CHARACTER PROFILE
character name: Oz Vessalius
Fandom: Pandora Hearts (manga)
Timeline: Chapter 36, going into the cavern in Sablier.
character's age: Fifteen going on sixteen.
canon powers, skills, pets and equipment: In theory, he's good at all the pursuits of a young nobleman: can quote poetry, can dance, can handle the sword a little. Also, violins and painting. As contractor to the B-Rabbit, however, Oz shows a certain degree of control over Alice in battle - he can, for example, stop her from killing someone through sheer will. In recent chapters, he's also developed the ability to summon a scythe and wield it with supernatural speed and strength - though this leaves him insane. This skill has been previously sealed by Gilbert Nightray's Raven chain. Given the fact that he seems unconscious of how to summon it, there is no Gilbert currently in play, and that Oz was taken before that canon point, this is noted mostly for the sake of completeness. With no Alice around, his canon abilities are mostly restricted to the talent of digging up blackmail material on virtually anybody. ♥ Even if one should appear, I'd like to request that the seal on his chest remain unmoving, though not dormant, whether Alice uses her canon powers or not. Since... it would be awkward for him to be dragged to his doom every few months, and allowing the seal to move without repercussion to Oz would probably be OOC, as I suspect it ties into his future development at some point! But I don't want to interfere with anything an Alice has planned.
non-canon powers: Minor illusions. That is to say, as long as he's within the Mist's range, Oz can make it appear that he's rolled two sixes instead of snake eyes in a dice game, change his face and general appearance... though not on any sensory level but the visual! It's a key point to his character that Oz is a liar, that he makes the world appear to others however he wants it to be, and they don't catch on unless they're paying attention. The Mist could manifest this tendency in a much more literal way: preventing others from seeing what he doesn't want them to see. This power would only extend to himself and nearby objects, however. I'd like him to develop this power, from having the illusions vanish the moment he stops trying to keep it up (say, about ten minutes) or moves out of range (out of eyesight of the object) to lasting up to seven hours whether he's there or not. Regardless, he can only keep up a limited amount of illusions at a time.
If second abilities are allowed, I'd also appreciate a sort of acceptance/rejection power - that is to say, he can acquire negative status effects, such as ailments and injuries from others, and transfer them onto himself. This would not apply to major deathly injuries or illnesses that are too far gone, and attempts to acquire those will cause a backlash that will injure him without removing the original status effect. He can't heal any of these effects on his own power. Moreover, he'd have to touch them; he wouldn't be able to help anyone over the network. The ability to "reject" would be something like a physical shield, preventing others from passing him or getting to him and any one person or thing he's touching. Those who try will get bounced back no matter the direction or type of (physical) attack. Unfortunately, he won't be able to maintain it - even an hour will leave him draned, and that's after he practices. He'll be lucky to get two minutes' mileage out of it at first.
Oz's sense of worth is seeded in his desire to protect people - more specifically, to prevent them from carrying his burdens. In canon, Oz sees his presence as a weight, and wants to prevent others from carrying his burdens for him. He'd rather die alone, turning rescuers away, than see it happen. The shields would be a response to his desire to guard others from that. The second half - accepting - ties both into his tendency to acknowledge bizarre incidents and move on without really grasping the significance. His uncle says it himself: it puts a burden on Oz subconsciously that will someday break him apart. This ability would be another manifestation on the physical level: taking on heaviness until it breaks him.
canon history: Technically, Pandora Hearts's story starts a hundred years before Oz is born. Oz's own part can be summed up like this: for his fifteenth birthday, boy gets pushed into hell and forms bond with evil rabbit. After they escape, they try to figure out what just happened to them. Adventures ensue.
