Liu Tao

Name: Liu Tao Hero Name: Shinobi Age: 33 Gender: Male Appearance: With the symbiote costume and without.

Personality: Calm and collected, Liu has become used to keeping quiet and unnoticed so he can blend in to any crowd. Out of costume he is very slow to trust or speak to anyone unless the situation absolutely calls for it, rather keeping to himself and meditating, honing his skills or resting. In costume he takes on a more brash and direct personality, speaking in a slightly more gravely voice and making himself out to be an avenging angel as soon as **** hits the fan. Usually that side of his personality is not necessary to be shown to many people unless he wants to send a message; his actions speak more than his mouth ever can and there's no better way to scare the hell out of villains than have their heavily guarded facility blown up without anyone seeing even the slightest hint of who did it.

Powers: Increased strength, agility, speed and healing factor, all thanks to his symbiote. Skills: Expert martial artist both in ninjutsu and wushu, trained in marksmanship although rarely uses guns. Expert infiltrator and guerrilla thanks to ninjutsu training.

History: Born in Hong Kong, Liu Tao grew up in a local wushu school that his father ran until his demise at the hands of a supervillain's minions come to shake down the place. Orphaned before his teenage years he resorted to the path that eventually led him to be a young street punk with many run-ins with the "law" or rather with the minions of whichever villain was periodically taking control of the city. He eventually drew interest from the assassin organization known as The Hand who finalized his training with their own flavour of ninjutsu and opened his eyes to the bigger picture in the world, teaching him languages and social skills so he could blend in wherever in the world and prepare him to work for the supervillains that might need his services under The Hand. He was not the best in his generation of Hand assassins, but he made due and often resorted to his previous wushu and streetfighting experience to gain an upper hand in sparring matches to stay afloat. During his time with the Hand, he found himself drawn more and more to the history of the organization while it was for a brief time under command by the American superhero known as Daredevil, finding the demon-worshipping evil ways of the Hand before and after Daredevil as something he was not comfortable with. Without revealing these inner thoughts to anyone around him, he sought for a way out and kept his head down while doing so.

A few years after his training was finished, at the age of 26, he was on a mission for the Mandarin in Kingpin's territory in America when during some simple scouting he found himself in an old abandoned warehouse. While moving through it to get to his destination, he stumbled on a crate, knocking it over a revealing inside a small pod that opened after hitting the concrete floor. From inside the pod, a dark ooze spilled all over the floor and touched Liu causing the ooze to wake up from whatever coma it had been in and envelop the frightened man. The symbiote linked minds with Liu, drawing on his memories and experiences formed a new outfit over the man before Liu fell unconscious over the sheer shock of what just happened. The symbiote reached out to Liu in his sleep, conversing with him throughout an hour while the asian man was passed out on the floor of the warehouse. The symbiote, whether a continuation of a line of symbiotes that had been on earth for decades or a new arrival from off planet, was still juvenile and the first contact with a clear mind such as Liu's had shaped much of how the symbiote's personality grew from thereon out. After waking up Liu knew he had finally found his way out and the means to keep himself alive while running from the Hand. He had a responsibility now as well to guide the symbiote's growth in a path where it would not become chaotic like Venom and Carnage some half a century ago.

Liu immediately went off the radar, spending a few months conversing with the symbiote and testing the limits of his new enhanced strength, speed and agility. A year in he found himself in China where he eventually ended up re-inventing himself in a Shaolin Monastery while learning how to control the growing urges of his symbiote. At the age of 31 he reappeared again, this time in the Silver Shogunate. During the course of a year he was seen across the island group of Japan, shutting down Hand outposts first and then causing general mischief against the Silver Samurai. However, as the Silver Shogunate was in a state of cold war with Sinister's empire on the mainland of China and Korea, the man and his symbiote decided it was best to cause some harm on that side as well to even things out. In any case it's easier to start with the two-bit villains like Silver Samurai before going to the favourite playground of heroes and villains alike; America.

Equipment: Although not really needing any of the equipment due to the symbiote being able to shapeshift into blades and such at least for a short period at a time, Liu prefers to carry around a katana as well as a total of ten kunai, of which two are always connected to a long chain to act as a long-range weapon without being thrown.