[ ooc ] yaaaay application
(As of 6/16/2009:) Okay, this app is old and sucks, plus it was the unpolished version to begin with. Look if you want, but hell if I'm not going to end up giving this thing a much needed revamp. Which probably isn't necessary, but now that I can play the character better, I'd rather have something that matches with my ability. Or something. Just keep that in mind while looking, since my opinion on a few things has changed since then. Carry on.
Name/Handle: Duskino
Series: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3
Series' Medium: Playstation 2 video game
Character you're applying for: Yukari Takeba
Character's age: 17
Character's gender: Female
Character’s “Real Name”: Kara Blenn
Please give us a detailed personal history of your character:
Ten years before the start of the story, in the year 1999, a man named Kouetsu Kirijou-- the current head of the Kirijou group-- was determined to bring forth The Fall. Essentially, summoning Death to end all of humanity. He, and a group of scientists, obsessively studied strange creatures called Shadows for years prior; it was soon discovered that twelve "special" Shadows brought together as one would summon the one of the Death Arcana, who in return would summon Nyx, the entity to end all. Somewhere during all their research, something went horribly wrong-- the experiment was sabatoged, and the Shadows they held in their labs escaped, causing massive chaos and havoc along the way. Because of an explosion it was said that nobody came out alive. Kouetsu died, along with the rest of the research team, and in the process a mysterious event was born. This is called the Dark Hour, an hour that takes place between one day and the next. It starts every night at twelve o'clock midnight, and during this time the world transforms into something else entirely. Normal people get transmorgrified into coffins, and wake up unaware of its existence once it's over. There are people who don't transform into this coffin state, but they normally become victim of the Shadows who come about and lurk during this time. That isn't the only strange thing that happens-- where the lab once was, now Port Island's high school Gekkoukan High, an enormously huge tower called Tartarus rises. It's like a labyrinth, the nest of Shadows. Once the Dark Hour is over, it goes back to being a normal high school.
It's a rare occurrence, but there is also a special type of person who can not only experience the Dark Hour, but also fight the Shadows. They are called Persona users, capable of using manifestations of their inner selves in order to use a power that can defeat the monsters. Yukari happens to be one of these people.
Everything had started off as normal as ever. Yukari lived with her mother (strangely enough, she is never given a canon name), and her father, Eiichiro Takeba, who worked as the lead research scientist for the Kirijou Group. It wasn't until she turned seven when something happened that changed her life-- in what was known to the public as a mysterious scientific accident, Eiichiro died in the explosion. Not even his family got the true reasons behind his death.
Many people put the blame for the explosion and the casualties on Eiichiro, so Yukari's mother and her were given a lot of scorn because of it. This caused them to move around frequently, and over the years her mother picked up and dumped many boyfriends. Yukari felt as though this betrayed the love of her father, and that was hardly the appropriate way of dealing with his death. This caused them to grow up on and form a bitter relationship with each other, to the point where Yukari hardly had anything good to say about her mother.
Unfortunately, nothing is ever specifically stated within the game itself about how Yukari discovered she could use a Persona, or how she found out about S.E.E.S. (the group name standing for Special Extracurricular Execution Squad; basically, a group of Persona users). It is safe to say that somehow, while searching for the truth behind Eiichiro's death, she was discovered by Shuji Ikutsuki, the chairman behind S.E.E.S., and decided to join them and move to their dorm in Iwatodai. This all happens very recently before the game's storyline begins.
The first appearance we see of Yukari in the game are quick, brief scenes during the opening of herself in her bedroom, sitting on the floor by a sink. The water is running and she's sweating, panting heavily while wielding what looks to be a gun. She's aiming it towards her head, but her hands are shaking. In the end, she can't do it; she drops the 'weapon' to the floor between her whimpers. A scene that gives the first impression of a young girl failing to commit suicide is actually Yukari attempting to summon her Persona for the first time, yet she is unable to do that. The object is not a gun, but an Evoker, something that looks exactly like one and, in a sense, works in a similar manner (the user "shoots" themselves in the head, but it does not cause them any actual harm).
