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[zebrarhyme_everytime]

APPLICATION - THE FLEET - CANON AU CHARACTER

Player Information

Name: Dragon
Age: 34
Time Zone: Eastern
Email: dragonslj@gmail.com
Other Contact Info: dragonoflife
Prefered method of contact: Plurk
Current Characters at The Fleet: Maria Cyphert
Reserve: N/A

Character Information

Full Name: Zecora
Nicknames:
Canon: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Sex/Gender: Female
Age: Unspecified in canon; probably mid-20s as a human equivalent
PB: Canon icons only
Journal: zebrarhyme_everytime
4th Walling: Yes; Zecora (as CRAU) understands the concepts of alternate universes, in which some people may or may not be fictional.
Canon Point: Canon: The end of Season 2. CRAU: wonderfulwords postgame, after the reboot of the Reaper's Game.
Physical description: Zecora is a zebra, albeit one the size of an MLP pony -- so chest-high at the top of her head, all things considered. She is grey with black stripes, has a spiral surrounded by triangles for a cutie mark on her flank, and a white-and-black mohawk mane. She wears golden bracelets around her neck and one leg, and golden earrings. She is also often clad in a cloak, which when pulled up gives her blue eyes a sinister yellow cast for some reason.

Canon Information

AU description: Zecora is a CRAU from the Dreamwidth game wonderfulworlds. After dying for reasons she never discovered, Zecora found herself playing a Reaper's Game for the chance to come back to life -- but although she won it repeatedly, she was never given the opportunity to leave the Game. After several Games and weeks of effort, she and fellow Players and Reapers managed to unravel the mystery of why the Reaper's Game was so broken, and after it was shut down, they restarted it. Zecora assumed a position of power to bring back those who had been lost and keep everything running smoothly.

History: Canonically, Zecora is a very mysterious figure. She has never spoken of her past and it has never been detailed in the canon. Zebrakind itself lives on the far side of the Everfree Forest, a trip terribly difficult for even the Princesses of Equestria to make, and no other representative of this race appears in the show.

So rare are zebras that although Zecora took up residence in the Everfree Forest near Ponyville and often ventured into town to try to obtain supplies, the local ponies didn't recognize her species until Twilight Sparkle told them about her. Her mysterious appearance and behavior convinced everypony she was an evil enchantress to be feared, except for young Apple Bloom, who decided to follow her into the Everfree Forest to investigate. The 6 main characters head in after her, only to wind up in a patch of a plant called Poison Joke. Zecora warns them about the plant, but comes off far more ominous than she intended, and the ponies ignore her and consequently suffer side effects of exposure. Apple Bloom, not believing that Zecora is responsible, enters the forest again and this time befriends the zebra -- only for the other ponies to show up, knock over her cauldron, and accuse her of evil. Zecora, at first irritated, relaxes when she realizes they're just being idiots, and cheerfully points out she has neither cursed them nor made Apple Bloom into soup. In fact, she was brewing the cure for the Poison Joke exposure.

Realizing they'd been fools, the ponies befriend Zecora, and though it isn't shown onscreen, clearly smooth her way in town, because from this point on the zebra is quite welcome in Ponyville. She is consulted for her advice in several instances, and ponies occasionally go to her hut for tea and pleasant conversation. Because of her aptitude with illusions and her knack for storytelling, Zecora leads the foals around to tell them the story of Nightmare Night, though she ends up running away in a panic along with everyone else when Princess Luna makes her heedlessly dramatic entrance.

Zecora's next major appearance is alongside Apple Bloom, with whom the zebra had clearly maintained a good friendship. When the young pony chips her tooth, Zecora makes her a potion that can mend it, but inadvertently gives the filly the bad idea to eat an herb called Heart's Desire. By the time she realizes what has happened, Apple Bloom is experiencing a terrible disease called Cutie Pox -- which, fortunately, Zecora knows how to cure. By coaxing Apple Bloom to tell the truth, she grows a flower from the Seeds of Truth, then forgives the young pony even as she advises her to learn from her mistakes.

Her last appearance before her canon point is diagnosing the baby dragon Spike with maturation induced by greed, after which he promptly steals the entire contents of her hut.

Personality: In broad strokes, Zecora is a classic 'wise hermit' character. She has a great deal of wisdom and knowledge and is entirely willing to share it; she is also quite worldly, having come from a land so far away that zebras aren't even common knowledge to the average Ponyville resident.

