Masaomi Kida (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mellowyellow) wrote2015-11-10 01:01 pm
mellowyellow) wrote2015-11-10 01:01 pm
inugami app
Player Information
Name/Alias: Wind
Player Journal: [personal profile] windroars
Contact: [plurk.com profile] shogunsensual
Timezone: PST
HMD: HMD
In-Game/Processing: N/A
Character Information
Name/Alias: Masaomi Kida (Goes by Bakyura online)
Fandom: Durarara!!
Canonpoint: Volume 6 Intro, After returning to Ikebukuro with Saki
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Physical Description: The idiot on the right. He has no visible scars or tattoos, but he does have three ear piercings, and he dyes his hair blond.
History: A kid who laughs for all the wrong reasons.
Personality: Masaomi Kida is quite the catch, if you can get past all the reasons he isn't. Spoiler alert, there are a lot of reasons.
This particular high school drop out happens to be a notorious(ly bad) flirt, a bit on the obnoxious side, and convinced that his jokes are actually funny. They're not. He's playful to a fault and over-animated, almost too passionate about what he enjoys. A true-blue extrovert who is always the most energized when surrounding himself with friends. His favorite pastime is to go out on the town and pick up girls, dragging his poor friend Mikado along with him when he can, but despite his big talk, he fails spectacularly. Of course, it's hard to get a girl to laugh with you rather than at you when you're flapping your elbows like a chicken.
Somehow though, when it matters most, even these outlandish traits can work in his favor. He's sensitive to others' feelings (if not their motivations) and tries hard to make people feel better about themselves. He wants a chance to be the hero, the good guy, a knight for all the princesses of the world. The effort he puts into it is more than a little noticeable despite that it's often disguised as Masaomi's usual antics. In a way, that's all Masaomi's usual antics are: an attempt to make even the mundane fun and interesting. He has a certain charisma, an energy about him that can liven up a party and make anything his own. He can take charge or fool around; he scares away awkward silences and brings people together. All through joking around like a carefree dumbass. One of those people at whom someone can only shake their head and smile fondly while saying, "That's Masaomi for you."
Unfortunately, this too-happy-for-his-own-good image is little more than brightly colored wrapping paper meant to distract from the disappointing contents within. Masaomi doesn't act like a different person than he actually is or hide his true self behind a mask. What he does is willfully deny parts of himself because he doesn't want to or can't deal with them at the time. Chilling beneath the surface and shaping his otherwise sincere motives is a swirling miasma of guilt, depression, doubt, and self-loathing. It's partly for the benefit of others that he puts up the facade whenever he's with them, and it's partly for himself. He doesn't want anyone to know he's unhappy, especially why he's unhappy.
First and foremost, Masaomi is lonely. He has always been lonely. He has felt as if he has no place in the world, something that probably originated because his parents don't give a rat's ass about him. In fact, after Masaomi drops out of high school and begins traveling with his girlfriend, Mikado tells him that he and Anri miss him, his classmates miss him, even the teacher is worried about him, and not to be discouraged because his parents don't. It's quite a statement.
In order to create that elusive place where he can belong, a place he lost when he moved to Ikebukuro and left his friend Mikado behind, he seeks out anyone who will have him. In true Masaomi fashion, however, he has a tendency to search in all the wrong places. Faced with the transition from small town to big city, he dives head first into the thick of things and comes out the other end as the accidental but effective leader of a delinquent gang. After all, why settle for something small? Masaomi isn't a flame, he's a firework! By forming his color gang the Yellow Scarves, the young rebel without a cause creates the place for himself that he’s wanted and, thanks to Izaya, is even able to find a girl with whom he can share it, Saki Mikajima.
Of course, the moment one utters the phrase “thanks to Izaya” is the moment shit hits the fan.