Later than evening, when the main protagonist reaches his destination at the dorm (he is a "silent main character" without a given name-- only one that you choose to give him. He's given the name Minato Arisato in the manga, and for the sake of the app I'll continue calling him so.), the first person who sees him enter is Yukari herself. Because of his bad timing of arrival, Yukari is quick to be hostile towards him, before Mitsuru intervenes and keeps her from causing any harm. Finally, it's safe, and the two introduce themselves to Minato. They learn he is a transfer student staying at the dorm from then on, and Yukari shows him where his room is, asking is he managed okay on the way there and urging him to keep what happened a secret.
Things are kept brief and simple for a while, and in the meantime Yukari does things such as show Minato to the school and find out they're in the same class. What Minato isn't aware of is that, at night, while he's sleeping and the Dark Hour occurs, Mitsuru, Ikutsuki, and Yukari are monitoring him. They conclude that because he has managed to retain his human form during it, that he possibly could have the potential to summon a Persona.
All is quiet until one night, during another monitoring session, Mitsuru gets a message from another S.E.E.S. member, Akihiko, about an abnormally strong Shadow that is chasing him to the dorm. Once he gets there, it seems as if there's more than one of them attacking the dorm, so Mitsuru instructs Yukari to go wake Minato and take him to safety. She obliges, wakes him up, but doesn't have the time to explain what's going on. Their initial route of escaping through the back door doesn't work, so they both run to the roof of the dorm. They reach it, but when they think they're finally safe, they quickly realize the Shadows have climbed the walls of the dorm and made it to the top as well.
From here, Yukari is determined to protect Minato. "These monsters... We call them Shadows," she explains, though behind her words, she is still reluctant to use her Evoker. She pulls it out, aiming it towards her head with hesitation. Yukari is able to pull the trigger, yet with anxiety and panic mixed inside her as well, unfortunately her power does little to hold the Shadows back. Without any trouble they're able to attack her down, and cause her Evoker to slide across the floor next to Minato's feet. He picks it up and follows Yukari's example, only this time he's able to destroy the Shadows attacking them. Afterwards he faints, and as much as Yukari tries to wake him up, he won't.
Jump forward to a week later, where they're both in a hospital room. Minato finally wakes up, and Yukari says she's been by his bedside for a lot of the time, worried he wouldn't wake up. Claiming that it wouldn't be fair that she knew about his past but he didn't know about hers, Yukari explains it to him, about her family situation, the relationship between her mother, and why she decided to join S.E.E.S. Once done, she thanks him for listening and says she'll tell the others he woke up.
A day or two passes, more things regarding the Dark Hour and Persona are explained, and they gain a new member, Junpei, who is another classmate of Yukari's. And by her reaction when Akihiko first introduces him to them, she isn't entirely pleased by this, either, because of his class-clown attitude. With their growing numbers, Mitsuru decides they have enough people to start exploring Tartarus. Just before midnight the group goes to the front entrance of Gekkoukan High. By midnight, Tartarus grows in size right before their eyes. They go inside and decide to explore the tower, for the first time without highly endangering themselves. "Do you think you'll be able to summon your Persona without hesitation?" Akihiko asks, and, although still somewhat unsure, Yukari answers with a decisive yes.
It's not shown through any special cutscene or event, but rather the gameplay itself that Yukari finally gets over her issues and uses her Evoker to summon Io, her Persona. It's... a little anti-climatic, if anything.
Now, S.E.E.S. is able to explore Tartarus during the nights they need to. The next big thing to happen is on the next month, May, during the full moon. Mitsuru traced and unusually powerful Shadow lurking on the nearby monorail, so it's decided the team will go to investigate. Minato, Yukari, and Junpei are chosen to go in. Frozen in time, they find one of the trains on the rail, which is where the Shadow's presence was strongest. They climb in, but as soon as they are, all the doors are shut tight, indicating it knows they're there. A weaker Shadow reveals itself and flees, and without thinking Junpei runs after it by himself. It's up to Yukari and Minato to go after him-- then stop the train, which suddenly began moving at high speeds thanks to the Shadow's influence. They run through and find Junpei, then go forward and fight the Shadow there. It's defeated, and thanks to quick thinking the train is stopped before it crashes into another one in front of it (though, with little help from Yukari; she spent most of that time freaking out over what they should do). The day is saved, and they return home.
