Edward 'Ed' Finklestien (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fuhrinkaed) wrote2016-06-03 11:11 am
fuhrinkaed) wrote2016-06-03 11:11 am
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♚ OOC
Name: Trinam
Age: 29
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
trinam, kwikkidus on aim, m(dot)prather42(at)gmail(dot)com
Character In-game: None
♛ IC
Name: Edward 'Ed' Finklestein
Canon: OC
Canon Point: 3 years after the death of his sister, Lila
Age: 22
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Appearance: Do you see all this nerd? This is a fine nerd.
World Info/Background: Tens of thousands of years ago, in another dimension called Reverse World, dark gods appeared and attempted to take over. They were opposed by an army of highly advanced magic users, led by their king, a master of magic and hero without peer. The battle continued for nearly half a century, with neither side gaining any distinct advantage over the other. The stalemate finally ended when the king, knowing her life was near its end while the dark gods' could last until eternity, made a final gambit to seal the dark gods away at the cost of her own life.
First, the king rounded up the dark gods and sent both herself and them to Earth, a planet in another dimension, well out of reach of any of the dark gods' followers. There, she bound the dark gods to the planet itself, and created seven Seals from her own soul that would hold them in their prison forever.
The Seals represented the raw elements of the universe: Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, Light, Darkness, and Ether. Each Seal contained a portion of the king's power, and had the ability to bind itself to the soul of a living being. While bound, the Seal would take a part of the host's psyche and imprint it onto itself, allowing it to grow alongside them. In exchange, in times of crisis, the host would be allowed to access their Seal's power.
As time passed and the planet grew, magic and monsters eventually became the things of legends, forced into hiding due to humanity's focus on science and fear of the unknown. Their modern-day Earth became much like our own, only with supernatural phenomena hiding in its nooks and crannies. The existence of the Seals themselves are only known to a handful of people, and their purpose to even less; those who seek them tend to only do so to obtain their great powers. For all intents and purposes, as far as most humans were concerned, magic just didn't exist.
That changed thirty-nine years before present day, when Tokyo disappeared in a massive column of darkness as part of the plans of an organization known as the Council of Seals. They sent the entire city into Reverse World using an ancient ritual in order to hold it hostage against the few people who may be able to stop them—the people they had reasoned would be most likely to be carrying one of the Seals.
Although it was hard to piece together everything that happened inside the city, one story persisted among the survivors. They talked about a man that merged with a dragon and fought all manner of monsters, day and night, protecting the city to the best of his abilities. His greatest battle, they said, was against a fiery-haired demon; the battle itself resulted in half of Shinjuku being leveled to the ground. He wasn't the only one that fought to protect the populace, however. All kinds of so-called "monsters," super-powered humans, and magic users came out of the woodwork, and not all from Earth.
When the city returned, over a million people were dead or missing, and millions more were wounded. The event, eventually called "Tokyo Reverse," forced the entire world to admit to two truths, one old, one new: Magic was real, and the Earth wasn't prepared for it. To correct the latter truth, the world's governments got together and, with the help of independently wealthy investors and other parties, created departments and institutions to train people to fight against otherworldly threats. One such institution, the focus of our story, was a high school.
The Academy is a high school located far off of the coast of Japan. It is not the only school of its kind, but it is the first, and considered to be the best. Opening a mere four years after Tokyo Reverse, it is a self-sufficient facility that employs the best it can get its hands on, which has resulted in a staff consisting of some of the best minds and powers the planet has to offer. Many have been "in the know" about magic their whole lives, some know about the Seals, and at least one is in possession of one.
Students at the Academy are expected to be just as exceptional as the faculty. They are to maintain good grades in their regular classes, as well as exceed in the special classes—those aimed towards dealing with magical and superhuman threats through either combative or diplomatic means. Graduating from the combination high school/college leads with rare exception to an offer from at least one national military's anti-paranormal assault or 'APA' teams. The top 5-10% of any class are usually scouted and given lucrative contracts not unlike what professional athletes make. A completed stay at the Academy is synonymous with living comfortably, as magic research groups and private security companies alongside the military itself all highly value the high pedigree the school's degree carries.
