Yūki Terumi

Yūki Terumi (ユウキ＝テルミ), also known as the Black Susanoo (黒いスサノヲ), whose real name is Takehaya Susanoo (建速須佐之男), is the true main antagonist of the series and a former member of the Six Heroes, as well as the creator of the Blue Grimoire. He is also the founder of both the World Void Information Controlling Organization and Seventh Agency, often manipulating both sides to reach his goals. He is featured as a playable DLC character in BlazBlue: Chronophantasma and reappears as a playable character in BlazBlue: Centralfiction where he is the final antagonist in the story mode. In the previous entries he only appears as a NPC due to him sharing Hazama's body until they were separated. He is eventually slain by Ragna and is revealed to be the god Susanoo of Japanese mythology, whose final form is introduced in the console version of Centralficition as a separate character.

Appearance
Terumi wears a hooded yellow cape with black markings and large rolled-up cuffs along with long black ribbons and bandages across his arms. He also retains a few articles of clothing from Hazama's form, including an open shirt beneath his vest that shows his chest, a loose black tie, two belts, and black pants. When he activates Overdrive mode, his hood comes off for a brief moment, revealing his spiky green hair. In his ghost form Terumi is a black mass with green energy on him with his face having a wide smile and only one glowing green eye. During the Great Dark War, before fusing with Kazuma, Terumi wore a Magical Association uniform shirt, a tattered orange cape with a hood, and long black ribbons across his arms. During Phase Shift 1, his hair is not shown, as he is always cloaked. However, concept art in later art-books has revealed that Terumi's hair remains the same as it is today: spiked-up and green-colored. Whilst as the Black Susanoo he resembles a shadow version of Hakumen with green lines all over him with his mask having a glowing smile and evil, glowing eyes.

Personality
Cruel, sadistic, and selfish, Terumi delights in the suffering of others, both physically and mentally, and relishes pure chaos. He happily provokes and manipulates others for his own amusement, and ruthlessly tortures anyone who irritates him or get in his way. Unsurprisingly, this has earned him the contempt of almost every character in the BlazBlue universe, most notably Ragna, Kokonoe, and Nine. However, he is prone to enraged tantrums and panics a lot when things don't go his way.

Despite this, Terumi's personality serves as a foil to both Hazama and his original self, Susanoo; the former seems to favor more subtle forms of dialogue and harmless manipulation with Terumi being more blunt and open to violence (shown even more clearly when the two are separated as of Centralfiction), to the point where even Terumi himself cannot fully trust Hazama with specific duties due to the latter's ambiguity. Meanwhile, his personality as Susanoo is more composed and focused on rage and hatred rather than the sadistic tendencies displayed as Terumi.

Phase 0
When Relius Clover and Shūichirō Ayatsuki worked on an experiment to examine the Gate, Terumi offered his knowledge, as well as the Susanoo Unit, for their studies. During Relius' trial experiment, the Black Beast emerged from the Kiln. Relius was swallowed by the Kiln, Terumi's physical form was destroyed, and his spirit form took heavy damage. It took five years for his spirit body to heal, after which Terumi contacted Relius in order to ask the whereabouts of his next body that Clover promised to prepare. The body, Kazuma Kval, was placed in Magic City Ishana, which was protected by a ridiculous barrier that Terumi couldn't overcome in his current state. Instead, he opted to calling directly into Kazuma's mind from the Boundary.

Phase Shift 1
Six years after the first arrival of the Black Beast, Terumi's calls are continuously ignored by Kazuma. That changes, when Kval's life is threatened for the first time in his life, by the assault of Tomonori. This allows Yūki to finally reach Kazuma, who in such a situation was ready to grab any chance of survival. The next day, after Kval woke from his dream, Terumi, as a delusion, appeared clearly for the first time before him. As Kazuma didn't recognize him, Terumi introduced himself and began tempting him with the Blue.

