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madetosin» PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Rebecca
Current AGE: old enough
Player TIME ZONE: Pacific
Personal JOURNAL:ladydragon.
IM & SERVICE: AIM: Dragonwing2002
Player PLURK:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
calidragon
Current CHARACTERS: N/A
» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Muraki Kazutaka
Canon & MEDIUM: Yami no Matsuei - Manga/Anime
Canon PULL-POINT: End of Vol. 8, shortly after Tsuzuki stabs him
Character AGE: He is at least 33, possibly 34. The only time a date is given is during the King of Swords arc (vol.3), but given the amount of time between then and his canon point, I believe at least a year would have gone by.
Character ABILITIES: On the more mundane end of things, Muraki is foremost a very talented medical doctor. He is adept at transplants of all kinds. He is also apparently at least knowledgeable of how to use small firearms and possess a large working knowledge of botany (enough to create hybrids and specialized strains).
In addition, he has a host of extraordinary and supernatural powers. The source and exact nature of Muraki’s abilities are largely left unexplained, but in general his powers are as follows:
Character HISTORY: Muraki grew up in a fairly affluent family in Tokyo, the son of a man who was in the very least a second generation doctor (it’s implied that the profession might even go further back than his grandfather). The exact details of his childhood are vague, but it’s shown that his mother was somewhat unhinged and possibly even abusive; treating the boy more like an object or another part of her massive collection of china dolls. His father seems to have been largely absent from his life and cheated on his wife at least once. Specifically, he conceived another child with a patient shortly around the time that Muraki’s mother was pregnant with him. When he was a teenager, his half-brother, Shidou Saki, came to live with his family because his own mother had died. The details of what happened afterwards are scarce and also contradictory. In the manga, Muraki says only that Saki destroyed his family and hurt his greatest love, while the anime explicitly states that Saki killed his parents and was later killed by the butler before he could kill Muraki himself. However, he names himself as his mother’s killer later in the manga. Who or what his “greatest love” might be is never explicitly explained, but given the evidence it is assumed he is referring to his childhood friend and later girlfriend, Sakuraiji Ukyou. While not explained in canon, it is known that Ukyou is sickly are suffers from what is referred to only as an “allergy to men”, but what might be more accurately referred to as a phobia. Taking that into account, it is reasonable to assume that Saki sexually assaulted Ukyou sometime before he was killed. Whatever the case may be, Shidou Saki did in fact end up dead.
Following that, Muraki attends school in Kyoto, where he was mentored by a Professor Satomi. It was also there that he met Mibu Oriya, who later becomes close friends with both him and Ukyou. From there, Muraki graduates and becomes a doctor practicing out of a major hospital in Tokyo. It is during that time that he succumbs to a kind of insanity, driven, he says, by his repeated failures at saving his patient from the inevitability of death and longs to overcome it entirely. He turns to a dark power (the source of which, again, is not elaborated on in canon) to improve himself and begins his career as a serial killer. Given other references in the series, he apparently also begins to hire his services out privately, not only as a doctor, but also that of his more supernatural talents, gaining a large amount of wealth, influence, and prestige.
It is here that Muraki is first encountered in the series, where he is hired to raise a girl who had submitted suicide to get away from her controlling mother back to life. As payment, he used his magic to control her and make her into a sort of pseudo-vampire that would kill for him, allowing him not only to siphon energy from the victims but also to draw the attention of a powerful shinigami. These shinigami happen to be Tsuzuki Asato and Hisoka Kurosaki, the main characters of the series. The job of shinigami is to bring back souls of people to JuOhCho for judgement or intercede in cases where unnatural deaths are taking back. These being are dead themselves, selected for the job due to their attachments to life in some form, but posses powerful abilities in their own rights. The plot of the series as a whole follows their cases and adventures, several of which involve encounters with Muraki. In this first case, his plan is to capture Tsuzuki, who is the most powerful shinigami in the Judgement Bureau, and absorb his power. By circumstance, he captures his partner Hisoka instead, who turns out to also be one of Muraki’s victims. Hisoka had witnessed one of his murders and the doctor raped the boy, erased his memory of that night, and then cursed him to die slowly over the course of three years. Tsuzuki, however, arrives to rescue Hisoka and together they defeat him.