More details are difficult, since it's still a tangle as to what's going on, but here are the clearest facts: in a country ruled by the aristocracy, Oz was born the heir to the house of Vessalius. He grew up in a strangled atmosphere, amid whispers that the Nightray house had poisoned his mother. (One assumes / devoutly hopes that this happened after the birth of his younger sister.) Somewhere in this time, an orphan was found in the gardens, inept and clean of memories - a boy known only as Gilbert. Oscar, Oz's uncle, gave Gilbert to Oz as a servant - but he became much more than that: he was Oz's best friend. The rest of Oz's childhood, however, was shaped by a single question: why did his father never come to see him? Oz, being the perfect noble-in-training that he was, didn't question this. He studied harder, aspiring to impress his absent parent to such a degree that his father would accept and acknowledge him. But the reality became much more difficult to ignore when his father arrived in the mansion - and still failed to summon him. Fueled by his devotion to Oz, Gilbert set off to get the answers from the master himself. Oz caught up to him just as Duke Vessalius threw Gil down and told him the truth. He'd never acknowledge Oz, because the latter's very existence was a sin.
This was perhaps the defining moment of Oz's life.
In a way, Oz had built his entire being around the possibility of his absent father's approval. It took him three days to recover from the incident, spent in his room while Gilbert was locked away from him for daring to speak out against the master. In that time, he came to terms with his situation - by realizing that he couldn't. His only option was to accept what had happened, and to go on accepting it. Accept every impossible thing without questioning it in case it broke him apart.
Eventually, Oz becomes cheerful again. By his fifteenth birthday, he's grown into a charming, self-sacrificial boy with an occasionally sadistic flair for tormenting his best friend. Unfortunately for Oz, his coming-of-age goes horribly wrong. Just before the ceremony, a dark force possesses Gil. It uses him to wound Oz and force him into the Abyss: a broken-down dimension haunted by monsters known as Chains (who do eat small children, so there's a clear and present danger). Oz is attacked - but before he can be killed, a human-shaped Chain known as Alice comes to his aid. It's clear from the beginning that she's special. Most of her kind can't retain human form, and Alice is paticularly human as she searches for the history she can't remember. She offers Oz a contract - a pact between Chain and humans which grants the human's deepest desire and manifests the Chain's powers in the human world. Accept her Contract, and Oz can return to his own dimension. After some minor detours - being deceived by an evil Chain who wants to eat him, for one - Oz takes her hand. Together, they're released from the Abyss... and into the custody of the mysterious organization known as Pandora.
Seeking control over Oz, Xerxes Break offers him a position in the organization to investigate suspicious Chains loose in the world. In return, they allow him to keep living (well, contracts between Chain and human are illegal, after all)... and give Alice the opportunity to recover her lost memories. They accept - and are promptly dispatched alongside fellow agent Raven to investigate a local mansion. It's only in the middle of the mission that Oz is made to realize that the world isn't as he left it. Ten years have passed since he fell into the Abyss, though for Oz it can't have been more than a few hours. Moreover, Raven isn't just a Pandora agent: he's Gilbert - now Gilbert Nightray, having allowed himself to be adopted by the Nightray house in order to gain more resources with which to search for his master.
There comes then a revelation: Oz, as a Contractor, has been branded with a clock-like seal. Every time he summons Alice's powers in battle, the clock's hands twitch one mark forward. When it turns a full cycle, he will be dragged into the Abyss and consumed. But Oz accepts this, and their missions carry on. He even meets Vincent Nightray, Gilbert's little brother - an off-kilter man that Xerxes later warns him away from. During one of their breaks, however, Alice is dragged into the Abyss again along with Xerxes Break by a mysterious force known as Cheshire. Sharon Rainsworth, another Pandora agent, presents him a way into the Abyss to save her and he seizes it, for he's come to love Alice's awful simplicity. This time, however, the Abyss he visits is not composed of broken things and monsters, but of Alice's lost memories, which are tangled up in a tragedy that happened a hundred years ago - a wave of human sacrifices that he doesn't understand. In trying to save Alice, Oz inadvertently stumbles onto the reason she can't remember anything: she died a hundred years ago - was integral to the tragedy somehow, and was so shamed as to try to destroy that history wholly. Cheshire was guarding her secrets until she returned in search of the past that she herself had thrown away. These memories are so powerful as to overwhelm Oz. In a flash, her old desires possess him. Stripped of his own mind, he begins destroying her dimension - and everyone in it - according to her wishes. It's Gilbert who calls him back to sanity - Gil, his best friend who reminds him that they're not there to serve Alice's wishes: they're there to save her. Gilbert's voice calls him back to his senses, and Oz pleads for Alice to return to the real world with them. She doesn't have to be anybody but herself, he tells her, because that's the reason that he loves her in the first place. She awakens again, and they escape together.
