warforged Application

[heartstorage]

NAME: Yuff
CONTACT: Yuffie99k@gmail.com
PERSONAL JOURNAL: randomtology
OTHER CHARACTERS: Zelos Wilder, Red Flight

CHARACTER NAME: Sora
CHARACTER SERIES: Kingdom Hearts
SPECIES: Human, or at least made out of at least 2 of them and a humanoid replica. :|b
AGE: 16 as of his latest canon point
CANON POINT: End of Dream Drop Distance, before he reaches Traverse


CLASS/ABILITIES:
In canon Sora is a keyblade wielder. This means he can summon a key like weapon that is pretty haxx. The keyblade can open any lock, always returns to the wielder, be sharp enough to cut through buildings, shape shift into other weapons (or ships), travel worlds and do all sorts of godhaxxy things. But on the downside, keyblades also mark its wielder as a giant target to monsters like Heartless and there's no giving up the keyblade once it's chosen you - so you spend your entire life constantly being hunted by any heartless that happen to be nearby.

Like most of the keyblade wielders, he seems to possess a low level of empathic abilities. Though while the ones with formal training seem to sense more the levels of light and darkness in their heart, Sora is less refined and seems to sense more along the lines of how malicious a person is- which is a major reason he's not often tricked. If he's dealing with someone that has malicious intent, he starts to get edgy, untrusting and even frequently hostile.

Sora also had an ace up his sleeve called drive form that for a short amount of time, would allow him to wield two keyblades or have his magical power be greatly enhanced. These forms were incredibly strong, however extremely taxing. So much that if he used this power too frequently, he stood the risk of reverting into anti-form- which was a heartless like form with claws that would attack anything in sight. Whoops.

In addition to his keyblade, he's capable of using magic. Most of it is elemental magic such as ice, fire, thunder, air and light. He's also got some healing skills and can mess with gravity and time. Or make shields. In overall power he's about average in comparison to other characters in the games.

His name does mean Sky, so I should probably talk about his movement skills as well. He can jump really high and even learn to glide or fly. He also seems to take no damage from falling, no matter the height. He also is able to move incredibly fast in short bursts of speed, fast enough that that he becomes a blur or mirages of his movement.

However Sora's most unique power to himself is the power of his heart. He seems to possess a special ability that allows his heart to connect with other people much more than others. This allows him to do stuff like store other people's heart/souls into his body for safe keeping or trigger actual emotions out of people who are, quite literally, incapable of emotions. It's even theorized by one person in canon that this power of his, if used right, could even bring back the dead. However how these powers work is still vague/mysterious, and also at this point it seems to come at serious costs. For example, triggering actual emotion out of normally emotionless sociopaths for some reason is possibly not the best idea. Another problem is that if someone else's heart/soul is in him for an extended point of time- it starts to influence his own personality and appearance. Also the only known way to get those hearts/souls out of him right now is to kill him.

Seriously. Heart is actually a terrible power.

For Warforged Sora will be reclassed as a druid because, well, he does a lot of form changing for various situations throughout the series (merman, lion-form, all the drive forms, heartless, etc), so it fits for him some of his skills. Not to mention in Dream Drop Distance, it was his job to go into the dreams of certain worlds and clear them of their nightmares/wake them up- which is fairly similar to the tasks of druids in the Emerald Dream.

Personality and role wise it also fits him because much like Druids, Keyblade wielders are unaffiliated with any faction or government and answer only to Keyblade Masters if they haven't passed the Mark of Mastery Exam (and it seems more based on respect for their Master than strict authority). And much like Druids, Keyblade wielder's main goals seems to be to preserve and/or achieve balance within the worlds - even if there is differing opinions among them what that should look like.

His forms will be cat, bear and moonkin since Sora is very much not a healer.

HISTORY:
Canon history is here! I am so sorry for the length.

For a quicker summary:
As far as he's aware, Sora had a mostly normal childhood. He grew up on the Destiny Islands along with his best friends Riku and Kairi and had a peaceful life. While he and his friends were curious about the outside world (with Riku really wanting to leave), he was rather content with his life.

However things changed when the Heartless, creatures made out of the darkness in people's hearts, invaded the islands. The islands were destroyed and fell into darkness. Sora survived by chance when the keyblade, a legendary weapon, choose him as its new wielder. Thanks to the keyblade, he managed to get to another world that had yet to fall to the Heartless.

From there eventually he was discovered by a group of people looking to save the worlds. They recruited him because he could use a keyblade, and he's been traveling the worlds since, trying to beat back the Heartless and any other forces that threaten the safety of the worlds.



PERSONALITY:
When a person first meets Sora, it's not uncommon for someone to completely overlook him. He's young, short, skinny and all in all pretty average in terms of looks. Being rather average in intelligence and not particularly driven unless pushed, it's rather no surprise many people seem dismiss him right out of hand. This is only furthered by the fact that it turned out the only reason the keyblade choose him was because its first choice screwed up and no longer qualified.

But what Sora lacks in sheer awe factor, he seems to make up for in friendliness and an outgoing nature. Unlike many of the keyblade wielders, Sora has an easy time interacting with new people and making friends wherever he goes. Unless there's something about a person that puts him ill at ease, he seems to approach most new encounters as a chance to make another friend.

While this may sound like Sora is a gullible idiot that'll get himself killed one day, he's actually surprisingly perceptive about people's motives- even more so than many of his fellow comrades. A novel once described that when he meets a new person he spends some time mentally judging them into three different categories: good, bad and suspicious for those rare people like Joshua that he has trouble pinpointing their true alignment. But aside from those rare cases, all in all his perception and intuition works extremely well and it's hard for someone with malicious intent to pull the wool over his eyes.

