[ Background ]

	The beginnings of Soma Takeyama's life were not aupsicious, to 
say the least. He is the product of two generations of what you might 
call shameful ancestry; his mother is the half-Japanese, half-American 
daughter of a Japanese prostitute who was loved and left by an American 
serviceman just after World War 2, and his father is an American 
businessman who did much the same. Thus Soma himself looks particularly 
Anglo in appearance, with only a trace of his Japanese heritage showing 
through. He was born in squalor -- a midwife delivered Soma to his mother 
in a dusty loft in the slums of Southtown -- and in squalor he would stay 
for much of his early life.
	A young Soma quickly became self-reliant and practical, because 
his mother did not in any want children, nor did she consider for a 
moment giving up her profession. He truly did live out the cliche, 
becoming housekeeper and chef for his lackadaisacal mother, who did 
nothing but entertain clients during the evening and sleep the day away, 
hungover. To keep himself occupied he learned to read fairly quickly, and 
found fantasy stories his most constant companions. One book in 
particular was a children's book that portrayed the various signs of the 
Western zodiac as characters who interacted with each other as a group of 
friends. Impressionable and lonely, Soma took to the book with some 
vigor, constructing in his mind imaginary friends based on those 
said-same characters and sparking what would later become a lifelong 
interest in the occult.
	When he began his middle school career, Soma was beginning to 
better understand the world in which he lived... a world he used to 
quietly resent and escape, but now actively had begun to hate. He 
previously considered his mother an object of worry, or at least tired 
acceptance; the more contact he had with other, normal children, however, 
the more bitter he became about his lot in life. More to the point, as a 
self-reliant individual by nature and necessity, he wasn't kindly 
disposed to dealing with others, either; he was quiet, not particularly 
gregarious, and clearly of a different socioeconomic and cultural stratum 
than his school friends.
	As anyone who's attended a public school knows, that means that 
Soma was perfectly placed to be picked on, and picked on he was. Nothing 
particularly terrible happened, given it was the middle school range, but 
it was clearly enough that the administration felt the need to get 
involved. Initially, they singled Soma out for other activities -- the 
worst possible thing they could have done, given the situation -- and 
sent him to special classes where he could devote his energy to his 
studies in peace. In particular he formed a friendship with the phys ed 
teacher at his high school, who noted the boy's lean frame was well 
suited to gynmastics and acrobatics, starting him on the path of another 
lifetime passion. However, it was not enough; in the end, Soma reached 
his breaking point and lashed out at a boy who had teased him with 
crushing force -- more than he should have been able to manage at his 
age, as it was sufficient to break the other boy's arm in three places.
	The school administration and city officials did their best to 
find some way to contact his parents and get them involved, perhaps 
finding some place for Soma to go. What they found was his indigent, 
prostitute mother and no indication that his father even existed, except 
for the youth's clearly Western last name. Unable to find any reason to 
place him in foster care -- a curse Soma brought on himself by covering 
for his mother -- and not having any idea what to do with him, they were 
forced to send Soma to Gedo beginning his freshman year of high school.
	Though well-intentioned, this was not a particularly good result 
for Soma either, as the impulse to tease or outright hurt him for being 
different was considerably stronger among the students of Gedo High than 
it ever had been at his middle school. Only two things kept Soma from 
being seriously hurt: one, the cooling effect Daigo Kazama's recent 
consolidation of power had on the student body, and two... the 'curse'. 
Students who tormented Soma when he initially arrived soon found bad 
things happening to them if they kept it up. Doors would slam in their 
faces, sharp objects would fall at them or otherwise end up in their 
path. But those were just the coincidences; there were equal numbers of 
reports of the Just Plain Creepy, as those who picked on him heard voices 
in their heads, had sudden flashes of fear or being haunted, their skin 
prickling with goosebumps. Soma, for his part, simply made the effort to 
keep to himself as he always had, though his hatred for his fellow man 
was growing exponentially with every attempt on him.
	What was actually going on was that Soma's Psycho Power, latent 
for many years, was beginning to bubble to the surface. Subconsciously, 
he was using it to 'protect' himself, either by tweaking the momentum of
or psychokinetically moving nearby small objects, or by random bursts of 
projective empathy that would send brief and terrifying 'visions' into 
peoples' minds. That was the true nature of the 'curse'. Although he kept 
it quiet, the need of the emotionally-charged energy to escape in some 
form was growing every day, giving him terrible headaches and occasional 
flashes of insight into other peoples' thoughts and motivations. 
Considering he already disliked everyone around him, it was not helping 
anthing.
	The breaking point came in the form of a transfer student named 
Hazama Kiribayashi, who came to the school shortly before the Justice 
High incident. A brutish and self-righteous punk, he took an immediate 
dislike to Soma, roughing him up and reviling him at every turn simply 
for his non-Japanese appearance and his love of reading. The 'curse' 
apparently wasn't enough to dissuade him; indeed, the strange happenings 
simply made Hazama want to hurt Soma all the more. However, Daigo's 
presence kept his actions from boiling over too much. Other Gedo students 
who didn't like Soma but feared the 'curse' lived vicariously through 
Hazama, and kept his more egregious activities out of the ears of the 
more responsible people (like Daigo) who might do something about it.
	However, when Daigo fell under Hyo's control and the students of 
Gedo began to go a little wild, Hazama had his chance. Cornering Soma 
alone one afternoon after school, he produced a knife and threatened to 
see if the 'curse' was really enough to protect the young psion from 
grievous harm. To Hazama's great misfortune, it was; reacting on pure 
blind rage and fear, Soma's psychic power erupted in a burst of 
purple-black energy that literally shredded Hazama's body, as if he had 
