Akashi Kaoru || 明石 薫

Applicant Info

◎ Name: Orange Crates
◎ Journal: dreamingcellardoor
◎ Contact: orangeCrate @ Plurk

Character Info

◎ Character's Name: Akashi Kaoru
◎ Character's Canon: Zettai Karen Children
◎ Character's Age: 16
◎ Canon Point: 397
◎ Background/History:
Kaoru had awakened as a Level 7 psychokinetic at (or before) the age of three and she was sent to Babel to work on controlling these powers after she accidentally hurt her mother.

She was in isolation until she was around five when her powers finally stabilized enough that they can risk putting her with two other Level 7 psychic girls around her age. They hit it off almost immediately though things will still be rough for a while due to the adults in their lives.

Because they were all so powerful, the supervisors they were assigned would do things like put ESP supression drugs in their food or sometimes react to them in other negative ways. Coupled with the fact that Kaoru especially could be volatile because of her temper and her desire to protect her friends, needless to say, there were a lot of incidents leading to the government assigning them a new supervisor from the Ministry of Education. As usual, the Children started off trying to impress their new supervisor, however, seeing them as uncontrollable animals with powers to rival a weapon of mass destruction, their new supervisor puts a limiter on Kaoru and her friends that they can't take off that can give them an electric shock at the touch of a button.

Needless to say, this incident shattered any trust the Children had towards just about everyone. Kaoru, especially, came to understand that the only way she can protect her friends was by using her power to attack and scare off those people who tried to hurt them. Nothing else she's ever tried had worked.

Eventually they will meet a man name Minamoto Kouichi who will be able to undo a lot of the damage that's been done, but that too will be a long, painful journey.

They didn't trust him at first, believing that, like every other supervisor in charge of them before, he will leave when he realizes he can't deal with them. That never happened though, and after an incident where Kaoru's powers went out of control, instead of abandoning them, he told Kaoru, "Your powers are the problem but you can stay right here." Eventually they opened up to him and their personalities returned to something closer to what it had been when they were five, before their trust had been broken.

At some point a Level 7 precog made a prediction that some day in the future, espers and Normals will go to war with one another...with a grown up Kaoru as the leader of the espers. Though Kaoru didn't know about this, from this point on Minamoto will be fighting to change this future.

To make matters more complicated an esper criminal organization called Pandra appeared and its leader, one Hyoubu Kyousuke seems to know about this prediction and Kaoru's role as the Queen of Catastrophe in this predicted future. His goal is unknown, but Kaoru trusted him.

They were working as special espers for the government for a while now, but when they got into middle school, they started receiving more missions.

In response to this, Babel assigned Kaoru and them two new espers to help cover them when they're on missions. They're not entirely new to the Children, however. While they were still in elementary school, they clashed with another criminal organization by the name of Black Phantom which uses espers as tools. Though Hyoubu claimed that there was no way to save the espers except by killing them, Kaoru wasn't satisfied with that answer. Using a new function that Minamotot had added to their limiters, something called the Boost that allows the Children to combine their powers, Kaoru created a new psychic power called the Force of Absolution which can destroy the mind-control Black Phantom put on espers.

The two espers who came to act as the Children's back-up were both espers that had been saved by the Children in this way.

As the Children moved into highschool, their powers continued to grow to the point where their bodies can no longer handle the full brunt of their powers for extended periods of time. During this time, Kaoru caught a cold and had to come face to face with her own powers which even now she was still afraid of. However, through this event, she came to accept her power, stating that while she hated it and was afraid of it, it was a part of who she is.

◎ Is the character a hacker and/or do they have a sixth-sense? Kaoru has what is referred to by another character as her "Queen Sense" which is an ability to locate other espers and notice when a esper is in danger. For location she can only find them at this point by concentrating very hard and as for sensing when other espers are in danger, it sometimes works sporadically as well as only being shown to work with espers close to her.

◎ Personality:
The first word that comes to mind when you're talking about Kaoru is 'warm'.

Although she has a temper, she is, at heart, an incredibly kind person who feels strong connections with others. Whether they are espers or Normals, she values them all equally and will push the boundaries of what is possible in order to protect them.

