[hider=Kyo Zhang][b]Name:[/b] Kyo Zhang.
[b]Species:[/b] Human.
[b]Gender:[/b] Male.
[b]Age:[/b] 32. 

[b]Homeworld:[/b] Shanxi.

[b]Appearance:[/b] 

[hider=Picture][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/74910aef-2cf1-4d30-aec3-7897af34d2e8.png[/img][/hider]

A very typical human of Asian descent, Kyo stands at 5’8” and has an athletic build that seems to be made specifically for speed and dexterity. His skin is light and almost Caucasian in complexion but its slight hue makes his race unmistakable when combined with the rest of his features. His body appears to be in good shape for a mercenary; he has only a few scars, none major, and Kyo’s smooth skin, trimmed nails and immaculately groomed body hair indicate his vanity and the pride he takes in his appearance. 

Kyo’s face has an almost permanently austere look to it, even when he is amused or delighted, owing to the raptorian arch of his brow, the lines beneath his eyes and the way his lips naturally purse together. His eyes are narrow, sharp and as black as his hair, giving them an inscrutable and keen quality at all times. Speaking of his hair, Kyo wears it in a simple style, longer on top of his head and trimmed shorter on the sides, that he sweeps back out of his face. It has a healthy sheen and lustre to it and appears to be just as well cared for as the rest of his body. There are no visible scars or blemishes on his face, leaving the overall impression of Kyo that of a meticulous and capable professional that does not take unnecessary risks or put himself in harm’s way all that often. 

His movement and speech would support that notion. Kyo is inherently graceful and agile, carrying himself with the deliberation and restraint of a gymnast -- or a killer. He speaks in short, clipped tones and with as few words as possible to get his point across, but that does not mean he is averse to talking. His flexibility and core strength allow him to sit in strange, seemingly uncomfortable positions that are perfectly manageable for him and Kyo likes to seat himself on top of something, be it a table, a closet or a support beam, to gain the high ground in conversation. 

His casual clothes are simple and comfortable, mostly harem pants and plain t-shirts, making them equally suitable for relaxation and exercise. Kyo’s battledress, however, is a stylish ensemble of black leather trimmed with yellow that he wears over the ceramic plating of his combat hardsuit. The inside of the popped collar of his jacket and the embroidered sash he wears diagonally across his chest are decorated in gold thread over a soft yellow background. His helmet is matte black and features a single narrow and horizontal yellow visor that is reminiscent of the helmets worn by the participants of Earth’s Urban Combat Championship League. Unlike the bulky suits of armor worn by Soldiers, Kyo’s gear is lightweight and flexible enough for him to wear it practically every time he leaves his quarters or has to be seen in public. This is by design; the look is part of his trademark. 

[b]Biography:[/b] Born on Shanxi five years before the First Contact War with the turians, Kyo was the only child of a very typical pair of colonists; his father Yaoru and his mother Sakura. Yaoru worked in construction and Sakura as a nurse in one of the colony’s health clinics. They were already in their late thirties when they finally managed to conceive a child and Kyo was hailed as a blessing and a miracle. He was doted upon by his entire family and never wanted for anything. The colony was prosperous and it looked like humanity’s dreams amongst the stars were going to be realized without much trouble. 

Until the turians arrived, of course. Shanxi was besieged and the Zhang family found themselves having to seek refuge in the bomb shelters amidst the turian fleet leveling entire city blocks just to kill single squads of Marines. Kyo’s uncle, Shinto, took up arms against the turian invaders and participated in the guerilla war against the turians on the ground. He was not an Alliance Marine and operated as a rogue element. He was the older brother of Yaoru and carried a legacy with him that could be traced back to the family’s distant origins in Asia on Earth. The discovery of the Prothean technology on Mars and the Mass Relay inside Chaurus suddenly propelled humanity into the stars but it also prompted a wave of retrospection among colonists, learning about and identifying with their Earthly heritage before departing for worlds unknown. Simply put Shinto had become a trained warrior in the ancient Oriental style, his skills with the blade enhanced with modern technology that rendered him invisible and gave his swords tremendous killing power. He stalked the battlefields of Shanxi as a lone wolf, anathema to the disciplined and organized way that the turians waged warfare, striking from the shadows at officers and snipers before slipping away and living to fight another day. He continued this practice even when General Williams surrendered and despite the turians’ best efforts, Shinto was never caught. His distinctive appearance, characterized by an ochre sash around his torso, was passed on to turian command by the few witnesses that Shinto left behind and he became known as the Yellow Death among the occupying force -- a much hated and reviled foe.

