Krayzikk — Roleplayer Guild

[NAME]
安峰 運 (Yasumine Kazu)

[GENDER]
Female

[AGE]
17

[APPEARANCE]

Kazu tends to dress in nice, albeit functional, clothes. No dresses or skirts for her, if she can absolutely help it. No heels either. None of them are helpful at all when running at high speeds. She tends to carry, and wear, a pair of dark sunglasses to protect her eyes from unexpected light or detritus when moving at high speeds.

[PERSONALITY]
Quite friendly, and always willing to help, Kazu is nonetheless a little self-conscious. Her parents’ reputation back home casts, in her eyes, a rather large shadow. Despite taking after her mother with regards to her Quirk she feels inferior. Her body’s limitations grate on her pride, compelling her to work harder and harder to compensate for her perceived failings. In the back of her mind she fears that her body will never actually become strong enough for her to use her speed without limits, forcing her to stay in her parents’ shadow forever. She doesn’t let anyone in on this doubt, and she might not even admit it to herself, but it remains a driving force behind her behavior.

To everyone else she just seems friendly, if a little ambitious. Her naturally accelerated processing of stimuli sometimes leads her to speak or act quickly, without realizing that her peers aren’t necessary keeping up with her. This doesn’t change that she is a generally likable individual, and not one to go poking sleeping bears so to speak. The major exception is for arrogance. Kazu is painfully aware that the metaphorical lottery of Quirks is not a fair one, and she feels strongly that lucking out and receiving a powerful Quirk does not give someone the right to feel superior. Not to fellow Quirks, and certainly not to those unlucky enough to be born without. This isn’t usually an issue, but Kazu will get very angry very quickly if presented with such behavior.

[BACKSTORY]
Kazu’s parents, a speedster and a kineticist respectively, were rather famous local Pro Heroes. Not nationally or anything of the sort, but in her home region they were well-known and beloved. It was never spoken but there was an air of expectation, that the offspring of two reasonably powerful Quirks from capable heroes would lead to a child that could match or surpass them. Her birth was met with lots of celebration from the Yasumine family, and an eagerness as to what Quirk she would develop. When a four year old Kazu ran after her mother on her way to work, and actually kept up with her, her parents were ecstatic. Even if her Dad was disappointed that he lost the bet on which she’d take after more. For the first few weeks everything went fantastically. Her grandparents were already experienced in dealing with a super-fast toddler, so updating the home’s babyproofing to account for it wasn’t difficult. Her birthday was themed after all the greatest speed-based Pro Heroes. It wasn’t until a month or two later that the problems manifested.

Kazu would accelerate unexpectedly, something that was clearly a surprise to her as much as anyone else. She would run into things (though thankfully she wasn’t very good at high speeds, or there would have been much more immediate problems) and show discomfort, if not pain, when moving after using her Quirk. So they took her to the doctor, and learned the bad news. Kazu’s Quirk wasn’t something her body could handle yet. She would eventually grow into it, so to speak, as her muscles grew and toughened alongside her bones but for the moment it was incredibly hazardous to her health. It could go awry in any number of ways, potentially causing permanent damage. 

Her parents were desperate for a solution, but an old family friend was quick to come forward. He had been born with a Hyperintelligence Quirk, one he used to make great strides in biotechnology and create a prominent, profitable company. He suggested, since she would grow into it gradually, that it might be possible to limit her in such a way that she could safely grow into her ability. An intelligent neural implant, something that could regulate the amount of energy she could pump into her speed. In the meantime Kazu was fitted with custom weights to ensure that she couldn’t accelerate to dangerous speeds unexpectedly. The neural net was completed in a matter of weeks, and implanted into Kazu’s central and peripheral nervous system in a twelve hour surgery.

It worked, but for the majority of her early childhood Kazu’s speed was hamstrung. Her mother focused on training her to control it, to ensure that as more speed was permitted to her she could handle the increase in her capability. She learned, as a result, very refined technical control over her Quirk to compensate for her lack of potency.

But the expectations she had been blissfully unaware of as a young child kept becoming more apparent. The disappointment in her family, even if her parents worked exceptionally hard to mask it, and the barely concealed exasperation from the people who had expected so much. It was the worst from her peers. Kids who had no way of understanding the finer points of the situation, and just knew that the great Yasumines had produced a weakling.

