[Esper] Matsuo Imae

FULL NAME: Matsuo Imae
OTHER ALIAS: None Currently
CURRENT AGE: 15
GENDER: Female
OCCUPATION: Student
SCHOOL: Nagatenjouki Academy
FACTION: None so far



APPEARANCE: A girl with soft black hair that is commonly tied back in a ponytail or a braid of some variety to keep it neat. She has vibrant green eyes hidden behind large reading glasses and likes to wear bright hair clips to add a splash of color to her appearance. She's not the type to brag but she does have an immense pride in her school and as a result the uniform she's often wearing as well.
HEIGHT: 5'2"
WEIGHT:  108lbs
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: N/A



PERSONALITY:
Studious
The type of student who is always ahead of the game. She's the type who doesn't lack intelligence but is far from a genius. Making up for her own flaws with excess work ethic and pride, she is the type who strives for perfection on test scores and commonly researches deeper into the subjects she's learning.
Emotional
She's the type who is quick to smile, but just as easily forced into crying or shouting. While she is very capable of maintaining herself when need be, it's not hard to taunt or tease the girl into acting out if someone really wants to. Simple gestures like compliments or gifts also manage to earn a pure and honest smile from Imae quite quickly.
Elitist
While she's not as full of herself as some of the self-entitled students one might find in Academy City, she is very much aware of the prestige that comes with the school she attends and she is the type to be subtly showy or confident because of her position in Nagatenjouki. She won't openly look down on other students, but she might pity them for very simple reasons.
Confident
Being that she was the type of student who earned her way through hard work, she finds it easy to rely on herself and be assured of her own success. This helps her avoid depression and melancholy states as she always manages to bolster herself. It could be referred to as Imae's own natural talent to bounce back to her usual self after exhaustion, tribulation, or adversity.

LIKES:
Cute Phone Games, Pop Music, Spicy Foods
DISLIKES:
Cold Foods, Obnoxious Classmates, Romantic Movies
STRENGTHS:
Studying, Organizational Skills, Pop Trends
WEAKNESSES:
Physical Strength, Bad at Lying, Poor Eyesight without Glasses



HISTORY:  Matuso Imae was born in the Saga prefecture and raised by a single mother alongside her own younger sister. She was never the type to complain openly about her situation nor to see it as anything more than normal. Her mother helped instill a strong image of independence and work ethic in her girl. Imae helped out around the house and was always good at handling chores and helping cook. She also took time from her own lessons to help her sister whenever she was stuck with her homework.

Somewhat of a model daughter by some measures, it was rather surprising for the family when it was found out that Imae had the capacity to study and develop inside of Academy City under the Power Development Curriculum. It was a bit of a shakeup as at this time Imae was attending a rather small school and had a good chance for entry into any one of the prestigious middle-schools in the area. Even so, the almost fantastical image that Academy City held in Imae's eyes was too great to be ignored. She agreed to enroll and began to immediately submit her own scores to several schools in the city.

Initially she attended her final year of elementary at a rather unknown school, but as her power developed slowly and revealed itself to be a rare derivative of metal manipulation. This coupled with her excellent test scores to put her in the running for some of the more impressive names in the city. Soon enough, the simple daughter from the south of Japan found herself reading an acceptance letter from Nagatenjouki Academy based on her own merits and potential in both education and power development. While she was a bit out of place and informal her first year, awed by the whole situation she was in, Imae soon came around and settled nicely into the atmosphere of the famous academy. With a subtle nudge from one of her friends, she even managed to put herself forward and wind up elected a class president at the beginning of her second-year at the school. Though she does sometimes get a bit wrapped up in her role and find herself upset when other students aren't as excited for school events as she is herself.



RANK: None
LEVEL: 2
Alkali-Shift: A branch power from metal manipulation that involves forcing the characteristics of Alkali Metals onto Non-Alkali Metals.

