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overconfidantUser Name/Nick: Azrael
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E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
EternalLie
Other Characters Currently In-Game: N/A
Character Name: Akira Kurusu
Series: Persona 5
Age: 17. And to start with, the route I'm using for him means that he was literally five minutes short of selling the entire world's free will to an evil god when he died. He's also spent most of a year forcibly resetting people's minds to their factory moral settings by ripping out their distorted wishes and self-justifications.
From When?: Akira is coming from late game in the Velvet Room when "Igor" ordered the twin wardens Caroline and Justine to execute the inmate. As per canon, they start to hesitate when he's on his last legs... but he was on his last legs, and ongoing damage from a burn status finished him before they remembered who they really were.
Inmate Justification: Thou who art willing to perform all sacrilegious acts for thine own justice! Call upon my name, and release thy rage! Show the strength of thy will to ascertain all on thine own, though thou be chained to Hell itself! -Arséne, the manifestation of his true self
Akira does, in essence, mean well. He wants to help the helpless and protect innocent people from guilty ones. But yeah, that quote kind of hits it right there. He's very morally questionable in his methods and just as sure as Steve Rogers that the best hands are their own. He's willing to go to incredible extremes for the outcome they believe is the best one and he's been willing to at least risk killing for it. He also is low-key handling a lot of his relationships in transactional and manipulative ways, which is presumably 'okay' because he is helping them even if he gets something out of it and also holds... most of the power in them.
Hopefully a warden can help him take it down a notch? Learn to cope with his negative feelings better and ameliorate his tendency to make sketchy deals because they're beneficial to him. Help him gain a more stable moral compass of his own instead of depending on a collection of other traumatized teenagers and a talking cat to make the right choices.
Arrival: Agreed to coming, because he wants to live. If he hadn't died there, he was, as noted above, about five minutes from making a much uglier deal with a different powerful being to survive.
Abilities/Powers:
Personas:
Metatron
Michael
Ishtar
Mara, damn him. (warning since canonblind: tentacled dick chariot I wish to God I was joking)
Zaou-Gongen
Chi You
Vishnu
Sandalphon
Odin
Raphael
Gabriel
Black Frost
Skill descriptions, including a bunch he doesn't have but they're sorted by type.
Self-nerfed by Akira having no idea they can potentially be manifested outside the Metaverse and less idea how to go about doing so. Inaccessible.
Third Eye: Akira is capable of using this ability for multiple forms of detection. He can see in darkness. Find his Confidants in a crowd. Detect hidden items of value. Detect traps, camera views, triggers for puzzle locks, and other secrets. Pinpoint enemies and roughly judge their power level relative to his; they can register as weaker, on par, stronger, and "holy shit don't pick this fight". It is mostly restricted to line of sight, he can't detect anything on the other side of a wall. The farthest it goes is "hey, this vase/box/other small container you can see has something valuable or important in it!" He cannot sense something held on a person.
I'm fine if you'd want his ability to detect traps, camera areas, puzzle lock triggers, and other secrets to be unreliable or not really working. Especially the secrets part, since being able to walk into a room and point out there's a secret door in that wall because it glows to him might be kind of unfair to people that have been really working for it.
Confidant links: Akira is capable of forming Confidant bonds with other people in the form of making deals. He'll agree to help them with some sort of (significant, he can't do this by agreeing to weed their plants) problem or task they are facing. In exchange, they'll help him in some way.
Commonly, he'll learn skills from them that can help him. He learned better ways of persuasive speaking from a politician, battle tactics from a shogi player, sharpshooting and trick shots from a master of arcade shooting games, as examples. Sometimes, they'll provide services instead. A doctor giving access to medical supplies, a journalist publishing articles to sway public opinion for him, etc.
Confidant links have other benefits but most of those are Metaverse-related and don't apply. Skills learned from Confidants are mastered with slightly unnatural speed.
Inmate Information:
Earliest known major life event: Akira was framed for assault and found guilty. He was actually intervening to stop an attempt at sexual assault and the drunk jackass tripped and fell. But he was a powerful drunk jackass. Akira is sent to Tokyo to a new school during his probation. This kicks off the entire game plot and also contributes to his anger issues and trust issues. It's also the reason he is often quiet and reserved around unfamiliar groups or adults; he's trying hard to slide under the radar while he's on probation.
