[Sphinx] Suzu Arakawa / 荒川すず {The 101}

General Information


Full Name:
Suzu Arakawa

Codename or Alias:
Kaiju

Anonymity
Public Identity

Gender:
Female

Race:
Mutant

Age:
25

Place Of Birth:
Okuma, Fukushima, Japan

Occupation/Status:
Japan's #2 Ranked Hero

Alignment:
Hero

Factions:
The 101

Canon Or Original?:
OC

Powers/Abilities:

Kaiju Physiology: Suzu's mutation gives her the ability to transform into a creature referred to in popular culture as "kaiju". While she still retains some abilities when in her base state, these attributes become dramatically enhanced when she changes form. She experiences changes throughout her entire body from her nervous system to her musculature, including growing scales, claws, and a tail. These changes grant her the following abilities:

- Superhuman Strength: In her base state, she's as strong as an Olympic athlete. After she transforms, Suzu's muscle density increases, while the composition becomes lighter yet more resilient. She is strong enough to stop a charging Juggernaut in his tracks, or level a skyscraper in seconds. 

- Superhuman Speed: In her base state, Suzu can keep up with a speeding car. After transforming, and while on all fours, she can reach speeds of 220 mph, slightly faster than a bullet train's top operating speed.

- Superhuman Durability: Even in her base state, Suzu is naturally resilient to damage, making most blades useless, and most bullets cause bruises instead of puncture wounds. After transforming, her durability increases to the point where it's hypothesized that she's as durable as a Kryptonian. Furthermore, the scales she grows on her body function as natural armor, granting additional defense. She's also extremely resistant to heat.

- Superhuman Stamina: Thanks to her body being a natural fusion reactor, she simply doesn't tire out, except after long periods of physical exertion, like a prolonged fight or one of her rampages. Suzu still requires sleep, however.

- Enhanced Nervous System: Along with enchanced reflexes and senses, Suzu's nervous system shifts into one much more suited to predation, exhibiting changes in neural pathways, neurotransmitters, and brain chemicals. She experiences a marked increase in aggression and cunning, with a reduced capacity for empathy. In her transformed state, she typically only differentiates people as either threat or prey.

- Biological Fusion Reactors: Suzu's digestive system is a series of chambered fusion reactors, giving her much more energy than the usual biological processes. It is this aspect that powers her signature Atomic Breath. Through a currently unknown process, anything ingested is fused atomically rather than broken down into component parts. The byproducts, helium and neutrons, are expelled through her breath. Because she is a biological fusion reactor, she is extremely resistant to heat, and immune to radiation.

Atomic Breath: Suzu's signature ability. While the most eye-catching feature is the jet of plasma, the first aspect that hits is the shockwave, strong enough to flip cars over and shatter walls. Then, comes the blinding stream of scorching plasma, with a range up to 360 feet (the length of an American football field) and reaching temperatures of 10,000F, the same temperature as the surface of the sun.

Weapons/Items:

None.


Weaknesses:

Limited Control: The longer Suzu stays in her transformed state, the harder it is for her to exert control over her power and base instincts. Eventually, Suzu loses control completely and goes on a raging frenzy, rampaging until she is subdued or tires out. Because of this, she gives herself a time limit of 6 hours.

Extreme Cold: Due to an encounter with the X-Men's Iceman, Suzu found that she is susceptible to extreme cold acting as a coolant to her atomic reactors, dampening her powers.

Healing Limitations: While Suzu's body heals at a normal human rate, because of Suzu's physiology, her injuries are difficult to treat, and medicine that's ingested will not work properly due to her digestive system treating medicine as fuel before it enters her bloodstream. Her durability also prevents needles and scalpels from working.

Lack of Communication Device: While not a combat weakness, the nature of her powers make it difficult for her to hold onto or wear a communication device, such as a cell phone or earpiece, making it difficult to communicate with her in the field, or even check the time.


