Saikō

legend o{{Bird Page V1
 * bordercolor=Silver
 * border shadow=Black
 * heading font=Times New Roman
 * header font shadow=1px 1px 3px #750000
 * header font color=Silver
 * background color =Black
 * charname=Saikō
 * top color =Black
 * bottom color =#750000
 * username=Jay Sea
 * bender type=Firebender
 * title=~Max
 * alignment= Chaotic Good
 * age=18
 * status=Alive
 * gender=Female
 * sexuality=Lesbian
 * hair color=Black
 * eye color=Grey
 * height=6'2"
 * relationship=Single
 * plans=
 * file=Screen_Shot_2015-03-13_at_5.43.30_PM.png
 * appearance=Saikō is tall and slim in a very martial-artsy sort of way. That is, she's no bodybuilder, but she's just as strong as her definition makes her look. Her dress varies from day-to-day, but generally it goes like this: Blacks, dark greys, or deep blues, reds, and earthen tones. She doesn't do bright colors. Or anything without a crotch.
 * personality=Saikō has quite the temper, and is almost always pissed off about something. She snaps at people who surprise her, or annoy her, or sometimes talk to her at all--but if she thinks she should have replied in a more calm fashion, she will apologize...sometimes. She is perceptive, a skill she's picked up from years of watching people interact with eachother. She's very much a loner and pushes people away when they get too close...not that she wants to. She doesn't want to hurt anyone, and she doesn't care to get hurt herself--plus she's afraid of her bending, afraid it might get away from her like it has before, and no one needs to be around when that happens. To her it is not an if, but a when.

She is very, very loyal to everything that is "hers": causes, beliefs, family, employers when she's got them, friends when she had them. To her the greatest offense is stabbing someone in the back. She fails to comprehend how one could do that--if one person trusts another to that extent, so that it truly is a stab, how could anyone pull the rug out? How could they live with themselves afterward?

How can she live with herself? }}
 * powers={{Fire Infantry
 * 1  = Not Yet Achieved
 * 2  = Not Yet Achieved
 * history=Saikō was born to Kala and Shinya in a reasonably sized town not far from the Fire Nation capital.

Parents
Kala, an orphan, was raised by a kind waterbender couple in a nice area of Repulic City. Her new parents weren't expecting a bender child, but they didn't mind to much after they recovered from their little seven-year-old almost burning down the house. They tried to take Kala to a firebending teacher, but she was much too shy and apprehensive for such things. In the end her parents taught her to firebend like they were taught to waterbend. Kala picked it up quickly that way, and even after her discovery of probending and subsequent participation in the sport she preferred the more fluid, calmer motions to the choppy, violent ones.

Shinya was the son of two of traveling preformers, one a waterbender, the other not. He traveled with his parents and their group until he knew enough waterbending and felt he was mature enough to be on his own--he hated traveling so much, and he didn't enjoy that his parents made him preform either. At sixteen he decided not to leave Republic City when his parents decided it was time to move on. For a while he was a broke, dumpster-digging, way-out-of-his-territory chump, but after a chance encounter with a particularly generous cop who caught him attempting to steal fruit from a stand led to a roof and a small allowance for cleaning the apartment he was able to set his life straight. The cop took him to his first probending match on his nineteenth birthday. He'd never much cared for it before--he'd been forced to endure radio commentary many times, but listening to the action was not his thing. He was in it or nowhere near it. The match became significantly more interesting when he caught sight of the firebender on the all-girls team--the Butterflies? Tigersquirrels? Turtleducks? He never could remember the name...her face was so much more important. She was Kala, and she was hot (no pun intended...maybe). The other team was just being broken in...but it was still rookie-vs.-rookie. In the end Kala's team won, not that Shinya really noticed. He wanted--needed--to see her again, but he wasn't sure when her team would be playing next and...well, he'd rather talk to her, too.

About a month later, he caught a break. His cop friend showed him an advert asking for a reasonably skilled waterbender for a probending team, needed ASAP. The team let him come on, and his new team's first match was against Kala's team. He went after her relentlessly during the match, trying to make such an impression upon her that she would have to find him after to ask him what his problem was.

Did she? No, not until her teammates pointed out he was obviously beyond desperate and that he had given her the beaten-puppy-look when she'd simply brushed by him on her way out. So she turned around and waited for him. She was expecting some arrogant little jerk, but instead she got an apology, a breif, flattery-filled explanation, and an offer to go for coffee. They had their cofee, and the rest is history.

Not.

Not Parents
Eight years later Kala and Shinya decided to put probending behind them and start a family. A small family, no more than one kid and two small or one large pet. Baby came first.

Actually, baby came early by about a month. Kala and Shinya were in the Fire Nation visiting Kala's recently discovered biological sister and almost ready to head back to Republic city when her water broke, leaving them more or less stranded in the sister's home. The birth was remarkably smooth, even if the child--a little girl--was a little small. The parents had not yet decided on a name, so as Kala recovered the pondered the issue.

Kala came up with a few, but Shinya shot them all down, saying they were much to common. They were silent for several moments, each staring at the child, trying to guess who she would be. Shinya them smiled. Max, he said. We can call her Max. Kala gave him an odd look. What? Shinya shrugged. It's unique, but I think it fits nicely. The max is the greatest of something, and our child is the greatest of everything. Kala, a soft smile on her face from her husband's words, still shook her head. That would be like calling her Dog because she will be loyal, or Mouse because she will be fast. Think of something else. Shinya thought for a moment, then his face brightened--a lightbulb may as well have appeared above his head. Saikō, he said. Saikō. Kala raised an eyebrow. Saikō? What is Saikō? Shinya grinned. Saikō is the greatest. Kala rolled her eyes, but she didn't think it was a bad name. Sounds like a boy's name? Shinya detected the question in her voice, and it made him laugh. Even if it does, who cares? We could call her anything! Kala pursed her lips. I think naming a child Anything is a little too out of the box, Shinya. Saikō is just fine. And so Saikō she was.

