[C&C] Belle

[Belle Hibiki]

Dragonball

Two years ago, Earth was assaulted by an alien force from beyond the stars. Known only as The Construct, it sought to assimilate all of Earth's peoples into itself and, in doing so, purge them from the planet. The short but brutal battle between the creature and Earth's defenders reduced a city to ash and, although they were victorious, it left an enduring scar upon mankind's battered psyche.

Into this anxious time Belle Hibiki has been thrust. Armed with little knowledge of the world outside the forests and mountains he calls home, Belle set out on a quest to recover the fabled Dragonballs that have been scattered to the ends of the earth. Legend had it that if ever all the balls were to be gathered in one place, their owner could have their heart's desire granted...

At last, Belle succeeded in accomplishing his wish, bringing back the people that the Construct killed and restoring a measure of peace to the world.

What adventures will he embark on next? Where will his path take him? The answers lie forward!

Characters:

Belle Hibiki

Young, brash, and with a temper that would put an angry bear to shame, Belle has spent most of his life alone in the wild. Modern life is a mystery to him, as are women (who terrify him). He frequently lets his anger get the best of him, but usually does the right thing - eventually.

He is an accomplished martial artist with great natural talent that has been honed by years of training. He is fast, durable, strong, and adaptable. He has a demonstrated gift for the unexpected, and can turn around even the most impossible situation with a little ingenuity.

Sayana

Even younger than Belle, Sayana joined his quest with the finding of the first Dragonball. Although she is not yet a woman, she has a tendency to act aggressively, inappropriately erotic for her age. Much to Belle's dismay, she also seems to have taken a liking to him. She is very protective of those she cares about, and is willing to use extreme measures to keep them safe. Lately, she's come to realize that her feelings aren't taken seriously because of her age, and this is a fact that is a source of great personal angst and frustration.

Sayana acted as Belle's compass to the Dragonballs, possessing an heirloom that allows her to divine their location. Now returned from their adventure, she has resumed her classes in the local school.

Doctor Edward "Cog" Cognivius

The other member of the team that joined after Belle's first Dragonball, Cognivius - "Cog" to his friends - is by all appearances an aging, eccentric inventor. He loves to play with machinery, particularly anything with gears (hence his nickname). He is kind but weak willed, often unable to stop Sayana from doing whatever she wants. Although he pens his full name as "Dr. Edward Cognivius," it is not clear what exactly he is a doctor of.

He was responsible for the creation and upkeep of Hibiki's transportation: a hybrid of boat and blimp that is as eccentric as its creator. Since returning from the summoning of the Dragon, he has resumed his air-touring business of the local mountains.

Master Akiha

A formidable elderly woman, Master Akiha is Sayana's blood grandmother and Belle's current sensei. She at one time possessed a Dragonball, and easily overpowered Belle when he tried to take it. She later agreed to give up the ball, but only on the condition that Belle first surrender himself to her for training. Her reason for doing so is to protect Sayana, and training Belle, who is protective of her, is a way to guard her against the darkness that lurks within her family.

Akiha is evidently wealthy, owning a stately shrine in a secluded section of deeply forested land dotted by sharply peaked mountains. She currently resides at the dojo of Master Long following the battle between Belle and the dragonball thieves that wrecked part of her home, awaiting completion of repairs.

Master Long

A man in his sixties, Long is amiable and easy to get along with. He has a kind demeanor, and has never been known to raise his voice. He is Sayana's adoptive father, having found her and taken her in some years ago. He is good friends with Edward Cognivius, and seems to have many others spread out among the planets. He teaches lessons at his dojo, which is situated at the end of a mountain path and overlooks Coast City.

Master Long was once married, but his wife passed away due to illness before they had a child. Long attempted to gather the Dragonballs himself, but was defeated and robbed before he could make his wish.

