𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚕𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 — 𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚋𝚗𝚍

[sacral]

PLAYER NAME: eve
CONTACT: pm sacral
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: mod blessings!

CHARACTER: Sumeragi Subaru (family, given)
CANON: X/1999 (previously of Tokyo Babylon fame.)
CANON POINT: Vol 16, Nocturne, Kekkai VI. Post Seishirou's death. Pre-the eyeballening. Listen there's enough to contend with without the addition of taking a certain someone's last name. And powers.

BACKGROUND:

PROLOGUE. Be Sumeragi Subaru.

1. Be born on the Pisces side of the Piscean-Aquarian cusp, part two of twins, with a silver spoon in your mouth in regards to lineage. Be destined to become the 13th head of clan Sumeragi, a family of onmyouji (❀) who have served as the spiritual protectors of Japan and its emperors for hundreds of years. This is a lot of clout for a baby, but we'll get there.

2. Be trained from birth to funnel immense raw power into onmyoudo. Be adored. To be fair, you are cute as a button, but should really learn some self-preservaton. (Spoilers: you don't.)

3. Be 9-years-old. Have your loving grandmother not use the Sumeragi's generational wealth to purchase a child leash. Wander off to a flower viewing, but witness a grisly murder instead. When the creep committing the murder tries to scare you, react with big pleading shoujo eyes. Get the creep to make a bet with you that you won't remember, because you are are 9 and he is 16 and his onmyoudo is way better than yours. Something about love? Who knows! Narrowly escape murder, but at the price of having sick scars and being hunted for the rest of your life.

4. Upset your poor grandmother with this news. She hides you for seven years.

5. Until you move to Tokyo at 16! You go to school! Get paid to ghostbust! Skip meals because you're a workaholic! Incur the loving wrath of your older twin sister, Sumeragi Hokuto! You sure hang out in Kabuki-cho a lot —

6. As seen previously on Days of Our Lives: Exorcists edition... Be lead on a wild... goose... raven? chase by your shikigami. Eat pavement in front of a handsome man with a job. Become friends. Have your twin sister betroth you without your consent. Now, you are a power trio who hunt spirits, fight for the downtrodden, and go on dates. Experience domestic bliss.

7. Be unaware of your life's dramatic foreshadowing. Even though your handsome man friend with a job's name is Sakurazuka and your rival clan's most infamous assassin is the Sakurazukamori. Weird.

8. Have one of your cases result in your handsome man friend with a job being blinded in one eye. Lose your absolute mind with fear that he will hate you, when in fact, 9/10 people find scars sexy.

9. Realize you've fallen in love with him.
    9b. This goes poorly.

10. Have this be the catalyst for the unveiling of the bet you weren't aware you made. Surprise, Sakurazuka Seishirou, your handsome man friend with a job has another job: the Sakurazukamori!

11. Tragically, he does not love you back. Allegedly. Instead, have him attempt to kill you. Don't fight back, even though you could. You are much too heartbroken for that.
    9a. Have your grandmother intervene, saving your life at the expense of crippling herself.

12. Go catatonic while your twin sister confronts the man who broke your heart. Be awoken by her death at his hands — but not before she exacted a little insurance in the form of a spell.

13. Drop out of school. Withdraw from society. Get (magically) swole. Take up smoking. Perfunctorily do your duties as the clan leader while hunting the handsome man friend you wish would hunt you back to fulfill your wish. Turn 25.

14. Finally reunite with your handsome man friend at the beginning of the end of the world. He has another job! He is a Dragon of Earth, one of the Seven Angels, someone who is on the side of changing the Earth at the expense of culling humanity. Luckily (citation needed), you are a Dragon of Heaven! One of the Sevel Seals, tasked with saving humanity. You get a sweet interdimensional, damage-reducing forcefield as a participation award.
    14a. You do not actually care about the fate of the Earth. (But the barrier is pretty sweet.)

15. Fight. Become a boyfriend mentor to the boy who is tasked with saving mankind. Meet your teammates, meet your enemies. All to varying degrees of success.

16. Have your new boyfriend's boyfriend gouge out your right eye because you wished to be like your handsome man friend whom you wish was your boyfriend. Congratulations, you are now half blind! You only mentally scarred your colleagues a little to get there.

