(no subject)

[lotusbloom]

OOC INFO
_NAME: Kiki
_PLURK: begleiters
_AGE: 26
_CONCURRENT CHARACTERS: N/A


IC INFO
_CHARACTER'S NAME: Guren Ichinose
_CANON: Seraph of the End
_CANON POINT: Chapter 33
_CHARACTER'S (ACTUAL) AGE: 24
_CHARACTER'S (APPARENT) AGE: 24
_CHARACTER'S HAIR COLOR: Black
_TANAGURA OR MIDAS?: Tanagura
_HOUSING PREFERENCE: N/A

_HISTORY: Guren @ the Owari no Seraph Wiki

_ABILITIES: A Demon Weapon is, as the name implies, a weapon that has had a demon sealed away inside of it via the use of curses. These weapons require contracts to use, and Guren has formed one such contract with a weapon named Mahiru-no-Yo (often simply referred to as Mahiru for short). Mahiru takes the form of a black and red katana and is used exactly as such, serving as a perfectly functional weapon even in her dormant state. If the curses on her are activated her power bleeds through into the weapon, putting extra force behind Guren's blows. As a step above simple curse activation, Guren can also call on Mahiru to possess him. In this state his strength and speed increases even further and puts him on a level where besting even other Demon Weapon users is easy.

In addition, simply being contracted with Mahiru grants Guren increased strength, speed, and stamina and allows him to recover from wounds at a much faster rate than normal humans can. The exact parameters of such benefits are never given, but he's personally managed to (barely) walk away from fights with people that have shrugged off getting rammed by armored trucks. Other soldiers contracted with similar weapons have been shown to recover from stab wounds that puncture completely through their shoulders in a matter of minutes.

A final trick that Guren can perform with Mahiru is the ability to project the demon's aura outward from his blade. The exact means by which he does this aren't explained (and the ability outside the limits of what Mahiru's demon type should be capable of), but the effects are clear. Miharu's aura causes a tremendous amount of mental and emotional distress to those who are subjected to it, enough to make even other individuals contracted with demons feel weak and uneasy. The degree to which someone is impacted varies depending on their mental fortitude, past experiences dealing with demons, and any protective amulets or charms they may have. Some people may be totally unaffected, whereas others may be so overwhelmed they pass out after only a few seconds.

JIDA Supplements are special pills that the JIDA assigns to their soldiers for use in battle. When Guren takes one of these pills his ability to synchronize with Mahiru will increase to 150% of his normal ability, further enhancing his speed, strength, and skill. On the downside, he ends up sacrificing his endurance in its place. At 13 minutes his synchronization rate will drop back to its usual level, and at 15 minutes the rate will drop to nothing - he'll loose his physical boons and the ability to activate Mahiru's curse at all at all until he recovers, which can take several days. These supplements are a highly situational tool and he's cautious about using them.

The final combat-oriented skill in his repertoire is his use of traditional spell talismans to place curses on his enemies. He's stated (but not shown) to have a wide variety of these at his disposal, but primarily uses a simple spell that causes the tag to explode violently a few seconds after it's activated and placed on a target.

His most important ability, however, is his ability to create Cursed Gear. He has the mental fortitude necessary to resist the influences of demons, the strength and leadership skills necessary to subdue and capture them, and enough knowledge of curses to seal them inside weapons until an appropriate user forms a contract with them.


_PERSONALITY: Guren could be politely referred to as a very layered person. Less politely, but more honestly, one could call him two-faced. Whatever one chooses to describe him, however, it's clear that he's like that for a very important reason: survival. From day one, Guren has been raised in a toxic vat of political infighting and carefully maintained pecking orders. Being the heir to a disgraced branch family of the ruling Hiiragi house, Guren has been in bad standing from the start. Throughout his time spent in high school he was meant to be a scapegoat and punching bag for the children of the superior noble houses - and he took to that role admirably. Through brutal beatings and literal broken bones, Guren managed conceal his true skill allowed everyone to believe he was as weak as they first assumed.

That was eight years ago. Though Guren is still disliked and often disregarded by the Hiiragi and other noble families, the need to allow them to pick on him has long since passed. Still, it's not an exaggeration to say that lying is second nature to him - and it would be direly inaccurate to say that lying is no longer necessary for him, either. Guren is someone that had and has a lot of ambitions. Now and in the past, the biggest is his desire to overthrow the Hiiragi family and rid what's left of humanity of their corruption. And no matter how much the Hiiragi detest and suspect him, that's not something he can just admit.

And hand in hand with lying comes ruthlessness. Guren's world is not an easy one to live in, the concept of 'survival of the fittest' having been turned up to eleven in the wake of a devastating virus, the emergence of inhuman monsters, and a world-wide vampire attack that reduced the human population to a tiny fraction of it once was. Guren doesn't just intend to overthrow the Hiiragi: he's going to make sure all of humanity survives the coup and protect as many people as he can against the vampires. Despite this much of his alleged ruthlessness is feigned, or at the very least justified. He claims to be simply using Yuu, but looks after him like some combination of father and older brother. He has a sharp temper and short words for unruly subordinates, but disobedience and disharmony among his soldiers can lead to them all getting killed. He ordered Kimizuki and Yuu to kill Yoichi when the latter was possessed to by a demon, knowing full well that they would have to make similarly difficult decisions in the future (and when it came down to the wire, Guren still stepped in to make sure Yoichi wouldn't actually die).

