Tuxedo Mask

History
Djordji Shoban and Sima Shoban were not what one would expect of government rebels. He kept the farm running, though his primary pleasure was in his large rolling gardens and keeping their flower shop alive. Sima helped him, as a good wife should, though her pleasure was in horses. While he was in charge of the acres of flowers, she kept watch over the horses used to pull their plow for the field, as though a number of the horses were theirs, they also boarded. Sima’s favorites were the sprightly show-horses and jittery race-horses, and she was a master at taking a retired racehorse and turning it into a champion show jumper and steeplechaser.

They were comfortable, Djordji, Sima, their little boy Ruro. Nothing seemed to affect their bubble of happiness and contentment for eleven wonderful years. Ruro never noticed the furtive glances and whispers many people who bought flowers gave to his Pappi, or the way that many people came to ask his Mammi about boarding horses without ever bringing a horse. His was a magical childhood, filled with the love of his parents and the learning that came from good, hard labor, whether in the fields, stables or in the schoolroom. Best of all were the stories. Mammi and Pappi told him stories, his “Aunties” and “Uncles” told him stories too, of a long-ago Kingdom and a kind King and Queen and seven brave warriors, females all. He liked these “Golden Kingdom” stories best of all the stories he was told, and continually asked to hear more, and hear the same ones again and again, especially about how the King loved flowers and helping people and the Queen was nice to everyone, always wanting people to do their best.

On his tenth birthday, Mammi told him they had a special surprise, more than just the fact that he was being given his first horse, instead of his old pony. He didn’t know what could be better than his own horse to take care of all by himself, but figured that hearing he was going to have a sister was just as good. Imbued with the knowledge he would have to be even more responsible when his sister came, keeping her from the stable and making sure she stayed safe on the farm, he began paying attention to the many people who came to their home. If he didn’t keep watch when his sister was around, one of them might take her! That was when he started noticing the same people, those he wasn’t supposed to call “Auntie” or “Uncle” but they always came around with an “Auntie” or “Uncle”, kept coming to the house and store and stable.

Mammi and Pappi had more and more whispered conversations, or asked him to muck out the stalls when he had just come back from doing so. Odd. Perhaps it had something to do with his sister. Yeah, that had to be it. Yup.

Amisi Shoban was born while Ruro was at school, on a Wednesday in spring. She was all red and wrinkly when he first saw her, but her blue eyes were just like his, and her hair was curly and dark like Pappi’s, so he knew she had to be his sister. Ruro quite happily fell head-over-heels for his little sister, always aware of when she cried and knowing before his parents did that she needed her diaper changed or wanted to be fed or just wanted to be held or was tired. He’d whisper her stories of the Golden Kingdom as he rocked her, easing her to sleep and prompting many an adorable tableau as his parents came upon him fast asleep with Amisi laying on his chest, asleep as well.

It seemed that life would continue in this wonderful idyll, until one day when he came home from school. Mammi told him that his “Auntie” Gwynell was going to take him and Amisi for a ride into the city for ice cream. Overjoyed at the thought of the rare treat, he kissed and hugged his parents in thanks, holding just as long and tight as they did – longer and tighter than they normally did, but perhaps they just really missed him that day. It was only when he came back, belly full of ‘death-by-chocolate’ ice cream that he fully realized. Mammi and Pappi were gone. Completely, utterly gone. They hadn’t told him where they were going, they were just gone, and “Auntie” Gwynell told him that his parents loved him so, so much, but they’d been made to leave, been forced to leave, and he was never going to see them again.

That was the first day Ruro learned about the Alliance, and the first night he had those dreams. The dreams carry on until this day, a blonde woman, not his Mammi or Gwynell, singing to him a song he doesn’t know, but is soothing when he’s troubled, or kissing him, or just leaning on his arm as they walk, or hugging him or… any number of things. Her and other women doing things he doesn’t understand, and four men that he knows are his brothers always there for him, offering advice when he needs it, teaching him things he needs to know about fighting, the stars and music and having fun. The dreams he wishes he’d had earlier, maybe he could’ve helped Mammi and Pappi with some of the things he learned in them.

