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OOC ☂ THEIAN NIGHTS APP
Player Name: Wind
Player Age: 27
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shogunsensual
Character Name: Kamui
Character Canon: Gintama
Character Age: 18
History: Kamui's wiki page only covers through the Shogun Assassination Arc, so I will provide his more recent history here.
After fleeing Earth, Kamui led the Seventh Division in fending off their Harusame pursuers. They moved to capture an enemy stronghold ship, but it wound up being a trap. Half of Kamui's men were killed by his own father, hired by their enemy's leader Utsuro, but when Kamui and Umibouzu charged at each other, the already ransacked stronghold burst. Kamui disappeared into the darkness of space.
He did not reappear until Takasugi Shinsuke took a fatal fall on the planet Rakuyou, where Kamui's Seventh Division and Takasugi's Kiheitai had agreed to meet if they were separated. He saved Takasugi's life but didn't stick around. With the silent assertion that they were now even, he left to deal with his own matters: namely his father.
Once he found his target, he issued his showy challenge. The fight began with Kamui dropping an entire cliff on Umibouzu and only got more intense from there. Despite that a war was raging around them, the two members of the Yato clan became absorbed only with killing each other. They would have succeeded too, if Kamui's younger sister Kagura hadn't stopped them.
Not thrilled with the interruption, Kamui turned his wrath on Kagura, leaving Umibouzu to agonize over his children destroying each other. Umibouzu believed that the only responsible thing to do after bringing a monster like Kamui into the world was to kill Kamui himself. However, when the main antagonist Utsuro made his move to kill Kamui first, Umibouzu shoved both of his children out of the way. In the end, he couldn't stand to watch his children die. Kamui and Kagura fell along with the landslide caused by Umibouzu and Utsuro's powerful confrontation.
In the valley where they fell, Kamui told Kagura why he left home so many years ago. As a child, he'd learned that their mother was dying because she could only live with the support of the Altana from her home planet. Umibouzu took her away from that planet so that they could marry and have a family. Thus, Kamui had determined, the only way to save his mother was to cast aside his family and take her back to her home world by force. In order to do this, Kamui tried to kill his father and failed. Knowing he couldn't remain with his family after that, he ran away with the Harusame Space Pirates. With this explanation, he asked Kagura to let him go as killing Umibouzu was all he had left. He buried her under a pile of boulders and left.
Upon returning to the battlefield, Kamui saw that his father had lost to Utsuro. Enraged that someone had gotten to Umibouzu first, Kamui charged his dying father only to be stopped by Gintoki.
Kamui still refused to leave Umibouzu be, so Gintoki grabbed the fallen warrior and headbutted him back into the ground. With that, he proclaimed himself as the one who defeated Umibouzu, antagonizing Kamui into fighting him instead. Kamui did not hold back, throwing all of his anger at Gintoki. The fact that Gintoki never wavered despite that he was losing disturbed Kamui, and he sensed that Gintoki was putting his strength into fighting someone else entirely. He asked who Gintoki was really fighting. Gintoki told him he was fighting himself, something Kamui was running away from. Kamui did not like that.
The vengeful Yato warrior had given up everything for strength. The idea that there was a sentimental part of himself that he could not throw away, that this sentimental part of himself was why he couldn't win, was too much for him to take. Kamui lost control of his Yato blood, forfeiting all reason and purpose. It took Gintoki, Kagura, Shinpachi, and Abuto to hold off his senseless onslaught long enough for him to regain his senses, but even their combined efforts could not stop him. Only once Kamui won the fight against himself and accepted that there was a part of him he cherished even more than strength did the battle end.
Kamui and Kagura threw one last punch at each other, but when it came down to it, Kamui could not kill the little sister he'd once promised his father he'd protect. His punch missed, and the two broken siblings collapsed into each other's arms.
A large faction of the Harusame space pirates, including three division leaders, approached after the fight had finished. They claimed that seeing the protagonists recklessly challenge Utsuro and his vast armies made them realize they were on the wrong side of the fight. Pirates were meant to defy the status quo, not enforce it, and the ragtag group fighting Utsuro looked a great deal more free than any of them. Despite that Kamui was lying on the ground beaten and broken, they would rather follow him than the mighty Utsuro. Kamui left Rakuyou with them, proclaiming that he'd never lose again, especially not to himself.
If he couldn't do that much, he could never face his family again.
