Name: Ueno Katsuko
Age: 19 at ANBU Trials
Birthday: April 3rd, Sandaime Year 15
Rank: Jounin
Service: ANBU Field Ops, ANBU Team 6
Registration Number: 010993
Physical Appearance
Height: 5’7”
Weight: 130 lbs
Blood Type: O
Hair: Dark brown/black, cut short and otherwise left to its own devices. Katsuko likes to call it ‘stylishly messy’. More accurate descriptions compare it to a tumbleweed. She’s growing it out, mostly because she’s too lazy to go get it cut.
Eyes: Hazel, framed by dark lashes. Changes from green-blue to brown depending on the light.
Skin: Pale, covered in scars.
Facial Features: A sharp jawline that comes down to a pointed chin. A small, long nose and thin lips; androgynous. Could be described as either a delicate boy or a masculine woman.
Other Physical Traits: Lanky, with a wiry frame. Has a boyish figure, with narrow hips and strong shoulders. Long, slender fingers.
Handedness: Originally left-handed; ambidextrous through training.
Voice: A low alto, pleasant and warm. Gets high-pitched and cracks when she’s excited.
Identifying Marks: The ANBU tattoo on her right bicep. Various other assorted scars from training with sharp objects. A bastardized seal on her stomach, courtesy of her time spent as one of Orochimaru’s lab rats. An open-heart surgery scar running down her sternum, various incision scars, puncture scars in the crooks of her elbows and wrists— again courtesy of Orochimaru. Four large claw marks in line with the left side of her ribcage from an ill-advised fight with an angry bear summons.
Usual Clothing: On duty she wears the standard ANBU uniform and thick combat boots. Off duty she wears whatever’s available— usually jeans and worn t-shirts. Some days, when doing laundry is just too much work, she drags out her jounin blues and wears those. Has bought new underwear just to avoid doing laundry on more than one occasion. Keeps her arms from her elbows to her wrists covered at all times, whether with bandages, gloves, or long sleeves.
ANBU Mask: Rat, with strong bold black lines around the cheekbones (that are not like whiskers, shut up). Also has a red spiral engraved on the forehead.
Living Situation: A fifth-floor within walking distance of the Monument, and therefore within walking distance of ANBU headquarters. The first floor of her building houses a grocery store, which is totally not the entire reason she chose the apartment in the first place.
Skills
Fighting Style: As a kenjutsu specialist, Katsuko could pick up anything that fell into the ‘sword’ category and kill large numbers of people to death with it. She’s as skilled wielding one blade as she is with two, but she prefers fighting with a sword in each hand. Her mother, a samurai, trained her in the Hyoho-Niten style of sword-fighting.
Thanks to Orochimaru’s experiments, Katsuko’s chakra system is perpetually filled to the point of overflowing. She can pull off several high-powered jutsu in a row, but at a heavy price. Her chakra flow is so strong that she can barely control it— which means that if she’s too exhausted and tries to pull A-rank jutsu, or loses focus for even a second, there’s a high possibility her chakra will recoil on her and burn her alive from the inside out. She’s worked extensively enough with some experts (i.e. Hyuuga) to regain control over her elemental jutsu, enough control that she uses those techniques regularly.
Her fighting style consists mostly of her family kenjutsu combined with ninjutsu from her twin elements, wind and fire. Relies on her speed, dexterity, and agility to make quick, crippling blows. Likes to plant the odd explosive tag here and there for a little bit of fun.
Preferred Weapons: Fights with a combination of katana and kodachi; normally, practitioners of the Hyoho-Niten Ryu use a wakizashi instead of the longer kodachi, but Katsuko prefers the extra reach the kodachi gives her. Uses standard kunai and shuriken for long-range attacks. Fire and wind offensive ninjutsu.
Special Jutsu: Combines wind and fire jutsu with her family kenjutsu, can make a larger-than-normal amount of clones. It’s harder for her to do simple jutsu than to do chakra-eating, A-rank ones. Performing an A-rank jutsu three or four times in a row isn’t a problem— but if she tries to pull off simple jutsu three or four times, it takes her as much effort and willpower as it takes normal shinobi to do an A-rank jutsu. The largest jutsu she can pull off without losing control is fire and wind combined in a storm about a quarter-mile long and wide.
Service Record: Graduated from the Academy at age 10. When she was 13 she was kidnapped by Orochimaru sometime in March and used as an experimental test subject. She spent her fourteenth birthday in the labs. Rescued four months later. Passed the Chuunin exams at sixteen. Passed the jounin exams at 18 and entered ANBU shortly afterward.
Personality
General Personality Traits: Cheerful, intelligent, quick-witted, and lazy. Very hard to rile, seeing as the effort of getting angry, calming down, and then dealing with the damage she’s dealt isn’t really worth it. Plans every move she makes to get the maximum effect for the minimum amount of effort. Only really seems to come alive during a fight, and then she throws everything she’s got into the fray. Says what she means and keeps what promises she can. Straightforward, as much as a ninja can be. Her affection, when you’ve earned it, comes in the form of punches, hugs, and unrepentant freeloading.
Quirks: Doesn’t like anyone touching the insides of her forearms or the crooks of her elbows; keeps her arms from her elbows to her wrists completely covered at all times.
Sexual Orientation: Bisexual.
Gifts/Talents: An excellent liar, when it’s necessary. An attentive and empathetic listener, and very good at calming people down. Cool-headed in a crisis and able to think on her feet.
Flaws: Her general apathy towards anything that doesn’t have to do with fighting. Her laziness, cynicism, and tendency to avoid emotional conflicts at all costs. Deals with personal problems by avoiding them in the hopes that they’ll go away, and is always, always surprised when they get worse instead.
