Application | @Labyrinthum

[linecrook]

OOC INFORMATION
Player Name: Cris
Pronoun Preferences: She/Her
Contact: crissyphus (discord)
Are you over the age of 18?: Yes
Invitation Link: Here!
Current Characters: N/A
Link to Permissions: Permissions.

IC INFORMATION
Character Name: Zhao, Tianyou
Species: Human
Canon: Yakuza Games (Like a Dragon/Infinite Wealth)
Canon Point: Post-Infinite Wealth
Character Age: Not stated exactly in canon, but somewhere in his early/mid-30s.
CRAU: No
Character Appearance: Here. #Fashion
Powers and Abilities:

Martial Arts: Zhao is a skilled practitioner of Kung Fu, in a universe where in order to be high ranking in a criminal organization you have to be one of its strongest members. He shows a preference the various animal-based schools when fighting (especially snake, tiger, dragon, and mantis styles), but he doesn't specialize in any one particular branch of Kung Fu and prefers to constantly mix it up. He can fight both hand-to-hand, and with a Dao (Chinese saber.) He also carries a pistol, but only ever seems to use it for intimidation, not combat—he is probably an okay shot at best.

Nerfs: N/A.

Fighter's Aura (Heat): In Yakuza universe, fighters at or above a certain level are able to perform "Heat" actions or empower themselves with a fiery aura which allows them to move faster and hit harder, sometimes pulling off impossible feats like creating an energy shockwave by stomping hard enough or shooting a beam of fire off the end of their sword, etc. Zhao can also sense a fighter's relative strength and skill just by being in the presence of their aura, an ability which likewise seems limited to highly skilled combatants.

Nerfs: If I regain this power, I will put up an Opt-In permissions post for the aura sensing, and limit any energy attacks to a 5 foot radius around himself (so they will be essentially just enhanced melee attacks.)

JRPG Nonsense: Some finishing/special moves that Zhao can do involve summoning objects/other people into a special pocket dimension for attacks. He can also inflict status effects/debuffs/buffs with certain moves, and even heal allies over time by sharing his Homecooked Dim Sum with them.

Nerfs: Any pocket dimension/ultimate attack weirdness is just getting nerfed out/will not attempt to regain it. (I do NOT want to have to try to figure out how any of those finishing moves would work diegetically in threads haha, thank you. 🙏)

What Did Your Character Wish For? For Kiryu (a castmate/personal friend, recently diagnosed with late stage cancer and given about 6 months to live) to recover and regain his health.
What Potion Did They Receive? Red
Did They Drink It? Yes
If Yes, What Element/Animal? Fire

Character Questions:
1. Who is the person your character is most bonded with from their canon, or who is someone they miss the most and why?

Before the games take place, the person that Zhao was closest to was Akira Mabuchi/Lao Ma, a childhood friend and the person he elevated to Second in Command of his gang. They grew up together in Ijincho, experienced the social stigma of being Chinese in Japan together, and worked together very closely (to the point of being sworn brothers) while Zhao was being groomed for leadership of their shared gang. Of course, during the games themselves, Mabuchi lead a coup against Zhao and even tortured him once his followers had captured him. Zhao did know on some level that Mabuchi resented him for being born rich and handed all the power that he coveted on a silver platter, and that Mabuchi was entirely too greedy and ambitious to be trusted, but he was too sentimental about their past relationship to the point that even after the betrayal (and a second, discrete murder attempt just to make things even more ridiculous) he did everything he could to make sure Mabuchi survived the situation when the other people affected by his actions would have killed him. He certainly wouldn't call himself close to Mabuchi anymore, for obvious reasons, but he does sometimes miss Mabuchi and he's really mad at himself it every time because he knows it's stupid.

At his current canonpoint he tends to hold people at arm's length more as a result, though he is still pretty close to the members of Kasuga's Party, and subsequently Kiryu's. Within the party he is probably most close with Seonhee and Joongi, the Leader and Second in Command respectively of the Geomijul (another gang, to whom Zhao left his own gang when he essentially quit after the coup.) They've been working together for years (though, in total secrecy for the first decade), and he trusts them implicitly to do right by his people. Also, they both share his slightly cracked moral code where organized crime like murder and intimidation and extortion etc etc are all fine, but you protect your own people and do right by them or else there's no point, which is a nice bonus!

2. What are they most afraid of and why?

Zhao fears turning out like his father, who was so miserable and paranoid that he died early in his sleep from sheer stress even though by that point he was a retired man and Zhao was doing all the work of running the gang and being the face of it to their enemies. As a result, he has deliberately gone in the opposite direction, giving up on his ability to control the circumstances of his life and just letting himself relax and be buffeted around by it, in whatever form it takes. Most mob bosses die violently in the Yakuza universe, like hell he's going to waste whatever time he does have alive being so worked up about it that it kills him anyway.

3. What are their emotional, mental, and physical weaknesses and why?

Emotionally, Zhao's biggest weakness is his sentimentality. He remains protective of people who definitely mean him harm simply out of attachment to past relationships, to the point where he will walk into a trap on purpose in order to get a former friend to skip town before he gets killed, even though said former friend was only in town to kill him. Zhao can recognize that his attachments are irrational, but that doesn't make it any easier for him to let them go.

Mentally, what holds Zhao back the most is his lack of ambition or drive. He just kinda lets the world happen to him, rather than taking charge of any of it. Normally this wouldn't be terribly detrimental, but because of the circumstances of his birth, it did mean that he stayed in a job he hated for a decade and only freed himself when the whole house of cards came tumbling down around his ears.

