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OOC Information
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IC Information
Name: Nanami Yasuri
Canon: Katanagatari
Gender: Female
Age: Late twenties.
History:
In the time of warring states, a time of corruption, there existed an ultimate way of the sword.
That used no swords.
The story of Katanagatari begins with a woman by the name of Togame, who travels to Fushou island by boat to locate the "hero of the rebellion", Yasuri Mutsue. The Shogun Yanari, who came into power after the rebellion, feared his powers and exiled him and his family to a previously uninhabited island. For twenty years, no one had stepped foot on that island until the day that Togame arrived.
The only two remaining inhabitants of the island are Mutsue's children: Yasuri Nanami and Yasuri Shichika. The morning of Togame's arrival Nanami and Shichika have a fight outside of their tiny house. Nanami's body has been frail since birth, so her brother Shichika is constantly trying to do her chores for her and dote over her well-being. After likening household chores to training, Nanami calmly states that there is no longer a reason to train, since their combat style will end with Shichika's generation. She tries to gently tell him that the death of their father a year later means that he should let go of the style and leave the island, since it was only their father who was banished. She tells him to fashion a boat for himself and leave the island alone, but he quickly grows irritated and she apologizes for bringing up the topic so early in the morning. Shichika goes to draw water from a nearby pond, where he meets Togame. After she challenges him to a battle and falls flat on her face shortly afterwards, Shichika takes her back to their house to speak.
After introducing themselves to one another, Togame reveals that the only people to ever have openly demonstrated the Kyotō-ryū style were the first generation head, Yasuri Kazuni, and Nanami and Shichika's father, the sixth generation head, Yasuri Mutsue. The style was used by Nanami's father on the battlefields when the whole country was plunged into a rebellion. During the Sengoku period during the rebellion there existed an incredible sword-smith by the name of Shikizaki Kiki, who apparently had a close connection to the founder of Kyotō-ryū. He was not a part of any sword school, and isolated himself from others; the most heretic of the heretical sword-smiths. Despite this it's said that his smithing dominated the Sengoku period - belonging to no house or country he distributed his swords indiscriminately throughout the land. Within twenty-five countries he gave out a thousand swords. The more of his swords that a country was in possession of, the better they did on the battlefield.
They say that one-hundred and fifty years ago, Shogun Kyuu obsessed over Shikizaki's mythical weapons, and when he achieved unification of the country, he held five-hundred and seven of the swords, and made a corrupt decree to collect all of his swords. Through this method he collected one hundred thousand of Shikizaki's swords. The real purpose of doing this was to collect the locations of all of the swords, and he gave up on collecting them all. Among the thousands of swords, there existed twelve unique blades, and it's said that the first 988 before them were only practice for the sole purpose of creating those twelve swords. Only these twelve out of the many he had crafted are rumored to have been specially crafted via alchemy, the occult, and other magical means. Although they are supposedly "katanas", not all of them are such, for they have different forms, such as a suit of armor, a dagger, and a pair of guns. The 'evil' of these swords was so vast that the armies sent by Shogun Kyuu to collect them were wiped out with the power of only one sword. Fearing that the conspirators behind the rebellion will gather the swords to start a revolt, the Shogunate is desperate to gather the swords.
Togame has come for Shichika specifically — she needs someone who fights neither for money nor honor. The ninja they hired to help recover the swords immediately betrayed them the instant they recovered a sword. Likewise, after calling the most loyal, most skilled, most honorable swordsman in the land, a man by the name of Sabi Hakuhei... he took the sword after recovering it quite quickly, and fled, thus destroying the thought of a swordsman’s honor. The ‘poison’ of the Deviant Blades is too much to surpass the honor of owning one of Shikizaki’s swords compared to that of the honor of a swordsman. So Togame turns to Shichika, a swordsman who works without money or swords, with the demand that he fights for love — and falls for her. As Nanami and her brother look at Togame with a quiet sort of pity, Nanami moves abruptly and shoves the two of them out of the way as kunai are tossed through their house directly at the areas they were sitting prior.
Koumori, a Maniwa ninja head, the very same clan of ninja that betrayed the Shogunate, followed Togame to the island under the guise of her ferryman. He fights with Shichika on the beach with one of the Deviant Blades, until Togame arrives and Koumori kidnaps her and hides her in the forest. After the promise he’ll come back to gather the locations of the Deviant Blades he transforms into a perfect copy of Togame to try and catch Shichika off-guard. Fortunately this doesn’t work, since Shichika recognizes people more by scent than looks alone after being alone on the island so long. Koumori tries to manipulate Shichika’s feelings by telling him Togame only plans to use him to gain a position as the current Shogunate’s right-hand, due to Togame’s father being the starter of the rebellion who was then killed. He takes Shichika’s form next to try and catch him off-guard, but due to the nature of Kyotō-ryū fighters, they have absolutely no skill with swords, and the sword slips out of his grasp, leaving him easily defeated with a single flashy move from Shichika himself. Shichika then goes to free Togame, and tells her he’s indeed fallen for her, and will help her despite what he’s heard from Koumori.
At the side of the sea Nanami tells Togame she approves of Shichika’s decision to leave. No matter the details, as long as Shichika gets to leave the island and improve his skills she’s willing to let him go. As the two row off to the sunset on the start of their journey, it paves the way for Nanami to someday soon leave as well.
For four months Togame and Shichika have been on their journey, and Nanami has stayed on the island alone, living out her life. Three men, Maniwa ninja from the Insect Squad, have made their way to the island in order to steal the swords that Togame and Shichika have already gathered. They plan to capture her to use as a hostage, but all doesn't go as planned. Kamakiri, the leader of the three, goes to try and capture Nanami alone, but is knocked out and awakens, bound to a tree. Nanami tells him its useless to try suicide, since she’s removed his poison molar while he slept, and that she apologizes, since now she’s going to have to torture him. She intends to do Kamakiri the good will of burying him beside his companion, Koumori, whom Shichika defeated months prior. She then gives him the choice to keep silent and die, or talk then die, though, she doesn't mind which he decides. She admits to not being sure how to go about torturing him, so it’ll be easier for her that he stay silent and die, since she already has a good idea of the general situation.
Kamakiri questions her strength since Shichika is the family head and not her, she admits that they haven’t properly fought for a year now, and that she was never trained for Kyotō-ryū from the former head. But the skill she used was a disarmament technique by the name of patrinia. As she gently sharpens nails she’s torn from Kamakiri so that he cannot use his ninpou, she tells him a story of how Shichika used to bite his nails. After refusing to do so, she ripped off his nails, and he hasn't bitten them since, she tells him that it’s a story of 'child discipline', so she isn't sure of how applicable it is to torture. She offers that instead they work in reverse, and places Kamakiri’s nails in his mouth, telling him to bite them. He offers to tell her about their group’s ninpou in order to bide time to grow his nails back, extending them far with ninpou to try and stab Nanami. Unfortunately she uses a skill to seal the movements of his nails with her kimono sleeve, and stabs him through his skull and tree behind with his own nails.
