Flow is the power system that the characters of NEON RED use. It utilizes aura as a resource to create whatever effect they wish to achieve, depending on the Style they perform.
“Aura? Styles?”
Yeah, that’s a lot at once, isn’t it? Let’s start simple.
Every Human – every single one – carries aura within, knowingly or unknowingly. In essence it’s life force; the very thing that was used by the world’s creator to imbue life onto it. Not just Humans carry aura, but even non-sentient life – trees, flowers, rocks, the ground, et cetera – is imbued with it.
All Humans have the possibility to awaken to their source of aura – either by having it brute-forced open by another, aura-aware Human, or by coming in contact with it through mental and spiritual journeying.
“Okay, but what does it do?”
In itself, aura isn’t very special. You can imagine it like waves of translucent mass that any non-aware human isn’t even able to witness. However, it acts like a moldeable mass that an awakened Human is able to harness into something different. This is where Flow comes into play.
When an awakened Human uses aura, they control it via their soul. They need to perfectly imagine the way they want to use it in order to do so.
Flow helps these Humans to do so, via the twelve different Flow Styles. Here’s a nifty infograph displaying them all:
As you may have noticed, all of these Styles have two indicators:
– a verb that describes what exactly you can do with it
– a specific placement of both hands (though they can all be used with only one hand as well)
This means that you can use a Style to mold your aura in the way that the Style describes.
“… what?”
Let’s make it a little more digestible:
Take Scatter for example. Assuming you have already learned how to use Scatter (which, in itself, takes a lot of mental training), you fold your hands to the exact motion and invoke the Style to, well, scatter your aura. How and in which way? That is completely up to the user. Creativity and mental control is all you require.
Another example: with Shape, you can shape your aura into a form that you have learned to mentally conjure. Or with Order, you can basically ‘program’ your aura to carry out a simple order. With Envelop, you can let your aura envelop you or something else, and so on and so forth.
However, each Style has their own level of difficulty to master.
Simple commands like Envelop, Shape, Scatter or Stream are the ones low-level users begin with to get a grasp at Flow. Styles like Range, Manipulate or Select are much harder to execute, mostly used by high-level professionals that have their fair share of training years behind them.
But wait! That’s not all!
You can also combine Styles.
Let’s say we use Shape, and after that Effect. If you have trained yourself to do so, you can create a shape that has some sort of effect – say, a cube that explodes on contact. Or let’s combine Range with Magnify. You could extend your aura around a certain area, which you can then use to increase something within that area – or the area itself. Maybe you enlarge rocks and create a landslide, maybe you sharpen grass so it becomes a field of deadly blades.
This fusion of Styles is then known as a Flow Style sequence.
The time and difficulty needed to perform any of these tasks depends on creativity, training and mental state. A novice may, for example, create grass scythes in around ten seconds, while a master of his field may do so in an instant.
Combining in itself is difficult as well, and a certain degree of mastery is needed to even pull off two Styles at once. Three becomes a task of perfection and four at once is only possible for the most powerful Humans on the planet.
“That sounds cool.”
Thanks again.
“Wait, why is Unlock in the middle? There are thirteen Styles, not twelve.”
Unlock isn’t really a Style per se. It’s more of an awakening-button, something you execute so that you unlock the full potential of your current aura. That’s why it doesn’t count toward a sequence either. Novices have to learn it before any other Style.
“What would my Flow be?”
Totally up to you. Get creative and draft your own skill!