NAMEAkizawa Nadeshiko
GENDERFemale
AGEFifteen - 22nd of November
APPEARANCEHeight: 5' 4"
Weight: 108 lb.
Fashion Sense: Nadeshiko prefers to wear clothing that covers as much of her body as possible. Long-sleeved shirts, large sweaters and over-sized hoodies make up the majority of upper body's coverings. The same goes for her legs, boasting an impressive array of jeans and leggings for the days she is bold enough to wear a skirt. Her taste in colors ironically skews towards the dark, in the vain belief they make her harder to notice despite contrasting against her "skin".
Distinguishing Features: As a result of her Quirk, the entirety of Nadeshiko's body is a glossy, pink gelatinous substance.
PERSONALITYNadeshiko is a somber, melancholic girl with deep seated feelings of self-loathing. Years of torment at the hands of her peers have stomped upon what little hope she has for herself or a happy future, and instilled an overwhelming sense of apathy in her. Her inability to find merit in herself leads her down the path of insecurity, and causes her to doubt herself even at the best of times, for she finds little of worth when looking inwards. Praise, while foreign to her, is something she craves. The validation provided by others acknowledging her merits embarrasses her greatly, but it is one of the few bright things she cherishes, even if her lack of self-esteem and cynicism often causes her doubt its authenticity. While bereft of friends and holding a strong tendency to isolate herself, Nadeshiko proves to be fiercely loyal to those few individuals who look past her depressing exterior to appreciate the gentle nature that lay beneath.
HISTORYIt was not by illustrious lineage that saw Nadeshiko spawned into the circumstances that would haunt her for the rest of her days. Born to a simple salaryman and his wife in the humble city of Ōtsu, the young girl was marked a pariah from the moment the doctors pulled her from the womb; a Quirk user, and one whose unfortunate condition had manifested quite visibly at birth. Chance had condemned her and by extension the burgeoning Akizawa family to years of hardships, though the gelatinous youth would not feel them for the first few years of her life, to the credit of her parents. Perhaps it would have been more merciful if she had. Isolated from play dates and daycare, her progenitors sought to shield the precocious youth from the horrors nightly news projected into their living room long after their daughter had gone to sleep. Perhaps they had meant to protect themselves as well, to push the weight off from their shoulders for as long as possible, and pretend that everything would be okay, that their child was not a freak.
It did not work. For time moved, uncaring as always, forward, and Nadeshiko was forced to confront the painful reality her guardians had tried to dance around when she entered school at the tender age of five. Ill-prepared for the stigmatization that followed, the poor sweet girl was confounded by the way her peers would ignore her. How her teachers would shoot wary glances at her. How they would whisper when they thought she couldn't hear. How daddy stopped smiling as much when he got home from work, and how tired her mom looked all the time. She didn't understand why, at first. But fate, having decided that hers would be a path rife with suffering, saw fit to teach her why. Every year, the silent treatment got a little less silent. The wary glances turned to disdainful glares. The whispers got louder, and crueler, and more numerous. Dad came home a little later each night, as if he didn't want to face the reality waiting for him outside the office, and mom would take little Nadeshiko in her arms and apologize with tears staining her cheeks more and more often.
It made her wish she could still not understand. But she did, she quickly caught onto why the kids at school would call her names, steal her things, jam pencils and rocks and who knew what else into her gooey flesh when they thought she wasn't looking. She wasn't just a little different. She was entirely different. A freak of nature, monstrous, untrustworthy, unfit for society. Like the bad, bad men on the nightly news that her mother all but gave up on stopping her from watching. She deserved it, Nadeshiko had come to accept, even if her Quirk was no fault of her own. Perhaps it was punishment for deeds done in a past life. Perhaps mom was right to apologize to her for birthing her the way she was. It didn't much matter. Nothing did. In the place of shock, anger, even despair at the face of her treatment, apathy took root.
Nadeshiko marched through the days, accepting what fate had deigned to bestow upon her. As she worked her way through grades, she found others like her. People with Quirks too, though never one so visible as hers. Some were like her, content to be victimized. Some lashed out, fighting back with a courage that Nadeshiko lacked, though whether she pitied them for railing against destiny or admired them for having a backbone she never did, the goo girl did not know. Her hopes for a life of normalcy and acceptance had been dashed a dozen times over, nothing more than fond daydreams to whittle away the waking hours. Left to her own devices, there was little doubt that the Mutant would've accepted her place at society's bottom and scraped out a meager living when the comfortable confines of schooling ended and her parents were ready to throw her out like society had been pressuring them to do since the day she was born.
Fate, being a cruel force, refused to give her that certainty. When middle school came to a close and the preparations for high school exams began, pamphlets arrived at her humble home. A hero program, they spoke of, funded by the government in an initiative to fight back against the tides of an ever growing Quirk-based crime wave. Applicants would be shuttled off to a campus near Tokyo, drilled in the usage of the abilities, and given casus belli to rein in their villainous counterparts upon graduation. The prospect was not exciting. But, for the first time in a long time, she caught glimmers of hope on the faces of those who had brought her into the world. A new start, they said, someplace where she could try and make friends with people just like her. Cynical as she was, she had almost thought they looked forward to getting rid of her. But, weak as she was, Nadeshiko could not bear the thought of disappointing them more than she already had.
Forms were filled, applications sent in, and by the time the cherry blossoms that resembled her so well began to fall, Nadeshiko was packed up and on a train to Musutafu, and to her own heroic academia.
QUIRKShort Quirk explanation: Nadeshiko’s Quirk, aptly named Gelatinany, is a Mutation-type that has converted her entire body into a malleable, semi-elastic gel.
OTHERSLikes: Autumn, Sweet Beverages, Praise, Reading, Bravery
Dislikes: Herself, Loudness, Bees, Mint, Mathematics
Fears: Being ostracized by even her Quirk using peers