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Kiyoshi
Played By: Evangelist

Kiyoshi by Evangelist

TEAM: Solo Hero

SECTOR: Lowtown

KIT CLASS: Empathy


Hall Of Fame!

Survival - 8 wins!

Brutal - 2 fatalaties!

Fight Record
League Wins: 8
League Losses: 3
Out Of League Wins: 0
Out of League Losses: 0
Total Wins: 8
Total Losses: 3
The Bread Beast - Win 0-0
Mr. Fin - Win 0-0
The Messenger - Win 0-0
Lucky Boy - Win 0-0
The Unknown Soldier - Loss 0-0
VIREBATUN - Win 0-0
Nomad's Tear - Win 0-0
The Lord of Nothings - Loss 0-0
Schattenj - Win 0-0
Reinhart - Loss 0-0
Unbekannter Wunsch - Win 9-8

They'd been watching her for several minutes. Three of them, huddled together in a booth at the far end of the club. They didn't look like thugs; more likely, just horny idiots who'd had too much to drink. He could overhear large portions of their conversation, but their plans would have been fully obvious even if they'd been mute. Sad, really, how artless they were. They ignored the brunette thirty-something sitting at the bar cradling her bourbon and forcing back tears, ignored the ambiguously teenage-looking girl with glasses trying to work up the courage to approach an older male seated about twenty feet away, and went straight for the thoroughly uninteresting blonde with the hourglass figure and far too much makeup; at least they were intelligent enough to wait for her to leave. She dropped a few bills on the table and headed for the door, and the idiots did the same, grinning like eight-year-olds on Christmas Day. Kiyoshi wondered if saving her would really be worth it. Oh, obviously, it would be the right thing to do, but was it worth it? This was probably not a woman who would impact the world in any significant way. More likely, she'd get knocked up by some drunken moron and spend the rest of her life earning minimum wage so she could get her kids through college, where they would doubtless do nothing but smoke pot and marvel at how great their obviously doomed lives were going to be. She was petty, not even worthy of consideration. The idiots even less so. Nothing would be gained or lost through any of their lives or deaths, so why should he bother? Only because it was the right thing to do, correct? People who harmed others were morally wrong, so they had to be stopped using any means necessary. The victims all had to be protected, no matter how pathetically uninteresting they were. Oh, but it was always so much easier to save them, so much easier to care, when there was something, anything that intrigued him; it'd been the same way before, only back then his goals had been quite different. It was better not to dwell on that, though. Far too recent, far too tempting. As occasionally satisfying as it was to rescue people, he had previously found it much more enjoyable to place a sword through their chest, to watch as they crumpled to the ground and slowly bled to death, to see every one of their memories pass through their eyes, every little regret they'd ever had. And there was the fear, too. The fear was always nice, as was the confusion, the simple incomprehensibility of their own death at the hands of someone they'd never even met before. Ironically, it was only the Fallen that convinced him that he'd been wrong. The Fallen were a rather sad bunch for the most part: about half of them were a mix of supernatural entities and traumatized kids all grown up, and the other half were simple malcontents trying to take control of a world they didn't like. They talked a lot about how they were visionaries, messiahs even, yet they still showed a marked lack of imagination. He had yet to meet one of their order who wasn't, at heart, a child spitefully trying to break a toy they weren't allowed to play with. Kiyoshi had been a malcontent himself; he had long known that he was more or less totally incapable of feeling any sort of emotion save whenever he was causing another's death, and by that point it was simple compulsion as much as it was a source of release. It was by watching the Fallen, watching people much like him do things with much the same motivations, that he realized finally what a pathetic enterprise it really was. It was merely temporary distraction from the realities of a world that ultimately did not mean anything, and no matter how good the high was, no matter how great he felt as he watched newlyweds die together on their honeymoon or impaled a doctor days away from discovering a cure to some disease, the boredom and the apathy were still there when he woke up the next day. And the next. And the one after that. For people were always defined less by their good moments and more by their bad ones; this occurred to him after a particularly one-sided fight with a sonics user that ended with his sword being snapped in two. That was a bad moment. The good ones had all left him stupidly happy for a short period of time; in contrast, this particular bad one had him without a weapon. And without a weapon, what was he but a defenseless hemophiliac wandering the streets, waiting for someone to recognize him from the newspapers and shoot him down? Oh, he'd bought a new one eventually, of course; that was after he'd decided to become a hero. Well, "hero" wasn't a particularly good term..."agent of balance" was more appropriate, though "hero" might have sounded more noble. He protected innocent people from the bad moments, the ones that would leave them dead or penniless or, in the blonde's case, violated. It wasn't satisfying; it was much like making do with ground chuck after having eaten steak for the majority of one's life. But it was logically and morally the right thing to do. Which made up for it. It did. It wasn't like he was accomplishing anything at all useful by randomly killing people; that sort of thing was wrong, illogical, and moreover, pathetic. Even being tempted by it was a sign of weakness. So it was best to forget the whole thing altogether.

