kazuha akagi (herbivore) [civilian]

THE BASICS

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

brown hair, brown eyes and bespectacled, kazuha would be the very definition of nondescript, if not for his above-average height, and that itself is offset by his constant slouching. kazuha's attention to his appearance extends as far as showering everyday, and it shows. you could tell the day by the way he's dressing -- he has the same set of clothes he rotates through every week -- and how close you are to the weekend by the state of his hair. (cowlicks everywhere? happy friday!)

PERSONALITY

kazuha akagi lives a life of least-effort. it's not that he doesn't put in any work; rather, he puts in just the minimum required to get by. he has no expectations of doing anything special, being anyone spectacular. if he was a character in a manga, he'd be a mook, at best -- and for characters like those, just staying alive is a feat enough.

his fatalism has seeped into his entire demeanor. take his perpetual ennui, and pile on the persistent side-effects of overusing his quirk (an occupational hazard that unfortunately is the only thing putting food on his table), and you get a sad, sad man whose constant lethargy is a defining characteristic. 

there are rare moments when he comes alive: talk to him about stories, and you just might catch a spark of vigor in his eyes. just don't bring the conversation back to him.

BACKGROUND HISTORY

kazuha akagi grew up wanting to be something. 

he'd been born average, to an average family in an average home, in the uneventful aomori countryside. shun and natsuki were both smart; university graduates, not top-of-the-line, but not shabby either. natsuki found steady work at the municipal office after her pregnancy; shun's job postings had him travelling to osaka and tokyo -- but he invariably returned to his wife and child for a weekend every month. 

in the idle hours waiting for his mother to return from work, kazuha filled his notepads with stories: melodramatic narratives of good vanquishing evil; of impossible ordeals and triumphant friendships. for a while, he lived vicariously through his heroes, basked in their glories as he play-acted with his friends in the playground. 

those were the sorts of childish fantasies most inevitably grow out of. 

by middle school, he had become aware of a few cold, hard facts: 1) his quirk was potentially useful, but nothing spectacular. 2) there was no way any serious hero school of any repute would take him. 3) he was not, and would never be, anything special. 
 
the verdict: give up; don't waste your effort.

so, he packed his notepads, and sat for his high school entrance exams -- the conventional sort, with desks, chairs and pen-scratching-paper -- and went on to high school (the conventional sort) and graduated (the conventional way) -- and, with his middle-of-the-line grades found himself at a vocational college majoring in graphic design and minoring in business administration.  

he front-loaded his modules and fast-tracked his course, graduating in three-and-a-half years instead of four, skipping his graduation ceremony and falling face first into a job in the marketing department of a mid-sized company. it was decent; it paid well enough for him to rent a 1dk apartment in central tokyo, and steadily chip away at his student loans. sure, he had no passion for it, but few could ever say they did jobs they truly loved.

so, it was fine, everything was fine!

and he quit.

it wasn't dramatic: he handed in his one month notice, sent his thanks down the chain from department head to executive chief; attended the requisite nomikais until the official date of his resignation, when he quietly packed up the 1.5 square meters of office cubicle space he had since joined the company three years ago. "stress," he would tell his parents over the phone. "the hours were bad and after-hours drinking was worse."

it was that, partly; he liked his liver enough to want to keep it. but it also -- wasn't. it was a lifetime of self-inflicted discontent, building up to a regrettable impulse decision to lease a 12 square meters, fixer-upper office space in musutafu's shopping district. it was the sort of thing he was supposed to have grown out of.

job left, paperwork submitted, real estate secured and financial instability achieved, akagi design consultancy stumbled off to a rocky start. as things turned out, jobs were far harder to come by without the backing of a company with a reputation and industry connections. for the consultancy's inaugural year, kazuha scrounged for work where he could; picked up a guidebook on food foraging, and moved into a 1r in the outskirts of musutafu. 

it wasn't as much of a breakthrough, as a lucky break. an ex-coursemate of his suspected her newly-wed husband was cheating on her.