Religion and Philosophy: The closest she’s ever gotten to religion was her mother’s lessons about samurai and their bushido. She’s ambivalent about the concept of honor at best, downright disparaging at worst.
Likes and Loves: Large, open spaces with plenty of sun and warmth and trees. Bright colors. People with expressive faces.
Dislikes and Hates: Orochimaru. Sandaime, for letting Orochimaru go.
Drugs that screw with her reflexes (i.e. morphine, other painkillers, sleeping pills). Hates needles, the smell of antiseptic, small closed spaces, and anything even remotely resembling a human experiment. Really, really hates the interrogation rooms.
Fears: Losing control of her chakra and burning up from the inside out, being tied down and experimented upon while still awake.
Dreams and Ambitions: To hunt down Orochimaru and take him apart piece-by-piece.
Relationships
Family: Her mother Hisae, her father Kasa, and her little brother Makoto. All still alive. Estranged from her family since she joined ANBU, although relations between her and her mother had soured long before then. Still keeps in contact with Makoto, although her parents don’t know about that.
Friends: Her jounin sensei, Miyamoto Hideki, and her original genin teammates— all dead. She has casual acquaintances, drinking buddies, and colleagues, but none of them are close enough to be considered ‘friends’. She was on an ANBU team with Namiashi Raidou last year and got along with him, mostly because both of them liked mangling things.
Lovers: Katsuko’s been in several relationships, some of which she was even happy with. In the end, though, it always came down to a choice between duty or love. She chose duty every time. Since she joined ANBU she hasn’t been involved with anyone beyond the occasional one-night stand, and even those have petered out.
Hero: Miyamoto Hideki, Yondaime Hokage
Enemies: Orochimaru. Shinobi from rival villages. Katsuko doesn’t have the emotional investment or energy to strike up an enemy-ship with someone in Konoha.
Personal History
The result of a fraught romance between a kunoichi and a samurai, Aomine Hisae learned from day one that trust was for fools. Raised and trained by her father as a samurai after her mother left the family, the majority of her childhood was spent traveling from country to country. Her father, Aomine Taiki, was an exiled warrior from the Land of Iron. He knew slightly less about how to raise a child than he knew how to handle his wife disappearing in the middle of the night and never coming back.
Taiki taught his daughter how to fight and win in a world run by shinobi. From him she learned how to channel chakra into her blades and how to draw steel fast enough to cut the enemy’s hand seals off at the wrist; when she grew skilled enough, she started doing mercenary work with her father. The two built a reputation as excellent sell-swords.
After Taiki died during a botched job, Hisae moved on to Wind Country and continued to work as a mercenary. It was there, during a fight against a client’s bodyguards, that she met her future husband.
Ueno Kasa was twenty and a newly minted jounin when a female samurai stabbed him in the arm with her kodachi. It was curiosity, not love at first sight, that drove him to pursue her after that— samurai were rare outside the Land of Iron, and what else was he in Intelligence for if not to gather, well, intelligence?
The next year was spent in a game of cat-and-mouse with her, as the two of them often— sometimes purposefully— took assignments that pitted them against each other. How their chase eventually turned into a courtship is still a mystery, but at the end of the year Hisae and Kasa walked through Konoha’s gates as husband and wife.
Marriage didn’t mean harmonious bliss for either of them. They had two years of happiness; at the end of the second year, after Katsuko was born, Kasa was promoted to Konoha’s ambassador to Wind Country. Hisae, who had given up her old life to settle down with her husband, was understandably bitter that said husband was no longer home six months out of the year. She would have gone with him, had it been any other country besides Wind: her exploits there had netted a large bounty on her head. The birth of Makoto, Katsuko’s little brother, two years later did little to appease Hisae.
Katsuko entered the Academy at the same time as her year-mates, studied hard, and kept her head down. She trained with her mother outside of classes and quickly discovered that she had a talent for kenjutsu. She graduated when she was ten years old and was put on a genin team under Miyamoto Hideki, along with her teammates Arata and Nori. Katsuko developed a competitive, sibling-like relationship with the two boys and constantly pushed herself to keep up with them.
When she was thirteen, Orochimaru kidnapped her on a cold March night. She spent her fourteenth birthday in the labs. The months-long experience left her with a prototype seal carved into her stomach, a chakra system twisted almost beyond recognition, and a lifetime of nightmares.
After her rescue, it was her father who told her that Sandaime had let Orochimaru leave Konoha as a free man. The leader of her village had let her torturer go, treating her and the other survivors like a shameful secret to be hidden. The Hokage’s betrayal rocked her to her core, leading to a breakdown that landed her in the Psych ward for the rest of her physical recovery. It was only the news that Sandaime had stepped down to make room for Minato Namikaze that gave her any feeling of safety.
In October, three months after ANBU had brought her out from the depths of the labs, the Kyuubi attacked. Katsuko’s jounin-sensei and genin teammates were among the dead.
The Ueno Katsuko who re-entered Konoha’s service was very different from the girl who’d been snatched off the streets all those months ago. Her hollow-eyed silence went unnoticed amongst the survivors still reeling from the demon’s attack. When Sandaime’s funeral was held, she wasn’t amongst the mourners.
She attempted to meet with Mitarashi Anko, another survivor of Orochimaru’s experiments, exactly once. The experience was something neither of them wanted to repeat.
Katsuko took refuge in training and throwing herself into higher-and-higher ranking missions, isolating herself from her family and peers. She made chuunin at sixteen, jounin at eighteen, and applied for ANBU shortly afterwards because nobody there asked questions when she enjoyed her job a little too much.
She still keeps tabs on the third survivor of Orochimaru’s labs— a boy named Tenzou Yamato. After the failure that was her meeting with Anko, she’s leery of contacting him.