Post by lvsphinx on Aug 19, 2024 22:03:30 GMT
General Information
Full Name:
Katsu Yamada
Codename or Alias:
100 Paths (百の道, Hyaku no Michi)
100 Victories (百勝, Hyaku-shō)
100 (百, Hyaku)
Demon of Profane Ki (不敬の鬼, Fukei no Oni)
Anonymity:
Private
Gender:
Male
Race:
Human
Age:
192 years
Place Of Birth:
"Edo, Japan" (modern-day Tokyo, Japan)
Occupation/Status:
Martial Artist, Healer, CEO, Ki Practitioner
Alignment:
Villain
Factions:
None
Canon Or Original?:
OC
Powers/Abilities:
Ki Mastery: Katsu has mastery of the ki from his own body, and can manipulate the ki in other people to produce various effects.
Ki Absorption/Infusion: Katsu can absorb the ki of another living person, able to drain them up to the point of death. Katsu can also infuse someone with ki to heal them or to produce other mystical effects, such as suffusing their body with "battle memories". When Katsu completely absorbs the ki of another living being, he also gains all the life experiences and memories of the victim. The victim immediately enters a brain-dead state. The entire process is quick, only taking a minute to fully absorb someone's ki, though for some reason, metahumans seem to have inborn protection or resistance to this ability. Katsu typically uses this ability to gain the entirety of someone's worldly experience, allowing him to bypass decades of practice to have mastery over a skill after a mere minute.
Wholeness of Body and Mind: Katsu's mastery over ki allows him to manipulate it subconsciously, keeping him alive and youthful despite being almost 200 years old. He is also immune to all worldly diseases of the body and mind, and cannot be poisoned. He can also use excess ki gained from Ki Absorption to accelerate his body's healing, also being able to regenerate lost body parts over time.
Ki Blast: Katsu has achieved mastery over Ki to be able to force ki to have a physical dynamic plasma state, usually using the effect to form explosive fireballs from burning ki. This "soulfire" not only burns flesh, but at the mind and soul of whoever is afflicted by it. It passes through physical armor, but can still be blocked by magical barriers.
Master Martial Artist: Through Ki Absorption and his own decades of battle and warfare, Katsu has literal centuries of combat experience and knowledge at his fingertips. Being a master of over 100 martial styles has given him the ability of Pre-Initiative, making him able to read an opponent's inception of intent and attack before most opponent's move. Katsu currently favors a formless hand-to-hand fighting style that resembles kickboxing while standing, but sambo while grappling.
Weapons Mastery: Katsu has taken advantage of Ki Absorption and decades of time to practice in every manner of martial combat he could think of, including with firearms. His favored weapons are combat knives and American-made firearms, though can still hold his own with a traditional shortbow and katana, or sword and shield.
Expert Marksman: One of Katsu's hobbies is marksmanship, spending more than a century practicing and studying, and capable of trick shots with some of the oldest firearms found in Japan. He even competed in the Olympics under a pseudonym one year, easily taking first place.
Multilingual: Katsu can speak Japanese, Mandarin, and English fluently.
Wealth: As the CEO of the Yamada Corporation, Katsu has access to a vast amount of wealth, which his typically recycles into his company to further their, and by extension, his, research. He is a frequent but private donor to left-leaning political candidates in Japan, and Katsu's influence can be felt throughout Japanese politics and business.
Weapons/Items:
Katsu prefers to fight pure and fair, one on one, hand to hand, no chemical enhancement. As such, he typically carries no weapon or combat item.
Weaknesses:
"Does ki have a weakness?" "..." "Don't be a smartass, if we're serious about recruiting him-" "...?" "This is supposed to be an invitation, what do you mean 'fight him and find out'?" "..." "We believe the abilities are tied to his body in some way, so-" "..." "Understood. Ducard out."
- Terry Ducard and the Director of the Institute, decrypted transmissions.
Appearance
Image:
Physical Appearance: Katsu is a handsome and slender Japanese man, with a graceful body covered by toned muscle from decades of martial practice. He has flowing raven hair, brown eyes, and typically a mustache goatee combo.
Clothing and Armor: Katsu's wealth allows him to dress at the height of men's fashion, typically dressing in sharp suits and ties, with a comfortable coat and stylish walking shoes.
Personality
Sexual Orientation:
Heterosexual
General Personality:
Decades of meditation and practice in a Buddhist temple (although a profane sect), and even more years of ki practice and manipulation after that, have created a very easy-going individual. He has long since consumed enough ki to live for several more centuries, and has mastered every martial style and weapon known to mankind. He is also wealthy, though he deeply remembers slavery, and donates frequently to progressive causes. All of these factors of his success has allowed him to currently live in a state of idleness. Though he still remembers ambition, and still has it, he has not yet found other masters worthy of hunting. Katsu finds empire building a bore, and the superhero phenomenon distracting, though he admits to finding some current cape names as appealing targets for further experience and memories.
