Chesa Uzumaki

Chesa Uzumaki

Age: 44
Gender: ♀️
Appearance: Chesa is short, at 5'3", with a rounded apple-shaped build. Her hair is very short with a tightly-curled texture, light auburn in color. Her skin is dark brown, and she has red-brown eyes framed by thick eyelashes. Her Uzumaki heritage makes her look at least a decade younger than she is, with the average observer placing her in her early-mid thirties. She has a softness to her poise that makes her also often mistaken for civilian by unfamiliar ninja - as she rarely works in the field, she lacks much of the twitchy edge that shinobi her age develop. 

She wears round reading glasses with blue-tinted lenses, expensive Sun Country imports that she is very careful with. She often speaks very quickly when she does not make an effort to slow down, but she is very precise with her wording, with a natural clarity and enunciation that would make her a good public speaker if she ever had the inclination. Her voice has a textured depth and rasp to it - in contrast to her appearance, she sounds a little older than she is, and she has a pronounced cough that surfaces when she is stressed or winded. 

Her casual dress is mostly composed of wrap garments in colorful patterns. This look extends to the skirts, wrapped bottoms and pants that she wears in more professional contexts, paired with more conservative collared tops that bring to mind a bureaucrat or scholar. She generally wears sandals, and wears her hitai-ate on her forehead in contexts where it is expected of her. 

Village: Shimagakure
Clan: Uzumaki
Bloodline: Undying Body
Clan/Bloodline Traits: Sealing Overload, Vivacious, Concentrated Chakra
Specialty: Fuuinjutsu
Element: Water

Personality: Chesa plays up an image of being an absent-minded professor type. Though she's considered to be a brilliant mind, she portrays herself in such a way that paints her as unreliable, fickle, and flighty... as well as totally apolitical, with her interest only in furthering her work in chakra theory and seal design. This is motivated by a deep ambivalence about her role in Shimagakure's military, and she is quite uninterested in advancing further in the village's hierarchy and opening her work up to deeper exploitation for violence.

The act she puts on is an exaggeration of some of her personality traits, however, not fully pulled from whole-cloth. She does forget to eat or sleep, often... but she'd never forget somebody's name. 

Her work primarily concerns matters of the soul, and her research requires a deep understanding of how people function. The warriors of the world who wield chakra consider it merely a tool for domination, but Chesa draws her knowledge from the traditions of her clan and syncretic Ninshu. She passionately believes chakra to be the light of the soul, and that its use for thoughtless violence or cruelty is a perversion. 

Behind closed doors, Chesa is a deeply thoughtful and often-worried woman. It's difficult for her to relax without the help of alcohol. She feels trapped in her situation, and guilty, like there is no right way to move forward. She knows that any breakthrough she makes in her work will be twisted to use for war - but it's all she has. Maybe, just maybe, if she works hard enough, she can find a way to fix everything. She's a 'fixer', in many ways, and has trouble sometimes staying out of other people's business if she thinks she can make things better. 

Chesa is unmarried, and keeps her personal life very private. She shares the task of raising her 14 year old niece with her parents after the death of Chesa's sister and brother in law during the Sea-Reed War. As far as the village is concerned, Chesa's niece has zero talent for molding chakra. 

History:  When Chesa Uzumaki was born, there was a town called Ōnami. Centuries old, the town had weathered the tides of war many, many times. There was no reason to suspect that this most recent attempt at reunification of the Sea Country would be any different. This time, unfortunately, the ancient town was at the right place, at the right time. The Hoshigaki clan wanted their shining hidden village, a symbol of strength and prosperity to put the others to shame, and Ōnami was in just the spot for it.

When she was eight years old, Chesa was told by tall strangers that her home was called Shimagakure now. She thought it was a silly name. Hidden, how...? The grand statue they were erecting in the river didn't seem very hidden. The adults of her clan told her to keep those thoughts to herself.

When she was twelve years old, Chesa's home was visited by those strange people again. They had strange metal plates worn over their foreheads now, stamped with shark fins. They told her that she'd wear one too, soon. She was expected to begin her studies at Shimagakure's new ninja academy the following week. It was a little older than was ideal, they said, but she'd still make a fine shinobi if she put her heart into it. 

When she was sixteen years old, Chesa was handed a hitai-ate of her own. With low scores in all practical combat fields, she was never picked up by a jounin instructor, leaving her two options. The first was to die young as canon fodder, and the second was to dedicate herself to one of the many noncombatant roles crucial to the well-being of a hidden village. Chesa became a talented cryptographer and codebreaker, and although Shimagakure valued the art of fuuinjutsu little, her talents were sometimes called upon to break seals or barriers.

When she was eighteen years old, Chesa worked against her village for the first time. Piece by piece, the old buildings of Ōnami had been dismantled. One of the last remaining places of worship, the Temple of the Younger, was next on the chopping block. It was simple enough to sneak in, re-activate the old defensive seals, and then act clueless when asked to decipher and counter them... and it made her family so happy, though the temple would still be destroyed five years later.

When she was twenty-two years old, Chesa was promoted to chuunin on the basis of merit after the publication of her first research paper.

When she was twenty-five years old, Chesa was arrested in a crackdown against dissidents within the village and charged with sedition. The Yamanaka clan, fully involved in the treasonous whispers that set the Umikage on this warpath, searched through the minds of blooming revolutionaries and declared them innocent to the courts. Without the cooperation of the Yamanaka, there was simply no proof - the rebel cells trading messages throughout Shimagakure, whispering to one another ways to depose the Hoshigaki, had covered their tracks well.

When she was twenty-six years old, Chesa received her last coded message, telling her to wait for further instructions and not to reply - that the Hoshigaki were on to them. A jounin Chesa had only ever met in passing, but whose speech during the trial had a very familiar cadence to the writing in the letters Chesa had just burned, was executed soon after. 

When she was thirty years old, Chesa's niece was born. While the child was still very small, war was declared by the Reed Country, and Chesa's always more talented sister was called away to fight. She returned three years later in an urn, alongside her husband. The Umikage became reclusive, strange, consumed by his grief. Beforehand, it seemed Shimagakure had been held together by the force of personality of a single man. Isamashi Hoshigaki and his family had been the singular villains, the ones responsible for everything. But then, one daughter died, and Isamashi broke - and the village just kept going, sustained by its own power and wealth. The clans gave up on the idea of breaking the village's power, no longer seeking its destruction - now they vie for the top, infant sharks devouring one another in the womb. 

How fast, eleven years can go by. The post-war years have been like a blur. Chesa works now in the research and development division of Shimagakure's shinobi forces, spending the majority of her time within the village.

Total Stats: 150
Speed: 25
Strength: 25
Durability: 25
Chakra: 50
Reserves: 75 [25+50 (Vivacious)]

Alts?: Yanmei Hyūga
[Archived]
Other Notes: --