Ishida Emiko
Aug 17, 2015 15:58:27 GMT -5
Post by Ishida Emiko on Aug 17, 2015 15:58:27 GMT -5
Identification
Character Name: Ishida Emiko (nee. Ikari)
Classification: Quincy
Alias/Titles:
Gender: Female
True Age: 41
Birthday: December 25th
Residence: Karakura (Outskirts)
Occupation: Housewife
Appearance Information
Apparent Age: Late 30's
Height: 5' 6â€
Weight: 144 lbs.
Eye Color: Grey
Hair Color: Fading Black
Physical Description:
Emiko is the kind of person who always seems a little tired (which she is) and a little angry (which she usually isn't). She has thick black hair that is a little dull with age, though it is well taken care of as is the rest of her; she wears it cropped in the back with longer strands framing her face. Her eyes are grey and smoky, with a usually distant look; Unlike her husband and son, she doesn't need glasses. Her face is long but with a heart like shape and her nose is concave and snubs up at the end. She has somewhat thin lips that turn downward naturally, and her build is rather large for a Japanese person. Under her left eye is a small beauty mark. Her body is crisscrossed with old scars that she passes off as consequences for a stint spent homeless, though this is not the case.
She dresses well, fitting for her status, and often puts on makeup even if she's not planning on leaving the house for the day (she does it for herself). Emiko has a voice that is low and almost husky in tone, usually somber but able to be raised to an intimidating volume. She holds herself without much confidence, demure and a little sad, and the burden she carries seems small (though that is not the case).
Personal Information
Personality Overview:
Keep moving forward.
Emiko is a rather gloomy woman, and doesn't like to talk to others much. She doesn't even like to go outside, preferring to watch the world from her window on high. She has friends numbering in the single digits—the low single digits. One or two, if that. That is fine by her, and she wouldn't go out of her way to make new ones; to her, having friends is not all it's cracked up to be. The more people know about her the more they can hurt her, and the more she can hurt them. She fears being found by her family because of her betrayal of them, thus she is a woman of secrets upon secrets. Even so, she cares deeply for her son as well as her husband, although they have grown apart and the love they shared is absent now she still would like the best for him. She harbors some resentment for the man, though, for taking Ichiro into the Order of the Holy Cross and training him against her wishes.
She worries about many things, with her family being at the top of the list. Her only wish is that Ichiro does not grow up to be like her; if he grows up to resemble his father even that would be preferable. Still, she sees her own tendencies in him and it frightens her. Even Hitoshi's safety worries her, and she is kept up sometimes by her own fear and worry. The thought of them fighting so much saddens her, and she wishes she could have convinced them to live in peace with her as a happy family. She spends little time hung up on the regrets of the past, however, because she has learned that such things are a waste of time and only make her worrying nature worse.
She is a very neat and tidy person, and cleaning calms her; the Ishida home is spotless because of her efforts. Her favorite chore is tending the gardens that decorate the yard, and she pick flowers to arrange in the home's vases. She is the queen of her domain, wanting to keep everything that she can under her control—she would smother Ichiro in affection if he was more available but he and Hitoshi both have proven time and time again that she is of no consequence and they will continue their efforts no matter what she does. She tries to remind herself to let them go; especially Hitoshi. She knows that she is emotionally damaged by her experiences and that their relationship and affection was not quite strong enough to weather it all. It's something she has come to grips with. Order, especially natural order, is important to her, and she believes that nothing good can come of denying one's place in the grand scheme of things.
Pacifism is her philosophy, and she despises what she considers the fruitless arguing between Quincy and Shinigami, the Quincy and humans, and even the Quincy and Hollow (but she still harbors a conditioned resentment of Hollow). The tensions between them all dredge up bad memories for her, and she sometimes feels as though they could cease their efforts against the hollows and accept their attacks as part of the Order of Things.
She hides her true nature as a Quincy, and hides it well. She never takes out her cross or bow unless it is an emergency that is very dire, and has never used her powers in front of her husband. Emiko is surprisingly intelligent; sly and clever in many respects, this facet of her was born from necessity. She's an exceptional liar without expending very much effort, she keeps up her facade without remorse and has yet to even garner suspicions of being anything more than what she says she is—a normal, powerless human. Her reason for it is that she refuses to be used as a weapon ever again. All she wanted from her own and her child's lives was normalcy, but she didn't get it. She regrets it, but again she will not dwell on the past.
