OOC// Application
[ Player Name ] : TK or Tory
[ Personal LJ ] : waterkairi
[ Age ] : 18
[ Timezone ] : CST
[Other Characters ]: N/A
[ Character's Name ] : Julius Monrey
[ Character's Age ] : Mid-to-late 20s. 25~27?
[ Series ] : Heart no Kuni no Alice
[ Canon Point ] :
Chapter 11: after Ace meets with Julius, but before Alice comes back.
[ History ] :
Alice’s appearance in Wonderland is simultaneously irritating and unexpected for Julius Monrey. He does not recognize her and simply wishes for her to leave his tower at first. But with a testimony about Peter White dragging her into this strange place and the revealing of the potion bottle, Julius quickly realizes she is a foreigner. One brought into Wonderland without his permission. Infuriated enough by that fact, he takes Alice into the Tower to give her the basics of her situation- She is now a player in the “game.” Alice must go around Wonderland, and the more people that she meets and interacts with, the more that her bottle will fill with liquid. Once the container is full, she will have won the game and may return home if she so chooses.
Confused, Alice believes that all of this is a dream thought up in her mind. Julius tells her to believe that if she really wants, but to be careful. She is in the most immediate danger with Wonderland, for all is not peaceful around their country…
Within the world there are three warring groups- the Hatter mafia led by Blood Dupree, the Castle of Hearts ruled by Queen Vivaldi, and the Amusement park run by a man named Mary Gowland. The three of them are always locked in fights over territory, all of them wanting to claim the most land for themselves to own and to sell to gain profits. Between the three regions is the Clock Tower, led by Julius Monrey himself. He offers the Clock Tower as a place for her to rest and return to, for it is the only neutral territory in Wonderland. No one is allowed to battle within the area of the Tower. She accepts and starts off on her quest through her “dream”.
Very quickly, Alice starts catching on to the other mysteries of this world that Julius had kept from telling her. All of the people she runs into until arriving at the Queen’s Castle were rather normal. (Well, save for some animal ears or the fact that everyone wields a weapon and has no hesitation to kill on sight...) But when she gets a look at the servants, that’s where things start getting odd- the majority of people in this world do not have faces. The areas where a person’s eyes should be are completely blank.
Those who possess a full face and a definitive name are considered Roleholders within Wonderland. Their status gives them a reason for being, and it determines what sort of occupation or life they will lead. They are, under no circumstances, able to stray from the role that they were given. Roleholders also have the ability to change the time of day, but not without good reason. But regardless of his a person holds a role or not in the country makes no difference-they will never actually die.
That is the dirty truth behind Julius’ job. Every person within Wonderland, save for Alice who is an outsider, has not a functional beating heart… but a clock eternally ticking away inside of them. Their bodies function as any normal person would, aside from the ticking of a clock that can be heard instead of their heartbeat. Julius takes all these clocks within the world and by fixing them, he resets their lives any infinite number of times. All of their previous memories are wiped away when they are reset, but those with roles are reborn into the same role that they had beforehand.
When a person dies, not soon after, they are surrounded. Strange shadows appear around their body, leaving only their clock remaining. They then take the clock, and return it to the place for it to be recycled- The Clock Tower. They are called Afterimages-shadows with only a vague shape of a person. They are actually the spirits of people who have died before and are waiting to be revived. Julius has a sort of mental link with them, and he has the ability to control them.
Sometimes, there are far too many complications to getting a person’s clock back that the Afterimages cannot handle, such as a group of people holding the clock so that their comrades would not be revived. That is where Julius’ accomplice steps in. Under the guise of a mask and bloodied cape, the Knight of Hearts, Ace, will go and fetch clocks that are particularly difficult to obtain. Usually there is a group of bodies left in his wake, resulting in more clocks for Julius to fix.
For those who are lucky enough to make it out alive… the Clock Tower also serves as a prison. Elliot March had been arrested and spent a good amount of time in jail in the Tower for smashing his friend’s clock so that he would not be revived. Eventually he was illegally broken out by Blood Dupre, but it is an example of how serious a crime that it is to tamper with the collection of the clocks.
While Alice is having midnight tea at the Hatter’s mansion, Julius is visited at the Tower by Peter White. Or rather, Peter was trying to visit Alice and had just missed her. Already quite angry at the rabbit for bringing Alice into their world without permission in the first place, Julius demands to know why he had brought her here in the first place. The rabbit claims that it’s all for her happiness, and that staying there in Wonderland would make her the happiest. Retorting back that it is only Alice’s decision to make where she goes, the clock mechanic announces that he is going to tell her the way to return home. Peter just smiles knowingly and says that Julius doesn’t have the courage to tell her, and goes along his merry way.
