Post by Aleph Casshern on Oct 25, 2010 16:52:19 GMT -5
Aleph Casshern
"Your body isn't ready."
"Your body isn't ready."
NICKNAMES: //[/color] Aho
AGE: //[/color] 24
DATE OF BIRTH: //[/color] August 8
GENDER: //[/color] It's a man, baby!
ALIGNMENT: //[/color] Neutral
OCCUPATION: //[/color] Huge guy, 108th Inheritor of Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu
[/size][/ul]
* Sometimes fistfights look like this. Sometimes.
* She is not exactly tall, but she is for serious standing up. Maybe.
* Hard life, really.
HEIGHT: //[/color] 6'8"/200+ cm
WEIGHT: //[/color] 224 lb/100+ kg
EYE COLOR: //[/color] Dark brown
HAIR COLOR: //[/color] Dark brown.
PIERCINGS: //[/color] Impossible.
TATTOOS: //[/color] There are these funny little crest things, but they're not tattoos.
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: //[/color]
* Huge.
* Golden feet.
* Miles of hair.
* Dead. Sexy.
* No shirt.
[/size][/ul] [/blockquote]
- Beast
- For Aleph, there has been little more to his life than the philosophy of his bloodline, the Shin Ho'oh Tensei. He has lived apart from other people, in essentially total isolation. What limited human contact he has had before coming to civillisation is nothing more than a dim, hazy memory. This isolation has, in part, shaped who he is: though not animalistic, he is definitely strange. 'People' and 'society' are abstract theoretical concepts taught to him by the abrasive ghosts of his ancestors, who have taught him what is necessary to break through to Akasha. His grasp of social dynamics is essentially non-existent. He is honest and innocent almost to the point of cruelty and largely unable to tell people apart without considerable effort: faces are meaningless to him unless they matched with touch, taste and smell, and gender is something he thinks is totally irrelevant. Because of this, he is also naturally curious. But if you let him get touchy feely with you, watch where his hands go, because your body probably isn't ready.
- Unfettered
- The man who is to be great is the one who can be the most solitary, the most hidden, the most deviant, the man beyond good and evil, lord of his virtues, a man lavishly endowed with will. Aleph's isolation was calculated . Aleph might be willing to get 'friendly' with just about anyone, but he is also willing to abandon almost anyone. He is essentially without morals; he does not attach any sort of moral or ethical value to acts of any kind. This is in part because Casshern philosophy is solipsist in nature. For them, every act is the 'right' act to take, and not one of them - Aleph included - would hesitate to kill or maim another person, regardless of age, gender or health. It might not be impossible to gain something like loyalty or attachment out of Aleph, but don't rely on the goodness of his heart. If you get in his way, he might just go straight through you, and your body won't be ready.
- Languid
- Since he was a child, Aleph has been driven by nameless, faceless voices, the collective unconscious of his ancestors. They beat the tenets of Shin Ho'oh Tensei into his brain, body and soul. They made him a monster through unceasing, unrelenting philosophy. They forced him to run through snow. They forced him to reverse the flow of waterfalls. They forced him to fight lions, bears and tigers, and kill sharks. For twenty years, Aleph existed within the spiral of his noble ancestors' training, until the day they concluded that there was nothing more they could teach: and when he became the Inheritor, their voices stopped pressing. Stopped commanding. He became the master of the family, and they bowed to him. And then, Aleph realised something.
He had free time.
Beyond a usual routine to keep him in shape, Aleph no longer has to train. There is no impetus to force himself to go through all 108 astras or the infinite hybrid variation spells. He can only complete Shin Ho'oh Tensei through the Grail War itself. This freedom was like nothing he had ever experienced before. He found himself able to just ... lie in the sun. To just lie in the sun. This sort of thing is pretty intoxicating, and while not exactly lazy, Aleph is very much inclined to relaxing pursuits like long walks along the beach, attractive humans and this thing called 'cuisine'. Being so quote unquote emotionally different means that he comes across as being ludicrously laid back. He may not even be capable of getting angry.
- Since he was a child, Aleph has been driven by nameless, faceless voices, the collective unconscious of his ancestors. They beat the tenets of Shin Ho'oh Tensei into his brain, body and soul. They made him a monster through unceasing, unrelenting philosophy. They forced him to run through snow. They forced him to reverse the flow of waterfalls. They forced him to fight lions, bears and tigers, and kill sharks. For twenty years, Aleph existed within the spiral of his noble ancestors' training, until the day they concluded that there was nothing more they could teach: and when he became the Inheritor, their voices stopped pressing. Stopped commanding. He became the master of the family, and they bowed to him. And then, Aleph realised something.
- Mind like a flash of lightning
- It's easy to dismiss Aleph as a total moron with no understanding of how the world works. Given that he can't successfully operate a door, it's not a totally unfair assumption; this doesn't mean that it's right. Aleph is the 108th Inheritor of Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu: if he was anything less than a prodigy, his own mother would have drowned him. It would go too far to call him 'brilliant', but he is the inheritor of some significant period of time's philosophical learnings, taught to him by generations of ancestors. Shin Ho'oh Tensei doesn't just teach a magus to cut through armour, and flesh and bone, but through illusion, and logic, and human ego. For Aleph, fighting is just an expression of his intellect, and he is very good at fighting.
LIKES: //[/color]
Short people
DISLIKES: //[/color]
Clothes
STRENGTHS: //[/color]
Have you SEEN how big this guy is?
More seriously, Aleph is the 108th Inheritor of Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu, the treasured sorcery of the Casshern line. It's objective is to create an Arhat suitable for the purpose of reaching Akasha, and it is best described as a synthesis between martial philosophy, killing art and sorcery. To call it sorcery powered hand-to-hand fighting would be to do the style a disservice: itis not merely physical attacks enhanced by spellwork, but instead spells which are triggered by Aleph's fighting techniques. Even without sorcery, Aleph's huge body is exceedingly well trained. His strength, speed, endurance and so on are close to the border where it can barely be considered human, and this isn't taking into account the effects that Shin Ho'oh Tensei has on the Inheritor's body.
