HMD

2009-09-21T03:49:38Z

This feels very odd considering that I only found out what "HMD" meant just a couple of weeks ago even though I've been seeing the acronym all over the place. XD It sounds like a computer component okay.

Anonymous comments are allowed. (I think. I mean, I didn't really fiddle with the default journal settings.) All comments will be screened. Do please give me feedback~ I've been writing about this character in fic for years but it's really different in RP. I'd be really grateful if I'm told right away if I'm doing things wrong. On the other hand, I'd be over the moon if someone tells me that I'm doing OK. X3

Profile

2009-08-16T15:00:57Z

[ PLAYER INFORMATION ]

Player Name: Lyn
Age: 25
Timezone: GMT +0800
Personal Journal: kye_kestrel
Contact Information:
Instant Messenger: cloud121383 on AIM and cloud121383 on YM
Email: cloud121383@yahoo.com, cloud121383@gmail.com (backup email)

[ CHARACTER INFORMATION ]

Name: Kurapika
Age: 21, but looks around 17 to 18
Gender: male
Fandom: Hunter X Hunter
Timeline: 3 years after ~~the manga died~~ he last encountered the Geneiryodan in chapter 119
History: He has a Wikipedia article, but to be honest it feels kinda insufficient so I'll add my own TL;DR here.

Kurapika is the last survivor of a reclusive tribe of people whose eyes turn red whenever they feel anger and other heightened emotions. The color stays when they die in that state, and because certain people with questionable hobbies find the Kuruta eyeballs beautiful, they were attacked, slaughtered, their eyes gouged out and sold all over the world as priceless anthropological treasures.

How Kurapika managed to escape that fate is unknown, but years later he turns up at the Hunter Exam, an annual examination being conducted by a global organization aptly called the Hunter Association. Kurapika's goal back then was to pass the exams, obtain a Hunter license and become a professional Hunter, because the license and the status would grant him lots of benefits that could help in his mission to catch the people who murdered his clan. He passes the grueling series of tests, of course, makes friends along the way--even finds a clue to the future whereabouts of the notorious group of people he'd been hunting for all these years.

He takes time off to prepare, training in the woods and eventually developing a set of abilities that would allow him to defeat his mortal enemies. Six months later, he finds his targets - the Geneiryodan, at the exact time and place his source gave him, manages to capture the leader of the group with a bit of help and creative ~~crossdressing~~ misdirection, but instead of killing the man he merely seals the dude's abilities, with the belief that the Geneiryodan wouldn't be able to act anymore with their leader in such a powerless state.

Kurapika then turns his attention to seeking out and recovering the eyeballs that the Geneiryodan stole from his tribe, doubling as a bodyguard of a head of a mafia family with considerable influence, in the hope that his employer's underground connections might help him find those eyeballs sooner. What he doesn't know is that the Geneiryodan are actively searching for a way to remove the seal he placed on their leader's nen, and--my head canon starts from here because the mangaka went on an indefinite hiatus--Kuroro Lucifer eventually finds a nen remover and gets rid of the seal.

It's been nearly two years since then, and Kurapika has already encountered Kuroro twice in the last year alone. Naturally he'd be doing his utter best to kill the bastard, but Kuroro's been holding back, not fighting seriously, even running away after exchanging a few blows with him. Needless to say, Kurapika's not too happy about it.

The summons from BREW happens during one such fight, right as Kurapika's getting ready to vent some of that pent-up frustration.

Character Personality: Quiet and standoffish--and maybe girly--would be the first impressions you'd get from Kurapika. Because of his background he doesn't randomly approach strangers or make friends of his own volition. He's usually polite and well-mannered, though, and once you get him to warm up to you you'll find that he's quite reliable and trustworthy. He's intensely loyal to the friends he made during the Hunter Exam, and wouldn't hesitate to risk his life for their sakes - although in less favorable terms that would translate to recklessness.

That mental strength is at the core of all his motivations - he's persistent and driven and he isn't afraid to die for his goals. He reacts negatively to things or people who don't measure up to that ingrained standard; he becomes short-tempered and sarcastic when dealing with stupidity, and at best he'll be boring and lecturing, at worst he'll be very cold and rigid. Maybe because he's not much of a social butterfly, Kurapika enjoys spending time by himself, reading or exploring topics that most people wouldn't care about. He likes history and culture, in particular, and has a keen eye for antiquities and artifacts. He has a tendency to get long-winded when explaining things in academic terms.

