The Basics
Name: 花森 美咲, Misaki Hanamori

Nickname: Misa

Age: 19

Species: 雪女, Yuki Onna, Snow Woman

The Appearance
Weight: 44 kg (97 lb)

Height: 152 cm (5' 0")

Physical Description: Misaki is a young Japanese girl with dark hair and dark brown eyes. No matter whose standards you uses (Japanese or American) she is quite petite and has a small delicate frame, but she doesn't look too thin for her size either and it seems to suit her well. Her skin is always a pale white and no matter how much time she sends in the sun it never seems to gain any additional color. At times the color has lead people to assume that she is ill or unwell, but she very rarely will get sick as her body temperature is lower than most bacteria or viruses need to survive.

She often has a sad or nervous look on her face, but that's usually just how her face rests as she is typically a happy girl. But she smiles though, she seems almost radiant and her bubbly laugh can be contagious.

Even after moving to America, her style of dress is still very similar to what it was back home in Japan. Her clothes tend to be looser fitting and more modest than the style that a lot of American girls seem to dress in. Her outfits often include sweaters, dresses or skirts, collared tops, and items that have accents of lace or small ruffles. When she wears the dresses or skirts she almost always wears tights or tall socks with them unless the weather is especially warm.

She almost always carries a small backpack with her that is adorned with a small assortment of keychains and pins. All of her school supplies are those that she brought over from Japan.

Distinguishing Features: Apart from her petite stature, the most unique feature of Misa is only visible when she is tapping into the part of her that isn't human. When using any of her powers that come along with being a Yuki Onna her eyes change from a dark brown to an icy blue that almost seems to glow.



The Human
Personality: Misaki is in no way a shy girl and doesn't let the language barrier between her and the people around her get in the way of trying to make new friends. Even when her face looks sad, she almost always has a happy disposition and her bubbly personality makes it difficult to be upset around her.

She tends to live life relatively fearlessly and has the tendency to always look on the bright side to try and see the good in everyone making her quite the optimist. When he sees someone who looks shy or alone in a group she will make the effort to include them and always tries to make people smile.

That is, unless you get on her bad side or you have the very very rare and poor luck of catching her in a bad mood. At times the Yuki Onna side of her can take over and make her extremely cold and unreceptive of people, not matter what they try and do. It is almost a complete turn around from her typical personality and she is thankful that it isn't something that happens to her very often at all.

Mundane Skills: Misaki always received top grades in her schooling and therefor is extremely knowledgeable in a wide variety of subjects. She tends to remember most things that she hears or reads and tends to have random facts for almost every topic. Her native language is Japanese but she has worked hard to study English and considers herself to be most fluent, at least enough to get by living here. She loves to cook and has a small collection of Japanese cookbooks, typically preferring the food that she is used to to the American options.

Occupation: Since coming to America, Misa hasn't yet found a job and has no plans of doing so anytime soon. She considers her schooling to be her main job and will call her occupation being a student. After moving to Sanctuary she enrolled at Sanctuary College to pursing a college level education. She is currently doing a double major program in Zoology and Conservation. She is also pursuing a minor in Mythology and is particularly interested in East Asian mythology and folklore.



The Not So Human
Species Description: The Yuki Onna (雪女) is one of the most well-known story in Japanese folklore and has been known by many other names including Yuki Musume (雪娘), Yuki Onago (雪女子), Yuki Onba (雪乳母), and Yuki Nyobo (雪女房) depending on the region in which the stories come from.

Whatever you call her, the Yuki Onna from the stories changes little in appearance. She is said to have snow-white skin and wears a white kimono, which is usually described as a thin, summer kimono that is far too light for the cold weather. In many stories, the kimono is pale enough to be translucent, with the garment exposing her white skin underneath. The biggest variations in her appearance are her age and her hair. In most tales, the Yuki Onna is a preternaturally beautiful young woman, with dark black hair offsetting the whiteness of her skin and kimono.

In many stories, Yuki Onna appears to travelers trapped in snowstorms, and uses her icy breath to leave them as frost-coated corpses. Other legends say she leads them astray so they simply die of exposure. Other times, she manifests holding a child. When a well-intentioned soul takes the "child" from her, they are frozen in place. Parents searching for lost children are particularly susceptible to this tactic. Other legends make Yuki Onna much more aggressive. In these stories, she often invades homes, blowing in the door with a gust of wind to kill residents in their sleep (some legends require her to be invited inside first).