As soon as mother and child were strong enough, the little family traveled back to Republic City. Shinya joined the United Forces Air Force, and Kala stayed mostly at home, offering a breath training class on the side. Saikō, even though she started out small, grew quickly, and was obviously a firebender--after all, it's hard to miss it when your kid almost burns all your hair off. Saikō was five years old when her mother began attempting to teach her control over her element. Saikō got the breathing easily enough, but the waterbending movements couldn't eke out any sort of spark from her. This only made her frustrated...which ended up leaving a large singe in the carpeting. Shinya suggested finding her an instructor, but Kala resisted. She's much too young. She continued to teach her daughter how not to let the fire get away from her, which lessened the amount of scorch marks that were left everywhere. When Saikō was ten, she decided she really did want to learn actual firebending, because her mother's method was obviously failing. After a long discussion, several communications, and a lucky opening for Shinya as a test pilot in the Fire Nation, the family packed up and moved to the Fire Nation archepelago where Kala's sister, Akiko, had agreed to train Saikō.

Saikō learned quickly from Akiko, who was a great teacher, even if she was a little...military in her methods. Uniform, rigid schedule, inspections. Saikō didn't mind all that much though, because her mother told her this would help her to learn faster. Plus the uniform was damn cool.

One year later, Shinya was killed as a result of a system malfunction during a test flight. The impact of his death was overwhelming for wife, daughter, and sister-in-law (but she didn't show much more than a stoic frown in public. Emotion was saved only for those closest to her.) Saikō became quite reckless after; her bending, the agression she channeled into it, the bits of freedom she felt from it, was her out. It helped her cope. But...one day she got too angry, too fast, at both her mother and aunt, and neither could move quick enough to escape the blast of fire. Both made full recoveries, but both also kept one half of the same scar, mirror images on each of their torsos--it could have been a butterfly, if you stood them both together.

After this accident, Saikō's bending puttered out. She feared it, and as such could not use it. Would not use it. Her family assured her it was okay, that mistakes happened sometimes and there's no use drawing out pain that should be long over, but Saikō could not listen. For over a year she did not bend, not a single spark, but when her fire escaped her next the toll was too great.

Kala had decided to take a mother-daughter trip to the Fire Nation capital, and Saikō--her mood now mostly regular, though still not bending--was raring to go. At dinner a few nights before they were set to go home, Saikō overheard a man at the next table hating on "those who swing the other way"--i.e. the gay (cue bells of doom), women doing "men's jobs"--i.e. anything ouside of the house, and, of course, the fact that nonbenders have rights. Kala heard it too, and she knew Saikō was more than willing to verbally put the man in his place. She shook her head--it was not her daughter's duty to stand against every über-conservative, unreasonably archaic bastard they came across. After a few more minutes of the hate, Saikō could not longer stand it. She stood, walked, sat at the empty seat at the table of men, and became the opposition to their one-sided debate. Kala literally had to drag her, yelling, out of the restaurant. Saikō decided to go for a swim to cool off, and her mother agreed. On her way back to the hotel, she met the man again...let's just say the encounter was less than pleasant, and resulted in the man being very, very well done. Kala wondered what had taken her daughter so long, and when she found her daughter trapped under this blackened body...she did what she could. She dragged the body off the pier and took her daughter back to their room. Saikō shivered, and shivered, even though it was stifling hot. She was minimally responsive, and then, of all things, the police showed up at the hotel in the morning. An eyewitness had seen Kala dumping the body, and she was charged with murder. She went willingly, and Saikō, who would, under any other circumstances, have confessed to the crime, simply sat up in bed while her mother was taken away in shackles. One of the cops, a young woman with a kind voice, asked Saikō if she had any family. She said she had an aunt, and then not another word, not even to her aunt, for a month. She was positive her mother had been executed--the man who had attacked Saikō had been Fire Nation nobility, after all.

Kala was not exectuted as she could not be connected with anything other than dumping the body, which was easily explained. But she is still locked up in a Fire Nation prison, in solitary, which is almost as bad as being dead.

On the fourth day after her mother was arrested, Saikō received a single letter from Kala, one that simply asked she be courteous and reasonable to her aunt, and that she would always love her.

Saikō was thirteen. And she was now almost damaged beyond repair already.

She obeyed her mother's wished as best she was able. She could bend freely again, with all her guilt and anger and pain driving it. She asked Akiko to train her with the blade, which she did. For three years Saikō trained everything she had with everything she had, saved her money, and at sixteen bought her own katana and a custrom-make mask made of black metal, engraved with swirling, disorientling designs. For the first year she simply wandered around, dishing out her own justice when she thought it necessary. She wore her mask, always, when she was being a vigliante. She even used a different name: Max, the meaning of her given name, so her victims would know she is the greatest.

The second year she moved to Republic City and rented an apartment. She was able to buy a police scanner off of some black market chap, and she uses this to take care of the problem before the cops can eff it up.

For money she probends and does odd jobs for whoever needs stuff done.

}}