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icanhastail[OOC Information]
Name: Tai
Age: Twenty-seven
AIM and/or Plurk / E-mail / Dreamwidth journal: you know all thiiiiiiiiis. I did just get a dreamwidth journal for writing things, username tairako if you care.
What characters do you play here already, if any? Ven!
Where did you hear about Just A Game? :PPPP
Have you seen MST3K before? :OOOO
[IC Information]
Character Name: Zidane Tribal
Series: Final Fantasy IX/Dissidia
Gender: Male
Age: Sixteen-seventeen, probably seventeen. It's unclear how much time passes between the "end" of IX and the epilogue, but it's long enough for Garnet to regrow all her hair. Personal headcanon is that Zidane vanishes from under the Iifa Tree trying to rescue Kuja (he was sixteen then) and gets taken to Dissidia then, so the time he spends in the gods' war probably puts him over another birthday.
Species: Genome - an artificial species created to be the recepticals of Terran souls, they resemble smaller humans but have identical heavy blond hair and prehensile tails about as long as they are tall that are strong enough to support their weight like monkeys. For all intents and purposes, his biological functions are human.
Appearance: Zidane is relatively short, standing a couple inches under five feet tall, which isn't at all unusual for his home planet of Gaia and entirely uniform for his whole race save his dear fashion disaster of a brother. His hair is blond, cut in layers around his face like all Genomes, but left to grow longer in back unlike the rest. He pulls it back into a ponytail with a ribbon to keep it out of the way and pretty much doesn't bother with it otherwise. His clothing is almost a throwback to 19th century dress in many ways; how many people wear jabots in modern times? He doesn't wear clothing that can catch on things as he is a thief and that's just asking for trouble, but he likes to be fashionable and well-dressed. Mostly he wears vests over a white shirt with the jabot underneath, gloves to protect his hands, fairly utilitarian boots, and relatively form-fitting trousers tucked into the boots. He tends to favor a lot of blue in his clothes. His eyes are blue as well, another Genome trait, and he shares the Genome's prehensile tail as well, giving plenty of people the opportunity to invent nicknames for him based on monkeys.
Personality: Zidane was created to be destruction incarnate, the living Angel of Death to sow chaos and bring an end to the world of Gaia, preparing it for absorption by the world of Terra. He was to be cruel, ruthless, sadistic, torturous, wishing to dissolve all ties of goodness in the world and gather the souls of the people of Gaia in death's embrace.
Instead, Zidane is a fun-loving, smart-talking heroic goofball thief with a large sense of humor, an incredibly cocky smile, and a distinct love for the ladies. Sometimes things just don't make sense.
Living proof of the idea of "nurture over nature," Zidane was given a soul in the closest thing he had to an infancy, but his abandonment by Kuja in the world of Gaia at age four changed him into the complete opposite of his intended path, an almost exact reflection of Kuja. Where Kuja is selfish and, in many ways, childish, Zidane is giving and selfless and surprisingly mature (when he wants to be). His constantly repeated phrase is indicative of his good nature - "You don't need a reason to help people" are words he lives by every day. Jumping into situations to save friends or even perfect strangers is a frequent occurrence for him, sometimes even leading to conflict with people in authority over him as Zidane just does whatever the hell he wants without listening to what they say. Baku's smacked him a time or two for that, and the genome's independence lead to him leaving Tantalus at least twice - though he's always welcome back.
Helpful and heroic as he is - and he is very well aware of his own "gallant hero" status - Zidane is full of as much mischief and lively spirit as the worst of tricksters. Only bowing to authority he recognizes and respects, Zidane delights in tweaking the tails of others on more than one occasion, especially the pompous ones like Rusty used to be (and still is, but they came to an accord). He loves having fun, and is more than a bit of an attention whore, feeding his need for acclaim both with his interactions with his friends and his ladies and on the stage for an appreciative audience. He has a natural talent for acting and storytelling as well as thievery and dagger fighting, and his background in the theatre has given him a wide knowledge of both music and plays that he can pull out at any given moment to impress people with.
An inveterate flirt, Zidane has been hitting on women since the age of nine, even those much older than him or of completely different species, such as Freya. He unabashedly flirts with Dagger, even going so far as to grope her early on in their acquaintance while climbing a ladder, and sometimes has trouble keeping track of what he's promised to what woman. Even being in love with Dagger won't change that; Zidane will always have an eye for a pretty lady and is completely unabashed in it. Considering he was talking about dating the Goddess of Harmony, the little monkey's got some cheek. Still, Dagger has his heart, and always will - his flirting is one of the compromises they have to agree on in everyday life.
One of his main motivations in life is simply to have fun. Zidane fully believes that the best thing you can do for yourself is enjoy what you do. He loves to adventure and explore, trying new (and sometimes stupid) things along the way and going for the Big Experiences. He's always trying to one-up himself, and he encourages others to follow their wishes and desires as well, as long as they don't hurt others. Freedom of choice is one thing he will strive for above almost anything, and he won't let others interfere in someone's choices.
Zidane can be serious, though, and usually is serious about what he says, even if it sounds like a joke to others. Only a couple of things in his life have ever brought him down to absolute lows - finding out he was essentially a magic-fueled genetic reproduction on Terra, and losing all his friends in the Void. Other instances have brought him sadness or gloom, notably not being able to say anything to Dagger after she becomes Queen after the fall of Cleyra, but those two incidents are the only times he's gone right down into zero state... And even then, he pushed through them through sheer willpower, attacking Garland head-on even after pushing all of his friends away. That willpower is the thing that always saves him, and he's not going to let it go any time soon.
While he's come to accept his origins (even if he completely rejects the purpose for those origins) and see Kuja as something of a brother to the point of risking his life for him, Zidane's real home will always be with his friends. Growing up without any blood family didn't scar him at all; rather, Zidane's come to the conclusion that a person's real family is who they choose it to be. Where connections of love and friendship bind, that's when you have people who will stick with you for the rest of your life. He's very thankful that he's got such a large family himself: the members of Tantalus, Dagger and Vivi and all their friends, and now the Warriors of Cosmos as well. For him, his friends are his family are his home - his place to go back to.
At the end of the day, one phrase seems to sum him up very well: "Oh Zidane."
History: Zidane was born... well, made... on Terra, neighboring planet to Gaia, home of the Genomes and Garland-the-robotic-android. Garland created him specifically to replace Kuja, the previous Angel of Death whom he viewed as a miserable failure. At first Kuja either didn't understand Zidane's role or Garland's view of him, because for the first few years he didn't mind having the kid around. When Zidane was four, though, Kuja kidnapped the child and left him on the planet Gaia. Zidane was found by Baku, the leader of the Tantalus Theatre Troupe-slash-thief gang based in the large city of Lindblum, and Baku brought him into the gang and raised him in Lindblum for a dual purpose: performing and thievery. Eventually Zidane could only remember one image from his childhood: a blue light overhead.