The technology employed at the school is some of the best found in the world, which is fairly similar to our own, but slightly more advanced. Some functions, like cleaning and maintenance, are relegated to robots. Mechanical exoskeletons ("mech suits") exist, and are being improved on all the time. Students whose talents lay with science are encouraged to explore their talents, and various projects with focuses to improve humanity overall are carried out all the time.
---
As for where Ed fits into all of this, he was born with the Seal of Ether. His half-sister Lila, a hugely successful businesswoman whose hunger for power was matched only by her lack of moral fiber, stole it from him when he was an infant and murdered his parents when they walked in on her doing it. She let Ed live on a whim, to prove to herself that she deserved the Seal because he would have squandered its gifts anyways. She kept him in a mansion as a child, and left him largely to his own devices, assigning nannies to keep watch of him and ensure he was healthy but allowing him total freedom to pursue whatever he liked. He devoted himself to the study of magic and the paranormal, wanting to learn all he could about it to the point of obsession, and never actually leaving his house or spending time with other people. He wound up learning about proper magic from a Dryad who took a liking to him, and quickly developed a gift for casting elemental magics.
At sixteen, he asked his sister for permission to take the Academy entrance exam, and was admitted due to a combination of middling test scores and incredible magical talent. He spent two years in school there and he made a number of friends, was in the background of a club called Ryuoumaru which existed to deal with resolving crisis situations on the island, and was peripherally involved with several criseses ranging from a crazed cult of pain-worshipping weirdoes to a demon trying to regain its full power. He also got a girlfriend (who was his eternal rival), broke up with her over the summer of the first year, and got distracted by a god, the Dryad's boss apparently, showing up on his doorstep to say 'Hi.'
The element god known as 'Balance Dragon' ("Call me Lucas. It sounds nicer.") told him what Lila did when he was a child, and also what she didn't do--Lila didn't manage to steal the entire Seal, and that meant it was in two pieces. It was crucially important that he defeat his sister and restore balance to the Seal before either one of them died, or else--well, nobody knew what would happen, and that made it even more dangerous. Lucas stayed on as a magic tutor to help Ed master the combat prowess he'd need to have to hold a candle to his big sister, who was by this point acknowledged as one of the strongest beings to ever exist.
His chance came at the end of his second year, as the Academy was attacked by an organization headed by Lila, which was dedicated to the gathering and stealing of all of the Elemental Seals. It turns out that a lot of Ryuoumaru's activities had been interfering with Lila and company's plans to gather the Seals for themselves, and several of the villains they disposed of over the last several plot arcs were related to the organization. Putting together a slapdash plan, he and two friends went at Lila in a direct fight. The three of them put together seemed to hold their own, until Ed asked Lila why she hurt everyone and stole the Seal. She told him about how she'd always wanted magic but could never do any of her own, and that without the ability to use magic their father would never pay her any attention or care about her at all--she'd only ever wanted to have someone be proud of her. He believed her, and offered her a hand of friendship if she'd stop being so crazy and evil. She pulled him into a hug, stabbed him in the kidney and called him a sucker. He lost consciousness and the ensuing fight wound up ripping apart the Academy and the island it was built on, sending everyone there to the far reaches of both the Earth and Reverse World.
Ed wound up wandering the wilderness of the Reverse World for three years at Lucas's behest, accompanied by a demon who tought him a nearly-extinct form of magic and an insect girl who was basically just there to be the cute one. During his travels he met with several notable figures in the Reverse World, and trained under them to further perfect his elemental magics. He also decided to try making his own spell once, but nearly blew up all of existence when it ran out of control so he decided not to do that anymore. He grew more competent as a result of his training, and in the end wound up heading to the biggest city in all of the Reverse World for a go at winning a way home by winning a tournament that occurs once every several years. In an appropriately badass tournament arc, Ed showed off his newly refined strength and skill to great effect and found his way to the top four, where he engaged in a battle royal between himself, two of his friends, and an evil mage named Delg who wanted to use the tournament to take over the city. After a lengthy battle, Ed revealed one of his trump cards--a spiritual pact he'd made with the Balance Dragon--and the immense boost to his magical power let him straight chump Delg, at the cost of overloading his spiritual avatar and making it explode (disqualifying him from the final victory).
