“I had that dream again last night. I dreamed I wasn’t actually Kalani Sakata, I wasn’t actually myself. I was someone else pretending to be Kalani Sakata and everyone got mad at me because they found out. They put me in jail because they I wouldn’t tell them where Kalani was. But I didn’t know where she was. I thought I was her.”

 

–Kalani to school psychiatrist Dr. Colt

 

“I don’t know why she decided to be a superheroine. Does that sound mean? I’m just being honest here. She’s so quiet. She doesn’t like to talk to people. I mean, what’s she going to do on a superteam? I know I wouldn’t want her on mine.”

 

–Matthew Roy, AKA The Coat

 

Name: 

 

Kalani Sakata

 

The Sakata name is like Vega or Adams, it carries a lot of weight in the superhero community and is both a burden and source of pride for Kalani.

 

Supername:

 

Sword Saint

 

Kalani also accepts the traditional name of Kensei, even with the friction between her family and Japan.

 

Average Grade:

 

C+

 

Kalani is a bright girl, but her social issues and depression have prevented her from achieving at her potential. She often seems bored or distracted in class and has trouble paying attention to lessons.

 

Emergency Response Class:

 

3

 

Naturally, Kalani is ERC 3. Anything less won’t do for the second Sword Saint of the 21st century.

 

Personalized Curriculum:

 

Emergency Response With A Focus On Superhuman Combat, Telekinetic Development

 

Kalani takes the typical superhero-track class, Emergency Response with a Focus on Superhuman Combat, not much to say about that that isn’t already said in the profiles of the other superhero-track kids, and she takes Telekinetic Development along with Adam and Songbird because part of being the Sword Saint is pushing what the Sword Saint can do.

 

Contact Education:

 

Morelli Training Center for Superhuman Combat

 

Hyperstasis:

 

Thoughtform Manipulation.

 

Kalani is the current wielder of the thought-form yokaigiri which has been passed down through the Sakata family for generations going back to the late 17th century. Yokaigiri is an invisible, flying manifestation of unbreakable will that can cut the uncuttable. Kalani wields this weapon with respect not only for its great power, but for its history. She is the Kensei, or Sword Saint, and represents a superhero tradition older than the United States.

 

History of the Sword Saint

 

Yokaigiri was forged in the dying mind of a Shugendo monk of late 17th century Japan named Honmyōkai as he underwent the self-mummification process of sokushinbutsu. Honmyōkai wanted to keep his mind sharp as his body wasted away, and so thought of his mind as a sword that he kept sharpening, and sharpening, and sharpening. He died imagining a sword that could cut through the physical trappings of samsara and into the diamond consciousness that was nirvana.

 

When he passed on, his fellow monks found something very strange in his hands. Whatever it was, it was invisible, and with the slightest pressure cut their fingers. No matter where they touched, their fingers bled, and the blood could not stain it. It remained untouchable, unseeable. They prayed to the Buddha for understanding until a brave monk, reciting the nenbutsu as fast as his breath allowed, grasped the strange thing–and found that it was as soft as silk and as flowing as water in his hands.

 

This monk, named Ishiro Sakata, became the first Kensei, or Sword Saint.

 

The Shugendo monks were issei gyonin. They believed that through self-deprivation and physical mortification not only would their spirit be strengthened but the wellbeing of the surrounding community would improve as well. It was not an act of pride to undergo sokushinbutsu. It was an act of suffering meant to help others. The Kensei believed that yokaigiri was the perfected soul of Honmyōkai stripped of all physical trappings, desires, and ego. Yokaigiri was what was left of a man when all but love for mankind had wasted away. Yokaigiri was a Bodhisattva who turned from the final step towards nirvana to protect humanity from things only a Bodhisattva could stand against. It was a supreme blessing to wield yokaigiri.

 

19th century studies of yokaigiri at William Quan Judge University proved that it was not the ghost of Honmyōkai but a thought-form forged in his mind. Still, Kalani and her family venerate yokaigiri. Every morning when Kalani wakes, she says a brief prayer to yokaigiri to start her day. Yokaigiri may not be Honmyōkai’s soul in the manesology sense, but in the abstract sense it is. Yokaigiri is Honmyōkai’s goodwill and legacy.

