Beautiful Alone

How beautiful is my loneliness, how great is my pain... *

Order: Abyssinian

Ran Fujimiya had never considered himself a particularly hard or cold man. In fact, he'd rarely taken time to consider his character or his place in life at all. He was the son of a prominent banker, which meant that his family's material needs were provided for. His parents, while occasionally stern or overprotective, loved their children and their children knew it. His sister adored her older brother, and for good reason. Ran Fujimiya was fundamentally content.

Ran Fujimiya's entire world had come crashing down with a few simple actions. An explosion, a car accident, a falsified story released to the media, and Ran Fujimiya was alone. His parents were dead. His sister lay in an irreversible coma, with little or no chance of ever awakening. His family name and reputation were stained.

Ran Fujimiya discovered – or perhaps he'd known it all along – that he had a surprising stubborn streak, and a highly developed sense of honor and righteousness. With the desire to visit justice upon those who had wrought havoc upon his life, he began to search for methods of revenge. He soon discovered that it wasn't nearly as easy as he thought it would be.

He received training in the art of swordsmanship after joining a team of free-lancers. For a short while, it seemed as if he'd found, if not a new family, at least a group with which he could feel at home. The group fell apart, though, and Ran was alone again. His perseverance – or possibly idiocy, depending on how one looked at it – led him to continue searching for the murderer of his family.

Unfortunately, his target was not inconspicuous and Ran drew attention that, in the short run, he would rather have avoided. In the long run, it probably saved his life. It also enabled the actualization of his revenge.

Working with the assassin group called "Weiss", it was much easier for Ran to start to come close to his target. By this time, he focused only on those facets of himself concerning so-called justice and on his comatose sister. Anything else became extraneous and therefore discarded. He performed his job as an assassin for the vigilante organization Kritiker with precision and near-unmatched skill, and to his cover identity as a florist with he gave equal care to detail.

During his time spent with Weiss, Ran discarded his given name and fought using the name of his sister. A moment of sarcasm on the part of one of his teammates gave him a name to wear as a token, a reminder of why he struggled, near-tangible evidence of his goal. He wore Aya's name and bloodied it, keeping it next to his own. Both were tainted now.

Vengeance and justice are two sides of the same coin. Both are empty. It was a hard lesson for Aya to learn, and he found it difficult to continue with his target eliminated and his life without meaning. He returned to his sister, drawn to the only connection to the person he had been, and once again devoted his life to her. His goal was now much more nebulous; simply to keep her oblivious form safe from harm.

Initially, he failed.

Forced to return to Weiss, Aya withdrew even more into himself. His only thought now was to find his sister and punish those who had been so arrogant as to steal her away from him. In the end, he succeeded. His sister woke. She regained her memories, her health, her life. Aya Fujimiya picked up the existence she had so very nearly lost, and faced it with cheer and a smile.

Aya Fujimiya stayed with Weiss. He still used his sister's name. He continued to hunt those "dark beasts" his commander had spoken of in those early days. His life belonged to Kritiker, and he could not give it up. Where his focus had once been his personal vengeance and his own sense of right, now justice itself became the ideal for which he strove. By removing those who perverted the morality inherent in the objective idea of good, he believed he could change the world and somehow save it from itself.

Aya Fujimiya did not consider himself a particularly hard or cold man. He believed in his work, believed that he could create a better tomorrow from the blood of today. His sister was safe, even if he never saw her or she him. And despite the rather unique circumstances in which he found himself, he never thought much about himself at all. Justice was enough.

Design: Balinese

"Neee, Asuka, what are we working on today?"

Yohji Kudo had asked the question a thousand times, and he would ask it thousands more. His existence was precarious but satisfying, and to a young man it seemed perfect. He worked with whom he considered to be the most wonderful woman in the world, at what he considered to be the most fantastic job in the world.

The reply was always the same. "Yoooohji… Didn't you read the case file last night?"

"But Asuka…"

Life as a private detective was never boring, especially not with Asuka around. It might have become so, had Yohji been given the chance to explore it fully. It didn't take long for them to find a case that was more than they could handle, a client who was investigating the wrong people.

Asuka died, on the street, and Yohji could do nothing. Wounded and disabled, he simply watched. Watched as he told her to run, to save herself, and screamed as she was brutally gunned down. Shortly after that, Yohji Kudo's life changed dramatically. Kritiker found him at his most vulnerable point and used it to recruit him.

Unlike Aya, Yohji had no thoughts of revenge. He mourned what he had lost, and tried to move on. Intent on replacing Asuka, at least for a few moments at a time, he found an endless string of women. Sure, he worked as an assassin to hunt down the scum of the earth – or at least the scum of Tokyo – but that wasn't nearly as important as the memory of … her.

