Application for adstringendum
Name: Dood
Livejournal: question_box
Contact: PMing question_box is probably best, but I also have an AIM account (aspacedragon)
Other Characters Played: None
Are you 18 or over? Yes
Canon: Inuyasha
Character: Sesshomaru
Timeline: Shortly after receiving Tokijin in chapter 162
Personality:
At first glance, Sesshomaru appears to be a demon's demon. He's cold, utterly ruthless, and appears to have few other concerns besides growing stronger. He comes across as a total bastard most of the time, though. His power and his position have given him a (not entirely undeserved) rather high opinion of himself and demons in general. He looks down on humans just for being humans, and is very insulted by the mere existence of proof that his father laid with one. Though the fact that it also proved his father was running around on his mother might have had something to do with that. He talks down to just about everyone he meets and the only emotion that seems to pierce through his usual iron mask of calm is rage.
Though he shares certain similarities with his brother, namely arrogance, Sesshomaru has a certain devious cunning that his half-human brother sadly lacks. His initial appearances show he has a certain flair for scheming, as he demonstrates by playing Inuyasha like a biwa. And he always seems to know what Naraku's plan du jour is, even if that doesn't always help him get out of it (Naraku is very good at the 'heads I win/tails you lose' sort of plan). The only thing that keeps him from 'evil mastermind' status is his incredible pride.
After all, it's cowardly to hide behind others...and worse still one becomes dependent on them, a weakness that Sesshomaru cannot abide. Relying on others is anathema to him, as is relying on the power of magical artifacts...hence why he despises the Shikon no Tama and refuses to hunt for its shards like nearly every other youkai in Japan. Sesshomaru, you see, has a certain wisdom that they lack; he knows that there are no shortcuts to power.
And yet for all that he definitely seems to have his limits. His first chronological appearance in the series is a conversation with his father, shortly before he died. His father asks him why he desires power, and Sesshomaru tells him that he "walks the path of the conqueror" and one needs power on such a path. His father asks him if he has something to protect, and Sesshomaru tells him he has no use for such a thing. And yet, even then. Knowing his father was soon to die, knowing that he was crippled, Sesshomaru still addressed him with the highest respect. And he refused to kill him. He walked away. This was probably the first sign that there's more to Sesshomaru than it seems at first.
As it turns out, Sesshomaru does have a heart. But as a youkai, such a thing is a terrible weakness...and his pride simply won't allow him to accept that he has any such thing. So he's forced to try and justify himself in other terms; he's always helping people out but has a ready excuse for how it really was to his benefit, and as time goes on the excuses get more and more transparent.
Background:
Sesshomaru is the son of the Great Dog Demon/Inu no Taisho and a female demon who...has no name. Way to world-build, Takahashi. D: Almost nothing is known about his early life except that, at some point, his father slept with a human woman. And produced a child. Aaaaaawkwaaaaard. Then he (Inu no Taisho) fought a dragon and died. To his two sons, full-blooded Sesshomaru and half-demon Inuyasha, he left his two swords. Inuyasha was to receive the Tetsusaiga, the 'sword of destruction'. Sesshomaru received Tenseiga, the 'sword of heaven'...which was completely incapable of harming anything that lived.
Something seemed wrong with this picture. Very wrong.
Feeling he'd somehow been snubbed, Sesshomaru set out to find the sword his brother had been bequeathed. It took him a while, as Inuyasha had managed to get himself pinned to a tree for fifty years (the moron), but eventually the seal was broken and he became the perfect route to the sword. Rather than asking nicely, or even threatening him, Sesshomaru came up with a surprisingly effective scheme: he acquired the help of a demon that takes on the form of somebody's mother, and spun a yarn about how he had resurrected Inuyasha's mother and would torture her to death if the hanyou didn't tell him where Tetsusaiga was. Of course, Inuyasha did the heroic thing and rescued his mother.
Just as planned.
