Mother Aoi
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| From Malta Intelligence Files | |
| Mother Aoi | |
| Player: @jchinds | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Mastermind |
| Threat Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | June Maehara-Galahad |
| Known Aliases: | none known |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 41 |
| Height: | 5'3" |
| Weight: | 130 |
| Eye Color: | brown |
| Hair Color: | blue-black |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Semi-retired crimelord |
| Place of Birth: | Sausalito, California |
| Base of Operations: | unknown |
| Marital Status: | Widowed |
| Known Relatives: | The Cobalt Claymore, The Cobalt Ghost |
| Known Powers | |
| Shadow Manipulation, Demon Summoning | |
| Known Abilities | |
| various | |
| Equipment | |
| Five very dedicated ninjas, bow and arrows | |
| Hit Level 50 May 24, 2009 9:28pm CDT | |
Contents |
Affiliations
Personality
Mother Aoi's personality is well, sociopathic and a bit creepy. She is usually content to sit patiently and observe her targets but has also been known to adopt any number of personality traits to gain a relationship with her target until she needs to move in for the kill.
Powers
Primary Set
Ninjas: Mother Aoi is the head of a clan of ninjas, and commands them in the field like any good general or warlord would do. She often provides fire support for her troops thanks to her training as an archer. She is also known to regularly summon Oni to provide an extra layer of fighting prowess in addition to her highly-skilled genin and jounin. Recently, shadow servants have also been noted in her entourage, the reasons of which are unknown to any outsiders.
Secondary Set
Dark Mastery: Thanks to the pacts formed by her clan and the shadows, Mother Aoi has learned the magic arts of shadow manipulation. She uses the shadows to hold enemies in place, scare them, sap their strength and speed, and even healing her allies through use of what she calls shadow essence. Naturally the shadows also work to hide her from view and also help to resist various types of non-physical damage.
Additional Powers
Teleportation
Mother Aoi teleports by stepping into a shadow or shadow-based portal and reappearing through another shadow or portal. She can also transport others in this manner.
Fitness
Rigorous exercise to keep in fighting shape has allowed Mother Aoi to leap higher and farther than most normal humans, and has increased her ability to recover quickly from injuries and fatigue.
Fighting
Mother Aoi uses a slightly modified form of Shadow Taijutsu when melee combat is required of her. She uses kicks and a rapid series of shadow-enhanced punches to keep her enemies at bay until she can either disengage and retreat or until her ninjas arrive to assist her. She also has a limited form of shadow-based armor to protect her from minor injuries.
Soul Mastery
A recent doublecross of Ghost Widow has allowed Mother Aoi to learn a few secrets needed to help tap further into the realm of Shadow. As such, she has improved her minor shadow armor, allowing her to avoid more than just weapons and fists. Rumor has it she is working on techniques that will open a small portal filled with hungry shadows under her target, pinning them to the spot and sucking away their life force. She may have also learned more information on one of Ghost Widow's more feared techniques for incapacitating and killing her enemies.
Abilities
Mother Aoi is a political creature by training and nature. She has brokered deals, created contact networks from disparate groups, and used diplomacy to strengthen alliances and agreements without giving up much in return. It has also allowed her to blend in with many of the movers and shakers in the worlds of politics and academia, allowing her further access to useful information.
Thanks to that diplomatic acumen, Mother Aoi's pacts with the Shadow and the Oni have become less political over the years to the point where both Shadows and demons refer to her as "honored little sister." They tend to treat each other more like family members than allies.
Adding ninjutsu and the martial abilities therein makes her even more dangerous.
Mother Aoi also has one other ability in her arsenal: by using a specific ritual, she can merge a living shadow with a human in order to grant that human various powers. The ritual is known as Shadow Branding, named for the permanent marks left on the human subject and the searing agony endured during the process.
Weaknesses and Limitations
Any threat to the lives if her children or clan members (or her control thereof) will cause Mother Aoi to obsess over humiliating and then killing the threat. This has caused her to lose focus on missions.
