Yasushi Kato

Yasushi Kato (JP: 夏冬靖, *Katou Yasushi*) is a blue-colored satori who has vowed to never speak again in an attempt to avert the hatred associated with his species and their mind-reading power. As a side effect of his intense study, he has gained the ability to "silence" through suppression of all forms of vibrations. Formerly in the Komeiji sisters' care, he now wanders Gensokyo in secret, keeping his species a secret from all but a select few.

## General Information

### ☯**Personality**

*Yasushi smiles gently at you. He then forms an X with his index fingers over his mouth, and then pokes his head on the side thrice with his left finger. He then relaxes his pose and flicks a left-hand thumbs-up. A glimmer of a mischievous grin appears.*

Yasushi can be described as an ordinary satori - thoughtful, somewhat manipulative, and wise. Yet he is also not - his vow of silence was also a vow of responsibility; he may be unable to stop reading the thoughts of others, but he made up for it by disciplining himself to only use what he learns for the betterment of those around him.

He also does not speak. It has been so long since he made the vow that he isn't sure as to what his actual voice sounds like anymore; his mental voice is thus unstable, though usually it settles on a voice that's surprisingly deep for someone of his apparent age. He, instead, speaks only with his actions and his body cues, compensating by being surprisingly explicit in his actions and especially with his facial expressions.

He has a caring side that he shows whenever he can, and his silence reflects the calmness of his mind. However, he has quite a bit of a perverted streak, often sneaking in ways to ogle and/or fondle girls discreetly, or read their own less than pure thoughts for his own amusement. Even so, he is hesitant when it comes to the act, having put it in his heart that the act is reserved for when mutual and true love is achieved with each other.

As someone who values silence, he avoids communicating with more than one person or two at a time - it no longer overwhelms him easily, but it tends to muddle up his attempts to communicate. He also hates lying for the similar reasons - he considers such as a waste of time seeing as he can easily tell whether one was lying or not.

Secretly, he hopes to restore the honor of the satori race by proving himself to others as altruistic in nature despite having such a frightening power. This motivation of his is also powered by his experiences in isolation: he wants to be loved by others, and thus he tries his best to help others out with their problems.

### ☯**Appearance**

Yasushi stands at 5'8'', with relatively long turquoise hair that forms intakes and sharp blue eyes on a face that usually seems emotionally blank though youthful. His build is unremarkable, leaning on out of shape if he wasn't fairly thin for his height anyway. In human terms, he could be approximated to just barely 19, if a little taller than average.

He usually wears mostly white and blue, with his standard outfit being a fairly large and fluffy-armed white coat and white pants. He has taken to trimming some of his newer outfits with a tiny bit of pink/violet, though, with his normally blue scarf being the first.

His third eye, normally tucked underneath his clothing, is blue on both its veins and on the eye itself.

### ☯**Theme Songs**

* Steve Halpern - Crystal Suite (Regular)
* Baumarius - Victernus (Alternate)
* Bravely Default - Wicked Flight (Combination Battle with Tenkou Heiwakishou)

## Backstory

The satori were doomed to extinction. That was what defined Yasushi's early life - he was there when they were first driven off Youkai Mountain and forced underground into Former Hell along with the other undesirable youkai. Even so, they were still singled out as particularly detested; it still remains unknown to this day as to what happened to the rest of the satori, but it is clear that they were chased out into the wilderness and were rarely heard of, if ever.

Nonetheless, the young satori saw something else in their aggressors. While the others would see their flaws and hidden desires with which to manipulate for their benefit, he and a few others chose to focus on their positive traits: the virtues that they keep to themselves, the hopes and ideals that they wanted to achieve. But it was far too late for them to try and change their reputation; they were lumped in with all the rest and exiled like all the others.

Yasushi wandered for a while out in the wilderness; though his constitution and the Barrier's existence meant that he couldn't die easily, he was already struggling to stay active about three seasons in. It was then that he stumbled into the Palace of the Earth Spirits. In desperation, he hid himself in there and took from its owners' storage. Unfortunately for him, the owners were the Komeiji sisters - they caught him out almost immediately.

Fortunately, they recognized him as a fellow satori and gave him a separate room within the rather spacious Palace. There he stayed for the better part of his second and third centuries, reading through Satori's collection as she added more and more from her occasional secret travels. Thus he learned a lot from these things... yet even with the reclusive but thoughtful Satori, her uplifted pets Okuu and Orin, and her cheerful sister Koishi around, he still longed for contact with others.