Later on, when Julius needs to send for Ace for assistance for a job, Alice volunteers to go fetch him from the castle. Ace and Alice end up getting lost, as is the usual pattern for the Knight, so the two of them camp out for the night. It is revealed to Alice that the citizens of Wonderland have a clock for a heart, and she puts two and two together about Julius’ work with the clocks. They arrive back at the Tower this morning, and Julius can immediately tell that the girl had learned the truth by her uncomfortable expression. Frightened by the sound of the clocks ticking and the view of the Afterimages, Alice runs out of the Tower, leaving Julius behind.
Ace returns later on from his job, with a bag of clocks. Julius is unsettled at the amount he brings back, and Ace instantly questions his friend’s reaction. He can tell that he likes the girl, and finds it unbelievable that an outsider would be able to change everything and everyone in Wonderland so much. Julius is left on his own, and has yet to make up with Alice.
[ Personality ] :
Julius is a very private person in nature. With the solitude of the Clock Tower and the work he does, he does not get outside much. Unsurprisingly, he does not like to reveal any more information to anyone than is completely necessary. Short, to the point, unflourished,- Julius is the prime example of succinct.
This does not mean he is completely unsociable, though. The only one of the Roleholders who Julius shows any sort of real “companionship” with is the Knight of Hearts from the Queen’s Castle, Ace. The knight claims that Julius is “his favorite of all the Roleholders,” and considers them to be close friends. (Whether Julius would ever openly admit to agreeing to his claim of being ‘best friends’ is still questionable, though.) Without Julius around, Ace seems to get very irritable.
The owner of the Amusement Park, Mary Gowland, also has a fondness for Julius, but that’s simply because Julius is one of the few people who doesn’t make fun of his name. All the rest of the citizens in Wonderland either dislike Julius or are simply indifferent to him.
As for his job, Julius as already long accepted the grotesque truth of it all. He knows that the majority of people within Wonderland hate him for what he does; resetting the clocks and restarting people’s lives completely. It’s a bitter job with no real benefits. He hates that no one takes their life or their clock-hearts seriously in Wonderland. Clocks return to him in all varying sorts of destruction, and he can do nothing but fix every single one that ends up in his hands. Lives come and go through his hands every day. While his composure is normally indifferent and nothing off of the usual, there are times where he simply seems exhausted and sick of performing the same duty over again. Ace and Julius can also connect on that point- Ace tries to escape his role by becoming Julius’ masked helper, while Julius gets contact with another person instead of being stuck to working only with the shadowy Afterimages.
Like the incubus Nightmare, who had appeared in her dreams and has a hand in all of Wonderland’s workings, had said to Alice, not all of the people in the world would immediately fall in love with her. Julius is one of those: he did not particularly want her around at first. He offered her a place to stay in the Tower, because… well, if you consider any of the alternatives in Wonderland, his is certainly the safest. As if he’d let her stay with the warring crazies.
Within the period of time that they stay together, she tries her best to earn her keep for him letting her stay with him. He hardly thinks it’s necessary. No one else ever does anything for him that isn’t outside of work or direct orders. Kindness and reciprocation for his help are completely foreign to him. Julius had probably not given a genuine smile in years before Alice started worming her way into his heart. She fixes him coffee and tea, and although he judges her on a point-scale for each cup, it is really just his way of trying to show her that he appreciates what this outsider is willing to do for him. The two of become a little more friendly towards each other with each day that passes by.
More than anything else, he wants Alice to make all of her own decisions while she is in their world. Julius believes very strongly that where she goes, who she stays with, and if she will stay in Wonderland at all is nothing that they have any power over. Peter White, however, rubs in the fact that Julius does not possess the courage to push her away or tell her how to go home. This is the point that Julius realizes that he doesn’t want to be just a father figure/mentor/someone to watch over Alice anymore… he too has come to like the girl, maybe more than he would ever like to admit.
Soon after Alice’s epiphany, the truth being brought to light was unavoidable. Julius revealed all about his profession to the girl, bitterly chasing her off by pointing out that she was indeed scared. He thinks that is the end of it. He had long expected from the start that Alice wouldn’t want to stay around him if she learned the truth. That isn’t what he really wants, though… Ace sees right through him; Julius has changed because of Alice, and there is no way that he wouldn’t want her back.