By the end of the month, Akihiko returns to the dorm from the hospital and finally healed from the injuries he got from last month's events. Not only that, but he met a girl there named Fuuka that had the potential to summon a Persona. She doesn't seem to have any fighting capabilities, but they agree that they should try to find and talk to her anyway. Only, soon after, Fuuka mysteriously disappears and is nowhere to be found. Rumors around her mostly say she's sick and in a hospital, but she isn't the only one with stories floating around. Apparently, three girls fell unconscious at three different nights in front of the school and had to be hospitalized. Ghost stories quickly rose, and Junpei brought this into light; here it is discovered that Yukari is afraid of ghosts, so she's determined to disprove the ghost story.
About a week later, Yukari tells Minato and Junpei that she's gathered new information about the girls, thus succeeding in proving the ghost story wrong. The three girls weren't in the same class in school, and said to have had nothing in common, but late at night they hung out in the back alley of Port Island station, which is a place where the bad crowds hung out. Not exactly thinking through her plan thoroughly, Yukari decides the three of them will go to just that place the next night and investigate the matter. Junpei objects, but Yukari insists. The next night, they do exactly that... Only it doesn't quite go as planned. The kids back there immediately become hostile towards them, and Yukari's mouth doesn't help them much on their mission, either. The situation doesn't look good for them until Shinjiro, another student in their school, intervenes. He scares the rest of the kids away and reprimands Yukari and the two boys for ever deciding to come back there. He also knows the reason they were back there, so he begins to explain that the three girls who were hospitalized always talked about Fuuka, and it turns out they constantly bullied her. Not only that, but Fuuka hadn't been home in over a week. They're surprised to find this out, thank Shinjiro for the information, and go home.
The next day, Yukari and the two want to talk to Fuuka's home room teacher, Ekoda, about her situation, yet when they arrive there that morning they see Mitsuru already in the office. Natsuki, one of the girls that bullied Fuuka, tells her side of the story: They did in fact bully her, and one night locked Fuuka in the gym. Afraid she might hurt herself while locked in there, one of the girls went to go let her out, but instead was found the next morning unconscious. The next two nights, the same happened with two others. When questioned if anything strange happened before the incidents, Natsuki reveals they heard voices calling their names. The members of S.E.E.S. discover that Shadows are attacking humans specifically, and why some people experience the Dark Hour. They also conclude that Fuuka must still be stuck in Tartarus, and plan that night to break into the school and enter Tartarus the same way Fuuka did, through the gym.
Before the Dark Hour occurs, they break in. Yukari and Minato find the keys to the gym in the faculty office and return to the main hallway to meet the others. There, it is decided that Yukari will stay behind with Mitsuru while the other three search for Fuuka in Tartarus. Midnight comes, and they spend quite a bit of time at the base of the tower trying to get a hold of the other three, but communication is full of heavy static at best. At the top, they manage to find Fuuka... but at the bottom, things aren't going so well. They return to find two powerful Shadows attacking Yukari and Mitsuru, and anything they try doesn't work. Amongst the chaos, the two Shadows are eventually defeated.
This night brought out another realization: That the unusually powerful Shadows they have been fighting tend to appear during the full moon. From then on, the group is prepared to face something strong for each full moon, and that there are twelve of them in all-- at that point, there are eight left.
The next day, Fuuka is formally introduced to the members of S.E.E.S. She agrees to join, yet Yukari protests her hasty entrance to the group. She felt as though Mitsuru had pressured her into joining, rather than letting Fuuka think it over first. Fuuka protests, but it doesn't change Yukari's mind; she still thinks Mitsuru would rather have more strength behind their mission, instead of thinking what's best for its members.
The month starts passing by, and as the full moon draws closer, everyone prepares for a Shadow to appear soon. A week before this, Yukari asks a favor from Fuuka: to research more information about their school, specifically from ten years ago, because of something suspicious that happened then. She explains she simply wants to know what happened, and that Mitsuru acts strange and never explains anything, so she's probably hiding something from them.
