☆ ooc: profile
[Character Name] Hitomi Kanzaki
[Canon] Vision of Escaflowne
[Point Taken from Canon] Halfway through Episode 14.
[Age] 15
[Gender] Female
[Sexual Orientation] Heterosexual
[Eye Color] Green.
[Hair Color] Light brown.
[Height] 5'3" (160 cms)
[Other] She's, uh... incredibly normal-looking?
[Clothing] Hitomi usually wears her school uniform, consisting of a cream and brown blazer, red necktie, white shirt and brown skirt, though she usually wears trainers with it rather than standard-issue school shoes. She also has a necklace made - though she doesn’t actually know it at first - of a fragment of an energist stone, which used to be her grandmother's. It doesn't really have any special properties aside from keeping perfect time when swung and allowing her to be transported between Earth and Gaea, though she uses it as an aid when dowsing.
[Background]
[Slightly less TL;DR version here.]
Hitomi Kanzaki is fifteen years old. She likes track and field, fortune telling and Amano-senpai, who's smart and handsome and athletic and nice and just seriously totally amazing. All in all, she's a perfectly ordinary high-school girl. Hitomi is, however, one of those perfectly average high-school girls in that she's also the protagonist of an anime series whose opening credits feature catgirls, giant robot battles, airships and teenage boys shedding feathers all over the place so very clearly this state of affairs is not going to last, and oh how it very doesn't.
After passing out during a training session, when she hallucinates running into a startled boy with a nasty-looking sword, Hitomi finds herself having a strange vision of war, fire, giant robots and being saved from plummeting to her death by a mysterious winged man. She wakes up to discover that her crush, Amano, has taken her to the infirmary. After a brief conversation about the pendant that she wears, which somehow keeps perfect time when swung, Amano seems poised to make a move on her which is interrupted by her best friend, Yukari.
On the way home, Yukari asks if she's ever done a tarot reading for herself and Amano. Hitomi says no, but when Yukari confides that Amano might be moving away, Hitomi's anxieties get the better of her. The reading, of course, isn't good. Hitomi interprets it to mean that Amano will be moving away, and her feelings for him are hopeless - but, hopeless or not, she plucks up the courage to make a declaration of sorts to him the following day, telling him that if she can beat her own running record of 13 seconds, she'll kiss him. Amano agrees, keeping time with her pendant.
So far so shoujo anime, right? This is where things start to get interesting with a capital WEIRD.
Hitomi starts her run, but doesn't finish it because random startled boy is random, except this time he's real and she runs into him. This is Van Fanel, he's trying to kill a dragon, and he's not at all impressed at ending up on a high-school running track. Nor, a few minutes later, is the dragon - which, unfortunately, seems far more interested in trying to eat Hitomi, Amano and Yukari than finish what it and Van started. The trio flee while Van tries to get the dragon's attention again, but fails. A running battle commences, with Hitomi and her friends chased by the dragon which is being chased by Van. As her friends hide at the top of a flight of stairs, Hitomi has a vision and realizes that Van is about to be killed. She calls out to him to watch out, he actually does so. Life saved, Van kills the dragon and removes the energist that forms its heart.
Van, of course, is a tsundere and feels the need to point out that Hitomi didn't really help him. Hitomi responds by slapping him. She berates him for being a complete jackass, says she should have let him get eaten and starts to cry. Van relents, slightly, and says she should come to his castle. Before Hitomi can point out that this doesn't make a lot of sense she and Van are caught in a beam of light which transports them back to Van's home world, Gaea.
One cart journey and a quick, confusing vision of mass destruction later, Hitomi and Van arrive back at the tiny kingdom of Fanelia. To Hitomi's surprise, Van turns out to be the prince and the whole business with the dragon part of the rite of succession. With no immediate way to get back to Earth - known on Gaea as the Mystic Moon - there's nothing for Hitomi to do but to sit tight and wait for the coronation to be over and hope that Merle, a lively but childish cat girl with a planet-sized crush on Van, doesn't annoy her to death in the interim.
