INCENSE

Contact Info: Blade, kumonryuu@hotmail.com

Character's Full Name: Incense is her full name, though it is often 
accompanied by "Dragon Princess", or "Dragon Princess of the Musk 
Dynasty"

"Place" in GRIT:  Godlike Child

Residence: The Ken Ni Kaze, at least until she can be persuaded to give 
it back to the rightful owner

Height: 68cm (child form), 183 cm (adult form)

Weight: 25kg (child form), 82 kg (adult form)

Eyes: Crimson, with the pupils slitted as a reptiles are.

Hair: Tri coloured, with white bangs, blue on the top and sides of the 
head, and with pink falling down behind to mid-back.  In either form, 
Incense normally wears her hair in a ponytail, secursed by a golden 
clasp.

Birthday: April 12th, 4 years old

Blood Type: Inhuman.

Curse: Spring of Drowned Young Man

Other: Incense bears a more than striking resemblence to her father Herb, 
Dragon King of the Musk.  In adult form, the two look essentially 
identical.

Clothing: Incense normally wears a rich raiment of white, with a crimson 
sash and collar.  There are golden plates of armor on the outfit as well, 
which look like they came from a scaled creature.  The outfit is the same 
in either form; child-Incense merely adapts the shirt to be a full body 
outfit, and uses the smaller armor plates as her shoulder guards.  

Personality:  Incense is a superior being.  She knows it, her servants 
know it, and anyone in her presence had better know it too, or be 
prepared to act like they do.  She is the Pure, the ultimate culmination 
of the mingled human-dragon bloodline of the Musk royals, and one of the 
most powerful beings alive.  She's not especially unpleasant most of the 
time, and especially in her child form can be playful and cheerful, 
almost indistinguishable from another four year old girl.  But when she 
demands something, those around her jump to fulfill her wishes.  When she 
is annoyed, those around her rush to remove what bothers her.  And when 
she is angry, those around quake in fear, for at any time she may decide 
to unleash her staggering might indiscriminately on anyone unlucky enough 
to be in the vicinity.

She is not merely a childlike being with the power of a god, though that 
could be forgotten easily when she plays with her friend Pikachu or even 
zips through the air cheerfully in her natural form.  Underestimating her 
based on this is very dangerous, however.  Incense is staggeringly 
intelligent and learned, far more than should be possible for any child, 
much less one of her tender years.  She knows complicated chi tricks it 
takes powerful masters years to learn, and seems an almost inexhaustible 
fount of knowledge on any subject, supernatural or mundane.  Confident, 
cunning, and resourceful, it seems very believable that she is the 
perfect warrior; indeed, even a perfect being.  Incense is quick, 
sometimes too quick, to show off just how frighteningly competent she is, 
as yet more proof of her superiority to mundane "half-bloods" and even 
her Musk companions.

Lies.  All lies.

Incense is the daughter of Herb, who in his bitter misogyny of years past 
found no woman he would marry and instead wed his own separated female 
cursed form.  She was the product of this union, the ultimate incest, and 
from birth it was already clear she could never be normal, even by the 
loose standards this word applied to a member of Musk royalty.  Unusually 
intelligent and clearly with great potential for power, Incense was 
walking, talking, and even flying when most children lay helplessly in 
their cribs.  She was also listening.  And what she heard bothered her 
greatly.  Many considered her a freak, resented her birth, resented her 
father's refusal to take a "proper" wife.

Worse by far was her father himself, who while cordial in person, raged 
behind closed doors over his child and heir being a woman.  And her 
mother, while not overtly unfriendly, was cool, distant, and self-
absorbed, leaving the care of her baby almost entirely to surrogates.  
This, unintentionally, became the child's salvation.

Mint, wolfen royal bodyguard and seneschal, volunteered to be the young 
princess' companion.  Though he had reasons of his own for doing so, the 
Musk warrior found himself growing fond of the lonely, confused and 
desperately unhappy young girl.  Though he would speak no ill of or 
protest to the royal couple, he did his best to be a friend and companion 
of Incense, and to show and teach her whatever caught her fancy.  Though 
his efforts did much to help the princess, she still grew obsessed with 
proving her worth to her parents, to the courtiers, and most of all to 
herself.  When Incense proposed a risky, almost ludicrous plan to him, 
Mint agreed to go along with it and even helped trick his friend Lime 
into assisting, still caught by that mixture of loyalty to the princess 
and hope that he could use her to further his own aims.

