of desperation, she can use the same healing ability that she uses in Healing Wind to heal herself completely of all injuries and ailments, also refreshing and revitalizing herself from any mental or physical fatigue.
* Great Gospel: Her ultimate ability. In times of great need, she can send out a pulse of healing and protective energy, healing all injuries of those around her in a ten foot radius, shielding them completely from all harm, and revitalizing them from all mental and physical fatigue. It also has the added side-effect of giving each person in the area two bright white wings for as long as her protection over them lasts. This, as always, depends on the power of the attacks directed toward the people she protects.
* * *Abilities requiring aid * * *
* Materia Manipulation: She possesses the ability to use the memories of the planet that take physical, crystallized form as 'materia'. Using this select memory, she is able to manipulate the Lifeforce into whatever form the memory takes, from summoning a bolt of lightning, to healing an injury, to even briefly summoning the creature the memory was taken from to strike at whatever she commands. While anyone can use materia, the greater the strength of the materia the greater the mental and magical toll it takes on a person. Aeris has both an innate talent due to her Cetra ancestry and ample training with materia due to liberal use of it while traveling the world. This ability is, of course, completely useless without having a piece of materia on her person...and only the select memory and form of that memory contained in that specific crystal shard can be used.
* Telepathy: Using the Lifestream's connection, she's able to communicate mentally and even summon up ghostly visions of herself and others to communicate with people directly, something the Planet alone has always appeared to be incapable of. As some sort of extension of this, she can manipulate electronic devices such as telephones (likely because electricity comes from a tainted form of the Lifestream) to communicate vocally through them. However, this ability is useless for anyone not connected to the Lifestream, and impossible if she doesn't have the Lifestream at her beck and call.
* Lifestream Clones/Possessions: Almost identical to the way that Sephiroth could manifest himself bodily through those with JENOVA cells in them, Aeris is capable of manifesting herself physically through anyone with the Lifestream flowing through them. This is an ability she has never used, however, because she prefers an indirect hand and doesn't wish to disturb her friends with a body that is-yet-isn't her. Obviously this, like the above, is completely impossible if she's not connected to an energy source like the Lifestream closely enough to have control of it like her own body, and useless if there isn't at least one other person plugged into it. Still, this is an ability she possesses at home, and so it's one that she would have the potential to possess in Ariel when given the opportunity if/when the chip isn't suppressing it.
* * *Non-magic/planet-based abilities * * *
Cetra are not in any way physically superior to a normal human, so she has no such enhanced abilities. However, due to her lifetime of survival facing ShinRa and Mako-twisted monsters and traveling across the planet with the rest of AVALANCE, she still possesses great strength and endurance. At one point she claims to be 'good enough for SOLDIER' as far as physical abilities, but Cloud quickly refutes that. Although this was just a joke to cover up for the real reason she was being pursued by the Turks, this still shows that her physical abilities, at least when they first meet, weren't especially stand-out. Her current abilities, then, can be assumed to be somewhat less than the absolute peak a human body can reach without specialized training. Still, by the time of her death, she's shown to be fully capable of keeping up with all of her other friends (save the Mako-enhanced one, the non-humans, and the ninja) without difficulty.
Aeris is highly proficient in fighting with a full-length quarterstaff, whether they're decorative, wooden, or metal. In fact, she has enough skill with it that she can fight off monsters many times her size using her staff alone, even without back up. Conceivably, she could pick up similarly shaped items and still be able to fight with them, although the lack of proper balancing would limit her abilities.
Despite appearances, she also has some sales skill, able to finagle gil out of slum and city dwellers alike for single flowers. She's also able to convince a burnt out tailor to make a new, custom dress for Cloud when they need to dress Cloud up as a woman to sneak into Don Corneo's mansion.
Partly due to her connection to the Planet, she picked up an affinity for plants. Gardening appears to be a hobby for her, and she is able to cultivate vast flowering gardens of bright flowers and green plants even in dead, irradiated ground where a vast metal plate blocks out almost all sunlight. Where no other plants grow at all, Aeris seems to have no difficulty growing more at any time she wishes. While it's possible some of that has to do with her innate connection to the Planet, the amount of time she's shown and suggested to spend tending to them says that a bigger part of their well-being is simply that she knows how to tend to them well and devotes sufficient enough time to doing so that she overcomes the harsh and barren, sunless terrain of Midgar.
