Name: Kawakami Hideo, "Oni"
Appearance: Hideo is a large and intimidating Japanese man, standing 195 cm tall and his thick, muscular build weighing him in at 85 kg. His features are striking, with a strong jaw, thick eyebrows and piercing gaze. Despite having his physical appearance frozen in his mid-thirties, Hideo wears his age in his eyes, the hollowness of which often giving away his world-weary nature. Even so, his dark eyes frequently catch light in strange ways, glowing like hot coals in the night. His thick, dark hair is worn long and loose, usually brushed back and hanging to the middle of his neck, and he keeps a short, close-cropped beard, though it more resembles overgrown stubble than facial hair. His skin, oddly pale, is completely unblemished aside from a profound bite scar on his left deltoid. The scar, as well as his prominent fangs and the subtle points to his ears are the only visible indicators of his vampiric nature. His typical attire is that of a black suit, though usually somewhat dishevelled, and occasionally spattered by bloodstains.
Age: 468
Gender: Male
Corps: Hell Hounds
Bio: Hideo was born centuries ago in feudal Japan, during a time known as the Warring States (or Sengoku) Period. Though he was born as a noble warrior of the samurai caste, Hideo's clan was a small and mostly unrecognized one. Rather than set out and conquer for their master as their contemporary clans did, the Kawakami served their lord by cleansing his land of monsters, spirits and other strange beasts. Consorting with onmyouji and other such mystics, their clan came to master the art of hunting down and slaying the youkai that were all too common at that period of time.
Hideo was no different from the other men of his minor clan, having been raised in the art of both sword and pen, as both could defend against the forces of night just as equally. His friends and family often teased him for his large size, calling him a giant and other such jests. Hideo's great strength and skill in battle impressed his elders enough to allow him to carry his family's ceremonial sword, Kokorowatari ("the Passage Across the Heart"), into battle against their favored quarry. This sword was an odachi, a blade as long as a man is tall, and one far too heavy and unwieldy to be practically used in combat. However, Hideo's tremendous power allowed him to learn the unorthodox method of wielding such a mighty sword, and so he could harness the power of the ancestral weapon and its ancient enchantment of demon-killing.
However, times changed faster than the Kawakami could keep up with them. After their lord died an early death due to illness, his impetuous son inherited his land and his samurai. Not seeing the point in a bunch of superstitious monster-hunters, the young lord dismissed the Kawakami clan from his service, outing them all as ronin. While many of the clan's elders committed seppuku out of duty, Hideo thought that he could do better for the turmoilous nation by taking his skills abroad. He travelled the breadth of the land, hunting down dangerous monsters wherever he heard rumors of them, with each new tale bringing him to a different village and a different beast to slay. After years of journeying across Japan, a rumor of a capricious rain god alternating between blessing and terrorizing a farming village in Kansai became known to him, and he made it a point to investigate.
After tracking down and arriving in the allegedly cursed village, much to his surprise Hideo was soon able to meet the "rain god" in person. She took the form of a strange woman with long, alien features, golden eyes and hair, and a red garment of unusual cut and style. The two shared a surprisingly civil conversation, wherein Hideo learned that she had only arrived in the region some few short years ago, and had been blessing the village's harvest in exchange for occasional tributes of wild game. The rumors of human sacrifice, she had assured him, were largely unfounded and overblown. Even so, Hideo was not convinced, and stayed in the village for some weeks to observe this "god's" work. Before long, villagers began to inexplicably disappear from their homes in the dead of night. At first only one or two in a month, but soon several people disappeared per week. The village quickly became a ghost town, and Hideo was set to bring the "god" he knew to be the culprit to justice.
He challenged the god, confident in his skills and his magic blade, only to be met with protest and claims of innocence. Hideo knew that she was lying, having once secretly observed her biting the neck and drinking the blood of a live fox. Hideo gained the upper hand on her by striking the first blow with his enchanted sword, but the battle was still a terrible one. This being was unlike anything Hideo had ever heard of before, with the strength of a dozen men, the speed of a falling star, and the ability to twist her form into a variety of malevolent shapes. Hideo was only able to pierce her black heart and kill her by allowing her close enough to mortally wound him. With his blade in her heart and her fist through his stomach, Hideo was sure that this would be his final battle, but in her death-throes, the monster bit down on his shoulder, shattering his armor to do so, and then coughed a foul stream of her blood into his face and mouth. The creature then disintegrated, and Hideo lost consciousness.
He awoke, not in Yomi as he expected, but on the torn landscape where he battled the creature, merely some hours later. His mortal wound had healed, and he felt infused with strength like he had never felt before. The night was clear and welcoming to him, and he found that he now shared in the same powers that the beast he had just slain had shown. Realizing that he had been turned into whatever it was that she had been, Hideo despaired, but eventually resolved to use this newfound power to continue his crusade. Even so, his dark nature swelled within him, and his thirst for blood and battle grew in equal measures. He found more and more that he killed not for honor, but for pleasure, and would often dip into flesh-eating and blood-drinking frenzies. Before long, he had turned his blade away from monsters and toward men, desiring their lifeblood the most. As centuries wore on, a man known once as a "demon-killer" eventually simply became a "demon."
