[ooc] lang application
CHARACTER INFO
Name | Alma Karma
Series | D.Gray-Man
Canon Point | End of chapter 199
Reference | D.Gray-Man wiki entry | Alma's wiki entry
Age | He is physically 20 years old. Mentally, however, he has only awake for about two years of his current body’s life, but he does remember parts of his life previous to becoming a Second Exorcist, where he was an adult female. Alma acts the part of being an adult sometimes, while also keeping his childishness at other times. His mental age I would point at fluxing between the ignorance and nativity of 10, while having the maturity to deal with subjects as much as a real 20 year old. It seems to round out to perhaps a 15-16 year old mentality that has the potential to ‘grow up’ very quickly, but also have the strength/weakness of emotions of someone who hasn’t had all the time to deal with the identity and emotional confusion Alma seems to collect by the boat load.
Gender | Alma is physically male, but mentally identifies parts of self as female, and parts as male. Gender is a large issue with Alma. First, I will explain that for pronouns I will use male ones for Alma, HOWEVER, this is not to say my Alma identifies as male. I use it because Alma's gender identity is OMGWTFBBQ and in grammatically correct English, the male pronoun is also used to gender neutral situations. Alma canonly refers to himself using the more male pronoun, but uses the more female pronoun to talk about his pastself (the woman Alma was in his first life, previous to becoming an experiment)--so, this is what I will do. Unless I am distinctly referring to past!Alma, I'll be using male pronouns. Although, Alma’s actual gender identity seems to be both male and female, with female leanings, so Alma may choose to deal with his gender identity differently later on, depending on how things develop.
Suitability | (My character doesn’t need to be ‘aged up’ exactly, but there is debate over whether he is mentally too much of a child, so I’m including this section just to be sure.) Alma is childish, and during his second life, he was only ‘conscious’ for maybe two years of it, however Alma is not entirely a child in an adult body. He is immature at times, throwing tantrums and roughhousing with his friend Yu when they get into fights, but he also shows maturity in his decisions and actions with topics children aren’t often able to handle, let alone grasp in their entirety.
He can handle being tortured, torn apart, and still have a strong sense of justice and willpower. Selfishly selfless, he tries to destroy Yu and himself to bury what happened to their pastselves, but also to punishment those who performed the actions. All of Alma’s actions, while somewhat misguided, were thought-out and directly executed. He had his reasons, and yes some of them were childish reasons, but much of his reasoning was mature and mindful of the consequences. While he has not had to deal with sexual situations in canon, and it is likely (being a young Victorian woman and possibly Catholic) that his pastself may not ever broken her virginity either despite being canonly in a relationship with someone, this doesn’t mean Alma is unfit to handle sex itself. (He just may need a better explanation of where babies come from rather than the fail one Edgar gave Yu, which Alma overheard when they were children.)
Appearance | Alma is kind of Asian-looking, with dark, short hair, rounded features, and angular eyes. However he's rather obviously not completely Asian with his large eyes and oversized, fuzzy eyebrows. His hair is usually kept short with fringe and side bits that frame his face while the rest is very short and scruffy.
He is losing most of his Akuma-look because he will be human for the sake of Languishment. He will keep the black markings patterned all over him, including a large triangle on his stomach, tribal-like markings on his biceps, and a hand/claw marking over his heart. Alma also is keeping the prehensile, demonic-looking tail as well as his pointed ears. The halo-disc, shoulder spikes and doll-like joints are gone for more human features.
Personality | Alma can be very eager to please, as he wants to be liked by everyone he knows. Granted, his world has been limited to the science team and Yu Kanda who initially wants nothing to do with him. Lacking true social skills from his few (awake) meager years of sheltered life, Alma can be mistaken for an idiot quite easily in his ignorance of the world at large, as well as his eagerness in which he tries to befriend people.
Even in the darkest of times, Alma is a very optimistic person. Even when things look bad, he tries to find the bright parts and bring them into the light, however that doesn't he can actually always find the bright parts. There are times when he only pretends to find the good in all the bad. He'll smile even when things are horrible just to lift someone else's spirits and hide his own falling ones.
He's also very easy with his emotions. He's not afraid, when pushed too far, to blow up in a blaze of childish tantrums, or fall to the ground and wail loudly with tears and snot everywhere. This can be good and bad, being that while he's a very honest person, he can also come off as a child after such actions.
