Hellpointe App | REVISED | Mika Whitepaws
✖ OOC: Bio ✖
History: Her world is not unlike the one we know today, but whether it was by magic, natural selection, or human design, several species similar to humans but with more animal traits began to appear over the course of history dating as far back as the middle ages. No one quite knew their origins, and while they were rare and had to deal with prejudice as much as anyone of racial color, they slowly began to integrate into society until they were seen as equals to everyone else. Or at least that's what some would like to think. There are stories among the older clans of a trickster, a liar that fooled the once proud animals into taking a relic that would make them safe from harm by man's hand, that transformed them into what they are now, but that's just an old folktale. They still have to deal with being treated like domesticated livestock on occasion, which always gets awkward. Humanity is still trying to get used to the demihumans (who are genetically far closer to animals than humans), but the situation is still rocky at best.
As the youngest and smallest cub in her pack, Mika was raised with an inferiority complex already setting in. Easily bossed around by others, she was quick to tuck her tail and curl into a ball to escape trouble. As she got older she learned the art of running away in both literal and figurative senses. It wasn't something her parents encouraged, but when her older sister was chafing to become the next big alpha in the family, Mika was the one that ended up being bossed around until her sister struck it out on her own. Since then the relationship between her and her sister has improved incredibly now that her sister is off running a house of her own. Their family is average enough, living modestly and going to modest schools, although Mika got it into her head to attempt an art school by way of college, it didn't go well and she ended up slinking back home with little to show for it save a stack of student loans.
When Mika was a young cub during the late 1980's, her father began to read comics to her and let her watch cartoons. Not all the cartoons were American, in fact, many of them were Japanese in origin. By the time Mika had entered primary school, she was already well-versed in anime and comics, and had been learning how to use the computer. She grew up watching and reading the latest translations before the Age of Cable and the Internet, so by the time everyone was streaming the latest and greatest mecha shows off of torrents, Mika was mourning the lost days of comic shops and trips to the movie rental shops to pick up her favorite titles that were now so suddenly vintage. Being a bit of a purist at heart, Mika winced at the shrieking hordes of the cable and internet generation fans that swarmed the anime conventions, sneering at their shallow interests among her group of friends and generally being a bit of a snob. A tiny snob, but there was still a small part of her that made her feel a cut above the tiny fans whose parents had dumped them at the shows like it was some babysitting service.
The fact that the same shrieking hordes thought Mika's ears and tail were cosplay did nothing to endear them to the wolf, who sometimes fantasized about gnawing on their shin bones in the lines. At least until she also thought about what they'd actually taste like. Never a pleasant thought.
In college (during the few years she stayed there), Mika's inner art snob was refined into a more cultured beast. Her inner geek was made more technical about animation and game mechanics. She and her friends were up-to-date on the latest and sudden bout of Console Wars, watching with rapt attention as the big name companies were coming up with the newest ad most innovative creations in order to push the envelope. The group of students followed all the title releases because they needed to know if they were to ever get jobs in the fields they sought so desperately. Unfortunately Mika chose to be an animation major and stay one even as all of her friends switched to game design. Which meant that she was one of the few who, when they finally all began dropping or graduating, did not get a job fresh out of college.
As her friends all went off to become game designers for most of the big-name companies, Mika was left in the dust with nothing but a few pennies to her name and the dreaded realization that she had become one of the worst things known to fans. She was now that fan, the one still living at home, playing videogames, and completely jobless. No matter what she did she could not seem to land a job, and aside from the internet, she had no social life. Any attempts to be social were failures at best, unlike her friends who were all successful and in some cases even going so far as to get engaged or married. For a wolf who would lifebond with whoever she would end up with, this was a daunting prospect. And a sign that she was more than a bit of a failure.
For a while it seemed like all she'd ever do in life would be to read books and comics, play video games, do a little art on the side and hope she'd get a job. It wasn't until after she woke up in the Jigoku Apartments that she went to desperately wishing that was all she was doing.
