Niko

[Light Beams]

Niko fires beams of light horizontally or vertically that do small, repeated damage as long as they’re touching the enemy. Can inflict negative status effects such as dizziness, confusion or impaired vision.

[Healing Light]

Niko can summon a large healing light that slowly heals anyone or anything caught in it and inflicts positive status ailments like regeneration and slightly increased strength and speed.

[Spark]

Quickly causes a small flash of sparkling light that can disorientate opponents. Does little damage.

[Glow]

Niko’s firefly bulb is often glowing, making seeing and navigating dark spaces easier. He can turn it on or off, but a weird side effect of his curse is it’ll sometimes flicker on/off involuntarily.

[Poison Blood]

Like actual fireflies, Niko’s blood is poisonous to consume just in case any competitor wants to try that. This is NOT a result of his curse; it's always been like that.

[Curse]

Niko’s curse from the cult mages. Slowly fills his body with a mysterious substance that will start weakening him and putting a strain on his body before it kills him. After which his whole body will turn into a crystal-like material that can be cut up or used for energy soon after. Physical symptoms it (so far) induced in him include coughing, physical weakness, low energy, skin turning pale and weight gain (despite it making him thin as a stick) Niko’s blood, if touched, will electrocute opponents as a result of the curse. His blood is dark purplish crimson instead of red.

It’s unknown how long he has to live.

[Flashbang]

Niko’s ultimate attack. A massive ball of light is fired ahead of him before it explodes causing massive damage, possible blindness and major status ailments for anyone hit by it. Niko’s physical state already severely limits how much magic he can use so this attack will only be able to be used once in the entire tournament.

[Fighting Style]

Due to his physical state, it’s basically guaranteed he’ll be in the Assist role the whole OCT but that doesn't mean he’s useless. He actively tries to provide Rikka with strategy whenever he can, and his observant nature helps him identify weaknesses in both fighting style and character of his and Rikka’s opponents. Whether Rikka listens or not can vary, but Niko generally tries to stand back for obvious reasons and will cast heals and his AOE and DPS attacks whenever it's safe to.

Strengths

Observant and a good strategist. He’s good at reading people and predicting opponent’s behaviour.
Good listener and empathetic despite his background, makes it easy for people to like him.
Bulb increases his ability to help him and RIkka navigate in dark spaces.
Spells have a long range.
His spells don’t actually use that much energy (for the most part) so despite his physical state, he can still use them for a while before he gets too weak to or uses up his magic for the day.

Weaknesses

Physically extremely weak, has little mobility and energy.
Niko sometimes will start to give up on trying to provide strategy to Rikka after she hasn’t listened to him for too long.
Since he’s gotten physically weak from the early stages of his curse, his flying ability is limited to a few minutes at a time (three at most,) as a result he wears a jacket that doesn’t have holes for his wings to fit out of.
Spells are more support oriented than attack oriented with the exception of Light Beams, Spark (which is weak) and Flashbang. Makes it hard to break Rikka out of dangerous situations she gets into.

Gallery


[Ref Sheet]	[item description]

Author's Notes

Niko stutters often due to nervousness and social awkwardness. He also more often than not doesn’t use shortened words like don’t and can’t.
Niko’s gestures and facial expressions tend to be much more subtle and less overly expressive than Rikka’s.
As far as seriously injuring/killing is concerned, I don’t want either to be too seriously hurt in Round 1 and killing is off limits 100% too. It’s very unlikely I’d allow it if I were to make it to later Rounds.
Niko doesn’t swear. If he ever did, it’d take a profoundly emotionally intense situation.
Currently don’t have this ready, but under his puffy clothes, he’s both skinny and has a bit of purple skin discoloration on his wrists, lower forearms and abdomen. This is planned to spread as rounds progress.
Feel free to play with how Niko’s bulb works with his clothes. I know it’s a bit illogical (and usually I like to have those sorts of features on characters make some sort of sense) but I played a little loosely with it here.
His wings are retractable, his bulb and antennas aren’t.
Niko’s antennas can move independently. They often correlate to his emotional state but I don’t have a set “sad athena angles, surprised athena angles” etc so feel free to play with how they express his emotions. Just note, they always curve even if only slightly. They are never perfectly straight.
Though I didn’t heavily worldbuild (since they are OCT made characters) hybrids like RIkka and Niko are fairly normal, though you may get teased or bullied depending on what animal you have features of. As well as their respective shadow and light magic, it's just banned in some places. (Schools, shops, cinemas.)