Kôsuka

Kôsuka is a Ketsurui Samurai who served on the YSS Sakura. She is Ketsurui Kotori's birth mother.

Kôsuka
Species:	Nekovalkyrja (NH-27)
Gender:	Female
Age:	11
Zodiac Sign:	Aquarius
Height:	5'5“ (165 cm)
Weight:	~127 lbs (58 kg)
Bust:	78 cm (30.7 in)
Bra size:	30B (America)
Waist:	72 cm (28.3 in)
Hips:	79 cm (31.1 in)
Organization:	Star Army of Yamatai, First Expeditionary Fleet
Rank:	Chui
Occupation:	Ketsurui Samurai
Current Placement:	Sensei, Samurai House

Kôsuka is a player character. She is played by Jake (Doshii Jun).

About as muscular as a Nekovalkyrja can get, Kôsuka nevertheless has a rather bendy, limber frame. She has the same pale, creamy skin her daughter has, but her eyes are a duller gold. Her face is slightly heart-shaped, but her jet hair is kept in a stick-straight ponytail only a few centimeters long.

She wears two swords – a katana and an extended wakizashi – when not on primary duty. Her short ponytail as well stands out among the samurai, who normally keep their hair long. She also has a manufacturer's tattoo.

“Mature.” She's lasted a long time for a Neko, after all, in combat and out. Her primary fighting style, a form of Sora-Mai, reflects her fighting desires – confuse the enemy and let them destroy themselves. She takes her duty seriously, but not without heart. Honor, after all, is more than killing one's foe.

Kôsuka has a soft spot for the younger samurai, especially those in training. It's a motherly streak in her. She also is not overly fond of starships. When she saw her daughter in YE 29, she pointed herself inward, conversing even less than before. She opened up when dealing with the trainees, but otherwise remained quiet. That trend continued into YE 30.

Two years later, though, she has taken steps to strengthen and fortify the training program among the Ketsurui Samurai. She is a harsh teacher, but she cares for her students more than ever, becoming fiercely protective of them.

Kôsuka was born as one of the first test subjects of Yamatai's upgrade from the venerable NH-17 Nekovalkyrja V. The Nekovalkyrja VI project was an attempt to fold the three categories of NH-17 – Regular, Telepath and Stealth – into one being, stretching the limits of what could be done based on DNA alone.

Her primary creator and caretaker was one Karl Sylvester, who was at the time a Nepleslian PNUgen scientist who had done work on the NH-17. Sylvester knew the young gold-eyed creation was designed for war, but he still fostered in Kôsuka a love of the arts, of psychology and of dance. It was this final love that would influence the young test weapon most strongly as she began to be trained to serve the Ketsurui Clan's need for personal soldiers.

Combining her love of dance with her training, Kôsuka studied the art of Sora-Mai, an anti-gravity, purely Nekovalkyrja-based two-sword fighting style the Ketsurui Samurai found acceptable for their purposes … after primary instructor Chizuru Saya testified it was an adequately dangerous style. The newly minted Samurai was five months old.

Sylvester taught Kôsuka a few things about life the Ketsurui did not – patience with those less experienced than her was the one that stuck most. It was this lesson, which took time to learn, that helped her become a dance teacher for some of the younger Neko around PNUgen, where she was assigned first. But, from seven months until 13 months old, what Kôsuka garnered the most was a love of children from Sylvester's wife, Margaret.

When she received one of a few small weeklong breaks from her work at the palace, Kôsuka visited her “foster” family. She played with Sylvester's two children and helped Margaret care for them, as best she could. Despite the fighting and training Kôsuka's life was immersed in, seeing the joy in the faces of Sylvester's children meant more to her. She absorbed all she could from Margaret about understanding what children meant, and why the Samurai had such feelings for the kids.

Kôsuka then made a reasoned choice (Sylvester had always stressed using reason). She wanted to have her own child, but she knew PNUgen would take it from her, as it would be a Nekovalkyrja VI (which by YE 27 was known as the NH-22 Military model). However, she could still care for her youngling in some capacity, she was sure. When her and her daughter's service was completed, they could leave the military and do as they pleased.

After careful consultation from Sylvester and his wife, Kôsuka gave birth to a darling, black-haired youngling. She named her Kotori.

At first, Kôsuka was ecstatic. Kotori entered Samurai training, showed great promise, just as her mother had. The two made a good team and learned from one another in ways even Karl Sylvester had not predicted.

