OOC: Info Post
Owl
Full Name: Nagi Kengamine (Western order)
Fandom/Timeline: Deadman Wonderland, Chapter 15, page 18 (just before being amputated)
Current Location: Living in an apartment over his ramen shop with Karako (chainbell)
Occupation: Owner and operator of Ramen ya Soba (Japanese cuisine with a focus on noodles!)
Relationship Status: Widower/Single
Employees: Lenalee Lee (Waitress), Nina Fortner (Waitress/Deliveries), Kaien (Deliveries), William T. Spears (Chef)
Deaths: Zero
Links: IC Contact, Relationships, How's My Driving, Ask me anything
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Appearance and Impression: Nagi is a Japanese male in his late 20s/early 30s (unclear!). His most distinguishing features are his violet eyes, the scars at his throat where his vocal cords were removed and the silver collar he wears at all times (and cannot remove). The latter two are generally covered by one of the two scarves he wears at all times. Speaking of the scarves, while one will vary in color and pattern, the other is always green plaid - a memento of his lost wife. Most of the time, Nagi looks fairly unthreatening and unassuming (although he's actually in shockingly good shape): he's slightly rumbled and careless with his appearance, his hair is always tousled and he definitely doesn't dress to impress. His smile is warm and mild and so are his eyes.
However, sometimes, when he grows serious his face turns cold and so does his gaze. When that happens, he's generally in leader mode instead of buddy mode.
Notably, Nagi is mute. He speaks through the use of a voice synthesizer, which gives him an electronic/cold tone devoid of emotion or inflection.
In the air the questions hang
Will we get to do something?
Who we gonna end up being?
How we gonna end up feeling?
What you gonna spend your free life on?
Powers, skills and equipment:
Branch of Sin: Nagi is one of the Deadman - people who, through the infection of a "Nameless Worm," has gained the ability to use his own blood as a weapon. One cut, one scratch, anything that gives him access to his blood, and Nagi can draw on it to create explosive orbs called Owl's Eyes. These orbs float around him, and detonate either on impact or on command. He can direct them through the air with rather impressive accuracy, as well. The blood needs to be his, but it does not need to... attached to him - he's been shown to manipulate blood from inside a severed limb. And while it may seem like a bad idea to go tossing one's blood around, for whatever reason, it takes a great deal of blood loss before Nagi is affected.
Physical Strength/Stamina: Nagi is unusually strong and has been shown performing feats that one normally wouldn't expect of a human - crushing skulls with a single hand, for example or sustaining massive injuries and continuing on, that sort of thing. It is unknown whether this is an ability or related to all those arena fights, or if he's just natural gifted. (The injury survival is probably related to blood manipulation, though.)
Voice synthesizer: Nagi comes equipt with a voice synthesizer - the only way he can speak due to his severed vocal cords. While it is a good enough synthesizer, it doesn't allow for tones or inflection.
And someday you'll know that nature is so
The same rain that draws you near me
Falls on rivers and land, on forest and sand
Makes the beautiful world that you see
In the morning.
Personality:
Nagi is insane.
It's hard to tell at first. He's sweet, after all - a really nice person. Humble and selfless - full of hope and determination, and more than willing to carry all the pain and all the dreams of his friends and followers on his back without question. Without complaint. God knows he's always ready with a smile, an encouraging word, couched in metaphor and poetry, served over green tea and ramen. It's remarkable in a way - listen closely and you can hear the edge of all his pain, his losses: murdered bride, lost child, voice torn from his throat as part of a deal with the proverbial devil - a deal that went sour and took everything he loved away. Close your eyes and you can almost hear the clink of the jail cell doors closing around him, but still he smiles, and oh - he must have been framed.
Now he's a pacifist, and a warrior - a man who fights not for revenge or from rage but for the future. And Nagi speaks well - sometimes poetically, in a way that seems strangely out of place and yet strangely appropriate to his monotonous mechanical voice. He's charismatic, charming - an idealist and a visionary looking beyond the cold grey walls and into the world outside.
That's why people follow him. That's how he makes them believe. And if he's ruthless sometimes, if he plots a good plot, if there's steely determination under that gentle exterior and he's willing to shed blood when he has to... it's for the greater good. Always for the greater good.
Of course he has another side. Sadly, he can't see it. Can't remember it. Because if he does remember - if he remembers the feeling of bone crushing in his hand, and the spray of blood, the viscera left crushed underfoot, red painted across the walls of Undertaker barracks... if he remembers tearing twenty-two men apart with his bare hands, and the full weight of all the tragedies he's seen and participated in? That's when he breaks and the flood begins.
So he forgets. Because he needs to forget just to keep the demons at bay - to remain the man he thought he was before the darkness came.
Because when the veil comes down, Nagi wants to drag the world into hell.
A stranger in this world without you is all that I can ever be.
All I know that's pure and clear, you left it with me here
In this souvenir.
