Name: Kisaragi Mika 如月美香
Alias: Violet Lightning / Shiden / 紫電
Alignment: Hero
Powers/Abilities: Mika is able to sense, generate and manipulate electromagnetic fields. The most dramatic application of this ability is her "Left-hand Shot", named for how she literally uses Fleming's Left-hand Rule and induced Lorenz forces to accelerate a small ferrous projectile to velocities in the vicinity of 2,500 m/s (approximately Mach 8, or hypersonic). She carries a little bag of ball bearings for this purpose, which she can also use for other applications, including as a simple sap. For close-in work, she has a pair of kunai throwing daggers connected to wristbands with thin steel cable, with which she can deliver taser-type shocks. Defensively, she can put up an electromagnetic shield that works against EM radiation and ferrous metals. When she wants to go more subtle , she is capable of reading and controlling electrical signals, for example those of RFID or credit card mag strips. She also gets great mobile reception and never wants for wi-fi.
Mundane skills: Genius-level intellect - For all she acts ditzy and brash, Mika has a mind like a steel trap. She is extremely intelligent, with particular ability in higher mathematics and physics. She is also quite good at problem-solving, especially when it involves her powers.
Streetrunning - Unlike many other supers who rely on their powers exclusively, Mika's quite aware that her more mundane abilities can make all the difference in a dangerous situation. She has actively practiced the art of moving efficiently in an urban environment, and does so quite well. Of course, she also gets an edge from using induced EM forces on the metal inserts in her costume to give her a boost here and there....
Knife wielding - Similarly, you never know when being able to use a knife might be useful. Mika can throw her kunai quite accurately, and also use them in close combat. Again, she's not beyond using her powers to cheat a little, but even without them she is far from helpless.
Weaknesses: While Mika's meta-ability is potentially very powerful, it is limited by a couple of factors. Firstly, she isn't intrinsically immune to the forces that she generates; while she can balance them with her power, it requires precise and careful control to make sure that she doesn't, for example, accidentally blow her own fingers off while performing her "Left-hand Shot". This tends to put a cap on how much force she can generate, and how quickly she can perform different tasks with her ability. It also means that she can go really, really big if she's willing to risk injury or collateral damage....
Secondly, while she can tap into and manipulate EM spectrum signals such as wi-fi, she has the neural bandwidth of a normal human being, if a gifted one. She's very intelligent, but she can only handle so much information at a time. She's thus normally dependent on a device such as a smartphone or laptop to process the data. So she can boost signals, or jam or warp them, or other such relatively brute-force applications, but (for example) editing herself out of a video feed would be beyond her capabilities.
Personality: Mika goes out of her way to go against the stereotype of the Asian woman - she's loud, brash, crass, flashy, ditzy. It's not all an act. She really is quite absent-minded; but she's also intelligent, kind, and generous. She used to be very insecure, so she learned to put up a front that allowed her to choose who she would interact with, and to preempt people judging her. Of course, what counts as brash and crass in Japan is fairly normal extroverted behaviour in America, so she fits in fine.
Background: Mika's powers manifested quite subtly. It was only in middle school that her teachers realised that the dreamy, absent-minded girl could generate EM radiation. This came as quite a surprise to her parents, who were normies to the point of caricature. All of a sudden Mika was different.
She'd never felt quite right about being part of the normal flow of life, and discovering her powers set her free in ways beyond the power itself. It seemed to turn a switch on in her head - she understood now that she didn't really much care what people thought of her, so she could just be herself and do whatever she wanted.
Which was, apparently, to be a gyaru.
Of course, she's actually a little bit more introspective than that. She feels like she ought to be a role model for kids, to show them that what's important isn't what society thinks of you but what you can do for yourself and the people around you. That's what heroes should be - the best version of themselves. And that's what people should aspire to, rather than being beaten into a mould. That's what inspired her to become Violet Lightning.
And then, of course, she ran into her biggest nemesis: Bureaucracy Man! Not even kidding - there's a mascot for the civil service who has the power to process information really quickly, with photographic memory (his weakness is that he doesn't necessarily understand what he's read, so he may not be able to grasp its relevance....) In any case, the state wanted her powers registered, and for her to apply for permits for all the possible applications of her powers, and undergo a multi-year apprenticeship under established heroes....
So Mika noped out to all of that, and applied to do her postgraduate studies at the Nova Institute of Technology, the best STEM school in America and a partner with alma mater Handai, the University of Osaka. If she got into the hero game while she was in Nova City, that would be fine, right?
Appearance: Mika has a lot of looks, but as a gyaru she's almost always flamboyant and flashy, with loads of accessories and a shock of bright pink hair. Physically she's quite lithe and petite, but visually she takes up a
lot of room.
She uses a special hair dye that turns jet-black and has contacts that go blue when a current is passed through them, so when she's "on the job" she looks very different from usual.
Affiliations: None as yet.
Motivations: Doing her own thing, being a role model, protecting the weak.
Relationships: Mika's mostly on her own in Nova City, although as an outgoing, vivacious young woman she's made her share of casual friends; she hasn't let anyone closer into her confidence yet, and has no plans to. She does have an academic mentor, a Professor Siddarth at NIT, who's a close friend of her Handai mentor Dr. Konoe Satori. Prof Siddarth is grumpy and somewhat stuck in his ways, so he gets a bit flustered by Mika's antics, but he's every bit as kind and generous as she is deep down and they click on that account.
Base of Operations: As a grad student, Mika has scored a private rental apartment in a university-owned housing development.
Signature Gear: Bag of BBs, pair of kunai, smartphone, laptop, "Frankencomp" - a portable processor unit running on a Raspberry Pi with a dozen additional AI chips soldered on, used for processing data in custom fashion on the fly. Costume has metal inserts to augment powers.
Public Perception: As a new hero on the block, Violet Lightning is little known at the moment.
Combat Style: Sneaky and cunning. Mika knows she's a glass cannon despite her shields, so she prefers to work from a distance, sniping or otherwise using her powers to futz around with the opposition's plans.
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