[OOC] -- Application
PLAYER INFO
Name/Nickname: I go by Random online.
Age: 17 ½
Journal: okroginator
AIM/MSN/IM: n/a
Email: random_idiot_v2@yahoo.com
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Mitarashi Anko
Canon: Naruto
Point taken from canon: After the Chuunin Exams, but before Tsunade’s arrival.
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Preferred Village: Konohagakure
Appearance: Anko is light and built for speed and agility. She’s about 5’6” and she weighs about 100 pounds. She’s lean, pretty curvy, and muscular, without an ounce of unnecessary body fat. This is despite the fact that she eats like she’s starving-a leftover habit from being a test subject under Orochimaru, as a test subject is never sure when she might eat again.
Her most attractive feature is her hair-a glossy deep brown, so deep that it looks closer to black with purple highlights. She doesn’t put much stock in beauty over brawn, though, and prefers to tie it up and out of the way on top of her head. Her eyes are light hazel, and her complexion is pretty fair.
Anko tends to wear baggy clothes over her protective wire mesh undershirt, especially longer coats with baggy sleeves. This is presumably to help with the effectiveness of her “Striking Snakes” technique, so that the snakes she summons have room to slither down her arms without being constricted. She also prefers shirts with large collars, to hide the Curse Seal on her neck.
Background: Anko was a troubled child from the start. Her mother had died in the field during the Third Ninja World War when Anko had been about five or six years old. Her father had taken up drinking as a result, growing increasingly more erratic. He was eventually removed from active duty and subsequently tried and imprisoned for crimes while on duty. Anko had no love for him whatsoever by this point, being about ten years old and preparing to graduate Academy (as the war was still on, students were still being pushed through at a faster rate).
She was assigned to a team led by one of the legendary Sannin themselves, a man by the name of Orochimaru. Anko soon came to idolize him, replacing her own father in her mind with her genius teacher, who in her eyes could do no wrong. As the months and years progressed, and Anko became more loyal to/enamored of him, he began to see her as a possibly useful tool. Thus, when Orochimaru’s illicit scientific activities came to light and he was forced to leave the village, he took Anko with him.
At the age of twelve, she became one of ten test subjects for a prototype of the Curse Seal (which wouldn’t be refined for another few years, with the discovery of Juugo). She was the only one to survive, establishing the “one in ten” survival rate. Her other two teammates died in different experiments. Anko, betrayed, shocked, disillusioned, and a little more than half-crazy, escaped when Orochimaru abandoned her during a hideout shift, and was found by a few ANBU members on a recon mission close by.
She returned to Konoha, mistrusted by many at first. She was bumped around from team to team until she ended up being a more-or-less permanent member of a cell with Kamizuki Izumo and Hagane Kotetsu. Ironically, though they were both older than her, she still managed to outstrip them in rank eventually. Anko still considers them to be two of her closest comrades, and works with them often.
Years passed. Anko became known for her skills in fuuinjutsu, or the art of sealing, as well as her loyalty to Konoha. Upon attaining the rank of “special jōnin,” Anko became a semi-permanent member of the board of proctors for the Chuunin Exams. She often worked with Morino Ibiki, and soon developed a close friendship with him.
A couple of years after that, the Chuunin Exams were held, once again, in Konohagakure Village. The groups of Konoha testees included all the rookies from that year, an oddity in itself, one of whom was the last surviving member of the Uchiha Clan, Uchiha Sasuke. After a strange encounter with one of the testees from the Village Hidden in the Grass (Kusagakure), Anko sent all of the chuunin candidates into the Forest of Death for the second round. About twelve hours after they’d been in there, Anko and some of the other proctors discovered the bodies of all three Kusagakure candidates, dead and missing their faces. Anko recognized it as a sign of a jutsu she knew to belong only to one man-Orochimaru.
She told her subordinates to call for a squad of ANBU and then rushed into the forest to confront Orochimaru himself. When she found him, she attempted to trap him and kill him with a double-suicide technique. Before Anko could release it, though, Orochimaru escaped from her hold, leaving her pinned to a tree by her own kunai. He then revealed that he’d given his Curse Seal to one of the students: Uchiha Sasuke. After reminding Anko of her own failure, he disappeared into the forest, leaving her racked with pain from the activation of her own Curse Seal.
Personality: Anko prefers to cultivate an air of “absolutely crazy.” She’s loud, brash, slightly capricious, and often eager for a fight. She tends to have a foul mouth, and speaks her mind fairly easily. Anko is independent and hard-headed, and will sometimes do something just to prove she can.
Underneath all this, though, people who know her on closer terms can sometimes catch a softer, darker side to Anko, thoughtful and distant. What happened with Orochimaru hurt her very deeply as a child, but she chose to deal with it on her terms. She became very loyal to Konoha-willing to die for it, even. Also, as a result of her tragic childhood, Anko is extremely protective of children; she sees them as “special.” Despite this, she isn’t very maternal in the classic sense. She tends to adopt an attitude of “throw them in and hope they float,” which is why she enjoys proctoring the Chuunin Exams (she is, in fact, one of the few shinobi who volunteer).
