ｄｅｅｒｉｎｇｔｏｎ ａｐｐｌｉｃａｔｉｏｎ

[kiseijuu]

IN CHARACTER

Character Name: Shinichi Izumi
Canon: Parasyte: The Maxim
Canon Point: Episode: The Stranger (immediately after being stabbed by the parasite who took over his mother).

In-Game Tattoo Placement: On the back of his right arm, above his elbow. Coincidentally, this is the place Migi actually joins with his body.
Current Health/Status: Shinichi was critcally injured right before appearing in Deerington, due to a fatal stab wound through the heart. After waking up, his body was physically healed, though he bears a crude scar in his chest and back, as he was literally impaled.
Age: 17
Species: Human, though also host body to a parasitic alien organism.

History: Shinichi Izumi was an average high school student living in present-day Tokyo, Japan. An only child, his life was the picture of normality. However, one night, an alien species fell from the skies in the form of spore-like eggs which floated around with the wind: landing on trees, windowsills, mailboxes, in the grass... etc. From these pods emerged small worm-like beings, almost harmless-looking, almost cute -- save for the drill-esque feature at the tip of their heads which would allow them to burrow into the flesh of a nearby host body....

From there, the alien creatures began to follow the instinct to make their way to the brains of humans and take over them. However, some of them would end up failing at this task, taking over other living organisms instead -- such as dogs or cats. Some of them would fail at making it all the way to the brain, reaching maturation in another part of the body instead.

One such "worm" found itself stunned when trying to get into the ear of the young boy sleeping in his bed that night (Shinichi had earbuds in, making entry impossible). After another failed attempt to enter the boy's nose, the creature desperately began burrowing into his right arm and making its way upwards. By this point, Shinichi had woken up from the intrusion and rightfully began to panic, sleepily thinking it was a snake currently crawling its way through his arm. In a moment of quick thinking, he wrapped his earbud cord around his arm, cutting off the blood supply and succeeding in preventing the thing from going further.

After his parents rushed into the room to see what the commotion was about, they dismissed the ordeal as a nightmare, and Shinichi was stunned to discover there was no wound in his arm or any other evidence of what had happened. Perhaps it was a nightmare...

The next morning, Shinichi returned to his usual routine -- except there were odd changes that seemed to have happened over night. For one thing, he found his appetite had doubled. For another, he almost mindlessly glanced over a spider as if he had to remember his deep fear of insects.

And then there was the tiny little fact that his right hand seemed to have a mind of its own. Throughout the day, it proceeded to move in odd ways, grab, touch, and fiddle with an assortment of things, and even help itself to using his phone to do research in the middle of class while he dozed off (Shinichi of course getting in trouble for this.) However, it was the eyeball Shinichi spotted staring out of his hand later on that really suggested something was not quite right. Fueled by his fear and emotions, Shinichi decided to pull a knife out on this devious hand and threaten it. Needless to say, this did not go over well. His hand grabbed the knife, forced it from him, and hurled it at the wall - - then began to morph and distort into a mess of eyes and a drooling mouth...which informed him it couldn't speak well yet, and that it had "failed", before disappearing again.

It didn't take long for the creature to learn how to speak well, and the next time it made an appearance, Shinichi learned that because he stopped its journey to his brain, it reached maturation in his right arm, and thus "ate" and replaced his arm from the elbow down -- centered mainly in his hand. He also discovered that this creature was not alone, and over the next weeks, encountered more of these parasites who began to show up around the city. Their appetites seemed to be for whatever species of host body they had overtaken, which meant that the majority were feeding on humans and leaving behind messy remains that prompted Tokyo to declare there being a serial killer on the loose. (His parasite had no need to feed on humans, since he had only taken over Shinichi's hand and therefore simply fed on the nutrients from his host's bloodstream).

