Beta

"The clouds cascade over the moon tonight. How fitting for us."

- Beta

Beta (ベータ) (Βήτα) is the second member of Shadow Garden, being one of the original "Seven Shadows". Her public identity is Natsume Kafka, the renowned author of numerous "original" stories that are actually media from Earth told to her by Shadow, which she uses to make connections and gather information.

Appearance
Beta is a beautiful young voluptuous Elf with blue pupils and shoulder-length silver hair with a left braid behind her ear and a mole underneath the corner of her eye on the same side. Those who once saw her are said to be become utterly mesmerized by her bewitching beauty.

Her Shadow Garden outfit consists of a low-cut dark slime suit that exposes her cleavage with golden decorations around her chest, shoulder, arms and waist. Her collar is styled with shoulder guards that latch onto two ribbon capes, each ending with golden clasps adorned with tassels. The torso of her bodysuit has gold edged one-piece black bustier that dresses atop ink gray leggings, which also has golden trimming from the center of each breast to where her abdomen meets her inner thighs. Her sleeves are black with matching cesti around her forearms and black gloves on her hands. Along her waist is black belt with golden buckles and gold plating on her hips, acting as a decorative armor. The leggings are connected to her boots lining down the tibia of her legs, which wrap the insides of her legs, decorated with gold rings and lining. There is an asymmetrical aesthetic to her suit, where a single belt loop around her right leg above the knee. Within the golden parts of her attire, there are violet gemstones which resemble the color of her master's magic.

While posing as Natsume, her civilian attire comprises a white ruffle blouse that also reveals her cleavage, a professional dark mini skirt with a split up the sides, black stockings and high heels. Additionally, she is also adorned with a pair of glasses she needs for clear vision and a necklace, as well as a scarf around her waist that wraps along her forearms to stay affixed to her person.

Personality
"A world of shadows. The clouds cascade over the moon tonight. How fitting. For us."

- Beta to Shadow

Beta is a dedicated and loyal subordinate to Shadow Garden. She is known to be both a great analyst by using information presented to her or has attained from her missions, and as a warrior when leading her team members to victory. While conversing with others, she remains calm and responds to them in a sophisticated manner, saving outbursts for private moments-- such as expressing herself after a teasing from Epsilon. Her goal is to one day stand next to Shadow with the power to support him in everything he does, whether as his immediate confidant or lover. As Miss Natsume, she portrays her public persona as a calm and humble young woman to her adoring public, but won't hesitate to use her beauty to entrap her targets and get what she wants, such as Acting Archbishop Nelson in revealing more information about Aurora.

Beyond her loyalty to Shadow Garden is her loyalty to her master, Cid Kagenou, as Beta is madly in love with him. She dreams of one day him embracing her into his arms with the most extreme of passions. Because of this, she gets extremely jealous of any girl who isn't from Shadow Garden that attempts to get close to him, particularly Princess Alexia Midgar. While off-duty or during her duty in her Natsume persona, she has a hobby of writing a book entitled "The Chronicles of Master Shadow" based on the exploits of her master.

Beta's lack of direction shortly after joining Shadow Garden made it difficult to become desensitized to bloodshed, to the point where she had trouble sleeping and had violent physical reactions. Cid would see her sleeplessness and often regale the self-proclaimed bookworm with stories from Earth. Cid captivated Beta with stories such as Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, and Red Riding Hood. She found solace in Shadow's stories orated as bedtime tales, which allowed Beta to conquer her trepidation and found a reason to fight. These stories also helped set Beta on her own path as an author and willingly follows Shadow for the wisdom he bestowed.

Powers & Abilities
Beta is tied with Epsilon as the fifth-strongest member of Shadow Garden, behind Zeta, Delta, Alpha, and Shadow. She is the "Jack of All Trades" of the "Seven Shadows" as she is proficient in many fields yet not excelling in any of them. Her true specialty is intelligence gathering, using the many influential contacts she made through her public identity to give her access to information sources and otherwise inaccessible archives not readily available even to royalty.

Intelligence
Leadership: Beta can effectively give orders to her squad and reprimands them should they disobey her, such was the case with numbers 664, 665, and 666 when infiltrating the Crimson Tower. She also easily deceives others with her false identity as the meek and shy "Miss Natsume," playing to some for their want to protect a "fair maiden" or baiting their more lecherous desires seeing a beautiful young woman. By the time anyone realizes her true identity, she will efficiently and quickly kill them like any trained member of Shadow Garden.

Multitasking: Due to her providing support to the other Shadows, Beta has developed knowledge in areas ranging from administration, espionage, reconnaissance, and encryption, among others. She is a capable leader, though not at Alpha's level, a strong fighter, though not as strong as Delta, a good infiltrator, though not as good as Epsilon, and possesses a great intellect, though not as great as Gamma or Eta. By her coordinating the other shadows, she learned parts of their specialties to know what subordinate Numbers to assign to ongoing missions as well as how best to support them herself.

