Time | Class | Instructor(s) |
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Time | Class | Instructor(s) |
[0800-0930] | ||
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wittyndelicious for the wonderful coding~)bossbattles (formerly giratinium)
Contact: breloomasaurus@gmail.com; giratinium at AIM; hoshidoragon on Skype (text chats only, please!)
Character name: Data Riku. May occasionally be called Dataku or the Journal.
Series: Kingdom Hearts
Gender: Technically genderless, but considered male.
Age and canon point: Dataku looks around fifteen. However, he's not even a week old of his own merit. He has been taken from just before his data is reset by King Mickey.
Requested sponsor: Diamond (I think? This can be changed if you all feel something else suits him better.)
Entry position: Cadet
History: Just gonna write this one out because the wiki doesn't do a very good job at all.
Once upon a time, a certain cricket who went by the name of Jiminy was going through his journals. All of the journals contained a written log of the adventures he had witnessed firsthand, sitting in the hood of his friend and resident savior of worlds, Sora. However, when one of the journals (which had been previously empty) suddenly came up with a mysterious message — ‘Thank Naminé’, and later, ‘Their hurting will be mended when you return to end it’ — Jiminy and the resident mouse-king, Mickey, turned the journal into data. Unfortunately, the journal was almost immediately taken over by ‘bugs’, or viruses, so Mickey also awoke a data version of the hero Sora to go and remove them, as well as to find the true meaning of the mysterious messages.
In the course of these events, another entity besides the data-Sora was created. All of the noncorrupted data of Sora’s adventures chronicled in the Journal needed a vessel to be contained in to protect it from further corruption, and soon enough one was made. That vessel is what we call Data Riku. But even though he is given the name of ‘Riku’, he doesn’t exactly… er, match up. You see, because Data Riku (or ‘Dataku’) is a compilation of all of Sora’s adventures, his appearance is a mishmash as well. What this has done to his personality is explained in the appropriate section, but for now we will cover the physical effects. Dataku takes the body shape of one of Sora’s closest friends, Riku, as he looked at the age of fifteen (around the time of the original Kingdom Hearts game). However, he did not take Riku’s outfit from that time period. Instead, he took Riku’s outfit from a very different point in the journal data (about a year later, in the events roughly around Kingdom Hearts II). Because Data Riku is a representation of all of the adventures, and therefore all of the true Riku’s data, the result was a fifteen-year-old Riku avatar with sixteen-year-old Riku’s clothes.
In the beginning, Dataku could do nothing but stand by and watch while Data Sora ran around and removed the bugs from assorted parts of the data. He appeared a few times trying to help, but Data Sora dismissed him as a villain. Eventually, Dataku took King Mickey and his posse from the real world and place them in a secure datascape copy of the room, so that they could be closer to Data Sora and the answer to the mysterious message. It was also at this point that he was able to actually interact with Mickey and friends physically; from there, he takes Mickey’s place at the computer terminal they’re using to contact Data Sora and becomes the one to guide him on his adventure.
After a while of this, Dataku and King Mickey are forced to actually come to Sora’s side and help him after his weapon is destroyed by an evil witch named Maleficent. Unfortunately, she and her henchman Pete go and kidnap Dataku instead. They take him to a world called Hollow Bastion and infect him with viruses. From this point forward, Dataku becomes a bugged entity who follows all of Maleficent and Pete’s orders, while he is slowly being eaten inside by the bugs. Eventually, it gets to the point where he collapses in the middle of a battle; if nothing is done, the viruses will take him completely, and he will essentially die. Data Sora does not go for this, however, and vouches to actually enter Dataku’s data so that he can debug him, just like he had done for all of the worlds. As Data Sora goes through condensed trials of all of the worlds he has visited, Dataku is able to take his old form within himself as well, and the two have some nice programmed-friend bonding time. Eventually, through defeating the source of Dataku’s bugs, Sora returns the ‘real’ Dataku to his normal waking state. The group has a nice discussion about what's going to happen, and Dataku says that now that the journal is clean, it'll need to be reverted to its previous state -- including himself and Data Sora, who will promptly cease to exist.
