Tsubame Yuuka

yuuka tsubame

appearance

Yuuka stands in in at a fairly average (at least by female standards) height of five feet and six inches tall with a toned, athletic build and fair, but not excessively pale skin. Her shoulder-length hair is a deep steel blue (a slightly lighter shade of which is also mimicked many times over in other aspects of her appearance, including: her eyes, her eye liner, her lipstick and her fingernails) and is usually kept fairly neat and straight, with the front being swept over her left eye in a shallow crescent.

Yuuka's most distinguishing feature, however, is perhaps her choice of attire. Outlandish to the point of easily distinguishing her from a crowd, her apparel is vaguely reminiscent of the clothing worn by samurai, if only just. Starting at her torso, she commonly wears a dull white shirt with long sleeves that flare as they get to the wrist, the cuffs of which are hemmed with intricate bronze patterning, while the lower tails of the shirt that skirt her waist are embroidered with equally regal patterns of pale violet. Under which, she wears a long-sleeved black blouse, the arms of which reach all the way to the backs of her hands, just below her knuckles.

Shifting down to her legs, she usually wears a pair of loose fitting, dark violet shorts (vaguely similar in design to shortened hakama), the bottoms of each leg of which are adorned with long, ankle-length tassels, the front of which are the same shade of purple, while the backs are an almost pastel shade of crimson. Moving even further down, she also wears a pair of knee-length platform heel boots, the soles, heels and knees of which are made from a bronze-toned steel, while the actual boot portion is made from black leather, inlaid with haphazard swirls of red.

As far as armor is concerned, she wears a black steel gorget around her throat, with a pair of burgundy pauldrons covering her shoulders, a white steel arm guard overlaid by an additional, bronze-toned steel armguard surrounding her upper right arm, and a black leather sword belt around her waist. Furthermore, on her left hip she always carries a large, ornately designed nodachi of antique craftsmanship, while on her right hip she carries an ominous looking grimoire bound by numerous, pale violet chains. Lastly, as jewelry goes, she also wears a pair of white pearl globe earrings from either ear.

personality

Quiet and distant with a heart as cold as ice, Tsubame Yuuka is far from the most approachable person you'll ever meet. Introspective and withdrawn almost to a fault, you'll virtually never see her going out of her way to interact with people unless she has a clear reason or motivation in mind for doing so. A lone wolf by nature, she makes a habit of never staying in one place for very long, preferring instead to constantly drift from one place to another without ever tying herself down.

Likewise, she has expressed little to no interest in pledging her loyalty to any of the so-called shinobi villages that have recently begun popping up in the five great nations, as she sees them as little more than a power play by their founding clans, meant to solidify their regional influence and provide them with a means of officially demarcating the areas that they've claimed as their territories.

Beneath her cold and indifferent exterior, however, lies the heart of a truly honorable warrior. Trained in the ways of the samurai by her adoptive father, Tsubame Kojiro, she is a strong supporter of the code of bushido and its seven virtues (righteousness, courage, benevolence, respect, sincerity, honor and loyalty) and she will always attempt to uphold them, be it within her power to do so. To the few that earn her trust, this makes her an invaluable ally.

On the battlefield, Yuuka is an intensely formidable adversary, constantly pushing both her mind and body to the brink in order to decisively overwhelm her opponents in terms of both strategy and technique, and it is no exaggeration to say that the heat of battle is, without a doubt, the one place in this world where Yuuka feels the most at home; the one place in this world where she can actually allow herself to relax and let her true aesthetic to unwind.

Lastly, Yuuka's personality has one quirk in particular that deserves special mention. Whenever a storm sets in, especially a particularly large or fierce one, she will often go out of her way to stand outside under the falling rain, staring up with some silent ire at the dark clouds passing overhead, her eyes glazed over by a haze of nostalgia and barely contained animosity, as though she were reminiscing about an unspoken memory from some fargone time.

history

Born many years ago in the Land of Typhoons to a fisherman and his wife , Yuuka's earliest memories of her childhood were certainly happy ones. Her family was never an especially rich one, but nevertheless they managed to live out their days in peace and happiness, content simply to have each other. It was truly the ideal life for the happy couple and their beaming little daughter...that is, until the storm came...

It was an afternoon like any other on the shores of the Land of Typhoons; sunlight streaming down from a nearly cloudless sky, waves lapping lazily against the shore, a refreshing sea breeze flowing in from the ocean...and then that peaceful atmosphere was shattered in an instant as a great and terrible shadow rose from beneath the waters, gathering clouds of darkest black to its awful form as fell winds began to replace the balmy air.