While Utsuro's faction came together and surrounded planet Earth, Kamui did the opposite. He ordered his men on a wild rampage, taking out the enemy's forces everywhere else. He didn't return to Earth until the last minute, when planet-wide destruction was imminent.
After he and his men crashed through Utsuro's defenses and landed on Earth, Kamui met Gintoki and was pointed in Kagura's direction. He swiftly moved to save his sister from her attackers. He and Kagura shared a brief moment of mutual encouragement, during which Kamui asserted that he would help them save Earth, but afterward he'd be ready to defeat her anytime.
This camaraderie lasted for a whole two minutes. Kamui and Kagura's team up against the leader of their attackers, dubbed the Eldest, quickly devolved into the two siblings beating on each other instead. Their petty squabbles should have put them at a disadvantage in the fight, but in true Yato family fashion, they started using the Eldest as a projectile weapon against each other. The Eldest's poor crotch was thoroughly abused in the process, as the ruthless siblings seemed to aim there with every single hit. Eventually, they grew bored with him and finished him off with a combined strike.
The most surprising thing about the entire conflict, however, was that after the battle, Kamui reassured Kagura and their enemies that he had not killed the Eldest. Nothing had changed, he insisted; he just had no use for the weak. He had his eyes on a bigger prize.
When Kamui moved to attack Kagura for real, Gintoki finally arrived to scold him and put a stop to it. In a characteristically dramatic display, Kamui agreed to be patient so long as Gintoki, Kagura, and his other targets made sure not to die in the upcoming battles.
They all leaped into the fray, fighting for Earth together.
Canon Point: During chapter 637, after giving his men the order that no one is allowed to die.
Personality: Kamui is by his own admission "empty," a snapped soul with nothing left but to move forward on his eternal hunt for strength.
As a child, his family meant everything to him. They were the reason he first sought strength. His father was one of the strongest Yato out there, and that all powerful man had asked him to protect his mother and little sister in his stead. When his mother fell ill, Kamui poured his heart and soul into being everything she needed him to be. Until he learned the harsh truth his father had been hiding from him. His mother was a mutant, born on the Yato's now uninhabitable home planet. That planet was the only place she could live, yet her husband and children would die under such harsh conditions. She chose her family over her health. Now she was dying.
Kamui's very existence was killing the one person he wanted to protect most.
The day he learned this was the day he shattered. He took his family down with him when he tried to kidnap his mother and force her to return to her home planet. He attacked his father, and his father nearly killed him, all while his mother watched weakly from the sidelines and his little sister begged them to stop. His young mind warped, desperate for a way out, but all he could do was run away. He'd destroyed everything he cared about, his one place in the universe, and he'd done it more thoroughly than even he'd thought possible. He could never go back again.
It's from this mentality that the Kamui of the present was born. He is a man who only looks forward, disregarding the past as nothing more than a crutch. He shuns worldly or emotional attachments to anything, even his own life, and openly despises the weak. His only goal is to become "the strongest," and he will do anything, kill anyone, to get there.
Kamui's obsession with strength is a lifelong one. He has always had difficulty defining it, and thus, he's looked to others as examples. When his father's strength couldn't save his mother, he began looking to a man named Housen, the then leader of the Harusame Space Pirates Seventh Division. Housen's strength was easy to understand because it wasn't meant to protect, only to destroy. It makes sense, after all. The strength Kamui had gained in his desperate attempts to save his family only netted him tragedy. This must be because strength isn't meant to protect others in the first place. No, strength is not a means to an end; strength is the only end for which one should strive.
He is very closed minded in that sense, choosing to see the world in black and white. Anything that doesn't fit into his definition of strength must therefore be weakness. Umibouzu, one of the strongest men in the galaxy, is weak in Kamui's eyes because he wasn't willing to kill Kamui, his first and only son. Housen, the King of the Yato and the man who taught Kamui how to fight, is also weak because he fell in love with a woman and was desperate enough to cage her. These two former idols of Kamui's fell prey to such weakness as love, guilt, lust, and possessiveness. According to Kamui, that is their downfall, and he's not wrong. Housen dies to an uprising of those women he's subjugated, and Umibouzu loses both his arms because of Kamui. The very concept of honing one's strength to protect something is now outright insulting to his ideology because it betrays one's weakness, and more than anything else, Kamui detests his own weakness.
