Post by Akoga Reiko on Mar 17, 2012 17:45:44 GMT -5
Yeah… I’m kind of nervous. I see this either coming off as super special awesome or a complete disaster.
Okay, I realize this character might seem a little… odd. Regardless, I think this character is (or at least could be) shojo drama material and thus suited to fit in a Clamp universe, so I hope that comes across. I understand that I am taking a number of risks with this character that I guess might get her flagged as cliché. However, there’s a difference between something that is done frequently and something that is DONE WELL frequently. I kind of wanted to prove myself, but if you want me to scrap the character and try again with another, I’ll make sure to play it safe.
Oh yeah, I am also aware that the whole Japanese delinquent mythos as we see it in media was pretty much a total exaggeration of things in the seventies, and simply doesn’t anything in current reality resembling it. However, I chose it because it’s a fun topic and I thought that a wild, ambitious, irrational, “because it’s cool!” mind set was appropriate when writing for something based around a subject like manga.
NAME: Akoga, Reiko (Sue me. I’m going to explain my own pun.)
ALIAS: Boss
PHYSICAL AGE: 17
RACE: Human
SERIES: Original character; XXXHolic
HOME WORLD: Earth
APPEARANCE:
Despite her status, Reiko is rather unassuming in appearance in a few ways, despite how much she makes herself stand out in others. She stands at an even (please remember that a fairly average Westerner is still quite tall by Japanese standards) five feet tall. While she has gotten more and more into shape because of brawling, this is only at a point of where tone is just starting emerge. She has brown eyes, a slightly prominent chin, and a mole on her left cheek. Additionally, having bruises, scrapes, and the like form recent fights she’s been in is certainly not uncommon.
She’s a moderately fashionable girl, so while she may have some occasional variation, however the gang dictates she have a specific look most of her time out. She wears an altered version of a/the school uniform, except with a very long skirt, and a rolled up sleeves. She also wears a surgical mask on her face and wears a metal chain (doubling as a weapon) as a boa to complete the look. This is very typical delinquent stuff. Her hair is dyed white to further match this, but the style is a contrast. She has twin drills, large extremes of the famous “princess curls” style or pig tails.
There are also a number of items she will frequently have on her. She also carries around a type of paper fan common to Go players, and will often open it when doing her noblewoman’s laugh. Due to her smoking habit, a cigarette may be in the other hand. Most importantly, however, she wil have her teru teru bozu charm on her at all times, often attached to her clothes, bag, phone, or even tucked in her cleavage. The charm itself is simply a white cloth covering a rubber ball for the head, a string tied to separate the head and body, and a smiley face scribbled on it with sharpie. It looks sort of like a classical sheet ghost.
PERSONALITY:
Reiko is simply not who you may think she is at first glance. At the same time, it isn’t quite as complicated as one might later make her out as. A major for of it all is almost a paradox: She has pride and a sense of duty, and yet she is in secure and confidence issues. A major part of this the expectations and responsibly she is forced into fulfilling and the stresses she gets from struggling to so, along with her her lack of luck in love as well. She’s also already has hurt and driven two people she’s cared deeply for, not wanting to be hurt or to hurt anybody again. This makes for a duality of, vulnerability and harshness. It’s very often that she doesn’t really faith in herself as much as faith or expectations in the people have of her. At the same time, she reluctant to open up to the people she’s loyal to and feels that she can trust.
Something that is both obvious and true about her is that she is very confident in her skill in Go. There is a good reason for this: Go is a very stable constant in her life. Go is logical, cold, and as far away from the chaos of the rest of her life as possible. It has a calming effect on her, matches putting her in a Zen like state, with… a few notable exceptions. There’s a level of pride she gets from knowing she’s good at the game, but it just doesn’t translate into confidence outside of her little Go world. She doubts if becoming a professional Go player would really make her life any less chaotic, but that doesn’t seem to stop her in the end.
In the opposite manner, she makes it her prerogative to display confidence, calm, and even smugness when at school or around the gang. Sometimes she may seem like a braggart or full of herself, but the majority of her boast are about the gang or other members in in with little mention of herself. Oddly enough, she gets far more dramatic when planning or encouraging her gang with a speech: times of action, so to speek. She gets more boisterous, more animated in her movements, more likely to belittle and tease people, and sometimes even having tendency to talk with an almost Chihuahua-like speed and volume. This can prove effective in persuasion through sheer force of personality. Most distinguishable if something she learned from her mother, The Noblewoman’s Laugh. You know the maniacal and annoying “Oooh! Ho! Ho! Ho!” with the palm of one’s hand pressed against the chin? She even brings out her Go fan for it… A part of this persona that draws in some of the gang girls is a level of mystique that Reiko has unfortunately embraced. Actually, nobody in the gang really knows much of anything about her before she took command in the siege. And making everything means that she doesn’t really hang out with any of them like friends.
