Name: Hikari Kiyoshi
Age: 17
Gender: Male
Appearance: "You can never defeat another if you know not how to defeat yourself." Kiyoshi is around five foot nine, with a lean and fit build and an appearance that might be described as "unusually pretty", enhanced by an almost elfin grace in his movements.
Personality: Kiyoshi could certainly be considered the strong, silent type. He is stoic and solitary in general, to the point of nigh-antisociability outside of his actual social groups, yet unfailingly polite when he speaks to others, and quite generous on top of this, dispatching sage-like wisdom to those who require guidance, and assistance to those in need even at his own expense. He is typically patient and calm, maintaining his wits and a rational outlook even in bizarre circumstances, and clever enough to strategise, plan, or improvise around most situations. Despite this, he tends to think somewhat rigidly about many things, and it is surprisingly easy to rile him up, flaws in his persona that he seeks to eliminate as soon as he can. Oddly enough, he also maintains a poor understanding of many types of advanced technology, whether through reluctance or simple inability to use most of it properly, though he has forced himself to become proficient with the school's ubiquitous tablets, and very few weapons pose any significant challenge to him due to his IES. As far as the school's battle policy goes, he maintains a fairly strict rule of not initiating fights with those lower in rank than himself, and only rarely challenges somebody of greater or equivalent rank, few as they are nowadays.
Backstory: Kiyoshi entered Shirohama High School a fair while after the new combat system was implemented, and for the duration of his first year didn't really stand out at all. Supposedly, he was born from some family of nobility and ex-samurais or another, hence his weapon, though he never really got close enough to anybody to discuss his past, and indeed rarely made much of an impact even when talking to somebody. At the same time, the size of his sword often deterred others from trying to challenge him - "speak softly", as a famous man once said - and though the occasional fighter came up against him, they were all handled in a low-key fashion, and his Student Rank remained below 10 for quite some time.
This changed when one of the more insecure and masculine members of the Philosophical Questions and Inner Peace Club decided to get sweet on Kiyoshi near the end of his first year. Despite pointing out that he wasn't interested in any relationship at that time regardless of sexuality, the Rank 24 kept pushing, eventually getting angry at his crush's insistent refusal (in stark contrast to the club's tenets, frankly speaking), and challenging him to a duel in a very public location in the near future. The expected outcome was that the philosopher would crush his low-rank foe with ease. Instead, Kiyoshi defeated the man with surprising ease, causing quite the upset in many clubs other than that.
Over the next few weeks before the holidays, members of various clubs began to challenge him to fights multiple times each day, his prior cover of relative anonymity destroyed by his victory - as much as he enjoyed exercising his sword arm, so many fights in such a short time was something he'd actually rather wanted to avoid. Whilst most of his fights were won somewhat simply, each took a bit of a toll on him, the sudden additional stress adding up over and over until it hit a breaking point of sorts; the fights that actually challenged him varied from "a good workout" to "frustrating beyond belief", though the overall toll kept gnawing away at him.
Finally, he decided to take it out on a convenient target: the head of the Philosophy Club, the club that opened him up to such excessive amounts of combat in the first place, challenging the man specifically for control over the club itself if he won. Suffice to say, he defeated his foe, and gained control over the PQIP Club, but in a shockingly brutal fashion that left many questioning the sort of person he really was - was all that calmness he'd been showing off a facade for a monster in human form? Was he really suited for the position of Philosophical Questions Club leader? Why did he take such an aggressive approach to this fight? These questions were forcibly silenced after somebody chose to challenge Kiyoshi shortly after that fight - if the previous fight had been won brutally, this ended in an outright explosion of fury and screaming and violently cutting up the challenger until he stopped moving.
And after that, Kiyoshi felt much better and much worse all at once.
Not many people have challenged him in his second year, for very different reasons to his first, and he in turn has generally refrained from challenging others, retaining his usual calm mindset. Most challengers at this stage have been foolhardy students wishing to take Kiyoshi down as a show of their own strength; all of those he has challenged have been of higher rank than himself, and typically offered some grave insult or another to him or his club beforehand. None have lasted very long. Either way, his rank has escalated somewhat further since then, leaving him and his club with quite substantial status in the school. Of course, now the newcomer Chinatsu Chiba has drawn his interest, not least because she too is a sword bearer of substantial strength... and wouldn't it be a shame for her to fall into the hands of somebody that would waste her potential?
Inherent Engine Skill: Weaponmaster - In Kiyoshi's hands, every sword moves as fluidly as water, every axe and hammer strikes true, and every gun seems to aim itself. To put it bluntly, Kiyoshi is instantly able to wield whatever weapon is placed in his hands, or even utilise mundane objects as weapons, as though he'd trained to use it to the exclusion of all other activities for a decade or longer, in particular acquiring the skills of a grandmaster with most types of sword simply because swordsmanship is already his focus. This even extends to Active Engine Devices to some extent - if the AED is a weapon, and Kiyoshi can manage to disarm the wielder and bring the weapon to bear himself, he will have an instinctive awareness of how to use it as a weapon of its type, albeit lesser than a mundane equivalent unless he practices with it; likewise, he gains no insight into its special features without significant training to first handle these effects properly.