"detectives are a hassle. i've got a mint plant in the living room; see if he's been bringing her home. i'll pay you."

"eugh. sure, i guess."  

and that was that. 

the consultancy wasn't on the up-and-up as much as no longer spiralling down as fast. his coursemate, a satisfied and newly-single customer, recommended his services to a friend, who hooked him up with an acquaintance, who had a friend in law enforcement -- and so on. through word of mouth, akagi design consultancy became known as akagi consultancy, and he went from freelance designer to freelance detective. it was the sort of story arc he might have delighted in as a child; the hero embarking on his fated journey, except the journey was 5% staring blankly into space, 15% seeing things he never wanted to see, and 80% dry-heaving into a wastepaper basket. 

but it kept him fed and clothed for the past two years, and he could saunter into work at 10:30am instead of on-the-dot at 9am, and in those few cases when he wasn't ratting out cheating spouses, he could feel like he was doing something.  

that had to be enough, right?

THE ARMORY

QUIRK & SKILLS

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CHLORO-FEEL

TYPE: mutation
RANK/LEVEL: d
SUMMARY:
by ingesting plant parts, kazuha is able to experience the plant's "memories" from the past twelve hours.

the plant parts he ingests must be from the same plant, and the plants must total at least 2.5g (five basil leaves, for example). the plant parts must be fresh, and cannot have been cooked, or separated from the main plant for more than an hour. upon eating the requisite plant parts, kazuha enters a trance state, during which he explores the plants "memories".

he experiences these "memories" as rapidfire, disorienting impressions. he has learnt how to hone in on pertinent details -- but to do so, he must have some idea of what he's looking for. the more information provided to kazuha before he enters the trance state, the more effectively he is able to seek out the exact "timeslice" of memory he needs to experience in detail. otherwise, he risks getting swept away in the deluge of impressions, and coming out with only a muddied sense of what he's seen.

WEAKNESSES/LIMITATIONS:
while in the trance state, he is completely unaware of anything that is happening around him -- he cannot see, hear, or feel, and cannot move voluntarily. the trance state lasts for at least one full post.

the trance also leaves kazuha feeling (and, unfortunately, looking) like he's going through the world's worst hangover: a pounding headache, intense nausea, light and movement sensitivity, vertigo, and an unnameable, uneasy sense of displacement as his consciousness adjusts to being human again. as long as he's allowed to rest and rehydrate with minimal movement, he'll be himself again in four posts. otherwise, this hungover state will last until he's given to time to rest -- and he'll almost definitely throw up over his pants.

he also cannot stop himself from entering the trance state as long as he has consumed the amount required for activating his quirk; for that reason, he avoids all fresh produce. ("oh, you have your own herb garden? that's, uh, great. seeya.") 

RANK/LEVEL: b-
SUMMARY:
he's largely given up on trying to wrangle his disparate impressions into human language. instead, he's found it much more efficient to simply draw out what he's seen. considering he has an art degree, and does this as a career, he has quite the deft hand at it, and is able to quickly and accurately reproduce sketches at professional quality. 

RANK/LEVEL: c
SUMMARY:
he's by no means an expert, but he knows enough to identify common plants when he sees them (especially which ones are edible, and which ones he should avoid.) he's also nurtured a green thumb, successfully keeping his shelf-full of herbs alive, and has nursed a number of them back to health after mistreatment by his clients.

RANK/LEVEL: d-
SUMMARY:
he's a private-hire investigator, and has attempted to gain the skillset required for such a profession. he has a theoretical knowledge of stealth, lockpicking, and how to work a pinhole camera, but -- considering most people pay him to eat plants -- he doesn't often get to put this knowledge to practice.

RANK/LEVEL: d
SUMMARY:
he's put a lot of strange things in his mouth in his lifetime. acquired tastes and dubious appearances are unlikely to phase him, even if he'd really rather not.

SOCKS

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