Naomi Kimishima (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
deadshallspeak) wrote2013-05-22 09:03 pm
deadshallspeak) wrote2013-05-22 09:03 pm
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savetheearth application
See lightsoflife for the game journal.
OOC Information:
Name: Steph
Are you over 15? Yes
Contact:useantibioticgel, ![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
elemental_shark on Plurk, Dreamwidth PMs
IC Information:
Name: Naomi Kaufman (originally Naomi Kimishima)
Canon: Trauma Center
Age: 30 (originally 29 and 31 in canon games, and she's 30 here mostly because the timeline math worked out that way)
Preincarnation Appearance: Here we go.
Any differences: Naomi Kaufman has light blonde hair rather than bluish-white, and tends to wear more practical clothing. I'm planning to use Laura Harris as her PB (on a journal different from this one), unless that creates any problems.
Preincarnated History: There's a wiki article here, but the wiki as a whole doesn't always distinguish too well between fact and wild speculation/shipping/things that were actually just made up(!) so here's my own writeup.
Naomi Kimishima was originally a brilliant Japanese surgeon, but news of her supernatural Healing Touch ability branded her a "devil doctor" and ruined her career. A shady organization called Delphi relocated her to America, giving her a new job at a hospital under the assumed name Nozomi Weaver in exchange for her skill and Healing Touch upon request. While she didn't agree with their ideology (medicine was wrong, terrorism via cultivating and unleashing a deadly disease known as GUILT was practically a religious mission), she owed them for salvaging her a new life. So they told her to do things, she did them, and they paid her.
Meanwhile word came out of another brilliant doctor with the Healing Touch (suddenly more acceptable, go figure): Derek Stiles, who had recently begun working with international medical research organization Caduceus. Each time Delphi unleashed GUILT, Caduceus stopped it. When Naomi was effectively discharged from Delphi and left with a sample of GUILT, she jumped ship. She went to Caduceus Europe and gave them her sample and her skills (including her Healing Touch and other knowledge) for full amnesty for her crimes. For months after that, she treated GUILT patients and did research part-time, all under her original name again. This gave her time and freedom to struggle with what she’d done in life - she felt she had to atone for what she’d done with Delphi, but after all that did she really deserve to be a doctor?
When Derek Stiles became infected with GUILT while in Europe, it was up to Naomi to operate on the international hero of medicine. She realized that yes, she too was needed as a doctor no matter her past, and to work as a true doctor again would be her atonement. When she confided all this - her past, her thoughts - to Derek, his trust never changed and she pulled through. Derek was cured and ready to work again when another outbreak occurred, resulting in a team-up effort to treat infected patients.
Naomi stayed in Europe for a year or two believing that she would not receive amnesty elsewhere, but when she became infected with some kind of disease (implied to be a derivative of GUILT) Derek probably pulled some strings to help and with a plea bargain Naomi was able to stay free in the US on the stipulation that she oblige to any government demands for her work. Her time was short: Derek couldn't treat her illness, so she had a year left at best. Since the illness made operations dangerous, Naomi had to retire from surgery. Instead she assisted the FBI with various cases, gaining a reputation for her work with the FBI and her ability to hear the dead's final words (don't ask where that came from because they don't say!), before she settled down and found work as a researcher/medical examiner at the Cumberland Institute of Forensic Medicine in Maine.
The FBI began to call on her at CIFM to work on murder cases, and her FBI liaison there turned out to be a former Delphi coworker who'd faked his way into government work. Unfortunately stuck with him, Naomi imposed a ban on discussing their past and nicknamed him Little Guy. A working relationship developed from there as Naomi did her job and solved cases, musing on death as she investigated murder cases and waiting for her own life to end. Along the way, her cases led her to discover a mysterious disease that drove its victims mad before they died of hemorrhaging - without any known source, cure, or even serious treatment. She also befriended Alyssa Breslin, a sweet little girl who lived next door to CIFM, until an attempt on Naomi's life during a high-profile serial bomber case destroyed Alyssa's home, killed her family, and sent Alyssa herself into critical condition.
Naomi was angrier and more frustrated than she'd ever been: she blamed herself for getting Alyssa and the Breslins involved and was desperately afraid that Alyssa would die. It was a little while before Naomi was able to snap back to herself and track down the Raging Bomber to atone again. Alyssa survived, and Naomi took custody of her reasoning that the FBI owed Naomi for her work and that it ensured that Alyssa wouldn't be abandoned: upon Naomi's inevitable death by illness, the FBI would be left responsible for her care.