Guilt is one of Masaomi's ultimate motivators. Though Izaya is the one who doesn’t answer his call for help, though Yellow Scarves’ rival gang are the ones who torture Saki, Masaomi Kida is the one who couldn’t save her. None of the obstacles in his path shift an ounce of blame away from himself. He allows Izaya to manipulate him, too drunk with his perceived victories to see the bigger picture, and when his defining moment comes, he freezes in fear, essentially leaving his girlfriend to die. With the nurturing power of his anxiety and doubt, the overwhelming guilt of these truths quickly spirals him into depression and self-loathing.
Even as he slowly resolves his worst issues, he never forgets them. They remind him regularly of the consequences of his actions and of the people he has put in harm's way, giving him a foundation on which to base his pride. (If he doesn't help this person, he’ll never be able to look Mikado in the eye again, etc.) But these reminders at times also wreak havoc on his decision making skills which are already subpar at best, flushing the boy down more than one angsty teenage emotional spiral of misery.
Having experienced what he has, he has an almost inhuman determination, perhaps desperation, not to allow his friends to fall into "the dark side" of Tokyo the way he did. He will evade, lie, act, cheat, betray, kill, and die to make sure it doesn't happen. Nothing makes him angrier, nothing makes him more frightened, than losing it all again. Every transgression made toward them, every subtle sign of discomfort, he wants to change it. He didn't have anyone to hold him back before, so now he wants to be that person for others who need him.
What's grown out of this is a fierce but faulty protectiveness, a misguided loyalty and backwards will to preserve his peace, even if his own actions destroy it in the process. He’d rather give it all up then let it be taken from him again. Whether a person be a friend, an acquaintance, or a member of his gang, he places their safety into his own hands with a firm and steady belief that he alone must protect them. He takes it upon himself to watch out for problems on all sides and react accordingly, without informing those he's trying to protect.
This ties into one of Masaomi's key coping mechanisms: compartmentalization. He has trouble seeing himself as one whole person. Instead, he sees himself in mental segments. A great deal of his anxiety stems from worries about what others will think when they see a side of him they don’t usually see. In order to prevent that, Masaomi adapts to situations by essentially separating them from each other. He willfully splits his life into different "realities." In one reality, he is the failure flirt extraordinaire and street-wise best friend to Mikado and Anri; in another, he will punch one of his own followers across a warehouse floor for not following orders. He keeps each reality as separate from the other as possible, and this complete separation allows him to function under a different moral code in each reality without compromising the other reality. When the two worlds start to mix, so do his separate lifestyles, and that's when he makes his biggest mistakes.
Simply put, Masaomi can't be straight with his friends because if they knew what kind of person he was, they would undoubtedly hate him for it. He hates himself for it, after all. Even when he's finally willing to stop running and accept his mistakes, his logic behind it is that he made those mistakes because that's the kind of person he is. It's just as much condemnation as it is forgiveness. If he can hate himself so thoroughly, how can his friends not?
If it isn't noticeable enough already, Masaomi has some glaring trust issues. This isn't surprising when even his girlfriend spent a year in the hospital supposedly unable to walk but in reality had recovered months before. He will avoid entrusting his fate to adults in particular so long as he has the choice. They're great for occasional advice, but if he sticks around too long, they'll betray him eventually. A history of parental negligence heaped on top of Izaya's cruel manipulation leaves him unable to count on the older generation to the extent that he doesn't even consider it an option. When faced with dire, suicidal circumstances, he runs into a ridiculously powerful but kind man telling him he shouldn't have to kill or die in a place like Tokyo. Instead of ask for help, Masaomi jokes, laughs, even rates the man's sushi restaurant before running away. His problems are his own.
It is, however, possible for Masaomi to enjoy someone's company, love them wholeheartedly, while knowing they are lying to him. Trust isn’t required for affection because if it was, he would have no one. Rather, he ends up allowing others excuses for their lies while giving himself no quarter. Anri and Mikado both hide things from him for the same reason that he hides things from them, but he is the one who doubted them, not the other way around, so he’s the only one at fault.
