[Siren's Pull] App/Character Info

[deadfreesia]

Player Information

Name: Pi-chi
Age: 30
AIM SN: ThisIsJustPichi
email: munhunt@gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? yes
Bonus: How did you hear about Siren's Pull? your Nagi tempted me from dear_mun. Then three of my friends joined as other castmates, at which point I was officially Doomed.

Character Information

General
Canon Source: Weiß Kreuz
Canon Format: an anime (known as Kapitel), two OVAs, some drama CDs, another season of anime (known as Glühen), and a splash of manga.
Character's Name: Mamoru Takatori, codename Persia (formerly known as Omi Tsukiyono, codename Bombay)
Character's Age: 21
Conditional: If your character is 13 years of age or under, please clarify how they will be played. N/A

What form will your character's NV take? http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/brandnewday/archives/verizon-xv6800-smartphone.jpg

Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: Mamoru has no superhuman abilities in canon. He did, however, spend all of his adolescence leading the assassin squad Weiß, and as a result comes with an arsenal of hidden skills. He has experience in reconnaissance, tactical work, espionage, sabotage, and weaponry. He's trained in combat and able to handle himself against most normal humans, though he favors avoiding close-range fighting if possible due to the disadvantages it presents in light of his smaller size. He knows how to sneak into secure areas undetected and disable their security systems. He knows how to make and use (and I would suspect disarm) explosives. As the resident computer expert amongst the team, he was responsible for most technological infiltration and subterfuge. He's trained his body for speed, stamina and agility, and is capable of some light tumbling. And, most notably of all, he has pinpoint aim with thrown or fired objects.

Mamoru is also skilled with First Aid thanks to his experiences in Weiß helping to treat injuries sustained by his former teammates, though he is not trained in CPR. He has solid leadership abilities and is an unofficial genius, cunning and resourceful in his problem-solving. For example, he once tied a rope to a crossbow arrow and shot it over an electrified fence to create a means of crossing it. He's equally crafty with facts and words when talking, enabling him to manipulate and deceive people with strategic half-truths. Lastly, the cover job of the assassins' group was a flower shop. Mamoru has an extensive knowledge about flowers, their care, and their meanings from working that cover.

As a side note, Mamoru is no longer an assassin by trade; he's a politician, and he's not keen on making it obvious to anyone that he has these skills. While being watched, he will pretend to be far less capable than he actually is until it becomes advantageous to do otherwise.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them? Shapeshifting. It nicely compliments his inner self, which is something of a behavioral chameleon, taking on different facades (Omi the flower shop boy, Bombay the assassin, Mamoru the politician, Persia the head of Kritiker) to suit his circumstances. It gives him an advantage in some fields but adds little to his fighting ability, which I'd prefer to keep at its current level. I like the idea of his being at a disadvantage in battles thanks to the superhuman powers most others wield. He'd find it frustrating to not be able to fend for himself all of the sudden.

In the beginning, Mamoru will only partially morph, and he will lack control over when and where it happens. It will be to another human or humanoid shape-- no growing extra limbs. The partial morph will be a product of deep thought about that person. As he gains control and experience with the ability, he will first learn to stop the shapeshifting from happening involuntarily, then eventually learn to do full-body morphs to other human figures of his choosing.

After mastering human morphs, Mamoru may start to learn animals, which would follow a similar process of starting with those closest in size and shape to humans and gradually moving away from that. It would be several months before he could take on the shape of an animal radically different from a human. The ability will never extend to fantasy creatures, extinct animals, or inanimate objects.

The ability requires a degree of active concentration. He can still think or carry out an activity, but if he's badly surprised or dazed by an injury, he reverts to his normal form. In addition, it's a drain on his energy (both physical and mental) to hold the form. It can't be done indefinitely. How long he can hold it will be another area that develops through the game and be relative to both his experience level in shapeshifting and the familiarity of the morph. For example, as he is learning to become a non-human life, he'll have weaker stamina to hold that than he would a human form. The further from human form he is, the stronger the drain and thus the less time he can hold it.

The ability is also unable to cover an injury. If he breaks his leg and tries to shapeshift into a different person or creature, he'll still have a broken leg or similarly crippling damage (such as a broken wing in the case of a bird). Animal morphs also carry with them all the unfamiliarity of a different physiology. One could expect his early attempts at four-legged creatures to come with great clumsiness-- he doesn't inherit the instinct to synchronize the legs properly. Likewise for the ability to fly with any winged creatures. Becoming a housefly would be extremely disorienting on a visual basis from the nature of the eyes.

Along with that unfamiliarity comes all the natural pros and cons of a different form. Insects are inconspicuous but easily killed. Dogs have an excellent sense of smell but are colorblind. Cheetahs are fast but have short stamina and the burst of energy would drain his ability to stay in the form much more quickly. Every form has a natural vulnerability.