The Jigoku Apartments were the stuff of Japanese horror movies, the kind that left her in cold sweats at night hoping that sound she heard was just the house settling. The kind she'd once enthusiastically talked about with friends. The kind that once upon a time she'd rushed off to the theaters to see. After the first few months, the novelty had long since worn off. While it was fascinating that she was meeting characters that by all accounts had to be fictional, the fact that every day was a fight to outlast whatever horror was infesting the apartments left her preoccupied with living one more day instead of pondering the universe. Her vast knowledge of b-grade horror films was her only saving grace. Knowing the way stories worked turned into a small boon in disguise, as she could guess what methods would help keep her and the other tenants alive just a little bit longer.
It was in the Apartments that Mika developed what would slowly transform into an extreme case of OCD. She had to have a stockpile of red tape at all times, as the red duct tape was the only weapon against and protection from the ghosts that haunted the town. She quickly learned to meticulously cover everything from windows to doors to the bathroom and kitchen sinks in tape, praying it would stop anything from getting in. Everywhere she went she had at least one roll in her bag, along with a notebook that slowly filled with notes on each ghost, haunting, and freak accident that happened within the apartment walls.
It didn't save her from the vampires among them, though. Twice bitten in less than four months apart, and less than eight months from her arrival, Mika quickly turned bitter as her narrow escapes with death grew even narrower. Close encounters with violent hauntings grew more frequent until one day she was sent a cursed video that left her with a choice; pass the video along or keep the consequences to herself. Mika chose not to spread the curse, and died a painful death at the hands of a very angry ghost. Unfortunately when someone died in Jigoku, they didn't stay dead, and Mika's body was quickly possessed and used to attack the other tenants.
Which left Mika the nasty surprise of waking up to find someone had emptied half of a pistol magazine into her in self defense. If it hadn't been for the fact that one of the other tenants had known healing magic, Mika would have easily died a second time.
She grew much more anxious after that, quick to try and sort out any newcomers, and the first to warn them of all the dangers. She worried for the safety of others, and tried to keep everyone well-supplied since she felt like there was nothing else she was good at. Well, aside from hording supplies and occasionally flying off the handle for good measure at least. When there was at least one known living homicidal cannibal in the building, it didn't make for easy sleep at night.
The most traumatizing blow to her psyche was near the first end of her stay in Jigoku, before she was sent home for a year. Another tenant, believing himself to be one of the scum of humanity, decided it was time for Mika to learn that as well. He dragged her with him through a rift in the Apartment's hold on them and back to his world, where he proceeded to murder a group of delinquents in front of Mika. Being already mentally shaken from her stay in the apartments, Mika reacted poorly, screaming and vomiting from the smell of death that clung to her senses like a thick paint. After that it took weeks for Mika to sleep more easily (as she could never sleep well in the apartments due to various hauntings), and several more weeks before she showed any signs of her usual humor. Having a group of people killed like that in front of her did more damage than her own near-death experiences. It left her rattled and easily sickened at the sight of a fresh corpse.
She was given a bit of respite after that, being sent home just when her stay at the apartments had done its worst to her. She was allowed to go home, growing close to recovering from her mental blows. The trauma that had left her waking up in the night screaming, or frantically taping the windows and doors with the red duct tape that warded off the ghosts in the apartments took months to mend. Mika was a jittery mess, confusing her parents by what had been to them a sudden and dramatic drop in weight, with Mika raving like what seemed to them complete lunacy. The only thing that had kept her from being sent to a mental ward was that Mika had not tried harming herself.
But she was getting better. In two months of being home she was making progress, laughing a little more and sleeping a bit better. With the beginning of August things took an instant nosedive for the worse. Her sister's mate of ten years died without warning, and the next four months were a haze. She doesn't remember much of it, one week blurring into the next as everything seemed to pass in a fog. Her family had to help support her sister, and had to help take care of her two-year-old son as the stress of being a single parent pressed down on her sister. Mika's stress habits flared up during that time, her hair going paler during the winter months, her weight dropping as her eating habits grew worse. Her usual time to play videogames or watch movies disappeared, but when she did have a day to herself it was spent in a listless fog. Sometimes she did it, sometimes she just broke down and cried.
