Name
Tanaka Yukako. Friends get to call her Yuya.
Nationality
Japanese, with some foreign ancestry.
Age
24
Sexuality
Bisexual
Birth
Kyōto, Kyōto Prefecture (京都, 京都府) - July, 2007
Appearance
For somebody who's largely Japanese by genetics, noted by her usual skin tone and dark brown eye colour, Yukako looks very foreign indeed, or perhaps like somebody who never left their delinquent phase. She tans readily, has lengthy and naturally platinum blonde hair, and most notably has a figure that wouldn't look out of place in certain types of modern Japanese media; she is also tall, and courtesy of her background in the police force quite fit indeed, with lean musculature only further enhancing her physique.
Her usual outfit when out of the field tends to be a combination of shirt and skirt, occasionally wearing trousers instead of a skirt if formality is a requirement, in a variety of patterns that may or may not work together or clash horrendously, as well as various black heels usually accompanied by white socks to prevent chafing. In uniform is another story: she typically opts for one of the basic Assault outfits, consisting of a blue fabric bodysuit covering her entire frame, black kevlar protecting her torso and groin with storage for ammo and grenades, and a full optics mask hiding her face.
Height
6' flat.
Personality
Yukako is on the autistic spectrum, a relatively high-functioning example. This colours a lot of her personality both on and off duty, but primarily as a poor understanding of social norms and facial expressions that can make her look unempathetic or impolite. Granted, understanding exactly why certain social matters are so important can be hard for her, in particular with the stringent demands Japan often makes in that regard, but she is nothing but empathic, perhaps overly so, once she recognises how somebody is feeling; indeed, trying to sort out how people feel consistently does lead to a degree of anxiety about it all. By default, however, she presents as highly energetic and friendly to the majority of people, often talking rapidly and to great length when describing a topic or situation, and may well flirt with them egregiously depending on circumstance, most commonly when smalltalk has taken over and she is struggling to find anything meaningful to say.
This energy transfers over to her approach to a fight. In some sense, she is professional, and certainly trained for combat scenarios, but she tends toward a great deal of movement and intense laughter in a firefight, often showing a reckless attitude as she travels toward the foe. Funnily enough, this is not out of pure lunacy: her tolerance for sensory overload is significantly lower than that of a neurotypical person, and she tries to keep moving in battle specifically to keep herself from freezing up and becoming a sitting duck.
Role
Assault
Equipment
ASSAULT-01 Armour - One of three standard NSF Assault-grade suits. Bullet-resistant kevlar provides moderate protection to the center of mass, leaving the limbs free to move and remaining light enough that sprinting for a brief time is viable. Also bears utility boxes to contain ammunition clips, grenades, and other relatively small items. Built-in camouflaging systems allow the user to refract visible light around them for just under ten seconds, with recent advances in thermoptic technology adding infrared radiation to this spectrum to avoid detection by thermal vision; this will recharge greadually when not in use.
Motionvision Visor 01 - A visor with advanced motion detection technology implanted throughout. At a moment's notice, the user can switch between standard visuals and motionvision, showing the world in a faint reddish-yellow tinge and displaying any and all movement as a bright yellowish burst even if a target is camouflaged from visible light, though it cannot detect motion through dense clouds such as from a smoke grenade. As a bonus, the ASSAULT-01 model covers the full face, blocking identity, and allowing the user to draw from a small internal oxygen supply in case of a gas attack.
Directed Energy Weapon Prototype - A rather large custom weapon of Yukako's design, comparable in size (though not in recoil) to a handheld Minigun or LMG, much of which is the large battery pack powering it. The rest is a combination of LASER emitters at the "barrel" end, and a switch and dial just above the cell to toggle between electrolaser and PEP modes, and determine the degree of incapacitation or lethality desired. The battery pack uses similar technology to the NSF's thermoptic camouflage to recharge over time, but takes much longer comparatively due to the greater stored charge.
