Youngster Ikki

NAME: Hyūga Ikki
ALIAS: N / A
AGE: Thirteen
GENDER: Male
HEIGHT: 5’4”
WEIGHT: 123lbs
BLOOD TYPE: O+
BUILD: Slim, Athletic
SPECIAL TRAITS: N / A

MENTALITY / FRAME OF MIND:

In his social life, Ikki is an upbeat and cheerful brat. A strange grin is permanently plastered across his soft features. Despite his trials and tribulations, he’s taken on an optimistic demeanour. He thoroughly believes that, though in the long run the pessimist may be proven right, the optimist has a better time on the trip. His doctrine is simply to smile when it hurts the most. This being said, he instantly banishes all foul and displeasing emotions to the farthest recesses of his mind. Ikki is an outgoing extrovert. Whether he knows you personally or just met you all of three seconds ago, he is talkative and forthcoming.

In his studies he is as assiduous and diligent as his mother once was. The cornucopia of scrolls and the like that litter his bedroom all come from the library in his parent’s now empty and rundown home. His intelligence is his one of his few redeeming qualities. He has an analytical mentality and thoroughly dissects and categorizes the matter at hand. His almost mechanical way of thinking is the only thing that aids him in coming up with techniques and stratagem. As well, his love and passion for tinkering with mechanics bear witness to some strange contraptions and inventions.

On the battlefield, he is a completely different person. Since the tender age of ten, he’d been thrown into thousands of real life experiences where death was only a short breath away. This led to a ruthless and aggressive nature when in a battle mindset. His has a mild bloodlust (in the literal sense) as he is often seen licking the blood off his kunai or swords. He is relentless when attempting to bring down his foe, if at all possible. Should he find himself on a suicidal venture where victory is an impossible fantasy, young Ikki has taken to the idea “live to fight another day”. He would instantly flee from battle, so long as no comrades are left lingering behind to be slaughtered like sacrificial lambs. Though aggressive, his loyalty is unfaltering.

PHYSICAL ANALYSIS:

nationality: Japanese
hair color: Blonde
hair style: Messy, Ponytail
eye color: White, No Pupil
piercings: N / A
scars: N / A
markings: Hyūga Branch House Seal [forehead]

Having barely reached the age of puberty, Ikki’s features still carry a childlike roundness to them and are soft to the touch. This is further accentuated by his childish and trademark grin. His eyes are peculiar in that they lack any form of pupils. The irises, on the other hand, are barely differentiable from his ivory sclera. Because of this strange feature, at times it is difficult to tell if he is looking directly at you. His nose is small and flat, and all around, he looks to be quite young, even for his age.

His hair bears a usually dull blonde hue that miraculously gleams far brighter when pelted with daylight rays. Usually messy and unkempt, they are tied behind him in a somewhat spiky ponytail that stretches down just past his shoulder blades. His forehead his covered by locks of golden hair and obscure his demeaning cursed seal from the public eye. Similar tresses elegantly frame his childlike face. Ikki has a slim body frame and is lightly toned. He also has broad shoulders.

His shinobi attire is identical to his recreational one. He wears a tan overcoat with a large and loose hood that is rarely worn. The overcoat itself is quite loose and drapes his form. Beneath it Ikki wears a black t-shirt that is just as loose, though it goes unnoticeable. He wears something like slacks that are navy blue in colour and reach down to about mid-shin. To protect his feet, the standard shinobi sandals are worn. Lastly, his hitae-ate is worn around his neck like a choker.

BIOGRAPHY:

a protector?

The fifth of July bore witness to a bright and gleaming morning. Radiant rays beamed down and enveloped all in a soothing cloak of heavenly warmth. This sunlit and joyous morning would one day manifest itself within the demeanour of the young infant born. Konoha was thriving in a time of peace. The detrimental First Shinobi War that had beckoned a mere twenty years after the founding of this great village (and continued to rage on for another ten) had come to an end quite some time ago. The supposedly victorious Konohagakure had been blessed with a short era of serenity. On this day, within the barracks of the Hyūga Ichizoku, seven years after the conclusion of the First Shinobi War in history, two loving parents gave birth to a young Hyūga Ikki.