 

Personality: The door closed; the three idiots had left. All those involved were now outside. Unless something intervened, within a few minutes the woman would be naked with a knife held against her throat, crying, afraid to scream. And Kiyoshi, despite the fact that he would eventually have to stop them, didn't care. He knew that he should have. He knew that there should have been a fire of righteousness burning in his eyes, a grim determination to set things right, but there wasn't. He simply didn't give a damn. But he would save her anyways, because it was the right thing to do, and because it made it so that he didn't have to think about...other things. Disturbing things. Not that it was a mere distraction, though; that would be beyond pathetic. He would save her because it was indeed the right thing to do, and because he was a hero now. Heroes saved people, didn't they?

 

Strength:

 

Weak BELOW normal human strength -
can bench press 50 pounds (maybe).
Agility:

 

Supreme This fighter can dodge and move
with superhuman fluidity.
Body:

 

Weak BELOW normal human endurance.
Goes down easy and stays there.
Mind:

 

Supreme Brilliant to the point of supra-genius.
Can easily think many many moves ahead.

Analytical Mind

Kiyoshi took his sword, paid for his drink, and left the club. He was reasonably sure of where they would take her; there was an alley behind the building with nothing but a few trashcans and some stray animals, and even if she screamed (which was doubtful) it would be highly unlikely that anyone would hear her. He could hear sounds of a struggle as he approached; everything seemed to be pretty much what he expected. Stopping just at the side of the alley's entrance, he judged the nearest light source, drew his sword, used the blade as a reflective device, and peered in. All three appeared to be armed: two with knives, one with a gun. The one with the gun was acting as a lookout, so he would have to be dealt with first. Kiyoshi exhaled, did some quick calculations in his head, judged the distances and timing involved, and entered.

Survival

  • Power: Lucky
  • Level:Supreme
The lookout fired immediately, as expected, and his bullet veered far off to the side as Kiyoshi moved in at an angle rather than straight-on. The other two, startled, turned their attention away from the blonde, looking around wildly. The woman screamed. Kiyoshi pressed forward, increased his momentum, leaped upwards and rebounded off the far wall, aiming towards the gunman. Almost immediately, though, he knew he'd been too slow. The gunman had time enough to change the positioning of the barrel and try to get a lead on his target. He fired. The shot barely missed, going slightly high. Kiyoshi thought back upon his past battles. He likely should have been dead long ago; he was a hemophiliac, after all. Even a hit in the arm would probably have killed him, but always he just barely managed to survive. His sword flashed out, cutting the pistol cleanly down the middle. Within the downswing, he inverted his hands' positioning and brought the hilt up and into the man's jaw. One down. Perhaps he'd indeed been lucky all those times, but it was far more comforting to think that he was simply that good.

Combat Mastery

The second man brought up his knife and moved forward, his eyes giving away his hesitation. Kiyoshi waited; the man swung low and fast, and Kiyo quickly and simply adjusted his sword's position. The man didn't even see it, didn't realize what happened until the blade impaled his wrist. He screamed and dropped the knife, and Kiyoshi disengaged. He knew, however, that there was once a time that he could have done it better, faster. A few months ago, he could have deflected submachinegun fire; now he was lucky if he could hold off an idiot with a semiautomatic. Perhaps he'd simply lost the zeal for it. The man tried to punch him with his good arm, and Kiyoshi knocked him in the gut before he could draw it back. Two down.

Blade

It appeared that the third one, the one closest to the blonde, was panicking; he grabbed her by the hair, held the knife to her throat, yelled something incomprehensible. Kiyoshi rushed him while the angle of attack was still available and jammed the sword through his neck. It crunched. The woman screamed a second time as the man fell backwards; it took him a few moments to die. Kiyoshi tried not to look at the body but did anyways, and was instantly reminded of why it was that he'd formerly taken great care selecting those he killed. The corpse was grinning slightly, its empty, soulless eyes staring out into nothingness, its stupidity and meaninglessness preserved for eternity. When he'd killed before, he'd done it to see beauty, and what he was viewing now was ugly beyond description, a perversion of his former art. He began to feel sick.

