Russell Kobayashi

'Hit-Parade'

Played by: Hit-Parade

INFORMATION

Bee, Male, 37 (DOB: 22 August 1980)

Aliases: Michael Takashima, Danny Cheng, Carter Prentiss
Nationality: Canadian
Residence: SoHo, London; Ibiza; Boston, MA
Employer: Interpol ("day job"); Council of Venice Investigative Service
Function: Roving inspector (Interpol); Supervisory Field Investigator, head of Task Force Harrier (CoV)
Twitter: @goldshield01

•Physical Appearance •

• Early Life •

• The Secret War •

• From TSW to SWL •

• Known Associates/Affiliations •

• Personality/Abilities •

• Special Notes •

Russell during a rare moment of downtime, somewhere warm.

Russell is a handsome Eurasian man in his mid-30s. Although only one-quarter Japanese, that ethnicity is highly visible in his physical appearance. His physique is toned and athletic, a result of a physically active lifestyle and a long-ingrained habit of exercise.

Despite the fact that his Bee gave him 20/20 vision, he often affects zero-prescription glasses, as he likes to exploit the stereotypes lazy people mentally assign to people with glasses. He has one tattoo, the Toronto Police Service's coat of arms with the number of his first badge, on his upper left arm.

Russell has a couple of vanities he is prone to indulging. One is his general style of clothing -- he tends to favor business suits or clothing in a similar vein. This is an artifact of his career as a police detective. His experiences in the secret world have made him sufficiently affluent to buy tailored suits without breaking the bank, so this is typically what he is seen in. Even his more casual clothing tends to fall under the "business-casual" heading. His other vanity is his hair and facial grooming: he wears a neatly-trimmed mustache and goatee with a short, fashionable haircut, and is almost obsessive about maintaining it.

One final, minor affectation is part and parcel of his continued love for his hometown, Toronto. He is prone to wearing tie tacks or lapel pins bearing the City of Toronto's coat of arms.

Russell's grandfather, Keisuke "Casey" Kobayashi (1919-1988), had been a decorated sergeant in the U.S. Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team during WWII, but had emigrated to Canada following the war, when his geology degree got him a job offer from a Canadian oil company. Casey would eventually retire as an executive V.P. in the mid-1980s. (The fact that he also found it smart to relocate because of flak from his new wife's Danish-American family was sheer coincidence.) Keisuke's brother Raizo ("Ray") would remain in San Francisco, eventually turning the family restaurant into a successful local chain. His own granddaughter, Sakuya, became a Bee herself after a law career active in local politics.

Russell's father, Alex (born 1948), was a professor of literature at Ryerson University in Toronto; he died of lung cancer in 2005. His mother, Arielle (née Lavigne, born 1950), was a notable pediatric oncologist; she suffered a fatal stroke in 2010. He has one sister, Rochelle ("Shelly," born 1983); she was a wild child as a teenager and into her 20s, but is now a dental hygienist in Bobcaygeon, and is married and has one daughter (Adrienne Tanner, born 2010).

Russell was born and raised in the Leaside neighborhood of Toronto. From a young age (no doubt influenced by numerous American crime dramas), he was certain he wanted to be a cop. He was a good-but-not-great student, (solid B-B+ average). Physically active, he also ran track and field, but not because of a natural love for athletics -- he knew he needed to be in good shape to be a cop, and besides, those cute girls in their track and field uniforms....

Russell's relationship with his parents was generally loving and supportive. They were, however, rather disappointed in his career choice; the words "wasted potential" were said quite a bit. They did make their peace with it eventually; they came to see his career choice as, at least, one that helped society. His relationship with his sister was generally amicable, although frequently strained with the usual stresses of sibling dynamics.

Russell met Sarah Delacroix, Shelly's best friend, when he was 16 and she was 13. It was was mutual loathing at first sight. Unsurprisingly, they would later date while she was in medical school. Their relationship was passionate, and seemed to be almost complimentary (both of them working in jobs that were ostensibly aimed at benefiting society), but the relationship began unraveling as Sarah started her neurology career and they became engaged. Eventually, she began pushing for him to leave the TPS (as much as for what she perceived as the "poor reputation" she received for dating someone in a "lower" career as for concerns for his well-being), and he refused. By the end of 2010 their relationship had ended, and even now they are unable to be anything other than politely uncomfortable around each other.

