THE FAR SHORE | APPLICATION

[lousypage]

Player Information

Name: Emily

Contact: Colortheory on Plurk
Age: 29

Other Characters: Joscelin Fitzthomas

Character Information

Name: Tetsunosuke Ichimura

Canon: Shinsengumi Imon Peacemaker and Peacemaker Kurogane
Canon Point: Post-series, after Tetsu has finally left Ezo with Hijikata’s sword and death poem.
Age: 19 years old

History:

Tetsu was born the second son of a Japanese diplomat with a keen love for Western culture. His father had served as a translator during one of the first overseas missions undertaken following the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate’s isolationist policy. Seeing the rest of the world—America in particular—left an impression. Tetsu grew up surrounded by Western furniture and ideas, with his father sprinkling English words into almost every sentence. The word that left the biggest impression on him was “Peacemaker”—his father’s wish that he would be a force for good in the changing world.

It was a very loving and happy childhood, but that happiness was short-lived.

The Ichimura family’s pro-Western stance attracted negative attention from the anti-Bakufu (shogunate) faction, whose driving ideology was “Revere the Emperor/Expel the Foreigners.” One winter’s day, when Tetsu was twelve, a follower of the Choushuu Ishin Shishi came to the Ichimura residence to assassinate the family. Tetsu’s parents hid him in the closet, where he watched as the man slaughtered them. Tetsu somehow escaped the burning house and ran into the snow, where he was found by his older brother, Tatsunosuke. The trauma of seeing his parents murdered stunted Tetsu. He stopped aging, retaining the appearance of a twelve-year-old even as he became a teenager, and he couldn’t sleep unless he was in a small, enclosed space.

Tatsu became a surrogate parent for his little brother and tried to help him heal, but his overprotectiveness did little to help Tetsu mature emotionally. Tetsu remained immature and impulsive.

Three years later, the brothers arrive at a plan: they will attach themselves to the Shinsengumi in Kyoto, figuring that allying themselves with the strongest anti-Shishi force in Western Japan will help them avenge their parents’ murder. Tatsunosuke is hired on as an accountant, but Tetsunosuke is turned away due to his youth and small stature. However, the exchange between Tetsu and the guards at the gate of the Shinsengumi compound attracts the attention of an interested stranger. This young man, gentle and feminine in appearance, catches up with the brothers and asks why Tetsu wanted to be in the Shinsengumi so badly. The boy responds, saying that he wants to beat the legendary First Unit Captain, the boy genius swordsman Okita Souji, to prove his strength.

The stranger offers to introduce Tetsu to the Shinsengumi leadership. Tetsu meets Kondou Isami, the Commander of the Shinsengumi, who seems charmed by the determined little warrior. Tetsu repeats his desire to beat Okita Souji, which Kondou finds hilarious. At that point, the kind stranger disappears…only to reemerge a few minutes later dressed in a kendo practice uniform.

He introduces himself as Okita Souji.

Tetsu and Okita’s fight is brutal. Okita doesn’t hold back on the boy, who still holds his own surprisingly well despite the clear difference in size and skill. Tetsu is nearly beaten many times, but he keeps going. He can't give up!

The fight attracts the attention of many members of the Shinsengmi, including the Vice-Commander, Hijikata Toshizou. Hijikata ultimately puts an end to the fighting. Kondou, impressed by Tetsu’s tenacity, wants to give him a place within the Shinsengumi, but Hijikata refuses.

Tetsu is devastated.

Later, Okita comes to Tetsu with a suggestion: if he hides himself in a certain place at a certain time, he willsee the true nature of the Shinsengumi. Tetsu does so, only to witness a failed assassination attempt on Hijikata’s life, and the subsequent slaughter of the assailants at Hijiakta’s hand. Tetsu is sprayed with blood. Okita had meant it as a lesson: to become a member of the Shinsengumi, Tetsu will have to cast aside his humanity and become a demon.