This is why he has so much trouble with protagonist Gintoki and his little sister Kagura. They wear their weaknesses like a badge of honor and yet Kamui cannot beat them into submission. Through their persistence, they lay his weakness bare: the fact that he still loves and wants to be acknowledged by the family he destroyed.
Kamui does eventually accept this weakness as a part of his identity and is forced to eat a piece of humble pie, but this doesn't make him a better person by any means. If anything, it gives him the opportunity to be even more intolerable. He sees no reason to reform (once a pirate, always a pirate) and decides that because the reason he couldn't defeat Kagura was that she refused to stay down, he'll just have to refuse to accept defeat himself.
His decision making has always been guided by his momentary whims in this way. While his well-honed battle sense and pure, unadulterated power are what he's known for among his enemies, his followers see a different side to him daily. Kamui is brutal, yes, but he's also selfish, sacrilegious, and single-minded to the core. He will ditch anyone and anything the moment they no longer interest him, and he'll leave plenty of bloodshed in his wake. These traits are actually what make him so charismatic among his fellow outlaws. What Kamui desires isn't the perks of a higher status or a better world to live in but rather to topple the entire hierarchy just to prove he can.
He says as much when his second in command Abuto points out that his actions will get the entire Seventh Division in trouble with Harusame's higher ups. If his superiors don't approve of his actions, Kamui chimes cheerily, he'll kill them. He'll have to kill them sooner or later anyway if he wants to become the strongest; angering them enough to come after him only makes his job easier.
Honestly, this entire personality section could be summed up with a concise, "He does what he wants when he wants, and screw everyone else." Not only is he a selfish asshole, he is a self-aware selfish asshole. This makes his character that much more intolerable because he can't be reasoned with. Telling him he's being impulsive or stupid, even killing himself, only nets a happy insult. He already knows he's an idiot with no desire but to fight on the battlefield until he dies, so anyone with the balls to tell him what he is as if he doesn't know is clearly just asking to be shat on.
What makes this unabashedly obnoxious personality so fascinating though, are the rare moments when Kamui contradicts himself. During his introduction arc, he spends a great deal of his time reuniting a young boy with his prostitute mother. He accomplishes his task through mass murder, sure, but Housen chides him over how transparent this act of vicarious redemption is. Though he will take the lives of his own men if they don't heed his warnings and certainly won't mourn them, he is loyal to them as long as they're alive. He goes as far as sparing Abuto after the man loses a major fight, and he always leads his men into battle from the front lines. He knows what kinds of outlaws he commands, and he respects their strength rather than appeal to their love of life. It's true that he goes about his "good deeds" in the worst way possible, but even Kamui has a code of conduct that keeps him from murdering everyone he meets.
He also states that everyone, no matter the life they've led, deserves to be sent off with a smile when they die. Supposedly this (not just bloodlust!) is the reason he smiles while killing. In a way, it's how he atones for not being by his mother's side when she died. Amusingly enough, Kamui's smile always wavers when fighting Kagura, the one person he can't bring himself to kill. This is the simplest way to decipher his true motives behind a duel.
After all, if Kamui has one virtue, it's that he's hideously honest.
Abilities: Kamui is a member of the Yato Clan, a race of violent aliens from a long dead planet. They are known as one of the most powerful races in the galaxy, also the most bloodthirsty.
➛ Inhuman physical strength and endurance: All Yato are significantly stronger than humans, and their bodies are capable of taking damage that would kill anyone else. For example, Kamui's subordinate catches a bullet in his teeth, his father is able to withstand a blast from a battleship with only an umbrella, and Kamui himself keeps fighting long enough to kill twenty men after being pumped with enough poison to kill an elephant. Not only can they survive the vacuum of space, Kamui even manages to break into the control center of a spaceship from outside. He frequently murders opponents just by thrusting his palm straight through their chests.
➛ Extensive hand-to-hand fighting experience: Kamui is not only powerful, he is also disciplined, accompanying his punches and kicks with seemingly weightless acrobatics. He learned how to fight from the King of the Yato and has since usurped his title as leader of Harusame's Seventh Division.
➛ Yato blood: Their blood is described by Kamui as a sort of collective intuition made up of the memory of their entire species. Throughout most of the series, this is seen as a negative trait because Yato instincts always tend toward violence. The Yato have to overcome their base instincts or else lose their identities to a sea of mindless bloodlust. Kamui, Kagura, and Umibouzu all fall prey to their blood at one point in their lives - during which time they attack everyone indiscriminately without care for their opponents or themselves. Although Kagura is originally afraid of this blood, Kamui teaches her that there's more to it as long as the Yato in question is disciplined. This well of instinct can be utilized through the senses and allow one to measure his/her opponent, comparing said opponent to the thousands of battles stored within their blood's collective memory. Kamui can sense the presence of other Yato with it, distinguish the truly powerful from the braggadocious, and analyze the enemy's battle strategy.
