So, what does it take to make a hero?
This is the question I asked while I wrote the backstory and placed Femme Kyou into the UnTimelyverse. I mean... She's a gender opposite of the writer himself; what would make her fit into a world with onryo, time travelers, steampunk, extreme unluck and extreme unwant?
A hero. I don't have any of those, despite my love of the hero portrayl. Everyone safely straddles lawful neutral, or at most chaotic neutral. Femme Kyou couldn't be a villan (but an anti-hero, maybe).
I spent a while looking up tropes on what exactly I have to work with, and what is most definitely not going to be in her character and her backstory.
She wasn't an orphan, nor was she extremely well off economically. She's not the prettiest dame to strut her legs, nor is she hideous. She works nine to five as a front desk waif at a monolithic bank in a megalopolis and hates her interaction with rude passerby, and could care less about what the bank stores.
The place is robbed by an organized group of thugs and her eye is slashed across the cornea (but not the brow and cheek... She gains that later), disregarded, she is tossed aside near the door like a corpse. Still bleeding, she grabs the flag stand near the glass entrance, and with a thought of pure rage, clubs the ski mask adorned guard with the brass makeshift stave. She runs quick, staggering with her depth perception off kilter, taking out six other thugs with equal aggression before the local police chapter surrounds the building and she passes out from bloodloss.
She wakes in a hospital bed, finding that she for once took the reins on her life and saved her coworkers from gunwielding madmen. Her bank awards her a heroism award and yet... she feels like she has something better in store for her. The first night out of the orderly bed she saves a young man from a beatdown. The next she desperately tries to save a young lady from rape, only to be caught herself and saved by a deathly pale male with a long sword, she doesn't feel saved in any way, merely soiled and frail.
she finds a dojo and trains in stavefighting, wanting to learn to protect herself and others in the way this wild stranger did for herself. She hones her skills, choosing to use a slender naginata as her weapon of defense.
But, dear writer, why does this distinguish her enough of a character to give her a subplot?
She (not completely cemented in writing yet) grows into the darker portion of the UnTimelyverse, being the second most violent of my current characters (she actively seeks blood too, which is something that the most violent character avoids) and, as a woman, finds herself on the susceptable side (something our Onryou doesn't have to worry bout), and most importantly, is mortal.
I have most of her in-universe setting ready, but I want to finalize some other parts beforehand.
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