It's this sort of backwards thinking, twisting facts so that the blame lies with him, that brings about moments when he allows himself to brood or be serious.
Alone, he has little to distract himself from the claustrophobic atmosphere of gang-infested city streets. The change in not only expression but body language the moment he finds himself without an audience is readily apparent, as if a string that holds his head and shoulders high is suddenly cut. The only person he displays this kind of helpless brooding to is Saki, though Izaya has a knack for bringing it out of him when he tries.
When Masaomi Kida gets serious, it's another story. When Masaomi Kida gets serious, he gets serious, and everyone is going to know about it. He is well aware of the horrors of which people are capable, that life is never fair, but he can only face his obstacles head on with a deadly glare and a nail puller to the ribs. He doesn't gain the respect necessary to lead a gang through pretty words. Despite the silly jokes, the insecurity - Masaomi is a fighter at his core. He lives to survive, and to give others the same chance. If someone gets in the way of that, he will mess them up. Revenge is a dish he readily serves, his own unique bastardization of a hero's duty, and the pain he is willing to both inflict and endure for it is no laughing matter. When something is truly important to him, he won't let go of it so easily, even when it does nothing but hurt.
It's a little selfless, a little selfish, a little sacrificial, and a little self-sabotaging, but in the end, it's just a lot of Masaomi Kida.
Abilities: Masaomi is a dumb teenage boy with no super human abilities whatsoever, but it's notable that his intuition is highly developed. He reads people and situations, getting ominous impressions from clues that he can't otherwise piece together. This will likely never become an issue with Inugami plots/villains, however, because Masaomi is a dumb teenage boy and consistently disregards his own premonitions until it's too late.
He's also pretty good in a fight. Years of delinquency have given him plenty of practice and taught him how to get creative with weaponry.
Samples
Dialogue: Inugami TDM
Exposition/Introspection: sfw post-death Carvaka log
Revision
Masaomi has never been your run-of-the-mill kid. Even back in elementary school, when he still lived in Saitama with his best friend Mikado, he was already developing into a would-be Robin Hood and eager rule breaker. At one point, Mikado reminisces about the time that Masaomi showed up at his house in the early hours of the morning and coerced him into catching rhinoceros beetles. While the two ten year old boys gallivanted through the forest unsupervised at 4AM, a few middle school kids caught their trail and began stealing the beetles from the traps Masaomi had set up earlier. After a bit of bullying, Mikado stood up to them, but Masaomi pulled back. He took Mikado to a safe place and went off on his own to deal with them because he knew his best friend didn't like fights. He got his revenge using a wasp's nest and freed all but a single beetle that he later gave to a younger kid. Everything about this incident speaks to Masaomi's core personality. He is the kind of person who goes on an excursion into the woods to find a single rhinoceros beetle for another kid when he could have taken them all and sold them for a profit, the kind of person who fights so that others don't have to. Masaomi doesn't do things for profit; he does things for people. He lives to make the people he loves happy because that makes him feel needed. Masaomi Kida needs to feel needed.
This core part of him never vanishes; it only matures and twists with Masaomi's own self doubt. This progression is painfully clear when looking at Masaomi's actions chronologically. He never intends to start a gang. At first, he just jumps into the fight whenever he sees someone from his school being harassed by thugs. He never questions why they might be in the situation they're in. The only thing on his mind is helping someone who needs it. When the gang war between his Yellow Scarves and Blue Square escalates, he doesn't seek out Izaya's help because he's losing but because, in his own words, he's seen hundreds of his friends injured in unfair fights and he wants to even out the playing field. But when he freezes in place on his way to save Saki, when he realizes his own mortality and helplessness, his confidence crumbles, denying him everything he thought he was. It is then that Masaomi is forced to accept that he is not and never was a hero. Maybe, though, he can still be a friend. When Mikado moves to Ikebukuro, Masaomi takes him under his wing, showing him around and cheering him up however he can. He goes to people in search of information on the new gang Dollars the moment Mikado mentions it, so that he can keep Mikado safe from them. He threatens a teacher when he catches the man sexually harassing Anri. He runs after potential bullies when Anri's shoes go missing and gives up on pursuing her when he realizes Mikado has a crush on her. He does his absolute best to keep Mikado and Anri safe from anything and everything, which makes it doubly agonizing when his efforts prove in vain.
