Yamato Kurisawa

Yama. ^{It's short for his name.}
Kurakura. ^{It's a dumb version of his surname.}
(Biting) Dog. ^{A nickname he earned by his violent and aggressive nature.}

Man.

22

◽ bouncer at a nighclub
◾ bodyguard for hire at the private security company attached to the mob he's a part of

5'7"/1.72

149lbs/68kg

fit, athletic, but not like a body-builder

◽ athletic
◾ fearless
◽ no social ties.

◽ hotheaded/reckless.
◾ no formal education.
◽ no connections.

◾ handling weaponry (knives, sticks, pistols).
◽ can drive cars rather well.
◾ lockpicking, hotwiring.
◽ street fighting.
◾ karaoke.
◽ videogames.
◾ partying.
◽ smoking.

↳ Yamato is exactly how he looks - stand offish, delinquent, and an asshole. He generally does whatever he wants, not exactly being a role model. It is lucky, then, that he stays out of the spotlight and stays behind the scenes most of the time in his years in the mob.

For what it's worth, Yamato is quite loyal to his friends and would stick up for them if needed. That said, friends are few and far between, since he's not the most open of people and his mark as a person that is supposed to be erased has separated him from anyone that cared enough to call themselves his friends. It takes some time to get used to him, and most people don't have the patience for that. Mostly those that stick around him are people like him - delinquents, troublemakers, criminals and crooks.

But his delinquent attitude also makes him seem cool (to some people). Frequent smoking, hell the guy is a chainsmoker, as well as drinking and going out, make him seem slightly more cool. Whether or not this affects your view of him depends on you as a person, but it does give him a certain attitude of being a dangerous member of the mob. Suppose that's also why he got marked.

↳ Yamato was born in one of the poorer districts around Osaka, with his father being a car mechanic and his mother being a stay at home mom. Being an only child in a poor family meant there was a lot of pressure on him to perform well to make the investment his parents made into him worthwhile. “Get good grades,” was a thing he'd hear quite frequently even though he used to do quite well for himself. As he became older and moved on to highschool the pressure proved to be too much for him as he became more independent. The lack of income and nice things made him jealous of those around him and ensured that he got in with the wrong crowd - the mob. Although he was merely affiliated at first, not being an official part of the mob but merely.. an associate of sorts that did the odd errand for them, he quickly became more involved in it all and began doing other things for them.

The errands were simply enough. “Take this money to here, deliver that message to there, go take a look at what these guys are doing.” It wasn't even criminal until he started delivering 'packages' that had illegal items in them, but really, what police officer would stop a 15 year old kid? It was the perfect cover, wasn't it?

At 17 he dropped out of highschool after a particular large fight with his parents and he was disowned. And any chance of coming back into the family fold was ruined when he moved out the next day and strayed around for a few days before being taken in by the mob. They saw a chance in him, after all, a 17 year old trouble maker that seemed to be unafraid of causing a ruckus and getting physical. He moved up from being an associate to being a muscle for the clan. Hotwiring cars, breaking and entering, collecting 'enforcement money', it were all new ways to make money and they were all so easy. He learned the ropes quickly and moved up rapidly, becoming more influential within first his regime and then the organization. But he never stepped into the upper echelons of the hierarchy - he was considered too brutish and rash for that, which were just nice ways to say he was stupid. It suited him just fine however.

This continued for some time. Yamato made more money, and began getting involved in the street racing nightlife scene. He purchased a sweet tuned up car, and raced it across town at night, losing a lot at first but gradually becoming better and better until he started winning, and actually earning a bit of money from the prize pools.

This all proved to be a rather short lived success. Five years after he originally moved out and got involved in the scene, he'd be notified he was to be erased. Somehow, someone somewhere had gotten offended with his very existence. Thinking about it, it was probably the father of the person he rivalled in the street racing thing. Usually these things were about offenses much bigger than just beating someone in a race. But this was about a lot of money, and to add to that, the dumb kid totaled his car while racing against Yamato. It'd be little concern otherwise if it weren't for the fact that his father was a mob boss of his own. That must've been where the hit came from. And once it was known in the upper echelons that Yamato was going to be erased - well, his own clan cut ties with him rather quickly. His social life already didn't exist anymore. His history would be erased - if needed his parents too would be erased. Just non-existence.

So when he received the mysterious text that warned him, he had no real other choice. He was already dead. You might as well fight back at that point. Otherwise... you might as well lay down and accept your fate. But not Yamato. He'd fight back. So he packed a bag, grabbed his keys and ran for his car, running off to Tokyo, where the mysterious text had ordered him to go. Hopefully the head start of a day he had meant he could do it without being traced immediately, but these guys weren't just random nobodies. They were better than Yamato at what they did - so he had to become better than them. Not to win - to survive long enough to take revenge.

Better to die fighting than to die on hands and knees begging like a prostitute.

James Richard Amson

Kagaku-sha / The Chemist — As a chemistry graduate of Queen Mary University of London, he became involved with the Japanese criminal underworld on his first tour there, conducting cooperative research. Now, owing them a debt, he helps them produce narcotics and drugs for international distribution. They call him The Chemist, because that's precisely what he is.

Male

27

Aside from working with the crime family to produce drugs, he maintains his daily appearance as a researcher for the international pharmaceuticals firm, GeneSynth.