Meanwhile, Shinichi knew the true explanation for the horrific occurrences. His guilt led him to want to turn himself into the authorities and offer his knowledge of the parasites, but he was quickly put in his place by his own hand, who threatened to remove Shinichi's ability to see, hear, or speak, should it have to. After all, its own survival was most important, and Migi (the literal term for Shinichi's "right" hand), would not allow anything to jeopardize that. Challenges also quickly presented themselves in the form of the other parasites seeing the boy and his hand as an anomaly to be exterminated. A human retaining his own mind and sharing his body with one of them? Better to be put out of their miseries. Except Migi proved a force to be reckoned with, and he and Shinichi were actually able to defend themselves and kill off rival parasites more easily, as they could use having two working minds as an advantage. Not that the soft-hearted Shinichi wanted to do any crime-fighting or alien-hunting, and he simply remained along for the very gruesome ride. While trying to adjust to life with this sentient, alien right hand, keep all of it a secret from those closest to him, and hang onto his humanity which seemed to be subtly changing in the process.

And they were starting to adjust to this odd life together, when something happened that changed everything. Shinichi's parents left for a weekend to take the vacation they were long overdue for. Not too far from their vacation spot, a parasite who had been in a car crash had just relocated to a new host body. Unfortunately, it had previously reached maturation in a female host, and the new male form it had found was unstable. So it needed a new female to relocate to...

After killing and taking over Shinichi's mother, it used her memories to find its way back to their home, with the intent to find and kill his father who had escaped. Shinichi, who was home alone, ended up being impaled by the creature, who left him to die on the floor. When he woke up again, he was in Deerington, unsure if the horrible incident had truly occurred or if it was all some bizarre dream (and hoping it was). However, when waking up, everything felt achingly real, from the weakness and pain in his body (his injuries crudely healed and leaving scars in his chest and back) to the flashes of memories of his mother which stung his heart just as much as the physical pain did. Whatever the case, he seemed to have gone from one nightmare into another.

Personality: Being quite literally invaded by an alien does things to a person. Not only has Shinichi's life experiences as of late been shaped by that abrupt forced factor into his life, but his personality has been affected by it as well.

Growing up, he was perhaps the definition of A Very Good Boy. In fact, his parents frequently remarked that he was too well-behaved (his only real dark deed being to accidentally cause his mother to burn herself with hot oil when he was really young, leaving a large scar on her arm that would always remain a source of guilt in Shinichi's gut) and worried over their son often, but Shinichi was happy being a well-mannered, boring, high schooler. He had always been on the shy and soft-spoken side, never one to demand attention or even seek it out in small doses, preferring his status as a wallflower. Social awkwardness was part of the package as well, but he did have a close-knit little group of friends (100% girls; most of the boys his age and their interests were far too rough for his gentle demeanour). His sensitivity showed itself in other ways as well: he always had a weak constitution for things like horror, violence, confrontation, and insects.

However, it is Shinichi's altruism that has truly defined him as a person. Despite being someone whom others may easily peg as cowardly or "weak", if a situation involved someone else being hurt or in trouble, Shinichi would interfere without a second thought as to his own safety. This has led him to literally step into the line of fire, whether it be protecting a classmate being targeted by bullies and ending up beaten up himself, or moving into traffic to protect a child. He recognises that such acts can be foolhardy, but at the same time his protective nature and strong sense of altruism are not traits he's ever thought to challenge.

Because Shinichi is absolutely led by his heart, and that's what has always felt natural to him.

So then that aforementioned alien invasion happened, and literally every aspect of Shinichi's personality was challenged. Suddenly he was host to something not only outright terrifying in appearance, but also capable of extreme violence -- violence that Shinichi found himself unwillingly exposed to, as other parasites became hostily drawn to him and Migi, forcing the pair to have to destroy them first. For Shinichi, who had never hurt a fly and never wanted to, bloodying his hands was something he couldn't come back from. Not to mention the nightmares involved with being hunted by monstrous parasitic organisms hiding in the brains of humans. The paranoia from that, coupled with having to hide this dark secret from everyone around him, led his psychological state to be quite tested.