In battle, he is both supremely focused and easily detached, having mastered a type of non-self non-attachment found referenced in Zen literature. He is able to make calm ration combat decisions in split seconds, and carries out the action, sometimes before the thought, without delay. He strikes fast and true, with exactly the right technique at exactly the right time, no energy or motion wasted. As a martial master, he is quick, economical, and efficient, practical without having flashy moves.
Face/Voice: Joe Odagiri
Character's History
Family: "I had one. They died a long time ago, having influenced little and remembered by no one."
History:
Katsu's earliest memory is of him walking away from the corpses of his parents, being taken in by roaming slavers as they passed through his village that was ravaged by cholera. It was because of the damages of cholera, and his upbringing around bandits and slavers, that he grew to have anti-foreigner, expulsionist ideals. He was around 20 years old when Commodore Perry's black ships first appeared on Japan's horizon, and Katsu, having been inspired by a wandering ronin to kill for his freedom, decided to commit himself to expulsionist forces forming in Japan.
Life as muscle among slavers taught him how to fight, so he set himself to learn how to read, picking up the skill while working at a Buddhist monastery. It was through reading Buddhist scrolls that he found secret and hidden away texts that told him of forbidden paths. One scroll pointed out a location in Japan where one could study unfamiliar and potentially perilous ways of working with the ki found in every being. After learning enough of how to read and get by in a modern city, Katsu set out to find this place, eventually discovering a hidden temple deep within a mountainside cavern. Here, the monks practiced the Way of Profane Ki, and after an initiation ritual in which he killed someone trying top absorb his ki, he committed himself to learned their ways, deciding that the mystic arts would be the way he would help the expulsionist forces, instead of through swords, firearms, or diplomacy.
However, after a few years, Katsu forgot his vendetta against foreigners, finding that grudge small compared to the new powers that he learned. He secluded himself within the cavernous temple, undergoing a ritual to blind himself for a decade to hone his skills while sightless. He was a gifted student, and time passed strangely in the temple. While he was free to leave at anytime, Katsu was completely immersed in his studies, almost like in a deathless trance. After what he thought were only a few decades, he emerged, simply out of mere curiosity, to find that the year was already 1912, the end of the Meiji Era. He quickly secluded himself again, not yet re-emerging for good until after 1945, when the atomic bombs shook him from his meditative practice and brought him stirring to the surface once more. From Post-WWII Japan onward, Katsu has been focused on quietly and privately building his fortune and portfolio, using various false identities, and companies that would age and merge over time to form the powerful financial presence known in the present day as the Yamada Corporation, a pharmaceutical company that specializes in cutting edge neuroscience and youth therapies.
In the modern day, when Katsu is not in the C-Suite overseeing business operations, he spends his time researching and tracking down prominent martial artists. First, to extend a work offer for a security position in the Yamada Corp, just to lead them to Japan and absorb their ki, gaining their entire life experiences. At first, after emerging after WWII, Katsu would hold a tournament every other year inviting martial artists of world renown to Japan for a fighting tournament, where the attendees would have their ki absorb and consumed one by one. After about 15 years, Katsu was able to hold 7 tournaments scattered across various points in Asia, and lost count of the number of people he's killed through this method after 100, earning him the name "100 Paths" from his former fellow monks from the cave temple. It was after that 15 years that Katsu significantly limited his exposure in public, letting the trail of bodies behind him grow cold. Katsu did not and doe not limit himself to just martial artists in his targets either, having absorbed the experiences and memoirs of assassins and soldiers as well, "learning" about all the various ways of warfare.
Role Play Sample:
The masked assailant slid his blade across his cuff after ending the pleading cries of his quarry, predictably answering the pleas of spare me with a swift death. The swordsman didn't react as another person approached the scene in the street, too fearless to be a civilian, too early to be a police officer. Was it a hero, or...?
"I've actually been looking for you! You've left a trail of bodies behind you while in Japan, no?" Katsu walked slowly but confidently towards the hooded man, in the middle of the street, eyes on the stranger's sword. "If you're not a part of this, don't get close. And don't get in my way." The stranger turned to leave, but immediately spun around and slashed downward as a loud bang echoed behind him. The stranger had deflected a bullet in the nick of time, smoke rising from the barrel of a revolver in Katsu's hand. "So uncivilized, I know, but I need you to stay here." Combat daggers slid out of the sleeves of Katsu's coat, the martial artist rushing forward with both daggers raised. The stranger backstepped and slashed, to which Katsu evaded with a sift and light sidestep, quickly closing the distance and slashing himself, cutting across the stranger's face. "Do you know they call you Ronin in this country? What are you killing for?"