Tantalus became his family, with Baku as their father (though they always called him "Boss") and the other members as brothers, sisters, and cousins, especially Blank and Marcus. But something in him always niggled to know where he originally came from, as Baku couldn't even tell him what had happened to him before the troupe, just that he'd found the little monkeyboy in the streets one day. When he was fifteen, he told Baku he wanted to try and learn where he was from, which led to a huge fight between the two - their biggest ever, and they were a pair known for fighting at least twice a week. It resulted in Baku throwing Zidane out of the troupe and Zidane storming off at the same time, determined to find his family. But as much as he searched and searched, he couldn't find anyone who looked like him nor any clues to where he'd come from, and he began to miss his friends in Lindblum more and more. Eventually he gave up the search and returned to Lindblum, asking for readmission into the gang, having learned who his true family was - the people who shared their hearts with him unreservedly and genuinely cared about him, no matter how often they fought. Baku, after smacking him around a lot, let him back in.
A little over a year later Tantalus was hired by Regent Cid to kidnap Princess Garnet from the matriarchy of Alexandria amid rumors of her mother, Queen Brahne, beginning to lose her mind and start a war. The kidnapping definitely did not go as planned at all, since the Princess wanted to be kidnapped and they ended up being chased by her personal guard onto the stage in the middle of the performance, but Zidane went with it and Garnet turned out to be a surprisingly good improviser. They had to hightail it out of there quick, though, when Brahne realized that they were taking the princess, and she demanded her artillery destroy the Prima Vista. During their escape back to Lindblum, the badly damaged Prima Vista crashed in the Evil Forest, starting off a series of adventures the likes of which they could never have imagined that would change them all forever.
A little black mage named Vivi had been caught up in all the ruckus in Alexandria, and he and Zidane quickly became fast friends as Zidane tried to teach him to stick up for himself and be confident in who he was, not who he wanted to be. Princess Garnet acquired a new nickname with "Dagger," which Zidane would adopt and thereafter never, ever drop. He had to watch Blank, his best friend and brother, get petrified while saving all of them from the Evil Forest. Brahne turned out to be worse than anyone could have imagined, and even she was only a puppet, her strings being pulled by a tall, slim person with long silver hair and a very large cruel streak. They discovered a manufacturing production for black mages under the village of Dali that sent Vivi into existential crises while trying to reach Lindblum. Zidane and Steiner constantly argued and tried to hurt each other. "Ragtag group of companions" was an incredibly apt description of their company, and yet somehow they all made it safely to Lindblum aboard a ship that was pretty literally falling apart around their ears.
In Lindblum Zidane bumped into an old friend named Freya, who joined the Festival of the Hunt along with Zidane and Vivi. Zidane promised Garnet a date if he won the competition, but the Festival mood was killed when a messenger from Freya's home of Burmecia came to the castle badly wounded, saying they were under attack by black mages and the Alexandrian military. At the feast after the Festival, Garnet doctored most of the food to put everyone to sleep, leading her and Steiner to escape the city and try to return to Alexandria to confront her mother and possibly stop her. Zidane was set to chase after her, but chose instead to accompany Freya to Burmecia to try and stop the attack and save the population. Along the way they picked up Quina Quen, a Qu that nobody can figure out but who wants to tag along to find lots of yummy things to eat. They turn out to be far too late, finding many dead and most of Burmecia in ruin, but they do find Brahne talking with Kuja and Beatrix. Attempting to end things before anyone else gets hurt, also Freya being in a frothing rage, they attacked the group - and get their asses roundly handed to them by Beatrix, while Kuja and Brahne escape.
The group decided to go to Clerya since the King escaped there and offer to help out in any way they can. Unfortunately, Brahne and the Alexandrian army followed the same path, attacking the tree-land after Zidane's group reached it. The battle was going well until Brahne decided to summon Odin, who had to use his power to crush the city. Zidane and his friends barely escape destruction as well by jumping through the Alexandrian's teleport spells, ending up on the Red Rose and stowing away to fly back to Alexandria. There they run into Garnet, Steiner, and Marcus, the two men joining them to rescue the sleeping Garnet from Zorn and Thorn. Beatrix, sickened by what her Queen has been turning their military might to, renounced her and joins their side, fighting with Steiner and Freya to allow Vivi, Zidane, and Garnet to escape through the underground tunnels. They're forced to watch in horror as Brahne invades and destroys Lindblum with another eidolon, Atomos. They manage to sneak into the partially-leveled Lindblum to meet with Regent Cid, and they decide collectively to follow Kuja, who seems to be pulling the majority of the strings in this worldwide conflict. With Cid's help, the trio escaped to the tunnel between continents, Fossil Roo.
The first place the group found on the Outer Continent was the Black Mage Village, where they stay for awhile with the former war machines who'd become aware and who turned out to have very childlike and caring minds, much like Vivi. Zidane related his history and thoughts on family to Garnet, who was curious about many things, making the two of them closer. They decided to head to the dwarven town of Conde Petie because the black mages told them Kuja might be living at the Iifa Tree and Conde Petie was the closest town to the Tree. In order to get to the Tree, however, Zidane and Garnet had to get married, which Zidane was thrilled about but Garnet constantly insisted "didn't count." Once on the road to Iifa, they met the small summoner girl named Eiko, who pretty much instantly developed a crush on Zidane and insisted they come home with her. Her home turned out to be the destroyed summoner town of Madain Sari, populated by only Eiko and the horde of moogles who were both friends and surrogate parents to her. Zidane and Garnet share a moment in the town, where she asks why he's helping her with everything she's trying to do despite not having much at stake in most of it. He responds with a story about the adventurer Ipsen asking the same question of his companions, and at the end gives the same answer his companions did: "Because I wanted to." He didn't know it, but that was the moment she fell in love with him. Zidane's own feelings for her had also been growing, though he couldn't put the name "love" to them at that time.
