Suzuki Satomi

PLAYER: Kobayashi
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: Yes
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: N/A
CONTACT: IM this journal
CHARACTERS PLAYED: Koshi Tanaka (batteredbatter)

NAME: Satomi Suzuki, otherwise known as Benten-sama
CANON: Uchouten Kazoku (The Eccentric Family)
CANON REFERENCE: Here
AGE: Late twenties/early thirties.
GENDER: Female
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: Economics Professor
APPEARANCE: here

PERSONALITY: Benten is a woman of power, self-assured and confident, some who gets what she wants on whatever terms she wants it, with poise and grace and dignity. Or at least, that’s the image she projects, though to call it an image is to undercut the very real danger she represents and power she holds. It’s simply that there are other sides that she does not so readily present, but are all too well known to those close to her, and yet other sides that she hides altogether.

First and foremost, Benten is ambitious. She’s not necessarily ruthless, but neither is she particularly squeamish about who she has to step on what she has to do to get what she wants. A teenager, she was kidnapped by a tengu and abducted into their society. Rather than rebelling, she rather enthusiastically climbed the ladder of tengu society and learned all of their tricks and abilities. And when she had no more to learn, she abandoned her master without much a thought, moving on to become quite successful in human society and among prestigious circles such as the Friday Fellows – yet another case where she can exercise her power as well as move closer to a knowledgeable master, Jiroujin, who is apparently a practitioner of magic.

She is capricious and self-centered, to the point of being cruel and irresponsible. Not in a way that would endanger herself, of course – she isn’t careless. But she could care less about what happens to others often, while in the pursuit of her own goals. She claims no regret for her part in the scheme that debilitated her former master, nor does she seem to care about the damages to those around her caused by chaos she either foresaw or perhaps even instigated, as seen during the fight between the ships or the way she maneuvers around the various disasters at the year-end bash, all without warning any of her fellows as to the possible danger. She tends to act on whimsy, such as when she wakes up feeling like she wants to pull on a whale’s tail and summarily spends her day waiting for one to appear in a nearby inlet – and when one does, actually swimming over to it and playing tug-o-war with the poor thing’s tail.

These kinds of indiscretions stem from the fact that, for all the dangerous adult that she presents to be, Benten is rather childish. She demands the moon and is actually disappointed when she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t particularly consider the feelings of others very much beyond to manipulate them – the idea that, inevitably, she will eat Yasaburo only saddens her in the fact that she wouldn’t have him around anymore for her own entertainment, not in any sympathy for him, the one who is to be literally eaten. She tends to swing rather easily with her emotions, feelings of melancholy or nostalgia, rather easily, though she generally hides it.

She’s not above helping others, but it tends to be for her own ends. Not to say she always has a particular angle in mind when she does, but she’ll help those that she favors, either out of amusement or personal taste, and abandon those she doesn’t. Of course, if it suits her, she might as easily abandon or threaten the ones she does favor. It’s all something of a game to her, one where there are those she cares about enough to help keep in play, unless she’s the particular one removing them.

Above all else, Benten’s motivation is her own pleasure and entertainment – her ambition is simply a means to an end. By holding power, she can do whatever she wants. She puts herself in a position to be able to act on her desires and enjoy whatever she likes, and to always have a plan continue doing so and escape whatever consequences may come. Without conniving, she is cunning; without carelessness, she is capricious; without darkness, she is dangerous. She is a woman who is, first and foremost, looking out for her own best interests, no matter how small they might be, over everyone else’s.

POWERS/ABILITIES: Benten is known for her ability to fly and manipulate the wind, but her true power is the ability to steal the powers of other mutants. However, hers is not a particularly convenient ability to use. In order to steal the power of another mutant, she must eat part of them, as in literally consumer their flesh and/or blood. How much power and how long it lasts are dependent on what she eats and how much. Taking a literal bite out of someone might let her use a moderately strong ability for a minute or two. Eating something like an entire limb or several internal organs might let her copy something almost permanently. It seems the rarity and vitality of the flesh consumed enhances the potency – skin is near worthless, blood is okay, but things like organs or bone can be extremely potent.

Though it’s called “stealing”, it doesn’t actually take the ability away from the original owner. Her current power set is taken from her former master – gained over many years through the ingestion of blood samples, what began as only being able to temporarily copy his abilities of flight and frost gradually grew to being able to sustain them for much longer and as skillfully. She finally sealed her grasp of the “tengu’s” abilities by stealing his spinal fluid, though the theft of it accidentally injured his spine, leaving him with a bad back and a great weakening of his abilities. This was enough to take his powers for her own, to the point that her mastery rivaled his own at his peak. She can fly, with enough power to lift several other people with ease, she can whip up winds powerful enough to send a car flying, or given enough time, create an actual storm, though she has no control over what rain or lightning might occur from that.

Over the course of her career, she’s had chances to sample various “tastes” through her connections, though the only lasting effects she’s kept are a minor ability to create freezing cold in a very small area at a touch, short of frostbite, a bit of strength that belies her size and build, though hardly anything that would be unusual for an athlete, and slightly enhanced reflexes. Preparing such meals has always been rather hard to do, especially in more recent years, since she generally does not like to let others know of her powers or to leave lasting harm – since such grudges could lead back to her.

AU HISTORY: Satomi Suzuki was a completely ordinary girl right up until high school, when her life took a turn for the strange. Not because of her awakened mutation, but because she was kidnapped while strolling along Lake Biwako in Kyoto by a self-styled “tengu”, Akadama-sensei, a man who had gained the power of flight and wind manipulation through his mutation. Seeking a protégé to teach his “secrets” and that of the small society of similarly empowered individuals, the man took him under her wing after having sensed she might be similarly gifted. Rather than rebel though, Satomi rather enthusiastically embraced this change to her previously boring life, voraciously taking in their knowledge, making connections throughout Japan’s underground communities, both mutant and otherwise, and obtaining power – in some cases, quite literally.

