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Player's Name: Plague
Contact info: Aim: CorsecGreenXWing, Plurk: Jaetopus, email: candykatt@gmail.com
DW: personal: corellianrogue, character: kaerunoko
Character: Yamamoto Takeshi
Canon: Katekyo Hitman REBORN!
Version: Yamamoto is pure manga as I have not seen the anime.
Canon Point: Immediately after returning to the present after the TYL arc, roughly chapter 282
Age: 14
Gender: male
History: Yamamoto Takeshi is, until he meets Tsuna, your typical Japanese middle schooler. His mother died when he was much younger, but his father owns TakeSushi, a sushi restaurant where he is also the main chef. Yamamoto often helps out around the shop and likes to invite his friends over for sushi whenever possible. His cheerful personality and outlook on life, as well as certain skills he develops later, are all from his father.
At school, he’s known as a baseball star, the only first year to be a starter on the school’s baseball team. When he first meets Tsuna properly, he asks for advice because “No Good Tsuna” has been turning his life around and Yamamoto has seen his baseball skills falling despite all his hard work. Tsuna tells him that the only option is to work even harder, and Yamamoto thanks him, but at practice that night, ends up breaking his arm because of the advice. Thinking his baseball career is over and that the sport is the only thing he’s truly good for, he attempts to kill himself by throwing himself from the school of the roof. Tsuna saves him, and the two become good friends after that. Reborn considers this Tsuna acquiring his second Family member for the Vongola, and with Tsuna’s encouragement and friendship, before long, Yamamoto is back with the baseball team.
Despite all early evidence to the contrary (all the guns, explosions, and fights that Tsuna and Reborn seem to attract), Yamamoto continually refers to it all as a ‘mafia game’ and treats Reborn as if he is actually a small child just playing. Somehow, in spite of this, he manages to show himself on numerous occasions to be both a competent and even accomplished fighter. When they believe Tsuna to have been kidnapped by a Yakuza gang, Gokudera and Yamamoto run off to fight them and end up helping to completely destroy the gang, despite being first year middle schoolers still. Throughout the rest of their first year and into their second, similar incidents continue to highlight how powerful the tenth generation Vongola are turning out to be despite all appearances to the contrary. The friends also grow closer, forming a more cohesive Vongola family and learning to trust each other and their respective skills.
Finally, in the fall of their second year in middle school, Tsuna and his friends face their greatest challenge yet when the elite assassin team of the Vongola, the Varia, challenge Tsuna’s claim as the heir of the Vongola 9th in the Vongola Ring Battles. The prize are the Vongola Rings, which mark the boss and his Guardians. At first, they are grossly outmatched, with Gokudera and Yamamoto being easily defeated by Squalo of the Varia. With only ten days to train and prepare, they needed to do a lot of work in not much time. Yamamoto went to his father for training in kendo. He soon found, though, that his father was actually a master swordsman himself. On the day of Yamamoto’s battle for the Vongola Ring of Rain, his father presented him with the Shigure Kintoki, a shinai forged out of steel instead of bamboo that could become a real katana only when used with the special Shigure Souen sword style that Yamamoto had learned from his father. The first four of seven battles leave them down three wins to one when Yamamoto faces Squalo. Reborn remarks that only an idiot or a natural assassin would go into a life-or-death match with so little training as confidently as Yamamoto had. Although he’s done well to master the eight Shigure Souen forms before the fight, it turns out that Squalo also knows the forms and how to counter them, as he had defeated another Shigure Souen user some years prior. Although badly injured and nearly defeated, Yamamoto manages to invent a new, ninth form in the heat of battle to defeat Squalo and win the Ring of Rain. In the end, Yamamoto, Tsuna, and the others manage to win the Vongola Ring Battles and become assured of their place in the Vongola succession, whether Tsuna wants the position or not.
Just a few days later, Gokudera and Tsuna find themselves mysteriously sent ten years into the future with no way to get back when the 10-Year Bazooka, which previously had a time limit of only five minutes, malfunctions. The future they find themselves in is filled with danger as the Vongola are under attack, Tsuna has been killed, and the main Italian headquarters as well as many of their allies have fallen to their enemies the Millefiore family. They meet the version of Yamamoto from ten years in the future when he saves them from a strong enemy. He’s still just as calm and cheerful as the present version, right down to using sports metaphors whenever possible. In the middle of a tense battle, however, the future Yamamoto is also switched with his present self, leaving the younger Vongolas to figure out how to win in the future largely by themselves.
In this future, the Vongola Rings are suddenly even more important. They enable the wearer to use the energy within their body to fight. This energy can come in seven attributes, matching the seven Vongola Rings. Lal Mirch, a new ally in this future, begins to teach them how to use the power of the Rings, and Yamamoto and Gokudera manage to ignite theirs almost instantly, showing the strength of their resolution to fight. Within days, they’re already having to put that strength to the test when they’re sent to try to find the future Hibari and end up running into a squad of the Millefiore’s Black Spell. Unfortunately, although the fight goes well at first, they’re eventually confronted by Gamma, a captain for the Millefiore. Yamamoto attempts to convince Gokudera to team up, quickly seeing that alone they would be outclassed by this opponent, but Gokudera refuses. At first, Yamamoto lets him, backing away from the fight, but seeing Gokudera being beaten badly by Gamma, he finally intervenes, showing one of the rare breaks in his pleasant character as he yells at Gokudera for never trusting any of them but Tsuna and not being worthy to call himself the right-hand man. For just a minute during the lecture, he openly admits that he knows exactly what’s going on and what the ‘mafia game’ is all about. Then he turns his back on Gokudera and announces himself as Gamma’s next opponent. While this soon gets Gokudera to fight with him instead of alone, none of it is enough to let them win. Their overconfidence ends with them being tortured and nearly killed by Gamma before the future Hibari intervenes.
