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Application to Siren's Pull
Jun. 23rd, 2012 11:34 pmPlayer Information
Name: Mishi
Age: 23
AIM SN: ohsarjalim
email: ohsarjalim@aim.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yep
Currrently Played Characters: none
Conditional: Official Reserve Link: Right here!
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Ergo Proxy
Canon Format: Anime
Character's Name: Vincent Law/Ergo Proxy
Character's Age: Nooooooo clue. He could be anywhere from 20 to 5000 years old.
What form will your character's NV take?
This clunky laptop-looking thing is also a phone and will have video capabilities.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: Proxies are canonically referred to as gods, but gods in the sense of the greek pantheon. They are corporeal, they can be killed, however with difficulty, and they are not omnipotent. They are, however, vastly more powerful than a regular human being. The full extent of their abilities are never outlined, and they seem to vary from Proxy to Proxy, but they have demonstrated several abilities that seem consistent across all Proxies. It's implied that Proxy One, as the first and last of the Proxies, is the most powerful of all, and as his shadow, Ergo Proxy shares in that distinction.
> Physical: Proxies are way stronger than human beings. Things thrown by a Proxy have been known to make dents in solid stone upon impact. They're also much faster than human beings, so much so that they sometimes move faster than the eye can see.
> Mind games: Proxies seem to have the ability to create visual and auditory illusions, as well as the ability to create visions and dreams within another person's mind, such as when Proxy One projected himself into Vincent's mind, or when the Swan Proxy tried to convince Vincent he was just a fragment of Re-L's mind, or again when the Proxy, Will B. Goode, showed Pino a dream to warn her away from his Dome. It's implied they can do this from quite a distance, since they had barely come into sight of the dome when Pino awoke from her dream. I don't expect Vincent to be fond of using this power after all the times he's been on the recieving end of it.
> Force field: Ergo Proxy has shown himself capable of releasing waves of energy powerful enough to knock combat AutoReivs aside.
> Teleportation: The journey from Romdeau to Mosque took Vincent and his companions months to complete by windship. Proxy One somehow beat the his shadow to the punch and was gone before anyone was the wiser.
> Human Form: Proxies can take on a human appearance. Pretty straightforward.
> Proxy Awareness: When they come to within a certain distance of one another, perhaps the span of a Dome, or a city, Proxies can sense each other's presences.
> Creation: This is probably the vaguest power, and Vincent will not be using it much, if at all. No Proxy has ever been SHOWN to use it during the series, but it's a fact that each of them somehow created a dome and the first members of its population. Since they're man-made, I doubt they're able to create matter, but perhaps they were able to shape and transform it into something else. And since the Domes rely on their Proxies for survival, it's also possible that Proxies generated energy for the Domes.
> Immortality: The source of a Proxy's immortality is the fact that they are made from Amrita cells, which have an impenetrable membrane and can reproduce indefinitely. They don't age, they don't get sick (well, they do, but the illness won't kill them), they can't be killed by normal means. They can regrow limbs and recover from injuries that would kill a regular human being. There are only three ways to harm them: sunlight, FP shells, and another Proxy. An injury inflicted by a Proxy neutralizes the Amrita cells, and the wound will have to heal normally. For some reason, Vincent appears to be more resistant to sunlight than most Proxies. I assume it would still weaken him, but it didn't appear to be killing him to be standing in the sunlight at the end of the final episode.
Weapons: Vince has a gun, if for some reason he can't kick ass in Proxy form.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History: Vincent's story starts with Proxy One and the Proxy Project. 5000 years before the start of the story, the Earth was a complete mess. An environmental ruin almost beyond repair, no longer inhabitable to humans. So humanity took to the stars, but before it did, it left behind 300 Proxies tasked with restoring the Earth and recreating the human race, and building Domes in which these new humans were to live, one to each Proxy. But the information the fugitive humans that the Proxies would come to refer to as the Creators left for their creations was faulty. The human race they recreated was flawed, incomplete. Sterile. Not only that, but this project they were tasked with was a back-up plan, set in motion in case the Creators weren't able to return to Earth. And in case the new humans didn't work out, the Proxies were also instructed to use a computer virus called the Cogito Virus to grant sentience to the AutoReivs, that they might take the place of their human masters. Don't ask me how that was supposed to work. I suppose in a way it was forward-thinking of the Creators to want to leave a legacy on Earth even if they themselves couldn't come back but, well, they're jackasses.
See, if they did come back, they built self-destruct mechanisms into their experiment. Proxy One was given the title of Agent of Death and designed with an extra ability called the Pulse of the Awakening, also referred to as the Proxy Anihilation Program. In short, once this ability was unleashed, Proxies would turn on eachother, destroy eachother the moment they came into contact. With the Proxies gone, the Domes would follow, and all of their work would be annihilated. And if each Proxy wisely decided to stay home and not seek eachother out, well. Proxies are vulnerable to sunlight. When the environment was viable again, the clouds would part and they would all die anyway.
As you can imagine, over the millenia Proxy One became quite bitter about the cruel and ultimately pointless duty he was tasked with. He found some sort of solace in his love for Monad Proxy, but eventually he could bear it no longer and sought to escape his fate, which he did by creating a clone of himself, Ergo Proxy. He dumped the care of Romdeau dome and even his title of Agent of Death into Ergo Proxy's hapless claws, and where he absconded, I am not sure. Unfortunately, after an unspecified period of time, Ergo fell into the same despair as his progenitor, and went to Mosque Dome with Monad, where he erased his own memory in his own attempt to escape.
In retrospect Proxy One should have seen this coming. Ergo Proxy was fundamentally identical to him; what made him think that Ergo would be any more equip to deal with the tragedy of the Proxies' existence than he was? It's like when Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes made himself a clone to do his homework while he went out to go play, and when he returned, he found that his clone had had the same idea, and so on and so forth until there were at least 5 Calvin clones, none of them any more willing to do homework than the original. Luckily for Proxy One, Ergo either didn't want to inflict his duty on yet another hapless clone, or he figured his progenitor could pick up the slack.
At any rate, it was Ergo Proxy's abdication that set in motion most of the events of the anime. In retaliation for 'stealing Ergo away', Romdeau, led by its Regent Donov Mayer, destroyed Mosque and captured Monad. Some time after that, Re-L Mayer was born, created in the image of Monad as bait to lure Ergo home.
Upon losing his memory, Ergo Proxy became Vincent Law. Vincent recalled the attack on Mosque, but he referred to the attack as a disaster, and I'm not certain any of the Mosque immigrants knew that Romdeau was in fact responsible for the destruction of their home. At any rate, that 'disaster' and the journey to Romdeau Dome are Vincent's first memories. And one day when he was looking for work in the temporary immigrant section, he first saw Re-L. And, without knowing that she was meant to provoke this reaction in him (because he had, after all, lost his memories), he fell for her like a ton of bricks.
Vincent worked hard at becoming a fellow citizen; suppressing his emotions, keeping his head down. Always obeying the law, never asking questions. He got a job in an AutoReiv Disposal Unit, destroying Cogito-infected AutoReivs. He tried to be the person he thought they expected a fellow citizen to be. It's never made clear, but he might have spent over two years working towards that, and getting rejected every time his file came up for review.
Then the Pulse of the Awakening was activated within Proxy One. It awakened Monad, and though mutilated almost beyond recognition by torture at the behest of Donov Mayer, she still managed to escape. Thus begins the first episode of Ergo Proxy. The same night, Vincent was out chasing an infected AutoReiv when his vehicle caught the Cogito virus and nearly killed him. It's this incident that leads him to cross pathes with Re-L once again. Re-L was looking into Cogito-infected AutoReivs as well, specifically, a series of murders believed to have been committed by AutoReivs, and asked for information about the previous night's events.
