Kirei Kotomine

PLAYER
Name: Nao
Age: 24
Personal Journal: scribblenautics
E-mail:
AIM/MSN/etc: lollichop f0xh0undvix3n [AIM]

CHARACTER
Name: Kirei Kotomine
Canon: Fate/Zero
Age: 28
Timeline: Act 9 Part 3 (Episode 12)
If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this?: Rider and Kirei aren't likely to interact; the latter is only a minor NPC in Fate/Extra and the two never actually cross paths onscreen.

Personality:

From a very early age, Kirei was a sensible and insightful person with a strong sense of right and wrong. He was raised by a loving father who took pride in his gifted and clever son. But there was an inconsistency that Kirei himself only fully realized in his early teenage years: not only did he feel no love for his father, he also did not hold any interest in the sense of 'beauty' his father saw in the world. Kirei preferred things like moths over butterflies, nightshade over roses, and all things 'evil' to be more beautiful than that which was 'good'.

Possessing the morality of a normal person, Kirei comprehends the difference between good and evil and therefore understands that being good and moral is what the world regards as 'correct'. Unfortunately, he takes absolutely no pleasure in anything but what would be considered evil; from others' misfortune to widespread destruction. Understanding how fundamentally wrong that is, at this point in canon Kirei has largely repressed his own nature, continuing to act as a good and moral person despite feeling nothing from it. The majority of his early life has been spent in devotion to his faith, desperately seeking salvation from God in the form of becoming someone more normal; he pursued an ordinary life despite having no attachment to the idea. As an experiment to see if he was capable of enjoying such a life, he married a terminally ill woman who loved him dearly.

For most of his life Kirei has seen the fact that he is unable to be a good person as a 'defect'. Instead of committing evil acts and enjoying them, he questions why someone like that exists. From his own perspective, Kirei sees 'evil' as something the world hates and tries to remove, so he finds that it stands to reason someone born evil shouldn't exist. At the same time, he questions where the crime is in his own existence, and whether or not he has a right to exist at all the way that he is. Aware that he was simply not created with even the desire to be a good person, Kirei found he couldn't even regret having become evil; he simply was from the very beginning.

Though he is disinterested in nearly everything, Kirei has a tendency to be extremely obsessive when it comes to the matter of his own existence. That is to say, if he determines that someone or something has the potential to be similar to himself and therefore potentially able to justify or condemn his life with certainty, he will fight with almost singleminded determination to find and question them no matter how distant or difficult to reach. Finding that he was mistaken about such an individual (as was the case with Kiritsugu Emiya) is one of the few things that can make Kirei visibly upset and angry; ultimately, the idea that his backwards existence could in fact be a singularity is the most frustrating thing for Kirei Kotomine.

In short, Kirei is an almost completely detached and empty individual with no true sense of self, who derives no joy from anything but others' suffering. His current denial of the fact results in him being someone who simply goes through the motions of acting in the 'right' way a person should, and that repression will in later canon collapse under the guidance of outside influences (mostly Gilgamesh) to form a major antagonist demanding answers rather than waiting for them.

Background: Kirei on the Type-Moon wiki

Abilities:

Martial Arts

Kirei uses a heavily modified form of bajiquan to fight hand-to-hand, and an extreme amount of physical strength to back it up. His style uses his own strength fused with magecraft to damage an opponent's internal organs; with one strike he manages to destroy Kiritsugu's heart and lungs, the latter only being saved by the regenerative properties of Avalon.

Generally speaking, his skill in bajiquan is somewhere beyond even the level of your average martial arts film; he can detect an opponent's movement without even the benefit of his own eyesight, as well as strike and block far faster than nearly any ordinary human being.

Holy Church

At ten years old, Kirei was made an Executor; a heretic-hunting assassin. The title alone is taken to mean those of the group's number are hardened killers of the most steadfast faith and bloodiest hands. The chosen weapon of the Executors are Black Keys, long and thin swords used as thrown weapons to physically or spiritually injure their targets. Kirei himself often uses three or even six at a time, throwing them easily and with near prefect accuracy--he can throw one in 0.3 seconds and throw four in 0.7 seconds without difficulty.

Exorcism is another skill held by some Executors, and the skill of exorcists is exactly what it says on the tin. They have the ability to destroy evil spirits and demons through holy words and rituals, which Kirei himself demonstrates late in Fate/stay night.

Magecraft

Spending the three years prior to the Fourth Holy Grail War studying magic, Kirei learns many different categories of the craft. Seeking some form of fulfillment, he chooses one and studies until he's very nearly mastered it; finding all of them to hold no genuine interest, he drops them at that point and moves on to the next. In this way he learns alchemy, necromancy, summoning, divination, and healing skills. The latter is the only one of any importance; he is gifted in a form of magic that heals the spiritual and mental rather than the physical. In other words, he can do things such as remove Command Spells, purify poisons, and in Fate/stay night even remove a number of magical parasitic worms merged with Sakura Matou's body.

First Person: On the test drive!

Third Person:

It was all so irritating in a way Kirei couldn't quite describe. This place and his arrival...was there some deeper meaning to it, or had it been just another mistake?

He'd taken to occupying the cathedral in moments like these, the quietly thoughtful ones in which the priest found himself carefully considering the situation at hand. He still wasn't certain how he had arrived, but more pressing was the question of what to do now that he was here. Without his father's or Tokiomi's guidance and advice, Kirei found himself at something of a loss.

'Everything from this point forward is up to you.'

Kirei pressed a hand to his head to ward off the memory of that arrogant voice that had only spoken to him a few days prior. It had only been a few days, hadn't it? Idly he wondered what had become of Tokiomi Tohsaka and the Holy Grail War itself. He had been drawn into that incident much like he'd been drawn to this city; suddenly and without any clear purpose. There must have been a reason for this, he thought. A reason that Kirei Kotomine was to be in this city at this time...but considering the matter yielded no results.

It couldn't really have been his own choice as to what happened next, could it? Kirei wasn't even certain what he should do if that was the case. The option to help others live and find a way to escape held no interest, but then what was left? Simply existing in a foreign place like this? How was that any better of an option? Could he really do nothing at all even allowed his own will and opportunity to decide for himself?

What was the point of it, then?

In the silence of the empty house of God, one single priest questioned everything and heard nothing in return.