Akiyu Sinnoe

### Occupation:

Hitwoman (mostly Monsters and Primals) (employed by the Grand Companies, mainly the Maelstrom)

## Affiliation

### Free Company:

Silver Valkyries (loosely); Dark Moon Blades (stand-in leader, formerly)

## Powers and Abilities

### The Echo:

She is habitually vague about it (maybe for a lack of the proper words to describe it), but her Echo grants her tremendously heightened perception compared to normal mortals; not only does she not need conventional eyesight, but she finds it pretty distracting, leading her to constantly wear a blindfold

### Physical Abilities:

Superhuman strength - will use a tree log as a weapon substitute without too much issue if necessary

### Magical Abilities:

High affinity for both White and Black magic; extraordinary talent for infusing her wielded weapons with her aether to "supercharge" them for much increased damage potential and durability in battle

### Non-Combat Abilities:

Nigh superhuman disregard for "false politeness"; more or less impossible to intimidate; talented (closet) writer

Akiyu Sinnoe (pronounced "Ah-kee-yoo Sin-oh") - her first name stemming from an uncommon Doman dialect, whereas the origin of her odd last name is something known only to those close to her - is twenty-eight years of age, called a Warrior of Light by many a common folk (not actually true), and hero by technicality.

"By technicality" because while, yes, she does make a very regular habit of fending off beasts, Primals and whatsoever else may threaten her world at any given time, that used to be, for the most part, a byproduct of her insatiable thirst for battle. Though in recent times, she has grown to actually embrace the role of doing good for others.

## Appearance

Akiyu is a very slender and short Au Ra - among the shortest you can possibly chance to find, in fact, contrasted by her rather long tail. One might almost even feel inclined to call her petite... at least while she's not listening. Her hair, which she likes to wear long and loose, is pitch-black, her skin a fair shade, and her scales the typical blue of the Xaela. Her eye color is something few have actually seen, but Akiyu herself says it's green.

On that topic - she constantly wears a blindfold that she never takes off; she seemingly wears it because she relies wholely on her superhuman senses gained through her Echo, considering her normal eyesight not just unnecessary, but downright distracting.

Other than that, Akiyu is actually an unexpectedly fashion-conscious woman; even in battle she is mostly seen wearing stylish attire, and out of battle she is quite fond of wearing very modern and casual clothing.

## Childhood and Teenage Years

Akiyu was born in Doma - right into the Garleans' conquest of the nation. She doesn't know anything of her heritage or if she has any living siblings or other relatives, and assumes that her parents died during those deadly times while she was still very young. Her childhood and teenage years were spent on the streets of Doma and Yanxia - later on mostly the latter.

To cut a long story short: She grew up an orphan, forced into learning to get by on her own from a young age; while this is of course a tragic circumstance, it does mean fighting, scavenging, improvising and surviving came to her naturally - and it did teach her to grow up to be ruthless and highly utilitarian, be it for better or for worse.

It was when she was around ten years of age that the Echo sounded across the star of Hydaelyn, and Akiyu was one of those souls who witnessed visions of falling stars and awoke to strange powers. In her case, next to the usual, it was her perception and understanding of time and space around her that grew beyond the limits of common mortals; in more simple terms, she attained some kind of superhuman sense keen enough to not just replace, but utterly outclass her physical body's ordinary eyesight.

It was around this time that Akiyu first started developing active enjoyment for the art of battle. Lacking a teacher of any sort, she taught herself, in equal parts through reading and through improvisation, to wield blades and magic over the years. It was then that she discovered not only how naturally magic came to her, but also her unnaturally high raw physical strength, slowly but surely enhanced further and further as she began to actively train.

Inevitably, though, what with her ruthless survivalist personality combined with her gradually increasing power, this led her to grow increasingly reckless and subsequently attain a degree of notoriety with Doma's and Yanxia's Garlean masters that got her into more and more trouble over time - but that wasn't actually what led her to leave, it seems. Mostly refusing to disclose what exactly happened when asked, Akiyu simply refers to an "incident" that forced her to leave her homeland, and set out into the unknown... a journey that apparently turned into a very, very long world travel - not to find a new home or a new family or friends, as she would later say, but rather "to find strength".