Unfortunately, Alice's powers aren't wholly under control. They emerge in the human world, all right... in the middle of a confidential meeting between the remaining Dukes. Obviously, the nobles are not pleased. Before the manhunt can get too out-of-hand, however, another force possesses Oz, this one a figure from Alice's memories: Jack Vessalius, the hero who stopped the tragedy begun by his best friend Glen Baskerville - the tragedy that Alice herself was caught up in. Using his charisma, Jack convinces the Dukes that there's a risk that Glen will rise again and another tragedy may ensue. It's also made clear to Oz, from his words and gestures, that Gil too is connected to Jack. As they return to the mansion, Xerxes brings a sickening Sharon back, later explained to be the consequences of a kidnapping by Vincent. Meanwhile, Oz's uncle Oscar has grown worried about the growing darkness of their latest missions. He drags them off, ostensibly on the mission that Oz's little sister Ada (now ten years older than when he last saw her!) has fallen in love with someone at her school, and they must be there to appraise (read: horribly beat down) this boy and see if he can attain their approval. But Oz isn't merely reunited with his sister - he also encounters Eliot Nightray and his manservant Reo. Eliot instantly gets on his nerves by spoilering Oz for his favorite book series (he was stuck in an abyss for ten years! how was he supposed to know their world's equivalent of Snape Kills Dumbledore?).
But there's more to their meeting than that: for some reason, Oz discovers, Eliot knows an important lullaby - a secret composed by, and known only to those close to, Glen Baskerville. As is typical for Oz, he's kidnapped on his way by the organization of Baskervilles, a creepy fellowship utterly devoted to Glen's memory. For some reason, this involves one of the members, Lotti, badtouching him a great deal. When Eliot and Reo come to his rescue, however, Oz tries to turn them away. It's none of their business; he got himself kidnapped and he doesn't want to get them into danger just for him.
This is possibly another key point for Oz, as Eliot points out exactly how screwed up this perspective is. Who gets picky about being rescued? He's getting rescued, and he can shut up and accept that! If he feels that he's not good enough, then he should learn to get better! Also, has Eliot mentioned that Oz needs to shut up yet? This might seem like a good start to a beautiful friendship. It's nipped in the bud, however, when Gil chances upon their return from the kidnapping. Eliot is deeply antagonistic towards Gilbert, as the latter managed to bind the Raven chain to him and for this reason has become significant to the Nightlay house over the legitimate son, Eliot. The latter gets even crankier when he finds out that Oz is a Vessalius - a descendent of Jack Vessalius, the man who stopped the tragedy a hundred years ago. Eliot himself is a descendent of the Nightrays, who were rumored to be connected to the Baskervilles and were then the lowest of the houses. To associate with a Vessalius is a stain on his honor, and he turns away from them.
It's not a happy thought for Oz, but he doesn't have much time to brood over this, as they're shortly made to take another field trip - this time to the Duke of Barma, who purportedly knows everything and might therefore give them a lead. After a brief scuffle - because it is a manga - Barma is unmasked! Not a whimsical old man as he pretends, but a distant, contemptuous figure. He reveals Break, too, to be an illegal Contractor, and one who doesn't have much time left. Nonetheless, Oz accepts this - and even calls Break his friend, if only to annoy both Break and Barma simultaneously. With no information to be gained from Barma, they return to the Rainsworth household. Gilbert goes out to visit his brother Vincent and Oz takes the day off to enjoy a festival with, as it turns out, Vincent's faithful servant Echo. He takes the opportunity to dress her up and teach her how to be happy, as she's a little mechanical and disconnected from the world, which pretty girls shouldn't be. The evening is slightly spoiled when Oz's Contract activates for no apparent reason. Oz collapses. When he wakes, Echo is gone. The fact that Oz refuses to tell Gilbert - who can sense Oz using the Contract through his own Raven seal - what happened causes a rift between them. In the meantime, Oz continues to train - with the sword, etc - in order to become more useful, and to take a stand in his own life.