Tragedy struck the little household one day, as Satori realized - too late - that her sister had sealed away her third eye. Bereaved of her dear sister, she became even more withdrawn, not even bothering to go out of her room. Alas, it was fated that he would feel the same powerful emotions that drove Koishi to such a drastic action mere years later. Yet he remained rational, keeping in mind her fate that he became aware of thanks to Satori the longer he considered pursuing her path.

Eventually, he made a decision. Dedicating himself to utter silence, he made a vow to never utter a single word and to teach himself to never need his voice ever again. Studying silence-based magic and non-verbal communication, he tried his best to control his own compulsions to voice out his thoughts and the thoughts of all those around him. It took him several decades of hard work, even once locking himself within that very room that had become his home so as not to interfere when intruders came for Satori and the rest of the Palace's residents.

His first attempt at heading outside the Palace was a success, owing to his numerous precautions including hiding his third eye underneath his clothes. Again and again he tested himself, going further and further until he could finally sense that he had a semblance of trust within the very few people that he interacted with. From there, he gave himself the ultimate test - head out of Former Hell, into the Gensokyo that most certainly had changed in the intervening centuries, and form friendships with its residents.

Currently, he alternates between wandering the surface and returning homeward, both in secret, hoping that one day he may no longer need either his voice or his secrecy.

## Abilities

### ☯**Ability to Read Minds**

As a satori, Yasushi has their species-wide powers of mind-reading and mind-altering. He shares the same strengths and weaknesses of most common satori, including the limitations of being restricted to surface thoughts without a lot of focus or preparations and the inability to shut off the reading at will.

### ☯**Ability to Manipulate Silence**

However, his studies in silence has certainly served him well; he now has the ability to dampen vibrations with his mind. Combined with his perception-distortion ability, he can silence anything from a certain object's sound to an entire area, and with the help of his mind-altering power even disrupt opponents' ability to perceive sound.

### ☯**Communication**

One notable spell that he has learned among his basic magical repertoire is a magic-writing spell, capable of displaying what he wants others to see for a limited time. This is what he uses in lieu of a verbal declaration for a spell card, among other, much rarer purposes.

### ☯**Spell Card Declaration**

As for spell card declaration, he does this by writing at the same pace as his 'speech' either right above him or in an easily visible place. The writing is then enchanted partway through the declaration to decode into a language the viewer will understand, then flash when the declaration is completed, lingering for a moment before dissipating.

## Danmaku

Yasushi prefers to fight in a calm way, using slower but denser clusters of danmaku to force an opponent to move slower - and thus make themselves more vulnerable to his silencing ability. His preferred bullets are butterfly and bubble bullets, usually colored turquoise like his hair.

## Spell Cards

### ☯**Spell Cards**

 Suppression "Damping Field"
 Suppression "Noise Barrier"
After a few seconds, the wall collapses, transforming all danmaku caught in it into thin but precise lasers that are fired in quick succession at the source(s) of said bullets and lasers.
 Still Sign "Inertia at Rest"
The sphere is ungrazeable and deals moderate continuous damage to all enemies in contact with it. Furthermore, the sphere's radius expands at a linear rate for as long as an enemy remains in contact with it. Said rate is proportional to how many opponents are in contact with it at any given time, and there is no upper limit as to how large the sphere can become.
The sphere's radius also expands naturally, but at a slower rate. Should its growth remain unaffected by enemy contact, it will grow to a maximum size of 6m radius before expiring.
 Stillness Sign "Stasis Burst"

### ☯**Combination Cards**

 Horizon Sign "Rendezvous of Heaven and Earth"

### ☯**Splash Cards**

 Splash Sign "Water Dam"
 Drying Field "Arid Sphere"

## Weaknesses

Yasushi is vulnerable, like any satori, to mental-overload tactics: huge crowds, mental static, or simply being lied to through careful thoughts. While he is much more adapted to these than Satori, he still finds these quite uncomfortable to deal with.

As someone who has focused much on the study of silence, he is almost entirely reliant on creating an absence in sound or motion to fight. This forces him to be creative with how he fights.

He is also not one to rely on violence, and as such is woefully ill-equipped in true combat - any opponent that can get past his slowing and debilitating tactics can shut him down quickly.

Outside of combat, it is difficult to read him if one is not used to him relying on his actions to relay emotion. Even then, his hints can occasionally become quite obscure, though he does avoid this except in cases wherein he really has to hide things.

He also has difficulty conveying things that are either extremely difficult to do without words (like names), or tend to have connotations that may distort meaning (like the various definitions of love). He works around this by writing, but even then there is no guarantee that he would write about these.

## Trivia

* Yasushi is a male name meaning 'quiet'.
* Kato is a common family name in Gifu prefecture, where the satori were historically known to live within. This particular kanji of it means 'summer and winter', thematically related to him being of contrasts.