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Entry tags:
OOC: Profile
Your name: Rini
Your LJ: Ainasiriel
Your email: swirly[dot]darkness[at]gmail[dot]com
Your AIM, MSN, or Yahoo handle: AIM: Katarini Damacy
Personality:
To the untrained eye, Miku Hinasaki is a doormat. She is a rather shy young woman that tends to hide behind stronger people, and agrees to most everything put before her. She is incredibly soft-spoken, and well-mannered. Polite to a fault, thanks to a heavily traditional Japanese upbringing. It has frustrated people in the past, but Miku knows of no other way to be more appealing. She does know, however, that she is a lot more personable than she was two years earlier, and works hard to impress others in earnest.
Beneath that, Miku is a genuinely kind person that wants to see the best done for everyone around her. She would give you the food from her plate and the clothing from her back, if it were needed. She is not averse to giving her friends good, sound advice. She does things by hand. All things, and generally dislikes using things like dishwashers and microwaves. Miku has a streak of self-preservation that keeps her from being taken by ghosts or killing herself. She’s been told she’s is a lot emotionally stronger than she looks. Her hobbies include collecting antiques
Miku is a very loyal young woman, but suffers from second guessing herself sometimes, especially when dealing with interpersonal relationships. She is calmly analytical when she must be, collecting her answers in a measured pace. If there is an answer to it, she will find it, though it usually leads to more questions. This skill has made her invaluable to Rei’s research of certain homes for their assignments. Luckily, as terrified as she is of malevolent ghosts, Miku is able to act calmly and rationally when forced to battle the intangible dead.
However, for all of Miku’s good points, there are bad ones. She represses her darker, more emotional outbursts, and blames herself for everything, even if it is not her fault. Her visions often frighten her, and she is absolutely terrified of her inability to control her powers. Her guilt over the death of her brother, and surviving when she feels she should not have, is what drives the young photographer. This internally self-destructive manner, in turn, is what drives her curse. She may or may not have a brother complex where Mafuyu is concerned.
Brief (around 500 words) history and background of your character OR link to a really good wiki page with their history. In either case, explain where they cut off from the timeline:
Miku was born into the Hinasaki family of folklorists (and later, archeologists) in 1969 to Masato and Miyuki Hinasaki. From the time she was a very young girl, Miku was able to see what other people could not, the result of a very, very strong sixth sense shared by her brother and mother.
Her unhappy cross with luck would make itself known early. First, her father went missing while he was on assignment. Miku was fairly young, and didn’t remember him well, though her mother sank into a deep depression and turned to her mother’s camera for comfort, the Camera Obscura. Miku’s abilities made themselves known early. For this, both she and her brother Mafuyu were warned to never let others know that they were different from normal people, no matter what they saw. Secretly, Miyuki regretted giving birth to her children, as they were as abnormal as she was.
Miku grew up a lonely girl, as her classmates picked on her and left her alone. Her own abilities made her shy, and as such she had no friends. Mafuyu was her only companion, and for this she trusted and loved him. Shortly after Mafuyu left for his career in the field of folklore, and Miku had entered high school, their mother hung herself. She’d been driven mad by the ghosts she saw. Between the two siblings, Mafuyu inherited their mother’s camera. Miku was given her grandmother Mikoto’s hairpin.
A short time passed, and in the final year of high school, Mafuyu entered an abandoned mansion on the outskirts of Tokyo, following the trail of his mentor, Junsei Takamine. Mr. Takamine, his editor, and his personal assistant had vanished several days previously, and Mafuyu took it upon himself to find them, leaving Miku alone against her wishes. He was spirited away by the Rope Priestess Kirie (who had killed Takamine and his team) because he looked like her former lover, leaving behind the Camera Obscura.
Ten days after Mafuyu vanished, Miku entered the mansion in search of him. She spent the next few days fighting a horde of unruly, angry spirits, exorcising them with the camera that Mafuyu had left behind. She was helped by a young girl in a kimono, the pure part of Kirie that wanted to see her ritual through to the end.
Despite the difficulties that Miku went through, she was unable to save her brother. He chose to stay beside Kirie, to keep her company while she protected the Hell Gate. The area around them was unstable, however, and the spirits inside the Hell Gate caused a cave-in, which killed Mafuyu. Miku escaped the mansion alone, and for a short time, lost her abilities. Mafuyu was listed as a Missing Person, though Miku knew otherwise.
