Fuyuki Shido

Sex: male Age: 21 years old Height: approx 6'0" Weight: approx. 159lbs Birthday: 8/12 Sign: Leo Blood Type: A Nom de Guerre: Beast Master

A Few Words on Shido: tough, down-to-earth, bashful around women, outdoorsy
overall: loner

Shido's Story
An outdoorsman stuck in the middle of the most populous city on earth, Shido is quite a loner. Well, from a human perspective, anyway.  He hardly ever goes anywhere alone, constantly accompanied by any number of animals from birds to rats to, every once and a while, a lion.  A circus stray, I guess. ^^;;

He naturally attracts bestial companionship, and he can understand their conversation as easily as spoken japanese.  If he chooses, he can summon any number of any animal at any time, getting them to do anything, with just a whistle.  When that fails, Shido can resort to another ability, the "Hundred Beast Faces".  With that, he can assume the abilities of any of one hundred different animals, from the fangs and speed of a cat, to the strength of a wolf, to the supersonic hearing range of a bat.  Physical change is not uncommon, such as growing claws and fangs.

While Mugenjou is smack in the middle of a huge urban center, it is still overrun with enough rats, crows and other assorted critters to make sure Shido had a really high spot on the food-chain of Lower Town.  He was one of VOLTS Four Kings, actually.  How and when Shido got there, no one knows for sure, but Ginji speculates that his arrival was maybe 8 or 9 years prior.  That makes young Shido about 12 or 13 when he first, for all appearances, voluntarily came to Mugenjou.  Ginji said he looked like he was running from something, but just what is not clear.

What is certain is that, along with Kadz, he left shortly after Ginji dissolved the gang.  Gaining employment as a bodyguard, he fell in with one mafia-connected violinist by the name of Akutsu.

There, he ran into GB, and Madoka.  Her music captivated him almost instantaneously (can we say "music soothes the savage beast"?) , and thus began the infamous relationship between the two.  Shido is way, way too bashful to own up to any feelings for the blind violinist, but he has sworn his life to keep her safe.  Plus, after the Stradivarius Dakkan, he even moved in with her, ostensibly because she has a large yard.  I'd say those're some pretty big hints. ^.^

Sparks of another kind flew the minute he met Ban, the person he viewed as having "stolen" Ginji from him and the rest of VOLTS.  While after his decisive loss to Ban's Jagan, Shido finally came to accept Ginji's decision to partner with Ban, he has yet to accept Ban as a person.  The two are "best rivals" of a sort, constantly picking at the other over any little thing, often devolving into a nose-to-nose snipe-fest only this shy of coming to blows.  It's quite entertaining. ~.^

Shido's abilities are not something he picked up from Mugenjou's Weirdness, like Ginji did.  It's an inborn talent of all descendants of the "Maryuudo", or "Mystic Village".  About 8 or 9 years ago, Shido's home came under attack, and he was the only one to survive.  I'm assuming that he didn't directly run to Mugenjou, but rather ended up wandering there.

SPOILERS (black on black so just highlight to read)
Shido is the son of the leader of the Fuyuki (Winter Tree) tribe, one branch of the Family of Four Trees, and a pure-blood Maryuudo.  Like the Cherokee and Apache are to America, so the Maryuudo are to Japan.  In all the millennia since mongoloids crossed over to the islands and became today's Japanese, the Maryuudo have kept their bloodlines as free from that taint as possible.  The result is a reclusive clan of people with unusual powers: beast-mastery.  Counterpart to the Maryuudo are the Kiryuudo (Demon Village). Another clan of pure-blood Native Japanese, the Kiryuudo boast the power of insect-mastery.

Hailed by his kind as a genius child with a level of talent seen only once in a century, Shido mastered most of the arts of the Maryuudo before he was 10.  I get the impression that "normal" levels of talent involve being able to control a single species, and maybe copy a couple of their traits.  Shido can summon and control ANY beast, and included in his Hundred Beast Faces are even extinct species.  And I think that's only the tip of the iceberg as far as what he can really do.

400 years ago, something happened which set the Maryuudo and Kiryuudo at each other's throats.  The war hasn't ended yet. About 8 or maybe 9 years ago, the Kiryuudo launched an attack which did some massive damage to the Maryuudo.  It did not wipe them out.  Contrary to popular belief (er, well, mine anyway), Shido is not the last Maryuudo, he's the last Fuyuki.  Fleeing his destroyed home, Shido ran to Mugenjou and out fell the events which eventually landed him in Madoka's spacious lawn-- and back out where the Kiryuudo could find him.

The insect-masters are not only after Shido's death (which will be as painful and drawn out as they can manage), but also the "heirloom" which Shido received from his father.  I get the impression that this heirloom once belonged to the Kiryuudo, and was stolen.  It could even be the catalyst that started the whole feud in the first place.

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