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Name: Birdy
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kyanve_te_shirhan
Time zone: Arizona
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|| Character Information ||
Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn
Name: Rokudou Mukurou
Canon Point: ~Chapter 349
History: The wiki sucks~ its link is here. I would sign up just to edit it, and fix grammar, and make sentences make logical sense, but I'm too lazy and it's not a huge priority, esp. since I might get tempted to move on to other articles and then collapse in a sobbing heap because I'm trying to rewrite an entire wiki apparently run by illiterate twelve-year-olds. I have a version of his history written out here.
Personality: One of the first, most important things to understand about Mukuro is that he is a lying liar who lies like a lying rug. Even on the rare occasions he says something truthful, he's still probably slanting or misrepresenting something. This means that, when trying to figure out what the Hell is going on in his head, nine times out of ten, he's the last person you should trust. He's a Mist User, and a damn good one in more ways than just raw power and illusions; his survival and existence is dependent on his skill in figuring out what other people are hiding while keeping his own secrets and leading other people astray about him and making them unsure what's true and what's a lie. One of his few lines that actually gives solid, useful insight is a moment of intimidation and theatrics - that the nature of Mist is "to hide the lies within the truth, and the truth within the lies".
He has a very practiced, reflexive, carefully constructed persona that is how he's almost always seen and known; calm, controlled, arrogant and aloof, he carries himself as a predator, something alien to humanity. Other people might be tolerated, but are, at best, pawns, only of value as long as he has some use for them. He has a god complex, a sense of pride in the power he gained from the experiments, and an unshakable belief that it's made him something greater than human. As much as he carries himself as above everything, he has no issues with violence; if anything, given a reason, he can be downright bloodthirsty, with an edge of the special kind of sadism reserved for someone whose power focuses on mindgames - playing with prey like a cat. He can be very affable and charismatic when he wants to be, but silly things like social ties, friendship, relationships, and morality are for mortal creatures, and he's above and beyond all of it. Moreover, that calm charisma isn't that he tries to put people at ease - it's more a matter of his own confidence; he can quote things like a desire to start world war three and drown the world in blood with calm, unwavering focus, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. If anything, it can be unsettling to outsiders - he's not at ease and affable because he's "friendly", he's at ease and affable because he is the larger predator and there's nothing you could do to touch him. The more he's pushed or challenged, the sharper and more visible his claws get, and the more blatantly predatory he becomes. Still, he's a Mist user - and banks everything on cunning, planning carefully and calculating out risks and tactics, control of the field, and the ego doesn't go to overconfidence and a lack of acknowledging and respecting an enemy's skills...
He's just sure he'll prove that he's better in the end.
At least, all of the above is what he projects to the world. If it were purely false, this would be simple, but that ends up running into that bit about Mist User logic, and that he's a VERY talented and clever Mist user; he's not stupid enough to think he can keep up a facade that's entirely made of lies, so it's less that there's layers between "facade" and reality", and more that his outward persona is a careful weaving of his actual personality with various defense mechanisms and bits of tactical posturing, so there isn't really such a thing as "dropping the act". To make matters more fun, depending on the situation and who he's talking to, he's perfectly happy to express opinions, goals, and motives where he'll say completely contradictory things within the same page, all with the same conviction, just for the sake of muddling the waters further. When he does express more than one opinion, not only is it necessary to unravel what he wants people to believe and what parts of it are "true", but then to chase a shell game of mixed puzzle pieces and stitch back together what bits of each thing he's said have what meaning(s) - and what he might be hiding or drawing attention away from. As much as his actions and what he actually commits to is easier than trying to puzzle out his intentions from what he says, even that has aspects of the shell game to it; his survival, and that of others around him, depends on his ability to fake people out, which means that even his actions have to be read over time, weighing what things have actual impact - and therefore are things that'd be towards one or another of his goals.
The short form? He is intentionally incredibly confusing, and will just about never be completely lying... or completely telling the truth. Anyone dealing with him has to be prepared to deal with the minefield, since even with the people that do register as "closer", he will keep up the same game; it's less that he lowers his guard, and more that he might occasionally drop hints and otherwise relies on the people "closer" to him to be able to decode what he really means and wants out of the mix of grey-shades of truth and lies.
That having been said, there's a few things that are fairly stable traits that can be reconstructed, and two things that're major foundations of his behavior.
The first is that he's a created being (CEEB) in most respects. Sure, he was naturally born, but nothing is known of his parents; he was given up for experiments to turn into a weapon for the Famiglia at an incredibly early age, and odds are good that he neither knows nor cares who his real parents are (beyond maybe that he'd happily kill them if he found them). His earliest memories are of the lab, and a great deal of time, work, and care was put into both the experiments on him and into trying to groom him to be a weapon. Whatever else may come, that much will never leave him - on some level, he is a weapon, something created to exist for a purpose, and his early childhood and formative years were something with pressures and patterns almost alien to a normal human being. It's established that before his powers stabilized, he was basically a "good little experiment" in most respects, if a bit unsettling - he's the one child that hadn't really stuck out beyond that nobody had ever heard his voice - meaning he'd never cried out, or gave any vocal reaction to anything.
And then he became the poster child for the Frankenstein principle - create something and abuse it, and it will turn on you; try to create a monster and you'll succeed.
They'd made him to be a weapon, and he was a very good weapon, even when he decided to turn on his creators; this still shows to this day in his mentality - he was molded to be something that would destroy problems, and there is still an element that, left to his own devices, his solution to threats, things that strike him as wrong, abuses, etc. is to find the source and kill it. As of his first appearance in the series, this had spiraled out of control impressively, going from "destroying his creators" - the Estraneo Famiglia - to "destroy the other people LIKE the creators/associated with them" - the Mafia and underworld in general - to "Destroy anyone who'd allow that kind of thing to go on/try to use it/abuse power" - an end goal of infiltrating world governments, bringing about World War III, and reducing the world to "a pure and beautiful sea of blood"... a plan that was also, as a side note, inherently self-destructive and a bit on the "take everything out with us" side. He DIDN'T have a lot of hope for an extended future beyond that, and he and the others were weirdly at peace with this; it's unsure if he's achieved picking up better long-term goals yet, or if he's still too unwilling to trust/rely on anything that WOULD be a stable place for them.
The only people that he'd taken with him that seemed to have any actual understanding of him were two of the other experiments, also the first people he'd ever spoken to; he'd rescued them from the labs, and taken them under wing, and they responded with the kind of almost unsettlingly unwavering loyalty that comes from being molded to be unable to function outside of certain patterns and given a "master" that actually has some understanding and offer of protection. There was a good long period where it was basically them vs. the world in all mentality, and nothing really did anything to disagree with that assessment; they lashed out at what they saw as threats or things like their creators, which led to the rest of the underworld seeing them as basically rabid loose weapons of mass destruction and turning further against them, which confirmed the idea that everything was, in fact, out to get them, or at best indifferent to the point of allowing abuses.
That "us against them" mentality and basic defensive cornered lab rat aspect is a big part of why there ISN'T a "drop the act". He might relax more genuinely around certain people that're "safe", but otherwise, everything is, on some level, assumed to be a potential threat and something he might have to protect himself and the others from, whether the person he's dealing with means to be threatening or not. This leads to an almost pathological complex about not showing weakness and maintaining at least the illusion that he has control over the situation and could destroy those around him at any moment; if you're not on a very short list, you're an Outsider, a threat, and not only will he be dealing with you as a Weapon and a predator, but he won't risk giving you ANYTHING that you or anyone else might be able to use against him. It's ingrained enough that, even at times when it might be to his advantage to do things like "ask for help", or where admitting that he does care about that short list in his own odd way would make someone less likely to see him as a monster, he won't do it; he might leave a hint dropped in here or there in the hopes another party is smart enough to catch it, but anything else would be leaving openings and the first reflex is to assume those openings will be used against him. Moreover, anything that'd make him dependent on someone else is going to be couched heavily in "it's to his advantage" terms; if he's not at least keeping up a show of being self-contained and perfectly capable without someone else, then that means whoever it is has leverage they could use against him.
