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[subject002]

OOC: Player Name: Miru. Age: 20+. Contact: miruvix[@]gmail.com | databomb IC: Name: Tanaka Kouji. Canon: Ajin. Canon Point: Right after the Forge Security arc. (Post chapter 43.) Age: Late 20's to early 30's, assumed 29. Spoken language(s): Japanese. Username: tk To the Mods: No specific needs! History: » Though he does have a rudimentary wiki page, it's rather sparse on the history front so I'll do a more detailed write-up here. » Some 17 years ago, ajin (demi-humans) are discovered in Africa. A group of soldiers who'd been nicknamed "God's army" were captured by American soldiers, and discovered to be functionally immortal -- though killable like regular humans, they never stayed dead, and came back to life within moments. Efforts are made at first to keep this secret, but such a huge matter is impossible to keep fully under wraps. It's not long until everyone knows about ajin: immortal, non-human creatures who don't even know they're inhuman until they've died once and come back to life. » And there's some debate about them, of course. Are ajin dangerous. Are they even human. What should be done about them? Each country reaches its own conclusion about how to treat ajin, and the hubbub soon subsides. Ajin become a novelty, just a thing that exists in the world. Only a few dozen ajin have been officially discovered worldwide, so most people never even encounter one in real life. » Meanwhile, in Japan, Tanaka Kouji is born a regular child to a regular couple on a farm out in the countryside. He's raised in an entirely unremarkable manner. Completely average in every way, he grows up, goes to school, ages a bit, wonders what to do with his life. He's in his late teens, almost a young adult when he's killed in an accident. And then comes back to life a few minutes later. » Still wearing his bloodied shirt, he stumbles back home to tell his parents, 'I think I'm an ajin.' And they have no idea what to do about it. Only one other ajin's been discovered in Japan before, and who knows what happened to that one. But isn't it kind of amazing that Kouji is an ajin? Should he be reported to the government? A hospital? Maybe he'll be treated well! An ajin is incredibly rare and unusual, after all. Maybe he'll be a national treasure! » Unfortunately, people must have seen Tanaka reviving. There's soon a media mob outside his door eager to speak to him. And although Tanaka and his parents, freaked out by this sudden attention, go on the run, it's not enough. Tanaka's name is repeated over and over on the radio, his face plastered on TV, and soon TV stations begin offering rewards for the capture of Tanaka Kouji, Japan's second discovered ajin. » Soon afterward, Tanaka is discovered and taken into custody by the Ajin Control Committee of the National Ministory of Health, Labor and Welfare. Supposedly, they'll isolate him to protect his identity and keep him safe. Kind of like a witness protection program. Supposedly. » In actuality, Tanaka spends the next decade suffering and dying over, and over, and over again. The government is eager to figure out exactly how an ajin works, and subject him to a battery of tests -- how much pain does he feel, what does it take to kill him, how much electricity can he take, what does he look like when reviving after being smashed flat, etc. And once they're satisfied, they start loaning him out to various companies as a labrat. Car companies to use him as a crash test dummy. Drug companies to test their dangerous new drugs on him for side effects. Arms companies to see how well an actual human fares in their new, ultra-thin bulletproof vests. So on and so forth. » Tanaka spends most of those years in a haze. But not always. A few times, he pleads for help, but nobody ever obliges. After all, ajin aren't human, so why should anyone care about an ajin's suffering? So instead Tanaka starts growing familiar with faces. The repeat offenders, people who've watched him die repeatedly. And mostly, he just dies. » Then one day, without warning, he's rescued. The bandages constantly wound around him to keep him immobile and docile are undone, and he finds himself staring at a kind-looking older man in a cap, who introduces himself as Satou. A fellow ajin. » Satou whisks Tanaka away from the nightmare torture facility, keeps him safe, helps him recover. It takes a while, but Tanaka remembers how to function as a living being again. And while he's incredibly grateful to be given this second chance at life, he's also angry. After ten years of being tortured, of course he's angry. And Satou encourages this anger, gently