[OOC] AU Profile (xavier_institute)

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PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Nyx
CONTACT: salroka; PM

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Ryuuna Uryuu (Ryuunosuke Uryuu in canon)
CANON: Fate/Zero
CANON REFERENCE: Wiki link
AGE: 17 (Early 20s in canon)
GENDER: Female (Male in caon)
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: 12th Grade
APPEARANCE: More or less like so. Ryuuna is genderswapped from canon, but her appearance, fashion sense, and mannerisms are all very similar to her canon self.

PERSONALITY:
Ryuuna is fascinated by death, to the point that studying it has become her driving motivation. Fake deaths, such as those found in horror movies and violent media, aren't realistic enough to satisfy hier; she believes that if they were, she wouldn't have become a serial killer to satisfy her own curiosity. Always vying to vicariously experience new sensations, she takes pleasure in experimenting with differing techniques, often times drawing out deaths for extended periods of time so that she can study a greater amount of responses from her victims. It's for this reason that she is so enamored with Caster's ability to artificially protract the deaths of their victims.

She is also a woman who finds enjoyment in novelty; after performing 30 killings on her own, she begins to become bored, because there is a limit to the amounts of ways she can kill with the means available to her. Likewise, when she discovers a book on summoning, her interest in her "hobby" is sparked anew. Even when she doesn't truly believe the summoning ritual is authentic, just having a new objective—creating a summoning circle from the blood—is enough to make things "fresh" again. She also doesn't need to be an active participant in a death to enjoy it; watching Caster's creatures kill people in ways she has never seen before excites her just as much, if not more, as killing her victims herself.

Of the murders she does participate in, Ryuuna enjoys being able to get creative. Using Caster's ability to distend the length of time it takes someone to die, she has done things such as attempt to make an instrument out of a still living girl by using her intestines as keys. She has also used the bodies of her victims to create art of a sort, fashioning skin, bone, and flesh into both practical items and "art pieces" that have no discernible purpose at all. When Caster tells her that they're going to be changing their priorities to quantity over quality of death, Ryuuna is obviously disappointed, and even though she is won over to Caster's way of thinking in the end, her thoughts on the matter are still something along the lines of what a waste.

All of this reflects the somewhat simplistic, childish thought process Ryuuna displays. She is capable of acting like a normal person around others, as well as behaving prudently, but at the same time, her thought process can be...eccentric. She's focused on self-image, and uses the impression of a leopard as a role model. When her Command Spells (a set of strange, tattoo-like symbols marking her for the Holy Grail War) spontaneously appear on her hand, her immediate thought is that they look cool. Her thoughts often don't follow the most obvious path, meaning that, for better or for worse, she may take actions others wouldn't think of. To use the example already mentioned above, the problem with attempting to make a "human instrument" as she did is obvious—a person won't make a sound of the same pitch twice just because they were prodded in the same place. However, this didn't occur to her until after the fact.

Another example of this skewed thought process is how she prioritizes things, and the results of that prioritization. For instance, when reading up on the summoning ritual, she skipped the entire section explaining the reason for the ritual because she found it dull. Similarly, once the Grail War itself has begun, she still has no interest in actually learning about the Grail and what it is; instead, she simply wants to see destruction and violence she would never be able to experience otherwise. Conversely, when presented with something that does interest her, she can become almost fixatedly interested in it. After seeing Caster murder someone for the first time, for example, she becomes almost manically excited and swears to follow Caster on the spot, an eagerness that repeats after the first battle of the Grail War, when Caster summons a giant monster in the river, etc.

Perhaps the ultimate example of these odd priorities is the way she regards human life. When an enemy in the Grail War destroys Ryuuna and Caster's workshop, Ryuuna breaks down at the sight of all her artwork ruined, calling the perpetrators inhuman for destroying something she had put so much effort and love into. The act of killing all those people, meanwhile, was not morally objectionable in her mind; most people lead boring, mundane existences, after all, so her actions actually enriched them!

This is reflected in her spiritual outlook as well; she believes in a god that loves humans, but in the way that a storywriter loves his characters, and sees proof of God's love in all the beauty there is to be found in the world—while citing examples like "the color of human organs," naturally. Stories of suffering and pain move Him just as much as stories with happy endings, and He loves writing them both. Likewise, He enjoys creating villains like Ryuuna and Caster, and as such God will reward them for enriching His story with the atrocities they commit.

Outside of all the murder, though, when interacting with others, Ryuuna tends to behave both casually and familiarly, and is actually described as having a talent for "witty" chatter. This can and has played in her favor—after all, before having access to Caster's help, she had to draw her victims in somehow. She remains pleasure-seeking and quickly bored, as well, so she enjoys pursuing new activities and experiences, even if none of them can replace her primary hobby. And, of course, her off-the-wall thought process remains, giving her a tendency toward spontaneity and unpredictable behavior. This isn't always a bad thing, and can lead her to think of some creative solutions; she was shrewd enough, after all, to get away with 30-something murders.