Of course, it never quite comes to that, as by the time Van's coronation is through she finds herself in the middle of a war zone. Fanelia is attacked by an invisible enemy, and in no time the city has been overrun. Van is ordered by General Balgus to take Hitomi to a hidden shrine and escape, if needs be, in Escaflowne. Hitomi, of course, has no idea what this means, but soon finds out as Van uses the energist he found to summon and subsequently power a giant steampunk mecha, a guymelf. He announces his intention to go out and fight in Escaflowne, but the battle very quickly makes its way to him. He is attacked by a cloaked enemy, but Hitomi realizes something crucial - she can sense where the invisible guymelfs are.
Van destroys the first guymelf, but is very nearly killed by another. Balgus shows up just in time, taking on the guymelf armed with an enormous sword. This goes about as well as you'd expect. It does buy Van and Hitomi time to get out of the shrine, but his sacrifice is very nearly pointless as the pair are surrounded by enemy guymelfs. However, Hitomi's distress at Balgus's death and the devastation she has witnessed causes her to break down, triggering a reaction in her pendant and Escaflowne's energist and beaming them the Hell out of there - only for the pair to become separated.
Lost in the woods, Hitomi she tries to use her pendant to work out where to go next but before she can get any answers, she's attacked by an old mole man. She's saved by the sudden and timely appearance of Allen Schezar, a knight of Asturia who looks so similar facially to her crush that she at first confuses him for Amano. She passes out a few minutes later, waking from a dream of talking with Amano to find herself in Allen's castle. Reunited with Van, the pair are informed that Fanelia has been destroyed. Hitomi is horrified, but before Van can do something stupid they're once again forestalled by events.
Allen is visited by Dilandu, a soldier from the Zaibach empire - responsible for the attack on Fanelia - who claims to be after provisions. Dilandu wastes no time in proving himself to be a colossal ass and Van, unable to let his slights on Fanelia slides, interrupts the proceedings. Dilandu advances on him, and... asks Hitomi about her clothes. Allen saves her from Dilandu's questioning by claiming she's his new girlfriend and kissing her on the cheek, leaving her stunned.
Later, faced with one of Van's epic sulking fits, Hitomi attempts to cheer him up by doing a tarot reading. Van is skeptical, but when Hitomi draws the Death card she finds herself having another vision on the general theme of destruction, this time with added Dilandu. She snaps out of it just in time for the mole man from the night before to dig into their room - intent on returning Hitomi's bag, as an apology. He turns out to be not a pervert but a rather rubbish thief, who helps Van and Hitomi to the room where Allen has been keeping Escaflowne. Before they can leave, Allen stops them and, when Van won't back down, challenges him to a duel which Van ends up losing.
Hitomi has another vision, this time of Allen's castle being destroyed, but when she tries to tell him about it, he is disbelieving. Shortly afterward, some of his men return from patrolling the forest with news they have captured a suspicious person - but this turns out to be Merle, who was looking for Van. She confirms that Fanelia has been destroyed. Hitomi has visions of burning, then collapses with a high fever. She is put to bed by Allen, who nurses her while Van takes care of Merle, and they talk for a while. Hitomi's unguarded comment about Allen's mother leading to the revelation that his mother died after his younger sister, Celena, disappeared without a trace. When he takes her hand, Hitomi can't help but berate herself - she's only just told Amano how she feels, and here she is falling for Allen.
While Hitomi and Merle totally fail to hit it off, Van returns with medicine for their fevers - caused by poisonous plans in the forest. He's tending to Hitomi when she senses the arrival of the Zaibach guymelfs, which quickly lay waste to the castle. Allen orders a retreat, and the little group escape to his airship, the Crusade. They are followed in short order by Dilandu and his Dragonslayers. Allen tries to fight them off. When Van draws Dilandu away from the Crusade on Escaflowne, to allow his friends time to escape, all Hitomi can do is watch.
With Van captured, Hitomi tries to persuade Allen to let her try and use divining to work out where he is. Allen tries to turn her down, but Hitomi perseveres: she asks him to let her prove she can do it by doing a tarot reading on him. The forecast has her revealing a lot more about Allen's past and family than either is comfortable with. Allen calls a halt to the reading prematurely, and tells her he's convinced. After a long night of fruitless attempts to track him down using dowsing, Hitomi remarks in frustration that it would be easier if only she had something of Van's to hold. Merle reminds her that they do - the bandage he wrapped about her arm. With that to hold, and Allen and Merle assisting, Hitomi traces the floating fortress holding Van captive to a fold in the earth.
