User Profile

This is a character journal for Rude from Final Fantasy VII. Welcome.

Rude was born Richard Freeman to one Mary and John Freeman on Howlstreet and, for the first eleven years of his life, lead an existence of almost painful normalcy. Showing an early interest in electronics, the petite youngster spent much of his time alone with his face shoved into a book (with such titles as “Safe and Fun Experiments”), and his hands wrist deep in wires. A high point came when, on his eighth birthday, he succeeded in blacking out, not just his own house, but the entire block. Richard took it as a mark of personal pride when the men in grey suits came to the door and asked his Mum if she would kindly keep her son away from electronic devices in the future. She didn’t, and he wasn’t.

The rail crash ended the warm-blanket-like security of Richard’s life. He’d waited for two hours at the babysitter’s until the crash showed on the vids. No survivors. He wasn’t an idiot, and he knew what happened to orphans in this town. After all, hadn’t he heard his Da complain about it just last week over toast and jelly? Richard decided, with the conviction of the young, to do what he’d always dreamed of doing: Go and live a life of adventure. It couldn’t be that hard, right?

A week and a half on the street gave him an education of another sort altogether. Eventually becoming a second rate pickpocket (and master dumpster diver), Richard earned the moniker Rude on a summer night while telling off his hustler once and for all. After having an emphatic lesson in respect Richard decided that he’d never feel like that again. When the usual teenaged goon came the next night to obtain a cut of the profits, Richard, now irrevocably Rude, fought back. And, when Rude fought back, he fought dirty. It wasn’t easy, but he discovered something in the process: People, all people, were shaped by forces beyond their control and, as a result, were limited by the boundaries imposed upon them by time and circumstance. But Rude found, that night, a larger truth; boundaries are never where we think they are.

That was the first night Rude ever rebelled against his attackers. It was also his first murder. He took the sunglasses off the largest of the bunch, half as trophy and half as remembrance. Even if he had to do terrible things, which was inevitable, really, he vowed never to enjoy it. It would be Just Business.

Things went a little better after that and, after a magical summer in his fifteenth year when he grew, and grew, and grew, they went a lot better. Jobs suddenly came his way; enforcer, bodyguard, and all around Muscle. A company named Shin-Ra finally took note of the up-and-coming thug, and hired him after rigorous testing to ensure his mental capacity was not in deficit to his physical prowess. Rude’s employment at Shin-Ra finally gave the young quasi-thug an outlet for his muscle, bountiful training to hone his natural skill at explosives construction, and finally transformed the manling into a first rate bodyguard. After finding that it was much easier to find work if your employers thought you were thick, Rude perfected the art of Keeping Ones Mouth Firmly Shut. He could read physics and electronics manuals in his spare time, listen to Rodgers and Hammerstein in private, and if nobody saw or knew of his mastery of soufflés, so much the better.

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