Ten days later, when the two have begun to recover from their wounds, they begin training again. Reborn takes Yamamoto on personally, promising to tell Yamamoto his real history if he does well in training. As the three train and prepare, they are interrupted a few days later by the arrival of the future Ryohei bringing news that the Vongola would be gathering to attack the Millefiore base in just five days time. They would all have to be ready by then. But the night before they can execute their attack, the Millefiore discover their secret base and surprise attack them first. With no time to lose, those who were going to attack the Millefiore base escape and launch their own attack in the middle of the night while Hibari holds off the entire Millefiore force. It goes surprisingly better than would have been expected from three half-trained teenagers and two adults. At least, it did at first. They soon became separated, each facing their own enemies as they fought to complete the attack and escape in one piece. When the base reveals its ability to shift the location of individual rooms, Yamamoto and an unconscious Lal Mirch are separated from Gokudera and Ryohei, Tsuna having gone earlier to draw off the enemy.
Yamamoto eventually runs into yet another swordmaster much like his fight with Squalo in the Vongola Ring Battles. Genkishi, who claims to be the greatest swordsman of the time, says he will even the odds by fighting with only his bare hands instead of a weapon. Yamamoto confidently says that he will force Genkishi to draw his sword instead of looking down on him by fighting without a weapon. Within the first few moves of the fight, Genkishi does, indeed, draw his sword, in the process acknowledging Yamamoto as a true opponent. But soon after, Yamamoto’s sword, the Shigure Kintoki which he had received from his father, is nearly destroyed by a powerful attack from Genkishi. Or so it seemed. Yamamoto quickly realized that it had actually been an illusion cast by Genkishi and that the sword was actually completely undamaged. Of course, he then promptly falls for another of Genkishi’s illusions, knocking himself out against a hidden steel wall. In the end, his skills prove not to be quite good enough and he only survives through Hibari’s timely intervention.
Finally, they’re all captured and held captive by the man in charge of the base, Irie Shouichi. Just as they’re about to be killed, though, Irie reveals that he is actually on their side and has been working secretly to help them. Although they receive news that the Vongola and their allies are winning the most recent series of battles, they’re soon contacted by the head of the Millefiore, Byakuran, who shows them that he expected every move they’d made, and warns them that they won’t win against him next time. He invites them to play the game he’d invented, called Choice, against his own Guardians, the Real Six Funeral Wreaths. Once again, they have only ten days to prepare before the game will begin. Squalo of the Varia shows up in person this time to continue to train Yamamoto, angry that he’d let himself lose once already.
The game of Choice is as much a game of chance and luck as a battle. The battle location as well as the participants are chosen randomly and the object is to defeat an equally randomly chosen target person from each team. It pits Tsuna, Gokudera, and Yamamoto, as well as two Vongola noncombatants against three of the six Funeral Wreaths and one of their subordinates. The three split up to separate the enemies. Yamamoto ends up fighting one of the subordinates of the Mist Funeral Wreath. In the course of the battle, he reveals himself to be Genkishi, who had pretended to be a subordinate in order to fight Yamamoto again and defeat him. Instead of cowering as Genkishi expected, however, Yamamoto says he’s glad they could finally have their rematch as he shows the strength of his newest skill, opening his Vongola Box Weapon to reveal Jirou and Kojirou, his two box animals. Kojirou, the rain swallow, flies away to cover the battlefield in Rain flames to give Yamamoto the advantage over his Mist-using opponent, while Jirou, the rain akita, carries the three flame swords that Yamamoto uses together with his Shigure Kintoki for a four-sword style to rival the one Genkishi defeated him with. Finally, Kojirou returns to merge with the Shigure Kintoki to form a fourth Rain flame sword.
Together, these new skills allow Yamamoto to easily defeat Genkishi, although Genkishi questions him when he fails to follow through with a killing blow. “We’re not killers,” Yamamoto tells him, which sums up the view of most of the 10th generation Vongola perfectly. Although they’ll do what they must to protect those they care about, they aren’t killers like the ‘real’ mafia members such as the Varia. Unfortunately for Genkishi, the Funeral Wreaths have no such problem, and he’s soon killed off by one of his own for being ‘useless.’ Yamamoto and Tsuna then turn their attention to winning the deadly game by defeating the enemy’s target before their own can be found. Tsuna is quickly sidetracked by another enemy, leaving Yamamoto to deal with Daisy, the target and one of the Funeral Wreaths, on his own. Although he kills Daisy, the Funeral Wreath is effectively immortal and he comes back to life, while the Vongola’s own target is defeated. The Vongola lose the first round of Choice, but even being near death, Irie Shouichi, who had been the Vongola’s target, insists on telling them all exactly what they are up against. Namely, that Byakuran can see across all possible futures, and the one they’re currently in is the only one in which there is a chance to defeat him. In fact, the entire situation with all of them having been brought to the future at the same time was orchestrated by the future Tsuna with help from Irie himself.
The confession is too late, though. As they have lost, Byakuran arrives to claim the Vongola Rings for his own as well as their lives. But just at the last moment, the other head of the Millefiore, a young girl named Uni, arrives to save them by throwing her support behind the Vongola. They barely escape together, returning to the underground base in Namimori, but even there they aren’t safe as the Storm Funeral Wreath, Zakuro, quickly finds them and attacks. They flee with Uni back into Namimori, leaving Squalo behind to fight Zakuro. Once they’ve managed to escape and find a play to hide, Yamamoto says he’s going to go back and look for Squalo.
While he’s gone, the rest of the Vongola, together with the Black Spell from the Giglio Nero family which Uni formerly commanded, join forces in a climactic battle with Byakuran and his Funeral Wreaths. Two of the six were defeated, but the rest showed to be much more powerful. Finally, Byakuran’s trump card, the final Funeral Wreath, Ghost, enters the battlefield. He is the Byakuran from a parallel world that the Byakuran in this world managed to bring here by destroying the world he came from. He absorbs all flames and box weapons, leaving both the Vongola and his own allies helpless to save themselves from him. Yamamoto arrives just in time to stop Gokudera and Ryohei from being sucked dry themselves, but it only leads to his own flames being stolen. With his Guardians and allies in serious trouble, Tsuna manages to defeat Ghost, only for the real Byakuran to appear. He had been using Ghost as a conduit to drain and take all of their flame energy for himself. Even Tsuna’s strongest attack is no match for Byakuran, and soon the scene is set for the final battle, with only Byakuran, Uni, and Tsuna trapped inside an impenetrable barrier. Suddenly, the Arcobaleno Pacifiers, the third of a trinity of powerful objects together with the Mare Rings controlled by Byakuran and the Vongola Rings, escape from Uni on their own and begin to regenerate. The Arcobaleno of the future had all been killed by Byakuran, but with Uni’s protection, they are now nearly able to return to their regular forms. Their return looks to be taking too long, though, as Byakuran attacks Tsuna, seeming to defeat him entirely.
