Profession:
Saki is currently one of the best students of the Four Dragon Dojo, based in the Horam District of New Meribia and run by a veteran of the Upheaval named Tadashi. While not a large dojo, it nonetheless commands some respect and noteworthiness amongst the many in the District, and Saki is the best of an admittedly small bunch of pupils. She takes her duties seriously; besides constant practice to further her skills for the upcoming tournament, she additionally trains some of the younger and less experienced students for a nominal sum and a small set of living quarters above the dojo.

Appearance:
While not actively ugly, Saki is hardly special-looking, either - certainly she wouldn't be winning any beauty competitions soon. The most notable feature are the ruddy-brown eyes generally fixed in an almost listless stare. Above her short brown hair is tugged back into a messy ponytail, while her mouth is generally set in a line. Altogether, between her lack of looks and generally quiet disposition, she generally cuts an unassuming figure. When getting ready for a fight, however, she managed to exude an air of authority, as if she belongs on the battlefield. What is normally a slightly hunched, drooping figure becomes a confident young woman with an almost feral glare.

Saki has heard of - and seen - Bunny Karate, and wants no truck with anything of the sort. Unlike a fair proportion of the martial artists around Horam, she dresses for ease and practicality - a dark green tunic over similarly coloured, fairly loose slacks for movement. When fighting she wears knuckle dusters and bracers, secured with bands around her wrist.

Personality:
Generally, Saki is the quiet sort, slowly living out her life with a minimum of fuss and bother and concentrating on the careful and longwinded study of martial arts. She's polite and neat, albeit with little to say, and takes her studies - and, bizarrely, her cooking - with deathly seriousness.

At least, that's how it should go.

The truth is that Saki has a tough time keeping calm and quiet in the face of the near-constant feeling that something is inherently wrong with the world. Not in the fashion of bad people and politicians and crime - quite literally that somehow, everything is wrong and fractured, that the planet itself is... incorrect.

This is compounded - or proven, depending on how you look at things - by the vague flashes of memory of a past she doesn't have or remember. Images of a happy family or a different town; the feeling she should be elsewhere; or reaching for a door that isn't there when not wholly paying attention. At the worst of times this can become a near-crippling sensation, as she sinks into an identity crisis and tries desperately to work out - and remember - who the real person is. At these times she can become erratic and violent - at least one student has caught her at a Bad Time and faced a wrathful assault that forced him to flee.

These feelings of wrongness regularly leave Saki feeling angry and irritable, with no easy way to reconcile or disprove her feelings. Here, the martial arts step in for her; either a good session of meditation or some consistent pounding of a punching bag will do wonders for the world view... for a while, at least.

When it comes to practising the martial arts, she shows considerable dedication and flair. Saki appears to be a natural, picking up new moves and forms with ease and applying herself to the study with coniderable concentration. It's well known by pupils at the dojo that she is close to even with the Master, and often she can be found at neighbouring dojos sparring or simply studying styles. Despite this latter point, she has yet to attempt to draw any new styles into her repertoire, preferring to concentrate on one style. There is some speculation as to whether this is in response to the desire for some stability in what seems at times to be a very alien world.

This fanaticism, against all probability, extends to cooking, and no-one is really sure why, including herself. Certainly she never cooks for guests or anything of the sort, but there seems to exist in her resolve a weak spot and interest for food that helps to take her mind off of the general insecurities she normally harbours. It's not a case of a sweet tooth; indeed, she seems wholly uninterested in desserts, but every stall and sidestreet shop with aromatic food in the Horam District has at least had one visit from a girl who showed up, silently and slowly ate a dish while watching the chef, then departed leaving a generous tip. She is especially known at a small eatery around the corner from the dojo, where she has become quite the regular.

Saki is perfectly capable of having happy smiling moments, but the lack of real friends - it's hard to make friends when part of you insists they aren't really /there/ - and her general seriousness make her enthusiasm for such tend to be somewhat muted. Certainly they only tend to happen when she is entirely engrossed in something; without that, her mind may often wander and her thoughts return to the feelings of displacement.

Motivation:
For now, Saki lives to fight. And why not? If pressed, she would admit some pride for her pupils, and it is clear to all how dedicated she is to the martial arts and how much of an aptitude she has for it. With her mastery of Four Dragon Karate near-complete, the only way is upwards and onwards, and winning the tournament will be her first step in proving herself. At the same time, the clear-cut nature of the fight helps centre herself amidst the swirling uncertainties of the world.

Background:
Saki has no memory of her family, or of the world before the Upheaval. At least, no memories she can actively identify as being most definitely hers. It's assumed she was alive at the time, since she can remember vague flashes of destruction and the worlds tearing apart. Beyond that, however, she has no clue. Taken in by one of the many orphanages that sprung up shortly after the cataclysm to care for bereaved children, she has little memory of growing up until the dojo took her in as a student. Since then she has studied diligently.