In the final days of the turian occupation an orbital strike destroyed the shelter where Kyo’s grandparents sought refuge and they were among the dead. Enraged, Shinto visited Yaoru, Sakura and Kyo and told them that he intended to fight the turians until his death and that he would likely never see them again. Yaoru, unwilling to lose another family member to the aliens, managed to talk him out of it -- but only barely. Shinto stayed with them, buried his gear to hide all incriminating evidence of his activity as the Yellow Death, and quietly fumed. 

Life went back to normal as well as it possibly could once the Council intervened and brokered peace between the humans and the turians. Shinto was never able to let go of his anger, something that Yaoru saw, and as Kyo grew older his father told him not to listen too closely to his uncle. Yaoru thought that Shinto’s ideas and emotions were dangerous and he did not want his son to get mixed up in that. Kyo, however, grew up to see Shinto as a war hero and he was swiftly imprinted with an undying fascination for his uncle’s exploits. Yaoru tried to hide them from Kyo, but he learned the truth from others -- among them his mother, Sakura, who secretly admired Shinto for his actions and his ferocity and resented the turians deeply for the death of Kyo’s grandparents.

Inevitably, as Kyo grew older, he found himself seeking out his uncle despite his father’s warnings and asked to be told about Shinto’s experience in the First Contact War… and, while his heart raced with the audacity of his request, to be taught the same skills. Shinto rebuked him, hot anger flashing in his eyes, saying that the boy had no business asking such questions and should focus on his academic education instead to become a doctor like Yaoru wanted. Kyo insisted, emboldened by the refusal, saying that Shinto had no right to withhold the skills inspired by their heritage -- his heritage, too. Shinto remained silent for a minute before he began to laugh. Kyo was right. 

And so it was to be. Yaoru was kept in the dark with Sakura’s aid while Kyo and Shinto retrieved his hidden blades from their underground stash and found a place to practice in a disused storage hangar. Kyo’s studies were to be equal parts martial and technological in nature, as the modern [i]shinobi[/i] of the 22nd century had to incorporate bleeding edge developments into their arsenal to be successful. But Shinto introduced an unexpected third element into the curriculum: philosophy. His wrath against the turians had almost made him forget the most important parts of his teachings, Shinto told Kyo, and he had been close to losing his way. It was essential that Kyo was never to make the same mistake, or the combat skills that Shinto was to teach him would surely only lead him to death and ruin. Kyo struggled with this part. He failed to see the importance of long and boring hours of meditation and he did not grasp the meaning behind Shinto’s insistence on the strength of balance and tranquility. Was violence and combat not the domain of the incensed and the furious, Kyo thought? Discipline was important, yes, but as a tool to focus such emotions, not to negate them. No, Shinto said, time and time again. A killer was at his most dangerous when he felt nothing at all. 

Yaoru was disappointed that his son did not pursue the opportunity to become a doctor and instead wasted his time studying hydroponics and horticulture. It was an easy enough education for Kyo to be able to dedicate several hours every week to training with Shinto. Many years passed this way. His busy schedule left Kyo little time for friends or romance and he was always considered a bit of an outsider by his peers, and aloof too, as if he knew something that they didn’t and it made him better. Shinto tried to get rid of this slight arrogant streak but he failed and was eventually forced to accept that that was how Kyo was. The boy was simply determined to be devoid of humility. 