Kurapika's best people skill is his sensitivity. He's shown that he's very receptive of people's moods, and will strike up a conversation and attempt to help if a friend feels troubled. He doesn't take debts for granted and doesn't hold back on thanking people who've helped him in any way - if he lets them help in the first place. He's spent years living and surviving on his own after the massacre of his tribe, and as a result has grown to be independent and self-reliant. He doesn't like getting people involved in his problems - maybe because most of his problems are related to his vendetta against the Geneiryodan.

And as for morals, Kurapika isn't what you would call a shining paragon of the lawful good. Again, it comes down to his dealings with the Geneiryodan. He has a set of principles he sticks to, yes, but he's not above using and deceiving people for his own needs, especially if they're people who aren't spotlessly clean, either. And he's already killed one of the Ryodan members - but he spent at least a week beating himself up over it.

Character Abilities: Kurapika is a certified Hunter, one of an elite group of people powerful enough, skilled enough--and crazy enough to want to take the most dangerous set of exams in the world and pass. Aside from all the perks they get with the license, it should be noted that Hunters are usually the ones who go on to learn how to use nen, or what stands for life energy in that world. Nen wielders can enhance their physical capabilities: strength, speed, defense, even slow down the process of aging--and the energy is directly tied to the user's emotions and mental state. (So it goes without saying that Kurapika is quite powerful considering his abilities are fueled by hatred for his clan's murderers.)

A step up from simple nen is hatsu, or the ability to project one's nen and use it to carry out a certain function. Kurapika's hatsu is of the materializing type; he has the ability to create solid objects out of energy. Before learning how to use his nen he used a pair of kan - basically, two short swords connected by a string or a chain. But for the sole purpose of defeating the Geneiryodan, he decided on materializing a set of chains wrapped around the fingers and wrist of his right hand, symbolizing how he plans to restrict their movements and haul their asses off to jail. Because the chains are made of nen, he can conceal them completely from normal sight... He also gave each finger a specific ability.

The chain on his thumb can heal injuries within seconds. The chain on his middle finger is almost unbreakable, and has the ability to send anyone into zetsu, or an enforced state wherein the target can't access their own nen no matter how hard they struggled. The chain on his ring finger is something of an all-purpose chain; he uses it to dowse for objects, and knock bullets out of the air, even as a lie-detector once. The chain on his pinky finger is tipped with a blade at the end, which enters the victim's chest and wraps around the heart. Kurapika sets up to two conditions, and if the victim violates either one, the chain crushes the heart and kills them. The function of the chain on his index finger is unknown.

Now here's where it gets even more complicated. All these different abilities should be impossible since Kurapika's nen can only materialize objects. Healing is strictly for strengthening-type hatsu, and the ability to control the movement of his chains as freely as he can means that he should also has controlling-type hatsu. The thing is, Kurapika's nen changes whenever his eyes turn red. Instead of being limited to just materializing, he gets the ability to use all five hatsu types at 100%. So whenever Kurapika gets mad enough to trigger his clan's bloodline - his eyes, in other words, his ability to use his nen becomes a lot more efficient, and he can overpower enemies stronger and more experienced than him (i.e. Kuroro Lucifer and most of the Geneiryodan), given proper preparation and wise use of his hatsu.

Long story short, he's like this all-purpose nen user, only limited by his physical endurance and emotional stamina. But since all of that is probably going to get sealed at Shibusen--

Kurapika is intelligent and level-headed (unless he's facing Kuroro and his gang of thieves), and in several instances demonstrated the ability to calmly analyze all aspects of a situation and come up with the best solution to a problem. He bargained his way out of fighting a vastly superior opponent during the Hunter Exam, when fighting would have gotten him and a friend killed. He's good at deducing answers to riddles. He's also quite knowledgeable about a lot of subject matters - often spouting random bits of trivia and sounding like he's reading articles straight out of an encyclopedia. He seems to be very well-read, and knows enough advanced math to manually calculate the time it would take a storm to make landfall after merely checking out its wind speed through a pair of binoculars. o.o

He's also quite physically fit despite his deceptively slight build - he had enough stamina to run a 60-kilometer long marathon without breaking a sweat, and that was months before he learned how to use his nen. Quick on his feet, agile, and very observant, Kurapika fights well with his twin swords and his materialized chains, but he's not reliant on weapons. It's never mentioned where he trained or learned how to fight, and he probably can't be considered a master martial artist, but he can damn well hold his own in a fight. Especially if he gets mad enough to use his eyes.

