Player InformationName: Chicklet
Age:I am
Contact: (Email/AIM/Plurk) ChickletLARP on Plurk, Bardess Ookami on aim DWlogs@writeme.com on email
Characters already in Medietas: Gabriel Agreste/Papillon, Tyleet, Cassidy
Reserve Link:
http://medietas-mods.dreamwidth.org/1679.html?view=815759&posted=1#cmt815759Character BasicsCharacter name: Skuld
Character Journal: Manga_Goddess_Skuld
Canon: Aa megamisama (Manga not anime)
Canon Point: Just past the end of the chapter where Sentaro gloomily tells her he is moving, and she points out that it's fine, because she's a Goddess!
Age: She looks like she's early to mid teens, but as she isn't human it is hard to tell. Implication is that she is much older than that, though she is still emotionally a teenager, and is at about that maturity level. It is hard to tell if she seems to be growing at a human pace simply because she is on earth, if that is her normal pace or if (and this is the most likely) that she is aging visibly as a direct correlation to the growth of her powers. Her emblem is the future, and at one point when their powers/connection to Yggdrasil was sundered, she started aging rapidly. Balancing out her powers returned her to her normal appearance.
Icon:
http://v.dreamwidth.org/9361293/2422564Canon Character InformationAppearance:
Skuld looks like a girl in her early to mid teens, and with two exceptions she could pass for human. One exception would be the three emblems on her face. The other would be - in most worlds anyway - the insane amount of hair she has. It seems to be one of the few constants in the series, visually - humans seem to have normal length hair, Goddesses often have very long hair (Except Lind, for some reason), and Demons often have a normal length - but more fullness. She is average height for the age she appears to be, with a slender form and normal enough face. Pretty working her way to beautiful, but not there yet.
Except when she feels love. Then her unearthly beauty starts to shine through.
History:
http://ohmygoddess.wikia.com/wiki/SkuldSkuld joins the series as a Goddess, Second Class, limited. Which means that she does not yet have the limitation that says she cannot lie (which we learn about much later thanks to Urd, who always lies and will never be First Class for that reason). She claims that she came to Earth because of all the "bugs" in the code caused by her sisters being on Earth for so long. This is both true and not, skirting the lines of honesty, and her guilt gets he to confess after the fact, seeing it herself as a lie. She was lonely, she wanted big sister Belldandy back in Yggdrasil with her. We learn during this section that despite her age and immaturity, Skuld is the best debugger in Yggdrasil - which houses the computers that run the universe. We also learn that in some dimensions, like Earth, buggy code can become literal. She gives everyone special glasses to see the bugs, and special mallets to squash them - the dream of so many programers before her.
Skuld's theories about the cause of the bugs, while logical, are all brought about by her preconceived desire to bring Belldandy home, so it takes rather longer than it should to find the true root of them. She winds up building a machine to eat the bugs, and as far as we know it is still in some forgotten corner of the temple somewhere, running happily.
With the crisis averted, and Keiichi no longer in danger of turning two dimensional or falling into some odd offshoot world, Skuld tries again to get Belldandy to come home. But Bell has a contract with Keiichi to stay with him forever (though later it's implied that Forever means until he dies, not actually forever, as she is nearly immortal) So Skuld decides she's staying to make sure that Keiichi keeps his grubby human hands off her precious sister.
(please note the following section is not necessarily in order until we get to Sentaro)
Skuld builds a ton of machines, and claims to hate K1 (Keiichi), but she can usually be tricked into helping him when a machine needs to be built or fixed. Sometimes she'll decide to fix something on her own, and she had been working on his bike for him - something he is capable of doing himself - when he met his baby sister, Megumi Morisato. Megumi treated her like a kid, asking her brother if she was his and Bell's, to yank his chain. Which ticked off Skuld for multiple reasons. And then - WORSE - she criticized Skuld's work. Skuld stood up for her repairs, and they forced Keiichi to settle the score by riding the motorcycle. When it fell to bits, Skuld claimed that he wasn't "riding it right" and was about to try to blw Megumi up with a homemade Neo-Skuld bomb... when she was stopped. Two of Keiichi's senpais convinced the girls to compete in a mech battle. Megumi built a team of her fellow college students, Skuld built hers on her own. And when Skuld started winning, Megumi thought fast and turned it around, and was starting to win. So Skuld... hit the self destruct button on the remote control for her mech. leveling both mechs and the playing field. Belldandy made her make peace with Megumi, though she decided the other girl was her rival from then on. (A theme we almost never see again, even when Skuld winds up helping Megumi's softball team win a bet against the boys' baseball team at NIT)
Mara, a Demon from Urd's past (Urd being the eldest sister of the three, and the one Skuld is always at odds with), attacks, and after they escape Skuld does what she does best. She builds a machine - in this case,
Banpei. As she steals the innards of most other machines in the Temple where they live (her usual MO) to build him, and as powering him on kills all the power to the Temple... She is told constantly to turn him off by Urd and Keiichi. One time after he is turned off, Belldandy finds him, unmoving and thinks he is broken. She uses her magic to heal him and... her magic combined with Skuld's magic and genius.... Banpei becomes feeling and sentient. Can't speak still, but he can love. And he falls in love with Belldandy. Because his primary programing was Demon fighting, and his secondary programing was to keep Belldandy and Keiichi apart, Banpei starts to resent Keiichi and attacks him regularly, Urd tries to shut him down and joins K1 on the enemies list.
And then one day, Keiichi finally gets to Belldandy long enough to get her to escape the temple with him, so they can talk, Banpei sees that she is gone, but left the lunchbox she had so lovingly made behind. So he disconnects himself from his power source and flies off to find her. He uses the last of his energy to deliver the lunch, and then powers down. Skuld tried to repair him, and while she got him functional again, his emotions and sentience were gone, as were all of his memory files. He was Banpei in form and programing. Belldandy kept hoping some of his special personality would resurface, but it never did. (Though another one develops, and is destroyed, then another develops and as of her canon point remains).
