Hyohaku

Appearance
Hyohaku is one hundred and forty pounds and has the height of five feet and seven inches. He has pale white skin with short and spiky white hair and eyes in a sharp, aqua marine color. The teenager’s trademark clothing style consists of a fishnet shirt followed by a black shirt over the fishnet shirt, black gloves, black cargo pants and black and gray running shoes. His overall main look is the trench coat. It has a dark blue color, to blend with the night, with black fur at the rim of the hood that is wrapped around by his long chain from his left shoulder to the right side of his waist.

Origin
Within one of the harsh ghettos of a city in the fire nation, Hyohaku had his newborn life given to him by his non-bender mother Sazu, and with a great amount of help from his fire-bender father Izanashi and brother Sazashi who is eight years old. The second the little bundle of life was brought into the world, the family quickly noticed that his skin pigment was bleached white. And just as a little joke, Sazashi instantly chose to give him the nickname “Hyohaku” because of his pale white skin. But funny enough, his parents agreed to how funny the nickname sounds and officially called their newborn baby boy “Hyohaku”. Throughout the years of growing up, Hyohaku has mostly been taken care of by his older brother Sazashi since their mother and father individually take jobs to sustain their family financially. Outside of the bad neighborhood they call home, the two brothers always had each others back. Gang fights were a usual thing at that areas and considering that Hyohaku was merely eight on his first day of school, having his big brother around didn’t seem like a bad idea at the time. Sadly enough, the boy did attract the wrong crowd because of his pale pigment and was usually beated up for being different. He didn’t really pay much mind to that since his older brother was always there to save him on the nick of time. One day, Hyohaku came home from school to be greeted by a his family and a regular sized cake with nine lit candles on top of it, today was his ninth birthday. As he warming hug the his family, they all gathered around the table as they watched him blow out the candles. While they were all enjoying the cake their mother Sazu made for the occasion, Sazashi nudged at the child to get his attention. He gave him what seems like a book covered in a colorful wrap with a bow on it. Saying that he couldn’t bare to see him going birthday after birthday without a gift, he passed the item to him and waited for his expression. As Hyohaku tore off the wrap, his eyes widened in fascination and awe when he gazed upon the picture of a masked man in a grey trench coat below a large title in bold that said “The Silver Shroud : Issue #1”. On that day, he became addicted to comic books.

For the next four years, Hyohaku has spent most of his time reading his Silver Shroud comic books among with other comics volume by volume. Each issue didn’t even cost more than three yuans so his elder brother was able to provide him his favoirite comic books since he had a job. There honestly has not been a single day when he wasn’t reading it, even during school days he ignored his teacher’s lectures to catch up on the latest issue of the silver shroud. Apparently, some other older children who usually picked on him because of his odd skin pigment noticed his hobby and decided to mess with him by beating him up after school. They managed to have caught him and dragged him I to an abandoned house and presumed to beat the hell out of him. Not knowing how to fight, the best the boy could do was stay in the fetal position and protect his graphic novel from harm’s way. But that only made them antagonize him even more by forcefully grabbing his comic book from his hands and ripping it apart piece by piece in front of him. This of course made Hyohaku angry to the point that he retaliated like any normal person could have done…by running up to the biggest guy he could see and punching him in between the eyes. The only one thing that he didn’t realize was going to happen was the small ember of fire that collided with the boy’s face, leaving some scars. Before the other ones came to make him pay for what he did, Sazashi was there at the nick of time as usual a to save him and leave the area. He didn’t spare any time to tell his parents not only that his little brother can not only bend fire but white fire. Admitted, they were both scared and couldn’t comprehend how Hyohaku could bend fire but the made sure to comfort their child and assured him that nothing was wrong with him doing what he did.