Appearance

Image:




Physical Appearance:

Suzu is a striking Japanese woman standing at a modest 5'3". Her body in her base state is slender, with dark brown eyes, brown hair, and usually a boyish haircut. In her transformed state, she grows to a towering 7'2". with scales covering her entire body, most prominently her legs, her arms, and her upper torso. She grows a 5' long tail, claws, and her hair grows out into flowing silver black hair. Her eyes take on a reptilian look, and become a dull amber.

Clothing and Armor:

Suzu likes to go around in boyish clothing as her casual wear, preferring jeans, hoodies, and t-shirts usually too large for her frame. After transformation, her clothes don't survive the change. 


Personality

Sexual Orientation:
Pansexual

General Personality:

Suzu's partial upbringing in relative isolation, the nature of her powers, and her position as the #2 hero, have made Suzu a loner. She prefers to be by herself, or in the company of animals. She wasn't always a loner, remembering times in her childhood where she was a normal girl with friends, and deep down longs for that friendship once more. Her loneliness, however, manifests as bitterness, to the point where she may verbally snap at anyone simply trying to get to know her. She can be aggressive, especially in her transformed state, and is upfront and direct, that people have called both terrifying and refreshing. She has little patience for stupidity, and finds it extremely embarrassing when she unwittingly does something she'd snap at someone else for. She's made a few friends in the training facility she was raised in, relationships that carried into the 101, but has difficulty making new friends. Her heritage as a Mutant have also made her extremely sympathetic to mutant causes, though she finds most of the Mutant Liberation Front's methods extreme and Xavier's X-Men mealy-mouthed. Suzu also has an ambitious streak, secretly longing to be the #1 one day to show that even mutants and monsters can be heroes.


Face/Voice: 
Maki Horikita


Character's History

Siblings:

Rin Arakawa

Mother:

Yui Arakawa (deceased)

Father:

Taketo Arakawa

Other Family:

None


History:

Born to loving parents, Suzu lived a perfectly normal ordinary life as a schoolgirl until an electrical grid failure at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan damaged nearly all of the power plant's backup energy sources. The subsequent inability to sufficiently cool reactors after shutdown compromised containment and resulted in the release of radioactive contaminants into the surrounding environment. The town of Okuma was evacuated, but not before Suzu was exposed enough to trigger her dormant X-gene. He powers started manifesting soon after the incident, and Suzu, as a young adolescent, was taken in by the Japanese government and groomed/trained along with other metahuman children under controlled conditions to be a metahuman asset for the defense forces. Many of these children would be later found withing the ranks of the 101, despite their unsavory origins. Suzu's parents were legally blocked off from her, with the government using Suzu's incidents as reasons to contain her. Scientists who worked on the projects would later admit that the conditions the children were raised in were "not ideal".

It was during her teenage years that a travelling Brotherhood of Mutants led to a clash with the X-Men in Tokyo, Japan. Being present at the scene, Suzu was caught between a fight between the Juggernaut and Iceman, having to withstand attacks from both. It was also during her teenage years that her mother discovered, fought, and died from cancer, though Suzu would not know for many years.

It was only after her 20th birthday that she was finally allowed freedom as a fully free citizen and not a ward of the state, and because of her conditioned upbringing, found an aptitude in stopping crime, and later offering assistance during major emergencies, metahuman-related or otherwise. However, while learning to apply her powers in the outside world, she has accidently killed criminals, which haunt her to this day. Her limited interaction with people even within the 101 have also led her to be isolated in her private life. Though she tried to reach out to her estranged father and sister, rekindling those relationships have been difficult.

In public, Suzu enjoys strong popularity, despite her signature move being a reminder of nuclear disasters. Even children love her, with Kaiju merch often found with schoolchildren. However, her ruthless and uncompromising, some would say brutal, handling of villains and some criminals have caused some part of Japanese society to regard her with caution. Furthermore, her Mutant heritage is kept secret, for like many other countries, Japan is a country fraught with complications for mutantkind. Behind closed doors, the Japanese government views her as a major deterrent for extralegal forces like the Justice League, or against national teams such as the Great Ten.