There is a flashback, cutting to the time that Nanami’s father told her that she could not be the head of the family, and inherit Kyotō-ryū. Not because of sex or her frail body, but because he cannot raise someone as exceptionally powerful as her. She compares Kamakiri’s dying glance to that of her father’s the day he refused to train her. Shichika and Nanami have fought only once, and he remarks that he wonders if the strongest swordsman in the land, Sabi Hakuhei, is stronger than his sister alone. The flashback drives us to believe she defeated Shichika with only a single strike, due to the fact she had not a single mark on her body, while Shichika himself was badly bruised.
Chouchou, the next member of the Insect Squad is confused when Nanami has noticed his presence while trying to sneak up on her after the death of their leader. She believes it makes more sense for her to question why he thinks he can erase his presence while he’s still alive. While waiting for her to take a stance to fight him, Nanami remarks that she has never once in her life taken up a stance, calling them useless, and that she can already read what move he is going to make because of his stance. She reveals just as she’s about to kill Chouchou, that she hid in the bushes during training sessions to secretly master the Kyotō-ryū skills. Seeing is training and her practice is observance, as she finishes telling him this, she snaps his neck that’s crushed under her heel with a single movement of her foot.
Nanami was able to sense Mitsubachi, the final Insect Squad member watching her battle with Chouchou, but after exerting herself so much she starts to cough and lose her strength. Mitsubachi sees this as a chance to strike and hits her with his ninpou, poisoned caltrops that render the opponent immobile so he can hone in and kill them with his katana. He hits her and Nanami appears too weak to move properly, but she laughs at him for displaying his ninpou to her so easily. He hits her with another caltrop as she attempts to run at him, and he moves in for the kill with his katana, but with the blinding speed of Chouchou’s Ashigaru, Nanami moves away in time, hitting him with his own ninpou. Shocked that she couldn't have prepared caltrops beforehand, she remarks that she used the two he hit her with, digging them out of her flesh with Kamakiri’s Tsume Awase ninpou skill - using her own extended nails, this time.
The poison was all an act, anything that isn't lethal is hardly a worry to her, and she compares it to an everyday experience otherwise. No matter how excruciating the pain, no matter how close she is to death, her body refuses to choose death. Another flashback shows that Nanami’s mother even wishes she could have the relief of death than go through so much pain. As Mitsubachi tries to bear the pain Nanami lets him in on another fact... she strengthened the power of the poison on the caltrop with the poison from Kamakiri’s molar. As he writhes in pain she gives him the chance to die from poison or the sword, since because of watching him she’s now able to wield a sword. He chooses the sword and she agrees to honor his final request to be buried with his comrades. In the end, she managed to take down the entire squad with their own techniques, and in the end, they died like bugs.
As the scene quickly cuts away, Shichika has finished his battle with Sabi Hakuhei, and admits that he wasn’t nearly as strong as Nanami. Nanami honors the dead by burying them together, and lights incense as well as offering a prayer. Nanami wonders if she should join Togame and Shichika on their sword hunt with a smile on her face.
While Togame and Shichika continue their sword journey for three more months, Nanami has left the island, and has traveled to a land by the name of Shireizan. The scene is shown in monochrome, the only colour shown being the red blood of countless murdered soldiers in terrifying positions. Impaled on trees and strewn about the ground, Nanami stands in the middle of this massacre at a small shrine, and feels sorry for an object placed inside. She refers to the object being revered as a deity, almost like she herself, and destroys the shrine with an unnamed blast of what appears to be air from her hand, revealing a warped, black-aura-infused blade. She compliments its lightweight design, and calls it a good blade, before smirking, and remarking that maybe it’s more ‘bad’ due to the nature of the Deviant Blade in her hand.
One of the fallen soldiers grabs her leg, reaching up to her as she attempts to leave with her prize, but she looks down at him, visualizing him as a weed, and berates him for touching her without permission. She is shown stomping mercilessly, repeating the word ‘weed’ over and over, only stopping when the man’s blood hits her cheek. Talking to herself as she walks, Nanami muses that she’ll wait in an obvious place to see ‘them’ again and hopes Shichika has grown a little.
Nanami is seen on a boat on torrential waters, spirits visible around her. The spirit of her dead father appears to call her a monster, telling her she should have never been born. The spirit changes to that of her mother, calling her a truly pitiful girl who can never die in peace. A pitiful girl who can’t live in peace. Ignoring the noisy spirits, she enters the Gokenji Temple in Tosa, cutting down all in her way with Kamakiri’s Tsume Awase, as the spirit of her mother tells her she is a failure at life and should die. She berates the spirits as worthless, calling the necromancy used by the holy guards of Shireizan nothing but useless memories. As she murders one of the last guards she sends the spirits away, and turns to tell the air behind her that she doesn't need them to tell her such things.
The scene changes and Nanami is facing Shichika inside of the temple, he and Togame having been guided here by Emonzaemon, a man who is a servant of a Princess named Hitei that Togame is familiar with. Shichika questions Nanami why they need to fight, and she scolds him, telling him not to waste her time. She reveals to the audience that this is a serious duel between her and her brother, and she wants him to come at her with the intent to kill. As he hesitates she sighs, having worried that going on such a journey and learning of the world would turn her brother soft. She says that she went through the trouble of obtaining a Deviant Blade because she figured that Shichika needed a reason to fight her, and scolds him again, saying that their father brought him up to prioritize his ‘owner’ (Togame) over his sister.
Togame counts down and Shichika runs at Nanami, blocking some unseen force projected towards him, as he moves in to strike however Nanami leaps into the air and proceeds to block an unimaginable flurry of punches from Shichika while barely being seen due to her speed. As he attacks she offers to teach him something, no matter how strong he’s grown in half a year, it will always be useless because of her eyes. When pitted against them, whatever strength Shichika has becomes hers. Her incredible skill to learn any technique and use it as her own after seeing it only once, is called ‘migeika’, sight training. Shichika’s blows stop and they return to the ground, and he uses his ‘ultimate technique’ on Nanami, the Shichika Hachiretsu... and is sent crashing into the ceiling. Stunned by the display, Shichika questions what she just did, and she explains she grabbed him by the waist and threw him.
Shichika doesn't believe her, saying there’s no way she could throw him with her weak arms. She brings up the name of a young girl named Konayuki that Shichika and Togame met from a village called Itezora. She likens her own strength to that of one of its clan members, whom she reveals to have slaughtered completely aside from the young girl in order to try and take the Deviant Blade they hid there. It ended up being a waste of innocent lives and her time, since the blade there wasn't useful to her body type. She apologizes for calling their battle serious, stating Shichika doesn't have any right to stand against her. For an opponent at his level everything but her ‘little finger’ will do.
