[Esper] Yugoro Matsuma

FULL NAME: Matsuma, Yugoro
OTHER ALIAS: None
CURRENT AGE: 16
GENDER: Male
OCCUPATION: Student, Part-Time Sandwich Maker, ITEM Member
SCHOOL: A Certain High School
FACTION: ITEM (Unwillingly)



APPEARANCE: Yugoro is a tall and lanky guy, who appears to utterly lack any particular muscular definition to his frame, namely because he doesn't particularly need to be big and tough despite his unfortunate line of work. Nevertheless, he retains a slight tanning of the skin, just enough to appear suntouched. His hair is a grey color, long and spiky, and drapes over his eyes to the point where one cannot tell if they are open or not. He is always wearing a grin on his face, usually hiding the immense nervousness he's feeling at any point, though it can also be genuine, and because nobody can see his eyes most of the time, the two are basically indistinguishable. Speaking of such, in the rare instance his eyes are visible, they are emerald green.

As clothing, one cannot really say he dresses all that differently than anyone else in Academy City. Usually he just wears his school uniform, though he's always wearing the winter version, as well as a tie, which he does not tie appropriately most times. Sometimes he'll replace the slacks of the uniform with a pair of jeans, with a chain hung between two belt loops on his hip. When it comes down to it, he wears whatever takes the least maintainance to continue wearing, so he's usually wearing the same clothes all day, possibly even multiple days in a row.
HEIGHT: 6'2" (187.86 CM)
WEIGHT:  170 lbs (77.1107 KG)
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Constant grin plastered on his face, regardless of his current mood. Yes, even in the classroom.



PERSONALITY:
Cowardly
Off the bat one may be able to detect that he's not very sure of himself, and despite his constant grin, he holds a lot more fear in him than bravery. Most of the reason why he's in the situation he is to this day is because he's fearing for his life. Being a coward isn't a horrible thing, fear is a majorly good way for him to get motivated and get things done. His lack of will to take the bold approach is what leads him to find a new way to do things.
Cynical  
He's not the kind of guy who thinks that all things have some kind of underlying goodness to them. Yugoro is a man who is full of satire and genre savviness, and for the most part judges a lot of things perhaps too harshly. He isn't much of a pessimist, he understands the importance of a bright state of mind when doing things versus the fatalistic perspective. Therefore, while trying to stay on the bright side, he still can't help but notice how nifty it is that they picked him to carry the bag.
Friendly
Yugoro is a punch-clock villain of sorts, he's only doing his job and has no particularly happy feelings towards what he's gotten himself into. He'd be more than happy if they'd just let him go, but he's not able to leave on his own volition. Because of this, it's easy to see that a 'bad guy' can be a friendly fellow... when he's off the clock at least. He strongly believes that friends are a valuable asset to have, the more genuine the better, because friendship actually does have a ridiculous amount of power behind it, and is a stronger force than fear. He doesn't understand how, but equates it to 'idiot strength'.
Doesn't Know Potential
While one would be able to determine that he's probably a pretty tough individual, he is not fully aware of his own potential. See he was always cautious of the things that he couldn't do and never looked much at what he could do, and so he's got this underlying fear that he's not strong enough, not tough enough, not fast enough. Things like that. While he certainly cannot do it all, he vastly underestimates his own potential, and is not willing to push his self imposed boundaries, for fear that he won't break through, when they weren't there in the first place.
Creative
You know what Yugoro wanted to be when he grew up? A novelist. A person who wrote stories and sold them for a profit, living off their imagination and the love of their fans, which were hard-earned. He's got the chops for it as well, he is always thinking of cool ideas and stuff which, while they don't particularly work out in his life, would make a wonderful mechanic for a world or universe. He is pretty good at giving creative advice to people, especially in the way of creative uses for things and powers. If they're willing to come to him for advice, anyways.

LIKES:
Fantasy Literature
Chocolate
Classical Sonatas
Exotic Animals and Pets
Iced Coffee

DISLIKES:
His Current Position In Life
Crime
Hindering Others
Being Disliked
Classic Video Games
Sweets That Aren't Chocolate
Urban Smells (Like Sewage)

STRENGTHS:
Following Orders
Survival Instinct
Creative Problem Solving
Good at juggling multiple lives.
High general combat ability

WEAKNESSES:
Weak-Willed
Poor Body Language
In Over His Head with no way out
Doesn't Know his Own Potential
No Leadership Qualities
Fears his Weaknesses.