In Tokyo, he wakes up powers and becomes the leader of a vigilante group. Because that is clearly what you do in Tokyo.
Akira has done A Lot of harm to others, primarily to people that were doing harm in the first place. The amount of harm actually scales to the severity of the crimes, since losing your twisted and distorted impulses and excuses naturally has more impact the more bad you've done. Some of the worst were left actively suicidal with guilt afterwards. Their first target could have died due to their inexperience and they all chose to take that risk.
His main non-framed criminal acts are first, vigilante justice, and second, escaping police custody.
He's also been tangled up with someone trying to retire from the yakuza, blackmailed by a mob boss, and accessory to illegal hacking and medical experiments of uncertain legality.
Being in police custody was major and horrible. The police force was corrupt and Akira was both physically abused and forcibly injected with drugs, quite possibly to some level of overdose. So cops or any attempt to give him drugs/medication without his consent will cause a bad reaction.
Personality: (The game does not dive into Akira's thought processes much, beyond the implications of any dialogue or action choice being something he considered saying or doing. So some of the worldview is inference and supposition.)
To most outward appearances, Akira Kurusu is a fairly laid back young man, quiet and patient. He's reserved when he feels unsure of people but has a broad streak of sass and playful humor when more relaxed. He's also incredibly shitposty when the mood strikes him. He's a good listener and often reaches out to help others, though he'll also ask for help in return. That's what friends do, right? Help each other.
As the leader of the Phantom Thieves, Joker is not quiet or laid back. Joker is a gigantic drama queen that loves to pull action movie stunts. He's also sharp and dangerous, angry, rebellious, fully willing to play judge and jury according to his own beliefs. He makes a clever, effective teammate and leader, fully understanding of the worth of delegation. If you have to do something yourself to get it done right, you aren't asking the right people to do it.
Carefully hidden under everything else, Akira has a seething core of cynical bitterness. Society and the adults in his life have not treated him fairly and he has a lot of feelings about that. He does want to help people but it might sometimes be less about them and more about his own personal sense of justice. He's prone to using people, but justifies it as a fair exchange, preferring mutually beneficial agreements. He manipulates others with very little remorse, considering there to be no harm done as long as all ends well. Results are more important than reasons in his opinion; if everyone is happy, why should it matter if his motivations were selfish?
His response to challenges tends to be to rise to them. With a certain flavor of "My pronouns are try/me." His powers are literally founded on his sense of rebellion.
Path to Redemption: The most important thing is probably stabilizing his moral compass and teaching him to make better decisions on his own. Bonus points for teaching him to be more open and genuine in his relationships. Milestones would then, obviously, be making better decisions without much outside input, and forming some relationships with more equality and honesty to them.
He isn't going to be happy to be wardened, since his previous wardens killed him. Plus there was something fishy about his 'rehabilitation' from the start. So he'll be pretty suspicious of the Barge. In that vein, too cool and calm or too aggressive and loud would backfire with him, since those were the natures of his previous twin wardens. Someone on the friendly side might do best, and maybe with some willingness to push for more than he's offering; Akira doesn't talk about himself much beyond the surface level. He would rather learn a lot about the other person while giving away very little. Patience is still important, though, because Akira doesn't really trust adults easily.
Possible impetus for change could be someone that doesn't deserve it being hurt by his actions, or a more long-game of the advice of someone who's managed to gain his trust.
History: Game Canon, noting that P5 is a kitchen sink of content warnings.
Pre-game note: At no point in the game are his parents shown or even stated to be contacting him after they sent him to live with a person they'd never met. While this could be simply a lost detail, given the themes of the game it's more likely to be a sign of a less than ideal family. My theory given a lot of other details is that his family life before the game involved a lack of trust and a heavy preoccupation with "face".
Sample Network Entry: Thread 1
Sample RP: Thread 2
Special Notes: He lives in an attic above a cafe with no door, so I'll probably use the outer cafe door for his cabin if that's fine.