The next morning, Hijikata and Okita find Tetsu sitting in front of the compound in the rain, where he’s been all night. Tetsu tells them that he would do anything to become stronger, even if it means becoming a demon.

Hijikata finally consents to have Tetsu join the Shinsengumi. There’s only one problem:

Tetsu may join…but as Hijikata’s page and not a full warrior.

Tetsu is a terrible page, and Hijikata is a terrible master. Tetsu’s clumsiness and insolence means that he gets yelled at a fair bit by Hijikata, who seems to show no interest in him. So Tetsu becomes less and less faithful in his page duties, often disappearing into the training hall for sparring sessions with other Shinsengumi members, running errands for Ayumu, the kindly Shinsengumi housekeeper, or engaging in petty disputes with Yamazaki Susumu, a shinobi working for the Shinsengumi (and Tetsu’s much more competent rival).

During this time, Tetsu becomes friends with Saya, an apprentice oiran in Kyoto’s pleasure districts, and Kitamura Suzu, a fellow samurai page in Kyoto. One day, when Tetsu is accompanying Shinsengumi Vice Commander Yamanami Keisuke and Eighth Unit Captain Toudou Heisuke to the pleasure district, Tetsu, Saya, and Suzu all end up in a room together, eating snacks and playing games while the adults play…other games. They are having a fantastic time until Suzu’s master, Yoshida Toshimaro, comes to pick him up. Instantly, Tetsu recognizes Yoshida as the person who killed his parents, and Suzu realizes that Tetsu was a member of the enemy faction all along.

Tetsu’s trauma resurfaces, and he refuses even Ayumu’s delicious cooking. Ayumu comes to bring him the cold leftovers, and tells him that she will be going away for a little while. She asks him to be a good friend to Susumu who, it turns out, is her younger brother. Following a potentially fatal error by Susumu, Ayumu opts to take his place as the Shinsengumi’s ninja intelligence officer.

She does this knowing that she is going to her death.

After Ayumu’s murder, the Shinsengumi is merciless in trying to track down her killers. Hijikata personally tortures one of the perpetrators into giving up the location of their leaders: the Ikeda-ya inn. The Shinsengumi storm the Ikeda-ya. Tetsu is left back at headquarters, too traumatized and grief-stricken to do anything, when Susumu comes to knock some sense into him and give him a Shinsengumi uniform and a sword. Tetsu races to the scene of the Ikeda-ya, and engages Yoshida in a desperate fight. Tetsu is cut across the face, leaving a wound from his ear to his cheek. Finally, Tetsu gains the upper hand, but Okita swoops in to make the kill to save Tetsu from becoming a killer.

Suzu comes onto the scene minutes later to see his beloved master dead, apparently by Tetsu’s hand.

Following Yoshida’s death, time starts moving for Tetsu again. He starts growing and aging, coming into his own as a person. He’s permitted to carry swords, and even starts paying better attention to his page duties. A few weeks after the Ikeda-ya affair, Tetsu and Tatsu run into a strange man during a trip outside Kyoto. Like their father, he sprinkles English words into his vocabulary and seems far more interested in his American-made pistols than his sword. This man’s name is Sakamoto Ryoma, and he’s a kind, good-natured follower of the Imperialist faction. As soon as he realizes who the brothers are, he decides to try to win them over from the Shinsengumi to his side.

Around that time, Suzu reemerges. Still in possession of Yoshida’s severed head and completely unhinged by his master’s death, Suzu is determined to make Tetsu’s live as hellish as his.

Soon after, tragedy begins to befall the Shinsengumi at an alarming rate. The first casualty is Yamanami Keisuke, whose kind nature and hatred of violence is at odds with the Shinsengumi’s strict samurai code of conduct. He attempts to run away with his lover, and is forced to commit suicide.

Following Yamanami’s death, the Shinsengumi factionalizes. This eventually leads to a separation, with Toudou Heisuke and Saito Hajime (sent as a spy) leaving along with many other previously loyal men. Around this time, Susumu decides to train as a doctor, and he and his new master diagnose Okita with tuberculosis and realize he doesn’t have long to live.

