Mikan of Diastra

Mikan of Diastra ( full name: Mikan Runa Candidra Selene daughter of Rena from the Vespera tribe of Diastra or 97th princess of the Royal House of Phantasama daughter of King Zevaron of Diastra ) is one of the main protagonists of the novel Ceosan: The Phoenix Age.

Her name "Mikan" means "orange" (mandarin orange) in Japanese and is a likely referrence to her obsession to the said fruit.

(Spoiler warning)

Conceptualization
At the start of the story's creation, Mikan was first named "Midori" and was loosely based on a certain character and was given a theme color of green. "Midori" is a tomboyish prankster with an obnoxious personality but high-class combat skills. However, when the plot developed, the author viewed "Midori" as unfit and recreated her as the character now known as Mikan who retains her original personality but with several improvements and a different character basis.

Mikan's signature description is "petite, flat-chested, short blonde haired, heterochromic eyed (left eye: blue, right:violet), feisty, short-tempered, boyish and aggressive" and it hasn't changed even after the character's recreation except the hair color which was originally brown. Her signature clothing is composed usually a midriff-cut, sleeveless or tube top and a pair of cycling shorts. During her time with the Fox Elites, she wore the prescribed sets of uniforms with certain changes (e.g, a snap was added for her to close the kimono-inspired top).

In the Chibi Ceo-tan short comics, she is often depicted with fox ears, a fox tail, fangs and closed eyes as a reference to her being mischievous and sly like a fox.

Past
Mikan was born as "Runa" in Diastra during the Planet's Alignment as is prophesized by the monk Omnizeiris who later adopts her after her mother's death due to childbirth. She has no idea regarding her father's identity but is well aware of her role as a Chosen One. During her childhood, she lived in a sangunese slum with Monk Omnizeiris and his brother Omnizon the Hermit. She just wakes up one night to find that that Omnizon had taken her to the Fox Bandit leader Rakayan for safety because the slum was raided under the Anti-Sanguinese, Anti-Bestian decree of King Zevarus. Omnizeiris chose to stay and protect the other sanguinese family but was killed along with them. Omnizon and Rakayan both told Mikan to keep her true identity a secret and live under a new name (Mikan). Rakayan welcomed her as a part of the Fox Guild when Omnizon said he had to leave and "gather data". As a Fox Bandit, she strictly told none of her teammates in the Fox Guild Elites of herself to the point that they mistook her for a boy and called her "Quick Fox" which was her code name. She ends up telling Toruna, their squad leader and Lei when the time came that she badly needed to feed (drink blood, being a sanguinese) and started to severely weaken in sunlight. Toruna and Lei agrees to keep the secret but unknowingly,Jinkenchi found out by eavesdropping but kep it quiet until his death. But due to an accident, Ren discovers that Mikan is a girl, and was at first resentful at the thought that he was "always beaten by a girl". After that, everyone in their team is aware of her true self and helps her cope with her vulnerabilities.

Appearance and Personality
Among her peers in the main characters of Ceosan, Mikan is known to be the shortest (barely 2 inches taller than Mikko who is three years younger) and is known to be the most flat-chested among the girls. Due to her appearance, she is often mistaken as a preteen boy. She only started looking slightly more feminine when she turned eighteen. Her "human" from is caused by the slow ageing rate of sanguinese. Her true form or sanguinese form is a lot less petite and is often unrecognized by even those who know her which is why she makes use of it ironically as a disguise instead.

Her blond hair and violet eye are common traits of sanguinese. She inherited her blue eye from her father. Although she could change her appearance, she could not change her eye color which helped Fuego identify her during their first meeting. Her eyes have a noticeable glow; a result of her special blood.

Mikan is very mischievous and excells and enjoys in playing pranks, laying traps and using disguises and deceit. She is upbeat and cheerful but can be quite a fist-thinker. She is very caring to Mikko whom she claims is her adopted brother, showing how she is very fond of children. She is short-tempered and has a pretty short attention span and always looks forward to a good fight, contrary to the popular belief that the White Phoenix persona is gentle. She respects her fellow Chosen Ones and is fiercely loyal and deeply caring to all her friends. She can be quite reflective and emotional only when she's left alone, but when she's with others, she makes sure that she stays strong. She has a habit of making nicknames for people she cares for as a sign of familiarity and endearment. She is also shown to know a lot about fashion, being the one to incorporate various clothes for every disguise

Mikan's language has a slight slang influence and she uses "ne" as a tag question to mean "right?", "Don't you think?" or "Okay?.