At the same time, despite being a delinquent, Reiko is actually pretty intelligent in a few ways. For one, she has a lot on her plate, and yet makes average grades. She’s a talented go amateur Go player with skill on a professional level, even if this mainly due to knowing and being exposed to the game as long as she can remember. Her shady dealings have also brought out a rather significant skill in management and organization that has only improved since middle school. If Go doesn’t pan out, could she possibly have a future in business?
It is also worth remembering that the most essential and important thing about the gang to her is the feeling of family which justifies everything else. This naturally puts her into the role of a mother of sorts. Thus, she has she tries to emphasize with each and every girl that they can come to her about any personal problems or feedback about how she’s running things. While softer and quitter, she still has to seem more in control than everybody else. When it’s about stress, sometimes she has to go with the military therapist mantra of giving a pat on the back and sending somebody back into the fray, but if things seem serious enough she will try to reduce the work load or even let a girl go from the group if things are just that overwhelming. One the same token, when playing the disciplinarian, she tries to convince the girl that she’s let down or betrayed her “sisters” while others are actually doing the beating.
She also actually does question the morality of much of what she’s doing in the gang. She’s simply a girl who hasn’t been content with what she has for a long time. This said, her jealousy and greed have a habit or taking advantage of her in times of weakness. She’s grown bonds with the girls, and tries to understand them and their reasons. Of course, there’s also the conflict of how doing such things makes her doubt her self-worth, and yet they also bring her gang to respect her more.
There’s still limits she has, however. She still actually cringes every time she hears the phrase “compensated dating” and couldn’t imagine ever bringing herself to do that. Her taking up smoking wasn’t a moral conflict as much as it was just a lapse in logic, too much peer pressure, and lack of will power, though she can’t deny that it takes off stress, and thus can understand people taking other drugs to an extent. And when it comes to fighting, she tries to psyche herself into feeling as heroic as possible, and tries to think about the fact that’s she’s actually harming people in the back of her mind as much as possible. She really stresses that the gang focus on fighting rival gangs because a power struggle is easier to accept that picking on someone you can’t defend themselves. Mugging’s naturally harder for her to deal with, though she’s tried to try to emphasize scaring the target as much as possible so the gang doesn’t have to “get their hands dirty and waste time.” She has also tried to secretly return some of what she has stolen, though she still risk much for things that aren’t obvious heirlooms or valuables, and sometimes there are things just so nice that she just can’t help herself.
Naturally, she can only carry on with her delinquent persona for so long throughout a day. She gets burnt out daily and becomes far more melancholic. She becomes shy and slow in her speech. There’s less carrying her: her posture goes out of whack. She may also seem out of it, in her own world. There are simply times she has to center herself and reflect so that she can keep carrying on. Possibly the most important part of this is repeatedly reciting a chant (below in her history) while squeezing her teru teru bozu charm. She has done this every day of her life since she received the charm during elementary school. If she were to ever lose this charm, she would burn out very quickly, spiraling into depression. If she’s like this in public, she may try to drastically change her look so she won’t be recognized. The same goes if she feels she has to take a walk or the like to clear her head. She will regularly try to dismiss herself from the rest of the gang because she “needs a smoke”- even though she smokes openly around them. They’ve caught on to this naturally meaning something else, but they run with it.
Finally, A little known (nobody but herself) fact is that Reiko is lesbian. So far, this has most negatively affected her life, yet she is envious of anybody with the courage to be out. Part of her calls herself a freak because of this while another worries she will never find true love. However, a hobby of her shows a persistent hope: she’s an avid collector of her lesbian themed anime and manga, a regular yuri fan girl. She even has what is known as “yuri goggles”, which is essentially a kind of romantic day dreaming and tendency to read too much into things.
You might think an otaku wouldn’t be genre blind, but then you’d be wrong. If she developed feelings for a girl, she’d be reluctant to confess her love to her. She will deny being a lesbian if the subject ever comes up, even if somebody had her stash. It wouldn’t be odd for her to even “protest too much.” Reiko knows a relationship would be difficult and fears it wouldn’t work. She knows it could possibly tear her entire world apart. She feels she couldn’t take being rejected by somebody she cares about again. Could she trust herself not to hurt her love? Can she accept the obvious? Can realize what she really needs? Perhaps, but the tough girl persona she’s been absorbing sure isn’t going to help. She may likely try to avoid or drive away the girl she’s in love with, but it is unlikely that this will be in a violent way despite her disposition towards it. She has will, heart, and self control where it counts… or at least she tries to.
ABILITIES AND SPECIAL SKILLS: Includes weaponry.
Reiko’s a normal high school student: nothing super natural about her, at least at the moment. This doesn’t necessarily mean she doesn’t have a trick up her sleeve or two that distinguishes her from others a bit.