Aleph kills with his hands, and is so proficient in doing so that it is almost lunatic. Almost every single waking moment of Aleph's life has been devoted to honing his martial arts through increasingly surreal methods of training. At Aleph's level of skill, it can be said there there is a space around him, an imaginary 'barrier' that represent where he can freely strike. Only a monster could enter this space and hope to leave intact - this interval is probably
WEAKNESSES: //[/color]
As strong and as fast as Aleph is, there is no denying that he is a close combat specialist, in the sense that it is his exclusive skill. Shin Ho'oh Tensei does not possess anything other than the most limited ranged attacks - with very few exceptions, all astras require Aleph to touch his opponent. Further, Shin Ho'oh Tensei represents the totality of his skills as a magus; in ingraining it into himself, making his body the temple of the Casshern style, he has had to reject all other forms of magecraft. This is not simply a matter of not knowing, it is literally impossible for a Casshern to use other forms of sorcery. This is so absolute that Aleph cannot use formalcraft. Even though a normal person might conceivably find some way to complete a summoning , or some other formalcraft ritual, Aleph simply cannot. He lacks any number of useful techniques belonging to most magi as a result: he cannot create bounded barriers, he cannot perform mental interference on normal humans, he cannot create familiars. He possesses on the most basic, instinctual elements, such as the ability to create binding contracts through sexual contact and the detection of loose prana, but very little else.
Perhaps most importantly, however, Aleph is very obvious. He is extremely tall and cannot be convinced to wear normal clothes; his feet are gold and he stole his hair from Rapunzel. More importantly, perhaps, Aleph is not very good at suppressing his presence; there is always a pressure around him that can be easily detected by another magus, it simply becomes stronger when he gets serious. He will not be difficult to find.
[/ul][/size][/blockquote]
MY FAMILY LINE: //[/color] Have you heard of the Cassherns? The chances are you haven't. If you asked around the Clock Tower though, the chances are you would probably find someone who has. And if you asked they'd probably say 'Them? Oh, they're crazy'. That is not an innacurate assessment. The Cassherns are mad. While it can be said that they have achieved the noble obsession, the total and absolute devotion to reaching Akasha, in the process it has made them into monsters. As the generations have worn on, as each new Inheritor rises, they have become more and more inhuman. Even by the standards of magi, who thrive on their ruthless determination, there is simply something wrong with the Casshern Line.
Where does this madness begin? The Casshern Line is ancient, stretching back tens of centuries, to a person best named Sumner. Details of this person's life are scarce, but it is known that they were some second tier heir to a long dead family of magi. He, or perhaps she, was most definitely the originator of Shin Ho'oh Tensei, even if it was not codified under that name at the time. It was an attempt to create a system by which sorcery was triggered by all aspects of the body: Sumner clearly believed that only through a form of absolute perfection would Akasha be unlocked. Knowledge was not enough: one had to be enlightened. The magus must become an Arhat, one whom makes sorcery not just a science, or an art, but instead their entire being. Sumner's belief was that if a person could make their body a temple for this new philosophy, they could break through to Akasha.
This was ambitious; too ambitious for a single magi to achieve, and Sumner's failure to actualise this state of rejection was emotionally crushing. Sumner cursed the fate of having been born human, having been born so crippled by weakness, so bound by circumstance. It was not enough to perfect your body, though Sumner did not succeed in that aspect. One needed to repudiate history, to repudiate humanity, to reject the world. The world, humanity, history could not serve to reach Akasha: it could only serve as an obstacle to overcome.
The logic at the base of the Casshern Line is thus: causality is an underlying principle of the world. While not necessarily absolute, outside of miracles what comes before determines what comes after. This defines the circle of the world, and all things are slaves to causality, including thought: Sumner's weakness, she reasoned, stemmed from circumstance. The way a person was raised, the education they received, the people they associated with, the beliefs of society, the history of their world. All these things serve to shape thought and it is an established thaumaturgical principle that the soul is connected to the body through the mind. In this sense, Sumner realised that even if the body was perfect, and even if the soul was perfect, the mind was not. And because the mind was imperfect, it would warp the other two. This was the principle upon which Sumner refined her philosophy. Humans do not move themselves. Humans move to the beat of the world.
Repudiate history. Repudiate humanity. Reject the world.
Sumner realised something, in that attempt to see through custom and society: people believed children were born ignorant. Sumner disagreed. Children are not born ignorant; they are born free. They are unchained by the limitations of society. They come into the world unblemished and, driven by innate curiousity, became indoctrinated into society, with its systems of belief, and values, and ethics. Curiousity was no curse, Sumner decided, but when a child must live amongst others, that curiousity is the end of their free-moving soul. It would not be enough to simply abandon mercy in the manner of other magi: one would have to harness the empty purity of a child, where nothing has meaning except the self. Sumner was too far gone for that. His children, too, had lived too long in the world, under Sumner's living influence. Their children too.
But their children? There was a starting point, a real foundation. Sumner's unborn great grandchildren would be the beginning of something new, something grand. This would be a line in which Samsara was exploited as a means to an end. Over four generations, Sumner's children abandonned that dead family and created a new one, which they named Casshern. And over four generations and more, they forged the Casshern Crest, and and used what would become known as Shin Ho'oh Tensei to forge the cycle that would lead subsequent Inheritors. The early Cassherns realised that even if their objective was the free-moving soul of a child, that child must be educated. But if their objective was the free-moving soul of a child, then the Inheritor could not be taught by any living human. Instead, they would have to inherit the techniques of Casshern sorcery bereft of contact, through the Crest. All Crests contain the knowledge of previous generations, becoming increasingly complex and mechanically dense, till it is possible for the possessor to search for spells within it - then use them without knowledge.
