Maison App
Jan. 11th, 2013 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stalking_horsePlayer's Name: Birdy
Contact info: shirhanblade (AIM), kyanve@gmail.com, kyanve (Plurk)
LJ:shirhan_blade
Character: Hakuba Saguru
Canon: Detective Conan/Magic Kaito
Version: Manga. As much as the DC changes aren't much
Canon Point: A few months after the Koushien arc
Age: 18
Gender: Male
History: (Wiki is basically nonexistent for him.) Saguru is half-British, half-Japanese; his father's the head of the Tokyo police department, while his mother is British and basically never mentioned beyond that she apparently is fairly well off. (Headcanon - it's partly family wealth, but she is a very well regarded and well paid independent analyst that gets work from several law enforcement agencies.) His parents are mostly absentee; when he is seen with his father, his father is openly dismissive and insulting towards him, treating him as if he's not even there, and considering that he's apparently spent more of his life in Europe - enough to have a noticeable accent on his Japanese - it's fairly clear he doesn't get along with his father very well at all. His mother is never seen, nor is there much indication given of her keeping much track of him; instead, his usual "parental figure" is an old housekeeper/hired servant that seems to serve as both looking after him and playing backup and help on his work.
He's a brilliantly gifted kid, and ridiculously eccentric; there's not really any indication that he's ever gotten along with his peers, and in fact, outside of Baaya and some slightly old-fashioned courtesy that probably came from her, his social skills can be summed up as "raised by wolves" - although it seems to even out less as a depressive isolation issue, and more of just 'he doesn't get people and they don't get him'. He grew up on Sherlock Holmes and likely a lot of casefiles and things from the family business, and given his record and where he is now, had to've started meddling in field work at a far younger age than would be allowed; it's entirely possible that he's the reason the Tokyo homicide department adjusts so easily to having "Conan", who's only apparently eight, involved. The general likelihood is that at some point, whatever agencies his mother/father were around resigned themselves that he was going to be getting into things, that he was bright enough to be helpful, and that it was probably better to keep him where they at least had a clue where he was and what he was doing than have him sneaking off to get into trouble without anyone to get him out of it.
At some point, this shifted to him coming into his own as an investigator; at seventeen, at the beginning of Magic Kaito, he's gained enough of a track record to be requested for harder cases in more than one country, as well as an international reputation and enough attention from media for many of his classmates in Japan to know him by news stories and reputation before he transfers in.
The turning point case came in the form of one flamboyant thief "coming out of retirement" and "returning to activity" - Kaitou Kid, 1412. Kid was an odd case, the sort that belonged more in a novel than reality; relying on magician's tricks and trickery as much as standard thieving skills, Kid had started out initially as an art thief known for stealing things, then returning them a few days later, who, for no apparent reason, had shifted his focus to large or unusual jewels before disappearing entirely for ten years.
Saguru caught several things in the pattern that others missed - the recent Kid was shorter and smaller than the old records, a few variances in style, and realized that they weren't dealing with the old Kid returning, but a new Kid taking over; based on what information he had on the records of the case and the fairly small pool of possible suspects that were skilled magicians who'd died ten years ago with potential successors in his age range, he'd managed to guess the identity of the new Kaitou Kid as the son of an internationally famous magician who died in a "freak stage accident" ten years previous - he had a guess that Kid had made some kind of enemies that weren't the sorts Kid could pull his usual stunt with of setting up worse criminals to get caught, and any suspicions that Kid had made enemies of whatever he'd been tracking were confirmed when Kid started getting shot at regularly on heists by parties unknown that usually managed to elude police capture.
In a series of events that would be best described as 'it's not stalking, it's research!', he transferred into the same high school class as Kuroba Kaito, the almost certain suspect, and started up an instant rivalry with the young magician, generally being a massive creeper - and on the professional side, he insisted on joining the special Task Force the police had formed to pursue Kid. While the Task Force was initially grudging of his presence, and never entirely lost a bit of bruised professional pride, he managed to prove his worth by getting them closer than they'd ever been to Kid's coat-tails, and seems to've been accepted more than the older cops are willing to admit. Unfortunately for him, besides getting straight in the path of a number of very dangerous people, getting that closely tangled up with Kaito has meant being enmeshed in the other chaos the magician attracts, including occasional run-ins with a powerful witch, Akako, and getting drug into the path of a couple of other detective prodigies that've also set their sights on catching Kid.
He's currently settled into a pattern of chasing Kid where he can in between other cases and classwork, with occasions of crossing paths with the other, now more main-character detectives, who he has a professional rivalry with; it's most obvious with Heiji, who's only recently started operating outside of Osaka at all, although considering his attention at times the only thing that's probably saved "Conan's" secret identity from him, is that his focus hasn't really been on "where the Hell IS Kudo Shinichi anyway and what connection is this strange child?".