If it sounds paranoid, it is, but it's less a delusional sort of paranoia and more a kind of wounded-animal reflex; him and his have been through enough with even well-meaning people not really managing to handle them or protect them (even if some of it was self-fulfilling prophecies) that it's habit. Other people = they WILL hurt you, no matter how nice and kind and well-intentioned they might be, and "protecting himself" from them is a necessity. Being the biggest, baddest predator means nobody else around can touch him or harm him. He's capable of recognizing when people are acting to his benefit, and it's possible to get him to slowly acknowledge that you're useful/not a threat/NOT going to harm him, but unless you have a way to quickly establish yourself as nonthreatening and completely in his service, it's going to be slow going. Even then, at best, the defense mechanisms will still be there; if he decides he likes you or that you're beneficial to him and nonthreatening, he'll still be making sure to occasionally drop reminders that yes, he's a predator, yes, he could kill you, and yes, he's only there because he chooses to be... for now.
This also means that getting him to admit he cares about someone is like trying to pull out his intestines through his mouth with a hooked wire and no restraints. For that short list, those people are the only ones he's let inside his defenses and the only stable thing in his world he can keep, and he's acutely aware that yes, there are people that would target them for being associated with him or use them against each other. Moreover, it's something where if he falls, they all go with him, something all of them are well aware of; as much as he protects them where he can, if it's necessary to put them at risk to protect the whole, he'll be relying on them to take care of themselves to some extent. And if anyone asks or fishes or tests? He cares nothing for them, they're pawns, they're expendable, he could exist just fine without them, and aiming at them will only piss him off because they're possessions, not because you'd be damaging something he cares about, so it's not even worth using them as bargaining chips or targets to bank-shot.
The insistence that he doesn't care is one of his few true lies; as much as he doesn't process close relationships the way a normal person would, if he does start getting attached to someone he gets very protective and possessive, and Daemon Spade has proven that this CAN be used against him in spite of his protests after using Chrome as bait for an obvious trap that Mukuro dove into. It's also one of the things he's most pathological about as defense mechanisms go - the more a given weakness can be used against him, the more he'll work to make sure it doesn't look like it exists.
It is worth nothing that there is slowly becoming more than one circle; there's the Short List - Ken, Chikusa, Chrome, Fran, and to a lesser extent MM - of people that're His, unquestionably, that he's the most possessive of. All of them are people that're, to some major degree, dependent upon him for survival/freedom, or people that've put themselves under his authority/ownership on some significant level. Basically, don't think you're ending up on the Short List unless you're someone he Owns.
Outside of that, there's a small, gradual, possible admission that maybe there's a few people that aren't completely out to get him that might be useful and good to keep around. This is still something that's very clearly pragmatically fueled; the Vongola 10th Gen, as much as they're connected to Mafia and therefore something where there's very blurry lines between them and "People just like Creators", are also the main thing standing between him and his people, and the continued retribution of the underworld and the Vendice. With the bargain he made, as long as he's keeping some foothold on being the Vongola Mist Guardian and helping protect the 10th Gen, him and his people are safe and allowed freedom; because of that, as much as there's protest and it's not something he's entirely comfortable with, he is actually reliable in his duty. There's a gradual possibility that they might manage to grow on him enough to register as "safe", but for now, that secondary circle is basically a place where, if achieved, you are probably somewhat confusing and not-sure-if-want, teetering in between "useful/safe" and "threat" where you're worth enough for him to want to keep you intact, but liable to get claw-batted at, tsun'ed at, and half avoided. (And if you manage to earn your way into that level and then either turn on him, or fail to hold up your proverbial end of the bargain, no God in heaven will save you, which is the "Truth" to the "bigger predator, I tolerate you and find your presence amusing and useful but mis-step and I will decorate with your entrails" bit of his persona.)
There's also authority issues inherent in this First Thing. He was a CEEB, kept in a box and experimented on and tortured because he only existed for a Purpose and he was told to be a good little weapon and be perfectly obedient, and escaping that fate took backlashing against it with incredible violence. Give him the slightest impression that there is a box, cage, intent to restrict or restrain him or his people, or that there will be Order imposed on him whether he wants it or not, and you will invoke that same backlash. It will be violent, it will be spectacular, and he will enjoy ripping you apart and playing in the bloody remains. The best you can get as far as "giving him orders" is setting up something where it's in his best interests to go along with it, being damn sure to maintain it being in his best interests, and avoid exerting force to pressure him into it; push and he will do things to prove that you can't control him and give warnings that trying will end with him slaughtering you. "Feral cat" is, again, an appropriate metaphor; the cat will generally not do tricks for you, and if you try to force it or take away its sense of ownership, it will shred your arms for trying. Give him enough of a sense of a lack of options and he's able to sit on the backlash and play along, but it'd be nearly impossible to do that without merely delaying the backlash until he feels like he can get away with it.
The extent of his "normal socialization" was a short stint of one Famiglia trying to adopt/rescue the kids; this ended spectacularly and bloodily, and registered to him more as a potential threat than anything. Outside of that, as much as he's watched and observed things where he can, he's been living with Ken and Chikusa, basically on the run with stints in underworld prisons. His experience with interpersonal relationships is stunted, warped, and bizarre; he might academically grasp other people's behavior, but he tends to function in a fairly cause-effect, behavioral response sense that's heavily couched in defense mechanisms. It's not that he doesn't have emotions or that he isn't capable of bonding to people...
It's that the way he expresses and processes emotions is off-kilter, normal is a setting on the dryer, and any connection to others has to first get filtered through a lack of positive experience and a ton of habits and defenses, and even then he's probably going through the motions to get what he wants rather than actually understanding the other person and responding to them with empathy/sympathy. Given that the people he's the closest with are all off-kilter themselves, it's hard to tell if he'll eventually be good with people ... or always be kind of a hyperpredatory freak.
The second big thing besides the horrible morass that is CEEB issues, is what, specifically, was done to him. There's canon history for the more powerful Mist users drawing on supernatural or unnatural forces, and to make him the most powerful weapon they could, he was repeatedly killed and revived, with the intent of punting him back and forth across the incarnational cycle until he brought bits of the other realms back; he's basically lived repeated incarnations all across the cycle of Samsara to get his powers, and expressed memory of them all.
This ends up being the source of the aloof, "above it all" inhuman sense; not even animalistic but alien - beyond being a weapon like Ken and Chikusa, he has all the less reason to identify as "human" for having his early years packed with an overloaded mosaic of different states of being. Considering that he does seem aware of some of the lore around said cycle, the "above it all" god complex is something that's grown out of what he's become; on some level he really ISN'T human anymore, but a human-incarnated channel for something that's transcended the normal boundaries of the cycle, packed into a little teenage CEEB-shaped box. Given the amount of Buddhist imagery in some of his illusions, it's safe to say he's pretty familiar with the faith that the cycle is described in. However, it's hard to tell if he's a fairly good Buddhist all things considered, or the closest the religion can get to a theistic Satanist equivalent. He certainly has a sense of morality but it's one that isn't tied to "normalcy" or any standards of society or worldly habit; on some level, his morality is trying to dance to a "Higher law", and one where concepts like "good" and "evil" are tools, shades of grey and things to be played off each other. If it suits his goals and his sensibilities, he can be perfectly compassionate and protective, or intensely sadistic and cruel, and flicker between them without much warning as it seems necessary to him, and he does certainly seem to try to hold emotions and sentiment as something to weigh against other things and not rely on.
Or at least, he tries to, and would certainly love for everyone to believe it; he does have a ridiculous amount of self-control when he wants to, and a strong will. Moreover, some of the Buddhist tenets, particularly Zen sect, of seeking clarity and attempting to let go of delusions and preconceived notions are something that seems to seep into his behavior and perceptions. For all of his complexes, he's self-aware, and in a pinch will acknowledge or point out things with a good degree of clarity and insight, as well as a sense of weighing objective reality versus subjective impressions. Of course, this is also something that feeds into him being a Mist User at heart, as part of the purpose of a mist user is to be able to see through the deceptions, motives, and biases of others clearly, while being able to conceal what's important for self and those around them. It is still something that seems significant that, where most of the Tenth Gen has gotten at least an echo and reference to their First Gen counterpart's weapons in their last evolution of the Vongola Gear, his weapon isn't anything associated with Spade at all, but rather a khakkara - a Buddhist monk's staff. (Nevermind that a favorite recurring weapon/theme are lotuses and lotus vines, Buddhist symbols of transcendence, truth, and purity.)
Through all of this, it's worth noting that he is a teenager, as much as the experiments and extra lives make him seem older. All of this is still filtered through a person who has fifteen years at most of practical, direct experience with the world they're interacting with, and fifteen years in the current incarnation and body however much they might remember of other lives. He's very calculating and cunning, and incredibly mature for his age, but there's still times where he can act on whim or impulse, there is a temper that can be provoked, he lacks experience with a lot of things he won't want to admit to, and compared to his first-gen predecessor, he's not always the most subtle thing for a Mist Guardian. There's even times, with the Kokuyo gang, where he almost achieves a sense of "normalcy" or behavior that'd be about expected of a slightly primadonna and egotistical teenager.