---

Recap:

Belle began his journey in the dojo of Master Long, an aging man who is the adoptive father of Sayana. The young daughter, who had just returned from a trip to her grandparents' house, did not trust Belle, and harbored deep suspicions that Belle would eventually end up hurting her father. She found a way to forge evidence of him molesting her, and used it to blackmail him into doing what she wanted, though this didn't last long. At the request of her father, she helped Hibiki locate the first Dragonball, and on a whim decided to accompany him. She led him to the aging inventor Cog, who ran a sightseeing expedition with his zeppelin up into the mountains where the Dragonball was hidden.

When they got there, it was to find that the Dragonball already had an owner: a massive, black stone dragon-like creature that was only spoken of in local children's stories. After a brief but furious fight, Belle emerged the victor.

After Belle returned to the dojo, Long revealed that it was he who had hidden the Dragonball after his own failure to collect them. Long had planned to use his wish to save his now-deceased wife from illness. He wondered if Belle, who was, he said, essentially a good person, had the resolve to shatter other people's dreams to make his come true.

A week after setting off to collect the remaining Dragonballs, Belle - now accompanied by Sayana and Cog - landed to stock up on supplies. Sayana convinced Belle to accompany her to a nearby carnival, but their visit was cut short when bandits raided the camp and kidnapped the ringmaster's son. Chasing them down, Belle eventually defeated the bandit leader, Jun, barely managed to avoid dying from poison in the process, and rescued the ringmaster's son and the other children that were being held for ransom.

Some time later, after putting down again in the middle of a forest to let Belle do some training, Belle was accosted by an old friend from his childhood years. Alex was his name, a speedy but strong fighter that was currently on the way to deal with a "situation" that had arisen at a nearby development site. The crew there had disturbed one of the few remaining Ancients in the world. Ancients, a viciously bitter elemental creature left over from the creation of the world, often made trouble for humans in their early days, and Belle and Alex were often told as children about how their fathers had fought hard to bring them down. Belle agreed to fight, unaware that this particular Ancient's special talents lay in its spores. The closer he and Alex got to tracking its lair down, the more and more each began to hallucinate, the images drawn from their deepest fears.

The Ancient was more resilient than any opponent Belle had ever fought before, but after awakening his dormant ki, Belle was able to light the Ancient on fire, torching its wood-based body to the ground.

Shortly after returning to the ship, Belle and Co. were attacked by a masked fighter. Calling himself Gozen, the strange man seemed intent on finding Belle's Dragonball and taking it from him, though whatever wish he wanted was never hinted at. Belle managed to fight him off, but the ship was damaged in the course of the fight.

Seeking material for repairs, the team headed to Central City, and were suddenly caught up in a full-scale revolution that started the day of their arrival. Belle and the others were seperated for a time when he was captured by the government after starting a riot in the middle of the city. During his capture, Sayana and Cog had been kidnapped by the revolutionaries, and Belle was given the offer to help the government deal with the rebel threat. If he defeated the rebel leader, he would end the civil strife, and thereby save his friends in the process.

Belle agreed, but the unit he was assigned to didn't last long before it was split up in the chaos of the fighting. Belle managed to hitch a ride on the bottom of one of the rebel helicopters, riding it to their base, arriving just before the rest of the government began their assault. Sayana and Cog were almost killed in the ensuing fight, and were rescued from danger by a boy called Juno before Belle could do it himself.

Later, after the war was settled, it was revealed that the acting mayor of the city had planned to release Belle regardless of the side he chose. Knowing that Belle's unusually pure saiyan blood contained the gene for spontaneous transformation, he planned to use Belle's ape-like transformation and the destruction it would cause to bring the world's attention to the threat that "ki fighters." Norman (the acting mayor) hoped to unify the world and widely distribute the specialized technology that Central City scientists had developed to counter such beings everywhere.

Alas, an unexpected storm rolled in that night, blocking out the sky and the moon's rays, preventing Belle from undergoing a transformation. Satisfied with merely being the mayor of the city, Norman conducted a lengthly debriefing of the parties involved, in particular Belle and Kaden, the latter a courier that had gotten caught up in the conflict quite by chance.

