Application for thehometree

[monster_san]

| mun |

| name | Eileen
| age | 26
| e-mail | eowynjedi@gmail.com
| aim/msn/other | AIM is inkycompass, plurk is eowynjedi
| location/time zone | EST
| current character(s) | N/A

| character |

| canon | Magic Knight Rayearth
| character name | Fuu Hououji
| character age | 14

| gem | Night
| reason | While she has a good heart and is much more at ease with her first adventures than she was, killing two people at age 14 is still something that leaves a big mark on your soul.
| wings | Like this: Feralia major.

| personality | Fuu is a friendly, intelligent fourteen-year-old. She speaks with excessive formality, referring to her best friends and even rampaging monsters with polite honorifics (except in extreme situations). She is generous and caring and will lend a helping hand whenever she is able, whether to her friends or a stranger. Fuu is also quite a nerd, specializing in computer science and being a huge RPG fan, but that doesn't make her shy. She enjoys meeting new people and making friends and isn't easily intimidated by loud and flaily people. When she's put into strange and stressful situations, her first reaction is to behave in an aggressively normal fashion, but it's more of a coping mechanism than a sincere reaction--a more expected, flustered response sometimes slips through her mask of unfazedness. She also has a habit of pointing out the obvious.

Fuu is highly pragmatic. If an experienced warrior tells her to leave them behind she will follow that advice, trusting their judgment and recognizing her limitations. When forced to fight her "most important person", it's herself. However, this logic is allied with a strong sense of compassion: protecting her own well-being is the best way she can keep her loved ones happy, knowing how upset they would be if anything happened to her. While Hikaru and Umi learn combat spells first, Fuu takes the role of the group's healer and shield with her wind magic. Her analytical mindset is an asset in battles; she's often the first to notice an enemy's strengths and weaknesses, and is good at inventing new spells in an immediate crisis.

Fuu also shows a rather wicked sense of humor at times. She enjoys prodding at Umi's tantrums by hugely understating the problem or playing Captain Obvious. She can get a little creepy and morbid too, like suggesting that they make Mokona into a snack for tea. In fact, Fuu can show quite a bit of guile and sneakiness when the situation calls for it. She's easily able to hide her intentions behind a friendly, smiling face, and has no qualms over misleading or obfuscating when she feels she has to.

The events of MKR I left a deep scar on Fuu's heart. As a result, Fuu now resolves to learn her enemy's motives before they fight and will try to avoid fighting if at all possible. She doesn't want to repeat that tragedy by making assumptions and being careless again. Although she feels much better by the end of MKR II, it is still a commitment Fuu carries with her.

As a final note, when it comes to the area of romance, Fuu reacts just about exactly as you'd expect a teenager to: by turning red as a tomato.

| background |
While at Tokyo Tower for a school trip, Fuu Hououji fell into the world of Cephiro alongside strangers Hikaru Shidou and Umi Ryuuzaki. They had been called by Princess Emeraude to save her world as the Magic Knights of legend, and were met by Guru Clef. He gifted them with magic and armor, and instructed them to defeat Zagato, who had betrayed Cephiro and imprisoned Emeraude. As the Pillar, Emeraude upheld all of Cephiro with her prayers; with her gone, it was a land of disasters and strife. To this bizarre turn of events, Fuu insisted on a proper introduction, suggested that they had been carried there by Mount Fuji erupting, and begged Clef to send them home (he didn't) before finally equating the situation with an RPG. An attack by Zagato's minion Alcyone forced him to send the girls onward to obtain weapons from master smith Presea. Though Hikaru wanted to stay and help him fight, Fuu said that they had no choice but to continue on--and when Alcyone caught up, pointed out that they had nowhere near leveled up enough to deal with her. Fortunately, Hikaru drove away the sorceress with her newly-acquired magic, and they landed safely at Presea's home.

After a brief misunderstanding, Presea gave the girls Mokona, an cryptic marshmallow odd little creature that served as their guide. She sent them to the Spring of Eterna for Escudo, the only mineral from which a Magic Knight's evolving weapon could be forged, and loaned them regular weapons for the trip. Fuu selected a bow and arrow while the other two picked swords, and they set off into the monster-infested Forest of Silence.

