(no subject)

[uzune]

» PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: levi
Current AGE: 22
Player TIME ZONE: eastern time // us
Personal JOURNAL: uzune
IM & SERVICE: aim: cribbywibbles
Player PLURK: cribbywibbles
Current CHARACTERS: n/a

» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Kazuaki Nanaki
Canon & MEDIUM: Hatoful Boyfriend | otome game/visual novel
Canon PULL-POINT: In the middle of the Bad Boys' Love route, when he's locked in a room with Anghel Higure and they're being gassed.
Character AGE: 25
Character ABILITIES:

just ridiculous math/science-related intelligence and uncanny acting ability. nothing supernatural here!

although, question! he is a bird originally, and i've seen for the other hatoful cast you've allowed them to be human in their gijinka forms. kazuaki has a disadvantage even as a bird since he's a tiny quail that rarely flies, so i wrote my samples on the assumption he could be human since he has less chance of being accidentally injured and a better chance of being taken seriously than he would as the smallest type of quail in the world. would it be all right to keep him human?

Character HISTORY:

(Note: Both the history and personality section will pull information from Holiday Star as well as BBL, as even though Holiday Star is an alternate universe, the characterization is the same and some events shed light on the events of BBL from a different perspective.)

Hatoful Boyfriend is set in a not-so-distant world not unlike our own, with the small twist that around 2068 birds began carrying a strain of Sumatra Flu that was harmless to birds, but deadly to humans. In the course of two years, the human population declined some 30%. In fierce retaliation and to ensure their own survival, human scientists developed a virus that was in turn harmless to them, but fatal when contracted by birds, and spread it. However, instead of drastically reducing the bird population, the virus created by humans mutated and sped intellectual development of several bird species. Doves were the most highly affected and in the 2100s remain the most sentient type of bird, but others such as quails and shoebills are advanced enough to even hold political offices. For humans, the downside of avian sentience was tragic and not completely unexpected, given their intention of killing off birdkind. Instead of wiping out birds, the virus backfired and war between the species broke out. Birds managed to nearly destroy the human race, and less than 1% of the billions of humans before the war remain now thanks to immunity to the mutated virus. Even with humans nearly extinct, tension between birds and humans is extremely high. Two political factions exist in Hatoful Boyfriend, the Dove Party and the Hawk Party. The Dove Party advocates peaceful coexistence with remaining humans and works to develop this, albeit in bizarre and sometimes unethical ways. The Hawk Party advocates for the elimination of the remaining human beings.

This tension between birds and humans directly affects Kazuaki Nanaki-- a button quail born Hitori Uzune on September 23rd, 2163. A hardworking young war orphan living at the Heartful House with other orphans, Hitori enjoys life and does his best to contribute to his family and make sure they're happy, too. The closest orphan to him seems to be Nageki Fujishiro, a mourning dove five years younger than himself. Nageki frequently doubts his worth to their family and Hitori firmly but kindly refutes this in every shown circumstance, arguing that even if Nageki is too sick for work or school, that he's important to their family. Hitori has always been good academically, so to help support his family he works as a teacher at a nearby school. It should be noted that he specifies that he doesn't go to school anymore, but there's no indication that the standard Japanese 3-year high school doesn't apply as the norm, meaning that Hitori either dropped out, or graduated high school early. Early graduation is the most likely as he also became a distance college student. Hitori isn't just financial support for his family, though-- he's very active in being around them, helping as much as he can and being emotionally supportive as well. They're a close-knit group that despite all their different schedules, makes time for each other every Friday to eat together and regroup. Hitori sticks to this schedule religiously, and is late only once: Friday, September 2, 2189. Twenty days shy of his 18th birthday, Hitori's been working overtime and has more money on his check than he expected, so on his way home he's planning to use it to make this Friday special and treat his family. When he gets home, he doesn't see the same tranquil, peaceful sight that usually greets him. Instead, he's greeted by bright lights and police officers, birds with guns and panicked people everywhere. When he learns that there are humans with guns attacking his family, he bursts through the barricade without a second thought, disregarding the authorities completely, but he's far too late to save anyone. By the time Hitori gets inside, all he sees are the dead bodies of his family and his family's attackers. He goes through the whole house looking for people, and in the innermost room he finds the only survivor: Nageki. Nageki is surrounded by dead humans as well, and in the initial shock Hitori assumes that the humans are dead from gunshot wounds.