Because Masaomi's friends are really all he has, they mean everything to him. He even refers to Mikado as his courage. When Anri is sent to the hospital by the infamous Slasher, a criminal going around Tokyo with a sword and cutting people at random, Masaomi snaps. Someone has ruined the peace he's worked so hard to create for him and his friends, and he is going to make them pay. In the worst case scenario, he's even willing to start another gang war over it because the Slasher is connected to Dollars. Masaomi returns to the Yellow Scarves as their leader, not bothering to hide that he is using them solely for their information network and strength in numbers, and though innocent people are hurt in the process (including a friend of his and Mikado's from school), Masaomi doesn't back down. He is willing to do anything to avenge Anri and keep Mikado out of this mess. He's willing to do anything to prove that this time he won't freeze in fear. Until he finds out that Anri is the Slasher, and Mikado is the leader of Dollars.
When Masaomi's two worlds collide, both quickly spiral out of his control. He saves Anri from his own men only to corner her in an alleyway and violently accuse her of deceiving him and Mikado from the start. He goes to Izaya for information despite knowing how twisted he is because he's isolated himself from everyone he cares about and doesn't know what else to do. He stops going to school because he can't face his friends, even though his friends and their peaceful school life together are why he began fighting in the first place. At the same time, he can't command his gang properly. They are itching for a war on Dollars, and now that Masaomi knows who Dollars' leader is, he's lost his will to fight. Less loyal members of his gang sense his hesitance and discover Mikado's identity. They call Masaomi and tell him he's out of the gang and that there's an execution order out on his head. It's only at this lowest moment that he is finally able to overcome his own fear and self doubt. The insecurity, depression, and self-loathing that have led him in emotional circles through this entire mess are cast aside for one single thought. "What if they go after Mikado? What if they use Anri to get to Mikado?" Nothing else matters - not who Mikado or Anri are, what they've done, or why they've done it - but making sure that no one can hurt his friends. He takes up a suicide mission, marching right into his gang's base of operations with every intention to murder Horada, the man who'd taken over and threatened Mikado, or die trying.
He manages to survive, however, thanks to the interference of his friends and of Kyohei Kadota, and is forced to leave town with Saki because of the execution order on his head. Masaomi hasn't had the guts to visit her for a year since he failed to save her, but he hasn't been able to leave Ikebukuro either. Not while she's there. He genuinely loves Saki, has from the beginning, but desperate to explain away his failure in not saving her, he tells himself that the reason he failed is because he doesn't love her enough. He runs around hitting on other girls with ridiculous gusto in order to prove this, but that doesn't stop him from standing outside Raira General Hospital at night, looking up at her window. No matter how insistently he deludes himself, he can't let go of her, and it was the same for Mikado and Anri. His ordeal with the Yellow Scarves helps him realize that he didn't fail because he didn't love her but because this is the kind of person he is. He's unreliable, a coward, and he makes more mistakes than Google translate, but as long as someone like Saki can still love him, that's okay.
Unfortunately, his climactic revelation and acceptance of himself does nothing to brighten his negative self image; it just enforces it. During the six months following, he contacts Mikado and Anri only through an online chatroom and never explicitly states that "Bakyura" is Masaomi Kida. He only hints at it, at one point telling Saki that he can't speak to them in person because they must hate him for what he put them through. With no confidence in his own ability to support himself and Saki, he also returns to Izaya with his tail between his legs and takes up a job gathering information for him. Despite all of his effort to preserve the peaceful time he spent with Mikado and Anri, he separates himself from them, instead relying on a man who has ruined his life on several occasions, because he believes (falsely) that Mikado and Anri will be happier without him.
