Throwing out a preliminary character concept:<br/><br/>Asagi Mimiru ("Ru-chan" to most; only one or two people can call her "Mimi" without eating their teeth) is a delinquent and borderline dropout who seems to be more interested in playing music than paying attention to school.  The vast majority of the time she lays out of school entirely, but every time the subject of expulsion is brought up her best friend--a dedicated honor student--manages to talk her into attending just long enough to stay the disciplinary committee's hand.  Before long she always ends up getting into trouble--for smoking, listening to music in class, or fighting, usually--and cutting class again, returning to her familiar haunts on the underground club scene.<br/><br/>Despite persistent rumors at school, she isn't a criminal and doesn't tend to hang out with the worst of the dross in the delinquent crowd; she's actually a talented guitarist and vocalist, though she's having trouble finding any competent bandmates in the area to make a serious go of it with.  She usually ends up playing illegal raves, sleazy dives that serve underaged drinkers, and borderline-riot street shows as a result of her inability to hook up with a serious band or get any kind of representation, which certainly does nothing for her already tarnished reputation.  The common rumors at school--at least when she's not there to squelch them, which is often--are that she's a thug, a drug-addict, or a whore.  Her best friend tries to run "damage control" on the vitriolic whispers, but it's a losing battle.<br/><br/>Mimiru's mother is deeply concerned for her, but works constant overtime as a corporate<em>sarariman</em>, making it difficult for her to keep track of her daughter's bad behavior.  They tend to have an explosive fight now and again after a PTA conference or call from the police, at which point her best friend usually manages to reel her in enough to put on a good face and behave until her mother gets distracted by work again and stops threatening to send her to boarding school.  Mimiru has never met her father, a point of no small angst and dissatisfaction for her, and a constant thread of contention between her and her mother during their spats.<br/><br/>The shadowed side of Mimiru resents her best friend every bit as much as she loves her; although Mimiru is smart, athletic, and pretty, she was always noticeably second best when put beside her childhood friend.  The feeling that she couldn't compete led her to, essentially, quit the game: she stopped trying in school, quit every sports team and extra-curricular, and adopted a "punk" appearance rather than trying to be conventionally beautiful.  Deep down, Mimiru feels like the "thug life" is a poor fit for her, and that she doesn't belong with the outcasts of society any more than she belongs on the honor roll.  The most deeply galling part is that since her best friend's father died, she feels one-upped even in her angst; the only thing she was good at was being bitter and disaffected, and now her friend has every right to be angrier than her, but isn't.<br/><br/>Mimiru fights with a guitar, whether it's a fragile and soft acoustic or a brain-jarring electric bass.  Mimiru's style of music and dress are both mercurial, befitting a young woman looking for her "voice", varying from punk-industrial, to gothic-lolita, to flamboyant j-rock flourish.  Normally, though, her attire and styling fall somewhere under the broad umbrella of "punk".  Notably, she has quite a few piercings as well as a few tattoos: "No Future" is scrawled across the small of her back, with a super-deformed "Chibi" Grim Reaper underneath, a barbed-wire "armband" around her right arm, and Jack Frost on her left shoulder.  Though she'd never admit to it, Mimiru is a concert-quality violinist, having taken lessons from the time she could first hold an instrument up until she started her rebellious phase, and she has an abiding love of classical music.  Mimiru loves cute things, especially kittens and puppies, but she tries her damndest not to let it show.<br/><br/>Mimiru's arcana is The Tower.  Her Persona is Benten, the patron Japanese goddess of musicians.  Benten appears as a serpentine sea-dragon, but when it opens its jaws rather than a tongue, a woman with eight arms emerges from its mouth.  Her arms bear a sword, an arrow, a bow, a jewel, and a key, while the remaining two are joined in prayer.