Akina Hooper, 8

AKINA ANTHEA HOOPER

Akina has big, wide-set green eyes on a short, heart-shaped face. Her nose is all together too large for her face and her mouth is a smear of pink just below that. Akina adores her high cheekbones and highlights them in the few times she gets to wear makeup each year. Her eyebrows are gracefully curved but dark and bushy and her lashes touch her cheeks when she closes her eyes.

Though she carries no extra weight because of her frugal lifestyle, Akina's body is soft and weak, with dimples at her elbows and knees. She has a light scattering of freckles all across her back and arms, and her knees are heavily scarred from a long history of falling on them.

Akina's hair is a dark brown that gleams with tones of red in bright sunlight. It used to hang down past her waist, but when she started working in the looms in the factories, they made her cut it. It now hangs just above her shoulders, in a tangled tousle, and she often runs her fingers through it when thinking.

Akina wears simple clothes, mostly because she would ruin anything lovely that she wore. Her sleeves always hang right to her fingertips and are frayed and wrinkled from chewing. The collar of her shirts often suffers the same fate. Her shoes are scuffed and mended beyond reason, held together by duct tape and some questionable sewing. Akina has a black leather and cotton patch jacket that belonged to her father that she wears almost constantly, and a wooden bead necklace given to Akina by her grandmother.

Personality:

Akina is wicked clever. She excels in school, specifically in sciences and maths. Her brain soaks up facts and concepts like a sponge, and once she is told something, Akina almost never forgets it. She enjoys puzzles and riddles, and loathes when she is outsmarted or stumped.

When without an outlet for her genius, Akina becomes extremely irritable and rather childish. She rampages and hissy fits and bothers everyone around her, like her bad traits get magnified. For that reason, those close to her make an effort to find her something to do, so that she is bored as little as humanly possible.

Akina is extremely closed off, hardly ever speaking to people she hasn't known for a long time. She doesn't trust easily, and often comes off as cold and rude when people first meet her. Though she has a very strong ability of reading people and deducing situations she often does not share these observations and simply uses them to build her opinion of a person.

When Akina doesn't trust you she comes off as rude, distant, sarcastic, smug and a show-off. She keeps people at a distance and hates showing any emotion, considering emotions to be a weakness.

When Akina trusts you, she comes off as rude, distant, sarcastic, smug and a show-off; but she is also strangely affectionate, laughs loudly and too much, starves for physical contact and will do literally anything for those she cares about no matter the consequences.

History:

Akina's childhood was warm and happy, her mother and father were loving and perfect. Akina remembers them mostly as smiles, flashes of white teeth and warm lips in her simple memories. She does remember the jacket and necklace, remembers the feel of the wooden beads in her fingers when her mother held her, the scratch of her fathers jacket when she buried her face in his sleeve.

For all she remembers of her parents, Akina has forgotten so much more, a memory loss that she mourns every day. But she was only five when they died, and though she is very clever, she cannot make her brain grow faster.

Since her parents died in a 'freak' accident at the factories, Akina has been raised by her older brother Anthony. Anthony is twelve years her senior, and works in the Justice Building, though Akina doesn't truly know his position. Akina and Anthony's relationship is strained because they are very similar people, and neither of them thinks the other uses their genius the way they should. Though they don't get along, Anthony is fiercely protective of Akina and ultimately wants what is best for her.

So since she was twelve (and perfectly capable of making her own decisions thank you Anthony), Akina has been mostly living on her own, only having to suffer through one visit from Anthony a week. She has a flat above a small grocery store run by her landlady, Mrs. Collins, one of the very few people Akina trusts implicitly.

Akina has spent the last ten years of her life trying to find out the truth of her parents death, and has become obsessed with solving what she is sure is their murder. It drives most of her social and work life, and worries both Mrs. Collins and Anthony with the ferocity of her conviction.

In her every day life, Akina works in the looms of the factory, her keen eyes allowing her an advantage in finding the few faults with each machine and swiftly fixing them.