First appearance: S4E5 — Toxicity — Toocher the Toxic v Sho Nin · watch it on YouTube
Sho Nin was a 15-year-old champion who walked into the Void like the hero of his own anime and left it the way those stories sometimes end when nobody is filming the sequel. A swordsman and spellcaster carrying a wind power he did not understand, he faced the grung wrestler Toocher the Toxic in S4E5 — Toxicity — Toocher the Toxic v Sho Nin. He had style, swagger and a genuinely spectacular leg cut. He also had dreadful luck, rolling five natural 1s in a single night.
Story
The Grandmaster pulled Sho Nin through a portal opened with her own blood, presenting him to The Shadow King as one of “the greatest champions in all the realms.” He met Toocher’s trash talk head-on, telling the frog he talked so much trash he “may as well just crawl right back in the sewer you came from,” and rating his power level “like a three.” He thanked the Shadow King for dragging him in and hoped they would end the night with a lesson. The Shadow King promised one, though not necessarily a good one. Before the fight, Toocher gave him an overly firm “friendly” pat on the shoulder and quietly read his mind. Behind Sho Nin’s confident front, Toocher found deep self-doubt, a sense of unworthiness, and a boy overwhelmed by a grandeur far beyond him. Sho Nin answered by shoulder-barging past to reach the portal first, and in a moment of pure brilliance his right foot tripped Toocher into a triple somersault. He strolled out of the dust cloud looking majestic, waved and winked to The Acolytes, and left the crowd asking whether his opponent had ever walked before.
That was the high point for a while. In the arena, a tiny abandoned steampunk city of docks, bridges and machinery, Sho Nin ignored his opponent to go hunting for trinkets. He backed into a rusty crane, which promptly fell on him, and he decided the moment was “perfect as it is” and simply stayed there. Toocher elbow-dropped him from the top of the wreck, blood spurted from Sho Nin’s mouth, and the grung’s poisonous skin poisoned him. A tea-sipping old man then rose from the water and swapped the two champions’ places, putting Sho Nin on top of the crane. Vomiting blood and bile from the poison, he flung a wind-driven dart into Toocher’s chest, rode a burst of wind to The Box of Chaos, and traded his scabbard to the bewildered soul inside for a gleaming Moon Sickle. That soul belonged to the Acolyte Blissful Dwarf, whom the Shadow King had just snatched from the crowd, ripping off his arms, legs and head and pulling the soul out of the neck hole. Sho Nin laid his old sword in front of the chest, pointed the sickle at “this toad,” and struck an obnoxious pose just as the wind swept past, leaving him looking so ethereal that the crowd screamed at his beauty.
Toocher kept getting his hands on him. He pinned Sho Nin’s face, stabbed him with his own dart, and still had him grappled when a chaos event swelled both champions’ butt cheeks into butterfly wings. Sho Nin broke free with a blast of his inner wind, and a voice in that wind told him to “look to the stars.” It was daylight, so he looked at the sun and flew off half-blind like a moth. Toocher then turned around, spread his butt cheeks and clapped them together around Sho Nin, launching what the Grandmaster called “the great bougie clap of 2023.” Sho Nin wiggled free of the piledrive that followed, leaving Toocher to piledrive himself into the ground, but the next “old hiney hold” poisoned him again, which he likened to being pushed out between “two slices of ham.” Then he finally found his rhythm. With his bladesong singing through the Moon Sickle, he announced in a doubled voice, “I’ve had enough of this game. It’s time to finish this.” Later the voice in the wind told him to look north. He looked northwest. When the wings withered and he fell, the wind caught him (“I’ve got you, my child”), and Sho Nin declared it “an abusive entity.” Thrown into water the Shadow King had turned to acid, he hauled himself onto a boat while the Acolytes bowed their heads for him, and he refused to die: “You will know my name.” He charged past Toocher in a single flash of motion. The two stood facing opposite directions in silence, and then Toocher’s leg cracked open with green flame burning inside it.
It wasn’t enough. His follow-up missed, and a parting kick at the wound became his fifth natural 1 of the night. Toocher, eyes glowing with his own inner wind, knocked the Moon Sickle from Sho Nin’s hand and caught it in midair. “Just give it back, I’ll do it myself,” Sho Nin said, and Toocher obliged in the worst way. As the blade came down, all the color drained from the world. Only a small gust of wind remained, then “nothing but a child that you cut down for the sake of your own glory.” A multicolored wind wrapped around the two champions and swept his body away. At the table afterward, his player summed it up: “He died the way he lived.”
Personality and Abilities
Sho Nin played the cool young hero to the hilt, all quips, winks and dramatic poses, though Toocher’s mind-reading showed a kid full of self-doubt underneath. He was easily distracted, more interested in the arena’s trinkets than in the frog trying to kill him. He was also strangely serene in disaster, and quick with a comeback even while poisoned, grappled or squeezed between Toocher’s butt cheeks (“two slices of ham”). He bristled at being called pretty: “I’m 15! I prefer cool!”
He fought as a blade-dancing monk who mixed swordplay with spells, because, as he put it, “every blade deserves a good cutting spell.” He threw darts carried on the wind, dashed through the air on sudden gusts, and wreathed his blade in green flame while his bladesong was active. His defining mystery was a latent wind power passed down through his family that had skipped a generation and only recently settled into his body. Nobody had explained it to him, and he was on a quest to understand “the wind within” (not, he insisted when asked if it was a fart, “from betwixt the cheeks”). He hoped his mother might have answers. She was “not a windy lady,” but “the musky maiden,” and it is a weird family, so don’t ask. In the arena he traded his scabbard and set down his own sword for the Moon Sickle, which was later used to kill him.
Relationships
- Toocher the Toxic: His opponent and self-appointed mentor, who called him “Sho Nin Pootagonist,” promised him a lesson, and killed him with his own weapon.
- The Shadow King: The ruler he was brought before to fight. Sho Nin thanked him for “dragging me in here.”
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: She summoned him through her blood portal and told him that, like all anime, he could win “with the power of friendship. And also swords.”
Memorable Quotes
“You forget who I am… We just met… You will know my name.” (S4E5 — Toxicity)
- “You talk so much trash, you may as well just crawl right back in the sewer you came from.” (S4E5 — Toxicity)
- “I’m 15! I prefer cool!” (S4E5 — Toxicity)
- “Oh man, that was stupid! Oh man, what are these spirits trying to tell me?” (S4E5 — Toxicity)
- “That wind is bait, man. That’s an abusive entity.” (S4E5 — Toxicity)
- “Your tricks only work once, frog.” (S4E5 — Toxicity)
- “Just give it back, I’ll do it myself.” (S4E5 — Toxicity)