Fly Me To The Moon

How am I handling Hakuno so far? Positive/negative feedback goes here!

I'm still kind of unfamiliar with this kind of structured thing, so if these posts generally include anything else, hey, lemme know about that too. Any way I can spruce up this journal? I'm open to advice.

⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Hakuno Kishinami
Age: Complicated? Going with 18, though, as at least a year has passed since the events of Extra wherein Hakuno was nominally a 2nd-year in High School.
Canon: Fate/Extella
Canon Point: After the true end of the game.

Background:

Alright strap in because the Type-Moon wiki is garbage. Nevertheless, this is the most informative link, despite missing a lot.
Here is Fate/Extella's wiki page.
The Fate/Extra series takes place in a universe where the moon is actually an enormous photonic crystal, which essentially functions as a magic supercomputer that has recorded all of history, as well as any parallel timelines. Somehow or another this also gives it the ability to grant wishes. Sort of. It's complicated and poorly explained, but supposedly being able to see "what if" timelines allows it to move to timelines where the wish is reality. There used to be a similar system on Earth, but for whatever reason Earth ran out of mana, so mages on Earth resorted to a technique called spirit hacking to, in essence, hack their way into the Moon Cell Automaton (the Moon Matrix, basically). Here, the mages would fight the Holy Grail War for the sake of winning a chance at having their wish granted by the Moon Cell. This is all explained a little better here. The relevant one will be the one from Extra, as it's closest to what's mentioned in Extella and CCC was never released internationally and in-canon dialogue indicates nobody remembers what happened in it anyway. This journal will borrow elements from Extra and Extella/Zero, which was meant to explain the events prior to Extella but was mostly just the male route of Extra with some elements from CCC. It's... a mess.

Hakuno almost fell in the preliminary rounds of this war, but her will to survive drew the attention of a Servant, a Legendary Soul contracted to participants in the war who possess the strength of will to fight. For the sake of this app and continuity in general, Hakuno's first Servant was a Saber class, Nero Claudius. Together they fought against many opponents and won. Among her early matches was one against a young man who had been made out to be her friend in the preliminaries, and lingering false memories between them both made them consider each other friends, despite not actually knowing one another. This boy turned out to be an 8-year-old spirit hacker who had joined the war without realizing the stakes, thinking it was just a game for money. After defeating (and consequentially killing) him, an old proud knight, and a young girl who was just the ghost of a child who'd died in the hospital, Hakuno came against a Master who actually deserved such a defeat. The master of a Caster class named Tamamo-no-Mae abused his servant, and tried to use her to escape deletion when they lost. Hakuno used a command spell to save Tamamo, and contracted her as a sub-servant.

Despite never recovering memories of her previous life, Hakuno continued to fight and search for a meaning to it all. Finally, she made it to the center of the SE.RA.PH, the Serial Phantasm that made up the world in which the war was fought. Here she found the Moon Cell core, as well as Twice H. Pieceman. It was revealed that he was an NPC that had gained sentience and had fought in the Holy Grail War, and had come back over and over until he won. But he was unable to enter the core and have his wish granted, so he manipulated the rules of the war to give it its present structure, and invited magi in to fight for the "Grail". It was also revealed that much like him, Hakuno was also a sentient NPC, based on the spirit of a real person who'd been put into a coma in the same event as Twice. But where Twice was dead, Hakuno's body was still alive. His hope in bringing her into the war was that she would win and be able to enter the core just long enough to make a wish before deletion.

When she won, she entered the core and made her wish to end the senseless Holy Grail War, which even before Twice's meddling had just drawn in magi at random to fight to the death simply to observe them. Somehow, in a poorly explained way in-canon, Hakuno does not die here. Or she's brought back, or... something. Extella is unclear on this.

