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BASIC
Character name: Kurama (AKA "Youko Kurama" AKA "Minamino, Shuichi" AKA "The King of Thieves" AKA "Is that his girlfriend???" etc...)
Fandom: Yu Yu Hakusho
Timeline: Post-series
Age: 3-4,000

ABILITIES
Kurama has control over plants, and as it were, he needs soul energy in order to be able to manipulate them. He can use his life force instead of spirit energy, but that would sort of require dying, which is a bad move, really, but he does it sometimes anyway, so he might end up doing it because he's a fucking jackass like that. Anyway, despite his inability to use some of the following, I'll describe them all anyway in case limiters come off or something.

Btw, he keeps his plants and seeds.... in his hair...

Basic Plant Abilities

• Grass Blade: He takes a blade of grass (maybe it's a leaf; he doesn't really use it anymore; it's very low-level) and makes it into a sword. It works like a regular sword.
  
• Rose Whip: His most-used attack. He takes a rose and makes it into a thorny whip. It's sharp enough to cut through bone, but that may just be because he whips it around pretty damn fast.
  
• Petals and Thorns: If you're familiar with Bleach, this is like an uncontrolled Senbonzakura. Basically, petals and thorns surround Kurama in a sort of whirlwind and then cut anyone stupid enough to get near him. Easily destroyed with fire (he's a grass-type.)
  
• Seed of the Death Plant: If Kurama can distract his victim enough to toss a seed at them, it will bury itself into his victim's body and given enough time (3 minutes), will sprout and kill its victim. Since this is kind of a cheap move, it will bury shallowly into its victim and leave a blood trail, so he (or she) can just pick it out. You know, if they like clawing into their skin. That, or if Kurama's rather injured, he won't really be able to call it to fruition. It may just end up causing an interesting bunch of flowers being attached to the victim until it's ripped out.
  
• Bamboo Plant: Sharpened pikes of bamboo shoot out of the ground.
  
• Lamp Weed: Non-attack type plant that sort of just glows.
  
• Mugen Flower Pollen: Non-attack type pollen that erases recent long-term memory. Okay, actually, Kurama can pretty much pick and choose the memories and feelings he can erase, but I'm not comfortable with that, so I'm going to say like maybe the last day's worth of memory, and the memory will come back eventually.
  
• Leaf of a Plant: Non-attack type plant that just grows and acts like wings. Yes, he can fucking fly. With plants. Don't ask me where Togashi comes up with this stuff.
  
• Parrot Grass: Non-attack type cute little plant that repeats information (video or audio) for about two hours.
  
• Healing Plants: Non-attack type vaguely-described plants that heal minor wounds. Useless against bigger wounds, because otherwise Kurama would use them more.

Advanced Plant Abilities
Going to assume Kurama can't use most of these while in human form since some of these are cheap as fuck abilities some of these abilities would probably cause a shitload of energy.

• Death Tree: A plant that looks like an overgrown venus fly trap and attacks anything that moves, with its acid. Also, by overgrown, I mean seriously overgrown. Like one of its bulbs has a mouth wide enough for a regular human.
  
• Ojigi Plant: Huge fucking plant that crushes anything that moves or has heat until its victims die or it's cut off.
  
• Bloodsucking Plant: Attaches onto a victim and drains him of blood. You know, a lot of these attacks involve death, so I'm going to pretend this just takes enough to knock you out because god is this a cheap move.
  
• Sinning Tree: It latches onto its prey and then plays painful memories of the victim's fears, while feeding on the victim's life force until they die are knocked unconscious, and then can no longer feel the pain of the memories.
  
• Binding Fist of the Demonic Vine: If you're familiar with Fullmetal Alchemist, it's basically Edward transmuting his arm into a sword, except with a plant instead of metal. If you're not, it's basically a vine that is like a sword and extends as part of Youko's arm.
  
• Okunenju Root: Only usable while in the demon world, because apparently it takes thousands of years to be of any use. Roots come out and Kurama can basically sic them and their razor-sharp points on his opponent.
  
• Pseudo-Creature: A plant that latches onto its victim and then keeps its victim at a sort of paralyzed state until the victim's brain is destroyed.

Non-Plant Abilities (Superhuman in regards to non YYH humans)

• Smoke Screen: He keeps things that fog up the place... in his sleeves.
  
• Speed: Pretty fast, but it's more like I should put it here because he can see quickness better than he can keep up. But his eyes are pretty fast.
  