Kazu would be the last person to admit it, but the experiences shaped her development. They made her work harder. Hold herself to a higher standard. Instilled her with a great hatred for arrogance. The same man who made her neural network, at her request, fashioned her a custom set of weights for her 10th birthday; weights that greatly increased the resistance when she ran, helping her develop her muscles and bones faster. Anything to accelerate her development. Every year she would request a new set, scaled to her current abilities. The contempt she felt towards her abilities fueled a conviction that she would prove them wrong, that she would be the best Hero she could possibly be.

Here and now, that hasn’t changed. Kazu is still striving to be stronger, faster, and better than she was before. Better than they believed she could be.

[QUIRK]
Redline - verb: drive with a car engine at or above its maximum rated RPM. The daughter of a speedster and a kineticist, Kazu’s Quirk essentially uses the fundamentals of the former to accomplish the latter. Her muscles are constantly in a state of motion, even on a very low level, generating incredible amounts of excess energy that her muscles are uniquely able to store. She channels this additional kinetic energy into her muscles, vastly increasing the force exerted with each movement and the rate at which those movements occur.  Oddly the friction generated by her power at high speeds tends to shift her overall appearance into the red spectrum, with intensity of the shift scaling according to her speed. In short, Kazu can move at extremely high speeds. Or rather, both she and her parents wish that was all there was to be said.

Unlike most speedsters, Kazu’s body could not handle the extreme forces her particular variation on speed exerted. Her Quirk is always on, to some extent, and young Kazu could neither adequately control it nor sustain the stresses it put upon her body. She would try to run normally and accelerate uncontrollably, often into objects, and the very act of acceleration would tear her muscles and stress (if not fracture) her bones. The Yasumines took her to a doctor, someone who specialized in understanding Quirks; they received good news as well as bad news. The good news was that her body’s inability to cope with the effects of her power was temporary. She would, in time, be able to cope with the stresses just like her mother’s body did. But that capacity was developing at a much slower rate than the capacity of her Quirk. Kazu needed time, both to learn how to control it and for her body to be able to cope with the strain.

Unfortunately she wouldn’t get either in her current state. Not when she could accidentally accelerate to unsafe velocities, potentially with great harm to herself. So her parents called in a favor with an old family friend, a hyperintelligent inventor in the field of biotechnology. He designed and implanted a smart neural network wired into Kazu’s nervous system; it constantly assessed the degree of stress that her skeletal and muscular systems could handle, and blocked her from pushing any more energy into her muscles than that. It was a safeguard that the human body performs naturally, preventing the use of 100% of a muscle’s potential, but on a grander and more adaptive scale.

Like the body’s natural safeguards, the neural network set limits. Four, to be precise. Anything under the first one it designated as ‘safe’. The range of use that Kazu is permitted. Beyond that is yellow, designated by another limit. The region wherein the body starts to cause harm, but only mildly; the sort of overexertion that can be forced for brief amounts of time. At this point the network starts to limit how much stress she can put on her body. The last two limits, orange and red, are what the network is designed to prevent her from reaching. It is within those ranges that she will start to cause serious harm to herself, and thus, the network will not let her attain. The lowest limiters can be consciously disabled, as a personal safety measure, but this is done with the potential for significant risk to her health. She hypothesizes that they might be overridden, but given that they’re there for her safety, she hasn’t dared to try

The network was designed to grow with her, and at this point is integrated so tightly into her natural nervous system that removal is impossible. It serves, in this way, to bolster her nervous system to ensure that she can process the stimuli she experiences at high speeds. It constantly adjusts its parameters as she grows stronger and older, and will eventually disengage its limits completely once her body can handle her power at full force.

[SKILLS AND TECHNIQUES]
Formation 91 - With a little fine tuning, Kazu has adapted a technique of her mother’s for her own use. At the right speeds, and the right angle of movement, Kazu exploits the delay in the mind’s perception to seem like she is leaving after-images; like while she’s in motion there are more than one of her. With the current limitations on her speed, she can’t manage this for very long but the momentary confusion is easy to take advantage of.

School of the Undefeated of the East - A name cheekily invented by her Dad, Kazu learned rudimentary hand to hand combat from her father. She wouldn’t win any prizes for form, but a hail of blows coming at superspeed will really put a damper on your day. Though her Quirk does not afford her any enhanced strength, its very nature lends her movements much more force. In short, a punch at superspeed is going to hit much, much harder than you would expect from someone with her strength.

Three Times The Speed Of The Others - As a side effect of both her Quirk and the neural network, Kazu can take in and process stimuli far faster than non-speedsters. Without this capability operation at superspeeds would not be possible, but it carries over into the rest of her life.

Trapped By Earth’s Gravity - Kazu wears custom weights on her body, designed to act as a sort of extreme resistance training. As a result of this Kazu is rather fit, even without her power, and has a second wind of speed so to speak if she drops the weights that hinder her movement.

[LIMITS]
Speed Limit - The neural network limits Kazu’s speed to what she can safely operate at, barring extenuating circumstances. Though she is still fast, incredibly so, her full potential is locked down for her safety.

Breakdown - If Kazu exceeds her limits by too much for too long, she will literally tear her own muscles apart and fracture her bones. The limits are put in place for her own safety, and purposefully trying to push past them is a sure-fire way for Kazu to land herself in the hospital at best, and specifically the ICU at worst.

The Third Law - If Kazu happens to run into something at high speeds, she is going to get hurt. Probably badly. She wasn’t gifted with enhanced durability. A wall, or a pole, or the ground at top speeds is going to do a lot of damage.

Explosive Overclocking - Though casting off her weights will grant her an extra burst of speed, just a little more to help her reach her goal, Kazuu is unused to her balance without them. Dropping her weights tends to make her unsure of her own speed and balance, increasing the likelihood that she will make a mistake. See The Third Law for why that would be very, very bad.

Yosumine Kazu: School's Not Out For Summer

Brave High was exactly five miles from where the Yosumines lived. A substantial walk, for most students. Even at ten miles per hour, a speed only obtained when at least jogging, it would take half an hour to arrive. Far enough away that anyone who needed to reach school in a timely fashion would ride a bike, take a bus, or get a ride with someone who could drive. Yosumine Kazu eschewed these manners of transportation in favor of her own two feet.

After all, it was only a ten minute warm-up run. People really needed to exercise more.

Not, that said, that it didn't burn quite a few calories. If Kazu failed to rise from her slumber to enjoy a breakfast of five slices of toast, three eggs (scrambled), one omelet made from six eggs (bacon, two types of cheese, onion, mushroom, corned beef, and tomato), two bananas, and a glass of orange juice then she had to make a stop somewhere on the route to school. Fortunately, several coffee establishments existed along the route and a couple of their larger baked goods yielded a similar number of calories. She just had to eat more at lunch since they were, as her mother constantly reminded her, empty calories.

But they tasted so good.

Nevertheless, this was in fact the case upon this particular morning; her father's insistence on brushing up on boxing technique, and her mother's on the finer points of speed control the night before, had led both to her sleeping in and running behind schedule when she awoke. Not so much that she would be late for school (though anyone else would be), but enough that she did not have time to prepare for breakfast.

Such was the reason that, when she decelerated in the hall outside of the senior home room (startling a few freshman confused by the individual moving at 30MPH through the hallway) it was with a box of coffee, a box of a dozen donuts in her hand, and a muffin box balanced precariously on top of that. Though now that she was not moving she could stop supporting them with her other hand, and instead focus on smoothing her hair back out while she stepped into the classroom. Normally she sat a row over and two seats down from Namari (a very, very deceptively massive girl that Kazu might, on her good days, call "friend" rather than "acquaintance") but given the abundance of food in her hand, and the presence of very hungry teenagers, she was in need of a sentinel.

This was accomplished by taking the seat next to Namari and setting a donut on her desk, ensuring that the her classmate would be inclined to safeguard Kazu's stash of food from the ravenous horde. With the boxes carefully set on her chosen desk, Kazu took a moment to push her sunglasses up her face and to the top of her head. This served the dual purpose of keeping them handy, and helping keep her admittedly somewhat wind-disrupted hair in place. 

While Namari went off to speak with the new kid, Kazu busied herself with a muffin, a donut, and the filling of her first mug of coffee. She wasn't really alert enough to be friendly, so she elected to simply observe the proceedings. The two weren't very far away, only a desk or two, so she could chime in if she really felt the need.

Which, at the words 'Happy Feet', she did.

"I'd be careful. Those feet can make anyone else unhappy real quick."

@Write@Plank Sinatra

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