The Blue was a tempting proposition, as it not only gave Kval a purpose, but also offered him a chance to reclaim what he lost, including his memories. Thus, Kazuma begins his search for the Blue. After Kval fails to find anything about the Blue at the library, Terumi again appears in order to aid him in his quest. He surprises Kazuma with not only vast knowledge about the Magic Association, but also about Kval's own thoughts. That is because the only place that Terumi existed in Ishana, was in Kazuma's own mind. After Yūki's reveal that the Guild's secret information, hidden in the Cathedral, is a way to reach the Blue, they are again imprisoned in a barrier ars, this time performed by 3 half-beastman assassins. In exchange for Kazuma's promise to obtain the Blue no matter what, Terumi takes care of the 3 assailants. Later that night, a worried Trinity comes to Kval's room, asking if something happened as Nine again had felt a strange power (ars), like the last time that Kazuma was attacked. After she leaves the room, Terumi manipulates Kazuma into believing that Trinity's real purpose was to monitor him all along.

After Kazuma doubts are confirmed during the meeting at the café with Trinity, Celica and Nine, Terumi appears again, leading Kval to a part of Ishana's Barrier that had a hole created in it by the beastman. There, he forces Kazuma to realize that he can use this to his advantage in obtaining the Guild's secret information.

Finally, Kazuma manages to reach to the bottom of the Cathedral, where the man-made Kiln is hidden. Kval calls out to Terumi, who appears to congratulate him for reaching this far. Afterwards Kazuma gains information regarding himself and Terumi from the Boundary, by touching the Kiln. After realizing what he is and noting that he has indeed regained what he has lost, as Yūki promised, they perform the ceremony in preparation for the complete fusion. Right after that, Tomonori appears again, this time wielding the Hihiirokane and battles against Kazuma. With the released Hihiirokane, Tomonori gains advantage over Kazuma. Kval, wounded, while standing at the top of the central part of the Kiln, feels like the power of the Boundary is entering him, as if madness is starting to engulf and possess him, it is Terumi entering Kazuma's body through the Kiln. The fusion instantly takes place, the rightful soul enters the rightful body, fitting each other perfectly. It is no longer Kazuma or Terumi, it is Kazuma-Terumi as one, the fusion is complete, Kval's hair spikes up, eyes open wide and he gains the ability to wield the Ouroboros, as well as the snake manifestations. With those now in his arsenal, Kazuma manages to defeat Tomonori. Still wounded from the fight, Terumi tries to leave the Cathedral, but instead encounters Valkenhayn R. Hellsing and is easily defeated by him. He is then taken to the Alucard castle, where he is sealed by Clavis.

Soon after, Konoe A. Mercury, who realized that Terumi's power was needed to defeat the Black Beast, releases him from his prison and casts Mind Eater on him to use him as a puppet during the Great Dark War. Before the spell hit, he split his and Kazuma's mind from each other so that his controlled mind was trapped inside his body while Kazuma took over.

Phase Shift 2
During the action of the novel, he is forced to follow Nine's order, but when no one is watching him, Kazuma takes over to act behind her back.

As Seven and Eight plan to go against Nine's order to dispose of the first Arch-Enemy Event Weapon before it's complete, Kazuma appears to aid them in their schemes. He personally introduces them to the Void Information Management Agency and their collaboration with the organization begins. He is also shown seeping poisonous words into Trinity's ears.

During the Black Beast's reappearance, he was part of Ishana's mage unit.

Phase Shift 4
After the war, Kazuma eventually manipulated Trinity Glassfille, who had feelings for him, into releasing Terumi from the spell. After his release, he quickly killed Konoe and Trinity, threw their bodies into the Boundary, and proceeded to find Hakumen and Jūbei so he could kill them. Terumi had the upper hand, but Jūbei used Tomonori's Sekigan to force him to materialize. As he was taken by surprise, Hakumen grabbed him and jumped into the Kiln while Jūbei closed the gate.

Terumi was sealed inside the Boundary for some time before being finally released by Takamagahara System. He met Relius, who had just finished his time leap after being swallowed by the Kiln, again and the two resumed their partnership. Relius apparently made Terumi a new body called Hazama afterwards. However, because of the after effects of the Mind Eater curse, Terumi and Hazama are forced to remain separate entities sharing the same body. During the creation of Mu -No. 12-, Seventh Agency desired to merge both Hazama and Noel to make a Black Beast, but Takamagahara stoped their plans by using Takemikazuchi, destroying the facility, leaving Mu incomplete, and adopting the new identity, Noel Vermillion.

