Pilot Character SheetName: Terra Laedo
Age: 20
Gender: Female
Appearance:Terra stands at about 5'8"-5'9", with dark violet eyes and black hair terminating at the small of her back. She is generally seen as a figure who does not budge easily. Many a times, it seems as though she's glaring holes into you, as though in scrutiny. The truth is that she has inquisitive eyes that seek answers to most situations, ones which do not often relax. Indeed, one might even say that Terra never relaxes...until she does. It's a weird thing, but her outward reactions will turn on a dime. Never out of control, always given to a purpose. It makes her stand out, sometimes, and yet...if you mention it to her, she'll start acting like those around her and no longer stick out.
Her physique is that of one who is well-trained, well-disciplined. Or maybe...she was well-formed? It's an athletic build, one ideal for moving about with high stamina, more about quickness than bulk strength, as well as a focus on coordination. These are things you would find ideal in an NC pilot. Speaking of which, Terra may not be picky in her attire - only that it'd better involve the use of pants and a shirt, because more feminine does not appeal to her - but she has an unusual flight suit. It's next to all white, with only slight black highlights here and there, along with a white helmet that has a reflective visor. Basically, during mecha operation or any situation where civvie clothing is not involved, Terra is basically dressed like The Stig.
Personality:You ask about her mind and her emotional state, and immediately you find that Terra is magnificently coordinated. It was by design, though. There are those who can master a mental concentration sufficient to overcome some sort of limitation - mind over matter - and then there are those who - due to adrenaline or a spur of the moment - ignore limitations because the body is compensating that very moment to call to power, acting on incredible reserves within the body to pull off impressive feats. Arising through great focus or great need, these things are unusual within people for obvious reasons. It's very hard to invoke a change in your body to ignore pain or control your heartbeat or even temper your emotions with great precision.
This is something Terra does. There is a reason for it, but essentially Terra is mainly a focused sort of person with high discipline who takes rather realistic - if sometimes cynical, due to the world - views on things, and has very clear-cut ways to deal with them, at times. She can raise and lower her emotional reactions because she has a say in how her biological reactions work. Half of your emotions are intent and reason. The other half is chemistry. Terra controls the chemistry of it so that anything she doesn't want to feel physically doesn't distract her, though the feeling is still there, internalized. Reactions to pain, sadness, and so on are lessened, allowing her to deal with the feeling on her terms.
It's often about control, for her. Terra prefers to control a situation. If it's her belief that she has the right frame of mind to judge any sort of problem and come up with the solution, she will maneuver it towards that goal. This is not to say that she is manipulative. On the contrary, Terra is quite often and will speak her mind, even though her steady tone of speech would make it hard to tell when she is lying. The fact is that she feels no reason to conceal something she feels is right to do, in most cases. But getting back to control, Terra prefers to establish herself as having control over her surroundings because she perceives giving that up as allowing others to control her. It's the logic that delivered her out of enemy hands and she's not about to give that up easily.
That said, it is a curious fact that she can also express herself fully and pleasantly when she wants to.
Backstory:The only time in which Terra ever cried was when she was born. After that, she could not stand to lose control like that again.
You might ask yourself, how would it even be possibly? The answer, however, was
science. Genetic engineering, to be precise. Though expensive, the results of it being done right speak for themselves, and it was a new process. You see, when you take a person and augment them in, say, the prime of their life, results may vary. How well it takes and how well the subject can cope with the change are all important factors. But...if you started at the
beginning of one's life...they grow into it naturally, and the only coping is the initial sort that all children must go through in her lives. The time used in getting accustomed to such was...childhood. Terra Laedo was born to a couple who badly needed food, money, and all other sorts within the Japanese Red-Star territory. At the time, they were looking for volunteers -
actual volunteers - for a new process to create better soldiers. It was a limited experiment and they needed full cooperation, but the compensation was frankly a godsend for anybody who was, say, struggling to survive. They took it.
Let me walk you through the process, because it's a long one. They needed Terra's parents to be on board with this, up-front and all, because while it is true that they care not for the individual in Red-Star areas, they wanted this to
work, no half-baked screw-ups on the science end OR the raising end at all. The process needed to be perfect in order to shape any of these youths into the next generation of NC pilots. Step one was
mostly full-disclosure. They explained to the parents - By the way, Laedo was not their last name. Terra Laedo is Latin, basically translating to Earth Strike. - 'You are raising a new soldier for the Red-Star, a pilot who will achieve great things in her life. You will remain as her parents, but her professional life will be ours.'. The parents had to raise the child, and they had to do so with the understanding that Red-Star was doing them right in order to create someone beneficial to them. The necessity to have them on board with this would smoothe things later down the lines...or so they thought.
Step two was augmentation. With Terra healthy enough, they placed her within a liquid suspension chamber to begin the process of altering her genes using teaching tools to unlock physical and mental capacity faster than normal. The parents were allowed to observe the process and keep with it every time. With this having been completed, Terra would now be able to live a normal life according to her own higher standards, one of which is that she did not want to cry anymore or lose control...so she didn't. It was like shutting a valve in her head. Other people hold back tears to varying levels of effectiveness. She does it better. Once this was achieved, she actually began to experiment with the others and accidentally put herself in a dopamine high for a while. HUGE lecture over that. Responsibility was engrained in her at an early age. Actually,
alot of things were. Step three was that while her parents raised her, they needed to be able to cope with her accelerated learning curve, and that she was starting to comprehend things faster than she was able to speak them properly.
