Character DescriptionName
Tadakuni Ishizawa III (Japanese: 三代目 石澤忠邦, Sandai-me Ishizawa Tadakuni)
Aliases
Nirubito (Japanese: 煮る人, lit. “The Cook”)
Gender
Male
Age
19
Apperance
Height: 173cm (5ft 6in) | Weight: 62kg (136lbs)
MotivationsGoals
- First and foremost, Tadakuni aims to hone his cooking skills so that he can be considered worthy of inheriting his grandfather’s legendary katsudon restaurant, although he is happy to engage in side quests of the more heroic sort.
- Having grown up most of his life with very little free time, Tadakuni wants to take the few years he has away from the stifling clan environment of his family to enjoy a little more leisure.
- Unrelated to his ambitions as an aspiring restauranteur, Tadakuni is trying to gain better control over his X-Ray vision, a power which he has trouble using because of the nature of its mechanism.
Fears
- Surprisingly, Tadakuni fears his own power; while using his X-Ray vision, the muscles of his eyes experience pulsations, and he is still phobic of his ability after once overusing it and straining his eye muscles to the point of excruciating agony.
Strengths and WeaknessesPowers
- X-Ray vision: Tadakuni possesses X-Ray vision, which grants him the ability to see through objects at will. The extent of this ability is such that he can choose the number of objects through which he sees, allowing him to see through walls and vehicles, and to look into human bodies or even through them. When utilising this ability, images become clearer, but suffer from a slight loss in colour.
However, his ability is limited distance wise by the constraints of human vision. In addition, just as X-rays are blocked by lead and concrete walls of sufficient thickness, Tadakuni is unable to see through substances capable of blocking X-Rays. He is also constrained by the fact that he is afraid to use his own power, for fear of damaging his eyes.
Abilities
- Cooking skill: Despite still being worlds away from his grandfather in terms of skill, Tadakuni is still a highly talented and adept cook in his own right, and can whip up a wide range of creative dishes even with just simple ingredients.
- Iaijutsu: Tadakuni is highly competent in iaijutsu, and practices regularly to maintain his competency.
Equipment
- Knives: Tadakuni owns a collection of 11 kitchen knives, most of which were custom-made in Germany.
- Swords: In addition to his kitchen knives, Tadakuni also owns two swords: a wooden practice blade and an iaitō: a metal sword with blunt edges.
Weaknesses
- X-Ray vision: Curiously, Tadakuni is highly phobic of his own ability, and will go to great lengths to avoid having to use it. The mere thought of the throbbing feeling behind his eyes is enough to make him feel extremely uncomfortable.
- Experience: Though he is trained in iaijutsu, Tadakuni has yet to engage in an actual fight; while he may function well in duels, where there are rules governing the actions of the swordsmen, he most likely will not be able to perform quite as well in an actual, free-for-all fight.
BackgroundStudent or Teacher?
Student
Legal Status
Tadakuni has never gotten into trouble with the law, nor does he plan to.
General
Tadakuni Ishizawa III was born on 15 April 1999, in Ōtsu City of Shiga Prefecture in Japan. His mother, Hiromi Ishizawa, is the daughter of Tadakuni Ishizawa II, the owner of a renowned and well-acclaimed katsudon restaurant overlooking Lake Biwa; hailing from a samurai clan dating back to the Muromachi period, men who marry into the clan (like Tadakuni’s father, who is a local city administrative organiser) also take the Ishizawa surname.
From young, Tadakuni II, the de facto head of the modern Ishizawa family, was insistent that his oldest male progeny Tadakuni III take over the restaurant, but also that he get as holistic an education as possible, so that the boy could have an understanding of the world outside. As such, while attending an ordinary elementary and middle school, Tadakuni III was also apprenticed to his grandfather in the kitchen of the restaurant from a young age, and received English lessons from an expat British professor who had retired in Japan (as a result, he speaks perfect English, but with a distinct cockney). He also practised iaijutsu under a relatively well-known teacher; as a result of his numerous often conflicting commitments, Tadakuni III grew up with very little free time, being constantly on the move or doing something.
Like many other members of his family, Tadakuni III also has a special power, inherited through a gene that had until then remained dormant; unlike most of his predecessors, however, he prefers not to use this power.
When he was 18, upon completing high school, Tadakuni insisted that he wanted to study abroad; all too aware of his power, which had been as much of a hindrance as a help throughout his days in normal schools (he had to go to great lengths to avoid accidentally telling anybody about his power), he longed for a change in environment, to a place where he could learn to overcome the fear of his own power without fear of reprisals from those who were quick to judge. Initially unwilling to let his grandson leave, Tadakuni II eventually relented, sending him abroad to the recently-established Lefevre Manor in the United States, a school about which he had come to hear through his information networks.
As such, Tadakuni Ishizawa III put his destiny to take over his family’s restaurant on hold for a while, and packed his bags for America.
Posting Commitments
About once in two days. I’m being called up for compulsory military service in about three months, though, so after that, it may be around one post in four or five days.
TIGER
Character DescriptionName
Yekaterina Grigoriyevna Yumasheva (Russian: Екатерина Григорьевна Юмашева, Jekaterina Grigorjevna Jumaševa) (Georgian: ექატერინე გრიგოლის ასული იუმაშევი, Ekaterine Grigolis asuli Iumashewi)
Aliases
Katyusha (Russian: Катюша)
The diminutive form of her name, “Katyusha” also refers to a missile used in WWII and a popular war song.
