1798 YEARS OLD

CREATURE

REBEL

FEMALE

GAP YÔKAI

LEADER

character overview

positive traits

negative traits

things they like

things they dislike

character description

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The young and the ignorant, the blind and the fools, hoards of human beings who have either been fortunate enough not to stumble across their paths or idiotic enough to not realize that they already have all find themselves asking the same questions in her little beloved pocket of the world: What is it like to meet a youkai? What do they look like, how do they act – why do they dine on human flesh? The regrettable answer is that there is no one perfect response to any of the above four, just as there would fail to be should an infant youkai ask another of greater age ask those same questions of human kind; too much deviation between one creature to the next, both in powers and in reasoning. If one were to try to summarize their entire race into one singular stereotype, however, the name that may first come to mind when scrambling for a proper example would be none other than the Youkai of Boundaries herself, Yukari Yakumo. Those who know of her know that she is a near perfect representation of all that the youkai attempt to collectively present themselves to be. She is lazy, sleeping for many hours of the day and spending large swathes of the year in a completely unnecessary form of “hibernation”; she is selfish, acting or refusing to act only when it suits her unexplainable whims; and she is vicious, a beast whose playing could batter down even the strongest of opponents more than some of even the strongest youkai's best. An enigma taken to the extreme, it's impossible to know what is going on in that devious mind of her's, and as such, her self-satisfying lifestyle comes off as the poster child for her kind's ever abundant stereotypes. (What these simple minded humans don't understand, though, is that it is precisely that they will never understand the deeper workings of her mind that they can believe this style of living to be indicative of that and nothing more.

(After all: She only eats humans sometimes.)

In truth, one could argue that a great many of the things that Yukari does in her life are all to give off the impression that she is a very “youkai-like youkai”. Her heart is not entirely scorched black as many might see it, however close it may be to that point, and the acts of kindness she allows herself to carry out – being one of the few, if only, for example, to deal out donations to the Hakurei shrine, preventing a complete annihilation of the Gensokyo population at the hands of the Lunarian society, maintaining the barrier that allows them all to live free of the certain destruction that would be interference from the Outside World – are hidden so carefully as to be brushed off as nonsensical or greedy acts, not as actions of good intention. It all boils down to the fact that she wants to be feared. And she should be feared. She is a demon of terrible strength and terrible intellectual might, a being who has outlived the country she helped to build and nearly all of its inhabitants and uses millenia of wisdom and experience to bend the entire world around her finger, should she muster up the motivation to do so. She is well acquainted with stories of old and the strongest of Gensokyan citizens; the fact that many owe her great debts has earned her an army through blackmail should her own power not be enough to overcome her adversaries. As for whether or not these adversaries find themselves aligning with the side of good, evil, or otherwise, however, could very well depend on the time of day. A heroine today and the villain the next – the world has ever right to fear a woman who could shake their hand, then devour it whole just some twenty-four hours later. What, after all, would they be able to do to stop it from happening?

Humanity breathes its sigh of relief, however, upon realizing that her lethargic nature – the likes of which has both caused and prevented catastrophes in the past – prevents her from actively leaving her home and causing mischief both inside and out of the Hakurei Barrier. Even her waking hours provide little to be feared, most would say, seeing as she rarely leaves that aforementioned home, and instead drowns herself in self indulgence at most any given opportunity. So they say. In reality, the gap manipulator balances a need for relaxation and the need to maintain and destroy by manipulating others to carry out her actions for her. No amount of trickery, bribing, or blackmail is beyond her to have her work done for her at the hands of another human or youkai entirely, and few souls deemed to be worth the while have gone free of this manipulation at some point in time, even if they never truly realized that they were being used in the first place – especially when they never realized that that were being used in the first place. Her mentality is that there is no need to expend extra effort toward something that she could just as easily trick someone else into doing for her, particularly when it is much more entertaining to watch their struggles and revel in their (shared) victory than it is to be experiencing those very same struggles herself. She was born, clearly, to lead the life of a mastermind. Even in Sanctum, despite the fact that her current connections are but a fraction of what they were in her old home, she has managed to carry out almost all of her duties by forcing someone else's hand. By the time she has finished here, she hopes that it will take more than a handful of words to see her will done.