Kyo became a man, graduated from his class (with mediocre grades, but Sakura was swayed to forge a diploma with distinction) and when he was 20 years old, Shinto abruptly said that he was ready. Kyo naturally and easily gave himself over to meditation, voluntarily spending an hour each day before bed perched on the roof of his family’s hab, looking out over Shanxi and thinking about nothing at all. His skills with the monomolecular blades were such that he could consistently beat his uncle in a duel. And last but not least, he became capable enough with the omni-tool that his tinkering had resulted in an even stronger Tech Shield than the ability Shinto possessed. But a student does not become a real [i]shinobi[/i] until his skills are put to the test. 

At the end of a serious ritual that involved a lot of incense and meditation, Shinto handed over all of his gear to Kyo and informed him of a “job opening” with a local real estate development corporation that sought to increase its influence over Shanxi. Evidently, Kyo’s uncle was well-connected. Shinto guided Kyo remotely as he entered the world of corporate espionage, breaking into dark offices after hours to hack server farms and virtual private networks to scour them for dirt on the corporation’s competitors. The turf war of Shanxi, hitherto unknown to Kyo, was a fierce competition waged out of the public eye as multiple entities had sought to capitalize on the rebuilding efforts that were necessary after the First Contact War and still continued into the year of 2172. Shinto seemed unduly interested in this corporate kerfuffle, Kyo thought, but he could not deny the sizable paychecks he received for each successful operation. His swords remained sheathed as Shinto reminded him that lethal force was inelegant when it was unnecessary and Kyo avoided the security guards and the local police forces instead. They were innocent bystanders. 

Matters escalated quickly and suddenly when Shinto gave Kyo a small device with instructions to place it within the walls of his client corporation’s head office. Kyo had gained the trust of the director with his exemplary results and was free to come and go as he pleased -- which he did often enough for briefing and debriefing. Shinto explained that he had discovered a pattern in the information Kyo retrieved but refused to explain the details until he had received confirmation from the corporation’s own data bank. Kyo, trusting his uncle, complied. Shinto called him a day later, clearly furious, and relayed a series of discoveries to Kyo -- the corporation’s director had been acting as a proxy for turian interests that sought to undermine the human rebuilding effort on Shanxi, seemingly out of spite. Shinto demanded that Kyo wet his blades for the first time and ordered the director’s death. Simmering resentment against the turians for what they had done to Shanxi drove Kyo to obey without question and he struck against the unsuspecting director the very next night in his own office. Kyo stabbed him through the heart from behind before quickly wiping the security camera footage and vanishing in thin air, only to disappear without a trace. 

The murder made headlines and the corporation’s various competitors were accused, as news of the data breaches they had suffered leaked to the press and a motive for a retaliatory strike seemed evident. Kyo followed the news closely, dismayed to see that the assassination of the director had essentially achieved the alleged goal of the turians and created discord within Shanxi’s communities. The cogs in his head began to turn and Kyo set his sights on Shinto himself, convinced that there was something his uncle wasn’t telling him. The student turned his master’s own skills against him by tracking down his uncle’s hideout when Kyo knew that Shinto was meeting friends at the bar. He broke into his personal computer and discovered a very ugly truth: there had never been any turian interests. The assassination of the director had simply been another contract and Shinto had reaped the rewards in Kyo’s name without ever putting himself in danger. Clearly, Shinto lied about having [i]almost[/i] lost his way and Kyo struggled to keep his fury from overcoming him. Every emotion that raged in his heart told him to kill his uncle in the name of revenge, and paradoxically everything that Shinto had taught him told Kyo to keep his cool and deal with this matter calmly and professionally. Kyo settled for downloading all the evidence to his omni-tool for the time being and after two days filled with meditation and reflection, Kyo knew what he wanted to do. 

Using the information he had recovered from Shinto’s computer, he outed him as the mastermind behind the director’s assassination while keeping himself anonymous by sending carefully curated versions of the files to the colony’s security forces via dead drop courier delivery. He almost threw away the armor and its distinctive yellow sash that Shinto had given him, but Kyo had to admit that, once his anger had subsided, he admired Shinto’s audacity and he decided to keep it as a reminder to respect the threat that others could pose. In a way, he felt that he had earned the right to take up the mantle of the Yellow Death after outwitting his uncle and seeing him sentenced to life in prison. But he was definitely determined never to be controlled like that again. Kyo kissed his family farewell, claiming that he was leaving to pursue a career in horticulture on the colonies of the Attican Traverse, and set off for the stars of the Terminus Systems instead. He knew he had the skills and the guts to carve out a niche for himself as a freelancing thief, assassin and stealth warrior. And so he did. 