One of the more shocking moments in Terra's development was when, during a time she was playing with others, she saw a bully taking charge of things. After a couple minutes watching this, she went over to him and just started repeatedly punching him. She didn't give him any chance to speak or react. She just kept doing it until she was made ot stop, which was fine with her because she was going to after another minute anyway. Her parents were shocked. Were they raising a total psychopath?! Terra then explained that after today, he won't want to hurt anyone ever again. Red-Star took this as a good sign, but they didn't see the wheels that were turning in her head. Terra wanted to stop the bully getting in people's way, hampering their efforts. She basically subdued him without mercy, and it was
effective. They began to wonder now if
Red-Star knew what they were raising...
Well, apparently not, because the program continued as Terra developed through puberty and they started testing her with NC equipment, which she took to at a higher synchronization rate while controlling some of her pain sensation and using high adrenaline bursts as needed. Throughout the years growing up, Terra had learned how to manage the finite resources of her body, to know that she was not a machine, even though she managed herself in terms of percentages and capacities. She cooperated with all tests, and performed well, so long as she was able to have 'outlets'. She was still a teenager, after all. The strange thing was...Terra didn't have a particular preference in which side of the fence, only stating that if she ever wanted a child, she'd better either find a decent guy or a mad geneticist. We're not sure if Red-Star wants to go THAT far, though...
Finally, the day had come. There were plans to cash in on Terra's upbringing by using her to spearhead the Haven defensive lines and crush their resistance. While she tore through their people, Red-Star would bring reinforcements to bear and defeat them, once and for all. As sort of a 20th birthday gift, Terra was given use of a dangerous new toy...Id. However, on the day, things went in a most unexpected way... Picture, if you will, the mind of someone who analyzes and judges capacities and efficiencies, determining who is in the right based upon merits and practices. Everyone is being judged in Terra's world, and she is neither sharing these results, nor showing that anything is wrong because that would understandably cause her trouble. The day she received full charge of Id, she quietly removed the security restraints in both software and the real, stepped inside, destroyed the hangar before leaving Red-Star for Haven. They, like her parents, had raised her...but Red-Star had fallen in favor with her. Their actions seemed poorly thought-out, short-sighted and foolish, like a bully. The only regret she carried was that she had effectively killed her own parents, and she loved them very much.
Tactical Preferences and Skills:As stated, Terra has control over herself in a manner that is most uncanny. It's like having admin control, the way that she can will adrenaline to flow, raise and lower the chemicals that influence emotion, and even manage the sensitivity of her senses. These things do not overshadow what a human is capable of, but humans do not often use their full potential. Consider her as one who can unlock those special human feats at will, as opposed to needing times of desperation or deep concentration to make it happen.
Her fighting prowess outside of an NC focuses on martial arts styles and almost never a blade, but she will carry at least a pistol, one that is light and accurate. Even with this in mind, she is checked out for a number of firearms, though not anything particularly heavy. She could use a sniper rifle well enough, as long as she was still. Her best skills are medium to point-blank areas, basically, which translates nicely into mecha combat.
Terra is genuinely scary, up-close. She's fast, she's brutal, and she is not merciful if it's not warranted. Her use of firearms is often in the case of 'firing until you close in', 'firing because it's quicker', and 'firing to suppress and/or keep the distance for reasons of safety and sanity'. All the rest could be acts of wanton mecha destruction. Either way, it's all about the swiftest ways to destroy the enemy, for her. War isn't a game, so she doesn't treat it that way.
Notes: Terra has Synesthesia, seeing sound as color.
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NC Character SheetCode-Name: Id
Appearance: It's a big image.Body Type: Bipedal-Hover Killing Machine
Type of NC: Assault
Equipment & Armaments: Shatterfield - As sonic vibrations can tear apart materials with the right amount of generated forces, Id's hands are outfitted with sonic capacitors which give off a short-range but very dangerous energy field for use in rending apart enemies when physically struck. There had originally been designs to install similar devices within Id's feet, but the possibility of accidentally destabilizing the ground while in combat seemed like a bad idea, in case the enemy used it to their advantage. This weapon makes the NC devastating at close range.
Monomolecular Blade-Edges - Located in the claws, knees, shoulders, and feet. These are used to enhance Id's damage capability in close-quarters-combat situations. They are not to be relied upon, but rather they support the already-existing threat level posed by getting in too close to it.
Plasma Rifle with mounted Grenade Launcher (Stolen) - Id was not designed to have many weapons installed, but rather to sling weapons and use them in battle as needed. Thus, the machine was modular in the use of a number of self-contained weapons that Terra was trained for. In this case, she had taken possession of a phased plasma rifle, designed to fire rapid bursts of super-hot fourth-state-of-matter. The grenades are incendiary by default, designed to damage and overheat NCs, but any grenade type may be loaded into the mechanism.
Energy Shield - Naturally, this machine comes with a defensive field device, as well.
Overclock Engine - Id's flight engines, Shatterfield, and energy shield were designed to handle the stress of higher output capacities than their normal fusion generator can supply. This is because the mech was also built with an extra support engine that temporarily increases the capabilities of one of these systems before requiring a brief cooldown period. The Shatterfield, which normally just tears into material objects, would be able to blast a hole into an armored structure large enough for Id to walk inside, when used. The flight system would allow for a sudden burst of incredible speed. The energy shield would be able to take a higher-capacity strike against it. Any one of these devices is safe to overcharge, as directed. If two are engaged at once, their systems will probably overheat and disable themselves from the strain of use. If all three systems are activated at once, the Overclock Engine may reach meltdown capacity and destroy the primary fusion device, which would destroy Id, its pilot, and probably anybody nearby. Never do this.
