Mastery #2 – Do You Believe in Magic? [Kido]

Mastery #2 – Do You Believe in Magic? [Kido]

Baseline: A Prodigal Summer w/Tetsuya Akimoto // Here we see Nao when she was an Academy student. She and her good friend/would-be-lover Tetsuya Akimoto get their hands on some powerful Kido and they decide to play with fire, quite literally. Tetsuya goes first and everything goes horribly wrong, but Nao is able to make substantial sacrifices through Kaido in order to keep him alive until other Shinigami can save the two of them. She’s young, naïve, but ultimately she’s already competent and might well have the technical skill of a master at this point, but she lets doubt and a lack of confidence paralyze her into inaction for decades.

Growth: Paper Beats Rock w/Zenji Hatayama // Nao makes her challenge for Third Seat, using the same powerful Kido that Tetsuya used. It goes wrong, albeit in a different way than it did with Tetsuya, but she finally succeeds, carried on to victory by indignation at her old boss and overcoming at least some of that lack of confidence.

Mastery: Misfortune Follows w/Anatoly & Zenji Hatayama and Just In The Wrong Place At The Wrong Time w/Michael O’Donovan // In the first thread, Nao comes across Zenji, horribly wounded after his fight with Meridith and Kevin. She gives up on chasing down Anatoly to save her new friend, melding her Shikai and Kidou into a combined healing that is able to overcome the raw destructive power of a Quincy. In the second, she uses the knowledge she’s learned to use the same technique again, calmly and without fear.
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Nao is a talented Kido specialist and, though she focuses in Kaido, she has a respectable handle on other aspects of Kido as well. She has used and referenced Bakudo in other threads, but those uses have not have the same mastery-relevant impact of the ones I am using in this request.

She begins her story already arguably having a mastery of Kido, but a traumatic event stalls her development and prevents her from using her abilities to the fullest. It is only after realizing that she has wasted her life toiling under an abusive supervisor because of that lack of confidence that she makes use of her abilities again. Though she nearly kills herself in the process, Nao comes out on the other side closer to the woman she was in the Academy than the meek creature she had become.

Her moment of triumph comes when she heals Zenji, and that triumph is solidified into mastery when she reuses the same technique to keep her Quincy prisoner alive despite his own suicidal actions. She’s finally come to realize her own skill, something she should have noticed nearly a century ago.

PS: Judge me publicly.

Kido specialty in healin' arts, hrmmm! Let's take a look!

Baseline - Pass - Tough. I know what it sets up but this could be used for triumph handily if it were not put in the past. However, that line has been not so well established so I don't mind cutting some slack here. I really like why this exists and it's okay to establish mastery as the missing whiff of something working from a baseline.

Work - Pass - The work here is a triumph for hado and this section I think is extremely hard to set up appropriately because whoosh you set the bar so high as your baseline that it's hard to meaningfully work from there to a solid resolution. It's a cool ass spell done well in a good moment and totally great if you wanted Hado a mastery with supporting material but that is not what you're going for here. But it isn't about the spell, it isn't about reading some new magic words and doing some big flash. This mastery story is about why she failed in her baseline and about what gets her to mastery and that's a lot more about who Nao is than what she knows.

'I have to put it away, she thought, I have to look strong.'

Does a hell of a lot more for a mastery request than doing a big flashy thing.

Triumph - Pass - I like the tie into the correction of a past mistake. I like the idea of Nao getting her groove back with a vengeance through the redemption of a spell. It can be improved with the stakes, but we have to accept the organic nature of a site like this, the conditions aren't a perfect recreation but her relationship with Zenji and Anatoly are solid and lend a nice bit of authenticity to this circumstance.

The story of a prodigy is a pretty hard sell when we're dealing with a site that's all about growth. If you don't leave Nao room in her ability to grow then you're robbing yourself of half the tools in your arsenal to prove the request. That said in this case I think the emotional growth is a solid way to pull this request into a good spot, going forward, you have to consider Nao learning and demonstrating growing ability. It is very easy to read this request as an attempt to pass with three triumphs one after the other and that's not really what mastery is, but if you frame it as an emotional mastery tied in with Kido we have some traction. A really great mastery, however, is both things not one or the other and I worry you'll have a hard time with Nao on doing both, so bare that in mind moving forward.

Congratulations! You have been approved for mastery in Kido!