Hinawa Kagami [Approved; 1-5]

"So fight the past... take back the night."

Basics

Name: Hinawa Kagami
ALIAS: Eis, Queen of Isolation
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Bisexual
Age: 17
Height: 4'8"
Weight: Lightweight

Personality: Hinawa is, for lack of a better term... cold. She just doesn't seem to care about much in life or the world. She has an incredibly hard time with paying attention to the things that don't directly concern her. Even more, she doesn't like people, not one bit. Acting hostile and without any respect towards pretty much EVERYONE is normal for her. Even harsh insults are used just to get others away from herself, for she enjoys solitude and quiet times. Outright conflict, though, is not her desire... at least not one she shows. In fact, she just doesn't show a lot of things.
Her heart is 'frozen', but not completely dead. She may dismiss a crying child next to the body of the dead mother with a flippant comment and disregard, but that is mostly because of how desensitize she has become. A life filled with violence and mortal danger has dulled her empathy, but not completely eradicated it. If you just make her listen for once, and FORCE her to pay attention, then she will care just like any other human would.

Other than most people, Hinawa has no ethical barriers regarding murder. She can stab someone to death with a pen, be drenched in their blood, and not feel a single ounce of guilt about it. She's a trained and effective killer, being the source of her cold attitude, and she's damn proud of it. When she talks, she doesn't keep her occupation - even if it is mostly in the past now - a secret. If others hate her for being a contract killer, then so be it - that's simply the type of person she was raised to be. In fact, she takes quite a bit of pride in her ability to quickly infiltrate, eliminate, and disappear - often without even causing greater amounts of pain, and without spilling all that much blood to make a gigantic mess. Only if she has no other way. Having no ethical compass also makes stealing, breaking in and destruction of property very easy.
Together with techniques to kill, she learned how to fight. Not all targets can be killed in their sleep, after all. And quite simply, fighting is the only passion in her that breaks through the shell of ice, ever so slightly. Impress her in combat, and she'll take interest. Survive combat, and she might even take a liking to you. Friendship is an alien concept to her, but trust and working together aren't - once she takes a liking to someone, she'll generally defend them to learn more about them.

In a way, she's interested in the thought patterns of normal humans. Since her first thought generally is 'can I concieveably kill this person' when meeting someone, it is simple to understand why. But she also has had enough of being used in her life. As such, making demands is a quick way to land back on her kill-list. And while she adores strength and combat ability, she despises ignorance and stupidity. Acting stupid to make someone careless, fine - being stupid is a huge red flag.
The most puzzling thing about normal people, though, is love. Love alone makes incredible feats of willpower, physique and magic possible with it's strength - and as one might guess, Hinawa never felt love in her life, not towards her parents or anyone else. Usually because anyone else was her target most of the time, and falling in love with a mark only happens in cheesy novels. Besides love, willpower itself is interesting to her, but she also doesn't realize how much of it she has inside of herself. Her desire to be her own person, for independence, and for understanding are all in direct defiance to her teachings of an assassin.

There are normal things about her, but they're hidden under the frozen shell. Once she gets to liking someone, she'll generally let these parts shine through. She can be caring, even comforting, to those she likes. She'll defend them with her life, as stated before, if the need arises. Even acting like a normal teenage girl isn't unheard of - even if she despises topics such as fashion, as they seem impractical to her. In a way, she's more of a tomboy. Hinawa will get a bit clingy and easily jealous once she likes someone, so one should beware of that... Someone lacking in social skills, like her, can easily turn violently protective.

Appearance

Appearance:



It should be noted that some things about her appearance can change, depending on her Arcana. When her internal energy reserves run low, her eye color will switch into red, which is her natural eye color. Furthermore, she can create clothing out of ice and snow, which is very light and comfortable (too her, at least), and it will reflect light like a million small gemstones inserted into a dress with colors varying from snow white to a slight tourquis or violet. Technicially, when 'wearing' such a dress made out of snow, Hinawa isn't actually wearing clothing. Make of that what you will.

