Karteria | App

[el5n]

OOC INFORMATION

Name: Possum
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact: awkwardpossum
Other characters: Dearka Elthman (his app will be incoming... soon,)
Permissions & opt-out: 2 in 1

IC INFORMATION

Name: "Elan Ceres" (AKA Enhanced Person No. 5)
Canon: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury
Age: Unconfirmed, but as a 3rd year student he's somewhere between 17-18.
Gender: Male
Species: Human (Enhanced Person)
Appearance: A little creep!
Canon point: Ep 24, before the Epilogue/Timeskip

History: Here

Personality answers:

Quick note: for the sake of clarity, I'll be referring to the character I'm apping as "Five" for this portion, because there are literally three different characters who are all connected and all use the name "Elan Ceres".

1. Who in your character's canon influenced the most growth in your character? What do they think about this character?
Norea DuNoc is a character who Five takes an interest in very quickly after meeting her, sensing that she is a sort of kindred spirit: someone who resents the people around her for living in an artificial world, willfully ignorant of the suffering of the people who make that paradise possible. She's also a fellow Gundam pilot, ie the kind of big robot she flies will gradually kill her the more she flies it; same as Five.
For the most part the two of them have a very antagonistic relationship built off of diametrically opposed points of view: Norea is an Earthian "terrorist" and extremist who is ostensibly fighting for the future of her people. Five is a Spacian who thinks idealism is worthless and only ever looks out for his own self-interests.
Most of the time, their interactions start with Five needling Norea, trying to get her to lift the facade of apathy she's always wearing... And then they usually end with Norea retaliating with violence. They clearly irritate the shit out of each other, both having strong feelings about the cursed machines they have no choice but to pilot.
It isn't until Five sees the contents of Norea's sketchbook that he actually starts to understand her. It's as if he peers into her heart, and she does NOT take kindly to him doing so. But her art, the illustrations she makes fixating on death and decay, help him put the pieces together... And seeing the fear they share reflected in her work, the true depths of Five's loneliness and desperation for connection come to light. For someone who operated entirely on his own before then, who only ever acted for his own benefit, it's a major turning point in Five's growth. He's desperate to know her, he thinks he understands her, and when she makes it clear that no, actually, he doesn't, he keeps pushing to try and learn. In the end, his longing for connection pushes him to do something he swore he'd never do: he willingly puts his own life at risk, boards a Gundam in order to fly out and try to stop Norea from throwing her life away.

2. Explain which event in canon is most pivotal to your character's development, and who they are today.
cw: vague mentions of sexual harassment and assault.
It's hard to choose just one pivotal moment, but I'm going to choose: Episode 21, when Five eavesdrops on Suletta's reveal that she is actually genetic replica, ie an illegal clone that her mother created for the purpose of enacting an elaborate seventeen year long revenge scheme.
Prior to moment, Suletta is an unexplained anomaly: someone who pilots a mobile suit that uses the dangerous GUND format, and yet suffers no ill effects from doing so. This makes her a person of extreme interest for Five's employers, Peil Technologies, who are trying to master the GUND technology for themselves... And so they order him to try and get close to her in order to pump her for information.
For most of his early on-screen time, Five clearly finds Suletta to be highly irritating. Alas, he has no choice but to interact with her if wants to stay alive, and subsequently he exhibits some truly heinous behavior around her, (poorly) attempting to seduce her and just generally behaving as a Sex Pest. While this is technically action he is taking under duress, one wonders if he's not being overly cruel on purpose, treating her as an outlet for his frustrations regarding his own lack of agency. To his mind, it's easy for him to justify, as he strongly resents all "normal" Asticassia students, and privately finds Suletta's happy-go-lucky nature, AND her naive attitude regarding GUND technology... Extremely grating.
However: learning Suletta's true origins, she suddenly becomes someone who Five can actually relate to. She's another person who was created and used as a tool by scheming adults. What's more, she seems resolved to rise above her intended purpose, to act on her own morals and use her newfound sense of self-determination in unselfish ways. Hearing this clearly stirs something inside Five: he then reveals his presence and offers to help the good guys with their plan (although not without a few caveats). After that, he and Suletta speak privately for a bit, and he actually apologizes for his past behavior! He doesn't even make any excuses by passing the blame to Peil or anything! Now, would he have ever apologized if Suletta hadn't turned out to be someone who was very much like him...? Maybe not. But it's still a major step in the right direction for someone whose personality is described early on as being, quite simply, "twisted".