Ronin swung his sword aimed across Katsu's torso, which Katsu blocked with both hands. He kicked Ronin under the ribs, hard, knocking him back, before tossing one dagger up in the air, quick drawing and firing his revolver again, and holstering and catching his dagger in one smooth motion. Ronin grunted as the bullet found soft tissue, burying itself into his side. "Why are you trying to stop me? Is it payment? Revenge?" Ronin asked desperately, starting to realize that he was losing ground. Katsu stopped for a second, and grinned, flipping his dagger in the air again. "Trying to? I am stopping you. You should be fighting crime back home in your own country, American." Katsu suddenly threw one daggers at Ronin before firing the next four bullets in his revolver at his head. Ronin blocked the daggers with one expert swing and dodged most of the bullets aimed at him, but the last one clipped the side of his head, sending him off balance and Ronin toppling to the side, down onto the street. He recovered quickly by rolling, but Katsu was already upon him. Ronin thrust upwards with his sword, but-
Katsu parried and seized Ronin's throat with his free hand, staring straight into his eyes as his hand suddenly erupted with verdant green flames. Ronin screamed, thrashing and stabbing wildly, but Katsu parried the swings effortlessly, searing Ronin's face before kicking him hard away from him. Katsu stepped forward after landing the kick, stabbed downward into Ronin's sword arm, incapacitating him before slamming his fist into Ronin face, then gripping his head by the hair. "You should've run. You should've stayed home. You shouldn't have shown your talents so brazenly. Now..." Katsu's hand caught aflame with ki again, engulfing Ronin's head with emerald fire as he screamed aloud, thrashing in Katsu's grasp once more. Katsu's eyes glowed a matching emerald as he absorbed the ki of the hero, and after a minute, after the screaming ceased, Ronin's body dropped unceremoniously after his head was let go.
"Ahhh...So your name was Clint Barton... Thank you for the meal. You might've lived if you fought me with a bow instead, but don't worry. Your abilities will be put to good use."
Full Name:
Katsu Yamada
Codename or Alias:
100 Paths (百の道, Hyaku no Michi)
100 Victories (百勝, Hyaku-shō)
100 (百, Hyaku)
Demon of Profane Ki (不敬の鬼, Fukei no Oni)
Anonymity:
Private
Gender:
Male
Race:
Human
Age:
192 years
Place Of Birth:
"Edo, Japan" (modern-day Tokyo, Japan)
Occupation/Status:
Martial Artist, Healer, CEO, Ki Practitioner
Alignment:
Villain
Factions:
None
Canon Or Original?:
OC
Powers/Abilities:
Ki Mastery: Katsu has mastery of the ki from his own body, and can manipulate the ki in other people to produce various effects.
Ki Absorption/Infusion: Katsu can absorb the ki of another living person, able to drain them up to the point of death. Katsu can also infuse someone with ki to heal them or to produce other mystical effects, such as suffusing their body with "battle memories". When Katsu completely absorbs the ki of another living being, he also gains all the life experiences and memories of the victim. The victim immediately enters a brain-dead state. The entire process is quick, only taking a minute to fully absorb someone's ki, though for some reason, metahumans seem to have inborn protection or resistance to this ability. Katsu typically uses this ability to gain the entirety of someone's worldly experience, allowing him to bypass decades of practice to have mastery over a skill after a mere minute.
Wholeness of Body and Mind: Katsu's mastery over ki allows him to manipulate it subconsciously, keeping him alive and youthful despite being almost 200 years old. He is also immune to all worldly diseases of the body and mind, and cannot be poisoned. He can also use excess ki gained from Ki Absorption to accelerate his body's healing, also being able to regenerate lost body parts over time.
Ki Blast: Katsu has achieved mastery over Ki to be able to force ki to have a physical dynamic plasma state, usually using the effect to form explosive fireballs from burning ki. This "soulfire" not only burns flesh, but at the mind and soul of whoever is afflicted by it. It passes through physical armor, but can still be blocked by magical barriers.
Master Martial Artist: Through Ki Absorption and his own decades of battle and warfare, Katsu has literal centuries of combat experience and knowledge at his fingertips. Being a master of over 100 martial styles has given him the ability of Pre-Initiative, making him able to read an opponent's inception of intent and attack before most opponent's move. Katsu currently favors a formless hand-to-hand fighting style that resembles kickboxing while standing, but sambo while grappling.
