[Esper] Oshiro Masaru

Casual Outfit:

FULL NAME: Oshiro Masaru (御城 勝)
OTHER ALIAS: N/A
CURRENT AGE: 17 (Born August 18, 1997)
GENDER: Male
OCCUPATION: Library Assistant
SCHOOL: Nagatenjouki Academy, Second Year
FACTION: N/A



APPEARANCE:
Initially, there's not much about Masaru that stands out. With his earthy clothing colors, the only clue that he's not as normal as his appearance suggests is the fact that he's in Academy City, where nearly everyone is extraordinary in some way. However, he prefers to be unassuming in appearance. That way, he has assured himself, people are just that much more surprised when he displays his actual talent. His height is average at 170 cm, and his weight is slightly on the skinny side at 57.6 kg. His athletic training is limited to brief times of about one season each on soccer and swimming teams, and he has never desired an athletic lifestyle. He considers the heavy lifting of books as an assistant at his school's Library to be all the exercise he needs. His hair is a medium chestnut brown, which he likes to keep around his ears. He puts little effort into its appearance otherwise though, aside from sweeping it to the side in a futile attempt to keep it off his forehead. He constantly has a piece in the back of his head sticking up, in spite of how many times he tries to flatten it out. His eyes are darkish green, and he wears a light prescription of glasses. When not in school uniform, his brown sweatervest, beige polo shirt, and khaki cargo pants are meant to make him seem "casually intelligent," smart but approachable.
HEIGHT: 170 cm/5'7"
WEIGHT: 57.6 kg/127 lb
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: None

PERSONALITY:
Egotistical
Masaru wants to believe that he's the best. Essentially, he dislikes the thought of people being better than him. He considers his mental ability unparalleled, and will go to great lengths to prove it. Most of the people he's made friends with, ironically enough, are better than him at many things except academics. He's willing to accept other people being better than him as long as he can reasonably convince himself that he's still the best at SOMETHING, no matter how narrow that category can eventually get.
Analytical
Masaru loves using his brain. It's what he's best at, both with his Ability and without it. He's certainly smart, and he can do well in almost every academic subject. Because of this, he almost never goes into something without thinking about it first. He's also constantly thinking when he's doing anything. Ways to do it better. Ways to expend less effort doing it. What his adversary, if he's in a battle, will do next. By doing this, he's ready for almost any outcome.
Stubborn
In conjunction with being the best, Masaru believes that he's always right. After all, how could someone who knows as much as he does ever be wrong? This is an exaggeration, and he realizes that even he can be misguided, his information can be incorrect, or he could just have arrived at the wrong conclusion. However, he never wants to show it. He'll argue a point nearly to death before he concedes it, though he'll make sure he does in the end.
Determined
If I can't do it, it can't be done! Masaru's philosophy towards tasks is strange. He will see something through to its finish, no matter what. However, again, his motives are more personal than anything. He doesn't want to fail anything because that would mean he's not as great as he thought. If he takes on a job and finds out halfway through that it's more difficult than he had assumed, he will always push through it so that he seems just that much better.

LIKES:
⁃ Beef udon
⁃ Books
⁃ Hard data
⁃ Summertime
⁃ Quizbowl
⁃ Trivia
⁃ Competition
⁃ A challenge
DISLIKES:
⁃ Challengers
⁃ Fish
⁃ Springtime
⁃ Luck/Chance
⁃ Unassured outcomes
STRENGTHS:
Self-Esteem - Masaru's attitude towards himself is extremely positive. His own abilities are, above all, the things which he trusts fully in. He's almost always happy since he's secure inside his own bubble of egotism, and he's confident that he can do anything.
Unassuming - His appearance, especially his clothing, is similar to that of thousands of other students in Academy City. For this reason, he's rather difficult to pick out in a crowd, especially from the rear. From the front it's slightly easier, if you knew exactly what you were looking for.
WEAKNESSES:
Self-Reliance - The negative side of his self-esteem. He can rely on others when he needs to, but when it comes down to the wire, the only person he completely trusts to do anything right is himself. This can cause problems in groups where another person thinks they could do the job better, or worse, knows that they can. They'd need to get through Masaru first.
Unathletic - Masaru gets easily winded. His endurance is sub-par when doing long, physically-intensive activity. He can run effectively, but only for short times before he needs to stop and catch his breath. In combination with the rather internal nature of his ability, he's not the most useful in combat.