She claims to be able to sneak around well, but rarely shows this ability. However, there's probably some weight to this claim anyway, since she is able to cross the distance of Sector Five without being seen and does it more quickly than Cloud does when she leaves after he 'sneaks' out of the house without her, arriving at the door to Sector Six before he can.
Also, when it comes time to leave AVALANCHE she seems able to go without anyone knowing where: although it's not clear whether she leaves just after Cloud collapses when there would be less people to stop her, or some time after they arrive in Gongaga. It's also of note that she has spent most of a lifetime on the run from ShinRa in one form or another. Considering her lack of overwhelming physical skills, stealthiness probably played into her continued freedom whenever she encountered forces not headed by Tseng.
Also, as mentioned previously, she's a pretty good judge of character, understanding others fairly easily and being very empathic toward most people. She immediately trusts not because she's too naive to know better, but because she can almost immediately ascertain whether a person is actually trustworthy or not.
□ Personal Items:
* 1 Cotton ankle-length button-up pink dress
* 1 Pair sturdy brown leather boots
* 1 Set segmented bronze bracers for her wrists
* 1 Worn pink ribbon
* 1 Short sleeved heavy read denim jacket, with metal cuffs and breast pockets.
* 1 Flower-print pink cotton bra
* 1 Gold Saucer Day-Pass
* 1 Pink PHS (Useless without a cellphone network)
* 1 Round white crystal (White materia, inert)
* 1 Ornate quarterstaff (It looks like this: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Crown_Scepter?file=Ehrgeiz_Princess_Guard.png ), with six shallow circular indents linked with grooves along its length and one lone circular indent near the top. Provided she's allowed to keep it, of course.
□ First Person Sample: [It should come as no surprise that Aeris has found a quiet and wooded area in the city to explore. The city itself was nothing particularly new to her, although she's more accustomed to an atmosphere like level one accompanying the lack of any natural sunlight, but even there she'd found a quiet place or two to cultivate flowers, so it was only natural she'd find the source of nature here. It didn't feel the same here as there, though. Beautiful and lush as the plant life was, and far more immersive than the tiny patches of life under Midgar's plate, it still felt...artificial.
Perhaps everything would without the ever-present hum of life around her from the Planet. She could surround herself in growing life for miles and it would all feel more cold and sterile than ShinRa's deepest labs. She could walk amidst a crowd of friends that stretched as far as she could see and a part of her would still feel alone. But...there was nothing for it. There was nothing to fill the emptiness that waking up in the city had instilled in her, so she would have to operate with its presence still in her mind.
The sound of naturally running water, a small creek on polished rocks, will be what greets the viewers of the chip first. Then the sight of that very same creek will appear, and in the shimmering reflection, green eyes and a pleasant face framed in hair that's dark enough not to reflect well in the water.]
The city I used to live in was a little like this. Things didn't grow well there, though; there weren't any places like this, and sunlight didn't reach the ground. When I saw the world outside of the wilderness around the city, it felt like outside and inside were two different worlds. [She reaches down and touches the running water with the tip of her finger, dispelling the reflection for a moment or two, and her expression is thoughtful once it reappears.] I wonder what the world is like beyond the wilderness outside this city. There are other people and other cities out there, if we go far enough away, so I wonder what they're like. They probably feel like a different world, too.
[After a moment, the thoughtfulness vanishes into a smile, and she waves down at the image.]
Instead of construction at the wall, let's try growing things there! We can infect the other side of the wall with life, and then when it's safe to go out we can all walk through it and find where the new life turns into old growth and see what's out there when we do!
[She paused briefly, before nodding and offering another, faintly amused, smile.] Although...we'll have to find a new way of communicating. [She lifts a little pink flip phone and holds it out for inspection.] PHS?
□ Third Person Sample: http://theloonybin.dreamwidth.org/11511.html?thread=5300215#cmt5300215 (Two Test Drive threads)
□ Name: Aeris Gainsborough (I'm choosing to use the original English spelling to differentiate her from her alternate Kingdom Hearts version in case she's apped in the future)
□ Journal: stopcallingmemommy
□ Series: Final Fantasy VII
□ Canon point: Post-Advent Children (classic, not Complete, although the only significant difference here is that she'd remember the battle between Sephiroth and Cloud as shorter: Aeris contacting the children as she does in ACC is already implied in AC, simply kept off-screen.)
□ History: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough#Story
Note: the novellas are not generally considered canon and thus I won't be including them.
