Bennu Maibe
From Wiki Resolution
Contents |
[edit] Summary
Bennu is second of the generally considered Worst Seals Ever of Cairo, the first being James. This is not because she lacks skill, but merely because she displays a lack of concern for human life that is not common among Seals.
Considering she has gone out of her way to piss off pretty much everyone everywhere, it is rather surprising that she survived for the entire battle.
After killing Cole Wolfram, James (08), Keith Lewis, and Zeke Cone, as well as ordering the deaths of several uninvolved citizens, like Kalia's parents, she was killed in the final battle by Zeke's last attack.
[edit] Basics
Name: Bennu Maibe
Gender: Female
Age: 15 16
Birthdate: December 6th, 1982
Died: November 18th, 1999
Alignment: Dragon of Heaven of Cairo
Languages: Arabic, English, French
Religion: Raised in the Coptic Orthodox Church; no longer cares.
City of Origin: Giza, Egypt.
[edit] History
[edit] Pre-October 15, 2005
Before Bennu was born, her father recieved a letter that said that his daughter would fight to save humanity, centred around the nearby city of Cairo. As he was told this only a matter of hours before anyone realized that his wife was pregnant, the prediction was not immediately discarded as random ramblings. When Bennu was born, she was watched carefully for signs of the powers that the letter had mentioned. Most were highly skeptical, but enough believed it that Bennu grew up expected to save humanity. No one suspected that humanity might fail.
The Maibe family is one that is very successful in a variety of businesses. Through strict training of their children and carefully selected marriages, a disproportionate of highly skilled and highly intelligent people belonged to the family. A saviour of humanity, while somewhat more special than normal, seemed to be the logical progression for the family.
At first, Bennu was raised with the rest of the Maibe children. In the Maibe household, children are raised in common by the less successful members of the household whenever they have spare time to free up time for the most successful members. When Bennu was approaching the age of four, she moved a ball from a drawing that one of her cousins had left lying around and began to play with it. At this, the majority of the skepticism was brushed aside. After all, even if she did not have to use the powers to save humankind, they could surely be put to some use.
She was given into the care of a twenty year older cousin, Zahur, at this point. The Maibe family had no history of unnatural powers and therefore had no idea how to train such abilities. Zahur was assigned to spend his time researching into Bennu's powers and to figure out what would be the best way to train such abilities. In return, his unofficial "rank" in the family was elevated--beforehand, he was comparitively unimportant.
For the first few years, Bennu was unable to completely understand her position in the family. This could be considered the happiest portion of her life, in the sense of "ignorance is bliss." Although she was more or less kept in isolation from anyone her own age, except at the large family dinners, she didn't notice. Zahur knew a lot about raising children, at least partially because of his original position in the pecking order assuring him a lot of the responsibility of raising other peoples' children, and he made sure to keep Bennu happy. His hands were somewhat tied, as free time was viewed as a luxury, but for at least the first few years he tried to keep lessons in her powers fun and took her for walks often under the excuse of finding more materials for her powers.
However, he couldn't completely shield her from the rest of her life, where her private tutor worked her almost mercilessly and even those among the Maibes who wanted to be nice had a very intimidating presence for a little girl to meet. She became extremely shy and withdrawn towards anyone other than Zahur, who she began to see as her "knight in shining armour," like those in her picture book about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Whenever the rest of her family wasn't watching, she was also very clingy and got scared very easily. This caused her to get bullied during her short time attending a public school, which ended after a few months when she tried to use her powers on the bullies. Thankfully, no one believed the children who saw it and no one questioned why Bennu started getting a full-time tutor rather than going to school, although there are doubtless a few people around Bennu's age in Giza who still swear they got attacked by a dog that came from a painting that Bennu carried around with her.
As she noticed her stressful environment more and more, she finally resulted in retreating with her powers into one of the paintings in her room. It was a painting that Zahur had bought for Bennu on one of their walks. The picture showed snow falling on a snow covered field. In the background, a tree overshadowed a small graveyard, although Bennu first believed that they were just a bunch of standing stones. Because she had never experienced snow, the world reflected her idealistic view of snow, which, while in the painting world, was warm and felt like a mixture of fluffy cotton, sand, and how clouds would feel if they felt like they looked like. There, she could cry or play without being overheard and being forced to return to her work. As time went on, she increasingly found solace in the snowy world to the point where it affected the work her tutor assigned, which had never been stellar.
