[Piano & Forte] Reference

Original Doc

Main Fighter: Piano

Aliases: Talent, The Silent Shadow.

Age: 23

Race: Devil Blooded

Gender: Female

Height: 5’9”

Weight: 137 lbs.

Appearance: A woman of slim, but muscular build, showing her intense training. Her skin is a crimson red and her hair is a dark black that goes to mid-back that she keeps tied back with a simple ponytail. She has two horns coming out of her head, but they are mismatched. Her right horn is short and pointed, as if it was broken off at some point. The left is longer, close to her head with a slight curve in the center so that if you looked closely, it could be mistaken for the top of a quarter note. Her eyes, which are round but normally kept half-lidded to give her a more demure appearance, are likewise mismatched in color. Her left eye is an amethyst purple, while the right one is a shimmering golden color. Her face has a sort of softness about it and her ears are slightly longer than a human’s and come to small points at the tips.

Her outfit, in seeming stark contrast to her personality, is a bright, lilac piece that seems made to draw attention to her. She wears a violet leotard, over which she wears a white dress shirt buttoned all the way up and a golden vest likewise buttoned. She then wears a lilac coat with gold trim over those, with two long coat tails with bells attached to the end that trail off behind her and frame her slim, arrow tipped tail. The interior of her coat has numerous secret pockets from which she draws weapons from. She wears a pair of lilac high heels, though her opponents will quickly discover that these shoes can actually “break off” the heel and switch to more comfortable for combat flats, while she uses the new blades as preliminary throwing knives to test her opponents. She also wears what appear to be fishnet stockings, but are actually just tights that are skin color to her with the appearance of fishnet stockings, which she uses to hide some of her weapons. Overall, her ensemble resembles strongly that of a magician’s assistant in appearance.

While she does primarily fight using her fists and legs, she does carry a small assortment of weapons to use in fights she deems necessary. Her primary weapons for fighting at a distance are two sets of throwing knives, which are hidden all throughout her body. One set is made of tempered silver, while another is a darker red in appearance, forged using her blood as a quencher. She also possess a ninjato with a dark crimson blade, also forged using her blood, which she brings with her as needed. It is a short blade, only about half an arm’s length, but she keeps it in a bigger blade’s sheath to deceive her opponents of its length. Her tag is a simple necklace around her neck.

Personality: Piano is shy and demure, almost to a fault. She refuses to talk to most people, usually preferring to have her brother handle most social situations. If she must talk to someone, she tries to keep the conversation shorter, getting the important points across while still respecting the other person’s desire to talk to her by not brushing them off. She is highly empathetic, but due to her abilities and work, she’s been forced to stay more closed off and reserved to protect herself. When she thinks she can get away with it, she’ll try to help people in silent ways that she hopes goes unnoticed, so her presence will go unseen.

Piano’s abilities and skillsets lead her to be very observant, easily able to notice things that most would miss, but could hinder her job if she didn’t notice them. She is also a pretty good judge of character, usually able to get a good idea of what kind of person they are with some cross confirmation from her brother, Forte. While he’s more logically and socially intelligent, her words carry enough weight that her words are needed before he can confirm a plan. She often puts Forte’s desires and tasks ahead of her own, her diligence often ensuring that she’s still able to get what she needs in the end.

In combat, she generally has two methods of acting. When dealing with those not worthy of “stealing” from, she prefers to put a swift end to combat, knocking out her foes before they have to feel any pain. If they prove stronger than expected, she’ll resort to blades and other implements, but still tries to ensure it’s painless as she takes them down. Piano only kills as a desperate last resort, and will retreat long before resorting to it if possible, and taking as long as possible to start resorting to lethal level force.

If her opponent is worthy of “stealing” from, however, then she will instead try to draw out the combat as much as possible, attempting to watch them fight for as long as possible, even at great risk to herself. Once she has completed her observations and performed the “theft,” she will quickly switch strategies to take out her opponent so that she might retreat with that precious “talent” in tow. In all things, she tries to ensure her presence will interfere as little as possible while getting the most of what she wants.

Backstory: Piano and her brother, Forte, were born in a war torn continent, with various powerful factions fighting each other and bringing ruin and destruction everywhere. The two were orphaned for as long as they can remember. The pair managed to survive by working together, the male half using what boyish charms he had to find marks and distract them with his slowly developing silver tongue, while Piano used her burgeoning physical abilities to pick up what food and money they needed to get by for the week.