Further, on the question of whether or not Aeris knew when or even if Zack died pre-Gongaga, I choose to interpret the end scene of Crisis Core to mean that she sensed 'something' terrible happen but not what. This is using the theory that without help from another Cetra or Cetra blood himself a person can't manifest separately once they're taken into and fully absorbed by the Lifestream.
Aeris thus continues to believe he simply left her until Gongaga, when Zack's parents make it obvious he must have been killed and she runs out of the house to deal with her emotions on the matter. This reaction indicates she really did believe he'd found a pretty girl and ran off with them, rather than knowing that he died and pretending otherwise; retconning her knowledge would tamper with subtleties in her personality due to words and actions she makes pre-Gongaga.)
□ Personality: Aeris holds an indomitable spirit and a persistent optimistic kindness that defies her upbringing. Throughout her life, she has been exposed to the very worst humanity has to offer; her father was murdered before she reached one month old, and she and her mother were kept in a lab and experimented on until she was seven. Despite the horrors she's no doubt seen, the kindness of a few key characters in her life; Elmyra Gainsborough, who took her in when her mother died in their escape from ShinRa; the Turk Tseng, who went out of his way to help and protect her despite ShinRa's orders; Zack Fair, who helped her to overcome her fear of the sky and gave her a method to make money and spread happiness in the slums; and her connection to the Planet, she has maintained a gentle outlook. One would not be able to tell her harsh upbringing through the quiet serenity and bubbly happiness she projects throughout all of her experiences. She is far from naive, having grown up with her life and freedom in almost constant danger, yet she is quick to forgive nearly any offense.
While outwardly she maintains a calm and cheerful demeanor, at times she finds herself quite self-conscious, especially concerning serious relationships. When her first love stopped responding to her letters, she concluded this must have meant that he ran off with some pretty girl he met on one of his missions, despite their relationship lasting for two years previous to this. This small sign of insecurity is, perhaps, because her experience with such lasting relationships have been almost universally cut short thanks to constant interference by ShinRa. As something of a more positive extension of Shinra's involvement in her life, Aeris deeply cares for orphaned or endangered children, and would give up her own freedom for the sake of one. When a girl Aeris had never met was threatened, she willingly gave herself up to ShinRa--the people who killed her parents and experimented on her throughout her childhood--just for the promise of the girl's safety.
Aeris has a wry sense of humor, and despite her fragile appearance is fully capable of defending herself should the need arise, but she generally prefers to avoid conflict. If she feels she must face conflict, however, she never shies away from danger. In fact, she is often offended by a person attempting to 'protect' her or shield her from danger she believe she can handle. She defies both her adoptive mother and Cloud, her 'bodyguard's, wishes when he attempts to sneak away through Sector 6 alone rather than endanger her with roaming monsters, and later in their travels she even makes fun of Cloud's tendency to keep her away from 'dangerous situations' when speaking with another member of AVALANCHE.
Her confidence shouldn't be confused with arrogance; a lifetime hiding from ShinRa has actually given her firm knowledge of when to run and how to make herself unnoticed. Furthermore, the roving mutant monsters she consistently had to fight through simply to get from her house to the broken down church she frequented, and then to sell the flowers she grew there, meant that she possessed more than enough skills to handle herself on her own. The further experience of traveling across the world with AVALANCHE eventually even enabled her to handle a solo trek across the world with only her weapon and a piece of armor to help her.
Growing up in the slums of Midgar, hunted by ShinRa from birth, and weighed down by her responsibilities to the Planet, luxuries and indulgences have largely been unavailable to Aeris; simple things like a boat or plane ride can thrill her with her inexperience. Perhaps due to her sheltered--rather, caged--life growing up, or perhaps to a certain (though incomplete) knowledge of her potential fate due to communication with the Planet and her mother teaching her about the White Materia, Aeris is always quick to embrace new experiences and charge into adventure. Whether the adventure is crossing a great ocean for the first time, pretending to be a soldier to stowaway on a boat, or helping Cloud pretend to be a woman and sneak into a crime-lord's house, Aeris rarely hesitates to experience and explore new things. It's never fully clear whether this is entirely due to a love of life and a driving curiosity to learn new things or if it's encouraged by the frequency in which her life, and those opportunities for new experiences, are threatened.
