Mizuki

Credit to the original artist.

Credit to the original artist.

Mizuki "Kelly Miyabi" is a character in the Athalia Academy universe created and played by Driving Park. She is neither an antagonist nor protagonist exclusively, frequently travelling back and forth across the moral compass.

Basics

• Gender: female
• Species/Race: kitsune
• Age: 19 (human) / 72 (spirit)
• Height: ' " /  m
• Weight:  lb. /  kg
• Hair Color: silver
• Eye Color: yellow
• Skin Color: fair
• Figure: curvaceous

Powers

• Fox-Fire Manipulation - As a kitsune, Mizuki utilizes fox-fire as her main offensive weapon in unconventional ways such as hypnosis and life-force draining.
• Hair Manipulation - Mizuki can move her head hair and each of her tails as if it were another appendage, and use them for various purposes, including attacks, defense, and comakinetic flight.
• Lunar Empowerment - "Mizuki" means "beautiful moon", and Mizuki is thus the lunar fox-spirit. When it is night, especially a full moon, her power is augmented.
• Trickster - Enhanced Thievery, Regenerative Healing Factor (slow).
• Kitsune Physiology - Enhanced Hearing and Smell, Night Vision.

Abilities

- Where’s Waldo?: Using her fox-fire’s limited light manipulation properties, Mizuki can create holograms of herself and others and control them. These holograms are completely indistinguishable from the actual person due to manipulation of light particles. Using a hologram in combat will split her available energy between herself and the hologram, so there is no net gain in power or effectiveness. Use of more than one hologram simultaneously is only useful for causing confusion, as there isn’t much energy left to attack or defend with. In addition, although she can create holograms of others, she cannot duplicate their voice, as sound manipulation is not one of her abilities. Thus, duplication of others is only useful when speech is unnecessary. Finally, although the holograms look 100% real, they are incorporeal and touching them will dissipate them immediately.

- Beam Me Up, Scotty: Using her fox-fire’s limited light manipulation properties, Mizuki can faux teleport in a blaze of fiery blue light. However, it drains a significant amount of energy and must be used very sparingly. In addition, she can only teleport to places she is looking at, as she is moving there at the speed of light rather than actually teleporting.

- She’s Dead, Jim: as a trickster fox-spirit inhabiting a once-almost-dead human body, Mizuki can convincingly feign death at will.

- Hypnotize Me, Cap’n!: Mizuki’s fox-fire is used as a hypnotic device with a lulling beautiful display of the mystical blue flames. As mind control is not in her portfolio, Mizuki can only lull and make targets go to sleep, and not control them. - Burn Notice: While Mizuki’s fox-fire possesses many mythical qualities that she prefers to utilize it with, it can still be used as traditional burning fire should the need arise, including blasts from the hands, mouth and tails. Compared to normal fire, it is hotter and burns longer, but is more easily extinguished when separated from its user (i.e. if she set a building on fire, it would be very easy to put out).

- Two-Way Street: Arguably Mizuki’s darkest and most benevolent ability simultaneously. She envelops a target in fox-fire, robbing them of their life-force until she is replenished, or even overdriven. Has the potential to kill if active for long enough. This is her most direct way of obtaining life-force energy, one of the three things she needs to survive (the other two being normal food and water). However, she can also use it the other way, transferring her own life-force to the target, potentially killing herself if active for long enough.

- Death Blossom/Supercombine: Mizuki grows additional hair at the end of each tail and head hair, which is then infused with fox-fire and separates into countless tiny hair spike bullets, which disperse in every direction. They can either function as bullets, creating intense pain and burning (due to the fox-fire) upon contact with a target (Supercombine), or as concussion grenades, creating small explosions upon impact (Death Blossom).

- Heads or Tails?: Mizuki’s only defense apart from offensive countermeasures is using her voluptuous hair as a shield. Part of her hair manipulation ability, her hair-shield has an extremely large area because of how much hair her head and tails have, and is movable at will. The strengthened hair is able to stop many forms of physical attacks, but is weak to others such as fire and does little to protect from magic.

- Burnout: Mizuki's last-resort is quite literally a burnout, using all of her energy in one go to completely overwhelm an opponent or area with a storm of her most potent fox-fire that both incinerates and drains life-force. Although the move is extremely powerful and essentially unavoidable, she is unable to use any abilities at all after its conclusion for a period of twelve hours, and is unable to even move (remaining limp) for an hour. A true last-ditch attack.

Weaknesses

Mizuki is an on and off switch. When in a fight, it's all or nothing, which causes her to be far more aggressive than what is necessary for maximum effectiveness and survivability. She will rain down her own attacks without so much as checking for a counterattack. If she sees it, she will counter it, but the likelihood of her not seeing it at all is high. This also applies to collateral damage, which she both doesn't watch out for and views as an acceptable price to pay in battle, so it's generally a good idea to stay far away from her in a fight.

Mizuki and her fox-fire are very weak to water users, especially as fox-fire can contain electrical properties.

Mizuki's heart is located in a shell hardened from years of suffering (see Background), but the right triggers can crack it, causing complete emotional collapse.

As a kitsune, Mizuki is weak to and afraid of dogs.

In addition to normal nourishment, Mizuki must also feed on life-force energy to remain at 100% capacity. This includes emotions, which is why she is dependent on people, despite her disdain for them. If she goes for too long without feeding, her good side will be completely suppressed and she will be very mentally volatile, likely to go on killing/feeding sprees until her benevolent side returns.

