Tetsuo Usuda
| Tetsuo Usuda | |
|---|---|
| A.K.A. | |
| Age | 16 |
| Voice Actor | |
| Relatives | |
| Series | AKIRA |
| Player | Paul (Exacerangutan) |
- Name: Tetsuo Usuda (Western order)
- Age: 16
- Sex: Male
- Birthday: Nov. 4th
- Parents (Natal): Kaneda and Kei
- Parents (Adoptive): Kenshiro and Miyuki Usuda
- Place of Birth: Old City, Neotokyo
- Nationality: Japanese
- Specialty: Urban survival
- Hobbies: Bike racing, climbing and free-running, soccer, video games, American and British culture
- Likes: Going fast, cussing up a storm, prewar American and British movies and music
- Dislikes: Showing weakness, guns, drugs, disloyalty, people who ruin other folks' good times
- Favorite Food: Tied between burgers and pizza
- Least Favorite Food: Most Japanese modifications on American food
- Favorite Music: Rock and Roll from before WWIII
- Favorite Sport: Soccer
- Most Valuable Possessions: Scrapped-together motorcycle, bombardier jacket
- Level of Education: High-school
- Seiyuu/Voice Actor:
- Physical Stats
- Height: 5'6"
- Weight: 130lbs
- Eyes: Brown
- Hair: Black, irrepressibly messy
Contents
Appearance
Tetsuo is wiry to the point of being almost scrawny, but highly athletic. He almost always has some scrapes and small bruises from various close calls, and his hair is always a chaotic, untameable mop. He almost always wears a big, endearing, somewhat doofy grin, and generally radiates mellowness and fun unless something really pisses him off. He tends to wear beat-up (or "worn-in") sneakers, jeans, and tee-shirts, and a highly prized (and beat to hell) leather bombardier jacket with a fuzzy collar. He don't make a very convincing macho-man or bishounen, but rather, exudes a cheerfully vulgar sort of boyish charm and innocence.
Personality
Tetsuo is generally a cheerful, fun-loving guy always looking for a good time, especially involving going really fast, doing something pointlessly dangerous, or satisfying his Anglophilia. Although usually totally laid back, the bulk of his experience with women is being made uncomfortable by his mentor's attempts to make him a Ladies' Man, so his relaxed state tends to falter the moment he realizes a girl might be something more than just another pal. Tetsuo is practically obsessed with biker culture and lionizes mothers, so he's prone to swooning over Biker Goddess types and anyone who treats him maternally; contrastingly, he has basically no respect for fathers or other macho authority figures, and enjoys seeing them look foolish. He will defend those who earn his loyalty without hesitation and with very little regard for his own wellbeing or whether his attempts at protection really make any sense. He finds drugs and intoxication repugnant, mostly for the effects they can have on otherwise awesome people, and for similar reasons, bears a nearly overpowering dread and hatred toward firearms.
Background
Tetsuo and his twin sister were born in 2020 AD, after the destruction of most of Neotokyo, supposedly by terrorists. His parents were the supposed terrorists--a highly talented but untrained medium named Kei, and an extraordinarily lucky but generally clueless biker named Kaneda, who had actually helped to bring down a berserk psychic after whom Tetsuo was named by his father in memory of their friendship. In 2022, Kei and Kaneda were captured in a raid. Kei went to a maximum security women's prison; against her advice, Kaneda tried to tell the world what really happened, and went to a psych ward. The children made wards of the state and separated.
However, Tetsuo remembers nothing of his birth family, and after the traumatic death of his adoptive mother Miyuki and the disintegration of his relationship with his adoptive father, he left home to join a biker gang called the Hungry Wolves when he was 12, following in the footsteps of his childhood friend and mentor Hideo. He had grown up climbing all sorts of things he shouldn't have, especially the ruins of the old Olympic Stadium (in spite of the rumors of radioactive contamination--actually he was just playing in a sea of residual psychic energy), and freerunning and tussling with Hideo. In the gang, he quickly became one of the best riders thanks to Hideo's lessons and a capable fighter under the tutelage of the older gang members with a mix of street fighting, capoiera, and a half-dozen other styles, employing his extraordinary dexterity, unrelenting spirit, and astonishing luck. Although the Hungry Wolves were relatively laid back and generally harmless to regular citizens, they had to put up a strong front to keep other gangs off their turf, and frequently had to fend off individual and group attacks both on foot and while speeding through traffic on their bikes, giving Tetsuo quite a bit of experience with life-or-death personal combat. Between the frequent opportunities to test his lessons in races and gang fights, his natural tendency to push his limits and take risks, and his monkeylike agility, Tetsuo learned extremely quickly.
