Facility App
OOC Information:
Name: jao
Age: 25
AIM: zigziggon
MSN: jaokolad@live.com
Y!M: ja0k0lad
E-MAIL: jaokolad@gmail.com
IC Information:
Name: Soul “Eater” Evans
Fandom: Soul Eater
Timeline: At the end of Chapter 84, shortly after his return from insanity.
Age: 16
Appearance:
General appearance from manga canon
Winged scythe appearance
Full deathscythe appearance 1 | Reference 2 art by me
Scars Reference art by me
Abilities:
On his own, Soul's abilities are limited. His non-combat skills are the ability to play the piano and the training to drive a motorcycle. Combat-wise, Soul isn't particularly fast or acrobatic, and his fighting skills are average at best. His true solo combat worth comes with his ability to partially transform a limb into a scythe blade for blocking and attacks.
When in the hands of his meister, Maka Albarn, Soul's abilities grow. With her, he takes on the position of weapon, transforming into a full sized scythe. Since they have accomplished the goal of gathering 99 kinshin eggs and a witch's soul, Soul is even more powerful as a deathscythe and holds added abilities.
-When engaged in soul resonance with Maka, his blade grows and changes shape according to the attack. These attacks go by names such as Genie Hunter, Demon Hunter and so on, and all have been shown to be able to cut through stone, steel and, of course enemies.
-If needed, Soul can change from his scythe form into a winged staff for Maka's use, giving her flying transportation. This is a move they've only used a few times and would be a risky thing to do in battle without further practice.
-Black Blood, caused by an infection early in the canon, allows Soul to pass impenetrability to Maka. This is a very dangerous ability since it puts them both at risk of falling into insanity. Black Blood can sometimes be triggered on accident if a battle is going badly and Maka is in great danger.
-Soul Adagio is the ability to match the frequency of an opponent's soul wavelength to null an attack or hinder the opponent. This, like most of his abilities, can only be done while in full weapon mode and relies on his ability to play the piano, namely the one within his soul.
-Chain resonance command. With the aid of the piano within his soul, Soul can quickly establish chain resonance with other weapon/meister teams and help guide their attacks through the music he plays.
Personality:
Soul is cool, or at least, that's how he tries to appear. To most strangers, he comes off as aloof, lazy or rude with his slouch that reads of apathy, or his sharp teeth that he happily shows off in warning snarls or mocking, sarcastic grins. He's easy to annoy, loud when he speaks, and blunt with his words, lacking tact or manners. Despite his outward behavior, Soul has morals that he sticks to. Besides his teasing comments to Maka, he respects women, and adheres to strict ideas of right and wrong.
Although still blunt and lacking in tact, Soul is much more sensitive to his friends' feelings. Most comfortable in casual settings, Soul enjoys the company of his friends at school, around the city or at someone's home. Personal emotional matters are typically left out of discussions. If a friend were to come to him with a problem, he would do his best to give advice, but he would never pry or give unwanted advice.
--Unless that friend is Maka. If she appears upset, Soul will do what he can to find out what's wrong. It's not unusual for him to grow angry or frustrated if she won't tell him, more often than not making the situation worse. Should the reason of Maka's upset behavior be a person, Soul will not hesitate to seek that person out and make sure they don't get away with it or ever harm her again. This, like most of his battle tatics, would be an unplanned rush ahead.
He keeps most things to himself. Soul is hesitant to share his true feelings or troubles with anyone. He strives to keep that calm, cool, collected, apathetic appearance and avoids feeling or looking weak, even in front of those that are closest to him. Death City, to him, is a chance to establish a new identity of who he wishes he could be while pushing away the baggage of his past and the identity he held there. (More on that in the history section) Admitting to a lack or a failure in this new setting would only weaken his walls around those same feelings that he attaches to his past.
His relationship with his partner Maka is complicated. The desire to appear cool and apathetic, and his hesitance to show any of his true feelings makes their partnership seem childish at times. Arguments spring up with little effort and if Maka gets a little too close, Soul doesn't hesitate to push a touchy subject with her to get her to get angry or change the subject.
At the same time, Soul is fiercely dedicated to Maka, loyal enough to even risk his life, body and sanity for her. While he claims it to be part of his job as a weapon, it's a clear and obvious choice to protect her. Soul clings to her at times and may be quick to threaten those he might feel are threatening her. While a great deal of this desire comes from the honest want to keep her from harm, part of it also comes from the fear of failing at what Soul sees as the only thing he's good at and his one and only purpose: being a weapon. A purpose Maka gave to him when she asked him to be her weapon. So, adding gratitude for that fact to the rest, you get a strange mix of emotions that Soul would rather simplify into 'simple duty' and forget about, rather than work through. With his hesitance to speak to others about his feelings and his desired cool, cold appearance it would take some large, dramatic event to get him to vocalize any of these things or for him to even really think about them.
