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if_i_surviveCharacter: Ritz Malheur
Canon: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Version: Post-Canon AU
Canon Point: Three years post-canon
Age: 17
Gender: Female
History:
(Strictly Canon Section)
In an isolated, peaceful town in the far north of a country, a white-haired little girl was born to a pair of loving parents. At some point, the girl's father seemed to vanish from the face of existence, and was never mentioned again. The little girl was intelligent, and rose to be the head of her class by the time she was thirteen. She also was not afraid to speak her mind, and equally not afraid to stand up for those who were worse-off than she was.
When a new kid moved into the sleepy town of St. Ivalice, Ritz was among the first to welcome the new boy, Marche. The two of them bonded, partly over taking a third child's side in a snowball fight, defending the boy, Mewt, from the bullying of the other students in their school. They made fast friends, going to visit Marche's house and examine a book that Mewt had acquired.
As it turned out, the book itself was a magical thing. The three children, with the addition of Marche's brother Doned and Mewt's father Cid, were all drawn in by the magic of Mewt's mysterious grimoire. It drew them into a world of magic and monsters, something their own world lacked. In addition, each of the five had acquired something they had desperately wanted on some level. For the disabled Doned, it was a healthy, able body. For the unemployed town joke trying to be a good father to his son, it was a job with prestige and authority. Mewt, who was always bullied and had lost his mother, got a position as prince of this new world, with a mother who was queen. Marche's own desires were never said outright. Ritz gained hair that was naturally salmon-pink, the color she often had her hair dyed to cover her snow-white hair.
Marche and Ritz both adapted to the new world's strange custom of using clans to fight, mercenary-style. Ritz ended up traveling with a clan of agile, sharp-witted rabbit-women known as the Viera, with an individual named Shara being the closest to Ritz's heart. While Marche strove to undo the dream-world after realizing what it was, and Ritz opposed him several times in direct combat. Eventually, Marche managed to convince his headstrong classmate to not oppose him, if he never managed to convince her to join him as an ally.
Eventually, the crystals holding the dream-world together were shattered, and the final keys to the world were revealed to be Mewt's false mother, a creature known as the Li-Grim, as well as the remaining desires of the children to remain within the dream-Ivalice. In turn, each of the five from the real town of Saint Ivalice were convinced that it was the superior option to return to reality. After the Li-Grim was defeated and they were able to return to the real world, they discovered that only one night had passed in the real world. Each of the five went on, their lives improved in some way by what they had done in the dream Ivalice.
(Headcanon/Runs Concurrent With Canon Events)
Ritz had been particularly close with her father as a small child, and was devastated when he vanished one day, to never return. Her confusion and anger was worsened by the fact that nobody found the time in their day to talk about his disappearance. To her, it was as if the entire world would have liked to forget that her best friend had never existed. After some time spent in the throes of feeling abandoned, Ritz whipped around into a steely determination to prove that she could enjoy herself, and thrive, without her father. Partly because of her father's disappearance, and partly because of teasing from her peers, Ritz took a dislike to her natural hair color, which she shared with her father.
Ritz maintained good grades, and her temper quickly earned her a reputation to be feared among her peers. She made few friends, and behaved as if she had little care for such things. Instead, she focused on her studies and becoming more athletic, still striving to prove herself. The idea of proving herself to her absent father had faded from her conscious thoughts, but the idea of striving her best to prove herself to a nebulous someone remained a defining aspect of her behavior.
When Mewt's grimoire transported them to the dream-Ivalice, Ritz made fast friends among the proud Viera. She proved her potential worth as an ally to a Viera named Shara by rescuing her from a spider twice their size. It was this that led to Ritz's adoption and eventual acceptance among a fighting clan of Viera. With them, she learned combat- and as a direct result, used to learn magic along the lines the Viera knew, as opposed to her friend Marche, who was in a mixed-race clan and could learn human abilities from those sharing his race.
Ritz proved her worth several times over, making up for a lack of experience with a hard-edged drive to prove herself to her new friends. She found she quite enjoyed the dream-world, and had a further enjoyment of learning to do practical things. It was discovered that Ritz's intense application of her focus to all endeavors would save them. A poor encounter that had left them in a jagd, an area free of the faceless Judges who enforced that no combat would turn lethal, left Ritz's clan without their one and only healer. By luck, they escaped with only one dead, and from that point on, Ritz's common-sense advice led the rest of the clan to follow her lead.
