Faustein Kuroyakushi

Quirks:

Attire:

Clothing:
Faustein prefers to keep his attire preferences as simple and practical as possible, although he does sometimes give in to flights of fancy to indulge his flair for the dramatic. So, at home by himself, he usually just wears a muscle tee of some shade of color along with PJs of some color (never pink though because he hates that color). At home, he usually doesn’t bother with footwear, but if pressed to wear some, he would go for simple geta shoes. If at home, but entertaining guests, then of course, he would wear a semi-formal long-sleeved shirt with a traditional ballooning hakama (modified to able to equip a tactical utility belt) with the usual male undergarments along with the same geta shoes for footwear.

When out and about, but not at work, he usually prefers to don a simple semi-formal t-shirt and tactical utility belt equipped cargo shorts of some color along with the usual male undergarments (none of them being pink). For footwear in this situation, he prefers to use standard long tabi boots of some color (except pink). When out and about at work, either at his profession as a physician-scientist or just taking on client requests, over the usual male undergarments, he wears his formal work outfit, that being a high collar, below knee length doctor’s white coat with long sleeved formal white shirt of some color and a crimson red colored necktie. Below that, he wears a tactical utility belt equipped, dark colored formal pants and for footwear, he wears formal patent leather, black or brown western style shoes. This ensemble is completed by the presence of a pair of disposable white surgical gloves, and when necessary, a high tech face mask as well.

For any other situation, he dresses as the occasion or environment demands of him (e.g. swim trunks at a swimming pool, weather appropriate clothing in accordance to the seasons, a 3- piece tuxedo and formal black shoes for really formal events, etc.). While traveling, he can usually be seen his usual work outfit and maybe a thick white trench coat over it and a white fedora with a dark blue silk band around the top on his head. Needless to say, in addition to the abovementioned attire, he also always has whatever armor, weapons, and other accessories are necessary for his life on the seas as a pirate, all of them being themed to correlate to his profession as a physician-scientist.

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Accessories:
- A reinforced, durable, pale yellow windflower light silk scarf around his neck

- An ivory white head piece known kenseikan, denoting his family's elevated social status

- A badge pinned just below his shirt collar depicting the equation “E = MC2”

- Metal stud earring in his right ear

- Mirrored lab goggles worn over his face

- Tactical load bearing equipment pouches attached to various parts of his standard attire. These contain not only various medical and surgical tools (throwing needles, bottles of pills, small scalpels, bandages, suturing thread reels, etc.), but also typical military weaponry (smoke bombs, caltrops, bullets, etc.)

- Weapon sheaths (there is one large version slung across his back which holds his scalpel naginata, and the other is a smaller one slung across his left hip which holds his cane sword).

Physique:

Faustein is 5' 7" tall, weighs in at 140 lb., and has a medium-heavy bone structure. His skin is very pale and maybe even somewhat sallow in appearance. Due to the constant traveling he does and the intermittent exposure to the elements as well as the various substances he deals with in his practice as a physician-scientist, his skin is also very coarse and dry to the touch. He has very thick, coarse, and dry hair which is mostly white at the base and middle, but melds into forest green towards the upper half. He never bothers to keep it tamed due to his inherently lazy nature and also because it tends to get disheveled anyway over the course of his research. He has a generally ovoid head like any other regular human. He also has some distinctive facial features such as: gaunt cheeks with high-set cheekbones, a high and wide forehead, as well as thin, roughly almond shaped eyes with the usual round pupils and bright, haunting, crimson red irides. These always have prominent dark circles under them, which are the signs of marked sleep deprivation. Then, there are his thin, firm lips which are always displaying a dark discoloration and upon which are always displaying an arrogantly smug smirk.

He has a slender, slightly longer than normal neck with a very prominent Adam's apple. His back and shoulders are broad and well developed with lean, well defined, clearly visible musculature due to his own basic physical conditioning and also because he often has to exert himself physically during his travels and research. All across his torso, both the front and back aspects, he has no more than an ounce of fat anywhere since he almost constantly forgets to maintain a proper meal schedule, especially when he is wrapped up in one of his long-term research projects. His upper limbs are of average length and just like the rest of his body, they too possess lean, well defined musculature. Due to his medium-heavy set bone structure, his wrists are slightly larger than normal and his hands are also larger and more muscular than average too due to the near constant use in his various physical exertions. In contrast, however, his fingers are longer than average and have a rather skeletal look to them.

He has a narrow waist and hips, again due to the veritable lack of body fat, especially the abdominal type. Below, he has lower limbs which are longer than average and like the rest of him, his lower limbs also have not more than an ounce of fat anywhere. As a result, like everywhere else on him, his lower limb musculature is also clearly visible and well defined, but also due to the effect of his physical exertions and specific training as well. Like his wrists, due to his medium heavy bone structure, his ankles are also slightly bigger than average as are his feet. However, like his fingers, his toes are also quite spindly in appearance. The rest of him is similarly well endowed due to the many genetic gifts he has inherited from both sides of his family.