Zecora can be quick to anger, or at least annoy -- most of her appearances end up with her shooting a look at somepony who's just messed up whatever she was in the middle of -- but generally that look and possibly a wry remark are enough to work it out. She rarely stays mad for very long; even after her entire house is wrecked, she quickly forgives all involved once the reasons come out, despite the reason being that the ponies responsible had decided she was evil on shoddy evidence. Despite these flashes of irritation, Zecora has immense patience, tolerance, and understanding -- particularly for younger ponies. She is quick to forgive mistakes, and quick to offer aid when ponies are in need.

Though remarkably blase about the very real dangers of the Everfree Forest, which likely are not any more fearsome than her homeland, Zecora is not immune to fear. When Princess Luna makes her ill-advisedly-dramatic entrance on Nightmare Night and Pinkie Pie suggests that Nightmare Moon has come, Zecora takes off in a panic the same as everypony else. Clearly, though perfectly prepared to deal with manticores, basilisks, and even dragons, Zecora very clearly draws the lines at ultimate evils.

If Zecora has a major flaw, it's that she comes off much, much creepier than she intends to. She lives in the Everfree Forest, presumably because it is more comfortable and home-like than Ponyville, which is so feared and incomprehensible to the inhabitants of Ponyville that they used to close the entire city down and hide when Zecora comes to town every month. Her home is decorated with creepy, ominous-looking masks that are intended to welcome guests; she wears a cloak that covers her face and makes her eyes shine an ominous yellow; her zebra language sounds like evil incantations, and she has a tendency to deliver helpful warnings in a way that sounds like she's cursing the person she's trying to advise.

Once she gains the acceptance of Ponyville, Zecora seems to value it quite highly -- to the extent that when she returns at a time when Ponyville has coincidentally been locked down and evacuated, she believes it's because of her presence and delivers a shockingly bitter couplet about how she should have just stayed home.

Zecora also tells the story of Nightmare Moon with obvious relish and enjoyment... and just a bit of over-the-top glee. She's somewhat theatrical by nature anyway, but when given the chance to really go wild, she does so with delight.

Strengths Zecora is incredibly knowledgeable about a wide variety of subjects, and more importantly, she is very wise as well. She is patient and kind, as well as very good with children. Her self-confidence and self-knowledge are solid as rocks; she never doubts herself and never oversells herself either.

Weaknesses Zecora has a tendency to obfuscate and confuse even when a clear answer would be better. She isn't quite as good at dealing with others as she thinks she is. She also has a tendency to hang back and stay out of the limelight even when her direct action would probably do the whole situation a lot of good -- her 'wise beyond her years' attitude seems to cause her to act indirectly at best, as a mentor and source of information, even if that has a detriment compared to her direct involvement.

CRAU Information

(Skip if this section does not apply to your character.)

History: The Reaper's Game is a one-week competition. The recently dead may pay the entry fee of 'whatever is most important to them' and must form a Pact with another player, then survive seven days by completing a mission on each day and then defeating the Game Master at the end. Failure means the Player is Erased -- eliminated from existence. Success ordinarily means survival, unless the Player is very weak or broke the rules of the Game in some way. The Player may become a Reaper (an employee of the Game, basically), be brought back to life, be allowed into the afterlife, or be allowed to play again if they haven't earned the right to move on.

In Shibuya's Reaper's Game, the Composer, the ultimate power in charge of that Game, made a bet with his underling the Conductor: the Composer would give the Conductor, Megumi Kitanji, 30 days to save Shibuya from its corruption, decay, and decadence. If he failed, the Composer would erase both Kitanji and Shibuya.

Canonical to the video game, Kitanji failed. But in wonderfulworlds, his plan succeeded -- he turned Shibuya into a hive mind, and thus won his bet. But his plan had a horrific consequence: all the individuality, the Imagination, he suppressed ended up incarnated in a girl named Michiru Motou. With so much power within her, she overthrew the Reaper's Game and Erased everyone associated with it, resulting in Shibuya's destruction. She then fled into an alternate universe.

In this new universe, she hijacked the Composer position for neighboring city Shinjuku, and with the help of that Game's Producer, created a Game where only the strongest souls could exist. This worked well for a time, until Michiru's counterpart in this universe died, 'Michitwo', appalled by her plan, worked her way up through the Game as Reapers, until she managed to erase the original Michiru and claim ownership of the game.

The furious Producer broke Shunjuku's Game off from reality, sealing it in the void between multiple worlds and setting it into motion. As a consequence, the Game stole strong souls from all the worlds it touched, while at the same time it jumped from world to world each week, never settling.

One of those souls was Zecora. She never learned how she died, only woke up one day to the Conductor explaining the Reaper's Game and offering her the chance to participate. With her death a complete surprise and fear that her friends might be in danger ruling her heart, she accepted the offer. Her fee was her memory of Apple Bloom.