HISTORY:
Masaru was born in the Bunkyo district of Tokyo to two medical professors at Tokyo University. From an early age, he exhibited intelligence. The "puzzle" toys people often buy their children all became organized and solved. His mother enjoyed watching quiz shows, and by the age of 5 Masaru was answering most of the questions completely correct. It was at this point that his parents decided to start saving up money to send him to Academy City in the hopes that he actually had an Esper Power. Who better to develop one than him?
He entered the academic world entirely within the city's educational system and was getting top marks in all his classes. However, he remained a Level 0 for two more years until the third grade. One day, following a lecture on Personal Realities, he decided he was going o read as much as he could on the subject and, in this ay, find out how exactly to develop a power. He went to the school's library and started reading. He lost track of time by when he finished, but he closed the cover on the 200-page book and realized he'd only spent 20 minutes reading it. Was this his personal reality at work?
It was. He told his teacher, suspecting something was up, and underwent several other tests. Eventually, they determined the nature of his power and named it, and he began his time as a Level 1. It was hard, learning to control a power. More difficult than he'd expected. At first, he couldn't even figure out how to use it on command. He would just have to start reading and hope it would kick in. However, with enough practice and enough books, he finally began to actually be able to use his power.
He began Middle School, and from there he started working on increasing his speed, which hadn't improved much since he first discovered his power. It was here as well that he realized he could take in information from digital storage too, and faster than from print. His grades were top-notch, enough to get him into Nagatenjouki Academy, one of the city's most prestigious schools.

RANK: N/A
LEVEL: 2
Lightning Recall:
Masaru's ability straddles the gulf between electricity and telepathy. Lightning Recall, named for its most unique use, allows Masaru to control the electrical impulses of his own neurons. His Personal Reality isn't projected more than a short distance away from him, but within that distance, it's rather powerful. He uses small electrical pulses to control his neurons and, for short distances, directly connect his mind to the world around him.
The primary way he uses this ability is rather mundane. Masaru loves books and reading, but hates how much time it can take up. However, by lightly probing a book with electricity, he can "read" it in only a few seconds. The electrical pulses from his skin travel differently through ink and paper, and these conductivity differences are then translated into words in his brain. By using his power in this way, he can memorize and process immense amounts of text in a short time. His current speed is about 100,000 words per minute via this method.
A much faster way of memorizing things for him is straight from a digital file. If he can find digital editions of things, he'll always choose that version to read. Since digital storage devices are designed to work with electricity, the interpretation process in his brain is much shorter. His speed by this method is approximately 2,000,000 words per minute of unformatted text. This speed can be extrapolated to give him a current transfer rate of 10 megabytes per minute, which is rather slow when using computers as a frame of reference. However, it is far faster compared to normal human speeds, which rely upon slow connections between the hands, eyes, and brain.
In spite of his speed, anything he "reads" in this fashion needs to be in a concrete file before he can read it. Taking text or images directly from an Internet connection is impossible for him, partially due to the immense speed at which those connections are moving and partially due to the huge amounts of information on the Internet. Both aspects of this have overwhelmed him, and the several times he's tried to memorize things directly from the Web, he's ended up passing out instead.
The process by which he "reads" analog material bears remarkable similarity to a scanning electron microscope, and he can use his ability in this capacity as well. However, in order to get good results, he needs to put in a far greater amount of subconscious calculation than simply reading. While simply interpreting words on a page takes about 2 seconds for an average-sized book, and digital sources take 0.1 to 0.5 seconds based on conductivities and data formats, scanning a surface and analyzing it takes 20 seconds to two minutes just for calculation, depending on the resolution and area scanned. In addition, his current maximum resolution is only 500 μm, about 10 times the size of a cell. Although this application of his ability can be helpful in a few niche circumstances, most of the time it simply takes up too much time and energy to ever be used.
His ability has a few other practical limits besides speed and an inability to access Internet sources as well. He can use his ability continuously for about 20 minutes at a time before he begins to get seriously exhausted. He might be able to push the time a bit more, to around 25 or 30 minutes, but he would be seriously incapacitated when he stops. His Personal Reality, although quite powerful with respect to himself, has a tremendously short range. It extends approximately only 40 centimeters from his body, making contact with anything he's reading a near-must. However, his range can be extended greatly by reading from digital sources, which are much more conductive and often have their own power sources. In this way, he can read any files on any machine that's connected directly by data-carrying wires. Being able to read radio waves from Wi-Fi units is still beyond him, as are cellular networks.
OTHER ABILITIES:
Perfect Memory
Masaru's memory is almost infallible. This isn't related to his Esper Power, but instead enhances the things he can use it for. Even if he were a Level 0, he would remember far more than his classmates. Before he started the Power Curriculum Program, his grades were already all As and he could recite almost word-for-word what his teacher had taught that day. Sine developing his Ability, his ability to memorize has only increased.
Taser
Masaru's weapon of choice. He likes using it since it's in conjunction with the "electricity" part of his ability, even though it produces sparks far more powerful than anything he could ever do. Of course, that's the point in carrying a weapon, right?
Direct Connection
Masaru's ability directly connects his brain to a computer network. Although the data transfer rate by these means is easier, the files are often also encoded for whichever program they're used for. He's able to subconsciously decode these things into text, images, or whatever the file is actually designed to be.