Personality: At heart, Hakuba is relatively good-natured, very protective of others, and driven by a strong sense of justice. While he can be slightly cynical, as would be expected of someone who's grown up exposed to the worst of human nature, he doesn't hold grudges very well, and his temper is of the long fuse, slow burn, quiet variety – he doesn't blow up very easily at all, and while he can be downright venomous when he's irked, it usually doesn't really last that long. He has a tendency to keep a strong hold of rationality on his emotions, and is prone to hiding what he's actually thinking and feeling, which can make him seem almost unsettlingly detached in some respects.
He does, however, have a great deal of intensity and drive behind it, and even while he might be covering what he's thinking, that bleeds through more visibly. It's to a less obnoxiously creepy extent than it used to in early-canon, but it's less that he's LOST the laser focus and obsessive tendencies, and more that he's learned to play it off so that it's less... well, creepy. Give him a case, and he'll devote every bit of his energy to unravelling it while still keeping some space left over for his obsessive attention to detail; give him a target or a long-term cause, and while his approach might evolve, you have a die-hard who has all the vocabulary for “give up” and “leave it be” of a Terminator until it's solved and he feels it's resolved. His definition of resolution can vary, and may mean he'll pursue something after legal authorities have deemed it over just to get that one last question answered, or that he might wander off before they're done with it because he feels his work is done.
This leads to the funny quality that personal attacks on him, verbal or otherwise, are a craps shoot. Unless you hit a nerve, if you're not actually interfering with his work or something he's doing, he's liable to smarm back or defend himself for the sake of doing so – and then cease to care.If you interfere with his work, even if there's nothing aimed at him, he will take it personally, and will get irritated or vaguely angry with you, and you will be dealing with a snippy, politely poisonous Brit until his temper simmers down and the situation is over.
He has a very definite ego – and it's one that tends to thrive in spite of shots taken at it. He's incredibly intelligent and knows it, has been at the top of his class, has been assisting in police investigations since he was old enough to try to get involved, and has solved some things others have deemed impossible; nothing's going to deflate that anytime soon. More over, this ego has developed in a vacuum of parental attention, and with every implication that his social life has been nonexistent to lousy; this is a genius bookworm kid who bounced around different schools a lot growing up who not only hasn't taken conflict with peers as a blow to self-esteem, but has seemingly developed the mechanism of being more determined to prove it wrong and make something of himself in spite of it. He doesn't brag really, but he's capable of exuding enough smug that many people feel compelled to choke him, and particularly if someone's struck him as irritating, annoying, or slightly slow on the uptake, he can be annoyingly backhanded-condescending.
Oh, that note about his social skills? He's very polite and can even be somewhat charming in surface interaction, but his collected meaningful human contact has mostly been with his grandmother/housekeeper depending on the translation. Put him around someone else longer than introductions and small talk, and casework-related conversation, and he will eventually flounder.Said old lady is PROBABLY responsible for a lot of his behavior seeming a little lifted from the wrong part of history. Not only is he polite even when he's being obnoxious, but he's given to some old-fashioned social standards, and is chivalrous to a near fault. If someone is female or massively younger, they will get various protective gestures, doors opened for them, and him being horribly helpful, fussing over them, and being a Perfect Gentleman; in fact, it's worth noting that his grating smug competitive streak tends to vanish if he's talking to a girl. This will continue even if the girl is, say, a primary suspect in an investigation, although he does keep to some reason – he won't stop investigating a girl just because he was raised to be chivalrous, and he does recognize that “don't hit girls” and the like are a little irrelevant when the girl is, say, trying to kill you. He'll still be polite as all hell about it, though.
Oh, one of his few nerves? Seems to be jabbing at the idea that he doesn't belong somewhere, is some kind of alien intrusion, or generally playing “you are alien and do not belong”. In the Koushien arc, when he's in with a group of other young detectives for a "challenge", he doesn't start hissing at Heiji until after Heiji has his twitch about Saguru “Not being the REAL Detective of the East” and being a foreigner, and it only goes downhill when Heiji strikes him as reckless and careless with crime scenes. Also to whit – said chivalry streak, in modern times, tends to come across as him being a horrible flirt. It's possible that there are times where he IS not-entirely-consciously flirting … but given the one canon example of him seriously flirting, if he's actually interested and consciously trying, for all the chivarly and politesse he may have about it, he's about as subtle as a jackhammer.
As for the OCD jokes, while he doesn't actually have obsessive-compulsive disorder, he is a thoroughly focused Virgo. Not only is he insanely detail-prone as befits someone who's learned part of his methodology from Sherlock Holmes, but he's very neat, and will do things like track time down to the second.
Also, much like many of the other detectives in his canon: His sense of survival instinct and what to be afraid of is slightly faulty. A dangerous situation or sirens or an Obvious Trap is really just begging to be investigated, isn't it? He's a little better than some of his peers, probably owing to more high-risk field work than the others, but it tends to mean less that he WON'T go poking something dangerous, and more that he'll be more cautious and try to plan escape routes and contingencies when he pokes something dangerous.