After that, he was sent after another infected AutoReiv, and the course of his pursuit took him near Re-L's appartment that evening. There Vincent's memory has a hole. See, when Ergo erased his memory and created the Vincent Law persona, he sort of ended up giving himself a split personality. Vincent couldn't know he was a Proxy, so whenever he switched from human form to Proxy form, he also stopped being Vincent Law, and resumed being Ergo Proxy. Not that Ergo at this point knew his own name, or that he was a Proxy, or even what a Proxy was. His memory was just as kaput as Vincent's. But there were advantages to being a ten-foot tall demon-looking thing, not the least of which was, apparently, the ability and effrontery to break into Re-L's house and creep on her while she was in the bathroom. It was at this moment that Monad Proxy decided to crash the party. The Pulse of the Awakening was in effect, so even though she used to be his lover, she was nevertheless compelled to kill him, although I imagine that even if this was not the case, she'd still be pretty angry to catch her man macking on a younger CLONE of herself, no less. In any case, both Proxies flipped out of Re-L's appartment, and that was the last Re-L saw of them that night.
The next morning, Vincent Law was found unconscious a short distance away from her appartment, and Monad was nowhere in the area. But she wasn't done with him. She caught up with him in a shopping center, and chased him through a crowd, killing everyone who got in her way, including a woman and her newborn son. Out of the corner of his eye, Vincent spotted the woman's companion-type AutoReiv, Pino, falling to her knees and praying, the first thing AutoReivs do after they're infected with the Cogito virus.
Monad cornered Vincent in the lower districts of Romdeau and it was at this point that Ergo Proxy killed her. Vincent later woke up on the metro with blood on his hands, and, again, no memory of turning into Ergo and killing Monad. Now, both Re-L and Raul Creed, Romdeau's newly minted Security Chief, were investigating Proxies, Re-L because being attacked by the giant ex-girlfriend of an equally giant godly creeper kind of piqued her curiousity, and Raul because it was his job. There were all kinds of witnesses to the fact that a Proxy was chasing Vincent Law, so both Raul and Re-L set their sights on capturing, or at least interrogating Mr. Popular-with-Proxies himself. Vincent got a call from his Entourage, Dorothy, and when he returned to the AutoReiv Disposal offices, he found that she had been destroyed, and nearly got killed by Romdeau security forces.
In any case, Vincent packed a few essentials and managed to evade capture long enough to make his way to the service tunnels. There he ran into Pino, who was herself on the run from an AutoReiv Disposal squad. Pino led him down a path that, it appeared, only infected AutoReivs knew about, specifically, to an airlock that led outside the Dome. Now, all this time, Re-L had been trying to reach Vincent's cell phone, but he had been kind of busy dodging security guys. She eventually reached him, and he begged for her help. Re-L promised him she would do everything in her power to help him, and asked him where he was, and managed to figure out where he was. But she only managed to beat the Security Bureau by a few minutes. Before they could effect an arrest, Pino opened the airlock, and the force of the wind sucked her, Re-L, and Vincent outside. Re-L was saved by her Entourage, Iggy, but Vincent could only hang onto the railing. As he looked down into the abyss, he reflected that the last couple of days had demonstrated just how huge a failure he was. His despair was such that he deliberately let go and fell to the surface, along with Pino.
Vincent thought that would be the end of him, but a Proxy doesn't die from a mere fall. Nor did he die of the illness he suffered from breathing the poisonous air of the world outside Romdeau for the first time, although it did keep him bedridden and feverish for ten days. He was taken in by a man called Hoody, the de facto leader of a commune composed of exiles from Romdeau, most of whom were old men and women.
Vince and Pino stayed in the commune for a while during which Vincent recovered and tried to figure out what to do next, but fate wouldn't let him rest for long. An automated scout vehicle from Romdeau spied Pino while on its regular patrol and would have killed Pino if Vincent hadn't shot it down first. Before it crashed to the ground, it managed to broadcast its last few seconds of video footage to its masters at the Security Bureau. Thus the people of Romdeau learned of the fugitive immigrant's survival, and of the existence of the commune.
Shortly thereafter, Re-L arrived to take Vincent away. While she was argueing with Hoody about Vincent's return, an attack on the commune had already begun and Re-L's hazmat suit was damaged. The only way she could move was by discarding the suit, but once exposed to the outside air, she succumbed to illness and she did not have the advantage of a Proxy's immune system. She would have to be returned to Romdeau in order to survive. While Hoody used her ship to ferry her back to Romdeau, Vincent, Pino, and the surviving refugees escaped the commune on Hoody's airship, the 400 Rabbits.
Now Vincent throughout all this had mostly taken a WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME, I AM SO PERSECUTED attitude. But, despite appearances, he was not stupid, and what with the black-outs he'd been having whenever he turned into Ergo Proxy, and the strange dreams of stars shooting into the sky, he was clueing in to the fact that not all was quite right with him. And after both Re-L and the Security Bureau had tracked him to the commune, he figured he had better find out just who he was soon, before he endangered anyone else. Having nowhere to go and no better destination in mind, Vincent and his companions set a course for Mosque, the place he believed to be his homeland, and, perhaps, the place where he would find some answers to his questions. It bears repeating that all of his human companions were old and frail, so none of them were able to survive past the next episode. Naturally, seeing everyone around him dropping like flies got Vincent all depressed and he spent the next episode whining about how alone he was and indulging in grimdark narration while Re-L and Daedalus and Raul furthered the plot back in Romdeau. Even if he wasn't alone at all. What was Pino, chopped liver?
They sailed in the darkness for so long Vincent had run out of food, when Pino spotted a beam of light in the distance. They sailed toward it and ran smack in the middle of a raging battle between a group of human soldiers and a platoon of AutoReivs. The soldiers picked them up and fed Vincent and offered to repair the 400 Rabbits, which had gotten damaged in the attack, but only if he offered his assistance with their war. Vincent realized how much more agreeable Pino was in comparison to these jerks who were drafting him into a pointless conflict and immediately regretted his AutoReiv-dismissing ways. He was all for grabbing Pino and getting the hell out of there as soon as his ship was repaired, but unfortunately Vince was a magnet for Proxies, and one of them stealthily killed a couple of soldiers. Their leaders, of course, blamed Vincent and locked him and Pino up in a cell next to one of those pertinent madwomen, the type that spout nothing but the most cryptic and foreshadowy nonsense. As she babbled, Vincent began to feel anxious and frightened; he was feeling the Pulse of the Awakening as the other Proxy drew nearer. After slaughtering most of the soldiers, the other Proxy finally made her move on Vincent, only by then he had turned into Ergo Proxy and promptly killed her, after which he fell unconscious.
Then some fruity-looking guy brought Vincent, Pino, and apparently the 400 Rabbits as well, to Asura Dome. Vincent was quite surprised to wake up in opulent surroundings and be wined and dined by a man who did not seem to be all there. The man's name was Kazkis, and he would turn out to be a Proxy. The Proxy Vincent had killed in the last episode was called Senex, and she and Kazkis were lovers. But Kazkis, initially, didn't seem particularly upset at his lover's death. He practically declared his love for Vincent... but when he realized that Vincent didn't remember killing Senex or even who he used to be, well, that's when Kazkis got pissed. Apparently it's one thing to kill Kazkis's girlfriend, and another thing entirely to not even remember it. In any case, he chased Vincent halfway across the dome, badgering him about being a Proxy and running away from his duty while the hapless wanderer denied the truth in vain. Eventually Vincent had to stop running and fight back and this was the first time he was aware when he once again involuntarily switched to Proxy form. The process looked painful and traumatic. But Ergo did kill Kazkis, and as he was dying, Kazkis asked Ergo one last time: "What are you the agent of?" And Ergo finally remembered his name: Ergo Proxy, the agent of Death.
Then there was another episode where Raul and Daedalus and Re-L furthered some more plot and Vincent didn't appear at all. Apparently, Vincent had to learn his lesson more than once, because the next episode took place entirely within his own mind. Basically Vincent stumbled across a bookstore in the middle of nowhere, where someone who looked just like Ergo Proxy/Proxy One went on about perspective and Descartes and the Pulse of the Awakening, took Vincent back through his own recent memories, the ones with relevance to his existence as a Proxy. Tried to make him remember. WHO WAS VINCENT LAW, WHAT WAS HE AFRAID OF? WHAT DROVE HIM TO ERASE HIS OWN MEMORY? Whereas the incident with Kazkis had confronted Vincent with physical evidence of his being a Proxy, this episode was dedicated to Vincent's actually coming to terms with the fact that he was a Proxy.
