Smash Academy Application

[trumped_card]

Out-of-Character Information

Name: Jon
Are you over 15?: I am.
Time Zone: EST
Personal Journal: dr_mcscience 
Reliable Method of Contact: Aim: jongrim001
Other characters in the game: None.

In-Character Information

Name: Celestia Ludenberg (Real name is Taeko Yasuhiro)
Game/Series: Dangan Ronpa
Teacher/Student/Other: Student
Canon Point:  Post-execution...technically
Age: 18, 16 mentally...sort of. It's weird.
Grade Level/Class Taught/Job: Sophomore
Dorm or Living Arrangement: Dorms are fine she will flip out at the thought of having a roommate

Personality: Some people see the world as one massive stage, while all the people of the world are merely actors. Celes' view on life is quite similar to that, except she sees it as a game instead of a stage, while the people (including herself) are players. Like with any game, life is a competition; you have to defeat other players in order to rise to the top and reach success. This gambler wants success and will do whatever it takes to achieve it, whether or not she has to step on a few toes or stab a few backs.

Outwardly, Celes seems pleasant enough, if not a bit mysterious. With good manners, a friendly smile, and a very intelligent brain in her head, it's not hard to see why people think this. Sure, she seems a little odd with her fascination of gothic things and love of games, but aside from that (and her occasional "stealth insults") there isn't really anything to suggest she's not a total sweetie.

...which is what she wants you to think.

Inwardly, things are a bit different. Her sweet and calm demeanor are used to trick people into believing she's something she's not, while also being able to use it in order to manipulate others if need be. See, in reality Celes doesn't actually care about anyone other than herself and she will do whatever is necessary to improve her position in life. However...life doesn't always work out the way we plan, no matter how cunning and devious one may be. When things don't go her way, we see a side of her that she tries to keep hidden: her angry side. This girl's got a bad temper.

When Celes gets angry, it's like she's a completely different person. There's no politeness, no warmth, nothing. Just enough yelling, cursing, and insults to make you want to crawl under a rock and die. Thankfully, her tantrums are fairly short, so finding something to hang on to until it's over is probably a good idea. She's usually not prone to violence in these aforementioned tantrums, but that isn't to say she's entirely against it either.

 The main reason this little gambler flips out when things don't go her way is because of her massive amount of confidence. To put it bluntly, she doesn't think for one second that she can lose. And really why should she? She's never lost before, why would she now? Thanks to her extensive list of victories (and a few other circumstances) she's convinced herself that she deserves the best and thus expects nothing but the best to happen to her. When it doesn't, she becomes unable to deal with that  prospect and thus it sends her into a rage. A rage that doesn't stop until the situation is rectified or until her composure is recovered.

Moving on, there is a very large aspect of her character that need to be taken into account. Specifically, her ability to lie. Celes isn't a good liar, she isn't even a great liar. She's the Queen of Liars. Her skills are so good, she can fool lie detector tests, people, and even herself on occasion (or so she says, which could be another lie). One can argue this trait comes from her ability to study people's "tells." All she had to do is simply identify her one tell, that would give her away when lying and then focus all her energy on making sure it disappears. After that, no one can tell if she's full of it or if there's really something to the words she's saying.

Speaking of words, Celes sure does know a lot of them. Her vocabulary is rather large, as is the number of subjects she knows about. Whether it's geography, math,  literature, or even pop culture,  you can safely bet she'll know at least something about the topic at hand. After all, knowledge is power and this girl certainly does like power...mostly because it can help her accomplish her goals, whatever it is they may be.

With all that's been mentioned in the past above paragraphs, one could easily assume that Celes is quite simply a selfish bitch who only cares about herself. All things considered, one would not be blamed for coming to such a conclusion, as they'd be totally right. However, if they were to say that she's a complete monster...well they'd be wrong. She's not evil or anything, just used to getting what she wants and putting herself first. However, end game spoilers confirm that she actually went to school with all the students, and it's more than hinted that she was good friends with some of them (like Yamada, for example, as she gave him her real name). With that in mind, it's not entirely impossible for her to change her ways, but she will still probably end up hanging on to her self-preservation far into the future.