Fearing the results of Marche's attempts to destroy the dream-Ivalice, a place where she had found herself not only not harassed, but welcomed, she opposed his efforts to return them to the real world. It was only after many long talks with Shara that she realized the one detail marring her joy in the dream world. There was a homesickness gnawing on the edges of the fourteen-year-old's mind, a desire to return home and see her mother, ensure that her mother could share in her accomplishments.
Eventually this led to an ambivalence over Marche's cause; she was eventually swayed to believe that returning to the real world would be the proper course of action for her. She didn't do this without some heavy regrets. In a little over eighteen months, the dream Ivalice had become something of a second home to her, and even when she returned home, she had the acute and uncomfortable sensation of being caught between worlds.
(Post-Canon AU)
Ritz's dissatisfaction with her lot in either world coupled with her drive to learn as much as possible. Though Mewt was initially against allowing Ritz to borrow the grimoire and study it, eventually her determination eroded his ability to say no. When she was not occupied with classwork, Ritz devoted her free time to studying the grimoire's contents. Notebooks soon began to pile high as she progressed through high school, notes based on what research she could manage.
Several other concepts nagged at her mind, things that the dream Ivalice had introduced to her in such a way that some old assumptions about the Right and Proper Order of the world had become rather disturbing. For a dream-world, it had been shocking realistic on some fronts, and there were places and things that seemed to answer more to the order of things contained within the grimoire than things contained in the subconscious desires of a group of people from a nowhere town.
Where the viera in the dream world had honored their history and traditions, in her classes, history was given a very short shrift, and Ritz had the distinct impression that they were being fed a very sanitized version of world history. Maps in the dream Ivalice were common, stretching as close as a town and its surrounding environment or as wide as the whole of the world that existed in the dream. In the real world, maps were excessively rare, and Ritz could not find many that stretched further than Saint Ivalice and the next tiny town. Gossip about national politics flowed like water in the dream world, only dulling when Mewt and the Li-Grim-as-Queen were in foul moods. Information on any sort of politics, or indeed, about the government, strongly resembled the fearful hush under a Judge's presence. In one world, travel was common, while it was highly unusual in the other.
After the disturbing realizations had occurred to her, she picked up a pastime of vigorous exercise. The more she thought about her hometown, the more she came to believe that their lives were more scripted than they had ever been in the dream world. With the grimoire her only avenue towards understanding and potentially doing something about the state of the world, Ritz launched herself with even more fervor at it.
The final discovery that damned her ability to hold any sort of faith in the government of her world came upon her realization that magic did work in the real world, though it was several times more difficult than it had been in the dream world. Taking stock of her notes on the grimoire, aided with the strange form of her native tongue from the dream world, Ritz found parallels between the sanitized version of the history of her world, and references contained within the hefty tome.
The other races she had encountered- moogles, bangaa, nu mou, viera- had once existed. Airships had once existed. Once upon a misty time, certainly not only in myth and legend, people had used magic. Her readings made vague hints at other races, and catastrophes across the history of the world, things conveniently left out of any history book she could get her hands on.
Ritz dedicated herself to her various studies with more of a fervor, hoping to attain her high school graduation and escape her hometown in the brief summer provided to her.
Personality:
Ritz is well-known for the level of intensity she brings to all her endeavors.It is not enough for her to simply attempt something- she will do it until she gets it right. Doing something half-assedly is simply not something she can stand, and her emotional reactions tend toward reflecting this intensity. From an early age, she had dedicated her endeavors to proving herself, even if the only audience she had was herself. Good is never "good enough" for her- she must do resoundingly well, or she will do her level best to ensure that her future efforts will result in perfection, or as near as she can manage. She is also a girl of action. She does not do well with being kept idle, and usually requires a great deal of both physical and mental stimulation in order to remain healthy; stagnation and stillness are old, well-known enemies for her. As a result of this, she will actively seek out things that are challenging, difficult, and engaging.
She takes pride in the things that she is capable of, and focuses on this to the exclusion of all other factors. Though she will readily jump to the defense of others for no reason other than them needing her aid, she does not expect the same kind of courtesy or care to be paid to her. Her tendency towards perfectionism and tendency to assume people would not want to be around her for her self, and not her skills, hint at a deeper, unifying trait. She is also prone to setting herself up for competitions, and does have a bit of a competitive streak in her personality. It rankles her to 'lose' in any respect, though she is at least capable of managing to salve her wounded pride on that front, often by seeking out the one who beat her and attempting to learn if there is a way to perform better.
