- Full Name - Lady Luenciel Aelissia Navietas Age - 15 Gender - Female Heritage - Grayle, The River Kingdom Magical Affinity - Water
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Gentle As An Autumn Rain Luenciel—or Lucien, as the case may be—is a soft, kind person. Though her social interaction up to this point has been limited, she hasn't changed, and they all point to the same thing: patient, gentle, caring, almost to a fault. That's not to say that she's gullible or easily taken in, not exactly. Rather, even when someone irks her, gets on her nerves, is a pain to be around; even then, she still cares.
Quiet As A Winter Mist Though, that might not be immediately apparent sometimes if you don't know her. In order for her to show that caring side of her she (not always, but usually) needs to speak first. It's not like she's shy or a wallflower, that's not why she's quiet. She's always tended that way, really. Just a generally quiet person, And the wire that she walks now to avoid being discovered has only made this more prominent. She is keenly aware that her voice is not a man's. And while she can get away with it for now, there's always a chance someone will realize she's out of place. So the less she talks, the safer she is from discovery and expulsion.
Fierce As A Summer Storm And expulsion is something she does not want. For all the noblewoman in her blood, all the quietude in her manner, all the kindness in her soul...she's still training to be a knight. And that means something. It means that despite her alignment to water, there's still a fire in her, one that is impossible to snuff out. And though slow to rouse, when that fire is stoked, she turns from a quiet child with too many rumors floating around about her to a skillful, relentless, and vicious warrior that belies her sheltered and pampered upbringing.
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Crest Of The Wave Luen doesn't carry a weapon. Ever. But that doesn't mean she's ever unarmed.
The bracers that wrap around her forearms are scored all over with lines of runic script, each of which corresponds to a spell in Luen's trademark arsenal. She uses very little magic directly. Rather, it all gets filtered through the elaborate runes on her bracers. They conduct the water. Run it along their conduits. And finally, the water—whether liquid or simply condensed from the air—takes shape in her hand, and becomes a weapon. A sword, a glaive, a spear, an axe, a knife; all of these and more are available to her through her right bracer, and only dissipate when she lets them, loses focus, or loses consciousness. Her left bracer can create arrays—from one to six, depending on focus, time, and available water—of watery knives that launch themselves at her foe.
Some may say that she's vulnerable without her bracers. It's true, she is. Take them from her, and she becomes a normal teenage girl. But good luck getting to them through the storm.
Born Under A Baleful Star Curse-child. Ill-starred. Monster. Thing. Killer.
Rumors have spread a long way from the Navietas household over these past years. Whispers down the lane, growing ever more distorted as they've slithered from house to house, ear to mouth to ear again. Dead-pale skin, like a corpse. And it only spun out as time had gone on, and her seclusion had remained. Red eyes, red like blood. And though she lived in quiet, these rumors—stark white hair, like all the light was drained from it—circled back around to her. Though her father tried to head them off as best he could, he was never able to stop her from wondering whether or not she's really safe to be near. After all, when something is repeated often enough...
...You start to believe it.
Quickstep It might be surmised by her slim lines, weaker physique, and the fact that she uses magical water-blades instead of any real weapon, but Luenciel is not what you would call strong. It's very likely that almost everyone else around her could overpower her through raw strength without a huge deal of effort (except maybe Julian).
And yet, she's still a competent combatant, because as much as she lacks in might, she makes up more than enough for with speed and technique. Doesn't matter if you're weaker if you're too agile for them to hit you, and too good for them to block (she can thank her dad for that one).
Physical Description
Ah, Lady Luenciel. To say that she cuts a striking figure would be something of an understatement. Much taller than her poor late mother was, she falls nearly to her father's height at an unusual and surprising 174cm. More intriguing is that she looks nothing like either of them, really; where her parents have tan skin, dark hair, dark eyes, Luen is none of those things. Whispers throughout the courts told of the Navietas child, born under an unlucky star, bleached of color, and light, and life. Quiet. Watching. Waiting. And everyone knows so little about this ill-fated child. Age, creed, name, even gender; all hazy and indistinct. Her father's reticence is proof: something about the second child of House Navietas is wrong.
Though, that's not quite the truth. As far as Lady Luenciel Navietas knows...she's simply unlucky.
Nobody quite knows why she looks the way she does. Not her family, not the soothsayers her father sought, not the books that she's read. But it's probably not from some kind of magical curse like people assume she has or is. Her ghost-pale skin; her stark icepick-white hair; her narrow eyes, dyed a vivid sanguine crimson; just how she is. A strange, unfortunate twist of fate that would perhaps not be called normal, but...harmless.
Tall, lithe, slender. Stick thin and skinny. While once upon a time she wore them openly, she tends to hide these aspects as best she can now, obscuring them with voluminous, billowing cloaks. Lucky she is indeed that she has very little obviously visible curvature, though underneath her clothing, she wears a well-kept, tightly wrapped sarashi to, as she would put it, "tighten everything up." Always best to ensure no clothing laying oddly on what should be a slender boy's frame gives her away, after all. What an embarrassing way to be exposed that would be. Her long, high cheekbones can give her a haughty, arrogant look that she tries her best to avoid.
Since determining her own fate to be a knight (or at least a cadet), she's had to change the way she carries herself quite a bit. Though she can't avoid the graceful, gliding steps that are so baked into her now, the primness in her bearing has gone the way of her her once-habitual curtsies and urge to take up less space. The urges are still there—one does not simply shrug off the years—but she's become quite practiced at avoiding them now.
...For the most part.
Character Conceptualization
Asceron Navietas, Lord of a military family, is a man stricken by grief. His first child, Dicen, was a fine young man. He would've been eighteen now, by Asceron's reckoning. But he was taken young. Not by fire. Not by war. A strange fever that refused to break ravaged him, turning his tall, fit form into a shivering, wasted thing before finally, mercifully, letting him slip softly away into the night. And that, on top of his wife dying soon after childbirth years before, giving him his second child: a girl, who she named Luenciel before she passed. And a bizarre child she was; from the moment she opened her crimson eyes, Asceron knew that something was strange. And when her hair grew in stark and white, he was ever more concerned for her.