Go- Reiko is a talented player of the board game, and is ready to go pro.
Her main weapon is a metal chain that she wears on her shoulders like a boa. She may also use objects try to improvise random objects in her environment as a weapons, like any punk does, or may receive “weapons” from delinquent girls under her. Remember that she is a simple delinquent with no real formal training on how to fight and access to any real weapons.
Gang Boss- She is the leader of the delinquent girl gangs at two schools, having plenty of friends in low places. In other words, she had people who work under her command who know how to fight, gossip, steal, scam, blackmail, sell, or seduce. As long as she commands their respect, she can make use of their, ahem, unique skills. This flexible in that they can obviously be used an assortment of things from fetching snacks to fetching information about what’s going on at the school, but again, mundane things, and if the girls feel like they are being treated too badly, they might simply leave the gang or put a new boss may be put in Reiko’s place. This can be helpful in battle. For example, having a few npc delinquent girls already established to be in the scene to back her up or a retreat giving her enough time to call or text for some of her girls to come to where she is to back her up. Of course, these girls are no different from her really, and it isn’t like they can just pop up where Reiko is out of thin are. They have no powers, real fighting training, or real weapons. If they have weapons at all, expect wooden swords, chains, lead pipes, kitchen knives, baseball bats, etc. The only real threat they can have is numbers.
Also, it might be notable that because of of her emotional investment and daily prayer involving her teru teru bozu charm, it might be possible that the charm could hold a sort of dormant power. Still, this is only a possibility and it has no active powers at present. However, someone like Yuuko, Clow Reed, etc. might be able to notice a dormant power in the charm.
HISTORY:
A Prologue; Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Delinquency
Like many born in the 70’s, Reiko’s mother, Yasu, was abandoned in a coin locker as a baby. She was rescued and adopted by a caring family, but has known to have constant health problems. Despite the setbacks she’s made a name for herself as a professional in the Women’s Go League, her husband a simple salary man.
Because of all this, Yasu wanted to do for some other kid what was done for her; Reiko was both given up and adopted while still in her infancy. Reiko’s parents were determined to make her succeed from an early age. When Reiko wasn’t studying, she was being taught Go, an ancient but constantly evolving board game. Occasionally, Yasu would take her daughter to see Takarazuka plays with her as a reward for hard work. And while Reiko did grow to love the shows, they weren’t the real reason such outings were a reward; they were a meeting place. It was at these shows that Reiko met an girl named Sachiko. To put it simply, Sachiko was like a cool big sis. Just before a big exams, Reiko became completely zonked- the only thing that helped her pass was Sachiko visiting to encourage her to carry on, making a special charm as a reminder, a weather charm called a teru teru bozu, “shiny headed little monk”. A charm that became part of Reiko’s daily rituals. They consist of what is basically a pseudo nursery rhyme about the charm:
“Teru-teru-bozu, teru bozu
Do make tomorrow a sunny day
Like the sky in a dream sometime
If it's sunny I'll give you a golden bell
Teru-teru-bozu, teru bozu
Do make tomorrow a sunny day
If you make my wish come true
We'll drink lots of sweet rice wine
Teru-teru-bozu, teru bozu
Do make tomorrow a sunny day
But if the clouds are crying
Then I shall snip your head off”
Okay, It probably wasn’t exactly the best charm or chant, as Reiko only passed by the skin of her teeth. And thus, she couldn‘t get into the academy that was part of the plan, instead going to a normal middle school. Yasu went into overdrive as an education mama in attempt to compensate this. But Reiko was disappointed for a different reason: a transfer in her father’s job in meant she had move away from her home of Osaka and go to a different school than Sachiko.
With her mother’s strict schedule, and thus no Sachiko, for Reiko’s first year of middle school, she became very introverted and frustrated with her life. The only real fun she had was occasionally playing with the old men at one of the Go salons, which she encouraged, and was a good excuse to get out of the house. It was here that she was approached by a member of the middle school Go club, Tadashi, the vice president. The daughter of a pro was certainly welcome, but he was also impressed by her own skill. And it was in this club that she became somewhat popular. She was definitely one of the better players alright, but the many of the kids just wanted to get close to her mother, with the exception of Tadashi. These friends were nothing like Sachiko was, but she just got used to it eventually, taking what she could get. She even gave into a few, trying to schedule them teaching games with her mother, but she eventually grew very fond of teaching the new members herself, and many of these new recruits became genuine friends.
