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matou Kotone

"Stupidity, blasphemy, theories, it's all the same. What matters is the person behind it"

0 · 384 views · located in Japan: Sengoku Era

a character in “Ways of The Samurai: Revenge”, as played by Robbhus

Description

Matou Kotone
Promises are for those without trust, pride is for those justifying their own murder, and death is for the one that never gets ready for their final moment



Image
Age
Twenty-seven

Appearance
[justify]Kotone shines of determination, sheer willpower and strength. While her body shows very little muscles on the outside, she is surprisingly strong for her thin build, a tool she has used since pretty much the beginning of time. She stands a mere 5'5 foot tall, though for a woman, that is quite decent. And besides, she makes up for the low height with her ego and charisma when standing up towards men.

While adoring long hair, it really doesn't work for her, so Kotone keeps it cut down till it reaches just past her ears. On that note, her hair has a chocolate brown color, just like her eyes. She has an overall friendly and calm face, it is easily possible to guess that she's confident in herself and holds no doubt when doing anything.

Clothes-vise, it depends a lot on the occasion. When she has no reason to sneak around, doing normal ninja stuff that should have been a constant, she love to dress up in strong colored clothing that is easily noticed. As well as that, she would normally bring the twin pair of bigger blades, instead of a more tactical set of smaller ones, which would of course be easier to hide. All of her blades are based upon kunai knives, though the bigger pair has taken a far step away from the classic design, having a more western feel to them.


Likes
  • Fighting - She has strong beliefs against the male dominated society, especially when it comes to fighting, and believes that it is pure blasphemy that a woman shouldn't be able to fight.
  • Attention - Not wanting to admit it, she is a fair bit of an attention whore, she loves being looked at, and loves to hear people talk about her.
  • Herself - Yeah, her ego probably needs a bit of work, seeing that it is currently towering higher than Mt. Fuji at the moment...
  • Conversations - While she is supposed to be a ninja or something in that genre, she generally enjoys a good conversation, regardless of the turnout.
Dislikes
  • Arrogance - Kotone really dislikes arrogant people, kind of weird seeing that she is about as arrogant and cocky as one can get, though the point is that she is of the type of person that has to be the best to feel good, which is why arrogance is not something she appreciate much.
  • Hard labor - Definitely not her type of work, she can do it, but in the end, she prefers to be the one carrying the grains of rice falling out of the bag rather than the bag itself. If someone else can do the hard work for her, she would definitely not mind it.
  • Sexism - Yeah, she's a feminist, to some degree at the very least. She thinks strongly against a woman being treated as something fragile that has to be protected, that they are unable to stand on their own legs without support.
  • Chivalry - It shouldn't matter how prideful a battle is, there is one winner and one loser, in the end, there is only one going out with a crown anyways, so why take the time to be polite to a future loser?

Personality
Kotone's personality is quite the peculiar thing to think of. When met in most common situations, she is pretty much the opposite of what one would expect of a ninja. She's noisy, cocky, arrogant, and demanding to be around. She enjoys to be the center of attention almost as much as she likes to win. However, the twin side of her that is hardly ever seen as she hates it herself, the self-confident bitchy one that is, would be a far more silent, professional, restrained side of her. While her combat capabilities are about the same, she doesn't shine of the same confidence, nor of the same anything really, she becomes pretty much like a polar opposite version of herself. She wouldn't say a single word if she wouldn't have to.

Another thing that is worth noting about her more... Apparent side, would be that she despises being talked down to. She believes that a female shows just as good combat potential as a male does if she actually receives any training, though with such a man dominated society,She isn't exactly a person people would listen to until they found themselves laying on the ground after a half-a-minute fist fight with him not getting in a single hit.

Relationships
Morimoto Reiko - Kotone's mother, a cheerful woman caring for the people around her, with a strong and decisive mind that would easily put the people around her over herself, especially her children. Not married, but lives together with her new husband, not daring to marry him in fear of dishonoring his name.
Kazuki Kouchi - Reikos' oldest son, two years younger than his older sister. He still lives with their mother, helping to bring in food by working in the stall of a local fisherman while he is out. Liked his sister and miss her, sure she'll come back at some point, despite starting to have his doubts.
Kazuki Tatsuji - Reikos' youngest son, being five years younger than his sister and three years younger than his brother. Currently unemployed, though he helps out in the local rice fields if more people are needed. Has never had much of a relationship with his sister.


