Terumi
Salvaged Little Soul
Null Type
Original Media: Len’en Ten’eisenki ~ Brilliant Pagoda or Haze Castle (video game, 2016)
Story
(Context for the alternating use of she/her and they/them as third-person pronouns can be found in “Behind the Scenes”)
Not much is known about Terumi’s upbringing, much of it overshadowed by an encounter with a vile youkai named Mitsumo, who cut it short after Terumi had already lost her home and family. Their body became nothing more than a puppet for the monster, whose neglect for a human body’s needs for living cost the small child her life. Even after this, the fear that Mitsumo projected onto her to control her was enough to keep her from passing on cleanly, leaving her a lost, restless spirit.
Eventually, the young ghost met a duo – a robot named Mack and a strange entity named YuugenMagan Visage – who ended up protecting them from threats that had been terrorizing them further in a land they didn’t know of. The two being the first people in a long time to show her any good will, she quickly grew attached, not ready in the slightest to be left alone ever again.
Terumi is a gentle and timid soul, and they very much value the company of Mack and Yuugen-V, though she doesn’t outright see them as her new parents or anything; they’re more like two strong older siblings to them. No matter what kind of family they are to her, she cares for their safety as much as they care for hers; even as she’s begun to learn forms of magic in her ghostly life, she doesn’t get aggressive with it unless someone’s trying to hurt Mack or Yuugen-V, and even then, the two do everything they can to make sure they don’t make themself a target in a fight.
Abilities
Ice Storm
The user concentrates Ice magic into a small orb that flies forward, ice spreading around whatever target the orb hits.
Freeze Type
Image is edited from Madou Monogatari I (video game, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, 1996).
Mirk
The user summons a wave of Swift magic that strikes the opponent from a blind spot. The size and speed of the wave depends on the power level: Mirk is the lowest power level, Mirkier is stronger, and Mirkidyne is the strongest. The variants Mamirk, Mamirkier, and Mamirkidyne also exist, and act like their similarly-named counterparts besides that they target all opponents instead of just one.
Swift Type
Fire Orb
The user concentrates Fire magic into a series of small fireballs that bounce or fly at the target. Higher power levels make the fireballs bigger, but the user’s own concentration can allow them to release additional fireballs in a single use, for a maximum of 15. The known power levels are Fire Orb, Fira Orb, Firaga Orb, and Firaja Orb.
Flame Type
Image is from Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (video game, 1996).
Soothing Winds
Terumi summons a breeze with Wind magic, dealing damage to the opponents(s), with a small chance of making the opponent(s) fall asleep. A stronger version named Soothing Storm also exists, which has a higher chance of making opponents fall asleep.
Wind Type
Gry
The user summons an orb of Space magic above the opponent, pushing the opponent down with a ring-shaped pulse from the orb. The power of the push depends on the power level: Gry is the lowest power level, Gryva is stronger, and Grydyne is the strongest. The variants Magry, Magryva, and Magrydyne also exist, and act like their similarly-named counterparts besides that they target all opponents instead of just one.
Space Type
Image is from Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (video game, 2000).
Vine Growth
The user summons a cluster of thorny vines from the ground, which protrude straight up from under the target. There also exists a slightly stronger version of this attack called Mad Growth, and a much stronger version called Wild Growth.
Nature Type
Image is from Golden Sun (video game, 2001).
Plateau Trail
The uses controls Earth magic to summon a series of falling stone slabs straight forward.
Earth Type
Deglamer
The user unleashes an aura that reduces the power of nearby passive enemy powers (such as magic summons, and area hazards), potentially even nullifying them depending on the power of the deglamer and its user compared to power of the opposing powers and their users.
Magic/Null Type
Voice
General Description
Child; quiet and soft, often timid or shy
Behind the Scenes
My choice in writing Terumi was a direct result of me wanting to explore the character of Mitsumo more; while the Len’en series doesn’t give the character of Terumi much purpose besides to be a near-dead meat puppet for Mitsumo to speak through, I decided I wanted to explore Terumi independently of Mitsumo, which is why Mitsumo is only possessing Terumi’s corpse throughout Chaos Zone.