Weapons Mastery: Katsu has taken advantage of Ki Absorption and decades of time to practice in every manner of martial combat he could think of, including with firearms. His favored weapons are combat knives and American-made firearms, though can still hold his own with a traditional shortbow and katana, or sword and shield.
Expert Marksman: One of Katsu's hobbies is marksmanship, spending more than a century practicing and studying, and capable of trick shots with some of the oldest firearms found in Japan. He even competed in the Olympics under a pseudonym one year, easily taking first place.
Multilingual: Katsu can speak Japanese, Mandarin, and English fluently.
Wealth: As the CEO of the Yamada Corporation, Katsu has access to a vast amount of wealth, which his typically recycles into his company to further their, and by extension, his, research. He is a frequent but private donor to left-leaning political candidates in Japan, and Katsu's influence can be felt throughout Japanese politics and business.
Weapons/Items:
Katsu prefers to fight pure and fair, one on one, hand to hand, no chemical enhancement. As such, he typically carries no weapon or combat item.
Weaknesses:
"Does ki have a weakness?" "..." "Don't be a smartass, if we're serious about recruiting him-" "...?" "This is supposed to be an invitation, what do you mean 'fight him and find out'?" "..." "We believe the abilities are tied to his body in some way, so-" "..." "Understood. Ducard out."
- Terry Ducard and the Director of the Institute, decrypted transmissions.
Appearance
Image:
Physical Appearance: Katsu is a handsome and slender Japanese man, with a graceful body covered by toned muscle from decades of martial practice. He has flowing raven hair, brown eyes, and typically a mustache goatee combo.
Clothing and Armor: Katsu's wealth allows him to dress at the height of men's fashion, typically dressing in sharp suits and ties, with a comfortable coat and stylish walking shoes.
Personality
Sexual Orientation:
Heterosexual
General Personality:
Decades of meditation and practice in a Buddhist temple (although a profane sect), and even more years of ki practice and manipulation after that, have created a very easy-going individual. He has long since consumed enough ki to live for several more centuries, and has mastered every martial style and weapon known to mankind. He is also wealthy, though he deeply remembers slavery, and donates frequently to progressive causes. All of these factors of his success has allowed him to currently live in a state of idleness. Though he still remembers ambition, and still has it, he has not yet found other masters worthy of hunting. Katsu finds empire building a bore, and the superhero phenomenon distracting, though he admits to finding some current cape names as appealing targets for further experience and memories.
In battle, he is both supremely focused and easily detached, having mastered a type of non-self non-attachment found referenced in Zen literature. He is able to make calm ration combat decisions in split seconds, and carries out the action, sometimes before the thought, without delay. He strikes fast and true, with exactly the right technique at exactly the right time, no energy or motion wasted. As a martial master, he is quick, economical, and efficient, practical without having flashy moves.
Face/Voice: Joe Odagiri
Character's History
Family: "I had one. They died a long time ago, having influenced little and remembered by no one."
History:
Katsu's earliest memory is of him walking away from the corpses of his parents, being taken in by roaming slavers as they passed through his village that was ravaged by cholera. It was because of the damages of cholera, and his upbringing around bandits and slavers, that he grew to have anti-foreigner, expulsionist ideals. He was around 20 years old when Commodore Perry's black ships first appeared on Japan's horizon, and Katsu, having been inspired by a wandering ronin to kill for his freedom, decided to commit himself to expulsionist forces forming in Japan.
Life as muscle among slavers taught him how to fight, so he set himself to learn how to read, picking up the skill while working at a Buddhist monastery. It was through reading Buddhist scrolls that he found secret and hidden away texts that told him of forbidden paths. One scroll pointed out a location in Japan where one could study unfamiliar and potentially perilous ways of working with the ki found in every being. After learning enough of how to read and get by in a modern city, Katsu set out to find this place, eventually discovering a hidden temple deep within a mountainside cavern. Here, the monks practiced the Way of Profane Ki, and after an initiation ritual in which he killed someone trying top absorb his ki, he committed himself to learned their ways, deciding that the mystic arts would be the way he would help the expulsionist forces, instead of through swords, firearms, or diplomacy.
