Kanako Kuga

"Kana" redirects here. For the silicon being, see Kana (silicon being). For the Novus Orbis Librarium agent, see Kana (fighting game character). For the solar exalt of Heaven's Reach, see Kana (solar exalt)

With Liz on its shoulder, the small tactical suit screeched along the mountain road, sparks streaking from darkened asphault with every turn. For several minutes and corners, the transit wheels were the only noise, until Kana knocked on the canopy.
"Hey Liz."
"Hm?"
"You know that wasn't my first kiss," Kana said matter-of-factly as a row of sharp turn warning signs flashed past. "Just to be clear."
"It was a demon!" Liz exclaimed. "I had no control over anything! Shut up!"
"No, what I mean is it doesn't count. And us talking about it in this way makes it not count. Because you know if you let the topic fester... So like... If you let it fester, so like, ignore it and just look away and turn red, then it would count. That's how it works. So now it doesn't count."
"It was sucking your soul, not kissing you!"
"They say that about CPR!"
"It felt nice because I was eating Yang chi!"
"It felt-" Kana blinked. "WHAT?!"
"Shut up and drive!"
Kana clenched her fingers around the throttle and wrenched it to eleven. The Samurai accelerated even further and blew on down the road.

Background

Kanako Kuga was a middle class Japanese Canadian high school girl from Toronto who Awakened and wound up on the New World Order high priority shortlist. She is the reincarnation of Ohno Miho, an Akashic lady samurai involved in the mid-19th century wars against the Technocracy's incursion into East Asia. As the NWO closed in, her former incarnation's partner, Takezo Kenshin, sacrificed his life to confront his former student turned arch-traitor Amy Lee, and saved Kana's life. Later, the combined efforts of Tia Mazu and Proteus managed to scoop her out of various entanglements and she wound up going to Winnipeg, then New York, then back to Winnipeg, before finally settling down as a member of the chantry in Vancouver.

Due to her sudden Awakening, Kana is not part of any of the Traditions. Nevertheless, her anime obsession and ancestry put her closer to the Akashic legacy than any other. Inheriting a powerful warrior's Avatar, Kana started her career slaying undead of various descriptions and soon graduated to fighting corrupt Technocrats and their abominations of science in Japan. She pursues the Ascension War with straightfoward feeling and a firm eye to causing damage to Technocrats at any cost but somehow winds up being heroic more often than not.

She is one of the two founding members of the Fantastic Game and Story Club along with fellow Orphan and best friend Liz.

Vital Statistics

Name: KUGA Kanako
Birthday: October 5, 1991
Player: Mal
Tradition: Orphan
Avatar: Primordial
Demeanor: Gallant (Artistry; Flamboyance)
Nature: Celebrant (Passion; Intemperance)
Arete: 5
Quint: 1
Tass: 0 (Gundam - as of Tokyo Finale), 139 tass Ruby
Dox: 4
Damage:
Willpower: 7/7
Exp: 49/418
Init: +7 Dash: 32yds

Attributes

Physical

Strength: 2
Dexterity: 4 (Acrobatically)
Stamina: 2

Social

Charisma: 3
Manipulation: 4 (Convincing)
Appearance: 3

Mental

Perception: 4 (Looking Under the Hood)
Intelligence: 5 (Always the Bridesmaid)
Wits: 3

Abilities

Talents (29)

Alertness: 3
Artistic Expression: 4 (Costume Design)
Athetics: 3
Awareness: 3
Blatancy: 5 (Anime Related)
Do: 3 [Karma, Dhyana, Shastamarga]

Kiaijutsu (Manipulation + Do)

Peaceful Way (Pilot)

Dodge: 4
Expression: 3
Streetwise: 1
Subterfuge: 3

Skills (24)

Disguise: 2
Etiquette: 1
Fastdraw: 2
Firearms: 1
Heavy Weapons: 3
Leadership: 4
Melee: 4 (Alchemical Weapons)
Pilot: 3
Stealth: 1
Technology: 2
Hypertechnology: 4 (Robotics)