Where exactly that long journey took her is something she doesn't talk much about unless specifically asked (Thavnair seems to be one place, for instance, where she spent a certain amount of time)... but suffice to say, she must have reached more than a few faraway lands, people and sights, and has more than adequately reached the goal of her journey.

## Adulthood

The Seventh Umbral Calamity was something that very nearly somewhat passed Akiyu by as she was, even then, still on her travel across the farthest reaches of Hydaelyn.

Where she next showed up on the radar in any capacity was when she grew tired of the low living standards of aimlessly wandering the world and arrived in Eorzea sometime during 7UE5. Of course Eorzea wasn't a completely random choice for her; by now, her initial fondness of battle had evolved into an almost excessive thirst for proving herself against the strongest foes she could possibly find - or, in her words, for "killing strong things". The beastmen of Aldenard and the Primals they summon were, to her, like a big, fat, shiny candy in a shop window, just begging to be eaten already.

... and if she was able to help the rebuilding Eorzea out and even earn a neat fortune in doing so, then that was really just extra icing on the mayhem cake.

So estranged from society was she for such long stretches of time, in fact, that it was actually only now that she witnessed for herself what she had previously only vaguely heard of here or there: The existence of other people possessed of the Echo - as well as the existence of legitimate Warriors of Light. In another very utilitarian move of hers, Akiyu joined one of the Free Companies of Eorzea, a then small organization of adventurers known as the Dark Moon Blades. She quickly rose through the Free Company's ranks, ultimately assuming the leading position in all but name, and used it to efficiently find interesting foes and, when necessary, have other adventurers at her side for assistance.

Over time, Akiyu grew used to her new life and even grew fond of taking things easier - just from time to time, at least; she bought a house in Mist, near Limsa Lominsa, picked up writing as a closet hobby, and grew to be at least... somewhat more social(ly competent)... and Eorzea grew used to her in turn - "Primalsbane" is one nickname she earned for herself in her relentless hunger for the thrill of battle and ever more power... and regardless of her motivations or intentions, "hero" is another. As well, people actually started calling her a Warrior of Light, which isn't technically correct - Akiyu doesn't bear a Crystal, she is merely powerful, fights dangerous things and has the Echo, leading many to simply mistake her for one. She also made her way through the ranks of the Maelstrom rather quickly, holding a high position of authority to this day (though she very rarely makes any active use of her standing with them, with one major exception mentioned below).

Ultimately, as the Dark Moon Blades turned out to fall apart over time for various reasons, Akiyu left the crumbling Free Company behind in the recent past. Rather, the Silver Valkyries caught her eye... to an extent. She has an at most loose relationship to them. Essentially, she's available when there's a good fight to be had and assistance is needed, and she sometimes drops by Her Embrace to, for the lack of better words, snoop around for information on interesting marks.

Her main source of income is simple: She has excellent connections to the Maelstrom - and to a lesser extent the Flames and Adder - and has an ongoing occupation as a "hitwoman", of sorts, for high-priority threats like Primals and certain monsters (or the occasional Garlean threat, though this being less common). In simple terms: They approach her with kill orders for particularly dangerous threats that need to be eliminated, and Akiyu essentially picks and chooses her marks (really just based on how exciting they look) from among them, and sacks the pay while also satiating her thirst for mayhem. Needless to say, this profession allows her a comfortable lifestyle, and she doesn't exactly have to count her gil.

## Recent Past (In-RP)

After meeting Kirigi Sulyvahn, Akiyu fell for her rather quickly - and, despite initially being quite apprehensive about the idea of a relationship (for reasons known only to her and said Kirigi Sulyvahn), Akiyu ultimately admitted to herself that you gain nothing by venturing nothing, and they got together.

A short time later, due to looking for some kind of productive pastime that could serve as a change of pace from fighting, and due to really enjoying the Stray Sheep Bar in the Lavender Beds, she signed on there as security.

Of late, it also seems she's somehow more at peace with certain aspects of her past in Doma and Yanxia. This gradual change in attitude set in after she went back there for the first time since she fled Othard around a decade ago, a trip she undertook together with Kirigi Sulyvahn; Akiyu seems unwilling to share what exactly happened during this trip or why it was significant to her, only that she "visited someone's grave".

