Ensign Nozomi Kusuda
Name Nozomi Kusuda 'Gemini'
Position Fighter Pilot
Rank Ensign
Character Information
| Gender | Female | |
| Species | Human | |
| Age | 36 |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 5'5" | |
| Weight | 142 IBS | |
| Hair Color | Naturally black, but prefers to dye it purple. | |
| Eye Color | Green | |
| Physical Description | Nozomi Kusuda is of average height for her age, but is slightly overweight. She tends to tie her waist-length hair into a set of low-hanging twin-tails, though she does occasionally change things up by either tying it up in a single braid looped around her shoulder or by letting it down completely. |
Family
| Relationship Status | Single | |
| Spouse/Partner | None | |
| Children | None | |
| Father | Enki Kusuda | |
| Mother | Ume Kusuda (Deceased) | |
| Brother(s) | None | |
| Sister(s) | None | |
| Other Family | None of note |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Those who truly know Ensign Kusuda have described her as being a gentle, compassionate individual who possesses wisdom far beyond her years. She tends to look on the bright side of things, even when the situation is dire. Because of her easy going nature, it takes a lot to actually rile her up, and she tends to be the cooler head in an argument. She can be a little awkward when first initiated into a new social group, but she tends to catch on rather quickly. One area that Ensign Kusuda particularly shines is her knack for offering personal advice; with a constantly revolving door of people who’ve cycled in and out of her life, she’s picked up on a few key traits that tend to distinguish certain behavioral patterns. Her father had even suggested that she become a social worker before she joined Astral, and eventually Starfleet. Ensign Kusuda has had a long-standing fascination with spiritual phenomena such as power spots and fortune-telling. She carries a pack of Tarot cards in her pocket, and has even gotten into palm-reading as of late. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | + Purported to have “exceptional” piloting skills. + Loves to talk and offer personal advice to her colleagues; while this is not always appreciated at first, her advice can often prove fundamental in the long term. +Is not easily scared and/or provoked. +Doesn’t get hung up on embarrassing missteps; she just accepts that what’s done is done and moves on with her life. +Is very punctual about her sleeping habits. -Can at times be a little too meddlesome for her own good. -Tends to lean a little too heavily on superstition. -Her unmitigated kindness often rubs off as patronizing to some of her colleagues. |
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| Ambitions | After an incident that transpired from her days at Starfleet Academy, Ensign Kusuda has had to greatly scale back her ambitions. At this point, she’s grateful that she’s been deployed at all, and is eager to prove herself to her new commanding officers. | |
| Hobbies & Interests | -Fortune Telling; she’s carried a pack of Tarot cards on her since she was six, and has more recently gotten into palm-reading. In addition, she occasionally peruses the horoscopes when the mood strikes her. -Music; her interests vary, and she’s open to new genres. She also sings (due to having been a member of the Idol group Astral in her late teens and early twenties), and has even learned a handful of songs in Klingon. -The Supernatural; she keeps a copy of “Starfleet Ghost Stories” by Jake Sisko under her bunk, which she occasionally flips through from time to time. -Yakiniku; specifically, horumonyaki. |
| Personal History | Nozomi Kusuda was born on June 9, 2360, as the first and only child of Enki and Ume Kusuda. Due to the nature of her father’s job as a construction manager, most of her early life was spent moving about to various locations throughout Japan. She claims that the longest time her family spent in any one location was approximately a year and a half in Kyoto, where she developed a relaxed Kansai dialect. In 2376, Nozomi’s family moved to Akihabara to oversee the construction of a new civic center. Nozomi was enrolled at Shigosen Public Academy, where she met and befriended a Russo-Japanese transfer student named Eliza Nanjō. Excited at the prospect of having made a real friend outside of her immediate family, she sought her parents’ permission to continue living in Akihabara when they were eventually called to oversee another job out in Nagasaki. Her parents obliged in her request, so long as she endeavored to formally complete her education. In 2377, Eliza was elected as the head of the Shigosen Student Council, with Nozomi appointed as her vice president. In April of that year, it was announced that Shigosen would close following years of declining attendance. As Eliza collaborated with faculty in helping to wind down student organizations and reassign students to nearby institutions, Nozomi was approached by a junior named Honoka Kousaka, who was hoping to drum up revenue for the school through a student idol group named "Astral," which she had formed with the help of her classmates. While it was a gamble to be endorsing a student club while they were already in the midst of reassigning students, Nozomi could tell by Honoka's burning determination to save her school that this was something she was truly passionate about, and quietly backed Honoka's group without Eliza's consent. Following Astral's moderately successful debut at a regional talent competition, enough interest was renewed in Shigosen for Eliza and Nozomi to take note, and with some encouragement from their juniors, the two of them would eventually go on to join Astral themselves, with Nozomi taking the stage name “Gemini” after her astrological sign. While their group was moderately successful, they lacked enough public exposure to make a difference in the fate of their school. However, their luck took a turn for the better when a talent scout for a big-name entertainment corporation witnessed their performance at the semi-finals for the regional competition and approached them with a tantalizing 6-year