But Tsuna’s strong resolve to protect everyone, past and future, calls an unexpected power out of the Vongola Rings. From each one comes an image of the original bearers, the First Generation Vongola Boss and his Guardians. Tsuna, through his will to protect everyone he can, has been deemed worthy of the true power of the Vongola Rings, and Giotto, the Vongola Primo, releases them from the shackles that had been holding them to less than half of their true strength. Now, with this newly unveiled strength, Tsuna is able to stand against Byakuran. Also with the new power of the Guardians’ Rings, the box animals are able to combine their powers to begin breaking through the barrier that Byakuran had erected to isolate the final battlefield. Gamma is able to slip through the break and with his help, Uni finishes awakening the Arcobaleno Pacifiers, but both of them vanish immediately after. Tsuna’s anger over Uni’s loss drives him to fight even harder against Byakuran, giving him the final edge he needs to destroy Byakuran for good and save the past and the future.
With the threat to both times defeated, the tenth generation Vongola are finally able to return to the past. With the help of the restored Arcobaleno, they are also able to take their Vongola Box Weapons into the past with them, although in smaller, ring forms made in the shape of the animals they contain. They’re returned very nearly to the time they left, and life goes back to as normal as it gets for them. At least for a little while.
Personality: Yamamoto is the very definition of laid back, at least outwardly. He very rarely seems to let things get to him, often being the voice of reason or the one holding his friends back from starting a fight they can’t win (or shouldn’t win, when it comes to Gokudera and kid-Lambo). The few times he’s pressed past what he can handle, such as when he believes he’ll no longer be able to do the one thing he thinks he’s good at because of his broken arm, it becomes obvious that something under the surface isn’t dealing with things as calmly as he’d like everyone to think. But being the sort of person who would rather deal with all his problems himself than have anyone worry about him (or just not deal with his problems at all until they explode if he can manage it), he rarely lets that show, preferring to keep a cheerful smile and a kind word ready at all times.
In order to manage this, Yamamoto tends to build himself a version of reality that ignores what’s actually happening and replaces it with a cheerful alternative. He tends to come across as stupid or oblivious because of his unrealistic reactions (such as believing everything is a ‘mafia game’) but if anything, he’s just as observant if not more so than his friends. Everybody lies to themselves in some way, but Yamamoto just helpfully puts all his lies right out where everybody can see them. If those lies tend to be a bit more spectacular than most, so much the better. Not to say that he actually believes most or any of what he’s coming up with, but it serves as a framework for him to build on. He’ll stick to that framework no matter what unless pushed completely outside of his comfort zone. Even after being sent ten years into the future and nearly killed, he continues to call it all a ‘mafia role play game’ despite breaking character, so to speak, to yell at Gokudera during the fight with Gamma.
Once you get past the surface and the cheerful, not-quite-there image, you can start to see exactly what makes Yamamoto the sort of person that Reborn would call a ‘natural-born assassin.’ While he’s not exactly known for his book-smarts (although that’s as much by choice as anything, judging by the fact that when he actually tries, he’s just as quick to solve their math homework as Gokudera is) he’s more than capable of learning quickly and well when the need arises. He learned an entire school of swordsmanship in less than a week, and learned it well enough to improvise a new form for it in the heat of a battle when he was in danger of losing badly. He watched Squalo’s 100 most important sword battles in 3 days, and at the end of those three days, he’d assimilated much of Squalo’s style into his own. He’s also quick to assess any given situation and improvise as needed to reach what he sees as the best solution. In battle, his intuition seems to almost rival Tsuna’s on occasion. On the negative side of that, though, because he often relies on snap judgments and goes with what seems the best idea at the time, he doesn’t always take everything into account, leading him to overestimate his own and his companion’s abilities or underestimate the enemy.
The driving force behind 90% of what Yamamoto does is his determination. Whatever he does, once he sets his mind to it, he will give every possible effort and then some to succeed. The first time he’s told how to use the flame attribute of the Vongola Rings, it takes him only a few seconds to ignite the flame because the Dying Will Flames that the rings harness are an expression of the bearer’s determination to win. He breaks his arm while determined to practice harder and do better at baseball during a slump in his first year of middle school. He pushes himself to be better than anyone could possibly expect from him for no other reason than that he expects it of him.
Fears: The biggest is being afraid of not being good at anything or not being good enough. He tends to define himself by what he can do better than anyone else. At the beginning, it’s baseball, and thinking he’s lost that ability when he breaks his arm nearly drives him to throw himself off a building. He even says it was the only thing he was good at. Eventually, this becomes not being good enough to protect his friends and family. While he’ll laugh off the idea if asked, the amount of time he spends keeping track of his friends and training to be better at protecting them says it’s definitely his top priority.
Connected to this, he’s also afraid of losing those people that he really cares about. Despite having a very large list of people that he’s friendly to or would consider friends, there’s a core group that he would do just about anything to protect. His father, Tsuna, and Tsuna’s Guardians, as well as their close friends, are all on that list. He would do more to protect them than he’d ever do to protect himself, and sometimes that scares him just a bit, too. He’d much rather incapacitate an enemy than kill them, but if there’s no other way to protect his important people, he won’t hesitate. He’ll just remember it later.
Weaknesses: Possibly because of the way he filters his view of the world, Yamamoto tends to underestimate his enemies (or possibly overestimate himself). The first time, at least. He rarely does it twice, but sometimes that once is bad enough. He also tends to trust people that maybe he shouldn’t, likely for the same reason.
He’s also supremely competitive. Even if it’s not something he especially cares about or really even knows whether he wants it or not, if it’s framed in the context of a prize for a competition, he will do his best to win, no matter whether that ‘win’ is from a fight, a contest, or whatever else. This occasionally includes going along with very bad ideas because he thinks he can beat whatever game is rigged to make him lose. Granted, most of the time he CAN, but it’s still not a good thing to just jump into without thinking.