After that initial improvement in her general state of mind and attitude, her crushing defeat at the hand of an Ascian as well as Kirigi Sulyvahn's general predicament make her slip into a bit of a crisis - on one hand desperately determined to protect and save Kirigi, on the other hand insecure and doubtful about the way she spent her life thus far, questioning if she's been wasting it away by fighting for nothing meaningful. Trying to juggle both those things in addition to other things on her plate leave her - even if mostly below the surface - in a pretty questionable state.

Akiyu has since then become allied with not just the Silver Valkyries, but also Elrias Duskwind, who helped her get her power under control (while also gaining a significantly greater boost from it now), and made leaps and bounds in discovering the true nature of her strange power, and also discovered some things about her own identity that left her a bit shaken. She seems to now be on a quest of sorts that has to do with finding something out about her own past - though the details of this are known only to a few people.

Since getting together with Kirigi Sulyvahn and making more friends like Mis'to Raesthe, Seraphina Cershald or Elrias Duskwind, Akiyu has also grown more... well, more sociable, relaxed and friendly - even more "girly" in some regards. She can still be pretty rough, but not as much as in the past.

When Kirigi Sulyvahn finally gets kidnapped by one of the Ascian's pawns, Akiyu blames no one but herself for it - if she hadn't convinced Kirigi to leave Her Embrace for the spring prom at the Stray Sheep, then it wouldn't have happened, so she keeps telling herself. So one of the happiest events in Akiyu's life - proposing to Kirigi, and hearing a yes in response - is linked in her mind to the guilt of failing to protect that very same person. Even after finally finding and rescuing Kirigi several days later, Akiyu can't just let go of that guilt, and it's an increasing motivator in the steady downward spiral in her mental state; at this point it's fair to say she suffers from some degree of depression.

Finding the Ascian defeated and, along with the Silver Valkyries and others, fending off Dredgen, thus seeing Kirigi finally safe once more, allows Akiyu to finally calm down. In the following weeks, she mainly tries to just live her life normally - except now by Kirigi's side... who has her own issues here and there, during which Akiyu does her best to be a good future wife to her. A lot of her time is also spent learning to cook better, and she seems to slowly grow into a much more amicable person (though still with a loose vocabulary and a healthy dose of snark and sarcasm), and shows a desire to actually do good with her power proactively; in this desire, she decides to offer her assistance to the Silver Valkyries in the future as an ally.

Eventually, a few weeks back into normality, Morgana makes good on her promise to have a one-on-one match against Akiyu. After an initial outrage at Morgana holding back, the two eventually engage each other seriously - a fight Akiyu seems to dominate right until the end... when, for a moment seemingly defeated, Morgana reveals the true extent of her strength, and takes victory for herself in unleashing the might of Phoenix. This result leaves Akiyu, while respectful towards Morgana for her awe-inspiring power, deeply shocked - it marks not just the first time, since gaining her much increased might, that she goes all-out... but also the first time she since then that she lost. Still not being able to quite let go of identifying herself so much with her strength as a mage and fighter, this doesn't just ignite an entirely new admiration for Morgana, but especially hits home rather darn hard for her.

(You can read a transcript of said battle here: ***Akiyu Sinnoe vs Morgana Browne***)

Over time, Akiyu grows more and more into her improved life as an actual decent person with friends and a fiancé. Notably, too, Grima Dotharl becomes someone she grows quite close too, having found a sort of "battle sister" of like mind in the mighty warrior. Akiyu also grows much more of a desire to actually use her powers for good proactively, rather than just for the sake of enjoying one good challenge after another only for herself.

She also starts to care more about her purpose and legacy in the world she lives in... and in the course of this, she also decides she wants to find a pupil to impart her magical and martial knowledge to - someone morally upstanding enough to wield it responsibly, talented enough to wield it safely, and openminded and wise enough to wield it at all. Over the course of starting to visit the Elysium Fight Hall regularly - a place she appreciates greatly for giving her not just good challenges, but also a way to sharpen her skill and humble herself a bit regarding her raw strength - her eyes fall on Azekiel Hawthorne as the best candidate.