Underneath it all, Ritz is horrifically insecure. This meshes poorly with her rampant perfectionism, and drives her to deny that she has any such problem. She rationalizes her response to her insecurities by telling herself that few would wish to remain around her if they knew of it, and further compounds her problems. She masks this insecurity with her alarming intensity, behaving as if she is perfectly capable and doesn't have such a crippling, deep-rooted issue. It is not that she will not admit to faults, but her own standards for 'reasonable' faults in herself is horrifically skewed at best. While she holds herself to impossible standards, her standards for other people's behavior is slightly more forgiving. It is not that she doesn't expect much from others, but she does not expect the unrealistic from them.
She does not fear speaking her mind on topics that don't betray her insecurities obviously, and tends to come across as brash and opinionated. When prodded about her insecurities, or otherwise distressed, her general tendency is to behave as a wounded predatory cat. She will attack verbally and physically, though the ultimate sign of her upset is an unwillingness to communicate at all.
Unfortunately, she is very aware of herself and her background. She tends to be pessimistic about her odds of success, to the point where she can become entrenched in situations that leave her feeling completely terrified and beyond her depth. Because she does not feel comfortable seeking assistance for these deeply-held fears, she is likely to end up in self-destructive cycles of panic. Because fear is a reaction she believes will make her lose face, she masks her fear by charging in anyway, or with heavy bravado. Pain is rarely a deterrent for Ritz, and she would rather get beaten than give up.
Growing up in a peaceful, small town in relatively modern and stable times, Ritz never dealt with any threat that would last longer than a few days at the most. Because of this, she does not have an effective method of coping with long-term situations of fear and uncertainty. Even her stint in the dream-world had the assurance that any fear-situations would be over fairly quickly, no matter how they were resolved.
Recently, she has had a deep shock that has driven her further away from trusting others with her secrets. The revelation that her world is deeply troubled has given her metaphorical ghosts to jump at. Her drive to find a way to change the world away from the patterns it is in, and the awareness that some force much larger than her is pressuring it the other way, has made Ritz quite paranoid. Though very unused to the idea of playing her cards close to her chest, she has become secretive and paranoid. Her trust has become a fragile thing, and she views everything she is told through a lens of heavy suspicion. This is not to say that she is unwilling to ally herself with others- far from it. She deeply appreciates the feeling of having someone "in her corner", but no longer trusts them to ensure more than her temporary physical well-being.
Fears: Trusting Others - Ritz has always had issues putting trust in people's better natures, and that problem has only been exacerbated by the situation in her world. She will trust their practicality, but being forced to trust others while psychologically or otherwise vulnerable is something she is not quite able to bring herself to do. Because of this fear, she does not trust lightly, and a severe violation of that trust, or the appearance of it, could do severe psychological damage to her.
Inadequacy - Ritz prides herself on being able to at least meet every challenge she faces. To have something put in front of her that she is obviously not good enough for is a deep fear of hers.
Pretty Much Everything About Home (especially the government) - The Government back home has taken on something of a Big Faceless Threat status for her. As a result, anything that hearkens to the government's authority over the lives of its citizens understandably scares her.
Weaknesses: Brittle Strength - While Ritz talks a good game and has more than her fair share of determination, her insecurities make that strength of character quite brittle.
Paranoia, Paranoia, Everybody's Coming to Get Me - Because of how thoroughly her world has been manipulated, and her own status in opposition of that, Ritz is understandably paranoid.
Perfectionism - Good luck trying to get her to stop making snippy internal monologues about how anything less than perfect from her isn't acceptable.
Amazing Human Stress Ball - Left on her own devices, without any interference or people she trusts to unburden herself to, it is entirely likely that she will work herself into a breakdown and only compound it by trying to not let it show. It will only get worse if she is severely hurt in some way, or forced into a form of "downtime".
Mundane Strengths/Abilities: Intelligence - Ritz is quick-witted, and capable of doing a very good amount of intellectual work.
Fighting Fit Fencer- Having been very physically active, Ritz can run for long distances without tiring, and can run fairly fast. With a fencing blade in hand, she is capable of defending herself, though her fighting style lacks a certain something without the application of magic. She also has a fairly decent natural grasp of tactics, though this particular talent is untrained and more of an instinctive thing.