HRV ZX68S Assault Rifle - Relatively standard secondary weapon with suppressed muzzle flash. Well-rounded for distance, accuracy, and stopping power, and capable in most circumstances. Thirty-plus-one round Stanag magazine, 7.62x51mm projectiles.
JH Industries Tachi Pistol - Basic Assault sidearm, custom-tooled for NSF use. Fifteen rounds, .40 ACP projectiles, with a toggle between single shot and automatic to perform a "mag-dump" when needed.
Frag grenades - Standard issue fragmentation explosives. Pull the pin, throw the explosive such that the lever comes away, do not move in range of flying shrapnel. Easy enough, and sufficiently powerful to kill even heavily-armoured targets in close proximity to ground zero.
Combat knife - Last resort weapon. Relatively poor in the situations faced by the NSF, but can potentially instakill if a stab to the right place is made.
Previous Careers
Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (Tokyo Keishi-chō, 東京 警視庁) - Police Sergeant (Junsa-buchō, 巡査部長)
Kyoto Prefectural Police Department (Kyōto Fu-keisatsu, 京都 府警察) - Senior Police Officer (Junsa-chō, 巡査長)
Biography
Yukako's childhood was, one could say, eventful. For starters, her young self had clear difficulties in fully comprehending the basic behaviours taught in childhood in her home country, and her parents often took her to be slow or a trouble maker rather than cottoning to the actual issue. Then, of course, her family moved from Japan to southern France after the nuclear attack on Tokyo - they lived in Kyōto at the time, but her parents decided it would be best to avoid any possible additional attacks. She was only four or five at the time.
Adapting to the new environment was quite tough on Yukako. Aside from anything else, the behavioural standards set at her new school were vastly different to those her parents set for behaviour, and much different to those of her preschool in Japan; suffice to say, language barriers in both French and English made learning quite difficult in kind, and in the end it was specialised tutoring that gave her both a leg up to the necessary educational standards, and an insight into the idea that she had something happening in her brain that warranted investigation. A couple of testing sessions later confirmed a diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder; whilst it was hard for her parents to adapt and account for Yukako's condition, emphasis was placed on the fact that doing so would make things a lot easier for both her and them, and it is likely that this change led Yukako to be much closer with her parents in the years since.
Even still, friends were hard to come by for her. She managed to form a very strong bond with another girl in CM2, only to be separated from her when they went to different middle schools, a fact that still stings whenever it arises for her; collège, ultimately, was a somewhat lonely affair in its first two years, supplemented by quite a bit of exercise, but began to look up when Yukako began to express herself more outwardly. People began to look to her as... a friend? An acquaintance? An idol? She wasn't sure, but despite her oddities, and perhaps because her tendency toward athleticism made her seem more interesting, she suddenly stuck out as one of the cool kids, a fact that continued into high school and ultimately propelling her to her baccalauréat at the age of 17, with specialities in languages and engineering sciences - foreign languages, ultimately, were something that she was naturally adept in by then, but she'd found herself quite fascinated with optics too, lasers and the like, and was considering even taking a tertiary education course in.
At which stage, her parents threw her a fresh curveball by announcing that they were moving back to Japan. Why? They wanted her to receive higher education in her home country. Did she get a choice? Not really, no. What about the Jinrai? Oh, they were all in Tokyo, they wouldn't be seen so far over. Thus she was moved back into a nation whose social norms she still didn't fully comprehend even after drilling on them by her parents, now with an additional barrier of looking rather foreign to boot. Suffice to say, her enrolement and education in Kyoto University was a somewhat difficult affair, and a mouth that had already learned to speak fast reinforced the habit there as stress and anxiety ramped up to terrible levels. Even so, she got in on her first try; she endured great amounts of discrimination for her sex, appearance, and autistic traits, nullified in part by her intentionally dressing and speaking as a delinquent to throw people off and, occasionally, awkwardly flirting and sleeping with people who would otherwise have been bullies; and in the end, she hit 21 having acquired a very solid degree in engineering and cemented her interest in optical technologies.
