Application - Siren's Pull
Player Information
Name: Yun
Age: 16
AIM SN: fiertia
email: milexiander@gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes
Bonus: How did you hear about Siren's Pull? Through a friend’s flist.
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Pandora Hearts
Canon Format: Manga and Anime, though this character will be taken specifically from the manga
Character's Name: Echo/Noise/Zwei
Okay, so, this is a little complicated. Canon hasn’t specified what Echo/Noise/Zwei really is, but it’s inferred that she/they is/are human and what is known about this character is that there are two personalities within the body of this one little girl whom I’m trying to app. The personalities don’t seem to exist outside of the body itself, so it might be a split-personality disorder, or it might be two souls inhabiting one body - ergo, we’re not sure, and until canon reveals more information about her, we won’t be sure anytime soon. For clarification, she will be played as a character with a split-personality disorder in-game. But this character in particular has two sides to her - Echo and Noise; Echo who is your typical emotionless girl with some added baggage, and Noise being the number one evil shrieking fangirl of a certain Vincent Nightray, another character from the canon. Zwei is an alias of the ‘Zwei’ side of this character.
Normally, the character will be in ‘Echo’ mode. Her personality will be heavily extrapolated in the later section. In canon, she is portrayed as the one who keeps ‘Noise’ in check and prevents her from ‘coming out’, so to speak. However, when Vincent Nightray, her master, orders for it, they can switch personalities. It’s inferred that the non-dominant personality at the time rests at the back of the character’s mind and has full cognition of the character’s movements, thoughts and on-goings. Essentially, it’s like two people living inside of one body, only not. Like I said, it’s a little complicated. In a way, it’s impossible to app them as two different characters, considering that canon has made it clear that they are one single entity in itself.
If this needs further clarification, I’ll be happy to provide it.
Character's Age: 16 (or at least this is the age she gives. Canon isn’t clear on her actual age, but she looks older than 15, at least. She’s a contractor of a ‘Chain’, however, which might skew her age a little. It’s complicated and involves age-freeze and time travel.)
What form will your character's NV take? A magical journal/diary/notebook.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities:
Echo/Noise’s supernatural ability consists of their ‘contract’ with a ‘chain’ called Doldum. Essentially, a ‘contract’ is a pact between a human being and a ‘chain’, which are biological weapons which thrive in the ‘abyss’. These chains have no cognition of their own, and their only purpose is to escape the abyss where they are born and to kill people in the human world before devouring them. Echo/Noise holds a legal contract with the chain Doldum, which allows her the access to all of Doldum’s power. Doldum is then considered to be living inside of her per se, and she is able to call Doldum out to exercise her power over the chain. The chain itself is capable of controlling the actions of others through threads that connect the other person to the chain, almost like a puppetmaster and its marionette. The Chain is also able to strip away inhibition and allow a character’s true nature to show through when the character is under Doldum’s control. The more the character struggles against Doldum’s threads, the more tangled they get and the more control Echo/Noise has over their actions. However, it is possible to cut Doldum’s threads through sheer force of will alone.
Other than that, Echo/Noise is also capable of close-quarter combat, and their main weapon is a knife which they keep hidden up their sleeves.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them?
Weapons:
She has a knife up her sleeve. Most likely several.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History:
The first time we come into contact with Echo/Noise, it’s in Volume two of the manga, in which Oz Vessalius has just been tossed into the abyss. Long story short, Oz Vessalius, our protagonist, was thrown into the ‘abyss’ on his fifteenth birthday during his coming-of-age ceremony, and to return to the surface world, he had to make a contract with Alice, a chain who dwells within the abyss who also wishes to come to the surface world. The contract is symbolized by the seal on Oz’s chest, which looks like an empty clock, and Oz tends to keel over from the release of power every time the hands tick from one hour to another. Zwei is one of the characters at the ceremony, in which she managed to entrap Gilbert, Oz’s faithful servant, within her threads and use him as an instrument during the ceremony. However, she loses control after her chain takes interest in Oz.
The next time we see her, it is ten years later in the mansion where the ceremony was first held. Pandora members swarm the building, investigating, and she manages to entrap all of the members in the building with her threads in order to attack Raven once he enters the building. Raven manages to kill all of the possessed members, but she manages to entangle Raven within the threads in the process, and uses him as leverage against Oz Vessalius, sending Raven after Oz and revealing to Oz Raven’s identity as Gilbert Nightray. However, during the ensuing fight, Gilbert manages to break through one of her threads through sheer force of will and shoots her in the shoulder. She retreats.
The next time we see her, it’s during one of Oz’s keeling episodes in which Echo appears at the apartment of Gilbert Nightray, standing over the convulsing Oz with a bouquet of blue roses in her hand and a card addresses to Gilbert. She watches on as Oz falls to the ground, and then presumably leaves the same way she came in - through the window. She, however, leaves behind the roses and the card for Oz and Gilbert to find.
