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[singleblossom]

Name: Manda
Livejournal: clockworkwings
Contact: AIM: librarynin
Other Characters Played: Mukuro Rokudo, Saix
Are you 18 or over? Yes

Canon: Persona 2: Innocent Sin
Character: Jun Kurosu
Timeline: Immediately after the final battle
Personality: Jun is introverted, with a rather cool personality, which makes him somewhat antisocial. While he seems to like humanity as a whole, he isn't necessarily so good at dealing with people one-on-one. He hasn't had many friends in his life, so those he does have, he's gentle towards and devoted to - maybe a little too much sometimes. When he thought Tatsuya and the others had killed Maya, he intended to destroy them in return.

It's not so surprising, really. Jun has mixed feelings toward his family, having a father who he was ashamed of and a mother who essentially abandoned him. On top of that, he was bullied for having a somewhat feminine appearance - and it didn't help that his hobbies are things like flower language, astrology, and cooking, all considered feminine to a certain extent. Jun hasn't had many chances to make friends or form deep bonds with people in his life, so of course he'd value the bonds he is able to form. Jun has spend a good portion of his life lonely.

Despite his difficulty making friends, Jun is somewhat idealistic - his dream is to help other people achieve their dreams. This is why he becomes Joker, and it expresses itself in more realistic ways, too, such as Jun wanting to become a teacher. While he may have been bullied and spent most of his time alone, it hasn't ruined Jun's belief in humanity. Once he's regained his true memories and realized what he's done, Jun willingly attempts to save humanity, after all - and, notably, even when he's still Joker he commands his minions to fight the Lost Battalion that's attempting to destroy everything.

Which brings us to another important part of Jun's personality: his guilt. Jun was manipulated by Nyarlathotep, and in the process hurt quite a few people and assisted with Nyarlathotep's ultimate goal, the destruction of humanity. It's important to note that his memories and his mind were being affected by the avatar of chaos, so Jun wasn't fully aware of what he was doing - he thought he was helping people achieve their dreams and punishing the ones who had killed a dear friend of his. Despite this manipulation, though, Jun still feels the weight of what he's done. He takes responsibility for it and does his best to help defeat Nyarlathotep.

Jun does have the tendency to be kind of mopey. After all, he hasn't had the best life, and he did accidentally become the tool of someone who tried to destroy the world (and succeeded, in the end). He doesn't ignore what he did, and while he doesn't wallow in guilt, he definitely has darker moments where he questions the purpose of his existence. He worries that people will hate him for what he's done.

However, Jun is a strong person. Once he regains his true memories, he chooses to reject Nyarlathotep's power, and chooses to fight alongside Tatsuya and his other friends. He cares deeply about them, especially Tatsuya (who is often called his doppleganger, because of their similarities in personality) and Maya. He might look weak on the surface, but he's no pushover, he'll fight hard if it's necessary - as those who tried to bully him discovered. He also freely chose to lose his memories of his friends in order to give humanity a second chance. He is an intelligent and strong boy, if also lonely and distant. Jun will do what he believes is right, even if it's occasionally misguided.

Background: Jun didn't have the most idyllic of childhoods. His mother, an actress, was unhappy being a housewife, and often fought with her husband - Jun's father, Akinari Kashihara ('Kurosu' is his mother's last name). As a result, Jun spent a lot of time out of the house at Alaya Shrine. He met Tatsuya Suou, the main character of Persona 2, there. They were best friends, hanging out together quite a bit, both at the shrine and elsewhere. They traded keepsakes, Jun giving Tatsuya a lighter that had been his father's, and Tatsuya giving Jun his own father's watch. Both of them kept these items until they were teenagers, despite everything that happened.

At Alaya Shine, Jun also met his other close childhood friends - Lisa, Eikichi, and Maya. They all played together, wearing 'Phoenix Ranger Featherman' masks (a show that resembles Power Rangers or super sentai) and calling themselves the Masked Circle. They also played the Persona Game, which later on gave them the ability to use Persona.

Around this time, Jun's home life deteriorated even more. He loved his father, who was kind and caring, but Akinari Kashihara was also a bit of an odd man. He was obsessed with conspiracy theories and the occult, and wrote a book called 'In'Lakech' that was full of conspiracy theories, rumors, and a prophecy called the Oracle of Maiya. Jun's mother, Junko, spread rumors that Akinari was a bad father and a lazy bum. Jun, ashamed of these rumors and the strangeness of his father, lied to his friends, telling them that his father was cool, smart, and competent, but never letting them meet him. When his father came to pick him up from the shrine one day, Jun told everyone that the man was his uncle instead.

