Appearance
Name: Yuuma Saito
Age: 19
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Height: 6'1 ft | 186 cm
Weight: 172 lbs | 78 kg
Personality: Yuuma isn't exactly a hard person to read. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and his facial expressions and body language are always very telling. He knows of this and does his best to stifle it, but whenever he's the least bit flustered or excited, he forgets.
He's an honest person who constantly has an easy smile on his face, and is always willing to help anyone who asks -- even those who don't will find him offering his services to them more often than not. He never asks for compensation in return -- the recognition and satisfaction he gets is enough for him.
And that's what he lives for: the satisfaction. He wants to be a hero, one who eliminates all the evil in the world and saves all the good and innocence in it. This is a result of his more selfish wish to be remembered; death doesn't really scare him, but the idea that he'll eventually be forgotten does. At a young age, he figured that the best way to fulfil both these strong desires of his -- to help others and to be remembered -- was to become a superhero, and he has clung to that dream throughout his life. If it were possible, he'd take on everyone's issues and suffering.
Of course, what is 'good' and what is 'evil' is all based on his perspective and morals, meaning it's entirely possible for him to make a 'wrong' decision, which would greatly affect him.
Challenging him on his views is an easy way to upset him and get into his head. He knows that the world is far from perfect, and that making it perfect is just about the most absurd, impossible thing one can set out to do, but he chooses not to acknowledge that. He also tends to view everything in black-and-white, so his decision-making suffers greatly in greyer situations.
Finally, he's not a pushover when it comes to dealing with people. If he thinks he can help someone, he will, even if they protest. If he has a disagreement with someone about how best to approach a situation, he'll go with his own idea. In the end though, Yuuma always means well, no matter how stubborn he's being.
Skills and Powers:Strengthening Magic:
Yuuma has a great amount of natural talent for strengthening objects with Mana, and has spent his entire life improving this skill. Strengthening an object increases its durability and damage, and with enough Mana pumped into it, can even hit things that otherwise couldn't be physically touched normally.
More importantly than objects, Yuuma discovered he can strengthen a specific area of his body by moving all the Mana inside of him to it. Doing this, he can block blades barehanded, survive crushing blows, deliver his own powerful strikes, run faster, jump higher, etc. It basically works as temporary, quick burst of enhanced strength and durability. All of these actions do expel a portion of his Mana out of his body, so as a fight drags on, he gets weaker -- unless he can regenerate Mana faster than he uses it.
Finally, when focusing his Mana in one part of his body, he can also forcefully expel a larger portion of it than normal, causing a powerful shockwave. The strength of this shock wave dissipates very quickly -- at three feet, all one would feel is a strong push, and at five, a strong gust of air. Yuuma doesn't use this ability often, as it is incredibly wasteful if it isn't delivered at point-blank range, and reduces the effectiveness of his self-strengthening for the rest of the fight.
Mana Generation:
While Yuuma had talent for controlling Mana, he unfortunately generated very little, limiting how much he could fight. Once the strange Youkai fused with him, however, he began to passively generate a good amount. Another effect of the merging is that whenever Yuuma is in a bad situation and on the verge of death, his heart will suddenly start pounding, and his body will generate absurd amounts of Mana -- more than he can even contain in his body.
With nowhere else to go, the excess Mana leaks out of every pore of his body, causing him a considerable amount of pain and making him give off a blue glow, noticeable to the naked eye due to just how much of it there is. In this state, Yuuma's entire body is 'strengthened' to an even greater extent than he would normally be able to accomplish.
Coming so close to death and pushing his body so hard has it's downsides, of course. After exiting this state, Yuuma has always collapsed from exhaustion and taken a couple days to get back on his feet.
Sacrificial Heroic Tendencies:
Yuuma will always help those in need, never thinking or caring about any consequences to himself. When others are in danger, he reacts more quickly, thinks more intelligently, and fights viciously.
As long as he believes whatever he is doing will help and save people, Yuuma will never give up, no matter how exhausted or hurt he is, or how impossible a situation seems. As things get more and more dire, he starts basically losing his mind, becoming incandescent and desperately choosing to do anything he can to fix the problem.
Knife Combat:
Never having had the courage to trust himself with longer blades (for fear of chopping himself in half), Yuuma first used knives and stuck with them. He can wield two at a time effectively, and throw them with good accuracy. He prefers using knives instead of his fists, as they kill faster and retain the Mana he strengthens them with for far longer, resulting in less wasted of it being wasted and increasing his endurance.
Hand-to-Hand Combat:
He has no real 'style,' but years of beating on Youkai has given him plenty of training and experience to utilize his self-strengthening to the fullest extent he can.
