Nocturne

"*All of my friends are dead.*"

## Haiji Nisekou

**Nocturne** (夜曲 (ノクターン) ), falsely registered as **Haiji Nisekou** (偽 (にせ) 幸 (こう)  灰 (はい) 自 (じ)  *Nisekou Haiji*) and occasionally referred to as Nokku-tan (ノックターン) by his colleagues, is the owner and sole proprietor of  local family diner The Eternal Summer, as well as the chief organiser of the villain group that takes sanctuary there.

As head of the Organisation, Nocturne leads this group of assorted villains, vigilantes, and societal refuges in a crusade against his perceived worldview of societal oppression against the weak and the neglected.

## Appearance

Not many people are sure what Nocturne’s true appearance is on account of his high degree of secrecy. With a cautiousness that borders on paranoia, he hides most, if not all, of his defining features using cosmetics, wigs, and disguises. On top of this is his tendency to continuously swap appearances on a daily basis.

Some of his more common personas while in public are as follows:

* A brown-haired man in his early 20’s with a medium to muscular build that tends to wear a white shirt underneath an open turquoise gray dress shirt with dark pants held up by a belt. The look is finished with a pair of leather shoes and shades. Nocturne also appears to gain several inches in height.
* An older dishevelled man in his 40’s that sports unkempt black hair under an orange beanie that clashes horribly with his oversized purple hoodie. Alongside grey sweatpants, slippers, and an immovable scowl, Nocturne also flourishes a five-o'clock shadow, even if he was clean-shaven earlier in the day.
* A young tan teenager, about 18 to 20, with what appears to be two horns that curve around to point upwards. In hand with their apparent mutation, they also seem to have soft messy green hair. While like this, Nocturne wears a generic Japanese male school uniform, although the school it belongs to seems to be ambiguous.

Each of these personas are also subject to subtle changes depending on Nocturne’s mood and the situation.

However, regardless of all this, Nocturne will always revert back to the same appearances while working at the Eternal Summer, i.e. as Haiji, and when in his villain costume.

At the Eternal Summer, ‘Haiji’ appears as a slim round-shouldered man in his mid to late 20's with curly chestnut hair and blue eyes. Despite having a seemingly nervous aura complete with an awkward crooked smile, Haiji maintains a confident professional look with a pristine white dress shirt that's neatly tucked into dark pants and black leather shoes. While helping to serve tables, he also dons a black service apron around his waist and neatly rolls up his sleeves when giving a hand in the kitchen.

In his villain outfit, Nocturne hides all his facial features behind a white mask with a large toothy grin that moves with his jaw. The mask is kept in place by a metal ‘collar’ that covers the entirety of Nocturne’s neck and part of the back of his head. This collar also doubles as a voice modulator and is able to record and repeat sentences, allowing Nocturne parrot and modify phrases in an unnerving manner. He dresses in a fitted sleeveless turtleneck (even though the turtleneck is obscured by his collar), as well as puffy pants that are buckled together with a large belt and tucked into metallic casings around his knees, lower legs, and feet that appear similar to the casing around Nocturne’s neck. He also wears long gloves that reach past the elbows that have a circular hole where his palms are and a small chest plate device on his left. The device can be used to spin and cut a thin strong steel wire, Nocturne’s preferred choice in weapon. In the face of a difficult mission, Nocturne will also attach other small tools and weapons to his belt in case of emergency.

## Name

Nocturne's name is kept unknown on purpose. Nocturne’s Japanese Villain name is a pun on his quirk where the word for ‘nocturne’ (夜曲 Yakyoku) sounds very similar to the Japanese word for ‘pharmacy’ (薬局 Yakkyoku).

His alias Haiji (灰自) contains the character *hai* (灰, ash) and *ji* (自, self). His alias' surname Nisekou (偽幸) contains the characters *nise* (偽, lie) and *kou* (幸, fortune). Combined, his name literally means something like "Ashen self", potentially in reference to how his supposed real name is falsified, and "false fortune", alluding to his hidden personality and possibly his quirk.

## Personality

Just like his physical appearance, Nocturne will adopt and abandon multiple personality traits as he sees fit. Additionally, Nocturne is also prone to wildly switching personas while interacting with strangers and outsiders, being able to suddenly go from cheerful to hostile at a moment's notice. In the case of interacting with an acquaintance or mutual though, Nocturne will go to great lengths to establish a false personality with its own distinct quirks, like twitches and accents, to further concrete the idea that his several personas are each legitimate people. It is currently unclear whether Nocturne suffers from some form of dissociative identity disorder or if he is just very good at passing himself off as such.

