Character Name: Czeslaw Meyer
Character Series: Baccano!
Character Age: 10 ( in body, chronologically he's 230 during the 1930's arc, and then 300 in 2001 )
Background: Czeslaw's story starts some 200 years before the rest of the 1931 cast, and before most of the 1930 and 1932 cast as well. His begins in 1711, in an event that sets the next 300 years in motion, aboard the Advenna Aviss. During this time Czeslaw was in the care of an older man named Fermet for an unspecified amount of time. It can be assumed that under the man’s tutelage he was learning not only normal studies but alchemy as well, due to the light novels reference to Czes being an alchemist.
As the ship covered a particularly desolate stretch of the sea, something began to happen happen aboard the ship. A man named Maiza knew the way to summon a demon so everyone aboard the Advenna Aviss could become Immortal. And much to the surprise of everyone there, it worked. By drinking the Cure-All Elixir they were granted immortality, at the price of not being able to hide their true names from one another. Nothing could kill them anymore. Well, nothing except being devoured by another Immortal. It’s a simple process. Just place your right hand on top of the head of the Immortal you would lie to devour and think "I want to eat."
Skip forward a few hours ( or days, we're not told ) when the oldest in the group, Slizard Quates flips out and begins to devour as many people as he can ( because he wants to "know everyone's thoughts, feeling, memories, and knowledge." ). It isn't really known if these events significantly affected Czeslaw because we're never really shown it during the situation. (We do get a shot of him with everyone on the rest of the deck after they stooped Slizard, and he merely turns to look at Fermet.)
Skip forward a few years ( again, we're not told how many, though by this point it doesn't matter ). Czeslaw is still in the care of Fermet, but things have changed drastically. Under the disguise of "testing the limits of immortality", Fermet has begun to systematically torture Czes through various means. A few named for us, later in the show are: having his eyes stabbed out with hot fireplace tongs, dropped in an acid bath, and thrown into a roaring fireplace. ( And we see Fermet sharpening a large butcher's knife as Czes' eyes heal. Makes you wonder what was next for the poor kid. ) After years ( debated between 20-200 years, why are we so unsure of these numbers? ), Czeslaw finally snapped, devouring Fermet in a desperate bid to escape anymore suffering. He then fled, though we don't know where.
He surfaces once again on the Flying Pussyfoot, a train making its way to New York in 1931. We're soon informed that he is in fact on his way to New York to meet his family ( though this later proves untrue, he was heading there to devour Maiza ), and that he had made friends with the governors daughter; Mary. Though Czeslaw looks like a cute child, it becomes apparently quickly that he is much more as he begins to worry about another Immortal being aboard the train, as revealed when he ended up giving his real name to Isaac and the others in the Dining Car, instead of his alias: Thomas.
As chaos starts on the train, Czes hides out with Mary, eventually abandoning her in a broom closet because he felt she would only get in the way of him locating the Immortal. The next time we see him, he has moved to a storage car within the train, and is now talking to Ladd Russo, one of the White Suits who began to interrupt the Black Suit’s hijacking of the Flying Pussyfoot earlier in the show. Why Czeslaw is with this psycho is a big question, but only for a few seconds. See, it seems he wants to Ladd to blow up the dining car because he has "business with one of the corpses". Yep. Our cute little shota is really a creeper.
Ladd becomes angry when he perceives Czeslaw to be acting as if he is superior to him, and shoots him in the face twice and leaves. After a short time, Czes heals, after which he decides Ladd is nothing more than a "useless thug" and that he will have to devour the Immortal before he or she gets to Czes. But guess what! The conductor gone killer in an earlier episode? He heard Czeslaw, and, in a twisted sense of justice, goes after him, first strangling him and then attaching Czes to bottom of the train when he discovers his immortality.
But no fear, because Czes finally catches a break after 230 years. Isaac and Miria find him on the bottom of the train, and Isaac attempts to save him, only to reveal that he is one of the Immortals ( Miria is too ) that Czeslaw has been searching for. Upon seeing this, Czeslaw panics, trying to push Isaac away from him. This only succeeds to, you guessed it, send them both flying off the train completely. Miria attempts to save both of them, only to end up falling off the train soon. In a true show of heroism and caring, Isaac and Miria embrace, keeping Czes between them so he will be safe. After the lovely experience of dangling on a rope in the air for your life, the group finally lands on top of the train.