Equipment
The traditional equipment of a ninja is rarely seen in Mother Aoi's possession unless called for. She tends to use modern equipment such as access-swiping cards for electronic locks, signal looping gear to fool video cameras, modern patterns of camouflage and the like. Her only nod to tradition is the coil of piano wire she keeps in her scarf to use as a garotte.
Character History
From the moment her eyes first opened to today, Mother Aoi has always been pushed to the human breaking point. June Maehara was born in June of 1968 (thus the name) to Kazuo Maehara and Theresa Colchester, both of whom were spies posing as adjunct professors. They traveled throughout the world, failing to gain tenure because of their political leanings. That was the usual story they'd give to sympathetic ears. In reality, the pair gathered data on various members of academia and local political figures in order to sell that information to the highest bidder. The daughter they brought into this world was used mostly as a prop, covering her parents' covert activities. As such, she found herself homeschooled in order to keep her out of the public eye. As her parents spent most of her grade school years in California, her homeschooling was justified by use of tropes familiar to the bien-pensants in academia: Conforming to society's rules would destroy her self-esteem, she'd need to have an unconventional education to better understand the forces of the revolution, and so on. Her father used the time spent teaching her to hone her skills in ninjutsu and introduced her to the history of his side of the family. His family were the hereditary leaders of a clan of ninja known as Jizoku no Himitsu, the House of Secrets. Their specialty was small-unit fighting tactics similar to modern special operations forces. Where most people joked about "black ninja fighting style" as one where ninjas attack one at a time in order to preserve personal honor, the House of Secrets used overwhelming force against individual targets, often sending five to ten ninja to attack the same person simultaneously. Unless the target had near-godlike fighting prowess, they'd normally die within seconds.
The greatest secret of the Maehara family's success was their long-standing alliance with a tribe of Oni and a near-familial relationship with the personified spirit of Shadow. As every person has a shadow, their shadow holds in great amounts of secrets known only to the person. Shadows have personalities of their own, some being opposites of their hosts, others being the same, and still others with entirely different personalities altogether. The Maeharas learned first to control, then to meld their shadows with their own selves. The shadows are an extension of their physical bodies, and young June learned to use her shadow to great effect. Eventually, the family returned to the Maehara compound in the northernmost section of Honshu in Japan. June continued to grow up in isolation as her father assumed control of the House of Secrets. All of her training and missions reinforced two things: Loyalty to Family and Succeed or Die. Ninjas who failed in their missions often found their souls sucked out of their bodies by the hungry shadows (who would occasionally then inhabit the body until they got bored) or would be sent to serve the Oni in their realm of fire and blood. Having your soul fed to the Shadow was considered more merciful than being sent to the Oni.
Eventually, she returned at the age of ten to California to enroll at UCLA. Her training still continued, and her professors marveled at the little girl's ability to absorb, interpret, and apply the information given to her. She graduated from UCLA's Economics department, and was accepted into the Political Science program at Stanford for her Doctorate. After graduation at 16, June returned to live in Japan full-time to complete her training. While she'd had assassination missions given to her since the age of eight, her next mission would be a long-term intelligence gathering mission. June Maehara was going to monitor the rising number of superheroes in the United States. The information gathered would be of good use (not to mention profitable) to groups like the Fifth Column, Arachnos and the Malta Group. Her father assured her she'd still have a team with her, but this team would be different. She'd be working with The Malta Group, specifically one of their elite soldiers known as "Gunslingers." More specifically, she'd work with Michael Galahad, known in the spy community as Royal Helix Sierra.
June and Michael were assigned to monitor hero activity in the Midwest. So, they moved to Chicago under the identity of a new Economics professor and his young bride. Unlike her parents, there would be little need for traveling, so Michael eventually gained tenure. June accustomed herself quickly to the mission-oriented and meticulous Gunslinger, and found herself falling in love with him. The marriage they entered into in order to complete their cover suddenly seemed more than just a mere cover to her.