After a while, after a number of smaller adventures, Keiichi accidentally summons another Goddess. Peorth. Someone from home with a grudge against Bell. And while most of that resolution doesn't involve Skuld all that much as she moves back into background character status, when Peorth leaves, she swipes Skuld's enteire manga collection.... >.<
One other adventure lead to a creation of a second Urd, and ended with them having an Urd Skin Skuld used to create a trap for Demon Urd for force her to merge with Goddess Urd. This is important to Skuld, because she started having to admit that she does actually love Urd, (though we see some of that when Urd is summoned home and her return is foiled and she gets to stay) and because the adventure ends with that Urd skin remaining.
Skuld had finally managed to build emotion circuits for Banpei properly, and she also gave him an internal power source, hoping his personality would remerge. But he was a completely new 'Bot. But since his primary programing was still defense, and he was still in a house filled with the love of multiple Goddesses, he was still a good and self sacrificing sort. He wanted to go out with Bell and Keiichi when they went shopping, but because of his odd appearance, Keiichi told him to stay home. Banpei found the fake Urd skin and put it on, so that he could join them. But trying to find them he kept finding trouble instead, and had to keep stopping it. He saved a girl from a mugging, among other things, and had just caught up to them when he detected sounds of distress. He rushed to a building fire, where there was a single living thing still inside - a cat. Banpei flew in and saved the cat, the skin burning off in the process. He brought the cat out safely and then shut down... and that personality too was lost. And Keiichi never again complained about him coming out with them after Skuld repaired him, AGAIN.
The Goddess connection to Yggdrasil keeps them stabilized (I need to know what the mods want me to say does it for her in game, unless you guys are cool with her still having a connection, in which case I can expand on what that means, power-wise) and when they stopped Urd from being forced to go home to get her Goddess License renewed they accidentally crashed the system.... "Let me guess, this is the first time you three actually worked together?"/"Let me guess, this is the first time you three were all getting chewed out together?"... The connection to Yggdrasil broke. They were stranded on Earth with no way to renew their power. This is where we learned that Urd's love of booze and Skuld's mania for ice cream weren't just character traits - they were survival mechanisms. Whithout the connection, Urd started regressing in age, Skuld started aging, and Belldandy couldn't maintain a full sized body. Ice cream helped slow the aging process but it was up to Skuld and Keiichi with help of mini-Belldandy, and a well placed message from the Goddess' father the Almighty, to figure out a solution. Moon Rock bracelets, made artificially in a lab, that supplied them with power for one month, though almost a fill bracelet was expended each to restore them to normal. During this aged up time Skuld got an idea of what it was like to be an adult, and started to grow a little too fond of Keiichi. Those feelings mostly vanished when she became a "kid" again.
Until the rock of the three sisters. Urd spun some tale to Keiichi about this rock just off the coast and how there was a legend that if two people confessed their love on the rock, under the moonlight, they would be bound together forever. So K1 took them to the beach, despite being unable to swim, and mostly sat on the sand, lazy and bored. Miserable. Skuld squirted him with a water gun for checking out Belldandy in her swimsuit, but then decided to be "nice" to him, letting him try out her new Banpei model - an jet ski with Banpei's face and a remote control. She doesn't give him much of a choice, and is sure he is having fun even as he is screaming in terror. When he falls off and nearly drowns, Belldandy saves him. They go back to the Inn and Urd convinces him to look for the rocks again. He finds them - missed them before because of the tide - and heads back, but Skuld figured out what he was up to and set traps to stop him. "I didn't expect him to fall into all of them. Yeesh, even I'm starting to feel bad for him" He wasn't sure why his luck was so bad until he saw what seemed to be a really cute girl, half collapsed on the beach. She begged him for help getting to the inn, and he carried her, but she got heavier and heavier. He was almost fooled... until his keys flew from his pocket to stick to the girl. She was made of sand, but looked and felt so human, held together by a magnet. Once he realized that, Skuld panicked... and hit the self destruct. "Skillfully superb execution, absolutely amateurish ending, it's got to be Skuld." That made him even more determined to get back, despite being scorched and battered from the explosion and the traps. He finally got back, convinced Belldandy to come with him... then realized that he had no clue how to get her out to the rocks. Urd reappeared to "help" giving him Skuld's Banpei-RX again. He got back on the machine, with Bell and tried to make it for the rocks, but couldn't. He again began to drown. Bell saved him and landed on the rocks, because they were the closest thing to dry land. Skuld used water teleport to try and stop them... but her timing was the worst. She popped out of the water and landed between them...just as Keiichi was turning, finally confessing his love. Urd admitted to making up the legend, Bell was clueless, Keiichi was embarrassed but Skuld...
For some reason... Skuld couldn't get his confession out of her head. Even to the point of building a doll that looked like him, holding it as she pictured the words, punching it because he wasn't saying it to her and besides, she hates him, then picking it up and holding the doll close like she was sorry she hurt it. K1 decided that her moodiness and odd shyness around him probably meant that she was getting her time of the month for the first time, since his sister acted weird when she got hers and "she looks about the right age". He tried to ask Belldandy but chickened out, embarrassed when she didn't understand what he meant by "monthlies" so he went to the drugstore and bought her supplies, and some taiyaki, leaving them both with a note that said "I know ice cream might be hard on your tummy now, so enjoy these, and congratulations." She was beyond confused by the note, and by the inedible stuff he left her, but she did eat the cakes. And... she started to worry that she was noticing his kindness, that she was falling in love with him.
SO! She decided to go on a date with him, to prove to herself that she hated him. Urd caught wind of this, and to protect both her sisters, she decided to make sure Skuld remembered how much she hated him by secretly making the date miserable. She didn't understand why Belldandy kept fixing everything she made wrong. At the end of the "date" Skuld discovered that her sisters were interfering and correctly presumed that all that had gone wrong had been Urd's doing. Furious she lashed out at her sister, printing the word DUMMY across her face with magic - the first big magic we ever see her do other than the water teleport. Belldandy explains that all Goddesses get emotional when it is time for their powers to grow for the first time, and Skuld realizes that all the odd conflicting feelings about K1 are gone. "Keiichi, I hate you forever," she says, but she says it fondly, and it becomes obvious she might still want to, but she no longer quite can. But she isn't in love with him, and still wants him to back off her big sister.
