Matthew Maruyama [Zato-oni]

[Utlanning]

IRC Nickname: Utlanning

Name: Matthew Maruyama
Alias: Zato-oni
Age: 25
Date of Birth: Early March
Hometown: The Bronx, NYC, NY

Height: 6'2
Weight: 190
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: N/A
Nationality/Race: American

Occupation: Psychologist/Student

Personality Profile: Very calm at all times, but still possessed of an outgoing and friendly nature, rather than being reserved or stand-offish. Wants to understand everyone around him, wants to help everyone, even mutant-haters and serial killers... But that doesn't mean he's naive or easy to manipulate, 'help' does not mean 'give them want they want' or 'go easy on them.' His sense of humor's pretty healthy, but he can't abide hurtful jokes toward any person or group, and has a tendancy to over-analyze people(the bane of all students of psychology everywhere).

Physical Description: Tall and powerfully muscled... Matthew goes out of his way to obscure these facts about himself, perpetually slumping and wearing loose clothing. The other notable facts about his appearance are rather more difficult to conceal, however. His skin is a light purple hue, his ears are pointed, and his hair is an unnaturally shining shade of silver. Two short, stubby horns project from his brow, the same color as his skin and his large hands have only three thick, stubby fingers and a three-jointed thumb. His eyelids are concave masses of scar tissue, stitched shut, which he always keeps concealed under both a pair of sunglasses and a specially cut strip of black cloth.

He tends to dress toward the "casual conservative," end of the spectrum. Usually in some combination of baggy jeans or khakis and a loose tee shirt with a jacket or duster over it. Other than that, he doesn't wear much in the way of accessories besides his sunglasses, but obviously never goes anywhere without his titanium, extendable white cane with the red leather grip.

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Mutation/Powers:

Primary : Chi - While he might once have had the potential to be an extremely powerful telekinetic, trauma all throughout his life followed by strict training closed that door off to him. Instead, his telekinesis works along the lines of chi. It allows him to strengthen a blow to where he can split stone without harming himself, jump far higher than a normal person could, dodge out of the way of a blow as fast as thought, and even give a blunt object an "edge" of thought as sharp as a razor.

Secondary : Sense Alteration - While his senses are already preternaturally sharpened due to being blind, through concentration(that is natural to him in his normal state of zen), he can sharpen individual senses to a supernatural level, usually focusing on his hearing or his sense of smell to help with his environmental awareness or allow him to detect changes in a person's mood by the tone of their voice, their heartbeat, or shifts in their mood that can be detected through minute changes of scent. This also allows him to perform incredible feats of balance.

Tertiary : Environmental Awareness - A mixture of sharpened hearing, scent, vibratory sense, and a steady, subconscious probing of his environment with nearly imperceptible touches of his telekinesis allows Matthew to be aware of his environment within a 50' range to an uncanny degree.

Drawbacks/Weaknesses/Side Effects : His telekinesis is entirely bound up in the idea of Chi and the forms of martial arts. He can't so much as float a feather, nor can he choose to make himself super-strong to win an arm-wrestling match for instance, nor form any kind of telekinetic shield save for the automatic reinforcement of a joint when he blocks a blow. In addition, if he loses his composure, his talent will start to go 'wild,' lashing out randomly at objects and people around him, entirely out of his control, until he is rendered unconscious or drains his reserves too far and drops from exhaustion. While his remaining senses are all sharpened in the manner that any blind zen-practitioner's would be, he can only focus one to supernatural sharpness at a time, and that can easily lead to sensory overload(a gunshot or close clap of thunder while it's hearing, a particularly vile odor while it's scent, a painful blow while it's touch, etc), which can be anything from mildly disorienting to outright mind-shattering(leading to a lapse as mentioned under the drawback of his telekinesis). And finally, while his Environmental Awareness allows him to function without his cane(though he keeps it with him anyway), he still can't see things like color, fine details like facial expressions or most engraved/raised lettering, or minute changes in light. This ability is also partially dependant on his Sense Alteration, most notably hearing. If he's not focused on hearing, the range drops down to more on order of 20', and if he is deafened or there is absolute silence(he often uses things like heartbeats, taps of his cane, or soft clicks of his tongue to help him 'see'), everything becomes shapeless blobs to him, while he can sense the position of anything larger than a baseball, it all becomes shapeless blobs to him.


How do you believe this character's powers will further develop in the future? His abilities with Chi will likely continue to increase, and while he'll never exactly be able to fly, he may be able to do something similar to wuxia leaps, as well as possibly using thrown balls of force as an attack. He may also eventually realize that as well as sharpening his own senses, he can dull those of others. If he blinds a sighted opponent, he will clearly have the advantage, and he may eventually be able to keep two senses sharpened at a time(though neither as powerfully as if he's fully focused on one).

Background:
Abandoned in a dumpster as an infant, the unidentified young mutant was made a John Doe - Ward of the State and put in St. Gerard's Home for Children in the Bronx. Being one of a handful of mutants and looking rather like a demon, the first 12 years of his life were a mix of stern teaching and outright brutality from some of the nuns who saw little beyond his horns and his glowing red eyes. Even worse were the older boys who frequently hazed and beat him. Both sides were only antagonized further when he occasionally manifested wild telekinesis, sometimes just knocking things over or shattering them, othertimes actually harming his attackers.

