Personality: Suzaku is extremely good at compartmentalizing. Because of this, he can be both open, and extremely guarded. Friendly, while still keeping most people at an unconscious arms' length, and using a variety of small, reassuring lies to minimize their unhappiness. Smile and pretend even though he hasn't really let anyone in since he was ten years old, an innocent little boy living with his two best friends in the world -- and although he often seems content at the beginning of the series, that summer so many years ago is also the last time he remembers being really happy. And he is also impossible to ruffle or embarrass, because he reserves his shame for much bigger things.

The key word, for Suzaku, is guilt. At the beginning of the series, he was painted as the idealistic counterpoint Lelouch's cold cynicism: nobly determined to make a better life for those oppressed by the Britannian Empire not by destroying it, but by rebuilding it from the inside. But nobility had nothing to do with it. He kept telling Lelouch that the ends don't justify the means because he knew what it was like to choose the wrong method for achieving your goals and wind up regretting it for the rest of your life. In a moment of desperation, he had killed his own father in order to save both the lives of his only friends and Japan from its prime minister's determination to continue a futile war. And Suzaku was determined to preserve the peace for which he paid so dearly.

Rejecting the bloodstained path of terrorism, he tried to choose the slower, cleaner path of becoming the Knight of One, a position as the Emperor's chief body guard that would also allow him to claim any area as his territory, including Japan, and rule it as he likes -- but becoming the Knight of One was no easy thing, especially for an Eleven, and Suzaku wound up with very bloody hands. In order to gain and keep the trust of his allies, he slaughtered their defenseless enemies (his own people); in order to gain the Emperor's notice and so become the Knight of Seven, he turned in his best friend. (Although admittedly Lelouch made this much, much easier by feigning indifference and even cold calculation about some of the more heinous actions he had taken.) In order to preserve his own life, he killed millions of innocent civilians with the F.L.E.I.J.A. device -- and mustered an unfeeling rationalization in order to preserve his reputation. At his lowest point, he even went so far as volunteering to assassinate the Emperor -- with the specific understanding that one of the man's dissatisfied sons would then be in a position to promote him. The means had, apparently, become irrelevant.

All throughout the series, Suzaku has needed a reason to live: a purpose -- and it is both ironic and appropriate that reuniting with Lelouch here, at this lowest point, is what finally gives him that reason. The two form a temporary truce against the Emperor and what he now reveals is his plan for the world, and after the battle Suzaku learns the whole truth of what Lelouch has been trying to do since the first episode of R1. For Suzaku, it turns out to be a vision worth not only dying for, but also worth living for.

As the Knight of Zero, Suzaku is in a better place than he has been since the beginning of the series -- and possibly since the death of his father. He and Lelouch have finally rebuilt their friendship, after pretending for so long that there was nothing wrong with it, and, in a way, setting his sights firmly on the future (instead of the past or even the present) has given Suzaku some closure with his multitude of sins. He hasn't forgiven himself for them, but he doesn't have to: conveniently, Lelouch's plan will give him both a suiting punishment and a way to atone, all rolled into one. And Suzaku takes tremendous personal satisfaction in that.

Abilities: None of the abilities that Suzaku possesses are technically magical in nature, although they should be: his physical prowess is truly ridiculous. Whether it's dodging machine gun fire, running partway up walls, or simply being a human egg-beater, Suzaku is incredibly fast and incredibly strong. (Like everything else about him, this is a neat contrast to Lelouch's ridiculous physical weakness; another neat contrast is how instinctive and intuitive Suzaku is, compared with Lelouch's cool intellectualism.)

Suzaku also has the military training and the martial arts proficiency to hold his own in, if not outright win, most fights. However, this doesn't mean he's not a brawler; Suzaku actually prefers to avoid fighting whenever he can, and would rather solve disputes with words. He is also difficult to provoke, and even if you come at him with a knife, he is much more likely to respond defensively than offensively -- slipping in under your guard to fling you over his shoulder, for example, would disable you without seriously harming you. While it's true that Suzaku has set aside a lot of his compunction against taking lives as long as it's for the right reasons, he will not be at war in Marina Asylum, so he probably isn't going to have the right reasons.

Suzaku's one semi-"magical" ability is that he seems to have, or to have acquired, the ability to detect geass to some extent. The director has stated that this was supposed to be something other than merely the potential to acquire a geass himself, but what, precisely, we will probably never know. What we do know is that he noticed C.C.'s presence in Zero's Knightmare Frame when Lelouch's geass began to go out of control, and I tend to interpret this, especially toward the end of the series where I think it might have gotten a little stronger, to mean that he can vaguely sense when someone's geass is active, but assume that he cannot immediately recognize geass-users (unless theirs are always active, like Mao and later-series Lelouch) or detect their affect on others.

Multifandom Test: Clark Kent, any flavor of Superman media.

At this point in his canon, Suzaku would admire Superman's convictions, and like him as a person, but secretly think he's kind of naive, and that his lack of an actual plan for saving the world is dangerous. (Ideals are all well and good, but with the number of bad things happening all over the world at every minute, Suzaku thinks they'll slip away from him, as it slowly sinks in that he will never save the world with the method he's using.)

He would also grok Superman's identity fairly easily -- even assuming that the glasses-make-people-blind extends outside Superman's canon, Suzaku is pretty good at reading people and relationships, so he'd notice that both Superman and Clark were suspiciously attached to Lois -- but wouldn't approve of his hiding it. At least, not from Lois; he'll have better luck maintaining his ideals if there's even one other person he can talk to when he starts feeling conflicted or tired.

And Suzaku wouldn't be shy about confessing any of this to Superman, either.

==

Appearance: Suzaku has a sort of boyish charm and is good-looking, although not stunningly so. He also goes from cheerful and smiling to coldly serious like he's flipping a switch, and the effect literally adds or subtracts years from his face, by the observation of other characters. (I take the novels with some salt, but Milly's note in the second one comes to mind specifically.) In tight clothing, like what Suzaku arrives wearing, the outlines of hard muscle are noticeable, but again -- his body is slender and still growing.

Language: Suzaku is, obviously, Japanese, but he doesn't habitually speak it. (Even though everything is coming through his headset in Japanese, he's not responding in it.) When you meet him in person, what he actually speaks is Britannian, with a bit of an accent he tries to suppress.

Additionally: Britannian is not English, and given the deeper influence of Celtic culture is probably some merger of English and Gaelic. In short: you may be able to understand some of it, if you speak English, the way you can understand some Spanish if you speak Italian, but they're not the same language.