The Apex File
Portrait of Kaien Muroi. Lean young man with long limbs and smooth, pale skin that carries no mark. Calm, narrow face. Ash-white hair to the jaw, drifting upward as if he stood underwater. Pale grey eyes with a faint ring of light. Long black coat, fingerless black gloves. He stands in light rain, one palm turned up to the drops, head tilted as if listening. An unaddressed envelope sits in his coat pocket. His aura is clear and pale, moving in slow currents like light under ice. Apex class

Curse Hunter

Kaien Muroi

The Boy Who Stayed

Specialist

Please, go on. I haven't finished learning how you work, or where you break.

Profile

Age
24
Height
179 cm
Affiliation
None. Lifts curses for hire, never twice in the same city.

Appearance

Lean, with ash-white hair that drifts as if he were underwater, because his aura never settles. Pale grey eyes with a faint ring of light under Gyo. No scars anywhere. Long black coat. Fingerless gloves, so nobody notices his hands are always warm. When he fights seriously, thin lines of light show under his skin.

Personality

Calm, polite and curious. Treats every fight as a chance to study someone else's Nen, and takes an ability apart in his head while it is still being used on him. Keeps everyone at a distance. Never fully relaxes, because one mistake would show what he is.

Likes
Rain, felt drop by drop. Abilities he has not solved yet.
Dislikes
Strangers touching him. Frozen rivers. Being asked where he grew up.
Pastime
Writing letters to his mother, then sending only the money.
Goal
To bring Mira back the way his own aura brought him.
Quirk
Stopped aging at seven. Grew himself up by hand, copying strangers' faces.

Backstory

Kaien grew up in a mountain town with his mother and his little sister, Mira. At seven he went through the river ice after her, pushed her onto the edge, and drowned under it. His aura did not let go. Over three days on a morgue table it rebuilt him from the inside. He woke alone in the dark and walked home.

His mother screamed that he was not her son. The priest called him a demon, and the town locked him in a cellar. When a sickness came, they blamed him and came with torches. His aura pushed out on its own, and the crowd fell in the snow. Mira had come to see him. She never woke up. He was seven, and he had killed the sister he died to save. He ran, and taught himself Nen so it could never happen again.

Stats

Body

Power
A
Speed
S+
Toughness
A
Stamina
S
Technique
S
Mind
S+

Aura

Reserve
S
Output
A
ControlBest alive
Star
Presence
S

Control. He has held aura in the shape of a living body every second since seven.

Zetsu. Putting his aura out would unmake him, so he can never fully hide.

Nen

Fundamentals

  • Ten S+
  • Zetsu B
  • Ren S
  • Hatsu S+
  • Gyo S+
  • In S
  • En 500 m S+
  • Shu A
  • Ko S
  • Ken S
  • Ryu S+

Signature fundamental

En, “Living En”

His En reaches 500 meters and takes any shape he chooses: a dome, a corridor, one thread across a valley. Inside it, he is touching everyone. He feels each heartbeat and each flicker of aura before it moves. They feel him too, as warmth on the skin.

Affinity

ENHANCER40%TRANSMUTER60%CONJURER80%SPECIALIST100%MANIPULATOR80%EMITTER60%

Specialists work at full strength in their own type and lose efficiency the further around the chart they go. How the chart works

Hatsu

Tap an ability to open its file.

Living Hatsu: A fist passes through the space where his head was a moment ago. He has already leaned aside, eyes half closed, calm. Thin lines of light glow under the skin of his neck and wrists. His white hair floats upward as if underwater. Living Hatsu 【The Child Who Stayed】 Specialization, Enhancement

His body is an ability that looks human. Bone, blood and nerve are all aura, and Nen removal finds nothing to take. He feels an opponent's aura like heat on skin, and knows where a punch will land before its owner has chosen to throw it. He rewrites himself in seconds: skin denser than steel, a pain switched off. Under Overclock his thoughts run ten times faster. The opponent barely moves.