I recognize that extending his ability to animals adds a great deal of versatility to it. I have done my best to compensate for that with restrictions and disadvantages, but if it still seems like too much, I'm open to limiting the shapeshifting to only human forms.
Weapons: Nagi. Mamoru carries poison darts on his person at all times and a folding crossbow concealed under his coat when he's wearing it. He's also a master of archery and throwing knives, though he has neither on his person. On arriving, Mamoru will only have his darts.

History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History: Mamoru Takatori is the illegitimate son of the wife of Kapitel's main villain, Reiji Takatori. As if that weren't juicy enough, his real father is Reiji's brother, Shuuichi. Reiji despised Mamoru as a constant reminder of his wife's unfaithfulness, so when Mamoru was kidnapped at the age of 11, Reiji's revenge was to refuse to pay the ransom for his wife's beloved son. This act is ultimately the catalyst for the entire series, since it leads to Mamoru's mother committing suicide, which then drives Shuuichi into taking on the role of Persia to plot his brother's murder through Weiß. (Why he couldn't just hire a hit man instead of taking six years and ruining a child's life to achieve his goal is never answered).

In any case, filled with feelings of betrayal and terror as the kidnappers closed in to kill him, Mamoru squirmed past them and ran out of the room screaming and crying. Shuuichi, who believed the boy to be Reiji's, helped him escape, took him in and began training him to be his personal killing dog. When the series opens, he has no memories of anything that happened to him before Weiß. He doesn't remember being kidnapped, who his family is, or even his real name-- he's assumed the name Omi Tsukiyono in its place. He does later, however, regain his memories of the kidnapping (episode 7) and his awareness that he is Mamoru Takatori, along with a few memories of his early childhood (episode 10).

Significant events within the series Kapitel: a character named Schuldig throws Omi into an emotional upheaval by pointing out his hypocrisy-- thinking of himself as a good person even though he's just as much a killer as the monsters he hunts down. He falls in love with Ouka, a girl that turns out to be his cousin (but is believed to be his half-sister). Schuldig and Farfarello kill her, an act for which he has never forgiven them. After an identity crisis that Aya helps to resolve, he disowns his Takatori birth name (significant because this is the first time he actively chooses to dissociate himself with the family), personally murders one of his "brothers," and through Weiß is an accessory to the murder of his other "brother" and "father" Reiji. With Persia having died the same night as Reiji and Ouka already dead, Omi finds himself once again completely alone in terms of blood-related family after only a short time of knowing that he had it in Persia and Ouka.

The first half of the series revolves around exposing the exploits of the Takatori family and Omi's connection to them. In the second half of the series, Weiß reunite to try to stop a group calling themselves Eszett, who have an interest in the sister of another Weiß member, Aya. The final battle takes place in a building off the coast, last seen crumbling into the sea with all of Weiß in it. Somehow, they all manage to survive and go back to doing what they do. Now from a trailer.

The OVAs consist of a plot in which Weiß's liaison with their parent organization, Kritiker, is taken hostage and forced to assist a Persia imposter. She is able to encode a warning to Weiß, however, and after a bloody staged deathfight on a snow-covered carnival grounds, Weiß ambush the imposter, kill him, and rescue their liaison. Unfortunately, teammate Ken kind of snaps at the end and starts on a downward spiral from there.

The OVAs are significant because they set the stage for future events in the drama CDs. Omi is forced here to confront the fact that Weiß are not family, a notion he has clung to as a comfort against his lack of any living relatives. At the same time, he spends the next several months watching Ken and Youji psychologically deteriorate. His "family" is falling apart in front of him, both by outward appearances and by inward perspective.

The drama CDs introduce another new twist when Reiji's and Shuuichi's father, Saijou Takatori, contacts Omi through a pair of servant girls and pressures him to stay with him for a few days. Saijou wants Omi to return to the name Mamoru Takatori and take his place as the heir to his biological family. Combined with the growing mess within Weiß, Omi's long-denied desire for family outweighs the stigma of the Takatori name. He willfully blinds himself to signs that Saijou may be no better than Reiji and refuses to let Weiß go after him. After the two servant girls die protecting his grandfather, Omi agrees to his grandfather's wishes, thus sending his character on a full reverse-course from his development in Kapitel. Weiß disbands, with Youji, Ken and Aya taking their own paths and Omi-- now going by the name Mamoru-- spending the next two years living with his grandfather and attending law school.