CHARACTER THEME:

Normal Theme: A Fellow In Which You Can Believe (Inazuma Eleven Chrono Stone OST)
Distrustful Theme: Sekkin (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure OST)
Battle Theme: One Minute Of Miracle (Inazuma Eleven OST)


PLAYER'S NAME: Masaru Oshiro
RATING: R
FACE CLAIM: My own art.
OTHER CHARACTERS: None
MISC. INFORMATION: None

Interesting one indeed. So let’s get this started, shall we?

1. First of it all: “Esper” isn’t considered a faction in here, so I would ask you to leave that point blank.

2. Second sentence of his personality description:

Even though he's a Level 4, he dislikes the thought of people being better than him.

I guess you forgot to remove the “Level 4” thingie, so do that now. Thanks!

3. I’m going to point out the usual stuff:
Going to Academy City isn’t really expensive. School pays you for going there in most cases. Of course it’d always depend on one’s Esper Level, but it would be sufficient to keep you alive anyway. Especially in his case there wouldn’t be much need for his parents to save up money to make it possible~

4. Alright, ability&question time!
So reading is the only thing his ability allows him? No other applications or such?

Is there any upper limit to his ability or some kind of weakness, besides taking information from the internet?

All right! Questions 1 and 2, fixed! Sorry, I thought I'd taken out all references to it, but it seems like I'd missed one.

Question 3: I could easily take that part out, and if you want me to I can. However, it could also be construed that since children in Japan (and the Academy City education system, which seems to be based off of it) can enter Elementary School around 6. If they started saving when he was 5 as I said, that would give them an appropriate time to come up with the small amount.

Question 4: It applies to reading, picture recall, and basically anything else that can be memorized. I have his current upper limit listed in the ability already as 100,000 words/minute from print, 2,000,000 words/minute or 10 Mb/minute from digital storage, and nothing from the Internet.

