Institute App

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Kobayashi
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: Yes
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: N/A
CONTACT: PerfectSquare @ Plurk
CHARACTERS PLAYED:N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Koshi Tanaka
CANON: Liar Liar (VN by Tokimekiwaku, not the Jim Carrey Movie)
CANON REFERENCE: Liar Liar and Liar Liar 2: Pants on Fire - there are no written up resources about the game, though there are Let’s Plays on Youtube and it’s a very short – the first game is about 20 minutes and the second is maybe 40. Some other information comes from the creator's blog but their Liar Liar tag is both full of fanart and also not-fully inclusive. I realize this not very much canon, so I fully expect that this will be treated similar to an OC, but I intend to stay as true to canon as possible.
AGE: 15
GENDER: Non-binary, uses he/him pronouns. This is entirely canon.
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: 10th Grade
APPEARANCE: He's the miniature gremlin on the left.

PERSONALITY:

Koshi is someone who plays it fair. He honestly just wants everyone to get along, and tends to believe the best in people – even when he shouldn’t. He’s a bit naïve in that way, and combined with his desire to help others, he tends to have a low sense of survival. More than anything, he wants to keep the peace – though he’s not above using violent means to do so, if that’s the playing field. He tried to talk Yukari out of her initial murders and even after she “killed” him, he only transferred to her school to keep an eye on her and prevent any further murders, not take revenge or kill her. On the other hand, he tried to thwart her first murder attempt by stabbing her in the back – and in one ending, succeeds. Given the situation though, it was the only way and seemed fair enough, considering she’d already stabbed him. So while he’d prefer to play pacifist, he’s not above fighting or even murder if he thinks it will save others and do greater good. Over all though, it’s a method he’d rather avoid.

He’s trusting – not stupidly so, if he’s been betrayed before, but he still wants to believe in people at least at first. He trusts Tohru implicitly for most of the game, despite the bad ends revealing his friend having worse intentions for him. He never suspected Wakabayashi might be anything but a nice guy. Even when he learns of Minami’s involvement with all the bodies and everything, he still wants to help her – he always acts with the intentions of helping and protecting her in their interactions, even if in reality he might be causing more trouble for her schemes. He’s also trusting of systems - he believes in the existence justice and fairness, and generally agrees with the accepted order . He’s pretty notably horrified by Miho’s story about how the authorities, both police and school, ignored her plight – to him it was unthinkable they’d act so callously. In a way, he’s quite sheltered.

A lot of it is that he’s very sympathetic towards others, and wants to believe they had good reasons or intentions. When badgering Minami about the bodies, he tells her that it’s important he understand why she did it – so he can help her. After hearing Miho’s story, while he still believes what they did was wrong and that they need to be stopped, he’s much more sympathetic to the girls – in the end, he’s even clearly on Miho and Yukari’s side, or at least trying to keep them from becoming another victim in this string of violence. He tries his best to protect everyone, to an extent, even Yukari, the girl who “murdered” him once before – along the Akira bad-end route, he tells Yukari to run even while he’s being held hostage, and help her run away when Akira attacks her, instead of just fleeing on his own. In the end, he can’t really see anyone as an enemy unless he’s in direct conflict with them. However, because he’s so straightforward and optimistic, he has trouble understanding people who deviate from those expectations or whose motives defy his sense of morals. Even at the end of the Sisters route, he thinks things can still be talked out, not understanding how Minami’s feelings can no longer be reconciled with her sister, and he never is able to fully understand or agree with Miho about morality.

Still, he’s very practical. While he tends to value upholding order and authority, he’s not close-minded about it, considering the exceptions he makes when deemed necessary such as trying to kill Yukari in the first game in order to stop her. As said before, he’s not above getting his hands dirty if he thinks it will save people. He’s also willing to make hard choices even if it means sacrificing people, if he thinks it’s the only way to save people – in the true route, he has to tell Miho about Minami’s involvement in order to save Tohru, and weighs the option of lying but decides that he’ll only get caught and cause more damage if he attempted to cover for Minami – the bad ends prove him right. He’s also very patient and reasoned, if a bit stubborn, as shown by how long he’s willing to hound Minami for answers despite her ignoring him. His persistence is what drives him, even months later, to follow Yukari doggedly to try to prevent further murders, when likely no one would blame him for trying to just escape the situation.

