Gai Arisawa (AKA Torch)

Name: Gai Arisawa
Hero Name: Torch
Title: 4th President of Arisawa Heavy Industries
Alignment: Neutral Good
Age: 84
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5’11
Weight: 166 lbs
Blood type: AB+



A native-born Japanese man, he consistently maintains a clean-shaven appearance, much like his deceased father. However, his hair is kept rather unkempt except for public appearances, out of a degree of silent defiance for tradition. He looks like a man in his mid-30s in spite of his age.



Given his considerable intelligence, Gai suffers from a rather inflated ego and overestimation of his capabilities. He’s a sore loser, not even taking kindly to losing a game of Twenty Questions. He’s loath to admit that, as he’s still human, he is prone to making errors in judgment - he is still capable of swallowing his pride if a situation demands it.

Despite his pride and overconfidence, his desire to improve the lives of human beings is very genuine. He’s more than aware that it takes more than one man to make life better. As such, he’s more than willing to give credit where it’s due and he values his subordinates greatly. In this way, he’s the stereotypical “Jerk with a Heart of Gold”.

The company has a “Gai Safety Protocol” in place, given that he’s a notorious womanizer.



From the memoirs of Hiroki Segawa, personal aide to the CEO of Arisawa Heavy Industries:

Gai was born the second of three children to Takafumi Arisawa,the chief founder of what was then known as Arisawa Industries. As this was soon after the end of World War 2, Arisawa Industries was in the business of civilian manufacturing and infrastructure. All accounts point to Takafumi being an honorable man, yet his drunken extramarital affair that resulted in Gai remained a black mark on his reputation for the remainder of his life.

As the only one who had a different mother from his siblings, Gai ended up being the only one to have the Meta Gene. From an external standpoint, his abilities weren’t impressive - he aged slower once he came of age and his intellectual capability was exponentially higher than one of identical age.

The memoirs of Takafumi’s own aide claim that Gai had a strong understanding of the English language alongside his native Japanese by the time he was five years of age. By the time he was eight, he was solving trigonometric equations in his head. And by the age of ten, he could quote Shakespeare’s works from memory. Unfortunately, his emotional maturity didn’t progress at the same rate as his knowledge base - when combined with the social stigma that came from being born out of wedlock, Gai’s lack of emotional maturity was a factor as to why he was last in line to take over the company.

Per the family records, Takafumi died of cancer in the months prior to the end of the Vietnam War, leaving the eldest son, Kenta, to take charge of the company. As this was still near the height of Cold War tensions, it was Kenta that made the decision to transition Arisawa Industries from industrial construction over to a military manufacturing venture in cooperation with the United States. Contracts and investments began flooding in, and Arisawa started making record profits.

However, Arisawa Industries became the target of anti-militarism protests, resulting in the assassination of Kenta and his children in Kyoto in 1982 while on a business trip, leaving Arisawa Industries in the hands of the youngest sister, Asuka. Asuka had good, if conservative, fiscal sense, pulling out of international dealings to maintain good domestic public relations - indeed, while Arisawa didn’t lose much in terms of revenue, it didn’t make any significant strides, either.

However, with the discovery of other realms in 1983 and the increased public awareness of Superhumans in 1985, public pressure on Arisawa Industries eased, and more concern on the probable threat that superhumans could pose increased. As a result, looking over construction plans left by her late brother, Asuka okayed the construction of the XT-01 Power Armor Frame. It made for a decent proof-of-concept model and, when combined with cooperation with United States defense contractors, gave rise to the Type-1 Power Armor.

Gai, for his part, had spent most of the 80s and 90s shedding his immaturity and learning Western business practices while abroad and invested heavily within the housing and technology markets, striking it big when the World Wide Web went public in 1994. By that point, he had held four Doctorate’s Degrees, including in software engineering and physics. Many of his peers tried to discourage him from his investments, believing the Internet would never become a success. Gai argued it would, as people had said the exact same thing about talkies, colored television, and mankind setting foot on the moon - by simple trial-and-error, if not by one major breakthrough.

Unfortunately, bad news hit Gai on his return to Japan - Asuka had survived an attempt by a Meta-human to assassinate her, but the powers of the same had rendered her in a persistent vegetative state. As she was unable to operate as CEO of Arisawa Industries, nor had any children old enough to assume the position, the board of directors reluctantly entrusted the position of CEO to Gai Arisawa.

With his considerable return on investments, Gai took a more hands-on approach to improving the Power Armor line, relying as much on in-house assets as he did on inter-corporate agreements, as well as several unorthodox business practices. Research and development sped up, and units garnered contract after contract for improvements, with the Arisawa Type-20 Power Armor in circulation through Southeast Asia by the time of the New York Assault.