Aeris carries an open smile and bonds easily with those she interacts with, and, due to the involvement of ShinRa in her life, has gained some experience in reading personalities. Despite this, she is quick to trust almost anyone and slow to anger, although she does not tend to hesitate to express her feelings when she is angered. It should be noted she immediately takes a liking to the ShinRa spy Cait Sith, but it's difficult to say whether she trusted him due to his cover, or whether she correctly judged his character underneath both it and his allegiance to ShinRa, and thus never suspected him as a spy until he revealed himself as one.
Both due to her traumatic childhood and due to the Planet teaching her from a young age at least some of her grave responsibilities, she is very mature under her bubbly persona, and is not afraid to make difficult decisions. She values life, and would give up her own for another without a second of hesitation. That is not to say, however, that she is reckless with her own life. Although her actions can appear to be reckless to the outside eye, she usually only offers or insists on doing things she believes can actually accomplish, unless her goal is to protect someone else at the cost of herself. She can be both quiet and outgoing by turns, but outwardly she will almost always maintain an optimistic perspective, no matter how dark the situation. When trapped in an Escher-style maze, she cheers up her friends by joking that they would all find the adventure hilarious in retrospect; even when she knew she was walking to her death, she spoke cheerfully with Cloud about her plans and warns him not to push himself too hard rather than focusing on her own fate. Few things can truly crack through her shell of cheer and nonchalance, but those that do, such as the realization of Zack's ultimate fate, can be sure to have cut deep into her personal emotions and left hidden marks long after her cheerful facade returns.
Still, no matter what succeeds in getting her down, whether a little or greatly, Aeris has always been able to quickly bounce back to her old self. When recaptured by ShinRa, she was more concerned for AVALANCHE and Marlene than herself; when almost force-bred with a sentient cat in one of ShinRa's awful experiments she almost immediately shrugs off her distress once the danger is passed; and when she flees Zack's house following the news of his death, she is able to overcome the pain and sadness almost immediately after Cloud finds her. Even in death she chooses to die wearing a smile, and flippantly rejects the concept of blaming her teammates for their inability to save her.
After her death her personality remains much the same, although some of the louder aspects of her bubbly shell tone down somewhat and level off into a deeper and more encompassing wisdom brought on by the knowledge and memories embedded in the Lifestream. Whether her ability to remain herself and assume control of the Lifestream rather than be completely assimilated by it or having her presence rejected by the Planet is due to her use of the Materia, her Cetra ancestry, or perhaps even uniquely her personality is unknown. Regardless, she uses this ability consistently to protect life, the Planet, and her friends. Her first act after her death is to summon the Lifestream from all across the planet to one point to destroy Meteor when the White Materia isn't enough to destroy it. After defeating the Black Materia, rather than move on and allow herself to be reborn with the Lifestream, she continues to devote her 'afterlife' to helping others: fighting the lingering taint of JENOVA inside it and healing those she can, and even offering personal comfort and support inside and out of battle to Cloud.
Finally, it's worth noting that Aeris will never use the term 'Gaia' when referring to the Planet. It will always be 'the Planet' or 'Lifestream', though she will acknowledge the existence of the name 'Gaia' for it. The reasoning behind this is that it is a name assigned to the Planet by humans, just as 'Ancients' are the name assigned to the Cetra. Because Aeris is capable of speaking with the Planet directly, she perceives the Planet as a sentient being (although slightly more complex and difficult than one single human) and would never assign a name to it which it didn't choose for itself. It's important to note that she never indicates that she finds the name offensive, any more than she finds 'Ancients' offensive. She simply doesn't use it.
□ Age: Physically twenty-two, but she's been conscious post-death for two more years, so technically twenty-four.
□ Gender: Female
□ Appearance: Aeris is soft spoken, and open faced. Her gentle features would not stand out in a crowd of people, but her bright demeanor might.
She stands at a mere 5'3''; has pale, smooth skin; deep brown hair that parts into thick, sharp bangs on either side of her face; and vividly emerald eyes. She tends toward tying her hair up into a long braid with her favorite pink ribbon (or an approximate pink/red ribbon if that's unavailable or inappropriate for the situation), and wearing loose, casual dresses that allow free enough movement to travel and use her quarterstaff in. Most often, she can be found wearing her favorite color, pink, but on occasion she will wear white or red as well.