Physically, Zhao is weak to cold damage. In-game this means he takes more damage from weapons that deal ice damage, but diegetically it means that he's a big weenie about cold weather, he can't fight to the best of his abilities in it, and that he definitely suffers from Man Colds.

4. What discrepancies are there between their inner self (who they feel they are) and their outer self (how they present themselves to others)?

Zhao is a big softie who cares about the people around him a whole lot more than he's willing to let on most of the time. Because has spent the last decade or so leading an organized crime family, he puts up a front of flippant cruelty, especially where business is concerned. He very much acts the spoiled, rich, disaffected part that he was cast in by the circumstances of his birth, and he is very calculated about he leverages that persona to try to keep people at arm's length and make it harder to see through to his gooey insides. (Though if he gets drunk and relaxed enough, he'll reveal his hand pretty readily—that it's a mask he wears because of the job, and that he's pretty sure that's true for most people in the business.)

But sober, any act of kindness or generosity he commits, he either hides it behind a (sometimes ridiculously thin) veil of self-interest, or pretends that it was accidental. He even tends gets annoyed or uncomfortable when the people he very much does care about and want to help actually realize that about him, and he takes it as an insult when anyone implies to his face that he's a better guy than he seems at first. Yes, even when it's meant to be complimentary.

5. What would make them happiest and why?

The thing that is clearly shown to bring Zhao the most joy is cooking for the people he cares about (and basking in their gushing praise once they eat it.) Zhao has spent his whole life neck deep in organized crime, but being so talented at cooking and being able to feed his people feels like the one, uncomplicated Good thing he can do that he doesn't have to obfuscate behind a veil of selfishness or greed in order to not lose face (and therefore power/safety) in the crime world. His ability to cook and to make others happy with his food is the one thing about himself that he actually seems to take genuine pride in, and if he spent the rest of his life just running a restaurant and having no power to shape the Japanese underworld, he'd honestly be more than content.

6. What characteristics does someone need to have to be your character's ideal significant other?

Zhao is shown to be drawn to people with ambition more than anything else. Unfortunately, things like cruelty and greed—which go hand-in-hand with ambition in the criminal world more often than not—are not particular deterrents. If anything, he would probably not last long in a relationship where the other party doesn't have some familiarity and comfort with violence, or anyone morally pure enough to take serious issue with his shady past, which he doesn't really bother to put effort into concealing.

He is also attracted to strength, intelligence (which he can appreciate in non-traditional forms too), and the sort of sense of humor that can keep up with his constant ribbing and teasing. Bonus points if they're as enthusiastic about food, shopping and fashion as he is.

7. Would your character make a sacrifice to save someone else and why or why not?

Yes. In canon, Zhao tells the protagonist to go help another faction (the Geomijul) rather than come save him from a coup actively happening in his own crime family, which ends with him being tortured by former subordinates. When said protagonist comes to rescue him after the fact, he makes it clear that he weighed the lives of the Geomijul against his own and actively chose to conceal how much danger he was in so the protag would not split his focus and would go to save them immediately instead. While he isn't interested in being heroic or engaging in self-sacrifice for its own sake, he cares a lot about the lives of his own men (even the ones actively participating in the coup) and he extends that care to the lives the Geomijul despite the fact that they're enemies at the time because they're in a very similar situation as fellow immigrant minorities in Japan who have been systemically pushed out of polite society and into organized crime.

In-game, he's unlikely to be willing to do the same (or similar) for anyone but his own personal friends, but, you know. He does have it in him.

8. What is one thing they would tell their younger self if they had the chance, or if your character is young, what is one thing they would want their older self to remember?

To not get so attached to Mabuchi. Probably the only way Zhao would be able to disentangle himself from the (former) friendship and all it entails for him on the way would be to stop it before it starts, when he was still a kid. Not that Zhao would have any hopes of his younger self listening: plenty of people (namely his father, and the old guard his father left behind when he retired) told him not to trust Mabuchi, and it turns out they were correct. Who knew?

9. When in dire circumstances does your character fight, flee, freeze or fawn and how does that look?

When in physical danger, Zhao defaults to fighting. Most of the time that's literal fist (/sword) fighting, but considering he's a gang boss it also means calling in lackeys to fight on his behalf. Ironically, physical danger is what he's most comfortable with, and he even seems excited to fight against certain opponents if for no other reason than to be able to test his mettle despite whatever fearsome reputations they might have. Zhao does not actually seem to fear physical pain very much though, and if anything has a blasé attitude about life or death situations despite very much preferring to be alive and intact.

Being confronted by emotional threats is where Zhao tends to freeze. In situations where things are falling apart around him, Zhao prefers to hunker down and let whatever happens happen, even if it will have a drastic impact on his life and the lives of the people he cares about. This is seen most plainly when Zhao is presented with proof that Mabuchi has betrayed him, but instead of acting and stopping the coup before it happens, or even fleeing the situation, he freezes and lets himself get captured and tortured as a result.

10. Why did your character make the wish they did?

Honestly? Because he is otherwise satisfied with his own life to the point that he doesn't have anything for himself to wish for, so he'd rather things improve for a good friend. Despite only knowing Kiryu personally for a short time, Zhao likes him a lot and risks his life to help Kiryu achieve his goals multiple times. On top of that, in canon during one of the side dialogues that the player can find, he mentions seeing a four leaf clover on the ground but leaving it behind for someone else to find because he is perfectly content with where he's at currently and doesn't need the extra luck to get by, so there's precedent for him giving up something "miraculous" that he doesn't feel he personally needs.

Samples: Log Sample & Network Sample