August-September 2017

- thread with Akechi
- thread with Minato (AC)
- thread with Mahir
- thread with Mondo (AC)
- thread with Jean (AC)

top level: dream scape

Name: Hannah
DW username: viridianwings
E-Mail: howlinmad88 @ gmail.com
IM: viridianwings#7619 @ Discord
Plurk: viridianwings


Other Characters: Elizabeth Comstock (uncaging), Sole Survivor (geiger)


Character Name: Makoto Niijima
Series: Persona 5
Timeline: Mid-October, in Okumura's Palace
Canon Resource Link: Here!


Character History:
Makoto lives with her elder sister Sae in Tokyo. Her father was a police officer and died in the line of duty prior to the events of the game. Since his death, Sae has supported Makoto financially with her job as a prosecutor, working long hours and becoming distant emotionally from her sister. Makoto herself has thrown herself into her studies, becoming a top honour student and student council president at Shujin Academy. Her diligence and her status as a bridge between students and faculty make her the teacher's pet of the school principal and Makoto follows his orders, even though she resents being used by adults. When the principal learns of the possibility that the Phantom Thieves, mysterious figures who change a person's entire nature by supposedly stealing their heart, may be students at Shujin, he tasks Makoto with investigating. It doesn't take Makoto long to figure out that the Phantom Thieves are Akira, Ryuji, Ann and Yusuke.

Makoto calls Akira in to see her, showing him a recording she has of Ann and Ryuji talking about being the Phantom Thieves. She offers to erase the recording if the Phantom Thieves can prove that what they're doing is just, and requests that they change the heart of the leader of a Yakuza group who are targeting students around Shibuya and blackmailing them into delivering drugs for them. After some digging around, the Phantom Thieves learn that the mob boss is Junya Kaneshiro. His Palace is the whole of Shibuya, with his stronghold being a huge floating bank above the city and the citizens depicted as literal walking ATMs for him to bleed dry of their money. Angry at being seen as useless by both the Phantom Thieves and her sister, Makoto acts rashly in demanding to be taken to meet with Kaneshiro. Angry at being challenged, Kaneshiro takes pictures of Makoto and the others at his club and threatens to send them to their school unless they pay him 3 million Yen.

The group take Makoto into the cognitive world with them, since she is able to get them access into the bank that forms Kaneshiro's Palace as she's now considered a customer of it. When they get inside, they run into the cognitive version of Kaneshiro, and in response to his degrading threats toward herself and her sister, Makoto finds herself awakening to her Persona, Johanna. She joins the Phantom Thieves, becoming a strategist for the group and assists greatly in taking down Kaneshiro and changing his heart.

Makoto reports to the principal that she has concluded her investigation into the Phantom Thieves, saying there's no evidence that they're in their school. She refuses to take up the investigation again even with the principal's offer of a letter of recommendation to top universities as an incentive, with Makoto believing she can enter university on her own strength instead of having to rely on her usefulness to others to secure her a place. She begins to spend of her free time with the Phantom Thieves, learning how to have fun instead of spending all of her time studying and being occupied with student council matters. The next trial for the Phantom Thieves comes in the form of the online hacker group Medjed, and Makoto journeys with Akira and the others into Futaba Sakura's palace, changing Futaba's heart and learning about the cognitive psience that her mother was trying to understand before her death. Futaba provides Makoto with spyware software, which she installs on her sister Sae's computer to get information about the investigation she is leading into the Phantom Thieves.

Makoto accompanies Akira, Ryuji and Ann on their school trip to Hawaii over the summer, acting as a chaperone after several teachers need to stay behind, because the principal has died very suddenly after suffering a cardiac arrest in the middle of the street and being run over by a truck. The death is ruled as a suicide, but there are rumours around the school that the Phantom Thieves changed his heart. On their return from Hawaii, the group look for their next target and find it in Kunikazu Okumura, CEO of a big fast-food chain. Okumura's daughter Haru joins the Phantom Thieves and Makoto is happy to have someone else in the group in her own year. Together with Haru, the Phantom Thieves enter Okumura's Palace, a space station, to change his heart.


Abilities/Special Powers:
Makoto can summon a Persona, Johanna, who takes the form of a motorbike that Makoto rides on. Johanna's powers are both offensive, in the form of nuclear damage, and defensive, in the form of healing skills. Makoto is around level 45 on arrival, and Johanna's skills are listed at the linked wiki page. These skills will be dampened down as necessary, especially since nuclear damage outside of the cognitive world comes with far more problems than most elemental damage.


Third-Person Sample:
She was still surprised at just how easy it had been. Playing the good girl had become just that: a role. Makoto supposed it had been a role she'd played for a long time, but she'd kept on because it was what was expected of her, caught between a rock and a hard place of school and Sae, and completely unsure of what she would do if she rejected the role they expected of her.

The Phantom Thieves had changed all of that. The cry of rebellion, once it had sang out in her heart, was impossible to ignore. Makoto felt a thrill at rejecting the way things were, at the power she wielded in the cognitive world and the changes she saw reflected in the real world, changes that she had brought about. No more would she bow to adults using her and dismissing her, seeing the good girl they expected but never seeing her.

No more, she whispers to herself as she sits astride Johanna, the cold steel of her mask on her brow, her cape fluttering behind her in the breeze, the physical manifestations of her power and her rebellion palpable here, giving her a strength that she didn't know she had. She grins as the shadows draw near, willing them to come to her, to let her demonstrate that strength, the well of power that she'd tapped into and which her friends replenished.


First-Person Sample:
[ Makoto doesn't have a single hair out of place when she appears on the network feed. Even in the mansion, she's taken care to wear quite formal clothes that could easily be mistaken for a school uniform. She feels that she needs to constantly remind herself that being here isn't some extended holiday away from the world and her own responsibilities. ]

Hello. My name is Makoto Niijima. It's come to my attention that there are quite a lot of people here of school age. If there isn't one already, I'd like to set up a study club, to keep us all sharp.

[ Her expression cocks up a half-smile that indicates she knows full well that most of the other kids aren't going to appreciate the suggestion. ]

I'll incentivise it, too. The most diligent student, and the most improved, will get a ride on Johanna.