The basic premise of Alkali Shift revolves around Imae's ability to induce unstable changes inside the structure of metal elements directly. Imae is able to shift normally stable elements such as gold, iron, or titanium into a highly unstable state. Changing the behavior and design of atoms themselves, the result is a highly volatile state where prolonged contact with atmosphere or especially water will begin to cause a rapid heating of the metal until it flares up. This spark combined with the gas that is given off results in an explosion proportionate to the size of the metal altered.

Current limitations of the ability at Imae's level require that she be within 10 meters of any object she wishes to effect. The actual object must be a metal element or compound metal that she is capable of identifying as well. Once the process begins, the material itself will gain a slightly noticeable increase in luster while being shifted. The length of the alkali shift depends on the size of the object itself, increasing exponentially with larger and larger objects. Small things like coins, ball bearings, or other such hand held items might take just a second or two to fully shift while a security door would take closer to a minute.

The entire time that Imae is shifting the metal to an Alkali, she must maintain focus or direct contact with the object and in case this is broken the process will break halfway and the half-converted metal will not be sufficiently volatile enough to produce a proper explosion. Darkness, fog, or anything that can sufficiently blur her vision would cause the process to fail. This includes losing her ability to use the power at range when she loses her glasses.

The ability will not work at range if the air is heavy with telesma or other sources of interference to her AIM field. The process cannot be reversed once it has been completed and the explosion will occur when Imae releases her focus on controlling the shift. Since Alkali metals react explosively with water / moisture, it is possible to neutralize her power by completely altering the atmosphere or environment around whatever she is trying to detonate so that no moisture reaches the object.
OTHER ABILITIES: Nothing in particular





CHARACTER THEME:
Comedy / Hijinks Theme -  Baka wa Tsugeru yo

Sad Theme - Daiji na Koto sa

Generic School Life Theme - Sore de ii to

Fighting Theme - Nenshou Kairou



PLAYER'S NAME: Vividgold
RATING: R
FACE CLAIM: Unknown Character Name - Borrowed from Japanese VN CG Set.
OTHER CHARACTERS: None so far.
MISC. INFORMATION: None

---

"Come on, what's a little money between friends?"

The alleyway near the school dormitories rang with those words before a series of dull thuds replaced the noise. It was for the most part out of the sight of those who would pass by on the sidewalk, but shadows cast on the far wall told the entire story.

A single shadowy form was doubled, soon hidden as a few extra figures circled around it.

"It's not like we're asking for much, friends should take each other out to eat once in awhile, ya'know?"

A little chorus of snickers followed that comment as the rest of the bullies chimed in with sarcastic comments about friendship. All while they held onto the bruised figure that had been unlucky enough to get caught in this shady locale.

Anyone who passed on the street was either too distract or overtly ignored the situation taking place just out of eyesight. At least until the soft patter of a certain young girls steps stopped at the alleyway entrance. Sipping on a coffee she had just purchased, the golden haired maiden focused down the small pathway between the buildings and listened for a few moments longer.

One could hear the pained gasp from the victim as another softened thud announced a kick that bowled him over. The brown haired male collapsed to the ground, a previously pristine uniform of orange and white now soiled with dirt and scuff marks from the small squabble. The same style of uniform that Emelie might have been wearing if it were not a day off from classes.

Pressing a finger up to correct her glasses against the bridge of her nose, the pale and short girl turned and moved into the alley. Her black formal dress swishing with a full plume its silky material as she stepped off the main road and into the alley itself. One of the bullies would greedily helping himself to the pockets of the downed student as he pulled out a wallet and dumped the cash and coins inside into his own hand.

A taller male with rugged features was watching this with all the smug satisfaction he could fit into his grin, until the movement of the interloper caught his attention and put him on edge. Apparently the leader of this little band of three misfits, the spiky haired boy would flash a momentary look of surprise before breathing out an exaggerated sigh of relief and waving a hand as if the stress disappeared as quickly as his hand moved.