He holds himself to a higher standard, as well, connected to both of the above weaknesses and his fear of not being good enough. When he can’t meet that higher standard, it hits him harder than perhaps it should. The idea of not being able to save someone, even an enemy, when he thinks he should have been able to, or not being able to do something that he thinks he should have been able to, can leave him dwelling on things and careless in other ways. Or trying to jump off a building because he can’t play baseball.
Mundane Strengths/Abilities: He’s a great baseball player! If the House ever forms a league, he’ll be the first to sign up. He also keeps himself in peak athletic condition (for a teenager, at least) so he’s relatively strong/fast/etc although all within normal human and teenage limits.
More usefully, he is becoming a master swordsman. He’s still learning, but he learns very quickly and takes great pride in always bettering his abilities. He learned the Shigure Souen style from his father and has additional training from Squalo as well as adding his own forms. He’s also a dead-on shot with anything thrown, such as a ball or a rock or anything else of a similar size. Since he’s referred to as ‘a born hitman’ in the manga, he’s honestly going to manage pretty well with most weapons, given a bit of time to learn them.
He’s a very quick learner, as shown by the fact that he can pick up new sword styles and strategies almost on the fly, as well as how quickly he learns to use the Rain Attribute flames despite never having seen anything like them before. He even learns to ride a racing motorcycle at an advanced level within minutes of first getting on one.
Connected to that, he’s also a pretty good strategist in a pinch, able to quickly see the various lines of attack and pick what he thinks is the best one. It helps that so many people underestimate him, but he’s just become so accomplished at lying and seeming ‘stupid’ that it’s easy for him to take advantage of that and form a plan around the element of surprise, such as pretending to trip and turning that into an attack. (Whether that attack works or not, though, is usually more a reflection of his ‘underestimating the enemy’ weakness. He is, after all, still 14.)
He also makes really good sushi.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: Yamamoto is not going to be very sensitive. Maybe the low side of medium. While he does have certain powers, they’re all very much from inside himself, not something that would be sensitive to outside powers or beings unless he was specifically trying to use his Rain flames to search for them.
The core of all of his abilities is based in his ability to use Rain flames, which are fueled by his determination and belief in himself. With those flames, he’s able to either enhance his own attacks or open his box weapons. Rain flames have the Tranquility attribute, which means they can calm or stop the other types of flames or cause a person to fall asleep or lose consciousness. He can use his flames to find hidden or invisible but physical objects and people such as box weapon animals by creating a flame and paying attention to the way the waves from it change as they enter his surroundings.
His flames can be used to open the Box Weapon that contains his two Box Animals, Jirou and Kojirou. Both are made of Rain flames and will remain active only as long as Yamamoto can keep his flames active. Jirou is an akita and Kojirou is a swallow. Kojirou is useful for scouting and distracting the enemy as well as spreading Rain flames over the battlefield to give Yamamoto an advantage. He also can combine with the Shigure Kintoki to form a new, more powerful blade in the Vongola Rain Box’s Cambio Forma. Jirou, on the other hand, while he’s capable of joining in the fight on his own, is most useful because he carries Yamamoto’s three short-bladed swords. These swords are made of pure Rain flames and Yamamoto can either use them to fight or to propel himself by expelling flames from them very quickly to effectively make small jet engines out of them, allowing him to either move extra quickly or even to attain flight for short periods of time.
Supply List:
*Clothes: most of a school uniform but with a very non-regulation jacket
*A student’s school bag with a couple baseballs, a change of gym clothes, and some other school odds-and-ends like books, pens, etc
*A chain necklace holding the Vongola Ring of Rain and the compact Vongola Rain Box Weapon (ring form) containing Jirou and Kojirou
*Shigure Kintoki in its carry bag- it’s a steel shinai (a kendo practice sword usually made out of bamboo) that becomes a regular katana whenever used with the Shigure Shouen style (which is any time Yamamoto fights using a sword)
Both rings and probably Shigure Kintoki would all be considered ‘magical’ in some way.
Sample RP post: Longest day ever. Getting back to a full day of school followed by practice and now waiting for Gokudera to get done blowing up whatever he was blowing up so they could walk home together. After the non-stop training of the weeks they’d spent in the future, being back in middle school should have been easy, but the lack of excitement made the day drag on forever.
Yamamoto stretched his arms over his head, shrugging the school bag higher on his shoulder and locking his fingers behind his head. He laughed quietly to himself, just a bit, at that absurd train of thoughts. Not that he would exactly admit it, but he missed the constant action. He’d kept the training regime here as well as he could around studying and everything else, but it wasn’t easy. Squalo maybe hadn’t been entirely wrong about there not being enough time for baseball and the sword, but so far he was managing.
By the time he found himself bouncing a bit from his heels to the balls of his feet and back, it occurred to him to wonder if today had been another ‘Avoid Yamamoto Game’ day. Gokudera had them every now and then, but it was usually pretty obvious when they were going to happen anymore. Or, they had been before their vacation. Maybe he’d missed the signs for this one, or maybe Gokudera was just looking to make them more challenging, like practice for the Mafia roleplay game Tsuna and the kid had started ages ago.
Another minute passed with no Gokudera and Yamamoto gave up on waiting. Game or no, he could only bother standing around so long. Instead, he set off to find Gokudera on his own. It was always more fun to surprise him, anyway.
Except this time he made it all the way to Gokudera’s apartment with not a sign of Gokudera. He frowned vaguely at the door, but when he tried it, it was unlocked. Obviously, Gokudera was just here waiting for him. He laughed loudly at himself for being worried and not playing the game properly as he went inside. “Hey, Gokudera! You actually managed to beat me today. Good... job...”
Gokudera must have seriously redecorated his apartment. It was dark, for one, and the lightswitch wasn’t at all where he remembered it being. It looked way bigger than it had been. Chains and... things... swung from the ceiling, and...
Was that blood on the walls?
He laughed again, walking closer to poke at a puddle of the fake blood. “Wow, isn’t it a little early for a haunted house? It’s still months to Obon, you know?”
He turned back to open the door and let a little more light in, but the door seemed to be gone. That was a bit much even for a haunted house, wasn’t it? Shigure Kintoki was in his hand before he stopped to think. “Gokudera?”
The sound of footsteps made him snap to attention, sword low at his side. The sigh that followed was completely familiar, though.
“Great. Another idiot. Just what this place needs.”
