ryuma Taiyou Hibana [Ready]

[Dio]

 

Taiyou Hibana

If you don’t put a bit of yourself in the machine, it has no reason to follow your lead.

 

Name: Taiyou Hibana (“Sun Spark”)

Sex: Female

Age: Mare

Species: Ryuma

 

Coat/Body Color: Azure.  Fetlock tufts and scales are goldenrod yellow.  Horns are ash white, usually adorned with metal sleeves to compliment her piercings.  

Mane/Tail Color and Style: Ash white with a streak of goldenrod at the front, usually done up in mohawk fashion.  The rest is trimmed down to her coat.

Eye Color: Violet.

Physique: Petite, but toned from heavy lifting done in golem shops and her own personal projects.

 

Style remarks: Engraved metal sleeves worn on her horns.  Piercings adorn her ears and she wears a small silver stud in her nose.  She bears two heavily stylized tattoo sleeves, one of a Gojira-style kaiju on her front right leg and the other of the Yamata no Orochi snaking up her right hind leg.  Hibana has a preference for flight jackets, flier’s scarves, and aviator sunglasses when not clad in a work shirt, welder goggles, and machinist’s apron in the workshops.

 

Portrait:

 

 

Residence: Kyoma, Horshu.  Works in the golem hangar on palace grounds, but keeps a modest apartment in one of the outer wards.

Occupation: Kansei, chief engineer and caretaker of Raiju, Shogun Ryuichi’s personal golem and master of all matters pertaining to golems and golem accessories.

 

Cutie Mark: A violet gem superimposed over a golden sun, signifying her affinity for magitech and the passion she puts into her machine creations.

 

Unique Traits: In spite of her humble roots and her rough-and-tumble presentation, Hibana is well-educated and well-spoken, being fluent in Neighponese, Long, and Common Equestrian, having encountered all of them in her upbringing.  Language is second only to engineering in her talents.

 

Her dragon breath manifests as a burst of blue flame, with which she can use to ignite her aether torch, warm up a lukewarm drink, or clear slag from her workbench.  In a pinch, she can also use it to defend herself, though she finds a hard left hook much more satisfying.  Her combat skills lie not in martial combat or use of a sword, but in dirty, practical fighting with a bar brawler’s grit.

 

Hibana is a golemancer prodigy, a combination of both intensive study and her natural knack for putting together magitech machinery.  She treats her creations as pets, believing that while they lack sentience, the spirit of the machine will eventually return the favor if she cares for it well.

 

Hibana is rarely found without her personal assistant golem, Riko.  Riko is a small, snake-like construct that rests around Hibana’s neck when not in use.  It can fly, hover, and lift small objects as well as providing illumination with the aether lamp in its head.  Despite being an artificial construct, Riko displays animal-like intelligence, being able to self-navigate and solve basic problems to complete its tasks.  Its usual function is to retrieve tools and take notes while Hibana’s hooves are otherwise occupied.

 

Character History

Hibana was born in Dosanko to a large family full of fishers and machinists.  The family professions demanded physical strength, mental acuity, and intense cooperation to not only succeed, but to succeed before the hard winters set in and most in the village were housebound.  Hibana learned early on to work with her hooves on nets, boats, and the mechanical devices that pulled their hauls in and kept the boats safe.  She was also taught to fight, as the ever present threat of rogue caribou constantly loomed over the island.  When she could, however, Hibana would sneak a book or two from the neighbors, with which she began to slowly teach herself Long and Equestrian.

 

 

One day, a neighboring family brought home a novel contraption, a golem toy gifted by other family members in Polohama.  The children stared in wonder before mobbing around the owner to play with the machine that came to life.  After being handled by so many children nearly nonstop that winter, however, the golem finally fell apart.  While the foals were disappointed, no one had time or know-how to fix it.

 

As luck would have it, the latest round of books Hibana had borrowed focused on the functions and applications of magitech.  With some trial and error, Hibana figured out how to use the tools in her father’s machine shop to emulate what a magitech engineer would use.  So she set about fixing her friend’s golem.  Every free minute she had she poured into the golem, wanting to make it work for her friend.  The end result was not quite the same, but to everyone’s surprise, it was fully functional.  It was then that she earned her cutie mark, a golem’s power crystal warmed by the sun of loyal friendship.