HISTORY:  He was a relatively normal kid for the environment. Yugoro was born in Okinawa, and he was raised for the first 10 years of his life in a normal family with no particular events that made him any different than a normal everyday citizen of Japan. He was one day recommended to the idea of becoming a member of Academy city, and having his potential unlocked through experimentations, tutoring, and training, all while sustaining not only a relatively normal life, but a prestigious education in the most technologically advanced academy in the world. This was a moment his parents deemed as possibly the deciding factor for his life's turnout, and left the choice up to him. Of course, when they explained it to him, all he could think about was a school of high flying superheroes, with optic beams and the ability to lift things with their brains.

Unfortunately he was half right. Upon agreeing, he was taken in and examined, given some psychological enhancers to work on the development of his personal reality in which he'd develop his Esper abilities, and sent to school with other kids. While some older kids had powers, it was never a vast multitude like he'd imagined. Sure, some people could fly, some could fire beams from their eyes, some could lift things with their brains. None could do all of the above. So to his disappointment, he wasn't about to get anything super powerful and become part of a new generation of superheroes, dashing his hopes. But Yugoro didn't opt out because the community was actually very pleasant for him.

Growing up, he'd become a decent Esper, he had an interesting ability. But more importantly, he was just a normal guy really. He was thinking after his education, he'd go to a university, get an english degree, and delve into a career as a writer soon enough. But his plans were nipped at the bud. Once upon a time, he believed that all a hero needed to do was save a life. He walked by an alleyway and noticed what looked to be a mugging of a student. Yugoro intervened and decked the mugger in the jaw whilst he was unprepared, thus saving the life of someone who didn't deserve it.

The young man whom he'd saved, going by Nagumo Shiki, thanked him profusely for saving him. He didn't have Esper abilities like so many others did. This prompted Yugoro to become Shiki's friend, and that was where his life went totally wrong. Not everyone who gets shot in a back alley doesn't deserve it. It started with helping Shiki 'get out of a tough place', he just needed a body guard while making a hand off of sorts, the less questions Yugoro asked, the better off he was. Whatever was being handed off was in a cooler. So of course, he didn't try to ask any questions, after all, people did things when they needed money desperately that they normally wouldn't do otherwise.

But it didn't end there, what was handoffs, turned into a full scale human rights catastrophe within a few months, and Yugoro didn't understand how to cut his losses. The whole thing looks incredibly stupid and childish looking back on it today, but he thought Shiki was legitimately his friend, not just using him. It was only during a high profile bank robbery, the dumbest thing he'd seen yet, with guns and plans and everything, that Yugoro tried to reason with Shiki. He reasoned that the idea was stupid, and they could just get a normal job like normal people... but he was too late: Far too late, and pretty slow, too. Shiki was never interested in being Yugoro's friend outside of work, and since Yugoro was so useful as a bodyguard, he was just taking advantage of his kind nature.

So Yugoro kind of just stopped. After the robbery, Shiki got away, and Yugoro was taken under arrest by Anti-Skill without a struggle. He'd realized that everything that he'd done was just a total waste of time, all of it was evil, he wasn't a hero, he wasn't helping a friend, he was assisting on numerous ventures into the darkness. Now he had no escape, he'd rot in prison for all that he'd admitted to. But then there was a way out, something that seemed like a glimmer of hope, anyways. He could rot in prison for all of his life, or he could become a member of the official Academy City underground, a member of ITEM. He naively accepted, thinking it would just be some dark work, assassinations for a year and he could go. He didn't know that not only was it going to be much more complicated than that, but it was going to be all sorts of evil stuff until ITEM let him go... He joined looking for a way out... and now he is trapped. While he gets to exist in the sunlight once in a while, carry on as a student and get his education, he no longer gets the benefit of feeling innocent and young. Just when he thinks he might be able to be free, work reminds him otherwise.

It was at this point that he was a member of ITEM, and since that fateful day, he's been juggling a life of organized crime, and a life of trying to have friends and learn things. He's too scared to leave because they know everything about him and could ruin him with a phone call at this point. That's if they didn't take him out with the trash. So now he lives in fear and shadows, carressed by the demons of the underworld like a caged pet, and is made to do tricks for their entertainment periodically, for sake of metaphorical visual to comprehend his current life.



RANK: Cowardly Lacky
LEVEL: 3
Force Recorder: Yugoro has a rather unique ability which is in the most basic sense, the ability to capture, store, and release kinetic energy. With this ability, he passively absorbs any unwanted opposing kinetic force, and stores it inside of his body. This makes him essentially immune to any damage caused by mass moving at a velocity, as he will simply store it inside of himself harmlessly. He must come into contact with it, but he will not suffer any harm from it as the kinetic energy is immediately captured and stored, zero delay. This basically makes it so that he doesn't budge when things hit him, even if damage would occur otherwise. In order to do this he must sustain conscious thought of doing it, and calculate what is coming when he does do in order to calibrate himself to take in the kinetic energy. This negates the momentum entirely, and causes no damage to either party involved; though contents may be rattled by the sudden stop, the container won't be.