He can also wax bitter, cynical, and violent in a worse state or worse mood. There is the curious note that in most cases, as sadistic and violent as he can be at his worst, it's not really malice so much as lashing out and that he's a -WEAPON-; there's not a great deal of personal involvement in harming others, they just happen to be there and damaging them is a means to an end that is one he happens to be good at/was made for. Even his sadistic streak is fairly impersonal. He does have fairly good internal ability to recover from setbacks and traumas, and a habit of "survive/adapt" even when something does back him into a corner or end up hammering on nerves, at least.
Skills | Powers: Mukuro is very, very clever. For all his limits of experience, he's a very fast learner, incredibly observant, and good at both putting information together and reading between the lines; with a little more experience he's a natural and incredibly good spy, and he's already capable of some fairly scary feats of information gathering and gleaning from his surroundings, as well as tactical planning and Xanatos-gambit plotting. It's limited by his experience level and that he's not THAT great at "normal world" and "normal people".
He's a manipulative bastard. While there's definitely a distinct angle to it, he's very good at gauging people's goals, motives, fears, and personalities, guessing at how they're likely to react in a given situation, and not only planning for it, but setting things up to get them to jump to his advantage while making it look like it's their idea. The only thing gimping it really is the whole, CEEB issues, doesn't understand normal human wormbaby logic thing; he's got TALENT, but his skills are still a little blunt-instrument compared to the more actively insidious Mist users in the series. He does tend to do less "I'm going to try to seriously warp your psychology" and more "I'm going to predict how you react and push buttons to get you to do what I want".
He's a lying liar who lies and is incredibly good at it. It doesn't hurt that pretty much every time he breathes and speaks, and his entire outward persona, is a stitched together shell-game tangle of bits of truth, bits of lies, bits of what he wants people to believe, red herrings, and accurate information. He's got an EXCELLENT poker face, and under most circumstances it doesn't so much drop as briefly flicker or show varying intensity. It doesn't hurt that accurately displaying his emotions and reactions is one of those pathological defense mechanisms he couldn't stop if he tried.
He's damn good with the trident, staff, and in a fight in general; he's both got a decent amount of combat experience this-life, and apparently picked up some by osmosis from others, making him a very dangerous exception to the idea that taking away an illusionist's powers renders them weaker in a fight. In fact, he's been known to use that trope to his advantage for surprise value dropping into the Path of Asura.
He does have a very odd sort of pragmatic mental stability; it's not that he doesn't have moments where he can be a moody and unstable bastard, especially if the wrong triggers are hit, but he's generally good at mentally rolling with things and recovering his balance and footing. It's less being teflon and titanium that never scratches or has anything stick, and more like trying to stop a gyroscope - you might throw him off-balance and even push him far enough to completely lose control, but his instincts are to react in a way that'd mean surviving and escaping, and as long as he's surviving, he can eventually recover.
He has the kind of self control that's rarely seen in someone born and raised as a normal human worm baby, to the point that it almost becomes another one of those pathological things that doesn't really shut off. As moody and pissy as he can be, it takes a fairly bad corner to get him to actually lose control, and he dislikes and avoids it. It's only really been seen ONCE in the series, when he was cornered in the first big fight and facing being thrown in captivity himself for the first time since his escape from the labs. Just because he HAS violent tendencies and will happily act on them if he feels they're appropriate and he can get away with it, doesn't mean he's easily provoked; if anything, trying to provoke him will probably get him going more zen-calm just to piss you off and be contrary. This can make his mood swings all the more unpredictable, since you don't just have some of his occasionally alien logic to account for, but what he'll decide is a reaction he wants to have, if he's even going to act on it, and if he's going to act on it in the direction you expect.
He has sickening pain tolerance. He's been tortured and experimented on, literally sent to Hell, stuck in a sensory deprivation/stasis tank for months straight, gotten the shit beaten out of him, holes put in him, and generally been through damn near everything. He doesn't exactly enjoy pain, but it's something possibly a little too familiar; his pain tolerance is ridiculous, and he's used to picking up and toughing through/ignoring pain to an even more ridiculous extent.
And yes, he has picked up a bit of a "Hahahaha fuck you I've already been through worse so you can't touch me, but I'll destroy you for that on principle" complex about it that might make him seem a little masochistic sometimes.
He isn't overly sensitive in the "can sense things supernaturally" per se, but he does seem to have some ability to tell illusions from reality. It mostly seems to be very honed instinct and experience and self-training to judge differences between an actual presence and illusions. He also does have a bit of animal instinct sense for "something isn't right", but again, it doesn't seem to be anything unnatural so much as being observant and having good instincts honed by experience.
The majority of his powers come from the Six Paths; things he brought back via his time spent getting bounced around the incarnational cycle. While technically he can normally only use one at a time, it does seem like he's good enough to keep some small or ambient effects up when he's path switching, like maintaining Chrome's organs while doing other things. There IS a visual tell as to which Path he's using at any given time, in the form of a number-kanji mark in the unnatural red eye.
*-Path of Hell - The path with the strongest outright illusions. The end effect does depend somewhat on how much effort he puts into it, and it is a truism that there's a battle of wills involved and it's hypothetically possible to overcome it, but he's grown powerful enough that if he's really working at it, the illusions generated by the Path of Hell are almost less illusions and more temporary reality-warps. Sure, it stops being real once he stops putting will into it, but for the duration that it exists, it takes a great deal of will and effort to NOT be affected as if it were real. He's shown the ability from early on to pretty much turn an entire area into something he can play with like putty, shattering things into earthquakes, summoning strangling vines and pillars of fire, warping gravity, and otherwise making life interesting for anyone caught in it. It is limited to what he can see and be aware of; he can't generate illusions away from where he is. Once he lets go of it, it ceases to exist, although injuries caused by it if someone doesn't manage to fight it off are real and will persist.
He can't alter things in a way that would allow changing the layout of the area; if there's a wall there, it can't be walked through just because he makes it as if it isn't. (This has been used as a trap by another illusionist in series to get someone ELSE to slam into a wall.) If an illusion includes the floor dropping out, someone afflicted can get hurt from the "fall", but if they manage to snap out of it or he cancels it, they're still on the ground where they were and looking probably pretty silly. He could possibly generate some kind of weapon that could be aimed at a wall to try and put a hole in it (Make weapon, make it solid, use it to damage something real), but he couldn't just have the wall suddenly have a hole in it. He can't make things cease to exist - a real knife aimed at him is still a knife, and will cut even if it doesn't look like it's there, although he could either play displacer beast (get someone striking at an image of him that's not where he really is, or even at something else instead of him), or create something to serve as a barrier/way to block. If someone's managing to hold their own in the battle of wills enough to "disbelieve", his creations will have less effect, or even possibly none, although he has been known to use a "that's an illusion and I know it" to hide an actual physical weapon in the past.
Yes, it's kind of messy, and depending on how he uses it and who he's trying to use it on, can end up being either very powerful, or incredibly fragile and finicky.
Oh, also, since part of the power relies on his ability to put will and faith into his own illusions - outside of obvious things like the displacer beast tricks and "hide a weapon attack in an illusion" fakeouts, his illusions will be perfectly real to him, as psychologically contradictory as it sounds. While he probably couldn't do things like live off Path of Hell illusions for food and water, as all he'd be doing is fooling his body into thinking there was food/water, he IS capable of dealing with injuries by basically covering them with an illusion that all is well. It's dependent on him having power and focus for it, and in most cases is more useful for "get somewhere safe/to where it can be properly cared for", but he has had several months practice on Chrome with something as severe as replacing missing internal organs with illusory doubles. It also seems like a safe assumption that him seeming as healthy and able as he is after several months in the jar and Spade getting the shit kicked out of him is partly him playing self-affecting-illusions when he's out and about. This can be used on someone else easier than on himself, although anything interrupting the effect on that person or blocking his power will make it piff. Normal healing does seem to go on under the illusion, but it won't make up for a lack of treatment.
*- Path of Hungry Ghosts - Tied to his possession abilities; the Path of Hungry Ghosts allows him to use the abilities of whoever he's possessed. He doesn't retain them afterwards beyond maybe some kind of academic understanding, but it does mean that if he possesses someone, he has full use of their powers and skills while he's got their body.
