Sukeban

Description
An 165cm tall athletic young Japanese woman, with a defiant posture. Her hair tied back in a high pony tail that hangs to mid-back, her bangs long and unkempt in the front. Shimmering red flames wash around her hair, kicking off drifting sparks and embers. Her right eye is a burning red, lit with an inner fire. Her left eye is covered by a black eyepatch with a red and yellow flame emblazoned on it.

she's wearing a black sailor-style blouse with a red scarf, the sleeves rolled up, the collar unbuttoned; a long black pleated skirt that drapes to her ankles, sensible black loafers, and white ankle socks. On her hands, she has a pair of black fingerless biker gloves.

Origin
Kotone is a mutant, though she doesn't know this. Her fire powers were innactive until her final year of highschool. She got into a fight with a rival gang, and won. Unfortunately, they were the children of yakuza, and they got their big brothers to teach her a lesson. They grabbed her off the street, knocked her out, doused her with gasoline, set her on fire, and ran off. She awoke a few hours later with a headache, surrounded by cinders. She coud feel a fire burning within her, aching to be released. Not knowing who had grabbed her, she had no one to lash out at, so after letting off a few jets of flame and flying around for the fun of it, she went home to take an aspirin.

Powers
Flame Control: Kotone can create fire, and manipulate her own flames, turning them into blasts of fire, fiery clouds of flame, breathe fire, toss balls of fire, or concentrate all her fire into white-hot flames aound her right hand, capable of burning through even reinforced materials. She can fly, leaving a trail of smokey flame behind her, use her flames to create a superheated barrier of air around her that deflects objects and refracts energy away from her, lessening the damage.

Inner Flame: She's immune to all but the hottest fires due to the flames continually burning within her body. She can perceive patterns of heat. If she wants, she can let her inner flames be visible, causing her eyes to turn glowing red, and for a fiery shimmer of flame to wash along her hair.

Burning Will: While Kotone is for the most part an athletic, but not superhuman, woman, her inner fire manifests mentally as an insane level of willpower. This lets her shrug off hits that would stun most people, and makes her very difficult to effect with mental powers.

All of her powers, except for her burning will, are manifestations of her flame control mutant ability.

She's a also an accomplished judoka, capable of handling herself in a fight even without her powers.

Personality
Kotone keeps up a fierce exterior, speaks roughly, and is impulsive, quick tempered, suspicious, and rude. The reality is different. More than anything she wants to be accepted, to have friends that she can laugh and cry and be herself with. Friends that she can trust, and not have to constantly be wary of, waiting for the inevitable betrayal. She's also terrified of her powers. She loves that they make her strong, but she knows herself, she knows that she's weak. That's she's standing on the edge of an abyss, and the temptation to use her powers to make everyone fear her, to get back at everyone that ever laughed at her, is really, really strong. So far, her desire to protect her mother, and to maybe some day prove herself worthy of loving Suzume, keeps her firmly on the edge of the abyss. Since coming out and being accepted by Suzume, and by others, Kotone has mellowed a little. She's still a hothead though.

History
Ume Yoshida fell in love when she was 16. Unfortunately, it was with a female classmate, her best friend. She never worked up the courage to confess, and her friend got married to a man while she was in college. Brokenhearted, and facing pressure from her parents to get married, she reluctantly began dating a man. Within a few months, she was pregnant, and the man, who turned out to be married already, refused to have anything more to do with her. She turned to her parents for help, but they shunned her as well, considering her a disgrace. Forced to fend for herself, she took whatever low paying jobs she could find, and tried to provide for her daughter, Kotone as best she could.

Kotone was a bright, cheerful child, until she got to school age. In school, she was teased, students insulted her mother, calling her a whore, and they rubbed Kotone's poverty in her face. Some pretended to be her friend, stringing her along for a few weeks before humiliating her. So she learned to be tough. To be suspicious. To be untrusting. To be mean. She became a bully. If they wouldn't be her friends, if they laughed at her, then fine, she would make them fear her instead.

Her teachers tried to channel her energies into something more productive, so at their urging, she joined the judo club. For a while, she was happy. Her teammates feared her, which was good, and they respected her strength, which was even better. But in the end, it couldn't last. She fought too dirty, and kept losing matches due to fouling out. The last straw was in a regional competition. Her opponent went out of her way to taunt Kotone, and had the skill to back it up. Frustrated, Kotone resorted to an illegal hold, and broke her opponent's leg.

More years passed, and she got worse. She barely bothered coming to class, and probably would have skipped entirely if her mother hadn't begged her to keep going to school. And if Suzume Doi hadn't been there. Suzume Doi the class rep, short, elegant, cute, and cheerful she smiled at Kotone, and talked to her like there wasn't a million miles between the situations of their families, like Kotone wasn't just a violent thug.

When her graduation date drew near, she began to despair. Suzume was going abroad for college. To Colonial Bay State University, in the United States. Kotone's grades weren't even good enough to get into a 4th tier Japanese college, and there was no way her mother could afford to send her anyway. And then the miracle happened. She got a letter from CBSU inviting her to attend, on a full scholarship, under the condition that her mother come with her, in light of her record as a delinquent and her grades. She didn't know who had helped her, but she vowed to make the most of this chance! Colonial Bay was a city of heroes. Maybe she could leave her past behind and become a hero too.

Since coming to Colonial Bay, she's had many adventures as a hero, confessed her love to Suzume, got engaged to Suzume, moved off campus to own place with Suzume, went to work part time in the Neko Cafe that Suzume opened to give Kotone's mother a relaxing job, had her powers increase, briefly threatening her control, joined the Princess Guard, fought goblins, supervillains, the undead hordes of the Reaper, and a swarm of animated chocolate bunnies. Recently she's had to cope with Suzume joining her as a superhero. She has a pretty busy life for a former punk from Osaka.