All he could do was laugh.
Contact info: Aim: CorsecGreenXWing, Plurk: Jaetopus, email: candykatt@gmail.com
DW: personal: corellianrogue, character: kaerunoko
Character: Yamamoto Takeshi
Canon: Katekyo Hitman REBORN!
Version: Yamamoto is pure manga as I have not seen the anime.
Canon Point: Immediately after returning to the present after the TYL arc, roughly chapter 282
Age: 14
Gender: male
History: Yamamoto Takeshi is, until he meets Tsuna, your typical Japanese middle schooler. His mother died when he was much younger, but his father owns TakeSushi, a sushi restaurant where he is also the main chef. Yamamoto often helps out around the shop and likes to invite his friends over for sushi whenever possible. His cheerful personality and outlook on life, as well as certain skills he develops later, are all from his father.
At school, he’s known as a baseball star, the only first year to be a starter on the school’s baseball team. When he first meets Tsuna properly, he asks for advice because “No Good Tsuna” has been turning his life around and Yamamoto has seen his baseball skills falling despite all his hard work. Tsuna tells him that the only option is to work even harder, and Yamamoto thanks him, but at practice that night, ends up breaking his arm because of the advice. Thinking his baseball career is over and that the sport is the only thing he’s truly good for, he attempts to kill himself by throwing himself from the school of the roof. Tsuna saves him, and the two become good friends after that. Reborn considers this Tsuna acquiring his second Family member for the Vongola, and with Tsuna’s encouragement and friendship, before long, Yamamoto is back with the baseball team.
Despite all early evidence to the contrary (all the guns, explosions, and fights that Tsuna and Reborn seem to attract), Yamamoto continually refers to it all as a ‘mafia game’ and treats Reborn as if he is actually a small child just playing. Somehow, in spite of this, he manages to show himself on numerous occasions to be both a competent and even accomplished fighter. When they believe Tsuna to have been kidnapped by a Yakuza gang, Gokudera and Yamamoto run off to fight them and end up helping to completely destroy the gang, despite being first year middle schoolers still. Throughout the rest of their first year and into their second, similar incidents continue to highlight how powerful the tenth generation Vongola are turning out to be despite all appearances to the contrary. The friends also grow closer, forming a more cohesive Vongola family and learning to trust each other and their respective skills.
Finally, in the fall of their second year in middle school, Tsuna and his friends face their greatest challenge yet when the elite assassin team of the Vongola, the Varia, challenge Tsuna’s claim as the heir of the Vongola 9th in the Vongola Ring Battles. The prize are the Vongola Rings, which mark the boss and his Guardians. At first, they are grossly outmatched, with Gokudera and Yamamoto being easily defeated by Squalo of the Varia. With only ten days to train and prepare, they needed to do a lot of work in not much time. Yamamoto went to his father for training in kendo. He soon found, though, that his father was actually a master swordsman himself. On the day of Yamamoto’s battle for the Vongola Ring of Rain, his father presented him with the Shigure Kintoki, a shinai forged out of steel instead of bamboo that could become a real katana only when used with the special Shigure Souen sword style that Yamamoto had learned from his father. The first four of seven battles leave them down three wins to one when Yamamoto faces Squalo. Reborn remarks that only an idiot or a natural assassin would go into a life-or-death match with so little training as confidently as Yamamoto had. Although he’s done well to master the eight Shigure Souen forms before the fight, it turns out that Squalo also knows the forms and how to counter them, as he had defeated another Shigure Souen user some years prior. Although badly injured and nearly defeated, Yamamoto manages to invent a new, ninth form in the heat of battle to defeat Squalo and win the Ring of Rain. In the end, Yamamoto, Tsuna, and the others manage to win the Vongola Ring Battles and become assured of their place in the Vongola succession, whether Tsuna wants the position or not.
Just a few days later, Gokudera and Tsuna find themselves mysteriously sent ten years into the future with no way to get back when the 10-Year Bazooka, which previously had a time limit of only five minutes, malfunctions. The future they find themselves in is filled with danger as the Vongola are under attack, Tsuna has been killed, and the main Italian headquarters as well as many of their allies have fallen to their enemies the Millefiore family. They meet the version of Yamamoto from ten years in the future when he saves them from a strong enemy. He’s still just as calm and cheerful as the present version, right down to using sports metaphors whenever possible. In the middle of a tense battle, however, the future Yamamoto is also switched with his present self, leaving the younger Vongolas to figure out how to win in the future largely by themselves.
In this future, the Vongola Rings are suddenly even more important. They enable the wearer to use the energy within their body to fight. This energy can come in seven attributes, matching the seven Vongola Rings. Lal Mirch, a new ally in this future, begins to teach them how to use the power of the Rings, and Yamamoto and Gokudera manage to ignite theirs almost instantly, showing the strength of their resolution to fight. Within days, they’re already having to put that strength to the test when they’re sent to try to find the future Hibari and end up running into a squad of the Millefiore’s Black Spell. Unfortunately, although the fight goes well at first, they’re eventually confronted by Gamma, a captain for the Millefiore. Yamamoto attempts to convince Gokudera to team up, quickly seeing that alone they would be outclassed by this opponent, but Gokudera refuses. At first, Yamamoto lets him, backing away from the fight, but seeing Gokudera being beaten badly by Gamma, he finally intervenes, showing one of the rare breaks in his pleasant character as he yells at Gokudera for never trusting any of them but Tsuna and not being worthy to call himself the right-hand man. For just a minute during the lecture, he openly admits that he knows exactly what’s going on and what the ‘mafia game’ is all about. Then he turns his back on Gokudera and announces himself as Gamma’s next opponent. While this soon gets Gokudera to fight with him instead of alone, none of it is enough to let them win. Their overconfidence ends with them being tortured and nearly killed by Gamma before the future Hibari intervenes.