Anko has a hard time getting close to people. She tends to be prickly to strangers until she becomes comfortable with them, and sometimes even takes out negativity on her comrades. She always feels guilty after such an episode, and apologizes as quickly as she gives offense.
On a slightly more irrelevant note, Anko has a bit of an oral fixation. If she isn’t eating something, she’s chomping on a wooden dango skewer, licking her lips, chewing her lower lip or the inside of her cheek, or biting her fingernails to the quick and beyond. It actually predates her time with Orochimaru, but it wasn’t nearly as pronounced before that. It tends to worsen when she is really bored, really emotional, or really stressed.
Abilities/Strengths: Anko’s greatest strength is her determination. She refuses to allow the preconceptions of others to keep her from achieving her goals. When most of the village didn’t trust her, she worked hard to prove herself and gain their respect. She is loyal almost to a fault, and once someone earns her trust, it takes a lot for them to lose it. She is fearless, and uses that recklessness to pull off strategies that seem utterly impossible to carry through in battle.
Despite her sometimes prickly exterior, Anko is compassionate, which demonstrates an amazing strength of character considering what she went through. She cares about people, especially her village, and has the ability to empathize with others. Even though she could have closed herself off from the world after what she went through, Anko chose to believe that people were basically good.
Anko’s particular specialty is fuuinjutsu, or the sealing arts. As a special jōnin who often proctors the Chuunin Exams, as well as being a former test subject of Orochimaru’s and the bearer of a Curse Seal, Anko has trained and excelled in the arts of physical binding and chakra sealing. She is very smart and strategic, though people tend to overlook this and assume she’s unintelligent due to her hot-bloodedness. Anko doesn’t bother to disabuse most of this notion, since it tends to make people underestimate her. As befitting her rank, she is well-rounded, being skilled at taijutsu, ninjutsu, and genjutsu. Where ninjutsu is concerned, her chakra affinity is fire, and she knows a variety of snake summoning techniques gained from her former master.
Weaknesses: Anko is a very stubborn young woman with a tendency to rush headlong into things. While this type of passion can be considered a positive trait, it also means that she sometimes doesn’t think a particular set of actions through to their logical end (or she does, but doesn’t care).
An example from her canon: Anko attacked Orochimaru in the Forest of Death during the Chuunin Exams, taking him off guard and pinning him to a tree by stabbing through both her left hand and his right hand underneath. She then proceeded to use his other hand to make a set of seals for a double-suicide technique, intending to kill herself in order to ensure that he would also die. Thankfully, she paused to tell him so before releasing the technique, which is when he revealed that she had only captured a doppelganger. Anko ended up with nothing but a kunai in the hand for her trouble, but at least she wasn’t dead. This is generally how Anko operates: off the cuff, whatever it takes to get the job done, regardless of what happens after the job’s done.
Physically, Anko is too light to be very sturdy or strong. She has endurance and speed, but she can’t afford to take more than a few heavy hits. Her Curse Seal prevents her from burning too much chakra over time, or from using most techniques higher than B-rank. If it activates, it paralyzes her with pain and the chakra corrosion can cause damage to her body.
Defining Quote(s):
If it really is you, then we’ll end this right here. Right now. Because you’ve become a Bingo Book Level S threat-the worst kind of security risk! And I’m going to kill you, even if it costs me my life! And if I can’t manage that, then...at least I’ll slow you down before the black ops team can get here. It’s my duty. It’s what I learned from my greatest teacher ever...what I learned from you... “Isn’t it, Orochimaru?”
--
Invictus, by William Ernest Henley:
Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow'd.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Other: She eats like crazy, because of her Curse Seal. Mostly high-calorie food like dango and other sweets. Hilarity Ensues.
Third Person Writing Sample:
Anko ran her fingers across her chapped lower lip again and tried not to think about him. The sea of black was almost impenetrable; she could barely make out Sandaime’s dumb glamour shot over the coffin.
Sandaime, who was killed in battle with Orochimaru. Sandaime, who was dead because of her.
She bit fiercely at the dead skin around her right thumbnail, shivering because of the rain.
Sandaime, who trusted her when everyone else had called for her expulsion from the village for being a stupid, stupid, dangerously stupid child; Sandaime, who smiled when he handed her the scroll with her promotion to special jōnin; Sandaime who believed in her like he believed in everyone else, who entrusted her with the Will of Fire, Sandaime who was deadkilleddead because she had been unforgivably incompetent.
She moved on to the first three fingers of her right hand at once, shoving them into her mouth and savaging the nails, biting until they bled and her bones ached underneath. She wasn’t shivering just because of the rain.
A hand came down on Anko’s shoulder, startling her, and she pulled her hand away from her mouth lightning-fast. “It’s...okay, Anko-san,” Kotetsu said hesitantly; it was his hand, or maybe Izumo’s, she wasn’t looking very hard at them. “None of us could do anything. He gave his life willingly for the village. It’s not...”
The rain on her face (ashinobimustnotshedtearsashinobimustnotshowemotion) was oddly hot. “Shut up,” she said, but without much venom.
I swear, Sandaime-sama. I will do whatever it takes to protect the children of this village. Just like you did for me.
When it was her turn to place her flower in the vase, the white petals were faintly spotted with the blood from her fingernails.
eta: having issues with the formatting, please ignore that some of the text is white.