#au : youkai

[selpuku]

oni x oni hunter

[twstedforyou]

“Your third set of familiars--Octavinelle, the information broker company for all your snooping needs! You’ll make good use of our services, won’t you?”

Masterlist || Askbox

[yinyuedijun]

kitsune!suo x fem reader | feudal japan au

→ notes for an au set in feudal japan, featuring supernatural creatures and spirits (e.g., youkai). suo is a kitsune, sakura is a nekomata, and nirei is an onmyouji. → see this post for backstory on the bofurin trio (recommended background reading)

note: most information on kitsune-mochi were sourced from folkorist lafcadio hearn's accounts of traveling in japan (c.1901). I did, of course, also take creative license with some of the lore.

reader | kitsune-mochi (fox-employing witch)

→ as a kitsune-mochi, you are a human who has entered a contract with a fox spirit to care for it in exchange for having it lend you its power and carry out your requests. → in your case, your familiar is suo, a nine-tailed kitsune that lost his hoshi no tama. → most witches employ kitsune for the purpose of carrying out malicious acts, like having the fox spirit possess their enemies, steal the wealth of other people, etc. you, however, rely on suo and his power in order to perform exorcisms and exterminate demons—something that you cannot do on your own because you have no innate spiritual talents yourself.

→ although a convenient source of power, these deals are typically risky for the contract holder. you are expected to care for suo for the rest of your life, and any descendants you might have would be cursed to serve him as well. kitsune-mochi are heavily ostracized by human society as well, so if this relationship of yours were to be discovered, then your entire bloodline would suffer. → additionally, these contracts typically favour the kitsune, as they are the ones who define what it means to be "cared for", and may request dangerous or unreasonable tasks. → fortunately for you, suo is not a very demanding familiar! the most basic act of caring for a fox spirit is feeding it, and he's more or less happy with anything you make, though he especially likes tea, wagashi, or dishes with aburaage. this is more or less all he asks of you! → suo's disposition is generally so patient and gentle that you nearly disbelieved that he was a youkai. you were convinced for a while that he was actually a messenger of god who was lying to you about his identity for some reason. (at the very least, you'd noticed that he had a habit of lying to people generally, though this was an unsurprising trait for a fox and it was usually harmless fun.) → this perception of him was shattered when you saw him fight a youkai that seriously injured you. he spent an uncomfortable amount of time toying with it in a distinctly humiliating fashion before finally putting it out of its misery. it was only in that moment that you realised that you'd signed yourself and all of your descendants up for serving a literal demon 👍

→ warning: immortal/human relationship, immortal deity meets reader as a child but doesn't get to know or grow close to them until they're an adult

your backstory with suo

→ at a very young age, you were adopted and raised by a priestess of an inari shrine belonging to a small mountain village. consequently, you developed a deep respect for the kami and affection for foxes. → as a child, you once found a one-eyed, wild fox in a near-death state. this was suo after he lost his hoshi no tama in a battle with a demon—but to you, he just looked like a regular animal. most people would have let this creature die peacefully, but you were adamant on nursing it back to health. while caring for him, you named him mr. adzuki because of the colour of his fur, which suo finds incredibly funny to this day. → suo disappeared after recovering, never making his true identity known. however, out of gratitude toward you and the priestesses for allowing him refuge, he decided to act as the guardian spirit of the village, protecting it until the end of your life. → conveniently, this meant that suo got to eat all the offerings given to inari's messengers at your shrine, as well as allowing him to gain power from the prayers directed toward him. (inari himself seemed not to mind, as no actual fox messengers showed up to throw hands with suo.)

image: gashadokuro, a youkai made from the skulls of humans who died in battle.

