Name: Asakura Hikari.
Nickname:
Age: 16
Height: 5’4”
Weight: 120 Lbs.
Hair Color: Blonde.
Eye Color: Blue.
Identifying Marks: Star shaped scars on the inside of both palms. Recently dyed cotton candy pink hair.
Father: Asakura Hao.
Mother: ???
Siblings: None.
Adoptive Parent: Asakura Yoh.
Personality: Recluse, wary, awkward
Likes: The rain, confections, baking, singing, playing piano.
Dislikes:
Fear: Fire.
Physical Abilities: Lithe, acrobatic,
Special Abilities: Can identify human hearts through reishi, communication with spirits
Past Information: Shortly after she was born, both parents abandoned her. Both are presumed dead. She was given up to an orphanage where she spent five years growing up. Just shy of exactly five years of having stayed there, the orphanage caught on fire and burned down. Twenty-three dead, two survivors and four unaccounted for, assumed to be dead. Having survived the fire, she was sent to live in another orphanage for one more year before being adopted. A young adult, Yoh Asakura, had paid a visit to the orphanage for spiritual purposes. The orphanage claimed to be ‘haunted’ at the time. Yoh spent nearly a month there before his work had been completed. Before leaving, he adopted the young girl. The two moved around frequently, even traveling to different countries before settling back into Tokyo, Japan. By the age of fifteen, she was sent to the prestigious campus town of True Cross to attend school.
Official History: Hikari Asakura was born to Hao Asakura and one of his followers, a woman simply named Meiko. After several attempts of pregnancy, when Hao found out Meiko was in fact with child and was healthy, Hao allegedly killed himself in front of Meiko. Surprisingly Meiko hardly had a reaction to this and continued on living for her and her unborn daughter. Four months later, Meiko gave birth to healthy baby girl. Several days out of the hospital Hikari was brought to an orphanage. Meiko had commit suicide after having her child.
Hikari was raised in the orphanage. Everyone expected the young and healthy child to be adopted quickly but as time went on, hopes died. When Hikari was old enough to converse with the other children, when she should be making friends and having fun, it was soon discovered that Hikari was ‘different’. During the children’s play time, she always sat by herself beside a window or if they were outside, she would stare off in the distance for hours. She was thought of as ‘just shy’ up until her drawings were discovered. Besides the drawings she was asked to draw for school purposes, Hikari had a stash of other pictures she had drawn. They depicted some of the children, specifically the mean hearted, with dark ‘shadows’ standing beside them. On all the drawings of the other children and even the staff of the orphanage, everyone had what could be considered as ‘aura’s’ surrounding them. Each with different colors. When questioned about these drawings, Hikari responded in a deadpan tone ‘it’s what I see’.
Because of these strange drawings the staff began to worry and tried desperately to help Hikari. For a while it seemed to work. They would spend extra time with her, talking to her and asking how she felt. But after two months of this Hikari told them that ‘they were just worried about her being different’. After that, she became unresponsive to the staff members. The children became increasingly mean to Hikari after this. They called her weird and strange but nothing fazed her.
Three years later, oddities only increased around Hikari. Unexplainable happenings began to occur around the orphanage. Some of the staff attributed the ‘phenomenon’ to Hikari, who had been making ‘imaginary friends’ for the last year or more. The children, instead of becoming more aggressive toward Hikari, called her ‘cursed’ and began to leave her alone. One day was particularly difficult for Hikari. The girl was busy with her daily ritual of bringing snacks to the edge of the yard outside the orphanage, but on her way there, one of the older boys got into an argument with the girl. He demanded that her snacks be given to him and proceeded to call her names. Hikari was initially untouched by the words, but still refused to give up the snacks. She claimed they were for ‘her friends’. The boy began to show aggressive behavior toward her by pushing her to the ground, kicking her and the like. The staff stepped in before anything worse could happen. It wasn’t until the next day, when Hikari found him torturing a baby bird whom had fallen from its nest, that she responded. She screamed and shouted at the boy and even attacked him as she cried. The rest of the day she cried, muttering to herself how she hated ‘them’. ‘They’ were the reason her friends were always sad.
That evening, Hikari went to the edge of the yard again, food in hand. She was still upset and to make matters worse, the bird from earlier had passed away. She began to cry again, ‘I hate them’. On her sixth time having shouted this, the orphanage broke out into screams of terror. Hikari raced back, only to find everyone inside had been lit on fire, screaming as they clutched at the sacks of melting skin on their bodies. The heat was intense but the building itself had yet to start on fire. In fact, it was the bodies themselves that started the flames. Everyone inside the orphanage had self-combusted all at once.
