Name: Birra Romano (technically Birra Lucidostella)
Personality: Birra is the epitome of a laid-back young man, the polar opposite of his long-lost brother. If he had the choice, he would spend every day sleeping in, relaxing, playing music, going out in the evening, and enjoying life while it lasts. Birra’s idea of fun never involved risky things like what Caffe gets up to, either. He’d prefer to go to the beach, or an amusement park, or relax with a nice apple cider and a few hours on the PS2. While he doesn’t shirk his responsibilities, he is, at the end of the day, out to maximize his fun. He’s good at making friends, though over the years he’s lost quite a few. Whether due to falling out of touch, disagreements, or personality clashes, few other human beings have been permanent fixtures in his life than his mother. And, coupled with his floundering music career, he can’t help but feel that it was his fault. He’s really quite lonely, to be honest.
Since his Stand spontaneously manifested, Birra’s life has been turned upside down. He’s the brother of a Viscount? He has a weird ghost of a guitar pick with a face on it that can attach to things? He gets to live in a fucking
manor?! While he’s grateful to Caffe for helping him and his mother so much, even seeing past his illegitimacy--Caffe has certainly gone a bit…
too fast. He’s only known his brother for a month, yet his Caffe is acting as if they’ve known each other their whole lives! At the same time, he’s somewhat worried that he’ll fall out with Caffe somehow, like he did with his other friends, given that his brother is now the one financially responsible for him and his mother, though he does want to get a job.
Though frankly, he can’t blame Caffe for his overzealous attitude. He definitely noticed that Caffe lives with just Birra, his mother, and the servants, and hasn’t talked about any other family. Birra can connect the dots, and the picture he thinks he they depict is one too terrifying to think of.
However, the truth is, beneath Birra's chill exterior lies an explosive temper. It takes a
lot to push Birra over the edge, and it doesn't happen very often, but when it does, people lose teeth, as those thugs who tried to rob him found out the hard way when they got a Stand-enhanced guitar across the face. And with the upcoming battles he'll get involved in, he'll end up in that state a lot more often.
Height and Weight: 5’6” and 145 pounds
Gender: Male
Backstory: Birra Romano grew up in a cheap apartment in a relatively poor section of Florence to an American mother, Acqua Romano, never knowing who his father was. Life was comfortable, if not as good as it could be. He went to school, got good grades, and had a talent for music from an early age, taking a shine to the guitar. However, his mother had to be gone frequently to earn a living, and Birra had to take care of himself most of the time, which, coupled with something in her past that Acqua would never talk about, always made her seem distant to the young Birra.
As Birra moved through the school system, he rotated through groups of friends, constantly losing touch or falling out with one friend before finding another. It seemed he could make friends easily, but could never really keep them, leading to him feeling not only lonely, but as if it was his fault. He attempted to combat this by trying to form several bands in high school, but nearly all of them collapsed for one reason or another, be it creative differences or the bandmates not having time to meet regularly anymore. Every time, it felt like a natural and well-handled breakup, but for Birra, it was more of the same.
When he went to college for music at a prestigious Florence university, he decided to throw all idea of permanent friendships to the wayside and strike out on his own, becoming a solo street musician and performing gigs at bars and other venues whenever he got the opportunity.
Of course, putting yourself constantly out on the streets
does pose some risks, and Birra found that out one weekend afternoon while performing in a park. It was a good day for business, and his tip bucket was practically overflowing. Three thugs saw this and decided to take advantage of it, walking up to him. They pulled concealed knives and demanded he fork over all the money in his tip bucket. And his wallet. And his phone. And his precious guitar.
He didn’t know what came over him, but he bashed the three of them in the face with one swing of the guitar, knocking them out before they could react. And the dinky acoustic-electric guitar somehow didn’t break from the impact. It was only after the fact that he saw a little green guitar-pick-like alien-thing grafted onto the guitar. Figuring it was a hallucination and resolving to get that checked out when he had a chance, he waited for the police to arrive and let them take the thugs away.
The police were somewhat skeptical that the scrawny Birra was capable of beating up three hardened criminals, all armed with knives, with nothing but an acoustic guitar. They even wondered if he might have had some kind of Mafia connections that might have protected him, but his story was backed up by no less than ten bystanders, as the thugs had not been particularly discreet.
He had just gotten outside his apartment building that evening and was about to head inside when a stranger approached him, and after an introduction, claimed to be his long-lost brother from the noble Lucidostella family. Birra was at first incredibly suspicious of this stranger’s wild story, but the man pulled out a comprehensive genealogy that showed that his father had an affair with an American woman...,named Acqua Romano.
And that was that. The man, Caffe Lucidostella, graciously offered to invite Birra and his mother to live in his sprawling manor, and basically fixed all of their financial problems--and Birra’s student debt from his recent graduation--in one fell swoop. Even more incredible, Caffe knew what the strange green alien that had been following Birra was, and tutored him in its use. He’s only been living with Caffe for a month now, but already his life has been turned upside down.
Then, a man named Diavolo approached them, and everything became even more bizarre than it already was.
Appearance:
Stand Name: [Rite of the Exploding Guitar], or REG for short.
Ability: Rite of the Exploding Guitar basically augments people or objects with incredible power. It can fly freely through the air at moderate speeds for a Stand, and latch onto them in a process that is mildly painful. It grafts itself onto the subject’s exterior with a series of legs that resemble electrical contacts on a circuit board. When it is attached, the subject gains insanely-high durability and significantly-improved strength, stamina, and speed equivalent to the Stand’s own stats. Effectively, with REG,
you’re the punchghost now.
It has a secondary ability, known as [Way of the Exploding Guitar], which allows a subject that REG has latched onto to cause an explosive effect on striking a person or object, which can be of varying strength depending on what the host needs, but at most equivalent to about 5 pounds of TNT (the level of a pipe bomb), though REG can potentially create bigger yields with training and development. It can even attach to other Stands, adjusting any stats lower than REG’s to REG’s level with no downsides, and supercharging their abilities. This, however, leaves Birra unable to defend himself. The user can also see--but not hear--through the eyes on its face, giving it semi-decent use for surveillance, scouting, or espionage.
Height: 0’1.811” (30mm)
Obtained through: Natural-born Stand User
Appearance: REG resembles an ornate green guitar pick with a crude humanoid face. Two round eyeballs are visible above a simple oval mouth. When REG is attached to an object or person, golden legs pop out of its back half, grafting themselves onto the target in a way that vaguely resembles a RAM chip on a circuit board.
Stand Cry: GYA! (note: The Stand is not actually punching people when it does that. It just does it whenever its user does a punch barrage or something equivalent)
Punished GN