Before long, Oz, Gilbert and Alice are dispatched again - this time to the center of the tragedy that happened a hundred years ago: Sablier, the ruined city. There, he meets Eliot again, as the Nightray family apparently keeps an orphanage there for the various children whose parents succumbed to the poisonous gases that still cover much of the city. Hearing a rumor that a local cavern may lead them into the Abyss - and offer them more clues about what exactly happened in Sabrie a hundred years ago - Oz ventures in... but he never makes it to the Abyss.
personality: Brat. Flirt. Heir.
Oz transitions from one role to the next without a hitch. He’s apt at goading, blackmailing and insulting people in the most childish ways possible. He doesn’t even need to be prompted to start in on someone, only interested enough in them to poke in all the wrong ways. It’s all part of his innate motivation to keep himself entertained. Only a year ago, he hung his servant from trees and sicced cats - Gil’s mortal fear - on him just for fun. It should be noted that he does this without malice. He’d never really harm anyone, physically or otherwise; Oz just has terrible ideas about what’s fun.
His smoothness with words also translates to a romantic air when it comes to flirtation - Oz is full of the kind of lines that you ought, by right, to find in host clubs. “If I take this flower with me, it’ll only wither,” he tells a flower-girl. “But if you wear it, then the two of you will continue to bloom within me!” But these gestures are made just for the fun of them, because he’s a romantic rather than because he’s a Casanova in training. Oz likes to charm people, and so these kinds of lines aren’t reserved for girls specifically. He’s been known to use them on virtually anyone.
This isn’t to say that he doesn’t know Stranger Danger when he sees it. Oz is actually a pretty perceptive person, clever and decent at getting accurate first impressions. He’s no hero, though, inclined to Great Moral Strides - Oz can keep up appearances with someone he dislikes as easily as he likes them. It takes a seriously bad incident to completely throw him off… or simply an enigmatic personality. He’s not fond of mysteries.
Above all else, however, he is the heir to the Vessalius estate. As such, Oz has an innate knowledge of courtesy and what’s expected of him, and he fulfills every expectation to the fullest. But the ease with which he performs in each of these roles reveals the fourth and key facet of his character: liar. He can talk with all the sincerity in the world, and he doesn’t often lie to other people about their affairs. When it comes to himself, though, Oz is full of illusions and easy pretenses. They’re all he’s got as shields. If he doesn’t hold onto those, he’s nothing.
Underneath all the pretenses, Oz is a boy clinging to his father’s valuation of him. His often-absent father, who told him when he was young that he wished Oz had never been born and cast him into the Abyss for his fifteenth birthday. This belief in his own lack of worth hasn’t gone away in the three years since. It’s simply become part of him. At the time his father told him, Oz understood: he had to either break down completely or accept it, and he couldn’t bear to break down. But this feeling of worthlessness has come to be his driving motivation with other people. He functions for other people; his existence and usefulness is wholly defined by what he can do for them. In and of himself, Oz means nothing. He refuses to act against others - hurting someone is simply too heavy a burden for him to carry.
Naturally, that early feeling of “break down or accept” has also formed his view on life. Because Oz refuses to break, he continues to accept everything, no matter how absurd. He emerged from the Abyss and accepted instantly that the world had advanced ten years while he was gone, that he was bonded to a Chain and, if they didn’t find some way out of it, he would be doomed to die insane and be cast back into the Abyss. Given the fact that Oz has no special abilities and wasn’t even aware of an overtly supernatural existence in his world prior to this, the fact that he doesn’t freak out is a little bizarre. But accept or break down - and he’s always chosen the first.
Recently, though, having been made aware of how much pressure that puts on him, he’s started to try to break out of it a little more. Accept things a little less. Ask the right questions. He’s not doing very well, but he’s trying. The strain’s showing a little more, and he’s a little more tired than he used to be. But he won’t fall apart. He has Alice to live for, after all - he owes it to her to find her memories. She needs him. His affection for her is perhaps the simplest and most sincere feeling Oz has.
Underneath it all, though, Oz means well. He wants to save everyone - and maybe put a cat in their beds while he’s at it, just for fun.