 

The walls between worlds were far thicker in the 17th century than they are now, but they were thin enough so that occasional emanations from the astral could find their way to Earth. Yokaigiri was one example. The yokai that it slayed were another. The Kensei roamed Japan breaking spells, exorcising spirits, cutting down demons, and protecting the innocent from predators that only yokaigiri could cut.

 

Being a travelling warrior placed demands on the Kensei that drove him to break with certain tenets of Shugendo. He had to eat meat to keep up his strength. He had to carry a little coin to make his way through the world. These transgressions were excused by the holiness of yokaigiri and its mission. Nowadays, Kalani is a vegetarian by choice. She can keep her strength up just fine with a modern vegetarian diet and believes that she is making up for the karma of her ancestors every time she eats a caesar salad.

 

Throughout the history of Japan, the Kensei kept as far from Japanese politics as possible. He cared not for the Shogunate, nor did he care for those that fought against the Shogunate. Yokaigiri was a divine instrument, and its business was not with the mundane. Never, under any circumstance, was yokaigiri to be used against another human. This law was changed by the Kensei of the Worlds War so that yokaigiri may be used against another human so long as it wasn’t used to cause bodily harm. This allowed the Kensei to fight against the Axis, but his decision split the Sakata family. To this day, there are parts of the Sakata clan that feel Kalani is illegitimate because she traces her lineage to the “fallen” Kensei of the Worlds War.

 

Kalani, for her part, believes the Kensei of the Worlds War made the right decision.

 

There is one element of the original prohibition against involving the Kensei in mortal affairs that Kalani keeps–and is very glad that she keeps. She does not involve herself in any kind of politics. She has no political opinion. She does not vote. And she finds it absolutely liberating. When her friends ask her what she thinks about superhuman registration in Europe or who she voted for in the last presidential election, she just tells them “The Sword Saint has no political opinions.”

 

Because historically the Kensei couldn’t wield yokaigiri against humans, he carried a blunt sword, essentially a metal paddle, and a jitte, a type of sword-catcher, to subdue human opponents. A lone traveler was an opportune target for brigands and the Kensei had to defend himself. Using yokaigiri to crack the ground or fell a cluster of trees was typically enough to frighten brigands away, but some were too hungry or too stupid to be scared by magic and required physical restraining. The Kensei became known as a master of armed and unarmed combat, and every Kensei has trained extensively in jujitsu and kenjutsu. Kalani is a master in both disciplines and carries her own blunt sword and jitte. Her training has developed her spatial awareness, which has improved her control of yokaigiri somewhat, but she undertook it mostly for the sake of tradition. Her sword and jitte are rarely drawn. She knows how to use them effectively, but a common force projector works better as a safer alternative to yokaigiri than any medieval weapon.

 

When a Kensei felt age slowing him down, he would pass yokaigiri to his eldest son and retire. When yokaigiri is passed, the giver and recipient must both be willing. If there is a mote of hesitation in either, the transfer will not work. It is unknown what would happen to yokaigiri if a Kensei was ever killed. No Kensei has ever fallen in battle.

 

One early Kensei attempted to undergo sokushinbutsu after he retired in the hopes of forming a companion weapon for yokaigiri. Samurai carried both a katana sword and a shorter wakazashi, and so this Kensei figured that yokaigiri should likewise be in a pair. When he was successful in sokushinbutsu but unsuccessful in producing another thought-form, the Shugendo took his desire, no matter how well intentioned, as a sin. It was prideful to think that yokaigiri alone was not sufficient. They forbade further Kensei from undergoing sokushinbutsu. Sokushinbutsu hasn’t been practiced by the Shugendo in centuries, but the ban still technically remains. Kalani is fond of telling people that she’s been forbidden to mummify herself.

 

When the Meiji government outlawed Shugendo in 1872 for syncretizing Buddhism and Shinto, the Kensei of the era immigrated to the United States. Mirabology as a science was taking off in the United States and Europe during the late 19th century and the Kensei was interested in seeing what western science had to say about yokaigiri. He chose the United States over Europe because he feared becoming involved in the ongoing shadow war between Leadbeater’s theosophists and Crowley’s Thelemites.