Still very much alive, however, Muraki moves on, only to be encountered some time later when the duo is called out to investigate a rash of deaths centered around a cruise ship which, unknown to them, has been built by the businessman Kakyoin under the direction of the doctor, in order to secure his ailing daughter Tsubaki the heart transplant she needs to live. Muraki then blackmails Kakyoin into letting him continue to take people to remove organs from. He is surprised to see the shinigami on board, but does not waste time in harassing Tsuzuki, in whom his interests have grown increasingly romantic in nature. The doctor plans an elaborate ruse in which he drugs and manipulates Tsubaki to make her believe she was possessed by the owner of her heart - her friend Eileen - made easier by the fact that she was in love with him for saving her life. Muraki then uses “Eileen” to kill off the people who knew about his arrangement with Kakyoin, ending with the man himself, during which he also fakes his own death in order to throw the shinigami off the trail. Eventually he wakes and shoots Tsubaki after she reveals the secret to the shinigami, then setting off bombs in the cruise ship to destroy the evidence. He escapes again before Tsuzuki can apprehend him, and Hisoka is forced to shoot a dying Tsubaki to end her misery.
It is suggested that during this time and his next appearance that Muraki discovers within his grandfather’s papers, a file and a photo belonging to Tsuzuki. His grandfather had also been involved in experiments (and it is suggested that he was killed by the Ministry for it), and that Tsuzuki had lived for eight years in his care in a semi-comatose state within no food, water, or sleep before he eventually managed to kill himself. In the files was physical evidence that indicated that Tsuzuki’s DNA was something other than human, and that his abnormal healing abilities existed even before he became a shinigami. Muraki hatches a plan to draw the shinigami’s attention by committing a series of murders, collecting strands of hair to give to Professor Satomi for his cloning research as a blind. Tsuzuki and Hisoka encounter him during one such act and he takes Tsuzuki to Oriya’ restaurant to talk where he reveals his actions and his knowledge of Tsuzuki’s suicide and thus the slow psychological assault. The shinigami arrive at the university where Satomi works, where Muraki murders a young student using some chimeric creatures while her friend Mariko watches. Tsuzuki is paralyzed by the sight of death, which the doctor further taunts him about. The shinigami interfere but decide to stick around to protect Mariko from Muraki. However, he is able to capture the girl eventually and uses her to blackmail Tsuzuki into going out with him, during which he tells Tsuzuki he isn’t human. Secretly, he then releases Mariko, who the shinigami take to the Ministry. Using his magic, he causes Mariko to transform into a grotesque centipede-hybrid, forcing Tsuzuki to kill her and triggering his despair over causing the death of others. His powers go wild, releasing more of his shiki and weakening the shields around the Ministry. Muraki uses this to teleport in and capture the catatonic shinigami, taking him away to the lab in the university’s basement.
Muraki plans to use Tsuzuki’s body and transplant his half-brother’s body onto it, which he has somehow preserved, so he can have the chance to kill him himself and exact the revenge he feels he was denied. He continues to taunt Tsuzuki while also comparing them, before Tsuzuki has a lucid moment that allows him to stab and mortally wound the doctor before he can succeed. Tsuzuki summons Touda, intending to kill them both with his flames. Sure that he is dying, Muraki privately asks Ukyou for forgiveness and attempts to call her, though apparently passes out before he can say anything.
A full summary of the series can be found here
Character PERSONALITY: Like many villains, Muraki seems to possess two very different faces. The normal, polite and professional doctor, clothed almost perpetually in white like the angel to which he frequently invites comparison and yet which hides the black soul of a demon.
Not much of him is shown outside of how he acts when not in the role as a villain, though clearly he functions as a normal person enough to continue practicing medicine and not alert everyone he meets to the fact that he’s a murderer. He is highly cultured, well spoken, and seems to enjoy the finer things in life (which he can afford, given he comes from a rich family and works for high-powered clients). Still, even in casual conversation he comes off cold and somewhat distant.
Not terribly far under the surface is an extreme arrogance. He sees himself as above everyone. He openly admits to his former mentor that he doesn’t see why he can’t play God with people’s lives. He sees himself as a higher being, born out of the blood of his victims. In his point of view, the rules simply do not apply to him. He frequently taunts the heroes with the power he holds over them, or needles them when they fail to figure out his plans, and not without cause – considering how often he is a step or two ahead of them. He is a master manipulator – intelligent and patient - setting up intricate plans and playing the emotions of the characters like a fiddle to get them to do as he wants. Even when things don’t turn out exactly as he wants, he rarely shows any anger, because he’s confident the desired chips will fall into place eventually.
