This is something you obviously DO NOT HAVE TO read, but if you feel like asking questions, I'd be appreciated if you at least try finding the answers here first. =]

Extended A/N:

Hi, there! Before going to the usual listing of sections, I'll just say it here that this story actually originated from my other pet-project work "Thoughts Untold and Unheard", which is focused on Emma (and Sean)'s point of view(s) of canon events. I planned on writing about her time with the new Hellions, and then after relocating to San Francisco, later Utopia, her time with Pixie and Armor... And the Armor part just started a chain reaction in my brain. I realized I wanted to write certain events as how Hisako saw them, and I even went through the crazy process of picking the unnamed Paladins, how their team would work, and team dynamic, such and such, which is wayyyyyy off the track for the other story, Soooooooo I started this one. xD The good thing is, unlike the other one which I'm not so certain how it would end, this story would probably just be 5 chapters long, definitely less than 10 chapters. Lastly, the first section of the story will most likely be moved to the other story once it catches up with the timeline.

Oh and yeah, I'm keeping the part about what happened to Hisako's family in Monstrous story arc canon. (AsXM v3 36-37,#39,#41) So yeah, it will come up eventually, sorry.

1. What's canon and what's not?

I think the beauty of it is... When it wasn't mentioned in canon, what was made up, as long as it doesn't contradict existing canon information, it can't be simply regarded as NOT canon... Because, really, it COULD happen, if some author finally decided to fill in the blanks with the same situation. So all I can tell you is what's definitely canon:

a. Hisako at least started to attend Xavier Institute for Higher Learning during Gifted story arc. (AsXM v3 01-06)
b. Hisako (and her father, later shown in Monstrous) spoke Japanese.
c. Hisako had a brother, mother, and father at one point.
d. Hisako's uncle (her dad's only brother) died when he was young.
e. Hisako's father wore glasses, was shown in Monstrous.
f. Hisako's family lived in Tokyo, Japan at one point.

So yeah, that's about it, the rest are all my fantasy xP.

I made Hisako's brother older than her... Because in WatXM Alpha & Omega, the way the artist drew the character definitely made him seem a few years older than Hisako. The part about the Ichikis was heavily inspired by how Hisako first describe the way her armor work. The direct quote: "It's my family, the line of my ancestors passes this strength, this protection that I can access..." (written by Joss Whedon) I've always felt that the statement can be interpreted as the Ichikis had other mutant members in their family tree. I also thought the explanation in the 2011 X-Men Anime made sense; the direct quote from the english subtitle I saw: "The Ichiki family is a long line of mutants, but her parents never actually manifested their powers." As for the term latent mutant gene, I'm not sure if it appeared earlier before, but I personally read it from XTXM #10, and thought its definition is very fitting for the scenario, so I used it.

Because I wanted to have at least one of the mutant the Ichikis had before Hisako, and her parents and her brother obviously were human; not wanting to create more unnamed characters (say, her father's cousins... at this point we don't really know if he had any), the only canon given character became the choice, AND it just so happened that the only thing we know of Hisako's uncle is that he died young. Originally, I didn't plan his death to be mutant related at all, he could have simply had a car accident; but as I started to play around Mr. Ichiki and Emma's talk, it sort of just happened.

2. Ichiki's actual kanji?

Apparently Joss Whedon did not specify which Ichiki he was thinking of, that, or people didn't get his note, because Ichiki Hisako was written as 市来 久子 in the 2011 X-Men Anime, but in the Japanese translated version of AsXM v3 published by villagebooks (ヴィレッジブックス), it was written as 一木 久子. Both '一木' and '市来' are indeed actual Japanese last names (as well as '市木', also with the same pronunciation and romaji). Marvel launched the 'Global Comics' app in early 2014, and I've checked: they do have some of the AsXM v3 chapters; everything on the app is translated by iVerse Media (I have no idea what this is before looking up, so if you're confused, don't feel bad), so I'm interested to see which Ichiki they would use. If there's anybody out there who prefers reading in Japanese and would like to actually support the comics by buying them, let me know if you ever find out just which one! I'm happy to switch out 市来 if 一木 is the majority.

3. Hisako's description?

I wrote her how I see her from the comics, just that nowadays she's such a background character that it's really hard to get the same vibe =/ . Hisako definitely strikes me as a studious person, other then her, I can only think of Husk, Prodigy and Victor Borkowski "Anole" that gave me the same feeling, so I think I should focus on that as I personally think it's an important skill to be able to apply what you learned (and if you hadn't learned anything at all, that sucks for you). The part about track and field was really because, based on her few appearances, she didn't seem unfit, and I was again inspired by her movements in the 2011 X-Men Anime, which was why I picked high jump. I could have picked kendo or kyudo, as those two afterschool clubs are pretty popular in manga and probably hold more impact, but once the high jump idea came to mind, I simply can't see Hisako doing any else that would be more fitting. Judo was picked because... Karate seemed like all people know (sorry lol), that and I thought instead of aggressively striking the opponent, focusing on simply 'taking down' the enemy seems like something to sculpt her character. Anyways, I hope she'd be believable, for now anyways. I promise she'd have more lines in the later chapters!