Magic

Type: Sorcerer
Description: Cold, colder, Hinawa. Her entire body is a walking freezer. The arcana within her has changed most of her basic living functions to work even at sub-zero temperatures flawlessly - in short, she doesn't require heat to function. In fact, her general body heat is around 20 degrees Celcius when in a calm state. With some focus, she can lower it further, even down to slightly below freezing point, by will alone. This act requires virtually no usage of arcana. Another oddity is her blood - while always liquid on the inside, if brought outside through a wound, it will nearly instantly freeze over. This effectively seals wounds away from the outside world. A side-effect of her cold body is a near-immunity to any normal virus or bacteria, as they require normal body heat in their host to function properly. This does not extend to dangerous magical sicknesses that directly attack arcana. The obvious downside is that her body can't stand higher temperatures AT ALL. Being in warmer climates is highly uncomfortable by itself. Incredibly hot weather, such as found in a desert or hot jungle, would cause her body temperature to raise back up to normal human levels, causing extreme discomfort, mental fatigue, and possible health issues with longer exposure, while also eradicating her positives of having a cold body, including her normally freezing blood. Being surrounded by heat can be likened to an intoxicated state, making her speak carelessly and disrupting the 'frozen' impression around her heart, making her a lot more likeable than normal...
The ice flowing in her veins has more than just that for applications, though. In a short radius around her, she can instantly freeze the water particles in the air for various effects. This is used to create weaponry out of sharp, well-formed ice. She can create smaller weapons, such as daggers or shivs, nearly instantly to fight with. Furthermore, by channeling smaller amounts, she is able to create throwing weapons. While she prefers to create Kunai-shaped icicles to stick opponents up, she can also make shuriken from it. The largest object she can conjure currently is a standard-sized katana. Any and all ice-constructs are harder than normal ice would be, thanks to being infused by arcana, and won't melt as quickly as real ice, even in a desert. Still, an ice-weapon will lose against a steel weapon most of the time. It can be dangerous to block too much ice with metal, though, as the cold will slowly but surely make any normal metal brittle and suspectible to being shattered.

Shadow Step: This technique is both movement and breathing control. With a certain rythm of breathing, the heart slows down considerably, together with a very silent way of moving about with great care - the user becomes virtually undetectable, unless you're staring right at her. Even wild animals can't track the user normally, unless they leave behind a strong scent. Shadow Step is broken if the user moves quickly, attacks, or uses arcane power directly. To fully hide her presence, Hinawa surrounds her body with a 'shroud' of ice arcana.
Rythmic Echo: An optical illusion technique utilizing Shadow Step. Since the eyes are the only sense truly able to pick up a Shadow Step using target, this technique involves the user moving at a certain internal, rather slow rythm. The rythmic movement leaves behind an 'echo' within the eyes of the beholder, making it seem as if a whole horde of the user are slowly circling their prey. As with Shadow Step, once active action is taken by the user, Rythmic Echo is immediately dispelled, and the users location is given away by the usual signs, such as murderous intent or arcane power. Enhanced senses, artificial eyes and arcane powers can make it easier to spot the original, and strong ones can even see right through it. The after-images are partially corporeal, as they consist out of 'remnants' created by the ice energy shroud that allows Shadow Step to function in the first place.
Frozen Armor: For this technique, Hinawa accesses the ice energy within her blood directly. If she sees an attack coming, she immediately hardens the blood within the attacked area to ice, turning her muscles and lower skin harder than iron.
Frozen Claw: With the same principle as Frozen Armor, Hinawa accesses her frozen blood and manipulates it within her right or left hand. Fingers get strengthened and twisted into looking like claws, with her fingernails protruding slightly and also freezing over. A hand frozen like this is as hard and as dangerous as an actual claw weapon made from tempered steel. However, she can't actively move the frozen fingers during this state, and has to manipulate her arcana to do any movement with them apart from simply swiping or stabbing. As such, this technique requires too much focus to be used alongside any other arcane technique that requires massive effort, such as Frozen Armor or Rythmic Echo. Shadow Step is easy enough to be used.


Combat

Equipment: A small pouch filled with multiple small sacks of herbs, mushrooms and even dried insects. None of these are illegal - in most states, at least - or dangerous on their own. When mixed together, they can create some rather nasty toxins, though. The pouch also includes some small tools used to mix together the ingredients, and some small glass vials containing no liquid at this point to use for storage of more volatile ingredients.
Skills:

• Surgical Knowledge: Hinawa could put a modern doctor to shame with her knowledge of the human and elvish body. Bone structure, muscles, joints, tendons, organs... she's like a textbook regarding them. This allows her to strike with extreme precision, to quickly incapacitate or kill a target. Pressure points, and direct attacks onto them to disable an opponent, are also possible.
  
• Freakish Agility: Hinawa's speed is bordering on the best one can reach at her age. Her body is so highly trained that she ignores pain and directly disables the natural inhibitors that humans have to limit their own strength. Together with her highly trained reflexes and virtually instant reaction time, she can even dodge bullets, as long as they're not fired from an automatic rifle.
  
• Extra Strength: With the same technique of ignored pain and unlocked potential, Hinawa heightens her muscles to unleash strength like a body-builder from her small frame. This unleashed strength gives her enough power to crush bones with her strikes. Combining strength and speed together gives her incredible physical threat.
  
• Weaponless Killing Specialist: As one might guess by the earlier remark, Hinawa's long fingernails aren't there to seem more feminine - and that nail coloring isn't to be attractive, it's too hide old blood underneath them. She knows how to disarm someone, how to pierce her fingers like knives to rip someone's artery or even entire heart out, and you'd better believe that she'll do so without hesitation when needed. However, these incredible feats all take a huge toll on her body. It isn't unheard of that a single, strong and direct attack from one of her hands results in her fingers or wrist being broken in multiple places.
  
• Poison Adept: The one type of assassination that Hinawa never perfected. Sure, she can poison a cake or roast beef, but you'll generally taste that something is... off. She can't create useful poisons to use on weaponry as of now. Not all of her toxins are necessarily fatal, they can also induce such unpleasant things as hallucinations and... unpleasant bowel movements.
  
