Sakamoto Kiyoko

"Girl of Shock and Awe! Lovely Warrior in Sable and Carmine! Demons of stasis beware! Destruction Maiden Kiyoko will end you!"

A publicity photo of Kiyoko taken for the revelation of her secret identity.

Background

Sakamoto Kiyoko had it all. At the age of 13 she was the most popular magical girl in Japan. Her weekly television show topped all the ratings, with millions hanging on her every word and action. Popular among girls for being cute and boys for being a total badass, her first two years of junior high school were a tale of love, justice, and ass-kicking.

Then came third year, and the throes of puberty. She shot up six inches in the course of a single summer vacation, and everything fell apart.

Boys weren't interested in a girl who was suddenly taller than them, and with no bustline to speak of to boot. Girls felt she was insufficiently cute. Sponsors bailed on her left and right, and her ratings in the second half of the year tanked. An ill-advised revelation of her true identity in an attempt to humanize her backfired horribly. Her show was canceled by the time she was entering high school, and her time slot was given to the young upstart magical idol, Moe Idol Pretty Akemi.

Everyone in her school knows who she is, and none of them care.

Metaphysics

As a magical girl, Kiyoko represents the somewhat questionable concept of destruction. However, as her publicist was always quick to point out, she specifically represents the destruction that clears the way for the creation of new things, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of its own destruction. This was enough of an excuse for the network, who just wanted lots of explosions in their primo after-school timeslot. Of course, no magical girl is complete without a force of evil to do battle against - for Kiyoko, this was Heat Death, a shadowy spirit that represented ultimate entropy. Of course, now that Kiyoko's show has been canceled, Heat Death is just as much out of a job as she is. It mostly does public service campaign work these days.

Personal Information

Name: 坂本 清子
Height: 181cm (5'11")
Weight: ;_;
Measurements: Pathetic, and the whole world has them memorized.
Blood Type: B
Birthday: March 7
Blog: This Is The Way The World Ends
Likes: Action movies, Magical Girl manga, tall men, attention.
Dislikes: Boredom, being ignored, AKEMMIIIIIIII.

A more recent candid photo of Kiyoko.

Description

Kiyoko is tall. Let's just get that out of the way. She's probably taller than anyone you've ever met, including adults. She had to special-order her uniform and it's still a little small on her. For all this, she's yet to really fill out after her growth spurt; and her lack of 'elegance' is especially troubling to her. Despite being so skinny, she is quite strong, and not all of that can be attributed to her Magic of Destruction. She's very athletic, and would probably be welcome on any of the sports teams (especially the basketball team!) if it weren't for the fact that everyone would just think she was trying to show off. She keeps her jet-black hair very long, and wears blocky glasses both to correct for slight nearsightedness and to try to disguise herself (it no longer works at all).

After she transforms into her magical girl form (accomplished most often by assuming a stylish pose and shouting "Rebirth! In the Fires of Destruction!"), Kiyoko wears a black uniform with carmine-red trim and a matching skirt. Her knee-high boots are both elegant and steel-toed for extra pain; they are also, unfortunately, heeled, adding another two inches to her height. A pair of black spandex bike shorts under her skirt is her concession to modesty, given how prone she is to kicking the enemy (and surrounding terrain). Strangely, in this form, her vision is fine, and she has no need for glasses.

Her transformation sequence has been known to cause slight collateral damage, especially burn marks where she's standing.

Personages of Import

+ Show

Mother and Father

Sakamoto Katsuro was an up-and-comer at a multiindustrial manufacturing concern when Kiyoko made it big as a magical girl. He very publicly quit his job, burning every bridge and acting as Kiyoko's full-time manager. Kiyori, Kiyoko's mother and a former shrine maiden, burned through the money Kiyoko made with astonishing rapidity, and the necessity of appearing wealthy as a manager of a famous magical girl in the industry didn't help matters. When Destruction Maiden Kiyoko was canceled, the cashflow ceased, and the family's debts began to pile up. Katsuro had to go crawling back to his old workplace and beg for his job back- he just barely got it, and makes half of what he used to. Kiyori, whose only marketable skill was being a shine maiden, was unable to contribute beyond getting part-time work, since having a daughter rather puts a crimp in the whole maiden thing.