Then, the attempted sexual assault of Sylvester by Kotori. Such an act of dishonor should have been unforgiveable … but Kôsuka was a mother. Mothers forgave their children, protected them, raised them. In what turned out to be a life-altering plea, Kôsuka swore service to the bloodthirsty, 2nd War Fleet Taisho Kessaku Irim in exchange for her daughter's life (the NH-22M project was tied to Kessaku directly, through desire for stronger warriors). Kessaku granted the request … partially. She instead put Kotori in Project SWEETHEART. Though Kotori survived, Kôsuka was already on a ship with her new master and a new NH-27 Samurai body. The two would not see each other for more than a year.

Upon the end of her service, Kôsuka returned to the palace and took up her role as Stealth Sentinel again. She was fine with that – her service under Irim had hardened her, strengthened her and cultivated her warrior blood, but she hated the icy bitch. She was happy to return to Yamatai's lush plains and drizzly skies.

But the Ketsurui had need for a Samurai on a starship, the YSS Sakura, to protect and serve Hanako-hime. Kôsuka's initial reaction was one of silence. Then she was told of who would be on the vessel with her. The Samurai leapt at the chance to see her daughter again.

The relatively short assignment was worth it to see Kotori again. Though unsure at first, eventually Kôsuka was unflinchingly proud of what her daughter had become, and left the assignment confident her daughter had turned out just fine. She reasoned it was the genetics.

Kôsuka returned to the Empress' Palace and her duties as a Stealth Sentinel. She expected to remain there quietly for some time, occasionally taking up trainees for the Samurai class and watching over the Ketsurui family. The announcement of the new Ketsurui Sanctuary Palace did not affect her; her standing within the clan allowed her to choose whether to uproot or not, and she chose to stay.

A message from an officer under Kotori's command affected her greatly. It informed the Samurai of a disturbing trend on how Kotori's ability to be reborn was being hampered by something. The message was a plea to help the officer and a crewmember discover what that something was. To find out, Kôsuka visited Sylvester at his home on Chiharu Star Fortress.

The pleasure of seeing her creator, as well as his family, did not last in the face of what the Samurai found out about Kotori. After being damaged beyond repair in the Battle over PNUgen, Kotori was restored with a new body that prevented ST backup. The benefit of the body was incredibly powerful psionic defense. This meant that while she would be successful in battles against telepaths such as those employed by the SMX, she could not come back to life by any reliable means, were she killed. A second revelation came with Sylvester's admission that the original Kotori — an NH-22M — was alive and onboard Kotori's ship, deep in stasis.

Kôsuka relayed the information to the two Neko on Kotori's ship, then requested a temporary transfer out of the Stealth Sentinel service. She could not puzzle over what she had been told and still serve the Ketsurui faithfully. She took up teaching instead, at the Samurai House in Kyoto.

Kôsuka's service on her daughter's ship was very brief. After the discovery of an NH-23 model of her daughter, created by her father, the Samurai knew she could not continue to be a part of the crew. Especially after a shameful battle on Bowhordia, and the tactics her daughter adopted afterward. She had to leave.

She returned to Yamatai. It did not take long for SAINT's agents to find her, but she was not thwarted by them. She succeeded in robbing SAINT of her memories, using a previous backup to purge the information from her mind. With that, Kôsuka was again a teacher. There were things about her daughter she did not know … but she knew she did not know them, and she knew why. She accepted it, and prayed she would see her Kotori again.

• Fighting: All Ketsurui Samurai are masters of melee combat. Each is skilled and experienced in combat both in Yamatai-like conditions and in zero-gravity, with and without weapons. Weapons Kôsuka is an expert in include energy pistols, swords, spears, staves, knives, and power armor. Ketsurui Samurai are also trained with grenades, rifles, machine-guns, and a variety of randomized exotic weaponry. Kôsuka is particularly skilled with her tachi, which is well suited for the Sora-Mai. She also is proficient with her built-in energy use.
• Communication: Kôsuka is familiar with radio operation and procedures and can make transmissions to and receive transmissions from other characters through telepathy, starships, and power armor, under any conditions.
• Information Technology: Kôsuka is capable of operating any computer system that uses the Kessaku OS, found on all Star Army starships. She is proficient in entering and/or searching for information.
• Mathematics: Kôsuka received basic mathematics training, to including up to algebra and trigonometry.
• Knowledge: All Ketsurui Samurai are familiar with the laws of the Yamatai Star Empire.
• Language: Kôsuka is very fluent in English and Japanese, and calligraphy of both. She prefers Japanese calligraphy.
• Humanities (psychology/sociology): The little off-duty time Kôsuka has is spent studying the brain. No matter how much people know about it, after all, there's always more to know. Kôsuka especially enjoys reading about the effects of exercise and exhaustion on the ability to reason, as well as child sociology.