[Esper] Narikiki Unimato

FULL NAME: Narikiki Unimato
OTHER ALIAS: Phase Warp, Nervous Wreck, Kid in the Cat Hoodie, Uni
CURRENT AGE: 16
GENDER: Male
OCCUPATION: Student
SCHOOL: A Certain Middle-High School
FACTION: None



APPEARANCE: Fair skin, dark brown hair, pale green eyes. In general small stature. Typically sports a slightly oversized, gray hoodie with cat ears (which most people know him for) along with simple indigo jeans and black sneakers (or boots, if it is raining). Otherwise the usual school uniform on said school days.
HEIGHT: 158.5 cm (5’2’’ ft)
WEIGHT:  40.5 Kg  (89.3 lbs)
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Reflective eyes similar to that of an animal



PERSONALITY:
(Shy)
Nervous and quiet around new people or anyone they are not familiar with.
(Skittish)
Very jumpy and easy to scare, typically resulting in involuntary phasing. Though this sometimes applies to the other end; behaving a bit more playfully with people they are comfortable with and can be a tad unpredictable, when they wish. 
(Skeptical)
Though some may simply call it “paranoia” or even “trust issues” as they rarely take someone’s word at face value unless they see it for themselves.
(Anxious)
Typically in social situations, extending a bit off of the “shy” aspect, whether they're worried about how someone is currently perceiving them or in general nervousness about a situation. Also potentially results in the occasional involuntary phasing.
(Nerdy)
Extends from the typical video games and manga to actually putting effort into their studies.

LIKES:
- Rain/Thunderstorms
- Video Games
- Manga/Reading in general
- Naps
- Music
DISLIKES:
- Being poked/prodded
- Harming others
- Potentially shady individuals/Salespeople of any kind
- Being jump scared
- Particularly strong scents
STRENGTHS:
- Very Methodical
- Calculations/Accuracy
- Stealthy/Silent
WEAKNESSES:
- Low endurance/easily injured
- Easily “throwable” due to small size
- “Pulling punches”/Holding back
- Grossly underestimates their own abilities and capabilities 
- Low self esteem/Lack of confidence




HISTORY:  
Their hoodie was given to them by an older sibling who died shortly before they started school, and since then they have been very attached to it. That attachment to it quickly became an easy target of ridicule and bullying, as well as their interests and height. Due to this they rarely share their interest with anyone out of fear of being judged, though regardless of how much the hoodie makes them a target, they continue to wear it, as a form of emotional comfort and security, especially since their parents fail to provide it due to lack of free time, being constantly busy and away with their jobs. 

With their parents being overworked, they would have to walk home on their own, constantly being harassed and bothered by various shady individuals or desperate druggies trying to take what little money or valuables they even had, seeing them as easy prey due to being small and young. To distract themself with their constant anxieties and fears of the outside world, they would lock themselves in their room after school, either immersing themselves in their studies or distracting their mind with whatever cheap video game or manga they could get their hands on. Over time these stresses made them more and more reluctant to leave their room, until the point they were too afraid to do so. Their parents not wanting Unimato’s potential being wasted, since they were always able to maintain high grades and due to feeling partially at fault for not being able to provide the proper support, they sent Unimato to Academy City, under the pretense of it hopefully being more secure and accommodating. 

Taking some convincing, their parents persuaded them to give Academy City a try, though purposely omitting anything about potentially being experimented on, hence garnering trust issues in the already anxious and nervous wreck of a kid. The experiments themselves only made them skittish and jumpy, via the various methods they used to test reaction time for the development of their ability. As well developing a hatred of being jabbed and prodded from all of the drugs they were injected with, all of it in general making them more anxious than they were to begin with. From there, even after seeing how much more secure the city was (aside the occasional disturbances from Skill-Out, which they were at least grateful to not be involved with or targeted by), they still felt vaguely uncomfortable being out and about, as well as too shy to go out of their way to talk with anyone. “Still… at least it’s better than almost being mugged, daily…”



RANK: None
LEVEL: 3
(PHASE WARP):
The Subject holds the ability "Phase Warp", which enables them to alter the properties of their physical interaction with the remaining world.  Subject also appears to be able to control the degree of intangibility, making it so as most solid objects may pass through while also remaining opaque. Further tests also suggest the capability of phasing specific parts of the body as well as their degree, appearing to range from full parts, such as their limbs, torso, or head, to more minute parts, such as allowing for the soles of their feet to remain tangible to not phase through the ground while the rest of rest of their body remains intangible. The amount that may be phased at once appears to be roughly a full meter, with the restraint being current usage on the body, in which the radius is restricted to about half the distance. Essentially, it has a rough limit of one person at any given time.