Thus, Guren has two distinct reputations within the military, each of them equally deserved. To some, he's an inspiring and and dependable leader that cares deeply for his troops. To others, he's a sneaky, untrustworthy, insubordinate pain in the ass. These reputations have gained equal ground and are equally deserved, but which one seems most valid depends entirely on the person he's interacting with.

Unfortunately for him, the former reputation is the one that holds the most weight with the people in the military who 'matter'. The bad blood between the Hiiragi family (and their lackeys) and the Ichinose family is well know. Guren exacerbates their tense interactions by acting lazy, disrespectful, dismissive, and bored whenever he has to deal with the military higher ups. It's not uncommon for him to sleep through meetings, mouth off to his superior officers, and walk out of non-vital conferences when he gets too bored. As he puts it, too many of them carry on and on and on while accomplishing nothing of note in the process.

But to many others - the rank and file soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Demon Army, the elite soldiers of the Moon Demon Company, and sometimes even his own students - Guren is someone deserving of respect and awe. Watching him interact with them, it's not hard to see why. Guren is someone that looks after his own, even when 'his own' includes nearly a hundred soldiers under his command. He ensures that each of his soldiers are capable of looking out for both themselves and each other, arranging and rearranging teams as needed to ensure optimum survival. Even despite his comparatively high rank, he's a front-line fighter and doesn't hesitate to put himself into the thick of things. When he and his best were sent on what he fully expected to a suicide mission, he vowed to bring all of them back and opted to go after a powerful vampire with just one team even, as he sent multiple teams against other, equally powerful vampires.

To those that know him, however, Guren is hardly someone deserving of any sort of awe, or at least not to the degree that most the JIDA and Moon Demon Company give him. His friends - Sayuri, Shigure, Goshi, Mito, and Shinya - are more like a family of him, all of them having known him since high school and Sayuri and Shigure having known him since he was a child. Despite Goshi, Mito, and Shinya coming from higher ranked noble families (and Shinya being one of the Hiiragi), he has their admiration, loyalty, and trust, and they have the same from him. And as a result, this small group of people can give him an endless amount of crap. Apparently, the main way of bonding in Guren's squad is to make fun of Guren, and no matter how much he brushes them off, tells them to shut up, or roughs up Goshi in the wake of this behavior, they never stop and he never gets actually mad at him for it.

Because in spite of his two disparate reputations, the reality of Guren is that he's an honest, earnest, passionate person. He cares deeply about the people around him and readily admits (to Shinya, at least) to crying alone in his room in the wake of each soldier's death. After he's made sure none of the surviving soldiers are around to see their commander break down, of course. He rushes to make sure that critically wounded soldiers under his command can, at the very least, have peaceful deaths. And when he and Shinya were trying to handle a trio of vampire nobles on their own, Guren ordered Shinya to abandon him (while refusing to abandon Shinya himself).

As a critical note to make, Mahiru Hiiragi is an incredibly important person in Guren's life. The two of them were friends as children and as in love with each other as a pair of six-year-olds could be. Unfortunately, Mahiiru was the admired and treasured heir to the Hiiragi family, while Guren was the reviled and distrusted Ichinose family. The two were forcefully separated (Guren receiving a brutal beating from a group of grown men in the process) and unable to see each other for ten years. Independent of one another, they both began to seek power for the sake of extracting themselves from under the Hiiragi family's thumb. Guren's quest lead him to research and develop his own style of magic and swordplay.

Mahiru's quest lead her to developing the Demon Weapons and giving humanity the tool it needed to fight back against the vampires. She was considered humanities savior for her actions, but eventually she became too submerged in her research and became a demon herself. Guren was the one who had to kill her, and he subsequently sealed the demon that had been Mahiru inside a weapon, which he uses to this day. And to this day, what's left of Mahiru lingers inside his mind, ordering him to follow her whims and defy the Hiiragi family. Guren insists that he's in control, not the other way around, but some that knew Mahiru in life (namely, her younger sister Shinoa) are understandably wary of the influence she may have on him.

Regardless, Guren does not like to discuss Mahiru, and even to Yuu he only refers to her as 'someone important' that he failed to protect. And that's the final point to all of the myriad of flaws that make up Guren: while he makes no secret of his dislike for the Hiiragi family and anyone else he finds to be a puffed up, arrogant nuisance, he's extremely reluctant to actually admit exactly how important he considers the people he cares about.

_ITEMS: His Moon Demon Company uniform, which consists of a shirt, jacket, slacks, shoes and gloves; Mahiru-no-Yo, a black and red katana with a demon sealed inside (detailed above); and a pack of a dozen JIDA supplements (detailed above).


WRITING SAMPLES

_GEN SAMPLE: May Test Drive top level (20+ comments)

_SMUT SAMPLE: PSL!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY CHARACTER IS THE FOLLOWING:
_SENTIENT: Yes
_MENTALLY ADULT: Yes
_CAPABLE OF CONSENT: Yes
_CAPABLE OF SEXUAL AROUSAL: Yes