Denial

Kiyoshi stared, unable to look away from the hideously stupid expression on the man's face. He heard a voice. The woman. She was saying something. "Are you okay?" He didn't respond. She frowned. "You look kind of... uh... hey, don't worry about it, he had it coming." She offered a weak smile, and tried vigorously not to look down at the body. "So, uh, thanks, Mister...?" Still no response. "...Mister." Silence. Both stared: her at him, him at the body. "Um, hey, do you know where I can find a phone? I should call my kids, make sure they're okay." He blinked, then turned and gave her an odd look. She misinterpreted it. "You're right. What would they think if they heard me like this? God, I'm still shaking... I must sound hysterical." She laughed nervously. "It's just, I worry about them, you know? And... if those guys had killed me or something, I don't know what they'd do." She was crying, but trying to hide it. Kiyoshi looked down, saw the sword still in his hand. Still with the man's blood on it. Then he turned towards her, saw her clutching herself and hunched over as the shock coursed through her like a sickness. And he imagined her lying on the ground, her blood leaking onto the concrete, looking up at him in fear and confusion. He imagined her children, too devastated even to shed tears, watching in disbelief as they put her into the ground. The hand on the hilt twitched; she was peering at him now, sensing something in the same way that a deer or a rabbit might. He met her gaze, his mind still swimming with the intoxication of the moment, and she took a step back very, very slowly. Neither one said anything. She ran; he watched her go. The sword dropped from his hand, and he turned to the alley wall and vomited. Then he began to cry.

Reversion

It had been several months. It wasn't stalking, really; he just kept an eye on her, on what she had been doing. A bit of research had yielded an address, and every few nights, after the gloom and sheer boredom of being a hero had started to irritate him, he would go to her home. He would find a safe place to hide himself, and watch her and her family through the windows. Kiyoshi had always been attentive to details, but it was unusually true in this case; he took in every movement, read their lips, became acquainted with who her and her sons (she had two) were, what they were capable of, what their loves and hatreds were. There was always the urge, of course; it never went away, and he knew that it would eventually have to win over whatever semblance of a conscience that he had. He also knew, equally well, that the only time he was ever happy was when he watched her and her children and, with different imagery each time, imagined their deaths; as long as he was still alive, it would only be a matter of years, months, perhaps even weeks until they wouldn't be, and this knowledge both haunted and inspired him. Time passed, the days ticked forward, and he could feel himself slipping. His swordsmanship improved noticeably and regained the terrifying, effortless flow it had once had; the haze of ethics gave way to the emptiness that lay underneath. It wasn't exactly courage that he'd needed to work up during that time, but it worked in much the same way, and one night he broke in. She hadn't returned home yet, and both boys were watching television; he could sense them the moment he entered, like they were wrinkles in the fabric of things, like he could smell them in the air. He tensed in anticipation, and for the first time since before he'd joined the Fallen a grin arched across his face. Neither one tried to run or fight back, and his cuts were very precise considering he'd been out of practice. He turned the TV and the lights off, carefully sat himself on his knees, and watched them die; their blood soaked into his clothing, but he didn't mind. He peered into the eyes that looked back at him with childish incomprehension; these two were unsatisfying on their own, but they would serve their eventual purpose well enough. He waited until they died, taking in every moment as if he was sampling a fine wine, then began the task of arranging the bodies; it took some thought and a bit of trial and error before he found the placement that would look the most nightmarish to their mother. He heard her car in the driveway. The door opened, the lights turned on; she looked older than she had the last time, more worn down by things, though perhaps that was simply the lack of makeup. Inhuman, unnatural emotions flowed across her face when she saw her children, and they froze outright as she noticed him. The recognition. The memory of the alleyway. The realization clicked in her mind, and she screamed. Kiyoshi couldn't help it; he giggled. She brought up her arms, began to advance again; perhaps she was, impossibly, trying to attack him. Kiyoshi had never felt so much happiness at once. He drew his sword, used it, and replaced it just as quickly; she fell, face-first, which was not what he had intended. He turned her over slowly and examined the wound; it had been nearly perfect, almost sure to prolong her life for close to an hour. And so he sat back and watched her; every few minutes she would try to stand again before collapsing back to the floor. Her gaze, far from being one of confusion, alternated between total hatred and absolute, overriding despair. She cried, and Kiyoshi joined her, because this was quite simply the most beautiful, the most perfect thing he had ever seen. She was in too much pain to talk, but her eyes already revealed what she would have said. They showed her past and what would have been her future, they showed her parents and they showed her children. And then she died, an image of gentle pain and sad regret left on her face for all eternity. Kiyoshi stared at her for a long, long time, until finally the dawn arrived and slowly bathed the bodies in a halo of light. He smiled; he had been wrong before, he thought. The world did have meaning after all. He took a moment to brush some of the fresher blood off his leg, adjusted his sword, and then left.