Character Time-line:
I cannot undo my actions, nor reset the past.
Born to a dedicated family of Quincy in Sapporo, Emiko was trained from the time she could walk to eliminate hollows in stealth based attack missions. Her childhood was rough and difficult, and it could be argued that she hardly had one at all. Her parents were strict and demanding, and even though her powers flourished and she was made to study and train hard she never had the chance to be the child she was. By the time she was twelve, her bow radiated terrifying power and she was sent on missions with the other family members, keeping up with even her more experienced and much older brother, who had been considered a prodigy by the family's standards. Hunting was all she had, but no matter how many she killed her parents weren't satisfied. To earn their love she begged her brother to train her in secret and teach her the things they wouldn't. He agreed and put her through her paces every day, which always ended with her bruised and ragged collapsing into bed only to have to go through it another day. She was sixteen when years of hard training culminated on one snowy evening in her finally learning to control both channels of Blut from her brother; it taxed her incredibly to change between them and she passed out in the snow, not able to make it to her bed. She woke up cold and wet, almost freezing, with her family around her. She could hear her brother talking.
“...don't know, she must have gone out to train by herself. She's trying way too hard.†They bandaged and warmed her, but the feeling of betrayal had iced her heart to their temporary affection. It was getting more and more clear that she was working for nothing, they used her as a weapon and that's all they wanted. And her brother...he was jealous of her, and had strung her along until she collapsed with the intention of leaving her to die. It was an enormous weight that burdened her, and she couldn't even cry. Not in front of them. It hurt all the same. They ate breakfast together, and then Emiko went to her room. “Don't slack off because you pushed yourself a bit too hard, Emiko!†She gritted her teeth and looked back at her mother, vaguely wondering how she could say such a thing after her own daughter could have died. I suppose I am being selfish...I have to think, though! I need a rest...I'm sorry mom. She retreated to her room and had a long cry. It was confusing and frightening, but before she could even feel the entirety of her emotions her father was at the door, ordering her out for another night of hunting. She took up her bow without any hesitation and continued to hunt and to train with her brother.
Her mind was in crisis, she knew deep down that there was something very wrong with how she was treated but she feared breaking the way things were; she had finally trained herself a new bow that she named herself and maybe now her family would accept her as a daughter and not a weapon...but as she continued to fight she knew that she was just grasping at straws. She had to get out. There was no love in that home, and so she would go out and find love for herself, as a normal person. But vindictive as she was, in the last session she ever had with her brother she unleashed an attack on him that far surpassed any he could have ever mustered and left him barely clinging to life, just as he had. After that she stole away into her room and took up a few packed bags and every record the family had of her, setting out for something new and better. Her first order of business was to reach Honshu, and so she stowed away on the first ship heading there. Avoiding detection was an easy task for her, and she was able to smother her reiatsu to avoid pursuit by the Ikari family.
After weeks of travel on foot and sneaking aboard trains, bathing in rivers and only eating because of the kindness of strangers she arrived in a city that just felt right and decided that Karakura would become her new home. She was hungry, worn, and tired; she had a large bag of clothes that she hadn't worn yet because she hadn't wanted to show up in her new home with nothing but mussed and ruined garments. She had no place to stay, however, and so she set up a small camp on the outskirts of town and decided that would do.
For a few weeks, she took her time adjusting to her new life and eventually found herself in a bar, playing poker for money. She got good, aided by her natural talent for bluffing, but at first she walked away from tables with very little or nothing at all and spent most of her time hungry. She preferred gambling to her alternative, though, and so she weathered the times when she lost and saved her money judiciously. Survival was hard, but in ways it felt so much easier than her life with her family—she could do things at her leisure, and the only person who could tell her what to do was her. She didn't have to fight anymore, at least that was what she thought until she realized that hollows would attack her here too, whether they thought she was human or Quincy. It would be the same anywhere else, she reasoned, and so rather than take to the road again she resorted to chasing them off for waiting shinigami or quincy to kill, she didn't mind which. They never suspected that she was anything more than a vagrant human, which was just how she liked it.