The Demon Mara, sick of losing all the time, made a contract with a human woman - Sayoko - who hated Belldandy, and used a mind force amplifier to give her the ability to remake the NIT campus into a palace and enslave all within it. (By this point locals were so used to weirdness in the area that most just thought it was an elaborate prank of the seniors in the engineering department and Megumi's full comment on it was "Whelp, no school means no classes, right?") Skuld built ribbons for herself, her sisters, and Keiichi to block the mind control and they went in. Each of them found tests and tasks meant to distract and delay them. Skuld and Urd were forced many times to work together as they became seperated from Keiichi and Belldandy. Faced with the machine that was amplifying her powers, Skuld and Urd threw all they had at it, but couldn't destroy it... until they realized that it was a power amplifier... which meant.... they combined their magics and launched a volley of mean words wrapped in Urd's lightning at the machine which destroyed it. And most of the castle they were in. They fled together, realizing they might have over done it.
Not long after Sayoko's loss, Skuld wanted to increase her own power... So she could summon an Angel and she is, after all, a genius, and if Mara could magic up a mind force amplifier that affected everyone, Skuld was sure she could build one that would amplify herself only. And she might have managed it, except Keiichi came in to find out where the innards from one of his machines had gone. Seeing her in full on mad-scientist mode, he decided to come back later, but accidentally stepped on the on switch. She had not yet built an off switch. Her powers spun wildly out of control, forming a painfully fast wall of water between the two of them and her sisters. Urd had to accept her Angel, whom she had hidden from because it was a true representation of herself as all Angels are (Urd is terrified of her Demon half), because they needed that power to save Skuld and Keiichi. Once they were free, and Skuld had recovered from the ordeal, Urd wasted no time showing off her Angel, getting it in while she could knowing Skuld would soon have her own.
And Urd was right sooner than she expected to be. Skuld found the Angel Egg in Urd's room that she had ordered to try and reconnect with her Angel before she found she had the strength to call her all along. The Egg had signs all over it saying "Skuld, do not touch!" So, of course, Skuld had to touch it, had to pretend that she was going to swallow it... and then Urd startled her and she dropped it in her mouth, and accidentally swallowed it. She then passed out. Given Skuld's low levels of power, and her lack of control, it was possible the Angel would run wild and have to be sealed away for Skuld's own protection, but the Angel that was born was like any Angel except that she was ridiculously small. Skuld was thrilled to have her own Angel, no matter how small, and ADORED Nobel Scarlet.
Skuld, determined to have power enough to help her Angel grow finally started actually trying to learn magic, though she still relied on her machines for most things. But all she really achieved was a fancier font when she printed words on things. "You call that a new talent?"
And then one day Skuld was watching Belldandy on her bicycle. She understood a bike in theory, but she was more a motor sort of girl, so she started examining the bike, trying to figure out what made it so much fun to ride. Belldandy offered to teach her, and she started to refuse, but at some goading from Urd, she became determined. But she wanted to learn it her way. First she built knee and elbow pads that would release air to stabilize her. She would never admit that was a failure, just a misapplication of otherwise perfectly built tech. Then she decided to add out-rigger wheels. When Keiichi pointed out that was like a kid's bike, that idea was gone. THEN she thought to add a gyroscope and a motor. Belldandy convinced her to just try, without the tech.
After freaking out about where Keiichi was putting his hands "There's nowhere else to grip, Skuld!" She tried. And fell. She was stunned that Belldandy hadn't stopped her from falling, but clearly Belldandy just hadn't been fast enough, and obviously Keiichi wasn't holding her right. She tried again. And Again. And again. And every time Keiichi let go, she fell. And not once did her big sister save her. Belldandy was trying to teach her an important life lesson. That she always relies too much on her machines and other people, and that was why she couldn't learn her magic. That one always finds his or her "true path on the far side of suffering."
But for Skuld, who always had Belldandy's support, who was a genius that almost never failed badly enough to admit failure... she felt abandoned and stupid and inept for the first time in her life. She yelled that she was quitting and ran away.
Skuld was moping over bikes, watching people ride, sulking, when a shadow passed over her. She stared up and saw a boy flying over her head, aloft only by the bike under him. Her being under him startled him so much that he crashed on the far side of her. She rushed over, and as much as she hated bikes, a machine was a machine, so she started working to fix it. He asked if she loved bikes, and when she said she hated them and explained why, he told her "Bikes are fun because they CAN crash" and talked about the "Thrill of keeping something under control when it wants to wipe out." She admitted to not getting it - which was a huge sign of how much she matured from her first appearance - so he decoded to teach her.
Next thing she knew, she was on his bike, and he was standing behind her, hands over her hands on the handles, providing the balance. When she, despite herself, started to feel comfortable even with him screaming in her ear "WARP FACTOR NINE!" he let go, flying off the bike from momentum. She was riding a moment before she realized she was doing it on her own and once she had it... it all clicked for her. She often claims to be a genius and it was true. Once she grasped the concept of how she was meant to balance, it became easy for her in a moment. (We see a similar thing with Urd when she learns to play video games in about 2 seconds flat). She then "borrowed" his bike, to show Belldandy.
The confidence of having mastered the bike, plus Sentaro (the boy) being in her life so much provided a double jolt to her magical aptitude, and she began to master her magic faster and faster by the day. She learned what Belldandy was trying to teach her, that a Goddess' source of power is love. And her crush on Sentaro shows in that her magic becomes much easier for her when he is near, even though she often acts like he's a nuisance. She doesn't understand why she's happy to see him and that confuses her, and she doesn't know why he keeps coming over "Every stupid day" to show her new bike tricks. After he wipes out one time, she sends him to Belldandy for a bandage, and then tries some magic without guidance. She summons her power to make his bike as good as new. Not just repair the lose chain, but fully make it new.