When the group arrived at the Iifa Tree, they found Brahne and Kuja arguing with each other. Brahne summoned yet another eidolon, but Kuja was able to control the creature, Bahamut, and turn it against Brahne's fleet, killing many in the process. In the end, Brahne died of her injuries, but regained her own mind long enough to speak to Garnet and reaffirm that she loved her daughter very much and she deeply regretted everything Kuja had made her do. They carried her body back to Alexandria for a state funeral, and a coronation, because Garnet would now be Queen. Zidane couldn't express his feelings, because he knew he should be happy for her and everything, but she was so far above him now and he was just a lowly thief, and he couldn't even face her. Trying to avoid his emotions, Zidane went with Eiko and Doctor Tot to participate in a card tournament in Treno, which Regent Cid was attending as well thanks to his pilot entering. When the group heard about another attack, this time on Alexandria, they all boarded Cid's ship in order to fly back and protect the city. Garnet and Eiko summoned Alexander from the city's castle, and Kuja was warded off once more - temporarily. Garland instead stepped up to rain down destruction as Zidane rescued the summoner girls from the castle, and the monkyboy was knocked unconscious in the attempt. He woke up later in Lindblum and was told Alexandria was completely destroyed. Garnet had also lost her voice in face of the shock of the tragedy.
The party quickly decided to pursue Kuja and bring an end to the death and destruction. He'd gone to the Outer Continent again, but when they arrived at the Desert Palace he was using as a base, he captured all of them and forced Zidane to go to Oeilvert to retrieve the Gulug Stone. In Oeilvert, they found several old technological marvels from the planet Terra - and Zidane turned out to be the only one who could read and understand them, although even he didn't comprehend the meanings behind the half-prophecies. Once the Gulug Stone was in his position, Kuja fled once more, and Zidane's party once again followed him to the Lost Continent and Ipsen's Castle. They were forced to retrieve the four elemental mirrors from the castle in order to open the portal to the other world, Terra, and quickly split into pairs to place all the mirrors in their respective shrines with as little time lost as possible. The portal was opened, and the group jumped through, landing in Bran Bal.
On the strange world of Terra, Zidane finally learned of his true origins - meeting other Genomes and hearing about their purpose from Mikoto, his sister and the third Genome with a soul. She revealed his purpose as an Angel of Death, and upset and furious at having been created for such a thing, Zidane ran off to confront Garland himself and destroy him if necessary. Garland, however, proved too powerful for Zidane alone and stripped him of his soul in short order. He fell into darkness and despair, coming to believe that nothing was worthwhile and he was only good for causing problems and aiding Garland. He managed to escape from Garland's bindings in time for his friends to find him, but he ignored them and shouted at them to leave him alone. Finally, last of all, Garnet reminded him of all the times he'd helped her, and Zidane remembered that he did have a different purpose, to protect the things and people he cared about. Garnet's words gave him back his soul, and thereafter he became even more fiercely protective of her. They raced back to face Garland again, but Kuja had already found him and killed him. Before he died, Garland told Kuja that he didn't have long to live either, causing Kuja to throw a huge temper tantrum and destroy Terra with the penultimate spell, Ultima. Zidane and his friends took over Garland's airship and manage to evacuate themselves and all the Genomes before Kuja got planet-cidal, but they knew that Kuja wouldn't stop there. Zidane vowed to follow him as long as necessary until Kuja was finished, sending the entire party into Memoria.
Memoria was a twisting maze of memories that forced the group to confront truths about themselves, their pasts, and their relationships with each other but they are able to make it through to the Crystal World where the origin of their world lay. There they fought Kuja in his Trance form and defeated him, but before he could die he cast another Ultima, nearly killing everyone and blasting them into a sort of parallel space where the group fought Necron, the harbinger of death. He was the true Angel of Death, trying to bring all to a "zero state" since he thought that life was created only to end, but they manage to defeat him. Before his destruction could kill them, a repentant Kuja teleported them away and back to the Iifa Tree, where his broken body lay among the roots.
Most of the party boarded the Hilda Garde III to return to the Mist Continent, but Zidane chose to stay behind to try and save Kuja, his brother, from death. The Iifa Tree itself was dying, thrashing and losing roots, and Zidane had to put every bit of his monkey-skills to use in reaching Kuja in decent shape, but once he reached the older Genome it was too late. The dying tree consumed them both...
AND THEN SHIT GOT WEIRD.
The brothers were summoned into the war of Cosmos versus Chaos, one on each side, their memories wiped. Not much is known about the early stages of the war, but by the twelfth cycle Zidane had been there for awhile and regained about half of his memories of his homeworld, and Kuja was acting against his own comrades on Chaos side trying to help his brother. Everything seemed forgiven between them, but Kuja had lied and said he was on the side of Cosmos (instead of just doing the smart thing and saying he was on Chaos but hated them and so was working against them. Idiot). Zidane trusted him and believed what his brother said, so when Kefka ruined Kuja's plans by revealing that the manikins wouldn't hurt him, Zidane was almost completely floored. Bartz and Squall had to step in to save him, Kuja fighting all three of them to prove to Kefka that he truly was on Chaos' side, but he didn't put his whole being into it because he truly wasn't. The three companions escaped with barely a scratch, while Kuja subtly revealed that he'd broken Kefka's control of Terra, causing Kefka to put a version of the same spell on him and set him against Lightning, who ended up killing him and erasing all memory of an according between him and Zidane. At various points later in the twelfth cycle, Bartz, Squall, and Zidane would all be ambushed and defeated by Kain, who was trying to keep them safe for the cycle to come. The three were purified and revived for the thirteenth cycle along with the group who would become Cosmos' ultimate champions: the Warrior of Light, Firion, the Onion Knight, Cecil, Terra, Cloud, and Tidus.
Memories of peace between the two of them were lost to Zidane and Kuja, but they both still knew they were family. Kuja tried every method he could to get his hands on Zidane, from attacking his friends to setting traps for him, trying to break his spirit and bring him onto the opposite side. The breaking-the-spirit part worked decently, to an extent, but Zidane never once considered changing sides. The closest he got was when he was forcibly separated from Squall and Bartz by another one of the traps laid for them was wondering if he had any sort of purpose and if he could do any good for his friends, unconsciously mirroring his losing hope in Bran Bal on his homeworld. Fortunately, Cosmos projected an image of herself to talk to him, telling him to believe in his friends and believe he could help them. Zidane decided to take it to heart, and when Kuja found him once again, he stated bluntly that he was fighting to go back to the people he cared about and considered this fight Kuja's finale. After beating him, Zidane received his crystal, which acted as another teleport node to send him back to his friends.
Zidane also got the best out-of-nowhere entrance in the entire series when he crashed into Garland before Squall's fight for his crystal, asking Squall if he was trying to steal the spotlight. Even better was that Garland saw it coming.