With the tournament won by one of his friends, everyone went home. Lila attacked all the Seals at once to tire them out and set free the Dark Gods. Delg showed up on Lila's side to help with the process and get a little revenge on Ed. One of their friends betrayed them and revealed himself as both evil and holding the Seal of Chaos--an eighth seal and the counterbalance to the Seal of Ether. Fighting against Dark God-possessed Sealholders happened. Somewhere in the middle of it all, there was a romantic subplot with the demon who tought him that nearly extinct form of magic. The Dark Gods, being freed, had to be sealed away again. The team came together and pulled this off, though one of their mentor figures died to supply the energy required to fully reform the prison.
With the prison reformed, the only major issue left was dealing with Lila. After gathering on the ruins of the old Academy's island, the protagonists caught up for a while and reformed their friendships before going after her on an artificial mechanical island she built in the ocean. Ed found his way into one final fight with Delg on the island, which he won fairly handily. Then, he faced off against Lila. In a ridiculously over the top shonen-style battle, Ed managed to defeat her and get back the portion of his Seal that she stole at the cost of her life. The story, for all practical purposes, ends there.
Life, however, goes on. Getting his late sister's assets in order and dealing with the fallout of her death took the better part of two years, and by the time he was done he wanted to move on to learning something new. Not being nailed down anywhere on Earth, he took Lucas's advice and left for Endemiyon to go to their premiere magical college. He was able to be admitted despite his lack of a recognized degree due to his strong extracurriculars such as 'Having the Seal that represents magic itself,' 'saving the entire universe from the Dark Gods, and also that crazy woman who freed them,' 'placing third overall at the tournament to find the strongest person in all Endemiyon through raw force of magical talent,' and also a letter of recommendation from the dragon god of balance.
On his first day at the new school, he was jumped by an elemental mage named Susan who demanded that he drop everything and let her spar with him. Being a pushover, he agreed. She attacked with a variety of tactics designed to beat the abilities he'd shown during the tournament two years ago, but he made short work of her. Angry, she stormed off--only to wind up being assigned to the same workshop as Ed by some fluke of chance (Alongside another girl named Adhara and a few other people who are less important and thus don't get names). She served as equal parts attempted tormentor (Attempted--Ed is very hard to properly torment), friend, and occasional dispenser of exposition.
At this point he's spent a year in college doing various research projects with his workshop and getting into various hijinks--and the group's grown to be a fairly tight group of friends.
Personality:
If you only had two words to describe Ed, those words would be 'selfishly kind.' He has a very strong sense of right and wrong, and a hair-trigger reflex to act on what he thinks is right. He is naive, optimistic, and trusting to a fault. A severe fault. He genuinely believes that everyone on earth could get along if they really wanted to, and is constantly baffled by those who think differently. He tries so hard to get along with everyone and see the good in everything that he (unintentionally) deludes himself—it often takes a blatant act of malice in order to see a "bad guy" for what s/he really is.
He makes friends quickly, but many of his friendships are one-sided. If he thinks of you as a friend, then that's what you are whether you like it or not. He has no problem whatsoever going all-out for his friends... and strangers, too! Because of it, he tends to take on too many tasks and go in too many directions at once, and finds himself overwhelmed and burnt out in short order.
A magic nerd in the extreme, Ed has an encyclopedic grasp on paranormal phenomenon and magical theory and is seldom found without some kind of book in his hand, or his head buried in it. Though he detests real fighting, his life has shown him the benefits of learning how to fight in order to protect himself and others, which is the only kind of real fighting he's resolved to do. When he is resolved to fight he shows no mercy--he doesn't believe in 'honor' on the battlefield, only in winning.
To say Ed has lived a privileged life is a vast understatement. Up until his admission to the Academy, his life has been spent with a constantly changing circle of nannies, all of which were instructed to leave him to do whatever he wanted. As a result, he's formed some very odd notions about how the world and the people in it work, which in turn allows him to come up with some of the most absurd reasons for the reasons why people do what they do. Despite his overwhelming ability to learn and analyze almost anything having to do with the occult, in terms of regular academics he's average at best. He finds it difficult to motivate himself to do anything by himself outside of the subject of magic (and, by extent, the supernatural), which leads to a hyper-focus that often drifts into tunnel vision. This is most apparent in his focus on 'balance,' and finding the natural equilibrium of the world and figuring out how to fit into it properly.