By her twenty-fifth (or was it twenty-sixth? She couldn't tell anymore) birthday, Mika had started her second recovery, but her then-three-year-old nephew could tell auntie Mimi was sick. Her clothes hung off of her skinny frame and her hair around her face had gone almost white, a vast difference from the peppering of grey her sister suffered. Mika started working out to get in better shape, tried to get herself to eat properly so that she wouldn't worry anyone. It was around this time that she got closer to being back to her older habits, scouring the videogames and new releases at the bookstore and the theater. Almost like she was looking for something, or someone. Her art has changed since then, while she still sometimes uses bright colors, there's always a sense of anxiety about her pieces. Like something isn't quite right. Even with summer approaching she could sense something was wrong, but she couldn't put her finger on it.
Her nasty feeling was proven right when she found herself snatched up again, close to the time of year she'd been sent home. What was supposed to be a relaxing vacation left her with a cold sense of dread as once more she awoke to the grimy, water-stained walls of the apartments with a cinnamon-flavored candy in her mouth. Every night the apartments would leave a cinnamon candy in the tenant's mouths, and even now, away from the apartments the taste of cinnamon will leave Mika's stomach reeling.
Her second stay in the apartments was far less eventful than her first, the year passing quietly as Mika refused to leave her room, walled in by red tape to keep out any terrors. Her apartment was a fortress that she would not leave willingly without at least three rolls of tape, more than what she'd carried before. Mika would not let herself be hurt again, nagging terror quietly eating away at her until she was just as bitter as she had been before. After all, even if she did make it home, what was to say she wouldn't be snatched up again like it was nothing at all? Nowhere was safe for her anymore.
Overall her stay in the apartments were unkind to her, leaving her both physically and emotionally scarred. While she likes to think she's recovering, it takes a while to get over trauma like that.
Personality: 'Laid back' is what she likes to think of herself, but since her stay in the apartments 'anxious' and 'skittish' are far more accurate terms. Thinking of the good of the whole rather than just herself comes naturally, but not without a fair share of snarky, bitter quips to round out whatever advice she's willing to give. Mika used to be the optimist, but after three years of being jerked around by the skin of her teeth, she's lost a lot of the chipper luster that only sometimes shines through her sarcastic veneer these days. She's easy to get worked up, moreso if she feels threatened, and will respond to a threatening situation by bristling up and snarling.
Mika's taken a mental and emotional beating during her time in and away from the Jigoku Apartments. Suffering from a strange kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, she is much more sensitive to the paranormal, having often complained of hearing or seeing things that others couldn't. Her anxiety manifests in eating and sleeping troubles, where she will gorge herself on food for several days, while others she can barely pick at what's on her plate. She has nightmares and will often wake up with headaches, and never really got over having a roll of tape with her at all times. She might not have used it much, but she had to keep one in her bag no matter where she went. The tape became her security blanket, for lack of a better term. When it's with her, she feels safe.
Losing so much weight has had an odd effect on her. On the one hand, she's glad to have finally lost all the weight she'd been struggling with, but she's scared of becoming anorexic or bulimic. She's afraid of what it could mean for her overall health, as the lack of health insurance makes it almost impossible for her to see a doctor. Or even a psychiatrist, but what could she tell them? That she was trapped in a haunted apartment for a year that might have never existed, that she has bullet wounds that shouldn't be there, or that she's going pale prematurely? The stress of not being able to speak to anyone about her problems without coming off as crazy has made her quiet, less prone to speaking up when something is bothering her only for her to completely break down when the pressure becomes too much.
Exercise and her usual escapism into entertainment media have become her therapy. While she might have stressed her way out of most of her body fat, it revealed hard muscle underneath, and she's been working to regain some body mass in muscle. She found out that after a few hesitant months of worry, she can still enjoy horror games. After all, in the game, she's the one in control. With the gun, the pipe, or even the stupid plank she can fight her way through the games and win, overcoming whatever gets in her way. It's like a strange form of therapy, and it doesn't help that Mika's usual rambling while she played turned into what could only be described as one-sided conversations. It doesn't happen often, but there were some games that she quietly chats her way through, and the habit did start to worry her parents. The only thing that stopped them from being too worried was how calm Mika was after playing. It still wasn't the same as speaking with her friends, but even playing video games is hardly enough to give her solace and peace of mind.