→ although your village was peaceful throughout your childhood due to suo's protection, in your adult years, a violent conflict between humans and demons broke out in your mountain range. this resulted in the destruction of nearly all its towns and the brutal deaths of your fellow villagers. suo, not at full power, was unable to stop this, but made it his goal to save you from the carnage. → after allowing you time to grieve your loved ones, suo—still considering himself indebted to you—asked what you would like to do next. he offered you wealth, status, and other material things, but none of these appealed to you. → recognising that the mountains you grew up in would be plagued by malevolent spirits and demons for centuries after all the bloodshed that just occurred, you asked suo to teach you jujutsu. your goal was to exorcise all the vengeful spirits, exterminate the demons, and purify the mountain range so that its villages could peacefully rebuild. → given your lack of innate spiritual abilities, suo suggested that you make a pact with him and become a kitsune-mochi to acquire powers. not wanting to deceive you, however, he fully explained how dangerous it might be to enter such a relationship, and warned you not to trust fox youkai like himself.

→ nevertheless, you accepted his offer and became a witch.

image: sakura irl

meeting sakura & nirei

→ you and suo thus embark on this crazy mission to purify the entire mountain range. while you are more than capable of exorcisms and exterminations, your spiritual abilities (one of a youkai) do not allow you to purify the land. → but that's okay, because nirei and sakura have been traversing these same mountains to exorcise and hunt demons! being an onmyouji, nirei can perform all kinds of purification rituals. when you inevitably run into the two of them, and suo suggests that you all work together. → nirei is more than happy to help you purify the mountain range (because he is a good-hearted person, and also because he usually gets assignments there anyway). he improves his jujutsu under suo's tutelage, and he gets insights on kitsune that he'd otherwise never learn (it's rare for an onmyouji to meet a kitsune-mochi unless it's to prosecute them for some kind of crime, and it's just plain hard to meet and talk with a nine-tailed fox spirit). → sakura is a harder sell. he doesn't trust suo at all at the start, and he trusts him even less when he finds out that he's a kitsune and has been lying egregiously to him. (sakura and nirei spent an entire month thinking that suo was a traveling tea merchant from china and being fed severe misinformation about the entire country.) → however, sakura is very curious about you, because you're the first human he's ever met who has a mutual and trusting relationship with a demon, which he didn't think was possible beyond weirdos like nirei. → you also aren't afraid of him at all even after seeing his nekomata form, which gives him complicated feelings. he reasons that this is because you've fought too many demons to be afraid of any of them, but the actual truth is just that you find suo incredibly scary, and sakura feels harmless and adorable in comparison </3 → sakura deeply enjoys the act of helping the mountain towns and being accepted by their communities, though he's very shy about admitting it! eventually, he does "resign" to joining you in a long-term arrangement, and the four of you take on the endless mission of exorcising and cleansing the mountain range together. it's a very "monster of the week" type of set-up hehe

→ although the work of purifying the mountain range will likely take the rest of your life (and probably will require generations after you), suo often asks you what you would like to do after the work is complete—so that he can think of ways to grant your request. → you decide not to tell him this, but your wish would be to return to your old village grounds and rebuild the shrine that you grew up in. rather than just inari, you would also dedicate it to the worship of the one-eyed fox spirit that once protected your village.

[mystic-warriors]

SOMEONE MENTIONED UT AND YKW AND MY BRAIN KINDA JUST WENT CRAZY SO IM MAKING AN AU I HAVE SO MANY IDEAS

[b1tterarts]

earth spider redesign

[sinful-lanterns]

for nekomatamonster!angell: imagine another monster woman who Researcher is already familiar with (and Woman is probably stalking shhh) came across the abandoned campsite, finds Researchers abandoned notebook, and realizes that they’ve must’ve not left willingly because Researcher NEVER is without their notebook.

A monster woman that immediately came to mind was Sumire. Who, in this Monster AU, I believe would be a Hachishakusama, aka the 8 foot tall woman in Japanese urban legends…

The 8 foot tall woman is a malevolent spirit that wears a summer dress and a wide brim hat, similar to one of Sumire’s skins. I imagine that before being kidnapped by Nekomata Angell, Sumire encounters the Researcher’s abandoned campsite one morning, and immediately goes on the hunt to rescue her. Nekomata Angell is going to have quite the encounter when she goes out to hunt and sees a tall, 8 foot Sumire, angrily glaring down at her and demanding that she give back the Researcher.

Yeah…by the time you wake up from your slumber, you’ll find that you’re being carried out of Angell’s house in Sumire’s large arms, all the while Angell is hissing and clinging to Sumire’s legs, trying to get you to stay 😭

[puffballwarrior-blog]

Life or bath for dry cat?

