Dove
Name: Shina Morizumi
Nickname: Misery
Age: 25
Gender: Duh!
Rank: Rank 1 Investigator (recently promoted)
Appearance:
Shina is by all intents and purposes a strong woman. She is what has been described as "beefy as hell" by other investigators, and by extension not the lightest or thinnest woman. Virtually always wearing an eyepatch and having her entire arms covered in shallow scars make a very veteran-y expression and fittingly, she radiates an aura of authority from every pore.
Quinque: (Only the weapon, not the crazy chick wielding it, duh!)
"Misery", a giant spiked sword similar to a grater in its functionality. It was once a Koukaku-style Kagune and retains the former attributes of being extremely heavy, slow and devastating. Its surface appears in a metallic shine as is typical for Koukaku-Kagunes but is also stained with the blood of countless ghouls and convicted humans, complementing the already horrific look of the weapon. The appearance of the weapon is that of a giant, clunky greatsword with numberless rough spiked extensions on both broad sides of the edge. These are often called "teeth" and turn every single slashing motion into a brutal cut that can easily ravage most of a humanoid body beyond recognition, be it human or ghoul. Furthermore, the user can utilize the broad side to smack a victim, likely breaking numerous bones or weaker kagunes with one impact, impaling and scraping off skin of the victim with the teeth.
The major application of this weapon is to overpower an enemy, as many stronger ghouls tend to underestimate the force of impact such a weapon can have in the hands of a mere human. Misery is exceptionally solid and could probably pulverize a tank with very few strikes, taking barely a scratch from it. Needless to say, Shina has to utilize the full extend of her physical power to use the weapon, despite it being made lighter than the original Kagune by modifications to the RC-structure. Obviously, its weight renders the weapon near useless against foes that specialize in evasion rather than defense, but even those kinds of ghouls have eaten a surprising follow-up attack every once in a while.
A special functionality of the Quinque that is mostly used as Morizumis trump card is the whip-blade form, which splits the sword into four pieces connected by a crimson colored, flexible and thick wire. The wire itself is harmless, but this form gives the four giant chunks of hurt deceptively high range, a boost in speed and makes them harder to predict.
She still owns the old, nameless Quinque she used before Misery was made, but hasn't used it since. It roughly resembles the shape of a telescopic baton. While lacking piercing properties, the weapon excels at breaking the opponents guard, swatting away a defensively held Kagune to open up for the follow-up attack of more offensively oriented partners, or cracking porous and structurally weak Kagunes so they can be destroyed by a piercing type of Quinque.
"Misery", a giant spiked sword similar to a grater in its functionality. It was once a Koukaku-style Kagune and retains the former attributes of being extremely heavy, slow and devastating. Its surface appears in a metallic shine as is typical for Koukaku-Kagunes but is also stained with the blood of countless ghouls and convicted humans, complementing the already horrific look of the weapon. The appearance of the weapon is that of a giant, clunky greatsword with numberless rough spiked extensions on both broad sides of the edge. These are often called "teeth" and turn every single slashing motion into a brutal cut that can easily ravage most of a humanoid body beyond recognition, be it human or ghoul. Furthermore, the user can utilize the broad side to smack a victim, likely breaking numerous bones or weaker kagunes with one impact, impaling and scraping off skin of the victim with the teeth.
The major application of this weapon is to overpower an enemy, as many stronger ghouls tend to underestimate the force of impact such a weapon can have in the hands of a mere human. Misery is exceptionally solid and could probably pulverize a tank with very few strikes, taking barely a scratch from it. Needless to say, Shina has to utilize the full extend of her physical power to use the weapon, despite it being made lighter than the original Kagune by modifications to the RC-structure. Obviously, its weight renders the weapon near useless against foes that specialize in evasion rather than defense, but even those kinds of ghouls have eaten a surprising follow-up attack every once in a while.
A special functionality of the Quinque that is mostly used as Morizumis trump card is the whip-blade form, which splits the sword into four pieces connected by a crimson colored, flexible and thick wire. The wire itself is harmless, but this form gives the four giant chunks of hurt deceptively high range, a boost in speed and makes them harder to predict.
She still owns the old, nameless Quinque she used before Misery was made, but hasn't used it since. It roughly resembles the shape of a telescopic baton. While lacking piercing properties, the weapon excels at breaking the opponents guard, swatting away a defensively held Kagune to open up for the follow-up attack of more offensively oriented partners, or cracking porous and structurally weak Kagunes so they can be destroyed by a piercing type of Quinque.Personality: Shina can essentially be seen in three different, separate states of mind. Those are, contrary to rumors in the CCG, not the result of a mental disorder. They are her conscious way of coping with the job as opposed to split personalities! If someone asks her about it, she usually just shrugs with an unphased expression.