Hitori and Nageki are the only survivors, and it's anyone's guess what the authorities did to handle their situation in the 20 days before Hitori turned 18. The age of majority is never explicitly stated in Hatoful Boyfriend, but there isn't a huge passage of time between the attack and when Hitori and Nageki move out on their own, so it's reasonable to assume that 18 is when Hitori was allowed custody of him. Soon, Hitori procures them an apartment and they move out on their own, where they live while Hitori does his best to work and take care of an increasingly sick Nageki too. The sicker Nageki gets, the more hospitals Hitori takes him to, desperately searching for medical help for him. Consistently they're told that Nageki is beyond help, but Hitori doesn't give up and continues taking him to hospitals. Whether this cuts into his working time or not is unknown, but there's no mention of being unable to pay bills, so it can be assumed that Hitori is working at least somewhat.

In the beginning of 2183, they receive a letter from prestigious St. Pigeonation's from Dr. Souma Isa inviting Nageki to the medical centre and school there. Dr. Isa says he's familiar with Nageki's condition and would appreciate the opportunity to research and cure it. Hitori is ecstatic, grateful that he was insistent on taking Nageki to so many doctors, as it led to someone telling Dr. Isa about Nageki's condition. Nageki is apprehensive about accepting the invitation, but Hitori insists.

For the first while Nageki's away, Hitori is fully confident that he's getting the care he needs and that he can't provide. Instead of coming home over summer break, however, Nageki is kept for intensive treatment. His letters to Hitori become increasingly upset, culminating in a letter that raises a red flag to Hitori that everything is not as good as his frequent phone calls to Dr. Isa make it seem. Nageki writes him that he's "fine," which Hitori had made him promise to never say three years ago. Hitori travels to St. Pigeonation's and breaks into the school. When he finds the basement, he's greeted by alarms and panicked researches exiting as quickly as possible. His initial assumption is that he's been caught, but soon he overhears the real reason the researchers are abandoning the basement: There's a fire, set by one of the subjects. Hitori continues despite the smoke and searches for Nageki. Soon enough he finds him, in the room filled with the strongest smoke and flames. He tells Nageki they need to leave, and Nageki closes and locks the door to keep Hitori out. He tells Hitori that he can't leave, he can't go outside anymore, and asks him for two things: Make sure there's no trace of his body, and live, and be happy.

The loss of Nageki is the final nail in Hitori's coffin, and the trauma of it breaks him. The events of Holiday Star reveal that he returned home, continued going to school, and met another button quail by the name of Kazuaki Nanaki. Kazuaki is a fellow student, though specializing in humanities rather than math or physics like Hitori. Hitori's natural kindness and ability to reassure people attract Kazuaki like a moth to a flame, and soon he becomes entirely dependent on him for emotional support. Hitori, however, has different ideas. The trauma of losing Nageki the way he did affects him so deeply that he's warped the memory he has of it, and fully believes Nageki asked him to exact revenge on Dr. Isa and the other researchers at the St. Pigeonation's Medical Centre. His whole life is focused on that goal, no matter how long it takes, and his interest in Kazuaki as a friend is questionable at the least. Kazuaki is a better candidate as a tool in his plan to avenge Nageki's death and recover whatever traces of his body he was unable to access. Kazuaki Nanaki is a quail with severe depression and suicidal ideation, which Hitori carefully pushes to fruition. In the span of a very short time, Hitori uses the advantage he has as someone Kazuaki believes in unfailingly to convince him to kill himself. It will be a joint suicide, revealing Hitori's vulnerability as someone unhappy with life, as well.

Kazuaki is hesitant, but agrees when Hitori shows up at his apartment with a bag of brightly-coloured pills. He takes them, and presumably so does Hitori. They're holding hands, lying down, when Hitori breaks the illusion. He gets up and starts taking Kazuaki's wallet and keys, explaining that he has more to do before he can die, no matter how terrible the world is. Kazuaki panics and begs Hitori to help him, telling him he doesn't want to die, and that he's afraid. Hitori is calloused and completely unsympathetic, telling Kazuaki that people like him are just a bother. He knew that Kazuaki didn't want to die, but says that he had to-- indicating that he'd planned to kill him the whole time.

