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INFO ABOUT AYA--

Aya Shameimaru is a crow tengu and many of her mannerisms are decidedly birdlike. She can be fickle and flighty and is extremely attracted to novelty. As a reporter, she loves the new and exciting--people, places, incidents--and rushes to cover them with her sensationalist writing and shameless paparazzi photography style. This doesn't exactly endear her to the many victims of her scandalous articles and she often gets shot at while trying to gather data for a story. Despite this unwelcome reception, she's annoyingly persistent and doesn't let criticism or threats or even violence deter her, just continues to produce and distribute her unwanted newspaper no matter how many reputations or lives it ruins in the progress. The more, the better.

Speaking of ego, however, Aya definitely has quite a sizeable one of her own. She is a tengu. Most youkai are not very social monsters, but the tengu are quite different. Like a murder of crows, they live in a large organized hierarchy as the most powerful tier on Youkai Mountain... more specifically, as the most powerful tier after their overlord onis moved underground, and before two newcomer goddesses and their shrine maiden moved in from the outside world.

As proud as Aya is of her heritage, even she would admit that being a tengu is not always as cracked up as it's made out to be. Like the wind that she has control over, Aya is carefree and easygoing and loves her freedom, especially the freedom of the press and the freedom to take as many scandalous photos as she'd like of every unwilling subject without consent. She's been attacked and shot at by photography victims ranging from fireflies to celestials. Few people in Gensokyo have much or even any influence in what she does. But when push comes to shove and a call comes out for the tengu corps to protect the mountain from intruders, even she'll answer the summons to stand and fight, even if she'd really rather not. "Belonging to a group means that sometimes, you don't get to have your way," she admits to Reimu immediately before challenging her. And it's true. Despite appearances and against all first impressions, she does have a strong sense of duty to her clan. As powerful as she is, birds of a feather flock together, and her flock is more powerful than herself by far.

Crow tengu are well known for their speed, but Aya is particularly famous for being the fastest person in Gensokyo. She has a lot of ground to cover, collecting data and photos for her stories, distributing her papers, snooping into everyone's business and getting violently rebuffed. Aya is always busy chasing down the next new name, the next big scoop and scandal. She's shameless and doesn't think twice about lying, cheating, and invading any kind of personal privacy for the sake of her paper, even if it's little more than a gossip tabloid that everyone would rather use to feed the fire rather than read.

She's one of the most annoying and disliked residents in Gensokyo, starring in two games whose plots basically boil down to Aya taking pictures of everyone and being attacked by her unwilling photography victims. But she tends to hide how powerful she is and would rather not fight back and clutter her shots with her own danmaku, preferring to use her dodginess and speed and camera instead. While she's generally friendly and relatively easy to get along with, there's no denying her shadiness and penchant for ruining lives and reputations with nothing but her camera and a scandalous spin doctored interview. She doesn't need a weapon when the pen--and camera--are mightier than the sword.

Abilities, Strengths, and Weaknesses:

abilities.

• journalism!... rather sensationalist and questionable journalism. she's a prolific newspaper-writer.

• photography. rather scandalous and questionable photography, but there you go.

• spell cards: she has the power to manipulate the wind and can fire danmaku.

• flight: she has wings that she can apparently summon/put away at will.

• super speed: she's thought of as the fastest person in Gensokyo.

strengths.

• generally friendly and easy to get along with.

• extremely driven--working on the Bunbunmaru is a 24/7 lifestyle.

• resilient. she's not easily defeated or depressed.

• loyal to her superiors.

weaknesses.

• EXTREMELY ANNOYING.

• flighty and unreliable and untrustworthy.

• would love to blackmail and/or defame you.

• is generally just. very unlikeable.