In cooler climates she tends toward denim jackets over her dresses, but when warm she's often seen without them. She prefers sturdy traveling boots that give good traction and balance over shoes that look pretty, and when available she will usually use metal bracers (often layered in various ways) to help shield her wrists from the shock of her quarterstaff's blows. When traveling she will sometimes add a few leather belts to her dress to give her something to hang items and spare materia from or tuck them into. As a final touch, she often wears a black string tied in a simple knot around her neck as some form of a simplistic necklace, and will tie off the bottom of her thigh-length braid with whatever tie happens to be on hand.
□ Abilities/Powers: Aeris is half-Cetra, half-human. While Cetra appear human inward and outward, they have slightly different physiology than a normal human, allowing them to communicate freely with the Planet and utilize the White and Black materias in different forms than normal humans. (The former requires a Cetra to utilize, and it could be presumed that Sephiroth can only use the latter because of JENOVA's help)
Although it isn't explicitly made clear whether they're naturally a different species than humans to begin with or if they were humans whose DNA altered over time due to their constant exposure to the Planet, despite the fact that they can interbreed with humans and consider themselves only a separate 'lifestyle' they're almost universally treated as a different species (called 'Ancients' by most humans) and their unique genes apparently cannot be transferred elsewhere by artificial means. (It's not entirely clear whether Mako treatment is a failed attempt to copy Cetra physiology, but Professor Hojo makes it clear that breeding is the only option to reliably carry her abilities on to another generation). It's worth noting that without the genes Cloud is able to briefly 'hear' the Planet but not understand it, and Bugenhagen, a philosopher dedicated to studying and understanding the Planet, can decipher that an audible sound it makes is it screaming in pain, slowly dying, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Cetra are simply differently developed humans.
Specifically, Cetra physiology makes them innately more in-tune with the Planet they reside on. It's once again somewhat vague in game whether this is the Planet, or any planet they reside on, because the name 'Gaia' is not used in the original game. Further, excluding Sephiroth mentioning the Cetra being the 'native' inhabitants of the Planet who the humans uprooted, the mention of Cetra being 'nomadic' isn't completely clear over whether they simply travel the surface of the same planet, or to different planets across their different lifetimes. The information Sephiroth was referencing, however, came from erroneous reports which incorrectly shifted the blame of the Cetra's near-eradication on the humans (in truth it was JENOVA who caused it) and assumed JENOVA was a surviving Cetra, rather than a rogue alien menace. With these inaccuracies present in the reports, all other information involving their origins are thus called into question, including whether they were the original inhabitants born of the Planet or whether they simply existed on the planet before humans did.
It's implied at one point that Cetra care for a planet as long as they feel is necessary and then migrate on to another to care for that one when their job is done...but so many inaccurate beliefs and myths exist about Cetra that it's difficult to say whether this is actually true or not.
In a practical sense, this in-tune nature allows them to communicate with the Planet through some approximation of words, speak to those who reside in the Lifestream and by extension makes them more in-tune with magic and nature, as the magic of their world uses the energy and essence of the Planet like an electrical circuit; essentially an untainted form of the Mako (which is like liquified, irradiated lifestream. That is...something like semi-sentient, irradiated oil, if oil were Earth's lifeblood) energy that's used to power most of the electricity in modern culture. Aeris once says that she can 'feel the wind calling her', which suggests that she's in tune with nature as a whole as well as communicating with the entity that's generally accepted to be the Planet's consciousness.
Due to the nature of both magic and the way the Planet works, it's not really clear whether Aeris would ever experience a connection to Ariel's planet, whether she would be able to communicate with it, whether she could channel its energy to her own uses, or whether any of these things would require extensive time (years if not decades of dedicated study) adapting to it to accomplish even without the chip.
However, presuming that she will maintain some small connection to the Planet, or that her physiology will indeed be able to immediately adapt to a new planet, these would be the abilities she is capable of.
* Communication with the planet: Cetra, even half-Cetra, are able to hear the Planet's 'voice' innately and without any training. She can decipher how it feels, whether it's injured and sometimes how, and communicate with its sentience (On Gaia this extended to the dead in the lifestream, because the consciousness of the Planet and where 'souls' went were one in the same) at will. However, like any communication, this is a two-way street. She can't extract information the Planet isn't willing to give unless she's a part of the Planet itself (such as post-death) and she can't force it to speak. If it's choosing not to speak, then she will hear nothing. Likewise, if Ariel has a sentience at all and isn't simply empty, sensing anything more than how it's suffering or how it's feeling would be impossible without its consent.