Extella's story is much simpler. Some 14,000 years ago, the Umbral Star Velber passed by Earth and sent the White Titan to destroy all human civilization. It also sent a piece of itself into the moon to try to hack into the Moon Cell, for the purpose of extracting and then destroying the information it contained. Due to the actions of a legendary hero (supposedly Gilgamesh's father) who defeated the Titan on Earth and the Moon Cell's actions to quarantine the infected areas in the SE.RA.PH, the Umbral Star was defeated. The Moon Cell then deployed a jamming signal to mask the location of Earth from Velber, so it would not return in the future. Unfortunately, the systems engineer in charge of the Moon Cell's maintenance, a Legendary Soul of Archimedes, interfaced with the piece of Velber left in the moon and was corrupted by its influence. He then began preparations to re-awaken the sleeping Titan within and after the events of Extra, he brought in Hakuno to help facilitate this.

See, somehow or another Hakuno had acquired the Moon Cell Regalia, a ring that gave her power to access and modify the SE.RA.PH, presumably the way Twice had. Why Archimedes never contacted him, well, maybe the time just wasn't right yet. Anyway, he led Hakuno to the quarantined area of the SE.RA.PH to find the titan Altera, and tried to get her to use the Regalia to attack the titan. Presumably, this would have awakened the titan's true nature as a Destroyer, which she was suppressing due to a lack of desire to become that destructive force again. But Hakuno never actually tried to attack her, so when the titan picked her up, she panicked and used the power of the regalia to split herself - and the regalia - into three parts to keep her or Archimedes from getting the ring. Her Mind (loosely defined by her passions and desires) went to Nero, while her Soul (her logical side) went to Tamamo. Her Body, the empty digital frame that maintained only her base self, stayed with Altera as her prisoner.

The events of the game followed one of the three pieces of Hakuno through different timelines. Apparently, Archimedes had been shifting from one timeline to another in an effort to facilitate Velber's return before a Quantum Timelock, an event which prunes possible timelines and essentially forms a new "trunk" of a metaphorical tree from which timelines sprout. If he were to have succeeded, it would have meant that humanity would be destroyed in all possible futures. His primary method of achieving this goal is awakening Altera's true nature and unleashing her as Seypher, the titan. If it worked, she would have run rampant and demolished the Moon Cell, allowing Velber to find Earth again.

But in the timeline that followed Hakuno's Body, she defeats the other versions of herself and their servants, all while lacking any memories of her own, and regains the full Regalia. But this isn't enough to save Altera from Archimedes' scheming, and in a last-ditch effort Hakuno's Body uses the regalia to transport the memories she'd formed to another version of herself from another timeline. This works, and the Mind of another timeline learns of everything that had happened. She learns of Archimedes' plan, of Altera's situation, and of how petty the war Nero and Tamamo were waging on one another really was. She convinced them both to reconcile... or at least stop fighting long enough for her Mind and Soul to reconnect, and convinced them to join forces to stop Altera from conquering the Moon Cell. They succeeded and convinced her to join them, but to prevent a conflict in the space time continuum (the other Body sent her memories back after fading away, so this one had to, also, to keep the timelines parallel), the Body of Hakuno that had grown to love Altera (and have that love reciprocated) faded away.

The group then fought Archimedes and the fragment of the Umbral Star itself and won. Altera's body was destroyed in the process, but left behind a normal-sized child version of Altera that Hakuno took in as another servant. The game ended with Hakuno, Nero, Tamamo, and Altera living together peacefully, and the threat of the Umbral Star pushed back for the time being. Together, Hakuno and her servants planned to help cultivate the new world that the SE.RA.PH was forming.

Personality:

Hakuno started out as a shy, confused, and conflicted individual. Thrust into the Holy Grail War with no memories and no sense of identity, she depended on her servant Nero for stability and reassurance. This was vital in the early rounds, as there was just so much child murder. Without someone to lean on, she would have broken down early in the war. With no wish of her own and no identity to hold on to, the guilt of crushing the dreams and lives of others weighed heavily on her heart. But ultimately, she fought to survive, and she managed to save one or two of the human combatants (mentioned in Extella but not named, presumably Rin and/or Rani). She's made peace with this fact, but sometimes she's still troubled by the lives lost along the way. The fact that she's not the "real" Hakuno Kishinami doesn't bother her anymore, since the SE.RA.PH is her home and everything around her is, for all intents and purposes, "real" to her. The other Hakuno on Earth is a different person, and not the person she has come to be after everything that's happened. She is determined to live her life on the moon with her servants and defend the peace that she worked to achieve.