 

The Kensei moving to America marked the beginning of the gradual transition of the heroic tradition from a Japanese one to an American one. At first, the Sakata family tried very hard to keep the Kensei Japanese and eventually moved to Hawaii for this reason.

 

When Hawaian king Kalakaua’s hopes for a Polynesian Confederacy were dashed by the balkanization of Samoa in 1886, he negotiated with the United States to make his kingdom a state with himself as the first governor. He saw statehood as a way to avoid the colonial pressures that balkanized Samoa and had a fondness for American superhumans since Dr. Stone helped him rebuild ‘Iolani Palace by hand in 1877 and protected him from an attempted coup by Sandford Dole and associates in 1885. The new state of Hawaii provided the perfect opportunity for the Kensei to find a full-blooded Japanese bride as Hawaii had a large population of Japanese. But as Japan continued to oppress Buddhists that did not comply with State Shinto such as the Soka Gakkai into the early 20th century, the Kensei began to think of himself as American instead of Japanese. The Kensei began to refer to himself as the Sword Saint instead of the Kensei.

 

Kensei tradition began to change. The Sakata family began to include polyensian and caucasian blood. Their children spoke English, and one of them was born with blonde hair. The greatest change came with the Worlds War of the 1940’s. The Kensei of the time, Kaikane Sakata, fought against the Japanese who invaded his home. He altered the code of the Kensei to permit drawing yokaigiri against humans. He promised to converse the essential spirit of the code and never to take a human life. But it is an open secret that he broke his promise.

 

Honor is always the first casualty of war.

 

Kalani is, to put it mildly, estranged from her distant Japanese roots. She knows only a little Japanese and a little less Japanese culture, and though she takes a yearly pilgrimage to Yamagata prefecture to see the body of Honmyōkai, it is usually an awkward experience. Old enemies take a long time for a defeated nation to come to terms with. Coming to terms with old traitors that broke a centuries long code takes a little more time.

 

She dislikes it very much when someone asks if she’s Japanese. She’s Hawaiian.

 

Yokaigiri

 

The name yokaigiri is a bit of wordplay. “Yokai” comes not only from Honmyōkai but from the Japanese term for a supernatural creature. “Giri” can mean either duty or to cut. Thus, yokaigiri means both “the duty of (Honm)yokai” and “that which cuts yokai.”

 

People without a degree of telepathic sensitivity cannot sense yokaigiri in the slightest. It is silent and invisible to them with its presence in the physical world only determinable by the actions of the medium through which it passes. Even for trained telepaths, yokaigiri is only barely perceptible.  It’s location can be determined– but not precisely. It is not “seen” so much as distantly felt. Sensing yokaigiri has been compared to the feeling one gets standing on a high ledge or standing close to a fire. The telepathic mind instinctively senses that yokaigiri is a danger.

 

Kalani senses yokaigiri through proprioception. She knows where it is the same way she knows where her arms and legs are. But even she can’t see yokaigiri. Extremely powerful telepaths such as Neiros can see yokaigiri which appears to them as a flashing line cutting itself into and out of reality. It always cuts, even if it can only cut itself. Such is its nature.

 

Kalani can control the shape and form of yokaigiri. She can change its size so that it’s less than a Planck length or large enough to stretch to the sun. She can make it round or square. Yokaigiri responds to her thoughts, but as with all thought-forms it can actually act faster than Kalani can think. Yokaigiri is unbound by space-time and can travel instantly wherever Kalani desires. She can point to a star in the night sky, and yokaigiri will cut that star. Though she’s never actually done this for obvious reasons just as she’s never sent it into the past or future. There is no reason for a thought-form that can cut nearly anything to roam the timelines–and yokaigiri can indeed cut nearly anything.

 

Yokaigiri can cut through dimensions, planets, spirits, dreams, energy fields, and even the unbreakable metal perkunite–in a way. Perkunite’s famous durability is due to how energy causes its molecular structure to contract rather than expand. Energy beyond a certain threshold is converted by perkunite into an overlay that contracts and strengthens its molecular bonds. The more perkunite is hit, the tougher it becomes. The more a force tries to separate perkunite’s molecules, the stronger its molecular bonds become. When yokaigiri comes into contact with perkunite, it severs its bonds. But at the very same time, in the same instant, the bonds reform around it stronger than before.