While he has a lot of friends, many of his friendships are shallow. This makes it difficult for him to honestly open up to anyone, for fear that his 'not nice' thoughts will drive them away. He doesn't like conflict, and when he does find himself in an argument, he tries to be as tactful as possible. Unfortunately for him, his "tact" is usually the sacrifice of his own opinion, because he believes he must understand the other person's point of view first. This often leads to evasive and weak counters on his part. He genuinely means well, but is emotionally evasive without realizing it. If you do get him talking, his mouth tends to move faster than his brain, making him phrase things badly and causing him to insult people without meaning to (his naivete about others' motivations doesn't help, either). If called out on it, he'll panic and start talking even faster, which only puts him deeper into the hole he originally dug himself into.
Having been brought up without ever wanting for anything has left Ed with some crazy ideas about the value of a dollar, or just "earning" things in general. He is terrible with money, and tends to spend or give it away in an act of charity as quickly as he comes into it since he's never been denied the privilege. The speed at which he makes friends and places trust in others can be taken as a warning to his impatience: He is very bad at having to wait for long periods of time for anything. He has gotten much better about this over time, thanks to school's environment and real friends, but an entire lifetime of instant gratification is hard to shake.
He's not all sunshine and rainbows, though. His inner monologue can occasionally run quite cynical, and he feels a lot of guilt over having to kill his sister despite her being objectively the worst person to have ever existed. He's also keenly aware of what someone with his level of power can do, and hesitates to ever go outside of the norms because he's worried that he might blow up all of existence by accident--a fear he won't have within a limited system like Crosscheck has, but a good fear to have back home. These sorts of feelings are among the ones he considers 'not nice' and will avoid voicing, but he's often far more perceptive about things than he lets on, and even if he doesn't always get how people other than himself work he's got a natural gift for picking up patterns. With him being naturally lighthearted and eccentric, he sometimes plays up his own airheaded traits in order to avoid letting others pick up on all of this. In his view, it's better to be thought of as an idiot than to be disliked, and he assumes people wouldn't like him as much if they knew he wasn't always nice all the time.
Skills/Abilities: Ed is bullshit.
To expand on that, Ed is from an incredibly shonen battle manga-styled canon, and is a protagonist. He has absurd magical powers, and in canon specializes primarily in elemental spells (earth/fire/wind/water/light/dark) and weilding raw magic in focused beams of destructions called 'Bursts.' He can also break down ongoing spells into base magical components called motes, and use them to cast other spells or refill his own mana pool. He's used to having effectively infinite MP thanks to winning the genetic lottery, so running out of mana in crosscheck will be a new experience for him. While he has an incredible talent for picking up new spells and learning new types of magic, he tends to do it by compensating for inexperience with raw power, giving him bad habits for learning and refining new spells now that he won't have said infinite MP around to offset his methods. He also has an incredible amount of focus (in canon he managed to stay awake and casting spells by force of sheer determination despite having just had an entire belt of gating gun ammo emptied right into his torso, give or take an explosion or two) and a talent for solving riddles and puzzles. Obviously, he won't be able to take nearly as much damage before falling over due to the limits of crosscheck, but he still has a above-average ability to stay on his feet.
He also has basic swordsman skills from his stint of training in the Reverse World, and several utility spells, including 'cleaning magic' and 'turning into a girl and back.' His sword abilities are average at best (he's a novice), and not being able to magically clean himself and his clothes means he'll have to shower again.
Magic Weapon: A staff made of gnarled oak with a dragon's head carved into the top in a perpetual roar, a pair of rubies serving as its eyes. It comes to a point at the bottom. Its active ability is to focus mana into the pointed tip in a spiral to create an energy drill for a powerful penetrative strike that's particularly good for breaking through armor or shields. The weapon is quite grabby, though--the active ability pulls as much of its user's mana into the point as it can. It makes the drill quite strong, but only good for one strike before the user is left on the cusp of falling unconscious.
Mastery of the weapon makes you able to fight back against and then properly control the strong mana pull of the active ability, so that the user can use the ability multiple times at a lower level of power without instantly falling unconscious.
Carrier: A small dragon with butterfly wings, roughly the size of a large hosuecat. It cannot breathe fire, but its breath inexplicably smells like those cinnamon red-hot candies at all times.
