Name: Hikaru Tsukuda
I.D. Number: 46443892
Rank: C1
Year: 1
Nationality: Japanese
Age: 15
Sex/Gender: Female
Face Appearance:
Clothing and shinai appearance:
Other Appearance: She has burn marks covering a lot of her back.
Fighting Style:
She's a nidan at kendo, which is the second "black belt" rank. She has no other types of martial arts practice.
If she's caught without her shinai (practice sword used in kendo) then it results in a hastily put together fighting style more akin to what you'd see in a street fight, practicality winning over flair, with the influence of kendo thrown in mostly by way of her footwork still acting as if she was in kendo. Some of her punches may swing around as if they were her sword, but this is usually only if she gets extremely flustered so most of the time she can at least pull off normal looking punches. Her most common reason to do the "swinging sword punches" intentionally is when she clasps her hands together and does a downward swing of her arms to bash the opponent on the head.
Luckily all of her kendo training benefits her by way of physical abilities whether she's using her shinai or not, allowing her to be very much in shape (including very respectable ab muscles and a toned body, but no bulging muscles). She has a healthy balance between power and speed and can take quite a beating before being put down, some of this due simply to determination, however.
Her style of fighting is generally defensive until seeing openings in her opponent's defenses and capitalizing on it. 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 than. She's particularly unsuited against grapple attacks and on the floor due to not having to deal with it in kendo. For that matter, any other techniques not used in kendo can equally take her off guard besides the basics that everyone should know. This makes her C3 rank at the school a tad misleading. She can lose to much lower opponents if they take advantage of her weaknesses but she can also be incredibly formidable to higher ones in certain circumstances as well, especially if she's allowed a shinai. This makes her a bit of a wild card at the mercy of circumstances. However, she's going to do her best and train to alleviate most of her major flaws to become far more formidable against any type of opponent.
Powers:
She has power over pressure, a power which could greatly expand with practice but is right now of more limited scope. Her pressure comes from within her body and extends out of her skin to her immediate surroundings whenever she wills it and applies the necessary energy. If she focuses on exerting pressure off of only a smaller portion of her body rather than in it's entirety, it will not increase the amount of pressure she can magically exert onto the less surface area, it simply requires less energy than applying the pressure all over. This means that if she wants to use it defensively she has to know where the attack will hit, otherwise she'd be wasting a whole lot of energy trying to cover too much. She can control how hard or soft her pressure is, but obviously has a max amount that she could exert, which would feel as hard as if she delivered a shove that could knock someone over if they're not braced for it or rather weak.
Even if she pinpoints her pressure placement perfectly, it's still not likely anywhere near a perfect defense. Imagine shoving your hands at someone and them punching your palms. Odds are you will still be reeling much more than they are. Her advantage is that she doesn't have to be moving to do this, so wouldn't make it hurt even more by moving into the blow, but the fact still remains that the punch would win out. Of course if she adds her own physical force into the mix then it would make things all the more difficult for her opponent, yet tire her out that much quicker like she's using 110% of her strength or more. That being said, pressure is best used for things other than trying to outright stop an entire blow from occurring or else she'll either loose or exhaust herself quickly.
This transferring of pressure to a target can also include other applications such as sending pressure out into the floor from the soles of her feet to increase jumping height, but this doesn't work well on all types of flooring. For example, if fighting on sand then the pressure spreads out and dissipates, not applying much force back to her in equal and opposite to allow her to jump (she's currently unaware of this disadvantage).
Although coming from her skin it doesn't have to be bare skin because the transfer of pressure can easily be done through her normal clothing and her opponent's normal clothing to reach their body. If she wore armor or thick soles on her feet than those could interfere, a lot in case of armor and a little for the shoes.
Besides this manual application of her pressure it can be done to constantly exert itself all over her body. This is what she calls "auto pressure". Although this stops her from having to pinpoint where the attacks are coming from to use her ability defensively on it, it tires her out so quickly that it can only be used for 10 seconds all in one burst while manually applying it could allow her to last around three minutes if used relatively sparingly (not every attack, but every once in a while). Upon using too much pressure in battle she's often at a loss for pressure afterwards, suffering the effects of low blood pressure and overall weakened by up to half for around an hour. Sometimes she may even slump against her shinai sticking vertically out of the ground and zonk out right then and there, nearly impossible to wake up for the night.
Personality:
She's feisty, tomboyish, stubborn, and motherly, to point out her most obvious character traits. 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 to. That being said her sense of justice is strong. She's seen enough of the other side of the law and she never wants to see other people squander their abilities by being in such a predicament. If she decides to do something then she often wishes to carry it through to the point of being self detrimental, making her hard to work with on a team if they're not so eager as she is about things 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.