That changed when Forte tried to use his usual tricks against a much more observant target. But rather than get angry at them when he caught them with his wallet at their hideout, he gave them an offer: a place to find food, shelter, skills beyond what they could imagine, and a purpose greater than even the gods could offer. Forte eagerly accepted, with Piano coming along for the ride.

Over the next decade or so, the pair were trained extensively into their own specializations, with Piano honing her physical talents. She mastered quite a few martial arts techniques, unarmed and with a variety of weapons. This training was augmented when she was in her teens, when she was granted the ability to “steal” the “talents” of those she observed for a decent period of time, allowing her to master skills in hours or minutes which took their practitioner entire lifetimes to perfect. Her quiet nature was also honed to make her a perfect spy, with enough social training to make a decent infiltrator, at least when paired with her brother.

Eventually, the pair were deemed ready and sent out into the world to collect talents of great importance, which the two were beginning to work on. They were handling targets of middling difficulty to obtain and were working their way up to bigger targets when Piano got an invite to join this tournament for a wish. While the pair seemed skeptical of the whole thing, the moment she saw her brother’s eyes read the words “God Eater,” she knew what she had to do. She’d participate in this tournament, collect what she could while her brother did his “work,” and if she was lucky, she’d even get a wish out of it. What she’d wish for, not even Piano knew.

Abilities: First and foremost, Piano is an expert martial artist, with a mastery of a wide variety of fighting styles from stand up striking to grapples and ground combat. She also has skills in most forms of bladed and bludgeoning weapons, as well as a number of ranged weapons and firearms. Her chosen style however, causes her to mostly use her weapons defensively, using them in various locks and holds so she can strike with her fists and legs. But for the purposes of the tournament, she will have her ninjato sword and a few sets of throwing knives hidden among her person.

Devil Blood: Being a descendant from devils, her blood has a high corruption factor about them. When her blood touches someone that isn’t devil related themselves, it begins to burn their skin much in the same way a powerful acid does. It does affect objects as well, but to a much lesser degree, only causing slight corruptions of the material and maybe melting some holes with enough blood. Her weapons that were forged using her blood carry some of this corrupting property as well, causing intense pain and making it difficult for healing magics or regeneration to occur along the wound for some time.

Ki: Through intensive training, she is able to manipulate the natural energies flowing through her body, allowing her to enhance her body’s performance in a variety of ways. Mostly this results in the strengthening of her blows and defenses, allowing her just slightly superhuman physical abilities. She can also alter her temperature nearly 50 degrees in either direction, alter the flow of blood in her body to gather in one place before impact or speed it up to create a doping effect to further enhance her strengths, hold her breath for dozens of minutes even without prior preparation, mitigate the effects of foreign chemicals in her body to a decent degree, and sense the life forces of creatures around her in a limited area. As this draws on her life energy, though, it can easily wear her out if used too long, so she tries to limit her use of this in short bursts, and not too much at once unless absolutely necessary.

Talent Thief: A unique ability of hers, this ability allows her to, after a certain period of observation, copy the ability of the person in question perfectly, including aspects of that ability the person didn’t show her at that moment. With martial techniques, this lets her instantly understand their principles and weaknesses, allowing her to create counters to them while she incorporates the strengths into her ever expanding fighting style. She can also copy non combat abilities as well. Her current list includes:

• Sewing

• Pickpocketing

• Wood carving

• High level culinary

• Piloting of a number of vehicles

• Skydiving

• Underwater Basket Weaving

• And several others

While her ability to copy physical abilities is flawless, she does not possess the capability of copying magic or abilities wholly stemming from magic.

Strengths: Olympic level physical capabilities, further enhanced with ki, keen senses, martial abilities that make her hard to deal with at close and mid ranges, ability copying for physical skills, devil blood that corrupts on contact.

Weaknesses: Lots of ways to drain her stamina and wear herself out, few long range options for this tournament, bludgeoning attacks don’t allow her to use her blood effectively, blessed weapons or attacks from beings that are blessed are more effective against her, for opponents with interesting talents will risk drawing out the fight to get them. 

Motivations: She’s merely trying to provide an entertaining show so as to allow her brother to get everything he needs. She will attempt to win the tournament, but she has no inkling as to what she would wish for if she won.

Supporter: Forte

Aliases: Forte (like the skill), The Silver Tongued Snake

Age: 23

Race: Devil Blooded

Gender: Male

Height: 5’9”

Weight: 135 lbs.