Shortly afterward, Jun's father died, crushed to death in the gears of the clock tower at local Seven Sisters High School, where he had worked as the World History teacher. From then on, Nyarlathotep - an incarnation of chaos, and the main antagonist of the game - took the form of Jun's father, although only for Jun. That is, he appeared to pick Jun up from playing with his friends at the shrine, and interacted with Jun occasionally, but didn't actually take care of him day-to-day. Nyarlathotep, in the form of Akinari Kashihara, was the ideal father - exactly what Jun had been telling the others his father was like - molded by Jun's rumors and dreams.

Jun also held quite a bit of hatred for his mother, as her displeasure with her life had made his home life so uncomfortable, and she seemed to have little love for her son. One of the friends he played with, Maya, was an older girl, and he began to see her as something of a substitute mother/big sister. The other kids also loved Maya very much, so they were understandably upset when they learned that she was going to be moving away. Jun, Lisa, and Eikichi locked her in Alaya Shrine for the night, thinking (with typical kid logic) that if she couldn't go home that night, she wouldn't have to move away. Tatsuya tried to stop them, so they locked him in, too.

That night, an arsonist set fire to the shrine. Maya helped Tatsuya escape, and later was able to manifest her Persona for the first time and escape as well - but none of the kids knew that. They thought she'd died in there, and that it was because of them. Overcome with guilt, Jun, Lisa, and Eikichi hid their Featherman masks and forced themselves to forget about what had happened.

After his father's death, Junko more or less abandoned her son, getting involved with a lot of younger boyfriends and essentially leaving Jun to take care of himself. He was bullied on for his feminine looks and hobbies, and would retaliate with his Persona. This gave him a pretty bad reputation as a juvenile delinquent, and he was eventually sent to Kasugayama High School, which was known for having a rough student body.

Not long after starting at Kasugayama, Jun became the Joker. He was taken over by Nyarlathotep's power, giving him Persona-like abilities. Nyarlathotep wanted Jun to fulfill the prophecies that were in the book 'In'Lakech' (the one Jun's real father wrote), with the end goal of destroying humanity. Jun, on the other hand, wanted to make people's dreams come true...

Ok, bear with me here, because this is all going to get kinda crazy. According to the In'Lakech, the way to make people's dreams come true was to bring them to 'Idealian', a kind of utopia. In order to do that, Jun had to collect Ideal Energy, the power of people's hopes and dreams, and use it to raise an alien spaceship that was underneath the city he lived in, Sumaru City. He collected this energy by spreading a rumor that you could summon the Joker by dialing your own cellphone number, and he'd make your dreams come true. Instead, Jun would steal their Ideal Energy using five crystal skulls.

While this all wasn't technically true, it became true, because Sumaru City had become a place where rumors would turn into reality. So because Jun believed it, and because he released the In'Lakech for everyone in the city to read, it all started to come true. It should be noted that by this point Jun was deeply under Nyarlathotep's control, and Nyarlathotep was twisting his memories and his thoughts, so he wasn't entirely sane.

Lisa, Jun's childhood friend, learned about the Joker rumors and tried summoning him, while Eikichi and Tatsuya - also Jun's old friends - were there. They didn't recognize him in his Joker form, but he recognized them, and thanks to Nyarlathotep's twisting of his memories, he thought they were responsible for Maya's death. Unsurprisingly, considering everything that had been going on and Jun's somewhat questionable grip on sanity, he decided to kill them.

He created a new Masked Circle, formed of people who had wished for things from Joker - one of whom, Queen Aquarius, was in fact his mother Junko. She wasn't aware that her son was Joker, and had wished for youth and beauty. This Masked Circle attempted to get Jun's old friends to wish for things from Joker, which would mean their defeat - but in the process of these attempts, Tatsuya and the others remembered their past, and realized who Joker must be. By this point, Tatsuya, Lisa, and Eikichi had been joined by Maya (who Jun thought was dead) and Maya's friend Yukino.