Although there's nothing physically different in her brain, there is a portion of her mind which was in tune with the Planet, which is what allowed her to 'sense' the wind and communicate with the Planet. While her abilities are suppressed or if Ariel is a world without sentience (or perhaps if her connection to it is partly blocked by something unknown) she will feel an emptiness like an unused compartment in her brain, making her feel wrong and inexplicably alone regardless of her company, similar in a way to suddenly depriving a well-developed sense of any stimulation whatsoever.
* Communication with the Dead: If there is an ambient magical/natural energy pool that she can tap into in the area, and there are 'ghosts' of some sort left behind, whether due to becoming a part of it such as with the Planet, or whether due to lingering around such as 'ghosts' would, Aeris would be able to use the same method she speaks to the planet with to speak to the consciousnesses connected to the energy. If there is no one around or connected to what she is, then the effort is useless, and of course just like with the Planet, she can't make them talk if they don't want to.
* Visions: Although this only happens once while Cloud is unconscious, she seems able to access a person's subconscious and communicate with them in a vision dream to speak to them in a telepathic manner. It's presumable that she used some form of mutual connection to the Planet to do this. It's also possible that it's some sort of unique ability of the Sleeping Forest, but this is unlikely considering that AVALANCHE seems to only be a short while behind her to the City of Ancients, and the Sleeping Forest is nearly there.
* Nature Manipulation: As a part of the Lifestream, she could manipulate all non-sentient life on the Planet. (Presumably force of will prevented her from manipulating sentient things, but it's also possible she simply refused to). Not only could she wield the Lifestream like a sword and shield all across the planet, but she could manipulate water and change its properties to healing and cleansing forms. She could also supercharge humans, giving them a boost of energy or curing their ailments. It's also implied she can heal from either near-death or death should she choose to, as well as help people meld into the lifestream and to a limited extent cleanse foreign entities from the flow.
* *Limit Breaks* *: These abilities are bursts of innate power she is capable of accessing only in bursts and only if she is experiencing an extreme surge or build up of stress at the time. While the 'need' for the ability can contribute to the rise in stress, she can't actually use them whenever she wants unless she has the bottled up energy/stress she needs to overcome her mental and physical blocks activate them.
Essentially, these are things she's able to use only with a considerable shot of adrenaline. They're also one-shot. She can only use one at a time, and her stress/adrenaline level must build all the way back up from nothing again before she can use another. There is no time frame to this, in extreme situations (particularly if she's under an 'upper' kind of influence) this could be minutes, or on slow and relaxed day (or she's under a 'downer'/tranquilizing influence) days. As a side-effect, using one of these will completely eradicate her stress until something begins to build it up again, so she could use it just for stress relief if she's not in a life or death situation.
...It's not really explained in canon why this exists the way it does. It just...does.
* Healing Wind: Using her own innate energy she can send out a wave of healing energy that will partly heal the injuries of those around her including herself. Severe injuries such as bleeding gashes, crushed organs, and shattered bones won't be healed all the way, instead they may simply 'advance' to halfway healed, but lesser injuries such as moderate burns, broken (not shattered or crushed) bones, and smaller cuts and gouges will heal. This extends about ten feet in a circle around her, but if she chooses she can avoid healing certain people even if they're within that circle.
* Seal Evil: With her force of will, she can send out a wave of pure energy that will pin down those around her so completely that they won't even be able to move their mouths or tongues to speak. Note that they will be able to breathe. The length of time they're kept that way depends entirely on their force of will verses hers (and how much of the chip is allowing her to access her powers). In the game there's no need for her to maintain 'concentration', but in the city it makes more sense if she has to retain her focus on everyone she wants to keep down to keep them that way. Thus, the more people in a ten foot radius she paralyzes, the harder it is for her to keep them all down, and if anyone breaks her concentration or distracts her, the spell will be broken or weakened.
* Breath of the Earth: Using her connection to the planet, she is able to flush out all impurities from her body; curing it of poisons, diseases, mental afflictions, or other ailments that aren't directly injuries. If she has no connection to the Planet, then this will have to use her own energy and will be a slower, more difficult process. Theoretically this could be used to turn a stone back to flesh if only part of her is petrified when she activates it, but overcoming mental domination would be a struggle between herself and the one doing the dominating.
* Fury Brand: Turning her stress outward, she can impart a massive adrenaline boost to up to two other people (not herself) within touching distance. For people with 'Limit Breaks', this would allow them to use their limit break immediately, even if they'd just used one, but it won't allow them to use it twice if they were close to one already. For those without them, it would work much like having a huge burst of adrenaline...and impart the stress on their body to match that.