As Reiko continued to be part of the Go club, Yasu became hopeful in her daughter, loosening her reigns a bit. And so, Reiko became insistent on trying to rekindle her friendship with Sachiko. They’d both changed a lot, but tried anyway. Sachiko now seemed to have her own problems, and thus couldn’t exactly be the Obiwan she used to be for Reiko. Moreover, she had to balance her time between her new boyfriend and Reiko. Even though she knew the guy was nice, Reiko grew to really, really hate him really, really fast… really; she couldn’t even explain why. Once things got heated, they all knew it was best for the friends to just cut ties. This only made Reiko fight harder in one of the amateur Go tournaments the next day, and even though she lost, there was quiet the surprising development: Tadashi asked her out. He was her best friend, and he was on his darn knees: it was embarrassing. But she said yes, and after a few weeks, she was showing him of to Sachiko, blatantly trying to make her jealous; it didn't work and even Tadashi said Reiko was acting like a jerk.
The bridge to Sachiko burned to ashes, things with Tadashi became a little awkward. Reiko didn't know- no, scratch that. She didn't want admit why she didn't really like him, made worse because of how infatuated he was, or at least had been with her. Nonetheless, most of their dates somehow or another ended up with them going to the go Salon, so she did rather enjoy them. On one in particular, Tadashi was deeply concentrated in a game with one of the stronger of the regular name Hajime. She was just as eager to play him as Tadashi was, and found herself getting bored as their game dragged on.
Eventually, Reiko reached to read a manga that Tadashi brought with him and laid down. She had no clue what it was at first, and it was pretty likely nobody else knew other than Tadashi. She found herself blushing after only a few pages, and put it away before anyone could see her. It wasn’t long before she paid a few boys to buy the entire series for her and keep their mouths shut about- it surely wasn’t something she wanted everyone and their mother know about her reading.
Cocky with whatever twisted pride a guy fresh out of high school could get from after beating a middle school kid, Hajime thought he could beat Reiko too, whispering to her that he’d give her 6,000 yen if she could beat him. She couldn’t refuse that kind of money, and won. This became regular series of bets between the two, and most of the time, she came out on top.
It wasn’t long until some of the middle school’s delinquents figured out what she was going and got real interested, and she became a member of the pack in no time. Together, Reiko and the delinquents started to use the Go club as the subject of their own mini underground gambling ring. And in return, she made sure that a portion of the profits from tit and some of the other activities of her new delinquent friends to help fund the Go club. Only a few select member members grew to know what was going on, and luckily, one of them was Tadashi. A few of the delinquents joined the go club, making it less conspicuous to deal with them.
Reiko soon went on to high school and became increasingly involved in the sukeban, or female delinquent gang at her school. She initially tried to bring what she had in the middle school over to the high school, but got pressured into helping with other things the gang was tied into. She was quickly seen as the brains of the freshman gang girls, steadily gaining respect, and thus further embracing the gang and letting it influence her. Her parents figured out she was acting differently, dressing differently at school, and she’d even started smoking. However, at the same time her grades weren’t suffering, and her Go skills were increasing. There’s tension in the Akoga household, but there’s no danger in it. Tadashi, however, just got fed up with it and broke up with Reiko. He’d bottled it all up; Reiko was blind to what going on until it was too late to do anything about it. She hated the deceit of playing the part of his girlfriend, but she still wanted to be his friend. It was a blow; she was reported that she was like a “zombie” for the entire week following the event.
The two met later, but on the “battle field.” It was the annual test to become a professional Go player. Tadashi’s skills had stagnated, while Reiko’s only grew further. Although she tried to fake it, she purposely played poorly to let Tadashi win out of guilt. Unfortunately, his opponent wiped the floor with him in the next round. Afterwards, Reiko judged that she would likely have been able to pass and become a pro if she hadn’t threw the match for Tadashi. Tadashi found out what actually happened in retrospect a few days later and called Reiko out on it to which she was speechless.
At about the same time, the gang became more aggressive in its rivalry with the female delinquent gang of a neighboring school. Reiko didn’t have fighting experience, and it showed. She even broke an arm after one fight, and generally wasn’t even impressive among the freshman. However, one day changed all of that. A sense of finality was obvious before the fight even began, made only worse in that their boss was knocked out very quickly. Some girls fled immediately, and remaining ones were struggling. Seeing her chance, Reiko tried to take the reins, encouraging and pushing her comrades to carry on. It was arduous, but the rival gang surrendered. After negotiation, with Reiko agreed to act as surrogate until the boss regained consciousness, it was agreed that the rival gang would be absorbed into that of Reiko’s school. spot, Reiko suggested, The Atari, after the Go maneuver, and it stuck.
At the end of the year, the current leader of The Atari would graduate, so an election was held to vote for a new boss. However, the girls of the conquered school were unable to vote. This lead to Reiko being voted as the boss. She is now in her second year and is taking over as boss. One of the first things she did was to pledge that before her graduation, the gang would conquer and absorb the male gangs at their schools, but also entire other neighboring schools. She is particularly finding it hard to control seniors reluctant to take orders from someone younger than them. If this wasn’t enough, she has to juggled these duties with being active in the school’s go club and connected gambling ring, aiming to become a professional Go player this year. Unbeknownst to her, she’ll actually have so much more on her plate soon enough.