Sample: Here is a link to my TDM toplevel. I have more if you would like as well.
Name: Trinam
Age: 29
Contact:
Character In-game: None
♛ IC
Name: Edward 'Ed' Finklestein
Canon: OC
Canon Point: 3 years after the death of his sister, Lila
Age: 22
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Appearance: Do you see all this nerd? This is a fine nerd.
World Info/Background: Tens of thousands of years ago, in another dimension called Reverse World, dark gods appeared and attempted to take over. They were opposed by an army of highly advanced magic users, led by their king, a master of magic and hero without peer. The battle continued for nearly half a century, with neither side gaining any distinct advantage over the other. The stalemate finally ended when the king, knowing her life was near its end while the dark gods' could last until eternity, made a final gambit to seal the dark gods away at the cost of her own life.
First, the king rounded up the dark gods and sent both herself and them to Earth, a planet in another dimension, well out of reach of any of the dark gods' followers. There, she bound the dark gods to the planet itself, and created seven Seals from her own soul that would hold them in their prison forever.
The Seals represented the raw elements of the universe: Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, Light, Darkness, and Ether. Each Seal contained a portion of the king's power, and had the ability to bind itself to the soul of a living being. While bound, the Seal would take a part of the host's psyche and imprint it onto itself, allowing it to grow alongside them. In exchange, in times of crisis, the host would be allowed to access their Seal's power.
As time passed and the planet grew, magic and monsters eventually became the things of legends, forced into hiding due to humanity's focus on science and fear of the unknown. Their modern-day Earth became much like our own, only with supernatural phenomena hiding in its nooks and crannies. The existence of the Seals themselves are only known to a handful of people, and their purpose to even less; those who seek them tend to only do so to obtain their great powers. For all intents and purposes, as far as most humans were concerned, magic just didn't exist.
That changed thirty-nine years before present day, when Tokyo disappeared in a massive column of darkness as part of the plans of an organization known as the Council of Seals. They sent the entire city into Reverse World using an ancient ritual in order to hold it hostage against the few people who may be able to stop them—the people they had reasoned would be most likely to be carrying one of the Seals.
Although it was hard to piece together everything that happened inside the city, one story persisted among the survivors. They talked about a man that merged with a dragon and fought all manner of monsters, day and night, protecting the city to the best of his abilities. His greatest battle, they said, was against a fiery-haired demon; the battle itself resulted in half of Shinjuku being leveled to the ground. He wasn't the only one that fought to protect the populace, however. All kinds of so-called "monsters," super-powered humans, and magic users came out of the woodwork, and not all from Earth.
When the city returned, over a million people were dead or missing, and millions more were wounded. The event, eventually called "Tokyo Reverse," forced the entire world to admit to two truths, one old, one new: Magic was real, and the Earth wasn't prepared for it. To correct the latter truth, the world's governments got together and, with the help of independently wealthy investors and other parties, created departments and institutions to train people to fight against otherworldly threats. One such institution, the focus of our story, was a high school.
The Academy is a high school located far off of the coast of Japan. It is not the only school of its kind, but it is the first, and considered to be the best. Opening a mere four years after Tokyo Reverse, it is a self-sufficient facility that employs the best it can get its hands on, which has resulted in a staff consisting of some of the best minds and powers the planet has to offer. Many have been "in the know" about magic their whole lives, some know about the Seals, and at least one is in possession of one.
Students at the Academy are expected to be just as exceptional as the faculty. They are to maintain good grades in their regular classes, as well as exceed in the special classes—those aimed towards dealing with magical and superhuman threats through either combative or diplomatic means. Graduating from the combination high school/college leads with rare exception to an offer from at least one national military's anti-paranormal assault or 'APA' teams. The top 5-10% of any class are usually scouted and given lucrative contracts not unlike what professional athletes make. A completed stay at the Academy is synonymous with living comfortably, as magic research groups and private security companies alongside the military itself all highly value the high pedigree the school's degree carries.
The technology employed at the school is some of the best found in the world, which is fairly similar to our own, but slightly more advanced. Some functions, like cleaning and maintenance, are relegated to robots. Mechanical exoskeletons ("mech suits") exist, and are being improved on all the time. Students whose talents lay with science are encouraged to explore their talents, and various projects with focuses to improve humanity overall are carried out all the time.
