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[sukasa]

➺ PLAYER

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Age: 25 ugh
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➺ CHARACTER

Character Name: Mikasa Ackerman
Character Age: 15-16

Canon: Attack on Titan. In the case of any discrepancies, I err towards the manga over the anime. There isn't a huge difference either way for her, though.

Canon Point: Chapter 64

History:
Series (Manga/Anime) Overview
Mikasa specifically

Personality:
Mikasa Ackerman is a prodigy at 15. She has a higher kill count as a freshly graduated trainee than some soldiers see their entire lives, ended up at the top of her class, and is pretty casually called a genius. A girl worth a hundred soldiers.

And she doesn't seem to care about it much at all.

"I'd seen this before. So very many times. I'd seen it again and again, but... I'd always pretended I hadn't. That's right. This world is cruel."

There's a sense of calm to Mikasa, skating the line between peaceful and apathetic. Little affects her because she's seen worse, and she lives with the full understanding that all things come to an end. The world is a cruel place, and no matter how strong she is, that's simply the natural course of things. And to those unlucky enough to be weak—there isn't much hope for survival.

It sounds defeatist, like she doesn't care about anything. Neither's correct. Despite the fact that she's consciously aware of the world's problems, Mikasa fights with as much fervor as her peers, if not more. She wants to live, but doesn't begrudge fate or deny reality. If there are innocent lives at stake, she'll protect them, and in overall terms she's a pretty decent person. While she shows no interest in justice and whatnot, she's dutiful and disgusted by the worst of human nature, and generally stays a good few notches above that.

So despite her cool demeanor, Mikasa isn't a heartless ice queen. Softspoken and calm, her level-headedness in the face of just about everything can be intimidating, but she still occasionally finds herself endeared to others. Armin, a close friend that's basically family, is a good example—she tends to mother him a bit, and though she's not terribly overt, she lends him support and trust without question or smothering.

Though, let's be honest. She saves most of her concern for one Eren Jaeger.

"Once I'm dead, I won't even be able to remember you. So I'll win, no matter what. I'll live, no matter what!"

As a child, Mikasa learns on her own that the world is awful. But it's Eren that teaches her that it's beautiful too, and that giving up guarantees that you'll lose everything that makes it so. He makes her understand in a crucial moment that the only way to hold onto anything is to fight for it. She owes him her mindset, her poise, and a whole lot more: when she loses her home, he gives her his. When she loses her family, he replaces them. Her life is in ruins, and he's the one who teaches her how to live again.

Her devotion to Eren is borderline ridiculous, and even he doesn't tend to like it very much. Whereas she'll be reasonable and treat Armin like he might not die every two seconds, with Eren she tends to be much more aggressively protective. She's a mother hen and keeps him in line, ready to literally punch some sense into him when he gets uppity. She cares to detrimental degrees. Because nothing—not her morality or her duties as a soldier or her life or anyone else's lives—is as important as Eren. All she wants and needs to be happy is to be by his side, and she lives so she won't ever forget him. She doesn't expect him to return her feelings, or for anyone else to understand them. Despite her bleak perspective of the world and her hardships, she is content with her life. It can't do anything to her that would make her regret living it, because she got to meet Eren. And that's enough.

For the record, this doesn't always play out to her advantage. Her zeal can be admirable, but it's too much of a good thing—she's been through enough that she's very clearly not Okay, and she'll do whatever it takes to keep what little she has. Her life is unbalanced and centered around others, what with her lacking real dreams like Armin or a devotion for humanity's future like Eren, but she doesn't try to change that. She has no great ambitions, and she shelves her own desire for a peaceful life without hesitation.

And we do see that despite her reputation, Mikasa has flaws just like anyone else. When Eren comes into play, she gets reckless. She has emotions without particularly emotional reactions, which can be misleading; when Eren 'dies' in canon, she seems perfectly composed. But in reality, she'd given up. Her confidence encourages the people around her to fight without her really being willing to defend them, and her ignorant disregard for her comrades leads to many of them getting killed. Likewise, on the surface she's perfectly willing to slice Reiner and Bertolt apart later, but she hesitates as they were once her friends (if only just, and doesn't seem ready to make the same mistake again). On occasion we do see her emote rather powerfully, particularly in relief or anger over Eren or his circumstances, but few people are privy to this more human side.

When she makes mistakes, they do tend to be of an emotional nature. Though often humble and self-aware of what she isn't cut out for (e.g. leadership), Mikasa's self-confidence has occasionally turned to conceit, leading to a blunder or two such as letting Levi get injured in combat. And this is a common enough theme with her. She's jaded, but not wholly wise—despite her strengths, she can and does mess up. For example, she can get carried away and insubordinate, and she isn't above losing her temper. She's calm, but not especially patient. Her anger tends to be scary in a strange, restrained way; she can be downright menacing when someone gets in her way or crosses her. Threatening the few things she cares about will quickly draw her ire, and then from there she can get absolutely frigid.

