Name- Hikaru Tsukuda
I.D. Number- 00405823
Rank- D3
Year- 1
Nationality- Half Japanese/Half American
Age- 16
Gender- Female
Appearance- She wears a hakama (pants) and keikogi (top), traditional for kendo practitioners, over a plain grey t-shirt and form fitting grey shorts.
Fighting Style- Kendo and aikido. If this was a kendo competition she'd be around A rank, but with this not being allowed in normal fighting she has had to make due without her shinai, resulting in a hastily put together fighting style more akin to what you'd see in a street fight with the influence of kendo thrown in by way of some of her jabs and swings looking as if she's using her arm/fist as a sword. Luckily all of her kendo training did benefit her by way of physical abilities, allowing her to be very much in shape; balanced between power and speed and can take quite a beating before being put down. Her style of fighting defensively until seeing openings in her opponent's defenses and capitalizing on it remains the same. Still, with her lack of refinement and knowledge of how to fight properly without her shinai, she's bound to make costly mistakes and lose to opponents that she might be physically more capable then. She's particularly unsuited against grapple attacks.
Powers- In 3 seconds she can form a defensive layer of solid air directly on top of her skin at the strength of iron armor. Although saying it's defensive, it would still hurt people more to be hit as if she was wearing an iron glove. You can see when her power is active by it's quivering, distorted white area of space that shines through the fabric. She's personally incapable of sending the solid air out any further then this thin layer or form it into any other shape, even if it would be theoretically possible. She can only form it over enough of a surface area to cover one hand and about halfway up the forearm. Any more surface area at once and it weakens considerably, becoming too unstable for practical use. She cannot split where she generates the layer, such as both fists or one fist for offense and over her torso for protection. Keeping it up requires continual energy use, so at the maximum surface area it would exhaust her within around 40 seconds.
Personality- She's feisty and tomboyish, first and foremost. However, most of her feistiness is directed towards perceived wrongdoers which most definitely includes bullies, who she will
not tolerate and who she
will speak her mind. That being said her sense of justice is strong. She learned her lesson long ago when she was on the other side of the law and she never wants to return or see other people squander their abilities. If she decides to do something then she often wishes to carry it through to the point of stubbornness, making her hard to work with on a team if they are not so eager or have conflicting ideas. She tries to keep these more negative traits of hers in check so she's not too hard on people, but she just wants people to succeed so gets rather irritated if she has to bottle things up. It's simply not her style.
Background- Her father was an American businessman who traveled over to Japan as part of a work related opportunity, which is where he met the love of his life and married two years later. Unfortunately, he died in a plane crash while on one of his business trips, leaving a single mother to try and support 8-year-old Hikaru. Times were tough and Hikaru could see how difficult it was on her mom even at that young age. As such she tried to get by on her own so her mom wouldn't have to work so hard, which ended up involving her stealing food and other basic necessities, claiming that her friends at school gave it to her and it would have been rude to decline their presents.
One day her crime spree came to and end when she stole from kendo instructor Makoto Ueno, who whacked her upside the head and caused her to spill all of her stolen merchandize. He promised not to get her in trouble if she returned the items to everyone, which she did after a bit of pouting and another failed escape attempt. Although she was angry at him for catching her, she couldn't help but be intrigued by him when she spotted him around on occasion and heading into the kendo dojo to give lessons. Makoto noticed her peaking and offered her into the building as much as she wanted. From there he was able to keep a close eye on her so she wouldn't go back to her old ways and also teach her how to behave honorably. It took a while to warm up to him, but she eventually did and officially joined his kendo class, which he offered to her for free and she could just pay him back whenever she was able. He became like a dad to her. It was unknown how her mother truly felt about that sentiment, but it helped Hikaru get over her real father's death so she was happy for her daughter. Hikaru was no longer on her dark road and was back into a full recovery.
Due to staying at the dojo so often, having not much to do otherwise after school and growing attached to the place like a home away from home, she become very skilled at kendo for her age, although never skilled enough to take on the masters like Makoto. Still, she was considerable and confident that she could do well in New Peaks High, which offered a better education then what she could afford otherwise, especially with her scholarship she had earned for it. She was so eager that she overlooked a very important part that had been mentioned on the school website; shinai are not allowed in standard fights. She only learned that after flying out to the school and the first day began, the information given to her in the briefing. She nearly had a heart attack at the news, but there was no way she would turn back now. She had to somehow make due. Her physical qualities and magic earned her a D rank but that didn't take into account practical fighting ability, so she'd be stuck with opponents who mostly did have that experience she lacked, the inexperienced people being in E rank where she thought she belonged.
She somehow managed to pep herself up, saying that she was indeed a powerful fighter, so using her hands rather then a blade shouldn't be much more difficult. She was a D rank, after all...right? She could win her matches...right?
