[CHAR] Realism no Mononoke: An Urban Fantasy RP

Character List:

• Agency Head: Suzuki Tomoko
• The Former Enemy: Shimizu Kaori

[Rune_Alchemist]

Hmm~? A girl was kidnapped?~ I'm appalled you think I did it, ufufu~

• Name:
  Shimizu Kaori
• Age:
  Forever 18~
• Gender:
  Female
• Race:
  Jorogumo
• Appearance:
  A youthful, beautiful appearance that belies her true age. True to the myths, Kaori possesses a supernatural beauty befitting of her nature in order to seduce and charm. Often appearing no older than high school age, she typically dresses in elegant kimonos when not masquerading as a student or working. Shoulder length black hair tied at either side of her head, and her perhaps most striking feature is the obvious heterochromia, though she says she wasn't born with it. The matter of fact it is an old injury she got when she got a little too...rambunctious. As long as you ignore the fangs and pass off the occasional spider leg as your imagination, she's a totally normal and harmless human~
• Personality:
  As a Jorogumo, one knows what to sort of expect from Kaori. A man-eating seductress that seduces men with their charms in order to feast on them or slowly drain them of their vitality with a potent venom. Kaori is well, exactly this. Overly friendly, playful, a little teasing when she must, but polite, kind, affectionate. She knows how best to seduce someone using her charms. The only, perhaps, difference with the Myth is her choice of food...cute little girls instead of men. Make no mistake, she is a predator at heart. Playful, lascivious, and will always take an opportunity to make someone put their guard around her down so she can have a little afternoon snack. Thankfully, she mostly behaves as long as someone hold her proverbial leash, and shows her at least some manner of affection themselves.
  
  For the most part, though, generally, Kaori is a friendly little if somewhat troublesome and impish spider much preferring to be friends rather than enemies or rivals. However, while she is quick to show physical and intimate affection to the girls around her, she is quick to fall into a rather listless, broody, mental state and falling back into old habits if such affections aren't returned by those around her especially after repeated rejections or just going for so long without it...and this is her totally, definitely, valid reasoning for having her spider friends take stealthy panty shots or her propensity to grope and tease the women around her.
• Abilities:
  Her most obvious ability is her physical strength. While not quite as powerful as an Oni or perhaps a tengu, compared to a human or most other Youkai her strength could be said to be at least a low A tier, able to handle herself quite well against most threats physically. Coupled with her extra appendages, she's fairly adept in physical combat even if she primarily relies on ambush and hit and run tactics, emphasizing her agility.
  
  As expected as well, Jorogumo silk possesses supernatural strength, being equivalent to steel and yet remaining extremely flexible, breathable, and workable. Easy to bind, slow down, or overwhelm prey with it. Sharp and deadly, razor thread is one of the main things she uses to defend herself with, easily able to decapitate and sever limbs. Coupled with her ability to manipulate fire or her potent venom which can be used to physically weaken people in short term, the threads can be rather dangerous beyond their razor sharpness.
  
  Her fire magic and venom are a bit more niche in their uses, primarily for covering her tracks. In combat, fire is mostly used as simple fireballs, jets of flame and mixed with her agility and threads to envelop and burn foes to death. Venom, even more niche, she can coat her threads in it to deliver a potent venom even at a distance to weaken foes physically.
  
  A more understated ability is her ability to speak with and commune with most arachnids. While not directly useful, the ability to gain information from all spiders around her shouldn't be underestimated when dealing with oddities and curious happenings or events. Her shapeshifting ability as well - her natural form is more that of an Arachne, but appearing as a beautiful woman is an easy enough feat.
• Skills:
  Domestic abilities? Check! Cooking, cleaning, sewing, first aid, hugging, hand holding, massaging...as you can see, she's an extremely talented little spider. The last three are her most skilled subjects~
• Equipment:
  Her kimono and all her clothes are made out of her silk. Strong and durable, and the perfect defense against anyone touching her cute little friends. Flirt ask nicely and she might make you one. Unfortunately she says her talents only work for cute girls (lie). She'll also need to do a fitting. Be prepared for a lot of unneeded touching.
• Brief Backstory:

About seven years ago or so, a highschool girl went missing, snatched on her way home from school. No trace or leads to what happened. The only possible clue was a note book, badly burned and only a few pages legible. Days passed. Then a week. Then months. No leads, no clues about what happened. Rumors started about a urban legend that would snatch unsuspecting girls up on their way home. No one thought to suspect the odd new student at the school...after all, she technically wasn't even in the roster, but she was so polite and fit in so well no one questioned it. Forging documents were easy enough, too.

Then a year passed. The girl, showed up, dazed. Confused. Slightly drugged and a bit physically weak but otherwise completely fine. She however, could not recall anything that happened. Only something about a woman taking care of her through the entire year. With no leads, there was nothing else to be done. Three months passed. Everyone assumed there wouldn't be any breakthroughs...until another girl went missing, in an extremely similar fashion from the same school. Except, she was on her way to the park to 'meet a friend', the only source of this information being a badly burned notebook where a page managed to survive.

