Shadow Stalker - Team:Teen Outfit

Shadow Stalker - Assassin Outfit

Shadow Stalker's inborn superhuman power is sometimes called shadowcasting.  It is the power to become one with shadows, to use them to one's advantage and manipulate them to fit one's needs.  Shadow Stalker can literally become a shadow, making herself dark and seemingly flat and two-dimensional to hide within them.  She can teleport limited distances by 'shadow hopping', including becoming lost in one shadow and attacking from another.  She can also form shadows into shapes with form and substance, including 'hard shadow' objects and weapons.

Kagejitsu (Shadow Techniques)

Shadow Stalker has, in addition to the other forms of martial arts she has studied, incorporated her Shadow Manipulation abilities into a fighting style all her own that she has termed Kagejitsu.  Kagejitsu incorporates concepts from the other martial arts styles she has studied, from the more flowing aspects of Jeet Kun Do, the stealthiness and guile of Ninjitsu, and Korean Hapkido's ideal of a total penetration of an opponent's defenses, but is certainly a style all her own.

Martial Arts

In addition to Kagejitsu, Shadow Stalker has spent most of her youth in exhaustive training in several varied styles of martial arts, including Kendo-- "The Way of the Sword".  Even without drawing it, Shadow Stalker is an amazing hand to hand combatant.
 

Hiyate Anko is merely the alter-ego of the Yakuza’s deadly assassin project, codenamed Shadow Stalker.  Shadow Stalker is a meta-human girl who was raised almost from birth to use her extraordinary abilities for killing.  Pulled away from her parents before she learned to walk, she was forced to dedicate all her time to the study of ninjitsu and other fighting arts, as well as how to hone her meta-human powers of shadow manipulation.  She would grow up with no family, no friends, and the knowledge that all that mattered was that she was 'different'. 

That difference was the amazing abilities that Anko seemed to be born with, including the ability to actually hide within shadows, to teleport through shadows within limited distances, and to shape herself weapons of what was termed “hard shadow.”  Through years and years of training, she honed those powers, and developed a fighting style called Kagejitsu, or “Shadow Techniques.”  When she reached her 15th birthday, those in charge of her development deemed her ready for the field.  Shadow Stalker was to be released on the heads of the rival mobs in Tokyo. 

Anko teleported into the suite of one of the rival mob bosses, but he had not arrived yet, so instead she literally lay in wait in the shadows.  Thus far, the assassination plot was working according to plan.

But something went wrong.  The assassinations never took place. 

As she waited, Anko watched from concealment as the boss’s wife returned with her little daughter, and she could only stare on in amazement as the woman showed love and kindness to the young girl.  The two talked; they discussed school and what they would do tomorrow, and they laughed and joked and hugged before the little one rushed off to her room.  Anko's childhood had been sterile, compared to the expressions of love and gentleness she saw; there was no mother in her life, no smiles or laughter.  She'd had nothing like this in her past.  And suddenly, perhaps irrationally, after seeing what was being kept from her-- denied her-- all her life, she abandoned her post and spent the next few nights wandering, trying to understand what she'd witnessed. 

The Yakuza were furious, and ordered her failure punished by death.  But they'd created something they could no longer control.  Once Anko was found, she left her assailants incapacitated and escaped from her would-be-captors through the shadows. 

Anko spent the next few weeks in a struggle with herself, knowing nothing but how to fight and kill, but no longer able to bring herself to do it.  From afar, as she wandered through Tokyo, she saw some of the same sights that confounded her on her first mission: a man and a woman in a heartfelt embrace; a grandfatherly man smiling and chatting as he raced toy boats with a young boy; a young girl happily petting a dog rather than telling it to kill; a policeman offering assistance to a couple who were in a car accident.  

The more she saw, the more Anko realized she did not want the life that had been planned for her.  She didn’t want to harm people, but rather to help them.  She left Tokyo for America to escape the grasp and watching eye of the Yukuza, and ended up on the east coast. And there, she saw and heard of extraordinary people like herself, not trying to hurt or kill, but help.  Anko knew that with proper adjustments, her training could still be useful.  She could be Shadow Stalker once more, but the way she wanted to, helping the innocent, and making sure no other would be denied the chance for love, as she was.

However, when-- as often is the case-- she strikes out on her own, Anko often wears her old assassin's garb to remind herself why she helps others.  And what she still needs to learn.

To the other members of Team: Teen, Anko often appears cold, reserved, aloof, and even cruel, despite her burgeoning friendship with them and her appreciation for being asked to join them.  But in truth she is slowly learning how to open up to others, and how friendship and love-- which she swears now to defend-- truly work.