Juling and Chenzi Kitano are part fox sprite and two of Locksley's oldest friends.
Jules has one fox tail, which she generally hides beneath short bustle skirts.
Fox sprites have reputation for being untrustworthy, and Jules would prefer not
to be judged on silly superstition.
Jules
is 5'9", with honey-colored skin, hazel eyes, and dark, wavy hair with
blonde and pink highlights. Her canine teeth are sharp and her ears are pointy,
but not enough to draw undue attention. She has the lithe grace of a danc-er,
the long, slender fingers of a pianist, and the right hook of a champion
pugilist. Despite her willowy build, she is considerably stronger than she
looks.
Jules
is a clockwork artiste and a dead shot with anything remotely resembling a
projectile. She and Locksley were raised together in the Bone Scythe assassin
guild. They trained together, they fought together, they killed together, and
they burned the guild down together. She's only a year older than Locksley, but
whereas Locksley could pass for mid-teens, Jules appears to be in her
mid-twenties.
Chenzi
Kitano is Jules's younger half-sister. She appears around 21 years old,
5'6", with porcelain skin, dark eyes, and short, spiky hair. She usually
wears obnoxiously bright plaid tights with adorable bubble shorts, with small holes
cut into the rear to accommodate her two fox tails. Unlike her older sister,
Chenzi doesn't bother hid-ing hers.
She
runs the Leviathan Street clan's garage/chop-shop in Downside. She's the go-to
for sky racers and anyone wanting serious machine work. She's the top source
for high quality, if stolen, parts. Whereas her sister is a clock-work artiste,
Chenzi is more of a mechanical Doctor Frankenstein. She's always cannibalizing
other machines for the parts she needs, often without permission.
Her
creations aren't always pretty, in fact they are sometimes descibed as
monstrous, but they're definitely fast and powerful. There's also the
possibility they might accidentally explode, but she just chalks those up as
learning experiences. Chief among those lessons was to always keep fire
retardant near at hand.
In
addition to her ability to wreak mechanical mayhem, Chenzi can also see ghosts, but that's a skill
she'd be ecstatic to be without. Ever since could remember, ghosts were always
trying, and sometimes succeeding, to possess her body in order to resolve
whatever issues they had tying them to the mortal realm. Various healers,
priests, shamans, witches, mages, and sorcerers have all tried to help her,
but with little success.
The
only one who was ever able to help her was a nine-inch tall demonic familiar with
sorcerous aspirations. A demon minken named Hex spent over a year perfecting a
complicated protection spell to keep them out. When it was finally finished,
the spell was tattooed in five vertical lines, from the hairline on the left
side of her face, down her throat, to her heart.
The spell prevents ghosts from
possessing her body, but nothing can stop her from seeing them. Whenever a
ghost gets too close for comfort, the shield spell activates. Once activated,
her tattoo, which is normally only visible under ultraviolet light, turns
black, as if ink is oozing from her pores.
Jules's
and Chenzi's mother was a four-tailed fox sprite named Amara Kitano. Amara was
raised among the elite citizens in the highest levels of Blackmire. She was
adopted at birth by a wealthy, but barren couple through a private, closed
adoption. Amara never knew her real parents, but there could be no doubt one of
them was a full blooded fox sprite, if her own four fox tails were any
indication.
Amara's
adoptive parents weren't bothered by their daughter's biological parentage, but
the children in her neighborhood weren't as open-minded. In stories, fox
sprites have a reputation for mischief and malice. After being teased and
bullied for most of her life, Amara ran away from home when she was thirteen,
heading to Downside and never looking back. She had always possesed remarkable
hand-eye coordination, and she was able to support herself by performing
impressive knife-throwing tricks.
Her
ancestry didn't bother the owner of a local spectacle, who took Amara in and
trained her as a professional knife-thrower. Until one of the other acts, a
charlatan tarot reader named Madame Dulcineia, discovered Amara had the
exceedingly rare ability to talk to ghosts. Dulcineai took Amara under her wing
and set her up with all the mystical trappings of a Ghost Seer. People from all
walks of life would pay good coin to speak to their long lost loved ones.
As
Amara's fame grew, so too did the number of her admirers. Among them was a
handsome young man named Caston Tenzing. He hailed from the top tiers of the
city, visiting Downside with his elitist friends in disguise to "slum
it." He was extremely wealthy and extremely married. Amara wasn't
interested in his money, as she was ac-quiring her own. And neither was she
interested in any sort of serious relationship, so his marital status wasn't an
issue. Until their contraception failed and they wound up with an issue of
their own. Amara was content to raise the child on her own, but Caston had no
intentions of abandoning his responsibility.
