Yoka

-- Show me, show me! Do it again, please? 

Name: Yoka
Age: 11 (KHII)
Homeworld: Twilight Town

   Romy's younger sister. They share biological parents, and their 7 year age gap is from their parents wanting to "find themselves" in between each sister. Despite the difference in age, they have a great relationship. Yoka will occasionally follow Romy to her boomerang practice spots, or to the streets to act as Romy's hype man and get people interested, but most of the time Yoka is stuck indoors dealing with schoolwork. On her free days, she likes to watch Struggle Matches town in the town square and asks her sister to escort her to the matches. Yoka has a few players she's interested in, but her top favorite is one of Romy's friends, Mina.
   Because of her fondness of Mina and her fighting style, this may be why Yoka wants to practice magic when she gets a little older. 

(KHII Era)
♥ Yoka spends most of her summer vacation down at the Struggle match ring. She's a little too young to be there on her own, but enough of the town knows her or her sister that it's safe enough and plenty of the adults or older kids help her get back on the train to go home at the end of the day if Romy isn't with her. In between complaining about not finishing her math packet for the break, Yoka can be found gobbling down sea-salt ice cream like her life depended on it, or trying to beg her older sister to take her to the beach since that's the one spot she's not allowed to go to alone.
   She was safe at home the day Romy saw a man in a black coat kidnap a strange girl, and for a full day after the event she wasn't allowed to leave the house on her sister's order. If Romy had her way she'd probably never have let Yoka leave the house again, but it's not really that fair when Romy herself decided to run off with Mina on her own adventure. Yoka stayed behind, vowing to protect her parents and the rest of the town while Romy is away, though there was little she could truly do outside of eat more ice cream and try to beg her way into participating in the Struggle matches. 

(KHIII Era)
   ♥ Still a little too young to much of anything, Yoka spent most of her time practicing her swings for the Struggle matches. She's still not good enough to really participate in any tournaments, just some practice with the other participants, but that's okay! Yoka has also been trying to learn more about magic while everyone's been gone, though how much she can learn is incredibly limited given that it's not really a thing in Twilight Town. A few odd books have made their way to resale shops, and Yoka scraped together all of her allowance to buy them, but without a teacher all she can really do is read the concepts. That-- and hope one of the strangers that keeps coming and going may give her a hint about what to do next.
   Though a good couple years younger than them, Yoka likes to (try to) hang out with Hayner, Pence, and Olette sometimes, or at least hang around them. She's not too great with heights, much preferring the ground or the ocean, so any time the trio decides to scale the clocktower for an ice cream break she stays firmly on the ground. Sometimes, even looking out the train windows on trips to and from the city is a little too much.
   But that's fine! She has Struggle practice she needs to do anyway! There are books on magic to try to study up on! Yoka has a lot of work to do before Romy gets back from her adventure; she has to show her sister how strong she's gotten.

   When Romy is back in Twilight, staying behind to protect everyone, Yoka tried to help out. She got yelled at for thinking she could take on the Heartless, but Romy quickly apologized and had Yoka go gather up any stray townspeople to get them inside. It was an important job, and would really help her sister out, so Yoka agreed.
   Since Yoka hates heights, she personally volunteered to stay firmly at home and get nowhere near the gummiship. She'll hold down the fort here, Romy. You and everyone can go hang out on a beach somewhere. She has her own beach that doesn't require a scary flying thing. 

 Personality: 

   Way more confident and generally more fearless than her older sister, the only thing that really holds Yoka back is a fear of heights. Strangers don't bother her, and her fight-or-flight may be slightly broken, but she's horrible at anything higher than standard jumps-- even 2nd floor railings make her skin crawl if she's too close to the edge.
   Her friendliness matches her sister's own, and the two are either friends with or know a good portion of the residents, especially in Sunset Terrace. Yoka won't let anyone telling her she can't do something stop her-- just saying she can't do it means she has to practice until she can. It's never a full stop, just a little bump in the road. 

   Yoka is stronger on the female-presenting side than her more tomboyish sister. She likes and frequently wears dresses or skirts, though on really windy days she'll wear swim bottoms or exercise shorts under them. Yoka's voice is higher pitched and childish, and even as she grows up it doesn't lose that childish, innocent edge to it. 