The first personality is the most commonly known one, that of a dutiful and exact investigator. The kind of person who pins you on every word you say, makes sure that everyone is following the rules and doesn't tolerate exceptions. People revolting against regulations are confronted, warned and eventually threatened into submission, as no human has yet managed to keep their cool when facing the brutal Quinque Misery. Towards ghouls, she acts merciless and mostly cold. She feels no joy in killing a helpless or weakened ghoul, but doesn't hesitate to do so if the mission requires it. If there is a part of her that believes in peaceful, 'innocent' ghouls, she manages to hide it well.
The second is a careless, fun-loving Shina that is seen only outside of the job. The young woman is living a somewhat carefree and relaxed life in her free time, essentially oblivious to the dangers and horrors of her daily occupation. Some people take their work home because they can't let go, Shina is the exact opposite. After a shift, she takes off her work clothing, heads into the shower room and comes out as a wholly different person, leaving the exemplary investigator in there. This whole persona is possibly a deception, to both hide her actual occupation as a Dove and act innocent or harmless to the people in her daily routine. Be it deception or repression, in this state of mind she appears forgetful about the existence of ghouls and often acts like they're nothing more than an urban legend.
The third Shina is unknown to most, as essentially only her partners have seen it. This is the most unsettling one and it only comes out if a ghoul proves to be a challenge for her. In this case, she will let go of her hesitations, restraints and the stiff workplace mindset to endulge in a ruthless duelling bloodlust. During these phases, she ecstatically enjoys the fight and throws herself into battle with reckless abandon, often surprising even hardy ghouls with her borderline insane demeanor. This is when she actually fights the best as she will utilize the momentum of her Quinque into wild spinning motions and follow-up attacks, but it comes at a cost. She will tunnel vision completely on her chosen victim and not stop chasing it down, ignorant to collateral damage, orders or her own health until the ghoul is either smashed into bloody mucus or manages to escape.
Those who have seen the third persona of hers swear that she's a demon hiding behind multiple layers of sheep's clothing. Generally this part of her is misunderstood, however. Though it might very well seem so, she is not ecstatic about killing ghouls. Instead, she enjoys hunting and fighting a worthy opponent too much for her own good. This part of her psyche surfaced the first time when she lost her eye. There is no doubt that one day, this 'passionate' part of hers will be her demise.
Biography:
Shina Morizumi, like countless others, lost most of her family to ghouls. However, she only realized it after working for the CCG already.
As the child of an averagely wealthy family, Shina lost both parents and her sister when she was no more than three years old. She witnessed a seemingly friendly man knock on their door, enter the house and lull the family in with false friendlyness before eating them in front of the childs eyes. The man left the toddler until last, to be the 'cherry on top' so to say, but the CCG caught up with him and drove him out of the house before he could finish his gruesome meal. Shina was too young to understand what was really happening, luckily. She grew up as the adoptive child of a woman already working for the CCG, being told that she was her aunt and that her parents were simply gone. Shina never felt the urge to inquire how exactly they died, subconsciously avoiding the truth that was already cemented in inaccessable memory.
Not realizing she was shoehorned into attending CCG-Academy, she thought it was the best thing in the world. It had exciting training involved, was about hunting and fighting monsters with amazing weaponry and resulted in doing something 'good' for the world, in her opinion. The girl wasn't the brightest crayon in the box, but she barely graduated thanks to her exceptional bodily fitness and motivation. To think that she'd end up being the stiff, rule-abiding role model investigator one day would have sounded like a joke to her, at that time.
But suddenly, things didn't seem so shiny anymore. The exemplary heroism she always had in mind was nowhere to be found on the actual battlefield. It was a gruesome, exhausting and outright unfair job where the 'good guys' were hopelessly inferior to those they were supposed to hunt. It was a cruel twist of fate when Shina had to see her friends from the academy die at her feet, and at first she blamed herself for all the death around her, both investigators and civilians, sometimes even ghouls. She fell into depression and trained harder, but never let her guard down. She survived where others didn't and eventually managed to kill her first low-ranking ghoul with nothing more than her very human reflexes and a handgun. A man named Ryoto, rank 1 investigator, noticed her impressive dedication and secretly began observing the rookie outgrow her training wheels. After her third takedown he notified his superiors and initiated her promotion, as such talent and commitment had to be supported. At first, Shina didn't even like the idea. Working in a two-man team was a lot more personal than working in a faceless group of many, and the self-preservation instinct in her realized that the CCG just painted a much larger target on her forehead. The notion of learning to use a Quinque on the other hand, evening out the odds in a one-on-one situation, appealed to the survivor. Ryoto volunteered to train her as his partner, and so Morizumi became what she was until very recently - a rank 2 investigator.
