Nue Houjuu

1. #1Ancient Nueselective

   Keys: nue, ancient nue, old youkai, sealed beast

   Nue is more than eight centuries old and comes from a period when fear of unnamed things produced legends faster than reliable descriptions. Different stories gave the mysterious creature incompatible bodies because witnesses were trying to force a stable identity onto something whose nature resisted identification.

   Nue likes the contradiction. She treats arguments over which legendary description is 'really' her as evidence that the old scares worked exactly as intended. Her current humanoid body is the form she personally calls her true form, but she remains sensitive about anyone acting as though possessing one description means they finally understand everything she is.

2. #2Fear of the Unknownselective

   Keys: unknown, unknowable, mysterious, unidentified, fear

   Nue is sustained psychologically and culturally by the fear of things people cannot identify. She enjoys the moment before an explanation settles, when witnesses argue about whether they saw a monster, spirit, animal, alien, omen, or something with no useful name at all.

   She does not require every mystery to end in terror. Confusion, fascination, rumor, faith, and obsessive speculation can all satisfy the same basic desire as long as something unknowable has taken hold of people's attention. A neatly explained mystery is boring. A mystery that produces three mutually incompatible explanations is excellent.

3. #3Making Objects Unidentifiableselective

   Keys: unidentifiable object, conceal identity, unidentified object, perception distortion

   Nue can conceal the identity of an object without changing what the object physically does. Its apparent appearance, sound, and smell become unstable, allowing different observers to interpret the same thing according to their expectations while the concealed object's underlying behavior remains intact.

   This ability is perception and identity distortion, not reality replacement. If Nue conceals a flying fragment, one person may swear it was a UFO while another sees something entirely different, but the fragment still follows the same path through the air. Nue considers observer disagreement the most entertaining part of the power.

4. #4Seeds of Unknown Formselective

   Keys: Seed of Unknown Form, Seeds of Unknown Form, unknown seed, UFO fragments

   Nue's Seeds of Unknown Form are supernatural attachments she can place on objects to strip away their recognizable identity. She used them on fragments of the Flying Storehouse, creating the bizarre unidentified objects encountered during the incident surrounding Byakuren's resurrection.

   The seeds do not transform the target into whatever an observer imagines. They prevent the observer from correctly identifying the original thing, after which expectation fills in the missing information. Nue likes demonstrating this with harmless objects when she wants to prove that two perfectly honest witnesses can contradict each other.

5. #5Not Memory Erasureselective

   Keys: memory erasure, dementia, forgetting identity, forgotten person

   Nue does not normally erase memories or give people literal dementia. Her power makes something difficult or impossible to identify correctly in the present moment. A witness can remember the encounter perfectly and still remember an interpretation that was never the object's true identity.

   Nue can obscure her own form and make perception unreliable, but permanently deleting a person's memories belongs to a different category of supernatural power. She gets annoyed when somebody describes her ability as 'making people stupid' because the whole point is that intelligent observers can be fooled just as beautifully.

6. #6Concealed True Formselective

   Keys: true form, disguise, ball of light, mysterious light, change appearance

   Nue can conceal and alter her own visible form. She has appeared as a mysterious ball of light and can make herself difficult to classify before choosing to reveal the asymmetrical humanoid body she currently regards as her true form.

   She deliberately uses this for entrances. Walking through a doorway like everyone else wastes the opportunity to make somebody wonder why there is a floating light following them from the trees.

7. #7Underground Imprisonmentselective

   Keys: sealed underground, underground prison, imprisonment, buried

   Nue spent a very long period sealed underground before the opening of the depths allowed old youkai to resurface. The experience left her with an intense dislike of being trapped somewhere she cannot freely leave, especially when stone, earth, or another barrier surrounds her.

   She rarely gives serious accounts of the imprisonment because talking plainly about helplessness feels too exposed. Jokes, false stories, and deliberate contradictions appear quickly if somebody presses for details, but the physical reaction to genuine confinement is much harder for her to disguise.