Russell went to Ryerson University, his parents' alma mater (Class of '03), and got a bachelor's degree in Criminology before going to the TPS academy. There were two reasons for this: one, because getting a college education first was the deal with his parents; and two, because the TPS recruiter told him doing so would speed his advancement into the detective bureau. (The recruiter was correct, but Russell wasn't the only one to do so; he, his future partner Tony DiNicola, and three others from his TPS class made detective within five years, leading to them being called "the boy geniuses.") He loved his job with the TPS, but by 2012, between his engagement with Sarah collapsing, his parents having passed on, and Tony invaliding out of the force after losing his leg, Toronto had stopped seeming like home.

In April 2012, Russell's friend and former classmate Gord Leitner, a staff sergeant in the RCMP, offered him a transfer, at no loss of rank or pay, into a challenging position in counterintelligence. (The fact that he had a newly single sister-in-law who looked just like Tatiana Maslany was icing on the cake.) Russell accepted immediately, starting to make plans to leave Toronto.

That night, he swallowed a Bee.

Within a week, Russell had been contacted by the Templars. An attractive young woman showed up on his doorstep, offering a business-class plane ticket to London, and an plum assignment as a RCMP liaison to MI-5. Perhaps most importantly, the chance to side with the faction in the secret world that came closest to espousing his own principles.

And Russell.... took it and ran.

To this day, the majority of his friends and colleagues in Toronto are confused, even disbelieving, when it came to his reasoning. They could believe transferring to the RCMP, but a glorified desk job -- in London?! Only a handful -- Tony and his wife, his sister Rochelle, a few others -- truly understood how strong Russell's perceived need to get away was. Not even they had a clue what he was running to.

Over the next two years, Russell would work extensively in the areas most directly affected by the secret war. His liaison position with MI-5 him a surprising amount of access to unexpected places, one he exploited ruthlessly. He rose rapidly in the ranks of the Templar field-agent corps, gaining a reputation similar to the one he'd had as the TPS's wunderkind. He also gained a reputation for working solo -- not disdaining teamwork, but feeling more comfortable working alone. As a result, he made only a limited number of friends among the Templars during this stretch of time. Almost all of them were his fellows in the Ordinem Palatini, whose members shared his own priorities of placing justice and protection of the innocent over correct political doctrine.

In the spring of 2014, Russell was promoted to Paladin-Lieutenant. During the promotion celebration, his direct superior gave him some simple but profound advice. According to the older Templar, having a personal life, and people to come home to, was key to a Templar agent avoiding burnout or slipping into zealotry. "We make our homes where we find ourselves. You find yourself in Ealdwic, lad."

Russell thought that overly simplistic, if probably accurate. Still, he resolved to not let any more opportunities slip by.

And, over the next few months, he didn't. Starting with a chance encounter with two Dragon agents at the Horned God, over the next six months he began building himself a network of close friends and sometime-lovers among the secret worlders calling Ealdwic home. One of those was Min-suh Park, with whom he would finally find love and a home. In a bitter irony, however, that ended up bringing about his break with Temple Hall.

At the time, Min-suh was a Dragon agent, and Russell had already butted heads with influential members of the Templars' Old Guard. In the midst of a difficult, extended Council-sponsored joint mission in Yokohama, those extremists kidnapped Min-suh, attempting to brainwash her as a double-agent against Seoul. Russell and a number of their mutual friends, including several Templars, assaulted the facility and rescued Min-suh.

While Min-suh was now safe, Russell's faith in the Temple, or at least in the progressives' ability to keep the zealots in check, had largely been ruined. At the same time, he'd had positive experiences with the Council task forces he'd worked with, and found its mandate to fit well with his moral compass. Offered a senior position in the Council's investigative division, he transferred officially in May 2015.

Over the next year, Russell would continue to make his mark as a supervisory field investigator, often working with old friend Cassandra Havelock of the Templars in joint task forces. He would also become known as one of the “activists” in Council service, seeking to help move the Council away from stagnation and closer to its ideals.