All of the aforesaid physical characteristics are actually organometallic in nature due to him being a full cyborg. Despite this, to any uninitiated onlooker, he would look like a mere half cyborg and not the full kind which is his actual identity. This is because only certain parts of him are covered by skin. Namely; the majority of his face (80%), and the left half of his body minus the left side of his pectoral region is covered by skin. Everything else aka the remaining 20% of his face, the right side of his pectoral region, as well as the entirety of the right side of the rest of his body lack any skin coverage, thus giving this false impression. The left side of his body has his normal skin tone, but since both of his pectorals as well as the entire right side of his body are completely uncovered, this presents a starkly different look when compared to his left side as attested to by the following details.

First, the remaining 20% of his face, both of his pectorals as well as the rest of the right side of his body possess a somewhat dull, steel-gray hue. Second, from head to toe, there are various obviously mechanical parts such as slender, yellow colored conduit pipes and wire bundles which provide channels from one each component to the next, a series of complex robotic joints, bolts and screws as well as other such gadgets holding the whole assembly together. Third, his right temple has a large, inbuilt, bolt screw-like device connected to a mechanism inside his cyborg brain. He turns this whenever he needs to tune out distractions and/or focus his thoughts. The mechanism inside produces eerie clicking noises whenever turned, the sounds resembling a multitude of gears grinding against each other. The bolt screw’s head is visible on the right side of his head while the tip juts out on the left side. Of course, on the left side, due to the positioning of his hair, the tip of this bolt screw is well hidden from sight. Last but not least, there is a hidden compartment built into his pectoral area. This houses the “Colark Engiactor” which is a device of his own design and which is the power source for his organometallic chassis, whether for offensive, defensive, or even supplementary purposes.

Psyche:

Stein is a stereotypical mad scientist in thought, word, and deed and his various personality traits apply as much in battle as they do outside it. Due to his insatiable curiosity, he pursues knowledge at any cost and views the whole world and everything in it, including himself not as individuals worthy of respect and care, but rather merely as guinea pigs to use in this eternal quest for knowledge. As if this were not bad enough, he blatantly disregards the personal rights of others (especially his specimens and/or research volunteers) and brooks no complaints from them, either about his research or the methodology that goes into it. This already reprehensible aspect of him is exacerbated even more by his lack of any modicum of inhibitions or qualms of any kind which could possibly regulate the methodology of his quest for knowledge.

Due to the rigorous demands and high focus his research and work as a physician-scientist needs and has, he is strictly objective almost all the time and is almost impervious to most sentiments, being moved to act only by the cold logic of a situation or by his desire for knowledge. In keeping with this strictly objective POV, his face looks stern, distant, and inscrutably emotionless almost all the time. That said, he is very protective and is wholly invested in his research and so, he usually tends to be very reclusive and reticent about his work. He also doesn’t trust others very much and believes everyone around him is out to take his beloved research away from him. So, he tends to have no allegiance to anyone or anything but himself…and of course, his pets/companions since they are his helpers and guardians. Toward anyone else, especially if he knows for certain that they are weaker/less capable than himself, he has an insufferable superiority complex which often gets him into trouble with them since it makes him act in a condescending manner towards them. The other side effect of this superiority complex he has is that his lips are always twisted into a wide, irritatingly smug, arrogant smirk.

To make things worse, he is also extremely manipulative of others, and this includes his pets/companions as well as allies and of course, his enemies and opponents too. Of course, in this former case, he does tend to ease up a little on his manipulative aspect because he knows full well that for his plans to truly succeed, he needs to keep it around for the aforementioned reasons. Even though he has a superiority complex, he realizes that neither him nor anything or anyone else in the world is perfect. In fact, he actually abhors the concept of perfection and ridicules anyone and anything which claims to be perfect since to him, perfection is nothing more than a stagnant state which doesn’t allow for any sort of improvement or progress. Finally, he has no reverence for any sort of religion whatsoever and puts all of his faith is the power of science. As a result, he has no qualms experimenting on even the holiest of holy beings or the vilest of the denizens of the dark or anything in between those two extremes of the creature spectrum.

To his credit though, despite having all these defects, he does also have some saving graces, though some may consider these to be a blessing and a curse simultaneously. The first is his determination which lets him persevere diligently and see each of his research projects till the end, for better or worse. However, this can also be a drawback since, at the same time, it does also make him quite headstrong and stubborn as a result of which, he can be quite intractable to any attempts to sway him toward any path other than the one he sees lying before him. Then, there is his objectivity of view and his ability to stay emotionally detached regardless of whatever may be going on around him. While this does help him keep a calm and clear mind in all but the most trying of situations, it also means he is utterly oblivious to the emotional needs of others. This is especially apparent in his asexual and unromantic behavior in all situations and also his usually inscrutable face bearing a very apparent clueless expression in these emotional situations.

Besides this, he is quite passionate, driven, and focused when he is hooked and these give him the advantage of being able to avoid many common distractions which may otherwise impede his research. However, it can also be a negative thing because it does cause him to ignore everything else, like the basic everyday things like personal maintenance, for example. In addition to this, he prefers to be as efficient as possible in thought, word, and deed and this is a boon since it allows him to delegate resources properly to where they are needed and saves time which he can then spend on other projects or studies, but it also makes him speak very bluntly since, to him, hiding the truth behind any kind of façade just to make it palatable to his audience is a waste of effort. Naturally, this tends to get him into trouble with others, especially those among his audience who may take issue with his lack of verbal filters.

