[Application] Kotoha Isone ; Cerealia

[kototama]

Applicant Info

◎ Name: Cal
◎ Journal: kalisona
◎ Contact: kalisona

Character Info

◎ Character's Name: Kotoha Isone
◎ Character's Canon: Yozakura Quartet
◎ Character's Age: 17
◎ Canon Point: Post-Chapter 80
◎ Background/History:

Once upon a time, there was a young human girl. She was a quiet thing, vastly preferring the company of books to the company of people. She was the one who would read in the corner when company was over. She was too shy to try to make friends, and the more she read, the easier it was to just slip into the stories, and allow the book characters to be her friends. After all, the worlds of those books was vastly more exciting.

She learned, in particular, how to "read between the lines"--how to see more than just what words were there, and how to really embrace the books and everything about them.

For Kotoha, the world was like a fairy tale. She liked to believe that evil people had bad things happen to them, like in stories, and good people always prevailed, like in stories.

And then, one day, still a little girl, Kotoha "fell".

"Falling" is a natural act, where energy from one world slides into the other--but it can have very unfortunate consequences. When it strikes, the person it strikes gains demonic powers--but also goes crazy.

Kotoha fell, and gained her kotodama powers, and caused a lot of destruction. While it isn't shown on-screen, it's heavily implied that she killed some people as well, the guilt of which hangs heavily on her. She also very badly injured Kyousuke, causing his sight to go bad, something he never entirely recovered from (something that took Touka, his sister, a very long time to forgive her for, understandably).

Akina's grandfather is able to exorcise her, saving her life and purging her of the insanity, but when those who have fallen are tuned, they retain the powers they have, though not full-youkai. And so Kotoha is half-youkai, one of very few in the series.

Due to the efforts of Hime and Gin, they were eventually able to become friends with Kotoha, transforming them into the nakama they are at the start of the manga, but nonetheless this all had a very strong impact on Kotoha. While it took her time, eventually she became the friendly, cheerful girl she is, years later.

Shenanigans ensue.

As Yozakura Quartet is a slice of life + DEMON BATTLES hybrid series, in the course of 80 chapters the plot has really only begun to appear. What is most significant to know is that Kotoha works alongside Akina, Hime, Kyousuke, Ao, and Touka, pitted against both the Senate and the Big Bad, Enjin, in their attempts to keep their town safe and try to prevent catastrophe from happening in a year's time.

◎ Is the character a hacker and/or do they have a sixth-sense? She can sense youkai and half-youkai -- in her canon, that basically means she can sense anyone supernatural in any way, and she's stated multiple times to be the best at it of the main crew.

◎ Personality:

"I've read mountains of books by myself. I would always look for happy endings in stories.

To continue living towards a happy ending."

Kotoha Isone is the sort of carefree, happy teenager that you would expect to find in a town as cheerful as hers. She's cheery, hard to get down and very exuberant and enthusiastic. She likes shopping, and nice clothes, fun trips and playing games and singing karaoke with her friends.

She's hard-headed, brash, rude and crude. She won't hesitate to curse if it suits her, just as she won't hesitate to offer up encouragement or good cheer to her friends or even strangers along the street. She's got an honest heart, and doesn't tend to hold anything back.

When Kotoha is determined to do something, that thing will get done (and she can be rather overly confident as she does so, such as when she claimed, "I am a kotodama user--when I say 'hit', it will definitely hit the target"-- it wouldn't have if not for some lucky extraneous circumstances). She is so determined to do the things she wants to see done, and nothing will hold her back from doing them--but she approaches them in her own bookworm-ish way as well. Where Hime and Akina just charge right in, Kotoha will do the research, read up on the topic, and then try to come up with a way to resolve the problem. Nonetheless, she can be just as reckless as her friends, diving right into all sorts of problems with a reckless sort of overconfidence.

She's a teenager. Reckless overconfidence is what teenagers are good at.

Kotoha is a quirky sort of girl as well--she's fond of being a little odd and out there, and doesn't really mind much what anyone thinks of her. She sasses people who think they know more than her or that she should listen to, and she's honestly not the sort of person to willingly listen to someone who hasn't earned her respect, not when she already has an idea or plan in mind.

Of course, once someone has her respect and friendship, she's more than happy to listen to them. They're important to her, the most important, and she will do whatever they need to make their lives easier. She'll protect them, support them, offer up pep talks and spend time with them, and she's significantly more touchy-feely as well. Friends are extremely important to Kotoha, and she clings to them with everything she's got when she knows she has some good ones.

And she's extremely forgiving due to what she's learned from her friends. They forgave her for so many things, and for that reason, she's tried to take a page out of their books and try to learn how to be forgiving as well. She's not always as forgiving as Hime and Akina, but she's willing to welcome even people who were her enemy or tried to kill her, so long as they show some willingness to change. She'll extend that olive branch.

Until someone breaks that trust, anyway.

Basically, in one sense, Kotoha is just like any other modern day seventeen year old girl from Japan.

In another sense, she's completely different. Kotoha is half-youkai, which means that she's half human, half...not. In order to become half-youkai, you have to "fall"; youkai and humans can't reproduce, so the only way is to fall and be saved. Therefore, they are rather rare. Through falling, Kotoha grew an appreciation for life and living, but also for how cruel the world can be. It was simple bad luck that she was where she was, and it nearly ruined her entire life--and it did ruin some of the lives of the people around her.

So Kotoha has learned not to take for granted the good that there is in her life--but also to know that nothing lasts forever. She'll fight for their happiness, and fight to preserve the good in the world as long as she possibly can, but she's also very, very aware that at some point, it'll disappear, and there's nothing any of them can do about it.