*- Path of Beasts - Summoning and commanding animals. So far his favorite has been snakes. It can only call things that're existing in the area; he can't portal things in or anything, just call them over and make them do what he wants for the duration of the effect. It also likely only works on "Normal animals", and would fail on monsters, supernatural beasts, etc.
*-Path of Humans - Or That Thing You'll Probably Not See Much. While he professes that it's a reflection of how ugly and horrible the human state is, it actually seems to be something akin to a Dying Will state...
Which basically means amplifying all of his "Abused Weapon CEEB" traits and taking off all the mental and physical safeties. Ironically, this ends up being one of the more monstrous paths, as he's shown to end up with black patterns crossing his skin, fangs, slight claws, and basically turning into what seems to be a self-image-gone wrong. Besides the fact that he can rip things apart in this state and is basically a living weapon of mass destruction that's very hard to injure and stop, it DOES seem to shut down normal surface-consciousness controls, and tends to end up with a sadistic berserk state.
*-Path of Asura - Also marked by a visible mist-flame over his altered eye; pure physical-combat path - channeling the skills and power of one of the "vengeful gods/warring gods". Not quite the juggernaut the Path of Humans is, but still damn dangerous in a physical fight, and more given to tactical thinking and actual skill as opposed to ripping things apart and torturing them, as well as strengthening him a bit beyond normal human speed/strength.
*Path of Heaven - The possession/mind control Path, also the one he usually stays in. He can do suggestion-type effects with eye contact and some force of will, although anything this state is subject to the victim resisting and him needing to overcome them. It's also possible for him to extend this out into a controlled state where the victim is completely obedient or being blackout-puppeteered, although those can be interrupted or broken, and often take a bit of other work to set them up psychologically. He can potentially take over someone's body completely, but this is a drain on resources and usually requires leaving his own body unattended; he doesn't often use the possession end without resorting to the Possession Bullets to make it as easy as possible.
Note that all of these are a bit easier for him if he can get a connection via drawing blood with his trident/"staff"/weapon.
Either way, if some outside effect manages to break his control over an unwilling target before he's let go, he can't re-establish it; they basically get a sort of immunity short of him mentally/emotionally breaking them down for it to work, and the most he can do after that is a sort of psychic tug-on-sleeve-and-point.
*Possession Bullets - He probably only has two or three of these; they're the forbidden work of the Estraneo, based on the Dying Will bullets. They're also a great way to confuse the fuck out of someone after him, since they work via him shooting himself, and he does seem, for all intents and purposes, dead for the duration of the effect, blood and everything.
However, while he's out, he can take over anyone he's "Marked" and completely suppress their will without them getting a chance to fight him off; moreover, he can control more than one person at a time, and has used this to possess four people at once.
*Box Weapon/Vongola Gear - Now a single entity; in "dormant state" they're a pair of funny indigo dangle-earrings. He can summon the "Box Weapon" familiar, Mukurou the owl, from it at any time, and it is worth pointing out that yes, he has Marked the owl so that he can possess it or control it beyond the usual level of familiar-loyalty. It can also use his Mist flame as a catalyst for a weapon form, the owl shifting into a Buddhist Khakkhara staff with the usual chime-rings adorned with sharp points. The staff is controllable enough to use those points as weapons, or channel illusions to spear things on them; however, the main power is that while it's active, he's capable of using all six Paths at once without having to favor one or the other, with a bit of amplification.
Yes, this does take a lot of power, and if he uses it for too much, it'll be a one-shot fight and he'll be avoiding confrontations to recover afterwards.
Yes, he has potential to be powerful. His reserves are finite, however, so there is a limit to how much he can do, and he tends to play the Neuro gambit; he'll make occasional shows, but for the most part he's gauging how much force is necessary to deal with X problem as quickly as possible and not pushing further, trying to conserve power past what he needs to use, and avoiding things that might force him to use power when his reserves are recovering.
This means that, if allowed to play his usual games and keep some ability to control his involvement in a situation, he can make it look like he's got inexhaustible resources when really he's only putting solid pressure where it's needed and is trying to avoid overdoing it. If he does push it too far, he can wear himself out, even to the point of physical collapse, and sometimes frighteningly fast. It's worse if he's working through someone else's body; it's been canon-history that almost every time he's worked through Chrome for a fight, she's ended up collapsing and he's ended up 'out' for a while after. Also the illusions are finicky, particularly against anything resistant to them or anyone who knows what they are and is resisting; it takes more power for him to do anything in those cases, and can make it so that he doesn't really have much stamina at all for an extended fight. In a recent-chapter example (future to his canon point, but by only a few days), he was able to put two of the Vendice - which are both very powerful and highly resistant to illusions - down with something summoned via such...
However, that particular illusion had Chrome lending power to it (he couldn't do it alone), and was an all or nothing attack, taking enough of his reserves that he couldn't muster a second shot against the one that HADN'T gone down. Most of his extended fights that aren't against other illusionists end up using bait and switch tactics, the non-illusion paths, and fakeouts to trick people into accepting the illusion or mask weapons within things people have already resisted.
Also with the possessions, he does have to ditch his body; he can't be in his own body and others at the same time. Considering that his canon point is right after someone has used that against him to steal HIS body, he's … not too keen on the idea without a good reason, because it DOES leave his body vulnerable to not only physical harm but some other jackass that can possess things stealing it. Basically, the most likely situations he'd use it in are either his body being incapacitated for some reason anyway, or some kind of emergency coming up where he can't come up with a better option… and depending on who he has marked, if anyone, he might still just resort to the owl if his body's down, resulting in his power being basically limited to "boosting Chrome" and being able to talk, fly, and do normal owl things.
His canon point does make its other point of weakness; it's a bit too soon for him to be COMPLETELY recovered from several months in the tank, nevermind the way Spade got the shit beaten out of his body immediately following. While it's a fairly easy low-level illusion he can maintain and keep solidly "real" no matter what Path he's in, if anything cancels or interrupts his powers enough, he's ... well... thin, pale, weak, and would look a bit like death warmed over.
First Person Sample: [The video feed is on, but all that it's showing is black; it's also eerily quiet at first.]
How fascinating. [The tone is more drily sarcastic than anything, flat with thinly veiled irritation.]
And ... anticlimactic; I had grown accustomed to more... [That...also sounds like it's in a VERY small space.] Well, it wouldn't be Hell without being unable to truly die, I suppose, and in poor taste to complain. [Particularly when the "anticlimactic" was in his favor.]
Are there any unusual surprises, or am I simply expected to dig my way out?
[Yes, he is just much of a living corpse as anyone else that's just died, and no, he's not commenting yet; the buried casket is enough of an annoyance to leave the bad puns and vague sense of amusement that something decided to make his self-chosen "Corpse" name literal for when he's out of it.]
Third Person Sample: Exploring from normal ground level had started to get old; the endless sprawl of the living dead was dreary and not really yielding anything useful. He took a side detour down an alley and found a good, blank wall to cheat with, switching to the Path of Hell. A set of stone stairs emerged from the wall with a small shower of dust; no railings, just steps going up to where he could step off onto the roof, dismissing the illusion as soon as he'd reached it.
Navigating from the roofs via whatever was handy and a few similar tricks made it much easier to get a feel for the layout, and added that extra comfort of being mostly less visible; the walking dead didn't seem to look up any more than anyone else did, and other "guests" stuck out all the more in the mass.
Even that lost novelty eventually, leading to a bored illusionist perched on a tower overlooking the city, a flimsy "nothing to see here" making him less noticeable; it was an interesting view, possibly a good perch to remember for later, and enough to get more intrigued by a flicker of light and an odd whim. He hadn't picked up much of anything on the Greek lore except a few easier to absorb stories and a few fragments picked up when bored about other descriptions of the afterlife, but the rivers - well, for now, just the two "relatively" less hazardous ones - piqued his curiosity.
Styx was pristine, quiet...
And for all his occasional disregard for ceremony, he knew enough of where things were of real import in other realms to know better than to disturb it, as much as the greater object of his interest was the stretch between the two parallel rivers.
Then again, the way it flickered out now and then, maybe it was for the best that he couldn't get any closer; the river that burned the souls of the dead guilty of violence - and a few licks that seemed to almost be uselessly trying to get him closer.
It wouldn't be the first time he'd been through a 'Hell' of fire, but a lack of novelty didn't mean there was any desire to repeat it just yet; it was perversity more than nostalgia that led him to smile, and give the flaming river a small wave.
"Not today, I'm afraid... and maybe not ever." He chuckled. "I still have things yet to do; you'll have to be content with other poor fools."