 

It’s a physical anomaly as hard to describe mechanically as worldtunnel travel, but effectively it comes down to this–Yokaigiri can cut perkunite, but it can’t leave a cut on perkunite. It passes through perkunite while leaving the material virtually solid.

 

Yokaigiri’s ability to cut nearly anything makes storing it very difficult. Previous Sword Saints simply stored it far above their heads in the sky.

 

But as flight is very common for vehicles and people these days, Kalani instead stores it in a satellite orbiting the Earth that marks its trajectory to her location with a beam of bright photite whenever she summons yokaigiri to her side.

 

One thing yokaigiri cannot cut is Kalani herself. Kensei throughout time have tried to have yokaigiri draw their blood. But it cannot. This is either due to the defining feature of superpowers (that of being a hyperstasis unable to harm its user) or to a hypothesis by Dr. Colt that ties into his theory of the primal dream. His hypothesis is that yokaigiri represents a micro-version of primal dreams like Vril and the Blueprint. Vril and the Blueprint are massive thought-forms shared by entire races of beings. They are dreams of transcendence beyond the physical and rational. Vril is a dream of the power to remove all obstacles. The Blueprint is a dream of the power to overcome all distances. Yokaigiri was a dream of the power to cut through anything. And just like Vril and the Blueprint, yokaigiri is limited by itself. It cannot destroy itself or those it recognizes as itself like Kalani.

 

It’s interesting to think that a 17th century monk might have created a singular version of a primal dream. But the hypothesis to this day remains untestable.

 

To improve her control over yokaigiri, Kalani works hard at her telepathy empowerment and mastery class which teaches her how to speed up her thoughts to get closer to the speed of her thought-form. She also uses a photite generator to create smears of color in the air to show where yokaigiri is and where she intends to use it. This is invaluable when she works in groups.

 

Historians and folklorists have noticed similarities between yokaigiri’s powers and several stories from Japanese mythology and have speculated that yokaigiri might have inspired them. One story tells of a sword called grasscutter that could control the winds. This could have been inspired by yokaigiri invisibly slicing through the air as if it were a gust of wind. Another story tells of a sword called tender hands which acted with discretion. It could only cut what was not alive. This may have been inspired by the Kensei code to never wield yokaigiri against a human. But such speculations should remember Stone’s objection: the function of mythology is not to explain superhuman actions but to explain human experiences. In the absence of concrete proof, never assume that superpowers influenced mythology.

 

Behavior:

 

Fair

 

Kalani lives with a lot of stress. Even before she took her first steps into Martin’s halls, she lived with a lot of stress. Any legacy is a burden on a teenager’s shoulders, let alone one that goes back centuries. Naturally shy, she did not adjust to the controversial aspects of being Sword Saint as easily as her predecessors. It bothered her that some of her relatives believed that she had a tainted inheritance because Kaikane Sakata changed the rules of being a Kensei during the 1940’s. It bothered her that people a world away in Japan thought of her and her family as traitors. It bothered her that the Sword Saint of the 1960’s had a tabloid romance with Pele, Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes.

 

Kalani lived with a lot of stress when she came to Martin’s. And her stress only built as she found her integration into the student population less than ideal.

 

She never knew how alone she was until she realized she was eating alone at lunch while a boy with a living trenchcoat, a girl with long red hair that flowed into her eyes and always floated above the ground, and a boy with fur and tail having lunch together on a giant, floating blue hand created by another boy.

 

She tried to socialize. It never worked out. She felt apprehensive standing close to people she didn’t know. She didn’t know how to respond to all their questions.

 

“Did you really get your superpower from a mummy?”

 

“How does Sugendo figure into Buddhism as a whole?”

 

“Do you really pray to your superpower each morning? I’ve never heard of someone doing that!”

 

“Are you Japanese?”

 

“Is that a salad you’re eating?”

 

Kalani never knew how to take their questions let alone answer. Were they making fun of her? Were they just trying to be friendly? She couldn’t tell. It bothered her that she couldn’t tell. Why was she like that? Why was she so weird?