Moe Idol Pretty Akemi

Kiyoko's archnemesis, the scheming little witch that stole her timeslot! (No offense to Witch-Girl Yuu-chan, her show always gave Kiyoko a good lead-in.) Frequently mistaken for a middle schooler, Akemi is (unforgivably!) Kiyoko's sempai! Her powers of moe trope manipulation have regularly garnered her ratings that even Kiyoko could only hope to achieve in a season finale, as she expertly appeals to almost every subdemographic several times per episode without alienating any competing subdemographic! Truly, Akemi-chan is an avatar of commercialized moe, and Kiyoko will never ever ever ever ever forgive her for it.

Tendo Hanako

Hanako is perhaps the only person left in Japan who takes Kiyoko seriously as a person. This is likely due to the fact that she is perhaps the only girl in Japan who did not watch Destruction Maiden Kiyoko. ("I just never really got into that sort of thing. It was on during my Literature Club meetings anyway.") She is a bright but otherwise uninspiring girl, who could easily go all three years of high school without distinguishing herself in any particular way save perhaps by occasional academic excellence. Thankfully, she seems quite capable of serenely ignoring Kiyoko's occasional furious rants whenever someone mentions Moe Idol Pretty Akemi in her presence.

Heat Death

Kiyoko's archnemesis, an entity of universal entropy that seeks an eternally quiescent universe. Naturally, of course, Earth is the lynchpin in its diabolical master plan; Tokyo, specifically. Employing aspects of its own nature as subentities, Heat Death would leech enthusiasm from its victims and use them to promote lassitude and apathy before discarding them as washed-out husks of the people they once were, fit only for possession by more Entropic Subentities.

Once Destruction Maiden Kiyoko was canceled, however, Heat Death got into financial troubles as a result of loans and poor business decisions, and has had to largely put its plans for universal destruction on hold. It is a marginally popular tarento on several morning shows and has been a guest judge on a few competition shows, but for the most part it is stuck doing public service announcements for mental health counseling to make ends meet. It only occasionally bothers to menace Kiyoko anymore, usually in situations that are likely to result in lots of people being around to see it, in hopes of getting the show picked up again.

When it bothers to take a humanoid form, Heat Death appears as a tall human-shaped hole in the universe itself, wearing an immaculate white suit.

Akomaru

Akomaru was Kiyoko's official talking animal assistant, a big black pit bull who speaks in Kansai-ben. Unfortunately, since his contract was with the studio rather than with Kiyoko, when her show got canceled they gave him a bit part on Witch-Girl Yuu-chan's show. He doesn't really get along with Yuu-chan's familiar (obviously, a black cat), and is trying to work from the inside to get Kiyoko her show back (or, at least, get her a part on Yuu-Chan's show).

Witch-Girl Yuu-chan

A former associate of Kiyoko's, her show now leads in to Pretty Akemi's. The two don't really get along (Yuu-chan feels somewhat threatened by the sheer power of Akemi's moe, which used to be her big selling point), but Yuu-chan's manager is very politically savvy and insists upon the two working together and putting on a facade of being best buddies. Of course, this means no talking with Kiyoko, or being seen with her, or anything involving her even tangentially, really. Yuu-chan is goodhearted, but a timid girl and a reluctant witch; she would much rather be a dancer or play the piano or something, but being the heiress to a thousand-year legacy of witchcraft is kind of hard to skive off of. On the upside, she doesn't have to deal with rush hour traffic, as she can just ride her broom wherever she's going.

Millennium Princess Mayumi

The first. The best. The ur-avatar of modern magical-girldom. Hailing from an alternate future timeline ruled by the evil AI that emerged from the Y2K bug, Mayumi traveled to our own timeline to obtain uncorrupted UNIX code that might be used to free her people from oppression. However, the wicked programs of Y2K followed her, and she resolved to save our timeline from the fate that befell hers! For years, she fought a guerrilla war, transferring from school to school, tracking down students and teachers corrupted by Y2K and debugging them. But she was only a single girl, and she could only do so much. The turning point came when she struck a deal with the NHK to serialize and publicize her story as a television show in order to raise awareness about good programming practices, and this more than anything allowed humanity to survive the millennium without suffering a hard-takeoff singularity. It also served to make her filthy fucking rich from the royalties and syndication rights, and once January 1, 2000 caused the Y2K bug's programs to suffer a fatal recursion loop, she financed an expedition back to her own timeline with the necessary tools and data to continue the fight. She has not been heard from since, but her legacy survives her, as reality magical girl television remains one of the hottest commodities in entertainment. All modern magical girls look up to her example (after all, without her, they'd all be stuck serving as shrine maidens, which is pretty boring and nowhere near as lucrative), and the holy grail of any magical girl's career is a chance to emulate one of the many plot lines she pioneered: the Future Daughter arc, the Inevitable Best Friend Betrayal arc, and so on.