But even though he can seem childish, Alma is able to deal with very mature situations with the ease and sensibility of an adult. He can stand being torn to pieces everyday in the experiments trying to get him to sync with his Innocence (a kind of weapon in his canon), and still smile and laugh afterward when oops, his arm just fell off, don't worry it'll be fine. Alma also shows maturity and intelligence beyond his second life’s childishness when dealing with the knowledge of the Second Exorcist project. He takes a situation that would destroy other people-and yes he goes murderously insane, but a frighteningly logical insane. He is able to make an argument for his actions and understand what he did was wrong, but also say that while it’s wrong, it was necessary in his understanding.
The boy is like a sponge, soaking up any and all information, just trying to make sense of this world that he's known for only a year or so he thinks. Even when Alma didn’t remember his past life before becoming a Second Exorcist, it affected how he reacted to things. When alone and surrounded by adults, he is mature and extremely thoughtful about his actions. Yet, even with the fact he's grown up once, died, and was reawakened, Alma is very much a child at times.
However his childish maturity, Alma has a deep rooted sense anger at the world. It started, in his second life, with Yu ignoring him as a child, throwing off every honest attempt at making friends. Alma had waited so long, all alone, for just one friend, and when Yu wakes up and continually just blows him off-it’s not just a “oh well, there’s more fish in the sea” thing. Yu is his one chance to make a proper friend and the other boy wants nothing at all to do with him. It’s heartbreaking and begins that small crackle of anger.
The crackle of anger grows into a scarred burning mass of pure hatred when Yu yet again refuses him, only made worse when Alma remembers his past and knows what Yu and he were lovers in their first lives. The fact Yu doesn’t recognize Alma as the woman who appears in the hallucinations is at once heartbreaking but also drives that hatred inward towards Alma’s own self, because why should he want Yu to recognize him? If Yu recognizes him--well that just leads to a can of issues about Alma’s identity, his gender, and insecurity about losing Yu.
This fear of losing friends and connections he’s made is not limited to Yu, although Yu is the greatest example of this in effect. Alma was a very lonely boy for a long time, and it didn’t matter that Alma used to know Yu in his past life to why Alma was obsessed with the connection they had together. Yu was the first person to be Alma’s peer in his lonely childhood and Alma wasn’t about to lose that even not knowing anything about their past connections. Alma was sorrowful about leaving the other sleeping Seconds in their ponds when he fled in attempt to save Yu and was upset with himself for killing them all later on, blaming himself for why they never woke up. He’s the type to guard any friend he makes fiercely, at great personal risk to himself. This ‘guarding’ doesn’t always mean keeping them alive, however, and more means he’ll guard them from mental distress at all costs, even when he has to kill them to save them from being hurt.
Alma has a hardness about him for all his optimism and apparent childishness. To survive all the practically torture and sheer pain he had to go through and still be able to smile, he had to be a strong person at heart. He’s excitable at times, but very level headed when it counts--acquiring information, planning, and setting about to set his plan in motion, without sign of wobbling or backing down. When he sets his mind to something, he follows through on it. It’s not that he makes snap decisions that later turn out to be not what he wanted; Alma thinks through all of his decisions and sets his mind to stone.
The potential to become an Akuma was one presented to him by the Order’s scientist when they placed the Dark Matter inside of Alma and let his healing curse fight with it to remain alive for the experiments even while unconscious in a coma. What actually awakened the Dark Matter was his hatred and shame from realization of what had really happened to himself and Yu. Seeing in Yu’s memories the woman he had been searching for, and listening to Yu’s thoughts, the first betrayal to strike Alma down is almost forgiven in a way. Alma forgives Yu because Yu didn’t know that Alma was that woman Yu was searching for-which only makes Alma hate the Order even more so. Full of so much hatred and shame for what the experiments have done to himself and Yu, Alma uses the Dark Matter within him to change fully into an Akuma.
Alma lets himself be consumed by the hatred and anger as a guard against the other emotions threatening to break him: the sadness and shame at his body and the identity confusion he has gone through. It’s easier to iron that hate into a weapon rather than let himself drown under the twists and turns of his contorted emotions.
During their fight, Alma doesn’t know that Yu will figure out his secrets, but his reaction to Allen figuring it out is very direct. Screamingly angry and pushing himself further into his fury to hide the cracks in the “mask” of anger where his deep sorrow and shame of himself are leaking through. Alma attempts to self-destruct as a last ditch effort to stop Yu from ever learning the secrets about their past and to keep Allen from ever telling him.