Her OCD is stress-induced, and shows up in the meticulous ways she will take notes. Or how she will frantically begin to fiddle with a roll of red duct tape. Any house she does not feel safe in, she will fortify with the tape. After being in the apartments twice, Mika has upped her rolls to hand by two, constantly carrying three rolls of it with her in her satchel wherever she goes. Under extreme stress Mika will begin to whine and 'cry' like any anxious canine, flattening her ears and gritting her teeth as her lips peel back to expose her fangs. Unfortunately lots of things make her anxious these days. Anything from sudden movements to loud noises to strange shadows where they shouldn't be. She's been seeing a lot of strange shadows where they shouldn't be since her stay in Jigoku. It hasn't done good things for her temperament.
Unfortunately as the lowest member on her pack's totem pole, Mika's snarl is far worse than her bite. That doesn't mean she won't bite at all, but she will almost always back down if her bluff is called.
After all, she'd much rather be home reading books or playing video games than be stuck in another world-ending catastrophe. Then again, the idea of crawling into a hole and pulling it in after her isn't such a bad idea some days....
Powers/Abilities: As a wolf, Mika has genetically enhanced senses of smell, hearing and taste. Wolves are able to pick up slightest of sounds at great distances, run for days without stopping, can see easily in the dark, and can smell prey nearly a mile away. That would be at peak conditions. Mika, however, is not at peak condition. Still, she can hear enough noise around her that she knows when the TV's been left on downstairs or if the neighbors have gotten a phonecall, and she prefers to be out of the house when her friends bring home their dates. It's bad enough for her when she can smell them walking into the house after a night at the club.
Aside from that Mika's 'power' lies in knowledge. Very specialized and trivial knowledge, the kind that can win you arguments on the internet but do absolutely nothing for you in real life. The kind of knowledge that comes from spending too many hours reading Wikipedia and TV Tropes because you have nothing better to do, or because you've beaten all your video games a half-dozen times so you've memorized where all the secret items are. The kind of knowledge that kept Mika alive in Jigoku is only a little different from that. She could get people to listen to her advice only because she knew what she was talking about when it came to horror survival. Why?
Because she'd spent too many hours watching movies and playing video games.
She can memorize trivial details like boss stats or where to find important items, not that this sort of information comes in useful in Real Life, but it worked out okay for her at the apartments. Although there were a lot of tense and awkward moments where she would slip up and say something she shouldn't have to the local video game protagonists...
((Note: In Jigoku Apartments, Mika was allowed fourthwalling with player permission and mod approval only, because it was a small game and I asked the playerbase if they would think it was fun and was given the green light by a majority of the players as well as unanimous approval by the mods. I am not bringing that into Hellpointe because she's already 'met' versions of several of the characters in-game. I figure any fourthwalling skills would be redundant and most likely unwanted.))
Limitations: Despite being able to smell a deer downwind within a mile, or hear a twig snap in the middle of a forest, Mika is used to the city life. Before the apartments she was slow, lazy, and as overweight as the next video game nerd. Being in the apartments put her under a lot of stress which, while it made her lose a lot of weight, did not leave her healthy. She's malnourished, half-starved, still recovering from some injuries, and jumps at loud noises. Her endurance levels might be higher than average, but she will burn out quickly if forced to exert a lot of effort into anything for extended periods of time. Mika is, very simply, a mess.
Despite being able to memorize stats, she can't use this memorization ability for anything useful, and she has a strong inferiority complex. Despite having survived in an awful wreck of an apartment for two years, she's come out of it more cagey than she went in, which leaves her with the unfortunate reality of being unfit for most social interactions. Mika is also afraid to trust people now that she's completely outside of any comfort zone she'd constructed for herself, and will be prone to clamming up or lashing out at things around her.
