Post by Konei Kozuki on May 13, 2012 18:10:19 GMT -5
KONEI KOZUKI
name: Konei.
age: Twenty-one.
element: Non-bender.
animal companion: N/A.
::looking pretty good[/font]
hair color: Black, longish, and somewhat shaggy. He used to have it braided and tied into a wolf-tail, but after having come to Republic City he sticks it back in a rough ponytail and hides it beneath a hood.
eye color: Pale, silvery-blue, not nearly as striking as the vibrant sapphire of other Water Tribe members.
skin color: Light tan.
overall appearance:
A tall, muscular man of 6'2", Konei sports the body of an experienced swordsman. A broad chest and muscular arms keep his strikes strong and accurate, along with powerful legs to keep him moving gracefully and swiftly. Hard grey-blue eyes are separated by a straight nose, and they narrow when angry or thinking intensely, which are essentially the same facial expression. His jaw seems to sport perpetual stubble, and his tanned Water Tribe skin has paled somewhat from staying out of the sun, allowing him blend into almost any crowd or walk amongst nearly any population, which works well to his advantage when he needs to remain unseen.
He bears many scars, but most are results of everyday scrapes and injuries, mostly on his hands and arms. One, however, runs down his left eye from brow to cheekbone, a memento of his battle with a particularly fierce Earthbender his first week in Republic City.
::what I'm thinking[/font]
likes: Water Tribe food, ladies, alcohol, taking a break from working in the forge.
dislikes: Benders who use their ability to extort and oppress.
sexuality: Heterosexual.
overall personality: When he was younger he was a clown, a joker, a rogue. He cared about nothing and was no stranger to bust lips or bruised egos. In some ways, that’s not changed. In others, he couldn’t be a more different person now Around the time he became a Water Tribe warrior, Konei did some growing up, and when he left the North Pole he did a bit more.
Nowadays, Konei is a ladies’ man, to the point where it would not be wrong to call him a womaniser. He’s a suave, honey-tongued, velvet-voiced sweet talker with a killer smile despite his scarred face. He can be pretty smooth and charming when he wants to be, but occasionally falls back into a mode of disinterested silence. Despite his charisma, he can be quite a serious person; he proceeds into any situation with caution, takes only calculated risks, and tries his best to be prepared for any and all eventualities. However, he occasionally has a grating attitude that tends to get on people’s nerves. It’s acerbic and sarcastic and facetious; a lingering ghost of his carefree youth.
His temper takes a very long time to provoke, but when it is he's violent, and had a tendency not to stop until his target is either down and not moving, or he is physically restrained until he calms down. A good fighter, Konei is a force to be reckoned with, especially when angry.
Konei also doesn't like to talk about a large portion of his past. He's happy enough to talk about his very recent history, but further back between, he glosses over and gets very vague. He’s not proud of the murders he committed in the name of income, and he doesn’t mention being an Equalist sympathiser or talented chi-blocker lest he accidentally piss off a master bender.
::a past to remember[/font]
Konei was born and raised in the Northern Water Tribe, one of the places in the world relatively untouched by the industrious age of the world. He was the only non-bender in a family of Waterbenders; his father was a bending teacher and his mother a guardian of the Spirit Oasis. His little sister, Halyna, was a talented bender, and showed great promise in the bending arts as a fighter, but she was instead more interested in using her abilities to heal.
Konei loved Halyna more than anything else in the world, but he envied her at the same time. Halyna had such potential; she could have been a great master bender, could have used her abilities to do great things, but she chose the humble life of a healer instead. They sparred often by the healing huts, but Halyna would freeze his feet solid, then his hands, and he would be forced to forfeit. So Konei chose to pour his efforts into non-bending achievements; learning how to hunt, wield a sword, use a bow and arrow, practise throwing knives, hand-to-hand combat. He got better in his spars against Halyna, and as she had no formal training in using Waterbending in battle, and he was strong, fast and nimble, he began to win against her.
When he turned sixteen he took up the spear of a warrior, and joined the Water Tribe forces to defend the North Pole. A couple of years later, when Halyna turned sixteen, she got engaged. The betrothal necklace bore a carved water droplet within a full moon, probably the most beautiful Konei had ever seen. Shortly after she got married, Konei decided to leave the Northern Water Tribe, and hitched a ride on a boat to the United Republic of Nations. He rented a dingy place above a tannery and got a job as a mercenary. Most of the work was simple protection for richer people than he, and he got into a few tight spots on those jobs, and he came within a hair’s breadth of death multiple times, but he kept working, needing the income. Some of the work, however, was assassinations, which Konei only accepted when he was in a financially tight spot and needed the money. Those men he killed had been sons and brothers, fathers and husbands, and they may well have loved their families. Now they were without them forever because someone had offered Konei a few pieces of stamped alloy. That had justified the deaths of those men. Konei hated those jobs.
He had been sending death souls for petty pocket change for a couple of months that he decided once and for all that he was going to quit mercenary work, and he went south to Republic City. There he came across the Equalist movement, a small and largely unrecognised group of idealists who had decided to fight back against those who used their bending for ill deeds. Konei initially passed on by, but a few days later when he witnessed a small group of bending thugs setting a shop alight for the shopkeeper’s missed payments on their extortionate bribes, Konei began to sympathise with the Equalist views. He had once thought that bending maintained the balance of the world, or so his bending family had told him, but what was balanced about this? From a young age, Konei understood and longed for the power of bending. What non-benders could achieve by years of technology and innovation benders could do simply by virtue of being born. Konei had once lain awake at night and yearned for the abilities his sister possessed. Abilities she neglected and wasted the full potential of.
Konei got a job in a forge, and used half of his wages to fund chi-blocking lessons, determined not to fall prey to those who would use their bending against him. He was not opposed to benders, as Halyna used her abilities to heal the injuries and sicknesses of others, but he was aware that he could easily be taken advantage of by one.
Such a night came less than a week later. On his way home from the post office, sending a messenger hawk home with a letter to his family, a young Earthbender stood in his path in the middle of an alleyway and demanded his money. Konei refused. The mugger attacked, kicking up slivers of stone in Konei’s face, slicing across his eye. Konei dodged his neck attack, struck the chi points down the left side of his body, and swivelled past the man as he staggered, in pain. Konei ran, not wanting to be caught by any boulder the Earthbender might decide to hurl at him.
Shaken, but stronger from the attack, Konei continued chi-blocking lessons, and stopped going to them when there was nothing left for him to learn. Since then he has heard more rumours of Equalist movements, but Konei has not wanted to get caught up in anything if he can help it.
