Takami Yukimura

## Personality

### Catchphrase

"Hey, it's no longer a prank if I hate my target. Not that I like any of them in particular."

## General Information

### ☯**Personality**

She is playful and mischievous. She loves to prank or surprise other people, but she doesn't take it well when she's on the receiving end instead. Her only limit is that they will never be mentally devastating, let alone physically lethal; she feels responsible for all her schemes. Other than that, she's a curious girl and considers her pranks as ways to get to know people.

She can appear patient at times, but when the opportunity to do something comes close, she'll immediately dive straight into it like a seagull picking fish out of water. Otherwise, her manners are rather boyish and harsh, if not counting her inferiority complex about her body. She is totally not a tsundere because of this manner, nope.

### ☯**Appearance**

5' 2", rather malnourished and underdeveloped even for a human of her age alive. Black hair tied in two moderate pigtails, with a crimson lock of hair to her right. Her eyes are red-orange -- even though she insists it's "vermillion" -- with slitted pupils like cats. Like another well-known ghost, her legs are normal, if only her flesh is still cold to the touch. Her natural voice is soprano, but she prefers to talk in a lower tone, raspy and airy.

Her clothing is quite simply that of a student from the Outside World, though with some alterations. It consists of a dark gray sailor-style blouse (again, she says it's black) with a white collar, and a matching short skirt along with thigh-high white socks under black boots. Alternatively, she wears a white-laced black dress, with short puffy sleeves and a longer skirt. Around her neck hangs a metallic red sigil, designed like a dream catcher -- a circular mesh with five glowing garments magically hovering below.

Her weapon of choice is "Nightmare Eye"; a black staff consisting of thorned twigs twisted together, featuring a gem with the shape of a hawk's eye in a black cage at the tip. More about it in Skills/Powers section.

## Backstory

Takami's family had been working with dreams and emotions ever since she remembered. Their ancestors included a powerful youkai whose power involved dreams (he was thought to be a baku). Lesser versions of his power were passed down the bloodline, but they only ever manifested as enhanced senses of emotions. Nevertheless, Takami knew how to weave a functional dreamcatcher since she was so young -- they must have affinities to fear, since that's what's prominent in nightmares.

In adolescence, she started showing interest in other emotions, particularly surprise. When she attended Keine's history classes, she spent free time experimenting with various plots that would throw her classmates off their chairs, sometimes literally. Some worked like charms; some failed like lame jokes. She was a love-or-hate kind of person, yet her teacher and most friends credited her for helping to clean up the mess and promptly apologizing.

One kid, though, considered her a complete irritation. He started bullying Takami for her small body and the inability to fight back. The resident prankster started to lose her laughs, replaced by constant snickering that were meant to drive her away. She didn't surrender, instead fighting back with her own game, devising more and more complicated plans to embarrass this yakuza-in-boy-clothing in return.

The boy, appropriately a son of some influential figure, started taking revenge by proxy, bringing unspeakable harassments upon Takami's family as well as herself. That was enough. She could handle all the unfortunate results on her own, but her family must be left out of this! Filled with anger to the very brim, she switched her focus from surprise to fear, tracking down everything that this thug feared, and successfully drove him home with his worst fears.

The next day, she found her own tied up body in a pool of blood, her head bleeding from a repeated strike. She was dead, and her spirit lingered around to see this.

What she started must be ended by her own hands, and her family must not be involved. She began her longest plan yet: to harness the power in her bloodline and use it to deliver the same fate to that boy, and strictly only him. She studied hard for any method to channel fear into a more comprehensive and usable idea, and found the right spells that would create physical substances in the vicinity of certain emotions. She ended up with what she called "Nightmare Sand", and later came up with a staff, "Nightmare Eye", that would allow precise control of the Sand.

That boy had grown up and gained authority, but he was still the same boy with the same set of fear. Takami sneaked up on him every night, haunting him with incrementally horrifying illusions. Once he grew perpetually paranoid and stood on the brink of insanity, she simply showed up before him, completely crippling his prideful mind without any additional Sand. Her plan was complete. She had the last laugh.

However, she quickly learned that it wasn't revenge that kept her from reincarnation; it was her quest to fully understand the concept of fear, and how it can influence people. It wasn't answered by the boy's death, but rather by the entire world she stood upon.