The altered Casshern Crest does not contain spells, or even knowledge in the conventional sense. It would not be correct to say it contains egos or memories. It would perhaps be accurate to say that the Crest is an attempt to create a personal Arayashiki, an unconscious mind in which all the techniques of Shin Ho'oh Tensei can be found. As time has passed, the information within has become increasingly depersonalised, uncoloured by bias. If Arayashiki is the unconscious 'will to survive', then the Casshern Crest is unconscious 'will to become empty'. This is the central precept of Shin Ho'oh Tensei, whereby the Inheritor comes to live the concept of Sunyata.
So 107 Inheritors passed; some 2700 years. The Cassherns never grew beyond their single line: other families might amass sister and brothers and cousins, creating webs of branch families tied to a single source. Other families amassed retainers, territory, wealth, prestige. They became temporally powerful, creating the aristocracy which manages the world of sorcery in the modern world. The Cassherns simply did not: each Inheritor had one child, who received the Crest. To say this was risky is something of understatement, at least for the first dozen generations. It was worth it, they decided. If their philosophy was so weak that it would fail at such a fundamental point, then it did not deserve to exist. They were not even concerned with that traditional magi pursuit of increasing the number and quality of magic circuits: while they would not simply sire the next inheritor on anyone, it was only to preserve the strength that they had. That was all they needed to actualise the Shin Ho'oh Tensei, and it is the nature of their system which allows them to consistently maintain what is, by all accounts, a considerable level of strength.
The Casshern Line has maintained this single-minded march through history for twenty seven centuries, each Inheritor being less human, more 'free' than the last. The Cassherns brook no prophecies, for they are aspects of the world to be rejected, but the past eight generations have become increasingly sure that Shin Ho'oh Tensei is reaching its zenith. The last Inheritor is coming, who will either bring the Casshern dream to life, or who will fall and take the family with him.
MY HISTORY: //[/color] Aleph Casshern, six years old, stood barefoot in the red slush, and gasped for breath. The towering figure strode through the steam, clean ice water washing her feet with every step. Looking at her was difficult; her presence was a pressure, an ocean suspended above his head. His tiny legs almost buckled.
"The world conditions a person to live within imagined limitations." Aleph Casshern, six years old, took a tentative step backwards. "People cannot choose to stand unless the world allows them. The believe in things like 'pain' and 'despair' and 'fear' and let them justify their bending to the will of society. They live in a false reality that conforms to the will of outsiders. Their souls are chained."
She appeared next to him, her palm buried in Aleph's stomach. He had nothing left to vomit but blood, and she tossed him further down the side of the mountain. He rolled, cracked his shoulder on a protuding rock and flipped himself to his feet. There were bloody splashes that stretched across a thirty meter gap. Just looking almost made Aleph fall to his knees, but he had been told to stand. To stand no matter what happened.
"Pain. Despair. Fear. Do you know what these words mean?"
Aleph shook his head. He couldn't make his split lips form words.
The figure's face made something like a smile. "No one taught you what those words mean. The world never touched you, and the world never will touch you.
When she was seventeen years old, the 107th Inheritor of the Casshern Line, Mischa Artemesia Casshern was adopted by the Fulke family's famed 43rd head, Björn Fulke.
Once an ascendant noble family that made its presence felt even in the upper echelons of the Association, the Fulke had been in what was widely considered an unfortunate downward slide for about eleven generations. Björn was considered a return to form for the family: the first Grand rank Fulke since the 22nd head; Dux Bellorum in his first, second and third years; professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Divine Linguistics; the legendary Choir Boy who fought within the elite Battalion of Kron. His ambition allowed him to attract the attentions of Elysia Arma, a rapidly rising prodigy within the Department of Universal Research. Together, they sought to revitalise the flagging fortunes of the Fulke family.
In Mischa Artemesia Casshern, Björn saw another opportunity to improve his family's standing. They went unmentioned with the Fulke records; making discrete requests to the Library of Babel, he discovered only limited information. But what he did find intruiged him. Heretics. Madmen. Monsters. The encounters with other magi tended to be brief and often extremely violent. Their history was soaked in blood. Details of their insane philosophy were scant, but its unorthodoxy had rendered it almost completely untouchable.
Naturally the Lords of the Association, on the few occassions that they encountered Shin Ho'oh Tensei, dismissed it.
But when the third son, Stefan, brought Mischa before him and his wife, Björn was not ready to dismiss that insane philosophy.
"She is extremely tall."
"You are a master of observation, dear." Elysia sighed. The family doctor was examining her as she tore through a loaf of bread. Elysia had almost boiled Björn alive when he had suggested that Sandström leave their nearly dead son to examine their 'guest', but her curiousity got the better of her. Stefan hunted wolves for fun, without exercising his prodigious sorcery; he could run one of the beasts down and beat it to death with his bare hands. And yet this girl had delivered him to their doorstop drowning in his own blood, pierced by his own bones.
The magus in her wanted to know.
"She has a superficial burn." Sandström said, standing up.
"Just one?"
"He almost fooled me." the girl said flatly, wolfing down another chunk of that morning's bread. "Made a trap with ice, triggered thermolysis. If he hadn't I would have torn him in two."
Elysia glanced at her husband. That almost seemed like a compliment, and using a two verse spell, secretly, to counter an attack was worthy of considerable praise. Neither of them really want to ask how she had avoided Stefan's attack. Björn cleared his throat. "Torn him in two? I am his father. I should kill you where you sit for harming one of my heirs."
"You can't."
There was an awkward silence, until Björn spoke again. "Do you mean literally...?"
