Makimachi Misao

Name: Nagia
Age: 30
Contact: shok_chama
Other Characters: Cole, aka becamehim


Journal: amnotaweasel
Name: Makimachi Misao
Age: 21
Canon: Rurouni Kenshin
Canon Point: "Haru ni Sakura."

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

Wiki page: Here, but I don't 100% know where they got some of their facts.

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. At some point, 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 (traditional, expensive, bed & breakfast). After that, Aoshi vanished from Misao's life.

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

Headcanon/Supposition: I believe that around the age of 14, Misao was sexually assaulted somewhere near Tokyo. This explains both her habit of playing the "I'm a dumb innocent virgin and I don't know anything at all about sex or how to have an orgy" card later and also why she'd never visited or searched Tokyo until the Jinchuu arc.

At sixteen, she learned she needn't have bothered: his team was dead, including Han'nya, and Aoshi had gone mad because of it. 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 proved himself beyond redemption by trying 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.

Compared to all that, 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. In short, she's 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 spying. 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.)

She's also probably one of the only people in her family to directly care about people not in the clan, rather than in an indirect "this is where I keep my stuff" way. It's another hint at a nature that was natively too compassionate for the real onmitsu work, and probably related to the way she can and has forgiven Aoshi for betraying their family and everything it stood for.

All that aside, there is absolutely a darker side to Misao: she's got a pretty slender moral code that sees absolutely nothing wrong with beating the hell out of strangers, taking their stuff, and saying whatever she has to in order to get them where she needs them. She was using her virginity as a lure the first time she met Kenshin -- and I do wonder both where she learned that and why it's her go-to (my personal explanation is in her history). She tends to view men she doesn't know with a mixture of disdain, disinterest, and as acceptable targets -- possibly because she's decided that men who aren't Aoshi-sama (and Himura) are generally predatory and outright dangerous to women.

And last, even though she was willing to stand against Aoshi when he was crazy, doing so was immensely painful for her. She can't turn off her feelings for him; while I trust her to try to bring him back to his senses if he ever loses them again, I don't wholly expect her to survive the experience. (Plus, Aoshi proved in Jinchuu that he can still get things done, be home in time for breakfast, and seem 100% normal to her. Her ability to detect wrongdoing from his is... probably not great.)

Genuinely lastly, there's the issue of Aoshi. It's never really been explained why exactly they care about each other so much -- Misao spent years of her life missing him and searching for him, and is one of the only characters to genuinely welcome him back after his insanity; Aoshi straight up says in Jinchuu that he fought to live because he had to return to her. When he's gone, she wants to find him; when he seems upset, she wants to make him happy (though how she tells is never clear); when someone insults him, she's furious. Outside of knowingly betraying their family or the Kenshin-gumi, she would genuinely do anything for him... and that probably extends to cold-blooded murder.

Special Abilities

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.

I honestly don't think she needs many, if any, nerfs. The nature of the game will naturally nerf her con artist abilities, since she's outside of her native culture, and her hearing is as much as a weakness as a strength in a world where danger is accompanied by air raid sirens.



Sample 1 TW - discussion of sexual assault || Sample 2 - modern AU || Sample 3 - TDM