➛ Sunlight sensitivity: Though the Yato are infamously powerful, they do have one prominent weakness. Their bodies cannot handle direct sunlight. Prolonged exposure to the sun's rays dries them out until they literally crumble to death. Because of this, Yato are known throughout the galaxy for their pale, flawless skin and the parasols they carry. They reinforce and weaponize these parasols, using them as clubs or even guns. Kamui is no exception.
Inventory: One Chinese martial arts outfit, bandages around both of his arms, and one heavy cloak.
Room Detail: Food. Lots and lots and lots of food. Interesting food from all over the galaxy. He'll still probably scarf it all down in the first week, but. This is where his interests lie. Food is always the most important thing. A collection of three or four Chinese parasols and windows with curtains or shutters are necessities. Other than that, his room will be very plain.
Samples:
i.
[Kamui eyes the strange mirror with a thin frown, brows furrowed. Whatever and wherever this place is, it has stolen him from the fight of his life, and he does not appreciate that. Nobody interrupts his fights and lives.
Nobody.
Though he's never seen a smart!mirror before, he recognizes the basic technology and navigates the apps with no problem. The people behind this piece of work, he decides, must be quite narcissistic. He'll make sure to wreck their faces then. This thought brings an anticipatory smile to his lips just as he begins to record his message.]
A sweet little girl told me I'd run away even though I don't remember ever being here. If I have, it must've been a very boring place. No wonder I ran away.
[She'd even said he was loved here. Kamui laughs. She clearly doesn't know him.]
She was funny, but someone should probably keep an eye on her. I don't think she knows how to use a door.
[He trails into unconcerned silence for several seconds before suddenly perking up.]
Ah, the blood was a nice touch! It really brightened up those ugly portraits. The smell made me hungry though. Does anybody mind sharing?
ii.
Shinsuke's ship wasn't much different from his own. It wasn't some expensive new model, and it wasn't particularly large either. Scars from past combat marred the outer shell. Still, Kamui swept his gaze over every inch of it in childlike wonder. He was especially appreciative of the kitchen and nearly destroyed their poor microwave in a pique of curiosity. (How was he to know metal and microwaves didn't mix? Why should he care either way?) The wave of distraught and frantic minions who hastily intervened were fun to scare at least.
Honestly, it wasn't the things themselves that so fascinated Kamui. What made these common items so interesting was that they were Shinsuke's frantic minions protecting Shinsuke's microwave while on board Shinsuke's ship. Shinsuke was the man who had saved his life and recklessly declared war on the Harusame alongside him. Shinsuke was the man who had the same dangerous smell as Gintoki, the smell of a samurai. After having witnessed Gintoki's potential as well as Shinsuke's strength, he couldn't help but marvel at the mysterious way of the samurai. This new world where everything was the same but vastly different...
It was a blast.
The excited Yato paused his exploratory adventure to take a look out a nearby window. The blackness of space had swallowed them whole, and though it was dotted with far away stars, they were too far out in the sticks to see any cool planets. It would take a long time to reach Earth. Kamui had never been a patient man, and he didn't feel like starting today. He wanted to attack right now, to send out the small fry and watch them all burn so he could fight the last man standing! That was real living! That was why he wanted to stay by Shinsuke's side. But today, Shinsuke was busy meeting with his loser buddies and talking strategy. Boring stuff. So Kamui was left to run free through the ship's hull, terrorizing innocent technology.
Speaking of... Kamui turned to focus on what had caught his eye. Yes, that was absolutely the open door to a gym. With exercising equipment. He practically skipped his way inside.
Not two seconds later, he peeked out the door again, calling for his right hand man. "Abutoooooo~" he chimed merrily. "I've found their torture chamber! Come join me!"
Aspirations: I'm not looking to redeem Kamui - that would be impossible anyway - but I would really enjoy exploring his motivations, how they warped because of his mother's condition, and how this setting could potentially agitate his newfound identity. The fact that he can now allow himself to form emotional bonds with people while still being a murderous, sadistic pirate makes him ideal for a horror game.
