[quote=@BCTheEntity]
[hider=The Sword Saint]
[center][h3][b]Hikari Kiyoshi[/b][/h3]
[img]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f6/4d/19/f64d1992b70074593cdef48c38660dcd.jpg[/img][/center]
[b]Name:[/b] Hikari Kiyoshi
[b]Alias:[/b] The Myriad Man (English title), Kensei (Japanese title, translates to English as "Sword Saint"), Pure Light (direct translation of name to English). Note that Hikari is the family name, and Kiyoshi the given name; thus, for an English speaker, he might be addressed as Kiyoshi Hikari, or simply as Kiyoshi.
[b]Age:[/b] 22
[b]Nationality:[/b] Japanese, but raised in the United Kingdom
[b]Gender:[/b] Male
[b]Appearance:[/b] Kiyoshi stands at about 175 cm tall, with a lean and fit build and a slender face, burgundy eyes looking out over the world and shoulder length black hair framing his features, even partially tied back into a ponytail as it is. Altogether, one could describe him as "unusually pretty", enhanced by an almost elfin grace in his movements. This image is rather enhanced by his outfit, a combination of a hakama with flame designs at the base, a kimono with a symbolic design worn over one arm whilst being tied down under his obi and belt on the other side, and a very close-fitting top and arm sleeves combining netting, cloth, leather, and a steel bracer, all in a combination of deep blue, gold, and white.

[hider=History]
Kiyoshi is a second-generation Japanese immigrant, after his mother and father Hikari Hideaki and Ai moved to the UK in the mid-90's in pursuit of freedom from what they saw as Japan's cloyingly restrictive life ethic. Ironic, then, that they proceeded to be about as restrictive with their son as they legally could - Hikari Hideaki's lineage stemmed from that of a former line of samurai, and both of them expected Kiyoshi to properly honour their ancestors whilst also fitting into English high culture. To that end, they had him training from a young age with traditional weapons that were, all things considered, too large for his age and strength, as well as practicing his etiquette in both cultures, and the finer arts such as painting, music, and tea ceremonies. Always, they insisted that he portray himself with nothing less than excellence, offering naught if he failed but sharp reproach and the requirement that he try again until he got it right, something that affects him to this day.

It all came to a head when, near the beginning of his Summer holidays shortly after he'd turned 16, his father took him out to their garden, a large netted area that now inexplicably contained a single swallow. Hideaki explained that the great swordsman Sasaki Kojirō's Tsubame Gaeshi, emulating the curve of a swallow's tail in flight, was quick and precise enough to cut down the same bird mid-flight, and insisted that Kiyoshi practice with the family's nodachi Seirei until he could bring down the bird with that very technique. When Kiyoshi pointed out that it'd be nigh-impossible with a sword like Seirei, the response was a knuckle rap on the forehead and the back door locking him out until dinner.

The next week was spent futilely trying to take the swallow out of the air, but no matter how quickly he swung the blade, Kiyoshi found that the bird would simply change direction to avoid the heavy swipe, even with the very technique Sasaki had pioneered so gracefully. It seemed to him that he would need more than just the one sword to block off all escape routes, and that seemed absurd... unless, he considered, he could somehow project himself to be in more than one place at a time. He knew that supernatural abilities existed, after all, and could be naturally developed. Perhaps if he centred himself, developed a pool of ki, and then projected his ki to effectively put him and his blade in two places at once... or for that matter, three, four, five places? Could he do it? And if he could, how many times could he do it?

Another two weeks passed pondering and exercising this question's limits, to the exclusion of nearly everything else. His parents were pleased with the devotion he'd put into the task he'd been set, but knew not of his method, and grew concerned as he refused to return to the house in pursuit of his goal. Finally, though, Hideaki and Ai were called out to witness Kiyoshi's success: with Seirei drawn, they were shocked to see him apparently multiply in the swallow's direction, surrounding it from all sides before hacking it to bloody pieces mid-air. Though it was a victory for Kiyoshi beyond his wildest dreams, he found himself berated once again for his failure to perform the task "properly", and it struck him that in the end, all he'd managed to do was kill a bird because his parents had requested it of him. A hollow victory, indeed.

After that, his relationship with his family was far chiller than it had been. He dutifully did as asked at home, but pursued his own interests as he pleased beyond its walls - he pursued philosophy and psychology in college and university, he entered clubs specifically to practice his swordfighting skills and enhance his newfound cloning abilities, he even went out to fight and capture criminals in the night. He gained a reputation as a sort of myriad person, a man with a blade who could strike from any angle, who fought to take down evil in secret. A sword saint. Yet as he learned more from his classroom and eventually pursued a life separate from his parents, he felt increasingly that simply curing the symptoms with violence failed to address the source of the problem with true change, a disparate concern that continues to haunt him.