History: Her world is not unlike the one we know today, but whether it was by magic, natural selection, or human design, several species similar to humans but with more animal traits began to appear over the course of history dating as far back as the middle ages. No one quite knew their origins, and while they were rare and had to deal with prejudice as much as anyone of racial color, they slowly began to integrate into society until they were seen as equals to everyone else. Or at least that's what some would like to think. There are stories among the older clans of a trickster, a liar that fooled the once proud animals into taking a relic that would make them safe from harm by man's hand, that transformed them into what they are now, but that's just an old folktale. They still have to deal with being treated like domesticated livestock on occasion, which always gets awkward. Humanity is still trying to get used to the demihumans (who are genetically far closer to animals than humans), but the situation is still rocky at best.
As the youngest and smallest cub in her pack, Mika was raised with an inferiority complex already setting in. Easily bossed around by others, she was quick to tuck her tail and curl into a ball to escape trouble. As she got older she learned the art of running away in both literal and figurative senses. It wasn't something her parents encouraged, but when her older sister was chafing to become the next big alpha in the family, Mika was the one that ended up being bossed around until her sister struck it out on her own. Since then the relationship between her and her sister has improved incredibly now that her sister is off running a house of her own. Their family is average enough, living modestly and going to modest schools, although Mika got it into her head to attempt an art school by way of college, it didn't go well and she ended up slinking back home with little to show for it save a stack of student loans.
When Mika was a young cub during the late 1980's, her father began to read comics to her and let her watch cartoons. Not all the cartoons were American, in fact, many of them were Japanese in origin. By the time Mika had entered primary school, she was already well-versed in anime and comics, and had been learning how to use the computer. She grew up watching and reading the latest translations before the Age of Cable and the Internet, so by the time everyone was streaming the latest and greatest mecha shows off of torrents, Mika was mourning the lost days of comic shops and trips to the movie rental shops to pick up her favorite titles that were now so suddenly vintage. Being a bit of a purist at heart, Mika winced at the shrieking hordes of the cable and internet generation fans that swarmed the anime conventions, sneering at their shallow interests among her group of friends and generally being a bit of a snob. A tiny snob, but there was still a small part of her that made her feel a cut above the tiny fans whose parents had dumped them at the shows like it was some babysitting service.
The fact that the same shrieking hordes thought Mika's ears and tail were cosplay did nothing to endear them to the wolf, who sometimes fantasized about gnawing on their shin bones in the lines. At least until she also thought about what they'd actually taste like. Never a pleasant thought.
In college (during the few years she stayed there), Mika's inner art snob was refined into a more cultured beast. Her inner geek was made more technical about animation and game mechanics. She and her friends were up-to-date on the latest and sudden bout of Console Wars, watching with rapt attention as the big name companies were coming up with the newest ad most innovative creations in order to push the envelope. The group of students followed all the title releases because they needed to know if they were to ever get jobs in the fields they sought so desperately. Unfortunately Mika chose to be an animation major and stay one even as all of her friends switched to game design. Which meant that she was one of the few who, when they finally all began dropping or graduating, did not get a job fresh out of college.
As her friends all went off to become game designers for most of the big-name companies, Mika was left in the dust with nothing but a few pennies to her name and the dreaded realization that she had become one of the worst things known to fans. She was now that fan, the one still living at home, playing videogames, and completely jobless. No matter what she did she could not seem to land a job, and aside from the internet, she had no social life. Any attempts to be social were failures at best, unlike her friends who were all successful and in some cases even going so far as to get engaged or married. For a wolf who would lifebond with whoever she would end up with, this was a daunting prospect. And a sign that she was more than a bit of a failure.
For a while it seemed like all she'd ever do in life would be to read books and comics, play video games, do a little art on the side and hope she'd get a job. It wasn't until after she woke up in the Jigoku Apartments that she went to desperately wishing that was all she was doing.