Knowledges (13)

Computers: 2
Cosmology: 0
Enigmas: 5 (Xanatos Roulette)
Linguistics: 2 (English, Japanese, Chinese)
Strategy: 5 (Assymetric Warfare)

Backgrounds

Ally: 1 (Kano)
Ally: 1 (Pam)
Ally: 1 (Arita)
Apprentice: 1 (Arita)
Arcane: 5
Avatar: 5
Destiny: 2+1 (Tibetan BS)
Node: 1 (Wuff Apartment)
Node: 5 (Gundam; squatting at least)
Sanctum: 1 (Beneath the Gundam)
Resources: 3

Spheres

Correspondence: 3
Entropy: 1
Forces: 3
Life: 0
Matter: 4 (Mechanical Design)
Mind: 1
Prime: 3
Spirit: 0
Time: 0

Merits and Flaws

Catlike Balance (1)

Your mage possesses an innately perfect sense of balance. You reduce the difficulties of all balance-related rolls (e.g., Dexterity + Athletics to walk along a narrow ledge) by two.

Folk Hero: (Koborokuru)

Obsession: Otaku (-2)
Echoes: Wind of Fanservice (-1)

Equipment

Izanagi (Charges: 1)

Derived from the clay figure that protected Mr. Lao. This is a bracelet with three odd looking large beads and a hanging leather strap. When fastened, the bracelet's beads will open up as eyes and protect Kana from her next three wounds. One eye closes permanently for each charge used.

Magic and Philosophy

Compared to her chantrymates, Kana is flighty and unreliable, or at least difficult to coordinate with unless she is the one who initiates the coordination. She tends to carry this with a presumptive, even demanding tone that often sparks irritation in others. The fact she is frequently willing to take risks with both her own and her friends' safety in pursuit of potential gains reinforces the perception that she is not a good team player. Her friends can, however, count on her help in times of need. After several times in which she considered it, Kana ultimately rejected the abandonment of friends - even unreciprocating ones - as an acceptable option without passing a very high bar for necessity.

In terms of firepower, Kana's magic is moderate but comparatively adaptable and her repertoire of ordinary skills is remarkably large, especially for someone her age. She almost always tries to get by with only mundane abilities, inspired preparation, magical gear, and whatever magic from the first two parts of the Kanadigm Trinity she can pass off as coincidental rather than resort to outright magic. This ties her magical prowess to whatever happens to be around rather than what she has within her. Nonwithstanding her typical advantages in Blatancy and the permissiveness of reality in her areas of operation, Kana is a comparatively fastidious mage with an intense aversion to triggering paradox. This might be related to her experience in Quiet during which she caused a considerable number of deaths and injuries to sleepers that probably could have been avoided. She has since demonstrated both a desire to limit casualties where possible and the will to deal death when it is called for. She also has a (possibly overly) strong save-for-later instinct for many of her limited resources which inverts dramatically when her otaku obsession gets involved and she devotes her will to making a particularly compelling work of art that has no commeasurate practical use.

When necessary or overcome by emotion, Kana can quickly don a costume and wield a prop to go "all out". This not having happened since she was a much weaker mage, the resulting paradox and collateral damage are anyone's guess. Even in normal situations, Kana wears clothing and accessories that are mundane at first glance but gives her some measure of power. The most common and flexible option is a school uniform (a topic in which she is well versed), but she will also wear the street clothes of various characters that use superhuman abilities in ordinary settings or who can transform quickly.