At some point in time, Iron Tager had encountered Terumi in his ghost form, as he recalled seeing a "green shadow" in Ikaruga. Yūki was also present at the time that Jin had slain Tenjō Amanohokosaka, in order to erase Jin's memories of what he had seen and concluded afterwards.

The Wheel of Fortune
Terumi briefly appears in the original timeline when he switched faces with Hazama in order to fight Hakumen. After fighting for a brief while, he shouted out for Relius to help him and, after Hakumen attacked the Puppeteer, the two engaged the leader of the Six Heroes. After the Event Interference occurred, Terumi began to throw up as he had reached the limit of his self-observation. He cockily told Relius to shut up and that he would handle the rest.

Calamity Trigger
During the events of Calamity Trigger Terumi appeared as a NPC both in his ghost form and taking over Hazama's body a couple times. During Rachel Alucard's story mode, Terumi appeared twice, the first time mocking Valkenhayn R. Hellsing, and the second time mocking Rachel herself.

After the final fight of the True Ending in Calamity Trigger, he appears before Noel and Ragna, and after Rachel arrives, he loses his calm demeanor. His hair spikes up and his voice becomes much louder. Rachel and Ragna, having recognized Terumi from the attack on the church years before, attack him immediately, but he simply shrugs it off, and begins to taunt Ragna over the church attack before departing.

Continuum Shift
Terumi appears as the main antagonist of Continuum Shift where he appears only in Hazama's astral or when he takes over in story mode.

It is revealed that Terumi, like Hakumen and Rachel, will fade away without an Observer. Takamagahara, and later Mu (with the power of the Eye), with whom he shared a Life Link, observed him in BlazBlue. However, Mu lost her power after she turned back to Noel and Takamagahara was attacked by a magical virus from Phantom, losing its power. Terumi did not fade away, however, because he had awakened Hades: Izanami, her vessel Saya is observing Terumi. As an added measure, he is using Ragna's hatred as a force to bind him to this world, as well and the reason he was able to destroy Takamagahara.

Chronophantasma
He was tasked with erecting a barrier over the Ikaruga region, preparing the 13th Prime Field and managing Tsubaki Yayoi. Among his other goals was taking care of Ragna the Bloodedge and the remaining Six Heroes.

As part of their plan, Trinity and Rachel utilize Thundering Roar: Muchōrin on a more powerful level to materialize Terumi in the real world. To do so, they assault Terumi's mind and agitate him by having various illusions of characters he finds particularly annoying to taunt him, such as Bang, Ragna, and his fellow Heroes. Prior to Amaterasu's forced intervention, he even has to fight himself, who claims that even Trinity might have not predicted this far. Eventually, Terumi's consciousness is forced to become the front side while Hazama's becomes the backside. The Heroes catch him downtown Yabiko, and almost kill him if not for Phantom's intervention. Terumi somehow manages to become the backside later, and meets Trinity again as the Heroes split up to look for him. He easily defeats Trinity, but Hakumen appears to save her. Terumi traps both of them in Phantom's Infinite Corridor to lock them away forever, but Trinity and Hakumen use the power of Muchōrin to confront the source of the barrier.

In the finale, he goes to the Monolith as told by Hazama and meets Hakumen. As Hakumen tries to ascertain his existence, Terumi blames what happened on Trinity and Rachel, saying his recognition is all over the place despite being finally set free. He then encounters Hakumen in battle. Terumi gains the upper hand by not allowing Hakumen any opening to charge his technique. However, as Trinity ambushes Hazama, the connection between him and Terumi puts the latter into a temporary halt. Using the chance, Hakumen uses Time Killer on Terumi and kills all of his "time", effectively destroying him.

Centralfiction
Despite Hakumen's death blow, Terumi manages to survive by observing himself, leaving himself in the same state he was in during the attack on Celica's church years before and prior to Noel observing him while also leaving him immune to most direct forms of death. Living on what little time it gives him, Terumi finds himself needing to merge again with Hazama within the week, or his self-observation will give out and he will perish. Despite locating Hazama, Terumi finds that not only has Hazama gained free will and his own desires, but he no longer wishes to be Terumi's vessel. Even if he did, Terumi is unable to merge with Hazama again due to an unexplained side-effect of what Trinity did to them at the monolith during the events prior.