Combat Pragmatist - Ritz's own peculiar moral code does not preclude dirty fighting. If she can use it to her advantage, she will try. This solid practicality extends to more than just combat, and short of not yelling at herself for not being perfect, if a kludge works in a situation, she will kludge the everloving hell out of a solution.
Amazing Superhuman Stubbornness - Even in the face of fear that would cause her to otherwise shut down psychologically, if Ritz adopts a cause she will not give it up for love or money. It would be the easy road to give up discovering what is wrong in her world back home, easy to pretend it couldn't reach to her tiny nowhere town. Ritz did not take the easy road there, and any other cause that catches her attention is likely to get the same treatment.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: Gifted? - The only other white-haired human girl in the series, Adelle, is part of a group of people with unique magical abilities known as the Gifted. It is heavily implied that a Gifted learns their magical abilities from other Gifted, or using them as inspiration. Due to the rare nature of white hair on humans, and comments from the Viera about white hair being a sign of the gods' blessing, it is possible that Ritz ranks among the Gifted, even if these abilities are dormant at the time.
Fencing A-Abilities - As a general rule, these require Ritz to have some kind of blade to use, and are less of a drain on her magical resources than any of her other magical abilities.
Swarmstrike - Ritz's magic acts as a poison coating the blade, allowing her to inflict a slow poison on her victim. The poison tends to be a slow sap of health, and can be cured via relatively common means. It can be lethal if left alone for long enough.
Manastrike - This ability is a mage's nightmare- by striking her foe with both blade and magic, she can attack not physical reserves, but magical ones. Its effectiveness in preventing spellcasting is proportionate to the caster's reserves. Someone with large reserves might not notice that much of a change... but someone with small reserves would notice a large dent to their resources.
Piercethrough - This ability lets Ritz stab through one target and into someone behind them, or allows her blade's reach to temporarily extend by the approximate distance needed to stab through a person.
Featherblow - A strike with enhanced accuracy; the trade-off is that it is a much lighter blow than a normal attack.
White Magic - Focused on healing and defense. Ritz can cast the Cure line on people in a tightly-clustered area.
Cure/Cura - Cure is used for relatively minor injuries; Cura is capable of healing more major injuries. This doesn't work on injuries caused by Phantasms, and if you're looking for healing from near-death injuries, Ritz is not able to help with the level of magic she has attained.
Barrier - Technically red magic, but with it being more defense-oriented it goes here. Barrier is what happens when shell (a magical defense) and protect (a physical defense) are combined.
Red Magic - The spells listed here are more offensively oriented.
Doublecast - Not actually an offensive spell in and of itself, but it grants the ability for Ritz to cast two spells essentially on top of one another. Elemental magic or two curas on top of one another will deplete her reserves past what she is currently okay with running on, in terms of magical reserves.
Sleep - It makes the target take a nap.
Fire - Basic fire spell- it can create a ball of fire about the size of her head.
Blizzard - Basic ice spell - attacks the opponent with freezing cold.
Thunder - Basic lightning spell - not lethal, but it will certainly smart.
Elemental Magic - Heavily dependent on the area, since Ritz cannot summon what is not there. These spells, aside from Cura, cost the most of her reserves to cast.
Sliprain - Water elemental damage, makes the ground where she cast it slick and potentially difficult to navigate.
Heavy Dust - Earth damage. Heavy Dust relies on the earth's power, and she cannot cast it without bare earth. When able to cast it, it runs a chance of immobilizing the victim or possibly breaking some bone from their knees down.
Fire Whip - Creates a whip of fire that is ineffective against the heat-resistant. It runs a chance of inflicting severe enough burns on the target's arms and hands (where Ritz usually aims) to make them unable to hold a weapon comfortably.
Supply List: Gran Grimoire - Ritz has a book. It is huge. It is magically powerful. She can't use it at all, except as a bludgeoning weapon and a weight for endurance training. Oh, and a book. She's working on decoding what it means, but it's slow going (four years and counting and she still hasn't made sense of it.)
Bookbag 1: A fairly standard messenger bag. Contains Ritz's class supplies (calculator, binder, two books, a slew of pencils (10), two spiral notebooks (70 pages each), a small army of pens (10)
Bookbag 2: Large internal-frame backpack. Contains the Gran Grimoire, 5 spiral notebooks full of her notes on it (200 pages), 1 half-filled spiral notebook (200 pages), and 3 pens.
Clothing: Long wool coat, warm winter hat gloves, scarf, sweater, t-shirt, jeans, socks, snow boots.