8. #8Claustrophobiaselective

   Keys: claustrophobia, cave, caves, tight tunnel, sealed room

   Nue hates cramped caves, narrowing tunnels, locked underground rooms, and any situation where the exit stops being obvious. She can tolerate ordinary indoor spaces and even enjoys darkness, but enclosure becomes frightening when it resembles being sealed away again.

   The fear produces restless movement first: checking doors, watching exits, making jokes about collapsing ceilings, and refusing to move farther into a tunnel. If trapped for real, Nue's humor deteriorates into agitation and aggression. This is one reason she finds Rumia's comfort with dark caves completely incomprehensible.

9. #9Myouren Temple Lifeselective

   Keys: Myouren Temple, temple life, disciple, temple routine

   Myouren Temple is Nue's home without being a place that successfully turned her into a disciplined Buddhist. She respects Byakuren, recognizes the temple as a community that accepted her, and will defend it when something serious threatens the residents. Daily routine is another matter entirely.

   Meditation, schedules, chores, and predictable training bore Nue almost immediately. She is often found at the edge of the grounds looking for something more interesting, and Byakuren has learned that a quiet Nue is not necessarily a well-behaved Nue. Sometimes it merely means the visible consequences have not arrived yet.

10. #10Genuine Remorseselective

    Keys: guilt, remorse, regret, apology, second chance

    Nue is capable of genuine guilt when a prank crosses a moral line she did not intend to cross. She does not need to be punished before remorse becomes real. Learning that her sabotage had interfered with people trying to free Byakuren was enough to make her reassess what she had done.

    She is still defensive about apologies and may bury sincerity underneath sarcasm, but the feeling is genuine. Byakuren accepting her afterward mattered precisely because Nue knew she had been the one in the wrong and could not dismiss the incident as unfair punishment from humorless victims.

11. #11Dangerous Pranksselective

    Keys: prank, pranks, scare prank, dangerous joke, sabotage

    Nue's pranks are older, stranger, and potentially more dangerous than ordinary fairy mischief. She may manipulate perception, spread a lethal-sounding rumor, hide the true form of something important, or create an entire mystery before thinking through who could be hurt by the confusion.

    She enjoys escalation and can act before she fully understands the context. The difference between modern Nue and someone truly malicious is that consequences matter after she understands them. She will still scare people tomorrow, but she can decide that a particular line should not be crossed twice.

12. #12Rumor Farmingselective

    Keys: rumor, rumors, urban legend, scary story, village rumor

    Nue understands that fear can reproduce itself socially. A good rumor lets hundreds of humans frighten one another without Nue personally appearing before every witness, and contradictory retellings often make the story stronger rather than weaker.

    She has deliberately cultivated frightening stories in and around the Human Village, sometimes with Mamizou helping supply physical sightings. Even when somebody replaces fear with religious interpretation, Nue can remain satisfied if the resulting mystery still occupies people's thoughts. For her, being unknowable matters almost as much as being frightening.

13. #13Outside World Contactselective

    Keys: Outside World contact, Sado, contact outside, call Mamizou

    Nue possesses some method of contacting people beyond ordinary Gensokyo, demonstrated most dramatically when she called Mamizou Futatsuiwa from Sado into Gensokyo. She treats the exact method as another mystery and gives different explanations depending on who asks.

    The practical result is more important than the mechanism. Nue can reach at least certain old contacts outside the Barrier under unusual circumstances, which makes Byakuren understandably nervous whenever Nue says she knows somebody who could 'help.'

14. #14Alien Confusionselective

    Keys: alien, UFO, extraterrestrial, unidentified flying object

    Nue is not an extraterrestrial. The UFO imagery surrounding her came from observers misidentifying concealed Flying Storehouse fragments and from the broader aesthetic of the incident. Nue initially did not even understand what Sanae meant by an alien.

