Name: Yamanaka Tsuruko
Age: 23
Physical Description:A full figured adult Yamanaka woman, her long blond curly hair having taken a lot of time and effort to maintain, her big blue eyes usually holding a melancholic expression when caught without a social mask. She makes fairly heavy use of cosmetics, pink lipstick and heavy concealer helps cement her reputation as a soft, vain bimbo, though it's true purpose is to keep the telltale signs of a cursed mark from being known. Without it, purplish scaled tendrils of infected skin crawl across her face, radiating up from a diamond mark on her neck.
She most often wears loose dark green fabric that matches the leaves of the forest fairly well, though since choosing the bow as her Taijutsu of choice, she keeps a fairly asymmetric design. Her left side keeping a loose wide sleeve; which she often crosses over herself while the right side is kept mostly bare, so as not to interfere when with her aim. The practice of removing one sleeve having been made as a permanent alteration to the outfit. Underneath she wears the common mail of ninja wires most ninja wear benieth their clothes. She also wears a steel Mune-ate across her chest in an effort to keep her bowstring clear.
Mental Description: Tsuruko has been afraid of violence for a long time, shes been completely comfortable being seen as weak and pathetic to everyone around her because she believes that others follow a twisted morality that causes them to value things that shouldn't be valued, while there are many other beautiful things about life that are much more important. However in her adulthood she has begun to grow cynical. Shes found that love, safety and security have been genjutsu in themselves. Shes sure that she'll never be able to trust again and shes struggling to figure out a way to resolve the contradiction between this and her core beliefs. How could she lead a comfortable life amid a community of people who care about eachother when love fades, and she knows herself to be so open to falling for false security.
She still loves the last person who left her behind and it torments her, such that its tempting to cut her own heart out of her chest. This feeling has brought with it an apathy, or loss of hope that has somewhat loosened her moral standards. There is still an aversion to violence, but what if we simply imagine differently, that our opponent is just another straw target. Dispite all this, she can seem in quite high spirits, shes learned to mask her feelings pretty well in people's company, but you can still see it drop each time there is a lull in conversation, a quiet moment under the moon, or the melencholic look while staring down an arrow at a target.
History: Tsuruko is known as a remedial ninja, many look at her as a failure, having wasted her talents as a Yamanaka due to what is seen as an appalling lack of will. Ever since her training began as a child, shed felt the notion of harming others to be frightening and unnatural. The notion of possibly harming a training partner would always cause hesitation and defeat. Those she fought were often furious, finding it humiliating that their partner would hold back. She didn't necessarily take defeat easily herself, not due to the defeat itself, but she'd shed tears over the injuries she'd sustain herself. Her instructors mostly wrote her off as too soft to be a leaf ninja, while her family insisted she remain to continue on the family's legacy.
Tsuruko didn't take to ninja morality well, she grew bitter toward others, she felt that everyone else was deeply broken to be okay with all this. She felt like she was surrounded by monsters, though her hatred would never blossom to make her revel in the violence that others always seemed to seek, her bitterness was surely felt socially when as a teen she developed into quite the social viper. Meanwhile, someone who did take to ninja morality well, perhaps too well, was her little brother. Half her age and just entering the academy, he held none of the constraints she did and easily surpassed her. Initially it seemed he took quite a bit of satisfaction in besting his own sister, but it embarrassed him more than anyone to share a class with her and then quickly leave her behind there.
Outside of the academy, Tsuruko helped out at the maple street flower shop, taking care of the plants. The idea of nurturing something instead of trying to end it felt right to her. She'd hang out with other losers of a similar situation and she'd practice archery to calm herself down when things got too much for her and eventually it allowed her to graduate from the academy, a tecnicality brought on with no small amount of political pressure from her family branch. Her skill with archery was something she'd actually kept from the instructors themselves, but once that secret was found It could be classified as Taijutsu, though the targets didn't have to feel pain.
As a genin she decided to specialize in reconnaissance. Though no teams would want to take her, she has been made to go along with a few missions as a trial, and most of those went quite poorly. Her brother, eventually decided he'd had enough of having a sister so weak, having developed into a terrifying ninja, eventually he appeared to her. He'd found a way to make her strong, apparently. She wasn't interested, but he wasn't someone who took no as an answer. Her memories are hazy of that moment, made complient through genjutsu that left her sluggish and unthinking and bound in snakes. There was a great pain in her neck and she screamed as a cursed mark was inflicted upon her. She passed out unable to withstand the pain. The result he found hilarious, after all the effort he put into trying to fix her, she wasn't even strong willed enough to withstand the pain of activating it. The mark was a waste on her, but he left it as some sort of twisted reminder.
Team trials faded away over time, and she'd thought she'd be allowed to lead a peaceful life in the leaf. She decided to settle down and move in with a boy she liked. Though after a couple of years she was evicted. The man having grown bored of her. A second relationship, she tried to let him have whatever he wanted but his interest still faded. The third, a complete loser who she helped to escape a life of social ostracism and depression, she was sure for the third time she was in a secure situation. How could someone who was such a loser leave her, especially when she helped them so much? It didn't matter. As soon as he'd been saved from the hell he'd made for himself, he'd lose interest too, more interested in another member of the Yamanaka family which she'd introduced them to. She still regularly has to see them together where she lives.
A new frustration having built up inside her, she found herself practicing her archery a lot, finally feeling a little bit of that call to violence that others had perhaps, or maybe just a growing apathy amid everything else she was grappling with at any given moment, as she felt herself now incapable of having a normal life. Perhaps she'd go back and try again at it. If nothing else, it'd give her a good opportunity to die like most have expected from her, so she didn't have to keep feeling the love which she couldn't let go of.
Bloodline/Core ability: Yamanaka
Despite her difficulties in basic combat training, per parents never gave up on her. After all, the one thing she never neglected was their flower shop and their horticultural teachings. Her gentle nature served well in nurturing the poisonous plants of their craft. She'd done so happily since she was a child, unknowingly infusing the chakra of her family line into those that craved it. Most notably the nightshade flower, fed daily with a drop of Yamanaka blood would for some unknown reason create a potent poison that could be extracted. Perhaps the secret of why is contained somewhere on an ancient scroll, perhaps the remnance of an ancient curse passed down through the blood, harnessed for the family's benifit. Whichever it is, a total mystery to her, and even the method of extraction would have remained a mystery to her for many years, until her first mission as genin, long after her brother had done the same, her mother happy she finally had a good reason to use it.
When it came to genjutsu, she's had no where near the talent of her brother, though she had a couple of small mental tricks under her belt, shes never really had any interest in dominating the mind of another, in fact she finds the idea rather frightening, the actions of her brother has tended to make her more interested in finding ways to resist such genjitsu. She's had the chance to train before, when her brother left her unable to the resist the application of her curse mark with his powerful genjutsu. She wasn't ready then, but maybe next time she will be, her mind having been awakened to the possibilities.
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