Assassin (Fate/Crossover - Mai Shiranui)

**Assassin** (アサシン, *Asashin*) is the servant of ??? in the ??? Holy Grail War.

*"How'd you like a humble Japanese woman who fights? ...My strength adds to my beauty, you know!"* - Mai Shiranui

## Profile

### Identity

Assassin's true identity is **Mai Shiranui**, the successor of the notorious House of Shiranui, a ninja clan whose origins date back to 400 years ago. A determined young woman, who puts all of herself in everything she does, even when it's about uplifting the heritage of her clan.

The Shiranui clan was first known to be dated back in the 1500s-1600s, a recorded history is shown back in 1765s during the Edo period. Where a dark warrior who is amember of the enigmatic Shiranui Clan has been corrupted and begun to follow the "way of the darkness". He seeks to enlighten his progress in the "way of evil" by traveling Japan, killing anyone he can. However, he encounters an unknown female ninja who slained the tainted warrior. This kunoichi's name was recorded to be Mai Shiranui, who might have history dated back to this early time in Japan. There where also reports of the kunoichi encounters a wandering ronin during her journey and has challenged the samurai to a duel. Many years ago, her name now lives on in a descendant who greatly resembles her, and is the grandaughter of the owner of a dojo that teaches the Shiranui arts in the modern day.

### Appearance

Mai is a very beautiful woman, with fair skin, long brown hair tied into a tight, high topknot style, accompanied by a waist-length ponytail with parted bangs and amber eyes. She is also well-known and noticed for her well-endowed body, such as her large breasts, and supple thighs.

She wears a kunoichi dress (a traditional japanese garb of her family's), her dress is red in color with white and sleeveless, with a white bowtie and large, long, flowing, red and white ribbons behind her, and red undergarments. As well as having two red and white tassels at the back containing orbs of the opposite colors, and circular white ropes secured around her shoulders. On her arms, she has black wristbands with red fingerless gloves, and on her legs she has black socks with red and white sandals. Mai is also usually seen wielding a traditional white Kachō Sen, or "butterfly fan", which resembles a Japanese war fan.

### Personality

This Mai has shared most similarities to her descendant that shares her name. Mai is a very cheerful and temperamental girl. She can tend to also be somewhat of an airhead and admires any kind beauty or attractiveness, which sometimes comes across as being vain. However, She is extremely loyal to her family and friends, often made her priorities.

Although her peppy fighting persona suggests otherwise, Mai is actually a traditional and ideal Japanese beauty, always speaking with honorific language, known as "keigo (敬語)". Her pride as a ninja of the Shiranui clan often get into the way of some for traits, as she can be very lethal. Can be somewhat ditzy at times, though she has shown that she knows when to drop it and get serious.

She's confident and very eager to fight, as she tells her opponent to come fight her with a confident calm composure. She will sometimes confidently exclaim that's she's the "best in Japan" whilst catching her fan or fan herself while saying she got sweaty, further showing her confidence and easygoing attitude. She doesn't hold any hard feelings towards her opponent as seen in her last win pose where she sweetly apologizes to her opponent before suggesting they "have fun".

## Abilities

Mai Shiranui is a pratictionar of the Shiranui-ryuu Ninjutsu (不知火流忍術, Shiranui-ryū ninjutsu) is a form of Japanese martial art that is based on traditional Ninjutsu.

It also important to note that female practitioners of the style tend to follow the Kunoichi way of wearing clothes that would distract their opponents by showing a considerable amount of skin, as is the case with Mai. The idea behind the Kunoichi way is also to make a man underestimate the ninja and go easy on her, while she could fight at her full power and defeat the opponent quickly. Tessenjutsu, the art of the Japanese war fan, may also be included as one of the learning disciplines, on which Mai chooses to specialize.

Her style resembles normal ninjutsu with more graceful and majestic moves, somewhat in reference to traditional Japanese dance. She also uses paper fans as weapons, integrating them into her combat technique and using them to perform several combinations and moves. Her clothing — specifically, the tassel on her ninja garb — is also used to attack the opponent. She's also exceptional in hand-to-hand combat using different throws and techniques to gain the upper hand. Mai has shown great strength as well as being strong enough to lift and throw enemies much heavier than her, and using her strong elbow strike capable of breaking through her enemy's defenses and easily incapacitating them.

