APPEARANCE

HAIR: Strawberry blond, pink highlights, shoulder length & spiky
EYES: Red right eye, blue left eye (can’t change this)
EYELASHES: Long lower lashes, notably on outer sides
NOSE: Long, sloped
LIPS: Thin and light
MOLES: None
BODY TYPE: Ectomorph, lanky
CONSTITUTION: Friendly, reliable, mischievous 
OTHER: Literally a shapeshifter

Being a shapeshifter, Teru doesn’t have a fixed form. However, his preferred form is that of a young human male. He generally appears to be a rather slim-built with slightly above average height (approximately 176cm), light skin and two-coloured hair (strawberry blond base colour with pink dye). 

His most noticeable features are his two differently coloured eyes: red right eye and blue left eye. Regardless of form, Teru can’t change his eye colour unless he uses coloured contacts. He is most commonly seen wearing a long, grey jacket with yellow decorations, large blue ribbon around his neck, white collared shirt and black, simple pants. 

SKILLS & ABILITIES

• Teru was taught to be ambidextrous, but he’s actually left handed - even if he himself isn’t quite aware of it.
  
  
• Has a very good visual understanding of shapes and general depth of living creatures, which is essential for a shapeshifter.
  
  
• Makes a very good singer, in particular with his ability to change his voice.
  
  
• Shapeshifting is based on strong imagination and understanding of other beings around him, and as such Teru’s shifting abilities are seemingly limitless - but they do exist:
  
  
  • Even if he can turn into other creatures, he can’t use any of their gained powers such as magical skills. He can, however, access all the purely physical skills, such as flying.
    
    
  • For some reason unknown to even Teru himself, he can’t seem to be able to change the color of his eyes. He usually uses sunglasses or contact lenses if he needs to pretend to be someone else.
    
    
  • If transforming into normal non-magical animals, Teru can’t speak with human words.
    
    
  • Full shifting physically exhausts him, and so it’s easier to tweak his features rather than do a full shift.
    
    
  • While he can turn himself into massive creatures, he can’t become more massive than the largest creature he has seen - which so far has been a full grown dragon.
    
    
  • He can turn into inanimate objects, but it makes him super uncomfortable and he fears he won’t be able to change back for whatever reason.
  
  

TRIVIA

• Teru usually prefers his default human form. As younger he used to switch between various looks, but he has eventually found a form he can properly identify and settle with.
  
  
• He was never assigned a sex at birth due to shapeshifter customs of raising their children with little identity of their own. As such, while Teru doesn’t necessarily think of himself as transgender because of his special circumstances, he has reached the conclusion he identifies as a man. This doesn’t stop him from taking various forms regardless of gender though, as his expression can still be very fluid.
  
  
• He doesn’t actually know his exact age, but has been able to dig up information to give a rough estimate. 

• He also loves to mess around doing various fictional character voices, and on human social media he’s pretty known for imitating characters with an “unnaturally high accuracy”. They don’t know he’s a shapeshifter. 

• He fears being rejected by people when they get to know him better and learn he is a shapeshifter, as humans in particular tend to view his kind as fickle and untrustworthy due to folktales. However, in the demon realm they’re often held in high regard: shapeshifters have the highest shifting ability of all demons, and while not godly figures, they’re rare enough that many demons treat them as such. To demons, shapeshifters represent all the demon species at once, and they don’t view their shifting as masquerade or dress up but rather as their unique way of existing among them. 

• Teru’s current hairstyle is heavily inspired by a man named Yuuma, who he just happened to see on the street one day. They never talked or had any interactions whatsoever, but would eventually meet in the future due to Yuuma also being a keykeeper like Hannes.
  
  
• He used to have a gambling obsession in his teenage years, from spending money on gacha games to actual real life bettings and casino visits. He knows he gets easily addicted to such things, and so he has asked his friends to stop him if he starts lacking self control.
  
  
• He was originally made for Gay Dessert Anime under the sweet called Tervaleijona (“tar lion”, a brand of candy from Finland) and his name Teru comes from the word Terva (te-ru-va). Nothing came of that though and so I moved him to a now long dead RP called Apparition Residence. I consider the events of Apres vaguely canon, meaning that Teru did for a short while live in a residence inhabited by supernatural creatures.

PERSONALITY

Summary: The definition of a good friend, Teru is kind, fair and very reliable. While he can be a little shy and still struggles with a lot of insecurities caused by his nature as a shapeshifter, Teru is working hard on his flaws and for the most part has done a great job at it. Even if he might act a little goofy with friends, Teru is easily his friend group’s shoulder to lean on when someone is having worries or troubles, as he makes a good comforter and a great listener.

Though shapeshifters are raised with little to no sense of identity, Teru represents an individualistic generation who longer wants to be “everything and nothing” but instead “someone”. While Teru was raised traditionally, he became fascinated by individualism as a teenager, and from there would start to form the basics of his identity, including his gender and sexuality. Teru does make a good actor and he’s a true social chameleon, and while it’s easy to let himself go with the flow and adapt a perona most suitable for the situation, he works hard to make sure he can still feel like himself doing so.

