Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2013 15:01:02 GMT -5
Fukui; Chiyo; Meister
Name: Chiyo Fukui
Nickname: Fukuemi Aino (Geiko name)
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Race: Meister
Position: Student
Class: One-star
Partner: Bang Bang
A Strong Body
Picture:
Appearance:
Chiyo is taller than average, with an oval face, thin lips, and dark brown eyes. She has an athletic build, with an average bust and thighs and hips, and is generally fit, practicing dancing every day to keep up her skills. Her strength doesn’t manifest as muscle definition, although she isn’t exactly soft. Her hair is jet black and straight, held back with a red headband on most occasions, and goes down to her chin in soft layers. She wears it down most of the time, but when she’s working or it bothers her she throws it up in a very short ponytail. Chiyo is very pretty, and takes good care of herself, and although she wears quite a lot of makeup when she is in full geiko dress, she rarely wears any when she isn’t. The most extravagant she gets outside of her geiko getup is lip gloss.
She dresses somewhat formally – a navy school uniform jacket over a white, short-sleeved button up, fastened with a red bow. Matching her jacket, she wears a long navy skirt that goes to right below her knees, coupled with socks that go halfway to her knees and brown loafers on her feet. A more casual outfit would be a nice cardigan over another button up and a long skirt. She was raised to dress nice, and won’t ever be seen looking sloppy. On occasion, or when she’s practicing dancing, she wears kimono or a yukata, more comfortable in them than in civilian clothing. She will wear them as soon as she returns home, and probably would wear them on missions if she wasn’t afraid of getting them ruined. (For missions, she’d wear something closer to a miko robe or just her school clothing).
Height: 5’9”
Weight: 165
Fighting Style:
Chiyo has trained in dance for years, so her movements emphasize grace and no extraneous energy expended. She moves where she means to, making sure every step counts. This also translates well into actual fighting, giving her sure footing and ease of movement. As well, her father gave her training, so she knows quite a few melee holds, grabs, and hits, as well as significant knowledge of kendo and sword fighting. She’s hardly a master, but she has enough practical knowledge to make her competent.
Personality:
Although the ex-geisha is at home in the tea houses, entertaining guests and making polite conversation with many kinds of people, Chiyo is more individual at heart. She loves nothing more than a quiet afternoon, maybe with a cup of tea, working on calligraphy or watching TV. She appreciates her alone time quite a lot, and most of her pursuits and hobbies are solitary.
Although she has a long history of being a social creature, once removed from that society, Chiyo can come across as unsociable and aloof, but that stems mostly from being unsure how to behave herself in a place that isn’t Gion Kobu. She has no idea how normal teenagers behave themselves, and a lot of their actions and conversations are what she calls “crude.” This can make her seem slightly standoffish or even snobby, although she doesn’t mean to be and often wouldn’t realize that’s how she’s coming across. She can also seem vain, although caring about her appearance is more to do with years of being taught that appearance was very important, which carried over to her Shibusen life. However, Chiyo has a very humble view of herself, and can be slightly self-deprecating, although she’d be embarrassed and apologize if she was called out on it. She’s not shy or unconfident, but to boast would be unseemly. She dislikes to talk about her successes, instead focusing on areas where she can improve.
She can fake a smile and pleasant talk with the best of them, being a practiced entertainer, which makes her a great liar but one with a guilty conscience. She values honesty and trust, but is afraid to open up to people in case they dislike her. Chiyo is used to hiding behind her geisha makeup, but once she lost her “mask,” so to speak, she became scared. She doesn’t tell anyone that she was a geisha, as in recent years (especially in America) they were thought of as prostitutes, and so she also carries a fear of getting a reputation that’s completely false. Thus she walks around on eggshells when she meets new people, behaving politely but wary to befriend people.
Although she’s very out of her element, Chiyo works extremely hard and is very dedicated. She truly means well and can be extremely generous and kind without any thought to herself. She isn’t selfish, and is very aware of the people around her, even though she may be misinterpreting their intentions.
Surprisingly, one of Chiyo’s favorite things is scary movies and horror novels. She enjoys any and all stories about ghosts, monsters, and the occult, and shares this love with her grandmother, who tells her old Shinto tales of sprits and ghastly apparitions. Chiyo can come across as, perhaps, a little macabre at times because of it, but in her mind a really good scare is quite a lot of fun!