Then, one day, a woman named Eve Roulette contacted him. She discussed who she was and what she had in mind, then offered to bring him to the USA to help right the wrongs of a city in desperate need - and though Kiyoshi felt the approach was still wrong, he couldn't leave the population of New Carona in such dire circumstances. And so to the USA he travelled, the start of a journey that he hoped would have a happy end.
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[center][h3][b]Personality[/b][/h3][/center]
[b]Motivations:[/b] Frankly speaking, the fact that a city would be allowed to fall to street crime so thoroughly upsets Kiyoshi's sense of morality and his desire to make things right. He knows simply wading in and cutting every criminal in the city to ribbons is unlikely to help much - but it'd pave the way for a more permanent solution to be set up, at least.
[b]Sexuality:[/b] Demisexual and demiromantic - Kiyoshi does not experience sexual or romantic attraction to others without first forming deep emotional ties.
[b]Likes:[/b] [list][*]Order
[*]Peace
[*]Meditation
[*]Blade practice, in specific suburi and kata
[*]Tea[/list]
[b]Dislikes:[/b] [list][*]Failing
[*]Imperfection
[*]Crassness
[*]Poor craftsmanship[/list]
[b]General:[/b] Refined, polite, put-together. All things Kiyoshi attempts to be, and as a general rule succeeds at. A combination of his family's general demeanour and his upbringing in upper-class English society has combined to instill Kiyoshi with both a keen sense of how to politely address others, and a rather traditionally "good" morality, both combining into a persona that is innately calm, and ideally calming to be around, albeit rigid in his perception of the world at times. It has, however, also presented him with something of an internal psychological split - he feels that he has to show excellence or even utter perfection in everything he does, and that if he can't achieve this, then he's simply reproachable and worthless. In other words, he's either God or a worm, with no emotional room for the possibility of being normal and fallible no matter how logically he tries to address the issue. Suffice to say, he gets quite upset with himself when he doesn't succeed, though he tries not to show it.