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Again, anything else you'd like to include can be put in this section, but nothing is required. Feel free to go into depth about their history, family, interests, relationships, etc. Anything you feel is necessary! If you'd rather not elaborate, go ahead and just delete this section. Alternately, you can add more sections if you'd like to go more into depth about your character. 

character classification

In the world she helped seal away from an unfaithful Earth, it is the youkai, not the humans that reign supreme. Creatures born from human fear (or, as the moon princess will say, from a need to limit the expansion of the human race), the diverse group roam primarily at night and have, for generations, made their mark on history by tormenting and eating the species they were brought about to combat. Yukari, by every definition of the word, is a youkai in everything from function to personality; already, we've spoken of what makes her much like her kind in terms of attitude, but there are strengths and weaknesses she physically has that make it right to classify her as such a monster. The first of them all is that she's no stranger to the consumption of human flesh. History books are quick to omit the spiriting away or ruthless murders of the unwitting in small villages and even large settlements scattered across the globe, and as the homo sapiens turned its beliefs from that of the spiritual and toward the realm of science, they were all too glad to forget the shadowing beasts that were to blame. She doesn't make a habit out of kidnapping and eating the neighboring species, however, rules in her own home preventing her from attacking those that lived in the villages in Gensokyo and a need to keep her reputation more or less unstained here in the city doing their jobs to combat such cravings. No one is perfect at holding back their desires, though – she, despite all of her restraint, is no exception.

At the same time that the humans turned their attention away from the human-like beasts knocking at their door and eating them whole, the power that allowed the latter to do so began to diminish with startling speed. Despite the fact that they are, in most cases, left to the mercy of the youkai, it's important to note that, like any animal who attempts to overgraze its nutritional source, the youkai are somewhat submissive in the idea that abusing their powers too much would result in the loss of the human race entirely. More than that, however, is that it is widely believed that they were brought about by human fear in the beginning; to lose that fear would be to lose themselves, and as the tales of sharp-toothed devils and gap manipulating she-wolves became little more than “superstitions”, so, too, did those “superstitions'” powers and life forces suffer. With the introduction of gifted and other creatures into the world after the Demon Tide, this is much less of a problem as it was centuries ago when it nearly lead her kind to extinction. Should the gifted population ever die away, however, so, too, would any youkai living outside the protective barrier of Gensokyo.

PHYSICAL SUPERIORITY / SPIRITUAL WEAKNESS

Pitted against an ordinary human, Yukari would no doubt be able to beat them in a contest of arm wrestling, running (assuming, even, that she does not simply let the opponent have the advantage only to gap to the end at the very last moment), or an old fashioned brawl of fists. This isn't something that's particularly unique to her, considering that most all youkai have a heightened amount of strength at the cost of a weaker spirit, but she, herself, is known to be of exceptional strength, even considering what she is. A swing of full force from a grown man has been and will continue to be blacked with no more than an extended palm, and if the old stories hold true, she should be able to recover even from being dismembered – assuming that someone else is around to put the pieces back together, that is!

As was mentioned, however, this incredibly strength is not without its drawbacks. Much like vampire stories of old, she may be able to lift a boulder over her head without breaking a sweat, but so much as the sight of a protective symbol can burn like touching a hot stove plate for a second too long. The shrines of Gensokyo were open to her, but holy places outside of her home exert such a crushing force on her that make it near impossible to move, much less breathe. Wards are especially effective at limiting or inhibiting movement, and a splash of holy water will have her skin blistering and set an angry red. Youkai extermination became a popular pastime in an older Earth, as well as a necessity with the shrine maidens of her country; you can see this put to use in Reimu Hakurei's affinity for seals rather than such weapons as a blade or club.

TELEPORTATION VIA "GAPS"

Mysterious bends in the boundaries of space that have given Yukari the title of “gap youkai”, “gaps” (seen here as the dash of black and scarlet, knotted with ribbons at the ends and filled with free flowing eyes and outreaching hands) are her most primary use of her abilities. These are used for many functions, although the aforementioned transportation is usually what they are used for. But opening a gap in front of her and opening one in her desired area, they function a bit like a subspace and allow her to travel to almost any place instantaneously. Truthfully, she could have her head poking out of a gap on one end of the Earth while the rest of her body stayed behind on the polar opposite end. There are certain limitations, such as places she cannot go or places that require more than one gap to arrive to, but with an infinite number of gaps she can have open at a time, “gapping” repeatedly is of no issue. Aside from just being able to create them, however, she can also dictate what comes in and what goes out, preventing unwanted guests from hitching a ride with her or sucking in only someone she wants out of the way while leaving her where she's standing. Outside of teleportation, they can also be used as an extra set... or, rather, many extra sets of eyes, the likes of which she has used to spy on Gensokyo and, recently, the rest of Earth for many, many years. The eyeballs inside the gaps are not for show, truly; they act exactly as any normal eye would. Lastly, and least importantly, she alone is capable of sitting on a gap, making for a comfortable chair even in places as furniture-less as three thousand feet underwater.