"Whew~ I thought some judgement brat had stumbled back here to see what's going on. But it looks like it's just some girl on her way back home. Oi oi, don't worry about us, we're just helping our pal here with some lessons on friendship."

As the male who was crouched over the downed student feigned closeness by grabbing the bruised figure around the shoulders and tugging him close in some sort of 'pal' display. The group stepped aside and seemingly cleared the path for Emelie to move on without getting involved.

Quiet and patient throughout the whole display, Emelie seemed focused on the victim at first. Moving a hand over, she casually and carefully placed her very important coffee cup on top of an electrical box that hung from one of the alley walls. Taking her time with all this roused suspicion from the thugs naturally, who began to grumble and looked ready to tell her to beat it. However, just then the girl calmly and deliberately turned to face the group.

"I may wear glasses, but assault is pretty easy to distinguish from camaraderie"

Even though her tone was sharp, the volume was quite soft for her speech and considering her body language and size did little to back it up the whole act would almost come across like a joke. Reaching a hand across her own body and hugging her far arm, one wouldn't assume this quiet figure had it in her to hurt a fly.

The trio of delinquents gave each other a look of disbelief, unsure if this was serious until finally the batter male on the ground clawed at the pavement and called out a simple plea for help. "President..." There was a soft desperation in his voice, mixed with the embarrassment of the situation.

Before the delinquents had a chance to react to that revelation, a swift buzz like noise would cut through the normalcy of the scenario and all at once a series of three small explosions wrung out from somewhere low on the delinquents. The scene turned to panic and as the lanky leader tried to turn and move he would trip up in his now overly baggy pants. The thin metal zipper that had been keeping it up had been burst open and left limp to resist the tug of gravity.

The shorter delinquent who had held onto the cash fell backwards onto his bottom, a shiver of fear as coins and a few bills spilled on the ground in front of his feet.

W-what the hell?!

He whined out as if it was unfair, his words soon followed by another buzz as a coin on the floor shimmered momentarily before flaring up in another miniature plume of fire. All the while, Emelie's composure was so soft and unmoving as if she were just handling a normal topic of conversation.

For the safety of Rikai Academy's students, I'll be turning you over to Judgement and offering personal testimony... I'll encourage you not to act drastically before then.

Announcing her plot with subtle conviction, her hand dug through the ruffles of her dress and pulled out a thin cellphone to prove she wasn't bluffing.

---

High Intellect and Powers.

Perhaps I'm over analyzing this but I was under the impression these two things don't generally walk hand in hand. Development of psychic abilities while lean towards scientific explanations, it requires the power of a creative/imaginative mind that's commonly found with younger people. I get the feeling Scientists in general has very low affinity with developing their own abilities because of the lack of such creativity to seize a power of their own imagination. Even in the series you never get to see Scientists developing their own powers.

We do however see instances where Scientists uses a cheating methods that allows them temporary access to Esper abilities as its shown with Kihara Gensei and Kiyama Harumi. But we never catch those with high intellects to develop their own powers.

Nunotaba Shinobu is a canon example of youth who possess high intellect and no powers of her own. Same could be said from the young scientists who developed the Chemicaloid project: Febrie and her sister Janie. I think this gives some hints that a high level of intellect generally is a blockade that prevents people from obtaining abilities than helping them gain one. This isn't to say students like Mikoto or Misaki are dumb kids, contrary they're among top 10 in their academy, but they're clearly outclassed by intellectuals like Shinobu.

As for the power you've described.

I'd like some elaboration on how it would work in these situations.

How would her focus work if it was in the pitch black darkness? She can't see the objects so how would it work? What if there was a Esper who can create a dust storm making the object slightly hazy? How would she focus then? Also would it work if she wanted to focus on a moving vehicle? or would that require her to be moving as well? For example standing on top of a moving car?

I will concur that the series tends to push highly-intellectual characters away from developing powers themselves. Though there are quite a few people who have obvious hints of intellect but maybe not your standard book smarts styles. You could make a case for Kakine, Accelerator, Misaka, etc... but I can't really relate them to your stereotypical 'genius' students which is more along the lines of what I was portraying Emelie as.

