PLAYER: Hedge
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: yes
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: -
CONTACT: on file
CHARACTERS PLAYED:
Liir Thropp friendofdorothy, The Biologist theghostbird

NAME: Ryoko Hakubi
CANON: Tenchi Muyo
CANON REFERENCE: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/TenchiMuyo
AGE: About 100 (over 700 in canon)
GENDER: F
CHARACTER TYPE: meta human/cyborg
APPEARANCE: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/tenchi/images/f/f9/Ryoko_Hakubi_New_2.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/340?cb=20190103151431

PERSONALITY: Ryoko does what Ryoko wants. 

Just kidding, that'd be way too short for a personality section, but it's a good point to start. Ryoko is independent and fiercely resents taking orders of any kind, even when they're for her own good or those of others. That doesn't mean she won't ever knuckle under, but she won't like it and she won't do it if she doesn't have to (though for certain powerful individuals she'll become almost submissive, like a young wolf who's been beaten in his challenge). Currently she's trying to get a handle on this to be a useful NSO vigilante but it's a struggle.

Ryoko's used to a smash-and-grab lifestyle. She has little respect for others property or personal space (even while she's fiercely protective of her own). She comes on strong in most interactions, partially from an almost animal-like instinct for intimidation and partially because she's just not the type to conceal her feelings on any matter. She'll let you know her opinion immediately and what she thinks of you and if you don't like it, well as the old Japanese saying goes, "tough titty".

This tends to put her at odds with more polite, upper crust types, but also makes her well suited to breaking through to the more dense (read: Mihoshi) who need a kick in the ass to get moving. This bluntness is not necessarily malicious, since if she does care for you she'll try to use it in useful ways (IE if you tell her to wake you up in five minutes you'll be awake in five minutes whether you like it or not).

Not to belabor the point too much, but Ryoko is also an adrenaline junkie. She'll jump at the opportunity for escapism, whether through a good fight, a daring escape or a roll in the hay. This is a barely subconscious mechanism for escaping dealing with the massive amount of trauma her time as a child slave/assassin, but if you bring this up with her you'll get, at best, flipped off.

One of the few things that will force Ryoko to show circumspection is the opportunity to play a good prank. For good or ill, she loves getting a rise out of people and the more spectacular the reaction the better.

Ryoko isn't incapable of caring. She just has to be forced into bonding by extenuating circumstances. Ryoko's respect can be earned through bravery and her compassion through treating her nicely despite what an asshole she can be. She can be almost motherly and protective with children and animals and will not tolerate people hurting them. She also has a fellow feeling for those who have been slaves and prisoners, meaning she's more likely to open up to them.

Overall, Ryoko's a bit of a mess due to a Dark Traumatic Past but it's made her a boisterous hail-fellow-well-met-let's-fight type instead of a brooding trenchcoat wearer. She's a fierce enemy, a good friend and a total package that you can take or leave but never change.

POWERS & ABILITIES: Ryoko's primary power is phasing. She can make herself and objects very close to her (IE within about a foot) insubstantial and out of phase with everything else. Obviously this has tremendous utility in criminal activities and close quarters combat, rendering her an excellent thief and virtually unrestrainable without specialized machinery. 

It has other benefits, not all of which are obvious or that she's even aware of. She can, for instance, void the contents of her stomach without having to puke by leaving it substantial and phasing the rest of herself out. She can damage machines by reaching through them while phased and phasing parts of them out.

The motor control necessary for the smooth use of this power is tremendous. Fortunately she's assisted by four kinesthetic neural implants, two in her wrists and two on her insteps, which appear similar to blue jewels. The artificial neural hookups for two more, larger gems are in her throat and forehead but the actual implants themselves are missing. No doubt if she ever finds them she will be even more powerful.

Ryoko's balance is also artificially enhanced, chiefly with augmentations to the vestibular system, resulting in lengthened ears. As a result she's capable of relaxing in positions that would terrify most people, such as narrowly balanced on a high up branch in a tree (indeed her favorite nap/drinking spots tend to be in rafters). Her vision and sense of smell are also both enhanced by implant but those are not visible except with an x-ray.

Due to Washuu's interference in her genes (and Kagato's later control over her gene expression), Ryoko ages very slowly (she appears to be in her 20s at close to 100 right now). This requires her to periodically ingest large amounts of collagen, calcium, proteins, etc, plus nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA) to keep herself alive though.

Ryoko has a tail implant, approximately three feet long, implanted just above her butt, and behaving much like a cat's tail. It's there because she likes it, and while it can be removed, she doesn't like to.

Ryoko owns a VTOL craft, Ryo-Ohki, made of radar-absorbent material. This craft is capable of landing in clearings no larger than it is itself and of being safely submerged (though it is not capable of any movement while underwater besides rising to the surface). The key to it is a <a href=https://blacknerdproblems.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Ryo-ohki.Tenchi.Muyo_.full_.1286399.jpg>small biotech creature seemingly engineered for adorability</a>. Both were "parting gifts" from her time at Jurai Biotech.

