Mamoru Yasuragi/History

Hallways... always...

When Nerou Araki met Konomi Nakamura in art college, he didn't expect that she'd latch onto him solely because of his "cool name!"; he especially didn't expect that they'd start dating, since his branch of art was technical--he would become an architect--while hers was very definitely stylistic--she would become a painter, and together they'd make an on-and-off husband-and-wife mangaka duo, with Konomi handling the regular art and Nerou handling backgrounds. Except "Araki" wasn't quite artistic enough as a name, Konomi claimed, so she insisted that he change the reading of it to "Yasuragi" when they got married--unusual, since it's usually a girl's name, but Konomi was enamoured by it and Nerou loved her more than enough to let her have her way; being the third son in his family, he could do as he pleased, anyhow. In between their artistic pursuits and meeting deadlines, they managed to get an apartment, and were quite surprised, though pleasantly so, when Konomi took with child. She gave birth to her son, Mamoru Yasuragi, on April 13, 1993, and while she and Nerou loved him, they were too busy with their loves to pay him too much heed; when she got pregnant again and gave birth to her daughter Usagi a year later, on October 8th, they had a bit more time, and decided the best way to go was to raise Mamoru to look after Usagi once he could take care of himself. (Konomi may have been a fan of a certain other popular girls' manga that was being published at the time.) He took well to this role, having taken fondly to his little sister, and he doted on her. And that was how Mamoru's very early life began. Aside from how busy his parents were, which Mamoru never really minded thanks to Usagi being around, there was nothing in particular that happened--no horrible trauma, no attacks by arsonists or murderers or horrifying monsters from behind the veil; he was just a normal kid. A normal kid, that is, with anger management issues. It's not that rare, really. Some people just aren't very good at controlling their anger. Mamoru's one such person. Even if he tried to be a good kid and let it run down his back, he'd snap and throw a punch at someone who was, say, making fun of him in class. If someone tried to bully him? Headbutt to the face. If someone was complaining about something he thought was stupid, like how their parents were sooooo unfair for not letting them watch TV all night and instead making them do homework? School briefcase hurled at them from clear across the room. If someone tried to pick on his sister (and given Usagi's childhood epilepsy and general nerdiness, that was quite often)? Well, they were just dead meat then.

I'll always want you

His parents, already harried by the growing demands of their respective pursuits--"art" might seem easy to those who don't do it, but to actually make a living off of it, you have to bust your ass off--didn't know what to do with him. Mamoru felt genuinely bad for losing his temper all the time and he did try to rein himself in, by for example accepting more chores around the house. If he knows he's getting punished, then he'll have more reason to keep his cool, right? All this ultimately accomplished, though, is that he all but ended up doing all the chores, which in turn went poorly when at times him flipping his lid meant dishes got broken or all the laundry got upended into the mud. He'd clean up after himself without complaining, but eventually it went full circle, and his parents stopped asking him to do anything at all. This meant that at home, at least, he'd be pretty calm, but Mamoru also felt like he was useless, which meant that when away from home, his trigger became even more sensitive. After a certain point, he decided he'd stop caring. If he couldn't control his anger, then what the hell was the point in bothering?! If there was nothing he could do and even his own parents had given up on him, then he'd just do whatever the hell he wanted! And that worked... well, not fine, because Mamoru still cared about his parents--and they still cared about him, even if neither of them were any good at relating to him--but he managed somehow... even if that meant he ended up getting a reputation hard as a trouble-maker and a fighter, even when the Yasuragis moved to a few different cities to try to get away from it. He also still had a weakness for his younger sister, whose smile was excellent at getting him to calm down if his temper hadn't snapped yet (but could not actually stop him once it was off); when she and her friends were a person short to play the Persona Game one time and she asked him to join in, he couldn't say no. When it came to anyone else, though, he just didn't try. This remained so up 'til an incident in the eighth grade, when he was fourteen years old, when his family had stopped into their bank--just before it was robbed. The robbers were not especially clever, and they were rough with their hostages, including Usagi. When she screamed in fear and pain, Mamoru's vision went white, then red.