This of course, goes completely wrong because afterward, Alma find himself spilling his emotions everywhere, unable to hide behind his mask of anger any longer. His mind is rattled and heart torn into pieces. Alma just wants to have it all end and find some peace in finally succumbing to death. Unable to keep it in any longer, Alma spills his secrets to Allen, who has seen his ‘soul’ already, and accidentally allows Yu to overhear their conversation.
Yu’s reaction to Alma’s secrets is one that calms a lot of the emotions raging and fighting inside of Alma. Alma is selfishly selfless in that he wants to die together with Yu, so that he may have Yu to himself forever-and Yu understanding the reasoning behind that helps Alma find a sense of calm that he didn’t know before. Yu accepting Alma as “Alma” no matter his shape is something Alma did not expect or plan for, and it throws him off, but in a good way. With his dying strength he clings to Yu and cries because all the emotions behind the anger are finally coming out in a flood and the only way to deal with it is to throw his head back and cry like a small child while Yu holds him tight.
There’s no hiding that Alma is obsessed with Yu. He cares deeply for the other boy, and wants to be by his side, even when he doesn’t remember who Yu was to his pastself. In their first life, they were lovers and Yu died ten years before Alma did. In their second life, Alma was the first one to awaken and spent nearly a year utterly alone-then Yu awoke too. Yu was not only his only friend, he was Alma’s only peer.
They were the only children in a big lonely lab filled with scientists who prodded them with needled and sent them through extremely painful testing. Yes, the scientists were kind outside of the testing, they grew to be likened to parental figures to Alma. Which only made it more heartbreaking when Alma found out what the scientists had actually done to them. Betrayed by the only people he had ever known, Alma went insane and killed them all, leaving only himself and Yu as survivors-and not for long in Alma’s mind. When Alma reawakened from the coma, he knew why Yu had betrayed him and had tried to kill him.
Yu is the only remaining link for Alma to this world. He killed everyone else that could have anchored him down-not for that reason, but that is the result of his actions. Alma is understandably obsessed with the person who is everything to him: best friend, brother, family, lover, and the only one who could ever understand.
Consequently, to stabilize his insanity, Alma will need to anchor himself again to this world, in the form of friends and comrades. Starting a “third” life if you will-one that takes the agony of the two before it and hammers out a new path.
Possessions | Literally nothing but the one pair of black shorts he’s wearing.
Character Abilities/Powers | Alma has the original abilities of being a Second Exorcist with an artificial body: enhanced strength, extra durability, and a powerful healing factor. On top of this, the Dark Matter injected into him has given him the powers of Akuma, including the ability to fire energy and spikes from his mouth, and turn his arms into blades reminiscent of his Innocence.
Alma’s Second abilities are, for the most part, static. As a child he could easily throw Yu hard enough to dent cement walls in an argument over name-calling. When he was young, Alma could heal quick enough to be burnt to charcoal one moment and nearly recognizable the next. His healing has slowed down and worn out because of his near-death by Yu slicing him to pieces, as well as his fight against Yu’s Innocence as an Akuma. His healing is blocked while within Languishment, of course, proving that chunk of his Second abilities useless. His extra strength and durability remain untouched, although he may not be able to use them as easily considering it will now cost him if he does get injured.
His Akuma abilities on the other hand, are mostly learned. The only one static is his ability to be powered by the sorrow and hatred of his own soul, which is an ability unique to Alma as the only Akuma so far to be made from a living person. His soul (which takes the form of his original life as the female Exorcist) is chained to the charm where his heart resides in his chest, only able to be seen by a cursed eye (such as Allen Walker’s left eye) or people able to sense/see ghosts and the souls of people.
The learned Akuma abilities are mostly manipulating his own body to either look a certain way, or transform his arms into blades. He can also fire a sort of beam of energy from his mouth and hands, as well as spikes that are possibly formed straight from his own body, using his natural ability to heal to use parts of it as projectiles.
His Akuma abilities, however, take strength to use that he doesn’t have much of left anymore. While he isn’t dying or turning to stone anymore, Alma also still won’t be back to full strength.
Weaknesses/Fears | Alma’s main weakness is his emotional instability. He’s, to make a bad pun, explosive with his emotions and often cause him to come off like a psychopath-which… he kind of is as well. He is a VERY emotion-driven person and while logic and thought does go into things, the driving force behind all of his actions is the power of his emotions. This often works against him, because he can’t even handle all of his emotions at once and they overload him. This is why he uses his overwhelming hatred of the Black Order and his anger as a sort of “shield/mask” to hide his turmoil of emotions, but also to protect himself from any more pain.