Striking up a conversation with Kaden, Belle revealed that he was after the Dragonballs, but when he reached into his pocket to show Kaden his ball, he found it missing. Because the balls radiate their own particular form of ki and Kaden was naturally adept at sensing it, he was able to locate Belle's stolen item before Sayana could.

Heading to track the ball down, Belle and company came under attack by a four-man group of mercenaries operating at the behest of the world government from the shadows. Being the people responsible for both the attack and the stolen Dragonball, they are all ki fighters of the highest caliber. Each one has control over a different element: fire, wind, water, and earth. Their names are Blaze, Zephyr, Wave, and Rock, respectively.

At the end of a long and arduous battle, Belle and Kaden emerged triumphant over the quartet, though not without great personal risk. During the battle, Belle inadvertently transformed into Oosaru, the fabled giant ape of Saiyan lore, seriously injuring several members of the mercenary team and laying further waste to the abandoned sector of Central City in which they were fighting. In order to stop Belle before he became a threat to innocent people, Kaden and the mercenaries teamed up, and the courier was eventually able to cut Belle's tail when the ape became distracted by the approaching Maiden's Dream.

Leaving the two procured Dragonballs in the unconscious Belle's possession, Kaden struck off on his own. Once Belle had recovered, ignorant of his transformation but thankful for the results, he entered the famed intergalactic tournament, Dante's Abyss.

Bothered by the trouble he had had in recovering his stolen Dragonball, Belle jumped into the tournament with all guns blazing, hoping to test himself against the world's strongest and see just where he stood. He advanced through several rounds, meeting fighters such as Sage and Alexander Trafford along the way, before finally being eliminated in the game's first and only coliseum match. As a reward for his hard efforts, in lieu of other prizes, Damon Dukes - chairman of the enterprise - bequeathed unto Belle another Dragonball.

Belle now had three of the fabled balls. Putting the tournament behind him, he and his crew tracked down the next Dragonball in the depths of a mountainous forest, resting in a secluded shrine. It was revealed that this shrine was tended to by a single, solitary old woman, Master Akiha, and that she was, moreover, Sayana's grandmother, a powerful fighter and spiritual medium. At first Akiha refused point blank to turn over the ball, beating Belle senseless. However, on seeing his relationship with her granddaughter, and how much she trusted him, Akiha secretly agreed to turn the Dragonball over, but only under the condition that Belle submit himself to her training until she was satisfied that he was ready to protect not only the Dragonballs, but Sayana as well.

So began several months of training in which Belle's preconceptions about martial arts were put to the test. His previous instructors had focused on the physical aspect of fighting. Akiha, on the other hand, emphasized the mental, and under her tutelage Belle's abilities expanded by leaps and bounds. When she discovered he had the ability of Foresight, Akiha sent him to train in the room of Spirit and Time, high above the world on Kami's Lookout. This, of course, meant Belle had to learn to fly all over again, which was a trial in and of itself.

When he arrived at the lookout, Dende, the current Guardian of Earth, agreed to allow him access to the room. Belle entered and spent a year training under the time chamber's extreme conditions, his body hardening and mind sharpening to a razor's edge.

Exiting the time chamber after his time was up, only a day having passed in the outside world, Belle rushed to return to the shrine and to his friends, dreading the fate that he had seen coming during his meditations.

He arrived in time to protect his friends, but in the end, he was unable to stop the gang of Kaden, Ander, and Sage from taking his Dragonballs and summoning the dragon for their own selfish ends. However, as the Dragon granted their wish, it was revealed that it had accumulated enough extra power to grant a second one - for this one time only. This second wish went to Belle, and with it, he resurrected the lives lost in Meridian City when the Construct attacked the Earth.

Later, Belle was sucked into the Kill Town saga. After several misadventures (as well as a stint as a girl), he returned to the real world, where he has since lived in peace.
---

Previous Threads:

---Part 1---
1 - A Path of Broken Dreams
2 - Soldier of Fortune
3 - Warm Hands
4 - A Friend In Need
5 - Belle vs. Gozen
6 - Revolution and Reformation
7 - Shadow Play
8 - Dante's Abyss 2009
9 - Master Akiha's Task
10 - Ball-Nanza: The Fightening
11 - Unleash the Dragon
---End Part 1---

---Part 2---
12 - Fire

Current thread is here.