And then Re-L found him laying on the ground crying because of this revelation. At first he thought this was a dream too, but as it turned out, Re-L actually was there. She insisted on him telling her everything he knew about Proxies, but since he had only just realized he was one himself, he didn't have much else to tell her.
Now, Re-L had brought with her a gun loaded with special bullets called FP shells, given to her by Daedalus, which were made to kill Proxies. She snuck up on Vincent while he slept and contemplated shooting him - she was having a hard time believing that Vincent was a Proxy, and since the shells were harmless to humans... Ultimately she wasn't reckless enough to go through with it. Instead she sat down beside him and started talking about how she had followed him all this way and how she felt 'strangely drawn' to him, so at least you can't blame him for getting the wrong idea. He pulled her down with him, which knocked the gun out of her hand. He was busy awkwardly confessing his love to her, and hadn't noticed it yet. And Re-L decided the best way to keep him distracted was to kiss him, thereby giving him an even more innaccurate impression of her feelings, while using her foot to kick the gun out of sight.
Later on, they ran into a Proxy and an infected AutoReiv. Vincent went Ergo and while they were locked in combat, Re-L took her opportunity to shoot the other Proxy. She told Vincent that one day she would kill him too, and could he still love her knowing that? Spoiler: Yes. He's that much of a schmuck.
Re-L decided she was going to travel with Vincent and Pino, and ordered her Entourage, Iggy, to take the Proxy's body back to Romdeau with him. Little did she know that Iggy had been infected with the Cogito Virus ages ago and decided to kill Vincent and kidnap her instead, since he figured she'd be safer in Romdeau than with a monster. To this end he swiped Re-L's gun and succeeded in imprisoning her, but the dead Proxy's AutoReiv tried to kill her. In the end he sacrificed himself for his selfish mistress's sake. Oh yeah, and then Vincent gave Re-L back her gun to show her that he trusted her, and trusted her to kill him if it ever became necessary.
By now you've probably noticed a pattern in this story. They would make a stop, find a Proxy, kill a Proxy, maybe the Proxy messed with their minds a little, then they would move on. The next two episodes were pretty much like that. In the first, they made their way to another Dome to gather supplies, and encountered a shapeshifting prophecy that tried to kill them, turn them against eachother, pretend to be Vincent and convince him he was suicidal, not necessarily in that order. Luckily he caught on and they managed to escape.
In the next one, somehow, don't ask me how, it's not even shown, they got sucked into this gameshow run by a Proxy called MCQ. Most of the questions had to do with the Proxy Project; this was also the first time Proxy One was directly referred to in the show. Vincent won the game, and MCQ seemed thrilled to die. I'm inclined to think this episode actually happened because the show was broadcast to Romdeau and Daedalus and Raul both saw it.
Then they were becalmed for a few days and Vincent and Pino chillaxed while Re-L went stir-crazy, and when the wind picked up they arrived at a cave system populated by Morlocks who were allergic to fresh air. On their way out the spotted a missile flying in the direction of Mosque, and when they got there, Mosque was pretty much destroyed. Vincent found an old room with a broken AutoReiv that was supposed to be the guardian of his memory; but something had clearly been there not long before and trashed the place so that Vincent would not be able to lear anything there. That, though they didn't know it, was Proxy One, who took care to leave a clue that Vincent would find what he was looking for back in Romdeau. So after all that, they finally turned around and set a course back to Romdeau, pausing only to get messed around by Proxies some more.
When they finally returned to Romdeau, it was falling apart. The Cogito virus had become a veritable plague, and without AutoReivs, the citizens were completely helpless. Vincent disappeared almost as soon as he and Re-L entered the Dome. In the next few days, there were sightings of Ergo Proxy all over the city, but never of Vincent. Ergo had regained his memories and the shock, as predicted, had submerged the Vincent Law persona. Ergo went to see where Monad's corpse was being kept, and wept. Although he acknowledged that he was the one who killed her, he could not forgive Donov Meyer to the horrors Monad had been subjected to while in captivity. While he was paying his respects to her, he was interrupted by a girl who acted like she knew him, wasn't at all afraid of him, and claimed to be Re-L Meyer.
See, in the real Re-L's absence, Daedalus went a little nuts and force-grew another clone of Monad, which he treated as a replacement Re-L. It's unknown precisely why it happened to her and not Re-L, but this new clone became Monad reincarnated. When Ergo expressed his confusion as to why some other girl was claiming to be Re-L, the clone got flustered and ran away. But Ergo hadn't seen the last of her.
Ergo's next move was to visit the Regent. While the Regent's Entourages criticised him for leaving and informed him that the Regent hated him for abandoning Romdeau, Ergo Proxy advanced, unconcerned. And killed Donov Meyer right before Re-L's eyes. Meanwhile, Raul Creed was lying in wait in the shadows. While Re-L confronted Ergo, he shot the Proxy in the arm with an FP shell, but Ergo survived by ripping off his own arm, and then promptly growing it back. Proxies are hardcore like that. Horrified, Raul emptied his gun, trying to score another hit, but Ergo wasn't going to let himself get shot a second time. Raul escaped to find some more ammunition, and Ergo left soon after. He wandered Romdeau, taking in its imminent destruction, the total collapse of its civilization. Meanwhile, Re-L was asking her grandfather's Entourages for information on Ergo Proxy and Romdeau.
Ergo Proxy returned to the Regent's sitting room and Re-L pointed her gun at him. She figured he had to know that if he came back she would hold him at gunpoint. He told him that was precisely the point. Ergo Proxy wanted to die. But Re-L, ever difficult, said screw that, you can't tell me what to do. I ain't killing you. Instead she told him she'd figured out who the real mastermind of this whole story was: Proxy One. At this point, Proxy One's laughter echoed throughout the chamber. They followed the sound of his voice.
Ergo went into shock upon seeing his progenitor: he really had had no idea that he wasn't the original. Anyway, Proxy One was only too happy to monologue about the purpose of the Proxies and the malice implanted by the creators. And also to accuse Ergo of running away, an irony which was not lost on either of them. He goaded Ergo Proxy into fighting to the death, and Ergo ripped a hole into his progenitor's chest. As he was dying, he entrusted the burden of shaping the world to his shadow, and that was when Monad II showed up. Now fully grown into her Proxy powers, she pleaded with Ergo not to listen to Proxy One. He didn't have to take up the burden of life again, she said. He nearly took her up on her offer. Running away with Monad sounded like a pretty sweet deal. There was just one catch: it entailed flying through the clouds and into the sunlight. Suicide, for a Proxy.
Vincent recalled that Re-L had asked him to find her, when she left him and his original to their confrontation, and he wasn't ready to die just yet anymore. So he appologized to Monad, left her to fly into the sun on her own, and went back down to pay his respects to Proxy One, who with his dying breath, told him he could think of no fitter punishment for the Creators than Vincent's survival.
Point in Canon: So, basically, after Vincent had his final words with Proxy One, Romdeau Dome completely fell to pieces, and I mean that literally. Vince was perched on a tower waiting for Re-L and Pino to pick him up on the Rabbit. And that's when he'll be pulled into Siren's Port.
Character Personality: The thing to remember about Vincent Law is that, as I mentionned before, he hasn't existed as his own person for very long. Vincent Law was the human mask Ergo Proxy wore after he erased his memory. And before that, Ergo Proxy himself did not realize he was only the shadow of Proxy One. He was essentially the same as Proxy One up to and including his descent into despair. But somehow, Ergo's despair was worse. It wasn't enough for him just to quit his job, to leave Romdeau. He could no longer even bear the memories of a Proxy's duty, and of the cruel experiment that the creators set up. To abandon the burden, he had to erase his own memory. I don't know why his reaction was worse than his progenitor's, but that was the key to their eventual differentiation. As Kazkis said, when Ergo erased his memories, he lost himself. That was probably intentional on his part, as was the creation of the Vincent Law persona. Vincent Law couldn't be allowed to know that he was a Proxy, lest it shatter his tender psyche, lest the terrible memories come flowing back.