cultivates it. Suggests to him, why don't we do something about this anger? Wouldn't you like to see this country be kinder to ajin? Wouldn't you like to help me fight this country? » So Tanaka ends up serving as Satou's right-hand man in a long, complicated, and very bloody battle against the Japanese government. Satou claims that this is a fight for ajin rights, to force the government to treat ajin like human beings. And while Tanaka believes wholeheartedly in this mission, Satou is ... more ambiguous. Not that Tanaka realizes this. He's too indebted to this man, too blinded by gratitude and the aftereffects of trauma to think about things rationally. » It starts with recruitment. Satou publicly announces his willingness to stand up for ajin rights, and ends up recruiting a few comrades: fellow ajin who aren't afraid of bloodshed. A few ajin show up trying to stop him, of course. But they're ... taken care of. Even if one of these do-gooders tells Tanaka that violence is not the way to go lest he wants to turn the entire country against ajin, Tanaka doesn't listen. He believes what he's doing is right. » Then, a very public declaration of war. Satou posts a video on the internet stating that on Wednesday, at exactly 3pm, he'll blow up the headquarts of Grant Pharmaceuticals, a company that's been associated with performing inhumane tests on ajin. » And by golly, he does it. By hijacking an airplane and driving it straight into the building. Satou tops off this stunt by going head-to-head with the Japanese Metropolitan Police Department's Special Assault Team when they try to capture him. He wins, too. With the help of Tanaka and his other ajin allies, Satou slaughters the entirety of the SAT and walks away with a smile on his face. Satou, Tanaka, and their companions are responsible for over 700 deaths that day. » Satou keeps going. The attack on Grant Pharmaceutical was just the "first wave." The "second wave" will consist of eleven assassinations. Eleven names are publicly revealed. Eleven people that Tanaka named for being involved in ajin experimentation. Eleven people will die. Tanaka is fine with this. It sounds right. » Things go swimmingly at first. But then Satou -- who's really just fighting for fun, tbh -- starts getting bored. Starts leaving more and more work to Tanaka and the other ajin. Though Tanaka is uneasy about Satou's sudden lack of enthusiasm, his desire to right the country remains strong, so he does what he needs to. Breaks into houses, murders people, crosses names off a list. About halfway through the list are the names Keiichi Kai and Li Naomi. The president of Forge Security and his secretary. Tanaka and his companions head off to kill these two very-well-guarded people, too. » Things don't go quite as planned. Tanaka and his companions are foiled at first, and end up captured by a special anti-ajin team. Satou swoops in to rescue them and finish the job, mostly. The mission ends with Keiichi Kai's death, as planned. » Li Naomi, however, doesn't die. Because when Tanaka faced her, held his gun up to shoot her, she apologized. It was the first time anyone had ever apologized for hurting him, and he hesitated. That moment of hesitation resulted in his capture, but that didn't even matter. Once freed by Satou, Tanaka defended Li and requested that she be taken off the list. He forgave this woman who had watched him die over and over, because she, at least, regretted what she'd done. Satou, seemingly candid about the whole affair, agrees to let Li Naomi live, but fractures have begin to form in his relationship with Tanaka. » Tanaka rests up after the Forge Security incident with a lot to think about. He's starting to doubt whether Satou's plan is truly the right way to go about things, whether this war against Japan will truly be for ajin rights, whether things will go well for ajin ... and suddenly snaps awake, standing, coughing on dust and being shoved towards a door. Personality: Tanaka has Seen Some Shit! (Been through it, too.) So first impressions would paint him as a somewhat unpleasant dude. These first impressions would not be totally incorrect. Tanaka usually comes across as a rather surly guy. His default expression is something of a wary frown, brow furrowed and lips pursed thin, usually with his arms crossed or hands shoved in his pockets. He's clearly rather guarded when talking to people and isn't the type to joke around or be friendly; while he won't shut down people who're having fun, he won't join in on the festivities easily, either. Though not actively antagonistic, he's slow to befriend people and isn't very good at displaying any warmth