Amidst a long career of odd jobs and missions completed comfortably on the fringe of galactic society and out of the public eye, the first most notable event was Kyo’s involvement in the Skyllian Blitz and its aftermath. He was still not an Alliance soldier and certainly had no intentions of signing up, but human colonists paid well for ragtag teams of mercenaries to act as their defense force against rogue pirates and slavers while the Alliance Navy was focused on fighting the bulk of the batarian forces elsewhere. This was Kyo’s first taste of real combat instead of corporate espionage. The initial shock of the brutality and sensory overload (war was [i]loud)[/i] wore off as Kyo learned to put his specific set of skills to use on the battlefield. He was, more so than any other member of his team, uniquely suited to hunting down and taking out important threats like snipers and combat engineers that operated at the fringes of the combat zone or just behind the heat of the firefight itself. He had no qualms with killing batarians, vorcha and other alien species and found a grim satisfaction in knowing that he was now truly following in Shinto’s footsteps as the Yellow Death. It was during this time that Kyo modified his twinned pair of monomolecular swords to carry a potent electrical current to replicate the effects of Disruptor ammunition, allowing him to slice through personal shields while the singularly sharp edge of the blades themselves sank deep within the weak points of his enemy’s armor. It wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows, however; Kyo was wounded during his fourth proper firefight when he unexpectedly found himself bested in melee combat by a batarian with an overcharged omni-blade and Kyo had to be rescued by his allies. Where Shinto had consistently failed, Kyo now finally learned a lesson in humility and his cockiness was taken down a notch. 

After the Blitz was well and truly over and the Alliance Navy had finished its retribution against the batarians, Kyo continued to operate in relative obscurity, avoiding allegiance with any of the major criminal syndicates while working for them and many other clients. If he had a reputation, it was one of true neutrality, discretion and effectiveness. He mostly took jobs that allowed him to work alone, from the shadows, but he found himself as part of a fireteam every so often -- there was no escaping that part of the job. Truthfully, he didn’t mind. Life was good and Kyo picked up the habit of sending a portion of his earned credits back home to his parents on Shanxi, who had adopted an orphan after Kyo left the nest and could definitely use the extra money. Like so many other freelance mercs, his base of operations became Omega but Kyo ranged widely throughout the galaxy, even dipping into Citadel space for clandestine operations on occasion. However, it seemed his luck was not meant to last forever... 

[b]Psychological Profile:[/b] While Kyo is stubborn and hot-blooded by nature, he has learned to overcome these traits through the power of meditation and philosophy, tempering the flare of his personality with an innering ability to keep his cool in stressful situations and his mind clear when it would otherwise be plagued by anger or doubt. Despite the betrayal Kyo suffered at his hands later in life, his uncle Shinto was a defining part of his formative years and the lessons he taught Kyo have become an integral part of who he is today. He seeks comfort and wisdom within the ancient teachings of eastern philosophers from Earth and lives his life according their tenets, just like his uncle taught him. However, Shinto also affected him negatively. Kyo is slow to trust and values his freedom and personal agency so highly that he has never stuck with a single employer, benefactor or romantic interest since leaving Shanxi, nor does he have many friends. He finds solace and satisfaction in his work and continues to hone his skills -- there is not much else he knows how to do.

In interpersonal relations, Kyo is both polite and reserved. He is quick to judge others for displays of excess and lack of restraint but he appreciates people who know what they’re about and can keep their head in the game when it matters. He has a soft spot for asari after a few flings, whereas his deep-seated racism against turians, and more recently batarians, has a habit of slipping through his mask of etiquette and good manners. If and when Kyo does warm up to someone, he is a dependable ally but it remains very difficult to get him to open up about himself. He loves having long, deep and meaningful conversations with the people that he likes about their beliefs, motivations and inner struggles, and he is very good at listening or giving sage advice, but he carefully avoids conversations about his own past with practically everybody -- it takes a lot of trust for him to delve into that. Kyo believes that telling people about his homeworld, his family or the way Shinto manipulated him gives them power over him and that thought is too frightening to entertain.

