Grade
Junior
Role
The Secret One
How Many Masks do they have?
One
Gender
Male.
Age
17. He has just turned 17 a few weeks ago.
Personality
Akira Hotaru is a complete workaholic who prefers to ignore the people around himself. This leads to him being quite secretive to all of his classmates - the most common rumor flying around school is that he's the son of the leader of a mafia branch. The strange rumor was most likely caused by his constant injuries from his Mask-counterpart's healing. Some claim he got them from gang wars... others say it was punishment for trying to break away from the mafia scene. When he's asked about it, he gives a shrug and walks away, making people believe it's true. It's even spread to his teachers as well - they never seem to invite his parents to any conferences. Other than the rumors about who he really is and how he gets his injuries, he stays far away from the group - during school affairs, no one seems to be able to find him.
He is unwilling to take risks, most of his goals involving complicated plans that must go exactly as he wants it to or they won't work. His skills are gained from a combination of late-night studying and arms training with his father, so he's quite unwilling to risk anything - everything he has took him years to train up to that point. Due to this, he detests the idea of gambling, but above all, he detests trusting in the idea of luck. Why he uses his mask is simple. He wants to stay out of the public view while dealing with the Masked and the Itex, so he uses his mask to hide his own identity, fearing that he'll be bothered otherwise.
Akira always speaks formally to everyone, no matter who they are. He'll speak the same way towards a lost child in the street as he would to the principal of the school, when he does speak. Even though he ignores them outwardly, he will constantly examine their every movement, and only step in when necessary. He sees his classmates as responsibilities of the Masked - so if he sees them close by to a potential issue, he'll just ignore it and walk away.
Akira doesn’t open up to those unless he’s known them for a while – the only one gifted with that honor is his dad. When he does open up, his speech becomes slightly more casual, and he’ll be lengthier with his answers as well as sometimes even starting conversations by himself.
Brief Description
Akira has long black hair that stretches to the bottom of his earlobes as well as cold, empty blue eyes. He’s commonly wearing clothes of good make and prefers black clothing. He knows that with his tall height, he’s intimidating for many of the younger students, and cultivates this with a constant stare. There is always a smile of his face, however, but it's a smile that's as empty as his eyes. Many take his coldness to mean that he's murdered someone before, but no, that's not the case. His arms and legs are always covered in neat, white bandages, but when he forgets (rarely) to change them, they become splotted with blood.
His appearance is something that he takes to heart - always making that he's presentable before heading to school, but he doesn't take the same care when it's a weekend - prefering to just throw something on and start training.
Skill(s)/Abilities
~Intimidation: He can easily manipulate people into staying far, far away from himself, giving him a lot of freedom in how he travels. When he walks through a crowd of underclassmen, there is usually a large personal bubble surrounding him. This allows him to travel through the school quickly, not needing to push through any crowds.
~Basic weapon training: Akira can use any weapon that vaguely resembles a spear. He, despite all of his practices, cannot wield a sword at all, much to his constant annoyance.
~Bandaging: Akira is quite skilled with bandaging his own injuries, mostly because he gets them so often. He can bandage others as well, but he won't put so much care into the presentation of theirs.
Likes
~Spears: They're long, they have a long reach, and they can be used to push people around. Not to mention, Akira uses this as his weapon of choice, starting from his childhood.
~Being solitary: Akira dislikes interacting with others unless he's the only one that can fix the problems, so he very frequently is seen wandering alone in the middle of the night, listening to his mp3.
~Night: Being as he can hear his own thoughts better in the middle of the night, he is constantly awake then. The moonlight calms him down and gives him a peaceful reprise in his busy world. The silver sheen it gives to things fades their bright color and Akira gets less distracted.
~Studying: Unlike most, he enjoys the pursuit of knowledge quite well, doing extra research on topics that interest him. He knows quite a bit of random topics, but he doesn't like to show off.
~Cherries: There is something about the red fruit that interests Akira. Sweet and juicy, he can be commonly seen eating a handful while he works. Calling them his brain food, he has nearly cleaned out the nearby supermarket of this gem of a fruit. During weekends, his fingers are always stained red, and his computer keyboard is permamently stained this color - leading to students believing it's blood.
Dislikes
~Swords: Whenever he tells someone he knows how to use a weapon, their minds instantly turn to swords, and more specifically, the katana. Disliking this jump to conclusions, his distaste has run off onto swords as well. Being as he can't use one, he might be quite biased against them.
