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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Davies" data-source="post: 8568563" data-attributes="member: 30538">Hebi-Onna/蛇女<img src="https://photos.smugmug.com/My-First-Gallery/i-WKVtcHk/0/854bc9eb/M/fixer-M.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />In the course of life, everyone -- nearly everyone -- accumulates regrets. There are many healthy ways to deal with them, and many unhealthy ways as well. One of the unhealthy ways is to allow the regret to fester until it becomes a grudge, and then to allow the grudge to fester until one will do anything to avenge it. And there are always those who are happy to arrange for that anything to be done in exchange for money. Usually a lot of money.Up until eight years ago, Kurihara Kayako -- almost certainly not her original name, but that really no longer matters -- was one such facilitator for acts of vengeance, active mostly in Tokyo but with connections throughout the home islands. In exchange for a fairly large sum of money, she would arrange for the objects of grudges to suffer social ruin; for much larger sums, she would bring about their deaths. She always kept her own hands clean, working through cut-outs, and was quite adept at finding homicidal and/or suicidal people to act as her patsies, and quite merciless in exploiting them.If she felt any regrets about this life she had made for herself, it was that so much of the money that she made had to go into offshore accounts that she couldn't access easily, such that she had to live a fairly spartan lifestyle instead of the luxurious one that her income could have made. But that would have attracted official attention, and Kayako knew that she had to avoid it. So she dealt with this regret in a much more healthy manner than the pathetic people who came to her did -- or at least, so she told herself.And then, one day, she was contacted by the usual weeping housewife whose precious little darling had become a recluse after coming in second place to some other student in the national exams, and now wanted revenge for his sake. Kayako outlined how much she would charge to socially ruin the parents of the other student, finding all of this to be quite boring. But the client clarified then that she didn't want to take revenge on the parents, but on their child. Putting a briefcase containing around two and a half million yen on the table, she described exactly how she wanted the boy who had humiliated her son to be violated, tortured and murdered, with the briefcase being the first installment, with the final payment totalling ten million yen.Kayako stared at the briefcase. It alone was more money than she had ever gotten for a single job before this, and the final amount was more than she might make in a year. But the task was more disturbing than anything she had ever done, and the victim had done nothing to deserve such a fate. Nevertheless, she knew that if she turned the job down, the client would seek out one of her competitors and make the same offer to them, and she hated the idea that they might show less scruples than her and profit from them. Ignoring what vestigial conscience she might have possessed and her sense that this was more trouble than it was worth, she took the money.In setting things up, she was even more careful than normal. She worked through two layers of cut-outs, with the actual murderer committing suicide shortly after their bloody work was done, and then personally eliminated the only people who could have tied her to this. Then she contacted the client with the good news ... and was first annoyed that the client claimed that she had no idea what she was talking about, and then confused when she claimed to have no son. Contacting her own sources, Kayako discovered that the client was telling the truth -- even though a few weeks before, when she had diligently checked them out, every source had claimed the exact opposite.She had been set up. As Kayako realized this, she was immediately confronted by the agent of her downfall, the occupant of the house of the Snake in the Shēngxiào, who explained to a constricted Kayako that he had been hired by a collection of her former victims and clients to deal with their grudge against her. Leering at her, he asked if she had any last words to pass on. "You talk too much," she said, and then he was shot in the head by the bodyguard she had hired as soon as she realized that things were turning pear-shaped.Before she could quite recover, however, Kayako realized that she was still not alone. Diorite herself had attended the death of her servant, and offered the house of the Snake to his killer -- not the one who had taken the shot, but Kayako herself. Suspecting that the alternative was her demise -- whether immediately or when the police caught up to her -- Kayako agreed, and became the second occupant of the house of the Snake, better known as Hebi-Onna ("Serpent-Woman".) If she has any regrets about this, it's that the first victim of her new life was that bodyguard; it seemed a poor repayment for saving her life. Oh well.Since then, Hebi-Onna has spent the majority of her time between doing her old job, usually for the benefit of the other members of the Shēngxiào but sometimes for clients who still seek her out. She no longer bothers to use cut-outs, though, and now actively encourages those clients to take more horrific revenges than they originally wanted. In this, she has frequently found herself opposed by the superhero Kerero Taicho. While that is certainly frustrating, Hebi-Onna chooses not to hold a grudge. A snake will inevitably eat a frog after all. The minority of her time has been spent hunting down all those who hired the earlier Snake to deal with her. She does hold a grudge over that.In terms of her powers, Hebi-Onna is able to employ damaging psychokinesis ("coils of the snake"), hypnotic mind control ("gaze of the snake") and a "nerve touch" that can set up a delayed organ failure ("venom of the snake".) Her only defensive abilities are her enhanced reflexes and flexibility, however, and she always remembers how her precursor died so easily. She will always exercise appropriate caution in dealing with an opponent, seeking to escape first and foremost. Now that she is able to live the more luxurious life that she always wanted, she has so much more to lose, after all.Hebi-Onna -- PL 8Abilities:STR 2 | STA 2 | AGL 6 | DEX 7 | FGT 9 | INT 2 | AWE 2 | PRE 2Powers:Mantle of the Snake: Array (25 points) <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Coils of the Snake: Perception Range Damaging Move Object 8, Subtle - 25 points</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Gaze of the Snake: Perception Range Cumulative Affliction 8 (Resisted by Will; Dazed & Vulnerable, Stunned & Defenseless, Paralyzed & Unaware), Extra Condition, Sight Dependent, Subtle - 1 point</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Venom of the Snake: Progressive Weaken Stamina 7 (Resisted by Fortitude), Insidious, Subtle 2, Triggered - 1 point</li> </ul>Advantages:Benefit 3 (millionaire), Connected, Contacts, Defensive Roll 2, Taunt, Well-informed.Skills:Deception 9 (+11), Expertise: Crime 8 (+10), Expertise: Magic 6 (+8), Expertise: Streetwise 10 (+12), Insight 8 (+10), Investigation 8 (+10), Perception 6 (+8), Persuasion 8 (+10), Ranged Combat: Guns 2 (+9), Sleight of Hand 4 (+11), Stealth 3 (+9).Offense:Initiative +2Unarmed +9 (Close Damage 2)Venom of the Snake +9 (Close Fortitude 7)Coil of the Snake -- (Perception Range Damage 8)Gaze of the Snake -- (Perception Range Will 8)Defense:Dodge 7, Parry 9, Fortitude 6, Toughness 7/2, Will 8.Totals:Abilities 64 + Powers 27 + Advantages 9 + Skills 36 + Defenses 11 = 147 pointsOffensive PL: 8Defensive PL: 8Resistance PL: 7Skill PL: 7Complications:Revenge--Motivation. Subject to Orders.</blockquote>

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