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[amnotaweasel]

PLAYER

Name: Nagia
Age: 30
Contact: shok_chama, discord yesthatnagia#8925, or just PM this journal.
Other Characters: n/a
Interests: I super, super love politics and political intrigue and spying. Also, murder, mayhem, mysterious poisonings, and everything going sideways in a big way.

CHARACTER

Name: Makimachi Misao
Canon/OC: Rurouni Kenshin
Canon Point: "Haru ni Sakura" epilogue, five years post-manga
Journal: amnotaweasel
Age: 21 (as of "Haru ni Sakura"; she was 16 when most of the canon events went down)

Canon World

The world of Rurouni Kenshin is a look at the early Meiji Era of Japan -- a time when Japan itself was changing and modernizing in the wake of the Boshin Wars -- specifically May through September of 1878, from the perspective of a martial pacifist. There are a lot of historical injokes, wacky hijinx, wackier villains, and ultimately, it demonstrates that while the early Meiji Era was a fascinating time, it wasn't particularly safe to live in. Sure, the hereditary classes had been abolished and the samurai's paired swords had been banned, but that just meant there was a lot of social unrest amid once-rich families becoming penniless and disenfranchised. Throw in that Japan was importing electricity and steam technology, and the result was (according to Watsuki Nobuhiro) just crazier crooks.

But if there's one thing Watsuki wanted his audience to remember, it was this: almost nobody raises a sword in open rebellion without a compelling reason. The Boshin Wars and the early Meiji Era were a tumultuous time in which nearly everyone who fought, no matter how they did it, was trying to have a say in their country's future.

History

Makimachi Misao was born in November of 1862 in an unknown location, presumably near Kyoto, Japan. Her paternal grandfather was the leader of the Oniwabanshuu, a group of spies who worked for the Shogunate. Her parents died, and by the time she was five years old, she had been taken into the custody of Shinomori Aoshi, her grandfather's successor, and Han'nya, Aoshi's lieutenant.

By the time she was eight, Aoshi left her in the care of Kashiwazaki Nenji, better known as Okina -- Aoshi's own mentor and the owner of a prosperous Kyoto ryokan. After that, Aoshi vanished from Misao's life.

Misao spent the next eight years in Kyoto, slowly civilizing and training as a kunoichi in everyone's spare time, as well as how to cook. Around age thirteen she started to leave Kyoto, looking for Aoshi. She had loved him and his team of undomesticated ninjas too dearly to just forget about them all.

At sixteen, she learned she needn't have bothered: his whole team was dead, and it had driven Aoshi. He wanted nothing more than to kill a newfound ally of hers, and then himself. In the meanwhile, Shishio Makoto, a disenfranchised ex-assassin, had decided to take his frustrations with the Meiji government out on the city of Kyoto and then the whole of Japan. Misao spent most of the summer of 1878 working against Shishio in whatever ways she could, until at last Aoshi tried to kill Okina, and Okina disbanded the Oniwabanshuu in a deathbed letter.

Not willing to give up, Misao immediately re-formed the organization, with herself as its leader, and led the other four active members in resisting Shishio. They mobilized the city, preventing Shishio from setting it on fire, and acted to support Himura Kenshin, Misao's new ally and the actual protagonist of RK.

Even after Himura had straightened Aoshi's head out and dragged him back home where he belonged, events kept spiralling downwards. Aoshi spent all his time in meditation, while Misao tried ridiculous thing after ridiculous thing to cheer him up --

And then came the letter from Kamiya Kaoru, one of her new friends, asking Misao to find the diary of one Himura Tomoe, Kenshin's long dead wife. When they delivered the diary to Tokyo, they discovered that they were too late: Kaoru had died days before they'd even arrived.

It was Aoshi who realized that Kaoru wasn't really dead. Misao spent most of the arc wandering around with Yahiko and saying things like "And he walks pigeon-toed!" Once they'd managed to locate Kaoru, pull Kenshin out of his heroic BSoD, and have a bunch of final battles (including Misao disarming sea mines via kunai), Aoshi eventually pried her out of Tokyo and back home.

The last five years have been quiet. Aoshi appears to have restarted his information network, and he and Misao still travel together. Misao herself has grown up considerably, from a tempestuous young teen with hero worship to a blithe-spirited Kyoto socialite.

Personality

In a manga full of angsty and traumatized people, Misao stands out as a determinedly cheerful, well-adjusted person. Emotionally speaking, she's one of the more resilient characters. Hell, the guy she's in love with tried to kill the guy who raised her from the age of eight and she didn't break down (though she did cry for a little while).

All of this to say that Misao is the consummate genki girl: constantly energetic, constantly moving, cheerful even when she probably shouldn't be, and tempestuous.