Before they could leave the hospital, the mysterious disease that had appeared in some of Naomi’s past cases quickly became widespread. Naomi and Resurgam staff determined that the disease had been cultivated from the blood of Rosalia Rossellini, adopted daughter of virology researcher Albert Sartre. Both were already dead, but they managed to produce an antiserum to counter the Rosalia virus. However, somewhere in her work with Rosalia and Sartre's bodies Naomi became infected with the Rosalia virus. She ignored her symptoms to work on the antiserum, but the virus mutated in combination with the disease she already had and she soon collapsed. Thanks to Derek and a really good surgeon the hospital managed to treat her, and in doing so eliminated her original disease along with it – leaving Naomi able to live freely and enjoy another chance at life. Bonus clips show that she later resumed her work at CIFM, balancing research and crime investigations with taking care of Alyssa.
Reincarnated History:
Naomi Kaufman's early childhood was a lonely one - her mother died when she was young, and her father worked long hours as a doctor in the town hospital so more often than not her days were spent by herself. When her father changed jobs, they moved to a city called Newport, and the subsequent move to a new school in the middle of the school year made Naomi more desperate to make friends. She gravitated towards the first people who showed interest in her for more than the first few weeks, who happened to be a pair of friends named Ethan and Diana. The three of them stuck together for a while, through their first year of school; although Naomi was wary of the fact that some of their other friends were getting into the wrong side of the law, she stuck with them for lack of other perceived options - she didn't want to lose the only friends she had at the time. In their second year, Ethan got an in with a local gang through one of his friends. Diana went with him, and Naomi followed them despite her better judgment.
However, although Naomi tried to fit in she really didn't mesh well with most of the gang. Although she could stomach the theft and the drugs, she didn't do well with just about anything that involved violence in a real-life situation: she learned a little bit about how to use a knife, but she avoided situations and tasks where she'd have to use them on people and more or less stuck to low-key jobs such as playing messenger or making deliveries. She'd picked up basic first aid and some other medical know-how in the past at her father's insistence, so she helped patch up others as well.
Eventually it got to the point where there was a bottom line, however: either she stepped up and dived into the fray of a long and heated territorial dispute or she was out. Naomi chose the former, and delivered - she fought and fought hard, but she had no taste for it and seeing only the same in her future she finally backed out for good the next day. Once she'd left, all ties were cut off between her and most of those in the gang. Ethan and Diana were the only ones who cared to talk to her again after that, which only cemented the fact that she hadn't accomplished much by way of social life in the past year or so. The fact that Naomi could see that the two of them were growing closer in a way she wouldn't intrude on only drove that point further in.
Naomi went on to bury herself in her studies, not quite knowing what to do with herself until the beginning of her second year of high school. Here she discovered an interest in chemistry, something encouraged by both her father and her chemistry teacher. At her teacher's recommendation Naomi joined a few academic leagues and other clubs, and through those she started to make new friends - if slowly, given her previous crowd. Her chemistry teacher and her father both encouraged her interests, and she studied hard to get into her university of choice. She drifted further apart from Ethan and Diana during this time, but just before graduating high school they approached her and the three of them agreed to stay in touch.
Naomi went through college majoring in chemistry and going on to graduate school, taking a particular interest in its application to forensic sciences and maintaining a quiet but comfortable social life. When Naomi was about to finish school entirely, her grandfather died and her father requested her help in getting things settled. Naomi found a job in a lab near home and moved back for the time being.
Back in Newport she reconnected with some of the high school friends with whom she'd kept in contact over the years, Ethan and Diana among them. By this time they'd gotten married and had a three-year-old daughter named Anna; however, in the time since then Diana had been diagnosed with cancer and hospitalized. To pay for the costs Ethan took on additional work, and Naomi helped take care of Anna when she could, but within a year Ethan became unable to pay for the hospital and Diana passed away a few months later.
Left to raise his daughter, Ethan tried his best to give Anna the best chance he could. He was working part-time and involved in the drug-dealing business on the side at the time, but since Diana's hospitalization he'd begun searching for a more stable job to better support his daughter. Naomi tried to help as much as she could, assisting Ethan on the job search, but when he was abruptly killed in a dispute over work and drugs Naomi was left without two of her friends and Anna was left without both her parents.
Naomi ignored the reactions she got from other friends and family and adopted Anna after that, unable to see her put into the foster system. Naomi and Anna stayed in the city for another year or so, but feeling it was time to give both herself and Anna a new environment Naomi found a new job at a forensics lab, and the two of them moved to Locke City to put some distance between themselves and their old home. Naomi received her first Echo about a month after moving into the city.
First Echo: While processing evidence at work for a kidnapping case, traces of midazolam (a type of benzodiazepine) were found in a cup left in the victim's room. Due to the involvement of a benzodiazepine in one of the more tragic murder investigations in her past life (in which a hallucinating woman killed her daughter and nearly her husband, the latter of whom was drugged) Naomi was struck with a haunting feeling that the victim had been killed, something that never completely went away even when the case had been resolved with the victim being returned alive.