What Yuki Onna is after varies from tale to tale. Sometimes she is simply satisfied to see a victim die. Other times, she is more vampiric, draining her victims' blood or "life force." She occasionally takes on a succubus-like manner, preying on weak-willed men to drain or freeze them through sex or a kiss.

Like the snow and winter weather she represents, Yuki Onna has a softer side. She sometimes lets would-be victims go for various reasons. In one popular Yuki Onna legend, for example, she sets a young boy free because of his beauty and age. She makes him promise never to speak of her, but later in life, he tells the story to his wife who reveals herself to be the snow woman. She reviles him for breaking his promise, but spares him again, this time out of concern for their children (but if he dares mistreat their children, she will return with no mercy. Luckily for him, he is a loving father). In some versions, she chose not to kill him because he told her, which she did not treat as a broken promise (technically, Yuki Onna herself is not a human, and thus did not count). In a similar legend, Yuki Onna melts away once her husband discovers her true nature. However, she departs to the afterlife afterward the same way.

The most well-known story of Yuki Onna is as follows:

A long time ago, there lived two woodcutters, Minokichi and Mosaku. Minokichi was young and Mosaku was very old.

One winter day, they could not come back home because of a snowstorm. They found a hut in the mountain and decided to sleep there. On this particular evening, Mosaku woke up and found a beautiful lady with white clothes. She breathed on old Mosaku and he was frozen to death.

She then approached Minokichi to breathe on him, but stared at him for a while, and said, "I thought I was going to kill you, the same as that old man, but I will not, because you are young and beautiful. You must not tell anyone about this incident. If you tell anyone about me, I will kill you."

Several years later, Minokichi met a beautiful young lady, named Oyuki (yuki = "snow") and married her. She was a good wife. Minokichi and Oyuki had several children and lived happily for many years. Mysteriously, she did not age.

One night, after the children were asleep, Minokichi said to Oyuki: "Whenever I see you, I am reminded of a mysterious incident that happened to me. When I was young, I met a beautiful young lady like you. I do not know if it was a dream or if she was a Yuki-onna..."

