Nina Irving

Name: Nina Irving
Age: 18, real age 18/19
Gender: Female




Height and weight: 5’10” and 117 pounds
Hair and eye color: Straight and silky hair, of the light nuance of milk chocolate. It reaches down to the middle of her shoulder blades, and is usually worn in a side ponytail. Eyes are of the same color.
Appearance: Due to her mixed heritage (European, Australian, Japanese and Native American), Nina exhibits quite an interesting set of features. First of all would be her skin, of a warm olive tint, which covers lean, barely sketched muscles. Taking in consideration Nina’s hobby of running, it makes sense for her long legs to be the most developed part of her body. For the same reason, she isn’t quite the busty type, feature accentuated by her habit of wearing large blouses. An item she is particularly fond of is a silk lavender scarf, which she would often be seen fidgeting with. In matters of clothing, the young woman prefers comfort over fashion, and simply dreads torture instruments such as high heels. She has a tattoo running down her spine, kanji and kana drawn in black ink composing the words ‘hopeful monster’*.
[*genetics term. Nina understands it as the chance of survival of a being/idea completely different from what we are used to]

Sweetening the impression left by her serious pointy features, her big brown eyes have a childish, curious look to them. She has a hard time controlling her facial expressions and gestures. Not used to inter-human communication, Nina also has a hard time piecing words together. That’s why, when trying to convert a particularly difficult or slippery idea, she will unconsciously try sketching figures through the air. It should be noted that Nina’s fingers possess a remarkable dexterity, especially in combination with a keyboard. Her normal walking pace is slightly faster than the average, a bit mechanical, but instinctively slows down when in someone’s company. However, when being allowed to run at her usual speed, Nina appears incredibly graceful, almost like a dancer - or even the legendary Lung-gom-pas Runners from Tibet. She seems like lost in a trance, and, quite the exception in her life – truly happy.


Personality: Nina is an introverted person, one who often has difficulties expressing herself. When that happens, she often fidgets and gestures, as if thoughts are pouring through her fingers. She is also a very innocent and naive girl. Partially because she had always been protected, partially because of psychological issues. When being told something which severely violates that serene state of mind, her brain simply can’t perceive it. She hears the words and sees lips moving, but they make no sense to her. However, Nina doesn’t simply ignore other people’s problems; instead, she considers it her duty to help others and make the world a little better. Violence of any kind is something she doesn’t understand, and which she will try to avoid.

What she truly longs for is a state of inner peace, which she temporarily achieves through her two greatest passions – running and mathematics. At her best, Nina seems to radiate an incredible calm, an unshakable, silent and almost autistic force. At her worst, she’s just an alien lost in the wrong world. She is used to being alone, and will hesitate to approach people. Lies are something that she does neither like nor understand, so she will think carefully before speaking. Truth is, she will think a lot before doing anything. Maybe too much, sometimes giving strangers the impression of being dim-witted. To friends and ideas, she is loyal to an embarrassing extent.

Strengths:

• Intelligent – Nina has a frightening memory and logic when it comes to exact sciences. She likes solving difficult math problems for a pastime, in the same way people do rebuses, and has also been regarded as a pretty skilled hacker (note- not cracker, but computer expert). She seems to get a silent pleasure from numbers and mind games.
  
  
• Caring – When she does notice the surrounding biomass, Nina tends to care deeply about it – maybe a bit too much. This refers to people, animals, plants...pretty much anything living. She’d be the type to step on a spider and then cry her eyes out because of this.
  
  
• Focus – She has never been a very good sprinter, but as soon as she gets in the proper mind state, Nina can run for hours on end. A similar thing happens with any action that she enjoys doing. It just doesn’t feel tiring.
  
  
• Reflexes - Really useful for someone who loves crossing long distances in a relativelly quick pace while rarely thinking about where her feet would land the next second.

Weaknesses:

• Lost in her own world –Despite her impressive knowledge volume, Nina can barely take care of herself. She is the type of person who would prefer sitting down and analyzing all the types of molecules inside a piece of cake, rather than actually eating it. However, she’s not a full-fledged ‘idiot savant’ by any means, only a bit weirder in comparison with the majority.
  
  
• Socially awkward – Most words look excessive and opaque for the girl with her head in clouds of numbers. So do most people. On the other hand, she enjoys exchanging ideas with those who she trusts.
  
  
• Non-distributive attention – Correlated with her insane concentration power. Probably, the only way she would notice a thunderstorm would be if lightning struck her.
  
  
• Dependence – Not physical, such as to tobacco or drugs, but rather emotional. Nina is still a bit of a child, and tends to cling to the people she cares about.