Equipment
Twin Kunai
Her primary weapon when actually have to stay silent and in the background, Kotone's main weapon would be a pair of kunai, both razor sharp and special made to sport a singular hole in the middle instead of at the end of the hilt, to make them fit better to her own combat style, which relies heavily on the ability to flip on the blade, which the hole helps a lot with.

Ritualistic Twin Kunai
The second pair of weapons Kotone use regularly. The base of the blade is made like any other kunai blade, however, moving up from there, the blade is a lot more bowed, has an a lot more detailed finish. Another thing worth noting is that the blade has one circular hole near the shaft of it, made to prevent blades from sliding along the blade and down to the users hand.

Strengths
Kotone is a well experienced ninja and knows well how to easily kill people, remain unseen, or to blend in. She has experience in using a wide array of weapons, though she prefer the kunai to an extent. She specializes in fighting opponents in heavy armor, using her much higher speed to easily take down the opponent. Besides this, she has an unnaturally agile body, allowing her to jump very high, easily lean far to the sides, do splits, and so on.

Weaknesses
While her speed might be an big advantage, it naturally means that she can wear a minimal amount of armor to keep her mobility on top. Wearing a lot of armor would might increase her defensive abilities, it would still make her unable to dodge incoming attacks and so on. Besides this, her weapons are of short length, meaning that she need to get close to the target to attack. Besides this, her arrogant and self-centered personality makes her quite ruthless and it could easily put her own life in danger just for the sake of proving herself better than the opponent.

Home
At the moment, she's a wanderer. She moves between a couple of inns every once in a while, though for the most, she prefers to stay away from them. A tree serves her just fine and she finds it more comfortable regardless.

ImageHistory
Born as the unwanted first daughter out of three siblings her widdowed mother eventually had, Kotone's start of life was fairly smooth. Her mother was an well-experienced dancer, working as a waitress on the side for some extra money, something the family needed, especially after Kotone's two years younger brother came to life.

When the young girl passed five years of age, her mother decided to start teaching her the one art she actually knew. It was awkward, hard, and undoubtedly challening for the short girl to try to replicate the long and silk-smooth movements of the older, taller and by far more experienced mother. However, after several weeks of hard work, she started improving.

Two years later, when she was seven, she started to actually show some real talent. She had been awarded with a very flexible body from her mother and strong yet thin muscles from her father, undoubtedly something every dancer would desire. Her mother were proud of her, and she was starting to enjoy the dancing a lot.

However, the joy would naturally not last forever. A couple years later, with her being almost at the level of her mother, something happened that made her realize how society worked to say the least. While walking home with some food her mother had requested to go and purchase, she could hear something happening between two houses. She could hear a woman screaming, it seemed out of place, her mother told her to never do anything dragging attention. So with her attention naturally being caught, she walked closer, seeing a young woman, not more than maximum 18, getting strangled up towards a wall.

While she knew that men did that all the time to one another, she had never seen it happen towards a woman, and it made her notice the notable difference in strength. The woman did not by far have the strength to make the man loosen his grip, so it didn't take long before she died of suffocation. Not honorable, not notable, just straight out murder. Everything her mother had told her about her father sounded like a long thought-through lie. He couldn't be honorable, he couldn't have died in battle protecting what was good, he wasn't some perfect person who would never do anything wrong. He was just a murderer. Just like the man she had seen. The difference was of course, that his father would have fought towards someone with a whole different premise than what the woman there had. Her father would be prepared, trained, and ready to sacrifice his life. The woman she had seen had probably been doing some everyday thing, for then to be pushed up to the wall and strangled by a drunk warrior.

It took barely a second for her to realize that if she entered the alley, she would probably be killed as well. She had learned from her mother that drunk people were not to mess with, the outcome could be quite unwanted. She barely managed to walk away however, terrified. She realized while walking home that the woman she had seen could might as well have been her mother, or herself for that sake. It made her feel sick, but then again, what was there to do about it? It wasn't supposed to be her job to make sure things like that didn't happen, nor was she socially and culturally allowed to, it would disgrace the family name further, after her mother decided to find a new husband, the name she carried from her dead father held less honor than it had after he died.

A couple more years passed, and Kotone's view on the world around her became darker and darker. It felt like incidents like the first one just kept popping up, more frequently than ever. Time after time, someone were killed. And the pattern was clear as well, the majority of the incidents that happened were women killed by men. She had never seen a woman kill another woman, nor did it happen especially often that she'd see a man kill another man out of nowhere. The men had their names to worry about, while the women hardly had any reason to kill one another. Though then again, was there any true reasoning to take another persons' life anyways? In the end, murder was murder, there was no justifying it, in the end, one person won and another one lost, paying his or her life as the stake.