Please give ongoing C&C in this thread

[Kaden]

I like Belle.

That's a comment, right?

[Belle Hibiki]

I guess.

Then again, so is "I like Coke."

[Kaden]

Ok, I guess I can be a little serious.

What I like about Belle is how he's constantly toeing that stereotype line. He gets just close enough to get the read nodding along, then does something... normal, I guess is a pretty good word. You take bits of commonly accepted character mechanics and fuse them into the character without letting them actually take over the character.

Your most recent post in Shadow Play is a perfect example of this. (What I liked about this post was how humorous it was when looked at conceptually) You have Belle about to face down with some random jackass who supposedly knows all this shit about him. When Blaze starts mouthing off, Belle treats him exactly like what he is: some random jackass.

The whole "omg he's my brother now everyone stand around stunned for a whole episode" bit in anime gets really old. Yeah, everyone in simultaneous shock can be dramatic for about two seconds. After that it's just stupid. No one would do that. Ever.

Belle certainly doesn't. He gets annoyed. It makes sense.

As long as you keep the balance you've struck, I think Belle will continue to be a very entertaining character. Too far to one side and he'll just become too predictable, but too far to the other side and he'll make a pretty serious tonal shift. I think you're a good enough writer to handle it, though.

[Belle Hibiki]

http://www.cdbzrpg.com/forum/showpost.ph...stcount=17

New poast up. A lot of side-character stuff. I think this is probably one of my longest posts, right up there with my intro to the R&R saga.

[Belle Hibiki]

Belle:

Another well thought out, engaging character. I haven't read much of your work in the past, and I can see why you're regarded as one of the better writers on this site.

Belle, if nothing else, is selfless. He picks up any poor, abused soul's problem and makes it his own until it's fixed. If I remember correctly, isn't Belle trying to get the dragonballs to revive everyone that died during the reign of The Construct? And he almost flipped out when Blaze eluded that the occupants of the overturned museum truck, now missing, were killed by him. Belle couldn't possibly have any personal connection with those random security officers, and yet their untimely demises was enough to enrage Belle to the point of lashing out. That's compassion right there.

It's also interesting to see that his love for all people even extends to the murderer. After the rollercoaster of emotions he endured while fighting Blaze, and full well knowing how dangerous he was unchecked, Belle didn't kill him. It's truly all encompassing and for a half saiyan martial artist who was physically abused by his father to show mercy like that is surreal. It's almost surreal to the point of unrealistic, but Belle's outward manifestations of these traits cement the believability. In a sense, I see a similarity with Orion.

He's also quirky. His fear of girls (although it hasn't featured in Shadow Play to any noticeable degree yet), his ineptitude with literacy and technology in a computer powered galaxy add plenty of extra chances for a good chuckle.

You have a diverse vocabulary. Words like "suffused" and "corona", although I didn't know their meaning beforehand, present a vibrant description of events and aesthetics. You blend these words masterfully into such descriptive phrases as "wine red eyes" and "silky shiver of rain." Tantilising imagery such as that make it hard to stop reading, if only to find out how you'll reference Belle's next minutes.

Not sure if you collaborated with Kaden about how you defeated Blaze, but I really enjoyed it. I didn't see it coming at all and I love being surprised.

Downsides? Not a lot, really. Your grammar is almost always spot on, but sometimes you overuse words. Several times you inserted "claws" in a short space, and I felt that the very inclusion of that word as an illustration seemed a little off. You used it to describe the presence of wind, and although this may be a personal perception, I don't think it blends well with the notion of moving air.

This point goes to both of you, could you try to shorten the length of your posts? Even if you make two or three posts, it breaks it up and makes it simpler to digest and reduces the chance that I'll walk over to the 360 for a self instituted break.