The last aspect of this ability is the ability for him to release it from his body. He can release stored kinetic energy, ranging from an extremely minuscule amount of 1 KGs of force (9.8 joules, negligible force), to all of his maximum stored amount which has been clocked in at 15,075 KGs of force (a little over 147,800 joules, equivilent to roughly 1 average 35 mph *roughly 55 kmph* compact car crash). This adds the released kinetic energy to the force he is putting out, regardless of whether or not he's actually putting any out, and he can release this from any point in his body at will. Say he is hit by a punch, and absorbs the impact force, rendering the punch as good as a gentle loving touch of his face if that. He can then punch someone, using the stored up force from the punch he took and the punch he's actually delivering, making his punch essentially worth two punches. He can also release the energy directly into something to simply make it move in a direction should the energy be sufficient. While he cannot direct it once launched, he can launch things, and not harm them when he does, though when they collide with something, he can't help them there.

Despite how powerful this ability might seem, it only affects Kinetic Energy, the energy present when mass moves at a velocity. He cannot absorb other forms of energy, such as electricity, heat, or even magic, since they are energy moving at a velocity, not mass. He has limited effect on telekinesis, since that uses mental energy which isn't directly kinetic. He can be struck and harmed by it, but not moved. In the face of other forms of energy asides Kinetic, he is but a normal person. Also, he does not retain energy he stores forever. It is released harmlessly an 9 minutes and 13 seconds after he stores it, even if he remains entirely focused. As a similar issue, if he cannot currently store all of some kinetic force, he cannot store any of it, therefore, if he racks up too much too fast, he becomes able to be harmed by it. Should he be knocked out, dazzled, stunned, or staggered, or otherwise unable to focus he would lose the stored kinetic energy.
OTHER ABILITIES:
Punchman
An item based on a walkman, which is designed for him specifically in order for him to measure his kinetic intake and output. It takes the shape of a watch, worn on the wrist, and reads his AIM Dispersion Field's current state in order to accurately judge about how many kilograms of force he has stored up, to the tenth place decimal. This is an important tool for him to have, since he cannot otherwise determine how much kinetic energy he has stored up. The Punchman doesn't technically have a cap on how much it can read, though he knows his measured maximum number. Since he otherwise doesn't have a way of determining how much he's saved up, as he doesn't feel particularly different, he uses this to regulate himself actively in heated scenarios. It can distract him from things if he looks too often.
Good Chef
He's an actually good at cooking food due to having an allowance but otherwise needing to cook for himself. Instead of living on microwave dinners, he actually picked up some cook books and bought some spices, and got enough food to last him a while. After a few years of this, he's got a good handle on many recipes and methods of cooking, and knows each common household spice by smell and taste, and can tell what's been put into a dish by its taste, asides non-household spice flavors. He's not college trained, but he knows what he likes, and it's not that uncommon a taste.
Disguise
He's good enough at disguising himself with nearby items that he can alter features one could use to identify him using makeup and a comb. Normally he'll just obscure it with colored contacts and a ski mask, but he can also alter his voice pitch and intonation to sound far different than he normally sounds, and apply false bits to trick facial recognition programs should they be a foreseeable problem.
Indelible Poker Face
Due to the nature of how he acts perpetually, his mood and feelings are incredibly difficult to read. His eyes are always obscured from vision, his face is always in a grin, all of this regardless of how he feels. This basically makes him impossible to read using body language, though standard fare like actual lie detectors and stuff can catch him lying if he is lying.


CHARACTER THEME:



PLAYER'S NAME: Matsuma Yugoro
CHATANGO NAME: leafyGnostalgic
RATING: R for Restricted
FACE CLAIM: Kirai, as drawn by Naimane
OTHER CHARACTERS: None Yet
MISC. INFORMATION: This character was created with minimal knowledge of what certain things were, including ITEM. I apologize for any inaccuracies.

We sure are getting a bunch of amusing characters lately, especially for ITEM. I’m personally looking forward to the next SS .


The Basics

Reading that profile I feel like Yugoro is the character’s first name – correct me if my impression is wrong – and therefore I need to ask you to change your account name to the proper Japanese naming order, thus: Matsuma Yugoro.

While I’m at it I also need to point out another rule telling you to add an avatar. Please do so.


The History

Excuse my nitpicking, but usually you don’t get chosen for Academy City. Basically anybody can get in, as long as the parents or other forms of family would support the idea.