However, after a few years, Katsu forgot his vendetta against foreigners, finding that grudge small compared to the new powers that he learned. He secluded himself within the cavernous temple, undergoing a ritual to blind himself for a decade to hone his skills while sightless. He was a gifted student, and time passed strangely in the temple. While he was free to leave at anytime, Katsu was completely immersed in his studies, almost like in a deathless trance. After what he thought were only a few decades, he emerged, simply out of mere curiosity, to find that the year was already 1912, the end of the Meiji Era. He quickly secluded himself again, not yet re-emerging for good until after 1945, when the atomic bombs shook him from his meditative practice and brought him stirring to the surface once more. From Post-WWII Japan onward, Katsu has been focused on quietly and privately building his fortune and portfolio, using various false identities, and companies that would age and merge over time to form the powerful financial presence known in the present day as the Yamada Corporation, a pharmaceutical company that specializes in cutting edge neuroscience and youth therapies.
In the modern day, when Katsu is not in the C-Suite overseeing business operations, he spends his time researching and tracking down prominent martial artists. First, to extend a work offer for a security position in the Yamada Corp, just to lead them to Japan and absorb their ki, gaining their entire life experiences. At first, after emerging after WWII, Katsu would hold a tournament every other year inviting martial artists of world renown to Japan for a fighting tournament, where the attendees would have their ki absorb and consumed one by one. After about 15 years, Katsu was able to hold 7 tournaments scattered across various points in Asia, and lost count of the number of people he's killed through this method after 100, earning him the name "100 Paths" from his former fellow monks from the cave temple. It was after that 15 years that Katsu significantly limited his exposure in public, letting the trail of bodies behind him grow cold. Katsu did not and doe not limit himself to just martial artists in his targets either, having absorbed the experiences and memoirs of assassins and soldiers as well, "learning" about all the various ways of warfare.
Role Play Sample:
The masked assailant slid his blade across his cuff after ending the pleading cries of his quarry, predictably answering the pleas of spare me with a swift death. The swordsman didn't react as another person approached the scene in the street, too fearless to be a civilian, too early to be a police officer. Was it a hero, or...?
"I've actually been looking for you! You've left a trail of bodies behind you while in Japan, no?" Katsu walked slowly but confidently towards the hooded man, in the middle of the street, eyes on the stranger's sword. "If you're not a part of this, don't get close. And don't get in my way." The stranger turned to leave, but immediately spun around and slashed downward as a loud bang echoed behind him. The stranger had deflected a bullet in the nick of time, smoke rising from the barrel of a revolver in Katsu's hand. "So uncivilized, I know, but I need you to stay here." Combat daggers slid out of the sleeves of Katsu's coat, the martial artist rushing forward with both daggers raised. The stranger backstepped and slashed, to which Katsu evaded with a sift and light sidestep, quickly closing the distance and slashing himself, cutting across the stranger's face. "Do you know they call you Ronin in this country? What are you killing for?"
Ronin swung his sword aimed across Katsu's torso, which Katsu blocked with both hands. He kicked Ronin under the ribs, hard, knocking him back, before tossing one dagger up in the air, quick drawing and firing his revolver again, and holstering and catching his dagger in one smooth motion. Ronin grunted as the bullet found soft tissue, burying itself into his side. "Why are you trying to stop me? Is it payment? Revenge?" Ronin asked desperately, starting to realize that he was losing ground. Katsu stopped for a second, and grinned, flipping his dagger in the air again. "Trying to? I am stopping you. You should be fighting crime back home in your own country, American." Katsu suddenly threw one daggers at Ronin before firing the next four bullets in his revolver at his head. Ronin blocked the daggers with one expert swing and dodged most of the bullets aimed at him, but the last one clipped the side of his head, sending him off balance and Ronin toppling to the side, down onto the street. He recovered quickly by rolling, but Katsu was already upon him. Ronin thrust upwards with his sword, but-
Katsu parried and seized Ronin's throat with his free hand, staring straight into his eyes as his hand suddenly erupted with verdant green flames. Ronin screamed, thrashing and stabbing wildly, but Katsu parried the swings effortlessly, searing Ronin's face before kicking him hard away from him. Katsu stepped forward after landing the kick, stabbed downward into Ronin's sword arm, incapacitating him before slamming his fist into Ronin face, then gripping his head by the hair. "You should've run. You should've stayed home. You shouldn't have shown your talents so brazenly. Now..." Katsu's hand caught aflame with ki again, engulfing Ronin's head with emerald fire as he screamed aloud, thrashing in Katsu's grasp once more. Katsu's eyes glowed a matching emerald as he absorbed the ki of the hero, and after a minute, after the screaming ceased, Ronin's body dropped unceremoniously after his head was let go.
"Ahhh...So your name was Clint Barton... Thank you for the meal. You might've lived if you fought me with a bow instead, but don't worry. Your abilities will be put to good use."