His
wife, Adosinda, was barren, and after years of failed fertility spells, he was
delighted with the prospect of be-ing a father. He had no intention of leaving
his wife, though. Caston and Amara mutually decided to end their dal-liance,
but he continued to visit his infant daughter in secret. He would steal away
from his wife and head to Downside incognito as a lowly airship sailor in order
to explain away his intermittent visitations to Jules as she grew older,
without immersing her in his complicated life.
Although
Amara remained on friendly terms with Caston, he was never more than a pleasant
way to pass the time. When Jules was only a few months old, Amara met the man
who would steal her heart. Appropriately enough, Jinzei Coe was a highly
skilled professional thief. Born and raised in Downside, there wasn't a ward he
couldn't get past or a safe he couldn't crack. They met when Jinzei came to ask
for her help getting rid of a ghost that was haunting him in retribution for
stealing an heirloom from her living granddaughter.
They
became friends and eventually lovers. After they were together for a couple
years, Amara and Jinzei decided to have another child. It wasn't long before
they presented Jules with a younger sister, Chenzi.
Despite
Amara's changing family, Caston was still welcome in Jules's life. He doted on
his daughter, and he spent more and more time in Downside. Adosinda began to
notice his increasing absence, and grew suspicious. She had him followed and
was furious to discover his "other family." Instead of confronting
him, she decided revenge would be more satisfying. She began poisoning him with
trace amounts of lead. As the toxins built up in his system over the next few
years, Caston began showing more and more signs of instability. He started
suffering from memory loss, had difficulty concentrating, and was increasingly
irritable.
Caston's
behavior grew more and more erratic, and just as Amara was considering cutting
him out of their daughter's life, the decision was made for her. Adosinda had
bribed a doctor have Caston committed in an upscale, respectable "health
sanitarium," which was really just a private mental asylum for the
wealthy.
Amara
was actually relieved. A few months passed, and her family settled into a new
routine. But Adosinda was-n't done with them yet. She hired private
investigators to follow and watch them. When Jinzei broke into an un-pscale
flat, Adosinda anonymously notified the Metropolitan Guard. Jinzei got caught
with his hand in a safe. He was convicted and sent to the ore mines, where he
was killed by another prisoner Adosinda had bribed.
Then
had rumors spread declaring Amara a charlatan. Madame Dulcineia had no choice
but to dismiss Amara. Amara was blacklisted from every job opportunity in
Blackmire. To make sure her prey didn't flee her grasp, Adosinda bribed a
number of officials in the port authority to make sure Amara couldn't get any
travel papers to leave Blackmire.
Then
Adosinda bought Amara's building under an assumed name, raised Amara's rent,
and made sure no one else would rent to her. Although Amara had some money set
aside, and Caston had tucked away some money for Jules, it didn't take long to
burn through their savings on astronomical rent. Amara and her daughters were
turned out onto to street. Their neighbors shunned them, afraid Amara's
"bad luck" was contagious, muttering among themselves that perhaps
the stories about fox sprites were true.
They
survived by digging through garbage bins for scraps and selling trinkets. Jules
made a game of it for Chenzi, scouring through garbage bins for scrap metal and
parts they could use to create clever toys. After they had spent a few months
of living rough and fighting starvation, Adosinda approached Amara with a
proposition. Adosinda offered to give Amara her job and apartment back if she
agreed to sign over her parental rights to Adosinda.
Amara
had no intention of letting that cold, manipulative woman near her children,
but she also realized she was-n't in a position to care for them. So she went
to Auntie Cora and begged for help. While Auntie Cora arranged the travel
papers Amara needed to leave the city and start fresh, Amara and the girls
spent a few days hidden in one of Auntie Cora's safe houses. Ignoring the ache
in her chest, she spend every precious moment with her daughters. On the day
her papers were ready, Amara couldn't bring herself to say goodbye. She waited
until nightfall, and then kissed her sleeping girls goodbye, her eyes burning
with unshed tears. Though it broke her heart to leave, Amara truly believed
Auntie Cora would safe guard her daughters. She couldn't remain in the same
city as the children she would never see again. So she joined a traveling
circus as a Ghost Seer once more, and never set foot in Blackmire again.
Years
later, when Locksley declared war on the guild, Jules's weapons helped bring
about the guild's demise. Unfortunately, none of her weapons could have
protected them from the demons the guild sent to stop them. Always seeing challenges
as simply problems waiting to be solved, she wouldn't let an amputated arm slow
her down. With Chenzi's help, she designed and built herself a mechanical
prosthesis made out of a high tensile titanium and tungsten alloy. The new
biomech arm was fused directly into her shoulder socket, responding to her will
no differently than her flesh and blood arm.
In the brief calm following the Bone Scythe guild's destruction, Jules and Chenzi tried to track down their
mother. They discovered Amara had died only a few years after leaving Blackmire. After surviving a bout of pneumonia, Amara's lungs were irreparably damaged.
