Kuchisake Onna

Kuchisake Onna (litteraly translate to "the slit-mouthed woman") is a ghost from japanese urban legends (though she has been known to appear in South Korea as well from time to time).

She is rather ancient by urban legend's standards, as accounts of her go back all the way to 1754, acrediting the story of her origins, as she could have lived in such a period.

## Biography

Kuchisake Onna (her real name has seemingly been lost to History), was once a woman living in Japan during the edo period. She was renowned for her beauty, so much so that a rich and powerful samurai had taken her as his wife.

Unfortunately she was also very vain and, despite being maried, enjoyed the attention men whould give her for her looks. Upon discovering his wife regularly had flings while he was away on his feudal duties the samurai flew into a rage and slit his wife's mouth open from ears to ears with his katana, saying "Who will find you pretty now?". The woman died soon after, either from her injury getting infected or by commiting suicide in despair from her ruined beauty. In either case her husband's cruel taunt mixed with her heartbreak from the loss of her appearance to form an obsession strong enough to let her remain in the realm of the living.

## Appearance

In her natural form Kuchisake Onna is a spirit, invisible and intangible.

Upon possessing someone she appear to be that person, though due to her possession's strict criterias, she is always a woman, with her mouth slit from ear to ear miroring Kuchisake Onna herself. In theory any woman could be the target of such possession so long as she is properly disfigured but Japan's ethnic homogeny means that every recorded hosts were asians.

Kuchisake Onna will try to hide her disfigurement behind a scarf, a fan, or a face mask as part of her motus operandi and tend to wear concealing clothes as well such as trenchcoats. Due to being possessed women rather than direct ghostly emanations, Kuchisake Onna's hosts dresses in modern clothes.

## Behaviour

Like most ghosts Kuchisake Onna is extremely obsessive, endlessly repeating the same series of actions that are only meaningfull when one consider the reason for the ghost's haunting.

In Kuchisake Onna's case, she is motivated by a desire to prove her husband's assertion that she would never be seen as pretty again false. Thus she approach isolated people (children and teenagers being her favorite victims for unknown reasons) to ask them if they find her pretty, then if they answer "yes" she will reveal her ghastly disfigurement and ask again. Answering "no" to either question will result in her killing her interlocuter in a fit of rage, answering "yes" te second time will result in her inflicting the same disfigurement to them, telling her she is "average" might confuse her enough for the victim to escape.

## Characteristics

Kuchisake Onna herself has no physicall characteristics, being an incorporeal spirit, these characteristics applies to the host.

* Strength : Kuchisake Onna greatly enhance her hosts natural strength to a superhuman level of at least three times a normal human, able to cut someone in half or snap necks with one hand.
* Resilience : women possessed by Kuchisake Onna are much more resilient than normal and do not feel pain, allowing them to go on for a little while after suffering fatal injuries.
* Speed : as part of the host's enhanced strength, she is also made much faster than normal.
* Intelligence : While Kuchisake Onna is a human spirit with human intelligence, her intellect is not her strong suite, being easily confused by non-binary answers to her questions, distraced by money or candies, and is noted to be very gulible, possibly due to madness clouding her jugement.

## Powers

* Possession : Kuchisake Onna is unable to affect the living world in her spirit form, instead she possess women to perform her killing. She can only possess women who share her facial disfigurement, a slit mouth, and are in a state of despair. These women need not have been mutilated by Kuchisake Onna but her actions obviously contribute greatly to creating new hosts in her general vicinity. The host's body wears of over time before being consumed by the possession, meaning Kuchisake Onna has to change host regularly.
* Creation : all of Kuchisake Onna's gear is materialised as a psychic construct, meaning she can create as many of these items as she wishes, though they will vanish after being separated from her.
* Teleportation : Kuchisake Onna can let her host body enter the shadow realm (the limbo in which ghosts like herself resides) in order to travel faster or through solid objects, akin to a short to medium range teleportation.
* Assimilation : Kuchisake Onna can absorb the souls of her victims, countaining them into herself and increasing her power, but decreasing her sanity as these souls interfere with the way she perceive the world.

## Gear

* Bladed weapons : Kuchisake Onna uses an oversized pair of scissors as her go-to weapon but will sometimes substitute it with a kama or a large knife.

## Weaknesses

* While Kuchisake Onna will survive her host's death, she won't be able to continue fighting unless another suitable host is available for posssession, of wich the available number is relatively limited even with Kuchisake Onna creating some through her actions. As a result, according to the rules of Crypto X Ing, if she runs out of hosts, she will have to forfeit the fight, resulting in defeat.
* Furthermore she can be exorcised from hosts, in one instance even being sent straight to Jigoku rather than simply back to the shadow realm (though she managed to escape back to the living world this would likely take time, resulting again in a forfeit).