Erina Emisane

*This page is about the artificial human character belonging to Terry N. Muse. For the mandrake character belonging to CellarDoor96, see Eri Bryonia.*

## Personality

### Personality

Quiet, Curious, Superficial, Object-Oriented

## General Information

### ☯**Personality**

Endlessly curious and with a good eye for observation, Erina is good at picking up the little details. Frequently asks about various matters, ranging from how certain objects work to what normally commonplace items are to why certain events occur. She's always fascinated by the daily lives of others, but her curiosity is rather shallow at times. When she asks what an item is, an answer of that item's name is often enough to suffice her, and she can satisfy herself with the most clipped and abridged explanation of how or why things happen.

While she's excellent at assessing and observing her surroundings, Erina tends to not analyze it any deeper than what she already has in front of her. She still prefers the company of the inanimate such as Lazarus' machinery, as she already has a solid grasp on the various concepts behind them.

Since Erina is most comfortable in fields she's already accustomed to and understood, she has a hard time making breakthroughs into other fields - especially in such unpredictable and ever-changing ones as the people around her.

### ☯**Appearance**

Appears as a teenage girl standing at exactly 5'0, with clear green eyes and long black hair. She lets it grow without much concern, so it's somewhat messy at times; her bangs tend to obscure one of her eyes.

Dresses in a fairly standard blazer with green trims and knee-length skirt, along with black thighhigh stockings and a dark olive cloak. The designs on it resemble Lazarus' coat: a Mandelbrot set fractal on the back and a series of dragon curves along the base. Erina's designs are only slightly lighter than the rest of the cloak, so they blend in well with the rest of the material. Her cloak hides most of her body, though she often removes the cloak and carries it by hand as well. When she's outside, she wears an olive beret the same shade as her cloak and decorated with spiral-patterned frills, but she prefers to keep a set of headphones on in her personal time.

Tends to avoid eye contact for longer than a few seconds at a time. Her voice is fairly soft and quiet from having used it little for a long time, so she sometimes has trouble making herself heard.

### ☯**Theme Songs**

* Kirby - Virtual Space Manipulator (Regular)
* Homestuck - Dance of Thorns (Battle)
* Itoki Hana - Moonstruck Blossom (Image Song)

## Backstory

Building off of salvaged research and recent studies, Lazarus sought to move beyond mere artificial organisms and understand the workings of life itself, launching an experiment with the aid of Akira and Yuuko. The end result was to be knowledge of the composition of life - the components of a soul, the manifestation of life in a new being, and everything in between. While not strictly a being with a soul created from nothing, Erina was created through the complete removal of "information" from a naturally existing soul. Lazarus' power didn't extend to actively destroying or creating life, but what they had was a "blank" soul. The procedure of manipulating souls through her discs was simple enough - even modelling a wholly new being - but the exact mechanics remained unknown. How they encoded abilities and commands and memories had to be tied to the design of life; despite the vast impracticality of the process behind her, Erina was Lazarus' proof of concept that life could once more be "programmed."

Erina was hardly complete the moment she was originally "created," even accounting for the time spent transferring the knowledge and memories and "experiences" that produced the foundation for an identity that wouldn't destabilize as Goukei (the *other* attempt at artificial life that Lazarus encountered) had. After finally being deemed safe to develop consciousness and awaken, she remained confined to her laboratory for further testing and adjustment from Lazarus. Aside from that, there was precious little for Erina to do but wander where she could and peruse the doctor's records of other studies and try to make heads or tails of it. While there was always another paper to stump herself with and kill time, life was exceedingly quiet for Erina - and with the lack of interaction outside of Lazarus' maintenance, exceedingly lonely.

There was only so much the laboratory could offer her, and Lazarus couldn't confine her forever. With the vast majority of her most rigorous tests and maintenance behind her, Erina stepped into the world at large... though she's still in her beta phase to Lazarus.

## Story

### ☯**Imperfect Barrier Heist**

Assisted Akira in stealing the Hakurei Shrine.