Fandom: Pandora Hearts (manga)
Timeline: Chapter 36, going into the cavern in Sablier.
character's age: Fifteen going on sixteen.
canon powers, skills, pets and equipment: In theory, he's good at all the pursuits of a young nobleman: can quote poetry, can dance, can handle the sword a little. Also, violins and painting. As contractor to the B-Rabbit, however, Oz shows a certain degree of control over Alice in battle - he can, for example, stop her from killing someone through sheer will. In recent chapters, he's also developed the ability to summon a scythe and wield it with supernatural speed and strength - though this leaves him insane. This skill has been previously sealed by Gilbert Nightray's Raven chain. Given the fact that he seems unconscious of how to summon it, there is no Gilbert currently in play, and that Oz was taken before that canon point, this is noted mostly for the sake of completeness. With no Alice around, his canon abilities are mostly restricted to the talent of digging up blackmail material on virtually anybody. ♥ Even if one should appear, I'd like to request that the seal on his chest remain unmoving, though not dormant, whether Alice uses her canon powers or not. Since... it would be awkward for him to be dragged to his doom every few months, and allowing the seal to move without repercussion to Oz would probably be OOC, as I suspect it ties into his future development at some point! But I don't want to interfere with anything an Alice has planned.
non-canon powers: Minor illusions. That is to say, as long as he's within the Mist's range, Oz can make it appear that he's rolled two sixes instead of snake eyes in a dice game, change his face and general appearance... though not on any sensory level but the visual! It's a key point to his character that Oz is a liar, that he makes the world appear to others however he wants it to be, and they don't catch on unless they're paying attention. The Mist could manifest this tendency in a much more literal way: preventing others from seeing what he doesn't want them to see. This power would only extend to himself and nearby objects, however. I'd like him to develop this power, from having the illusions vanish the moment he stops trying to keep it up (say, about ten minutes) or moves out of range (out of eyesight of the object) to lasting up to seven hours whether he's there or not. Regardless, he can only keep up a limited amount of illusions at a time.
If second abilities are allowed, I'd also appreciate a sort of acceptance/rejection power - that is to say, he can acquire negative status effects, such as ailments and injuries from others, and transfer them onto himself. This would not apply to major deathly injuries or illnesses that are too far gone, and attempts to acquire those will cause a backlash that will injure him without removing the original status effect. He can't heal any of these effects on his own power. Moreover, he'd have to touch them; he wouldn't be able to help anyone over the network. The ability to "reject" would be something like a physical shield, preventing others from passing him or getting to him and any one person or thing he's touching. Those who try will get bounced back no matter the direction or type of (physical) attack. Unfortunately, he won't be able to maintain it - even an hour will leave him draned, and that's after he practices. He'll be lucky to get two minutes' mileage out of it at first.
Oz's sense of worth is seeded in his desire to protect people - more specifically, to prevent them from carrying his burdens. In canon, Oz sees his presence as a weight, and wants to prevent others from carrying his burdens for him. He'd rather die alone, turning rescuers away, than see it happen. The shields would be a response to his desire to guard others from that. The second half - accepting - ties both into his tendency to acknowledge bizarre incidents and move on without really grasping the significance. His uncle says it himself: it puts a burden on Oz subconsciously that will someday break him apart. This ability would be another manifestation on the physical level: taking on heaviness until it breaks him.
canon history: Technically, Pandora Hearts's story starts a hundred years before Oz is born. Oz's own part can be summed up like this: for his fifteenth birthday, boy gets pushed into hell and forms bond with evil rabbit. After they escape, they try to figure out what just happened to them. Adventures ensue.