At the same time though, Emelie isn't entirely focused on the scientific like your average student either. She studies at a school that has a heavy focus towards arts in a city that is normally leaned towards science, which would help give her a slightly more unique view point than a focused and dedicated scientist. She's the type who loves learning and it doesn't necessarily just have to be numbers and research. Music, Arts, Powers... Things that require a bit more flair than simply putting 2 and 2 together if you want to develop something unique and masterful.

I can of course alter it a little though if you don't agree with this, I'll just tune down her affinity for scientific endeavors a little.

As for the power, I understand the slight bit of confusion in those scenarios as well. If she were completely devoid of light in a situation, I imagine she wouldn't be able to use her power at range anymore. If she could touch a metal object though it should still be possible for her to Alkali-shift it since it would give her a reference point. As for Haziness, I think it wouldn't be a problem as long as she could still make out the object to some degree. If it was to the point of thickness that the object was completely unrecognizable though, such as with overly thick smoke, she'd be unable to successfully use her power.

When it comes to moving objects, it wouldn't be a problem as long as it wasn't too fast for her to track with her eyes. Also if the object left her maximum range before she had successfully shifted the metal, it would stop the process halfway which might result in either a very timid or weak explosion or perhaps nothing at all besides slight changes to the metals properties. This might result in noticeable softness to what would normally be a harder metal for example, as Alkali metals do tend to exhibit this trait.

I hope that explains things a bit and I'd be fine with following up to discuss the power more. I guess what might help is to explain that I envision it as sort of a singular process that becomes isolated once Emelie starts to focus on it. She can continue to warp the metal from its normal form to a more and more volatile form. If it is stopped halfway because of distance, focus, light, etc... it would just end the process at whatever point it was at so the reaction would be proportionate to how much she had changed.

I felt like I was missing something but finally figured out what it was.

Is there any specific reason why her family decided to send her into Academy City? Because to me personally, she feels more or less like a Magician than a Esper.

Magic in this universe was a man made discovery to mimic psychic abilities which was able to the few Espers running around with super powers until ordinary people decided that they'd like to do something similar even if they weren't capable of learning Esper abilities. Magicians are naturally studious people and dedicated learners which might go hand in hand with the high level of intellect Emelie possesses.

She comes from a rich background in Germany, the fatherland of Alchemy. Putting aside her power to manipulate molecular structure of metal she comes across which already sound like something within the realms of Alchemy, why didn't her family seek out an option that is closer to their home? Existence of Magicians, while not as common in ordinary folks, but among the rich and prestige I'd assume the word would have gotten out about the existence of Magicians. It leaves me to wonder, well couldn't she have been taught by a freelance Magician the art of Alchemy? Magic is something that can be obtained through hard work and unyielding patience while there are no guarantee that your child will be gifted with a Esper Ability as seen in Saten's case. If Emelie is the kind of person she claims to be I think it'd make more sense for her to pursue Alchemy over taking risks by going through the Power Curriculum.

Other reasons why I think Emelie's more suited to be a Magician is mainly with her ability.

The way you describe it and how it's executed seem far more plausible through Magic than a Esper Ability. The ability to alter reality outside your immediate physical contact is extremely difficult, much less altering property of a foreign material from a distance. Only thing that comes to mind is Wannai's Hydro Hand ability which allowed fluent manipulation of four clumps of water until it touched the ground. I don't remember much of the fight but I'm certain she mentioned that her range was limited to 5~10 meters in the manga. There are of course other abilities that allows one to hurl some kind of projectiles like fireballs and such but these abilities aren't something they can control once it leaves their range of influence (usually once they throw it, that's it.) which in most case is limited to direct physical contact.

