InsaneJournal

Aim high. If you miss, at least you won't shoot your foot off.

Character Name: Shiota Natsumi 塩田夏弓 ("salted field" "summer archer")
Age: 20
Birthday: July 12
Rank outside ANBU: Special Jounin
Affiliated with which ANBU branch: Hunters
Registration Number: 010910

Physical Appearance
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 135 lbs
Blood Type: A
Hair: long, black, and smooth as silk; she has her mother's hair, if not her mother's beauty. She often wears it in a high ponytail, with shorter bangs sweeping across her forehead, but likes experimenting with more intricate styles.
Eyes: dark chocolate-brown, with long lashes and delicate brows. Her eyesight is superb.
Skin: smooth, clear, and a little paler than normal. Bruises extremely easily.
Facial Features: Too strong-featured for classical beauty; her nose is a little too long, her jaw a little too strong, her face more angular than soft. She's never been called pretty, but striking certainly applies. Fortunately, men tend to be more distracted by...other things.
Other Physical Traits: Okay, let's get it over with: Natsumi's rack isn't just the first thing most men notice about her, it's the only thing quite a few of them notice about her. The muscles in her shoulders and forearms would make quite a few shinobi envious, but it's the padding over her pectoral muscles that draws the eye (and sends the ANBU Quartermaster into fits of despair). Given that Natsumi spent most of her adolescence being more buff than the boys, her glee at her developing body (and the resultant male attention) still hasn't quite worn off.
Handedness: left with the pen and chopsticks; right with the bow; ambidextrous otherwise.
Voice: a cool alto.
Identifying Marks: ANBU tattoo on her right shoulder. A spread-wing falcon silhouette tattooed at the small of her back. A small, circular mole under her left breast.
Usual Clothing: At her family's home, Natsumi usually dresses more formally, in kimono or hakama (if she's at the archery range). Away from home, she likes classy, comfortable clothes that combine elegance with practicality. If a skirt showcases her long legs but hampers her movement, she'll go for jeans instead. Before she entered ANBU, she wore a modified version of the chuunin/special jounin uniform, with a sleeveless shirt, a fitted vest, and an archer's glove on her right hand. Now that she's in ANBU, she's still arguing with the Quartermaster over whether he'll supply a properly sized chestplate or whether she'll get breast reduction surgery.

Natsumi keeps her bows and other equipment sealed in scrolls in her left hip-pouch. Empty scrolls are marked with a dab of red wax; the scrolls in which her bows are sealed have carved spindles instead, individualized with intricate designs. Her right hip-pouch contains weaponry for easy access, while the central one, at the small of her back, holds her med-kit.
ANBU Mask: Bird, in blue
Living Situation: apartment 305, a window-room on the east side of the 3rd floor.

Ninja Skills
Fighting Style: Archer and ranged weapons specialist. Her taijutsu is good, but her ninjutsu and genjutsu are no more than chuunin-level. Her low chakra reserves and tendency to bruise easily mean that she'll avoid the classical forms of shinobi combat if she can. She's focused her perfectionism into long-distance fighting, and she can split a soybean at 25 meters--or find a man's heart at 40. Chakra type: Wind.
Preferred Weapons: shuriken, kunai, and any of three bows, which she generally carries sealed in scrolls on missions. The two-meter-tall yumi has the greatest range (and greatest penetrating power), but the shorter hankyu is more useful in battle. For the best accuracy at distances up to 40 meters, she uses a recurved horn bow she picked up in southern Mangrove Country. She's a bit more casual with this bow than with the yumi or hankyu, both of which she treats and addresses with great respect, but she loves it more.
Special Jutsu: None to speak of. Her chakra reserves are low, and she prefers to use chakra to support her weapons-based fighting rather than to perform flashy ninjutsu or genjutsu. In conditions of poor visibility, she often focuses chakra in her eyes to improve her sight, and on windy days she may employ small Wind-element jutsu to ensure that her arrows won't stray off course. In part because of her low chakra and her general ideas about waste, she tends to be rather critical of her comrades who use flashy and chakra-draining jutsu. She's finally accepted that her low chakra capacity will prevent her from ever inheriting the family summoning contract with hawks, but she'll never be happy about it.
Service Record: Graduated the Academy at 10; promoted to Chuunin at 15. Promoted to special jounin at 20. She plans to make full jounin at 25, just to make it even--and no matter what anyone says about her capacity.