He's kind of an idiot.
Name/Alias: Wind
Player Journal: [personal profile] windroars
Contact: [plurk.com profile] shogunsensual
Timezone: PST
HMD: HMD
In-Game/Processing: N/A
Character Information
Name/Alias: Masaomi Kida (Goes by Bakyura online)
Fandom: Durarara!!
Canonpoint: Volume 6 Intro, After returning to Ikebukuro with Saki
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Physical Description: The idiot on the right. He has no visible scars or tattoos, but he does have three ear piercings, and he dyes his hair blond.
History: A kid who laughs for all the wrong reasons.
Personality: Masaomi Kida is quite the catch, if you can get past all the reasons he isn't. Spoiler alert, there are a lot of reasons.
This particular high school drop out happens to be a notorious(ly bad) flirt, a bit on the obnoxious side, and convinced that his jokes are actually funny. They're not. He's playful to a fault and over-animated, almost too passionate about what he enjoys. A true-blue extrovert who is always the most energized when surrounding himself with friends. His favorite pastime is to go out on the town and pick up girls, dragging his poor friend Mikado along with him when he can, but despite his big talk, he fails spectacularly. Of course, it's hard to get a girl to laugh with you rather than at you when you're flapping your elbows like a chicken.
Somehow though, when it matters most, even these outlandish traits can work in his favor. He's sensitive to others' feelings (if not their motivations) and tries hard to make people feel better about themselves. He wants a chance to be the hero, the good guy, a knight for all the princesses of the world. The effort he puts into it is more than a little noticeable despite that it's often disguised as Masaomi's usual antics. In a way, that's all Masaomi's usual antics are: an attempt to make even the mundane fun and interesting. He has a certain charisma, an energy about him that can liven up a party and make anything his own. He can take charge or fool around; he scares away awkward silences and brings people together. All through joking around like a carefree dumbass. One of those people at whom someone can only shake their head and smile fondly while saying, "That's Masaomi for you."
Unfortunately, this too-happy-for-his-own-good image is little more than brightly colored wrapping paper meant to distract from the disappointing contents within. Masaomi doesn't act like a different person than he actually is or hide his true self behind a mask. What he does is willfully deny parts of himself because he doesn't want to or can't deal with them at the time. Chilling beneath the surface and shaping his otherwise sincere motives is a swirling miasma of guilt, depression, doubt, and self-loathing. It's partly for the benefit of others that he puts up the facade whenever he's with them, and it's partly for himself. He doesn't want anyone to know he's unhappy, especially why he's unhappy.
First and foremost, Masaomi is lonely. He has always been lonely. He has felt as if he has no place in the world, something that probably originated because his parents don't give a rat's ass about him. In fact, after Masaomi drops out of high school and begins traveling with his girlfriend, Mikado tells him that he and Anri miss him, his classmates miss him, even the teacher is worried about him, and not to be discouraged because his parents don't. It's quite a statement.
In order to create that elusive place where he can belong, a place he lost when he moved to Ikebukuro and left his friend Mikado behind, he seeks out anyone who will have him. In true Masaomi fashion, however, he has a tendency to search in all the wrong places. Faced with the transition from small town to big city, he dives head first into the thick of things and comes out the other end as the accidental but effective leader of a delinquent gang. After all, why settle for something small? Masaomi isn't a flame, he's a firework! By forming his color gang the Yellow Scarves, the young rebel without a cause creates the place for himself that he’s wanted and, thanks to Izaya, is even able to find a girl with whom he can share it, Saki Mikajima.
Of course, the moment one utters the phrase “thanks to Izaya” is the moment shit hits the fan.