At the end of those two years, Mamoru summons Weiß back together for the sake of fighting a new enemy. The events that follow comprise the second anime, Glühen, and are covered here:

http://ayakreuz.tripod.com/weisssynopsis1.htm
Point in Canon: completely after Glühen and after a scene in the Side B manga (technically a flashback) in which Mamoru and Aya officially part ways. He is taken before any of Side B proper, however.
Conditional: Brief summary of previous RP history: N/A

Character Personality: Mamoru is an extremely complicated young man. Glühen was a period of metamorphosis for his character. It is a coming of age story in which he sheds the aura of innocent child that made Omi so charming and approachable and dons in its place the stern, strong manner required of him in his new role as Persia. His outward personality undergoes a fundamental shift from his earlier identity of Omi. Although close examination reveals surprising parallels between the two, on the surface their personalities could hardly seem more different. Omi offered smiles and compassion to those around him. He was pleasant, uncertain, inquisitive, easily flustered, and expressive. Mamoru, by contrast, is subdued and calm, hiding 95% of his emotional responses. He rarely smiles unless it is as a politician for the cameras. He's cautious and shrewd, making decisions only after examining all conceivable angles. This forethought makes changing his mind difficult, though new information may crack open the door.

Mamoru has adopted as his primary goal the resolution to protect the Takatori family. Not one to do things halfway, he embraces this to the full extent of its meaning. He protects the lives, the lineage, the leverage and the legacy. He has taken up a public career in politics, both to establish/strengthen the connections and influence the position offers as well as to uphold the expectations of greatness upon him as a Takatori son. He has taken over as the head of Kritiker to keep a private army of investigators, saboteurs, spies and assassins at his disposal (it is worth noting that another part of this decision was his not trusting anyone else to wield the power responsibly). One may presume he expects to one day marry and have children to continue the Takatori line. It is difficult to fathom this was the same boy who a few years earlier passionately dissociated himself from the Takatori clan, but such is the difference the shattering of one's alternative family can make.

Three years as Mamoru has taught him to value pragmatism over the idealism his younger counterpart chased, and he no longer allows his heart to influence his decisions. As a canon example, one only need look to Mamoru's alliance with Nagi, formerly a member of Schwarz. Schwarz was Weiß's mortal enemy in Kapitel. Omi had passionate feelings against Schwarz which would have made working alongside them impossible. Mamoru by contrast may still privately hold Ouka's death against Schwarz, but those feelings do not prevent him from seizing the great advantage of allies in its members.

In keeping with his goal to serve and protect his family, Mamoru's decisions are now grounded first and foremost in self-interest. Increasing his power, avoiding a threat, strengthening a valuable social connection, conserving his resources-- anything that benefits him or the Takatori family on a more general basis. That doesn't mean his heart is fully ignored; when possible, Mamoru is a man who will create selfish justifications for ultimately selfless causes. If he can find a way to make an action benefit him while at its heart being done to serve someone he cares about, that's his favored option. But if he can't find a way to make it benefit him, he'll restrain himself from following that path. Mamoru has compassion, but it will likely not be seen, and it should not be taken as given that it will do anyone other than himself any good. He is not a nice person in spite of his remaining a kind-hearted individual at his core.

Another of Mamoru's less glowing qualities is his manipulative nature. Even if he cares about a person, Mamoru is willing to use selective facts, lies of omission, emotional weaknesses, and any other tactics at his disposal to guide that person into a desired course of action or way of thinking. He takes no pleasure in it. He also feels no remorse for it. He acknowledges that he must regard members of Kritiker and its various branches as his family's tools, not people in their own right. He puts this into practice within the series itself, having hand-picked the new recruit Sena largely because of his connection to the ultimate target of the Koua Academy mission. Sena was used to bait the target into coming out, a strategy which cost Sena his life.

Mamoru's personal secretary, Rex, makes an observation to one of Kritiker's branch members in the final episode, responding to an accusation that Mamoru is weak for sinking to the cold-hearted persona he has embraced. Rex disagrees, stating instead that Mamoru is very strong, and it's because of his strength that he's so sad. What she means is that Mamoru is aware of the fact he's become a dick and privately hates being one. It runs completely counter to the selfless, kind and sensitive person he is deep down. But as unhappy as he is with the image he projects of himself, he recognizes that his life situation is one in which such a personality is necessary. He has resigned himself to this fate, found the strength to maintain his required persona in spite of how much he despises it, and he accepts the consequences without flinching.

Mamoru also knows that he is a dangerous person to be associated with. That awareness along with his natural aversion to intimacy drives him to avoid forming closer relationships with anyone. It is only a select few that are allowed to see his more human side, people for whom the wall is half-lowered. The main one is Rex. The other is his former teammate, Aya, who is second only to his grandfather as the most influential living person in his life. To a lesser extent, the same applies to Ken and Youji. Though throughout Glühen it is a side his grandfather sees, Saijou spends the series grooming him to keep that more human side in check. It's not established in canon, but one can reasonably guess that following Glühen's epilogue, which shows a Mamoru much more harsh and unyielding than he was to that point, that the progress has been matched elsewhere. In an effort to please Saijou, Mamoru has likely begun keeping the facade up in his grandfather's presence in spite of the attachment he has developed towards him.