* Planet Protector: By calling on her innate magic, she can reach out a shield up to ten feet around that protects everyone inside from any attack, including mental assaults. The duration of this is of course all dependent on the strength of whatever is assaulting her shield and how strong her will-power and ability is at the time. The stronger and more persistent the attack, the less time the barrier will last. Once again this is dependent on the how much of her magic the chip is allowing her to access.
* Pulse of Life: In a moment of desperation, she can use the same healing ability that she uses in Healing Wind to heal herself completely of all injuries and ailments, also refreshing and revitalizing herself from any mental or physical fatigue.
* Great Gospel: Her ultimate ability. In times of great need, she can send out a pulse of healing and protective energy, healing all injuries of those around her in a ten foot radius, shielding them completely from all harm, and revitalizing them from all mental and physical fatigue. It also has the added side-effect of giving each person in the area two bright white wings for as long as her protection over them lasts. This, as always, depends on the power of the attacks directed toward the people she protects.
* * *Abilities requiring aid * * *
* Materia Manipulation: She possesses the ability to use the memories of the planet that take physical, crystallized form as 'materia'. Using this select memory, she is able to manipulate the Lifeforce into whatever form the memory takes, from summoning a bolt of lightning, to healing an injury, to even briefly summoning the creature the memory was taken from to strike at whatever she commands. While anyone can use materia, the greater the strength of the materia the greater the mental and magical toll it takes on a person. Aeris has both an innate talent due to her Cetra ancestry and ample training with materia due to liberal use of it while traveling the world. This ability is, of course, completely useless without having a piece of materia on her person...and only the select memory and form of that memory contained in that specific crystal shard can be used.
* Telepathy: Using the Lifestream's connection, she's able to communicate mentally and even summon up ghostly visions of herself and others to communicate with people directly, something the Planet alone has always appeared to be incapable of. As some sort of extension of this, she can manipulate electronic devices such as telephones (likely because electricity comes from a tainted form of the Lifestream) to communicate vocally through them. However, this ability is useless for anyone not connected to the Lifestream, and impossible if she doesn't have the Lifestream at her beck and call.
* Lifestream Clones/Possessions: Almost identical to the way that Sephiroth could manifest himself bodily through those with JENOVA cells in them, Aeris is capable of manifesting herself physically through anyone with the Lifestream flowing through them. This is an ability she has never used, however, because she prefers an indirect hand and doesn't wish to disturb her friends with a body that is-yet-isn't her. Obviously this, like the above, is completely impossible if she's not connected to an energy source like the Lifestream closely enough to have control of it like her own body, and useless if there isn't at least one other person plugged into it. Still, this is an ability she possesses at home, and so it's one that she would have the potential to possess in Ariel when given the opportunity if/when the chip isn't suppressing it.
* * *Non-magic/planet-based abilities * * *
Cetra are not in any way physically superior to a normal human, so she has no such enhanced abilities. However, due to her lifetime of survival facing ShinRa and Mako-twisted monsters and traveling across the planet with the rest of AVALANCE, she still possesses great strength and endurance. At one point she claims to be 'good enough for SOLDIER' as far as physical abilities, but Cloud quickly refutes that. Although this was just a joke to cover up for the real reason she was being pursued by the Turks, this still shows that her physical abilities, at least when they first meet, weren't especially stand-out. Her current abilities, then, can be assumed to be somewhat less than the absolute peak a human body can reach without specialized training. Still, by the time of her death, she's shown to be fully capable of keeping up with all of her other friends (save the Mako-enhanced one, the non-humans, and the ninja) without difficulty.
Aeris is highly proficient in fighting with a full-length quarterstaff, whether they're decorative, wooden, or metal. In fact, she has enough skill with it that she can fight off monsters many times her size using her staff alone, even without back up. Conceivably, she could pick up similarly shaped items and still be able to fight with them, although the lack of proper balancing would limit her abilities.
Despite appearances, she also has some sales skill, able to finagle gil out of slum and city dwellers alike for single flowers. She's also able to convince a burnt out tailor to make a new, custom dress for Cloud when they need to dress Cloud up as a woman to sneak into Don Corneo's mansion.
