Post by Hisui Inagawa on May 13, 2015 15:19:45 GMT
Name: Midori Inagawa; Alias "Hisui"
Age: 17
Date of Birth: October 15
Birthplace: Tokyo, Japan
Gender: Female
Sexual Orientation: In practice, asexual
Face Claim: Mamizou Futatsuiwa, Touhou Project
Appearance:
Height: 5'9"
Distinguishing Features: Fairly tall and without much of a feminine figure. Combined with her sharp facial features, she might be mistaken for a boy whenever her hair is covered. Though it's normally concealed by her clothes, her left upper arm from shoulder to elbow is completely covered by a tattoo of a coiled serpent. Her clothes vary according to the occasion: a protective labcoat and gasmask while working in her lab, men's fashion while on official business, or a modest blouse and loose skirt when she doesn't want to stand out in the crowd.
Class: Persona-user
Arcana: Justice
Occupation: Yakuza junior member
Starting Equipment: A satchel full of Level 1 homemade shrapnel grenades filled with deadly venom that inflicts the Poison status effect. The type of damage these ones deal is Pierce. (With starting character discount, this costs 500 FP.)
Personality: Superficially, Hisui presents a coolly unflappable demeanor. At best, slightly amused, and at worst, mildly annoyed. She has very little that is genuinely nice to say, and most often she only speaks up to ridicule the subject of her attention with acerbic wit. In her natural state, she is not at all a pleasant person to be around, even among her closest associates.
This is almost never the result of any intentional malice or hostility. She is simply the type of person to see the worst in other people, and she does not enjoy seeing it. Expressing her thought process without any sugarcoating is the easiest way for her to get those thoughts off her chest, and if her unkind words motivate the subject to remove himself from her presence, then that's all the better. Whether the subject improves himself as a result is usually considered irrelevant.
Hisui is capable of empathizing with other people, but she has no sympathy for them. In other words, she is perfectly capable of understanding how other people feel, but she just doesn't care. She might be psychologically described as a sociopath if not for the fact that her upbringing outside regular society has given her plenty of time to learn how to conceal her true nature. In the rare case that she deems it necessary, she is quite adept at adopting the personality of someone more well-adjusted, and only the exceptionally perceptive are capable of seeing beyond the facade.
This is not to say that she is utterly without her own principles. In fact, Hisui considers herself to be bound by a rigid set of ethics that correspond quite closely to her Yakuza family's code of honor, and she follows them even more closely than her peers. She considers ethics to be as objectively real, logically deducible, and empirically testable as any other law of nature. Petty theft, betrayal of the family, and unchivalrous conduct toward the local community are all utterly off-limits. That said, foreigners are fair game for anything, and even locals are still subject to extortion, bribery, fraud, intimidation, blackmail, vendettas, and so on. Hisui has killed before in the course of her duties, though not so often as to forget how many times it's been.
Beneath her professional exterior, Hisui has an intensely curious personality. Her obsession with ethics is only one part of her desire to understand the principles that drive the universe. She is by any measure a prodigy in the fields of chemistry, biology, and physics, and she proudly uses these talents to the benefit of the Yakuza. More than knowing about something, she is addicted to the feeling of finding out about something, especially finding it out for herself, and explaining a puzzle to her directly is one of the few ways to draw her genuine resentment.
Hisui is quite accustomed to being left alone and much prefers it to the alternatives. She speaks with her associates precisely as much as is necessary to advance the goals of the family and not any further. Her closest associates within the family itself consider her eccentric. Her less close associates consider her dangerous on account of her inconvenient code of conduct and her prodigal skill. As yet, none have opted to stick their necks out far enough to nip her in the bud, but she has not cultivated any peers loyal enough to defend her. Anyone misguided enough to seek a genuine friendship with Hisui has a difficult and potentially dangerous road ahead.
Likes:
-Trustworthy people, because they're predictable.
-Studying, because there's always something interesting to find.
-The clear night sky, because the stars bring to mind mankind's infinite potential.
-Trying new foods, because it's an experiment.
Dislikes:
-Unprincipled, ignorant people (she considers these one and the same), because they're practically subhuman.
-Needing to disguise herself, because fashion is often impractical.
