<br/><br/><div class="floatleft">(https://66.media.tumblr.com/f43abd1b474f0241cc43b2c9c515f176/tumblr_o8s976d6kC1ufq4oao1_500.jpg)</div><strong>Hero Name:</strong>Toshu-Yaiba "Empty Handed Blade"<br/><strong>Aliases:</strong>Mayami Nakamura<br/><strong>Identity:</strong>Semi-Secret<br/><strong>Age:</strong>40<br/><strong><br/>Appearance and Personality:</strong>Mayami is a statuesque and strong bodied woman. Standing at 5'9 she is taller than average for a Japanese woman, and weighs in at around 135lbs. She has a slender, athletic figure, softened somewhat by age and mother hood, baring firm hips and C-cup breasts that she usually keeps bound in a sarashi. Her old Yakuza roots are deeply tied into her personal style, from her gangster-esque outfit to the copious tattoos running down her body. All and all she has aged rather gracefully, and is still a beauty by anyone's standards, however the stress of her work has begun to take its toll, most noticeably in the early graying of her hair around the ears. Also tied into her roots she holds a rather old school mind set, holding honor, tradition, and respect in high regards, and while she isn't humorless, she always carries herself with a certain level of sternness that can make her seem hard to approach to some.<br/><br/><br/><strong>Powers:</strong>Mayami possesses no special abilities beyond regular human limitations. However she is an extremely skilled swordsman, as well as a practitioner of several martial arts. While her body has slowed down somewhat from when she was in her prime, her speed, dexterity, flexibility, and precision are all still well above that of your average person. In lieu of powers she fights with a set of specially made beam katanas, cutting edge technology given to her back when she was a part of the Yakuza, the energized blades capable of cutting through most materials with relative ease.<br/><strong><br/>History:</strong>Born in a small town in Osaka Japan, Mayami grew up with a fairly uneventful, country upbringing. She helped around her parents' shop, went out exploring with her friends, and trained at the local kendo dojo every summer. When she came of age she went out to try living an exciting life in the big city of Tokyo. However a wide eyed country bumpkin like herself was quickly gobbled up by the ruthless city, and it wasn't long before she was relying on loans from some unrepeatable people to make ends meet, acquiring a fair amount of debt in the process. When the loan sharks came a knocking and it was clear she didn't have the money, it was decided she would have to find<em>other</em>ways to pay them back. The first and most obvious idea on their minds was to use her body, whore her out to make back what she owed, however she managed to spare herself this fate when they found out how proficient she happened to be with a sword. She was given a knife and a target, a thug from one of the rival clans, the instructions were simple "either plunge this into his belly or spend the rest of your life having things plunged into yours", at first she struggled with the morality of her decision, but it didn't last long, after all this was a criminal, a bad man who had done bad things to good people... and she was no one's whore...<br/><br/>From that day on Mayami found herself on a new career path, that of a trained hit man, an assassin who took the life of whoever her bosses, the Iyama clan, deemed a nuisance or threat. Though she started as a indebted servant, eventually she gained the respect of the higher ups, and rose to a prominent position in the syndicate's hierarchy. They called her Toshu-Yaiba "The Empty Handed Blade" due to the signature beam katanas she wielded, that appeared blade less until the moment she struck in a blinding flash of light. Then, once she had paid back her debt to the family 10 times over, and felt she had done everything she could for them, she stepped away from the business. The split was amicable, she was a revered member of the family, who had done more than her share for the cause in her time, if she wished to settle down then they would support her. She ended up taking a husband and started up her own little corner store (with the backing of the Iyama's of course), and the two even had a beautiful daughter together, finally managing to find a happy medium between her quiet, uneventful country life, and the insane, violence filled world she had found herself living in for the past 15 years.<br/><br/>She would have lived happily ever after, however 5 years later her old associates from the Iyama family came knocking once more. There were big stirrings within the Japanese underworld, and they once again found themselves in need of her services. She flatly refused however, she was retired, she had a family, she had put that violent life behind her. The clan had tried every trick and trinket they could to try and entice her back into the fold willingly, however when it became clear that she didn't intend to take up her sword they decided she needed to be punished. Reminded of who it was she answered to, who had given her the chance to build the life she led...and who could take it away oh so easily. It wasn't shock or surprise that gripped her when she saw the bits and pieces of her husband and daughter spread across the inside of their shop...only deep, sinking despair...and then heated, violent rage. With the wrath of an angered war goddess Mayami cut down the ranks of the Iyama family like a field of wheat, not stopping until she had slain all of them down the very last man.<br/><br/>However theirs deaths had brought her now great satisfaction, not enough to fill the void left by her family at least. And her actions had caused such great instability in the crime world that staying in Japan wasn't an option. Thus she left, fleeing from everything, her past, the memory of her family, the bloodshed she had left behind in her wake...all of it behind her. And when she found herself in a strange new land she found herself with nothing left but fatigue and overwhelming guilt. Guilt for allowing herself to be the pawn of evil men, guilt for the misery her actions unwittingly sowed for so many. She told herself she would never allow such injustices to go unpunished. She could not stop criminals from abusing the weak or destroying families as they had with her's, but she could at least make sure they paid the price for their actions with their lives. As such she ended up becoming not a hero, but a vigilante, stalking the streets at night and taking down criminals with lethal precision. She would never be accepted by the more noble, registered heroes, but she didn't care, after all she had spent most of her life as a hitman, she was prepared to live out the rest of her days as such if it meant doing at least some good in the world.<br/><strong>Note:</strong>Theme: The Rising Sun (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJjZM5zFGuA)<br/><br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Dual Beam Katanas "Blooming Lotus" and "Shrinking Violet"</div><div class="spoiler_body">(http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/suda51/images/3/35/TradingCardNo107.png/revision/latest?cb=20090910075257)(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-yzvQCFPh79M/VjPi2QdphbI/AAAAAAAAA3E/eEg6tRI5Fw4/w890-h576/CrossSword.png)</div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Mayami in her prime (as well as back tatoos)</div><div class="spoiler_body">(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/64/55/e2/6455e27e9a5678f36bd234fde8e1e00a.jpg)</div></div><br/><br/><strong>Physical Skills:</strong>3 - Skilled in several disciplines of both sword and hand to hand combat. Also sufficiently trained in stealth, tracking, marksmanship with hand guns, and "interrogation" methods. Over all ability is only slight marred by her age and accumulation of injuries over her life.<br/><span class="bbc_u">Specialty:</span>Dueling/Assassination - due to her upbringing as a Yakuza hit man, she is particularly effective when facing down a single opponent, or when having to arrange the assassination of a target.<br/><strong><br/>Mental Skills:</strong>4 - Mayami has both a keen, well educated mind, as well as years of experience fighting and hunting men. Combined this makes her a great tactician, both when planning/organizing difficult missions, and when spontaneously improvising solutions on the spot. She is also well versed in certain technology, particularly the operation and maintenance of her beam katanas.<br/><strong><br/>Social Skills:</strong>2 - Carries herself very professionally and regards most people with a fair amount of respect. However her old school personality sometimes clashes with more modern sensibilities.