Stubborn, patient, protective, trusting and trustworthy, with a distinct sense of justice that isn’t entirely idealistic, Koshi may seem rather stodgy, but that’s not all there is to him. He’s also rather sharp-witted, able to find the culprit of the missing bodies faster than the girls and easily read Yukari’s lies when they first meet. He’s also a bit childish – He’s really into both baseball and video games (claiming the KH on his hat is for Kingdom Hearts) and rather immaturely gloats over Akira if Yukari chooses to go home with Koshi instead. Basically, he’s surprisingly normal for a 15 year old boy despite everything he’s gone through and seen. He’s very friendly and open, and most people can see that about him – even his enemies pick up on how responsible he is and how kind he is – Minami locks him up just for that reason, so he doesn’t get hurt trying to save her. Basically, he’s a steadfast friend and a trustworthy ally, and even as an enemy he has compassion, and a hope that people can be saved, even from themselves.

POWERS/ABILITIES: Koshi’s mutant power is resilience. While it contains elements of both, it’s not quite like actual immortality or advanced regeneration. Basically, most things that would kill him simply don’t. He’s still just as injured or incapacitated as an injury would normally leave him, but he just won’t die, unless it’s an injury that literally prevents vital functions, such as removing his heart, cutting off his head or the like. It is extremely unlikely he’ll bleed to death or die of shock or other conditions that would kill normal people, though they could leave him very debilitated. While he regenerates faster than most people, allowing him to recover from these injuries, well, ever, he can’t regrow limbs, though he might be able to reattach some if it’s done soon enough. Basically, he’s just able to retain basic functions and consciousness far beyond when normally injuries would disable or kill someone. Take every story where someone miraculously survives what should have been a fatal injury and that’s a normal day for Koshi. Now, though he’s extremely resilient and tough enough to resist shock, he still feels all of the pain and, considering this hasn’t actually come up for him often, he doesn’t have much resistance to it. In general, things are only 90% fatal aren’t fatal at all to him, though they may put him out of commission for a long time. Deaths from less physical harm, such as electrocution, burning, suffocation, poison, may nearly kill him but take much, much longer than normal to actually kill him, to the point that most people would assume he has to be dead, especially since he might seem it after finally passing out. He’s the kind of guy that “won’t die even if you kill him”, who always gets back up after a sure-hit kill, who walks away after getting hit by a car – he really seems unkillable, but you just have to be more thorough. To use gaming terms, as long as he has 1hp left, he won’t die.
As a side effect, he’s a bit stronger than his tiny stature would suggest, though not any stronger than a normal human being can be, like your average adult athlete or fighter. Still, it’s impressive for a kid his age and size. He also has endurance and stamina that’s nearly inexhaustible, though he pretty rapidly experiences diminishing returns on what he can actually do without resting. Still, he can “power through” endurance contests like staying awake or walking without rest that might normally kill someone by sheer will alone – in fact, if he doesn’t use up enough energy during the day, he often suffers from insomnia and restlessness. His hair has been pink since long before his mutant powers were apparent, but they probably should have considered that a sign.

AU HISTORY: Koshi grew up in a rather privileged environment. Never rich but never in financial strain. Upper-middle-class, basically. He grew up in the kind of family and community where it was really believable that the world was fair and just and things like discrimination and hate crimes were just a thing of a past and movies. Never facing hardship, and never really struggling academically, socially or physically, he lived a life where he could truly believe that if you worked hard, you would be rewarded and could achieve any dream. Even if that dream was to be a major league star pitcher, despite it being obvious he was going to be very short even when he grew up. Or that he was a, by everyone else’s account, a girl. Even that hardship was sheltered for him though – his parents were extremely supportive, even if not everyone was, when he decided to stop being one. He wasn’t sure he was a boy either, but found it was just easier if everyone treated him like one. While it never sat entirely right with him, he didn’t really think about it much – the fact that he was starting to live his life as a boy was already confusing enough for everyone and even he realized it things could get extremely hard if he tried to tell people “well that’s not quite right either”, even his parents. He figured this was close enough – maybe he could figure it out later after he became a major league pitcher. And it wasn’t like anyone had ever told him that it was okay to identify as neither a boy nor a girl. For now it was just good enough to finally get to play ball with the boys, even if there were some stern words and maybe a few punches involved at first. In any case, all of that got swept out of the picture when the accident occurred.

The truth of the accident is something no one besides Koshi knows. All his parents know is that he came home bleeding profusely from several stab-like wounds and covered in dirt. They could hardly believe he crawled all the way back from wherever it was – the doctors could hardly believe he was alive at all. Given how much blood he’d lost just on the way to the hospital alone, he should have, by all accounts, been dead. In the months that followed as he recovered, it was more than miraculous that he’d survived – he was considered a refutation of basic science and biology. In the end, the doctors could only conclude one thing: that he was one of the few things that even in the Tanaka’s sheltered little bubble of a community still held open stigma, a mutant.

