Basic Information
Name:Shiori Miyamairi
Nickname/Alias/etc.: Shiori; LinguaFranca (online handle)
Gender: Female
Age:26
Height: 5’4”
Weight: 95 pounds
Home District: West Woodlake, Hedgemount
Appearance
Hair Colour: Mousy Brown
Eye Colour: Green
Ethnicity: British-Japanese
Physical Appearance: Shiori is possessed of two primary physical qualities in direct juxtaposition to one another - her face is jubilant and radiant, full of love and laughter and life, and every expression is emotive in the extreme. Big green eyes and full, slightly chubby cheeks highlight her natural bubbliness and friendliness, and it is rare to see her with anything other than a smile plastered across her face. Full lips and well-kept teeth lend her a disarmingly charming smile, and she often outshines any light source in the room with a warmth that seems to emanate from her in waves.
In direct contrast, the rest of Shiori's body is meek and slight, more often than not escaping notice. She is smaller than average, and has a wiry frame - she has a smaller than average bust, very rarely shows off any of her body, and keeps her hair in a long ponytail - a practical and comfortable situation that seems to edify the rest of her appearance. Given that Shiori often busies herself with books or other tasks that require her focus, she often has her head buried in something and this leads to her looking extremely unremarkable. She is not short enough to be the focus of attention, and her fashion sense plain enough that with a book she could likely meld into the background as some sort of person-shaped furniture. Shiori’s features are fairly heavily Japanese, not really having taken much from her British heritage.
While Shiori does not frequent the gym, her naturally wandering disposition and constant walking around often have left her in surprisingly good physical state for an archivist. Though her duties are not conventionally physically taxing, they have left Shiori with a layer of wiry muscle and a lean overall appearance.
Attire: Shiori's fashion sense is, above all else, designed to bring her the most comfort possible while attempting to not hinder her in any way. As a result, she tends to wear loose and flowing clothing. She can very often be found in jeans and an ill-fitting t-shirt, especially when working, and at home prefers to wear a more traditional yukata (though a little more loosely than her mother would like). She wears a lot of deep blue or emerald green colours, and has a particular knack for somehow making these colours clash and generally making her outfits look a bit off. Shiori’s a bit of a swing and a miss in the fashion department.
Personality
Innate & Outward Personality: Shiori is, fundamentally, an avid reader. This shapes almost every aspect of her personality, from her deeply inquisitive nature to her gentle sense of patience. Calm and collected, and yet eternally hungry for knowledge. Shiori is like an open book, easy to read, and is as welcome as a book on a long and boring trip - she gives off an inherent stability, a sense of tranquility and peace, and above all else is joyous in everything that she does. Shiori finds a way to be happy in practically every situation, whether it be diligently doing her duty or delving into the mysteries of the cosmos. She is not always exuberant, but practically everything she does leaves her with a demure but genuine smile.
Shiori is always happy to help someone in need, always happy to take time out of her schedule to assist others, and always happy to teach anyone who genuinely wants to learn. She has an exceptional eagerness for life and her work, and while she is always happy and calm this does not necessarily translate to her being still. Shiori frequently roams, even while reading or studying, and prefers not to stay still for too long unless she is well and truly engrossed by something that she is doing. She frequently switches between reading one book and another, only to abruptly stop and make tea. While well-meaning, Shiori is often clumsy in that she simply does whatever she likes best, and her capricious whims often take her on long jaunts of non-sequiturs. Despite her inherent wanderlust and borderline inability to stay still and focus on one subject only unless it really demands her attention, Shiori always remembers what it was that she was doing and returns to it after she has finished working on the tangent that took her away from her previous task at hand.
Sometimes Shiori struggles with her racing mind, but she is almost never melancholy. She tries her utmost to be respectful and polite, though can seem dismissive when she excuses herself from a duty to do something else that she feels is a better use of her time or simply strikes her fancy. Though a gifted individual, Shiori is often a little naive and does not read well into social cues or subtexts. She frequently takes social cues literally, though in her own light-hearted sort of way, and ends up missing the mark ever so slightly in what many consider to be a 'cute' fashion. She is far less prone to making these sorts of miscommunications with people she is intimately familiar with, and in turn they learn how Shiori works.
Many individuals that read too much are wont to have periods of being crestfallen and melancholic, though Shiori seems to be almost terminally happy. She could not explain the concept of sadness to someone if she tried, only really able to explain what she could learn through a book or through watching someone. The parts of her mind that understand existence and moderate happiness seem to be completely and utterly separate, and though she often speaks of traditionally "depressing" topics, it is always with a gentle musical timbre and with joy in her heart, often to the confusion of those she is talking to. Shiori simply does not know how to feel sad or angry (at least consciously), and if she is ever driven to these emotions they manifest without her really knowing what they are, which tends to leave her a little dazed. If ever in this state, Shiori instinctively seeks out those she is close to and tries to work through whatever problems she may have with them. Shiori’s inward and outward personality are literally identical. She couldn’t hide what she is or how she feels if she tried. Also, Shiori is gay as fuck.