More details are difficult, since it's still a tangle as to what's going on, but here are the clearest facts: in a country ruled by the aristocracy, Oz was born the heir to the house of Vessalius. He grew up in a strangled atmosphere, amid whispers that the Nightray house had poisoned his mother. (One assumes / devoutly hopes that this happened after the birth of his younger sister.) Somewhere in this time, an orphan was found in the gardens, inept and clean of memories - a boy known only as Gilbert. Oscar, Oz's uncle, gave Gilbert to Oz as a servant - but he became much more than that: he was Oz's best friend. The rest of Oz's childhood, however, was shaped by a single question: why did his father never come to see him? Oz, being the perfect noble-in-training that he was, didn't question this. He studied harder, aspiring to impress his absent parent to such a degree that his father would accept and acknowledge him. But the reality became much more difficult to ignore when his father arrived in the mansion - and still failed to summon him. Fueled by his devotion to Oz, Gilbert set off to get the answers from the master himself. Oz caught up to him just as Duke Vessalius threw Gil down and told him the truth. He'd never acknowledge Oz, because the latter's very existence was a sin.
This was perhaps the defining moment of Oz's life.
In a way, Oz had built his entire being around the possibility of his absent father's approval. It took him three days to recover from the incident, spent in his room while Gilbert was locked away from him for daring to speak out against the master. In that time, he came to terms with his situation - by realizing that he couldn't. His only option was to accept what had happened, and to go on accepting it. Accept every impossible thing without questioning it in case it broke him apart.
Eventually, Oz becomes cheerful again. By his fifteenth birthday, he's grown into a charming, self-sacrificial boy with an occasionally sadistic flair for tormenting his best friend. Unfortunately for Oz, his coming-of-age goes horribly wrong. Just before the ceremony, a dark force possesses Gil. It uses him to wound Oz and force him into the Abyss: a broken-down dimension haunted by monsters known as Chains (who do eat small children, so there's a clear and present danger). Oz is attacked - but before he can be killed, a human-shaped Chain known as Alice comes to his aid. It's clear from the beginning that she's special. Most of her kind can't retain human form, and Alice is paticularly human as she searches for the history she can't remember. She offers Oz a contract - a pact between Chain and humans which grants the human's deepest desire and manifests the Chain's powers in the human world. Accept her Contract, and Oz can return to his own dimension. After some minor detours - being deceived by an evil Chain who wants to eat him, for one - Oz takes her hand. Together, they're released from the Abyss... and into the custody of the mysterious organization known as Pandora.
Seeking control over Oz, Xerxes Break offers him a position in the organization to investigate suspicious Chains loose in the world. In return, they allow him to keep living (well, contracts between Chain and human are illegal, after all)... and give Alice the opportunity to recover her lost memories. They accept - and are promptly dispatched alongside fellow agent Raven to investigate a local mansion. It's only in the middle of the mission that Oz is made to realize that the world isn't as he left it. Ten years have passed since he fell into the Abyss, though for Oz it can't have been more than a few hours. Moreover, Raven isn't just a Pandora agent: he's Gilbert - now Gilbert Nightray, having allowed himself to be adopted by the Nightray house in order to gain more resources with which to search for his master.
There comes then a revelation: Oz, as a Contractor, has been branded with a clock-like seal. Every time he summons Alice's powers in battle, the clock's hands twitch one mark forward. When it turns a full cycle, he will be dragged into the Abyss and consumed. But Oz accepts this, and their missions carry on. He even meets Vincent Nightray, Gilbert's little brother - an off-kilter man that Xerxes later warns him away from. During one of their breaks, however, Alice is dragged into the Abyss again along with Xerxes Break by a mysterious force known as Cheshire. Sharon Rainsworth, another Pandora agent, presents him a way into the Abyss to save her and he seizes it, for he's come to love Alice's awful simplicity. This time, however, the Abyss he visits is not composed of broken things and monsters, but of Alice's lost memories, which are tangled up in a tragedy that happened a hundred years ago - a wave of human sacrifices that he doesn't understand. In trying to save Alice, Oz inadvertently stumbles onto the reason she can't remember anything: she died a hundred years ago - was integral to the tragedy somehow, and was so shamed as to try to destroy that history wholly. Cheshire was guarding her secrets until she returned in search of the past that she herself had thrown away. These memories are so powerful as to overwhelm Oz. In a flash, her old desires possess him. Stripped of his own mind, he begins destroying her dimension - and everyone in it - according to her wishes. It's Gilbert who calls him back to sanity - Gil, his best friend who reminds him that they're not there to serve Alice's wishes: they're there to save her. Gilbert's voice calls him back to his senses, and Oz pleads for Alice to return to the real world with them. She doesn't have to be anybody but herself, he tells her, because that's the reason that he loves her in the first place. She awakens again, and they escape together.