Generally Teru appears as a calm and collected young man, but with feelings of insecurity due to his status as a shapeshifter. He is also rather shy by temper and sometimes a little afraid of making friends, fearing people will lose their interest in him when they realize he doesn’t have what he would consider a “fixed personality”. As a result he might sound overly serious or uninterested at times because of his inner nervousness, but those around him can easily see through this and view him as the warm, friendly guy he is. Teru is very dutiful and reliable, and especially with age has matured a lot and assumed an almost big brother -like exposition when dealing with those younger than him. He’s a good listener and has a surprising amount of life experience that makes him give quite good advice to others as well.

With those he is more comfortable with, Teru tends to be much louder and is often telling jokes, sometimes even slipping to dark humor. He likes teasing those who he loves, sometimes changing his looks to imitate his friends or their favourite fictional characters. He loves to entertain others and make them laugh, and he isn't afraid of making a fool out of himself in order to do so. He is curious and adventurous sometimes to a fault, and although he is rather smart and mature, he isn't beyond letting his curiosity get the best of him - especially with close friends.

He has a bad habit of distracting himself instead of dealing with his own feelings though, and he often feels out of place among other supernatural creatures because shapeshifters don’t have any defined culture nor sense of belonging. Teru also has a bit of a gambling obsession, though he’s trying hard not to relapse to old habits: his friends keep an eye out for him when he starts a new gacha game, and in turn Hannes makes sure Teru won’t return back to his old habit of cheating in casinos with his disguising abilities.

Teru is also noted to be somewhat overprotective and a worrywart, and as younger he would have some serious work to do with his possessiveness. However, now as an adult he’s doing just fine and has learned to respect other people’s boundaries, even if he might be worried for them.

HISTORY

Summary: Raised without a clear sense of identity, Teru struggled all his youth trying to understand who and what he was - especially after turning into a gruesome monster on instinct while trying to save a human, scaring him to think this may have been his true form. He moved into the human realm as a youth and would eventually become partners with the keykeeper Hannes, and close friends with Vincent and Darian.

His entire family consisting of shapeshifters, Teru grew up without ever knowing his original form. Instead his parents kept him in the demon realm around supernatural beings so that Teru could see a wide variety of different demons, and learn to imitate their appearances - which he started doing at a young age, hence his original shape being a mystery to him.

His parents loved him dearly, but due to shapeshifter customs they were definitely not the ones to record any milestones in their son’s growth: they never took photos of Teru as a child, didn’t celebrate his birthdays and never encouraged him to have any personal interests beyond what would be useful as a shapeshifter. While this made Teru a rather talented shapeshifter, he lacked a distinct sense of identity - but still yearned for it, given everyone around him seemed to know who and what they were.

The human realm

When Teru was still a child and his parents would finally let him venture to the human realm every once in a while, he ended up witnessing a woman being attacked and rushed to her rescue without thinking it through. Acting on an instinct, Teru transformed into a gigantic monster and scared the men away, but in the process he ended up also frightening the woman he had only wanted to help. Her eyes, full of fear, were burnt into his memory so deeply that he would often see them in his nightmares, and he began to fear himself: his child’s mind had convinced him that the horrible beast he had turned into was actually his true form, as he had assumed the wretched form automatically.

Teru had no way of knowing this wasn’t true, and he started becoming gradually more and more afraid of himself, his powers and the things he could do. To fight back his nightmares, Teru decided he wanted to mature more and moved out of his parent’s place, going to the human world and attending school there. He used to live in a hotel meant for the demon real folks, but after a while moved on his own. He would often gain money through scamming gamblers and criminal gangs with his shapeshifting skills, to the point gambling and cheating in it would become an addiction for him.

After moving on his own Teru met the local keykeeper Karen and they became acquaintances, Teru occasionally helping Karen out on his missions. Karen was a great help at getting Teru rid of his gambling addiction by providing him with other things to do, often those where he got to use his shapeshifting skills. A year after working with Karen he heard a new keykeeper moving into the same city, and this is how he met Hannes. Because Teru didn’t need to keep his nature as a demon a secret as well as him and Hannes being around the same age, they were able to establish a bond and became close friends - and eventually partners.

Through Hannes he would meet the art major Darian and theater major Vincent. Both had close ties to the demon realm despite being born humans: Darian turned out to be connected to the demon of old, Damian, and Vincent in turn had been accidentally turned into a merman by the mermaid he had become friends with. Hannes, Teru, Vincent and Darian would spend their young adulthood as a tight knit group, having fun and finding themselves in the middle of various mysteries and conspiracies, though the latter often unintentionally.

Currently:

Hannes and Teru are traveling together as Hannes carries out his keykeeper duties, but as they’re still young they often return back to their home city to hang out with Vincent and Darian.

RELATIONSHIPS