*pushes glasses up dramatically*
TADASHI SANO
佐野 忠
Nicknames: Tada, Dashi, Tadashit, tad ashes
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Birthday: September 29
Nationality: Japanese
Ethnicity: Indian-Japanese
Height: 6’0”/182 cm
Weight: 100 lbs/45 kg
"How may I help you?"
+Mannerly | +Easygoing | +Obedient | +Unbothered | +Diligent
PERSONALITY
-Egocentric | -Artificial | -Clueless | -Childish | -Detached from reality
On the face of it, Tadashi soft-spoken and polite. He keeps to himself, but if you talk to him he’ll respond with a gentle demeanour and the utmost respect. Depending on the type of person you are, you may find his pleasantness charming, or you may find his submissiveness annoying. Regardless, it’s all a front anyways. Tadashi presents himself as amiable in order to counteract some of his deeper traits and problems.
★ Emotionally Immature / Alexithymic: Tadashi’s biggest issue is his emotional immaturity. He has trouble recognising or understanding his own feelings past very basic, often somatic observations, which leads them to manifest in very unhealthy ways. To make matters worse, since he can’t understand himself, he has trouble understanding others. Even when he’s actively trying to put himself in someone else’s shoes (a thought that very rarely occurs to him), it’s very hard for him to imagine any experience outside his own. This results in a boy who, when he wants something, will pursue it by any means necessary with little to no regard for the people he might hurt in the process. However, Tadashi doesn’t like hurting people and will become very distraught if he finds out he has. Tadashi lacks neither emotions nor empathy; they’re just muffled under his detachment. He’s simply so ignorant he doesn’t realise what he’s doing is hurtful. Don’t mistake his egocentrism for narcissism or egotism, though. There’s no self-love here.
★ Artificial / Theatrical: Since Tadashi struggles to understand other people (and some social conventions), he imitates instead. He’s a fairly convincing actor and liar who can switch personas at the drop of a hat. Besides his default amiability, another common persona is that of overdramatic overzealousness. In most scenarios, Tadashi does not have the social awareness to shift personas in order manipulate conversations or make himself appear more favourable to an individual, though.
★ Oblivious: Aside from being oblivious to feelings, Tadashi also has a difficult time with nonverbal cues (such as facial expressions) or anything emotional that’s not explicitly spelled out for him. This means that you can call him names or insult him and he won’t even understand it as antagonistic (with exceptions to things that strike his own personal insecurities). Tadashi only registers “fear” as “dislike”, and thus hates being feared above all else.
★ Aimless / Obedient: For such a single-minded kid, there are only a few things Tadashi actually gets passionate over or even cares about. He doesn’t like making choices, be they hard or easy, and would rather someone else make them for him. Thus, he often follows orders without question or complaint. Combined with how hard he is to upset, this (in theory) makes him easy to get along with. Or at least not very disruptive.
★ Change-averse: Part of Tadashi’s fear of tough choices comes from a fear of any sort of major change, especially one expected of himself. Mundanity is comforting to him; it’s predictable in a world of unpredictable, unreadable things. As one would expect, he’s very noncommittal.
★ Childish: Tadashi really likes sentai and nerd stuff and using XD unironically and isn’t ashamed of any of it. Does this kid have any shame? He does, but it’s for a very narrow selection of things, and his weird hobbies are not one of them. Unfortunately, Tadashi also has trouble truly distinguishing between reality and fantasy. Sentai shows are an appropriate basis for understanding the world, right? (No.)
★ Fixates: What Tadashi does care about often goes far past simple hobbies and into the realm of obsessions. The longer he has the fixation, the more likely it is to become a fixation with the fixation itself rather than with what the original subject was. Sentai, heroism, and finding his dad are all arguably at this stage. He’s also quite nosy and will go to absurd lengths just to sate his curiosity once he’s latched onto something.
Likes:
✓ Sentai
✓ Action figures, figurines, stuffed animals
✓ His mom
✓ Observing 👁
✓ Hobbies: Roleplaying, knife tricks, philosophy, magic tricks, amateur drawing and writing
Dislikes:
✘ Swimming
✘ Blueberries
✘ Hard mattresses
✘ Wind
✘ Spoilers
✘ People touching or using his stuff without permission
“I wish to observe the protagonists of this world.”
History
Even from the moment he was born, Tadashi was isolated. He lived in the lonely halls of the Sano estate as the only child of Ichizo Sano, the next head. It wasn’t a terribly interesting life. Tadashi followed a predictable schedule of wake up, breakfast, a rotating door of tutors, training regiments with his father, dinner, bedtime, repeat. But he wasn’t dissatisfied, even if only for the fact that he knew nothing else.