Then, there is his tendency to warn people of potential dangers when he sees them coming, but if it is a specimen which intrigues him enough to want it, he has no qualms in lying and doing whatever he has to acquire said specimen, even though his actions may cost him and his allies a crucial victory or even if doing so would lead to massive casualties on his side. If the situation demands it, he would even cut down an ally just to get to said rare specimen. Finally, there is his innovativeness as well as his cerebral and eccentric nature. His innovative side and his cerebral nature do give him the ability to solve most if not all the problems he may face, but they also give him that insatiable curiosity which causes him to want to take apart and analyze everything and everyone around him if they happen to intrigue him. This tendency to want to analyze everything when combined with his innately observant aspect of his nature leads him to lurk about observing everyone and everything around him in order to glean any valuable intelligence about them which he can put to some use or another and so, he can notice things most tend to overlook in their surroundings. An interesting side effect of this is that he tends to show up when someone least expects him to in a given situation which often leads to them being either greatly startled (if they have decent mental resilience), beating him senseless (if they be prone to violence), or running away screaming about ultra-creepy, uber-mad physician-scientists (if they are particularly susceptible to fear or surprise).

Besides this, there is the cautious aspect of his nature which he now has because he not only inherited it from his parents, but also trained steadily since childhood. This means he never even enters into an area or situation without researching it thorough through remote means, whether it’s by sending his pet/companion ahead of him to survey and then report back, planting hidden surveillance devices on one of his purported allies, or any number of other ways as well. He usually ensures that he at least has a handful of main action plans, a handful of backup plans to handle common contingencies, and escape plans for the worst-case scenarios. This cautious nature combined with his innately super tier curiosity causes him to use any and all situations he enters as a series of field tests for any new techniques or gadgets or anything else he is developing, with both him and any opponents/enemies acting as the guinea pigs.

He tends to keep his distance from his opponents while gleaning information on them which he then puts to use to slowly but surely overwhelm them over the course of the confrontation. Of course, if it means getting his hands on some exciting source of new or otherwise unfamiliar knowledge, this cautious aspect of him tends to take a backseat, though he will still try to maintain some baseline version of it even when hunting said knowledge. Add to this his inherently lazy nature and the result is that he tends to be very inertial as well, which may be good for helping him keep a low profile when needed, but it also means if such a mood does overtake him, there is virtually no one in the world who can convince him to get going with whatever they want him to do for them.

Finally, there is his extreme, unbridled eccentricity which, though beneficial in that nobody who is willing to hang out with him would be assured of never getting bored and any potential enemies can never quite accurately predict his next move. This can also be quite the obstacle in his interpersonal relationships since he is not only highly unconventional, but also prone to doing things which others find rather disconcerting in nature. It is also quite the major impediment because it makes him a very difficult subordinate since any authority figures tend to have trouble accepting his highly whimsical behavior. This eccentricity extends to his practice as a physician-scientist as well and when combined with his lack of moral compass, means he usually resorts to highly unorthodox treatment methods which, though remarkably effective…may just come with some unsavory side-effects as well for any patient that puts themselves under his care.

The last effect of this eccentric side of him is that he occasionally tends to behave in a very out of character way, which may throw some for quite the surprising loop (e.g. randomly fluffing some particularly fluffy creature or being when they least expect it, bursting out into a maniacal laugh like some stereotypical mad scientist/supervillain when one of his long term, particularly difficult research projects comes to fruition or when he discovers something new to him, making unorthodox and impromptu changes to any battle strategy or even scrapping it entirely mid battle, etc.)

Nascence, Omens of a Tumultuous Future:

Like with anyone else, Faustein Kuroyakushi’s tale begins with that of his parents, a man named “Odin Faustein” and a woman named “Izanami Kuroyakushi”. Odin was a native of O’Hara Island in West Blue while Izanami hailed from Drum Island in the Paradise area of the Grand Line. The two met several years ago in O’Hara during a science symposium and thus, got increasingly entangled with each other after a series of misunderstandings and strange encounters despite being polar opposites. Upon noticing this, their respective families decided to unite them in a political marriage which then led to an alliance between the two sides.

Following their union, Odin and Izanami had settled down in his home island, O’Hara, and eventually got named as aides to the Council of Scholars which oversaw the goings-on in this scholastic Eden. In due course, their only child, “Faustein Kuroyakushi”, was born into the world and became the sole heir to the future leadership position of the overall alliance. It would have been a completely joyous occasion, were it not for the fact that the day was about to be marred by some inexplicable events. Of course, it had started out in a relatively innocuous manner as had the several days before it. Izanami had been laying in her assigned hospital bed, bossing Odin around while enjoying the warm sunbeams and gentle zephyr streaming through the open windows

“Odin, be a dear and get me that water bottle over there…Odin, my feet need a massage, so would you be so kind as to oblige me?”