• Transformation: If he is regressed timeline-wise, he can turn into Youko Kurama.
  
• Hammerspace: He keeps his seeds in his hair.
  
• Hair-Limb: If immobilized, his hair can actually wield the rose whip. Don't ask me; I wtf'ed when I saw it too.
  
• Personal Invisifan: Whenever he summons the rose whip, for some reason Bishounen-Grade Wind blows through his hair.

Non-Plant Abilities (Regular, could be achievable by human standards)

• Flips: I don't really know where he learned to do a backflip, but he can.
  
• Intelligence: Top of his class, pretty damn clever in the real world. Best at biology.
  
• Mastery of Multiple Weapons: He's good with a whip, and he's decent with a sword.
  
• Observance: His life as a thief allows him to visually catch things people are trying to hide.
  
• Closing Mind: He is really good at clearing his mind against mindreaders.
  
• Scaryface: His glare is famously cold and (especially in Youko form) super memorable.
  
• Ability to live life again, perfectly cognizant, and not be totally traumatized after having lived 3,000 years and not being able to control ones own bodily functions or mobility, being forced to watch pre-K shows, having to socialize with little kids, and revisiting puberty: so yeah...

How would they use their abilities?: Well he gave up that whole killer thief thing (sorta...) so probably if his 4-man team is on a mission or there is a tournament, he will totally use his abilities then. I don't think he'll use them for ~*~evil~*~ ever again though. Been there, done that...

APPEARANCE
Kurama is… can I get away with saying gorgeous and be done with it? No? Damn.

Okay, okay, let's start with human-form Kurama. He's supposedly something like seventeen now, even though he looks like he's in his twenties, but he's looked that way since he was fifteen… Which is odd since he looked like he was nine when he was fourteen but ANYWAY, giant growth spurt aside, he's like five foot seven or five foot eight and slightly built. It's hard to tell since he's usually very well-clothed (sob) but he is hiding a very nice set of abs and arms. Also, boy has a tiny fucking waist.

Kurama is kind of pale I guess? He looks tanner in the official art than he does in the anime. He's also generally slightly more yellow, but uhh… I GUESS IT DOESN'T really matter, anyway. He has long red (anime red, not natural red) hair that is cut in the silliest way possible that most people would look incredibly ridiculous in. Like seriously, it's all kind of the feathery sort of spiky up top and then there's this odd part by his jaw that is extra spiky and then from there on it spikes downward. Like I'm not sure how Togashi came up with this hairstyle? It's bizarre.

He has bright freaking forest-green eyes that are huge (and sometimes way too close together in the anime, oops) in that way that makes him look like one of those awkwardly pubescent teenage boys who get mistaken for their mothers over the phone.

Speaking of, did I mention he was mistaken for a woman twice in the series? Poor guy.

Kurama's sense of style is WHACK and when he's not wearing the strangest all-purple school uniform ever conceived, he usually chooses to wear some sort of high-collared martial arts clothes with some sort of band to accentuate his waist. Casual wardrobe includes loose collared shirts and high-waisted 90s-era tight jeans.

Youko Kurama is quite different in the way that he is almost seven feet tall and also more muscular and also he has fox ears + a bushy tail. Like he has long silver hair and fox ears that grow out of his head. He has a lot of hair so it's unclear whether or not he also has human ears (but probably not, since wouldn't that be silly.) He's also way paler than Kurama with a yellower complexion. He has narrower eyes which are golden, and a longer nose.

Also, I like him because he chooses to show off how nice his arms are because the only thing he ever seems to wear is an all-white sleeveless wrapped tunic over strangely midcalf-length pants. Though I wish Kurama would think more about his shoes, they're never very interesting…

Kurama also has a fox form but it seems he cannot (or chooses to not) ever turn into a fox. It's not exactly clear whether or not this fox-form is current to his age or whether it stopped existing after he gained a humanoid form.

BACKGROUND
Oh boy. Okay, well, first off, this guy's between 3,000-4,000 years old (I'll leave a detailed explanation on why) and since the series is focused on ~2 years in the early 90s, and 175 chapters long, there isn't a whole lot of information on the early years, but I'll give it my best.