The next time we see Echo, it’s when Gilbert and Alice are off on a ‘shopping trip’ wrought with drama and must exposition and Oz is left alone in an alleyway to wait for the two of them. Oz comes across a crowd of bullies taunting a young boy, and successfully chases off the bullies through witty intimidation. He then converses with the young boy, who reveals himself to be Philip, the son of an ex-nobleman who is currently on hard times. During the conversation which ensues, Echo appears in the alleyway and immediately points a knife at Oz and Philip, stating that she’s under orders by her master to capture Philip. After a comical moment in which Oz attempts to get Echo to remember their first meeting and Echo only remembers the other as ‘that hindrance on the floor’, Echo threatens to harm the two of them if Philip does not come with her peacefully. Needless to say, the terrified boy runs, leaving a puzzled Echo and an exasperated Oz.
Echo them immediately gives chase, and Oz, panicked, runs after her. He manages to catch her by the arm, and upon asking who he is, Oz reveals his relationship with Gilbert Nightray. Immediately, Echo bows in apology for her actions, and Oz uses this opportunity to ask her why she’s chasing after Philip. Echo merely says that she has been ordered to do so, and later reveals that the man she is after isn’t the son, but actually the father of the boy, and in which it becomes apparent that her orders was to take the boy and use him in a hostage situation against the father. After a wild goose chase across the city, she manages to catch up to Philip and ‘captures’ him via sitting on him. However it’s too late. The fight has already begun. As Alice and Gilbert are accosted by Philip’s father and his illegal chain, Echo jumps into the battle to attack the chain with her knives. It doesn’t go well, however, and she is repealed, flying into an alleyway.
However, before she can get up again, she is grabbed and a hand motions for her to shush.
A fight ensues between Oz, Alice, Gilbert and the man and his chain. Just as Alice is about to kill the man and his chain, Oz stops her through his own will, and a stand-off ensues between the two parties, with Oz simultaneously protecting the man’s life and screaming at him about what his son truly wanted - his father’s companionship. However, a gunshot rings through the air and the man drops dead. Stricken, Oz turns to Gilbert, asking for why Gilbert shot him, but Gilbert denies this. Instead, out of the alleyway, Vincent Nightray steps out with his servant Echo, and tells the party that he had killed the man in order to save a boy’s, Oz’s, life. Echo and Vincent are then taken to the Rainsworth mansion where they are dried off, and then sent off back home -- during which Echo shows hostility against Xerxes Break for his words against her master.
The next time we see Echo again, it’s when Break and gang are sucked into Cheshire’s dimension, an off-shoot of the Abyss, in which they then traverse the realm trying to escape from Cheshire and to figure out the mystery behind the tragedy of Sablier a hundred years prior. Echo is sent by Vincent to attack Sharon Rainsworth while Break, Sharon’s primary guardian, is off on his little journey through the abyss, and to kidnap her. Echo apologizes to Sharon before knocking her out and bringing her back to the Nightray mansion. Both girls are then poisoned by Vincent Nightray, Sharon because she is a valuable hostage and Echo, because poisoning her is a part of his little ‘demonstration’ against Break, who will need confirmation as to the lethality of the poison before he can give Vincent what he wants. After Break returns from the Abyss, a tense show-down between Vincent and Break ensues, in which Vincent cures Echo with the antidote to the poison, and then holding the antidote over the balcony, gesturing at Break to give him what he wants - the destruction of the bell which Break procured from Cheshire’s dimension. Without a choice, Break destroys the bell and demands the antidote. Vincent laughs and lets it fall over the balcony.
It’s just then that Echo breaks free of her usual ‘emotionless doll’ role by Vincent’s side and catches the antidote before it can fall. Before Vincent can react, Break accosts her and takes the antidote from her smugly. Enraged that his plans had not gone the way he had wanted them to go, Vincent dismisses both of them. It’s assumed that he punishes Echo for her transgression.
We see Echo again in Chapter 33 of the manga during the Bridget’s day festivities. Oz notices her on a rooftop, brooding, and climbs up to greet her. She talks about how she must record all of what these two eyes see in her journal, and shows Oz how she keeps neat records of each and every event she witnesses. Oz then grabs her hand, citing that the best part of the Bridget Day festivities is that one can simply don a mask and become someone different for a day. They pick out a dress for her, and the two run around the city enjoying themselves - Echo reveals to Oz how much she dislikes her master, Vincent Nightray, and they talk. At the end of the day, they watch fireworks.
But nothing goes as planned, of course. Oz witnesses another tick of his clock and collapses on Echo, and Echo absorbs quite a bit of the power resonating from his seal. Upon returning to the Nightray mansion, Echo hallucinates about Noise and collapses onto the ground. After she manages to right herself again, Vincent strikes her down once more. Lotti enters the room at that moment and witnesses the scene. Sparse conversation takes place as Echo convulses on the ground, citing that she has to keep the other at bay, that it was Master Vincent’s orders that she had to obey. Vincent then simply smiles and tells Echo that she isn’t needed any more. That Noise can switch in again.
