Misha Iwan'ako

Misha Iwan'ako is a player character played by Jabonicus.

Standing at 4'2, Misha is a daur who does not deviate much from the standard height range, though her thin body shows a long history of malnutrition. Her short hair and the fur of her tail are an ashen black, both groomed with an amateurish style. Neither her hair or fur appear soft, rather they simply seem rugged and on the edge of being unkempt. Her tail maintains the same coloration and texture, all the way to the nearly mangled tip.

Her eyes, often sunken, are a dull orange hue that appears to poorly reflect light. Her right eye is clearly less focused than the other, and she has more trouble seeing out of it than her left. Of her senses, physical events have left her with below-standard vision, and she was born with a weakened sense of smell.

Her skin is naturally pale, with calloused hands and feet. Many minor scars cover her body, primarily along her neck, face, hands, and forearms. On her left forearm are two verticle gash scars that have since healed over, and she is missing her right hands pinky and ring finger. A singular, blotchy burn scar covers her right cheek, reaching down to her lower neck.

Misha Iwan'ako is a quiet individual, reserved and retracted from normal social standards. Though she appears to detest social interaction, it's easy to notice that it's simply an aftereffect of her lack of experience with it. Unskilled with understanding others as well as herself, she often comes across as uncertain or fairly unopinionated. Politically she believes in very little, and socially she obviously views herself as being extremely low.

Deeply attached to a stuffed animal she carries, she appears to be an absolute minimalist in terms of owning property. Losing and gaining money, clothes, or anything at all doesn't matter to her, with the sole exception of the stuffed animal that's ripped, torn, and patched in a hundred places.

Unsure of the touch of others, she initially appears to fear touch and interaction, though the slightest kindness in a hand melts her defenses as years of affectionless coldness has left her unknowingly in want.

Above all, though she may not realize it herself, she wants family, a family that cares, and a family that will help her understand herself.

The past heavily haunts Misha, and she seems quite unable to accept it on any level. The one reprieve from the pain of the past was when her house, as well as her family, vanished in an explosion caused by a terrorist attack. Though the scars prior to this event still obviously run deep, new ones have come to burden her, and without recourse, only one option seems available to her, the only one that's worked so far. Burn it down, begin again.

Misha Iwan'ako was born in ER757v to Alesha and Sasha Iwan'ako, and to her older sister Nadia Iwan'ako. The Iwan'ako family was not wealthy by any means and was considered to live in poverty, barely able to afford to live in their house. Heavy debts were thought to weigh on the family, as did rampant abuse.

The following are recovered segments of her personal journal.

“Opening Statement of Journal”

If you find this diary and believe me to still be around, whether I have just dropped it along my path or if you have simply found it among my possessions, please allow me a single decency and do not read further. If I am dead, by some unfortunate luck, or missing, or you find this journal and have no idea who I am, then I suppose you’re precisely who I’m writing for. Someone deserves to read this, I suppose, and if it’s made me feel any better to put these words to dirty ink then maybe I’ll find even greater solace in have another pair of eyes on them.

Not that it matters either way, I’ll warn you now that my story is not a consistent one. I won’t tell you everything, I’m not going to paint myself as some grand protagonist nor try to convince you of what I’ve done, because ultimately this is for me.

Or someone.

I don’t really know.

It doesn’t really matter. You’ll find better stories in the trash anyway.

I wasn't a good kid. At least, neither my parents, counselors, or neighbors seemed to think so. My big sister swore I was perfect, and I, of course, took her for granted. I didn't like to be at home so I would run around quite a bit. I was a little wild, getting into things I shouldn't have, running away from any adults who tried to tell me otherwise as fast as my stunted legs could carry me, and worst of all, I think, really solidified what my parents already thought of me. They fought, a lot, over what we had, what we didn't have, and what we were taking.

When they felt that they had nothing left to gain from screaming and hitting each other I suppose they went for the easier targets, me and my sister. She usually was able to provoke them enough to focus on her more, but when I did something dumb like usual or just walked in at the wrong moment, there wasn't much she could do to keep me out of their path. I'd like to think that I love my sister, but unfortunately, I don't think I remember much about her. She had black hair like me, and her eyes were deep orange. I think she looked like me overall, though probably better. She ran away at some point, and it took us all a day or two to realize that she might not be coming back.