Guilt is one of Masaomi's ultimate motivators. Though Izaya is the one who doesn’t answer his call for help, though Yellow Scarves’ rival gang are the ones who torture Saki, Masaomi Kida is the one who couldn’t save her. None of the obstacles in his path shift an ounce of blame away from himself. He allows Izaya to manipulate him, too drunk with his perceived victories to see the bigger picture, and when his defining moment comes, he freezes in fear, essentially leaving his girlfriend to die. With the nurturing power of his anxiety and doubt, the overwhelming guilt of these truths quickly spirals him into depression and self-loathing.
Even as he slowly resolves his worst issues, he never forgets them. They remind him regularly of the consequences of his actions and of the people he has put in harm's way, giving him a foundation on which to base his pride. (If he doesn't help this person, he’ll never be able to look Mikado in the eye again, etc.) But these reminders at times also wreak havoc on his decision making skills which are already subpar at best, flushing the boy down more than one angsty teenage emotional spiral of misery.
Having experienced what he has, he has an almost inhuman determination, perhaps desperation, not to allow his friends to fall into "the dark side" of Tokyo the way he did. He will evade, lie, act, cheat, betray, kill, and die to make sure it doesn't happen. Nothing makes him angrier, nothing makes him more frightened, than losing it all again. Every transgression made toward them, every subtle sign of discomfort, he wants to change it. He didn't have anyone to hold him back before, so now he wants to be that person for others who need him.
What's grown out of this is a fierce but faulty protectiveness, a misguided loyalty and backwards will to preserve his peace, even if his own actions destroy it in the process. He’d rather give it all up then let it be taken from him again. Whether a person be a friend, an acquaintance, or a member of his gang, he places their safety into his own hands with a firm and steady belief that he alone must protect them. He takes it upon himself to watch out for problems on all sides and react accordingly, without informing those he's trying to protect.
This ties into one of Masaomi's key coping mechanisms: compartmentalization. He has trouble seeing himself as one whole person. Instead, he sees himself in mental segments. A great deal of his anxiety stems from worries about what others will think when they see a side of him they don’t usually see. In order to prevent that, Masaomi adapts to situations by essentially separating them from each other. He willfully splits his life into different "realities." In one reality, he is the failure flirt extraordinaire and street-wise best friend to Mikado and Anri; in another, he will punch one of his own followers across a warehouse floor for not following orders. He keeps each reality as separate from the other as possible, and this complete separation allows him to function under a different moral code in each reality without compromising the other reality. When the two worlds start to mix, so do his separate lifestyles, and that's when he makes his biggest mistakes.
Simply put, Masaomi can't be straight with his friends because if they knew what kind of person he was, they would undoubtedly hate him for it. He hates himself for it, after all. Even when he's finally willing to stop running and accept his mistakes, his logic behind it is that he made those mistakes because that's the kind of person he is. It's just as much condemnation as it is forgiveness. If he can hate himself so thoroughly, how can his friends not?
If it isn't noticeable enough already, Masaomi has some glaring trust issues. This isn't surprising when even his girlfriend spent a year in the hospital supposedly unable to walk but in reality had recovered months before. He will avoid entrusting his fate to adults in particular so long as he has the choice. They're great for occasional advice, but if he sticks around too long, they'll betray him eventually. A history of parental negligence heaped on top of Izaya's cruel manipulation leaves him unable to count on the older generation to the extent that he doesn't even consider it an option. When faced with dire, suicidal circumstances, he runs into a ridiculously powerful but kind man telling him he shouldn't have to kill or die in a place like Tokyo. Instead of ask for help, Masaomi jokes, laughs, even rates the man's sushi restaurant before running away. His problems are his own.
It is, however, possible for Masaomi to enjoy someone's company, love them wholeheartedly, while knowing they are lying to him. Trust isn’t required for affection because if it was, he would have no one. Rather, he ends up allowing others excuses for their lies while giving himself no quarter. Anri and Mikado both hide things from him for the same reason that he hides things from them, but he is the one who doubted them, not the other way around, so he’s the only one at fault.
It's this sort of backwards thinking, twisting facts so that the blame lies with him, that brings about moments when he allows himself to brood or be serious.
