Name: Matou Shinako
Gender: Female
Age: 21
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Objective for the Grail: Pest Control
Command Seal:
Personality: Shinako is many things, and startling few of them are positive. She is narcissistic and self-obsessed, believing herself superior to her contemporaries. It is not enough for her to defeat her foes, whether they be true enemies or merely individuals she sees as competition. No, she must
conquer them, see them utterly dominated and humiliated before her very eyes. She is hungry for power of any kind, and relishes in the opportunity to hold that power over others, vying for dominion in almost every aspect of her life, desperate to cling onto whatever small semblances of authority she can dig up. She engages in the heinous and debased not out of any greater philosophical purpose, or even for the acts themselves, but because
she can. It makes her feel strong, powerful, in control. She has, for many years, suffered under the cruelty of another, and to cope, she enacts the very same acts of cruelty onto others, relishing in their agony and the fact that she is capable of inflicting such onto them.
It would be unbecoming of her to simply allow this ravenous, unquenchable desire be shown, however, so she has carefully cultivated a persona to mask this—in her every day life she is sweet and caring, if a bit domineering, always at the forefront of whatever group she finds herself in, masking the darkness within her heart with all the manipulative skill of her sire. But it is just that: a mask. True compassion is something she has never experienced before, and has little interest in pursuing, seeing it as a frivolity that she can neither afford nor abide by. A truly rotten individual to her core.
Bio: The latest scion of the Matou family, a spark among the dying embers of a once promising clan condemned to the indignation of decline. The heirs of the Matou had, for generations before her, increasingly lost their potency. Exiled from their homeland and rejected by the lands of Japan, it was their lot in life to dwindle entirely, until not a single trace of magic could be found among their descendants. In an attempt to staunch this inevitable decline, the patriarch of the Matou, a cunning man with knowledge far beyond his years, bartered with what influence he still had, and obtained suitable breeding fodder for his dying bloodline. It was through careful augmentation and manipulation of this woman—of Shinako's mother—that she came into the world healthy, strong, and most importantly, worthy of continuing on the family legacy.
From her earliest years, Shinako was trained at the knee of her grandfather, learning the secrets of their lineage's magecraft. To say it was unpleasant was an understatement. It was agonizing, horrifying, vile work. It drove her to the brink of madness countless times, rendering her down to the thinnest scraps of humanity again and again, barely giving her time to recover before doing it all over again. But it never broke her. She was strong, after all. She endured. Time and time again, after days and weeks in that infernal basement, in that hellish realm, she endured. It didn't matter what it was that kept he going. Strength of will, hatred for her forebearer, an animalistic desperation to live; none of it mattered. Not to him. All that mattered was the power of the heir, carefully tending the ember that was Matou Shinako to be a worthy heir to the Matou. In that, she unfortunately provided.
As she grew from child to teen, from teen to woman, the grueling work became less and less grueling. She was allowed, as an act of backhanded mercy, to live a normal life among her peers, to go out and learn of the world around them to better prepare for the battles to come, where she would finally realize the ambitions of her family's five hundred year dream. It was no mercy. She could never be
normal. Not after all she had been through. But every day life proved to be an adequate outlet for the violence she felt within, and she had long since learned to be discrete with her desires, so her grandfather never had cause to deny her what little pleasure she found in existence.
Until the volcano erupted, harbinger of her time of reckoning—the Fourth Heaven's Feel.
Magic Circuit Switch: The sound of gnashing teeth
Number of Magic Circuits: B
Quality of Magic Circuits: B
Elemental Affinities: Imaginary Numbers, Water
Attributes: Absorption, Reinforcement
Origin: Consumption
Magecraft: General Magecraft: Although not formally schooled at the Clocktower, Shinako received a comprehensive education under her grandfather, Matou Zouken, and therefore possesses all the cursory skills of a true Magi.
Absorption: The basis from which all Matou magecraft is derived. It is "the binding of things to one's self", the ability to consume that which is another's and use it for one's own purposes. It goes without saying, therefore, that this aspect of Shinako's magecraft is especially useful when employed against the brute force tactics of other Magi, turning their strength into her own.