Her strange appearance, and Asceron's grief at Enuiel's passing, caused her life to be sheltered, secluded one from the beginning. And the spreading rumors—no doubt house staff who'd caught glimpses of white hair and red eyes, Asceron thought—convinced him quite well that he was right to do so. The outside wasn't just indifferent to her. It was outright hostile.
For years, she sought solace in her father and her brother. Though...at one point, her uncle came to visit. She'd never seen him before, but...he seemed nice, right? And the rumors hadn't truly found their way to her yet. He saw his niece, one of the very few that Asceron had let see her at all. He was nice. Gave her candy, patted her on the head, went to bed, and...the next morning, tripped and fell down the stairs. Broke his neck. And just like that, dead.
More grief from Asceron. Condolences from Dicen. And...confusion from the seven-year-old Luenciel.
A few years later, an elderly woman who lived next door to their house broke several bones from a fall and couldn't get up. She lived alone, and her voice wasn't loud enough. Unable to move, she stayed there until she died.
A year after that, a vendor hawking his wares in the street below seized, and his movement ceased as his heart stopped beating in his chest.
And then, when she was twelve...Dicen.
So very grief-wracked now, Asceron kept Luen inside not just for her own sake, but for his own. As strange as she looked, she was his last family. He wanted so desperately to keep her close. And though nobles came and went, events were held and released from the manor of the Navietas—though he told her to stay in her room, flashes of her were noticed, just barely, and the rumors intensified—the years passed, and Luen remained.
By now, though, she'd heard the rumors. So, so many of them. Enough that she started to believe them some: that her being around someone put them in danger. So she looked at her father. She looked at his glaive on the wall. She looked inward. Did she really want to be locked away like this for her whole life?
No. No, she wanted to make something of herself. She wanted to see the outside for herself. She wanted to talk to people. She wanted to escape her curse. And as she thought of these things, an ember kindled itself in her chest. What she wanted was...
...To fight.
Two more years passed in the blink of an eye. She trained with her father, learning from him how best to leverage her water magic and creating her bracers. She remained inside. And then, as she packed to leave, she sat down with her father again. She talked to him about names. About how she wouldn't be able to go by hers, and would need to find a man's name. Her father—upset she was leaving, but unable to bring himself to stop her—thought for several minutes as they sat together in silence one last time.
"...Lucien."
And so, Lucien Navietas—scion of the Navietas family and a cursed child born under an ill-fated Star—left her—his—family home. To see. To talk. To escape.
But, she reflected as she walked quickly down towards the front of the hall, at least it had sucked successfully. She'd done what she wanted to do, which was to draw eyes; hence the stares she could practically feel still burning into her back. Burning into, warming; they were the same thing in the end, right?
As she continued roughly shouldering her way through the crowd, she passed by Tentacles and a few others talking, though she couldn't hear what about over the noise of the hall. She sighed quietly. She'd made an enemy already. God. God, she hated this, and she hated how much she craved it. A small, bitter smile came to her face. It was almost funny in a mundane kind of way, wasn't it? Here she was at a hero school. A really good hero school, too. One of the best in the entire country, where she could eventually learn to help people, most especially by way of her Quirk. After all, a hero without a Quirk wasn't much of a hero at all.
So in a place designed around working with Quirks, wasn't it funny how much she hated hers? It almost made her laugh.
Or, no. She didn't hate her Quirk, not really. Otherwise she really wouldn't have come to Ishin. What was the...ah. That was it. She didn't hate her Quirk. She resented it. Perhaps she wasn't mad at it, but she was definitely mad about it, that it had been inflicted upon her. And as she walked by the crowds of people with their multiple arms, metal hands, and cat heads apparently, she did laugh. Quietly, but not too quiet; rather, just loud enough.
No one here knows what it's like, huh?
Good for them. That sucked too.
Ah, there we go. Right up front, row second to the front. Perfect. She plunked herself down in the chair, distractedly fiddling with a strand of her hair. She was surrounded by people on all sides now. No way it'd go unnoticed if she disappeared. She felt the tension in her stomach unknotting as much as it ever could. There. Safe.
Full Name - Quinn Loughvein Callsign - Ablaze Age - 16 (b. 2662) Birthplace - Denver-Vegas Pilot Type - Assault -
P S Y C H E
Cheerful!! Quin is something of an anomaly sometimes. With all the nightmare that piloting can be, especially for one as young as she is, it comes as a genuine shock to some people when they find that not only is she personable, but she's downright chipper. She's overall just a genuinely nice presence to be around, especially if one's been beaten down by the dark side of piloting for any length of time.
Supportive Hand in hand with that cheery nature comes the next symptom of Quinn's terminal case of positivity: somehow she's become a highly supportive and empathetic individual. While she is, of course, a pilot and thus has devoted much time to becoming skilled in the art of war, she really would rather talk it out with whatever's going on than jump straight to the nuclear solution.
Volatile Still, despite all that, Quinn is a pilot, and she does have that skill. And it's hard sometimes, for her to reconcile who she is at heart—that cheerful kiddo—with the things that she's done. She's formed a kind of...semi-stable suspension of emotion, where as long as she doesn't think about all the awful stuff behind her she can ignore it. But because that delicate balance is so tenuously struck, it can have dramatic fallout if it should ever be lost.
G E A R
Thermal Lances Something of a misnomer, as they're not really thermal lances, or any kind of "lance" a all. The thermal lances are a pair of small fuel tanks strapped to the underside of her forearms when going into combat proper. Though they're generally subtle and harmless, when Quinn flicks the toggle rings attached to them (which can be done with the thumb of the same hand, with a bit of stretching) nozzles pierce out from said tanks. At that point, flicking her wrists backwards triggers the tanks, which proceed to produce a stream of cohered thermite that can burn through nearly anything she points them at. They're small, so each one is a single use before it's refilled, but really, one use is all you need of something like that, and luckily refills are just iron, aluminum, and petroleum.
Journal Quinn chooses to eschew the modern convenience of the datatool for a normal, old-fashioned pen-and-paper journal. Given to her as a gift by Becca years ago, it's very important to her. There are memories years old written in there now, and every time she reads the first few pages, a kind of melancholic smile plays over her face. It all feels like it was just yesterday, after all.
Framed Picture Kept far away from the insides of Ablaze, her nightstand holds a framed 4x6 picture that shows Quinn standing front and center, with Becca on one side, leaning against her so Quinn's head falls into the crook of her neck, and Delia on the other side, giving her a side-on hug with a big smile on her face. Quinn looks at this often, and is open about the fact that it's her most prized possession.