-Stormy weather, because it puts her on edge.
-Popular cinema, because its stories are built to reinforce nonsensical morals.
History: To understand Hisui, it is first necessary to understand her family.
Hisui's mother is the daughter of a Roppongi grocer. Hisui's father is a distant cousin of the leader of one of the largest Yakuza clans in all of Japan. Her early childhood was generally happy and peaceful despite (or perhaps because of) her father's incarceration for gang-related offenses when she was still an infant. She had no brothers or sisters, and from a young age she disliked the company of other children.
Hisui was an extremely curious child, as concerned with "why" as she was with "how." Though her mother had plenty of unconditional love to spare, she was often stumped by the child's questions, and so Hisui turned to her father's family for wisdom. The answers she received began to shape her personality.
As Hisui progressed through primary school, it became clear that her inquisitive nature was backed up by some very rare talent. With her father's full support, the Yakuza drew her further into the fold, pulling her out of public school and away from her mother in order to begin grooming her for a useful role in the organization. Though her mother objected strongly, Hisui herself found the lifestyle change most agreeable.
By the time she became a teenager, Hisui had already far surpassed most of her tutors and turned to independent research involving college textbooks, academic journals, and the Internet. She became more closely involved with local Yakuza operations and more than once was put into situations that escalated to the point of lethal force, in which her conduct was sufficient to earn her a reputation as a professional, coldhearted tool of the Yakuza.
However, her talents were much more suitable for less direct work. Hisui applied her aptitude for physics and chemistry toward the construction of powerful, efficient bombs and grenades used and sold by the Yakuza. Her keen understanding of biology was put to use in synthesizing rare poisons that were unlikely to be recognized and unlikely to be cured. Hisui was given a personal laboratory on the outskirts of a Yakuza compound to perform her work, and she gradually grew beyond the bounds of those who had put her there in the first place.
The time not spent in the lab was spent writing, as Hisui's drive for knowledge was not limited to the material. She began to write volumes of philosophical work, epistemology to define what could be known, metaphysics to describe what could be considered to exist, ethics to prescribe how a good person should behave. She drew heavily from Zhu Xi and Immanuel Kant, but she interpreted them in the context of the criminal underworld of society. Ideas incompatible with what she had experienced for herself had to be thrown aside, and the rest needed to be reworked in order to fill those holes.
It was late at night as she toiled at reconciling the ideas of ancient philosophers with her own ideals of justice that she first experienced the Dark Hour.
The lights suddenly went out, and her lab was lit only by the harsh green light of the corrupted moon. Hisui watched in mingled confusion and fascination as masked creatures of coagulated darkness creeped out from inside test tubes and under stacks of books. Sharp, shadowy claws reached for her, and she instinctively backed toward the window. A presence began to surge forward in her mind, something familiar yet alien, bright and cold...
But Hisui shut it out. She lept through the window, drawing the shadowy things after her, and then threw some of her grenades into the pursuing mass. When those grenades failed to detonate, she kept fleeing, out into the streets, among the coffins lining the sidewalks and within the frozen vehicles, more shadows joining the pursuit from every alleyway. By the end of the Dark Hour, she was exhausted and bleeding from half a dozen places, and only barely made it back home in time for her absence not to be noted.
She quickly reached the conclusion that seeking outside help against this phenomenon would not be productive. As her Yakuza peers were all sealed inside coffins during this period, they would be unable to assist her against the Shadow assaults. Explaining the situation to them would only make her look like a madwoman, and of the few that might believe her, she doubted that any could render any useful assistance. This would have to be something for her to handle on her own.
The following days and nights were spent in a flurry of activity. Hisui began to adjust her schedule with the expectation of spending the Dark Hour fighting off the Shadows, and her free time was filled with a new field of study, occultism. She pored over the works of Aleister Crowley, Abe no Seimei, and anyone else in the East or West who might possibly have had any genuine clues about the supernatural. She modified and simplified the construction of her grenades, eventually realizing that it was the electronic arming mechanisms that were preventing them from functioning. She researched ancient poisons prepared with occult rituals that seemed to affect the Shadows as strongly as they did humans. She searched for any possible advantage she could find.