She's so happy and pleased when he returns, excited to see how overjoyed he'd be... and she is crushed and devastated when he gets mad at her. "Scratches are history, Skuld!" He explains that every one of those dents and scratches was a special memory. They part ways, angry and hurt. Belldandy talks to Skuld about falling in love "I'm not in love with anyone!" and about the power of the magic words "I'm sorry". She goes and apologizes to Sentaro, and he starts teasing her, and things are okay between them again.
Meanwhile, Banpei's newest emotional circuits finally kick in. Skuld is using him as a motorcycle at one point (she has remade him a million times, adding and swapping features. While most are for defense some are more practical like his gardening set up and his motorbike and jetpack abilities. Yes, to her a jet pack os practical.) She was racing with him towards a sale on motorcycle parts when they pass an animatronic doll bowing and saying "Welcome". Banpei skids to a halt and stares, until Skuld makes him move again. The next day he sneaks out and goes to sit and watch the Welcome Doll for a while. While Skuld and Urd are spying on him, he steals the Welcome Doll away and positions himself in a secluded spot so that when she bows, she is kissing him.
Disgusted, Skuld tries to get into his programing, sure there is a glitch in his code or a bug... but he unhooks himself and runs away again. Skuld goes looking for him, but finds Belldandy. She tells Bell what's wrong, and asks her to power Banpei down if she sees him. Belldandy stops her and says that she doesn't think it's a glitch, that she thinks Skuld created something truly alive and "we all have parts of ourselves we only show to our special someone. Even you are like that with Sentaro." Skuld has trouble accepting that and runs off, trying to find him.
Finally she comes to accept it, and tries to buy the Welcome Doll, but the woman who owned her couldn't fix the voice record player any longer and trashed her. Skuld was dejected, Banpei was heartbroken... then Keiichi comes home from a late night at his job because his and Belldandy's boss Chihiro had found a busted up doll in the scrap yard she wanted him to fix. The Welcome Doll! Skuld goes with Bell and K1 to beg Chihiro for the doll, offering all the money she has, and accidentally making an inappropriate offer for how to pay the rest when she means that she would pay the debt. Chihiro says that she can't refuse a child and gives it as a gift. With a tremendous show of will, Skuld manages NOT to blow Chihiro up for calling her a child, and manages to thank her. We see the struggle as she does this for Banpei.
Skuld takes the Welcome Doll into her lab and works on it, while Banpei dances around like a loon in the hallway. Skuld finally emerges with the Doll following her. Unlike Banpei, the Welcome Doll (she gets the name Sigil later, so I'll just call her Sigil from here on out) starts with a full on personality, can walk like a human rather than lumbering, can speak, and has an expressive face. And, you know, hair. Banpei is THRILLED and tries to kiss her. She beats the mechanical snot out of him. "You forgot to program her to love him!?" Whoops.
Skuld keeps trying to get Sigil to give Banpei a chance, but the android sees him as a pervert and says that she will do absolutely anything else Skuld asks of her "Even self destruct" but she won't do that. Skuld's days become a mix of time with Sentaro, practicing her magic, and fixing Sigil and Banpei.
And then Doctor Morou shows up. He's a professor at NIT who is trying to make a robot that can walk. And he sees Banpei... and then Sigil. He might have mistaken Sigil for human if she hadn't launched a "ROCKET PUNCH!" at Banpei in front of him. After recovering from passing out, the not so good doctor kidnaps Sigil to disassemble her to learn how she operates. Banpei upgrades himself - including drawing angry eyebrows on with a sharpie - and takes off to find and rescue her. He is armed with every last bit of weaponry in Skuld's arsenal, which is not inconsiderable. Still, as violent as Skuld can be, she is still a Goddess, and she did build Banpei and for all practical purposes built Sigil. So even as Sigil claims they don't know Asmov's three rules of robotics, all the two 'bots do is give the professor a scare. Belldandy talks to him after, and he never bothers them again.
Intermixed with all of this (part of why chronological order is so tricky with Skuld) Skuld does get some time to read manga and is reading with Scarlet, both of them getting gushy over shojo manga. When Skuld sees Sentaro next after that, Scarlet gives her a small shove which leads to an accidental kiss. Skuld feels, mortified and throws things at Scarlet - including a model star ship enterprise - And tells her that if she ever does something like that again, she'll go back in her egg!
Whelp, Skuld finally braves herself and attends one of Sentaro's competitions. He thinks she didn't show, and once she saw him on the winner's pedestal, she was about to leave. But Angels are parts of the soulds of the Goddess they are bound to. Scarlet gave Skuld another push, and she stumbled out of the crowd and had to face him. Much blushing later, she headed home feeling better, with ice cream to share with Scarlet...who wouldn't come out when summoned. Skuld's sisters inform her that an Angel is obedient to her Goddess. Completely. They hold out Scarlet's egg to her. She complains that she didn't really mean it, that she loves her Angel and wants her back... but this is one of those hard lessons. She wears Scarlet's egg as a necklace, leading to some minor jealousy from Sentaro who thinks another boy gave her the necklace that she is suddenly wearing everywhere.
As things start to calm down with Sigil and Banpei as Sigil starts relenting and hating him less and less, Skuld spends more and more time on her magic, wanting desperately to be strong enough to support Scarlet again. She becomes more of a background character for a while as she focuses on magic and Sentaro, and we focus more on Keiichi, Urd and Belldandy. Until the Angel Eater.
A special sort of Goddess - a Valkyrie named "Lind the Binary Angel" appears to warn them that there has been some sign of a beast called an Angel Eater that has come to Earth. As they're the Goddesses living on Earth Lind decides to stay with them while she investigates, to protect them. She demands everything new to the household including their Demon cat, Velsper. (Velsper has a wonderful arc, and is an amazing character, but the only thing of note to this point for Skuld about his story is that she and Urd had to work together to stop his time virus in the Yggdrasil systems from destroying all three dimensional worlds. It is one of her finest moments as a debugger, but gets a half dozen pages in a book long arc.) She puts all of these things in stasis and settles in to watch over them. They try to draw her out, with marginal success. And then the Eater attacks. One by one the Goddesses fall. As their Angels are stolen from them - since all the Adult Goddesses are so closely bound to their Angels - they pass out, unable to be roused.
