Shidoku (Deadly/Lethal poison)
*Shunk!*
8 inches of razor edged steel sank into the supine man’s back, pinning him to the restaurant floor like a butterfly to a collection pan. He twitched once, gurgled then lay still. Aiko rose, smoothly unsheathing her katana from flesh with s sharp jerk.
Stillness surrounded her, silence and blood, her two lifelong companions. The riot of battle, rising a fever pitch then ending a sudden, dreadful silence. It was almost like sex but slightly messier. She smirked, a crimson trickle running down her cheek like a tear. Yes, empty, quick and unsatisfying, she thought, looking over remains of her attackers... like bad sex anyway.
Aiko made her across the dining room battlefield. One Dragon remained the first one that had tried to jump her. He clawed at the sai that pinned him to the wall right below the Specials. Nice touch if she did say so herself. Shidoku grabbed his chin and turned him to face her. “You’re bleeding to death. You’ve got maybe 3 minutes? I have one question. Where are the Osakis?” She whispered in Japanese. She wanted to be perfectly clear.
He just glared for a moment then smiled, blood and spittle seeping past broken teeth. “Heihachi Santo….sends his regards.” Shidoku saw his jaw tense, the way the way muscles in his throat were working and jerked her head to the side just enough to the avoid the wad of bloody phlegm that came next. Her grip tightened and she repeated her question, adding a slow twist on the blade embedded in shoulder for emphasis. He groaned, but said nothing his eyes flickered toward the back. Answer enough.
She left the punk hanging, hurrying into the back, nauseous with terror and a sense of familiarity, like déjà vu. Shidoku rushed threw the kitchen doors and froze there, horror written on her face. Kenzo and Ms Osaki lay there, their blood congealing around their bullet riddled bodies long dead. She felt numb and her katana fell to the floor from nerveless fingers. And she was back, back in that small apartment in Osaka, years ago.
-------------------------------------------
Her father Ryo was a simple but honorable man. A teacher by trade and nature, he ran a local dojo. Popular enough with is students, he had the misfortune of offending one of the local crime bosses by taking insult at the thug’s advances on business and his lovely wife, an American woman named Rose.. Refusing to bow to their intimidation, Ryo fought the gangsters at every turn, by whatever means he could muster but physical violence. He was, despite his art, a peaceful man. The conflict came to a head when Santo and a group of thugs broke into Hanamura home intent on putting an end to Ryo’s interference once and for all. Aiko never saw what happened. Her parents hid her away in a closet.
But, she remembers hearing the sounds fighting, her father’s cries of rage, screams and breaking furniture as she huddled in the darkness. Aiko sank to her knees, the images playing out in her mind again. She’d pressed her eye to the door when it had gotten quiet and peered out into what used to be her home. She saw bodies, several of the thugs lay broken and moaning but her father was terribly still. Santo tossed her mother across the bed and…
Aiko’s throat tightened around a sob. Too much, but she’d seen it, watched it all until she couldn’t take anymore and she’d dashed out screaming at him to stop hurting her mother. Santo had struck her then. A casual brutal knife thrust that knocked her out and took her right eye. Her mother survived but was never the same. The scars were too deep and from that night on her mother was more a shell than a woman mechanically going threw life as Aiko’s rage grew. She poured her anger into rebellion, turning to the streets and a bad crowd. As if by some dark design, her body responded growing hard and strong. She discovered a natural instinct for violence and knack for reading people, understanding their weaknesses and how to exploit them.
It was a talent the served her well. From streetfights to underground tournaments, Aiko tried to work out of her anger on any convenient target. She’d formed a half mad plan. Work her way into the underworld to get close to Santo again and kill him. She held onto that threw long nights of fighting, pain and madness, going from underground fighter to enforcer to assassin. She found she possessed a singular talent for mayhem.
Now, looking back, she saw that part of her even grew to like it, her goal of vengeance fading in the light of acclaim and fortune. At least in part, she could always look in the mirror for reminder. It took years and allot of bodies but she got what she wanted. A shot at Santo. He’d fallen out of favor with his syndicate. One too many power grabs, a little too much attitude. There was truly no honor among criminals. His “friends” wanted him out of the picture and she was contracted to do so.
But someone tipped him off. She didn’t know who but it was all a set up to sniff out who he could trust or not. There were a few dozen heavies waiting for her when she made her stab at him. And she cut her way threw them. It was perhaps the most glorious moment of her life. Until the police arrived on the scene before she could get to her goal. She could almost feel the rage again as she instinctively tore into them as well without realizing to caught up to stop and battle spilled out into the streets of Hong Kong.
It was the screaming that stopped her, the child screaming as her parents were cut down. She’d become one of them, one of what she’d hated for years. She broke off the attack then and ran, ran from her former allies, the police, from what she’d become. It was the act of a coward, but she hadn’t cared. Anything was better than facing what she’d become.
Or so she’d thought but she didn't run far enough, maybe she should have never stopped. Her past caught up with her years later and a country away. Her sins had come it come home too roost. The family that had taken her in was dead. Because they’d been kind to her, because she’d lied to them and because she’d been to weak to take care of her own problems.
Weeping from her remaining eye, Akio dropped to her knees as the cops closed in slowly, ordering her to freeze. Her instincts screamed at her to run, to lash out, to do something. She did nothing and said nothing.
The United States’ policy toward metahuman criminals was extremely draconian. Aiko’s mixed legal heritage made her processing complicated, but eventually she was confined to the US’ Fortress metahuman criminal containment facility, a bleak slab of reinforced concrete and steel located in virtually unknown area far from civilization and hope. It wasn’t a prison, it was a landfill where the rejects of society were dumped to rot.
Akio was less than a model prisoner; you couldn’t be one and survive very long. But she didn’t make more trouble than it took and no one died. After two years, certain sectors of the government remembered her and found a use for her talents. A skilled operative always had uses. One with few options and total expendability along with superhuman powers even more so. Akio was given an offer she’d had to have been a fool to refuse: a chance to get out of the Fortress and have something approaching freedom. Part of her still felt the need to be punished, but more so she wanted another crack at her tormentors. So why not make everyone happy? Yeah, a totally win-win situation, right? Sure…
Personality: Akio is jaded, violent and cynical. She's seen the worst side of life since a very young age and its colored her personality perhaps irrevocably. Years of living in a kill or be kill environment have made her jumpy with a healthy paranoia. She has little tolerance for social and head games and tends to be blunt and to the point. Akio also have an unbelievably foul mouth and curses fluently, often and in a couple of languages.
She has peculiar sense of honor for her background and adheres her given word. She also never forgets a debt or a favor owed in either direction. Akio has taken too many lives to be squeamish about lethal force but she's trying to learn restraint and use regulated amounts of force, but old habits die hard. Her trainers have committed at its almost like she doesn't know how -not- to kill in combat and has to work at it, but she does try if that counts for anything. Also for what its worth, she tries to minimize or eliminate any danger to innocent bystanders, particularly children. Threatening them is a certain way to earn her ire.
This is one of the reasons Shidoku disdains the use of firearms and explosives along with the fact her mutant powers don't readily increase her ability with them. Shidoku is bad with money, spending freely and is thus often broke. She figures work hard, play hard.