After another year, the girl was returned. This odd series of events continued to play out for about four years. A perplexing series of events where girls were kidnapped, and then returned after a year. Around three years ago, however, this pattern would slowly start breaking. Two girls kidnapped. Neither returned until a year and a half later. Then four. Five. Seven. Whoever was doing it, was getting more aggressive, but still no leads. The police were stumped. The only evidence was burned and discarded items, and on a few occasions a notably high presence of spiders in a persons home.

A year ago, is when this case was brought to Tomoko. It would not take the girl long to piece together what was roughly happening, even if it was a bit odd. A jorogumo, was kidnapping highschool girls instead of men...and not eating them. Perhaps, that's why Tomoko didn't deem it necessary to exorcise her. After a small confrontation where Kaori couldn't bring herself to harm a cute hair on Tomoko's head, she ended up willingly joining under the logic 'Someone has to protect this cute little girl, so I'll do it!'

No other intentions at all, definitely not.

The girls were all safely returned home.

[VitaVitaAR]

• Name: Suzuki Tomoko
• Age: 17
• Gender: Female
• Race: Human("About 88% human!")
• Appearance: A petite girl with pale blonde hair and green eyes. Due to her small size, youthful looks, and less mature figure, she is sometimes mistaken for younger then she actually is. Her right arm appears to be bandaged, and her left leg is a mundane, albeit very well-made and effective, prosthetic.
• Personality: A highly intelligent and mentally capable girl. Gifted with excellent intuition, and pride in her own mental capacity. It's undeniable that Suzuki Tomoko excels in matters of problem-solving and reason. Certainly, it appears to be one of per primary reasons for positioning herself as someone who can resolve supernatural cases for others. But this seeming altruistic intent does not change, fundamentally, who Suzuki Tomoko is.
  
  A ruthless and manipulative girl who has absolute no issue in doing whatever is necessary to achieve her goals. Blackmail, emotional browbeating, lies, it's all in the table for Suzuki Tomoko. Even if it means placing herself into serious danger in order to secure a solution, or perhaps the assistance of a reluctant party, she won't hesitate. Perhaps it's because she always plans ahead. Perhaps she places plenty of faith in her ability to think on the fly.
  
  Or maybe she's just that confident that things will work out, somehow.
  
  Playful and often prone to toying with her employees, Tomoko will amuse herself in a variety of ways. From teasing someone who has no choice but to deal with her to indulging in logic puzzles, she occupies her free time with anything she finds emotionally and mentally stimulating.
  
  Despite her manipulative and ruthless nature, ultimately Tomoko is a rather friendly and open girl towards humans, yokai, and spirits alike. All are seen equally in her eyes, and thus all are treated with the same approach. While this means she is quite outgoing, it is important not to mistake her for the kind of person who will only met out judgement towards the supernatural. If a culprit is ultimately proven to be human in nature, there is no reason to treat them any differently then a wicked spirit or yokai.
  
  Tomoko's ego enjoys being stroked, and thus she indulges in praise wherever she can find it. Her many eccentricates include playing up her own cuteness whenever possible, even when it's something such as summoning a ghost to interrogate. There's no reason she should pose like a magical girl when doing so, but she will anyways. She is also highly competitive towards perceived rivals, and can be extremely clingy if she takes a liking to someone. Combining these two traits can be disastrous.
  
  While the loss of her arm and leg was doubtlessly a painful experience, and the fact she was offered as a sacrifice should have left deep scars upon her mind, Tomoko shows little evidence of feeling as such. If anything, she's almost thankful that she was subjected to the ritual, as it has granted her capabilities that even skilled practioners of onmyodo would have to cast complex spells to achieve.
  
  In short, Suzuki Tomoko is a ruthless hellion who will stop at nothing in the name of achieving a resolution for a case.
• Abilities: The sacrificial ritual that took Tomoko's right arm and left leg was intended to create a spiritual entity from a human being, one that would function as a human-derived deity once enshrined. Though the ritual was deemed a failure, as Tomoko's entire body was not taken, her nonexistent right arm and left leg are still considered to be of the spiritual world. Rather then being killed and transformed into a spirit, Tomoko instead stands at the intersection of the spirit world and the material world, bridging the gap between both. This allows her to effortlessly perceive the invisible, and to physically interact with the intangible. Spirits with no corporeal form are like solid objects to her, allowing her to touch them. Her presence is immediately recognizable to the denizens of the unseen world, be they yokai or ghosts, though less easily understood by creatures of foreign origin. Her nature also grants her skill comparable to an adept onmyouji in the areas of exorcism and spiritual invocation, as well as anti-yokai spells.
• Skills: Tomoko is highly intelligent, and gifted at using deductive reasoning and her natural intuition. She is also a capable liar, adept at spinning potential truths if she believes they are more convenient then reality at the moment. While she is hardly the sort of person who seems capable in a fight, she is less of a slouch then would be expected. Her cane makes a surprisingly effective weapon, and due to her nature she can even strike intangible threats with it.
• Equipment: Aside from her cane, which is mostly ordinary and also useful as a weapon due to the fact that Tomoko is the one using it, her left leg is a high-quality prosthetic. She can even walk without a cane, but finds using her cane marginally easier(plus it makes people more considerate of her). Her right arm, however, is concealed entirely in bandages. No physical limb remains beneath them, and Tomoko asserts that removing the bandages is something she would only do if absolutely necessary. Finally, her bag is filled with ofuda, for use in various spells.
• Brief Backstory: The child of a faded branch of an onmyouji family, Tomoko's early life was not particularly out o the ordinary. She did express an interest in the unusual from a young age, and enjoyed puzzles, but she was otherwise possessed in the same lacking talent as her parents.
  