History: When the beautiful Kimiko Yamada started the engine of her airplane that day, no one could have predicted the hellish storm which would soon ravage the sky, or the strange events which would follow. Flying above the ocean with almost no visibility for several hours, she was forced to try an emergency landing in one of the uninhabited islands of the Pacific. It was more of a controlled crash, and the woman thought she had no hopes of survival. So did the explorer Jacob Irving, when he saw that giant mass of steel heading directly towards him. But fate (or chance) is that the two survived their first meeting. And so there followed others, albeit in less extreme circumstances. In five years time, they were married and had a baby. Go figure.

Nina, as they called her, was left in the care of her grandparents, in Japan. She was a quiet child who rarely bothered anyone and watched the world through big, calf-like eyes. At least, until she learned how to speak (‘why is the sun yellow?’; ‘why are mommy and daddy almost never at home?’ ; ‘look, I got new socks. Wanna see them? I like ice-cream. How do you make cookies?’). Her appetite for knowledge was so insatiable and serious, that her older relatives let out a metaphorical sight of relief when Nina started going to kindergarten, and later to school.

As she grew up, less and less people were able to answer her questions (‘How does dark matter influence the universe?’; ‘What causes gravity?’). She grew up as a loner. The darker nuance of her skin, the fame of her parents, her silence and the fact Nina could mentally multiply three-digit numbers as if it was the easiest thing in the world made others kids avoid her, and the girl didn’t feel the need to correct the situation. There was something so deep and frightening in the viewed her passions, namely numbers and running, that even bullies had a tendency to stay away from her.

Her talent bordered genius, and Nina was determined enough to get the best of it. Not for fame, neither to prove anything to anyone, but only for pure and solitary enjoyment. However, it just wasn’t to be. Just a few weeks after turning 18, Nina Irving collapsed in her room, coughing her life out because of an untreated cold that had been developing for the last few months. She was alone at home. It took a few agonizing hours at the edge between life and death, spasmodic gasp and lungs slowly filling with liquid red, until something finally snapped in Nina’s chest. Freed from its shell, her soul could only catch a glimpse of her poor and frightened self, before being drawn to Soul Society.

Written sample:

Quote :

‘Such a blatant display of chance!’

The white winter butterflies spun around in circles, helixes and spirals, followed by Nina’s enchanted eyes. All alone on the moonlit street, she ran. Her feet moved quickly and slipped often; under jeans, her knees were black and blue. But emotions bloomed faster than bruises, in the girl’s exhilarating race through the blizzard. Such a blatant waste of snow, so many snowflakes – and behind them, that little, all-knowing smile of physicists who said that in the whole history of the world, it is highly unlikely that two of them will ever be exactly alike.

How many possibilities! A number far greater than the one of the atoms in the universe. And if there were just eighteen terms to combine instead of millions, like the eighteen years of hers, the chances would still skyrocket over 6 Quadrillion! One needs to develop a function if they want to find anything in this mess... With this kind of thoughts spinning around in her mind, Nina ran further. Her nails were a pale nuance of mauve, hands were numb. She stumbled and fell, again. But couldn’t get up anymore. Splash, cough, splash; spit, blood and tears tainting the white snow. Every square millimeter of her respiratory tract had gone beyond sore, it was just raw flesh. Lost in her thoughts, she just hadn’t noticed it.

“Hey! Are you all right?!”
The woman’s fingers instinctively clenched, she knew that voice. Her muscles stiffened, and with her last bit of her strength, she jumped up and continued running. Faster. And faster. It wasn’t her style, it was too quick; she couldn’t enjoy it. Her long white coat, now dirty with secretions, was fluttering behind her back. The snaps of the wind eventually covered her colleague’s voice, and Nina was happy for that. After all, it had been his decision to think she was all those unpleasant words he always said, and it would have been improper of her to interfere with that, to do something as selfish as make him worry about her. It would have equaled ridiculing all the intense thought process he must have put in that decision years ago, and all the developing and correcting he must have done since then. She couldn’t agree with the result, but it didn’t matter.
“Nina?!”

Everything is absolutely perfect. Apart from one thing I'm afraid, the fact that Nina can produce an extremely miniscule fraction of her powers isn't going to be allowed I'm afraid. The reason being; a souls hidden power will only be realised after they have either become a shinigami OR become a hollow. Anything before that would simply be a higher reiatsu level than most regular souls and the feeling of hunger coupled with the need to eat.

Any foreshadowing of a characters power can be done within the character itself, for example Nina enjoys mathematics. Maybe her power revolves around the use of equations?

In any case can I ask that you change this part of your application, once you do you'll be ready for approval. ^w^

You know what? That just gave me a wonderful idea for further development! Tyvm!

Anyway, edited. Hope everything's all right now!

Oops, one minor detail; can we have your characters real age (The amount of time they have been dead combined with their time as a human.) Sorry it slipped my mind the first time. =p

Ah...right. But you see, I had planned to start role-playing with all the confusion and questions of a spirit who has no idea where she is (Soul Society), or even that she is...erm, dead. In that case, is it all right for me to put such a small difference between the real and the apparent age?

Note: I'll add more years as/if I rank up, don't worry.