Ran Ichioka - Strain

Ran Ichioka

Neutral Citizen | 26 | homosexual 

Full name: 一岡, 蘭, or Ichioka, Ran. Prefers Ichioka with nothing tacked onto it.
Gender: Female
Occupation: Doctor and head of staff at Ichioka Clinic, which she owns. It sounds impressive, but she's the only doctor there, so maybe not that impressive.
Home: Lives in an apartment a few blocks away from her clinic in Shizume Town.
Face Claim: Takemi Tae from Persona 5



Hair: Short black hair, cut so that it frames her face and so that her bangs, which end at her forehead, can be easily fixed to the side with a hair clip. 
Eyes: Her natural eye color is a slightly dark red, bordering on a cardinal red, with flecks of silver around the irises. When she uses her ability, however, it reverses, becoming a silvery gray with red flecks around the irises.
Height: 5' 3", but 5' 5" with the black heels she wears for work. The occasional outing will have her at 5' 6" when she wears her red ones.
Weight: 118 lbs 
Unique Features: has knife scars around her collarbone, as well as scars on the palm of her hand when she tried to prevent the blow and had it stabbed for her trouble.
Body: Ran is a rather small woman, with a thin set of shoulders and a thin waist and little to no muscle at all other than what a woman her age would have naturally from just walking in deadly heels. Her spine is curved from all the times she has sat with terrible posture and her laziness prevents her from fixing it. She has smooth, fair skin with the occasional mole appearing, the most visible being on her neck where dots crawl up it in various patterns that she used to trace as a child. She has a heart-shaped face with a sharp nose and a soft set of eyes that are accompanied with naturally long eyelashes, as well as pierced ears. Often times, she will paint her lips red to match her painted nails.
Clothing Style: Ran's attire is divided for when she is either at work or the rare times that she is out and about on a day she doesn't work. Her work attire is made up of the standard lab coat, perhaps a slightly low cut black blouse, or turtleneck for colder weather, and brown slacks, paired with black heels. For when she is away from work, her clothing becomes slightly more adventurous, with her wearing short cut, black dresses that end before her knees and red heels. Since black is her favorite color, she wears it often, usually with other colors to accompany it such as red or blue in the form of bracelets, necklaces, and even belts. In the cold weather, she will choose to wear black sweaters and jeans on the days she has off, paired with red boots. Ran wears chokers every day, regardless of where she is at. 


Likes:

1. good mystery novels
2. corny comedy shows, often of the American variety
3. green tea
4. challenging crossword puzzles
5. store packaged ramen and sushi
6. portable strategy games
7. her cat, Kou
8. being surprised or proven wrong
9. solving puzzling aspects of people's personalities
10. wrapping up in blankets
11. organization

Dislikes:

1. nagging
2. loud people
3. horror movies about ghosts and zombies
4. disappointing ends to an otherwise good book
5. mentions of the hospital and alleged scandal
6. exercise
7. cigarette smoke
8. days she can't summon up the energy to leave her home
9. spikes of apathy and numbness that she can't control
10. sleepless nights
11. ignored advice

Strengths:

1. processes situations and information rather quickly, and is even quicker to act based on what she gleans from them
2. has a steady hand and knows how to use her scalpel in more than one way
3. excellent at memorization
4. very controlled in movement and expression
5. has a high pain tolerance

Weaknesses:

1. suffers from severe depression
2. is rather limited in terms of defending herself
3. overthinks basic human interaction
4. does not do well in crowded places
5. has a horrible sense of direction, to the point where she often uses it as a rationale to stay in on her self-gifted days off.

Fears/Secrets:

1. Secret - Few ever actually remember that she was once considered a medical prodigy and is considered one of the best doctors in Japan, especially after she was framed in a hospital scandal and especially now that she owns a small simple clinic in Shizume Town instead of working at a hospital.
2. Fear - terrified of heights
3. Fear - terrified of spiders

Habits:

1. she either laughs softly or, if something is funny enough, silently, curled over and holding her stomach as though in pain
2. cannot leave the clinic if the paperwork is not filed properly and organized correctly
3. simply leaves the room if there's a spider, and will not come back to it until somebody kills it or it shows up in the room she's in
4. tends to be late in returning calls or text messages simply because she puts it off for something else in the moment
5. brushes fingers through hair when trying to solve a problem or when stressed

Personality: 
There are two constants to Ran's personality, no matter where she is and no matter what mood she is in. She acts maturely and calmly, unwilling to slight someone out of pettiness or act like a fool for somebody's amusement on purpose. The rest vary on the location and on the day.

