Institute App

[realmenknitplushies]

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Sleepy
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: Y
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: N/A, over 18
CONTACT: Plurk sleepyphoenix, AIM oneirologue, or PM.
CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Kanji Tatsumi
CANON: Persona 4
CANON REFERENCE: SMT Wiki: http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Kanji_Tatsumi
AGE: 15
GENDER: M
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: 10th Grade
APPEARANCE: http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090507012607/megamitensei/images/4/48/Kanji-Expressions.jpg In the AU, he tends to wear long sleeves and protective gloves to prevent himself accidentally shocking others.

PERSONALITY: At first glance, it's easy to make assumptions about Kanji. He's a drop-out. A delinquent. The sort of person who just wants to cause trouble, and doesn't care what anyone else thinks. The way he carries himself, his dress, his hair: he could be any gang member on the streets. This image carries through in a casual conversation with him, too: his speech patterns are rough and casual with a fair helping of bad language - 'get bent' could almost be his catchphrase (though he technically only says it around three times ingame) and he’s been seen to even call his mother an ‘old hag’ when stressed! - and he's all too likely to go on the attack at the slightest provocation. He loves the challenge that fighting provides, and the chance to prove himself to be strong, going by his reaction to the idea that he’s dreaming about a grand tournament (which proved to be real…). He’s also extremely adept at improvising with weaponry (being known for attacking opponents with a chair!)

However, while it's inaccurate to refer to his rough exterior as entirely a front, it's not the entirety of who and what he is. It's a defense mechanism, developed over many years, that's worked a little too well in protecting his inner self from the scrutinies of others. He doesn’t like fighting for fighting’s sake, according to some of his introspection during the same tournament incident. Inside, Kanji's spent a long time deeply insecure about who he is, and while during the course of the game he's worked to overcome this and become happy with himself it's taken him a long time to do so. If he's in any way accused of being strange or weird - or if he perceives it, something which he has a tendency to do so over the smallest thing - it's very likely that he'll go straight for the throat in his replies. Given some of his friends tend to be less than tactful, this is someting that’s happened on a regular basis. Even worse, he's very likely to fly off in a rage if his berserk buttons are pressed, or otherwise over-react, though he's working on controlling that much. Examples would be his chasing down his future friends angrily on their first meeting, believing they were calling him weird, or his charging into the girls’ tent on a camping trip at the thought that it’d prove him to be more interested in them than his tent-mates.

On a more positive note? He's very generous, when he gets the chance to be, being willing to give both his time and his handiwork very freely to others. For example, he goes out of his way to try and find a child’s lost toy and replace it immediately on hearing about what happened to it. He's a very protective individual, too, standing up for those weaker than him against accusation and trouble at the drop of a hat. Even if he doesn’t want to fight for its own sake, he is more than willing to do so when it’s needed. A lot of his history of conflict comes from him trying to do what's right and look out for others: he's been known to go as far as tearing a whole biker gang apart single-handedly just to save his mother's sleep at night. When he warms up to someone, he softens quite a bit, becoming extremely caring and possibly more than a little awkward - he's not the greatest at admitting to his feelings, to say the least. He blushes, he flails, he can't find the right words, and frequently shoots himself in the foot. This can be seen in his interactions with his crush, Naoto, in canon - even when put in a position to do something that could be seen as romantic with her, for example something as simple as sharing an umbrella, he instead makes things worse for himself.

Kanji's problems ultimately largely stem from a conflict between his natural interests and preferences, what society expects of him, and how what he likes and would otherwise act are perceived. He's spent his whole life trying to be a 'real man', thanks to his dying father's urges and influences - but he's grown up with hobbies that are seen as 'unmanly', loving to sew and knit thanks to his upbringing around his family's textile business and being fond of putting his considerable skills to use on creating such things as cute charms and plushies. Putting it bluntly, he loves cute and fluffy things! (Such things as fur coats and his teddy-bear team-mate have all caught his attention at some point…)

Unfortunately, not only have his hobbies been dismissed as 'unmanly', but they've caused plenty of accusations about his sexuality. He's had reason to consider that he might be gay on his own, and acknowledges there's a part of him that's bothered regarding relationships with girls, but overall, he's a rather confused young man as to where his actual attractions lie (particularly given that he fell for a cross-dressing team-mate without knowing her true gender…)
In the end, though, he's stated that his problems aren't about the gender of who he's attracted to - but whether he knows that they won't reject him in the same way as he's often felt rejected by society. The idea scares him more than anything. And for all he's struggled with the idea of what being a 'real man' means, he's come to accept it as meaning putting his all into everything he does... a trait that he's proud to have.