In the company of Weiss, Yohji was exposed to what he had had in Asuka; friends and companions who would stand by him, for whom he was responsible. He had a duty to protect those around him, as they were honor-bound to protect him. If he had been able to see it, he would have been able to form a type of rapport with his teammates that would finally ease the emptiness he tried so much to ignore.

Upon becoming a part of Weiss, Yohji thought he had put Asuka behind him, never realizing what it was that drove his incessant search for the perfect woman. Or perfect women. Or, failing that, the perfect one-night-stand. He discovered differently during the mission targeting the organization that had killed her. Once again, he watched injured and helpless as the woman depending on him died.

Yohji again laid his ghosts to rest, remained in Weiss – having nowhere else to really go and no inclination to try – and performed his job admirably. Once again, he discovered that his ghosts were still very much alive. Or undead. Along, apparently, with Asuka herself, although she was now calling herself "Neu" and working as an assassin in a group standing against Weiss.

Regarding Asuka, Yohji had a most peculiar blind spot. He "rescued" Neu, brought her home, and tried to reawaken her memories of Asuka. He refused to listen to any hint of aspersion cast upon the woman for whom he held such respect and affection. Any doubt he might have had was buried deep and suppressed as ruthlessly as possible.

Neu's inevitable and perceived betrayal, therefore, hurt much more than it should have. It nearly got Yohji and the rest of Weiss killed, but instead Yohji was placed in the position of killing the only woman he had ever really loved and hearing another man's name on her lips as she died by his hand.

It nearly broke Yohji Kudo.

Yohji Kudo, however, had by now developed a not-so-surprising talent for suppressing uncomfortable memories and emotions. He had women and men with whom to spend a few hours; none of them were perfect, but he didn't really care. Not thinking about Asuka for a few minutes was enough.

Balance: Siberian

Ken Hidaka once thought he had it all; fame, success, support. He had been a damn good soccer player, the youngest ever to play in the J-League. It didn't last; it couldn't. He learned bitterness and threw it away, placing himself in his faith in a friend. Ken Hidaka died, victim of a warehouse fire set to destroy the evidence of his illegal gambling. He had not, of course, had anything to do with said illegal gambling; he was far too straightforward and honest to do something like that.

Ken was also far too straightforward to recognize jealousy when he saw it, and so he never questioned his closest friend. He "died" believing that his friend had been kidnapped by the same people who had set him up.

Kritiker, the vultures surrounding Tokyo's disillusioned, stepped in at the last possible moment – not to save his life but to claim it. Ken, believing honestly that he had literally nowhere else to turn, threw himself into his new life with a vengeance. He learned to use his hands instead of his feet, slicing out the cancer riddling humanity with the metallic claws of a beast.

Ken Hidaka also honestly believed in his work – at least at first. It didn't take long for Weiss to set a target with who he was all too familiar. The target was none other than the friend who had betrayed him, unaware though he was of the reality behind his friend's actions.

Ken insisted that Kase was innocent. Convinced, he demanded time to verify what he knew to be true. Kase was not innocent, despite the front he put up upon seeing Ken. Idealism and faith could not stand in the face of reality, and Kase became just one more in the string of targets eliminated by Weiss. The most Ken could do for Kase was to kill his friend himself, and promise to seek him out in Hell.

Ken remained off-balance for some time after the incident, but, seemingly resilient, he appeared to bounce back and regain all of his old optimism. When not working either his cover job or performing his duty as a hunter of the dark, he spent his time coaching the children living in the neighborhood in soccer. In this way, he managed to retain some sense of perspective, managed to see why it was that he used his physical gifts to kill. He had to make the world a safer place. It all evened out in the end.

Physical trauma can often induce changes in personality. In Ken's case, perhaps the shattering blow to the skull he received fighting to save the world merely awakened a sleeping facet of himself of which he had been unaware. Or perhaps it had had nothing to do with it. It was, really, irrelevant.

It was a gradual process, but Ken began to realize that he enjoyed the feel of his targets' flesh under the metal of his claws, enjoyed the shiver as the sharp edges grated on bone, enjoyed the thick warm liquid that rushed out over his hands every time he completed a kill. Unable to truly consider his slow metamorphosis, he buried that part of himself which considered the consequences of his new mental track, and desperately threw himself into his work as a part of Weiss.

It only got worse. Or better, depending on how one looked at it. The death of a target was a rush, one he craved more and more as time went on. Outside, he remained a carefree and stable young man. To his young students and their parents, he seemed to be a veritable island of calm and health. To his teammates, who knew him better, he seemed edgy and anxious, yet none of them had the time, the resources, or the inclination to deal with Ken's problems when they had their own.