Muraki kills not only without remorse but with enjoyment. He is a sadist in every sense of the word. His method of killing is often outrageously brutal and yet very precise in execution, nor is it ever without reason. At the same time he’s perfectly fine with indulging his whims, whenever they strike him. He killed Hisoka because he witnessed one of his killings, but instead of simply killing the boy, Muraki chose to kill him in a elaborate method simply because he considered him beautiful and deserving of more than an ordinary death. He is also, unsurprisingly, something of a complete pervert. Age and gender do not matter to him as long as the person catches his attention in some way. He is not at all shy with his personal space and will touch without asking if it suits him.
The reasons for his actions are somewhat nebulous. Initially, his intention is only to ensnare the most powerful shinigami from the Ministry of Hades (otherwise known as JuOhCho), with the goal of killing him and taking his power for his own. He claims, and Tsuzuki echoes this later, that his impotence and grief at losing patients to the inevitability of death drove him to madness and the search for the power to overcome it. Once Tsuzuki escapes his grasp, he instead sets in motion a convoluted plan of psychological warfare on the shinigami who he now claims to love, in order to capture him and instead use his supernatural healing abilities to resurrect his half-brother Shidou Saki, so he can kill him again with his own hands. In the manga, Muraki says only that Saki destroyed his family and hurt his greatest love. It’s clear he was upset that his father had impregnated another woman soon after he was conceived, and the sudden appearance of an illegitimate son likely threw his household into chaos. It’s perplexing, however, that he would much care about this, given his obvious disgust for his father. His mother, too, is alluded via flashbacks to have been deranged and possibly even abusive towards a younger Muraki, treating him more like a doll in her collection than a son. It’s more likely his anger stems from possessiveness or a Stockholm Syndrome-like attachment to them rather than genuine affection. And yet, near the end, when it seems he is about to die, his final thought is of his girlfriend Ukyou, and of his regret that he could not help her. It’s implied therefore, that it was for her sake he was ultimately working, personal ambitions or no. This statement by itself says a lot. Muraki regards everybody with contempt. He sees them only as tools to be used and thrown away once they’ve displeased him or outlived their usefulness, often referring to them as dolls or puppets – only objects he can control. The only two people who appear to escape this classification are his Oriya and his girlfriend Ukyou.
His treatment of Tsuzuki, then, is interesting. While it’s true his intentions are largely homicidal in nature, he still calls him by name and addresses him in a semi-formal manner, compared to Hisoka, whom he never once refers to by name (more often “boy” or “my poppet”). Even his carnal attentions are somewhat restrained by his standards. On some level, he identifies with Tsuzuki. He says that both of them were the products of genetic experiments. They were programmed to be killers. It could be this was just another attempt to break the shinigami and turn things to his side, but the fact that he was sure he was dying at the time might indicate this feeling of affinity and shared sorrow is genuine.
Above all, Muraki desires control. He controls people like puppets and searches endlessly for the ways to take back the control that was taken from him early in life and seeks control over that of the institution of death itself. Tsuzuki describes his initial kidnapping of Hisoka as a declaration of war upon the Ministry, and in many ways he was correct, despite the more focused nature of Muraki’s attentions later on. In many ways Muraki is a man who approached his own moral dividing line and crossed it consciously, seeing it as his only real option. He is utterly unapologetic about who he is, what he wants, and who his actions hurt. He may never have been good – given the influence of a philandering father, insane mother, and a grandfather whose own medical experiments played rather loosely with the doctor’s playbook of ethics – but he at least once had good intentions. Oriya tells the shinigami that Muraki is driven by hate – hate for himself, his parents, the world, and even God. Whatever positive emotions he once felt have long been buried, most of them so deep not even he can reach him; nor can Hisoka, a highly sensitive empath, successfully read anything in him but darkness.
» EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: Muraki’s weapon will be his innate energy vampirism. As it works now, the ability can only be used through touch and it cannot kill. As it evolves, the following may become possible over time (I may add to/modify some of this later)
Character INVENTORY: White suit, white trenchcoat, red stud earrings, eyeglasses, cellphone, and keycard.
