so that despair may become hope

( PLAYER INFORMATION )
- ★ NAME: Sandy
- ★ AGE: 24
- ★ TIMEZONE: EST/GMT -5
- ★ CONTACT: PP to ampersandy
- ★ LATEST AC: N/A

( CHARACTER INFORMATION )
- ★ NAME: Haruto Souma, Kamen Rider Wizard
- ★ AGE: 24 (this is my best guess, but there's no canon age.)
- ★ CANON & CANON POINT: Kamen Rider Wizard, live-action TV, taken from after The Fateful Sengoku Movie Battle. Episodes 52 and 53 of Wizard are of extremely questionable canonicity, and as such I will not be using the events of those episodes. I will be including the movie In Magic Land, but not Super Hero Wars Z.
- ★ CANON INFORMATION: Wiki.
- ★ PERSONALITY:

"That's right. Our hope is that... you would live. It's what we wanted... and what we always will."
— haruto souma's father, moments before death. flashback, episode 9, The Dragon's Cry.

Haruto Souma is, at his core, deeply and intensely focused on one thing above all else: being the last hope for Gates and defeating Phantoms. This philosophy springs directly from Haruto's initial 'hope', in the Wizard universe a moment or concept that allows a Gate to keep going. In contrast to the dreams and desires of other Gates, Haruto's hope springs from a moment of great despair: the death of his parents after a car accident, which he walked away from largely unscathed. His parents told him 'you are our hope'. In middle school, his homeroom teacher is worried he wants to commit suicide: when he rebuffs this, it's with 'I can't die. I'm my parents' hope', not 'I don't want to die'. Haruto lives his life wanting them to be proud of them, and carrying on for their sakes. He has to help people, to be hope for people, or he'll have failed their memory. When he accidentally injures his best friend during a soccer selection match, he abandons soccer (and his injured best friend) as soon as the option arises, leaving the past behind because he's incapable of dealing with the fact that he doesn't need to be - and isn't - perfect all the time. Then comes the dark ritual called the Sabbath. As one of two survivors of a traumatic, terrible event, he latches onto his new duties with aplomb, especially the job of keeping the amnesiac Koyomi alive with a steady stream of mana. He can save Koyomi, and be hope for her and for the Gates he saves, and so he fulfills what he has misinterpreted as his parents' desire. Haruto never wanted to be a wizard, but the longer he acts as one, the more he identifies himself around it. Conversely, he hates the idea that other people should have to fight as he fights - no one should have to suffer as he suffers, or should put themselves in the danger he deals with.

"It's showtime."
— pre-battle catchphrase.

As a wizard, Haruto is flash and style, both in battle and out of it. When Shunpei begs to be his apprentice and learn magic from him, Haruto rebuffs him with 'I know everyone wants to be as cool as me, but it's just not possible' in order to let him down easily. (After all, wizards are born from overcoming great despair.) In the early stages of his relationship with Nitoh, he takes great pleasure in keeping Nitoh off-balance and annoyed at his smooth teasing, and delights in winding up the manager of his favorite doughnut shop by suggesting he'll eat one of her specialty doughnuts... and then letting her down at the last minute to request his usual. All in all, Haruto is kind of a snot. He knows he's handsome and not really the type to downplay it; he's self-possessed and self-aware, and that's as much one of his weapons as his magical rings.

Gargoyle: You're a real pain in the butt, buddy.
Haruto: Sure am. It's kind of my trademark.
— episode 10, National Security Bureau Section 0.

When transforming into Wizard and doing battle with Phantoms, Haruto is generally composed, thinking critically and fast on his feet. He's a capable fighter more than willing to use tricks and cheats, and an irritated Phantom is a Phantom in further danger of being smacked down. He knows the value of understanding your opponents, and when all things are equal, prefers not to go into more delicate situations blind. Despite this, Haruto proves himself to be impulsive, and he has bad long-term planning skills. He rushes the enemy base not long after gaining his ultimate power, only to be nearly killed, and suffers repercussions in the form of falling unconscious in the middle of battle for the rest of the day. He has a knack for turning the words of his opponents around on them: he'll copycat their speech patterns in order to mock them, or steal their sentence structure in a dramatic fashion. This skill doesn't translate well to all of his interpersonal relationships: when dealing with Gates, Haruto's kindness falls second to his logic, and he can be tactless (up to and including 'Woah! You're super-rich, aren't you?' to the face of a Gate whose house he is visiting). It falls to his assistant, Shunpei, his partner, Koyomi, or to Rinko to appeal to the emotional side of Gates, or the people who surround the Gates, because Haruto isn't very good at it.

