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[color=2E2C2C][sup]_______________________________________________[/sup][/color][/center][hider=// INFO][indent][sub][b]D A T A[/b][/SUB]

[sup][COLOR=SILVER]
[b]Full Name[/b][COLOR=#807B84] - Manaka Kokone (真中 心音)[/COLOR]
[B]Hometown[/B][COLOR=#807B84] - Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan[/COLOR]
[b]Quirk Type[/b][COLOR=#807B84] - Emitter[/COLOR]
[B]Gender[/B][COLOR=#807B84] - Female[/COLOR][/color][/SUP]
[color=#2e2c2c]-[/color][/indent][/hider]
[hider=// PERSONALITY][indent][SUB][b]P E R S O N A L I T Y[/b][/sub]

[sup][COLOR=SILVER][b]Awkward[/b]
[COLOR=#807B84]Outwardly, most people's first impression of Kokone is probably that of an exceedingly shy, demure wallflower of a girl. Her expressions are stiff and awkward, and usually resolve themselves to an impassive, slightly gloomy sort of look that only grows more forced and uneasy when people are actually looking at her. What's more, she often doesn't seem to notice when she's being spoken to -- or, if she does notice, only responds after a great deal of awkward silence. It's not really clear to an outside observer if she's just spacy or if she's shy, but either way, she's definitely not really the type who makes friends and influences people.[/COLOR][/COLOR]

[COLOR=SILVER][b]Considerate[/b]
[COLOR=#807B84]Despite her complete lack of social skills, however, every so often Kokone will approach someone and start a conversation herself, seemingly at random. And, whenever she does... she's actually surprisingly sensitive to the wants and needs of others? She has an almost uncanny awareness of things people are worrying about or tasks they need done, and seems to make it her mission to assuage those concerns as quickly as possible before immediately returning to her usual aloof demeanor. The contrast between her apparent apathy and sudden bouts of compassion is strange and more than a little unsettling sometimes, but at the very least, it seems like she's a nice person?[/COLOR][/COLOR]

[COLOR=SILVER][b]Jaded[/b]
[COLOR=#807B84]What most people don't realize is that her reticence has less to do with her own inability to express herself, and more to do with her Quirk. Flooded with the thoughts and sometimes even feelings of others every single day, she often double and triple checks out of paranoia to make sure she isn't responding to someone's internal monologue rather than their actual words. This, coupled with her constantly revising her own responses so as not to aggravate any issues her power makes her aware of, tends to be the actual cause of her characteristic demeanor. If anyone else could read her thoughts as easily as she reads theirs, perhaps they'd be surprised at how dry and cynical her assessment of those around her tends to be -- especially for a 14 year old child; but, well, given the types of things she's long since become accustomed to hearing, it goes without saying that her perspective on people in general would be somewhat soured.[/COLOR][/COLOR]
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[/cell][cell][b]Physical Description[/b]
[color=#807B84][indent]Minuscule. Diminutive. Lilliputian. Pint-sized. Basically, she's [i]really, really small.[/i] Standing at the meager height of 147 cm (approx. 4'10"), she's dwarfed by... pretty much all of her classmates, honestly. Her minute stature is only compounded by her figure, which is tremendously thin and wiry, with dainty little hands and feet, and the narrowness of her shoulders dwarfed only by the narrowness of her waist. One gets the impression that by putting their hands together just below her hips, their thumbs and forefingers together could probably encircle the entire width of her body; and most of her more physically-oriented classmates could probably effortlessly lift her with a single hand. If one could convince her to dress up and sit perfectly still, she could probably easily be mistaken for a particularly large doll rather than a particularly small young woman.

Her notably petite stature aside, however, she... doesn't really have many particularly remarkable physical traits to speak of. Her face is particularly round and childish, with full cheeks that might show dimples if she smiled, and a rather less cute high brow and prominent forehead. She's neither dazzlingly adorable nor is she disgustingly ugly, but rather looks simply... normal? Her large, thick-framed glasses that serve to frame her face in the process only obfuscate her unusual emerald green eyes, covering up one of the few truly unique "charm points" she might otherwise brag of. Her hair, too, is soft and silky -- but is often bunched and somewhat clumsily braided up on either side to keep it from flapping around too much.