One of his more notable concrete personalities is that of Haiji’s, which he will always immediately default to when working at the Eternal Summer. At these times, Nocturne will portray himself as a quiet polite gentleman with a few nervous ticks, especially when dealing with any big or public figures that may happen to enter the diner. However, Haiji is also portrayed as a hard-working and competent fellow who always provides pleasant conversation when talked to, even if ‘he’ is quirkless. Regardless, Nocturne’s constant personality switching or meticulous facade maintenance reflects on his supposed paranoia surrounding the need for secrecy around his identity.

In more familiar environments though, such as in the apartment complex above the diner, Nocturne will revert to a personality that is best described to as ‘monotone’, regardless of the physical disguise he is wearing at the time. His face predominantly remains blank and tends to rarely show emotion physically or verbally. Never initiating conversation without some kind of prompt and usually only talking in short polite sentences, Nocturne’s neutral disposition in his private time tends to unsettle people due to the serious aura he naturally exerts. As such, even in what seems to be friendly conversation, Nocturne seems to passively exert a sinister sense of danger. This unflappable aspect of his personality bleeds into his villain persona where, even in the most dire of situations, Nocturne continues to appear level-headed and calm.

However, despite his guarded exterior, Nocturne cares deeply for each member in the organisation and relates to all of them to a degree, even if he doesn’t display or vocalise his fondness in obvious ways. Instead, Nocturne tends to each with small actions: Tolerating the antics of the younger members without a hitch, silently extending a helping hand without being asked, lending a shoulder to lean on and an ear to listen, and so forth. Additionally, Nocturne will also work in the background to provide small ‘treats’ for each of the members from time to time, like arranging work shifts so that Shojiro can go home and spend more time with his younger siblings, asking Kumokyo to come with him to the train station when he needs to go somewhere, and taking Keiko grocery shopping and conveniently stopping by some cute girly shop. He is quite thoughtful in this regard.

Finally, keeping in line with his scrupulous attention to keeping his identity a secret at all times, Nocturne is meticulous when it comes to planning for his missions and combat scenarios. Usually working separate from the main group, Nocturne tends to plan out fights several steps ahead of initiation and confrontations are usually over before they begin, the enemy having fallen into his traps or an energy draining ambush. However, Nocturne is not particularly adept at adapting to fights or immediately coming up with plans if his original plans are foiled, even if his exterior doesn’t flinch at the slightest. Instead, he makes up for his inability to fully improvise on the spot by being a perfectly adept fighter to buy time for him to come up with a new strategy.

## Abilities

### Quirk

**Double Theatre** (ダブル・シアター *Daburu Shiata*): Double Theatre allows Nocturne to create spherical areas in space by drawing the radius on a solid surface or object with his hands. Double Theatre is able to create two different sorts of ‘theatres’:

* **Draining Field**: Lovingly dubbed the ‘Torture Theatre’, entities within the field, excluding Nocturne himself, steadily lose their vitality. First losing their ability to concentrate, then their ability fully utilise their body, before finally causing them to shut down if they remain in the field for too long. The size of the field is inversely proportional to the speed of the energy drain.
* **Healing Field**: Nicknamed the ‘Operating Theatre’, entities within this field, once again excluding Nocturne, will recover their vitality and steadily recover from injury, with minor injuries quickly stitching back together and major wounds taking a little longer. Similar to Torture Theatre, the size is inversely proportional to the speed of healing, taking note that in terms of injuries, only the area within the field is affected.

### Other Abilities and Skills

**Unnatural Vitality**: Nocturne’s innate understanding of the human body, as well as how it functions and how it can optimally work, bestows Nocturne with an uncanny amount of biological strength and speed that isn’t commonly seen in fighters that lack quirks to modify such traits. Nocturne is able to quickly incapacitate opponents in martial combat, lift objects that a man of his stature should not be able to, and has the eerie tendency to “just appear” next to his opponents while they aren’t paying attention.

**Expert Tactician**: Coming from years of experience and partially attributed to his constant attention to detail, Nocturne is able to lay out plans to allow him to win fights before they even begin. From laying out traps and ambushes or taking advantage of an enemy’s personality, Nocturne fights best with prior knowledge about his opponents and takes actions to ensure that he is always prepared, thus allowing him to come on top even if the opponent is substantially better equipped or in a better position. Others may comment about his fighting style being ‘dirty’ but between Nocturne’s want for efficiency and indifference, it doesn’t seem to bother him.