Since Izanashi couldn’t teach his son to fire bend because he had to work to support his family, Hyohaku depended on his older brother Sazashi to help teach him how to master his fire bending powers. He was a slow learner, but within the time of three years he was able to master the basic phase of fire bending. Now able to defend himself, he was able to walk through the poverty stricken streets with little to no fear. Some would usually try to mugged him, but he was able to beat the criminal to near unconscious. Although he had the opportunity to end the person’s life, he didn’t solely because the main protagonist in the comic book he loves never used his talents to kill…his graphic novels at the time helped him build up his moral code. On his way home from working at the same comic book store that he bought his latest issue of “The Silver Shroud”, he saw something quite odd. The sixteen year old witnessed a man dashing away from his front door with a rather large duffle bag and holding on to a short, blood covered knife. Slowly puzzling the pieces together and instantly thinking of the worst, Hyohaku ran through the door and into the living room to see his parents mourning over their son who he sees on the floor with a stab wound in his chest. His poor brother wasn’t even given a final word, he just simply died in his mother’s arms as his father closed his eyes. In a fit of anger, the boy ran back outside, ignoring the plea of his parents to come back, and followed the small drops and footprints of blood on the pavement until the trail lead to an old house that seemed abandoned years ago. Kicking through the old front door enraged, he saw the familiar culprit along with five other teenagers. By the look on the main guy’s face which was badly burnt at the center, Hyohaku knew that these were the same kids who usually beated him up years before. He gave a slight smirk when he saw five of them starting to pick up debris of wood to attack, it seemed like a hint that none of them were benders. Deciding to play their game, the boy picked up a long chain hanging from the ceiling and started to beat all of the boys severely by dodging their swings and whipping them with the chain till they yield for mercy and ran leaving their leader. One of them had the bright idea to try to strike him from behind, but was greeted with a fire ball past his face which was a warning to leave. Hyohaku walked up steadily to the murderer of his older bother who began to cry and beg for mercy. Still giving the thief a glare of murderous intent, he wrapped the chain around his knuckles and beated him to near to consciousness. The fifteen year old boy felt slightly better about the loss of his brother and turned around to see that he accidently set the front of the old house on fire. Calling himself an idiot for fire bending in the room he prepared to jump through the window but came to a sudden halt when he realized that the same thief was still unconscious with the flames almost engulfing the entire room. Nothing would have pleased him more at the moment to sit back and watch the bastard burn to death but somehow he found himself dragging him from the roaring fire. Leaving his bruised body on the grass at the back yard, he ran off to go home to his parents. Considering the events today, he thought that all need to be together.

It has been a good month since Sazashi died and Hyohaku took care of his murderer, his parents somehow managed to move on and continue their lives by gathering enough money to move to a fairly cheap apartment in republic city, but Hyohaku still had something running in his mind. He was in his room reading his latest issue of “The Silver Shroud”. He remembered that he could have left that thief to die but somehow he couldn’t do it. Was it that he couldn’t handle it? Or maybe he was too cowardice to end his life. More questions ran through his head as he continued to read…until it hit him. What if this was some sort of sign? The happy childhood loving family, the struggles of his daily survival with a father figure, his cherished one’s demise and his refusal to kill the one that wronged him. It somehow seemed similar to the storyline of a vigilante. He slowly started to smile at the idea he had in his head as he looked at the cover of his comic book. The night later he was up on a rooftop, wearing a long dark and blue trench coat with a black chain wrapped around his shoulder looming over what seems like a woman on the verge of being robbed…or rape…or maybe both. In a weird sense, he felt that this was right for some reason. He had the tragic back story, the cool uniform, and the weird ass power of bending white fire. It felt like the puzzle pieces to make a perfect vigilante if you asked him. So in one leap down to save his first civilian, he started his new life, well it’s only a hobby, as a vigilante that goes under the alias “The White Shroud”

Description
Hyohaku is a rather calm and docile individual when you meet him at first but he does like to have decent conversations and would like to hear another’s opinion when he comes up with ideas and theories. Since he was born in a rather dangerous area, he did pick up swearing pretty quickly, but he knows very well to speak as such in certain periods of time…like when he’s out at night doing vigilante stuff. The main thing about him is that he is a die hard comic book fan. There barely is a time in the day, except at night, he usually spends his time reading his personal favorite graphic novel “The Silver Shroud”. Hyohaku tends to have a fairly high sense of morals because of what he reads, but that he doesn’t mean that he lost touch with reality. He is fully aware that being a vigilante is dangerous work, and he plans to take it all on just because.