That event, which came to be known as the Great Storm, brought with it chaos the likes of which had not been seen in hundreds of years, taking countless innocent lives and leaving naught but utter destruction in its wake. Yuuka was one of the few that somehow managed to survive, albeit with her mind in a state of shock and near-catatonia from the experience, and in the end, her young mind was so addled by trauma that she was able to remember only a single, vivid scene from that day; watching her parents die in front of her, their bodies perforated over and over by the very rain that had fallen from those umbral clouds, and then gazing up to the heavens and catching but a glimpse of the accursed shadow that had conjured it all.

Having escaped from the ordeal with her life, but only just, she then wandered the coast aimlessly for three full days in search of help, never stopping, not even to rest, for fear that the storm should return before she reached safety. Starving, dehydrated, utterly exhausted and powered only by what little force of will she could still muster as she neared the brink of death, she was eventually found on the eve of the third day by a wandering samurai, just as her consciousness began to fade.

The samurai, who went by the name Tsubame Kojiro, would then spend nearly an entire week nursing her back to health as she lay comatose, recovering from the massive overexertion of her body. When she finally came to, the first thought that ran through her mind was that she must be dead and that her soul must have passed on, but as soon as she caught sight of the samurai's smiling face, she realized that by some miracle, she'd managed to survive.

As soon as she felt well enough to speak, the samurai tried his best to determine just what had happened to the girl, eventually piecing together that she was a survivor of the terrible storm that had befallen the Land of Typhoons just days before he'd arrived and that the tragedy had claimed both her home and her family. Realizing that she had nowhere else to go and nobody else to turn to, Kojiro then decided without a second thought that he would act as the girl's guardian and take her with him as he resumed his travels across the world; an idea to which Yuuka seemed fairly receptive, as it gave her a means to escape the place that, while once her home, now held only the most horrible memories for her.

It would be nearly a year of traveling with her new companion before Yuuka finally began showing signs of recovery from the trauma of her incident, and when she finally did, it ended up manifesting in a most peculiar way; she asked Kojiro if he would train her in the ways of the samurai, as he had been, so that she would no longer have to be afraid. Kojiro was understandably taken back by the sudden inquiry, especially coming from the girl who'd barely said anything to him in all the time they'd known each other, but as soon as he recovered from the initial shock of the situation and realized that she was actually being completely serious, he decided to acquiesce to the request, for her sake.

Being only twelve years old at the time, he had expected her to struggle with the sheer volume and intensity of his training, but never once during her tutelage did she utter even a single word of frustration or discouragement and he was honestly astounded to see just how quickly a girl that had never trained a day in her entire life managed to pick up a style that had taken him his entire life just to create. It was truly a level of raw, unrestrained talent that he had never seen before in any individual, let alone a twelve year old girl.

And so, Yuuka's training in the ways of the samurai would continue for nearly a decade, until at length it reached a point where Tsubame Kojiro had nothing left to teach her. It was shortly thereafter that Kojiro, who had long been struggling with his gradually declining health, fell deathly ill. An illness which, according to the doctors, would claim his life within weeks. It was then, as he lay bedridden in the hospital with Yuuka by his side, that he finally made up his mind; he was going to entrust everything to this girl.

That night, he passed three of his most prized possessions on to her: his sword, Kuroeri (Black-Collared) from whence was derived his title, The Black-Collared Swallow; an ominous book of esoteric design, bound thoroughly in pale violet chains, which he explained to be an heirloom that had been down and protected by his family for generations, though none now remained who could remember what was written upon its pages, nor why it was sealed so impenetrably, only that it should 'never be opened'; and last, but not least...his name, Tsubame, for while it may not have been his blood that ran in her veins, he could think of no one in this world that he would rather call 'daughter'.

From that day onward, she would henceforth come to be known as Tsubame Yuuka, the daughter of Tsubame Kojiro and the last remaining heir to the legacy of the Tsubame family. Kojiro's death would come on a rainy afternoon nearly three weeks later; ironic, in hindsight, as his death also marked the eleventh year to-the-day since the tragic events of the Great Storm, making this the second time that Yuuka had been forced to watch the people that she loved the most die in front of her on that most ill-fated of dates.

Nearly two years have passed since that day and Yuuka's personality has once again grown cold and distant in her father's absence, but nevertheless she presses on, ever walking the endless path of the ronin, ever seeking that ephemeral 'purpose' that will bring her life meaning again...ever gazing upon the heavens and the storm clouds that gather overhead.

shinobi info

Primary Nature: Futon | Wind Release
Secondary Nature: Katon | Fire Release
Advanced Nature: Shakuton | Scorch Release

Preferred Styles:
Bukijutsu [Kenjutsu, Iaijutsu]
Taijutsu

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