Hitori takes Kazuaki's identity and masks Kazuaki's dead body as his own. Hitori Uzune dies, and Kazuaki Nanaki lives on to become a prestigious name in Japan's math and physics fields. Within the next five years he becomes a teacher at St. Pigeonation's, aware that the physician on premises, Dr. Shuu Iwamine, is really Dr. Souma Isa. At some unstated point he develops narcolepsy which seems to be legitimate, as shown in the guidebook's short story with Kazuaki's physical, performed by Shuu. He also confirms that he suffers from sleep paralysis and hallucinations by denying them to himself when Shuu suggests that he may be suffering from them, convinced that Nageki has come to see him again and that they talk frequently.

Kazuaki teaches without serious incident at St. Pigeonation's, and without anyone guessing he's anything other than what he says he is. However, the Bad Boys' Love route begins and changes all this. One of his homeroom students, Hiyoko Tosaka, incidentally the only human in the birds' school of St. Pigeonation's, is found dead and dismembered, scattered across the school in various print boxes for all of the classes. As Ryouta Kawara and Sakuya Shirogane uncover the reasons behind this, Kazuaki keeps an eye on Shuu's autopsy of Hiyoko's body, calmly sipping tea the whole time and making himself useful as needed. Whether Kazuaki's helpfulness to Ryouta is out of legitimate concern for his student or the feeling that following him to Shuu will help him achieve the revenge he's sought for five years is unknown, but follow him to Shuu he does. He listens to all the explanations, even interjecting a few times to remark blandly, never revealing who he is. He learns that Nageki had a virus lethal to humans, cultivated by his own weak immune system. Dr. Isa had never intended to cure Nageki at all. His intention, with the rest of the Hawk Party, had been to cultivate strains of the Charon Virus from Nageki's body and use it to eliminate the remainder of the human race. Nageki had been subjected to experiments where humans were brought to him and dropped dead of asphyxiation after just a few minutes of being in his presence.

He allows everyone to have their turn before he takes the stage, waiting until the rest of the students are evacuated before suddenly and without warning, shooting Shuu. As he shoots him again, he explains that he's looking for Nageki, and that Nageki is why he's here. Shuu understands that Hitori Uzune is alive and well and standing over him with a gun in wing, and tells Kazuaki that the remains of Nageki-- just tissues recovered from the fire, still infected with the Charon Virus-- have been implanted successfully into Ryouta. Specifically, Ryouta's liver. Convinced that he's found the pieces of Nageki to take home at last, Kazuaki takes Ryouta into a separate room to figure out how to get Nageki out of him. Delusional, he pokes at Ryouta's abdomen with a knife and wonders where the liver is before Nageki's ghost somehow uses Ryouta to talk to him. It's revealed that Kazuaki has been hallucinating a shadow of Nageki since he died, pretending this shadow is really Nageki and wants to punish him, to deal with his guilty feelings about Nageki's death. He insists to Nageki that he told him to take revenge on Dr. Isa and that he promised they would be together. Nageki's ghost convinces him to stop trying to cut whatever tissues of him there are in Ryouta's liver, Kazuaki cries a lot and presumably resolves to move on from Nageki's death, and they leave to join everyone else.

Ryouta, still infected with the Charon Virus, decides to stay behind while everyone leaves. Kazuaki, as seemingly cheerful as ever, supports his decision and everyone exits. In an extra scene it's revealed that after BBL he takes charge of caring for Shuu, pushing his wheelchair.


Character PERSONALITY:

Kazuaki's personality as someone pretending full-time to be someone else is complex and deceptive. Despite his narcolepsy and general spaciness, he's seen as a reliable adult figure by students and other teachers alike. He's requested as a chaperone for a particularly difficult student, Anghel Higure, at an out-of-school event by Anghel's teacher, in a separate episode shown in Holiday Star. In the same episode, a concerned Hiyoko asks his advice about Anghel's behaviour. In BBL, he's trusted by Ryouta and Sakuya to watch over Shuu's autopsy of Hiyoko and ensure that nothing bad happens to her body. The trust in him is warranted enough, and he willingly agrees to chaperone Anghel as well as give decent advice to Hiyoko. He seems to care for his students as he urges them to be careful and stay safe, and at the end of BBL before he even shows a sign of his intention to take his revenge on Shuu, he waits until the rest of the students are evacuated. This could easily be because he knew to expect the rest of the students in the school and didn't want to be overpowered, but there are reasons to believe that Kazuaki genuinely doesn't wish harm on any innocent students, if he doesn't care for them.