Alone, he has little to distract himself from the claustrophobic atmosphere of gang-infested city streets. The change in not only expression but body language the moment he finds himself without an audience is readily apparent, as if a string that holds his head and shoulders high is suddenly cut. The only person he displays this kind of helpless brooding to is Saki, though Izaya has a knack for bringing it out of him when he tries.
When Masaomi Kida gets serious, it's another story. When Masaomi Kida gets serious, he gets serious, and everyone is going to know about it. He is well aware of the horrors of which people are capable, that life is never fair, but he can only face his obstacles head on with a deadly glare and a nail puller to the ribs. He doesn't gain the respect necessary to lead a gang through pretty words. Despite the silly jokes, the insecurity - Masaomi is a fighter at his core. He lives to survive, and to give others the same chance. If someone gets in the way of that, he will mess them up. Revenge is a dish he readily serves, his own unique bastardization of a hero's duty, and the pain he is willing to both inflict and endure for it is no laughing matter. When something is truly important to him, he won't let go of it so easily, even when it does nothing but hurt.
It's a little selfless, a little selfish, a little sacrificial, and a little self-sabotaging, but in the end, it's just a lot of Masaomi Kida.
Abilities: Masaomi is a dumb teenage boy with no super human abilities whatsoever, but it's notable that his intuition is highly developed. He reads people and situations, getting ominous impressions from clues that he can't otherwise piece together. This will likely never become an issue with Inugami plots/villains, however, because Masaomi is a dumb teenage boy and consistently disregards his own premonitions until it's too late.
He's also pretty good in a fight. Years of delinquency have given him plenty of practice and taught him how to get creative with weaponry.
Samples
Dialogue: Inugami TDM
Exposition/Introspection: sfw post-death Carvaka log
Revision
Masaomi has never been your run-of-the-mill kid. Even back in elementary school, when he still lived in Saitama with his best friend Mikado, he was already developing into a would-be Robin Hood and eager rule breaker. At one point, Mikado reminisces about the time that Masaomi showed up at his house in the early hours of the morning and coerced him into catching rhinoceros beetles. While the two ten year old boys gallivanted through the forest unsupervised at 4AM, a few middle school kids caught their trail and began stealing the beetles from the traps Masaomi had set up earlier. After a bit of bullying, Mikado stood up to them, but Masaomi pulled back. He took Mikado to a safe place and went off on his own to deal with them because he knew his best friend didn't like fights. He got his revenge using a wasp's nest and freed all but a single beetle that he later gave to a younger kid. Everything about this incident speaks to Masaomi's core personality. He is the kind of person who goes on an excursion into the woods to find a single rhinoceros beetle for another kid when he could have taken them all and sold them for a profit, the kind of person who fights so that others don't have to. Masaomi doesn't do things for profit; he does things for people. He lives to make the people he loves happy because that makes him feel needed. Masaomi Kida needs to feel needed.
This core part of him never vanishes; it only matures and twists with Masaomi's own self doubt. This progression is painfully clear when looking at Masaomi's actions chronologically. He never intends to start a gang. At first, he just jumps into the fight whenever he sees someone from his school being harassed by thugs. He never questions why they might be in the situation they're in. The only thing on his mind is helping someone who needs it. When the gang war between his Yellow Scarves and Blue Square escalates, he doesn't seek out Izaya's help because he's losing but because, in his own words, he's seen hundreds of his friends injured in unfair fights and he wants to even out the playing field. But when he freezes in place on his way to save Saki, when he realizes his own mortality and helplessness, his confidence crumbles, denying him everything he thought he was. It is then that Masaomi is forced to accept that he is not and never was a hero. Maybe, though, he can still be a friend. When Mikado moves to Ikebukuro, Masaomi takes him under his wing, showing him around and cheering him up however he can. He goes to people in search of information on the new gang Dollars the moment Mikado mentions it, so that he can keep Mikado safe from them. He threatens a teacher when he catches the man sexually harassing Anri. He runs after potential bullies when Anri's shoes go missing and gives up on pursuing her when he realizes Mikado has a crush on her. He does his absolute best to keep Mikado and Anri safe from anything and everything, which makes it doubly agonizing when his efforts prove in vain.
