Akira Yakou

is a young child from the Japanese Yakou family of magi in The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II.
==Profile==
===Background===
Akira is a member of the Yakou family, a family of houjutsu practitioners. She is seven years old. Akira is the next Black Chest. The Divine Body is being transplanted into her from her father little by little.
When she was young Akira often saw things like mouths on the walls and hands sprouting from the ground. Her father would use chants to dispell them.
At one point the family arranged a marriage between Akira and her uncle Genma Tobori, though her father Yukinobu Yakou was able to cancel it.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 3: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Lower) - Chapter 2
Akira's father Yukinobu and mother are divorced so he could continue to keep magecraft a secret from her, because the alternative was trying to convince her to transfer the curse that was killing him into their daughter. In the divorce, Yukinobu took custody of the older sister Mei and his wife took custody of the younger sister Akira. Without her father there to dispell the things she saw Akira had to just live with them.
Akira's mother didn't know the Yakou were a family of mages, she just thought of them as a weird religious group, so eventually grew unable to handle the strange phenomena happening around Akira and disappeared. She tried looking for shamans before abandoning her child, but no ordinary shaman could take in the influence of the Yakou's Divine Body, and she couldn't ask the Yakou themselves because of the divorce situation, so she chose to simply disappear after seeing a priest who tried to heal Akira rot from the inside out.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 3: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Lower) - Chapter 2 After Mei's sudden death, the Yakou decided to bring Akira back and found her malnourished. They couldn't transfer the Divine Body to her until recently because her health wouldn't allow her to survive the transplant.
The transplant was indescribably painful despite the anesthesia drugs she took before every session. She was taken out of the Yakous' mountain between each transplant, and she spent the meantime constantly dissociating to avoid feeling the pain. Akira only returned to her senses the day she met Bai Ruolong, because she felt the burden being halved as if the Divine Body was scared of his wings. Unlike the Yakou, Bai Ruolong asked for Akira's consent to kidnap her, and Akira responded "Save me". He understood she wanted to be kidnapped.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 3: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Lower) - Chapter 3 Akira never complained about them having to live on the streets because Ruo couldn't get a passport to stay at a hotel. The homeless people were all kind and generous. The bartender gig was also surprisingly enjoyable. Ruo came to think that living in Japan with Akira wasn't a bad idea, which is a fatal mistake for someone who knows what theophage hunger really is.
Mikiya Ryougi asks Lord El-Melloi II to find her, as the Yakou are relatives of the Ryougi.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 2: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Upper) - Chapter 2 However Gray believes that Akira actually ran away from home of her own accord due the Yakou's neglect and dehumanization of children, as is typical for mages.
===Appearance===
Akira is seven years old. Akira wears boyish clothing and has an intentionally androgynous haircut.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 2: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Upper) - Chapter 1 Part 1
Adventures Visual Promotional Image.png|Akira in The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Visual Key, illustrated by Mineji Sakamoto.
===Personality===
Akira refers to herself with boku, has everyone in the homeless camp call her -kun, and gets offended when Bai Ruolong tells her to brush her teeth and comb her hair because she assumes he's telling her to take care of herself because she's a girl. Despite seemingly wanting to be seen as a boy, the third person narration of the novel uses feminine pronouns for Akira.
Sano asks Akira if making her gender hard to tell is a way of running away because she didn't have the endurance to conform to the things she didn't want to do, which is the reason Sano himself ran away. Akira doesn't confirm or deny, instead saying that she's really sensitive about this kind of thing and muses about how much better her life would be if she were less sensitive.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 2: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Upper) - Chapter 1
Akira and her sister Mei were close to their uncle Genma and often went to visit him when they were younger.
==Role==
===The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II===
====The Devil of the Wandering Sea====
Akira is being watched over by Bai Ruolong and does not wish to return home to her family. The two live in a homeless camp. Ruo incapacitates any Yakou men who come after her. Ruo wants Akira because his mentor, Ziz from the Wandering Sea, needs the Divine Body inside her for his plans, though Ruo himself doesn't know why.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 2: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Upper) - Chapter 4
Because Akira's situation is also similar to Gray and Ergo's, Lord El-Melloi II thinks that she could help him figure out a way to save them. She befriends Mana Ryougi once everyone gathers together at the Garan no Dou to discuss what to do regarding her situation.
Eventually Akira's grandmother Akane Yakou decides that El-Melloi II is untrustworthy and takes the last fragment of the Yakou's Divine Body, the piece that was still inside Yukinobu and yet to be transferred to Akira. As Akane places the Divine Body in a noh mask and then puts the mask on her face, at the same time in a different part of the city Akira begins to scream. A noh mask appears on her own face as a dark ocean begins to form around her that manifests black ropes which bind Bai Ruolong. The darkness condenses into a black box with Ruo and Akira inside it, which is taken by Yukinobu back to the Yakou house.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 3: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Lower) - Chapter 1
The Yakou begin preparations for a ritual far larger than a simple transplant of the Divine Body should require, and it is clear that Akira will not survive it. The ritual initiated by Akane first has the last 20% of the Divine Body transferred into Akira, and then Akira and Ōkuninushi inside her begin devouring Bai Ruolong and Typhon inside him.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 3: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Lower) - Chapter 4 Akane intends on sacrificing Ruo to heal Yukinobu because his talents are too valuable for the Yakous to lose, but Yukinobu does't want to be healed. Yukinobu disrupts the ritual by sacrificing himself and giving everything to Akira for her to do whatever she wants with it, but Akira is too far gone after learning the truth about her father and finds all she wants was to eat Ruo.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 3: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Lower) - Chapter 5
After Akira comes to her senses, Ruo breaks them out of the black box with Typhon's Noble Phantasm Blaze of Etna. He and Ergo have the rematch they had been waiting for, after which his master Ziz arrives. Ziz cuts the Yakou Divine Body in half, leaving half for the Yakou family and half for him to feed to Ruo. A fair compromise for all, but not ideal for anyone. He then teleports away with both Bai Ruolong and Akira.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 3: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Lower) - Chapter 6
Although Akira is no longer in Japan, El-Melloi II promises Mikiya that he will still find her.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 3: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Lower) - Epilogue
====Legacy of the Alchemist====
Akira watches as Ziz performs spiritual surgery to remove Rhongomyniad Mythos' seal from Bai Ruolong.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 4: Legacy of the Alchemist (Upper) - Intermission
====Fem's Casa====
As a result of Akira having previously consumed part of Bai Ruolong's flesh, her form changes to gain aspects of Typhon due to the organ containing the concept of the ephemeral fruit that Typhon had digested. After her transformation, she demands a name from him, and he names her Typhon Ephemeros.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 8: Fem's Casa (Lower)
==Abilities==
Akira is the next of the Yakou family, keeping a Divine Body - an organ of a god - inside of her so that the Yakou can connect to it to use their magecraft. The Divine Body is being transplanted into her from her father little by little.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 2: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Upper) - Chapter 3 
Akira is not a mage, but her position as a Black Chest holding a Divine Body, an organ of a god, allows her access to divine powers. The god within her is Ōkuninushi,The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 3: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Lower) the Japanaese equivalent to the Egyptian Set who is inside Ergo.The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II Volume 2: The Devil of the Wandering Sea (Upper) - Interlude She can manifest black ropes similar to that can dissolve one's clothing, painfully mixing dissolved clothing with their skin and flesh, and seemingly act of their own volition in order to protect her. The power inside her is not enough to beat Ergo.
==References==
Category:Characters in The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II
Category:Humans
Category:Yakous
Category:Introduced in 2021
Category:Japanese