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" pieces of literature 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.

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 tassles. The torso of her bodysuit has gold edged one-piece black bustiere 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 fibia of her legs, which wrap the insides of her legs, decorated with gold rings and lining. There is a assymetrical 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, using information presented to her or has attained from her missions, and a warrior, 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. As Miss Natsume, she presents herself as a calm and humble young woman to her adorning 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 Kagenō, 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.

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.

Beta's hobby is reading books and stories. It's revealed long ago that Beta felt remorse for killing and used to have trouble at sleeping after killing and was only able to do so, until Cid would often to regale her by telling a bedtime fairy tales with the stories from his old life towards her. Not only did the method help Beta remove any trace of guilt in killing, but also made her become the extremely loyal subordinate, as well as helped her to set her own path as an author and willingly follows Shadow for it.

Powers & Abilities
Beta is tied with Epsilon as the fifth-strongest member of Shadow Garden, behind only Zeta, Delta, Alpha, and Shadow. Overall, she seems to be the "Jack of All Trades", "User of All, Master of None", of the "Seven Shadows", being proficient in every field but not excelling in any of them.

Beta's specialty seems to be intelligence gathering in using many connections that she has made to build a network of informants, as well as gathering a large number of influential contacts using her public identity as a famous author and successfully able to access the information archives that are not readily accessible to the public, even for a princess like Alexia Midgar couldn't get her hands into it.

Leadership and Lethality
She 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.

Swordsmanship
Like the rest of her companions, excluding the superior Alpha, Beta is an excellent swordswoman capable of withstanding Mordred, the 9th seat of Cult's Knights of Rounds.

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 until Shadow's rescue.

Multi-talented
As already explained, Beta provides mission support to all other shadows, which is why she has demonstrated knowledge in areas ranging from administration, espionage, reconnaissance, and encryption, among others. Beta has shown to be 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 and 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. Beta is easily able to pick up languages, mastering Japanese (More or less) in just a couple of days.

Professional Novelist
Due to the immense influence of Cid and the stories that he told her to calm her down, Beta developed an extraordinary taste and ability 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 her master Shadow, though well below him, and almost even with Nu, Beta is good at disguising herself, as she passes herself off as a novelist that is called to by almost everyone around her with her beauty, charm, and voluptuousness. If necessary, Beta isn't shy about using her beauty to manipulate her targets into giving her what information she is after. Although apparently, without her partly noticing, Alexia is already suspicious of her way of acting, due to the princess's distrust of anyone so happy.

Trivia

 * 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.