By nature, before he murdered the original Kazuaki, Hitori was kind and gentle, presumably to everyone. He seems to have been well-liked and respected, since he was hired on as a teacher so young, and Nageki refers to him as one of "the adults." He seems to have cared greatly for his family and gone to lengths to be there for them, financially and emotionally, and at no point in his self-explanation or anywhere in Nageki's is it approached that Hitori was big on complaining. Instead, he does everything he can to be uplifting and positive, insisting that a full stomach will keep away bad dreams and encouraging him to eat. Kazuaki seems to still believe this, at least superficially, as his main method of reassurance to his students is offering them tea.

As trusted and kind as he is, Kazuaki's main apparent trait to others is his spaciness. He dozes off quite easily, and he's totally carefree about things that should be serious (for example, Ryouta describes Kazuaki's expression as he shoots Shuu multiple times and interrogates him about Nageki's remains as the same soft smile he wears in class while teaching). He doesn't seem to be concerned that he's unable to stay awake, and to an extent this lack of concern is legitimate. In the guidebook's short story about him, he honestly doesn't care about anything as serious as abnormalities in his own brain that lead to his narcolepsy and could be fatal-- as long as he can do what he needs to do, i.e. get revenge on Shuu and take back Nageki's remains. He expresses concern, but in an airy, light way.

However, as air-headed and carefree as Kazuaki seems, he's a mathematical genius and specializes in math and physics. He's renowned in Japan for it, and he lives up to his reputation-- in his otome route, he explains how fireworks work via redox reactions. There's less opportunity for him to express his geeky side in BBL and Holiday Star, but he shows a genuine passion for subjects such as calculus when teaching it. There are days he forgets to even wear underwear (explained in a radio segment interviewing the characters in Holiday Star), but he's cunning enough to disguise another person's death as his own from a resourceful group like the Hawk Party, as well as get past them by pretending to be someone else. His carefree front is exactly that, a front, and while he may never drop it, behind it lurks a lot of pain and hatred. He hates not only Shuu/Isa, but the world itself for taking everything away from him, and himself for failing to be there for Nageki when he needed him as well.

Kazuaki is passionate behind the mask, but not in a way that benefits anyone (anymore). Before losing Nageki he may have been healthy, but even if he wanted to, and there's no indication that he wanted to, focus on anyone besides Nageki, there was no time between working, schoolwork (if we assume that he was in distance college while Nageki still lived with him) and rushing Nageki to hospitals when he wasn't taking care of housework as well. Nageki has become Kazuaki's whole world, and he cares for literally no one besides him. His actions and tone point to more than platonic or family-related feelings for Nageki. In his otome route, his basis for rejecting Hiyoko is that he's unable to love after losing Nageki, and the feelings they're discussing are only romantic. It's possible that he may have been possessive of Nageki while he was alive out of necessity, due to Nageki's illness, but somewhere along the line that has grown into something ugly that disregards Nageki's real wishes. Nageki would never want him to trick someone into suicide so he could steal their identity, even less so for his own sake, and he definitely doesn't want revenge-- he tells him this himself at the end of BBL. Kazuaki knows better, but argues with him anyway. He insists that he knows better than Nageki, not because Nageki is wrong, but because he's come to think that the torture Nageki received at the hands of Dr. Isa brainwashed him. Kazuaki is so deep in his coping methods that he's not only unable to move past Nageki's death, he's completely unwilling. Despite Nageki's real wishes, he's held onto revenge as his sole reason for living, and will let nothing get in his way. He's more willing to believe his hallucinations than what he knows is actually true, finding comfort in the pain of his delusion over the pain of reality.

Revenge as his reason for living has made him a hateful person as well. The original Kazuaki would be pretty annoying to the best of us, but to Hitori, someone who he perceives as having no real difficulties in life, difficulties of the kind he and Nageki had, has no right to complain and be useless. His hatred of the original Kazuaki and people like him is real and genuine, and that he's able to hide it so effectively makes him a formidable actor. He's under no delusions of doing a good thing when he tells the original Kazuaki exactly what he thinks of him while he's dying; he flat out tells him that he knows he "didn't want to die, but he had to." He's selfish and knows it, feeling so slighted and betrayed by the world that he doesn't care how pathetic the people he has to use really are, and what's more, wanting them to suffer. He didn't have to tell the person he was killing anything; he could have pretended to die too, waiting until his victim was gone before taking his stuff. But he didn't. He made him suffer, like the world has made him and keeps making him suffer. However, one thing he's under no illusions about is that he doesn't think he's so great, either. Whether it's only because he feels he failed Nageki so completely or because of the sum of everything he's failed at and done to others, it's touched upon by Moa that Kazuaki likely harms himself on occasion and that this is a reason for him to layer up on clothes, besides keeping warm.