N E U R A L C O M B A T A N T
Armor Ablaze is a slim, quick, lightweight NC, jet black and accented with silver metal; the relative weight of her primary armament and the propulsion system means that if she wants to be light on her feet, she needs to forgo a lot of armor. And she has. This Assault-tyle NC is quite vulnerable to anything that Quinn's shield doesn't protect it from, so its principle defense is high mobility, skirting around the edges of a fight with the propulsion system on its back.
Hands Quinn's calling card is Undying Light. Though it's not a quick or lightweight weapon by any means, what this enormous thermal cannon lacks in maneuverability, it makes up for quite thoroughly in sheer blistering firepower. As tall as her NC is, it has a long cycle even by default. But if she takes the extra time to let it charge, the devastation that it can wreak could only be described as spectacular. Not only that, but when Quinn is in fullsync, she can reroute some of the additional power through induction plates in Ablaze's hands, letting her substantially increase the power of Undying Light. Precise? Not nearly. Less 'shoot this NC' and more 'shoot in the general direction of this NC and watch the thermal bloom envelop everything.' But when you want to blow a particularly bothersome foe off the map entirely, accept no substitutes.
Back The back slot of Ablaze is taken up by a large, heavy propulsion system. High-powered and versatile, it allows for sudden bursts of directional movement. Once Quinn hits fullsync, the additional power allows for much high propulsion, as well as a far longer duration to the time she can spend in the air. If she's willing to really commit, she can even reach limited flight. Which, as you can imagine, can be absolutely devastating when combined with her cannon.
Right Auxiliary Ablaze indeed.
The right shoulder of Ablaze plays host to an innocuous-looking fuel tank. Now, for a girl that uses a thermal weapon, 'fuel tank' probably sounds strange. But if her cannon was her only weapon, well, where would she be then? No, this fuel tank—with attached barrel, of course—serve a very simple purpose, one shared by her thermal lances.
It is a flamethrower. A very, very powerful flamethrower.
At a brief impulse, she can set loose a stream of cohered thermite, burning in a flare as bright as the sun at thousands of degrees. There isn't much time in it, so she needs to be careful when she uses it; wasting it is a big waste indeed. But when employed properly, this weapon is an absolute nightmare for anything unshielded.
Left Auxiliary Slightly more pedestrian than the insane contraption on her other shoulder, her left auxiliary is a much more typical shield generator, though it does have a slight quirk to it. Weighing her odds, Quinn figured that she was probably more likely to run into ballistic weapons than anything else on the battlefield. So with some tinkering, the Perihelion SP actually gains energy from kinetic impacts instead of losing it. That benefit, however, doesn't come for free. While it's true that ballistic weapons don't do much to it now, it's lost pretty much all of its thermal dispersal qualities as a result, meaning thermal weapons will pass just about right through it. Just like her flamethrower, it needs to be used carefully and correctly to work well, but when it is, it's a very powerful tool.
R E L A T I O N S
Rebecca Darroux (goes by Becca) Quinn's parental figure for about eight years now, Becca is a bit of an interesting case study in care and contradiction. To pretty much anyone else (bar one), she's like...the dictionary definition of a hardass. She talks tough, fights tougher, usually carries a gun, and does her job very well. To Quinn, though...to Quinn, she's an incredibly empathetic, caring, and motherly figure who tries her best to not refrain from her vices; doesn't smoke, doesn't drink if she can help it, hides her gun, even tries not to swear. Always an interesting reaction from people that know her, but haven't seen her with her definitely-not-daughter-I-promise; she really is like a whole different person.
Shannon and Luke Loughvein Quinn's biological parents, and a deeply, deeply problematic presence that hangs over her head even now. They are a pair of scientific authorities, specifically the foremost scientists in DV with regards to the study of Neural Combatants. This is the root cause of the extremely problematic relationship that they cultivated, and still to some faint extent have, with Quinn, and the horrifying situation that Becca saved her from all those years ago.
Delia St. Seine Delia St. Seine has been referred to as many things over her 18 year life. People have called her a prodigy. A genius. A menace. A disaster. A symbol of the problems inherent in the system.
Quinn calls her a sister.
After her parents' untimely demise when she was very young, she was taken care of by a family friend for several years. During this time, she demonstrated an amazing aptitude for engineering, and Rebecca Darroux took notice of that and took her under her wing, begin teaching her all about the process of weaponmaking. As she learned from Rebecca, Delia heard rumors that she had an adoptive daughter, which of course, Rebecca mercilessly crushed down, and so Delia didn't really put much stock into them. Until one day when she was eleven, when she--completely by accident, when she was looking for Rebecca--ran across a shy, quiet girl, must've been eight or nine years old, with a long black and yellow braid and wide, apprehensive yellow eyes. Or...eye. The right one was gone.
To make a long story short, the two of them eventually grew close to each other, and Delia to Becca. And when Delia's adoptive father Mendez died, she was (informally) adopted by Quinn and taken into their family.
Now, though...she's been missing for a few months now, with no word at all. And both Becca and Quinn are getting very, very worried.
Physical Details ◢
Quinn is a shortish girl, no more than 5'3" in height, with an extremely ordinary build. Despite that, she is extremely recognizable whenever she walks into the room thanks to a few very specific and unusual pieces of her appearance. And first and foremost is her hair. While dark gray streaked with yellow isn't exactly impossible, is is highly unusual. But moreso is the sheer volume of said hair. When tied up in a tight (if large) braid, it ends up going down to her upper thighs. Untied, it goes all the way halfway down her calves. Needless to say, she keeps it braided near permanently to avoid tripping over her own hair. She's reasonably athletic, another piece of her that is fairly average; but that average is applied to the average of a teenage girl, so she's not going to be running a marathon any time soon.
Next are her eyes. Or, well, her eye, singular. Only her left eye is intact, and it is a bright, sharp, violent yellow, wide and expressive, roving around with constant curiosity. By contrast, the other side of her face displays a black eyepatch, dyed here and there with goldenrod yellow. Faint echoes of scar tissue peek out from underneath, barely hinting at the mangled, mutilated mess that sits where her eye socket used to.
