Natha Spruce

is a player in the Shadows for the Tokyo Lift, and has been with the team since Fall Ball.
==Official League Records==	
Spruce joined the ILB as a player in the Shadows for the Canada Moist Talkers with .
During the , Spruce Evolved to as a result of the blessing.
During the November 25, 2022 Fall Ball, Spruce fell to the Tokyo Lift.
On Season 1, Day 6, Kaj Murphy crashed into Spruce during a game in Horizon (weather) weather, knocking Spruce into the Lift's Shadows.
==Personal History==
===Background===
Natha Spruce (nee Takeuchi-Agrawal) (she/her) was born in Vancouver, Canada. Spruce realized she wanted to be a lawyer at a very young age, and graduated top of her law class, eventually working her way up to a defense attorney position with a Vancouver law firm.
After the death of her fiancée, Mira Spruce, at the age of 31, Spruce quit her job and moved across the country to join the shadows of the Canada Moist Talkers as a batter, taking her fiancée’s surname at that time. She did not see active play during the Discipline or Expansion Eras, spending her time mostly out of touch with blaseball pursuing hobbies at her seaside home with her housemates.
 
===Before Blaseball===
After attending law school at the University of British Columbia, Spruce graduated top of her class and went on to work as a junior paralegal at a local law firm, eventually passing the bar and becoming a full lawyer. It was during this period she met Mira Spruce (she/they), and the two became close friends and eventually began dating shortly after Mira came out as transgender and began to explore her identity as a lesbian. They became engaged a year later.
One month into their engagement, Mira suffered a sudden illness and passed away, leaving Spruce bereft. At this time, suffering severe grief, Spruce withdrew from her hobbies, friendships, religious communities, and career, even severely limiting contact with her family. A few days after Mira’s funeral, Spruce sold all the possessions in their shared apartment that had not been given to family, quit her job, and moved across the country to Halifax, NS.
 
===On the Canada Moist Talkers===
In Halifax, Spruce purchased a small waterfront house on the city’s outskirts and signed up for blaseball as a shadows hitter for the Canada Moist Talkers, aware that her lack of blaseball skill made her unlikely to be called to play. Spruce continued to isolate herself during this time, spending weeks without speaking to anyone or leaving her house. This was severely exacerbated by the effect of her shadowing, which made her significantly more difficult to remember or interact with by anyone except shadowed blaseball players. During this time, Spruce lost touch with her family and friends entirely and remained out of contact for the length of the Discipline era.
Shortly after the start of , Spruce was compelled to attend a mandatory shadows mixer with other Canada Moist Talkers shadows. While attempting to leave early, she became lost in the Underarena and there, met ███████████████████, a fellow shadowed player who had entered the Underarena during the mixer to investigate the unique insect activity present. Shortly afterwards, they encountered ███████████, a teenage runaway and shadowed player living in the Gleek Arena. ███████ was later cited as saying the Underarena had engineered the meeting “because it wanted us to meet. And because we needed each other.”
Spruce committed to returning regularly to ensure ██████ was safe and worked with ███████ to bring daily meals and supplies. After months of support, ██████ was discovered by a maintenance worker, and accepted Spruce’s offer to move in with her. At this time, ███████ also moved into the house as the three had grown close.
Spruce’s focus on helping ██████, and her friendship with ███████, were a catalyst in helping her process and work through her grief. Spruce slowly began to take interest in the world around her again and began to engage in activities she used to enjoy, in addition to new hobbies. She spent much of her time gardening, building and carving wooden furniture, cooking (especially recipes passed to her by her family), and keeping up with notable court cases, sometimes travelling into Halifax to watch live trials.
After the isolating effects of shadowing were reduced in the Expansion Era, Spruce reconnected with her family, and made trips out to Vancouver to visit her parents and cousins. She, along with ███████ and ██████, also travelled abroad to reunite with extended family for extended periods of time.
 
===On the Tokyo Lift===
During Fall Ball, Spruce attempted to remain in the Black Hole (Black Hole) so as not to leave ██████ behind. When she did Fall, she cites her hope to “fall back home” in landing with the Tokyo Lift, coincidentally located in the city her father grew up in. After being orientated by her new team members, she was met by a group of extended family members who housed her and supported her until she found her own apartment. A few days after her Fall, ███████ flew from Halifax to join her in Tokyo.
During Fall Ball, Spruce was initially polite but withdrawn. Still, in the interest of adapting to her new circumstances, Spruce set herself to doing useful tasks around the Legscraper and restoring it to its pre-Black Hole (Black Hole) state, drawing on her experience with home maintenance and woodworking to complete a wide variety of needed repairs. As teammates Vernon Cotterpin and Silvia Rugrat were also completing similar work, Spruce began spending more time with them.
Spruce initially clashed with Rugrat, the two often arguing for long periods of time while completing repairs. Both Rugrat and Spruce’s strong opinions on the ILB’s legal situation and contract enforcement, despite being largely aligned, were often a topic of division. Rugrat’s background as an investigative journalist reporting on the ILB and Spruce’s as a lawyer who had spent a significant amount of time studying her contract meant both had significant expertise and ability to argue the issue. Eventually, these arguments gradually turned more towards friendly debates and even occasional agreement, and by the beginning of Season 1, the two could often be found together conversing at length.
In Season 1, Spruce debuted as a batter for the Lift, marking her first ever active game. On Day 6 of that season, Spruce was crashed into by Falling player Kaj Murphy, knocking her back into the shadows. In an interview shortly afterwards, she expressed gratitude for the additional time to spend with family, work on stadium maintenance, connect with her religions, and pursue hobbies.
 
===Personal Life===
*Spruce has described her relationship with both ███████████████████ and ███████████ as a found family, and her relationship with ███████ as a platonic life partnership or a queerplatonic partnership.
*Spruce is a lesbian and states her gender as butch or butch woman.
*Spruce is a second-generation immigrant. Her parent, Harvinder Agrawal (they/them), was born in Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh, India, and immigrated as a college student to study Urban Studies at UBC, the university Spruce would later attend. Her father, Takeuchi Tatsurō (he/him), was born in Tokyo, Japan, and immigrated as a child, settling in Vancouver and eventually becoming a construction foreman. Spruce has kept in touch with extended family over the years, and is really enjoying the chance to get to know more of her father’s family in person while living in Tokyo.
*Spruce is an active follower of both Nichiren Buddhism and Hinduism. In the wake of her fiancée’s death, she did not actively practice for some time, but reconnected as she began processing her grief. She has cited both religions as bringing her great peace and strength.
*During late Discipline era, Spruce realized she was autistic and identifies as neurodivergent.
*As a child, Spruce pursued debate, Model UN, and blittle league blaseball along with her education.
Category:Players With Base 1