Her eyebrows came together. "I don't mean what you think I mean. They were right when they said humans are strange. haven't you recognised your own curiousity?" she reached for the bowl of milk the maids had left. "You can't kill me because you don't understand me, and you want to understand me. This is our true difference, which has nothing to do with our respective killing ability. It's like you're underevolved."
"Do you have no manners at all?" Elysia asked with an almost shocked laugh.
"Manners are a social construct created by the diseased minds that live within the circle of the world. They are meaningless to a free-moving soul. They are meaningless to an Arhat. They are meaningless to a Casshern."
She took another bite from her bread. Elysia stood on her tip toes and pressed her lips against Björn's ear. "I like her."
Stefan Fulke recovered, though not without Erst Sandström's masterwork healing, and the Fulke adopted Mischa Casshern. Members of the branch families found this highly irregular, especially as she was tied into the line of succession (admittedly sixth). Members of the main family, including the former 42nd head, also had some difficulty understanding the decision - 'some difficulty' meaning 'outraged disbelief'. Mischa could be playful or condescending, but she was always a beast. Lucas attempted to teach her high society manners. Lotta tried to educate her in the great thinkers of the world. Their 'sister' refused everything thrust upon her, became an underdressed embarrasment for the family. You couldn't take her anywhere: high born functions turned into debacles. She would make a mess at the dinner table, insult the hosts, sleep with the maids (admittedly everyone did that, but at least they were discrete).
Of course, whenever there was a formal duel, it was Mischa who stood for the Fulke. Her mysterious sorcery techniques were outside the experience of the arrogant heirs who took part in those duels. Her strength was overwhelming, her attitude merciless. One could not deny her effectiveness in removing potential political rivals.
It was not her strength that the 43rd head craved, however: it was her uniqueness. There was nothing quite like Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu anywhere else in the world. Of course, you heard of some magi from the east who used their backgrounds in martial arts to further their search for Akasha. And their techniques of breathing-and-walking were similar to a well documented phenomena. And the sort of total isolation the Casshern's had practised was only notable in the sense that it had persisted for a hundred generations.
But there was something more, something within Mischa Casshern that made Björn greedy. A one-in-a-million freak that could build a serious reputation within the Clock Tower. The association had ignored the Cassherns in the past, but Björn would make them recognise her - make them recognise her discoverer.
A magus who had rejected all other sorcery; a magus whose body was a pure land from which only her magecraft could emanate. Where he used words, to speak interferences with nature into being, her existence was itself an interference. 'I walk, I breath', she would say. Her movements and stances were arias; she made no analogies. Her philosophy was more abstract, more alien, more pure. Mischa was more abstract, more alien, more pure.
The fascination he shared with his third son, Stefan, deepened. Turned to obsession. Mischa would be his stairway to heaven, the avatar through which he, Björn Fulke, would achieve supremacy. He dreamt of raping her, of siring on her perfect body a child who would carry his name into the future. She could make it possible. After all, wasn't that the nature of their sorcery, the synthesis of Magus Crest and Sorcery Trait? Mischa claimed to have been taught by the ghosts of her ancestors, a claim he could accept. Their Crest could indeed contain the egos of past Inheritors, though they were deliberately intended to be without coherent form, a combined will. However, what was stopping it from being further adapted? What was stopping him from finding a way to contain a full and coherent personality within it? His ego, his personality: Björn Fulke, most promising and accomplished Fulke magus in 21 generations - in over eight hundred years! - could achieve immortality. He could build his legend until the day the stars went cold and the world stopped turning.
His son did not share this particular desire, and his fascination was much less academic than his parents and siblings. For Stefan, Mischa's unusual skills and great strength were simply the starting point; he had felt her touch and only barely survived. In that way, he felt a kind of priviledged closeness: the only person to have fought Mischa Artemesia Casshern and survived, a feat he doubted his father could replicate. The only person to see - to feel - her world and live.
His father saw her as a treasure, his mother a curiousity. His elder siblings thought of her a tool, an attack dog. His younger brother saw her as a target, something to aim for and exceed. His younger sister thought of her with a terrified love.
They didn't understand, but Lucas did. Mischa was simply more.
So Stefan Fulke fell in love.
And when his father announced his attention to take Mischa to London, to present her to the Lords of the Association and have her ranked, Stefan protested. In his opinion, using Mischa simply to advance their own standing was a mistake; the only possible outcome would be a Sealing Designation. In Björn's opinion, Stefan didn't need all his teeth, and they beat each other bloody, bringing down an entire wing of the house. In the end, it was Björn who was still standing.
Their trip lasted two weeks. There were interviews, rituals, dinner parties; backroom deals, ellicit affairs, blackmail. Mischa met important, famous, powerful magi and insulted them. She ended a mock battle against a powerful familiar by throwing her chair through the summoner's head. In the end, Stefan was correct: Mischa was Sealing Designated. Could there have been another outcome? Of course not. Shin Ho'oh Tensei is exactly the sort of thing that the Association would seal; a fascinating parrallel development of magecraft, an intruiging synthethis of techniques, an outrageous unorthodoxy which had no place other than in a museum. This suited Björn fine. After all, he owned her, and the Clock Tower had
On the night of receiving her Sealing Designation, Mischa consumated her relationship with Stefan, and some months later she fell pregnant to him.
And when she knew, Mischa left.
The Fulke attempted to stop her.
"Mischa!" Lucas roared above the howling wind, his mind flitting amongst the trees in the shape of great black dogs. He was running, the snow parting before his heat. He flung himself from a rocky prepice, following his familiar down a twelve metre drop; his impact cracked the lake's frozen surface.
Stefan, that fool. He had let his feeling cloud his better judgement, and now the Fulke family's entire existence was balanced on a knife's edge. Lucas broke into a sprint as his familiars scented blood, the ice almost breaking under the force of his feet - he unlimbered his axe, skidded to a halt as he reached a section of the lake ice which had been totally caved in. Half a man, torn apart from groin to shoulder, rested nearby, spilling entrails into black water.
