Post by Akiyama Shinobu on Sept 1, 2009 20:23:42 GMT -5
Player name: Deadsky
Contact Info: PM me, I check often enough.
Basic Character Information
Type: Original
Full Name: Akiyama Shinobu
Goes By: Vandal, Mask
Code Name(s)/Alias(es): Vandal
Gender: Male
Age/Birth date: 16, May 25th
Place of Birth: Torii Station, Japan
Hometown: West Point, New York
Height: 5’3”
Weight: 73 lbs.
Hair: Variable
Eyes: Variable
Education: High School Student, Still Enrolled
Occupation: High School Student
Family:
Mother: Makino Midori, Age 39, Deceased
Father: Akiyama Kansuke, Age 41, Drill Sergeant in US Army
Criminal record/citizenship: Dual Citizenship in United States of America and Japan
Affiliation: Xavier Institute Kids
General Appearance:
Genetically, Shinobu is 7/8 Japanese, 1/8 Korean, and received most of his dominant genes from his father, making his Japanese descent more prevalent than normal. Unlike his father, he has a weed-like body, and all the conditioning in the world has only just managed to make Max eke his way into the ideal body mass for his height and age. His arms and legs are a few inches longer than most people’s. Not enough to be easily noticed or overly useful, but enough that normal clothing looks a bit ridiculous on him. With the conditioning, his body has a very athletic appearance, if he ever showed it off.
Up from there would be Shinobu’s more noticeable face. Chinobu's hair changes from day to day in color, and will actually change of the course of a few hours, but is subtle enough that it goes unnoticed. He leaves his hair in swept back spikes or generally stuck-up style. His eyes change colors just like his hair, and it's not at all uncommon for him to have different colors in each eye. He's got two piercings, one on his lower right lip, and one on his right eyebrow.
Clothing wise, Shinobu likes to keep himself in baggy clothes. They promote his flexibility and make him look like he has a good bit more mass to him. He prefers to have layers over just a few articles, and is something of a fan of accessorizing. Max will wear a chaotic blend of colors on most occasions, making him a dizzying blur when he’s in an acrobatic mood. He's a big fan of scarves, so he'll more often than not wear one, even in the summer.
Personality:
From the moment he was born, Shinobu was born into multiple cultures and languages. Because of this, he’s got a very open mind as far as other people go. He’s slow to judge people beyond a quick surface evaluation, which he leaves open to edit as he continues to observe people. He adapts to other customs fairly easily, to the point that his manner will change depending on who he’s with, just to match their customs and mannerisms. His emulation of other people isn’t strong, but he does tend to get caught up in whatever seems to be the dominant mood. If others are loud and jovial, he tends to raise his voice some and laugh with the rest of them. If things take a more serious turn, he’s going to follow suit. It’s in his nature to adapt to his immediate surroundings.
Shinobu has generally pushed himself to be more and more independent of outside support. Being a military brat has moved him around the United States a lot, making him lose friends. Then his father has been pushed out to several tours of duty lasting a year each. On top of that, he lost his mother before his teens. The only person he’s managed to get any lasting connection to is his father, and the connection isn't an amazingly friendly one. There's still the glimmer of a formerly proper father-son connection, but it’s been buried in arguments for years, and Shinobu has learned to rely on himself for most things.
On the subject of his father, he’d kept his mutation a secret from even him for months. When his father found out, it furthered Shinobu's sense of individuality in relation to other people, and reinforced the feeling that his father just didn't really have a clue. His father, being a drill sergeant, has tried to make him adopt the military rank and file personality. Shinobu, feeling himself so different from others, is used to a strict regimen that he'd frequently defy. By his orders, he wakes up and gets ready early in the morning, then he goes back to sleep or does something counter-productive mostly out of the novelty of defying orders. It's satisfying to him to see his father frustrated with his lifestyle and behavior.
When he's alone, he'll occasionally go into a bit of a depression over the lack of friendship in his life. He knows he's not going to retain friends for too long, so he doesn't spend a lot of time with his 'acquaintances' as he'd be more prone to call them. To counter it, he relies on escapism through video games and stories. He also has his hobby of sewing costumes to fall back on. He uses his one track mind to keep himself distracted from his negativity by simply ignoring it.
He's also got slight confidence issues. They first came around when his mother died and he was moved yet again. Losing so many people and being left only with his dad gave him nobody to really confide in since relations with his father were shaky at best. Without people to talk about his issues with, he was left to his own insecurities. He did get over the majority of them as time went by and he learned to rely on himself. He's still got confidence issues over things he's never done before, and over more stressful social situations.
Likes:
-=- Cosplay
-=- Chocolate Milk
-=- Dancing
-=- Gaming
-=- Anime
-=- Soccer
-=- Reading
-=- Techno
-=- Dr. Pepper
Dislikes:
-=- Basketball and Football
-=- The Lack of Men’s Fashion Designers
-=- Wearing Tight Clothing
-=- Sprinkler Systems (He swears they’re programmed to go off as soon as he gets near.)