Player Age: 27
Contact:
Character Name: Kamui
Character Canon: Gintama
Character Age: 18
History: Kamui's wiki page only covers through the Shogun Assassination Arc, so I will provide his more recent history here.
After fleeing Earth, Kamui led the Seventh Division in fending off their Harusame pursuers. They moved to capture an enemy stronghold ship, but it wound up being a trap. Half of Kamui's men were killed by his own father, hired by their enemy's leader Utsuro, but when Kamui and Umibouzu charged at each other, the already ransacked stronghold burst. Kamui disappeared into the darkness of space.
He did not reappear until Takasugi Shinsuke took a fatal fall on the planet Rakuyou, where Kamui's Seventh Division and Takasugi's Kiheitai had agreed to meet if they were separated. He saved Takasugi's life but didn't stick around. With the silent assertion that they were now even, he left to deal with his own matters: namely his father.
Once he found his target, he issued his showy challenge. The fight began with Kamui dropping an entire cliff on Umibouzu and only got more intense from there. Despite that a war was raging around them, the two members of the Yato clan became absorbed only with killing each other. They would have succeeded too, if Kamui's younger sister Kagura hadn't stopped them.
Not thrilled with the interruption, Kamui turned his wrath on Kagura, leaving Umibouzu to agonize over his children destroying each other. Umibouzu believed that the only responsible thing to do after bringing a monster like Kamui into the world was to kill Kamui himself. However, when the main antagonist Utsuro made his move to kill Kamui first, Umibouzu shoved both of his children out of the way. In the end, he couldn't stand to watch his children die. Kamui and Kagura fell along with the landslide caused by Umibouzu and Utsuro's powerful confrontation.
In the valley where they fell, Kamui told Kagura why he left home so many years ago. As a child, he'd learned that their mother was dying because she could only live with the support of the Altana from her home planet. Umibouzu took her away from that planet so that they could marry and have a family. Thus, Kamui had determined, the only way to save his mother was to cast aside his family and take her back to her home world by force. In order to do this, Kamui tried to kill his father and failed. Knowing he couldn't remain with his family after that, he ran away with the Harusame Space Pirates. With this explanation, he asked Kagura to let him go as killing Umibouzu was all he had left. He buried her under a pile of boulders and left.
Upon returning to the battlefield, Kamui saw that his father had lost to Utsuro. Enraged that someone had gotten to Umibouzu first, Kamui charged his dying father only to be stopped by Gintoki.
Kamui still refused to leave Umibouzu be, so Gintoki grabbed the fallen warrior and headbutted him back into the ground. With that, he proclaimed himself as the one who defeated Umibouzu, antagonizing Kamui into fighting him instead. Kamui did not hold back, throwing all of his anger at Gintoki. The fact that Gintoki never wavered despite that he was losing disturbed Kamui, and he sensed that Gintoki was putting his strength into fighting someone else entirely. He asked who Gintoki was really fighting. Gintoki told him he was fighting himself, something Kamui was running away from. Kamui did not like that.
The vengeful Yato warrior had given up everything for strength. The idea that there was a sentimental part of himself that he could not throw away, that this sentimental part of himself was why he couldn't win, was too much for him to take. Kamui lost control of his Yato blood, forfeiting all reason and purpose. It took Gintoki, Kagura, Shinpachi, and Abuto to hold off his senseless onslaught long enough for him to regain his senses, but even their combined efforts could not stop him. Only once Kamui won the fight against himself and accepted that there was a part of him he cherished even more than strength did the battle end.
Kamui and Kagura threw one last punch at each other, but when it came down to it, Kamui could not kill the little sister he'd once promised his father he'd protect. His punch missed, and the two broken siblings collapsed into each other's arms.
A large faction of the Harusame space pirates, including three division leaders, approached after the fight had finished. They claimed that seeing the protagonists recklessly challenge Utsuro and his vast armies made them realize they were on the wrong side of the fight. Pirates were meant to defy the status quo, not enforce it, and the ragtag group fighting Utsuro looked a great deal more free than any of them. Despite that Kamui was lying on the ground beaten and broken, they would rather follow him than the mighty Utsuro. Kamui left Rakuyou with them, proclaiming that he'd never lose again, especially not to himself.
If he couldn't do that much, he could never face his family again.