I'm here guessing that the coins you carry can be used as a makeshift bombs. Similarly these kind of powers were seen in the series by Kaitabi Hatsuya who was a Synchrotron that used aluminium cans and things like spoon/forks as a bomb. I'd imagine his influence and control over it however was further amplified with the processing power of all the people under the influence of Level Upper. Not only was the explosion on par with a Level 4 Esper but he was able to have great range as well as control over when it will explode. While similar let's look at how this is all executed by analyzing the ability.

He has to physically touch the object before it's set into motion/molecular changes.
He required processing power of X many Espers under the influence of Level Upper to gain range, control, magnitude of explosion.

Whereas Emelie's ability seems to be able to let her do similar stuff in real time, from distance without touching the object prior to activating her ability, and without the stress of having to possess processing power of several thousands of Espers under Level Upper's influence.

TL;DR

Her power is easier to explain and obtain through Alchemy than ESP.

I do welcome the review of the character as it's always nice to see other perspectives as they help one develop something in a way they normally wouldn't take things.

As for the magician elements that you bring up, I feel your points are valid and Emelie could very easily have been a mage or an alchemist if that was the route life ended up leading her down. I think the general feel when I was designing her was that her family might have been more inclined towards natural sciences so the prospect of having someone from their own family associated with Academy City might have been something worthy of praise inside their own household.

While also not entirely unreasonable that a rich or affluent family might know of the magical side of things especially with a few good connections. I don't think anything but the head of state has ever been shown to really acknowledge magic in any one faction besides those who are involved for obvious reasons such as the royal family of England or France. But, on the whole I'd be far more willing to make a slight change to the back story and simply concede this point and have Emelie be of Japanese descent and origin if it would put this to rest and help us move on to my next point.

Akali-Shift

While there are no real notable examples of powers that do the exact likeness of what I have put forth. I will go ahead and assert that it definitely falls well within in the realm of Science rather than magic. The only outlier at the moment would appear to be the issue of distance. We can clearly find examples of other powers that have great effect at a range and the Hydro Hand example that you brought up is one of the better ones. I can't recall a distance being formally mentioned in the arc myself, but even if it was I'd like to note the increase in difficulty there would be in controlling multiple  large pools of water all at once and keeping track of how they're all behaving. This is of course in comparison to Emelie who would basically just be turning her power on or off and setting a target via the reference given from her point of vision. Not only this, but we can clearly see that Wanna may use her ability even when the water itself is out of sight and hasn't been touched previously. All of this comes at Level 3 as well, mind you.

You did bring up a good comparison in synchrotron, but I feel as though we will have a point of contention with the actual effect of the level upper and what that meant to the power itself. Seeing as we might have difficulty in establishing how the power would have behaved purely at its level I'll suggest that we leave that example aside for now. Instead I'll motion towards Shutaura of the Endymion movie whose power probably most closely resembles Emelie's own in its current form. While there's not nearly as much explanation behind it, it's a specific set of metals that explode at the whims of the user and it is shown that she doesn't need to be holding onto the discs she uses at the time of the explosion. We can say she starts the process when she touches them, but it will be a bit hard to then explain how the explosions occur when the disks are being used in coordination with the cables that her mech utilizes. While we can say the cables are for providing a conduit, that would infer that her power could obviously transfer through other mediums to reach the final object anyways.

With that said I am completely fine with making tweaks to the power itself, but with how I've presented a scientific and sturdy basis for simply shifting the behavior of a metal to an already known example, albeit exaggerated for esper fun, I'd say Alkali-shift has more solid proof behind it than some already known examples in the series such as Shutaura or Synchrotron. If the range is an issue we can work around this and see what would be fitting of what you'd believe a power should have. Though as we have seen with Wannai distance isn't always a terribly large issue. There are even such far-fetched examples as Kill Point where calculations aren't even involved and the user is moving completely off reference points, showing that the way individuals deal with these situations with their esper powers is fairly unique.

As for Alchemists... well... we've seen one and the only quote that we have for the rest comes from Stiyl before he saw Ars Magnas where he said that they were all rather weak since none of them had accomplished anything great since Paracelsus.