Odin, on the other hand, had been looking longingly at the grassy meadows outside the hospital and at little he could see of the white clouds that were drifting along in the sky above, all the while grumbling and complaining under his breath as he went about assisting her

“…Tch…troublesome woman…preventing me from indulging my cloud gazing…I mean…the water bottle is right next to her…and she could just as well as her nurse assistant to do the massage…”

All in all, despite the activity going on, it was fairly peaceful and quiet, barring the usual noises of the everyday passersby. Unbeknownst to them, however, the day would soon change for the worse and that too, in particularly startling manner. It all began slowly enough, for at first, the only omens of trouble being the wind outside which had become just a little faster than it was before. In response, the hospital staff had set about closing all the windows of Izanami’s hospital room. Good thing they did too because after that, it had just kept on worsening at every turn. The sky above had darkened rather ominously due to the slowly but surely gathering thunderclouds. As if that were not bad enough, the winds had begun to pick up even more speed, and had started to rustle the leaves of the trees which they passed through, causing a disconcerting howling noise. Then towards the evening of that day, deafening peals of thunder had begun to issue from the thunderclouds that had been blanketing the sky for some time by that point. This was followed by a sudden downpour of rain which sent everyone unlucky enough to be outside running for shelter.

There were even a few lightning strikes which had managed to char the trees as well as the ground upon impact. Finally, at the exact moment of his birth, the unnerving milieu that had been developing up till then had been exacerbated even further by the piercing, hauntingly melancholic howls of all the dogs in the area as well as the wolves in the nearby forests which could be heard clearly by all the townsfolk in the area. Now, Izanami and Odin as well as their hospital assistants were people of science and so, were not usually given to superstitious fear and hysteria, but all the same; the surreal coincidence of all these portents did manage to unsettle them to some degree. To their surprise, however, once they had hit their climax, these events died down just as quickly as they had started up earlier that day, leaving everyone who witnessed them wondering about the reason for their unexpected occurrence. Thus, begins the saga of Faustein Kuroyakushi whose future was seemingly presaged to be turbulent by mother nature herself.

Early Years, Seeds of Madness:

Despite the ominous circumstances of his birth, Faustein had proved to be a promising enough prospect right from childhood since he had seemingly inherited a great many genetic gifts from both sides of the family. These included traits like the remarkable determination and strength of will which Izanami was known for, the perspicacity which made Odin stand out among his peerage, as well as the combined intellectual prowess and curious natures of both Odin and Izanami. This could be attested to by his fascination with the various sciences and above all, his insatiably curious, questioning nature. Of course, he did play with his fellow children as would any other kid. However, when he wasn’t busy on his play dates or didn’t have any homework from school, he would be tinkering constantly with architecture related toys or attempting to perform experiments, which albeit simple were fascinating behold, at least to him. These were quite varied, ranging from studying the effects of focusing the sun’s rays through a magnifying hand lens, to attempts at magnetizing simple objects such as metal needles to make them act as compasses, to making simple wind musical instrument by using bottles with differing levels of liquid inside and anything in between.

On top of that, he constantly asked his parents about the world around him…about why the sky looked blue, about the reasons for the differences between the various races in the world, about why the sun and clouds looked the way they did, and so on. All of these were fairly unobjectionable, but as time went on, his parents were startled to realize that there was a darker, more unnerving side to his many attempts at scientific inquiry which was also driven by the same childlike curiosity which fueled his more acceptable studies. For instance, with the same fascinated, curious look on his face which was always present when he was focusing sunbeams through a lens to burn holes in paper, he would also be trying to do the same with small insects, especially focusing on their wings.

Why you ask? Well, the idea behind that was to study the effects this would have on their flight capacity. On other occasions, with the same childlike enthusiasm with which he built simple constructs out of building blocks, he would undertake projects such as pinning small amphibians and trying to vivisect them to study their innards before death. Then, he would kill them, dissect them, and study their innards and general bodies after death. Needless to say, whenever they saw this side of him, they were quick to suppress it as best they could, but nevertheless, it had worried them greatly since they couldn’t monitor him at all times due to their work.

So, they had decided to try to steer him onto the proper path of scientific inquiry by devising a series of private tutoring sessions and other interactive programs through the use of their connections. Of course, they didn’t want to force it on him, so they broached the topic with him on his 12th birthday

“You enjoy learning about the world through the lens of science, right son?”

To that, he had replied in the affirmative, albeit without actually raising his eyes from the simple robot he had been in the process of building from the kit they had gotten him for his birthday

“Of course!! Science is the most intriguing activity I can possibly imagine doing with my time!! It brings me great joy!!”

Naturally, both Odin and Izanami were thrilled to hear a response in the affirmative, and so they had pressed on, emboldened by this successful start

“In that case, how would you like to sign on with the private tutoring program we have arranged for you? You can have a lot more access to a lot more resources for learning if you do, Faust.”

However, much to their surprise, he had stubbornly resisted their efforts to fit him into their envisioned agenda since he wanted to enjoy his childhood like other regular kids. Realizing that they wouldn’t be able to convince him to reconsider, his parents decided to let him do as he pleased as they were confident in the fact that sooner or later he would learn about the dark side to the world around him, which would in turn, bring him back to them so that they could enact their original plan for him.