Another weakness is Alma’s sheltered life. He really doesn’t understand very much sometimes. And while he does indeed soak up information like a sponge, there are a lot of years to make up for. Even with the addition of his past memories, Alma is still missing quite a lot of knowledge about the world-which can obviously be used against him in the practice of misinformation.
Only the Noah family can exploit his weakness as an Akuma, programmed to follow their orders even if he is reasonably rebellious and his own self enough to ignore the orders he definitely doesn’t want to follow. That doesn’t mean he won’t follow their orders, however. Although some of that may be because Alma would see it as a sort of favor for giving him the power (and life) enough to attempt to fulfill his wishes. The Noah have a certain amount of sway over his actions that has been baked into his body now with the acceptance of the Dark Matter. The only way to change that would be to free him with the Innocence-or basically, kill him.
Alma’s other weaknesses focus on his lack of life as it ticked away from using all of his powers, plus fighting like a mad thing in the midst of near General-ranked Exorcists. This should be fixed in Languishment, however, because he won’t be dying anymore. I will however put a limit on the amount of powers he can use even when allowed his full power, simply because while that limit won’t kill him now, it does reflect the limits put on him in canon. He won’t have his healing abilities back, but just because he’s not dying anymore doesn’t mean he’s any stronger.
Requested Village | Fuar
NPC mini-plot | Yes
SAMPLES
First-person |
[The video clicked on to the round face of a young man, heavy marks along his skin like tattoos gave him an almost monstrous appearance even with his soft, feminine facial features.]
This golem--this device, you can hear me right? [A small pause, as he furrows his overly fuzzy caterpillar-like eyebrows.]
I’m looking for someone. [Another pause] Hello? [Unsure how the PND works, Alma pushes several buttons.] Can anyone hear me? I’m looking for someone. He has long hair and... is kind of grumpy. He was supposed to be with me. [They fell into the gate together, right? He has to be here somewhere. He has to be.
Trying to remain calm... Yu has to be around here somewhere...
Stupid white-haired Noah and their dumb gates that don’t even work.] ...How does this thing wor-- [One of the buttons Alma pushes ends the feed.]
Third-person |
Freedom. Freedom from the Church, from the holy war, from all of the guilt and betrayal. It had been within his hands and now it was gone. Now Alma was here in his strange place with stranger people.
This “Arawn” man who didn’t flinch or tire no matter how Alma tried to injure him. The man had left the Second alone after the explanation, although Alma had no intentions of staying in this place. He didn’t know where the gate the white-haired Noah made was meant to send them, but Alma was fairly sure it wasn’t this place.
He trembled. The anger and hatred still swarmed his thoughts, demanding justice for this new imprisonment. It was hard to think. Where was Yu? Yu had held Alma tight--Alma had hoped it was because he didn’t want them to lose each other. --Which they had managed anyway.
Alone... and warm. He had been turning to stone, Dark Matter eating his body and trying to crush his soul. This wasn’t the same body he had before they fell through the gate. This body was warm, with a fluttering in its chest that was unfamiliar. Sitting on the low bed and staring at his hands--which were flexible and soft. No longer the hard, doll-like appendages, Alma’s hands moved fluidly like a real human’s should.
This wasn’t what he wanted!
Jolting up from the bed, Alma growled deep in his throat and threw open the bathroom’s door. A monster stared at him, reflected from the large mirror.
This wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to be with Yu forever. He wanted to die, and end this horrible life of betrayal and loss. Throw himself into the fires of hell, which he so rightly deserved for all the blood on his hands, and free Yu to spend forever in happiness--which is what he deserved.
Driving his fist through the mirror, it crunched under his knuckles and pieces sliced his hand as they fell away. It hurt. It should hurt. It’s what he deserved for doing this to Yu.
The white-haired boy was right. Alma never thought about Yu’s feelings. About how he was left those long nine years to search for someone who he had betrayed unknowing that who he sought and who he betrayed were the same person.
But Alma was selfish. He didn’t want to loose Yu. The one person who meant everything.
He couldn’t tell Yu. He couldn’t tell him and risk losing the person who he--
And now, even after every secret was spilled and things had been finally... finally maybe going well. … Now Alma had lost Yu anyway.
Shaking his hand, Alma stepped around the broken shards and out of the bathroom, flexing his hand. It wasn’t healing. Well, he must have finally used all of that up. Alma stood next to the bed and stared at the device Arawn had give him.
Perhaps he could still find Yu. Maybe this wasn’t all for nothing.