After all ten of them obtained their crystals, the Warriors of Cosmos gathered at Order's Sanctuary again to find out how to end the cycles once and for all, only to find that Cosmos was fading before their eyes - and Chaos appeared out of nowhere to kill her in a fiery inferno. All ten of them were stunned beyond compare, and Exdeath and Kuja came as well to taunt them as they began to fade into "true darkness," one by one. All looked lost, as they were trapped between realms with no light, no guidance, only with absolute hopelessness and despair. But they overcame it, refusing to bow down to Chaos and accept defeat, and their crystals appeared in the darkness to transport them all out of it and back to Order's Sanctuary. Since the crystals were made with Cosmos' light and they were now in their hands, each of them was allowed a certain amount of time to live beyond their benefactor and defeat Chaos once and for all, though the time was not unlimited. They chose to journey as a group this time, trying to find a way to Chaos through a world that was starting to crack and break at the edges, while they were fighting to hold themselves together against complete dissolution.
Along the way, each of them had to once again fight their nemeses, all of whom had been revived by Chaos. Zidane's fight with Kuja, however, wasn't nearly as acrimonious as their previous ones had been. Kuja had entered a nihilistic state much as he'd done after the destruction of Terra, bent on taking everyone and everything down with him. But after the battle, Kuja seemed to accept that he'd made several mistakes, asking Zidane to finish him off for good. Zidane, instead, offered his hand to his brother, asking if he needed a reason to help someone. Kuja refused, still prideful enough to want to do things on his own, but he insisted that he would return there someday, and Zidane agreed in the belief that they would both see their homeworld before they died. When they confronted Chaos, the Warriors of Cosmos manage to defeat him as well, sending everything exploding into literal chaos, before the worlds are returned to the way they were before the wars started. The friends have one last chance to say goodbye to each other and thank you before they begin vanishing, returning to their own homes, with Zidane going second after Tidus.
...Except he gets to the SOL, not his home. Not exactly what he had in mind, there.
Extra notes: He likes to sing and dance and act and all those good things! Also watch out for your wimmenz. He will hit on them.
He's also going to be having some memory issues, but since he currently doesn't know anyone on the SOL that's probably not going to be very apparent. Headcanon is he remembers about half his life on Gaia, and once he's out of the gods' war the interference will clear up pretty quickly.
Cambot post sample: [Cambot turns on to being jerked around a lot. Zidane's gotten used to the idea of floating mechanical watchers showing pictures of him everywhere, but that doesn't mean he's any good with the technology. Right now he's trying to position Cambot to show off something specific, but Cambot's fighting him because it does not like being grabbed.]
Waitaminute- Come on, just- Cut it out already, I just want you to showWHOA!
[Cambot jerks out of his hands and zoomed up to float near the ceiling where Zidane can't grab it. Apparently they're on the Theatrical deck, if the bits that can be seen at the bottom of the picture can be made out.]
That's not fair, just get down here! I'll climb up after you if I have to!
[And Cambot starts to float off at that little bit of info.]
HEY! Get back here! We've got a show to perform!
Third-person log sample: "ALL RIGHT! EVERYBODY DOWN HERE ON THE DOUBLE!"
Zidane smirked, lazily stretching his arms as he pulled himself up on his bunk in the Tantalus headquarters. The boss was roaring already - must've gotten word of something big this time. Maybe he'd take it just a little slower, just to see how-
"ZIDANE! YOU AND THAT TAIL OF YOURS TOO!"
Okay, it was really important. Scratching his head, the thief jumped down to the ground easily and stretched, then trotted down to join the rest of the gang. They'd distributed themselves around the big, empty room they used as a rehearsal and storage space, sitting on crates or leaning against the wall, wherever there was room. Zidane jumped up to his usual perch on top of one of the scenery crates with a grin and a wave of his tail at Baku, who as usual looked about to have an apoplexy. "You're interrupting a really good nap you know, boss."
"That nap of yours can go to hell! We've got a job, kids, and it's gonna take every one of us to pull it off!"
"Everyone?" Ruby blinked.
Baku nodded, folding his arms over his chest and staring at them like a general surveying his troops before battle. "Everyone 'cept the kids. We're gonna be pulling the job and putting on a show at the same time! The show's gonna be the distraction while we..." He paused, drawing in breath to puff up his chest importantly. "Kidnap Princess Garnet!"
"What?" "You serious?" "We're kidnapping royalty?" "That's crazy!" "Why-"
"QUIET!" The noise took another few minutes to die down, but die it did. "Things're getting crazy out there. Word on the street is Queen Brahne's starting to lose it, seems she might be planning some sort of war. Whatever's going on out there, our client thinks it's too dangerous for her in that city, and he's paying us to get her out!"
Zidane tilted his head to the side, staring up at the ceiling as his imagination conjured up a picture - him kneeling before the Princess, extending a hand, asking her to run away with him in some grand fashion... "She sure is supposed to be pretty."
"Save it for later, lover boy!"
He grinned. "Okay, but I wanna be the one to kidnap her!"
"FINE! You're a guard then. Now pipe down! We've got a heist to plan!"
Zidane met Blank's eye with a grin that only widened as his friend shook his head at him. Whatever happened, this job would involve a pretty girl or a fantastic audience. With any luck, it'd be both.
Riff sample: Is this part of the act? If so, I’m impressed, Maggie thought, fanning her suddenly hot face with an Orcaland program. (Oh I could impress her so much more than this drowned rat. Come on sweetheart, just give me a chance!)
“He’s a trespasser!” one man in the crowd accused. “Put him in the slammer.” (If I had a gil for every time someone said that about me, I'd be the richest thief in Gaia. Guess what, that doesn't work so well!) The guy’s stout body sported a T-shirt proclaiming, 'If Swimming Is So Good For Your Weight, How Do You Explain Whales?'
“Ha!” the blond god exclaimed. He stood in water up to his waist now, at least fifteen feet away. (Hey, he's stealing my look!) “The first person who tries to slam me will be missing an essential body part. (No! Not that, anything but the beer gut!) Besides, there is no such thing as trespassing in Valhalla.” The man’s voice carried over the crowd in a strange foreign accent.
“This ain’t Vail, fella,” a cowboy-clad, gray-haired man commented in a heavy Southern drawl. “This heah’s Texas. You’re ‘bout two thousand miles off-course. Ha, ha, ha!” (I think this guy's been hit in the head. Want me to do it again? You never know, it might help!)
“Tax-us? Many lands require scutage, but ne’er have I heard of a country that asks to be taxed.” The hunk just shook his head in confusion. (Quit trying to copy me! We all know I'm the best-looking blond hunk around!)
-------------------------------------------------------
What do you think, sirs? I think she just tried to kill me with a forklift.