Allen flies the Crusade in after the Zaibach fortress and he and his men begin a rescue mission, with Merle and Hitomi waiting behind. This, of course, only lasts as long as it takes Hitomi to have a vision of Dilandu killing Van in a swordfight. She runs out, only to realize that the only way to find him involves crossing a five meter wide chasm. Reflecting that her best long jump should see her clearing it, Hitomi decides to leap across. She clears the jump, leaving Merle staring after her in disbelief, and goes to find Van, arriving just in time to see his brother Folken, Strategos of Zaibach, return Van's sword to him. Dilandu attacks right on cue, but is sent spiraling into one of the longest Villainous Breakdowns in the series when Van cuts his cheek - once again allowing Van and Hitomi to make a break for it.
Arriving in the capital of Asturia, Palas, Hitomi meets and takes a dislike to Princess Millerna. First almost throwing herself at Allen, then going out of her way to insult Hitomi, who she mistakes for a handmaid, Millerna doesn't get off to a good start with Hitomi at all. Even when she loans her a dress to go out in, she follows up by trying to throw out Hitomi's uniform. The group head out to the bazaar, but while there Hitomi has another vision of Van's doom and runs after him, tearing the hem off her dress as she goes. She finds him confronting Folken on a bridge, just in time to save him from a sniper attack by Dilandu.
The pair barely have time to catch their breath before they're hustled away by Asturian soldiers. The King of Asturia, claiming to want to put Van's abilities to the test, has him and Escaflowne fight three nastily-armored mercenaries. Van defeats them easily, and when Allen and Hitomi protest that this wasn't a fair fight, shrugs it off. At dinner that same night Millerna continues her charm offensive on Allen, once again obliquely insulting Hitomi when one of the king's advisers puts her on the spot by asking where she's from. Millerna's elder sister calls an abrupt halt to this by breaking the news that Millerna is engaged, much to Hitomi's delight.
Hitomi drinks too much and is put to bed by Allen, but after sleeping it off decides to go get some air. On the way to the balcony, Hitomi is interrupted by Van, who tells her she doesn't want to go up there but won't explain why. Hitomi ignores him and goes up anyway, just in time to witness Allen and Millerna kiss. She flees back to her room, distraught, only to be interrupted by Merle who demands to know why she's crying. Hitomi yells at her to leave, which she does - but, the minute Hitomi is alone again, she is abducted by a group of gecko men who had been hidden in the shadows. Her abductors make their escape by boat, but Van, in Escaflowne, chases after them through the canals and with Merle's assistance manages to rescues Hitomi. Hitomi, who had been hoping Allen would come, is surprised to realize that Van is the one who saved her.
Moments later, back on dry land, the three are attacked by Dilandu again - this time armed with a flamethrower. Allen arrives, buying Van time to transform Escaflowne into flight mode and flee the now-burning city.
Later, camped out in the forest with Van and Merle, Hitomi wakes from a dream about Allen and Millerna even she would admit was rather embarrassing. Merle teases her about calling out to Allen in her sleep, then runs off with Hitomi's pager, which she tries to eat. Later, with Merle sleeping, Hitomi comments that her necklace and Escaflowne's energist look rather similar, leading to a conversation where she and Van trade details about their families. Van asks if she wants to travel with them - he might need her help - and Hitomi gladly agrees.
The path she chooses by taking a reading leads them over the Dragons' Graveyard, an energist mine, and back into danger. Van decides that the only way to stop Zaibach using the energists to power their war machines is to destroy the mine and, while Hitomi and Merle hide a short way off, he launches an attack that's actually going rather well until the girls are spotted by one of the guards. Merle flees and hides, but Hitomi is captured again and, when the mine's commandant threatens her, he calls off the attack. Under interrogation by the commandant Van refuses to speak, so the man hits on the idea of threatening Hitomi with his pet snake. Just when it seems the snake will bite, the group are distracted by a strange sound - the pager, still hidden in Merle's dress, has suddenly gone off as Amano tries to get in touch with Hitomi.
With the guards distracted, Van manages to get his hands on a sword. Freeing himself, killing the guards and the commandant he continues the interrupted attack. When the energists in the storehouse suddenly start resonating and explode, the mine is devastated and the ground splits open. Merle manages to scramble to safety, but Hitomi falls into a crevasse. With no choice left to him, Van springs from Escaflowne and flies to the rescue, catching her before she can be killed, revealing that he was the person in her repeated visions of falling and being saved by a man with wings.