User DW: N/A
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact:
Other Characters Currently In-Game: N/A
Character Name: Akira Kurusu
Series: Persona 5
Age: 17. And to start with, the route I'm using for him means that he was literally five minutes short of selling the entire world's free will to an evil god when he died. He's also spent most of a year forcibly resetting people's minds to their factory moral settings by ripping out their distorted wishes and self-justifications.
From When?: Akira is coming from late game in the Velvet Room when "Igor" ordered the twin wardens Caroline and Justine to execute the inmate. As per canon, they start to hesitate when he's on his last legs... but he was on his last legs, and ongoing damage from a burn status finished him before they remembered who they really were.
Inmate Justification: Thou who art willing to perform all sacrilegious acts for thine own justice! Call upon my name, and release thy rage! Show the strength of thy will to ascertain all on thine own, though thou be chained to Hell itself! -Arséne, the manifestation of his true self
Akira does, in essence, mean well. He wants to help the helpless and protect innocent people from guilty ones. But yeah, that quote kind of hits it right there. He's very morally questionable in his methods and just as sure as Steve Rogers that the best hands are their own. He's willing to go to incredible extremes for the outcome they believe is the best one and he's been willing to at least risk killing for it. He also is low-key handling a lot of his relationships in transactional and manipulative ways, which is presumably 'okay' because he is helping them even if he gets something out of it and also holds... most of the power in them.
Hopefully a warden can help him take it down a notch? Learn to cope with his negative feelings better and ameliorate his tendency to make sketchy deals because they're beneficial to him. Help him gain a more stable moral compass of his own instead of depending on a collection of other traumatized teenagers and a talking cat to make the right choices.
Arrival: Agreed to coming, because he wants to live. If he hadn't died there, he was, as noted above, about five minutes from making a much uglier deal with a different powerful being to survive.
Abilities/Powers:
Personas:
Metatron
Michael
Ishtar
Mara, damn him. (warning since canonblind: tentacled dick chariot I wish to God I was joking)
Zaou-Gongen
Chi You
Vishnu
Sandalphon
Odin
Raphael
Gabriel
Black Frost
Skill descriptions, including a bunch he doesn't have but they're sorted by type.
Self-nerfed by Akira having no idea they can potentially be manifested outside the Metaverse and less idea how to go about doing so. Inaccessible.
Third Eye: Akira is capable of using this ability for multiple forms of detection. He can see in darkness. Find his Confidants in a crowd. Detect hidden items of value. Detect traps, camera views, triggers for puzzle locks, and other secrets. Pinpoint enemies and roughly judge their power level relative to his; they can register as weaker, on par, stronger, and "holy shit don't pick this fight". It is mostly restricted to line of sight, he can't detect anything on the other side of a wall. The farthest it goes is "hey, this vase/box/other small container you can see has something valuable or important in it!" He cannot sense something held on a person.
I'm fine if you'd want his ability to detect traps, camera areas, puzzle lock triggers, and other secrets to be unreliable or not really working. Especially the secrets part, since being able to walk into a room and point out there's a secret door in that wall because it glows to him might be kind of unfair to people that have been really working for it.
Confidant links: Akira is capable of forming Confidant bonds with other people in the form of making deals. He'll agree to help them with some sort of (significant, he can't do this by agreeing to weed their plants) problem or task they are facing. In exchange, they'll help him in some way.
Commonly, he'll learn skills from them that can help him. He learned better ways of persuasive speaking from a politician, battle tactics from a shogi player, sharpshooting and trick shots from a master of arcade shooting games, as examples. Sometimes, they'll provide services instead. A doctor giving access to medical supplies, a journalist publishing articles to sway public opinion for him, etc.
Confidant links have other benefits but most of those are Metaverse-related and don't apply. Skills learned from Confidants are mastered with slightly unnatural speed.
Inmate Information:
Earliest known major life event: Akira was framed for assault and found guilty. He was actually intervening to stop an attempt at sexual assault and the drunk jackass tripped and fell. But he was a powerful drunk jackass. Akira is sent to Tokyo to a new school during his probation. This kicks off the entire game plot and also contributes to his anger issues and trust issues. It's also the reason he is often quiet and reserved around unfamiliar groups or adults; he's trying hard to slide under the radar while he's on probation.