It was of course only a question of time before she found herself in a situation she wished she'd never end up in. One of the men in the village had mistaken her for a prostitute simply because her kimono was hanging a bit loosely due to being too big for her. It was a question of economy, not wish, but the man refused to listen. She managed to hold him away for a while, but eventually, he had her cornered. No-one to save her, only her and a man at least a foot taller than her, with enough muscles to crush her bones if he grabbed around her.

He had a knife in his belt though. Not a big, killing knife. Just a small, pointy knife used for skinning animals or something in those lines. It could be for cutting up fish for all she knew. It didn't matter however, she had no intentions of having her womanhood taken by a complete stranger due to a misunderstanding. She had managed to lean out for it while he was concentrated on making her look him in the eyes, and it didn't take long before the knife was driven through his neck, in on one side, pushed till there was no more blade. Then again. And again. Three times at all, two in the neck, then one in the chest. She could feel the silk she wore getting bloody, she could feel the extra weight. Disgusted both by her own actions and by the blood itself, she ended up running away from the small city. It became very spontaneous, but she ended up deciding to run away. Running away from her problems. The most cowardly, unsolving solution there was, yet, it was so bloody tempting she fell for the idea her own mind had created.

While travelling to the next city by foot, she started thinking about what she had done. It made her feel sick of herself, wanting to kill herself for a while, though, she managed to convince herself it had been for the greater good. If not herself, then who would have done it? It wasn't honorable at all, it had been dirty play, she had distracted him while getting ready to stab him, not giving him a chance to even prepare for the assault. However, it had been effective, undoubtedly. She hadn't been hurt other than mentally, so in the end, it had been an successful counterattack.

When reaching the next town, she had made up her mind. She wanted to be a warrior as well. She had heard stories of female warriors, some more interesting than others. Yet, her goal would probably never be reached. She had no-one willing to train her, no father anymore, and who would agree to training a physically unable female to become strong? It was like trying to plant something where the ground wasn't fertile enough, nothing healthy would grow out of it. Yet, she didn't give up, she begged every armored figure she met, but still, she was weak, short, and had nothing to offer in return. A lousy offer with no money to make up for it. She felt like some nasty street rat as she stole food to stay alive, despite being just enough to live on, leaving her hungry for the most part, though the guilt was worse, the guilt of stealing what was to be the money that person would live on, stolen by her for nothing in return. Her self confidence started to drain slowly.

Yet, she never had the time to truly reach the pit of despair. She got in contact with a Shinobi out of pure coincidence as she saw him talk to different store owners, looking for someone. Eventually, she came to her. She knew the person he was looking for. It was a friend of hers. Well, friend would be an exaggeration, but she knew him, that was the most central bit. He was kind, had never hurt anyone as far as she had seen. However, it was probably her biggest chance. She ended up making a deal with him. The location of the man in exchange of her training, at least for a while, so she could prove the potential she was sure she had.

And it worked out. Her friend was killed in exchange of her own training. A dreadful sacrifice, but it had to be done. Survival of the fittest. And she managed to prove herself. Despite being hungry, tired, and not having worked out for a long while, she still managed to save herself a spot as an apprentice.

During the next four years, she followed the Shinobi, did tasks for him if she was asked for it, dirtying her own hands, balancing her unstable mind with a self-created ego, adding a counterweight to the sad and depressing thoughts. It was her way of escaping from all the terrible things she did over the years, all the terrible acts the mightier samurai families didn't want on their names, so they dropped it over on someone without names, anonymous to the world. Everything from burning down whole city-parts just because a single man in the region had slept with his wife, to poisoning water to kill a single victim. All sorts of extreme wishes, though she wasn't in a position to object. The warrior of justice or whatever you wanted to call it she once dreamed of being was long gone, all she was now, was some pathetic rat lurking in the shadows, justifying her own acts as mere objectives, telling herself time after time that she would make up for it at some point, but till then, she would have to keep on running.

After her apprenticeship was over, she had already stepped up to being worthy of the title of Kunoichi. Female ninja had a lot of advantages males didn't have, despite also being vice versa. Any dreams of the past were nothing but a mere joke. All she was now was someone wondering how to make up for all the terrible things she had done, running away from it till she found the solution.