---
As for where Ed fits into all of this, he was born with the Seal of Ether. His half-sister Lila, a hugely successful businesswoman whose hunger for power was matched only by her lack of moral fiber, stole it from him when he was an infant and murdered his parents when they walked in on her doing it. She let Ed live on a whim, to prove to herself that she deserved the Seal because he would have squandered its gifts anyways. She kept him in a mansion as a child, and left him largely to his own devices, assigning nannies to keep watch of him and ensure he was healthy but allowing him total freedom to pursue whatever he liked. He devoted himself to the study of magic and the paranormal, wanting to learn all he could about it to the point of obsession, and never actually leaving his house or spending time with other people. He wound up learning about proper magic from a Dryad who took a liking to him, and quickly developed a gift for casting elemental magics.
At sixteen, he asked his sister for permission to take the Academy entrance exam, and was admitted due to a combination of middling test scores and incredible magical talent. He spent two years in school there and he made a number of friends, was in the background of a club called Ryuoumaru which existed to deal with resolving crisis situations on the island, and was peripherally involved with several criseses ranging from a crazed cult of pain-worshipping weirdoes to a demon trying to regain its full power. He also got a girlfriend (who was his eternal rival), broke up with her over the summer of the first year, and got distracted by a god, the Dryad's boss apparently, showing up on his doorstep to say 'Hi.'
The element god known as 'Balance Dragon' ("Call me Lucas. It sounds nicer.") told him what Lila did when he was a child, and also what she didn't do--Lila didn't manage to steal the entire Seal, and that meant it was in two pieces. It was crucially important that he defeat his sister and restore balance to the Seal before either one of them died, or else--well, nobody knew what would happen, and that made it even more dangerous. Lucas stayed on as a magic tutor to help Ed master the combat prowess he'd need to have to hold a candle to his big sister, who was by this point acknowledged as one of the strongest beings to ever exist.
His chance came at the end of his second year, as the Academy was attacked by an organization headed by Lila, which was dedicated to the gathering and stealing of all of the Elemental Seals. It turns out that a lot of Ryuoumaru's activities had been interfering with Lila and company's plans to gather the Seals for themselves, and several of the villains they disposed of over the last several plot arcs were related to the organization. Putting together a slapdash plan, he and two friends went at Lila in a direct fight. The three of them put together seemed to hold their own, until Ed asked Lila why she hurt everyone and stole the Seal. She told him about how she'd always wanted magic but could never do any of her own, and that without the ability to use magic their father would never pay her any attention or care about her at all--she'd only ever wanted to have someone be proud of her. He believed her, and offered her a hand of friendship if she'd stop being so crazy and evil. She pulled him into a hug, stabbed him in the kidney and called him a sucker. He lost consciousness and the ensuing fight wound up ripping apart the Academy and the island it was built on, sending everyone there to the far reaches of both the Earth and Reverse World.
Ed wound up wandering the wilderness of the Reverse World for three years at Lucas's behest, accompanied by a demon who tought him a nearly-extinct form of magic and an insect girl who was basically just there to be the cute one. During his travels he met with several notable figures in the Reverse World, and trained under them to further perfect his elemental magics. He also decided to try making his own spell once, but nearly blew up all of existence when it ran out of control so he decided not to do that anymore. He grew more competent as a result of his training, and in the end wound up heading to the biggest city in all of the Reverse World for a go at winning a way home by winning a tournament that occurs once every several years. In an appropriately badass tournament arc, Ed showed off his newly refined strength and skill to great effect and found his way to the top four, where he engaged in a battle royal between himself, two of his friends, and an evil mage named Delg who wanted to use the tournament to take over the city. After a lengthy battle, Ed revealed one of his trump cards--a spiritual pact he'd made with the Balance Dragon--and the immense boost to his magical power let him straight chump Delg, at the cost of overloading his spiritual avatar and making it explode (disqualifying him from the final victory).