» SAMPLES First PERSON:
[The tablet shows a pale face bent over the screen. Even though a fall of silver hair obscures one of his eyes, his expression appears to be rather blandly curious.]
This is a very interesting place. So much life in one location – human, inhuman, even super-human. It’s extraordinary. We lust so often for the power to improve ourselves, and yet we fail repeatedly, only to have a lucky few granted what we crave by happenstance or the quirks of genetic lottery – the same that dooms just as many to death. It seems unfair, doesn’t it?
[There a shade of something vaguely accusatory in his gaze for a moment. Though wasn’t it just as unfair to be born as something other than human] How many lives could be saved or improved by unlocking the key to such gifts? [He smiles, mostly to himself, and brushes back a little hair from his face]
Let me ask this, though. If, back in your own world, you could share your abilities with the world, even if it cost you your life, would you do it? [And, oh, how he hopes that they will…]
Third PERSON: Test drive meme link here
Player NAME: Rebecca
Current AGE: old enough
Player TIME ZONE: Pacific
Personal JOURNAL:
ladydragon.IM & SERVICE: AIM: Dragonwing2002
Player PLURK:
Current CHARACTERS: N/A
» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Muraki Kazutaka
Canon & MEDIUM: Yami no Matsuei - Manga/Anime
Canon PULL-POINT: End of Vol. 8, shortly after Tsuzuki stabs him
Character AGE: He is at least 33, possibly 34. The only time a date is given is during the King of Swords arc (vol.3), but given the amount of time between then and his canon point, I believe at least a year would have gone by.
Character ABILITIES: On the more mundane end of things, Muraki is foremost a very talented medical doctor. He is adept at transplants of all kinds. He is also apparently at least knowledgeable of how to use small firearms and possess a large working knowledge of botany (enough to create hybrids and specialized strains).
In addition, he has a host of extraordinary and supernatural powers. The source and exact nature of Muraki’s abilities are largely left unexplained, but in general his powers are as follows:
- Energy Vampirism – He can take other people’s energy and convert it for his own use. All evidence in the series indicates he requires, in the very least, touch. It doesn’t seem to be inherently fatal, though he can get far more when he kills (which is part of reason he does it).
- Magic/Spiritual powers - Again, the source of these powers is entirely up for speculation, since canon is vague on this point. It’s reasonable it’s demonic in nature, although Muraki himself isn’t one. Powers as shown in canon are as follows:
- Teleportation – Fairly standard. Can semi-instantly transport himself from one place to another, even transdimensionally. Paralysis spell – He can immobilize a single victim at long range. The fact that this works on Tsuzuki easily (at best he can move a little, and with great difficulty), indicates it’s very powerful.
- Memory control – Muraki can remove any memories he wishes from a person via touch and then re-grant them in the same manner.
- Curses – He places a curse on Hisoka that takes three years to kill him, disguised as a incurable illness. The curse leaves marks that last even into death.
- Necromancy – He can raise people from the dead and control them
- Summoning – He’s shown to summon and control both demons and dragons
- Force fields/warding spells - Can keep people either in or out Spiritual senses - Ability to pick out things like spiritually aligned land or know a shinigami when he sees one
- Mad Science? – While there’s no details on how he does this, he can also create creatures, such as the strange chimeric insect birds he sends against a girl, and then trigger another girl into a human-centipede hybrid at his command. Probably a mix of medicine and magic.
- Fake eye - Technically not quite a power the unique nature of the item, I believe it gives him enhanced visual capabilities including slightly increased spotting distance and the ability to see in the dark
- Poison resistance – He says he’s been taking small doses of poisons for reasons, making him immune or resistant to most of them.
- Other stuff – canon also seems to support a higher than average speed and agility, since he dodges attacks far easily than a normal person should. He also exhibits a high level of pain tolerance, but it’s easy to chalk that up to his insanity.
