Kuzuryu Ashiko

[sunshinehistory]

Country/Village: Ice, Formerly Otogakure
Rank: Civilian
Age at Game Start: 21
Birthday: September 18th

Appearance

A traditional beauty with bobbed, glossy black hair and eyes to match. In regards to her figure, she is petite, topping off at about five feet, and slender with average but present curves. She is very nearly always seen in an immaculately arranged kimono and a spotless apron.

Abilities/Powers

As a civilian, she isn’t very versed in chakra use at all, but as a Kuzuryu she has some knowledge of poison and other indirect assassination methods.

Personality

At first glance, Ashiko is unfalteringly pleasant, graceful, obedient and helpful. She speaks in a calm, unhurried manner, and is generally in good spirits, unless the general mood of her master dictates otherwise. When studied deeper and longer, however, it soon becomes apparent that she is a case of still waters running deeply. Very, very deeply indeed.

She is intelligent, resourceful, and actually has a sense of humor, though it is rather wry and she does her best to swaddle it beneath her normal servile attitude. She takes pains to always be well-groomed, as she was taught from an early age that an unkempt appearance would reflect poorly upon her master; truly, a fate too terrible to contemplate.

The above-mentioned training left her attentive, and with a readily flexible set of morals. Orochimaru’s experiments and ambitions, when she first encountered them, didn’t earn so much as a surprised blink. The Kuzuryu family has served despots and madmen in the past, both of which had in time turned their eyes towards conquering death. Ashiko does not personally take part in her master’s work, contenting herself to seeing to his personal needs. The most she does is organize his journals detailing the various processes and offering small celebrations with each ‘breakthrough’ or discovery he reaches. Most often, she offers to make sekihan for the next meal or as a snack between experiments.

Despite being more than capable of turning a few heads, Ashiko has little to no interest in pursuing romantic relationships. Her master will always come first, which is something she is self-aware enough to realize would be hard for any average significant other to stomach. When the time comes that she needs to leave a child behind to carry on the family duties, she plans to ask her master to choose a suitable partner for her—or perhaps, given just who she serves, a more utilitarian insemination will follow. Beyond her master, she forms warm yet fairly shallow friendships with others she meets while following him. She may have picked up several pen pals over the years, but likely has avoided mentioning her master’s identity beyond simple but numerous mentions of her ‘Danna-sama’.

History

The Kuzuryu family was famed, in the most elite of circles, for being the single-most capable servant family of any court. They served directly beneath a line of Daimyo for centuries, their loyalty seamlessly transferred at each change in power and station, seeing to their masters’ and mistresses’ wishes and whims with prompt service and zero judgment. They are trained from birth not to bat a single lash at the bizarre vicissitudes of the political climate they exist at the edges of, and any and all orders they may be given. A Kuzuryu is reserved, dignified, and supportive of their master in all exploits, be it poisoning a more successful rival, keeping mum about an affair, or taxing the lower classes into bitter starvation and poverty.

Coincidentally, it was three successive generations of Daimyo that saw to an uprising. The Daimyo at the time who had inherited control of the Kuzuryu family was publicly cast down and executed, and all but two members of the family were killed as well in his defense. The survivors were a very young Ashiko and her largely bed-ridden grandfather; when the new regime was instated, they were exiled to a small, lakeside village. Ashiko’s grandfather raised her to the old Kuzuryu standards, convinced that eventually the country would settle and select a new Daimyo. He regaled her with the history of their family’s servitude until she could recite it from memory verbatim, and trained her in every field that a discerning servant might need to know about in order to aid any sort of master.

A new Daimyo did indeed rise, but by that time her grandfather had passed away, and Ashiko had already sworn herself to a new master: a man by the name of Orochimaru.

He passed through the small village not a month after her grandfather had been cremated, and Ashiko gravitated to him almost immediately. Perhaps it was some ingrained instinct, a biological need to look after the needs and necessities of an exceptionally powerful man. Perhaps it was his own bizarre magnetism. Whatever the reason, however, the result was that she eventually left the village with him, and seldom left his side since that day, save for when he ordered her.

He ordered her to do so quite frequently over the past few years, to her dismay, and it resulted in her forming several very notable bonds, including at least three significantly politically important members of the Uchiha clan, plus the Hyuuga heiress. In February, however, she crossed paths with the man she had originally been born to serve: Arashi Yamaru. Her faith in her Danna-sama began to waiver at that point, and she remains torn between her duty and childhood friend, and the master that took her in when she had nothing to live for.