There, they met a strange swordsman named Ferio who claimed he wanted to become a Magic Knight himself, and was also searching for Escudo. Fuu and Umi were wary of him, having no way to know if he was in league with Zagato or not. Fuu decided to strike a deal: they would show him the way to Eterna if he acted as their escort through the dangerous forest (putting aside that she did not know herself, as she had Mokona who did), thus giving him a reason not to attack and gaining a powerful ally. Soon they were attacked by a monster resistant to swords, and Ferio devised a plan to kill it by driving it into a spiky tree. The creature aimed one last blast at Fuu, but Ferio tackled her to the ground and saved her.

As soon as they exited the forest, they were ambushed by Alcyone and Umi was severely wounded. Hikaru enaged the sorceress while Fuu tended to Umi. Using Mokona, Clef communed with Umi and taught her a magic spell that defeated Alcyone for good. Fuu quickly took Mokona, realizing that somehow it had given Umi her magic, and contacted Clef herself. He taught her a healing spell, which Fuu immediately used. With Umi healed, the three of them affirmed their commitment to fight with each other and become the Magic Knights. Ferio departed after complimenting Fuu's wily handling of their situation, then kissed her hand and gave her an earring as keepsake--much to her embarrassment.

After determining that a strange horizontal line in the middle of a field was, in fact, the Spring of Eterna, the girls jumped in. There, they were attacked by visions of the one most important to them. In Fuu's case, this was a doppelganger of herself; she had a strong desire to protect herself for the sake of her friends and family. Emeraude appeared to them and guided them into destroying the visions, and they obtained the Escudo. Presea met them on exiting the spring and crafted it into swords. Now fully equipped, the girls set out to awaken the Mashin: ancient guardian spirits that took forms uncannily similar to giant robots. Each would ask the girls to prove the strength of heart necessary to become a Magic Knight.

They first visited the shrine of the sea, where Umi was entranced by the Mashin and separated from them. Ascot, a boy summoner, attacked Fuu and Hikaru with a fire-creature that swiftly disabled them, but they were nonetheless able to offer some magical assitance to Umi when she came out to fight. Umi stopped Ascot with a sharp slap and a forceful lecture about how to treat his beasts, and the Mashin Seles bonded with her. Next, they went to the mountain in the sky, where Windam resided. This time, it was Fuu who was entranced while dancer and hypnotist Caldina set Hikaru and Umi to attack her. Fuu invented a new spell to restrain them, but Caldina quickly used her magic to puppeteer Fuu into attacking. Fuu desperately tried to restrain herself from hurting them, but when Windam's words reminded her that strength of heart is the greatest force in Cephiro, she was able to turn a powerful spell on Caldina. Fuu told Caldina that she was willing to die for her friends, even though they had only known each other a short time. Caldina was impressed and, having earned her fee from Zagato, decided to leave them unharmed. Windam judged Fuu's actions worthy and bonded with her. The final Mashin, Rayearth, was in a volcano. Again, the other two were attacked while Hikaru was entranced, this time by a powerful swordsman named Lafarga. He pinned Fuu and Umi in a rock wall, forcing Hikaru to face the brunt of his attacks in shielding them. They were saved when Lafarga tried to seize Hikaru's sword, which turned into flame and broke him out of Zagato's hypnosis.

Now all three Mashin were awakened and judged the Magic Knights ready to pilot don them. They took to the sky in search of Zagato's lair and found it behind a mirror that they shattered by combining their magic. Zagato confronted them in a Mashin he had created himself. He was a powerful foe, but during the battle he made some strange remarks on the Pillar System and Emeraude, and died with a plea for her to be free. Nevertheless, the Magic Knights were elated: they had fulfilled the legend, defeated Zagato, and now need only free Emeraude from her prison before going home HA. HA HA. HAHAHAHAHA that didn't happen.