They practically tore apart her room in retaliation, and I just hid in my own while I listened to them storm up and down the stairs, flinging various objects and belongings into the trash, onto the curb, and threatening to burn anything that existed in their spiteful sight. The bravest thing I ever did as a child was sneak out of my room while they ran downstairs to fling out her books, snuck into her room, and found that they had not yet tarnished or claimed her pillow. I had brought my own, and as I heard them storm back into the house, I swapped the near-identical pillows and escaped back to the relative isolation and safety of my bed.

I refused to wash the pillow until it began to rip and go threadbare. By then her scent, what little I could find on it, had began to evaporate into my own nightly sweat and tears. Still, for a time, it made the days a bit more bearable, and the nights just a bit longer to have that scent nestled against my cheek.

Even as it tattered and ripped, I kept that pillowcase close even after the house went away.

I ran away more than once, but I always came back after a day or two. This time I managed to make it three days before I decided to come home. That's when I found that, in my absence, there was no longer a house to return to. Shrapnel, wood paneling and glass fragmentized in horrible angles and shards, a crippled and dripping foundation that couldn't decide whether to fall inward or outward and so it claimed each direction all the same. Where the once stood a house, a place I can't call my home was now the remnants of some explosion. Ours was not the only victim, of course, nearly the whole block had vanished into this urban oblivion.

Apparently it happened the day it ran away. I don't know if my parents were there, but I never tried to find them. At first, I would sleep in a hole in the rubble, but the discomfort of the hole and memories that struck my nightmares forced me outward, away.

When I finally slipped away in the dead of night, it felt like I had left a great weight behind, even if I carried all I owned on my back. I felt that perhaps with such a roadblock gone, I could have something better.

It did not last.

Years blended easily, anything that didn't stand out or hold meaning was merged and compacted in a flurry of days and weeks, months and years. The time it took for the night to fall and fade was long and grueling, but the weeks could not be retained with their speed. Somehow I both dragged along, and ran too fast to record. I slipped away from the roads and people when I couldn't handle their noise, and found brief solace in sections of woods and wilderness. Once I saw a large creature stalk by, it stopped and glared at me as I woke from my sleep.

I was terrified, or at least felt I should be, but I could rise no panic or sense of urgency into my body. About the furred, fanged beast, its young cried out for attention before running forth. The thing looked at me once more, and with a strong puff, followed its needy youth. A week later I saw a stuffed toy of it in a store window, and before I could properly think of why I was running from the owner, the larger-than-it-appeared toy cradled in my arm.

At that point I owned two things that mattered to me in any real sense. A pillowcase that no longer smelled of my sister, and a stuffed animal of a beast I knew not the name of.

Everything else was expendable.

Everything else could be thrown away.

I'm not sure when it started, or directly why, but I began to hang around this group of men and women. I think it's because they would speak freely around me, without chasing me off or trying to include me. It was is if they ignored my very existence as I listened, and the peace of this faux socialization kept me sticking around. I enjoyed them, I believe, and so I think I became just something that happened near them, a strange dirty girl who liked to be there and hated to be approached.

One of them approached me regardless, and made me offer. Normally such people just offered scraps like I was a beggar, but she didn't see fit to give me anything I had not earned, as she put it. She had jobs, small things that some small dirty runt could do for cash, for food, for a place to sleep.

I became a criminal, though I never thought of it as such.

I heard the news once, as I slept in some small corner, years after joining what could only be a scrappy gang of the downtrodden. People calling for change, ripping the signal from the air and replacing it with their own. Defense of the people, safety, stop the destruction, fall of the kingdom. I had never been attached to anybody, aside from my sister, and so I grabbed my patchwork toy (that I had stitched using the pillowcase) and left when no one was watching. I was sure they wouldn't notice until a few days at least, but maybe they would miss me.

Maybe they would wish me luck. I didn't know what I was looking for, I didn't know why I was looking for it. Defend the people? You have to help them first.

I needed help. Maybe I could earn it.

Misha Iwan'ako is connected to: None.

While no expert on living in the wilderness, Misha spent many years alone and depending on herself. She knows, at the very least, how to scrape by with absolutely nothing.

A self-taught skill, she's shown some adept level of talent in repairing and mending clothes and cloth.

Misha Iwan'ako has the following items:

- A heavily stitched and sewn stuffed animal.

N/A.

In the case Jabonicus becomes inactive:

• Can this character be used as an NPC by a GM or FM? NO
• Can this character be adopted after I am gone for a year? NO