Personality
General Personality Traits: Intensely practical, cool-headed and superbly self-controlled, Natsumi can probably count on one hand the number of times she's lost her temper since she learned that not succumbing to her older brother's teasing was a victory in itself. She can seem a little stand-offish at first, but she has a dry, needling sense of humor that pokes fun at herself as often as at others--and she enjoys letting her hair down, as long as the situation is one she can control.

When the situation is one she can't control--as frequently happens on missions--Natsumi adapts as best she can, and channels the stress into an obsessive perfectionism that can take weeks to wear off. On good days she compulsively straightens the table-settings at restaurants, on rough days she may abruptly demand permission to comb her companion's untidy hair, and on the worst days she locks herself in her room and polishes her weapons for hours at a time. Every single arrow shaft has a sheen like silk.

Despite a mild touch of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, Natsumi manages to get along well with her comrades and friends. She'll never be the center of attention in a group, but she's a warm friend and a quick wit, and her calm temper and practicality has kept her team from fracturing on more than one occasion. She's a good listener, and sometimes she even manages to refrain from offering solutions.
Quirks: has difficulty keeping her hands to herself when faced with an untidy room or an unkempt friend; she'll absentmindedly clean up a friend's apartment while visiting. Enjoys Friday nights at the bar, where she can usually con some unsober fools into paying a great deal for the privilege of playing darts with her. Prefers traditional baths to showers, especially if it's in a hot spring. Fascinated by the village messenger hawks, and will usually try to befriend whatever bird brings her a message. Seldom swears, because she believes in efficiency in every aspect of life, and swear words are much more effective if you save them up until absolutely necessary.
Sexual Orientation: straight.
Gifts/Talents: near-perfect aim with ranged weapons. Excellent cook, although it's time-consuming and stressful enough that she prefers eating out. Can hold a team of abrasive personalities together under the most difficult of conditions, and keep her own temper, too. She can also beat most men at arm-wrestling, and she's very good at written seals.
Flaws: Deals poorly with stress and change; has difficulty adapting when she loses control of a situation, and can have difficulty pulling herself back together if she loses control of herself. Demands perfection of herself, usually gets it, and has difficulty being sympathetic when other people fall short. Or coping when she does. When she's under a great deal of stress and trying to hide it, she can be insensitive, cold, and even cruel. Her low chakra level means that she can't perform many chakra-intensive major jutsu and, despite conserving her energy, will burn out much faster than most shinobi of her level.
Religion and Philosophy: Shinto, with a touch of Zen Buddhism. In terms of philosophy, her personal outlook might best be expressed as "minimum expenditure for the maximum result."
Likes and Loves: traditional food, especially sushi and daifuku. Archery practice with her father. Reading (mostly nonfiction and poetry, but she has a guilty love for trashy romance novels). Bird-watching. Cleaning. Shopping. Composing poetry under the cherry trees with her mother. (She's terrible at it, but she likes making her mother laugh. It's even better when her father joins them, and the two of them can trade very bad poetry.) Friday nights at the bar--if she can't get a satisfactory date, she can usually double her weekly paycheck playing darts. (Even shinobi, who should know better, are astonishingly willing to believe they can out-throw a girl.)
Dislikes and Hates: close-range killing. Cold fingers. Natto. Feeling socially off-balance or awkward to any degree, especially when she feels the situation is slipping out of her control. Slimy men. Crying. Uncomfortable with torture.
Fears: total loss of self-control; she'd rather die than "break," even--especially--in front of her friends. She dislikes the prospect of physical pain, but has fairly high pain tolerance when it actually hurts. She frequently suffers from nightmares--although she seldom remembers them on waking--and still struggles with an irrational terror of crawly things.
Dreams and Ambitions: Natsumi has it planned out almost to the day. At twenty-five, she'll make jounin and retire from ANBU. At thirty, she'll retire from active duty. There will be children by then (although she's leaving some details to fill in later). She'll raise her children (two, a boy and a girl) and help her father open an archery dojo. It doesn't sound terribly exciting, maybe, but that's what ANBU is for.

Relationships
Family: Natsumi loves and respects her mother, Kimiko, but she worships her father, Takahiro. Kimiko is steel will sheathed in silken grace; Takahiro is a bright grin and a strong hug, a steadying hand and an encouraging voice. Natsumi was her father's daughter from the start--but that meant being a ninja's daughter, too. And instead of protecting her, Takahiro taught her to protect herself. When she was eleven years old and heading off to war, Takahiro taught her four ways to kill a man who had her pinned. Kimiko, who gave up a life of wealth and privilege to marry a ninja, taught her two more.