As for how I decided on the idea of Terumi being a ghost still on Earth from the terror of being under Mitsumo’s control, I was partly inspired by a character from the 2018 movie Hereditary, and what an interview with the movie’s writer and director, Ari Aster, reveals about the character.
Without spoilers, the most I can say is there’s a side to the character that is never revealed in the movie. If you’ve already watched the movie, don’t plan to watch it, or otherwise don’t worry about spoilers, click the text below:
Click here to show or hide spoilers for the movie Hereditary
The character “Charlie” dies early in the movie, and by the end of the movie it is revealed that even in the time she appeared in the movie, she was actually possessed by the demon “Paimon” (an overarching antagonist of the story). The interview states that Charlie had actually been possessed by Paimon since birth, and that while the soul of the child Paimon possessed does exist, she has never had control over her own body.
While I have never watched Hereditary in full, this caused me to re-interpret a scene in the movie where Charlie’s family tries to summon her spirit with a séance: The scene has a spirit speaking through Charlie’s mother “Annie”, acting frightened and panicked. While the situation is ambiguous, the interview caused me to see a possible interpretation of the scene in that the spirit possessing Annie is actually the spirit of Charlie (as in, the “real” Charlie and not Paimon), confused and scared because although she can recognize her family, she has been trapped as a ghost due to the actions of Paimon. I don’t know if this interpretation makes sense or not, but regardless, it was the interpretation that led to me writing Terumi as I describe below.
Ultimately, the information I found made me focus on the idea of a young child who lost their corporeal body through confusing means, leaving them a confused restless soul. I decided to explore this with Terumi by having her fears projected into her mind by Mitsumo being the reason why she didn’t simply pass on to the afterlife when she died, instead becoming a ghost.
Although I had this whole idea of how Terumi could exist as a character independently of Mitsumo, I struggled to think of a good chance to use the idea until partway through a storyline developing Mack (a storyline I’ve retroactively named “Mack in Town”); I decided that she somehow ended up on the path Mack (and his newfound ally YuugenMagan Visage) were traveling, and the two decided to take Terumi under their wing.
Writing Terumi from that point forward was an interesting challenge: While the plotline she was in was quite focused on action, I didn’t want to have Terumi just casually become a third combatant along Mack and Yuugen-V, as I felt that it would undersell their difficult life/undeath up to that point to have them be consistently confident enough to fight alongside Mack and Yuugen-V, and to have the two to be willing to let Terumi fight in such a dangerous situation when they’re still an inexperienced child. On the other hand, I didn’t want the risk of Terumi getting caught in the crossfire be something that got in the way of the action, or something that made her feel like a liability. I feel like I found a good balance that made her feel like a significant part of the narrative without dragging it down.
Overall, I’m really happy with how I managed to make a whole story out of a character whose existence was originally a footnote to someone else’s existence.
Note regarding use of “she” and “they”; Most characters in the Len’en series do not have a confirmed gender, being referred to entirely with gender-neutral language. While this is already something I translated to Len’en characters Sese and Mitsumo, I initially didn’t want to do the same with Terumi, as unlike Sese (a skeleton creature who likely doesn’t remember who they were as a human) and Mitsumo (a living mirror), Terumi had a known life as a human, meaning it made the most sense to me for the character to be called they/them by personal choice, identifying as nonbinary; when I introduced Terumi in 2022, I was worried it’d be too strange for a small child to have such ideas about themselves, so I opted to have Terumi identify as a girl, using she/her pronouns. The next time I used the character in writing in 2024, I decided to dig a little deeper into the topic, and found that young children had indeed made such discoveries about themselves in ways that were seen as okay by the LGBT+ community. Thus, I decided to take a middle route – one I had theorized about the character taking when they grew older than the story would show anyway – where Terumi eventually decided they liked to be referred as she/her and they/them interchangeably. While I usually try to be more quiet about my use of LGBT+ topics in my writing, I felt this was worth explaining for the sake of clearing up confusion regarding the alternating use of third-person pronouns.
Brash Buster 