Character Weaknesses: Kurapika sounds like he'd be a formidable fighter, and he is, but there's a caveat to the bonuses that his eyes can give him. Prolonged use of his eyes utterly exhausts him. He'll quite literally collapse if he keeps using his abilities in conjunction with his eyes for more than a few hours. It implies that he might be using up energy at a faster rate in exchange for a power-up. Once down, he'll fall ill and will need to take a few days off to recover.

He's extremely principled and can be quite stubborn. Taken together, those two traits are never a good combination. If something goes against his principles, he'll never do it even though he's already inconveniencing other people. He can be quite narrow-minded as a result, and doesn't take well to having ideas forced on him. For example, that thing with his murdered kin? It's kind of like a be-all and end-all issue for him, and he tends to lose sight of everything when he's on his mission - like using his own life as a collateral to strengthen his hatsu, or almost blindly charging into a no-win scenario the moment he laid eyes on an actual Geneiryodan member.

Oh, and speaking of Geneiryodan members - they use a 12-legged spider as their symbol. They have it tattooed somewhere on their bodies. As a result, Kurapika has come to associate spiders with his mortal enemies and will go berserk the moment he sees a spider - red eyes, rage, the whole shebang. (Maybe that hatred hides a baser reaction - arachnophobia, possibly? But for now he's still quite pissed at the insects.) So the best way to make him lose his cool would be to have someone with a spider tattoo try to hurt the people dear to him--Kuroro Lucifer himself marked it as his biggest weakness.

And maybe as a milder form of that hair-trigger response, Kurapika has a temper even though he looks like he'd be gentle and girly. He has no love for idiots and won't hold back on insults. He comes off as being aloof at first because of it, and doesn't trust easily; then again, if someone killed off your entire family and you're left to pick up the pieces by yourself, you wouldn't trust easily, too.

[ WEAPON SECTION ]

Why your character should be a Weapon: Almost everything Kurapika has been doing ever since his tribe was slaughtered has been for the purpose of bringing the killers to justice. It sounds corny, but you could say that he's been turning himself into an instrument of vengeance. He probably wouldn't know what to do with a weapon, so although he sounds like he'd be responsible and mature enough to be a meister, it would be less disastrous to have someone else take the reins and direct that anger somewhere constructive.

What is your character's Weapon form?: Kurapika takes the form of a pair of unsheathed tanto connected by a length of fine chain, and would look nearly similar to the kan he wielded. The chain should be capable of getting longer, just like the chain on his middle finger - how long, though, depends on the capability of the meister. The blades are short - just a tiny bit over 12 inches, and would look more like daggers. But if he ever manages to complete a soul resonance, the blades will adjust to his meister's height and become true swords.

[ SOUL INFORMATION ]

Soul Description: Analytical, quiet, sensitive, independent, tenacious, neurotic

Soul Appearance: N00b Photoshop drawing here. Kurapika's soul looks plain by itself. It's average-sized, and predominantly yellow (the color of his hair in human form, and maybe the actual color of his soul if he stops angsting about his past) with the exception of his eyes, which are red and always seem to be glaring in disapproval. His mouth is upturned and frowning, and the general impression he gives off is disgruntlement. The most remarkable thing about his soul appearance are the chains wrapped around the lower half with one dangling down from behind and tipped with the dagger of his Judgment Chain. They symbolize the circumstances that tie him down to his past, and represent his hatsu ability and the chains he has wrapped around his own heart. (*gives up on expounding* - please see Nen Abilities section in Wikipedia link.)

[ SAMPLES ]

First Person:

Don't get me wrong. Normally I'd be delighted for the chance to explore a completely new society, but I was in the middle of an important job. I'm not really worried about the money, but assuming that time moves similarly in this world and my world--

That person is also here. This post is public, right? Let me take this chance to warn anyone who might be reading of the individual known as Kuroro Lucifer. Black coat, black eyes, black hair, cross-shaped tattoo on humongous forehead. He might come across as a gentleman, but he's a murderer and a despicable thief. Never let your guard down around him.

(Oh yes, it's public, you ass. Come fight me seriously if you feel like doing anything about it.)

~~I refuse to accept that our souls are compatible. Surely there must be someone in this city I might be able to resonate with.~~

Third Person:

He was starting to wonder if Kuroro Lucifer was following him.

He certainly didn't know that the man would be in this city, and thus wasn't in this city because of him. He was here for a simple job, and totally wasn't expecting to spot the Geneiryodan leader loitering around outside the lingerie shop across the street.

