CIVILIAN . FUJIHARA, YUUDAI

Male

Bisexual, prefers females

Thirty-two

March 1st, 1980

Japanese

Japanese
English
Various others
(see training section)

Yuu

0.5

Civilian

N/A

N/A

10/11/13 by Dani

REITGERTE

DARRIN "MOOSE" MOORE
LUCIEN MARGAUX
KEIJIRO WATANABE
MIKHAIL USENKO
EILIA TIFIEL
ANASTASIA SOKOLOV

VERY LOW

EMIYA KIRITSUGU from FATE/ZERO

He lives in a leased basement apartment that suits his needs quite well. He's been living there for just over a year and hasn't had any problems. The owner of the building is some friend of a friend of a friend of someone in the Yakuza branch that Yuudai works with, and doesn't give him any trouble--or really talk to him at all. He gives Yuudai his privacy, and since the basement apartment has a back exit, he can come and go without drawing any attention. The apartment looks normal and lived in, but holds its secrets. Even though there is a TV in front of the couch, Yuudai almost never watches it (although he does sometime leave it on so anyone listening in will hear the noise). He bought the couch used, which means it looks well worn, as if he's had plenty of people over to visit. There's a living area, a kitchen, a small office and then his bedroom.

There's also not one, but three secret compartments located in his home. Yuudai has contingency plans for his contingency plans, and is fully expecting that someone might one day dig around his apartment. His priorities are simple: One, keep anyone from ever finding out what he does for a living, and two, keep anyone from ever finding who he really was. If he had his way, 'Yuudai' would simply be another one of a long line of fake and stolen identities.

On a bookshelf in his room is a whole mess of books on a variety of topics. The second shelf from the bottom is actually only three quarters real books--a quarter of the books on the shelf (just off to the left of center) are actually a facade used to hide a small safe. Unless you go through pulling out books, it's impossible to tell there's anything there, as it's covered on the top and sides. Inside that particular cache is a fake ID that leads to a man who looked like him and died several years back, which could very well be his 'real' identity to anyone investigating. Buried in a cache in the soil under the potted plant in his kitchen is a cache of drugs, enough to convince most cops that he was simply a dealer, and that that was what he was really hiding. What he actually intends to hide (which is minimal, and even then not enough to conclusively link him to Yuudai Fujihara) is actually hidden in a section of air venting in his attic. One portion of the piping that provides his section of the house with air conditioning has been modified, holding a cache that's only accessible if you know exactly where to press. Essentially, it's impossible to stumble across it on anything but a vigorous and intensive search of the entire house that would involve tearing down walls. He accesses the cache every six months at maximum, and there's next to no sign that it's there.

Yuudai dislikes the idea of coverjobs entirely. He really doesn't see the point to them. If anyone is starting with his real identity and trying to locate him, there's no reason for him to have a job--he had enough money saved from when he worked as a banker that he could reasonably live off them and not work for years. Each of his identities has some other reason they might not be working at a given time. They might have a recently deceased wealthy relative, or have someone listed for supporting him.

His actual job is simple--he's a hitman that works primarily with the yakuza. The Yakuza's expansion through California is still relatively small and low key. They have minimal interest in a true 'expansion', simply using America for what it's good for--smuggling guns and drugs. Methamphetamines go in, and guns go out. California is simply a stop on the grand train, and the vast majority of the smuggling actually happens in Hawai'i. Yuudai isn't even a proper cog in the machine--he just happens to be the machinist who comes in to oil any squeaky gears. He's considered more of an 'outside contractor', and while he primarily works for them, he also occasionally does work for their allies in order to prevent him from tracing directly back to them.

While most hitmen do more than just kill, Yuudai does not. He has enough money that he can be relatively choosy about his jobs, and he has particularly strict standards. The Yakuza he work with simply take it as a given when working with him, because it's his own personal bit of 'honor'. He'll kill, but he won't cause pain--he strives to do what he does while causing the least amount of pain possible. He doesn't do torture jobs or kidnappings, and prefers to do those who have already been forsaken by their families. He's insanely meticulous about the jobs he chooses, and having him do a job for you means it'll be done as neatly and efficiently as possible. Not everyone wants that of course--some want their victims to suffer--but for those who value efficiency, he's the best choice among the contacts of the LA Yakuza.