In Tokyo, he wakes up powers and becomes the leader of a vigilante group. Because that is clearly what you do in Tokyo.
Akira has done A Lot of harm to others, primarily to people that were doing harm in the first place. The amount of harm actually scales to the severity of the crimes, since losing your twisted and distorted impulses and excuses naturally has more impact the more bad you've done. Some of the worst were left actively suicidal with guilt afterwards. Their first target could have died due to their inexperience and they all chose to take that risk.
His main non-framed criminal acts are first, vigilante justice, and second, escaping police custody.
He's also been tangled up with someone trying to retire from the yakuza, blackmailed by a mob boss, and accessory to illegal hacking and medical experiments of uncertain legality.
Being in police custody was major and horrible. The police force was corrupt and Akira was both physically abused and forcibly injected with drugs, quite possibly to some level of overdose. So cops or any attempt to give him drugs/medication without his consent will cause a bad reaction.
Personality: (The game does not dive into Akira's thought processes much, beyond the implications of any dialogue or action choice being something he considered saying or doing. So some of the worldview is inference and supposition.)
To most outward appearances, Akira Kurusu is a fairly laid back young man, quiet and patient. He's reserved when he feels unsure of people but has a broad streak of sass and playful humor when more relaxed. He's also incredibly shitposty when the mood strikes him. He's a good listener and often reaches out to help others, though he'll also ask for help in return. That's what friends do, right? Help each other.
As the leader of the Phantom Thieves, Joker is not quiet or laid back. Joker is a gigantic drama queen that loves to pull action movie stunts. He's also sharp and dangerous, angry, rebellious, fully willing to play judge and jury according to his own beliefs. He makes a clever, effective teammate and leader, fully understanding of the worth of delegation. If you have to do something yourself to get it done right, you aren't asking the right people to do it.
Carefully hidden under everything else, Akira has a seething core of cynical bitterness. Society and the adults in his life have not treated him fairly and he has a lot of feelings about that. He does want to help people but it might sometimes be less about them and more about his own personal sense of justice. He's prone to using people, but justifies it as a fair exchange, preferring mutually beneficial agreements. He manipulates others with very little remorse, considering there to be no harm done as long as all ends well. Results are more important than reasons in his opinion; if everyone is happy, why should it matter if his motivations were selfish?
His response to challenges tends to be to rise to them. With a certain flavor of "My pronouns are try/me." His powers are literally founded on his sense of rebellion.
Path to Redemption: The most important thing is probably stabilizing his moral compass and teaching him to make better decisions on his own. Bonus points for teaching him to be more open and genuine in his relationships. Milestones would then, obviously, be making better decisions without much outside input, and forming some relationships with more equality and honesty to them.
He isn't going to be happy to be wardened, since his previous wardens killed him. Plus there was something fishy about his 'rehabilitation' from the start. So he'll be pretty suspicious of the Barge. In that vein, too cool and calm or too aggressive and loud would backfire with him, since those were the natures of his previous twin wardens. Someone on the friendly side might do best, and maybe with some willingness to push for more than he's offering; Akira doesn't talk about himself much beyond the surface level. He would rather learn a lot about the other person while giving away very little. Patience is still important, though, because Akira doesn't really trust adults easily.
Possible impetus for change could be someone that doesn't deserve it being hurt by his actions, or a more long-game of the advice of someone who's managed to gain his trust.
History: Game Canon, noting that P5 is a kitchen sink of content warnings.
Pre-game note: At no point in the game are his parents shown or even stated to be contacting him after they sent him to live with a person they'd never met. While this could be simply a lost detail, given the themes of the game it's more likely to be a sign of a less than ideal family. My theory given a lot of other details is that his family life before the game involved a lack of trust and a heavy preoccupation with "face".
Sample Network Entry: Thread 1
Sample RP: Thread 2
Special Notes: He lives in an attic above a cafe with no door, so I'll probably use the outer cafe door for his cabin if that's fine.