MANIPULATION OF BOUNDARIES

While her gaps may give her her classification as a youkai, they are, in truth, only a small fraction of a broader power still. While she is the “gap youkai,” her powers are better summed up by exactly what the title states: her manipulation of boundaries. By manipulating boundaries in space, she can move objects from one place to another instantaneously, as well as see at virtually any point of her choosing through such warps created by her powers. Beyond that, however, she is also able to manipulate just about every other physical boundary – she could raise mountains, for example, but manipulating the boundary between the sky and the horizon – as well as metaphysical boundaries. By warping the boundary between reality and dreams, she can not only view the dreams that others have, but also teleport herself or whoever else she deigns to into the dreams in question. By manipulating the boundary of night and day, she can extend daylight or moonlight beyond what should be their normal times, as well as mesh them into one state of being – something akin to twilight. While she cannot force a person to speak truthfully or falsely, she is able to manipulate the boundary of truth and lies in order to form somewhat of a personal lie detector, separating truth from an untrue or lacking statement. She can also see through other such metaphysical boundaries that are created by another being's power; she was capable of seeing the a village even after its existence had been erased from history by Kamishirasawa Keine's manipulation of history, among other such examples.

Realistically, depending on how this power is used, it can grow to be quite powerful quite fast, a resident of Gensokyo herself saying that it was a power that could “rival that of the gods”. To create a boundary, in a sense, would be to create a new existence, and to erase a boundary would be to erase that existence; if that were to hold true, she could simply stare down a person she did not care for, erase their spacial and metaphysical boundaries, and there would be no more person left to stare down by every definition of the word. However, whether this is caused by a limitation of her powers or simply a moral rule she has placed for herself, she has and likely will not put such things to use. She has played a part in creating such things as the Great Hakurei Barrier from the boundary between reality and fantasy, and has been known to erase the boundary of the mouth (essentially erasing a person's mouth for short bits of time) to keep the especially chatty from speaking out of line, but if the ability to create and destroy anything she so chooses is in her arsenal, it's certainly being saved for a grave time that has – thankfully – not come to pass.

SHIKIGAMI BINDING

Similar to the familiars that a witch may possess, Yukari is not only capable of binding youkai and other animals to her as her shikigami, but has made and used many in the past and keeps one in particular – Ran Yakumo, notably powerful enough from the power she received from her master to have a shikigami of her own, Chen – around to do most all of the work she would have had to do otherwise for her. The method with which she uses to bind a youkai as a shikigami is not specifically stated, nor is it particularly clear; it's assumed, however, that she can forcefully bind animals, such as a flock of crows or a group of cats, for a quick, easy team of shikigami while stronger, more useful youkai shikigami require a mutual pact. The only reason Ran agreed to be her shikigami in the first place was for the offer of power; her shikigami cannot quite reach her own massive power levels, but the deal took a simple, weak fox youkai and made her a force on par with other such bosses as the destructive vampire Flandre Scarlet, the forgotten goddess Suwako Moriya, and even the immortal Fujiwara no Mokou. With shikigami around, Yukari really has to do very little of her job as a the general “maintenance woman” of Gensokyo and its Barrier, and since she has arrived in Sanctum, she's been using Ran primarily to keep things in check at home while she manipulates matters in the Outside World.

DANMAKU

In short, like most all residents of Gensokyo, Yukari is capable of using danmaku – seen here from an aerial view, and here for an idea of what it might look like in battle – and is notorious adept with them. While Remilia Scarlet suffers from weakened cards, unused to using them outside of the Great Hakurei Barrier, she, herself, has grown so accustomed to slipping in and out of the Outside World that her skills have grown accustomed to the change in location, as well. Essentially, she can rain bullet hell on you any day of the week and twice on Sunday – and that's not even using her boundaries.

character biography

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If your character's class is either Gifted or Creature, use this section to give information on what makes them different than an ordinary human. This isn't entirely necessary, however, if your character's class doesn't require much explanation; for instance, if you're writing a Creature that happens to be a cat, it's not necessary for you to go into detail - everyone knows what a cat is. For well known species, such as vampires and werewolves and the like, however, you may still want to give a description, just to be safe; especially if your breed of vampire (or any other well known species) differs from the norm in some way.

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