He stinky.

[itkea]

Background of kyorinrin!Ratio🛐

I tried very hard to make the comics colorful and atmospheric...Japanese mythology is always sooooo inspiring 🍵

Btw a few facts about Kyorinrin itself:

[youkaigakkou-tl]

"If they had been born in the same era and became classmates, they might have become good friends."

[flowerakatsuka]

[ messy ass sprite edit ] youkai au, but if it was cooler & sexier ( aka they let these losers have anything besides their fuck ass bowl cuts. )

[crepes-suzette-373]

[Youkai AU]

Zoro is a kamaitachi, sickle-wielding weasel that rides the wind.

The faux ink brush stroke style is fun.

[kaoyoll]

My timeskip au ittosara in 1970s

Both of them could not sit properly at the human cafe because of their long legs

[twstedforyou]

It’s called being.. fashionably late..?

[yinyuedijun]

bofurin trio in feudal japan | youkai au

inuyasha-esque au featuring the wbk characters as youkai and other feudal era figures. I watched too much inuyasha as a child and you can tell lol

kitsune!suo x fem!reader hcs here

sakura haruka | nekomata-possessed human

→ a nekomata possessed him while he was still in the womb. its memories are gone, but its powers remained. consequently, sakura was born as a human with nekomata features (including his black & white hair, superhuman strength, and a tendency to severely misbehave).

→ he can switch completely between forms. he cannot shift into the form of another human or radically change his human appearance, however.

→ he tends to prefer existing in his human form. (If he spends too long in his nekomata form, he becomes afraid that he'll forget how to be a human and permanently stay a monster.)

→ when he gets embarrassed or very emotional, his ears and two tails come out.

→ suo teases him a lot for this and will try to provoke it as much as possible lmao. he likes to offer sakura towels and ask him to dance whenever his tails are out. (the first time this happened, sakura tried to maul him lol)

→ growing up, sakura was referred to as a "demon child" and ostracized his whole life. after a demon attack on their village, sakura was blamed and his parents were killed for having given birth to him. he escaped to the mountains (where nekomata tend to hide) and lived mostly as a cat for some time before re-entering human society due to nirei.

→ this is why he's so poorly socialized and literally has feral cat energy btw lol

→ misses and longs for human connection, but is also afraid of it!

→ hates vegetables because he is a cat, likes meat because he is a cat, and likes eggs because his mom used to cook them a lot.

art by yoshitaka amano

nirei akihiro | human onmyouji

→ an onmyouji related by blood to the abe clan. originally a young and talented officer working at the bureau of onmyou, he became frustrated (frightened) with its politics and left for the private sector. he loses the court official hat, but he keeps the clothes because I think they're pretty 👍

→ his talents mainly lie in astronomy, divination, and calendar-making. very analytical stuff!

→ due to his family having been affected by disease spirits when he was younger, he has a strong wish to become skilled in exorcisms and always attempts to engage with evil spirits and demons to build experience.

→ chronicles his encounters with the supernatural, at first for his own learning, but now because he wants to put together a publication to help others interested in recognising supernatural phenomena and understanding common exorcism practices.

→ at some point, nirei was privately contracted to perform a purification ritual at a small mountain village. he heard stories about a boar demon that had been causing problems, so he went to go search for it, and it nearly killed him. sakura (living in his nekomata form) happened to be nearby at this time and saved him. he expected nirei to try to attack him or run at this point, but nirei instead tried to communicate with sakura, despite his monstrous appearance.

→ upon realising that sakura could actually adopt a human form, nirei convinced him to go back to the mountain village with him by offering to treat him to oyakodon.

→ the villagers were somewhat frightened by his appearance, but warmed up when nirei explained that sakura had killed the boar.

pictured above are japanese works depicting kitsune, which suo would be considered, but some of the below is influenced by lore regarding the related chinese myth of the huli jing

suo hayato | nine-tailed fox spirit

→ a nine-tailed fox spirit who was originally quite powerful; however, his hoshi no tama was stolen in a fight with a demon, which left him weak and nearly dead.

