Ashina

Ashina adjusted their mask for the seventeenth time, trying to ignore the itch beneath. Most assume they hide a battle-scarred past or a secret identity. The truth is far more humiliating. Before leaving The Great Panda City, a moment of overconfidence with a pair of shears resulted in a bowlcut of such catastrophic perfection that exile felt like the only option. Their entire explorer persona—the brooding silence, the concealing poncho—is an elaborate cover story to avoid showing their face until it grows out. They send back tales of atonement for a mysterious past failure. The failure was purely follicular. Every new trail they blaze is secretly just a search for a barber who can fix the unfixable.