Name: Birdy
Personal Journal:
kyanve_te_shirhanTime zone: Arizona
Contact: kyanve@gmail.com, shirhanblade @ AIM,
Current Characters: None!
|| Character Information ||
Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn
Name: Rokudou Mukurou
Canon Point: ~Chapter 349
History: The wiki sucks~ its link is here. I would sign up just to edit it, and fix grammar, and make sentences make logical sense, but I'm too lazy and it's not a huge priority, esp. since I might get tempted to move on to other articles and then collapse in a sobbing heap because I'm trying to rewrite an entire wiki apparently run by illiterate twelve-year-olds. I have a version of his history written out here.
Personality: One of the first, most important things to understand about Mukuro is that he is a lying liar who lies like a lying rug. Even on the rare occasions he says something truthful, he's still probably slanting or misrepresenting something. This means that, when trying to figure out what the Hell is going on in his head, nine times out of ten, he's the last person you should trust. He's a Mist User, and a damn good one in more ways than just raw power and illusions; his survival and existence is dependent on his skill in figuring out what other people are hiding while keeping his own secrets and leading other people astray about him and making them unsure what's true and what's a lie. One of his few lines that actually gives solid, useful insight is a moment of intimidation and theatrics - that the nature of Mist is "to hide the lies within the truth, and the truth within the lies".
He has a very practiced, reflexive, carefully constructed persona that is how he's almost always seen and known; calm, controlled, arrogant and aloof, he carries himself as a predator, something alien to humanity. Other people might be tolerated, but are, at best, pawns, only of value as long as he has some use for them. He has a god complex, a sense of pride in the power he gained from the experiments, and an unshakable belief that it's made him something greater than human. As much as he carries himself as above everything, he has no issues with violence; if anything, given a reason, he can be downright bloodthirsty, with an edge of the special kind of sadism reserved for someone whose power focuses on mindgames - playing with prey like a cat. He can be very affable and charismatic when he wants to be, but silly things like social ties, friendship, relationships, and morality are for mortal creatures, and he's above and beyond all of it. Moreover, that calm charisma isn't that he tries to put people at ease - it's more a matter of his own confidence; he can quote things like a desire to start world war three and drown the world in blood with calm, unwavering focus, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. If anything, it can be unsettling to outsiders - he's not at ease and affable because he's "friendly", he's at ease and affable because he is the larger predator and there's nothing you could do to touch him. The more he's pushed or challenged, the sharper and more visible his claws get, and the more blatantly predatory he becomes. Still, he's a Mist user - and banks everything on cunning, planning carefully and calculating out risks and tactics, control of the field, and the ego doesn't go to overconfidence and a lack of acknowledging and respecting an enemy's skills...
He's just sure he'll prove that he's better in the end.
At least, all of the above is what he projects to the world. If it were purely false, this would be simple, but that ends up running into that bit about Mist User logic, and that he's a VERY talented and clever Mist user; he's not stupid enough to think he can keep up a facade that's entirely made of lies, so it's less that there's layers between "facade" and reality", and more that his outward persona is a careful weaving of his actual personality with various defense mechanisms and bits of tactical posturing, so there isn't really such a thing as "dropping the act". To make matters more fun, depending on the situation and who he's talking to, he's perfectly happy to express opinions, goals, and motives where he'll say completely contradictory things within the same page, all with the same conviction, just for the sake of muddling the waters further. When he does express more than one opinion, not only is it necessary to unravel what he wants people to believe and what parts of it are "true", but then to chase a shell game of mixed puzzle pieces and stitch back together what bits of each thing he's said have what meaning(s) - and what he might be hiding or drawing attention away from. As much as his actions and what he actually commits to is easier than trying to puzzle out his intentions from what he says, even that has aspects of the shell game to it; his survival, and that of others around him, depends on his ability to fake people out, which means that even his actions have to be read over time, weighing what things have actual impact - and therefore are things that'd be towards one or another of his goals.
The short form? He is intentionally incredibly confusing, and will just about never be completely lying... or completely telling the truth. Anyone dealing with him has to be prepared to deal with the minefield, since even with the people that do register as "closer", he will keep up the same game; it's less that he lowers his guard, and more that he might occasionally drop hints and otherwise relies on the people "closer" to him to be able to decode what he really means and wants out of the mix of grey-shades of truth and lies.
That having been said, there's a few things that are fairly stable traits that can be reconstructed, and two things that're major foundations of his behavior.
The first is that he's a created being (CEEB) in most respects. Sure, he was naturally born, but nothing is known of his parents; he was given up for experiments to turn into a weapon for the Famiglia at an incredibly early age, and odds are good that he neither knows nor cares who his real parents are (beyond maybe that he'd happily kill them if he found them). His earliest memories are of the lab, and a great deal of time, work, and care was put into both the experiments on him and into trying to groom him to be a weapon. Whatever else may come, that much will never leave him - on some level, he is a weapon, something created to exist for a purpose, and his early childhood and formative years were something with pressures and patterns almost alien to a normal human being. It's established that before his powers stabilized, he was basically a "good little experiment" in most respects, if a bit unsettling - he's the one child that hadn't really stuck out beyond that nobody had ever heard his voice - meaning he'd never cried out, or gave any vocal reaction to anything.
And then he became the poster child for the Frankenstein principle - create something and abuse it, and it will turn on you; try to create a monster and you'll succeed.
They'd made him to be a weapon, and he was a very good weapon, even when he decided to turn on his creators; this still shows to this day in his mentality - he was molded to be something that would destroy problems, and there is still an element that, left to his own devices, his solution to threats, things that strike him as wrong, abuses, etc. is to find the source and kill it. As of his first appearance in the series, this had spiraled out of control impressively, going from "destroying his creators" - the Estraneo Famiglia - to "destroy the other people LIKE the creators/associated with them" - the Mafia and underworld in general - to "Destroy anyone who'd allow that kind of thing to go on/try to use it/abuse power" - an end goal of infiltrating world governments, bringing about World War III, and reducing the world to "a pure and beautiful sea of blood"... a plan that was also, as a side note, inherently self-destructive and a bit on the "take everything out with us" side. He DIDN'T have a lot of hope for an extended future beyond that, and he and the others were weirdly at peace with this; it's unsure if he's achieved picking up better long-term goals yet, or if he's still too unwilling to trust/rely on anything that WOULD be a stable place for them.
The only people that he'd taken with him that seemed to have any actual understanding of him were two of the other experiments, also the first people he'd ever spoken to; he'd rescued them from the labs, and taken them under wing, and they responded with the kind of almost unsettlingly unwavering loyalty that comes from being molded to be unable to function outside of certain patterns and given a "master" that actually has some understanding and offer of protection. There was a good long period where it was basically them vs. the world in all mentality, and nothing really did anything to disagree with that assessment; they lashed out at what they saw as threats or things like their creators, which led to the rest of the underworld seeing them as basically rabid loose weapons of mass destruction and turning further against them, which confirmed the idea that everything was, in fact, out to get them, or at best indifferent to the point of allowing abuses.
That "us against them" mentality and basic defensive cornered lab rat aspect is a big part of why there ISN'T a "drop the act". He might relax more genuinely around certain people that're "safe", but otherwise, everything is, on some level, assumed to be a potential threat and something he might have to protect himself and the others from, whether the person he's dealing with means to be threatening or not. This leads to an almost pathological complex about not showing weakness and maintaining at least the illusion that he has control over the situation and could destroy those around him at any moment; if you're not on a very short list, you're an Outsider, a threat, and not only will he be dealing with you as a Weapon and a predator, but he won't risk giving you ANYTHING that you or anyone else might be able to use against him. It's ingrained enough that, even at times when it might be to his advantage to do things like "ask for help", or where admitting that he does care about that short list in his own odd way would make someone less likely to see him as a monster, he won't do it; he might leave a hint dropped in here or there in the hopes another party is smart enough to catch it, but anything else would be leaving openings and the first reflex is to assume those openings will be used against him. Moreover, anything that'd make him dependent on someone else is going to be couched heavily in "it's to his advantage" terms; if he's not at least keeping up a show of being self-contained and perfectly capable without someone else, then that means whoever it is has leverage they could use against him.