As a rule of thumb, very little about Yuudai's living situation is obvious. Even a keen eye would have trouble with the details of his existence. His clothes are plain, tagless, and generic. Despite looking high quality, they could be purchased in almost any mall in America, and they reveal little about him. They come from a variety of stores at a variety of dates, and almost any identifying feature has been removed from them. Several pieces of his clothes have been tailored, but there's no way to get information from that either--the thread is generic, and he did the stitching himself.

What he carries with him is similarly mystifying. Despite having permits for his guns, he rarely brings a weapon along. Unless he's going out with the intention of killing someone, he knows that a gun can be more of a liability than an asset. As far as he's concerned, if someone is trying to kill him, knows where he lives, and manages to catch him unawares, then there's absolutely no reason to give them an extra gun as a reward for their good work. What he does carry on him is minimal at best. He had a small wallet he carries in his right pocket which holds cash, an ID for whatever persona he happens to be, and then some cards to help lend some credence to the ID. It isn't difficult to collect membership cards for a fake identity, and it makes a wallet look a lot more believable if you've got more than just a drivers license to go with a name.

Yuudai doesn't look particularly intimidating or interesting. In a city like Los Angeles which features not just a Chinatown but also a Little Tokyo and a Koreatown he manages to blend in easily. Those good at differentiating between the different groups of East Asians would have little trouble working out his country of origin, but those who rely on more obvious cues such as accent will be left in the dark. His accent has diminished to the point where it barely exists, and it's only on very, very specific words that it's noticeable at all. Even then, most people wouldn't notice. Early on in his time in America, he made a point of practicing English in front of a mirror, recording and listening back to words as he said them to try and sound more 'american'. While his intention at the time was good--to fit in more at the American office of the bank--it's had more use during his time working on less noble pursuits.

Yuudai stands at five foot nine inches tall, which puts him above average for a Japanese male, but on average with an American male. He's muscular and fit from time at the gym, and his build is average. His skin is paler than usual from lots of time inside, and doesn't hold a tan well. His hair is black, and he wears his hair relatively short. In general, he hates his hair, because while it feels nice to run his finger through, it's also impossible to keep under control. It enjoys standing on end, and no reasonable amount of combing will keep it under control. His one consolation is that he's not going to go bald anytime soon, enjoying a thick head of hair that shows no signs of thinning.

Yuudai operates with three identities and a variety of minor pseudonyms.

The first of his identities is Mike Nakamura. While the identity was not his originally, it was a real identity. Mike Nakamura was a nisei, an American citizen born to Japanese parents. He fell in with the Yakuza, and when he died in an accident, his death was simply never reported, and his identity went on to help the Yakuza. While Yuudai was originally iffy on the idea of stealing a dead man's identity, it turned out that it was an honest to goodness accident that killed Mike, not an 'accident'. Considering that Mike packed everything and moved to the west coast less than three months before he died, no one in the area is familiar enough with him to have realized he was replaced. He had a similar height, weight, and build to Yuudai, and the ID still has Mike's real picture on it. In a year his license will expire, and Yuudai himself will go and have it replaced. He has everything in order, and the picture looks similar enough that anyone would simply chalk the difference up to the years since it was taken.

The second of his identity is actually his own. He uses it about as much as he uses Mike, which works well because it's a lot easier to respond to your own name. It's that identity that his home is leased under, and the owner of the house knows him by that name.

The third identity isn't used the way the first two are. The third identity is 'Kaito Takahashi', who was a Japanese tourist who ran afoul of the Yakuza several years back, and before Yuudai started working with them. Unlike Mike, the Yakuza did disappear him after an incident involving a large amount of drugs, and while he was reported missing, no body was ever found. He looks similar enough that Yuudai could pass for him, although it's been quite a while since his last picture was taken. Yuudai never uses his identity when out and about, but instead keeps a cache of his personal documents hidden in his house. The idea is that if anything happens to him, someone would discover 'Mike', 'Yuudai', and then find 'Kaito' hidden away, and assume that Mike and Yuudai were assumed identities, while Kaito was who he really was.