She found this revolting, as suddenly there seemed to be something that could interfere with the mission. Her father's advice was to accept it as part of the mission, but she refused to let her heart get in the way of her mission. Michael saw it differently as he began to break under the strain. Suddenly, his life as the hero known as the Cobalt Claymore, his teaching career and his young wife became more important than anything else. The quality of information suffered despite June's hard work. She feared failing the mission.
Even worse, she found herself pregnant shortly after realizing that love was ruining the mission. She found herself ordered to carry her children to term by her father, again to maintain a cover identity and keep the mission a secret. Michael Galahad, Junior, was brought into the world in May of 1987. Her husband seemed to be turning away from his job and becoming an actual superhero. She wasn't sure how to react, and was stopped from acting again by her second pregnancy shortly thereafter. In June of 1988, on her 20th birthday, her youngest son Todd was brought into the world. The stress of childbirth, her family's constant interference with her personal life, her mission, and her husband's abandoning his tasks caused something to snap. Soon, she was on the phone with her father, pleading for re-assignment. She did not wish to risk failure because of her husband's change of heart.
Her wish was granted, but her husband would have to die. June gathered her sons in her arms on that fateful night and held them close as a combined team of ninja and Malta operatives attacked the Cobalt Claymore. Not only did he survive the initial onslaught, he overcame their sheer numbers and killed almost everyone sent against him. Before she was taken away from the scene, Michael Galahad reached out with a bloodied and broken arm to grab his children. He managed to snatch Todd away from her right as she was stepping into the portal. She screamed in rage and heartbreak as she arrived with only one child in tow.
For the next seventeen years, June continued the harsh environment in which she was raised to instruct her oldest son in the arts of the ninja. Michael Galahad, Junior took the name of the Cobalt Ghost, as he intended to haunt his father before killing him. June never sent anyone after her husband even after taking her father's place. She was content to monitor him as he fought criminals. Her spies reported quite often that no mention was made about her or her oldest son to young Todd. When news reached her ears that her husband died, she again was torn by her love for him and her hatred for what he had done to her life. She sent a team to recover her son, only to find that he had sold all known properties and moved away. Heartbroken, she continued the search.
Soon thereafter the Cobalt Claymore was sighted, this time in Paragon City. The spies in Paragon told her that his skills were not quite as polished as the old Cobalt Claymore, and that he was a student at a local private high school. She knew it had to be Todd, so she sent her eldest son, the Cobalt Ghost, to investigate. It was indeed the son who had been denied knowledge of her. She left clues to his heritage, including a new costume similar to that worn by the elites in her clan but she was denied a chance to visit him personally by one annoyance or another.
Mother Aoi had finally had enough. Her son was rejoining the family by force since he seemed too ignorant to understand the clues given to him. She realized he would be at his most vulnerable while at college, and while engaged in his preferred sport of lacrosse. She gathered five teams from her family, and called upon her allies among the Oni to assist her. She brought them directly to the field where Todd was playing, and slaughtered everyone there, spreading chaos throughout the campus. Her ninja quickly overwhelmed the young hero and he found himself in a new home with a new identity and infused with unwanted powers. Mother Aoi had finally beaten the Cobalt Claymore as the newly-named Whispering Typhoon went forth under her tight control. Using subtle magic, coercive suggestion and threats of retaliation, she began to form her son's psyche to her will.
For now, Mother Aoi watches and waits, sending her teams forth to gather information and to fulfill their missions or die trying. She sits at the head of a small but powerful network of spies, assassins, and shadow-wielding warriors. She appears content to act as an information broker, but no one yet knows what other plans she holds.
Typhoon Warning
With the events of Typhoon Warning ended, Mother Aoi is seeking to bury her sadness by throwing herself fully into her work. She will not rest until her son returns to her. He will return to her, one way or another. She knows that much about her son.
Trivia
Mother Aoi is skilled in five different musical instruments: piano, violin, classical guitar, harp and drums.
Also, "jizoku" technically means "continuation" and not "house," which is actually "shizoku." Rumor has it that the Arachnos clerk who misspelled it because he couldn't read the furigana properly has been killed and then sacked for poor performance.