Backstory: Celes' entire past before the events that took place in Hope's Peak Academy is never actually stated in canon...or rather, it's never actually stated by a reliable source. The gambler herself tells us a few things of her past, but considering her status as a compulsive liar (and a good one at that), not to mention the fact that some of the things she says counter what happens in the story (For example, she states during her free time events that her parents are foreigners even though later in the story she's proven to be of Japanese descent), so...yeah. You really can't trust what she says.

What we do know is that she is an amazing gambler, one that has supposedly never lost. Because of this, it's pretty safe to say that she's been learning how to play games and gamble since she was very young. Someone, possibly her parent(s) or guardian(s) must have taught her what she knows and she stuck with it all throughout her life (there's information that says she's robbed hundreds of people out of their money whenever they challenged her to a game). While we don't know if it was her parents or guardians who taught her the trade, it's safe to say that if they did, then perhaps Celes wasn't exactly raised in the best environment, which may have attributed to her lack of morals.

Thanks to her title as a "Super High-School Level Gambler", she met the main requirement in order to get into the prestigious Hope's Peak Academy. Naturally,  she decided to attend the school. After all, it was certainly a place worthy of her and her talents, not to mention she'd be surrounded by people much like herself! What could possibly go wrong?

...the answer was everything.

The school? Taken over by a complete psycho (using a robotic bear named Monobear to communicate with the others) who was keeping Celes and 14 others trapped inside the school. If one wanted to get out, all they had to do was murder one of the students inside of the academy and they'd be home free! ...or at least, that's what they thought earlier. As it turns out, no only do you have to kill someone to leave the school, you have to kill someone and get away with it. After each murder, a trial is held to determine the murderer. If the correct murderer is found, then they are executed and the other students can go on with their lives until the next murder and trial. However, if the wrong person is chosen, then everyone except for the murderer is executed.

Of course, no one would ever commit a murder, right? Hell, Celes even set up a rule ordering people to not go outside their dorms during Night Time,  to protect everyone. Besides that, they're all just a bunch of innocent kids! ...aren't they?

Well, we never find out if anyone would have murdered just to get out of there, because the robotic teddy bear that was keeping them locked inside came up with ~*~*~motives~*~*~, something that would continue for most of the game. See, he was bored, so giving these brats a REASON to kill each other would totally pick up the pace. The first incentive/motive? A DVD containing information about a tragedy that would/ already occurred in one of the students lives. In order to find out what happened, you'd have to kill someone and get away with it. We never find out what Celes' DVD contained, but it's probably for the best.

So as expected a murder happens. The Super High-School Level Idol ends up dead in the protag's shower and everyone, minus Celes, believes he did it. After she's found dead, another student (this time the model, who our lovable gambler actually predicted would die) ends up being murdered...but this time it's done by someone who can get away with it, the so-called headmaster Monobear. Why? Because she "broke a rule" or something equally as dumb. At any rate, they continue onwards, hoping to find the killer.

Thankfully, it the real culprit is found (It's the baseball player). In an interesting turn of events, however, during the trial we find out that she attacked him first, so it was in self-defense! ...except it isn't as clear cut as that. Celes brings up an excellent point: he disarmed her and she fled the scene, yet instead of leaving things alone he went back to his room, grabbed his tool set, took off the lock, and then proceeded to murder the girl. Could that really be considering self-defense? He had tons of time to stop himself, yet he did not.

Regardless, Leon is still executed...brutally. So brutally, In fact, that it even caused a crack in the gambler's poker face. Not an easy thing to accomplish.

So with 3 people dead in a few days' time, things weren't looking very hopeful. On the bright side though, here comes Chapter 2!

