Siren's Pull Application
Player Information
Name: Jess
Age: 32
AIM SN: TigerCubFromHell
email: liltigre [at] gmail [dot] com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Ohhhh yes. from paradisa to stedelweiss to amatomnes to... well, I've been doing this for about five years now, and if I listed every game I'd ever been in we'd be here forever.
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Canon Format: Video game/novella
Character's Name: Reeve Tuesti
Character's Age: 38
What form will your character's NV take? Reeve's NV is essentially a full-color Kindle, with a keyboard and trackpad integrated into the bottom section and a webcam/holographic projector integrated into the top. The 'Kindle-NV' has buttons on the side to select voice or video input (text is the default). As any good e-reader-esque contraption, it comes in a fine leather cover, which is embossed with the WRO logo on the front.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: Unlike the rest of the FFVII cast, Reeve does not have Limit Breaks. Instead, Reeve has the ability called 'Inspire', which allows him to give life to inanimate objects. That ability is how he 'controlled' Cait Sith in-game. It's implied that he actually projects part of his soul into whatever he brings to life; regardless of how it works, he can see, hear, and feel everything that his creation feels. (No, seriously, this is actual canon. The Ultimania Omega guide lists it. One of the weirdest abilities ever for a FF character, period.) Cait Sith isn't just some little robotic puppet, either- he's demonstrated actual fighting ability, which may be an extension of Reeve's own. While I'd like to keep Cait Sith along with Reeve- I've had extensive experience playing them both- I understand if having the two of them as a single playing unit is too much. Otherwise, he can use his ability to animate virtually anything inanimate. How much of a personality it gains depends on how much effort he puts into it and how long he leaves it 'alive'.
Outside of Inspire, Reeve is immensely skilled as an architect and civil engineer, and has the uncanny ability to build and repair, well, most anything he puts his mind to- from buildings to vehicles to weaponry. He's also something of a natural leader, though this is something of an accidental skill. Tactics and distribution of supplies, etc. in crisis situations (natural disasters, etc.) is a skill he's developed over the years. Reeve's an excellent shot with both a rifle and handgun- not at the same level as, say, Vincent or the Turks, but expert enough to go into battle with his troops and be an asset and not a burden.
Weapons: I'd like for Reeve to come in with the weapons he had on him coming from the game- while they were confiscated from him during his stay in rosenhanclinic, they were simply locked up and not destroyed. What he generally carries are three spheres of Materia (mastered Restore, mastered Manipulate, and a mastered Contain) and a handgun (closest equivalent I can think of would be like a Beretta 92 semi-automatic, or a Glock 22) with a few extra magazines.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History: What few details there are of Reeve's early years are either kept locked up in ShinRa databases or in the very few anecdotal quotes from those who may have known him or his mother when he was young. Reeve himself never speaks of his past before ShinRa. It's known that his family was lower class; his mother handmade his school clothing out of inexpensive, flower-patterned fabric, and his Cait Sith units all inherited the backwater country/highland accent he originally spoke as a child. It's also known that he grew up helping his mother cultivate the flowers she loved so. At some point in his childhood years, he acquired the kitten that would become the inspiration for his feline android Cait Sith.
At some point when he was young, his family became friends with the man who would later become the leader of the Turks, Veld. Veld took an interest in Reeve's progress, and the two developed a close-knit relationship that lasted well throughout the following years. The Turk leader is perhaps the only member of ShinRa Reeve has any sort of loyalty to.
Reeve breezed through school, graduating early and going into college on a full tuition scholarship. He came out of it with master's degrees in both architecture and civil engineering, as well as a job. ShinRa took notice of him when he redesigned one of their early mako reactors to boost output; they hired him straight out of college and put him to work designing a grand city to rival anything else on the Planet. Not long after the war with Wutai ended, Reeve's dream city made the leap from paper to real life, and Midgar was reconstructed as a metropolis hovering above the rest of the world. To ShinRa, the city was a show of power; to Reeve, Midgar was as precious to him as his own child.
As Head of Urban Development, Reeve was one of the top officials in ShinRa, the company who by now virtually ruled the world. However, being the only one with anything resembling a conscience, his power was limited at best. Most of what he did was done 'under the radar'- secretly helping Veld and the Turks rebel against ShinRa at the risk of his career, for example.