And Vincent scarcely represents the classic idea of a god. He's soft-spoken and easy-going, hardly the kind to rain down righteous wrath. That role would be more easily associated with his progenitor, Proxy One, who engineered the destruction of Romdeau in a fashion more brutal than entirely necessary, simply out of spite for the imperfect creatures he had created. But Proxy One is dead, and Ergo Proxy has taken up the role, though he does it for a different reason. Over the course of his travels, Vincent has experienced a lot. Met people, killed Proxies, experienced life. He has met people living outside the domes. He has seen a colony of Morlocks living in a poisonous cave. He's learned that life is tough, often dark and full of suffering. But it is also worth living. If Ergo Proxy once hated his creations, this is no longer the case. "The living have no choice but to go on living," as he once told Kazkis Proxy. Killing humans simply because they're flawed, destroying the dome simply because it was destined to be destroyed, these things don't sit well with him. It's not so much a question of love as of justice, for the Proxies as well as the humans, and he intends to see that the Creators answer for their actions. This is his new purpose.
At this point, the Vincent Law and Ergo Proxy personas are almost completely merged. He will still tend to be more violent and intimidating in his Proxy form, and less so in his human form, but let's face it, as Ergo Proxy he is much better suited to fighting and being scary than as derpy, average-looking Vincent Law. Kazkis Proxy had a habit of staying in human form unless he needed to fight, and I think, now that Vincent has control over his transformations, that he would adopt a similar modus operandi. If only because Proxies are giants, there's not much room on the 400 Rabbits, and Vincent bangs his head on the ship's ceiling often enough without adding about three feet to his height.
See, Vincent's a pretty easygoing sort of guy these days, but he'll always be a little awkward. The kind of guy who hurts himself while making repairs because he's daydreaming about Re-L. Or who doesn't pay attention to his surroundings and gets kicked out of the ship. He lets these things happen because in the long run they don't matter, and when it comes to the little things, he doesn't have much pride. Despite his identity as Ergo Proxy and the Agent of Death, Vincent is a pretty humble guy. In the beginning, he just wanted to be human. He wanted to be normal, he wanted to belong. That is why he was so focused on becoming a fellow citizen. That is why he was willing to, as he said, 'constantly suppress [him]self, all the time, everywhere.' He sought approval and he was confused as to why he always fell short. He patterned his behavior along the lines of what he thought an ideal citizen should be; obedient, unemotional, unwilling or unable to express doubt or question the status quo. And he tried, he tried so hard and still it wasn't enough. So he started to wonder if maybe there was something wrong with him, that he was constantly being rejected. And now that he has his memory back, he almost feels he doesn't have the right to claim the title of god, not when he abandoned Romdeau.
But for the things that matter, Vincent will stand firm. He showed bravery and quick thinking in saving Pino's life from the automated patrol. He stood up to Re-L when she tried to take him back to Romdeau at the expense of the people of the commune, who were about to be killed. He has a backbone and a strong sense of right and wrong, see. It only took being chased by the Security Bureau for him to understand that acting meek and keeping his head down would not guarantee him acceptance.
Which isn't to say he's a total dork, and he isn't as much of an idiot as he first appears. He is smart, honest! He notices things, works them out. Re-L accused him of not being very well organized and of making up the trip to Mosque as he went along, but he did have maps, and even a Proxy couldn't guarantee a brisk wind every day on such a long journey. He's the guy who figured out that all the infected AutoReivs employed similar escape routes. One gets the impression, from his rant on the railing, that it was hard for him not to doubt the system, not to ask worrying questions. He's a thoughtful and conscientious young man.
That said, Vincent listens to his heart a lot more than he listens to his head. Although it's true he had no way of knowing that the initial reason he was drawn to Re-L was because she was made to look like Monad, to be bait to draw him back to Romdeau, he probably knows now. And he doesn't care. It doesn't matter to him why he loves Re-L, he just does. He might have begun life as Proxy One's shadow, but he no longer cares who he used to be. He is himself, and that's enough for him. It's why it took him so long to accept that he was a Proxy. Because he really, really, really didn't want to be a 'monster'. He just wanted to be loved, at the risk of sounding trite. That's why he was so terrified of the idea that he wasn't human. He would deny it vehemently each time it was hinted at, and when confronted with actual evidence he would try his best to repress it. His encounter with Kazkis Proxy was fairly traumatic for him. There's one thing I forgot to mention about it, though. After it happened, Pino told Vincent she knew all along that there were 'two of him'. And that she wasn't afraid, because Vincent was the one who always protected her.
That was crucial for him. After this and Anamnesis, the episode where Proxy One went into his mind and forced him to accept that he was in fact a Proxy, Vincent seemed calmer and more at peace with himself. The other shoe had dropped, and Pino was still with him. Pino had known all along and still she was his friend. He's not very socially adept, but his few friends mean the world to him, and their support make all the difference.
Character Plans: It practically goes without saying that Vincent will make a beeline for Re-L Meyer. More generally, though, Vincent will probably just try to make ends meet, and keep those he cares about close to him.
He'll also be intrigued by the fact that he's been spirited to an Earth that hasn't yet been irreparably damaged and screwed over by the Creators. It may eventually occur to him that this could be an opportunity to set right what once went wrong. He'll try to avoid joining either SERO or AGI, since he's not into that sort of war. Or really any sort of senseless conflict. If he can find an unaffiliated garage, I figured he could be a mechanic. Of course that will just mean he'll take heat from both sides, and apparently harmless Vincent may also be a prime target for anti-newcomer sentiment.
Appearance/PB: Here are his icons
Writing Samples
First Person Sample: [Voice] Back where I come from, everyone was made for a reason, given a single purpose in life. It's something that brings them stability and gets them through their day-to-day lives. When they lose their purpose, they become desperate, and fall apart if they're unable to regain it. So did I, when I lost mine, but I discovered a new reason for being. I wonder if the reason we needed a raison d'être was because we were flawed creatures and too fragile to live without one. Is it even possible to live without one entirely?
We Newcomers are torn from our own lives and our own duties and transplanted into this city. While we're here our lives are on hold and our purposes go unfulfilled. No time might be passing back home, but time still passes for us. Anyway, I guess I'm wondering how other people are coping with that.
Third Person Sample: Shortly before sunrise, the Core pulled in a new victim. The ordinary-looking man in the red cloak hit the ground with a thud and a groan. For one stunned second he lay there face-down in the dirt, then slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position, holding his face in his hands like a man waking up with a bad hangover.
Ow. Dammit. What happened? The last thing Vincent remembered was perching against that column in the ruins of Romdeau. He had just spotted the Rabbit in the distance, and was waving it over. Had he- Yes, he had lost his balance and fallen. So, he fell and the landing must have knocked him unconscious. What would Re-L say when she caught up to him? And Pino would no doubt laugh at him. He'd never live it down.
"Why's it so dark?" he mumbled. "H-how long was I out?" This place didn't look like the ruins of Romdeau at a-- he moved, in a flash, out of reach of a Mutation that had snuck up behind the disoriented newbie, completely undetected, or apparently so, until a split-second before those long digits closed around his neck.
"What the hell are you?!" Vincent growled, a deep inhuman harmonic creeping into his voice as his body began to change, to take on Ergo Proxy's form. The monster made no response but lunged at the Proxy, claws bared, scoring a deep gash on his arm that made him cry out in pain. Vincent lashed out in retaliation, but it appeared that both he and the monster were equally matched in speed, and neither was able to land another hit on the other.
Dawn broke within minutes, and the thing seemed to melt in contact with the light before Vincent's disbelieving eyes. He watched the Darkness recede, still tensed for a fight and momentarily forgetting his own weakness to sunlight. He was more concerned with his injury. The deep gash in his arm should have healed by then. Could that thing possibly have been a Proxy? No, there was no way; he hadn't sensed anything like that from the beast. As the fog set in and the sirens blared, and nothing further attacked him, he returned to human form and stood numbly in the baseball diamond, looking at the surroundings, and they were no more believable than his sudden attack. Green grass in the outfield. A tree on the other side of the fence, looking healthy and lush. The sky was blue, with white, fluffy clouds. Where were the ruins of the Dome he had once called his home? This place was too green and devoid of rubble and trash.
It seemed like he had been cast into a nightmare that had abruptly transformed into a daydream. From darkness to dawn. From death to rebirth. It was almost trite. Such musings were impractical at the moment. Vincent just wanted to know what the hell was going on. And look! There was someone coming out of the dugout. Someone who would hopefully have some answers, since they now had a bewildered and somewhat freaked out Proxy headed their way.
