i'll take a breath

[koshien]

Player Information
Name: sisi
Age: 26
Contact: protags#8655 @ discord
Other Characters: i slept on it yall

Character Information
Name: mei narumiya
Canon: ace of diamond
Canon Point: after the tokyo all star game
Age: 18
History: ideals and feelings are for the weak to justify themselves.

Personality:

How do we begin to describe Narumiya Mei?

At the risk of making this sound like Mean Girls, Narumiya Mei is flawless--or at least he'd like to make you think he is. A baseball genius and star player of Inajitsu Tech, a team that frequently makes appearances at Koushien/nationals, Mei has a big name, big talent, and most of all, a big mouth to back it up. Your first impression of Mei is cocky: even taking a look at him screams arrogance, because he tends to walk with his nose held high. Mei's arrogance is a huge part of his personality because he does, unfortunately, have the talent to back it up, and his ego is as large as it is fragile. Mei doesn't take to defeat well--two of his classmates had a running bet on how long it would take him to get over a sulk after the first time Inashiro loses.

In fact, when we first meet Mei, he's pretty childish. He tends to whine at his catcher when he doesn't get his way and takes to brooding in his room when he's annoyed. Mei gets jealous easily (see: Sawamura starting to pitch a change up, mei's changeup thank-you-very-much), pouts, whines and sulks with the best of them, and tends to lose his temper as quick as anything. He gets flustered when he screws up and hates when people beside him get complimented, especially pitchers, and is a big drama queen about pretty much everything.

To put it simply, Mei is a brat at his best and a nightmare at worst. His hobbies include sitting in the bullpen telling the other pitchers at Inashiro how much they suck when he's not playing. Part of that is that he is, indeed, the spoiled prince of Tokyo, but the other part is that he holds everyone on his team to incredibly high expectations. Mei treats people in two different ways based on his judgement of them, and for him, it's all about respect: if he thinks you're useless (see: at first, his current catcher) he'll belittle you, ignore you, and altogether treat you like garbage. If he respects you, he'll pursue you until he can beat you in baseball, typically psychologically, or adopt you into his team. Mei put together his batchmates based on his own personal scouting--his dedication to being the best is that strong--and he chose them because he admired their abilities and wanted to create the strongest team possible to take Koushien. When he was denied by one of these people (Miyuki Kazuya, a person that figures pretty heavily into Mei's storyline going into the present canon), Mei just decides that he has to crush him and his team, instead. Mei loves a challenge, almost as much as he loves when people acquiesce to his way. He loves nothing in life more than baseball, though, and he'll geek with the best of them, even if he thinks he's super cool and above that kind of behavior.

Mei is ridiculously smart--this feeds into that huge ego of his--and it's what makes him such a good player. As a part of a battery with Masatoshi Harada in the early part of the show, Mei pitched several perfect games because he finds people's weaknesses and takes them apart, even striking out Seido's Yuki Tetsu two innings in a row. He frequently shakes his current catcher's (Tadano Itsuki, the most harried person in the entire world) signs, and it's this arrogant, i'm smarter than you so just be a wall for me to pitch to behavior that caused Inashiro to lose in their fall tournament and kickstarted Mei on his slow character arc to redemption. His behavior towards Masa and Itsuki are characteristic of his "respect you or stomp all over you" personality--Mei is very, very strong personalitywise and will happily steamroll over anyone and everyone to get his way.

Off the mound, Mei's charming, bubbly and popular. He gets confessed to frequently and has a legion of fangirls who can be heard at any number of his games. Mei loves the spotlight (are you getting a picture of how egotistical he can be, yet?) and lives for being praised: he likes to show off for cameras and interviewers and fully accepts his title as the Prince of Tokyo with glee, often hamming it up for media and press in interviews. He's cheeky and has a comment about most things, whether they're from tired underclassmen, equally tired senpai, or even his coach.

Mei tends to be snappy and childish in his comebacks and takes his duty as a senpai (to poor, harried Itsuki) with importance; he can go from mentor to child in .3 seconds, and takes it upon himself to nag the shit out of him with "helpful" advice. In reality, Mei sucks at most things that are considered actual feelings--showing kindness to his teammates is one of them--and trying to get any warmth out of him is like pulling teeth. He doesn't say thank you, even when the urge is there.