Okay, I realize this character might seem a little… odd. Regardless, I think this character is (or at least could be) shojo drama material and thus suited to fit in a Clamp universe, so I hope that comes across. I understand that I am taking a number of risks with this character that I guess might get her flagged as cliché. However, there’s a difference between something that is done frequently and something that is DONE WELL frequently. I kind of wanted to prove myself, but if you want me to scrap the character and try again with another, I’ll make sure to play it safe.
Oh yeah, I am also aware that the whole Japanese delinquent mythos as we see it in media was pretty much a total exaggeration of things in the seventies, and simply doesn’t anything in current reality resembling it. However, I chose it because it’s a fun topic and I thought that a wild, ambitious, irrational, “because it’s cool!” mind set was appropriate when writing for something based around a subject like manga.
NAME: Akoga, Reiko (Sue me. I’m going to explain my own pun.)
ALIAS: Boss
PHYSICAL AGE: 17
RACE: Human
SERIES: Original character; XXXHolic
HOME WORLD: Earth
APPEARANCE:
Despite her status, Reiko is rather unassuming in appearance in a few ways, despite how much she makes herself stand out in others. She stands at an even (please remember that a fairly average Westerner is still quite tall by Japanese standards) five feet tall. While she has gotten more and more into shape because of brawling, this is only at a point of where tone is just starting emerge. She has brown eyes, a slightly prominent chin, and a mole on her left cheek. Additionally, having bruises, scrapes, and the like form recent fights she’s been in is certainly not uncommon.
She’s a moderately fashionable girl, so while she may have some occasional variation, however the gang dictates she have a specific look most of her time out. She wears an altered version of a/the school uniform, except with a very long skirt, and a rolled up sleeves. She also wears a surgical mask on her face and wears a metal chain (doubling as a weapon) as a boa to complete the look. This is very typical delinquent stuff. Her hair is dyed white to further match this, but the style is a contrast. She has twin drills, large extremes of the famous “princess curls” style or pig tails.
There are also a number of items she will frequently have on her. She also carries around a type of paper fan common to Go players, and will often open it when doing her noblewoman’s laugh. Due to her smoking habit, a cigarette may be in the other hand. Most importantly, however, she wil have her teru teru bozu charm on her at all times, often attached to her clothes, bag, phone, or even tucked in her cleavage. The charm itself is simply a white cloth covering a rubber ball for the head, a string tied to separate the head and body, and a smiley face scribbled on it with sharpie. It looks sort of like a classical sheet ghost.
PERSONALITY:
Reiko is simply not who you may think she is at first glance. At the same time, it isn’t quite as complicated as one might later make her out as. A major for of it all is almost a paradox: She has pride and a sense of duty, and yet she is in secure and confidence issues. A major part of this the expectations and responsibly she is forced into fulfilling and the stresses she gets from struggling to so, along with her her lack of luck in love as well. She’s also already has hurt and driven two people she’s cared deeply for, not wanting to be hurt or to hurt anybody again. This makes for a duality of, vulnerability and harshness. It’s very often that she doesn’t really faith in herself as much as faith or expectations in the people have of her. At the same time, she reluctant to open up to the people she’s loyal to and feels that she can trust.
Something that is both obvious and true about her is that she is very confident in her skill in Go. There is a good reason for this: Go is a very stable constant in her life. Go is logical, cold, and as far away from the chaos of the rest of her life as possible. It has a calming effect on her, matches putting her in a Zen like state, with… a few notable exceptions. There’s a level of pride she gets from knowing she’s good at the game, but it just doesn’t translate into confidence outside of her little Go world. She doubts if becoming a professional Go player would really make her life any less chaotic, but that doesn’t seem to stop her in the end.
In the opposite manner, she makes it her prerogative to display confidence, calm, and even smugness when at school or around the gang. Sometimes she may seem like a braggart or full of herself, but the majority of her boast are about the gang or other members in in with little mention of herself. Oddly enough, she gets far more dramatic when planning or encouraging her gang with a speech: times of action, so to speek. She gets more boisterous, more animated in her movements, more likely to belittle and tease people, and sometimes even having tendency to talk with an almost Chihuahua-like speed and volume. This can prove effective in persuasion through sheer force of personality. Most distinguishable if something she learned from her mother, The Noblewoman’s Laugh. You know the maniacal and annoying “Oooh! Ho! Ho! Ho!” with the palm of one’s hand pressed against the chin? She even brings out her Go fan for it… A part of this persona that draws in some of the gang girls is a level of mystique that Reiko has unfortunately embraced. Actually, nobody in the gang really knows much of anything about her before she took command in the siege. And making everything means that she doesn’t really hang out with any of them like friends.
