Donna Schlag

Cat-eye glasses and vivid red lipstick set the tone for Donna's severe presentation. Her short purple hair is parted at the center, the zigzag hairline mimicking a lightning bolt, and gathered into a low bun, with two long, angular locks framing her face.

She dresses in a tiger-print dress beneath a collarless black coat, cinched by a wide white belt with a squared gold buckle, and finishes with black heels. Gold runs through her accessories: square earrings, a heavy necklace, and two rings worn over white gloves. The buckle, earrings, and pendant all carry a stylized thunderstorm symbol, while Eden College's initials mark the necklace chain and the rings.

As a teenager she styled her hair much the same way but wore round spectacles, dressing in the academy uniform topped with the cape granted to Imperial Scholars.

Discipline is Donna's creed. She enforces Eden's rules without compromise, hands out Tonitrus Bolts for the smallest infractions, and believes firm correction, not leniency, is what molds students into proper candidates for Imperial Scholar status. Henry Henderson frames her harshness as a form of care, a way of keeping order and focus, and she illustrates it herself with the tale of a promising student whose slide into delinquency began with mockery over a forgotten handkerchief. Anya Forger's mind reading reveals a less noble layer: Donna privately relishes the punishing, thinking of her sprees as a "Tonitrus party."

Her standards bind adults too. When Henderson tries to resign over a false bribery accusation, she brands the retreat cowardly, strikes him with a Bolt of his own, and lectures that real elegance means persevering with integrity, though his weary admission of exhaustion briefly rattles her. She can bend for honorable motives: the children who sneaked into the old schoolhouse to clear Henderson's name receive volunteer work rather than Bolts, along with a reminder that the rules exist to keep them safe. And genuine concern lives beneath the terror she inspires; she visibly worried for the hostages of the bus hijacking and shielded the students who exposed Murdoch Swan.

Now in her early sixties, Donna once studied at Eden Academy herself and earned Imperial Scholar rank there. She and classmate Martha Marriott were opposites who barely spoke, and Donna privately dismissed her, until word reached her during her studies at Berlint University of Education that Martha had signed up for the Women's Combat Battalion in the first East-West war. The news impressed her deeply and shaped her own pursuit of strength: drawn to the ninjas she met in Eastern literature, she threw herself into ninja training under the moniker Goraimaru Narukami.

Those years still show. Age and a stout figure slow her not at all; she moves with startling speed, hurling Tonitrus Bolts with pinpoint accuracy, darting past opponents, leaping to strike several targets at once, snatching thrown chalk out of the air, and resupplying seamlessly from her secretary Rahden. Her signature technique, the Tonitrus Strike, plants a Bolt on a student's forehead and frequently leaves the recipient stunned or out cold.

In the present she returns from a hospital stay to find Henderson softened by his first-years and pays the class a visit. When he is framed for trading test answers for bribes, her long acquaintance with him leaves her doubtful of the charges. She follows his students to the old schoolhouse, uncovers Murdoch Swan's illegal admissions dealings along with his part in the framing, punishes his co-conspirators, coldly rejects the position he dangles before her, and sees that the children carry their photographic proof straight to Henderson so he can be pushed back into his post.