Name | Alma Karma
Series | D.Gray-Man
Canon Point | End of chapter 199
Reference | D.Gray-Man wiki entry | Alma's wiki entry
Age | He is physically 20 years old. Mentally, however, he has only awake for about two years of his current body’s life, but he does remember parts of his life previous to becoming a Second Exorcist, where he was an adult female. Alma acts the part of being an adult sometimes, while also keeping his childishness at other times. His mental age I would point at fluxing between the ignorance and nativity of 10, while having the maturity to deal with subjects as much as a real 20 year old. It seems to round out to perhaps a 15-16 year old mentality that has the potential to ‘grow up’ very quickly, but also have the strength/weakness of emotions of someone who hasn’t had all the time to deal with the identity and emotional confusion Alma seems to collect by the boat load.
Gender | Alma is physically male, but mentally identifies parts of self as female, and parts as male. Gender is a large issue with Alma. First, I will explain that for pronouns I will use male ones for Alma, HOWEVER, this is not to say my Alma identifies as male. I use it because Alma's gender identity is OMGWTFBBQ and in grammatically correct English, the male pronoun is also used to gender neutral situations. Alma canonly refers to himself using the more male pronoun, but uses the more female pronoun to talk about his pastself (the woman Alma was in his first life, previous to becoming an experiment)--so, this is what I will do. Unless I am distinctly referring to past!Alma, I'll be using male pronouns. Although, Alma’s actual gender identity seems to be both male and female, with female leanings, so Alma may choose to deal with his gender identity differently later on, depending on how things develop.
Suitability | (My character doesn’t need to be ‘aged up’ exactly, but there is debate over whether he is mentally too much of a child, so I’m including this section just to be sure.) Alma is childish, and during his second life, he was only ‘conscious’ for maybe two years of it, however Alma is not entirely a child in an adult body. He is immature at times, throwing tantrums and roughhousing with his friend Yu when they get into fights, but he also shows maturity in his decisions and actions with topics children aren’t often able to handle, let alone grasp in their entirety.
He can handle being tortured, torn apart, and still have a strong sense of justice and willpower. Selfishly selfless, he tries to destroy Yu and himself to bury what happened to their pastselves, but also to punishment those who performed the actions. All of Alma’s actions, while somewhat misguided, were thought-out and directly executed. He had his reasons, and yes some of them were childish reasons, but much of his reasoning was mature and mindful of the consequences. While he has not had to deal with sexual situations in canon, and it is likely (being a young Victorian woman and possibly Catholic) that his pastself may not ever broken her virginity either despite being canonly in a relationship with someone, this doesn’t mean Alma is unfit to handle sex itself. (He just may need a better explanation of where babies come from rather than the fail one Edgar gave Yu, which Alma overheard when they were children.)
Appearance | Alma is kind of Asian-looking, with dark, short hair, rounded features, and angular eyes. However he's rather obviously not completely Asian with his large eyes and oversized, fuzzy eyebrows. His hair is usually kept short with fringe and side bits that frame his face while the rest is very short and scruffy.
He is losing most of his Akuma-look because he will be human for the sake of Languishment. He will keep the black markings patterned all over him, including a large triangle on his stomach, tribal-like markings on his biceps, and a hand/claw marking over his heart. Alma also is keeping the prehensile, demonic-looking tail as well as his pointed ears. The halo-disc, shoulder spikes and doll-like joints are gone for more human features.
Personality | Alma can be very eager to please, as he wants to be liked by everyone he knows. Granted, his world has been limited to the science team and Yu Kanda who initially wants nothing to do with him. Lacking true social skills from his few (awake) meager years of sheltered life, Alma can be mistaken for an idiot quite easily in his ignorance of the world at large, as well as his eagerness in which he tries to befriend people.
Even in the darkest of times, Alma is a very optimistic person. Even when things look bad, he tries to find the bright parts and bring them into the light, however that doesn't he can actually always find the bright parts. There are times when he only pretends to find the good in all the bad. He'll smile even when things are horrible just to lift someone else's spirits and hide his own falling ones.
He's also very easy with his emotions. He's not afraid, when pushed too far, to blow up in a blaze of childish tantrums, or fall to the ground and wail loudly with tears and snot everywhere. This can be good and bad, being that while he's a very honest person, he can also come off as a child after such actions.