Background:
Welcome to Deadman Wonderland, the only publicly operable prison in Japan. Strange place, really - it doubles as a carnival, and God knows it puts on shows. Prisoners chopped up. Prisoners butchered. Prisoners dropped down pits, all for the sake of entertainment. They're fighting for their lives, for status points. Sometimes they're fightingfor the prison currency, the only thing that allows them to buy pieces of candy containing the antidote for the lethal poison constantly circulating in their system. The people outside, they think it's all special effects, but they're not there when the curtain goes down, and there's still blood and guts all over the arena floor.
If you're wondering how this happened, you need to go back - back to the great Tokyo earthquake, some 10 years ago. It destroyed everything, sank 75% of the great metropolis into the ocean. and in the wake of it all came the Deadmen - humans infected with a machine called a Nameless Worm that allows them to use their blood as weapons. Nagi was one of them.
Most likely that's why he ended up imprisoned to begin with. Of course they don't say as much, but the prison acknowledges (quietly, off the record) that many of the Deadmen are not guilty, brought in on trumped up charges.
(Then again, knowing some of the things we know about him now, maybe he was just a killer after all.)
It doesn't matter. Or more, we don't know, because we don't know much about his past at all. Did he meet his wife before his arrest or inside the prison? It could be that it was after, seeing as she was a Deadman, too. So here's husband and wife, both living, breathing human weapons, both living under the threat of death. Because that's what you've got when you're convicted of a serious crime and sent to Deadman Wonderland - you've got a collar around your neck tracking everything you do, tracking your vital signs, and pumping you full of poison every second you're alive. The only way to fight off the poison is by ingesting doses fo "candy," medicine in the form of a little ball. Looks a bit like a peppermint, really, except this peppermint costs you dearly. Because you can only get candy by spending Cast Points, and you can only get Cast Points by engaging in cruel, potentially lethal games.
So the prisoners are performers, they're gladiators. In the case of the Deadmen, they're participants in the Carnival Corpse - given aliases (different species of birds) and set against one another to battle in front of a small group of high-paying spectators. Win a match, you're rewarded with an exorbitant amount of Cast Points. Lose... well, that's another story. Lose and you have to take a chance with the slot machine. Whatever it turns off, you lose. This means body parts - ears, eyes, anything they can take out without you dropping dead, it's up to chance.
Nagi was called Owl. We don't know what his wife was called, but it was perhaps inevitable that Nagi ended up matched against her, his beloved wife. His beloved pregnant wife.
And Nagi, he was not a violent man. Patterned after the goddess of mercy, Kannon, he preached forgiveness and hope; he preached pacifism. How could such a man be expected to endanger his wife, his unborn child? He couldn't. Nagi went to the promoter, Tamaki, begging mercy. He would throw the match, and take the punishment. The promoter agreed. A deal was struck. The match began, and Nagi lost. Just as planned. Play the slots - his vocal cords were removed. Now Nagi speaks with an electronic voice.
But the story doesn't end there, because when he went to his wife, he found her dead, murdered by Genkaku, the leader of the Promoter's anti-Deadman enforcers, The Undertakers. She wasn't just dead, though - her belly had been opened, their child removed and placed in a test tube, dead. Punishment for throwing a fight.
One week later, Nagi turned up at the Undertakers' area and slaughtered twenty-two men while Genkaku himself hid in a locker, terrified and awestruck.
After that, Nagi forgot. He forgot his murders, his dark side - he even forgot the murder of his child. Somehow, he came to believe that his son was alive, living outside the prison, and that one day they could be reunited. With this in mind, he began to gather followers, infusing them with the hope he, himself felt. They planned to expose the prison's dark secrets to the world, and secure their freedom. Nagi planned to find his son, whose face he thought he saw every time he looked into the empty shell of his wife's locket.
They called themselves Scar Chain, this merry band of freedom fighters, led by Nagi and his second, Karako. Together they gathered enough information to expose Deadman Wonderland for what it was, and enacted a plan to deliver that information to inspectors. To accomplish this, the group split into teams. But unfortunately, Scar Chain had a viper in their bosom - a traitor who informed on their plans, resulting in Nagi's being trapped in a one-on-one battle with the murderous child Undertaker Daida Hibana. Some child, she was - a kindergarten aged serial killer the press dubbed "Punishment." An expert at wielding a blade more than twice her size... and more than able to use it to nullify Nagi's powers.
Quite a surprise. That's part of why Nagi found himself on the losing end of that little fight. But even in his hour of darkness, he couldn't quite bring himself to be dishonest - he called her nothing but a little girl. A sick, twisted little girl with a rotten heart. That set her off, all right - quick as that, she moved in for the kill with a blow that would never connect.
Because that's when he disappeared and turned up here.
Oh, dry the glistening tear that dews that martial cheek;
Thy loving children hear, in them thy comfort seek.
With sympathetic care their arms around thee creep,
For oh, they cannot bear to see their father weep