→ after these events, took refuge in a village with an inari shrine and acted as their guardian deity for some time as an act of gratitude.

→ having lost his hoshi no tama, suo's powers are now limited but still substantial. notably, he can still shapeshift freely between a number of forms—his original form of the common fox, different human appearances, etc.—but he cannot adopt his true form of a giant nine-tailed fox.

→ in his typical disguise, he is indistinguishable from regular humans. however, if you manage to catch his shadow in the light of a full moon, it reveals his true ears and nine tails. (based on this art!)

→ his disguises are otherwise so skilled that even other youkai and animals have difficulty recognising him. however, all dogs can sense fox spirits and are consequently terrified of suo. suo, himself, prefers not to interact with dogs.

→ while sakura did not immediately recognize suo as a youkai, he correctly identified him as a shitty person at his core (lol) and was later unsurprised to learn that suo was a kitsune. ("oh, the worst kind of demon.")

→ on the other hand, suo immediately recognized that sakura was a nekomata lol

→ being a fox spirit, suo is quite skilled in jujutsu and eventually trains nirei in exorcisms and/or demon extermination techniques.

→ sakura has a preference to travel and hunt demons at night, partly because there are fewer people around to make a spectacle of him, and partly because it's just his inclination as a cat. since nirei is a human and cannot see well in the dark (unlike his two youkai companions), suo lights up mountain pathways with kitsunebi to allow nirei to see.

→ in addition to enjoying tea and sweets, suo likes aburaage (since he is a fox spirit). if you offer aburaage to the kami at a shrine, there's a 9/10 chance that suo will come by and eat it before any of inari's actual messengers can visit.

[mystic-warriors]

I’m so sorry my Au made me draw komasans (that would have worked so much better if Komasan was sans , alas 😔)

[blue-cat-ter-flies-blog]

Let's go a bit old school and have a youkai au! This one has SatoSugu in the beginning before ending in Sukugo. This also seems to be a long one, hmm. Well, enjoy!

Satoru is a Yaobikuni- not that he, nor Suguru, meant for him to become one. Satoru had been at death's door, ill health gone poorer thanks to a late autumn sickness and Suguru had only been told by the wandering medicine seller that the 'medicine' would either cure him or kill him. It ended up curing him- it did that, and more. How were they to know that they'd been given a powder of mermaid flesh?

Not that they knew until the years showed on only Suguru's face and not Satoru's, devastating them both since it meant that Satoru could not follow Suguru and Suguru would be leaving Satoru behind. It only made the time they had together more precious and they stayed together until Suguru died of old age, his last words to Satoru were for him to 'find happiness again one day'.

Satoru ends up travelling around Japan as a medicine seller himself, occasionally dabbling as a merchant, and studying youkai since he could be considered one now. He even gains a few skills of his own over the next few centuries. Eventually he makes his way into youkai circles and settles in an apothecary and curio merchant for both worlds- much like a certain Time-Space Witch and her eventual heir.

He even heals enough to take in some children every now and then, especially this one abandoned bastard child with a scar on his face. Satoru honestly thinks that some noble ranks just reproduce to increase stupidity instead of intelligence. Toji was a perfectly fine and healthy child! It's not his fault his father couldn't keep his dick in his pants or was trying to 'prove' his virility. He was also a great help at the store and his crush on that little bird youkai was so cute!

Sukuna, on the other hand, is an oni of the same notoriety as Shuten Douji himself. He took care of his territory of course, but centuries of destruction and revelry made him crave new and interesting things- as it was with most powerful youkai. Their long lives made entertainment and drama more important to them lest they languish away in stagnation.

So when, on a impromptu trip around the neutral lands, Sukuna discovers an albino yaobikuni and their ward beating off some middling (to him) youkai with unexpected strength for a pair of humans, he finds himself interested enough to bother them for a while. A few decades, thought Sukuna, would pass easily with this.

Jokes on Sukuna, he ends up marrying Satoru within the century and intends to stay married as well! And since Satoru was already taking care of one child while he was single, then surely more children would mean that Satoru would stay with him for the rest of their long lives.

Satoru, fondly exasperated, only says that he's in love with a fool.