Name: Tai
Age: Twenty-seven
AIM and/or Plurk / E-mail / Dreamwidth journal: you know all thiiiiiiiiis. I did just get a dreamwidth journal for writing things, username tairako if you care.
What characters do you play here already, if any? Ven!
Where did you hear about Just A Game? :PPPP
Have you seen MST3K before? :OOOO
[IC Information]
Character Name: Zidane Tribal
Series: Final Fantasy IX/Dissidia
Gender: Male
Age: Sixteen-seventeen, probably seventeen. It's unclear how much time passes between the "end" of IX and the epilogue, but it's long enough for Garnet to regrow all her hair. Personal headcanon is that Zidane vanishes from under the Iifa Tree trying to rescue Kuja (he was sixteen then) and gets taken to Dissidia then, so the time he spends in the gods' war probably puts him over another birthday.
Species: Genome - an artificial species created to be the recepticals of Terran souls, they resemble smaller humans but have identical heavy blond hair and prehensile tails about as long as they are tall that are strong enough to support their weight like monkeys. For all intents and purposes, his biological functions are human.
Appearance: Zidane is relatively short, standing a couple inches under five feet tall, which isn't at all unusual for his home planet of Gaia and entirely uniform for his whole race save his dear fashion disaster of a brother. His hair is blond, cut in layers around his face like all Genomes, but left to grow longer in back unlike the rest. He pulls it back into a ponytail with a ribbon to keep it out of the way and pretty much doesn't bother with it otherwise. His clothing is almost a throwback to 19th century dress in many ways; how many people wear jabots in modern times? He doesn't wear clothing that can catch on things as he is a thief and that's just asking for trouble, but he likes to be fashionable and well-dressed. Mostly he wears vests over a white shirt with the jabot underneath, gloves to protect his hands, fairly utilitarian boots, and relatively form-fitting trousers tucked into the boots. He tends to favor a lot of blue in his clothes. His eyes are blue as well, another Genome trait, and he shares the Genome's prehensile tail as well, giving plenty of people the opportunity to invent nicknames for him based on monkeys.
Personality: Zidane was created to be destruction incarnate, the living Angel of Death to sow chaos and bring an end to the world of Gaia, preparing it for absorption by the world of Terra. He was to be cruel, ruthless, sadistic, torturous, wishing to dissolve all ties of goodness in the world and gather the souls of the people of Gaia in death's embrace.
Instead, Zidane is a fun-loving, smart-talking heroic goofball thief with a large sense of humor, an incredibly cocky smile, and a distinct love for the ladies. Sometimes things just don't make sense.
Living proof of the idea of "nurture over nature," Zidane was given a soul in the closest thing he had to an infancy, but his abandonment by Kuja in the world of Gaia at age four changed him into the complete opposite of his intended path, an almost exact reflection of Kuja. Where Kuja is selfish and, in many ways, childish, Zidane is giving and selfless and surprisingly mature (when he wants to be). His constantly repeated phrase is indicative of his good nature - "You don't need a reason to help people" are words he lives by every day. Jumping into situations to save friends or even perfect strangers is a frequent occurrence for him, sometimes even leading to conflict with people in authority over him as Zidane just does whatever the hell he wants without listening to what they say. Baku's smacked him a time or two for that, and the genome's independence lead to him leaving Tantalus at least twice - though he's always welcome back.
Helpful and heroic as he is - and he is very well aware of his own "gallant hero" status - Zidane is full of as much mischief and lively spirit as the worst of tricksters. Only bowing to authority he recognizes and respects, Zidane delights in tweaking the tails of others on more than one occasion, especially the pompous ones like Rusty used to be (and still is, but they came to an accord). He loves having fun, and is more than a bit of an attention whore, feeding his need for acclaim both with his interactions with his friends and his ladies and on the stage for an appreciative audience. He has a natural talent for acting and storytelling as well as thievery and dagger fighting, and his background in the theatre has given him a wide knowledge of both music and plays that he can pull out at any given moment to impress people with.
An inveterate flirt, Zidane has been hitting on women since the age of nine, even those much older than him or of completely different species, such as Freya. He unabashedly flirts with Dagger, even going so far as to grope her early on in their acquaintance while climbing a ladder, and sometimes has trouble keeping track of what he's promised to what woman. Even being in love with Dagger won't change that; Zidane will always have an eye for a pretty lady and is completely unabashed in it. Considering he was talking about dating the Goddess of Harmony, the little monkey's got some cheek. Still, Dagger has his heart, and always will - his flirting is one of the compromises they have to agree on in everyday life.
One of his main motivations in life is simply to have fun. Zidane fully believes that the best thing you can do for yourself is enjoy what you do. He loves to adventure and explore, trying new (and sometimes stupid) things along the way and going for the Big Experiences. He's always trying to one-up himself, and he encourages others to follow their wishes and desires as well, as long as they don't hurt others. Freedom of choice is one thing he will strive for above almost anything, and he won't let others interfere in someone's choices.
Zidane can be serious, though, and usually is serious about what he says, even if it sounds like a joke to others. Only a couple of things in his life have ever brought him down to absolute lows - finding out he was essentially a magic-fueled genetic reproduction on Terra, and losing all his friends in the Void. Other instances have brought him sadness or gloom, notably not being able to say anything to Dagger after she becomes Queen after the fall of Cleyra, but those two incidents are the only times he's gone right down into zero state... And even then, he pushed through them through sheer willpower, attacking Garland head-on even after pushing all of his friends away. That willpower is the thing that always saves him, and he's not going to let it go any time soon.
While he's come to accept his origins (even if he completely rejects the purpose for those origins) and see Kuja as something of a brother to the point of risking his life for him, Zidane's real home will always be with his friends. Growing up without any blood family didn't scar him at all; rather, Zidane's come to the conclusion that a person's real family is who they choose it to be. Where connections of love and friendship bind, that's when you have people who will stick with you for the rest of your life. He's very thankful that he's got such a large family himself: the members of Tantalus, Dagger and Vivi and all their friends, and now the Warriors of Cosmos as well. For him, his friends are his family are his home - his place to go back to.
At the end of the day, one phrase seems to sum him up very well: "Oh Zidane."
History: Zidane was born... well, made... on Terra, neighboring planet to Gaia, home of the Genomes and Garland-the-robotic-android. Garland created him specifically to replace Kuja, the previous Angel of Death whom he viewed as a miserable failure. At first Kuja either didn't understand Zidane's role or Garland's view of him, because for the first few years he didn't mind having the kid around. When Zidane was four, though, Kuja kidnapped the child and left him on the planet Gaia. Zidane was found by Baku, the leader of the Tantalus Theatre Troupe-slash-thief gang based in the large city of Lindblum, and Baku brought him into the gang and raised him in Lindblum for a dual purpose: performing and thievery. Eventually Zidane could only remember one image from his childhood: a blue light overhead.
