Launch Day for the Second Star

Today is the day. At 1 PM EST I will post the first chapters of the Second Star Saga. But for today's post I'll be sharing a bit more on characters.A bit of a long post, lots of info.
One of the early characters of importance to my story is named Theodore Rush. He is an American ex-soldier who is currently working as an agent with the CIA.His job often takes him from his south Florida home as he investigates any number of matters for the agency. At the start of the story, he and his partner, Robert Andino, are investigating the case of a wanted member of a now defunct international criminal organization who turns up dead under mysterious circumstances in Japan. Rush and Andino appear much throughout the story, investigating a number of unusual incidents around the world as instructed by the CIA.

Now, as I mentioned yesterday there are a number of characters within this story whose inspiration came not from something as clear as an anime story behind them, but merely an image. A lot of the images I end up using for reference come from a website called danbooru.donmai.us. The following characters are based on images I came across on that site. In all but one case the name of the characters comes from the name of the artist as listed on that site (usually their pixiv ID if you're familiar with pixiv).

Within this story are a group of people who are referred to as Irregulars. They are very rare individuals who have been discovered to have supernatural abilities. For the most part, while claims of their abilities have been denied in public, many governments, including the US and Russia, have been searching out the individuals and taking them in for research. Kagome and Miyu are such individuals.

Kagome is one of the stronger of the irregulars. She is tall, has purple eyes and hair, and wears frilly and somewhat aristocratic dresses in a sort of Gothic Lolita fashion. She is usually with a black umbrella opened over her left shoulder and a cigarette on her lips, a disinterested expression on her face. Her specialty as an irregular is in fire. She usually carries around a gold lighter, those who are somewhat aware of her abilities mistakenly expecting that this is needed as a trigger for her powers to work. However, she can create her own flames. The lighter is a memento from her older brother who was killed when she was young. He carried the same lighter and like her could often be found with a cigarette on his lips. He had apparently gotten in the way when it was first discovered that Kagome had potential as an irregular and was forcefully taken from her home. Having already taken her revenge for that incident, she mostly does whatever she wants now, seeing no point in setting a goal for herself, but disliking the idea of dying. She says that because she doesn’t like the idea of dying, she will use her powers however she sees fit to when she is threatened and will not show enemies any mercy. While she seems very cold and distant most of the time, it’s interesting that she has come to own a black cat, a stray she apparently picked up somewhere. She named it Mr. Haineko Kuroi, a rough translation meaning black ash cat.

Miyu Matsunohara is a half-vampire irregular working and living in Japan. As most if not all purebloods are already extinct, Miyu represents the last of her kind to an extent. She neither has the powers a real vampire would have, nor suffers the ailments they do. She can’t fly. Her strength is substantial, but not overwhelming. She wears glasses so it’s not as if she has amazing eyesight, though she can see in the dark. She doesn’t need to drink blood to survive, though she will sometimes crave it if she is otherwise hungry or thirsty. Her ability to recover from injury is better than most, but she cannot regenerate rapidly, thus she suspects she can be killed. She has increased senses of smell and hearing, and has superb agility.

Miyu tends to be a very direct person. She will get straight to the point on any issue, sometimes making her seem insensitive in a delicate situation. She has no physical aversion to sunlight, but has noted that since being turned into a half-vampire she tends to prefer cloudy days or nighttime to be active over sunny days. She has a very “refined” appetite. Because her senses have been enhanced, she dislikes food that smells bad or doesn’t taste right, including onion, garlic, fermented foods of any kind, etc. An acquaintance once mentions that this is a little odd, and likely a byproduct of her not having to drink blood (vampires tend to find little to no taste at all in any food since they only have a taste for blood). Overall Miyu dislikes having to move around and says she would be a hikikomori if it weren’t that she needed to earn a living to support herself. She works as a part-time teacher, though due to her nature she tends to be thought of as a way too relaxed instructor whenever she’s in a classroom. Her other job is as a librarian. She says she isn’t that fond of reading, but likes libraries because they’re cool and dark most of the time, although some wonder what kind of library she works at that is dark. 

