APP: Vincent Phantomhive // Mayfield

Name: Cassie
Personal LJ: tokyocentricity
Contact Info: AIM (tokyocentricity), email (tokyocentricity@gmail), plurk (starfishing).
Other Characters Played: None!
Preferred Housing: No preference!

Character Name: Vincent Phantomhive.
Character Series: Kuroshitsuji.
Character Age: 38.
Background: Wiki. Disregard the 'Anime Synopsis' section; I'm pulling him from the manga.

Personality: Vincent Phantomhive is known to most to be a generous, good-humoured and amiable man. He's noted for his abundant kindness, his consideration for others, and, at the same time, the darker aspects of his life. Vincent Phantomhive, like his father before him, is known as the 'guard dog' to Queen Victoria of England. On her orders, he will carry out 'morally grey' operations without question and without fail, and he has taken and ruined many lives in the course of his work for Her Majesty. It's something that, with his bleeding heart, he mourns every day, but not something that he has ever regretted. He takes immense pride in what he does, and in carrying on the illustrious Phantomhive name as his father desired him to.

He puts much of his time and effort into serving Her Majesty as well as running his company — the Funtom Company, which makes toys and games for children of all ages. However, neither of these things takes priority over the most important factor in his life: his family. His beloved wife, Rachel, and his darling son, Ciel, are the absolute world to him, and he puts their safety and happiness before everything else, including orders from Her Majesty. Were he forced to make a choice, he would sooner be a traitor to his country than a failure to his family. (Seriously, I cannot stress enough how much of a family man this guy is. You have no idea.)

With his family, friends and strangers alike, Vincent is a witty conversationalist and a social butterfly. He comes off as being naturally friendly and approachable, and makes friends very easily. The sort of generosity people might normally bestow upon their most loved ones is the sort of generosity that Vincent sees fit to bestow upon complete strangers: he invites children from the local orphanage into his home on the holidays, and donates liberally to charities as well as to individuals in need. In some respects, these things are done to ease his conscience, because he feels as though he needs to create some form of balance for all the evil he's done in his life.

The strong points of his personality are numerous, but not innumerable. He's a naturally magnetic person; others are drawn to him, and it makes him an excellent leader. His loyalties are deep and unshakable, and he doesn't shy away from hard work. While generally a 'good' person, he is also quite capable of manipulation, extortion, and other unsavory things in the name of Her Majesty or his family.

In his own opinion, Vincent's weaknesses outnumber his strengths, but he tends to be hard on himself. He's been accused of being too generous — he'll give you a second chance, and a third, and a fourth, and he will empty his pockets for you and give you the shirt off his back, even if he knows he's being duped. His softheartedness makes it nearly impossible for him to say no, and that includes the discipline of his son, which he typically leaves in his wife's hands, as he's no good at it. Children in general are a distinct weakness for him, and on the rare occasion that his work for the Queen puts him in such a position that he's had to kill a child, it's eaten him alive ever since.

His role as Her Majesty's guard dog has changed him in remarkable ways since he took the responsibility from his late father. His once-optimistic views have been dimmed, and while he'd never let you know it, his opinion of humans as a race and his hopes and dreams for the future have all been horribly warped. He has trouble really trusting people, not that it stops him from letting them take advantage. The things he's done haunt him daily, and the side of himself that he keeps in reserve for Her Majesty can sometimes slip out, causing him to go a bit overboard, especially if his family's safety is in question.

Abilities: No supernatural abilities to speak of! He's a talented man, but nothing that would be taken from him upon entering Mayfield.

Sample Entry: Sample post! I know the post itself doesn't do much for giving you a feel of the character, but I think (hope) you'll find that the particular thread I linked to does a much better job.

APP: Hiruma Youichi // Morire

PLAYER
Name: Cassie
Age: 21
Journal: tokyocentricity
Best Method of Contact (AIM/EMAIL/PLURK): tokyocentricity (AIM); starfishing (plurk); tokyocentricity@gmail.

CHARACTER
Name: Youichi Hiruma
Age: 19
Canon: Eyeshield 21
History: Wiki!
Personality: Hiruma is an enigma wrapped in a little blond riddle.