By this time, Arisawa - now renamed Arisawa Heavy Industries - had taken a minor interest in developing energy-based weaponry, though the primary products remain various types of Power Armor. The latest in the line - the Type-24 - is acknowledged as an equalizer by the various police prefectures in Japan.

Asuka Arisawa never recovered from her persistent vegetative state, and passed away in 2028. Now permanently CEO of Arisawa Heavy Industries, Gai made the request that her body be cremated, per wishes she expressed to him in their youth.

To date, Gai Arisawa is the only CEO to see active combat. As for me…well, he chose me to ask as provisional CEO in the event of his death until the board of directors can select a new one.



Gai has two major abilities granted by the Meta Gene, neither of which have practical combat application: namely, his Enhanced intelligence and Cellular Regeneration.

His Enhanced Intelligence puts him well above “Genius” level in IQ tests, and is part of how he came up with such a large suite of gadgets and gizmos.

His Cellular Regeneration is fairly low-grade, and cuts the time he spends recovering from injuries in half. His physical lifespan is unknown, but estimated to be triple the human norm.



Neither of his powers have practical combat application, so Gai is mostly a normal man with a lot of gadgets and gizmos. His devices, however, generate large amounts of waste heat, meaning that his equipment operates inefficiently in hot weather or climates.



Given that the major product put out by his company is Power Armor, Gai frequently uses older and heavily customized testbed models. Gai’s standby armor is the Type-16 Power Suit. The Type-16 is considerably less armored than Arisawa Heavy Industries’ flagship Type-24, with less advanced servo-motor systems (meaning a negligible increase in strength and speed), but it handles better, does not require specialized training, has a similarly powerful fusion battery, and an assortment of addons not available on production-model Power Armors.

Gai's Type-16 Power Armor: An older version of the power armor types on the market, this armor is resistant to ballistic weaponry and heat. Gai personally stripped out and replaced the servos with more simplified ones, making maintenance easier at the expense of negligible strength and speed gain. Energy attacks can break through the armor given enough time, and it is also vulnerable to electrical short-outs.

Jet Pack: The Fusion Battery provides more than enough power to propel Gai up in the air and provide hovering capability. He frequently uses his jet pack to close the distance and enhance the momentum behind any melee moves he uses. It builds up heat rapidly, and once heat surpasses the safety limits, the jet pack ceases to function until internal heat falls to safe levels.

Modular Wrist Devices: The most noteworthy addition to this suit are the wrist devices capable of mounting all types of weapons. These include lethal things like wrist rockets and railguns, flamethrowers and poisoned darts, to less lethal items such as a whip cord for restraining targets. The nickname “Torch” stuck because the flamethrowers see frequent use.

• Wrist Flamethrower: Mounted in the right bracer, this device uses energy from the fusion battery to generate a jet of  fire with a range of about three meters. Despite the short range, the heat is intense and agonizing, making it a solid close-range anti-infantry choice. Waste heat is discharged in the jet pack, and he can only use one or the other at a given time. Vulnerable to explosion if hit.
  
• Dart Launcher: Also mounted on the right bracer, this launcher uses pressurized air to launch darts at unarmored targets. The darts are naturally subsonic, but the use of compressed air limits its effective range to around twenty five meters. Ammunition dependent.
  
• Wrist rockets: Mounted in the left bracer, this launcher can be used to fire grenades or miniaturized rockets. Unlike the flamethrower, the wrist launcher is ammunition dependent. The most common ammunition is standard fragmenting rockets - they explode, showering metal fragments in a two-meter area.
  
• Railgun: a snub-barrel weapon mounted in the left bracer that uses magnetic induction to propel a ferromagnetic slug, as opposed to traditional propellant-and-primer bullets. This particular wrist-mounted model does not have the barrel length to accelerate the slug fast enough to penetrate heavy armor.
  In addition, while the ammunition is just an inert metal slug, the capacitors are vulnerable to explosion if hit, likely taking the wrist launcher with it.
  
• Whipcord Launcher: Mounted in the right bracer, this launcher uses pressurized air to propel a paracord rope that wraps around a target to restrict mobility - something favored by bounty hunters to take their targets alive. Gai's armor holds about fifteen feet worth of paracord. The rope can be cut or broken out of, though is difficult to do so due to the durability.
  

Light Amplification: Internalized into the helmet is a Generation 7 Low-Light Vision device, linked into a IR light on the side of the Power Suit’s helmet. Vulnerable to overload from EMP and flash-based interference.

Apollo Systems Model 9 Laser Pistol: Gai’s main weapon outside of his suite of weapons. This laser pistol is heavily modified by Arisawa assets, trading off some of its raw power for better cooling and durability. Low yield when compared to most energy weapons, being not much stronger than a standard 9mm handgun, but the low drain on the internal power cell gives it good staying power.