Preincarnation Personality:
Whether by nature or by control, Naomi is not one to display emotion in extremes. It's rare to see her bursting with happiness or crushingly depressed, though this isn't to say she's stoic. She jokes and teases if she's fond of somebody; she gets happy when she's achieved something, sad when uncovering tragedies, melancholy when thinking about death, angry when people make a mockery of life - she experiences all of these and more when anybody else would, just sometimes in a more quiet, musing manner.
When she has something to do Naomi usually focuses on any task at hand, and if her feelings conflict with what she's doing it's to wait until she can afford to deal with it (if she can afford to at all), regardless of the impact of putting it off. Naomi never agreed with Delphi's goals to spread disease and death, for example, but because she didn't see any other options for herself Naomi kept a tight clamp on her feelings and went on with her work for as long as she was there. It was only when she was out from under their thumb that she allowed herself to really think about the fact that what she had been doing was wrong, at which point Naomi spent the next few months wondering if she even deserved to be a doctor until Derek fell ill. This applies short-term as well as long-term: even when confirming that she was going to die of her illness, Naomi never even flinched - just calmly asked for details and tried to understand what was coming on her own in the months following, even though she never came to terms with her own mortality until she had to face someone else's.
Exceptions do exist, though she usually makes an effort to rectify it later. Naomi was openly and vocally frustrated when her new FBI contact turned out to be an old Delphi coworker (even if she could only be frustrated at him), getting over her frustration by explicitly banning discussion of their past and getting on with the case. In the case of the CIFM bombing, Naomi had to be physically restrained from running into the blast when she realized an innocent girl was caught in an explosion meant for her and afterwards she became so desperately afraid Alyssa would die that her ability to hear the dead went on the fritz, only recovering thanks to others' help and convincing herself Alyssa would be all right as she tracked down the bomber responsible.
Aside from this, Naomi seems to be able to move on from her troubles relatively quickly as long as she can put them in the past - she doesn't like to reflect on times gone by and diseases cured when they're of no use and there are other, more useful things to do. This can be as bad as it is good. It allows her to do her work well and succeed at what she does and it's what lets her go on with her life without any pressing angst about how she was blacklisted in her home country for being a good surgeon who happened to have supernatural healing powers or trapped between working for terrorists and having nowhere to go. On the other hand, the same thing is why Naomi becomes angry when someone from her past suddenly comes back into her life or refers to her former career as "glory in the distant past" when she'd retired less than a year previously.
For this reason Naomi also has a tendency to cast aside even things that most people would probably consider essential. Naomi isn't one to get close to others easily and is in fact never shown to have a friend before her second game, whether because she's naturally disinclined to seek people out or because a string of relocations and a few environments where she couldn't trust those around her has discouraged her from it (or more likely, both). Further than that, she gives up on life once she realizes she will die of illness, resigned to the point where she claims she wouldn't care if she were murdered, and spends much of the game waiting for death to come even as she goes on working until her wake-up call in the form of the CIFM bombing. The fact that she adopts Alyssa at the end of her character storyline in Trauma Team is significant in this way, showing that she has decided to let people closer into her life and to use her remaining time to actively make a difference in the ways left to her; that her illness is later cured grants her a chance to follow through on this in the long term.
Naomi doesn't always get why people feel or say as they do, and her relationships can reflect this lack of understanding. She misses out on Little Guy's Star Wars joke and needs an explanation as to why a woman would be upset over being cheated on and involved in a murder investigation, and makes occasionally biting comments intended as quips. (One of these involved a jab at Gabe's recent divorce, although to be fair he retaliated by making fun of her powers and possibly her history with Delphi so maybe it goes both ways there.) However, the friends she does have she cares for in her own way even if her approach varies: with Little Guy she teases but holds him at arm's length, save for a single admission of her trust; with Gabe, she's a little softer when she's concerned about him, though both of them are too private to be very open with each other. With Alyssa, however, she's relatively relaxed and indulgent - partially because after the bombing that orphaned and nearly killed Alyssa Naomi feels that "I owe it to her to make her happy" and partially because Alyssa is a sweet eight-year-old girl and therefore much easier to relax around than any adult she's familiar with.
Naomi has a great deal of talent and is aware of it, and ideally she'd rather make use of it in some way. While working for Delphi she commented that "Money's about the only thing that ability of mine is worth these days, depressing as it is." With the Healing Touch at her disposal she knew she could be doing more good than she was under her contract with Delphi, even though she tried not to think about the other ramifications of her situation. While she's pragmatic and not very idealistic, there are certain things that she holds in high regard. Life and saving lives remain important to her, and that's relatively constant as time goes on. While in Delphi she went out of her way to save a reporter who'd been pursuing her when he crashed his car, and remarked that it put her in a good mood; years later at CIFM, Alyssa managed to convince her to help out a potentially sick cat months after Naomi had retired from practice with nothing more but a simple "But you're a doctor, miss." Even when she was resigned to her own death she worked to bring truth for those whose live had been cut short early, and became angry at those who defiled or made light of others' deaths.