World View

The Ascension War
The easiest way for Kana to frame the Ascension War is in terms of Gundam cosmology and similar universes - the Traditions, spirits, "fantastic" races, and even Marauders, are sort of like the colonies and the Technocracy is sort of like the Earth Federation or Britannia. The Technocracy has already won the first war for Earth but has become a menace to the advancement of humanity. Static Reality is the embodiment of the proverbial gravity binding Oldtypes. In this sense, the Ascension War might be considered a war between Newtypes or Innovators and Innovade - one fights (broadly and maybe very imperfectly) for freedom and the revolution of humanity; the other is bent on conquest, control and rule.

The war can be taken in steps - you can loosen their hold and fill some of the vacuum in before moving on, but you will inevitably have to defend it against technocrats. The ultimate defeat or equally radical rearrangement of the Technocracy is an absolute prerequisite of winning the Ascension War. Saying the Ascension War must be won by winning over normal people is like saying a regular war must be won by taking all their land - you won't be able to do it unless you defeat their military and that military is the Technocracy's mages and equipment.

The Technocracy
Kana's experiences with the Technocracy throughout her short career as a mage has left her hateful and embittered towards them. Although her antipathy began for personal reasons (ruining her life and killing her friend), it has broadened through understanding of what the Technocracy does on a wider scale (genocide of entire species, the destruction of worlds, drowning the spirit of humanity with stasis, creeping ineffectiveness against demonic corruption, and so on). She grudgingly recognises that there may be good individual technocrats (though most are bad!) but does not believe in inciting change by convincing the good technocrats to produce it from within, or in negotiating with them over the long run. Ultimately, the Technocracy as it exists is inimical to humanity's wellbeing.

The Technocracy vs. The Technocratic Paradigm
They're different. The technocratic way is a great thing to have as a baseline because it provides ordinary people with the foundation for their quality of life. Kana cannot really imagine life without modern amenities (despite historical or fantasy anime) and finds true throwbacks who want to toss the whole table over to be frankly kind of kooky, and maybe nascent well-intentioned extremist villains. More importantly, the paradigm is self-sustaining because (for good reason) most people like it. Now that it is established it no longer requires the Technocracy to maintain - only the respect of factions that otherwise might be able to change it.

Nephandi
Are horrible, yes. In fact, they're so horrible that they are dangerous only on a personal level. It's like Nazis - when you're so horrible and people know it, not many will join you.

The Technocracy vs. The Nephandi
Nephandi are a disease of the skin; the Technocracy is a disease of the heart. Kana doesn't remember who said that, but it's apt. The Nephandi are awful, sure, but almost everyone inevitably agrees they are awful and will unify against them. On the other hand, the Technocracy's temptation is insidiously attractive to humanity even though it is slowly killing them. Moreover, the world apparently did just fine against "outer horrors" for ages before the Technocracy was even invented and any number of arrangements could replace the Technocracy in the defence of humanity. Ultimately people will step up against black, but they will settle for dark gray if it's made a convenient option. To use defence against Nephandi as an excuse for the Technocracy's existence is to have profound lack of confidence in humanity's potential.

Marauders
Marauders generate something akin to the Reality Marble of Nasuverse lore.

Marauders vs. The Technocracy
The Technocracy is like a massive supermarauder collective and her Reality Marble is Static Reality - the greatest, most destructive thing of its kind that the universe has ever seen.

Mass Awakening
Promoting the next evolution of humanity? Is such a thing even possible within our lifetimes? If it is akin to the Newtype theory, would it imply the ability to understand each other without misconception? Could it be a form where each person can accept and integrate any other person's paradigm?

Paradigm

As an Orphan, Kana practices a brand of magic that is uniquely her own. The Kanadigm is based on the belief that depictions in otaku culture (anime, manga, and some videogames) are a valid and meaningful reflection of reality. When she embodies a character by cosplaying, wields a device as depicted, or enacts whatever technique's ritual, it feels to her that ultimately, it should work. The actual working of magic is highly instinctive and probably won't be articulated in any formal way until Kana stops being a high school dropout. The foundation of her magic is made up of the following trinity:

1. Reality is its own anime, manga, or videogame. It is governed by common tropes, story elements, and a reality that has an objective morality that works for one side or another in certain situations.

