application for the Tower of Animus | delphi water you doin'

[mephistofeels]

Name: Delphi
Personal Journal: LJ - delphinova
Age: 25
Contact Info: AIM - IvyMidnighter, plurk - endlessskies
Other Characters Played: Breath of Fire IV Mami [OU] - brokenstove, Devil Survivor Asako Minegishi [AU] - sawthelockdown, Original Character Solas Greine - repeatingsun, Valkyrie Profile Platina [AU] - vestigialdream

Character Information

Character Name: Kyuubey, which is short for "Incubator"

Character Series: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Character Age: Unknown; there are implications within canon that Kyuubey has been around since the dawn of humanity or longer.
Character Gender: Does not have a gender, and it accepts being labeled male or female, though ze honestly does not consider zirself to be either. The Incubator is just the Incubator, as far as ze is concerned.
Alternate Universe
Canon Point: Episode 12, right before reality is rewritten.
Background Link: Contract?
AU Background: Kyuubey's mission was the same as in canon - make magical girl contracts, stave off heat death of universe, etc. For the most part, this went pretty well, as it did in canon! ... Then one of the magical girls Kyuubey contracted with went witch-mode in front of a close friend. Kyuubey being Kyuubey, ze figured that it would be an excellent idea to tell said girl to make a wish and become a magical girl in order to put her friend to rest. The young girl, however, saw Kyuubey's utter lack of remorse and emotion for what it was, and thought that it could go on no longer. While she did agree and became a magical girl, her wish made caused reality to have a case of the hiccups, and Kyuubey's plans went a little out of whack. What was this wish, you ask?

"I wish you felt sorry for the trouble you cause!"

In this universe, this reality-bending wish caused the birth of the Walpurgis Night Witch - and Kyuubey has never been the same since. Since Kyuubey's species consider emotion to be a mental illness, suddenly being saddled with it completely broke zir brain. To compound it, ze knew that zir mission could not simply be shoved aside for this sudden...mental illness. The mission was of the utmost importance, for without it the universe might well be destroyed, and ze had to continue. However, as per the wish, ze could not help but feel sorry for what ze was doing - but ze could do nothing about it. Ze was trapped, to put it bluntly, and unless ze wanted to get relieved of duty and possibly killed, ze had to continue with zir mission as if nothing had happened.

But ze couldn't simply ignore this strange...illness affecting zir. Ze is aware that humans are capable of feeling and generating emotions, after all that is why the Incubators go after them. In this universe, emotion is energy, and all that. A very strange thing has resulted from all of this: Kyuubey, occasionally, during downtime, has asked the magical girls about how emotions work and why they work. Initially, this was so ze could find some way of coping with the illness whenever it struck - but it ended up causing the Incubator to learn what loss and grief were whenever these girls inevitably succumbed to despair and became witches. After all, when they died, Kyuubey could never again ask them about coping with emotions, or receive answers from them for that matter.

And yet ze had to continue with zir mission.

The magical girls of this universe, however, have gone and caused Kyuubey more problems. When a group of girls contracted all at once way back when, one of them wished the Incubator could turn into a human "because it'd be really cute!" That girl ended up becoming another part of Walpurgis Night, but the damage was done. Kyuubey was now able to transform into a very cute little humanoid. Ze was quite able to use it to zir advantage, too - it was just another cute thing girls liked. It was in this form, when one girl was turned into a witch, that Kyuubey discovered tears. Ze learned, slowly but surely, over the decades and centuries, that ze felt remorse and grief - and not just because of the wish.

And yet ze had to continue with zir mission.

Canon continued as it would otherwise have happened, except that ze actually expressed remorse to the girls when things went wrong, and ze spoke less condescendingly towards the girls ze met. Homura still does not like Kyuubey at all, but in this universe, Kyuubey doesn't antagonize her and make it worse; to some degree, Kyuubey doesn't like zirself anymore either. When Madoka wept at the truth, Kyuubey openly expressed regret that it had to be this way.

And yet the mission had to continue.

In the end, Madoka made her wish to erase all witches, past, present, and future, with her own hands - and Kyuubey broke down, screaming in shock and horror. "Are you insane?! We are not talking about just manipulating time - you'd oppose the very laws of the universe itself! Either you might become a god, or you'd destroy yourself entirely! Do you really want to risk that, Kaname Madoka?!"

