Institute App

[echoing_sutras]

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: gsai
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: y
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: n/a
CONTACT: pm this journal
CHARACTERS PLAYED: Reimu Hakurei (musou_tensei, Bridget (kickstart_my_heart)

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Kyouko Kasodani
CANON: Touhou Project
CANON REFERENCE: Touhou Wiki page, SoPM
AGE: 16
GENDER: Female
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: 10th Grade
APPEARANCE: http://i.imgur.com/8grSQ.jpg
Kyouko has teal hair and eyes and brown, furry ears and tail. The ears and tail, dog-like in appearance, are traditional physical characteristics of yamabiko. When preparing her echoing power, her ears vibrate rapidly.

PERSONALITY:
"She lives in the mountains, and when she hears a joyous sound, she replies back with a loud voice. A good youkai with kind heart."

Kyouko is among a race of youkai called yamabiko which don't partake in the normal terrorizing of humans that some youkai do. In spite of her jokes about "filling the morning with their screams", Kyouko is generally nice to the heroes of the story (except for Youmu, for reasons to be described later). She is kind spirited and will try to help out anyone that needs it. It's just her way, really.

Being a neophyte of the Myouren Temple, Kyouko studies Buddhism quite extensively, and tries to reflect the principles of that faith. She can echo sutras from memory, and will often quote various sutras and precepts as the time calls for it ("Greetings are the heart's oasis.") when going about her duties. Given her primary duty is to greet temple visitors, her audio memory comes in great handy. It also helps that she's cute.

Kyouko is also very enthusiastic. It may be because she's young, but she has great energy, even for as early in the morning as her scenes in canon take place. Before dawn she is sweeping, cooking, greeting visitors, accepting challenges from interlopers, and basically preparing the whole temple before anyone else is even awake. Her energy channels into her greeting, giving a hearty "Good morning!" to the heroes, far louder than some would expect (much to Marisa's annoyance, actually). She goes about everything with this sort of gusto, and is all smiles during.

One thing she doesn't tolerate is killing. When Youmu shows up at Myouren with her swords drawn, Kyouko treats her far faaar differently than she did the other heroes. She becomes aggressive and righteous, shaming Youmu for daring to kill anyone, be they fairies or youkai. Youmu, of course, hadn't killed anyone at all, but Kyouko jumped to the conclusion anyways and attacked with a fury the other heroes were not subject to. Whether this had to do with her Buddhist training or something deeper in her past is unknown.

Kyouko, unfortunately, has become a bit bored with her life in the temple, though. While she tries her best and is dutiful, a lot of the deeper meaning of her training is lost on her and her restless youthful energy has desperately come out in other ways. She formed a rock band with Mystia Lorelei as a result and has started really throwing herself into music with a message of rebellion and punk rock culture. In some ways, it coincides with her Buddhist beliefs of challenging one's perceptions of reality. But in most ways... she's still just a kid and frustrated with the world.

Symposium of Post-Mysticism makes note to mention that she is fairly timid, but this is more to do with in-person interaction. Over great distances (such as via a typical network ala DWRP) she's fine. This also makes sense with the persona she adapts as a rock star in canon, as it's fairly detached from interpersonal communication. It's also noted in that same book that she doesn't deal with stress very well.

There is something of a depressing point to be made about the matters that drove Kyouko (and others like her) to Myouren Temple to begin with. Given it's a temple for youkai, they often take in those with nowhere left to go. Human reason and science forced Kyouko out of her home in the mountains, her entire existence threatened by the denial of the supernatural. Even with her constant smile and high energy, there is that weight still carried with her. She doesn't show it often, and prefers to not talk about it, but it's still very much reality.

It is thought, perhaps, that her darker treatment of Youmu has something to do with this. The idea of dying, of being killed or wiped out, frightens her deeply. Existence for youkai born outside of Gensokyo is extremely grim. They have no protection from xenophobic humans, who would wipe out youkai either directly or indirectly by no longer respecting their existences. Kyouko is no exception to this, as she was likely born outside Gensokyo.

She attached herself to Buddhism because she honestly had nothing left. The emptiness of secularism was frightening, threatening to pretty much unmake her. Now, with spirituality on her side, she echoes sutras in the mountains of Gensokyo, retaining her place in the way of the world as a youkai. And it scares some humans, too. That's always a nice bonus. But what she really wants is for them to believe again...