Hobbies/Interests: Reading – Shiori is a lover of all things bookish, and spends the majority of her days reading and internalising volumes of text. Shiori can devour the contents of a book in a staggeringly short period of time, and is able to store all of that knowledge in the chaotic depths of her mind. Shiori’s love of books is so extreme that she has a very physical and visceral reaction to their mistreatment, and often chastises those who put books in damaging situations.
Languages – In order to consume more books, Shiori has mastered the reading and writing of several languages. She is able to fluently read and write in Classical Greek, Aramaic (and Syriac), and Sanskrit, but having only ever had a written education in these languages is not capable of speaking or understanding them aurally. Shiori is, however, fluent in English, Japanese, Latin, and Spanish and can speak, listen, read, and write in these languages. She is particularly interested in the etymology of the various languages she knows, and is able to take educated guesses at languages that are etymologically similar to those she knows.
Organisation – In contrast to her extremely chaotic mind, Shiori abhors chaos in the physical world. She is a serial tidier, and keeps things catalogued and in orderly fashion as much as physically possible. She will literally reorganise your entire bookshelf before she sits down if she notices that so much as a single volume is askew (and she is very perceptive on this mark). Shiori is, in fact, so obsessed with the idea of order that she has been known to do housework for close friends because she actively enjoys it. No wonder she makes so many friends.
Skills/Talents: (Almost) Perfect Recall – Shiori can recall practically anything from any book that she has ever committed to memory, down to the sentence number and the page. Unfortunately, Shiori does not often commit books to memory due to the sheer volume of them that she gets through – though anything that sufficiently piqued her interest and is purely factual is a likely candidate. She is also able to perfectly recall the location of any subset of any system she has either designed or organised, so she knows the location and title of every book in any collection she manages.
Insight – Shiori is able to connect dots that many cannot simply due to her vast reserve of information and scattered way of thinking. She can connect seemingly unlinked phenomena together with an explanation that is usually as nonsensical as it is correct, and can pick up on things that many people would typically miss. Conversely, most of the time she does not understand a lot of normal logical inferences.
Cookery - Shiori has a particular fondness of Japanese food, and has learned to cook it to a fairly adept degree. She always makes far too much food, however, and typically shares with her neighbours (to varying degrees of success).
Goals/Motivation Shiori knows that the universe is eventually going to die an entropic heat death, and expresses this as an intense desire to make her life as happy as possible while she exists. Shiori’s mind is too scattered and too wide-reaching to really give herself a five-year plan. She does, however, have a hunger for knowledge and is particularly interested in Metahuman affairs.
History/Bio:Shiori was born to a British father and Japanese mother in central England, where she was raised for the first sixteen years of her life. Shiori had a fairly normal childhood by all accounts - the only real oddity being that she was raised to speak both English and Japanese due to her multicultural heritage (which is not particularly odd). Shiori excelled in school, was loved by her parents, and made many friends. She lived for most of her early life knowing only contentedness, and had no plans to change that. When the time came for Shiori to choose a college or a sixth form to continue her education, she instead signed up to an exchange programme which led to her going to Japan for two years to further hone her study of the language and "find herself and connect with her heritage", as her parents had put it.
Shiori's two years in Japan were fairly uneventful as far as drama goes. She perfected her Japanese, continued to excel in studies, and returned home after her two years were over. The British political climate had been unstable and leaning conservative for a while, and when she returned Shiori's parents decided that that was rather against their more liberal sensibilities. They escaped the slew of murders of British politicians by a year or two and emigrated to the United States of America to pursue a more liberal existence.
Shiori did not move with her parents immediately as she was due to start University, and ended up enrolling near Baybridge. She began her studies on classic literature and quickly excelled, learning the classical languages at an almost staggering pace and producing her dissertation two years early. She then specialised as an archivist, seeking to read as many rare works of writing as she possibly could. She was fast-tracked in this regard also, earning her Masters in Information Management and Preservation in four months. The university offered her a job managing their archives, and Shiori accepted the job, settling in Baybridge fairly early with a decent salary and a job that she loved.
As time went on, Shiori became increasingly interested in the metahuman appearances, and spent much of her free time engrossed deeply in research. When the Overload Crisis struck, Shiori doubled down on her efforts to uncover and understand what was going on. It was during this time that she discovered her own power - and promptly got into contact with DOVE to see what needed to be done. She was placed under watch and carefully developed her understanding of her powers, testing their limits and occasionally using them to procure rare texts for preservation that she ordinarily would not have been able to. Shiori's life as a metahuman proved to be fairly similar to her life prior to the discovery - working in a closed environment with little exposure to the public eye and careful moderation of her power largely left her untouched.