At the same time, despite being a delinquent, Reiko is actually pretty intelligent in a few ways. For one, she has a lot on her plate, and yet makes average grades. She’s a talented go amateur Go player with skill on a professional level, even if this mainly due to knowing and being exposed to the game as long as she can remember. Her shady dealings have also brought out a rather significant skill in management and organization that has only improved since middle school. If Go doesn’t pan out, could she possibly have a future in business?
It is also worth remembering that the most essential and important thing about the gang to her is the feeling of family which justifies everything else. This naturally puts her into the role of a mother of sorts. Thus, she has she tries to emphasize with each and every girl that they can come to her about any personal problems or feedback about how she’s running things. While softer and quitter, she still has to seem more in control than everybody else. When it’s about stress, sometimes she has to go with the military therapist mantra of giving a pat on the back and sending somebody back into the fray, but if things seem serious enough she will try to reduce the work load or even let a girl go from the group if things are just that overwhelming. One the same token, when playing the disciplinarian, she tries to convince the girl that she’s let down or betrayed her “sisters” while others are actually doing the beating.
She also actually does question the morality of much of what she’s doing in the gang. She’s simply a girl who hasn’t been content with what she has for a long time. This said, her jealousy and greed have a habit or taking advantage of her in times of weakness. She’s grown bonds with the girls, and tries to understand them and their reasons. Of course, there’s also the conflict of how doing such things makes her doubt her self-worth, and yet they also bring her gang to respect her more.
There’s still limits she has, however. She still actually cringes every time she hears the phrase “compensated dating” and couldn’t imagine ever bringing herself to do that. Her taking up smoking wasn’t a moral conflict as much as it was just a lapse in logic, too much peer pressure, and lack of will power, though she can’t deny that it takes off stress, and thus can understand people taking other drugs to an extent. And when it comes to fighting, she tries to psyche herself into feeling as heroic as possible, and tries to think about the fact that’s she’s actually harming people in the back of her mind as much as possible. She really stresses that the gang focus on fighting rival gangs because a power struggle is easier to accept that picking on someone you can’t defend themselves. Mugging’s naturally harder for her to deal with, though she’s tried to try to emphasize scaring the target as much as possible so the gang doesn’t have to “get their hands dirty and waste time.” She has also tried to secretly return some of what she has stolen, though she still risk much for things that aren’t obvious heirlooms or valuables, and sometimes there are things just so nice that she just can’t help herself.
Naturally, she can only carry on with her delinquent persona for so long throughout a day. She gets burnt out daily and becomes far more melancholic. She becomes shy and slow in her speech. There’s less carrying her: her posture goes out of whack. She may also seem out of it, in her own world. There are simply times she has to center herself and reflect so that she can keep carrying on. Possibly the most important part of this is repeatedly reciting a chant (below in her history) while squeezing her teru teru bozu charm. She has done this every day of her life since she received the charm during elementary school. If she were to ever lose this charm, she would burn out very quickly, spiraling into depression. If she’s like this in public, she may try to drastically change her look so she won’t be recognized. The same goes if she feels she has to take a walk or the like to clear her head. She will regularly try to dismiss herself from the rest of the gang because she “needs a smoke”- even though she smokes openly around them. They’ve caught on to this naturally meaning something else, but they run with it.
Finally, A little known (nobody but herself) fact is that Reiko is lesbian. So far, this has most negatively affected her life, yet she is envious of anybody with the courage to be out. Part of her calls herself a freak because of this while another worries she will never find true love. However, a hobby of her shows a persistent hope: she’s an avid collector of her lesbian themed anime and manga, a regular yuri fan girl. She even has what is known as “yuri goggles”, which is essentially a kind of romantic day dreaming and tendency to read too much into things.
You might think an otaku wouldn’t be genre blind, but then you’d be wrong. If she developed feelings for a girl, she’d be reluctant to confess her love to her. She will deny being a lesbian if the subject ever comes up, even if somebody had her stash. It wouldn’t be odd for her to even “protest too much.” Reiko knows a relationship would be difficult and fears it wouldn’t work. She knows it could possibly tear her entire world apart. She feels she couldn’t take being rejected by somebody she cares about again. Could she trust herself not to hurt her love? Can she accept the obvious? Can realize what she really needs? Perhaps, but the tough girl persona she’s been absorbing sure isn’t going to help. She may likely try to avoid or drive away the girl she’s in love with, but it is unlikely that this will be in a violent way despite her disposition towards it. She has will, heart, and self control where it counts… or at least she tries to.
ABILITIES AND SPECIAL SKILLS: Includes weaponry.
Reiko’s a normal high school student: nothing super natural about her, at least at the moment. This doesn’t necessarily mean she doesn’t have a trick up her sleeve or two that distinguishes her from others a bit.
Go- Reiko is a talented player of the board game, and is ready to go pro.