Unfortunately, Alice's powers aren't wholly under control. They emerge in the human world, all right... in the middle of a confidential meeting between the remaining Dukes. Obviously, the nobles are not pleased. Before the manhunt can get too out-of-hand, however, another force possesses Oz, this one a figure from Alice's memories: Jack Vessalius, the hero who stopped the tragedy begun by his best friend Glen Baskerville - the tragedy that Alice herself was caught up in. Using his charisma, Jack convinces the Dukes that there's a risk that Glen will rise again and another tragedy may ensue. It's also made clear to Oz, from his words and gestures, that Gil too is connected to Jack. As they return to the mansion, Xerxes brings a sickening Sharon back, later explained to be the consequences of a kidnapping by Vincent. Meanwhile, Oz's uncle Oscar has grown worried about the growing darkness of their latest missions. He drags them off, ostensibly on the mission that Oz's little sister Ada (now ten years older than when he last saw her!) has fallen in love with someone at her school, and they must be there to appraise (read: horribly beat down) this boy and see if he can attain their approval. But Oz isn't merely reunited with his sister - he also encounters Eliot Nightray and his manservant Reo. Eliot instantly gets on his nerves by spoilering Oz for his favorite book series (he was stuck in an abyss for ten years! how was he supposed to know their world's equivalent of Snape Kills Dumbledore?).
But there's more to their meeting than that: for some reason, Oz discovers, Eliot knows an important lullaby - a secret composed by, and known only to those close to, Glen Baskerville. As is typical for Oz, he's kidnapped on his way by the organization of Baskervilles, a creepy fellowship utterly devoted to Glen's memory. For some reason, this involves one of the members, Lotti, badtouching him a great deal. When Eliot and Reo come to his rescue, however, Oz tries to turn them away. It's none of their business; he got himself kidnapped and he doesn't want to get them into danger just for him.
This is possibly another key point for Oz, as Eliot points out exactly how screwed up this perspective is. Who gets picky about being rescued? He's getting rescued, and he can shut up and accept that! If he feels that he's not good enough, then he should learn to get better! Also, has Eliot mentioned that Oz needs to shut up yet? This might seem like a good start to a beautiful friendship. It's nipped in the bud, however, when Gil chances upon their return from the kidnapping. Eliot is deeply antagonistic towards Gilbert, as the latter managed to bind the Raven chain to him and for this reason has become significant to the Nightlay house over the legitimate son, Eliot. The latter gets even crankier when he finds out that Oz is a Vessalius - a descendent of Jack Vessalius, the man who stopped the tragedy a hundred years ago. Eliot himself is a descendent of the Nightrays, who were rumored to be connected to the Baskervilles and were then the lowest of the houses. To associate with a Vessalius is a stain on his honor, and he turns away from them.
It's not a happy thought for Oz, but he doesn't have much time to brood over this, as they're shortly made to take another field trip - this time to the Duke of Barma, who purportedly knows everything and might therefore give them a lead. After a brief scuffle - because it is a manga - Barma is unmasked! Not a whimsical old man as he pretends, but a distant, contemptuous figure. He reveals Break, too, to be an illegal Contractor, and one who doesn't have much time left. Nonetheless, Oz accepts this - and even calls Break his friend, if only to annoy both Break and Barma simultaneously. With no information to be gained from Barma, they return to the Rainsworth household. Gilbert goes out to visit his brother Vincent and Oz takes the day off to enjoy a festival with, as it turns out, Vincent's faithful servant Echo. He takes the opportunity to dress her up and teach her how to be happy, as she's a little mechanical and disconnected from the world, which pretty girls shouldn't be. The evening is slightly spoiled when Oz's Contract activates for no apparent reason. Oz collapses. When he wakes, Echo is gone. The fact that Oz refuses to tell Gilbert - who can sense Oz using the Contract through his own Raven seal - what happened causes a rift between them. In the meantime, Oz continues to train - with the sword, etc - in order to become more useful, and to take a stand in his own life.