Character HISTORY: Muraki grew up in a fairly affluent family in Tokyo, the son of a man who was in the very least a second generation doctor (it’s implied that the profession might even go further back than his grandfather). The exact details of his childhood are vague, but it’s shown that his mother was somewhat unhinged and possibly even abusive; treating the boy more like an object or another part of her massive collection of china dolls. His father seems to have been largely absent from his life and cheated on his wife at least once. Specifically, he conceived another child with a patient shortly around the time that Muraki’s mother was pregnant with him. When he was a teenager, his half-brother, Shidou Saki, came to live with his family because his own mother had died. The details of what happened afterwards are scarce and also contradictory. In the manga, Muraki says only that Saki destroyed his family and hurt his greatest love, while the anime explicitly states that Saki killed his parents and was later killed by the butler before he could kill Muraki himself. However, he names himself as his mother’s killer later in the manga. Who or what his “greatest love” might be is never explicitly explained, but given the evidence it is assumed he is referring to his childhood friend and later girlfriend, Sakuraiji Ukyou. While not explained in canon, it is known that Ukyou is sickly are suffers from what is referred to only as an “allergy to men”, but what might be more accurately referred to as a phobia. Taking that into account, it is reasonable to assume that Saki sexually assaulted Ukyou sometime before he was killed. Whatever the case may be, Shidou Saki did in fact end up dead.
Following that, Muraki attends school in Kyoto, where he was mentored by a Professor Satomi. It was also there that he met Mibu Oriya, who later becomes close friends with both him and Ukyou. From there, Muraki graduates and becomes a doctor practicing out of a major hospital in Tokyo. It is during that time that he succumbs to a kind of insanity, driven, he says, by his repeated failures at saving his patient from the inevitability of death and longs to overcome it entirely. He turns to a dark power (the source of which, again, is not elaborated on in canon) to improve himself and begins his career as a serial killer. Given other references in the series, he apparently also begins to hire his services out privately, not only as a doctor, but also that of his more supernatural talents, gaining a large amount of wealth, influence, and prestige.
It is here that Muraki is first encountered in the series, where he is hired to raise a girl who had submitted suicide to get away from her controlling mother back to life. As payment, he used his magic to control her and make her into a sort of pseudo-vampire that would kill for him, allowing him not only to siphon energy from the victims but also to draw the attention of a powerful shinigami. These shinigami happen to be Tsuzuki Asato and Hisoka Kurosaki, the main characters of the series. The job of shinigami is to bring back souls of people to JuOhCho for judgement or intercede in cases where unnatural deaths are taking back. These being are dead themselves, selected for the job due to their attachments to life in some form, but posses powerful abilities in their own rights. The plot of the series as a whole follows their cases and adventures, several of which involve encounters with Muraki. In this first case, his plan is to capture Tsuzuki, who is the most powerful shinigami in the Judgement Bureau, and absorb his power. By circumstance, he captures his partner Hisoka instead, who turns out to also be one of Muraki’s victims. Hisoka had witnessed one of his murders and the doctor raped the boy, erased his memory of that night, and then cursed him to die slowly over the course of three years. Tsuzuki, however, arrives to rescue Hisoka and together they defeat him.
Still very much alive, however, Muraki moves on, only to be encountered some time later when the duo is called out to investigate a rash of deaths centered around a cruise ship which, unknown to them, has been built by the businessman Kakyoin under the direction of the doctor, in order to secure his ailing daughter Tsubaki the heart transplant she needs to live. Muraki then blackmails Kakyoin into letting him continue to take people to remove organs from. He is surprised to see the shinigami on board, but does not waste time in harassing Tsuzuki, in whom his interests have grown increasingly romantic in nature. The doctor plans an elaborate ruse in which he drugs and manipulates Tsubaki to make her believe she was possessed by the owner of her heart - her friend Eileen - made easier by the fact that she was in love with him for saving her life. Muraki then uses “Eileen” to kill off the people who knew about his arrangement with Kakyoin, ending with the man himself, during which he also fakes his own death in order to throw the shinigami off the trail. Eventually he wakes and shoots Tsubaki after she reveals the secret to the shinigami, then setting off bombs in the cruise ship to destroy the evidence. He escapes again before Tsuzuki can apprehend him, and Hisoka is forced to shoot a dying Tsubaki to end her misery.