Devastated, Echo can only allow Noise to take over the body that the two share. Overjoyed, Noise jumps into her precious Master Vincent’s arms and gushes over him for a good while. Once Lotti leaves the room, Vincent orders for Noise to go to Sablier in his place. Later, Noise falls asleep on Vincent’s bed, spent, and Vincent and Lotti exchange words.
Upon arriving in Sablier, a sequence of events leads to Noise facing off with Xerxes Break, in which Break jabs a sword through her stomach in the ensuing fight.
It’s around here that she is pulled into Siren’s Port by the core.
Point in Canon:
Just after Xerxes Break shoved a sword through her stomach in chapter 37. The main characters are gathered at Sablier, where they are attempting to investigate the tragedy of Sablier. Noise is sent to Sablier by Vincent in order to observe their progress and to throw a monkey wrench in their works when Xerxes Break intercepts her and stabs her through the stomach, before driving a sword through her right hand.
Character Personality:
So far in PH canon, we have seen that the entity, whom we shall call ‘Echo’, to simply things, possesses two personalities: Echo and Noise. Upon questioned, Vincent once described it as ‘something like a split personality’, and while we are unsure of the circumstances in which these two personalities developed, nor are we certain that it is truly a ‘split personality’ (some indications point to the possibility that Echo and Noise are two different people entirely that just happen to inhabit the same body), what can be said at this point is that the two personalities, Echo and Noise, and as different as day and night.
Echo --
Echo seems to be the Echo-Noise entity’s default personality. Or rather, we see Echo as the main personality far more than we see Noise, and thus we know her far better than that of Noise’s.
Echo is a quite young girl with an indifferent stare. She is obedient, but not loyal per se, and follows orders with extreme precision and care. Both Echo and Noise consider Vincent Nightray as their master, but Echo seems to follow his orders not out of a misguided sense of loyalty, but because she was born into it and that she /must/. It’s unknown the circumstances that led to her becoming a servant of the Nightray house, but it is known that while she seems passive and obedient to a fault, Echo finds Vincent Nightray childish and annoying.
She seems to take things rather literally. One could say that there’s a certainly childish simplicity to her. If one tells her to jump, she would hardly think to ask how high before she does so. If one tells her to kidnap a certain child, she would hardly think to ask why. Or rather, while she may harbor questions for certain questionable orders (and this happens rather often, seeing as her master is Vincent, and Vincent is hardly normal by any standards) she simply doesn’t ask. Nor does she hold her tongue out of any sense of respect for Vincent.
Once told by Oz Vessalius that she can say whatever she truly thinks about her situation, she very bluntly declared that she found Vincent to be very annoying, that he’s childish and a slob and makes her do things that she doesn’t quite understand the purpose of, such as making her sit on his lap and other such questionable activities. But upon being questioned as to /why/ she remains his servant, she simply says that she was born into it, and that she must. And that was the end of that conversation.
From this, we can gather that Echo is blunt, and relatively straight-forward. Once told that she can have free reign over her words, she would not question the intent of the person, and immediately say what she thinks. In this, she seems almost naïve. She takes things at a face value, and acts, not according to the situation, but according to her principles. Never question. Always obey. Vincent is law. She seems to have a set of rules (writ by Vincent, of course) which she applies to all situations, but in situations that are not governed by such laws, she seems to end up at a loss of what to do. Like a lost child.
Echo also professes to not know what the feeling of happiness is. Coolly logical, seemingly apathetic, and serious, she rarely smiles (or rather, she doesn’t seem to realize that she never smiles. She simply does what she usually does, and… does not question what she can or cannot do), and consistently takes things literally. And while she seems to be an encyclopedia of knowledge (she’s capable of explaining the workings of fireworks using very official terminology), she doesn’t seem to know what to do with this kind of knowledge.
She’s quite aware of the wrongness of her situation. Upon attacking Miss Sharon during the Cheshire arc, she does apologize for her actions - knowing very well that Vincent ordered a wrong-doing out of her. However, she seems to accept everything as ‘normal’, or rather, as something that ‘should’ happen, and ‘thus happens’. In this, she seems to be rather emotionally stunted, and can possibly be comparable to Oz Vessalius.
Emotions are outside of the boundaries of logic. She cannot reason her way with it, and thus she does not explore it. Echo is a very clear-cut personality.
However, she needs to feel as though she’s needed, and when Vincent cruelly exchanged her for Noise, the other personality, the expression on her face is devastated.
Her greatest fear is to be forgotten. To become useless. To be cast aside.
After all, she is but a mere echo of noise, and she knows this all too well.
Noise --
Noise, the night within the Echo-Noise pair. Or rather, perhaps she is even day, for her personality is bubbly and energetic and all-too emotional. While Echo may exhibit the naivety of a child, Noise exhibits the cruelty. She is sadistic, cruel beyond repair, and yet is easily excitable. Touchy-feeling, and constantly clamoring for attention and love, Noise is the source of Echo’s ‘Echo’. For while Echo is silent and only responds when spoken to, Noise creates the noise whenever she can, and thus, it’s only fitting that Noise’s name is ‘Noise’, while Echo is ‘Echo’. And yet she is called ‘Zwei’, which is German for ‘two’, by Vincent and by many other characters within the manga, and this is theorized to be a fake name used within the Baskerville organization, so as to not attract attention to Echo-Noise that inhabits the Nightray manor.