4. Stuff Emma bought?

If anybody's interested, the brands I was basing of are 'HYSTERIC GLAMOUR' and 'earth music&ecology'. They both obviously aren't as luxury as Dior (Emma definitely confirmed wearing its perfume), but they aren't so inexpensive that every schoolgirl can afford. I left out the names because I'm not sure if people will see Emma as OOC for not going for bigger names xP. The banana sweets is Tokyo Banana (東京ばな奈), something I sadly had yet to have the chance to taste.

5. Aomori-shi?

The saddest and most funny thing is, although this section is super long with my obsession for not using Tokyo (lmao), you really don't get that much more about Aomori-shi in the actual story. Sorry if I'm disappointing anyone.

This is done for a personal and selfish reason (I'm not even ashamed of admitting). When I looked up Hisako's profile, I was like 'go figured they would make her from Tokyo, just like every other Japanese Marvel characters seem to be.' Noriko's from Tokyo, Kwannon apparently was from Tokyo; Shiro and Mariko were from a fictional place (or they retardedly misspelled it and never bothered to correct it), Yukio wasn't specified, but at least they made Lady Deathstrike from Osaka. Idk, from the people I listed, the Tokyo ratio didn't seem too much out of proportion, but just think of it like this: of all the student body of Xavier Institute, there are two Japanese, and they both just so happened to be from Tokyo. Like, what are the odds? I wouldn't be happy if most of the mutant from California are all from LA; it just seemed like whenever the author didn't bother building up characters' background, they'd pick a very generic city so that most people know where it is. I'm not blaming Joss Whedon, for all I know, he could have had planned Hisako to be a second generation immigrant; I'm also not blaming Daniel Way (who brought up Tokyo), because luckily the way he wrote it, he never did specify that the Ichikis was from Tokyo, just that they lived there, which is how I got the leeway to do the backstory. I also felt like mentioning, thank you, whoever edited Hisako's page on Marvel wikia, cuz I'm pretty sure for a while it was written in black and white where she was from, and now:

Place of Birth Unrevealed, presumably Tokyo, Japan

That I can accept and gladly took advantage of xDD

So why Aomori-shi? This is still a selfish decision but the whole reason started from here: Back to the 2011 X-Men Anime, I find the setting they used a lot more interesting than, well, Tokyo, so I looked it up. In the anime itself, it only said the Tōhoku region (東北地方) without specifying which of the six ken (県, prefectures); however, the stage was set there based on the events that happened in Akita-ken (秋田県) (at least how it is stated in the show's Japanese wiki page). Unfortunately, I know nothing of this ken (I know I can always do research, but it just feel different), and after seeing that the ken has ranked number one for 19 years in a row in Japan for SUICIDE RATE... I dunno, I just thought I can try something else lol. The only northern part of Japan I've personally been was Hokkaido (北海道), and while it's definitely a rich place to write about, for some reason it didn't fit the picture I imagined, so I decided to give the Tōhoku region another try.

Where do people learn about places they've never been besides school, tv, books, and Internet? Feel free to judge me but here goes: when I was young, I was pretty addicted to the PC game Sentimental Graffiti (センチメンタルグラフティ), in which the player gets to tour 12 cities in Japan and learn about what they're famous for; and just my luck, 2 of the cities were in the Tōhoku region: Sendai-shi of Miyagi-ken (仙台市, 宮城県) and Aomori-shi of Aomori-ken (青森市, 青森県). I actually had a hard time picking which one, but Aomori won because of the apples (ha), and because Sendai doesn't snow as much. Ironically, when I was picking a university for Hisako's uncle, the one I remembered of was actually Hokkaido University (北海道大学) but instead I came across Tohoku University (東北大学), and after looking it up, thought it fits, AND Tohoku University is at Sendai-shi of Miyagi-ken. So I guess I got both places in the end.

6. 'A New Plus Op'?

In case there's people out there who think the plot about the U-Men was super brilliant, please note that the idea U-Men and the Ichikis is by no means original; I would be outright lying if I said I had not drawn inspiration from the 2011 X-Men Anime. When I read about the U-Men in NXM, I've always thought the entire idea was very sick but realistic in some ways; I actually thought their threats towards mutants were at the same level with the Reavers, the Right, Friends of Humanity, and the Purifiers, but were mostly forgotten after NXM's run, and related incident only resurfaced once (without organ removing, fortunately). The anime brought them to the screen, so I guess tying them again with the Ichikis is some sort of homage. As for the anagram, it was after I decided on which one that I remembered Sublime didn't necessary link his twisted movement with Weapon Plus, but owells. Other anagrams from the name includes: U.S. New Pal Op, Opal New Ups, A Supple Now, and A Supple Won.

14/10/09
Sammm