In the end, this master-student-relationship does come to pass, and she begins training her new pupil diligently, also inviting people like Mis'to Raesthe and Ria Duskwind to the lessons sometimes, as they show interest in freeform aether manipulation. Meanwhile, Akiyu also cooperates with Abathur Fore, of all people, as well as other people like Kirigi Sulyvahn and Ria Duskwind, in hunting down an elusive set of villains formerly associated with Abathur.

## Personality

Growing up and spending her childhood and teenage years the way she did... well, she would likely say she lacks the patience for licking others' behinds to make them feel better about themselves. She's not an inherently very aggressive or hostile person, no - but one with no desire to fake politeness or display patience for those that bore or annoy her, readily showing those individuals an abrasiveness they might not always deem called for, topped by a calm and eloquent yet coarse vocabulary to go along with it.

Inversely, though, she will lend those she deems worth her time an ear or even two (or horns, rather) for hours on end, showing that she makes for quite the listener and conversation partner... just so long as she deems who sho's talking to interesting, that is. And even here she will still startle some gentler souls with her blunt, unvarnished attitude.

And of course, as mentioned above, Akiyu ever thirsts for mayhem and the thrill of a tough opponent. A "hero" she may be and glory may be hers, yes, but she has no care for either of those things. She simply carries an insatiable thirst for battle, for growing ever more powerful and laying low the mightiest foes she can possibly find... it just so happens she knows right from wrong and doesn't mind doing some good while she's at it. Where exactly this obsession even comes from she either cannot *or* will not say, though.

Almost funny it is, then, that someone like her would take to the leisure pastimes she does. Akiyu has quite the liking for music and written stories, for instance, and fancies herself somewhat of a "closet writer", one might say... and even something like floating around idly on the waves at the beaches of Mist or relaxing in the garden outside her house are things she is also seen doing quite often. In more recent times she's also grown fond of spending long evenings and nights in bars, ordering one vodka after the other - which of course also has the side effect of being able to listen in on conversations, maybe gleaning information about promising marks here or there.

Also, as it turns out in the more recent past as Akiyu starts socializing more, she loosens up and gets quite a bit more talkative with enough vodka in her system, and then also turns into a bit of a cheeky flirt under the right circumstances.

Due to her reliance on custom-made weaponry, she has also developed a very discerning eye for the quality, specifics and condition of combat gear, even if she isn't a blacksmith herself.

More recently, she has grown to be much more friendly under the good influence of her friends and especially Kirigi, and even developed a rather notable desire to proactively use her strength for good; she's still a pottymouth sometimes, so to speak, and does sometimes still run out of patience a tad quickly, but has otherwise grown into a much better person.

## Combat Capabilities and Powers

Akiyu bears no Crystal and is thus no Warrior of Light, but still displays superhuman powers; whether or not this is due to the Echo or not, even she doesn't know, and she doesn't care either - it's likely though, all things considered. Strong enough to swing around a tree log and possessed of a high affinity for White and Black magic alike, Akiyu is also a very admirable tactician - at least in single combat; she's also not a chump when it comes to fighting alongside others, but team fights are not her strong suit. Hence, she prefers it if the situation allows her to just fight alone and let loose. Of course, her unique superhuman perception gained through her Echo also aids her *greatly* in battle, allowing her to survey the battlefield and analyze the movements of foes in ways most of anyone else simply can't.

Her preferred fighting style is one of highly aggressive and fluid attacks and dodges at very high degrees of agility and raw speed, employing both melee attacks with her rapier-like weapon as well as an array of devastating and highly varied spells. She also has a tendency for leaving quite a mess due to how (literally) explosive her attacks often tend to be. Aside from that, she has taken a liking to occasionally employing a fighting style with heavier armor and a greatsword in recent years, and on more rare occasions she is also seen employing a fighting style not entirely unlike that of a Ninja, wielding dual shortswords... and if the situation absolutely calls for it, she will also *occasionally* take more of a supporting and healing role for others with her White magic, albeit reluctantly; being right in the fray is decidedly more her style. All in all, it can be said she values independence in how she fights - the ability to deal huge amounts of damage of her own, coupled with either the sturdiness to take her foes' attacks or the agility to avoid them.