  This would not have lead to anything if not for the fact that the main family's bloodline was faltering too. While other families continued to flourish, they did not. And so they decided to use the branch families for the very purpose they had been created: Sacrifice.
  
  Selecting Tomoko as the one best suited to this role, they summoned her parents to their estate and swiftly snatched her away at only ten years old. The intent was to perform a sacrificial ritual, to convert Tomoko into a guardian deity with no aspirations or will of her own, whose presence would strengthen their faltering blood.
  
  Initially it seemed as if they had succeeded, Tomoko's parents at once horrified and yet unable to do anything to bring their daughter back.
  
  And yet, four years later, Tomoko was returned. At the very same time, a disaster struck the main family, their estate destroyed and many of them dying as a result.
  
  Tomoko was found in a park near her family's home. She was perfectly healthy, and yet in spite of having been gone for four years she hadn't aged a day.
  
  That, and she was missing both her right arm and her left leg.
  
  From that day forth, she was gifted with abilities much like the main family had desired, and stood at the intersection of the spiritual and human worlds. As she grew older, having involved herself in numerous incidents, Tomoko chose to establish an agency that would allow her to better handle them, carefully seeding rumors in order to better draw the attention of those who would require her assistance.

[Raineh Daze]

• Name: Ibaraki Akari
• Age: 9
• Gender: Female
• Race: Oni
• Appearance: Probably best if you don't try and catch the ball.
• Personality: On the one hand, Akari is a fairly innocent and bubbly child. She's a big fan of magical girl shows, and although she doesn't play video games herself, she quite likes watching other people do it. She complains about having to study, even though she's got far less on her plate in that regard than a normal child would, and would much rather go bother the other employees about something.
  On the other, she's an oni, and a spoiled one with the most notable lineage that it's possible to have in the modern day. Her attitude towards unfamiliar humans is less "oh, that's a person" and more "oh, that's something to play with and potentially food". The idea of respecting people for simply existing, or having to defer to someone she hasn't been explicitly told to by her mother, simply doesn't occur to the girl.
  Some of her behaviours and habits are also pretty odd--none of her clothing is of western style, and she already has the oni habit of drinking sake like it's water.
• Abilities: Akari is a shockingly powerful oni, given her age. Despite her unimposing physique, there are very few people who are going to be winning if it's simply a contest of pitting strength against one another. She's about as difficult to seriously injure; blunt force is mostly useless without some serious strength behind it, and simply cutting her often requires magical assistance or massive force. Plus, like her mother, if it's not cut off entirely it will doubtless heal fine, and losing limbs would be more of a (physical) inconvenience than life-threatening.
  Although she hasn't any practice at using it, Akari has inherited Ibaraki's affinity for Heat--not just heat in the direct sense, but heat as a driving force for changes. It's this affinity that led Ibaraki-douji so easily to shapeshifting, and allows for just reattaching missing body parts later. She's also inherited the ability--or some would call it a mystic scar--common to all of the famous oni's relatives, no matter the connection: Lost Arm. So significant was the injury that, even now, her entire extended bloodline has the ability to summon a single phantom arm.
  You know, if two arms isn't enough for hitting things.
• Skills: She's... good at clipping vtubers? Really, you can't expect too much out of her when it's a matter of finesse.
• Equipment: She's got an iron club, when needed, in case something really needs to be broken. Spoiled as she is, her phone is also brand new and top of the line. If it weren't for needing other people to do the actual purchasing of alcohol, she'd probably have more spending money.
• Brief Backstory: As her name implies, Akari is related to Ibaraki-douji. The Ibaraki-douji. In fact, she's Ibaraki's sole daughter, which explains why her upbringing thus far has been extremely luxurious... but also rather sheltered and disconnected from the world. Of course, that's not good for her upbringing at all--she needs to actually interact with people and at least come to be able to see humans in a slightly less dismissive light. But that would take a lot of time and effort.
  The solution? Pay Tomoko to do it. Tomoko gets easy access to muscle, Akari gets to meet lots of new people and get used to the public, and Ibaraki's time is free for other things.