been cut to pieces by knives. Soma himself staggered out to a nearby 
park, and then collapsed face-first onto the grass.
	When he woke up, it was in a hospital bed with a spring breeze 
blowing through an open window. For the first time in months, his 
headache was gone, replaced by a feeling of... something, in the back of 
his mind. He didn't have much time to think about it; his thoughts were 
interrupted by the arrival of a female doctor who introduced herself as 
Karen Miyahara, a gentle-looking woman with one remarkable feature: 
her short-cut hair was a shade of palest sky blue. She asked Soma a few 
questions about his general state of health, which he responded to 
neutrally, as she seemed friendly enough. It wasn't until halfway through 
the interview that he realized neither of them had opened their mouths 
even once.
	Too shocked to understand what was going on, Soma simply sat 
there, stunned. Karen explained, speaking aloud, that she, like Soma, had 
some special quality not quite understood by many others yet, something 
called "Psycho Power". She explained that her own gift was very weak -- 
limited primarily to an increased awareness of others' thoughts and 
feelings, and speaking with other people who have such a power, like Soma 
-- but it was enough to make her useful to 'certain people' who had an 
interest in helping those coming to grips with that power. Confused and a 
little scared, Soma nonetheless could sense that Karen genuinely wanted 
to help him. When she offered to help him get his life in order and his 
powers under control, he accepted without hesitation.
	What followed was perhaps the most significant turnaround in 
Soma's life. Leaving behind Japan, he and Karen travelled to Geneva, 
Switzerland, where she explained that she was part of a group called 
'The Inquiry': a close-knit, multinational organization dedicated to 
working against the increasingly international nature of crime. Karen 
herself presented the only other psychic member of the group, 
headquartered in a large estate in Geneva, but there were many others 
Soma met with many other impressive talents, both in a fighting sense and 
without. Karen herself, for example, was an expert in criminal psychology 
as well, and put that talent to use for the organization.
	Initially, Soma was wary. He was smart enough to know that the 
Inquiry was likely to ask something in return for helping him out. 
Interestingly enough, his meeting with the head of the Inquiry, an old 
man of Russian descent named Mikael, dispelled that... or at least, made 
it palatable. Mikael explained that their awareness of Soma came from 
finding his name on a list of students in Southtown that was kept by an 
operative of an international crime syndicate known as 'Shadaloo' the 
Inquiry had managed to obtain. Karen and other Inquiry agents had been 
sent to Japan to monitor the people on the list. The others had proven to 
simply be normal teenagers, but Soma was different. Although they had 
been too late to stop something terrible from happening (in the case of 
Hazama) they were thankfully able to spirit him away from the scene, and 
convince local authorities of Soma's innocence.
	What the Iniquiry wanted, Mikael explained, was to give Soma the 
tools to survive. It was likely, they surmised, that criminal 
organizations such as Shadaloo and other major crime syndicates would try 
to find and exploit people with powers such as his. The Inquiry would 
give him training, both academic and martial, in order to give him what 
he would need to keep himself safe. What they would ask in return is 
simply that Soma keep them and their organization in mind in the event 
that he came in contact with people out to do the public harm. Although 
the story sounded too good to be true, on an instinctive level Soma felt 
he was being told the truth, and thus assented.
	For the next year, Soma lived in Geneva, learning as promised 
what he had been told he would. Through Karen, he learned to control and 
direct that feel of power and awareness that had awakened one fateful 
afternoon at Gedo. His ability to notice what others were thinking or 
feeling grew and his headaches all but vanished. Meanwhile, the best 
tutors money could buy caught him up academically, while visiting members 
of the organization stopping between assignments taught him more 
practical lessons: how to defend himself, and the basics of crime 
fighting and detective work. One Brazilian agent, a master of Capoeira, 
noted that as an experienced gymnast Soma should use what he already knew 
to develop his own fighting style that used his particular talents. 
Finding that martial arts were a useful physical and mental exercise, he 
worked with many agents and with Karen to create a hybrid fighting art 
that combined gymnastics, Capoeira, kickboxing, and the unique properties 
of Psycho Power. More to the point, however, he also, through the 
Inquiry's small but effective operation, came to understand the scope of 
what Shadaloo, 'R', and other criminal groups were doing in the world, 
particularly to people who came from places like he did: in poverty and 
squalor. He realized that while he was not obligated to help the Inquiry, 
he knew that he would, as it was the right thing to do.
	More importantly, however, for the first time in his life Soma 
had friends. The members of the Inquiry, though almost all adults, were a 
close-knit group who understood all too well how Soma's past and 
abilities could affect him. They encouraged his interests in cooking, the 
occult (particularly astrology), and gymnastics, but they also pushed him 
to greater challenges. He took up singing after being exposed to opera, 
and academically he showed huge leaps and bounds catching up to where he 
should be, and more. For the first time in his life, he was surrounded by 
people who supported him, and thus was finally able to achieve something 
rather than simply coasting by.
	Once the year was up, Mikael and Karen offered Soma a choice: he 
could stay in Geneva, or he could strike out on his own with a financial 
gift from the Inquiry, starting his life over in a new city. To their 
surprise, he chose the latter... with a twist. Hoping to return to the 
city of his birth, Soma moved back to Southtown and enrolled as a junior 
at Taiyo High, starting, if not anew, then at least fresh. However, he 
also serves a dual role; using the local street fighting circuit as a way 
to keep tabs on local crime using the skills he learned from the Inquiry, 
he subtly tries his best to watch out for more people who may have ended 
up as he did: alone and hurting. Though he is still scarred by his past, 
with some help he is slowly trying to work his way back into doing 
something positive with his life.