In terms of AU differences, the biggest one is that Ryuuna hasn't gone down the path of a full-blown serial killer yet. Right now, she's mostly a bored, disconnected teenage girl, and while the interest is there, it hasn't been fully cultivated. Similarly, she hasn't had her, er, religious epiphany on the nature of God and His plan for her life yet.

POWERS/ABILITIES:
Ryuuna is capable of healing wounds and relieving pain with her touch. Because her healing is based around regenerating damaged tissue, she can't heal sicknesses or other ailments, but the pain-relieving properties of her power can still be used at normal effectiveness. The healing process itself is not instantaneous and can require her to focus on the injury for up to several minutes, and while she can potentially stabilize a person whose wounds might otherwise be fatal, she's likely to exhaust herself before completely healing more severe injuries. Conversely, her ability to soothe pain is much faster acting.

The most obvious drawback of this ability is that Ryuuna needs to be close enough to touch the injury she intends to heal. Additionally, the healing process does rely on Ryuuna's guidance, so if you have your organs hanging out of your stomach, you should probably not trust her to accurately put everything back where it's supposed to be.

This power can be used on both herself and other people, and the healing and soothing properties can be applied separately as well as together. So if, for example, it would be too risky for her to heal an injury herself, she could simply dull the recipient's pain until they could receive medical attention. Doing the reverse and healing without anesthetizing the area results in an uncomfortable, itchy feeling while the flesh knits itself back together.

AU HISTORY:
Ryuuna was born the first of two daughters in an average Japanese family. She lived in an average house with average parents in an average town. By all accounts, she should have grown up to lead an average, utterly normal life.

The problem was that, from an early age, Ryuuna was not an average child. She had behavioral problems. She acted out, constantly. No matter how many times you told her something, she seemed to forget in the next minute. And those problems only became more obvious once Ryuuna started school, where she struggled to focus on the material from one minute to the next, or even sit still for an entire class period. Combined with the way her sister, a mere year younger than her, was the very picture of a responsible model student, her parents grew frustrated and even resentful of Ryuuna's troublesome behavior.

Ryuuna, on the other hand, never grew resentful of her family—not even her obviously favored sister. It just never seemed very important to her, though then again, she had trouble forming anything beyond shallow relationships in general. So, since she didn't really care what they thought, she didn't try very hard to meet their expectations. Her grades stayed poor. When she started high school, she dyed her hair. She even got an upperclassman to help her pierce her ears—twice. She wasn't even trying to rebel against her parents and the clean-cut image they expected of their daughters; she just did whatever seemed like fun at the time, trying to find something she truly enjoyed in spite of the disconnect she felt between herself and other people.

Her relationship with her parents only grew more strained when Ryuuna discovered her mutation. As spacey and careless as she could be, it wasn't odd for her to come home with scrapes and bruises, usually from her bumping into a door frame or tripping over a desk while she was only half paying attention. One day, she managed to give herself a somewhat less superficial cut in much the same manner, only for it to seal itself when she started to prod at it with her fingers. As far as mutations went, it was hardly the most shocking or worrying, but considering all the other marks against her, it didn't sit well with Ryuuna's parents that their oddball daughter was a mutant on top of everything else.

That said, it turned out that she was in good company not soon after. Her sister's own mutation manifested not long after Ryuuna's did, and it was something other people found much more unsettling than Ryuuna's apparently benign healing: the ability to cause immense heat, or even potentially cause something to catch fire, with her gaze. It resulted in the loss of several friends, but her sister still shouldered her way through her new found social stigma, as dutiful as ever.

But in spite of her determination to carry on, the summer before Ryuuna's sister was to enter high school, everything changed for the Uryuu family. Ryuuna's sister turned up dead, with her eyes sliced out and her body mutilated. The nature of her injuries prompted investigators to label it as an anti-mutant hate crime, and the violent death of their favorite child sent Ryuuna's parents into an emotional tailspin. They immediately had Ryuuna transferred to the faraway Xavier Institute, out of mingling bitterness and fear.

...Of course, there wasn't actually anything for them to worry about, since the perpetrator was Ryuuna herself. She never resented her sister, and in some ways was closer to her than the rest of her family, but if you're going to try murdering anyone, a family member is the most convenient choice, right? So she had led her somewhere secluded, cut her eyes out, and tied her up. After a lifetime of vague, ill-defined curiosities, it was a rush like nothing she had ever felt before.

Ryuuna didn't mind being sent away after the fact, of course. She was smart enough to know that the less the police questioned her, the better. It wasn't hard for her to break away from those surface-level relationships she had formed back home, either, so she packed her bags without regrets, cheerfully starting over again in America.