1. Youko Kurama
   
2. Minamino Shuichi
   
3. Series start
   
4. Three Kings arc onward (because there's a sort of gap.)
   
5. Extra stuff

Youko Kurama
About 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, Youko Kurama is born as a fox. Either 100 or 1,000 years after his birth, he gains a human form, which he resides in. As far as I know, he does not have the ability to transform back into his original fox form. At least 1,000 years ago, his partner-in-crime was Yomi. Youko (which is a title, but I use it as a name to distinguish Kurama's past life and his current) was already an established thief, and eventually he felt that Yomi was weighing him down. Yomi kept needing Youko to bail him out of trouble, so one day Youko sent a hitman after Yomi. The hitman blinded, but didn't kill Yomi-- but at least he was out of Youko's hair. For now.

Later (not sure how much later; I'm guessing somewhat immediately), Youko picked up a new partner named Kuronue, who was apparently very useful to Youko. One day, after a particularly rough night stealing, Kuronue was trapped in a field of bamboo (which is oddly somewhat like one of Kurama's attacks). He died, but Youko got away. Oddly enough, he displayed a bit of compassion here-- whether it was because he didn't want to find another partner (and not because of affections towards Kuronue) is unknown.

Minamino Shuichi
About fifteen years prior to the current timeline, Youko got into a bit of trouble. Cornered, Youko eventually escaped to the human world and sealed his life force away inside a woman's unborn fetus.

About nine months later, he was reborn as Minamino Shuichi. His original plans were to stay in the human world until he was ten years old, whereupon he would have enough strength to return to the demon world and continue his life as a thief, where he'd left off. However, when he was nine, he dropped plates and his mother helped him, smiling, even though her arms were bleeding and later left scars. Up to this point, Kurama has been described as cruel and cold, but it's at this moment that he decides he can't leave his mother. Later, he says since the day he was born as Shuichi, he loved his mother as if she were his "real" mother.

When he was fourteen, a demon showed up in his hometown and started to terrorize the place a little. Hiei, another demon, tried to fight Kurama because he thought Kurama was working for the demon. Eventually, they realized there was a misunderstanding, and then it turned out that the demon'd kidnapped one of Kurama's classmates, so they both went to go defeat the guy. They were successful, and Kurama had found himself another partner. Thankfully, this one's not quite as dependant on Kurama, so hopefully neither of them get themselves killed for another thousand years, because Kurama has serious problems keeping a goddamn partner.

Series begin
And then the beginning of the series starts! Hiei and Kurama work together to steal a few items. Kurama, because his mother is sick and he wants to use a special item to sacrifice himself in order to save her. Yusuke, not wanting Shiori (Kurama's mom) to live without her son (after having witnessed his own mother mourning his death), offers half his life in exchange for half of Kurama's. The mirror is sympathetic towards these actions and takes no harm, and Kurama decides to work with Yusuke.

Skipping 4 Saint Beasts arc, because the only thing that's important that happens is the four main guys of YYH having a little camaraderie. After that, the four of them go to save Yukina (who is revealed to be Hiei's twin sister), and meet some important bad guys that come in later in the series.

They all enter the dark tournament together, because Yusuke is in need of a 5-man team and the dark tournament is kind of a big deal to demons. Before it starts, they go through a lot of training, etc. Everyone gets past their semi-finals, etc.

Kurama has quite a few fights in this arc, but in summary: His mother's life is used against him as a threat, one of his opponents tries to revert him back to infancy only to meet face-to-face with Youko Kurama, he obtains the object that turns him into Youko, and his fight with Karasu. Karasu's kind of a creeper, and he really likes Kurama. Kurama takes a shitload of damage (it's pretty cringeworthy to watch) and then eventually kills Karasu, but means to sacrifice his life in the process (again...). He's saved, with Youko's sheer life force power rubbing off on Kurama, which further cements at this point just why people were afraid of Youko in his prime.

After that, things seem to be going smoothly back home, until new humans come around with powers. One of them is a student at Kurama's high school, and traps the group in a game. It's revealed that Kurama is at the top of his class, and he's also the brains of the group, because he outsmarts Kaito (his classmate) at his own game, winning back his group's souls.

Then, chaotic things happen when the barrier between the human and demon worlds is starting to open, and it's up to them to stop it by defeating Sensui, who's laid a bunch of obstacles for them. Kurama coldly lies to a little boy and kills him in order to advance them forward. He's incredibly angry that he was forced to do this, and takes his anger out on the elder Toguro brother (some creepy fuck who's in their way.)

Pretty much everyone's decided at this point not to piss Kurama off.

Sensui takes them all to the demon world, and Kurama nearly dies again because holy shit, the group just cannot take this guy on, but this is a shounen series, so shit happens and they save the day, and then Sensui has an MGS monologue and it turns out he wasn't such a bad guy after all.