"Lotta ..." he gasped. His familiars recognised his twin sister's scent. A red-white flash caught his eye. Fire. His sister's fire. Lucas leapt across the fifteen metre gap, and broke into a sprint.
-v-
Björn Fulke cradled his daughter's bruised, severed head. There wasn't even enough of Lucas left to hold. Tears froze on his cheeks as he lifted his head, stared hate into the almost bare back of his adopted daughter, his prize. How dare she. How dare she! How could she!?
How could she rebel against the future he had envisioned? Björn placed Lotta's head gently into the snow, and pushed himself to his feet, envisioned an axe splitting a skull. The Fulke Crest, over 1700 years of history and family strength, blazed. His Magic Circuits burst open under flood of his power, and snow turned to steam. "MISCHA!" he called, and his voice shook snow from the trees.
She stopped, turned slightly, glanced over her shoulder. Then she kept walking.
"MISCHA!" Björn repeated, striding after her, incanting arias as he went. "DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM ME!"
Fire curled and shifted, bent into the shape of eagles, and Björn brought his family's Mystic Code, the twin headed hunting spear they had the audacity to name Gungnir, into his hand. "I am your father! You will return to me!"
He completed his ten-count aria, and it seemed like the world was burning. Eagles had become whirlwinds, Gungnir had become a lashing shield, Björn Fulke had achieved This Burning World, the signature spell that had made him a nightmare even within the Battalion of Kron. It was perhaps possible to make out the shadow of a figure within the sphere of bladed flame that vaporised trees, turned dirt and stone to gouts of white-hot, glowing obsidian.
Mischa turned, as Björn streaked towards her, fell into stance.
This Burning World was on top of her. Björn could see her hair tossed by the burning wind, see her within reach, see her draw back her fist, see her about to die. He didn't need that much of her body intact, just enough to find her palm planted under his chin. His teeth cracked, blood evaporating past his lips.
"Did you forget who I am? Did you forget my name? I told you, the first time we met, that you couldn't kill me." the sphere of fire wobbled, broke like a soap bubble; Gungnir was flung of sight. "I am Mischa Artemesia Casshern, the 107th Inheritor of Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu. I am an Arhat, a mask set before the sun. It doesn't matter how fast you move or how hot you burn.
"No matter how fast you spin them, there are only two blades." Björn felt his jaw shatter, felt the truth in her hand. "And I am the fist that extinguishes the light."
In a single night, the venerable Fulke family was almost wiped out, it's most promising head in eleven generations slain by a single blow. In the aftermath, Stefan Fulke became the 44th family head; an uncharacteristic gift from a woman who could not connect with human beings.
Mischa disappeared into the wilderness from whence she had come. The Fulke almost totally collapsed, their position happily ruined by long time rivals; the strange woman was essentially forgotten. After all, why be concerned about a hermit? If she wanted to go into self-imposed exile, then the Sealing Designation was being fulfilled. Stefan did not forget, but he knew that tracking her would be a mistake. Mischa's generosity would likely not extend that far.
He never met his son, who was born quietly some eight or nine months later.
He never understood what Aleph Enkidu Casshern, had to endure.
At first, he was taught by Mischa, for like all newborns he was incapable of surviving. After embedding sarīra in his hands and feet, she simply taught him words, to speak the languages of men, and to write in Sanskrit. She taught him the world: rain, wind, and fire. When he was four, when Mischa was satisfied that Aleph could stand, she began to teach him how breath and how to walk. It would not do to inherit the Crest while still being subject to the physical limitations of his body. Over the course of three years, Mischa burnt away the human parts of Aleph's physique. She broke his bones, tore his muscles, forced his heart to work like a machine. Like all Cassherns, Aleph's body was destroyed in order to achieve the higher level that Shin Ho'oh Tensei demanded; there was no way that he would live past thirty, but there was no need, much as there had never been any need.
'There have been one hundred and seven Inheritors. You will the one hundred and eighth. You will be the last.'
Driven by her 106 ancestors, Mischa in turn drove Aleph to reach new heights. He nearly faltered a dozen times, as had every Casshern, but this was justified: if the Line could not survive this initial training, then there was no point to the Line's continued existence. In the end, Aleph reached the level his mother required. On the night of his seventh birthday, Mischa Casshern passed on the Casshern Crest, passed on the right to be the inheritor, passed on Shin Ho'oh Tensei.
Aleph sat, blinking slowly as the sun rose. The figure had sat him down in the clearing they had constructed and been silent for an entire day. She had told Aleph to do the same. They simply breathed, together. Without really meaning to, he found his breathing coming to match hers, the same slow, steady cycle. Over the hours, they became a system, operating together to shut out the interference of the world in all its myriad forms.
They were within the spiral of Shin Ho'oh Tensei. The figure raised her hand, the lines of her Crest glowing blue, and red, and violet. "Aleph Enkidu Casshern." she said. "That is your name now. Aleph ... the alpha, the point which contains all other points; you will see everything from every angle, with infinite clarity and without confusion. You are the future and finality of Shin Ho'oh Tensei. Live or die, our time has come, and you will be the orchestrator of the end of the Casshern."
"I am Mischa Artemesia Casshern, the 107th Inheritor of Shin Ho'oh Tensei. I have learnt at the feet of our ancestors, and I have brought you into this world." she reached into her own chest, seized her heart. She held it out to Aleph, blood dripping, cracking stone where it fell.
He took her heart, hot and still spasming. "Eat." she said, gushing red from the black hole in her chest. Aleph tore through the tough muscle of his mother's heart, though he never really understood that she was his mother, with his teeth. Blood dribbled down his chin like the fat of a roasted boar.
He ate.