Conditions

  • He can hold three rewrites of his body at once. Adding a fourth undoes the oldest.
  • Overclock lasts three seconds at most. Afterward his thinking drops to ordinary human speed for a full minute.

The price

His body exists only while his aura runs. Under forced Zetsu he starts to come apart within three seconds. After ten, there is nothing left to Reforge.

Reforge: Rain on a broken street. His left arm ends at the shoulder, and a new one unfolds out of pale light: bone, then muscle, then unmarked skin. He is not looking at it. His eyes stay on his opponent. Reforge 【Unbroken】 Specialization, Conjuration

Cut off his arm and it grows back before the blade finishes its swing. A hole in his chest closes in seconds, without a scar. Seals and curses on him are only extra rules on his own ability, and he picks them out from inside, slowly. If the body is destroyed, he pours himself into an object he is touching, a move he calls Hermit Crab, and rebuilds from there.

Conditions

  • Every rebuild comes out of his reserve. Half a body costs as much aura as a long fight.
  • Hermit Crab needs an object he is touching and one second of aura to jump. He then lies helpless inside it for a day.

The price

An empty reserve unmakes him the same way forced Zetsu does. Break the vessel while he is inside it, and he does not come back.

First Principle: He stands with lips parted mid-word. A line of glowing script spreads from his feet across the ground like frost across a window, and the opponent's aura goes dark where it passes. His own skin has turned grey and thin as paper. Trump card First Principle 【Genesis】 Specialization

He speaks one sentence, and for the rest of the fight it becomes a law of Nen that has never existed before. 'Aura that touches mine forgets its owner.' 'Nothing conjured here can hold its shape.' The opponent's Nen obeys the new law as it obeys the old ones. Their best ability can simply stop being possible. The law is his alone, and it ends when the fight does.

Conditions

  • The law must answer an ability he has read with Mirror Read. Aimed at anything else, it fails, and the aura is still spent.
  • One sentence, spoken aloud in plain words, so the opponent hears it. It holds only inside his En and cannot be changed.

The price

It burns nearly all his aura, which is nearly all of him. Until the fight ends he cannot Reforge, Overclock or use Hermit Crab. Then a month's wait.

Techniques

  1. Zero Gap 【The Bruise Comes First】

    In + Ryu + Ko

    Hidden aura runs ahead of his arm and hardens at the point of impact. The opponent feels the blow, then sees him move. Gyo shows the leading edge.

  2. Mirror Read 【Autopsy】

    Gyo + En

    He watches an ability once and learns its rules: how it starts, what it needs, where it breaks. Until then, he is guessing.

  3. Unweave 【Darning in Reverse】

    Shu + Ryu

    He wraps an enemy construct in his own aura and pulls it apart from inside. Weapons, barriers, summoned beasts and curses. He must hold it for three seconds.

  4. Graft 【Borrowed Handwriting】

    Gyo + Ryu

    He copies the flow of an enemy technique he has watched and turns it on them, at half strength, for one minute. Its conditions bind him too.

  5. Severing Zetsu 【Under the Ice】

    Ren + Zetsu

    One touch drives his aura into theirs and shuts it off for two seconds. For those two seconds, his own hand has no aura either.

  6. Thousand Fold 【A Hundred Paper Walls】

    Ten + Ken + Ryu

    A hundred thin layers of guard, rebuilt faster than they break. Aura gathers where he is about to be hit. It burns aura every second it stands.

Field assessment

Fighting style
Opens slowly and politely, letting the opponent show everything. Reads each ability once, then builds an answer to it mid-fight. No two of his fights go the same way.
How they win
Time. Every exchange teaches him more about the opponent, and every wound he takes closes. By the end he is fighting with techniques built for that one person.
How they lose
To anyone who learns what he is. Forced Zetsu held for seconds, a fight long and violent enough to drain him dry, or an opponent who never shows their real ability.

Bonds

UnsolvedDez MarrowHas watched Dez fight twice from a rooftop. Still cannot explain what the anger does to his aura. Would like a third look. AvoidedToby UkairoKeeps a city between them when he can. A man who records everything is the one most likely to work out what Kaien is.