It was a race between her rush to find the truth about the Dark Hour and her dwindling ability to survive the Dark Hour. Wounds accumulated over the next month, and she became increasingly exhausted by the nightly fight for survival. Though she was able to keep appearances up during the day, it seemed to be only a matter of time until her endurance ran out.
That moment finally came one night when she sought refuge inside Roppongi's Mori tower. Hisui had managed to lose most of the Shadows that had been chasing her up until that point, but now they were spreading out aimlessly through the whole area, and she needed to put some distance between herself and them. She began to climb the emergency stairwell, but in her haste she failed to see the Shadow waiting there. It stabbed down at her from above, impaling her through the belly, and her cry of pain drew a second Shadow from below, seemingly eager to finish her off.
As Hisui slumped against the wall, clutching her middle, time seemed to slow down. Her thoughts raced, questioning the absurdity of the situation. Was she really to die in such an inglorious way? To die with her duty to her family unfulfilled? Die with her understanding of the true nature of the world so frustratingly incomplete?
No. It could not be tolerated.
In that moment, her resolve crystallized and took form. A blindingly bright light. Plates of metal shifting and clanking together heavily. The steady hum of an engine brimming with unimaginable power. A winged figure floated above Hisui's head, angellic of form and steel of flesh. As artificial as it was divine.
Zarathustra! Hisui called out the name held in her heart, and the entity responded. Her limbs were no longer heavy with fatigue, her wounds didn't hurt so badly, and she saw with a new clarity the forms of the Shadows closing in on her. The one below, larger, but slower, with short limbs that would have more difficulty mounting an effective attack. The one above with its deadly spear, far more dangerous, but conversely also much more fragile. Poison the one below, eliminate the one above, then make a fighting retreat up the stairwell until the Shadow below finally succumbs. In her current state, she should just barely be able to manage it.
And so she did. Zarathustra didn't lift another finger to help, not even when Hisui was stabbed a second time, but that was fine, Hisui didn't want any unnecessary aid in the first place. The brilliant form vanished moments after the second Shadow fell, and Hisui limped the rest of the way up the stairwell, elated at her first true victory. The fresh night air of the rooftop observation deck was invigorating, but only for a moment, as Hisui detected a faint whiff of brimstone. Curious, she dragged herself to the railing and looked down.
Down below and far away, Hisui saw a terrifying sight. An enormous crature in the shape of a three-headed dog was pulling itself out of the Earth in the middle of Shibuya. It was so large as to make the two things that Hisui had defeated in the stairwell look like insignificant bugs in comparison. It took a moment to realize that there were living humans down there too. Accompanied by bright apparitions similar in nature Hisui's own, the humans battled the beast. The wind whipping past the tower carried sounds of clashing weapons and bursts of magical energy, and it was plain even from that distance that the humans were supernaturally fast, strong, and tough. Even so, their victory seemed like an impossible dream.
But then it happened. The beast fell back within the depths from which it came. Another tiny figure briefly appeared where the beast had stood, and then it too was gone, leaving the humans to scatter once more into the city and out of view.
Hisui took a moment to catch her breath and think on what she had seen. This was proof that she was not alone in this situation, and that there were outsiders who she could perhaps make common cause with. Now that she had Zarathustra's power at her back, she might be able to survive venturing beyond Minato and meet them face to face. Having only seen them at this distance, there was no way she could recognize them by sight, but if all else failed, they could meet during the frozen hour easily enough.
Her mind buzzing with a few answers and many more questions, Hisui set out with a new hope in her heart.
OOC Name: Serp
Notes: Speaks Japanese most fluently, and some Korean as well learned from foreign-born Yakuza members. Self-taught in English, French, and German well enough to read the classics, but her lack of pronunciation practice means she can hardly communicate in them verbally. She's severely farsighted beyond the limit of surgery to correct, but she carries two spare sets of reading glasses, one of which is actually a pair of sturdy goggles intended for chemical work.
Persona: Zarathustra
Appearance:
Persona Lore: The legendary priest Zarathustra was said to have received a divine revelation dividing the world into the opposing forces of truth and falsehood. He later became associated with sorcery, astronomy, and most recently with mankind's transition to a higher state of understanding.
Skills:
Radar Scan (500)
No points left over after initial weapon purchase.