Approaching her eighth birthday, Bennu's decreasing performance in her work was noticed by her family. Some insisted that Zahur figure out what was wrong. They were already disappointed that Bennu was turning out to not be a genius like they expected of all the members of the family and they were adament that she should work to become as good as one. This resulted in one of those chillingly polite arguments that often resulted between people so trained in hiding and supressing their emotions. This put Zahur in a bad mood to discover what Bennu had been doing with most of her time in her room. After Bennu showed what she had been ignoring a lot of her work for, they eventually started arguing and several things were said that shouldn't have been said. In the midst of the argument, the painting was ripped into several pieces.
Zahur was immediately very apologetic about the destruction of the painting and spent a large amount of his time tracking down the artist and commissioning one just like it. However, Bennu refused to forgive him and started to think that Zahur was just as bad as the rest of her family. She requested to be allowed to continue her training on her own, citing that she knew her power better than anyone else as her reason. She was given a few months as a trial period and she worked herself nearly to the bone trying to prove that she didn't need Zahur, refusing any attempts by Zahur to help or to heal the rift between them (she has yet to open any of the birthday presents that Zahur sends her every year). At the end of the trial period, she was allowed to continue the development of her power by herself, with just a test by a few members of the Maibe family to see how she was progressing every now and then.
Over the next several years, Bennu was constantly in a state of being close to tears, now that she had felt that Zahur had betrayed her, she increased her workload, and she spent more time in the company of her family members, who were all very intimidating in the business-like way they acted and dressed and she no longer had anyone to try and hide behind. However, as anytime that she would break down and actually cry, she would be punished, as no Maibe was supposed to allow their emotions to control them. Therefore, as the years passed, she grew less tearful and became more cynical.
For a while, around when she started hitting puberty, she went through a stage where she started to hope again, even just a little. Although she continued the emotionless act that her family wanted, she started to want to become more like the "normal" girls her age, who she saw whenever she walked (usually on her way to her martial arts class). She started to like to wear some cutesy things along with her dull grey dresses, such as ribbons and cute little hats. She snuck in some romance novels into her room and found interesting ways of hiding them, often with her powers.
However, as she began to walk farther and farther on her walks, she began to see some of the more disreputable parts of Giza. Once, while on a walk, she came across a drunk that seemed to be planning on forcing his attentions on her. She easily got away, as the man wore a snake tattoo within easy reach for her powers to bring to life, but this and other situations that she observed cultivated her cynical side. Eventually, between her fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays, she decided that she was being altogether silly. At this point, she began to become more like the way that she is in 1999.
The Maibe family had no idea of when the battle in Cairo was supposed to begin, but they kept a close eye on any developments in Cairo that could be considered a prelude to the battle. Nearing her fifteenth birthday, Bennu suggested that she move to live at the Maibe family's house in Cairo as to be prepared for action, citing the many people who feared the end of the world coming by the turn of the millenium. Her real reason was to keep as far away as possible from Zahur and anyone else who had tried to be nice to her, regarding this with deep suspicion. She currently occupies three rooms of the almost mansion-like Maibe house, two of which are mostly used as storage rooms for artworks for her use. In order to be able to leave at any time to deal with the end of the world business, her room has a door that connects to the outside, where she can walk through the yard to a gate leading outside.
[edit] Post-October 15, 2005
[edit] Personality
Her family and anyone who might be believed by her family would never be able to recognize the side that Bennu shows on the community. To them, she appears as a very polite young lady, perhaps a bit on the shy side. After being trained almost from birth to be prepared for both the business world and almost certainly an arranged marriage for purposes of strengthening the Maibe family's diverse businesses, she has gotten very good at several virtues like patience, deferrence, and general politeness.
This, however, means she rarely has an outlet for any negative emotions, so she lets it all come out in the end of the world. She goes with the philosophy that, as the end result will be the same, it's easier to just hate people on sight. She's selfish, cynical, and mean-spirited. A great believer in the ends justifying the means, she's been known to lie, use underhanded tricks, and turn a blind eye to, or even encourage, the murder of people who are uninvolved if it advances the Seals' purpose. All without a twinge of guilt--after all, if not for the Seals, everyone would die anyway so anything is an improvement. Ironically, she is often judgmental about the actions of others, even if they are the same methods she'd use.