"I'm the only one who can fight the Phantoms."
— episode 17, Another Wizard.

Haruto is vain, and likes to look cool, but there's more to it than that. He needs to look unruffled and unaffected, because if he doesn't, he can't be a shining 'last hope' for the victims of Phantoms. A visibly upset wizard is no hope at all. He dislikes leaning on people, and keeps information to himself for fear of hurting others over it. He'd rather worry at it himself until his mood clearly displays what he longs so desperately to hide: personal weakness. Haruto learns through the course of the series to show himself at less than his best, first to Koyomi and the detective Rinko Daimon, and later to his fellow wizards, Nitoh and Mayu. He tries never to be angry with the non-wizards in his life: when he snaps at his friend and assistant Shunpei, he apologizes immediately, and he's gentle with Mayu even when she admits to attempting to use subterfuge in order to steal his ultimate power, but he snaps loudly at and argues with Nitoh. Other wizards don't need him to be perfect, especially the one who's never really been impressed with or needed him in the first place, but non-combatants need special consideration. On the battlefield, however, people who aren't wizards - who can't stand up to Phantoms and win - need to stay out of his way. He is downright short and impatient with National Security Agency chief Masanori Kizaki, who distrusts Haruto's intentions, until Kizaki backs down and accepts Haruto's way of doing things. Within the power structure he stands by, however, Haruto leans wordlessly but hard on the Japanese concepts of seniority: that the more senior members of a group must be responsible for those who come after. He trusts Fueki's intentions because he was the first wizard, and attempts to care for Mayu as her senior. He does the same, initially, for Nitoh, but in a rougher way as befitting Nitoh's ego.

"I knew it, as soon as my magic disappeared. Magic's all I can do. Without it, I can't even cheer up one little girl..."
— episode 31, tears.

Mayu: Becoming a pillar... what could that mean?
Haruto: Who knows? But it means that as helpless as I am, there might be something I can do to help her.
— episode 49, the beginning of the sabbath.

Despite his teasing, show-off exterior, Haruto has a nearly bottomless well of internal kindness. He doesn't value it as much as other people do - when he temporarily loses his magic as a result of the Phantom Legion destroying Dragon, he apologizes to the victims of the week that he can't provide anything more for them, and then is surprised when the older of the two comments that Haruto's kindness, rather than his magic, was of more value than his spells in the first place. Koyomi later bookends this, in this arc and again at the end of the show, telling Haruto that his immediate and full acceptance of her, despite her body being dead, her own view of herself as monstrous ,and their situation being less than ideal, was what led her to feeling human again. Haruto is kind in action, if not always in word, and especially with strangers. His most potent anger is reserved for Phoenix - a Phantom who took Rinko's hope that somwhere in there, he was human, too, and nearly killed her - who, in Haruto's words, 'took Rinko's compassion and spat on it' - and Haruto kicks him into the sun, where he will die and revive eternally, a cruel punishment, but the only one Haruto can mete out that will prevent Phoenix from continuing his reign of terror - and for Sora - a misogynistic serial killer turned Phantom-with-his-human-mind-intact, a grotesque mirror of Haruto's triumph in the Sabbath, who murders the White Wizard and then Koyomi for his own desires. Haruto defeats and kills Sora, and tells him he's not human, no matter what mind he has. Haruto never even passes verbal judgment on Koyomi's father, the White Wizard, who attempts to murder everyone in Tokyo with a magic ritual in order to revive her, probably because he identified with that desperate desire to keep Koyomi alive. He sees himself in Fueki, and so cannot call him a monster.

"I don't want you to apologize [for unknowingly aiding in creating the Sabbath]. Especially since I want to keep that nightmare from ever happening again. Only a wizard can fight the Phantoms. And if you're the only one who can make these rings... No regrets. Let's keep moving forward."
— flashback, episode 3, Transform! Live Broadcast.

