ABOUT PERSONALITY ABILITIES BACKSTORY CODING

ABOUT

PERSONALITY

At first meeting, Natsume is a very polite and accommodating person, but it's very easy to tell that he's simply trying his best to be as easy to deal with as possible. He's kind and can be warm, but he rarely expresses his own opinions or desires, even when prompted, and tends to defer to what others want to do in almost any situation. Overall, his attempts at not causing problems usually end up forcing him to hide his own wants and needs even deeper.

When he relaxes a bit more, Natsume is surprisingly strong-willed and stubborn. He tends to reveal this side more with people who get under his skin -- those who are careless, arrogant or cavalier, which often end up being the yokai or exorcists he encounters -- and can be downright blunt when he's properly irritated. He isn't afraid to be bossy to these sorts of people, despite his relative physical weakness. Natsume can also be incredibly reckless, putting himself in harm's way and pushing himself far beyond his own limits, if he believes it's in the service of doing the right thing.

At his heart, Natsume is a very compassionate, soft-hearted person, who puts up a prickly exterior as a defense mechanism. He's very susceptible to the causes of those who are smaller or weaker, and doesn't believe in ever hurting someone or something to get what he wants. Despite a life made more complicated by yokai, he never tries to severely injure or kill any of them, choosing to exorcise or otherwise bind them if they're causing problems and simply talking it out doesn't work. He's ferociously loyal, and constantly hovers between wanting to accept the love other's try to show him and hold them at arm's length so he doesn't hurt them more.

ABILITIES

BACKSTORY

Natsume Takashi was the only child of two very loving parents. His mother died soon after he was born, and his father soon followed, when Natsume was three or four. Since he had no immediate relatives, Natsume began a pattern: he would be taken in by a set of relatives, spend a couple months with them, then be sent away. He changed schools countless times, went from well-meaning but hapless relatives to cruel, abusive ones and back again, and even spent a length of time in an orphanage. He was a polite, sweet-tempered, obedient child, but he simply couldn't stay in one place very long.

The reason for this was simple: Natsume was able to see things. From a very young age, he would react or talk to creatures that only he could see, which was unsettling enough. He would try to show his relatives what he was seeing, pointing into empty corners or yelling at thin air, and growing increasingly panicked when nobody else could see what he could. The monsters weren't passive either -- when they realized the boy could see them, they would often torment him, chasing or attacking him, leaving injuries that Natsume couldn't explain. Bad luck seemed to follow him too: items would be broken, strange messes that could only be blamed on the strange, erratic child, outbursts that didn't make sense to anyone else. It only made sense that eventually every guardian would give up and send him away.

When Natsume was sixteen, he moved in with a new set of relatives, the Fujiwara's, and started school in the small local village. The area was full of yokai, but Natsume was used to that by now. He knew how to run and hide and try to keep it a secret. He knew how to be polite and accommodating to try and keep his place in this home -- the kindest he'd ever been in -- as long as he could. It was one day, when running from yet another malevolent spirit, that Natsume accidentally broke a seal on a small shrine containing a lucky cat statue, and released a powerful mountain spirit named Madara. The spirit could sense Natsume's incredible power, and was about to devour him -- when Natsume punched it in the face and turned it back into lucky cat form.

Madara -- or "Nyanko-sensei", as Natsume nicknamed him -- then revealed that generations before, Natsume Reiko -- Natsume's maternal grandmother -- lived in the same village, and was also capable of seeing yokai. She was a formidable force, who made a game of battling as many spirits as she could and taking their names to keep in a handmade book. Holding their names was akin to holding complete power over the spirits, making the book (titled the "Book of Friends") a valuable item. Natsume Takashi was no Reiko, though, and he decided to try and return as many of the names as he could. Nyanko-sensei begrudgingly agreed to be his guardian, in exchange for whatever remained of the Book of Friends once Natsume died. Having a cranky, alcoholic cat bodyguard wasn't exactly what Natsume had envisioned for his life, but it ended up being a good thing as soon as word began to get around that Reiko's grandson was in possession of the Book of Friends...

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the weak will seek the weaker til they've broken them

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