deal; with enough money to not only buy Shigosen a few more years of relevance, but put all 9 members of Astral through college, they would sign themselves over to whatever contractual obligation his employers asked of them— be it recording songs, voice acting, modeling, or even guest-spotting on a few talk shows. As it turned out, six years of their lives was more than worth the money they would be offering, and the nine of them happily obliged. Under the guidance of new corporate management, Astral would go on to see much greater success, including a couple of high-concept albums and at least one single, “Rendezvous At The End Of The Galaxy,” cracking the top 30 on the Japanese Pop Charts. However, by 2383 and with their contracts drawing to an end, Nozomi and her fellow band members, having successfully accomplished what they had originally set out to do, were already gearing up for a farewell tour. However, as Nozomi was contemplating what she was going to do with her life post-fame, her life changed forever following a pair of announcements on social media. After reassessing her long-term goals and receiving feedback her parents, Eliza had reached the decision that she would be applying for Starfleet once her contract expired. With the Nanjō family already boasting proud ties to the Federation (her uncle was an esteemed veteran of the Dominion War), she felt that her next course of action was making a difference in the galaxy. At the same time, Honoka was also assessing her career options, as she wasn't particularly interested in inheriting her parents' confectionery. By chance, she stumbled across an open-house event at Starfleet Academy's Tokyo campus, and upon consulting with a recruitment officer, was elated to discover that her grades would be just good enough to get in. Deciding it would offer a nice change of pace, she made an announcement not long after Eliza that she too would be enrolling at Starfleet once her contract formally expired. Feeling somewhat inspired by Eliza and Honoka's announcements, Nozomi took a hypothetical placement test to decide which field would likely suit her, if she chose to follow Eliza and Honoka into Starfleet. She was surprised to discover that she showed an inclination towards piloting, and after sitting on it for a few stops along their tour, she decided that it the position interested her, and made an announcement live on stage that she would be joining Eliza and Honoka in Starfleet. Nozomi, Eliza, and Honoka formally enrolled at Starfleet Academy in the spring of 2385, with Eliza going into the field of Command, Honoka into the field of Engineering, and Nozomi into the field of Piloting. Nozomi's appointed flight instructor was Lieutenant Commander Phyllis D'Lar, an El-Aurian veteran who had been working with Starfleet since nearly the beginning. It was also in Lieutenant D'Lar's class where she became acquainted with a young Soren Dillinger and his girlfriend, Tammi Grace. Though Lieutenant Commander D'Lar was strict in her teachings, Nozomi managed to excel under her tutelage, and was at one point amongst the top 5 students in her class; Lieutenant Commander D'Lar spoke highly of her, saying that she had a bright future in piloting ahead of her. Unfortunately, her future in Starfleet came crashing down just weeks before her graduation, when Nozomi, Soren, and their classmates were dispatched aboard the USS Las Vegas (NCC-51505) as part of a clandestine diplomatic exercise on the homeworld of Yukira VI. While preparing a shuttlecraft that Nozomi and her classmates were to escort down to the surface, a group of cadets from the operations division intercepted a distress signal from a group of mountaineers, who had become stranded on Mt. Korizuna following an avalanche. Despite pleas from Soren and the other cadets, the commanding officers at the time disapproved of sending a shuttlecraft down to rescue them, as their first and foremost priority was establishing diplomatic relations and not meddling in civilian affairs. In spite of this, Soren managed to rally Nozomi and her fellow cadets into breaking rank and commandeering the shuttlecraft to orchestrate an unauthorized rescue mission. While they succeeded in rescuing the trapped hikers, their commanding officers were livid for their insubordination and possible jeopardization of diplomatic relations. While a full court martial was never pursued, the reputations of everyone involved in the incident were irreparably marred. Nozomi unceremoniously graduated at the bottom of her class in 2389; she would spend the next six years of her life being shuffled around a series of uneventful desk jobs, taking a brief absence in 2391 following the death of her mother. In 2395, Eliza Nanjō, having recently been appointed as Captain of the USS Moscow (NCC-61025), was formally appointed by Rear Admiral Kree to oversee the temporary reassignment of Marine and Engineering personnel to the USS Tokyo (NCC-91101), which had sustained considerable casualties in a skirmish with an unidentified craft over the Romulan colony of Alvatar and was in dire need of replacement staff. On a whim, Captain Nanjō put the name of her old friend into a Starfleet records database and was surprised to discover that Ensign Kusuda had not once been deployed outside of the Academy. Feeling partially guilty for the limbo state that her friend had been unjustly relegated to, Captain Nanjō personally vouched to have Ensign Kusuda deployed aboard the Tokyo, citing that she had not been given the proper chance to prove herself outside of her Academy training. in part due to Rear Admiral Kree's preoccupation with other matters at the time and the Admiralty's perception of the Tokyo and her crew as a "liability" following the Alvatar incident, her request went through unopposed and Ensign Kusuda was formally deployed aboard the Tokyo at the first available opportunity. |
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| Service Record | 2385-2389: Starfleet Academy (Piloting) 2389: USS Las Vegas (Cadet- Training Assignment) 2390-2395: Various desk jobs (Ensign) 2395-????: USS Tokyo (Ensign- Fighter Pilot) |