This made it the third time in only a handful of months that they'd run into each other--completely by coincidence, in his point of view. Kurapika wouldn't have been surprised if he'd been actively hunting for the man in his capacity as a Blacklist Hunter, but the frequency with which they were having these encounters suggested something decidedly less amusing.

Kuroro Lucifer was most probably stalking him.

It was just as well, Kurapika thought grimly. This would save him the trouble of actually expending the effort needed in a manhunt. And he still had to pay Kuroro back for the last time. He wasn't wearing his heavy tribal clothing this time around, and the nearest body of water was hundreds of miles away. Bastard wouldn't be able to use his teleportation trick to dump him into a handy reservoir this time.

This time, he was going to wipe that arrogant smirk off of Kuroro's face. He probably wouldn't be able to hold himself to just attempting to seal Kuroro's nen again. His patience was wearing thin. If it felt like Kuroro was just going to play around again and prance off after getting a few hits in--

[ NOTES ]

Apologies for the extremely long-winded abilities section. ;_; Hunter X Hunter has one of the most convoluted energy systems I've seen in shounen manga, and I couldn't think of a way to describe Kurapika's abilities without first explaining how the nen system works. (It's not even complete as it is. There's this thing about conditions and restrictions, and Kurapika made full use of that aspect to make his chains unbreakable. I decided not to include that since it's not that relevant to the RP, but believe me, if I'd included it, the abilities section would be 2-3 paragraphs longer.) There's also that bit about his eyes. It's never explicitly said in canon, but he seems to get stronger and faster whenever he uses them. I'm assuming that his hatsu has got to go, but what will happen to his eyes?

Rue Bourdain - 005.

2009-06-24T12:34:05Z

[Filtered to Kuroro]

KURORO LUCIFER.

STOP FLOODING MY INBOX WITH ILLUSTRATIONS OF ARACHNIDS.

Rue Bourdain - 004.

2009-06-04T02:02:35Z

I... apologize for being late.

There was a massive spider strung across the path on the usual route I take to work, and I had to take a detour to avoid it.

Rue Bourdain - 003.

2009-05-25T03:10:23Z

[TRATTORIA]

There's something strange going on in the Yugao. I've been noticing a decrease in public posts over the last week, with the exception of a couple of... Very odd-sounding voice posts from a very unlikely source. I don't know him personally, but I've seen him, and he looks like the kind of person who would rather throw himself off the bridge than be caught posting messages that sound more like prank calls.

N-not that I'm overly concerned or anything, but they are just next door. I guess, I'm asking if anyone else has noticed anything?

[PRIVATE]

This is stupid. First I snap at a customer, then I nearly spill my guts to the last person I'd expect to find myself confiding in. I'm going to have to find a way to control my temper better.

Rue Bourdain - 002.

2009-05-18T13:10:04Z

[TRATTORIA]

I have absolutely no idea what's happening, or how one tiny hamster managed to dispose of dozens of pounds of cheese in one sitting, but this sounds like a really serious problem. Please don't hesitate to tell me if there's anything I can do to help outside of my normal duties.

[PRIVATE]

How did a hamster become a restaurant's dishwasher in the first place? I'm fairly certain that having a live rodent in the kitchen violates a lot of food safety and sanitation laws.

Rue Bourdain - 001.

2009-05-17T11:14:03Z

[TRATTORIA]

I'm still not used to inviting discussion by making public posts, but I guess now's as good a time as any to ask if there's anything anyone would want to tell me or ask me? ... About work and other such issues. I'm pretty dull as a waiter, I think. I wouldn't mind getting suggestions for improvement.

[FILTERED TO MISS YUKIKO AMAGI OF THE YUGAO]

It has come to my attention that Kuroro Lucifer might have made a few... unsolicited advances towards your person over the network the other day. I would rather not presume, or interfere in other people's personal affairs, but I think it my duty to warn you that that man is an asshole. I am sure that you are fully capable of dealing with him, but please be careful. I don't want to see any more careers ruined because of him.

[PRIVATE]

We have one particular customer who's been a regular for a long time. She's a lovely lady and a good conversationalist, and I've learned a lot about practical medicine talking to her. She's generous with tips, too. I really don't mind serving her table, but she has this habit of being... overly familiar with my backside. It's nothing I can't handle, but I'm getting increasingly worried that I might offend her by reacting.

And I don't want to be the first one to break anything. The penalty aside, that man will never let it go.