Satomi discovered her mutant powers somewhat by accident, after participating in rituals that were supposed to increase spiritual power and bonds between her and her master – a ritual which involved drinking a draught that, among other things, contained Akadama-sensei’s blood. While the mystically-inclined among those she knew, her teacher included, assumed that her minor ability to mimic his power was simply proof of their teachings, Satomi had her own suspicions. Over the years, she managed to confirm those suspicions as to the true nature of her abilities while building them up, all without arousing her master’s suspicion and currying favor with him and his colleagues, rising among their secret society.

Eventually though, it was time to leave the nest – having, to her estimates, exhausted the resources she could gain from her teacher, she decided it was time to move among other circles and increase her reach – socially, economically and in terms of her mutant abilities. She wasn’t going to leave without a parting gift though. While the intake of blood regularly was all well and good, she found it both impermanent and lacking in terms of the power bestowed, despite how much her copy of her master’s skills had grown. She had learned that blood was, in fact, quite cheap, compared to other less easily procured parts of the body. She theorized that spinal fluid would probably be something with the highest “value” so to speak yet cause the least lasting injury – or evidence of its theft, as it were. A missing limb was hard to overlook, while a small puncture, some pain and temporary after effects would be more easily forgotten. With the help of another disciple of her master’s teachings, she set about stealing it from Akadama-sensei. Through complications though, they ended up causing him permanent injury that left him with a bad back – and most notably, severely diminished use of his abilities. Neither of them were ever caught or even implicated in the accident though, and with her objective obtained, Satomi left with not a shred of regret, taking with her the power that once had made her master so feared.

Using the connections she’d built up over the many years as her master’s disciple, Satomi flourished, living rather comfortably as she went where she wanted and did what she wanted. She made her way into a somewhat secretive elite society in Kyoto known as the Friday Fellows, a group of seven social elites who took the names of seven lucky gods as aliases; it was from here that she obtained the name Benten-sama. As a member, she enjoyed the most luxury and freedom to indulge in her hobbies, such as experimenting with her power. Her meddling did eventually attract the attention of greater powers, and as a result of a rather chaotic power struggle to which she was tangent, Benten decided to take a little vacation out of the country – and the big city on the opposite side of the world seemed far enough. Deciding to take a break from business and dealing, she decided to try her hand at education – and what better place than a school with a greater variety of powers than any banquet she’d visited might offer. Unfortunately, she didn’t count on the headmaster being the most powerful telepath in the world. Her genuine interest and curiosity at being able to teach in such a unique environment outweighs her ambitions and more dangerous meddling, as does her desire to maintain a low enough profile not to be attracting too much attention from back home, so she’s promised to be on her best behavior, a promise Xavier knows she has every intention of keeping, and one she’s not foolish enough to break, for now. Still, she’s under somewhat strict watch, and while it wasn’t necessarily spread around, her true abilities, which she usually keeps secret, are known among various parts of the staff, somewhat to her chagrin. As it stands, she tries not to think about the restrictions on her movements at the moment and just think of it as a light vacation from her usually dangerous lifestyle and just enjoy the rather idyllic charms of teaching at a school with impressionable young children, though as the recent U-Man attack showed, school life isn’t necessarily as boring as she assumed it would be.

SAMPLES

NETWORK SAMPLE:
[Here’s Ms. Suzuki sipping tea – okay, no, “something in a tea cup” is all that can be said, with the edge of some kind of glass bottle just visible on the right side of the camera shot – at a table and chair, which might be concern enough, but probably of bigger interest is the fact that… these are clearly on top of the roof of the institute.]

Like I said in class today, I won’t be in my office this afternoon – however, if you do have any pressing questions before next week’s quiz, you’re free to come find me between the hours of… oh, let’s say now and five o’clock? I really can’t be responsible for any of you hurting yourselves trying to get up her once it starts getting dark. Bring a notebook and a pencil… oh, and a scarf or something warm. It’s a bit chilly up here and I’m afraid someone might get mad if I shared this with you.

[She smiles and raises her cup at the camera before sipping again, smiling smugly right before it turns off on a timer.]

LOG SAMPLE:
Benten – no, Satomi Suzuki… how long had it been since she’d last used that name? – heaved a sigh as she stared out the window. The same round moon would be hanging above Kyoto – in twelve hours or so, anyway. The distance would be the same, yet here it just felt so much further. America… Satomi wasn’t one to be easily intimidated, but even she could feel a little unease so far from her usual hunting grounds. Mostly it was her situation that had things feeling more out of reach than usual – wandering in social circles where she was neither top dog, going to be top dog, or close enough to the actual top dog that she might as well be.

“…on my best behavior, is it?” she mused, leaning her chin onto a hand, the treasured fan her master had given her dangling from it. Truly a petty bit of nostalgia, especially when it didn’t actually hold any power of its own – yet she was glad she had it here. At least something could be familiar. She wondered how long it would be before things settled down enough for her to go back – if she could, even. She wouldn’t admit to missing anyone but… certain faces might have served to ease the possible ennui working here might promise. Like that boy who’d always provided such a delicious dilemma. “Ah, but now… I can’t have him or eat him. A shame, really.”

Just like the moon, just like a far off the dream. But perhaps there were other opportunities here. “Well… I suppose I should do some sight-seeing this weekend, if I’ve come all this way.”

Yes, she wondered how small the Big Apple would look from atop the Statue of Liberty. Maybe on Saturday she’d go find out. That idea cheered her up immensely, and suddenly the moon didn’t seem so far away.