Aberrant: Mutant High - Kazuo 'Kurusu' Kanai

[Kazuo]

Personal Information:

Birth Name: Kanai Kazuo (Kanai is his surname, Kazuo his birth name)

Nick Name: Kurusu (the Edo Period way of saying ‘cross’ in Japan, used in reference to the cross-shaped scar on his face)

Identity: Semi-public

Occupation: Student

Legal Status: Has an extensive criminal record in Tokyo, Japan and is implicated in several crimes within various cities of the USA. Crimes he is accused of in Japan include (but are not limited to) Assault and Battery, Destruction of Private Property, Attempted Manslaughter, and Resisting Arrest. He is implicated in multiple counts of Grand Theft Auto within the USA, as well as a few other burglary-related criminal offenses.

Aliases: None

Marital Status: Single

Known Relatives: Mother (estranged)

Affiliation: ‘Mutant High’ (well, sorta)

Concept: The nail that cannot be hammered down. Ever.

Nature: Survivor

Origin: Because the majority of Kazuo's mutant characteristics are extremely subtle, it is difficult to say when they first began to manifest. However his powers did not develop to their current levels until after he awoke from a two month long coma, as a result of attempting to prevent members of a Yakuza gang from committing sexual assault on a young woman of his aquaintance.

Physical Traits:

Weight: 175lbs.

Height: 6’1”

Age (apparent age): 17 (18-20)

Gender: Male

Ethnic Background: Japanese

Nationality (place of origin): Japanese

Eye Color: Dark brown

Hair Color: Black

Handedness: Either

Distinguishing Marks: From the waist up, Kazuo's body sports an astonishingly large number of very serious-looking scars. But the Most notable are the two that cross each other at right angles on his face, one running horizontally across his forehead, and the other vertically down over his right eye. After these, perhaps the most notable scar is one that runs part-way along his neck, and that looks like it was probably life-threatening when first inflicted.

In addition to the scars on his face and neck, part of Kazuo's right ear is missing, and his torso and forearms also sport a myriad of scars, ranging from long slashing scars, to what appear to be stab wounds, and even two little round scars just below his left shoulder blade that look for all the world like bullet wounds. Because the scars that run across his forehead and over his eye look like a cross, some of Kazuo's aquaintences have taken to calling him "Kurusu" (the Edo period way of saying "crucifix").

General Appearance: Badly scarred former pretty boy. Before Kazuo's "encounter" with four Yakuza thugs, he possessed the pretty-boy good looks of a future J-Pop star. These days he's still got the looks, but they're now overshadowed by the scars running across his face.

Even with the scars, or perhaps because of them, Kazuo presents a striking figure. Standing more than six feet in height, Kazuo possesses the kind of lupine physical grace normally only seen in Anime heartthrobs, the swagger of a Shinjuku gurentai or a New York rapper, and the confidence of someone who's been in a fistfight with Death and is still around to talk about it.

Powers, Skills, and Personality:

Known Powers: Kazuo possesses only two known actual ‘super powers’: a limited ability to regenerate from wounds, and a somewhat mysterious and poorly understood ability to seemingly defy gravity.

An interesting aspect of his regenerative powers is that they seem to work based off of a “template”, or “memory”, of his body when it is in good health. This appears to be why none of the considerable number of scars across his body have faded over time. Because his regenerative capabilities first manifested only after he had already sustained severe injuries to much of his body – including a large gash through the middle of his right eye – they were not able to fully repair the damage, having no “memory” of a time before those injuries. Instead, his powers simply closed off the wounds, which was enough to largely restore the functionality of injured muscle and bone (for the most part), but not enough to repair the much more complicated structure of his eye.

All wounds that Kazuo has sustained since his powers first manifested have faded, usually in only minutes but occasionally taking as long as several weeks, always leaving no scars or loss of functionality once healing is complete.

His ability to ‘defy gravity’ is more difficult to define. Kazuo has never shown the capacity to fully ignore or escape Earth’s gravity and actually fly or levitate, but he has shown the ability to leap incredible distances and to walk, run, or merely stand still on walls or ceilings, and he seems to have some (limited) control over the relative speed of his leaps and falls.