The transfer of the Crest, begun when he was newly born, was complete when Aleph finished devouring Mischa's heart. Cannibalising the rest of Mischa's body, and after cremating her bones, Aleph began the true training required by the Crest. His body, honed to perfection, was no the foundation upon which he could grow into the full force of Shin Ho'oh Tensei. The will to become empty filled him, and he travelled the world, sought out increasingly harsh and difficulty ways to train. By the time he was twelve, no animal on earth posed him any threat. On the Serengeti, he tested his blows against buffalo. He left the corpses of tigers strewn across the banks of the Amur and Ussuri rivers. In the north, he goaded bears to fight him and won every time. He tossed himself bleeding into the ocean of the coast of Australia, attracted a shiver of great whites.
Methodically working through the animal kingdom eventually lead him to humans, though the will within the Crest considered most humans a waste of time, and the only ones which were worth fighting were those that would upset the vacuum which a training Inheritor had to inhabit. Humans were a creature that did not need to be fought through touch; instead they could be slain with the mind. This is to say that by learning about the intricacies of human societies, there was simply no need to actually fight them: humans did this, humans did that, humans were chained in these ways. By understanding the nature of the circle of the world, the principles of causality and circumstance, then one could undestand the nature of humans. From the weakest to the strongest, they were chained. They armoured themselves in sin and ugliness, in virtue and beauty, but Aleph came to understand that this was meaningless. By being fully aware of what shaped a person, it was possible to see through a person; having been born and having lived in near total isolation, Aleph did not so much see holistic people as he did the the parts of humans. The way they stood, the way they spoke, their insecurities, their strengths. By being unable to recognise the person, be became able to recognise their motivations, their circumstances, the chains of their souls.
So it was not necessary to actually fight them.
Instead, Aleph learned to fight natural disasters.
A storm is impersonal. It cannot really be fought and in no way truly defeated. To be a 'force of nature' is an ideal that even the Casshern might admit they have. An enemy that cannot be fought and cannot be defeated is the best enemy to test yourself on. Of course, a storm or an earthquake is not something which can coaxed into attacking a single person - one had to be able to recognise the most critical point and throw themselves into maximum danger, then escape it at the absolute last moment. As he grew, Aleph trained himself by dodging lightning bolts and facing down a tornado. He even triggered an avalance and attempted to block it - this ended poorly, but he survived. The will within the Crest made it clear that by surviving these things, by training within the circle of these forces of nature, he would force himself to better adapt to Shin Ho'oh Tensei.
Part this river with your fist.
Reverse this waterfall with a single blow.
Hold back the tide with your presence.
Breath, walk. As tranquil as the forest, as unmovable as the mountain.
Sometime after his twenty fourth birthday, Aleph's training was complete. And, in defiance of their philosophy, Aleph was confronted by all 107 of his noble ancestors. If he was to be the omega point of their two and half millienia existence, then he would have to survive their final test.
There was no name for the gorge, though it was beautiful. The rock walls were slicked to grey-black, the green of vegetation so rich as to be unreal. The river was calm, shallow and clear as glass. Flanking each side of the waterfall were statues, their rough features carved out of the raw stone. Images of, perhaps, the Buddha, but if one were to more closely examine the surface they would have seen the stone dimpled. Hundreds of thousands of depressions that would fit a large fist.
Beneath the raging cataract, Aleph Casshern sat on a natural altar. With his bare, muscular back straight, Aleph sat, and he breathed. On the back of his left hand the endless knot of the Casshern Crest glowed in its myriad colours. On his right hand, a winged crescent burned in white and cherry red.
Before him, beyond the open space where the water was churned to white froth, beyond where the water was so deep to be black, one hundred and seven Cassherns stood, shin deep in the placid river. Had Aleph known them, had he been able to recognise human faces as faces, he might have marvelled out how perfect each replica was. He might be fooled into thinking that his noble ancestors lived again. As it was, he knew better. The Crest did not contain complete egos: it contained the will of the Casshern and their knowledge, bereft of consciousness.
An analogy could be made with the twin wills of the world, Gaia and Alaya, though on a much more personal scale. This was the Counter Force of the Crest, the Beast of Casshern. The Crest had recognised him as the phenomena with the capacity to end the Casshern Line, and it had produced this imitation of a greater force in response.
"You are Aleph Enkidu Casshern." one of them said. "An Arhat of the Casshern Line, 108th Inheritor of Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu."
"You possess the miracle of the Grail." began another. "You have been chosen to take part in that conflict; Akasha can be said to be within your grasp."
"This was the task begun almost three millenia ago." a third voice, a little further back from the front rank. "You are the realisation of a dream that has been one hundred and eight generations in the making."
"You are the end of us." said a fourth, a voice which seemed almost familiar. "All these generations have come to this. You are the final product of our science; but we are not convinced you are worthy."
Aleph opened his eyes. "Spare me. This is such a hassle." he sighed and pushed himself to his golden feet, before stepping out onto the surface of the water. "Wasn't the Will of the Casshern the will to become empty? The Crest should have no other desire than to meet the void at the origin of the world. The Line really has come to an end."
His ancestors barely reacted. "This idea of 'worth' isn't something that has a meaning for me. It's just a word which you learnt in a few hundred years of contact with humans. I am the Inheritor. I am an Arhat, a mask set before the sun."
He stepped through the surface of the water, on to smooth stone. "There is no 'worth' that I need to 'prove'; I am the world in which our sorcery lives. My existence is proof enough."
"Then what," asked the familiar voice. "Are we?"
"An opportunity to burn all threads to the past. Isn't that the goal of Shin Ho'oh Tensei? To repudiate history, humanity and the world." Aleph took in a long, slow breath, inched his right foot forward. One hundred and seven ancestors moved to match his stance. "That is the dream of this style. To reject circumstance and causality, to become a free-moving soul. To walk and breath without the weight of the world pressing down on our shoulders.
