Name: Atarah
Title: Has not earned one.
Age: 18
Gender: Female
Allegiance: Hell
Race: Dodo Harpy Demon

Personality: Atarah has three primary loves.
Serah, her one companion and friend, through everything she has been through. Even if Serah never actually says anything and just looks around with her googly eyes. If Serah was at risk, Atarah would be putty in the hands of whoever held Serah. No matter how much Atarah says she wants to be the best, and prove herself, and that she's an independent birb who don't need nobody, especially stupid other harpies, she still couldn't bear to be parted with Serah.

Maximum Effort, a fight's not a real fight unless you're giving it your all! Atarah knows she's not strong enough to be taken seriously by the Nexus, practically nameless. But that's only who she is today. She has faith that she'll burst through her limitations and show the world the power of her effort. She just knows someday she'll be taken seriously, and have a cool title that people will whisper to themselves in fear as she dramatically strides into the room.. Oh, wouldn't that be lovely?

Flight, no matter how much she pretends she's fine how she is and proud of her body, the fact that she can't fly in the skies burns in her heart. She has plenty of nightmares of finally being able to fly, only to suddenly fall.

History: Born and raised in captivity, Atarah was a slave who, unlike the rest of her kin, could not fly to try and escape the harshest punishments of their masters. She could only crawl in the dust and hope it would hide her. When she saw their feared masters, she could not help but feel jealous of the fear they inspired in her? Wasn't she like that? Between her flightlessness and her desire to be like the demons who enslaved them, Atarah wasn't exactly good at making friends with the other harpies, but she made one, Serah. Serah had tasted the freedom of the sky, but had her wings clipped after her first attempt at escape. Together, they tried to survive. But they didn't. Serah died.

Rather than having faith in some stupid male harpy who was supposed to be so great and save them, or some Deva who was supposed to take care of everyone who prayed to her (fat load of good that had done Serah), Atarah was determined to climb her way up in the nexus. She voluntarily joined the "foreign legion" of slaves who were used as cannon fodder in battle. She was not as good as she thought she was. Amidst the broken bodies of the damned, Atarah barely kept her mouth above the river of blood. Machina artilery and weapons had literally materialized out of thin air and light and pounded the slaves into the dirt, to clear the field of those who were not real fighters.

While not as strong or great as she thought she was, she was still stronger than those other slaves by sheer determination and she rose from the corpses after the battle had passed over her. Only to hear a little squeak. Turning her head, she found a little bouncy ball of a demon struggling to keep its head above blood level. It had apparently been shielded from the blasts by the body of an emaciated dragon that had served as a mount for the fortunately ill-fated "sergant" of the slaves. Unable to pass by the only other survivor of the group, Atarah took in the little googly eyed squeeking thing. She presumed it was some kind of demon, as it had demonic energies. And she named it Serah.

When Syphax "rescued" all the harpies by sheer luck, Atarah was enraged. Serah hadn't come with her. Tearing towards the demonic lands as soon as she was back in heaven, Atarah did not stop until she had clawed her way back into hell and found Serah again. She swore they'd never be apart again, and was so sorry that those mean angels had stolen Atarah away from Serah. She'd show those stupid harpies what she thought of anyone who would tear Atarah away from her REAL family.

Powers:

Soft Shadow Style- This "creatively" named style is Atarah's anti-Hard Light and Nanomachine technique. These constructs are machina staples, and Atarah has trained specifically to be be able to punch through them. She sends out a pulse of demonic energy which corrupts nanomachine code, and creates and marks weakpoints in hard light. Upon then hitting with another attack, this style shoots energy through the fracture points of an impact with a weakpoint, disrupting hard light into regular light. Against other stuff, it just lets Atarah know where her targets are after she lets out a pulse.

Serah, the Earthshaker Lance- A tiny little bouncy ball of a demon, Serah is capable of transforming into a earth moving lance, capable of causing localized "earthquakes" (with video game physics), burrowing through the ground with rapid speed, and small scale earth manipulation apart from those specific applications. But most of the time she just nestles in Atarah's cozy chest feathers, as any sort of extended exertion is beyond the baby demon(?).

Rare Earth Skin- Atarah's skin and feathers are pretty brutally tough, and not just physically, but also possessing demonic energy fields that work via corrupted magical magnetics to deflect or diffuse metal and laser based attacks. Unfortunately makes her vulnerable to magnetic fields in return, and she has accidentally deflected herself right off a machina airship when she wasn't paying attention. Just another way in which the Nexus, for all the gifts it has granted her, refuses to let her fly. She developed this power after Serah started nestling in her feathers, and it seems to be getting stronger all the time.

Maximum Effort- Dime a dozen physical boost at the cost of energy/life limit ability. Atarah really wants to win, and she's willing to put her body beyond her limits to achieve that.

To go even Further- Atarah's true power is to able to steal extreme effort. She thrives off people pushing themselves past their limits, including herself, a psychological obsession that has manifested a latent reality warping power. When someone uses an ability that has a significant stamina, reserve, charge up time, or life or what have you cost, such as Maximum Effort, Atarah spontaneously gains stamina/life/excetera equal to half of the resource spent. This doesn't do anything against normal attacks or such, only abilities that truly push someone past their limits. Thanks to how math works, this doubles the duration or power (depending on how Atarah allocates her power) of Maximum Effort. Which could be truly frightening if she was a powerful race instead of a harpy. Instead it just kinda maybe sorta gets her on par.

Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyRK2GI_T7I