Eventually, she got in contact with Yousuke. The work was, despite not being the honor of a samurai, did at the very least not lead to bloodshed that had never been needed at all, that easily could have been avoided. She didn't care for honor anyways, but the blood that could be spared deserved to be spared. Her own mental state had already been the stake she put up when she entered the line of work, and she had lost, losing it, replacing it with a fake one crafted by herself solemnly to be able to withstand her own presence.

So begins...

matou Kotone's Story

Characters Present

Character Portrait: matou Kotone Character Portrait: Kurosawa Tsubaki Character Portrait: Warlord Yousuke
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#, as written by Ion


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Another day, another pointless exercise in the futility of struggle. And yet here she was, prepared to struggle all the same. She blamed him, and his seemingly perennial ability to convince her of things she knew to be false. But believe him she did, and she knew without having to ask that he would fight his fate, would fight this damnable man that held her in chains, tooth and claw… though perhaps not literally. That option was closed to her for the moment, and everyone involved was well aware of this. Her power was to be exercised at his leisure, and in the meantime, she was reduced to what this frail human-shape could do for her.

It was nothing, she was nothing, compared to what she could be in the full glory of her existence, and this rankled her. The warlord knew that too, and she suspected it amused him.

Tsubaki’s nostrils flared just slightly, the only sign of her discomfort, and a muscle in her jaw ticked. The shinobi that had taken her in, so long ago now, had advocated daily meditations as a way to begin one’s tasks with a clear mind and a solid foundation, but she had ever preferred skating by on the agility of her wit and adaptability. She was too fluid to be solid, and that was just her nature. So she abandoned the effort to be other than she was, and stood instead, crossing to the armoire standing in the corner of her room. The simple sleeping yukata she wore slid to the ground in a whisper of blue silk, and instead, she donned a kimono of deep purple, the distended sleeves exaggerated even for such a garment, paired with an embroidered gold obi, over the more practical and darker vestments of her work. To her knowledge, she wouldn’t be needing the more mobile clothes, at least not today, but she refused not to wear them.

Her present lack of assignment likely meant she would be forced to wander about as a useless ornament to this palatial estate, commanded as ever by a base creature that she despised. Tsubaki knew quite well that the warlord thought of her as his very own particularly exotic pet, and some of his hirelings were not so different. Had she her strength, she would show them all exactly who deserved to bow to whom in this relationship, but presently her soul lay tied to the damnable man’s neck, and she therefore held by the thinnest, most unbreakable of tethers, a red thread binding their fates together for as long as he willed it.

The woman pinned her hair up into a simple mage ornamented only with a pair of inlaid sticks. It was far from the most expensive ensemble she could have donned, but she was not the kind of woman that preferred nor needed excessive decoration. Also, she detested that none of the things she was granted were hers, and this was a small, subtle showing of her disapproval. Sliding open the painted shoji screen that led out into the main hallway, she wended her way down the labyrinthine corridors to the garden, which tended to be her preferred dwelling place. It was close enough that she did not feel the ache of separation from her star ball, but distant enough that she usually didn’t have to see Yosuke Harada, much less interact with him.

It was too late in the year for cherry blossoms, but the garden was lovely anyway, and she settled with as much contentment as she ever felt anymore into seiza, enjoying the fragrance and the colors. If she stayed like this long enough, her thoughts would eventually quiet, as her long-lived mind drifted back over the spans she had already occupied, and tried to avoid thinking of the millennia that yet lay before her. There were mistakes to be found there, certainly, but also happiness, and it was to this that she held most dearly. Tsubaki held no faith that she would find any in the near future, and so she found it in the past instead.

…Or at least, she would have, had she not been interrupted by Yosuke’s attendant boy. Sasuke, his name was, though she would never admit to knowing it, and she certainly would not use it. She was not oblivious to the fact that the warlord actually commanded a fair amount of loyalty from some of the others who served him, and there was a certain logic to it. The youkai excepted (many of whom she’d been forced to trick into his service), he was a relatively fair person to those that served him. She could hardly be bothered to consider this a redeeming feature when her soul rested in his hands and he showed no inclination to give it back.

Nevertheless, she was bound to answer summonses, and this one was no exception. Waving the boy off to find the next of his assigned targets, Tsubaki flowed into a stand and made her way through several side corridors before she found the room she was looking for. Even if she had not been told where he was, she would have been able to find him without anything but the call of her essence to her body. A subtle twitch to the muscle in the right side of her jaw was smoothed out, and the face she wore today was a vaguely-disdainful neutrality. She did not announce her presence—he would know of her nearness just as surely as she knew of his. Instead she entered, ignoring everyone else and simply took a seat, utterly silent.