• Precise Weapon Fighting: Slice and dice swordsmanship won't be found with Hinawa, unless she can't properly use her anatomical knowledge. Ice weapons are always aimed in such a way to disable or kill right away - vital points and tendons are targeted. When clashing weapons directly, Hinawa will try to dodge and weave out of the way more than block directly, as her weapons lack strength.
  
• Pain Immunity: As part of assassin training, even children are subjected to extreme pain from a very young age. This dulls their sense of pain as they grow older. You could break Hinawa's arm in ten places and she still wouldn't even wince. She FEELS pain, but can ignore it... When fighting. When not in a heightened combat mindset, she will react like any other person, but can 'start' ignoring it as soon as she needs to.
  
• Poison Resistance: Those toxins aren't going to test themselves! Hinawa can ingest any poisons created by herself without taking any damage from them. Other poisons, unless incredibly strong and fatal, will lack quite a bit of their usual potency. This does not have any effect on magical poisons.
  
• Beyond the Limits: When needed, Hinawa can go up to six days without any sleep, or just tiny naps to conserve her strength. While her combat ability will slowly falter, real fatigue only starts to set in during the end of the sixth day. Going for so long without proper rest require her to recover for up to two weeks with a lot of sleep, though. She can also go without water for five days, mostly because she loses less water than normal humans, and without food for an entire month. Doing either of these repeatedly will take a toll on her health and life-expectancy.
  

History and Roleplay Sample

History: Some people are bad parents. Then there are horrible parents, or even parents that cause their children to die horribly. But it takes a whole different type of parent to turn their flesh and blood into a cold-blooded killer. Well, Hinawa had the 'fortune' of being born to such parents.
Both of them were trained killers - assassins, part of a hidden enclave within the Open Lands that was known for taking contracts everywhere, situated near an active vulcano. The arts of subterfuge and efficient murder had been driven into them since childhood - and they did the same thing with Hinawa. She has no single memory of her parents ever acting like actual parents towards her. From the youngest age on, they were nothing but intimidating grandmasters, her cruel and strict teachers. When other kids learned how to walk for the first time, Hinawa learned how to balance on a tightrope above hot coals. Other kids played with those in their own age-group - Hinawa learned how to properly stab a man in the throat to reduce the amount of noise he'd make while dying. It is thus no real surprise that she never really learned how to use empathy, or even how to talk normally to people.
When she was four years old, her arcana began to manifest. A reflection of the cold and stoic personality that was being instilled into her, day in and day out, her power over the elemental force of ice proved quite useful over time. For one, her instantly freezing blood made it possible to torture her for far longer when training her pain resistance. Once she obtained some semblance of own control over it, she even started creating her own training weapons out of it.

Her first kill came around when she was six years old. Quite a simple contract, since her parents didn't want to lose their prodidgy of a killer-child. A simple drunkard that owed the wrong people money, in a small town somewhere in the hinterlands of Brauk. As part of her training, she travelled the entire distance within Brauk itself alone, with only a picture of her target in her posession. She ripped apart the picture after memorizing the face, and reached her destination after one week of traveling, one time claiming to be an orphan, then just a girl traveling to her relatives... lying was an essential part of being an assassin. When she found the bar where the drunkard frequented, she managed to find out the favorite drink of her victim, and poisoned the entire storage of it within the bar.
Her ruthless method earned her some recognition, but also some chastising, since three non-targets also died that evening. Still, the mission never stated NOT to endanger bystanders, so she passed her first test.

Afterwards, her training continued for many years to come. She competed against other young assassins within the conclave, and was even pitched against them in deathmatches from time to time, to get rid of the weaklings. And Hinawa killed them with the same ruthless efficiency as she continued to kill her targets. Once she grew old and strong enough, she stepped away from poison and towards brutal melee kills, or subtle strokes with a blade, with the occasional use of poison. Quickly, her natural talent for striking vital points and organs took full form, making her the most successful child-killer of the entire conclave.

But that life had an end. Not because of some knight in shining armor swooping in to rescue her, not because of a wild fire of vengeance consuming her home. She simply decided to leave. Life as an assassin wasn't exactly bad to her, nowadays. As someone who had by now hundreds of kills under her belt, her training was little more than proving she could surpass any current limit even further. Her parents even seemed to start seeing her as a daughter to be proud of, rather than a project to build up. But every single time that Hinawa was out for a mission, she became more interested in normal life. How people could actually stand it, how they survived it... So when she turned 15, she stabbed her mother in the face, cut off one of her father's legs, and fled the conclave. Her parents never felt so proud of their daughter before.

Since then, no single other Kagami-assassin came after her. Mostly because they knew - no matter the result, one Kagami would die in the confrontation. And if that Kagami wasn't Hinawa, then they'd just raise up their strongest child prodidgy against them. So they wait, wait for her to grow tired of human life, to return to her roots. For two years, they have been waiting...