Difference between revisions of "Tetsuo Usuda"

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(Created page with '{{Infobox Character |name=Tetsuo Usuda |image= |age=16 |japaneseva= |relatives= |series=AKIRA |player=Paul (Exacerangutan) }} *Name: Tetsuo Usuda (Western order) *Age: 16 *Sex: M…')
 
 
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== Background ==
 
== Background ==
−
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. In the gang, he quickly became one of the best riders and a capable fighter, employing his extraordinary agility, unrelenting spirit, and astonishing luck. Shortly afterward, a girl named Kinuko, about Tetsuo's age, was brought into the gang, 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.
+
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 ==
 
== Skills ==
 
'''Physical Skills''':
 
'''Physical Skills''':
−
*Alertness: Very Good (+5)
+
*Alertness: Incredible (+4)
−
*Athletics: Amazing (+5)
+
*Athletics: Incredible (+4)
−
*Stealth: Excellent (+4)
+
*Stealth: Very Good (+3)
  
 
'''Social Skills''':
 
'''Social Skills''':
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*Leadership: Abysmal (-1)
 
*Leadership: Abysmal (-1)
 
*Expression: Abysmal (-1)
 
*Expression: Abysmal (-1)
−
*Etiquette (Street Gang): Excellent (+4)
+
*Etiquette (Street Gang): Very Good (+3)
 
*Etiquette (Anyone Else): Abysmal (-1)
 
*Etiquette (Anyone Else): Abysmal (-1)
  
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*Medicine (First Aid only): Very Good (+3)
 
*Medicine (First Aid only): Very Good (+3)
 
*Science: Novice (+1)
 
*Science: Novice (+1)
−
*Technology: Excellent (+4)
+
*Technology: Very Good (+3)
  
 
'''Other Skills''':
 
'''Other Skills''':
 
*Driving: Amazing (+5)
 
*Driving: Amazing (+5)
 
*Driving (Motorcycle): Amazing (+5+2)
 
*Driving (Motorcycle): Amazing (+5+2)
−
*Survival (Urban): Excellent (+5)
+
*Survival (Urban): Incredible (+4)
−
*Empathy: Amazing (+5)
+
*Empathy: Incredible (+4)
 
*Languages: Japanese (native), English (fluent but learned mostly from 80s action movies)
 
*Languages: Japanese (native), English (fluent but learned mostly from 80s action movies)
  
 
== Powers & Merits ==
 
== 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... but this is obviously highly unlikely to actually happen, so they're actually quite modest. Combined with his lack of training, these abilities at first function entirely subconsciously, and will require a lot of training to be useful for anything significant. All of Tetsuo's psychic abilities will start at the ''Untrained'' level and will only increase as character upgrades, with significant IC training including education by characters who actually know how to do these things.
+
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.
−
 
 
−
'''Telekinesis:''' The ability to manifest one's will as physical force. Tetsuo is quite modest as a telekinetic, with enough strength to lift about his own body weight. ''Theoretically'' a highly versatile power, this could be used to lift, drag, catch, or throw objects and heat or cool matter, along with more complicated extensions of those actions, including flight.
 
−
* ''Untrained:'' This only works unconsciously, and in ways Tetsuo can dismiss as luck. Bullets might miss narrowly (deflection), he might avoid slipping or wiping out at a crucial moment (pushing), and so on. Only brute-force manifestations of his telekinesis can activate this way. This unconscious reflex ability is partly covered by Tetsuo's Daredevil and Luck merits.
 
−
* ''Novice:'' At this level Tetsuo's telekinesis becomes voluntary, but he still lacks the focus to use it effectively or with its full strength. He can only intentionally lift about 10 pounds or deliver a slap or tug, and his range is limited to about 5 meters. He can only perform brute-force actions, with no fine-manipulation of any sort. His ''Untrained''-level reflexes can manifest in more overt ways--pushing someone away or deflecting falling debris--but only as a reflex, in the manner of someone's arm unconsciously shooting out to break a fall.
 
−
* ''Initiate:'' At this level, Tetsuo can use a bit less than half his strength (~50lbs) deliberately, although he has to be well focused on the task. He is beginning to develop fine-manipulation, but is still very clumsy: he could type telekinetically, but slowly and with a lot of typos, or manipulate a few small objects if his concentration is unbroken. He might be able to heat or cool objects enough to boil or freeze water after a minute or two, but only if specifically trained in this trick, or whatever other extensions of telekinesis someone decided to show him--none of these tricks will be practical as attacks at this level, unless he meets an enemy vulnerable to moderate discomfort.
 