In order to widen the girls horizon and drive her away from the ego-trip that kept her alive until now, Ryoto ordered a special Quinque for her, its effectivity almost entirely based on teamwork. It came without surprise that Shina hated it. Being overly reliant on someone else was -in her book- a weakness, and after all the losses in her first year on duty made her reluctant to bond with the man who did so much to support her. While she adapted to the training the rank 1 had in mind for her and they became a potent team that could take on any target, it took almost two years for her to drop her guard around Ryoto and accept him as a friend and partner. That, however, made the following events only harder.
While it remains unclear if the clown-mask was the actual puppeteer, the dead monster was successfully identified as "Ogre" and retrospectively declared S-class. His Kagune was forged into the weapon that is now known as Misery and rightfully dreaded by large parts of the ninth districts ghoul population.
Shina Morizumi came to realization that it was wrong to blame herself for all those years. She survived, Ryoto didn't. He made the mistake, not her. Her intuition to follow the rules was right and his wasn't. While she was still grateful for his support and mourned his loss, she also despised him for this final chapter in her training.
She shelved her old Quinque for being a reminder of her ended partnership, and took up the unique Quinque "Misery" as both a trophy of her achievement in surviving Ogre and a symbol of her realization that in the end, everyone stands or falls alone. While the CCG gave her the option to receive a naturally looking replacement for her eye or even a high tech prototype with several perks and features, Shina remained adamant in her request to use a pitch black glass eye, resembling that of a ghoul. While this is absolutely worthless as a "disguise" - ghouls can smell the difference after all - it serves a purpose still. Like many aspects of her style, it's provocation, a mockery. The target painted on her forehead became one of her greatest allies in fighting ghouls and with Misery she only needs a tiny opening, a brief moment of inattention or underestimation to land a killing blow. Since ghouls usually bathe in their superiority over their human opponents, this is a gamble with the dices rigged in her favor. Despite the glass eye, she often wears an eyepatch that only comes off when fighting a serious battle, where she needs to provocate her opponent as much as humanly possible. Her reliance on the weapon Misery has gotten her that exact alias in ghoul society and the CCG equally. When referring to "Misery", people usually mean her -and- the weapon, as they're virtually inseperable. In the ninth ward, it is often used jeeringly to describe what she has in stock for her current partner.
Shina had a number of partners after the incident, but most of them requested to change teams before long, deeming her unfit for teamwork but admitting her talent. That and the occasional casualty on her more destructive rampages prevented her from ranking up for a time, and eventually the ninth ward ran out of investigators to pair her with. The solution to the problem seemed as simple as effective: internal rumors were spread that the clown-mask moved to the 8th district, and less than twenty-four hours later Shina had her transferral request filled out and handed in. Satisfied with the turn of events, the 9th ward finally promoted her to rank 1 investigator and approved the transferral. Should the 8th deal with her.
Shina keeps an actual headcount of her statistical kills, but not to boast and only to measure her own success. It counts as follows.
54 ghouls:
S-rank - 2
A-rank - 12
B-rank - 35
C-rank - 5
17 convicted humans
4 casualties
The two of them were out on a mission to catch an S-rank ghoul codenamed "Puppeteer". The creature was known to lure his victims into false safety and had done so with other investigators before. Furthermore, there were rumors about a small private fight club he held, but the nature true nature of this enterprise was unknown. After picking up numerous fake trails and wasting several weeks running after red herrings, the ghoul finally made a mistake that gave them a true lead to where this mysterious arena could be. Though at a remote warehouse supposedly being the place, they didn't find what they were looking for. After entering the compound silently, instead of a colosseum they found a half-eaten girl. Draped like a mockery on the investigators and painted like a laughing clown, but bleeding profoundly and barely having a pulse. Ryoto rushed in to help the young woman, despite Shinas expressed distrust about the whole situation. "She's going to die if we don't help her, goddamned Morizumi move!" was the last of Ryotos voice Shina would ever hear, it resounds in her nightmares still. Of course she complied, the order of her superior - and more importantly friend - stood above the code of conduct. As soon as she reached the supposedly unconscious woman though, things went horribly, horribly wrong. The unknown girl snapped awake, quickly knocking out the man at her side by ramming her knee against his jaw in a split second. The sheer power of this action made it obvious that she was not human, but it didn't outright kill the investigator nor did she seem to plan on doing so. She scuttered away on all fours, panicking and with tears running down her cheeks at the sight of Shina and her extended Quinque. The rank 2 saw the fear in this ghouls eyes and realized that she was just defending herself. Shina made a hesitant step towards her unconscious partner and the wounded ghoul holding her hands out in a non-hostile manner. "Calm down." she said, with a wavering but friendly voice. A blunt hit to the back of her head then knocked her lights out.