[center][h3][b]Fighting Arts[/b][/h3][/center]
[b]Skills:[/b] [i]Etiquette[/i] - Having been made to uphold himself in all respects by both his family and the people surrounding him during his upbringing, Kiyoshi's capacity for etiquette is second to none - he is polite to a fault in most cases, rarely failing to uphold the basic social rules, though he is likewise suitably apologetic when he slips up. Perhaps overly so, even when politeness is unnecessary.
[i]Philosophy and psychology[/i] - Largely against his parent's wishes, the courses Kiyoshi took in college and university included philosophy and psychology. Consequently, if pushed to do so, he is quite capable of discussing and debating various ideas about the meaning of life and the nature of the human mind, and as a side-benefit has a fairly decent ability to read others based on how they act and his ongoing interactions with them.
[i]Painting[/i] - Kiyoshi is quite capable of putting brush to canvas, coming from the pursuit of both art classes in school and enjoyment of the process at home, in particular calligraphy as a means of ensuring a steady hand for more elaborate art pieces. A lot of attempts have been discarded for want of a few slightly out of place lines.
[i]Violin[/i] - Kiyoshi never liked playing the violin, or even getting involved with music in general. But, his mother insisted he master a musical instrument, and so it was that the violin became a tool to take out his frustrations in rapturous chords before he realised it wasn't helping. He's still quite capable of playing excellently, but he's not practiced for a couple of years, and his tendency to get frustrated with his unsuccessful efforts has meant it's been left to one side for a while.
[i]Tea-making[/i] - Kiyoshi likes tea, and more importantly he likes tea of varying sorts. It stands to reason that he's therefore good at making tea, even out of wild plants such as nettles, both for the simple British purpose of having a cup of Earl Grey, and for the more elaborate tea ceremonies pursued by many traditional Japanese families.
[b]Fighting Style:[/b] [i]Ittō-ryū, translates to English as "one-sword school"[/i] - For the most part, Kiyoshi's fighting style focuses around the use of a single, very large blade. Consequently, his attacks primarily come from kenjutsu schools descended from the original Ittō-ryū fighting style, in particular Ono-ha Ittō-ryū providing him with a fundamental understanding of the basic cutting technique, thus in theory the myriad of other techniques one might use to attack.
This is somewhat altered by the simple fact that, technically, Kiyoshi rarely fights with just "one" sword. Rather, through intense training of body and ki, he has unlocked an ability that might be referred to as "clone superposition": at any time, he can generate an apparently-ethereal copy of himself and anything on his person made of ki, generally requiring that it be superimposed over himself to at least some extent, and can essentially swap which of these bodies is the "real" Kiyoshi at any moment to alter his own position rapidly, seeming to leave behind afterimages of himself and his weapon in the process. Whilst these ki clones superimpose freely over him and his weapon, they are very much able to interact with the world at large, but they are also somewhat short-lived without some psychological effort on his part, and cannot move or be generated away from Kiyoshi himself, though they can be generated using and move through each other, since they are still linked to Kiyoshi proper.
His three most basic supernatural techniques in a fight, then, are to layer multiple copies of his sword over itself as he strikes, producing an attack that stacks many individual cuts into a single cohesive, and to the untrained eye extremely sharp severing slice; to generate a clone in a new position, then immediately swap to that clone to avoid an attack that would have hit the original body as if leaving behind an afterimage; and to perform this clone repositioning repeatedly to perform a rapid "dash" in one direction for a short distance, altering his position in the blink of an eye whilst appearing to move as a blur of afterimages.
[b]Weaknesses:[/b] The very nature of Kiyoshi's fighting style tends toward being more, rather than less lethal - which is fine when his opponent is as supernaturally potent as himself, because they can take the hits, but simply cutting apart random people is a quick way to get arrested or worse, and it's not a proper thing to do besides. As a result, he tends to hold back too much at the start of a fight, so that he can properly gauge how much punishment an opponent can take before ramping up his fighting to match, and as such he is vulnerable to being immediately rushed down and taken by surprise by opponents who care less for such niceties, at least until he catches up and starts fighting seriously.
Likewise, Kiyoshi also has a bad habit of berating himself for not succeeding at something absolutely. This applies even to relatively minor situations, including getting hit in a fight. Consequently, if he finds himself on the back foot, it is entirely possible that it will spiral into a loss as he loses composure and his technique gets sloppier with every subsequent micro-failure.
[b]Special Techniques:[/b] [i]Phase[/i] - Superimposed clones of oneself and one's weapon are very useful, especially when faced with an opponent's guard. If an opponent sets up a block against Kiyoshi's attack, he can use this technique to generate a new instance of several of Seirei behind that guard, the attack continuing to strike them as if it had phased through the block entirely, albeit with the benefit of the original swing continuing to occupy their guard and prevent them from reasonably defending against the phased strike too.
[i]Amplify[/i] - Whilst it can be difficult to accurately control large numbers of clones, it becomes far easier if all are doing the same thing. By layering a clone of himself over his own prime body, Kiyoshi effectively benefits from the physical abilities of both superimposed bodies at once - multiplying his strength, durability, senses, speed and agility by two, at least for a little while. In fact, he can use this technique repeatedly by layering additional clones over himself, increasing the multiplier for his own physical abilities accordingly.
[i]Afterimage Strike[/i] - Sometimes, being incredibly fast matters less than looking like you're still there. Such is the nature of this technique: using the same principle as his basic afterimage technique of rapid clone generation, Kiyoshi "dashes" at an opponent, covering a good meter or two in a very short timeframe, and swinging his sword to inflict a lot of damage, often from an unexpected angle as the dash takes him past the opponent's guard.
[b]Super Arts:[/b] [i]Hiken: Shinseina Gaeshi (translates as "Secret Sword: Divine Reversal")[/i] - Essentially Kiyoshi's ultimate attack, to be used to end a fight quickly, be it early or late in the fight. Almost in emulation of [url=http://typemoon.wikia.com/wiki/Tsubame_Gaeshi]a certain similarly-named attack,[/url] Kiyoshi generates a significant number of clones of himself all at once, each swinging multiple overlaid clones of Seirei toward the target from a different angle, trapping them in a prison of attacks each capable of causing serious damage alone, never mind all at once. This makes Kiyoshi appear to have personally struck from many angles at once, and is by its nature extremely difficult to avoid or block when fully executed, with anything less than an all-round barrier being unlikely to stop the blades, or indeed a multi-directional blast of some sort to hit the real Kiyoshi, who will likely have transferred into a clone that is relatively unlikely to be attacked at that point.
[b]Exp:[/b] 0
[b]Equipment:[/b] [i]Seirei (translates to English as "Holy Ghost")[/i] - Kiyoshi's nodachi is around 180cm long, and is clearly well-forged despite its dark blue colour. Most, however, will not see this, because he hides it within a cleverly-designed wooden sheath that makes it appear to be a suburitō instead - essentially a form of training weapon, and for want of a sharp metal blade not legally a sword, let alone a reasonable weapon for a fight in the hands of most due ot its weight. In Kiyoshi's case, however, he is more than strong enough to swing Seirei around, sheath and all, as a comparatively non-lethal option against foes he would rather not grievously wound. When an enemy who does pose a serious threat arrives, he can then draw Seirei proper, bringing the weapon to bear as an incredibly sharp blade with a much longer range than most might expect, able to wound with the merest flick of the tip.

[b]Other:[/b] 
[i]Sources:[/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clothing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimono
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_painting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokken
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburit%C5%8D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinai
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenjutsu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itt%C5%8D-ry%C5%AB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasaki_Kojir%C5%8D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaido
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaijutsu
Some Type-Moon content.
[i]Theme Song[/i]
N/A, for the moment.
[i]Favourite classic arcade game[/i]
I'unno, I never played any of those. Uh, maybe Mortal Kombat? Blood and stuff.
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Kiyoshi looks good! Well researched and documented. We’ve got our 5th fighter! Only one slot left, folks!