Van fills Hitomi in on the details about himself - he has wings because his mother was a Draconian, believed by most Gaeans to be a cursed people, and before her death he promised her he'd never let anyone see them. Hitomi, however, doesn't care about the legends: she tells Van that she thinks they're pretty.
The trio head for the Duchy of Freid, but are spotted in the woods by Dilandu, who sends his Dragonslayers to attack. Hitomi gets a bad feeling just before the attack and, using dowsing, manages to sense where the cloaked Dragonslayers are attacking from. With Hitomi acting as a kind of early-warning system Van manages to make it to the river, where Dilandu and the Dragonslayers are forced to drop their cloaks - but to no avail, as he's outnumbered and soon overwhelmed. With capture looking inevitable, Hitomi prays for someone to save Van: Allen appears right on cue in Scherazade, his guymelf, and the pair manage to fight the Dragonslayers off, taking one of them prisoner, but when a final shot seems to be headed straight for Hitomi Allen throws himself in the way and is seriously injured.
Allen is taken aboard an Asturian trading convoy, and the day is saved by Millerna, who is fortuitously traveling on the same ship. Millerna has studied medicine, and saves Allen's life by performing an emergency operation. The group travel on to Freid, where Allen slowly starts to recover and Millerna returns Hitomi's bag to her, along with an offer of friendship.
The following day Van asks Hitomi if she can teach him dowsing, so he'll be able to locate the cloaked Dragonslayers by himself. A failed attempt to locate Merle later, Van gives up in frustration. Hitomi, however, finds her easily, to the delight of the Duke's son Chid, who was watching. Merle lets slip that Hitomi is a fortune teller and Chid asks if she can do a reading for him, but before anything can come of this they are interrupted by the news that a seer, Plaktu, has come to help interrogate the captured Dragonslayer. Hitomi goes to see Allen, who asks if she can do a reading on the prisoner. The reading predicts that Zaibach are aiming for the end of everything, so it can be reborn in their emperor's ideal image. The card for the prisoner - under hypnosis at that moment - is blank.
Before Hitomi and Millerna can help Allen to warn someone, the three are taken captive by Chid and his men and imprisoned along with Van and the crew of the Crusade. The prisoner, while under Plaktu's hypnosis, has told Chid that Allen and Van tried to lead a revolt in Asturia, and Chid believes him. The group are to be interrogated by Plaktu, with Hitomi to go first.
Under hypnosis, Hitomi seems at first to suggest that the charges against them are correct - confirming not only the attack on the mines, but that she is not from their planet. When Plaktu tries to get her to hand over her necklace, though, he and Hitomi are plunged into a dream world where the entranced Hitomi discovers that he is a Doppelganger named Zongi, who has killed Plaktu and taken his form to turn Chid and his advisors against them. When he threatens to kill her to preserve his secret, she tells Zongi that he is due to die soon. The pair are swallowed up by black tendrils, Hitomi snaps out of her trance state with a scream, and collapses to the floor, apparently dead.
Hearing her scream, Allen holds Chid hostage to force his guards to let him and Van go to her aid. Millerna tries to revive her by administering CPR, but it's not until Van takes over and has practically exhausted himself that Hitomi revives and, in a panic, reveals Zongi is going to die. Allen convinces Chid to allow them to go after the impostor but, weakened by his wounds, is unable to search himself. Van takes his place, Hitomi going with him, but before Escaflowne can reach him, he is killed by Dilandu. Hitomi, aware of all this, suffers a collapse, leaving Van to track down the cloaked Dragonslayers by himself, something he ultimately manages. Dilandu, in a blind rage over Zongi's revelations about Hitomi, attacks with the intent to kill her, but Van fights him off and his guymelf, damaged by the battle, cannot follow when Escaflowne flies away.