6"1

153lbs

Sinewy and toned, but not exactly strong. Due to his cycling habits, his legs are well developed, and he looks good - but he's light by nature, and appears skinny.

- He forms interpersonal bonds well, enabling him to gain the trust of others, or diffuse unstable individuals with a higher rate of success than average.
- He is an intelligent and analytical person, capable of discerning patterns not immediately visible to most - especially when his specialist subject, Chemistry, is involved.
- Though it has its drawbacks, his pupils do not constrict properly, and overdilate in darkness, granting him a modicum of nightvision.

- Well, for one thing, he's white. He sticks out like a sore thumb in Japan - and his Japanese is poorly accented too. By no means is he likely to blend in with any community but an almost exclusively immigrant one.
- His pupils, due to a genetic defect, are too wide and do not constrict properly. He has decent nightvision as a result, but experiences reduced visibility in bright daylight and is easily blinded.
- He's not terribly fit. By no means is he incapable of running for his life, but he's also no athlete and would be easily outpaced by any experienced assailant.

- From his time with chemistry students, in a central London university, he still has an absurdly high alcohol tolerance - especially considering that the Japanese often has lower tolerances than Europeans anyway.
- Because of his background in chemistry both legitimate and otherwise, he can synthesise a number of basic painkillers and medications from basic ingredients. This also extends to poisons, drugs, explosives and the like. Most of it is quite dangerous to do without specialist equipment, however.
- He can handle a gun, courtesy of his time with the local criminal underworld. He's not an excellent shot, however, and has no real skill with long guns.
- Surprisingly, he is an excellent cook.

James is a generally well meaning, polite, and friendly individual, making him both more trusting than is beneficial, and more persuasive than isn't. He has no particular mental illness, or pathological tendency for conflict, but tries to be funny frequently and usually fails. He usually puts it down to social differences in comedy, however - the British sense of humour is internationally reknowned for being... rather odd. Other than that, there's nothing remarkable about him. He scares just as easily as the next person, and has no particular favourite foods, drinks, or activities that he's ever likely to enjoy again, now that he's a wanted man.

James Richard Amson was one of the best. He hadn't always been, but that was how he'd turned out on the day he graduated from Queen Mary University of London with a Master's Degree in Chemistry.
Having put the work in, having found his heart in science, and having met someone fantastic to share his life with, he had absolutely no reason to not be the best he could be. He was happy, safe,
fed, and in an intellectually stimulating environment. All his needs were taken care of. He was good, and he graduated top in his class. Now, this is the kind of thing that makes a guy a shoo in for the most exciting research programs there are, and he went on to spend two years with his own professors, developing anti-cancers. While he was with them, they were able to produce and replicate three promising new drugs to test, one of which went on to commercial production within the next two years - which is how he got to Japan.

As it happens, that drug that made it to production ended up proving 130% more effective than the next best on the market, with half of the negative side effects of its predecessor - and it was primarily due to his and two other recent graduates' input. In the world of science, this usually has the easily predicted effect of setting private corporations after you; sure enough they were, all three, hired within a month of this drug going into public use. The very company they'd received half their funding from in the first place promised to give them levels of funding never before seen, and a state of the art facility in the land of the Rising Sun. One of them had been Japanese anyway, so she took the offer as a way to move home with a pay rise, but for the first year of their employment there the other two lived very insularly, within the small English speaking community that had grown up around the lab. They learnt Japanese slowly in between hours in the lab, and enjoying the lavish lifestyle of a high level corporate researcher.

And, as all things lead on to more things in turn, this was how he became involved with producing drugs. You see, the local dark economy had taken to using tutors and translators to reach the immigrant communities, in search of individuals with useful skillsets. James was one of these individuals, and although he hates to be called greedy...

The money they were promising was fantastic, and absurd. It would give him opportunities he'd never had before. It would let him move back to England and be with his girlfriend not just as a successful chemical professional, but as a man with the ability to set something up that would look after them both forever - their own company, generating its own profit. They could own their own home, full stop.
No mortgage or anything.

It was too good to be true.

Which is why it wasn't.

For the final year of his time there, he slowly came to realise that he was under the very real threat of murder should he not deliver, continuously, a stream of narcotics. He was perfectly capable of it,
yes, but when he began to see the effects of his work on the local community - teenagers trying to deal with exam stress ending up in hospital, overdosed on his pills, the homeless living only for their next hit of something he'd put into a syringe for them only a week earlier, and the decadent wealthy in his own community, snorting compounds that should never have existed - he thought again.

When he saw his colleague - the other student he'd graduated with, the one he'd had to learn Japanese with - overdose and barely survive at a party, on only her first hit, he thought again.

When it hit him, what his lover, Jean, would think of him now, he thought again.

He sabotaged the production facility, puncturing the feeder tubes and loosening screws in the reaction vessel to fill the whole warehouse with flammable, toxic fumes. And then he lit a candle at the far end of the building, and ran.

The next day, there's a remarkable hole in the pseudo-cartel's production network... and his last reliable contact has informed him that there's an eraser hit on him.

All he could think was that he'd done a good job of it- and that he was lucky they had no idea about Jean.

He has a steady relationship with a woman named Jean, who lives in England and so far remains unknown to the people he is running from. He uses burner phones to contact her occasionally, to let her know he is alive - but he only ever leaves a single message with each phone, and destroys them afterwards.