That aside I have a major point to address about the overall history. The way he got into the city’s underworld and later ITEM is a little too vague and way too simple. From what it sounds he simply had some misfortune and somehow ended up participating in criminal activities and went deeper down the road from there, which won’t be working out. You might wanna go over my guide again.

Usually people get drawn in slowly, sink deeper and reach the bottom at the worst point where already only little remain.

However I can give you a suggestion here. Maybe he could have been drawn into some minor crime business, somehow getting caught up in that world for quite a lengthy while, learning a little about its workings until the point where he would get caught by Anti-Skill. Instead of ending up in jail he would get to make a deal with ITEM’s underling organisation, working as one of their grunts from there on.
Yugoro being part of the underling group instead of the B one sounds more fitting to the character, too, as it’s still more the crimey part of the darkness.
You could even have it turn out the way that he just joined that group at the beginning of the RP, in order for yourself to explore his new position first hand~


The Ability

Now this is a refreshing idea, if I’m allowed to be honest.

But of course I still have something to complain about: While the overall concept is nice we don’t fancy passive effects, especially of the defensive kind. If I would have to give a good reason why, I would simply name Accelerator, who literally became one of the most dreadful characters through his passive defence. Additionally to that it’s just that it’d leave too little weaknesses for an opponent to exploit in a fight.
Therefore I would like you to change the overall workings of the ability so that each usage would require Yugoro to concentrate, meaning he would only be able to use it actively. With that he would still be able to absorb punches or even things coming at him at high velocities, but nothing he wouldn’t be able to predict or too late to notice.

Adding on to the usage I would also like to point out that Esper abilities usually require the user to focus on whatever they are doing, because they would usually have to keep calculations up constantly. In Yugoro’s case he already loses the stored force after a certain time, but he’d also lose it if knocked out or hurt in a way that’d truly kill his focus.

Lastly the limitations you put up for him are beyond boundaries. I’d be accepting of him taking in the kinetic energy of a speeding car running into him, but nothing beyond. Especially nothing that’d be comparable to a direct hit by a tank shell; that’d be quite overpowered a thing.
Basically even fending off a direct hit from some high class sniper rifle, a tank or whatever crazy weaponry is an exception less nono. Espers are not full fledged superheroes.


Besides that the downsides you named seem alright with me and shouldn’t be changed.

Alright. I've taken what you've said into consideration, and altered everything to the best of my abilities. Edits are as such:

Username has been traditionalized and an avatar instated.

He was recommended to it instead of selected. I thank you for the correction.

I've made the means by which he'd entered the dark side a more in-depth and purposeful means of doing such. Instead of doing someone a solid and winding up a criminal, Yugoro instead wound up saving a smalltime Organ Trafficker from getting shot in what appeared to be a mugging, and became friends with him. He wound up assisting this individual with all of his crimes for several months, helping him go from a human trafficker to having a larger operation going on, including human trafficking, and organized crimes like bank robbery. The latter of which he finally gave up on the individual in question, and wound up arrested, locked up, and offered an alternative to life in prison as an underling of ITEM.

I have also altered Force Recorder to be something more of a toggle-on-and-off mode. He doesn't passively do it anymore, however, I've made it so that as long as he is concentrating on using the power, he doesn't need to know what's going to hit him in order to absorb it. I've also stipulated that things that he absorbs the kinetic energy from do not impact him, and therefore they do not innately suffer any harm.

Furthermore Force Recorder's maximum load has been reduced to roughly 2/15ths of the originally stated value, at 200,000 KG of force storage instead of a cool 1.5 mill. This still allows him to absorb the kinetic force of most infantry firearms for a sufficient time to seem cool (in my opinion), can survive a high speed attempt at vehicular homicide with a Sports Utility Vehicle (when empty), and also provides enough force to use kinetic energy as a tool.

I thank you for your review, and look forward to future reviews.

Other Stuff

What exactly would be the definition of “High general combat ability” in this case?


The Ability

I said it already and I will stick to it: No passive defensive effects. The moment he absorbs energy from an outward source he will have to focus on it and manually perform the calculation process. This is not only something dictated by canon, but also a means to ensure that he won’t be granted full immunity against any physical attacks in a fight.

Surprise hits, the occasional too quick to react to type and of course the unwanted opening of not being concentrated enough should be weaknesses even Yugoro should have. An invulnerable character won’t be tolerated.


