Emir Parkreiner

Emir Parkreiner
kana	エミーア・パックライナ
romaji	Emiia Pakkuraina
Also known as	Garcian Smith, the Bloody Heartland
Age	13 years old (original) 33 years old (as Garcian)
Nationality	American
Occupation	Assassin
Weapon	Golden Gun
Special abilities	Third eye, resurrection
First appearance	killer7 (2005)
Voiced by	13 - "N/A" 33 - Greg Eagles

Emir Parkreiner is a character in killer7. Although he does not reveal himself until very late into the game, he is actually the original personality into which the killer7, one iteration of Harman Smith himself, the Remnant Psyches and possibly others have been absorbed. He can therefore be said to be the game's true main protagonist, as in the act of controlling any of the personalities the player is actually controlling Emir. The current physical form that Emir adopts as that of his persona is Garcian Smith.

Appearance and Personality

Events early on in Emir's life have left him with psychopathic murderous intent. Near the end of Target05 Smile Part 2, where Emir makes his first and only physical appearance until Lion, Emir is seen wearing a red dress shirt with black pants and brown shoes. In addition, he has brown eyes and a hairstyle similar to Garcian's (Since they are one and the same).

When Emir returns in Lion, within Garcian's body, he is seen wearing a dark purple suit with a light blue dress shirt and black tie. His eyes also are now bright green, which are said to be "the eyes of the devil" (According to Hand in Killer7).His personality during Lion, despite using the same battle voice clips that his Garcian persona, is left ambiguous (or up to player interpretation based on the ending) due to being silent during cutscenes.

Story

Emir's backstory is muddled with government coverups and multiple identities. The summary below is merely one attempt at piecing the information given from both killer7 and Hand in killer7 together, both of which contradict themselves and each other.

Emir was born on November 2, 1942. He was enrolled in Coburn Elementary School, which provided him with the training and opportunity to carry out the tasks he was bred for. However, he gradually became mentally unbalanced, and started killing off various of the institution's officials and employees. At the age of 13, Emir's madness culminated in a murderous rampage in which he killed every person on campus, including Holbert, a government detective dispatched to investigate the strange occurrences at the school, and its principal, an avatar of Harman Smith.

From here Emir gravitated towards the United States government as a backlash against his Japanese "creators" and became a professional assassin, eventually being hired to take on the increasingly dangerous "killer7" group directed by another Harman avatar and lead by former police officer^[source?] Dan Smith. Emir ambushed the Smith Syndicate at the Hotel Union in Philadelphia, killing each of them in turn before confronting that Harman on the top floor. Embracing the guilt of all the deaths he caused, Emir retreated to the roof and committed suicide in an attempt to escape his suffering. Harman arrived soon after an absorbed Emir's persona. With his new identity as Garcian Smith, leader of the killer7 assassination group, he instinctively returned to the government and worked as its loyal operative for many years.

Garcian plays Russian Roulette with Benjamin Keane at Coburn Elementary School.

When the events of Kun Lan's Heaven Smile crisis culminate in Mills's assassination and subsequent replacement, Garcian, having learned too much about the conspiracy to let it go, goes rogue, his independent research leading him back to Coburn Elementary School. Here, he learns of a madman named Emir Parkreiner without realizing it was himself, accesses the school's safe and finds Harman's corpse (which re-opens his third eye), and then confronts Benjamin Keane and Greg Nightmare, two critical figures in the shadow administration that runs the United States government under the front of the Ministry of Education. After learning the truth in a game of Russian Roulette with Benjamin Keane (which Garcian wins) and defeating Greg Nightmare in the school gym, Garcian has his other six operative personalities permanently obliterated by Black Smiles. He then recovers the Golden Gun, the weapon he used as Emir, and uses it to defeat the final Black Smile.