But, funnily enough, her physicality remained ever-present as something of importance. When word came of Jinrai's attempted coup, she decided she couldn't just let it go to waste. She felt, rather, that she had a duty not to allow that, and even that she should take up work to keep herself and Japan in good standing - even though her degree would have inclined her to potentially much more immediately prestigious scientific work, her profession and hobby ultimately swapped places, and she signed on to the Kyoto Prefectural Police Department as a police officer, and after a year or so a senior police officer.
The men there hated her. The women found her strange. She did wonder if she'd made a mistake at points, but reassured herself time and again that she was helping people, keeping them safe! Until she was reassigned as a sergeant in Tokyo, of all places, at the start of 2031. Quite suddenly, the only people she had consistent connections to were more or less cut off from her, as she was moved to a technically more prestigious academy, but with even fewer support mechanisms. To keep herself sane, she began putting her technological knowledge to use in her downtime, by designing a blueprint for a directed energy weapon with multiple purposes. Electrolasers could be done, it was just a matter of finding a strong enough power source!
Then came September. She and her squad were informed of a firefight occurring in the Kanagawa Ward area, and pursued the affair fully armed and ready to deal with, in theory, anything. What they weren't ready for was the conflict to be between the pseudo-governmental terrorist group trying to claim the country's rulership, and what amounted to the government's secret special forces. Most of the squad survived the raid, largely thanks to Yukako's firm instruction and at least two moments where she shot down a foe who had trained their sights on her team, plus a third where she did the same for somebody from the NSF. This, however, only led to their being brought into custody as the government tried to figure out who they were with and how much they knew.
To the government's credit, the others were eventually released back to the public, with a signed NDA and a very clear understanding on their relevant superiors' part that they weren't talk about what they'd witnessed. As for Yukako... her skill intrigued them. For somebody who'd only been with the police for a few years, she was shockingly capable, and when it transpired what she'd been working on in her spare time too, a decision was made by somebody somewhere. She'd be trained up; she'd be incorporated into the NSF as a new agent; and, with testing allowed of course, a weapon that was basically functional in theory and just needed a more efficient battery in practice could be built for her to wield on the field. Their recent advances in thermoptic camouflage and its recharging would prove to be the ironic final piece of that lattermost puzzle: the battery could recharge on its own merits.
Come November, Yukako would officially join the NSF's ranks as a Class C Operator, with multiple extra languages and some input into the mechanical side of matters to boot. She was quite excited for her new job, suffice to say.
Affiliations
Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and Kyoto Prefectural Police Department - Former places of work, source of much field training.
Tanaka Hideyoshi and Akane (多仲 秀吉, 多仲 (茜) - Father and mother. Currently living in Kyoto, but moved to southern France with Yukako for over a decade after the 2012 bomb dropped. Yukako's foreign ancestry stems from her father, whose own grandfather was a soldier from another nation, possibly Germany.
Relationships [Optional]
None specific yet - Yukako really is quite new to the NSF, and so hasn't gotten more than a bare-bones impression of anybody else in its ranks.
Takai Shunsen - Didn't meet him yet. Hearsay suggests that he was recently maimed in another raid.
Kazankova Bykov - Strong, so you'd think a good workout buddy. Kind of hostile, though.
Takeda Ochisuita - The boss' boss' boss. He's pretty okay. Hard, but not a dick.
Caitlyn Ellesworth - The boss. She seems to know her stuff. Kind of distant, unfortunately.
Takeuchi Yukiko - Kind of boring? Doesn't stick out a bunch.
Yamamoto Mikasa - She makes a lot of sense. Dark sense of humour, is all.
Hattori Naomi - Not super sure what to make of her. A bit distant, maybe.
Li Dàiyù - Pretty cool. Kind of a badass, maybe? Not sure.
Itsuki Itou - Don't have to be so formal with him. What a relief.
Character Theme [Optional]
I'm gonna be accepting this badboy. Love it