Over the period of the battle, she has started to grow somewhat fond of many of the other Seals, although she wouldn't admit it to herself even under torture. Strangely, this has made her worse at teamwork. Before, she thought it would be a good idea to work in a group so that she would have a greater chance of avoiding death; now, she wants to take the worst parts of the battle onto herself, justifying it on her belief that the rest, other than James, are too soppy to take the proper actions and that James's insanity makes him too incompetant and unreliable to work without being told what to do. Because of this, she has chosen to only tell people what she thinks they need to know and is unlikely to seek permission or advice from others.
Nearing the fall of Cairo, with the death of the last of the original Seals and the fall of the second last barrier, she has given up any hope of saving humanity. She slightly regrets some of her past actions, but feels that it no longer matters. She is emotionally drained and her final goal is to show the world the glory of the Seals.
The death of the last of the original Seals revealled a side to herself that even Yo-san didn't know. Despite the fact that she never allows anyone to get close to her and actively pushes away anyone who makes any attempt at friendship, she needs other people. Alone, she is inclined to give up and lose hope easily; she retreats into herself. She clings to hope offered by others, hiding it in her gruff and uncomfortable way. She needs a kind of acceptance and attention, even if it's the sort that's gotten from doing acts that disgust the important people in her life, like killing innocent people in her attempt to protect humanity. It's very difficult to describe and it's a bit messed up.
[edit] Powers
Brings art to life. Summons objects within art, usually painting or other drawings, to the real world, which disappear afterwards. Strength of what Bennu summons depends on the amoutn of power she puts into it, although she cannot change their inherent weaknesses. Once she has brought it out, she can retain a measure of control over it if it is animate, but higher degrees of control require more of her energy. She can also hide within paintings, but can be killed if it is destroyed while she is still inside. Cannot use art created for her or by her.
As her power has been discovered through trial and error, her control is imprecise and more or less through brute force. This has given her vast stores of energy to use with her powers, but she also does not use them to their greatest effectiveness and they can be more easily countered, particularly by Cairo's Kamui, Kalia.
[edit] Relationships
James (08): Nemesis, part time minion. They were on opposing sides of four battles, the last of which lead to James's death, and was prepared to dispose of him at any time that he grew too dangerous. However, Bennu often secretly gave him missions that were of too shady a nature to involve the other Seals. For example, Bennu instructed James to kill Kalia's family, both of them denying that there was any planning involved; this was later revealed to the public through the interferance of Yatouji Satsuki.
Nadine Hasni: Bennu insists that she in no way, shape, or form likes Nadine or anyone else, but she's in denial.
Acacia Hazard: They used to get involved in conversations where Bennu would get really annoyed at Acacia. This hasn't happened for a long time and Bennu is incredibly thankful for it.
Na'Na' (Zachary) Heather: She'd never admit it, but she feels slightly guilty that she never kept up her side of their bargain that the one to survive would bury the other. Slightly. Verrrrrrry slightly.
The original Cairo Seals (Daena Clover, Nadine Hasni, James (08), Baron Khufu, Heather Thatcher): She considers these others to be the only true Cairo Seals (although she includes Zeke Cone in this category). When the last one, Nadine Hasni, died and left Bennu as the only Seal to survive from the beginning, Bennu lost hope at the possibility that Cairo could be saved.
Zeke Cone: Lumps him in with the original Cairo Seals, partly because he replaced rather early on Baron Khufu, who hadn't been all that active anyway, and partly because she fought alongside him in protecting Cairo. She was affected by his betrayal, but her strong will and reluctance to allow emotion caused the effects of it to only be noticeable a few weeks before the fall of Cairo, when she challenged him to fight her at the final barrier for the sake of the man he used to be. She also holds a bit of a grudge (and some burn scars) from when he defeated her, tore down the Citadel, and became a full-fledged Angel. She was killed by him after she gave him a fatal stab wound.
Kalia: Bennu doesn't like Kalia. I mean, really doesn't like her. The feeling is likely mutual.
[edit] Music
Bennu's theme song is Anberlin's "Never Take Friendship Personal."
Bennu's image song is Ayumi Hamasaki's "Powder Snow." Not that she'd ever admit it.
[edit] Other
Bennu is PBed by Miori Sahara (Sahara Miori) from Ceres, Celestial Legend (Ayashi no Ceres). Her journal is located at snowfallgrave and is monitored by Yo-san