With the tournament won by one of his friends, everyone went home. Lila attacked all the Seals at once to tire them out and set free the Dark Gods. Delg showed up on Lila's side to help with the process and get a little revenge on Ed. One of their friends betrayed them and revealed himself as both evil and holding the Seal of Chaos--an eighth seal and the counterbalance to the Seal of Ether. Fighting against Dark God-possessed Sealholders happened. Somewhere in the middle of it all, there was a romantic subplot with the demon who tought him that nearly extinct form of magic. The Dark Gods, being freed, had to be sealed away again. The team came together and pulled this off, though one of their mentor figures died to supply the energy required to fully reform the prison.
With the prison reformed, the only major issue left was dealing with Lila. After gathering on the ruins of the old Academy's island, the protagonists caught up for a while and reformed their friendships before going after her on an artificial mechanical island she built in the ocean. Ed found his way into one final fight with Delg on the island, which he won fairly handily. Then, he faced off against Lila. In a ridiculously over the top shonen-style battle, Ed managed to defeat her and get back the portion of his Seal that she stole at the cost of her life. The story, for all practical purposes, ends there.
Life, however, goes on. Getting his late sister's assets in order and dealing with the fallout of her death took the better part of two years, and by the time he was done he wanted to move on to learning something new. Not being nailed down anywhere on Earth, he took Lucas's advice and left for Endemiyon to go to their premiere magical college. He was able to be admitted despite his lack of a recognized degree due to his strong extracurriculars such as 'Having the Seal that represents magic itself,' 'saving the entire universe from the Dark Gods, and also that crazy woman who freed them,' 'placing third overall at the tournament to find the strongest person in all Endemiyon through raw force of magical talent,' and also a letter of recommendation from the dragon god of balance.
On his first day at the new school, he was jumped by an elemental mage named Susan who demanded that he drop everything and let her spar with him. Being a pushover, he agreed. She attacked with a variety of tactics designed to beat the abilities he'd shown during the tournament two years ago, but he made short work of her. Angry, she stormed off--only to wind up being assigned to the same workshop as Ed by some fluke of chance (Alongside another girl named Adhara and a few other people who are less important and thus don't get names). She served as equal parts attempted tormentor (Attempted--Ed is very hard to properly torment), friend, and occasional dispenser of exposition.
At this point he's spent a year in college doing various research projects with his workshop and getting into various hijinks--and the group's grown to be a fairly tight group of friends.
Personality:
If you only had two words to describe Ed, those words would be 'selfishly kind.' He has a very strong sense of right and wrong, and a hair-trigger reflex to act on what he thinks is right. He is naive, optimistic, and trusting to a fault. A severe fault. He genuinely believes that everyone on earth could get along if they really wanted to, and is constantly baffled by those who think differently. He tries so hard to get along with everyone and see the good in everything that he (unintentionally) deludes himself—it often takes a blatant act of malice in order to see a "bad guy" for what s/he really is.
He makes friends quickly, but many of his friendships are one-sided. If he thinks of you as a friend, then that's what you are whether you like it or not. He has no problem whatsoever going all-out for his friends... and strangers, too! Because of it, he tends to take on too many tasks and go in too many directions at once, and finds himself overwhelmed and burnt out in short order.
A magic nerd in the extreme, Ed has an encyclopedic grasp on paranormal phenomenon and magical theory and is seldom found without some kind of book in his hand, or his head buried in it. Though he detests real fighting, his life has shown him the benefits of learning how to fight in order to protect himself and others, which is the only kind of real fighting he's resolved to do. When he is resolved to fight he shows no mercy--he doesn't believe in 'honor' on the battlefield, only in winning.
To say Ed has lived a privileged life is a vast understatement. Up until his admission to the Academy, his life has been spent with a constantly changing circle of nannies, all of which were instructed to leave him to do whatever he wanted. As a result, he's formed some very odd notions about how the world and the people in it work, which in turn allows him to come up with some of the most absurd reasons for the reasons why people do what they do. Despite his overwhelming ability to learn and analyze almost anything having to do with the occult, in terms of regular academics he's average at best. He finds it difficult to motivate himself to do anything by himself outside of the subject of magic (and, by extent, the supernatural), which leads to a hyper-focus that often drifts into tunnel vision. This is most apparent in his focus on 'balance,' and finding the natural equilibrium of the world and figuring out how to fit into it properly.
