Inoue, Tadashi

Name: Tadashi
Full Name: Tadashi Inoue
Nickname: Sempai (by Nemo), Alpha (by packmates)
Gender: Male
Marital Status: Single
Age: 25
Birth Date: November 2
Race/Ethnicity: Shifter (wolf)
Career/Past Careers: former Alpha of a shifter pack
Occupation/Grade: HS senior (didn't finish his senior year before he was captured, so he's finishing it up at Alculard)
Dreams/Life Goals: Wants to be a teacher, but will probably end up following Nemo into law practice.

Hobbies: reading, swimming, Kendo
Likes: roughhousing, cute things
Loves: Nemo, freedom
Dislikes: injustice, prejudice, cages
Loathes: those who experiment on shifters
Fears: being captured again, losing Nemo
Strengths: Strong leader, intelligent
Good qualities: Patient, loyal, protective
Bad habits: fighting (for dominance) when he really shouldn't
Turn ons: unpredictability, willingness to fight or play
Turn offs: boring, snobby or stupid people

Hair: long and black
Eyes: crimson
Height: 6'3"
Build: lean, lightly muscled
Human Form:

Spoiler:

Wolf Form:

Spoiler:

Personality: Though the first impression that Tadashi gives others is either confrontational or playful, there's more to him than just that. He's typically a very gentle and patient man. The biggest exception to this is his behavior toward those who threaten his pack. He can get vicious when in such a situation. Intelligent and loyal, he earned the respect and trust of every non-human he met before he was captured, and a few even then.

Background:

Tadashi unlike many shifters, was born into a normal family. Or least what appeared to be a normal family. His Mother was far from normal, and kept her strange abilities secret from her completely human husband for she feared that if her secret got out that he would come to hate and despise her.
Tadashi was the first child born to the happy couple, and the first few years of his life held some of his fondest memories. Both of his parents showered him with all the love and affection he could ever want, and his father held a stable job that easily supported the small family while his mother stayed at home to take care of him. His mother was always fairly lenient towards Tadashi, and let him get away with quite a few things. But she did have one cardinal rule, one rule that Tadashi was supposed to follow at whatever the cost. No shifting in front of humans, not even Daddy. Especially not Daddy. For you see that was Tadashi’s Mother’s dirty little secret, she was a shifter. A wolf shifter to be exact. And so were her ancestors and her decedents. And it had to be kept a secret, and it wasn’t until Tadashi was older that he truly learned why.

When Tadashi was four years old his mother gave birth to another child, a baby girl who also inherited the shifter gene. Almost instantly Tadashi loved his little sister, and for the first time he had someone to talk to about his special ability, besides Mommy that is. He hardly ever talked to his Mother about it; it was a sort of taboo subject in their home. But despite the skeletons in the closet the family remained happy for three more blissful years. It was the evening of Tadashi’s seventh birthday, and the family was relaxing after a long day of fun and games with their bellies full of cake and other sweets.

Tadashi received many gifts and presents that gleamed brightly in the fading sun, but his little sister who was three at the time seemed dissatisfied about something. In her childish mind she was slightly jealous of the attention that her brother received all day, and wanted to be noticed and cheered upon like he had been. So in an attempt to receive praise she marched into the living room where Tadashi was playing with his toys while their parent’s lounged together on the couch. After a giggly shout of “Watch what I can do,” she promptly shifted into a silvery wolf pup.

Needless to say the reaction she got wasn’t the one she expected. She’d broken the one rule her mother enforced almost religiously. Tadashi’s Father, as his Mother expected, didn’t take it well at all. Especially when Tadashi and his Mother both numbly admitted that they too were shifters. He was horrified at the realization and believed that he’d married some sort of monstrous freak. He had been raised by a very religious family and called Tadashi’s Mother the devil’s whore and said that he could not stay with a woman who was involved in such atrocities. Obviously his accusations were wrong, and despite his family’s pleading he left that very night not even bothering to pack his things.

At first Tadashi’s Mother kept a faint sliver of hope that he would come to his senses and return to them, but it turned out to be just wishful thinking. The family would never see him again. They stayed in that home for just two weeks before his Mother packed them up and moved them to a quiet home in the country. Partly because she feared that he might turn them in, and partly because she couldn’t stand all the memories and lies their home had contained.

His mother was never the same again. She still took care of her children, made sure their bellies were full and those sort of things, but it was easy to tell that she was simply going through the motions. Tadashi’s Father had been the love of her life as hard as it may seem, and without him she was only the empty shell of who she used to be.

At first Tadashi himself was saddened at losing his Father, but in time that sadness turned into hate. He hated his Father for running out on them, all because they were ‘different.’ In his mind there was nothing wrong with what he and his family were. There was no shame in being a shifter, that’s what his Mother always told him and he believed it.

Three more years trickled by slowly without incident and the worst seemed to have past, but one more tragic even would shatter the resolve of the small family.

Tadashi was ten, and his sister respectively was six. The two as usual decided to shift and run around in the large forest that surrounded their home. It was a regular pastime for the children, especially when there was nothing else interesting to do. For hours they ran and frolicked letting their wolf instincts take over. Looking back on it Tadashi wished that he had paid more attention, been more in tune with his surroundings, and maybe, maybe his sister would still be here.

Unknown to the two children a poacher had set up camp in the family’s forest hoping to pick up a few foxes and deer. He’d carefully set up numerous traps and taken the care to avoid getting his scent on them. He was no fool; he knew that animals would take one whiff the area and high tail it out of there if they caught a human’s scent.