Well, at the very utmost, she could at least be said to be passably cute -- but not enough to draw much attention to her when she seems to have made a conscious effort to look as plain as possible. And that, perhaps, is just the way she likes it.
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[b]Personal History[/b]
[color=#807B84][indent]Manaka Kokone was born an ordinary child to an ordinary couple in Kyoto. Her father was a salaryman, and her mother an office clerk at the same company. A casual fling became a marriage, and that marriage just as quickly bore fruit -- and then fell apart shortly after. Kokone doesn't know the "why," just that the last memory her mother has of her father is an argument. After that, he disappeared into the night, and neither she nor her mother have ever seen him since.

Supporting a child alone is no easy task, but her mother Ayumu took to it with herculean perseverance. Despite their tenuous financial situation, she ran herself ragged working enough hours to keep their small apartment and pay for Kokone's needs. When her job fired her, she found another job, and with it, their tiny family moved again and again -- to Okinawa. To Tokyo. Back to Kyoto. Then back to Tokyo again. She changed schools twice in her first year, and in the second she hardly lasted a month. All her classmates had Quirks, while she was not only a transfer student and an outsider, still gloomy from the loss of her friends from her old school -- but also apparently Quirkless. She wasn't bullied particularly harshly, but she did quickly find herself ostracized at her second school, and was surprised to find herself relieved rather than heartbroken when she moved again.

Her situation only worsened when her Quirk manifested. It was, perhaps, a cruel sort of mercy that Kokone was a tremendous late-bloomer. Her nascent abilities of telepathy and mind reading only reared their ugly head at age 7, right before she transferred into a new second grade classroom. She was packing her things and getting ready to leave for her first day, only to suddenly hear her mother's voice apparently talking to someone in the next room. She overheard several unsettling things, like "What if they make fun of her?" or "What if I get stuck late at work and can't take her home?" But when she entered the room, there was only her mother there.

Still young and not understanding what was going on, she innocently asked... [color=#4F8D1B]"Mama. Who are you talking to?"[/color] The look of confusion that greeted her only unsettled her more. "I didn't say anything, did I?" came her mother's voice -- but her lips never moved. [color=#4F8D1B]"Yes you did!"[/color] Kokone insisted, and what followed in response was not so much [i]words[/i] as an overwhelming, crushing sense of [i]dread.[/i]

[i]Was I thinking out loud? No, I'm sure I didn't say anything. But then how did she know what I was thinking? Am I losing my mind? Why is she looking at me like that? I didn't say anything. I didn't say anything so [b]what did she hear?![/b][/i]

She didn't know what to do or say, so before she knew it, she found herself crying and apologizing, not even knowing why. Somehow, this defused the situation as her mother tried desperately to console her -- but all that time, Kokone could hear her thoughts still, and could still hear the worries that took months of feigning ignorance to go away.

[i]"What if she can hear what I'm thinking?"[/i]

A lot of things happened after that. School became a nightmare where the voices of her classmates drowned out everything around her. She got used to hearing herself called weird or creepy in people's heads, when those same people would act nice and fake smiles when she spoke to them. So it was that she learned that people were fundamentally two-faced -- and she herself, of course, was no different. She covered up the truth, passing off her earlier slip-ups as the rough awakening of a telepathic Quirk. It wasn't entirely a lie, after all -- it was just a way of sweeping the more unpleasant side of her powers under the rug. Since she could hear people's thoughts, she got used to telling others what they wanted to hear. Feeling their support and gratitude almost made up for the weight of all her lies -- and so, as her sole relief from her own guilt, she grew almost addicted to it.

This didn't help mend her relationship with her mother, however -- which only grew more and more distant as, in a misguided attempt to reduce her beloved parent's stress, she forced herself to become self-reliant from a very young age. She cooked her own meals, managed her own schedule, and did everything she could to take care of herself and their home so that her tired mother could focus all her energy on her work. Kokone didn't even realize until it was already too late that this eliminated the few points of contact they even had to begin with -- and by then, it wasn't uncommon for them to not speak to each other for entire weeks at a time. Ayumu came home late, and left early; that is, when she even came home at all. That was just the way things were, so Kokone had accepted it without complaint. But every now and again, she'd overhear a guilty thought. "What if my daughter hates me? I'm never there for her. I'm just as bad as her father." And no matter how hard she tried to assuage those doubts with little gestures of kindness and understanding, she never truly could.

