Tsubaki Taighana [Updated]

[odango]

Tsubaki Taighana

Other Names:–
Epithet:–
Height: 176cm
Build: Slightly toned hourglass figure
Age: 19
Gender: Female
Race: Human
Occupation: Marines
Bounty/Rank: Petty Officer

Total X-Poinz:– 300
Used X-Poinz:– 100

Personality

Tsubaki is kind, well-mannered and educated. Those are the three things one would notice when first speaking with her. She can be a little shy now and then - depends on the situation. If she has just wandered off in thought and meets someone, she will be caught off guard and fluster. Also, she tends to get really shy when spoken to as an equal by superiors, but that isn’t so uncommon. Most of the time, she greets everyone with a warm smile and has a certain sense of warmth and calmness about her.

If one were to try and get to know Tsubaki, they’d realize that she is actually a hopeless romantic, loves to dream and gets overly enthusiastic about dreams way too big to be accomplished quickly. At times she can still seem childish, which doesn’t go quite together with the usual, composed, graceful Tsubaki, who’s on a mission to do everything needed to try and fulfill her family’s expectations. She lets down some of the borders she put up and shows a selected few people how naïve, overly optimistic and childishly fragile she can be at times. Her skills of observation don’t even help with this. Leave it to Tsubaki to find a “theoretic” way to do the impossible.

The truth of her nature also comes with laziness some times. You see, she never had to study much to cram something in her head, so when something requires a lot of ground work or a long period of time, she can start getting thoughts. Until something has become routine or she genuinely likes it, she will try to make the oddest excuses not to do it. If nothing serious is set as punishment for not doing a tedious action, she will find a way out of it, or find a non-ordinary way to do it much quicker to get it over with. Tsubaki tries to avoid troublesome things all together. She has no problem helping others, but if she can go practice or sleep, or fry something in soy sauce, she’ll do that. Of course, her self-conscious hurts after an action like this and most times, she goes to check if everything is getting fixed. The girl is quite compassionate. Her empathy for others is probably what lets her predict what they might do at times.

Fascinated by psychology, the girl often spends her free time just observing the people around. Not in an obvious way, of course. She likes to find the similarities in characters and, from there on, likes to guess what they might do. It’s like a game with herself. If she guesses right, she earns a point and after fifteen points she gets bored with the person and moves on. Predictability is something that bores her the most. She would never let it show, so she wouldn’t offend anyone, but she has a tendency to walk away from not well known, yet deemed predictable people quite quickly, if possible. Another thing she’s not particularly fond of as a trait in others is common choleric behavior. If someone makes a habit of throwing insults and shouting before thinking beforehand, it does not go good with Tsubaki. She can be patient, but only to a point.

Oh, and she has a fear of spiders. When she was a kid, she woke up to see her kitten and a spider (that seemed to be half the size of the feline) starring each other down only a few meters from her bed. She got up and proceeded to throw every toy she had (this was when she was six) at the beast trying to slay her cat and, at a point, it seemed she had succeeded. However, imagine her horror when the next time she opened her eyes, the spider was on her pillow, at the tip of her nose… From that day Tsubaki is certain that all spiders want to bite her head off. As absurd as it sounds, when she sees a spider, she stares at it and doesn’t blink, move or breathe until she has a plan for it.

Added, the young woman has grown a liking towards sarcasm in terms of humor, which some might take too seriously at first. However, if that’s the case, she makes sure to apologize afterwards.

Appearance

Standing about 5’8” and weighing around 130lbs is Tsubaki. She has a heart-shaped face, hazel eyes and brown hair that go down to her waist. The girl has ample curves. Her breasts are especially eye-catching, which is one of the reasons she used to get picked on and a bit of too much attention now and then. As for piercings, she only has her ears pierced. Marks she has none, apart from a birthmark under her right eye, on her cheek.

She usually pins her hair back at the sides or pulls it up at the back. As for make-up, she is not too fond of putting too much on her face - only a little, if necessary. She has no jewelry that’s too flashy. She values quality over quantity, so you would not see her with different things each day of the year. Also, on most days she wears clothes that don’t show off her figure, but rather goes with clothes that seem a little baggy or lack form. This is because she doesn’t want to accent her proportions and at times feels that she might get judged differently because of her appearance. Her regular Marine wardrobe consists of basic uniform shirt, that are a tad too big for her, color-matched, more tight-fitting trousers and a Marine appropriate colored scarf.