Personality

Mizuki is a product of a very unique upbringing, with her recipe consisting of 60% nogitsune malevolent fox-spirit, 30% zenko benevolent fox-spirit, and 10% kind and gentle girl. She does not value life (including her own), with the exception of her two parents. She is not afraid to kill anyone (except children and the defenseless) in her quest for answers and revenge (see below). She is mischievous and malevolent, thanks to her nogitsune genealogy. She will mess with people she chooses, engaging in thievery, mind games and other such tricks for her own purposes. She is always plotting, scheming and conniving (yes, all three). She is cunning and stealthy with her games, and extremely hard to pin the blame on. Yet, because of her zenko side, she has the capacity to be an extremely sweet, caring individual to those she chooses. However, most of the time it is all an act as part of her game. On the very rare occasions when someone earns her genuine affection, kindness and trust, she will pour out her entire heart to them, smothering them in said affection and kindness. This is an extremely rare yet extremely beautiful occurrence.

She occupies a moral space located in the gray area of the moral compass, and can hate (and kill) both good and evil, usually aligning with good for their kindness and lack of unrealistic world domination plans. For her, there is only her journey.

Background

Years ago, in the small town of Shiroku, Japan, a little girl was dying. Incapacitated by a disease that was slowly claiming her life, no amount of medicine she was given was improving her condition, and fell into a coma. Her family couldn't afford proper medical treatment, and was relying on the little medicine they and their neighbors had.

One night, while the family was sleeping, the fox-spirit Mizuki descended on the household. A spirit of the night, Mizuki had gone unseen, being spoken of in the local area in hushed tones. Whenever something was stolen or someone went missing, the small group of villages always accredited the misdeed to Mizuki, and regularly prayed to their deity to deliver them from it.

This night would be different.

When the fox-spirit reached the house of the ill child, it intended to do what it normally did. Upon seeing the little girl, however, it changed its mind. For although it was a malevolent nogitsune, it still had a reserve of compassion and honor tucked away in the recesses of its mind. Mizuki possessed the child, saving her life in the process. When morning came, the family observed what had occurred, and that the girl had already gained a bushy fox tail. Despite Mizuki's reputation, they vowed to continue raising the kitsune child as if nothing had happened.

Unfortunately, the rest of the town and indeed the Japanese government did not share the same sentiment, driving her and her family away. The family sought refuge in America, hoping to eke out a new life for themselves and Mizuki. They did so until Mizuki was in her early teens, having grown into a sweet little kitsune with three tails. In the process, she picked an American name (Kelly) to normalize herself in American society.

One night, however, armed men came and forcefully took her parents, never to be seen again. When the police arrived, all they found was a frightened Mizuki.

Mizuki never understood why her parents were taken, but it affected her drastically. She spent the rest of her life alone, scrounging out an existence in any way she could, all the while in intense emotional pain, trying to uncover who the armed men were and why they took her parents. She grew as a kitsune, gaining tails and strength during the process. She was almost ready to admit defeat and move on.

But then, they came for her.

She fought.

And then she fled.

She flew as fast as she could, and soon she was no longer followed. However, she wouldn't stop running, dangerously ignoring her fading stamina and her very undeveloped flight, which would cease to function at any moment.

And soon, she fell.

Further Information

[Anything else we should know?]

Athalia History

Mizuki has not yet been introduced in-character.

Theme

[What, if any, is their theme music?]

Trivia

• Mizuki was first introduced in the second episode of the non-canon Noxonshaw, long before she was introduced in-character. It was written by NarayanK and Driving Park as part of a many-hour collaborative episode marathon, which included the first two episodes of the Noxonshaw (Carmen then Mizuki) followed by the first episode of Carmen's show, Athalian Idol. The pair stayed up extraordinarily late completing the trio of episodes, concluding at approximately 7 a.m. EST.
• The name Mizuki means "beautiful moon" in Japanese.
• When posting for Mizuki, Mizuki's creator, Driving Park, often accidentally began typing the name Miyoshi, which is the name of a character he plays in a non-Athalia roleplay.
• The original inspiration for the character came from a multitude of sources. The idea to link the character to the moon came from HylianRose when Driving Park first considered making a second character. A long time passed between that conversation and when development of a second character (that became Mizuki) actually begun, but Driving Park remembered the lunar suggestion and incorporated it into Mizuki's design. The inspiration to make Mizuki a kitsune came from Driving Park's "Ninetales" Etherpad username and retroactively applied Roleplayer Guild avatar. Ninetales is a Pokémon that is noticeably a nine-tailed kitsune, and is DP's favorite Pokémon. The idea to make her morally ambiguous came from three reasons:  the fact that it was the creator's apparent knack, the fact that the creator couldn't decide between making a nogitsune or zenko kitsune, and the fact that the two pictures the creator found (and really wanted to use) each portrayed a different morality.
• The name "Kelly" was chosen long before Miyabi or even Mizuki, and was entirely chosen so that a certain Eurobeat song by the same name could be used as the character's theme. However, during character development it was realized that the character didn't at all match the extremely uplifting mood of the song, and the theme idea was scrapped but the name kept.

Gallery

Mizuki in a more evil state of mind. Credit to the original artist

Mizuki in a more good state of mind. Credit to the original artist

Young Mizuki. Credit to the original artist