Strengths and Weaknesses:
Strength: Light
Weakness: Dark
Age: 17
Date of Birth: October 15
Birthplace: Tokyo, Japan
Gender: Female
Sexual Orientation: In practice, asexual
Face Claim: Mamizou Futatsuiwa, Touhou Project
Appearance:
Height: 5'9"
Distinguishing Features: Fairly tall and without much of a feminine figure. Combined with her sharp facial features, she might be mistaken for a boy whenever her hair is covered. Though it's normally concealed by her clothes, her left upper arm from shoulder to elbow is completely covered by a tattoo of a coiled serpent. Her clothes vary according to the occasion: a protective labcoat and gasmask while working in her lab, men's fashion while on official business, or a modest blouse and loose skirt when she doesn't want to stand out in the crowd.
Class: Persona-user
Arcana: Justice
Occupation: Yakuza junior member
Starting Equipment: A satchel full of Level 1 homemade shrapnel grenades filled with deadly venom that inflicts the Poison status effect. The type of damage these ones deal is Pierce. (With starting character discount, this costs 500 FP.)
Personality: Superficially, Hisui presents a coolly unflappable demeanor. At best, slightly amused, and at worst, mildly annoyed. She has very little that is genuinely nice to say, and most often she only speaks up to ridicule the subject of her attention with acerbic wit. In her natural state, she is not at all a pleasant person to be around, even among her closest associates.
This is almost never the result of any intentional malice or hostility. She is simply the type of person to see the worst in other people, and she does not enjoy seeing it. Expressing her thought process without any sugarcoating is the easiest way for her to get those thoughts off her chest, and if her unkind words motivate the subject to remove himself from her presence, then that's all the better. Whether the subject improves himself as a result is usually considered irrelevant.
Hisui is capable of empathizing with other people, but she has no sympathy for them. In other words, she is perfectly capable of understanding how other people feel, but she just doesn't care. She might be psychologically described as a sociopath if not for the fact that her upbringing outside regular society has given her plenty of time to learn how to conceal her true nature. In the rare case that she deems it necessary, she is quite adept at adopting the personality of someone more well-adjusted, and only the exceptionally perceptive are capable of seeing beyond the facade.
This is not to say that she is utterly without her own principles. In fact, Hisui considers herself to be bound by a rigid set of ethics that correspond quite closely to her Yakuza family's code of honor, and she follows them even more closely than her peers. She considers ethics to be as objectively real, logically deducible, and empirically testable as any other law of nature. Petty theft, betrayal of the family, and unchivalrous conduct toward the local community are all utterly off-limits. That said, foreigners are fair game for anything, and even locals are still subject to extortion, bribery, fraud, intimidation, blackmail, vendettas, and so on. Hisui has killed before in the course of her duties, though not so often as to forget how many times it's been.
Beneath her professional exterior, Hisui has an intensely curious personality. Her obsession with ethics is only one part of her desire to understand the principles that drive the universe. She is by any measure a prodigy in the fields of chemistry, biology, and physics, and she proudly uses these talents to the benefit of the Yakuza. More than knowing about something, she is addicted to the feeling of finding out about something, especially finding it out for herself, and explaining a puzzle to her directly is one of the few ways to draw her genuine resentment.
Hisui is quite accustomed to being left alone and much prefers it to the alternatives. She speaks with her associates precisely as much as is necessary to advance the goals of the family and not any further. Her closest associates within the family itself consider her eccentric. Her less close associates consider her dangerous on account of her inconvenient code of conduct and her prodigal skill. As yet, none have opted to stick their necks out far enough to nip her in the bud, but she has not cultivated any peers loyal enough to defend her. Anyone misguided enough to seek a genuine friendship with Hisui has a difficult and potentially dangerous road ahead.
Likes:
-Trustworthy people, because they're predictable.
-Studying, because there's always something interesting to find.
-The clear night sky, because the stars bring to mind mankind's infinite potential.
-Trying new foods, because it's an experiment.
Dislikes:
-Unprincipled, ignorant people (she considers these one and the same), because they're practically subhuman.
-Needing to disguise herself, because fashion is often impractical.
-Stormy weather, because it puts her on edge.
-Popular cinema, because its stories are built to reinforce nonsensical morals.