At that point, a digital version of Sora’s Heartless (another remnant from the real Sora’s adventures) shows up. As it turns out, this creature was the source of the bugs all along, and it was hoping to get out into the real world to feed on more hearts. Data Sora does not go for this either, so he defeats Data AntiSora (try saying that five times fast). The bugs are now all erased, but there’s one more world: Castle Oblivion, the world from a part of the Journal that was removed a long time before. After Sora heads on through and cleanses that world, the Journal is completely clean.
Dataku falls victim to Time Compression.
King Mickey resets the datascape. Abilities and physical abnormalities: No abnormalities. As for abilities, he has the power to create tunnels between the real world and 'his' datascape, that is, the data contained within King Mickey's computer. He can also access any data within his datascape. Furthermore, when it comes to battle, he bears a data version of the weapon Soul Eater, which in the real world was held by the true Riku. He can also transform into Dark Mode (Soul Eater also pictured), another remnant of the real Riku, and use Darkness-based attacks.
Personality: Data Riku is a very curious case when it comes to personality. Even though he may act like a perfectly normal human being, the fact of the matter is, he as a sentience has only been in existence for a couple of days, and therefore has only had that long to develop a personality of his own. In this way, it makes him almost like a very young child, though the experiences he has watched through Jiminy’s eyes, and learned from, gives him the basic knowledge of how society works. It is also these experiences that give him a vague air of ‘humanity’ – that is, without them, he would act more like a machine than a human. Machines do not speak, machines do not disobey the rules, and machines do not feel. Dataku speaks but only says what he has to, Dataku feels responsible and tries to fix problems in the best way he can, and Dataku does feel, but not enough to stop him from seeming somewhat empty and detached.
Almost every aspect of his personality comes from the data of Sora’s travels within him, because as he said himself, in a sense he is the data. As his appearance comes from Sora’s logs and memories of Riku, so too does the basis of his personality… but again, it is a mashup of different time periods. He is outwardly calm and collected, though has a good enough sense of playfulness to be able to laugh; this comes from Sora’s earliest journey memories of him, when the two of them were competing playfully on the Destiny Islands, their homeworld. Also like Sora’s early-journey memories, he acts strongly on his beliefs and always takes the incentive; it was Riku who decided that he wanted to expand his horizons past the tiny world he lived on and therefore convinced his friends to build a raft to sail to another world, just like it was Dataku who took the very drastic measure of pulling King Mickey and his cohorts into the Datascape without their permission so that he could explain the situation to them, as well as put them in closer proximity to Data Sora if he ever needed help (which, in the end, he did; both Dataku and King Mickey had to go and stand by his side for that one). Of course, after pulling them in, Dataku guilt-tripped himself briefly about it.
Unfortunately, as Riku moves along in the storyline and does some… unfavorable things, he also grew extremely apologetic and guilty about his previous misdoings, even if they were beyond his control; Dataku shows the same tendencies. For example, when he was taken over by bugs and Data Sora had to enter his data in order to cleanse the journal entries, Dataku apologized so much to him that Data Sora literally has to tell him to stop. During the same timeframe, Dataku tells Data Sora that he didn’t have to come in and remove the bugs, because he could do it on his own. It didn’t fool anyone; Dataku was clearly not in the right shape to ‘hold them off a little longer’, and he was just trying to keep Data Sora out of harm’s way. This need to protect his friends is another remnant of late-game Riku, both figuratively and literally: he tried to keep the true Sora from learning about his time in the Darkness in order to keep his mind at ease, and he also literally jumped in front of an attack headed for Sora.
He is unafraid to sacrifice his own well-being for a good cause; when he became the last existing glitched data, he had long since resigned himself to diving into the Darkness, killing the remaining glitches… as well as himself. In a way, this ties in with his sometimes-reckless decisions when the situation calls for it, case in point being him bringing King Mickey and friends into the datascape. (The only reason he could do it was because the bugs had already weakened the walls between the real world and the datascape; in bringing them through, he could have left them at the mercy of the bugs, which would surely have destroyed them.) Near the end of the game, Dataku’s similarities to the real Riku go over the threshold, and he seems to have brief bouts where he begins to think he is Riku. Data Sora and Data Riku have a conversation while Data Sora is cleaning up his data; thinking of them strictly as their data selves, his comment about being jealous of Sora’s many friends wouldn’t make very much sense at all – after all, he is Sora as much as he is anyone else, due to the expansive amount of data within him. But when one looks at the situation as if Data Riku and Data Sora are their real-world counterparts, it makes much more sense. (After all, one of the major reasons Riku turned to the Darkness in the first place is because he seemed to think Sora had replaced him with many new friends.) Of course, since he is essentially channeling many of Riku’s other thoughts and insecurities through the data, it is entirely possible that this is a remnant of Riku’s thoughts as well.