~Gambling/other luck related activities: Allowing everything to go to chance is, in his opinion, the mark of a lazy person. Preferring to plan everything out before hand, he thinks that luck is unnecesary to life. He will turn his head in order to stop observing games that involve luck and gambling, and will never willingly participate.
~People who brag: People who broadcast their skills simply don't have any in his opinion. If they do brag, it means that they themselves don't believe in themselves, so with bragging, you also get his life-long irritation.
~Rumors: Something that is based off lies, and yet is seen to be truth by those who don't seem to understand, bothers him to no end. Even worse, the rumors surrounding him make it difficult to pass a day without someone asking him if his Mafia-boss of a dad did this, or that... or that he did some strange action... he doesn't understand why people would think such way.
~Loud animals: While he enjoys watching animals when they're being quiet, when they keep making loud repeated sounds, it gives him a headache.
Phobia
~Fear or Keychains: No one knows why, but the sound of a jingling keychain drives him to the wall. It is the only time where he will lose his calm and quickly head in the opposite direction of the keychain even if it's the complete opposite of the direction he has to go. Near his house, there is a shop that sells keychains, and he will never enter that street.
~Fear of Death: He doesn't want to think that his existance is only temporary and that he will one day die. This causes him to ignore all religions that have an afterlife, or mention death in anyway. It gives him nightmares, so he'll always be very careful about his own safety - staying quite far away from all possible deaths... it takes him a long time to cross the street.
History
Akira grew up as the younger of a pair of twins in an average family, with a loving dad and mom. Having no other relatives, as his parents were both only the only child, and his grandparents had died long ago, he had a tight bond with them. His mother stayed at home to take care of him while his dad opened a 'martial arts training' school. Akira spent much of his time with his identical twin brother, watching his father's students train with various techniques.
When his twin died when he was about five-years-old, Akira was given a keychain with his name on it to take his mind off of the loss of his only friend. Since then, Akira has had nightmares about the keychain being the reason behind his twin's death as it appeared in his life at about the same time. At this time, he bothered his father, asking him to allow Akira to learn to use a weapon in order to defeat what he called "The Great Lord Keychain" who was after his life. His father didn't know what to do with this strange behavior, but proceeded to teach him anyways.
His choice to use the spear came from his favorite book - about a knight in a jousting tournament. Apparently, at that time, he thought that being a knight was the easiest way to defeat the keychain in battle. While young, he took to running around his house, carrying a fake wooden horse, brandishing his spear in his excitement. Months after learning to use the spear, his father found him 'murdering' his keychain with this spear...
After this incident, his parents decided to move away into the neighborhood he lives in now, to get rid of the curious neighbors who were drawn to the scene when they heard raw yelling and a strange hammering sound. He has gotten more ordinary after this move, but he still shares a strange fear of keychains and death. It was here that he discovered his love of school, and he poured all of his time and effort into his studies and training of his spear-work. Also, he grew even tighter to his father, but his mother became an outsider to his heart. His mother is still upset about it, which causes a few arguments in his house.
It was when he was wandering about the city at night that he finally found his mask. It was lying in the shadows, glinting off the silver light of the moon. Feeling curious about the ornate object, he tried it on and became a completely different - but that is a story for another time.
Crush
Akira feels something connecting himself with the Ace. He envies her constant happiness and innocence from the darker sides of life. He finds himself observing her more often, and it takes much of his self control to stop. He's afraid of showing this to her, however, because of the chance that he'll be rejected.
Theme Song Title Here
TBA
Picture of Mask
Brief Description
A symmetrical ornate silver mask that vaguely resembles a cage. The bars are filled in with floral designs and complicated flourishes.The holes for his eyes are slightly feline in shape and the edges stretch upwards towards his forehead. In the moonlight, it glints a bright silver, but it looks dark black during the day.
Personality of the Mask
Akira becomes an insouciant, fun-loving person who takes careless to a new level. He doesn't care what happens after he does do something and takes unnecessary risks. When having a choice between healing two different people, he uses "Eenie, Meenie, Minee, Moe" to choose the lucky person, but it's always the Itex unless he gets the choice to heal the Ace. When getting complained to about his partiality, he will blame it on the loser's luck... which is true in a way.
