Origin: New York City, New York

Early Life

Tess didn’t grow up dreaming of fame, she grew up craving answers.

Raised in a working-class household, Tess learned early how quickly stories get buried when no one powerful wants them told. Her father worked city contracts and vanished from her life after being tied to a corruption scandal that never quite made sense. Official reports said one thing. Street whispers said another. No one ever followed up.

That silence stuck with her.

By her late teens, Tess had one obsession: truth doesn’t protect itself, someone has to fight for it.

Finding Her Voice

Tess paid her way through journalism school doing internships, night shifts, and freelance writing under a dozen aliases. She wasn’t flashy, she was thorough. The kind of reporter who triple-checked sources, recorded everything, and never forgot a name.

Her big break didn’t come from a viral story.
It came from an uncomfortable one.

She uncovered a pattern of hush money payments tied to a local business empire. The story barely aired, but the fallout behind the scenes was explosive. Editors noticed. Politicians noticed. People who didn’t want her digging noticed too.

That’s when Weazel News offered her a desk.

Weazel News Rise

Tess climbed fast, not because she played politics, but because she understood them.

She became known for asking questions others wouldn’t, staying calm while chaos unfolded live, reading between official statements, and exposing the gaps.

Her on-camera presence is sharp and composed, but her real power is off-screen. Tess cultivates sources quietly: first responders, clerks, lawyers, gang affiliates, government staffers, people who trust her not to burn them.

She doesn’t exaggerate. She doesn’t speculate. She lets the facts ruin people on their own.

Public Persona vs Reality

On camera, Tess is the city’s steady voice.
Measured. Professional. Untouchable.

Off camera?
She’s meticulous, guarded, and rarely surprised. She keeps burner phones. Backup drives. Copies of copies. Tess doesn’t trust systems, she trusts receipts.

She believes Weazel News isn’t about being liked. It’s about being recorded. Because history remembers what gets filmed.

Motivation

Tess isn’t chasing fame, she’s chasing accountability.

She wants criminals exposed, corrupt officials nervous, and the city just a little harder to lie in. She knows she’s walking a line, between reporting and becoming a target, but she accepts that trade.

If something happens to her?
The story’s already written. And it’s already scheduled to air.

Toni Marie Collins was born and raised in the rougher corners of Boston, where loyalty meant everything and life had a way of hardening people early.

Growing up, Toni always carried a stubborn streak mixed with a soft heart she tried hard to hide. By the time she reached freshman year of high school, she met Arthur Asher, the boy who would unknowingly shape the rest of her life. 

Arthur was her first real love. The kind that felt endless when you’re young. They spent every second they could together through their early teenage years, surviving school drama, family struggles, and the chaos of growing up in a city that never slowed down.

But life changed fast.

At only thirteen years old, Toni discovered she was pregnant.

Terrified of what people would think, scared of disappointing her family, and even more afraid of ruining Arthur’s future, Toni hid the pregnancy from everyone, including Arthur himself. She buried the truth beneath oversized hoodies, lies, and distance. Before the school year even ended, her family abruptly moved away from Boston. Toni never got the chance, or the courage, to say goodbye.

To Arthur, she simply disappeared, but to her, she was protecting the one she loved.

Months later, Toni gave birth to a baby boy. The moment she held him, she knew there was only one name that fit him, Leo. 

As Leo grew, Toni saw more and more of Arthur in him. The same eyes. The same stubborn attitude. The same crooked smile that used to make her weak in the knees back in school. Every laugh from Leo became a reminder of the life she ran from. She traveled from town to town, doing whatever jobs she could to survive and raise her son alone. Diners, gas stations, bars, warehouses, if it paid enough to keep a roof over their heads, Toni worked it. Still, Boston never really left her heart.

Five years later, on a cold rainy night, Toni finally returned. With Leo asleep in the backseat and fear twisting in her stomach, she drove through familiar streets until she found Arthur’s old family home. Rain poured down around her as she stood at the front door, Leo in her arms, praying by some miracle he would still be there.