Celes played a slightly bigger role in this chapter, having been a "witness", but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Chapter 2 taught us something about her we did not know before: that she has a REALLY  BAD TEMPER. this was revealed when the Super High-School Level Douijin Artist: Yamada brought her a cup of tea. She took one sip...and then threw it at a wall, scolding him for making it so poorly. A brief argument followed, but it wasn't long until she lost it and screamed at him, calling him a "pig boy" and ordering him to make it again, right this time.

...needless to say no one saw that come and everyone was pretty thoroughly shocked, but they tried their best to ignore it. And then later on, that's when the next motive came up!

This new motive was an interesting one; if a murder did not take place soon, a piece of information would be told to the outside world. For some people, it was something extremely minor (like Naegi wetting the bed until he was much older), while others (Mondo) had something...substantial. Celes' is never stated (noticing a pattern here?), but we can probably assume it was bad, since she refused to talk about it (and yelled at Yamada when she told him to drop it), or it was something only she would care about. Still, it obviously wasn't bad enough to kill someone over.

However, that wasn't true for everyone, as soon enough the young SHSL Hacker winds up dead. In a shocking turn of events, it turns out that a famous Serial Killer known as Genocider Syo is actually a personality of Touko Fukawa, the SHSL writer. Naturally she's the one being targeted for this crime, because the way the victim's body was found was indeed similar to how her victim's were found. During the trial, it's proven that she was not the murderer and that Togami (the SHSL Asshole Heir) modified the crime scene to frame her. Why? Because he was bored.

So who was? The SHSL Gang Leader and best friend of Ishimaru, Mondo! However, he didn't mean to kill the poor guy (Yes, that's right. Chihiro, the little hacker, was indeed a guy in a skirt), he just lost control of himself when Chihiro told him his own secret about actually being a man and wanting to become stronger. The Gang Leader didn't want to explain the motive of why he freaked out, so Monobear, being the asshole he is, did it for him. Turns out Mondo ended up being responsible for the death of his own brother! If anyone found out about this, the entire gang would fall apart thus that would break the promise he made with his brother before he died.

Monobear, however, did not care about his reasoning and executed him anyway, sending Ishimaru into a state of despair so bad, he couldn't even speak. And that was pretty much the end of Chapter 2!

Chapter 3...oh man. Where do I even BEGIN...

Alright, first and foremost: Chihiro actually created this AI construct on a computer the students found earlier on in the game before he died. Its main purpose was to assist the students in finding a way out of the academy. Eventually, the device was found and it was given the command to search for as much information as possible on their current situation. However...it kind of did something else as well. You see, the hacker programmed its mind with information on all the students, including bits of their personalities. It took on the persona of Mondo and told Ishimaru to get his shit together...and it...kind of worked? The good news was he could actually talk and move again...the bad news is he merged souls with his "brother", becoming Ishida and thus a complete wreck. It was terrible.

Oh, and Yamada, the briefly-mentioned douijin artist, ended up forming a crush on the computer. It was...extremely creepy. Celes even told him that the AI wasn't interested in him, just the information he provided it. He didn't care though, he was in love. This clashed with Ishida, who wanted the computer for himself, so he could speak with ~brother~. Everyone else just wanted to use it so they could get out of there, so there was a big clash.

Thankfully, Kyouko was able to settle things without too much difficulty...sort of. And just in time for another one of Monobear's motives! This time was different though, because if you killed someone you got a giant sum of cash, exactly 100 billion yen. Even though it was a lot of money, surely no one would kill over it, right?