Name: Mishi
Age: 23
AIM SN: ohsarjalim
email: ohsarjalim@aim.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yep
Currrently Played Characters: none
Conditional: Official Reserve Link: Right here!
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Ergo Proxy
Canon Format: Anime
Character's Name: Vincent Law/Ergo Proxy
Character's Age: Nooooooo clue. He could be anywhere from 20 to 5000 years old.
What form will your character's NV take?
This clunky laptop-looking thing is also a phone and will have video capabilities.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: Proxies are canonically referred to as gods, but gods in the sense of the greek pantheon. They are corporeal, they can be killed, however with difficulty, and they are not omnipotent. They are, however, vastly more powerful than a regular human being. The full extent of their abilities are never outlined, and they seem to vary from Proxy to Proxy, but they have demonstrated several abilities that seem consistent across all Proxies. It's implied that Proxy One, as the first and last of the Proxies, is the most powerful of all, and as his shadow, Ergo Proxy shares in that distinction.
> Physical: Proxies are way stronger than human beings. Things thrown by a Proxy have been known to make dents in solid stone upon impact. They're also much faster than human beings, so much so that they sometimes move faster than the eye can see.
> Mind games: Proxies seem to have the ability to create visual and auditory illusions, as well as the ability to create visions and dreams within another person's mind, such as when Proxy One projected himself into Vincent's mind, or when the Swan Proxy tried to convince Vincent he was just a fragment of Re-L's mind, or again when the Proxy, Will B. Goode, showed Pino a dream to warn her away from his Dome. It's implied they can do this from quite a distance, since they had barely come into sight of the dome when Pino awoke from her dream. I don't expect Vincent to be fond of using this power after all the times he's been on the recieving end of it.
> Force field: Ergo Proxy has shown himself capable of releasing waves of energy powerful enough to knock combat AutoReivs aside.
> Teleportation: The journey from Romdeau to Mosque took Vincent and his companions months to complete by windship. Proxy One somehow beat the his shadow to the punch and was gone before anyone was the wiser.
> Human Form: Proxies can take on a human appearance. Pretty straightforward.
> Proxy Awareness: When they come to within a certain distance of one another, perhaps the span of a Dome, or a city, Proxies can sense each other's presences.
> Creation: This is probably the vaguest power, and Vincent will not be using it much, if at all. No Proxy has ever been SHOWN to use it during the series, but it's a fact that each of them somehow created a dome and the first members of its population. Since they're man-made, I doubt they're able to create matter, but perhaps they were able to shape and transform it into something else. And since the Domes rely on their Proxies for survival, it's also possible that Proxies generated energy for the Domes.
> Immortality: The source of a Proxy's immortality is the fact that they are made from Amrita cells, which have an impenetrable membrane and can reproduce indefinitely. They don't age, they don't get sick (well, they do, but the illness won't kill them), they can't be killed by normal means. They can regrow limbs and recover from injuries that would kill a regular human being. There are only three ways to harm them: sunlight, FP shells, and another Proxy. An injury inflicted by a Proxy neutralizes the Amrita cells, and the wound will have to heal normally. For some reason, Vincent appears to be more resistant to sunlight than most Proxies. I assume it would still weaken him, but it didn't appear to be killing him to be standing in the sunlight at the end of the final episode.
Weapons: Vince has a gun, if for some reason he can't kick ass in Proxy form.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History: Vincent's story starts with Proxy One and the Proxy Project. 5000 years before the start of the story, the Earth was a complete mess. An environmental ruin almost beyond repair, no longer inhabitable to humans. So humanity took to the stars, but before it did, it left behind 300 Proxies tasked with restoring the Earth and recreating the human race, and building Domes in which these new humans were to live, one to each Proxy. But the information the fugitive humans that the Proxies would come to refer to as the Creators left for their creations was faulty. The human race they recreated was flawed, incomplete. Sterile. Not only that, but this project they were tasked with was a back-up plan, set in motion in case the Creators weren't able to return to Earth. And in case the new humans didn't work out, the Proxies were also instructed to use a computer virus called the Cogito Virus to grant sentience to the AutoReivs, that they might take the place of their human masters. Don't ask me how that was supposed to work. I suppose in a way it was forward-thinking of the Creators to want to leave a legacy on Earth even if they themselves couldn't come back but, well, they're jackasses.
See, if they did come back, they built self-destruct mechanisms into their experiment. Proxy One was given the title of Agent of Death and designed with an extra ability called the Pulse of the Awakening, also referred to as the Proxy Anihilation Program. In short, once this ability was unleashed, Proxies would turn on eachother, destroy eachother the moment they came into contact. With the Proxies gone, the Domes would follow, and all of their work would be annihilated. And if each Proxy wisely decided to stay home and not seek eachother out, well. Proxies are vulnerable to sunlight. When the environment was viable again, the clouds would part and they would all die anyway.
As you can imagine, over the millenia Proxy One became quite bitter about the cruel and ultimately pointless duty he was tasked with. He found some sort of solace in his love for Monad Proxy, but eventually he could bear it no longer and sought to escape his fate, which he did by creating a clone of himself, Ergo Proxy. He dumped the care of Romdeau dome and even his title of Agent of Death into Ergo Proxy's hapless claws, and where he absconded, I am not sure. Unfortunately, after an unspecified period of time, Ergo fell into the same despair as his progenitor, and went to Mosque Dome with Monad, where he erased his own memory in his own attempt to escape.
In retrospect Proxy One should have seen this coming. Ergo Proxy was fundamentally identical to him; what made him think that Ergo would be any more equip to deal with the tragedy of the Proxies' existence than he was? It's like when Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes made himself a clone to do his homework while he went out to go play, and when he returned, he found that his clone had had the same idea, and so on and so forth until there were at least 5 Calvin clones, none of them any more willing to do homework than the original. Luckily for Proxy One, Ergo either didn't want to inflict his duty on yet another hapless clone, or he figured his progenitor could pick up the slack.
At any rate, it was Ergo Proxy's abdication that set in motion most of the events of the anime. In retaliation for 'stealing Ergo away', Romdeau, led by its Regent Donov Mayer, destroyed Mosque and captured Monad. Some time after that, Re-L Mayer was born, created in the image of Monad as bait to lure Ergo home.
Upon losing his memory, Ergo Proxy became Vincent Law. Vincent recalled the attack on Mosque, but he referred to the attack as a disaster, and I'm not certain any of the Mosque immigrants knew that Romdeau was in fact responsible for the destruction of their home. At any rate, that 'disaster' and the journey to Romdeau Dome are Vincent's first memories. And one day when he was looking for work in the temporary immigrant section, he first saw Re-L. And, without knowing that she was meant to provoke this reaction in him (because he had, after all, lost his memories), he fell for her like a ton of bricks.
Vincent worked hard at becoming a fellow citizen; suppressing his emotions, keeping his head down. Always obeying the law, never asking questions. He got a job in an AutoReiv Disposal Unit, destroying Cogito-infected AutoReivs. He tried to be the person he thought they expected a fellow citizen to be. It's never made clear, but he might have spent over two years working towards that, and getting rejected every time his file came up for review.
Then the Pulse of the Awakening was activated within Proxy One. It awakened Monad, and though mutilated almost beyond recognition by torture at the behest of Donov Mayer, she still managed to escape. Thus begins the first episode of Ergo Proxy. The same night, Vincent was out chasing an infected AutoReiv when his vehicle caught the Cogito virus and nearly killed him. It's this incident that leads him to cross pathes with Re-L once again. Re-L was looking into Cogito-infected AutoReivs as well, specifically, a series of murders believed to have been committed by AutoReivs, and asked for information about the previous night's events.