Kazuo’s physical traits are all enhanced beyond the human norm to varying degrees. Through applied use of his still limited ability to control and partially ignore gravity’s effects, Kazuo’s strength and speed are much greater than a normal human’s. Because of his regenerative abilities, his body is almost always in the peak of physical health, and his resilience to harm and physical hardship is also significantly greater than human norm.

Abilities/Special Skills: Kazuo is highly capable in most areas of physical endeavor, including close-quarters combat. Also of special note are his street skills. Kazuo is very much at home when operating amongst the seedier elements of Society, and there is little in the way of illicit goods or information that he cannot find or acquire with enough time and money. Though he does not make a point of advertising it – especially to school faculty members – Kazuo is also a relatively skilled B&E artist, specializing in auto theft, but more than capable of entering homes and other facilities through means other than using the front door and a key.

Personality: Kazuo is brash, crude, bold, and rude. The Nipponese say that the nail that sticks up will get hammered down, but Kazuo Kanai couldn’t care less. He’s been hammered down by this world more times than he can count, but he just keeps getting back up again. Even when no one would blame him for backing down or giving up, and even when doing anything else seems like pure insanity, Kazuo still won’t back down or show any sign of weakness. These qualities make him brave, courageous, and uncompromising. They also make him a huge asshole.

Spending most of his life on the streets has left Kazuo a hardened and cynical young man, and he shows a marked lack of respect for the traditional Nipponese values of conformism, politeness, and discipline. Instead he has embraced the brash and flamboyant attitude of the gurentai and bososoku gangs, swaggering through life like he owns it. Kazuo smokes, drinks, parties far too hard, and he also engages in any number of minor (and a few major) criminal activities as a means of bringing in the yen. He's been lucky so far, and none of his criminal activities in the US have come back to haunt him - though he has had a few close calls. Already, his name is known and (mostly) respected within certain circles of New York's criminal element.

Interests: Parties, tail, alcohol and drugs. Not necessarily in that order, either.

Background: Kazuo’s father died when he was quite young, leaving his mother a decent amount of money, and Kazuo all alone. Kazuo’s mother recovered from the death of her husband with remarkable speed, and was soon seeing other men. Lots of them, in fact, and Kazuo was only getting in the way. As a way of resolving this, and certain other familial tensions, Kazuo has been more or less living on the streets since before his balls dropped. His mother used to pay for his clothes, his food, and his schooling, but ever since Kazuo started turning a profit from his not-entirely-legal activities he made it a point not to take money for anything other than school - and the only reason he lets her pay for that is because it’s school - why the hell would he pay for that if he doesn’t have to?

Kazuo’s illicit activities inevitably brought him into contact with the Japanese underworld. First with the bososoku motorcycle gangs of Tokyo, and later with the lower levels of the Yakuza itself, the so-called gurentai. By the age of sixteen Kazuo had already begun to earn himself a reputation as a reliable thief and a dangerous street tough.

Manifestation of the Mutant Gene: Kazuo’s life changed the night he stumbled out the back door of a night club towards the end of a night of hard partying, only to stumble (almost literally) into four men in the process of sexually assaulting a young woman by the name of Ryoko Mendo. Now, Kazuo had entertained a mild crush on Ryoko since he was still young and naïve enough to actually believe in the possibility of finding a good woman and living a happy life with her. He’d never have admitted as much, of course, but it was still true.

So when he saw those four men raping her (who, it turned out later, were all Yakuza), a fuse blew inside of Kazuo and he suddenly found himself feeling something he’d never felt before: righteous anger. Kazuo proceeded to lay into the four men with a vengeance, and for a few moments it seemed like he might even come out on top and emerge as the ‘hero’ rescuing the ‘damsel in distress’. Sadly, it was not meant to be. Kazuo may have been an extraordinarily tough sixteen year old, and a talented fighter, but he was up against four street- and prison-hardened yakuza thugs.

