HANTU
“Their own shadows will betray them”
secretive shadow
Hantu is a very private person, and not much is known about him. He mysteriously appeared during the attack on the Towers compound and was discovered inside the towers when the victorious forces first broke inside. Hantu has a Japanese ninja’s demeanor and the skills of a covert agent or mercenary from feudal Japan. There are rumors that he has some secret mysterious agenda. More civil than social, Hantu speaks carefully, as if everything he says is part of some larger plan. It is known that Hantu did work for awhile with Carnival as a mercenary, but when Carnival put together the Echoes gang, Hantu did not join, saying that “politics do not interest me.”
Hantu seems to always have top-of-the-line equipment, and he seems to have some connection with Pistola Olivari, as he usually chooses to purchase his firearms from the Italian firm. Hantu appears to fight for crystals to profit personally, but there are rumors that he is somehow connected to the leaders of UltraHorse.
Hantu is equipped with a digital camouflage cloak that he covers himself with (fabric soft enough to move in the wind or from touch). For a short period of time of invisibility, Hantu can flank enemies and strike them in the back, or lay still and prepare a deadly trap. Hantu is Proficient with Shotguns and long blades such as Katanas.
civil but mysterious
Hantu seems to enjoy having an air of mystery about him. Hantu does not mix much socially and always seems to be wearing the same outfit. Hantu is a temperate eater and nobody has ever seen him cook anything at UH. It is known that he does dislike cats, and there is a suspicion that perhaps he likes watching 90’s cartoon shows when alone.
Nobody at UH has any idea if Hantu has a best friend, but it was learned recently that he has a wife! There is suspicion that Hantu underwent a period of some serious psychotherapy as a youth. Hantu sometimes will assume a false identity in some town somewhere, find a low level job, and spend a week living a humble existence and mixing with the population in a way that he never could in his fighter form. His wife met him during one of these sojourns when he was in New York working as a dishwasher in a large downtown delicatessen.
-
A recent surprise visitor to the UltraHorse Towers community was the wife of the most feared fighter in the compound. Hantu has a wife! Beyond the shock of learning that Hantu is in fact married, it was enjoyable to learn that her name is Rita and that she comes from New York via Jamaica. A perfectly normal and reasonable person, Rita has a firm and almost tough personality, but still manages to be quite friendly. In her profession, she is apparently an artist who makes large glass sculptures. A quick web check revealed that she has won a number of prizes, does a lot of work on commission, and seems to be very picky about who she chooses as clients.
Lovely Rita applied her artistic talents towards fixing up Hantu’s quarters a bit while she was here. Rita does not seem to buy into Hantu’s whole “dangerous and mysterious” thing, and in fact, it appears he might actually be a bit afraid of her, as she certainly seemed to give him a lot of instructions while she was here. It was amusing for the UH crew to see Hantu dutifully sanding and painting furniture on the Echoes gang patio and hanging new curtains in the windows of his personal space.
While it is well known that Hantu does not like cats, we also now know that Rita does have a cat herself and that she says it adores Hantu, who does not know how to respond to the cat’s affection. She did not bring the cat with her on her visit to the UH Towers.
Rita does not actually know Hantu’s real name and background, and only knows the legal name Hantu uses for government documents, but she also has a strong hunch those are forged documents, and she doesn’t know much about his past and “other life” but she’s fine with that because she knows who Hantu is to her.
After a two week visit, Rita seems to have started a strong friendship with Dash and her gang of eco-warriors, and she seemed to fit in well with the rest of the UltraHorse community as well. Unfortunately, Rita has now flown back home, but she says she will be coming back again in two months after her next show in New York closes.