Abilities: 

   While young, Yoka has no real 'abilities' to speak of. She owns a training version of the magician struggle bat just out of her love of the games, and fondness for her sister's friend Mina's own one, that she'll practice with. There's only so much a toy can teach you, however, so Yoka's "battle capability" is little more than having your friend swat you with a pool noodle at the beach.
   As she grows up, however, and gets actual training to be a mage, Yoka starts to excel in status spells. For Offensive magic, her lean is in Water spells. She's vaguely athletic just from trying to follow along with her sister, but not overly so. Yoka is more graceful and uses any athleticism for dodging, rather than holding any kind of physical attack strength.

   Romy tried to teach Yoka how to juggle a few times but she was never too good at it. Yoka lacks the proper level of hand-eye coordination to be anywhere near as skilled as her sister is, but through the repeated practice Yoka did learn she's rather ambidextrous. If she tried really hard, Yoka could maybe juggle two balls with some success, but its absolutely nowhere near the variety or amount of things that her older sister can handle. 

Relationships: 

♥ Romy: 
     Yoka absolutely adores her older sister. There are times they butt heads just out of the nature of being siblings, but generally they get along well. Romy wants whats best for Yoka and tends to baby her a little more than she should by buying her new toys and clothes. Whether that's to take some of the strain off their parents, or just because Romy wants her sister to have cute things is unknown. Romy isn't that happy when she learns that Yoka has been trying to teach herself how to fight and use magic, but she only blames herself for getting the idea into her sister's head and doesn't fight against Yoka's desire to learn more. She knows enough mages now, at least with her connections she can make sure Yoka gets a decent education in it.
     On the days the two are fighting, Romy will purposely go somewhere high, knowing that Yoka wouldn't dare follow her. They never stay mad for long, especially since Romy knows that Yoka will continue wandering the town until she finds her sister-- and Yoka would be the type to ask complete strangers for help. Even if those strangers are weird kidnappers in black cloaks. She can't risk letting a fight go on too long.

♥ Mina: 
     Though Mina is Romy's friend first, hers second, Yoka loves watching the girl participate in Struggle matches. She's sweet and kind, and has helped Yoka get through the high train car rides more than once. It's probably through watching Mina that Yoka starts getting it in her head that she should learn to be a fighter, learn magic, too. Even if she has no idea what that really means, it's a starting catalyst.
     Though Yoka really wants to impress her sister with how strong she's gotten, she really wants to show off to Mina, too-- but not until she knows some of her water spells. 

♥ Twilight Trio:
     Olette seems to enjoy Yoka's presence, but Pence is the one that talks to her the most. Yoka's not sure what she might have done to get on Hayner's bad side-- it's not like the boy is mean to her, but he doesn't seem to be as accepting of her wanting to poke around the teens as the other two are. Pence has told her it's because he's trying to be cool and not let kids hang out with them, and Olette had joked it was just dragging his image down, but Yoka hangs out with her sister all the time and it doesn't drag her image down? Oh well. Hayner has started to learn if he wants to ditch the risk of her as a shadow in her free days, it's best to hang out somewhere high, or with a steep overlooking view, so it's easy enough for the trio to lose her. 

Little Extras:

   Sleep Habits: 
Yoka is an early to bed type of person. To her, sleep is the best thing ever and she is notoriously late to any event in the morning if they're scheduled too early. Yoka is even worse at staying up than her older sister is, and she has been caught nodding off in the middle of hanging out with friends and had to be carried home. For Yoka, 9pm is a pretty good time to start winding down.

Trivia: 

x - Yoka doesn't start practicing magic fully until she's 12 or 13, a bit after the events of KHIII. She was offered the chance to start reading and practicing small, nondangerous spells after Romy returned from her KHIII adventures, but it took a bit to get things started since it's not anything she was exposed to for a very long time.
x - Yoka is themed after an octopus, down to her starter mage wand. It's why she's better at Water spells than any other kind of damage magic. She also has 8 'tentacle' flips to her hair.