Within any third-person dialogue, she will be referred to as ‘Noise’, but will introduce herself as ‘Zwei’.
As it has been said before, Noise is cruel and sadistic. She finds great pleasure in torturing others, causing pain and dissent amongst Vincent’s enemies, and using her Chain ‘Doldam’, to enslave and control others. She seems to revel in that sense of control, and while Echo was quite passive, Noise is hardly but. Even Vincent’s orders cannot sate her. Though Vincent orders for her to keep the Gilbert-Oz pair alive, she nearly kills Oz in her enthusiasm for the job, and while she’s punished, it hardly destroys her killing spirit. Over-enthusiastic, Vincent seems to have trouble keeping her in line, but it does not seem to pose a problem to him.
Why? Because Noise seems to love Vincent, and everything she does seems to be for his sake. While Echo finds Vincent annoying and childish, Noise seems to think the world of him, willing to put her life on the line for his purposes at all ends. She clamors for a chance to ‘meet’ with him, as she puts it, eagerly pushing aside Echo in order to hug and caress Vincent - and going as far as to say that she is more useful to Vincent because of her past deeds. In this, she is also very childish, clinging onto Vincent as though her life depended on it. And while Vincent responds with similar love (as fake as it wont to be), she is delighted.
Of the Echo-Noise pair, she seems to be the denser one. While Echo seems fully aware of Vincent’s orders and their implications, but carries them out effectively and efficiently anyway, Noise does not seem to have any sort of inkling as to what’s going on. Rather, she does whatever Vincent asks of her without thinking it through in the least, and when the consequences come, she screams her throat out. She seems almost sloppy, in comparison to the prim Echo, and yet she is better loved.
It’s theorized that Vincent’s ordering of the switching of their personalities is hardly arbitrary, and that the switching in itself seems to be facilitating certain feelings within the two personalities - a craving to see Vincent in Noise, and a sense of passive despair within Echo. For Echo does care about Noise, it seems, feeling rather guilty that she stands in the way between Noise and Vincent, and yet does so because of duty. And Noise’s only wish is to see Vincent, and almost resents Echo for being able to spend more time with him.
In the end, the entity of Echo-Noise is within the palm of Vincent’s hand. That’s what it inevitably comes to.
Character Plans:
I plan on developing her character. Echo/Noise is a character with a lot of potential in character development, and I’m hoping to do her justice. I can start by garnering a few sympathizers to her cause, and then perhaps giving her a sense of self-worth, and perhaps turning her against Vincent’s cause. It will be a gradual process, of course, but that is what I strive for in terms of her character.
Appearance/PB:
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
[The echoing silence. She stares into the video screen with a blank face, eyes scouring the screen as though it were something mildly distasteful.
A long pause, and she points the edges of a frilled sleeve at the screen.]
Location, unknown. Object appears to be similar to a looking glass.
[Another pause.]
Master Vincent appears to not be within the vicinity.
[Her eyes dart to her right.]
Echo will commence search.
[A pause, and she darts off, leaving the object behind.]
Third Person Sample
She knew something was amiss the moment she realized that she wasn’t dead.
Lying there on the ground in a pool of her own blood, she grimaced as she reached her left hand over her stomach, and wasn’t surprised to feel that the hole in her stomach prior had healed up to form something that felt like an over-sized scab. The blood on her fingers and, from what she could feel, on her back was dried and smelled of iron. The dark color, she discovered as she lifted said hand for a brief inspection, dyed her right sleeve brown. A brief moment in which she laid there and felt for broken bones. Her ribs felt sore and the bones in her hands creaked with each and every movement, but other than that, she seemed to be in a reasonable state of health.
She got up. Her first steps were unbalanced and shaky, and she felt for her stomach worriedly, watching as fresh blood seeped out to dye the tips of her fingers red. But other than that, the wound itself was apparently healed from the inside out, and while the slightest movements made fresh blood spew from the sides of the scab, it felt as though it was nothing more than a skin abrasion. Her hand, after a thorough examination and the picking at of the scab, was of the same state, and it was after this discovery that she turned to look around curiously at the strange place where she had been dropped off after her adventures in Sablier.
The graffiti seemed distasteful to her Victorian-age sensibilities, but she didn’t dwell upon it. Instead, the signs caught her attention. Walking forward, she read each and every one of them, before reaching into her sleeve and pulling out her journal from the recess of its frills. It had changed, evidently, the journal. Her quill had been replaced by a ball-point pen, and the journal itself was foreign to her.
A brief pause in which she examined it closely, and then, taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes.
Her fingers scuttled over the clasp.