Once she had the town relatively memorized, she enrolled in the local high school after changing the name on her records and forging signatures. She entered school as freshman Hajime Emiko, but her time there quickly became less than fun. She was disliked and mocked because of how “dirty†she came to school looking and how poor she was at communicating with other people, but she excelled in all of her classes to the chagrin of her classmates. Lunch was spent alone under the sakura trees, eating lunches provided by the school. It was the best she had eaten in months at that point, and she would squirrel away portions to eat later. After two months or so in her new school, she met an upperclassman who treated her much better than her classmates did—Ishida Hitoshi. He was made fun of for chatting with the dirty and socially inept new girl, but it seemed like he saw past it and they enjoyed each other's company. After quite some time they began dating; eventually it came to light that she was homeless and Hitoshi convinced her to move in with him under the guise of a goodwill gesture and for a while she enjoyed a stable home and caring adults. When their romance was discovered tensions at the Ishida house rose but they remained together, she was allowed to stay in the home since kicking her out back onto the streets would be downright evil on the part of the family and leave a dark mark on their reputation besides. It pained her to keep her identity from them, but their dedication to the Quincy Cause scared her badly and she worried that if she was revealed they might use her as her family did. Her ability to conceal her reiatsu almost perfectly served her well, and they never suspected a thing.
The two were happy together and eventually got married, ensuring Emiko a comfortable life of relative normalcy with a loving husband. She felt happy, and when she found out she was pregnant she was even happier. They lived a peaceful life, though she often worried about Hitoshi and his involvement with the order though he was more than strong enough by that point to handle himself. When Ichiro was born they were joyous as any parents would be. Ichiro was the light of their life, but he endured teasing and bullying at school and Emiko felt at fault for it, somehow she had failed to teach him how to deal with it. The quiet but bright young Ichiro began to shut himself away, and Hitoshi began to show interest in training him young. It sent a cold shock down her spine to imagine Ichiro fighting at such a young age, but for all her arguing against it Hitoshi disregarded her concerns with a simple 'You can't possibly understand.' He was right...maybe she couldn't. Even as a Quincy, maybe she just couldn't understand his line of logic. That was the point at which their marriage began to lose the warmth and joy it once held, as the boys went off to train and fight and she took care of the home. It pained her at first but as Ichiro seemed to become seized by quiet and barely noticeable fear, she came to resent Hitoshi for (as she saw it) taking his childhood away. Their love eventually dissolved, replaced by indifference.
Emiko continued to care for Ichiro while he was at home, teaching him things she had learned from Hitoshi's parents—sewing, cooking, keeping checkbooks—and he was genuinely interested to her complete joy. To this very day she has things to teach him, but she still keeps her secrets. She always hoped that maybe her guise wouldn't be enough for Hitoshi, and maybe he would force her hand and reveal her, but that was never the case. As the threats in Karakura begin to loom closer however, it seems like she might just get her wish, but she won't let go of her facade so easily.
Bow Classification {Quincy Only}
Bow Name: Peacemaker
Quincy Cross:
Emiko's cross resembles a traditional Quincy pentacle but with a single ceramic rose in the center, held on by a rosary style chain. Emiko never carries it unless she is certain she must fight, instead keeping it in her bedside drawer. She does not fear it being discovered there.
Bow Description:
The Peacemaker is a physically beautiful bow, resembling a very long stemmed rose about three feet in length. A small thorn shaped protrusion about halfway up the bow's length serves as a stable place to nock arrows. The top of the bow splits into three smaller branches with withered rosebuds atop them, with the bow string attached to the center one. The string is thin and green like the rest of the bow, and all in all the bow carries an elegant but fragile appearance, severely belying its true power. The arrows are similarly thin, but packed with reiatsu and take the appearance of thorny stems with ornate creamy pink arrowheads that resemble budding roses.
Functionality:
Peacemaker is a bow that is focused on power, with very dense bolts that pack an unexpected punch for their size. It is a weapon strictly for shooting, since it is wispy and thin it doesn't pass muster for anything else. It does, however, have a special trick to it: as Emiko hits targets, her Peacemaker's flowers begin to bloom (they are taking in the reishi that is freed when Quincy arrows deal damage and this reiatsu is separate from her own). Each rose can hold twenty hits of reishi and this can be used to fire more powerful arrows or saved for two very powerful last-ditch attacks. An arrow fired using this reiatsu must also contain some of her own, but not as much as a regular arrow.