Keiichi has to take on an Angel himself, when it turns out Lind is called the "Binary" Angel because her Angel has a single wing.... because she has TWO Angels - the only Goddess we know of to have two - but they're two halves of a whole; each with a single wing. She pushes one into Keiichi when she discovers that the Angel Eater has been inside her the whole time, corrupting one of her own Angels, using its pain to draw the other Angels out and capture them. All of this was a plan of Hild's to see what would happen if Demon Familiars were implanted into Goddesses. (Hild is the CEO of H***, in charge of all the Demons...and Urd's mother. Not Skuld's mother, or Bell's, just Urd's.)
Skuld has to call her Angel...and it is the fact that she NEEDS Scarlet, rather than just wanting her, that allows her to summon her again - this time full sized and full powered. They manage to defeat the Eater, but not before the Familiar had been rooted inside Belldandy.
Eventually the Familiar after being held by Belldandy, and by Keiichi winds up inside Velsper, and Skuld and Urd have a great time harassing him to learn what her true name is. Once she is settled within Velsper, things more or less calm down for a time. Or so much as they ever do.
Skuld keeps working on her magic and spends more and more time with Sentaro and tinkering with Banpei.
Then one day, Sentaro starts acting oddly, and he keeps starting to tell her something, and showing her bike tricks instead. She finally gets it out of him. He's moving, he has no choice, to another country, and he is afraid he'll never see her again.
All series Keiichi works hard to keep anyone from finding out the girls are Goddesses. As Goddesses who aren't supposed to lie, (again though, Urd is a massive exception) none of them understand why. So Skuld - away from Keiichi - tells Sentaro that it'll be fine, they can see each other whenever they want, no matter where he is, because she's a Goddess. That ends the chapter. And the canon point I have her from os between this moment and the start of the next chapter. (I have not read beyond this point as I don't own any manga beyond it, sadly.)
Mini-Goddess
Also, there are the adventures of the mini-goddesses, but they aren't fixed in time, and are largely pointless, so unless there is an event reason... I generally ignore them for RP sake. Skuld and Urd and Belldandy tormenting Gan-chan is largely out of character for Skuld and Belldandy - Urd is almost exactly the same as ever - and it has nothing to do with the main story. It was published originally as a news paper comic strips, though new releases of the manga in omnibus format includes them. They are sort of like manga Omake.
For completeness sake - in MG, when Keiichi is away, supposedly the Goddesses get bored and shrink down to miniature size to spend time with a rat named Gan-chan. They have all gotten stuck inside an RPG together, fought bugs in the attic, and generally claim they're trying to be helpful while really tormenting him. That's about all there is of note in the manga version of MG.
Personality:
A lot of this will connect to what is above, I will try to cover new ground where I can and try to avoid repeating myself overmuch.
One of the biggest things to note about Skuld that isn't explained well enough above is her relationship with Urd, because it shows a side of her personality that comes out almost nowhere else, but it is also an aspect of her that is mostly put aside in times of crisis, and most of the above is times of crisis. But they are constantly in a state of competition, and have a love/almost-hate relationship. When they compete it is USUALLY over TV privileges. This starts out as sneaking around and trying to beat each other up, then becomes Urd's magic against Skuld's tech, then becomes playing board games for TV rights - usually Belldandy coming in while they're playing and cluelessly putting on her show, because no one is watching, so the TV is available, right? Neither Skuld nor Urd really ever tell her otherwise.
At one point, Keiichi finds an old TV someone threw away that works. He offers it to them, so they can each watch their shows, but they both tell him point blank that the fun isn't in watching the show, it's in winning the RIGHT to watch their shows. They are the very best of frenamies.
But it is super easy to get them to fight each other and forget the friend part. In Ninja-Master, the first ninja who Mara sends to stop the Goddesses poses as Skuld and destroys all of Urd's potions and medicines, claiming it is for her own good, then poses as Urd to destroy all of Skuld's machines, making the same claim before vanishing.
Skuld and Urd spend most of the rest of that story outside fighting. Skuld is throwing all her bombs at her eldest sister, and Urd is striking her with lighting. By the end of the chapter Urd is covered in "Dummy!" and they are both out of power and bombs and have resorted to grappling and hair pulling before finally realizing that what each of them is hearing the other accuse them of makes no sense.
On that note, of Skuld's temper... it does show with other people, especially when they treat her as a child, but no one gets as much of it as Urd does. Whatever Skuld does in temper, however... her bombs do a fair amount of damage to Urd, and to property; but only comic/cartoon level injuries to humans most of the time. Keiichi often gets more beat up, but never anything he can't recover from within a day or two, and he usually milks it to get sympathy from Belldandy "Your sisters play rough."
Skuld has eased up on trying to separate them... but she never will be fond of their relationship, and after Urd, he's her next favorite person to pick on. In Hand in Hand when a badly coded spell makes it so that Belldandy and Keiichi cannot stop holding hands, Skuld offers among her solutions the "Skuld basic matter separator" - a sharp knife. She has no intentions of using it, but she does scare K1 with it. She does, in that chapter, hit him with her debugging mallet when he wakes up and accidentally pulls Belldandy on top of him while yawning. "Up and at'em are we?"
Also during "Miss Keiichi" when Keiichi accidentally turns himself female from the belly up, Skuld convinces him and Belldandy that the only way he could go out looking like that is in a dress with hair and makeup done.
Skuld... temper aside, and she is getting better at controlling that as she matures, Skuld TRIES to be good, to be more like Belldandy, but sometimes she slips and is far more like Urd. Those two seem to be her measuring sticks for how to behave, and how to never behave. And she tries so hard to be more like Belldandy. There is a constant running gag of Skuld and either sister being too alike and Urd saying something, usually to K1 about "I can't believe we're related" to which the inevitable reply is "I dunno, makes perfect sense to me."