While Utsuro's faction came together and surrounded planet Earth, Kamui did the opposite. He ordered his men on a wild rampage, taking out the enemy's forces everywhere else. He didn't return to Earth until the last minute, when planet-wide destruction was imminent.
After he and his men crashed through Utsuro's defenses and landed on Earth, Kamui met Gintoki and was pointed in Kagura's direction. He swiftly moved to save his sister from her attackers. He and Kagura shared a brief moment of mutual encouragement, during which Kamui asserted that he would help them save Earth, but afterward he'd be ready to defeat her anytime.
This camaraderie lasted for a whole two minutes. Kamui and Kagura's team up against the leader of their attackers, dubbed the Eldest, quickly devolved into the two siblings beating on each other instead. Their petty squabbles should have put them at a disadvantage in the fight, but in true Yato family fashion, they started using the Eldest as a projectile weapon against each other. The Eldest's poor crotch was thoroughly abused in the process, as the ruthless siblings seemed to aim there with every single hit. Eventually, they grew bored with him and finished him off with a combined strike.
The most surprising thing about the entire conflict, however, was that after the battle, Kamui reassured Kagura and their enemies that he had not killed the Eldest. Nothing had changed, he insisted; he just had no use for the weak. He had his eyes on a bigger prize.
When Kamui moved to attack Kagura for real, Gintoki finally arrived to scold him and put a stop to it. In a characteristically dramatic display, Kamui agreed to be patient so long as Gintoki, Kagura, and his other targets made sure not to die in the upcoming battles.
They all leaped into the fray, fighting for Earth together.
Canon Point: During chapter 637, after giving his men the order that no one is allowed to die.
Personality: Kamui is by his own admission "empty," a snapped soul with nothing left but to move forward on his eternal hunt for strength.
As a child, his family meant everything to him. They were the reason he first sought strength. His father was one of the strongest Yato out there, and that all powerful man had asked him to protect his mother and little sister in his stead. When his mother fell ill, Kamui poured his heart and soul into being everything she needed him to be. Until he learned the harsh truth his father had been hiding from him. His mother was a mutant, born on the Yato's now uninhabitable home planet. That planet was the only place she could live, yet her husband and children would die under such harsh conditions. She chose her family over her health. Now she was dying.
Kamui's very existence was killing the one person he wanted to protect most.
The day he learned this was the day he shattered. He took his family down with him when he tried to kidnap his mother and force her to return to her home planet. He attacked his father, and his father nearly killed him, all while his mother watched weakly from the sidelines and his little sister begged them to stop. His young mind warped, desperate for a way out, but all he could do was run away. He'd destroyed everything he cared about, his one place in the universe, and he'd done it more thoroughly than even he'd thought possible. He could never go back again.
It's from this mentality that the Kamui of the present was born. He is a man who only looks forward, disregarding the past as nothing more than a crutch. He shuns worldly or emotional attachments to anything, even his own life, and openly despises the weak. His only goal is to become "the strongest," and he will do anything, kill anyone, to get there.
Kamui's obsession with strength is a lifelong one. He has always had difficulty defining it, and thus, he's looked to others as examples. When his father's strength couldn't save his mother, he began looking to a man named Housen, the then leader of the Harusame Space Pirates Seventh Division. Housen's strength was easy to understand because it wasn't meant to protect, only to destroy. It makes sense, after all. The strength Kamui had gained in his desperate attempts to save his family only netted him tragedy. This must be because strength isn't meant to protect others in the first place. No, strength is not a means to an end; strength is the only end for which one should strive.
He is very closed minded in that sense, choosing to see the world in black and white. Anything that doesn't fit into his definition of strength must therefore be weakness. Umibouzu, one of the strongest men in the galaxy, is weak in Kamui's eyes because he wasn't willing to kill Kamui, his first and only son. Housen, the King of the Yato and the man who taught Kamui how to fight, is also weak because he fell in love with a woman and was desperate enough to cage her. These two former idols of Kamui's fell prey to such weakness as love, guilt, lust, and possessiveness. According to Kamui, that is their downfall, and he's not wrong. Housen dies to an uprising of those women he's subjugated, and Umibouzu loses both his arms because of Kamui. The very concept of honing one's strength to protect something is now outright insulting to his ideology because it betrays one's weakness, and more than anything else, Kamui detests his own weakness.
This is why he has so much trouble with protagonist Gintoki and his little sister Kagura. They wear their weaknesses like a badge of honor and yet Kamui cannot beat them into submission. Through their persistence, they lay his weakness bare: the fact that he still loves and wants to be acknowledged by the family he destroyed.