-=- Formal Occasions
-=- Doctors
Skills:
-=- Sewing and Costuming
-=- Running for Extended Periods of Time
-=- Climbing Random Things
-=- DDR
-=- Can Find Anything on the Internet
-=- US Army Style CQC
-=- Bilingual Japanese/English
Equipment:
-=- Cell Phone
-=- Baggy Clothing
-=- Scarf
-=- PSP
Habits/Quirks:
-=- Checks E-Mail and Text Messages Habitually
-=- Never Throws Things Away
-=- Never Sits in a Chair Properly
Powers:
Accelerated Pigment Production: Shinobu's cells all create pigments in great amounts. They are stored in his arms and can be leaked through the pores in a fine mist. The pigments will bond onto anything and leave a mark of whatever color is leaked. He can easily control which color comes out, through nothing more than unconscious willpower. Not only can he create normal colors, he can create pigments that have different effects, namely glow-in-the-dark, high-gloss, pigment only visible under blacklight, and even full chromatic (colors that change based on what angle the light reflects off them) pigments.
Hyper-Developed Respiratory System: Shinobu has four lungs and individual diaphragms for each lung. With the extra breath intake and output he has, he can breathe in and out at the same time, almost ensuring that he's never short of breath. His stamina and ability to hold his breath are at least five times greater than a normal human. Where normal people produce carbon dioxide in their lungs, Shinobu creates butane. He can breathe in from any part of his body by rapidly increasing the rate at which skin breathes. And he can exhale from, likewise, any point on his body. When exhaling from his arms, the butane is propelled through the same pores that leak the pigment, causing a strong spray of pigmentation. With the combination of butane and pigments, he's able to create an aerosol spraypaint. The spray can reach up to ten feet away with a spot only the width of a quarter. If the spray goes further than that, the speed of the spray slows and it disperses in a wider area, only reaching up to fifteen feet with an uneven mark the diameter of a basketball. His respiratory system filters out nearly all unnecessary gasses in his system. This leaves him immune to gas-based issues such as nicotine smoke, knock-out gas, and the like.
Toxic Physiology: Shinobu's breath and spray both contain butane. Breathing butane causes euphoria, drowsiness, narcosis, asphyxia, cardiac arrhythmia, and even frostbite. Due to other trace elements found in his breath, Shinobu's butane emissions can be much more effective against people. The euphoric sensation lasts much longer, drowsiness are more prevalent in people's minds, and their bodies fall into short-term narcosis after only a few inhalations. Frostbite only occurs under extremely close situations, such as direct mouth-to-mouth contact. The butane can be synthesized into carbon dioxide and water in the presence of heavy amounts of oxygen. This takes some time though. His butane breath is also quite flammable, and can be used to create a flame-thrower effect given a spark. The fire burns at 1900 degrees Celsius and can go as far as fifteen feet before losing it's momentum. If lit in the presence of heavy oxygen levels, it can burn at 2800 degrees Celsius.
Enhanced Agility and Reflexes: Shinobu’s body is above and beyond the normal call of agility for a human. While his training has put him in great physical condition, his mutation replaced the insides of his bones, and a lot of his mass with air passageways, making him very lightweight. Despite the change in body composition, his body maintains an average level of toughness because he's supported by pressurized butane. His nervous system has a more streamlined network, which allows him to react to a situation much faster than normal. As far as agility goes, combined with his physical training, he’s able to jump over people of average height and run almost twenty miles per hour.
Weaknesses:
Pigmentation Over-Production: Shinobu produces way more pigment than his body can handle without a constant excretion. As such, his arms and hands are perpetually miscolored, looking like he'd been attacked by an abstract artist. The arms are never the same colors in the same spots from day to day. If he showed his arms, they'd be a mess of colors that could be most easily related to a stained glass window in appearance, minus the typical religious imagery. The leaking is bad enough that he has to wrap his arms in absorbent material to keep it from dripping all over the place. Cleaning expenses are expensive. His eyes and hair also change colors like his arms do, but usually in more esthetically pleasing ways. It's not uncommon for him to have mismatched eye colors. Convenient Excuse: Fashion. For eyes and hair, contacts and wash-out dyes.
Toxic Breath: Shinobu also has to wear a respirator mask constantly. Small doses of his butane breath aren't bad for people normally, but at the rate he breathes, coupled with potentially unventilated rooms means that it's better safe than sorry unless he's trying to get everyone tripping balls and falling over with narcosis. The respirator looks like he's trying to keep harmful airborne germs and chemicals out, but in reality, he's keeping the butane from getting out into public. The toxic breath can cause drowsiness, asphyxiation, narcosis, and frostbite. One deep inhale can cause a person to lose their equilibrium. Weaker physiologies may very well pass out. When his breath causes frostbite from rapid condensation in the throat or nasal passages, it can prove to be downright fatal if not immediately tended to. And don't forget, it's flammable. Very, very flammable. Convenient Excuse: Poor respiratory and immune system.