The demon did exactly what it was supposed to. It got close to Inuyasha and then began to absorb him, combing through his memories for the location of the tomb where Tetsusaiga was stored. As it turned out, Inu no Taisho had hidden it in a pearl hidden inside Inuyasha's eye. So Sesshomaru simply pulled it out (feel the love guys). Then he decided to take care of the loose ends, except his demon pawn decided to intervene; it was created from "a mother's tender feelings for her children", however twisted it might have become. So Inuyasha survived. Oh well! Sesshomaru had more important things to worry about...like the sword. Which...wouldn't let him touch it. It had been sealed by Inu no Taisho so only somebody with compassion for humans could use it. Which pretty much ruled out Sesshomaru by default. To add injury to insult (ho ho), Inuyasha was able to use it to slice off one of Sesshomaru's arms and badly injure him. Fortunately he was able to get away in time.
Since the injury was made by one of the (very) few demons stronger than him, his own father's fang, Sesshomaru was unable to regenerate his arm. So he started using replacements cut off of various youkai, which never seemed to last very long. As soon as he put even a little of his power into it they burnt out. Then a mysterious stranger came up with a brilliant idea: use a human arm with a fragment of the shikon no Tama that Inuyasha was looking for. He even provided a nest of DEMON BEES to help in the scheme. The arm would 'trick' Tetsusaiga into thinking Sesshomaru was a proper wielder, and the bees would neutralize one of Inuyasha's allies.
While DEMON BEES are indeed awesome, they weren't much help in the scheme. Sesshomaru realized too late that the human arm wasn't any tougher than a normal man's, making it far too easy to injure. And the Shikon shard was trying to consume him. So he pulled the arm off, threw it to the demon bees, and followed it back to the stranger named Naraku. After venting his displeasure the stranger somehow escaped. Pity.
Sesshomaru then realized that not being able to hold Tetsusaiga without some special trick made it kind of useless to him, so he started shopping around for a proper sword. He first went to the man who made Tetsusaiga and Tenseiga, but Totosai refused to help. Cue another fight with Inuyasha, where Sesshomaru revealed that he had slaughtered a frikkin' dragon for it's arm as a shield. Unfortunately Inuyasha pulled another trick out of his butt at the last second and seriously wounded Sesshomaru, requiring Tenseiga's intervention again.
That took a while for Sesshomaru to bounce back from. For several days he was forced to lie in a forest, completely vulnerable...while a small human girl made well-meaning but futile attempts to 'help' him (cleaning his wounds with water, offering food, etc.). While he made a full recovery on his own, something about the girl pulled at a heartstring he didn't even know he had. When she was killed by a band of demon wolves, he paused, and for just a moment he wished he could help her. That was when he discovered that Tenseiga did have a use: it could raise the dead by killing the spirits that took a soul to the underworld.
Rin has joined your party!
Of course, this didn't stop Sesshomaru's quest for power, even if it meant more frequent breaks for the group's only human member. After hearing of an oni who had managed to bite through Tetsusaiga's blade, Sesshomaru immediately tracked it down. The fact that Inuyasha had killed the oni was beside the point; Sesshomaru took the severed head to a demon swordsmith named Kaijinbo. It was rather unfortunate that Kaijinbo got possessed by the sword and went out looking to kill Inuyasha. This required Sesshomaru to track the fool down. And worse still, if he had arrived sooner he might have been put in the unforgivable position of having to save Inuyasha to kill him later.
Fortunately his younger brother was good for something, and slaughtered the swordsmith before Sesshomaru got there. He reclaimed the sword and then set out to test something he'd noticed upon picking up the oni's head. Cue yet another fight with Inuyasha, one that Sesshomaru came very close to winning...until Inuyasha started transforming into a full demon and Totosai used a blast of fire as a distraction (they ran away).
Sesshomaru returned to where he had left Rin, and had a most unwelcome visitor: a woman representing Naraku, who claimed to be checking on the demon whose fang had been turned into Sesshomaru's new sword. She didn't seem to particularly care that he was dead, but Sesshomaru still didn't care for the visit. He didn't get much time to do anything about it, though, before he came here.
Abilities/Additional Notes:
Uhhh...Christ this guy has a lot of seperate powers. For the full story go here and I'll try to shorten this up.
- I Am Demon Hear Me Roar: Like most demons in the series, Sesshomaru is all-around more capable than a mortal. He's strong enough to lift several tons single-handedly, tough enough to flat-out ignore most human weapons of his time, and fast enough to leave after-images in his wake. He doesn't appear to need food or water. He also doesn't age and appears to be immune to most mundane diseases and poisons. This is fortunate since he can secrete a powerful acid/poison from his claws, and it would be embarrassing if he poisoned himself every time.