One night, without warning, this monotony shattered. Tadashi woke to the shaking of his mother as she urged him to hurry into the dark unknown. Tadashi didn’t know what was happening, but he was taught obedience, so he followed.
Now, he held residence in a cramped motel room. Breakfast and dinner were small boxed meals—if anything at all—and the schoolwork and training were replaced with a single, small TV, his bed, and the empty white walls staring back at him. And his mom. Though she was often distracted by phone calls or appointments, come nightfall she’d make the time to just sit there with him and stroke his hair as they watched TV. It was pleasant, and Tadashi quickly grew accustomed to his new norm.
It was in this period that Tadashi discovered the magic of sentai. With nothing else to do except watch either the moving picture box or the blank walls, Tadashi had a lot of time to be exposed to the old sentai reruns that were playing on the local channel. The lonely boy immediately clung to what would become one of the only stable comforts in his life. He idolised the colourful do-gooders and cherished them as he would dear friends.
Truthfully, Tadashi and his mom were not at that motel for very long. As he’d later learn, Tadashi’s grandmother lent his mother enough money to rent a humble house for them to stay in. She found a job not long after, and with the air warming up, it was time for Tadashi to start school.
Unsurprisingly, the kid who had almost no interaction for most of his life had a hard time adjusting to, let alone fitting in with the overwhelmingly social school environment. For the first couple months, Tadashi’s mother having to come to school to comfort the boy having overstimulation meltdowns was a common occurrence. Eventually he habituated enough to function. Teachers certainly liked him—he did everything he was asked without question, did well on his tests and assignments, and didn’t disrupt the class. But the kids were a different story.
Tadashi’s weird habits and social ineptitude quickly put him off to any kid who dared approach him. It was only worsened by such a dangerous and frightening quirk, which he would not use in any way that would help his case either. Tadashi fell into a cycle of finding people who were open to him only to drive them away with his behaviour, until he had finally driven away everyone.
He was alone, and he didn’t understand why. All he knew was that kids seemed to fear him. Even though Tadashi had been lonely his whole life, the taste of companionship being continually torn away from him devastated him. Why? Why did people hate him? Why did they fear him? They were treating him like he was….
a villain.
It wasn’t an instantaneous realisation, but it did snowball rather quickly. Tadashi’s little gerbil brain was putting up memories and thoughts on a metaphorical wall and connecting them with a red string until finally, it was clear. In fact, it was so obvious he was shocked he didn’t realise it sooner.
His father was a villain.
Those training exercises, the philosophy, the off-handed comments by relatives, the weapons on the wall. He comes from a line of assassins. Until he and his mother moved, he had been trained to be an assassin.
This was the answer Tadashi was looking for. It wasn’t the correct one, but once the initial horror had subsided, it brought him a strange level of comfort. It was okay if no one liked him, because that was just his destiny, right? It was okay if he did bad things, because that’s just who he was, right? It admittedly stung the sentai-obsessed child to come to the conclusion that he’d never be like his heroes, or even a hero at all, but there was nothing he could do about a fate out of his hands….right?
It was through some accidental eavesdropping that Laasya Balakrishnan discovered the man she loved and had a child with was involved in some of the most heinous acts against human life she could think of. Immediately, she was overwhelmed with fear—fear for her own life, fear for her child’s life, and fear of what her child may become if he was kept in this environment. And so, she grabbed her child and fled, never to look back.
It was rough at first. She felt bad leaving Tadashi alone in the tiny motel room with nothing to do, but he was a trooper. He did exactly as he was told and never complained. Even when they started to have a more normal life and he was clearly having trouble at school, even as he was sobbing into her lap regularly, he wouldn’t talk about it. He didn’t complain at all. Sometimes she wished he would. It was hard to tell what was going on in that head of his. Why was he bottling everything up? Was it for her sake?
Laasya felt bad that she couldn’t be there for him more. She already got home three hours after he got back from school, but that didn’t stop him from fussing over her. He’d clean the house for her, he taught himself how to cook for the two of them, and he’d often be the one to take care of their illnesses. And then, despite sacrificing so much, he still spoke to her with that gentle, loving smile.
She couldn’t help him in other areas, either. Laasya didn’t have a quirk, and she definitely didn’t have his quirk. She couldn’t help him develop and control it, and there was only so much school quirk counselors could do. She could tell it bothered him, but he didn’t like to talk about it. Laasya was just as guilty of avoidance, though. There was an unspoken agreement that the topic of Ichizo was off-limits, as if pretending he didn’t exist would erase the danger he posed. But it didn’t ease any of her concerns. Laasya spent every day fearing that it would be the day Ichizo or some other Sano would come to take Tadashi or take revenge, and it killed her knowing there was nothing she could do to protect her child. She could only watch as the timer fell ever more.