Active Engine Device: Seirei - translates as "Holy Ghost" - Kiyoshi's nodachi is around 180cm long, and is clearly well-forged despite its dark blue colour (see his character image). Its power could be described as "clone superposition", to some extent: the blurring and afterimages it leaves are clones of itself superimposed on top of itself, which must be generated with at least some superposition on top of a pre-existing blade or body (not necessarily the prime, to wit), taking more energy to be created the less superposition there is; cannot be created within any other solid or liquid matter, such as inside an opponent's body or a magical barrier; and only last for a very brief period before vanishing without constant upkeep. However, any given clone of Kiyoshi or Seirei can be transferred into by the respective prime if it has not started to vanish yet, essentially reversing which is the prime body and which is the clone body; this allows Seirei a fair degree of self-maintenance, by creating a clone of itself derived from a sort of "memory" of its past self, as well as gifting Kiyoshi with a certain ability to recover from minor injuries in the midst of a fight.
Whilst this power does allow Kiyoshi to fight alongside multiple copies of himself, the focus and energy needed to maintain and control more than one body makes this relatively ineffective under normal circumstances. He therefore prefers to utilise a number of techniques with this AED:
- Sever - The most basic technique available, Kiyoshi layers many copies of Seirei on to itself, then swings the sword as usual. Whilst the result appears to be one cohesive, extremely sharp slice, it is in fact a large number of individual cuts stacking atop one another, marginally enhanced by Seirei's own extreme length giving any attack some degree of range.
- Phase - By creating a copy or several of itself behind an opponent's blade, Seirei can continue to strike at a foe whilst also occupying their weapon, whether it be blocking or striking. This works effectively against most weapons, given that they are quite thin at some point or another, and at times it can almost appear to have phased through an opposing blade, thus the technique's name; it is less functional against barriers with a larger surface area, namely shields and force fields, as it is not possible to create a clone inside solid matter, a very likely occurrence against such large objects.
- Amplify - Whilst trying to control multiple bodies is extremely difficult, it becomes far less so if all of them are doing the same thing. By layering one or more clones of himself on to his own prime body, Kiyoshi effectively benefits from the physical abilities of every superimposed body at once - multiplying his strength, durability, senses, and speed and agility by the number of clones superimposed on to himself. That said, he still needs to maintain and control each clone, a more arduous feat than maintaining many clones of Seirei proper, so the technique is limited to at most a 4x multiplier; even then, it drains his mana and willpower increasingly more than a 2-3x multiplier, and going beyond this risks draining both far too quickly to be useful.
- Afterimage - In some cases, being incredibly fast matters less than looking like you're still there. The basic steps of this technique involve generating a clone in a new position (still superimposed over Kiyoshi, mind), transferring to the clone so that it is the new prime, and leaving the previous body behind, whether to take a hit or to simply vanish. Kiyoshi has practiced this technique to the point that it can be executed in a fraction of a second, and can also be performed many times in sequence, essentially providing him with a good option to dodge otherwise unavoidable attacks, or to make quick charges toward an out-of-range opponent if need be. However, beyond the innate energy costs, it is understandable that so many rapid changes of perspective are not easily managed by the human mind; thus, attempting to dash more than a meter or two at a time is very likely to start giving Kiyoshi escalating headaches, ramping up to outright unconsciousness if he pushes the technique too hard.
- Hiken: Shinseina Gaeshi - translates as "Secret Sword: Divine Reversal" - 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 its namesake, 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. 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.
This technique's strength evidently comes at a price: though the focus needed to command so many clones is limited to a small timeframe, it does leave Kiyoshi distracted for a moment during and afterwards, something that can be capitalised upon by other fighters if desired; likewise, the energy input for such a brief attack is rather substantial, and if he lacks the mana needed to cover every base, it may leave a small gap within the prison of blades that a quick foe can escape out of before being hit, though the average fighter may be hard-pressed to spot something like this in such a limited timeframe.
Skills: Swordsmanship - Though reasonably well trained in various weapons, Kiyoshi's true calling is that of the sword. Even without his Inherent Engine working for him, he can quite readily hand other fighters their backside, even those who have trained for longer in swordsmanship, from any given stance. He even prefers to "standby" in no particular stance at all, from there being able to adopt whatever stance he desires nearly instantly; as described, the IE Skill proper renders him practically untouchable with sword in hand.
Martial arts - Despite preferring to fight with his weaponry rather than without, this is not to suggest Kiyoshi is anything but skilled with his bare hands and feet; though only specifically a black belt in karate, he combines his general knowledge of various martial arts into a unique style that tends to revolve around disabling and disarming, rather than killing a foe, since if death is a necessity, he already has the tool to inflict it. It helps that Seirei's power remains partially active even when not wielded, boosting his physical capabilities somewhat without providing the corresponding skill boost.
Philosophy, painting - Kiyoshi is rather skilled in the matters of psychology and the painting of fine art - whilst certainly not a grade-A expert in either field, especially compared to his swordsmanship, he knows enough to hold reasonable conversations on the topic with others working in those areas, and shows a keen willingness to learn more about both topics.
Teamaking - Kiyoshi likes tea, and more importantly like tea of varying sorts. It stands to reason that he's therefore good at making tea, even out of wild plants such as nettles.
Rank: 46 - Kiyoshi is a very highly skilled fighter and a strong opponent besides, but the sense that further advancement is more a function of closeness to the Student Council President than actual ability rings strongly within him, and his tendency to avoid challenging others when not necessary has led to minimal rise in rank as of late.
Club: Philosophical Questions and Inner Peace Club - Though he did not create it, Kiyoshi presently leads the Philosophical Questions and Inner Peace Club, or the Philosophy Club for short, dedicated to trying to understand the bigger mysteries of life, the universe, and etcetera through a variety of methods; under Kiyoshi, it also functions as a way of helping students to master their IE Skills and AE Devices through, amongst other things, mastering themselves as well as their equipment.
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