ᴋᴀᴍᴜɪ ᴜᴇʜᴀʀᴀ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
metafictions) wrote2023-05-30 11:24 pm
metafictions) wrote2023-05-30 11:24 pm
the city | app
(cw: eye horror, unreality, child abuse and neglect, suicide)
OOC INFORMATION.
NAME: Danni
CONTACT:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
smithsyndicate
AGE: 31
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a
IC INFORMATION.
BASICS
CHARACTER NAME: Kamui Uehara
CANON: No More Heroes
Note for the mods: There are multiple characters named Kamui Uehara in Suda51's Kill the Past chronology. The Kamui I am playing does not debut until The 25th Ward: The Silver Case, after which he crosses over into the No More Heroes series. As much of his characterization occurs in his NMH appearances, and this is the most likely series castmates would app from, I've chosen "No More Heroes" as his canon name over "Kill the Past".
CANON POINT: post-Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes
AGE: Physically mid-20's; mentally, Kamui has lived a minimum of 200 additional years via timeloop
BACKGROUND
HISTORY: Wiki; including a write-up in case that isn't enough!
The original Kamui Uehara was born on the Micronesian island of Lospass. Per Sundance tribal ritual, his left eye was removed and replaced with a hyena's eye. Legend has it that, should the hyena's eye turn silver, the bearer would be granted immortality; sure enough, anyone with a silver eye cannot die via illness or old age. Kamui immigrated to Kanto, where he became a serial killer. In 1979, he infiltrated a government meeting; after killing all attendees but the 24th Ward mayor, he was arrested by Detective Tetsugoro Kusabi.
(In reality, these events were falsified. The officials killed each other, attempting to steal Kamui's silver eye for themselves. The victor, Mayor Uminosuke Hachisuka, would go on to replace one of his eyes and continue to govern the 24th Ward, eventually succeeding himself as his "son". It's even possible that the original Kamui was not even really a serial killer.)
Furthermore, Kamui Uehara's personality had attracted government attention. Obedient and possessing a large amount of "criminal power"-- an abstract capacity for chaos, cruelty, and violence-- his persona was seen as an ideal base for government pawns. Thus, the Shelter Kids Policy began in 1980. The families of 1,440 boys ages 2-4 were promised free tuition through high school in exchange for 4 years of participation. Though publicly presented as legitimate, in reality, the children within the project were being subliminally imprinted with "Format Kamui"'s persona. These children were kept in a dark, oppressive facility: neglected, robbed of individuality, and forced to perform endless rote tasks. Children were also experimented on in an effort to mass produce silver eyes; hyena eyes were implanted into as many as possible. The children's bodies largely rejected the implants, with almost none achieving "ocular silverization". Upon release, while most children suppressed all memories of the Shelter, they were already conditioned sleeper agents. Shelter Kids were then placed in strategic places in the government and police.
Uehara was a rare Shelter child: his eye had turned silver. His conditioning dormant and his memories suppressed, Uehara was adopted and had an uneventful upbringing in the 24th Ward.
In 1999, "Kamui Uehara" (a Shelter child and scapegoat for the deceased original) escaped from prison. Within the year, Tetsugoro Kusabi of the 24th Ward Heinous Crimes Unit went rogue, uncovered the truth about the Silver Case, and executed a number of key players in the Shelter Project (aided by agents Akira and Sakura Natsume, both former Shelter children). Kusabi went into hiding; the surviving 24th Ward HCU agents restructured their department and continued operation.
Meanwhile, Uehara became a detective and relocated to the newly formed 25th Ward. The 25th Ward was an experimental ward: supposedly utopian, but effectively authoritarian. It was secretly watched over by officials known as "Observers"; any criminals or rule-breakers pinpointed by Observers were "processed" by deep state agents affiliated with the 25th Ward's postal service. Even less known, Observers were metaphysical beings fully able to control the ways in which they were perceived within reality-- including the reality of the actual video game.
Uehara became an agent of the 25th Ward's HCU. Here, he was used as a pawn by 1) the 25th Ward's government, seeking the influence of a Kamui within the HCU, and 2) insider agents from the 24th Ward looking to awaken him as Kamui and an Observer to destroy the oppressive 25th Ward from within.
Before his formal hiring, Natsume secretly allowed Uehara onto the crime scene of his first case-- the murder of Miru Yuzuki-- where she explained his role as an insider. He was then hired by high-ranking administrator Kinshiro Nakane, who ordered him to work under the assumed name Kamui Uehara. At the HCU offices, Uehara met agents Shinko Kuroyanagi, Mokutaro Shiroyabu, Hatoba (chief of the HCU), Akama, and Aoyama. In time, Shiroyabu awoke to his own supernatural powers as host for the purely metaphysical existence of deceased Observer Kurumizawa. As the rest of the HCU pursued the rogue agent, Shiroyabu discovered that Uehara was truly Kamui, as well as a fledgling Observer, and killed him.