When Arthur opened the door, time seemed to stop.

Older now, harder around the edges, but still unmistakably him. And standing there beside Toni… was the son he never knew he had.

Toni explained everything the best she could through tears and guilt. She told Arthur about a job opportunity that would take her across the country, a chance she couldn’t afford to lose. But she also admitted something even harder, she couldn’t take Leo with her.

With shaking hands, Toni placed Leo into Arthur’s arms. The little boy stared at him with the same Asher eyes staring back. Arthur didn’t know whether to yell, cry, or collapse under the weight of everything he had just learned. But despite the pain, despite the betrayal and the years stolen from him, he took Leo inside. 

For the next five years, Toni and Arthur learned how to become parents together while living separate lives. Leo traveled back and forth across the states, spending time with both of them. Co-parenting wasn’t easy. There were arguments, resentment, sleepless nights, and wounds that never fully healed. But somewhere between airport pickups, late-night phone calls, birthdays, and holidays, the fire between Toni and Arthur never truly died.

What started as forced communication slowly became friendship again. Friendship became trust. And trust slowly rekindled the love they thought they had lost as teenagers.

Then everything changed once more.

After five years, Toni lost the job that had kept her moving across the country.

With nowhere left to run and tired of living half a life away from the people she loved most, she made the decision to come home for good. Toni moved back to Boston.

Not as the scared thirteen-year-old girl who disappeared without a word… But as a woman finally ready to face the life she left behind.

Origin: Tokyo, Japan

Yuto Shin was born into a life that never truly gave him a choice, only a direction. 

He grew up in Tokyo, Japan watching his father move through the world with quiet authority. To outsiders, his father was disciplined, distant, and respectable. To those who knew better, he was Triad, respected, feared, and deeply loyal. Yuto learned early that power didn’t always come from loud violence, but from patience, precision, and reputation. By the time he was fifteen, Yuto made his choice willingly: he joined the Triads, not out of coercion, but out of devotion. He wanted to walk the same path as his father and one day surpass him.

That future was ripped away in blood.

A rival Yakuza faction, looking to destabilize Triad influence, orchestrated an ambush that left Yuto’s father dead. The message was clear: stay in your place. The Triads mourned the loss of a valuable man. Yuto mourned the loss of his anchor. The rage that followed could have consumed him but instead, it sharpened him.

Unlike many who burn out in vengeance, Yuto learned restraint. His mother, still living in Japan, became his last tether to a normal life. Their relationship survived the violence and secrets, not because she approved of his choices, but because she understood them. She had loved a man who lived by the same code. She only asked one thing of Yuto: don’t die chasing ghosts. Yuto promised nothing but he never stopped calling.

By his early twenties, Yuto had become something rare: disciplined, intelligent, and terrifyingly effective. The Triads saw in him not just his father’s legacy, but something more refined, more dangerous. When intelligence surfaced that the Yakuza boss responsible for his father’s murder was maneuvering to establish operations in Los Santos, the decision was made quietly and decisively.

Yuto would go to America.

Officially, he was sent to expand Triad influence overseas. Unofficially, he was a blade pointed directly at the past. At just 23 years old, Yuto arrived in Los Santos with a clean identity, a ruthless mandate, and a long memory.

The city tested him.

Los Santos was louder, messier, and more chaotic than anything Japan had prepared him for. Power shifted fast. Alliances were fragile. Violence was public. But where others struggled to adapt, Yuto thrived. He built his own Triad branch piece by piece, recruiting loyal companions who respected competence over ego, silence over spectacle. He ruled not through fear alone, but through consistency. Betrayal was rare. Mistakes were not forgiven twice.

Yuto Shin does not chase revenge blindly. He builds. He waits. He learns. And somewhere in Los Santos, a Yakuza boss believes the past is buried, unaware that the son of the man he murdered now controls a growing shadow beneath the city’s neon lights.

Yuto isn’t just following in his father’s footsteps anymore. He’s carving his own path, one that ends with balance, blood, or both.