Of course, Dataku never actually thought about any of this in his first adventure as a living being. All he was focused on was fixing all the data. But now that that incident is over… he’s left in a new world with no way to get back and fabricated memories of someone else. He doesn’t know who he is, because he isn’t really anyone. All he has done was hide behind the real Riku's personality, and that is just not acceptable to him. (Oh, just a note: not even this is unique to him. Guess who had a synthetic, but non-digital, copy made of him too, with thoughts that go along exactly the same lines? That’s right. Riku.)
What are your plans for the character in-game?: My hope for Dataku is for him to gradually find his own personality and sense of self through his experiences at Garden.
Anything else?: Dataku does not have any memories of Sora or Riku's before they set out on their great adventures, so he has no idea how a school works.
What do you prefer to be known as? Call me Data Riku. That's what I use as a name.
How old are you? I'm a few days old. [Dataku pauses for a moment, dead serious, before seemingly realizing what he just said.] ...That is, I was created a few days ago. I look and function like a fifteen-year-old.
Do you have any history in combat? Yes.
If so, have you ever killed? ...No. [He needs a moment to think about this one.]
i) How do you feel when you get involved in some project that calls for immediate and rapid activity? I don't 'feel' anything. I just get to work.
ii) Do you organize and initiate leisure activities? No.
iii) What role do you take when working in a group? If I'm the person best suited for the task, then I usually try to take the reins of the project.
iv) How talkative are you around other people? I say what I need to to keep up a conversation.
v) What three things would you want to have with you on a desert island? State your reasoning. One: a computer so I can get into the datascape and leave. Two: some of those solar panel things so I can power the thing from the sun, because obviously there's no electricity on a deserted island. Three... my sword. [He shrugs slightly. Being physical data, he has no need for food or water, so some of his reasonings might be a little... odd.]
vi) Is it important to be liked by a wide range of people? Yes, I think it is.
vii) When the odds are against you, is it worth taking a chance? When there is no other alternative, then possible success is better than guaranteed failure.
viii) Do you consider yourself to be an impulsive person? No.
ix) Would you agree that planning things ahead takes the fun out of life? Not necessarily.
x) Do you like surprises? I suppose.
xi) Do you sometimes wonder if there is something wrong with you? ... [He stares at the interviewer for several minutes.] ...Yes.
xii) Do you consider yourself to be smarter than your superiors, and disagree with their decisions? No. I trust my superiors to make the right decision.
xiii) Lastly, how do you feel about cabbages? ...I've never had a cabbage before.
----
(This probably isn't what actually happened, since it seems that Time Compression affects the datascape as well, but there you are.)
He had told Mickey that it was better if he was erased. There was no point taking up memory on the computer for a program that was no longer useful. That was the analogy he had given, and it was true enough in his opinion; in the end, it won over Mickey as well, though he took his time with farewells. He told the digitized journal how grateful he was that he had come to help, and that he had done a great job protecting the data. But a few minutes later he was clattering away at the keyboard.
“I’ll need to do a brief run of the systems,” said Mickey. “You might be exposed to some unfamiliar sensations for a few moments.”
“Yes,” the journal responded. He already knew the details of what was going to happen. The journal, which before had been simply zapped into the computer, had to come out before the remaining data saved on the computer (him) could be erased. But he would feel a temporary, very brief upset, because just for a second after the journal was taken into the real world, it would not be a journal at all – it would be in the shape of him. Just for a moment. And then a second later he would disappear and everything would go dark.
‘This is how it has to be,’ he said to himself. ‘There’s no reason to keep me around.’ He steadied himself completely and stood at attention, watching Mickey work, following the keystrokes in his head. Just a few moments now. Three… two… one…
…ding.
Startled, Data Riku suddenly straightened up and looked around. He didn’t know where he was, and he definitely didn’t know why, but one thing was for sure: this was not the dark, empty depths of the Trash Can.
