Sanctum App.
Player Information:
Name: Sayo
Age: STILL OLDER THAN YOU. 34
Contact info: plurk/AIM - sayomibaka
Characters currently played at Sanctum, if any: Hisagi Shuuhei
Character Information:
Name: Nezumi, correctional facility prisoner VC103221.
Canon: No. 6 light novels
Canon point: Post-series (by 2 years)
Age: 18.
Appearance: Here, on the left.
Background: Novel translations here, Book 4-9 summaries here
Post-Canon History: Upon leaving No. 6, Nezumi had intended to spend a year in each of the other five numbered cities, in order to build a less violent perspective on humanity before returning to see the world that Shion would have a hand in building. His intent, before slipping through the Rift, had been to spend his time in each place observing the others there in the city, investigating the goings-on beneath the surface... trying to grasp an understanding of what life is like for those caught somewhere between the ‘pampered, blissfully submissive elite’ that stood at the top of No. 6 and those that had scraped with stubborn, gritty determination to live by any means, no matter how unsightly outside the wall in the West Block.
This time was also meant to be a time of recovery for Nezumi, away from the city that had cultivated such a deep-seated hate and need for vengeance in the young man.
He started... by going to the ruins of where his village had been. Took his time sifting through the ruins with little luck - save for the fact that the forest there was slowly reclaiming the area with twelve years worth of new growth, there was nothing that remained of the people that had once lived there, save Nezumi himself. From there, he made his way to No. 4 and started at the bottom, or as close to the bottom as he was willing to step. He worked odd jobs until he found a theatre he liked, then promptly challenged the lead female role... and upstaged her with ease.
In return, she was nice enough to give him a place to stay in addition to becoming his understudy until he could afford his own place.
It was his first time living above ground and an experience he had extreme difficulty adjusting to.
Despite being in another city, Nezumi’s life didn’t change much, at first. He worked at the theatre under the stage name ‘Eve’, spent his free time at the various libraries scattered around the city, and worked at a bakery as a part timer in between. And all the while, he watched and investigated... and found no traces of similar systems as that of the ones that’d existed beneath No.6’s pristine surface. He dug deep, investigated the government, yet nothing.
And then he began seeing Shion on the news.
His initial shock at seeing No. 4 working to offer No. 6 aid in order to support Shion’s efforts soon faded to bemusement, then something suspiciously like that thing called pride. And though he said it was because the thought of Shion crying or asking the other cities for help annoyed him, Nezumi was, in fact, one of the hardest workers moving things around and packing the donations for the relief efforts.
After a year, he moved on to No. 5 and repeated the same process - though this time, he actually managed to make a few acquaintances after his investigations. One, his neighbor, was a local university student studying music and taught him to play the guitar. Nezumi, in turn, taught him how to load a pallet while they volunteered with that city’s relief efforts.
And this time, it was the leading male role he’d overtaken.
It’s while he was in No. 5 that he began to accept the slowly changing perception of humanity - to recognize that while the extremes do exist, there is also a mental, social, and emotional middle ground. Recognize it, yet he still struggled to accept it, much less apply it.
Still, it was in No. 5 that he began to sleep properly at night, for more than four hours at a time. It’s at this point, when he’d just decided to leave No. 5 and move on to No. 1, that he’d been picked up by the rift.
Previous Game History: N/A.
Personality: Given his rather bleak outlook on the folly of trusting others and his disdain for Shion’s general faith in humanity, we can infer that Nezumi has been on his own for the vast majority of his life. He may have made connections if they served his needs or slight alliances for his continued survival, but the last person who saw an honest emotion, one that was free of any and all reserve, was Shion.
Nezumi is, in a word, a survivor He made a choice early on, to dig in deep and claw his way forward - to hold fast to this life he held by any means necessary. And he made that choice, again and again as he grew older, when circumstances, uncertainty, or exhaustion wore him down, to continue to live no matter what. He learned to do whatever it takes in order to ensure his own life reached the next day, though he already knew the weight of having to take a life and the realities of having to kill another to reach that goal of survival.
He truly believes the axiom ‘Survival of the fittest’.
He learned to shut people out, to distance himself from them as much as possible to avoid attachment or perceived weakness on his own part. Jagged and jaded to the extreme, he became the perfect example of a hard-hearted loner, utterly cool, aloof, and uninvolved.
Experienced and unaffected on every level.