But even though he can seem childish, Alma is able to deal with very mature situations with the ease and sensibility of an adult. He can stand being torn to pieces everyday in the experiments trying to get him to sync with his Innocence (a kind of weapon in his canon), and still smile and laugh afterward when oops, his arm just fell off, don't worry it'll be fine. Alma also shows maturity and intelligence beyond his second life’s childishness when dealing with the knowledge of the Second Exorcist project. He takes a situation that would destroy other people-and yes he goes murderously insane, but a frighteningly logical insane. He is able to make an argument for his actions and understand what he did was wrong, but also say that while it’s wrong, it was necessary in his understanding.
The boy is like a sponge, soaking up any and all information, just trying to make sense of this world that he's known for only a year or so he thinks. Even when Alma didn’t remember his past life before becoming a Second Exorcist, it affected how he reacted to things. When alone and surrounded by adults, he is mature and extremely thoughtful about his actions. Yet, even with the fact he's grown up once, died, and was reawakened, Alma is very much a child at times.
However his childish maturity, Alma has a deep rooted sense anger at the world. It started, in his second life, with Yu ignoring him as a child, throwing off every honest attempt at making friends. Alma had waited so long, all alone, for just one friend, and when Yu wakes up and continually just blows him off-it’s not just a “oh well, there’s more fish in the sea” thing. Yu is his one chance to make a proper friend and the other boy wants nothing at all to do with him. It’s heartbreaking and begins that small crackle of anger.
The crackle of anger grows into a scarred burning mass of pure hatred when Yu yet again refuses him, only made worse when Alma remembers his past and knows what Yu and he were lovers in their first lives. The fact Yu doesn’t recognize Alma as the woman who appears in the hallucinations is at once heartbreaking but also drives that hatred inward towards Alma’s own self, because why should he want Yu to recognize him? If Yu recognizes him--well that just leads to a can of issues about Alma’s identity, his gender, and insecurity about losing Yu.
This fear of losing friends and connections he’s made is not limited to Yu, although Yu is the greatest example of this in effect. Alma was a very lonely boy for a long time, and it didn’t matter that Alma used to know Yu in his past life to why Alma was obsessed with the connection they had together. Yu was the first person to be Alma’s peer in his lonely childhood and Alma wasn’t about to lose that even not knowing anything about their past connections. Alma was sorrowful about leaving the other sleeping Seconds in their ponds when he fled in attempt to save Yu and was upset with himself for killing them all later on, blaming himself for why they never woke up. He’s the type to guard any friend he makes fiercely, at great personal risk to himself. This ‘guarding’ doesn’t always mean keeping them alive, however, and more means he’ll guard them from mental distress at all costs, even when he has to kill them to save them from being hurt.
Alma has a hardness about him for all his optimism and apparent childishness. To survive all the practically torture and sheer pain he had to go through and still be able to smile, he had to be a strong person at heart. He’s excitable at times, but very level headed when it counts--acquiring information, planning, and setting about to set his plan in motion, without sign of wobbling or backing down. When he sets his mind to something, he follows through on it. It’s not that he makes snap decisions that later turn out to be not what he wanted; Alma thinks through all of his decisions and sets his mind to stone.
The potential to become an Akuma was one presented to him by the Order’s scientist when they placed the Dark Matter inside of Alma and let his healing curse fight with it to remain alive for the experiments even while unconscious in a coma. What actually awakened the Dark Matter was his hatred and shame from realization of what had really happened to himself and Yu. Seeing in Yu’s memories the woman he had been searching for, and listening to Yu’s thoughts, the first betrayal to strike Alma down is almost forgiven in a way. Alma forgives Yu because Yu didn’t know that Alma was that woman Yu was searching for-which only makes Alma hate the Order even more so. Full of so much hatred and shame for what the experiments have done to himself and Yu, Alma uses the Dark Matter within him to change fully into an Akuma.
Alma lets himself be consumed by the hatred and anger as a guard against the other emotions threatening to break him: the sadness and shame at his body and the identity confusion he has gone through. It’s easier to iron that hate into a weapon rather than let himself drown under the twists and turns of his contorted emotions.
During their fight, Alma doesn’t know that Yu will figure out his secrets, but his reaction to Allen figuring it out is very direct. Screamingly angry and pushing himself further into his fury to hide the cracks in the “mask” of anger where his deep sorrow and shame of himself are leaking through. Alma attempts to self-destruct as a last ditch effort to stop Yu from ever learning the secrets about their past and to keep Allen from ever telling him.
