Aburame Hounoki

Aburame Hounoki
Village:	Konohagakure
Rank:	Chuunin
Clan:	Aburame
Birthdate:	December 21 2098
Age:	17
Blood Type:	O-
Height:	5'7"
Weight:	190 pounds, with hives
Teammates:	Aburame Shiina, Hyuuga Takeshi
Elemental Affinity:	Lightning
Specialties:	Medical ninjutsu, fire-Lotus hybrids

Aburame Hounoki [油女玉兰 Yóunǚ Yùlán] is a chunnin of Konohagakure no Sato. She currently resides in Konohagakure no Sato.

Appearance

Hair: Hounoki's ashen-blonde hair falls in a mane of flowy, effortless curls. Strands that would otherwise frame her face are often tied onto her crown, and portions of it are similarly secured for manageability. Overall, Hounoki doesn't do much with her hair as long as most of it stays out of her eyes.

Eyes: Amber.

Physical Description: Hounoki has a heart shaped face with defined cheekbones and a slightly angular nose. She wears no makeup, and her lips are naturally a splash of pale pink. Freckles lightly trail across the prominent parts of her cheeks and across the backs of her shoulders, and aside from a few moles, her fair skin is otherwise generally free of blemishes. The Kikai grubs she hosts adds significantly to her weight, making her proportions look heavyset on paper. During periods of high swarm activity, Hounoki's skin can ripple rapidly.

Clothing: For a typical day in the field, the girl chooses formless onsies that cinch at her waist. Hounoki forgoes any traditional idea of shoes- a band of rawhide tied to the calloused balls of her feet are sufficient enough.

Personality

Hopelessly carefree, Hounoki has very few attachments in the world. Life, though simple, is too valuable to waste. She owns little more than the clothes on her back, but to her, wealth is measured by how she fits into the world- how her companions value her and what impacts she has made. Hounoki is independent, but congenial and openhearted. She has the patience and tolerance of a bodhisattva with firm, unwavering faith in her convictions. As such, Hounoki fears little besides failure, and even then she knows obstacles will only serve to empower her. She has an aversion to conflict and much rather prefers going with the flow. Though she finds comfort in solitude, her worst fear is to be abandoned by those around her. She forgives endlessly and forgets even easier, names and faces most of all.

Unfortunately, Hounoki is shamelessly straightforward and blunt, with little situational awareness of proper decorum. Sometimes she comes off as careless in her practices, and disorganized when overwhelmed with tasks. Additionally, due to the nature of her abilities, she has the affinity of endangering the physical well being of herself and others, for the human body is reparable.

Background

In the winter a girl was born to an Aburame couple, born with a wailing voice and a crown of fine, translucent hair. Light hair was unusual within the clan, but the elders assured the newborn's hair would darken over the years. They all did. She was named Hounoki- magnolias- a flower that relies on beetles rather than bees for pollination. Minutes after birth she was surrendered to the Kikai hives, but try after try, the infestation never 'stuck' with her as the swarms died off, the eggs sometimes never even hatching. The clan gave up, leaving Hounoki to be raised... normally, or rather abnormally within the clan.

Growing up, her hair never did darken. Hounoki's parents enlisted her in various activities in attempt to distract her from her genetic shortcomings, introducing her to a plethora of sports, arts, and scholarly pursuits. Most of all, they strived to satisfy her thirst for the world- of the living and nonliving components of it. The trio (it was decided any future children from the pair could likely be 'faulty' as well) searched across the countries to give their daughter knowledge, and Hounoki became well-traveled well before setting her sights on the academy. Without a visible trace of her lineage, the nine year old girl survived easily through the NCIA invasion and occupation. When the Aburame made their stand at the gates of their compound, the invasion took her mother and left her father an empty husk, crippled mentally and physically. Hounoki had not yet lived a decade, but found herself putting aside her... childhood dreams to care for her ailing father within a resistance camp. It was there that she first studied the medical arts, and the pursuit certainly was not her own accord. She did so out of necessity, tending to rows of the Resistance's injured while keeping a her father within an inch of life as a permanent patient. Months stretched into years and the girl's father finally withered away. Instantly, Hounoki found herself free. And alone.

She slipped off into the trees, guided only by hunger and stars. The expedition was short lived however as Hounoki found herself in the crossfire of a rather unkind world. Without a home, Hounoki thrived on the fruits of nature and the kindness and strangers. Three years after the liberation she returned to the clan grounds to honor the lives of her parents and other Aburame lost in the invasion and revolution. Counting the lost seasons suggested that the girl had turned fifteen. The clan elders assumed she'd perished as her parents had. Hounoki decided to pursue her clan identity, attempting to offer her body as a home for the Kikkaichu. Still unsuitable to sustain the continuation of her own hives, the girl made do with what she wass given and spent months of trial and error forging her own method of managing the swarms. With thousands of underdeveloped beetles at her command, the young (albeit old for the academy) Aburame enrolled herself into the academy and soon ascended to gennin rank at the age of seventeen.