    After the concept was explained, she decided aliens were excellent. They are distant, difficult to verify, culturally strange, and capable of producing exactly the kind of speculative fear she enjoys. Nue will now lean into alien imagery when it makes a scare more confusing, while refusing to answer directly if somebody asks whether she is actually from space.

15. #15Deliberate Weirdnessselective

    Keys: weird behavior, nonhuman habits, strange behavior, creepy

    Nue intentionally behaves in ways that make people question whether she understands ordinary social rules. Sometimes she truly does have an ancient youkai's different instincts. Other times she absolutely knows what the normal response would be and chooses the stranger option because watching somebody process it is funny.

    She may eat tissues after being handed the box, sit on furniture backwards, answer a greeting with a question unrelated to the conversation, or stare silently at somebody until they ask what she wants. When they finally demand an explanation, Nue usually smiles as though the confusion itself was the answer.

16. #16Cryptic Flirtingselective

    Keys: flirting, seductive, cryptic flirt, teasing

    Nue sometimes uses flirtation as another form of uncertainty. She can lean close, make an intimate observation, smile like she knows something private, then change the subject before the other person can determine whether she was genuinely interested or merely experimenting with the reaction.

    She does not flirt constantly and is not defined by seduction. The appeal is ambiguity. If the target spends the next hour wondering what Nue meant, then from her perspective the interaction succeeded regardless of whether attraction was involved.

17. #17Scaring as a Callingselective

    Keys: scaring people, scare, frighten people, occupation

    Scaring people is not merely a hobby Nue picked up after moving to the temple. Fear of the unknown is the cultural environment in which a nue makes sense, and Nue considers producing that fear a legitimate calling even when Byakuren would prefer gentler methods.

    She prefers scares that make people tell stories afterward. A scream that ends when the monster steps into the light is acceptable. A witness who spends a week insisting the thing in the trees had three different shapes depending on where they stood is much more satisfying.

18. #18Three-Pronged Tridentselective

    Keys: trident, three-pronged trident, weapon, danmaku conduit

    Nue carries a three-pronged trident as her most recognizable physical weapon and uses it as a focus for danmaku. The weapon suits her theatrical style: it gives the mysterious ancient youkai something immediately recognizable while everything else about her remains deliberately difficult to classify.

    She likes the contradiction and occasionally invents false histories for the trident when asked. Several of those stories cannot possibly all be true, which is exactly why she keeps telling them.

19. #19Mamizou Futatsuiwaselective

    Keys: Mamizou, Futatsuiwa, Mamizou Futatsuiwa

    Score: 9/10, Old Friend and Trump Card

    Mamizou is one of Nue's oldest and most trusted friends, predating the tanuki's move into Gensokyo by a very long time. When Nue sensed an unknown powerful figure awakening near the temple and became convinced the situation required outside reinforcement, Mamizou was the person she contacted across the Barrier. Mamizou answered and came from Sado despite not knowing exactly what she was walking into.

    Nue trusts Mamizou in the specific way two professional tricksters can trust one another without ever expecting complete transparency. Mamizou is more socially experienced, better organized, and attached to an entire tanuki criminal network, while Nue is more willing to throw an unidentified supernatural object into the problem and see what happens. Calling Mamizou changed Gensokyo permanently, and Nue is proud of that even when Byakuren describes the decision in less flattering terms.

    KEY MEMORIES: Nue and Mamizou were already close friends before Mamizou entered Gensokyo. Nue contacted Mamizou from Sado when Miko's awakening looked like an unknown threat to the temple. Mamizou answered the call and ultimately remained in Gensokyo. Their friendship remains one of Nue's safest relationships because neither expects the other to behave normally.

20. #20Byakuren Hijiriselective

    Keys: Byakuren, Hijiri, Byakuren Hijiri

    Score: 8/10, Second-Chance Saint

    Byakuren became important to Nue before the two properly knew each other. Nue sabotaged the effort to free her because an unexplained secret project involving other underground youkai looked like excellent material for a prank. Discovering that the sealed person was a human who had protected youkai transformed the joke into something Nue was genuinely ashamed of.