Fears: Saguru is someone that's basically grown up with some of the worst of human nature as "normal daily business"; it makes him hard to rattle. His biggest direct fear, really, relates to what he's getting into; he knows damn well that he's poking sticks at something much larger than he is, and depending on his investigations, may already be aware that they've gotten away with wiping out an entire precinct once for getting too close. He's very aware that his survival odds, just with what he currently knows, are very likely dismal.
*- He doesn't have many people at all that he's attached to. While he's fairly inured and adapted to dealing with bad things happening to people - it's his business, after all - he does try to work to prevent it as much as possible and minimize damage, and is a little too aware of how much could happen on the rare occasions he decides he's attached to someone. (Friends is a little strong of a word for what's gone on with the few people he likes.)
*- Being helpless or unable to do anything at all. As long as he has at least bits of information to follow, he can keep momentum, but an actual wall where there's not even anything he can try to make sense of or work with would take out a lot of his mental supports.
Weaknesses: *-Obsessive Tendencies - Give him something that is a goal, and he will stubbornly and doggedly pursue it to the end, going into things that would probably unsettle other people. A good example is his near-stalking of Kaito because of realizing Kaito is actually Kid, which does occasionally stray into "possible legal grounds for a restraining order" territory. (There may also be a very confused crush in there which isn't helping.) He's also used to dealing with cases where the longer it goes on, the more damage is done, which means he tends to not have a "low" setting with investigations.
*-Raised By Wolves - he doesn't relate to normal people at all, nor does he want to, and he's used to people not really wanting him around. This means he's prone to not caring that much what people think of him, and he can be an obnoxious brat sometimes. He is protective of others and has dedicated his life to a service-related job where the entire point is to protect others, but it's a sort of distant protection; he's perfectly comfortable with the realization that most of his "human" validation in his job comes from things like checking up a few months to a year or two later to find out that the girl who was the serial killer's next target is doing fine and going to college and has probably forgotten he exists.
*-Ego/Pride - While he knows he has limits and is fallible, he doesn't really accept the word "can't", and treats it more as "I need to find a way to prove I CAN" than a sign that it's a bad idea.
*-Calculated Recklessness - He is used to a dangerous lifestyle. He takes what precautions he can and tries to plan what he's getting into, but is very used to things in the field going all FUBAR, and if anything, may've picked up a mild adrenaline junkie streak out of it, albeit one subtle and well-covered usually; among the things that get him "what the Hell is wrong with you" looks in canon, is that he will actually seem to be enjoying himself a little too much and going slightly predatory when things are going wrong.
*-Curiosity - He's cunning and clever, but he has to find out SOMEHOW if something catches his attention and has no good explanation or answer.
Mundane Strengths/Abilities: *-Saguru's ridiculously intelligent. In the manga, he does his own forensics work, and is taking college classes on the side of his high school attendance; in fact, it's basically implied that he could potentially skip straight to college, and is only attending high school to stalk Kaito/may already be taking college classes on the side. He has a record of several hundred difficult cases solved, and judging by the nature of his reputation, in recent years he's been focusing on particularly high profile and thorny cases internationally. He demonstrates an ability, given a few pieces of seemingly unrelated information, to draw connections and fill in blanks well enough to be a terror to anyone with something to hide, even if he is occasionally tripped up by an assumption somewhere. There's at least two people he's "investigating" at current where it's less that he doesn't know who they are and what they're doing, and more that he's working on gathering evidence to make an actual case and prove what he already knows.
*- He knows how to handle a pistol. There's no sign how good a shot he is, since the one time he's used his pistol was with a blank for a ruse, but he's definitely familiar and confident with it; likely not a master marksman but enough to defend himself and hit what he's aiming at.
*- He's very familiar with forensics and police procedures in multiple countries.
*- He's a repository of random information and research. His main focus is criminology, but he's figured out whether or not Kaito's glider would be a useful escape route by looking at the weather for flight conditions, and somewhere out of idolizing Sherlock Holmes he's definitely gone out of his way to learn how to identify anything that might be useful, even if it doesn't seem related - in fact, his knowledge base seems broader than his idol's.
*- His focus in his investigations does seem to be behavioral, with a distinct interest taken in figuring out motives and predicting actions, something he's been annoying with to more than just the criminals they're after. Headcanon is that his mother is a behavioral analyist/forensic psychologist, and he's been learning the trade himself. He's very aware of speech patterns, body language, and reactions, and combined with his attention to detail and knowledge base, is well capable of being utterly obnoxious with how much he can figure out about a person by watching or interacting with them for a scarily short time. This doesn't necessarily help his social skills, but it at least means he knows what he's dealing with.
*- Parkour and free-climbing. He chases Kaitou Kid, who happens to have a fondness for high places, rooftops, and leading wild goose chases. While he prefers to predict where Kaito's going to make an escape from and get there ahead of the thief, he's perfectly capable of a pursuit himself.