Sometimes Skuld will get so wrapped up in doing something, she will forget what her goal was. When she decided to help Keiichi prep for a job interview, she built a machine - Mr. Helmet, that would shock him when he gave a bad answer and advise him on how better to answer each practice question. She got so lost in the wonderful design... she forgot that Keiichi might not be able to answer every question perfectly, and he overslept his interview because he was up all night trying to get it off. During the Lord of Terror incident, the Lord of Terror, holding K1 hostage ordered Skuld to build a 12th dimensional scythe to cut the universal superstring. She did too good a job, lost in the beauty of the device she was building. Also, you know, if she had read the instructions on the Vaccine, like the Almighty told her to (twice) the Lord of Terror wouldn't have been able to get nearly so strong as he did. Her impulsiveness nearly got Belldandy and Keiichi (and Velsper, but she didn't know him yet) killed, but her quick thinking ultimately saved them all.
Also, sometimes, when working on a project... Skuld tends to forget that stealing is wrong by mortal standards. In Yggdrasil, there is almost no concept of possessions, though certain places and living beings are considered belonging to this person or that. So when she sets out to build something, very often the others around her will find that their electronics don't work...because she's gutted them. Countless TVs, Radios, computers, and bikes in and around the temple have been stripped for parts, as well as the karaoke machine and lighting board at an inn they stayed at with Mara when Mara and Urd had a Karaoke contest, and they needed a machine to judge the winner.
The only thing larger than Skuld's genius is her ego. It takes almost no effort to pump it up, and she will boast and crow till it gets her into trouble, as it often does. "I am a genius" is an often heard phrase. She hates to admit she could ever be wrong - even to herself, and gets furious when anyone criticizes anything she built or repaired. Urd often uses Skuld's ego to push her buttons - like with the bike incident she droned on about "Of course, if you can't do it..." when Skuld didn't want to try.
For a Goddess who fights Demons in the ultimate war for Market Share (Human Souls, more or less) Skuld is a complete coward when it comes to ghosts and hauntings. On TV or in manga is one thing... even the hint that there might be a ghost in the room has her hiding behind the scariest person she can find - usually Urd.
Everything Skuld builds has a self destruct. This mostly feeds back into the ego thing, if a machine fails her, she triggers the self destruct, rather than be faced with the proof that her design was imperfect. Banpei and Sigil both have Self destructs, and they are both somewhat alive. Sigil activated hers - canceled at the last second - to prove her determination and sense of self to Skuld. She would rather blow herself up then be forced to act like she loved Banpei. Banpei, when he and Sigil were trapped in a well put Sigil in his hat, lifted it over his head, then activated his self destruct count down so that the explosion would launch her upwards. (she pulled his power to cancel it at the last second, and they used team work to escape. That was when Sigil gave Banpei a kiss of her own free will, and things started to calm down...a little.)
Skuld is a Geek. Canonically she watches Star Trek as well as a show called Beyond 3000. She reads manga, and getting the latest issue is a concern for her whenever she has to return to Yggdrasil. She also loves games... but only if she can beat someone at them. She loves games against K1's mother somewhat less, but is determined to win against her at SOMETHING.
Urd, being her eldest sister and something of a brat, knows what the best punishment is when she is mad at Skuld - she forces her to build machines that do nothing useful at all. "Now build me one that does nothing but go in circles." This has reduced Skuld to tears, and she hates even being shown the machines she made that way. Her machines must be useful and elegant. She wants to fall in love with her own designs, and her ego usually lets her.
Easily distracted by ice cream. This was a thing in the manga even before it was known that ice cream helps her maintain her physical body on Earth. Belldandy and Keiichi vanished during the time when K1 was carrying the Familiar, and Skuld launched satellites she created to try and track them. She stopped, shocked at what she saw on the screen. Peorth and Urd demanded to know what she found, and she replied "there is an ice cream shop within five miles that I haven't been to!"
As said above, a Goddess draws her strength from Love, and Skuld's powers... she's still learning control. So sometimes when she is thinking of love, feeling it, or around someone who feels it... her magic slips out of her control. She might start floating - things or herself. Water might act oddly around her. The first is more likly, the second more extreme at her current power level, but might happen if her powers grow a significant amount in game, without her control growing to match.
Being called a kid or treated like a child is a hot button for Skuld's temper. She is working on it, but might still explode - or blow something else up.
Even with her magic growing, Skuld's first instinct when faced with a problem is to build a machine to solve it. Except, oddly, with Sentaro.
Singing - Spells are odd in this world. They are all code, first of all, but the Goddesses only bother with actual terminals while in Yggdrasil. Otherwise they do their magic in a number of ways, depending on the scale of the working, and the intent. Small things like levitating is accessing the code mentally and rewriting a thing that is on the ground into a thing above it. They can literally do spells of this level in their sleep. Not that they sleep often. A spell for opening a gate, or a warding, is usually done with a mandala, the code half accessed in their head, and half scribed into the form of the mandala. Even a .4 centimeter variance on a line or placement of a stone can change the meaning of a spell and/or crash it. Add a decimal point randomly to a line of code... that's more or less what an improper placement does. Higher level spells are sung. The harmonics of the voice, like the placements on a mandala have to be PERFECT. Skuld's sister Belldandy is said to have the finest voice in Yggdrasil, and Urd is really good too. We spend most of the series thinking Skuld doesn't sing, until the sirens chapter.... Skuld loves to sing, but it is one of the very few places where she feels insecure and inferior, so she generally doesn't. She's not usually involved in song level spells - though any lower level spell CAN be sung - but because her voice is not as strong, nor as pretty as her sisters', she generally avoids singing to avoid the comparison. However... as we see in the Sirens' chapter, she also has an amazing voice. It's only that she is comparing herself to Bell and Urd that she thinks she does not.
