OOC || Application
Player's Name: Rae
Player LJ: suburbangoth
AIM or Email: ryuzaki plzkthx // marbleandstone @ gmail.com
Timezone: US Central [GMT -6]
Other Characters Played: N/A
Character: Beyond Birthday [aliases: B, Backup, Rue Ryuzaki, Lue Luxaky, etc. - thinks of himself as B; usually introduces himself as Ryuzaki]
Series/Fandom: Death Note/Another Note [spinoff prequel novel for both the manga and anime]
Original or Template version: Original
Age: 22
Gender: Male
Species: Human, with shinigami eyes
Sexuality: 98.5 percent asexual; 1.5 percent pansexual [approximate estimation, subject to change]
Link to picture/PB of character: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3042/2953177159_4c8389b067_o.png, for example. Since B imitates L, he is frequently represented with images of L, sometimes altered, such as with red eyes, to denote his shinigami eyes. Another example - http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3188/2965651554_314d868966_o.jpg.
Appearance: Most aspects about B’s appearance are intentionally designed to emulate the great detective L. B stands somewhere around 5’11” - or he would, were it not for the extremely pronounced slouch he’s adopted over the years. His build is wiry and thin; B toes the scale for underweight, clocking in at somewhere around 130 pounds. His eyes are wide and dark, his complexion pasty-pale, his shaggy, just-above-shoulder-length hair unkempt, unevenly cut, and a natural shade of black.
B’s wardrobe is simple, with an emphasis on comfort and function over fashion; he tends to wear clothing that is loose-fitting and plain, usually just an oversized dark-colored long-sleeved T-shirt, faded jeans, and comfortably worn tennis shoes. He does, however, wear makeup as part of his disguise - paler foundation and dark shadow smudged underneath both eyes to enhance the appearance of sleep deprivation.
Personality: B is a bona fide genius, brilliant and deviant; his eccentric manner is heavily influenced by the fact that he has possessed the eyes of a shinigami since birth. The eyes of a shinigami, or death god, allow anyone who possesses them to view any live person’s name and natural life span. The ability to view life spans is the ability to view death, and B has been surrounded with reminders of death from the day he was born. As a result of both this and the fact he was orphaned at an early age, B’s world view is a little more emotionally distant and off-kilter than the average, well-adjusted person.
B’s personality, in a single word, is obsessive. He is driven, and will go to extremes - such as murder - to achieve his goals, yet he is neither a sociopath nor a psychopath. He is rational and calculating; his obsession is to surpass L, and he will commit murder to do so, but he chooses victims with a painstaking amount of planning. B uses his shinigami eyes to choose victims who are destined to die the same day he plans to commit the murders, and he drugs them before committing the actual, gruesome murders, presumably so they will not suffer. B is emotionally detached in some aspects, but not entirely unfeeling or lacking a moral code. His general line of thinking is to do what L would do, only bigger, better, more extreme.
B does not maintain close relationships; since he has been surrounded with reminders of death his entire life, B learned early on in life not to allow himself to form attachments with other people. Once he was brought to the Wammy’s House orphanage and enrolled in the training program there, he fixated, instead, on L; B cares about L and L alone, in a bizarre idol-worship kind of way. B is mostly disinterested in both romance and sex - he usually has more pressing matters on his mind. He can, however, feign a certain topical friendliness when dealing with other people, especially if the other party has information or something else B thinks will be useful for his own purposes.
Abilities/Strengths: Through the Wammy’s House program, as a potential successor to the great detective L, B received extensive training in the investigative arts. He is adept at problem-solving, creative thinking, and logical reasoning, as evident in his prowess for both creating and solving puzzles, particularly crossword puzzles. B speaks English and Japanese fluently, and is proficient in a number of additional languages, including French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, and Mandarin. B is also an expert speed-reader and highly skilled in various types of computer work, including programming and hacking, and has had some medical training.
B is a skilled mimic and actor, capable of maintaining a convincing long-term public persona as an “unprivate detective” named Rue Ryuzaki with ease. Under the guise of Ryuzaki, B acts much less intelligent than he actually is, “playing the fool,” in effect, in order to gather information, subtly manipulate other people, and set his plans into motion. Even outside of this act, B lies, frequently and with precise calculation, and will not hesitate to give misinformation if it suits his purpose - and it generally does.