With Hazama no longer a viable option as a vessel and his time rapidly running out, Terumi is forced to change tactics and find himself a new vessel entirely. To this end he discards his fragment of Blue, and breaks into Alucard Castle. There, he makes his way to an unobserved place within and finds his first target, the coffin of Clavis Alucard. After fighting a duplicate of himself created from the security surrounding the coffin, Terumi then steals a cube, from the coffin, which is actually the sealed form of Hihiirokane, and states that with it he would obtain an unrivaled vessel and destroy everything.

Terumi's plan comes to fruition when he ambushes Hakumen with Hihiirokane in its chain form, destroying his soul. With the Susanoo Unit empty it is revealed that it is in fact Terumi's original body. Ragna, Jin, Noel, Tsubaki, and Trinity can only look on in horror as Terumi merges with the Susanoo Unit once more. Body and will reunite and Takehaya Susanoo, brother of Amaterasu, is reborn. In his original form once more, Terumi kidnaps and assimilates Noel into himself and in doing so renders himself completely immune to Event Interference, rendering him almost completely invincible.

He goes on to defeat Es at the gate, telling her the reason she lost is that Ragna is the true Protector of the Blue, not her. With Es defeated Jin attacks Susanoo only to be easily defeated. The last man standing, Ragna activates the Blue Grimoire as the only one who can stop Susanoo. After a vicious battle, Ragna attacks Susanoo head on and once in reach of him utilizes Soul Eater and rips an enraged Terumi out of the Susanoo Unit once more, allowing Jin to take control of it before sending them inside the gate into the Blue Horizon, which resides in the Boundary. In the Boundary after Terumi's speech about the true nature of the Blue, Ragna then reveals his trap to Terumi: as the Susanoo Unit is Terumi's true form, by having Trinity place Jin within it the world perceives Susanoo as a mighty hero and Terumi as one of the legendary Six Heroes that defeated the Black Beast. As a result, no one is afraid of him and Terumi is unable to use that fear and hatred towards him to anchor himself to the world any longer.

Now truly vulnerable and out of options, Terumi engages Ragna in one final battle to the death, attempting to take the True Blue for himself to finish what he started. The battle reaches its climax as Ragna successfully defends himself from Terumi's Unholy Wrath of the Basilisk with Black Onslaught. With Terumi left wide open, Black Onslaught's final strike impales him upon Ragna's sword. Fatally wounded, he wishes eternal suffering upon Ragna. With one final thrust from Ragna, Yūki Terumi finally dies, his passing punctuated by his maniacal laughter.

Powers and abilities
Stated by Jūbei to be a powerful magic-user, Terumi has proven to be one of the most powerful characters in the BlazBlue series. Terumi's primary ability is to feed on the hatred of others to make himself stronger, and it also allows him to anchor himself into the physical world. In ghost form, Terumi is intangible and immune to most attacks save those that are specially designed to harm ghosts, such as Tomonori's Hihiirokane. Despite his incorporeal state, Terumi is still able to physically interact with the world. Terumi was shown to be able to erase memories by "eating" them, commenting that they are delicious. He used this ability twice, both of which were on Jin Kisaragi.

His magic is even strong enough to be used on the level of observation, where as of his demise in Chronophantasma, Terumi was able to observe himself in order to stay alive from Hakumen's technique and seemingly immune to death as a ghost in Centralfiction; however, such levels of self-observation put much strain on his power to only being able to maintain his existence to merely a week before he perished for good.

In battle, Terumi is a powerful, vicious, and savage opponent, able to fight on par with both Hakumen and Jūbei. In line with his sadism, Terumi's fighting style revolves around inflicting as much pain on his enemy as possible before finally killing them. In contrast to Hazama, who relies on his Ouroboros chains and whose fighting style was graceful and dance-like, Terumi's style is far more barbaric and cruel, relying more on his serpentine spirits, butterfly knives, and knives within the heels of his shoes. He is also adept in the use of his Ouroboros for direct attacks, using it for his Snake Bite, Retaliating Fang, Venomous Bite, and Screeches of the Condemned attacks, being these the only times he uses it as such. Terumi is also able to access the power of the Susanoo Unit despite no longer owning it, using it to transform into the Dark Susanoo, a black and green shadow version of Hakumen, and deal the final blow in his Astral Heat, Unholy Wrath of the Basilisk.