- Regeneration: Like most demons, Sesshomaru can regenerate. He can regenerate minor wounds (such as being stabbed through the palm) nearly instantaneously, though serious wounds like nearly dying would take him several days or more. Note that this is not a passive ability; he appears to actually need to stop and focus to regenerate his wounds in combat, and when nearly killed he spent several days completely unable to move.
- Tenseiga: A sword passed down from Sesshomaru's father. Unlike the sword given to Inuyasha, Tenseiga is completely incapable of harming living things, which is not to say it's useless. It can cut down spirits, including those that carry a soul to its final reward; in other words, it can raise the recently-dead and restore them to health. But it only works once per person per FOREVER (not that Sesshomaru knows this) so it's not very reliable. The sword can also act to protect its owner by raising a protective forcefield when he's about to die.
- Tokijin: A magical sword that's surprisingly durable; it looks pretty normal but can parry a blade that weighs about as much as Sesshomaru himself does. Sesshomaru can fire waves of yoki (demon energy) from the blade when he wants to reach out and touch someone.
- Soryuuha: Sesshomaru's strongest attack, a blast of lightning that scours the ground and can cause rocks the size of houses to explode from the sheer heat. Technically he can do this with either of his swords, but he never does so with Tenseiga (presumably it only works on spirits, making it kind of a waste). Tokijin isn't strong enough to use the attack repeatedly without a long wait in between.
- Yoki: Sesshomaru's demonic aura is so strong that he breaks holy symbols, rather than the other way around. He even caught one of Kagome's purification arrows bare-handed with no effect. This also keeps him from being absorbed by other demons (lol hi Naraku).
- Flight: Sesshomaru can fly, though it seems to be a high speed/low maneuverability thing since he mostly uses it to travel long distances or make straight dashes in battle.
- Dog Form: Sesshomaru can turn into a gigantic flying dog. It's true! In addition to being ridiculously huge (and therefore strong and tough). this form can still fly...and his breath is an extremely powerful acid. Also, he has an extremely good sense of smell; he can sense people from many miles away.
- Fluffy Thingy: Apparently the fluffy stole-looking thing on his shoulder is heavy enough to be used as a blunt weapon, and can extend far enough to smack people at a distance.
Sample Journal Post:
[Whoever owns the PCD has apparently, like many newcomers, managed to turn it on accidently. This is obvious from the way the view wobbles crazily. It appears the owner is walking through what once might have been a residential neighborhood before the compression.]
A dying world. How fitting. I would expect little better from lowly humans.
[A brief pause, and the PCD turns around to reveal Sesshomaru. He doesn't look amused.] But first, unfinished business. I thought I smelled something foul when I came here. I wonder, Naraku, if you had anything to do with this? Surely you wouldn't be so foolish as to cross I, Sesshomaru, a second time.
Sample RP:
To Sesshomaru's sensitive nose, the scent of death was near-overpowering. But if he cared to notice it at all, it certainly didn't show on his face. What was a village of dead humans to him? Nothing at all. However, the girl who had spent so much time helping him lived in that village, and almost as if he were running on auto-pilot he found his feet carrying him in that direction. Sure enough, he came across a pack of wolves nibbling on her corpse. A strange twinge of...something...bubbled up into Sesshomaru's awareness, but whatever the feeling was, he had never felt it before. So he felt comfortable ignoring it.
Instead, he fixed the stupid beasts with a simple glare. They ran in the face of the daiyoukai's anger, which was only proper for youkai trash such as them. Sesshomaru was dimly aware that Jaken was babbling about...something...but he tuned the kappa out, only deigning to reply when he asked if Sesshomaru had some purpose in mind. "No."
And that should have been the end of it. He turned his back to the girl's body. He should have just kept walking, come up with a new plan for seizing Tetsusaiga from his foolish brother...but the girl's gap-toothed smile was the only thing that came to mind. For a moment, just a single moment, he wished he could help her. That thought startled Sesshomaru. She was a human. He shouldn't care. And yet...
And yet he found himself turning back to her. Tenseiga rattled in its scabbard. Did it have some purpose here...?