The Emeraude they met was not the childlike figure they had seen in Eterna, but a woman out to avenge her love: Zagato. Naturally this was a bit of a shock and the girls were in no way prepared to deal with it. On top of that, Emeraude and her Mashin were way more powerful than Zagato had been. As they struggled to withstand her assault, flashes of the childlike Emeraude appeared to them and told them the truth: they had not been summoned to kill Zagato. The problem started long before then, when she fell in love with him and could not devote her entire heart to upholding Cephiro. Thus, she had summoned the Magic Knights to execute her, because that's what Magic Knights are really for and Clef's "save the princess" story was basically like Obi-Wan saying "Darth Vader murdered Anakin." Zagato, ruthless as he had been, was trying to save her from this fate.

They didn't have a choice: either they killed Emeraude or she would pray for the wholesale destruction of Cephiro. Still they resisted, not wanting to accept the truth, until Emeraude told them to send her to Zagato and fulfill her only selfish wish. The three Mashin combined into one powerful enough to slay Emeraude. Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu were returned to Tokyo Tower at the exact moment they'd left, horribly traumatized. And thus ended the first volume.

A short time later, the three girls arranged to meet again at Tokyo Tower. Fuu tried to hide her deep hurt and distress from her family so as not to worry them, but her older sister Kuu said that they were only pretending not to notice for her sake. Though she did not press Fuu for details, she asked if Fuu had someone to talk to, who would understand.

At Tokyo Tower, the three girls ruminated over the tragedy they had participated in, blaming themselves for not understanding the situation. All of them wished to return to Cephiro and immediately their wish was answered in another flash of light. As before, they were caught by Clef's flying fish, but Cephiro was nothing like the lush green land they had known. The loss of the Pillar had caused it to collapse into a rocky wasteland (very literally--chunks of the landscape were breaking away because there were no prayers to maintain it) apart from a single castle.

They reunited with Clef, Ferio, and Presea, and also found their former enemies Caldina, Ascot, and Lafarga there, all trying to save the land. Clef, guiltridden for what the girls had gone through, told them they had no need to fight and vowed to find a way to send them home. But the girls refused and asked for their weapons back, deciding to protect Cephiro out of their own heartfelt feelings. When they learned that Ferio was the prince, thus Emeraude's brother, Fuu felt even worse. He reassured her by saying she had fulfilled his sister's wish.

Meanwhile there was a more immediate threat: three other worlds were attempting to invade Cephiro and seize its Pillar System for their own purposes. The new Pillar would be the person with the strongest heart in Cephiro even if they were not native to Cephiro--if one of the invaders took control, they would reshape the land to the benefit of their own country. The nations of Chizeta, Fahren, and Autozam had each sent a flagship with powerful magical and mechanical weapons, using mystical Roads to enter Cephiro. The Magic Knights first met Eagle of Autozam. He was motivated to save his own land and his friend Lantis, and the strongest of the three invaders. His hi-tech mech drove the Magic Knights back, but they were bailed out by Lantis. Lantis was Zagato's brother, it turned out, and had spent some time in Autozam, only returning after Emeraude's death. Lantis and Clef separately searched for the Road that would be traveled by the new Pillar without success.

During a sleepless night, Fuu wandered the castle corridors and met Ferio. They spoke of Emeraude's death and the sorrow that she couldn't be with the one she loved, and expressed their own feelings for each other. While having tea with Hikaru and Umi, Fuu repeated her sister's words and they pledged to do their best together. The land continued to crumble away, and time to find a new Pillar was growing short. Soon afterward Chizeta and Fahren broke into Cephiro. The girls rode out in the Mashin not to fight, but to speak with them and understand their reason for fighting. They didn't get the chance, however, as both ships soon fell to fighting each other.

Later, she spoke with Umi out of mutual concern over Hikaru, who seemed particularly affected by the tragedy of Emeraude and Zagato (and was not great at looking after herself generally). Their conversation turned to their journey and the Pillar System itself. Though it had caused them such pain, Fuu wondered if it was really their place to judge another world's way of doing things, and how Cephiro's people felt about the Magic Knights who had killed their princess and destroyed their world. They both agreed on their hatred of the Pillar System and pledged to become stronger to protect those they loved in Cephiro.