After that, he was sent after another infected AutoReiv, and the course of his pursuit took him near Re-L's appartment that evening. There Vincent's memory has a hole. See, when Ergo erased his memory and created the Vincent Law persona, he sort of ended up giving himself a split personality. Vincent couldn't know he was a Proxy, so whenever he switched from human form to Proxy form, he also stopped being Vincent Law, and resumed being Ergo Proxy. Not that Ergo at this point knew his own name, or that he was a Proxy, or even what a Proxy was. His memory was just as kaput as Vincent's. But there were advantages to being a ten-foot tall demon-looking thing, not the least of which was, apparently, the ability and effrontery to break into Re-L's house and creep on her while she was in the bathroom. It was at this moment that Monad Proxy decided to crash the party. The Pulse of the Awakening was in effect, so even though she used to be his lover, she was nevertheless compelled to kill him, although I imagine that even if this was not the case, she'd still be pretty angry to catch her man macking on a younger CLONE of herself, no less. In any case, both Proxies flipped out of Re-L's appartment, and that was the last Re-L saw of them that night.
The next morning, Vincent Law was found unconscious a short distance away from her appartment, and Monad was nowhere in the area. But she wasn't done with him. She caught up with him in a shopping center, and chased him through a crowd, killing everyone who got in her way, including a woman and her newborn son. Out of the corner of his eye, Vincent spotted the woman's companion-type AutoReiv, Pino, falling to her knees and praying, the first thing AutoReivs do after they're infected with the Cogito virus.
Monad cornered Vincent in the lower districts of Romdeau and it was at this point that Ergo Proxy killed her. Vincent later woke up on the metro with blood on his hands, and, again, no memory of turning into Ergo and killing Monad. Now, both Re-L and Raul Creed, Romdeau's newly minted Security Chief, were investigating Proxies, Re-L because being attacked by the giant ex-girlfriend of an equally giant godly creeper kind of piqued her curiousity, and Raul because it was his job. There were all kinds of witnesses to the fact that a Proxy was chasing Vincent Law, so both Raul and Re-L set their sights on capturing, or at least interrogating Mr. Popular-with-Proxies himself. Vincent got a call from his Entourage, Dorothy, and when he returned to the AutoReiv Disposal offices, he found that she had been destroyed, and nearly got killed by Romdeau security forces.
In any case, Vincent packed a few essentials and managed to evade capture long enough to make his way to the service tunnels. There he ran into Pino, who was herself on the run from an AutoReiv Disposal squad. Pino led him down a path that, it appeared, only infected AutoReivs knew about, specifically, to an airlock that led outside the Dome. Now, all this time, Re-L had been trying to reach Vincent's cell phone, but he had been kind of busy dodging security guys. She eventually reached him, and he begged for her help. Re-L promised him she would do everything in her power to help him, and asked him where he was, and managed to figure out where he was. But she only managed to beat the Security Bureau by a few minutes. Before they could effect an arrest, Pino opened the airlock, and the force of the wind sucked her, Re-L, and Vincent outside. Re-L was saved by her Entourage, Iggy, but Vincent could only hang onto the railing. As he looked down into the abyss, he reflected that the last couple of days had demonstrated just how huge a failure he was. His despair was such that he deliberately let go and fell to the surface, along with Pino.
Vincent thought that would be the end of him, but a Proxy doesn't die from a mere fall. Nor did he die of the illness he suffered from breathing the poisonous air of the world outside Romdeau for the first time, although it did keep him bedridden and feverish for ten days. He was taken in by a man called Hoody, the de facto leader of a commune composed of exiles from Romdeau, most of whom were old men and women.
Vince and Pino stayed in the commune for a while during which Vincent recovered and tried to figure out what to do next, but fate wouldn't let him rest for long. An automated scout vehicle from Romdeau spied Pino while on its regular patrol and would have killed Pino if Vincent hadn't shot it down first. Before it crashed to the ground, it managed to broadcast its last few seconds of video footage to its masters at the Security Bureau. Thus the people of Romdeau learned of the fugitive immigrant's survival, and of the existence of the commune.
Shortly thereafter, Re-L arrived to take Vincent away. While she was argueing with Hoody about Vincent's return, an attack on the commune had already begun and Re-L's hazmat suit was damaged. The only way she could move was by discarding the suit, but once exposed to the outside air, she succumbed to illness and she did not have the advantage of a Proxy's immune system. She would have to be returned to Romdeau in order to survive. While Hoody used her ship to ferry her back to Romdeau, Vincent, Pino, and the surviving refugees escaped the commune on Hoody's airship, the 400 Rabbits.
Now Vincent throughout all this had mostly taken a WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME, I AM SO PERSECUTED attitude. But, despite appearances, he was not stupid, and what with the black-outs he'd been having whenever he turned into Ergo Proxy, and the strange dreams of stars shooting into the sky, he was clueing in to the fact that not all was quite right with him. And after both Re-L and the Security Bureau had tracked him to the commune, he figured he had better find out just who he was soon, before he endangered anyone else. Having nowhere to go and no better destination in mind, Vincent and his companions set a course for Mosque, the place he believed to be his homeland, and, perhaps, the place where he would find some answers to his questions. It bears repeating that all of his human companions were old and frail, so none of them were able to survive past the next episode. Naturally, seeing everyone around him dropping like flies got Vincent all depressed and he spent the next episode whining about how alone he was and indulging in grimdark narration while Re-L and Daedalus and Raul furthered the plot back in Romdeau. Even if he wasn't alone at all. What was Pino, chopped liver?
They sailed in the darkness for so long Vincent had run out of food, when Pino spotted a beam of light in the distance. They sailed toward it and ran smack in the middle of a raging battle between a group of human soldiers and a platoon of AutoReivs. The soldiers picked them up and fed Vincent and offered to repair the 400 Rabbits, which had gotten damaged in the attack, but only if he offered his assistance with their war. Vincent realized how much more agreeable Pino was in comparison to these jerks who were drafting him into a pointless conflict and immediately regretted his AutoReiv-dismissing ways. He was all for grabbing Pino and getting the hell out of there as soon as his ship was repaired, but unfortunately Vince was a magnet for Proxies, and one of them stealthily killed a couple of soldiers. Their leaders, of course, blamed Vincent and locked him and Pino up in a cell next to one of those pertinent madwomen, the type that spout nothing but the most cryptic and foreshadowy nonsense. As she babbled, Vincent began to feel anxious and frightened; he was feeling the Pulse of the Awakening as the other Proxy drew nearer. After slaughtering most of the soldiers, the other Proxy finally made her move on Vincent, only by then he had turned into Ergo Proxy and promptly killed her, after which he fell unconscious.
Then some fruity-looking guy brought Vincent, Pino, and apparently the 400 Rabbits as well, to Asura Dome. Vincent was quite surprised to wake up in opulent surroundings and be wined and dined by a man who did not seem to be all there. The man's name was Kazkis, and he would turn out to be a Proxy. The Proxy Vincent had killed in the last episode was called Senex, and she and Kazkis were lovers. But Kazkis, initially, didn't seem particularly upset at his lover's death. He practically declared his love for Vincent... but when he realized that Vincent didn't remember killing Senex or even who he used to be, well, that's when Kazkis got pissed. Apparently it's one thing to kill Kazkis's girlfriend, and another thing entirely to not even remember it. In any case, he chased Vincent halfway across the dome, badgering him about being a Proxy and running away from his duty while the hapless wanderer denied the truth in vain. Eventually Vincent had to stop running and fight back and this was the first time he was aware when he once again involuntarily switched to Proxy form. The process looked painful and traumatic. But Ergo did kill Kazkis, and as he was dying, Kazkis asked Ergo one last time: "What are you the agent of?" And Ergo finally remembered his name: Ergo Proxy, the agent of Death.
Then there was another episode where Raul and Daedalus and Re-L furthered some more plot and Vincent didn't appear at all. Apparently, Vincent had to learn his lesson more than once, because the next episode took place entirely within his own mind. Basically Vincent stumbled across a bookstore in the middle of nowhere, where someone who looked just like Ergo Proxy/Proxy One went on about perspective and Descartes and the Pulse of the Awakening, took Vincent back through his own recent memories, the ones with relevance to his existence as a Proxy. Tried to make him remember. WHO WAS VINCENT LAW, WHAT WAS HE AFRAID OF? WHAT DROVE HIM TO ERASE HIS OWN MEMORY? Whereas the incident with Kazkis had confronted Vincent with physical evidence of his being a Proxy, this episode was dedicated to Vincent's actually coming to terms with the fact that he was a Proxy.
And then Re-L found him laying on the ground crying because of this revelation. At first he thought this was a dream too, but as it turned out, Re-L actually was there. She insisted on him telling her everything he knew about Proxies, but since he had only just realized he was one himself, he didn't have much else to tell her.