Now, the way Baccano! Immortals heal in not like most others. While others simply regenerate, Baccano! Takes care of the trouble problem with blood stains and just bring everything; skin, bone, and blood back together. Look, ma, no stains! All that blood Czes lost having his arm and both legs removed decides to make its way back to him, crawling up the face of the train. Believing this is the Rail Tracer come to eat what's left of Czes, they dive to protect him, covering him with their bodies and stunning Czes. For the first time, someone is showing genuine care for him, exactly what Czes has always needed. Isaac decides to deem himself Czes's "Dear Uncle", and both Isaac and Miria tell him that he can finally be happy, and smile again. He no longer has to worry, and he is a "good boy". ( They believed he lied about going to New York to meet family when he does not have one to keep them from worrying. )
Morning dawns on the Flying Pussyfoot, the Rail Tracer finally stops killing people, and the train pulls into a station in New York. Isaac and Miria ( always them, naturally ) offer Czeslaw up to a woman named Ennis, who is a homunculus that Slizard created and was later killed by her combined efforts with a man named Firo ) as a "little brother". However, their conversation is cut short when Czes notices Maiza, the man he came to New York to devour. Czes seems to resign himself to a fate of being devoured by him, unable to bring himself to raise his right hand to eat Maiza. But instead of placing his right hand on Czes's head, he uses his left, merely stroking the boys hair. While Czeslaw has his little paranoid thoughts about Maiza tricking him so he can devour him later, the man assures him that it's fine, and everything is like it was back on the ship. Czeslaw once again bursts into tears, thinking that it can't be like it once was. He then hugs Maiza, crying about how much he had missed him.
The light novels ( or what has been translated of them ) also tell us that after all of this, Czes goes onto live with Ennis and Firo, who marry a few years later. He stays with them for a while, hopefully becoming less of a Paranoid Survivalist and moving on with his life, before he goes off with Maiza to find the other Immortals that have gone into hiding to keep from being devoured by Slizard.
Personality: Czeslaw is a very bright young boy. He is friendly and dedicated to helping other people and he loves spending time with his friends, although he makes sure to have his studies taking care of first. He loves to learn and explore, ever the curious soul and he's a polite child that gets along well with adults ; again, always ready to help if need be. He's kind and gentle, but very outgoing.
This, however, is a complete sham.
To understand the person Czeslaw really is, you have to know what he's been through. For over two hundred years, Czeslaw was put through barbaric torture at the hands of his guardian, Fermet. Though he was told it was to "test the limits of our immortality", it was only to satisfy Fermet's sadism. Czeslaw quickly came to realize this, and in a desperate attempt get away, consumed Fermet, resulting in gaining his memories. So he has memories of happily torturing himself. The kid is justifiably messed up.
Czeslaw is really cynical and quite paranoid. Under that agreeable mask is a miserable boy, one who would do anything to keep himself alive, even sacrifice dozens of people. This isn't to say Czes is a bad person, just deeply traumatized. He's willing to do anything and use anyone to get what he wants, no matter the body count at the end of it. Czeslaw is cautious, refusing to tell anyone his real name ( and has a freak out of epic proportions when he realizes he's given it, because Immortals are unable to give false names to one another. ), and playing up the image of the cute little boy, all the while scheming.
His darker attitude ranges from rude (he thought a young girl was getting in his way, so he abandoned her) to flat out dangerous (to find one person, he was willing to have dozens of people killed.)
But all in all, Czeslaw is really just a traumatized child who wants nothing more then his life to be how it was before he became immortal and everything went to hell.
Abilities: Because he's an immortal, obviously, Czeslaw cannot die. Should he be injured in anyway, all of his blood and skin and such will be drawn back to his body, and he'll heal up. The only way to actually kill him is for another Immortal to eat him. Good luck with that.
Sample Entry:
Dear Mun ( older )
SortingHat_RP ( recent ).