Ten days later, when the two have begun to recover from their wounds, they begin training again. Reborn takes Yamamoto on personally, promising to tell Yamamoto his real history if he does well in training. As the three train and prepare, they are interrupted a few days later by the arrival of the future Ryohei bringing news that the Vongola would be gathering to attack the Millefiore base in just five days time. They would all have to be ready by then. But the night before they can execute their attack, the Millefiore discover their secret base and surprise attack them first. With no time to lose, those who were going to attack the Millefiore base escape and launch their own attack in the middle of the night while Hibari holds off the entire Millefiore force. It goes surprisingly better than would have been expected from three half-trained teenagers and two adults. At least, it did at first. They soon became separated, each facing their own enemies as they fought to complete the attack and escape in one piece. When the base reveals its ability to shift the location of individual rooms, Yamamoto and an unconscious Lal Mirch are separated from Gokudera and Ryohei, Tsuna having gone earlier to draw off the enemy.
Yamamoto eventually runs into yet another swordmaster much like his fight with Squalo in the Vongola Ring Battles. Genkishi, who claims to be the greatest swordsman of the time, says he will even the odds by fighting with only his bare hands instead of a weapon. Yamamoto confidently says that he will force Genkishi to draw his sword instead of looking down on him by fighting without a weapon. Within the first few moves of the fight, Genkishi does, indeed, draw his sword, in the process acknowledging Yamamoto as a true opponent. But soon after, Yamamoto’s sword, the Shigure Kintoki which he had received from his father, is nearly destroyed by a powerful attack from Genkishi. Or so it seemed. Yamamoto quickly realized that it had actually been an illusion cast by Genkishi and that the sword was actually completely undamaged. Of course, he then promptly falls for another of Genkishi’s illusions, knocking himself out against a hidden steel wall. In the end, his skills prove not to be quite good enough and he only survives through Hibari’s timely intervention.
Finally, they’re all captured and held captive by the man in charge of the base, Irie Shouichi. Just as they’re about to be killed, though, Irie reveals that he is actually on their side and has been working secretly to help them. Although they receive news that the Vongola and their allies are winning the most recent series of battles, they’re soon contacted by the head of the Millefiore, Byakuran, who shows them that he expected every move they’d made, and warns them that they won’t win against him next time. He invites them to play the game he’d invented, called Choice, against his own Guardians, the Real Six Funeral Wreaths. Once again, they have only ten days to prepare before the game will begin. Squalo of the Varia shows up in person this time to continue to train Yamamoto, angry that he’d let himself lose once already.
The game of Choice is as much a game of chance and luck as a battle. The battle location as well as the participants are chosen randomly and the object is to defeat an equally randomly chosen target person from each team. It pits Tsuna, Gokudera, and Yamamoto, as well as two Vongola noncombatants against three of the six Funeral Wreaths and one of their subordinates. The three split up to separate the enemies. Yamamoto ends up fighting one of the subordinates of the Mist Funeral Wreath. In the course of the battle, he reveals himself to be Genkishi, who had pretended to be a subordinate in order to fight Yamamoto again and defeat him. Instead of cowering as Genkishi expected, however, Yamamoto says he’s glad they could finally have their rematch as he shows the strength of his newest skill, opening his Vongola Box Weapon to reveal Jirou and Kojirou, his two box animals. Kojirou, the rain swallow, flies away to cover the battlefield in Rain flames to give Yamamoto the advantage over his Mist-using opponent, while Jirou, the rain akita, carries the three flame swords that Yamamoto uses together with his Shigure Kintoki for a four-sword style to rival the one Genkishi defeated him with. Finally, Kojirou returns to merge with the Shigure Kintoki to form a fourth Rain flame sword.
Together, these new skills allow Yamamoto to easily defeat Genkishi, although Genkishi questions him when he fails to follow through with a killing blow. “We’re not killers,” Yamamoto tells him, which sums up the view of most of the 10th generation Vongola perfectly. Although they’ll do what they must to protect those they care about, they aren’t killers like the ‘real’ mafia members such as the Varia. Unfortunately for Genkishi, the Funeral Wreaths have no such problem, and he’s soon killed off by one of his own for being ‘useless.’ Yamamoto and Tsuna then turn their attention to winning the deadly game by defeating the enemy’s target before their own can be found. Tsuna is quickly sidetracked by another enemy, leaving Yamamoto to deal with Daisy, the target and one of the Funeral Wreaths, on his own. Although he kills Daisy, the Funeral Wreath is effectively immortal and he comes back to life, while the Vongola’s own target is defeated. The Vongola lose the first round of Choice, but even being near death, Irie Shouichi, who had been the Vongola’s target, insists on telling them all exactly what they are up against. Namely, that Byakuran can see across all possible futures, and the one they’re currently in is the only one in which there is a chance to defeat him. In fact, the entire situation with all of them having been brought to the future at the same time was orchestrated by the future Tsuna with help from Irie himself.
The confession is too late, though. As they have lost, Byakuran arrives to claim the Vongola Rings for his own as well as their lives. But just at the last moment, the other head of the Millefiore, a young girl named Uni, arrives to save them by throwing her support behind the Vongola. They barely escape together, returning to the underground base in Namimori, but even there they aren’t safe as the Storm Funeral Wreath, Zakuro, quickly finds them and attacks. They flee with Uni back into Namimori, leaving Squalo behind to fight Zakuro. Once they’ve managed to escape and find a play to hide, Yamamoto says he’s going to go back and look for Squalo.
While he’s gone, the rest of the Vongola, together with the Black Spell from the Giglio Nero family which Uni formerly commanded, join forces in a climactic battle with Byakuran and his Funeral Wreaths. Two of the six were defeated, but the rest showed to be much more powerful. Finally, Byakuran’s trump card, the final Funeral Wreath, Ghost, enters the battlefield. He is the Byakuran from a parallel world that the Byakuran in this world managed to bring here by destroying the world he came from. He absorbs all flames and box weapons, leaving both the Vongola and his own allies helpless to save themselves from him. Yamamoto arrives just in time to stop Gokudera and Ryohei from being sucked dry themselves, but it only leads to his own flames being stolen. With his Guardians and allies in serious trouble, Tsuna manages to defeat Ghost, only for the real Byakuran to appear. He had been using Ghost as a conduit to drain and take all of their flame energy for himself. Even Tsuna’s strongest attack is no match for Byakuran, and soon the scene is set for the final battle, with only Byakuran, Uni, and Tsuna trapped inside an impenetrable barrier. Suddenly, the Arcobaleno Pacifiers, the third of a trinity of powerful objects together with the Mare Rings controlled by Byakuran and the Vongola Rings, escape from Uni on their own and begin to regenerate. The Arcobaleno of the future had all been killed by Byakuran, but with Uni’s protection, they are now nearly able to return to their regular forms. Their return looks to be taking too long, though, as Byakuran attacks Tsuna, seeming to defeat him entirely.