After finishing his story, Oyuki suddenly stood up, and said "That woman you met was me! I told you that I would kill you if you ever told anyone about that incident. However, I can't kill you because of our children. Take care of our children... " Then she melted and disappeared. No one saw her again.

~~~

Powers and Abilities: Being the daughter of a Yuki-Onna, Misa inherited almost all of her mothers abilities and even gained a few new ones of her due to the unique make up of her half Yokai half human genetics. The human inheritance from her father made it so that she has more control over her powers and is able to attempt to live her life like a normal human if she chooses to do so.

Cold Aura: The area around Misa tends to be a couple degrees colder than the rest of the air. This also causes her skin temperature to often be a bit cold to the touch.

Cold Immunity: Misaki is immune to cold, being completely invulnerable to direct and indirect effects. This makes it so that she rarely gets cold, leading her to often get strange looks as she walks around outside in the winter without a coat.

Cold Manipulation: She is able to create, generate, shape and manipulate areas of coldness. In doing this she can change the remperature of an area or even make an area or object so cold to the point where it freezes, including water. This can be done either with a direct touch or by her just being in the general proximity. Direct contact makes the process easier and faster, as does the ambient temperature of the area.

Cryogeneration: Similar to her ability to create and manipulate cold, Misa a Yuki Onna can create and manipulate ice and snow. THis is also directly influenced by her proximity to the object/area, but is not as limited to the ambient temperature as her cold manipulation is.

Yuki Onna Physiology: Due to her half supernatural genetics, Misa inherited all of the physical enhancements that her mother had. She has increased dexterity, endurance, durability, intelligence, and reflexes. Her senses and strength however are the same as a regular full-blooded human would be.



The Story
Character History: Misaki was born as one of two daughters her father Hirokatsu Hanamori and a mother whose name she never knew. Shortly after the girls turned one 1 year old their mother left their father and was never heard from again for the majority of the girls' lives. The story of how Misa and Kumi's father met their mother is similar to the story of Minokichi and Oyuki that was told above.

Their father became lost in the woods, stranded and lost without any food or water. A woman found him close to freezing and decided to spare his life after she felt pity on the man. She was a Yuki Onna however and had secret plans and reasons for why she actually wanted to save Hirokatsu, she wanted to find a man worthy of creating her children, a new generation of Yuki Onna to help her.

She helped Hirokatsu return to the closest city and made a bargain with him, that the needed to give her children and never tell anyone of what she or her future daughters are or else she would change her mind and kill him. He agreed and soon after they were married and the Yuki Onna was expecting their twin daughters Misaki and Kasumi.

All seemed well in Hirokatsu's life, he had a beautiful wife and two perfect daughters, but sadly his happiness didn't last for long. His wife the Yuki Onna left one night leaving behind her her family with only one simple note.

私たちの娘を守る (Protect our daughters)
彼女達を教えてはいけない (Don't tell them)

So the girls were raised knowing nothing of who their mother was. None of Hirokatsu's family had ever met the woman and there were no photographs of her to be found in their home, no mentions of her name, it was as if she had never existed.

Misa and Kumi lived a relatively normal childhood after that and their father never remarried but he did his best to raise two young daughters as a single father. It wasn't until their 6th birthday that they started experiencing things that hinted at their true parentage, however staying true to his work, Hirokatsu never told the girls what they were and did his best to teach them to control their powers.

Misaki and Kasumi were extremely close growing up and were almost inseparable, doing everything they could together, but as they grew older their were changes in the girls' personalities. While Misa stayed the cheerful girl that she had always been, Kasumi started to have more darkness in her, but even that was unable to drive a rift between the twins.

With no records of their mother and then woman that he had once loved Hirokatsu eventually forgot the appearance of his wife so when he was once again approached by her after the girls turned 18 he no longer recognized her, which was exactly what the Yuki Onna had been hoping for.

The Yuki Onna continued to trick Hirokatsu and worked her way back into the family. Misaki was always wary of the woman, but her sister Kasumi felt a strong draw towards her. After all these years, the terms of his deal with the Yuki Onna had become hazy and one night in a lapse of judgment, her broke them and told the woman about his former wife. He mentioned how much she reminded her of his former love. The Yuki Onna was furious that he had broken his promise to her and killed him on the spot, freezing his body solid with just one touch of her finger.

Misa had been standing in the doorway when this happened but had remained hidden. her hand flew over her mouth to make sure that she didn't scream and she ran off to find her sister and tell her about what had just happened to their father. Kumi however, already knew who and what the woman was and didn't seemed surprised to hear it at all. She told Misa that they were also Yuki Onna and that she would be leaving with their mother to start living the life that she had been destined for.

Misa was terrified and quickly packed up her belongings and left her family home with her cat Momo. For weeks the girl stayed with a friend, never leaving the house until one day she received a package with no name or address to indicate where it had come from. She tentatively opened the envelope and inside found a large amount of money, a one-way plane ticket, a map, and a simple note saying "Fly Away. Find your Sanctuary.". Misa was at first confused until she saw what was hiding in the bottom of the envelope. It was a necklace with a small silver chain and a pendant on the end. It was part of a matching set that Hirokatsu had bought for his daughters during their trip to Hokkaido when they were ten. He had the necklaces custom made for his daughters and the one in the envelope had belonged to Kasumi.

She understood the meaning. Kasumi was telling her that even though she had chosen this new life with their mother that Misaki didn't have to and she was helping her get away. Misa didn't know how or where Kumi had come across that much money, but Misa never had the chance to find out as she never saw her sister again.

The next day Misa went to the airport and flew across the ocean with Momo, not knowing where she was going or where her life would take her. She found that the location on the map was called Sanctuary and made her way there not knowing what to expect.

Misa learned that this city was a safe haven for people like her and quickly felt at home there. She enrolled in the College and and has been living there for the last few months now having started school in January.

Past Connections:
花森 博克 (Hirokatsu Hanamori) - Misaki and Kasumi's father who was killed by their mother, a Yuki Onna after breaking his promise and revealing what she was.

花森 佳純 (Kasumi Hanamori) - Misa's twin sister who is sometimes called Kumi. She also inherited the same Yuki Onna traits from her mother but instead of trying to live a normal life like Misa, she gave in to the coldness and left with their mother after the death of Hirokatsu. It was thanks to Kumi that Misa was able to come to America and be safe from their mother.

Current Connections:
もも (Momo) - Misa's pet cat that she brought over with her from Japan. She is a medium sized calico cat that has more orange on her than black and white.

Serina Hargrave -Misa's fellow student at Sanctuary College. They are in the same Philosophy 101 class and run into each other on campus occasionally. They have yet to figure out what the other is.

Future Connections: To be determined