I revised my Power yesterday to add a small combat application to it, though I couldn't upload this from the car:
" In addition, his ability has extremely limited combat use. Because his personal reality is so small, anything he can do requires physical contact. The more "electrical" part of his ability comes into play here, and he can deliver minor shocks to the nerve cells of his enemies. They're enough to paralyze an arm for about 30 seconds, but other than that he can't do much against anyone."

That could be another application, and it's designed to be weak but useful in getting out of sticky situations if you know how to use it.

As for a maximum power limit, if you're asking for one... I'm not sure. I guess I'd say:

• 1 Gigabyte/minute from Analog sources
  
• 10 Gigabytes/minute from Digital sources
  
• 5 Gigabytes/minute from Internet sources
  
• The ability to put his own thoughts onto digital storage

Thanks for the help!

Nya, next steeep~

1&2. Those things happen all the time, so it’s alright~

3. True. He’d have some extra money and stuff then. You don’t need to take it out, then. My mistake.

4. Actually I didn’t mean that kind of limits.
What I meant is how much information can he absorb before he grows weary or exhausted? I also believe that his mind would start erasing any unnecessary information at some point, however that’d be only logical, wouldn’t it?

Then there is also the question of the ability’s range: As far as I understood the ability isn’t only meant to work on touch, which means there’s the chance of him getting information from things close to him, right?

I’m also quite curious how deep into detail his scanning would go. Would he only be capable of understanding an object’s surface or would his ability go into deeper detail, like – let’s exaggerate a little – molecular level for example?

Ooooh and how long would it take to apply his ability? Most abilities can’t be applied instantly, but need a short moment of preparation and calculation.

From the many questions I’ve been forced to ask, I hope you can see that there are many things that aren’t very clear about his ability. The first impression left me to believe that he is only capable of reading books or data, however if there is more to it, I feel like you should point that out, too.


And getting to the offensive usage, I’ll give you a pretty short reply: Leave that out. His ability appears as a supportive one only. For once an offensive application like the one you came up with wouldn’t really fit in there and it would get close to the realms of Dual Skill, at least in my opinion.
Also he does have a taser already, so there wouldn’t be any need for that application, hm~


The maximums you named aren’t necessary at the moment, I’d say. Sorry.

All right! Glad to hear I fixed those issues satisfactorily.
Now on to the next part. This involves a lot of my own calculations to provide a rational basis for my values, but if you want to skip right to them, there's a TL;DR at the bottom.

How much information can he absorb in one sitting? Esper's bodies seem to use energy different from others. Only using them for an extended time or greater power seems to tire them out; otherwise, it's like a part of their daily life. This gives us a starting point. Something that's slightly unusual, but not out of place in life. Maybe like jogging up a few flights of stairs? Take walking up four flights at once, for example. Unusual, but not out of place. In other words, using a power at normal capability is like light exercise. Using an ability multiple times in quick succession would be like jogging up four flights of stairs in quick succession. Initially manageable, but eventually quite tiring.
Going from this viewpoint, normally using his power he'd be able to go for about 20 minutes straight before needing a rest. Taking this into the words/minute spectrum: From print sources, he can take 2,000,000 words or so. This is about enough to read War And Peace four times over. From digital sources, he can take 200 MB of data or 40,000,000 words. These values are, of course, taken at normal capacity.

About the erasing thing, he wouldn't normally forget anything he chose to memorize. If he decides to memorize it, he won't forget it. However, subconscious calculation is a huge part of every esper power. All the errata these calculations generate, he doesn't care about, and so his subconscious also cleans it out.

His range, currently, is about 40 centimeters. Direct touch has far better results and takes much less time and energy. For analog materials, this range is all-limiting. He can't "read" a book more than 40 cm away.
However, for digital materials, their conductivity comes into play. In addition, many digital items are powered from exterior sources. His range when concerning reading information off of a computer is subsequently extended to anything connected to the same Local Area Network via cable. To provide an example, if a laptop and a desktop were both connected to a router via Ethernet cord, he could read files from either one by using only one of them. However, were he reading a desktop and a laptop was connected to the same LAN via Wi-fi, he couldn't read anything from it.