Hikari however saw the true culprit. It was made entirely of flame with eyes as golden as the sun at noon. The creature, small in size, stood beside the bodies with its maw chewing restlessly at their burning flesh. With each bite, the skin melted further; bone turned to ash in an instant. It was eating them. Devouring them and reducing their bodies to ash in the process. Hikari’s fear of anything fire was born on this day.
Only Hikari and a staff member, who had gone into town during the time, survived. Hikari was transferred to another orphanage quickly; the staff member would spend the rest of her life, insane and scared of Hikari whom she blamed for the accident. Upon investigation, there was no evidence that the fire had been started by any single person. Instead it was ruled as strictly an accident; a candle may have started the fire.
At the new orphanage Hikari remained reclusive toward the others. The children there had no interest in Hikari and left her alone; along with the workers. Instead of caring of the mental state the girl was in, everyone pushed her aside, letting her do as she pleased, even if that meant walking into the woods by herself. She spent almost a year at the orphanage, neglected by ‘them’. Once more however, she claimed to have made friends. Friends that lived in the woods. She drew pictures of her new friends; mystical appearing creatures, things that don’t exist. Some were terrifying in appearance, even for a child to have drawn, and others appeared to be something out of folklore legends.
Just shy of having been at the new orphanage for a year, strange things began to happen once more. Hikari naturally worried, even trying to sleep out in the woods. Anything to stay away from the orphanage. The happenings continued to occur however. Things were misplaced, papers thrown around the room as if a wind had blown through, even the lighting began to give out at random. No one thought to ask Hikari, who saw the culprit. It was simply mischievous nature spirits. However, these spirits only appeared when something was about to happen; before earthquakes and the like.
These strange things were the reason why Yoh Asakura came to the orphanage. He had been in the area, investigating the strange happenings at Hikari’s previous orphanage; more importantly, the fire. When arriving at this orphanage, Yoh quickly made an excuse to inspect the building. When he located the source, he told the orphanage owners that it was faulty wiring in the basement and he could fix it within a few weeks for free. So he was hired. But he, like Hikari, knew it wasn’t bad wires.
It wasn’t until his third day arriving at the orphanage that Yoh discovered Hikari, running off into the woods on her own one morning. When he questioned the staff, they made no attempt to hide the fact that they hardly paid attention to the girl. This seemed to upset Yoh; even more so after discovering her information. On the fifth day Yoh ditched his usual routine of trying to talk the devious little spirits out of the orphanage and instead hunted down Hikari. She had been in the woods since the day he asked about her; starving, dirty but hardly alone. Her friends, spirits of the woods and from long forgotten temples were with the young girl. Even low ranked demons existed with her, keeping her happy.
Yoh made contact with Hikari that day by talking directly to the spirits, unlike the kids who mocked her. He even held conversations with one of the snowy white fox spirits who had an otherwise distasteful view on anyone who wasn’t Hikari. Hikari watched in sheer awe. This man. This stranger. He wasn’t like ‘them’. He was like ‘her’. After that day, Yoh took Hikari under his wing. He explained to her what he was and what she was as well. Though it was difficult to explain to a five year old at the time; Hikari would soon come to understand entirely.
Close to a month had passed before the curious spirits in the orphanage were taken care of and Hikari had been adopted officially by Yoh. It was with this man, a ‘Shaman’, Hikari was raised. He taught her everything he ever knew about being a Shaman. He also taught her by experience; he traveled a lot, he often told Hikari he had ‘lost something’ and was trying to find it. On these travels they came across demons with intent to kill and do harm and spirits who were beyond help. With Hikari by his side, Yoh showed her how to exercise spirits and demons alike.
By the age of twelve Hikari had learned everything she could from Yoh. She absorbed everything like a sponge. At thirteen she and Yoh moved back to Japan where Yoh purchased an old Inn that they would call home. Friends Yoh had encountered on their travels came to stay with them, eventually together they reopened the Inn as a high class relaxation spa. Hikari kept herself busy by attending school though she hardly paid attention in class, and helping around the Inn.
A girl from her school who had absolutely no connection to Hikari once so ever, had approached her while returning home from grocery shopping. The girl looked pale and sickly while low ranking demons swarmed around her. Hikari was immediately aware that something was wrong but she didn’t react fast enough. Soon the girl was on top of Hikari, laughing as she took out a knife from her pocket. She had Hikari pinned down with unnatural strength for a human. The girl began to talk about Hikari as if she had known her for her entire life. She even spoke about the fire which Hikari never spoke of to anyone but Yoh. This threw Hikari’s guard off, confused by how she knew these things. When her attention was diverted, Hikari’s classmate forced her palms open and began to cut away. When she was finished, Hikari was left with a perfect five point star in the center of both her palms, raw and bloody. The girl laughed hysterically before sudden screams of anguish broke out of her lungs. In an instant, flames poured from her eyes and mouth, quickly eating away her flesh. It was like the creature from before, only this time it was eating its way from the inside out.
