Badfic Manor Application, Part 1
OOC Information:
Name/Alias: Birdy
Age:(12) 29. YOU YOUNG WHIPPERSNAPPERS GET OFF MAH LAWN!
E-Mail//MSN//AIM: kyanve@gmail.com, shirhanblade @ aim, kyanve @ plurk
Personal LJ: shirhan_blade
How did you hear about Badfic? In mah day we didn’t have no fancy ATP, th’mods had t’link us. By hand. IN LETTERS!! AN’IT TOOK TWO MONTHS T’HEAR BACK!
IC Information:
Character Name: Raidou Kuzunoha XIV (Or Jouhei, if anyone ever gets his birth name out of him.)
Name that appears on plaque: Raidou Kuzunoha XIV
Character Journal: crowspetfox
Canon: (Shin Megami Tensei) Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha and the Soulless Army, DS: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon
Point in Canon: Post second game, Neutral path (RKv.King Abaddon)
Age: 17
Birthday: Nov. 9, 1918
Appearance: character artwork for laziness!
Raidou is, pretty much, a mature-for-his-age and apparently relatively good-looking Japanese teenager. (I say this because as much as the art style is that artist’s style, he certainly has the force of personality to make him fairly striking, and he gets hit on with decent frequency by random side residents of the city in the second game. By decent I mean I almost made a drinking game out of it but didn’t feel like making myself sick.) He's very athletic and neatly kept, with neat, short hair that pretty much is easily missed thanks to The Hat that he basically never takes off if he has any shreds of consciousness. He has worn The Hat into a bathhouse and hot springs. His eyes are grey and might stick out a little, but generally aren't noticeable enough to be a big issue. While it's assumed that he has clothes other than what amounts to a school uniform with his cape and work gear attached to it, it's never seen in game, and anything else he wears is likely to stay neat, semiformal, and a bit archaic - he IS from the early 30's.
Abilities: On the mundane side, he's a decent student in school; he's bright and prone to overachieving enough that if school were his first priority he'd probably be doing damn well. He's good with a sword and can handle a gun, although it's pretty clear the sword his his preferred and more comfortable weapon. He's skilled, but not superhuman, and is just as vulnerable to injuries as anyone else. He's fairly observant and intelligent, and has been learning more mundane detective work thanks to the investigations that go around his work and being assigned to work with Narumi, although he's not going to be near as good with it as someone specialized, and his attention, focus, and knowledge on that is more on the occult side than criminology. As for his knowledge of occult lore and the things directly related to his work, his knowledge base is pretty local-centered; he absorbs other information quickly, but Gouto and others tend to be his main source for things not locally native, and he's used to having to adapt and deal with discrepancies between folklore and reality. He's athletic and in top shape physically; in a normal fistfight, he can hold his own against people older and bigger. (He’s trained to at least survive, if not hold his own, against monsters and demons.)
On the supernatural side, he's got his summoned "Demons". (Quotation marks because SMT franchise uses "Demon" to refer to basically any supernatural, including angelics and fae.) He can negotiate and bind them, but that's fairly pointless here, as there won't be any that he could work with besides the ones that come with him. They're often kept incorporeal in special tubes that he wears in sort of shoulder-holster carriers; he can call them out or return them, a process that takes a couple seconds. I'm going to err on some things being gameplay vs. story segregation, since in normal circumstances he can only have one active and out at a time. (The second game allows for having two out in combat only, which I'm ...going to skip; he can have one out and active at any given time.) In theory he might be able to call more than one out in non-emergency situations, but his ability to control them is ... iffy, and that would probably not be a great idea, something he well understands. Depending on the individual demon, there's some shared abilities that he channels from them, and they have use of their own abilities; while active, they're beings of their own, that can get injured or killed just as he can, and if one is returned to the tube injured, the injury doesn't magically heal - it still needs to be taken care of. Of the oodles that are possible in game, the ones I'd request are partly chosen for ability to make his life difficult while being useful, and partly for entertainment value. They can talk and are capable of communication, although many of them have more simplistic personalities, and not all of them are really viable conversation material. (By which I mean, except for a few that’re plot-important characters, they basically get given dialogue that’s a fairly simple flat-personality reaction set playing to one cliché or another, and a couple of them are, uh, not even really coherent conversation at that. As funny as Lucifer could be, he’d SO be a separate app and is only a summon-option on Chaos path anyway.)