She pulled it open, and read.
Name: Yun
Age: 16
AIM SN: fiertia
email: milexiander@gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes
Bonus: How did you hear about Siren's Pull? Through a friend’s flist.
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Pandora Hearts
Canon Format: Manga and Anime, though this character will be taken specifically from the manga
Character's Name: Echo/Noise/Zwei
Okay, so, this is a little complicated. Canon hasn’t specified what Echo/Noise/Zwei really is, but it’s inferred that she/they is/are human and what is known about this character is that there are two personalities within the body of this one little girl whom I’m trying to app. The personalities don’t seem to exist outside of the body itself, so it might be a split-personality disorder, or it might be two souls inhabiting one body - ergo, we’re not sure, and until canon reveals more information about her, we won’t be sure anytime soon. For clarification, she will be played as a character with a split-personality disorder in-game. But this character in particular has two sides to her - Echo and Noise; Echo who is your typical emotionless girl with some added baggage, and Noise being the number one evil shrieking fangirl of a certain Vincent Nightray, another character from the canon. Zwei is an alias of the ‘Zwei’ side of this character.
Normally, the character will be in ‘Echo’ mode. Her personality will be heavily extrapolated in the later section. In canon, she is portrayed as the one who keeps ‘Noise’ in check and prevents her from ‘coming out’, so to speak. However, when Vincent Nightray, her master, orders for it, they can switch personalities. It’s inferred that the non-dominant personality at the time rests at the back of the character’s mind and has full cognition of the character’s movements, thoughts and on-goings. Essentially, it’s like two people living inside of one body, only not. Like I said, it’s a little complicated. In a way, it’s impossible to app them as two different characters, considering that canon has made it clear that they are one single entity in itself.
If this needs further clarification, I’ll be happy to provide it.
Character's Age: 16 (or at least this is the age she gives. Canon isn’t clear on her actual age, but she looks older than 15, at least. She’s a contractor of a ‘Chain’, however, which might skew her age a little. It’s complicated and involves age-freeze and time travel.)
What form will your character's NV take? A magical journal/diary/notebook.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities:
Echo/Noise’s supernatural ability consists of their ‘contract’ with a ‘chain’ called Doldum. Essentially, a ‘contract’ is a pact between a human being and a ‘chain’, which are biological weapons which thrive in the ‘abyss’. These chains have no cognition of their own, and their only purpose is to escape the abyss where they are born and to kill people in the human world before devouring them. Echo/Noise holds a legal contract with the chain Doldum, which allows her the access to all of Doldum’s power. Doldum is then considered to be living inside of her per se, and she is able to call Doldum out to exercise her power over the chain. The chain itself is capable of controlling the actions of others through threads that connect the other person to the chain, almost like a puppetmaster and its marionette. The Chain is also able to strip away inhibition and allow a character’s true nature to show through when the character is under Doldum’s control. The more the character struggles against Doldum’s threads, the more tangled they get and the more control Echo/Noise has over their actions. However, it is possible to cut Doldum’s threads through sheer force of will alone.
Other than that, Echo/Noise is also capable of close-quarter combat, and their main weapon is a knife which they keep hidden up their sleeves.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them?
Weapons:
She has a knife up her sleeve. Most likely several.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History:
The first time we come into contact with Echo/Noise, it’s in Volume two of the manga, in which Oz Vessalius has just been tossed into the abyss. Long story short, Oz Vessalius, our protagonist, was thrown into the ‘abyss’ on his fifteenth birthday during his coming-of-age ceremony, and to return to the surface world, he had to make a contract with Alice, a chain who dwells within the abyss who also wishes to come to the surface world. The contract is symbolized by the seal on Oz’s chest, which looks like an empty clock, and Oz tends to keel over from the release of power every time the hands tick from one hour to another. Zwei is one of the characters at the ceremony, in which she managed to entrap Gilbert, Oz’s faithful servant, within her threads and use him as an instrument during the ceremony. However, she loses control after her chain takes interest in Oz.
The next time we see her, it is ten years later in the mansion where the ceremony was first held. Pandora members swarm the building, investigating, and she manages to entrap all of the members in the building with her threads in order to attack Raven once he enters the building. Raven manages to kill all of the possessed members, but she manages to entangle Raven within the threads in the process, and uses him as leverage against Oz Vessalius, sending Raven after Oz and revealing to Oz Raven’s identity as Gilbert Nightray. However, during the ensuing fight, Gilbert manages to break through one of her threads through sheer force of will and shoots her in the shoulder. She retreats.
The next time we see her, it’s during one of Oz’s keeling episodes in which Echo appears at the apartment of Gilbert Nightray, standing over the convulsing Oz with a bouquet of blue roses in her hand and a card addresses to Gilbert. She watches on as Oz falls to the ground, and then presumably leaves the same way she came in - through the window. She, however, leaves behind the roses and the card for Oz and Gilbert to find.