His carefulness paid off. Tadashi and his sister never noticed anything amiss till his little sister found herself caught in a nasty trap. At times Tadashi still has nightmares about that moment when his sister’s howls of pain filled the air. With perfect clarity he can still see her tiny leg clamped brutally between a smaller version of a bear trap.
Immediately Tadashi shifted back into a human and tried to pry the trap apart, but even though he was stronger than the average ten year old he still wasn’t strong enough to pull his sister free. Thinking quickly he knew he had no choice but to leave her and run back home to his mother, who he knew would be strong enough to pull his sister free. So even though it killed him to do so, he shifted back into a wolf and raced off towards home praying that he would get help in time.

Mean while, attracted by the sound of the howls, the poacher set off to see what he’d caught. He was very surprised to see a young wolf pup caught in his snare, and immediately thought of the money he could make for selling the little thing. Grabbing Tadashi’s sister by the scruff of her neck with one hand he used the other to carefully undo the latch that caused the trap to easily spring open. A latch that Tadashi in his haste had failed to notice.
His sister was nearly delirious with pain and was unable to hold her wolf form any longer and soon after being freed from the trap shifted into a human girl again. The poacher was shocked to see that instead of a wolf he now held his greasy hand around the neck of a little girl. Instantly he knew what she was, and knew he didn’t have much time. Having lived outside the law for quite awhile he knew the price that a shifter was worth to certain companies looking for guinea pigs to experiment on. He also knew that if the parents of this little shifter showed up he was as good as dead. So quickly he made the choice to abandon his camp, he could always buy new stuff after he sold off the girl, and departed through the woods in the opposite direction of Tadashi off towards where his old pickup truck was parked on the side of an old dirt road.

He was well gone by the time Tadashi and his Mother arrived back at the trap. Like his Father, Tadashi and his Mother never saw his little sister again.

That was the final breaking point for Tadashi’s Mother. Her already questionable sanity was thrown out the window. Sometimes she would go days on end without eating or speaking, and other days she would rant and rave and scream and cry. Till exactly one month after his sister’s kidnapping, she decided to end it all and take her own life.
The next few weeks were a blur in ten year old Tadashi’s mind. Child services picked him up not long after his Mother’s death and quickly put him in foster care where he would stay till he was adopted or turned eighteen. In the end fate decided to give him a break for once, and he didn’t have to wait long.

By a stork of luck a young mountain lion shifter couple, who were unable to bear children of their own decided to adopt. But they couldn’t adopt just any child, they knew the child had to be a shifter as well. They also knew the chances of finding a child who was a shifter in foster care were slim to none. But still they hoped and spent five years searching before, by chance they just happened to visit the home Tadashi was staying at.

They knew at once what he was, and he knew what they were too. Though he was slightly confused, he’d never met another shifter besides his Mother and sister, and certainly not another shifter that wasn’t a wolf. Immediately preparations were made for Tadashi’s adoption, and a few weeks later he moved into his new home.

Living with his new family was quite different for Tadashi. Unlike his birth Mother who hardly ever talked about being a shifter, his adoptive parents seemed quite open about what they were, and were quite involved in the shifter community. It was through them that Tadashi himself met his first Alpha, an older tiger shifter. The old man became Tadashi’s role model, and took the eleven year old boy under his wing and taught him all he knew about the dynamics of running and maintain a successful pack. It was under his tutelage that Tadashi made the decision that he wanted to be Alpha of his own pack one day. So that he could protect the people he loved from the cold cruelness of humans. He dedicated himself to reaching that goal, and against all odds achieved it a very young age.

By the age of fourteen, Tadashi had made his way to the top of the shifter pack in his community. Under his rule he hoped to bring a sense of security and prosperity to the people he led. However, past experience had taught him that non-humans had to hide themselves from the public at all times. But his goals and aspirations didn’t stop there, he didn’t just want to protect shifters from humans, but all non-humans. Together he knew that they would be safer. And over the next two years, he personally introduced himself to every non-human in the area and, against tradition, created a "Pack" of all non-humans, not just shifters. The Pack, he would joke, was the reverse of the Mafia. They organized to keep each other away from a life of crime, and to keep each other from being caught out by the humans.

His life continued like that four two years without mishap, till one day he happened upon a newcomer to his area. At sixteen, he met a young shifter named Nemo Hajiri. Nemo caught his attention, being at once innocent and cruel, and the older shifter decided to take the boy under his wing, so to speak like the old Alpha before him had done. It didn’t take long for Tadashi to fall head over heels for the boy, and though his affection wasn’t returned he never gave up in trying to make Nemo his. And after a couple months of "wooing" the boy, he finally gained a place in his life as his math and shifting tutor, a pastime he greatly enjoyed. Their relationship evolved easily into an awkward friendship, Tadashi in love with Nemo and Nemo looking up to Tadashi as an older brother of sorts.

Two years later, their paths were torn apart when Nemo's foster mother attacked them, forcing Tadashi to fight for both their lives as Nemo made his escape. Tadashi was not so lucky. Captured and placed in a prison to be experimented on, his only comfort came from the knowledge that neither Nemo nor his Pack had been captured. For the next six years, the alpha wolf planned his escape, his blood overrun with toxins, muscles sore from beatings.

He got his chance one evening when a series of blackouts plagued the facility and the surrounding towns. With no power running the automatic doors that kept himself and the other shifters confined they easily escaped killing any who tried to stop them. And once free, he and the others didn’t stay together long, they each went their separate ways heading off to pick up the lives they’d left behind. All except for Tadashi, instead of heading to the place he knew as home he set course for Alculard Academy. The one place he prayed Nemo would be.

The journey was long and hard for him, unable to shift due to the experimental collar he wore that prevented him from doing so he was forced to steal clothes and money and hitch hike his way all the way to the Academy all while trying to avoid his captors. He never gave up though, and eventually his tired and wore down body made it to the gates of the Academy.