Kamui does eventually accept this weakness as a part of his identity and is forced to eat a piece of humble pie, but this doesn't make him a better person by any means. If anything, it gives him the opportunity to be even more intolerable. He sees no reason to reform (once a pirate, always a pirate) and decides that because the reason he couldn't defeat Kagura was that she refused to stay down, he'll just have to refuse to accept defeat himself.
His decision making has always been guided by his momentary whims in this way. While his well-honed battle sense and pure, unadulterated power are what he's known for among his enemies, his followers see a different side to him daily. Kamui is brutal, yes, but he's also selfish, sacrilegious, and single-minded to the core. He will ditch anyone and anything the moment they no longer interest him, and he'll leave plenty of bloodshed in his wake. These traits are actually what make him so charismatic among his fellow outlaws. What Kamui desires isn't the perks of a higher status or a better world to live in but rather to topple the entire hierarchy just to prove he can.
He says as much when his second in command Abuto points out that his actions will get the entire Seventh Division in trouble with Harusame's higher ups. If his superiors don't approve of his actions, Kamui chimes cheerily, he'll kill them. He'll have to kill them sooner or later anyway if he wants to become the strongest; angering them enough to come after him only makes his job easier.
Honestly, this entire personality section could be summed up with a concise, "He does what he wants when he wants, and screw everyone else." Not only is he a selfish asshole, he is a self-aware selfish asshole. This makes his character that much more intolerable because he can't be reasoned with. Telling him he's being impulsive or stupid, even killing himself, only nets a happy insult. He already knows he's an idiot with no desire but to fight on the battlefield until he dies, so anyone with the balls to tell him what he is as if he doesn't know is clearly just asking to be shat on.
What makes this unabashedly obnoxious personality so fascinating though, are the rare moments when Kamui contradicts himself. During his introduction arc, he spends a great deal of his time reuniting a young boy with his prostitute mother. He accomplishes his task through mass murder, sure, but Housen chides him over how transparent this act of vicarious redemption is. Though he will take the lives of his own men if they don't heed his warnings and certainly won't mourn them, he is loyal to them as long as they're alive. He goes as far as sparing Abuto after the man loses a major fight, and he always leads his men into battle from the front lines. He knows what kinds of outlaws he commands, and he respects their strength rather than appeal to their love of life. It's true that he goes about his "good deeds" in the worst way possible, but even Kamui has a code of conduct that keeps him from murdering everyone he meets.
He also states that everyone, no matter the life they've led, deserves to be sent off with a smile when they die. Supposedly this (not just bloodlust!) is the reason he smiles while killing. In a way, it's how he atones for not being by his mother's side when she died. Amusingly enough, Kamui's smile always wavers when fighting Kagura, the one person he can't bring himself to kill. This is the simplest way to decipher his true motives behind a duel.
After all, if Kamui has one virtue, it's that he's hideously honest.
Abilities: Kamui is a member of the Yato Clan, a race of violent aliens from a long dead planet. They are known as one of the most powerful races in the galaxy, also the most bloodthirsty.
➛ Inhuman physical strength and endurance: All Yato are significantly stronger than humans, and their bodies are capable of taking damage that would kill anyone else. For example, Kamui's subordinate catches a bullet in his teeth, his father is able to withstand a blast from a battleship with only an umbrella, and Kamui himself keeps fighting long enough to kill twenty men after being pumped with enough poison to kill an elephant. Not only can they survive the vacuum of space, Kamui even manages to break into the control center of a spaceship from outside. He frequently murders opponents just by thrusting his palm straight through their chests.
➛ Extensive hand-to-hand fighting experience: Kamui is not only powerful, he is also disciplined, accompanying his punches and kicks with seemingly weightless acrobatics. He learned how to fight from the King of the Yato and has since usurped his title as leader of Harusame's Seventh Division.
➛ Yato blood: Their blood is described by Kamui as a sort of collective intuition made up of the memory of their entire species. Throughout most of the series, this is seen as a negative trait because Yato instincts always tend toward violence. The Yato have to overcome their base instincts or else lose their identities to a sea of mindless bloodlust. Kamui, Kagura, and Umibouzu all fall prey to their blood at one point in their lives - during which time they attack everyone indiscriminately without care for their opponents or themselves. Although Kagura is originally afraid of this blood, Kamui teaches her that there's more to it as long as the Yato in question is disciplined. This well of instinct can be utilized through the senses and allow one to measure his/her opponent, comparing said opponent to the thousands of battles stored within their blood's collective memory. Kamui can sense the presence of other Yato with it, distinguish the truly powerful from the braggadocious, and analyze the enemy's battle strategy.