The next time we see Echo, it’s when Gilbert and Alice are off on a ‘shopping trip’ wrought with drama and must exposition and Oz is left alone in an alleyway to wait for the two of them. Oz comes across a crowd of bullies taunting a young boy, and successfully chases off the bullies through witty intimidation. He then converses with the young boy, who reveals himself to be Philip, the son of an ex-nobleman who is currently on hard times. During the conversation which ensues, Echo appears in the alleyway and immediately points a knife at Oz and Philip, stating that she’s under orders by her master to capture Philip. After a comical moment in which Oz attempts to get Echo to remember their first meeting and Echo only remembers the other as ‘that hindrance on the floor’, Echo threatens to harm the two of them if Philip does not come with her peacefully. Needless to say, the terrified boy runs, leaving a puzzled Echo and an exasperated Oz.
Echo them immediately gives chase, and Oz, panicked, runs after her. He manages to catch her by the arm, and upon asking who he is, Oz reveals his relationship with Gilbert Nightray. Immediately, Echo bows in apology for her actions, and Oz uses this opportunity to ask her why she’s chasing after Philip. Echo merely says that she has been ordered to do so, and later reveals that the man she is after isn’t the son, but actually the father of the boy, and in which it becomes apparent that her orders was to take the boy and use him in a hostage situation against the father. After a wild goose chase across the city, she manages to catch up to Philip and ‘captures’ him via sitting on him. However it’s too late. The fight has already begun. As Alice and Gilbert are accosted by Philip’s father and his illegal chain, Echo jumps into the battle to attack the chain with her knives. It doesn’t go well, however, and she is repealed, flying into an alleyway.
However, before she can get up again, she is grabbed and a hand motions for her to shush.
A fight ensues between Oz, Alice, Gilbert and the man and his chain. Just as Alice is about to kill the man and his chain, Oz stops her through his own will, and a stand-off ensues between the two parties, with Oz simultaneously protecting the man’s life and screaming at him about what his son truly wanted - his father’s companionship. However, a gunshot rings through the air and the man drops dead. Stricken, Oz turns to Gilbert, asking for why Gilbert shot him, but Gilbert denies this. Instead, out of the alleyway, Vincent Nightray steps out with his servant Echo, and tells the party that he had killed the man in order to save a boy’s, Oz’s, life. Echo and Vincent are then taken to the Rainsworth mansion where they are dried off, and then sent off back home -- during which Echo shows hostility against Xerxes Break for his words against her master.
The next time we see Echo again, it’s when Break and gang are sucked into Cheshire’s dimension, an off-shoot of the Abyss, in which they then traverse the realm trying to escape from Cheshire and to figure out the mystery behind the tragedy of Sablier a hundred years prior. Echo is sent by Vincent to attack Sharon Rainsworth while Break, Sharon’s primary guardian, is off on his little journey through the abyss, and to kidnap her. Echo apologizes to Sharon before knocking her out and bringing her back to the Nightray mansion. Both girls are then poisoned by Vincent Nightray, Sharon because she is a valuable hostage and Echo, because poisoning her is a part of his little ‘demonstration’ against Break, who will need confirmation as to the lethality of the poison before he can give Vincent what he wants. After Break returns from the Abyss, a tense show-down between Vincent and Break ensues, in which Vincent cures Echo with the antidote to the poison, and then holding the antidote over the balcony, gesturing at Break to give him what he wants - the destruction of the bell which Break procured from Cheshire’s dimension. Without a choice, Break destroys the bell and demands the antidote. Vincent laughs and lets it fall over the balcony.
It’s just then that Echo breaks free of her usual ‘emotionless doll’ role by Vincent’s side and catches the antidote before it can fall. Before Vincent can react, Break accosts her and takes the antidote from her smugly. Enraged that his plans had not gone the way he had wanted them to go, Vincent dismisses both of them. It’s assumed that he punishes Echo for her transgression.
We see Echo again in Chapter 33 of the manga during the Bridget’s day festivities. Oz notices her on a rooftop, brooding, and climbs up to greet her. She talks about how she must record all of what these two eyes see in her journal, and shows Oz how she keeps neat records of each and every event she witnesses. Oz then grabs her hand, citing that the best part of the Bridget Day festivities is that one can simply don a mask and become someone different for a day. They pick out a dress for her, and the two run around the city enjoying themselves - Echo reveals to Oz how much she dislikes her master, Vincent Nightray, and they talk. At the end of the day, they watch fireworks.
But nothing goes as planned, of course. Oz witnesses another tick of his clock and collapses on Echo, and Echo absorbs quite a bit of the power resonating from his seal. Upon returning to the Nightray mansion, Echo hallucinates about Noise and collapses onto the ground. After she manages to right herself again, Vincent strikes her down once more. Lotti enters the room at that moment and witnesses the scene. Sparse conversation takes place as Echo convulses on the ground, citing that she has to keep the other at bay, that it was Master Vincent’s orders that she had to obey. Vincent then simply smiles and tells Echo that she isn’t needed any more. That Noise can switch in again.
