(Beyond Birthday, reincarnated)

obligatory crit post go

OOC Information:
Name: Des
Are you over 15? Y
Contact: AIM: Macrocosm says, deathdesu

IC Information:
Name: Preincarnation: Beyond Birthday, alias Rue Ryuzaki, Backup and B
Reincarnation: Ban Ueno (上野 晩), nicknamed "BB"

Canon: Death Note: Another Note
Age: 23
Preincarnation Appearance: Being a character from a novel, there is no official art of BB unless you consider the "L" in this picture from the first page to really be him. Because he is described in such a way as to fool the reader into thinking he is L, the only thing we know is that he resembles him. Fan artists tend to draw him looking like an L with red eyes (the artistic interpretation of what shinigami eyes look like - canonically no one can tell who has shinigami eyes, so his true eye color could be mood ring rainbow for all we know.)
Any differences: He's not copying L, so he could technically look like anything. For the sake of having artwork for icons, I'm going with this artist's interpretation.
Preincarnated History: Beyond Birthday was mysteriously born having Shinigami Eyes, as well as the ability to interpret the numeric code they show him into human lifespans. Because of this, he automatically knew the death day of everyone he ever met. Allegedly he calls himself Beyond Birthday because "He had these eyes before he was born." Since the eyes only work when one sees another human face, this could mean he had a twin. Of course, how he remembered life in the womb is anyone's guess.... Even if this is true, they would have been separated before he entered Wammy's, so it's not terribly relevant.

At some point his father was killed by a thug, and his mother died in a train crash, leaving him orphaned. He was taken in by the Wammy House, an orphanage for gifted children created by Watari in order to create geniuses like L, the world's greatest detective who began solving cases at age 8. Because no one at Wammy House was allowed to know each other's names, he was given the codename of "Backup", or "B" for short. Alongside B was another orphan boy who went by "A." At some point they met L, although he wasn't introduced as such - B only knew because of his Shinigami Eyes. The two studied in order to become like L, but in the end, the pressure drove A to commit suicide. Meanwhile B had become obsessed with L. He had come to think of himself as a clone of L, whose life had no value unless it could surpass the original.

In order to defeat L, he eventually left the Wammy House after several years and hatched a plan to defeat L. Naturally, since L was a detective, the best way was to devise the perfect crime, a case that even he could not crack. He did this by committing a series of murders, aided by his Shinigami Eyes to find victims who were already fated to die. It is said that killing them was "effortless" for him because of that, and all of his victims went down without any struggle whatsoever. Additionally, each crime scene took place in a locked room, and contained a puzzle planted by B that would lead to the next victim, and before his first victim, he even sent the police a crossword puzzle that would lead them to his address beforehand. For an example of what the crime scene puzzles were like, with his first victim, he carved a bunch of roman numerals in his chest which corresponded to the page numbers of a book that he'd inconspicuously planted in the victim's bookshelf, and the first letter on each page spelled out the name of the second victim. In addition, he'd always nail "Wara Ningyo", a type of curse doll, to the wall - with the amount of dolls decreasing in number at the scene of each murder.

Anyway, after he'd succeeded in three murders, L took notice and enlisted the help of Naomi Misora, an FBI agent who was on temporary suspension due to a mistake on the job, to solve the puzzles and stop the fourth murder from occurring. He guided her to begin looking for the clues that B had deliberately left behind. While she was investigating the first house, though, she met a detective named "Rue Ryuzaki", who had L's mannerisms. (The reader is lead to believe that this is L, but he is actually Beyond Birthday in disguise.) Ryuzaki was considered freakish by Misora, but he offered to work with her as fellow detectives - she begrudgingly decided to go along with it in order to observe the suspicious character. He then proceeded to manipulate and guide her toward finding all of his hidden clues - and at a different time, he donned a thug's outfit and mask and attacked her in an alley to test her ability to serve as "L's shield." She fended him off using the dance-martial art, Capoeira, and he ran away - to then jump in a stolen car and appear at the next crime scene before her to create his alibi. Eventually, he lead her to the address of the fourth victim - which was actually victims, as there were two people there who matched the profile of his victims (to be exact, he targeted people with the initials B.B. The serial killings came to be known as the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases.)

So, they had the two potential victims evacuated, and they planned to have Ryuzaki take one room, and Misora take the other room. When discussing how to defend themselves against the victim, Ryuzaki casually brought up the fact that she knows Capoeira. Their chat came to a close and they split up as agreed. It was then that Misora realized that Ryuzaki was the murderer, because the man who attacked him in the alley saw her Capoeira moves. She rushed to the other room, which was now on fire. To be exact, he was in the act of committing suicide by self-immolation - Beyond Birthday, with the initials B.B. - he, himself, was meant to be the fourth victim. Regardless, Misora arrested him on the spot, and he went to prison, where he lived out his sentence until he died of a mysterious heart attack (strongly implied to have been caused by the Death Note.)

Reincarnated History

Ban was born to Japanese parents, a businessman named Ueno Ryunosuke (上野 龍之介) and his wife, Hitomi (瞳). He also had a twin sister named Mari (真理). They all got along well as a family. In the case of Ban and Mari, they were close enough to where they had come to think alike. This extended to their interests - because of Ban, Mari always liked "boyish" things, and because of Mari, Ban always liked "girlish" things too. Growing up in Japan, they would always watch shoujo anime together.

When the twins were 8 years old, the whole family moved to the US on a business opportunity. Ban started going by "BB" because he was annoyed that everyone in school thought his first name was "Ben." His sister came up with it. If you asked her it stood for "Bonbon" because he had a sweet tooth. (He was shockingly okay with that.) Additionally, his genius became apparent to others with how quickly he picked up English and was even able to help his sister learn so they could adjust in the new country. However BB's smarts and kindness eventually made him grow in popularity faster than his twin, and with further developing insecurities from prepubescence they started to have a sibling rivalry anyway.

Unfortunately, the relative peace wasn't to last as BB's life and Beyond's ran parallel. When the twins were 11, the first of their problems occurred when Ryunosuke was killed by a mugger. It caused a string of numbers to appear in his mind and an urging towards criminal justice... but more importantly, it was devastating to the family. Unlike his preincarnation who was able to take it in stride with the knowledge that he had and different worldview, BB was struck with a much deeper grief. He often burst into tears, and became more distant from his friends at school until most were gone. Because of the murder, there was an undertone of anger that permeated the family's general mood, especially from his sister, and the differences in their grieving styles caused them to become even more distant from each other as well.

Then, at 14, Hitomi died in an accident. BB was reminded that death is sudden, arbitrary and merciless, and for a while he had irrational fears about himself being "next" - and the instability that came next certainly didn't help. It lent itself to him developing some strong visceral fears of pain and death.

After his parents' passing, BB was placed in foster care and spent the rest of his young life moving from house to house. He was separated from his sibling and completely lost contact with her by the time he was an adult.

Despite the odds caused from often transferring schools, he was nevertheless an A student in high school. Perhaps assuming that everyone he liked would eventually be gone, BB had lost interest in making friends, and focused exclusively on his studies. Although he was closed off, his academic success got him noticed, and he began to form good relationships with some of his teachers. They praised his intelligence and would stick their necks out for him to get ahead - having people like that allowed him to come out of his shell a little and put him on the path to being somewhat more functional as an adult. They also encouraged him to volunteer - starting sometime during the summer of his junior year, he ended up volunteering at a clinic and staying on for a year or so. However, the call of his first echo inevitably drew him back to studying crime.

BB is currently attending a Locke City university on several scholarships which he aggressively pursued (some for his brilliance in academics, some for his situation as a foster child) so living expenses are included. However, his criminal justice studies are not going as well as he'd like... he's getting good grades, but it hasn't satisfied his urge from his echoes. And also, it doesn't quite seem to suit his personality... nevertheless, he stubbornly continues. He also creates crosswords for the paper for part time cash, and participates in extracurricular activities.

First Echo: Caused by the death of his father, which paralleled his father's death in canon - both deaths were murders, in other words a crime. The echo was a vague sense that he wants to become a detective... but not a police detective, or even a private detective. A very specific type of detective... he can't figure out what type, though. Maybe an unprivate one.

Preincarnation Personality:

"Brilliant and deviant" are the two adjectives used to describe B as a child at Wammy's house. They are both true of him as an adult. B is a genius with a number of quirks - he is obsessed with numbers, especially the number 13 and numbers that can be made to form 13 (like 4, being 1+3, since 1+3 looks like 13) , because the number 13 looks like a B. As can probably be guessed, he is also obsessed with the letter B, his own name. This obsession became the theme for a bunch of death puzzles used in the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases, in which he was the murderer.

After committing a murder, he cleaned up the crime scene so thoroughly, he not only removed his own fingerprints, but all fingerprints total - going so far as to wipe the light bulbs in their sockets and every page of every book in the house. One of his deliberately-left puzzler clues involved "Akazukin Chacha," a magical girl manga which he claims to be a big fan of. Since he seemed to have extensive knowledge on the topic, it's probably the truth - the set of Akazukin Chacha volumes present at the crime scenes were most likely his own copies, which is why he allegedly wiped all the books clean of fingerprints. That way, nobody would be able to fingerprint Akazukin Chacha and know that it didn't belong in the victim's house. This shows that B is extremely cautious, something of a manga/anime geek, and stupid good at cleaning up a crime scene - ain't no one in the real world that can neatly remove fingerprints from paper, so he is clearly a serious criminal mastermind for having done something literally impossible. Also worth noting that another one of the clues he planted happened to be a bunch of dolls; between that and the shoujo manga, he seems to have a predilection for cute, feminine things. Not that it'd bias him; he killed a 13-year-old girl, after all.

He is an excellent mimic - specifically, he is a mimic of L, the world's greatest detective who happens to be B's object of obsession. While pretending to be L, he calls himself "Rue Ryuzaki", wears prosthetic makeup to look exactly like L, and his impression is almost indistinguishable from the original at times - he adopts his mannerisms, his eating habits (though the love of sugar may even be exaggerated - he eats whole jars of strawberry jam and puts about 80 sugar cubes in his coffee), his speaking quirks (such as throwing out random percentages). There may be differences where B is lacking in data, however in those areas it seems that he just goes out of his way to act as weird as possible. It could be that it's actually his own personality shining through. In his own words, "If L is a genius, then B is an extreme genius. If L is a freak, then B is an extreme freak." He also acts a little friendlier than L does, in order to play the fool and gain trust. He's a good liar and will lie often if it suits him. Despite the way he acts, he must have some social skills, as he was able to get himself close enough to three total strangers in order to drug and then murder them, and even got their loved ones to hire him on as a detective after the fact.

B's desire to surpass L is not only an unhealthy obsession, it's basically his entire world. This is partially due to the then extremely rigorous training methods implemented on him by the Wammy House, but B sees himself as a clone of L that must surpass the original in order for his life to have value. This mentality causes no end of self destructive behavior. Dressing and acting like L are his addictive drug.

Though he was a serial murderer, B gets no thrill out of killing others, and considers the method of murder as little more than an interesting experiment. He targeted his victims based on their names having the initials B. B., and their time of death as told by the numbers he saw above their heads, and attempted to kill them on the exact date, as his absolute faith in his shinigami eyes lead him to believe that even if he didn't murder the person, they would definitely die in some other way. Therefore, he hardly believed them to be casualties at all. They were simply a means for B to surpass L. And there's one more thing; because his shinigami eyes have always showed him when people he has known would die, he's incredibly desensitized to death in general, and it's even said that killing is second nature to him. He probably thinks of a human's death with the same amount of sympathy as you would give a fly that's been swatted. There are exceptions of course; A's suicide when he was younger came as a shock, because even though B knew when he would die, it was the last way he expected A to die. Likewise, if he ever saw someone die to the Death Note, he'd probably shit a brick, because they're dying out of order, and he has no idea that shinigami exist.

When he is alone, he has a habit of talking aloud to himself, sometimes using the third person. He boasts about himself and goes over his plans, all while sounding much more simple and deranged than while he's in his "Ryuzaki" persona. Every morning, sometimes while still in bed, he practices his crazy evil laugh. Unlike his true laugh, which is said to sound like that of a Shinigami's, this is a routine act that lacks any sincerity. But then, so were those murders I mentioned. You see, Beyond Birthday had a huge secret throughout his case, one that he tried desperately to hide. The string of murders that were meant to seem like the perfect crime, were actually nothing but an elaborate suicide note. After running away from Wammy's House, he erased the identity he had as "B," and started going by his true name, "Beyond Birthday." The purpose of this was so that, after staging his suicide (by burning himself alive) as a murder, he would be lost among the other B.B.s that he killed, and it would look as though no killer was ever caught, since Beyond Birthday was the final victim. Therefore, the mysterious 'killer', being nothing but B's shadow, would never be found. It would haunt L for the rest of his life, or at least that was the plan.

So you see, B's bravado was a facade. The truth of the matter was that he had grown so desperate to defeat L, that he viewed his own self on the same level as those he had killed - nothing more than a means for B to surpass L. Underneath B's many personas, there's a vast emptiness inside. Ironically, his driving force can end up being his very downfall - in the end, he was so focused on L that he underestimated all other potential opponents. In other words, because nobody has value to B besides L, including himself, he was unable to foresee Naomi Misora being the one to catch him.

Any differences: Because he grew up without his shinigami eyes and without knowing L, his entire world view is different. He does not view people on a whole as dead men walking, and as such it is easier for him to get emotionally attached to them - though that's not to say he's more willing to make attachments, because now he has abandonment issues instead. If someone does become close to him, he's likely to be sort of clingy in an attempt to circumvent his insecurities. Though that can be a good thing too. Unlike the original B, who resented his codename of "Backup" as meaning an expendable copy, he represents a more positive interpretation. Someone that's loyal; who's got your back in tough times, or supports the main effort, as in a backup singer. (Granted he doesn't actually have that codename in his reincarnation, and I'm just being artsy.) Either way, at his core he's a sensitive and kind person.

He has a respect for life that his Preincarnation did not. BB's something of a pacifist to boot, in that any reminders of blood and gore can make him cringe (although he's still weirdly extreme and cavalier about the way he talks about death, in some ways. It's something of a 'face your fears' coping strategy, but he wouldn't welcome his own death.) He also has a stronger personal dislike of criminals due to being affected more severely by his father's murder - to this version, he couldn't foresee it, and didn't eventually get picked up by a super-rich benefactor either. While he's still highly intelligent, his education was not as specialized as it was in his previous life - in the novel version of L change the WorLd, it is mentioned that Wammy House children are all matched with a highly prestigious private tutor who perfectly suits their strengths and weaknesses - instead, he had an ordinary education, and therefore presumably much of his potential was left untapped. He did the best he could though and is still very obviously intelligent.

Abilities:

Shinigami eyes - Although most shinigami eyes require a trade of half of a Death Note user's lifespan, B's were acquired congenitally through unknown means. The eyes raise a human's vision 3.6 times their current seeing ability, and cannot be detected by any scientific or supernatural means - not even other shinigami can tell if a human has the eyes. But most importantly, the shinigami eyes allow the user to see the true full name of any human, as well as seeing a strange array of numbers that represents the person's lifespan. Rather than a countdown, it is a fixed number that is assumed to be some sort of Shinigami code, which Beyond Birthday has somehow understood for as long as he's had the eyes. This is his only supernatural ability.

Photographic memory - B can recall explicit details very quickly. (It's not clear in the book if he actually has this or if he just had the details of clues memorized because he had planted them in the first place. I like to assume he had this regardless, as it could possibly be the reason for why he's so good at mimicking L, though their amount of past interaction is questionable. It could also explain the 'remembers being born' thing, SOMEWHAT. Oh, Death Note.)

Make up - B is a total expert at making realistic prosthetic makeup. His 'mask' can pass as a real face. Specifically, L's face - I can only guess it's a transformation kinda like how they made Joseph Gordon Levitt look like Bruce Willis in the movie Looper.

Fighting - Beyond Birthday is very smart in a fight, but dodges a lot and fights dirty by using a black jack and a club.

GTA - B stole a car at some point in the novel, so you can assume that he knows how to hotwire a vehicle and any other skills that go along with car thievery.

Contraptions - One of the key points of the BB case was the doors, which were locked from within although there was nobody inside but the victim. He pulled this off with a little trick using some string and the dolls nailed to the walls - the dolls served a double purpose of disguising the trick.

Cruciverbalist - Apparently, B's capable of making crossword puzzles that are impossible to solve unless you're a genius of equal level (as in, even several people working together couldn't figure it out.)

Detective Training - Obviously, having studied to become like L, he would have a lot of crime-solving knowledge under his belt.

Computer Hacking, Surveillance - Assumed because Wammy kids are all trained to be pretty good at this.

Languages - Again, tends to be a Wammy House thing to be ridiculously multilingual. He definitely knows English and Japanese, but probably also knows several other languages on top of that. Major languages like French, German, Russian, Arabic and Chinese.

Roleplay Sample – Third Person: Some prose logging in a STE verse.
Roleplay Sample - Network: Test Drive Meme and Dear Mun

Any Questions? AM I LATE OR WHAT?