Now, Re-L had brought with her a gun loaded with special bullets called FP shells, given to her by Daedalus, which were made to kill Proxies. She snuck up on Vincent while he slept and contemplated shooting him - she was having a hard time believing that Vincent was a Proxy, and since the shells were harmless to humans... Ultimately she wasn't reckless enough to go through with it. Instead she sat down beside him and started talking about how she had followed him all this way and how she felt 'strangely drawn' to him, so at least you can't blame him for getting the wrong idea. He pulled her down with him, which knocked the gun out of her hand. He was busy awkwardly confessing his love to her, and hadn't noticed it yet. And Re-L decided the best way to keep him distracted was to kiss him, thereby giving him an even more innaccurate impression of her feelings, while using her foot to kick the gun out of sight.
Later on, they ran into a Proxy and an infected AutoReiv. Vincent went Ergo and while they were locked in combat, Re-L took her opportunity to shoot the other Proxy. She told Vincent that one day she would kill him too, and could he still love her knowing that? Spoiler: Yes. He's that much of a schmuck.
Re-L decided she was going to travel with Vincent and Pino, and ordered her Entourage, Iggy, to take the Proxy's body back to Romdeau with him. Little did she know that Iggy had been infected with the Cogito Virus ages ago and decided to kill Vincent and kidnap her instead, since he figured she'd be safer in Romdeau than with a monster. To this end he swiped Re-L's gun and succeeded in imprisoning her, but the dead Proxy's AutoReiv tried to kill her. In the end he sacrificed himself for his selfish mistress's sake. Oh yeah, and then Vincent gave Re-L back her gun to show her that he trusted her, and trusted her to kill him if it ever became necessary.
By now you've probably noticed a pattern in this story. They would make a stop, find a Proxy, kill a Proxy, maybe the Proxy messed with their minds a little, then they would move on. The next two episodes were pretty much like that. In the first, they made their way to another Dome to gather supplies, and encountered a shapeshifting prophecy that tried to kill them, turn them against eachother, pretend to be Vincent and convince him he was suicidal, not necessarily in that order. Luckily he caught on and they managed to escape.
In the next one, somehow, don't ask me how, it's not even shown, they got sucked into this gameshow run by a Proxy called MCQ. Most of the questions had to do with the Proxy Project; this was also the first time Proxy One was directly referred to in the show. Vincent won the game, and MCQ seemed thrilled to die. I'm inclined to think this episode actually happened because the show was broadcast to Romdeau and Daedalus and Raul both saw it.
Then they were becalmed for a few days and Vincent and Pino chillaxed while Re-L went stir-crazy, and when the wind picked up they arrived at a cave system populated by Morlocks who were allergic to fresh air. On their way out the spotted a missile flying in the direction of Mosque, and when they got there, Mosque was pretty much destroyed. Vincent found an old room with a broken AutoReiv that was supposed to be the guardian of his memory; but something had clearly been there not long before and trashed the place so that Vincent would not be able to lear anything there. That, though they didn't know it, was Proxy One, who took care to leave a clue that Vincent would find what he was looking for back in Romdeau. So after all that, they finally turned around and set a course back to Romdeau, pausing only to get messed around by Proxies some more.
When they finally returned to Romdeau, it was falling apart. The Cogito virus had become a veritable plague, and without AutoReivs, the citizens were completely helpless. Vincent disappeared almost as soon as he and Re-L entered the Dome. In the next few days, there were sightings of Ergo Proxy all over the city, but never of Vincent. Ergo had regained his memories and the shock, as predicted, had submerged the Vincent Law persona. Ergo went to see where Monad's corpse was being kept, and wept. Although he acknowledged that he was the one who killed her, he could not forgive Donov Meyer to the horrors Monad had been subjected to while in captivity. While he was paying his respects to her, he was interrupted by a girl who acted like she knew him, wasn't at all afraid of him, and claimed to be Re-L Meyer.
See, in the real Re-L's absence, Daedalus went a little nuts and force-grew another clone of Monad, which he treated as a replacement Re-L. It's unknown precisely why it happened to her and not Re-L, but this new clone became Monad reincarnated. When Ergo expressed his confusion as to why some other girl was claiming to be Re-L, the clone got flustered and ran away. But Ergo hadn't seen the last of her.
Ergo's next move was to visit the Regent. While the Regent's Entourages criticised him for leaving and informed him that the Regent hated him for abandoning Romdeau, Ergo Proxy advanced, unconcerned. And killed Donov Meyer right before Re-L's eyes. Meanwhile, Raul Creed was lying in wait in the shadows. While Re-L confronted Ergo, he shot the Proxy in the arm with an FP shell, but Ergo survived by ripping off his own arm, and then promptly growing it back. Proxies are hardcore like that. Horrified, Raul emptied his gun, trying to score another hit, but Ergo wasn't going to let himself get shot a second time. Raul escaped to find some more ammunition, and Ergo left soon after. He wandered Romdeau, taking in its imminent destruction, the total collapse of its civilization. Meanwhile, Re-L was asking her grandfather's Entourages for information on Ergo Proxy and Romdeau.
Ergo Proxy returned to the Regent's sitting room and Re-L pointed her gun at him. She figured he had to know that if he came back she would hold him at gunpoint. He told him that was precisely the point. Ergo Proxy wanted to die. But Re-L, ever difficult, said screw that, you can't tell me what to do. I ain't killing you. Instead she told him she'd figured out who the real mastermind of this whole story was: Proxy One. At this point, Proxy One's laughter echoed throughout the chamber. They followed the sound of his voice.
Ergo went into shock upon seeing his progenitor: he really had had no idea that he wasn't the original. Anyway, Proxy One was only too happy to monologue about the purpose of the Proxies and the malice implanted by the creators. And also to accuse Ergo of running away, an irony which was not lost on either of them. He goaded Ergo Proxy into fighting to the death, and Ergo ripped a hole into his progenitor's chest. As he was dying, he entrusted the burden of shaping the world to his shadow, and that was when Monad II showed up. Now fully grown into her Proxy powers, she pleaded with Ergo not to listen to Proxy One. He didn't have to take up the burden of life again, she said. He nearly took her up on her offer. Running away with Monad sounded like a pretty sweet deal. There was just one catch: it entailed flying through the clouds and into the sunlight. Suicide, for a Proxy.
Vincent recalled that Re-L had asked him to find her, when she left him and his original to their confrontation, and he wasn't ready to die just yet anymore. So he appologized to Monad, left her to fly into the sun on her own, and went back down to pay his respects to Proxy One, who with his dying breath, told him he could think of no fitter punishment for the Creators than Vincent's survival.
Point in Canon: So, basically, after Vincent had his final words with Proxy One, Romdeau Dome completely fell to pieces, and I mean that literally. Vince was perched on a tower waiting for Re-L and Pino to pick him up on the Rabbit. And that's when he'll be pulled into Siren's Port.
Character Personality: The thing to remember about Vincent Law is that, as I mentionned before, he hasn't existed as his own person for very long. Vincent Law was the human mask Ergo Proxy wore after he erased his memory. And before that, Ergo Proxy himself did not realize he was only the shadow of Proxy One. He was essentially the same as Proxy One up to and including his descent into despair. But somehow, Ergo's despair was worse. It wasn't enough for him just to quit his job, to leave Romdeau. He could no longer even bear the memories of a Proxy's duty, and of the cruel experiment that the creators set up. To abandon the burden, he had to erase his own memory. I don't know why his reaction was worse than his progenitor's, but that was the key to their eventual differentiation. As Kazkis said, when Ergo erased his memories, he lost himself. That was probably intentional on his part, as was the creation of the Vincent Law persona. Vincent Law couldn't be allowed to know that he was a Proxy, lest it shatter his tender psyche, lest the terrible memories come flowing back.