He did enjoy doing the things that other kids normally did for quite a while. Whenever they had time and he had a considerable amount of vacation time, his parents took him on camping trips in various locales in and around O’Hara. They did this mainly to spend time bonding as a family, with the secondary objective of instructing young Faust in the ways of wilderness survival. Naturally, this was so that he wouldn’t be caught flatfooted without recourse at any point in the future. In this manner, time marched on for them until finally he came to the third stage of his formal education and entered his teenage years (around 14 or 15 years of age). It was during these years that he became acquainted with the darker side of those whom he had considered his friends up until then. Up to that point, things were fairly calm, or at least they seemed to be on the surface. That all changed on one fateful day when he had been running late to his usual meet up with his buddies. When he had finally managed to arrive, they were already there and had started playing without him. If that was all they had done, it would have been fine, but he could overhear some weird things being said, so he hid in the bushes nearby and decided to do some recon

“You know…this game is so much easier when we use Faust’s items. It’s a good thing we have him as a friend, huh?”

One of them had said, but then another piped up while shaking his head

“Friend? Pfft…give me a break, dude…the only reason we pretend to be friends with that nerd is so we can get him to give us these cool items…they would have been near impossible to get on our own, yanno?”

The other two laughed raucously while nodding at this remark

“You said it! There’s also the fact that he lets us copy off him whenever homework checking time rolls around…those assignments would be such a pain to do otherwise, man!!”

As he listened to these and other such comments they had been making because they thought he wasn’t there infuriated him. However, he was taught never to give in to his emotions, so he suppressed his rage with a forceful effort of will and walked off back home, swearing to himself

Those godforsaken, insufferable twits…all this time, their amicable behavior towards me has just been a charade…I can’t…believe this…I must be more careful henceforth…

That wasn’t the end of his troubles though, since more was to follow the next day. The next few days at his school were the days of the science fair where the student body would present their projects for all to see in a sort of show and tell session. He had been partnered with one particular girl from his class since she had asked him and he agreed since she had been friendly and nice towards him till then. She had brought on with her two of her guy friends who happened to be his classmates as well. They had finished the project well in time for the fair even though Faust had been the only one to do any really significant work on it. He didn’t mind that, since he considered them all his friends. Finally, it came time for them to go on stage, but due to the last-minute prep he wanted to do, he had come late to the event. So, he had begun to make his way through the crowd when the emcee called his team up on stage. To his surprise, they introduced the project in a far different manner than what they had agreed on prior to the event

“Thank you all for coming to see our presentation, it was hard, but by pooling the skills we all had, we were able to pull off this project of our successfully. Please enjoy the demonstration, folks.”

He was aghast that their temerity, but alas nobody would believe his words at this stage

Curses! Again?! Isn’t it enough that I have been betrayed once already?! Now these morons and their vapid bimbo of a donna have stolen what has essentially my work!! Why?! Why must I have to suffer like this?! I shall never again trust…in anyone!! I shall never again bother with such trivialities as friendship or emotion!! I swear it!! Someday…someday, I shall make all these fools pay for crossing me in this manner!!

He thought, furious at having been betrayed not once but twice in one week. As the event was already underway, he could not confront them about this matter. So, he let it drop and made his exit from the school grounds, unnoticed…save for by the security, but he convinced them to let him go by telling them he had been feeling terribly sick. On the way home, he was lost in his thoughts about how to wreak vengeance on them for their affront and so was not as aware of his surroundings as he usually would be on a daily basis. This resulted in him running into a pack of stray dogs which happened to be roaming on that road.

He had not done anything to them, but regardless, they had attacked him, and quite viciously at that. Fortunately, he was able to narrowly make his escape due to a guardsman coming to his rescue and bringing him back home to his parents. Once back home, he had been patched up by his worried parents, and so recovered in time. Alas, the wounds he had suffered ran much deeper and their effects would last much longer and be far more impactful than any of them could have imagined at that stage in his life. The following several years would soon make this fact painfully clear to not only him, but his parents and everyone else around him as well.

Late Teens, Gazing into the Abyss 1:

Needless to say, he was quite broken up about this aforesaid series of traumatic events. That said, he didn’t devise any way of retribution to unleash upon them, but only because he couldn’t, at that stage anyway. Instead, he chose to simply cut them all off rather unceremoniously, without any manner of preamble or warning. He even went so far as to request a transfer to a completely new school avoid repetition of these events ever again. He had even brought the topic of the private tutoring one day.

“I would like to take you both up on that earlier offer if it’s still available…”

His parents had been surprised, for they didn’t think he would come around that soon, but regardless of that, they were overjoyed to hear this from him. They did check by asking him about it

“Son, are you sure about this? Maybe you can make new, better friends at this new school...”

He had denied that emphatically, but to his credit at least, he did have the courtesy to explain his reasoning

“That is one thing that I will never again do, if I can help it!! Such things as friends, emotions, relationships are all useless burdens which only distract one from their true purpose!! Henceforth, I shall devote my life to the pursuit of knowledge and nothing else!!”

