Kii

"Rance"

- after learning of Kii's past.

About
Kii is a bodyguard-turned-housewife from the eastern nation of JAPAN who was born to a family of swordmasters, that long ago taught the sword and naginata to battle mikos of the Miko Institute before the practice was abolished.

Kii's was the sole girl among ten siblings who lost their mother shortly after Kii's birth. Kii's father placed her brothers and her through grueling training from a young age, which only became more relentless as they grew older. Though the training allowed Kii to hone her swordsmanship to unbelievable heights, she steadily came to resent her father’s harsh and restrictive parenting and began to yearn for a different life.

Upon entering adulthood, Kii grew tired of her merciless home life and attempted to set out into the world on her own. However, she knew that her father would be outraged by her disobedience, but she also did not have confidence to fight her father and all her brothers, so, following her family's doctrine of "Do whatever you must to win, even if you have to play dirty!", she poisoned them instead. With all remnants of her former life buried in their deaths, Kii was free to discover the world.

Shortly after beginning her journey, however, Kii discovered she lacked any kind of skills outside of combat and she has to rely again on the swordsmanship she learned from her father by working as a mercenary. Her exceptional talent with a blade quickly caused her to gain a considerable amount of renown, leading several people of notable wealth and status to actively seek out her services. Despite her success, Kii remained unhappy, believing herself to be forever confined to the cold and violent lifestyle of a swordsman that she had intended to escape from.

In the year LP0002, Kii was hired by an influential merchant to protect his son, a young man who was close to her in age. Kii fell deeply in love with the merchant's son almost immediately after meeting him, however, she did not share her feelings immediately as she found out he already had a fiance. However, again living by her family's doctrine to "Do whatever you must to win, even if you have to play dirty!", she poisoned his fiance.

Soon after, Kii successfully confessed her feelings to the merchant's son, who reciprocated her feelings even though he was aware of what had happened. Overjoyed, Kii took the opportunity to abandon the way of the warrior and be with someone she loved, but her tribulations were not over as the engagement angered the young man’s parents, who refused to allow their son to marry a mercenary and demanded for the marriage to be called off. Kii poisoned them too, but clarifies to Rance when speaking of her recollections that the poison only paralyzed the parents, letting her successfully intimidate them into accepting her arrangements, so it is presumed they still live today.

Regardless, Kii's husband loved her all the more for her intense character, and they successfully married and started living together. Two years after their marriage, the couple gave birth to a son, who they began to dote on with the same level of affection that they showed one another. After a life's worth of struggle, for the sake of her son, Kii resolved to let go of her vicious streak and retire from killing to live in peace as a housewife.

In the year LP0007, the major Human territories of The Continent were invaded by the forces of the Monster Army, which began to steadily overtake them with overwhelming power and ferocity, beginning the world-changing event that would come to be known as the 2nd Dark Lord War. To support the invaded countries, Oda House, the dominant power in JAPAN, began sending soldiers to the mainland of the Continent as reinforcements, and released a call to action across the nation to recruit as many warriors as possible. For the sake of protecting her family, Kii chose to answer the call, taking up her sword for the first time in five years.

During the events of Rance X, Kii was recruited into the Dark Lord Extermination Squad, an elite group led by Rance, the leader of the United Human Army, composed entirely of humanity’s strongest warriors. After months of fighting far away from her family, Kii, who had managed to stoically bury her loneliness up until that point, eventually became overwhelmed by feelings of homesickness after receiving a picture that her son drew of her in the mail. Despite this momentary lapse, Kii was quickly able to regain her composure and continue fighting by reminding herself to be strong for her son. While Rance made several attempts at convincing Kii to sleep with him during this period, she remained loyal to her husband and firmly rejected him each time.

Personality and Appearance
Kii is a young woman of average height with a slim build and long black hair that drapes over her forehead in bangs. By far her most distinct physical trait is her eyes, which possess unusually small pupils, giving her a somewhat harsh appearance at all times. While these eyes are noted by other characters to be rather strange-looking, Kii is still considered to be quite attractive. Kii's clothing consists of a blue-colored variant of standard JAPANese-style samurai armor with a large golden crest on top of its helmet.