As he charges her in frustration she uses a hybrid striking technique, a combination of ‘Red Poppy’ and ‘Daphne’ of the Kyotō-ryū techniques, knocking down Shichika with ease. She tells him she used Chouchou’s Ashigaru to take the weight out of all the blows for him, revealing she could have killed him 272 times before he hit the ground. Disbelieving she could pull off such moves with her frail body, Nanami removes the top of her kimono to reveal that she has buried the Akutō Bita deep within her chest between her breasts. Unlike his Shichika Hachiretsu, she no longer has any weaknesses or blind spots, and tells him to return once he’s improved.
Togame talks to Nanami over tea the day after Shichika’s defeat, she wishes to find a way to get around the idea of siblings fighting. Nanami is happy, and tells Togame she’s a kind person, and that’s why she entrusted Shichika to her. She never imagined he would be treated so humanely with her, however, and says how he was a much sharper sword back home on the island, while now he seems rusty. She asks if she should break him, and Togame is horrified, telling her not to say such terrible things. She compares the act to killing like Shichika and Togame have done to previous sword-wielders and tells her there is no reason to avoid a duel.
Nights later she and Togame share tea again, and Nanami tells her why their father was exiled to the island—he was accused of murdering their mother, as well as being segregated so the Shogunate wouldn’t have to fight against Kyotō-ryū in the future. Nanami’s mother belonged to one of the six Sengoku feudal lords families, the Tetsubi family, so it was no wonder he wasn’t executed for such a proclamation. Whether this is the truth or not though is lost in the darkness. Nanami tells her this in order to teach Togame that in the Yasuri household, it’s completely normal to kill each other. After their talk, Togame invites Nanami to the ‘stage of battle’ under the shrined Buddha statue for her final fight with Shichika, who was been training hard for a week. Under the sword Buddha there are countless candles around the battlegrounds, and Nanami brings up the topic of their father's death. She brings up that she’s never thanked Shichika for killing father, but she decides she won't because she would have been perfectly fine with their father killing her back then. She admits that there is no point in her living, after all, and tells him to be sure to kill her.
The instant Togame stops the countdown to battle, all the candles surrounding the three go out at once, shrouding the room at darkness. Togame’s plan is to try and block out the power of Nanami’s eyes with darkness. With the new and improved Shichika Hachiretsu Kai he sends Nanami flying back to the ground, and removes the Akutō Bita from her chest. Nanami rises and sighs, she tried so hard to become weak by relying on the Akutō Bita’s rejuvenation powers in exchange for dulling her strength. She’s been learning other people’s skills and techniques in order to weaken herself so that her weak body could catch up. In order to live just a little longer. In order to provoke him to finish her off she slashes the air with her hand, the blast cutting off Togame’s hair, she weakly threatens that her head will come off with the next strike. She seems happy with Shichika’s anger—now they have a reason to fight! Isn’t it great? The shrine is set on fire as Togame drops her lantern in surprise, and the two leap into the air for the final battle. Shichika buries his hand through her chest using the Dandelion skill that Nanami used to kill Chouchou months earlier. Happy that in the end, she was a proper Kyotō-ryū sword, she thanks Shichika for killing her. Her last thought before falling into his arms, is that she messed up her line— she probably wanted to thank him for being able to realize this.
Personality: Nanami is normally a very soft-spoken individual, her sickness that she has had since birth leaves her very frail, which may have something to do with why she hardly raises her voice. In the first episode of the series she is seen coughing painfully after only stepping outside for a few moments to talk to her brother. She's incredibly polite when dealing with other people, no matter what sort of situation she's found in. She apologizes to Togame the first time she meets her because she doesn't have any idea how to properly welcome a guest into her home. Even after something as insane as tying Kamakiri to a tree and threatening to torture him, Nanami still maintains a level of calm and politeness.
This innocent way of dealing with things stems from the way that Yasuri children are brought up as swords. While Shichika had the chance to leave the island and travel with Togame and learn of love, Nanami stayed on the island. When she did leave, all she was exposed to was killing and fighting; normally the only things a 'sword' has to be used for. Her way of thinking is vastly different to that of a human, she admits to ripping off Shichika's nails as a child when he refused to stop biting them. To Nanami, violence and pain are perfectly acceptable ways to solve a situation if she believes that they are needed.
Having suffered through her childhood due to the sickness she was born with, Nanami has had to experience great pain every moment of her life. This also ties in to her immunity to poisons and other sicknesses--nothing could be more painful than what she's had to grow up with, unless it was lethal. In her early childhood she was pitied by her mother, who wished she could die in peace instead of suffering, and rejected by her father for being so strong. When Shichika was trained to be a proper sword, Nanami had to watch from the sidelines, her eyes taking in everything themselves and teaching her everything she needed. She never had that level of familial 'love' most children grow up with all the time from their parents.
Flashbacks show that she and Shichika had a good relationship with one another regardless, eating together and spending time together quietly when he wasn't training. Being the more intelligent of the two of them, Nanami was normally the one to do the thinking for Shichika, who refuses to let his sister leave the room when Togame first wants to speak with him about their sword journey. Shichika is the more animalistic of the two, having been born on the island and raised by his father and younger sister, while Nanami seems to have inherited her manners and more mother-like abilities from her mother when she was still alive before being forced to live on the island after her death.
Nanami has a strange sense of humour that she tries to implement and the oddest of times, before fighting Chouchou she remarks on how she never thought she'd have a gentleman following after her. After acquiring the Akutō Bita she second-guesses herself with a smirk after calling things 'good'. Due to the poison of the sword slowly running through her she thinks it's a riot to correct the things she does as being 'bad' instead now. Like how the Akutō Bita has a 'good' weight...or maybe it's 'bad'?
Despite being raised as a sword, Nanami has certain honours she tends to keep; one being burying the dead properly after killing them. After killing the Maniwa ninja who attempted to kidnap her, she stays true to her word and buries them all alongside one another. After she leaves the island on her journey though, she seems to forget all about her honours when seeking the Deviant Blades. She massacres an entire clan, as well as the holy guards of Shireizan, leaving their bodies to be covered by snow and dirt without a single care for them. This is probably the 'poison' of the Akutō Bita magnifying how weary she is with all the meaningless violence she's had to do, and it infects her mind to make her strive towards her goal and nothing else; having Shichika end her life.
After she acquires the Akutō Bita her negative views on weak people seems to magnify, after murdering the holy guards in Shireizan she mercilessly stomps on a guard simply because he touched her. Nanami already viewed weak people as weeds, but if the man were to be in the same situation before she acquired the sword she probably would have been less violent about it and ended his life quickly. Despite having the Akutō Bita removed, occasionally this poison may still affect her mentality from time to time due to the wound on her chest.
Nanami welcomes death with open arms. Ever since she was a child it was the one thing she wanted the most; but could never attain. Her pain tolerance from her sickness left most blows dull, and the pride of a sword kept her from taking her own life. Her deepest wish as a sword was to be...good. More than anything she wanted to be a good sword. She wanted to be able to work towards something so hard, to feel that self-satisfaction she could never feel on her own due to her eyes that made everything effortless. It wasn't until her death she felt what it was like to work so hard towards something; she worked so hard to die at the hands of her brother, while helping him grow stronger, and putting up a good fight herself.