By a force far greater than he, young Ikki was birthed by a Branch House [Bunke] Kunoichi. Her astoundingly good looks aside, she was a well trained and studious Jōnin. She was an icon to her growing boy. Ikki’s father [Jūnsei], on the other hand, was a generally lousy Chūnin. He was hopelessly unskilled in a vast majority of the arts. However, he had heart and an unshakeable courage (probably the only things that attracted his wife to him in the first place). As a toddler, Ikki found himself playing pretend shinobi with his adoring father. Whenever the two were sent “grocery shopping” by the ma— I mean woman of the house, they would just shirk it and go running up and down the streets of the village while tossing cardboard cut-out shuriken at one another. These fond memories would forever linger within his heart.

As the toddler continued to age as all living things do, both his parents had made several attempts at explaining the goings-on inside the Hyūga district. They tried to explain to him the standings and purposes of the different branches and where his allegiance would tie in. Inevitably, such political blather soared over the young toddler’s head and simply left him dumbfounded and confused. All he had managed to take away from the many conversations was that his job would one day be to guard, serve, and protect his family. Wait… isn’t that what a man is supposed to do anyway?

Upon the third birthday of a Main House [Sōke] cousin of his (some “Hyūga Miyako” person), young three-year-old Ikki had been summoned before her as well as the elders of the Sōke branch. As he was once more explained the duties of the Bunke, Ikki quickly found himself branded with a cursed seal, the Hyūga Sōke’s Juinjutsu. After the ordeal, he simply stared at his Main House cousin, Miyako, blank faced. With a mix of disgust and contempt, his mother [Suruki] snarled at the elders, jerked her son’s hand towards her and headed home. Perplexed, he had no choice but to follow suit. Such a strange day…

Subsequent to his brandishing of the cursed seal, Suruki began young Ikki’s shinobi training. Idolizing his mother, Ikki worked hard to please her. Through Suruki’s eyes, her son had been condemned to a life of servitude and the only way to break free from his shackles was to attain the power required to forcefully remove them. She held a personal grudge towards the Sōke and had strived as a Kunoichi in mastering the sealing arts. Never having come across a solution to rid herself of the accursed marking, she prayed that by nudging her child in the right direction, one day he would.

Of course, the sealing arts weren’t the bulk of his shinobi training. In fact, they rarely touched upon it in comparison to the ordained tasks one would learn from the academy. After all, you couldn’t build a strong building without a sturdy foundation. For the next two years he was trained in the bare essentials of the shinobi world, however, rather than taking on Suruki’s champion intuition and latent talent, he picked up his father’s cluelessness and utter ineptitude. As you could imagine, this made training difficult, arduous, and for the most part, fruitless.

By the age of five, he was sent off to the officials for shinobi training… he was sent to the academy. During his first few years at the academy Ikki remained at the bottom of his class. All the while, he spent night and day training relentlessly with his mother. On the occasion, his loving and caring father would whisk him out of the house on some random “errand” that they always used as an excuse to have some play time. As previously mentioned, there mother was quite intuitive. Their hidden agendas were clear as day, though her soft side pressed her to turn the other cheek. Regardless, upon their return, training resumed. Suruki was determined to free her son from the manacles placed on him by her own clansmen.

Just before he reached seven, things began to pick up and he managed to finally get a handle on things. He made his way all the way up to the… middle of the class. His unwavering resolve to succeed his mother was the only cause of this. Though he lacked skill, his father’s tenacity imbedded within him helped him to thrive in the academy. This was picked up on by his school sensei. This… was not a good thing.

Konoha’s years of peace had been waning thin, and a little before Ikki’s eighth birthday, sheer chaos ensued. The village bore arms and went to war with Iwa and Ame. This was the starting of what was soon to be the Second Great Shinobi War. The “down time” from the last Great War was only a short lived fifteen years. Though they’d managed to repair most of the damage done, Konoha had no luxuries to spare. Both Ikki’s parents were sent off to battle. They were almost never home, leaving for weeks at a time on extremely dangerous missions. This simply served as a stimulus for the golden haired academy student. He pushed himself to his limits so that he would be able to fight alongside his parents in the heat of battle, protecting them as he was told a Bunke member was supposed to do.

He didn’t get the chance.