## Abilities

### ☯**Ability to Manipulate Fear and Nightmares**

Her power was distantly passed in the bloodline from a youkai ancestor. Takami retained her ability from her human ages to sense certain emotions, with a high affinity for fear. After decades training as a ghost, her potentials gradually came to surface, which allows her power to increase whenever she can sense fear in people nearby. That includes herself, and she takes advantage of it when she encounters enemies she is afraid of.

However, the raw power alone is hard to grasp. She channels it through a group of substances known as Nightmare Sand, which take on different physical properties as well as mental effects. She names them according to their color and other properties, after minerals and rocks. She can create these in the vicinity of fear, but she normally has reserves in satchels on her waist. Sometimes she uses them in conjunction with each other, or makes constructs out of them, such as weapons or creatures. Otherwise, they are her tools to manipulate one's dream.

* Quartz is a colorless type of Sand that gleams white. It is the primary product of "converting" fear into Sand, and the base material for other types. It has no mental effects, but it can be made in large quantities, and Takami can form non-complex constructs out of it.
* Calcite is white Sand with the effect of cleansing any of her other Sands' effects, along with clearing the recipient's mind to make them focused. Their robust tubular formations allow more complex structures, and usually become skeletons for a lot of constructs. Derived from Quartz.
* Obsidian is black Sand that can bring fear to minds. Its plate formations allow sharp edges like its namesake volcanic rock does. Takami discovered that the fear caused by this doesn't count for her creation, and thus she can't make a positive feedback loop. Derived from Calcite.
* Amethyst is light purple Sand that projects illusions. Alone, it can change colors to her heart's content. It is different from Obsidian in that its results come from Takami herself rather than the target's mind. Physically, it forms a gemstone formation, with a 7-8 rating on Mohs scale of hardness, which she exploits to get hard armor coating or blunt weapons. Derived from Calcite.
* Amber is dirty yellow Sand that can cause paralysis, and enough contact with it will calm one down to sleep. This type is flexible and adhesive to other Sands; it is normally the glue for her constructs as well as standalone ropes and threads. Derived from Quartz.
* Red Amber, while sharing most physical properties with Amber except for colors, represents memories. It can contain Takami's commands or record people's dreams, as well as convey information between other Sand units. It provides Obsidian "keywords" to search for fear-based memories, and allows Amethyst to correctly produce desired images. Above all else, it has a weak compelling effect, which she uses to command her creature-based constructs. This type is the most expensive to produce; it is derived from Amber, but requires noticeable amounts of Obsidian and Amethyst to be completed.

She gains better control of these Sands by commanding them via her staff Nightmare Eye. Its other functionalities include producing afterimages as if she dissociated her appearance from her true self, as well as making her sound resonate throughout the general area and obscure the source of her sound.

Lastly, she can use Red Amber to send a projection of herself into the Dream Realms. She has to fall asleep to do this, making her lose the influence on the dream's content via Sand. If one manages to knock her out of the dream, they have a chance to become lucid.

Having been a weak human, her ghost form doesn't have impressive physical strength at all; her youkai strength cancels out with it, presumably. She can, however, take advantage of her small frame.

She mainly relies on Sand weapons and constructs; for the former, she specializes in scythes, maces, and blow guns, as well as body extensions and armor.

## Danmaku

Generic Sand bullets take various shapes; Quartz are obstructing large boulders, Calcite are straight needles, Obsidian are triangular shards, Amethyst are crystalline spikes, and Amber are flexible strings. Red Amber dreamcatchers serve as her peripherals, and tend to control other Sands on their own.

Alternatively, she can disperse Sand into clouds, or shoot lasers based on some types. Notably, Obsidian is for intimidation, Amethyst is for altering visual information, and Amber slows opponents down.

Occasionally, land-based Sand creatures get used. Takami prefers insects or shapeless blobs, but seems to like the idea of black horses called Nightmares. These carry whichever Sand type necessary for missions, ranging from rushing opponents to stealth effect injections to reconnaissance and spying.

## Spell Cards

### ☯**Splash Cards**

 Illusion Sign "Wet Pinata"
 Bedtime Mythology "Lord of R'lyeh"