Various philosophical questions extend from this cornerstone that Kana usually has no time or intellectual interest in delving deeply into. One is the authorship of the production which might be one or more superior beings (whose narrative control is assumed to be non-absolute) or else a collective work wherein mages are the artists and authors and whose work must fall under the collective approval of the viewership/readership/playerbase made up of other sentient beings.

Making using of this pillar to work magic requires as a focus that Kana be acting in a certain way and/or be in a certain situation. It often manifests as a realisation that "because of event or situation X, plot point Y obviously follows". This sort of magic comes most naturally with the Entropy sphere but since Kana doesn't have that, she has to force it to happen via higher difficulty pattern spheres.

2. Kana herself is a character within this anime.

For the record, Kana would claim to be adamantly against self-insertion if asked, which results in a dissociation between "Kana" and "True Kana" when under the doctrine of "mages are the mangaka" as described above. This is not addressed, but it's worth noting that belief in a god or gods that govern over reality (see above) would conveniently sidestep this problem. Alternatively, considering her thinly veiled doujin representations of various chantry members, maybe she doesn't mind insertions so much after all.

In any event, Kana is the usual brand of beautiful, highly intelligent and physically superior anime heroine with above-par stats across the board and a collection of unusual skills. Like many recurring characters in long-running productions, Kana has been slowly acquiring new ones over time. At the moment, she is skilled as a swordswoman, modern ninja, mecha pilot, and mecha engineer though her intelligence, adaptability and preparedness shine above those abilities. Because she is a character of reality, Kana cannot normally use vulgar magic under this model except in edge cases or via Blatancy. However, she has a single major superpower:

3. Kana's power is the Power to Cosplay. By cosplaying a character, replicating an item of power, or emulating a situation or action so depicted, she copies and duplicates the relevant powers and effects.

This third foundation exists on a sliding scale. Blatant and specific magical abilities lie at one end of the extreme. Firing Nanoha Takamachi's most powerful spells would require cosplaying as Nanoha, or at least holding a Raising Heart and having some reasonable premise of being able to use it. That said, there is some flexibility provided it is consistent within the universe, so it would also be possible to cosplay as the Book of Darkness in order to cast Starlight Breaker or in some other way fit into the Nanoha universe in order to use its magical systems in general. At the other extreme, for very generic abilities that would otherwise already be in theme, the prop can be nonspecific, such as wires, a ninja outfit, or a ninja weapon.

Metaphysically, there is of course nothing about anime that limits this any more than any Tradition's paradigm truly limits magic. Otaku culture is simply the thing Kana enjoys most and has by far the most exposure to, so it creates a framework for her perception of the universe. It should be theoretically possible for Kana to cosplay a Hermetic mage and use Hermetic spells if she had sufficient confidence in them and the familiarity and transcendental enlightenment to do so.

Resemblences (or lack thereof) to Tradition Magic

Akashic Brotherhood
Kana's interpretation of Do and the mental disciplines associated with it is that it is the source of other martial arts. She is able to grasp it to some extent as a mage, but her understanding is limited since she uses it as a way to perfect her physical abilities and then do something else with it rather than using the magic native to the Akashic paradigm.

Celestial Chorus
Kana is all for battle nuns and A Certain Celestial Chorus, but she does not currently believe in a singular prime being from which all else extends. For what it's worth, she does understand the power of a good insert song.

Cult of Ecstasy
There are a few elements that would be Kana's "drug" from a CoE perspective. Shonen intensity is one example, as is a soundtrack appropriate for the job at hand. Breaking boundaries obviously ties into the whole TTGL schtick, but the link between breaking boundaries and altering perceptions is tenuous.