POWERS/ABILITIES:
Soundwave Manipulation -
Kyouko has the remarkable ability to manipulate the vibration waves that construct what we perceive as sound. Kyouko's master of this ability is also extraordinarily advanced. In addition to studying the sutras and principals of her faith, Kyouko also spent a good chunk of her life studying the science of sound so that she could apply her mutation with precision and skill. So far, she can successfully manipulate from the range of 10Hz to about 96kHz. Most humans cannot hear beyond the range of 20Hz to 20kHz, so the additional range is largely information used for animals or for mechanical purposes, such as causing a tremor in the sub 20Hz range or piercing effects in the higher ranges.

Kyouko can manipulate all of the major aspects of the waves. The frequency range was already mentioned, but she can also change the amplitude (loudness), the velocity (changing the literal speed of sound in spite of the space it moves through), the phase (allowing her to compound or cancel out waves of sound), harmonics (allowing her to replicate specific fundamentals, timbre, etc), and envelope (allowing her to act as a living compressor of sorts). This essentially allows her to replicate any sound in any location, within reason. This plus her being able to effectively analyze the spectrum of sound, Kyouko has extremely versatile application of her power. Furthermore, she has the ability to "record" and "store" sounds, though the mechanics behind this are unknown.

What she CAN'T do is create sound so intense it can cause massive damage (like Avalanche) or even focus it well enough to fly or project as concussive blasts (like Banshee or Siryn). Maybe with enough time she will be able to, but for right now her power is mostly applicable on practical and scientific terms, not in combat. Though she is more than happy to learn ways in which it can be helpful there. In addition to all of this, her physical mutation gives her dog-like ears and a small tail. As her powers are used, her ears vibrate in relation to the sound produced (though not visibly at the same frequency).

AU HISTORY:
Like most of the residents of the all-mutant Myouren Temple, Kyouko was an orphan. She never knew her parents, and was a street kid before the head monk of the temple found her and took her in, teaching her the ways of Buddhism. As the temple neophyte, it fell upon Kyouko to basically be the first to rise in the morning and perform a litany of chores. Since the residents of the temple were basically her family, she was more than happy to do so. And all the while, she 'memorized' the various sutras, reciting them regularly, though sometimes failing to understanding their deeper meanings. Life was good for Kyouko. She loved her new family, and especially loved her new 'mother', the head monk...

It was an ideal life, but as she started to get older, and her interest in music grew more and more, Kyouko started to become a bit more difficult for the temple to handle. Kyouko started to fully embrace the punk rock lifestyles and philosophies. She was still a Buddhist at heat, but now she was very much a loud and sometimes obnoxious one. The head monk was eternally patient with her, but the attention Kyouko drew to herself and the temple was starting to stir up trouble in the local town. With growing anti-mutant pressure from other fronts in Japan, the head monk made a very very difficult decision.

It was just safer for Kyouko to attend the Institute. The environment in Japan with regards to visible mutants like her was not friendly in the slightest. More and more, unsavory types began to stalk near the temple. The police refused to become involved, as always, with mutant issues. With a heavy heart, the head monk contacted Professor Xavier about Kyouko. She was the youngest amongst them, the mist impressionable, and the one who was most obviously mutant. It was a hard thing to come to terms with, but eventually, Kyouko agreed to head to America, to the Institute.

At the Institute, Kyouko began attending classes as well as starting up an internet-based school radio program to continue her studies and application of her powers, as well as sound in general. She doesn't have any trouble fitting among the rebellious, disenfranchised mutants of the school, since she was one herself, but she hasn't forgotten herself. She can still be seen every morning at the crack of dawn reciting the sutras she learned at the temple.

SAMPLES

NETWORK SAMPLE: Most of this ought to do.

LOG SAMPLE:
Kyouko sits alone with her guitar and amp, strumming out a little tune, her fingers moving deftly and her ears showing visible vibrations as they mimicked the sound of a rhythm section backing her up. This was not an uncommon sight since Kyouko came to the school. Music was, after all, her entire world. It had been fostered by the folks at the temple (though not the loudness she was fond of) and she now had access to the sort of training to take her music, and her powers, to a level well beyond what she could reach on her own. So that meant practicing every single day, every opportunity she could.

She wasn't here to learn to be a fighter or hero or anything like that. She still carried Hijiri's pacifistic teachings with her. No, for her, the expression of her soul, of her joy and sorrow, of her love and anger, was through music. The mutant condition, she wanted to capture it in sound. And hopefully, she could find some people that were of a like mind. Solo acts were great and all... but what Kyouko had come to really love was the camaraderie of the Temple. She wanted to find that again in a band.