But it wasn’t hopeless. There was one possible solution: hero schools. Tadashi was getting ready to go to highschool, after all. And hero schools were the perfect environment. There he’d be with kids just like him and with specialists trained in mentoring and nurturing proper quirk control. He’d be safe from any potential attacks from Ichizo or Ichizo’s family. And he’d even be training to become a hero. ...Laasya found ironic glee in the idea of Tadashi becoming the exact opposite of what Ichizo wanted.
It wasn’t long until she found what she was looking for. Laasya did worry about how Tadashi would fare separated from her for the first time, but he was such a trooper that she was certain he’d be fine. The school she settled on, Senshin, was pretty close to them anyways. Not to mention it was cheaper than most of its competition. And it still had a good reputation, even being the alma mater of some top ten heroes.
And so she brought it up to him.
...Tadashi seemed uncomfortable with the idea. Did he think he wasn’t cut out to be a hero? Nonsense! You’re a good, talented boy. You’d make a great hero. ...He was avoiding eye contact. Was he nervous? She placed her hand on his and tilted his head to look at hers. She was serious. She believed in him. And she believed this was best for him.
How could he say no? How could he tell her that it was impossible? How could he say that after she had placed so much faith in him? How could he hurt his mother like that? He couldn’t. And so he agreed. He’d just be weeded out in the entrance exam anyways, right? It didn’t hurt to try, if just for his mother’s sake.
He wasn’t weeded out. Not only that, but he was one of the top performers. And now he was stuck, a future villain in hero’s clothes. ...Maybe it wasn’t all bad, though. It was kind of fun pretending to be a hero. Praise and admiration sounded nice…… And being looked up to……. He guessed he could keep up the charade, at least until he was caught and revealed for who he truly was. For the time being, he wanted a taste of what it would be like if he had been given a different destiny. It was okay if he was just pretending to play along……………...…….right?
[ initializing HEROICS........ ]
“It is I, the Two-Faced Moon, the Bilious Scoundrel, the Dark Hero of Valiant Shadows, Enra!!”
[ loading hero.... ]
ENRA
HP: 14/14 | SP: 24/24
[ POW: 3 ] [ SPD: 5 ]
[ DEF: 1 ] [ TEC: 2 ]
[ INT: 4 ]
Class: Assist
Rank: Bronze III
Suit Boon: Oracle
Quirk: Smoke Body
User's body has properties similar to a solidified gas, and user can transform into a smoke-like gaseous state at will.
[ loading.......... ]
[ File: SMOKE BODY ]
The best way to think about Tadashi is as the solid state of some unknown gas. Tadashi can “switch states” at will, meaning he can shift his body between the solid human forme and his gaseous smoke forme near instantaneously. However, at the present, he can only do full shifts—meaning he cannot (willingly) selectively shift parts of his body and must fully transform if he’s going to transform. He completely skips the liquid state and cannot become liquid. He doesn’t seem to emit any sort of heat byproduct either.
Despite this, it’s important to view default Tadashi as a “solid” state anyways, since it explains some of the involuntary peculiarities that are side effects of his quirk. For example, Tadashi is never truly solid—tiny parts of his body are constantly sublimating and desublimating through no conscious effort by Tadashi. This can be mostly hidden through the use of clothes that cover his whole body. Additionally, Tadashi is lighter and less dense than a regular person, weighing in only at 100 lbs despite being 6’0” and clearly muscular (if still scrawny). He’s easier to knock over as a result.
Tadashi internally creates new smoke through another process akin to a mixture of breathing and the replacement of dead cells. It is not uncommon for this smoke to escape in small bursts as he’s talking or breathing, much to his chagrin. He can even willingly emit it through uncovered skin (usually hands) for the purposes of combat and escape, though not in large doses. Tadashi’s smoke creation allows him to recover bits of him that have “escaped” by transforming and being lost to air and other places, but only to the extent that we can regrow small things like hair and nails and skin. He cannot recover limbs, organs, etc. It also renders him immune to the negative effects of smoke and other bad air as he actually filters and uses those chemicals in his smoke production.
Tadashi’s smoke forme travels much faster than his human forme and can reach high up or otherwise hard to reach places. But currently he’s only able to remain in it for very short periods of time. Should he push himself too much, he will have trouble maintaining either forme and enter a glitchy in-between state of constant partial involuntary shifting. It’s very painful.
External water also poses a big problem to Tadashi. It seems to mess up the chemical makeup of his smoke, so if he transforms while he’s wet, the areas that were wet will have trouble remaining solid until he’s able to dry and recover himself.