Canon: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Version: Post-Canon AU
Canon Point: Three years post-canon
Age: 17
Gender: Female
History:
(Strictly Canon Section)
In an isolated, peaceful town in the far north of a country, a white-haired little girl was born to a pair of loving parents. At some point, the girl's father seemed to vanish from the face of existence, and was never mentioned again. The little girl was intelligent, and rose to be the head of her class by the time she was thirteen. She also was not afraid to speak her mind, and equally not afraid to stand up for those who were worse-off than she was.
When a new kid moved into the sleepy town of St. Ivalice, Ritz was among the first to welcome the new boy, Marche. The two of them bonded, partly over taking a third child's side in a snowball fight, defending the boy, Mewt, from the bullying of the other students in their school. They made fast friends, going to visit Marche's house and examine a book that Mewt had acquired.
As it turned out, the book itself was a magical thing. The three children, with the addition of Marche's brother Doned and Mewt's father Cid, were all drawn in by the magic of Mewt's mysterious grimoire. It drew them into a world of magic and monsters, something their own world lacked. In addition, each of the five had acquired something they had desperately wanted on some level. For the disabled Doned, it was a healthy, able body. For the unemployed town joke trying to be a good father to his son, it was a job with prestige and authority. Mewt, who was always bullied and had lost his mother, got a position as prince of this new world, with a mother who was queen. Marche's own desires were never said outright. Ritz gained hair that was naturally salmon-pink, the color she often had her hair dyed to cover her snow-white hair.
Marche and Ritz both adapted to the new world's strange custom of using clans to fight, mercenary-style. Ritz ended up traveling with a clan of agile, sharp-witted rabbit-women known as the Viera, with an individual named Shara being the closest to Ritz's heart. While Marche strove to undo the dream-world after realizing what it was, and Ritz opposed him several times in direct combat. Eventually, Marche managed to convince his headstrong classmate to not oppose him, if he never managed to convince her to join him as an ally.
Eventually, the crystals holding the dream-world together were shattered, and the final keys to the world were revealed to be Mewt's false mother, a creature known as the Li-Grim, as well as the remaining desires of the children to remain within the dream-Ivalice. In turn, each of the five from the real town of Saint Ivalice were convinced that it was the superior option to return to reality. After the Li-Grim was defeated and they were able to return to the real world, they discovered that only one night had passed in the real world. Each of the five went on, their lives improved in some way by what they had done in the dream Ivalice.
(Headcanon/Runs Concurrent With Canon Events)
Ritz had been particularly close with her father as a small child, and was devastated when he vanished one day, to never return. Her confusion and anger was worsened by the fact that nobody found the time in their day to talk about his disappearance. To her, it was as if the entire world would have liked to forget that her best friend had never existed. After some time spent in the throes of feeling abandoned, Ritz whipped around into a steely determination to prove that she could enjoy herself, and thrive, without her father. Partly because of her father's disappearance, and partly because of teasing from her peers, Ritz took a dislike to her natural hair color, which she shared with her father.
Ritz maintained good grades, and her temper quickly earned her a reputation to be feared among her peers. She made few friends, and behaved as if she had little care for such things. Instead, she focused on her studies and becoming more athletic, still striving to prove herself. The idea of proving herself to her absent father had faded from her conscious thoughts, but the idea of striving her best to prove herself to a nebulous someone remained a defining aspect of her behavior.
When Mewt's grimoire transported them to the dream-Ivalice, Ritz made fast friends among the proud Viera. She proved her potential worth as an ally to a Viera named Shara by rescuing her from a spider twice their size. It was this that led to Ritz's adoption and eventual acceptance among a fighting clan of Viera. With them, she learned combat- and as a direct result, used to learn magic along the lines the Viera knew, as opposed to her friend Marche, who was in a mixed-race clan and could learn human abilities from those sharing his race.
Ritz proved her worth several times over, making up for a lack of experience with a hard-edged drive to prove herself to her new friends. She found she quite enjoyed the dream-world, and had a further enjoyment of learning to do practical things. It was discovered that Ritz's intense application of her focus to all endeavors would save them. A poor encounter that had left them in a jagd, an area free of the faceless Judges who enforced that no combat would turn lethal, left Ritz's clan without their one and only healer. By luck, they escaped with only one dead, and from that point on, Ritz's common-sense advice led the rest of the clan to follow her lead.