How deep into detail? Here's where I'm actually beginning to realize some implications of his power. After all, electric probes could potentially "read" things on the molecular level. One thing I could say for certain is that Masaru has never thought further than simply reading the surface. As to an actual limit, his power currently involves interpreting relative conductivities of materials. Therefore, I'd say it would currently stop as soon as the specificity stops grouping things in terms of materials. Take, for example, a sugar molecule. A single molecule could hardly be detected on, say, an aluminum plate. Nor could two, or even three. If the equipment were precise enough to read conductivity molecule-by-molecule, it could. However, a power with that capability would rival even Accelerator, who can track and manipulate air currents over an entire city. Therefore, molecular specificity is out for anyone less than that level of power.
For a better idea of a limit, we can turn to scanning electron microscopes. After all, those use a process rather similar to this part of his power. However, even the least powerful SEM scans at around 20 nanometers, at which individual atoms are visible. That might be appropriate for an ultimate evolution, but we're not interested in that. Let's go up a SI unit: micrometers. This is the cellular level. An average-sized human cell is 50 micrometers (μm), and cells have a lot of stuff in them. Around 500 micrometers seems like a good limit, then. 5x10^-5 meters.
This resolution would give him an appropriate clarity when reading text, as well as the possibility to go a bit deeper onto the level of very large cells. However, it's also important to note that he often doesn't want to use full resolution. It generates a lot of unnecessary data and takes a lot of time, more than his optimum speed. He would normally use a resolution around 1000 micrometers, 1x10^-4, or 1 tenth of a millimeter, or around the smallest things the human eye can see.

Preparation and calculation. He would probably need to send a few test pulses in to subconsciously begin to be able to interpret the words on the page (at least for reading print materials), and then he'd need to calculate things, also subconsciously. For a print material, the delay would probably be around 2 seconds - a small amount concerning time in general, but when considering the amounts of testing and calculation necessary, it's pretty fast. Digital connections are simpler, since there's less calculation and the materials are much more conductive. The delay here would be only from 0.5 to 0.1 seconds, a good deal faster than reading from print.
Of course, we brought up the "scanning electron microscope" aspect of his power in the previous section. This use would certainly take a long time of calculation. The tests would be far more extensive, since the material he's scanning isn't as simple as paper and ink. The calculation would need to incorporate all the different things he's scanning, not only just "paper," "ink," and "errata." Calculations for this use would take 20 seconds at bare minimum, and upwards to two minutes for as precise as he can get.

No offensive usage is a good idea. Got it.

TL;DR:
Information limit: Governed by energy expenditures. 20 minutes normally.
Information (print): 2,000,000 words.
Information (digital): 40,000,000 words. 20 MB.
Erasing/Forgetting: Done automatically.
Range (print): 40 cm
Range (digital): Must be connected by wires. Must not involve Internet.
Detail: 500 μm maximum, 1000 μm normally.
Time (print): 2 sec.
Time (digital): 0.1-0.5 sec
Time (other): 20 sec-2 min

Fine. I’d like you to edit that stuff into your profile, as I can see nothing too wrong about it.

However, I’ll also suggest you to add in the fact that he’s got the knowledge necessary to use his ability for reading data and stuff, just for convenience’s sake.

That’s about it then~

Awesome. Thanks for all the help! I fixed everything and added it all in.

Guess that’s it then.


Now be a good student and wait for your Esper Level to be assigned and of course the final approval.

Take note that there was a lot to be considered when assigning said Level. I personally hope that you will be able to understand that decision and be content with it.

Well, I got his ability to do what I wanted it to do, and that's the important thing! Thanks for all the help getting it running.

Very interesting character we've got here, and I am certainly pleased to see he doesn't have an offensive ability, it's quite the change from what we're used to.

Good luck playing him, I look forward to see what he'll become throughout this RP.