Because Masaomi's friends are really all he has, they mean everything to him. He even refers to Mikado as his courage. When Anri is sent to the hospital by the infamous Slasher, a criminal going around Tokyo with a sword and cutting people at random, Masaomi snaps. Someone has ruined the peace he's worked so hard to create for him and his friends, and he is going to make them pay. In the worst case scenario, he's even willing to start another gang war over it because the Slasher is connected to Dollars. Masaomi returns to the Yellow Scarves as their leader, not bothering to hide that he is using them solely for their information network and strength in numbers, and though innocent people are hurt in the process (including a friend of his and Mikado's from school), Masaomi doesn't back down. He is willing to do anything to avenge Anri and keep Mikado out of this mess. He's willing to do anything to prove that this time he won't freeze in fear. Until he finds out that Anri is the Slasher, and Mikado is the leader of Dollars.
When Masaomi's two worlds collide, both quickly spiral out of his control. He saves Anri from his own men only to corner her in an alleyway and violently accuse her of deceiving him and Mikado from the start. He goes to Izaya for information despite knowing how twisted he is because he's isolated himself from everyone he cares about and doesn't know what else to do. He stops going to school because he can't face his friends, even though his friends and their peaceful school life together are why he began fighting in the first place. At the same time, he can't command his gang properly. They are itching for a war on Dollars, and now that Masaomi knows who Dollars' leader is, he's lost his will to fight. Less loyal members of his gang sense his hesitance and discover Mikado's identity. They call Masaomi and tell him he's out of the gang and that there's an execution order out on his head. It's only at this lowest moment that he is finally able to overcome his own fear and self doubt. The insecurity, depression, and self-loathing that have led him in emotional circles through this entire mess are cast aside for one single thought. "What if they go after Mikado? What if they use Anri to get to Mikado?" Nothing else matters - not who Mikado or Anri are, what they've done, or why they've done it - but making sure that no one can hurt his friends. He takes up a suicide mission, marching right into his gang's base of operations with every intention to murder Horada, the man who'd taken over and threatened Mikado, or die trying.
He manages to survive, however, thanks to the interference of his friends and of Kyohei Kadota, and is forced to leave town with Saki because of the execution order on his head. Masaomi hasn't had the guts to visit her for a year since he failed to save her, but he hasn't been able to leave Ikebukuro either. Not while she's there. He genuinely loves Saki, has from the beginning, but desperate to explain away his failure in not saving her, he tells himself that the reason he failed is because he doesn't love her enough. He runs around hitting on other girls with ridiculous gusto in order to prove this, but that doesn't stop him from standing outside Raira General Hospital at night, looking up at her window. No matter how insistently he deludes himself, he can't let go of her, and it was the same for Mikado and Anri. His ordeal with the Yellow Scarves helps him realize that he didn't fail because he didn't love her but because this is the kind of person he is. He's unreliable, a coward, and he makes more mistakes than Google translate, but as long as someone like Saki can still love him, that's okay.
Unfortunately, his climactic revelation and acceptance of himself does nothing to brighten his negative self image; it just enforces it. During the six months following, he contacts Mikado and Anri only through an online chatroom and never explicitly states that "Bakyura" is Masaomi Kida. He only hints at it, at one point telling Saki that he can't speak to them in person because they must hate him for what he put them through. With no confidence in his own ability to support himself and Saki, he also returns to Izaya with his tail between his legs and takes up a job gathering information for him. Despite all of his effort to preserve the peaceful time he spent with Mikado and Anri, he separates himself from them, instead relying on a man who has ruined his life on several occasions, because he believes (falsely) that Mikado and Anri will be happier without him.
He's kind of an idiot.