Chid's father, the Duke of Freid, arrives back, and the country starts preparing itself for war. Hitomi, though, is haunted by visions of Zongi's death and when Van approaches her to ask if she can use her powers to find out what direction Zaibach will attack from in the hope of launching a pre-emptive strike, she turns him down. She's worn out from the terrible visions she's having and is tired of feeling like a tool - back on Earth her predictions were only slightly more precise than anyone else's and fortune-telling was little more than a game, but on Gaea her visions are only terrifyingly accurate and things are getting so serious it's scary. She just wants it all to stop. Hitomi flees, going to sit by herself in the hopes of clearing her head. She's eventually joined by Chid, who confesses that he's frightened by the prospect of war and not being able to live up to expectations. Hitomi encourages him, telling him to believe in himself, and says she'll do a reading for him. Chid's future looks ultimately assured, but during the reading she draws a card meaning 'forbidden love', and is troubled by flashes of visions of Allen and Chid's mother, Princess Marlene.
Zaibach attack Freid, and the castle falls - the soldiers and palace guards sacrificing themselves so that the Duke and Chid can escape with the remainder of the army, Allen and his allies. They retreat to Fortona Temple, where the Duke uses a sword to unlock an inner sanctum. He tells them that the duty of the people of Freid is to guard the secret of the power of Atlantis, which ultimately destroyed the city, so it can never be used again.
Some time later, Hitomi goes looking for Van and finds him with Escaflowne. She has no idea what he's doing until he explains that he's trying to use the abilities he taught her to - essentially - synchronize with it. He doesn't just want to pilot it, he wants to become it. Van apologizes to her for asking her to use her powers to help him fight; slightly embarrassed by what she now sees as an overreaction, she accepts. He seems to be about to tell her something else, too, but leaves in a hurry. Left behind with Escaflowne, Hitomi has another vision, of the Duke of Freid standing in the middle of a battlefield in blood red rain. She falls to her knees.
The temple is attacked, and the battle does not go well. Scherazade loses an arm, leaving Allen unable to fight; Dilandu destroys the Duke's guymelf, and a short time later the Duke is killed, having decided that the Gods want him to surrender the power of Atlantis to Zaibach. Chid is left behind to oversee the surrender while the others flee in the Crusade - where they come to realize that Van is still in Escaflowne, and has not even attempted to leave.
Arriving in the hangar, they discover Escaflowne badly damaged and blood dripping from the cockpit, which Van all but falls out of a moment later. Hitomi and Merle run to his side. Van staggers to his feet, insisting he can still fight: his wings burst out and he collapses.
When Millerna examines him, she remarks that his wounds are strange and won't close - Hitomi runs into the hangar, and realizes that Van's injuries correspond to the damage inflicted on Escaflowne, something which happened as a direct result of Van's synching with it. If they can't find a way to fix Escaflowne, Van will bleed to death.
At a loss, the group seek assistance from an Asturian convoy owned by Millerna's fiancé, Dryden. Dryden fortuitously turns out to be rather knowledgeable about guymelfs like Escaflowne. He manages to signal the original constructors, the Ispanos, who will be able to fix it - for a price. That price turns out to be quite staggeringly high but Dryden, claiming to have taken a liking to Van, agrees to pay it. The Ispanos start to fix Escaflowne, but even then Van isn't out of danger - the process of fixing it could very well kill him from the pain. Merle is distraught and though Hitomi tries to comfort her, telling her there's no way this could kill Van, it's obvious even she has her doubts that what she's saying is true.
[Personality]
Upbeat and idealistic, Hitomi is a fairly average fifteen-year-old girl in all that implies - the bad as well as the good. She's energetic, good-natured, spirited and earnest to the point it can seem almost comedic. She's rather tomboyish, though she's not self-consciously so: she still enjoys dressing up and looking pretty, though she's sensible enough to realize that it's not something to make a habit of when there are invisible giant robots chasing you and you frequently have to drop everything and run for your life. She's practical by nature, the kind of girl who'll hack the hem off a borrowed dress if it'll enable her to move more easily and run rather faster.
Though she's nothing if not friendly by nature, Hitomi tends to respond in part to the way other people treat her: Merle is hostile to her, so she's hostile right back; Millerna initially treats her disdainfully, so Hitomi reacts by becoming disdainful of her. It would be a mistake though to assume she wishes either of the other girls any real harm, for all that Merle often annoys her and Millerna is for a long time her main rival for Allen's affections. She has no real malice in her, however, and prefers to believe the best of people, even when they've given her very little reason to extend them the benefit of the doubt, as shown by her attempt to save the Doppelganger Zongi's life even though he's responsible for several deaths and the imprisonment of herself and her friends.