"I am not the end. I am the completion. And in order for Shin Ho'oh Tensei to be complete, I must reject all things: including you."
"So you will reject even the Will of the Casshern."
"Ah. So brace yourselves. Your bodies aren't ready."
They came forward as one, two hundred and fourteen feet in concert, two hundred and fourteen fists in sequence. Aleph found a critical point and burst through it, dragging two of his ancestors with him. They spun in midair, struck like lightning, but Aleph used their force to deflect himself to the ground. He skidded backwards through the water as his ancestors fanned out across the riverbed and the sheer rock walls of the gorge.
Each Inheritor had been stronger than the last, the techniques of Shin Ho'oh Tensei developing with time. Logically, the most recent would be closest to his strength, with the first Inheritor being much weaker.
This was not the case. As they struck in coordinated waves, and as he blocked, deflected, dodged and counterattacked, he understood that they possessed the skills of the Crest. After all, they were truly dead. All they lacked was him. They were all equivalent to his direct predecessor.
To anyone else, this would seem like unwinnable odds. They would see the small army falling in on them and despair. Aleph saw the truth: it didn't matter how many there were, they were all his inferior.
Prana radiated from his shoulders like a solar corona, licking like red-blue flame. He fell back into stance and beckoned for them to come.
They were like comets streaking through the night, but Aleph broke through once more, grabbing a woman by the ankle and flinging her away from the pack, She skidded in the water, easily rose to her feet and counter attacked as Aleph's knee came within an inch of her face. He flipped back, but the interval between them was far too short. He struck her throat with his hand like a blade, circled around and drove his elbow into her flank, then his open palm hit the base of her skull. Every blow was like a detonation, and when she threw him off her attacks were sluggish. Two more Inheritors flashed past her, hands clutching planes of blue light - Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu: Hoshiken. Two metre blades of prana, fine like scalpels, burning in red and violet; they threshed, Aleph took one step back then cartwheeled through, his heel smashing into the crown of the female Inheritor's skull. The ground beneath her feet collapsed into a smooth crater.
She toppled backwards, Aleph using her face to redirect himself - Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu: Bakushukuchi, the sublime footwork of the Casshern found purchase on any surface, regardless of gravity and momentum. Her attempted saviours, their Hoshiken dissipated, sprang towards him with similar ease.
They were out of step but half a heartbeat. Aleph had not merely dodged, he had redirected. His thumb entered the first's eyesocket, and he swung himself around. Neck twisted under his momentum as he deflected the second with his legs. When Aleph landed, the Casshern in his hands was dead, head almost torn clean off. He flung the body at his third target, flashed after it. It was an instant of a blindspot as the Inheritor deflected the corpse, but it was long enough for Aleph's hand to punch through like a spear. Heart ruptured on the tips of his fingers.
The rest came, closing in on him like a hand. A few seconds to kill three, a few seconds for them all to reorient and come for him as one. Aleph took the only way out, leaping back to one of his great statues. They were relentless: some came sprinting along the gorge wall, some leapt directly for him, some were loping straight up the statue, some were clambering up the oher statue and preparing to jump from there.
His feet had barely settled when the first few arrived, striking through each other's blindspots. Aleph could defend, but only barely. As much as he knew that he could win, realising it was difficult. Fighting in numbers did not make a person stronger, there was no quality in quantity. If he could isolate an Inheritor, that Inheritor would die. That had become an absolute rule that he would actualise without fail. But the Inheritors weren't foolish, they understood that isolation would get them killed. Numbers did not make them strong, it made them a fortress.
A rank of soldiers is like a wall, but that wall is only as strong as its weakest point. Even a diamond is only as strong as its imperfections. The 104 Inheritors did not possess a weakest point. They were a diamond without flaw, each one of them with the same skill, the same situational awareness. Knowing their individual weakness, they sought to eliminate it. The intervals between them became interfaces; isolation was impossible.
If there is no imperfection, then one must create an imperfection. Aleph spun, his golden feet sending up sparks from Vairocana's noble brow, and struck out with a kick like an arc of lightning. It left him open for a moment, and one of his ancestors took that opening. Aleph's momentum made him fall on one hand, and he was barely able to spin away from a high rank Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu: Sōkotsu, a thrust punch that would have splintered his ribs and torn him open. Realising his mistake, that Inheritor tried to fall back into the embrace of his comrades, but he was already inside Aleph's maai. Palm met knee, the Inheritor completed his retreat, and Aleph flipped to his feet.
A created imperfection, and one that had not escaped the imaginary barrier defined by Aleph's skill. He pressed the advantage, broke through the wall created by the Cassherns, and began dismantling them. He killed five, injured more, before the 99th Inheritor, Briareus Aigaion Casshern drove her fist into the base of the statue. Cracks ripped upwards, and the head shifted enough to throw off Aleph's footing. A different Inheritor used a wheeling motion of his arms to deflect Aleph's fumbled killing blow, struck him in the solar plexus and inner knee.
Aleph caught him by the throat and sprinted down twenty metres of shattering statue, dragging his ancestor's face down the stone, before leaping away. The Inheritor twisted out of Aleph's hands, but Aleph impaled him on the twin blades of Hoshiken, then kicked away. He hit the water skidding, turned, and had to immediately backflip to avoid a rising axe kick that sucked water after the heel.
The foot came down, split the river and turned the waterfall to mist that parted like a curtain. The Inheritor fell apart and Aleph's Hoshiken dissipated; he immediately leapt, barely a Hoshiken tossed like a flaming buzzsaw. He was spinning, the second blade just barely avoiding his broad chest, but he didn't drop his shoulder fast enough. Flesh tsisted from his shoulder, exposing blood and bone. More Inheritors crashed into him; every parry he attempted knocked him further into the sky, and they simply kept coming, over and over and over again.
