Biography: Asuka Yubari, Starfleet Intelligence (Special Projects Section)

Played By: Caitlin Heaney
Voice Sample: Caitlin H. - Audition for Rachel Cortez - 7/1/07

Assignment: U.S.S. Excelsior
Position: Intelligence Attaché to Captain Cortez [Classified: Top Secret]
Rank: Lieutenant

Name: Asuka Yubari
Sex: Female
Race: Human
Date of Birth: 22 January 2357 (SD 34059.6) (age 25)
Origin: Tokyo, Earth
Height: 1.65 m
Weight: 54 kg
Eyes: Blue (piercing)
Hair: Blackish-brown (touches shoulders when off-duty)

Starfleet Profile
Physical
5'7" tall, Asian appearance. Large scar on the side of her neck. Excellent senses of hearing and sight.

Personality
Very strict/serious. Not easily impressed. Glares at colleagues often, likes to glare. Antisocial at times. Prone to anger. Woman of few words.

Family
Father - Tamasine Yubari - Deceased.
Mother - Amarante Roberge - Deceased.
Brother - Lt. Bezu Yubari - Science Officer, U.S.S. Legacy

Interests, Skills, and Languages
• Fencing (esp. exotic weaponry)
• Various martial arts
• Music: piano and pipe organ.

Languages:
• English (UFP Standard)
• French
• Japanese (native tongue)

Biography
Asuka was born to Tamasine Yubari and Amarante Roberges, in Tokyo, Earth. She was named for her grandmother, who was of Chinese descent, not Japanese. From an early age, Asuka was very bright, always inquisitive and intelligent. However, she was regularily ignored because her parents both led very busy and stressfull lives. Asuka became rather antisocial, not used to human contact. She only really associated with her brother, Bezu, who was just 2 years older than her. Unfortunately, the main form that association took was her suffering at his bullying.

Even after starting school, the solitude Asuka endured remained constant. Bezu became a master of harrassing his sister to the point where she lashed out, loudly, and drew her parents into the room to the sight of her punching and kicking her older brother. Whether being punished or simply choosing to remain to her own devices, Asuka spent much of her childhood locked in her room.

At the age of 16, Asuka met a handsome young man named Yutaka Nomiya, and fell hard for him. Yutaka Nomiya was 2 years Asuka's senior, in the midst of applying for entrance to Starfleet Academy when they met, and willing to date the young woman who seemed so interested in him during his final summer in Tokyo. Asuka never seemed to receive the signals that he was happy to be around her, but felt no romantic attraction to him... a consequence, perhaps, of spending her childhood in seclusion.

A year passed with Nomiya at the Academy. Despite rarely seeing him--and missing the increasingly loud signals that she needed to back off--Asuka's devotion was unwavering. She applied that fall, but was rejected off the waitlist because of her age. Asuka took it as a compliment to have made the waitlist at all, given that most didn't even apply until the age of 18. Her morale boosted by her near-success, her application the following year was extraordinarily strong, and she was one of the first cadets admitted to the class of 2375, choosing to follow Yukata into the Marine path at the Academy's London campus.

In autumn 2375, the ink on the Treaty of Bajor was still damp, and Starfleet Academy was still operating under the Accelerated Wartime Course initiative. Cadet Yubari was hustled through four years of intense study with a triple concentration in languages, history, and computer sciences in just under twenty-four months. Yubari was not entirely focused on her studies, however; her reunion with Yutaka was one of the most joyous moments of her life. Unfortunately, he was merely pleased. Asuka grew increasingly jealous of Yukata; he, in turn, became regal and distant from her. Finally, they broke up when Asuka discovered her boyfriend dating another woman. The incident earned Yubari her one formal reprimand while at the Academy, although her company commander was kind enough to wait until both she and Yukata were out of the hospital before informing her. The reprimand was nothing, however, to the crushing experience of losing Yutaka. After nearly three years of thinking of no one but him, Asuka was left even more isolated than before, cold and suspicious of affection.

Despite her reprimand, which became footnoted in her service record as a "regrettable incident" attributed to her youth, Yubari graduated with honors in 2377 and was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the Starfleet Marine Corps and assigned to General Isaac Brahms's Special Projects contingent. (Unbeknownst to her, her assignment was at Brahms's personal request). Lieutenant was a model soldier and operative for several years, serving as her team's intel officer and receiving a promotion in late 2379. A 2380 mission took her to Old San Francisco, where her mission was to recieve intel about illegal weapons-smuggling on Earth. Specifically, while the rest of her squadmates captured the ringleader, a Reman named D'Lex, she was to make contact with an informant.

Unfortunately, D'Lex wasn't where he was supposed to be. Yubari found him over the informant's dead body, and, in a surprising and unaccountable failure of her cool head and perfect nerves, she failed to capture the vulnerable Reman. Instead, she killed him. He very nearly did the same to her. Regardless, all attainable information on the smuggling was lost as the mission imploded. Asuka was barely clinging to life when her squadmates, at the cost of two lives, managed to retrieve her out of a brutal firefight. Yubari never fully recovered from the injury, losing her arm and some of her mobility. After several months, though, she was back on her feet, and, in yet another surprise, General Brahms did not discharge Yubari from his section for her failure. Instead, he offered her an instataneous change-of-branch to Starfleet proper and a promotion if she would join his intelligence unit. Grateful for the opportunity, Yubari eagerly accepted, and was sent back to Earth for additional training and further physical therapy.

After spending some time at Brahms's home office on or near an undisclosed planet, Gen. Brahms sent Yubari to the U.S.S. Excelsior, bound for the Delta Quadrant, as her first field assignment. Yubari's presence aboard the ship was kept absolutely secret, and she was listed on the manifest--where she was listed at all--as an "Engineering Diagnostician," with only Captain Cortez being aware of her true position or mission. Indeed, the secrecy surrounding her mission--or, indeed, what her mission is--are altogether remarkable: despite being the work of a lowly Lieutenant, the entire project is slapped with Top Secret labels so thick that even the C.O. of Task Force 38 isn't aware of it.

Character Developed and Originated By: M. Blais