History: To understand Hisui, it is first necessary to understand her family.
Hisui's mother is the daughter of a Roppongi grocer. Hisui's father is a distant cousin of the leader of one of the largest Yakuza clans in all of Japan. Her early childhood was generally happy and peaceful despite (or perhaps because of) her father's incarceration for gang-related offenses when she was still an infant. She had no brothers or sisters, and from a young age she disliked the company of other children.
Hisui was an extremely curious child, as concerned with "why" as she was with "how." Though her mother had plenty of unconditional love to spare, she was often stumped by the child's questions, and so Hisui turned to her father's family for wisdom. The answers she received began to shape her personality.
As Hisui progressed through primary school, it became clear that her inquisitive nature was backed up by some very rare talent. With her father's full support, the Yakuza drew her further into the fold, pulling her out of public school and away from her mother in order to begin grooming her for a useful role in the organization. Though her mother objected strongly, Hisui herself found the lifestyle change most agreeable.
By the time she became a teenager, Hisui had already far surpassed most of her tutors and turned to independent research involving college textbooks, academic journals, and the Internet. She became more closely involved with local Yakuza operations and more than once was put into situations that escalated to the point of lethal force, in which her conduct was sufficient to earn her a reputation as a professional, coldhearted tool of the Yakuza.
However, her talents were much more suitable for less direct work. Hisui applied her aptitude for physics and chemistry toward the construction of powerful, efficient bombs and grenades used and sold by the Yakuza. Her keen understanding of biology was put to use in synthesizing rare poisons that were unlikely to be recognized and unlikely to be cured. Hisui was given a personal laboratory on the outskirts of a Yakuza compound to perform her work, and she gradually grew beyond the bounds of those who had put her there in the first place.
The time not spent in the lab was spent writing, as Hisui's drive for knowledge was not limited to the material. She began to write volumes of philosophical work, epistemology to define what could be known, metaphysics to describe what could be considered to exist, ethics to prescribe how a good person should behave. She drew heavily from Zhu Xi and Immanuel Kant, but she interpreted them in the context of the criminal underworld of society. Ideas incompatible with what she had experienced for herself had to be thrown aside, and the rest needed to be reworked in order to fill those holes.
It was late at night as she toiled at reconciling the ideas of ancient philosophers with her own ideals of justice that she first experienced the Dark Hour.
The lights suddenly went out, and her lab was lit only by the harsh green light of the corrupted moon. Hisui watched in mingled confusion and fascination as masked creatures of coagulated darkness creeped out from inside test tubes and under stacks of books. Sharp, shadowy claws reached for her, and she instinctively backed toward the window. A presence began to surge forward in her mind, something familiar yet alien, bright and cold...
But Hisui shut it out. She lept through the window, drawing the shadowy things after her, and then threw some of her grenades into the pursuing mass. When those grenades failed to detonate, she kept fleeing, out into the streets, among the coffins lining the sidewalks and within the frozen vehicles, more shadows joining the pursuit from every alleyway. By the end of the Dark Hour, she was exhausted and bleeding from half a dozen places, and only barely made it back home in time for her absence not to be noted.
She quickly reached the conclusion that seeking outside help against this phenomenon would not be productive. As her Yakuza peers were all sealed inside coffins during this period, they would be unable to assist her against the Shadow assaults. Explaining the situation to them would only make her look like a madwoman, and of the few that might believe her, she doubted that any could render any useful assistance. This would have to be something for her to handle on her own.
The following days and nights were spent in a flurry of activity. Hisui began to adjust her schedule with the expectation of spending the Dark Hour fighting off the Shadows, and her free time was filled with a new field of study, occultism. She pored over the works of Aleister Crowley, Abe no Seimei, and anyone else in the East or West who might possibly have had any genuine clues about the supernatural. She modified and simplified the construction of her grenades, eventually realizing that it was the electronic arming mechanisms that were preventing them from functioning. She researched ancient poisons prepared with occult rituals that seemed to affect the Shadows as strongly as they did humans. She searched for any possible advantage she could find.