Role Play Sample:

"Wonder Woman Stops Alien From Destroying Metropolis Skyline" ran the headline as Suzu stared up at the massive TV screen, gazing at the live coverage of the battle through dark sunglasses. As she stared, a few laughing kids ran past, all clutching superhero figures, one of them of Kaiju. Her gaze flicked between the massive TV screen overhead and the playing children, before pulling the brim of her baseball cap down low. "Wonder Woman... Could I ever be like... Tch...Whatever..." Suzu clicked her tongue and shook her head, before striding across the large crossing to the studio across the street. She wasn't used to cameras, but her closest 101 handlers thought it might help promote her image if she did a photo series along with an interview.

Naturally, Suzu thought it was a stupid idea, preferring not be a showpony like some in overseas media. However, given the level of collateral destruction in her last battle, and the saber-rattling from nearby nations, the government applied pressure on the 101 to do a hero promotional campaign. As the #2, and with many of her peers already assenting, it was difficult to say no.

"Ms, Arakawa, it's so good to meet you," said a smiling TV personality whose name Suzu struggled to remember. She extended a hand, which Suzu grasped very lightly. No need to hurt the woman's hand. "Yes, it's nice to meet you, too. I'm sorry, but can we get this over with? I'm very busy,"  she lied, wanting to get out of there as soon as possible. Fighting an alien seemed much more preferable than this.

Taken aback, the woman quickly responded. "Of course! Please, take a seat. Would you like some tea, or-" "No." "Okay. Um, first question, what's it like to be a superhero? How do you find the work?"

A beat of silence. "Challenging," answered Suzu simply, thinking of this interview. "But rewarding. I like the work." The woman nodded, leaning in somewhat. "Mhm. Rewarding. How so?"

"Well, it's not always about fighting villains or lifting buildings. It's about the lives we save and those that continue to carry on, such as disaster survivors or children in intensive care units. Providing support, especially to the vulnerable, is one of the things I get to do on a large scale. I find that very rewarding, and I'm grateful to be able to do it."

"Wow, that's a humanitarian answer." Suzu shrugged. "It's just honesty."

"Do you have any role models?"

The question gave Suzu pause. Role models? Suzu didn't remember looking up to anyone in that way during her younger years, but now? Her mind wandered to the news coverage she was watching before the interview, remembering how Wonder Woman looked standing resolute against the rampaging behemoth of an alien, and thinking of the people surely cheering her on wherever and however they watched the battle unfold. Surely, Wonder Woman was a role model to many. Was Suzu a suitable enough role model to others?

"Role models... Perhaps the X-Men?"

"Really? The X-Men? Why them?"

"Well, not everyone with a power is a hero or villain. Many just want to live normal lives without discrimination, but cannot, and due to ignorance or indifference, they receive little help. The X-Men champion the rights of those overlooked like that. I look up to that. I try to be an advocate of the vulnerable and forgotten too."

"Are you a supporter of the Mutant Rights Movement?"

"I am. I think some of what happens to mutants in the U.S. and elsewhere is undeniably awful, especially when other metahumans show that they're just like us."

"Do you follow foreign superhero politics often?"

"It's hard not to in my line of work, especially when the media of some countries, such as the U.S. and China, do so well in exporting material of their superheroes. Foreign superheroes can seem so flashy in how they're presented, but I can't fault the media for presenting them that way. Superheroes are living spectacles, and...and..."

Suzu trailed off, gazing through the window, distracted by the same massive TV screen she was watching news on earlier. Instead of showing international superhero news, the screen was now showing live coverage of Tokyo itself and a malevolent looking being levitating over the familiar Tokyo skyline. The scene looked to be only minutes away for Suzu if she shifted.



Suzu suddenly stood up and strode to the door. "Sorry, I've got to go." "Wha-But-!" Suzu didn't hear the rest of the woman's protests as she quickly left the room, now running down the hall towards the stairs, her bones cracking and snapping as she started already shifting.