Dreamspeakers
Despite a lack of the Entropy sphere, one of the underlying assumptions in Kana's magical paradigm is that how things "should" go from a fourth wall perspective has profound effects on what actually happens. This concept is like a modernised version of Baruti Dreamspeakers' mythmaking and storytelling paradigm and incidentally matches up well with fellow Orphan Liz.

Euthanatos
Hrm...

Hollow Ones
That just means gothloli, right?

Order of Hermes
An unbiased Hermitic might consider Kana to use goetia when she uses anime props or rituals to produce effects and theurgy when cosplaying.

Sons of Ether
Philosophically, those of Kana's magical devices that depend on the guise of technology follow the individualistic, personal and permissive ideals of the Sons of Ether and she would probably concede the same right to exist to most other "scientific" theories she came across. However, Kana relies vastly less on science (not being fully educated herself) and fills the gaps with Rule of Cool. She is an adherant to the B Trinity doctrine and accepts Blam as a personal saviour.

Verbena
Some series do get pretty visceral with their special abilities...

Virtual Adepts
Rather than all things being data, all things are anime. Some of her Correspondence scene cutting abilities, series mashing and genre savvy effects bear a distant resemblence to VA principles regarding the unity of things. She is also able to mimic Virtual Adepts in action at a very shallow level via Ghost in the Shell, Lain, and similar series.

The Technocracy
Kana's background in hypertechnology and robotics is founded on Technocratic developments in the field linked to their hardsuit and JSSDF tactical armour programs.

Previous Incarnations

Kuga Hoshie
Hapless magic princess of the Sengoku period. Had Nine Lives but eleven Dark Fates so had two left over that Miho had to deal with after she was done.

Ohno Miho
Legendary Akashic of the 19th and early 20th centuries who participated in the defense of China and Japan against the encroachment of the Technocracy. Said to have died after the end of WWII in Tibet.

Magical Practice

Elements

Schoolgirls
Because Kana considers herself a school girl (whether or not she's still in school), any old school uniform on its own has debateable utility though wearing one pretty much guarantees she has a focus for something. The use of a specific school uniform is much more useful and can be a very subtle way of packing extra firepower; while many people familiar with the subject matter can easily identify various characters by their unique garb (this is, afterall, the reason the field of character design exists), only high level otaku can tell one school uniform from another. Naturally Kana can and a subtle change in ribbon colour and skirt length may be sufficient to transition from relatively harmless waif to wielder of supernatural kenjutsu.

Ninjas
Any kunoichi outfit grants Kana a slew of default abilities. Some of the more useful ones come from the Naruto side of things (which she always claims to be too plebian for a high class otaku like herself) such as the various types of Ninja Clone, the Ninja Substitute, the Summoning Scroll and Summoning Technique, as well as general access to Ninjutsu and Genjutsu, the two supernatural corners of the ninja trinity. The Summoning Scroll and Summoning Technique in particular are seen by Kana as objectively and generally useful abilities in a fight, especially once she can use it on something more massive than a toaster. Alternatively, the western stereotype of the black clad, ninja sword wielding ninja enjoys unparalleled acceptance in static reality across the globe.

Magic Girls
This category is used to gain magical powers and can be accessed directly via a small ornament, allowing preparation for a fight without appearing threatening. Magic Girls are a remarkably flexible genre if one knows it well, having strengthened considerably since the mid-2000's. Nevertheless, most of its range of effects tend to be more obvious and less outright powerful than ninja techniques. On the other hand, as Kana prefers to avoid vulgarity, things are probably so dire by the time she cracks this open that she defaults immediately to White Devil Fire-For-Effect.

Magic Eyes
Curious looking eyes justifies a broad spectrum of magical effects in anime. Kana accesses this corpus of techniques with contact lenses, either by having had them on the whole time or in a box on her person somewhere (Mat 2/Corr 2 OR Prime 2). A subcategory of her prop magic, a Magic Eye usually grants an ability or abilities that fall under a single underlying principle. This principle is unifying but it can be an exceedingly broad or powerful principle, including ones not fully covered by her spheres since characters are rarely able or willing to use the full breadth and depth of their special powers most of the time anyway. Although having the contacts themselves is coincidental, many of the easy effects of eye magic are as vulgar as one might expect of Kana's paradigm.