He shows affection or interest with small, attentive gestures and non-verbal communication since he is not much of a smooth talker. In fact, when he has to speak quickly due to circumstances or is involved in a group conversation, Kyo is quietly flustered and uncomfortable. This forces him to be curt and direct and he becomes oblivous to the subtleties of what other people are saying or the immediate impact of his words. When he has time to think about what to say and he feels relaxed, Kyo often speaks in metaphors and riddles that are open to interpretation and are designed to help his conversational partner with their own problems. He is perceptive and empathic, but not at a moment's notice. 

He believes strongly in the virtues of inner balance and tranquility and will, whenever necessary, retreat within himself to straighten out that which is crooked before re-emerging, steadfast and whole. Kyo is not strongly affected by trauma or feelings of pain and regret for this reason, moving on quickly from losses, though he does sometimes cringe at himself (hours after the fact) when he realizes that he said the wrong thing. It could be argued that he does not properly process the things that happen to him and instead buries them so deep that they effectively disappear, which could be tied to his extreme reluctance to talk about his past. An asari psychologist that Kyo briefly dated suggested that he might be on the autistic spectrum and that he is compensating for his emotionally stunted development with wisdom from the philosophers of ages past. The truth could be somewhere in the middle, but who knows?

[b]Class:[/b] Infiltrator.

[b]Abilities:[/b] 
[indent][list][*] Tactical Cloak
[*] Tech Armor
[*] Incinerate
[*] Electric Slash[/list][/indent]

[b]Equipment:[/b] 
[indent][list][*] Two monomolecular blades, matte black and slightly curved, fitted with power-cells that generate a strong electrical current along the edge and the tip of the blades that replicates the effect of Disruptor ammunition. 
[*] M-6 Carnifex fitted with a pistol scope.
[*] Modified suit of Light Mercenary Armor with a custom helmet worn beneath a leather ensemble, with the emphasis on mobility and shields.[/list][/indent]

[b]Strengths:[/b] 
[indent][list][*] Focus and stability are the name of the game for Kyo and it is borderline impossible to get him to flinch. When he has set his sights on something (or someone), he does not waver until the task is done. 
[*] His skills in the martial and blade-dancing arts make him a dextrous and agile fighter, even in a suit of light armor, and Kyo is a vicious nightmare in melee combat.
[*] Years of corporate espionage, theft and assassinations have made him a skilled hacker of security systems, locks, computers and everything in-between.[/list][/indent]

[b]Weaknesses:[/b]
[indent][list][*] Kyo’s personality does not lend itself well for diplomacy or charm and he should not be relied on to squeeze information out of someone gently or to haggle for a better price -- unless he has hours of time at his disposal.
[*] While perceptive and intelligent, the above weakness comes back to bite him in the ass in another way sometimes, as Kyo can be blindsided by people that [i]are[/i] socially conniving and elegant with words. Kyo has to concentrate and think hard about what he's being told to avoid oblivously missing the point or saying the wrong thing. This is why he prefers to say as little as possible when he isn't in a comfortable situation.
[*] He does not get along with turians, batarians or vorcha. Bad blood. It is beyond his own skill at detachment from earthly woes to let that go and it can affect his decision-making in the field. 
[*] Kyo considers ranged combat to be unsightly, inelegant and ultimately unreliable, and is significantly less useful in a fight if he cannot get in range to use his swords. He’s a decent shot with his Carnifex but that’s about it. The man lives and dies by the sword. Literally.[/list][/indent]

[b]Misc:[/b] 
[indent][list][*] Unlike most other mercenaries, Kyo lives a frugal lifestyle and instead invests his extra credits (after regular expenses and sending money back home) in a diversified stock portfolio. He can be regularly found musing over the extranet stock market during any downtime.[/list][/indent][/hider]