In the AU, he is still working his way through his problems to an extent. While he’s away from the pressure and ridicule that his hometown gave him, and he’s in an environment where being unusual is the norm, he’s not quite gotten over his old habits and old ways. He’s certainly still confused about where his sexuality stands, and while he’ll admit to enjoying artistic endeavours, he’s still a little nervous about owning up to the ‘cute shit’ that he loves…

POWERS/ABILITIES: Kanji is an electrokinetic and a walking generator.

At a basic level, he’s constantly generating a low-level electric field. This manifests itself as a constant static charge around him, and the odd spark flicking off him when he’s highly stressed or emotional. Bare skin contact will often result in a shock, smaller or larger depending on how long he’s let his charge build up for without finding a way to earth it or discharge it. He can't completely drain this current on his own, and as such, is always at risk of shocking those around him or affecting electronics.

Concentrating allows him to rapidly build up a more powerful current. If he keeps it stored in his body, it boosts his physical strength: his baseline with his usual low level of charge is that of a normal human of the same sort of build who trains regularly. Fully charged, that's doubled, though this level is hard to maintain - he tends to spark and discharge it off quickly at that stage. Unfortunately, this goes the other way too; if it were possible to completely drain his internal charge he'd be weaker than the norm until it built back up.

He can discharge this electrical charge into the environment at will; via touching his surroundings to transfer it into them, or via shooting out blasts. He cannot as of yet generate a consistent shock of both high enough duration and voltage to kill a human, but he is capable of causing burns and serious injuries, or stunning people and knocking them down. He is currently not very precise with his ability to aim his electrical blasts, and in combat, prefers to just concentrate current into his hands while attacking to deliver Taser-like punches. He can only store so much charge, and can potentially run through his reserves quickly if he's throwing around a lot of electrical blasts or otherwise using it up; his enhanced strength will drop off quickly with that, too.

If he comes directly into contact with an outside source of electricity, he can absorb it, redirect it and generally control its flow. This becomes more difficult with higher voltages and currents, or with a large amount of insulating material between him and it. He can handle household levels of current fairly easily, but not anything industrial as of yet. Overloading him will result in the same sort of physical damage that a normal human would sustain when exposed to high voltages - difficulty with muscle control, nerve damage, and suchlike. The same applies if he's forced to hold onto a high level of charge for extended periods.

Eventually, his power will develop to the point where he won't have to actually be in contact with an outside electrical source any longer to manipulate or absorb it, being able to draw the current out remotely. He will be able to create stable electrical constructs in his surroundings, akin to force fields, and freely manipulate them, potentially creating magnetic fields in the process. His ability to aim his electrical blasts will improve, being able to pinpoint very precise targets.
In the very long term, his boosted strength will increase to five times his baseline, and he will be able to create lethal and industrial-level currents and voltages.

[Revision notes: removed pseudo-"healing factor", reduced limits of enhanced strength from 2 ton and 10 ton]

AU HISTORY: Kanji was born in the small town of Inaba in Japan. His family had run a traditional textile store in the town for generations, and as such, Kanji would pick up the associated skills from a young age. He grew up loving arts and crafts and quickly displayed a keen talent for knitting and sewing, learning to make plushies and knitted dolls as a hobby. This love of things sweet, crafty and cute would soon turn into a problem for him, though, with the other children in school ostracising him as a weirdo who loved things for girls… he started pushing others away.