In short, Kazuaki is not okay and knows it, but doesn't let on anything to anyone. He's kind in appearance and helpful, but indifferent to anything that isn't achieving his goal of revenge. He's bitter and and subtly passive-aggressive (doing things to annoy Shuu before Shuu realizes who he really is, seeming to relish the way Anghel reacts to his real name). He's not particularly dangerous to anyone who doesn't hurt Nageki, even if he hates them-- he killed the original Kazuaki because he had to, not completely out of cold blood. All in all, he's likeable, but only at a surface level.

» EXSILIUM INFORMATION

Chosen WEAPON:

In canon, Kazuaki carries a small gun as well as a knife on his person, and I'd like for his weapon to be his gun since he's already familiar with it. Over time, I'd like for the bullets in it to not only pierce through who/whatever he shoots with it, but also explode upon impact and make the surrounding area combust as well.

Character INVENTORY:

All Kazuaki would have on him besides the abovementioned weapons is his wallet and phone, with ID and a few cards. In the wallet is also a photograph of someone with their face scribbled out in black marker.

» SAMPLES
First PERSON:

[ what a complicated little device. it's a bit like a smartphone, but still too complicated for kazuaki's tastes... easy enough to use, though, once he's looked at it for long enough. it would be easier to use in his own body, the small round feathered one he's accustomed to, but... all these blunt digits aren't unmanageable. is this a side effect of whatever gas isa pumped into that room with him and higure? or did the gas kill him, and this is what happens to bad birds in their afterlife...?

just strange.

he'll need to know people here if he ever wants to... to what? to learn if he can wake up from a strange dream, to get back to his own universe, or life, or whatever it is? this sounds like the type of thing that higure would talk about, but with less latin and more action movie-type words. it doesn't matter. he just wants to get back to where he was, and accomplish what he set out to do. ]

Aaa, what a scary place... I barely understood what that nice lady was saying, ahaha...

It's much colder here than I'm used to. I think tea would be nice, maybe mango sweet tea... Would anyone nice like to... maybe... mmmh...

[ his breathing evens out soft and slow, and it's clear that he's out cold. ]

Third PERSON:

It's difficult for him to say with conviction that he doesn't want to be here. He doesn't, he really doesn't, but surely that's only out of weakness. Surely the right thing to want is to be back at St. Pigeonation's, out of that room with the gas and following Isa. Isa's determination to get at Kawara makes Kazuaki determined as well, and he knows that's the direction he should be going. Back. Back. Back, so he can go forward, so he can use this gun weighing heavy in his pocket.

It's a much kinder pain than what Isa and the others put Nageki through. Nageki, his only true friend and family. Punishing Isa is redeeming himself as well, for putting Nageki in that situation in the first place.

There are people entering Kazuaki's "world" though, aren't there? That's what the woman explained. Kazuaki wants to care, because he'd promised Nageki's shadow that he would get the revenge they crave so much. He should care if only so that revenge isn't taken away from him, robbed right out of his hands like everything else has been. ...But it's difficult to care about such a terrible world, isn't it? Nageki isn't in it anymore, as much as he would like to wish otherwise. Just a few cells, most likely. It had been quite a high-temperature fire.

"Resources," haha. Hahaha! There are precious few resources where Kazuaki comes from. A few humans about to die and sentient birds handicapped by physical limitations. This place is warring and it's no different from the place he was abducted from, he's sure. War is war is war. Somewhere in this "world" there's an orphanage of impoverished but happy children being massacred. Somewhere in this "world" are survivors who prey on others, and who are preyed on.

It doesn't change because of the location.

They expect Kazuaki to battle, then, if he's understood right. A terrible lot of good he'll do in battle with this sleep disorder, though, "sentient" weapon or not. He's more likely to accidentally (he could deliberately, but why bother? Everything is the same in the end) sabotage their mission. Maybe he should, just because they put him in this weird, uncomfortable body. It's enough every day for him to give Kazuaki's name, much less be in a completely different body than the one he was born in. This one is certainly more suited to battle, he supposes, even if he's just as suddenly tired in it as he was as a quail...

No, in the end, nothing is different at all.

» ADDITIONAL NOTES
Anything else you feel is necessary.