Application | Tower of Animus

[featherdarting]

Player Information

Name: Delphi
Personal Journal: delphinova@lj
Age: 25, sigh
Contact Info: AIM - Ivy Midnighter; plurk - endlessskies
Other Characters Played: Devil Survivor AU1 Asako Minegishi (sawthelockdown,) OC Solas Greine/Achuaur (repeatingsun), Fire Emblem: Awakening OU Robin (tacticaldisaster)

Character Information

Character Name: Ayaka Sajyou
Character Series: Fate/Prototype
Character Age: Roughly ~16-17, from the looks of it.
Character Gender: Female, definitely.
Alternate Universe
Canon Point: Sometime near the start of the War. Ayaka has not yet lost Saber to Sancraid, nor has she met Archer, and Misaya still lives. She has, however, seen Rider's handiwork, and that has caused her to start to think differently about fighting. Saber has also given her the idea to learn Formalcraft, though not much has come of it - yet. They have already clashed with Misaya and Lancer.
Background Link: Prototype info | Ayaka info
AU Background: Fate/Prototype is, well, the prototype for the Fate-verse, and so a lot of things are changed. One of them is that Ayaka here is our protagonist instead of Shirou. The other is that Saber is a guy. Now, as for the plot - the fact is that it was never finished, but the initial events are the same: pursued by Lancer, accidentally summon Saber. The details, however, are where it really gets interesting/disturbing.

Ayaka was born to the Sajyou magus family, and was the younger of two sisters. Her elder sister Manaka was something of a genius, whereas Ayaka was merely "average"; unsurprisingly, Ayaka grew up with an inferiority complex. Eight years prior to the events of Prototype, another Holy Grail War occurred, this one with Manaka as the Master from the Sajyou family.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Manaka had been linked to the Root since birth and had always been wrong as a result. This ended in Manaka sacrificing a bunch of innocents to the Grail once it manifested, apparently horrifying even her doting father. If someone hadn't seen fit to stab Manaka from behind, she would have sacrificed Ayaka to the Grail as well. That being said, the War ended with what was essentially an epic failure, and Ayaka grew up alone in her family home. Despite her father saying that she would also participate in the War some day, she tried to have absolutely nothing to do with it, having been traumatized by the events of the previous War.

After eight years, Ayaka no longer recalled the details of the War - who it was that stabbed Manaka, how twisted her sister really was, and so on. To her, it had long since become a fading nightmare; even so, she tried to stay as far from the War as she could, living as normal a life as she possibly could. This did not go as planned, as the priest Sancraid approached her to talk about the War, telling her that it was about to happen again, that today was the deadline to summon a Servant. Indeed, at midnight that night, Lancer broke into her house to kill her before she could summon a Servant and enter the War. After a brief struggle, she to accidentally summoned Saber, who chased Lancer out.

Even in the wake of the summoning, Ayaka still did not believe she could or should be involved in the War. She claimed it had nothing to do with her, that it was dumb to fight to protect people she didn't even know from getting caught in the crossfire of the War. She even suggested to Saber that he go ask Misaya Reiroukan, a considerably stronger magus, to be his Master instead. Saber noted that it would be possible to do such a thing if both the Master and Servant agreed; however, Saber didn't agree, claiming he liked Ayaka better and that he would definitely protect her.

...And so Ayaka was stuck with him, for better or for worse.

As of her pull point into Animus, Sancraid the priest has informed Ayaka, seemingly out of good will alone, that something suspicious is going on in the industrial area of town. Ayaka and Saber investigated and found Rider when they got there. They also found the pile of corpses Rider had made. While Saber and Ayaka were able to escape the battle, Ayaka was forced to confront the fact that even if she didn't know those people she was still connected to them by the city they all lived in. That there was no escaping the War for anyone who had been drawn in. That saying "I don't know these people" would be an excuse and probably a lie - that if she had chosen to fight instead of run away, she might have been able to prevent this.

...And so, Ayaka has started to change. It may be a small change, but it's there all the same.

Personality: The Ayaka that people in the "normal world" meet is a very quiet, shy girl. She keeps mostly to herself and doesn't socialize much, tending to come off as gloomy and negative. Her inferiority complex regarding her "average" nature and her sister have influenced her personality to the point that she thinks the worst of herself, believing for example that she shouldn't be involved in the War because she can't do what Manaka did. She is fearful of the War and all that it implies, remembering only that it killed her family and that it ended in blood and gore. In fact, she is pretty fearful in general, a coward who has repeatedly chosen to run and hide rather than stay and fight, and she would like nothing more than to not be involved in any of this. ...Not that "normal" people ever hear this from her, because like all mages and supernatural entities, she makes sure that people in the "normal" world never even suspect that something is up.

In addition, while she may be a coward and gloomy and so on, she at least acknowledges that she is flawed, which is something quite a few people don't do. Given that this is brought on by her lack of self-esteem, though, it may not be a good thing, especially since she tends to exaggerate her flaws more just a bit when she thinks about them.

While Ayaka is a deeply flawed person, she also shows hints of having positive qualities as well. For example, she seems to be very compassionate deep down, as shown by the growing number of pigeons in the coop outside of her house. Her father left her instructions to sacrifice a pigeon each day for the purpose of their family's rituals. However, Ayaka has never managed to do so, substituting her own blood instead of the bird's. Ayaka has tried over and over again to work up the nerve to actually bring down the butcher's knife on the bird, but the worst that happens is that the poor bird of the day gets a nasty scare - it's never hurt or killed. Instead, the bird gets to live on in the coop, and it says something about Ayaka that the bird population only grows day by day. She is officially close to crows as well; perhaps she's fond of birds in general, and can't bring herself to kill even a pigeon.

As of her pull point, however, Ayaka has begun to change. Having seen firsthand the potential consequences of inaction (Rider's massacre,) she has started to want to protect the innocents caught in the crossfire. She is starting to acknowledge that since they're all in the same place, she can't just turn a blind eye to the suffering of people she's never met simply because she's never met them. She can't just back down anymore - for better or for worse, she's stuck in this mess, and she has begun to show some backbone as a result. That inner strength may well have been there all along, as evidenced by the fact that she doesn't just let Saber tease her at home, nor does she just back down in their discussions about whether or not to participate in the War.

Abilities: First and foremost, Ayaka is a magus. Her initial skills are in Witchcraft, which is general black magic and her family's favored branch of magic. Ayaka, however, is no good at it, aside from one spell. This spell uses an enchanted feathered ring as a medium to shoot crow feather darts at an enemy. Its only weakness is that every now and then, the ring's power has to be recharged; considering the scenes in the OVA and so on, it's probably not much of a stretch to guess that it is recharged via blood. Speaking of which, most Witchcraft rituals in this series do require a blood sacrifice, but since Ayaka can't bring herself to kill even a pigeon for this purpose, she uses her own blood instead.

Even so, she's still no good at it. No, her true affinity lies in an entirely different branch of magic: Formalcraft. This type of magic makes up for the weakness of the user by relying more heavily on rituals and offerings and magic circles; one type of Formalcraft spell is, in fact, the one to formally summon a Servant, using an elaborate ritual, a magic circle, and a relic related to the desired Servant. Given enough time and practice, it's entirely possible that she can become a monster on the battlefield with this underrated magic, just like her /Stay Night counterpart, Shirou. ... However, as Ayaka hasn't progressed that far into Formalcraft knowledge, she'll just be sticking to the feather darts.

Sample Entry: Throwing a monkey wrench into the time stream and running away, awww yeah-