Appearance: In many ways the opposite of Piano, Forte is a thin male, with short black hair neatly trimmed and styled and crimson skin. His horns are similar to Piano’s, only their position on his head are flipped. Likewise, his eye colors are flipped sides, over which he wears a simple pair of glasses. He occasionally wears hats to cover his horns as needed, and he keeps his tail under his clothes to hide it as well. His facial features are sharp and handsome, and his slightly narrow eyes belie a hidden cunning that matches his sardonic grin.

His clothes, also in contrast to the bright colors of Piano’s outfit, are darker and more subdued in color and presentation. He wears a white dress shirt under a simple black vest, with a twead jacket over top with leather patches on the elbow. He wears black dress pants and simple black Oxford style shoes.

He keeps a small bag on his side, which holds a number of books locked with a key only he can get access to. He has a simple wand in the shape of a fountain head pen, which he uses to write out his spells when needed.

Personality: Forte’s demeanor is one that appears to be open and communicative, but with that he hides a secretive and conniving personality. He often speaks with an overbearing, overly complicated manner of speaking that combines older words and fictitious words with which he overwhelms the listener with a deluge of language to misdirect his conversation partner. Despite that, he still manages to maintain an amiable talking style, often putting on the charms with people he’s interested in.

An objective oriented person, he’ll use whatever means he needs to in order to get access to the people he’s most interested in. He will tell whatever lies are necessary, manipulate whatever persons he needs to, and utilize whatever schemes puts him in front of his target. But once he gets what he wants, he abandons all interest in the subject in question, quickly departing before too much attention gets drawn towards him.Combined with his particular ability, he does possess a certain degree of egomania revolving around himself and his sister.

Despite this, he desperately does not wish to have his presence at events of importance noted, quickly vanishing the moment things start heating up. He always prefers, if having to get involved himself, to use means that don’t implicate himself in events, only resorting to more drastic means if pushed to the last resort.

Backstory: When his sister and him were taken in by the group that trained them, he was taken aside to hone his already skilled tongue to allow him to be a better manipulator. Both of people, and of the arcane arts. Trained in magic along with deception and other espionage techniques, Forte proved to be a skilled speaker and an adept spellcaster.

Like his sister, he was given a unique ability to steal something from others. In his case, he was given the ability to “steal” people’s true names, writing down their personality, motivations, and other defining traits into a particular way of writing their name. With that in mind, he was tasked with grabbing the names of figures of great importance, so that their names can be recorded carefully.

Using the guise as a writer journeying to do research for his magnum opus, he conducts interviews of people high and low, gathering names of ever increasing importance. When Piano received the invitation to participate in the God Eater’s tournament, his eyes gleamed, as he thought that it was time that he started moving up to taking from the gods themselves.

Abilities: With words being his primary means of navigating difficult situations, he is both a skilled negotiator and a highly proficient liar. He often tells lies on multiple layers, allowing his targets to detect certain lies to allow himself to hide bigger lies more easily. He’s a good judge of character, allowing him to more easily manipulate people to do what he wants.

Devil blood: Like his sister, his blood has corrupting properties. Unlike her, he is unable to control the flow of his blood, making it much harder for him to weaponize his blood. But he can find uses for it, on occasion.

Illusion and charming magics: A spellcaster of decent talent, Forte’s main focus of expertise is on utilizing illusions and enchanting spells to delude and lead his opponents in the directions he wants to go. He can create pretty realistic looking illusions, allowing him to disguise his appearance, create images and objects to mislead his enemies, and subtly manipulate someone’s choices to make them think they want to do something minor that benefits him. He likely is capable of doing more magic, but for this tournament, he would rather keep his abilities on the down low.

Name Thief: After conversing with someone for a certain amount of time, Forte can attempt to “steal” the true name of someone. This process involves careful study of the person’s personality and way of speaking, so he requires them to talk for his ability to work, but he usually can get anyone to do that for him. Once he’s written it down once, though, he can copy it anywhere he wants as many times as he wants. He usually keeps these names in one of his many locked books, each one holding more important names than the last.

Method of Assistance: While Forte is almost assured that his sister can best most of the other competitors in the tournament using her skills, he’s certainly not above tipping the scales in her favor. He employs means of subterfuge and sabotage prior to the start of the match, looking for ways to weaken her opponent before the match starts, though in ways that are not obvious in intent, nor easily provable to connect to him. He won’t get too involved otherwise, preferring to go after his quarry such as the God Eater and other persons of interest.

Motivation: To fish throughout the tournament for important people, stealing their names as he sees fit. His biggest prize is of course the God Eater Chifu, towards whom he’ll do anything to gain her true name. If Piano wins, he might suggest ideas for wishes for her, if he doesn’t end up taking the wish for himself if she lets him.