Tantalus became his family, with Baku as their father (though they always called him "Boss") and the other members as brothers, sisters, and cousins, especially Blank and Marcus. But something in him always niggled to know where he originally came from, as Baku couldn't even tell him what had happened to him before the troupe, just that he'd found the little monkeyboy in the streets one day. When he was fifteen, he told Baku he wanted to try and learn where he was from, which led to a huge fight between the two - their biggest ever, and they were a pair known for fighting at least twice a week. It resulted in Baku throwing Zidane out of the troupe and Zidane storming off at the same time, determined to find his family. But as much as he searched and searched, he couldn't find anyone who looked like him nor any clues to where he'd come from, and he began to miss his friends in Lindblum more and more. Eventually he gave up the search and returned to Lindblum, asking for readmission into the gang, having learned who his true family was - the people who shared their hearts with him unreservedly and genuinely cared about him, no matter how often they fought. Baku, after smacking him around a lot, let him back in.
A little over a year later Tantalus was hired by Regent Cid to kidnap Princess Garnet from the matriarchy of Alexandria amid rumors of her mother, Queen Brahne, beginning to lose her mind and start a war. The kidnapping definitely did not go as planned at all, since the Princess wanted to be kidnapped and they ended up being chased by her personal guard onto the stage in the middle of the performance, but Zidane went with it and Garnet turned out to be a surprisingly good improviser. They had to hightail it out of there quick, though, when Brahne realized that they were taking the princess, and she demanded her artillery destroy the Prima Vista. During their escape back to Lindblum, the badly damaged Prima Vista crashed in the Evil Forest, starting off a series of adventures the likes of which they could never have imagined that would change them all forever.
A little black mage named Vivi had been caught up in all the ruckus in Alexandria, and he and Zidane quickly became fast friends as Zidane tried to teach him to stick up for himself and be confident in who he was, not who he wanted to be. Princess Garnet acquired a new nickname with "Dagger," which Zidane would adopt and thereafter never, ever drop. He had to watch Blank, his best friend and brother, get petrified while saving all of them from the Evil Forest. Brahne turned out to be worse than anyone could have imagined, and even she was only a puppet, her strings being pulled by a tall, slim person with long silver hair and a very large cruel streak. They discovered a manufacturing production for black mages under the village of Dali that sent Vivi into existential crises while trying to reach Lindblum. Zidane and Steiner constantly argued and tried to hurt each other. "Ragtag group of companions" was an incredibly apt description of their company, and yet somehow they all made it safely to Lindblum aboard a ship that was pretty literally falling apart around their ears.
In Lindblum Zidane bumped into an old friend named Freya, who joined the Festival of the Hunt along with Zidane and Vivi. Zidane promised Garnet a date if he won the competition, but the Festival mood was killed when a messenger from Freya's home of Burmecia came to the castle badly wounded, saying they were under attack by black mages and the Alexandrian military. At the feast after the Festival, Garnet doctored most of the food to put everyone to sleep, leading her and Steiner to escape the city and try to return to Alexandria to confront her mother and possibly stop her. Zidane was set to chase after her, but chose instead to accompany Freya to Burmecia to try and stop the attack and save the population. Along the way they picked up Quina Quen, a Qu that nobody can figure out but who wants to tag along to find lots of yummy things to eat. They turn out to be far too late, finding many dead and most of Burmecia in ruin, but they do find Brahne talking with Kuja and Beatrix. Attempting to end things before anyone else gets hurt, also Freya being in a frothing rage, they attacked the group - and get their asses roundly handed to them by Beatrix, while Kuja and Brahne escape.
The group decided to go to Clerya since the King escaped there and offer to help out in any way they can. Unfortunately, Brahne and the Alexandrian army followed the same path, attacking the tree-land after Zidane's group reached it. The battle was going well until Brahne decided to summon Odin, who had to use his power to crush the city. Zidane and his friends barely escape destruction as well by jumping through the Alexandrian's teleport spells, ending up on the Red Rose and stowing away to fly back to Alexandria. There they run into Garnet, Steiner, and Marcus, the two men joining them to rescue the sleeping Garnet from Zorn and Thorn. Beatrix, sickened by what her Queen has been turning their military might to, renounced her and joins their side, fighting with Steiner and Freya to allow Vivi, Zidane, and Garnet to escape through the underground tunnels. They're forced to watch in horror as Brahne invades and destroys Lindblum with another eidolon, Atomos. They manage to sneak into the partially-leveled Lindblum to meet with Regent Cid, and they decide collectively to follow Kuja, who seems to be pulling the majority of the strings in this worldwide conflict. With Cid's help, the trio escaped to the tunnel between continents, Fossil Roo.
The first place the group found on the Outer Continent was the Black Mage Village, where they stay for awhile with the former war machines who'd become aware and who turned out to have very childlike and caring minds, much like Vivi. Zidane related his history and thoughts on family to Garnet, who was curious about many things, making the two of them closer. They decided to head to the dwarven town of Conde Petie because the black mages told them Kuja might be living at the Iifa Tree and Conde Petie was the closest town to the Tree. In order to get to the Tree, however, Zidane and Garnet had to get married, which Zidane was thrilled about but Garnet constantly insisted "didn't count." Once on the road to Iifa, they met the small summoner girl named Eiko, who pretty much instantly developed a crush on Zidane and insisted they come home with her. Her home turned out to be the destroyed summoner town of Madain Sari, populated by only Eiko and the horde of moogles who were both friends and surrogate parents to her. Zidane and Garnet share a moment in the town, where she asks why he's helping her with everything she's trying to do despite not having much at stake in most of it. He responds with a story about the adventurer Ipsen asking the same question of his companions, and at the end gives the same answer his companions did: "Because I wanted to." He didn't know it, but that was the moment she fell in love with him. Zidane's own feelings for her had also been growing, though he couldn't put the name "love" to them at that time.
