Ashkelon

"*No one can understand me... my suffering of being alone in this world. This body given to me by quirk does not allow me to verbally speak the human speech, all I can do use body language and use garbled noises to tell others my mood. I am... alone inside this body and no one will be able to know... it is me.*"
—Ashkelon
**Ashkelon** (アシュケロン, *Ashukeron*?), nicknamed as **Ash** (灰, *Hai*?), born as **Joan** (ジャンヌ, *Jan'nu*?) is an female whose quirk gave her an a unusual transformation-type quirk enabling her to transform into an type of "dragon", where more often takes the form of a cat-like creature, to which its true potential is that of an empowered form of a black dragon that takes energy to stay in. When she was born, this quirk manifested when she turned 12 years old, and been unable to revert back to her human form. She was however chassed from her home as her parents believed she ate their child, without knowing the fact the black creature was their child.

At some point in her life, Ashkelon was found by U.A. principal, Nezu and taken her in to the U.A. High School to order to help gain the ability to revert back to her human form. In this scenario, she would greatly befriend the Bakaneko Hombre Gato, whose in a similar situation and became closest of friends. In order properly communicate, both Nezu and Hombre helped her perform gestures and body-based languages in order to do so. She is placed into General Studies due to the Hero course being full, placed into Class 1-D as the Class Vice Representative with Gato being the Class Representative.

## Biography

### Background

#### Early Life

Like any other human child on the planet she was born to two normal parents in an unknown part of the world, being given the name Joan, after Joan of Arc, the infamous French heroine during the Hundred Years' War at the siege of Orléans. At first due to her parents being quirkless, it was believed Joan was also quirkless given the evidence of the absence extra joint in their pinky toe at birth, though continued to nevertheless keep a eye out. During her baby life to so speak, Joan was reserved for a baby, having rarely cried at all and often seen as the "calmnest baby baby in the world". However at some point when she turned twelve, she began to feel strangely throughout her body and told her parents. Fearing their child, they took her to check on her joints in her pinky toe, again showing no extra jolt indicatingg to be quirkless. The quirk specialist seeing it's not a quirk-related matter should take her to someone who is more specialixedf in this area.

Joan was taken to an hospital to be checked due to the "strangeness" in her body, but all medical analysis suggest her body is perfectly healthy and fine. To simply get rid of the strangeness, they presubscribed her with some medication which they believe will tone down the strangeness, believing it to be someone connected to her hormonal changes at her coming age of thirteen. After the hospital, she was taken to her relatives to play with her cousins after she took her medication.

After getting home, Joan was asleep as they walked inside their home, her mother having placed her onto herbed. After some hours, she awakened startled by the sudden wakefulness as she stood up only to fall flat on her head. As she got herself up, she realized her hands are no longer "human hands" but an creature's hand. Seeing as a mirror was placed conveniently next to her bed, she saw an black cat-like, almost dragon like creature where she was. Sudden realization daunted her that it was in fact her, she was transformed into this creature and concluded it was her quirk where she screeched loudly, stopping as she placed her "paw" on her mouth, shocked no form of verbal speech came out. The screech alerted the parents as they came barging inside, seeing the "creature" in her perspectives and not her child with its paws to its mouth. The father berated her as if she's an invading pest, with the mother fearing the creature haven eaten her baby. Trying to communicate, but to no avail as she was forced outside of the house as an gunshot was fired, almost hitting her head as the father attempted to "kill" her, the supposed creature that killed their 12 year old child.

Now all alone in the world as she has been unable to transform back to her human form, Joan decided to survive like this from no on, someday to return when she can revert back to her human form, but until then she leaves her old life behind despite being 12 years old at the time. This also calls for a new name, and decided to be called Ashkelon.

## Personality

Ashkelon holds herself to be a shy and rather timid individual due to the lack of common communications of verbal speech, heavily relying on an unique body-based language created by Hombre Gato for which some sound is integrated (like how a cat has specific noise for specific communication, but is not human speech). Reclusive before having encountered both Nezu and the eventual Gato, she was fearful to humans and most forms of life due to her unique draconic form thanks to her quirk. Running from any sight of living thing with the exception of requiring food to eat, hunting small animals and insects. She stayed away from society and kept to the wilderness in her own perception of being killed like a stray animal, or experimented on.

However when Ashkelon was introduced to U.A. High after being befriended by Nezu, she took on a different stance in life when she met Hombre Gato who deeply cared for her and helped her through her struggles. Developing what Mina believes to be "love" due to how affectionate she became towards Gato, she now hold a very confident and prideful attitude and has lost that initial shyness and solitary lifestyle she developed in time. If anything however this deep love for Gato made her more aggressive and extremely overprotective of Gato, willing to fight anyone that would berate, bad mouth or insult herself or Gato. Out of anything she trusts, only Gato has her complete trust and sees everyone else as an potential threat regardless on who and what they are.