Mai uses the Shiranui style of ninjutsu combined with her fire powers to fight. Her style resembles normal ninjutsu with more graceful and majestic moves, somewhat in reference to traditional Japanese dance. She also tends to strike with her buttocks, whether as her butt-first charge Genei-Shiranui (lit. "Phantom Fire"), or to crush enemies under her butt with her Yusura-Ume (桜桃, lit. "Wild Cherry").

She also uses paper fans as weapons, integrating them into her combat technique and using them to perform several combinations and moves, such as her Banka ("Elegy"), Kiri-Zakura ("Mist Cherry Blossom"), Kogarashi ("Wintry Wind"), Hototogisu ("Lesser Cuckoo"), Haimen-Hiji-Uchi ("Rear Elbow Strike"), Kazaguruma ("Windmill"), Kachousen ("Butterfly Fan"), Hana-Arashi ("Storm of Flowers"), Hakuro no Mai ("Dance of the Snow Heron"),Raicho no Mai ("Dance of the Thunder Bird"), Chidori-Gaeshi ("Plover Counter"), and her Chou Hissatsu Shinobi-Bachi ("Super Deadly Swarm of the Unseen Assassains") Power Blow. Her clothing, specifically, the tassel on her ninja garb, is also used to attack the opponent. When about to deal a heavy blow against her opponent, she proceeds to place her paper fan in her mouth to free up all her limbs.

Mai's ability to change clothes in one swift movement may come from training in the Shiranui style of Hensōjutsu, which may also be used for creating illusory quasi-real constructs. Mai can conceal an indefinite number of paper fans in her skin-revealing outfit making it look like there's absolutely nothing hidden on her.

### Skills

#### Parameters

* Strength (B Rank): Her strength is superhuman to an unknown extent. With her martial arts, she is capable of throwing her opponents heavier and bigger than her like ragdolls and using her hand to hand combat skills, and can destroy background objects such as walls at ease with her attacks.

* Endurance (D Rank): Mai's endurance and stamina is high, Can fight even while heavily injured. Though she isn't much durable even as a ninja, which is the reason for this rank.

* Agility (A Rank): As a ninja, speed is one of Mai's top priority. She's at least faster than the eye (moves this fast to change clothes in one of her victory poses), but also likely massively hypersonic at best. She can keep up with the other characters and is likely faster than most of others.

* Mana (B Rank): Her Shiranui-fighting style consist of a pyrokinetic ability, as such Mai is able to create and control fire.

* Luck (C Rank): Mai is highly accomplished in ninjutsu, an art requiring extensive skills in stealth, survival as well as studying and tricking other people. But she tends to be cocky which will often lead to her prolonging the fight.

#### Class Skills

* Presence Concealment (B Rank): Because of her ninja training, Mai is a master of stealth. Can also flawlessly disguise herself to resemble other people and even mimic their voices.

#### Personal Skills

* Shiranui-ryuu Ninjutsu (A Rank): Mai's fighting style. It consists of 18 disciplines: spiritual refinement, unarmed combat, sword techniques, stick and staff techniques, spear techniques, naginata techniques, kusarigama techniques, throwing weapons techniques, pyrotechnics, disguise and impersonation, stealth and entering methods, horsemanship, water training, tactics, espionage, escaping and concealment, meteorology, and geography. She is able to use her Shiranui-ryuu Ninjustu to be able to harness fire and temporarily gain levitation. She is a very skilled kunoichi and fights with metal fans, often infusing them with fire. She is also able to use parts of her clothing to attack the enemy.

* Mana Burst (Flame) (D Rabk): Allows her to generate flames from out of nowhere. Makes her resistant to her own fire, but not other people's fire attacks. She can channel fire through her clothes, weapon and anything she touches, and can cause explosions and eruptions of fire.

* Bushin (B Rank): Mai can temporarily project shadow images of herself and her weapon.