When the group arrived at the Iifa Tree, they found Brahne and Kuja arguing with each other. Brahne summoned yet another eidolon, but Kuja was able to control the creature, Bahamut, and turn it against Brahne's fleet, killing many in the process. In the end, Brahne died of her injuries, but regained her own mind long enough to speak to Garnet and reaffirm that she loved her daughter very much and she deeply regretted everything Kuja had made her do. They carried her body back to Alexandria for a state funeral, and a coronation, because Garnet would now be Queen. Zidane couldn't express his feelings, because he knew he should be happy for her and everything, but she was so far above him now and he was just a lowly thief, and he couldn't even face her. Trying to avoid his emotions, Zidane went with Eiko and Doctor Tot to participate in a card tournament in Treno, which Regent Cid was attending as well thanks to his pilot entering. When the group heard about another attack, this time on Alexandria, they all boarded Cid's ship in order to fly back and protect the city. Garnet and Eiko summoned Alexander from the city's castle, and Kuja was warded off once more - temporarily. Garland instead stepped up to rain down destruction as Zidane rescued the summoner girls from the castle, and the monkyboy was knocked unconscious in the attempt. He woke up later in Lindblum and was told Alexandria was completely destroyed. Garnet had also lost her voice in face of the shock of the tragedy.
The party quickly decided to pursue Kuja and bring an end to the death and destruction. He'd gone to the Outer Continent again, but when they arrived at the Desert Palace he was using as a base, he captured all of them and forced Zidane to go to Oeilvert to retrieve the Gulug Stone. In Oeilvert, they found several old technological marvels from the planet Terra - and Zidane turned out to be the only one who could read and understand them, although even he didn't comprehend the meanings behind the half-prophecies. Once the Gulug Stone was in his position, Kuja fled once more, and Zidane's party once again followed him to the Lost Continent and Ipsen's Castle. They were forced to retrieve the four elemental mirrors from the castle in order to open the portal to the other world, Terra, and quickly split into pairs to place all the mirrors in their respective shrines with as little time lost as possible. The portal was opened, and the group jumped through, landing in Bran Bal.
On the strange world of Terra, Zidane finally learned of his true origins - meeting other Genomes and hearing about their purpose from Mikoto, his sister and the third Genome with a soul. She revealed his purpose as an Angel of Death, and upset and furious at having been created for such a thing, Zidane ran off to confront Garland himself and destroy him if necessary. Garland, however, proved too powerful for Zidane alone and stripped him of his soul in short order. He fell into darkness and despair, coming to believe that nothing was worthwhile and he was only good for causing problems and aiding Garland. He managed to escape from Garland's bindings in time for his friends to find him, but he ignored them and shouted at them to leave him alone. Finally, last of all, Garnet reminded him of all the times he'd helped her, and Zidane remembered that he did have a different purpose, to protect the things and people he cared about. Garnet's words gave him back his soul, and thereafter he became even more fiercely protective of her. They raced back to face Garland again, but Kuja had already found him and killed him. Before he died, Garland told Kuja that he didn't have long to live either, causing Kuja to throw a huge temper tantrum and destroy Terra with the penultimate spell, Ultima. Zidane and his friends took over Garland's airship and manage to evacuate themselves and all the Genomes before Kuja got planet-cidal, but they knew that Kuja wouldn't stop there. Zidane vowed to follow him as long as necessary until Kuja was finished, sending the entire party into Memoria.
Memoria was a twisting maze of memories that forced the group to confront truths about themselves, their pasts, and their relationships with each other but they are able to make it through to the Crystal World where the origin of their world lay. There they fought Kuja in his Trance form and defeated him, but before he could die he cast another Ultima, nearly killing everyone and blasting them into a sort of parallel space where the group fought Necron, the harbinger of death. He was the true Angel of Death, trying to bring all to a "zero state" since he thought that life was created only to end, but they manage to defeat him. Before his destruction could kill them, a repentant Kuja teleported them away and back to the Iifa Tree, where his broken body lay among the roots.
Most of the party boarded the Hilda Garde III to return to the Mist Continent, but Zidane chose to stay behind to try and save Kuja, his brother, from death. The Iifa Tree itself was dying, thrashing and losing roots, and Zidane had to put every bit of his monkey-skills to use in reaching Kuja in decent shape, but once he reached the older Genome it was too late. The dying tree consumed them both...
AND THEN SHIT GOT WEIRD.
The brothers were summoned into the war of Cosmos versus Chaos, one on each side, their memories wiped. Not much is known about the early stages of the war, but by the twelfth cycle Zidane had been there for awhile and regained about half of his memories of his homeworld, and Kuja was acting against his own comrades on Chaos side trying to help his brother. Everything seemed forgiven between them, but Kuja had lied and said he was on the side of Cosmos (instead of just doing the smart thing and saying he was on Chaos but hated them and so was working against them. Idiot). Zidane trusted him and believed what his brother said, so when Kefka ruined Kuja's plans by revealing that the manikins wouldn't hurt him, Zidane was almost completely floored. Bartz and Squall had to step in to save him, Kuja fighting all three of them to prove to Kefka that he truly was on Chaos' side, but he didn't put his whole being into it because he truly wasn't. The three companions escaped with barely a scratch, while Kuja subtly revealed that he'd broken Kefka's control of Terra, causing Kefka to put a version of the same spell on him and set him against Lightning, who ended up killing him and erasing all memory of an according between him and Zidane. At various points later in the twelfth cycle, Bartz, Squall, and Zidane would all be ambushed and defeated by Kain, who was trying to keep them safe for the cycle to come. The three were purified and revived for the thirteenth cycle along with the group who would become Cosmos' ultimate champions: the Warrior of Light, Firion, the Onion Knight, Cecil, Terra, Cloud, and Tidus.
Memories of peace between the two of them were lost to Zidane and Kuja, but they both still knew they were family. Kuja tried every method he could to get his hands on Zidane, from attacking his friends to setting traps for him, trying to break his spirit and bring him onto the opposite side. The breaking-the-spirit part worked decently, to an extent, but Zidane never once considered changing sides. The closest he got was when he was forcibly separated from Squall and Bartz by another one of the traps laid for them was wondering if he had any sort of purpose and if he could do any good for his friends, unconsciously mirroring his losing hope in Bran Bal on his homeworld. Fortunately, Cosmos projected an image of herself to talk to him, telling him to believe in his friends and believe he could help them. Zidane decided to take it to heart, and when Kuja found him once again, he stated bluntly that he was fighting to go back to the people he cared about and considered this fight Kuja's finale. After beating him, Zidane received his crystal, which acted as another teleport node to send him back to his friends.
Zidane also got the best out-of-nowhere entrance in the entire series when he crashed into Garland before Squall's fight for his crystal, asking Squall if he was trying to steal the spotlight. Even better was that Garland saw it coming.