Personality:(And now we get to see Birdy extrapolate the personality of a Heroic Mime from dialogue choices, behavior in plot events, and facial expressions/mannerisms.)
As a first point, Raidou is someone who was born and raised for a Duty. There's no signs of any angst about it, and considering that there's actual trials and tests he's had to go through, it's pretty clear that he's perfectly content with that Duty being the point of his existence, nevermind that it's something he takes VERY seriously. Worth noting is that not all of the four Kuzunoha summoners were as thoroughly raised to it as he was; nothing is said of his parents or of Raidou Kuzunoha the XIII, and it actually seems safe to assume he was mostly raised by the shrine spirits. Also worth noting is that when another Kuzunoha and their apprentice are seen, the apprentice is still pretty green, unsure, and just reaching being up to taking care of herself or taking over the title ... and is Raidou's age. This happens to be in the second game, which means he may've likely been a year or two younger when he became Raidou Kuzunoha the XIV and took up all the responsibility that entails. He exists for his duty, and that duty is protecting the peace and lives of his assigned territory, the Capital, and its citizens. Moreover, it's a duty handed down by the Yatagarasu, the messengers of the Divine Will, and their Heralds, which ... makes it all the more "something to be taken seriously". He Will Keep To His Duty even if it means stubbornly going straight into seeming certain death, investigating and going against military authorities, and basically keeping moving non-stop. He will eat and sleep and all, yes, but if he is conscious and there is something he needs to be doing, that will take precedence over everything else.
When he DOESN'T have something work-related to keep him busy, he's prone to sort of going "standby"; keeping track of things in his area and ... waiting. Typical downtime scene in the Narumi Detective Agency office? Narumi reading the paper, getting coffee, etc.... Raidou leaning up against the railing waiting for something to go do. If Raidou's going out for lunch or going to hot springs or some other "go out and relax" thing, it's probably with Narumi and the older detective's idea. While he's technically still attending high school, there's never much said of him having much contact with classmates, and it very obviously has taken second place to protecting the city. (To be fair, it's not really a skewed priority to place "go hunt down the source of the monster locusts and wave of misfortune that threatens to open the gates of Hell itself in the middle of the City" over "high school day classes".) He's managed to do this without any signs of his grades suffering too badly, although they probably are more on the mediocre to “…showing up might not be a bad idea” side when something's going on. He might get out if it's too quiet, but it's as much "patrolling" as "getting out". He's not horribly social; his closest connections are all basically vaguely work-related, and it's pretty easily read that he IS generally pretty quiet.
Oh, on that note, the above about him getting hit on? He's certainly not UNAWARE of things, and doesn't seem to tweak/flinch about it (at least outwardly), but ... well...
In most cases, you'd have better luck hitting on a lamppost. The closest he's gotten to "affectionate" in canon involved sitting with a semiconscious/unconscious girl in his lap he'd just rescued from a possession waiting for her to wake up/making sure she's alright; while it's certainly friendly terms, he's not exactly going out of his way to stay close after confirming she's OK, and she disappears from the series after that, with her family moving out of the city. Other than that? Yeah. It's possible with some conversation choices in RKvKA that he NOTICES girls occasionally, and may be aware of hormones, but they're pretty well bridled, boxed, and shoved in a corner, mostly forgotten about. He won't be rude about shooting people down in most cases, and is more likely to just ignore it/go on as if it didn't happen/sidle out a different direction conversationally, but try to push the issue and you may just get him going more prickly. Considering that the greater majority of the actual flirtations were basically "non-plot-important NPC's" in situations that were vaguely "life as usual"(although the plot-important ones so far have all had at least one good assumption moment), so it's pretty well expected that the track record of " ._. why are people hitting on me?" isn't going to continue here. And yes, he does find getting hit on randomly slightly exasperating.
As you might've noticed by now, he's ... very disciplined and controlled. Under normal circumstances, it's fairly hard to judge his moods/thoughts outside of small shifts in mannerisms, and he's pretty good at schooling his expression; there's not many incidents where the poker face and the stoic bit cracks. Giant soulless battleship-monster crawling out of the water to destroy the city? Narumi looks slightly panicked, Raidou looks slightly pissed and mildly annoyed - and that's more "shading on his usual deadpan" than anything. Outside of diplomatic dodges, he's generally pretty honest, just .... hard to read, and not prone to giving much away or showing strong reactions. Of course, this does have its hiccups if the right buttons are pushed.