From his actions and reactions, it’s obvious that Nezumi is a seasoned close-combat fighter with reflexes honed in experience rather than simple instruction. He has an above average grasp of situational awareness, thus can easily take ‘stock’ of the moment and plan accordingly - a skill that makes it exceptionally difficult to catch him off guard. While he is proficient with using whatever is at hand in a fight, his weapon of choice is a knife that he always carries on his person.
He’s confident without being cocky in his skill, and doesn’t brag or boast unnecessarily to appear greater than he is. He’s self-aware enough to recognize his strengths and weaknesses… and how to hide them all.
And yet.
He befriended a pair of mice, going so far as to call them his companions, and developed a deep, abiding passion for literature. Especially tragedies. He would spend all of his free time in the safety of his home - nothing more than an underground room with a separate bath in the ruins of a stone building - reading every and anything he managed to get his hands on.
Books on science and technology, on mathematics and engineering, classics and religion. He filled shelf after shelf, lost himself in a wealth of knowledge that he pieced together bit by hard-won bit, so that his room was nothing more than a bed, a small burner, a couch and a small coffee table - all surrounded by his amassed treasures.
(The anime does show a small antique organ piano in the corner with various pages of tattered sheet music stuck to the walls, though he’s never shown fully playing it)
He’s mechanically inclined, having developed his own machines that looked like mice, complete with warm fur and fluid movements that he used to both infiltrate the government inside No. 6 in order to spy on them as they spied on Shion and monitor Shion’s activities himself. Ones developed for tracking and some for guidance, these were more tools of necessity than companions - and it was through them that he learned how their maintenance and citizen tracking systems worked, as well as how closely they monitored Shion and his mother.
Shion is the only one that can evoke such a confusing mix of frustration, irritation, exasperation, joy, and bemusement in Nezumi. He can’t help the sarcastic teasing that he used with the other, nor the sharpness with which he berated him for clinging to the bonds Shion still held in No. 6. While talking to Shion, Nezumi revealed a rather telling bit of advice that shows how he views survival:
"Back there, you threw away your citizenship card because it was a danger to us. So are feelings for other people. You get dragged around, pulled this way and that, and before you know it, you're in dangerous territory. Your mama, papa, your grandma, whoever― they're all strangers now. There's no emotional room in you to be concerned about strangers. Your hands are full enough trying to keep yourself alive."
And yet.
For all that he continuously claims that he and Shion are strangers, he always follows harsh criticisms with almost gentle words or actions that reveal the shades of a lie beneath the assertion.
To Nezumi, reality was something that betrayed people every day, with a disturbing ease even as it pulled people's lives in unanticipated directions. Reality was something that could coolly and casually fling them into despair, was equally cruel and violent and even utterly absurd. Reality wasn’t to be trusted - it could make anything happen at any time, or take anything that was of value without hesitation.
Personal questions are ignored outright by anyone, and downright anger him if asked by Shion - because by his estimation, they’ll break down the safety barrier of ‘strangers’ that he still sees in place between the two of them. It’s in these moments that Shion sees the harder edge to Nezumi, an animalistic quality that bespeaks of a stubborn fight or flight instinct to avoid human attachments.
For all that Nezumi’s actions and words reveal a special case for Shion, this skittishness and wariness has become something too far ingrained within Nezumi. He also reveals, in constant subtle ways, that his own grasp on reality is often suspect. When spoken to by Shion with a blunt honesty, Nezumi automatically assumes Shion is quoting lines from a book or play. He doesn’t always connect sincere words and action to the truth or feeling, as he’s never really had the experiences in his life that would indicate those things exist outside of said book and plays.
It’s a weakness that only Shion has been unwittingly gifted the right to see by Nezumi, though Nezumi himself is quite unaware.
He uses harsh, often cutting words to maintain that distance between them, then turns right around and softens the blow with an act of kindness or softer reassurances. He’s a constant contradiction, but only with Shion.
And the reason? Nezumi firmly believes that he and Shion will become enemies one day. Because of Shion’s strong desire to still keep and protect those few bods he holds within No.6 and Nezumi’s intense hatred for all that No. 6 stands for, Nezumi can’t see or accept that there will be a middle ground.
It’s one of the many ways Nezumi shows that his world view is very much ‘black and white’. Inside the wall, outside the wall, holding onto those bonds or cutting all ties, survival of self over acts of kindness to others. All things he views in strict lines, save for the few instances he crosses those lines.
Sexuality: Nezumi has a rather jaded view on sex and sexuality. So far as he’s concerned, base desires are a tool that can be used as a means to an end and little more. The acts themselves are something he’s skilled at and given the fact that he’s a consummate performer, he always leaves his audience satisfied without getting personally invested in any way. It’s because of this, however, that he doesn’t apply any specific terminology to his own sexuality, save maybe ‘as necessary’.