Powers/Abilities: Nanami was born with a special set of eyes she calls 'migeika'. While looking no different than normal ones, they posses the ability to teach her an opponent's skills with only a glance - and upon the second glance, master those skills. This means that Nanami can recreate any sort of blocking technique, ninja art, sword skill, or martial arts technique as long as she's watched it once, and master it if she's seen it twice. The same can be said for any other sort of skills present at Monad that would probably not be in her world; how to shoot a rifle or even something as odd as using her hair as a weapon would be good examples. As long as it isn't explained with fantasy-type magic Nanami will be able to learn that certain skill. Even something as little as the ability to write with her left hand she would be able to learn easily.
In terms of her family's fighting style, Kyotō-ryū, Nanami has demonstrated a few of the skills herself, but knows all of them due to watching her father and Shichika train from such a young age. Here are the names of the attacks and their terminology in order of appearance, due to the lack of an outside source to link you to instead. Patrinia is a type of disarming move she uses against Kamakiri, she uses her kimono to constrict around the target's weapon and render it useless. Tsume Awase is a skill she copied from Kamakiri before his death, she can extend her fingernails into long sharp blades, and regrow them should they be removed or broken. Poppy appears to be an uppercut move used with a single hand. Ashigaru is a skill she copies from Chouchou, it allows its user to make their body weightless, increasing their speed and rendering them unhittable. It can be used to hold additional weight on the back and shoulders, as well as skate over water. Dandelion appears to be a single thrust of the hand through vital organs of the body, she combines it with the copied Tsume Awase from Kamakiri. Makibishi Shidan is a ninpou (ninja arts) copied from Mitsubachi that allows the user to fire poison-tipped caltrops (spiked spheres thrown to cut into skin) at blinding speed to immobilize the enemy. Caltrops are needed beforehand however, and cannot magically be summoned. Though not considered much of an ability normally, Nanami has learned how to wield a katana properly through watching Mitsubachi try to attack her.
The 'necromancy' of the holy guards of Shireizan is shown by Nanami to be nothing but memories of dead family members come from the other side to haunt the user for a short while. Though this may only be true for Nanami herself, since her memories of her family aren't good ones. She considers it useless and probably will never use it again. After killing the Itezora clan Nanami gains their inhuman strength, which allows her to lift incredibly heavy objects, like her brother or things like large boulders with ease. Nanami also combines Kyotō-ryū attacks together, some pairs of these are Red Poppy and Daphne, which creates two varying types of striking blows that are unseen by the eye, but hit in the head and chest regions, sending the opponent flying back to the ground.
Since the Akutō Bita will have been removed from her chest come entry to Monad, most of Nanami's Kyotō-ryū skills will be severely limited due to her frail body. Most of the skills she showcases are normally striking skills, but continuous jabbing skills and jumps will quickly tire her out and cause her to be dangerously short of breath. Skills like the ones she copied from the Maniwa ninja will be fully usable, however her extreme strength from the Itezora clan will be very limited due to her poor health. Carrying large objects on her back will be quite impossible, along with carrying something heavier than herself in her arms for longer than a few minutes.
Keepsakes/Mementos: The pink flower that she wears in her hair; her pale green kimono; her purple kimono and gauntlets; the black void-like scar on her chest left over from Akutō Bita's removal; a small red maple leaf from Shichika's person; the skulls of the Maniwa Ninja she killed; the ghostly images of her parents from the Shireizan monk's necromancy; weeds; a pack of cigarettes; Kamakiri's nails coated with blood; Mitsubachi's caltrops; slices of watermelon.
Sample: All it took was a single swing of her hand - one swing to get Shichika to fight her seriously.
Although a rather pathetic trick to catch her off guard, she had to applaud the strategian - Togame's plan to snuff out every single one the three-hundred candles in the shrine around them was unthinkable to a sword like herself. Leaving her in the dark and giving Shichika time to attack her and pull Akuto Bita from her chest... even the Sword Buddha towering above them shifted to watch their heated battle.
Regulating her strength with such a phony sword... dulling her strength by rejuvenating her ailing life force. Even that wasn't enough to become a little weaker, by using the strengths of others...
She was too naive.
If only he'd hurry, now, hurry and kill her... if only Shichika would hurry and end her useless life.
But he still hesitated. He was still dull... even if out of the two of them, she had been duller. As his older sister, she'd have to set him on the right path once again before the end. Togame calls out to her, tells her there isn't any meaning to their fight, that they don't have to kill her any longer with Akutō Bita in their possession...
"Be quiet."
One slash of her hand and Togame's long white hair falls to the ground around her, and is lit up by her lantern falling to the ground. Standing in a ring of fire, she looks terrified and beautiful.
"Your head will come off, next."
She's panting heavily, scarred bosom heaving from the overexertion of cutting Togame from so far a distance. Without Akutō Bita her body was weak again, but her senses were still strong...
There was nothing to worry about, now that she'd caught Shichika's attention.
"Isn't this great? Now we have a reason to fight."
Shichika's voice wavers in his anger. His rage. She mocks him - tells him his likes are akin to fathers, tells him that he's unpleasant. The shrine around them is covered in flames now, and they leap into the air to clash with one another one last time.
She sees the tears in his eyes - Shichika, her little brother... finally. Finally he'd lay her to rest. She smiles at him faintly before his final blows start to fly towards her.
In order to live... just a little bit longer... she's tried to make herself weaker. But now...
This was what happened when a sword tried to use a sword, wasn't it?
Father... finally, in the end, she was a true Kyotō-ryū sword, wasn't she?
Finally, in the end, a sickly sword like herself... could die like a normal person.
A smile lights her lips, as Shichika's arm pierces through her breast. She leans in close and tries to murmur her thanks into his ear, for realizing her worth...
"Good job killing me."
Ah...she'd messed up her line, hadn't she?
She slides forward into Shichika's arms as her vision grows hazy, then fades to black.
She sees a vision of the past - of herself and Shichika as children, eating watermelon underneath the tree by their house. She calls out to him, but he's fallen asleep beside him, watermelon being picked at by a passing stag beetle.
She smiles.
Mindset: Nanami will be hesitant to accept her death - being used to the idea that the afterlife is nothing but a peaceful rest, she will probably insist that Shichika did not kill her 'properly' and will seek him out around Monad.
G̶̶l̨͡i̵͢t̷c͝͠h̕é͠s̷̷͡: Nanami herself is never frightened, disturbed, or upset by anything around her. The only time she ever expresses much emotion is around her younger brother. She wants him to succeed and do his job as a sword well. That being said, mentions of the Maniwa Insect Squad and the slaughtered Shireizan and Itezora clan will probably not be very pleasant memories, even if they aren't particularly painful to her to remember. Flames will remind her of her death by Shichika's hand.
