Velvet Key app
Player Info:
Nickname: CD
Age: 30
Personal LJ: crystaldawn
Method of Contact: email:sailorn1@aol.com
plurk: holyfight
AIM: Tomcat Claws
Characters Played: N/A
Character Info:
Name: Orihime Inoue
Age: 16
Canon: Bleach
Pull Point: chapter 423
Background Info:
History: Inoue Orihime was the second child in her family, after her brother Sora, who was 15 years older than her. According to Sora, their father was a "monster" and their mother was a "whore", the kind of parents who'd hit a child until they stopped crying. As soon as Sora turned 18, he took his baby sister and fled. It's highly unlikely that Orihime even remembers her real parents; instead, all she knew of family growing up was Sora, who was a caring and wonderful guardian.
When Orihime was in middle school, three years before the series began, Sora died in a car accident. Even though this was in no way Orihime's fault, she does feel she's somewhat to blame for it - the night before his accident, he'd given her the hairpins she still carries with her. She didn't like them and spent the evening giving Sora the silent treatment. Before he left that morning, she didn't even tell him to have a nice day. When he returns as a vengeful spirit and is exorcised by the series protagonist, Kurosaki Ichigo, she finally gets her chance to tell Sora goodbye.
The incident with Sora's spirit comes early in the series, and is the real first cohesive multi-chapter story arc in Bleach. After that, Orihime is a regular character, developing powers right alongside Ichigo's other friends and eventually accompanying him on their adventures. Although Orihime's powers have three functions, the one used most often is their ability to heal; this is the ability most important to their group because of their tendency to fight recklessly and get injured at the drop of a hat. She's single-handedly saved the lives of nearly everyone in their group at least once.
More information can be found here: http://bleach.wikia.com/wiki/Orihime
Personality:At first blush, Orihime might seem a bit like a ditz. The side of herself that she chooses to show everyone (particularly her friends) is happy-go-lucky, cheerful, helpful, and very friendly. She's overwhelmingly kind and fairly innocent and tends to invoke a protective response in those around her. This doesn't mean she's stupid or childish by any means; she's third in her class overall and can be quite pragmatic and creative in battle situations. But she lacks a certain degree of self-awareness and "street smarts" that might make it seem otherwise. She also has a unique appetite, often making food based on puns or just plain strange combinations (like honey wasabi ramen or egg parfait over rice).
She has a vivid, overactive imagination that seems to be inspired a lot by television and that those around her often see flashes of. It seems to work faster than her mouth in a lot of cases - in one instance, she's asked by her best friend Tatsuki whether she's ever been to the park with their mutual friend Ichigo, and this ends in her telling herself to watch out because someone has a gun. It's not that Orihime automatically went park=>guns; she had a (somewhat) natural thought progression from being in the park with Ichigo, to racing Ichigo to the teeter-totter, to racing Ichigo in the Olympics, to winning the track and field competition, to winning the world heavyweight title, to an assassin in the crowd at the boxing match. Likewise, when her class is assigned to make pictures of themselves in "the future", Orihime takes the assignment figuratively instead of literally. Instead of drawing herself as she imagines she'll be in the real future, she draws herself in a Jetsons-esque robot-and-flying-car "future" as a hyper-destructive robot. It isn't that Orihime thinks she will really become a giant robot; it's that she imagined herself in a creative, "futuristic" way.
When you look past the silliness and the overactive imagination, however, Orihime's inner self is much more down-to-earth and actually quite insecure. She's very critical of herself after she develops powers, especially. Her powers, the Shun-Shun Rikka, have three functions: healing, shielding, and cutting. Of these three, her most powerful ability is the ability to heal. However, that is often looked over in favor of more offensive abilities, and as such, Orihime sees herself as being less useful in battle than her friends. The actual truth of the matter could not be further from this; Orihime is invaluable to her friends as a healer, and has saved most of them from death or horrible injury at least once. These healing powers were even the premise Aizen, the series big bad, used to kidnap her (although his true purpose was simply to lure her friends into his base), because they not only heal, but can reverse any event that happened to an object at all. Still, Orihime has a tendency to be very critical of herself for not contributing enough to the offensive side of battle.
She doesn't like for her friends to see any of these weaknesses, though. In fact, in her very first story arc, she outright states that she didn't want her own brother to see her sadness or tears because she didn't want him to worry about her; the same logic applies to her friends. Any insecurity, fear, or doubt she has wouldn't come out often in interactions with other characters unless she really trusted them, so it won't be seen often by others. For the most part, those who interact with her will see a happy, somewhat dopey, very creative teenage girl.
