Yumeno Kisaki

Yumeno had a happy childhood; even though she was raised by a single father, her father doted on her, allowing her to read and learn whatever she could get her hands on. She showed a natural aptitude for music and music composition when she was a child, and her father encouraged her to try dozens of different instruments. Yumeno learned everything from the piano to the harp, playing in grade-school orchestras while her father rented child-sized guitars for her to practice with. She loved singing the most, playing the lead vocalist in their elementary-school choir nearly every year. Even though she was shy, everyone -- even her teachers -- could see that she became a different person when she was finally put in her element.

Her childhood would be snatched away from her, however, when she contracted viscerosis as a child. Her father was an EQE user, and, even though he thought that his glove had just been malfunctioning, it had actually become infected with viscerosis particles. Coming home early from school -- and before her father had a chance to put the glove away or get the problem diagnosed -- she'd tried it on, wanting to be like the espers that she was always reading about in books. Yumeno quickly became incredibly, deathly sick. While the prompt treatment she received at the hospital certainly prevented it from spreading far, she was still bedbound for weeks, having permanently lost her left eye.

For reasons that Yumeno still doesn't know, after her sickness, her father never came to pick her up from the hospital. She has plenty of hypotheses: he felt guilty that it was his glove that she put on, he was worried that the hospital bills would be too much for him to pay off, he feared that the disease would spread to him, he was murdered, killed, blackmailed, something. For all intents and purposes, he vanished off the face of the earth, despite the widespread search for him that was conducted within the city. Having no relatives and no emergency contacts, Yumeno was eventually left to an orphanage -- where she withdrew from nearly everybody around her.

Yumeno turned to stories for solace, quickly losing herself in fantasy and fiction and spending nearly all of her time either reading, drawing, or watching movies on her own. She quickly became entranced by the idea of being some kind of "chosen one," who had her father taken away from her because they wanted to stop her from fully realizing her own potential -- even if she didn't know what that "potential" was meant to entail.

Determined not to let her supposed oppressors stop her, she reluctantly went back to making music, armed with nothing but her old laptop and whatever programs she managed to pirate online. Dragging her high school grades out of the gutter, Yumeno would eventually apply as a philosophy major to the nearest university in Atriven City -- wanting to live in a dorm, for once. Even though she still hadn't discovered the secret powers that she believed herself to have, she was sure that she wasn't going to discover them within the walls of her orphanage.

Yumeno had her first group of friends only when she started college: Celeuxe, who she's relieved shares the same taste in media as her; Jaime, who she's constantly receiving encouragement from; Lisza, the only person she trusts to give her media recommendations; and Dioe, her favorite person to discuss literature and theory with outside of her classes. While she was intimidated by the prospect of singing again, she would eventually cave, forming the band Grimwreck with Celeuxe and Jaime. When Jaime brought up the idea of joining the Virion Project as interns, Yumeno would immediately agree -- seeing the proposal as a step towards that higher purpose that she still believes fate has in store for her.

The second that Yumeno stepped foot into the Virion Project's headquarters, she was immediately starstruck: the high-roofed foyer, the uniforms that people were wearing, the signs of authority that Set, their division head, seemed to embody... All of it seemed like something straight out of the fiction that she was so used to reading. While she was never the most physically fit, she knew that she would have to compete -- or at least match up -- with Celeuxe and Jaime if she wanted a chance at getting Set's approval.

Even though it was difficult for her to make time to go to the gym on top of her internship, her band, and the readings that she had to do for her major, Yumeno's ready (with Jaime's help in scheduling) to actually figure out what she's meant to be doing and answer the everpresent question of why her father ever disappeared on her. It's hard for her to focus on her goals entirely, though, given how nervous Set's been whenever they've been sent out on missions. It was fine at first, and Yumeno could handle what little fighting they did back then. What's been making the latest ones feel so different... or so much more dangerous?

While Yumeno has the least physical fighting experience out of the three interns in the Containment Division, she's relatively agile: highly sensitive to sound and capable of correcting her balance with her tail, it's difficult to actually hit her (even if, in turn, it's hard for her to actually get any hits on her opponents). She tends to try to tire out her sparring partners, getting them annoyed or complacent enough that they make a mistake that she can capitalize on. Her primary weapon, a chain whip meant to snag or trip opponents, has EQE technology embedded into its handle, allowing it to artificially extend its reach with the addition of jagged ice.

Yumeno uses her essence the least, as well (outside of channeling it through her whip, of course). Finding it difficult to quickly summon or form ice without the help of her weapon, she primarily uses her control over water in an attempt to blind or surprise her opponents, throwing scalding water at their faces in order to get them to trip up or stumble or filling the room with steam whenever she needs to escape a fight. She's tried to literally make people slip by freezing water underneath their feet, but finds it too unreliable to use regularly (given how she runs a risk of tripping, herself, if she loses track of the terrain in the middle of a fight).