The first morning after everything he asked to join the Alliance. “Auntie” Gwynell told him he couldn’t yet, he was too young, but they’d let him when he was older. Right now he had to concentrate on taking care of Amisi. So he did, falling into the role of big brother with even more vigor than he had when his parents were alive, sharing duties with “Auntie” Gwynell and her husband “Uncle” Murray as little as he could, at least concerning Amisi.

The pair were the two children’s guardians now, but they weren’t his parents. They didn’t try to pretend to be, but the grizzled old Murray did earn Ruro’s affection as he realized the man was good with Amisi, always knowing what she wanted, though not as quickly as Ruro did, and accepting that Ruro wanted to take care of her.

The five (for Gwynell and Murray had their own son, six year old Marc) still lived at the farm, Murray proving as deft a hand with the horses as he was with children. Gwynell wasn’t good in the garden, but she was a nurse, so she was well able to take care of any scrapes and cuts Ruro got as he attempted to keep that part of his father alive. She understood part of him, and the other parts Murray understood – both held him as he cried when Amisi first referred to them as Mama and Papa. Murray had been a soldier, before he married Gwynell, and normally peaceloving Ruro found it both interesting and calming, somehow, to watch the older man shoot targets.

Jupiter-born Murray taught Ruro the ways of the warrior – the gun and sword and hand to hand, as much to give him something to do as to assure that if Ruro went through with his want to become part of the Alliance that he would know what to do, he wouldn’t balk at injuring others, he would be able to do so, even if it went against his nature, he could do so, and do so effectively without getting hurt himself. Mixed-blood (Venus and Mercury) Gwynell taught him the ways of the healer – natural poultices and potions and the medicine involving needles and threads and drugs.

They implored him to go to college, even at fourteen they pressed upon him that it was the right thing to do, it was what his parents would want him to do. So the teen stayed through high school and went to college, going PreMed with minors in Agriculture, Horticulture and Veterinary Science.

A grueling, insane courseload was his gift from picking that major and three minors, but he stuck with it, determined to do well, not only to honor his parents, but to assure his place in the Alliance and do fourteen year old Amisi proud. He excelled in all his classes, finding that at college he had much more time to himself than at the farm, between caring for the horses and the gardens and Amisi and practicing his weaponswork – all that was going on here was classes and studying and occasional weaponswork without the weapons, and his dreams helped, his brothers letting him practice with swords with them, or giving him advice in his classes, while the blonde girl was always there when he needed comforting. Murray and Gwynell had informed him of the Eye in the Sky, so he was always careful to practice indoors, just as they did back home, keeping the majority of their practices to the stables or the greenhouses – Murray had coated the glass to let heat in, but nothing could see in.

Still, by doing nothing but studying he graduated magna cum laude at the age of twenty-two and went right into medical school, determined to become a doctor. He didn’t plan on specializing, except in trauma. The Alliance would need someone who was good at emergency surgery and other work, he was sure. Medical school was just as insane as college, though he had even less time to visit back home during medical school, as he was always on clinical rotation, trying to get as much done and learn as much as he could as fast as he could, so he could help the Alliance and go home. After graduating medical school at twenty-six, he became a resident at Domiinqua's General Hospital, working the Emergency Room.

His help to the Alliance is two-fold. Beyond living with Gwynell and Murray, staunch members and supporters of the Alliance, he will protect any Alliance member who wanders into his emergency room needing treatment. He has the loyalty of nearly the entire staff of the emergency room, if not a good portion of the hospital because of his personality and demeanor – though he finds himself continually refusing dates, but he does so in such a way that the nurses still love him (he can thank Murray for teaching him that one). Since he has some veterinarian training – not a lot, just some – and he raises horses, it isn’t out of the ordinary for him to have horse medicines at home. These are kept in the stable for use not just by the horses, but by the Alliance as needed. He does not go on any missions, he keeps to his life, assuring that above all, as Murray and Gwynell has taught him, that he remains innocent in the sight of the Eye, and keeps Amisi out of imminent danger.

Admittedly, the danger she is getting into now is none of his making. His little sister is going off to college, having graduated valedictorian of her high school class like he did. She doesn’t know what she wants to study, and as the eldest three in the family have worked to keep the Alliance away from her and just-graduated Marc, they don’t know what she’ll be getting into. All he can do is make sure to visit, to assure himself that she’s not getting into too much trouble.

