
⌈“The two primary drives of any sentient being are sex and death. So-called love, honor, and devotion are just means to those ends… and when all is said and done, they are not so different.”⌋

⌈Age⌋
Visually in her early twenties. Well, at least when not disguising herself.
⌈Appearance⌋
Tsubaki is a woman of many faces—an adept disguise artist, she can appear as old or young, beautiful or ugly, male or female as she wishes. That said, she generally keeps to two forms for the most part, and these could be considered her “human” form and her true or youkai form.
As a human, Tsubaki is rather small, perhaps at a height of 5’2” in total, and appears, though fit, to be a rather delicate individual. What some may refer to as ‘fox-faced,’ she has almond-shaped eyes of deepest black, a narrow face, high cheekbones, and a delicate, slightly curved nose with full, but small, pink lips, often painted red. Her dress is varied with the task, but overall it can be said that she understands something quite well: allure is often just as much about covering up as it is about exposing skin. She maintains a delicate balance of mystery and temptation about her, trained as she is in the delicate arts of seduction and manipulation. Her garments are always flattering to her voluptuous figure, but never gaudy or tasteless.
Her hair, most often black with a bit of a blue shine to it, is kept long, though as with her clothes, the styling of it varies between a number of things, including elaborate knots, a simple ponytail, or simply cascading about her freely in glossy sheets. She is trim and toned from the rigors of her profession, but far from boyish for all that. Her face is most often neutral in set with the faintest hint of disdain, though her mischievous smile could be said to be a strong point of resemblance between herself and her brother, Ryuunosuke.
As a youkai, she shares his distinctive violet irises and silver-white hair and ears, as well as the moon-colored claws and sharp white teeth. Her tail is the same hue, but where the distinctive facial stripes marking Ryuunosuke’s cheekbones are blue, Tsubaki’s are red. Long considered the loveliest of the daughters of the House of the Moon, she comports herself with a certain predatory dignity not found in human females.
⌈Likes⌋
+ Full Moons
+ Sweets
+ Witty conversation
+ Her brother… sometimes.
+ Pulling one over on someone
+ Sparring
⌈Dislikes⌋
- Humans generally (this is something she’s trying to work on)
- Her father and sisters
- Yousuke
- Foolish ideals like love and justice for the weak
- Heated summers

“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.”
⌈Personality⌋
As one would perhaps expect, Tsubaki’s predominant personality traits are a certain kind of sly cleverness, wit, and the tendency to adapt to her environment. She has lost most of her affection for tricking humans, as after a while, such activities become almost formulaic in their application, and while it is an ability that can be honed to a certain studied perfection, it tends to lose all amusement when there is no longer any risk of being caught. She has not lost her instinctual love of the hunt, nor her more sensual side.
Raised to view humans as less than nothing, she still does not hold them in the highest regard, unlike her more sympathetic brother. She tries to set her prejudice aside, but she has spent far less time with them than he has, and finds the wisdom of her culture and her people to be difficult to abandon, especially when the ningen so often prove to her their baseness and lack of refinement: robbing, murdering, raping… the list is quite long. Higher-order youkai like her people hunt. Humans simply murder. Not that she’s any better these days, and she’s come to see that maybe this distinction is not so sharp as she once believed. Even so, erasing hundreds of years of personal history and ages of cultural development is not an easy task, and she did not have the assistance of a worthy human mentor like Ryuunosuke did.
In her dealings with others, Tsubaki could be said to be cold, uncaring, and manipulative, but to do this would be to understand only part of what is going on. She professes not to believe in things like love or honor or altruism, but yet she can sometimes be found displaying these qualities. She loves her brother, follows her own internal code of conduct, and treats those she comes to care about with kindness and loyalty, though such people are few and far between.
Her adaptability allows her to slip into many different personas, from shy shrine maiden to confident, lovely geisha to competent, flinty kunoichi, and in each of these guises there dwells a small kernel of what she really is. When transformed, she does not change nearly so much as her brother, being more used to her youkai side and lacking the aggressive instinct of kitsune males. She is, however, wily and without much care for the lives of others, making her dangerous in her own way.
⌈Relationships⌋
Rather new to her current employment arrangement, Tsubaki does not yet know the other shinobi very well, nor does she particularly desire to. They work for Yosuke, and that’s enough to make them contemptible to her. Also, she doesn’t hold humans in very high regard. In terms of family, she has a father, a brother, and three sisters still living. The youngest of her line, it was her birth that killed her mother, and as a result, she and her sisters have always had bitterness between them. It is also she, however, that most strongly resembles her mother, supposedly the most lovely youkai in a thousand years. Naturally, those were always pretty big shoes to fill. Currently, she is estranged from her father and her relationship with her brother, though good, is somewhat strained, and they have not seen each other for many years.