That being said, Mei loves his team. He really, really loves Inashiro a lot. He hand picked them all because they were talented, but after losing at Koushien, Mei--Narumiya Mei, the Prince of Tokyo--bowed to his team and thanked them for everything they'd done, and for what they'd done for him. His private thoughts about Itsuki tend to run this way too, and he wants to take him all the way to Koushien, even if their adjustment period has been long. Mei acknowledges himself as "the worst pitcher, the worst senpai", but in the end, his dreams are huge and he's starting to recognize that to get there, he needs to be less selfish, and get there with the team he has.

When Mei breaks, he breaks. Jokes about brooding in his room aside, Mei takes everything relating to baseball very, very seriously: he confesses to Masa that it's his dream to be a professional baseball player, and just a little later, tells him that he hates himself.

The thing about Mei is that he holds everyone to impossibly high expectations, but there is no one he holds higher than himself. When he lost at Koushien--in the final, in an echo of the main team's narrative--it hurt to the point that he fought with his coach about it. Since then, Mei has tried to turn over a new leaf, but if there's one thing about Daiya, it's realistic. Mei couldn't do so easily, and his selfish behavior on the mound led to his coach snapping at him and pointing out that he was the reason that he lost. Mei cried over it, all alone in the locker room, because in reality, he knows that he's selfish. It's not that he floats through life oblivious of how his actions affect others: it's that he doesn't care, and he knows it. Mei's well aware of the fact that he can't play baseball alone. But his attitude doesn't change so easily, and the reality is that being Narumiya Mei, ace, Prince of Tokyo, is a lonely life.

Mei's inability to trust people that he hasn't hand picked personally has been his downfall in the past--in a strange contradiction to how much he wants his senpai and teammates to trust him. He seeks their recognition as much as they seek his, but Mei makes his far more unattainable for people who came into the game late. As a player, he's learning to be better. He still shakes signs often and pitches selfishly, but Mei's starting to do better in his battery, giving advice instead of relying on only himself, and it's with a hope that he's starting to grow a little as a player, too.

Since Act II started, we've seen some of those long changes start to take effect. Yes, Mei's still a brat. Yes, he's still an arrogant little megalomaniac with too much talent. Yes, he still loves taking people apart at the mound. But losing in the fall invitational taught Mei some much needed humility, and he's learned to stop taking criticism (and loss, mostly) so personally. He doesn't lose his head on the mound nearly as much as he used to, and as Daiya leads towards the next koushien, Mei's second fated meeting with Seido might not go so well for him--but he'll be damned if he's not a good challenge.

Abilities & Skills:

♚ GEN ♚
Mei is ruthlessly clever; his intelligence is one of his strongest suits. He's also in good shape from being an athlete, and can keep up with the best of them. He doesn't know how to fight or anything, but he's a quick learner, which will make him very useful in Aef!

♚ BASEBALL ♚
The majority of Mei's abilities have to do with his baseball skills. Known as the "prince of the capital" and the number one pitcher in the Kanto region, Mei is often considered his generations "strongest southpaw" (sorry sawamura.) His pitch speed is second only to Furuya's at 148 km/h and he has incredible control as well as variety in his pitches. Mei can take a player apart with his vast arsenal, and, honestly, his brains. All in all, he's a star player, who consistently bats cleanup and makes long hits and plays quick defense as well. His stats are all above 3/5 in every area relating to the sport.

Inventory/Companions:
♚ his game bag - contains basic supplies ( his glove, a ball, a bat, uniform, water bottle, etc )
♚ one inajitsu tech warmup jacket

Choice: monster - harpy. specifically traits of an american bald eagle.
Reason: [ snow voice ] he's a fluffy chick!!

Okay really though. Eagles are very proud and make an impression on people--symbolic of an entire country, they look really majestic and are terrifying predators, but they're also kind of weird and quirky and fussy. I wanted to pick a bird for Mei because of his whole icarus-flew-too-close-to-the-sun character type, not to mention the physical changes will make him shriek and hide a la Howl from Howl's moving castle. I'd like to see him develop a bond with a person because it replicates the battery bond of a pitcher and catcher, and in that situation, Mei is definitely the wild power instead of the conduit. Being a monster suits him in that way.

Sample: a tdm top level! (and a meme thread.)