Now, in the present day, Shiori is even more interested in the metahuman-related affairs than she was previously - having lived through the consequences of the actions of the Founding Family, she seeks to bring to light as much information as possible in her own little way.
Relationships
Family: Kinjiro Miyamairi – Mother
Shiori’s mother is an art teacher who specialises in traditional Japanese art. She has a good, if overprotective, relationship with her daughter and the two regularly meet up to catch up.
Dan Miyamairi – Father
Shiori’s father is a lawyer, and while he cares for Shiori he is easily exhausted by her antics and doesn’t spend as much time with her as her mother does. The two have a strong relationship, regardless, but only really see each other for special occasions.
Dynamics: | Rori Aherne |
|
Good |
Friend; Neighbour |
"Maybe Rori could use some snacks? I get the feeling they aren’t eating well…" |
Shiori lives in the house across the road from Rori, and tries to be as friendly and neighbourly as possible to everyone – but has a soft spot for Rori, who she notes is a terrible cook and does not eat particularly well. The two have been fast friends for a year or so, and Shiori often appears at Rori’s doorstep with homemade Japanese food, as she likes to make a lot of food but dislikes eating alone.
Abilities
Power Class: Other
Power: Portal Creation
Shiori’s power is, simply put, the ability to bridge two locations on the physical plane. She can create a portal mid-air that leads to any destination she has in mind, provided that she has an image in her mind of where precisely she wishes to create the two portals, and any physical matter is capable of moving through these portals. Shiori's portals specifically bridge the space between the two locations that she creates them at, which causes objects that move through them to retain any momentum or other physical force that they may have. Despite this, extraneous energy is not carried through the portals - if an explosion were to occur in front of one portal, only physical matter (such as shrapnel) would move through the portal, the rest would simply be dispersed upon contact with the portal, though depending on the level of energy this could destroy it.
Shiori's speed and ability to maintain portals is reliant on her ability to imagine the location that she wishes to create the portal to. For an intimately familiar space, it is an instinctive and strong connection that appears instantly - for somewhere she has only read about or seen pictures of but never travelled to herself, the connection takes a few minutes and the portal is unstable. As vivid imagery is key to maintaining these portals, Shiori often creates unique images at locations she frequently travels to, such as her home, and draws them in chalk as a sort of "anchor". Anything particularly striking that she has memorised is enough to act as an anchor open a portal, though the success is contingent on her anchor being undisturbed.
Shiori's power can be used to create more permanent portals, provided that they are able to be sustained with an energy source separate from Shiori herself. Shiori herself can only maintain a portal for up to five minutes, and can only maintain two at a time at an absolute maximum. Additionally, each portal that Shiori creates and maintains herself is only able to translocate physical matter six times - this means that she could make three return trips on her own, or facilitate travel for six people one way. She is capable of opening as many portals as she likes, but only while she has the energy to do so. Typically, Shiori can open up to three pairs of portals per day, though this can be increased if Shiori needs to exert herself. Normal use of the portals does not tax Shiori, however, as the energy required is primarily mental, and Shiori’s constant reading provides her with more than enough energy to facilitate the average use of her power.
Theoretically, Shiori can potentially weaponise her portals – by creating portals in front of a gun, for instance, and an individual, Shiori can essentially ensure that the bullet would hit someone by simply moving it directly to where she wants it to hit. This is an unpractised ability, and in order to use it Shiori would have to be put in a situation where this were a viable option and then try doing it herself. Additionally, due to the nature of what she is attempting to do and the fact she needs a clear image in her mind, she can only use her ability like this if she has both the weapon and the target in clear, immediate view, and requires approximately ten seconds to set up the portals.
Limits: Shiori’s portals can only facilitate a set number of instances of travel, and only a certain amount of portals can be created per day.
Weaknesses/Drawbacks: Once the portal is created, Shiori cannot choose whether or not she maintains it. She will maintain it until it has facilitated its set number of instances of transportation, or she has moved more than 500 feet away from it. As a result, her use of this ability is not particularly covert and she has no power to stop other people from using the portals short of not creating them.
When Shiori creates portals, she puts her body at risk. Continued creation of and travelling through portals can sunder one’s own physicality, and if her power is used too much, leave parts of her behind when she travels through portals. Careful moderation ensures that the ability is largely only mentally taxing, but there are dire consequences indeed for abuse.
Other: Shiori inexplicably brings the gay out in everyone she meets. It’s kind of a medical and/or scientific mystery.
