Uta Bloody Valentine

"The Rabbit! The White Rabbit! Hip-hop, die! Hip-hop, die! She's coming to kill me, Rum! She's coming to kill everyone! Big white ears can hear your fear! Hip-hop Die! Die! Die!"

- Yuichi Nakahara Uta Bloody Valentine, more commonly known as "The White Rabbit," is one of the later villains of the Funcom MMORPG ''The Secret World. ''Perpetually dressed in an oversized bunny mask and a bloodstained schoolgirl costume, she currently operates in Tokyo as a professional assassin, remaining a consistent looming threat to both the players and their allies from Issue #9 onwards, somehow remaining one step ahead of even the most proficient of Secret Worlders; even the Oni mercenaries of the House In Exile have difficulty keeping up with her.

For most of the game, her true nature can only be guessed at even by the experts among the Big Three factions, given that she does not remove her mask at any point, nor does she ever speak. What is certain is that she appears to be in the business of picking off roaming hit-squads from the House In Exile, Orochi operatives gone AWOL, and - most recently, members of the Fear Nothing Foundation.

However, it's not until the very end of Issue #11 that it becomes clear that the White Rabbit isn't a lone killer at all, but a coordinated team of three identical assassins all known by the name of Uta Bloody Valentine, all sharing more or less the same personality.

Appearance
All three Uta Bloody Valentines dress in the same costume: a giant cartoon rabbit-head mask; a Japanese schoolgirl's outfit, complete with red bow, tattered skirt, and a torn blazer usually covered in the blood of recent victims; and a pair of hand-wrappings formed from bandages, also heavily bloodstained. None of the three show any personal modification or variation in this single design, further enforcing the idea that these assassins are virtually the same person. Indeed, the only notable difference between the three appears in their chosen fighting style: one prefers the traditional use of a katana; the other dual-wields her swords; and one makes almost exclusive use of firearms, resorting to a minigun in combat with the player.

In her lore entry, the Bees note that the Utas are no stranger to wearing unusual costumes: over the course of their careers, all three of them have made use of specific masks and outfits, ranging from traditional Noh masks to Mickey Mouse masks.

Personality
Though none of the three give any direct indication of their characters - or character, as the case may be - numerous hints as to their personality are provided over the course of Issues #9 through to #11: during the mission "Fierce Competition," Inbeda's Mask of Kan'ami studies the emotional trails left around her past victims, and finds that the killer herself leaves next to no trace - indicating that the three rarely feel strong emotions. However, after Kan'ami locates the bodies of two lovers who committed suicide before the assassins could reach them, he also locates an additional trail indicating a mixture of envy and amusement, suggesting that the suicide pact did actually stir something in the otherwise heartless assassin.

Over the course of Issue #10, Uta occasionally exhibits playful, almost sadistic behavior when dealing with her targets and enemies: after easily killing her way through the ranks of the Morninglight staff, she leaves one survivor alive to panic over what to do next, toying with him; and when the survivor inevitably charges her, she teleports directly in front of him, allowing him to accidentally impale himself on her sword. Then, she goes to the trouble of silently pointing out the addresses of the surviving Morninglight staff to the players, before tapping her wrist - in other words, directly challenging the players to a race for her remaining targets. Later, after dropping a cargo container on players as they progress through the docks, she repeats the wrist tapping gesture once again - a mocking indication that players are running out of time.

However, regardless of their habit of toying with their targets, the Utas appear to at least have some degree of honor: during their confrontation at the end of Issue #10, Uta allows the players to conclude their business with Naonomi Tanaka and leave unharmed, exchanging respectful bows as the two of them depart.

History
The woman who eventually became the Uta Bloody Valentine trio was born in a rare and supernatural occurrence of embryonic cannibalism: she was originally one of a trio, but over the course of their gestation in the womb, one of the triplets essentially absorbed the other two. The process of giving birth killed Uta's mother, and her father abandoned her to the mental asylums when her many mental problems began to manifest: diagnosed as a violent schizophrenic with multiple personalities, doctors kept her under close observation at all times - only to be continuously baffled time and again by her inexplicable ability to escape her restraints.

Unknown to all but a few, the cannibalism of her sisters had infused the child with two additional souls: her "multiple personalities" were really the half-assimilated aspects of her siblings' minds struggling to make their presence felt, and her supposed schizophrenic delusions were simply the result of Uta's mind being opened to the Secret World from birth; she could see things nobody else could see, and her prenatal siblicide had infused her with powerful blood magic. With this innate grasp of thaumaturgy, she regularly broke out of the asylum and prowled the streets of the Secret World, hunting and killing rare magical creatures - before either returning to the asylum or being recaptured.

Then one day, she received an unusual visitor: Lilith, the legendary Mother of Monsters.

Trivia

 * Uta Bloody Valentine is one of many references to Alice In Wonderland made over the course of Issue #9, naturally being a stand in for the White Rabbit.