Her main weapon is a metal chain that she wears on her shoulders like a boa. She may also use objects try to improvise random objects in her environment as a weapons, like any punk does, or may receive “weapons” from delinquent girls under her. Remember that she is a simple delinquent with no real formal training on how to fight and access to any real weapons.
Gang Boss- She is the leader of the delinquent girl gangs at two schools, having plenty of friends in low places. In other words, she had people who work under her command who know how to fight, gossip, steal, scam, blackmail, sell, or seduce. As long as she commands their respect, she can make use of their, ahem, unique skills. This flexible in that they can obviously be used an assortment of things from fetching snacks to fetching information about what’s going on at the school, but again, mundane things, and if the girls feel like they are being treated too badly, they might simply leave the gang or put a new boss may be put in Reiko’s place. This can be helpful in battle. For example, having a few npc delinquent girls already established to be in the scene to back her up or a retreat giving her enough time to call or text for some of her girls to come to where she is to back her up. Of course, these girls are no different from her really, and it isn’t like they can just pop up where Reiko is out of thin are. They have no powers, real fighting training, or real weapons. If they have weapons at all, expect wooden swords, chains, lead pipes, kitchen knives, baseball bats, etc. The only real threat they can have is numbers.
Also, it might be notable that because of of her emotional investment and daily prayer involving her teru teru bozu charm, it might be possible that the charm could hold a sort of dormant power. Still, this is only a possibility and it has no active powers at present. However, someone like Yuuko, Clow Reed, etc. might be able to notice a dormant power in the charm.
HISTORY:
A Prologue; Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Delinquency
Like many born in the 70’s, Reiko’s mother, Yasu, was abandoned in a coin locker as a baby. She was rescued and adopted by a caring family, but has known to have constant health problems. Despite the setbacks she’s made a name for herself as a professional in the Women’s Go League, her husband a simple salary man.
Because of all this, Yasu wanted to do for some other kid what was done for her; Reiko was both given up and adopted while still in her infancy. Reiko’s parents were determined to make her succeed from an early age. When Reiko wasn’t studying, she was being taught Go, an ancient but constantly evolving board game. Occasionally, Yasu would take her daughter to see Takarazuka plays with her as a reward for hard work. And while Reiko did grow to love the shows, they weren’t the real reason such outings were a reward; they were a meeting place. It was at these shows that Reiko met an girl named Sachiko. To put it simply, Sachiko was like a cool big sis. Just before a big exams, Reiko became completely zonked- the only thing that helped her pass was Sachiko visiting to encourage her to carry on, making a special charm as a reminder, a weather charm called a teru teru bozu, “shiny headed little monk”. A charm that became part of Reiko’s daily rituals. They consist of what is basically a pseudo nursery rhyme about the charm:
“Teru-teru-bozu, teru bozu
Do make tomorrow a sunny day
Like the sky in a dream sometime
If it's sunny I'll give you a golden bell
Teru-teru-bozu, teru bozu
Do make tomorrow a sunny day
If you make my wish come true
We'll drink lots of sweet rice wine
Teru-teru-bozu, teru bozu
Do make tomorrow a sunny day
But if the clouds are crying
Then I shall snip your head off”
Okay, It probably wasn’t exactly the best charm or chant, as Reiko only passed by the skin of her teeth. And thus, she couldn‘t get into the academy that was part of the plan, instead going to a normal middle school. Yasu went into overdrive as an education mama in attempt to compensate this. But Reiko was disappointed for a different reason: a transfer in her father’s job in meant she had move away from her home of Osaka and go to a different school than Sachiko.
With her mother’s strict schedule, and thus no Sachiko, for Reiko’s first year of middle school, she became very introverted and frustrated with her life. The only real fun she had was occasionally playing with the old men at one of the Go salons, which she encouraged, and was a good excuse to get out of the house. It was here that she was approached by a member of the middle school Go club, Tadashi, the vice president. The daughter of a pro was certainly welcome, but he was also impressed by her own skill. And it was in this club that she became somewhat popular. She was definitely one of the better players alright, but the many of the kids just wanted to get close to her mother, with the exception of Tadashi. These friends were nothing like Sachiko was, but she just got used to it eventually, taking what she could get. She even gave into a few, trying to schedule them teaching games with her mother, but she eventually grew very fond of teaching the new members herself, and many of these new recruits became genuine friends.
As Reiko continued to be part of the Go club, Yasu became hopeful in her daughter, loosening her reigns a bit. And so, Reiko became insistent on trying to rekindle her friendship with Sachiko. They’d both changed a lot, but tried anyway. Sachiko now seemed to have her own problems, and thus couldn’t exactly be the Obiwan she used to be for Reiko. Moreover, she had to balance her time between her new boyfriend and Reiko. Even though she knew the guy was nice, Reiko grew to really, really hate him really, really fast… really; she couldn’t even explain why. Once things got heated, they all knew it was best for the friends to just cut ties. This only made Reiko fight harder in one of the amateur Go tournaments the next day, and even though she lost, there was quiet the surprising development: Tadashi asked her out. He was her best friend, and he was on his darn knees: it was embarrassing. But she said yes, and after a few weeks, she was showing him of to Sachiko, blatantly trying to make her jealous; it didn't work and even Tadashi said Reiko was acting like a jerk.