It is suggested that during this time and his next appearance that Muraki discovers within his grandfather’s papers, a file and a photo belonging to Tsuzuki. His grandfather had also been involved in experiments (and it is suggested that he was killed by the Ministry for it), and that Tsuzuki had lived for eight years in his care in a semi-comatose state within no food, water, or sleep before he eventually managed to kill himself. In the files was physical evidence that indicated that Tsuzuki’s DNA was something other than human, and that his abnormal healing abilities existed even before he became a shinigami. Muraki hatches a plan to draw the shinigami’s attention by committing a series of murders, collecting strands of hair to give to Professor Satomi for his cloning research as a blind. Tsuzuki and Hisoka encounter him during one such act and he takes Tsuzuki to Oriya’ restaurant to talk where he reveals his actions and his knowledge of Tsuzuki’s suicide and thus the slow psychological assault. The shinigami arrive at the university where Satomi works, where Muraki murders a young student using some chimeric creatures while her friend Mariko watches. Tsuzuki is paralyzed by the sight of death, which the doctor further taunts him about. The shinigami interfere but decide to stick around to protect Mariko from Muraki. However, he is able to capture the girl eventually and uses her to blackmail Tsuzuki into going out with him, during which he tells Tsuzuki he isn’t human. Secretly, he then releases Mariko, who the shinigami take to the Ministry. Using his magic, he causes Mariko to transform into a grotesque centipede-hybrid, forcing Tsuzuki to kill her and triggering his despair over causing the death of others. His powers go wild, releasing more of his shiki and weakening the shields around the Ministry. Muraki uses this to teleport in and capture the catatonic shinigami, taking him away to the lab in the university’s basement.
Muraki plans to use Tsuzuki’s body and transplant his half-brother’s body onto it, which he has somehow preserved, so he can have the chance to kill him himself and exact the revenge he feels he was denied. He continues to taunt Tsuzuki while also comparing them, before Tsuzuki has a lucid moment that allows him to stab and mortally wound the doctor before he can succeed. Tsuzuki summons Touda, intending to kill them both with his flames. Sure that he is dying, Muraki privately asks Ukyou for forgiveness and attempts to call her, though apparently passes out before he can say anything.
A full summary of the series can be found here
Character PERSONALITY: Like many villains, Muraki seems to possess two very different faces. The normal, polite and professional doctor, clothed almost perpetually in white like the angel to which he frequently invites comparison and yet which hides the black soul of a demon.
Not much of him is shown outside of how he acts when not in the role as a villain, though clearly he functions as a normal person enough to continue practicing medicine and not alert everyone he meets to the fact that he’s a murderer. He is highly cultured, well spoken, and seems to enjoy the finer things in life (which he can afford, given he comes from a rich family and works for high-powered clients). Still, even in casual conversation he comes off cold and somewhat distant.
Not terribly far under the surface is an extreme arrogance. He sees himself as above everyone. He openly admits to his former mentor that he doesn’t see why he can’t play God with people’s lives. He sees himself as a higher being, born out of the blood of his victims. In his point of view, the rules simply do not apply to him. He frequently taunts the heroes with the power he holds over them, or needles them when they fail to figure out his plans, and not without cause – considering how often he is a step or two ahead of them. He is a master manipulator – intelligent and patient - setting up intricate plans and playing the emotions of the characters like a fiddle to get them to do as he wants. Even when things don’t turn out exactly as he wants, he rarely shows any anger, because he’s confident the desired chips will fall into place eventually.
Muraki kills not only without remorse but with enjoyment. He is a sadist in every sense of the word. His method of killing is often outrageously brutal and yet very precise in execution, nor is it ever without reason. At the same time he’s perfectly fine with indulging his whims, whenever they strike him. He killed Hisoka because he witnessed one of his killings, but instead of simply killing the boy, Muraki chose to kill him in a elaborate method simply because he considered him beautiful and deserving of more than an ordinary death. He is also, unsurprisingly, something of a complete pervert. Age and gender do not matter to him as long as the person catches his attention in some way. He is not at all shy with his personal space and will touch without asking if it suits him.