Traits

Hawk-eye: Goal oriented focus, a perfect eyesight and spending most of her life searching for details have trained her to have a very keen sight and focus which greatly improves her aim and allows her to follow movement better than regular people.

Quick reaction: Incorporating the flexibility and footwork of a dancer and a fencer, the young woman is quite free in her body to utilize it to the fullest in terms of reacting to her surroundings. She's quick to react naturally which helps her not get stuck while fighting or avoiding. Since she has trained most of her life, Tsubaki doesn't need to think about execution of her movements as much as others which lets her make a move quicker.

Fighting Styles

Name: Koutai Nagare (Shifting current or shift current)
Focus: swordplay, constant movement
Class: E class
Description: This is a style most applicable and naturally created by Tsubaki. The idea was to combine the things she began learning as a child into something she could use in her further life. So, the combination of a plasticity of a dancer, knowledge and skill in swordplay along with the ability to focus on many actions at once is something quite specific. The style is based on ’motum perpetuo’. That means, the idea is to not stop movement. Constant shifting to avoid getting stopped. This does not mean that she runs around her opponents, no, this means focusing on all the parts of her opponents and always keeping her opportunities on count. For example, if she were to exchange sword blows and it would come to a time where both swordsmen would power-clash against one another, she would quickly give under the pressure intentionally and adjust her direction in a more favorable way. The whole variation of movement reminds of a water current, which is where the name came from.

Weapons:

Name: Ryūran
Fighting Style: Koutai Nagare
Rank: 1
Description: Ryūran is a katana that's about three inches longer than an average one. It has a slight curve towards the tip and the guard is shaped like a flower. The hilt is covered by black and navy blue woven thread.

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Threads

Active:

Doom Voyage

-Tsubaki and Pluto

Finished:

        -/-

Logs:

        -/-

Background

Family:

Mother: Aiko Hirosagi (nee Taighana) (45)
Step-sister: Yuki Hirosagi (7)
Cousin: Souske Takayama (21)
Cousin: Ayane Takayama (17)
Godmother: Akane Takayama (43)
Godfather: Shiro Takayama (48)
Grandparents: Sayaka(67) and Hatake Taighana (79)


Tsubaki was born in a rather honorable family. While no one taught about them in schools, the bloodline had been around for more than seven hundred years and at a time was one of the most known names in the world. However, that was then and now there were so many branches that it was becoming challenging to decipher who came from where. The family name had changed a little over the time for each branch - depending on where they had relocated. Basically, the bloodline had remained but most people from it gave the whole thing too much power and held the “family honor” almost above everything else. Everyone in Tsubaki’s branch was expected to be proper or what the society defines as “proper”. So, expect their surprise when Aiko, Tsubaki’s mother became pregnant without first even being engaged - and on top of that, from a married man. Tsubaki’s father was an Alchemist who decided to stay with his first wife and from there on tried to forget about Tsubaki’s existence.

From Tsubaki’s birth, the family’s attitude towards her mother drastically changed. There was no violence, of course. However, even her younger sister Akane (Tsubaki’s godmother) felt shame and didn’t hesitate to let Aiko know how bad her life was in comparison to Akane’s. The younger sister had achieved everything their parents wished for. She had been well educated and finished all her schools with honors. Akane also had a son as a firstborn, not to mention a husband, who happened to be a well-known architect in the region. Perhaps this is also what caused a change of opinion about Tsubaki from Aiko’s eyes…

Now, on to Tsubaki. As a child, she was quite happy. She had two wonderful cousins to play with (Akane’s children) and saw the world as a bright place. She was your ordinary, happy little kid. At the age of five she began studying the piano and singing. This was her mother’s wish. A few years later, Aiko also added extra lessons of exact sciences and other academic subjects. Not to mention art school, theatre, fencing, ballroom dance lessons and Tsubaki also had to go take regular swimming classes, in case all the previous activities were stressing her stance. The young girl could multitask all of these things by sacrificing all of her free time by the age of eleven. In short, Aiko had a wish to create a “super-child” out of Tsubaki so that somehow she could “fix” her daughter’s “bastard status”. She really thought that such a thing could and needed to be done.