A lifelong warrior, Kii is a blunt, taciturn person who possesses the cold detachment and steely resolve needed to act decisively in the face of great hardship. She firmly believes in doing whatever is necessary to accomplish her goals and is willing to take the lives of others, including her father and brothers, for the sake of improving her own, with little guilt lingering in her conscience afterward. Despite this, Kii tries to be a compassionate individual. After experiencing the worst of what her violent tendencies can lead to in her early life, she resolved to be a better person and a compassionate mother when she became pregnant. This sense of compassion carries on into her current character, which causes her to reject killing needlessly.

This somewhat contradictory nature has seemingly left her with a great deal of self-loathing. She regularly voices her belief that a "weird-eyed, mediocre housewife" like herself is undeserving of the wonderful life that her family has given her and has a complex about her appearance, having little confidence in her appearance.

Kii has a close and loving relationship with both her husband and son, who have allowed her to live the happy life free of conflict that she had sought since childhood. Thoughts of her family are among the only things capable of breaking Kii's cold front, making her either very upbeat and cheerful or depressed and lonely depending on the context in which they arise. This profound affection is also what pushed Kii to begin fighting once more during the 2nd Dark Lord War, as her desire to protect her family exceeded her distaste for bloodshed.

As is typical for a parent, Kii tends to view her son as being considerably more exceptional than he is, claiming that a childish scribble that he made in her likeness was a work of art worthy of being displayed in a museum. This unexpectedly allows her to find common ground with Rance, who shares a similar rose-tinted perception of his daughter Reset Kalar.

Abilities
A superb warrior who deliberately chose to conceal her talent to live an ordinary life, Kii could be described as nothing less than a hidden genius that stands among the most powerful fighters in the world. During the 2nd Dark Lord War she had succeeded in reaching the very high Level of 53, which is presumed, but not confirmed, to be her Level Cap; granting her a significantly greater amount of potential as an individual than the majority of the Continent's population.

In combat, Kii utilizes lightning-fast movements and strong attacks to outmaneuver her foes with a single-edged blade. She is in possession of the exceedingly rare Sword Combat Lv2 Skill Level, bestowing her with a virtuoso level of talent with a sword that she was able to make full use of as a result of the extensive training she was subjected to throughout her early years. Kii's outstanding skills as a swordsman allowed her to take on and win against her father and brothers, each a skilled swordmaster in their own right, all at once, and did not decay at all in the time between when she abandoned fighting to raise a family and her enrollment in the 2nd Dark Lord War.

Despite her considerable talents with the sword, it is a great irony that most of her early struggles were ended by poisoning her opponents, a skill in which she has no notable talent.

Trivia

 * Kii came in 44th place in the "Females" category of the Rance X Popularity Poll, scoring astonishingly high relative to her insignificant role and the competitiveness of the category.
 * Kii is part of a group of characters created for Rance X referred to by the development team as "The Hidden Geniuses of the Continent". These characters were designed by committee, with TADA, the director of the Rance Series, first conceiving of their name and national affiliation followed by Orion, the lead artist of the Rance series, creating their design and finally Dice Korogashi, the lead scenario writer of Rance X, developing a personality and backstory derived from this information.
 * Kii's name is derived from the Kii class of battleship, which was a planned but ultimately cancelled addition to the Imperial Japanese Navy's elite "eight-eight fleet", possibly in reference to her status as an exceptional JAPANese warrior who was nonetheless absent from Sengoku Rance, the game in the Rance series which places the greatest amount of focus on the country. Furthermore, Kii's ancestors' ties to the Miko Institute are an allusion to the Kii Province from which the battleship's name was derived, which contained the three primary Kumano shrine complexes that served as major sites for pilgrimage within the Shinto religion.
 * According to Dice Korogashi, Kii's character went through several different drafts; including one where she was the granddaughter of the legendary samurai Yagyū Jūbei, one where she was Yagyū Jūbei himself transformed into a young woman, and one where she was the human avatar of the Goddess Suzuka Gozen.
 * During a Twitter Q&A, Orion erroneously claimed that Kii had served as a commander for Uesugi House during the events of Sengoku Rance. Upon realizing his mistake, Orion revealed that he had modeled Kii's appearance off of that of a generic female Uesugi commander in Sengoku Rance and had gotten her origins confused in his mind as a result.