Meanwhile, Suzu is working behind the scenes to exploit the discord within the Shinsengumi ranks. He also murders Sakamoto Ryoma while disguised as Tetsu, making Sakamoto’s followers believe that it was the Shinsengumi page who committed the murder. This culminates in a massive battle between the Shinsengumi factions and Ryoma’s men which leaves many dead, including Toudou. Tetsu decides to go willingly with Sakamoto’s followers to prove his innocence.

It is only through the intervention of Saito Hajime and Akesato (Yamanami’s shinobi lover) that saves Tetsu’s life. Suzu nearly gains the upper hand, but he is defeated when Saito breaks Yoshida’s skull.

It is also around this time that Tetsu finally realizes that he loves Saya. He convinces Hijikata to lend him money to buy her away from the brothel where she lives, but arrives minutes too late; someone else has already paid to take her away. His happiness has, once again, been thwarted by Suzu.

The next target on Suzu’s list is Susumu. As Tetsu and Tatsu are rejoining the Shinsengumi following the failed attempt to buy Saya out of the brothel, Susumu is shot in the stomach saving them during an ambush by the remaining followers of the former Shinsengumi faction. He dies shortly thereafter, with Tetsu present. Susumu was Tetsu’s closest friend, and the loss leaves him devastated.

The Shinsengumi arrive in Edo and are named Hatamoto, or samurai directly in the service of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The world is changing, fast. The Shinsengumi are fitted for new Western-style uniforms, and Tatsunosuke becomes the mastermind behind turning a group of sword-fighting samurai into a rifle corps. Many members are resistant to change, so Hijikata, Tetsu, and Saito cut their long hair into Western styles and don the uniforms to lead by example. They leave Edo to defend other targets from the Imperialist revolutionaries, with a brief stop in Hijikata’s, Okita’s, and Kondou’s hometown. There they leave the ailing Okita, now far too weak to fight, so that he may die in the place of his birth.

Eventually, the remnants of the Shinsengumi end up in Hokkaido, where they attempt to hold the island despite the harsh northern landscape and overwhelming odds against them. A sniper begins dogging the Shinsengumi, Tetsu in particular. Even though Tetsu fights to disable his opponent, rather than kill them, the sniper targets anyone within a close range to Tetsu, killing them instantly. This increases the trauma and sense of guilt that Tetsu carries, and he starts closing off, rejecting the friendship of others. It is at this point that Hijikata brings in a young boy to help, one who is very much like Tetsu was himself years before. Hijikata rightly guesses that the sniper will not target the boy, and Tetsu’s heart is able to start healing, little by little.

At this point, the manga hasn’t caught up with the time skip to Hokkaido described above, so this is conjecture on my part based on characterization and historical fact:
Realizing the increasing hopelessness of their situation, Hijikata sends Tetsu, his faithful page of many years, away from him. He entrusts Tetsu with an errand: to take his sword and his death poem to his relatives’ house. Tetsu, who has grown into a soldier of deadly skill even if he does not take his opponents’ lives, wants to stay and die at his master’s side. It takes a great deal of convincing for him to accept his mission and set sail away from Ezo, knowing that his master will die.

Personality: Tetsu matures significantly over the course of the series. When we first meet him in Shinsengumi Imon Peacemaker, he is very childish, not quite able to see the points of view of others. For example, he doesn’t recognize the importance of Susumu’s place within the Shinsengumi; he only sees a boy his age who’s able to do interesting things while Tetsu has to slave away as a page to an unfailingly strict master. Little by little, however, he begins to grow up.

One aspect of Tetsu’s new maturity we see is his response to Susumu’s death. Susumu had been his closest friend and the death of someone he cared so deeply about hit him hard. However, when Hijikata asks how Tetsu is doing, noting that Tetsu has not served him tea since Susumu’s shipboard funeral, Tatsunosuke observes how much stronger Tetsu has become. Tetsu mourns his friend and is shown weeping for him, but he returns to duty shortly after and is seen cheerfully helping Hijikata convince the men of the Shinsengumi to adopt the new Western-style uniforms.