(Later on in canon, Alice eventually comes back and the two of them make up as she admits that she could never hate Julius just because of the type of work he does. But I’m pulling him before that canon point, so he’s going to be a little depressed for awhile!)
[ Strengths/Weaknesses ] :
Strengths: Julius, thanks to his job, is very mechanically minded. Even the tiniest, most delicate parts of a clock are no match for his expertise with his hands and tools. He also has the authority to give permission for someone to be brought into Wonderland.
Weaknesses: He’s not a very strong fighter, at all. He most certainly doesn’t get out of the Clock Tower much. Sure, he knows how to handle a gun, but his reflexes are far slower than the majority of the inhabitants of Wonderland.
Also, he has the most extreme trigger of motion sickness out of anyone you’ll ever meet. You can’t even put him on the Merry-Go-Round without him turning sickly pale and tangling up his insides, so he intentionally avoids the Amusement Park. He prefers to get places on his own two feet, if he must travel at all.
He’s also sort of a caffeine addict, if he stops to think about it. He goes through a few cups of tea or coffee a day while working.
[ Other Important Facts ] :
While he may not be based from Lewis Carroll’s original of Alice in Wonderland, Julius is pretty much what makes this Wonderland tick! Pun fully intended, yessir. Anyway, if those with knowledge of other Wonderlands go and ask him what character he’s based off of, he’ll look at you quite strangely and then go about his business… or something.
The manga is actually based off of a series of otome dating sims, so there’s also a lot of information missing from the sheer lack of a good translation… So if any of my castmates are more informed on character traits from the game and such, I’ll probably be learning from them along the way. @_@
[ Sample ] :
tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock t-tock tick tock
A second skipped? No, it couldn’t have. A clock either works or it doesn’t. There is no middle ground when in comes to time. There is the constant... or none at all.
His glasses were pushing a rather painful dent into the bridge of his nose. Julius groaned, lifting his head from his arms. Judging by the position, he must have fallen asleep at his work desk. He was certainly starting to worry about his mental health as of late. Alice must not have return to awaken him from the strange stature that he fell asleep in; she was probably going to run into the wrong person at the wrong time, as she always seemed to do. Really, Julius wondered why he looked after her so much as he-
’Isn’t it creepy, to be near someone like me?
Are you scared? No? ...Really?’
He grit his teeth and opened his eyes, at last. She wasn’t going to be around him anymore. Why would she want to be? His job was unclean and inescapable, and he had chased her off so easily. Taking off his glasses, Julius rubbed his blurry eyes. Why was it so bright? His desk was nowhere near a window in the Clock Tower. The window was on the opposite side of the room, next to the dining table, so he could sit and drink his coffee peacefully in the sunli--
“Ahh!” He cried out with a start, slightly jumping as a couple of very cold droplets of water hit his right hand. Eyebrows knitted together, causing deep lines in his forehead, the clock mechanic shook off the offending water, only serving to have more drip down to his hand from his sleeve.
Sighing, Julius rose to his feet and slipped his glasses back on. As he as deduced, he was entirely soaked, his thick coat and long hair dripping and creating a nice puddle under himself. One might’ve thought he had fallen asleep fully clothed in the bathtub by his appearance. He shifted his weight, grimacing at the fact that both his socks and shoes squished upon contact.
More mysterious than the fact that he had become magically soaked was his location. There was no place like this in Wonderland; that he was sure of. Just because he stuck to his Tower most of the time did not mean that he could not navigate his own world. The mechanic took a good look at his surroundings, trying to get an idea of what had transpired: he had awoken next to a grand, ornamental fountain. Perhaps he had fallen into that, and that was why he was all wet? It made no sense, on second thought- if he had fallen in there, then someone else would have had to pull him out and he surely would’ve awoken.
The man shook his head. He didn’t have time to focus on how he had become soaked… Now, he was unsure of which direction to proceed in. Julius tried to look at the buildings surrounding the plaza-type area he was in. A good distance away in the horizon, one building stood taller than the rest. He hesitated a moment at how predictable he was being, but normally, the taller the building, the more importance it held. After all, a tall building towering helps people as a landmark if they are lost. He only wished Ace would realize that trick with the Clock Tower back home… perhaps the Knight would stop getting lost so easily if he looked at where he was going.
Pushing his long bangs out of his face, the mechanic decided to proceed forward in the direction of the building. Wherever here was, it was certain that he would not find out anything by standing around.
[ Questions? Comments? Concerns? ] :
This app should seriously be titled as “How many times can I type the word ‘clock’?”
NOT ENOUGH TIMES, EVER.