However, this would not be the end of the ways in which he was different to others. At the age of ten, his mutation would start to manifest. Small things, at the start; little static charges that made what he worked on twitch and move. He believed it to be just chance for a while, thinking - no way. He couldn’t be one of them, could he? But it grew, with him unwittingly sparking up under stress and throwing currents into what he touched. He struggled to control it, hiding away, but eventually had to admit it.
He, Kanji Tatsumi, was a mutant.

After an …incident where he accidentally blew up the TV, he had to come clean to his parents. His mother was sympathetic and kind. His father… less so. The news made him grow a little distant from his son, though he kept up a polite front. Still, the timing could not have been worse; Kanji’s father fell sick shortly after finding out about his son’s mutation. Kanji would always blame himself for his father’s death - did the stress of having a mutant son cause this to happen to him? And one of the last things his father said to him didn’t help him either. “A man needs to be strong”… angry, he believed he was being told to be stronger than his mutation, and stronger than the sweet, delicate things he loved. He threw himself into toughening up, being someone that wouldn’t be messed with no matter what, and sure as hell not being one of those mutie freaks… it worked for a while, but not for good. Rumours started to spread that someone’d seen him with sparks coming off him, that he’d accidentally blown more things up, that he'd used his powers to intimidate someone… and not all of the rumours were lies. A small town that had no space for the happy young craftsman sure as hell didn’t have space for a mutant delinquent, and it made it clear.

By the time he was thirteen, enough was enough. While some of the local police were sympathetic, enough of them were turning a blind eye to the harrassment his family was getting that there was no way they could continue living in that town. Having heard that the USA was a safer place for mutants and their families, the Tatsumis made the leap to California… his mother would keep up the family trade as a specialist importer. And Kanji - would have to learn quickly to fit in.

Still, leaving the traditional small town environment for somewhere more open minded would be good for Kanji, even if he did have to adapt rapidly to the new culture and language. (What, the States wasn’t full of eagles and badasses?) He could readily see that at least one of his differences stood a chance of being more accepted - he could be creative at the very least, though was still reluctant to admit it from hard-wired habit. The rest, though, was still troublesome. Even here, he tried his best to hide what he was. But it was getting harder, with his natural electrical field getting stronger to the point where it was just about impossible to risk touching anyone. He improvised, though, with heavy jackets and gloves as insulation - not ideal, really, but what options were there?

The thing that pushed him over the edge would be almost mundane. A biker gang making a racket outside the family home, stopping his mother sleeping. He couldn’t care less for his own sake, but for hers? After everything she did for him? He covered his face and headed out - for the first time using his powers in a deliberate, offensive capability, to try and scare the gang into going away.
He did more damage than he’d hoped, with some of the gang badly injured.

The incident would result in a representative from Xavier’s contacting the family. While reluctant at first, they decided it would be the best thing for him. And so, he made his way there…
He’s still fairly new, but is just starting to settle into the idea of the school and its ways.

SAMPLES

NETWORK SAMPLE: Video:

[Here, today, we have Kanji sitting at a table in the rec room, looking a little thoughtful and plucking at his gloves as he asks a question.]

Huh. Hey, everyone. Been wonderin’ about this a bit, so … guess I’m going for it.

How many of ya out there have trouble - touchin’ people? [He pauses.] No, dammit, I - I don’t mean like that! Don’t ya even… I just mean, you know. Any sorta skin contact. Handshakes and all that. Or, hell, touchin’ anything sometimes for me, without worrying about it. I mean, it’s been like this for years now, and I don’t think it’s ever gonna change… and I’m glad the folks here have been able to sort things out for me. Seriously. Never knew there was someone out there to help, before.

But if there’s anyone watchin’ this in the same situation, I’d … kinda like to talk to ya. Just, uh, about how you guys cope with it all sometimes. Hell, I ain’t some sort of touchy feely person, d-don’t get me wrong! But - yeah.
You know what it’s like. And … I guess I kinda don’t want to feel like I’m alone dealing with this crap. It’s one thing seein’ all the gear in the storerooms and things like that, another to actually know who’s out there in the same boat.

So… guess that’s that. Drop me a line or something.
Later.

LOG SAMPLE: Multiple test drive threads found here!