Ashinaga

Long before the unification of Japan, various warlords lived in a state of constant strife. Even in the wild, untamed north savage clans fought amongst each other. One such clan was led by a virtuous man who cherished his sole daughter. When his wife passed due to illness he was bereft, and despite having no male heir he refused to remarry. The clan was thrown into crisis until the leader’s mother, a cunning witch, proposed a solution: a process to grant his treasured daughter the strength to lead them.

The charming young woman dutifully accepted the burden. After months of tonics, potions, and incantations, a final ritual required the father to sacrifice a part of himself to empower his child. So he plucked out his right eye as a sacrifice; the eye which saw so much of his beloved wife in his daughter. The severed organ carried so much of his love for them both that it supercharged the ritual, and not long after the delicate flower grew into a towering pine.

Clad in armor which hid her identity, the young lady strode across battlefields carrying her father’s banner at her back. Known simply as the “Long Legged Warrior,” she led the clan’s forces undefeated until a mysterious force headed by a sinister wizard invaded. Still, she was nearly victorious until the mad sorcerer, on the verge of defeat, cast a powerful spell which tore the fabric of reality.

All went dark. When the warrior came too, she found herself in modern-day Hirosaki, Japan. Immediately arrested for possession of deadly weapons, she was later found to have been the victim of the “Tartakovsky Effect” and conditionally released as a registered meta-human. She spent the following year trying to find answers about her past and come to grips with her present.

Still, the Japanese government found her to be troublesome. She questioned established practices, threw public records and historical academia into an uproar, and frankly was just inappropriately large for a Japanese person. Pensioners especially disapproved. Tokyo strongly urged her to accept a proposal for an exchange program in the United States.

Once again, she dutifully accepted.