BCTheEntity

Fighting King: Brawl in the Streets

@ProPro Alright, the edits are finalised, and Hikari Kiyoshi is officially completed, at least his first draft.

Fighting King: Brawl in the Streets

The Sword Saint

Hikari Kiyoshi

Name: Hikari Kiyoshi
Alias: 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.
Age: 22
Nationality: Japanese, but raised in the United Kingdom
Gender: Male
Appearance: 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.

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.

Personality

Motivations: 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.
Sexuality: Demisexual and demiromantic - Kiyoshi does not experience sexual or romantic attraction to others without first forming deep emotional ties.
Likes:

• Order
• Peace
• Meditation
• Blade practice, in specific suburi and kata
• Tea

Dislikes:

• Failing
• Imperfection
• Crassness
• Poor craftsmanship

General: 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.

Fighting Arts

Skills: Etiquette - 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.
Philosophy and psychology - 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.
Painting - 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.
Violin - 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.
Tea-making - 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.
Fighting Style: Ittō-ryū, translates to English as "one-sword school" - 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.
Weaknesses: 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.
Special Techniques: Phase - 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.
Amplify - 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.
Afterimage Strike - 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.
Super Arts: 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 a certain similarly-named attack, 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.
Exp: 0
Equipment: Seirei (translates to English as "Holy Ghost") - 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.

Other:
Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clothing
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimono
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_painting
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokken
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburitō
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinai
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenjutsu
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ittō-ryū
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasaki_Kojirō
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaido
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaijutsu
Some Type-Moon content.
Theme Song
N/A, for the moment.
Favourite classic arcade game
I'unno, I never played any of those. Uh, maybe Mortal Kombat? Blood and stuff.

Monster Girl Mecha Academy

A.L.M.A. Unit "Roxanne"

Ah. It appeared Maria had, in fact, discovered the final mech. Notably, she did not confirm that she had found the pilot; instead, as Roxanne altered her trajectory and made her way toward the signal of Maria's mech, the papillon speculated that either she was dead, or had escaped the mech and presumably disappeared.

It became immediately clear once she arrived at the scene that the pilot had not survived. Worse still, it was evident that there was no possibility that she had fallen to local monstergirls; the damage inflicted to both pilot and mech was severe, far too much for any mere mortal to be capable of. This was the end result of a mech battle, with an enemy pilot. Aware, sapient in fact. And it seemed they had a new target.

'Callsign: Judge reporting in,' Roxanne intoned quietly, pinging both the local radio and the station proper, Doctor Rei specifically. 'Agents Azai Cislacen and Kaselith Goto confirmed living and active, currently in company of fellow pilots. Agent Maia Reater confirmed deceased; cause unknown, but intelligent and highly technologically advanced in nature; engaging contaminant sterilisation protocols; requesting salvage operation for what remains.' Once the good doctor had confirmed Roxanne's statement, she did what needed to be done to ensure no possibility of infection remained: one arm aimed itself directly at the pilot, and a single burst of plasma was launched, blowing open the cockpit and vaporising utterly the body of the former Maia Reater.

'Mission protocols have been concluded. All agents, converge on the extraction point immediately.' The subtle urgency in Roxanne's voice was obvious, and for good reason. The sooner they came together, the safer they would all be if they were discovered.

Fighting King

I might rip off an anime, an anime parody, a music video with visuals partly based on the first anime, a show that's not an anime but is made in a country close to the country that makes anime, and probably some other anime that has a character with lightning powers because I know there's loads of lightning powers in anime.

A Funny and Clever Name for a Superhero RP

Maceroy Falthon

'Glad to offer it,' he replied to the towelled superhero as Blorb flailed his taco ingredients rather pathetically in his direction. Pff. As if a few globs of meat could hold him off. He'd fought Blorb many times before, and he had learned down to something of a science what his basic strategy was by now. More importantly, Blorb seemingly hadn't learned a thing about how either of his opponents preferred to fight.