However, some time before Uehara's presumed death at Shiroyabu's hands, he found himself in the middle of a standoff between the HCU. It was at this point that Akama and Aoyama revealed their true identities as time-traveling agents with an even deeper agenda than the 25th Ward project. It was their job to usher Uehara to many influential points in the timeline. Uehara took 100 separate actions at this nexus point, each leading to a separate fate and branch on the timeline.
Finally, Uehara expressed his Observer abilities, inheriting the memories of all previous timelines and gaining meta awareness. He pledged to the player that he would cleanse the world of evil and create a better world and future.
In the final timeline, Uehara shot at both Akama and Aoyama. The two saved themselves, explained the situation, then teleported him to 2018 Texas. There, Uehara was instructed to meet and aid assassin Travis Touchdown using his abilities as an Observer to detect the “points” Travis needed to encounter. Travis was searching for the "Death Balls"-- the games of an unreleased console, the Death Drive-- as they were rumored to be able to grant the owner's any wish once gathered. Kamui and Travis spent some weeks corresponding and searching for the Death Balls together, often meeting at diners across the United States.
However, Kamui's final mission was to kill or be killed by Travis before giving up the final Death Ball. After hiring several assassins to hold 3 innocents hostage and fight Travis, Kamui eventually fought Travis himself, prepared for a battle to the death... until Travis refused to continue the fight, as they had become friends through their partnership. Kamui, who'd never been shown genuine friendship before this point, began to cry-- then relinquished the Death Ball and aided Travis until he departed back into the timestream.
PERSONALITY:
What impression does your character give when meeting someone for the first time? How does the first impression differ from your character’s true nature?
Kamui presents himself as an almost limitless well of calm. He speaks softly, doesn't take up much space, and is both polite and to the point in nearly all his interactions. He's rarely roused to anger or annoyance and keeps a cool, professional head when caught off guard. However, this impassive nature, on top of how unaccustomed he is to socializing, can easily make him come across as creepy, unnerving, or awkward.
In truth, he is awkward! Now that he knows it's possible to live a life beyond his destiny, he's uncertain how to accomplish that and be himself. He's both a mild-mannered, somewhat sheltered young man who'd like to have lunch with his friends, as well as a tool of violence. On one hand, he's easy to appease and longs for friendship. Having once been a detective, he's also perceptive and intelligent: he's got an emerging dry wit and loves picking apart mysteries and puzzles.
On the other, Kamui can never escape the fate assured by his childhood conditioning and experiences. He's quite morally ambiguous and has a casual relationship with both death and violence, having experienced them both firsthand over and over; when it comes to his own abilities as a killer, he's utterly no-nonsense and confident, to the point of eerie detachment from both killing and his own mortality. After all, another incarnation and will always replace him. In fact, until his friend Travis hesitates to kill him in a fight to the death, Kamui is willing to kill-- or be killed by-- even the closest ally, for the sake of moving towards a goal. He breaks down in tears after having been shown this kindness, showing just how foreign it is to his expectations for the bloody utility with which he handles his own life.
How does your character handle stress? What do they do in an emergency?
In high-stress situations, Kamui's first instinct is toward action. He's accustomed to shutting himself down for the sake of practicality, as he did when stuck in the time loop at the end of the 25th Ward. In spite of the massive amount of stress and trauma he suffered within that loop-- all escape attempts failed, and he died or committed suicide over 30 times over its course-- being able to make any sort of decision or progress toward an end while within a hopeless situation, ironically, pushed him towards a greater sense of agency. Only through fighting for his life did it finally become his own.
This is reflected in how he now reacts to an emergency. After dying so many times, he's very loose when it comes to self-preservation: if it'll solve the problem at hand, he doesn't care if he gets hurt. If he dies, he'll come back-- eventually. It all returns to searching for the right solution to the problem, even at a cost to himself. He's like a rabbit, chewing off its foot to escape a trap: he'd much rather be hurt and free than whole and stuck. With Kamui, everything is about moving forward and onto the next action.
What are your character’s ambitions/goals? Why are they important to your character?
Kamui's goals are completely tied into his identity. Because he's an incarnation of the metaphysical chaotic entity called Kamui Uehara, he is an inheritor of the original Kamui's legacy. Other Kamuis have been many things-- killers, counterculture symbols, victims-- but they've all been heralds of social change and revolution, something that this Kamui longs to embody, too. At the end of the 25th Ward, he voices this to the player: he pledges to "revolutionize the world" and create a better future, cleansed from old evils.