If it sounds paranoid, it is, but it's less a delusional sort of paranoia and more a kind of wounded-animal reflex; him and his have been through enough with even well-meaning people not really managing to handle them or protect them (even if some of it was self-fulfilling prophecies) that it's habit. Other people = they WILL hurt you, no matter how nice and kind and well-intentioned they might be, and "protecting himself" from them is a necessity. Being the biggest, baddest predator means nobody else around can touch him or harm him. He's capable of recognizing when people are acting to his benefit, and it's possible to get him to slowly acknowledge that you're useful/not a threat/NOT going to harm him, but unless you have a way to quickly establish yourself as nonthreatening and completely in his service, it's going to be slow going. Even then, at best, the defense mechanisms will still be there; if he decides he likes you or that you're beneficial to him and nonthreatening, he'll still be making sure to occasionally drop reminders that yes, he's a predator, yes, he could kill you, and yes, he's only there because he chooses to be... for now.
This also means that getting him to admit he cares about someone is like trying to pull out his intestines through his mouth with a hooked wire and no restraints. For that short list, those people are the only ones he's let inside his defenses and the only stable thing in his world he can keep, and he's acutely aware that yes, there are people that would target them for being associated with him or use them against each other. Moreover, it's something where if he falls, they all go with him, something all of them are well aware of; as much as he protects them where he can, if it's necessary to put them at risk to protect the whole, he'll be relying on them to take care of themselves to some extent. And if anyone asks or fishes or tests? He cares nothing for them, they're pawns, they're expendable, he could exist just fine without them, and aiming at them will only piss him off because they're possessions, not because you'd be damaging something he cares about, so it's not even worth using them as bargaining chips or targets to bank-shot.
The insistence that he doesn't care is one of his few true lies; as much as he doesn't process close relationships the way a normal person would, if he does start getting attached to someone he gets very protective and possessive, and Daemon Spade has proven that this CAN be used against him in spite of his protests after using Chrome as bait for an obvious trap that Mukuro dove into. It's also one of the things he's most pathological about as defense mechanisms go - the more a given weakness can be used against him, the more he'll work to make sure it doesn't look like it exists.
It is worth nothing that there is slowly becoming more than one circle; there's the Short List - Ken, Chikusa, Chrome, Fran, and to a lesser extent MM - of people that're His, unquestionably, that he's the most possessive of. All of them are people that're, to some major degree, dependent upon him for survival/freedom, or people that've put themselves under his authority/ownership on some significant level. Basically, don't think you're ending up on the Short List unless you're someone he Owns.
Outside of that, there's a small, gradual, possible admission that maybe there's a few people that aren't completely out to get him that might be useful and good to keep around. This is still something that's very clearly pragmatically fueled; the Vongola 10th Gen, as much as they're connected to Mafia and therefore something where there's very blurry lines between them and "People just like Creators", are also the main thing standing between him and his people, and the continued retribution of the underworld and the Vendice. With the bargain he made, as long as he's keeping some foothold on being the Vongola Mist Guardian and helping protect the 10th Gen, him and his people are safe and allowed freedom; because of that, as much as there's protest and it's not something he's entirely comfortable with, he is actually reliable in his duty. There's a gradual possibility that they might manage to grow on him enough to register as "safe", but for now, that secondary circle is basically a place where, if achieved, you are probably somewhat confusing and not-sure-if-want, teetering in between "useful/safe" and "threat" where you're worth enough for him to want to keep you intact, but liable to get claw-batted at, tsun'ed at, and half avoided. (And if you manage to earn your way into that level and then either turn on him, or fail to hold up your proverbial end of the bargain, no God in heaven will save you, which is the "Truth" to the "bigger predator, I tolerate you and find your presence amusing and useful but mis-step and I will decorate with your entrails" bit of his persona.)
There's also authority issues inherent in this First Thing. He was a CEEB, kept in a box and experimented on and tortured because he only existed for a Purpose and he was told to be a good little weapon and be perfectly obedient, and escaping that fate took backlashing against it with incredible violence. Give him the slightest impression that there is a box, cage, intent to restrict or restrain him or his people, or that there will be Order imposed on him whether he wants it or not, and you will invoke that same backlash. It will be violent, it will be spectacular, and he will enjoy ripping you apart and playing in the bloody remains. The best you can get as far as "giving him orders" is setting up something where it's in his best interests to go along with it, being damn sure to maintain it being in his best interests, and avoid exerting force to pressure him into it; push and he will do things to prove that you can't control him and give warnings that trying will end with him slaughtering you. "Feral cat" is, again, an appropriate metaphor; the cat will generally not do tricks for you, and if you try to force it or take away its sense of ownership, it will shred your arms for trying. Give him enough of a sense of a lack of options and he's able to sit on the backlash and play along, but it'd be nearly impossible to do that without merely delaying the backlash until he feels like he can get away with it.
The extent of his "normal socialization" was a short stint of one Famiglia trying to adopt/rescue the kids; this ended spectacularly and bloodily, and registered to him more as a potential threat than anything. Outside of that, as much as he's watched and observed things where he can, he's been living with Ken and Chikusa, basically on the run with stints in underworld prisons. His experience with interpersonal relationships is stunted, warped, and bizarre; he might academically grasp other people's behavior, but he tends to function in a fairly cause-effect, behavioral response sense that's heavily couched in defense mechanisms. It's not that he doesn't have emotions or that he isn't capable of bonding to people...
It's that the way he expresses and processes emotions is off-kilter, normal is a setting on the dryer, and any connection to others has to first get filtered through a lack of positive experience and a ton of habits and defenses, and even then he's probably going through the motions to get what he wants rather than actually understanding the other person and responding to them with empathy/sympathy. Given that the people he's the closest with are all off-kilter themselves, it's hard to tell if he'll eventually be good with people ... or always be kind of a hyperpredatory freak.
The second big thing besides the horrible morass that is CEEB issues, is what, specifically, was done to him. There's canon history for the more powerful Mist users drawing on supernatural or unnatural forces, and to make him the most powerful weapon they could, he was repeatedly killed and revived, with the intent of punting him back and forth across the incarnational cycle until he brought bits of the other realms back; he's basically lived repeated incarnations all across the cycle of Samsara to get his powers, and expressed memory of them all.
This ends up being the source of the aloof, "above it all" inhuman sense; not even animalistic but alien - beyond being a weapon like Ken and Chikusa, he has all the less reason to identify as "human" for having his early years packed with an overloaded mosaic of different states of being. Considering that he does seem aware of some of the lore around said cycle, the "above it all" god complex is something that's grown out of what he's become; on some level he really ISN'T human anymore, but a human-incarnated channel for something that's transcended the normal boundaries of the cycle, packed into a little teenage CEEB-shaped box. Given the amount of Buddhist imagery in some of his illusions, it's safe to say he's pretty familiar with the faith that the cycle is described in. However, it's hard to tell if he's a fairly good Buddhist all things considered, or the closest the religion can get to a theistic Satanist equivalent. He certainly has a sense of morality but it's one that isn't tied to "normalcy" or any standards of society or worldly habit; on some level, his morality is trying to dance to a "Higher law", and one where concepts like "good" and "evil" are tools, shades of grey and things to be played off each other. If it suits his goals and his sensibilities, he can be perfectly compassionate and protective, or intensely sadistic and cruel, and flicker between them without much warning as it seems necessary to him, and he does certainly seem to try to hold emotions and sentiment as something to weigh against other things and not rely on.
Or at least, he tries to, and would certainly love for everyone to believe it; he does have a ridiculous amount of self-control when he wants to, and a strong will. Moreover, some of the Buddhist tenets, particularly Zen sect, of seeking clarity and attempting to let go of delusions and preconceived notions are something that seems to seep into his behavior and perceptions. For all of his complexes, he's self-aware, and in a pinch will acknowledge or point out things with a good degree of clarity and insight, as well as a sense of weighing objective reality versus subjective impressions. Of course, this is also something that feeds into him being a Mist User at heart, as part of the purpose of a mist user is to be able to see through the deceptions, motives, and biases of others clearly, while being able to conceal what's important for self and those around them. It is still something that seems significant that, where most of the Tenth Gen has gotten at least an echo and reference to their First Gen counterpart's weapons in their last evolution of the Vongola Gear, his weapon isn't anything associated with Spade at all, but rather a khakkara - a Buddhist monk's staff. (Nevermind that a favorite recurring weapon/theme are lotuses and lotus vines, Buddhist symbols of transcendence, truth, and purity.)
Through all of this, it's worth noting that he is a teenager, as much as the experiments and extra lives make him seem older. All of this is still filtered through a person who has fifteen years at most of practical, direct experience with the world they're interacting with, and fifteen years in the current incarnation and body however much they might remember of other lives. He's very calculating and cunning, and incredibly mature for his age, but there's still times where he can act on whim or impulse, there is a temper that can be provoked, he lacks experience with a lot of things he won't want to admit to, and compared to his first-gen predecessor, he's not always the most subtle thing for a Mist Guardian. There's even times, with the Kokuyo gang, where he almost achieves a sense of "normalcy" or behavior that'd be about expected of a slightly primadonna and egotistical teenager.