Gameplay-wise, Terumi is a character with more Distortion Drives than special moves. His Drive, Force Eater (フォースイーター), allows Terumi to have a much greater Heat Gauge gain while negating it to his opponents, allowing him to utilize his Heat-related abilities far more than any other character and having several combo opportunities to use them, making his potential damage output outright devastating (and also paints it as a foil to Ragna the Bloodedge's Soul Eater Drive). His Overdrive is Nightmare Reaper (ナイトメアリーパー), which strengthens Terumi's Drive attacks and allows him to absorb the opponent's Heat Gauge, making it work more similar to the aforementioned Soul Eater in the said state. However, he often lacks high one-shot damage, which ties into his preference of inflicting gradual damage in order to make his opponent(s) suffer.

Trivia

 * Naming
 * "Yūki" (幽鬼) in Japanese means "ghost" or "revenant". His last name translates from Japanese as "beautiful shrine" and is a feminine name, although admittedly rare.
 * His technique naming-motif is snakes, which also parallels his nature that nods to how snakes are negatively portrayed in most forms of mythology and media. Hazama follows this motif as well.
 * In nod to this as a contrast Hazama's crest being akin to the Ouroboros, Terumi's crest instead resembles a caduceus, or "herald's staff", which consists of two snakes coiling around a winged staff. In Greek mythology, it was carried by Hermes, a cunning trickster god who could freely move between the boundaries of worlds as an emissary of the gods and conductor of souls into the afterlife, which overall nods to Terumi's nature in both his personality and the fact that he was originally a god-like being.
 * Terumi also has his Distortion Drive Orochi Burensen, which like Hazama's Orochi Burensō, is a nod to the Shintō mythology beast, the Yamata-no-Orochi.
 * Other
 * Terumi is the first character to physically interact with the losing character after a match, stomping on them and occasionally kicking them off the screen.
 * Due to a glitch, Terumi's actions mentioned above count as a combo in Score Attack, with his repeated stomping on Ragna giving him the most points.
 * Just like Hazama, when Terumi is electrocuted, an imprint of his ghost form is revealed instead of a skeleton.
 * It is implied that Terumi's ghost form can materialize at will, but still needs a vessel to anchor his existence in the living world.
 * Terumi has more Distortion Drives than any other character, with a total of 6.
 * Along with Jin, Noel, and Tsubaki, Terumi also has a playable alternate form, Hazama, his former vessel. He also has another playable alternate form, which is Susanoo, his original body.
 * Also, Terumi has the most playable forms of any character in-game, with a total of 3 (Hazama, Terumi, and Susanoo).
 * When he was the user of the Susanoo Unit, he was acting upon the name of Takehaya Susanoo no Mikoto, as by recognizing himself as such in his Astral Heat, he gains the form of the Black Susanoo, which would be the most accurate description of Yūki Terumi, as he is recognized as such by the Eye of the Blue. It is also under the name of Susanoo that he opposes Amaterasu.
 * In his BlazBlue: Chronophantasma Arcade Mode, Terumi is the only character who has a Mirror Match as a mid-boss; this also repeats in Act 3 of BlazBlue: Centralfiction's arcade mode where his Mirror Match is a final boss instead.
 * Among Terumi's battle clips, there are some that directly refer to Kazuma, such as:
 * "Kazuma Kval".
 * "It's been a while, Kazu".
 * Terumi's backwards throw animation changes when used on Litchi. Instead of throwing her with his flip kick, he has an added animation: he feints his initial kick and finishes with his other leg, which is a completely unique animation taking a few more frames than normal.
 * Terumi's gag reel in Chronophantasma: Extend, akin to Hazama's in the original Continuum Shift, directly references and expands on a trait of his from his profile, which is his passion for live musical performances.