Sakura Avalon - PK

An air of fragility cloaks the delicately boned frame of this slight girl. Her skin, a light shade of olive, is smooth and blemish-free, drawn sleekly over the high cheekbones and attractive planes of her face. Contrasting against this complexion, inky black hair falls in silk sheets about her face. Its glossy color occasionally streaked with various rainbow shades, depending on how recently her friend Madison has been playing stylist. Angular eyes slant beneath the dark arches of her brows, glinting like chips of jet. Their lighthearted good humor reflects a life with few troubles or stresses.

Unlike many within the Capitol, Sakura has done little to follow the outrageous and fickle fashions of the day. Her features are un-enhanced to the point of being "boringly natural" as Madison would word it. The only concession to such trends is the small, silver inked tattoo of a five-pointed star set just at the nape of her neck.

Her appearance has undergone some changes of late - morphing from the cosseted and indolent physique of a girl who never worked a day in her life, to a lithe gymnast's frame. This alteration is due to her new occupation as one of the Capitol's trusted peacekeepers. Stubborn to a fault, she undertook her training with a determination, and pushed her body far beyond its accustomed routines, building layers of streamlined muscle.

What makes a person complex? I would say the challenges of life and the trials one is put through ingrain the layers of our personality. Sakura has had few of either, and thus she remains a shallow girl. It is not that people would find her particularly unkind, unintelligent, or uninteresting…it is just that her relatively sheltered life within the Capitol has kept her safe from most troubles one would encounter in the districts. Thus, she has had little opportunity to develop strength of character and integrity.

Her mother died when she was only three years old. While this was certainly not what she would have chosen, Sakura was too young to even remember her presence. She grew up hearing stories of her mother, watching televised newscasts that she did, but never truly missing her. If the truth was told, she might even feel a little guilty over how little her mother's death affects her.

She is a girl of determination, but then she has had very little until recently to test that determination. Becoming a peacekeeper is the most difficult thing she has done, and will perhaps be the making of her. She is driven to excel, but previously was aimless, with nothing to focus her efforts on and no significant dreams to pursue. Her best friend, Madison, was the one with all of the direction and desire. So, Sakura has always thrown herself into helping Madison to succeed and losing her own way a bit in the process.

She is an empty canvas begging for paint, for experiences to leave their marks and push her to create something beautiful from their ashes.

Once upon a time, there lived a wealthy young heiress named Nadiyah Amorelle. She was as beautiful as she was intelligent and kind. She lived in one of the largest homes in the Capitol of Panem along with her loving parents, and her sister Samarah. The two sisters were nearly inseparable, and when their college years came, it was difficult on both to find their interests pulling them apart so frequently.

Samarah pursued a promising career as a model in the high fashion spheres that Capitolites held such a passion for. Meanwhile, Nadiyah immersed herself in the zealous study of TV journalism. Her single-minded pursuit of the truth behind a story often led her places that her family did not approve of. Regardless of this, she still made time for Samarah, and was often the biggest supporter at her modeling events -- that is, until one day when she met the newest Professor at the local college.

Giving his first lecture in agricultural history, Aedan Avalon met and fell hopelessly in love with Nadiyah. In a scandalous two months, they were married. They gave birth first to a son, Toya, and then a little girl they named Sakura. The small family was blissfully happy, despite being disowned from the family fortune by Nadiyah's father, and suffering Samarah's bitter resentment of Aedan for taking her sister away from her.

Five years were spent together after Sakura's birth, with Nadiyah all but abandoning her journalistic dream in favor of raising her children. However, such times would not last. An anonymous tip, so enormous in portent that it could not be ignored, was passed to Nadiyah. It led her in stealth from the Capitol to the smoking ruins of District Thirteen from whence she would never return. Her lifeless body was later discovered by patrolling peacekeepers near the border of District Twelve -- throat slit open. Such a tragic crime could only be the work of merciless district rebels (so the President proclaimed), and became a new illustration of the Capitol's moral superiority.

Does the story end here? No, because this is not Nadiyah's story, but that of her infant daughter, Sakura.

The bereft family found themselves splintered apart as they all struggled to handle the death in their own manner. Aedan threw himself into fighting the district rebels in any way apparent. He soon became an admired propagandist, working closely with many key figures in Capitol governance. Toya initially grew sullen and withdrawn, expressing his growing teenage angst through harsh music and occasional fringe involvement in a local gang. By the time he turned eighteen, some of the storm seemed to have passed, and he gave all appearances of being a well-adjusted young man.

Sakura, was sheltered from the initial shock by her young age, but she grew up without a mother's presence. All she had were a stack of tapes that held recorded broadcasts her mother had done for the local news channel. Those, and her inseparable companion, Madison.

Despite the rift between herself and Aedan, Samarah loved her niece and first introduced Sakura to her own daughter, Madison, shortly following Nadiyah's funeral. From then on, the two were rarely apart. They attended the same school, kept the same friends, in all respects they might have been sisters. When Madison developed an interest in fashion, and declared her intent to one day become a tribute stylist in the Games, Sakura supported her whole-heartedly. She even went so far as to submit to frequent 'practice sessions', and serve as Madison's model for any variety of fantastical clothing creations.

When a fit of defiance led Sakura to join the peacekeepers, Madison tried everything to convince her otherwise. Stubborn to a fault (and perhaps having inherited some of her mother's tenacity), it becomes obvious that the more pressure was placed on her, the more determined Sakura became to pursue what was originally a rash whim. Resigning herself to this new turn, Madison made the best of what she considered to be a passing phase, and concluded that she would use this as a new challenge for her costume designing.

Peacekeepers within the Capitol are a far cry from their District counterparts. Mainly Capitolite volunteers on a lark, they have no ambition and little motivation for training. It might have been easy for Sakura to satiate her desire to rebel without any undue exertion if not for being assigned to the command of an aging Officer by the name of Cairo Berus. More mascot than anything, he is rarely taken seriously anymore, and most of the 'toy soldiers' (as Cairo dubs them) give him a wide berth. For some reason, he sees in Sakura a potential she doesn't even recognize in herself, and proceeds to push her through months of grueling training. However, it would appear that her effort pays off, when she is assigned to a mission with some of the youngest and brightest among the enlisted.