The three flagships attacked again, and they had an arduous battle, but Autozam ended it by destroying the other ships' Roads. Hikaru broke into Autozam's road, but the effort knocked her out and they had to retreat to the castle. Even so, she still wanted to look for the Road to the Pillar herself, as Umi and Fuu found when they intercepted her. Mokona, Ascot, and Ferio joined them in a scouting expedition, during which Fuu puzzled out the hints that the "Magic Knight" legend did not originate in Cephiro itself. Another battle interrupted them, but this time Chizeta and Fahren had decided to defend Cephiro from Autozam after a frank discussion with Eagle.

In the midst of the battle, the Road to the Pillar opened. The girls donned the Mashin as Mokona revealed itself to be the Creator of all four worlds, starting with Earth: after seeing it turn to strife and chaos, it had created Cephiro and its Pillar System to be a land of peace and order. Hikaru and Eagle were taken into the Road to undergo the trial.

Fuu and Umi obviously weren't going to sit by and let their friend fight alone. They tried to break into the Road to the Pillar and begged Mokona to let them through, while Lantis straight-up threatened to kill it if either candidate died. Eventually, Hikaru won the battle with Eagle, but she tried to bring him back with her, even if it cost her life. Finally, Umi and Fuu were able to break through and reach her, and the Mashin combined once more to bring them and Eagle out safely. Hikaru ascended as the new Pillar of Cephiro, but she rejected the position immediately. She had no desire to continue the system that had led to such heartbreak and divested her power among all the people of Cephiro so they could decide their own fates. Mokona accepted this outcome and left Cephiro with the Mashin, and returned the girls back to Tokyo. It would not be the end of their visits to Cephiro, however--they could visit at will by returning to Tokyo Tower.

| timeline | Shortly after the final battle, but before the epilogue. Mangaverse.

| abilities |

Fuu uses wind-elemental magic and has several combat spells. She can also create new spells at need.
- Healing Winds: Heals wounds. Wouldn't work on broken bones and sickness, though.
- Binding Wind: Tightly wraps the target in breezes to immobilize them.
- Guardian Wind: A protective, spherical shield that can deflect physical and some magical attacks.
- Emerald Typhoon: A powerful attack spell where strong blades of wind strike the target.

She is also a skilled archer and a fairly decent swordswoman.

| inventory |
1. Lightweight armor consisting of a pauldron and breastplate
2. Glove with a magical storage jewel
3. A five-foot sword. In the jewel. Incidentally, only Fuu can wield it. If anyone else tries to hold it, it immediately becomes far too heavy to lift.

| samples |

| amber entry | Test Drive

| prose sample | She had been whisked off right from Cephiro--that was fortunate, perhaps, because she was equipped for whatever potential dangers this tree might hold. Who had taken her? Why? And, most importantly, where were Hikaru and Umi? Fuu clenched her hand over her armor as she searched the immediate area, but she didn't stray far from the light and the two gems on either side. She didn't call out, either. All manner of small animals would find a centimeters-high human to be worthy prey, and she didn't want to attract that kind of attention.

At least her mysterious abductors had left her a small pack, though at the moment only the clothes seemed to be of practical use. The other items, perhaps magical in nature? They didn't give any clues just by looking at them. Really, Guru Clef had been able to her and the others in Cephiro, even while they were completely panicking. Fuu shook her head at the inconsideration of whomever had taken her. Then she turned her head to look at the two gems again.

She drummed her fingertips lightly on her chin. Bright and dark... she wanted to touch one. In fact, the thought became irresistible as soon as it occurred. Other things occurred, like hypnotism and enchantment and especially trap. She made for the darker of the two and reached out to touch it, jerking in surprise when a fragment dropped into her hand--then she let out an involuntary yelp at a strange sound and sensation on her back.

"...Wings," she said, twisting her head back to look. "My, my... I thought I couldn't be shocked by other worlds anymore!" The light, airy statement rang hollow without Umi to snap back at it. But at least having wings would make searching for her friends easier. Fuu fluttered them experimentally and then took off for the hole in the ceiling.