He can also wax bitter, cynical, and violent in a worse state or worse mood. There is the curious note that in most cases, as sadistic and violent as he can be at his worst, it's not really malice so much as lashing out and that he's a -WEAPON-; there's not a great deal of personal involvement in harming others, they just happen to be there and damaging them is a means to an end that is one he happens to be good at/was made for. Even his sadistic streak is fairly impersonal. He does have fairly good internal ability to recover from setbacks and traumas, and a habit of "survive/adapt" even when something does back him into a corner or end up hammering on nerves, at least.
Skills | Powers: Mukuro is very, very clever. For all his limits of experience, he's a very fast learner, incredibly observant, and good at both putting information together and reading between the lines; with a little more experience he's a natural and incredibly good spy, and he's already capable of some fairly scary feats of information gathering and gleaning from his surroundings, as well as tactical planning and Xanatos-gambit plotting. It's limited by his experience level and that he's not THAT great at "normal world" and "normal people".
He's a manipulative bastard. While there's definitely a distinct angle to it, he's very good at gauging people's goals, motives, fears, and personalities, guessing at how they're likely to react in a given situation, and not only planning for it, but setting things up to get them to jump to his advantage while making it look like it's their idea. The only thing gimping it really is the whole, CEEB issues, doesn't understand normal human wormbaby logic thing; he's got TALENT, but his skills are still a little blunt-instrument compared to the more actively insidious Mist users in the series. He does tend to do less "I'm going to try to seriously warp your psychology" and more "I'm going to predict how you react and push buttons to get you to do what I want".
He's a lying liar who lies and is incredibly good at it. It doesn't hurt that pretty much every time he breathes and speaks, and his entire outward persona, is a stitched together shell-game tangle of bits of truth, bits of lies, bits of what he wants people to believe, red herrings, and accurate information. He's got an EXCELLENT poker face, and under most circumstances it doesn't so much drop as briefly flicker or show varying intensity. It doesn't hurt that accurately displaying his emotions and reactions is one of those pathological defense mechanisms he couldn't stop if he tried.
He's damn good with the trident, staff, and in a fight in general; he's both got a decent amount of combat experience this-life, and apparently picked up some by osmosis from others, making him a very dangerous exception to the idea that taking away an illusionist's powers renders them weaker in a fight. In fact, he's been known to use that trope to his advantage for surprise value dropping into the Path of Asura.
He does have a very odd sort of pragmatic mental stability; it's not that he doesn't have moments where he can be a moody and unstable bastard, especially if the wrong triggers are hit, but he's generally good at mentally rolling with things and recovering his balance and footing. It's less being teflon and titanium that never scratches or has anything stick, and more like trying to stop a gyroscope - you might throw him off-balance and even push him far enough to completely lose control, but his instincts are to react in a way that'd mean surviving and escaping, and as long as he's surviving, he can eventually recover.
He has the kind of self control that's rarely seen in someone born and raised as a normal human worm baby, to the point that it almost becomes another one of those pathological things that doesn't really shut off. As moody and pissy as he can be, it takes a fairly bad corner to get him to actually lose control, and he dislikes and avoids it. It's only really been seen ONCE in the series, when he was cornered in the first big fight and facing being thrown in captivity himself for the first time since his escape from the labs. Just because he HAS violent tendencies and will happily act on them if he feels they're appropriate and he can get away with it, doesn't mean he's easily provoked; if anything, trying to provoke him will probably get him going more zen-calm just to piss you off and be contrary. This can make his mood swings all the more unpredictable, since you don't just have some of his occasionally alien logic to account for, but what he'll decide is a reaction he wants to have, if he's even going to act on it, and if he's going to act on it in the direction you expect.
He has sickening pain tolerance. He's been tortured and experimented on, literally sent to Hell, stuck in a sensory deprivation/stasis tank for months straight, gotten the shit beaten out of him, holes put in him, and generally been through damn near everything. He doesn't exactly enjoy pain, but it's something possibly a little too familiar; his pain tolerance is ridiculous, and he's used to picking up and toughing through/ignoring pain to an even more ridiculous extent.
And yes, he has picked up a bit of a "Hahahaha fuck you I've already been through worse so you can't touch me, but I'll destroy you for that on principle" complex about it that might make him seem a little masochistic sometimes.
He isn't overly sensitive in the "can sense things supernaturally" per se, but he does seem to have some ability to tell illusions from reality. It mostly seems to be very honed instinct and experience and self-training to judge differences between an actual presence and illusions. He also does have a bit of animal instinct sense for "something isn't right", but again, it doesn't seem to be anything unnatural so much as being observant and having good instincts honed by experience.
The majority of his powers come from the Six Paths; things he brought back via his time spent getting bounced around the incarnational cycle. While technically he can normally only use one at a time, it does seem like he's good enough to keep some small or ambient effects up when he's path switching, like maintaining Chrome's organs while doing other things. There IS a visual tell as to which Path he's using at any given time, in the form of a number-kanji mark in the unnatural red eye.
*-Path of Hell - The path with the strongest outright illusions. The end effect does depend somewhat on how much effort he puts into it, and it is a truism that there's a battle of wills involved and it's hypothetically possible to overcome it, but he's grown powerful enough that if he's really working at it, the illusions generated by the Path of Hell are almost less illusions and more temporary reality-warps. Sure, it stops being real once he stops putting will into it, but for the duration that it exists, it takes a great deal of will and effort to NOT be affected as if it were real. He's shown the ability from early on to pretty much turn an entire area into something he can play with like putty, shattering things into earthquakes, summoning strangling vines and pillars of fire, warping gravity, and otherwise making life interesting for anyone caught in it. It is limited to what he can see and be aware of; he can't generate illusions away from where he is. Once he lets go of it, it ceases to exist, although injuries caused by it if someone doesn't manage to fight it off are real and will persist.
He can't alter things in a way that would allow changing the layout of the area; if there's a wall there, it can't be walked through just because he makes it as if it isn't. (This has been used as a trap by another illusionist in series to get someone ELSE to slam into a wall.) If an illusion includes the floor dropping out, someone afflicted can get hurt from the "fall", but if they manage to snap out of it or he cancels it, they're still on the ground where they were and looking probably pretty silly. He could possibly generate some kind of weapon that could be aimed at a wall to try and put a hole in it (Make weapon, make it solid, use it to damage something real), but he couldn't just have the wall suddenly have a hole in it. He can't make things cease to exist - a real knife aimed at him is still a knife, and will cut even if it doesn't look like it's there, although he could either play displacer beast (get someone striking at an image of him that's not where he really is, or even at something else instead of him), or create something to serve as a barrier/way to block. If someone's managing to hold their own in the battle of wills enough to "disbelieve", his creations will have less effect, or even possibly none, although he has been known to use a "that's an illusion and I know it" to hide an actual physical weapon in the past.
Yes, it's kind of messy, and depending on how he uses it and who he's trying to use it on, can end up being either very powerful, or incredibly fragile and finicky.
Oh, also, since part of the power relies on his ability to put will and faith into his own illusions - outside of obvious things like the displacer beast tricks and "hide a weapon attack in an illusion" fakeouts, his illusions will be perfectly real to him, as psychologically contradictory as it sounds. While he probably couldn't do things like live off Path of Hell illusions for food and water, as all he'd be doing is fooling his body into thinking there was food/water, he IS capable of dealing with injuries by basically covering them with an illusion that all is well. It's dependent on him having power and focus for it, and in most cases is more useful for "get somewhere safe/to where it can be properly cared for", but he has had several months practice on Chrome with something as severe as replacing missing internal organs with illusory doubles. It also seems like a safe assumption that him seeming as healthy and able as he is after several months in the jar and Spade getting the shit kicked out of him is partly him playing self-affecting-illusions when he's out and about. This can be used on someone else easier than on himself, although anything interrupting the effect on that person or blocking his power will make it piff. Normal healing does seem to go on under the illusion, but it won't make up for a lack of treatment.
*- Path of Hungry Ghosts - Tied to his possession abilities; the Path of Hungry Ghosts allows him to use the abilities of whoever he's possessed. He doesn't retain them afterwards beyond maybe some kind of academic understanding, but it does mean that if he possesses someone, he has full use of their powers and skills while he's got their body.