Devastated, Echo can only allow Noise to take over the body that the two share. Overjoyed, Noise jumps into her precious Master Vincent’s arms and gushes over him for a good while. Once Lotti leaves the room, Vincent orders for Noise to go to Sablier in his place. Later, Noise falls asleep on Vincent’s bed, spent, and Vincent and Lotti exchange words.
Upon arriving in Sablier, a sequence of events leads to Noise facing off with Xerxes Break, in which Break jabs a sword through her stomach in the ensuing fight.
It’s around here that she is pulled into Siren’s Port by the core.
Point in Canon:
Just after Xerxes Break shoved a sword through her stomach in chapter 37. The main characters are gathered at Sablier, where they are attempting to investigate the tragedy of Sablier. Noise is sent to Sablier by Vincent in order to observe their progress and to throw a monkey wrench in their works when Xerxes Break intercepts her and stabs her through the stomach, before driving a sword through her right hand.
Character Personality:
So far in PH canon, we have seen that the entity, whom we shall call ‘Echo’, to simply things, possesses two personalities: Echo and Noise. Upon questioned, Vincent once described it as ‘something like a split personality’, and while we are unsure of the circumstances in which these two personalities developed, nor are we certain that it is truly a ‘split personality’ (some indications point to the possibility that Echo and Noise are two different people entirely that just happen to inhabit the same body), what can be said at this point is that the two personalities, Echo and Noise, and as different as day and night.
Echo --
Echo seems to be the Echo-Noise entity’s default personality. Or rather, we see Echo as the main personality far more than we see Noise, and thus we know her far better than that of Noise’s.
Echo is a quite young girl with an indifferent stare. She is obedient, but not loyal per se, and follows orders with extreme precision and care. Both Echo and Noise consider Vincent Nightray as their master, but Echo seems to follow his orders not out of a misguided sense of loyalty, but because she was born into it and that she /must/. It’s unknown the circumstances that led to her becoming a servant of the Nightray house, but it is known that while she seems passive and obedient to a fault, Echo finds Vincent Nightray childish and annoying.
She seems to take things rather literally. One could say that there’s a certainly childish simplicity to her. If one tells her to jump, she would hardly think to ask how high before she does so. If one tells her to kidnap a certain child, she would hardly think to ask why. Or rather, while she may harbor questions for certain questionable orders (and this happens rather often, seeing as her master is Vincent, and Vincent is hardly normal by any standards) she simply doesn’t ask. Nor does she hold her tongue out of any sense of respect for Vincent.
Once told by Oz Vessalius that she can say whatever she truly thinks about her situation, she very bluntly declared that she found Vincent to be very annoying, that he’s childish and a slob and makes her do things that she doesn’t quite understand the purpose of, such as making her sit on his lap and other such questionable activities. But upon being questioned as to /why/ she remains his servant, she simply says that she was born into it, and that she must. And that was the end of that conversation.
From this, we can gather that Echo is blunt, and relatively straight-forward. Once told that she can have free reign over her words, she would not question the intent of the person, and immediately say what she thinks. In this, she seems almost naïve. She takes things at a face value, and acts, not according to the situation, but according to her principles. Never question. Always obey. Vincent is law. She seems to have a set of rules (writ by Vincent, of course) which she applies to all situations, but in situations that are not governed by such laws, she seems to end up at a loss of what to do. Like a lost child.
Echo also professes to not know what the feeling of happiness is. Coolly logical, seemingly apathetic, and serious, she rarely smiles (or rather, she doesn’t seem to realize that she never smiles. She simply does what she usually does, and… does not question what she can or cannot do), and consistently takes things literally. And while she seems to be an encyclopedia of knowledge (she’s capable of explaining the workings of fireworks using very official terminology), she doesn’t seem to know what to do with this kind of knowledge.
She’s quite aware of the wrongness of her situation. Upon attacking Miss Sharon during the Cheshire arc, she does apologize for her actions - knowing very well that Vincent ordered a wrong-doing out of her. However, she seems to accept everything as ‘normal’, or rather, as something that ‘should’ happen, and ‘thus happens’. In this, she seems to be rather emotionally stunted, and can possibly be comparable to Oz Vessalius.
Emotions are outside of the boundaries of logic. She cannot reason her way with it, and thus she does not explore it. Echo is a very clear-cut personality.
However, she needs to feel as though she’s needed, and when Vincent cruelly exchanged her for Noise, the other personality, the expression on her face is devastated.
Her greatest fear is to be forgotten. To become useless. To be cast aside.
After all, she is but a mere echo of noise, and she knows this all too well.
Noise --
Noise, the night within the Echo-Noise pair. Or rather, perhaps she is even day, for her personality is bubbly and energetic and all-too emotional. While Echo may exhibit the naivety of a child, Noise exhibits the cruelty. She is sadistic, cruel beyond repair, and yet is easily excitable. Touchy-feeling, and constantly clamoring for attention and love, Noise is the source of Echo’s ‘Echo’. For while Echo is silent and only responds when spoken to, Noise creates the noise whenever she can, and thus, it’s only fitting that Noise’s name is ‘Noise’, while Echo is ‘Echo’. And yet she is called ‘Zwei’, which is German for ‘two’, by Vincent and by many other characters within the manga, and this is theorized to be a fake name used within the Baskerville organization, so as to not attract attention to Echo-Noise that inhabits the Nightray manor.