Personality
Ruro is a man of simple tastes at heart. Flowers and horses are two of his favorite things, with his sister exceeding everything in the entire universe, ever. Even the dream-girl he keeps seeing is occasionally swept aside by his love for his sister, because his sister is there and real and a link to his parents, unlike the dream-girl, whoever she is. He does want to meet her, if he can, and his brothers – for though he loves Marc like a brother, the younger man isn’t the same as these men he calls brothers – they’re on the same level as Amisi. Thanks to Gwynell’s patient teaching and his dreams, Ruro can, should he wish it, play the violin. Not that he does much, he just could if he wished to or had the time to, when not going about helping at the farm or in the emergency room.

Unerringly, unquestioningly loyal to his sister and to the two who helped to raise him after his Mammi and Pappi…passed, he is loyal to the extended Alliance, but agrees with Murray that despite the loyalty needed to keep such an organization running smoothly without being taken down, he can in truth only trust his family, which Gwynell and Murray are a part of. To trust outsiders is to risk too much, with him being so closely watched. One stupid move by someone might not send the entire Alliance tumbling down, but it might get Amisi snatched from her bed and attacked, because the Regime wants to get back at Ruro for something. He’s realized through the years that if Gwynell hadn’t taken them for ice cream, they would be dead and their parents alive. No matter how sad he is at losing his parents, his practical side makes him happy he’s alive – or at least happy that Amisi is alive.

For he is practical, quite practical, viewing the world with the cynical eye of one who has had their entire world torn down in their youth and slowly rebuilt it brick by brick. Everything has a purpose, or it doesn’t belong, everyone has a reason for being around him, or they don’t deserve to be there. He trusts in himself and his family and not much else, because it’s not practical to spread trust, otherwise there are enormous repercussions when the trust is broken – and you can’t promise that it won’t be broken, what with the Regime. This closes him off to most outsiders, keeping him walled away from even the Alliance that he is a part of and the patients he treats. No matter how kind and affable he can be to the patients (and he can be, there is no denying), even the children are kept out of his deepest domain in his mind, regardless of how young they are, they are kept at a layer beyond the doctor’s remove. Who knows what their parents might be up to that could affect him?

No matter how well Gwynell and Murray were in raising Ruro, that is the heart of him still, a lost little boy afraid and wounded, determined to protect his sister at all costs, even with his own life. He does get mad at her – he can easily get mad at everyone, but it is a calm madness, controlled anger like Murray has taught him. One cannot flash into anger and attack, unless one is Gwynell and it will only be with cutting words. Ruro can cut with words as effectively as his female guardian, his cynicism showing in the sharp biting tones even as his hands pump in and out of fists as Murray’s voice replaying in his mind persuades him to not go after the person physically. Ruro is a physical being, beyond working on the farm. If it weren’t for his preoccupation with the Alliance and his sister and his continual wonder about the dream-girl, he could have gone through nearly all the nurses at the hospital already, but that sort of physical gain is not for him. Hard work and labor are, as he strives to continue what his parents started at the farm even as he goes about living his own life, doctor by day, vigilante by night, emotionless and cold to all but those who know him best.

There are few, very few in the “know him best” category. Realistically just his family, as he was much too busy during school to have time for girls or friends in general, and he isn’t apt to let anyone close in now, making him a lonely figure according to the nurses, brooding and lonely and gorgeous. He’s just him, to him, and he doesn’t get it, just as he doesn’t get their attraction to him. Certainly if one could dig down to the heart of him he would welcome friends, the gentle wants-the-best-for-everyone soul of the lost little boy inside him craves friends and affection from those outside his family, it wishes for him to more fully show the kindness and sweetness and gentleness he was known for before his parents died. It is not to be, but the little boy inside can still try, and perhaps one day, with the right impetuous, get lucky. That is not to say that those he deals with as friends will be able to put up with him all the time, no matter how good and gentle and nice he might be. Ruro does still have a sharp wit, even when not used for cynical wounding but instead for gentle teasing, and is one who doesn’t ask for command, but merely expects what he says to happen, a side-affect from his doctoral training as much as it is his natural charisma coming forth.