At work, she is generally unsociable and blunt; she doesn't care much for small talk, not really, because all that matters is getting to the issue at hand. She is also uncaring of affiliations, giving people the same treatment no matter who they are or what they've done, and uncaring whether you listen to her suggestions to help. She's only as willing to talk about certain topics of health, such as smoking, for as long as she thinks the person would actually listen, so long as it weren't dire anyway. Why waste her own time when it would be ignored? These traits give off the impression that she is abrasive and cold, and on more than one occasion she's been labeled ugly names for such behavior. But there is care, somewhere, for the people that come into her clinic, in that she will do her best to save a limb, a liver, a life, and would easily suffer injuries for the sake of another should it call for it. Not to mention the reason that her clinic is known to be a safe zone or at least a neutral one, is that she refuses to turn over people to police, in fact hides them, or other clans/strains, even if the people she's hiding are high-class strains, clan members, or criminals.

Away from work, she is more lax and easygoing, more talkative even, but is still all the more awkward and relatively quiet compared to those around her; she is also even more introspective, more in her own head. Ran is more open to ideas and suggestions as well, from outings to events. Unfortunately, she is also more susceptible to her swings of depression when away from work, so she keeps herself busy when she can rationalize it. However, there are simply some days when it and a swing of apathy are too strong, to the point where she can't leave her bed or home. People could equate her days of trapping herself inside to laziness, but it's simply due to her severe chronic depression, which she puts off seeking help for despite the risks that come with her family.


Birthplace: Born and raised in Tokyo

Family: Miori Ichioka, step-sister, 29, gold clan; Kaoru Ichioka, father, 56, retired; Shenhua, step-mother, 54, retired.
tw for mention of the suicide of a family member
History: People who know of Ran's history are often wary of her or wary for her, in more ways than one. It's troublesome, really, and so she doesn't really like addressing it past short summaries, clipped and matter of fact snippets should anyone actually need to know rather than simply want to jump on the gossip mill. The one the Ichioka family was most known for was her mother jumping off a thirty story building at 11:30 in the morning on a simple Tuesday. And that too was all people needed to know. A simple, "My mother jumped one day. She didn't get back up" for psych evaluations, maybe even for the ever so demanding gold and blue clans when they came to check up on her, as they have always done ever since her status as a strain was discovered when she was at the tender age of five. 

Of course, it goes deeper than that. Nothing ever comes out of the blue, you see, much less something of that magnitude. Ran's mother has always been sick, in the head her father would softly state, and had even tried it twice before. Both times Ran had stopped it with her ability, as she'd done it at home in some way, and had worriedly told her father even as her mother denied it strongly, panicky as though terrified of being sent back to what Ran's father, Kaoru, stated to be her mother's hospital. Both times her mother had scorned her, snapped at her before her father came home, smile sickly sweet even as her hands curled into tight fists. But she succeeded one day when Ran was ten and at school, staring up at the clear, blue sky, listlessly.

Many people focus on that part, either in pity or as a proof of something, a flaw or another, and Ran simply can't understand why. Her relationship with her mother had been distant at best and had only worsened every time Ran had reversed what would have been fatal wounds. No, Ran had not been surprised, nor devastated in the way other people had wanted her to be, and had only withdrawn at such expectations. Everything bad about her became, suddenly, a result of that event, and Ran was too tired to correct them. Her father took it the worst, needing to take time off from work for a month, crying sporadically and holding Ran to his side as though she too may fade away.

Ironically, she thought, it didn't take him but another two years to get over her mother, fall in love, and get married all over again, to a woman who by all accounts was kind to her. Confused and concerned, either for or by her Ran could never quite tell, but still so kind. Her step-sister, who had taken to her father due to his previous status as a gold clan member, was not so kind at first, oh so wary of the quiet sibling. It took years for her to warm up to Ran, and for Ran to grow tolerant of Miori in turn, something that didn't occur until Ran entered high school and Miori was on her way out.