Canon: Katanagatari
Gender: Female
Age: Late twenties.
History:
That used no swords.
The story of Katanagatari begins with a woman by the name of Togame, who travels to Fushou island by boat to locate the "hero of the rebellion", Yasuri Mutsue. The Shogun Yanari, who came into power after the rebellion, feared his powers and exiled him and his family to a previously uninhabited island. For twenty years, no one had stepped foot on that island until the day that Togame arrived.
The only two remaining inhabitants of the island are Mutsue's children: Yasuri Nanami and Yasuri Shichika. The morning of Togame's arrival Nanami and Shichika have a fight outside of their tiny house. Nanami's body has been frail since birth, so her brother Shichika is constantly trying to do her chores for her and dote over her well-being. After likening household chores to training, Nanami calmly states that there is no longer a reason to train, since their combat style will end with Shichika's generation. She tries to gently tell him that the death of their father a year later means that he should let go of the style and leave the island, since it was only their father who was banished. She tells him to fashion a boat for himself and leave the island alone, but he quickly grows irritated and she apologizes for bringing up the topic so early in the morning. Shichika goes to draw water from a nearby pond, where he meets Togame. After she challenges him to a battle and falls flat on her face shortly afterwards, Shichika takes her back to their house to speak.
After introducing themselves to one another, Togame reveals that the only people to ever have openly demonstrated the Kyotō-ryū style were the first generation head, Yasuri Kazuni, and Nanami and Shichika's father, the sixth generation head, Yasuri Mutsue. The style was used by Nanami's father on the battlefields when the whole country was plunged into a rebellion. During the Sengoku period during the rebellion there existed an incredible sword-smith by the name of Shikizaki Kiki, who apparently had a close connection to the founder of Kyotō-ryū. He was not a part of any sword school, and isolated himself from others; the most heretic of the heretical sword-smiths. Despite this it's said that his smithing dominated the Sengoku period - belonging to no house or country he distributed his swords indiscriminately throughout the land. Within twenty-five countries he gave out a thousand swords. The more of his swords that a country was in possession of, the better they did on the battlefield.
They say that one-hundred and fifty years ago, Shogun Kyuu obsessed over Shikizaki's mythical weapons, and when he achieved unification of the country, he held five-hundred and seven of the swords, and made a corrupt decree to collect all of his swords. Through this method he collected one hundred thousand of Shikizaki's swords. The real purpose of doing this was to collect the locations of all of the swords, and he gave up on collecting them all. Among the thousands of swords, there existed twelve unique blades, and it's said that the first 988 before them were only practice for the sole purpose of creating those twelve swords. Only these twelve out of the many he had crafted are rumored to have been specially crafted via alchemy, the occult, and other magical means. Although they are supposedly "katanas", not all of them are such, for they have different forms, such as a suit of armor, a dagger, and a pair of guns. The 'evil' of these swords was so vast that the armies sent by Shogun Kyuu to collect them were wiped out with the power of only one sword. Fearing that the conspirators behind the rebellion will gather the swords to start a revolt, the Shogunate is desperate to gather the swords.
Togame has come for Shichika specifically — she needs someone who fights neither for money nor honor. The ninja they hired to help recover the swords immediately betrayed them the instant they recovered a sword. Likewise, after calling the most loyal, most skilled, most honorable swordsman in the land, a man by the name of Sabi Hakuhei... he took the sword after recovering it quite quickly, and fled, thus destroying the thought of a swordsman’s honor. The ‘poison’ of the Deviant Blades is too much to surpass the honor of owning one of Shikizaki’s swords compared to that of the honor of a swordsman. So Togame turns to Shichika, a swordsman who works without money or swords, with the demand that he fights for love — and falls for her. As Nanami and her brother look at Togame with a quiet sort of pity, Nanami moves abruptly and shoves the two of them out of the way as kunai are tossed through their house directly at the areas they were sitting prior.
Koumori, a Maniwa ninja head, the very same clan of ninja that betrayed the Shogunate, followed Togame to the island under the guise of her ferryman. He fights with Shichika on the beach with one of the Deviant Blades, until Togame arrives and Koumori kidnaps her and hides her in the forest. After the promise he’ll come back to gather the locations of the Deviant Blades he transforms into a perfect copy of Togame to try and catch Shichika off-guard. Fortunately this doesn’t work, since Shichika recognizes people more by scent than looks alone after being alone on the island so long. Koumori tries to manipulate Shichika’s feelings by telling him Togame only plans to use him to gain a position as the current Shogunate’s right-hand, due to Togame’s father being the starter of the rebellion who was then killed. He takes Shichika’s form next to try and catch him off-guard, but due to the nature of Kyotō-ryū fighters, they have absolutely no skill with swords, and the sword slips out of his grasp, leaving him easily defeated with a single flashy move from Shichika himself. Shichika then goes to free Togame, and tells her he’s indeed fallen for her, and will help her despite what he’s heard from Koumori.
At the side of the sea Nanami tells Togame she approves of Shichika’s decision to leave. No matter the details, as long as Shichika gets to leave the island and improve his skills she’s willing to let him go. As the two row off to the sunset on the start of their journey, it paves the way for Nanami to someday soon leave as well.
For four months Togame and Shichika have been on their journey, and Nanami has stayed on the island alone, living out her life. Three men, Maniwa ninja from the Insect Squad, have made their way to the island in order to steal the swords that Togame and Shichika have already gathered. They plan to capture her to use as a hostage, but all doesn't go as planned. Kamakiri, the leader of the three, goes to try and capture Nanami alone, but is knocked out and awakens, bound to a tree. Nanami tells him its useless to try suicide, since she’s removed his poison molar while he slept, and that she apologizes, since now she’s going to have to torture him. She intends to do Kamakiri the good will of burying him beside his companion, Koumori, whom Shichika defeated months prior. She then gives him the choice to keep silent and die, or talk then die, though, she doesn't mind which he decides. She admits to not being sure how to go about torturing him, so it’ll be easier for her that he stay silent and die, since she already has a good idea of the general situation.
Kamakiri questions her strength since Shichika is the family head and not her, she admits that they haven’t properly fought for a year now, and that she was never trained for Kyotō-ryū from the former head. But the skill she used was a disarmament technique by the name of patrinia. As she gently sharpens nails she’s torn from Kamakiri so that he cannot use his ninpou, she tells him a story of how Shichika used to bite his nails. After refusing to do so, she ripped off his nails, and he hasn't bitten them since, she tells him that it’s a story of 'child discipline', so she isn't sure of how applicable it is to torture. She offers that instead they work in reverse, and places Kamakiri’s nails in his mouth, telling him to bite them. He offers to tell her about their group’s ninpou in order to bide time to grow his nails back, extending them far with ninpou to try and stab Nanami. Unfortunately she uses a skill to seal the movements of his nails with her kimono sleeve, and stabs him through his skull and tree behind with his own nails.