Within Soul is a manifestation of his insecurities in the form of a little demon imp inside of his soul, the black room. This creature knows all of Soul's baggage and takes advantage of his fears in an effort to get Soul to give up reason and rules in favor for insanity and power. While Soul has always held these insecurities, they didn't personify until he had become infected with Black Blood. In most situations, the imp is quiet, but once things grow dangerous he speaks up, offering Soul power to overcome all his perceived failures. The only people to know of this creature are Medusa, who had posed as a nurse at the time, and Maka who had initially found out only because Medusa had told her. If she hadn't, and if later events hadn't lead her to personally see the creature through resonance, it's not likely Maka would have ever found out. It's not likely Soul would have told Maka in fear of sounding crazy, uncool, weak or losing her trust in his dependability as a partner and weapon.
History:
He doesn't speak much about his past or family. Soul left that all behind when he chose to join Maka in Death City as her scythe. A choice most people would say was foolish. After all, Soul left behind a very wealthy family.
The Evans family is well known for their musical prowess. The rare flashbacks of his past are full of lavish parties, attended by faceless commenters speaking their love for his elder brother Wes, a famous virtuoso. Separate from the party, Soul obviously feels out of place in this life style. The same blank faces mention Soul's playing and how they wish to hear him play. Consistently Soul doubts their taste in music.
There's no evidence that his family was ever cruel to him. Wes, the only canon character from Soul's past, speaks to him encouragingly. Even in the negatively influenced Envy chapter in the book of Eibon, Wes's kind words are darkened to only accusing sarcasm, which only seems to echo Soul's own typical sarcasm.
I feel as though Soul's lack of faith in his musical ability, and thus his place in his talented family, comes from himself. Music, to Soul, is a deeply spiritual, internal thing. It's an expression of his feelings, his life, his soul. When he puts his hands on the keys of a piano, the music that comes out is more of a mirror for him than anything else. So when the music that emerges isn't as elegant, as traditional, as flowing as that of Wes or his other family members, it's telling Soul that he's the one who doesn't belong. Wrong notes turn into questions towards him self and his place with his family, darkens his heart and further twists his music in a loop of haunting off key melodies and crumbling self esteem.
He doesn't play like them. Soul's melodies are too different, and when he hears praise for his brother Wes and his perfect traditional violin work, it cuts Soul deep. The compliments for his brother translates in his mind to negative statements towards all other types of music, turn into statements about him. Without a single bad word uttered Soul's way, he feels the burden of failure as a proper pianist, failure to be part of his family, failure as a son, at what he was supposed to be.
It's hard to tell if perhaps his parents had a more direct role in his feelings in these topics since they're almost never talked about and certainly never shown. It's safe to assume that Soul feels ashamed of his self and his failure as a musician and that may be why his flashbacks omit them all together.
The first time Soul and Maka met is also strangely vague, since it was such an important event in the canon. Maka recalls hearing Soul's playing when they had met. Soul must have thought he was alone at the time since he's reluctant to play for anyone. The room had been empty except for the two of them and Soul had been dressed in a suit. The walls were adorned with elegant empty hanging picture frames over the full sized black grand piano.
--The setting leads me to believe this had taken place at one of these lavish parties the Evans would attend, in a room just outside the main event since Shibusen has few rooms so ornately decorated and since Soul had been so formally dressed. His eagerness to accept her offer to be her partner reflects his eagerness to leave the place he was, what he was doing and who he was. This is speculation, however, since the details aren't there.
Accepting Maka's offer for partnership and moving in with her to a new place that wouldn't recognize his face meant that Soul could start over and make a new image free of the expectations that came with being an Evans. The cool Soul that is Maka's weapon doesn't like formal parties or overly fancy things. He's rude rather than cordial, loud rather than quiet and violent when he needs to be. He wears bright clothes and band shirts that play anything but classical music, leaving behind the suits and white button down shirts he had worn before. He even twists the name Evans and adopts Eater as a new sort of last name, further trying to put distance between himself and his family. Thanks to Maka and thanks to Shibusen, Soul takes advantage of this opportunity to redefine himself. His new purpose is to be cool, to be powerful and to be a weapon for the person who saved him from all the self inflicted darkness he had entertained before.