Given his job and that he has to play middle party between humanity - which is its own bag of nuts and flakes - and the demon worlds, which are even more prone to extremes and "their logic may not be your logic", he's decent at diplomacy. He's not really up to being a Chessmaster or pull any serious long-term manipulations, but he's generally capable of at least not pissing people off, if not calming them down or swaying them where there's openings to do so. He makes a decent ear to talk to, is a pretty good listener, and is fairly cautious about opening his mouth; he's fine with giving advice if it's asked for or seems to be needed, but in most cases fairly honest about it, including when he's not sure. He's gotten very good at taking all sorts of strangeness from other people and entities in stride, to the point that he probably has a busted sense of normalcy; he grasps what's typical ranges of behavior for people and various "demons" for the most part, and what kinds of cues mean someone's upset, off balance, or something's wrong, but unless there are the "Something's wrong" flags going up ... he's liable to take the "Normal is a setting on a dryer" approach in his perceptions of others. It's highly likely that he hasn't really wrapped his head around how abnormal he is himself for a human boy his age.
Thanks to a lot of the "discipline, control, and training" and the sorts of things he's had to deal with, he's usually pretty stable mentally and emotionally; the ones who trained him prepared him fairly well, and he took those lessons to heart, as well as holding self-control and self-awareness well enough to be hard throw off-balance. Between that and the usual iron control he has on his own expressions and strong reactions, he usually seems almost eerily calm, and even in situations that're fairly extreme will keep calm and stable enough to at least look like he has things under control for the most part. Part of this is actually training and the reinforced-by-experience awareness that dealing with powerful supernaturals and being the only one around that knows what they're doing and can fight such things most of the time equals "falter or show signs of weakness and it's not just your life, but possibly half the city as well, assuming whatever it is stops there".
That right there is the centerpiece of a lot of his behavior; the firm self-control, and the occasionally almost single-minded approach to his responsibilities - he takes them very seriously, is VERY aware of the consequences, and pretty much any deviation or mis-step is Horrible Disaster. Failure Is Not An Option. Even if something goes wrong and there's a setback, "admitting defeat" is not in his vocabulary, and if he is knocked down or something goes wrong, he's probably at least ten times more determined to get past it before he's even picked himself up and brushed the dust off, if not already working on deciphering what went wrong and where the actual opening to deal with the problem is. Put a solid wall obstacle in his path, and he will poke at it, prod it, try to get over it, look for the edges around it, search for cracks or weak points, test if anything has any real effect on it, attempt to dig under it, start work on a battering ram, and try to jury-rig explosives; he's smart enough to not outright beat his head on something that isn't working if there's evidence his current approach won't work, but that just means "find another approach/other way around". Even if it means "back off on this angle of the larger situation and go look at another one", it's less that he's admitted defeat on that problem, and more that he's working on a different part of the situation with plans of that either weakening the "impassable" problem or finding a side door around it to take it apart from the other side. Honestly, it's amazing that he doesn't have more issues with "remembering to eat/sleep/rest", and that's probably only due to one or another of the ones that trained him beating it into him that not taking care of his own health and stability destroys his ability to be effective. The same and a sense of "may not have beaten it today but will find a way sooner or later" is probably the main reason "tactical retreat" is in his vocabulary - he does know to flee or back off from a hopeless situation, but it won't be forever, oh no.
He does have a sense of pride - he's very self-assured in his work, his own abilities, and his title, which helps back up the "unflinching refusal to allow defeat"; he's too quiet and cautious for it to spill over into much visible ego so much as a reinforcement of the sense of stability and an honestly health-saving counterbalance to his overbearing sense of duty and inability to give up; he hasn't gone neurotic from it because he honestly does have faith in his own abilities to find a way to overcome whatever is put in front of him one way or another. Oh, he can get frustrated and even angry about problems, whether he lets on or not, but "Can't handle it" doesn't really occur in his vocabulary, it just becomes all the more reason to find a way to defeat the problem one way or another. The sense of responsibility grounds that into a sense of enough caution that he doesn't gamble lightly, which is another saving grace that's probably the main reason he HASN'T gotten killed in some of the insane odds he's been up against in the past. He's actually a fairly good problem-solver, as stubborn and determined as he is about it; he's still relatively young and nasty surprises, unforeseen surprises, and things outside his knowledge can catch him off guard, he's just used to taking his lumps and finding a way to adapt on the run... even though it is still possible to throw him for a good loop, and he is quite capable of getting in over his head if he doesn't know enough about what he's walking into.