Things changed rapidly after that. Over-supportive parents became over-protective ones. They moved. He was set to transfer schools. Koshi was kept mostly in the dark for this, told things like “for a change of scenery”, “work reasons”, not realizing his family had been tacitly and indirectly driven out of the suburb where they’d formerly lived once the news got out they were housing a mutant. He just didn’t bother thinking about it – he trusted his parents implicitly and had plenty more to worry about with his whole life being organized and still recovering a bit. And as far as he was concerned, this worked out well for him – he could have a new start and make new friends who wouldn’t ever remember him wearing dresses or being forced to play with dolls. He was a bit concerned what being a mutant meant for his life, but at the same time, it seemed so unreal to him – his mutation wasn’t visible and didn’t seem to affect his everyday life, so how bad could it be? He figured no one had to know he was a mutant, just like no one had to know he’d been raised as a girl when he was younger.

That wasn’t good enough for his parents. They wanted to be sure he’d get to be in an environment where he wouldn’t be discriminated against, even if someone did find out about him. So when the Xavier Institute of Higher Learning offered enrollment to Koshi, his parents were quick to jump on the opportunity of him going to learn in a safe, private environment for gifted youngsters. Koshi was rather ambivalent on the prospect but figured, what the heck? Life, for all its ups and downs, had turned out all right so far – because somehow, almost dying wasn’t enough to outweigh the fact that he’d survived – so what could go wrong now? There was one loose end still bothering him, but unable to control much of his life, still being a minor, there wasn’t much he could do about that – and the boarding school nature of the Institute was attractive as a way to escape his parent’s protectiveness, as in the months since the accident it had been starting to become rather smothering. He enters now, optimistic at what can be a new start for his life, finally able to be who he feels he really is and with every expectation that the world is going to be just fine.

SAMPLES

NETWORK SAMPLE: [Say hello to your new resident pink-haired shorty. He’s smiling pretty brightly at the camera, the dork, and already wearing a baseball uniform – from his old school, judging by the ridiculously pastel colors.

All right, all right. Don’t screw this up. Just be yourself, right? That always works out.]

Hey, everyone! I’m Koshi Tanaka. It’s a pleasure to meet you all!

[Could he be any more generic?

…well, crap, what else should I say? Something interesting?]

So do any of you guys – or gals – like baseball? I used to be a pitcher for my middle-school team! Hmm, though I wonder how that would work here – y’know, with all the, uh, advantages people have got. Are there any special rules for sports here?
Well, I guess we can just trust no one will cheat. I mean, what’d be the point in playing then? So yeah, if there are any other players – or people who want to learn how to play – come on and out to the quad and let’s get a couple teams together, okay?

[Yeah, that should work. Friendly, but not pushy! Everyone seemed pretty nice in class, so there’s gotta be some people who’d be interested, right? Oh, optimism…]

LOG SAMPLE:
Teeth and hair brushed? Check. Face washed? Check. Binder on? Checked, even if pretty unnecessary. Clothes all neat, no weird stains or wrinkles? Check. Books in bag? Check. Schedule? Check. It looked like everything was ready to go for the first day of class.
“You can do this, Tanaka. Nothing to be nervous about,” he told himself, looking in the mirror. It kind of bugged him how much taller the top of the mirror was over his head – the ones in his house were all shorter, so this really emphasized… “No, no, no, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”
It’s not like they’d pick on him for being short – everyone was pretty different here. Heck, one of the teachers was covered in blue fur, no one was going to make fun of him for being short. Maybe the pink hair, yeah, but being short? That was nothing. Even if it did still bother him a little.
With everything prepared, he was ready to go. Or should have been, anyway. He paused at the door, looking back at his room. Most notably, he was looking at the other bed in it. Did that mean he was going to have a roommate? Growing up an only child, the idea of sharing his room was a bit foreign to begin with, but when he considered the implications…
“…well, I guess that’s what I get for staying in the boy’s dorm,” he muttered, trying not to think about the problem too hard. It’d be fine, right? It was 2016, he was in one of the most tolerant and intelligent academies in the country, people could accept having a roommate who was a little different from them, right? Heck, his roommate would probably be the weird one. Anyway, he’d get to that problem when it came up – right now he had to face the very real issue of classes and first impressions on the teachers and his fellow students. Gathering his confidence, and assuring himself one more time that today was going to go just fine, Koshi opened the door and stepped outside.