Riley Takeda She / they
"Shut the fuck up around cops."
SPECIES: Kitsune OCCUPATION: Public Defender AGE: 73 Years Old (Looks to be about 32) PLAYED BY: A FC: Midori Francis
BIOGRAPHY:
TW: Domestic abuse, parental death
For most of her childhood, Riley constantly heard things like “your daddy’s a hero” and “I bet you’re so proud of him.” To the rest of the world, Richard Morris was a decorated veteran who had served his country proudly. To Riley, he was the monster in the closet. It was a picture perfect life. They could have been a snapshot on the front of LIFE Magazine, with their shiny blue sedan and white picket fence. Veteran’s benefits and an obedient wife and child made Richard seem like the king of the cul-de-sac. He demanded respect and was intolerant of misbehavior. Her mother was hardly any better: a perfect trophy who was largely content in their gilded cage. Despite the power stored in her four tails, she was fine with the yoke of control that her husband exerted over them so long as her life remained comfortable and safe.
Riley earned her second tail young, when she rescued a stray cat from a feral dog. It was something she would have done anyways, yet the powers that be saw it fit to grant Riley her first Zenko tail. Both of her parents thought this meant great things for Riley’s future, following in their footsteps of ‘greatness’, and they told her as much. But as a true ‘bleeding heart’ as her father always criticized her, she struggled to capture the necessary malice for a Nogitsune’s tail. It reminded Riley of her father and his casual cruelty, or her mother’s indifferent vanity at everyone else’s expense, and that was someone she never wanted to be.
When Riley’s father grew impatient for her to fulfill her potential, he devised a plan to try and force her hand instead. Two days after her sixteenth birthday, their home was visited by a band of Rangers, armed with weapons and magic. Forced to watch as they cut off her mother’s tails one by one, Riley balked as the hunters advanced on her. A well-timed and desperate flash of foxfire ignited a curtain, and in the sudden confusion, Riley shifted in a puff of smoke and disappeared into the woods. When she returned after a few days to see what had become of her parents, she watched from the treeline as her father sold her mother’s corpse to the very hunters that had murdered her.
Realizing what he had done, but unwilling to give him the satisfaction of her hatred, Riley sought to earn her third tail without becoming what her father wanted her to be. However, the idea of mustering the kind of suffering needed to earn a nogitsune tail was not easy for them to reconcile. Instead, she sought solace in the human world. College campuses were open and became a refuge for her, where she could sit at the back of any lecture she felt like, soaking up whatever knowledge she could about any topic at hand. Androgyny became a comfortable disguise, and in that day and age, it was easy to slip in and out of town without a word.
While they grew as a human, Riley remained stunted as a kitsune. They channeled restlessness into wanderlust, a fear of being tied down in one spot for too long. But when they earned their legal degree in the mid-80s, it became less viable to move around so freely. Every few years, Riley would pack up and find another place to settle, far enough away that she could start over without suspicious eyes. But as time passed and technology advanced, they started to feel like the invisible walls were closing in on them.
They had heard about Wicked’s Rest over the years, as a supposed haven for people like them. Whereas in the past, Riley would have actively avoided such a place, they find themself looking up apartments and how to transfer their bar membership to Maine. It’s impulse at its finest, but Riley knows that when they get that tugging in their soul, the worst thing they can do is ignore it.
PERSONALITY:
Resourceful · Argumentative · Compassionate · Perceptive · Blunt · Obsessive · Hedonistic
OTHER INFO:
Riley intentionally has gaps in their knowledge when it comes to being a shifter and kitsune. Anything they know has been through their own lived experience and what they learned from their mother as a child, but that was a long time ago. Part of their arrival in Wicked’s Rest is to see if they can learn more about their heritage in a (semi) safe environment.
Because of her upbringing, Riley has a fairly good handle on their shifting, but it does slip when they are especially tired or stressed. Because of their job, they are tired and/or stressed a lot.
While she does not have the time/schedule for a cat, there is a stray who lives in the alley behind her apartment that she feeds from time to time. He has a white patch around his eye and she has taken to calling him ‘Zuko’.
As a public defender, Riley has seen the ins and outs of the criminal justice system and has many opinions on it, and the engine it runs on. Police tend not to like her too much.