5. What is your character most afraid of?
Based off his actions and the shit he says in canon ("I changed my face just to stay alive, there's no way I'm dying for this", trying to bond with Norea over having the same fear, judging his predecessor for being apathetic and essentially giving up on life), the simple answer is that Five's biggest fear is death/dying. Which is a really bad fear to have when you're essentially the property of a huge corporation which views you as a machine part that can be thrown out and replaced at their convenience!
Digging a bit deeper, it seems like it's less death itself that Five fears, and more that he's specifically terrified of dying alone and unremembered. Towards the end of the series, when Suletta grows teary after Five explains the fate of his predecessor to her, he comments that Four is actually "the lucky one"... Implicitly because Four actually had someone (Suletta) who waited and now mourns for him.
Five's main driving trait is that he is deeply resentful of his circumstances as an Enhanced Person, and the previously mentioned line about him changing his face seems to imply that he chose to give up his own physical identity, just to have a better shot at escaping Peil's grasp. Everything he does is motivated by a strong sense of self preservation, born from a fear of being treated as disposable and killed off before he's truly had a chance to live.

7. What is your character's biggest ambition at their current canon point? To what lengths would they go to see it to fruition?
His biggest ambition is to get the fuck out from under the thumb of Peil Technologies and live a life of freedom. And... Yeah, he's willing to do quite a lot in order to achieve that.
A lot of the details of how the Enhanced Person project even works are left pretty vague by canon. For example, we don't know exactly how Peil sources their test subjects. We don't know whether any of them volunteer, or if they're kidnapped, coerced by circumstance, get told one story and don't learn about the risks until it's too late... We don't know how old they generally are when they're first brought in, either.
What we do know is that Five claims he "changed his face", ie volunteered to be the new Elan Ceres, to stay alive. In essence: he shed his old identity and had his face completely altered to play the public role of a completely different person, all just to grant him more of a chance at escaping his life as a nameless lab rat. Throughout the show we watch him lie extensively to everyone around him. He attempts to steal the Aerial, he creeps on and tries to seduce Suletta. He gaslights and manipulates mansplains and malewifes her into thinking that Miorine doesn't care about her. He attacks her and Guel both with a taser! He blackmails Grassley into giving him sanctuary when his little schemes backfire and Peil is out for his blood! It's all in an attempt to ensure his own continued survival.
Eventually he does seem to secure a route to his goal that also conveniently involves doing the right thing. And at his current canon point, he's very close to achieving it, with the CEOs of Peil under investigation and all their assets froze, the company on the verge of total destruction. All he has to do is make a break for Earth, and he's a free man.
Lol.

Inventory:
- Handgun
- A sketchbook full of drawings that once belonged to Norea DuNoc (which he had on hand and essentially inherited after she was killed)
- Asticassia school notebook (it's a smartphone)
Powers/Abilities:
- Piloting big robots
- Decent hand to hand combat skills
- An excellent shot with a pistol
- The only thing he has that might qualify as a "power" is the natural resistance to Permet that his implants grant him. The details on how it works are vague but, basically a good chunk (or possibly all??) of his nervous system is now artificial and built to withstand punishment from his world's magical "make technology work" mineral. This does not make him immune, however.

Samples: Here & Here
Goals: 1) I'm mean and I want to play out how he reacts to being within an inch of finally getting what he wants and then getting snatched away by YET ANOTHER shady company that wants to experiment on him and cause weird physical changes to his body.
2) ....He gets so little screen time in the show, we don't get to see how he really grows as a person. Can he overcome his selfishness? Can he find the human connection that he craves... by bonding with other monsters? Idk! There's a lot of possibilities! I'm excited to explore them.
Soul Choice: Aves type, theropod with harpy eagle-esque plumage that's also kind of vaguely reminiscent of the gundam he used to have to pilot, because I am mean.