Using the information he uncovered at the school, Garcian proceeds to the Hotel Union one last time, where he is perplexed to hear from manager Edo Macalister that he has been there before. He then travels around each floor of the hotel once again, to where he had collected the Soul Shells on his previous, government-contracted visit; in each room he recovers a memory of himself killing off each member of the killer7 in turn. At the top he finds a residual self-image of child Emir, whom he promptly shoots in his third eye, dissipating him; he then, for the first time, opens the black case he has been carrying around with him for the entire course of the story, finding that it contains the weapons of each of the other killer7 members, and demonstrating to him that he was individually the entire organization all along. He suffers a temporary nervous breakdown at this discovery, but as a result, his true persona of Emir reasserts itself.

Now disenfranchised, Emir travels to Battleship Island, the location at which he always found himself after having passed beyond the Vinculum Gate. Battleship Island is a man-made superstructure in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, halfway between the United States and Japan, just off the intercontinental freeway. Although his scanning ability was lost when he used the Vision Ring as a key to enter the Coburn safe, he is still able to target the Heaven Smiles that attack him using his third eye. At the bottom of the structure he encounters sub-antagonist and Prime Minister of Japan Kenjiro Matsuoka, who offers him the choice of either killing him and cause the United States to emerge as the undisputed global power (in turn, announcing war against the rest of the world) and subjugate the rest of the world, or allowing him to survive and allowing Japan to destroy the United States and "unite the world under Divine rule" (conquer the planet through forcible military action). The player is then asked to make Emir's choice, which results in one of two endings playing shortly thereafter.

After getting past Matsuoka, either by killing him or having him stand aside, Emir finds that the door he was guarding leads to his own trailerhouse, where he proceeds to the basement and finds the Last Smile, who may or may not be Iwazaru, and kills him and revealing the face of Kun Lan. The ending then plays, depicting either a United States global takeover or the issuance of a Japanese blitzkrieg.

Other iterations

When Garcian and Edo speak at the Hotel Union, Edo mentions not only that they've encountered each other before and that he remembers every guest at the Hotel Union, but also that he remembers his case. Although this is usually believed to be a reference to his previous visit in the form of Emir, in which he murdered the original killer7, and his pointing to the case foreshadowing of the revelation Garcian will later meet when he reaches the roof much later, some fans believe that this is evidence of some sort of connection with Sumio Mondo. It should be noted that Edo likely didn't see Garcian at the date of the massacre either, as Kevin Smith was the bellhop at the time.

There is also some measure of possibility that the character Ermen Palmer from No More Heroes may be another incarnation of Emir. Though this character wields a beam katana, he, too, is an assassin, and bears more than a passing resemblance to Emir.

Powers and abilities

Emir's abilities are mainly derived from his third eye, which is what allows him to break others to his will and absorb their personae into himself. He is then able to assume their physical forms at will, acquiring all of their associated skills in the process. Over time, this has allowed him to accrue a wide range of tools that allow him to navigate nearly any problem. He also seems to be able to subjugate personae but allow them to keep their form, thus giving him active physical agents in the world.

His other major power is resurrection, though he only ever seems to use it in the form of Garcian.

The third eye also seems to give him limited capacities of literal vision powers, namely being able to lock onto Heaven Smiles when he can't even see them. These powers are further bolstered by the Vision Ring (until he loses it) and other rings, such as the Power Ring, which increases the damage dealt by the Syndicate's weapons.

Trivia

• As an agent of the Japanese, Emir/Garcian has taken on many Japanese habits, such as Japanese-style bowing and other such effects; his attempt to kill himself in repentance may be a throwback to ancient Japanese ritual suicide. It is also likely the reason his power manifests itself as a "third eye" in particular, this concept being much more known to the Japanese than to Westerners.
• Dissociative Identity, one of the tracks on the killer7 Original Soundtrack, is named after Emir's psychological state.
• Emir's confrontation and subsequent reconciliation with his previous identity ties killer7 in with one of the core tenants of Kill the Past.

Etymology

• Emir is a miss-spelling of the Arabic word "Amir" which refers to a Prince or such royal figure.
• In Norse mythology, Ymir was the forebearer of the frost giants, killed by the god Odin and his two brothers; his body was then used to create the universe.