There was also the fact that he was now sharing his life and body with a cold, "insect-like" being without emotions. Something the complete opposite from himself, who was concerned solely with its self-preservation. This challenged many of Shinichi's values and morals, he and Migi frequently clashing over their ways of thinking and behaviours. Suddenly terms like "right" and "wrong", "justice" and "mercy", and "kind" and "cruel" began to fall on a more grey spectrum for the human boy. He initially fought it hard, viewing Migi just as much an "alien" to him as the parasite did Shinichi. They only used each other as needed, Migi relying on Shinichi's body for literal substance and Shinichi relying on Migi to protect him (and therefore his loved ones) from the other parasites.

Inevitably, as time wore on and they were forced to help each other's mutual goal of surviving day-to-day by combining each other's strengths and covering each other's weaknesses, he began to feel a sense of unease that he was starting to be able to understand Migi in ways his past self would have balked at. The most disturbing part of this, however, were not the ways he consciously began bonding with Migi, but the ways he subconsciously was growing to. The moments were small and insidious -- for example, Shinichi no longer experiencing some of his usual fears, things that Migi would perceive as irrational. More extreme examples included Shinichi literally threatening to eat a group of teenage boys who were hurting a cat (not to worry, Shinichi saved the little dude). The boys threw rocks at Shinichi, causing Migi to swoop in and catch them, and threaten to... eat the perpetrators, speaking through or perhaps mentally fused with, his host.

So a new fear began to blossom in Shinichi: that he would develop some sort of appetite for humans, and lose his precious humanity to Migi. After all, their situation held a great deal of unknowns -- even Migi didn't know what might happen in their odd case, where a parasite and its host retained their individual mindsets when they were originally supposed to fuse. It was a sort of catch-22: they were starting to be able to work together more efficiently as one unit...but to sometimes literally merge into one mind, as well.

In a nutshell, Shinichi Izumi is the result of someone who fell victim to a very bizarre experience by chance. None of his character traits have really changed -- he's still the same polite, mild-mannered, sweet, and altruistic person that he was before. But these traits have certainly been challenged and have been slowly, subtly evolving to where sometimes he's not sure if those things are really him anymore, or if he's having to grasp onto them instead. There's also the fact that carrying the weight of everything he has gone through has taken some of the "innocence" away from him. He may seem almost comically awkward and out-of-place on the surface, but beneath that there is something darker and heavier. He's been exposed to things that he can't return from, and having to emotionally and physically withdraw from his loved ones in order to hide Migi has taken an extremely heavy toll on him, as well.

Despite the moments of merging with Migi, there does remain a rather clear divide between them most of the time. If Shinichi is the emotional heart, Migi is the logical head. But perhaps the most accurate representation of them could be described when a young girl who had psychic abilities looked into Shinichi's eyes and was terrified to detect the image of a large, alien eyeball slowly opening itself wider and wider. Migi may not have successfully taken over Shinichi's brain, but deep down, the alien is inside the human.

In term's of Migi's personality, the alien is highly curious and outright inquisitive to the behaviour and life of other species. He will not hesitate to act on his own to satisfy this scientific curiosity, often putting Shinichi in the most awkward of situations. He may seem approachable: being almost childlike in his curiosity, speaking politely and formally, and even hosting a sense of humour that pops up from time to time. Yet underlying this is a rather frightening side to his personality in that he lacks human emotions and sees things from a purely tactical perspective; his purpose is to keep himself alive, and that means keeping Shinichi alive -- at any costs. He possesses intelligence beyond that of human capacity and is capable of acquiring information in an incredibly short amount of time. He is constantly adjusting to life, learning as much as he possibly can not only about the human world but also his own existence, and spending long nights awake reading books or doing research online.

Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses: Shinichi himself does not truly have any "powers." Rather, biologically-speaking, Migi is his right arm/hand, and the parasite's species are capable of many things beyond human limitation.

Despite being an "incomplete" fusion with his host, Migi is extremely formidable when he needs to be. He has the ability to change his form into basically any organic shape, to stretch himself out like rubber, to duplicate himself, and to forge Shinichi's arm and hand into whatever is needed. This includes shapeshifting into bladed weaponry (these "blades" are a staple of his species and while not organic by human standards, may be so for the parasites), tentacle-like appendages, or claws -- but most of the time, Migi is in a tamed state. This may be an eye or two anywhere on Shinichi's hand, a mouth popping up in his palm, or Migi manipulating his fingers into eyestalks so that he can look around.