As a kotodama user, which she gained through her fall, Kotoha loves words. She plays with them in her speech, works in random words from other languages, has random codewords for her shortcuts, and loves books and the written word. She's a nerd. One of her biggest loves is German history, and she swoons over guns and weaponry.

But also as a kotodama user, she's extremely aware of humanity and her lack thereof. She knows that she's not entirely human anymore. She knows that she can't necessarily claim her human status like she used to be able to. She loves her abilities and plays with them all the time, but she's also starkly aware of what she lost--she's no longer a human like the majority of the world, nor is she full youkai like the others. She's somewhere awkwardly in between, and that's her cross to bear.

Ultimately, she's the most realistic of the group, though she doesn't air those thoughts very often. She's always thinking them, though. No matter how many people they stop from hurting their companions, no matter how many battles they fight, life is fleeting, and she knows it.

For that reason, Kotoha is determined to enjoy the life she has for so long as she has it.

When she was young, Kotoha thought of the world like a storybook, because that was what she was familiar with. Now she knows better--the world doesn't work like a story, with neat, happy endings. Life is life, separate from a book, and she wants to embrace it on its own terms as best she can. After all, happiness can be finite, and she knows that better than anyone.

But because of all of this, she's also the most realistic and vicious of the group as well. If it came down to it, she'd be willing to kill someone for the sake of her friends, something that is extremely different from the others. She's fallen once before, and while she's afraid of it happening again, she knows that there's a darker part of her that sometimes comes out. A physical manifestation of this is that she's afraid of the dark--she's afraid of the sort of person that she is in the dark, and she's afraid of the sort of person she is when she snaps.

Thankfully, though, with the cheerful, happy life she lives, that happens very rarely. Her friends keep her on the right track, and she's doing her best to live her life as fully as she can. She is confident in her power to do so, and in the power of her friends as well. She's determined to see things through to the end, no matter what end that ends up being, and in the meantime--well, she'll have as much fun as she can.

◎ Powers/Abilities:

Kotoha is a kotodama user; what this means in its most basic form is that she can make anything she speaks into reality. This manifests by her sticking out her tongue, speaking the words she wants to make into real things, and... poof. There they are.

Obviously, this is a massively powerful ability, and there are some parameters for it. First of all, Kotoha can't create living things. Obviously, she won't be able to say something like "dog" and make a dog appear, even if she wanted to (which she doesn't; that crosses some serious lines for her). There is a slight caveat to this; she seems to be capable of creating plants, such as cherry blossoms. Other natural things, like rocks, are perfectly easy for her to make. (Sometimes, she accidentally summons book characters as she reads, but as they're fictional and not real, that avoids that little rule, and they don't last long anyway.)

But where's the fun in that?

The second caveat comes with man-made objects, and it's as to be expected with an ability like hers--she can't make something if she doesn't know what it is. For example, in order to make a simple band-aid, Kotoha has to describe it...down to its absolute basest parts, from the elastic to the adhesive. A bullet isn't a bullet, it's a metal-cased projectile filled with powder and possessing a primer.

But what good is that when you may need a bullet in a hurry?

So, for those tight situations when you may need a bullet (or a hundred), Kotoha is able to install "short-cuts", where she assigns a word to a concept and is able to make it come to life without having to explain the entire object over and over again. She's...a little crazy about her short-cuts. Just a little crazy. Yeah.

If Kotoha doesn't know what a thing is made of, she's able to...taste it to get a feel for what it is. That's exactly as it sounds--she licks it, and she can assign it to a short-cut and replicate it. Kotoha has a lot of fun with her tongue. Her range for this ability is...honestly very large. She's able to create large explosives and weaponry without anything more than a sore throat as a consequence.

That said, she does have to know what she's saying and speak it clearly, or it just doesn't work. When she gets flustered and starts spitting out half-words or syllables, the syllables can actually manifest in the air (yes, physically touchable letters), but nothing like what she was hoping for. Sometimes, when she's being a jerk, she manifests her own manga sound effects.

Basically, as she puts it herself, she's the master of oral tradition--all kotodama users are. So long as she has a good idea of what she's summoning (and some cough drops to soothe her throat), she can make it happen.

As a side-note, she's also half-youkai, which means she's more athletic, durable and agile than normal humans. That said, she says herself that she's no good with outright brawls, preferring to out-smart her opponents in battle.

◎ Weapons & Other Special Inventory:

- cell phone
- bag of cough drops

CEREALIA-Specific

◎ Element: Air
◎ Sense: Taste: her powers involve licking and tasting objects in order to recreate them; in a way, she 'tastes' the words that she is using to make her magic happen.
◎ Seven Character Traits:

( + )

: confident
: strong
: eloquent

( - )

: hard-headed
: cynical
: crude

( +/- )

: vicious

Samples

◎ First-Person Sample:

Hell-ooo, everyone!

[Well that's sure an exuberant greeting. It seems to fit the girl on the screen though; she's pretty cheerful about this entire situation.]

So, the whole kidnapped-to-another-world thing aside, what sort of things can a girl do around here? I'm your average girl who's interested in cute clothes, karaoke and Panzerkampfwagen II tanks, so if you've got any good suggestions, let me know! This broadcasting to everyone thing is weird...it makes me feel a little egocentric.

[Also sort of like a town announcement...though hime would probably use a town announcement for something like this, now that she thinks about it.]

Anyway, I suppose I should wrap this up before it drags on and on. Company's welcome, so long as you're not boring! ♪ [wait is there an actual music note popping up next to her--]

Ciaaaao!

[And, humming, she shuts off the feed.]

◎ Third-Person Sample: Already in-game with Sousei!

◎ Is your character retaining any previous game memories? N/A!