If most people in his life were asked what Yuudai was like, they'd inevitably be forced to think about it for a good long while before declaring that he keeps to himself. It's an accurate assessment, because Yuudai does keep to himself. He prefers his privacy and solitude, and sees absolutely no problem with spending several days at home without going out or speaking to another human being through anything but the internet. He purposefully chooses to distance himself from people he might care about, and keeps a mental wall between him and those he deals with. He doesn't really care about anyone in his life, and he prefers it that way. He doesn't want to grow attached, because he knows it'll only end badly. He's on speaking terms with people involved in his job and a few people he had to deal with locally, but none of them really know him.

Online he opens up a bit more. With thousands of miles of space between him and the people he's talking to, he feels less of a need to push them away. That's not to say he's not careful about talking to them, but to him they're as good a set of 'friends' as he'll ever allow himself to have. An important exception to this rule is his family, in particular his sister Kazue. While the rest of his family is either abusive or tolerant of his father's abuse, Kazue was the only other member of the family to break away. If that wasn't enough, Kazue has managed to be everything he isn't--she's largely unaffected by her childhood, and has gone on to be the success that Yuudai could never be. In a way he's proud of her, but on the other hand he's also jealous. He'd never admit it to himself, but he wishes he could have had her life. He simply doesn't think it was ever really an option for him.

His sister is also the one person he's truly protective of. His own life comes second to her well being now that he knows she's in America, and he'd do literally anything for her. His priority list shifted from 'keep living' and 'don't let anyone find out who I am' to 'protect kazue' and 'don't ever let her find out what I do' in the span of ten minutes, and it's a good indication of just how important to him she is. She's almost everything in his life, and a lot of his plans and preparations revolve around her.

In general, Yuudai is an overly prepared person. Most people might have a backup plan when going to a restraunt that they haven't been to before. Yuudai goes above and beyond that to an obsessive level. He'll have looked into the restaurant, read plenty of reviews, and chosen it not just for it's food but also it's location and setting. He'll have a good idea of where he wants to be seated in the restaurant (maximizing escape routes and vision of the area). He'll know what he wants, and tend to order without the usual 'sitting around staring at the menu'. He'll know at least two ways out of the building, and at least three ways back to a bolt hole. He doesn't go out all that often, preferring to cook at home, and when you realize how paranoid he is there's little question why.

Because he is paranoid. There's no way to brush off his thought process as justified. He's an extremely low key person considering his profession, and he's yet to get on anyones radar in particular. Those who think that his restaurant plans are excessive would cry out in horror at the level of detail and planning that goes into an actual job, and it's served him extremely well. Despite all that he is still convinced people could come after him at any moment, and he acts as if he was being actively hunted down, as opposed to it being something that might happen in the future.

Despite being extremely good at his job, Yuudai is a defeatist at heart. To him, the cycle of abused to abuser is an inescapable part of his destiny. In his mind, the moment his father raised a hand to him he was fated to do the same. He avoids people out of what he sees as the goodness of his heart--he knows he'll hurt them, and he strives to avoid hurting those that he likes. Everything he does is to that end, and he could use a good talking to about the way he thinks about it.

It should come as little surprise that someone as paranoid and over prepared as Yuudai has putting a great deal of time and effort into making himself as prepared as humanly possible for his job. Really, until Kazue made her presence known he only had his job, and every waking moment was dedicated to it. Some of his training was personal, self taught and self practiced in solitude, away from prying eyes. Others required professional training, generally done under a pseudonym. Others still required a bit more information, and were completed either under his own name, or under the name of Mike Nakamura. He strives to be prepared for every possible contingency, and while he accepts he's never going to be that good, he doesn't see any reason to let that stop him.

