Remi Aoi

     Remi is a woman who craves excitement.  After spending five years as a restrained workaholic, Remi is anxious to break out of her comfort zone and be daring.  With a lifetime of martial arts training under her belt, Remi is confident that she has what it takes to be successful in the ring.
     Despite her confidence in her abilities, Remi has a slight tendency towards nervousness.  Unfamiliar situations make her uncomfortable more often than not, but she usually faces them instead of running away.  Rather than be consumed by nervousness, Remi typically uses her nervous energy to spur her to action.  Still, it is not terribly difficult to make Remi flustered, and that can be used against her.
     Remi also has a tendency to joke around.  Her sense of humor is often sarcastic and morbid, but is seldom biting.  She uses humor both out of habit and to make light of difficult situations.
     Finally, Remi is not particularly aggressive.  Outside the ring, while she has no issues with standing her ground or being direct when needed, it is rare for her to be the aggressor.  Inside the ring, while she is more than capable of mounting an offense, her style is slightly more defensive in nature.  Essentially, despite her considerable skill, Remi does not have much of a killer instinct.

     Remi was born in Tokyo, Japan to a Japanese mother and an American father.  Her mother was a former Olympic silver medalist in the women's high jump and her father was a famous karateka—a karate practitioner.  Remi's initial inclination in life was towards books and reading: by the time she was four months old, Remi showed a strong liking towards picture books, and would pretend to "read" more conventional books.  However, at the age of three, Remi's father began training her in martial arts, specifically karate.  Despite Remi initially showing no interest in martial arts, her father continued to encourage her to train—he was never forceful though.  Eventually, after receiving lots of gentle encouragement from her father, Remi came to love martial arts.
     By the age of five, it had become clear that Remi had an unusual amount of aptitude for martial arts.  Her kinesthetic sense was far beyond that of a normal five year old, and she could pick up various techniques, albeit simpler ones, with ease.  She also displayed abnormally quick reflexes, a strong spatial sense, and an excellent sense of timing and rhythm.  The only thing that Remi lacked was natural aggressiveness: even against pads, Remi would not bring her full force to bear.  Still, sensing the potential in his daughter, Remi's father remained patient and never berated Remi over her lack of aggression.
     When Remi was seven years old, her father moved to a city in America to start an MMA gym with his longtime friend and former rival, Risuke Kimura.  Naturally, Remi and her mother followed, and Remi started school in America during the middle of the fall.  Unfortunately, because she was a foreigner and did not know English, Remi quickly became the target of bullying.  Eventually, on a cold spring day, Remi was cornered in an alleyway by a few of her bullies.  The bullies quickly escalated the confrontation to a physical one, prompting Remi to lash out in self defense.  Much to Remi's surprise, she managed to soundly beat her antagonists.
     After the incident, the other kids stopped antagonizing her.  Remi, on the other hand, began training martial arts even harder to build up her confidence and ensure that she would not be picked on again.  Additionally, once Remi's father and Risuke Kimura opened their gym—Kimura Itō MMA Academy—Remi began training in MMA at the gym.  It was there that Remi met Fumie Kimura, Risuke Kimura's daughter.  Despite Remi being eight years old and Fumie being eleven, the two became fast friends and training partners.  Eventually, the two became like sisters.
     Fumie and Remi brought out the best in each other, both as people and as martial artists.  Because Fumie was older than Remi and possessed a large amount of innate talent herself, Fumie always managed to stay slightly ahead of Remi growing up.  While Remi was the better striker, Fumie was a better all-around fighter, if only slightly.  Still, as the two got older, the gap between them got increasingly narrow (the margin between them was razor-thin by the time Remi was eighteen).
     Fumie made her amateur kickboxing debut shortly after turning thirteen, winning the bout decisively.  However, Fumie's debut was marred: on the way to Fumie's match, her mother and younger sister were severely injured in a car accident.  A drunk truck driver had crashed his semi-truck into their car, leaving the two bedridden for an extended period of time.  Both Fumie and her father both took time away from MMA to look after the two.
     With Fumie no longer training with her, Remi eased up on her own training.  This gave Remi time to develop a couple of other interests besides martial arts—most notably, Remi developed an interest in computers.  Fumie, on the other hand, did not train for an entire year after the accident.  The incident had rendered her afraid of competing.  In an attempt to fill the void that martial arts had left, Fumie developed a general interest in science, with a particular interest in chemistry.  However, Fumie was unable to fill the void and eventually returned to training.
     Later on, Remi won her amateur kickboxing debut shortly after her thirteenth birthday, following in Fumie's footsteps.  However, Remi's debut was also soured: Kimura Itō MMA Academy had sustained massive water damage due to a massive rainstorm that had occurred on the night of Remi's debut.  This forced the gym to close for several months as it underwent repairs and renovations.
     Ultimately, Fumie and Remi both went on to have highly successful amateur kickboxing careers, with both obtaining perfect records.  With their innate talent and training, it seemed as though both Fumie and Remi were destined to become MMA stars—but various circumstances prevented that from happening.
     Fumie's professional MMA debut was set to occur shortly after her eighteenth birthday.  Fumie traveled to the venue via car, with her father driving, herself in the front passenger seat, and Remi in the seat behind her.  However, on the way to the way to the venue, a drunk truck driver blew a red light and slammed into the right side of the car.  While Remi and Fumie's father escaped with minor and moderate injuries respectively, Fumie was put in critical condition.