And she tries very hard to protect people, but she never wants to do it at the expense of anyone's happiness or safety (except, perhaps, that of her own). She won't sacrifice one person in order to protect someone else, no matter who the people involved are. When she was forced to make this choice in one instance she had been devastated. She understands that at this point in time she can't save everyone, but it says a lot about her personality that, instead of beating herself about it or dwelling on it or giving up, she decides that she'll simply have to get stronger until she can protect everyone.

That's something else about Kaoru: she's always looking towards the future. While she values her memories, while she still carries scars from the past, she'll always choose to look to the future. Instead of focusing on past wrongs, she works on preventing the same thing from happening again. Instead of being preoccupied with how things are, she thinks about their potential and how things can be and works towards that.

It shouldn't be confused with optimism. While she does have a great deal of that, the reason she can look to the future and believe she can make it what she wants to is confidence. Someone dear to her had told her that an esper like her could become anything and go anywhere. They weren't, as someone else implied, destined to become a criminal if that's not what they want. The future isn't set in stone because, being Level 7 espers, they have the ability to change even a prediction that's said to be 100% accurate. She was once a child who couldn't control any aspect of her life, whether it was her powers, whether she can go to school or even go home. But now she knows she can do anything she sets her mind to. If she stumbles and fails, then she just needs to get stronger until she has the power to save everyone.

That being said, Kaoru does have her insecurities.

Some of it stems from her childhood, the distance people who didn't have psychic powers put between themselves and her, probably without noticing it. She understands on a logical level why they did that. Why her mother never dared to really discipline her because she's afraid of Kaoru getting angry and losing control of her powers. The way she wasn't allowed to go with her parents to something as simple as an amusement park because of the multitudes of restrictions on high level espers. She understands it, but it doesn't mean it didn't hurt and that can't be reasoned away as easily.

Before even though she was growing and maturing as a person, she still felt uncomfortable if she believed she really was being rejected or left behind. This stemmed from her insecurities when her father left their family and from the belief that she was a monster. So she clung to the people important to her very stubbornly. By the time she gets into highschool this is less of an issue now. Her confidence is no longer just bravado and she accepts that she will always be important to the people in her life as they will always be important to her regardless of whatever relationship they have with other people.

Also, Kaoru is at that age where she's transitioning from being a child to an adult. She's becoming more mature and adult-like and yet she's not quite there yet. She wants to be treated as an adult and she's trying her hardest to grow up and understand everything. Yet at times she still needs to be comforted and protected though she doesn't like admitting it. She's gotten to the point where she's beginning to outgrow all this, however and is becoming increasingly independent.

That's also a part of Kaoru's personality, the desire to be strong and protect those around her often manifests as her not wanting to admit to any kind of weakness or brushing her problems off when they're serious. She does it less now, but it still crops up from time to time.

As mentioned previously, Kaoru has quite the temper even if it's not as bad as it was when she was younger. It's improved in that she doesn't fly off the handle at as many things, and she's less likely to let her anger cause her to seriously hurt someone. However, when she does get angry she's still capable of holding a grudge and could cause her to do impulsive things like running away from home while it's raining. Also, while she won't cause serious harm while angry, there's nothing stopping her from taking revenge in petty ways or just hitting the person.

Apart from this though, in many ways Kaoru is just like a normal teenage girl. She enjoys hanging out with her friends, shopping, reading porn and...groping...girls? Some of Kaoru's hobbies are a lot like those of a perverted old man, and she herself sometimes acts like one. Ever since puberty hit though, she's become increasingly embarrassed about this even though not enough to stop. As such, she sometimes switches between acting like a shy maiden or acting like a perverted old man. Kaoru's also the sort of girl who guys don't usually become attracted to after a while. This is because while she looks very cute (and occasionally acts that way) more often than not she acts like one of the guys. She finds the fact that her two best friends get more guys writing them letters of confession than her a sore point, especially since she seems to be admired by girls only.