Inside the Soul
Abilities:
Soul Purge: By resonating with her own soul, Chiyo can drive her soul wavelength directly into an opponent's body through a physical strike on them. The incompatible Wavelength can cause strong direct and internal damage, and she is very good at it, thanks to training from her father.
Soul Perception: Soul Perception allows Meisters to see the nature of a person's soul. With this information, Meisters can then make judgements about the person's characteristics, and it can be especially helpful in discerning the person's Wavelength, which a Meister can exploit in battle by matching or disrupting. This makes it a valuable asset to combat.
In Chiyo's personal case, mediation allows her to focus and see souls. She closes her eyes and is able to get a picture of the soul in her mind. Since she has just begun to develop this ability, she can only see souls, and when she is too agitated she is unable to use the ability at all. She must be in a calm environment and she must focus her entire attention on the soul she wishes to see. This will be refined through practice (and upgrades).
Resonances: N/A
Out of your Mind
Strengths:
- Agile
- Physically strong
- High endurance
Weaknesses:
- Not strategic
- Slow
- Low stamina
Hobbies: Reading, practicing calligraphy, avoiding shamisen practice, wearing beautiful kimono (although putting them on takes forever and she dislikes how difficult it is), taking walks, reading horror novels and watching scary movies.
Likes:
- Beautiful clothing
- Autumn
- Horror
- Mochi
- Kotatsu
Dislikes:
- Animals
- Writing in kanji
- Reading
- Shamisen
- Rain
- Sloppy makeouts
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Aspirations:
When still in training to be a geisha (more accurately, a geiko in Kyoto – a woman of the arts), she wanted to continue her training and become a full-fledged geiko, but she also harbored a secret wish to go to Shibusen, although she had a hard time admitting it to herself until the opportunity to actually go arose. Now, she wants nothing more than to be the best meister in the land – to be a graceful and dangerous scourge of Kishin Eggs, who crushes the skulls of her enemies! But in a lovely way, of course.
History:
Born in Kyoto, Japan, as Chiyo Fukui, Chiyo lived a fairly normal life. Her family was traditional, coming from old wealth on both sides; her grandmother a retired geiko (a Kyoto geisha) who had left the profession after her popularity declined to get married, and her father was a stay at home dad. He was a Miester, having attended Shibusen until a serious injury forced him to retire. He now wrote dissertations on Kishin Eggs, and had also published several essays on theories on Madness, although his favorite hobby was learning more about the way of the sword. Chiyo’s mother was a homemaker, but she was from a wealthy family, descended from ancient nobility. They lived a quiet life, mostly, with Chiyo attending school and practicing subtle geiko arts learned from her grandmother. She planned on being a geiko, following in her grandmother’s footsteps, and although her father protested, her female relatives were more than happy to see her off in that direction. Her father grumbled, hoping Chiyo would be a meister like he was, and there were several mock arguments at the dinner table about her future. Chiyo promised her father that if she made a horrible geiko, she’d be a Miester, but her father wasn’t just content, knowing his daughter was naturally talented in that area anyways. He gleefully had her train her Soul Purge when it appeared suddenly at the age of 13, and taught her many fighting holds just in case. Chiyo loved it, and often dreamed about becoming a great meister, although she didn’t tell anyone about her wishes.
When she graduated from middle school, she began her training to be a geiko – specifically, an entertainer, learning an array of arts. She worked at a traditional geisha house, an okiya, in the Gion district, famous for its geiko and the rich history it held. She began at 15 years of age, and she was a maiko, an apprentice geiko. Her onee-san, a kind and round-faced senior geiko named Omocha, helped her pick out a proper geiko name, Fukuemi.
If Fukuemi had continued, she would have most likely debuted as a full fledged geiko within a couple years, given her skill at dance. During her time as a maiko, she learned the traditional instruments: the shamisen, shakuhachi, and drums. She also learned traditional songs, how to do calligraphy, Japanese traditional dances (nihonbuyō), and the tea ceremony, among also learning about literature and poetry. Her dancing and tea ceremony were her strongest pursuits, and she quite enjoyed learning both, especially bored with playing the instruments (her teachers called her performance with the shamisen in particular “awful” and “worse than a cat being stepped on”). Thankfully, her grace in dancing made her popular, and during the festivals in Kyoto she often participated in public dances, called odori. It would often take her at least two hours to get ready, as the makeup and dress of a maiko was much more elaborate than an older geiko.