A particularly developed specific magical talent of hers is the act of infusing her wielded weapon with her aether, more or less "supercharging" it to dramatically increase its durability and damage potential. This is something Akiyu actually taught herself, again in pure improvisation for the lack of an actual teacher, due to growing frustrated with how swinging her weapons at things with the kind of brute force she can muster caused them to break more often than she was comfortable with, in addition to requiring an efficient way to put more of her own magical powers into her close combat strikes. Due to the way she improvised her method of doing this, said method is somewhat unorthodox; she essentially extends her aether from herself into the weapon while she fights, and retracts it again afterwards. Funnily enough, ultimately she still ended up breaking her weapons *by doing this*, so by now she gets custom-made ones specially crafted to perfectly serve this specific purpose.

Also, contrary to most people, Akiyu uses very few pre-established spells and techniques - most of the ones she uses are ones she made up herself. Her fighting style made her decide to have her custom-made rapier crafted with a sharp edge on the front side, for instance, and she's rarely seen using any conventional spells. An exception, at least in a way, is that she seems to have abstracted Red Mage spells like Jolt and Verholy into versions of her own that serve her purposes better. Also, like Red Mages, she makes use of Acceleration to greatly magnify her magical capabilities beyond their already astounding limits.

Three particularly noteworthy things in how Akiyu employs spells, though, are rather more complicated spellcasting techniques she invented herself, which she dubbed *Delay*, *Storage*, and *External Fixpoints*. They all are, as complex as they are in theory, rather straightforward in practice. Delay allows Akiyu to modulate the charge time of her spells; like this, she doesn't have to rely on various different spells to balance charge speed against damage, but rather uses only a handful of spells and adjusts the amount of time she charges them. Storage, on the other hand, allows her to finish charging a spell without firing it - she more or less causes the spell's aether to become temporarily inert, letting her just hold it on standby for as long as she pleases; lastly, by "using External Fixpoints" she refers to creating a fixed point (as the name implies) in the caster's vicinity and charging a spell there rather than in one's hand, weapon, what have you - even (or rather, specifically) when it is a spell that normally requires being charges that way.

Specifically Storage and External Fixpoints, combined with Acceleration, are best showcased in what she dubbed "Jolt Barrage" - she charges a Jolt, stores it, accelerates into a second one, stores it, creates an external fixpoint, charges a Jolt in it, stores it, accelerates into a second one, stores it... and so on, allowing her to prepare and ultimately unleash a hailstorm of Jolt spells; Delay, on the other hand, is best showcased in a specific custom spell of hers - a spherical aetheric bomb, in essence, that she charges for the desired amount of time in mid-air to then launch it at her target.

Lastly, Akiyu seems to have a strange ability of sorts. She can transition into an unnatural state in which her body radiates absurd amounts of aether and produces aetheric disturbance in her vicinity, while granting her a frightening boost in raw power. The significant drawback to this rather weird ability of hers is that she seems to suffer some sort of temporary lapse in mental stability; the exact implications of this are something she avoids talking about with all but a select few individuals.

... yet, actually, this problem seems to be fixed now. Elrias Duskwind, with his extremely advanced technology, managed to allow Akiyu to tap into this power without losing herself. More still, that radiating aether is instead absorbed into her thanks to Elrias' tech, making the power boost she receives in this state *that much* more significant.

And in another way Elrias Duskwind helped her out, a newer addition is a set of universal combat armor and improved versions of Akiyu's weaponry, all crafted by Elrias. The weapons seem to simply be improvements of her old ones, finely crafted and allowing for much increased aetheric charge... but it seems there's more to the armor than just being highly resilient yet very light armor - it seems to come with a number of utilities and tricks... but what exactly those things are, only those who fight with or against Akiyu would know.

A comparably recent magical technique Akiyu came up with is something she calls Spellfolding. In essence, what with her technically limitless aether reserves, her only limitation is how much she can put out at once; thus, she invented a technique to fold spellcasting steps into each other, saving time, and thereby artificially increasing the amount of aether she can put out at a time while spellcasting.

The most recent addition to her arsenal of magical techniques is a way by which she seems to be able to stop magical attacks directed against her, take control of them, and turn them against the aggressor; this technique is still unrefined, though, and seems to be quite straining for Akiyu to pull off. It's experimental, one might say.