But Kazuo being Kazuo, he refused to go down or give up, until finally things got ugly when one of the yaks pulled a knife and tried to use on him. Kazuo managed to take the knife from the guy and cut him pretty good, but this only served to provoke the other three yakuza into drawing their own blades. The knife fight that followed was quick, and extremely brutal, but it didn’t actually end until one of them pulled a gun and used it on the crazed teen.

Displaying the first glimmerings of his mutant fortitude, Kazuo had quite simply refused to go down. Even after suffering multiple stab wounds and slash wounds, including one that destroyed his right eye, the boy just would not give up or stop fighting, let alone fall down and die. Only after one of the yaks finally shot him twice in the shoulder did Kazuo’s resilience at last give out, and he collapsed to the ground unconscious. By that time, the yakuza were so disturbed by what they’d just witnessed that they lost all interest in the ravaged and bloodied Ryoko, and quickly slunk away from the scene of the crime, leaving the two teens bleeding in the alley to die.

However, both of the youths were discovered before that happened and were quickly hospitalized. Ryoko healed quickly enough – physically, at least – but Kazuo remained comatose from his injuries for nearly two months. During that time Ryoko waited by his bed as often as possible, having been deeply moved upon discovering what Kazuo had done for her (or at least tried to do for her). And then one day Kazuo simply woke up and those wounds which hadn’t already healed naturally simply closed up before the amazed eyes of Ryoko and the gathered hospital staff.

After that, everything changed. It was immediately apparent – even before the doctors ran the test for the mutant genome – that Kazuo was one of the “them”. His already distant mother practically disowned him on the spot, and Ryoko’s parents refused to let her associate with him anymore (not that they’d been happy that she was spending time next to the hospital bed of a known juvenile delinquent anyway). By the time that Kazuo was cleared to leave the hospital early the next day, he had little left to him other than his desire for revenge and his scars to help him remember why he wanted it.

Over the next few weeks, Kazuo went on a rampage throughout the Shinjuku district of Tokyo as he tracked down each of the yakuza thugs responsible for what had happened to Ryoko and him. It was as he did so that he became fully aware of his burgeoning mutant abilities that had lain dormant in him for so long. By the end of two weeks, three of the four yakuza thugs would never be heard from again, and Kazuo still refuses to go into any details about what happened to them to this day. By the end of the third week, Kazuo was able to track down the fourth and final yakuza thug, a man by the name of Ryo Tendo, and corner him inside of the very same club Kazuo had been partying at the night he’d been beaten near to death.

Unfortunately, Kazuo’s efforts to exact the last of his revenge was stymied when the Genyosha showed up (Genyosha was the name of a secret ultranationalist organization in the late 19th century – their name means Dark Ocean Society - and it is from this group that the modern Genyosha have taken their name). The Genyosha are a notorious gang of mutant Yakuza, though no one knows just who they work for (if anyone). It turned out that Ryo was the older brother of one of the Society’s founding members, and he was not about to allow Kazuo to lay one finger on him. Needless to say, a fight broke out between Kazuo and the band of mutant gangsters. And, needless to say, the young and inexperienced Kazuo Kanai barely escaped with his life – again.

It was at this point in Kazuo’s life that Mark Ridley showed up and gave Kazuo another option. Kazuo had seen the strange old gaijin before, on the day he’d first woken up in the hospital. Through some strange series of events that Kazuo knew nothing about, the guy had wound up as Ryoko’s godfather, and had traveled to Japan when he’d heard of her condition after being raped. Kazuo had only seen the guy once, but now Mark was telling him about a school in America. A school that could train him to use his abilities, and give him a purpose beyond mere revenge.

Yeah right! Like Kazuo could give a shit about “purpose”, or whatever. But hey, if they can teach him to kick ass, so he can come back to Tokyo and fuck that Tendo bastard’s shit up, then Kazuo figures this school might not be such a bad idea after all. Plus, Tokyo police managed to track him down and link him to a small fortune’s worth of property damage, not to mention a few counts of Assault and Battery, Attempted Manslaughter, and other assorted misdemeanors, and they were gonna put him in jail or something, which would totally blow – unless he agreed to leave the country and go attend this “Mutant High”.

So, uh… when does school start?