Multilingual: Beta is easily able to pick up languages, learning basic Japanese in just a couple of days and learning how to type/message on chatrooms in the same timeframe.

Professional Novelist: Due to the stories Shadow told her when she was young, Beta developed an affinity for literature. She would create the "Natsume Kafka" identity to write and publish the stories, albeit with alterations of some measure as some elements of the stories wouldn't translate to the known world. This led her to start writing what she considers her masterpiece, The Chronicles of Lord Shadow, detailing the many missions and exploits of Shadow, which is a very popular series within the ranks of Shadow Garden.

Acting: Similar to Shadow, Beta is good at disguising herself. Taking advantage of her beauty, charm, and voluptuousness, she is able to manipulate her targets into giving her what information she is after. However, her act is not perfect, with Alexia having already grown suspicious of her.

Physical Abilities
Swordsmanship: Like the rest of her companions, excluding the superior Alpha, Beta is an excellent swordswoman capable of withstanding Mordred, the 9th seat of the Knight Rounds.

Archery: In the game, Beta wields a special bow made of slime, showing that she has a talent for marksmanship as well. The design of the bow resembles a | compound bow, allowing less energy loss from the archer's arm movement for additional accuracy and balanced shooting.

Endurance: Beta has proven proficient in user her magic to enhance her physical toughness, being able to survive a direct hit to the head from bullets fired by modern Earth guns.

Magic
Beta is very proficient in the use of magic, though not to the level of Epsilon's precision nor Alpha's abundance, but enough to put up considerable resistance. Such was the case when she led 664, 665, and 666 into the Crimson Tower and survived attacks from the Vampire Queen, Elisabeth until Shadow's rescue.

Equipment

 * Slime Bodysuit: per the Shadow Garden standard, Beta is equipped with a Slime Bodysuit based on Shadow's original design, improved and upgraded upon by Eta.
 * Slime weapons: her weapon in the game is a bow and arrows created using slime.

Special Techniques

 * Hail of Deadly Arrows (Game):
 * Quick Flash:

Trivia

 * Unlike the other shadows, who somehow see themselves as the good side, Beta is only interested in pleasing Cid, being more than willing to walk the path of evil if it allows her to remain at her lord's side.
 * Beta is secretly writing a book titled The Chronicles of Master Shadow, recording his actions and analects with the following notable alterations. A popular series among the Shadow Garden ranks.
 * The princess that Shadow rescues is described as an "elf with silver hair and a mole under her blue eyes".
 * Beta tends to fantasize about being saved by Shadow, in the same way she tends to imagine how happy she would be if Shadow declared his love for her.
 * Beta being a blue-haired girl that loves the main character resembles another character voiced by her seiyuu, Inori Minase, Rem from the anime, Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World.
 * In fact, in the anime, Beta briefly wore a maid outfit which might be a nod to the character.
 * Her civilian identity shares the first and last name as Natsume Sōseki and Franz Kafka respectively, both famous and influential novelists like herself.
 * Beta hides her memo pad within her cleavage, speculated to be deliberately done so to try to get the attention of her Master Cid / Shadow, and also to get the attention of others to achieve her goals.
 * During the "Goddess's Trial" event, Beta pulls out her notebook from her cleavage in front of everyone present there, being Alexia, Rose, and Nelson. Annoying the two formers and baiting the lattermost target into giving her the intel she sought.
 * During the "Test of the goddess", in Lindwurm, when his lord Shadow, participates outside of Beta's plans, and he summons Aurora as an "ideal" opponent, Beta is partially surprised, when he hears Alexia Midgar, say that Shadow's power had reached such a high level that it could generate chaos in the world, implying that even though Beta didn't agree with Alexia at all, for this time, she was right about something that not even Beta knew. She could picture it until now.
 * In the Kage-jitsu episodes, Beta uses special pads made by Eta to further increase her voluptuous breasts when she is in her "Natsume" alias and to take better care of the firmness, beauty and partly bouncy of her breasts. This according to her, she used it for the first time when she was a guest during the "Goddess's Trial".
 * Unlike in the light novel, anime, game, and web novel, Beta is seen participating in the assault on Midgar Academy, while not in the other story routes, as only Gamma was available for it. (possibly it was done, to encourage the humor of the readers).
 * Whether in her "Natsume" alias, or in her normal state, Beta apparently shows in part that she needs glasses to be able to see better when she is writing about her novels, or when she walks normally sometimes, either when is it infiltrated or not.
 * Although Beta doesn't seem like the type to wield firearms and long-distance weapons and since she hasn't been seen wielding them in any media, Beta apparently masters projectile-type weapons perfectly in the game, such as the bow since she has been seen to know how to aim well with the arrows that she shoots with it.