The philosophy Haruto verbally espouses several times over the course of the series is "accept what's happened in the past, and look to the present". Haruto says to "keep moving forward" after accepting what you've done - but he's not very good at living it, from day one. Haruto's inability to deal mentally with the accident he caused for Kazuya led to him picking up and leaving, breaking contact and quitting his professional-level soccer team entirely. His 'keep moving forward' becomes something more like 'run away from the past'. This ties back into his kindness and tendency to shortsell himself on his own forgiveness. He wants other people to move on without regret, because he cannot leave his own behind until he is forced to confront it: when he meets Kazuya again, he works through his conflicting feelings about soccer and injuring Kazuya through a last one-on-one match with him, which clears the air and with it Haruto's regret. He spends months attempting (and failing) to lay the Philosopher's Stone to rest, but until the Phantom Ogre creates a dark, destructive construct of Koyomi, Haruto must get through to her by verbally excising the things he never got a chance to tell her before her death, rather than by defeating her in battle. In The Promised Place, he finally verbally acknowledges that he isn't very good at keeping to his philosophy, and his friends remind him that people have to rely on each other, because of their weaknesses, and that even his inability to let Koyomi go wasn't the end of the world, which he appears to accept. He's slowly gaining the ability to follow through on his own philosophy, through trial and error.

"I'm... the last hope."
— episode 49, The Beginning of the Sabbath.

Haruto's interactions and relationship with his Phantom, the powerful Dragon, are an unsubtle indication of Haruto's self-image. Early in the series, Dragon is an ominous figure, who only surfaces unannounced in order to prevent Haruto from drowning - a fate that would kill Dragon, too. If Haruto summons him physically within a Gate's Underworld, Dragon rampages within it until Haruto takes control of him using a spell. When Haruto attempts to use Dragon's powers to defeat more powerful Phantoms, Dragon wonders idly how much Haruto can bear. Haruto responds by calling Dragon his hope, when of course what he means is that Dragon allows him to continue being hope for others. The White Wizard kidnaps Haruto in order to have him master Dragon's powers, and Dragon holds back until Haruto challenges him directly, and finally overcomes Dragon's power in order to master it and use against Phantoms. When Haruto loses Dragon temporarily, he brings him back to life through a rush of desire to save Koyomi and not give up as a wizard, ever. At the end of the series, he asks Dragon for his help in retrieving the Philosopher's Stone from Sora. Dragon notes that 'this is the first time you've used my powers for your own sake', and allows him full use of his powers. During the events of The Promised Place, Haruto goes into his own Underworld, in order to save himself from dying, because he doesn't want to die, and when Dragon comes to his aid he says 'your Underworld isn't unpleasant', a tacit understanding that Dragon exists within Haruto, instead of biding his time and waiting for Haruto to lose his resolve, so that he can take over their body.

- ★ COURT ALLIANCE:

Seelie! Haruto wants to do clear and demonstrable 'good'. His close, unspoken adherence to Japanese social customs, his clear belief in the order to responders to Phantom conflicts and his strong desire to save others not for his own advancement but for the sake of restoring equilibrium to the lives of Gates suggests that he likes the order that characterizes the Seelie. Haruto has made mistakes, but his beliefs line up with the Seelie code of chivalry. He wouldn't say that he's motivated by love - but he certainly is, inspired by the feelings he shared with Koyomi. (I interpret these feelings romantically, at least on his part.)

- ★ ABILITIES:

Haruto is a wizard, meaning he has magical powers. Unlike a classical "wizard", however, Haruto's magic is limited by the use of magic rings, through which magical power, called mana, is channeled using a belt called a Driver. Haruto's magic is derived from the enigmatic despair monster that lives in his Underworld, a dragon generally called, well, Dragon.