Respiratory System: Though he's immune to airborne toxins, Shinobu is vulnerable and cannot breathe in environments without carbon dioxide (or any other carbon-oxygen gas) and hydrogen. A lack of either will leave him gasping for air. Human environments have plentiful amounts of those gasses, so he's safe in most environments, but he's more heavily affected by high altitudes and the lack of air to breathe in those areas. Where people in his shape could stand to go snowboarding with no problems aside from the cold, he would be gasping for air pretty heavily by the time he reached the summit, even on a lift. At one mile elevation, he's perpetually winded and weakened. At two miles elevation, he cannot survive without a concentrated source of air. He cannot breathe butane without choking violently, even when humans can stand to breathe the same amount.
Power Potential:
Shinobu is at the peak of his power's capability. It's estimated that if he undergoes an artificially created secondary mutation, the constant production of pigment in his cells may change drastically into a full body regenerative capability. The other possibility is a full body pigmentation control, allowing him the ability to blend into his surroundings like a Chameleon. Or stand out even more.
History:
Born in Torii Station, a US military base in Okinawa, Japan, Shinobu was born into a stable, perfectly normal military family. His father was a staff sergeant at the time, and his mother was a waitress that just so happened to get into a relationship with the man. Like a good few military relationships, the marriage proposal came rather quickly, even before they learned she’d become pregnant. Still, it was a happy marriage, and despite not being ready for it, the addition to their family was welcome.
Because of the child, Kansuke’s duties in Japan were extended, and Shinobu got to live in Torii Station for the first three years of his life. The first year was for family purposes, then the in the next Kansuke left for duties elsewhere while Midori raised Shinobu. They stayed one more year as Kansuke volunteered to stay in Torii Station so he could have time to get ready for his first move. He wasn't too focused on advancing his career, since he was satisfied with his grunt work.
After that, the family moved to Texas for Kansuke's next assignment as a recruiter. A year of that led into another year of airborne training. While he did that, Midori took care of raising Shinobu, during the time where he was just starting to learn to read and speak. So she raised him bilingual, and while the teaching wasn't exactly easy for the small child, she managed to get her points across and got him ready for a strong education.
His first three years of elementary was spent in Colorado. It was a generally uneventful time for Shinobu, where he was growing used to not seeing his father often, while he spent most of his time studying outside of class at the urging of his mother. She'd been raised in the Japanese school system, and overestimated the difficulty of the US school system. But it left him well prepared every year and he was a quick learner.
California came next for the fourth and fifth grades. This was the first time Shinobu had lost friends to his father's work transfers. For all his studying, he still had quite a few friends, and spent the entire move moping about it. His mother was comforting about it, but his father was a bit too direct and tried to convince him to just get over it because it'd keep happening. It didn't really stick with Shinobu though, and he again tried to get a good collection of friends.
When Shinobu was twelve, his mother developed Pancreatic Cancer. His family was transferred to Camp Zama in order to get Midori into a Tokyo hospital. Unfortunately, she died six months into treatment. Shinobu went through two months where he did nothing outside of the required motions of his life. His father hadn’t been the primary caregiver for his child, so he had been caught unprepared to face the more emotional issues of an twelve-year old boy. And with his mother dead, Shinobu had a lot of emotional issues to sort out.
As Kansuke spent more and more time with his son, they started to show the signs of the rift between them. His strict and militaristic view on life conflicted heavily with Shinobu's naive and emotional viewpoint on life. Kansuke began to focus on his career again once they were moved to Florida in the wake of Midori's death. Meanwhile, the constant moving and the loss of the one person who'd stayed with him his whole life brought Shinobu into a state of inconfidence and depression regarding maintaining relationships.
It was a whole year before he broke out of the shell of inconfidence that kept him socially away from his classmates. But the encouragement of his teachers and a generally friendly disposition from his other classmates helped him start to rebuild his friendships through middle school. He also did quite well in school, scoring well in tests, keeping himself well studied, and picking up advanced reading rather quickly.
After the eighth grade, he was then forced to say goodbye once again, when his family was once again shipped to a new location. This time, it was to West Point’s military academy. His father was recruited himself into becoming a drill sergeant for the academy, which meant he was much more likely to be able to settle down and stop getting transferred. At that time, Shinobu entered a public middle school near West Point. With reassurance that it’d be a long time before there was any chance of another move, Shinobu once again began to build up his friends base. At least his ability to do schoolwork had remained nicely unchanged.
It was a year before they moved once again. This time, it was only to a place a few miles away, just a home that was off-base. When Shinobu learned of the move, he simply rolled his eyes and shrugged in defeat. His father had neglected to tell him it was only a town over, and he wouldn’t even be changing schools. Once the issue was sorted out, his father revealed that they’d be able to stay at least until Shinobu was old enough to move out, and that he’d finished his training to become a full-time drill instructor.