With that, they had been convinced and set about doing the transfer paperwork and handling other relevant details. Once at his new school, in accordance with his promise to himself and his declaration to his parents, he made doubly sure to stave off all attempts by anyone at connecting with him. He kept to himself, and immersed himself completely in his studies with the result that, by the end of the third stage of his academic journey, aka graduation day, he was ranked second highest among the crème de la crème of the student body. Of course, even with all this isolation from social life and immersion in academia, he didn't give up on his hobbies. No, if anything, he threw himself headlong into those as well, especially the involving his fascination with strategy and war games and in addition, his obsession with Wano Country's famous entertainment avenues, such as certain comics and shows. Sure, this had seemed like a good thing to all who knew him…after all, superlative intellectual achievements were something to be proud of, right?

In his case, while that was true, the other darker side to his desire for knowledge had also grown much stronger and now, it was even more warped than before due to his recent negative experiences. The fact that he was being gradually inducted into the ways of his family’s secret technomedical arts had only served to exacerbate the growth of this darker side ever further. Finally, it had consumed him entirely and became an irresistible addiction to him, akin to any mind-affecting recreational drug. This was not immediately apparent of course, since he had just entered the 4th level of his academic journey and had been making a name for himself as before, just like any of the many overachieving, budding scholars who could be found around O’Hara. So, his public life seemed to be pretty uneventful, as he went along from one year to the next since he primarily interacted with his professors and if need be with the other staff at the institution while keeping his fellow students at arms-length. During this time, his publicly known research was intriguing, but overall there was nothing too alarming in its legality or ethical ramifications.

Away from the public eye though, as he progressed from 1st to the 4th year, he had started to conduct several types of more unsavory research projects and experiments, ones that involved modification of living specimens, obviously without their consent. Naturally, he had also begun to use himself as a guinea pig whenever the situation demanded it. The main focus of these extracurricular studies was the cybertechnological modification of a variety of specimens because his objective was to someday convert himself into a full cyborg. This was merely a stepping stone to him though, intended to grant him the sort of enduring body and lifespan that he would need to pursue his ultimate goal of acquiring all the knowledge about all things in the universe around him. At first, he had managed to keep this work of his well camouflaged behind the veil of his public persona by limiting his specimens to the animals he could find in and around O’Hara. Later on, as the progressive diminution of the wild fauna of O’Hara had forced him to resort to co-opting the pets of the people in his neighborhood and elsewhere on the island, this veil was eventually torn aside. Consequently, people had started to become suspicious of his activities and had started to scrutinize his behavior.

Thanks to his foresight and precautions, even though they were suspicious of him, they couldn’t really link any solid, damning evidence back to him. Therefore, they had thought it best to bring it up with Odin and Izanami instead. As could be expected, when this unsettling account came to their notice, they had a hard time accepting the allegations being leveled at Faust, not only because of their faith in him; but also due to the apparent lack of incontrovertible evidence that could be traced back to him. His noticeably superlative performance in academic circles as well as the significance of the papers he had co-authored with his professors had only compounded this initial disbelief. Consequently, they had managed to convince both themselves as well as those who had accosted them to drop the issue for the time being. Nonetheless, there was still that small niggling doubt in the back of their minds about him due to their prior memories of seeing his dark side from when he was a child. As a result, they had decided to simply observe him closely without alerting him.

Late Teens, Gazing into the Abyss 2:

For several months after this meeting, they had him under surveillance, but couldn’t find anything of significance to their quest. Sadly, at least for Faust, just as they were planning to culminate their investigation into the rumors, their first and only definitive trail of evidence had emerged at last. This happened during the summer just before last year of the 4th stage of his formal schooling, when he was around 21 years old. They had managed to connect the dots and caught him in the act, just as he was about to enter the final phases of his cyborg creation research. Upon noticing the sounds of their entry into his secret lab, he had turned around and gazed at them rather impassively while remarking

“Congratulations, it looks like you’ve finally managed to find me out…what a pity…”

All the while he had not stopped tinkering with his latest research specimen, namely the pet cat of their neighbor which had gone missing under mysterious circumstances. He had been able to successfully replace its four limbs with their cybertechnological counterparts just mere minutes prior to their discovery of him. This temerity of his shocked them, though not as much as had the sight of his experimental subject, the very pet cat which their neighbors had reported missing several months earlier.

“What’s the meaning of this, Faust?!”

Odin had demanded of him, but instead of replying to the point; Faust merely smirked and mused nonchalantly while his eyes were transfixed upon the sight of his parents

“I had set up so many booby traps and alarms to alert me to any unwanted intrusion…so many in fact I had thought I would be warned well in advance…I should have known you two would be able to get past them all…”

As they watched, his eyes narrowed and he uttered a chuckle which had a chillingly calm, steely edge to it. This had surprised them since they didn’t think he was capable of such a thing, but they shook it off and re-focused their attention on him. Izanami, resumed their conversation first

“In the recent several months, many of the fauna of this island have started to disappear under some rather mysterious circumstances…and this travesty has been only compounded by the incidents of all the neighbor’s pets vanishing with nary a trace or explanation…”

Here, she had paused for effect and then continued a few seconds later

“Furthermore, we have also received some especially strange reports regarding your ever more inexplicable behavior during these past several months…”

As she spoke, both Izanami and Odin’s disappointment and sadness at witnessing Faust’s questionable activities became more markedly apparent by the minute. Finally, Odin spoke up again, this time pleading with him while at the same time asking

“How could you, a student with such a bright future…our scion, the future leader of the clan…what could have possessed you to perpetrate such a reprehensible crime?”