Fearing the results of Marche's attempts to destroy the dream-Ivalice, a place where she had found herself not only not harassed, but welcomed, she opposed his efforts to return them to the real world. It was only after many long talks with Shara that she realized the one detail marring her joy in the dream world. There was a homesickness gnawing on the edges of the fourteen-year-old's mind, a desire to return home and see her mother, ensure that her mother could share in her accomplishments.
Eventually this led to an ambivalence over Marche's cause; she was eventually swayed to believe that returning to the real world would be the proper course of action for her. She didn't do this without some heavy regrets. In a little over eighteen months, the dream Ivalice had become something of a second home to her, and even when she returned home, she had the acute and uncomfortable sensation of being caught between worlds.
(Post-Canon AU)
Ritz's dissatisfaction with her lot in either world coupled with her drive to learn as much as possible. Though Mewt was initially against allowing Ritz to borrow the grimoire and study it, eventually her determination eroded his ability to say no. When she was not occupied with classwork, Ritz devoted her free time to studying the grimoire's contents. Notebooks soon began to pile high as she progressed through high school, notes based on what research she could manage.
Several other concepts nagged at her mind, things that the dream Ivalice had introduced to her in such a way that some old assumptions about the Right and Proper Order of the world had become rather disturbing. For a dream-world, it had been shocking realistic on some fronts, and there were places and things that seemed to answer more to the order of things contained within the grimoire than things contained in the subconscious desires of a group of people from a nowhere town.
Where the viera in the dream world had honored their history and traditions, in her classes, history was given a very short shrift, and Ritz had the distinct impression that they were being fed a very sanitized version of world history. Maps in the dream Ivalice were common, stretching as close as a town and its surrounding environment or as wide as the whole of the world that existed in the dream. In the real world, maps were excessively rare, and Ritz could not find many that stretched further than Saint Ivalice and the next tiny town. Gossip about national politics flowed like water in the dream world, only dulling when Mewt and the Li-Grim-as-Queen were in foul moods. Information on any sort of politics, or indeed, about the government, strongly resembled the fearful hush under a Judge's presence. In one world, travel was common, while it was highly unusual in the other.
After the disturbing realizations had occurred to her, she picked up a pastime of vigorous exercise. The more she thought about her hometown, the more she came to believe that their lives were more scripted than they had ever been in the dream world. With the grimoire her only avenue towards understanding and potentially doing something about the state of the world, Ritz launched herself with even more fervor at it.
The final discovery that damned her ability to hold any sort of faith in the government of her world came upon her realization that magic did work in the real world, though it was several times more difficult than it had been in the dream world. Taking stock of her notes on the grimoire, aided with the strange form of her native tongue from the dream world, Ritz found parallels between the sanitized version of the history of her world, and references contained within the hefty tome.
The other races she had encountered- moogles, bangaa, nu mou, viera- had once existed. Airships had once existed. Once upon a misty time, certainly not only in myth and legend, people had used magic. Her readings made vague hints at other races, and catastrophes across the history of the world, things conveniently left out of any history book she could get her hands on.
Ritz dedicated herself to her various studies with more of a fervor, hoping to attain her high school graduation and escape her hometown in the brief summer provided to her.
Personality:
Ritz is well-known for the level of intensity she brings to all her endeavors.It is not enough for her to simply attempt something- she will do it until she gets it right. Doing something half-assedly is simply not something she can stand, and her emotional reactions tend toward reflecting this intensity. From an early age, she had dedicated her endeavors to proving herself, even if the only audience she had was herself. Good is never "good enough" for her- she must do resoundingly well, or she will do her level best to ensure that her future efforts will result in perfection, or as near as she can manage. She is also a girl of action. She does not do well with being kept idle, and usually requires a great deal of both physical and mental stimulation in order to remain healthy; stagnation and stillness are old, well-known enemies for her. As a result of this, she will actively seek out things that are challenging, difficult, and engaging.
She takes pride in the things that she is capable of, and focuses on this to the exclusion of all other factors. Though she will readily jump to the defense of others for no reason other than them needing her aid, she does not expect the same kind of courtesy or care to be paid to her. Her tendency towards perfectionism and tendency to assume people would not want to be around her for her self, and not her skills, hint at a deeper, unifying trait. She is also prone to setting herself up for competitions, and does have a bit of a competitive streak in her personality. It rankles her to 'lose' in any respect, though she is at least capable of managing to salve her wounded pride on that front, often by seeking out the one who beat her and attempting to learn if there is a way to perform better.