Further limitations have been discovered in the subject “Phase Warp” as tests proceed. Tests with phasing through various materials and touching or grabbing objects on the other side suggest that the less of their body within a structure, the more their precision and coordination appears to suffer. For instance, if the subject merely phases their fingers or hand into a structure, the amount of time for them to find the designated object is nearly twice that of their forearm entering the structure. Time is further cut in half when the subject’s full arm is within the structure. As these lines of tests have been carried out, other limitations have arisen within subjects' abilities, such as how long the various degrees of phasing can be held. We have begun timing this carefully along side every subsequent test and have come to the conclusion that continuous, intricate phasing, such as any full body application, can be continued for exactly 63 seconds, whilst lesser, continuous applications such as a held object or partial body usage appears to be about 128 seconds, a little over double the time of a “more intricate” usage. In theory, if used “on and off” as opposed to the continuous usage here, it could potentially be used for longer periods of time, though further testing with timed intervals will be needed to know for sure. Another restraint of note is that the subject's emotional state greatly impacts the effective time; at any point when they seem to experience a certain level of stress, anxiety, or an increase in heart rate, any and all applications seem to cease, prematurely. It also appears that any of the above emotional states as well as nervousness could result in the inverse of unintentionally phasing, as if being the subject’s “fight or flight” response. Further tests are needed to see how this affects reaction and activation times. 

After a series of reaction tests involving aiming harmless projectiles of various ranges at the subject, it has been deduced that they require about 1-2 full second(s) in order to activate. Currently theorized that the delay is dependent on the degree the subject attempts. Subject anticipation appears to play a large part in it, as well, such as if the aiming sequence were far enough away or telegraphed, well in advance. Though if the subject has reached their limit or is exhausted, the reaction can potentially take up to a full 10 seconds. Certain emotional states may also result in more unpredictable timings than cannot be easily measured at this time, though it appears calm and extreme focus result in the best reaction time whilst any sort of anxiety caused by anticipation can potentially cause a premature “flicker,” to occur that lasts a little under a second on it’s own.

OTHER ABILITIES: None


CHARACTER THEME: None



PLAYER'S NAME: Narakiki Unimato
DISCORD NAME: TraxEpsilon
RATING: T (MAYBE M)
FACE CLAIM: ???
OTHER CHARACTERS: None
MISC. INFORMATION: None.

Old Version Before 2022 06 14:

(Demo)

Heading back to his dorm from a tiring day of school, Unimato takes the usual shortcut through the usual alley as it begins to drizzle. About halfway through the alley, a thug walks up him from the shadows, asking if he could spare some change. Unimato shakes his head, backing away slowly. "I-I'm sorry" he replies sheepishly "I left my wallet at my dorm-" he stumbles a little bit as his left foot phased through the ground, mid-step. 'Why now?' he thinks to himself before phasing it back out, this always seem to happen whenever he's in these nerve racking situations. He turns around, ready to bolt just to come face to face with two more thugs.

"No wallet, you say" the first of the two says "looks like we'll have to settle with bashing your skull in, instead"
he takes a swing at Unimato with a pipe before he suddenly disappears.

"teh, a teleporter" the second of the two sneers "keep a look out-"

He was cut short by one of the nearby dumpsters banging, causing them to jump. This was due to the fact Unimato had only phased earlier, he didn't actually teleport. And right now he froze in his tracks, due to making more noise than he wanted to. He quickly picked up a glass bottle, hoping no one notice it suddenly disappear.

"what kind of ghostly bs is going on here?" one of the thugs exclaim before Unimato appeared right righ him and smashed the glass bottle over their head. The rest stared in disbelief as their comrade toppled to the ground.

Unimato dropped the remnant of the bottle with a face clearly saying 'I regret doing that' before turning around and bolting in the opposite direction and phasing into a nearby building...

Getting to this took me surprisingly longer than I had hoped. Seriously, I’m sorry.


1. Basics – Yeah, we’re basic

Ideally, all numbers regarding height and weight should also be provided in the metric system, given that the large majority of the forum and its staff use it. Please adjust.


2. History – Skip

Until we have discussed the ability in further detail, I will skip commenting on the history as that one might be heavily impacted by the outcome of that talk.


3. Ability – 1, 2, 3, 4…

Reading it for the first time I didn’t quite catch what exactly it does. After all, you mention that it is a mixture of four different skills, listing what it is capable of approximately and that’s it. There is no explanation on its actual foundation nor is there a clear direction given to it. As of right now it is literally all four of those abilities meshed into one. That’s where the problem starts.