To this, he offered no defense, but rather just stared at them with an impassive smirk on his face. Thus, his parents were finally forced to accept this bitter truth as it confirmed their suspicions at last. This led once again to anger on their part due to which they started interrogating aggressively again while gesturing to what little they could see of the specimen behind him

“Faust…so it was you after all…speak!! What were you up to here during these past several months?!”

He glanced back at the barely living, cyborg cat on the surgery table and then turned his gaze unfazed back toward them

“I guess the cat’s out of the bag now…I suppose it’s futile to say otherwise at this stage of the game…”

He paused dramatically before stretching his arms out and gestured towards the many specimen stasis chambers, tesla coils, formalin baths, and other such aspects of his lab and continued

“I have been working on developing a way to convert living beings into cyborgs!! Isn’t it marvelous?!”

Upon hearing this, his mother was temporarily stupefied, partly due to the horror and partly due to not being able to understand why their son would ever even contemplate dabbling in such atrocious research, let alone undertake it. His father had also experienced such emotion, but fortunately, he had recovered first. So, he responded while closing his eyes

“I see, so it is the forbidden aspects of our technomedical arts which you are after…”

His mother had recovered by then and with tears visible in her eyes, she lamented

“You…have sacrificed all of these poor animals…just for that, Faust? This is truly a sad sight to behold, son…”

Late Teens, Gazing into the Abyss 3:

His father had picked up the conversation at that point since his mother had broken down to silent tears and had been weeping on his shoulder by then

“What exactly do you hope to acquire by doing this?! Did you not realize that this is something that we mortals must never attempt?!”

As he heard his father reprimand him in this manner, Faust had felt amusement at the irony of the situation, and that had elicited the same blood-curdling laugh from earlier, after which he retorted

“You dub my work as being reprehensible? You say that these are deep and dark waters in which we humans must never explore? Then tell me, my dear father, what do you have to say to the incontrovertible fact that in the past, there have been researchers who have not only delved into such research as I am, but have committed far worse sins in the name of scientific progress?

He paused there to collect his thoughts before resuming his rejoinder

“Besides that, were you not the ones who have always been telling me that, for the sake of scientific progress, some sacrifices are veritably requisite?! More to the point though, to answer your query, I want to achieve everything there is!!”

His father had been silent since he truly had no comeback to Faust’s remarks, so instead he interrupted him there with another question

“Everything, you say? You had better elaborate this instant!”

Faust had sighed when he heard the demanding tone of his father’s voice, but nevertheless he obliged

“My ultimate objective is to procure all the knowledge about all the beings and phenomena in this world of ours…and in doing so, gain the truest and highest level of understanding possible! Think about it, how did we get the color green? The answer, someone took that first bold step of consciously mixing yellow and blue! The result then became labeled as the color green. My aim is to accomplish something akin to this, for just as there are an innumerable variety of colors in this world, so too is it the case for knowledge! In my case, however, blue is the experimental hypothesis, yellow is the experimental method, and green is the data or knowledge that results from this combination. The world reveals such quintessential truths only to those who are willing and able to dedicate their entire lives to this quest!!”

His face took on a more somber expression at this point and sighed before continuing explaining

“Alas…such a monumental endeavor would require several years at the very least, but there are not enough years in even the longest of lives, you understand…it’s due to the innate weakness of the mortal coil, of these organic systems we term as “the human body””

His father who had been silently enduring having to listen to this monologue now spoke up again

“In short…what you are implying is that…”

He had to stop there since the ramifications were too much for him to bear, but Faust completed that thought for him

“Yes, father, that is exactly what I am hinting at here!! I am on a quest to obtain a body which will endure not only the demands of my research, but also the ravages of time, the onslaught of disease, and of course; the eventuality of a natural demise!! Put simply, I want to eventually become a complete cyborg!!”

The exhilaration he had felt at that moment was far too great for him to resist, and consequently his manner which had been calm and composed until then, now devolved into maniacal, unbridled laughter making him seem like some sort of stereotypical mad scientist, if the sight of his research had not already done so, that is. This was the breaking point for both Odin and Izanami, for they had finally had enough of Faust’s delusions of grandeur and ominous ambition. So, they took him into custody, but not before he was able to put up quite the herculean struggle. After that, they had him shipped off to Drum Island which was the abode of Izanami’s side of the family, the leaders of which were famous for their unusually strict attitudes towards everything. The hope was that they would be able to reform Faust and suppress this dark side of his from growing any further. This was how the fourth stage of his schooling had concluded and was the beginning of the fifth and final stage of his higher education.

Late Young Adulthood, Aftermath:

His parents had expedited the process of his transfer to Drum Island and even took care of all the necessary paperwork on their own since they were only too happy to see him go there. In this manner, he had been shipped off to Drum Island and was allowed to enter one of the prestigious universities there, one that dealt with further instruction in the technomedical arts, of course. However, he was not left to his own devices and allowed to stay in the dorms owned by the institution. In fact, right after he had landed in Drum Island, he was picked up by his maternal grandparents and brought to their clan compound where he was practically put under house arrest whenever he was not attending his university. While under this house arrest, he was relentlessly bombarded with what had seemed like incessant lecturing from said grandparents. The topics, of course, covered everything from the essence of morality to the importance of being law abiding to the significance of compassion for one’s fellow living beings and everything in between.