How that's actually going to work on a practical level is another question entirely. Though he's aware of the harm that's been done to people via the authoritarian rule of his reality, he's a pretty young, naive chaotic entity, in the end. He isn't entirely all-knowing, and it's uncertain how he might form a new video game reality, either. Kamui just follows the directions laid out in front of him by other agents who are a couple steps ahead of him.
All of this stems from his harsh conditioning in the Shelter. Since childhood, he's been treated as more of a vessel for the fate he's supposed to inhabit, rather than his own individual human being. Only recently has he been shown that he can be literally anything else. At the moment, his goals are important to him solely because they're what he's supposed to be doing. He has no idea who, or what, he is without them. Until he discovers his own identity, Kamui Uehara is his goal: following the universe's road map to formulate a better world.
INVENTORY: The only notable item he has is a small harpoon gun: think a weaponized grappling hook a la Batman.
POWERS
SKILLS/ABILITIES:
Combat proficiency: Competent with hand-to-hand combat, firearms, and basic weaponry like knives. He is a former police detective and has been trained to be a killer since childhood, to the point that he can fight the most powerful assassin in his canon to a standstill. However, this all remains within human limits.
Observer: Kamui is fourth wall aware on the level of characters like Deadpool and Travis Touchdown. He knows he is from a video game, speaks directly to the player, interacts with a character who is literally the UI of The 25th Ward, and is overall aware of meta conventions and to a degree able to manipulate the structure of the reality he inhabits. (I will NEVER use this without player permission, and Kamui is not pop culture aware enough to fourth wall/info mod the majority of canons.)
Special points: Kamui is able to detect "special points" - essentially, an interaction point for advancing the adventure video game that is his reality. Outside of its meta explanation, he describes himself as a compass: he has a strong intuition for being at the right place at the right time. Exerting this ability will sometimes give Kamui nosebleeds.
Criminal power: Kamui is able to sense an individual's criminal power. Criminal power is an abstract measure of a person's potential for chaos, lawbreaking, and violence, detectable by the supernaturally attuned in the Kill the Past series. It's most similar to reading an aura, mixed with a very unspecific version of Dragonball's power level-- for example, a powerful villain would ping Kamui as having a high amount of criminal power. This doesn't mean that anyone with a large amount of criminal power will be a villain, though: it just means they'd be capable of destruction. Anti-heroes and heroes who could feasibly be pushed to chaos would also ping high, while an unenthusiastic henchman would ping moderate to low. Kamui, in turn, radiates this energy in spades, and people with a good sixth sense (or even just a really good intuition) would be able to sense something was off or strange about him.
Silver eye: The silver hyena's eye implanted into Kamui's left socket is a mystical item that grants him supernatural abilities. First, he does not physically age, although he can be killed; secondly, he has some reality-warping abilities. This allows him to teleport, travel through time, and move between dimensions and realities.
NERFING:
Observer: Kamui will not be able to sense anything about the structure of the world other than the fact that he has been, somehow, displaced.
Special points: Kamui has a 1/5th chance to make an accurate prediction of one of these points, and it will not be exact, only pointing him in a vague direction rather than a specific location. If he attempts to force the ability, whether or not any attempts are successful, he will suffer a nosebleed and a headache severe enough to incapacitate him.
Criminal power: Similar to the limitations placed on his sensing of special points, Kamui will not be able to sense criminal power without exertion. He has a 1/5th chance of picking up a vague suggestion (basically, whether the person might be dangerous, but without specificity), and if he forces the ability, he will suffer a nosebleed and incapacitating headache.
Silver eye: Only Kamui's functional immortality will remain. Though it won't be noticeable in-game, his aging will be slowed rather than fully suspended.
WEAKNESSES: N/A
SAMPLES.
Hizen
Soma
Travis
Andromache
OOC INFORMATION.
NAME: Danni
CONTACT:
AGE: 31
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a
IC INFORMATION.
BASICS
CHARACTER NAME: Kamui Uehara
CANON: No More Heroes
Note for the mods: There are multiple characters named Kamui Uehara in Suda51's Kill the Past chronology. The Kamui I am playing does not debut until The 25th Ward: The Silver Case, after which he crosses over into the No More Heroes series. As much of his characterization occurs in his NMH appearances, and this is the most likely series castmates would app from, I've chosen "No More Heroes" as his canon name over "Kill the Past".
CANON POINT: post-Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes
AGE: Physically mid-20's; mentally, Kamui has lived a minimum of 200 additional years via timeloop
BACKGROUND
HISTORY: Wiki; including a write-up in case that isn't enough!