And Vincent scarcely represents the classic idea of a god. He's soft-spoken and easy-going, hardly the kind to rain down righteous wrath. That role would be more easily associated with his progenitor, Proxy One, who engineered the destruction of Romdeau in a fashion more brutal than entirely necessary, simply out of spite for the imperfect creatures he had created. But Proxy One is dead, and Ergo Proxy has taken up the role, though he does it for a different reason. Over the course of his travels, Vincent has experienced a lot. Met people, killed Proxies, experienced life. He has met people living outside the domes. He has seen a colony of Morlocks living in a poisonous cave. He's learned that life is tough, often dark and full of suffering. But it is also worth living. If Ergo Proxy once hated his creations, this is no longer the case. "The living have no choice but to go on living," as he once told Kazkis Proxy. Killing humans simply because they're flawed, destroying the dome simply because it was destined to be destroyed, these things don't sit well with him. It's not so much a question of love as of justice, for the Proxies as well as the humans, and he intends to see that the Creators answer for their actions. This is his new purpose.
At this point, the Vincent Law and Ergo Proxy personas are almost completely merged. He will still tend to be more violent and intimidating in his Proxy form, and less so in his human form, but let's face it, as Ergo Proxy he is much better suited to fighting and being scary than as derpy, average-looking Vincent Law. Kazkis Proxy had a habit of staying in human form unless he needed to fight, and I think, now that Vincent has control over his transformations, that he would adopt a similar modus operandi. If only because Proxies are giants, there's not much room on the 400 Rabbits, and Vincent bangs his head on the ship's ceiling often enough without adding about three feet to his height.
See, Vincent's a pretty easygoing sort of guy these days, but he'll always be a little awkward. The kind of guy who hurts himself while making repairs because he's daydreaming about Re-L. Or who doesn't pay attention to his surroundings and gets kicked out of the ship. He lets these things happen because in the long run they don't matter, and when it comes to the little things, he doesn't have much pride. Despite his identity as Ergo Proxy and the Agent of Death, Vincent is a pretty humble guy. In the beginning, he just wanted to be human. He wanted to be normal, he wanted to belong. That is why he was so focused on becoming a fellow citizen. That is why he was willing to, as he said, 'constantly suppress [him]self, all the time, everywhere.' He sought approval and he was confused as to why he always fell short. He patterned his behavior along the lines of what he thought an ideal citizen should be; obedient, unemotional, unwilling or unable to express doubt or question the status quo. And he tried, he tried so hard and still it wasn't enough. So he started to wonder if maybe there was something wrong with him, that he was constantly being rejected. And now that he has his memory back, he almost feels he doesn't have the right to claim the title of god, not when he abandoned Romdeau.
But for the things that matter, Vincent will stand firm. He showed bravery and quick thinking in saving Pino's life from the automated patrol. He stood up to Re-L when she tried to take him back to Romdeau at the expense of the people of the commune, who were about to be killed. He has a backbone and a strong sense of right and wrong, see. It only took being chased by the Security Bureau for him to understand that acting meek and keeping his head down would not guarantee him acceptance.
Which isn't to say he's a total dork, and he isn't as much of an idiot as he first appears. He is smart, honest! He notices things, works them out. Re-L accused him of not being very well organized and of making up the trip to Mosque as he went along, but he did have maps, and even a Proxy couldn't guarantee a brisk wind every day on such a long journey. He's the guy who figured out that all the infected AutoReivs employed similar escape routes. One gets the impression, from his rant on the railing, that it was hard for him not to doubt the system, not to ask worrying questions. He's a thoughtful and conscientious young man.
That said, Vincent listens to his heart a lot more than he listens to his head. Although it's true he had no way of knowing that the initial reason he was drawn to Re-L was because she was made to look like Monad, to be bait to draw him back to Romdeau, he probably knows now. And he doesn't care. It doesn't matter to him why he loves Re-L, he just does. He might have begun life as Proxy One's shadow, but he no longer cares who he used to be. He is himself, and that's enough for him. It's why it took him so long to accept that he was a Proxy. Because he really, really, really didn't want to be a 'monster'. He just wanted to be loved, at the risk of sounding trite. That's why he was so terrified of the idea that he wasn't human. He would deny it vehemently each time it was hinted at, and when confronted with actual evidence he would try his best to repress it. His encounter with Kazkis Proxy was fairly traumatic for him. There's one thing I forgot to mention about it, though. After it happened, Pino told Vincent she knew all along that there were 'two of him'. And that she wasn't afraid, because Vincent was the one who always protected her.
That was crucial for him. After this and Anamnesis, the episode where Proxy One went into his mind and forced him to accept that he was in fact a Proxy, Vincent seemed calmer and more at peace with himself. The other shoe had dropped, and Pino was still with him. Pino had known all along and still she was his friend. He's not very socially adept, but his few friends mean the world to him, and their support make all the difference.
Character Plans: It practically goes without saying that Vincent will make a beeline for Re-L Meyer. More generally, though, Vincent will probably just try to make ends meet, and keep those he cares about close to him.
He'll also be intrigued by the fact that he's been spirited to an Earth that hasn't yet been irreparably damaged and screwed over by the Creators. It may eventually occur to him that this could be an opportunity to set right what once went wrong. He'll try to avoid joining either SERO or AGI, since he's not into that sort of war. Or really any sort of senseless conflict. If he can find an unaffiliated garage, I figured he could be a mechanic. Of course that will just mean he'll take heat from both sides, and apparently harmless Vincent may also be a prime target for anti-newcomer sentiment.
Appearance/PB: Here are his icons
Writing Samples
First Person Sample: [Voice] Back where I come from, everyone was made for a reason, given a single purpose in life. It's something that brings them stability and gets them through their day-to-day lives. When they lose their purpose, they become desperate, and fall apart if they're unable to regain it. So did I, when I lost mine, but I discovered a new reason for being. I wonder if the reason we needed a raison d'être was because we were flawed creatures and too fragile to live without one. Is it even possible to live without one entirely?
We Newcomers are torn from our own lives and our own duties and transplanted into this city. While we're here our lives are on hold and our purposes go unfulfilled. No time might be passing back home, but time still passes for us. Anyway, I guess I'm wondering how other people are coping with that.
Third Person Sample: Shortly before sunrise, the Core pulled in a new victim. The ordinary-looking man in the red cloak hit the ground with a thud and a groan. For one stunned second he lay there face-down in the dirt, then slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position, holding his face in his hands like a man waking up with a bad hangover.
Ow. Dammit. What happened? The last thing Vincent remembered was perching against that column in the ruins of Romdeau. He had just spotted the Rabbit in the distance, and was waving it over. Had he- Yes, he had lost his balance and fallen. So, he fell and the landing must have knocked him unconscious. What would Re-L say when she caught up to him? And Pino would no doubt laugh at him. He'd never live it down.
"Why's it so dark?" he mumbled. "H-how long was I out?" This place didn't look like the ruins of Romdeau at a-- he moved, in a flash, out of reach of a Mutation that had snuck up behind the disoriented newbie, completely undetected, or apparently so, until a split-second before those long digits closed around his neck.
"What the hell are you?!" Vincent growled, a deep inhuman harmonic creeping into his voice as his body began to change, to take on Ergo Proxy's form. The monster made no response but lunged at the Proxy, claws bared, scoring a deep gash on his arm that made him cry out in pain. Vincent lashed out in retaliation, but it appeared that both he and the monster were equally matched in speed, and neither was able to land another hit on the other.
Dawn broke within minutes, and the thing seemed to melt in contact with the light before Vincent's disbelieving eyes. He watched the Darkness recede, still tensed for a fight and momentarily forgetting his own weakness to sunlight. He was more concerned with his injury. The deep gash in his arm should have healed by then. Could that thing possibly have been a Proxy? No, there was no way; he hadn't sensed anything like that from the beast. As the fog set in and the sirens blared, and nothing further attacked him, he returned to human form and stood numbly in the baseball diamond, looking at the surroundings, and they were no more believable than his sudden attack. Green grass in the outfield. A tree on the other side of the fence, looking healthy and lush. The sky was blue, with white, fluffy clouds. Where were the ruins of the Dome he had once called his home? This place was too green and devoid of rubble and trash.
It seemed like he had been cast into a nightmare that had abruptly transformed into a daydream. From darkness to dawn. From death to rebirth. It was almost trite. Such musings were impractical at the moment. Vincent just wanted to know what the hell was going on. And look! There was someone coming out of the dugout. Someone who would hopefully have some answers, since they now had a bewildered and somewhat freaked out Proxy headed their way.
