Tomoko

Tomoko
Biographical information
Real name	Tomoko
Status	Alive
Species	Kitsune (Fable)
Gender	Female
Occupation	Yakuza leader
Affiliation	Yakuza
Homeland	The Hidden Kingdom
Appearances
First issue	Fairest #8 — "The Hidden Kingdom Chapter One: Big in Japan"
Last issue	Fairest #13 — "The Hidden Kingdom Chapter Six: The Hundred Demons Night Parade"

Tomoko is a kitsune, a shapeshifting Fable fox creature, who holds power as a Yakuza leader and head of a secret Fable community in Tokyo, Japan. She is also Rapunzel's former lover. She debuts in Fairest #8 — "The Hidden Kingdom Chapter One: Big in Japan."

History

Meeting Rapunzel

Tomoko and her former lover, Rapunzel

Tomoko was a kitsune who was part of the local Emperor's court in the Hidden Kingdom, the Homelands version of Japan. She kept her soul outside her body in the foxfire that burned beside her bed. Nine hundred years ago, Rapunzel had planned to die at sea, but instead was found by the citizens of the Hidden Kingdom and was welcomed into the Celestial Palace by the Emperor. Soon after arriving, she met Tomoko, and felt that the two of them were destined to fall in love. Tomoko and Rapunzel had a passionate love affair and Rapunzel surrendered to the kitsune woman's bite and sex.

Exile

However, the Shogun, Ryogan, had begun to bend the Emperor's ear to his puritanical beliefs, and the Emperor was soon convinced of his plan to exile all of the non-human residents, the so-called yokai, form the palace. First, he exiled the Tanuki, then the Kappa. Eventually, they came for Tomoko's foxfire. Her true nature as a fox-woman was revealed, and she too was exiled. As Tomoko was escorted out, Rapunzel promised to get the foxfire back.

After Tomoko was taken away, Ryogan began using her foxfire to enforce his will and influence the Emperor to suit his interests. Meanwhile, Rapunzel travelled to the forests of the Hidden Kingdom, seeking out the hideaway of those yokai who were exiled, including Tomoko. Her former lover was sick, requiring her foxfire for her continued survival. She tasked Rapunzel with finding it in Ryogan's safe, which was protected by a puzzle lock. The plan had hinged on using the courtesan Mayumi to get close to Ryogan and get the foxfire herself, but overcome by depression at her disfigurement at his hands, she committed seppuku, a ritualistic suicide, even though she lived on as a ghost.

Tomoko's nature is revealed to the court

As an alteration to the plan, Rapunzel returned to the palace and drugged Ryogan, allowing her to sneak into his chambers and attempt to open the safe. Unfortunately, she could not solve its puzzle. Ryogan awoke and found her, beating her into submission and then throwing her battered body into a nearby well. Rapunzel was able to escape the well by coughing up bezoars from her stomach and climbed up and killed Ryogan by choking him to death with her own hair.

Meanwhile, the ghost of Mayumi searched out Tomoko and the other Yokai, bringing her the foxfire that she stole from the traitorous general Ryogan's safe. The Celestial Palace had been destroyed by the Adversary's forces, who were secretly in league with Ryogan. Mayumi lied that it had been Tomoko's lover Rapunzel who caused most of the destruction; that she had betrayed them.

Tomoko, meanwhile, led her people to to a gateway to the mundane world, where they emerged in modern day Japan in the middle of World War II. Following the war, there were food shortages, and though Tomoko had magic thanks to her foxfire, she had no means of getting them food besides black marketeering. That transitioned into entering the Yakuza, and she soon became a powerful leader within it. She did what she thought she had to do to survive, but some disagreed — the Kappa Katagiri included. The group eventually formed a hidden Fable community in Tokyo.

Reunited with Rapunzel

Decades later, in the twenty-first century, Rapunzel travels to Japan with Joel Crow and Jack Horner after receiving a mysterious message from Katagiri. However, he is shot in the street by Mayumi before they have a chance to talk. Fortunately, a woman drives up to rescue Rapunzel and her friends: Tomoko. Rapunzel is surprised to see her former lover alive, since the Adversary closed off the gate to the Homelands. Tomoko warns that Rapunzel shouldn't have returned. She has arrived in the middle of a war, and once again, she is at the heart of it.

Tomoko is now the proprietress of the Celestial Entertainment Group, something of a front for her role as a Yakuza Obadan. The upstairs apartments of her building have been designated for Japan's Fables, its own version of Fabletown. Tomoko's Yakuza empire pays for the safe-housing of all Japanese fables, and though Rapunzel disapproves, she accepts it. She wonders whether it was Tomoko who sent the message about her children, but when she asks, Tomoko seems annoyed, explaining that Katagiri sent the origami birds to lure Rapunzel to Japan as a pawn in his plan to destroy everything that she has built.

Tomoko holding Jack Horner captive

Katagiri survives the gunshot and curses Tomoko for leading Rapunzel astray. It is only with the Fable woman's help that they can get back to the Homelands, by reuniting her with her bezoars. However, Tomoko will not allow that, because it would jeopardize her Yakuza empire. This is why she has sent Mayumi to stop Katagiri and his co-conspirators.

At her private apartments, Rapunzel tries to steel herself against Tomoko's temptations to merely stay with her and give up the search for Rapunzel's lost children and the old gate back to the Homelands. She and Joel make love. Meanwhile, Jack breaks into the penthouse floor of the building, looking for something worth stealing, and his eye is caught by Tomoko's foxfire. She appears, and suggests that he turn his attention to the money in her safe instead, as she drops her robe to the floor, naked. At first, Jack thinks they're going to have sex, but she explains that she is going to eat him.

