Name: Akeno
Current Stats:Level:
1 | Form:
Orc Runt | Tier:
2Current Skills:
- Ingestion - After consuming a required amount of biomass from a particular Creature, 1 of that Creature's Skills can be copied at its lowest Rank.
- Isekai Skill - Not Yet Chosen
- Empty Skill Slot
- Empty Skill Slot
Equipment and Inventory:
- Swaddling Pelts - Equip, Clothes - Old animal skins used to keep an Orc baby warm as they sleep. Once the Runt is old enough to start hunting, these are usually just enough to cover the parts that need the most covering.
- Wooden Stick - Equip, Weapon/Tool, Material Component - A wooden stick. From a tree. That's...that's all there is to it. Can be thrown.
- Sharp Rock - Equip, Weapon/Tool, Material Component - A rock with a slightly sharp edge. Useful as a primitive knife or chisel. Can be thrown.
True Age: 18
Past Life: Born and raised in Miami, Florida, Akeno is the daughter of Japanese immigrants, her parent’s second child and the first one born on American soil. When moving to America for her father’s work, her parents wanted to bring as much of their culture with them as possible, both being fairly traditional and old fashioned in terms of their beliefs and values. As such, Akeno grew up very much immersed in and aware of Japanese culture despite never visiting the country herself; she learned to speak English and Japanese alongside each other, ate Japanese food, and learned Japanese history. Furthermore, her parents still follow a number of Shinto traditions, though they have had to let several traditions slip away due to the fact that following them is harder in America than back in Japan; Akeno does not consider herself to be religious, mostly because Shinto isn’t a ‘religion’ in that sense, but still follows some of the Shinto traditions alongside her family.
Growing up, Akeno was close to her older brother at first, until their differing relationships with their parents drove a divide between them. Being the oldest and also being the only boy, her brother was seen as the golden child in their eyes, especially her mother; Akeno was constantly compared to him, always unfavourably, always getting in trouble for things they both did. If she failed to do something, she was told to be more like her brother, who never failed. If she succeeded, then she was just meeting the expectations her sibling had set, which was not worthy of praise. As she grew older she would try to fight back against these double standards, to little success, but it was seeing how her brother failed to do the same, never standing up for her or supporting her, that finally soured their relationship.
Even after this, Akeno still tried to appease her parents; to be seen to be as good as her brother in their eyes, if only to spite them and prove that she could. Academically Akeno was an average to above average student, always managing to pass her classes even if she didn’t excel at anything in particular. When her parents, particularly her mother, pressured her to try and do better, Akeno worked herself as hard as she could in order to push her grades higher. Through this effort, and many late nights of studying, she was able achieve straight A’s. However, even this wasn’t enough to please her parents who instead simply changed to criticising her studying habits and late nights instead, leaving Akeno despondent. By the time Akeno was finishing elementary school and starting middle school she was burned out from trying to maintain an impossible standard and had given up trying to please her parents academically or trying to compete with a brother who she had long since stopped looking up to.
In her final year of elementary school her parents tried to push her towards taking up an extracurricular activity. Her brother, of course, was already taking part in one by being on his school’s soccer team and this was another push to be more like him; her parents likely wanted her to take up a sport of some kind as well, or at least join a club that would look good on applications. She had no interest in this and wanted to just tell them no, but parents were insistent and Akeno decided to choose something that they would never approve of in an attempt to get them to drop the issue. She knew that her mother hated the idea of her brother doing anything dangerous, vetoing any sport with contact rules and even initially feeling uneasy with him playing a sport with as much risk of injury as soccer; as such when it was her turn to pick Akeno said she wanted to do a martial art of some kind thinking that the same would apply to her. Initially things went as expected with her parents telling her to pick something else, even making suggestions, but Akeno was adamant in the hopes they would give up. But to her surprise her father ended up changing his mind and agreeing to her taking up a martial art, with her mother reluctantly agreeing to it as well with the caveat that she wouldn’t actually be fighting anyone.
Because of this Akeno found herself enrolled at a Gōjū-ryū karate dojo to learn the sport variant of the martial art. She had only been half serious when suggesting it, but Akeno was forced to take the lessons seriously; otherwise she would have to admit to her parents that she didn’t actually want to learn karate in the first place, which would be a humiliating thing to admit after putting her foot down on the matter. She threw herself into her lessons at the dojo with vigour, if not quite enthusiasm, and initially struggled due to her level of fitness and being unable to follow the lessons properly. She wanted to quit, but was already committed, and at some point things just began to click; the lessons became easier to understand and when she hit puberty and had a growth spurt, shooting up in height, things became even easier. Despite her insincere reasons for starting, Akeno quickly grew to enjoy karate after that.
A year later Akeno expressed a desire to enter tournaments; sport karate, point-based with light contact and padding. Her parents were initially against it as it specifically went against her mother’s caveat of her not fighting anyone, but her father was quick to change his mind when she set out of convince him and she assured him it was safe. A few years after that, around when she entered high school, she decided wanted to take the next step and start learning the traditional version of karate instead of the sport variant and also to begin competing in full contact tournaments. She knew that this time it would be a lot harder to convince her parents to let her do this however and she spent most of her summer holiday after graduating middle school working up the courage to ask for permission, expecting to be completely forbidden from even trying full-contact karate and willing to fight her case in response. What followed was the longest and loudest fight she had ever had in her life, as she and her mother argued back and forth with no end in sight, neither one of them willing to budge on the matter. Once again, her father choosing to side with her was the deciding factor saying that he would support her desire to take part in full-contact tournaments so long as she was sure it was what she wanted. At her next lesson her father made the necessary arrangements for her to transfer to the traditional karate classes; she has since managed to obtain her black belt at the beginning of her final year of high school and regularly entered both sports and full contact tournaments.
At the time of her death, Akeno was rapidly approaching graduation and had already applied to and had been accepted to the university of her choice; she was entirely sure what it is she wanted to do with her life and had been planning to study English literature in the meantime. It ended up being a moot issue however when she was cornered by a mugger on her way home from school one day. She didn’t try to fight back, her experience with fighting was good enough she knew not to try anything against the knife he was holding, and was prepared to just hand over her wallet and phone and get it over with; it probably would have worked and she would have made it home safe, had someone not stumbled across them and shouted out, startling the mugger into lashing out and stabbing her somewhere vital.
Maybe she should have fought back anyway.
New Life:Day 0, Orc Runt > Awakening