Seizing an Inhertitor by the back of the neck and throat, Aleph saw Vairocana's head shift, then rise. The 27th Inheritor, Oberon Iskandar Casshern tossed it on a flat arc.
Aleph broke the ancestor in his hand, then used his body as a springboard. He hit Vairocana's eye heel first, and there was a moment where they were frozen in mid-air, before Aleph drilled a glowing tunnel through the statue's head. Uneven heating shattered it, and Oberon blocked Aleph's kick with crossed arms. There was a brief moment where Oberon's feet carved twin trenches through the stone riverbed and water parted to the gorge walls, but with a burst of prana he tossed Aleph back. The 99th Inheritor, Briareus sprinted up behind her distant predecessor as the water rushed back in around their feet.
Oberon grasped Briareus by the wrist and tossed her, her golden feet smashing into the the stone twice, her fist drawing back. Prana coiled around. She was a whirlwind, a tidal wave. Aleph matched her step for step, force for force - Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu: Senjū Kōten Taihō.
Where they met, the river recoiled; a membrane of water which stretched above them, popped into rain. Aleph's fist had shattered most of Briareus' face, while he had caught hers. But the massive impact that would have destroyed a normal man's body was just a side-effect. There was a glassy glittering, like Aleph had riven cracks into the strate of the air; in the space of a breath, Briareus stepped back, blades of prana like glass spears erupting from her flesh, trailing ribbons of dark blood.
Aleph recoiled, rain pounding on his his head, his left arm lacerated. He had countered, but Senjū Kōten Taihō was the 99th technique, and even he could not suppress it entirely. He gritted his teeth as Oberon tore through Briareus' corpse, Hoshiken flashing. Aleph met him blade for blade, butterfly kicked. He spun three times, struck with each blade one before bring them together on the third revolution. Oberon moved to block, but as Aleph came down his Hoshiken dissipated. He landed in a crouch before his ancestor. They were both open, but Aleph was faster. His left fist split Oberon's rib cage and he swung around his ancestor's body; in the blink of an eye he had shattered a lumbar vertebra with his knee, smashed the skull with the heel of his palm, in line with the medulla oblongata. Oberon was crushed between a trio of shockwaves.
Aleph stepped back, battered by a blistering detonation that another Inheritor passed through the corpse. His golden feet skidded backwards as the river rose back about his shins and the rain began to cease.
Eighty seven Inheritors stood around him, and Aleph took a moment to wipe blood from his chin. He fell back into stance, and his ancestors matched him. They were wrapped in the colours and sounds of their intent, and Aleph smiled. "You truly are my noble ancestors, who helped forge Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu. I don't know affection for you. I don't know your names. I don't know your exploits. I can know respect. You were all free; in that way you were all your own God."
He took in a long breath, and gently stamped one foot. "But I, too, am free. And being the last of this line, I can say with no ego that I am more free than all of you." he gave the ground another gentle stomp, and this time it seemed that the whole world shook. "That's why you're all going to die here."
Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu can be considered a path of techniques, each one more difficult, more important than the last. At the very end, at the pinnacle, is Shinra Bansho. It was a spell which was almost a hundred generations in the making, completed by the 99th Inheritor, Briareus Aigaion Casshern. Of course, they all knew it, but Aleph was the only who truly commanded it. Who fully understood what it meant.
When he stepped forward and tore the 56th Inheritor, Fuhrer Maelstrom Casshern in half, it was like their several of him, probalistic shadows formed out of whirling flame in blue and red and violet. They came for him, a raging tide of force, but they could not compete with the ultimate mystery of the Casshern. Every time they tried to initiate their own Shinra Bansho, he was there before them, his blows splitting them apart like his entire body was a blade. His phantasms followed him, somewhere between material and walking dream: each one the possibility of an Aleph made semi-real. The defended, they executed near flawless counter strikes, but it was almost pointless.
All covering forests and ten thousand fists. All things in creation covered by God. The techniques of Shin Ho'oh Tensei raised to the sublime. They sacrificed half their number simply to reach the point where they could match Aleph; streaking after images of twisted probability and flaming prana. The water around their feet evaporated into vast clouds that billowed and burst as the Cassherns cut harsh angles into the stone. Streaks of blue and red that came together like flashes of lightning and tore the river bed apart and shattered the gorge walls like glass.
They managed to toss Aleph high into the air as the waterfall broke apart and, like a bursting dam, spilled water like a tidal wave. The surviving Cassherns spiraled together, looking for all the world like a galaxy. They would come together and form a lance that would split Aleph, and the sky, apart.
"I am the 108th Inheritor of Shin Ho'oh Tensei-ryu!" Aleph called as he drew his fist back and his various phantasms finally caught up to him, colliding, growing. Probability became gravity, became mass, a glittering mandala in the shape of a man. "I am an Arhat, a mask set before the sun! I am God become man, and man become God! My fist will split the earth and create a miracle!
"I am Aleph Enkidu Casshern!"
The great fist of light struck the earth.
MY GOALS: //[/color] The Grail War is the long awaited opportunity to test the philosophical robustness of Shin Ho'oh Tensei; which is to say that his goal is to either kill everyone else involved in the Grail War, or be killed. Either is acceptable: either Shin Ho'oh Tensei is right, and Aleph will achieve the Grail, or it is wrong, in which case the family line being wiped from the face of history is the correct course of action.
[/size][/blockquote]
RANK: //[/color]
ELEMENT: //[/color] Devil
EXPERTISE: //[/color]
MAGIC CIRCUITS: //[/color]
SPELLS: //[/color]
PLAYER'S NAME: //[/color] arjunaluna
FACE CLAIM: //[/color] Yasuri Shichika, from Katanagatari
OTHER CHARACTERS: //[/color] Arjuna
MISC. INFORMATION: //[/color]He's not kidding: your body isn't ready.[/size][/ul]