B is not particularly strong or trained in hand-to-hand combat, but he is stronger than his twig-like frame would suggest, and he’s incredibly quick on his feet. B does not generally instigate physical attacks, but when he does, it’s always a calculated maneuver, and he favors stealth and small, simple weapons, such as a club. In defense, B employs quick reflexes and flexibility to dodge.
As far as his personality is concerned, B’s greatest strength is his determination. He will do anything possible to achieve his goals - when his goal is to surpass L, B even turns to murder and becomes a criminal, in order to simply win and become better than L. Once he has a goal in mind, B does not give up. He is very smart, though perhaps misguided.
With the shinigami eyes, B is able to see any live human’s true name and life span. For non-humans and humans who have died, he will not see their name or a life span.
Weaknesses: While he is stronger than he looks, B is still not particularly strong - no more so than the average person who spends most of the time indoors and does not train physically. He would be easily overpowered by a show of brute force, or an aggressive attack by someone trained in hand-to-hand combat or martial arts.
B’s greatest personality weakness is shortsightedness with respect to his obsessiveness; his eventual downfall is caused by the fact that he became so fixated on one thing - beating L - that he failed to consider anything else. For example, B underestimated Naomi Misora’s deductive abilities, and she was able to solve the mystery of his identity as the killer behind the series of murders and apprehend B before he was able to set the final stage of his murder plan into motion. B’s skewed world view is also something of weakness - though he is not prone to outbursts or displays of action not thoroughly calculated, B is still somewhat emotionally unstable, especially considering that the end result of the series of murders was intended to be a rather gruesome suicide.
History: There are not many specific facts known about Beyond Birthday from the text of Another Note before the events of the story in question. What is known, however, is that both of his parents were killed when he was quite young - his father was murdered by a thug, his mother died in a train crash - and he was eventually brought to the Wammy’s House orphanage in Winchester, England, to participate in a rigorous detective training program as B - Backup for the genius detective L.
B was the second candidate enrolled in the program, a child with a brilliant mind and an eccentric demeanor; the first candidate, A, was unable to cope with the various pressures of the intense training program and ended up committing suicide. B excelled in the program for many years, yet ultimately was not chosen as L’s successor, for reasons not precisely specified. It is speculated, however, that the first generation of trainees was perhaps meant to act as prototypes for the program, never intended to actually succeed as a successor to L. B disappeared from the House around May of 2002 - again, for reasons not specified - shortly before orchestrating what would come to be known as the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases in July and August of that same year.
The series of elaborate, grisly killings involved three victims, each seemingly unrelated to the next, save for the fact that each was found in a room locked from the inside, a decreasing number of Wara Ningyo dolls was nailed to the walls of the rooms where the victims were found, and each victim’s first and last name began with the same letter. Believe Bridesmaid, a 44-year-old freelance writer, was drugged and asphyxiated to death with a rope, with post-mortem cuts made on his chest, a code designed to indicate the second victim. Quarter Queen, a 13-year-old girl, was drugged and killed via blunt force trauma to her head; her eyes were crushed in post-mortem. Backyard Bottomslash, a 28-year-old bank worker, died from severe blood loss when her left arm and right leg were hacked off; the arm was never recovered.
The serial murders attracted L’s attention, just as B intended, and L enlisted the assistance of a suspended FBI agent named Naomi Misora in investigating the murders. B approached Naomi at the scene of the first murder, introducing himself as an “unprivate detective” named Rue Ryuzaki hired by the murder victims’ families to investigate the murder, independent of the police. Under the guise of cooperative investigation, B skillfully led Naomi through the obscure clues he’d left behind at the scene of each murder, pointing to the location of the fourth and final murder. B’s intent at the final scene was to commit suicide by setting himself on fire after setting it up to look like another murder, and thus leave L with a puzzle he could never solve. This, in B’s mind, would prove that he was better than L. Naomi, however, was able to piece together the final clues and determine Ryuzaki’s identity as the killer, B, and place him under arrest before he was able to succeed in his suicide plot, though not before B was able to badly burn himself.
B spent the next year and a half recovering from his extensive burn injuries while serving a life sentence in prison for his crimes and died of a mysterious heart attack on January 21, 2004, one of the many, many victims of Kira and the Death Note.