we all have our theories, so here's mine. i was looking at koncept art from the krypt, and one of the dairou drawings said that shang and quan chi offered the rogue samurai the position of general of the undead army or something similar to that. that pretty much describes what we know of hotaru now: an evil samurai, rumored to be general of the undead army. and with the misconceptions of the magazines citing ben and kobra as different characters, and the whole noob/skab thing, i think this is very possible that they are the same person too.