However, kudos to both of you. I will continue to read this story as it progresses, if only to see how it all ends and the true motives behind the elementalists' organisation. I hope I get to work with both of you in depth one day, if I find my way out of THE AFTERLIFE (hint hint.)

^_^

Thank you very much for the feedback. It's not often that I am treated to one that is so thorough (and the fact that it's mostly positive doesn't hurt, either).

You're right in that Belle is a compassionate soul. For all his strength and skill in combat, I've always felt that Belle is after the competition in something and the thrill he gets from fighting; actually hurting people is almost never an express purpose, and I don't think he's ever done it out of anything but service to some other goal (the Construct he did it to save people, Broken Dreams was because something tried to hurt Sayana, Soldier of Fortune was a case of kidnapping, etc.)

One thing that I feel I should point out, though, is that to call Blaze a "murderer" (for this saga, at least) is technically untrue. I'm sorry if my writing didn't make that clear. Blaze was supposed to have alluded to having 'dealt with' the guards, and - after provoking Hibiki into an attack (which separated Hibiki and Kaden) - reveal that the guards had run away. If Blaze had actually killed anyone, you would have seen a lot less compassion from Belle at the end of that fight.

We haven't seen Belle completely snap yet. When he does, I expect it'll be ugly.

If I have regrets about Shadow Play, they're:

1) The name, which ended up being a fairly 'buh?' title for what the story eventually morphed into being. There was originally supposed to be more about the mysterious missing weapons cache and cover-ups and such. Oh well, right? The duo saga apparently ended up being pretty good anyway, and I look forward to seeing how Kaden is going to wrap things up. (His will be either the last post, or the second to last, of this saga.)

2) NPCs. I didn't involve Sayana and Cog nearly as much as I could've, and the little bits in which I did include them feel, in the end, inadequate, to the point where I feel it might have been better not to include them at all. I originally wanted to have more time on the ship for Belle and Sayana to have more interaction (which would make the scene later between her and Cog a little more grounded), but that didn't pan out like I thought. When I started to think about it, Sayana's been through a lot of shit for a kid in a very short space of time. In anime it's sometimes easy for things to degenerate into slapstick, so I wanted to experiment and see how something like being kidnapped in the revolution and almost burning to death when her idolized hero didn't come to her rescue might affect the crew's resident loli.

I wanted to do that in R&R, but the saga kind of fell apart, so I decided to include Sayana's emotional aftermath in Shadow Play. In the end, though, it felt pretty 'off' to me when compared to the rest of the saga. Maybe I'll include a tail end of it if I need to post after Kaden and give some resolution there.

As to post length... Believe me, I know. It's easy to get carried away. Perhaps Kaden doesn't feel the same as I do, but I felt that we were continually raising the bar with one another throughout the saga. I didn't want to be perceived as 'slacking' after Kaden made a long one (especially after delaying for over a week), so I tried to whip up something just as lengthly. Even though I know quantity doesn't necessarily = quality, I still did it.

But sometimes, it (the post length) was completely unintentional. The last post I made, in my mind, was supposed to be short. After all, all that I wanted to do was show Belle's 'oosaru thought' and get Kaden to cut off Belle's tail while he was distracted. In my head, I thought "2k, tops!", but it ended up mushrooming to over 5500 words long or something ridiculous like that.

I'll try to avoid posts that ginormohuge in the future and keep to a steadier schedule. I've been wondering if something like writing 1k every day might be worth exploring, but we'll see. I've always been chronically unable to keep myself to a self-slated schedule.

Thank you again for the comments and critiques. It always feels great to know that you're actually being read, and I should really start returning the favor.

[Orion]

One thing that I feel I should point out, though, is that to call Blaze a "murderer" (for this saga, at least) is technically untrue. I'm sorry if my writing didn't make that clear. Blaze was supposed to have alluded to having 'dealt with' the guards, and - after provoking Hibiki into an attack (which separated Hibiki and Kaden) - reveal that the guards had run away. If Blaze had actually killed anyone, you would have seen a lot less compassion from Belle at the end of that fight.