The act of sex with Joel causes Rapunzel's hair to grow exceptionally long, and they use her long hair to escape the building unnoticed. Tomoko would never simply let them walk out. Meanwhile, Tomoko feeds on Jack's neck. Mayumi, meanwhile, decapitates Katagiri — his second death since Rapunzel arrived. She returns to Tomoko with the head, as Tomoko herself has just killed Jack Horner — or rather, thought she had, until he suddenly sputters to life. Before Tomoko can decide what to do with him, news comes of Rapunzel's escape, and she sends Mayumi to prevent her from getting to the gate to the Homelands.

Meanwhile, at Tomoko's CEG building, she is annoyed to see that Bigby Wolf and Frau Totenkinder have come, interrupting her enjoyment of draining Jack Horner of his blood. Quietly, Neko, a cat loyal to Katagiri, sneaks into her chambers and steals Katagiri's severed head back, causing a ruckus. Angrily, Tomoko leaves a lackey to watch Jack while she chases after the cat. Bigby and Totenkinder spot the cat, and realize that the man they are looking for, the one who sent them thousands of invitational paper cranes, is on his way out the door. Bigby catches up to the cat and hustles it into the car, making an escape. Further annoyed, Tomoko promises to kill all of her enemies, later.

After returning Katagiri's head to his body, the Kappa revives and explains how Tomoko led the yokai into the world of mundies. He had sent out messages every week for years, hoping he might reach Rapunzel, one day. It had finally worked — eventually. Totenkinder warns that their help will come at a price; they will require the foxfire. Katagiri has no use for it, and agrees. Jack, meanwhile, having easily outsmarted his captor, pulls a gun on Tomoko when she returns to her room, but he soon discovers that he is in her thrall, and can't pull the trigger. Dragging him outside, she warns that his friends will have to be ready, as she has assembled an army, and war is coming.

Tomoko wielding her foxfire in battle

Fable civil war

Tomoko prepares for war with Katagiri. Having long thought that Rapunzel was responsible for the destruction of the kingdom she once called home, Tomoko now seeks a way to neutralize Rapunzel's bezoars, which the latter used to escape the well back in the Hidden Kingdom. Jack Horner, under her thrall, offers to help — so long as she has enough cleaning products. Meanwhile, Katagiri summons and leads his own army of yokai.

Rapunzel returns to the CEG building to find that it is a war zone, where Tomoko commands her Yakuza soldiers against the yokai she believes are traitors. Bigby and Totenkinder come up with a strategy to get their hands on Tomoko's foxfire in the meantime. Calling up to Tomoko, Rapunzel warns of what her bezoars can do, and demands that she stand down. With contempt, Tomoko asks whether Rapunzel intends to tear her home apart again. Rapunzel responds that it was Ryogan, not her, who betrayed Tomoko in the Hidden Kingdom. He had killed the residents of the castle and opened the gate for the Adversary's army. She had been dumped down a well and buried under the corpses of those slaughtered, and the experience drove her mad, and spawned the bezoars that now surround her — but she has them under control, now. They could all still go back.

Tomoko and Rapunzel say goodbye

Hearing this, Tomoko's army attempts to give up, but Tomoko uses her foxfire to force them to fight. Rapunzel readies her bezoars for attack, but Tomoko calls down that she knows her secret. From the top of the CEG building, a vat of bleach is poured down on Rapunzel, blinding her and knocking her bezoars to the ground. In the meantime, a winged yokai flies over Tomoko's head as Jack steals the foxfire from her hands and escapes with the winged soldier's help, knowing that Tomoko will die without it. As Bigby reaches the roof, Mayumi pulls Tomoko through a mirror to escape. Jack, meanwhile, loses his grip on the foxfire, requiring Joel to become a crow and catch it. In the process, though, one of Tomoko's men shoots him down, and he returns to human form, plummeting to the earth with the foxfire in his arms. However, Joel lands safely — though wounded — in a cushion of her ever-growing hair.

Afterwards, all of the Japanese yokai return to the Hidden Kingdom, intending to close the gate behind them forever. Before they leave, though, the cat mentions to Joel that Rapunzel does love him — though she loves Tomoko more. Rapunzel is dragged through a mirror by Mayumi to Tomoko's side. From the bundle of hair on her head, Rapunzel retrieves the foxfire, keeping her promise to get it back for her — centuries late. They kiss, and Tomoko begs her to stay, to let her come looking for Rapunzel's lost twin daughters with her. Sadly, Rapunzel admits that she can't do it, because she has responsibilities to Joel.

Totenkinder gives Joel a potion which she promises will help protect Rapunzel from herself — by making her forget about the Hidden Kingdom, Tomoko, and her daughters. Joel and Rapunzel board the plane back to Fabletown and Joel sneaks the potion he was given into Rapunzel's water.

Physical appearance

In her kitsune form, Tomoko appears as a hybrid creature with a human body and a fox's head. When she takes human shape, she looks like a beautiful Japanese woman with long red hair. Even then, she always has many bushy tails. When she was expelled from the Celestial Palace, she had three fox tails; by the time she was reunited with Rapunzel, that number had increased to six, and intricate tattoos covered most of her human skin. She also has the ability to take on the mixed form of human body paired with fox ears. Her foxfire, her soul, takes the form of a glowing orange orb.

Appearances

Fairest

• Fairest #8 (first appearance)
• Fairest #9
• Fairest #10
• Fairest #11
• Fairest #12
• Fairest #13