The beginnings of a rift between Reeve and the company came when ShinRa destroyed the Sector 7 plate of Midgar in an attempt to crush AVALANCHE, a terrorist organization bent on overthrowing ShinRa. Thousands were killed, and while Reeve argued against it, in the end he gave in. This decision and the consequences weigh heavily on him to this day.
His natural aptitude for spying and covert operations came into play with the development of Cait Sith; the feline (whom he controlled via his own natural ability, 'Inspire', which brings inanimate objects to life) slowly gained his own personality as he was used to spy on Cloud and AVALANCHE. Reeve, meanwhile, kidnapped Marlene, the daughter of the head of AVALANCHE, to be used as a bargaining tool. This came in handy later on, when Cait Sith was outed as a traitor. However, he cared for Marlene like he would have his own child, and ensured her safety throughout the conflict.
The more Reeve saw the hard work and good deeds of Cloud and his group through Cait Sith's eyes, the more separated he became from the rest of his ShinRa colleagues. When the chance arose at the Temple of the Ancients, Cait Sith volunteered to sacrifice himself in order to get the Black Materia- and prevent Sephiroth from getting his hands on it. Due to 'Inspire', he was able to feel and experience everything down to the moment of his creation's death. While another unit was available, Cait Sith #2 was not exactly like the first one, and had more of his creator's traits in him. This incident marked the moment Reeve joined the cause of AVALANCHE and became a double-agent.
(Strangely enough, he wasn't completely separate- his one last act before turning traitor on ShinRa was to save the life of Tseng, the leader of the turks, who had been stabbed by Sephiroth. The Case of ShinRa novella notes this- that Reeve saved his life by use of Cait #2 before proceeding to reunite with the rest of AVALANCHE..)
Reeve was able to keep his status as traitor to ShinRa secret for quite a while, until Diamond WEAPON attacked ShinRa HQ. With the president of ShinRa, Rufus, supposedly dead, the entire company was thrown into disarray. While trying to stop his fellow executives from firing the Sister Ray (and potentially destroying Midgar), his cover was blown. Reeve was arrested by two of his co-workers and thrown into the ShinRa prisons.
While Cait Sith was free to help AVALANCHE make their last stand against Sephiroth, Reeve was trapped. Other prisoners were let go by the guards, thinking the end of the world was coming; as the last remaining member of the ShinRa hierarchy, Reeve had to take the blame for the entire company (both verbal and physical), and was thus left behind with no way out. When Meteorfall began, Reeve was able to animate two of his spare Cait Sith units and coordinate (with the help of Yuffie, Vincent, and the others) a mass evacuation of the city from his jail cell. It was from that cell that he watched Holy and the Lifestream rise up to fight Meteor, and watched the resultant power clash destroy the city he had nurtured into life through Cait's eyes.
There was one person he was not able to save, though- his own mother. She never evacuated, and died in the midst of Holy's uprising. He never found out her final fate until two years later, while hearing the story recounted from the orphan Denzel, whom she had taken in. (That Reeve's own inaction on the Sector 7 incident had led to the deaths of Denzel's parents was an irony not lost on him.)
Reeve spent a total of seventeen days virtually buried alive under the remains of ShinRa HQ. When Cait finally managed to dig him out, Reeve was half-starved, dehydrated, delirious from fever and fear; it took him almost two months to recover from the ordeal. Once healed, however, he took stock of the state the world was now in, and began working to build shelters for those displaced by Midgar's fall. This was the beginnings of the city of Edge, as well as the beginning of what would become the WRO.
With funding given in secret by Rufus Shinra, Reeve formed the WRO as a paramilitary organization dedicated to restoring the Planet. Edge was constructed; jobs were created; the economy began to stabilize. Cait Sith fought once more alongside AVALANCHE when the Remnants of Sephiroth returned two years later. Cid was hired to run the WRO's airship fleet; Yuffie became head of the intelligence-gathering division. Things seemed to be settling down... until reports began flooding in about mass disappearances in cities across the Planet.
The Deepground menace being so gigantic in scale, Reeve quickly pulled in everyone from AVALANCHE to help in combating this leftover remnant of ShinRa's SOLDIER program. Hundreds of his troops died in the conflict; he was able to see the mass execution of men, women, and children to feed a slumbering monster beneath the city; and Reeve himself was nearly killed at one point. Most disturbing to him was that his friends from the bygone days were so involved in the fight, including Vincent Valentine, who quickly got caught in the center of the entire conflict. When Omega WEAPON was born to try and take all life out of the planet, all he could do was stand back and watch as his friend seemingly died destroying it.