towards others, even if he considers them allies. And even when he does get to know people, Tanaka isn't exactly the easiest guy to get along with. As a whole, he's kind of ... insecure, actually. He seems to have slight control-freak tendencies, as he gets exasperated when things go awry, and likes to check and double-check that things are going the way he expects them to. He also tends to snap back and get a little defensive when people criticize him (though he will ultimately abide by their advice if they're better than him), and gets aggravated when people don't act as agreed or planned. These flaws might be a little mitigated by the fact that he's pretty hardworking and dedicated when he puts his mind to a task. He's not easily distracted once he has a plan in mind, sticking to his guns and trying to see things through to the end. Despite his tendency to bristle at people who don't act as agreed-upon, on his own, he's able to improvise to some degree when carrying out plans, and he also seems pretty composed most of the time. After all the shit he's been through, he doesn't panic easily and manages to keep a fairly level head; even when things catch him by surprise, he's more likely to respond with frustrated determination than he is to fumble. He's also decently cooperative when push comes to shove. He might not warm up to people easily, but he does respect people who he realizes are better than him, and whose goals align with his; as long as people are decent to him, he'll be perfectly decent back. It's just that people who fall in that category are few and far between. Then again, is it any real surprise that he's so wary about people? After a decade of getting killed in every way imaginable by dozens and dozens of people who never considered him a person, Tanaka harbors a pretty intense distrust towards humanity as a whole. It should also be noted that he was also technically a fugitive even before he became publicly known as a terrorist -- it's been a very, very long time since Tanaka's been in a position to trust other people, and that translates into a very distant approach towards people. Not to mention, Tanaka is of the opinion that some people just have to die. Specifically, the people who made him suffer. Sympathetic cause or not, Tanaka is a murderer who's killed people in cold blood, and has also contributed towards the deaths of hundreds of innocents. He is not a good person. But that said, it would also be hard to call Tanaka a completely bad person. As much as he's contributed towards numerous deaths, Tanaka seems to take a rather grudging, resigned stance towards violence as a whole. Perhaps with the exception of the eleven specific assassination victims he named and shows no real remorse towards killing, he never actively wishes for the deaths of others. Unlike his ajin teammates, who seem pretty thrilled to basically be living out an FPS, Tanaka dislikes handling guns, is kind of horrified at the sight of Satou dive-bombing a plane into the Grant Pharmaceuticals building, and gets pretty angry when people outside of the assassination list are killed needlessly. Killing, for him, is just a means to an end, and that end is ajin rights. While he does distrust humanity, he doesn't actively loathe it, and he definitely wants to save lives when possible. During the Grant Pharmaceuticals incident, he warns a group of young girls to stay away from the area of impending disaster and actively places himself against Satou, his (perceived) staunchest ally, to request that Li Naomi be spared. She apologized, showed regret, and redeemed herself in his eyes, after all, and he no longer wanted her dead despite her contribution to his long misery. Also notable is the fact that, during the chaos of the Forge Security incident, he goes out of his way to keep an undercover ajin working for the opposite side from being publicly outed as an ajin, potentially saving her from the same ten years of torture he suffered through. Because, despite his somewhat prickly attitude and gruff demeanor, Tanaka was at one point a regular guy who wanted to live a normal life. Even if he spent a third of his life literally getting smashed to mincemeat, he also did spend his childhood in the company of kind parents and friendly neighbors. Tanaka used to be a good person (or at least, an average person), and that aspect of him hasn't vanished. It's just been smothered under a decade's worth of anger. With a little prodding, it becomes pretty evident that he's still pretty sympathetic towards other people, and is just doing what he sincerely believes is for the best. Honestly, Tanaka's kind of a mess. A guy who