Yeah I realised that, it was illustrated in your roleplay, I just forgot to mention that when I wrote the critique. I was going to say something like "and then when he found out they weren't dead, his rage faded away."

Thank you again for the comments and critiques. It always feels great to know that you're actually being read, and I should really start returning the favor.

No problem. It was a great read.

[Belle Hibiki]

Didn't want to post this in Like/Hate because it would probably just get swarmed under. Didn't want to throw this up in RPG Discussion since I'm not sure whether it deserves it's own thread. But I think it needs to be posted.

I just "discovered" this guy today, and I really like him, but this video in particular meant a lot to me, because he discusses a phenomenon that I often find myself suffering from in my writing, and conveys the frustration really well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D8N1_FknXw

Some differences, obviously, but I think the takeaway can be applied to almost any creative pursuit. To those of you that feel like you have to live up to some sort of standard that you've set for yourself and doubt whether you can do as well again: don't let the little hater win! Just keep writing!

[Belle Hibiki]

Took a while to get up after DA, but I finally started a new thread. It will be partly about acquiring another Dragonball, but also about exploring some of the backstory behind major NPCs, Sayana in particular.

Stay tuned, give feedback, etc.

[Vad]

HEY FEG's BELLE WANTS SUM C AND C!

Like I told you in Chatbox. I'll handle it ASAP. =D

[Belle Hibiki]

(No okay really, not a big deal.)

More posts up. Will try to keep them regularly coming this time.

[Belle Hibiki]

Been sick and busy lately. (By 'busy', of course, I mean Mass Effect 2.)

Hope to get something up today. Not my best work, but this needs a kick in the ass.

[Belle Hibiki]

http://www.cdbzrpg.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27010

is now wrapped up, and lead into the final confrontation for the Dragonballs here:
http://www.cdbzrpg.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27166

Which led to this: http://www.cdbzrpg.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27209

Feedback, as always, is welcome.

[Kaden]

I'll almost certainly have some feedback once your ROSAT stuff is up.

It's kind of like a puzzle. All of the border pieces have been put together, but that big chunk in the middle isn't there. We know what it's supposed to be, cause it's on the box, but that's not the same thing at all.

[Belle Hibiki]

I've been feeling off most of the current saga. The most recent thread is here.

I'd like some feedback or suggestions. I'd like it, however, if it could be focused on what is wrong and could use improvement.

edit: Oh, and thank you for taking the time to read!

[Belle Hibiki]

OP is updated with some stuff - mostly brief blurbs about Masters Akiha and Long.

Getting some stuff in order for the upcoming tournament. I should really get a roster done

Current thread is Fire. Will probably be only a few posts long.

Let me know what you think!

[Belle Hibiki]

http://www.cdbzrpg.com/forum/showpost.ph...ostcount=2

first fight post in a while.

Feel very bleh about it, would welcome ideas.

[Belle Hibiki]

New stuff has started. Hosu's Attack.

The background for this is spread out over a few threads, but the main gist is this: Hosu has been hunting someone with Belle's ability for some time. The SID (Spiritual Intelligence Division) have taken steps to hide Belle from him, long ago sealing Belle inside a spritual Shell that would restrict Belle's powers and prevent him from being detected. Unfortunately, Belle's powers have grown faster than they anticipated, and the cracking of his Shell has lured Hosu to his energy signature.

Hosu wants to absorb Belle's ability of Foresight, which is actually the beginnings of Kai ability, in order to gain the power to travel to Heaven without dying first. The process of absorption kills the victim, and Akiha - Belle's sensei - is fighting keep this from happening. Belle is currently helpless, recuperating in a healing tank after his final round in the tournament.

For people that can give me some good C&C and where I need to work on shit, I would be glad to look at your work in return.

[Belle Hibiki]

Shit has happened. Shit be ... on?

Shameless bumpsu.

[Belle Hibiki]

Man, I thought that the avatar and sig hange would've sparked some interest. That badly done, or are people just that disinterested?