Powers/Abilities/Talents:
Code - this is the trickiest bit, other than her sustaining force. Skuld sees the world as it is, but also as code. I didn't think to put that into an application for a game she was in previously, and I was told I need to do that in the future, so here it is. Her spells, as I said above, are manipulations of the base code of the universe. While she is a master Debugger, most of that she needs to be physically in Yggdrasil for. She can only debug on earth with her mallet, by squashing the physical manifestations of the bugs. but all her other spells are low level coding. One level of spells not mentioned above are spells that take a mandala AND multiple parts to sing - Urd and Hild had to do that once to undo a virus Velsper loaded into Peorth. When I say everything is code, I mean everything, including the Goddesses themselves. Now, some code she can't touch. She's a debugger, not a hacker, and she knows how dangerous it is to try and mess with locked code without a proper terminal. For example, they couldn't unlock Velsper's virus in Peorth without Hild's help, because he (and he is a hacker) stole Goddess code and embedded Demon code within it. That was why none of the Goddesses could crack it themselves.
Sustaining force - On Earth when the connection with Yggdrasil crashes, Moon Rock bracelets sustain her. At regular levels of magic usage, she needs a new one every month. Urd at one point puts on six to do a single spell and pulls a ton of power all at once, but burns out all six at once. Ice cream helps sustain her, and gives her small short term boosts to power. She also has to sleep less often if she eats ice cream. In one game she was in, the Agents of the game created a sustaining force to hold her. In another every person gets these odd magical watches and hers sustains her. (she does not know this and is about to try to blow it up to open the case for parts. Whoops.) I am not sure what you would like it to be in this game. If you want to leave her connection to Yggdrasil open, what that means is:
That is her sustaining force, and anything that temporary kills the connection will cause her to start aging if she does not consume enough ice cream until the force is restored.
The Almighty can call her on the phone. Any phone at any time. It is his preferred method of contact. In theory, she can call Yggdrasil from any phone... but we have seen in canon where Belldandy could not contact Yggdrasil, during a special circumstance. So I could have her unable to call home, if you want.
She will get more powerful more quickly, but perhaps not noticeably so since there is no real measuring stick.
Any Mod who knows the canon is welcome to NPC the Almighty at any time to place restrictions on her (like sealing some of her magic is she is gaining too quickly) or give her tasks whenever you want. I think that would be a ton of fun!
In theory she would be able to water Teleport to go to Yggdrasil, however we have seen in canon times when that does not work, so it can be fine for that to not work in game! She'll just presume the Gate is visiting Earth again. (Yes, the gate between worlds has a "human" form and sentience....)
Water Magic - Every Goddess in the series has an element, though the word is used loosely in some cases (Peorth's element is flowers, for example), while they can work outside their element, they are strongest within it, and learn most easily spells within it. Sometimes this corresponds with their travel ability, sometimes not. Urd is, for example, Electricity, but moves through screens. Skuld is water. The only spell we see her using when she first arrives is water teleport. She can move from any body of water to appear out of any other, hovering over it until she choses to land. But her aim is HORRIBLE at the beginning, and while better now, she still often finds herself coming out of tea cups (hot and too small), mop buckets (EW EW EW EW EW), and Bathtubs (generally less fun for the person who was in the bath than for her, but she's usually disgusted too). At her canon point she was trying to master a water illusion spell that would let her create water butterflies that look real to fly around her. So far she can summon up a ton of water..... and like Kitara from ATLA....soak herself and everyone around her.
Basic cantrips - floating, levitating, flying, magically changing her outfits.
Some other oddly specific spells as well... like being able to make Sentaro's bike like new. We see from Goddesses who have mastered their magic that any magic below mandala level, and most singing level spells can be done solo. She is getting to that point, but not there yet. Also spells can clash with hilariously unpredictable results. Skuld and Urd both tried to fix the Temple at the same time once, and the result was some horrible weird mishmash thing of their personal aesthetics. Belldandy was unsealed at the time, and was able to put everything back.
Sealed magic - as of her canon point, Skuld has no seals, though this can change in game. The Almighty seals a Goddess to reduce how much power she has so she doesn't accidentally destroy the world. They are not allowed to unseal without permission - but there is nothing physically stopping them. Unsealing is a mandala level spell. Skuld helped Belldandy unseal even though they both knew it was forbidden, during Lord of Terror.
Nobel Scarlet - an Angel, once hatched, is a part of the Goddess' soul. Once fully bonded, the removal of an Angel renders a Goddess insensate and helpless. Scarlet boosts Skulds power a small bit when she is out normally, but an Angel's big assist comes with singing. Angels cannot speak, but they can sing code, so long as they are singing EXACTLY what the Goddess they are bound to is singing. So amplification more than assistance. If a spell needs two voices, the Angel does not count as the second. An Angel can physically lift and carry, and the connection between her and the Goddess can stretch, but it will never break. Angels, when out, are physically connected to their Goddess through her back, having no feet or lower legs of their own. And what an Angel feels, her Goddess feels. One of the tests in the challenge of the triple Goddess? Two Angels tickle each other mercilessly until one Goddess cracks and busts out laughing. Peroth's Angel shielded Peorth from a blast Velsper sent at her while they were fighting so that the damage was split between them. The Angel looked more damaged then Peorth did, but heals by resting within her. Angels, having wings, also offer Goddesses a way to fly without needing a spell, and a Goddess can call forth just the wings of the Angel.
Angels, in short, once bonded cannot be seperated from the Goddess without rendering her defenseless, cannot turn against her, are unflinchingly obedient and loyal, and are part of her very soul.
"YOU DUMMY!" Skuld has an odd power that seems unique to her. She can print words on people and surfaces when angry. In canon when Skuld is told to take the words off of Urd's face, she shrugged happily and said she didn't know how. I presume it fades with time, however. Otherwise Keiichi's face would say PERVERT forever.
Genius inventor. Until I found it recently in the updated Wiki, I did not know that any of her inventing was magic. With or without magic, she is a genius inventor, but I presume it is the magic in her hands that lets her create life - Sigil and Banpei - and create things that should otherwise be impossible based on the materials she has on hand. But ultimately, end of the day, Skuld can MacGyver nearly anything. She is brilliant, and she will not hesitate to tell you as much.