Granted a unique, immortal perspective of his homeland's unification and development, Hideo found himself disgusted by the actions of his Emperor in the nineteenth century; bending the knee to foreign powers and begging for scraps of their technology. He scoffed at the so-called Meiji Restoration, considering it to be an insult to his people and their ways that he had practiced for longer than anyone else in his country had been alive. Despite his contempt, Hideo was eventually tracked down by a servant of the Emperor, a tengu no less, and offered a place the royal court's unique group of youkai operatives, the "Amenonuhoko." Torn between his distaste of modern foreign policy and his history of warring against youkai, as well as his yearning desire to once again have a master, Hideo agonized over the decision until eventually agreeing to serve as a secret warrior for the Emperor.
The missions Hideo partook in as a member of the Amenonuhoko were pivotal in the rise of the Japanese empire. He and his fellow supernatural operatives preemptively struck against targets that the "true" Japanese military would later assault, with the intention of disabling any supernatural defenses or fellow monsters employed by the conquered nations. His participation lasted up to and including the Second World War, wherein he and the rest of the Amenonuhoko defended the Japanese isles against supernatural invasion and espionage. Despite their best efforts, Japan was still eventually defeated, with the dropping of the atomic bombs greatly disrupting the spiritual energy of the entire nation. While most other members of the Amenonuhoko committed seppuku upon their homeland's defeat, Hideo found that his innate vampiric instinct for survival kept him from taking his own life, going as far as to kill his own kaishakunin.
Taken captive, imprisoned, interrogated and tortured, nothing the Allied forces could do to Hideo could approach the pain he felt in his heart. Left a man without his home or his honor, when offered a place as a "Royal Hound," essentially indentured servitude in exchange for keeping his own life, he accepted simply out of the desire to find a reason to continue to live. And since then, he has served. Dutifully. Almost faithfully. But despite all appearances, one can only wonder at the workings of the mind of a man who has become what he has hated and lost what he has loved time and time again, and has all eternity to live this these painful memories.
Personality: Hideo is a broken man. Harsh, cynical and misanthropic, he fills his life with his work and petty pleasures to keep himself from feeling over four centuries worth of anguish. His opinions and values are twisted by bitter defeat and the sheer monstrosity brought on by his inhuman form. He can barely bring himself to care about others, as he doesn't really even care about himself. The opinions of others regarding him matter to Hideo somewhere between little to none, and as such he does not hesitate for a moment to say what he thinks at any given time. He has little patience for fools, and even less patience for the brave or optimistic, who are fools to him all the same. The only times Hideo feels truly alive are when he is in the heat of combat, pitting his life against another in a desperate struggle that he has known all of his long life. Despite the darkness in his heart and the bloodlust that tugs at his mind, Hideo still tries to keep alive the ancient code of Bushido that he had been raised on and followed (or at least tried to) for all of his many years.
Skills: Hideo can be considered the supreme soldier. Four centuries worth of combat experience, from mounted cavalry charges to jungle ambushes, have accumulated within him, and as such his skills are honed to a razor edge. An exquisite marksman, he has trained with firearms since muskets were first brought to Japan, and yet he has not let his skill with a sword slip, either. Hand-to-hand combat, explosives, archery, vehicle maintenance, horsemanship, espionage and sabotage all fall under his area of expertise. His knowledge of East Asian supernatural beings is encyclopedic, as is his practical knowledge of how to kill them. While he is unable to make use of it due to his inhuman nature, Hideo has a great understanding of onmyoudo and various other arts of mysticism.
As a vampire, Hideo is more powerful physically than any human could hope to be. His strength allows him to crush stone with his bare hands, and his speed is difficult to track with the human eye. His senses are as sharp as a supernatural predator's would need to be, able to hone in on a heartbeat or the scent of blood better than any bat or shark. Hideo's regenerative ability is truly prodigious, allowing him to recover from "mortal" wounds at terrifying speed. Hideo is also a practitioner of the vampire art of transformation, able to shape and alter his flesh, bones and blood into a variety of configurations for any number of purposes, turning him into a literal living weapon. He can also copy the form of any animal that he tastes the blood of, to include the form of specific humans. As a vampire of the mystic East, Hideo does not feed specifically on blood, but on chi, or life energy. Drinking blood is the easiest way to sustain himself, but chi can be consumed by a number of other, more difficult ways, such as one's breath. This also allows Hideo to feed on incorporeal entities or to consume a specific energy "within" another one.
Gear/Weapons: Hideo travels light, as his transformative abilities make him highly adaptable without the need for a variety of equipment. As such, he usually only carries his ancestral blade, Kokorowatari, a standard-issue assault rifle with a host of specialty rounds such as phosphorous or silver, and a few plastic explosives. His combat uniform is dark, form-fitting and covers as much skin as possible as a precaution should he ever be caught in daylight. A fairly plain black mask covers his head, without obscuring his supernatural senses. The uniform is very light and has many sections that can be torn away, allowing him greater freedom to transform himself to adapt to a situation. The only truly armored portion of the uniform is on his upper chest, as stakes to the heart tend to be quite pesky.