Languages were one of the first things that Yuudai dealt with. He's fluent in both Japanese and English, and can speak either without having a noticeable accent due to a good deal of practice. He's neither fluent nor conversational in any other language, but he's trained himself to pick out specific words in other languages in order to protect himself. Near the start of his time working in his current profession, he realized that it would be an extremely handy skill to know if someone had just told someone else to kill him in Spanish. The same idea extended to a whole lot of other languages, and as useful as the skill would be, he knew he wasn't going to have time to learn all the different languages he might need to proficiency. Instead, he compromised, memorizing and reciting a whole set of keywords in the top twenty-five most common languages (as well as a few that might show up a bit more in his line of work). He recognizes his set of approximately fifty keywords (gun, kill, silence, etc) in the following languages: Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese, Javanese, German, Lahnda, Wu, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, French, Vietnamese, Korean, Urdu, Yue, Malay, Persian, Turkish, and Italian. The language spread is wide, but it also covers the top ten organized crime groups in the world. He couldn't order a sandwich or even survive as a tourist with any of those languages, but he could definitely tell if you were planning to kill him. It's possible someone could be more vague or obscure ('get rid of him' is too vague and hard to translate in all those languages), but he's counting on people assuming he's not going to understand a word of Telugu.

One of the first proper classes he took was an urban escape and evasion class. It's the sort of absurdly specific class that might very well put you on a watch list, and it was one of the first classes he went to for that reason. It gave him time to blend into the background and fall off any possible watchlists, and the fact that he attended it under a fake identity he discarded years ago will only help matters. The purpose of the course is to help aid in escape in an urban environment. It deals with situations ranging from plausible (an american soldier downed overseas in hostile territory) to outright ridiculous (a kidnapping attempt you manage to escape from). Even so, the skills it provides are good. From being able to orient yourself in a city, to working out the best places to hide, all of it were skills that Yuudai either was going to use, or might need to use. Considering that the final exam involved him being bound, gagged, tossed in a trunk and then dumped in a city he was unfamiliar with and required to make it to an airport without being found, he considers the whole thing to be very relevant to his job.

Yuudai is self trained in the fine art of stalking. That is something that no lesson was going to teach him. He's not a spy, and he doesn't need to be terribly detailed about it. He doesn't need to plant bugs or anything--those would just put him at more risk. Instead, he's simply gotten very good at working out people's schedules, at shadowing targets without being followed. He practiced by following people he had no actual interest in, breaking off if they noticed him. Days and days of practice until he could manage it just fine. He knows the cities layout relatively well, and he's good at getting ahead of people to cut them off.

It almost goes without saying that he has some skill in general brawling and hand to hand combat, but he's surprisingly shoddy at it considering his profession. As far as he's concerned, if it ends up in a hand to hand brawl he's already failed. He can defend himself competently, but his focus is on breaking away and running for it. He's not going to be snapping anyone's neck or karate chopping them into submission. He wouldn't even try, and only the direst of situations would require him to engage them at all. He has no style, no formal training. He's fought before, and received some tutoring from members of the Yakuza in the basics, but there's no specific fighting style he sticks to. It's simply quick and brutal.

Of all his skills though, there's one that he's put far more time into, and for good reason. Being good with a gun is his job. It's a mandatory requirement. If he can't manage to hit a target with a good degree of accuracy, then there's no point in any of his other skills. He has to make absolutely sure he's as good as possible, and it's for that reason that he spends so much time at the range. He legally owns a gun under both his real name and secondary identity, which was a task and a half. He practices with his weapon of choice, a simple handgun, but he's also practiced less than legally with other weapons. A handgun doesn't seem like the average weapon of a hitman, but Yuudai prefers it. It's small, compact, and easy to hide. He's efficient enough with it that a single shot should be fatal, and in areas where sound matters, a silencer will do wonders. He's an excellent shot, and he works in such a way as to make any death instant. He doesn't enjoy dragging out people's suffering, the way that others in his profession might.

Yuudai was born in the city of Tokyo to Fujihara Ishi and Fujihara Shouta. He was the oldest of their children, and it would be several years for him before any siblings joined him. For the first few years of his life he made nothing but messes, becoming a little terror as he ran around the apartment complex where they lived, making trouble. It wasn't until his first sister arrived that he began to settle down. His mother admonished him for his behavior, and explained that it was his duty to be a good example for his sister, and to be a responsible big brother.