At the same time she also prefers to work quietly as she likes, and to do so without attracting major attention. At first it was because she didn't want anybody to ask questions while she was working for Delphi, but even later on after she'd jumped ship she didn't make a big deal of her abilities while at Caduceus Europe, only mentioning it to international hero and Healing Touch user Derek Stiles after she'd brought up her association with Delphi. In Trauma Team, he prefers to work at CIFM without fanfare rather than take high-profile cases as the FBI demands - even outright refusing in the case of the Raging Bomber. It's telling that her happy ending in Trauma Team is to continue as she is at CIFM rather than returning to surgery like she probably could with her illness gone for the time being. She has Alyssa to take care of in Portland; she has a few friends, people who she trusts; and she has work to do. It's not fame or glory or excitement, but it's enough for her.
Any differences:
Naomi Kaufman is a little less reserved and definitely more open to developing relationships with people, and currently keeps in touch with a few friends every now and then. For the most part she trusts people a little more easily than she did in her past life, though she's still cautious about most people from her hometown and especially cautious when it comes to anything that could affect Anna. The exception here would be those involved with the wrong side of the law or anybody whom she believes might be a danger to her or Anna.
She's less generally rounded than she was as Naomi Kimishima: while in her past life she seemed to have a broader range of skills and knowledge applicable to investigations as well as medical practice (although her experience with the latter certainly informed the former), now Naomi's main area of expertise lies in chemistry and forensics applications. She does have some knowledge of biology and medicine, due to her coursework and her father's insistence, but not enough to practice medicine as she once did.
Finally, Naomi now has a weaker tolerance for actively committing violence. While before she could coolly shoot someone trying to kill her and threaten to make it lethal, now Naomi has had a strong distaste for it since the gang fight in her teens. She's not a pacifist by any means, but she would definitely rather avoid having to fight if she can.
Abilities: Naomi is an excellent doctor and surgeon. In Second Opinion, while still young at the age of twenty-nine she is applauded by her hospital coworkers and in Trauma Team she is called "a master surgeon who can't operate" (due to illness that is later cured). In terms of skills she's pretty much a female version of Derek Stiles, who is renowned worldwide.
Her surgical skill is augmented by the Healing Touch, a supernatural ability that allows her to raise the patient's vitals and improve their condition (a skill that could be used for unscrupulous means as well as life-saving, as Delphi used it to keep their research subjects alive), but by no means is it dependent on the Healing Touch. In Trauma Team, Naomi is also shown to have the strange ability to hear the last words of the dead on her cell phone – probably a more recent development than the Healing Touch.
The supernatural aside, Naomi has a variety of medical knowledge that can be applied well outside of surgery. She's good at piecing together puzzles and mysteries and she could really do her work with or without the supernatural parts. Her work for the FBI largely consisted of piecing together mysterious deaths and understanding the truth behind what happened. She can also improvise in a pinch: operating in a dark tunnel? No problem, just get a convenient pen light and get the unnamed assistant to shine it for you. Pen light dies? She's operating on a reporter, so use his camera's flash and memorize the problem areas to treat in the dark. She's even been able to change her Healing Touch on the fly to imitate Derek's (despite the fact that this is the only known incident ever of such a thing). As far as fighting goes, she seems to know her way around a gun when necessary, as evidenced when one killer went after her at her workplace.
Roleplay Sample – Third Person: Here and here.
Roleplay Sample - Network:
[Naomi doesn't jump into things right away upon discovering the secret network, but she doesn't go through everything thoroughly either; there's too much to do that right away. So far she's browsed a little, skimmed here and there, looked at a few recent posts on the network and anything that seemed important...and she's still wrapping her head around everything, so now it's time to go a little deeper and start asking questions.]
My name is Naomi Kaufman, and I've just discovered this network of sorts in the past few days. Much like anyone else, I'm here looking for information.
I happen to work at a forensics lab. My work tends to bring me in contact with the police here and I understand it's said that they aren't on the straight, so any details I can get regarding their activities and who can or cannot be trusted would be appreciated. What do they know about whatever's going on here? If I'm at risk of being wrapped up in something, I'd like to know about it sooner rather than later.
I'd also like to hear more details about this conspiracy - for lack of a better word - and the ongoing events in this city. How safe is it here? What's the nature of any suspicious events committed by the supposed enemy here, and for what purposes are they done? Is that even known? I've done some reading, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find much of an exact nature.
And if this is some kind of hoax after all, congratulations. I don't know how you've managed to set this up, but it's certainly elaborate. Quite the air of intrigue you've managed to cultivate.
Any Questions? I'm going to note here that since I'm using a PB for Naomi I'm going to use a different journal than this one if I get accepted.
More importantly, game-wise: since Naomi works in forensics, I hope it's all right to say there happens to be a forensics lab that happens to be in Locke City where she's now working! (Alternatively I could put her in a crime lab or something attached to the university since those three are some of the most likely employers based on some research, but this seemed like the most fitting option for her.)
lightsoflife for the game journal.OOC Information:
Name: Steph
Are you over 15? Yes
Contact:
useantibioticgel, IC Information:
Name: Naomi Kaufman (originally Naomi Kimishima)
Canon: Trauma Center
Age: 30 (originally 29 and 31 in canon games, and she's 30 here mostly because the timeline math worked out that way)
Preincarnation Appearance: Here we go.
Any differences: Naomi Kaufman has light blonde hair rather than bluish-white, and tends to wear more practical clothing. I'm planning to use Laura Harris as her PB (on a journal different from this one), unless that creates any problems.
Preincarnated History: There's a wiki article here, but the wiki as a whole doesn't always distinguish too well between fact and wild speculation/shipping/things that were actually just made up(!) so here's my own writeup.
Naomi Kimishima was originally a brilliant Japanese surgeon, but news of her supernatural Healing Touch ability branded her a "devil doctor" and ruined her career. A shady organization called Delphi relocated her to America, giving her a new job at a hospital under the assumed name Nozomi Weaver in exchange for her skill and Healing Touch upon request. While she didn't agree with their ideology (medicine was wrong, terrorism via cultivating and unleashing a deadly disease known as GUILT was practically a religious mission), she owed them for salvaging her a new life. So they told her to do things, she did them, and they paid her.
Meanwhile word came out of another brilliant doctor with the Healing Touch (suddenly more acceptable, go figure): Derek Stiles, who had recently begun working with international medical research organization Caduceus. Each time Delphi unleashed GUILT, Caduceus stopped it. When Naomi was effectively discharged from Delphi and left with a sample of GUILT, she jumped ship. She went to Caduceus Europe and gave them her sample and her skills (including her Healing Touch and other knowledge) for full amnesty for her crimes. For months after that, she treated GUILT patients and did research part-time, all under her original name again. This gave her time and freedom to struggle with what she’d done in life - she felt she had to atone for what she’d done with Delphi, but after all that did she really deserve to be a doctor?
When Derek Stiles became infected with GUILT while in Europe, it was up to Naomi to operate on the international hero of medicine. She realized that yes, she too was needed as a doctor no matter her past, and to work as a true doctor again would be her atonement. When she confided all this - her past, her thoughts - to Derek, his trust never changed and she pulled through. Derek was cured and ready to work again when another outbreak occurred, resulting in a team-up effort to treat infected patients.
Naomi stayed in Europe for a year or two believing that she would not receive amnesty elsewhere, but when she became infected with some kind of disease (implied to be a derivative of GUILT) Derek probably pulled some strings to help and with a plea bargain Naomi was able to stay free in the US on the stipulation that she oblige to any government demands for her work. Her time was short: Derek couldn't treat her illness, so she had a year left at best. Since the illness made operations dangerous, Naomi had to retire from surgery. Instead she assisted the FBI with various cases, gaining a reputation for her work with the FBI and her ability to hear the dead's final words (don't ask where that came from because they don't say!), before she settled down and found work as a researcher/medical examiner at the Cumberland Institute of Forensic Medicine in Maine.
The FBI began to call on her at CIFM to work on murder cases, and her FBI liaison there turned out to be a former Delphi coworker who'd faked his way into government work. Unfortunately stuck with him, Naomi imposed a ban on discussing their past and nicknamed him Little Guy. A working relationship developed from there as Naomi did her job and solved cases, musing on death as she investigated murder cases and waiting for her own life to end. Along the way, her cases led her to discover a mysterious disease that drove its victims mad before they died of hemorrhaging - without any known source, cure, or even serious treatment. She also befriended Alyssa Breslin, a sweet little girl who lived next door to CIFM, until an attempt on Naomi's life during a high-profile serial bomber case destroyed Alyssa's home, killed her family, and sent Alyssa herself into critical condition.
Naomi was angrier and more frustrated than she'd ever been: she blamed herself for getting Alyssa and the Breslins involved and was desperately afraid that Alyssa would die. It was a little while before Naomi was able to snap back to herself and track down the Raging Bomber to atone again. Alyssa survived, and Naomi took custody of her reasoning that the FBI owed Naomi for her work and that it ensured that Alyssa wouldn't be abandoned: upon Naomi's inevitable death by illness, the FBI would be left responsible for her care.
Before they could leave the hospital, the mysterious disease that had appeared in some of Naomi’s past cases quickly became widespread. Naomi and Resurgam staff determined that the disease had been cultivated from the blood of Rosalia Rossellini, adopted daughter of virology researcher Albert Sartre. Both were already dead, but they managed to produce an antiserum to counter the Rosalia virus. However, somewhere in her work with Rosalia and Sartre's bodies Naomi became infected with the Rosalia virus. She ignored her symptoms to work on the antiserum, but the virus mutated in combination with the disease she already had and she soon collapsed. Thanks to Derek and a really good surgeon the hospital managed to treat her, and in doing so eliminated her original disease along with it – leaving Naomi able to live freely and enjoy another chance at life. Bonus clips show that she later resumed her work at CIFM, balancing research and crime investigations with taking care of Alyssa.
Reincarnated History:
Naomi Kaufman's early childhood was a lonely one - her mother died when she was young, and her father worked long hours as a doctor in the town hospital so more often than not her days were spent by herself. When her father changed jobs, they moved to a city called Newport, and the subsequent move to a new school in the middle of the school year made Naomi more desperate to make friends. She gravitated towards the first people who showed interest in her for more than the first few weeks, who happened to be a pair of friends named Ethan and Diana. The three of them stuck together for a while, through their first year of school; although Naomi was wary of the fact that some of their other friends were getting into the wrong side of the law, she stuck with them for lack of other perceived options - she didn't want to lose the only friends she had at the time. In their second year, Ethan got an in with a local gang through one of his friends. Diana went with him, and Naomi followed them despite her better judgment.
However, although Naomi tried to fit in she really didn't mesh well with most of the gang. Although she could stomach the theft and the drugs, she didn't do well with just about anything that involved violence in a real-life situation: she learned a little bit about how to use a knife, but she avoided situations and tasks where she'd have to use them on people and more or less stuck to low-key jobs such as playing messenger or making deliveries. She'd picked up basic first aid and some other medical know-how in the past at her father's insistence, so she helped patch up others as well.
Eventually it got to the point where there was a bottom line, however: either she stepped up and dived into the fray of a long and heated territorial dispute or she was out. Naomi chose the former, and delivered - she fought and fought hard, but she had no taste for it and seeing only the same in her future she finally backed out for good the next day. Once she'd left, all ties were cut off between her and most of those in the gang. Ethan and Diana were the only ones who cared to talk to her again after that, which only cemented the fact that she hadn't accomplished much by way of social life in the past year or so. The fact that Naomi could see that the two of them were growing closer in a way she wouldn't intrude on only drove that point further in.
Naomi went on to bury herself in her studies, not quite knowing what to do with herself until the beginning of her second year of high school. Here she discovered an interest in chemistry, something encouraged by both her father and her chemistry teacher. At her teacher's recommendation Naomi joined a few academic leagues and other clubs, and through those she started to make new friends - if slowly, given her previous crowd. Her chemistry teacher and her father both encouraged her interests, and she studied hard to get into her university of choice. She drifted further apart from Ethan and Diana during this time, but just before graduating high school they approached her and the three of them agreed to stay in touch.
Naomi went through college majoring in chemistry and going on to graduate school, taking a particular interest in its application to forensic sciences and maintaining a quiet but comfortable social life. When Naomi was about to finish school entirely, her grandfather died and her father requested her help in getting things settled. Naomi found a job in a lab near home and moved back for the time being.
Back in Newport she reconnected with some of the high school friends with whom she'd kept in contact over the years, Ethan and Diana among them. By this time they'd gotten married and had a three-year-old daughter named Anna; however, in the time since then Diana had been diagnosed with cancer and hospitalized. To pay for the costs Ethan took on additional work, and Naomi helped take care of Anna when she could, but within a year Ethan became unable to pay for the hospital and Diana passed away a few months later.
Left to raise his daughter, Ethan tried his best to give Anna the best chance he could. He was working part-time and involved in the drug-dealing business on the side at the time, but since Diana's hospitalization he'd begun searching for a more stable job to better support his daughter. Naomi tried to help as much as she could, assisting Ethan on the job search, but when he was abruptly killed in a dispute over work and drugs Naomi was left without two of her friends and Anna was left without both her parents.
Naomi ignored the reactions she got from other friends and family and adopted Anna after that, unable to see her put into the foster system. Naomi and Anna stayed in the city for another year or so, but feeling it was time to give both herself and Anna a new environment Naomi found a new job at a forensics lab, and the two of them moved to Locke City to put some distance between themselves and their old home. Naomi received her first Echo about a month after moving into the city.
First Echo: While processing evidence at work for a kidnapping case, traces of midazolam (a type of benzodiazepine) were found in a cup left in the victim's room. Due to the involvement of a benzodiazepine in one of the more tragic murder investigations in her past life (in which a hallucinating woman killed her daughter and nearly her husband, the latter of whom was drugged) Naomi was struck with a haunting feeling that the victim had been killed, something that never completely went away even when the case had been resolved with the victim being returned alive.
Preincarnation Personality:
Whether by nature or by control, Naomi is not one to display emotion in extremes. It's rare to see her bursting with happiness or crushingly depressed, though this isn't to say she's stoic. She jokes and teases if she's fond of somebody; she gets happy when she's achieved something, sad when uncovering tragedies, melancholy when thinking about death, angry when people make a mockery of life - she experiences all of these and more when anybody else would, just sometimes in a more quiet, musing manner.
When she has something to do Naomi usually focuses on any task at hand, and if her feelings conflict with what she's doing it's to wait until she can afford to deal with it (if she can afford to at all), regardless of the impact of putting it off. Naomi never agreed with Delphi's goals to spread disease and death, for example, but because she didn't see any other options for herself Naomi kept a tight clamp on her feelings and went on with her work for as long as she was there. It was only when she was out from under their thumb that she allowed herself to really think about the fact that what she had been doing was wrong, at which point Naomi spent the next few months wondering if she even deserved to be a doctor until Derek fell ill. This applies short-term as well as long-term: even when confirming that she was going to die of her illness, Naomi never even flinched - just calmly asked for details and tried to understand what was coming on her own in the months following, even though she never came to terms with her own mortality until she had to face someone else's.
Exceptions do exist, though she usually makes an effort to rectify it later. Naomi was openly and vocally frustrated when her new FBI contact turned out to be an old Delphi coworker (even if she could only be frustrated at him), getting over her frustration by explicitly banning discussion of their past and getting on with the case. In the case of the CIFM bombing, Naomi had to be physically restrained from running into the blast when she realized an innocent girl was caught in an explosion meant for her and afterwards she became so desperately afraid Alyssa would die that her ability to hear the dead went on the fritz, only recovering thanks to others' help and convincing herself Alyssa would be all right as she tracked down the bomber responsible.
Aside from this, Naomi seems to be able to move on from her troubles relatively quickly as long as she can put them in the past - she doesn't like to reflect on times gone by and diseases cured when they're of no use and there are other, more useful things to do. This can be as bad as it is good. It allows her to do her work well and succeed at what she does and it's what lets her go on with her life without any pressing angst about how she was blacklisted in her home country for being a good surgeon who happened to have supernatural healing powers or trapped between working for terrorists and having nowhere to go. On the other hand, the same thing is why Naomi becomes angry when someone from her past suddenly comes back into her life or refers to her former career as "glory in the distant past" when she'd retired less than a year previously.
For this reason Naomi also has a tendency to cast aside even things that most people would probably consider essential. Naomi isn't one to get close to others easily and is in fact never shown to have a friend before her second game, whether because she's naturally disinclined to seek people out or because a string of relocations and a few environments where she couldn't trust those around her has discouraged her from it (or more likely, both). Further than that, she gives up on life once she realizes she will die of illness, resigned to the point where she claims she wouldn't care if she were murdered, and spends much of the game waiting for death to come even as she goes on working until her wake-up call in the form of the CIFM bombing. The fact that she adopts Alyssa at the end of her character storyline in Trauma Team is significant in this way, showing that she has decided to let people closer into her life and to use her remaining time to actively make a difference in the ways left to her; that her illness is later cured grants her a chance to follow through on this in the long term.
Naomi doesn't always get why people feel or say as they do, and her relationships can reflect this lack of understanding. She misses out on Little Guy's Star Wars joke and needs an explanation as to why a woman would be upset over being cheated on and involved in a murder investigation, and makes occasionally biting comments intended as quips. (One of these involved a jab at Gabe's recent divorce, although to be fair he retaliated by making fun of her powers and possibly her history with Delphi so maybe it goes both ways there.) However, the friends she does have she cares for in her own way even if her approach varies: with Little Guy she teases but holds him at arm's length, save for a single admission of her trust; with Gabe, she's a little softer when she's concerned about him, though both of them are too private to be very open with each other. With Alyssa, however, she's relatively relaxed and indulgent - partially because after the bombing that orphaned and nearly killed Alyssa Naomi feels that "I owe it to her to make her happy" and partially because Alyssa is a sweet eight-year-old girl and therefore much easier to relax around than any adult she's familiar with.
Naomi has a great deal of talent and is aware of it, and ideally she'd rather make use of it in some way. While working for Delphi she commented that "Money's about the only thing that ability of mine is worth these days, depressing as it is." With the Healing Touch at her disposal she knew she could be doing more good than she was under her contract with Delphi, even though she tried not to think about the other ramifications of her situation. While she's pragmatic and not very idealistic, there are certain things that she holds in high regard. Life and saving lives remain important to her, and that's relatively constant as time goes on. While in Delphi she went out of her way to save a reporter who'd been pursuing her when he crashed his car, and remarked that it put her in a good mood; years later at CIFM, Alyssa managed to convince her to help out a potentially sick cat months after Naomi had retired from practice with nothing more but a simple "But you're a doctor, miss." Even when she was resigned to her own death she worked to bring truth for those whose live had been cut short early, and became angry at those who defiled or made light of others' deaths.
At the same time she also prefers to work quietly as she likes, and to do so without attracting major attention. At first it was because she didn't want anybody to ask questions while she was working for Delphi, but even later on after she'd jumped ship she didn't make a big deal of her abilities while at Caduceus Europe, only mentioning it to international hero and Healing Touch user Derek Stiles after she'd brought up her association with Delphi. In Trauma Team, he prefers to work at CIFM without fanfare rather than take high-profile cases as the FBI demands - even outright refusing in the case of the Raging Bomber. It's telling that her happy ending in Trauma Team is to continue as she is at CIFM rather than returning to surgery like she probably could with her illness gone for the time being. She has Alyssa to take care of in Portland; she has a few friends, people who she trusts; and she has work to do. It's not fame or glory or excitement, but it's enough for her.
Any differences:
Naomi Kaufman is a little less reserved and definitely more open to developing relationships with people, and currently keeps in touch with a few friends every now and then. For the most part she trusts people a little more easily than she did in her past life, though she's still cautious about most people from her hometown and especially cautious when it comes to anything that could affect Anna. The exception here would be those involved with the wrong side of the law or anybody whom she believes might be a danger to her or Anna.
She's less generally rounded than she was as Naomi Kimishima: while in her past life she seemed to have a broader range of skills and knowledge applicable to investigations as well as medical practice (although her experience with the latter certainly informed the former), now Naomi's main area of expertise lies in chemistry and forensics applications. She does have some knowledge of biology and medicine, due to her coursework and her father's insistence, but not enough to practice medicine as she once did.
Finally, Naomi now has a weaker tolerance for actively committing violence. While before she could coolly shoot someone trying to kill her and threaten to make it lethal, now Naomi has had a strong distaste for it since the gang fight in her teens. She's not a pacifist by any means, but she would definitely rather avoid having to fight if she can.
Abilities: Naomi is an excellent doctor and surgeon. In Second Opinion, while still young at the age of twenty-nine she is applauded by her hospital coworkers and in Trauma Team she is called "a master surgeon who can't operate" (due to illness that is later cured). In terms of skills she's pretty much a female version of Derek Stiles, who is renowned worldwide.
Her surgical skill is augmented by the Healing Touch, a supernatural ability that allows her to raise the patient's vitals and improve their condition (a skill that could be used for unscrupulous means as well as life-saving, as Delphi used it to keep their research subjects alive), but by no means is it dependent on the Healing Touch. In Trauma Team, Naomi is also shown to have the strange ability to hear the last words of the dead on her cell phone – probably a more recent development than the Healing Touch.
The supernatural aside, Naomi has a variety of medical knowledge that can be applied well outside of surgery. She's good at piecing together puzzles and mysteries and she could really do her work with or without the supernatural parts. Her work for the FBI largely consisted of piecing together mysterious deaths and understanding the truth behind what happened. She can also improvise in a pinch: operating in a dark tunnel? No problem, just get a convenient pen light and get the unnamed assistant to shine it for you. Pen light dies? She's operating on a reporter, so use his camera's flash and memorize the problem areas to treat in the dark. She's even been able to change her Healing Touch on the fly to imitate Derek's (despite the fact that this is the only known incident ever of such a thing). As far as fighting goes, she seems to know her way around a gun when necessary, as evidenced when one killer went after her at her workplace.
Roleplay Sample – Third Person: Here and here.
Roleplay Sample - Network:
[Naomi doesn't jump into things right away upon discovering the secret network, but she doesn't go through everything thoroughly either; there's too much to do that right away. So far she's browsed a little, skimmed here and there, looked at a few recent posts on the network and anything that seemed important...and she's still wrapping her head around everything, so now it's time to go a little deeper and start asking questions.]
My name is Naomi Kaufman, and I've just discovered this network of sorts in the past few days. Much like anyone else, I'm here looking for information.
I happen to work at a forensics lab. My work tends to bring me in contact with the police here and I understand it's said that they aren't on the straight, so any details I can get regarding their activities and who can or cannot be trusted would be appreciated. What do they know about whatever's going on here? If I'm at risk of being wrapped up in something, I'd like to know about it sooner rather than later.
I'd also like to hear more details about this conspiracy - for lack of a better word - and the ongoing events in this city. How safe is it here? What's the nature of any suspicious events committed by the supposed enemy here, and for what purposes are they done? Is that even known? I've done some reading, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find much of an exact nature.
And if this is some kind of hoax after all, congratulations. I don't know how you've managed to set this up, but it's certainly elaborate. Quite the air of intrigue you've managed to cultivate.
Any Questions? I'm going to note here that since I'm using a PB for Naomi I'm going to use a different journal than this one if I get accepted.
More importantly, game-wise: since Naomi works in forensics, I hope it's all right to say there happens to be a forensics lab that happens to be in Locke City where she's now working! (Alternatively I could put her in a crime lab or something attached to the university since those three are some of the most likely employers based on some research, but this seemed like the most fitting option for her.)