The news came with a nice raise, and a stable life, but it also came with a more militaristic lifestyle for the teen. His father was putting Shinobu through similar training to his recruits, saying that it’d be good for him. From then on, the child was subjected to long runs, combat practice, and a 5 a.m. wake up time. Unfortunately, it was good for him physically, but it seriously cut into his social time, and even into his homework a little. The involuntary training and the unstable relationship collided, and Shinobu was far from enthused with his father. They began to argue over what was right and wrong, and over what Shinobu was allowed to do.
When Shinobu turned thirteen, puberty hit him almost immediately. Along with it came his mutation, or at least the first version of it. His respiratory weakened severely and he developed a rash over his arms. Having a dislike of doctors, Shinobu refused to be treated, insisting that he'd get over it. It lasted several weeks through summer vacation, finally clearing up for the short time. The sickness was really his body changing dramatically, to make room for his mutation since he had to grow an extra pair of lungs and replace much of his body with air passageways.
A month after his mutation began, it finally finished and rose to the surface. Shinobu was showering when he noticed the water was running blue… and red… and every color of the rainbow all at once. His arms covered in paint, he freaked out and wrapped his arms in towels. His father was at work, so he contemplated calling 911. The only issue with that was that his arms were covered by towels, and he didn’t want to get paint everywhere. A moment to calm down gave him the clarity of mind to forget the call, and simply deal with the issue himself of else he’d call far more attention to himself that he could deal with. He wanted to be a human, not a doctor’s mystery case.
The very next day, Charles Xavier came to his house, while Shinobu’s father was again away at work. Showing up to the door in a gas mask and shoulder high gloves didn’t even phase the wheelchair bound mutant. It resulted in a long chat between the two (thankfully without the need to repeat himself past the muffled sound of talking through a gas mask) but it went nowhere. Xavier left his contact information with the young mutant, simply asking him to give the idea some serious thought. Shinobu was just scared of moving, and of becoming a doctor’s case file.
Schooling continued with little incident until his father found out. While the man was sharp, he wasn't around often, so Shinobu had found many ways to hide his powers. But the visual cues from his hair and eyes finally gave him away when his father finally tried to figure out where he got the money for so many contacts and dyes. While going to speak with Shinobu about it, he walked in on the mutant changing his arm wrappings. Generally frantic arguments and yelling ensued from there. The day ended with Shinobu being declared a freak, and Kansuke being declared a soulless abomination.
Arguments and disarray kept them separated for a long time, until Shinobu finally got fed up with the whole situation and decided that calling Xavier was a good idea. It'd be an environment where he'd be more likely to be understood, and where his interactions with his father could be kept to a very minimum.
Other:
Sample RP:
“Where is it…?” Shinobu rifled through the chest at the foot of his bed. It was a simple olive green box about three feet wide and one and a half feet square on the sides. It had a pair of boots, a clean set of military fatigues, folded neatly in a perfect square, a combat knife, compass, various other odds and ends, and a stack of papers. He pulled the papers out and flayed them out on the floor, looking for something smaller than the sheets of paper. Digging through them on his hands and knees, he found a small card, small enough that he could hide it in his hand easily. Flipping it over, it had fairly plain text.
The Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters
He'd been arguing with his father again. Neither of them would give up. Kansuke was a bull-headed soldier who never gave up the fight until it was won or lost, and he'd managed to teach his son the very same principle. They came from two separate worlds though, and not just in the after-school special sense. Kansuke was a soldier who's life revolved around orders and duty. Shinobu's life revolved around himself. Perhaps a bit selfish, but he didn't see anyone else trying to look out for him. His father certainly hadn't. And the whole mutant deal tended to put a nice wall between them.
The paraplegic had said there were others like him. Not like him, but each with their own unique mutation. Xavier himself had been one. They even communicated through telepathy, just so he didn’t have to deal with the respirator muffling Shinobu’s speech. It’d been weird, but the guy turned out to be really nice, and oddly trustworthy. If anything, it’d be worth investigating further. If anything, he’d be able to tell his father he was going to a private school for gifted children.
The nervous teen pulled the cell phone from his right-front pants pocket and flipped it open. Dialing was quick, he’d gotten all to used to the button layout by now. As the ringing started, he leaned back against the foot of his bed and sighed. Two rings, then the phone on the other end was picked up, with an obligatory greeting of course.
"Xavier's Institute right? Yeah... Is Xavier in? Damnit..." He scoffed a little bit. He'd been nervous enough about the call that the answering machine had duped him into thinking that he was talking to someone real. Go figure. So he listened through the whole spiel and waited for his chance to leave the message.
"This is Akiyama Shinobu from West Point. I'd like to be put in contact with Xavier as soon as possible about being a part of the institute. He should still have my file on record. My number is XXX-XXX-XXXX. I'll be available for a call at any time when it's convenient for you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Hopefully hear from you soon."
Activity: I try to at least check in once per day, but it’s usually far, far more than that.
Contact Info: PM me, I check often enough.
Basic Character Information
Type: Original
Full Name: Akiyama Shinobu
Goes By: Vandal, Mask
Code Name(s)/Alias(es): Vandal
Gender: Male
Age/Birth date: 16, May 25th
Place of Birth: Torii Station, Japan
Hometown: West Point, New York
Height: 5’3”
Weight: 73 lbs.
Hair: Variable
Eyes: Variable
Education: High School Student, Still Enrolled
Occupation: High School Student
Family:
Mother: Makino Midori, Age 39, Deceased
Father: Akiyama Kansuke, Age 41, Drill Sergeant in US Army
Criminal record/citizenship: Dual Citizenship in United States of America and Japan
Affiliation: Xavier Institute Kids
General Appearance:
Genetically, Shinobu is 7/8 Japanese, 1/8 Korean, and received most of his dominant genes from his father, making his Japanese descent more prevalent than normal. Unlike his father, he has a weed-like body, and all the conditioning in the world has only just managed to make Max eke his way into the ideal body mass for his height and age. His arms and legs are a few inches longer than most people’s. Not enough to be easily noticed or overly useful, but enough that normal clothing looks a bit ridiculous on him. With the conditioning, his body has a very athletic appearance, if he ever showed it off.
Up from there would be Shinobu’s more noticeable face. Chinobu's hair changes from day to day in color, and will actually change of the course of a few hours, but is subtle enough that it goes unnoticed. He leaves his hair in swept back spikes or generally stuck-up style. His eyes change colors just like his hair, and it's not at all uncommon for him to have different colors in each eye. He's got two piercings, one on his lower right lip, and one on his right eyebrow.
Clothing wise, Shinobu likes to keep himself in baggy clothes. They promote his flexibility and make him look like he has a good bit more mass to him. He prefers to have layers over just a few articles, and is something of a fan of accessorizing. Max will wear a chaotic blend of colors on most occasions, making him a dizzying blur when he’s in an acrobatic mood. He's a big fan of scarves, so he'll more often than not wear one, even in the summer.
Personality:
From the moment he was born, Shinobu was born into multiple cultures and languages. Because of this, he’s got a very open mind as far as other people go. He’s slow to judge people beyond a quick surface evaluation, which he leaves open to edit as he continues to observe people. He adapts to other customs fairly easily, to the point that his manner will change depending on who he’s with, just to match their customs and mannerisms. His emulation of other people isn’t strong, but he does tend to get caught up in whatever seems to be the dominant mood. If others are loud and jovial, he tends to raise his voice some and laugh with the rest of them. If things take a more serious turn, he’s going to follow suit. It’s in his nature to adapt to his immediate surroundings.
Shinobu has generally pushed himself to be more and more independent of outside support. Being a military brat has moved him around the United States a lot, making him lose friends. Then his father has been pushed out to several tours of duty lasting a year each. On top of that, he lost his mother before his teens. The only person he’s managed to get any lasting connection to is his father, and the connection isn't an amazingly friendly one. There's still the glimmer of a formerly proper father-son connection, but it’s been buried in arguments for years, and Shinobu has learned to rely on himself for most things.
On the subject of his father, he’d kept his mutation a secret from even him for months. When his father found out, it furthered Shinobu's sense of individuality in relation to other people, and reinforced the feeling that his father just didn't really have a clue. His father, being a drill sergeant, has tried to make him adopt the military rank and file personality. Shinobu, feeling himself so different from others, is used to a strict regimen that he'd frequently defy. By his orders, he wakes up and gets ready early in the morning, then he goes back to sleep or does something counter-productive mostly out of the novelty of defying orders. It's satisfying to him to see his father frustrated with his lifestyle and behavior.
When he's alone, he'll occasionally go into a bit of a depression over the lack of friendship in his life. He knows he's not going to retain friends for too long, so he doesn't spend a lot of time with his 'acquaintances' as he'd be more prone to call them. To counter it, he relies on escapism through video games and stories. He also has his hobby of sewing costumes to fall back on. He uses his one track mind to keep himself distracted from his negativity by simply ignoring it.
He's also got slight confidence issues. They first came around when his mother died and he was moved yet again. Losing so many people and being left only with his dad gave him nobody to really confide in since relations with his father were shaky at best. Without people to talk about his issues with, he was left to his own insecurities. He did get over the majority of them as time went by and he learned to rely on himself. He's still got confidence issues over things he's never done before, and over more stressful social situations.
Likes:
-=- Cosplay
-=- Chocolate Milk
-=- Dancing
-=- Gaming
-=- Anime
-=- Soccer
-=- Reading
-=- Techno
-=- Dr. Pepper
Dislikes:
-=- Basketball and Football
-=- The Lack of Men’s Fashion Designers
-=- Wearing Tight Clothing
-=- Sprinkler Systems (He swears they’re programmed to go off as soon as he gets near.)
