Kotomine

Kotomine
File:Kotomine.jpg
Allegiance	Requiem
Race	Ventus
Gender	Male
Born	35-40BDW (2035-40)
Profession	The Strategist (1ADW-Current)

Early Days

Kirei Kotomine, also known as the Strategist, was born before the rise of the Demon King several thousand years ago as the son of Risei Kotomine, a Christian priest who's wife had died giving birth to Kotomine. Kirei is a word of prayer, so Risei named him such so that he would be pure and beautiful. He grew up according to Risei's expectations and hopes, showing morals and good sense from a young age, and was insightful enough to seem precocious to others. He was actively involved with the Church even in his youth, and he often accompanied his father to the holy grounds where he worked. He worked diligently as a priest from an early age, and he was once chosen to lead his father's Church around the age of ten.

While he understood that he was living up to his father's expectations, he did not love his father. It was unrelated to having to meet expectations, and he grew up healthy. The problem was an intrinsic one, that he did not understand his father's notion of "beauty." He finally realized the inconsistency one morning, and wondered why it took him so long to figure it out. He simply woke up, raised his head, and knew at that moment that, while his father wished for him to be beautiful, he had always questioned why he had never thought the same of which that Risei had thought was beautiful. Understanding that he was not in accordance with the world, he worked hard to correct this mistake, attempting to be pure and beautiful. All throughout his teenage years, he did everything he could to overcome his defect after accepting its existence. He suffered agony, though he never knew if it truly was agony, trying to pursue something he lacked from the start. Following that he, as a sinner by nature, should punish himself following the morals in which he believed to keep balance in the world, He tried methods like shaving away the skin, ripping off flesh, and dislocating bones.

Rather than surrendering himself to his condition by indulging in twisted pleasure, he tried looking within his own body for what could not be found in his mind, attempted to use mental pain, which is more significant than physical pain for missionaries, and attempted to abstain from eating during their pious acts. After ten years of such things, all of his purgatories and sufferings were useless to change him. Unable to reach an epiphany, he arrived at the single conclusion that he did not have the sense to feel normal happiness. He turned to religion with fervor to turn himself into a normal person, believing that God may eventually bring him salvation. The path that became his creed was to become a priest and preach like his father. It is said that God forgives everything, so He should also save someone "who is not born with it." The result for him was tragic, as he abode by the rules of God, followed the law, and lived modestly with no results. He could not find greater pleasure than the pain of others, and while the Church's teachings forbid immorality, immorality was all he had at the time.

There was no anguish at this realization because had had always sought after something that never existed. There was nothing lost, so there was nothing to grieve. He was only concerned about the "why?" behind himself as he matured. He wondered about the nature of his existence, that if the world hates evil, what was the purpose of something that was never wanted being given life. Those with a deficiency should not be born, yet there are beings that exist to be hated and die. He wished to know the crime of his existence, the simple, pure question of "why?" and an anger towards something unknown behind his reward of years of anguish and blind devotion not being salvation. Due to his twisted nature, he wished to have a family in an attempt to gain a normal sense of self. After all his attempts, his final chance was a woman, believing that every human wishes to love one of the opposite sex, have a family, and die peacefully. He was no exception, but he wished for it while feeling no true fascination for it. He eventually met and married a woman while still performing his duty of being a priest. But he soon voluntarily left his position in the Church, and abandoned the path of becoming an official priest.

The woman he chose was one with no future, as she was terminally ill with only a few years left to live. He didn't know if he chose her because of that or if that had been his only choice. He tried loving her in order to earn a normal happiness, and she tried to love him, truly love him, and even bore his child. Their time together only lasted for two years, and it was unable to change him. He derived happiness from her suffering and their daughter's despair, and the more he tried to love, the more their suffering saved him. This didn't cause him to suffer, and he still didn't know if he did ever suffer. The only thing he did know is that the more she tried to cure him, the more he wanted to see her grieve. The degree with which she understood him and tried to heal him was beyond any other human, but she could still not fill the void within him. Filled with despair at this fact, he concluded that his birth and existence were some kind of mistake, so it was best to disappear. He went to bid her goodbye before he was to die, as it was a natural duty to tell her, whom he made his wife as an experiment, of his end. Entering her room where she was dying, composed of only skin and bones, he relayed the simple fact "I could not love you."

With her final attempt to prove to him that he could love and that he deserved to live, she took her own life after responding, "No. I love you." Believing that her death would bring sadness to him, she was happy to see that he was crying and smiled at him before finally passing away. However; that was only the way she saw it, and rather than crying for her death, he was instead sad over losing the chance of killing her himself and enjoying her death. He silently left the room and ceased pursuing salvation altogether. Their daughter mysteriously vanished a few days later, never to be seen or heard from again.

During the Daimao War

Soon, he came into contact with the being known as the Demon King; as part of the original crowd which had assaulted him and began his descent into madness. While the crowd had been furious and incapable of being reasoned, charging at the Demon King without hesitation nor restraint before getting slaughtered, Kotomine had simply stood behind; watching as the crowd brushed past him to their demise. He saw no flaw in the Demon King's logic; quite the contrary, the suffering he had witnessed in the Ventus people from the planet-wide loss of Mana was quite stupendous to him. He alone was not slaughtered that day, standing behind as the entire crowd was reduced to a puddle of flesh and bone; and the Demon King saw this, noted it as he ran away and began his spiral into the depths of despair and madness, before he began his systematic slaughter of the Ventus people.

One day, the Demon King came across Kotomine once more; taking refuge in his father's Church along with his father Risei and his 'friends'. They had taken every precaution not to be found, yet were somehow found anyway despite their best efforts. As the Demon King slaughtered the followers by hand one-by-one, he eventually reached Kotomine's father. Risei looked to his son with sadness, that he could not protect even his own son from the beast before them, and noted with some happiness that Kirei was indeed shedding tears for him as the Demon King twisted his head in one deft movement. However, Kirei actually felt the exact opposite affection that a normal person should; he wanted to kill his father himself, just like when his wife had committed suicide.

The Demon King remembered Kotomine, the man who had accelerated his descent into madness with his calm and uncaring manner even when faced with the deaths of thousands, and smiled at Kotomine's explanation of why he was truly crying; seeing the depraved, evil, intelligent soul before him as one he would need to finish his task of eliminating all sentient life. He offered Kotomine a position as a leader of his new army, Requiem, after explaining the details of his plan and what the position would entail. Kotomine accepted, having no qualms with the title nor the plan as he threw away his unfitting first name eternally and became the Strategist for the extermination. Kotomine only had one question to ask the Demon King, a question which to this day the Demon King has not answered to him;

Why did the Demon King take so long to find the Church? It certainly would not have been hard to find, he had made sure of that himself.