Shortly after Tetsuo joined the gang, a girl named Kinuko, about Tetsuo's age, was brought in as well, and the two quickly became inseparable. Unfortunately, the gang started falling apart a few months later, struck by various misfortunes, until only Tetsuo, Kinuko, and Hideo remained. After nearly a year on their own, Kinuko disappeared, as well, after she and Tetsuo attempted to evade a shady group of men resembling government agents. Tetsuo doesn't know if she was captured or if she went into hiding, but following an anonymous tip that some unsavory people were taking an interest in him and could cause tremendous damage if they got him, PARADIGM moved preemptively to recruit Tetsuo and get him out of their reach.
Skills
Physical Skills:
- Alertness: Incredible (+4)
- Athletics: Incredible (+4)
- Stealth: Very Good (+3)
Social Skills:
- Subterfuge: Good (+2)
- Streetwise: Amazing (+5)
- Intimidation: Novice (+1)
- Leadership: Abysmal (-1)
- Expression: Abysmal (-1)
- Etiquette (Street Gang): Very Good (+3)
- Etiquette (Anyone Else): Abysmal (-1)
Mental Skills:
- Computers: Good (+2)
- Medicine (First Aid only): Very Good (+3)
- Science: Novice (+1)
- Technology: Very Good (+3)
Other Skills:
- Driving: Amazing (+5)
- Driving (Motorcycle): Amazing (+5+2)
- Survival (Urban): Incredible (+4)
- Empathy: Incredible (+4)
- Languages: Japanese (native), English (fluent but learned mostly from 80s action movies)
Powers & Merits
Tetsuo has some latent psychic abilities. These would be quite substantial if he could form a gestalt with his twin sister and their wills were focused as one... or if he was taken in and subjected to the psychic enhancement techniques of the AKIRA Project. Both contingencies are obviously highly unlikely to actually happen barring GM-supported plot events, so his powers should remain totally latent and unseen, except for what seems like some unusual luck.
Daredevil (+3): +2 on rolls to do anything life-threatening.
Luck (+3): Three rerolls per mission, one retry per roll, second result always used.
Crack Driver, Motorcycle (+1): +2 bonus to Driving rolls on a motorcycle.
Gall (+2): +1 bonus to Social rolls where it helps to show backbone.
Loyalty (+1): Tetsuo is fiercely, even irrationally loyal to the people he counts in his in-circle. Most of those people are dead or missing, but this will apply just as well to anyone else he decides he's really close to. Attempts to make him betray someone in his in-group are resisted with a +2 bonus.
Items Of Note
Tetsuo's most notable possession is his hacked-together racing motorcycle constructed from spare parts by the engineering prodigy leader of the Hungry Wolves gang. It can't really compete with something like a Highway Star, in the way that the Iron Man suit Tony Stark built in a cave with a box of scraps can't compete with a later-model Iron Man suit, but it easily matches any commercially available motorcycle from 2035. ...no I'm not saying it has an Arc Reactor. Tony Stark used a very, very expensive box of scraps to build that. He also has a jacket he loves dearly, and is somewhat fond of his length of steel pipe that he's used to defend his gang's turf.
Weaknesses & Flaws
Tetsuo is young, inexperienced, often standoffish and even skittish, suspicious of authority, and overwhelmed by the situation in which he's found himself but too fixated on maintaining a tough image to admit it or seek out support. He viscerally hates and dreads firearms, and has a bit of a mother fixation to the point that he can be kind of a sucker for anyone displaying maternal behavior. Although brave to a fault, it's very much to a fault, as he can easily get himself into situations where the only way he could "win" is if the other party either decides they like his spunk, or finds it too embarrassing to continue.
Phobia, Firearms (-2): This counts as the 1-point version when it's just a matter of being near or working with firearms, applying a -1 penalty to all rolls. However, when directly threatened by guns, this requires a Diff 7 roll to avoid a panic attack and possible flashbacks, under which the penalty increases to -5. Depending on circumstances, he may run like hell, temporarily go catatonic, or do something else totally irrational, the way mind-numbingly terrified people do. That's why it's called "mind-numbing." Since this is really a PTSD thing and highly subjective, super-scifi-looking rayguns, the main cannons of tanks, and other ranged weapons won't bother him as much; the less they look like firearms, the less he'll be bothered. A cigarette lighter than looks like a pistol will make him infinitely more uncomfortable than a flamethrower that looks like a cigarette lighter.
Preoccupied, Find Kinuko (-1): For pretty obvious OOC reasons this is never going to happen, but he doesn't know that. May need to make a Diff 6 or higher roll to avoid pursuing what seems like a lead, if it comes up.
Compulsive Speech (-1): Tetsuo is prone to going on swear-filled rants or just blurting out things that sound good in his head at the time.
Overconfident (-1): Tetsuo learned the hard way that it's better to talk big, fail, and walk it off than to chicken out, so even when he's not really as sure of himself as he acts, he still has a hard time backing down when the time comes.
NPC(s) to go with char
None unless an AKIRA mission happens someday.