The other part of Ran's history that people, especially employers, look at is when she was freshly out of medical school, in an occupation that had been the only option to make sense to her given her ability, and her superior, who had found out as per the protocol for strains seeking jobs in public welfare, always tried to force her to use it. He'd been jealous, maybe, of how much attention she received, from being a so-called medical prodigy in medical school and even in his hospital and even graduating medical school early, or maybe had just wanted to boss her around, seeing her as lesser. But Ran never did, always depended on the traditional method in front of his eyes and cameras, and only rare times in the emergency room had her depending on her ability.

But still, he tried, and, without understanding the full capabilities of her ability, injected a deadly strain that they were still adapting a cure for on a patient, and demanded that she heal him. Except, her ability did not work on diseases, or even viruses, only physical wounds, and so the patient died, convulsing and blood dripping out of his eyes, right in front of Ran, who was helpless to stop it.

It was a huge hospital scandal, in which Ran was framed since her superior refused to take responsibility and the fall for it. Arrogance, he called it, a desire to play with things that should not have been touched, especially by a strain such as Ran. Everyone believed him; how could they not? For all that she was a medical prodigy and had been one of the best doctors in the hospital, he was her superior and she was relatively new in the field. Of course it would be taken as inexperience. The only ones who didn't believe it were the Ichioka family and the dead patient's wife, who had remembered Ran's thoroughness in taking care of her husband for the initial disease he was hospitalized for. But still, their voices did not matter, instead written off as the products of grief and bias. And so Ran was blacklisted from working at hospitals, and even banned from stepping into the hospital she worked in. She was just lucky they didn't decide to take her medical license, they said.

Ran, devastated and traumatized, lived listlessly for about a year in her father's home, until she, upon seeing a strain bleeding out in the street, decided to make a clinic, a safe space for those who would otherwise be refused or detained at a hospital. It's been a handful of years since that decision, and her clinic is now known to be a neutral and safe zone for strains and clan members, even if she does have the occasional patient who is entirely human.



Abilities: 
Wound Conduit - 
Ran has the ability to, upon contact, reverse physical injuries or wounds, to the point where it will be as though the body hadn't experienced them in the first place. In fact, it will appear as though they sew themselves up; blood will cease flowing out of wounds, wounds will be fixed, and they will be no more. Injuries such as broken bones, knife injuries, gun injuries, and more are easy for her to "heal", and she can even stop internal bleeding. So long as the injuries are attended to within two hours of obtaining them and so long as the patient remains alive, Ran can reverse them entirely. She, however, cannot fix anything from the effects of illnesses, unless it is internal bleeding. She cannot stop organs from shutting down, nor can she stop a brain from swelling. She depends on medicine and surgery for that.

When she uses this ability, Ran needs to use both hands; one hand on where the wound is, another hand on perhaps a wall. This is because when she reverses the wound, the wound itself flows through her nerves, causing her to suffer intense pain, and reestablishing the wound onto a surface. If she does not have the other hand on a surface, but rather another wound to speed up the healing, the wounds will instead transfer to her. For instance, if someone is shot in the stomach and the heart, and she, after pulling out any remaining bullet fragments, uses both hands to stop the bleeding, the wounds will instead bloom on her exactly where they'd been shot, and she'd start bleeding herself.

Because of this ability, Ran is classified as a Risk 2 Strain.

Trivia:

1. has been taught by Miori how to use a gun, but she isn't very fond of it.
2. has had to have a few walls replaced when transferring wounds caused by being hit by a car.
3. was given a cat by her step-mother when she first moved out in order "to have a friend."
4. only drank alcohol once, when she'd been fired due to the hospital scandal, and has never done so again.
5. found out she was attracted to girls after she was kissed in the school locker after gym class.
6. still keeps in contact with the dead patient's wife, and is still guilty about being unable to save him.
7. born on the 12th of July, 1986.

Your Alias: Farah 
Time Zone: PT/PST/GMT - 7
Introduction: I'm going on a boat ride some time. But hi lmao