*- Falconry and bird training. Specific, too; he owns a hawk, Watson, who he's trained to do several things that aren't normal falconry training, including drawing attention to traces of blood, tracking and following people, and carring messages to a marked vehicle. (Watson is not going to be present in Maison; his canon point is during one of the times he didn't have the bird with him.)
*-Languages and cultural adaptation: By canon, he speaks at least English, Japanese, and French, likely a few other European languages, and he's grown up traveling internationally. He adjusts to new situations quickly, and is very used to the idea of people with very different standards and habits, with probably slightly more ease picking up new languages than someone that wasn't raised multilingual and exposed to the unfamiliar often.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: Almost nothing.
I would say nothing, except there does seem to be a resistance. Akako, the witch, usually has a charm running to attract men, one that has just about all of the boys in their school fawning over her whenever she's around, acting like love-struck idiots no matter what their normal behavior is. While he doesn't seem to be completely immune the way Kaito is, the most reaction Akako's ever gotten out of Saguru is an occasional, confused moment of teenage blinking and "oh hey she's pretty", instead of the all-consuming fixation their classmates were hit by.
In the anime, which mostly parallels, it shows up as well with an illusionist that doesn't exist i the manga - It's not enough to protect him from the illusions used by the assassin, Spider, but Spider also overcomes Akako fairly easily; Saguru snaps out of the illusions and recovers faster than anyone else after, and seems to be putting up a visible struggle against it.
There isn't a lot of supernatural things in their canon, and they haven't exactly gone into explaining it, but Saguru seems to have an actual resistance to outside interference with his mental state that goes a little above and beyond the normal/natural.
Supply List: Antique/heirloom pocketwatch, St. Christopher's medallion, revolver, four smoke grenades (knockout gas, basically), rebreather, handcuffs, wallet, smartphone, notebook, pen, small digital camera, rubber gloves, several small plastic bags, powder for fingerprint dusting - pretty much the basic easily-portable parts of a field evidence kit.
Game Transfers: N/A
Sample RP post: He stood in front of the clock for a while, glancing between it and his pocketwatch curiously.
Dark wood, hard to tell what type with the varnish; well polished, well dusted, well kept, and everything seemed to be in working order, fine craftsmanship, metal hands…
And after a while spent observing and doing mental math, it was very off; twenty four hours on the clock would be a hundred and fourty-eight hours.
Seven days to each day on the clock.
And even more curiously, from what he'd been told, the day and night cycles followed that hundred and fourty-eight hour each period.
He knelt in front of it, studying the pendulums; the front wasn't opening, locked solidly, and he didn't want to risk damaging it for the moment in an attempt to pick it in case it was something important or something that might piss something off. They looked like standard enough brass, and for all the world it seemed like it was making the normal movements of a clock of its type, simply vastly slower than they should be.
He ran fingers along the varnished sides, examining everything he could see for any signs of mechanisms, cracks, damage, or anything, but it was almost unnaturally pristine.
It was also slid flush with the wall, enough that it'd be impossible to get behind it, and solid enough on the ground that moving it didn't work, either.
He pulled over one of the ottoman from the couches, standing on it to check the top…
And that, too, was depressingly normal, pristine, and intact.
Whatever was going on with the clock, he didn't have the tools to solve that right now; he slid the ottoman back into place ,then flopped back onto the couch, sinking into it. The fabric was well-made, comfortable, the couch well built, and a little archaic; the whole place brought to mind a good century earlier, although he'd have to do a bit more looking to guess, and placing decades on antiquities was a craps shoot among the things he knew.
After a moment's rest, he pulled out his journal, noting down his findings on the clock…
Or general lack thereof, besides the exact time conversion, which was something that seemed to be common knowledge anyway.
He dozed, thinking; too many details, not enough direction, and it would take a few more things to give a direction, start telling what might have meaning and what was simply part of the tapestry; everything might point somewhere, but the number of directions that things could point here were endless from what he'd seen - different styles pushed together, rooms that defied normal reason; if he hadn't already had some inkling there was more out there thanks to Akako and Kaito's crusade for whatever-that-gem-WAS, it'd have been a near apocalyptic shake to the foundations.
As it was, it meant he was suddenly shoved from occasional folk tales, to trying to learn the rules and reason behind something completely alien.
Restlessness finally kicked in again, and the teenager rose, walking out of the parlor to the entryway; after a quick scan, he spotted the bloody handprints on the ceiling.
"Well. That's unusual."
The old reflex was to go for his evidence kit, but what lab would he even take it to? Would a sample have any meaning? If there were a lab, would it be able to tell anything about blood from a haunting?
One hand moved to the spot on his tie where, under the shirt, his St. Christopher's medallion hung, as he studied the handprints; the size and shape, what sort of person could've made them. Even if it was a haunting, it might still be a clue to what sort of ghost it was, things to maybe piece together who it'd been.