Kodachi- a shortsword, of similar length to a wakizashi. Many shinobi fight with two, but Tsubaki only uses one.
Bow and Arrows- an excellent shot even from improbable distances, this is Tsubaki’s combat specialty.
Kunai and Shuriken- for mid-range lengths, Tsubaki has an array of throwing knives and stars, with which she is proficient. These are the weapons she most often uses on missions, as they are easily concealable beneath a kimono or haori.
Poisons and Needles- quite the adept alchemist, Tsubaki often mixes her own poisons, and will sometimes coat special, four-inch steel throwing needles with them, for striking vital points.
⌈Strengths⌋
Tsubaki is stealthy, clever, flexible, and quick. All of the traits serve her well as a shinobi, but her edge comes from her youkai blood. She is capable of switching her form to suit the occasion, though most often she limits this to changing her hair and eye color, and uses costuming for the rest, as she does not want anyone to know what she is. Over time, through the ritual ingestion of small amounts of poison, she has become immune to most varieties of it, and her ki control means that she has a particularly deadly talent: she can manipulate the toxins in her body, causing, if she wishes, her own blood, saliva, or other bodily fluids to become toxic to others. Like her brother, she has general kitsune magic, such as foxfire, but prefers not to use it, as it makes her supernatural nature rather obvious.
⌈Weaknesses⌋
In human form, she is quite weak physically, and even as a yokai, she could be overpowered by a sufficiently strong human without much difficulty. Also, her star ball, a manifestation of her soul, is currently in the possession of Yosuke, meaning that until he decides he’s made enough use of her, she is under his control and unable to assume her youkai form. This would hold for anyone who possessed the star ball, a small, lovely, perfectly spherical gem that the warlord presently keeps about his neck.
⌈Home⌋
Currently the newest shinobi in the employ of Yosuke Haru, she lives where and how he directs.

Much of Tsubaki’s history is shared with her brother. Like him, her name and face are different now from what they once were, and her own first name was once Kimiko. She was born the youngest child of the Lord of the House of the Moon, and she would be the last, as her birth resulted in the unexpected death of her mother. Growing up, she had three older sisters and an older brother, the last of whom she was closest to of her siblings.
Takahiro was always a bit different from other youkai, and she recognized this in him from an early age. When he decided he wanted to make unauthorized trips to the human world, she aided him by teaching him to disguise himself using his magic, something at which she had been very skilled from an early age. She had not known that his observations would turn him into a human sympathizer, and at the time, she probably would have refused if this had been apparent to her.
When he was exiled, she was sent to kill him as punishment for her part in his “misdeeds.” Hunting him down, she came upon him at last outside a human village he had been living in for a year and a half or so. Seeing him, she hardened her heart and attacked, but he staved her off with his unexpected human-learned skills, and instead of killing her, he disarmed her and then made her a deal: he wanted an afternoon to show her what he saw, and if at the end of it all she still wanted to kill him, he would let her. Thinking him a fool, she agreed.
What he showed her was the village itself. In her human form, she watched as he interacted with the humans, all of whom seemed to love him (and each other). She saw children playing with wooden swords, occasionally guided by a word from her brother, and wives and husbands out in the fields. They were peaceful people, and they clearly relied upon the goodness of her brother for protection. In return, they fed him and gave him a house at the edge of town, and furnished it with all they could spare.
More than this, though, she was affected by how much he seemed to care for them. When the time came to make her choice, she could not kill her only brother, but she knew what it meant. She too would be exiled. Unable to stay in that village with him and those humans, she wandered about for a while, eventually falling in with a distinguished clan of shinobi. These taught her of combat and amplified her talents for poison making and disguise, but like all humans, they were mortal and died in the end, and when there were no more left, she abandoned the settlement for the open road once more.
In an incident she does not care to repeat, her star-ball, the manifestation of her soul for as long as she retains human form, was stolen from her, and found its way into the hands of Lord Yosuke, who with it effectively has Tsubaki collared and leashed to do his bidding. It is not a position she appreciates being in.