got dumped into a horrific situation, and was unfortunately rescued by a man all too happy to fan the flames of his anger into wide-scale violence. After a really tumultuous run as a terrorist, he's starting to come to the realization that maaaaaaybe killing a bunch of people wasn't the best idea? But that doesn't mean he's fully come around to trusting people, either. Placed in a high-stress situation, he's the type to want to do the right thing, but whether he'll actually get to carry that out is ... up for debate. Who knows, maybe a stay in Reims will actually be good for him. Abilities/Skills: » IMMORTALITY | As is the case with all ajin, Tanaka is functionally immortal. (Ajin do age, however, so presumably the only way an ajin can permanently die is from old age.) While he isn't any more resilient or durable than a regular human being, if he's killed, he will always come back to life. That said, there's a specific ruleset with regards to an ajin's immortality. - Any injuries or illnesses the ajin suffered from will 'reset' upon revival. This includes replenishing all lacking substances (such as in the case of bleeding out, dehydration, or starvation) or missing parts. - An ajin's healing factor only activates upon death. An ajin that's been injured or incapacitated will remain in that state until they die. This is a key point, as ajin also cannot simply will themselves dead. As such, the easiest ways to incapacitate an ajin are to render them unconscious (through physical injury, oxygen deprivation, drugs, etc.) or immobilize them (whether by restraints or injury). - When reviving, any physical parts that were removed (flesh, organs, limbs, including the head) will slide back into place if within a roughly ten meter range. If the missing parts are further away, the body will simply regenerate what is missing. Any pieces removed from an ajin will be the same as a regular human's part (so ajin can donate organs endlessly, for example). - If an ajin has been completely divided into pieces, only the largest piece will regenerate into a whole person, and the remaining pieces will stay dead like normal human bits. - When an ajin's body recreates itself, it will eliminate any obstacles in the way. For example, a body that has been filled with bullets will revive with no bullets left inside. If an ajin is decapitated, then a board is placed between the neck and the head, a hole will be punctured through the board in the process of the body recreating the neck. - An ajin still feels pain and stress when injured or dying. However, the more an ajin suffers through death or injury, the more they grow accustomed to it. As a result of some ten-ish years of torture and death, Tanaka has ludicrously high pain tolerance and can very casually kill himself to reset. - The more an ajin dies, the more quickly they revive. Tanaka revives upon death within seconds. - When an ajin revives after death, a strange, black substance can be seen swirling around their body. The substance, called IBM (invisible black matter) looks a bit like floating ash, and dissipates quickly. » BLACK GHOST | Ajin, with a little practice, are able to project a 'black ghost' made of IBM; to those knowledgeable about ajin, the ghosts themselves are often referred to as IBMs. IBMs generally look like lean, muscular humanoids completely wrapped up in black bandages, though there are some variations in musculature, head shape, hand shape, etc. Tanaka's IBM is a lean humanoid with a jagged, toothy mouth that goes around the entirety of its skull, and hands resembling elongated bird talons. Thanks to its talons, it's able to rip people's heads or limbs off, or scale the sides of buildings. The IBMs are usually only visible to other ajin, and only be seen by regular people when displaying bloodlust. IBMs can speak (either saying what its ajin wants it to say, or mumbling whatever the ajin might subconsciously be thinking), and this can only be heard by other ajin. That said, they're still physical objects, and as such, people can bump into them, and they can interact freely with their surroundings. IBMs are shown to be a little stronger and quicker than regular humans due to their lack of inhibition, with Tanaka's IBM able to fling people around in a rage. These IBMs are largely non-autonomous, and move upon orders given by the ajin. An ajin can either link their consciousness to the black ghost, seeing what they see and controlling them directly, or give the black ghost orders to follow. Control can be given from a couple dozen meters away, but tends to go poorly if there's disturbance in the air, such as rain. Black ghosts show varying