Contact info: shirhanblade (AIM), kyanve@gmail.com, kyanve (Plurk)
LJ:
shirhan_bladeCharacter: Hakuba Saguru
Canon: Detective Conan/Magic Kaito
Version: Manga. As much as the DC changes aren't much
Canon Point: A few months after the Koushien arc
Age: 18
Gender: Male
History: (Wiki is basically nonexistent for him.) Saguru is half-British, half-Japanese; his father's the head of the Tokyo police department, while his mother is British and basically never mentioned beyond that she apparently is fairly well off. (Headcanon - it's partly family wealth, but she is a very well regarded and well paid independent analyst that gets work from several law enforcement agencies.) His parents are mostly absentee; when he is seen with his father, his father is openly dismissive and insulting towards him, treating him as if he's not even there, and considering that he's apparently spent more of his life in Europe - enough to have a noticeable accent on his Japanese - it's fairly clear he doesn't get along with his father very well at all. His mother is never seen, nor is there much indication given of her keeping much track of him; instead, his usual "parental figure" is an old housekeeper/hired servant that seems to serve as both looking after him and playing backup and help on his work.
He's a brilliantly gifted kid, and ridiculously eccentric; there's not really any indication that he's ever gotten along with his peers, and in fact, outside of Baaya and some slightly old-fashioned courtesy that probably came from her, his social skills can be summed up as "raised by wolves" - although it seems to even out less as a depressive isolation issue, and more of just 'he doesn't get people and they don't get him'. He grew up on Sherlock Holmes and likely a lot of casefiles and things from the family business, and given his record and where he is now, had to've started meddling in field work at a far younger age than would be allowed; it's entirely possible that he's the reason the Tokyo homicide department adjusts so easily to having "Conan", who's only apparently eight, involved. The general likelihood is that at some point, whatever agencies his mother/father were around resigned themselves that he was going to be getting into things, that he was bright enough to be helpful, and that it was probably better to keep him where they at least had a clue where he was and what he was doing than have him sneaking off to get into trouble without anyone to get him out of it.
At some point, this shifted to him coming into his own as an investigator; at seventeen, at the beginning of Magic Kaito, he's gained enough of a track record to be requested for harder cases in more than one country, as well as an international reputation and enough attention from media for many of his classmates in Japan to know him by news stories and reputation before he transfers in.
The turning point case came in the form of one flamboyant thief "coming out of retirement" and "returning to activity" - Kaitou Kid, 1412. Kid was an odd case, the sort that belonged more in a novel than reality; relying on magician's tricks and trickery as much as standard thieving skills, Kid had started out initially as an art thief known for stealing things, then returning them a few days later, who, for no apparent reason, had shifted his focus to large or unusual jewels before disappearing entirely for ten years.
Saguru caught several things in the pattern that others missed - the recent Kid was shorter and smaller than the old records, a few variances in style, and realized that they weren't dealing with the old Kid returning, but a new Kid taking over; based on what information he had on the records of the case and the fairly small pool of possible suspects that were skilled magicians who'd died ten years ago with potential successors in his age range, he'd managed to guess the identity of the new Kaitou Kid as the son of an internationally famous magician who died in a "freak stage accident" ten years previous - he had a guess that Kid had made some kind of enemies that weren't the sorts Kid could pull his usual stunt with of setting up worse criminals to get caught, and any suspicions that Kid had made enemies of whatever he'd been tracking were confirmed when Kid started getting shot at regularly on heists by parties unknown that usually managed to elude police capture.
In a series of events that would be best described as 'it's not stalking, it's research!', he transferred into the same high school class as Kuroba Kaito, the almost certain suspect, and started up an instant rivalry with the young magician, generally being a massive creeper - and on the professional side, he insisted on joining the special Task Force the police had formed to pursue Kid. While the Task Force was initially grudging of his presence, and never entirely lost a bit of bruised professional pride, he managed to prove his worth by getting them closer than they'd ever been to Kid's coat-tails, and seems to've been accepted more than the older cops are willing to admit. Unfortunately for him, besides getting straight in the path of a number of very dangerous people, getting that closely tangled up with Kaito has meant being enmeshed in the other chaos the magician attracts, including occasional run-ins with a powerful witch, Akako, and getting drug into the path of a couple of other detective prodigies that've also set their sights on catching Kid.
He's currently settled into a pattern of chasing Kid where he can in between other cases and classwork, with occasions of crossing paths with the other, now more main-character detectives, who he has a professional rivalry with; it's most obvious with Heiji, who's only recently started operating outside of Osaka at all, although considering his attention at times the only thing that's probably saved "Conan's" secret identity from him, is that his focus hasn't really been on "where the Hell IS Kudo Shinichi anyway and what connection is this strange child?".