There is a flashback, cutting to the time that Nanami’s father told her that she could not be the head of the family, and inherit Kyotō-ryū. Not because of sex or her frail body, but because he cannot raise someone as exceptionally powerful as her. She compares Kamakiri’s dying glance to that of her father’s the day he refused to train her. Shichika and Nanami have fought only once, and he remarks that he wonders if the strongest swordsman in the land, Sabi Hakuhei, is stronger than his sister alone. The flashback drives us to believe she defeated Shichika with only a single strike, due to the fact she had not a single mark on her body, while Shichika himself was badly bruised.
Chouchou, the next member of the Insect Squad is confused when Nanami has noticed his presence while trying to sneak up on her after the death of their leader. She believes it makes more sense for her to question why he thinks he can erase his presence while he’s still alive. While waiting for her to take a stance to fight him, Nanami remarks that she has never once in her life taken up a stance, calling them useless, and that she can already read what move he is going to make because of his stance. She reveals just as she’s about to kill Chouchou, that she hid in the bushes during training sessions to secretly master the Kyotō-ryū skills. Seeing is training and her practice is observance, as she finishes telling him this, she snaps his neck that’s crushed under her heel with a single movement of her foot.
Nanami was able to sense Mitsubachi, the final Insect Squad member watching her battle with Chouchou, but after exerting herself so much she starts to cough and lose her strength. Mitsubachi sees this as a chance to strike and hits her with his ninpou, poisoned caltrops that render the opponent immobile so he can hone in and kill them with his katana. He hits her and Nanami appears too weak to move properly, but she laughs at him for displaying his ninpou to her so easily. He hits her with another caltrop as she attempts to run at him, and he moves in for the kill with his katana, but with the blinding speed of Chouchou’s Ashigaru, Nanami moves away in time, hitting him with his own ninpou. Shocked that she couldn't have prepared caltrops beforehand, she remarks that she used the two he hit her with, digging them out of her flesh with Kamakiri’s Tsume Awase ninpou skill - using her own extended nails, this time.
The poison was all an act, anything that isn't lethal is hardly a worry to her, and she compares it to an everyday experience otherwise. No matter how excruciating the pain, no matter how close she is to death, her body refuses to choose death. Another flashback shows that Nanami’s mother even wishes she could have the relief of death than go through so much pain. As Mitsubachi tries to bear the pain Nanami lets him in on another fact... she strengthened the power of the poison on the caltrop with the poison from Kamakiri’s molar. As he writhes in pain she gives him the chance to die from poison or the sword, since because of watching him she’s now able to wield a sword. He chooses the sword and she agrees to honor his final request to be buried with his comrades. In the end, she managed to take down the entire squad with their own techniques, and in the end, they died like bugs.
As the scene quickly cuts away, Shichika has finished his battle with Sabi Hakuhei, and admits that he wasn’t nearly as strong as Nanami. Nanami honors the dead by burying them together, and lights incense as well as offering a prayer. Nanami wonders if she should join Togame and Shichika on their sword hunt with a smile on her face.
While Togame and Shichika continue their sword journey for three more months, Nanami has left the island, and has traveled to a land by the name of Shireizan. The scene is shown in monochrome, the only colour shown being the red blood of countless murdered soldiers in terrifying positions. Impaled on trees and strewn about the ground, Nanami stands in the middle of this massacre at a small shrine, and feels sorry for an object placed inside. She refers to the object being revered as a deity, almost like she herself, and destroys the shrine with an unnamed blast of what appears to be air from her hand, revealing a warped, black-aura-infused blade. She compliments its lightweight design, and calls it a good blade, before smirking, and remarking that maybe it’s more ‘bad’ due to the nature of the Deviant Blade in her hand.
One of the fallen soldiers grabs her leg, reaching up to her as she attempts to leave with her prize, but she looks down at him, visualizing him as a weed, and berates him for touching her without permission. She is shown stomping mercilessly, repeating the word ‘weed’ over and over, only stopping when the man’s blood hits her cheek. Talking to herself as she walks, Nanami muses that she’ll wait in an obvious place to see ‘them’ again and hopes Shichika has grown a little.
Nanami is seen on a boat on torrential waters, spirits visible around her. The spirit of her dead father appears to call her a monster, telling her she should have never been born. The spirit changes to that of her mother, calling her a truly pitiful girl who can never die in peace. A pitiful girl who can’t live in peace. Ignoring the noisy spirits, she enters the Gokenji Temple in Tosa, cutting down all in her way with Kamakiri’s Tsume Awase, as the spirit of her mother tells her she is a failure at life and should die. She berates the spirits as worthless, calling the necromancy used by the holy guards of Shireizan nothing but useless memories. As she murders one of the last guards she sends the spirits away, and turns to tell the air behind her that she doesn't need them to tell her such things.
The scene changes and Nanami is facing Shichika inside of the temple, he and Togame having been guided here by Emonzaemon, a man who is a servant of a Princess named Hitei that Togame is familiar with. Shichika questions Nanami why they need to fight, and she scolds him, telling him not to waste her time. She reveals to the audience that this is a serious duel between her and her brother, and she wants him to come at her with the intent to kill. As he hesitates she sighs, having worried that going on such a journey and learning of the world would turn her brother soft. She says that she went through the trouble of obtaining a Deviant Blade because she figured that Shichika needed a reason to fight her, and scolds him again, saying that their father brought him up to prioritize his ‘owner’ (Togame) over his sister.
Togame counts down and Shichika runs at Nanami, blocking some unseen force projected towards him, as he moves in to strike however Nanami leaps into the air and proceeds to block an unimaginable flurry of punches from Shichika while barely being seen due to her speed. As he attacks she offers to teach him something, no matter how strong he’s grown in half a year, it will always be useless because of her eyes. When pitted against them, whatever strength Shichika has becomes hers. Her incredible skill to learn any technique and use it as her own after seeing it only once, is called ‘migeika’, sight training. Shichika’s blows stop and they return to the ground, and he uses his ‘ultimate technique’ on Nanami, the Shichika Hachiretsu... and is sent crashing into the ceiling. Stunned by the display, Shichika questions what she just did, and she explains she grabbed him by the waist and threw him.
Shichika doesn't believe her, saying there’s no way she could throw him with her weak arms. She brings up the name of a young girl named Konayuki that Shichika and Togame met from a village called Itezora. She likens her own strength to that of one of its clan members, whom she reveals to have slaughtered completely aside from the young girl in order to try and take the Deviant Blade they hid there. It ended up being a waste of innocent lives and her time, since the blade there wasn't useful to her body type. She apologizes for calling their battle serious, stating Shichika doesn't have any right to stand against her. For an opponent at his level everything but her ‘little finger’ will do.