Natsumi has one brother, Takeo, who's two years older than she is--and, he never hesitates to remind her, much prettier. (Takeo inherited their mother's celebrated beauty; Natsumi got their father's angular jaw.) He's a jounin working as a cryptology expert in Village Intelligence, and despite a contentious childhood and his constant attempts to provoke her, they're extremely close.
Friends: Natsumi's best friend is probably her former genin teammate, Morino Ibiki, though it's entirely possible he wouldn't say the same. She's good friends with a few other chuunin and gets along well with most people she meets. Although she has difficulty carrying on an extended conversation with someone who hasn't brushed his hair.
Lovers: none. The gossip says she's picky, which is true, but it tends to miss the part about her intimidating the hell out of most men. She's dated a little, but only two relationships have lasted longer than a month, and neither of them made it to three.
Hero: Her father. The First Hokage, who forged a village out of warring clans and made Konoha into a world power. The Yondaime Hokage (but who doesn't idolize him? Natsumi met him once, when he stopped by their house to speak to her father, and then stay for dinner. She remembers his laugh, and the way he praised her mother's cooking. He told Natsumi she'd grow up to be a beauty, and she thought, even then, that it was a kind lie.)
Enemies: none that she knows of. Should she be watching her back?

Personal History:
Natsumi's mother, Kimiko, was the daughter of a provincial daimyo and, at age eighteen, the most beautiful woman in three provinces. Her father, Shiota Takahiro, was a Konoha jounin and ANBU better known for his ready laugh and skilled archery than for his social grace. On a routine bodyguard mission, he saved Kimiko's life, nearly bled to death at her feet, and woke up in her bed with his wounds bandaged in silk.

Five months later, Takahiro was back at the daimyo's castle--this time, to stand at Kimiko's side as she announced her pregnancy to her parents and demanded their blessing on her new life as a Konoha citizen and a ninja's wife. They gave it--reluctantly--and Takahiro and Kimiko were married three months before their son Takeo was born.

Natsumi followed two years later. She was playing with a toy bow before she could talk, and by the time she entered the Academy at six years old she could outshoot her brother. Upon graduation at age 10, she was assigned to a genin team as the "token girl" on a team of two boys: Morino Ibiki and Setsuri Keigo. Natsumi was taller and stronger than both of them. (Ibiki was sixteen, and nearly six feet tall, before he could beat her at arm-wrestling.) Under the command of their sensei, Nakamura Hitoshi, the team saw a year of D- and C-ranked missions before they were assigned to back up a chuunin reinforcement team carrying supplies to the war's front line. They were ambushed ten kilometers away from the rendezvous point, and Natsumi shot at a living target for the first time. She still remembers the look of empty surprise on the corpse's face when she tugged the arrow out of his chest, and how appallingly easy it was to clean her arrowhead and go on.

When she got home again, she spent half a day burnishing that arrow, and the rest of the day on all the others.

At thirteen, Natsumi's genin team was temporarily split up for special duty detachments. Ibiki went to the Intel boys, Keigo joined the runners, and Natsumi was sent to a specialized ranged-weapons team that provided backup and cover for the heavy-hitting assault teams. Natsumi's disdain for "flashy" ninjutsu techniques quickly solidified; one well-placed arrow was much more effective than a barrage of flashy but useless jutsu. She also learned that killing gets easier the longer you do it, and that she had an excellent head for planning--and for switching from the first plan to any of half a dozen contingencies when something went wrong.

The war ended when Natsumi was fourteen. She found her brother in a bunker filled to bursting with celebrating ninja, and spent half an hour crying on his shoulder before she pulled herself together enough to finger-comb his hair and order him to wash his face. It was the first time she'd cried in nearly four years. The next time came barely a year later, when she and her genin teammate Ibiki left the makeshift morgue after identifying what the Kyuubi had left of their sensei's body. Keigo was dead, too, by then--on a mission in three months before the war's end--and Ibiki held her while she cried for both of them. He swore he'd never tell anyone. As far as she knows, he's kept his word.

For the next few years, Natsumi ran missions with an assortment of cobbled-together teams, striking from the shadows and killing from a distance. She fell in love with a recurve horn bow from southern Mangrove Country, broke her heart over a boy who never knew, and outshot her father two times out of three. At twenty, she made special jounin.

Two weeks later, she followed her father's path and took the ANBU mask.