Goro Akechi

character basics.

NAME.	Goro Akechi
CODENAME.	Crow
NICKNAMES.	Black Mask
OCCUPATION.	Student, Detective, Assassin, Phantom Thief
AGE.	18
DATE OF BIRTH.	June 02, 1998
ORIENTATION.	Unknown
DATING STATUS.	Single
DATING HISTORY.	None
FAMILY.	Hinawa Akechi (deceased) Masayoshi Shido (not deceased enough)
HEIGHT.	178 cm
BUILD.	Thin
HAIR.	Brown
EYES.	Red-brown

"I'm going to be entirely honest with you.
I hate you."

Goro Akechi is not what anyone would call 'easy to get along with'. While in the past he may have put on an affect of pleasant geniality, recent events have caused him to simply stop caring about a number of things, chief among them putting on a mask for the benefit of other people.

Akechi is defensive and closed-off to most, to a degree of near-complete unwillingness to be emotionally open with anyone, requiring a great degree of trust before he'll be willing to delve into personal topics. This is best exemplified by his relationship with Joker, whom he needed to spend significant amounts of time with before he was willing to talk about any details of his life that were not sanitized or outright fabricated to be part of the public persona of the 'Detective Prince'.

It wouldn't be accurate to say he has a temper; the image that comes to mind when describing someone with a temper is like a powder keg or, in extreme cases, an atom bomb, stable at first glance but prone to sudden explosion. Akechi is more like a reactor, a constant, reliable output of quietly-simmering rage at the state of the world that ramps up to meet the demands of the occasion. He delights in 'biting back', in any number of cruelties great and small, directed at people who've hurt him or the vanishingly small list of people he cares about.

This isn't to say that his personality is entirely made up of barely-repressed rage and defense mechanisms, though. He's intensely inquisitive, easily lured by puzzles or mysteries and occasionally showing rare moments of genuine delight when a personal hypothesis is confirmed, or when a completely unexpected detail is revealed. He excels at, and delights in, games that let him get inside an opponent's head, like chess or shogi or, even, strategic card games. He's got a competitive streak a mile wide, as well, and seems to genuinely relish the rare occasion of being genuinely challenged at something- though occasionally that competitive nature can get him in trouble. While he enjoys being challenged, he responds poorly to being beaten, and though he's better about that nowadays, he still can't repress the instinctive spike of anger that comes when someone is better than him at something.

If he has a defining positive trait, it is his honesty. Stripped of all his lies and masks, the 'reformed' Akechi shows an admirable dedication to embracing the truth, though sometimes to a degree that others find abrasive. Even so, with his newfound resolve he has shown determination to pursue the truth- even should it cost him dearly to do so, leaving him dead or imprisoned.

"I'll break them."

Apart from a number of perfectly mundane skills, Goro currently has access to the Persona Captain Nemo, which renders him resilient to Darkness-based attacks, though weak to Light and Psychic-based attacks. While he's lost access to Hereward for the time being, Hereward's trait of increasing the efficiency of supportive abilities remains.

PERSONAS

CAPTAIN NEMO
Arcana: Fool
A former prince who chose self-imposed exile after watching his family brutalized by imperial machinations, Captain Nemo is a broad-figured man in a captain's coat decorated in silver, a talwar belted at his waist. His face shrouded in shadow, Captain Nemo represents the spirit of the sea, untethered from ties of origin and country- and charting his own course, instead.
Elemental Affinities: Resist Curse, Weak Bless
Skills:
Eiga/Maega: Black fire that deals Curse-type damage.
Flash Bomb: An explosion meant to damage and disorient.
Megido: A wide-area array of brilliant blue-white lasers that bypasses all resistances.
Tempest Slash: A flurry of blades to overwhelm a target.
Rakunda/Marakunda: Debilitating magic to weaken enemies' hides.

SHERLOCK
Arcana: Magician
A world-class detective that was once rival to the famed Gentleman Thief, Arsène Lupin, Sherlock was more famous for his own exploits. Taking the form of a cloaked man with a deerhunter's cap pulled low, pipe clutched in one clawed hand. While his cloak is tattered at the edges, his insight and keen mind
Elemental Affinities: Resist Curse/Psy, Weak Lightning
Skills:
Psio/Mapsio: Blasts of raw psychic energy that are especially effective on those whose minds are debilitated.
Pulinpa/Tentarafoo: Disorienting magic to confuse and misdirect.
Makarakarn: Reflect a single magical attack back at its user.

FREYJA
Arcana: Faith

Elemental Affinities: Resist Bless/Lightning, Weak Fire
Skills:
Kouga/Makouga: Columns of light to sear foes.
Diarama: Healing magic to soothe wounds.
Media: Weak healing spread across a wide area.
Marakukaja: Bolster allies' defenses.
Recarmdra: Puts the user at death's door to dramatically heal a group of allies.

"What's a life worth in a reality that was cooked up just to satisfy someone else? I say none."

For an in-depth character history, see his profile here.

In short, Akechi is the illegitimate son of a wealthy and villainous politician and a prostitute, forced to grow up in a society that labels and stigmatizes any deviation from societal norms. Driven by poverty and social isolation to suicide, his mother left him in the hands of an underfunded and uncaring childcare system, bouncing from foster home to foster home and, slowly but surely, coming to hate the world for its cruelty.

The exact time is unknown, but when he was at most fourteen or fifteen, a malevolent god granted him a gift- the awakening of his Persona, Loki, a dangerous and violent entity that held the power to induce psychotic rage in its victims, as well as access to the Metaverse, a world born of humanity's collective cognition. Not long after this, Akechi reached out to his father, hoping to prove himself useful by granting Shido access to the Metaverse through him, and thus earn a father's praise.

When it became clear that no such affection was forthcoming, Akechi fell into violent tendencies, reinforced by Shido's usage of his powers for assassination, and fed by this toxic feedback loop of abuse, Akechi resolved instead resolved to kill his father- to do whatever it took to earn the man's trust, so that he could kill him at his moment of triumph, and bring Shido a sliver of the pain he'd been forced to deal with all his life.

Given that Shido was plotting to kill him as well, it probably wouldn't have gone nearly as well as he'd hoped. On top of that, a group of Metaverse vigilantes known as the Phantom Thieves got involved... and the rest, as they say, is history.

"Oh, am I mistaken?
I thought I heard something about delicious pancakes."

IC Inbox: Here
HMD: Here
CR Chart: Here
PERMISSIONS
Can be found here.