-=- Formal Occasions
-=- Doctors
Skills:
-=- Sewing and Costuming
-=- Running for Extended Periods of Time
-=- Climbing Random Things
-=- DDR
-=- Can Find Anything on the Internet
-=- US Army Style CQC
-=- Bilingual Japanese/English
Equipment:
-=- Cell Phone
-=- Baggy Clothing
-=- Scarf
-=- PSP
Habits/Quirks:
-=- Checks E-Mail and Text Messages Habitually
-=- Never Throws Things Away
-=- Never Sits in a Chair Properly
Powers:
Accelerated Pigment Production: Shinobu's cells all create pigments in great amounts. They are stored in his arms and can be leaked through the pores in a fine mist. The pigments will bond onto anything and leave a mark of whatever color is leaked. He can easily control which color comes out, through nothing more than unconscious willpower. Not only can he create normal colors, he can create pigments that have different effects, namely glow-in-the-dark, high-gloss, pigment only visible under blacklight, and even full chromatic (colors that change based on what angle the light reflects off them) pigments.
Hyper-Developed Respiratory System: Shinobu has four lungs and individual diaphragms for each lung. With the extra breath intake and output he has, he can breathe in and out at the same time, almost ensuring that he's never short of breath. His stamina and ability to hold his breath are at least five times greater than a normal human. Where normal people produce carbon dioxide in their lungs, Shinobu creates butane. He can breathe in from any part of his body by rapidly increasing the rate at which skin breathes. And he can exhale from, likewise, any point on his body. When exhaling from his arms, the butane is propelled through the same pores that leak the pigment, causing a strong spray of pigmentation. With the combination of butane and pigments, he's able to create an aerosol spraypaint. The spray can reach up to ten feet away with a spot only the width of a quarter. If the spray goes further than that, the speed of the spray slows and it disperses in a wider area, only reaching up to fifteen feet with an uneven mark the diameter of a basketball. His respiratory system filters out nearly all unnecessary gasses in his system. This leaves him immune to gas-based issues such as nicotine smoke, knock-out gas, and the like.
Toxic Physiology: Shinobu's breath and spray both contain butane. Breathing butane causes euphoria, drowsiness, narcosis, asphyxia, cardiac arrhythmia, and even frostbite. Due to other trace elements found in his breath, Shinobu's butane emissions can be much more effective against people. The euphoric sensation lasts much longer, drowsiness are more prevalent in people's minds, and their bodies fall into short-term narcosis after only a few inhalations. Frostbite only occurs under extremely close situations, such as direct mouth-to-mouth contact. The butane can be synthesized into carbon dioxide and water in the presence of heavy amounts of oxygen. This takes some time though. His butane breath is also quite flammable, and can be used to create a flame-thrower effect given a spark. The fire burns at 1900 degrees Celsius and can go as far as fifteen feet before losing it's momentum. If lit in the presence of heavy oxygen levels, it can burn at 2800 degrees Celsius.
Enhanced Agility and Reflexes: Shinobu’s body is above and beyond the normal call of agility for a human. While his training has put him in great physical condition, his mutation replaced the insides of his bones, and a lot of his mass with air passageways, making him very lightweight. Despite the change in body composition, his body maintains an average level of toughness because he's supported by pressurized butane. His nervous system has a more streamlined network, which allows him to react to a situation much faster than normal. As far as agility goes, combined with his physical training, he’s able to jump over people of average height and run almost twenty miles per hour.
Weaknesses:
Pigmentation Over-Production: Shinobu produces way more pigment than his body can handle without a constant excretion. As such, his arms and hands are perpetually miscolored, looking like he'd been attacked by an abstract artist. The arms are never the same colors in the same spots from day to day. If he showed his arms, they'd be a mess of colors that could be most easily related to a stained glass window in appearance, minus the typical religious imagery. The leaking is bad enough that he has to wrap his arms in absorbent material to keep it from dripping all over the place. Cleaning expenses are expensive. His eyes and hair also change colors like his arms do, but usually in more esthetically pleasing ways. It's not uncommon for him to have mismatched eye colors. Convenient Excuse: Fashion. For eyes and hair, contacts and wash-out dyes.
Toxic Breath: Shinobu also has to wear a respirator mask constantly. Small doses of his butane breath aren't bad for people normally, but at the rate he breathes, coupled with potentially unventilated rooms means that it's better safe than sorry unless he's trying to get everyone tripping balls and falling over with narcosis. The respirator looks like he's trying to keep harmful airborne germs and chemicals out, but in reality, he's keeping the butane from getting out into public. The toxic breath can cause drowsiness, asphyxiation, narcosis, and frostbite. One deep inhale can cause a person to lose their equilibrium. Weaker physiologies may very well pass out. When his breath causes frostbite from rapid condensation in the throat or nasal passages, it can prove to be downright fatal if not immediately tended to. And don't forget, it's flammable. Very, very flammable. Convenient Excuse: Poor respiratory and immune system.