The young girl didn’t burn out from all of this. Not because she had a high endurance for physical and mental strain but because even as a child she had learned to observe, analyze and adapt according to the situation. There was a scheme for every activity and Tsubaki just naturally dug it up and used it, therefore gaining a sense of comfort in any new surroundings quite quickly. She grew more curious of the world with each year she grew. It started with dreams of visiting stars to notebooks of “My Robot plans! Do not open!”. At age ten she really couldn’t think of a way to make a robot that would look like a human not because of her not knowing how to make robots, but because she couldn’t think of a material that could look like a natural skin substitute. Indeed, her dreams were big back then.

As for school life, she was one of the bright kids and all of her extra interests were considered “nerdy” so she got bullied. Not that much at first, because she was quite friendly and bubbly, but after she began to befriend other kids who got even more bullied. She did it mostly because they were more interesting than the others. So, that is how much she cared about social ranks in schools. Also, the bullying intensified a bit, actually, when she became eleven and her body started to evolve faster than other girls. Needless to say, she got more attention but not the most pleasurable kind.

When she was twelve, Tsubaki’s younger step-sister was born. Her mother had married this time and had another child. She married a government official. And from the start Tsubaki’s and her step-father’s relationship went downhill. There was no real reason at first. Their personalities just didn’t mix. Tsubaki appreciated peace, didn’t bother with predictable things and crude jokes while she did like an everyday dose of harmless sarcasm or cynicism. He, on the other hand, was very straight forward and took most things as a personal offense - not to mention the man had a very short fuse. So you see, the chain of Tsubaki just staying out of his way and him thinking she was always mocking him was a ticking time bomb. Four years later, at the age of sixteen, Tsubaki and her step-father Juushiro hit an all-time low. By the time their relationship had gone to Tsubaki just pretending he doesn’t exist and her step-dad using her as an opportunity to dash out all of his anger daily. He never hit her yet at times words can seem harsher than any physical pain. It had come to emotional terrorism from his side. Tsubaki was not one to over-shout people, besides there had been no use. She had tried talking it out, but it had been too late and this was a situation she just could not adapt to. The man harbored enough bad feelings against her to dismiss reason at this point. Aiko, on the other hand didn’t get involved. While she should have, the woman did not wish to raise yet another child without a father and held on to that one thought a bit too much to clearly see what was happening in the family.

It got worse when Juushiro suggested Tsubaki should work on her character and that perhaps, serving the world government wouldn’t be such a bad idea. This frightened the girl of course and she would’ve held to her place among the normal people with her teeth and nails if need be, if it were not for her mother. Aiko saw this as not a way to get Tsubaki away from the family, but as a way to make up for what she was yet again. She figured that if Tsubaki did well, it would also stop the other family members from pitying the girl. And, Aiko thought that Tsubaki would want to get away from them, her slowly growing to be an adult and such… which would all be fine, if it were not the opposite of what Tsubaki wanted. However, she complied. For a moment she thought she’d raise an issue but then realized how bad her little sister might feel while growing up and feeling a huge amount of negativity at her home – where a child was supposed to feel safe and happy. Thus, insanely scared of what would happen and very saddened by the situation as a whole, the sixteen year old Tsubaki joined the marines.

She didn’t stand out much in physical workouts, mostly because she had spent most of her time between academic and artistic activities, yet her swordplay was good. It was not the same she had dabbled in as a kid, but not as different to get a hang on. But what turned out to be an excellent quality of hers was aim. She could hit a fly with a bullet from twenty meters away as a chore girl and taking classes (so she did it once and didn’t try again, figuring it was some odd luck but she did have really good aim).

Throughout the three years she spent as a part of the Marines, she was first based on the nearest island to Toroa and then sent to the 80th Branch only to be told she could be deployed elsewhere if need be. There she did not attain any close friends. A lot of good acquaintances, yet no close friends. The reason being, she didn’t feel like burdening anyone with her soap-opera worthy family history, thus took the role of a listener if anyone needed one. She was a curious soul so it didn’t bother her that much. Also, her not having close friends didn’t mean that people didn’t see her as one of theirs. The young woman also reached 19 years of age recently and for some time has no longer been a chore girl… Well, in a way… Also, she “officially” had studied up on what it meant to be a marine officer. Not that it guaranteed anything and not that she had yet really found anything particularly likable in her new environment, but who knows…