The Jigoku Apartments were the stuff of Japanese horror movies, the kind that left her in cold sweats at night hoping that sound she heard was just the house settling. The kind she'd once enthusiastically talked about with friends. The kind that once upon a time she'd rushed off to the theaters to see. After the first few months, the novelty had long since worn off. While it was fascinating that she was meeting characters that by all accounts had to be fictional, the fact that every day was a fight to outlast whatever horror was infesting the apartments left her preoccupied with living one more day instead of pondering the universe. Her vast knowledge of b-grade horror films was her only saving grace. Knowing the way stories worked turned into a small boon in disguise, as she could guess what methods would help keep her and the other tenants alive just a little bit longer.
It was in the Apartments that Mika developed what would slowly transform into an extreme case of OCD. She had to have a stockpile of red tape at all times, as the red duct tape was the only weapon against and protection from the ghosts that haunted the town. She quickly learned to meticulously cover everything from windows to doors to the bathroom and kitchen sinks in tape, praying it would stop anything from getting in. Everywhere she went she had at least one roll in her bag, along with a notebook that slowly filled with notes on each ghost, haunting, and freak accident that happened within the apartment walls.
It didn't save her from the vampires among them, though. Twice bitten in less than four months apart, and less than eight months from her arrival, Mika quickly turned bitter as her narrow escapes with death grew even narrower. Close encounters with violent hauntings grew more frequent until one day she was sent a cursed video that left her with a choice; pass the video along or keep the consequences to herself. Mika chose not to spread the curse, and died a painful death at the hands of a very angry ghost. Unfortunately when someone died in Jigoku, they didn't stay dead, and Mika's body was quickly possessed and used to attack the other tenants.
Which left Mika the nasty surprise of waking up to find someone had emptied half of a pistol magazine into her in self defense. If it hadn't been for the fact that one of the other tenants had known healing magic, Mika would have easily died a second time.
She grew much more anxious after that, quick to try and sort out any newcomers, and the first to warn them of all the dangers. She worried for the safety of others, and tried to keep everyone well-supplied since she felt like there was nothing else she was good at. Well, aside from hording supplies and occasionally flying off the handle for good measure at least. When there was at least one known living homicidal cannibal in the building, it didn't make for easy sleep at night.
The most traumatizing blow to her psyche was near the first end of her stay in Jigoku, before she was sent home for a year. Another tenant, believing himself to be one of the scum of humanity, decided it was time for Mika to learn that as well. He dragged her with him through a rift in the Apartment's hold on them and back to his world, where he proceeded to murder a group of delinquents in front of Mika. Being already mentally shaken from her stay in the apartments, Mika reacted poorly, screaming and vomiting from the smell of death that clung to her senses like a thick paint. After that it took weeks for Mika to sleep more easily (as she could never sleep well in the apartments due to various hauntings), and several more weeks before she showed any signs of her usual humor. Having a group of people killed like that in front of her did more damage than her own near-death experiences. It left her rattled and easily sickened at the sight of a fresh corpse.
She was given a bit of respite after that, being sent home just when her stay at the apartments had done its worst to her. She was allowed to go home, growing close to recovering from her mental blows. The trauma that had left her waking up in the night screaming, or frantically taping the windows and doors with the red duct tape that warded off the ghosts in the apartments took months to mend. Mika was a jittery mess, confusing her parents by what had been to them a sudden and dramatic drop in weight, with Mika raving like what seemed to them complete lunacy. The only thing that had kept her from being sent to a mental ward was that Mika had not tried harming herself.
But she was getting better. In two months of being home she was making progress, laughing a little more and sleeping a bit better. With the beginning of August things took an instant nosedive for the worse. Her sister's mate of ten years died without warning, and the next four months were a haze. She doesn't remember much of it, one week blurring into the next as everything seemed to pass in a fog. Her family had to help support her sister, and had to help take care of her two-year-old son as the stress of being a single parent pressed down on her sister. Mika's stress habits flared up during that time, her hair going paler during the winter months, her weight dropping as her eating habits grew worse. Her usual time to play videogames or watch movies disappeared, but when she did have a day to herself it was spent in a listless fog. Sometimes she did it, sometimes she just broke down and cried.
