Rupz Lopez

'Best Hacker in the City' (Yami Kitsune)

'SECOND best hacker in the city' (Paolo Kitsune)

Sakura Studios (Management)

Sakura Sushi (former HR)

**Rupz Lopez** is a character role-played by rup\_z.

## General Description

Rupz Lopez is a Filipino who migrated to another country because he wanted to leave the poor economic state of his country for a good paying job to provide for his family. On a normal day, he is usually seen with a buzz-cut fade, wearing loose and relaxed clothing. When on the job, he wears a ridiculous amount of protection, such as having pads that cover his whole legs. Rupz is generally a quiet person and prefers to think before he speaks. He easily gets stressed out and overwhelmed due to his anxiety. He tries to hide all of that by acting tough. He is very friendly to others and always carries a positive attitude. However due to his mental instability, when there is a job that requires him to shed blood, when too overwhelmed, there is a small chance that may trigger him to have a twisted personality.

## Background Story

Rupz studied programming in a university which his parents worked with blood and tears to pay just for him to get a good education. When he graduated, both his parents were fired from their companies because of old age. The pressure came to him as it was his turn to provide for them. He tried applying in various tech companies but was rejected due to not having much connections to the rich. He hated this work culture and pushed his luck to find work out of town - leading him to risk all his savings. He promised his parents that he would get them out of the financial struggle that they have been dealing for their lives.

Rupz was able to land a job with a small computer firm. Unfortunately, this sense of security didn't last because in the next 3 days, the company had been breached by unknown hackers which left the company bankrupt. Rupz could never tell his parents what happened as it would only break them. This left him lost in an unfamiliar city with nothing but few thousands in his pockets. The only thing that he knew was that he had to get a job as quickly to provide for his family back home.

## Events

At some point in time, a man named Greg Barzini decides to be a father figure to Rupz and takes him into his *Red Ties* family. He teaches Rupz a handful of things about the underworld. Even though Rupz was adopted by this man, his family back home still stayed in his mind as he saw this as an opportunity that he might be able to earn more money. The bond between the two grew strong, they both even started to work closely with the *Kitsune-Gumi Yakuza*.

    However, there came a time where Greg had said some things that the *Yakuza* was not very happy with. Rupz had no idea what was going to happen but just wanted his ‘father’ to be safe. It was also at this time when Greg had suddenly disappeared, leaving the responsibilities of the *Red Ties* family to him. When Greg came back after a long time, Rupz’ loyalty lied with the *Yakuza*. He told Greg about his situation and to leave the city. To Rupz’ surprise, Greg insisted that he had to pay for what he had done and would rather die at the hands of his ‘son’ rather than anyone. Realizing that there was no other way to convince Greg, he pulled the trigger, causing the tragic event that ended with Greg’s death. This traumatized Rupz making him mentally unstable.

However, even with this job, it was still unable to satisfy his needs to provide him and his parents back home. Slowly, he started getting reintroduced to the dark market industry through the *Yakuza* and later officially joined the ranks within the family as a *Kobun*. These opportunities included pushing drugs and chopping cars, which gave him extra income on top of what he had been working within *Sakura Sushi*. Thrilled by the income he had been receiving, he started to become interested in learning more about crime and showed more enthusiasm in taking these opportunities. The money he was earning helped his parents back home that it brought them out of their financial problems. His parents were finally able to retire in a nice home where they could run a small business.

One day, he was doing an oxy run with a fellow *Kobun* named Yuki Tanaka. The contact had sent them to meet clients in Sandy Shores. The job went smoothly, and the two had their backs making sure nobody was on to them. Before heading back to the city, they made a quick stop near a clothing store to get rid of the vehicle used for distributing oxy. Rupz then saw a nice-looking white *Gargoyle* parked nearby, unlocked. *'Must be some random dude's bike'* he thought. Being overconfident, he thought it was a good idea to use the bike to drive back to the city. He started showing off the bike to his friends at the *Sakura Sushi* food booth. Other people passing by were amazed by the look of it and Rupz would claim that it was his own personal bike.

Rupz drove around the city with it, being overconfident, yet ignorant. He even took Ellie Velasquez for a ride around the city until they made a stop at Hayes Autos where Ellie wanted to hang out with her boyfriend Tom Ato, at the time. There were others in the mechanic shop too. Even Yuki was working as a mechanic. Everyone; employees and customers were hanging out and having a good time. Little did anyone know that soon, all their lives would be in danger.    It was sudden. Before anyone knew it, *The Lost MC* surrounded the mechanic shop with their bikes and shotguns demanding everyone to have their hands up. Rupz was so confused to what was going on, until it hit him: *'Who the fuck stole the fucking bike?!'* one of them shouted. It was at this moment, that he knew, he fucked up. Rupz could not move or say anything. He was scared shitless. One thing led to another and one of them shot Tom Ato straight to the chest for talking too much which Rupz was not aware of from trying to process the whole situation. He only started to get his senses back when they started saying that they would search up each person in the shop one by one. Rupz did not want them to hurt Ellie nor Yuki, so he finally broke silence and admitted that it was he who stole the bike. They took him to a corner and he took a deep stab into the guts. Both physically and mentally.