Abilities
Mikan's abilities are highly influenced by her being the White Phoenix and a sanguinese purebood.

Being the White Phoenix Persona, she has the ability to heal any injury and disease which she only started to properly develop in the second half of the novel after the timeskip. Before that, she used her blood to heal wounds for sanguinese blood had healing properties. Also as the White Phoenix persona, she uses an ability she herself coined as "mind manipulation" which at first, only works with eye contact (It was only in the final scroll when she used mind manipulation on Zevarus without him looking her in the eyes). She could control all parts of her victim's brain, enabling her to create illusions that can fool all senses, control a person's emotions, thoughts, memories and actions (to the point that she can steal their abilities temporarily) and even take control over her victim's entire biological system. She finds it extremely difficult to controll her power to manipulate the organ systems and scarcely uses it, making sure that it is always her last option. The first time she used it was on the Raven team that attacked her home right before Omnizon took her away. She was traumatized by their rather grotesque deaths though she knew that it was the Shadow Amethyst she held that fueled her to do it.

She mostly uses mind manipulation to make people do her bidding as if on free will hence her belief that she "gets what she wants, when she wants it".

Still in the later part of the story when Mikan finished her training, more of her White Phoenix abilities were revealed such as an ability to calm or comfort a person with a touch, ability to use herself as a source of light (which is common for all the Chosen Ones) and ability to give temporary life to inanimate objects (which she only mentioned as "a pretty weird thing I can do to my practice dummies").

Her greatest ability as a Phoenix Persona is the ability to recreate and resurrect in cooperation with the other two Phoenixes. During the final scroll of the last chapter, Mikan, Phobos and Fuego set out to the Spirit World to try and resurrect the ones who died in the last war.

Being a sanguinese, Mikan doesn't need sleep unless weakened, needs to drink blood (a certain type mould replenish her best) and keep away from sunlight (overexposure causes her to weaken and it can be fatal) and she has immunity to being under alcoholic influence except when she drinks Ratavan Red Wine. But other than thant, she has a similar ability to mind manipulation but is properly called hypnosis. Like her other ability, she needs eye contact to make a person follow her command without question. However, when that person's task is over, they sanp out of the trance, fully aware of having been controlled.

She can also change her appearance, the reason why her criminal alias Quick Fox has been thought as an organization. But she could not change her eye color as is shown in the second chapter "The Quick Fox" in the first scroll "Reunited" of the first half of the novel when Fuego noticed that his nurse, the lady at the noodle bar, the lady at the orphanage and the running boy all had the same eyes.

Her greatest sanguinese ability is that she could use the Hora Sanguina, an ancient sanguinese relic used to restrain a victim's "awareness of time" making it seem like she could stop time. But her limit is one person for five seconds; beyond that, she loses a lot of energy quickly.

Only Lei and Ren cannot be affected by her sanguinese ability due to the fact that they are of the Celastran species. Instead, they have a powerful instict to protect Mikan not only because they care about her, but because she has a kind of blood bond to them known as Pactio Sanguina. It also allows them to transmit life force energy to each other.

Relationships
Mikan is very sociable and can deal with people from all walks of life due to her street smarts and experiences with many people during her time as a Fox Elite. She has a habit of creating nicknames for all her friends as a form of endearment.

Omnizon and Omnizeiris raised her when she was very young and she treated them like her real father.

Her first meeting with Fuego and Phobos may seem very unlikely. The two first saw her in the form of a little boy being chased by a group of men. Phobos and Fuego saved her but found out that "the boy" happened to be a thief and the men were police. Fuego ends up with a broken arm and notices that his nurse has the same eyes with the boy and that she had the Phoenix symbol on her shoulder just as they did. In the end, they discover her secret identity and she agrees to journey with them. From that point on, Mikan, Fuego and Phobos developed a close friendship that earned them excellent teamwork in battle. They managed to converse with ease when they meet again after three years of training, showing how comfortable they were with each other.