By her twenty-fifth (or was it twenty-sixth? She couldn't tell anymore) birthday, Mika had started her second recovery, but her then-three-year-old nephew could tell auntie Mimi was sick. Her clothes hung off of her skinny frame and her hair around her face had gone almost white, a vast difference from the peppering of grey her sister suffered. Mika started working out to get in better shape, tried to get herself to eat properly so that she wouldn't worry anyone. It was around this time that she got closer to being back to her older habits, scouring the videogames and new releases at the bookstore and the theater. Almost like she was looking for something, or someone. Her art has changed since then, while she still sometimes uses bright colors, there's always a sense of anxiety about her pieces. Like something isn't quite right. Even with summer approaching she could sense something was wrong, but she couldn't put her finger on it.
Her nasty feeling was proven right when she found herself snatched up again, close to the time of year she'd been sent home. What was supposed to be a relaxing vacation left her with a cold sense of dread as once more she awoke to the grimy, water-stained walls of the apartments with a cinnamon-flavored candy in her mouth. Every night the apartments would leave a cinnamon candy in the tenant's mouths, and even now, away from the apartments the taste of cinnamon will leave Mika's stomach reeling.
Her second stay in the apartments was far less eventful than her first, the year passing quietly as Mika refused to leave her room, walled in by red tape to keep out any terrors. Her apartment was a fortress that she would not leave willingly without at least three rolls of tape, more than what she'd carried before. Mika would not let herself be hurt again, nagging terror quietly eating away at her until she was just as bitter as she had been before. After all, even if she did make it home, what was to say she wouldn't be snatched up again like it was nothing at all? Nowhere was safe for her anymore.
Overall her stay in the apartments were unkind to her, leaving her both physically and emotionally scarred. While she likes to think she's recovering, it takes a while to get over trauma like that.
Personality: 'Laid back' is what she likes to think of herself, but since her stay in the apartments 'anxious' and 'skittish' are far more accurate terms. Thinking of the good of the whole rather than just herself comes naturally, but not without a fair share of snarky, bitter quips to round out whatever advice she's willing to give. Mika used to be the optimist, but after three years of being jerked around by the skin of her teeth, she's lost a lot of the chipper luster that only sometimes shines through her sarcastic veneer these days. She's easy to get worked up, moreso if she feels threatened, and will respond to a threatening situation by bristling up and snarling.
Mika's taken a mental and emotional beating during her time in and away from the Jigoku Apartments. Suffering from a strange kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, she is much more sensitive to the paranormal, having often complained of hearing or seeing things that others couldn't. Her anxiety manifests in eating and sleeping troubles, where she will gorge herself on food for several days, while others she can barely pick at what's on her plate. She has nightmares and will often wake up with headaches, and never really got over having a roll of tape with her at all times. She might not have used it much, but she had to keep one in her bag no matter where she went. The tape became her security blanket, for lack of a better term. When it's with her, she feels safe.
Losing so much weight has had an odd effect on her. On the one hand, she's glad to have finally lost all the weight she'd been struggling with, but she's scared of becoming anorexic or bulimic. She's afraid of what it could mean for her overall health, as the lack of health insurance makes it almost impossible for her to see a doctor. Or even a psychiatrist, but what could she tell them? That she was trapped in a haunted apartment for a year that might have never existed, that she has bullet wounds that shouldn't be there, or that she's going pale prematurely? The stress of not being able to speak to anyone about her problems without coming off as crazy has made her quiet, less prone to speaking up when something is bothering her only for her to completely break down when the pressure becomes too much.
Exercise and her usual escapism into entertainment media have become her therapy. While she might have stressed her way out of most of her body fat, it revealed hard muscle underneath, and she's been working to regain some body mass in muscle. She found out that after a few hesitant months of worry, she can still enjoy horror games. After all, in the game, she's the one in control. With the gun, the pipe, or even the stupid plank she can fight her way through the games and win, overcoming whatever gets in her way. It's like a strange form of therapy, and it doesn't help that Mika's usual rambling while she played turned into what could only be described as one-sided conversations. It doesn't happen often, but there were some games that she quietly chats her way through, and the habit did start to worry her parents. The only thing that stopped them from being too worried was how calm Mika was after playing. It still wasn't the same as speaking with her friends, but even playing video games is hardly enough to give her solace and peace of mind.