To her own surprise, she awoke alive and unharmed, but to her horror, she realized where she was - the colisseum. They had run into the Puppeteers trap, drawn to the supposedly harmless ghoul victim like total amateurs. And now they payed the price for it.
The next shock was realization that this fight club pitted humans against ghouls. She had heard the rumors about ghoul versus ghoul fighting as a sport, but this here was nothing more than slaughter. Slowly, her mind processed the sight unfolding in front of her - her holding cell had a large window, portraying what looked like a classical gladiatorial arena inside some kind of immense room, the ceiling easily thrice as high as a regular sized house. In the middle of the arena, a massive, bloated ghoul who probably had more muscle mass than her entire body, and equally as much body fat. The Kagune of the ghoul covered his grotesque arms and formed monstrous extensions at his hands that looked like oversized butcher knives, with an unnecessary amount of razor-teeth like thorns protruding everywhere, essentially turning them into macabre nightmare versions of the infamous baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. Even taking a glancing blow by these would easily turn a whole human body into an unrecognizable mess. She snapped awake just in time to witness the uncategorized ghoul "Ogre" barely miss Ryoto with one of his monstrous attacks. Despite the near miss, the teeth of the Kagune ripped her mentors arm open, grinding away enough flesh for white bones to be exposed. Writhing in pain, he lived only seconds longer in torture before the other arm of the creature connected with his curled up body, ending his existence in one gory smear. Shina screamed her lungs out as the shock ebbed away and the painful loss seeped in. The door of her cell opened and in front of it her suitcase-shaped Quinque presented itself. She threw herself into battle against the monstrosity, eager for the end that would ease the pain of losing her partner. But it was not her time to die. The beast moved slowly and shielded its body with immense range and the sheer intimidation of its spiked appendages, but the latter was of no importance to the investigator, since she had nothing to lose at this point. Using both her own Quinque and the sickle-shaped one of her dead superior, she managed to survive long enough to see the pattern in Ogres attacks and land hits, slowly wearing the monster down. The lethal fists of the ghoul clawed countless shallow scars into her arms, but she always just barely squirmed out of deaths grasp. When the monster finally collapsed, she did too - from exhaustion. One giant corpse among the countless bones and intestines decoration the colliseum.
A masked figure stepped to her side. Though she couldn't see the face of the ghoul, she recognized the thin frame of the wounded clown-girl, wearing the mask of a crying clown mocking her for her own tears. In a fit of rage, the burned-out investigator raised from the ground to strike this person, incarnation of her loss and failure. She didn't know if it was the girl or some other ghoul who hit her, but something impacted with her at unfathomable speed and vaulted her across the arena. Shina didn't get the time to recover from the blow, a moment later the clown-face hovered over her.
"You took out my gladiator. I will remember you for this." a dry, monotone voice sounded from the girl.
Prying, merciless fingers crept over Morizumis face and the following seconds would be burnt into her memory as the most painful experience in her life, as the ghoul slowly and carefully ripped her left eyeball out. Barely audible under the screams of agony filling the arena, the delicate voice spoke to her again.
"You should feel honored. The memory of your success will live on."
Two other ghouls appeared at her side, but the writhing investigator didn't really notice. The pain almost drove her insane. After a nod of the clown, one of them raised his scythe-shaped Kagune above Morizumis body with the clear intent to kill her. The deafening gunshot of a high-caliber sniper rifle sounded, ending the attempted murder by penetrating the head of her supposed butcher right through the temple. While the ghouls body was thrown aside from the impact to land between other corpses with a wet thud, CCG forces poured into the room. Shina herself had swallowed a bug at the beginning of her shift out of sheer paranoia, and just now it did a fine job leading the CCG to a well-timed rescue. Despite her anguish and to the great surprise of the scattering two ghouls, Shina jumped up and charged for the clown girl. Pressured by the CCG forces aassault the Clown was unable to properly fight back, but though Morizumi landed an actual hit through the element of surprise, she eventually lost her target and collapsed for good.