Underneath it all, Ritz is horrifically insecure. This meshes poorly with her rampant perfectionism, and drives her to deny that she has any such problem. She rationalizes her response to her insecurities by telling herself that few would wish to remain around her if they knew of it, and further compounds her problems. She masks this insecurity with her alarming intensity, behaving as if she is perfectly capable and doesn't have such a crippling, deep-rooted issue. It is not that she will not admit to faults, but her own standards for 'reasonable' faults in herself is horrifically skewed at best. While she holds herself to impossible standards, her standards for other people's behavior is slightly more forgiving. It is not that she doesn't expect much from others, but she does not expect the unrealistic from them.
She does not fear speaking her mind on topics that don't betray her insecurities obviously, and tends to come across as brash and opinionated. When prodded about her insecurities, or otherwise distressed, her general tendency is to behave as a wounded predatory cat. She will attack verbally and physically, though the ultimate sign of her upset is an unwillingness to communicate at all.
Unfortunately, she is very aware of herself and her background. She tends to be pessimistic about her odds of success, to the point where she can become entrenched in situations that leave her feeling completely terrified and beyond her depth. Because she does not feel comfortable seeking assistance for these deeply-held fears, she is likely to end up in self-destructive cycles of panic. Because fear is a reaction she believes will make her lose face, she masks her fear by charging in anyway, or with heavy bravado. Pain is rarely a deterrent for Ritz, and she would rather get beaten than give up.
Growing up in a peaceful, small town in relatively modern and stable times, Ritz never dealt with any threat that would last longer than a few days at the most. Because of this, she does not have an effective method of coping with long-term situations of fear and uncertainty. Even her stint in the dream-world had the assurance that any fear-situations would be over fairly quickly, no matter how they were resolved.
Recently, she has had a deep shock that has driven her further away from trusting others with her secrets. The revelation that her world is deeply troubled has given her metaphorical ghosts to jump at. Her drive to find a way to change the world away from the patterns it is in, and the awareness that some force much larger than her is pressuring it the other way, has made Ritz quite paranoid. Though very unused to the idea of playing her cards close to her chest, she has become secretive and paranoid. Her trust has become a fragile thing, and she views everything she is told through a lens of heavy suspicion. This is not to say that she is unwilling to ally herself with others- far from it. She deeply appreciates the feeling of having someone "in her corner", but no longer trusts them to ensure more than her temporary physical well-being.
Fears: Trusting Others - Ritz has always had issues putting trust in people's better natures, and that problem has only been exacerbated by the situation in her world. She will trust their practicality, but being forced to trust others while psychologically or otherwise vulnerable is something she is not quite able to bring herself to do. Because of this fear, she does not trust lightly, and a severe violation of that trust, or the appearance of it, could do severe psychological damage to her.
Inadequacy - Ritz prides herself on being able to at least meet every challenge she faces. To have something put in front of her that she is obviously not good enough for is a deep fear of hers.
Pretty Much Everything About Home (especially the government) - The Government back home has taken on something of a Big Faceless Threat status for her. As a result, anything that hearkens to the government's authority over the lives of its citizens understandably scares her.
Weaknesses: Brittle Strength - While Ritz talks a good game and has more than her fair share of determination, her insecurities make that strength of character quite brittle.
Paranoia, Paranoia, Everybody's Coming to Get Me - Because of how thoroughly her world has been manipulated, and her own status in opposition of that, Ritz is understandably paranoid.
Perfectionism - Good luck trying to get her to stop making snippy internal monologues about how anything less than perfect from her isn't acceptable.
Amazing Human Stress Ball - Left on her own devices, without any interference or people she trusts to unburden herself to, it is entirely likely that she will work herself into a breakdown and only compound it by trying to not let it show. It will only get worse if she is severely hurt in some way, or forced into a form of "downtime".
Mundane Strengths/Abilities: Intelligence - Ritz is quick-witted, and capable of doing a very good amount of intellectual work.
Fighting Fit Fencer- Having been very physically active, Ritz can run for long distances without tiring, and can run fairly fast. With a fencing blade in hand, she is capable of defending herself, though her fighting style lacks a certain something without the application of magic. She also has a fairly decent natural grasp of tactics, though this particular talent is untrained and more of an instinctive thing.