Respiratory System: Though he's immune to airborne toxins, Shinobu is vulnerable and cannot breathe in environments without carbon dioxide (or any other carbon-oxygen gas) and hydrogen. A lack of either will leave him gasping for air. Human environments have plentiful amounts of those gasses, so he's safe in most environments, but he's more heavily affected by high altitudes and the lack of air to breathe in those areas. Where people in his shape could stand to go snowboarding with no problems aside from the cold, he would be gasping for air pretty heavily by the time he reached the summit, even on a lift. At one mile elevation, he's perpetually winded and weakened. At two miles elevation, he cannot survive without a concentrated source of air. He cannot breathe butane without choking violently, even when humans can stand to breathe the same amount.
Power Potential:
Shinobu is at the peak of his power's capability. It's estimated that if he undergoes an artificially created secondary mutation, the constant production of pigment in his cells may change drastically into a full body regenerative capability. The other possibility is a full body pigmentation control, allowing him the ability to blend into his surroundings like a Chameleon. Or stand out even more.
History:
Born in Torii Station, a US military base in Okinawa, Japan, Shinobu was born into a stable, perfectly normal military family. His father was a staff sergeant at the time, and his mother was a waitress that just so happened to get into a relationship with the man. Like a good few military relationships, the marriage proposal came rather quickly, even before they learned she’d become pregnant. Still, it was a happy marriage, and despite not being ready for it, the addition to their family was welcome.
Because of the child, Kansuke’s duties in Japan were extended, and Shinobu got to live in Torii Station for the first three years of his life. The first year was for family purposes, then the in the next Kansuke left for duties elsewhere while Midori raised Shinobu. They stayed one more year as Kansuke volunteered to stay in Torii Station so he could have time to get ready for his first move. He wasn't too focused on advancing his career, since he was satisfied with his grunt work.
After that, the family moved to Texas for Kansuke's next assignment as a recruiter. A year of that led into another year of airborne training. While he did that, Midori took care of raising Shinobu, during the time where he was just starting to learn to read and speak. So she raised him bilingual, and while the teaching wasn't exactly easy for the small child, she managed to get her points across and got him ready for a strong education.
His first three years of elementary was spent in Colorado. It was a generally uneventful time for Shinobu, where he was growing used to not seeing his father often, while he spent most of his time studying outside of class at the urging of his mother. She'd been raised in the Japanese school system, and overestimated the difficulty of the US school system. But it left him well prepared every year and he was a quick learner.
California came next for the fourth and fifth grades. This was the first time Shinobu had lost friends to his father's work transfers. For all his studying, he still had quite a few friends, and spent the entire move moping about it. His mother was comforting about it, but his father was a bit too direct and tried to convince him to just get over it because it'd keep happening. It didn't really stick with Shinobu though, and he again tried to get a good collection of friends.
When Shinobu was twelve, his mother developed Pancreatic Cancer. His family was transferred to Camp Zama in order to get Midori into a Tokyo hospital. Unfortunately, she died six months into treatment. Shinobu went through two months where he did nothing outside of the required motions of his life. His father hadn’t been the primary caregiver for his child, so he had been caught unprepared to face the more emotional issues of an twelve-year old boy. And with his mother dead, Shinobu had a lot of emotional issues to sort out.
As Kansuke spent more and more time with his son, they started to show the signs of the rift between them. His strict and militaristic view on life conflicted heavily with Shinobu's naive and emotional viewpoint on life. Kansuke began to focus on his career again once they were moved to Florida in the wake of Midori's death. Meanwhile, the constant moving and the loss of the one person who'd stayed with him his whole life brought Shinobu into a state of inconfidence and depression regarding maintaining relationships.
It was a whole year before he broke out of the shell of inconfidence that kept him socially away from his classmates. But the encouragement of his teachers and a generally friendly disposition from his other classmates helped him start to rebuild his friendships through middle school. He also did quite well in school, scoring well in tests, keeping himself well studied, and picking up advanced reading rather quickly.
After the eighth grade, he was then forced to say goodbye once again, when his family was once again shipped to a new location. This time, it was to West Point’s military academy. His father was recruited himself into becoming a drill sergeant for the academy, which meant he was much more likely to be able to settle down and stop getting transferred. At that time, Shinobu entered a public middle school near West Point. With reassurance that it’d be a long time before there was any chance of another move, Shinobu once again began to build up his friends base. At least his ability to do schoolwork had remained nicely unchanged.
It was a year before they moved once again. This time, it was only to a place a few miles away, just a home that was off-base. When Shinobu learned of the move, he simply rolled his eyes and shrugged in defeat. His father had neglected to tell him it was only a town over, and he wouldn’t even be changing schools. Once the issue was sorted out, his father revealed that they’d be able to stay at least until Shinobu was old enough to move out, and that he’d finished his training to become a full-time drill instructor.