This of course, goes completely wrong because afterward, Alma find himself spilling his emotions everywhere, unable to hide behind his mask of anger any longer. His mind is rattled and heart torn into pieces. Alma just wants to have it all end and find some peace in finally succumbing to death. Unable to keep it in any longer, Alma spills his secrets to Allen, who has seen his ‘soul’ already, and accidentally allows Yu to overhear their conversation.
Yu’s reaction to Alma’s secrets is one that calms a lot of the emotions raging and fighting inside of Alma. Alma is selfishly selfless in that he wants to die together with Yu, so that he may have Yu to himself forever-and Yu understanding the reasoning behind that helps Alma find a sense of calm that he didn’t know before. Yu accepting Alma as “Alma” no matter his shape is something Alma did not expect or plan for, and it throws him off, but in a good way. With his dying strength he clings to Yu and cries because all the emotions behind the anger are finally coming out in a flood and the only way to deal with it is to throw his head back and cry like a small child while Yu holds him tight.
There’s no hiding that Alma is obsessed with Yu. He cares deeply for the other boy, and wants to be by his side, even when he doesn’t remember who Yu was to his pastself. In their first life, they were lovers and Yu died ten years before Alma did. In their second life, Alma was the first one to awaken and spent nearly a year utterly alone-then Yu awoke too. Yu was not only his only friend, he was Alma’s only peer.
They were the only children in a big lonely lab filled with scientists who prodded them with needled and sent them through extremely painful testing. Yes, the scientists were kind outside of the testing, they grew to be likened to parental figures to Alma. Which only made it more heartbreaking when Alma found out what the scientists had actually done to them. Betrayed by the only people he had ever known, Alma went insane and killed them all, leaving only himself and Yu as survivors-and not for long in Alma’s mind. When Alma reawakened from the coma, he knew why Yu had betrayed him and had tried to kill him.
Yu is the only remaining link for Alma to this world. He killed everyone else that could have anchored him down-not for that reason, but that is the result of his actions. Alma is understandably obsessed with the person who is everything to him: best friend, brother, family, lover, and the only one who could ever understand.
Consequently, to stabilize his insanity, Alma will need to anchor himself again to this world, in the form of friends and comrades. Starting a “third” life if you will-one that takes the agony of the two before it and hammers out a new path.
Possessions | Literally nothing but the one pair of black shorts he’s wearing.
Character Abilities/Powers | Alma has the original abilities of being a Second Exorcist with an artificial body: enhanced strength, extra durability, and a powerful healing factor. On top of this, the Dark Matter injected into him has given him the powers of Akuma, including the ability to fire energy and spikes from his mouth, and turn his arms into blades reminiscent of his Innocence.
Alma’s Second abilities are, for the most part, static. As a child he could easily throw Yu hard enough to dent cement walls in an argument over name-calling. When he was young, Alma could heal quick enough to be burnt to charcoal one moment and nearly recognizable the next. His healing has slowed down and worn out because of his near-death by Yu slicing him to pieces, as well as his fight against Yu’s Innocence as an Akuma. His healing is blocked while within Languishment, of course, proving that chunk of his Second abilities useless. His extra strength and durability remain untouched, although he may not be able to use them as easily considering it will now cost him if he does get injured.
His Akuma abilities on the other hand, are mostly learned. The only one static is his ability to be powered by the sorrow and hatred of his own soul, which is an ability unique to Alma as the only Akuma so far to be made from a living person. His soul (which takes the form of his original life as the female Exorcist) is chained to the charm where his heart resides in his chest, only able to be seen by a cursed eye (such as Allen Walker’s left eye) or people able to sense/see ghosts and the souls of people.
The learned Akuma abilities are mostly manipulating his own body to either look a certain way, or transform his arms into blades. He can also fire a sort of beam of energy from his mouth and hands, as well as spikes that are possibly formed straight from his own body, using his natural ability to heal to use parts of it as projectiles.
His Akuma abilities, however, take strength to use that he doesn’t have much of left anymore. While he isn’t dying or turning to stone anymore, Alma also still won’t be back to full strength.
Weaknesses/Fears | Alma’s main weakness is his emotional instability. He’s, to make a bad pun, explosive with his emotions and often cause him to come off like a psychopath-which… he kind of is as well. He is a VERY emotion-driven person and while logic and thought does go into things, the driving force behind all of his actions is the power of his emotions. This often works against him, because he can’t even handle all of his emotions at once and they overload him. This is why he uses his overwhelming hatred of the Black Order and his anger as a sort of “shield/mask” to hide his turmoil of emotions, but also to protect himself from any more pain.