Career

Gennin

Hounoki began her gennin career without a traditional three-man team. She set sights on taking the path of the medi-nin, which she has found complementary to her strange morph of insects. Where her permanently larval stage hives cannot partake well in battle, they offer regenerative and cleansing abilities that Hounoki is learning to apply to herself and her teammates. She and a slew of freshly-promoted gennin were drawn to the wail of a young boy named Adohi on a rainy night, and a turn of odd and unfortunate events lead to the group being questioned by authorities. As much as Hounoki resisted separating herself from Adohi, paperwork and policies separated the two. The girl was transferred to a higher learning opportunity organized by the Daimyo called the Ember Initiative in Hotarunoshi, along with Uchiha Tsukiyo, Uchiha Asahi, and Iko Rama.

The Ember Initiative culminated into a trained group that addressed outstanding criminal activity within the Fire country’s capital. The last mission undertaking by the gennin group was an infiltration and bust on Duke Taralex’s mansion after he was suspected of distributing a heavily controlled substance through the city’s bakeries. With the Ember Initiative disbanded, Hounoki returned to Konohagakure, bereft a team and Adohi’s whereabouts remained unknown to this day.

After Hotarunoshi, Hounoki was quickly reassigned to a three-man team. The group consisted of Hounoki and Hyuuga Takeshi, and during brief stints the third slot was occupied by Uchiha Asahi or Inuzuka Yuuki. During her time as a Konohagakure gennin, Hounoki and her team tracked down yokai disturbances surrounding the village lands. The most memorable was Nui, a canine yokai of the lake that froze and kidnapped the girl before her teammates came to her rescue. Changed by this encounter, Hounoki altered her medical shinobi path to one that provided her more self-efficacy. She trained one-on-one with a specialized jounin in the Celestial Gates and hidden clan arts.

Her path was further altered after Hounoki failed miserably in an unofficial match at the Arrakis Tournament. She lost by a large margin to Hyuuga Izanami, and returning to Konoha Hounoki found herself deviating more from studying purely the medical arts. Training in the first of the Eight Celestial Gates spurred Hounoki in a more offensive direction than what she was originally comfortable with. Her attention then turned to the combat arts Konoha offered, including fire manipulation and the Lotus fighting style.

Hounoki competed in the Chuunin Exams hosted in Rai no Kuni, which consisted of two parts. In the first part, the Aburame formed a brief partnership with Aburame Shiina and an masked Hyuuga named Mizumono. The alliance was short-lived as they were scattered between two stages in search of coins. Assigned to the swamplands, Hounoki nearly secured one coin until she was overpowered by a Toka of Kiri. Rescued by Ippo Biju, Hounoki continued until she discovered a shrine, where after a vision of irrecoverable loss, she was rewarded with a coin that qualified her for the second part of the exams. In the second part, Hounoki lost in her first round of combat against Otsutsuki Akio of Kiri, and then continued to lose to a puppeteer named Taysu of Suna, and then Uchiha Shinji of Konoha.

Just prior to the closing ceremony, Hounoki sensed Ippo Biju in distress and intercepted his assailant minutes too late. Unable to stave off Biju's fatal bloodloss, the Iwa gennin passed in her arms. Complicit in his murder were two shinobi- Kaguya Mukeiko and Ueshi Mairah. The latter harvested the deceased gennin's heart while Mukeiko quickly subdued the grieving Aburame, slashing Hounoki's Konoha headband and strewing it across Biju's corpse. Hounoki was taken into a cave, bound, and left to starve over the course of weeks. For the purpose of muddling the evidence and absolving herself of crime, Mukeiko used a blood transfusing machine to frame Hounoki of the Iwa gennin's murder.

Chuunin

Following the Chuunin Exams in Rai no Kuni, Hounoki was promoted to chuunin rank despite being missing as the Leaf entourage returned home. Months later, Hounoki abruptly woke up in the Leaf hospital, the circumstance of her deliverance unknown.

Quotes

• “Fire is the will of Konoha. It is warmth for those who stand by it.”
• “I swore an oath to do what I must to preserve all life. I loathe you. I loathe your life. But if, if whatever this is saves your life, do what you must and get out of my sight. Gods as my witness, my oath, my will... will not break.”
• “Takeshi, you're- you're all that I have. I couldn't bear to be alone again. I'm sorry, Takeshi.”
• "Well, tenacity's one of my few redeeming qualities. Do your worst, Uchiha-san. Okay... that was actually pretty bad."

Trivia

Public IC Knowledge

• Hounoki is an orphan of the Kumogakure invasion and expansion.
• When asked about her appearance and inability to raise a hive, Hounoki jokingly insists that her parents were a little too related.

Private IC Knowledge

• Hounoki's father survived the night of the invasion, but was rendered unresponsive. After months of care, Hounoki chose to let him pass. Her inaction that day continues to haunt her.

OOC Knowledge

• Hounoki is Cloudnine's fifth character created.
• Hounoki is Japanese for magnolia, which is a flower that is dependent on beetles (rather than primarily bees) for pollination.
• With Korin's passing, Cloudnine wanted her next two characters to inherit Korin's traits of light/dark and medical jutsu/genjutsu. Kikuya was given genjutsu and 'darkness,' while Hounoki was given the medical kit and 'lightness.'
• Magnolias are Kikuya's favorite flower, and the flowers that grow on Korin's grave.

Images