Within any third-person dialogue, she will be referred to as ‘Noise’, but will introduce herself as ‘Zwei’.
As it has been said before, Noise is cruel and sadistic. She finds great pleasure in torturing others, causing pain and dissent amongst Vincent’s enemies, and using her Chain ‘Doldam’, to enslave and control others. She seems to revel in that sense of control, and while Echo was quite passive, Noise is hardly but. Even Vincent’s orders cannot sate her. Though Vincent orders for her to keep the Gilbert-Oz pair alive, she nearly kills Oz in her enthusiasm for the job, and while she’s punished, it hardly destroys her killing spirit. Over-enthusiastic, Vincent seems to have trouble keeping her in line, but it does not seem to pose a problem to him.
Why? Because Noise seems to love Vincent, and everything she does seems to be for his sake. While Echo finds Vincent annoying and childish, Noise seems to think the world of him, willing to put her life on the line for his purposes at all ends. She clamors for a chance to ‘meet’ with him, as she puts it, eagerly pushing aside Echo in order to hug and caress Vincent - and going as far as to say that she is more useful to Vincent because of her past deeds. In this, she is also very childish, clinging onto Vincent as though her life depended on it. And while Vincent responds with similar love (as fake as it wont to be), she is delighted.
Of the Echo-Noise pair, she seems to be the denser one. While Echo seems fully aware of Vincent’s orders and their implications, but carries them out effectively and efficiently anyway, Noise does not seem to have any sort of inkling as to what’s going on. Rather, she does whatever Vincent asks of her without thinking it through in the least, and when the consequences come, she screams her throat out. She seems almost sloppy, in comparison to the prim Echo, and yet she is better loved.
It’s theorized that Vincent’s ordering of the switching of their personalities is hardly arbitrary, and that the switching in itself seems to be facilitating certain feelings within the two personalities - a craving to see Vincent in Noise, and a sense of passive despair within Echo. For Echo does care about Noise, it seems, feeling rather guilty that she stands in the way between Noise and Vincent, and yet does so because of duty. And Noise’s only wish is to see Vincent, and almost resents Echo for being able to spend more time with him.
In the end, the entity of Echo-Noise is within the palm of Vincent’s hand. That’s what it inevitably comes to.
Character Plans:
I plan on developing her character. Echo/Noise is a character with a lot of potential in character development, and I’m hoping to do her justice. I can start by garnering a few sympathizers to her cause, and then perhaps giving her a sense of self-worth, and perhaps turning her against Vincent’s cause. It will be a gradual process, of course, but that is what I strive for in terms of her character.
Appearance/PB:
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
[The echoing silence. She stares into the video screen with a blank face, eyes scouring the screen as though it were something mildly distasteful.
A long pause, and she points the edges of a frilled sleeve at the screen.]
Location, unknown. Object appears to be similar to a looking glass.
[Another pause.]
Master Vincent appears to not be within the vicinity.
[Her eyes dart to her right.]
Echo will commence search.
[A pause, and she darts off, leaving the object behind.]
Third Person Sample
She knew something was amiss the moment she realized that she wasn’t dead.
Lying there on the ground in a pool of her own blood, she grimaced as she reached her left hand over her stomach, and wasn’t surprised to feel that the hole in her stomach prior had healed up to form something that felt like an over-sized scab. The blood on her fingers and, from what she could feel, on her back was dried and smelled of iron. The dark color, she discovered as she lifted said hand for a brief inspection, dyed her right sleeve brown. A brief moment in which she laid there and felt for broken bones. Her ribs felt sore and the bones in her hands creaked with each and every movement, but other than that, she seemed to be in a reasonable state of health.
She got up. Her first steps were unbalanced and shaky, and she felt for her stomach worriedly, watching as fresh blood seeped out to dye the tips of her fingers red. But other than that, the wound itself was apparently healed from the inside out, and while the slightest movements made fresh blood spew from the sides of the scab, it felt as though it was nothing more than a skin abrasion. Her hand, after a thorough examination and the picking at of the scab, was of the same state, and it was after this discovery that she turned to look around curiously at the strange place where she had been dropped off after her adventures in Sablier.
The graffiti seemed distasteful to her Victorian-age sensibilities, but she didn’t dwell upon it. Instead, the signs caught her attention. Walking forward, she read each and every one of them, before reaching into her sleeve and pulling out her journal from the recess of its frills. It had changed, evidently, the journal. Her quill had been replaced by a ball-point pen, and the journal itself was foreign to her.
A brief pause in which she examined it closely, and then, taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes.
Her fingers scuttled over the clasp.
She pulled it open, and read.