Katana
Self explanatory; katanas can cut through anything and will almost always do it coincidentally.

Wire Control
"Monofilament" wire finds its way into Kana's available arsenal quite often. Owing to its portrayal in media and how unclear normal people are regarding the relevant physics, the cutting ability of wires when wielded with suitably flashy skills is ambiguous and may be second only to a katana. Moreover, wires are understood to be easily hidden on the person and potentially invisible, so their sudden appearance from nowhere or actual invisibility can easily be rendered coincidental.

Cosplay
Cosplaying, mimicking action sequences and using props is the most powerful aspect of Kana's magic and serves as the focus for any magic that the cosplayed character would be capable of doing, including abilities that would otherwise appear to require no other focus.

Do
Kana uses her newly taught basic skill in Do as well as her own acrobatic talent as a focus during battle. Although generally used with Athletics to perform feats of hand to hand prowess (with varying levels of outrageousness), her brief introduction to Do as the source of all martial arts allows her to use supernatural (often element-invoking or remote-controlling) martial arts such as all four families of Bending or (in theory) Hokuto Shinken.

Robotics
Her most recently acquired skill, Kana currently views hypertech robotics (and hypertech more generally) as her own personal rebellion against the Technocracy. The Technocracy has already written robotics into Static Reality but Modern Visual Culture has done a great deal to stretch that in the popular imagination. Kana intends to use the Technocracy's own device and her own straightforward feeling to create powerful weapons that are coincidental or barely vulgar and hoist the Technocracy on its own petard.

Rotes

Entangling Wires (Forces 2/Matter 2/Corr 2 or Prime 2)
A tangle of anime fighting wire entangles the foe, either pulled out of hammerspace by Kana or else spun out of existing material. Applying Strength to free oneself generally makes things worse by converting the successes into damage.

Extra Layers (Matter 2/Corr 2 or Prime 2)
Kana quickly switches tracks by having another costume under the one on top and just stepping right out of the outer layer. Helps if arranged in order of increasing fanservice.

Magic Eyes: Byakugan (Prime 1/Forces 1/Corr 1-2/Matter 1/Mind 1)
The most easily used eye magic. White contact lenses. Allows 360 degree vision through most ordinary physical objects and can be sensitive to chakra energy, minute movements indicating a person's emotions or have visual spectrum extended into infrared or ultraviolet. The default field of vision extends 50m but can be extended up to 10km with Corr 2 (and a bit of makeup).

Magic Eyes: Sharingan (Prime 1/Forces 1/Mind 1/d)
The Sharingan uses red contact lenses with black patterns inside. No makeup necessary. Like the Byakugan, the Sharingan can detect magic but also gives colour to magic and is able to detect whether a person is under illusion.----

Master of Mahjong (Matter 2/Corr 2/Mind 1) Kana could basically cheat like boss at mahjong (or most other games) whenever she felt like it. The utility of this rote is limited by the comparatively small number of life-and-death situations that might be resolved by two winds' go 'round at the table.

Ninja Smoke (Matter 2/Forces 2 or Corr 3) Any ninja can vanish in a puff of smoke, either turning invisible or by ceasing to be in the vicinity entirely.

Ninja Substitute (Matter 2/Prime 2/Corr 3 + Time 2)

Specific Cosplay

Fullmetal Alchemist
One of Kana's original standbys, a set of these Edward Elric gloves allows vulgar manipulation of matter following the Law of Equivalent Exchange. While the obvious use would be to forge surrounding walls and earth into huge blocks of stuff, the Edward Elric crossplay's true power is that it allows her to transition into virtually anything else by rustling up large props or another costume right up around her body when necessary.

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