The full moon comes by, and the next Shadow is detected to be in a love hotel somewhere in the city. At first, Yukari hesitates to join them, but after Junpei teases her about being scared she demands to be able to fight the Shadow to prove she isn't. They all arrive at the hotel, and go in to find the Shadow and fight it. It's found in one of the rooms and is easily defeated. Afterwards, everything goes black... and the next thing Yukari realizes, she's walking out of the shower in one of the rooms. Not only that, Minato's there, too. Yukari shows a fine display of slapping someone across the face and flees back into the bathroom to change out of the towel, and Fuuka is finally able to get in contact with them again. It turns out a different Shadow had been controlling their minds and got them separated. Everyone finds each other again, breaks the seal on the door the other Shadow is in, and goes to fight that one. Naturally, Yukari is angry as ever once she goes in. It's fought and defeated, albeit with some loss of dignity.
The next day it's decided there won't be a Tartarus run that night, and Yukari explains she needs to talk to Fuuka anyway. A few days go by, and Ikutsuki decides to hold a group meeting. Before it goes on further, Yukari interrupts-- she wants Mitsuru to reveal any information she knew about the inccidents at Gekkoukan ten years ago. Reluctantly, she does; about her grandfather and the birth if the Dark Hour.
This puts the group into a bit of a slump for some time, but after some discussion they all decide to head to Yakushima once summer break begins to lighten the mood. They all agree.
Exams are done, and they head on a boat to Yakushima to enjoy their vacation. A day into it, Mitsuru's father-- also there at the time-- decides to reveal a video. It's a video that Eiichiro, Yukari's father, took of the inccident before the catastrophe got the better of him. The video looks to be proof that, because of him, the experiment both followed through and failed. Once finished, Yukari gets upset and runs off to the beach's shore. Minato runs after her, and from there Yukari goes more into depth about what's happened to her in the past. They finish up and return to their rooms for the evening. The rest of the vacation is simply wacky beach adventures.
August doesn't have very much in terms of Yukari, although they do gain two more members and discover they have a new enemy, as well.
September is almost the same, except with a kidnapping involved.
October comes, and it starts off the same as the first two months. A full moon mission is completed, but by the end of the night... a fellow teammate is shot and killed. The next day, October 5th comes, where everyone learns how to cope with the loss.
There are a few more months to go after this-- up to January-- but because Yukari is being pulled from before that, that information may be irrelevant.
Please give us a detailed description of your character's personality:
The one thing Yukari's classmates will say the most about her is that she's quite the popular girl in her grade, mostly because of her upbeat attitude. Overall she is a friendly, and in a way "preppy" person, although the side to her that is easily angered is not hidden to her classmates either.
Three things a person will quickly find out about her is that she isn't afraid to speak her mind, has determination beyond her limits, and is very stubborn at times. Whenever she feels that something isn't right, or doesn't agree with the decision from a teammate, she will definitely let you know. Albeit there have been a few times where she has hesitated, such as times where she knows her opinion won't hold much weight. Yukari's determination and will is a force to be reckoned with; during battles, she makes constant threatening remarks towards foes that knock her down. She doesn't go down without a fight-- or makes sure she doesn't go down at all, but instead bringing down her opponent instead. When she was still new to S.E.E.S., at the beginning of the story, brief scenes are shown of her attempting (or more like trying to force herself) to summon her Persona, but failing, because of the Evoker's appearance.
Underneath all that, Yukari hides a lot of the self motivation she has from everyone around her. Her number one drive was always to find out about the truth behind her father's death, and put herself on any path that meant she would find it out, even ones that could potentionally harm her (such as joining S.E.E.S. in the first place). She believed nothing but the best about him, stubbornly believing all that he did was only for the greater good of people. Finding out the truth about him only made Yukari's belief in him stronger-- no longer did she move on to find out all the real reasons for everything, but in addition she continued to fight for what Eiichiro put his faith in as well.
A side to her hates having to depend on people for help, because she wants to prove she can be an independant person. Yukari will often tell a person she doesn't need it either, and when it's given she will get flustered and upset, even when she does appreciate the assistance. She admits she'd never be able to tell anyone this, though. When angered, she's prone to yelling first, then running off; her temper blows over quick, as she's fast to apologize, yet a little awkwardly from her side. However, when it comes to certain people, Yukari knows how to hold a grudge. A lot of it is directed towards Mitsuru, who she never really seemed to like from the very beginning.