Provisional Stats

Body 4	Mind 2
Coordination 4	Charm 3
Sense 3	Command 4

• Athletics (B/F/I) 3
  • Kiyoko is an athletic girl and has always excelled at sports, and just about any school team would be lucky to have her (especially the girls basketball team!), but her reputation as a self-obsessed glory hound has kept her from even trying out.
• Brawling (B/F) 4
• Endurance (B) 3
• Dodge 4
• Perception 3
• Demolitions 4
  • Thanks to her innate knowledge of destruction and years of experience with collateral damage, Kiyoko is an expert in the destruction of large objects and structures.
• Student (B) 3
• Single Combat Tactics 3
  • Despite several very popular team-up episodes, Kiyoko always really shines when she's on her own and doesn't have to worry about accidentally taking out her allies.
• Showy Magical Girl Bullshit (F/I) 4
  • Just because Kiyoko isn't popular anymore doesn't mean she still doesn't intimately know the myriad ways a magical girl entices the fans. From cheesy speeches to posing, she's a past master of it all. Too bad nobody cares anymore.
• Stability 4
• Intimidate 4
• Persuade (B) 1

• Source: Divine
  • Kiyoko is a human incarnation of force of renewal through destruction.
• Permissions: Power Theme (Destruction and Rebirth)

Base Will: 11

• Conviction: Ruin Pretty Akemi's Career (4)
  • Pretty Akemi took over Kiyoko's time slot, and Kiyoko blames her for it.
• Conviction: Get Her Old Time Slot Back (4)
  • Kiyoko has not handled the transition away from fame well, and desperately wants to get her fame and fortune back.
• Conviction: Save the World from Heat Death. (3)
  • Heat Death isn't exactly active in the supervillainy game anymore, but that doesn't mean Kiyoko can't still fight against the forces of universal stasis!

Powers

• Kiyoko Ballistic (Harm, 2/d) 8
• Kiyoko Mass Destruction (Harm +Area +Burn, 5/d) 4
• Kiyoko GIGANTIC (Size Shift +Booster, 6/d) 2hd
  • Hyperbody (Attached -2, 2/d) 5
• Immunity: Fire (3/d) 2hd
• Rebirth! In the fires of destruction! (Obvious -1) 2hd
  • Kiyoko's transformation sequence, perhaps the least subtle thing she does.
• Kiyoko Phoenix Revolution 2hd
  • Useful - Change Form (+2), Endless (+3), Obvious (-1), Exhausted (-3)
  • Useful - PHOENIX WINGSU (+2), Duration (+2), Booster (+2), Locational (Wings) -1, Attached to Change Form (-2), Self Only (-3)
  • Useful - PHOENIX RESILIENCE (+2), Engulf (+2), Permanent (+4), Always On (-1), Attached to Change Form (-2), Self Only (-3)
  • Attacks (+2), Permanent (+4), Always On (-1), Touch Only (-2), Attached to Change Form (-2)

Complication: Nobody cares. If Kiyoko saves the day, she gets guff for being a showoff. If she wrecks something in the process of saving the day, she gets the blame for it. She gets none of the slack normally cut a magical girl on the job.

Complication: Height Complex. Kiyoko dwells on the focus group results regarding boys in her age range. Specifically, the part about her not being cute because she's too tall. As a result, she tends to get flustered around the rare guy that is actually taller than her, since she naturally equates this with him finding her cute.

Complication: Fan Dumb. Kiyoko's show got abysmal ratings and was canceled halfway through the third season. People in the industry say flippantly that nobody was watching, but this is untrue, for there remains a bastion of faith in Our Lady of Shock and Awe: the Kiyokotaku. Kiyoko is torn between gratitude that someone still appreciates her as a magical girl and the severe willies at the mountain of creepitude that every Kiyokotaku she's been unfortunate enough to run into thus far has represented.

Complication: Sworn Enemy. No, not Heat Death. MOE IDOL PRETTY AKEMI! She has ruined Kiyoko's life, and there will be no justice until the eyesore that is Akemi has been removed from this world. Or at least smeared in every Japanese gossip rag still in print to the point where the network offers Kiyoko her show back.

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