Marissa Mizune

Name:  Marissa Mizune

Age: 20 

Bounty: N/A

Species: Lionfish Mermaid

Occupation: Slave/Navigator

Allegiance: Neutral

Home Village/Ocean:  Fishman Island


Appearance: Marissa is a voluptuously- bodied, lionfish mermaid measuring 5ft 7 inches from the top of her head to the tips of her main fins. She has waist-length, wavy, sandy blonde hair, milky skin and amber eyes, partly veiled by her long fringe.
She wears a dark red and black tank-top to cover her top body as well as a seashell necklace and bracelets of root seaweed. Sometimes, she will alternate between her tank top and string-style, seafoam bikini top.
Her fish-tale is creamy-white colour lined with the same roan and red striped marks as a lionfish’s. Her main fins are dark red and long, sinewy spines protrude from the lower part of her tail.  


History:
Marissa was born into a tribe of merfolk on Fishman Island. Her parents eagerly awaited her birth but sadly, her mother died in childbirth and as such, she was raised by her father.
He took excellent care of his young daughter, taught her everything to do with the nature of the island and protected her from harm and discrimination within the tribe.
Marissa’s mother had been a lionfish-type mermaid and as such had been born with poisonous spines protruding from her tail. Marissa herself had these spines too and though the poison was not as strong as her mother’s had been- members of the tribe still treated her like a hazard and often deliberately avoided her, afraid of being stung.

When Marissa was six, her father joined other merfolk and fishmen in retaliating against an attack on Fishman Island and tragically, he was killed in this attack.
His orphan daughter was left in the care of her aunt and cousins who were cruel to her, resenting the “burden” that she brought to their family. She served them as a slave and put up with her cousins constant bullying and harassment. Without her father to protect her, she was helpless. Her aunt also encouraged the tribe’s shunning of her niece-having never liked her late brother’s wife to begin with and only saw Marissa’s mother whenever she looked at the young girl.

One day, when she was twelve, she swam up a river into the forests, away from the merfolk’s lagoon, to escape her cousins’ tormenting of her. She stopped to watch a crew of fishmen sparring and fighting. They were unkind to her but she begged them to let her watch them train- feeling that if she could learn a few moves from them, she could toughen up and protect herself from her cousins’ abuse.

They agreed to let her come to observe them every day, however soon, she had a desire to learn a different skill. One day, the navigator of the crew brought down a few old map-books and charts to the river to burn. Marissa expressed her interest in them and the fishman gave them to her instead.
In her spare time, she began to read maps. In exchange for doing various odd jobs for them, the fishmen sometimes agreed to teach her a thing or two about charting and plotting nautical courses as well as the geography of the four great oceans...though this was largely through bragging about how well-travelled each of the men were.

Marissa made plans to leave the island, using the maps that she had been given. She started hiding her maps under a rock on the banks of the river, going back to them every day and vigorously memorising every single detail regarding the four oceans and the Grand Line’s geography, driven by her hatred of her aunt and cousins.
She also began collecting old compasses, astrolabes and lead blocks from ship-wrecks- hiding her navigational tools with her secret maps.
By the time Marissa was in her mid-teens, slowly going from a mer-“girl” to a fully fledged mermaid, she had grown rather beautiful. Her aunt saw this and did everything she could to diminish her niece’s self-confidence including telling her that she was ugly and comparing her looks unfavourably to that of her other cousins.

However, unfortunately, her gradual entry to womanhood did not go unnoticed by everyone and soon her fishmen “friends” began to give her a lot of “unwanted attention”, flirting with her and trying to paw at her whenever she got close enough.
One day when coming up to collect her usual old map-books from the fishman navigator, he attacked her in the water and tried to force himself on her.
Terrified, she lashed her tail against his legs and stung him with her spines. In the ensuing confusion, she swam away as fast as she could, never to return to that area again.
Determined never to be as helpless as that ever again, she started to teach herself a method of self-defence; she fashioned long thin needles from fishbone and flint-rock and tipped them with poison from her spines. She also made a tube by hollowing out a length of bamboo and practiced firing the needles like darts when she wasn’t reading her maps and charts.
On one unfortunate occasion, Marissa forgot to hide some of her maps and they were found by her cousins who tore them up and teased her mercilessly before reporting what they had found to her aunt.
Her aunt forbid her from ever reading such “impressionable” materials ever again, saying that she was too stupid to understand them anyway and saying that her deviant behaviour was a bad influence on the whole tribe.

Marissa’s hatred of the society that she lived in finally reached his peak and she fled the lagoon, swimming up the river, through the forest and to a spring in the inner part of the island, remaining there with her maps and self-made weapons, hiding from her aunt and surviving on her own.

One day, after months of self-teaching, Marissa attempted to flee Fishman Island only to swim into some rough-edged coral and hurting her tail. She was rescued from the water by a strange man named Annachie Dawn, only for both of them to be taken in by the Purple Heart Pirates. The captain, Namor Oceanus, offered Marissa the position of navigator on the crew.
She joined Namor in his quest to liberate Fishman Island and later joined him in his alliance with Steel Village.

It was shortly after their battle to retake Fishman Island that Marissa realised that she needed more experience in both combat and as a navigator before she could ever feel like she deserved a place on any crew. Bidding her friends a tearful farewell, she left to travel the seas. She travelled through the calm belt and back through the upper Grand Line, refining her needle throwing techniques and studying navigational techniques such as chart-drawing and taking bearings from natural sources.

Personality:
Marissa is a quiet, hard-going girl who often has difficulties trusting people. She tries to put up a tough, snappy, confident facade but is also visibly shy and easily made nervous. She will remain silent and not voice her opinions, often afraid to do so.
She is also a fast-learner and is extremely self-sufficient and independent. She has a very good memory (contributing to her ability to hold grudges) and despite her quiet, nervous, stony exterior, she is also capable of gentleness and will show kindness in return when kindness is shown to her. Marissa also has a strong sense of justice.
She enjoys every aspect of nature and greatly desires to travel the oceans.  

Ship: N/A
Ship Flag: N/A
Devil Fruit: N/A
type: N/A
effect: N/A

Special Abilities:
Marissa can read maps and charts efficiently and can also work out positioning using only the stars or the tides. She also has very good aim when it comes to shooting or throwing her needles at a target and the poison in the spines protruding from her tail-though not strong enough to kill- can painfully sting and when a person is hit enough times with the spines on her tail, their nerve endings can be numbed, resulting in paralysis.

Learned Techniques:
1. Stinging Constriction: Marissa will wrap her tail around the legs of her opponent, letting her spines brush against the skin of her opponent while squeezing their legs in with her tail muscles.

2.Bull’s Eye Shot: Marissa will shoot a poisonous needle into the neck or (if possible) eyeball of her opponent.

3.Final Sting: Marissa will dig a needle into the wrist or jugular vein of her opponent, embedding the poison into their blood vessels.

4. Five Point Penetration: Marissa will throw five needles at her opponent, the trajectory leading each needle to penetrate the upper eyelids, cheeks and chin of her opponent.

Weapons/Items: Poison tipped needles and a hollowed out bamboo tube.

Goals:
1. To escape Fishman Island and see the world.
2. To become as strong as she can.
3. To find a “family” who accepts her and cares for her for who she is.

Approved!