PLAYER INFORMATION
PLAYER: Floogy
ARE YOU AT LEAST 14 YEARS OLD?: Yes
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: Over 18
CONTACT: Flooged (aim)
PERSONAL JOURNAL: floogster
CHARACTERS PLAYED: Sumiko Hishikawa


CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Ayaka Kurosawa
CANON: Original
CANON REFERENCE: n/a
AGE: 16
GENDER: Female
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: Middle School 1 (She's never had any formal education, except “home-schooling” in Japanese and English.)

APPEARANCE: Image here. Except she doesn't wear aprons. She stands at about 5'1.
PERSONALITY:

On a first meeting with Ayaka, the first impression one is likely to have is that she is a spoiled brat. She has little regard for most people, and is rather openly selfish in her behavior. She's unlikely to do something she doesn't want to do unless somebody gives her something that she wants. That's not to say somebody could just hand her a pretty dress and tell her to go fight anybody she cares about, as she at least has some common sense. Depending on the actual activity, one may be able to goad her into it by appealing to her competitive side. Also, she does have some standards as well as to what she can be 'bribed' for. It would be extremely difficult, for example, to get her to clean toilets; or just cleaning anything in general, really.

Another facet of her personality is an extreme sense of confidence and pride. She's been involved in a number of fights, only a few of which she lost, and has developed a massive ego due to her victories coupled with the praise heaped on by the people she used to work for. At the same time, this also makes her stubborn. She's unlikely to back down from a fight, and unwilling to admit defeat even should she lose. She's quite willing to fight again to prove that she is, indeed, better than the person who (in her eyes) probably won through some fluke. She's also quite vain (perhaps even narcissistic?), and thinks quite highly of her personal beauty.

In some ways Ayaka can be considered fight hungry, and she is certainly short tempered enough that it isn't that hard to get her to throw the first punch. Depending on the fight, Ayaka isn't above killing her opponent; but she has been taught discretion when it comes to taking somebody's life. She doesn't exactly value the lives of enemies and strangers, but she won't indiscriminately kill, either. Ayaka isn't likely to pick a fight with anybody she considers weaker than herself, unless they provoke her; which, again, isn't difficult.

While she isn't really outright stupid, it is possible for somebody to use her stubbornness against her in such a way as to sort of 'trick' her into doing something. For example, she wouldn't want to look stupid if she somehow accepted the lead role for a play, as accusing the other person of trickery would be admitting to her stupidity. But on the good side of her stubbornness, if she decides to do something, she'll do everything she can to apply herself to it. Her mastery of numerous martial arts, even if she did so due to bribery from her adoptive father, helped develop this facet of her personality.

Ayaka has had no formal education, and in fact doesn't even know standard multiplication and division (at least, at the time of this application), but this is no real reflection of her intelligence; it's a simple matter of fact that she's just never been sent to school. People who decide to laugh at her lack of education are very likely to earn her ire. What she does know revolves mainly on how to handle herself as an enforcer of a Yakuza family, such as how to not draw attention from the authorities. She is capable of acting respectful, as such, but is likely to be passive-aggressive about it should the person she's interacting with does (or has done) anything to make her dislike them.

Finally, for those that can somehow get past her negative personality attributes, Ayaka can prove to be a loyal and trustworthy friend for those that get on her good side. While she cares little about the lives of strangers, she will adamantly protect those she has grown an attachment to. Given her mutation, she's even willing to go as far as taking a bullet for that person. After all, if she can't endure a little pain to save a friend, how's she going to get more presents from them in the future? Yes, of course there would be a bit of selfishness in this.


POWERS/ABILITIES:
Healing factor: Ayaka possesses an astonishing self-regenerative ability that can save her from quite a number of wounds that would be lethal to the average (and, in some cases, even superhuman) human. Dismembered limbs can be re-attached, and a bullet to the stomach will be painfully inconvenient.

The severity of the wound and how much tissue actually needs to be regrown determines how long she takes. A scratch would be gone in seconds or a flesh wound would take about a minute. A wound that should be immediately lethal, such as damage to the heart, could take hours or days to recover from depending on the severity.

However, such things as being incinerated to her bones will cause her to truly die. While minor brain damage can be regenerated (though it may cause amnesia, depending on what exactly is damaged), but if the brain is unable to 'send out orders' for regeneration... well, that's that. A decapitation will kill her except on the off-chance that somebody reunites head and body in the ensuing seconds; and the trauma will knock her out for a good length of time anyway.

As well, it takes large quantities of poison to have any sort of effect on her. Which also means that, yes, she could drink most people under the table if she was that type of person. Also, she's mostly immune to diseases unless it's somehow being subjected to her in extreme amounts.

As a side effect of her healing factor, she simply does not age. She also requires considerably less sleep. However, having to regenerate does increase her appetite. That extra tissue has to come from somewhere, right?

To put into perspective the nature of her healing factor, it more or less works off of a "blueprint" of sorts that was "saved" when her mutation first awakened. Anything that's done to her body to modify it in any way will be undone. This goes as far as tattoo ink being disposed of from the flesh, and even her hair and fingernails maintaining their length. This also means that she's unable to tone her muscles any further, while on the flip side she has no need to exercise to maintain herself. It's quite fortunate her mutation wakened while she was in peak condition, then.

Blood Manipulation (own blood only): At the time of this application, what she doesn't know is that her healing factor is actually a side effect of an ability to directly control her blood in a sort of telekinetic fashion. When/if she discovers this power, she can form weapons with her blood, make bindings or cages... whatever her imagination can come up with, really. Of course, she can't do something as ridiculous as make a working gun out of it (except making it shoot blood bullets or something, but really, that would be kind of pointless with what she can do with this power already). She can do some rather nasty damage to somebody if her blood is to enter their body. Of course, in the end, it is blood (hardened or not) and won't be as strong as steel.