She couldn't handle the cold temperatures and low oxygen of the vast wilds
between city-states. But she wouldn't seek treatment, because the nearest city
at the time was Blackmire, and she refused to return there. And then one night,
in a hypoxia induced delirium, she flung herself over the railing of the
circus's airship and fell to her death.
During
the Hyperion Insurrection, Jules was conscripted into the militia along with
Locksley. Instead of using her sniper training to kill for profit as she had
been trained, she used it to kill for her friends and her city. She had the
highest number of confirmed kills among all the snipers.
Jules
has a little assistant automaton named Kip,who is no bigger than a toy. He doesn't have a
voicebox, so he beeps and boops when he has
something to say. Like the majority of Jules's creations, Kip is small, cute, and elegant.
Jules
is quick-tempered, and her first response is usually noise and violence. Her swearing
isn't particularly crea-tive, though, usually just various incarnations of
words that begin with "F." And when words fail, she has a ten-dency
to give whomever inspired her anger a good whack upside the head. Unlike
Locksley, who enjoys fighting for the sport of it, Jules tends to fight only
out of necessity or anger. Ironically, Locksley, whose violence is leg-endary
and born of cold rage, is usually the first one to catch hold of Jules before
someone gets brained with a wrench.
Cho
gave her a flexible ball when she was a child. The ball was supposed to help
Jules with her anger issues, al-lowing her to squeeze out some of her
aggression. But she's just as likely to beam someone in the head with it. She
carries it with her still, constantly fiddling with it, tossing it from hand to
hand, etc. Her aim with it is impres-sive, and she can bank it off pretty much
anything and still hit her target. Her closest friends have taken more than one
hit to the head with her favorite toy. Locksley's the only one who's fast
enough to catch it or duck out of the way without being hit.
Jules is fiercely competitive, and so is Locksley. They constantly make bets, but the prize is usually something in-significant like a few coins or a toy or food. Their rivalry likely would have turned antagonistic if it wasn't for Chenzi, whose compassion convinced them to see the best in each other. Once she has set a mind to her task, she will follow it through, even if it means her death.
When
Chenzi is angry, she glares and mutters darkly under her breath. Unlike her
sister, Chenzi can't swear to save her life, instead she uses the actual word
"curses," and her insults are along the lines of
"rapscallion" and "rotten snail." Unlike Locksley and
Jules, she has few hand-to-hand fighting skills. Instead, her role is usually
that of the peacemaker. However, when words fail, she has a tendency to throw
things at people. But then she'll apologize and flee.
Unlike
Locksley and Jules, Chenzi volunteered for the militia, unwilling to be
separated from her family. While many soldiers cursed the gods during the war,
Chenzi found comfort in her faith. She values tradition and never neglects
honoring her gods or her ancestors. Unless she's otherwise engaged, she
accompanies Hex on his monthly pilgrimage to the temple of Sahasa, the
four-armed monkey god.
Chenzi
possesses a wonderfully creative mind, but she's not remotely organized. In
fact, she's a bit of a hoarder. Among her stacks of notes, bins of pieces of
metal and gears, she also has stacks of newspapers, and towers of books. She
reads historical romances, tends to overthink everything.
She's
always scribbling notes on random scraps of paper. If no paper is within reach,
she'll simple write on someone's arm. Not her own, of course. She'll just grab
the nearest Leviathan and roll up their sleeve. The scraps are then tacked on
the wall or strewn across her work area with no apparent rhyme or reason. At
least a quarter of her time in her workshop is spent trying to find the right
note or tool for her current project. It doesn't help that their house spirit
is a mischievous grimling named Ratchet, who takes great pleasure in moving
things around when no one is looking. It irritates Jules to no end, but Chenzi
tends not to notice.
She
has two pets. One is a lazy, three-legged pit dog named Chowder who rarely
leaves her side. He's much too friendly to be any sort of effective guard dog,
though. He's more of a therapeutic companion, helping her through traumatic
experiences with the lingering dead.
Her
other "pet" is a mechanical octopus, or rather, an
"octomaton," but unlike real octopi, he has an aversion to water. It
makes him rust. Like the most of Chenzi's creations, he's not particularly easy
on the eyes, but he is strong. His name is Rodger, and Chenzi built him when
she was twelve. She had intended him to be her assistant, but she didn't count
on his artistic nature. He spends the majority of his time on arts and crafts,
but he will deign to hand her the odd tool between brush strokes.
One
of his favorite pastimes is knitting. He spends hours lovingly creating
sweaters, scarves, mittens, and socks for the Leviathan Street clan and Auntie
Cora's orphan misfits. His color blindness is a bit of a hindrance, though. He
chooses balls of yarn based on the aesthetics of the names of their colors,
which tends to make for some rather garish combinations. The clan and children
love him, though, and they wear his monstrous creations with pride. He doesn't have
a voicebox, so he taps morse code out with his tentacles, which makes it look
like he's dancing, which he basically is.