Characters Present

Character Portrait: Hirano Hiroki Character Portrait: matou Kotone Character Portrait: Kurosawa Tsubaki Character Portrait: Warlord Yousuke
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The former Kobayashi estate, for all its history as a place where an entire family and their servants were brutally slaughtered, was a rather beautiful place. New servants went about maintaining all the walls and the paper of the shoji, though the designs depicted on them made them more reminiscent of artwork than parts of a building. And then there was the gardens, several of them, all filled with beautiful trees that seemed to constantly await the spring and flowers of all colors. Hiroki had not expected his new lord to be one for the preservation of such expensive beauty--he always came across as someone with a more pragmatic worldview--but he was happy to be surprised by such a thing. He was still wary of the parts of the estate that he had yet to explore, thinking that behind this door or around that corner he might find a corridor stained with the dried blood of the previous inhabitants, but that did not stop him or his family from enjoying the gardens.

While Hiroki was certainly grateful for his new home and considered it more than a criminal in exile could ever expect, it was rather modest in comparison to his last few abodes and not currently fit for the task of spoiling his family. He had commissioned several expanses to his new estate and it was well on its way to becoming a lovely home, but it was not quite there yet. In addition a simple desire to be amongst the luxury of a daimyo's home, these visits also provided him with a twofold service. The first was that his family would grow more acquainted to the generous lord that they would loyally serve in a few years. The second, and the one that enthused his children the most, was that Yousuke-sama's home also happened to be the home to several masters of martial arts who were open to training the younger followers.

And so, Hiroki sat in his white captain's garb beside his kimono-clad wife and watched his son and daughter swing their wooden swords around to the orders of Akakawa Gendo, a disgraced samurai from southern Satsuma. Yousuke-sama was apparently deep in contemplation elsewhere on the estate, leaving training and the view the only benefit from this visit, or, at least, that was what Hiroki though before he caught sight of someone moving about at the other side of the courtyard. On closer inspection it turned out to be Sasuke the page, who was currently scanning the rooftops for those who would normally be found perched upon them. Instinctively, Hiroki did the same, growing a bit tired of the ninja's perverse pleasure of appearing out of nowhere and awing his children. Before he could examine each and every tile to his satisfaction, though, the page turned his attention to the visiting family and approached them, bowing before the guests of his lord.

Hiroki rose and gave a bow of his own before the page relayed his lord's summoning. After he received the acknowledgement that his message had been received and understood, Sasuke bowed once again to the samurai and quickly took his leave--likely to go find a shinobi up a tree or a kunoichi hanging from the ceiling somewhere. Hiroki touched his wife's hand and smiled before stepping off the veranda and interrupting his children's training. He explained to them that he was going to go meet with the esteemed Yousuke-sama, and exchanged a few departing pleasantries with his subordinate and their instructor. Gendo gave the order for Hiroko and Kouki to bow to their father and future commander and, as they did so, he, with a proud smile on his face, returned their bow before departing and leaving them under the supervision of their mother.

Navigating his way through the hallways, Hiroki sidestepped busy servants carrying food and tools and nodded towards the guards and officers he passed on his way to his lord's office. He was now away from his family, which meant that his posture became rigid and every movement was done with conscious effort; he might be amongst a bunch of misfits and demons, but lifelong habits didn't yield that easily. When he reached the paper divide between the hall and the room his lord supposedly occupied, he took a deep breath, made sure everything about him was in order, and slowly slid the door to the side.

Already inside the room were two of the kunoichi that Hiroki had seen about the estate, one Matou Kotone and Kurosawa Tsubaki. Matou seemed to be a commoner, as were most of those who fought from the shadows, but Kurosawa had a much more refined air about her and she always did. As he was not aware of any family by that name, how she came to be such was completely unknown, but she seemed to serve the daimyo well, as did Matou, though that didn't make the sight of armed women any less unusual for the traditional man. Female warriors weren't something unheard of, especially amongst samurai women or assassins, but their regularity and openness in Yousuke's territory was what made them odd.

Regardless of this, it was only a moment before Hiroki took a few steps inside the room and took his place on the floor, with his legs underneath him and perfectly parallel and his hands placed on the floor before him. He bowed sincerely before his casually-placed lord, as one was supposed to do. After a moment, he raised his head to look at his lord and returned his hands to his lap. His posture was perfect, his face was stoic and unwavering, and his voice was devoid of any intonation of emotion. "You called for me, Yousuke-sama?"