The golem toy was given to Hibana, her friend having seen that she could take much better care of it.  Hibana slowly improved and upgraded the design piecemeal over the years, eventually coming to call it Riko, the assistant golem that now accompanies her.

Her parents realized that Hibana had developed talents that they could not cultivate in Dosanko and thus raised money to send her to school in Polohama.  First arrival on Horshu was culture shock.  The sheer flash and glitz of a city in constant motion was nearly overwhelming to a provincial family who had seen it only in books and magazines.  Hibana, however, took to it with gusto.

Her education was a whirlwind of projects, papers, and unfailing attendance to golem battles in the Dome.  Even after she’d finished school and was supposed to be looking for a professional salary position, she found herself enamored with the golem-fighter culture.  The Dome was always looking for adept engineers and Hibana’s passion for golemancy rapidly propelled her into a spot in the Dome.

It was there that she met Rakuen Ryuichi, prior to his ascension to Shogun.  It was sadly not her best day in the ring.  Prior disagreements with the then team leader left her in a sour mood and not in a clear state of mind.  As the team did rotations on golem commander, Hibana took the stage and launched into a relentless attack to take out her own anger on the other golem.  Her lack of defensive tactics made her golem a victim of vicious reprisal.  It was only when it was nearly crippled that she realized her mistake and scrambled to correct it.  In a last minute turnaround, Hibana’s quick thinking brought the other golem to its knees.

While not her best work, it was enough to get her noticed by Ryuichi.  When the heir approached her to congratulate her on her win during the exhibition match Hibana didn’t even know who Ryuichi was.  It was only with the mortified reactions of her teammates that she finally understood who she was addressing… which changed nothing for Hibana.  After all, if a rich boy threw a temper tantrum for not groveling at his feet, he wasn’t half the ryuma as she.

 Thankfully, Ryuichi had no such issues.  The two hit it off with a good laugh and kept in touch even through Ryuichi’s stint in the military.  Finally, with Ryuichi’s ascension, Hibana received a letter inviting her to take the role of Kansei, master of golems.  Though she loved her spot in the Dome, Hibana was not about to turn down the offer of a lifetime from a friend, bringing her to where she is today.

The Dome still calls to her occasionally.  Hibana usually offsets these cravings for action with side projects or upgrades to Riko, but it is undeniable that she has a hankering to get back in the ring to fight...

 Association with Rakuen Ryuichi by permission of Zeig.

 

 

Personality

Hibana’s punk proclivities are not merely cosmetic.  She is snarky and sharp, her acerbic wit always ready with a comeback or mocking jab in response to criticism.  She never hesitates to take a shot at an authority she deems incompetent.  Hibana is proud, but shrewd, reveling in a job well done, but at the same time knowing someone else might do the job better; someone she had best learn from to avoid being taken advantage of later.

 

Growing up with many brothers and sisters, Hibana often had to shout or shove to be heard.  As a result, she tends to be confrontational and quick to correct others when things have gone wrong or when she suspects someone is lying.  She is difficult to convince that she is wrong, but will correct herself if given incontrovertible proof.

 

Her bluntness and cavalier disregard for seniority or authority is often seen as rude and impudent by strangers, but her siblings and those she worked with in the Dome appreciated her ability to get to the root of problems with surgical precision and hammer it out with unbridled enthusiasm.  She laughs with just as much gusto when among friends as fury against enemies and is always one to enjoy a wild night out on the town.

 

She holds her few true friends in high regard and will defend their character and integrity to the death.  Those friends she does have lie outside the palace, with perhaps the sole exception of Shogun Ryuichi himself.

 

Hibana has amassed over the years an enormous collection of both local manga and Equestrian and Aquellian adventure novels, from which she draws inspiration for golem mods and designs.  She is also a fan of kaiju films and has posters plastered all over her workshop, apartment, and personal workbench in Raiju's hangar.

 

Character Summary

Hibana is a hot-blooded golemancer prodigy in charge of Raiju, the Shogun’s personal battle golem.  Her humble upbringing gives her perspective on the nature of hard work and frugality, driving her to live modestly despite her generous stipend as palace staff.  In spite of her cushy position in the employ of the Shogun, she still has an itch that can only be scratched by stepping into the Dome to command another golem fight.

[Dio]

Hibana-san is ready!

[Blueblood]