The original Kamui Uehara was born on the Micronesian island of Lospass. Per Sundance tribal ritual, his left eye was removed and replaced with a hyena's eye. Legend has it that, should the hyena's eye turn silver, the bearer would be granted immortality; sure enough, anyone with a silver eye cannot die via illness or old age. Kamui immigrated to Kanto, where he became a serial killer. In 1979, he infiltrated a government meeting; after killing all attendees but the 24th Ward mayor, he was arrested by Detective Tetsugoro Kusabi.
(In reality, these events were falsified. The officials killed each other, attempting to steal Kamui's silver eye for themselves. The victor, Mayor Uminosuke Hachisuka, would go on to replace one of his eyes and continue to govern the 24th Ward, eventually succeeding himself as his "son". It's even possible that the original Kamui was not even really a serial killer.)
Furthermore, Kamui Uehara's personality had attracted government attention. Obedient and possessing a large amount of "criminal power"-- an abstract capacity for chaos, cruelty, and violence-- his persona was seen as an ideal base for government pawns. Thus, the Shelter Kids Policy began in 1980. The families of 1,440 boys ages 2-4 were promised free tuition through high school in exchange for 4 years of participation. Though publicly presented as legitimate, in reality, the children within the project were being subliminally imprinted with "Format Kamui"'s persona. These children were kept in a dark, oppressive facility: neglected, robbed of individuality, and forced to perform endless rote tasks. Children were also experimented on in an effort to mass produce silver eyes; hyena eyes were implanted into as many as possible. The children's bodies largely rejected the implants, with almost none achieving "ocular silverization". Upon release, while most children suppressed all memories of the Shelter, they were already conditioned sleeper agents. Shelter Kids were then placed in strategic places in the government and police.
Uehara was a rare Shelter child: his eye had turned silver. His conditioning dormant and his memories suppressed, Uehara was adopted and had an uneventful upbringing in the 24th Ward.
In 1999, "Kamui Uehara" (a Shelter child and scapegoat for the deceased original) escaped from prison. Within the year, Tetsugoro Kusabi of the 24th Ward Heinous Crimes Unit went rogue, uncovered the truth about the Silver Case, and executed a number of key players in the Shelter Project (aided by agents Akira and Sakura Natsume, both former Shelter children). Kusabi went into hiding; the surviving 24th Ward HCU agents restructured their department and continued operation.
Meanwhile, Uehara became a detective and relocated to the newly formed 25th Ward. The 25th Ward was an experimental ward: supposedly utopian, but effectively authoritarian. It was secretly watched over by officials known as "Observers"; any criminals or rule-breakers pinpointed by Observers were "processed" by deep state agents affiliated with the 25th Ward's postal service. Even less known, Observers were metaphysical beings fully able to control the ways in which they were perceived within reality-- including the reality of the actual video game.
Uehara became an agent of the 25th Ward's HCU. Here, he was used as a pawn by 1) the 25th Ward's government, seeking the influence of a Kamui within the HCU, and 2) insider agents from the 24th Ward looking to awaken him as Kamui and an Observer to destroy the oppressive 25th Ward from within.
Before his formal hiring, Natsume secretly allowed Uehara onto the crime scene of his first case-- the murder of Miru Yuzuki-- where she explained his role as an insider. He was then hired by high-ranking administrator Kinshiro Nakane, who ordered him to work under the assumed name Kamui Uehara. At the HCU offices, Uehara met agents Shinko Kuroyanagi, Mokutaro Shiroyabu, Hatoba (chief of the HCU), Akama, and Aoyama. In time, Shiroyabu awoke to his own supernatural powers as host for the purely metaphysical existence of deceased Observer Kurumizawa. As the rest of the HCU pursued the rogue agent, Shiroyabu discovered that Uehara was truly Kamui, as well as a fledgling Observer, and killed him.
However, some time before Uehara's presumed death at Shiroyabu's hands, he found himself in the middle of a standoff between the HCU. It was at this point that Akama and Aoyama revealed their true identities as time-traveling agents with an even deeper agenda than the 25th Ward project. It was their job to usher Uehara to many influential points in the timeline. Uehara took 100 separate actions at this nexus point, each leading to a separate fate and branch on the timeline.
Finally, Uehara expressed his Observer abilities, inheriting the memories of all previous timelines and gaining meta awareness. He pledged to the player that he would cleanse the world of evil and create a better world and future.
