[series]: Toradora!
[character]: Kushieda Minori (family name first)
[character history / background]:

Wiki

Additional: Minori suffers a general lack of canon backstory, but from what she's revealed her parents are usually busy with work, leaving her to take care of herself and her little brother. She and Aisaka Taiga are best friends, and she's the target of Takasu Ryuuji's initial crush.

[character abilities]: Just a normal human. One that's very in-shape and athletic, but powerless in any supernatural aspect.

[character personality]:
Minori is eccentric at best, and extreme in the most honest of terms. Ryuuji's crush stems from how 'cute', refreshing, and energetic she is, and at first it's a little jarring to imagine a girl as nice as Minori can be best friends with someone as violent and temperamental as Taiga. She's the type that jumps dramatically off rooftops, makes pudding in plastic buckets, quotes obscure anime, scares small children in subways, eats the hottest curry ever made, flails her arms like a squid, takes on the part of a bald, buck-toothed gameshow host for a class skit, and sings out of tune. Something of a tomboy and 'sports genius,' something of a high school girl who decorates cell phones for money.

She's Kushieda 'Minorin' Minori, captain of the girl's softball team, and the strangest girl in Class 2-C.

Alongside that, her work ethic is completely psychotic phenomenal. She takes on several part-time jobs at a time while still in school because she has to keep herself busy, earning her several miscellaneous skills like cleaning and advertising, and back home she takes care of her little brother. All the while, her energy seems endless. In fact, for most people, they'll never see her without a smile, or just how tough she is on herself sometimes. That sometimes, potentially, 'everything's fine' doesn't really mean that.

And, well, it doesn't. But that's not really an issue Minori likes dealing with, because if she needs other people's help, then it's not the kind of success worth celebrating. So why make everyone worry?

While she truly and legitimately is upbeat, she's not gullible or ditsy or ungraceful too. She's very aware of her friend's emotions, and frequently realizes their feelings before even they do. She may always be there for them, but she very rarely opens up to other people herself. She's brave until it comes down to expressing how she really feels. For instance: when she accidentally reveals too many of her inner thoughts to Ryuuji, she tells him to not bring it up around other people and changes the subject whenever he does (she also tends to do this whenever too 'serious' an issue comes up, always trying to keep things lighthearted).

She doesn't want to be weak, so she hates showing her tears and fears, covering up everything with a smile. When finally confronted and cornered, she can lose her temper and become extremely emotional-- even then, she holds tight to her secrets. In the end, what makes Minori who she is her definite strength and shining nature, always willing to work and push forward past her own nervousness to grasp happiness, hesitant to believe or depend on something (or someone) she can't know is real. And underneath it all, a bad habit of running away.

[point in timeline you're picking your character from]:
Shortly after summer vacation.

[journal post]:

[The recording begins with a yelp and obvious splash of water; The City has claimed another soul in its fountain. A loud intake of air, and then silence. Quiet, rapid breathing.

There's a nervous laugh which only pauses when this new victim spots the device. A gasp. Sounds of fumbling fingers and jostled machinery follow.]

C-c-c-c-c-could it be...!?

[switches over to text]

> ATTENTION, ALIENS! <

Wasn't I supposed to be beamed up? Anyway, thank you for your hospitality! I am proud to be aboard this hallowed vessel! I wasn't expecting it to be so big (a simulated sky!?) and it kind of looks like a normal city and I'm soaked jsdklf BUT THANK YOU! I look forward to diplomatic efforts with your kind!

...I wonder where everyone else is! Being abducted by aliens wouldn't be the same alone.

[third person / log sample]:

Do you believe in ghosts?

It was a question she got every once in a while, and the answer was always a loud and resounding 'yes,' eyes wide and shoulders shaking just a little. Most people took it as a tell-tale sign of fear, laughed it off, finished with a none of it was real, you know or hey, this one time I heard...

Minori wished that were true, and that ghost stories were scary again. No, it was the excitement, the possibility of something truly eerie presenting itself that carried through reaction. The recent stuff in theaters? Child's play. Was dramatic music and then the monster falling out of the closet behind the frightened hero scary to anyone anymore? The sudden appearance of a werewolf from the roadside? Disappointing! Ryuuji and Taiga could've done better than that. Maybe.

Actually, probably not.

But horror wasn't for everyone. Minori was never the kid who hid behind pillows or with her face buried in a shoulder. She'd never scream, just watch with the strain of unblinking eyes, mouth open by just a little bit. Fear has a sort of adrenaline, an instinct that triggers somewhere and grips again and again at the heart from something as simple as memory. It's not too far off from a runner's high, or the tallest drop on a roller coaster. The brain reacted in fascinating ways, and fright was an amazing stimulus.

She found it funny sometimes just how much she thrived on something that she couldn't prove real. She believed in ghosts, but they didn't exist; if she stretched her hand out into the darkness, there would never be any clammy, half-sunken fingers pressing against hers in return. She couldn't put any faith in the revelries of other people when she'd never experienced the man with a smile pulled to his ears and a rigor mortis-limp in his step by the side of a nighttime road herself.

And wasn't it the same for that perfect somebody? It wasn't like other abstract concepts because something like 'the future' was always under her own reign, but what control did she have over a fated someone? It wasn't like she could shape that at all, regardless of willpower. It wasn't pessimism or anything like that; Minori never once thought her life would be terrible, and maybe she'd even find love. But spirits and soulmates-- she couldn't wait on them forever.

Yet when she'd sat with Ryuuji, eating ice cream and watching stars, and he brought out the idea that maybe a ghost was waiting for her to see it, there was a rare break in her guard. It was a silly idea, really. Nothing serious to consider; she was too focused on what she could obtain to wish for a ghost. Wishing and wanting were just as abstract, just as uncertain and just as unreliable. A vulnerable idea she didn't want to get dependent on in fear of dependence.

Even if it really was right there, smiling. Waiting.

Despite herself, she pulled the covers over her head as she slept that night. Just once to try out that wishing, dreaming thing and see if when she looked out the next morning, her ghost (or maybe someone else) would be there for her.

That's. A lot of people.

WELCOME I think. How are you faring?

((OOC: Have to leave for 4th of July revelry later-- will be backdating! Go for whatever~))

[The recording begins with a yelp and obvious splash of water; The City has claimed another soul in its fountain. A loud intake of air, and then silence. Quiet, rapid breathing.

There's a nervous laugh which only pauses when this new victim spots the device. A gasp. Sounds of fumbling fingers and jostled machinery follow.]

C-c-c-c-c-could it be...!?

[switches over to text]

> ATTENTION, ALIENS! <

Wasn't I supposed to be beamed up? Anyway, thank you for your hospitality! I am proud to be aboard this hallowed vessel! I wasn't expecting it to be so big (a simulated sky!?) and it kind of looks like a normal city and I'm soaked jsdklf BUT THANK YOU! I look forward to diplomatic efforts with your kind!

...I wonder where everyone else is! Being abducted by aliens wouldn't be the same alone.