As he charges her in frustration she uses a hybrid striking technique, a combination of ‘Red Poppy’ and ‘Daphne’ of the Kyotō-ryū techniques, knocking down Shichika with ease. She tells him she used Chouchou’s Ashigaru to take the weight out of all the blows for him, revealing she could have killed him 272 times before he hit the ground. Disbelieving she could pull off such moves with her frail body, Nanami removes the top of her kimono to reveal that she has buried the Akutō Bita deep within her chest between her breasts. Unlike his Shichika Hachiretsu, she no longer has any weaknesses or blind spots, and tells him to return once he’s improved.
Togame talks to Nanami over tea the day after Shichika’s defeat, she wishes to find a way to get around the idea of siblings fighting. Nanami is happy, and tells Togame she’s a kind person, and that’s why she entrusted Shichika to her. She never imagined he would be treated so humanely with her, however, and says how he was a much sharper sword back home on the island, while now he seems rusty. She asks if she should break him, and Togame is horrified, telling her not to say such terrible things. She compares the act to killing like Shichika and Togame have done to previous sword-wielders and tells her there is no reason to avoid a duel.
Nights later she and Togame share tea again, and Nanami tells her why their father was exiled to the island—he was accused of murdering their mother, as well as being segregated so the Shogunate wouldn’t have to fight against Kyotō-ryū in the future. Nanami’s mother belonged to one of the six Sengoku feudal lords families, the Tetsubi family, so it was no wonder he wasn’t executed for such a proclamation. Whether this is the truth or not though is lost in the darkness. Nanami tells her this in order to teach Togame that in the Yasuri household, it’s completely normal to kill each other. After their talk, Togame invites Nanami to the ‘stage of battle’ under the shrined Buddha statue for her final fight with Shichika, who was been training hard for a week. Under the sword Buddha there are countless candles around the battlegrounds, and Nanami brings up the topic of their father's death. She brings up that she’s never thanked Shichika for killing father, but she decides she won't because she would have been perfectly fine with their father killing her back then. She admits that there is no point in her living, after all, and tells him to be sure to kill her.
The instant Togame stops the countdown to battle, all the candles surrounding the three go out at once, shrouding the room at darkness. Togame’s plan is to try and block out the power of Nanami’s eyes with darkness. With the new and improved Shichika Hachiretsu Kai he sends Nanami flying back to the ground, and removes the Akutō Bita from her chest. Nanami rises and sighs, she tried so hard to become weak by relying on the Akutō Bita’s rejuvenation powers in exchange for dulling her strength. She’s been learning other people’s skills and techniques in order to weaken herself so that her weak body could catch up. In order to live just a little longer. In order to provoke him to finish her off she slashes the air with her hand, the blast cutting off Togame’s hair, she weakly threatens that her head will come off with the next strike. She seems happy with Shichika’s anger—now they have a reason to fight! Isn’t it great? The shrine is set on fire as Togame drops her lantern in surprise, and the two leap into the air for the final battle. Shichika buries his hand through her chest using the Dandelion skill that Nanami used to kill Chouchou months earlier. Happy that in the end, she was a proper Kyotō-ryū sword, she thanks Shichika for killing her. Her last thought before falling into his arms, is that she messed up her line— she probably wanted to thank him for being able to realize this.
Personality: Nanami is normally a very soft-spoken individual, her sickness that she has had since birth leaves her very frail, which may have something to do with why she hardly raises her voice. In the first episode of the series she is seen coughing painfully after only stepping outside for a few moments to talk to her brother. She's incredibly polite when dealing with other people, no matter what sort of situation she's found in. She apologizes to Togame the first time she meets her because she doesn't have any idea how to properly welcome a guest into her home. Even after something as insane as tying Kamakiri to a tree and threatening to torture him, Nanami still maintains a level of calm and politeness.
This innocent way of dealing with things stems from the way that Yasuri children are brought up as swords. While Shichika had the chance to leave the island and travel with Togame and learn of love, Nanami stayed on the island. When she did leave, all she was exposed to was killing and fighting; normally the only things a 'sword' has to be used for. Her way of thinking is vastly different to that of a human, she admits to ripping off Shichika's nails as a child when he refused to stop biting them. To Nanami, violence and pain are perfectly acceptable ways to solve a situation if she believes that they are needed.
Having suffered through her childhood due to the sickness she was born with, Nanami has had to experience great pain every moment of her life. This also ties in to her immunity to poisons and other sicknesses--nothing could be more painful than what she's had to grow up with, unless it was lethal. In her early childhood she was pitied by her mother, who wished she could die in peace instead of suffering, and rejected by her father for being so strong. When Shichika was trained to be a proper sword, Nanami had to watch from the sidelines, her eyes taking in everything themselves and teaching her everything she needed. She never had that level of familial 'love' most children grow up with all the time from their parents.
Flashbacks show that she and Shichika had a good relationship with one another regardless, eating together and spending time together quietly when he wasn't training. Being the more intelligent of the two of them, Nanami was normally the one to do the thinking for Shichika, who refuses to let his sister leave the room when Togame first wants to speak with him about their sword journey. Shichika is the more animalistic of the two, having been born on the island and raised by his father and younger sister, while Nanami seems to have inherited her manners and more mother-like abilities from her mother when she was still alive before being forced to live on the island after her death.
Nanami has a strange sense of humour that she tries to implement and the oddest of times, before fighting Chouchou she remarks on how she never thought she'd have a gentleman following after her. After acquiring the Akutō Bita she second-guesses herself with a smirk after calling things 'good'. Due to the poison of the sword slowly running through her she thinks it's a riot to correct the things she does as being 'bad' instead now. Like how the Akutō Bita has a 'good' weight...or maybe it's 'bad'?
Despite being raised as a sword, Nanami has certain honours she tends to keep; one being burying the dead properly after killing them. After killing the Maniwa ninja who attempted to kidnap her, she stays true to her word and buries them all alongside one another. After she leaves the island on her journey though, she seems to forget all about her honours when seeking the Deviant Blades. She massacres an entire clan, as well as the holy guards of Shireizan, leaving their bodies to be covered by snow and dirt without a single care for them. This is probably the 'poison' of the Akutō Bita magnifying how weary she is with all the meaningless violence she's had to do, and it infects her mind to make her strive towards her goal and nothing else; having Shichika end her life.
After she acquires the Akutō Bita her negative views on weak people seems to magnify, after murdering the holy guards in Shireizan she mercilessly stomps on a guard simply because he touched her. Nanami already viewed weak people as weeds, but if the man were to be in the same situation before she acquired the sword she probably would have been less violent about it and ended his life quickly. Despite having the Akutō Bita removed, occasionally this poison may still affect her mentality from time to time due to the wound on her chest.
Nanami welcomes death with open arms. Ever since she was a child it was the one thing she wanted the most; but could never attain. Her pain tolerance from her sickness left most blows dull, and the pride of a sword kept her from taking her own life. Her deepest wish as a sword was to be...good. More than anything she wanted to be a good sword. She wanted to be able to work towards something so hard, to feel that self-satisfaction she could never feel on her own due to her eyes that made everything effortless. It wasn't until her death she felt what it was like to work so hard towards something; she worked so hard to die at the hands of her brother, while helping him grow stronger, and putting up a good fight herself.