For the most part, she wears functional clothing; not out of any real desperate need, but simply because it's her taste. She's never really liked super restrictive fancy clothing. As a general rule, she likes duller, darker shades much more over bright colors or pastels. When asked for a reason, she simply claims that dull colors set off against her eye and hair a bit better, and that anything else would look weird.
Background Information ◢
Quinn Loughvein's background is a bit mysterious, all told. With the exception of her parents, nobody really knows much about it, especially her. And she certainly doesn't want to spend much time around her parents. What can be loosely speculated is that she was born in Denver-Vegas in the summer of 2662, upon which her parents immediately tested her for NC compatibility. And upon discovering she was neurally compatible, they began feeding her and pumping her with a staggering array of neurochemicals and other morally dubious drugs in an effort to crank her neural compatibility up: to turn her into the ultimate NC pilot. She was steered away from ever leaving their sight; and so never being exposed to the world.
Unfortunately for her parents, working where they did meant working reasonably closely to Rebecca Darroux, the poster child of the jerk with a heart of gold. And, on top of that...canny. She noticed that there were some things wrong with the Loughveins; they were exceptionally cagey, so it took more or less eight years. But when she did notice, she decided to tail them with a drone to figure out exactly what was going on.
She did.
She called them in the next day and reamed them, tearing them apart for their mistreatment and giving them an ultimatum: either they give child up and forfeit parental rights, or she'd see them in court. With all the evidence she needed from the drone footage.
Of course, it was obvious to everyone that 'court' was a sham in a city like this. But Becca had a bit more cachet and notoriety; and thus, she made the rules.
It took a bit for parental rights to be ceded; and during the process, Becca decided to spend some time with the child to avoid leaving her alone with her parents. She didn't know exactly what had cause her to have an eyepatch at eight, but whatever it was, it was not good, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. But then...something interesting happened: She got attached.
Quinn's life changed unbelievably quickly as soon as she found herself adopted by Becca. She chose to keep the name Loughvein; it just felt wrong to leave it behind. She was a child, after all. And her life going forward was...nice. Sure, Becca had her share of detractors. But she'd never been anything but wonderful to Quinn, and as time went on, to Delia as well.
Rebecca hoped that she could keep Quinn out of the NCs permanently; completely disregarding that pilots typically didn't live very long, she didn't know the full range of effects that the drugs that Luke and Shannon had given her had. But it was fruitless, because Quinn gravitated to them in the end; and at 15, she became one of the younger pilots out there. The notably sensitive Quinn didn't fare too well on the battlefield, but she was a pretty skilled pilot, and DV probably wasn't going to let her go easy.
To make a long story short, Becca eventually bought her out of the military. It wasn't exactly cheap, and it wasn't exactly easy; but Quinn was much, much happier. But still...she loved piloting, but didn't want to be in the military. So...what?
It was then that Becca put in her head the idea--the contract was free now--to leave DV, and go freelancing.
So she did.
She's been doing so for a little while now, and has happened across Lost Hope.
(She still calls Becca every night).
Polaris Shift ◢
Quinn's a little bit of a special case in the way she thinks about her Shift. Not only does it not bother her overly much, but...she actually likes it.
Quinn's Shift manifests as a voice inside her head. As far as anybody can tell, it's got nothing to do with personality drift regarding any old pilots of Ablaze, it has nothing to do with anybody else at all. More likely it's just a kind of persistent psychosis. But whatever the cause, the manifestation remains the same: there's another person inside of Quinn's head, or at least that's how she puts it.
This personality--who she says also wants to be called Quinn and so she that's what Quinn calls her--as far as can be gleaned, is rather different from the Quinn that most people know. That bouncy positivity is markedly absent. In the fragments of conversations that can be observed, she seems much more cynical and aggressive. But regardless, Quinn seems to put a great deal of stock into the other Quinn's opinions and thoughts. And not only that. Quinn has...
...She's made friends with it.
A small side effect of her Shift and this bizarre situation is that Quinn can sometimes have difficulty in knowing whether she's talking to her internal Quinn through thoughts, or spoken out loud. Sometimes she'll cut in and out of a conversation, bits and pieces of it out loud and the rest remaining unspoken. It can be someone disconcerting at times.
Personal Mission ◢
For Quinn, family is above all.
So her current goal, while it may not be filled for a long time, is finding out where Delia went. She's rather worried about her, as is Becca. So she is fully committed to tracking her down sooner rather than later.
Perhaps it was fine that she was in the class of this 'Justice,' Kayo though, her smile for a moment turning almost catlike in its satisfaction. On one hand, it did rankle her slightly to be called Mi-Me. She didn't know exactly what it meant, but she could probably guess, given, you know, her eyes. But on the other...in her experience, at least, cutesy nicknames led to being thought of as cute quite efficiently. And she craved the compliments that would come with it (or at least, what she perceived as compliments).
So this...kid would—just like the newly-introduced fish girl Izuna, who she was glad wasn't a third year, this was far better than what a third year would've gone for her and she privately congratulated herself for introducing herself to her—just ease a journey that was already going to be remarkably easy.
Not to mention, there were insecurities there in Mr. Justice. Kayo was no mind reader, but it didn't take a mind reader. Just someone like her, who was smart enough to notice it. Losing his train of thought. Eyes staring into the distance. Losing control of his Quirk, like only an idiot would. That turned-down smile, covering what was no doubt pain and fear and someone that was looming over him, watching him watching everything he did and punishing him whenever he did something wrong and making him look into the mirror into her eyes—
Her face twitched again as she violently wrenched her mind back into shape.
The point was, something was eating at him. She didn't know what, but she knew that she didn't have any doubt. She was 100% right, this boy was someone she could pick slowly at, and watch as he fell apart piece by piece and left her at the top, as she so rightly deserved. But that could—would—come later. What was important now, was...well, getting to the hall. Nigata Kayo was not late for things. If she ended up coming in after the bell rang, then it was their fault, not hers.
Speaking of "their," oh boy, Izuna. Could she just...not control her Quirk? It was almost sad, seeing her shiver like that.
Returning her smile to its normal oblivious innocence after the moment had passed, she cleared her throat a little bit. Affected her own shiver, clutching at the sleeves of her big fluffy sweater (she'd be sad taking it off, honestly).
