Houjin Jun Chi

[Houjin]

Name: Houjin Jun Chi
Alias:
Age: 300 [Appears 19]
Gender: Male
Race(s): Salamander || Daione

Personality: Houjin was a creature of fire, and it showed; heavily. Impulsive, impudent, and hot headed; those where favorite descriptors of the teen. Most of his clan saw him as normal; outsiders couldn't understand how he managed to go a day without being attacked over his brash personality. Never one to waste words or sugar coat; Houjin could best be described as brutally honest; beyond the level of fault. Could he lie? Of course; the young Jun Chi could lie with the best of them, if he needed to. He just preferred to tell it how it was; far as he was concerned, there was no time to waste with pretty words and coddling. His was a world of fast moving action and posturing; the ones that burned hottest burned brightest. They tended to burn out young as well; be he found he cared little about this possibility. Better to focus on getting things done then throttle back and fail. That being said; he could be friendly enough; even if he tended to offend people with his lack of a verbal filters. He was used to people moving in and out of his life; it was all too common in the youth of the fire sages. Acolytes where injured and washed out; elders burned out and where hidden away; people died on missions, of old age, accidents, etc. It was just the way of life.  
History: Houjin was born in the middle of the hottest day of high summer, in the middle of a rather nasty heat wave. While the rest of the village baked under oppressive heat the Jun Chi fire sages flourished. Bright hot, sunny weather made them a happy clan. The children played under the sun, the adults trained harder then ever. This was the atmosphere that Houjin was born into. His mother was lucky; Jun Chi had a predisposition towards difficult pregnancies; but Houjin had been relatively easy. A few minor hiccups, but over all easy enough. He was one of the rare babies born with a full head of hair; fiery and bright. In generations past; he would have been instantly marked for special training; placed in special programs to prepare him for the life of a High Sage; never trained in active combat, never allowed outside the clan compound until he was well into adulthood and ranked among the elder sages in power and knowledge. The practice of segregating children that where “marked by the flames”, as Houjin would have been considered; had been discontinued in the time of his great-grandfather. So it was that Houjin was spared a life of loneliness and isolation; and allowed to grow up with his cousins and siblings; just another one of the dozens of new sage acolytes born every year. He was lucky to actually know and be raised by his own parents; children of the Jun Chi where normally raised by the clan as a whole; however his parent's high ranking within the clan allowed them to circumvent this. He was raised by them and with his younger brother; Jeice, 5 years his junior and to all the outside world just a normal human with no bending abilities. Not entirely uncommon in the clan; those born without fire in their veins were still valuable members of the family, the monks that focuses entirely on the spiritual and not the martial aspects of their lives.

His was a happy enough childhood; filled with warmth and fun and plenty of hard times, but not once did his sunny disposition falter. It wasn't until his grandfather came to visit with he was just turning 11 years old did anything of significance change. His grandfather was a strict man; hard and cold and sharp like the lightning only the most powerful elders of the clan were able to use. In all his years, he had only met his grandfather once before, as a small child on his mother's knee; and it had not been the most pleasant experience. It had turned into an enormous fight between his father and grandfather; the context of which he had long since forgotten. The reappearance of his grandfather was not met well; he had come with a small army of strangely dressed men and was making even stranger demands. He was calling for all of the young acolytes to board his vessel and leave with him; threatening violence against the clan if they did not. Nothing made sense to him; and he called out to his grandfather demanding to know what was going on. His brother was standing beside him, clinging to his robe and cowering slightly; he was only a young boy of 6; and he was scared by all the insanity happening around him. Their grandfather merely looked upon him with cold, almost dead eyes, and began blasting them with fire so hot that it actually managed to burn Houjin; who's own fires were so hot and his body so resistant to other's flames that he could enter the lava pools below the clan's compound by age 7 without difficulty; something only the most experienced fire sages had been able to accomplish. He fought with his grandfather, his only desire to protect his brother from the fighting. He was no match for the elder however; the elder was a lightning bender and Houjin had no training in redirection or creation of his own lightning; a blast to the back sent him to the ground; barely conscious and unable to move.

He watched his grandfather lift his brother by the throat and demand that he fire bend; even a lick of flame or smoke would and he would spare the boy. Jeice struggled against the grip, his eyes glowing with the ferocity of a firebender, but the unearthly glow of the long forgotten Energy Benders. His greatest secret, and Houjin's own; his brother had recently begun manifesting signs of natural energy bending; one of the rarest, and most coveted, bending abilities that had ever existed. However, his power was untrained, unrefined, and only just beginning to manifest; even if he had known what to do with it, he lacked the sheer force of will of his grandfather; and was easily overpowered. Failing to produce any sign; that the elder could (or would admit to) see(ing); of being a firebender; he snapped Jeice's neck and blasted his heart right out of his chest with a bolt of lightning, tossing the charred corpse of his grandson away like a piece of trash. That was the last thing Houjin saw before blacking out; and the last time he ever saw his home temple, or his own family; again.

Image Name/Source: OC: Lee Go - Riigo / Deviant Art

[Niala]

Approved.