She was taken in by one of Mafuyu’s friends, Yuu Asou and Yuu’s girlfriend, Rei Kurosawa. Miku graduated high school and started apprenticing beneath Rei. Their life was rather comfortable; Miku helped out by housekeeping and cooking, running Rei and Yuu’s errands, and generally being amicable. Slowly, her shyness started to change, she became more personable. At one point, Yuu received a broken Camera Obscura (there were many copies created by his ancestor), which alarmed Miku to the point that she hid in her room. It is assumed that around this time, Miku’s abilities began to slowly return.
And then, one day in August, during a heavy rainstorm, Rei and Yuu were in an accident. Yuu died at the scene, and Rei sank into a deep depression. At that time, Miku took over everything – doing more than just running Rei’s errands, but actually delivering Rei’s work to their company, and picking up information about their next assignment. Though Rei did not want to, Miku urged her to work. They went into the mountains in search of a house that was, allegedly haunted. Though their search through the mansion turned up nothing, just before they left, Rei took one final picture, and caught the image of Yuu in the hallway.
Soon after this, Miku began suffering nightmares of her time spent in the Himuro Mansion two years previously. She dreamed of a young girl named Amane, who led her through the dream-version of the manor of sleep, begging her to somehow help Amane’s brother. Like Rei (and later, Kei), Miku began to show the curse marks, and her demeanor changed, often finding Miku awake at night in an effort to not sleep. As both Miku and Rei went further and further into the mansion, strange things began to happen in their home.
Miku was not able to shake the overwhelming sense of dread that she, Rei and Kei would not survive their curses, and fell into a depression. She communicated these thoughts to Rei, who told her that everything would be fine, despite seeing the marks on Miku’s body. However, it is after this peptalk that Miku follows the image of her brother into the land of the dead. She falls into a coma, trapped in the Manor of sleep..
Miku will be taken from after her talk with Rei concerning how she was certain they were all going to die. (Ray of sunshine, isn’t she?)
Explanation of Powers:
Miku is a psychic medium. That said, she is able to see and interact with the dead. The scope of her abilities include seeing apparitions, object-reading (where she can see the most important residual memory left on an item that was very close to its owner), premonitions, pushing away spirits, and warding herself against them with the Camera Obscura, her mother’s old spirit-catching camera. Where most people’s hands would go through a ghost, Miku can push them away from her (and presumably others, though she is usually alone in her games). However, it’s also very easy for Miku to be possessed. Miku will probably feel uncomfortable around characters that have returned from death. She will feel especially uncomfortable around places where violent death has occurred, as they often serve as triggers for seeing apparitions and residual memories.
Miku’s weapon, the Camera Obscura, will eventually drive her insane with too much use, as it did her mother. It absorbs the energy of the spirits it captures and confers it to the user, who becomes more and more able to see spirits without the camera. This works for people without a sixth sense, as well. However, this has led to the death of at least two users of the camera previously: Miku’s mother and her great-grandmother, Yae. The camera can foretell the death of a person in a picture by smudging their face and outline. If there is a ghost haunting the person, the ghost will also appear in the picture. Curses also appear on the body of the subject, if the subject is cursed by a ghost. Her two special abilities with the camera are the Sacred Stone (which allows Miku to slow down time so that she can get a powerful “Rei” shot at a ghost), and Double (which allows her to fire off two shots in succession, without waiting for the camera to charge).
Miku is cursed with the Snake and Holly tattoo. While most people won’t be able to see it, other psychics or spiritually-sensitive people can. It shows up as a red tattoo, starting from her right shoulder and spreading across her back, over her right breast and half down her both arms. Once the tattoo covers Miku’s entire body, she will be consumed by the snakes of the tattoo and turned to ash. The tattoo itself causes pain by being a constant bruise. However, it doesn’t appear to stop Miku from doing all her usual tasks, and would take a few months to actually inflict Miku’s death, unless it is somehow reversed.
While under the curse’s influence at night, Miku sleepwalks and sings the “Sleeping Priestess” lullaby, which is creepy in and of itself.
Here is an example of what Miku sees when her ability is activated: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvMmp3UdoKQ
And
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvMze-E90Fo&NR=1
An Example of Ghost Fighting Using the Camera Obscura:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJJ8Pyuqi44
Non-superhuman special abilities of note: Miku is an assistant photographer. However, her other duties include being Rei’s maid/confidante/chef/errand runner/researcher. So, in essence, she is Rei’s Alfred Pennyworth and Pepper Potts in a package just slightly over five feet tall.