"Yeah, I think I'd like to get inside too, it's so much colder in Hokkaido than Kyoto!" Heading off towards the door, she shot a sidelong glance at the other two as they went. "Justice-san," she had to swallow the disdain back into her throat, "Izuna-chan—can I call you Izuna-chan?—where do you come from?"
Full Name - Mia Anastasia Hartley Callsign - Absolution Age - 27 (b. 2651) Birthplace - Fairbanks Pilot Type - Heavy -
P S Y C H E
Mediating A veteran of many battles and at least as many intra-squad conflicts, Mia's seen a lot of yelling. With the lunatics she's been paired with over the years, she has found it necessary to become an expert in conflict resolution. And the...diverse personalities that Tartarus Squadron attracts have only made it more necessary. Thus, she's a calming presence when she needs to be, though unerringly firm with people who are escalating a conflict and stretching her patience, which does have a hard limit, even if it can be a little tough to reach.
Friendly And this one goes hand in hand with the conflict-resolution side of her. When she doesn't need to tell people to get along or else she'll crack their skulls together, she's largely easygoing and friendly. She's reasonable, knows when she's wrong, and isn't afraid to admit it. With some...notable exceptions, she'll try to get along with anyone once, and generally tries to give people the benefit of the doubt. That's not to say she's a doormat, though. If you cross her, that friendliness and reasonable nature goes right out the window in record time.
Hardened When it goes out of the window, what it leaves in place is something that people sometimes forget about her when she's hanging out with them. For all the amiability she projects, she's one of the most experienced and skilled NC pilots in all of Fairbanks. She knows what she's doing. She knows what she's doing very well. Name a technique used in NC combat—any technique—and odds are she hasn't just read about it, she's done it. So when that cheer flees, she is a reaper of a soldier who knows exactly what you're going to do, and exactly how to kill you before you can do it.
G E A R
'Arbiter' The Arbiter might not have the highest ammunition capacity of any handgun, holding only three rounds in its internal clip. It might not have the fastest fire rate; Mia's lucky if she pops off a shot once every two seconds. It might not be easy to tote around or carry surreptitiously, given that it's nearly a foot and a half long. But what it loses here, it more than makes up for in sheer power, firing fifty caliber sniper rounds with enough force to punch through plate metal. This monstrous pistol has been with Mia for a long time, and she's found it more than serviceable. Let the kids have their fancy SMGs. You don't need a fast fire rate when one shot annihilates a head at a hundred paces.
Luxury Datatool You don't make a lot of money in the Fairbanks miitary. But what money Mia has made, she's invested into a really nice datatool. With an unusually high amount of storage and not only an exceptionally high-fidelity display but sound that actually works without any crackles or glitches out, this is the most expensive thing she's got and she's pretty damn protective over it. A good chunk of the memory is spent on a video diary that she's taken and kept for her entire tenure in Tartarus Squadron every single day. Maybe ten minutes, maybe five seconds. But every. Single. Day. There are well over ten years of daily memories on that high-capacity memory.
Faded Picture Pinned up on the inside of the cockpit of Absolution is a wallet-sized photograph. Time and the elements have not been kind to it; the photo paper, once so glossy and white, is yellowed, dulled, and curled in at the corners, and the image on it is nearly indecipherable by now. The faces are all gone; all that's left is the indistinct and blurred silhouettes of five people.
N E U R A L C O M B A T A N T
Armor Absolution is an absolute tank of an NC. Heavy composite tungsten-nickel-iron ceramic, backed with tungsten-steel plate mean it's nigh-impenetrable by anything ballistic for a good long while. Between them is a thin layer of lead added to block attacks from ion weapons as best as possible. Between operations—if there's enough time—the surface is coated with a low-density Teflon-carbon-epoxy mixture to serve as an ablative and absorb thermal thermal energy until it's burned off. Consequently, Absolution sports a different appearance depending on mission circumstances. If there's not enough time or she's certain they'll be facing exclusively ballistic or ion weapons, it's a dully gleaming gunmetal-gray. If she has time, on the other hand, it's a dull matte black. The Fairbanks and Tartarus Squadron insignias are displayed proudly on the left and right should pieces respectively.
Hands Mia is, deep down at her core, a demolitions expert, and she always has been. Consequently, her primary weapon is the Emperor PGMl-10, a very large, semi-automatic rocket launcher. Firing heavy PGM ordnance as long as Mia is tall, it's not exactly the most subtle weapon, nor is it the most consistent. She needs to pace herself, and maintain extremely strict fire control to stop herself from spinning out her weaponry too fast. But when she's able to do so, she can clear whole battlefields with her baby.
Back Covered in several layers of heavy armor plating to avoid stray damage, the back module of the Absolution is a powerful shield generator. It doesn't exactly make her the most nimble NC, and the weight would make it prohibitive on anything smaller than her beast of a machine. But pretty much anything that isn't ion radiation isn't going to have a hell of a time even getting to her armor to be stopped. She can even lock the rest of her NC down and reroute power straight into the generator, creating a bubble of space nearly sixty feet across. It doesn't—can't—last a particularly long time, but it's come in real handy quite a few times over her career.
Auxiliaries Rockets. Lots of rockets.
Her auxiliary slots are occupied by rocket pods. Since her NC is so heavy and rock-solid, she can get away with loading a whole hell of a lot of rockets on her broad shoulders. Each pod can hold ten large guided missiles, as well at thirty addition smaller swarm rockets. Drawn by a more sophisticated guidance system than the rest of her ordnance, the swarms can be launched one by one or all at once, and are coded to relentlessly hunt and seek whatever they're sent after. Finally, there's a row of row of four dumbfire rockets at the base of each pod, just for the sake of completion.
In addition to all of this, there's a comparatively small weapon that could be conservatively called a hand cannon locked into a mechanically-released holster at her hip. It's a functional copy of her Arbiter, just...MUCH bigger, and with a higher ammunition capacity. As fond as she is of her rockets, there's something to be said for having something she can use up close.
R E L A T I O N S
Alice Louanne Aimes (Deceased) Mia's elder half-sister by the same mother, Alice was her closest friend and confidante since they were both children, and they shared their dreams like they shared everything else. They spent their time together as children. They enlisted together. They went through basic together. And eventually the two of them, just about inseparable, were scouted for the original Tartarus Squadron together, and she became the first Melinoë.