This ability as it stands right now is clearly multi-skill is there no unified foundation at the bottom of its workings (even if we include the reality and matter control paragraph). A thing all Esper abilities should have. Be it electron control in the case of an Electromaster, molecular acceleration in case of a Pyrokinesist or the transition through the 11th dimension in case of a Teleporter. There is only one baseline giving birth to the various results.

So please pick one of the four options: Teleportation, phasing through, telekinesis or illusions. Then scrap the others.

Furthermore, I will ask you to provide a deeper explanation of the ability’s inner workings. It doesn’t have to be a full length scientific text, but still make sense from an amateur pseudo-scientist POV. Here, concepts like controlling matter or (especially) reality itself should ideally not be mentioned – simply because both would be too powerful to be held by any Esper character.


4. Equips – Where’d he get that?

Where exactly does a supposedly ordinary Japanese high school student get his hands on a tranquilliser gun?

I converted the measurement (I blame the u.s school system that trained me into using "customary" :p). I pretty much redid the ability and the history (more so because I didn't like how the history came out) and attempted to justify the tranquilizer (if it still doesn't work, I am completely ok with removing it). As well as changed about half of the demo to make it line up with the ability better.

I am back and I promised I would work through things at my old pace ☆

However, I still owe you an apology for the unusual delay.


3. Ability – A continuation

I like the reworked ability a lot more, but that was something we already discussed on the Discord server.

Yet, I feel like the explanation still sounds a bit too unscientific to warrant approval. Therefore, I would offer you a suggestion: How about making this an ability that allows him to manipulate the interaction between the particles of his body with outside ones with a strict focus on either allowing a specific interaction or not? This would allow him to phase through actual mass, become invisible by phasing through photons and so on.

The limits here would be that he could only use it on himself and – by extension – anything in very direct contact to him (such as his clothes).

But those shouldn’t be the only limitations to be found in the ability description. Please provide some more to round it up. After all, no ability should be without downsides, drawbacks or possible counters.

Lastly, I gotta point out that Academy City – unlike what the anime and manga oftentimes reflect – doesn’t have a high favour for people abusing their abilities in their everyday lives. This shouldn’t be something to fix in this profile, but a general fact to keep in mind about future interactions ☆

Changed the description a smidge using your suggestion to the best of my understanding as well as added the drawbacks (had them in mind, but never actually typed them, for some dumb reason.) And I am also contemplating removing the "mental level" paragraph or just leaving it for flavor text (let me know what you think, there.)

3. Ability – Not Yet Done

With the limitations added I gotta admit that it’s too powerful as it is right now.

From the beginning on I felt quite iffy about the whole deal of expanding its application beyond his own body, but reading a possible application on a tank or even a building is a tad too much. Becoming intangible itself is already on the upper end of the power spectrum, but applying it on other (larger) things isn’t good. Right now the limit should be his full body or a small external object in direct contact with him, such as a fire extinguisher.

More importantly, however, is the idea of how this state of intangibility plays out in an actual fight. Phasing through anything creates a condition of invulnerability. And that’s not good.

A standard solution to this problem in cases like that would be to introduce the necessity of the ability’s activation requiring an active effort to trigger. Meaning he would have to consciously activate it, with it possibly taking a moment (1-2 seconds) of his time. This paired with a short time limit (x minutes) of how long he can keep himself in the state of «transparency» would then become the required counterweight.

On top of that there would be the subconscious influence of his emotions, which could very well trigger as well as cancel the ability randomly. This in itself should also be mentioned as a clear drawback, as it can impact situations not only positively but also negatively.


Lastly, don’t forget to also follow the pointer I left you on Discord.

drastically reduced the size limit and tried to come up with a reasonable "time limit" including the drastic change in emotional state ending the "phase", prematurely

OK, as I announced yesterday we are done ☆ Congrats ☆


A little different from usual my final verdict will be a final (mandatory) adjustment necessary to balance the ability in terms of combat prowess:

1. The activation time for the ability is somewhere between 1 and 2 seconds, depending on the current mental situation of its user. Aka if he is stressed for example, it will take longer.


2. The maximum time limit to keep a single activation up is 63 seconds for the most complex application of full body phasing and 128 seconds for something simpler such as basic invisibility under best conditions. Afterwards he will be required to rest shortly. The shorter the rest, the shorter the subsequent activation with a minimum gap of 10 seconds.



3. If he phases through anything and turns back while still inside of that object, he will sustain extreme injuries similar to those experienced by a teleporter who gets their coordinates wrong and ends up stuck in a wall.


4. The phasing should lack a lot of detail. Meaning that if he were to attempt to phase only his arm through something he would roughly be able to target his arm and not detailed tiny spots such as his finger tips or only points.

Done and done, thank you for your time an patience :)