Her OCD is stress-induced, and shows up in the meticulous ways she will take notes. Or how she will frantically begin to fiddle with a roll of red duct tape. Any house she does not feel safe in, she will fortify with the tape. After being in the apartments twice, Mika has upped her rolls to hand by two, constantly carrying three rolls of it with her in her satchel wherever she goes. Under extreme stress Mika will begin to whine and 'cry' like any anxious canine, flattening her ears and gritting her teeth as her lips peel back to expose her fangs. Unfortunately lots of things make her anxious these days. Anything from sudden movements to loud noises to strange shadows where they shouldn't be. She's been seeing a lot of strange shadows where they shouldn't be since her stay in Jigoku. It hasn't done good things for her temperament.
Unfortunately as the lowest member on her pack's totem pole, Mika's snarl is far worse than her bite. That doesn't mean she won't bite at all, but she will almost always back down if her bluff is called.
After all, she'd much rather be home reading books or playing video games than be stuck in another world-ending catastrophe. Then again, the idea of crawling into a hole and pulling it in after her isn't such a bad idea some days....
Powers/Abilities: As a wolf, Mika has genetically enhanced senses of smell, hearing and taste. Wolves are able to pick up slightest of sounds at great distances, run for days without stopping, can see easily in the dark, and can smell prey nearly a mile away. That would be at peak conditions. Mika, however, is not at peak condition. Still, she can hear enough noise around her that she knows when the TV's been left on downstairs or if the neighbors have gotten a phonecall, and she prefers to be out of the house when her friends bring home their dates. It's bad enough for her when she can smell them walking into the house after a night at the club.
Aside from that Mika's 'power' lies in knowledge. Very specialized and trivial knowledge, the kind that can win you arguments on the internet but do absolutely nothing for you in real life. The kind of knowledge that comes from spending too many hours reading Wikipedia and TV Tropes because you have nothing better to do, or because you've beaten all your video games a half-dozen times so you've memorized where all the secret items are. The kind of knowledge that kept Mika alive in Jigoku is only a little different from that. She could get people to listen to her advice only because she knew what she was talking about when it came to horror survival. Why?
Because she'd spent too many hours watching movies and playing video games.
She can memorize trivial details like boss stats or where to find important items, not that this sort of information comes in useful in Real Life, but it worked out okay for her at the apartments. Although there were a lot of tense and awkward moments where she would slip up and say something she shouldn't have to the local video game protagonists...
((Note: In Jigoku Apartments, Mika was allowed fourthwalling with player permission and mod approval only, because it was a small game and I asked the playerbase if they would think it was fun and was given the green light by a majority of the players as well as unanimous approval by the mods. I am not bringing that into Hellpointe because she's already 'met' versions of several of the characters in-game. I figure any fourthwalling skills would be redundant and most likely unwanted.))
Limitations: Despite being able to smell a deer downwind within a mile, or hear a twig snap in the middle of a forest, Mika is used to the city life. Before the apartments she was slow, lazy, and as overweight as the next video game nerd. Being in the apartments put her under a lot of stress which, while it made her lose a lot of weight, did not leave her healthy. She's malnourished, half-starved, still recovering from some injuries, and jumps at loud noises. Her endurance levels might be higher than average, but she will burn out quickly if forced to exert a lot of effort into anything for extended periods of time. Mika is, very simply, a mess.
Despite being able to memorize stats, she can't use this memorization ability for anything useful, and she has a strong inferiority complex. Despite having survived in an awful wreck of an apartment for two years, she's come out of it more cagey than she went in, which leaves her with the unfortunate reality of being unfit for most social interactions. Mika is also afraid to trust people now that she's completely outside of any comfort zone she'd constructed for herself, and will be prone to clamming up or lashing out at things around her.