➛ Sunlight sensitivity: Though the Yato are infamously powerful, they do have one prominent weakness. Their bodies cannot handle direct sunlight. Prolonged exposure to the sun's rays dries them out until they literally crumble to death. Because of this, Yato are known throughout the galaxy for their pale, flawless skin and the parasols they carry. They reinforce and weaponize these parasols, using them as clubs or even guns. Kamui is no exception.
Inventory: One Chinese martial arts outfit, bandages around both of his arms, and one heavy cloak.
Room Detail: Food. Lots and lots and lots of food. Interesting food from all over the galaxy. He'll still probably scarf it all down in the first week, but. This is where his interests lie. Food is always the most important thing. A collection of three or four Chinese parasols and windows with curtains or shutters are necessities. Other than that, his room will be very plain.
Samples:
i.
[Kamui eyes the strange mirror with a thin frown, brows furrowed. Whatever and wherever this place is, it has stolen him from the fight of his life, and he does not appreciate that. Nobody interrupts his fights and lives.
Nobody.
Though he's never seen a smart!mirror before, he recognizes the basic technology and navigates the apps with no problem. The people behind this piece of work, he decides, must be quite narcissistic. He'll make sure to wreck their faces then. This thought brings an anticipatory smile to his lips just as he begins to record his message.]
A sweet little girl told me I'd run away even though I don't remember ever being here. If I have, it must've been a very boring place. No wonder I ran away.
[She'd even said he was loved here. Kamui laughs. She clearly doesn't know him.]
She was funny, but someone should probably keep an eye on her. I don't think she knows how to use a door.
[He trails into unconcerned silence for several seconds before suddenly perking up.]
Ah, the blood was a nice touch! It really brightened up those ugly portraits. The smell made me hungry though. Does anybody mind sharing?
ii.
Shinsuke's ship wasn't much different from his own. It wasn't some expensive new model, and it wasn't particularly large either. Scars from past combat marred the outer shell. Still, Kamui swept his gaze over every inch of it in childlike wonder. He was especially appreciative of the kitchen and nearly destroyed their poor microwave in a pique of curiosity. (How was he to know metal and microwaves didn't mix? Why should he care either way?) The wave of distraught and frantic minions who hastily intervened were fun to scare at least.
Honestly, it wasn't the things themselves that so fascinated Kamui. What made these common items so interesting was that they were Shinsuke's frantic minions protecting Shinsuke's microwave while on board Shinsuke's ship. Shinsuke was the man who had saved his life and recklessly declared war on the Harusame alongside him. Shinsuke was the man who had the same dangerous smell as Gintoki, the smell of a samurai. After having witnessed Gintoki's potential as well as Shinsuke's strength, he couldn't help but marvel at the mysterious way of the samurai. This new world where everything was the same but vastly different...
It was a blast.
The excited Yato paused his exploratory adventure to take a look out a nearby window. The blackness of space had swallowed them whole, and though it was dotted with far away stars, they were too far out in the sticks to see any cool planets. It would take a long time to reach Earth. Kamui had never been a patient man, and he didn't feel like starting today. He wanted to attack right now, to send out the small fry and watch them all burn so he could fight the last man standing! That was real living! That was why he wanted to stay by Shinsuke's side. But today, Shinsuke was busy meeting with his loser buddies and talking strategy. Boring stuff. So Kamui was left to run free through the ship's hull, terrorizing innocent technology.
Speaking of... Kamui turned to focus on what had caught his eye. Yes, that was absolutely the open door to a gym. With exercising equipment. He practically skipped his way inside.
Not two seconds later, he peeked out the door again, calling for his right hand man. "Abutoooooo~" he chimed merrily. "I've found their torture chamber! Come join me!"
Aspirations: I'm not looking to redeem Kamui - that would be impossible anyway - but I would really enjoy exploring his motivations, how they warped because of his mother's condition, and how this setting could potentially agitate his newfound identity. The fact that he can now allow himself to form emotional bonds with people while still being a murderous, sadistic pirate makes him ideal for a horror game.