Additional Info: Final Fantasy Wiki article
Point in Canon: In canon, one week after the fall of Omega WEAPON.
Conditional: Brief summary of previous RP history: A week after the fall of Omega WEAPON, Reeve awoke to find himself entrapped within the halls of St. Edelweiss, a mental institution in a place, a world he'd never heard of. Disbelief quickly gave way to anger and the need to protect, as there were a great many innocent people- and even children there- and even worse, his subordinate and friend Yuffie, and their somewhat amnesiac compatriot Cloud were among the patients. Coming in so soon after a global war, Reeve found it hard to drop the role of leader; this brought him into conflict with one of the cruelest members of the staff, a man named Paul. Their first encounter ended with Reeve's arms burned to the point of near-uselessness and a very important revelation.
This place was another warzone.
While the place was hell, and a farce, and the doctors hellbent on torture worse than any ShinRa had ever conceived, Reeve had managed to make allies. Friends, even. Family, of a kind- one was a young man, barely out of his teens. Jack. Who had been, as it turned out, raped by a doctor and was falling apart from it. the mother hen instinct in him wouldn't let him stand by idly, and so he tried to help the young man. This incident was the first in what would soon be a turning point in Reeve's own mental health.
He saw friends given staff positions; that he could cope with, as it ensured their safety. He worked to see others safe, all the while realizing that he couldn't keep everyone safe, no matter how much he wanted to. And there were shadows in the back of his mind that kept coming forward, kept being teased out, until Paul cornered him again and ripped it out of his memory.
(Whether these memories are even real or not is another matter of concern- there's no evidence in his history for it, no evidence anywhere, and all he has to go on are fuzzy memories. This could well be implanted memories done for the sake of torture- Reeve was, after all, one of the ringleaders of the rebellion.)
With the memory fresh in his mind- four years of being molested as a child suddenly brought back- and a dislocated shoulder, Reeve broke. And when he broke, Cait Sith took over.
This continued for several days, Cait taking over when he could not cope with reality, until the friends he'd made pushed the secret to the fore. This ended up being beneficial, as Cait gained his own body out of the deal; this symbiotic relationship, combined with the friendships he'd made, were all that kept him going, most days. As a leader, he was often singled out for 'treatment', and as much as he tried to keep it together it was so very difficult when people were frantic and angry and lashing out at each other because they couldn't fight back at the real enemy.
There were attempts to find ways out- attempts to escape- but they led to nothing. People died too quickly to stay cohesive. Reeve found all his concentration focused on holding together the ones he loved. There were those who found themselves angered at him, furious that he was a leader figure and couldn't protect everyone. He himself regretted it, hated the fact, but- he was only one man. A broken, tired man with too much on his shoulders.
And then the fires came and burned everyone, everything. he died there, trapped--
-- and woke as a patient in a new place, a tropical haven called Rosenhan. An asylum, with no doctors. Clean. Real food. Sunshine and fresh air. the whiplash of the experience was staggering. He could hardly believe it- and was just waiting to see when the nightmare would begin again.
I'm pulling Reeve from this point, about two days in from his stay at Rosenhan.
Character Personality: Reeve is best described as a man of many masks. He has a very strong sense of morals and responsibility; he knows he's not a good person, and he doesn't believe in others deluding themselves about their own motives either. At one point, he has a very heated argument with Barrett (via Cait) over the destruction of mako reactors- while Reeve admits that what ShinRa has done is virtually murder, Barrett's waving aside of AVALANCHE's destruction as 'necessary' infuriates him. He will, at the same time, do whatever is necessary to further his goals- which has, at times, included blackmail, kidnapping children, and turning traitor to his company. In the end, though, Reeve works towards what he sees as the greater good and the future happiness of others. (While he might have kidnapped Marlene, for example, by all accounts he took very good care of her and ensured her safety even above his own.)
Reeve can sometimes be hamstrung by his need to make sure as few people are hurt as necessary. This caused issues with him and ShinRa early on, and still causes issues to this day. While he tends to be cheerful, he can easily switch into a more serious mood in a split-second. Loyal to a fault, he often cares far too deeply for people once they have gained his trust. He wears his heart on his sleeve for the people he loves, and as such is easily injured by them.