Another weakness is Alma’s sheltered life. He really doesn’t understand very much sometimes. And while he does indeed soak up information like a sponge, there are a lot of years to make up for. Even with the addition of his past memories, Alma is still missing quite a lot of knowledge about the world-which can obviously be used against him in the practice of misinformation.
Only the Noah family can exploit his weakness as an Akuma, programmed to follow their orders even if he is reasonably rebellious and his own self enough to ignore the orders he definitely doesn’t want to follow. That doesn’t mean he won’t follow their orders, however. Although some of that may be because Alma would see it as a sort of favor for giving him the power (and life) enough to attempt to fulfill his wishes. The Noah have a certain amount of sway over his actions that has been baked into his body now with the acceptance of the Dark Matter. The only way to change that would be to free him with the Innocence-or basically, kill him.
Alma’s other weaknesses focus on his lack of life as it ticked away from using all of his powers, plus fighting like a mad thing in the midst of near General-ranked Exorcists. This should be fixed in Languishment, however, because he won’t be dying anymore. I will however put a limit on the amount of powers he can use even when allowed his full power, simply because while that limit won’t kill him now, it does reflect the limits put on him in canon. He won’t have his healing abilities back, but just because he’s not dying anymore doesn’t mean he’s any stronger.
Requested Village | Fuar
NPC mini-plot | Yes
SAMPLES
First-person |
[The video clicked on to the round face of a young man, heavy marks along his skin like tattoos gave him an almost monstrous appearance even with his soft, feminine facial features.]
This golem--this device, you can hear me right? [A small pause, as he furrows his overly fuzzy caterpillar-like eyebrows.]
I’m looking for someone. [Another pause] Hello? [Unsure how the PND works, Alma pushes several buttons.] Can anyone hear me? I’m looking for someone. He has long hair and... is kind of grumpy. He was supposed to be with me. [They fell into the gate together, right? He has to be here somewhere. He has to be.
Trying to remain calm... Yu has to be around here somewhere...
Stupid white-haired Noah and their dumb gates that don’t even work.] ...How does this thing wor-- [One of the buttons Alma pushes ends the feed.]
Third-person |
Freedom. Freedom from the Church, from the holy war, from all of the guilt and betrayal. It had been within his hands and now it was gone. Now Alma was here in his strange place with stranger people.
This “Arawn” man who didn’t flinch or tire no matter how Alma tried to injure him. The man had left the Second alone after the explanation, although Alma had no intentions of staying in this place. He didn’t know where the gate the white-haired Noah made was meant to send them, but Alma was fairly sure it wasn’t this place.
He trembled. The anger and hatred still swarmed his thoughts, demanding justice for this new imprisonment. It was hard to think. Where was Yu? Yu had held Alma tight--Alma had hoped it was because he didn’t want them to lose each other. --Which they had managed anyway.
Alone... and warm. He had been turning to stone, Dark Matter eating his body and trying to crush his soul. This wasn’t the same body he had before they fell through the gate. This body was warm, with a fluttering in its chest that was unfamiliar. Sitting on the low bed and staring at his hands--which were flexible and soft. No longer the hard, doll-like appendages, Alma’s hands moved fluidly like a real human’s should.
This wasn’t what he wanted!
Jolting up from the bed, Alma growled deep in his throat and threw open the bathroom’s door. A monster stared at him, reflected from the large mirror.
This wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to be with Yu forever. He wanted to die, and end this horrible life of betrayal and loss. Throw himself into the fires of hell, which he so rightly deserved for all the blood on his hands, and free Yu to spend forever in happiness--which is what he deserved.
Driving his fist through the mirror, it crunched under his knuckles and pieces sliced his hand as they fell away. It hurt. It should hurt. It’s what he deserved for doing this to Yu.
The white-haired boy was right. Alma never thought about Yu’s feelings. About how he was left those long nine years to search for someone who he had betrayed unknowing that who he sought and who he betrayed were the same person.
But Alma was selfish. He didn’t want to loose Yu. The one person who meant everything.
He couldn’t tell Yu. He couldn’t tell him and risk losing the person who he--
And now, even after every secret was spilled and things had been finally... finally maybe going well. … Now Alma had lost Yu anyway.
Shaking his hand, Alma stepped around the broken shards and out of the bathroom, flexing his hand. It wasn’t healing. Well, he must have finally used all of that up. Alma stood next to the bed and stared at the device Arawn had give him.
Perhaps he could still find Yu. Maybe this wasn’t all for nothing.