The bridge to Sachiko burned to ashes, things with Tadashi became a little awkward. Reiko didn't know- no, scratch that. She didn't want admit why she didn't really like him, made worse because of how infatuated he was, or at least had been with her. Nonetheless, most of their dates somehow or another ended up with them going to the go Salon, so she did rather enjoy them. On one in particular, Tadashi was deeply concentrated in a game with one of the stronger of the regular name Hajime. She was just as eager to play him as Tadashi was, and found herself getting bored as their game dragged on.
Eventually, Reiko reached to read a manga that Tadashi brought with him and laid down. She had no clue what it was at first, and it was pretty likely nobody else knew other than Tadashi. She found herself blushing after only a few pages, and put it away before anyone could see her. It wasn’t long before she paid a few boys to buy the entire series for her and keep their mouths shut about- it surely wasn’t something she wanted everyone and their mother know about her reading.
Cocky with whatever twisted pride a guy fresh out of high school could get from after beating a middle school kid, Hajime thought he could beat Reiko too, whispering to her that he’d give her 6,000 yen if she could beat him. She couldn’t refuse that kind of money, and won. This became regular series of bets between the two, and most of the time, she came out on top.
It wasn’t long until some of the middle school’s delinquents figured out what she was going and got real interested, and she became a member of the pack in no time. Together, Reiko and the delinquents started to use the Go club as the subject of their own mini underground gambling ring. And in return, she made sure that a portion of the profits from tit and some of the other activities of her new delinquent friends to help fund the Go club. Only a few select member members grew to know what was going on, and luckily, one of them was Tadashi. A few of the delinquents joined the go club, making it less conspicuous to deal with them.
Reiko soon went on to high school and became increasingly involved in the sukeban, or female delinquent gang at her school. She initially tried to bring what she had in the middle school over to the high school, but got pressured into helping with other things the gang was tied into. She was quickly seen as the brains of the freshman gang girls, steadily gaining respect, and thus further embracing the gang and letting it influence her. Her parents figured out she was acting differently, dressing differently at school, and she’d even started smoking. However, at the same time her grades weren’t suffering, and her Go skills were increasing. There’s tension in the Akoga household, but there’s no danger in it. Tadashi, however, just got fed up with it and broke up with Reiko. He’d bottled it all up; Reiko was blind to what going on until it was too late to do anything about it. She hated the deceit of playing the part of his girlfriend, but she still wanted to be his friend. It was a blow; she was reported that she was like a “zombie” for the entire week following the event.
The two met later, but on the “battle field.” It was the annual test to become a professional Go player. Tadashi’s skills had stagnated, while Reiko’s only grew further. Although she tried to fake it, she purposely played poorly to let Tadashi win out of guilt. Unfortunately, his opponent wiped the floor with him in the next round. Afterwards, Reiko judged that she would likely have been able to pass and become a pro if she hadn’t threw the match for Tadashi. Tadashi found out what actually happened in retrospect a few days later and called Reiko out on it to which she was speechless.
At about the same time, the gang became more aggressive in its rivalry with the female delinquent gang of a neighboring school. Reiko didn’t have fighting experience, and it showed. She even broke an arm after one fight, and generally wasn’t even impressive among the freshman. However, one day changed all of that. A sense of finality was obvious before the fight even began, made only worse in that their boss was knocked out very quickly. Some girls fled immediately, and remaining ones were struggling. Seeing her chance, Reiko tried to take the reins, encouraging and pushing her comrades to carry on. It was arduous, but the rival gang surrendered. After negotiation, with Reiko agreed to act as surrogate until the boss regained consciousness, it was agreed that the rival gang would be absorbed into that of Reiko’s school. spot, Reiko suggested, The Atari, after the Go maneuver, and it stuck.
At the end of the year, the current leader of The Atari would graduate, so an election was held to vote for a new boss. However, the girls of the conquered school were unable to vote. This lead to Reiko being voted as the boss. She is now in her second year and is taking over as boss. One of the first things she did was to pledge that before her graduation, the gang would conquer and absorb the male gangs at their schools, but also entire other neighboring schools. She is particularly finding it hard to control seniors reluctant to take orders from someone younger than them. If this wasn’t enough, she has to juggled these duties with being active in the school’s go club and connected gambling ring, aiming to become a professional Go player this year. Unbeknownst to her, she’ll actually have so much more on her plate soon enough.