He's usually fairly calm and patient, as mentioned; eccentricities, borderline insanities, alien psychologies, and having to understand wildly varying motives and scales of priorities are a part of his existence. If someone is being destructive beyond reasonable solutions to problems or is lashing out, odds are good he might be understanding, occasionally somewhat sympathetic; it doesn't stop him from going "...yeah no you're not blowing up the city/preying on random people". It also won't change his own sense of ethics and duties - it's not that he holds a personal grudge, it's that you're threatening his wards and charges, and therefore must be stopped. Of course, this entirely depends on reasoning and how much trouble you're causing; if you're being destructive "for the lols", doing damage just because it's there, going along for the ride for the Hell of it, and otherwise doing things for petty reasons or playing both sides, He Will Dislike You. He Will Dislike You to a seething and slightly frightening extent. As an example, one of the rare times you see a very obvious display of emotion/strong reaction? Is after Rasputin has been playing both sides, trolling, and admitted not really caring either way who wins, despite being one of the architects of a huge amount of suffering, and has basically gone "Yeah done here gonna go popcorn.gif have fun cleaning up! :D".... followed not long after by a situation where "Damnit, we need to go ask him about something/get his help" ....... On being blown off, the idea of "I think we're going to have to resort to physical violence to get his attention" comes up, with the next step being breaking a bottle over Rasputin's head. Raidou's expression would be unsettlingly gleeful and slightly maniacal on a NORMAL person, much less a stoic not given to displays of emotion, and it's fairly easily inferred that said unholy glee continued all the way to setting up the " ^___^ Help, or be a lab rat for a mad scientist" bargain.
Yes, you can piss him off enough to exempt yourself from his normal ethics. It's not easy to do, but it's possible.
Speaking of ethics, this is basically his sanity anchor and what keeps him relatively human. He Takes His Duty Very Seriously, and part of his duty is looking after the city *and its people*. Moreover, he's a servant of "divine will" and expected to work towards the greater good, with a firm belief so far that "the greater good" involves the whole picture made up of lots of smaller parts - "ends justify the means" being invalidated by "If you're turning most people's lives to Hell, it doesn't matter how sound your logic or how noble your ideals, you're still fucking up his city". He's not exactly altruistic to the point of being taken advantage of/being a complete pushover, but generally if there's something he can do that'd be beneficial, it's pretty much an expectation to try to resolve things for the best, and that if people are generally happy with lives that're mostly peaceful and safe with regards to his areas, then he's doing his job right. Beyond that, it's hard to set any real specific code; it's fairly generic and situation-based "weak/squishy/innocent not getting hurt, random destruction stopped, conflicts resolved with a minimum of damage, things out to slaughter and destroy stopped". He does seem to get some emotional/personal investment, although it's somewhat a blend of that and the sense of responsibility; he would rather help people or see them happy, as much as he doesn't really form close bonds easily. He doesn't dislike people, he just doesn't form many strong attachments. Note that "pissing him off" is basically a combination of doing large amounts of unnecessary harm with little to no reason.
As mentioned about close bonds, he's usually pretty self-sufficient and not horribly social. He's polite, and can carry on conversations, but generally doesn't seek people out much outside of work-related business and filtering around town looking for clues/information. His closest associations are Narumi - who is another agent of Yatagarasu and the owner of the Detective Agency he works out of; Tae, the reporter that often brings in work and information; Gouto, who is his guide/mentor that's supposed to be constantly there; and Satake, who is the head of a relatively more principled Yakuza group that keeps order in one of the worse parts of town, where there's a working relationship when it comes to various craziness. Just about everyone else he's familiar with is someone that he crossed paths with due to work or met through work, and the only ones he really keeps consistent contact with are the ones that're consistently involved. This never really seems to bother him much; if anything, he seems more introverted and independent. Also, what is said of his background is that he was raised in a small village at the shrine basically, so large amounts of social contact are something that's relatively out of his comfort zone - a group of girls his age dragging him out shopping would be like dragging a cat to the beach.
Oh, he DOES have a sense of humor. It's just fairly quiet - he's more prone to straight-faced slipping snark or quips in where people might not catch them than outright pranks or loud humor. That and he can be a bit of a troll sometimes; nothing says respect for your currently cat-bodied mentor like collecting cat toys! Outside of occasional moments of trolling, he's the one people tend to forget has a sense of humor enough that they either get caught off guard or don't believe it was him when he DOES do something.