17. Have a final confrontation with your handsome man friend on Rainbow Bridge under the pretense of keeping that area's barrier safe. Go all out, look cool as hell doing it. You sought this moment for years, no reason to hold back.

18. Have your handsome man friend come to a realization about the nature of your wish. Prepare to let yourself be killed by him.

19. Have your handsome man friend pull the biggest Uno reverse in shoujo history and knowingly activate the last spell cast by your twin sister upon her death — one that turns the killing blow back against him.

20. Kill Sakurazuka Seishirou against your will.

21. Be told something by him that has haunted the imaginations of X/1999 fans to this day. Have some regrets. Wear your clothes stained with his blood for a couple days, it might help.

22. Lose your ability to create your sweet barrier and be unseated from the Dragons of Heaven. Have your new boyfriend's boyfriend offer you the remaining eyeball of your now dead would-be (???) boyfriend.
    22a. Have him drop the bomb that he did consider you special to him. Have more regrets.

23. Accept eyeball. Brief intermission. Become the Sakurazukamori. Become a Dragon of Earth. Fin.

EPILOGUE. we're just gonna ignore the implications of Sakurazuka Subaru huh

ABILITIES | POWERS:

ONMYOUDO — Subaru is an onmyouji, a professional practitioner of the art of onmyoudo, which is a system of magic and natural science based on the principle of yin and yang and the five elements (wuxing). Subaru is a powerful psychic and medium who performs the rites and rituals associated with divination, exorcism, protection, and other such religious services. He can sense, see, and communicate with spirits, ghosts, and demons. Subaru's spellwork is most often routed through ofuda, paper talismans. He can create psychic blasts, beams, and shields, as well as manipulate the elements to some degree. At his rowdiest, he can wipe out whole buildings and other manmade structures like bridges as collateral — though he would prefer not to.

Subaru's power as the 13th head of the Sumeragi clan is thought of as very rare and he has been trained in the art and its adjacent magic combat since he was a child to hone the skill needed to wield it effectively. In adulthood, he is counted as one of the most powerful standing onmyouji alongside Sakurazuka Seishirou. Even among the myriad characters and unique powers presented throughout his canons, Subaru is coined as one who stands on another level due to his lifetime of training beyond that of the fated conflict that drives the story of X/1999. While his upbringing as a medium has made him incredibly sensitive, his dedication and stubbornness also make him incredibly durable. He has some typical superhuman traits which aren't expressly attributed to his role as an onmyouji or a Seal (see below): increased speed, stamina, acuity, the ability to battle-cavort around the city by leaping or running wild distances, etc.

One of the Sumeragi clan's defining techniques is the development of the ability to enter the consciousness of another person. It's a dangerous ritual for the caster and subject alike, but it can be used to aid the possessed or comatose in their return to reality.

SHIKIGAMI — As an onmyouji, Subaru can summon shikigami, or familiars that are connected to the spiritual force of their masters. Subaru's shikigami takes the form of a large, white, three-headed bird, capable of separating into three birds. He can also summon weaker droves of white birds conjured from ofuda. These creatures are capable of reconnaissance and offensive/defensive magic.

KEKKAI — In X/1999, Subaru is a Dragon of Heaven and one of the Seven Seals, a group of individuals who were ordained to save humanity from destruction. One of the abilities of the Seals is to create a kekkai, a spiritual barrier that protects Tokyo from harm. When a kekkai is established, it temporarily phases the area inside of it to a different dimension where all physical damage sustained does not carry over to reality. Should the owner of the kekkai be mortally wounded or killed, the barrier forcibly dissolves and the damage affects the real world. Kekkai are born from a need to protect something, and with Subaru losing the person he most wanted to protect as of his canon point (Seishirou, by his own hand), he has so lost his ability to create a kekkai. His kekkai took the shape of a pentagram.

LIMITATIONS — None of Subaru's powers are particularly game-breaking and will suffer any natural limitations incurred by the setting, such as a supply of paper and ink for ofuda. His kekkai would be the biggest concern, but I've included it for completion's sake only and he will not have the ability to create it with his current canon point.