"There's a limit to the lives that I can care about. ...So, asking me for compassion is mistaken. After all, I have no heart, or time, to spare."

Her family is her first priority, and most of the rest of the world is a distant second. Despite her innate talent, she's a soldier solely because Eren is. If he had wanted to go work in the fields, she would've followed; she doesn't owe the world her sword arm, and most nobility on her part is (largely) coincidental. While she does care about her comrades and respect her superiors, at the end of the day her devotion to others is very, very select.

It isn't her just being meek or fear of people hurting her. By her own admission, she simply lacks the ability to care about that many people. Maybe it makes her cold, but that's simply how she is—her heart doesn't have room for much else. Though she isn't wantonly violent, this prioritization means she's willing to defend what little she loves with lethal force. Of her class, she's notably less troubled by hurting and killing other people if the situation calls for it, or if she needs to protect those on her side.

Meanwhile, socially, she's a weirdo. When asked what she thinks girltalk is, her answer is secret battle strategies—she's definitely not one to win people over with her sparkling people skills. Her peers seem to respect more than love her at times, which is extremely reasonable: she doesn't beat around the bush when she speaks, usually a little too honest and more critical than pleasant. She's can be a bit short and brusque, the type to casually call people out on their mistakes or exactly how she feels about them. Her means of inspirational speeches is clubbing people over the head with their weaknesses. To put it nicely, she's not especially gentle.

But she's still a teenager. One that's lived through hell and back, but a teen all the same. She can crack some pretty stupid jokes. Sometimes she gets flustered, frustrated, surprised, unreasonable and emotional. She smiles and cries and bleeds like anyone else might, and when her family is on the line, so is her heart. However strong or confident she may be, she's human, and has all the blessings and faults to show for it.

Power & Abilities:
Mikasa's lauded as top class in her canon—a one-woman army. She has a natural affinity for 3D Maneuvering, which is the use of specialized gear that allows humans to take to the air and fight giant enemies using hyper-sharp swords. This is limited by resources, namely compressed air, but a skilled user can pack a pretty sharp punch.

She has less official training on taking down people than Titans, but she's a skilled hand-to-hand fighter, and has been known to casually cave a guy's face in with her knee. Overall, she's fast, strong, and has excellent reflexes as well as physical/spatial self-awareness. It's almost a canon in-joke at this point that she's good at whatever she puts her mind to, but given her lack of life experience beyond the military, that's honestly not saying a whole lot. Other general skills include horseback riding, wilderness survival, marksmanship, and so forth—the usual soldier's repertoire.

Currently, there's vague and mysterious references to Mikasa's bloodlines. Being an Ackerman and Asian (just go with me on this), she can resist the memory erasure and manipulation that apparently huge swathes of the canon population are under. Additionally, under her childhood duress she 'awoke' to an exceptional kind of focus and ability, which seems to be why she's such a superior warrior. All the 'awakened' Ackermans in the series are pretty overpowered next to their peers, with references to killing or surpassing a hundred people on their own.

Still, at the end of the day, she's made of flesh and bone with no real superhuman ability; being at the top of her game in canon doesn't make her much to talk about in a pangalactic jamjar. She's not invincible, and all-in-all, she can be expected to die in all the usual human ways.

Inventory:
/ 3D Maneuver Gear + about (3) pairs of replacement blades for her swords
/ Military uniform + cloak
/ Dark red scarf (it's black in the manga and red in the anime, but it's somewhere around there)

Game Plan:
While Mikasa herself would likely lean towards the Assets, she wouldn't have a strong allegiance or preference. If Eren or Armin are with one group, her goal would be to place herself in a position to take care of them.

That said, I don't plan on depending on castmates for all motivation, and I think it'd be interesting to separate them if plausible! Morally, she's fine keeping the peace, but in canon she's pulled her weight with sketchy rebellion ongoings too, so she's got the capacity for either. While I don't think she'd have the patience or duplicity to go for being a double agent, ultimately her own agenda (which is to say, the safety of the people she personally feels loyalty to) takes priority. I think it'd be interesting for her to make CR and have to decide what the best course of action is from there, because that'll probably be the biggest source of conflict for her.

So in all likelihood, she would run with the Insurgents, but outwardly her loyalties probably won't be very impressive. And all of this could cause trouble down the line or draw into question what she's really there for, amongst other issues, but she'd be a stolid soldier with a preference towards avoiding civilian damage while she's there.

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