His inward disdain for others comes out in this state, mocking, joking words always ready on his tongue. He does not respect authority at all, and will purposely go out of his way to mistreat figures of authority - sometimes treating the Twisted Emperor horribly. His favorite insult seems to be calling others 'boring'. Others he will think of as useless, which explains why he is partial towards the Itex. Those who don't interest him (or provide him with cherries) seem to be on the negative side of his usefulness spectrum.
He is constantly on the search for something to do that will catch his interest, sometimes doing multiple things at a single time. His enjoyment of music fades somewhat and he'll spend his time watching people. He finds it amusing to catch people off their guard, using his second skill mostly to pop up in strange situations - on the airplane, during a major battle, etc.
When someone confronts him physically, he will disappear into that person's shadow and only appear until the mask has been taken off. When he's hidden away, he will sometimes chuckle to himself when something interesting happens, causing some confusion among people nearby.
Abilities
~Added agility and speed: Akira is given the ability to run faster and do things that used to be impossible for himself before. He can run faster and for longer periods of time while also being able to dodge projectiles up to a certain extent. This also affects his spear-work, making it more complicated and faster as well.
~Concentration: On a more mental note, he loses his constant headaches, and is able to stick to a task for a longer period, as long as it interests him for the first time around. Things are done faster, while he himself is able to take the art of multitasking to new levels.
~Heightened taste: Akira is able to taste food, bringing his enjoyment of cherries to new levels. This, however, leaves him vulnerable to strange tastes in the air, sometimes fainting upon trying strong flavored food - like salmon.
~Quicker probability calculations: Upon seeing something happen, he can quickly calculate the probability of something occuring, which comes from his mask's ability to use gambles to his own advantage.
Transformation
To summon his mask: "When you're bored..."
To transform into his other self: "Gamble on my luck"
Brief Description of Magical Form
Akira's black hair turns a dusty blond while his eyes re-animate himself, turning a bright gold. During this state, he cares less about his appearance, frequently running around with wind-blown hair and messy clothes. He becomes partial to a dark green, and wears a black scarf, twisted eccentrically over his clothes.
Magical Form Abilities
Get better already and stop wasting my time (Minor) – A basic healing skill that, nonetheless, uses up a lot of energy to use. Akira takes a single injury from someone else, nothing life threatening of course, and transfers it to himself. The existence of the injury seemingly disappears, but really, it only shows up when he takes off his mask.
You’re boring me… see you later then! (Minor) – Akira hides in the person he’s mocking’s shadow, disappearing from view. He is forced to remain in the area of the person's shadow, but being invisible to all, until he enunciates the words, “Ah, now you’re being interesting!” to remove himself from the shadow and return to public view. This can be used for at most thirty minutes at a time or he’ll be forced out of the shadow. After doing so, he usually has grey tints on his limbs, and they slowly head towards his heart the more he uses this. It resets whenever he takes off his mask, however.
Haha! I bet you’re surprised! (Minor) – Akira creates a small cyclone of star-shaped glowing objects that circle around him. After saying this, he picks out two cards from the deck that appears in his hands at this point. The numbers on these cards (Ace = 20 and all face cards = 10) determine the amount of stars that he can control to leave the cyclone. These stars can cause minimal damage when they explode in someone’s face and mostly serve as a distraction.
No, no, this won’t do (Major) – After Akira gains an injury, not from healing, he can use this skill to transfer the injury to his opponent. Due to the fact that he needs to be injured before being able to use this skill, he uses it rarely, but he finds it funny to see the opponent’s face when he does it. However, he uses this skill with a lot of annoyance, an injury makes him tire more easily and it distracts him from the fun. It takes a lot of energy to do this however, so he usually uses it to transfer larger wounds to the opponent. Anything life threatening will end up killing him, however, so he has to be careful when he uses it... but most of the time he isn’t, so this skill is both a curse and a blessing.
Weapons they have when they have transformed
A large thick tome of a book that he summons when he needs it, as it is much too heavy to carry around all of the time. Its cover is a dark brown, but it has a large gold clasp and peeling gold letters that read "The Art of Escaping Boredom." When necessary, and when he's provoked, he'll end up throwing the book at you - not quite an enjoyable experience. He will also carry around his spear, but it is far more intricate, covered in similar designs on that of his mask. He uses this mostly to defend himself, however, as he doesn't see a point to extend himself into attacking.
Mask Theme Song/Theme Song of their Magical Form
TBD