Taiga Akiraka (タイガ アキラカ Ta-i-ga A-ki-ra-ka)

Taiga grew up in Chichibu, a quiet pocket of Saitama where everyone knew everyone and everyone knew his father. The man was a boxer, the kind who left dents in gym walls and bruises in local legends. Taiga didn’t inherit his father’s fame, only the whispers that followed it. His mother disappeared when he was too young to ask why, leaving behind nothing but a pair of old headphones that still smelled faintly of smoke and perfume. In school, kids pushed him and one swing too many, one boy bleeding, and that was that the boxer’s son became “dangerous.”   For years, he stayed out of the ring. He refused to touch the gloves his father left hanging in the hallway. Fights, he decided, only made things worse. Things changed one night when two masked strangers broke into their home. His father moved like it was the final round, calm, fast, unflinching. Taiga followed his lead until one of the attackers used a move he recognized. It was his father’s signature feint. That split-second of shock cost him everything. His body froze while his mind screamed to dodge, and in that heartbeat, his father took the knife meant for him.   After the funeral, Taiga disappeared for a while. The gym lights stayed off. But the silence didn’t bring peace. It just made the questions louder. The police wrote it off as a robbery gone wrong, but Taiga knew better, that technique didn’t come from the streets. Someone trained had been there that night. A year later, a Hidora recruiter found him during an underground match, said he “hit like a man running from something.” The recruiter namley Noburo Yoshimura offered him resources, and connections. He joined because he needed their reach. He needed to find who took his old man’s life.   Once he joined the company he wasn’t flashy, his suit and calm demeanor stand out among the usual chaos of the clan’s rank and file. The old headphones never left his neck, they were his one constant in a world built on shifting loyalties. Between jobs, he asked quiet questions in quiet places about underground circuits, rival trainers, nameless boxers who vanished. The clan thought he was just another ambitious recruit. They didn’t realize his ambition had a gravestone attached to it.   Taiga’s hard to read. He doesn’t talk much, and when he does, it’s usually too direct. Subtlety isn’t his thing, he’ll tell you what he thinks, even if it lands like a punch. There’s a strange mix in him with cold eyes, warm loyalty. He fights for the few people he trusts, but freezes at the sight of his own bloob a cruel trick of the mind he’s never shaken. He doesn’t care for guns or cowards who hide behind them. He drinks too much, eats cheap sliders, and blasts heavy metal in his apartment till morning. For all his skill, he’s still learning how to be normal again one fight at a time.