TL;DR
I'd gladly alter the back story so Emelie is more Japanese because I find her power to be rather suited towards Espers and would gladly commit to tweaking it as necessary to satisfy the community at large. Not that mages aren't fun as well, if I have the chance I will be committing my second character slot towards a canon mage in the future.

Very well then.

Since the power is activated through her vision I would like to confirm a number of things that I feel should be noted/added.

These are some limitations I'd like to place on the ability itself.

Keep the range of her ability to 10 meters for maximum effect and varying diminishing returns of up to 15 meters.

As you have mentioned she must keep her focus on the steel surface in order to activate her powers.

This in turn would mean that should her vision becomes obscured it will create complication in activating her power.
Emelie must be able to recognize the type of metal she's working with and from there work out the composition ratio before being able to calculate the precise alterations needed to reach the state of instability she desires.

Likewise this task is almost impossible to do in pitch darkness and increasingly difficult during night when there's poor visibility.

Other things that could obscure her vision might be something like thick dust storm like the one created during Touma vs Accelerator where the whole zone was covered in flour.

She is also unable to activate her ability when the space is thick with raw telesma in the air.

She must also be able to follow the metal object with her eyes, things like flying bullets aren't within her capacity to alter at will.

I've made the requested changes to the ability.

Thank you again for taking the time to discuss this with me.

I'd also like to request confirmation on if I should be leaving the level at 4 and if you'd prefer that I alter the back story to make Emelie Japanese rather than foreign.

I'd also like to confirm what your opinion would be on the power being interrupted halfway. I imagine it as a sort of isolated reaction so if it was broken halfway the metal might just take slight properties from alkali's such as being softer than average metals. Or resulting in a little fizzle from the reaction with the air, even though it lacks enough substance to be proper explosion.

Or I can just have it so the metal reverts back to being exactly as it was before the process began~

Regardless, let me know your opinions on these few things and hopefully there isn't anything else you see that would prevent an approval~

I should have explained this before but I'll do it now.

The level I'm assigning her with is Level 2.

Reasons for this is that as she develops her powers even more she will start to reach new levels of control with her power. Some of the restrictions I've imposed will be lifted and by the time she hits Level 4 some of them will no longer be apparent.

For example I'd imagine at Level 4 her vision and focus will drastically improve to reach new heights of say 200 frames per second which allows her to blow up a moving jet at mach speeds much less stray bullets. Her range can also increase in due time.

Her background story seems fine the way it is albeit so common in this forums. Foreigners are supposed to be rare in To Aru Academy City much less a Foreign Esper... but that's not a reason to have you change it. All I'll say is that we have a number of Foreign Espers who has very very similar family background as yours does now and it's very unoriginal lol...

As for the ability being interrupted halfway. It's actually not that hard to imagine. If it was interrupted halfway or just before execution the result will have no reaction out of it. I think of To Aru universe as a set of mathematical interface/laws that governs how things exist and that Magicians and Espers are like freelance mathematicians who inputs new equations into the system to get some supernatural results as a reaction from the world's system.

An example is imagine you wrote a mathematical equation halfway and stopped, the equation still floats and exists but is left unsolved = no explosion/reaction from the world system. If it's interrupted there is no answer/reaction/response/results hence it will leave the metal in it's original state. Even if it was starting to turn the world will see it as a disturbance and set it back right as it's seen as an abnormality. The equation is what exists in the Imaginary Number District and the result of the explosion is what comes out of the Imaginary Number District and into the real world as a result.

Alright,

I believe we've cleared up a fair amount so far.

Since it was established that background changes weren't necessary even if she will be a tad commonplace in the community here. I'd like to submit what I have currently written up for approval. Unless something else stands out as in need of changing, I'm just waiting on an official message to let me know if it's fair for me to begin to get involved or if there's something else I need to take care of first.

Thank you again!