After all ten of them obtained their crystals, the Warriors of Cosmos gathered at Order's Sanctuary again to find out how to end the cycles once and for all, only to find that Cosmos was fading before their eyes - and Chaos appeared out of nowhere to kill her in a fiery inferno. All ten of them were stunned beyond compare, and Exdeath and Kuja came as well to taunt them as they began to fade into "true darkness," one by one. All looked lost, as they were trapped between realms with no light, no guidance, only with absolute hopelessness and despair. But they overcame it, refusing to bow down to Chaos and accept defeat, and their crystals appeared in the darkness to transport them all out of it and back to Order's Sanctuary. Since the crystals were made with Cosmos' light and they were now in their hands, each of them was allowed a certain amount of time to live beyond their benefactor and defeat Chaos once and for all, though the time was not unlimited. They chose to journey as a group this time, trying to find a way to Chaos through a world that was starting to crack and break at the edges, while they were fighting to hold themselves together against complete dissolution.
Along the way, each of them had to once again fight their nemeses, all of whom had been revived by Chaos. Zidane's fight with Kuja, however, wasn't nearly as acrimonious as their previous ones had been. Kuja had entered a nihilistic state much as he'd done after the destruction of Terra, bent on taking everyone and everything down with him. But after the battle, Kuja seemed to accept that he'd made several mistakes, asking Zidane to finish him off for good. Zidane, instead, offered his hand to his brother, asking if he needed a reason to help someone. Kuja refused, still prideful enough to want to do things on his own, but he insisted that he would return there someday, and Zidane agreed in the belief that they would both see their homeworld before they died. When they confronted Chaos, the Warriors of Cosmos manage to defeat him as well, sending everything exploding into literal chaos, before the worlds are returned to the way they were before the wars started. The friends have one last chance to say goodbye to each other and thank you before they begin vanishing, returning to their own homes, with Zidane going second after Tidus.
...Except he gets to the SOL, not his home. Not exactly what he had in mind, there.
Extra notes: He likes to sing and dance and act and all those good things! Also watch out for your wimmenz. He will hit on them.
He's also going to be having some memory issues, but since he currently doesn't know anyone on the SOL that's probably not going to be very apparent. Headcanon is he remembers about half his life on Gaia, and once he's out of the gods' war the interference will clear up pretty quickly.
Cambot post sample: [Cambot turns on to being jerked around a lot. Zidane's gotten used to the idea of floating mechanical watchers showing pictures of him everywhere, but that doesn't mean he's any good with the technology. Right now he's trying to position Cambot to show off something specific, but Cambot's fighting him because it does not like being grabbed.]
Waitaminute- Come on, just- Cut it out already, I just want you to showWHOA!
[Cambot jerks out of his hands and zoomed up to float near the ceiling where Zidane can't grab it. Apparently they're on the Theatrical deck, if the bits that can be seen at the bottom of the picture can be made out.]
That's not fair, just get down here! I'll climb up after you if I have to!
[And Cambot starts to float off at that little bit of info.]
HEY! Get back here! We've got a show to perform!
Third-person log sample: "ALL RIGHT! EVERYBODY DOWN HERE ON THE DOUBLE!"
Zidane smirked, lazily stretching his arms as he pulled himself up on his bunk in the Tantalus headquarters. The boss was roaring already - must've gotten word of something big this time. Maybe he'd take it just a little slower, just to see how-
"ZIDANE! YOU AND THAT TAIL OF YOURS TOO!"
Okay, it was really important. Scratching his head, the thief jumped down to the ground easily and stretched, then trotted down to join the rest of the gang. They'd distributed themselves around the big, empty room they used as a rehearsal and storage space, sitting on crates or leaning against the wall, wherever there was room. Zidane jumped up to his usual perch on top of one of the scenery crates with a grin and a wave of his tail at Baku, who as usual looked about to have an apoplexy. "You're interrupting a really good nap you know, boss."
"That nap of yours can go to hell! We've got a job, kids, and it's gonna take every one of us to pull it off!"
"Everyone?" Ruby blinked.
Baku nodded, folding his arms over his chest and staring at them like a general surveying his troops before battle. "Everyone 'cept the kids. We're gonna be pulling the job and putting on a show at the same time! The show's gonna be the distraction while we..." He paused, drawing in breath to puff up his chest importantly. "Kidnap Princess Garnet!"
"What?" "You serious?" "We're kidnapping royalty?" "That's crazy!" "Why-"
"QUIET!" The noise took another few minutes to die down, but die it did. "Things're getting crazy out there. Word on the street is Queen Brahne's starting to lose it, seems she might be planning some sort of war. Whatever's going on out there, our client thinks it's too dangerous for her in that city, and he's paying us to get her out!"
Zidane tilted his head to the side, staring up at the ceiling as his imagination conjured up a picture - him kneeling before the Princess, extending a hand, asking her to run away with him in some grand fashion... "She sure is supposed to be pretty."
"Save it for later, lover boy!"
He grinned. "Okay, but I wanna be the one to kidnap her!"
"FINE! You're a guard then. Now pipe down! We've got a heist to plan!"
Zidane met Blank's eye with a grin that only widened as his friend shook his head at him. Whatever happened, this job would involve a pretty girl or a fantastic audience. With any luck, it'd be both.
Riff sample: Is this part of the act? If so, I’m impressed, Maggie thought, fanning her suddenly hot face with an Orcaland program. (Oh I could impress her so much more than this drowned rat. Come on sweetheart, just give me a chance!)
“He’s a trespasser!” one man in the crowd accused. “Put him in the slammer.” (If I had a gil for every time someone said that about me, I'd be the richest thief in Gaia. Guess what, that doesn't work so well!) The guy’s stout body sported a T-shirt proclaiming, 'If Swimming Is So Good For Your Weight, How Do You Explain Whales?'
“Ha!” the blond god exclaimed. He stood in water up to his waist now, at least fifteen feet away. (Hey, he's stealing my look!) “The first person who tries to slam me will be missing an essential body part. (No! Not that, anything but the beer gut!) Besides, there is no such thing as trespassing in Valhalla.” The man’s voice carried over the crowd in a strange foreign accent.
“This ain’t Vail, fella,” a cowboy-clad, gray-haired man commented in a heavy Southern drawl. “This heah’s Texas. You’re ‘bout two thousand miles off-course. Ha, ha, ha!” (I think this guy's been hit in the head. Want me to do it again? You never know, it might help!)
“Tax-us? Many lands require scutage, but ne’er have I heard of a country that asks to be taxed.” The hunk just shook his head in confusion. (Quit trying to copy me! We all know I'm the best-looking blond hunk around!)
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What do you think, sirs? I think she just tried to kill me with a forklift.
