Kusera

Kusera is a fan made Dragon Ball character that is a part of the Crimson Continuity. She was created by Claire Rosen, who is also known as the Ace of Bangs.

(WORK IN PROGRESS)

Concept and Creation
If my feeble memory serves, Kusera was initially designed in 2019. At the time I was immersed in articles and video essays about the Minoan civilization. Theirs was the first advanced civilization recognized in Europe. My interest in historic cultures and events usually has its way with my ideas for character designs and backstories. I gave Kusera the snake ornaments that she wears around her torso as an homage to the Minoans’ snake deity. In fact, their society produced fine examples of bronze laid art for their gods to invite their grace and protection upon their homes. I took inspiration from that aspect of Minoan culture when building Kusera’s origins and the society she comes from.

Timeline
Kusera hails from a pocket universe which shares the same serial number as the timeline in which it resides, 000308507. The Kaioshin who created the pocket universe had breached the laws of time long ago by allowing the people of a later era within her dimension to manipulate space folds and traverse the timelines.

Appearance
She stands at six feet and one inch with long hair. It’s typically twisted/braided in a certain way and kept in a loose bun. She wears a black two piece style of under armor, a long white wrap arranged around her bust and hips and two snake ornaments hold that up by linking around her chest and hips. There’s usually nothing on her feet. The only other accessory is a pair of hook shaped earrings that were given to her.

Personality
Her personality is indicative of lonesomeness and caution. Later generations, upon hearing of her achievements and difficult history with the Time Patrol, came to call her “The Crudite Witch”. Kusera has resided among the Time Patrollers for a very, very, very long time. She has tried and failed to succeed through her skill in pharmacology. At one point, Kusera attempted to make her own compounds available to the time patrol, such as boosters for recovery in battle. They were effective enough to stimulate a patroller to the point of achieving higher forms of physicality. The results incited abuse of those drugs. Now, she chooses to remain inactive as a patroller and subside quietly in her own time rift. She’s dismissive and wary of disappointing herself by helping others become stronger. She isn’t enthusiastic in general, tending to not sign on for mentorships or social invitations. However, she will always return a considerate gesture.

Biography
She descends from a line of Crudite and Saiyans and honors the way of life they founded on a large island. Her parents were often absent overseas to collect wealth and establish trusts to build more ships and prospective trade with other islands. At the time Kusera became a teenager they left and never returned from the continent. She internalized the shock of abandonment by teaching herself to be a fierce capitalist and honing her magical gifts. She spent her remaining youth abroad and adopted many languages, raising the cultures and subsidiaries of the islands into a more integrated, capable economic force with her parents’ resources. Despite her popularity and skillful communication with the merchants and officials, she refused their proposals to republicize on the other islands so their chiefdoms could retain their provinces. She preferred that standardization be adopted on every island, however such a movement would lead to strong conservatism among artisans who used magic to produce goods and assets. Without an enforcing agency, equal trade was soon undermined by incongruous interpretations of value based on variances between magic and non magic methods and affected production costs in addition to other aspects of how deals were reached. So, Kusera and her supporters invited the other island chiefs to their island occasionally to set down records in pertinent languages and decide a universal metric system to keep everyone honest and the trade system fair. Soon, warlords in the continent invited Kusera and her wealth into the considerations of the Crudite state. Kusera traveled with a fleet to be part of a convention in which the Crudite leaders of those lands wanted to use the magic ornaments her people made as weapons against enemy Saiyan tribes. Kusera was too ambitious to ignore their offer and agreed to volunteer the best warriors she knew, provided there would be royalties for her island and those who earned victories for the Crudite state.

An important observation of the Crudite State at that time in which Kusera traveled the continent is that it was not opposed to all saiyan banners or nations, and vice versa in many saiyan tribes who were forced into serfdom under more powerful and unbalanced leadership. The legitimacy of power was determined, in saiyan tradition, not based upon one’s accomplishments to protect land and provide security for others. It was weighed upon the surviving numbers of one’s clan and violence they were capable of. It was one of the most harrowing lessons Kusera faced when she and her comrades encountered battlefields in which the impoverished, brutalized rural saiyan communities were sacrificed by detonating themselves abruptly if they went to their aid, or informing the enemy strategists of their activities and arsenals. When Kusera was informed that her retinue and fellow warriors would be selectively assigned under Crudite command, she knew she would not see many of them again before they left the continent victorious. She continued to defy many strategic outlines that would not allow negotiation with the saiyan armies simply so that many of them would be persuaded to support the Crudite state and allow their communities to become subsidiary farmlands as they advanced. Kusera’s rationale won over other Crudite soldiers as the sacrifices on both sides decreased in light of these conventions. Eventually, the leaderships of these enemy tribes could not wage effectively against the advancing Crudite army. Some fled into the higher mountain regions where they could hide and wait. Few of the remaining chiefs met with their adversary and peacefully sorted out their surrender. They held Kusera in deep respect for her graciousness and intervention throughout the campaign as they realized how much worse the outcome may have been.

Sadly, Kusera’s acolytes were not honored by the Crudite state to the same extent. Their abilities to wield enchanted ornaments were objectified as base and unnatural sorcery, an unruly extension of the island culture they belonged to. In the future days of the Crudite state, Kusera and the stories of her comrades were admired throughout farmlands known as “Koden lands”.

For a few years after their return to the islands, Kusera struggled to progress in anything. Then, she met a strange being by the name of Sealas who announced that he was sent by a deity to observe a ritual known as “induction”. This was a well known ability among Crudite to share auras in battle, and she allowed Sealas to witness some people of her community perform it. Sealas gave his approval and his impression of a similar ritual that he claimed to have witnessed in another time and place. Kusera was to learn that he was a time patroller who served a kaioshin known as the Supreme Kai of Time. She pursued with many questions for Sealas about what the Time Patrol was and the ultimate result of their exchanges led to her asking to become a patroller, fully knowing she would be removed from the timeline. Chronoa, Supreme Kai of Time, and the deity who reigned over the timeline, Rinkai, her the decision. Kusera became a first generation time patroller alongside Sealas and a monk named Shun Sei.

Power
Kusera is now a highly adept witch who possesses many abilities, but it all began with the magic to enchant the ornaments that she and her descendants before her made. Most notably, she relies on her snake ornaments in battle by channeling her ki into them. Through skill, focus and a degree of psychic transference, she can steer them with incredible accuracy and speed, cause their bodies to grow or shrink in proportion to the amount of concentrated ki (Similar to how future Trunks manipulated the ki in his own body to increase his bulk and pull a feint on Vegeta ). Her dominant Crudite blood also lends her the power to know the extent of transformations that any given person is capable of if she sees them in the flesh. Lastly, she has an impressive magical connection to water and uses it to different purposes. Denki is another aspect of her power. It is the particular state of ki that comes naturally to Crudite.

Abilities
In respect to Denki and it’s effects, it primarily affects the laws of entropy in a limited area. It is a way through which one can perform rapid purification or poisoning of the body, detect scents and toxins in the air and other surroundings and a number of other things including ki disruption. Applying Denki in combat would not increase one’s ki output, but it certainly can destabilize the enemy by disrupting their ki attacks. In the case of Crudite and Saiyan hybrids, their Denki tends to draw energy toward the source in greater amounts and create bridges of compounded ki in the form of lightning. Kusera is an example that relies on the the former application. She cannot create lightning although she can disrupt it.

Voice Actor
Although she currently has no VA, to the imagination she would sound like Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (Cornelia li Britannia, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, Kurenai, Naruto/Shippuden/Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Major Makoto Kusanagi, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex)