Name: Sayuri Ròs (pronounced “rose”) Ualas (pronounced “Wallace”)
Nickname: Ualas
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Weapon(s): A Highland claymore. It has a 13-inch grip, 42-inch blade and weighs a little over 5.5 lbs. (see bio for explanation)
- Spoiler:
Personality: To put it shortly, Sayuri is a quiet, highly observant and analytical individual. She’s unlikely to strike up a casual conversation with a stranger, preferring instead to study the world and people around her before speaking or acting. She is intensely curious about the world around her, ready to seek out an adventure if it will teach her something new or learn a new skill just for the sake of learning it. Being almost painfully introverted and shy, she has a difficult time making friends because she is reluctant to reach out to others. People in turn are often reluctant to approach her as well. She doesn’t exactly look intimidating, but she tends to hold herself rather stiffly. Her expression doesn’t help much either, appearing as a cross between mischievous, calculating and aloof. But one close look into her eyes and you can see how lonely and alone she feels. If you can manage to breach her emotional defenses, however, you are unlikely to find a more true or constant friend. She will stand by her friends through thick and thin, whether it’s as a shoulder to cry on, a sympathetic ear or that girl who will pound your numbskull ex into the concrete for you.
On that final note about numbskull exes and concrete, you will find that Sayuri has a rather low tolerance for other people’s crap. If you disrespect her family, her friends, or her, she will tell you in no uncertain terms that you will want to retract that statement immediately. And if you refuse, she will not hesitate to take what remains of your hind end and hand it to you in the form of a steaming slice of humble pie. If she sees you mistreating someone else for no apparent reason, she will feel the urge to beat the ever-living crap out of you – and most of the time she’ll make a damn good attempt at it. Again, she doesn’t look intimidating but you shouldn’t let that fool you. Behind the quiet demeanor is a well-trained fighter with firm beliefs on what is right and wrong that she will readily defend.
Physical Appearance:- Spoiler:
Sayuri is of Scottish-Japanese descent and her mixed heritage is immediately obvious at first glance even to a casual observer. Standing at 5’8, she is a fair bit taller than the average woman in Japan. Overall her body is lean and compact, but her curvy profile is more reminiscent of her Scottish aunts rather than her Japanese mother. Her shoulders are slightly broader and, along with her entire body, are quite muscular. Her muscles lack sharp definition due primarily to a large appetite and healthy diet. She trains daily to stay strong and agile, like her parents taught her. Her face is heart-shaped with high round cheekbones, a pert slightly curved nose and a small full-lipped mouth that is the delicate shade of pink roses. Slender eyebrows curve gracefully over large, slightly up-turned almond-shaped eyes that are an unexpected grey color. Her right eyebrow is pierced and she typically wears a simple barbell earring in it.
Her skin is soft and smooth with a somewhat ruddy color, making her look perpetually flushed or blushing when she is neither. Her left forearm is badly scarred as though flames had reached out, wrapped around it and refused to let go. On her right shoulder, she usually draws a random kanji – changing it daily to suit her mood. Her hair appears dark brown, but when the light hits it just right it lightens to a warm chocolate color. She keeps it in a long, choppy layered cut. At its greatest length it comes down to just above mid-back while at its shortest it is just above her eyebrows. Her hair is usually parted on the right side of her face, with her bangs are swept off to the other side. As for her clothes, she wears whatever feels comfortable at the time. She doesn’t really do the whole fashionable thing, preferring tattered short-sleeve tees and comfortable jeans to…well, just about anything. If you happen to see her on the streets, she usually wears a light-blue hoody-vest over her shirt and is never seen without an iPod strapped to one arm and large green headphones either over her ears or hanging from her neck. Her iPod is primarily filled with instrumental music from around the world, though she usually picks either Celtic or Japanese music to listen to. She typically carries a small green backpack around with her. The last little detail is a simple pendant necklace she wears. A rounded triangular blue sapphire set in a gold mount hangs from a slender gold chain. It was a gift from her father to her mother and all she has left to remember her mother by.
Bio:Family: Tormod Ualas (54), Ayame Takahashi (51 at time of death), Hamish Sora and Seamus Umi (fraternal twins; 29), Kenji Scott (24), Angus Mamoru (20), Hiro Gawain (pronounced “Gavin”; 17), Colin Kazuhiko (12 at time of death).
Tormod Ualas moved to Tokyo in the summer of his fourteenth year. His father, Bran, was the head of Ualas Enterprises – an American-based company that built and sold a variety of domestic goods – and the man was looking to open a new branch in Japan to expand UE into the Asian market. Tormod wasn’t exactly pleased about this new state of affairs, but he had refrained from his whining for one reason – martial arts. For as long as he could remember, he had loved martial arts. What better place to indulge that passion than in the Far East which possessed such a multitude of styles? Bran let the boy travel across Japan and the Asian mainland to watch various competitions, so long as Tormod kept up his grades and studied the Japanese language carefully. The boy happily obliged. Two years passed without incident until the summer Tormod turned 16. That was the summer he witnessed a small Japanese girl obliterate her opponents in a junior
wushu competition. Her style of fighting was unlike anything he’d seen thus far and he was instantly fascinated by this Takahashi Ayame.
He was unable to track her down after the final match, but as fate would have it he stumbled across her one day in Shibuya, Tokyo. Being a rather straight-forward kind of guy, Tormod immediately approached Ayame and introduced himself. She was initially wary of him, with his semi-broken Japanese and obviously foreign appearance, but his enthusiasm for martial arts coupled with his desire to learn from her softened her up a bit. She explained that she followed a philosophy known as
Jeet Kune Do (JKD). Her father owned a dojo in one of the cities of Western Tokyo and it was there she had learned the style that Tormod was so enamored with. They parted that day, Ayame certain that Tormod would not actually seek out her father’s dojo and Tormod determined to begin his study of JKD. After a lot of wheedling and negotiating with his father, Tormod finally sought out the little Takahashi dojo in Naruki City. It was quite a commute, but it was worth it to finally step foot in the dojo and meet with Ayame’s father Takahashi Hayato. Tormod’s training soon began and he somehow managed to juggle school, training, and traveling to watch competitions while becoming one of Takahashi’s top students. Within four years, he was skilled enough to start sparring with Ayame – one of only three others in the dojo who were about their age and could make the same claim.
Sometime after they began, Tormod heard Ayame humming a tune that he was quite familiar with. It was by a Celtic instrumental band – one that Tormod was quite fond of. He asked her if she liked the band and she said it was one of her favorites. They fell into a discussion about classical and instrumental music, which led them to many other topics of discussion. The two found they had a surprising amount of common interests beyond just martial arts and they began meeting outside of the dojo to indulge in those interests together. At first, it was just a strong solid friendship developing between them. But the more time they spent together, the more interested in each other they became. Before they realized it, they had fallen in love with one another and Tormod – being the ever straight-forward and determined individual he was – asked Hayato if he could marry Ayame. It took a lot of negotiating to convince Hayato that Tormod was in earnest and the elderly man reluctantly consented – he really had no real reason to say no beyond the fact that Tormod was not Japanese. The now-grown Tormod was industrious, a quick learner, and already had a secure and lucrative job within his father’s company. Bran was also not particularly pleased by the arrangement, but gave his blessing as well on the condition that Tormod would take over the management of Ualas Enterprises’ Asia division. The young man agreed and in their 23rd year, Ayame and Tormod married in a unique wedding ceremony that fused Celtic and Shinto traditions in a surprisingly natural way. They settled in Naruki City and two years later, the couple had their first children – a set of fraternal twin boys. The older boy was named Hamish Sora while the younger was named Seamus Umi. Five years later, Kenji Scott joined the hellacious team that was the Ualas twins. When Ayame became pregnant a third time, she swore it would be the last if it was another boy. Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint – Sayuri Ròs was born next, ensuring that her younger brothers Angus Mamoru, Hiro Gawain and Colin Kazuhiko would all be born eventually.
Sayuri’s childhood was largely unremarkable. From her parents, she gained an appreciation of instrumental music and a love of martial arts. From her older brothers, she learned to negotiate when possible and beat the living bajeezus out of them when they wouldn’t stop giving her grief. Her low tolerance for such treatment from anyone soon led to her schoolmates simply calling her Ualas, even the very few that she became close to. From her younger brothers, she gained a measure of patience and no small amount of compassionate affection. When the world seemed too big to handle, her family was always there to put things in perspective and she is deeply devoted to them.
The Ualas family split its time between their home in Naruki, visiting family in the United States and frequent vacations to the ancestral lands of the Ualas clan in Scotland. All of the children were taught English, Scots-Gaelic and Japanese simultaneously so that they would have a sense of their heritage on both sides of their family and also be able to converse with their relatives. The entire family also practiced Jeet Kune Do as a way of bonding. Ayame encouraged her children to take up meditations while Tormod happily taught anyone how to wield a Highland claymore, something his own father had taught him in his youth as a symbol of his Scottish heritage.
Perhaps the only remarkable part of Sayuri’s childhood – at least in her mind – was the spiritual awareness that she, the twins, and Colin possessed. From a young age, these four were able to see ghosts to at least some extent. If you trace Tormod’s genealogy back far enough, you would find that he is a very distant descendant of the once-widespread Quincy clan. His particular Ualas line would infrequently produce spiritually aware individuals as a result of this, though it was rare for one to see more than vague outlines of ghosts. The twins could see vague shapes and could not interact with them. But to Sayuri, the ghosts were as visible to her as another living human being and she frequently interacted with them – playing with them as “imaginary friends” when she was young and speaking with them (usually in private) as she grew older. Colin proved to be the most gifted of them, able to see not only ghosts but vague visions of Hollows and the Shinigami that fight them. Sayuri and her three gifted brothers inadvertently trained and developed their awareness with meditative techniques and by following the Jeet Kune Do philosophy their mother taught them – to constantly cast off what is useless. Sadly, this strong spiritual awareness would prove to have tragic consequences.
The family went on a picnic outing to the town of Karakura. They had picked the park, set up their picnic site and were enjoying a delightful lunch when there was a sudden disturbance not far from them. As the dust settled, Sayuri saw Colin running towards the figure of a small boy which was in turn running from something
much larger. Though she did not realize it at the time, she was seeing the vague shape of a Hollow for the first time. She didn’t even bother to think about it – Colin was running straight for it and he was
way too young to fighting something like that. She and the twins took off after him, but not before their mother had begun sprinting after her youngest son, calling out for him to stop. But the boy didn’t stop, too hell-bent on trying to save this other little boy from the danger that was as clear to him as the sky above. He succeeded in saving the other little boy – but at the cost of not only his own life, but Ayame’s as well when she tried to protect him from a threat she could neither see nor touch and therefore could not fight. This didn’t deter the twins or Sayuri from trying to leap into the fray. It only fueled their desire to protect their loved ones, though it was already too late. Their only reward for their efforts was for Hamish to be partially blinded and Seamus to be crippled before Shinigami finally arrived to dispatch the Hollow. The three wounded siblings were eventually treated at the Kurosaki Clinic, which was closest to the park the Ualas family had picnicked at. The explanation given to the clinic doctor was that there had been a terrible car accident that had already claimed the lives of Ayame and Colin. To this day, the rest of the family believes this version of events. Only the twins and Sayuri know the truth of things, though they maintain the car accident lie. But it is Sayuri who remembers the day most vividly – the final image of the Hollow being slain by several Shinigami is crystal clear. She lives with it every day, for she has seen both Hollows and Shinigami with increasing frequency ever since that day.
Three years have passed since that terrible day – each anniversary marked by a return to the park and a somber picnic. But not long ago, Sayuri convinced her oldest brothers to move to Karakura with her. She knows they all need closure and she knows that the answers to her questions are hidden somewhere in Karakura.
Role-play sample: (OOC - If it's italicized, it's being spoken in the native language of Genji's people. In the world he comes from, the island nation is called Itasus and the language is Itasu.)
- Spoiler:
Genji glanced back in time to see Nayeli’s nod. He had not really expected an answer of any sort, but at least she had been paying attention to his final statement. “I will send a servant to the palace when we have finished, princess.” With that he left the study and quickly made his way down to the first floor of the palace, unfolding the map as he went to examine the route to the cottage. His mind began leaping forward to the minutes, hours, and days ahead of him. He would spend a fair portion of today preparing the estate. It would be necessary in order to get the feng shui properly set up. It had taken him years to accomplish that in the Citadel – how unfortunate that he was under such terrible time constraints. Although if this marriage did go through, he would still have years in which to properly arrange the estate he had been granted. But still…there were paintings to hang, folding screens to artfully arrange, a shrine to set up and consecrate; furniture to move around or completely throw out…a thousand things and more, it felt like.
“Kazan-sama…what –”
He held up a hand for silence. “[color:d934=FF4500]Now is not the time, Mami,” he murmured. “I have much to arrange in a short amount of time and I cannot be distracted from my purpose. Save your silver tongue.” Mami looked distinctly disgruntled, but nothing more was said as they exited the palace. The three additional carriages that had arrived were in various states of unpacking. Well, at least they weren’t fully unloaded just yet. He gave a piercing whistle that echoed across the courtyard and got the attention of his slaves and servants. Trotting down the steps, he made his way over to the carriages. “There has been a slight change of plans. We will be heading for an estate by the palace’s northern gate. Reload the carriages quickly so that we may make up for this troublesome delay.” He stood there with his arms crossed, waiting as patiently as possible for his slaves to repack everything onto the carriages. After about fifteen minutes the carriages were almost ready, so he moved to his personal carriage and handed the map to his driver. Without a word, he climbed into the carriage with his guards, certain that his people would be intelligent enough to follow. After a few moments, the carriage lurched forward and made its way towards Genji’s new estate.
The ride was mercifully short, preventing the tension between lord and guard from escalating to unbearable levels. Genji peered out of the carriage windows as they arrived. A low wall did indeed surround the perimeter, fencing in a verdant lawn that had recently been tended to and a freshly swept courtyard that lay in front of the two-story manor house. A dirt lane branched off from the courtyard, leading to the small stables in the northwest. On the opposite side, he could see several fruit trees growing near the wall. The gardens, he was certain, would be just beyond the trees. He glanced at Mami once the carriage had rolled to a stop. “Scope out the house.” The woman’s eyes narrowed slightly before she gave a jerky nod, exited the carriage and trotted the short distance to the small manor. While waiting for her return, Genji eyed the house and grounds critically. Like most buildings, the house was a relatively drab color on the exterior – simple walls made of natural stone with shuttered openings here and there that served as windows and a slanted tile roof. The first entrance was arched and engraved – with what, Genji couldn’t tell – with a smaller opening set further back that undoubtedly let onto the actual house itself. Well…as far as Alagaesian homes were concerned, it seemed adequate enough for a noble.
He glanced at Rikuto. Her eyes were fixed on him with a very slight frown marring her normally placid features. They held each other’s gaze for several long moments. He didn’t know whether to be exasperated or amused by their frequent staring contests. Of all his guards, he actually rather liked Rikuto the most. She was neither clever, nor witty, nor even particularly intelligent. She was simple – there were never ulterior motives with her. She knew when to take initiative and when to bow to Genji’s decisions. She wanted nothing from him – nothing, except perhaps his understanding. Perhaps his only issue was that she never asked questions if she needed something clarified. He had to prompt her every single time it looked like she wanted to ask something. He sometimes wondered if all Ishinomori women were like her.
He was about to ask what she wanted this time when Mami reappeared at the carriage window. “The house is clear, Kazan-sama. There were no traps, no assassins, nothing out of place as far as I could tell. There is a large two-story hall just as one enters and it spans much of the first floor. There are several tables in the hall, as well as a smaller one on a raised dais. A balcony wraps around the second floor. To the right are the kitchen, a well-stocked pantry, a room which seems to be for storing drinks, and a set of stairs that is in the corridor outside the kitchen. The kitchen itself lets out onto a large garden, which also contains a well. To the left are another set of stairs, some sleeping quarters for servants, and a sizable chapel. Above the chapel is a small bedroom that is presumably for guests and a library. Above the kitchens is your living quarters: a large bedroom with dressers, a four-post bed, a wardrobe and nightstands; a well-appointed bathroom; a large study; and another smaller bedroom. There are large fireplaces in every room except the chapel, the pantry, and the drink room. And except for the pantry, drink room and the interior corridors, it is well-lighted by the windows.”
He nodded and gestured for Rikuto to step out first. She deepened her frown briefly before smoothing her face out and obeying his silent order. Genji quickly followed her out. He paused just outside the carriage and took in a deep breath. It smelled surprisingly clean and fertile here. It was almost like the Kazan estate on Sariatus. A peaceful look settled over his features as he took several more deep breaths of the fresh air. Whatever else he might think of Alagaesians, they had selected a good place for this estate and it was something he could definitely work with. He moved further into the courtyard and turned to face the little corral the carriages had formed in front of the manor entrance. “All right. We have a lot to do in the next few hours. Get everything off those carriages and into the great hall. And for the love of Yawata no Kami, you had BETTER be damn careful. Every one of these items is priceless and I will not hesitate to gut every last one of you if anything happens to them. As for my luggage, I want it in the largest bedroom on the second floor. Mami will direct you. Understood?” The assembled servants and slaves either grunted or nodded in assent and began their tasks – after all, Genji’s statements were not out of the ordinary to them.
Once everything was underway Genji finally went inside to change out of his kimono. He couldn’t trust the slaves to put things away properly and he couldn’t do that same job in his current outfit.
Several hours later ~ early afternoon:
Genji quickly toweled the excess water from his hair as Mami looked through his wardrobe for a particular silk tunic that was a light green. He currently wore a pair of white linen capris with his zori were already on his feet. The house was as ready as it was ever going to be and he had already sent a slave ahead to inform the palace of his imminent arrival.
He tossed the towel aside and looked himself over in the mirror. He scowled at the image presented to him, unsure of whether it really pleased him or not. He didn’t particularly need to add any womanly traits to his already effeminate features, but the effect of his lengthy locks was not unpleasant either. He ran his fingers through the damp locks, delighted that they were still soft and sleek as usual. Perhaps he would maintain this style until he was married.
“Found it.”
Genji grunted and turned from the mirror, picking up his father’s ring from the washstand below the mirror and slipping it onto the middle finger of his left hand. Plucking the sleeveless tunic from Mami’s loose grip, he pulled it on and tucked it into his capris. He adjusted it so that the wide collar sat mostly on his shoulders to reveal the crimson dragon tattoo curling around his left pectoral and shoulder. Satisfied he held is hand out for Seisui and strapped it to his waist with its sword belt so that it hung from his left side. He repeated the process with Hinote, save that he slipped the sword strap over his head with the hilt also facing to the left. He moved to the mirror once more and fiddled with Hinote for a few moments until he was satisfied that the sword’s strap would not cover too much of his tattoo before nodding. “All right. Let’s get this over with.”
Without waiting for affirmatives, he turned and left the room. He could hear the quiet footsteps of Mami and Rikuto as they followed him downstairs to the kitchen corridor. He poked his head into the kitchen, where several of the servants were gathered. “I am returning to the palace. Do try to stay out of trouble while I am gone. Good help is hard to find these days.”
Stats:
Hankou - 2
Reiryoku - 5
Hakudo - 6
Seijuu - 3
Bukijuu - 3
Hoho - 6
Total: 25