AU HISTORY: Washu Hakubi was (is?) one of the emergent corporate era's most celebrated scientists, responsible for countless inventions that helped shape the modern world and groundbreaking new theorems in more disciplines than one person should be able to study. There have been few to ever equal her stature. Even today, her holoportrait hangs on the walls of countless Japanese universities.

But Washu wanted an heir and did not want to go the traditional route. And so she implanted one of her own embryos in an artificial womb and as the child developed, allowed nanites she'd developed herself to enter the embryo's bloodstream. Her daughter would be, she was convinced, not just worthy of her but able to surpass her in all ways: smart but also strong and beautiful forever (Washuu's own powers ensured she aged very slowly, and while Ryoko aged she planned to ensure that those particular genes were expressed in her development) Ryoko emerged from an artificial womb near a century ago, an ordinary seeming but very powerful baby (she didn't really get the smart part tho; well, even a genius isn't perfect). Her first couple years were peaceful, though Washu was not the most loving of mothers.

It was not to last. Washu had rivals who she never paid attention to, in her arrogance, considering the machinations of corporate politics beneath her. Doctor Kajishima Kagato was one of them, a genius himself and her colleague, though never able to equal her status. Kagato was an expert engineer and staged a critical failure of one of Washu's experiments. He pulled the child Ryoko from the wreckage, believing Washu dead.

Ryoko grew up Kagato's secret slave, an assassin (always he was careful to forge meta rights terrorism) against his corporate rivals. With the child-killer Ryoko (kept in a state of neotenous arrested development due to his stealing Washuu's research on gene expression) as his ace in the hole, his role as the emergent Doumon Zaibatsu's head scientist, maybe even CEO, seemed ever more likely.

It was a doomed ambition. Open corporate warfare broke out between Doumon Zaibatsu and Jurai Biotech, their chief rival in the production of artificial lifeforms at the time. When the dust settled, Kagato was in prison, secretly handing Ryoko over to Jurai Biotech (and keeping quiet about her existence) in exchange for leniency in prosecution.

Ryoko spent ten years learning the basics of being a person while Jurai scientists experimented on her cells. It wasn't the worst kind of imprisonment in history, being mostly just boring and lonely, but it was prison and she never stopped being vocal about wanting out now that she was able to do so.

On the 10th anniversary of her imprisonment, Yosho Katsuhiko Jurai, the company heir, freed her. She rewarded his mercy by immediately turning to a life of crime. It was mostly their fault for not teaching her ethics or job skills.

The next couple decades were wild. Ryoko chalked up a rap sheet a mile long, successfully outliving statutes of limitations around the world. The rythms of crime and hedonism are actually quite monotonous, so this paragraph is shorter than you'd expect for decades of her life, but suffice to say that aside from human trafficking/slavery (something she reacts violently to to this day), Ryoko got her hands in just about every kind of shady business in existence. With how useful her power is for such activities she didn't even have to develop a sense of caution about it. Having no need to learn responsibility, Ryoko experienced very little in the way of personal (or physical, since Washuu's aging slowdown protocols were still active, requiring merely that Ryoko periodically rob large containers of collagen and other essential body part building blocks to keep herself perpetually youthful).

Naturally this meant quite a bit of hiding out while things cooled down. Ryoko's life changed when she found herself crash landing in bumfuck nowhere rural Japan and encountering none other than Tenchi Masaaki Jurai, the retired/disappeared Yosho's grandson. Surprisingly, Yosho welcomed them in to their simple country home and something happened to Ryoko that would change her life: she fell in love.

Being a hedonistic pirate suddenly head over heels for the grandson of the man who was your jailer is a weird feeling and she didn't know how to handle it at first, alternating between the kinds of forthright seduction attempts she was used to and bouts of rage, both of which did not achieve the results she wanted. Even worse, she had rivals, which was unsurprising, considering that Tenchi was the cute heir to a major biotech company.

The experience of staying in the Masaaki-Jurai household mellowed Ryoko out some, teaching her the virtue of being diplomatic when you absolutely had to. She began caring for people besides herself and her pet. If you get her drunk enough, Ryoko will admit that time was bittersweet.

The bitter came from the slow but inevitable realization that while Tenchi cared deeply for her, he wasn't the girl he was in love with. And so, with a kiss and a tearful goodbye, Ryoko left Japan, hoping to find something to do that was both fun in the ways she was used to, and harmless enough to not make Tenchi frown at her.

Vigilantism for the NSO was a natural fit.

https://neosapienooc.dreamwidth.org/2052.html?thread=492804#cmt492804 two threads here