Madoka's only response was to smile gently and order Kyuubey to grant her wish. She continued to smile at Kyuubey as the world rewrote itself, and the Incubator realized the true implications of the wish: "If there are no witches, you won't have to suffer anymore either, will you?"

... For the first time, Kyuubey smiled a real smile.

Personality: Kyuubey, to put it simply, is a mess. By the standards of the Incubator species, one magical girl wished a mental illness on Kyuubey, and ze has been unwell ever since. Incubators do not normally feel emotions, and getting remorse as the first emotion has caused Kyuubey a lot of stress. Ze has tried and failed to cope with having emotions, causing much consternation and stress. In the process the illness has gotten worse over the years, as ze began to see the girls as people instead of just tools or a resource. This hasn't helped, and Kyuubey zirself has sunk further into despair as time passes. The mission must continue, after all, and no matter how much it hurts to do so, ze must continue to make contracts. Ze tries to warn the girls ahead of time in this universe, having learned compassion over the years - saying things like "Are you sure? Think about it for a while, being a magical girl is actually pretty dangerous!"

Ultimately, however, ze sees no alternative and no escape from the mission, and will not - cannot - refuse a contract that the contractee refuses to back down on. The mission must continue, and ze must continue making contracts, lest the universe be destroyed. The only bright light at the end of the tunnel is that someday, ze will fill the quota for this world and be able to leave, meaning that ze doesn't have to torment these girls anymore. ...but there are other worlds, other Incubators, and eventually zir mental illness will be found out and ze will be hospitalized or executed. So really, there isn't a bright light at the end of the tunnel as far as Kyuubey's concerned. There's just a tunnel that goes on into the darkness of despair, and over the years, Kyuubey's cheerful act has become a shield to distance zirself from these issues as well as a means of drawing in potential magical girls.

For, after all, that is and always has been the purpose of the Incubators, and Kyuubey knows it must be done. Kyuubey is still a very calculating personality, with a "waste not want not" philosophy, and still acknowledges that the girls are resources to be used, that the whole is more important than the parts. ...but that's cold comfort, now. This won't stop the suffering and this won't stop the remorse, and this Kyuubey no longer actively tries to make things worse for zir charges. Things are bad enough as they are, after all. Ze still doesn't really understand why some things upset humans, and to some degree ze never will - zir thought process is simply too different. Ze is psychologically somewhere between human and incubator now, and that is another cause of grief, for ze does not wish to become more like humans, but neither can ze return to zir original mental state - and ze can do nothing about that.

Madoka's wish changed that, however - or will change it, at any rate. In those last moments before reality warped, Kyuubey finally felt hope and genuine happiness to go along with the remorse and sorrow - emotions that ze had never felt before, and decided that ze did not mind feeling at all. The mission, after all, would no longer cause as much pain; the girls would no longer become monsters. While Kyuubey still feels intense remorse for zir past actions, ze is at peace now, actually grateful for having been able to grant such a wish. The mission is over now, after all. For once, everything's actually going to end well for pretty much everyone.

And Kyuubey's okay with that.

Abilities: Kyuubey's most notable power is that of entering into a contract with someone; under this contract, Kyuubey is capable of granting a single wish of theirs, and in turn granting them the power to become a magical girl/puella magi...which includes ripping the girl's soul out of her body and containing it within a Soul Gem. This essentially means that the girl is the Soul Gem now, controlling her body remotely. If the Soul Gem is thrown too far away from the body, then the body will cease function altogether. Animus being Animus, of course, Kyuubey will NOT be able to use this power here. Kyuubey will know this fact when ze arrives.

While Kyuubey can be killed, and very easily at that, ze is able to create a new body immediately from mana/energy in the air. In canon, Kyuubey claims this can be done indefinitely; as that would be a bit of a total game breaker, in the Tower, this can only be done twice before Kyuubey will die for a day. It should also be noted that Kyuubey can and does devour discarded bodies - again, waste not want not; those bodies still have some energy in them, so there's no point in just leaving them there, gosh.

In addition to these powers, in this universe Kyuubey is capable of transforming from its true form into a (relatively) small human and back again.

Sample Entry: Voice test