Tetsu has always been very kind—we see this early on in his treatment of Saya—and he carries a lot of empathy. However, as the series wears on and Suzu’s plan takes hold, Tetsu’s natural kindness and openness begins to be tempered with sadness and grief. We see this in the Ezo timeskip chapters, when Tetsu rejects the young boy who wants to meet him and gives the boy, Ginnosuke, a modified version of the same “become a demon” speech he was given when he first joined the Shinsengumi years before. He is cold to Gin because he worries Gin will be taken from him just like all the others, either his friends who died prior to the timeskip or those who have died in Ezo, targeted because of their association with him. In Ezo, we see a colder and sharper version of the energetic, cheerful Tetsu we knew before.

Tetsu is not book smart like his brother; he eschewed a formal education in favor of training in sword fighting (and gunplay, later on), but he shows tactical skill in his fighting that shows he’s more intelligent than he may let on.

One of the most significant aspects of Tetsu’s personality that must be noted is his tenacity. He is stubborn, and he does not give up. He displays this multiple times throughout the series, one of which being his refusal to give up during fights despite overwhelming odds. His stubbornness can also translate into pigheadedness and a tendency to carry grudges. His temper is on a hair trigger and he can get angry very easily…but, on the reverse, he also recovers from his anger quickly.

The other significant aspect of Tetsu’s personality is his loyalty. He is unflaggingly loyal to his friends and family, particularly his found family within the Shinsengumi. When Suzu confronts him about Yoshida’s death, Tetsu takes the blame despite being innocent of having given the killing blow, all to protect Okita from Suzu’s wrath. Despite their early rocky relationship, Tetsu is loyal to Hijikata, and becomes one of the Vice-Commander’s most dependable allies following their flight to Edo and later Ezo. Tetsu is offered multiple chances to leave the Shinsengumi, particularly after his failed attempt to redeem Saya, but he refuses. His friends are far too important to him for him to ever even think about leaving them.

Abilities: Tetsu is a skilled martial artist who has mastered—or come close to it—the art of nito-ryu, or two sword fighting. Later, after the Shinsengumi have moved to Hokkaido, Tetsu replaces one sword with a rifle and possesses excellent marksmanship ability even when he is fighting with a sword in his other hand. As a warrior, Tetsu is unpredictable. When we first meet him during his dual with Okita, Tetsu eschews traditional kendo forms to slide under Okita’s legs. He’s fast and agile and because he was trained by Okita himself, Tetsu’s skills are deadly...even if he himself refuses to kill.

He also possesses the ability to make really bad tea.

Strengths: Loyalty, tenacity, friendliness, kindness, empathy
Weaknesses: Stubborn, impulsive, short-tempered, immature, terrified of losing those closest to him

God/Shinki: Shinki.
Why?: Tetsu’s role in the series is of a servant, not someone in a position of power. I want to keep that dynamic in-game, particularly if he is paired with Hijikata as his god. He takes orders; he doesn't give them.
Cause of Death: Tetsu will have died of a fever a few months after returning to Hino and completing his mission. Tatsunosuke was at his side when he died. This is one of the most commonly held hypothesis for how the historical Ichimura Tetsunosuke is thought to have died (though a few years later). For the sake of the game and the fact that it’s doubtful that canon will ever get to Tetsu’s life after he leaves for Hino, I will be compressing the timeline to make Tetsu’s death closer to Hijikata’s death and his character development up to that point.

Vessel: Tetsu takes the shape of his weapons in Ezo: a rifle and a katana. Tetsu is a dual-wielder in canon, and it only makes sense that his god should be as well.
Name Location: 誠 – Jouki (truth/sincerity) Located over his heart.
Power: Cheer. Tetsu’s power provides a boost of energy and speed to his god, whenever he senses that the god may be tiring or weakening.

Sample: https://takamagahara.dreamwidth.org/65938.html?thread=8208018#cmt8208018