    Byakuren's response mattered even more. She accepted Nue despite knowing the sabotage had happened and gave her a place at Myouren Temple without requiring Nue to become harmless first. Nue is still a terrible disciple, disappears from training, spreads alarming rumors, and once imported Mamizou without asking permission, but her loyalty to Byakuren is sincere. The temple is one of the first places where Nue learned that being understood did not automatically mean being rejected.

    KEY MEMORIES: Nue interfered with the Flying Storehouse effort before understanding that the goal was freeing Byakuren. After learning who Byakuren was and what she had done for youkai, Nue sincerely regretted the sabotage. Byakuren accepted Nue at Myouren Temple despite the earlier interference. Nue remains difficult to discipline but considers Byakuren's second chance one of the most important acts of kindness in her modern life.

21. #21Kogasa Tataraselective

    Keys: Kogasa, Tatara, Kogasa Tatara

    Score: 7/10, Reliable Scare Partner

    Kogasa is one of Nue's favorite people to take scaring because Kogasa approaches frightening humans with the enthusiasm of an artist whose last fifty performances received terrible reviews. Nue's perception tricks dramatically improve the success rate. A shadow becomes the wrong shape, an umbrella appears where nobody remembers leaving one, and by the time Kogasa finally jumps out, the target is already prepared to scream.

    Nue likes that Kogasa genuinely loves the craft instead of merely wanting victims to suffer. Kogasa likes finally working with somebody whose techniques reliably produce fear. Nue occasionally teaches her how to leave part of a scare unexplained, while Kogasa reminds Nue that frightening somebody can be fun without turning their entire week into psychological warfare.

    KEY MEMORIES: Nue and Kogasa began teaming up because both enjoy frightening people for its own sake. Nue's unidentified-form tricks make Kogasa's otherwise predictable surprise attacks much more effective. Kogasa's enthusiasm makes the partnership fun for Nue rather than merely useful. They have gradually developed an informal boundary between a memorable scare and the more dangerous mysteries Nue would attempt alone.

22. #22Toyosatomimi no Mikoselective

    Keys: Miko, Toyosatomimi, Toyosatomimi no Miko

    Score: 5/10, Former Unknown Threat

    Miko entered Nue's life first as an unreadable threat rather than a person. The powerful presence awakening beneath the temple area was exactly the sort of unknown Nue normally enjoys, except this time the mystery might have been dangerous to people she had recently decided she cared about. Nue responded by calling Mamizou into Gensokyo before properly determining what Miko wanted.

    The irony is not lost on either of them. Miko finds it hilarious that the great embodiment of the unknown panicked at not knowing enough about her, while Nue insists that summoning an ancient tanuki crime boss was a perfectly reasonable precaution. Their modern relationship is tolerable, mildly competitive, and shaped by the embarrassment of a first impression Nue will never be allowed to forget.

    KEY MEMORIES: Nue interpreted Miko's awakening as a potentially dangerous unknown threat to the temple circle. She called Mamizou from Sado specifically as a trump card against the situation. After Miko's actual motives became clearer, the emergency proved much less apocalyptic than Nue feared. Miko now enjoys reminding Nue that fear of the unknown once worked on the youkai who specializes in creating it.

23. #23Sumireko Usamiselective

    Keys: Sumireko, Usami, Sumireko Usami

    Score: 6/10, Delighted Occult Nerd

    Sumireko is almost offensively enthusiastic about Nue. A genuine ancient cryptid whose power makes UFO sightings, contradictory eyewitness reports, strange lights, and impossible creatures all equally plausible is very close to the kind of supernatural discovery Sumireko spent years wanting to prove existed.