Powers/Abilities: Nanami was born with a special set of eyes she calls 'migeika'. While looking no different than normal ones, they posses the ability to teach her an opponent's skills with only a glance - and upon the second glance, master those skills. This means that Nanami can recreate any sort of blocking technique, ninja art, sword skill, or martial arts technique as long as she's watched it once, and master it if she's seen it twice. The same can be said for any other sort of skills present at Monad that would probably not be in her world; how to shoot a rifle or even something as odd as using her hair as a weapon would be good examples. As long as it isn't explained with fantasy-type magic Nanami will be able to learn that certain skill. Even something as little as the ability to write with her left hand she would be able to learn easily.
In terms of her family's fighting style, Kyotō-ryū, Nanami has demonstrated a few of the skills herself, but knows all of them due to watching her father and Shichika train from such a young age. Here are the names of the attacks and their terminology in order of appearance, due to the lack of an outside source to link you to instead. Patrinia is a type of disarming move she uses against Kamakiri, she uses her kimono to constrict around the target's weapon and render it useless. Tsume Awase is a skill she copied from Kamakiri before his death, she can extend her fingernails into long sharp blades, and regrow them should they be removed or broken. Poppy appears to be an uppercut move used with a single hand. Ashigaru is a skill she copies from Chouchou, it allows its user to make their body weightless, increasing their speed and rendering them unhittable. It can be used to hold additional weight on the back and shoulders, as well as skate over water. Dandelion appears to be a single thrust of the hand through vital organs of the body, she combines it with the copied Tsume Awase from Kamakiri. Makibishi Shidan is a ninpou (ninja arts) copied from Mitsubachi that allows the user to fire poison-tipped caltrops (spiked spheres thrown to cut into skin) at blinding speed to immobilize the enemy. Caltrops are needed beforehand however, and cannot magically be summoned. Though not considered much of an ability normally, Nanami has learned how to wield a katana properly through watching Mitsubachi try to attack her.
The 'necromancy' of the holy guards of Shireizan is shown by Nanami to be nothing but memories of dead family members come from the other side to haunt the user for a short while. Though this may only be true for Nanami herself, since her memories of her family aren't good ones. She considers it useless and probably will never use it again. After killing the Itezora clan Nanami gains their inhuman strength, which allows her to lift incredibly heavy objects, like her brother or things like large boulders with ease. Nanami also combines Kyotō-ryū attacks together, some pairs of these are Red Poppy and Daphne, which creates two varying types of striking blows that are unseen by the eye, but hit in the head and chest regions, sending the opponent flying back to the ground.
Since the Akutō Bita will have been removed from her chest come entry to Monad, most of Nanami's Kyotō-ryū skills will be severely limited due to her frail body. Most of the skills she showcases are normally striking skills, but continuous jabbing skills and jumps will quickly tire her out and cause her to be dangerously short of breath. Skills like the ones she copied from the Maniwa ninja will be fully usable, however her extreme strength from the Itezora clan will be very limited due to her poor health. Carrying large objects on her back will be quite impossible, along with carrying something heavier than herself in her arms for longer than a few minutes.
Keepsakes/Mementos: The pink flower that she wears in her hair; her pale green kimono; her purple kimono and gauntlets; the black void-like scar on her chest left over from Akutō Bita's removal; a small red maple leaf from Shichika's person; the skulls of the Maniwa Ninja she killed; the ghostly images of her parents from the Shireizan monk's necromancy; weeds; a pack of cigarettes; Kamakiri's nails coated with blood; Mitsubachi's caltrops; slices of watermelon.
Sample: All it took was a single swing of her hand - one swing to get Shichika to fight her seriously.
Although a rather pathetic trick to catch her off guard, she had to applaud the strategian - Togame's plan to snuff out every single one the three-hundred candles in the shrine around them was unthinkable to a sword like herself. Leaving her in the dark and giving Shichika time to attack her and pull Akuto Bita from her chest... even the Sword Buddha towering above them shifted to watch their heated battle.
Regulating her strength with such a phony sword... dulling her strength by rejuvenating her ailing life force. Even that wasn't enough to become a little weaker, by using the strengths of others...
She was too naive.
If only he'd hurry, now, hurry and kill her... if only Shichika would hurry and end her useless life.
But he still hesitated. He was still dull... even if out of the two of them, she had been duller. As his older sister, she'd have to set him on the right path once again before the end. Togame calls out to her, tells her there isn't any meaning to their fight, that they don't have to kill her any longer with Akutō Bita in their possession...
"Be quiet."
One slash of her hand and Togame's long white hair falls to the ground around her, and is lit up by her lantern falling to the ground. Standing in a ring of fire, she looks terrified and beautiful.
"Your head will come off, next."
She's panting heavily, scarred bosom heaving from the overexertion of cutting Togame from so far a distance. Without Akutō Bita her body was weak again, but her senses were still strong...
There was nothing to worry about, now that she'd caught Shichika's attention.
"Isn't this great? Now we have a reason to fight."
Shichika's voice wavers in his anger. His rage. She mocks him - tells him his likes are akin to fathers, tells him that he's unpleasant. The shrine around them is covered in flames now, and they leap into the air to clash with one another one last time.
She sees the tears in his eyes - Shichika, her little brother... finally. Finally he'd lay her to rest. She smiles at him faintly before his final blows start to fly towards her.
In order to live... just a little bit longer... she's tried to make herself weaker. But now...
This was what happened when a sword tried to use a sword, wasn't it?
Father... finally, in the end, she was a true Kyotō-ryū sword, wasn't she?
Finally, in the end, a sickly sword like herself... could die like a normal person.
A smile lights her lips, as Shichika's arm pierces through her breast. She leans in close and tries to murmur her thanks into his ear, for realizing her worth...
"Good job killing me."
Ah...she'd messed up her line, hadn't she?
She slides forward into Shichika's arms as her vision grows hazy, then fades to black.
She sees a vision of the past - of herself and Shichika as children, eating watermelon underneath the tree by their house. She calls out to him, but he's fallen asleep beside him, watermelon being picked at by a passing stag beetle.
She smiles.
Mindset: Nanami will be hesitant to accept her death - being used to the idea that the afterlife is nothing but a peaceful rest, she will probably insist that Shichika did not kill her 'properly' and will seek him out around Monad.
G̶̶l̨͡i̵͢t̷c͝͠h̕é͠s̷̷͡: Nanami herself is never frightened, disturbed, or upset by anything around her. The only time she ever expresses much emotion is around her younger brother. She wants him to succeed and do his job as a sword well. That being said, mentions of the Maniwa Insect Squad and the slaughtered Shireizan and Itezora clan will probably not be very pleasant memories, even if they aren't particularly painful to her to remember. Flames will remind her of her death by Shichika's hand.