The news came with a nice raise, and a stable life, but it also came with a more militaristic lifestyle for the teen. His father was putting Shinobu through similar training to his recruits, saying that it’d be good for him. From then on, the child was subjected to long runs, combat practice, and a 5 a.m. wake up time. Unfortunately, it was good for him physically, but it seriously cut into his social time, and even into his homework a little. The involuntary training and the unstable relationship collided, and Shinobu was far from enthused with his father. They began to argue over what was right and wrong, and over what Shinobu was allowed to do.
When Shinobu turned thirteen, puberty hit him almost immediately. Along with it came his mutation, or at least the first version of it. His respiratory weakened severely and he developed a rash over his arms. Having a dislike of doctors, Shinobu refused to be treated, insisting that he'd get over it. It lasted several weeks through summer vacation, finally clearing up for the short time. The sickness was really his body changing dramatically, to make room for his mutation since he had to grow an extra pair of lungs and replace much of his body with air passageways.
A month after his mutation began, it finally finished and rose to the surface. Shinobu was showering when he noticed the water was running blue… and red… and every color of the rainbow all at once. His arms covered in paint, he freaked out and wrapped his arms in towels. His father was at work, so he contemplated calling 911. The only issue with that was that his arms were covered by towels, and he didn’t want to get paint everywhere. A moment to calm down gave him the clarity of mind to forget the call, and simply deal with the issue himself of else he’d call far more attention to himself that he could deal with. He wanted to be a human, not a doctor’s mystery case.
The very next day, Charles Xavier came to his house, while Shinobu’s father was again away at work. Showing up to the door in a gas mask and shoulder high gloves didn’t even phase the wheelchair bound mutant. It resulted in a long chat between the two (thankfully without the need to repeat himself past the muffled sound of talking through a gas mask) but it went nowhere. Xavier left his contact information with the young mutant, simply asking him to give the idea some serious thought. Shinobu was just scared of moving, and of becoming a doctor’s case file.
Schooling continued with little incident until his father found out. While the man was sharp, he wasn't around often, so Shinobu had found many ways to hide his powers. But the visual cues from his hair and eyes finally gave him away when his father finally tried to figure out where he got the money for so many contacts and dyes. While going to speak with Shinobu about it, he walked in on the mutant changing his arm wrappings. Generally frantic arguments and yelling ensued from there. The day ended with Shinobu being declared a freak, and Kansuke being declared a soulless abomination.
Arguments and disarray kept them separated for a long time, until Shinobu finally got fed up with the whole situation and decided that calling Xavier was a good idea. It'd be an environment where he'd be more likely to be understood, and where his interactions with his father could be kept to a very minimum.
Other:
Sample RP:
“Where is it…?” Shinobu rifled through the chest at the foot of his bed. It was a simple olive green box about three feet wide and one and a half feet square on the sides. It had a pair of boots, a clean set of military fatigues, folded neatly in a perfect square, a combat knife, compass, various other odds and ends, and a stack of papers. He pulled the papers out and flayed them out on the floor, looking for something smaller than the sheets of paper. Digging through them on his hands and knees, he found a small card, small enough that he could hide it in his hand easily. Flipping it over, it had fairly plain text.
The Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters
He'd been arguing with his father again. Neither of them would give up. Kansuke was a bull-headed soldier who never gave up the fight until it was won or lost, and he'd managed to teach his son the very same principle. They came from two separate worlds though, and not just in the after-school special sense. Kansuke was a soldier who's life revolved around orders and duty. Shinobu's life revolved around himself. Perhaps a bit selfish, but he didn't see anyone else trying to look out for him. His father certainly hadn't. And the whole mutant deal tended to put a nice wall between them.
The paraplegic had said there were others like him. Not like him, but each with their own unique mutation. Xavier himself had been one. They even communicated through telepathy, just so he didn’t have to deal with the respirator muffling Shinobu’s speech. It’d been weird, but the guy turned out to be really nice, and oddly trustworthy. If anything, it’d be worth investigating further. If anything, he’d be able to tell his father he was going to a private school for gifted children.
The nervous teen pulled the cell phone from his right-front pants pocket and flipped it open. Dialing was quick, he’d gotten all to used to the button layout by now. As the ringing started, he leaned back against the foot of his bed and sighed. Two rings, then the phone on the other end was picked up, with an obligatory greeting of course.
"Xavier's Institute right? Yeah... Is Xavier in? Damnit..." He scoffed a little bit. He'd been nervous enough about the call that the answering machine had duped him into thinking that he was talking to someone real. Go figure. So he listened through the whole spiel and waited for his chance to leave the message.
"This is Akiyama Shinobu from West Point. I'd like to be put in contact with Xavier as soon as possible about being a part of the institute. He should still have my file on record. My number is XXX-XXX-XXXX. I'll be available for a call at any time when it's convenient for you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Hopefully hear from you soon."
Activity: I try to at least check in once per day, but it’s usually far, far more than that.