Because she doesn’t age, few seem to know how old she might be. She doesn’t like to talk about her past, usually ignoring questions or changing the subject when someone starts asking her about how she became a half-vampire. It is a further mystery how one becomes only half-vampire in the first place. Since the last full-blood vampire was thought to have been killed more than two centuries ago, it would suggest that Miyu is somewhere around that old at least.

Yagisaka Lavolpe is a new teacher at the school attended by Anastasia and Serina. She started at the school at the start of the new term (the start of the story). She is known by both students and faculty as being rather level-headed and competent at her duties. She is known to be very well liked by most students who interact with her and tries to be outwardly friendly with her students, sometimes to the criticism of her fellow faculty members who think she is being too close to her students. She somewhat infamously takes the place of a student in a school drama club presentation when the student falls ill shortly before the performance is to begin. The play was written by a student. It was about a teacher who was secretly a gun-totting superhero protecting the town where her school was. She was very convincing. She is also known for having a rather voracious appetite, allegedly caught sneaking food between classes on a couple occasions. Little else is known about her personally. For all of her pleasant qualities and friendliness, it doesn't seem she interacts with her colleagues outside of the school. 

Long ago when the Romanovs dynasty was at its infancy, Anastasia Romanovna Zakharyina-Yurieva had come to be familiar with two animal spirits, one of whom was an Inari. The Inari would eventually come to be a guardian of the family, so long as the Romanovs chose to acknowledge its power. 

When in its normal animal form, the Inari is a fox with shimmering golden fur and a soft, fluffy, tail. It is known in particular for its speed and agility. It can also take a human form at will. It explains that it chooses black hair to be less noticeable in public since it would normally have hair as light as it does as a fox. The Inari now also wears a patch over her left eye, partly covered by her hair. It covers an injury sustained at the hands of Rasputin not long before the Romanov dynasty fell. As an Inari, it requires devotion of believers. At the time, the Romanovs had been made to doubt the Inari and it became weaker. Without its power it fell into a trap by Rasputin and lost the sight in its left eye. It doesn’t have the power needed to recover, and it has been so long now that the eye is all but irreparable without a tremendous amount of power. The Inari notes that eyes have a substantial amount of power, thus by having lost an eye it is effectively half as strong as it once was. Even so, it is still quite powerful. Supposedly the Inari and its counterpart have the means to discern with certainty if one is descended from the Romanovs or not. 

At the time the Inari met Anastasia Romanovna, it was quite a trickster, its favorite pastime being contests of wits with its wolf counterpart. She has since become more “refined” and though still quite a prankster, she is much more careful about who and when she plays pranks. She has come to be much more composed and tends to enjoy simple pleasures such as lazing in the sun. She has also come to very much enjoy drinking. She prefers her more native vodka over the nihonshu introduced to her. Since the vodka tends to get her drunk much quicker, it's believed Inari just likes to get drunk for the sake of getting drunk, though Inari claims it just likes the taste better.

Well then, those are the characters I've borrowed from various artists - Kagome/Traumatize, Miyu/Matsunohara, Yagisaka Seto, and Konshin. As you may notice I've linked to the respective artist's collections on danbooru. I forewarn that some content on that site is "not work appropriate" or something you may not want kids to see, so unless you are of appropriate maturity, don't click the links. Don't worry, the story itself is PG.

Yes, I do realize Inari technically has cat ears. I was originally going to go the cat route because I liked her design, even if it is a little bit generic, but setting up a backstory proved a little troublesome. It was simply a more natural fit to have a wolf and fox than a pair of leopards or something along those lines. What's more there is a bit of an old fairy tale that i draw upon for the setup of the two. 

That's everything you'll need to get started on this new story. I'll be keeping an eye out for ways to keep making it better. But, I'll be taking a break next week for the holiday. No posts (except a greeting on Turkey Day), so I won't be back until about the 3rd of December. I'll be preparing a special picture for that return as well. Until then, take it easy!