degrees of individuality; Tanaka's doesn't seem to have much of a mind of its own, mostly following orders without issue. These black ghosts can be summoned about once or twice a day, usually for about five to ten minutes at a time. Black ghosts can canonically only be eliminated by another black ghost, via blunt force trauma. (All that said, I'll be assuming in-game that IBMs count as a sort of supernatural phenomenon, and can be affected by any other supernatural phenomenon. Anyone with a supernatural ability will be able to see and hear them, and they can be fought off with any other supernatural ability. I can go more into detail on the science mumbo-jumbo behind why IBM are the way they are, but this abilities section is already obscenely long so I'm going to assume those details can be handwaved unless requested otherwise!) In very rare cases, an ajin can cause a 'flood' phenomenon. When an ajin is killed while suffering from an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime level of heightened emotion, they can cause an enormous outpouring of IBM particles, resulting in the summoning of many IBMs at the same time, who will then act upon that emotion. » SCREAM | An ajin's scream will briefly paralyze the people around them; supposedly, it triggers a person's reptilian desire to stay still and play dead when faced with a great danger. However, this can be easily nullified with earplugs. Furthermore, people who are familiar with the ajin, or aren't aware that they're an ajin, seem less affected by the scream. (Presumably this will be neutralized in-game, but I figured I might as well list it just in case.) » REGULAR NORMIE STUFF | All that complicated ajin nonsense aside, Tanaka seems to have trained a lot under Satou's guidance, and is now a semi-competent soldier-type! He knows how to handle a variety of guns (he's seen using an M1911 handgun, a pump-action shotgun, and a tranquilizer gun), and though he doesn't particularly like or feel at ease with any of them, his aim is adequate. He doesn't have any real training in hand-to-hand combat, but he's naturally pretty fit, with long reach and some bulk. He's not very good with technology on his own, but can understand most stuff if it's explained to him and is good at following instructions. Samples: » LOG SAMPLE | 'Be quiet,' huh. It's not quite to his tastes, to be honest. But he's pretty used to being stuck in situations not to his taste. Tanaka scowls as he trudges along the sandy path but silently repeats to himself to drill it into his head -- 'be quiet, be quiet, be quiet.' Even as he hammers that mantra into his head, the first thing he does is to put some distance between himself and anyone else nearby. He doesn't go too far, wary that something might happen and he'll be slow to realize if he completely isolates himself. But just enough that he can think more clearly, really absorb his surroundings. And after that ... after that, it's hard to be sure of what to do. Everything here is so unfamiliar that it's making frustration bubble in his gut, and Tanaka clenches a fist as he tries to calm himself. And ultimately, he thinks, what would Satou tell him to do in a situation like this? Not 'what would Satou do.' Because that doesn't feel like the correct option any more -- not that he and Satou ever worked on the same wavelengths when it came to dealing with things, but it feels incorrect on a deeper level, now. But 'what would Satou tell him to do.' ... probably to get a good grasp on the surroundings. A clench of the jaw and a huffing exhale before Tanaka casts about, looking for high ground. There, that building should be fine. Then he releases his IBM -- particles of black ash swirling together before him to form that eerie, lanky shadow that goes hurtling down the street. Ten minutes isn't an awful lot of time to scout around, and he'd like to keep another use of his ghost on reserve in case something happens. So he has to move quickly. Whatever happens here, he's not planning on letting himself fall victim. He's going to take control of the situation. » NETWORK SAMPLE | [ he ... is not completely at ease with this device. tanaka's never liked smartphones much. phones were still boxy and huge when he was captured, and holding these sorts of flimsy devices, he feels a bit like he might snap them in half by accident. still, it's a tool he has, so he'll use it. ] Username: tk If anyone has a knife they're willing to give up, I'd like to trade for it. A week's worth of my fresh food rations in exchange. [ because technically, he's fine without any food at all, as long as he can get his hands on something to help him 'reset'. ]