Personality: At heart, Hakuba is relatively good-natured, very protective of others, and driven by a strong sense of justice. While he can be slightly cynical, as would be expected of someone who's grown up exposed to the worst of human nature, he doesn't hold grudges very well, and his temper is of the long fuse, slow burn, quiet variety – he doesn't blow up very easily at all, and while he can be downright venomous when he's irked, it usually doesn't really last that long. He has a tendency to keep a strong hold of rationality on his emotions, and is prone to hiding what he's actually thinking and feeling, which can make him seem almost unsettlingly detached in some respects.
He does, however, have a great deal of intensity and drive behind it, and even while he might be covering what he's thinking, that bleeds through more visibly. It's to a less obnoxiously creepy extent than it used to in early-canon, but it's less that he's LOST the laser focus and obsessive tendencies, and more that he's learned to play it off so that it's less... well, creepy. Give him a case, and he'll devote every bit of his energy to unravelling it while still keeping some space left over for his obsessive attention to detail; give him a target or a long-term cause, and while his approach might evolve, you have a die-hard who has all the vocabulary for “give up” and “leave it be” of a Terminator until it's solved and he feels it's resolved. His definition of resolution can vary, and may mean he'll pursue something after legal authorities have deemed it over just to get that one last question answered, or that he might wander off before they're done with it because he feels his work is done.
This leads to the funny quality that personal attacks on him, verbal or otherwise, are a craps shoot. Unless you hit a nerve, if you're not actually interfering with his work or something he's doing, he's liable to smarm back or defend himself for the sake of doing so – and then cease to care.If you interfere with his work, even if there's nothing aimed at him, he will take it personally, and will get irritated or vaguely angry with you, and you will be dealing with a snippy, politely poisonous Brit until his temper simmers down and the situation is over.
He has a very definite ego – and it's one that tends to thrive in spite of shots taken at it. He's incredibly intelligent and knows it, has been at the top of his class, has been assisting in police investigations since he was old enough to try to get involved, and has solved some things others have deemed impossible; nothing's going to deflate that anytime soon. More over, this ego has developed in a vacuum of parental attention, and with every implication that his social life has been nonexistent to lousy; this is a genius bookworm kid who bounced around different schools a lot growing up who not only hasn't taken conflict with peers as a blow to self-esteem, but has seemingly developed the mechanism of being more determined to prove it wrong and make something of himself in spite of it. He doesn't brag really, but he's capable of exuding enough smug that many people feel compelled to choke him, and particularly if someone's struck him as irritating, annoying, or slightly slow on the uptake, he can be annoyingly backhanded-condescending.
Oh, that note about his social skills? He's very polite and can even be somewhat charming in surface interaction, but his collected meaningful human contact has mostly been with his grandmother/housekeeper depending on the translation. Put him around someone else longer than introductions and small talk, and casework-related conversation, and he will eventually flounder.Said old lady is PROBABLY responsible for a lot of his behavior seeming a little lifted from the wrong part of history. Not only is he polite even when he's being obnoxious, but he's given to some old-fashioned social standards, and is chivalrous to a near fault. If someone is female or massively younger, they will get various protective gestures, doors opened for them, and him being horribly helpful, fussing over them, and being a Perfect Gentleman; in fact, it's worth noting that his grating smug competitive streak tends to vanish if he's talking to a girl. This will continue even if the girl is, say, a primary suspect in an investigation, although he does keep to some reason – he won't stop investigating a girl just because he was raised to be chivalrous, and he does recognize that “don't hit girls” and the like are a little irrelevant when the girl is, say, trying to kill you. He'll still be polite as all hell about it, though.
Oh, one of his few nerves? Seems to be jabbing at the idea that he doesn't belong somewhere, is some kind of alien intrusion, or generally playing “you are alien and do not belong”. In the Koushien arc, when he's in with a group of other young detectives for a "challenge", he doesn't start hissing at Heiji until after Heiji has his twitch about Saguru “Not being the REAL Detective of the East” and being a foreigner, and it only goes downhill when Heiji strikes him as reckless and careless with crime scenes. Also to whit – said chivalry streak, in modern times, tends to come across as him being a horrible flirt. It's possible that there are times where he IS not-entirely-consciously flirting … but given the one canon example of him seriously flirting, if he's actually interested and consciously trying, for all the chivarly and politesse he may have about it, he's about as subtle as a jackhammer.
As for the OCD jokes, while he doesn't actually have obsessive-compulsive disorder, he is a thoroughly focused Virgo. Not only is he insanely detail-prone as befits someone who's learned part of his methodology from Sherlock Holmes, but he's very neat, and will do things like track time down to the second.
Also, much like many of the other detectives in his canon: His sense of survival instinct and what to be afraid of is slightly faulty. A dangerous situation or sirens or an Obvious Trap is really just begging to be investigated, isn't it? He's a little better than some of his peers, probably owing to more high-risk field work than the others, but it tends to mean less that he WON'T go poking something dangerous, and more that he'll be more cautious and try to plan escape routes and contingencies when he pokes something dangerous.