Around two years ago, though, Alice died, in a terribly sad way. Her Shift was far worse in the end than Mia's: sudden panic attacks, beginning mild and then slowly escalating. Eventually, she suffered a panic attack of such intensity, such horrible fear, that her heart seized and she died. It was like having a leg cut off for Mia, and even these years later, she still misses her terribly.
Donovan Thatcher Mia's been with Donovan in Tartarus Squadron since the beginning. The most experienced Fury by far, this Lyssa knows exactly how they both think, and Donovan respects her years of hard-won experience. So with her almost exclusively, it's less of a commander-subordinate relationship and more equal, both of them bouncing ideas off each other and perfectly willing with telling the other without hesitation that they've gotta rethink whatever's going on up there.
Sirona Laurier Only just after her half-sister's death, she was replaced as Melinoë with a tiny thirteen year old child, scared of the world. In any other circumstance, she would have been nice to her, almost nurturing. But so soon after losing her sister and best friend, and watching her be replaced by a kid who seemed just as afraid as Alice was in her last few months, she...well, she wasn't exactly nice. She was actually quite cruel to her. And though a year or so later she finally let it go, she knew by then that it was a lost cause, and Sirona was afraid of her quite intensely. So she just...awkwardly stayed out of her way as much as she could.
Physical Details ◢
Standing at 5'11" and lean, Mia cuts a recognizable figure as she walks into the room. Slightly wavy and pale brown hair habitually tied up into a loose low ponytail—she has a tendency to fidget with it—and tanned, callused skin contrast themselves quite nicely around the eyepatch that clings to the scarred wreck that her right eye has been turned into. Jagged lines of white scar tissue peak shyly out from just underneath the patch. Her slim build has been reinforced with tight, lean whipcord muscle. She's not quite as strong as she used to be, since she can't push herself nearly as hard due to her shift, but she is absolutely still quite fit.
Her eyes are a piercing brown-black and dart around with a striking degree of speed. Though she's held at a general relaxed friendliness, it's not particularly difficult to see how tense she is at any given moment, and the cheerful smile on her face can collapse into itself at any given moment. All it would take is the space between heartbeats for her to tear the handgun from her hip, draw a bead, and fire in one smooth movement.
She wears casual, functional clothing for the most part. There's no point in trying to hide the holster, so she mostly wears things like tanktops and jeans. The faster she can move in combat, or the faster she can jump into her cockpit, the faster things get done. And she knows from long, long experience that a second is the difference between winning and dying.
Background Information ◢
Message received Mia A. Hartley (Lyssa)
Donovan,
I think I told you I was doing this, right? Going back through all of the video logs and finding a few of the really important ones? Well, here they all are. Was a hell of a time compositing them all, but got 'em all done. Fun stuff.
Oh, and try not to share it with the other Furies, okay? I know we're tight, you and I, but you know I can still be scary when I want to, and if Anya gets her hands on this I'm gonna be PISSED.
Gotta say though, it's been weird as hell to see my right eye again.
These are the ones up through when I enlisted. I was such a kid. Well, I was literally a kid, haha, but that's not what I mean. So innocent to everything, it's kind of cute. But goddamn, I just—
No. Nope. Just went through thousands of these little clips. Years and years worth. I'm already dehydrated as all hell and if my eyes could be sore I think they would be. I'm not crying again just writing this.
And don't you dare laugh at how I used to wear my hair.
—ome on, Allie! Get over here! Hi! It's me, Mia!
What are you gonna do with the video anyway?
I'm gonna give it to mom as a gift!
Really? That's all? Don't you think she'd want something from just you, Mi?
Pleeaaaaase?
...Okay, fine. Hi! It's me, Alice! ...Was that really—
Allie keeps telling me that it's dumb to make these, 'cuz I'll give up soon anyway. I so totally won't though! Not after dad gave me the datatool! I'm gonna use it forever! So...Hi! My name is Mia Hartley, I'm eight years old, my birthday is the second of June, that's today! And my favorite color is orange!
See Allie! I told you I'd use it!
Wait—no way, it still works!
Wow, I totally forgot about this thing. Hey, Allie, check this out! You won't believe it, but it's that basic datatool my dad got me for my birthday a few years back! And check it out, it still turns on! There are the videos that we made!
Yeah, yeah, you were right. I really didn't use it in the end, haha! I wonder if maybe I should try again though. Still sounds kind of neato to make a video diary. I saw a movie about a guy who did that recently, he survived in a huge wrecked NC for a whole three months in the middle of the Sea of Thieves, and the only way he could keep himself sane was video journaling. Cool, right?
Shut uuuup, no, I swear I'll do it this time! Oh yeah? I'll make a week easy, and I'll keep doing it after! It'll be—
Hey! Alliiiie! Give it back, give it back right now!
Well, ah...ehem...I guess I'm doing this now. And definitely not just because Alice told me I couldn't yesterday! So...here goes.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley. Okay, that's not really my full name, but my middle name is such a mouthful, god, I'm totally not going to say it every time I start this up. Who still gives someone a name like Anastasia these days, it's so old fashioned, you'd need to be—
Dang okay, getting waaaaay off track. Let's try that again. My name is Mia Ana Hartley, the date is August fourth two-six-six-three, and I'm twelve years old. My dad is Jacob and my mom is Emily, and my sister—half-sister I guess but basically my real sister—is Alice Aimes, she's the greatest, the best friend a girl could ever have.
We've been talking about the military recently. Our mom says we're still too young for it, but other kids have joined at like thirteen so it can't be too long, right?
WHAT?
Anyway my dad is calling me so I need to go bye!
Hiii, I'm Mia Ana Hartley, the date's November fourteenth two-six-six-three, and I'm twelve years old!
I'm starting to really get into the swing of these daily log thingies now, it's fun once you get it down! I don't have a lot lot to say today, but I'm really glad I found this old datatool and Allie told me I couldn't do it, I'm gonna keep doing this as long as I can! So I guess I'll just—
Oh, hey Allie, you're back! You were away for a while, what did you—
You did? You are? Ohmygod no way, wow that's so COOL! Hang on, let me—oh, the—? Yeah, I'm still logging, see, I told you I would!
