Little is known about Tetsuyama Asi. Her public record begins and effectively ends with her role in the JSDF Mugai-Ryu. One of the original Mugai-Ryu members, she was active during the Shibuya Incident, and her name occasionally is credited with initiatives such as the use of drones in disaster relief efforts.
She was granted residence within Yamagato Park in 2018 to assist with an investigation into the bombing that took place at the Yamagato Fellowship Center, and was dispatched back to Japan in 2019. After returning home, Asi was put on an assignment to investigate Mazdak. In July 2019, after apparently infiltrating their network, everything went horribly wrong and drastically altered the course of Asi's life. Her allies in the Mugai-Ryu turned on her because of a lie, and she's given up on trying to get things back to the way they were before.
Asi vowed to use her position to strike back against Mazdak for what they did to her, but when the time came, she opened her fist and instead extended out her hand …
And for her change of heart, she walked away from that encounter living, but was sent back to the wild. Something that, no matter which way things had gone with that meeting, she had not expected to happen.
What else was there to do but continue forward?
There was barely enough time to apologize for the difficult position she'd put Silas and Monica in before events took her not to sea, as she'd first thought she might, but to California instead. Alongside Wolfhound, Asi ventured into the heart of Praxia to tear it down, and instead found that she herself was the crux holding their network together.
Freeing the 'Red Oni' by absorbing her into herself being gave Asi unfettered access into the Ziggurat's network in the process. For the thirty-seven minutes until the system imploded, her consciousness was expanded and spidered farther than she had ever previously dared to push herself. It was intoxicating, exhausting, exhilarating, overwhelming… empowering.
She's never talked about what it felt like the moment she was cut off from that.
On the flight to safety following the mission's completion, the Wolfhound leader Avi Epstein informed her there was a position open in their unit for a technopath. Before the Tlanuwa touched down for refuel, she knew her answer. In the two months that followed, Asi remotely attended questionings regarding the murder she was accused of in Japan, about her dealings with Mazdak, and terrorist activity she was suspected of. Apart from flatly denying any involvement with the PISEC prison break, she was open with her tale involving Mazdak— from her investigation into them, to the events at the steelworks the night Takumi Seko was murdered, and the overwhelming lack of direct interest displayed in her after the fact.
She never gave up Komura Banri's name as the 'Japanese official' who had set her up. Her loyalty to the old bear was shaken, but not broken.
While not legally absolved of the crimes she'd been accused of, the US quietly granted her leave to be gainfully employed by Wolfhound. And between the testimony provided to the US government, along with influence impressed by Yamagato Industries after assisting Kimiko with a personal favor, the conversation in Japan regarding Asi's crimes began to shift.
Continuing to contract with Yamagato and work on the furthering the SEER project at Raytech while still maintaining a position on Wolfhound's roster, things finally seemed to be getting into a stable place for Asi. She was more fulfilled than she had ever been while working under the Mugai-Ryu, feeling free and powerful in ways she hadn't in … ages.
Then The Event happened.
The loss of her ability has left Asi in an uncertain state. She tried to conceal what had happened at first, believing they would track down those responsible and rectify what had happened in relatively short order, but … that did not happen, and Asi's obligations were inarguably harder to fill without her ability to help her interface with the technology around her. Although she has not updated her registration, those close to her know the loss she's suffered and see what it's doing to her.
Without that edge, without that sixth sense, and bereft of any sense of security she'd grown to have, Asi is gradually slipping to darker and darker places. Not only has she lost her ability and her sense of self, she silently struggles with not knowing what's happened to her other self.
Answers might not give her back what was stolen from her, but the search from them is the only thing that drives her now.