Mundane abilities: Ayaka has been trained since a very young age in numerous forms of martial arts (mainly Japanese and Chinese styles, along with some Korean), along with a number of weapons. While her stance in an empty-handed form seems to indicate standard Karate, she's able to think on the fly and transitions fluidly to other styles to accommodate her situation.

She's also able to handle a katana, a naginata, and various other weapons; as well as using the environment around her if necessary. If given the choice, the katana is her preferred weapon.

Due to her extensive training, she has speed and reflexes that seem rather inhuman; but this is merely a product of her training.

AU HISTORY:

To understand Ayaka's background, one must know a little of the Kurosawa-gumi. The Kurosawa-gumi was once a small-time yakuza group, which had fallen into hard times when a larger group began to muscle in on their territory. There were two key important members of the Kurosawa-gumi. The first, naturally, was the oyabun (leader): Isao Kurosawa. The second was his trusted lieutenant and son: Denbe Kurosawa.

The larger yakuza group had them boxed in, but decided they weren't worth the trouble and left them with a miserable amount of territory left. Disgusted with his men's inability to strike back at them, Isao began to look into alternatives to reinforce his group. But it seemed like there was nothing he could do... until a rather insane idea came into his head, and he adopted a young orphan of three years old.

It was a long term plan, to be certain. But as long as their enemy were content to not finish them off, this plan could certainly succeed. Denbe and the rest were rather shocked when Isao told them the plan.

In short, Denbe was given custody of the child and told to seek out numerous martial arts masters. They would train the young girl, who was given the name Ayaka Kurosawa, into a living weapon of sorts. After all, in Isao's thinking, there would be a none more effective shock-troop than an unsuspecting little girl.

Though the girl was trained rigorously in various forms, Denbe was uneasy with his father's plan. But he couldn't disobey him, as the Kurosawa-gumi was all that he really had. It was fortunate then, that despite all the money he had been given for the project, that most of the masters he went to did not require a large fee for their services. Having no experience with raising children, he did the one thing he thought would make things easier for Ayaka: He bought her many gifts, effectively spoiling her. The very first gift was a fake lily, which Ayaka still wears in her hair to this day. It was also during this time that Denbe took it upon himself to teach her English and Japanese as well.

While Ayaka and Denbe effectively became close as daughter and father, Ayaka predictably became something of a brat. She held high expectations of being gifted for the things she did and, once Denbe brought her back to the Kurosawa-gumi at the age of thirteen, Isao soon became aware of this fact. Though Isao initially chided Denbe for this outcome, it soon became obvious that Ayaka was indeed a formidable individual despite her poor attitude.

Thus, Isao was finally able to set his plan into action. He sent Ayaka to initiate strikes into key points of operation into his enemy's holdings, carefully making sure not to insight total war as well as to not alert the police authorities. But each time Ayaka was employed, she had to be given another gift. But Isao's plan worked admirably. Before their enemy realized what was happening, their infrastructure was already devastated. Ayaka soon became known as the Lily of the Black Swamp. Kurosawa did literally translate to black swamp, after all. Ayaka didn't really like the sound of it, however, and it was shortened to Black Lily.

After some time, the Kurosawa-gumi did win its war against the other yakuza group. Ayaka was quite pleased with herself, and insisted that she receive a tattoo on her back to commemorate the occasion. After all, what was a yakuza without their tattoo? Her tattoo would have been a black dragon, wrapped around an over-sized lily modeled after the one Denbe had given her. Unfortunately, the tattoo-artist noted that the ink was fading away seconds after he had started. Ayaka was rather upset with this complication, and demanded that they find a way to make it stay. There was, however, no way to do so as far as they knew. (Edit note: There were some edits to the timeline of when things happened after this paragraph was written. The tattoo incident happened at some point soon after her mutation awakened)

The following three years continued rather uneventfully. The Kurosawa-gumi grew in strength and numbers, though Ayaka was still at the forefront of important operations; however few and far inbetween that was these days. Few dared to suffer the wrath of the Black Lily, after all. But there would be two events that would drastically change Ayaka's life.

During one of the rare missions that Ayaka was on during these more peaceful times, a desperate man had managed to shoot her with a gun. The wound should have been lethal, but she didn't die for some reason. She was rushed to one of the Kurosawa-gumi's doctors, though the wound was practically gone by the time she got there. However, the bullet was still in there, and it would be unwise to leave it there. The operation was somewhat difficult, due to her constantly regenerating tissue, but the bullet was extracted successfully. She had to be given quite a dosage of knockout medication to ensure she wouldn't suffer through the procedure as well. It became obvious that she was, indeed, a mutant.

Despite this complication, and having grown somewhat power hungry, Isao began to plan further expansions. It was unfortunate for him, then, that he soon died of natural causes; much to Denbe's relief, who had grown uneasy of his own father. Denbe himself had been named the inheritor of the Kurosawa-gumi, and decided that... something had to change.

Having Ayaka in their midst was trying at times, even for Denbe. Not to mention, it weighed heavily on his mind that he was perhaps the most responsible for this girl's lifestyle than anybody else. How easily could he have ran off with the orphan to give her a proper life, after all? It was much too late to do anything about that, and he realized that perhaps there was an organization out there that could help.

Thus, he contacted the Xavier Institute to have her enrolled in the academy. Perhaps part of his reasoning was to simply put the problem out of sight and out of mind. But he knew he wasn't equipped to give her the education and lifestyle that a child should have, not at this point in his life now that he was the oyabun.

Of course, Ayaka was rather against this, but that wasn't anything a few more gifts wouldn't fix...

SAMPLE
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http://institutesamples.dreamwidth.org/460.html?thread=5324#cmt5324
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