She has PTSD related to fire, so often freezes up and has minor panic attacks when seeing an open flame wielded nearby.
Background:
Her family was not the richest and her older brother, Akio, turned to the yakuza in a misguided attempt to help things out for them even if through less than pleasant measures. He made many stupid decisions over the years, decisions which snowballed over time. Once Hikaru was old enough to truly understand what was going on she would often knock some sense into him. Despite being two years younger than Akio she was like the older sibling and protector, mentally tougher than Akio was despite all efforts on his part for things to be otherwise. Despite the strained situation, or perhaps even because of it, they shared a close sibling bond.
She developed in interest in self defense, which turned to kendo, during this time, and a kind dojo instructor allowed her to do chores around the dojo and get her set up for other part time work opportunities to help pay for some of the cost that she couldn't afford at the moment. Noticing how hard of a worker she was, he claims that her work was able to pay off her cost in full within mere weeks. Wither he was just being nice or if this was actually true, she doesn't know, but what she does know is that she worked so hard that she seldom had time to sleep, in between school, homework, and spending time at the dojo or other jobs.
Unfortunately, despite all of her best efforts, things would soon take a far more sinister turn when she turned 10.
A rival yakuza group was beating akio senseless one day and she tried to intervene, taking some of the aggression as well until the leader called off the attack for reasons that she didn't know at the time, believing that she had scared them off. Unfortunately they just wanted to teach her a better lesson than simply beating the two up. Once she dragged her brother home, the rival group appeared yet again and firebombed their house once she and the rest of her family were inside.
A piece of burning debris crashed down onto her back, pinning her to the floor. This is when her powers first became evident as she managed to use pressure to knock the debris off of her, a feat impossible for someone of her normal strength to pull off from her position. She was damaged with permanent burn marks from his but luckily didn't suffer any long term debilitating injuries. The same could not be said for her parents; her father who died in the initial explosion and her mother from the flames.
Panicked bystanders rushing out to the scene scared the yakuza off or else they'd risk being identified and dealing with an angry mob. It was this that allowed Hikaru and her brother to survive the horrible encounter. The brave individuals who stormed into the burning building witnessed Hikaru flinging aside debris like pieces of cardboard as she tried desperately to get her parents free, although little did she know they were already either dead or beyond saving. With help from the adults, the family was at last pulled free and sent to the emergency room, Hikaru in the best shape besides her back being in agony and her muscles aching. Due to use from her power, it was this and the stress of the situation that caused her to pass out and hardly remember the events that occurred next.
She woke up an orphan. After recovering from their injuries they were released and adopted by the Tsukuda family, her adopted father a police chief who responded to the scene of the crime and was highly sympathetic of their plight. Her adopted mother, a moderately famous actress, always wanted children but was sterile. After a long, serious discussion, they decided that they should care for them as best as they could until they could reach adulthood. Hikaru started up kendo again for rehabilitation and to help get her mind focused on an activity with her friends there to help comfort her. If she just moped around at her new home then she might not have been able to recover. She believes kendo saved her life as a result, of course also giving this honor to her adopted parents.
Akio wasn't so lucky, as old habits die hard. Wanting to turn the situation around, Akio decided to join New Peaks and improve himself, but ironically got himself into trouble yet again in the process of paying for his tuition by stealing a small fortune from a rival yakuza group while on a raid with his own yakuza buddies after they talked him into it. Although his father was suspicious, Akio claimed that he had been saving his money up all the time he had been with his original parents, a fact which Hikaru, who he trusted far more, verified due to not wanting to get him in trouble, although she now wishes that she would have been honest so deeply regrets this for multiple reasons.
Once Akio got his acceptance letter he was off to school, the last time she'd see him while he was still conscious, at least for the foreseeable future.
He was beat into a coma by an undisclosed student for privacy concerns, but they obviously couldn't keep it confidential for very long as she figured out his name on her own; Shotaro Yanmei. Her best chance of properly confronting him was while he was still at what was known as the fight school, so she decided that was her next best course of action. While waiting for her parents to agree on her request to attend New Peaks and save up the necessary funds, she was working her butt off to get to second dan rank in kendo, a fact which likely helped her get accepted to join New Peaks next year when she was 15, transferring in eight weeks into the school year once everything was in order. Shotaro was now a senior. She knew she'd have little chance of actually defeating him, and she wasn't positive that this would be what she truly wanted to do once she found him, but she'd soon find out.
"First rule of fight school, don't fail fight school"