Not any sooner, a family meeting was called by the *oyabun* to demand some explanation about the situation. Almost everyone in the family pointed at Rupz being the cause of the whole situation. *'Stupid, Rupz'*, *'A local's bike- really, Rupz?', 'Why didn't you just fucking admit it?' 'Why did you wait until someone got hurt?'* All these words echoed into Rupz head, and in fact he felt that he didn't even need to explain how he felt in the situation because he was convinced that his actions were wrong. The fact that Mortelle was a close ally of the Yakuza just made him feel even worse. He was ready to offer a pinky to the *oyabun*.

To his surprise, the *oyabun and saiko-komon* defended his actions; something that he will never forget in his life. They said that even if Rupz made a stupid choice of being ignorant and stealing a bike, he already paid the consequences by getting stabbed. However, the actions of Hayes Autos and Mortelle were unreasonable and that they were willing to have a talk, or even fight them if needed. This was when Rupz knew that he was in the right hands; it was when he truly felt what family should feel like. Afterwards, he slowly started to overcome the self-pity he was giving himself; he started to stand up for himself and voiced out his thoughts and opinions.

The next time, Rupz got invited again by them to hack a Fleeca bank because he had been practicing his hacking skills that he learned as a programmer and wanted to give it a try to see if he could break into the Fleeca. After a few unsuccessful attempts, Rupz finally succeeded in breaking in, taking the money and finally getting into a chase with the police. The three of them had a getaway motorbike planted on a construction site and in a very last minute decision, Rico told Rupz to get on the bike with Chigusa and try to get away. With too much stress and pressure on Rupz head, he started to panic and he had no idea how he would get out of the situation. He had no clue about the ins and outs of the city. He was always driving on the main road, he had no idea how to lose the cops. Before Rupz knew it, they cornered him and Chigusa at a subway station where the motorbike broke down and were caught by the cops. The news came out with the three of their names on the local newspaper. Unfortunately, the information reached to the Philippines where his parents found out that he had been one of the bank robbers and decided to cut connection with him immediately.
This was the start of some kind of insatiable hunger growing inside Rupz. He wanted more. He wanted the power and the feeling of being able to do anything he wanted. He wanted that freedom that he could not get during his time in the Philippines. Despite getting caught, he enjoyed the adrenaline that came with it and swore to become one of the best bank robbers in the city.

## Trivia

* *Rupz has so much thoughts in his mind, he has a hard time letting it out.*
* *Rupz' name is so rare he has to spell it out to people.*
* *When Rupz met the Sacred Flowers, he got infected by a variant of the SBS disease, also known as the ‘SFS disease’.*
* *Rupz enjoys meditating.*
* *Rupz has a thing for accents.*
* *Rupz can harmonize.*
* *Rupz has some mild short-term memory problem.*
* *Rupz became the thing that made him lose his first job - a hacker.*
* *Rupz gets bullied a lot for someone who is the Yakuza's third in command. Even the associates bully him.*
* *Chigusa once bullied Rupz to eat a human tongue.*
* *Trish Rider once made Rupz eat a human tooth.*
* *Rupz has a newfound perspective of potatoes because of Rena.*
* *Rupz is always down bad.*
* *Rupz once got banned from a different branch of Hayes because he stole The Lost MC's bike and parked it inside thinking it was a local's.*
* *Rupz got hired in a different branch of Hayes Autos despite the incident.*
* *Rupz probably owes a lot of fingers to Yami Kitsune.*
* *Rupz is always clueless and clumsy.*
* *Rupz is a self-proclaimed triathlon athlete.*
* *Rupz faked his death for Paolo's official induction into KG Yakuza.*
* *Rupz went from HR Head of Sakura Sushi to Head Recruiter of the KG Yakuza.*
* *Rupz used to work in the Taco Shop with the Vagos.*
* *Rupz can't wait to get his own katana, he takes pictures wearing one when he borrows from Chigusa.*
* *Rupz stole Levi Ryujin's car when he was on a foot chase with him.*

## Quotes

* *What's gucci?*
* *Uh.*
* *I'm good, I'm good!*
* *Fuck it, Lezzz gooo!*
* *Lezzzgetit!!*
* *Ayyyyyyyy*
* *My name's Rupz, like R-U-P-Z. Like Rupees but Rupz.*
* *Hmmmmmmmmm…*
* *Anything crazy happening?*
* *\*meditate\* HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMM... Inner Peace.*
* *\*ongoing bank robbery\** *You actually believe we're shopping here?*