Name: Dance of White Chrysanthemum
Class: Offensive
Range: Long
Description: Emiko's penultimate attack. It uses two flowers of reishi and about a quarter of Emiko's true reiatsu. The attack charges an arrow and then Emiko uses the stored reishi to transform this into a large white bolt that bursts into a show of light resembling its namesake when it hits a target. It deals much more damage than a regular arrow. It does not return any reishi.
Name: Rain of Warring Roses
Class: Offensive
Range: Long
Description: Emiko's ultimate attack. It uses all three fully-bloomed flowers of reishi and 75% of Emiko's true reiatsu but deals ungodly amounts of damage. This attack charges an arrow as usual, but the stored reishi transforms this into a glowing pink bolt that is fired skyward; what comes down is a veritable hail of arrows numbering over a thousand pinpointed directly at a single target. This technique also returns no reishi.
Combat Information
Reiryoku Level:
Character Dynamic:
Emiko is a pacifist—she hates fighting and she usually refuses to take part in it. When she must fight, she carries an intense sorrow into battle. Under very specific circumstances she can be forced into it: she will take action to save her loved ones but won't usually fight to protect herself; it it's her that is in danger she will take the defensive and evasive, using her blut and hirenyaku to dodge and block. She will use her wits to plan a route of escape as quickly as possible and try to lead enemies to their own demise or goad them into squandering their reiatsu before she ever attacks for herself. If she is overpowered with no hope of escape then she will finally take her bow out to save her own life. Emiko is a truly formidable opponent when she is finally pushed into fighting, and always tries to end the battle as quickly as she can. To that end she can become particularly brutal, bringing down savage attacks on even those much weaker than her.
She is a balanced fighter in the sense that she is strong, fast, and has powerful reiatsu in about equal measure as well as solid endurance and defense; she doesn't specialize in any one thing. Her tactics are guerrilla-based, a holdover from her family's teachings, and she always fights with her bow while avoiding hand to hand combat as much as possible. Shooting from cover is a trademark tactic of hers, and she is more likely to force an opponent into pursuing her over a long range than to engage them up front. She is able to discern an enemy's weaknesses quickly and exploit them precisely, if she determines that ranged combat is a weakness of theirs she is willing to engage them on a close quarter field with military style close quarter combat and no qualms about gouging eyes, pulling hair, or using other tactics usually considered unfair. To her, the only unfair fight is the one she loses. She in unafraid of retreating when she is outmatched and aims to minimize casualties among her own side.
She has retained the ability to strategize in groups, but it is something she is a little rusty in as she never needs to use it anymore. Splitting large groups into duos or trios and taking cover quickly is usually her first tactic, just as it is when she fights alone, but if she knows her team mates she will move them around to take advantage of their strengths and cover her own and one another's weaknesses. She much prefers someone else to take up the lead, however, and is very good at following orders to the letter as well as judging whether those orders are reasonable. She is intelligent and cunning enough to make her own decisions, but sometimes falls back on the instincts of blind following she was hammered with as a child. It is for this reason in particular that when she must fight she much prefers to do so alone.
Reishi Abilities:
Name: Hirenkyaku [Flying Screen Step]
Class: Utility
Range: Personal
Description: The Quincy’s signature movement technique, using extreme speed and acceleration to overcome the eye’s capacity to trace movement. This ability can be used to travel quickly from one place to another, or in combat by a skilled practitioner to get a jump on the enemy. Using this skill repeatedly over the course of a battle is ill-advised, as it does not take long for the opponent’s eyes to adjust to the high-speed movement.
Name: Blut
Class: Utility
Range: Personal
Description: A Quincy ability that gives one inhuman defensive and offensive capability. By making reishi flow into their blood vessels they increase their attack and defense power drastically. Blut is significantly dangerous but it has one big flaw, the two forms of Blut for attack and defense work using two different reishi systems, so they cannot be used at the same time.
Known Ginto:
- Heizen
- Grtiz
- Wolke
Significant Inventory:
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