Skills and Powers: He’s a survivor with a photographic memory - he can fight down and dirty with the worst of them, specializes in close combat knife fighting, can spin escape plans on the fly, is quite competent in technological engineering... and can sing and act exquisitely. He has no special powers save a cutting cynicism and a lifetime of street smarts acquired over eighteen years while living in the slums nestled outside the great wall encircling No. 6 and his travels to the other numbered cities after No. 6 was torn down.
Items: Nezumi will be arriving with his usual clothes - combat boots, worn but not threadbare cargo pants, his belt, long sleeve tee-shirt, switchblade, leather jacket, and microfiber cloak. He’s got a haversack with a few spare changes of clothes and some dry rations, as well as a guitar in a soft case over his shoulder - and the same, well-worn copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet in his cargo pocket as well.
And as always, he’s got two mechanical mice (one for tracking and one for surveillance) and two real ones in his jacket pocket (Hamlet and Moonlit).
Writing samples:
Action: [The video flickers on to reveal a young manwoman standing on a stage, ‘her’ long purplish-black hair falling luxuriantly down his back, the top coiled in intricate braids adorned with glittering jewels on his head and long bangs framing slate-gray eyes.
He’s not looking at the video, however. Instead he’s listening intently to an older man that’s talking to him, motioning across the stage with one hand. The actor nods, tales a step back, shakes his hair back, then sighs towards the actress near him, his movements flow with a natural grace, the expressions flawless as he recites his lines:]
“I did not take my leave of him, but had most pretty things to say: ere I could tell him how I would think on him at certain hours such thoughts and such, or I could make him swear the shes of Italy should not betray mine interest and his honour, or have charged him, at the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight, to encounter me with orisons, for then I am in heaven for him; or ere I could give him that parting kiss which I had set betwixt two charming words, comes in my father and like the tyrannous breathing of the north shakes all our buds from growing.”
[A pause then, before Nezumi turns to wink at the video, a knowing smirk curving his lips.]
Just a tease, or a taste, my lords and ladies. For the rest, come to The Rose Theatre tonight for Opening Night and see Shakespeare's Cymbeline.
Third Person Prose: Nezumi had read books that were less bizarre than showing up in this place had been. Granted the information people had been as welcoming as the people of both No. 1 and No. 3 had been, however that hadn’t made it any easier to just accept as fact.
Which was why he spent the entirety of his first day simply walking the city, testing the openness of the place, looking for cracks within the facade, occasionally going back to ask this question or that...
And when, on a whim, he’d flirted a bit and jokingly inquired as to where a white-haired guy named Shion could be found... he hadn’t actually expected to receive a location.
Though the fact that he was working in Park Maintenance had amused Nezumi to no end.
Which is why he’d gone to the park and sat under a tree reading his book, an old beat-up copy of Macbeth, while his mice ran the length and breadth of the park, until they found him. That’s also why he’d held himself back, simply watched the teen as he worked, noted the slight differences in demeanor - though there were hardly any real differences at all - and followed the other back to his place.
Shion was still too trusting, to not notice his presence yet.
But what really caught his breath, made him want to both strangle Shion and somewhat else, was the fact that the moment he’d gotten home to that little basement place... he’d opened his window.
In a place like this, he still thought to draw Nezumi in.
And still, Nezumi held back. Just long enough to see Shion’s evening routine, to realize he was actually going to go to bed with a window open. Still too much the trusting fool. But for once, as Nezumi slipped into the window well after the apartment had stilled for the night, then pulled them all shut and locked them tight... he was glad.
Once there, he glanced around as he set the guitar case in the corner, then crosses the mostly bare living room to toss his bag and cloak over the back of a plastic chair, then shrugged out of his jacket. As he did so, he had to bite back a laugh as Cravat jumped down to greet him. This reunion no less joyous that the one he anticipated, though he left the three mice to reacquaint themselves on the kitchen counter as he walked the short hall looking for the stairs that went up into the bedroom. Quiet as can be, and with only a flashlight, he slipped up the stairs and into the loft, then slid into Shion’s bed and stretched out on his side, propped neatly on an elbow and facing his friend as he began to read while he waited on the other to wake.
And if his hand drifted once more to card through white strands still soft as silk... well he didn’t pay that any mind either.
In the Rift sample: N/A
Plans: Get Shion laid. Preferably by him.
Any questions and concerns go here: N/A.