## Relationships

### ☯**Dr. Josef Lazarus**

The one most responsible for Erina's creation. She's aware that Erina needs to get out on the field both for her research as well as the girl's own sake, but that doesn't stop her from doting on Erina, who likewise sees Lazarus as her mother.

### ☯**Akaichou Kano**

Akin to an older sister for Erina. While Akira's informality and habitual sarcasm causes them some communication gaps, the two are very close.

### ☯**Mekiku Subete**

A researcher who occasionally saw Erina during development, though their first proper encounter was during the events of Imperfect Barrier Heist.

## Abilities

### ☯**Ability to Iterate**

Exclusive to Erina is the power to iterate her surroundings and force certain actions or events to repeat as she sees fit. This ability is most often used on her danmaku - for instance, iterating a single bullet and splitting it into two smaller bullets, then splitting those bullets into four, into eight, into sixteen, and so on. While the speed and individual power of her bullets lessen with each iteration, numbers and density can cause them to hit far harder than her original bullet would have. In addition to defining the iteration used, Erina can also define a direction vector when she begins iterating an object. This means she can fire a bullet over someone's head and then define a vector towards her target when she begins "fracturing" her bullet, though she can only define this direction once for that set of iterations.

This also works on most objects, such as iterating a cube of clay into a small "tree" of clay or rearranging parts of the battlefield for mobility, defense, or offense in some situations.

By marking an area with a spell circle and performing iteration on space, Erina can alter how much distance needs to be covered in that space in order to cover the same distance outside that space. For example, if a person sees themselves as walking five meters in the spatial seal, they may only walk one meter according to those outside, and they will feel it takes five times as long to travel through the field as it would normally.

Iterating actions over a period of time can force her target to repeat the exact actions they took in that time, but she can produce loops by iterating the time frame itself. Using the former on a bullet making a right angle turn would cause it to make multiple right angle turns; using the latter would cause the bullet to retrace its path multiple times, "teleporting" back to its initial position with each new loop.

## Spell Cards

 Resistance 8 "Veiled Sky Determination"
 Unsigned 64 "Irreconcilable Time"
 Heighway Arcanum 128 "Venturing of Unknowable Deep"
The danmaku produced by this spell does *not*disappear over time unless the spell itself breaks, only becoming denser and more complex as Erina continues launching more bullets. Getting trapped and walled in is a very real threat, and Erina can play a strong game of keep away to prolong the spell as much as possible. However, she has to withdraw her ability to "free it up" before activating this card, so opponents can get a free hit before she can use her starburst iteration - so long as they keep her lingering bullets in mind.

## Weaknesses

### **☯Ability Mechanics**

Iterating her bullets causes their speed and lifespan to drop accordingly. This means that once she begins iterating them over a certain area, they can't move very far out of that position. Since her more powerful attacks are produced by extensive iterations, they'll fade away as soon as she stops iterating them, and opponents have plenty of time to simply walk away from the effectively stationary wall of death. While her lasers don't suffer the same speed penalty, they can still fizzle out at certain ranges if Erina isn't careful with her levels of iteration.

While her ability extends to performing action and time loops on her danmaku, it's the least exhaustive medium available to her. As it's a power she's only had so long to explore, trying to loop other combatants or even most of their danmaku is significantly more difficult for Erina - especially when she's manipulating her bullets at the same time.

### ☯**Fighting Style**

Erina lacks almost *any* damaging options in close quarters. At best, her bullet fracturing is slow and unwieldy; at worst, point-blank range is a complete dead spot for her attacks. Her iteration of space is also very difficult to use, since she's affected by her ability like everyone else. Once they break through her danmaku and into close range, Erina is put at a steep disadvantage with extremely limited options short of simply trying to get away and build distance to put opponents back into her effective range.

## Trivia

* Picks at her food a lot, though she usually still eats it.
* Her favorite food is caramel apples.
* Though it's mostly organic and doesn't yet carry spectacular augmentations, Erina's body is artificial.
* Has begun practising the violin.
* Afraid of thunderstorms.