Splitting into separate pieces may have affected Hakuno. While split, Hakuno's personalities were somewhat different. Her Mind was more passionate and more bold, but had trouble remembering some things and was easily confused. Her Soul was more calm, collected, and logical, but was also more of a pushover and tended to let Tamamo have her way even when she probably shouldn't have. Her Body was much the same as she was at the start of the Holy Grail War, lost and confused, with no memories or connections to her prior experiences. At the end of Extella, the Mind and Soul were reunited, but the Body disappeared. Even so, the experiences of the Body who died to send her memories to another timeline are still in Hakuno's head, vague as they sometimes can be. She recognizes these memories aren't her own, but she still feels the emotions connected to them. All of these experiences live together in her now, and so do the intense connections to each servant they were tied to. She feels love for both Nero and Tamamo, and a strong desire to protect the child that was left behind by Altera.

She started out as a third-rate wizard who wasn't expected to last past the first round. But she's come too far and evolved too much to be held down by low self-esteem now, and her results speak volumes of her potential. She centers herself with her faith in her servants, because together there's nothing they can't accomplish.

Hakuno is a kind, empathetic person who always tries to understand other people. Whether they're trying to kill her or take over the moon or kidnap her or whatever, she strives to understand people. She's also a bit of a dork, and doesn't always read a situation correctly (Read: sometimes she picks the wrong dialogue choice). She's also sentimental as heck, and prone to sinking into a deep spiral of flowery inner monologues, especially when faced with either of her wives servants.

Abilities:

Listed here, but the CCC abilities will be ignored. In Extella she also can have Code Cast abilities to heal or defend her servants, or boost their attack power. Most of her abilities are designed to manipulate the SE.RA.PH through spirit hacking, and are not quite the same as normal magic. For the sake of simplicity, I will restrict her abilities here to basic healing functions. This will use her natural mana instead of manipulating the virtual SE.RA.PH. She will also bring the Regalia, though its connection to the Moon Cell will be severed and it will retain none of its meaningful functions. It's essentially just a ring that she can merge with now, so her servant can wear it with her inside.

Alignment:

Elios. Hakuno's love for her servants and for Altera are what drives her now, and is the root of her desires to protect them and the life they've built.

Other:

I understand the Fate/ universe, and the Extra series in particular, can be a convoluted mess, so I apologize if only half of this even made any sense. I also apologize if the emotion sample is too short! I would have included some effects in the general thread but it slipped my mind at the time!


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉


General Sample:

Test Drive

Emotion Sample:

Another lazy day. Hakuno stares out the window at the city outside, lost in thought. Having found herself in a strange and unfamiliar place, she feels like she's once again dropped on her head and left to figure things out on her own. That's not true, of course. She's got Caster with her. But Saber and Altera aren't here. A small twist in her chest forms as old worries resurface. Saber can more than easily take care of herself, and the SE.RA.PH besides. But she's prone to loneliness, and without Hakuno there, she might falter. This thought troubles Hakuno, and she rests her head on her hands. Behind her, the shadow cast by the sunlight grows deeper.

The people here are nice, but she can't manage to feel connected to any of them. Not even just the native people, but the others as well. The fact of the matter is, most of them are real humans (or at least real people). Before coming here, she hadn't thought about it since the War. It was just a fact of life. She was a digital existence in a virtual world. But how can she even exist here? Is she still a collection of spiritron energy? A real human? Something in between? Her brow furrows, and her gaze drifts off into the distance, at nothing in particular. Behind her, the darkness of her shadow becomes even deeper. Inside it, points of light begin to form, but the darkness doesn't disperse.

Is this real? Is this a memory of another timeline, another dimension? Is she the same Hakuno who fought the Holy Grail War? The same who helped defeat the harbingers of Velber? Should it really matter? Her shadow stretches to the wall as she thinks of this, forming a galaxy in the darkness, countless distant stars and worlds.

And then she blinks, and turns around. The room is normal. She shakes her head and puts those thoughts aside. She has to stay strong, and work so that she and Caster can return home together. She slips on her shoes and walks out of the room to go find her, not noticing the single rose laying on the counter where her shadow had been.