When he was 12, his supernaturally sharp hearing picked up on some of the older boys planning to assault another young mutant they called "sluggy" with knives and salt. He told the nuns, and when the nuns brought the boys before him, they refuted everything. The nuns sided with the human boys. Two weeks later, after his punishment was concluded, the older boys caught him, dragged him into the abandoned kitchen at 2 in the morning, and started beating him. Once more his telekinesis acted in his defense, hitting one with a heavy pan. They decided that, if he couldn't see them, he wouldn't be able to hurt them... And cut out his eyes with a carving knife.

Every window in the building shattered, all the doors opened and slammed shut at once, and every bed turned its occupant out, all in the course of the few seconds it took for his sight to be stolen forever. When the nuns checked the kitchen as they were looking for the sign of the disturbance, they found him unconscious from shock, pain, and blood loss... And the remains of his three attackers spread in a fine paste over every surface of the room.

As soon as the bleeding was stopped at the hospital and his eyelids were stitched shut, he was taken to Rikers Island Medical Center and put under the 'care' of a doctor who knew how to sedate a mutant heavily enough to keep their powers inactive. The story quickly became a rallying point for anti-mutant groups, as an illustration of why it was dangerous to keep mutants in the same institutions as "normal people." The trial was quickly gearing up to get a lot of press and become another in a long run of conflict-points between the two sides of the mutant-rights argument.

At least, that was until a young lawyer from Hell's Kitchen took on John Doe 1986-9's case pro bono. The lawyer managed to get gag orders in place, see to it that the initial hearing and subsequent trial were closed, and even talked the judge into issuing an order for the young mutant to be moved out of the Riker's Island Medical facility(Where he was being kept heavily sedated) and into the care of a specialist at Bellvue.

As the specialist, Dr. Maruyama, weaned him off the drugs, they discovered that his formerly passive telekinesis had been driven entirely haywire by the trauma. Maruyama dialed the drugs back up, but only far enough to restrain his powers... And that was only temporary. Even while pre-trial motions were still in progress, Maruyama began instructing his young patient in the tenets and meditative techniques of aikido.

The trial began, and eventually progressed... But the lawyer saw to it that all attempts at trying the young mutant as an adult were defeated, and he was not needed to attend most of the trial. Instead, every day was spent in the care of his psychiatrist, who gradually taught him more and more, instructing him in zen and buddhist philosophies, teaching him all the spiritual aspects of his art, and gradually starting to reduce his reliance on the medications once more.

After six months, the trial concluded, and the young mutant was found not guilty on all counts by reason of self-defense... But the lawyer was not done yet. There was still one other matter to be attended to. He called in favors from another lawyer, seeing to it that the adoption paperwork for the young mutant by Dr. Maruyama was pushed through the system with all due haste, wanting to make sure that the boy was not put back into the system that had so recklessly allowed him to fall into such a situation in the first place.

The young mutant was overjoyed, and as he was formally adopted, he was offered the right to choose his name. No longer would he be John Doe... He named himself Maruyama, after his new father... And for his given name, he chose that of the lawyer who'd fought so tirelessly to keep him from spending the rest of his life in one of the new mutant holding cells or drugged up in a psych ward. He named himself Matthew.

In the years that followed, he continued to study with his adoptive father, moving back overseas with him for several years, learning Aikido, and then moving on as his interests embraced Iaido and Karate as well. He performed extremely well in the private school his father placed him in once he had learned the language, and then went on to college, where he studied psychology, even spending a year abroad in China.

Finally though, he decided on his own path. His father was a psychiatrist who had chosen to work in the busiest hospitals in the world... He decided to target his practice a little more specifically, choosing to return to the land of his birth, with the decision that he would study mental illness and the adjustment difficulties of mutants, and help those who had suffered as he had, while at the same time, helping the newly re-emerged META with the profiling, counselling, and reform of violent mutant offenders.

Of course, that would require additional education in Law Enforcement and Mutant Studies... And where better to get the necessary degrees and certifications than Cobalt Academy?

Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts:
Two biggest heroes are the Daredevil and Batman. Since he can't exactly read the newspapers about the Devil or Batman's comics... He has recordings of nearly every news story ever broadcast about the first and every movie(Even "Batman & Robin"), episode of TV show and cartoons, and even the old film serials and all the radio dramas he could find of the second.
Has a great love of musical theatre
Speaks Japanese fluently.
Speaks Cantonese passably.
Can understand basic conversational Mandarin.
Has a traditional Horimono in progress. So far it consists of the buddha across his back, with two Foo Dogs on either shoulder blade. The Buddha is complete, and the foo dogs nearly so, the waves moving down his biceps are in still Sujibori(just outlines) while his chest and the area below his waist still remain bare(for the moment). He takes trips to Japan four times a year to have more work done by his Horishi
Writes Batman, Harry Potter and Star Wars fanfiction. Would not admit to doing so, even under torture.