If Maka had never mentioned to their friends that he had played when they met, if later attacks and resonances didn't require his playing from within his soul, it's likely that Soul would never have touched the keys of a piano again. He would certainly never have told anyone about his ability or his lineage. It's only when they absolutely need to use his piano-based abilities that he plays, only when their mission or lives depends on it when he lets his past touch his current life. His friends also know better than to push the subject of his playing. It obviously puts him on edge and he gets annoyed and quickly changes the subject.
In Italy after a successful mission, Maka picks up on the presence and sudden disappearance of a gang the two had run into earlier. Despite Soul's begging to ignore it, they go into a small church to investigate the disappearance and stumble upon Chrona. Chrona's black blood weapon Ragnarok enables Chrona with impenetrability and can vibrate at a fast enough rate to cut into the steel of Soul's scythe form. It quickly became clear that they didn't have much of a chance against Chrona and Maka decides to retreat, only to find herself trapped against the entrance of the church. When a presumably fatal blow was going to be dealt to Maka, Soul transforms back into his human form and takes the blow instead.
This event was a turning point in the canon and their character development. The blow scared Soul from his right hip to left shoulder and infected him with the same black blood that made up Ragnarok, the blade that had inflicted the wound. Emotionally, Soul seems unaffected by the close call. He again says it's part of his duty as a weapon. Physically and mentally it changes a number of things. Since black blood can transfer through resonance, only someone with an anti-insanity wavelength like Maka's can purge the infected blood from her system which limits Soul's available meisters to pretty much her exclusively. With the infection came the black room, a dark representation of the past that sets him on edge, the imp that prods him with promises of power and the shadow on the instrument he can't seem to escape.
However, black blood has turned into more of a blessing than a curse. As seen in the abilities list, it's added a great deal of power to not just Soul but to the both of them. The emotional struggles that Maka goes through in result of the battle in Italy helps her strive to become stronger and is often mentioned in her motivations. It's safe to say the both of them wouldn't be as strong, as close, or perhaps alive, if it wasn't for his contamination.
From his taken canon point, it's clear that Soul has overcome some of the insecurities dealing with his brother and past. He's shown exceptional strength of will that he was able to pull himself back from insanity. He has a clear view of what it is that he wishes to be now, and continues to strive towards it.
There are other events that have happened that I've skipped over, but these are the events that I feel make Soul who he is.
Roleplay Sample - Log:
Her scream echoed and reverberated off his soul until all that was left was silence. The dull, dusty white of Sloth and the red of Maka's blood and the silver of that monster had been exchanged for endless empty black. Stillness replaced the violent inertia of her swings. If it was this quiet, if it was this still, if his eyes were closed then it meant just one thing.
“Maka!” He had called her name, pushing his bleeding torso up at once from the floor, but the word just bounced off of the white walls. Ignoring the pain, Soul struggled to his knees and then to his feet, his hand pressed on a nearby dresser for support. The surroundings didn't even register and Soul was far from noticing the new collar around his neck. All that he knew was that this white was different from the white of where he was, where he needed to be. All that mattered was that Maka was in danger and he wasn't with her. The how and why of his arrival was as far from his mind as the blood he had left on the floor of this room. Unarmed, there would be nothing Maka could do against Giriko. She wouldn't be able to stop that thing from harming her, killing her...touching her.
Soul stumbled towards the door and it was only when he felt his hand slip on the door knob that he paused. The cool metal was smeared with red from his palm, fed by the blood that trailed down his arm. It could wait. As long as he was standing, he had to find her.
Roleplay Sample - Journal:
[The video feed comes in with a tiny bit of haze before showing Soul's face. He's pale and with a frustrated, exhausted expression, he wipes a bit of blood from the corner of his lips.]
I don't...
[He pauses and rests his head back against the hallway wall. Soul's breathing is slow and deep. After two long breaths, his eyes return to the device in hand.]
I don't know how I got here, but I need to go. I need to leave. My meister, my- [Swallowing a mix of saliva and blood] my partner Maka. I need to go. If anyone can hear this, if anyone sees this, I need to get back to the book.
[His plead stops only as Soul uses the wall to struggle back to his feet.]
I'm in some hallway that looks like all...all the other hallways. Please.
[The frame shakes as the cell phone is lowered. His feet take two steps forward before the device clatters to the floor. Soul's knees drop into the frame, then his thighs as the rest of his body collapses with a thud.]
Maka...
[Silence.]
Questions? Comments? Crazed and creative statements? Those go here.
I know that my activity has been lacking recently, due to my wedding and all. With the date fast approaching, I'll soon be free enough to play as often if not more so than before. My credit load will be much less this year. I'll have far more time and energy to give to Facility and both of my characters.