So Ken quivered on a knife-edge between that moment when the life bled out of the eyes of his target and that moment when young hope and adoration surrounded him. As long as he could hold them, one in each hand, it was enough.

Composition: Bombay

Omi Tsukiyono did not exist. Omi Tsukiyono was a creation of Kritiker, from beginning to end. His physical birth had been just one part of the interfamily politics upon which Kritiker was later built, his childhood a search for paternal affection or acknowledgement. It was probably a relief to his registered father when he was kidnapped; so easy to let the unwanted child disappear.

With that single random act and its traumatic aftermath, Omi Tsukiyono lost any memory he had had of his former life and name. He was molded into a tool, an assassin to fight against the dark and make the world better. He had no idea, of course, of the rivalry existing between Kritiker and his "father". As far as his past went, he dissected what he knew, put it together like a puzzle, stopping only when he saw a picture of himself that he liked.

Omi Tsukiyono was a brilliant tactician, for he had been gifted with the talent of strategy, and that talent had been nurtured. Omi Tsukiyono was a superb hacker, for his analytical mind had been carefully cultured. Omi Tsukiyono was a spectacular archer, for his vision and coordination were enviable. Genetics had taken him to a certain point, and Kritiker had put those pieces into a pattern that suited its purpose.

The human mind and spirit are, however, unpredictable, and it was unavoidable that Omi would discover his past; the sordid display of politics and rivalry that had created Kritiker just as it had created him. His newfound sister – who wasn't his sister at all, but his cousin – was then killed in his arms on the orders of his supposed father.

The trauma of his lost childhood and his subsequent rejection on the part of the field leader of Weiss shook Omi's faith in himself. As a member of Weiss, Omi was obligated to terminate the targets chosen by Kritiker. As a member of his blood family, which he only barely remembered, he was obligated to protect them. Unsure if he was making the correct decision, yet unable to choose any other way, Omi stood with Weiss.

It was impossible for Omi to suppress the doubts that subsequently hounded his thoughts. Was he nothing more than a means to an end, a way for one brother to win against the other? Unwanted child of his mother's brother-in-law, he had been shaped into a killer striking at the heart of his uncle's operations. Was Kritiker nothing more than a tool used in a perverse display of power? Was that for which he and the others lived nothing more than hypocrisy and a distortion of apparent morality?

Regaining his memories was not an enjoyable experience for Omi Tsukiyono. Like two of the remaining three members of Weiss, he too dealt with adversity by devoting himself even further to the ideals that Kritiker had seemed to represent. Omi was determined to live up to those ideals, and to bring Kritiker to fulfill them as well.

At first, Omi had no way to realize his dream; to make Kritiker into something worthy. Near-death and staged betrayal, the blood of his teammates and himself, the lives of countless targets, all stood between Omi and his wish. Given who his father and uncle had been, though, he was finally offered the chance to make Kritiker into what he wanted it to be. Omi took that chance.

To hunt those who riddled humanity with impurity, to destroy evil, to terminate the lives of those who were not deemed desirable, all of that was the true purpose of Kritiker. Omi Tsukiyono – now Mamoru Shiro, protector of the pure and white – led his followers down his path. He determined the pattern, wove the threads of life and death. To save humanity from itself but in the process slowly destroy it was enough.

Harmony: Weiss

"Nee, Ken-kun, why do you think we do this?"

"Um…"

"Be quiet. Pay attention to your surroundings, Bombay."

"…sorry, Abyssinian."

"…"

"Really, why do we?"

"Oi, Omittchi, ask later. We've got a mission to complete. And the sooner we finish, the sooner I can go on my date."

"Yohji-kun! Can't you be serious?"

"I told you to be quiet. You're going to blow our cover."

"But, Abyssinian, I…"

"If you don't think you can carry out the mission, then leave."

"No, I can do it. It's just… Never mind."

"…I think we want to make the world a better place."

"Really, Ken-kun?"

"Ever the idealist, aren't you, Kenken? …. I guess you're right, though."

"Yeah, I think so too."

"It's irrelevant. Do your jobs. Silently."

"Okay, Aya. But –"

"There are the targets. All five of them."

"I get at least one. You guys didn't leave me any last time."

"That's because you were too slow, Kenken. Work faster this time."

"No one wants to let me have any fun."

"Remember the mission strategy. Ready?"

"Yeah, let's just go already."

"Understood, Abyssinian."

"Come on, I wanna take the target down."

"Now! Go!"

owari

*lyrics belong to Project Weiss, "Beautiful Alone".