SWL Russell is, essentially, the same as TSW Russell. The only difference is that some minor backstory elements have been cleaned up and adjusted.

Professional:

• Council of Venice:
• Interpol:
• Canadian law enforcement:
• Templars:

---

Personal:

• Min-suh Kobayashi:
• Valerie Hsi:
• Ivan Azarov:

Combat:

Russell is a highly capable combatant. He has proven most proficient with:

• Blades. He is an accomplished student of the Seiji-no-Akaitou swordsmanship school (a Templar-specific offshoot of the Jingu clan's kenjutsu ryu, specializing in fast and brutal attacks). His preferred blade is a Masamune katana named Akikaze, enchanted to channel anima. While he rarely carries Akikaze (handguns and elemental foci being much easier to conceal), he makes a point of practicing with it regularly.

• Elemental magic. Russell's primary magical abilities are in combat elementalism. He is most adept at using air and electric manipulation in combat, with reasonable competence in fire manipulation. Ice magic is where he is weakest, but he is working to improve his facility with it. He has several foci, with the Dresden Codex page recovered from a time-displaced Mayan cult being his favorite.

• Pistols. While he is proficient with all types of firearms, handguns are his forte, and his marksmanship with them is considered to be among the best of his generation in the Templar field-agent corps. This is not entirely surprising, as during his time with the TPS, he was a competitive shooter, and consistently placed as a finalist in departmental contests. Much of his effectiveness with handguns is derived from an active use of his intuition when shooting: a "sixth sense" for placing his shots where they'll do the most damage. Perhaps his favorite "trick" with firearms is to combine them with elemental magic, using air manipulation to increase a round's accuracy and stopping power, or enhancing its effects with elemental aspects. He has a special fondness for handguns in .45 ACP, and has amassed a rather sizable collection of them. His standard weapons are a pair of highly-modified SIG-Sauer P220 .45s with customized grips (modified to channel anima for both ammunition and damage enhancement, but also to act as elemental foci) called "Lilly" and "Belle," a “Thumper” shotgun of Red Hand manufacture, and a modified "Black Eagle" AKM of similar provenance to the Thumper.

---

Non-Combat:

Before his recruitment into the secret world, Russell was an 9-year veteran of the Toronto Police Service, earning the rank of Detective-Sergeant and the Ontario Medal for Police Bravery. During that time, he and his partner closed a record number of cases; perhaps more astonishing, all of those cases were actually, genuinely solved. As a result, Russell's investigative and people-reading skills are all at significantly above-average levels (even by the standards of his chosen profession). Equally notable are his pattern-recognition abilities and professional intuition. (Templar examiners have posited that these are likely manifestations of low-level ESP.) All of these have been aided with an excellent memory, which verges on eidetic.

Russell's charisma manifests differently than the typical social magnetism. Instead, he exudes a quiet affability and trustworthiness. This has helped to create and maintain a surprisingly widespread network of allies and contacts. Most of these allies and contacts are in Canadian, Japanese, or European law enforcement or government, but some are in the various strata of the European underworld.

As a mage, Russell's specialization is elemental magic (especially air manipulation). On top of the combat applications of such, he has learned fine enough control to incorporate elemental magic into his investigations. He uses it to enhance his eavesdropping and counter-eavesdropping abilities, as well as to disrupt his quarry's communication abilities, and even to manage limited telekinesis (although this last application tends to exhaust him quickly). Finally, as of late he has had to frequently deal with detecting and unweaving wards; while he's hardly an expert, his crash course means he can (to a degree) fill in for a specialist.

On the more prosaic end of the spectrum, Russell is a talented singer (baritone), and a decent rhythm guitarist. His near-eidetic memory extends to an encyclopedic knowledge of musical and pop-cultural trivia, and he is rarely without a relevant quote or song lyric for the given situation. (Whether or not said quote or lyric is appropriate is up for debate.) He is also a capable cook with steaks and roasts.

Russell's faceclaim is Kaneshiro Takeshi. His notional voiceclaim is Jason Segel (specifically, as Marshall Eriksen from How I Met Your Mother.

More edits/info to come!