Gender
Female
Age
39
Apperance
Height: 170cm (5ft 5in) | Weight: 50kg (110lbs)
MotivationsGoals
Yekaterina believes strongly in the power of critical thinking, and seeks to imbue in all her students an instinct for lateral thinking and questioning. To that end, as a history teacher, she seeks to teach her students not just historical facts, but also the soft skills needed to analyse trends and statistics, as well as to question information and to engage in Socratic thinking.
Fears
Yekaterina fears dying alone, to a significant extent. Other than that, any other fears she has are but mere, insignificant phobias.
Strengths and WeaknessesPowers
Yekaterina possesses a very potent form of mind control that requires very specific conditions. Once under her control, it is absolutely impossible to resist her commands; the mind control is total and absolute, and the subject is wholly subject to Yekaterina’s control, regardless of any external factors. However, her power comes with a long laundry list of limitations, which are as follows:
- In order for Yekaterina to activate the mind control, the subject has to be in a state of non-thought; that is, the subject has to be daydreaming or simply in a state of mental blankness. For example, the ability cannot be used to control students taking an exam or an opponent in a chess match, but can be used to control a commuter on a bus playing a mindless game like Flappy Bird
- The subject of mind control must physically be within 10 metres of Yekaterina. This distance is reduced to 4 metres if there is a wall in between them.
- Yekaterina must be able to see the subject of mind control.
- Yekaterina must not be under the influence of alcohol or narcotics in order to use this ability.
- The subject of mind control cannot be under the influence of alcohol or narcotics (this includes painkillers and medicines that induce drowsiness); in addition, Yekaterina cannot control people who are sleeping.
- Yekaterina cannot multitask; she has to wholeheartedly concentrate on mind control, and cannot even talk while doing so.
- Yekaterina needs to actively concentrate to use the ability. If she is distracted for more than three seconds, the control is broken, and cannot be reestablished on the same person for the duration of the day. This does not apply if Yekaterina intentionally breaks the control.
- Yekaterina can only control any individual for a maximum of 10 minutes in a single day (that is, a single 24-hour day-night cycle). This time limit is NOT reset if the mind control is interrupted.
- Yekaterina can only control one person at a time.
- Yekaterina can only control up to four people in one day.
- Between the use of mind control on different individuals, if Yekaterina uses the ability for more than 30 seconds, it has a cool-down time of 2 hours. Failure to adhere to the cool-down time results in intense, excruciating migraines, as well as nausea, vomiting, and possibly loss of consciousness.
- Yekaterina cannot use her ability on a person who is wearing a mask that covers more than 50% of the person’s face and/or his eyes.
- Yekaterina cannot use her ability on people younger than 14 or older than 80.
- Yekaterina cannot use her ability on animals or human cadavers. The subject has to be a living human.
- Yekaterina cannot use her ability on someone who is actively using another ability of any sort.
- Yekaterina cannot use her ability on blind people.
In addition, even using the ability within these constraints will cause Yekaterina to suffer from thirst and mild headaches. As such, while her ability can be potentially destructive, it is virtually impossible to use effectively in non-perfect, realistic circumstances.
Abilities
- Chess: Yekaterina has a chess ELO of 1981. She has competed in and won numerous chess competitions at high levels both in the USSR and in the USA.
Equipment
None
Weaknesses
See her ability’s constraints listed under Powers.
Background:Student or Teacher?
Teacher
If Teacher, which subject?
World history
Legal Status
Yekaterina has no legal issues under her name.
General
Yekaterina was born on 14 June 1979 in Tbilisi, then part of the Georgian SFSR of the Soviet Union. Her father, Grigory Ambroseyevich Yumashev, was a Russified Georgian who had formerly served in the NKVD and the MVB security apparatus, but was laid off after the formation of the KGB.
Throughout her life, Yekaterina displayed a prominent intellect and a sharp, critical mind, with a fierce talent for lateral thinking and for drawing connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena. From the age of 10, she began to take chess lessons, and competed regularly in competitions up until the dissolution of the USSR.
At the age of 16, she began to display an ability to cast mind control on others, an ability inherited from her father; within the two years following the first manifestations of her power, however, the potency of the power increased drastically, but also the physical limitations surrounding it, rendering it virtually impossible to use. By the time she was 20, seeing no use for the power and finding it too difficult to use, Yekaterina had ceased to use it at all.
During the August Coup led by Vice-President Gennady Yanayev against Mikhail Gorbachev, Yekaterina and her father left the USSR, first for East Germany (where Grigory Yumashev died of a stroke at the age of 65), and then, for Yekaterina, to the United States, of which she became a citizen in 1997. She opened a chess school with two expat grandmasters, Edward Bandjardjaja from Indonesia and Wang Xizhe from China. For six years, she taught chess to university students, while also working on a part-time degree in history, all while keeping her power under wraps, still unwilling to let on more than was necessary.
In 2013, she stopped teaching chess privately, choosing instead to teach history at a public middle school. This lasted for five years before she, tired of the public school system, opted to quit. As she dithered about, considering opening another chess school, she received an invitation to teach at a newly-established school for individuals with special powers: the Lefevre Manor. With no better option, Yekaterina accepted the invitation.
TIGER