Apparently nobody ever trained her personality to suit onmitsu-dom. When she's not running a con (and she runs a lot of cons; that's how she met Kenshin), she's surprisingly honest. She wears her feelings openly, including her temper. Thanks to said temper and how frequently it boils over, if in minor ways, she doesn't really hold grudges and she tends to move past slights quickly, unless you keep slighting her. In fact, in general, she's a pretty forgiving person.

It should also be mentioned that her attention span is so short she'd envy a gnat -- if she could concentrate long enough. Misao is the poster child for ADHD: hyperactive, often open with her emotions, easily distracted/swiftly losing her train of thought, forgetting what she had been about to say, zoning out during long explanations. She's even done it to her beloved Aoshi. If you are talking to Misao, Misao is not just listening to you: she's also listening to your heartbeat, watching what's going on beyond you and wondering if she should do anything about it, thinking about what she wants to eat for lunch, wondering when she'll get to see Aoshi-sama again, and probably fidgeting, too. (Sometimes this is advantageous, since it means people rarely sneak up on her; it's disadvantageous if you want her on a stakeout.)

Other traits? She's extremely loyal to her friends, she's been in love with one guy since she was tiny, she's not particularly moral (for example: she commits multiple thefts and is perfectly willing to extort people), and she's a good cook. She's just a little bit sneakier than you think she is--though not nearly as sneaky as she thinks she is.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Misao is good, though not brilliant, at stealth and hand-to-hand combat, since she was trained to them from the time she could walk. She's slightly better with throwing knives, but those aren't particularly useful if she's trying to defend herself or somebody else, unless she's fully committed and willing to kill people. (And she's usually not, though at least in the manga, she doesn't appear to have anything specific against killing people who are trying to kill her.)

But: however good her technique is (and it's good; she's roughly the equivalent of a second dan blackbelt in Aikido), she's all of five feet tall and weighs maybe eighty pounds. Sure, it's almost all muscle, but she can only hit so hard, and if somebody else hits her, they're gonna be hurting her pretty badly. She's kinda fragile, is what I'm saying.

Misao's real skill is espionage. According to manga canon (thanks, Jinchuu arc), her hearing is roughly as sensitive as a domestic dog's, which makes her great for overhearing conversations, or even acting as a human lie detector. She runs cons almost as easily as breathing, using what the people around her want from her -- and expect to see -- against them, and has no moral scruples about doing so. Her time on the road, in one of Japan's more dangerous eras, has taught her how to quickly identify threats and allies, and to size up the motives of others, within the context of her culture.

As she is now outside her native culture, she's going to have a serious learning curve ahead of her; she will never match the fluency she had in Japan, but she's perfectly capable of learning to fool most people at least for a short while.

Suggested Nerfs

I'm genuinely not sure if you should bother nerfing her hearing. (On the other hand, if you want her to suffer, go for it! It's very likely that her balance relies at least partly on her enhanced sense -- her hearing was likely trained before she entered Aoshi's custody, so in her infancy. Even without that, suddenly being unable to hear heartbeats will be disorienting for her all on its own.)

I think the sheer culture shock will nerf a lot of her espionage/confidence scheme abilities. The kind of social camouflage she uses relies on having a good mental template for interactions, and she won't have that anymore.

Arrival Inventory

• Exotic clothing! Specifically, an aged-up form of her canonical battle dress, which is mostly dark silk -- she's added a shirt with a mandarin collar beneath it, and she's too old for shorts now.
  
• A few kunai (very small throwing knives) -- maximum of five, in total.
  
• A stolen purse containing strange coinage (early yen and a few old ryou), the sum total of which might be roughly equivalent to a single gold sovereign, or maybe 50 silver, if anybody's even willing to accept it all.
  
• Nothing else.

'Human'ization

Misao is an extremely tiny human -- at 21, she's barely scraping 5', and I've even heard 4'11" for an official height, though I kind of doubt it. She has enhanced hearing and good night vision, but nothing that would visibly mark her as not human. I wouldn't be surprised if her sheer lack of height got her confused for an elf occasionally, but I see no need to reformat her.

Fit

One of the things I think will work really well is that Misao is used to living in a complicated social mess -- Kyoto wasn't exactly peaceful in the aftermath of the Boshin Wars, even without lunatics trying to set it on fire -- and also is used to only a slightly higher technology rate. I think she could be useful to the Inquisition as a spy/scout, especially attaching to diplomatic missions to bring back extra secrets.

Misao spent so much of her canon being played for laughs -- and, even when she led the Oniwabanshuu, she'd spent too long being everybody's little sister and the mascot of the bunch to really command respect without significantly more time in the role. I think she can really flourish in the Inquisition and I'm eager to play it out. (Then again, grabbing comic relief characters and playing them for competence is one of my favorite things to do.)

SAMPLES

Fade Rift TDM thread | "Bad ending" meme thread TRIGGER WARNING: contains discussions of sexual assault, infanticide, widespread starvation | Modern AU thread (a palate cleanser).