     In the end, Fumie survived the ordeal.  Her condition was stabilized and her limbs were ultimately saved.  But her MMA career would be put on hold for at a year, if she even decided to return to MMA.  Ultimately, Fumie did not end up returning to MMA—instead, she decided to attend university to study chemistry.
     As for Remi, the freak occurrence caused her to abandon her goal of pursuing a professional MMA career.  She was convinced that she was somehow "cursed", and that something bad would happen if she made a professional MMA debut.  Although Remi still trained at a high level for the remainder of her high school years, she no longer focused solely on martial arts.  This allowed Remi to cultivate her interest in computers and devote more time to her academics.  She did not make a professional MMA debut and instead chose to attend university.
     Remi majored in both computer science and computer engineering while at university.  She initially joined a few clubs and continued her martial arts training, but by the beginning of her second year, she stopped doing club activities and stopped training.  For the remainder of her time at university, Remi focused almost exclusively on academics, with the occasional computer-related side project.  Through careful planning, overloading on courses, and a lot of hard work, Remi ended up graduating in three years.
     After graduating, Remi went on to work for a cyber security company that did work for the government.  Remi's job had her pentesting embedded systems and IoT (internet of things) devices.  For three years, Remi worked nearly constantly, save for the few times per week that she would train MMA.  This led to Remi burning out hard.
     As a result of her burnout, Remi decided to quit her job and explore other passions.  She also decided to move to Japan for a change of scenery.  While in Japan, she joined a local MMA gym and even contemplated joining the local professional MMA scene.  However, her fear about debuting in professional MMA still remained, which prevented her from going pro.
     Still, Remi felt compelled to do something related to combat sports—after all, martial arts was one of her passions.  Moreover, Remi also felt a fair amount of guilt: for five years, she had been a restrained workaholic.  She vowed to never be like that again.
     As luck would have it, Remi would find her combat sports outlet when she stumbled across an advertisement for AFW.  On a whim, she decided to entertain the idea of joining.  Upon looking into AFW, Remi determined that AFW would be a good place for her to go wild get her combat sports fix.  Although Remi was nervous about the idea of debuting in AFW, she was markedly less nervous as AFW was a wrestling-based—not an MMA-based—promotion.  Thus, with nervousness and excitement in her heart, Remi signed on the dotted line and joined AFW.