Dropped into Shinjuku, the starting city for the Game, Zecora found herself primarily among humans and very ill-equipped to handle the details of life in the Underground. She proved incapable of using a cell phone, for example, which was frustrating when most Game communication was done that way. However, the humans themselves were generally decent -- even those who had entered the Game as Reapers rather than Players. On that first day, she met the human who would become her friend and partner for weeks to come: Sasuke Sarutobi, a high school student, soccer player, and generally decent guy.

The two swiftly became the absolute power couple of the Game. Zecora found herself swiftly able to master any Pin she acquired, which gave her access to numerous powerful techniques called Psyches, while Sasuke's will and determination made him a fearsome foe at her side. They made it through the first week through strength, determination, and cleverness, then fought and defeated the Game Master to claim victory.

They awoke on the second week to find themselves in the Game once again. Furious, Zecora pressed on, even as the Game attempted to propagate a mind-controlling Pin that urged those who wore it to vampiric or horror-monster tendencies. They survived through to the final week, and managed to force that week's Game Master to flee from them in turn, claiming yet another victory.

The third week dropped them off in a Christmasy town, where Zecora learned about Santa, beat up a bad Santa with his own sack, told the story of Hearth's Warming, and worked quietly to try to promote sympathetic Reapers to a position where they could strike out at the Composer in the hopes that the Game could be set right and release its grip on them. By the end, a concerted tag team effort by multiple Players took down the Game Master and freed the path to Week 4. She also had the chance to speak with the Conductor -- and learned that even he was uncomfortable with the situation, but was stuck following the orders of a Composer no one knew. Bitterly, Zecora agreed to continue playing the Game to try to solve the problem and fix it.

By now, however, Zecora's most precious thing had shifted. Though other ponies had appeared, and even a Pokemon or two, the majority of people were human. Zecora had come to value her identity as a zebra as defining and emblematic of herself, and as a consequence, her entry fee was to lose that. So Zecora spent Week 4 as a human... all while the game began to break down. A friend of hers by the name of Ryoji had lost his battle with the incarnation of Death he was created to summon, and the massive corruption of Nyx settled over the entire Game, dissolving the mission structure and breaking down all semblance of normality. In the end, Zecora was forced to fight Nyx, even knowing that some measure of her friend inside remained. Players and Reapers together teamed up to fight and eventually claimed victory one more time.

In week 5, the worst blow hit. Zecora's fee had changed again. This time, she lost the most important thing to her: her partner, Sasuke. The blow hurt her as nothing else could, and she muddled through the week rather desperately, even as creatures called Taboo Noise were put into play by rogue elements in the game and Erased Players and Reapers she knew and called friends. But by this point, the game was breaking down... and in Week 6, the Reaper's Game was canceled and shut down.

Michitwo had been jerked helplessly around from world to world with the game, and as Composer found herself absorbing the essence of each world in turn. But the sixth world was the ruined, broken Shibuya her original had set out to keep from every happening, and its essence was almost literally killing her. Past any bounds of tolerance, she shut the game down and abandoned her position entirely.

Neku Sakuraba, the protagonist of the original Reaper's Game way back when, assumed the role of Producer. Zecora, who had the greatest willpower, Imagination, and potential of any Player, took on the role of Composer. Together, they restarted the game, restored all those who had been Erased, and set everything right. At last, everyone was free to go home if they wished, or remain as Reapers if they so chose -- everyone but those two, of course. They were bound to the Game, but they had no regrets. Zecora had done what she set out to do, and her friends' happiness and a job well done were reward enough for her. As the game closed, she set about working to bring a new depth of Imagination into her Reaper's Game, with the development of a Pin that would manifest not a specific Psych, but one that drew from the wielder's own strength and essence.

Personality: That whole 'not interfering' thing listed as a flaw above? Zecora broke herself of that hard and fast. At first, it was out of necessity -- she questioned many times if she should try to undo her own death and if it was right to break the natural cycle of life that way. But fear and uncertainty kept her going, because she worried about her friends in Equestria, and she had to be direct and active.

While friendly enough with Ponyville ponies in Equestria, Zecora had never before had a partner like Sasuke. They were a team and a terribly capable one at that, one that gave Zecora new insight into working with someone else and being very close friends with another person. Species didn't matter in the slightest to their camaraderie, though it had its influence. Losing Sasuke, then, almost broke the poor zebra as nothing else had, and from that point on she was struggling to keep going. Only a proof she obtained later, that he had returned to life and his proper place, gave her the strength to keep going on and ultimately do what needed to be done.

She lost friends numerous times. She saw people hurt and suffer, even despite her best efforts. In many ways, Zecora lived more in death than she ever did in life. It gave her the strength and determination to seize the reins of the Game and restart it, even knowing what that meant for her. She sacrificed herself, essentially, to a higher cause, without regrets.

At the end, she is satisfied, happy, and eager to work to make the Reaper's Game something fantastic and truly positive. But she is also lonely, and will always look back on her days of missions and fighting and close companionship with wistful nostalgia.

Strengths Zecora has reached a level of absolute confidence and self-assuredness that is almost unbreakable. Beyond that, she has shed her refusal to interfere when necessary, even as she works diligently to make sure it isn't necessary. Her goal is to turn the Game into a refinery that will hone Imagination to its greatest heights, without the brutal Erasure of its old incarnations.

Weaknesses Zecora has tasted real exhilaration, real companionship, and real challenge now, and has given up all of them for the greater good. She is wistful and nostalgic now, and prone to living in the past as if her best days are behind her.

Gara Information

Images:


Number of gara: (can have up to three)
Primary Type and Color(s)/Color Patterns: Owm, deep blue with highlights that shade from light to dark green in starlike patterns across it.
Secondary Type and Color(s)/Color Patterns: Lea, deep amethyst with streaks of black that form a "D", surrounded by tan starlike patterns
Tertiary Type and Color(s)/Color Patterns: Vii, deep ruby with a lighter orange section marked with a deep ruby flaw in the middle, and two bright yellow flecks set in a red so deep it is practically black.

Shapes/Configuration: All three Gara are spherical, running down her breastbone in a line. The size difference from one to the next is only slight.

Other Information

Special Abilities:

Canon powers: Zecora is a master potion brewer, capable of preparing brews for almost any necessity provided she has access to the ingredients. She can also create powders and other substances with supernatural effects such as illusions. She also appears to be, in fact, a subtle and powerful user of magic; though she's only ever been observed conjuring water, Twilight Sparkle states she learns a very great deal from Zecora, and Zecora herself states that she is both powerful and practically unbeatable in magic -- and Zecora doesn't boast casually or talk herself up.

More mundanely, Zecora is incredibly knowledgeable about a wide variety of subjects.

CRAU powers: Zecora is the Composer of her own Reaper's Game, which basically goes where she does. The Reaper's Game existed in a space called the Underground (UG), which is a world on a higher 'vibrational frequency' than the real world (the Real Ground, or UG). Practically, this means the RG cannot see or affect the UG, but those in the UG can see and affect the RG (though not physically except in limited cases).

Within the UG, Zecora is essentially a god. She sets the rules of the Reaper's Game, can create Reapers from any level from lowest to Conductor, and delegate almost any power she possesses to them as she sees fit. The sole power she cannot delegate is the ability to return a Player to life. She can bind Soul energy into a Pin and use it to summon the creatures known as Noise, or give that power to others. She is not invincible, but is pretty much effectively so, at her full level of strength and power.

For game balance purposes, it is important to note that none of the godlike power listed thus far has any effect on the real world, with the one exception that Noise can influence a living person's mental state. The UG is the purview of the dead, and will have very little effect on the game environment except outside of player plots and potentially dealing with dead or undead characters. (It might possibly affect the Orakalla, but I leave that up to mod discretion.)

To interact with the RG, or be more normal-seeming in the UG, Zecora can lower her vibrational frequency. This dramatically decreases her power, relatively speaking -- while an ordinary Reaper would be no different than a human while tuned to the RG, Zecora still possesses abilities such as telekinesis and telepathy on that level. The Composer also possesses a certain degree of clairvoyant foresight, but this too is diminished when her vibe is tuned down.

Zecora technically has the ability to travel into alternate universes, but has never developed it or learned how to do it.

With her vibe tuned down and on the UG, Zecora is capable of using items called Pins, each of which provided a different effect called a Psych. She has following list available to her. A Composer can not create a new Pin, although some Noise drop Pins when they are defeated, if that ever becomes relevant... One of her Pins, Sexy D, is capable of affecting items in the RG through telekinesis. Beyond that... they're all very suitable for a Pin battling game called Tin Pin Slammer.

Notable/Unique Needs: Zecora needs to eat while in the RG and requires a vegetarian diet -- as a zebra, she is biologically incapable of processing meat.

Anything else? Zecora always talks in rhyme. It's a zebra thing.

Writing Samples

First Person: A network post from a previous game.

Third Person: A prose sample from a previous game.