Combat Pragmatist - Ritz's own peculiar moral code does not preclude dirty fighting. If she can use it to her advantage, she will try. This solid practicality extends to more than just combat, and short of not yelling at herself for not being perfect, if a kludge works in a situation, she will kludge the everloving hell out of a solution.
Amazing Superhuman Stubbornness - Even in the face of fear that would cause her to otherwise shut down psychologically, if Ritz adopts a cause she will not give it up for love or money. It would be the easy road to give up discovering what is wrong in her world back home, easy to pretend it couldn't reach to her tiny nowhere town. Ritz did not take the easy road there, and any other cause that catches her attention is likely to get the same treatment.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: Gifted? - The only other white-haired human girl in the series, Adelle, is part of a group of people with unique magical abilities known as the Gifted. It is heavily implied that a Gifted learns their magical abilities from other Gifted, or using them as inspiration. Due to the rare nature of white hair on humans, and comments from the Viera about white hair being a sign of the gods' blessing, it is possible that Ritz ranks among the Gifted, even if these abilities are dormant at the time.
Fencing A-Abilities - As a general rule, these require Ritz to have some kind of blade to use, and are less of a drain on her magical resources than any of her other magical abilities.
Swarmstrike - Ritz's magic acts as a poison coating the blade, allowing her to inflict a slow poison on her victim. The poison tends to be a slow sap of health, and can be cured via relatively common means. It can be lethal if left alone for long enough.
Manastrike - This ability is a mage's nightmare- by striking her foe with both blade and magic, she can attack not physical reserves, but magical ones. Its effectiveness in preventing spellcasting is proportionate to the caster's reserves. Someone with large reserves might not notice that much of a change... but someone with small reserves would notice a large dent to their resources.
Piercethrough - This ability lets Ritz stab through one target and into someone behind them, or allows her blade's reach to temporarily extend by the approximate distance needed to stab through a person.
Featherblow - A strike with enhanced accuracy; the trade-off is that it is a much lighter blow than a normal attack.
White Magic - Focused on healing and defense. Ritz can cast the Cure line on people in a tightly-clustered area.
Cure/Cura - Cure is used for relatively minor injuries; Cura is capable of healing more major injuries. This doesn't work on injuries caused by Phantasms, and if you're looking for healing from near-death injuries, Ritz is not able to help with the level of magic she has attained.
Barrier - Technically red magic, but with it being more defense-oriented it goes here. Barrier is what happens when shell (a magical defense) and protect (a physical defense) are combined.
Red Magic - The spells listed here are more offensively oriented.
Doublecast - Not actually an offensive spell in and of itself, but it grants the ability for Ritz to cast two spells essentially on top of one another. Elemental magic or two curas on top of one another will deplete her reserves past what she is currently okay with running on, in terms of magical reserves.
Sleep - It makes the target take a nap.
Fire - Basic fire spell- it can create a ball of fire about the size of her head.
Blizzard - Basic ice spell - attacks the opponent with freezing cold.
Thunder - Basic lightning spell - not lethal, but it will certainly smart.
Elemental Magic - Heavily dependent on the area, since Ritz cannot summon what is not there. These spells, aside from Cura, cost the most of her reserves to cast.
Sliprain - Water elemental damage, makes the ground where she cast it slick and potentially difficult to navigate.
Heavy Dust - Earth damage. Heavy Dust relies on the earth's power, and she cannot cast it without bare earth. When able to cast it, it runs a chance of immobilizing the victim or possibly breaking some bone from their knees down.
Fire Whip - Creates a whip of fire that is ineffective against the heat-resistant. It runs a chance of inflicting severe enough burns on the target's arms and hands (where Ritz usually aims) to make them unable to hold a weapon comfortably.
Supply List: Gran Grimoire - Ritz has a book. It is huge. It is magically powerful. She can't use it at all, except as a bludgeoning weapon and a weight for endurance training. Oh, and a book. She's working on decoding what it means, but it's slow going (four years and counting and she still hasn't made sense of it.)
Bookbag 1: A fairly standard messenger bag. Contains Ritz's class supplies (calculator, binder, two books, a slew of pencils (10), two spiral notebooks (70 pages each), a small army of pens (10)
Bookbag 2: Large internal-frame backpack. Contains the Gran Grimoire, 5 spiral notebooks full of her notes on it (200 pages), 1 half-filled spiral notebook (200 pages), and 3 pens.
Clothing: Long wool coat, warm winter hat gloves, scarf, sweater, t-shirt, jeans, socks, snow boots.