Banpei - I asked way back when the game was opening if she could have Banpei and was told yes but until motors were unlocked, he could not count as a vehicle, but I think they have been now?
Banpei is sentient and alive in some ways, but not a playable character on his own. He spends most of his time either patrolling or on standby mode unless Sigil is present or Skuld gives him orders. Every time he takes too much damage, his personality is erased and his memory banks may or may not be washed. (I probably won't do that, just because Sigil IS playable on her own, and I don't want to ruin my chances of playing with someone who apps her in a way they would expect, though his personality I may well shift several times.) He can self repair within limitations, so long as the damage is not too terrible, and self upgrade. He has a major design flaw in that the huge pull bar on his back is his on/off switch, so if you can get to his back, you can power him down. In case of Demons he has an auto backup that will turn him back on.
His anti-Demon mode is surprisingly his least violent lest devastating mode. In their world.... Demons cannot abide lucky charms. So he shoots good luck charms at Demons. Which honestly, is kind of hilarious.
Other weapons he theoretically can have (he usually rotates, almost never has them all at once) bombs, rocket launchers in three sizes, grabbing claws, and his jet packs. He has a motorbike mode (well a few different ones, depending on Skuld's mood).
He also has lots of tool attachments, so that he can help Skuld in her labs. And somewhere on him, inside his chest somewhere... will always be the sharpie he uses to draw expressions on his own face.
Randomly - Skuld has also at times built him a snow ball launcher (snowball fight with Urd), a rubber band launcher (Rubberband fight with Urd and Peorth that got to Temple destroying sized rubber bands) and other similar weird and seemingly random modes, like a boreing drill. Never an explanation as to why. He also has a sound system that plays music that can stop Mara or Urd in their tracks. (Both have a weakness to different kinds of music, Urd falls alseep, Mara can't stop dancing.)
Banpei is also trained at stick fighting, so when on guard duty is usually sweeping, so the broom can become a weapon.
She also seems to have an inexhaustible supply of Neo-skuld bombs tucked into her clothing - usually the front of her shirt. They explode on impact, but can also be used for a game of chicken to earn TV privileges, taking turns pulling wires until it explodes...
I think that should be everything? But since she's not human in the least, I'm never sure what needs to be said and what doesn't. I mean, she might have a Doublet - if one dies so dies the other - but I have no clue, she ages oddly, doesn't actually need food other than ice cream, doesn't get normal viruses, but could theoretically catch a computer virus...
AU/CR AU Addendum: N/A
What 4 items would you like your character to have with them on the island during their stay?
Wearing when she arrives: goggles, her normal clothes, the necklace that Sentaro gave her, earrings, a
Banpei
her bug smashing mallet and bug spotting goggles (If she can only have one, I want the mallet, please. And in case it needs to be noted, it telescopes in size and can be strapped to her back. It is also red pink and white. Very pretty for a bug smashing mallet.
her tool box full of tools
A large carton of parts
Samples - Can be linked
First Person:
[The camera came up on a young looking girl with marks on her cheeks and her brow, and a concerned look on her face.]
"The phone won't call home." [Either home, the temple on Earth, or Yggdrasil.] "And they stuck me in a house full of children. To make it all worse.... I can't figure out where the ice cream shop is. I will build something useful to the first person to bring me ice cream. Especially if you help me convince the people here that I don't need their school!" [Seriously, what could she learn in a school that teaches children that she didn't already know. When they could do n-dimensional calculations using only an abacus, then they could come talk to her!]
Third Person:
Skuld checked her outfit in the mirror, not sure why she was bothering. It was cute, but... No. She wasn't dressing up for Sentaro. A flush colored her face as she tried to banish that thought. Besides, he wasn't even here. So there. Did that make sense? Probably not.
Frustrated she changed her clothes back into her pink and red Goddess outfit. She hadn't worn it in so long that it looked odd on her now. She spent most of her life in it, and then she came to Earth and now it was like looking at someone different.
She affixed her mallet to her back and sighed a bit, then she turned to the bot beside her. "Alright, Banpei. To do list." Not that he was going to keep track, but it was too quiet here. Without Urd watching her stupid dramas, and stupid Keiichi doing his homework, and Belldandy puttering around in the kitchen, and Sigil running from Banpei and Velsper being a brat, and Tamiya and Otaki, and Sora, and Megumi, and everyone else just randomly popping by.... She even missed Peorth.
"I need to find at least three all night ice cream shops. I need to find the local parts supply store and pick up a circular. I need to figure out how to get money since Keiichi isn't here to give me any. Not that he ever has enough. And then I need to build a machine to get us home. I know you miss Sigil."
Banpei drew a tear drop under one of his eyes with his sharpie.
"I know I know! I'll fix it, alright? Some how. What can't I do? I'm Skuld, after all. I am a genius, so I can totally do this. Right Banpei?"
The small robot nodded its head emphatically. Skuld reached a hand out and Nobel Scarlet came forth from her back, to clasp her hand. "I can do this, Right, Scarlet?"
The Angel nodded, giving her an encouraging smile. She squeezed her Angel's hand, then let Scarlet return to resting within her. She took a deep breath, and let it out. "Banpei, bike mode," she ordered.
The small robot shifted its legs like a partial transformer, putting its hat down to give her a seat, handlebars coming from its round head. Skulled patted the hard skull lovingly, then rode him out of the building she was in, looking around at this new place.
Belldandy would find her and bring her home, or the Almighty would open the gate. Of course Skuld would still build a machine, to show everyone she could have gotten home on her own, but she wouldn't need to. She was sure Belldandy would arrive to take her home. Any second now.
Any....second.... now....
Seriously, she would pop out of the mirror in front of that.... did that person have ice cream????
All thoughts of home forgotten for the moment, Skuld turned Banpei to go ask that person where they got ice cream from....
Finally, out of the 4 words, pick one: Chimes, lake, gravel, or sun? LAKE!
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timeasmymeasure