It was a race between her rush to find the truth about the Dark Hour and her dwindling ability to survive the Dark Hour. Wounds accumulated over the next month, and she became increasingly exhausted by the nightly fight for survival. Though she was able to keep appearances up during the day, it seemed to be only a matter of time until her endurance ran out.
That moment finally came one night when she sought refuge inside Roppongi's Mori tower. Hisui had managed to lose most of the Shadows that had been chasing her up until that point, but now they were spreading out aimlessly through the whole area, and she needed to put some distance between herself and them. She began to climb the emergency stairwell, but in her haste she failed to see the Shadow waiting there. It stabbed down at her from above, impaling her through the belly, and her cry of pain drew a second Shadow from below, seemingly eager to finish her off.
As Hisui slumped against the wall, clutching her middle, time seemed to slow down. Her thoughts raced, questioning the absurdity of the situation. Was she really to die in such an inglorious way? To die with her duty to her family unfulfilled? Die with her understanding of the true nature of the world so frustratingly incomplete?
No. It could not be tolerated.
In that moment, her resolve crystallized and took form. A blindingly bright light. Plates of metal shifting and clanking together heavily. The steady hum of an engine brimming with unimaginable power. A winged figure floated above Hisui's head, angellic of form and steel of flesh. As artificial as it was divine.
Zarathustra! Hisui called out the name held in her heart, and the entity responded. Her limbs were no longer heavy with fatigue, her wounds didn't hurt so badly, and she saw with a new clarity the forms of the Shadows closing in on her. The one below, larger, but slower, with short limbs that would have more difficulty mounting an effective attack. The one above with its deadly spear, far more dangerous, but conversely also much more fragile. Poison the one below, eliminate the one above, then make a fighting retreat up the stairwell until the Shadow below finally succumbs. In her current state, she should just barely be able to manage it.
And so she did. Zarathustra didn't lift another finger to help, not even when Hisui was stabbed a second time, but that was fine, Hisui didn't want any unnecessary aid in the first place. The brilliant form vanished moments after the second Shadow fell, and Hisui limped the rest of the way up the stairwell, elated at her first true victory. The fresh night air of the rooftop observation deck was invigorating, but only for a moment, as Hisui detected a faint whiff of brimstone. Curious, she dragged herself to the railing and looked down.
Down below and far away, Hisui saw a terrifying sight. An enormous crature in the shape of a three-headed dog was pulling itself out of the Earth in the middle of Shibuya. It was so large as to make the two things that Hisui had defeated in the stairwell look like insignificant bugs in comparison. It took a moment to realize that there were living humans down there too. Accompanied by bright apparitions similar in nature Hisui's own, the humans battled the beast. The wind whipping past the tower carried sounds of clashing weapons and bursts of magical energy, and it was plain even from that distance that the humans were supernaturally fast, strong, and tough. Even so, their victory seemed like an impossible dream.
But then it happened. The beast fell back within the depths from which it came. Another tiny figure briefly appeared where the beast had stood, and then it too was gone, leaving the humans to scatter once more into the city and out of view.
Hisui took a moment to catch her breath and think on what she had seen. This was proof that she was not alone in this situation, and that there were outsiders who she could perhaps make common cause with. Now that she had Zarathustra's power at her back, she might be able to survive venturing beyond Minato and meet them face to face. Having only seen them at this distance, there was no way she could recognize them by sight, but if all else failed, they could meet during the frozen hour easily enough.
Her mind buzzing with a few answers and many more questions, Hisui set out with a new hope in her heart.
OOC Name: Serp
Notes: Speaks Japanese most fluently, and some Korean as well learned from foreign-born Yakuza members. Self-taught in English, French, and German well enough to read the classics, but her lack of pronunciation practice means she can hardly communicate in them verbally. She's severely farsighted beyond the limit of surgery to correct, but she carries two spare sets of reading glasses, one of which is actually a pair of sturdy goggles intended for chemical work.
Persona: Zarathustra
Appearance:
Persona Lore: The legendary priest Zarathustra was said to have received a divine revelation dividing the world into the opposing forces of truth and falsehood. He later became associated with sorcery, astronomy, and most recently with mankind's transition to a higher state of understanding.
Skills:
Radar Scan (500)
No points left over after initial weapon purchase.
Strengths and Weaknesses:
Strength: Light
Weakness: Dark