He is capable of moving inhumanly swiftly, and of pulling Shinichi around with sheer force. He also possesses the ability to heal Shinichi, to enter other parts of his body, and to actually detach from him, leaving Shinichi without everything from the right elbow down. (However, he must return to his host within a matter of minutes, or else he will die. When he is detached, he is also significantly weaker both physically and mentally.)

Migi is able to sense other parasites from great distances, and seems to have the ability to sense other species as well: their distance, strength, and to some extent their emotional state and whether it poses a threat to him -- similar to how an animal would. While his abilities may seem quite aggressive, they are essentially centered around the simple need for survival.

Something else worth mentioning is that Migi has extensive knowledge in anatomy. While this is enhanced via studying and research, a gift for anatomical understanding is just a general feature of his species. It's something inborn, so that they're able to invade, overtake, and work a host body as needed. His inhuman intelligence also belongs in this category, as it's not necessarily a skill so much as a feature of his species; they are capable of obtaining, processing, and retaining information extremely quickly (for example, Migi learned the entire Japanese language in one day.)

The parasite is very sensitive to changes in temperature. Fire can actually cause instability in his cells and result in his death, and cold makes him severely uncomfortable; if the temperatures are cold enough, he will retreat into a sleep state. He also requires completely shutting down for some time daily to rest. During these times, Shinichi's hand will fully be his own again, with no inhuman capabilities, and Migi cannot be woken up.

Warping: These two already suit a psychological, body horror, survivalist world very well, so for the power warping I just played up a couple of traits they already have to potentially suit some of the themes of Deerington. All of which I am very flexible about altering or discussing further, if needed!

While their relationship is usually mutualistic, in the world of Deerington, Migi's parasitism will have stronger and therefore more negative effects on Shinichi. He will absorb more of his host's nutrients, resulting in Shinichi feeling more weak and tired, and consistently feeling as though he needs nutrition and requiring more to compensate for what he's losing. Migi's already instinctive aggression will also be greater, in that he'll spring into defensive mode more quickly if he perceives something as a threat to his survival. He won't be so carefully controlled the way he is back home, which will no doubt cause a bit more discord between his and Shinichi's parasite-host relationship. The mental fusing between them is also amplified in Deerington, to the point that they will do it more often and more intensely. This will play into Shinichi's worst fears (thinking like a parasite and potentially developing some amount of appetite for humans).

In terms of "nerfing", because Migi can get pretty powerful, I planned to have him tire much more easily here. Therefore, in most settings he won't be able to stay in his more intense weaponised forms as long, and the really complex ones will take too much out of him. His cells may also become unstable in the process of trying to transform, leading to half-transformations or failed ones. He will also have to shut down and sleep more often here than back home. Also, because this is technically a sort of dreamscape, his ability to "sense" what other creatures are will be dampened, leaving him more in the dark about things. Basically, I tried to take the "edge" off of his actual abilities, but amplify the biological part of him (parasitism and being an alien) so that it has more of a distressing role here.

Inventory:
outfit (seen here; white button-down under a green sweatervest, blue jeans, brown shoes, and glasses)
brown fur-lined jacket
shoulder satchel simply containing his wallet and a small notepad with a pen
cell phone

Writing Samples:
Deerington TDM top-level (there's quite a bit of Migi here, too)
thread with a good mix of them interacting together

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: Jhey
Player Age: 29
Player Contact: plurk: eyestalks | discord: Jhey#2354

Other Characters In Game: N/A
In-Game Tag If Accepted: Shinichi Izumi: Jhey
Permissions for Character: Here.
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: Yes!
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: As Shinichi's canon suggests, I enjoy a broad spectrum of "subtle yet cutting slow burn" to "outright ookey body horror". Existential/philosophical horror, slowly turning into some thing, body sharing, possession and all of the psychological nuances involved, indescribable eldritch abominations from The Beyond, metaphorical and symbolic themes, What You Don't See being worse, and anything with religious/theological elements.
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: None.
Additional Information: N/A