Fears: Saguru is someone that's basically grown up with some of the worst of human nature as "normal daily business"; it makes him hard to rattle. His biggest direct fear, really, relates to what he's getting into; he knows damn well that he's poking sticks at something much larger than he is, and depending on his investigations, may already be aware that they've gotten away with wiping out an entire precinct once for getting too close. He's very aware that his survival odds, just with what he currently knows, are very likely dismal.
*- He doesn't have many people at all that he's attached to. While he's fairly inured and adapted to dealing with bad things happening to people - it's his business, after all - he does try to work to prevent it as much as possible and minimize damage, and is a little too aware of how much could happen on the rare occasions he decides he's attached to someone. (Friends is a little strong of a word for what's gone on with the few people he likes.)
*- Being helpless or unable to do anything at all. As long as he has at least bits of information to follow, he can keep momentum, but an actual wall where there's not even anything he can try to make sense of or work with would take out a lot of his mental supports.
Weaknesses: *-Obsessive Tendencies - Give him something that is a goal, and he will stubbornly and doggedly pursue it to the end, going into things that would probably unsettle other people. A good example is his near-stalking of Kaito because of realizing Kaito is actually Kid, which does occasionally stray into "possible legal grounds for a restraining order" territory. (There may also be a very confused crush in there which isn't helping.) He's also used to dealing with cases where the longer it goes on, the more damage is done, which means he tends to not have a "low" setting with investigations.
*-Raised By Wolves - he doesn't relate to normal people at all, nor does he want to, and he's used to people not really wanting him around. This means he's prone to not caring that much what people think of him, and he can be an obnoxious brat sometimes. He is protective of others and has dedicated his life to a service-related job where the entire point is to protect others, but it's a sort of distant protection; he's perfectly comfortable with the realization that most of his "human" validation in his job comes from things like checking up a few months to a year or two later to find out that the girl who was the serial killer's next target is doing fine and going to college and has probably forgotten he exists.
*-Ego/Pride - While he knows he has limits and is fallible, he doesn't really accept the word "can't", and treats it more as "I need to find a way to prove I CAN" than a sign that it's a bad idea.
*-Calculated Recklessness - He is used to a dangerous lifestyle. He takes what precautions he can and tries to plan what he's getting into, but is very used to things in the field going all FUBAR, and if anything, may've picked up a mild adrenaline junkie streak out of it, albeit one subtle and well-covered usually; among the things that get him "what the Hell is wrong with you" looks in canon, is that he will actually seem to be enjoying himself a little too much and going slightly predatory when things are going wrong.
*-Curiosity - He's cunning and clever, but he has to find out SOMEHOW if something catches his attention and has no good explanation or answer.
Mundane Strengths/Abilities: *-Saguru's ridiculously intelligent. In the manga, he does his own forensics work, and is taking college classes on the side of his high school attendance; in fact, it's basically implied that he could potentially skip straight to college, and is only attending high school to stalk Kaito/may already be taking college classes on the side. He has a record of several hundred difficult cases solved, and judging by the nature of his reputation, in recent years he's been focusing on particularly high profile and thorny cases internationally. He demonstrates an ability, given a few pieces of seemingly unrelated information, to draw connections and fill in blanks well enough to be a terror to anyone with something to hide, even if he is occasionally tripped up by an assumption somewhere. There's at least two people he's "investigating" at current where it's less that he doesn't know who they are and what they're doing, and more that he's working on gathering evidence to make an actual case and prove what he already knows.
*- He knows how to handle a pistol. There's no sign how good a shot he is, since the one time he's used his pistol was with a blank for a ruse, but he's definitely familiar and confident with it; likely not a master marksman but enough to defend himself and hit what he's aiming at.
*- He's very familiar with forensics and police procedures in multiple countries.
*- He's a repository of random information and research. His main focus is criminology, but he's figured out whether or not Kaito's glider would be a useful escape route by looking at the weather for flight conditions, and somewhere out of idolizing Sherlock Holmes he's definitely gone out of his way to learn how to identify anything that might be useful, even if it doesn't seem related - in fact, his knowledge base seems broader than his idol's.
*- His focus in his investigations does seem to be behavioral, with a distinct interest taken in figuring out motives and predicting actions, something he's been annoying with to more than just the criminals they're after. Headcanon is that his mother is a behavioral analyist/forensic psychologist, and he's been learning the trade himself. He's very aware of speech patterns, body language, and reactions, and combined with his attention to detail and knowledge base, is well capable of being utterly obnoxious with how much he can figure out about a person by watching or interacting with them for a scarily short time. This doesn't necessarily help his social skills, but it at least means he knows what he's dealing with.
*- Parkour and free-climbing. He chases Kaitou Kid, who happens to have a fondness for high places, rooftops, and leading wild goose chases. While he prefers to predict where Kaito's going to make an escape from and get there ahead of the thief, he's perfectly capable of a pursuit himself.