A loyal person, Hitomi cares a lot for her friends - both new and old - and barely less so for people in general. A normal girl from a normal family, the death and devastation she's witnessed since coming to Gaea is something new and terrible to her. She hates the effect war has on her friends, and on the people she meets and places she goes. Hitomi really doesn't like having to see anybody suffering or hurt, and will do what she can to try and alleviate it - even if that means putting herself in danger in the process. She is determined but her willingness to be guided means she falls short of obstinacy: as someone thrown ready or not into a totally different world, Hitomi is quite prepared to accept that other people really do understand how the world works better than she does. Consequently, she's willing to listen to advice that certain of her companions might disregard. (Lookin' at you, Van Fanel.)
Hitomi is by nature cheerful, thoughtful and friendly, but she's no saint. She's rather quick-tempered and can, at times, be capable of being rather self-centred. She can sometimes appear quite oblivious - she doesn't, for example, seem to understand quite why Merle's taken against her and, despite the younger girl's blatantly obvious planet-sized crush on Van, she continues to fail to get it for a very long time. She isn't always very good at taking other people's thoughts and needs into account and can occasionally allow her own desires to blind her to those of her friends. She is, however, not the kind of person who will refuse to own up to her mistakes or try and duck responsibility for the consequences of her behavior: she's every bit as capable of being extremely self-sacrificing.
It's not only her selfish actions that Hitomi blames herself for though. She makes her fair share of missteps, too, and blames herself for them almost as harshly - rather too harshly, if anything. She blames herself for Allen's injuries when he is seriously wounded saving her; though she had no way of knowing her attempt to teach Van dowsing so he wouldn't be vulnerable to the invisible Zaibach guymelfs that constantly attacked him and Escaflowne would lead to Van using the ability to mentally link with Escaflowne and then get himself nearly killed, she feels responsible for this too. As Hitomi sees it, she believes should never have allowed herself to teach him something that would expose him to such great risk.
Though she is undoubtedly a brave person who shows a remarkable talent for adaptability, Hitomi is at times unsure of herself and sometimes find herself becoming overwhelmed by the bad situations she finds herself in. It would be fair to say that she can be a bit of a worrier. She has a tendency to fear the worst when placed in a dangerous or difficult situation and can become rather overzealous (and, at times, even infuriatingly overbearing) in her efforts to ensure her friends' safety. She sometimes appears frankly mistrustful of her friends' abilities to look after themselves. She means well, but she doesn't always consider the consequences of her actions - she's the kind of girl who'll run headlong into danger in the cause of protecting someone she cares about, without quite realizing that she could very well be making matters worse.
If not for the mitigating factor of her age, Hitomi would be romantic to a degree that would be quite ridiculous. She's very shy and unsure of herself around large groups of strange men, especially rowdy ones - she finds them very intimidating and tends to clam up around them. She's prone to developing crushes and to reading more into those crushes than really exist, on either party's part, and consequently finds it very easy to believe herself in love. The apparent fickleness of her emotions occasionally troubles her but she's at something at a loss for what to do about it, and the upset and jealousy she feels when it seems that for all her hopes for the relationship things simply aren't going to work out are certainly real enough. Hitomi is also prone to moments of desperate insecurity (perhaps justified where it comes to Allen), fearing that she's not pretty or accomplished enough to hold a man's attention. Frightened she can't compete, she sees removal of the competition as the only way to get what she wants.
Deep down Hitomi is a romantic realist - she's also a very devoted lover. She simply doesn't realize it yet because she's too busy looking for love in all the wrong places. (And now I'm lookin' at you, Allen Schezar.)
Finally Hitomi likes to be helpful, to the extent that she's quite prepared to make an issue of it when she knows she's got something to contribute and is, for whatever reason, being kept from it. She understands that her abilities are important to her friends, but that doesn't mean she's totally unable to stand up for herself when they ask her to participate in things she's unwilling to do. She's no doormat and is quite willing to criticize the behavior of the people she's chosen to help, something she grows increasingly more capable of as time goes on.
Her willingness - most of the time, anyway - to help out doesn't imply that she's always in total agreement with what she's helping with, and she desperately resists the idea she's only as worthy as her abilities. Simply, Hitomi wants to be liked and needed for herself as a person, not just because she's useful, or for what she represents or can do.