3 Kings+
After a brief pause, it's discovered that there's a war for power going on in the demon world. Raizen, who is about to die of starvation, and is also sort of Yusuke's dad, wants Yusuke to come take the throne. Mukuro wants to take Hiei off for her team, and the third guy, of course, wants Kurama. Because they have history. Yeah, because he's Yomi.

Yomi reveals that he knows Kurama's the one who sent the hitman after him about a thousand years ago, and has captured the hitman within some 15 years ago, keeps him in his basement, and tortures him from time to time. Yomi says he's not mad at Kurama anymore, and wants Kurama to join his team. In fact, if he doesn't, he's going to kill Kurama's mother and her new husband.

Kurama eventually becomes Yomi's second-hand man, but after Raizen croaks, Yusuke decides that he's had enough with this damn war and he's going to have an open tournament to decide who's king. Yeah, really. So Kurama leaves Yomi to go enter the tournament himself, where he fights Shigure, the demon surgeon. (The actual fight is anime-only so here it goes:) He gets beat up, changes into Youko, decides he loves his mother and will never be Youko again, and switches back to Kurama to finish Shigure off. He almost has another self-sacrificial moment here, and I've just about had it with those, personally.

After that, he returns to the human world and finishes school, doesn't go to college, and goes to work for his dad's company. Apparently also there's a demon parasite in his new step-brother, he gets mistaken for Kuwabara's girlfriend twice, and... well, then Yu Yu Hakusho stops.

Extra stuff
Additionally: I have no idea where the Yu Yu Hakusho: Spirit Detective movie fits into the timeline, and the relevance to Kurama's history has already been explained.

Also, an explanation of his age is in order. In the English dub, they say he's over 300 years old. This is because a picture is shown of him as a Kitsune (general term for fox/fox spirit, "Youko" is just the kanji for kitsune+monster) with four tails. General consensus in Japanese mythology is that Kitsune are born with one tail and every hundred years, gain a tail. Thus, 300. However, Yomi states that it's been 1,000 years since Kurama sent the hitman after him and there's no way that jives with his tails. Therefore, we must assume that Togashi meant to use the lesser-regarded tale of the Kitsune where each tail sprouts after 1,000 years instead of 100. Therefore, 3,000-4,000.

PERSONALITY
At first glance, Kurama seems to be merely cool and collected. He is polite, tactful, and calm. He is on the apathetic side of pleasant, rather obedient, and gives off vibes of being a total momma's boy. Well, this is probably because he is. The one thing he cares most about is the happiness of one Minamino Shiori. For some reason, he never made this sort of attachment with his earthly father, but Shiori seems like one of those picture-perfect moms, so it would probably be easy to learn human love from her.

Kurama's also very smart, and he usually spends a lot of a battle figuring out his opponent rather than actually kicking his opponent's ass. For that reason, he usually ends up really hurt all the time, and then everyone has to worry about whether or not he's going to make it. Anyway, he makes a lot of plans and Yomi recruits him not only because he's Youko Kurama but because he's got a lot of good insights on the war. Additionally, at the most academic level, Kurama always aces his tests and is among the best students of his year (despite leaving school for months at a time.) Kaito, who is famous in his school for being good with words, gets his ass handed to him by Kurama, who outsmarts him at his own word game.

Additionally, Kurama's pretty charismatic. He has no qualms about lying, and he's pretty damn good at it. He ushers his mother off for a 3-month-long honeymoon so that he can go to the demon world and help Yomi out, thinks of betraying Yomi the whole time he's there, and also: Shiori has no fucking idea that Kurama's even a demon at all. I'm not sure why, because his immense power should have rubbed off on her, and she should at least be seeing ghosts or something. Anyway, he can also be really blunt when it's a good move-- he psyches out Amanuma during their match so that Amanuma can get distracted and die.

I guess Amanuma would be a good time to talk about Kurama's morality, which is something that Youko has very little of. Kurama feels incredibly guilty and upset over Amanuma's death, because, well... The bad guys pretty much used him to stall for time and planned for him to die, and Kurama ended up having to kill him, and pretty much told him no one gave a shit about him before he died. Oh, and Amanuma's like 10 years old. Elder Toguro is pretty much laughing sadistically at this, and this is like the one time Kurama's actually really fucking mad. He calls Toguro a "soulless fuck," which is funny and sort of ironic, because 15 years ago, just about all of the demon world would be calling Kurama the exact same thing. He also follows Yusuke to the Dark Tournament in what could be seen as reciprocity, as well agreeing to work for Yomi initially because he owes Yomi one. Meanwhile, Youko has no qualms about sending a hitman after his partner, or using a woman's fetus and then leaving her after ten years. So yes, development of morals: it's new.

