Mikan Tsumiki

Mikan Tsumiki: Mikan has fair skin and long, choppy, dark plum purple hair that is cut unevenly as a result of bullying. The longest point of her hair appears to be just past her fingertips, whereas the shortest point is slightly above her neck. Her bangs flow straight down, but are also cut at visibly differing levels. She has pale gray-mauve eyes that almost constantly convey anxiety or tearfulness. There is a beauty mark under her left eye's corner. She wears a nurse uniform which consists of a pale pink short-sleeved shirt with a white collar and puffed sleeves trimmed with white. A short, pale blue, slightly wrinkled pleated skirt is visible underneath. Mikan wears a white apron over this which is tied behind her neck with a ribbon. It is marked with two red lines on the left side of the apron, one going down to her middle and another short red line perpendicular to the vertical one in a simple design. As well as this, she has bandages wrapped around her left forearm and hand, excluding the fingers, and around her right leg from her mid-thigh to above her ankle. Additionally, she has a square gauze band-aid on her left kneecap and wears pale pink crew-length socks and white loafers. Mikan is an extremely meek, paranoid and fragile individual who suffers from hazardously low self-esteem as a result of severe abuse and bullying. This has resulted in many behavioral symptoms such as being easily intimidated, breaking down and crying with little provocation, profusely apologizing and nervously stuttering while speaking. She constantly worries about annoying, boring or offending others, going so far as asking others if it would be alright for her to remember their names when introducing herself. This delicate persona makes her a natural target for Hiyoko Saionji's predatory and cruel personality. However, as the Ultimate Nurse, Mikan tends to act much more confident while doing her job, and she is knowledgeable and intelligent. Furthermore, she sometimes gives (often unwanted) health advice to others concerning things like eating and sleeping, and may occasionally start to describe things like bodily functions in way too much detail in her wish to give the other students' information on the subject at hand. Unlike most students, Mikan has even admitted that she likes being in Hope's Peak academy, because her classmates acknowledge her and her talent makes her useful at times. Perhaps because of her high understanding of human physiology, Mikan is shown to be very skilled at reading people's faces, but she tends to over-analyze them and is quick to assume that she is disliked by those around her. She generally wants to be liked by and help other people, but her utter lack of confidence and wish to not be a bother causes her to rarely assert herself or state her feelings openly; if she feels the need, she will more than likely ask for permission from her peers to do so. Notably, she appears exaggeratedly clumsy and often ends up in embarrassing and revealing poses, leading her to apologize profusely, though it's been heavily implied and even pointed out by Hiyoko that Mikan does these poses on purpose in order to gain attention and pity. Because of her insistently klutzy and cloying personality, even for all the pity and leeway she generally receives from her kinder classmates, many of them do still see her as somewhat off-putting, incompetent or irritating, causing them to distance themselves from her rather than outright mistreat her. Since her social intuition is generally poor, if there is an awkward pause in a conversation, she will immediately begin to panic and apologize, believing it to be her fault. However, despite lacking many basic social skills, Mikan does actively attempt to gel with her surroundings by altering aspects of her conduct to suit what she projects as the thoughts of her peers. Because of the severe abuse she has incurred in the past, Mikan is very awkward and has a warped perception of both positive and negative social interaction. When treated with any sort of individual respect or sympathy, her first response is most often outright confusion, and sometimes assuming she has done something wrong. When first becoming friends with Mikan, she'll offer people to beat, strip, draw on or do other bad things to her, and states that she has done so multiple times with previous schoolmates so that they won't hate her and will continue to associate with her. She relates this to a belief that being ignored is even worse than being abused, thinking that the people who don't bully her don't care about her existence at all, a prospect that scares her much more. If someone treats her well and is outwardly kind to her in the long-term, she tends to become obsessive and cling to them, similar to the behavior of a stalker, which is interpreted as being extremely creepy, showing that she is unable to compartmentalize and reciprocate those positive feelings in a normal, healthy way. By defaulting to a state of unnaturally intense submissiveness and self-deprecation as a defense mechanism, Mikan is somewhat prone to bizarre outbursts, where the repressed elements of her personality rapidly surface for brief moments before burying themselves again, usually followed by an apology for her erratic behavior. These traits include deep-seated resentment for her abusers, general frustration over how she is treated, various sadistic or otherwise disturbing obsessions, an intense yearning for control, attention and sympathy, as well as her sexual urges. She mentions that she enjoys horror movies because of all the blood and helpless victims, especially appearing to enjoy bully characters getting what's coming for them. She also has a disturbing liking for syringes and shots. The dichotomy of Mikan's two-faced psyche is best represented by her mixed motivations for becoming the Ultimate Nurse. Directly contrasting her abusers, Mikan sincerely wants to help those who have endured physical harm, and generally wants to assist and participate in the group. However, she has also admitted that she occasionally relishes the power she holds over the sickly, helpless people who have no choice but to rely on her and listen to her to survive. While acting as a nurse allows her to feel useful, something she doesn't normally feel, it also indulges her selfish urge to assert absolute dominance over something, a sensation she essentially never feels otherwise given her general docility. Because there was no one to take care of her wounds, Mikan learned to take care of herself from a very young age. As she became more and more skilled in this area, she took an interest in nursing, realizing that it gave her a feeling of control over sick and injured people - as weaker people would have to depend on her completely, and their lives would be in her hands. Her skills in this field eventually continued to grow and she seemed to have developed almost all the necessary skills and abilities required of a nurse such as being able to give first-aid, creating various medicine/drugs, being capable of performing surgery, critical analysis of her patients condition in a moments notice and adaptability in dealing with medical emergencies. Ultimate Nurse.