Needless to say, he didn’t take kindly to this treatment which felt like utter torment to him. Normally, he would have been able to shrug this off and remain impassive, but he was still a human. So, he was susceptible to the same human foible of emotion when pressed too much, which was why their treatment had started to incense him. To his chagrin, though, he was stuck that way for the foreseeable future and nothing he did or said would be changing that anytime soon. As a result, over the next 5 years for which he was under the tutelage and guidance of the institution which he had joined after coming to Drum Island, he was all too enthusiastic to get away from his maternal grandparents and to the haven of the university campus. Like always, he had once again made a name for himself in these academic circles as well, but contrary to his parent’s expectations, his dark side didn’t get suppressed at all. Actually, all the unending prattle he had heard from his maternal grandparents and the irritation it had caused over the past 5 years had only caused its amplification and had further deepened its overall hold on him.

This was aggravated even further by the interactions he had with the pirate crews many of which he had seen since they usually came there to get treated for any ailments that couldn’t be dealt with by their own ship doctor. He had seen and heard a great many details about how free they were to roam about while living life on their own terms, unbound to anyone but themselves, of how they didn’t have to bother with any kind of silly morals or laws if they didn’t want to, and other such things. This in turn, had made him envious of their life of apparently total freedom and made him start taking a keen interest in everything related to being a pirate. Along the way, during these 5 years, he had even managed to convince some of the weapon masters among his pirate patients to instruct him in the art of using polearms, specifically a naginata and cane swords since he had always been fascinated with them from a young age. Apart from picking up a naginata and sword wielding skill, he had also managed to involve himself in a few other things as well. The foremost of these was of course, his involvement in more and more complex research. The topic was obviously cyborg creation, since he had been eager to pick up his work which had been so rudely interrupted back in his birthplace, O’Hara Island. Apart from that, he has also been taught in great detail about the strategy, tactics, and all the closely associated skills as well, so he had come to be a decent tactician and strategist as well.

Due to this, he had ultimately managed to convert his entire body into that of a cyborg with the help of a few of his more eccentric professors, at least those of them that had no qualms about the questionable nature of his research. Despite this success, since he had run out of funding and could not procure more, he was not able to cover more than half of his body with artificial skin. Hence, the remaining ¼ of his face and the entirety of the right half of his body had the visual appearance of a cyborg whereas his left half was human in appearance while still being cyborg underneath. This resounding success came with several downsides, the chief among these being even further diminution of his already dwindling degree of social interaction and of course, an inability to adhere to a consistently high degree of personal maintenance. This was because of how busy he had become by then, between his main profession as a budding physician-scientist on one side and his obsession with gain ever more knowledge through his research on various topics of interest to him. Thus, he had spent his days in Drum Island till the time of his graduation once more. By now, his maternal grandparents had given up on reforming him since he had proven too headstrong even for their strict methods. After graduation, he returned to O’Hara and on his 27th birthday, he announced his intent to become a pirate so that he could travel the world in search of the greatest mysteries it had to offer him.

Naturally, his parents were very surprised and very incensed by that since they had been expecting him to take over leadership of the alliance and of the two clans as well. However, they knew how recalcitrant he could be when he had his mind set on something that was of interest to him. So, they didn’t bother to waste any time and energy in trying to stop him. Since he didn’t want to part on such sour terms with them due to how much of a hassle it was, the compromise which he came up with was that if ever he were to encounter a disease which he would not be able to cure or a mystery that were to totally elude his powers as a researcher, he would immediately come back and accept their terms. With that, they were somewhat mollified, if only for the time being, and so allowed him to set off on his pirate journey. It has been 2 years since then and in that time, he has managed to resolve all the challenges that he has come across successfully and even managed to make a little bit of pocket change along the way, due to some of his clients and critically ill patients being fairly bourgeoise and willing to pay him for his time and service. With that, he has bought himself the ship which has carried him on all of his voyages since then. Additionally, during this recent period of time, he has also found what seems to be a rather queer looking Devil Fruit, one which looks faintly like a reindeer's head.

Due to his innately insatiable curiosity driving him to investigate the aforesaid Devil Fruit, he has eaten it and lo and behold, he has figured out that its true identity is that of a deer Zoan fruit, the specific model being…a reindeer. As with all Devil Fruit wielders, he has experienced a terrible loss, namely of his ability to swim which he had been fairly decent at all throughout his youth. In exchange, though, he has gotten the ability to play around with being a reindeer man which, to him at least, is amusing for some reason. On top of this, he has even been able to use the powers granted by this Fruit in conjunction with his base cyborg abilities. Therefore, he considers it somewhat worth the trade. Even with all this, his curiosity about the Fruit, its origins and the like remain a mystery to him. Since he figured he needed more data on the Fruit, he has decided to join a pirate crew called the "Oda Pirates" for now since it would make seafaring much easier for him. From here, it remains to be seen where life will take him, but it is certain that his future will be an amusing one.

Faustein Kuroyakushi