Reeve is really very insecure under the calm exterior he projects as a world leader; Cait Sith's happy-go-lucky nature and cheerfulness are another mask he uses to keep the world from seeing the real person underneath it all. He tries to hide his own perceived weaknesses, and tends to be excessively hard on himself when things do not go the way he planned, berating himself as a failure for things that are out of his control. When Deepground invaded WRO HQ and nearly destroyed it (and put one of his closest associates on the verge of death), he very nearly gave up on everything, placing all the blame on himself. It took an unexpected reproval from Vincent to snap him out of it- self recrimination is, perhaps, something they have in common. When something goes wrong, he will work himself into the ground to try and make up for it, at the detriment of his own health and well-being.
Conditional: Personality development in previous game: Reeve has become somewhat more fragile emotionally after his stay in the hell known as Edelweiss. He's still Reeve Tuesti, still the Commissioner of the WRO and virtual leader of Gaia... just a bit more broken, a bit more weary.
One of the most important lessons Reeve came out of Edel/Rosen with is that one has to be willing to fight to the end to keep hold of what they hold dear. To that end, he is very, very possessive. He's had to fight to hold onto his friends, his family, his very sanity- he will fight anything and anyone if necessary to keep the ones he cares for dear. Most of this is verbal sparring and bitter snark, but he's willing to get his hands dirty if he has to. He will defend those he cares for to the bitter end, if needed. They are his family- he has lost too much already. He won't tolerate losing anything else.
He's become quite jaded over time; he trusts very few people, and virtually no one in any position of authority. Doctors and the like are also not to be trusted; he'll panic at the idea of being caught alone with any medical or mental health professional. Being alone with anyone in general is something he will avoid. Intimacy is a taboo subject at this point. Discussion of sex crimes are a trigger he will avoid- discussion of child abuse of any kind is a huge trigger- and he will either try to forcefully change the subject, stop talking, or flee depending on the situation. Touch he can handle as long as he is the one to initiate it. The mob mentality is still a bit ingrained; he'll not have as many issues with the idea of mob justice as he should have, given his rank, especially when it comes to sex crimes.
His experiences have chipped away at his optimism; while he tries to keep the faith and hope for the best, he's adopted an 'expect the worst' mentality about many things as a way to protect himself from being disappointed. He'll still hope for the best, but he'll be prepared for when the best doesn't come.
Character Plans: Ideally, I'd like to see Reeve relearning what a semi-normal life is, and recovering from his 'stay' in Edelweiss/Rosenhan. Perhaps even coming to terms with himself. I'd love to see him actually getting a job and being productive again, rediscovering normal relationships.
Appearance/PB: here
Writing Samples
First Person Sample [A click, and a moment of silence underlied by static before a voice speaks- steely hard, the voice of someone who is accustomed to giving orders and having them followed.]
Who's really in charge here? I don't mean your little puppet government or whatever sop you give to the masses to control them. Who is behind all this?
[This time there's a slight note of something- not quite fear, not quite resignation- that catches in his voice before he continues.]
I'm not in the mood for yet another farce.
Third Person Sample Why was it that this place reminded him so heavily of Midgar?
Reeve sat at the window of the apartment assigned to him (but there was a key, and he could enter and exit freely, he'd tried that several times before allowing himself to settle down) and stared out over the port city. The coffee at his elbow had long since grown cold, and yet he stared at this hive of activity with something akin to confusion.
When was the last time he'd seen a city not at war?
Edge hardly counted as a city to him, even now- it was a half-built refugee camp around the fragments of Midgar, people still stubbornly clinging to his mistake. Kalm was... no, he'd seen it after Deepground attacked. Junon, perhaps? It had been minimally damaged by Meteor, but still had enough industry and pollution to make it resemble this strange land he now found himself in.
Idly he looked back down at the thin electronic notebook- NV, the natives called it- and flipped the cover open. So many people talking. Chatting. As if this was normal. How long had it been since a normal day had been normal for him?
... maybe he was thinking about it all too hard.
Rising, stretching until his joints popped, Reeve pushed the rickety chair back from the table and surveyed the tiny apartment. This was normal now, and would be until something new came along to upheave it. He'd just have to accept that.
The sun was setting; he watched the outside world creep into darkness, into rust and decay and horror. The shadows stirred and moved; it looked so... desolate. Haunted. Wasted, like... that place had, the hell he'd somehow managed to escape by fire and suffocation. A bitter smile crossed his face; his hands dug into his pantsleg, trembling. "So, finally showing your true colors?" he murmured to the emptiness. "That's all right. I've played your games before.
"I'm ready for you."