Outwardly, he's loud, vulgar, crazy, and prone to threatening people with violence or blackmail to get what he wants. If you don't plant both feet at least several inches deep in the ground, he's going to run roughshod over you. This applies regardless of status, power, age or whatever else you think you might have over him; Hiruma has very grey morals, zero respect for authority and presents as being basically fearless. Even his better emotions come out a little twisted. When he's happy, he shoots things. When he's fond of you, he kicks you. He doesn't appear to care much, though, for anyone beyond himself (but of course, appearances can be deceiving).

Beneath the bizarre surface is something a little less inexplicable: a cunning, manipulative young man with a mind like a steel trap. He prefers blackmail to violence, as it's 'neater,' and he's highly ambitious and goal-oriented. He's shown a knack for long, tactical games and a keen understanding of strategy in many forms. Even beyond his specialties, he's incredibly bright, proficient in all subjects and outstanding in some. It's been speculated (and there may be some truth to this, though Hiruma himself will never confirm or deny) that much of his outward persona is an affected air, constructed to keep the mindless masses frightened and compliant (read: just the way he likes them).

In truth, the only rules he follows are his own, and the only moral code he adheres to is the one he's set for himself. It's not that he doesn't care about anyone, just that he doesn't care about much of anyone, and he has an odd way of showing it when he does. Emotions aren't the enemy — Hiruma's not so stupid as to think it's just that black-and-white, and he does understand the value of an irreplaceable friend — but they're best kept under careful control, and he never lets his heart rule his head if he can help it.

IN GAME
Brief In-Game History: Little Hiruma was raised by his father in Japan. He sure is a long way from home, isn't he?

Well, his father was a professional chess player, acclaimed at the international level. (Oooh, exciting.) They traveled often; Hiruma learned his father's trade as they went. Unfortunately, the good life didn't last. Around the time Hiruma was ten years old, the old man began to run up on more and more opponents he had no hope of beating, and his chess career was looking like a wash. He struggled to get back into the game, as it was their financial sustenance and the only marketable skill he had, but to no avail. Watching his father flounder and fail over the course of four years, Hiruma began to grow discontent, then disgusted. The man he'd looked up to all his life was only that man when he was winning, and he wasn't winning anymore. When he wasn't winning, he was pathetic.

At last, stranded in Italy, they stumbled upon some good luck. A mysterious stranger offered Hiruma's father the chance to win big, big enough to support himself and his son for the rest of their lives. They would take care of his buy-in, but of course, the stakes were high: a loss, he was told, meant he would be in 'heavy debt' to them — 'the Family.' Still, eager to prove himself again, he agreed. He promised his son that he would win, that this would be the beginning of his comeback, that things would be good again.

He lied.

Without anything to offer to pay for his loss, the old man was quickly killed. The now-orphaned Hiruma, somewhat shaken by the loss of his father, was taken in, and he soon learned that the Mendolia always won. It didn't take them long to earn his loyalty, but they didn't succeed in brainwashing him, either. By appealing to him with logic and action, they managed to win him over. They had beaten his father fair and square, and the man was a loser. Losers deserved to die. Winners deserved to live.

With this newfound creed, Hiruma was swiftly inducted into the laboratories of the Mendolia family, where many experiments resulted in a few of modifications. A series of procedures in which his skull was disassembled and reassembled gave them the opportunity to completely alter his dental work, leaving him with a full set of sharpened, finely serrated teeth. His ears were remodeled, more out of necessity than vanity, and in the process, his hearing was tampered with, raising his threshold of aural pain and hearing loss, and enhancing his sensitivity to lower-decibel sounds. Some of the drugs administered during this time also changed the colour of his hair and eyes to blonde and green, respectively.

By far the most significant test the Mendolia put him through involved the perforare. They discovered that his talent for it lie in (surprise, surprise!) tactics, not offense or defense. Under the influence of the perforare, Hiruma was able to penetrate people's minds and target their most well-hidden secrets. In fact, that was all he could target; he seemed to have difficulty grasping their foremost thoughts, or even thoughts that were specifically directed at him. It was a useful ability, but not one that the Mendolia were so certain they wanted to foster. They did like their secrets, thank you.