A SUV at 120kph crashing into something? That’s far from what I imagined when I gave that suggestion. Both fending it off like nothing and dealing such a blow are too far out there, especially once you throw them together in a single ability.
Personally I wasn’t entirely sure what would fit best in this case, so I went ahead and took some time to think over the overall concept again. Considering that the ability’s strength is decided by both defensive capabilities and offensive ones, as well as how much energy would be stored in the average combat situation, I reached the following conclusion:

The limit should be the energy of a normal compact car crash at 55kmh.

Anything beyond would be too devastating looking at all aspects.


As for the focus topic: He would immediately lose all stored up energy the moment he loses focus. However for Espers keeping their focus is something they get trained on, making it a lot more difficult for an outside party to break theirs. Unless he is suffering severe pain or any other sort of state, that’d blur his mind he wouldn’t lose his focus. In case this happens, though he will lose all stored up energy immediately.

Besides that an hour is way too high a time for the storing, comparing it to other Esper abilities’ usages as well as including the fact that the ability is already quite powerful in what it does defensively and offensively. Therefore the limit will be about 9 minutes and 13 seconds.


Tell me, what will happen in case he is hit by an impact outside of his absorption limitations? Maybe a train running into him?



Wrapping this post up I must point out that our evaluations are usually aiming towards tweaking the characters to properly fit into both the To Aru Verse and the RP itself. There will hardly be any characters without proper weaknesses or the type that is just insanely powerful. I will pay close attention to all characters being equally beatable, so that fighting will go fair and balanced.
After all in the To Aru Verse fights are not based on power levels to begin with. Most are decided by the good old tactics and plans, allowing even the lowest Level to overcome a Level 5 by making full use of what they have. Strength alone is not the key, much rather is it the trigger of downfall in way too many cases.
Balance is what holds the greatest importance.

Alright, based on what you've stated, and clarified, I have established the correct editations.

I've utterly removed any amount of passive potential, he must see the attack coming and he must calculate before and as the attack hits. Surprise attacks, faster-than-the-eye-can-see stuff, will all be cause for great kinetic discomfort.

Whilst I am disappointed at the once again greatly reduced storage capacity, I did the math myself a few times over and what I had would have turned people into jelly in a single punch. Since not even Accelerator himself can do that, I figured it's very fair. I didn't expect to be punching cars out of the way with any level of frequency anyways.

Nevertheless, the amount that I have gleaned from this has taken into account a Honda Civic LX Coupe (a bit over 2600 lbs), converted from Imperial lbs to Metric kg (a little under 1200 kg), and plugged into a calculator at 55 kph, or about 15.27778 m/s, and math'd into joules, and then into KG Force, and then rounded up to a slightly higher and much rounder number. Mind you that this maximum does not take into account any people being inside of a given car, meaning he won't even be able to stop a Civic, given people are actually driving it at him. The resulting number is significantly reduced, but at least I won't be punching people at Mach 8/s (assuming acceleration over a full second which is generous... *shivers*). Now it's maximum output will accelerate to subsonic speeds of only 233 m/s/s, which is far less destructive overall in any theory, given he has all of those KG and no other productive ways of its expenditure.

Furthermore, I have also greatly reduced the hold time on the kinetic energy whilst focusing, and removed any ability to retain storage over it while unable to focus, or simply not focusing. 9 minutes and 13 seconds seemed fair enough to me. I don't imagine this character would fight for that long anyways, any more seems like overdoing it.

As the ability stated, it is an all-or-nothing ability. If he cannot absorb all of the kinetic energy something holds, then he instead will absorb none of it if he is hit. So a train hitting him (at any velocity worth measuring) would do exactly what it should, and break some bones, and/or carry him to the next train station on its front, without any undue momentum loss.

And to answer your first question, High General Combat Ability basically comes down to reflexes, physical speed, and toughness being acceptable ranges for a guy who gets into fights. It's sort of like saying he's not a pushover street punk in a fist fight, which is a due feature, since he's done some time as a body guard, shady as that business were.

And please, no worries. I understand entirely. Forgive me for shooting too high, I get this profound sense of needing to do so in order to keep up, when I'm really overpowering myself to nigh unforgivable status. Balance is very important, and I accept your judgement on the matter.

Don’t worry too much. I can relate to people rooting a little higher for the sake of keeping up. Ironically I have the opposite issue with my own self written ones *cough*.

As the ability stated, it is an all-or-nothing ability. If he cannot absorb all of the kinetic energy something holds, then he instead will absorb none of it if he is hit. So a train hitting him (at any velocity worth measuring) would do exactly what it should, and break some bones, and/or carry him to the next train station on its front, without any undue momentum loss.

If you want to you could actually make it an ability that could always have an effect, reducing the kinetic energy if not able to absorb it as a whole~


Welcome on board, slave #1