But Tsuna’s strong resolve to protect everyone, past and future, calls an unexpected power out of the Vongola Rings. From each one comes an image of the original bearers, the First Generation Vongola Boss and his Guardians. Tsuna, through his will to protect everyone he can, has been deemed worthy of the true power of the Vongola Rings, and Giotto, the Vongola Primo, releases them from the shackles that had been holding them to less than half of their true strength. Now, with this newly unveiled strength, Tsuna is able to stand against Byakuran. Also with the new power of the Guardians’ Rings, the box animals are able to combine their powers to begin breaking through the barrier that Byakuran had erected to isolate the final battlefield. Gamma is able to slip through the break and with his help, Uni finishes awakening the Arcobaleno Pacifiers, but both of them vanish immediately after. Tsuna’s anger over Uni’s loss drives him to fight even harder against Byakuran, giving him the final edge he needs to destroy Byakuran for good and save the past and the future.
With the threat to both times defeated, the tenth generation Vongola are finally able to return to the past. With the help of the restored Arcobaleno, they are also able to take their Vongola Box Weapons into the past with them, although in smaller, ring forms made in the shape of the animals they contain. They’re returned very nearly to the time they left, and life goes back to as normal as it gets for them. At least for a little while.
Personality: Yamamoto is the very definition of laid back, at least outwardly. He very rarely seems to let things get to him, often being the voice of reason or the one holding his friends back from starting a fight they can’t win (or shouldn’t win, when it comes to Gokudera and kid-Lambo). The few times he’s pressed past what he can handle, such as when he believes he’ll no longer be able to do the one thing he thinks he’s good at because of his broken arm, it becomes obvious that something under the surface isn’t dealing with things as calmly as he’d like everyone to think. But being the sort of person who would rather deal with all his problems himself than have anyone worry about him (or just not deal with his problems at all until they explode if he can manage it), he rarely lets that show, preferring to keep a cheerful smile and a kind word ready at all times.
In order to manage this, Yamamoto tends to build himself a version of reality that ignores what’s actually happening and replaces it with a cheerful alternative. He tends to come across as stupid or oblivious because of his unrealistic reactions (such as believing everything is a ‘mafia game’) but if anything, he’s just as observant if not more so than his friends. Everybody lies to themselves in some way, but Yamamoto just helpfully puts all his lies right out where everybody can see them. If those lies tend to be a bit more spectacular than most, so much the better. Not to say that he actually believes most or any of what he’s coming up with, but it serves as a framework for him to build on. He’ll stick to that framework no matter what unless pushed completely outside of his comfort zone. Even after being sent ten years into the future and nearly killed, he continues to call it all a ‘mafia role play game’ despite breaking character, so to speak, to yell at Gokudera during the fight with Gamma.
Once you get past the surface and the cheerful, not-quite-there image, you can start to see exactly what makes Yamamoto the sort of person that Reborn would call a ‘natural-born assassin.’ While he’s not exactly known for his book-smarts (although that’s as much by choice as anything, judging by the fact that when he actually tries, he’s just as quick to solve their math homework as Gokudera is) he’s more than capable of learning quickly and well when the need arises. He learned an entire school of swordsmanship in less than a week, and learned it well enough to improvise a new form for it in the heat of a battle when he was in danger of losing badly. He watched Squalo’s 100 most important sword battles in 3 days, and at the end of those three days, he’d assimilated much of Squalo’s style into his own. He’s also quick to assess any given situation and improvise as needed to reach what he sees as the best solution. In battle, his intuition seems to almost rival Tsuna’s on occasion. On the negative side of that, though, because he often relies on snap judgments and goes with what seems the best idea at the time, he doesn’t always take everything into account, leading him to overestimate his own and his companion’s abilities or underestimate the enemy.
The driving force behind 90% of what Yamamoto does is his determination. Whatever he does, once he sets his mind to it, he will give every possible effort and then some to succeed. The first time he’s told how to use the flame attribute of the Vongola Rings, it takes him only a few seconds to ignite the flame because the Dying Will Flames that the rings harness are an expression of the bearer’s determination to win. He breaks his arm while determined to practice harder and do better at baseball during a slump in his first year of middle school. He pushes himself to be better than anyone could possibly expect from him for no other reason than that he expects it of him.
Fears: The biggest is being afraid of not being good at anything or not being good enough. He tends to define himself by what he can do better than anyone else. At the beginning, it’s baseball, and thinking he’s lost that ability when he breaks his arm nearly drives him to throw himself off a building. He even says it was the only thing he was good at. Eventually, this becomes not being good enough to protect his friends and family. While he’ll laugh off the idea if asked, the amount of time he spends keeping track of his friends and training to be better at protecting them says it’s definitely his top priority.
Connected to this, he’s also afraid of losing those people that he really cares about. Despite having a very large list of people that he’s friendly to or would consider friends, there’s a core group that he would do just about anything to protect. His father, Tsuna, and Tsuna’s Guardians, as well as their close friends, are all on that list. He would do more to protect them than he’d ever do to protect himself, and sometimes that scares him just a bit, too. He’d much rather incapacitate an enemy than kill them, but if there’s no other way to protect his important people, he won’t hesitate. He’ll just remember it later.
Weaknesses: Possibly because of the way he filters his view of the world, Yamamoto tends to underestimate his enemies (or possibly overestimate himself). The first time, at least. He rarely does it twice, but sometimes that once is bad enough. He also tends to trust people that maybe he shouldn’t, likely for the same reason.
He’s also supremely competitive. Even if it’s not something he especially cares about or really even knows whether he wants it or not, if it’s framed in the context of a prize for a competition, he will do his best to win, no matter whether that ‘win’ is from a fight, a contest, or whatever else. This occasionally includes going along with very bad ideas because he thinks he can beat whatever game is rigged to make him lose. Granted, most of the time he CAN, but it’s still not a good thing to just jump into without thinking.