While Yuudai remembers himself shaping up immediately, it wasn't quite so quick. He simply gradually became more responsible, and by the time he was old enough to have a clear memory of it, he was a more or less responsible big brother. Kazue followed him around like a puppy, and he did his best to pay attention to her, as much as a young boy could manage. He had other things on his mind--baseball and school mostly--and while he was a good big brother, he wasn't quite a great one. By the time his second sister arrived, he'd practiced it all, and he was quite content to do a much better job.

It wasn't to be. There was no clear point where looking back Yuudai could have said it started. There was no single incident that pushed the scenario over the line from 'discipline' and into 'abuse'. As he slipped into Junior high school, the pressure on him mounted, and his grades slipped. At first it was simply discipline--Shouta was a concerned parent, worried for his son's future, and he simply did what any parent would do. As Yuudai's grades failed to improve, the pressure only grew worse, and Shouta only grew more aggressive in his attempts to right things. Even when Yuudai's grades did increase, it was never enough, and the vicious cycle began. If Yuudai did well, then he had been holding back all along. If Yuudai did badly, then it was because he wasn't trying hard enough. Nothing he did was enough to satisfy his father. For most of junior high school, it was simple enough--yelling and the occasional shove, and locking him out of the house if he had done badly enough. When he entered high school, it only escalated further. The violence only increased, and Yuudai was not yet old enough to realize just how far it had gotten.

As he moved through high school, the violence was no longer confined to him and his mother. Instead, their father began to target Kazue and their youngest sister as well, and as much as Yuudai believed he should be standing up for his sister, he rarely did. He was afraid of what his father would do, and a small punishment for his sister seemed a better choice than an extreme punishment for him. Later on he'd feel guilty for the cowardice he showed, but the one time he did really stand up to his father, it backfired horribly.

When he was freshly graduated from high school, preparing for college exams, his father pushed Kazue down the stairs. Looking back, there could be no question as to whether or not it was an accident. It was all too coincidental, just another step up the slow escalation of abuse they'd endured. For the first time in his life, Yuudai stood up to his father while his sisters were at the hospital, yelling at him for what he'd done. At the time, Yuudai honestly believed he could stop it if he'd just stand up for the family, and he turned out to be dead wrong.

His father wouldn't stand for Yuudai disrupting the order of the family, and he went at him. While Yuudai never went to the hospital, two of his ribs were broken as a result of the scuffle, and they still pain him even years later, even if the damage itself is minimal. He also gained a prominent scar across his back--another 'accident' that he's hidden away. His father was never quite bad enough to bring a knife to them, but if they happened to stumble against a counter where their mother had been preparing dinner? That was another story.

Yuudai hid his wounds, tired and lonely. He felt isolated, unable to communicate with those he'd considered friends. There was too much shame in it, and he felt that if he ever attempted to tell someone what was happening, they would simply take his fathers side. His father was only looking out for them, and all his father's concerns came true when Yuudai failed to get into a good university. Instead, he went to his fourth choice university, one that was alarmingly close to home.

It would take another two years before he'd managed to save enough money to move out. His father refused to let him have a proper job, insisting that any time he had should be put towards his studies. Even so, Yuudai found ways to get money, borrowing liberally from those he still thought of as, if not friends, then allies. By the time he was twenty one, he had enough to get his own place, a tiny little room not far from his school. He did favors and chores for the elderly owner of the house, and he was happy to be out of the families house, even if it meant leaving Kazue behind.

That was his one hesitation. He disliked the thought of leaving Kazue behind, and while he harbored similar feelings for his younger sister as well, it was Kazue who stayed in contact with him, chatting away while his youngest sister stopped. He forced himself through university, persevering not through intelligence, but instead through hard work and perseverance. He became more and more isolated, having little time for things outside of studying, and it would be years before he realized just how isolated he'd made himself.

He graduated, nowhere near the top of his class, but still competent. He took a nice respectable job as a banker, working in the city exactly as his father would have liked. He barely spoke to his family save for Kazue, sending only the occasional polite letter. Even as cellphones became expected, he ignored them, having no one to talk to but Kazue herself. He heard about the boyfriend, about her moving out, about her band. He lived for her short little updates in what was going on in her life, and there was little else for him. He was simply going through the motions.