In the interest of redirecting his abilities, they introduced Hiruma to guns. Rifles, shotguns, handguns, bazookas, bolt-action, semi- and fully-automatic, and even small explosives, in launchers or without: in time, they had Hiruma memorize the stats and best applications for nearly any weapon he might conceivably get his hands on. The weapons that he did get his hands on were quickly mastered for use. He proved to be quite the asset, even without his double-edged perforare.

Come his eighteenth birthday, however, Hiruma decided to take himself off the Family's hands altogether. As he explained to them, it wasn't that he wasn't grateful, or that he had anyone else to work for — just that he wanted to work independently. As incentive, he was happy to offer discounts on the weapons he'd be dealing, and for them, info would always be free of charge.

Equally happy to receive the offered benefits and place Hiruma somewhere he might prove of more use (out on the streets to trawl for secrets, instead of in their midst), the Mendolia agreed to cut him loose. Of course, Hiruma knew he wasn't completely free of their clutches, but he didn't need to be. He wasn't trying to double-cross them. Family was Family, after all.

Out on his own, he found it easy to turn a profit selling weapons and secrets. It's been a bit more than a year since then, and Hiruma's still living easy out of a hotel in Vizzini.

Type of Bullet(s) Requested: Intuito.
Abilities gained from bullets: Hiruma is able to see into the minds of others, and more specifically, target secrets. The deeper something is buried, the more likely he is to find it. Sifting through unhidden thoughts isn't something he can do easily; while the secrets come to him quickly, stopping to look at anything else along the way requires concentration. If someone's thinking about a secret when he dives in, he'll probably miss it completely.
Famiglia: Independent.

SAMPLES
First Person: Here's a DM post, but there were no comments, so if you needed a better look....

[ The video opens to a brightly-lit room; a pinball machine and a large table, completely covered with a tablecloth-sized map of Sicily can be seen in the background. There are coloured pins stuck all over the map, and a combat knife somewhere in the vicinity of Palermo.

The phone is deposited on said table, not far from the combat knife, leaving it out-of-focus and blurry in the foreground. ]

All right, you fucking goombas, listen up. Got some nice shit for Christmas and I'm feeling fucking generous, so I might give out some gifts myself.

Gonna have a merch showcasing. Piazza Marconi, Friday, my favourite fucking time. You fuckers should know when to be there. Show up late and eat lead.

[ In the background, where the camera has focus, the scoped barrel of a rifle swings past. After that, a hand reaches out to stop the feed, obscuring the view in the process. ]

Third Person: Hiruma blew a lazy bubble and his teeth ripped right through it, so he dragged the gum back into his mouth to try again. There was an art to it, he'd done it before. It just took a few tries. He tried again while he waited for the fucking instructor to decide on something he might not know.

Fat fucking chance.

Hiruma hadn't spent the last couple of years memorizing every fucking piece of artillery they could think up just to have this fucking goon show him up. Truthfully, it wasn't what he wanted to be doing with his fucking time, but it was a decent way to keep busy while he waited.

In just ten months and four days, Hiruma planned to walk out of here a free fucking man. (As free as you ever got from the fucking Mendolia, anyway.) He had an operable plan; he just had to wait until his eighteenth birthday to set it into motion. By his latest assessment, however, the plan was bound to be successful — he estimated about 96%.

The instructor held up a screen with a sturdy little SAR 21 on it. Hiruma pretended to be deep in thought while the fucking instructor's expression grew slowly more gleeful.

"SAR 21. From Singapore. Gas-operated, rotating bolt, takes a 5.56 NATO."

Watching the guy's face fall was enough to make him accidentally pop the next bubble, too.

"That was number forty-five, fucking instructor," Hiruma informed him. "Can I get the fuck out of here now?"

It had been a long time ago that the instructors had given up any pretense of being in charge of the lessons. The man sighed and resigned himself to taking notes as Hiruma left.