In a lot of other ways Yukari is a very typical teenaged girl. She enjoys hanging out, and loves shopping even more (she says she tends to deplete her monthly funds a lot). Again, she's a friendly person willing to aim for the best in things, and waits to aim for the better outcome in situations. With close friends she's very lax and casual with them, easy to tease and doesn't hold back when throwing around her sarcasm. At times, her words can lean a bit on the mean side (especially when it comes to her classmate Junpei). In the end it's mostly just her poking her fun around.
Please give us a detailed physical description of your character:
There's nothing particularly striking about Yukari's appearance, although she is an eye-appealing young woman. She's thin and slender, standing at 5"3'. Her hair is a very light brown color, almost looking orange, with a length that barely reaches her shoulders and flips out, and has brown eyes. She certainly doesn't give off the appearance of being a fighter.
What point in time are you taking your character from when he/she appears at Landel's?: After the October full moon event. Specifically, the date was October 5, 2009.
What kinds of magical/special/crazy powers does your character have, if any?:
(This is a very much updated and more in-depth revision from the original app as of 12/06/08.)
In short, Yukari is a Persona user.
In English, for those at home who have no idea what this means, a Persona is like an extension of one-self that can be summoned, a physical manifestation of one's psyche, that can be used to do typical JRPG things. I could get into all sorts of details about this but I'll spare you from them for now. At any rate, when summoned, they can be used to do magic and/or deal physical blows, depending on what sort of Persona you have.
Yukari is the token healer of the group, but since her in-game stats have her leaning to be more "magically" (I put it in quotes because they never actually refer it as magic, but rather, "skills". Whatever this implies, I'll leave it up to you.) inclined, she can also cast some powerful stuff, leaving her to be a pretty balanced character to use; in turn, she's not exactly the most physically powerful character ever, but since she uses a bow and arrows anyway I'm sure her strength wouldn't matter in the end (if it matters any, though, her hits are still pretty decent). At any rate, the only support skill that would probably realistically work in Damned is Dia (the equivalent to a healing spell) anyway, since everything else is status effect stuff.
Offensively, Yukari's element is wind; here's where things get a little tricky, because while in a video game you don't really need to make sense of these things and pass it off as gameplay elements, realistically speaking... well, it's wind. It kinda sounds like a lame type of magic to be using. Of course, I doubt I'm the only one with this sort of issue, so hopefully anyone who comes across this scenario will play along. That said, this kind of skill is called Garu (and on top of that, get upgrades like Garula, Garudyne, etc.). Instead of trying to describe what this does, here's a Youtube clip of what she does in battle. Or if you want something a little more powerful, this one works, too (go about 3:35 in, and you'll see a Garudyne skill-- it's not Yukari herself casting it unfortunately, but it's the same thing). Hopefully that suffices. That said, I gather it's possible for her to do things like a breeze or a gust of wind should the time call for it, but also cast something with enough force to actually do some damage that'll hurt someone. Like I said, it's tricky, but it can be worked with, right?
As you may have noticed if you looked at the videos, the characters do indeed shoot themselves in the face in order to burn their dread summon their Persona. WTF all you want, but... there ya go. However, these guns aren't real ones, and they don't cause any actual harm to the user. It just looks and works an awful lot like one. But hey, it's a pretty neat way to totally freak people out. Anyway, to get the last of the details out of the way, after face-shooting herself, Yukari is able to summon the Persona Io, who looks like this for the curious. And if you're a mythology geek, yes, it's very much like the Greek legend about Io, but rest assured there is no raping involved. ¬_¬ *cough*
And I think that's it! If there are any other questions they can be asked.
If present, how do you plan to tweak those powers to make him/her appropriately hindered in the setting of Landel's?:
(Revised as of 02/12/09.)
Well, Yukari got an Evoker back, so she'll be able to use her Persona after all! It can only be used five times total between the P3 Collective, three times per person. Also, the strength of her skills are severely dampened; Dia only works on superficial wounds (although we've gathered that's how it only really worked realistically, even without the limitations anyway), and Garu only has enough strength to say ... push something kinda heavy, more or less, but the wind itself won't cause any damage (because lol wind, we already covered this).
Does your character have any other non-magical skills or abilities that we should know about?:
As a member of the archery club at her school, Yukari wields a bow and arrows during battle. She excels with that, but has no skill with any other kind of weapon. Other than that, she's your typical teenage girl.
Augh. /)_u Curse these things.