Another facet of Orihime's personality that bears mentioning is her loyalty to her friends and the strength of their friendship. When her friend Rukia was taken back to Soul Society to be executed and Ichigo had doubts as to whether he should go get her back, Orihime was the one who talked him into it. And when she though that Ichigo might like Rukia for more than friends, even though Orihime was jealous, she took the burden and blamed herself because of how much she cared for Rukia. And when Rukia was attacked and presumed dead in Hueco Mundo, Orihime screamed to be released from her cell so she could heal her. The first time her powers activated was because her best friend Tatsuki was in trouble; she stated then that she would never forgive anyone who hurt Tatsuki. And when Aizen's henchman, Ulquiorra, threatened to kill all of her friends, she willingly traded her freedom (and what she presumed would be her life altogether) for their continued safety.
Finally, Orihime's crush on Kurosaki Ichigo, the series protagonist, should be mentioned. Tatsuki points out that Orihime has a crush on him in her very first appearance in chapter two and this crush persists throughout the series until the present time. Although Orihime can let her imagination run away with her (most recently imagining Ichigo inviting her into his room as him being dressed in a host outfit and emitting sparkles), she has demonstrated that she can understand Ichigo on a personal level. Part of what gave her her powers was his own incredible spiritual pressure (in concert with the hougyoku, the series' resident MacGuffin/magic wish rock), and the wish to protect him was what helped her learn to summon and use them at will. She can track his spiritual pressure when no one else can, recognize him by smell (and comments on this at least three times), and has stated that she loves him. Far from making her weak and dependent upon him and his power, however, this has inspired her to try and make her own spiritual powers more potent. In fact, her stated goal is to not look at his back in battle, but to try and fight side-by-side with him (this is also part of the reason she's so critical on herself for not being a better offensive fighter).
To sum up, at the point in canon Orihime is taken from, even though she still has some insecurity inside, she has mostly overcome her feelings of inadequacy and has become somewhat more confident in battle. She eagerly runs to help Ichigo when she thinks he's been kidnapped, stands up to the two men who claim to have hurt her friend Ishida, and is proactive in checking on the group's mutual friend Chad, who goes missing for a brief time. She's still flighty and fun-loving, starting conversations about random things with Tatsuki and Ichigo, and still has her crazy daydreams. She's also achieved one of her stated dreams - to work in a bakery (part time, since she's still in school, of course). And she and Ichigo, Ishida, and Chad have all become closer friends than ever; they all share phone numbers and know how to get to each other's apartments. This is the Orihime others in the Velvet Key should see - a fairly confident (at least on the outside), cheerful, helpful young woman with a crazy imagination and a taste for strange food.
Game Specific:
Arcana: The Empress
Justification: On the outside, Orihime is something like a Team Mom - she heals those who need it, is nurturing, is easy to talk to, and is very creative. But on the flip-side, she can be fairly self-conscious at certain points and would be very over-protective if given half a chance.
Samples:
First Person Sample:
[The message is sent out via cellphone. Somehow, Orihime had managed to make use of her new phone's camera feature and had texted her entire new address book her video message. And so, any of the other newcomers should be receiving this video via text message]
Hello! I don't think we know each other, but I'm sure me being here is some kind of mistake! If you're the one who brought me here, I just... I want you to know there's been a mistake! I don't have anyone to pay my ransom, and I wouldn't make a very good experiment or meal or hostess or any of the other things that teenage girls get kidnapped by crime syndicates for!
Unless you're not a crime syndicate and there was some other reason I was brought here? Maybe you're some secret organization that needs to save the world? I'm not sure, but if you need help, I'll help you out! I'd just like to go back home whenever we're done, please?
Third Person Sample:
Orihime stirred in the hotel bed, the unfamiliar, stiff sheets rubbing her the wrong way. This wasn't where she'd gone to sleep! Then again, she realized as she blinked up at the strange ceiling, she didn't actually remember going to sleep in the first place. In fact, her last memory was of going home after school that afternoon.
Or was it yesterday afternoon now?
As she sat up in bed, she took in her surroundings. It seemed that she'd been brought to an old hotel, but why? She still had her school uniform and she still had her hairpins, so what exactly was going on?
But the most disturbing part happened when she touched her hairpins, which were currently hooked to the collar of her school uniform. Whereas she could normally feel her fairies' presence inside them, now there was nothing.
"Shun'oh? Ayame? Tsubaki?" she called, her voice taking on a desperate twinge as she realized they weren't answering her. What could have happened to them? Were here powers somehow suppressed or else taken away entirely? How?
And most importantly, who could be responsible? She'd been kidnapped before, no doubt, but all those people had either been killed or sealed away; there was just no way they had come back for her. Her powers were valuable to them, so they definitely wouldn't want to take them away! Could it be yakuza? What would they want with her? Or alien abductors? Maybe some kind of underground fighting/snuff ring - she'd seen that on tv before!
As she looked onto the nightstand beside her table, though, her eyes lighted on the new cellphone her captors had provided her with. Perhaps that would help her find out more about this place? She flipped it open, browsing the options on it.
Hopefully she'd find some answers through it.