While he has a lot of friends, many of his friendships are shallow. This makes it difficult for him to honestly open up to anyone, for fear that his 'not nice' thoughts will drive them away. He doesn't like conflict, and when he does find himself in an argument, he tries to be as tactful as possible. Unfortunately for him, his "tact" is usually the sacrifice of his own opinion, because he believes he must understand the other person's point of view first. This often leads to evasive and weak counters on his part. He genuinely means well, but is emotionally evasive without realizing it. If you do get him talking, his mouth tends to move faster than his brain, making him phrase things badly and causing him to insult people without meaning to (his naivete about others' motivations doesn't help, either). If called out on it, he'll panic and start talking even faster, which only puts him deeper into the hole he originally dug himself into.
Having been brought up without ever wanting for anything has left Ed with some crazy ideas about the value of a dollar, or just "earning" things in general. He is terrible with money, and tends to spend or give it away in an act of charity as quickly as he comes into it since he's never been denied the privilege. The speed at which he makes friends and places trust in others can be taken as a warning to his impatience: He is very bad at having to wait for long periods of time for anything. He has gotten much better about this over time, thanks to school's environment and real friends, but an entire lifetime of instant gratification is hard to shake.
He's not all sunshine and rainbows, though. His inner monologue can occasionally run quite cynical, and he feels a lot of guilt over having to kill his sister despite her being objectively the worst person to have ever existed. He's also keenly aware of what someone with his level of power can do, and hesitates to ever go outside of the norms because he's worried that he might blow up all of existence by accident--a fear he won't have within a limited system like Crosscheck has, but a good fear to have back home. These sorts of feelings are among the ones he considers 'not nice' and will avoid voicing, but he's often far more perceptive about things than he lets on, and even if he doesn't always get how people other than himself work he's got a natural gift for picking up patterns. With him being naturally lighthearted and eccentric, he sometimes plays up his own airheaded traits in order to avoid letting others pick up on all of this. In his view, it's better to be thought of as an idiot than to be disliked, and he assumes people wouldn't like him as much if they knew he wasn't always nice all the time.
Skills/Abilities: Ed is bullshit.
To expand on that, Ed is from an incredibly shonen battle manga-styled canon, and is a protagonist. He has absurd magical powers, and in canon specializes primarily in elemental spells (earth/fire/wind/water/light/dark) and weilding raw magic in focused beams of destructions called 'Bursts.' He can also break down ongoing spells into base magical components called motes, and use them to cast other spells or refill his own mana pool. He's used to having effectively infinite MP thanks to winning the genetic lottery, so running out of mana in crosscheck will be a new experience for him. While he has an incredible talent for picking up new spells and learning new types of magic, he tends to do it by compensating for inexperience with raw power, giving him bad habits for learning and refining new spells now that he won't have said infinite MP around to offset his methods. He also has an incredible amount of focus (in canon he managed to stay awake and casting spells by force of sheer determination despite having just had an entire belt of gating gun ammo emptied right into his torso, give or take an explosion or two) and a talent for solving riddles and puzzles. Obviously, he won't be able to take nearly as much damage before falling over due to the limits of crosscheck, but he still has a above-average ability to stay on his feet.
He also has basic swordsman skills from his stint of training in the Reverse World, and several utility spells, including 'cleaning magic' and 'turning into a girl and back.' His sword abilities are average at best (he's a novice), and not being able to magically clean himself and his clothes means he'll have to shower again.
Magic Weapon: A staff made of gnarled oak with a dragon's head carved into the top in a perpetual roar, a pair of rubies serving as its eyes. It comes to a point at the bottom. Its active ability is to focus mana into the pointed tip in a spiral to create an energy drill for a powerful penetrative strike that's particularly good for breaking through armor or shields. The weapon is quite grabby, though--the active ability pulls as much of its user's mana into the point as it can. It makes the drill quite strong, but only good for one strike before the user is left on the cusp of falling unconscious.
Mastery of the weapon makes you able to fight back against and then properly control the strong mana pull of the active ability, so that the user can use the ability multiple times at a lower level of power without instantly falling unconscious.
Carrier: A small dragon with butterfly wings, roughly the size of a large hosuecat. It cannot breathe fire, but its breath inexplicably smells like those cinnamon red-hot candies at all times.
Sample: Here is a link to my TDM toplevel. I have more if you would like as well.