Bastard that he is, Mamoru isn't without his good qualities. He does what he can to help and protect other people when his family duty does not bind his hands against it. Kritiker is his tool, and is used to attack enemies of and threats to the Takatori family's assets. However, it is noteworthy that those enemies and threats are always bringing great harm to innocent civilians at the same time. He's adaptable, resilient, and highly intelligent. He's hard-working and committed to any cause that gains his genuine support. His determination and inner strength can carry him through nearly any obstacle. And for all the world has thrown at him to turn him into a truly terrible person, and for all he has had to change who he is on the outside to deal with that world, he's not yet lost sight of who he really is: a gentle spirit with a kind heart. Deep down, he is still the same person he has always been. Whether Omi or Mamoru, he is serious, calculating, depressed, and coldly private at his core. He knowingly and willingly sacrifices his personal happiness for the sake of a larger goal. He remains ambitious in pursuit of this larger goal and ruthless in his tactics for achieving it. It is extremely difficult to get close to him, but he holds quiet fondness and love for those that do.

In summary, Mamoru is in part a separate person from Omi, but also a natural evolution from his root character to accommodate a new life. Omi was born to exist in Weiß; he is not suited for the role of Persia, nor for the responsibilities of his birth family. It was fitting for Mamoru to lay him to rest amongst Weiß, the only family Omi has ever known. He has thus closed that chapter of his life and taken up a new identity-- in name, personality, and ambition-- for the task ahead of him in the next chapter. In so doing, he has fully matured into the Takatori heir.
Conditional: Personality development in previous game: N/A
Character Plans: Mamoru's biggest plan on arriving will be to secure himself safety and resources and, after that, power and information. He'll want to reaffirm his alliance with Nagi, do some recon, and design a strategy for rising up in the world so long as he's stuck there. I suspect he'll be aligning himself with AGI.

If it doesn't conflict with his greater interests, he'll also be doing what he can to benefit his former teammates. He'd probably like to have an active relationship with them again but depending on circumstances he may not pursue it.

Appearance/PB: http://www.livejournal.com/allpics.bml?user=deadfreesia

Writing Samples

First Person Sample

[Filtered to Aya and Ken]

[No video is available for the transmission. That's precaution number one. Number two is the filter solely to the two for whom he has any interest in alerting his presence. Number three is the use of code names in spite of the filter, just in case it fails. The young man's voice is gentle in timbre and soft in volume, but firm and curt in tone.]

Siberian. Abyssinian. If you're hearing this, I'd like to speak with both of you.

[After a few moments' pause, the tone of commanding-without-directly-ordering drops. In fact, it almost sounds apologetic.]

I won't be Persia. Please return my call as soon as possible. Until then.

Third Person Sample

Mamoru was not in the mood for games.

On recovering from the pinching sensation through his body-- followed by the feeling that he'd just been hit by a truck-- he furrowed his eyebrows and looked around the baseball diamond in which he'd found himself. He held his stance in a slight crouch, not quite enough to look more than wary. In truth, it was defensive, a stance prepared to spring into action at a moment's notice. If he needed to run, to duck, to jump, if he needed to block or to throw a dart. Mamoru had not survived for as long as he had by leaving his guard at home.

There didn't appear to be any threat in the surrounding area. This realization only slightly relaxed him. Where was he, and who had removed him from his office? Was it an illusion? A trap? Schuldig dropping in for his own entertainment? No, Schuldig had not caused any problems for a very long time. What, then?

His chest felt strange. A dull, ceaseless ache just behind the breastbone, like the tension in a weighted chain. The sensation bothered him for wondering what it might mean, but for the time being, he couldn't let himself become distracted.

Keeping his eyes on his surroundings, he reached into his pocket for his cell phone. He found two. Frowning harder, he pulled both from his pocket and turned the new one over in his hand for examination while he called Rex on the more familiar one.

No signal. Just for certainty, he tried Nagi as well. Same result. Mamoru's mood darkened; he slid the phone back into his pocket and took another look at the new one that had somehow gotten into his pocket without his noticing. He would give it this: it was nicer than the one he owned, which was a statement, but also unsettling. Mamoru kept up with the latest technology-- both for the sake of knowing what others might have at their disposal and for taking advantage of it himself. He had never seen anything this advanced before.

Some might have opted to try broadcasting a distress call, or at least a request for answers. Mamoru was against the idea of announcing his presence and possibly his location to a community of unknowns. It seemed luck was granting him a favorable turn, however. In his scroll through the contacts, he noticed a few familiar names, including one of the two he'd wanted to reach in the first place. Slightly worrisome as he still knew nothing of what had happened, where he and his old friends were, or what it meant for them, but ultimately more reassuring than not.

Still keeping an eye on his surroundings, he called Nagi, the slightest change in his facial features towards satisfaction as he heard a signal.