## Abilities

### Quirk

**Pendragon** (所長竜(ペンドラゴン), *Pendoragon*?, Lit. “Chief Dragon”): An transformation-type quirk that allows Ashkelon to transform into an black-furred dragon, an mythical legendary creature of various cultures around the world. However taking more in nature to being an feline then an actual dragon, th quirk nevertheless allows her to gain certain properties associated with dragons. In this case, she can transform between two different states; an non-combat mode and a combat mode. A non-combat mode is the default form looking more like a strange looking cat then what one may think is a dragon. In its non-combat mode, she is very agile and maneuverable in the environment, just as flexible if not even more then the actual domesticated cat. The non-combat mode features an sturdy small body for agility and speed over physical strength and power, faster the common household cat with stronger claws and higher jaw strength then the cat (comparatively inferior to the combat mode). This is the default and requires no energy to use.

However as stated, she can shift into what is called an "combat mode" or "combative mode", which transforms her into an large, four-legged more familiar dragon form. In the combat form, Ashkelon is a formidable individual with dense scales under fur to take great amounts of damage, including high calibre bullets with no noticeable pain. Her physical defenses allows her to withstand crushing blows, absorb radiation and be highly resistant to most forms of natural or unnatural phenomena (she is barely hurt when walking through fire). With her massive body, the combat mode is able to exert great amounts of physical strength which she can smash through walls of stone and brick with ease. She can even use her powerful limbs to crush objects and her jaw strength believed to exceed well over 25,000 pounds per square inch, the strongest bite force only surpassed by the extinct Tyrannosaurus rex which she can crush almost anything with her jaws. On the forehead protrudes two heavy-duty horn that can penetrate most materials behind her impressive body strength. With large pair of wings enabling her to fly, she can go incredible speeds for her speeds, going just shy faster then a F-18. Overall, her combat mode can become an dangerous thing to encounter to those hostile to her, easily using her tail to cause concussive or blunt damage and her claws to impale anything. At some point, the mode even enables to project an powerful particle accelerator beam from her mouth, which can have various of effect of small burn to almost complete disintegration of the targeted object.

As it stands, Ashkelon has been unable to revert to human form, incapable of human speech as well, making it extremely, if not impossible to communicate to the human community to voice her situations.

### Super Moves

#### Combat Mode

**Dragon's Breath** (竜の咆哮, *Ryū no Hōkō*?): Ashkelon can project an high density and powerful particle accelerator beam from her mouth, allowing her to cause significant amounts of damage to inorganic and organic materials, which could even cause disintegration if projected at the highest level possible.

**Tail Slam** (テールスラム, *Tēru Suramu*?) As the name suggests, Ashkelon uses her tail to slam against the earth against either an target or the ground itself to create a shockwave. She had used this during the Training Camp in order to save Hombre Gato.

**Mouth Slam** (口投入(マウススラム), *Mausu Suramu*?, Lit. "Mouth injection"): An dangerous super move performed by Ashkelon in certain dire situations, the Mouth Slam refers to an action she performs using her mouth, more often taking someone into her mouth and ejecting that at high speed with air propulsion and flinging them onto the ground from her mouth. More then not considered a very fatal super move as the impending impact will broke the bones of the one being flung out.

### Stats

Ashkelon's stats, according to the creator.

## U.A. High School

### Faculty

#### Midnight

Due to the color of her scales and a enigmatic vibe, Midnight took a vast likening to Ashkelon, having called her **Nyx** (夜, *Yoru*?, Lit, "Night") for which her color best represent a clear night sky. Ashkelon had also taken quite a likening to Midnight, one of the only few she fully trusts besides Hombre Gato in any endeavors.

### Class 1-D

#### Hombre Gato

Quite possibility the only student in U.A. she trusts with her entire heart, Ashkelon has an very obsessive tendencies towards him, extremely friendly and kind as Gato is to her. Due to both their situation involving their quirk, the two grew extremely close and rarely is seen separated. Comfortable towards each other, the two act more like legitimate cats then one may think, often snuggling against each other and keeping each of themselves warm, playful as well. In certain situations, she is extremely overprotective one can summarize, going out of her way to ensure Gato's safety by any means required. Due to their closeness, Gato even studied and found a way to allow Ashkelon to communicate, which was something that been difficult by U.A. faculty. Gato has essentially formulated and created a entire new way of communication language just for her, to allow full range of communication without the use of a vocalization.

Her overprotectiveness would even go as far to utilize her Combat Mode. When the two were invited to the Hero Course's training camp and that Gato was injured, she entered her combat mode to quickly use her own tail to slam against the ground to create a shockwave before grabbing Gato to safety. Due to the fact no villain was actually hurt, she only warned to not do so again, but she growled quite obviously disagreeing to the given warn.

## Trivia & Notes

* Ashkelon is physically represented by Sylvie, an character from *The Beginning After The End*.
* Named after Ashkelon, a coastal city in the Southern District of Israel whose other name is called Ascalon.
* In an draft of the character's history, Ashkelon was captured by an organization of villains and used an unknown quirk to activate her combat form, in hopes to weaponize her against heroes. However she broke containment and began fighting the villains, including even having fully devoured two of them to replenish energy, and to show she will go extreme lengths to protect herself. This is stemmed that many saw her as an monster, a beast and so has accepted that terminology, becoming an monster due to those around her calling her as such.
	+ This sequence was inspired by an scene in the 2018 game *God of War* with the dragon attacking Kratos and Atreus on the elevator.