Name/Alias: Birdy
Age:(12) 29. YOU YOUNG WHIPPERSNAPPERS GET OFF MAH LAWN!
E-Mail//MSN//AIM: kyanve@gmail.com, shirhanblade @ aim, kyanve @ plurk
Personal LJ: shirhan_blade
How did you hear about Badfic? In mah day we didn’t have no fancy ATP, th’mods had t’link us. By hand. IN LETTERS!! AN’IT TOOK TWO MONTHS T’HEAR BACK!
IC Information:
Character Name: Raidou Kuzunoha XIV (Or Jouhei, if anyone ever gets his birth name out of him.)
Name that appears on plaque: Raidou Kuzunoha XIV
Character Journal: crowspetfox
Canon: (Shin Megami Tensei) Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha and the Soulless Army, DS: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon
Point in Canon: Post second game, Neutral path (RKv.King Abaddon)
Age: 17
Birthday: Nov. 9, 1918
Appearance: character artwork for laziness!
Raidou is, pretty much, a mature-for-his-age and apparently relatively good-looking Japanese teenager. (I say this because as much as the art style is that artist’s style, he certainly has the force of personality to make him fairly striking, and he gets hit on with decent frequency by random side residents of the city in the second game. By decent I mean I almost made a drinking game out of it but didn’t feel like making myself sick.) He's very athletic and neatly kept, with neat, short hair that pretty much is easily missed thanks to The Hat that he basically never takes off if he has any shreds of consciousness. He has worn The Hat into a bathhouse and hot springs. His eyes are grey and might stick out a little, but generally aren't noticeable enough to be a big issue. While it's assumed that he has clothes other than what amounts to a school uniform with his cape and work gear attached to it, it's never seen in game, and anything else he wears is likely to stay neat, semiformal, and a bit archaic - he IS from the early 30's.
Abilities: On the mundane side, he's a decent student in school; he's bright and prone to overachieving enough that if school were his first priority he'd probably be doing damn well. He's good with a sword and can handle a gun, although it's pretty clear the sword his his preferred and more comfortable weapon. He's skilled, but not superhuman, and is just as vulnerable to injuries as anyone else. He's fairly observant and intelligent, and has been learning more mundane detective work thanks to the investigations that go around his work and being assigned to work with Narumi, although he's not going to be near as good with it as someone specialized, and his attention, focus, and knowledge on that is more on the occult side than criminology. As for his knowledge of occult lore and the things directly related to his work, his knowledge base is pretty local-centered; he absorbs other information quickly, but Gouto and others tend to be his main source for things not locally native, and he's used to having to adapt and deal with discrepancies between folklore and reality. He's athletic and in top shape physically; in a normal fistfight, he can hold his own against people older and bigger. (He’s trained to at least survive, if not hold his own, against monsters and demons.)
On the supernatural side, he's got his summoned "Demons". (Quotation marks because SMT franchise uses "Demon" to refer to basically any supernatural, including angelics and fae.) He can negotiate and bind them, but that's fairly pointless here, as there won't be any that he could work with besides the ones that come with him. They're often kept incorporeal in special tubes that he wears in sort of shoulder-holster carriers; he can call them out or return them, a process that takes a couple seconds. I'm going to err on some things being gameplay vs. story segregation, since in normal circumstances he can only have one active and out at a time. (The second game allows for having two out in combat only, which I'm ...going to skip; he can have one out and active at any given time.) In theory he might be able to call more than one out in non-emergency situations, but his ability to control them is ... iffy, and that would probably not be a great idea, something he well understands. Depending on the individual demon, there's some shared abilities that he channels from them, and they have use of their own abilities; while active, they're beings of their own, that can get injured or killed just as he can, and if one is returned to the tube injured, the injury doesn't magically heal - it still needs to be taken care of. Of the oodles that are possible in game, the ones I'd request are partly chosen for ability to make his life difficult while being useful, and partly for entertainment value. They can talk and are capable of communication, although many of them have more simplistic personalities, and not all of them are really viable conversation material. (By which I mean, except for a few that’re plot-important characters, they basically get given dialogue that’s a fairly simple flat-personality reaction set playing to one cliché or another, and a couple of them are, uh, not even really coherent conversation at that. As funny as Lucifer could be, he’d SO be a separate app and is only a summon-option on Chaos path anyway.)