Curiously, Tadashi can transform inanimate (never previously alive) items he’s holding with him. This usually extends to just clothes or small objects like pencils. He has to have a complete grip on the object in order for it to transform and cannot be lightly or incompletely touching it. He has to hold it too, so he can’t transform things like walls or poles. Much like his own body, he cannot partially transform objects. Due to water’s effect on his smoke forme, he cannot transform water that hasn’t been absorbed to his body either. Clothes and other objects he’s holding won’t passively transform in small patches like the rest of his body does. This is all just an excuse for Forest to let him keep his clothes between state shifts.
Strengths:
▲ Highly evasive (in...theory)
▲ Excellent at stealth and theft/retrieval, can reach and enter hard to access places
▲ Immune to fall damage with the proper reaction time
▲ Immune to smoke and other dangerous air
▲ Good low-light/fog vision
Weaknesses:
▼ Being wet shuts him down
▼ Strong winds also shut him down
▼ Smoke can easily harm allies if inhaled
▼ Not much of a direct damage-dealer, suffers in one-on-one combat
▼ Sensitive to bright lights
[ loading SKILLS.... ]
SMOKE REGENERATION:
If an enemy has a debuff, 80% chance to recover 1/8 SP at the end of the turn.
VAPOR STRIKE:
[ Rank III ] [ 3 SP | 4 DMG ]
▸ Tadashi vanishes and gets some hits in on an unsuspecting foe
Deals damage. Adds amount of unit's HP lost to total damage dealt.
CORROSIVE FUMES:
[ Rank II ] [ 4 SP ]
▸ Tadashi blasts some gross, corrosive smoke in an enemy's face. Enemy's defenses are lowered
Reduces a single target’s DEF by 1 for 2 turns.
MISTY VANISH:
[ Rank III ] [ 5 SP ]
▸ Tadashi poofs to smoke
Raises unit's SPD by 2 for 3 turns. Stacks. When HP ≤ 40%, evasion +15%.
PRAY THE PAIN AWAY:
[ Rank I ] [ 4 SP | 3 MTG ]
▸ Tadashi throws his scrawny arms up to block an attack and hopes for the best
Guard.
▸ Remaining General AP: 6
▸ Remaining Move AP: 0
▸ Remaining Stat Points: 4
▸ AP Distribution:
HP: 1
SP: 2 (+4 Rank Bonus)
▸ Stat Distribution:
POW: 3 (+0)
SPD: 5 (+0)
DEF: 1 (+0)
TEC: 2 (+0)
INT: 4 (+0)
// END_
...
...Oh?
What's this...?
INSPECT?
▸ YES
▹ NO
☼
☼ The Book of Dark Secrets ☾
Turn Back Now Traveler! This Book Is Not For The Faint Of Heart
Open And Meet Your Doom !!!!
...I'm Serious
Table of Contents
☼ Chapter 1 ☾
☼ Welcome Chosen One.....Aurer Of Shadows And Bender Of The Night ☾
English Dub Voice: link
Deviantart Account: link
Deepest wish: To be a protagonist
Deepest fear: To be feared
Important Figures:
Laasya Balakrishnan: His mom. He'd do anything for her.
Ichizo Sano: His dad. Currently seeks him out, hoping that his dad has the answers to his life that he wants.
Maiko Iga: A girl he met over the summer and quickly befriended. Unbeknownst to him, she's a spy sent by Ichizo to keep an eye on Tadashi. Her true name is Maiko Sano.
Luther Hira: LOCKED
Trivia:
✫ His normal smoke exhales or body shifting won't set off most smoke alarms unless he's right next to it
✫ Likes sitting in otherwise hard or impossible to reach places just because he can get there with his quirk. Tends to perch and generally not sit properly
✫ A serial lurker; doesn't really need to or want to be part of a conversation, he just likes being in the same area as other people (especially if they're people he's friendly with). It lets him pretend he has friends
✫ He'll eat just about anything, but his diet mostly consists of crossover brand deal food items like sentai fruit snacks. Despite knowing how to cook, if he's making food for himself it's not uncommon for him to just eat the ingredients instead of putting them together
✫ LARPs
✫ Has a fairly decent medical knowledge repertoire. Gets very pushy and mom-ly whenever a medical emergency is involved, no matter how insignificant. Probably because his quirk requires him to to be hyper aware of health hazards, and because he gets hurt a lot in general
✫ Panromantic
✫ Yes, he has a diary. Yes, it's unbelievably embarrassing
✫ Hates the cops. From a young age he was taught all the ways in which cops were corrupted or incompetent. He strongly believes cops are useless at best and detrimental at worst when it comes to stopping bad guys. Leave it to the heroes
✫ Horribly paranoid. Almost always assumes the worst-case scenario is true
✫ Ambidextrous
☾