One of the other prophecies in the In'Lakech was about the resurrection of Hitler and the Nazis, and as the people of the city read it, it started to come true. The resurrected 'Lost Battalion' stole the crystal skulls full of Ideal Energy from Jun/Joker, in the process attempting to kill him. Junko/Queen Aquarius realized Joker was her son and sacrificed her life to save him, one of the few motherly things she had ever done.

Tatsuya and the others also attempted to save Jun, but he attacked them. Being defeated, and being shown that Maya was alive, helped him regain his true memories. He rejected Nyarlathotep's power and lost the ability to summon a Persona and turn into Joker. Yukino, Maya's friend, chose to give him her Persona-summoning power so that he could fight alongside Tatsuya and the rest of his old friends and attempt to save humanity and make up for his (pretty horrible) mistakes.

Along with his friends, Jun fought the Lost Battalion, and finally Nyarlathotep - and he accepted his true past, that the eccentric Akinari Kashihara was his father rather than the fake one created by Nyarlathotep. Although they defeated Nyarlathotep in battle, it wasn't a true victory. Maya was stabbed and killed by a woman who was obsessed with making the In'Lakech come true. Maya was the final sacrifice necessary, and Nyarlathotep won as humanity was destroyed. Yes, the 'bad ending' is the only one you can get in this game.

Philemon, the incarnation that opposed Nyarlathotep, offered the heroes the chance to 'reset' everything and try again to save the world - but they would never have met, and wouldn't remember each other. They chose to do so, despite what it meant for their friendships and themselves.

Jun will be taken from after the final battle, after Maya has been murdered, but before losing his memories and 'resetting'.

Abilities/Additional Notes: Jun has the ability to use a Persona - a spirit-like manifestation of the Persona user's inner thoughts. All the characters in Persona 2 are able to switch their Persona at will (unlike non-main characters in P3 and P4), but Jun will be arriving in Adstringendum with only one Persona - Chronos, the strongest form of his personal Persona.

Chronos protects Jun from being damaged by wind-based, dark, or holy attacks, as well as giving Jun the power to manipulate wind himself. He can use wind spells that target one person (Garudyne) or a group of people (Mahagarudyne), as well as attacking physically with Chronos (Wing Flap). Jun is also capable of healing (Heartfelt Prayer), and using holy energy combined with wind to attack (Cross Fortune). Cross Fortune also inflicts status effects - confusion, blindness, or charm.

Jun can also fight physically without using his Persona. His weapon is a rose. Yes, the flower.

Sample Journal Post: [A polite cleared throat, as Jun turns on the PCD and makes sure he's visible through it.]

It's like a cell phone - ah, there. Can you see me? I don't have a lot of experience with cameraphones like this.

[Although his manner is somewhat hesitant, Jun's gaze doesn't waver.]

This isn't Sumaru City, is it? So many things are destroyed, here, but I think I would recognize landmarks even so. And the destruction there was much more - thorough, from what I saw. Where has Philemon sent me? This isn't what he promised.

[His eyes narrow as another possibility occurs to him.]

Or is this some trick of - of Nyarlathotep's? If that's so, then reveal yourself. I won't play any more of your games.

Sample RP: He still remembered everything. That was the one thing that stuck in Jun's mind, the one thing that told him this wasn't the do-over Philemon had promised them - this wasn't his world. If it had been, he wouldn't remember Tatsuya or Maya or anything that had happened, he wouldn't ever have met them in the first place - but he did remember, he had met them, and because of that Jun knew this wasn't his world.

It seemed so real, it couldn't be some kind of creation of Nyarlathotep - or so he thought, but Jun had been manipulated before. He walked through the ruined streets, wary, unsure of what might be a friend and what might see him as prey. There were people here, he had seen them, but so far he'd kept his distance. It was safer that way. Who knew what they might think of him if they met him?

He knew his guilt wasn't written on his face, but sometimes Jun felt like it was. He didn't want to bring misfortune to any of the people here, especially not any who might be willing to help him. And those who might wish him harm - well, he could still feel that hum in the back of his mind, that presence that told him he still had the power to summon his Persona.

Jun swallowed, catching sight of a figure down the road. He could duck down an alleyway next to one of the half-ruined buildings and keep hiding away from the people here - but what would that get him, in the end? He could die here by himself, without any help. He had to reach out, if only for his own survival.

As long as he didn't end up hurting them in the end, it would be all right. Jun could keep telling himself that.

He approached the figure. "Excuse me?"