 

She never knew how weird she was until she realized that she watched people more than she talked with them.

 

Kalani grew jealous of other girls. They had flashy costumes. She just wore clothes. They had powers that looked awe-inspiring in action. She had a power that was invisible. They could stand in front of people and lead them with just a few words and gestures. She was as invisible to others as her power.

 

She would never admit it, not even to herself, but she was also jealous because boys looked at other girls in ways they never looked at her. They just had to appear to get boys interested in them. She couldn’t get a boy to talk with her no matter how hard she tried.

 

And then the worst thing happened.

 

Martina Morelli, Diabla, plucked yokaigiri from the air.

 

It was during a sparring exercise in emergency response class. Diabla had powers derived from Xibalba’s Houses of Pain tamed to her will by a mask looted from Xibalba by the Mayan hero twins. One of these Houses was the Razor House which granted her immunity from all bladed weapons–even bladed weapons that were thought-forms. This made Martina an ideal sparring partner for Diabla

 

While sparring, things got pretty intense. They were both operating on trained reflexes. That was good, that was the ideal sparring experience. But then Diabla reached out and grabbed yokaigiri.

 

She didn’t block yokaigiri. She grabbed it.

 

Kalani felt her control over yokaigiri vanish. She was completely powerless.

 

Shocked that she grabbed it, Diabla released yokaigiri almost instantly and apologized. She explained that she had a hunch that her power would allow her to take over yokaigiri, but she never intended to try it without asking Kalani first. She understood how important yokaigiri was to Kalani and her family and was sorry if she belittled them in any way.

 

Kalani didn’t know how to take Martina’s apology because she didn’t know how to take anything. Was Martina making fun of her? Did she pity her? Regardless, it was bad enough the other girls had to outdo her. But now they had to outdo her power–the one thing that was really important about herself.

 

Intelligence tests showed Kalani had potential, but her stress caused her to rush through assignments. She fell into a vicious cycle. She earned bad marks, felt more inadequate, and earned worse marks. Her average grade became a C+ when it should have been an A+.

 

Her stress led to her doing something very stupid one day. During lunch, she saw Martina talking to Amy Beck, aka Heart of Gold. She didn’t know what they were talking about. Maybe they were talking about how popular they were. Kalani didn’t care. She just wanted to make them feel smaller than she felt.

 

Kalani muttered that the two of them dressed more like whores than heroines.

 

Martina was confused and a little hurt by what she said. But Amy responded violently.

 

Kalani brawled with a tidal wave of liquid gold across the cafeteria destroying the salad bar and sending tables flying until they were stopped by Adam Brigham, aka the Puppeteer, who caught them in one of his giant hands.

 

Her teachers didn’t think that someone as quiet and well-behaved as Kalani would ever get detention, and yet that is exactly what she got.

 

Her parents talked about getting her a psychiatrist. Kalani was mortified. No Sword Saint in history talked to a psychiatrist. No Sword Saint was ever that weak.

 

Kalani arranged a meeting with Vice Principal David Hwang to discuss her detention. If she could get him to end it early, then maybe she wouldn’t have to talk to a psychiatrist.

 

She started off very calm and very diplomatic.

 

Then she broke down in tears.

 

She didn’t want to be the weird bully. She wanted to be Sword Saint. She wanted people to like her.

 

But she didn’t know how.

 

But Martin’s will teach her how. That’s why Martin’s was built.

 

Appearance:

 

The Kensei never dresses in opulence and Kalani is no exception. She doesn’t wear makeup, or earrings, or bright clothes. She doesn’t wear a costume. Her one bit of stylistic flair comes in the form of a pair of bright red ARGO goggles she uses to see and track the location of yokaigiri be it on the other side of the world or in another dimension. She likes to wear her googles on her forehead  and then flip them down over her eyes with a nod. She thinks it’s a neat, dynamic gesture.

 

Because of her plain appearance and because her power is invisible, Kalani is envious of and intimidated by other girls with attention-grabbing looks and powers. This envy led to an infamous incident where she started a fight with Amy Beck, aka Heart of Gold, by muttering that she looked less like a heroine and more like a whore.