Personality:(And now we get to see Birdy extrapolate the personality of a Heroic Mime from dialogue choices, behavior in plot events, and facial expressions/mannerisms.)
As a first point, Raidou is someone who was born and raised for a Duty. There's no signs of any angst about it, and considering that there's actual trials and tests he's had to go through, it's pretty clear that he's perfectly content with that Duty being the point of his existence, nevermind that it's something he takes VERY seriously. Worth noting is that not all of the four Kuzunoha summoners were as thoroughly raised to it as he was; nothing is said of his parents or of Raidou Kuzunoha the XIII, and it actually seems safe to assume he was mostly raised by the shrine spirits. Also worth noting is that when another Kuzunoha and their apprentice are seen, the apprentice is still pretty green, unsure, and just reaching being up to taking care of herself or taking over the title ... and is Raidou's age. This happens to be in the second game, which means he may've likely been a year or two younger when he became Raidou Kuzunoha the XIV and took up all the responsibility that entails. He exists for his duty, and that duty is protecting the peace and lives of his assigned territory, the Capital, and its citizens. Moreover, it's a duty handed down by the Yatagarasu, the messengers of the Divine Will, and their Heralds, which ... makes it all the more "something to be taken seriously". He Will Keep To His Duty even if it means stubbornly going straight into seeming certain death, investigating and going against military authorities, and basically keeping moving non-stop. He will eat and sleep and all, yes, but if he is conscious and there is something he needs to be doing, that will take precedence over everything else.
When he DOESN'T have something work-related to keep him busy, he's prone to sort of going "standby"; keeping track of things in his area and ... waiting. Typical downtime scene in the Narumi Detective Agency office? Narumi reading the paper, getting coffee, etc.... Raidou leaning up against the railing waiting for something to go do. If Raidou's going out for lunch or going to hot springs or some other "go out and relax" thing, it's probably with Narumi and the older detective's idea. While he's technically still attending high school, there's never much said of him having much contact with classmates, and it very obviously has taken second place to protecting the city. (To be fair, it's not really a skewed priority to place "go hunt down the source of the monster locusts and wave of misfortune that threatens to open the gates of Hell itself in the middle of the City" over "high school day classes".) He's managed to do this without any signs of his grades suffering too badly, although they probably are more on the mediocre to “…showing up might not be a bad idea” side when something's going on. He might get out if it's too quiet, but it's as much "patrolling" as "getting out". He's not horribly social; his closest connections are all basically vaguely work-related, and it's pretty easily read that he IS generally pretty quiet.
Oh, on that note, the above about him getting hit on? He's certainly not UNAWARE of things, and doesn't seem to tweak/flinch about it (at least outwardly), but ... well...
In most cases, you'd have better luck hitting on a lamppost. The closest he's gotten to "affectionate" in canon involved sitting with a semiconscious/unconscious girl in his lap he'd just rescued from a possession waiting for her to wake up/making sure she's alright; while it's certainly friendly terms, he's not exactly going out of his way to stay close after confirming she's OK, and she disappears from the series after that, with her family moving out of the city. Other than that? Yeah. It's possible with some conversation choices in RKvKA that he NOTICES girls occasionally, and may be aware of hormones, but they're pretty well bridled, boxed, and shoved in a corner, mostly forgotten about. He won't be rude about shooting people down in most cases, and is more likely to just ignore it/go on as if it didn't happen/sidle out a different direction conversationally, but try to push the issue and you may just get him going more prickly. Considering that the greater majority of the actual flirtations were basically "non-plot-important NPC's" in situations that were vaguely "life as usual"(although the plot-important ones so far have all had at least one good assumption moment), so it's pretty well expected that the track record of " ._. why are people hitting on me?" isn't going to continue here. And yes, he does find getting hit on randomly slightly exasperating.
As you might've noticed by now, he's ... very disciplined and controlled. Under normal circumstances, it's fairly hard to judge his moods/thoughts outside of small shifts in mannerisms, and he's pretty good at schooling his expression; there's not many incidents where the poker face and the stoic bit cracks. Giant soulless battleship-monster crawling out of the water to destroy the city? Narumi looks slightly panicked, Raidou looks slightly pissed and mildly annoyed - and that's more "shading on his usual deadpan" than anything. Outside of diplomatic dodges, he's generally pretty honest, just .... hard to read, and not prone to giving much away or showing strong reactions. Of course, this does have its hiccups if the right buttons are pushed.