Familiars: While Absorption may be the basis for the magecraft of the Matou family, the vector with which it is employed is through their familiars. Specially bred worms are the method through which Shinako's magecraft is employed, and combined with her unique elemental affinity, provide her with a dizzying array of familiars capable of a wide variety of tasks.
Bounded Fields: A particular specialization of Shinako herself. She prides herself in the strength and complexity of the Bounded Fields she is capable or raising. Using her familiars as the necessary catalyst, she is capable of rapidly raising complex barriers and dividing lines without the lengthy set up time usually required. By devouring the energy used to assail them, she can further reinforce their strength. As someone who herself feels trapped by circumstance, Shinako takes particular joy in sealing off every possible escape for her prey.
Number Space: A curiosity for most, this rare element has been carefully incorporated into Shinako's capabilities. It grants the possessor the ability to access the Imaginary Number Space, a plane different from the Material, where aspects such as time have no meaning. Primarily used as a "storage" space for her numberless familiars, it also imbues her magecraft with a peculiar potency against spiritual beings, while limiting its effectiveness against those of physical form. In combination with the Matou's fundamental aspect, to bind and absorb, it is possible to subsume these entities under the proper circumstances.
Crest: The result of five hundred years of ambition, the Matou family crest is not a simple sigil etched onto the skin of its wielder, but a living organism—a worm that lives within the flesh of the Magi. It feeds off the bearer's magical energy, and in return provokes the body to produce ever greater heights to sustain itself, functioning as an artificial circuit of sorts. The very magecraft of the Matou is contained within the worm, and by its torturous fusion with the host, it carves the knowledge of generations into their very nerves.
Weapon: Shinako possesses a truly incomprehensible number of Crest Worm familiars, bred over countless years and stored safely within her number space, and in caches throughout Fuyuki. While the most ordinary of these is not particularly powerful, their sheer number can overwhelm unprepared or otherwise incapacitated foes. There are a number of more powerful varieties, however, bred for specific purposes. Some even form the basis of Mystic Codes, treasured tools used to further augment her effectiveness as a Magi.
The most notable of which are listed here.
Second Skin: A gelatinous organism formed from numerous Crest Worms, Second Skin serves the exact purpose for which it is named—it coats the user's body entirely, forming a secondary layer of protection. Fed directly by the user's magical energy, the malleable flesh of the Code hardens rapidly in response to harm, and while unlikely to do much against the weaponry fielded by Heroic Spirits, it provides consummate protection against mundane means of damage. When employed against enemy magecraft, it siphons off the very mana used to form means of attack, reinforcing itself against the effect in question to provide even greater heights of defense. As it is rather grotesque to look upon, Shinako usually restricts its cover to the portions of her body hidden beneath clothing.
Blade Wings: Carnivorous, flying insects that have been bred from the Matou's Crest Worms. They are fast, ravenous, and impeccably coordinated. Typically deployed in large swarms, they overwhelm their prey by attack from every direction simultaneously, stripping flesh from bone like winged piranhas. Shinako's primary combat familiar.
Death Worms: Huge, multi-segmented worms with massive, razor sharp mandibles and armored plating, these centipede-like creatures are Shinako's heavy hitters. She only has a handful of such creatures at any given point, as they are quite arduous to make, and so she deploys them only sparingly, using their powerful bodies to burrow beneath the battlefield and take her opponents by surprise. True combat familiars, befitting the expertise of the Matou.
Communicators: A specially bred worm with dozens of chitin plates across its body. In response to magical energy from its master, the worm will vibrate these plates synchronously, creating sound. They are complex enough to mimic human speech, and are used by Shinako to communicate at distance with orthodox Magi incapable of buying a Nokia.
mickilennial
Emberdawn2
vietmyke
Lemons
Damycles
Supermaxx
Xiro Zean
Cu Chulainn
Izurich