'You never did learn when to back down, Blorb,' Arete sighed, his right arm shifting into a bludgeon to whack aside the meaty tendrils as he rushed the meaty man... well, fatty, really. And as The Wet Towel made to distracted him with more towelling, he threw a punch at Blorb's torso. Just a normal punch, nothing fancy - but with the size and strength of his exoskeleton in play, it was sure to make quite an impact, as it always did.

Monster Girl Mecha Academy

A.L.M.A. Unit "Roxanne"

It appeared the search had borne fruit, at least for the first drop team. Felix had detected a signal of some sort, and relayed the knowledge to Roxanne's drop team... or at least to some of them. Eileen, still on her lonesome, made the proactive decision to pursue the signal in her own right, whilst Maria merely remained airborne, asking whether Felix saw anything yet. However, Lilliana had yet to update her status, and Luna seemed distracted. Distracted to the point of turning on a communication system that should not have been turned off to begin with, and asking if anybody had found anything interesting yet. For part of a search team, this was a bad sign.

'Luna, please do not disable your communications during a search operation,' Roxanne stated bluntly. 'If you are caught off-guard whilst they are inactive, we will not be able to help you. Felix, you have done well; please take the rest of your team to rendezvous with the agent. Luna, Maria, Lilliana, there are two options: follow Eileen's signal and assist in retrieving the agent; or continue to search fo-' She halted mid-sentence as Eileen's report came in. Not one, but two survivors. Excellent. The mission was already roughly 55% of the way toward total success. 'Addendum: There are two options: follow Eileen's signal and assist in retrieving the two agents; or continue to search for the remaining agents.' Both would likely assist matters greatly, but as drop team A were already assisting the agents, drop team B would probably be in a good position to continue searching the region, as Roxanne chose to do - though she did announce that she was doubling the range of her steps to two kilometers from now onward, in order to increase the rate at which she performed her search.

A Funny and Clever Name for a Superhero RP

Maceroy Falthon

And there was Blorb, trying to lash out at what looked like somebody wearing a towel, and Maceroy could guess which superhero that was. Ineffectual as Blorb was, Maceroy had to admit his ability wasn't exactly impotent; it was just the ludicrous way he employed it. He could probably drown large quantities of the city in low-quality meat and cheese if he so chose, and yet the fat bastard repeatedly only attacked the high school he worked at, apparently just to screw around with the students, in such a limited fashion that somebody else could routinely defeat him with a towel. Well, he was done with that situation. If he could get Blorb arrested, and contained in a proper facility, that could be the end of things.

Hovering overhead, Maceroy calculated his trajectory, figured out the routes, then began to plummet. Partway down, his exoskeleton manifested, his body rapidly surrounded by a humanoid barrier of whitish-blue light that flared like a comet before he lowered its brightness, just enough to unveil the exoskeleton's form, complete with four wide plane-like wings to cover his real wings. Thematically appropriate, he reckoned, for both offense and intimidation, whether or not he was noticed before he reached the ground.

He might have allowed himself to simply crash into the concrete near Blorb, if he wished. He'd easily be able to survive the impact. But, that was school property he'd be messing up. Instead, at the last second, each of his construct-wings briefly doubled in length and flapped once, as guided to by his true wings, slowing his fall to something of a glide with a burst of air just for good measure, before he finally landed by the duelling duo with a thud. Arm cross for dramatic effect... aaand perfect.

Nodding to the Wet Towel in acknowledgement, Arete sternly uttered 'Blorb, it's over. Come along quietly, and there won't be any trouble,' his voice masked by his own exoskeleton. The overweight man was surely no threat to him whilst his armor was up, and if he did try to fight back, well, he had answers to those questions.

Capes of Denver: A Worm RP

Chad Belton: Rockers HQ

Well... now what? He knew there were repercussions for harming or killing others... who had said that? Visage, right? And what was her exact wording? He didn’t recall. Even so, he figured killing those inside might not be frowned upon under the circumstances. Melting them down, dissolving them to puddles of boiling flesh in his lava. Not like he could do much else, without just charging right into Mire’s gas. But Sheila would never allow it, would she?

