Shinju, Kuragesame

Imposing and predatorial, Kuragesame stands tall and impressively built, but more noteworthy than mere stature, his body and manner seemed devoid of wasteful movement, as if his very life has ground him down to a living razors edge. One ought expect such precise and careful motion from a Shinju; after all, the beasts of divinity did not simply emerge as apex predators but were uniquely crafted as such, at least by some popular accounts. Regardless of origin, Kuragesame exhibits no deviation from this inborn path in his physical prowess, though contrary to many base assumptions he holds himself with a certain dignity and grace, where commoners might automatically assign him the stature of no more than a feral dog. Shredded by nature, his body not only boasts seemingly improbable musculature but spiderwebs with a delicate tracing of scars from constant life and death struggles, the price of a life outside of creature comforts and civilization. Not a bit of him shows fat, sloth, sluggishness, or anything short of a nearly spartan aesthetic, at least when viewing his nude form. His skin, in his basic iteration, is stereotypical pale as befits most of the village, and he sports long, jet black hair which he tends to keep tame in a ponytail or bun. Befitting his fundamentally bestial nature, his incisors extend longer and sharper than those of a human and he has a second set in place of his first set of bicuspids.

Most notable and certainly most alarming, he has 3 sets of esyes, as if he bears some relation to an arachnid. The primary set rests in the ocular cavities of a more humanoid shape, but another pair rests above and below those first lenses, which would doubtlessly horrify the average observer. Moreover, his sclera appear to glow dimly with a soft, red bioluminescence with sunset yellow pupils. He has a smallish, average nose on the soft side and an unremarkable mouth which hints at a taught bow shape, as if perpetually on the cusp of a grin. For dress, he actually tends to prefer human garb and skews traditional in his choices, layering bold haori atop more simplistic tops and bottoms which emphasize a freedom of motion, though transformations tend to make this soft of precaution irrelevant. Unbecoming his savage birth and nature, his voice has a high and papery quality and sounds much like a wave at the moment it crashes upon itself.

Neither timid nor weak, the great killer and beast Kuragesame at some point lost his flare and prefers the safety of the classroom or training arena to the dangers of the wilderness. It would could not be said of him that he is certainly a coward, but it would be wrong to call him brave. Shirking away danger or peril whenever possible, he had poured himself since washing up upon the shores of Shikigakure into a kind of manic and all-encompassing study of technique. From his first moments within the academy he demonstrated a fanatical love of weaponry and bodily combat and a kind of zealotry reserved for the technical genius and general masochist. Still, unexpected factors in the natural world - or within the confines of the village - easily startle him and he can play to the comic relief of the coward without much difficulty.

Overriding of this though is an insatiable curiosity and general spirit of fun; while not terribly adventurous, he loves 'games,' which include spars and bouts of combat. Put another way, people do not scare him, neither in their capacity for violence and cruelty nor in their combative nature and abilities; instead, the wild seems to have taken root in him as a grand fear. Sectors, demons, spiders, and the like may cause him quakes, but a rogue challenger ninja to him bears more resemblance to a toy than to a nightmarish phantom.

Beyond this, Kura is both intelligent and extremely flexible, particularly in his mode of thinking. Compared to many of his clan, he not only possesses forethought far beyond them but can shift and adapt his own plans and thinking to accommodate a particular goal. This bleeds over not only into his swordplay, where no reliance on singular or dogmatic forms proves a boon, but also to general strategy and manipulations; why fight directly when another would do just fine?

All said and done, though, he contains within him an apparent inner fierceness, a carryover of his nature as hunter and consumer. The law of nature is harsh but fair and, when the chips are down, he has no issue strapping in and casting aside his doubt. After all, whatever else civilization may layer upon him, it all amounts to a facade. Within, the wilds still roam, whether or not he has forgotten himself.

In the paltry name of the Dark Woods, Kurasegame came to live among a loosely defined back of his clan-members, not entirely composed of immediate blood relatives but a small band of the lineage mostly from a single patriarch. No proud pride of lions, they banded together as many do out of a necessity to not compete one another to death and thus had a low level of loyalty with which to bind themselves together. Some died, some lived, some rose to near the top, and still others fell from grace to live at the fringes of their makeshift society. Kura never achieved a terrible amount of prominence, but certainly his physical capacity alone instilled a certain sense of potency into the minds of others.

He was, however, rather fundamental in his difference from the others around him, not unheard of in those alterations but an oddity amongst his people and the wilderness itself: he had an unusually high life force to him, a certain personal spark not amiss in his tribe but lacking, unguided and untended by those around him. By contrast, his personal energy, this life force, this chakra, seemed ablaze like a miniature sun within him, and while his 'family' had no chakra vision, they could sense it nonetheless. Thus, no matter how terrifyingly strong his transformations nor admirable his hunts, his difference relegated him away from fame and the limelight. It was in this shadow that he came into his own, achieving not manhood per say, but beast-hood perhaps more aptly stated.

Nearing this personal apex and natural progression, something else within him changed, a possible commonality with the other Shinju but, if pressed, he thinks not. He 'gained,' or at least realized, his own consciousness. His bloodline exists in a tenuous place, neither fully man nor beast, and in this shares much more with the human cousins that the animals of the woods. Most ignore, or likely don't notice this dissonance, but for Kurasegame it grew and grew. Fleeting visions of scouting parties and shinobi filled his thoughts and he came to covet and hate the ninja he saw, their strange magics and, more than anything, their tools. He could grow claws or gnashing teeth, but he could not hold a sword; not as he was.

Leading up to his adulthood he came to realize more and more that he had no future would could slake his thirst in the woods as a mere beast. And so, he left that behind him, shedding and soon forgetting his monstrous form and abandoning his tribe; the risk of stopping him far outweighed any advantage in doing so, for what good would a captive do for mere wolves and hyenas? He made his way to Shikigakure and submitted himself a warrior and ninja of the village and, to his surprise, found the transition much easier than he had anticipated: others of his ilk had previously made the transition and though uncommon had prior example to follow. Like those before him, his natural inclinations and powers made the academy rather trivial but adjustment to 'civilized' life more arresting. While the former has since passed, the latter still posses a challenge and he spends more time in training than in conversation. But, the food is much, much better than killing your keep.