At first, she had a pretty bad relationship with Xavier's Shadow Raven Squad. Mikan did not trust them and harbored hatered toward the whole organization, holding a grudge against them for the genocide they commited which wiped out her entire tribe. But Mikan learned about their pasts through Lina and her father's files and through their own memories so started to see that they were also victims of Raven's atrocities. She harbored a special kind of grudge toward Guizu because he was once the infamously feared Ariastran mercenary known as "Wolf Warrior" who commited his career to the "Quick Fox's" capture. Although he always fails, he was the only one to get closest to killing her, which didn't happen because her teammates came to her aid. But during her training, Guizu helps her and they eventually became friends. She even helps Guizu court Princess Adamantha. She was also the one who introduced Fuego, Phobos and Xavier's squad to the Fox Elites.

Aside from them, she also became good friends with the characters they come across as they travel like Adamantha, Niev, Skiana, Raivhalash and Kyzentherus.

She and the Fox Guild Elites are a close-knit group despite the squabbles that take place very often when they get together. The twins Toruna and Jinkenchi were the original "Big Brothers" among them, being five years older than Lei and Jyuumo who replaced them. They treated Mikan like the little sister they lost to Raven. When Jinkenchi and Toruna's girlfriend Tahina gets killed in a mission, they were all depressed especially Toruna and Mikan who were closest to him. Toruna dies a few moths later due to severe depression, and Mikan was greatly affected, becoming emotionally unstable for weeks. Jyuumo and Lei treat her like a sibling as well and she viewed them as the big brothers she felt she lost when Toruna and Jinkenchi died. She pampers and spoils Mikko a lot to the point that he finds it awkward and Keiji and Ren makes fun of him. She views Keiji and Ren as rivals and works hard not to lose to them. They often quarell about the slightest hings, but since Keiji trains more often, it's usually Mikan and Ren who argues a lot. Mikan is openly affectionate to Lei, Jyuumo and Mikko as their "only sister".

Her relationship with Ren undergoes a dramatic change as she matures. They start off as teammates with a "not-so-friendly" competition and become very close friends. Although they almost always bicker when they're together, Ren is fiercely protective of her and Mikan is always concerned about him. They act like they hate each other by calling each other names and throwing insults at each other but they won't admit it, at least not openly, that they care deeply about each other, though they are unaware that their feelings are mutual. They became rather attached to each other when they made the pactio. When Mikan announced to the Elites that she would be leaving with Fuego and Phobos to do what they're meant to, Ren walked out with a rather curt "Fine." But when Mikan confronted him and questioned him if he really wanted her to leave, he admitted that he didn't. Something similar happened when Ren was feeling anxious about the final war as he laid to rest and Mikan laid next to him. He pretended to want his privacy but when Mikan asked him if he really wanted her to leave, he admitted he didn't again. When Mikan finds out that Ren got killed, she went all out for a moment, only remembering her true purpose toward the end. After the battle, she decides to break all limits and opt to resurrect all the fallen ones during the war. All she was thinking was seeing Ren once more. Romantic interests between the two are not explicitly depicted but is somehow mildly implied.

Trivia

 * Mikan and Ren share a love for oranges and are often depicted eating, holding or fighting over it.
 * She can't swim and is terribly afraid of spiders.
 * She is allergic to garlic.
 * Mikan's nicknames are: "Leechy, Mimi, Shorty Plateau" (Ren), "Flatsie" (Mithela), Big Sis (Mikko)
 * When Mikan gets drunk with Ratavan Red Wine, she gets a boost of power but looses control of her actions.
 * Mikan is the one who made Ren's clothes in the second part of the novel.
 * She is also known in Diastra as the Leusomina Princess (princess of light) upon her return as the rightful heir to the throne.
 * She dedicated her entire time in Ceosan Special: Hotsprings to remaking a spell Toruna was not able to finish.
 * In Ceosan Special: Islands, when the Portal of Time opened, Ren and his double came upon two boys with a splitting image to him and almost admitted that he is their father. They were careful enough not to tell Ren who their mother was when he asked, but later when Ren and Mikan (still in her true form) started arguing, one of the kids quipped "Nah, Mom always wins."
 * Her image item is an orange (same with Ren), her image color is yellow and orange and her character animal is a fox.
 * She has an annoying high-pitched girly laugh which she uses to annoy others.