Okay! I lied! Something really really big did happen today! Allie went to the doctor and tested, and apparently there's something right with her brain, I don't know exactly what but she can be a pilot! She's gonna be SUPER important soon! No, you definitely are, shut up! You're gonna be the best and most famous pilot ever!
What about me? Naaah, I'd never be as good as you, you're so cool!
Heeheehee, look how embarrassed she looks! Isn't it adorable?
Oh. My—okay um my name is Mia Hartley and it's January sixth two-six-six-four and I'm twelve years old, but OH MY GODDD!
So I went to the same place that Allie went, the doctor she was talking about right, and she took a bunch of scans and stuff with this big machine and looked at 'em all for a long time, pointed out a few spots—it was my head, scan was my head and she pointed out spots in my brain that she said were super important, she called 'em neuromarks or whatever then she smiled and—
I CAN BE A PILOT! EEEEEEEEEE!
I can't wait to tell Allie! We're gonna go enlist together as soon as mom lets us, and we'll both be pilots together and help protect everyone like all the grown ups say! It's gonna be the best and I'm so excited, dad says he's really worried about it, he seems really sad but I don't know why, but I just know the two of us are going to be the best, it'll be like—like—I dunno but it'll be great! I just can't believe it we're so lucky!
Okay I'm too excited to keep talking into this thing, I'm gonna go tell Allie, I bet she'll be so excited! Bye!
Hey, my name is Mia Ana Hartley, the date is June second, two-six-six-four. I'm thirteen. As of today! Because it's my birthday!
Don't tell mom or dad—or even Allie!—but I snuck out today! I know they don't want me to go outside without them because they say it's not safe, but how unsafe could it be? I'm thirteen, I'm basically grown up now! So I went through the wall real quick, cause I found a little chink in there I never noticed before and I'm definitely not telling anybody else about.
I didn't stay out for long, just to look around, because I was—no, I wasn't scared, I was just...being careful, because I didn't want to get caught! It was really dirty out there, and all the buildings are WAAY taller than mom and dad say they are. I did get yelled at by some guy in really dirty clothes for being a 'filthy spoiled rotten rich sheltered princess bi—' Well, you get the idea, right? Dad always says to ignore people like that because they're just jealous they don't have what we do, so...I think that's what I'll do! Then he ran at me, and I ran back around the corner and snuck through the little hole in the wall so he couldn't see where I went.
I'm gonna ignore him obviously, but...I wonder what he meant.
But, good news! Dad saw that I'd been using this thing for ages now, so he got me a new one with more storage! I had to transfer it all over, but, yay! I was so worried I'd need to start deleting stuff!
Anyway, I think that's about all I got for today, and Allie said she has a birthday surprise for me. So...bye!
We're doing it! We're doing it! We're really—
My, um, my name is Mia Ana Hartley, the date is October eighth two six six five and I'm fourteen and WE'RE DOING IT! Mom finally said we can enlist! TODAY! She was all cryptic and junk about us not being able to come back and she's sorry but this needs to happen eventually and all that kinda stuff but I wasn't really listening and I don't think Allie was either, we're actually gonna make it, we're gonna be FAIRBANKS PILOTS it's gonna be SO COOL! I can't think straight can barely talk so gonna be done for tonight bye!
... ... I... Haahhh. My...my name is Mia Ana Hartley. The date is October ninth, two-six-six-five. I'm fourteen.
Well...we did it, Allie and I. We both enlisted last night. We're both pilots. She's in an NC called Blue Sky. Mine is called Absolution. We haven't gotten our units yet. We...we really did it. My log from last night...I sounded so excited, just like I was twelve again. Being a pilot was always my— ... God...god damn. I didn't think—this isn't—I—
...I don't want to talk about it.
Alice isn't answering my calls.
Night.
These are some of the recordings that happened between when I enlisted and when you scouted me. I don't think I've ever shown you any of these. I don't know if I EVER showed anyone any of these except...well, yeah. You get it. Probably because a lot of them are mostly just me being really upset and stuff because I hadn't reconciled the reality of Fairbanks with the sanitized garbage my parents put in front of me when I was a kid.
So consider yourself lucky. You're getting to see some things that only Allie saw before.
(See how nostalgic I am? Calling her Allie like I'm a kiddo again. Leaving that in for the sake of it so you can see what looking at these does to me, haha).
Mia Ana Hartley. December fourth. Two-six-six-five. Fourteen.
Everything hurts.
I didn't think it would be like this.
I'm an idiot.
Bye.
I'm Mia Ana Hartley. The date is March first, two-six-six-six. I'm fourteen years old.
I'm starting to get a little better. Physically, I mean. I was always bigger and stronger than Allie—Alice was, so I'm not doing so bad on the physical side of things. It's...almost satisfying, looking into the mirror sometimes.
Alice hasn't talked to me since November. I feel like I should be worried about her. But I just...never mind. I'm not doing much better. Every time I think about the things that I'm going—that I need to—that—every time, I feel sick.
I feel sick now.
I don't want to think about it.
Bye.
I'm—I—
Mia Ana Hartley. Date, April twentieth two-six-six-six. Fourteen years old.
I—I can't—I don't—how do I...?—
Deep breaths, Mia. Deep breaths.
I...I killed someone today. Not an NC, I mean, I just—I tripped an alarm or something and Absolution booted me out, so it got opened up on the battlefield. Someone tried to climb in after me. He was—he couldn't be older than me, and I didn't think about it, I pulled out my gun and—
God, I'm going to be sick. I swear to god I'm going to be sick, I've puked twice already and it's going to happen again.
They can't get the stain out of the cockpit. I just...
I miss Allie.
Mia Ana Hartley. Date, June second two-six-six-six. Fifteen years old.
Happy birthday to me.
When I turned fourteen I was living at home. Allie—ALICE spent the whole day with me. I don't really remember the details, but I remember that I was so happy. So I spent all day remembering as much of it as I could. I even played the video I recorded on that day. And I'm...just...I spent the whole day crying my eyes out. I couldn't even get out of bed. I'm pretty sure that someone's going to come by and break my fingers soon because I missed training today. Fairbanks is a hell of a place. I don't know if I would even try to stop them.
Well, at least something good happened today. For the first time since Novemmber last year Alice talked to me. Or, messaged me. Just the two words 'happy birthday.' But...it's something, right? So it could always be worse.