Oh. There was Mire. Nifty, yeah, cool stuff... and it looked like Mire had some sort of marker over her face. Could she... see through that? Damn. But at least he had a course of action now: block the entrance.

Slight problem: there was more than one entrance. He could tell, because he could sense the individual chunks of rubble through the wall when he looked in that direction. The fact he didn’t need direct line of sight helped there, even if he needed to look in the direction to sense it all... so, block off an entrance, but there were many possible entrances... the solution was obvious.

Within the entrance hall, those still inside would likely be shocked by the sudden appearance of what amounted to a square ring of lava, two meters wide on all sides, and encasing a pretty substantial area maybe fifteen by twenty five meters large, give or take a meter either way, including the entrance doors. No pressure wave erupted from the ring, but a wave of roiling heat certainly did, hot enough even from a distance that moving near, let alone passing over, should be incredibly difficult, especially from inside. It didn’t quite get everything he wanted to get, but it was enough of a hazard that passing through should be nigh-impossible.

‘Okay, let’s go.’ With that muttered out, Salem followed on after Creep, leaving the building and the bastards that invaded them to whatever fate they all met. If they melted, fine. If they were crushed to paste, fine. If they escaped, that was fine too. Just another opportunity to fucking murder them and rip their muscles off of their bones, or bend their joints back on themselves until they snapped in half one by one by one... gyeuh. No. Not now. Not yet, anyway.

Capes of Denver: A Worm RP

Alessa Heather: PRT HQ

Agh, damn it! He had an answer for every strategy! And yet, he was still regretful, even as he continued working against them - clearly he had some distaste for Patriarch, and clearly he was still fond of the Wards, but that just made it so, so difficult to go all-out against him! Everything in her was screaming that maybe he could be saved, maybe he could be convinced to go back to normal... and that was the insidious part, wasn’t it? How could she know if that was true? And even if he did, he’d already done the damage to the Protectorate; she imagined he’d be lucky if he wasn’t taken to the Birdcage once they- if they put him- God, why did that lump of flesh remind her of the damn warehouse now?!

And everything was still happening at once. Tulpa hurled what was left of Mastar’s mass back to her; Mastar caught it and clambered into the ceiling; Lillian hurled a grenade roughly at the would-be hero, and for some reason a gun across the floor; and as the projection leapt at Protean, Evelyn called on her to hit it.

This was it, then. No freezing up now, girl. “Appropriate force” - or, so to speak, all-out. Just to make the point in her mind, she called out ‘Hit him with everything you’ve got!’ to nobody in particular. Margrave, ultimately, since all other parties had their plans.

One hand aimed at the projection as it charged Protean, an invisible beam of heat striking it and setting off its destructive aura at full-tilt. The other didn’t even move - she waited until she was pretty sure Protean wasn’t about to move before a spark of overwhelming heat and light and radiation left her eyes, and an infinitesimal fraction of time later, a trail of plasma two feet thick marked the path between her and him, at least where he ought to have been when she fired it off. A much-refined form of her attack from the warehouse, ironically, containing about half of her remaining reserves. Protean ought to survive, albeit massively reduced - and assuming he hadn’t suddenly moved. Anything else it went near would probably either melt before impact, or else survive long enough to take the spark direct and be vaporised in the ensuing explosion. And of course, she did her best to ensure she didn’t interfere with anyone else in the process... she hoped she hadn't, anyway.

Capes of Denver: A Worm RP

Raymond Haywood: The Airport

Hrm. Okay, then. He knew the first one was destroyed with just a single round, and the extras were needless... he had plenty left in his rifle...

Target: Unknown devices. Destroy explosive trigger as primary target, destroy other major components as secondary targets, do not detonate. Move to each in sequence they are dropped. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot.

He scoped out just long enough to mutter ‘He’s coming out of his portals in sequence. Get him when he comes out of the next one,’ before scoping back in to shoot down another bomb. And they said guns were a bad thing in the world of parahumans.