He holds himself to a higher standard, as well, connected to both of the above weaknesses and his fear of not being good enough. When he can’t meet that higher standard, it hits him harder than perhaps it should. The idea of not being able to save someone, even an enemy, when he thinks he should have been able to, or not being able to do something that he thinks he should have been able to, can leave him dwelling on things and careless in other ways. Or trying to jump off a building because he can’t play baseball.
Mundane Strengths/Abilities: He’s a great baseball player! If the House ever forms a league, he’ll be the first to sign up. He also keeps himself in peak athletic condition (for a teenager, at least) so he’s relatively strong/fast/etc although all within normal human and teenage limits.
More usefully, he is becoming a master swordsman. He’s still learning, but he learns very quickly and takes great pride in always bettering his abilities. He learned the Shigure Souen style from his father and has additional training from Squalo as well as adding his own forms. He’s also a dead-on shot with anything thrown, such as a ball or a rock or anything else of a similar size. Since he’s referred to as ‘a born hitman’ in the manga, he’s honestly going to manage pretty well with most weapons, given a bit of time to learn them.
He’s a very quick learner, as shown by the fact that he can pick up new sword styles and strategies almost on the fly, as well as how quickly he learns to use the Rain Attribute flames despite never having seen anything like them before. He even learns to ride a racing motorcycle at an advanced level within minutes of first getting on one.
Connected to that, he’s also a pretty good strategist in a pinch, able to quickly see the various lines of attack and pick what he thinks is the best one. It helps that so many people underestimate him, but he’s just become so accomplished at lying and seeming ‘stupid’ that it’s easy for him to take advantage of that and form a plan around the element of surprise, such as pretending to trip and turning that into an attack. (Whether that attack works or not, though, is usually more a reflection of his ‘underestimating the enemy’ weakness. He is, after all, still 14.)
He also makes really good sushi.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: Yamamoto is not going to be very sensitive. Maybe the low side of medium. While he does have certain powers, they’re all very much from inside himself, not something that would be sensitive to outside powers or beings unless he was specifically trying to use his Rain flames to search for them.
The core of all of his abilities is based in his ability to use Rain flames, which are fueled by his determination and belief in himself. With those flames, he’s able to either enhance his own attacks or open his box weapons. Rain flames have the Tranquility attribute, which means they can calm or stop the other types of flames or cause a person to fall asleep or lose consciousness. He can use his flames to find hidden or invisible but physical objects and people such as box weapon animals by creating a flame and paying attention to the way the waves from it change as they enter his surroundings.
His flames can be used to open the Box Weapon that contains his two Box Animals, Jirou and Kojirou. Both are made of Rain flames and will remain active only as long as Yamamoto can keep his flames active. Jirou is an akita and Kojirou is a swallow. Kojirou is useful for scouting and distracting the enemy as well as spreading Rain flames over the battlefield to give Yamamoto an advantage. He also can combine with the Shigure Kintoki to form a new, more powerful blade in the Vongola Rain Box’s Cambio Forma. Jirou, on the other hand, while he’s capable of joining in the fight on his own, is most useful because he carries Yamamoto’s three short-bladed swords. These swords are made of pure Rain flames and Yamamoto can either use them to fight or to propel himself by expelling flames from them very quickly to effectively make small jet engines out of them, allowing him to either move extra quickly or even to attain flight for short periods of time.
Supply List:
*Clothes: most of a school uniform but with a very non-regulation jacket
*A student’s school bag with a couple baseballs, a change of gym clothes, and some other school odds-and-ends like books, pens, etc
*A chain necklace holding the Vongola Ring of Rain and the compact Vongola Rain Box Weapon (ring form) containing Jirou and Kojirou
*Shigure Kintoki in its carry bag- it’s a steel shinai (a kendo practice sword usually made out of bamboo) that becomes a regular katana whenever used with the Shigure Shouen style (which is any time Yamamoto fights using a sword)
Both rings and probably Shigure Kintoki would all be considered ‘magical’ in some way.
Sample RP post: Longest day ever. Getting back to a full day of school followed by practice and now waiting for Gokudera to get done blowing up whatever he was blowing up so they could walk home together. After the non-stop training of the weeks they’d spent in the future, being back in middle school should have been easy, but the lack of excitement made the day drag on forever.
Yamamoto stretched his arms over his head, shrugging the school bag higher on his shoulder and locking his fingers behind his head. He laughed quietly to himself, just a bit, at that absurd train of thoughts. Not that he would exactly admit it, but he missed the constant action. He’d kept the training regime here as well as he could around studying and everything else, but it wasn’t easy. Squalo maybe hadn’t been entirely wrong about there not being enough time for baseball and the sword, but so far he was managing.
By the time he found himself bouncing a bit from his heels to the balls of his feet and back, it occurred to him to wonder if today had been another ‘Avoid Yamamoto Game’ day. Gokudera had them every now and then, but it was usually pretty obvious when they were going to happen anymore. Or, they had been before their vacation. Maybe he’d missed the signs for this one, or maybe Gokudera was just looking to make them more challenging, like practice for the Mafia roleplay game Tsuna and the kid had started ages ago.
Another minute passed with no Gokudera and Yamamoto gave up on waiting. Game or no, he could only bother standing around so long. Instead, he set off to find Gokudera on his own. It was always more fun to surprise him, anyway.
Except this time he made it all the way to Gokudera’s apartment with not a sign of Gokudera. He frowned vaguely at the door, but when he tried it, it was unlocked. Obviously, Gokudera was just here waiting for him. He laughed loudly at himself for being worried and not playing the game properly as he went inside. “Hey, Gokudera! You actually managed to beat me today. Good... job...”
Gokudera must have seriously redecorated his apartment. It was dark, for one, and the lightswitch wasn’t at all where he remembered it being. It looked way bigger than it had been. Chains and... things... swung from the ceiling, and...
Was that blood on the walls?
He laughed again, walking closer to poke at a puddle of the fake blood. “Wow, isn’t it a little early for a haunted house? It’s still months to Obon, you know?”
He turned back to open the door and let a little more light in, but the door seemed to be gone. That was a bit much even for a haunted house, wasn’t it? Shigure Kintoki was in his hand before he stopped to think. “Gokudera?”
The sound of footsteps made him snap to attention, sword low at his side. The sigh that followed was completely familiar, though.
“Great. Another idiot. Just what this place needs.”
All he could do was laugh.
