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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Davies" data-source="post: 8320133" data-attributes="member: 30538">Mizuki<img src="https://photos.smugmug.com/My-First-Gallery/i-CTng65W/1/5d060699/S/j7j6jw9mp0p41-S.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />When Kageyama Sarutobi passed away in 1992, the titular mastery of the Shadow School that he had created passed to his most senior disciple, one Kosugi Akio. While Akio, and the disciples who gathered around him, were much less inclined to accept non-Japanese students within the school, and discouraged those who had been present under Kageyama's tutelage, they otherwise largely continued the pursuit of martial excellence for its own sake and rejection of the modern world that their founder had. Those who sought to employ the skills of these latter-day ninja for their own ends were politely (and sometimes not so politely) refused in this period. Kosugi Mizuki, born in 2003, is Akio's only begotten child.Well before her birth, in 1996, the Shadow School accepted as a student an American-born Japanese man who used the name Sakamoto Sasuke. He demonstrated considerable talent for the School's teachings, rising swiftly through the ranks and becoming a senior instructor in just a few years. However, when Sakamoto asked to be given access to some of the school's most advanced techniques, Akio chose to refuse this request, supposedly on the basis that these were restricted to those who had spent more time within the school, regardless of talent. The truth was that he didn't trust this person for a variety of reasons.And it would seem that he was right not to do so. The Shadow School had suffered a fair amount of attrition during the first years of his leadership, but the aftermath of Cerebron's attack led to a large influx of people seeking shelter within the school's environs and agreeing to the school's principles. This caused a fair amount of confusion, and it was during this time that Sakamoto took action. The exact order of events is somewhat confused, but he broke into the storehouse of the sacred texts he sought, stole and/or destroyed them, killed a number of his fellow students and assaulted others, seriously injured Akio and then escaped.Humiliated by this, Akio retired as the master of the School and passed it to his senior disciple, choosing to spend his remaining years with his wife and newborn daughter. Koike Hidenori, his successor, was faced with the problems of repairing the damage of Sakamoto's attack, hunting the enemy down, and continuing to support the increasing population of the school. His decision to obtain the funds with which to accomplish all this was to begin using the younger members of the school as agents -- spies, saboteurs and, eventually, assassins -- for a variety of frankly criminal interests.In 2009, the agents of the Shadow School began to have clashes with the recently established Ghost Sweepers organization. This ultimately led to the Ghost Sweepers invading the Shadow School and exposing Hidenori's corrupt activities -- he had been embezzling much of the agents' fees for his own purposes. Hidenori was expelled and imprisoned, and Akio resumed the position of Master. The Shadow School would be permitted to exist, and even to continue its mercenary activities, but they were required to be much more judicious concerning the contracts that it took.The example of the Sweepers also wrought some changes in the society of the School. Having been defeated by people who employed the tools of the modern reality that the School had heretofore rejected, this naturally provoked a renewed interest in that modern world. Akio did not really approve but could not prevent this, and so chose to tolerate it, even in the activities of his own daughter, who began dying her hair blue and using a smart phone almost as soon as she entered early adolescence. She has continued to do so as the leader of a group of young kunoichi, sometimes dubbed the Tenshi no Akio.At the very least, he can be proud of the fact that, despite her apparent shallowness, Mizuki is a very capable practitioner of the School's martial traditions. She has even begun to master the recovered hidden technique of creating shadow duplicates. While able to create dozens or possibly hundreds of purely phantasmal entities who resemble herself, she can also create a maximum of four shadows who are fully able to act in any way that she herself could, although these can be disrupted quite easily. The greatest weakness of this technique is that she is unable to create duplicates of any other physical object more substantial than her clothes, restricting her to unarmed combat techniques rather than weapons usage.Her personal weakness, the fact that everyone in the School thinks she's an idiot coasting on her family's reputation, is actually one of her strengths. Mizuki is considerably more crafty than she appears, with the flashes of perceptive and knowledgeable behavior that she sometimes demonstrates usually being dismissed as dumb luck. She accepts this as a consequence of her chosen course, that of manipulating her so-called friends for the benefit of themselves and the School, not necessarily in that order. More than anything else, Mizuki intends to one day succeed her father (or whoever follows him) as the master of the Shadow School, and then there'll be some real changes made.Mizuki - PL 8Abilities:STR 1 | STA 0 | AGL 5 | DEX 5 | FGT 11 | INT 0 | AWE 3 | PRE 0 Powers:Actual Duplicates: Summon Duplicate 8, Active, Horde, Mental Link, Multiple Minions 2 (maximum of 4 dupes) - 65 pointsDecoy Duplicates: Concealment 4 (All Visual Senses) - 8 pointsStriking Strength: Strength-based Damage 2 - 2 pointsAdvantages:Agile Feint, Chokehold, Beginner's Luck, Benefit (status ["Princess"]), Defensive Attack, Defensive Roll 2, Eidetic Memory, Evasion, Fast Grab, Grabbing Finesse, Improved Disarm, Improved Grab, Improved Hold, Improved Initiative, Power Attack, Prone Fighting, Skill Mastery (Deception), Taunt, Weapon Bind.Skills:Acrobatics 8 (+13), Athletics 8 (+9), Close Combat: Unarmed 2 (+13), Deception 9 (+9), Expertise: Popular Culture 8 (+8), Perception 4 (+7), Sleight of Hand 6 (+11), Stealth 5 (+10).Offense:Initiative +9Unarmed +13 (Close Damage 3)Defense:Dodge 11, Parry 11, Fortitude 4, Toughness 5/0, Will 8 Totals:Abilities 50 + Powers 75 + Advantages 19 + Skills 25 + Defenses 15 = 185 pointsComplications:Duty--Motivation. Manipulative. Reputation (lazy & materialistic.)Note: Mizuki's duplicates possess all her traits except Actual Duplicates.</blockquote>

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