Given his job and that he has to play middle party between humanity - which is its own bag of nuts and flakes - and the demon worlds, which are even more prone to extremes and "their logic may not be your logic", he's decent at diplomacy. He's not really up to being a Chessmaster or pull any serious long-term manipulations, but he's generally capable of at least not pissing people off, if not calming them down or swaying them where there's openings to do so. He makes a decent ear to talk to, is a pretty good listener, and is fairly cautious about opening his mouth; he's fine with giving advice if it's asked for or seems to be needed, but in most cases fairly honest about it, including when he's not sure. He's gotten very good at taking all sorts of strangeness from other people and entities in stride, to the point that he probably has a busted sense of normalcy; he grasps what's typical ranges of behavior for people and various "demons" for the most part, and what kinds of cues mean someone's upset, off balance, or something's wrong, but unless there are the "Something's wrong" flags going up ... he's liable to take the "Normal is a setting on a dryer" approach in his perceptions of others. It's highly likely that he hasn't really wrapped his head around how abnormal he is himself for a human boy his age.
Thanks to a lot of the "discipline, control, and training" and the sorts of things he's had to deal with, he's usually pretty stable mentally and emotionally; the ones who trained him prepared him fairly well, and he took those lessons to heart, as well as holding self-control and self-awareness well enough to be hard throw off-balance. Between that and the usual iron control he has on his own expressions and strong reactions, he usually seems almost eerily calm, and even in situations that're fairly extreme will keep calm and stable enough to at least look like he has things under control for the most part. Part of this is actually training and the reinforced-by-experience awareness that dealing with powerful supernaturals and being the only one around that knows what they're doing and can fight such things most of the time equals "falter or show signs of weakness and it's not just your life, but possibly half the city as well, assuming whatever it is stops there".
That right there is the centerpiece of a lot of his behavior; the firm self-control, and the occasionally almost single-minded approach to his responsibilities - he takes them very seriously, is VERY aware of the consequences, and pretty much any deviation or mis-step is Horrible Disaster. Failure Is Not An Option. Even if something goes wrong and there's a setback, "admitting defeat" is not in his vocabulary, and if he is knocked down or something goes wrong, he's probably at least ten times more determined to get past it before he's even picked himself up and brushed the dust off, if not already working on deciphering what went wrong and where the actual opening to deal with the problem is. Put a solid wall obstacle in his path, and he will poke at it, prod it, try to get over it, look for the edges around it, search for cracks or weak points, test if anything has any real effect on it, attempt to dig under it, start work on a battering ram, and try to jury-rig explosives; he's smart enough to not outright beat his head on something that isn't working if there's evidence his current approach won't work, but that just means "find another approach/other way around". Even if it means "back off on this angle of the larger situation and go look at another one", it's less that he's admitted defeat on that problem, and more that he's working on a different part of the situation with plans of that either weakening the "impassable" problem or finding a side door around it to take it apart from the other side. Honestly, it's amazing that he doesn't have more issues with "remembering to eat/sleep/rest", and that's probably only due to one or another of the ones that trained him beating it into him that not taking care of his own health and stability destroys his ability to be effective. The same and a sense of "may not have beaten it today but will find a way sooner or later" is probably the main reason "tactical retreat" is in his vocabulary - he does know to flee or back off from a hopeless situation, but it won't be forever, oh no.
He does have a sense of pride - he's very self-assured in his work, his own abilities, and his title, which helps back up the "unflinching refusal to allow defeat"; he's too quiet and cautious for it to spill over into much visible ego so much as a reinforcement of the sense of stability and an honestly health-saving counterbalance to his overbearing sense of duty and inability to give up; he hasn't gone neurotic from it because he honestly does have faith in his own abilities to find a way to overcome whatever is put in front of him one way or another. Oh, he can get frustrated and even angry about problems, whether he lets on or not, but "Can't handle it" doesn't really occur in his vocabulary, it just becomes all the more reason to find a way to defeat the problem one way or another. The sense of responsibility grounds that into a sense of enough caution that he doesn't gamble lightly, which is another saving grace that's probably the main reason he HASN'T gotten killed in some of the insane odds he's been up against in the past. He's actually a fairly good problem-solver, as stubborn and determined as he is about it; he's still relatively young and nasty surprises, unforeseen surprises, and things outside his knowledge can catch him off guard, he's just used to taking his lumps and finding a way to adapt on the run... even though it is still possible to throw him for a good loop, and he is quite capable of getting in over his head if he doesn't know enough about what he's walking into.