He was twenty six when the opportunity presented itself. The bank he worked for had partnered with an American bank for trans-pacific trading. They needed someone to move to America for the long haul, and the majority of the workers had staff, families, and prospects. Yuudai did not, and he volunteered for the job. Less than two months later he was in Seattle, sleeping odd hours as he worked for the bank.

For the first time in his life, things began to look up. He settled down in a nice apartment. He had money thanks to the large bonus he'd been given as a result of his transfer. He slept odd hours, but he could certainly manage that. Within a year he'd met a beautiful young woman, a beautiful nisei who seemed just as interested in him as he was with her. For the first time in his life he could imagine himself settling down and getting married, starting a beautiful little family. The issues of his childhood seemed small and far away.

It seemed almost inevitable that it would all catch up to him. The day had been little different from the ones before it, but it had still been stressful and tiring. Yuudai was exhausted and eager for bed, and his girlfriend--now his fiancée--wouldn't let him rest. She just kept talking, going on and on about the wedding, about their future, about the kids they would have. She simply wouldn't let him rest, and he snapped, lashing out and slapping her across the fate.

That single action, more than any other in Yuudai's life, sealed his fate. To him, it was inevitable. No matter what path his life took, eventually he'd become little more than his father. No matter what he did, no matter what he studied or where he was, no matter who he surrounded himself by--he'd eventually just end up hurting those around him.

In what would be considered by most to be a vast overreaction, and considered by Yuudai to be a vast under reaction, he left that night. He broke off his engagement, packed his things, and bought the first flight out. He had no plans, no ideas. He simply knew that he did love the woman he'd been with, and that being with her would only result in her getting hurt. He left her behind and fled, unable to believe he'd be able to move past it.

The plane took him to San Francisco, and there he let himself vanish into the population. San Fransisco's Japantown was large enough that he could blend in seamlessly, and he picked up a motel not far from it. He'd left his job behind, but he'd barely spent any of the money he'd made working, and savvy investments left him confident that he'd be able to last a few years before he really had to get a job. That didn't mean he was happy, or even content. He had no more purpose, no focus, and he'd effectively dropped off the radar of everyone he'd ever known.

Much like his childhood, there was no distinct point where he could have said he'd been involved in the Yakuza. It began with someone met at a bar, and then a friend of his, and then another friend of his. It was like a chain of acquaintances, and soon enough he found himself with a job proposal laid out before him. He was unattached. He had few needs and plenty of skills, the most important being that he could drop seamlessly into the background. No one was going to look for him, and there was nothing to connect him to anyone the Yakuza might have wanted to avoid drawing attention to. While he lacked many of the necessary skills, he showed no distaste for them, and he soon found himself in 'training'. He had no rank, never formally joining, but existed on the fringes of the Yakuza itself.

He buried himself in his new work, drowning every bit of hesitation he had in training and practice. He taught himself every skill he might need, working through each skill in time. There was no intense rush, but he had little else to occupy his time, and less than a year after his arrival in San Francisco, he finished his first job. For him there was no celebration, and no horror either. It was simply rote and mechanical, no more important to him then a shooting on the range.

He found no joy in it, but to him it was inevitable. One way or another, he'd end up hurting people, and in his new job he'd be paid for it. He made a point of making it as painless as possible, of avoiding any jobs that might look suspiciously like torture or other violence. He killed, and that was that. He was damn good at his job, and only getting better, and when he was thirty, the Yakuza moved him south. He had new identities, more preparations, and was even more convinced that he'd manage just fine.

Even so, there was no real satisfaction in it. He didn't enjoy his job, even if he was good at it. Years later and he was still going through the motions, even if the motions were different. He had no friends, no one he spoke to in person. The only person he communicated to was Kazue, and it was one of the few highlights of his day. He'd wake at odd hours to talk to her, taking into account the timezones, and he ended up nervous and worried any time she wasn't on for long.

Things likely would have continued as they were--if not for a particularly unfortunate and upbeat phone call from Kazue herself.