Haruto is capable of transforming into an armored form generally called "the Ring-bearing Wizard", or more commonly simply "Wizard". As Wizard, Haruto has nine different forms, called "Styles":
Flame Style - his most natural form, as he has an affinity for flame magic. Flame Style is offense-focused, with high speed and agility. He is capable of channeling fire to aid physical attacks in this form.
Flame Dragon Style - a powered-up version of Flame Style, Flame Dragon is a balanced form that allows Haruto to manifest his Phantom's head on his chest through a magical portal, in order to use his flame breath on his foes. When combined with the other four Dragon Styles using the DragoTimer, he can equip all four parts Dragon lends him into a form called "All Dragon".
Water Style - a water-affiliated form. Water Style is faster than Flame Style, but weaker. It does, however, allow him to breathe underwater and change the composition of his body into liquid at will using the "Liquid" spell. As with Flame Style, he can channel water to aid his physical attacks.
Water Dragon Style - a powered-up version of Water Style. Water Dragon gains an affinity for ice, and allows for the manifestation of Dragon's tail. He can freeze enemies and part large bodies of water using this form.
Hurricane Style - a wind-affiliated form. The weakest of the four base Styles, Hurricane Style allows Haruto to hover by drawing wind into small tornadoes. It is the fastest form.
Hurricane Dragon Style - a powered-up version of Hurricane Style. Somewhat predictably, it allows for the manifestation of Dragon's wings, allowing for high-speed flight. This form has an added affinity for lightning.
Land Style - an earth-affiliated form. Easily the strongest and toughest base Style, Land Style is the slowest Style, but has high defense.
Land Dragon Style - a powered-up version of Land Style, Land Dragon allows for the manifestation of Dragon's claws, and has an added affinity for control over gravity.
Infinity Style - Haruto's most powerful form. In this form Dragon unites with Haruto's armor, allowing his armor to become as powerful as a magical diamond. Comes with an ax-sword formed from Dragon himself that grows huge when high-fived while wearing the Infinity Ring. Allows Haruto to shrug off most attacks, and flashstep.

DragoTimer - this glove-like apparatus features a wrist-mounted analog timer. When activated, it allows Haruto to copy himself into four separate iterations of himself, capable of independent thought and action. Use of the DragoTimer is a massive investment of mana, and cannot be done multiple times in one day. If a hard time limit is necessary, let me know - I would guess somewhere around an hour, at most, provided he isn't doing a lot of hard fighting or using a lot of mana.

PlaMonsters are Haruto's magical familiars. They are small (hand-sized) animals that can be charged with mana and then turn back into their base ring form when that charge wears out. There are four PlaMonsters: Garuda, a hawk, Kraken, an octopus, Unicorn, a... unicorn, and Golem, which is roughly gorilla-shaped. Golem is a capable craftsman and has made both a chest to hold Haruto's rings and a powerless replica of Kousuke Nitoh's Beast Driver from stone.

A full list of Haruto's magical spells, with explanations, is available here.

Despite its technological appearance, which I presume is the side effect of needing to be sold as a toy to children, I posit that the Driver is not technologically based - rather, it uses a switch-activated mechanism that allows the Driver's hand to be swapped back and forth like a circuit, only using Haruto's internal mana reserves instead of electricity. When a Wizard Ring is scanned across the Driver, the mana circuit connects to the hand bearing the Ring, and allows the spell to be performed. The SwordGun clearly works off of magic, not gunpowder - the bullets are propelled by a red substance that's meant as shorthand for magic - there's another Driver mechanism on the gun, adding to the circuit concept. The DragoTimer appears to use an analog clock mechanism, but if that's too technological to work outside the Station, then that's fine.

Outside of his magic, Haruto is an able fighter. He uses a sword that shifts into a gun, working with both with ease. He doesn't punch people because he wears giant rings all the time, so his fighting style relies heavily on kicks and his weapon. Haruto is extremely fit, though he requires a high calorie intake in order to keep his mana regeneration high. He prefers sugars. As a former professional-level soccer player, he is a talented athlete. He's also capable of doing that magic trick that involves hovering a ping pong ball.

- ★ INVENTORY:

Most prominently, the Wizard Driver, which generally exists in the form of a hand-shaped belt buckle, and after the Driver On ring is scanned over the Driver, transforms into its main Driver form.

Haruto has all of the following rings detailed here. He is carrying all of them on his person at his canon point. He is also carrying both the DragoTimer, a glove apparatus which allows him to copy himself, and the Wizard SwordGun, a Final Fantasy VII style gunblade with a neverending supply of silver bullets. See here. He also has the AxCalibur, but that doesn't exist physically until he manifests Dragon using the capabilities of Infinity Style.

On a more mundane level, Haruto has a jacket, two t-shirts, a pair of jeans, boots, some pieces of jewelry, and a cell phone on him at his current canon point.