Ayumu

Name: Ayumu
Face Claim: Olivia Thirlby
Age: 20-21
Gender/Pronouns: Trans woman, occasionally fluid. Feminine terms only. She/her, though occasionally goes by they/them and rarely he/him.
Orientation: Asexual Lesbian
Height: 6'7"
Appearance: Kinda gangly, tall with a long, fluffy tail. Has five finger-like pinschers on the end of said tail that can fully grasp and move objects like a hand (spoiler alert: it’s because there’s actually a hand in there but no one knows bc its so fluffy). As a civilian, she’s pretty scrawny and underweight, can’t seem to keep weight on either. Hair’s a very thick curly mess but not completely matted like some might think. Her clothing is loose and open, very flowy and bulky, not always clean. As a soldier, Ayumu’s hair is shaved into an undercut with a long curly top (occasionally with patterns shaved in the sides). She’s put on more weight and has more muscle, but is still relatively thin and not very shapely. She has two visible scars on her face under her eyes/over her nose and is missing a part of her left ear. There’s a third scar on her forehead. She has a visibly thick unibrow and grows scruff on her jawline/chin. Has a nose piercing (left nostril), lip piercing, and both earlobes pierced. Her hands often have several rings on each finger and look somewhat spidery, with long thin fingers and, as a civilian, somewhat pronounced joints. Feet are very similar to the jumper feet in this picture, although are more spindly, like a lemur’s.

Personality: Ayumu is a kind and gentle soul, although she can be quite mischievous and up to no good when she’s in the mood for it. She enjoys 
Medical History: Deals with bipolar disorder (undiagnosed) and PTSD (undiagnosed). Has suffered breakage in her left leg and some toes/fingers before, leading to a crooked appearance in one or two of her fingers. Is severely pigeon toed. Deals with arachnodactyly, aka a lengthening of the fingers/toes.

Story:

The year is 20-0358 GY. Lieutenant Rajani Solm finds himself faced with yet another new cycle, which means another visit to the surface of Myrhl. Specifically, a visit to Artia, the capital of Nyra and home central to the brothel - Death Divine in Common Artian - he’d been taken in by prior to his joining of the PROGRAM. It is the most prominent brothel in all Artia, and is home to the primary leader of Nyra’s government, Queen Aga'tha. Once an old piece of his family, now different, changed even, Solm finds himself unable to enjoy her company. Whether it’s due to his distance thanks to his age-old enrollment in the PROGRAM, or something that’s been bothering and twisting her on its own accord, it doesn’t matter. The deep-seeded dread in his gut, a familiar he hates feeling towards someone he once respected and looked up to, draws anxiety through his features with every new recruitment he’s stuck with on Nyra’s surface. But there is one benefit to signing up and being assigned to every new recruitment cycle in Nyra: he gets to see a young woman named Ayumu.

Ayumu’s life on the surface is a difficult one no matter how you slice it. As if finding food for herself and her two adopted children wasn’t hard enough, she also tends to the orphans around her community out of her own personal conviction and desire to help. She feeds them, cleans them, takes care after them and their siblings. She also tends many of the local markets and sells what scraps she has just to make enough to treat her own two, trying to give them a better life than she knows they’ve had previously. Likewise, many people have caught sight of her tending to sick and injured monsters out in the forests, and see her offering kindness to creatures otherwise deadly and dangerous. She’s been nicknamed “Mother Monster,” a name often used to mock her by other community members who just don’t understand her passion for life and compassion for the very things that cause them pain.

She wasn’t always alone like this, though some days she may argue she has been alone ever since her younger years passed on. In her youth, her parents found her more of a burden than they did anything else, not because of her personality, but because of what she attracted. Her mysterious ability to draw in monsters troubled local communities and brought what they considered a “plague” upon them, creatures of the night and horrors of the morn stalking and attacking (or so they claim) the innocent people of the community in search of food and in search of her. It was completely out of her control of course; she had no idea they were drawn to her, but they were, and several were not as friendly as they seemed. A particularly nasty incident left her with scars across her face after a monster cornered her on her own at the age of six, which only pushed her parents into more of a panic. Her father, convinced it had been a curse set upon him for having a blue haired child, determined to leave her on her own with his partner before a mysterious soldier came and stepped in on her behalf.

The Soldier, a blue hair himself, told her parents that abandoning Ayumu after one of his own soldiers had so bravely sacrificed himself to save her would be a waste of his life. Unfortunately, they were still too frightened to stay, and left Ayumu to live on her own shortly after the incident. The soldier, enraged by her parent’s fear, took it upon himself to take care of Ayumu. He led her to a Rajani man named Nayim, an old man who wanted nothing to do with her at first. After a half season of the Soldier pleading his cause and playing on account of Nayim’s insistence he was a “righteous man,” the old man accepted her into his community and took her in as one of his own.

Once she came to the age of 15, Nayim offered Ayumu a choice: she could leave his community and never come back, joining the ranks of another community and living as a member there or becoming a soldier in a PROGRAM not meant for children such as her; or, she could become his hunting study. That is, someone he would teach how to live and bestow his leadership blessing (aka his “sagely wisdom and knowledge” about the world around them) upon, but whom would take care of herself and would join a neighboring community of his choice. Ayumu, too attached to her new father figure, became his hunting study from then on. Nayim has helped take care of her for the past several years all the way into her adult life, helping teach her everything from personal identity to how to gut a fish quickly and efficiently.

Now, at the age of 21, Ayumu finds herself with another choice. Recruitment from Gimorrah is coming to her area and she has to decide whether or not she’s going to join the Soldier PROGRAM or stay on the surface another few seasons and wait until next cycle to start. The PROGRAM seems appealing due to the grand promise of wealth and healthcare for her two children (as “all soldiers are well taken care of! That’s the PROGRAM Promise!”), but Nayim – whom has a heavy distaste and personal bias against soldiers and the PROGRAM – warns her it is not as beneficial as it seems. Ayumu once more must make a life-altering choice and is stuck trying to rationalize which would be best, but she knows she must do so quickly, for recruitment is only on the surface for a half season before they leave and she’ll be left for another four Gimorran years on the surface.

With crumpled sign-up sheet in hand, Ayumu faces the recruiting table and awaits her turn to sign up. Much to her surprise, however, she finds the same Soldier whom she’d seen in dreams and memories sitting at the recruitment table, smiling as he extended his hand towards her.

“Nice to meet'cha, young recruit. My name’s Rajani Solm, and I been waitin’ a long time to see you again.”