For his tenth birthday, he was given news of his father’s death. Should I really explain to you, dear reader, on how much this gored his heart? Should I really compare it, dear reader, to the glistening, ivory horns of a Mexican bull? No. I think that you should imagine it yourself, dear reader, on how it would feel to hear of your father’s fatality in the midst of war… on your tenth birthday no less. I mean, you finally hit the double digits, and this shit happens? Like you would’ve been, Ikki was heartbroken.

Oh? And do you recall the academy’s sensei’s acknowledgement of Ikki’s determination and fighting spirit? Well, Konohagakure’s rations of able bodied shinobi had been dwindling. They’d even gone so far as to pick youngsters out from the academies, slap a forehead protector on them and call them Genin. Ten-year-old Ikki was also one of these youngsters. Placed into a squad of only two, he was accompanied by a Chūnin and a Jōnin. The former was a rough and rowdy female member of the Inuzuka clan who simply loathes her given name as she considers it to be far too “girly”. The latter was a highly skilled Kunoichi of the Hyūga’s Branch House… his mother.

The bulk of their missions usually revolved around relaying valuable information that needed to be hand delivered to the recipient and scouting enemy territories. Successfully completing all their missions, they narrowly escaped certain death on an almost daily basis. The only benefit to this at all was that it gave the young boy some… “hands-on” experience, to say the least. During this time, under his mother’s tutelage and the watchful eye of his ‘elder sister’, at the age of eleven, Hyūga Ikki had finally unlocked his Byakugan.

The war continued to rage on and during one fatal mission, the Inuzuka clanswoman [Aiko – though don’t ever call her that lest your life be forfeit], who was like an elder sister to the prepubescent had lost her right arm in battle and in a rash and half thought out attempt to protect her, he’d placed himself in mortal danger. Several steel blades lunged towards his tiny body as he stood in the Jūken stance and planned to deflect the weapons with his chakra coated hands. Could he do it? No one knows. Before the plethora of blades got close enough to the youngling for him to try his daring move, his mother quickly left her own opponent and placed herself between her son and the perforating razors.

As one would expect when one stands before piercing razors without giving them selves ample time to erect a suitable defence, Suruki had be stabbed, sliced, and skewered. With his jaws agape, Ikki was draught with horror and collapsed to his knees. With her lips curled into a pleasurable smile, Suruki was satisfied that she’d managed to protected her dear son and fell back into his lap, eyes closed and eternally asleep. Ikki sat there and watched as the same seal that marked his forehead activated on his mother and thoroughly destroyed her mind and her “prized” eyes. Though it was not that outwardly graphic, the simple though of his noble mother’s mind being turned to mush was revolting and abhorrent.

Ikki blacked out (because… y’know, guys don’t “faint”).

Unbeknownst to him, they’d somehow made it out of peril. Ikki awoke on a bed, in Konohagakure. His ‘sister’ Aiko sat at the foot of his bed while her wounded familiar slept on one of the couches in his room. She had a missing arm, while Ikki only had the bruises and broken bones sustained before his black out. Their makeshift sibling relationship had been cemented and could only grow from that point onward. Once they were fully healed, both were instantly called off to war once more. They were accompanied by a new Jōnin and resumed their previous success rate.

This continued on for the next two years until FINALLY the Second Great Shinobi War saw a conclusion. There was word of the Raikage’s disappearance, though that meant diddily to them. Ikki returned to Konoha as a Genin (still the inept fool that he was, though with a grander scale of life experience). His sister returned far more skilled than she once was and renowned for her unique style and method of fighting, bringing clout to her kinsmen. His unwavering grit and fortitude now kindled with a new, blazing passion. Ikki was now living with his aunt. Dreaming to fulfill his mother’s wishes, he did as she’d always requested, he delved deeper into the world of the sealing arts and would someday achieve what his mother could not. He’d be damned if he’d let them turn melt his mind as well.

HITAE-ATE [headband]: Worn across neck
VILLAGE: Konohagakure no Sato [village hidden in the leaf]
COUNTRY: Hi no Kuni [fire country]
RANK: Genin [low ninja]
POSITION: N / A

NATURE MANIPULATION:
[Katon]

EQUIPMENT / TECHNIQUES: [link]