I'll always need you

When the silence had returned, he looked around himself to find that the bank was half-wrecked, tiles shattered, counters cracked, windows broken, someone's hardwood desk half-cracked from use in his hands, and everyone unconscious and injured to various extents. That included not just the robbers but the outer tellers and the other customers... which also meant his family. Mamoru had awakened to his Persona, Heracles, but in being unable to control himself, he had been unable to control it either, and so when he flew into action, nothing escaped his wrath. No one died, but in the carnage, Usagi had gotten cut up badly by shattered glass. She managed a full recovery, as did his parents, but she still has those scars to this day. Mamoru wasn't charged for anything, either, due to being a minor and his lawyer's argument that he acted out of self-defense, and all the major damage had to have come from the crossfire since what fourteen-year-old could do all that? But Mamoru knew what he'd done, and there were more than enough witnesses that people talked about the monstrously strong, possibly possessed boy. Mamoru thought they might even be right; after all, he had no idea what his Persona was. All he knew was that it made him stronger than ever, and that he couldn't control it. He came to hate it, even, because Heracles was everything about him that almost destroyed everyone he loved. Nerou and Konomi outright avoided him after that. They claimed otherwise, but they were afraid of him, and moreso than before walked on eggshells around him and never asked him to do anything. At school, people spread rumors about him, about the boy who already had a demonic temper actually /was/ a demon now--something that seemed verified when Mamoru inevitably blew up at the rumormongers and wreaked havoc with his Persona-bolstered strength, and which led to him being called the Red-Eyed Barghest in a twist of his actual behavior (barghests following travelers and attacking them, and Mamoru preferring to be left alone until aggravated; either way, they're signals of death). It got to the point where Mamoru was about to run away, unable to stand himself and how he kept making his family suffer... except when he was in the middle of sneaking out late at night, Usagi caught him. "Don't you hate me, Usagi?" he asked her, frustrated, guilty and in despair, after she'd tearfully begged him not to go. "Aren't you afraid of me?" Usagi just stared at him like she had no idea what he was talking about. "Why?" That moment has remained a cherished memory ever since. Whether she meant it or not (for Usagi had already developed a talent for theatre, and would eventually be scouted while acting in a street play), Mamoru believed her, and it's that that's kept him grounded; otherwise, he probably never would have managed to graduate middle school, though by the time he did, he'd long since scared off anyone he might have liked to have befriended or even date. When the family moved away once again to a different city and he went into high school, he swore up and down that this time he'd start fresh, that /this/ time he'd straighten up--he'd make something of himself, he'd make it up to his mom and dad and Usagi, he wouldn't be a good-for-nothing whose only skill was breaking things and hurting people. He'd keep his head down and live quietly and leave the hated nickname "Red-Eyed Barghest" behind him, and really, at that point, that's all he really wanted anymore. Except on his first day, he met Seishi Izumori.

I'll always love you

He disliked him the first instant he saw him: a smug, smirking, completely self-assured boy whose shark-like eyes instantly marked him as dangerous. He picked a fight with Mamoru for no apparent reason. It was a tie, insofar as Seishi avoided his (direct) strikes and made Mamoru chase him all over the city before ultimately ditching him. Being unable to control Heracles, Mamoru left quite a trail of destruction behind him. He also blazed a new reputation even more fiercely and brightly than before, and even if Seishi didn't mess with him directly after that day, suddenly people knew about his past and what had happened that day at the bank and they called him the Red-Eyed Barghest again and they wouldn't stop talking and they wouldn't leave him alone-- The ringleader was, of course, Seishi, as Mamoru came to figure out. Mamoru tried to kill him--literally, his intention was to beat him into a bloody pulp until nothing was left, his hatred was that intense. It didn't quite work out. His first year of high school was pretty much like this the whole way through. There was one good thing about it, and it naturally had nothing to do with high school at all; during summer break, he and his family went to Tokyo on vacation for a couple of weeks. While wandering around Ikebukuro listening to his headphones, Mamoru ran across a few guys harassing a tall, half-blood looking girl. Irritated, he moved to stop them--but then the girl axe-kicked one guy in the face on her own. They ran off, and she then... made heartbroken faces at the broken DVDs they'd left behind. Mamoru managed to strike up a conversation with her, learning that she was Setsuna Mauer, a half-German visiting family, and as a pair of awkward individuals who didn't fit in at all, they quickly became friends. When they both had to leave Tokyo, they swapped phone numbers; to this day, they remain in touch, texting or calling each other frequently. Making an actual friend didn't help Mamoru's mood when back in an environment he hated, though. The teachers didn't dare punish him, and his reputation grew and grew--so when Usagi joined his high school in his second year, the difference in his behavior around her struck everyone as remarkable, especially Seishi. Within Usagi's first week, he hit on her in front of her brother. Mamoru tried to murder him, again. This did not actually dissuade Seishi from attempting to romance Usagi. The cycle continued. Mamoru never understood why Seishi was so hard-up on making his life hell, and he also never cared--this guy wrecked his chance at a quiet life, made other people start shit with him too, and most unforgivable of all was harassing his sister. This culminated a month and a half later, just before midterms, after Usagi had gained quite a lot of her own popularity as a TV actress rising in prominence. Mamoru went to meet up with Usagi behind the school as per a note she'd left in his locker (or at least it looked like her handwriting and was signed in her name), but when he showed up... he saw her pinned against the school building, locked in a kiss with Seishi--who, a second or two after Mamoru saw them, opened his eyes, looked directly at Mamoru, and smiled.

And I will always miss you.

When the dust settled, Mamoru was expelled. After a lot of discussion, Nerou and Konomi decided that rather than moving the entire family, it was best to send Mamoru by himself to board at Kasugayama High School over in Sumaru, which was the best and really only place for a troubled youth like Mamoru. Mamoru accepted this and the subsequent solitary move to Sumaru unhappily but without complaint. Usagi privately explained to him later that Seishi had called her out there and told her he really did like her, regardless of his relationship with her brother, and he couldn't hold back his true feelings any longer. She hadn't been certain of how to answer when all of a sudden he'd kissed her. She had certainly never left a note in her brother's locker. Mamoru thought that was a pile of horse shit, but Seishi was out of his life, possibly forever. It had better be forever, anyway, because if Mamoru ever has the infinite misfortune of running into him again, he will stop at nothing to destroy him. And so, after getting a quick-and-sloppy transfer to Kasugayama and a move into the nearby dorms, not having or being given the money to live in a place on his own, Mamoru is wandering around Sumaru with headphones in about to start his first day as a transfer student at the school for delinquents, trying his best to stay out of trouble and this time, this time, this time not let his family down. But Mamoru has the look of an experienced fighter, and reputations have a tendency to follow a man--especially in a city where rumors come to life...