* Femme Fatale (A Rank): Mai's trademark bounce was based on an assassination technique often utilized by Kunoichi, where they engage in sensuality towards unsuspecting targets before going in for the kill. And with her revealing outfit makes it easy for her opponents to get distracted and gives her an advantage to attack.

### Noble Phantasm

#### **Shiranui-Ryuu Kunoichi no Mai; "Shiranui Style Ninja Dance"**

Mai's Noble Phantasm is her ultimate ninja art of the Shiranui-ryuu Ninjutsu. Mai quickly dashes around while producing flames in the shape of the 女 "(female)" kanji. An alternate version has her quickly blitz the opponent before dropping on them and smashing their neck.

### Quotes

* *"This is the Shiranui-style Ninjutsu!"* - Mai Shiranui
* *"Shinobi fight until one of them dies! Prepare yourself!"* - Mai Shiranui
* *"Yo! Nippon Ichi! (Yes! Japan's best!)"* - Mai Shiranui's famous victory catchphrase
* *"You'll need more than that to beat a Shiranui ninja!"* - Mai Shiranui
* *"Come on and fight!"* - Mai Shiranui
* *"Whew, I got all sweaty."* - Mai Shiranui
* *"I will show you the meaning of strength!" - Mai Shiranui*
* *"Pray forgive!"* - Mai Shiranui
* *"Servant-class Assassin, at your service! I'm Mai Shiranui! Successor of the Shiranui-style ninjutsu. Why have I come here? Because I have responded to your summon. I may not look like it, but I'm a full-fledged ninja. My skills are nothing less than Japan's finest, but even calling them the world’s finest wouldn't be an exaggeration! It doesn't matter who my opponent is, I'll never lose! So please keep your eyes on me, master!"* - Mai Shiranui after being summoned
* *"Oh, stop whining and attack!"* - Mai Shiranui to Haohmaru
* *"It looks like that sword arm's the real deal. Nice work!"* - Mai Shiranui to Haohmaru
* *"That was a beautiful, dance-like fighting. Not as beautiful as me, though."* - Mai Shiranui to Nakoruru

#### Crossover Quotes

* *"Another servant who's a ninja, huh? I'd like to fight you to see what your made of. I'll show you a real kunoichi!"* - Mai Shiranui to Ninja servants

### Gallery

#### Fate/???

* Ascensions

1st Ascension2nd Ascension3rd AscensionFinal Ascension
* Craft Essence

Bond CE: Japan's Great BeautyKunoichi's Penitration
## Trivia

* Unlike in her home series she originated, the Assassin servant Mai Shiranui is different from the one in The King of Fighters, as she is based off of her cameo appearance in a couple of Samurai Shodown endings. This idea came from the theory that Mai in the Dead or Alive series that is implied in Kula Diamond's story mode of Dead or Alive 6 to not be the same one from The King of Fighters. Meaning the servant could resemble her ancestor.
* Mai is the most popular female character in the SNK series. She was voted as the fifth favorite character with a total of 2,380 votes in a popularity poll on Neo Geo Freak's website.
* Mai's popularity seems to come from her sex appeal. She was rated #4 in GameSpy.com's "Top Ten Babes in Games" feature and number 5 in Game Informer's "Top Ten Hottest Girls of the 16-Bit era."
* Mai's birthday (January 1st) is on New Year's Day.
* The name Mai means "dance" (舞).
* Mai's surname Shiranui means "phosphorescent light" (不知火).
	+ Phosphorescence refers to a type of light that glows softly in the dark and that does not produce heat.

## References

https://snk.fandom.com/wiki/Mai\_Shiranui

https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/Mai\_Shiranui

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Mai\_Shiranui\_(Fatal\_Fury)

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Mai\_Shiranui\_(The\_King\_of\_Fighters)

https://deadoralive.fandom.com/wiki/Mai\_Shiranui

https://topstrongest.fandom.com/wiki/Mai\_Shiranui

https://greatcharacters.miraheze.org/wiki/Mai\_Shiranui\_(SNK)

https://www.outskirtsbattledomewiki.com/index.php/profiles?view=article&id=5217:character-profile-mai-shiranui&catid=8