Kimura Masako

My entry for Yokai contest.

Name: Kimura Masako (Kimura being the name of the family, like a normal Japanese name)

Species: Nekomata

Background:
As an ordinary Bombay cat, Masako was bought by a young Japanese couple to celebrate their first kid, Kimura Kaede. As such, the kitten and the child grew together. In fact, Masako even became very protective of the child... So much that, when a rookie-ranked Yokai entered the room of the baby as it was 6 month old, Masako hissed, clawing and biting it... So much that the Yokai, not wanting more trouble than a small joke was worth, fled, but not without having changed the life of the cat forever... The owners, worried about the health of their pet, brought Masako to a veterinary for an examination... Which was concluded by the latter saying that he never saw a cat so healthy, even so young.

The years passed, without further incident, with the saying of the vet proving true, as even when Masako was nearly ten years old, which is old for a cat, she was almost still as lively as a kitten. Until, when she hit ten...

Kaede, now nine years old and the favorite of Masako among the household, woke up and, instead of a small black cat, found a naked girl, probably in her early teens, by his side, with big black fuzzy ears on the top of her head and two soft tails of the same color emerging from her well proportioned ass, as well as whiskers. For the moment being, she hadn't noticed him, occupied to try to remove a very tight collar from her neck... using her feet... The kid could recognize this collar - it was the very one that he bought Masako with his allowance money... As he pat on the shoulder of the girl, she suddenly turned toward him, but after seeing him, she immediately dropped on her back, her hands in the air and meowing pitifully, and at one point trying to say a very rough "Kaede". At that moment, it made no doubt in his mind, no matter how it was possible, it was Masako... At that, he removed the collar quickly, at which she rested her head on him and tried to purr... Later that day, Kaede presented the situation to his parents... Even if they were baffled by the situation, they decided to raise her like their own daughter... Beginning by teaching her to act as a human.

Five years later, Masako had learned a lot, ranging from Japanese and how to walk on two legs to the shapeshifting powers of her specie and her ability to disappear to the eyes of most humans. She was evolving normally among society, where the Kimura family hid her from others at first. However, one day, as she was at the market, she accidentally bumped into someone, making her lose her disguise for a second... While most people dismissed it as just her imagination, unfortunately for her, there was an overzealous slayer among the crowd. Seeing her inhuman attributes, he cried "Monster!" in front of the crowd. As she tried to ignore him, she saw that he was following him. As soon as she could escape the crowd, she tried to disappear to escape him, and ran at full speed toward her house, admittedly faster than any normal humans... However, even then, the slayer could follow her, and trespassing into the house, he began to say to the family that he would save them... Kaede, not wanting him to hurt the one who was like a big sister to him, tried to interpose. However, as he did, he was swept away roughly enough that he was knocked out on the wall... As the slayer looked up, all he could see was a very angry nekomata pouncing toward him like a wild cat before the living daylight got knocked out of him. Then, Masako anger not quenched, she continued to play with him, strongly enough that his heart gave up from the stress...

After that, the entire Kimura family talked for long about what they should do... Finally, it was unanimously decided that they would bury the body and that Masako would go away... Soon, by listening to gossips around town, they learnt that the man was a slayer, giving Masako an extreme dislike for them...

Now, twenty years later, Masako became quite strong, as she was the "slayer of the slayers", as she was calling herself, searching slayers and challenging them... For each of her victories, she adds a knot to the rope around her waist, for now being at 7... Additionally, fact known to few, she grew two additional tails, something that rarely happens to nekomata, as most are either not interested in becoming stronger or too wild to live long... The fact that she has four tails makes her quite a threat, especially since she hides two of them, making slayers underestimate her.

Likings: Her adoptive family (that she goes to visit every so often, Kaede now having children of his own), water (weirdly enough), dancing, hunting (of wild life, which is how she mainly nourishes herself, she also sells her quarry sometime to earn some money)

Dislikings: Slayers, dogs, other Yokais (unrelated to her first encounter with one - she just can't support most of them), heat

Source of inspiration for the character: Touhou, which inspired me to use a nekomata, and its wiki, which made me learn that they can have more than two tails.