...wrong. I'm not even going to sugar coat this, the third killer is Celes. She comes up with this really complex murder plan to have Yamada kill Ishida (she stole the stole the AI's labtop and blamed Ishida) then for her to kill him. Once that was done, she'd frame Yasuhiro Hagakure (the fortune teller) for it. It...kinda sorta almost works, as it shows how really good the gambler is at leading people on, but ultimately it just seemed kind of dumb once you knew the whole thing. Hell, she stuffed the fortune teller in a cosplay robot suit for crying out loud. One thing really made it a bit harder to pin the crime on her though, it was the killer's name. See, Yamada managed to say the killer's name before he died. However...it was Hagakure's first name, Yashuhiro. As we quickly find out, though, Celes' name is just an alias, and her real name is Taeko Yasuhiro. As the trial goes on and the metaphorical noose gets tighter and tighter around her neck, she completely loses it and freaks out. Once its finally wrapped tightly around her throat and she realizes she's lost...she accepts defeat.

The keys to the AI are forked over, Celes tells everyone that the reason she killed her classmates was because she didn't want to stay in there forever (even though she talked about adapting to their environment, which was a lie) because if she did, she could never accomplish her dream of living in a castle filled with servants dressed up as vampires. We don't know if she was telling the truth about that dream or if she meant it when she said she felt no guilt about murder, but we do know that she was executed by being burned at the stake...a death that she wanted.

Just kidding. Because she wanted to die like that, Monobear decided to be a complete asshole and decided ram a firetruck into her. That should have been the end of her, except a portal opened up behind the stake (she wasn't tied to it or anything) and when the truck hit her she was flung through the portal like a rag doll and crash-landed into Smash Academy's outdoors.

Anything Else?:
-Her mega twin tails are actually detachable hair extensions.
-I'll be putting up a permissions post for her because of how observant she is.
-She looks like this.
-Have some extra samples.

In-Character 1st person sample:

[Despite how long it's been since Celes used a computer, she manages to turn the device on without much difficultly. She looks at the camera with a smile and gives a friendly wave.]

Hello everyone, I'm delighted to meet you all. My name is Celestia Ludenberg, but feel free to call me "Celes" if you prefer.

[So far so good. She's kept up her facade quite well despite her...er...unorthodox landing. Let's hope it stays this way...or at least she doesn't get called out on it.]

Now with formalities out of the way, I must say this is quite the academy. Certainly better than my...last school.

[The gambler keeps up her facade, but there was a slight crack in it. Her eyes looked away from the camera for a few seconds and her smile fell for a bit. Nevertheless, it was back as soon as it left.]

...at any rate, I believe that's all I have for now. I look forward to meeting you all at a later date. Farewell!

[With a final bright smile, the feed finally clicks off.]

In-Character 3rd person sample:

It'd been a few days since Celes arrived at this school and yet she couldn't get over how strange it was. Sure, Hope's Peak was crazy and horrible, a place she'd love to forget, but this place was so...surreal. Beings who weren't humans able to don a humanoid appearance and walk the halls like the equals of man...she wasn't sure how she felt about that.

No...no that wasn't what was really bothering her, though. This school, her body, none of this made any sense. She should have died during that execution, she felt the flames slowly licking her skin, the entirety of the stake heating up...right before that son of a bitch Monobear rammed into her with that damn firetruck. Ugg, he would go and ruin everything...

...but then she lived and ruined it for him. If nothing else, she has the satisfaction of being alive, out of the school, and having severely pissed off that stupid bear. These thoughts and others passed through her mind as she walked down the hallways of the academy, clearly bored. She placed them in the back of her mind so she could deal with them later and looked around curiously. Ah...some students are walking by. Let's see here, it'd be interesting to rank them.

Celes made mentals notes of the people she walked by, ranking them by how interesting they appeared. A was obviously the highest, while F was the lowest. As expected, though, no one got even past C. Most people were Ds, but there were, sadly, a few Fs. This pretty much kept up until she finally meet someone who was a C. She was so excited that she almost considered talking to them...until they tripped over their own feet and hit the floor with a thud. The gambler gave a quick roll of her eyes and actually said "F" to the poor guy as she walked by, shaking her head.

This was going to be a loooooonnnnng school year.