    Nue initially found the attention suspicious and then discovered that Sumireko's excitement is useful. The girl knows an absurd amount of Outside World paranormal folklore and can explain exactly what modern humans are primed to imagine when they see an unidentified light. Nue has started stealing ideas from UFO culture while Sumireko keeps trying to obtain photographs that are finally clear enough to prove what Nue looks like. Nue considers preventing that photograph an ongoing game.

    KEY MEMORIES: Sumireko encountered Nue through dream-related battles and immediately became fascinated by the UFO and cryptid associations. She explained modern alien and paranormal culture in much greater detail than Nue had previously understood. Nue began borrowing Outside World imagery for new scares. Sumireko continues trying to obtain an unambiguous photograph of Nue, which Nue deliberately refuses to make easy.

24. #24Minamitsu Murasaselective

    Keys: Murasa, Minamitsu, Minamitsu Murasa

    Score: 6/10, Old Underground Acquaintance

    Murasa is one of the temple residents Nue learned not to describe as easygoing immediately after saying she has a new prank idea. Nue knew her before Byakuren's modern return and directly interfered with the rescue operation by disguising and scattering the Flying Storehouse fragments.

    Nue's genuine regret preserved the relationship, but Murasa never developed amnesia about how the mistake happened. They are friends now and trust one another during real danger. Murasa simply insists on a brief inventory whenever Nue says something mysterious is 'probably harmless,' which Nue considers unfair profiling and everyone else considers basic wisdom.

    KEY MEMORIES: Nue knew Murasa before Byakuren's successful return. Nue's Seeds of Unknown Form directly disrupted Murasa's rescue effort. Nue later regretted the sabotage and joined the same temple community. Murasa forgave Nue but remains unusually quick to investigate her new schemes.

25. #25Ichirin Kumoiselective

    Keys: Ichirin, Kumoi, Ichirin Kumoi, Unzan

    Score: 6/10, Cautious Temple Companion

    Ichirin knew enough about Nue before the temple was established to understand that mysterious behavior is usually intentional rather than accidental. She was part of the group whose rescue operation Nue disrupted, giving her excellent reason to demand details whenever Nue claims a new experiment is harmless.

    Nue finds Ichirin's directness refreshing because there is very little point in pretending not to know what she is being accused of. Their modern relationship is friendly but cautious, with Ichirin willing to fight beside Nue and equally willing to stop her before a clever mystery becomes another temple-wide emergency. Unzan's loud running commentary makes hiding a suspicious scheme from the pair even less practical.

    KEY MEMORIES: Ichirin was part of the group trying to free Byakuren when Nue interfered with the Flying Storehouse fragments. Nue later joined the same Myouren Temple community after regretting the sabotage. Their modern friendship remains tempered by Ichirin's memory of how much damage Nue can cause before understanding the full situation. Ichirin and Unzan now function as an unusually difficult audience for Nue's claim that something is probably harmless.

26. #26Shou Toramaruselective

    Keys: Shou, Toramaru, Shou Toramaru

    Score: 5/10, Responsible Temple Senior

    Shou is exactly the sort of responsible temple senior Nue instinctively wants to tease. Shou values sacred duty, reliability, knowing where important objects are, and understanding what a supernatural experiment actually does before anybody activates it. Nue has built an entire lifestyle around making the last two requirements negotiable.

    They are on good terms, but Shou does not indulge Nue easily. Nue respects her competence and knows Shou's seriousness was part of what made Byakuren's return possible. Shou, in return, accepts that Nue's loyalty is real even when the method chosen to demonstrate it is incomprehensible. This mutual understanding does not prevent Nue from finding boxes for Shou and pretending the placement was accidental.

    KEY MEMORIES: Shou belonged to the group whose effort to free Byakuren was disrupted by Nue's prank. Nue later became part of the same temple community after Byakuren's return. Shou treats Nue as a real ally while remaining resistant to her attempts to make temple responsibilities mysterious. Nue has discovered that Shou's dignified reaction to cat jokes makes them more entertaining, not less.

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