...Eventually, it was easier to just get away. She justified her decision to enroll in a hero school on the opposite side of the country in a lot of ways. Ishin was prestigious, and all her living needs would be covered. She wouldn't be imposing on her mother anymore, and if she could graduate with a good record, it'd guarantee a path to a good job working as field support or a logistics clerk for a hero agency. She wouldn't end up an exhausted wage slave in a dead-end job like her mom, and could finally start repaying her for all the sacrifices she had made so Kokone herself could get this far. Putting it like that, she almost didn't feel guilty. But really, deep down, she knew that the real reason was just that she couldn't bear to hear her mother's thoughts in the dead of night anymore -- and so she told herself it was for the best, and set out on her journey...
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[b]Character Arc[/b]
[color=#807B84][indent]Due to the fear of those around her when her powers first began to show themselves, Kokone has developed a crippling dread of what would happen should her peers ever discover her Quirk's true nature. As such, she begins the story disguising her Quirk as "Engage," the ability to psychically link one or more people. She also claims that, in addition to its hearing limits, her Quirk only works on those who volunteer to enter the link, and that the only thoughts that get transferred to anyone are ones prefaced with the specific name of the recipient -- both lies of convenience to make people feel more comfortable around her power, and to tell her which thoughts they actually want carried over, and to whom, so she can make sure to only send the information people want to be heard.

But no lie can last forever, and as danger begins to stir around the young students of Ishin High, can Kokone really afford [i]not[/i] to use her true power? Of course, the possibility she might be outed has always hung over her head ever since she was a child, but it has always seemed to her like a distant eventuality, and one that will hardly affect her anymore. With no friends or loved ones beyond her own mother, would she really lose all that much if people knew and feared the truth? Nothing would change, and she would remain the solitary observer she always has been.

...But what if she were to grow fond of her classmates for the first time since her Quirk awakened? What if she were to make fast friends and staunch allies? What if she were to fall in love? And then, what if all that happiness came crashing down in an instant when those friends realized the monster they'd welcomed into their midst -- an unseen phantom constantly watching their every thought, cataloguing every unconscious sin and judging them for it?

As of now, none can say. But one thing, and one thing alone is certain; when the truth is revealed, everything will change.
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[b]Quirk Description[/b]
[color=#807B84][indent]Known by the name of [color=#4F8D1B]Absolute Telepathy[/color], Kokone's Quirk is an anomaly tied to the sense of hearing. Provided she's close enough to someone that she could hear them speaking at the corresponding volume, she can also hear their foremost surface-level thoughts in her head at all times. Particularly emotional thoughts are like shouting -- easy to hear -- while the listless, unfocused daydreams of those not thinking about any one thing in particular are more like whispers -- barely perceptible unless she's particularly close by. But most of the time, people's thoughts just sound like normal spoken conversations -- and unless blocked by distance, earplugs, or some other form of obstruction, she always hears them, all the time.

Likewise, she herself can also project her own thoughts into the "hearing" of others -- though this, unlike reading thoughts, requires conscious effort on her part. She can use it on one target or many, and depending on how close she is to the target(s), can also send more complex information over the link. From far away, she might only be able to send basic verbal instructions -- but from close by, she could transmit emotions or complex mental images. Also, like her mind-reading, her telepathy only works if the target could hear her. If they're deafened, removed from hearing distance, or blocked off by a sufficiently thick barrier, her telepathy won't reach them. And, since telepathy requires actively focusing on sending specific thoughts and information, while it can't easily "misfire" and send something she doesn't want, frequent use puts her under a corresponding amount of mental stress, and can often lead to feelings of nausea, fatigue, and anxiety that render it difficult or impossible to focus on continuing to use the power.

As a final addendum, her Quirk has on some occasions shown the ability to perceive things other than just surface-thoughts, in forms other than sound. Colored haloes and auras representing emotions have sometimes appeared when she touches someone while reading their mind -- particularly when that person is someone close to her who she knows well -- or in moments of intense anxiety where her control over her powers is reduced. With this in mind, it's possible that her abilities will grow to encompass alternative forms of psychic analysis in the future, potentially including empathetic perception or psychometry. But, for the time being, these abilities remain beyond her ability to use consciously.
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