Intelligence wise, Sora is probably best described as simple. Complicated concepts tend to go over his head, and he's nowhere near as philosophical as his friend Riku. A few characters remark that he can be slow on the uptake, and it's not without merit. However he isn't without his clever moments. In battle he's shown to be very cunning in terms of resourcefulness and strategy, frequently turning the odds in his favor by using an object at hand or even using his opponent's abilities against them. His simple way of thinking frequently benefits him too, allowing him to cut through to the heart of the matter of an issue instead of getting stuck on the smaller details.

Sora has an overwhelmingly strong sense of justice. Many times on his adventures he would get involved in affairs not his own simply because of his strong sense made him feel it was wrong to leave unjust things lie. Originally, his perspective of justice was very two dimensional: light is good, darkness is bad. Later on when he encountered Nobodies who were never meant to exist, he did his best to apply the same duality as he did with darkness. This belief system wasn't irrational, since the forces of darkness had destroyed his home and light was the only chance to stop destruction. Not only that, but most Nobodies, even if they were sympathetic in their search to become whole beings, did so with methods that hurt and killed many innocent people.

However as he's gotten older and more experienced, Sora's has begun to expand his schema of justice to include shades of gray. Starting with his best friend whose learned to use darkness for good instead of evil (albeit, it took him a couple games and screw ups to figure out), he's coming to realize that darkness doesn't necessarily mean evil and that it is just as necessary as light. Nobodies such as Roxas, Namine and Axel also made him begin to question the things he had been taught about Nobodies. He's at the point that he seems to now privately believe that they have every right to exist as their Somebody counterparts. He still has a way to go to completely shake off the duality of his views on justice, but he's making progress.

All in all, when things are peaceful Sora is a boy at peace. While he enjoys adventure as much as any teenage boy, he seems most content just spending a quiet fun day with his friends. While Riku originally wanted to leave the islands with zero intent or desire to return one day, Sora seems to hang onto the dream that one day he'll get to return home with his friends. Having that dream threatened or seemingly taken away often results in Sora getting depressed or more easily agitated.

While the past couple years of Sora's life have made him grow and mature a lot, he's still very much a kid. He gets easily excited about new things and just as quickly angry over little things that more mature members of the group overlook. He can be competitive and do bratty things like stick out his tongue at villains or be a complete smart mouth. When something bothers him enough, he'll become extremely stubborn and not let it go. He also has a tendency to get stuck in the moment and forget the bigger picture- which sometimes lands him into serious trouble.

It's shown that Sora's got a bit of an ego as well. He gets miffed when people insult his capabilities or dismiss him. He'll do ridiculous things to prove himself, such as challenge the demi-god Hercules to a one-on-one battle to show that he's true hero material. He likes glory and isn't above seeking it out in absurd ways. When faced with the aspect of taking the Mark of Mastery Exam, an idea as nerve wracking to keyblade wielder as the SATs or GRE are to us, Sora showed total overconfidence in that he'd be able to pass it with flying colors (hilariously, he failed while his less confident friend passed).

Luckily, his ego and pride isn't strong enough to get the better of him when things get really serious. Truth be told, Sora knows deep down he's no one special. He knows that he only got the keyblade because the true chosen were unavailable and that his friends are so much more skilled and special than he is. And yet while one would think that would bother him - he doesn't care. He cares so little that villains who tried their hardest to psych him out with that card ended up having it backfire on them. While Sora certainly appreciates the occasional ego stroking, as long as he can help his friends he's okay whether he's the chosen one or the almighty janitor.

Partly thanks to the encouragement of his travel companions Donald and Goofy, Sora does his best to keep up a cheery temperament. Not all this is false, Sora is someone that tries to look on the bright side of things and is able to live in the joy of the moment. However it's indicated that when things are truly bad, this becomes less sincere cheer and more a mask to get by. This mask is pretty easy to see and sometimes break- but he'll do his best to keep it up so his friends don't get sad too.

Because of this coping mechanism and his old duality in how he viewed the world, Sora hasn't learned how to cope with his own darkness too well. He isn't without darkness as all people have darkness in them (aside from some princesses who- aw forget it), and due to the events of the past years its been growing in his heart unchecked. Best case scenario this causes him to become snappish at the people around him during stressful times. Worse case scenario? Well, he was once almost destroyed by Xehanort using that darkness against him. And it was such a close call that even after Ventus used his armor to shield the light in Sora's heart from being destroyed? The darkness was still strong enough to possess the armor and make Sora the unintentional final boss of a game. And that armor's resilient enough to darkness to fly through space.

Seriously. If that's not a cry for therapy I don't know what is.

Fortunately, despite the fact he's got a lot of issues, Sora's managed to avoid a tragic fate that often befalls Keyblade wielders in this series thanks to his friends. Sure, some of them make crappy therapists, but having them around has saved him on many occasions whether it be from enemies or his own failings. Sora works best in a team, and is the only keyblade wielder that'll regularly work in one. While some scoff that it's possible he has no real power on his own and the team itself is a bit of a ragtag crew (such as among its ranks is a drunken pirate, a skeleton with ADD and a talking duck) - it's hard to deny that his team has been the most successful thus far in the war. He even admits this, stating that on his own he's weak, but his friends are his power.

All in all, Sora is a simple kid that simply wants to be with his friends. He's got issues what with his view on justice as well as dealing with negative emotions, but he has a good heart. He likes to do the right thing, and so long as he has friends who will keep him in check- it's likely he'll end up alright. He may not be the brightest or the most skilled of the keyblade wielders, but there's still a lot more than the underwhelmed first impression people get to him.