Fox Face

"This world overflows with the ghosts of the monsters you've slain. The gate of eternal darkness was closed until now, you see...this woman is causing it to open! The ghosts sealed inside the darkest depths of your heart... they call to me, boy. And they demand that I devour your very soul!"

- Fox Face explaining his reason for being to Yuri.

Fox Face is a main antagonist within the video game Shadow Hearts. He stalks the hero through-out the game and though not part of the forces the heroes face that threaten the world he is the personal antagonist of Yuri, the main protagonist, and only Yuri. His actions however eventually lead to the heroine, Alice,'s troubles and the results of his actions will take their toll even in the sequel game Shadow Hearts Covenant.

Yuri, being a Harmonixer, absorbed the souls of demons and monsters he killed into his body and grew stronger from their collective souls able to transform his body into monstrous forms that were manifestations of their power. However the Four Masks, the four oldest souls; anger, hate and resentment of Yuri summoned Fox Face to reap Yuri's soul and drive him permanently insane and an empty shell for them to manipulate from within his own body.

Fox Face was summoned from the depths of Yuri's heart and created from his childhood memories. His overcoat, hair style and fighting style are that of Yuri's father and even wearing the child-hood mask Yuri once owned Yuri did not need to see his face to know it was his father's spirit come on the demon spirit's behalf.

In his youth Yuri rarely saw his father, who was a special forces member of the Japanese military and like Yuri a harmonixer as well. As a result of his father's absences Yuri began to resent him but grew very close with his mother. Yuri's father's tussles with the sage Dehuai, earned the wrath of the mad taoist and one night Dehuai sent his demon-servants to kill Yuri and his mother. Yuri's mother gave her life to protect Yuri and the trauma of seeing her die in frount of him set off Yuri's powers at a young age. Ever since that night Yuri hated himself for not being strong enough to protect his mother almost as much as he hated his father for not only frequently abandoning his family but for attracting the wrath of demons upon him and his mother and not being there to protect them when they both needed it the most. It was all this built up childhood fear and hate that went into summoning Fox Face as the reaper of Yuri's soul when the demon souls demanded vengence on their slayer.

Over the course of the game as Yuri defeats more and more monsters he gains Malice in several increments. As the Malice becomes stronger and stronger the amulet around Yuri's neck changes colors. If Yuri does not go into his heart to fight the Malice manifested in his heart before the amulet went from a calm blue to a blood red the Malice would manfested would summon Fox Face himself who would randomly and routinely appear in the real world and attack Yuri. Fox Face is both a tough opponent and even if beaten he will keep reappearing, so the player is encouraged to destroy the Malice manfested before the amulet around Yuri's neck turns red and Fox Face starts popping up at random.

When Yuri decides to absorb Dehuai's harbinger the Seraphic Radiance, a manifestation of nature's wrath, he manages to contain the beast within his body and keep it from taking most of it's wrath out on the entire human race but the Seraphic Radiance's Malice pushes Yuri over the edge and he loses himself to the demons in his heart and flies off in the Seraphic Radiance's tranformed state of his body.

As Yuri's friends leave Asia and journey into Europe to find him and chase down Dehuai's sponsor, a man calling himself "Roger Bacon", they will run into a vampire named Keith Valentine who notes that a deranged young man who could transform into a monster crashed into one of his towers and was now living there. Realizing it was Yuri the team goes to reuntite with their friend, but when found Yuri is completely insane, the only coherent thoughts he retains are that of his younger self who thinks the party are the demons ready to attack his mom. After fighting and subduing Yuri, Alice, Yuri's love intrest and a holy mage enter's Yuri's heart to try to bring him back. While in Yuri's heart she meets the Four Masks and asks them to free him. She finally convinces them to let Yuri have a fighting chance at regaining his soul if in exchange she give up her's when the time was right. Alice agreed to the demons' terms and is allowed into the deepest part of Yuri's heart to retrieve his soul if she can get it back from Fox Face.

When Alices get's to the deepest part of Yuri's heart she sees Fox Face is making Yuri's delusioned soul dig it's own grave for him. Once Fox Face smacks aside Alice Yuri get's protective of her, thinking he is his ten year old self, Fox Face is his father and Alice is his mother and decides to fight his "father" for hitting his mother. This is Yuri's final fight with Fox Face one that Alice is able to help him overcome this time. Once beaten Fox Face's mask falls off and to pieces and reveals Fox Face's true face; not that of Yuri's father as he thought it was but in fact his own face. Fox Face is revealed to be Yuri's hatred of himself and his own weakness, the thing he truely blamed for his mother's death, his father's coat was just a camouflage.

Powers and Ablilities
Fox Face has all the same basic skills as Yuri, he can use a mixed martal-arts kickboxing style of fighting, uses threes combo attack motions and can use Fusion ablities to transform into Yuri's alterante forms, while in a certain form Yuri can not choose to turn into the same one Fox Face is using, so when the game first starts and there is only one Fusion available this can result in Yuri being stuck in human form the entire fight. In addtion to having Yuri's skills Fox Face can lower Yuri's sanity points which prevent him from transforming easily without going beserk in the process. If Yuri does not take a turn out to restore his sanity-points with one of the purity items in his inventory the player will lose complete control of Yuri so Fox Face is always a few moves ahead of Yuri who needs to take nearly every other turn out to collect himself. Fox Face appears and disappears at will once Yuri's Malice has turned his amulet blood red and can teleport into even a non-aggressive area at will to attack Yuri seemingly out of nowhere.

Personality
Fox Face is sadistic and domineering. He takes great pleasure in Yuri's fear, pain, confusion and despair. He refers to himself as a grim reaper and though he was brought forth by the Four Masks of the demon souls in Yuri's heart he seems to have his own will seperate from them and is just called forth on their behalf but not their puppet. When defeated for good he seems to accept his fate as Yuri is no longer weak and thus his self-loathing that went into Fox Face's reason for being is completely unneeded.