In the off-chance he finds himself overwhelmed by an opponent, Nocturne is far from unskilled at improvising, though nowhere as adept as he is at planning beforehand, and will try to hold his ground until he comes up with an efficient strategy.

**Remarkable Awareness**: Nocturne is a prudish and cautious man by nature. Borrowing into his incredible aptitude for noticing small details and being aware of his surroundings, Nocturne is almost impossible to ambush or trap and is able to pick up minute details in hidden settings that most people would miss completely.

**Superior Stealth**: Nocturne continuously demonstrates high levels of stealth that only comes up short in the face of people who are literally invisible - Continuously getting the drop on heroes and policemen alike and suddenly appearing in close quarters and draining enemies dry before a fight even begins. Additionally, Nocturne is an expert at costuming and make-up.

**At the Restaurant**: As the owner of The Eternal Summer, his job around the restaurant revolve around making sure everything runs smoothly. This means that he has to manage paperwork, organise work shifts, handle disputes and complaints, provide help in busy hours, and other things that would fall to his role. Additionally, he has to always ensure that the members are not doing anything that would jeopardise the organisation, which chews a lot into his time.

### Stats

Nocturne's stats, according to their character reference

## Equipment

* **Modulator**: The voice modulator that Nocturne keeps on him not only distorts Nocturne’s voice, but also records it and plays it back in different voices. This gives the illusion that Nocturne is speaking with several voices at once, a scare tactic to intimidate his opponents. The modulator plays back five different voices: his own voice (greatly distorted), the voice of a young woman, an angry, older man’s voice, the voice of a young boy, and a heavily modified robotic-sounding voice.

* **Walking Stick**: Nocturne’s walking stick hides a sword, which Nocturne can pull out for use during close combat.
* **Shrapnel Packages**: Nocturne carries pouches of explosives that can be thrown at enemies. These grenades are not designed to be damaging by property of being explosive, but instead propel measures of burning metal shrapnel around, causing minor wounds. These minor wounds exacerbate the effects of Nocturne’s draining fields.

## Philosophy

"*Nowadays, heroes care more for money and fame than the health and safety of the very people who idolise them. They promise solace to the broken and the weary alike, but when the people of Japan face ever encroaching threats from the people we are supposed to be protected from, who are we to trust? The heroes who chase gold and glory? Or our so called villains, pushed into the rain and mud, who belong as an entity separate from the whole because they refuse to be named as such?*"

Nocturne believes heavily in the philosophy that the reliance on quirks in a modern society has destroyed it, ushering in an era in which psychopaths, egocentrics, and bullies are allowed to take centre stage in the world by displays of greater violence against one another instead of actively participating to make the world a better place. Nocturne believes that the rise of criminal activity has not been staunched by heroes becoming a government job, and has simply given violent sociopaths with “superior quirks” a stable job while simultaneously allowing them to show off to the public and beat people up.

His philosophy also believes that the separate categorisation of “heroes” and “villains” is a result of this corrupt society, who tend to judge quirk users by their quirks instead of by their users. Nocturne does not care who joins his Organisation as a result of his worldview, owing to it that no matter the quirk, people are people, and are strong in their own rights.

These combined views give Nocturne a clear dream which has become synonymous with the overarching goal of the Organisation itself. In destroying this newfound society, a new society can be created with no such thing as quirk superiority or quirk categorisation, where quirk users are judged by the user, not the quirk - and a society where quirks are not the only defining feature that provides the sole individuality to every person.

## Battles and Events

### The Warehouse

* Nocturne as the leader of The Organisation vs. Queen Bee and Raiden

### The Shutdown

* Nocturne as the leader of The Organisation vs. Horizon

## Quotes

* *(Keiko Ketsueki to Nocturne)* "*If you were to die, what would your last words be?*"
	+ *(In response)* "*Finally.*"
* *(To Keiko Ketsueki and Shino Kitamura)* "*I hope you remember we are supposed to be a **secret** organisation.*"

## Trivia

* Nocturne has a complete catalogue of the past annual hero and villain directories, and frequently reads the newspaper to remain up to date.
* Nocturne owns a mug that reads *More Espresso, Less Depresso*. Keiko and Kumokyo got the mug for him for Father's Day.