Biography: Yuuma's obession with heroism began with his father. His father was a Chaser, and had been one since his late-teens. He instilled his desire to help others into his son, teaching him to be sympathetic to others, to understand that everyone leads lives full of challenges and obstacles, and that everyone who continues to be a good person despite their hardships deserves to be helped.
His early childhood was normal enough. His mother knew about his father's nightly excursions, and supported him, knowing how much he enjoyed saving people. The only thing notable about the first decade of his life was his love for tokusatsu media, especially Kamen Rider and Super Sentai. Even at this age, he connected his father's teachings to superheroes, desiring to be like his fictional idols to help people in the most fantastic way possible: by saving them from evil monsters.
One night, when he was 10 years old, Yuuma was walking home from a friends house. He was more than a little nervous, as he had stayed later than he was allowed to; he feared his parents anger and the dark streets ahead of him. In his worry, he took a wrong turn and found himself in the Crimson Sky. A moment passed, as he stood, shaking in his fear and confusion, before a Youkai came out from the shadows, looking like a demonic dog. The two beings stared at each other for a moment -- one in shocked, disbelieving horror, and one in excitement -- before the Youkai attacked.
Scared out of his mind, Yuuma instinctively used his power for the first time. He scrambled and stumbled back as the demon advanced and jumped on him, throwing out his hands in front of him in protection. A weak blast of mana escaped from him, halting the Youkai's jump and pushing it backrather forcefully, and shaking his body and throwing his already off-balanced self onto his behind.
Confused that a child had put up resistance, the Youkai took several seconds to regain it's wits, reassessing it's prey. Eventually, it darted to Yuuma's side and jumped again. The young boy couldn't do anything even if he knew how -- he had no Mana in him.
A larger, human figure fell from the sky and landed feet-first on the dog mid-jump. Who else was it but Yuuma's own father. Staring in awe, he witnessed his father pick up the enemy and toss it into the air, blasting it away with his own Mana, looking incredibly heroic -- like one of Yuuma's fictional idols.
With the Youkai killed and his son safe, the two went home. From then on, Yuuma's life was anything but normal. His father taught him all about the Crimson Sky, and about what he did at night; how he killed demons like the one Yuuma had seen and saved people's lives. The two quickly found out they had identical abilities, and the older man took his son under his wing. They went out at night occasionally, Yuuma learning how to fight and survive. The boy had excellent control over his ability, but he had a major flaw: his body generated very little Mana, meaning he could only go out about once every week.
This lifestyle went on for about six years, until the night Yuuma's father died. The two were together, and came up against an extremely powerful, enraged Youkai that threatened to go on a rampage in the real world. Yuuma was ordered to get any people who were around away, and he did so reluctantly. When he returned to the scene of the battle, he witnessed his father fighting viciously and desperately against the Youkai. Their clash was so titanic that Yuuma didn't dare approach, for fear of being killed by the shockwaves. He also respected his father's wishes -- Yuuma had never seen him so joyful and alive.
This was his defining, heroic moment; he'd stop the Youkai, and save his son and possibly thousands of other innocent people.
And that was what he did. He beat the demon into submission, and despite being injured and exhausted beyond what should've been his limit, he stood tall and proud. With one last farewell to his son, he put Mana into his legs and leapt away, to die out of sight, wanting Yuuma's last memory of him to be a positive one.
Yuuma walked to the fading Youkai in a stupor, a multitude of emotions assailing him. He was so out of it that it took him a moment to realize that the shriveled up Youkai was stirring -- and before he could react, it had leaped onto him, pressing itself into his chest. He felt it invading his body, and tried to pull it off in a panic, but it would have none of it -- the thing wanted to live, it didn't matter to it how it accomplished that.
So it merged with Yuuma, wrapping itself around the boy's heart and becoming his engine. It's weak, feral conciousness also attempted to merge with Yuuma's, but it was quickly and easily rejected.
Despite it's efforts, it still essentially died, leaving it's remaining power to help pump Yuuma's Mana generator, strengthening the boy considerably. It also left him feeling... strange, to say the least. Both physically and mentally. After all, he was now technically part-Youkai, one of the things he had spent much of his life killing.
Deciding to take it for what it was, Yuuma used the extra power to continue in his father's stead. He was now able to go out nightly, and quickly grew from a boy to a man. He became independent, did all he could to support his mother (who was, of course, greatly saddened by her husband's death, even though she had been slightly prepared for it, considering his line of work), and help the general populace by killing Strays.
Equipment:- Two combat knivesThat's pretty much it.
Other: He likes spicy food almost as much as he likes saving people.