When she turned 17, two years after her formal training, she had finaly mastered the arts enough to become a full-fledged geiko and continue entertaining. Her skill with Soul Purge – possibly aided by her focus on concentration learned from her time as a maiko – had not gone unnoticed, and her father wanted her to do more with her life than just participate in tea ceremonies, no matter how culturally significant they were. Fukuemi was extremely torn – on one hand, she quite enjoyed her dancing and wanted to continue, but her debts to her okiya had not been paid, so leaving the okiya after gaining geiko status would have been financially unwise. At the same time, life as a meister sounded exciting and new – it was something she thought she could master, just as she mastered dance. After much deliberation, she decided to retire from the geiko scene, electing to leave Gion Kobu and take up meister training at Shibusen. Her okiya, in an uncharacteristic show of generosity, decided to absorb the losses and sent Fukuemi off with not only beautiful new kimono as a parting gift, but they even agreed to arrange for a nice apartment in Death City for her to live in. Her grandmother would go with her to Nevada to help her with her schoolwork, as she had Fukuemi’s father, but also to keep her in practice and help with her kimono and makeup and hair, because her grandmother staunchly refused to let Fukuemi’s skills go rusty. Her mother agreed to send them money every month for food and necessities, but it took everything in Fukuemi and her grandmother’s power to keep her from sending more than was necessary. So Fukuemi retired her geisha name, and began going by Chiyo Fukui once more to differentiate her miester career from her geiko one, cutting her hair in a more modern style and confidently travelling onward to Shibusen.
Extra Notes:
Behind the strings
Alias: Kat
Other characters: Zia Leroux, Nathaniel Zsoldos, Aries Sivo, Lavender Pratchett
Face Claim: Erika from Pokemon
RP Sample:
It was strange and eerily comfortable to be sleeping with a pillow under her head, and Chiyo was having trouble getting comfortable. After years of using a wood block to keep her hair in perfect shape, as geisha did in the old days, anything softer just bothered her. The amount of sleep she could get was strange, as well. Chiyo had gotten so used to 4 or less hours a night that the sudden free time seemed ominous. She felt restless, like she should be doing something, and sliding out of bed, she padded to the kitchen to make tea.
Her grandmother was already there, reading a newspaper from Kyoto, despite the late hour.
<<Grandmother, you’re awake,>> Chiyo said, surprised.
“In English,” her grandmother said, folding the newspaper and sitting it on the table. “You must practice.” Sanae Fukui was fluent, a skill Chiyo had always admired but had never quite mastered. Her father was fluent as well, since he had done all his schooling at Shibusen, and had tried to teach Chiyo as best he could, but he made a better student than a teacher. Chiyo knew enough to get by, but was far from perfect at it. She was horribly aware of her accent, but her grandmother had remarked just the other day that she was getting better and better, so at least she was improving!
“It is very hard,” Chiyo said, slowly, trying to get the pronunciation right.
“You’ll get the hang of it. Were you going to make tea?”
“Yes.” Chiyo got up and, forgetting herself for a moment, asked her grandmother in Japanese, <<Would you like some as well?>>
“In English!” It had become her mantra.
“Would…you want tea?”
“Yes, please. Thank you, Chiyo.”
“You are welcome!”
Chiyo put the kettle to boil and sat back down at the table, a western one with chairs. It felt strange not to kneel – her house back home had been an old, old house, with paper doors and traditional accoutrements, and the okiya she had worked for had been one of the older in Gion Kobu (although all the okiya were fairly old, seeped in long tradtion). Chiyo sighed and wished she had her kotatsu, the heated blanket that went over tables in winter. It had been her favorite thing in the world, and if she was honest with herself she missed it, even if it was incredibly warm in Nevada. One thing she liked was the casual clothing. She had followed fashion, but working as a geisha had meant kimonos nearly 24/7, and it was nice to wear cute modern fashions for the first time in years.
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