He does sort of enjoy fighting; one time he's chosen to fight instead of Hiei and he's super-excited. He also enjoys playing with his victim a little. In battle, he can be pretty ruthless and unforgiving-- of course, usually this is because whoever he's fighting really has it coming to him, in a literary-justice kind of way. The nicest thing he does is let his opponent give up, and then the next best thing is killing his opponent, and then the worst thing that could happen is him suspending his opponent in a nightmare indefinitely. Including Mukuro's pimp, he's done/aided in this being done twice, that we know of.

Hiei, who would rather let 100 people die than go save them (despite minimal effort on his part), and who plotted to kill his entire hometown for abandoning him, doesn't want to get on Kurama's bad side. And that's before Youko even shows up.

It's a little hard to explain Youko. In the Japanese, he's seen as the same soul as Shuichi, but he gets a new voice and a new appearance, but they're essentially the same person. In the English dub, it's more like they're two separate beings stuck in the same body. I haven't really decided a good way to explain this yet, but anyway, Youko seems a bit different, from what we see of him.

Youko is sort of like Minamino Shuichi, except that he just really doesn't give a shit about anything except himself, and maybe his right-hand man. Maybe. He's known for his cold glares, which Shuichi inherited to some extent (but of course, he has kind of big, usually kind eyes-- Youko's are more the nightmare fuel kind.) Youko smiles frequently during battle, because he takes in a lot of sadistic pleasure. He's actually pretty famous around the demon world, and a lot of them are scared shitless of the guy.

Other than that (though we don't really get to see him out of a fight), Youko seems to be just as wise as Shuichi, and even maybe as friendly to his comrades. Probably much less polite.

QUESTIONNAIRE
Why should that character be in this game:
Why do you want to continue their history here:
For applicants considering an alternate version of a character already in game, please use this as your chance to explain the key differences between your character and the one already in play:
Have you read up on how the game works?: The journals are a computer program known as the FlamingFerret. Kurama could 1. Go do missions, 2. Freelance work 3. Let his friends do the work and mooch or 4. Go fifteen years backwards in time and start stealing shit from everyone. (It could happen.)

SAMPLES
1st person sample:
[ So this is the internet of the future. Well, it's definitely not Mosaic, that's for sure. Kurama's taking some time to get used to this new aesthetic, because while the browser's organization itself is similar to (and much better than) his old browser, so. FragrantFerret or whatever your name is, you're worth a shot. It takes him a few minutes to set up the video, but voila.

You are now seeing an upshot of Kurama's nose. ]

This is a strange and interesting place.

[ A slight frown; he adjusts the camera: there. A full facial shot. ]

Much better. I suppose I should thank whoever it was who brought me here-- and I must apologize for earlier. Sorry.

I also don't mean to be ungrateful for this hospitality by any means, but I would like to know if anyone has information regarding the planet Earth that comes after its destruction.

Thank you.

[ You get a confused stare for a whole ten seconds as Kurama figures out how to turn this damn thing off. ]

3rd person sample:
He can hear breathing, and it might very well be his breathing, but it seems oddly detached from his body. His eyes open slowly and things come into focus-- what's wrong with his head-- what's wrong with his nose-- augh.

Something. Smells.

That something seems to be a grayish-green snoutnosed demon staring him down. He asks it questions and doesn't seem all too surprised not to get straightforward answers. The planet getting destroyed, being in the middle of space, something about poetry… What is this guy saying?

He closes his eyes and blocks the demon out of his mind. Where are the others? He feels a strong spirit power nearby. Regardless of whether it belongs to friend or foe, he needs to get there, stat.

The demon is in his way.

Five seconds later, it isn't.

Rose whip still at his side, he runs towards the door leading him through to--

--What seems to be an office with lines of people and another one of those demons. She happens to be a female of the species, saying something about forms.

Some of these people are human. Some of these people are unidentifiable.

For the most part, they all seem pretty harmless, and as he looks around at all the information around him, he realizes something. This isn't the Makai. This really isn't the Makai, and that guy he killed was telling him the truth.

…

So he gets in line, because the spirit power doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and he should probably figure out what this stuff is before he kills anymore innocent bystanders.

FINAL
Questions?: What's the punishment for killing a vogon...?
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: Hope so