In the final timeline, Uehara shot at both Akama and Aoyama. The two saved themselves, explained the situation, then teleported him to 2018 Texas. There, Uehara was instructed to meet and aid assassin Travis Touchdown using his abilities as an Observer to detect the “points” Travis needed to encounter. Travis was searching for the "Death Balls"-- the games of an unreleased console, the Death Drive-- as they were rumored to be able to grant the owner's any wish once gathered. Kamui and Travis spent some weeks corresponding and searching for the Death Balls together, often meeting at diners across the United States.
However, Kamui's final mission was to kill or be killed by Travis before giving up the final Death Ball. After hiring several assassins to hold 3 innocents hostage and fight Travis, Kamui eventually fought Travis himself, prepared for a battle to the death... until Travis refused to continue the fight, as they had become friends through their partnership. Kamui, who'd never been shown genuine friendship before this point, began to cry-- then relinquished the Death Ball and aided Travis until he departed back into the timestream.
PERSONALITY:
Kamui presents himself as an almost limitless well of calm. He speaks softly, doesn't take up much space, and is both polite and to the point in nearly all his interactions. He's rarely roused to anger or annoyance and keeps a cool, professional head when caught off guard. However, this impassive nature, on top of how unaccustomed he is to socializing, can easily make him come across as creepy, unnerving, or awkward.
In truth, he is awkward! Now that he knows it's possible to live a life beyond his destiny, he's uncertain how to accomplish that and be himself. He's both a mild-mannered, somewhat sheltered young man who'd like to have lunch with his friends, as well as a tool of violence. On one hand, he's easy to appease and longs for friendship. Having once been a detective, he's also perceptive and intelligent: he's got an emerging dry wit and loves picking apart mysteries and puzzles.
On the other, Kamui can never escape the fate assured by his childhood conditioning and experiences. He's quite morally ambiguous and has a casual relationship with both death and violence, having experienced them both firsthand over and over; when it comes to his own abilities as a killer, he's utterly no-nonsense and confident, to the point of eerie detachment from both killing and his own mortality. After all, another incarnation and will always replace him. In fact, until his friend Travis hesitates to kill him in a fight to the death, Kamui is willing to kill-- or be killed by-- even the closest ally, for the sake of moving towards a goal. He breaks down in tears after having been shown this kindness, showing just how foreign it is to his expectations for the bloody utility with which he handles his own life.
In high-stress situations, Kamui's first instinct is toward action. He's accustomed to shutting himself down for the sake of practicality, as he did when stuck in the time loop at the end of the 25th Ward. In spite of the massive amount of stress and trauma he suffered within that loop-- all escape attempts failed, and he died or committed suicide over 30 times over its course-- being able to make any sort of decision or progress toward an end while within a hopeless situation, ironically, pushed him towards a greater sense of agency. Only through fighting for his life did it finally become his own.
This is reflected in how he now reacts to an emergency. After dying so many times, he's very loose when it comes to self-preservation: if it'll solve the problem at hand, he doesn't care if he gets hurt. If he dies, he'll come back-- eventually. It all returns to searching for the right solution to the problem, even at a cost to himself. He's like a rabbit, chewing off its foot to escape a trap: he'd much rather be hurt and free than whole and stuck. With Kamui, everything is about moving forward and onto the next action.
Kamui's goals are completely tied into his identity. Because he's an incarnation of the metaphysical chaotic entity called Kamui Uehara, he is an inheritor of the original Kamui's legacy. Other Kamuis have been many things-- killers, counterculture symbols, victims-- but they've all been heralds of social change and revolution, something that this Kamui longs to embody, too. At the end of the 25th Ward, he voices this to the player: he pledges to "revolutionize the world" and create a better future, cleansed from old evils.
How that's actually going to work on a practical level is another question entirely. Though he's aware of the harm that's been done to people via the authoritarian rule of his reality, he's a pretty young, naive chaotic entity, in the end. He isn't entirely all-knowing, and it's uncertain how he might form a new video game reality, either. Kamui just follows the directions laid out in front of him by other agents who are a couple steps ahead of him.
All of this stems from his harsh conditioning in the Shelter. Since childhood, he's been treated as more of a vessel for the fate he's supposed to inhabit, rather than his own individual human being. Only recently has he been shown that he can be literally anything else. At the moment, his goals are important to him solely because they're what he's supposed to be doing. He has no idea who, or what, he is without them. Until he discovers his own identity, Kamui Uehara is his goal: following the universe's road map to formulate a better world.
INVENTORY: The only notable item he has is a small harpoon gun: think a weaponized grappling hook a la Batman.
POWERS
SKILLS/ABILITIES:
NERFING:
WEAKNESSES: N/A
SAMPLES.
Hizen
Soma
Travis
Andromache