Naoto Shirogane/Personality
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BATMAN WOULD UNDERSTAND Naoto Shirogane, for all his prodigal intelligence and skills in analysis, doesn't keep many friends. And he appears to like it that way. He has long sworn off friendships and relationships as illogical and unnecessary, things that would ultimately become impediments in his work. Much like the fictional Sherlock Holmes, he is known to be dispassionate and cold with others, and guardedly maintains that stoic reputation. In the matter of work, Naoto remains the stereotypical lone wolf, having little time and energy to spare on others, almost appearing disagreeable to having to explain his inferences and deductions to minds that are not as clear and sharp as his own. In truth, Naoto works alone partially for that reason, and partially out of her own insecurity: she is afraid of being stopped, or not taken seriously, and simply cannot yet find in herself the force of personality to "lead" investigations along. Many do not trust her strange inductive mind, or discredit her genius as a fluke, or even child's play, and she's simply found it easier to just isolate herself totally and trust little save for her own instincts and mind.
Naoto bleeds total professionalism. He is prim and exacting, and in possession of a Victorian's sense of mystery, giving due, civil courtesy to all who encourage and deserve it, but offering little emotionality or humanity beyond that diplomacy. He seems so formal that it's almost frigid, a young man who seems to lack all innate desire to know a person on an intimate level, or to let down his own austerity enough to relax.
It's a wonder how popular Naoto Shirogane is among his peers, and especially the girls, because to know him... isn't particularly to like him. He is as icy and unforgiving as a human being could possibly get, having no patience whatsoever for anything that isn't his work. He cannot seem, nor has any desire, to understand why a person would ever want to be so wasteful with their time or talents, and has no kind words to say for anyone who would dare waste his. He acts like a person older than his years, careful, artful, and serious, and cannot seem to relate in any way to teenagers his age. Their emotional ways, chemical imbalances, and predilection for relationships and romance exasperates him, and there is nothing that tests Naoto's strength of will than those silly girls who deem to "crush" on him.
Naoto is a true Shirogane, with an intellectual prowess that potentially surpasses her grandfather and deceased parents. She's a master investigator, possessing almost a supernatural inductive skill that only a handful of people in the world could be similarly assured. She's got the Holmesian mind, able to dissect and analyze any conceivable problem that presents itself to her, and has begun to supplement it by ingesting large amounts of semantic knowledge on her own time. Between her talents, passion, and unbridled ambition, a decade may see Naoto reach the potential as one of the world's most feared investigatory minds. Despite her young age, even now the Inaba Police Department cannot deny Naoto's obvious gift, and rumours of his intelligence are widespread. There are some people who are skeptical of it, even deny it as something so parsimonious as trickery or dumb luck, but the general consensus is a truthful one: no one can really keep up to Naoto's brain. And not many want to try.
Naoto Shirogane is a logical person. He is a factual person. He is a details person. He is not a people person. Oh, he could go to great and frightening lengths to dissect someone's entire psyche like a biology class bullfrog, but past all necessity to analyze he has demonstrated no need or want for others. Slightly more caustic than the ambiguous loner, he even goes to great lengths to push others away, citing little desire for their foolish and troublesome ways (sadly, this makes him all the more popular with the girls.) While capable of expressing courtesy and tact, both chief components to his formal nature, Naoto also keeps a famously short patience and a quick temper, and there have been more than one silly girls who have cried themselves to sleep after finding themselves on the receiving end of Shirogane's exasperation. For those who proactively try to annoy Naoto, the gloves will come quickly off.
Others will attest that Naoto Shirogane lives for his work. He's inherited the family business from his parents, and even in his relative youth manages it with absolute seriousness and complete dedication. He is a talented student, consistently scoring within the top two percentile of his year, but the fact of the matter is that Shirogane's academia has no designs for a career. He has already found his, and is living it out right now. At the moment, he would probably be the top student in Japan, or among the jealous few, if his detective work didn't absorb all of his free time. In reality, Naoto is slacking in school and paying her classes only the bare minimum of her attention, all passion for learning superseded by her passion for investigating, unravelling crimes, and upholding the proud, dignified Shirogane name.
However utilized for investigation, Naoto has the mind of an engineer. It's not just a job, but part of her very nature. She thinks in the terms of questions and answers, and engages the world as little more than a large, closed machine: a simple equation accumulating from input to output. She's insatiably curious about practically everything in life, and believes that just about anything in the universe could be understood if there is someone who knows how to take it apart.
Naoto's particular kind of intelligence also extends to building and utilizing tools, and she has a keen sense of resource for every day things. Given enough time, she could probably break down and strip the most complicated of machines to their base components. But as much as Naoto likes to rip things apart and put them back together, where her passion truly lies is her desire to build upon the existing design. She's a potential MacGyver and a natural inventor, and seems to have developed something of a passion for technological gadgetry. Over the years, she's built and modified her own private arsenal of "detective tools."
Underneath it all, Naoto is one big walking inferiority complex, and his (her) one great fear is not being taken seriously, or worse -- to realize that she is necessary and that no one needs her. For that to happen, to have others dismiss and ridicule her as a detective and as a Shirogane, it would mean she has failed her legacy and her only purpose. To combat that, she's been prepared to do everything it takes to be taken seriously -- to be respected and even feared for her gifts, to the extent of inhibiting most of her personality and even abandoning her very gender. That insecurity is all the reason for her cold and brusque nature: all of her rigid formality hides a real undercurrent of awkwardness, one built on Naoto's real inexperience in talking and relating to others. She's a very nervous and gentle person beneath it all, unsure of herself, her fallibility, and all her flaws just as any girl her age, and for her to truly open up is for her to reveal all of that discomfited timidity.
No one knows this aside from a sparse handful souls in the world (his grandfather and the family butler), but he is really a she. Naoto has completely forsaken her gender and determined to live life as a boy, finding the transition rather easy, if almost laughable, with her already-masculine personality and ambiguous looks. Even far beyond puberty setting in, no one has ever glanced twice at her, sought to question her masculinity, and she's gone to great (and considerable) pains on her end to keep up the charade. What's interesting is this is not a case of gender dysphoria or transsexualism; Naoto doesn't cross-dress because she particularly "wants" to be a boy or even feels born into the wrong biological sex. She doesn't even hold intimate feelings for other girls. Her identification with the male gender, much like every other facet in her life, is driven out of anxiety and fear. Living under the shadow of her family name and obsessed with the archetype of lone detectives, Naoto knows she must be perceived as a male in order to thrive as an investigator. This is because she believes she is nothing else. She has no other skills, no other talents, and no other friends -- no option for another life except for this one. If she fails, she will be nothing.
Is just another mystery to Naoto Shirogane... yet this one is perhaps "the" mystery, and the Detective Prince has obligated himself to demystifying the mysterious. In terms of understanding, studying, and encountering the hidden world of Personae and Shadows, he is unabashedly fierce and reckless, treating the entirety of it with the same arrogant recklessness as he does most of his other commissions. It's almost as if Naoto thinks it just another case within his genius and inside his control...
Naoto has mixed thoughts about this faction; part of her is secretly enthused at the idea of "kindred spirits" (who may attempt to include her and may even enjoy her company) and the opportunity it allows people her age investigating crimes and dealing with the supernatural entity -- but even then she's reticent to be considered one of them, afraid that if the group receives a terminal mantle of "silly kids" that she'll be grouped along with them. As it is, she watches them closely and judges them on the littlest moves and actions they make, almost as if she wants to dismiss them all as foolish children playing games. She's also unused to dealing with others, and is resistant to working on a team, greatly preferring to investigate leads on her own. |
