”This hand of mine glows with an awesome power! Its burning grip tells me to defeat you!”Name: Kawaguchi Umeko (川口 梅子)
Nickname/Alias: White Devil, Gundam Girl
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Appearance: Standing slightly taller than average, albeit not by much, Umeko clearly cares about her appearance. Her clothes are, without exception, kept immaculately clean and worn in specific combinations planned out long in advance. She wears them quite well, too; Umeko is unquestionably a striking individual. She's built like a fighter, with a solid stance and toned limbs, but her choice of style usually makes her seem much more lithe than she is. Her brown hair is straight and shoulder length, worn differently depending on what she thinks will look best. Umeko is almost always grinning a wide, amiable grin that can turn smug and self-satisfied at the drop of a hat. The deep blue eyes set above that grin are highly expressive, and very much the gateway to whatever Umeko is thinking.
Day to day, she wears the uniform when necessary. Absolutely never when it isn’t. Her casual wardrobe seems nearly infinite, and her attire is usually layered for different temperatures and skews towards the bluer end of the spectrum. Kawaguchi almost never goes anywhere without her white messenger bag, and a hairband that suspiciously resembles a gold V-fin while housing her Bluetooth earpiece.
Biography: Born to a reasonably wealthy family in Japan, Umeko didn’t have far to travel to go to Academy City. Her father was a businessman, so Umeko didn’t see him often; she was mostly raised by her mother. At a very early age she was fascinated by mechanical objects; cars, planes, trains, all manner of vehicles. The first time she was exposed to Gundam implanted it in her mind forever. As her enjoyment of the franchise grew, so did her fascination with robotics; she was working on her own projects by the time she was ten. They weren’t very good, obviously, but within a few years she was working on technology with genuine relevance. Academy City seemed like a godsend. Heightened technological capabilities, facilities with greater resources, opportunities to work on new and exciting technology…
Her own designs were making her money, with her father’s help, by the time she was fifteen. The sum has steadily increased as she produced better products, and got involved in the engineering community at Academy City. Things would change
substantially when she met Brennan Griese. Both were working on the Venus probe project, but there was a distinct (and continuing to this day) disagreement on who was the head researcher and who was the secretary. People outside the debate wisely learned not to take sides. Somewhere along the lines, through circumstances not entirely known, the two came to blows over the issue. They have gotten along
famously ever since. Especially notable since their fields of interest are not dissimilar, and tend to be remarkably compatible when an extra pair of eyes are needed. Such similarities extend as far as their Esper abilities, too.
Personality: Umeko is
energetic. Once she sets her mind on a goal, she will pursue it relentlessly and without fatigue until she has reached it. Kawaguchi is extremely competitive, a driving factor in her relationship with Brennan Griese, and will turn almost anything into a contest. Once she decides it’s a contest, she won’t give up as long as there is
any room to keep going. Stubborn to a fault, but her heart is always in the right place. In many ways, she’s the definition of Chaotic Good, striving to be a Hero of Justice. Unsurprisingly, this blends right into her love of all things mecha and tokusatsu until it’s difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends. In many ways the two are one and the same. One has to have examples of justice to try and live up to, right?
Always eager to talk about the fiction, or models, with anyone who will listen. And some people who won’t, in the case of Brennan Griese. Nevertheless, he is one of her staunchest supporters in the pursuit of all things.
Esper Power: Giga Assault Humane Dynamo (Level 3), oddly enough, harnesses waste energy. Whenever there is force exerted, energy is lost; especially in impacts. Heat, sound, it all escapes and no one thinks anything of it. Not for Kawaguchi Umeko. This waste energy is captured from every impact, large or small, and is converted into energy within her AIM Diffusion Field. All espers emit one, but for Umeko the effect is increasingly strong with higher amounts of energy recaptured. The effect on the world around her usually is indicated by increased static electricity around her as well as the air around her being a couple of degrees warmer than her surroundings.
This is merely the storage method; the energy built up is merely stored in her diffusion field. This reservoir can be used to enhance her own output of kinetic energy, either in a burst or a sustained duration. The former is quick and efficient, an exertion from her stockpile to add to a blow or push. The latter requires more energy exerted, but can be used to increase her strength to move a heavy object with greater ease. Once she exerts the stockpile available, she has to wait for it to build back up; high-impact activities, resulting in greater lost energy, will add to it faster albeit at the (obvious) cost of short term energy exertion. Since there is no safe way to absorb an impact that would generate vast waste energy, she has to be patient and ration its use though she has been experimenting with conditions that generate high amounts of “waste” energy, but low kinetic energy. For reasons of safety, this experimentation is slow going but her early results indicate that coming into physical contact with other types of energy will replenish her as well. She can go from ‘empty’ to a full tank in a few days, shorter if she devotes a few hours a day to strenuous exercise. Small enhancements will sip at this reservoir, boosts that simply bump her higher up in the range of what is humanly feasible, whereas outright supernatural feats will burn through her reserves much, much faster if used too frequently.
Skills: An
avid kickboxer, among a handful of other fighting styles. She doesn’t exactly seek out a fight, but if she finds herself in one her competitive streak kicks in immediately. Professionally Umeko is a gifted engineer, primarily where powered armor and mechanical fighting units are concerned. Mostly because that is where her interest lies almost exclusively. Powered suits for herself are her own pet project, increasing in complexity as she grew older. Nowadays they’re designed with a mass market production in mind, but that doesn’t mean she won’t go all-out in designing the prototype before she cuts back on the production model. Some of her component designs have been licensed out to other organizations, though the best is kept in-house, providing a steady stream of revenue.
An impressive, or disturbing depending on your opinion, level of knowledge regarding mecha anime backs up her engineering skills. Scale models of proposed designs are a gleeful guarantee. A good nose for fashion backs up her day-to-day attire, too.
Ambition: To make a Gundam. Well, and otherwise advance the field of robotics and scale models. But mostly build a Gundam.
Extra: Lives in a spacious student apartment with Brennan Griese and her plamo in District 5. Carries around a pair of self-designed gloves with metal plating and padding sewn in at each knuckle, to try and protect her hands if she uses her power.
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