*- Falconry and bird training. Specific, too; he owns a hawk, Watson, who he's trained to do several things that aren't normal falconry training, including drawing attention to traces of blood, tracking and following people, and carring messages to a marked vehicle. (Watson is not going to be present in Maison; his canon point is during one of the times he didn't have the bird with him.)
*-Languages and cultural adaptation: By canon, he speaks at least English, Japanese, and French, likely a few other European languages, and he's grown up traveling internationally. He adjusts to new situations quickly, and is very used to the idea of people with very different standards and habits, with probably slightly more ease picking up new languages than someone that wasn't raised multilingual and exposed to the unfamiliar often.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: Almost nothing.
I would say nothing, except there does seem to be a resistance. Akako, the witch, usually has a charm running to attract men, one that has just about all of the boys in their school fawning over her whenever she's around, acting like love-struck idiots no matter what their normal behavior is. While he doesn't seem to be completely immune the way Kaito is, the most reaction Akako's ever gotten out of Saguru is an occasional, confused moment of teenage blinking and "oh hey she's pretty", instead of the all-consuming fixation their classmates were hit by.
In the anime, which mostly parallels, it shows up as well with an illusionist that doesn't exist i the manga - It's not enough to protect him from the illusions used by the assassin, Spider, but Spider also overcomes Akako fairly easily; Saguru snaps out of the illusions and recovers faster than anyone else after, and seems to be putting up a visible struggle against it.
There isn't a lot of supernatural things in their canon, and they haven't exactly gone into explaining it, but Saguru seems to have an actual resistance to outside interference with his mental state that goes a little above and beyond the normal/natural.
Supply List: Antique/heirloom pocketwatch, St. Christopher's medallion, revolver, four smoke grenades (knockout gas, basically), rebreather, handcuffs, wallet, smartphone, notebook, pen, small digital camera, rubber gloves, several small plastic bags, powder for fingerprint dusting - pretty much the basic easily-portable parts of a field evidence kit.
Game Transfers: N/A
Sample RP post: He stood in front of the clock for a while, glancing between it and his pocketwatch curiously.
Dark wood, hard to tell what type with the varnish; well polished, well dusted, well kept, and everything seemed to be in working order, fine craftsmanship, metal hands…
And after a while spent observing and doing mental math, it was very off; twenty four hours on the clock would be a hundred and fourty-eight hours.
Seven days to each day on the clock.
And even more curiously, from what he'd been told, the day and night cycles followed that hundred and fourty-eight hour each period.
He knelt in front of it, studying the pendulums; the front wasn't opening, locked solidly, and he didn't want to risk damaging it for the moment in an attempt to pick it in case it was something important or something that might piss something off. They looked like standard enough brass, and for all the world it seemed like it was making the normal movements of a clock of its type, simply vastly slower than they should be.
He ran fingers along the varnished sides, examining everything he could see for any signs of mechanisms, cracks, damage, or anything, but it was almost unnaturally pristine.
It was also slid flush with the wall, enough that it'd be impossible to get behind it, and solid enough on the ground that moving it didn't work, either.
He pulled over one of the ottoman from the couches, standing on it to check the top…
And that, too, was depressingly normal, pristine, and intact.
Whatever was going on with the clock, he didn't have the tools to solve that right now; he slid the ottoman back into place ,then flopped back onto the couch, sinking into it. The fabric was well-made, comfortable, the couch well built, and a little archaic; the whole place brought to mind a good century earlier, although he'd have to do a bit more looking to guess, and placing decades on antiquities was a craps shoot among the things he knew.
After a moment's rest, he pulled out his journal, noting down his findings on the clock…
Or general lack thereof, besides the exact time conversion, which was something that seemed to be common knowledge anyway.
He dozed, thinking; too many details, not enough direction, and it would take a few more things to give a direction, start telling what might have meaning and what was simply part of the tapestry; everything might point somewhere, but the number of directions that things could point here were endless from what he'd seen - different styles pushed together, rooms that defied normal reason; if he hadn't already had some inkling there was more out there thanks to Akako and Kaito's crusade for whatever-that-gem-WAS, it'd have been a near apocalyptic shake to the foundations.
As it was, it meant he was suddenly shoved from occasional folk tales, to trying to learn the rules and reason behind something completely alien.
Restlessness finally kicked in again, and the teenager rose, walking out of the parlor to the entryway; after a quick scan, he spotted the bloody handprints on the ceiling.
"Well. That's unusual."
The old reflex was to go for his evidence kit, but what lab would he even take it to? Would a sample have any meaning? If there were a lab, would it be able to tell anything about blood from a haunting?
One hand moved to the spot on his tie where, under the shirt, his St. Christopher's medallion hung, as he studied the handprints; the size and shape, what sort of person could've made them. Even if it was a haunting, it might still be a clue to what sort of ghost it was, things to maybe piece together who it'd been.