[Specialties/Abilities]
First and foremost Hitomi is an athlete. A promising member of her school's track and field team, she is a good sprinter and long-jumper. She's not much of a one for physical combat, though. Not only is she not very good at it - to the extent if someone gets the drop on her she'd find it very hard to defend herself - she doesn't like or even approve of fighting. More significant are her psychic abilities, though at first it might be fairer to describe her as sensitive rather than straightforwardly psychic. It's suggested in the series that her talents are influenced by her environment. Specifically, that it kind of helps if she's on Gaea.
One of Hitomi's most important powers is her ability to see the unseen, allowing her to locate missing things and people - and, most crucially, to spot the cloaked Zaibach Guymelfs that constantly harass her and Van, allowing him to fight back against them. This ability relies on dowsing using a pendant - by picturing what she wants to see in her mind while holding her pendant (or, later, just thinking of it), Hitomi is able to locate things she can't see. It can be taught to others: after a false start, Hitomi manages to pass this on to Van, with serious consequences when Van almost immediately goes on to use it to mentally link with Escaflowne and then damn near kill himself when Escaflowne is badly damaged in battle.
She is capable of astral projection, though she doesn't really have a lot of control over this ability. Hitomi can, with difficulty, enter the minds of others when they're under a high level of psychic stress, allowing her to talk to, reason with or expose them. This doesn't come without a lot of danger to herself as she can very easily be overwhelmed by the things she sees and feels there and doesn't always know what it is she's supposed to be doing once she's there. The very act of doing it also throws Hitomi into a deathlike state complete with fixed, dilated pupils and complete cessation of vital signs, which is often very unnerving to witness. Despite this, she does retain a limited awareness of the physical realm and can be aided back to consciousness by external events. A slap, as Merle discovers, works wonders for this.
Hitomi also owns a deck of Tarot cards which she uses to tell fortunes with, something she initially did for her high-school friends regarding their love lives. She finds the sudden accuracy of her predictions alarming - on Earth, she suggests her predictions were only slightly more likely to come true than those of anyone else. On Gaea, though, she regularly receives visions of certain doom (specifically Van's) and regularly finds herself having to run around after him in a desperate attempt to stop him from being killed. It's a little more complicated than that, of course: sadly she doesn't know it yet, and thus the mad running-around continues.
Her final ability is to act as a part of a kind of psychic shield - Hitomi, Van and Escaflowne, when working in conjunction, effectively block any attempts to divine their future and thus work out exactly what they might be doing. This shielding doesn't work when any of the three elements are removed, though, so it won't work in Somarium due to lack of giant steampunk Transformer.
[Affection] Since Japanese girls can be quite physically affectionate with one another, hugging and hand-holding is absolutely fine if you're a girl or a young woman and she'd have absolutely no problem reciprocating. If you're a boy or a man and you're making your interest plain, Hitomi is likely to be a lot more awkward around you - she's still quite young and unsure enough to be reduced to a state of complete . Since Hitomi is only fifteen, though, she's incredibly unlikely to want to do much more than kiss no matter how fondly she feels for someone - unless, of course, she's gotten to know them extremely well beforehand.
[Fighting] itomi is absolutely not a fighter by nature. She not only isn't very good at it, she has absolutely no desire to fight in the first place, or even to watch other people do it. She's not likely to put up much of a fight back if attacked and she's even less likely to initiate anything more serious than a shouting match. (Unless you're Van and you're being a complete jerkass to her, in which case Hitomi might just slap you for it.) Injuring her is fine as long as it's nothing that won't heal in time, but given that she really doesn't like fighting and doesn't have any real abilities to defend herself I'd ideally like to keep Hitomi out of confrontations as much as possible.
[Other Permissions] Can telepathic characters read your character's mind? How much can fourth wall breakers say? In other words, how intrusive can another character be toward yours? If there's anything you don't want a character to bring up or know about your character, just fill it in here.
[Other Facts] As the protagonist of One Of Those Animes, Hitomi has already been dragged without warning into one seemingly-inexplicable fantasy world with no understanding of how or when she's going to get home or even if it's possible, so to a certain extent Somarium is just another day at the office to her. In a number of ways this is actually an improvement - at least it's obvious how you get out of this one, even if actually doing so voluntarily appears to be beyond most of its inhabitants. Oh, and there's electricity.