Ebisugawa "Tai" Taihou

Ebiranger

18

Male

Pansexual/Asexual

None.

Shy and introverted, Taihou is an otaku who likes nerdy, boyish things, like Super Sentai, Ultraman, Godzilla movies, Cantonese Kung Fu movies, and giant mecha anime. He has poor self-awareness and loses himself to excitement when it comes to his hobbies or when doing 'heroic' deeds. This makes him appear to switch between an 'outgoing' side and a 'shrinking violet' side. Growing up in a world where his appearance has been ridiculed as 'monstrous', Taihou has attempted to close himself off from the ostracization by embracing isolation. Yet his spirit continues to burn with fiery heroism. In a field dominated by exemplars of the human form, Taihou seeks to prove that even Saturday morning cartoon monsters can be heroes.

Taihou was born to parents of Japanese descent living in San Francisco. Though the father, Ebisugawa Saizen was of distant Inhuman descent, life was pretty normal for the small Asian family. Still, Saizen and his wife, Mizuko, kept their eyes peeled for news of terrigen release, as Saizen had learned of his lineage when a cousin had accidentally been exposed and acquired powers. When they caught wind that some terrigen had been released over the ocean somewhere, they temporarily swore off seafood until the proper authorities could confirm that all contamination had been accounted for. Unfortunately, Taihou, who was only ten at the time, went on a field trip with his fifth grade class to the aquarium. And even though his teachers and chaperones had notes to keep him away from seafood, during lunch, a friend of his who didn't like shrimp, traded his meal for Taihou's. The effect of the terrigen-infused shrimp had an immediate effect, and Taihou was rushed to the hospital, where proper medical staff could at least made sure he survived his transformation. In an ironically coincidental twist of fate, Taihou's Inhuman metamorphosis gave him shrimp limbs. The next few years of his life involved rehabilitation as his lack of human hands handicapped him severely, though his family and school tried to be as accomodating as possible.

Because of his unique hands, his mother kept him away from house chores, so his father taught him to participate in handyman hobbies, where his destructive, 'fat fingers' were less of an issue. Through this he was able to develop passable levels of manual dexterity, though he needs to resort to wearing special rubber gloves that provide him with some form of grip in order to deal with various everyday objects.

After the initial shock and the hospital stay, young Taihou thought it was kind of cool, and began to wonder if he could be like Spider-Man someday, after all, Spider-Man's powers just made him more spider-like, while his own transformation made him more shrimp-like, and both creatures were arthropods. Dreams of becoming a hero began to fill his mind, and he hadn't really considered the social stigma that still existed against those who didn't outwardly appear human. Things came to a head during a class in which all the students took turns standing in front of the class and read aloud their essay on what they wanted to be when they grew up. Taihou announced loudly and proudly that he was going to be a hero, like the ones from TV shows and cartoons, like Spider-Man. The other students jeered, calling him Baltan-seijin, and that he would never be a hero. He ran home in tears and binge-watched his favorite shows, realizing the sheer number of clawed, arthropod-like aliens, and that to the rest of the world, he looked just like these monsters. Though his parents tried to encourage him, he closed himself off from his peers, allowing the hurled insults to roll off his shoulder. Over time, with no friends and no after-school activities, Taihou began spending more and more time at home, going to school only for his mandatory studies.

To keep him engaged, his father started encouraging him to try various feats with his quirk, filming him, and posting videos online, resulting in playlists like the "Hydraulic Pinch Channel" and "Shrimp Tail Parkour", in which Taihou pushes the limits on what he can crush with his claws and using his massive tail to aid in ridiculous jumping feats. Online, things that were not socially acceptable found their niche, and behind the barrier of the internet, Taihou was allowed to be himself, reviving his hope in one day pursuing his dream. So he began applying himself so that one day he could apply to the best hero school. He knew that people who looked like him didn't have to monsters or villains.

Does whatever a pistol shrimp can! Taihou has powerful, crushing claws and a powerful tail that helps him jump high in the air and swim rapidly. He can breathe underwater, plates of red shell pepper his skin, providing some protection, and overall, He has the proportional strength and endurance of a human-sized shrimp. Long antennae sprout from the top of his head, are sensitive to smell and touch, and aid his otherwise clumsy fingers. He also has a secret technique: his left claw is evolved to produce a high-powered 'snap' that shoots forth a destructive sonic bullet. (Think MIB's Noisy Cricket on steroids)