PERSONALITY:

HOW IT STARTED — Subaru began life with an overabundance of "desired" traits. Heir to clan Sumeragi who wielded prestige and power over all other onmyouji clans in Japan, Subaru's strong latent abilities were fostered alongside the purity and softness of his nature. Subaru was a just, kind, and caring child with a critical lack of self-preservation that often put him at odds with the dangers of the profession he was being reared into. Even in his youth, Subaru was well aware that no two people shared the exact same experiences or emotions, but his ability and willingness to empathize so wholly with the people, ghosts, spirits, and monsters around him made his talents as an exorcist flourish. Subaru often looked the things that terrified people the most in the eye, corporeal and ephemeral both, and smiled. Funnily enough, he bore the responsibility of his position with a pragmatism that seemed to defy his skill, treating his job as the head of the most powerful onmyouji sect in Japan as anyone would treat any job they were being paid well for: just a job. Granted, his raw skill is still raw skill even when routed through hard work and competency — because of his morality, empathy, and deep distaste for harming (or seeing harm come to) others, he often pulled his punches and diminished his efficacy in the interest of "saving" others. Even those who often didn't deserve or desire saving; the first time he had to lie to a grieving mother to protect her in life from her young daughter's visceral wishes in death, it tore him apart.

This segues into an interesting piece of Subaru's thought process. Despite his gifts, Subaru doesn't see himself as special, only as not normal. He is often mercilessly othered by his own powers. He himself states that he's not good with people and because of this, he doesn't wish to work as an onmyouji forever. This seems contradictory to who he is and how well he performs in soothing the spiritual aggravations of others. However, there is truth in it — it's because Subaru lacks the ability to discriminate that he often feels misunderstood and like he can't communicate well with others. This blanket empathy makes no exceptions and often shrouds his own heart and soul from him. He treats everyone the same way and expects little from how others view or remember him, making him more than a little repressed, firstly, but also near impossible to betray. Save the one glaring case where he did let someone in at the behest of his own nascent wants: his antithesis, a man who treated everyone with the same apathy. That clash of Subaru's empathy and Seishirou's apathy ultimately resulted in the death of his sister and the shattering of his freshly-shaped heart. The pieces remained, but their shape very much changed.

HOW IT'S GOING — Going from there, Seishirou's betrayal drastically altered the course of Subaru's life. He grew from a fairly emotional, cooperative, and hardworking teen into a reticent and isolated adult. Subaru abandoned all other desires in life in pursuit of strength to stand equal to Sakurazuka Seishirou. This was not to exact revenge on him for the death of his sister or for betraying him, but to satisfy the one wish that lies at the axis of who Subaru was and who he grew into as a result: to die at Seishirou's hands. Because Subaru couldn't make himself unlove Seishirou, he sought to become a worthy opponent in his eyes. Worthy enough to be granted the Sakurazukamori's death that Seishirou never claimed out of what Subaru believed to be scorn. With this single driving force, Subaru became a knowledgeable and competent onmyouji who did perform the duties of the clan head, if not somewhat perfunctorily — iron wrought expertly over his his heartbreaks and hauntings. Subaru did not ever let himself heal from his formative hurts and so isolated himself with his wish to die at the hands of the person who hurt him. This immovable belief in his means to an end highlights his stunning lack of self-worth — he will meat shield for a good enough cause because in his mind, he's already decided on his course and nothing (good or bad) will stay him from it.

Despite this outlook being unhealthy and self-defeatist, Subaru is certain and stern in his undertakings even when he knows that it doesn't seem to make any sense, that it is selfish and will only benefit himself in the end. But Subaru also has a strong sense of self. He is still kind at heart, even though he has grown into a chilly and standoffish adult. He still reaches out. He still comes to the rescue. He does still, at his core, love. However, it is because he is who is he through his trials that he holds the wish that he does. It would be easy to seek strength as a means of revenge, but his heart only seeks the absolution of his first and only desire, and so he has woven his entire life around his pursuit of it. He knows that above all else, there is no way to make everyone happy.

TL;DR — overpowered sadsack with masochistic tendencies here to tell you why having too much empathy is actually not great

SAMPLE: tdm tourism & meme.

INVENTORY:

⋆ The clothes on his back.
⋆ A lighter + half a pack of cigarettes.
⋆ A few ofuda.
⋆ Seishirou's left eyeball in a sacred cannister.
⋆ (I'm kidding.)

NOTES: None, he's just here to have an arguably better time than in canon.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot-light. ...He deserves a tiny bit of a break. Just one.