−
'''Telepathy:''' The ability to sense the thoughts of others and to project one's own thoughts to them, perhaps the most common psychic ability. A highly skilled and powerful telepath can delve beyond the surface of another's mind to insert and remove thoughts and perceptions. Tetsuo is not one of them; at best, with extensive training, he could probably mentally ''wrestle'' with someone, but he would have no special psychic advantage in a contest of wills.
 
−
* ''Untrained:'' Tetsuo's telepathy at this level is feeble and totally unconscious, limited to a degree of empathy, an intuition for who he's going to like or dislike, and a subtle aura of trustworthiness. He can't hear people's thoughts or project his own, although if he's feeling something especially strongly, it tends to be obvious to anyone around him.
 
−
* ''Novice:'' At this level, Tetsuo learns to project his thoughts as words or images to other people, and to sense and recognize active minds within about a fifty meters, or much less in a very crowded area. If he doesn't have line-of-sight, sending thoughts requires total concentration. He can also pick up thoughts, but only if the subject is concentrating intensely on those thoughts; any amount of mental noise including distraction or resistance and he can't read anything more than a general state of mind.
 
−
* ''Initiate:'' At this level, Tetsuo begins to let go of the distance constraint--his range is limited instead by how many people he has to sort out, meaning he can establish contact much farther in the middle of a desert than in a city. He can sift through a couple dozen other minds to find the ones he wants to contact, and he can do so without line-of-sight, but he still needs some concentration to maintain contact. Any amount of resistance still blocks him quite easily, but he can hear deliberately foregrounded thoughts more easily and sift through moderate distraction on the part of the subject; this just means he's able to send and pick up quick, simple thoughts while doing other things. He can also roughly estimate the number of people nearby, although his sense of their position will just be a direction and "near" or "far" rather than exact distance. He might be able to pick up some sort of telepathic trick at this level, if his mentor(s) trained him in one, like a very simple illusion or aura projection to seem more intimidating, but nothing very complicated or convincing.
 
−
'''Clairsentience:''' The ability to extend one's senses through space and time, and to include various forms of extrasensory perception. At its full extent this ability is manifested by oracles and prophets, bringing visions of distant places, or of the future, or awareness of things unseen. Tetsuo's potential for clairsentience is fairly limited compared to the greats, reasonably deft but lacking great range or complexity.
 
−
* ''Untrained:'' Like all of Tetsuo's other latent abilities, his clairsentience only functions unconsciously at first. Not even at the level of the Danger Sense ability, this is mostly encompassed in his Daredevil and Luck merits, as well as his high physical skills: he tends to land in just the right way, notice things others would miss, and so on, but nothing overtly superhuman... just better than he ought to be at first glance. It's also accelerated the growth of his Technology skill. This couples with his instinctive telekinesis to some degree, as well: if Luck or Daredevil helps him avoid getting shot, he probably unconsciously deflected some bullets.
 
−
* ''Novice:'' At this level, Tetsuo can sense anything within a few inches of his body, given total concentration. He is still limited to using normal human senses: he could read a card inside a sealed envelpe, but only if there's enough light inside to read by. He can extend his senses a second or two into the future, but since he has to be in total concentration to do so, it's pretty useless unless he can do something about it in under a second.
 
−
* ''Initiate:'' At this level, Tetsuo can extend his senses out to about a meter. He is still limited to normal human senses, unless he is taught to use some specific form of extrasensory perception by his mentor(s). With total concentration, his extended senses are considerably finer than a normal human's--he could sense the presence of writing by texture alone, although he might have a hard time reading it without light. Letting his senses become more vague and broad, he can get an intuitive hunch as to whether a particular action like hitting some buttons or breaking a wire would yield Very Bad or Very Good results in the near future, but he can't get any details from this sense.
 
−
'''Other Abilities:''' If Tetsuo has any other abilities seen in AKIRA Project psychics, such as teleportation, matter-alteration, and spacetime-manipulation, he hasn't exhibited even unconscious forms of them, and they're probably too weak for him to do anything noticeable. They would probably show up at some level if he could gestalt with his twin, but that's not likely to happen, so these abilities can be pretty safely ignored for now, unless the ops want to use him as a Plot Stick.
 
  
  
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== Weaknesses & Flaws ==
 
== 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. He doesn't really understand his abilities, and doesn't even entirely like the idea of '''having''' them, being used to the notion of his own normalcy. 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.
+
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.
  
  
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== NPC(s) to go with char ==
 
== NPC(s) to go with char ==
−
None unless an AKIRA mission happens someday
+
None unless an AKIRA mission happens someday.
  
 
[[Category:Characters]]
 
[[Category:Characters]]

Latest revision as of 12:42, 7 July 2013

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

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.

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