◎ Powers/Abilities:
- Psychokinesis: Kaoru is a Level 7 psychokinetic. She has the power to move things around with her mind, which includes the ability to fly and create barriers as well as create a pocket of air so she can go underwater or into space. Level 7 just means that her powers go beyond what can be accurately measured (in her canon, Level 6 is the last level where an esper's powers can be measured, anything beyond that is considered Level 7) which means that there's no standard for how strong a Level 7 esper really is. It's implied though, that Kaoru is on the stronger end of the spectrum and that her possibilities are nearly limitless. Of course, this comes with a price as her powers, since she was little have always developed at a rate faster than her body can handle. Injuries to the head can cause them to go out of control but she can lose control even without one because right now her body as well as her powers are in a period of rapid growth, if she experiences a spike in power without her limiter on, she could lose control of her powers temporarily. Also, after she finished middle school Kaoru's powers have grown to the point where if she uses her powers fully she can only use it for 22 minutes and 30 seconds before she loses control of her powers and destroys both herself and everything in the surrounding area.

- Triple Boost/Force of Absolution: Kaoru's limiter has been modified to allow her to borrow the powers of the other two members of the Children when their limiters sync their powers with hers. This is called the Triple Boost or just the Boost and allows Kaoru to use an even more powerful version of her normal powers. Another power that can be used with the Boost is something called the Force of Absolution that Kaoru created in order to break the mind control of the strongest hypno user in the series, Phantom's daughter.

- Resistance to psychic powers: in Zettai Karen Children, telepaths and psychometers can't read a psychic with a higher level than them. Kaoru, being such a strong esper cannot be read by psychic powers (though it doesn't do much when anyone can read her like an open book even without psychic powers) and she's shown to be the most resistant to mind control and hypnosis.

◎ Weapons & Other Special Inventory:
- Limiter: Kaoru's looks like a large bracelet with a star design on the top. It limits the output of Kaoru's power when turned on but because her powers are at such a high level it cannot suppress her powers entirely. It has a newly added fail-safe that allows her to use her full, unrestrained powers for no more than twenty minutes before it automatically turns back on.
- the Children's uniform consisting of an entire outfit including shirt, jacket, skirt, boots and cloak. It is made of a specially designed material that is lightweight, fireproof, weather proof and bullet proof. It is the uniform they wear for missions in order to give them better protection. It also helps regulate their temperature, keeping them cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

CEREALIA-Specific

◎ Element: Fire
◎ Sense: Touch. Kaoru is a naturally touchy-feely person who often hugs people. To some degree, especially when she was younger, it was her proving to herself that she can touch others and interact with them without hurting others. Physical contact also has a reassuring effect on her.
◎ Seven Character Traits: NEGATIVE: Impulsive, stubborn, short-tempered
POSITIVE: kind-hearted, protective, brave
NEUTRAL: tenacious

Samples

◎ First-Person Sample:
Test Drive Meme Thread!

◎ Third-Person Sample: at least 400 words

Since she was young, Kaoru has always disliked her powers.

This power that had sent her mother to the hospital taught her how fragile people were and she always thought that it would be better if it didn't exist.

It had changed when Kiritsubo told her there were other girls with Level 7 powers, who were to be her comrades.

It changed again when they met Minamoto and he told her she could stay even if her powers were problematic.

She accepted that her powers were what led her to meet her best friends and Minamoto and she resented them less, became thankful for their existence. Despite the pain and sadness they suffered because of their powers, Kaoru would go through it a hundred times if it meant being able to meet them.

But she has never stopped being afraid of her powers, of the fact that she could seriously injure the people around her.

Kaoru places a cooling pad on her forehead and lies down, pulling her blanket up to her chin and squeezing her eyes shut. In this room, her powers can be kept under control, in this place she won't accidentally hurt anyone because of this cold.

She has faced down terrorists before, had been sent hurtling to the Earth on a satellite and never has she been as afraid as she was right now.

Kaoru breathes in and turns onto her side, reaching out to instinctively seek the body heat of another person (it was easier to count the days when she sleeps by herself because they are so much fewer than the uncountable days she spends clinging to Aoi or Shiho as she sleeps). She feels uneasy to have no one there, but at the same time...she doesn't want anyone here. She has to deal with this on her own, she won't allow her powers to hurt anyone she cares about again.

Her hands curl into loose fists and she turns abruptly back onto her back. "I can do this." She tells herself.

It helps to remember that Aoi and Shiho were in the control room, supporting her as best they can. It helps, also, to remember that Minamoto said that whatever happened he would be with her until the very end.

It didn't stop her from feeling lonely, but as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. But the knowledge that they were there (would still be there) helped ease it a little and gave her strength.

I will protect everyone no matter what.


◎ Is your character retaining any previous game memories? No.