*- Path of Beasts - Summoning and commanding animals. So far his favorite has been snakes. It can only call things that're existing in the area; he can't portal things in or anything, just call them over and make them do what he wants for the duration of the effect. It also likely only works on "Normal animals", and would fail on monsters, supernatural beasts, etc.
*-Path of Humans - Or That Thing You'll Probably Not See Much. While he professes that it's a reflection of how ugly and horrible the human state is, it actually seems to be something akin to a Dying Will state...
Which basically means amplifying all of his "Abused Weapon CEEB" traits and taking off all the mental and physical safeties. Ironically, this ends up being one of the more monstrous paths, as he's shown to end up with black patterns crossing his skin, fangs, slight claws, and basically turning into what seems to be a self-image-gone wrong. Besides the fact that he can rip things apart in this state and is basically a living weapon of mass destruction that's very hard to injure and stop, it DOES seem to shut down normal surface-consciousness controls, and tends to end up with a sadistic berserk state.
*-Path of Asura - Also marked by a visible mist-flame over his altered eye; pure physical-combat path - channeling the skills and power of one of the "vengeful gods/warring gods". Not quite the juggernaut the Path of Humans is, but still damn dangerous in a physical fight, and more given to tactical thinking and actual skill as opposed to ripping things apart and torturing them, as well as strengthening him a bit beyond normal human speed/strength.
*Path of Heaven - The possession/mind control Path, also the one he usually stays in. He can do suggestion-type effects with eye contact and some force of will, although anything this state is subject to the victim resisting and him needing to overcome them. It's also possible for him to extend this out into a controlled state where the victim is completely obedient or being blackout-puppeteered, although those can be interrupted or broken, and often take a bit of other work to set them up psychologically. He can potentially take over someone's body completely, but this is a drain on resources and usually requires leaving his own body unattended; he doesn't often use the possession end without resorting to the Possession Bullets to make it as easy as possible.
Note that all of these are a bit easier for him if he can get a connection via drawing blood with his trident/"staff"/weapon.
Either way, if some outside effect manages to break his control over an unwilling target before he's let go, he can't re-establish it; they basically get a sort of immunity short of him mentally/emotionally breaking them down for it to work, and the most he can do after that is a sort of psychic tug-on-sleeve-and-point.
*Possession Bullets - He probably only has two or three of these; they're the forbidden work of the Estraneo, based on the Dying Will bullets. They're also a great way to confuse the fuck out of someone after him, since they work via him shooting himself, and he does seem, for all intents and purposes, dead for the duration of the effect, blood and everything.
However, while he's out, he can take over anyone he's "Marked" and completely suppress their will without them getting a chance to fight him off; moreover, he can control more than one person at a time, and has used this to possess four people at once.
*Box Weapon/Vongola Gear - Now a single entity; in "dormant state" they're a pair of funny indigo dangle-earrings. He can summon the "Box Weapon" familiar, Mukurou the owl, from it at any time, and it is worth pointing out that yes, he has Marked the owl so that he can possess it or control it beyond the usual level of familiar-loyalty. It can also use his Mist flame as a catalyst for a weapon form, the owl shifting into a Buddhist Khakkhara staff with the usual chime-rings adorned with sharp points. The staff is controllable enough to use those points as weapons, or channel illusions to spear things on them; however, the main power is that while it's active, he's capable of using all six Paths at once without having to favor one or the other, with a bit of amplification.
Yes, this does take a lot of power, and if he uses it for too much, it'll be a one-shot fight and he'll be avoiding confrontations to recover afterwards.
Yes, he has potential to be powerful. His reserves are finite, however, so there is a limit to how much he can do, and he tends to play the Neuro gambit; he'll make occasional shows, but for the most part he's gauging how much force is necessary to deal with X problem as quickly as possible and not pushing further, trying to conserve power past what he needs to use, and avoiding things that might force him to use power when his reserves are recovering.
This means that, if allowed to play his usual games and keep some ability to control his involvement in a situation, he can make it look like he's got inexhaustible resources when really he's only putting solid pressure where it's needed and is trying to avoid overdoing it. If he does push it too far, he can wear himself out, even to the point of physical collapse, and sometimes frighteningly fast. It's worse if he's working through someone else's body; it's been canon-history that almost every time he's worked through Chrome for a fight, she's ended up collapsing and he's ended up 'out' for a while after. Also the illusions are finicky, particularly against anything resistant to them or anyone who knows what they are and is resisting; it takes more power for him to do anything in those cases, and can make it so that he doesn't really have much stamina at all for an extended fight. In a recent-chapter example (future to his canon point, but by only a few days), he was able to put two of the Vendice - which are both very powerful and highly resistant to illusions - down with something summoned via such...
However, that particular illusion had Chrome lending power to it (he couldn't do it alone), and was an all or nothing attack, taking enough of his reserves that he couldn't muster a second shot against the one that HADN'T gone down. Most of his extended fights that aren't against other illusionists end up using bait and switch tactics, the non-illusion paths, and fakeouts to trick people into accepting the illusion or mask weapons within things people have already resisted.
Also with the possessions, he does have to ditch his body; he can't be in his own body and others at the same time. Considering that his canon point is right after someone has used that against him to steal HIS body, he's … not too keen on the idea without a good reason, because it DOES leave his body vulnerable to not only physical harm but some other jackass that can possess things stealing it. Basically, the most likely situations he'd use it in are either his body being incapacitated for some reason anyway, or some kind of emergency coming up where he can't come up with a better option… and depending on who he has marked, if anyone, he might still just resort to the owl if his body's down, resulting in his power being basically limited to "boosting Chrome" and being able to talk, fly, and do normal owl things.
His canon point does make its other point of weakness; it's a bit too soon for him to be COMPLETELY recovered from several months in the tank, nevermind the way Spade got the shit beaten out of his body immediately following. While it's a fairly easy low-level illusion he can maintain and keep solidly "real" no matter what Path he's in, if anything cancels or interrupts his powers enough, he's ... well... thin, pale, weak, and would look a bit like death warmed over.
First Person Sample: [The video feed is on, but all that it's showing is black; it's also eerily quiet at first.]
How fascinating. [The tone is more drily sarcastic than anything, flat with thinly veiled irritation.]
And ... anticlimactic; I had grown accustomed to more... [That...also sounds like it's in a VERY small space.] Well, it wouldn't be Hell without being unable to truly die, I suppose, and in poor taste to complain. [Particularly when the "anticlimactic" was in his favor.]
Are there any unusual surprises, or am I simply expected to dig my way out?
[Yes, he is just much of a living corpse as anyone else that's just died, and no, he's not commenting yet; the buried casket is enough of an annoyance to leave the bad puns and vague sense of amusement that something decided to make his self-chosen "Corpse" name literal for when he's out of it.]
Third Person Sample: Exploring from normal ground level had started to get old; the endless sprawl of the living dead was dreary and not really yielding anything useful. He took a side detour down an alley and found a good, blank wall to cheat with, switching to the Path of Hell. A set of stone stairs emerged from the wall with a small shower of dust; no railings, just steps going up to where he could step off onto the roof, dismissing the illusion as soon as he'd reached it.
Navigating from the roofs via whatever was handy and a few similar tricks made it much easier to get a feel for the layout, and added that extra comfort of being mostly less visible; the walking dead didn't seem to look up any more than anyone else did, and other "guests" stuck out all the more in the mass.
Even that lost novelty eventually, leading to a bored illusionist perched on a tower overlooking the city, a flimsy "nothing to see here" making him less noticeable; it was an interesting view, possibly a good perch to remember for later, and enough to get more intrigued by a flicker of light and an odd whim. He hadn't picked up much of anything on the Greek lore except a few easier to absorb stories and a few fragments picked up when bored about other descriptions of the afterlife, but the rivers - well, for now, just the two "relatively" less hazardous ones - piqued his curiosity.
Styx was pristine, quiet...
And for all his occasional disregard for ceremony, he knew enough of where things were of real import in other realms to know better than to disturb it, as much as the greater object of his interest was the stretch between the two parallel rivers.
Then again, the way it flickered out now and then, maybe it was for the best that he couldn't get any closer; the river that burned the souls of the dead guilty of violence - and a few licks that seemed to almost be uselessly trying to get him closer.
It wouldn't be the first time he'd been through a 'Hell' of fire, but a lack of novelty didn't mean there was any desire to repeat it just yet; it was perversity more than nostalgia that led him to smile, and give the flaming river a small wave.
"Not today, I'm afraid... and maybe not ever." He chuckled. "I still have things yet to do; you'll have to be content with other poor fools."