Before long, Oz, Gilbert and Alice are dispatched again - this time to the center of the tragedy that happened a hundred years ago: Sablier, the ruined city. There, he meets Eliot again, as the Nightray family apparently keeps an orphanage there for the various children whose parents succumbed to the poisonous gases that still cover much of the city. Hearing a rumor that a local cavern may lead them into the Abyss - and offer them more clues about what exactly happened in Sabrie a hundred years ago - Oz ventures in... but he never makes it to the Abyss.
personality: Brat. Flirt. Heir.
Oz transitions from one role to the next without a hitch. He’s apt at goading, blackmailing and insulting people in the most childish ways possible. He doesn’t even need to be prompted to start in on someone, only interested enough in them to poke in all the wrong ways. It’s all part of his innate motivation to keep himself entertained. Only a year ago, he hung his servant from trees and sicced cats - Gil’s mortal fear - on him just for fun. It should be noted that he does this without malice. He’d never really harm anyone, physically or otherwise; Oz just has terrible ideas about what’s fun.
His smoothness with words also translates to a romantic air when it comes to flirtation - Oz is full of the kind of lines that you ought, by right, to find in host clubs. “If I take this flower with me, it’ll only wither,” he tells a flower-girl. “But if you wear it, then the two of you will continue to bloom within me!” But these gestures are made just for the fun of them, because he’s a romantic rather than because he’s a Casanova in training. Oz likes to charm people, and so these kinds of lines aren’t reserved for girls specifically. He’s been known to use them on virtually anyone.
This isn’t to say that he doesn’t know Stranger Danger when he sees it. Oz is actually a pretty perceptive person, clever and decent at getting accurate first impressions. He’s no hero, though, inclined to Great Moral Strides - Oz can keep up appearances with someone he dislikes as easily as he likes them. It takes a seriously bad incident to completely throw him off… or simply an enigmatic personality. He’s not fond of mysteries.
Above all else, however, he is the heir to the Vessalius estate. As such, Oz has an innate knowledge of courtesy and what’s expected of him, and he fulfills every expectation to the fullest. But the ease with which he performs in each of these roles reveals the fourth and key facet of his character: liar. He can talk with all the sincerity in the world, and he doesn’t often lie to other people about their affairs. When it comes to himself, though, Oz is full of illusions and easy pretenses. They’re all he’s got as shields. If he doesn’t hold onto those, he’s nothing.
Underneath all the pretenses, Oz is a boy clinging to his father’s valuation of him. His often-absent father, who told him when he was young that he wished Oz had never been born and cast him into the Abyss for his fifteenth birthday. This belief in his own lack of worth hasn’t gone away in the three years since. It’s simply become part of him. At the time his father told him, Oz understood: he had to either break down completely or accept it, and he couldn’t bear to break down. But this feeling of worthlessness has come to be his driving motivation with other people. He functions for other people; his existence and usefulness is wholly defined by what he can do for them. In and of himself, Oz means nothing. He refuses to act against others - hurting someone is simply too heavy a burden for him to carry.
Naturally, that early feeling of “break down or accept” has also formed his view on life. Because Oz refuses to break, he continues to accept everything, no matter how absurd. He emerged from the Abyss and accepted instantly that the world had advanced ten years while he was gone, that he was bonded to a Chain and, if they didn’t find some way out of it, he would be doomed to die insane and be cast back into the Abyss. Given the fact that Oz has no special abilities and wasn’t even aware of an overtly supernatural existence in his world prior to this, the fact that he doesn’t freak out is a little bizarre. But accept or break down - and he’s always chosen the first.
Recently, though, having been made aware of how much pressure that puts on him, he’s started to try to break out of it a little more. Accept things a little less. Ask the right questions. He’s not doing very well, but he’s trying. The strain’s showing a little more, and he’s a little more tired than he used to be. But he won’t fall apart. He has Alice to live for, after all - he owes it to her to find her memories. She needs him. His affection for her is perhaps the simplest and most sincere feeling Oz has.
Underneath it all, though, Oz means well. He wants to save everyone - and maybe put a cat in their beds while he’s at it, just for fun.