Mio Mifune
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-- Detective Kurosawa, Hitachi P.D.
Nekomata, the wannabe slasher villain. Strained to her limits and faced with an inescapable paradox, the young woman decided she would solve her issues with a knife.
Table of Contents
BackstoryAround a year before the events of Summer Leagues, Mio Mifune was an ordinary university student working towards a degree in a relatively profitable business related major- To her, an obligation she despised. With no particular talent nor connections in her real passion, movies, it seemed to be the only way forward... This would change abruptly, but not for the better.
Needless to say, a year later and this has not gone as planned for Mio. Despite learning more about her unusual abilities, she has yet to claim a single life. Worse yet, her attempts to even test the waters for gaining some kind of infamy have been overshadowed by the emergence of another urban legend local to her prefecture; a mysterious cult called 'The Process'.
PersonalityUnder typical circumstances, Mio comes across timid and a bit overly polite towards strangers. Although part of this is a natural coyness which became worse over the course of her solitude, she also feels conflicted in getting to know people personally given her nefarious intentions. The result is a difficult to shake nervous awkwardness on first blush.
Regarding those nefarious intentions- Mio has deliberately cultivated a strongly cynical, misanthropic attitude towards others and towards herself. Largely this has been kept internal, making quiet judgements over any and all flaws she can find, even petty, trivial, or unavoidable traits. |
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Abilities
WORMS
The first psychical ability Mio discovered, WORMS warps her through a tunnel in spacetime to any destination of her choosing, though it seems to only work when she's seen the place she intends to go and thus can visualize it. Externally, this ability appears instant. Mio's found that she can use it rather liberally, but will get sick if she attempts to use it with excessive frequency.
PINS
After months of constant headaches, Mio attempted to channel her willpower towards cutting off the pain and inadvertently discovered that she could block out the feeling of pain from her body selectively. As a result she can psychically reject pain signals, allowing her to give the impression of being unaffected by wounds. Incidentally, it seems her head pains aren't affected by this and have continued ceaselessly.
SHINE
Less an individual skill and more a trait of her ESP field, Mio's psychic energy applies itself to objects which she subconsciously views as extensions of herself, such as tools and weapons. This grants them unusual and supernatural properties.
The stronger the personal connection, the better a conduit the object can be.
Although being sentimental about an object is a surefire way to make it a strong conduit for SHINE, other feelings such as desperation can establish it faster(if she's relying upon an improvised weapon to save her life for instance, it will immediately become a strong conduit).
The specific effects of shine vary depending on what Mio is intending to do with the object as it will be affected to suit her fantasy of what it should do under the circumstances.
For example, Mio's knife; Sterling.
Sterling is an excellent conduit due to Mio's sentimentality towards it. As a result, it has developed its own telepathic field making it unreasonably sturdy and sharp. In some cases excess energy from Mio's own field will pool into the blade, turning it white-hot(this would happen due to high stress or passion on Mio's part). The knife's field also "magnetizes" to Mio's own, in effect Sterling always ends up where Mio needs it even after being separated from her.
To sum it up, SHINE can make even ordinary objects dangerous towards powerful foes when in Mio's hands. And there's likely even more possible uses of SHINE- However Mio herself isn't fully aware of the ability in general and at time of the audition assumes that it only works with Sterling.
Strengths
Misanthrope
The most dangerous effect of Mio's outlook is that she is highly perceptive and weaponizes that perceptiveness as a way to prod others for flaws. She's become quite adept at finding insecurities or blind spots and will try to exploit anything she finds ruthlessly.
Resourceful
Mio is shrewd thinker, and also has the benefit of having studied how to make and set traps with improvised materials in her efforts to become a better prospective killer. To note, the longer she is in the tournament, the more time she will have to scout and prepare traps between rounds. Given her ability to teleport, she can easily set pre-made traps around an arena as well.
Prowler
Mio is great at following people undetected due to her abilities and general nondescript appearance. She will attempt to stalk and learn about possible opponents prior to a round. If successful, she will tailor any traps she prepares to them.
She also may become overzealous and reveal that she's trailed someone in order to learn something she can't manage to piece together without confrontation(or simply to intimidate them).
Weaknesses
Amateur
Especially from the start, Mio doesn't fully understand how to use her abilities. She's clever and will learn with experience, but presently there's a lot more that she's capable of than what she actually knows how to do.
Doubtful
Some amount of doubt underpins her at all times, both in whether she's capable of being a killer and whether she really truly wants to be. Her goal is myopic and destructive, and although she's committed to it, some part of her is constantly aware of those things. This can lead to hesitance or under-confidence both broadly, and in crucial moments.
Wimp
Ultimately Mio is just a small woman, and regular human physically. Though she compensates using her abilities, and will attempt to give the impression of being an unstoppable monster, she's subject to all the frailty of her human body. On top of that it would be a stretch to call her especially coordinated- She has her moments, but also can be quite clumsy.
Gallery
Author's Notes
- My intention with each of Mio's abilities was to find a way to justify horror tropes using powers typical to psychic characters in fiction. WORMS allows her to do the trick where the monster seems to have been evaded, but then appears somewhere unexpected. PINS lets her give the impression of being unfazed by harm, mimicking the unstoppable killer trope. SHINE can help in a number of ways, but chiefly lets her cause excessive destruction with ordinary objects.
- A secondary narrative purpose to SHINE(and Sterling in particular) is to give Mio a scaling ability; Because the ESP is so concentrated in her weapon, it becomes just as lethal to more powerful characters as a normal knife would be to a normal person. She's as flimsy as a regular person, but can still pose an immense threat to anyone. You might call her a glass dagger.
- Mio's mask is actually the older design of the regional mascot for the Hitachi Prefecture, a fictionalized region. The region's mascot is a Nekomata, but it was decided that the previous design appeared too malicious and was redesigned to be a bit more moe'. Mio actually likes both versions, but uses the mask from the old version for its vintage aesthetic.