[ Personality ]

	Soma's early life was pretty miserable, and he's only just 
recently started to crawl out of the hole he grew up in. On top of that, 
he's a psion. Thus, Soma is a duality in most regards. The crux point of 
his entire personality revolves around the conflict between his hatred of 
what has happened in the past and his desire to make a better future for 
himself in the here and now. He has been given a new lease on life and is 
trying his hardest to do something positive with it, but he is also 
forever haunted by things he can't forget even if he tried.
	At heart he is a quiet individual, and somewhat shy; he is often 
worried that people will find his interests or his personality strange or 
off-putting and thus keeps distance between himself and others as a 
preventative measure; if they don't know you well, they can't reject you. 
This stems way back to his early family life. His mother might as well 
have not existed, and his father was something he knew he must have but 
really had no concept of (and still doesn't to this day). He desperately 
wants the approval of others because he never had it as a child, and 
having had a taste of it living in Switzerland with his first real 
'friends' really only craves it more.
	However, under the skin there still churns a deep well of 
resentment and hatred for other people, and in a weird way his powers 
only make that worse in some cases. Soma has seen how low people can fall 
and has little to no sympathy for those who do it to themselves on 
purpose. His dislike for bullies and those who torment others based on 
being different is one thing that will trigger what can be a really 
terrifying, ice-cold wrath on his part that seems out of character given 
his normally quiet demeanor. He finds it hard to trust others without 
getting to know them first (Mikael and Karen appear to be the exceptions, 
though there are mitigating circumstances involved in that instance).
	Soma sees fighting as a sport or a meditative exercise, not a way 
to hurt or kill others (though he's not stupid; he recognizes that people 
get hurt as a result of fighting). He dislikes people who fight to injure 
or worse but is reluctant to use force to counter them, primarily because 
of his intense guilt over the death of Hazama Kiribayashi. Despite 
therapy over the year that followed to help him deal with understanding 
that he didn't directly do the guy in, Soma still feels a terrible weight 
of responsibility for it. Thus he doesn't fight to wound or kill, and can 
become a little unstable if he finds he's seriously hurt someone without 
intending to.


[ Physical Characteristics ]

	None remarkable save his hair, which is naturally silver with 
black ends and resists being dyed (the dye fades out within a few hours 
if he tries). Soma looks American for the most part, though there is a 
very faint hint of his (distant) Asian ancestry, mostly in the structure 
of his face and his lean rather than square frame. He also wears glasses 
most of the time, though he tends to wear contacts when he knows he is 
going to be fighting.