Incense did not know what drove her to Jyusenkyou.  Oh, certainly, she 
understood the idea; the origins of the Musk made it so that women 
exercised the most fine control, wheras men inherited the most raw power.  
Hoping to combine her female mental acuity with the power of a man's body 
and chi seemed natural, once she thought of it.  But while she went along 
with the plan, she could not shake the feeling that while the plan was 
sound, it was NOT her own.  That, in fact, it had somehow been delivered 
into her mind by someone else...

As she emerged from the waters of the spring, all become clear to the 
Dragon Princess, as the hum that had always lay nascent in the back of 
her mind suddenly exploded into full-fledged words.  Her unique blood, 
untainted by outside influence, somehow had put Incense in contact with 
beings who claimed to be the spirits of her ancestors.  They could talk 
to her, teach her, help her.  But only in her male form, with the 
potential of her power and the union of both male and female realised, 
could she hear what they said.  

At first, she was overjoyed.  The plan had worked beyond her wild 
imaginings, and in her new "cursed" form she had gained power such as had 
never been seen in Musk history.  Within a month of training, aided by 
the constant tutelage and knowledge given her by her ancestors, she 
surpassed first her father and then the limits of any known Musk ruler.  
Furthermore, the voices that spoke to her assured her that she was no 
freak, no shame upon the Musk line.  Indeed, she was chosen.  She was the 
Pure, the ultimate culmination of Musk potential.  She was destined for 
such great things that even her father would be able to do nothing but 
applaud her.  

However, over time, Incense grew to resent the voices.  Loving the power 
and the ability to gain respect it gave her, she grew to hate and fear 
those that had provided it.  Her mind was that of a young child, but the 
knowledge she had been given was incompatible with her simple natural 
desires.  Incense repeatedly found herself torn between wanting to 
indulge herself in childlike ways, and feeling contempt at the self-same 
urges, now that she was "beyond" that.  The voices of her ancestors did 
not help.  They had no patience for her struggle to cope with her new 
situation.  They provided aid, but they cajoled, demanded, even 
threatened.  Incense MUST gain more power, more knowledge, more ability.  
Without it, she was a waste.  Moreover, they refused to stay silent, even 
as she commanded them to do so.  Unable to take it, Incense reverted to 
spending more and more time in her child form, attempting to forget.  But 
she hated her child form almost as much.  Though the voices were silent, 
her own knowledge was still there, urging her to "better" things.  
Moreover, she despised how weak and helpless she was, how she then needed 
Lime and Mint's protection.  Attempts to use some of the vast martial 
arts and chi knowledge to enhance her normal form's ability to defend 
itself had only limited success; she simply didn't enough power to draw 
on, nor the experience in controlling lesser power such that she could 
overcome this disadvantage.

So, she hatched a new plan.  On Mint's urging, she travelled to Nerima, 
but she was not interested in her servant's plan for vengeance.  Instead, 
she sought power.  She knew, and any idiot could observe, that great 
power lay for the searching in Nerima.  Hidden techniques.  Artifacts of 
power.  The Fire of the Dragon.  Any or all of these could be what she 
needed, the panacea that would allow her to rid herself of the voices 
while allowing her to keep or even exceed her current vast power.  

She speaks of this plan to noone.  Nobody even knows about the voices, 
the source of her knowledge and skill.  She will not show weakness before 
anyone; she will not back down in her quest for perfection, and she will 
not depend on anyone else for help.  Though she hates the voices, one 
thing they told her she believes implicitly: she is the Pure.  She is the 
chosen one.  She is superior.  The only alternative is that she is a 
freak, a scared little girl, an unloved child who doesn't even deserve to 
exist.  And she will do anything to avoid that.

Identifying quote: 
"Bow to your superior, little half-blood, and you may yet live."
"Candy!  Yummyummyummy!  Want some, Pikachu?"


[EDITOR'S NOTE:  At the end of the fight in "The Princess, The Avatar, and
the Handyman", Incense completely rejected the voices, and will probably
be avoiding her cursed form at all costs.]