He's usually fairly calm and patient, as mentioned; eccentricities, borderline insanities, alien psychologies, and having to understand wildly varying motives and scales of priorities are a part of his existence. If someone is being destructive beyond reasonable solutions to problems or is lashing out, odds are good he might be understanding, occasionally somewhat sympathetic; it doesn't stop him from going "...yeah no you're not blowing up the city/preying on random people". It also won't change his own sense of ethics and duties - it's not that he holds a personal grudge, it's that you're threatening his wards and charges, and therefore must be stopped. Of course, this entirely depends on reasoning and how much trouble you're causing; if you're being destructive "for the lols", doing damage just because it's there, going along for the ride for the Hell of it, and otherwise doing things for petty reasons or playing both sides, He Will Dislike You. He Will Dislike You to a seething and slightly frightening extent. As an example, one of the rare times you see a very obvious display of emotion/strong reaction? Is after Rasputin has been playing both sides, trolling, and admitted not really caring either way who wins, despite being one of the architects of a huge amount of suffering, and has basically gone "Yeah done here gonna go popcorn.gif have fun cleaning up! :D".... followed not long after by a situation where "Damnit, we need to go ask him about something/get his help" ....... On being blown off, the idea of "I think we're going to have to resort to physical violence to get his attention" comes up, with the next step being breaking a bottle over Rasputin's head. Raidou's expression would be unsettlingly gleeful and slightly maniacal on a NORMAL person, much less a stoic not given to displays of emotion, and it's fairly easily inferred that said unholy glee continued all the way to setting up the " ^___^ Help, or be a lab rat for a mad scientist" bargain.
Yes, you can piss him off enough to exempt yourself from his normal ethics. It's not easy to do, but it's possible.
Speaking of ethics, this is basically his sanity anchor and what keeps him relatively human. He Takes His Duty Very Seriously, and part of his duty is looking after the city *and its people*. Moreover, he's a servant of "divine will" and expected to work towards the greater good, with a firm belief so far that "the greater good" involves the whole picture made up of lots of smaller parts - "ends justify the means" being invalidated by "If you're turning most people's lives to Hell, it doesn't matter how sound your logic or how noble your ideals, you're still fucking up his city". He's not exactly altruistic to the point of being taken advantage of/being a complete pushover, but generally if there's something he can do that'd be beneficial, it's pretty much an expectation to try to resolve things for the best, and that if people are generally happy with lives that're mostly peaceful and safe with regards to his areas, then he's doing his job right. Beyond that, it's hard to set any real specific code; it's fairly generic and situation-based "weak/squishy/innocent not getting hurt, random destruction stopped, conflicts resolved with a minimum of damage, things out to slaughter and destroy stopped". He does seem to get some emotional/personal investment, although it's somewhat a blend of that and the sense of responsibility; he would rather help people or see them happy, as much as he doesn't really form close bonds easily. He doesn't dislike people, he just doesn't form many strong attachments. Note that "pissing him off" is basically a combination of doing large amounts of unnecessary harm with little to no reason.
As mentioned about close bonds, he's usually pretty self-sufficient and not horribly social. He's polite, and can carry on conversations, but generally doesn't seek people out much outside of work-related business and filtering around town looking for clues/information. His closest associations are Narumi - who is another agent of Yatagarasu and the owner of the Detective Agency he works out of; Tae, the reporter that often brings in work and information; Gouto, who is his guide/mentor that's supposed to be constantly there; and Satake, who is the head of a relatively more principled Yakuza group that keeps order in one of the worse parts of town, where there's a working relationship when it comes to various craziness. Just about everyone else he's familiar with is someone that he crossed paths with due to work or met through work, and the only ones he really keeps consistent contact with are the ones that're consistently involved. This never really seems to bother him much; if anything, he seems more introverted and independent. Also, what is said of his background is that he was raised in a small village at the shrine basically, so large amounts of social contact are something that's relatively out of his comfort zone - a group of girls his age dragging him out shopping would be like dragging a cat to the beach.
Oh, he DOES have a sense of humor. It's just fairly quiet - he's more prone to straight-faced slipping snark or quips in where people might not catch them than outright pranks or loud humor. That and he can be a bit of a troll sometimes; nothing says respect for your currently cat-bodied mentor like collecting cat toys! Outside of occasional moments of trolling, he's the one people tend to forget has a sense of humor enough that they either get caught off guard or don't believe it was him when he DOES do something.