The reasons for his actions are somewhat nebulous. Initially, his intention is only to ensnare the most powerful shinigami from the Ministry of Hades (otherwise known as JuOhCho), with the goal of killing him and taking his power for his own. He claims, and Tsuzuki echoes this later, that his impotence and grief at losing patients to the inevitability of death drove him to madness and the search for the power to overcome it. Once Tsuzuki escapes his grasp, he instead sets in motion a convoluted plan of psychological warfare on the shinigami who he now claims to love, in order to capture him and instead use his supernatural healing abilities to resurrect his half-brother Shidou Saki, so he can kill him again with his own hands. In the manga, Muraki says only that Saki destroyed his family and hurt his greatest love. It’s clear he was upset that his father had impregnated another woman soon after he was conceived, and the sudden appearance of an illegitimate son likely threw his household into chaos. It’s perplexing, however, that he would much care about this, given his obvious disgust for his father. His mother, too, is alluded via flashbacks to have been deranged and possibly even abusive towards a younger Muraki, treating him more like a doll in her collection than a son. It’s more likely his anger stems from possessiveness or a Stockholm Syndrome-like attachment to them rather than genuine affection. And yet, near the end, when it seems he is about to die, his final thought is of his girlfriend Ukyou, and of his regret that he could not help her. It’s implied therefore, that it was for her sake he was ultimately working, personal ambitions or no. This statement by itself says a lot. Muraki regards everybody with contempt. He sees them only as tools to be used and thrown away once they’ve displeased him or outlived their usefulness, often referring to them as dolls or puppets – only objects he can control. The only two people who appear to escape this classification are his Oriya and his girlfriend Ukyou.
His treatment of Tsuzuki, then, is interesting. While it’s true his intentions are largely homicidal in nature, he still calls him by name and addresses him in a semi-formal manner, compared to Hisoka, whom he never once refers to by name (more often “boy” or “my poppet”). Even his carnal attentions are somewhat restrained by his standards. On some level, he identifies with Tsuzuki. He says that both of them were the products of genetic experiments. They were programmed to be killers. It could be this was just another attempt to break the shinigami and turn things to his side, but the fact that he was sure he was dying at the time might indicate this feeling of affinity and shared sorrow is genuine.
Above all, Muraki desires control. He controls people like puppets and searches endlessly for the ways to take back the control that was taken from him early in life and seeks control over that of the institution of death itself. Tsuzuki describes his initial kidnapping of Hisoka as a declaration of war upon the Ministry, and in many ways he was correct, despite the more focused nature of Muraki’s attentions later on. In many ways Muraki is a man who approached his own moral dividing line and crossed it consciously, seeing it as his only real option. He is utterly unapologetic about who he is, what he wants, and who his actions hurt. He may never have been good – given the influence of a philandering father, insane mother, and a grandfather whose own medical experiments played rather loosely with the doctor’s playbook of ethics – but he at least once had good intentions. Oriya tells the shinigami that Muraki is driven by hate – hate for himself, his parents, the world, and even God. Whatever positive emotions he once felt have long been buried, most of them so deep not even he can reach him; nor can Hisoka, a highly sensitive empath, successfully read anything in him but darkness.
» EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: Muraki’s weapon will be his innate energy vampirism. As it works now, the ability can only be used through touch and it cannot kill. As it evolves, the following may become possible over time (I may add to/modify some of this later)
- He will be able to use this ability at a distance, using only line of sight. The distance will start out very short but slowly increase. Once it reaches a moderate distance (say, 10 to 20 feet), we will be able to affect multiple targets. Near the end of the evolution, he will be able to choose the affect a single person at an extremely long distance or a large amount of people in a small radius around him.
- As it starts, the ability can only cause fatigue or at most unconsciousness. At later levels, if maintained long enough, it will be able to kill.
- Considering he absorbs spiritual energy, it may eventually be able to absorb abilities from his targets which can then be used by himself for short periods
Character INVENTORY: White suit, white trenchcoat, red stud earrings, eyeglasses, cellphone, and keycard.
» SAMPLES First PERSON:
[The tablet shows a pale face bent over the screen. Even though a fall of silver hair obscures one of his eyes, his expression appears to be rather blandly curious.]
This is a very interesting place. So much life in one location – human, inhuman, even super-human. It’s extraordinary. We lust so often for the power to improve ourselves, and yet we fail repeatedly, only to have a lucky few granted what we crave by happenstance or the quirks of genetic lottery – the same that dooms just as many to death. It seems unfair, doesn’t it?
[There a shade of something vaguely accusatory in his gaze for a moment. Though wasn’t it just as unfair to be born as something other than human] How many lives could be saved or improved by unlocking the key to such gifts? [He smiles, mostly to himself, and brushes back a little hair from his face]
Let me ask this, though. If, back in your own world, you could share your abilities with the world, even if it cost you your life, would you do it? [And, oh, how he hopes that they will…]
Third PERSON: Test drive meme link here