Partly due to her connection to the Planet, she picked up an affinity for plants. Gardening appears to be a hobby for her, and she is able to cultivate vast flowering gardens of bright flowers and green plants even in dead, irradiated ground where a vast metal plate blocks out almost all sunlight. Where no other plants grow at all, Aeris seems to have no difficulty growing more at any time she wishes. While it's possible some of that has to do with her innate connection to the Planet, the amount of time she's shown and suggested to spend tending to them says that a bigger part of their well-being is simply that she knows how to tend to them well and devotes sufficient enough time to doing so that she overcomes the harsh and barren, sunless terrain of Midgar.
She claims to be able to sneak around well, but rarely shows this ability. However, there's probably some weight to this claim anyway, since she is able to cross the distance of Sector Five without being seen and does it more quickly than Cloud does when she leaves after he 'sneaks' out of the house without her, arriving at the door to Sector Six before he can.
Also, when it comes time to leave AVALANCHE she seems able to go without anyone knowing where: although it's not clear whether she leaves just after Cloud collapses when there would be less people to stop her, or some time after they arrive in Gongaga. It's also of note that she has spent most of a lifetime on the run from ShinRa in one form or another. Considering her lack of overwhelming physical skills, stealthiness probably played into her continued freedom whenever she encountered forces not headed by Tseng.
Also, as mentioned previously, she's a pretty good judge of character, understanding others fairly easily and being very empathic toward most people. She immediately trusts not because she's too naive to know better, but because she can almost immediately ascertain whether a person is actually trustworthy or not.
□ Personal Items:
* 1 Cotton ankle-length button-up pink dress
* 1 Pair sturdy brown leather boots
* 1 Set segmented bronze bracers for her wrists
* 1 Worn pink ribbon
* 1 Short sleeved heavy read denim jacket, with metal cuffs and breast pockets.
* 1 Flower-print pink cotton bra
* 1 Gold Saucer Day-Pass
* 1 Pink PHS (Useless without a cellphone network)
* 1 Round white crystal (White materia, inert)
* 1 Ornate quarterstaff (It looks like this: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Crown_Scepter?file=Ehrgeiz_Princess_Guard.png ), with six shallow circular indents linked with grooves along its length and one lone circular indent near the top. Provided she's allowed to keep it, of course.
□ First Person Sample: [It should come as no surprise that Aeris has found a quiet and wooded area in the city to explore. The city itself was nothing particularly new to her, although she's more accustomed to an atmosphere like level one accompanying the lack of any natural sunlight, but even there she'd found a quiet place or two to cultivate flowers, so it was only natural she'd find the source of nature here. It didn't feel the same here as there, though. Beautiful and lush as the plant life was, and far more immersive than the tiny patches of life under Midgar's plate, it still felt...artificial.
Perhaps everything would without the ever-present hum of life around her from the Planet. She could surround herself in growing life for miles and it would all feel more cold and sterile than ShinRa's deepest labs. She could walk amidst a crowd of friends that stretched as far as she could see and a part of her would still feel alone. But...there was nothing for it. There was nothing to fill the emptiness that waking up in the city had instilled in her, so she would have to operate with its presence still in her mind.
The sound of naturally running water, a small creek on polished rocks, will be what greets the viewers of the chip first. Then the sight of that very same creek will appear, and in the shimmering reflection, green eyes and a pleasant face framed in hair that's dark enough not to reflect well in the water.]
The city I used to live in was a little like this. Things didn't grow well there, though; there weren't any places like this, and sunlight didn't reach the ground. When I saw the world outside of the wilderness around the city, it felt like outside and inside were two different worlds. [She reaches down and touches the running water with the tip of her finger, dispelling the reflection for a moment or two, and her expression is thoughtful once it reappears.] I wonder what the world is like beyond the wilderness outside this city. There are other people and other cities out there, if we go far enough away, so I wonder what they're like. They probably feel like a different world, too.
[After a moment, the thoughtfulness vanishes into a smile, and she waves down at the image.]
Instead of construction at the wall, let's try growing things there! We can infect the other side of the wall with life, and then when it's safe to go out we can all walk through it and find where the new life turns into old growth and see what's out there when we do!
[She paused briefly, before nodding and offering another, faintly amused, smile.] Although...we'll have to find a new way of communicating. [She lifts a little pink flip phone and holds it out for inspection.] PHS?
□ Third Person Sample: http://theloonybin.dreamwidth.org/11511.html?thread=5300215#cmt5300215 (Two Test Drive threads)