It can always be worse. And it's damn sure not going to get better.
Bye, I guess.
I'm— My name is— I'm Mia Ana—Mia Ana Hartley. It's July seventh. I'm—I'm fourteen. I'm—I—I...
I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go—
HEY! HEY, GIVE THAT BACK, JESSIE! No! Give it back! Give it back, that's—NO! No, don't you dare, you can't—PUT IT DOWN! I SAID PUT IT DOWN! Put it down, please, it's all I—no, no, put it down! Put it down or—or else—DON'T—
THOOM
Thump
Oh god, I—
No, I didn't—I didn't mean to—oh god, oh god, I—
Oh god...
I held my gun to my head today.
Please help me.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley. The date is July twelfth, two-six-six-six. I'm fifteen years old.
Crazy thing happened today. Real crazy. Maybe the universe listened to what I said a few days ago (if were to delete any one of these, it would probably be that one. God, my eyes were swollen as hell.
Or...well, I guess two things happened. Both crazy. One good, one bad.
Bad news: my Shift started showing up. Came out of the cockpit today and my fingers were numb. Could still flex 'em and anything, but couldn't feel a thing. Went away after about an hour. I've got a bad feeling it's not just going to be my fingers if it gets a chance to develop. When it gets a chance. Trying on optimism again. It's hard.
Okay. Good news: I've been scouted. And not just me; Alice too. We've both been scouted for what apparently going to be some major super elite squad by Donovan, Demon of Fairbanks himself. Says we've both distinguished ourselves on the field of battle enough to be chosen as Furies, whatever those are. And it's true, we are pretty good. But I saw the way he looked between us. We don't have the same last name, but he definitely knows, and he wants to keep us together.
Not a very demonic thing to do, huh?
For the first time in a while, I feel...I feel hopeful. Like things are looking up.
And it really, really didn't hurt that I finally got to talk to Allie again when he called us in. And by "talk to," I mean "we both ugly cried for half an hour while hugging each other and both of us apologized for not being there for the other." Apparently a lot of the reason she hasn't been talking with me recently is cause of her Shift, showed up before mine. She gets panic attacks now and then. They're rare, but they're bad. She didn't want me to worry about her.
She's still the best sister and best friend a girl could ever ask for.
So I guess I should say good bye, huh? Things might really be getting better. I know that's tempting fate, but...here's hoping. Thanks for always listening to me.
I can't believe I'm talking to a fucking datatool.
And now we're getting into the stuff that you know personally! This encapsulates everything that happened in Tartarus, up through...well. You know. When things started going downhill (poor Addie). Still can't believe I had the good luck to be scouted for something like this. I'd pretty much given up at the time. You could probably tell from the one right beforehand, but I was definitely considering GIVING UP in a very concrete and PERMANENT way. If you catch my meaning.
You'll notice that not once in any of those logs did I smile. Not really. But you'll see as this goes on I start getting there again. It'll never be the cheerful smile I had as a kiddo, but it's still there, right?
So...thanks.
Sorry to get sappy, haha!
Hey, my name is Mia Ana—
My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley.
It's not that bad, I guess.
Anyway. My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date is August second, two-six-six-six. I'm fifteen years old.
So. Tartarus Squadron, huh?
Some of the people from the old unit are pissed that I'm getting out. Tyra especially, I think if I didn't have my gun on me all the time she already would've tried to gut me. But I'm out of there now. New barracks, new quarters. My OWN quarters. I—
I haven't had my own room since before I enlisted. It's small, it's spartan, it's utilitarian. But I have my own room. The luxury is...almost inconceivable.
And you know who else has her own room? Her own room really close to mine?
ALICE AIMES.
I don't know if I can really—it's just...so much. So much has happened. Too much. I don't—
Good...good bye. I'm...
Good bye?
My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date is November seventh, two-six-six-six. I'm fifteen years old.
Lyssa and Melinoë, huh?
I've never had a code name. I've had a callsign, obviously. For a little while. And I do keep it during normal stuff, but I don't do as much normal stuff now. So now I have a CODE NAME. We have code names. Mia "Lyssa" Hartley. Alice "Melinoë" Aimes. It's a weird feeling.
Hades said he was scouting a third. Said he wanted a total of five, but it would take a while to find them. Apparently he found someone he thought might be "Alecto." I don't really know what he means by it and I think he knows that. I think I'm just...worried. It's taken a long time for Allie to really start opening up to me again. Seeing her Shift attacks has made it better, but it's also really, really painful. The look in her eyes reminds me of when she was having nightmares when she was a kid.
...God, it was only a year ago, wasn't it? I think? Or, not even a year. Time kind of runs together. It feels so much longer than that. Days seem to take a long time when you're worried each of them might be your last, don't they?
...I'm starting to upset myself now, so I should probably stop talking. I just...bah.
I'm going now. Good bye.
My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date is December nineeteenth, two-six-six-six. I'm fifteen years old.
Well, I'm starting to see what Donovan's getting at now. Tartarus Squadron, I mean.
We have our Alecto. She's a girl a little older than I am, a little younger than Allie is. Her name is Adelaide Taylor, callsign Second Sun, and she's a really good squad support from Unit E-13. Really knows what she's doing, really good at holding groups together and keeping stuff going. Here, check out this picture of her.
See how annoyed she looks? She's always like that. So no-nonsense! She's one of those people that always thinks they know best and everyone else is always wrong. Though in this case, she's, uh...usually right? I mean, it's not like she goes out of her way to tell everyone else they're wrong or anything. She takes other opinions and junk. But she's just really smart at tactics, way better than Allie or me.
Donovan's already definitely starting to plan out ops with her, so I have to try at least a little less during strategy meetings.
So that's the pro. The, uh, con is that I don't think she likes me.
And by that I mean she told me she hates me. She hates me a lot. She thinks I'm dumb and I don't care about what happens to anybody else in the squad as long as I get to blow things up. Which is obviously really wrong.
Well...we can at...at least work together...? I guess that's something.
Allie's starting to get better. She got prescribed medicine that she's supposed to take whenever her Shift is getting at her. She can't take them herself, so she's given them to me so I can give them to her whenever she starts panicking, and they really do work. They only last thirty seconds, maybe a minute afterwards, which is waaay better than the five or six minutes they're starting to get to.
My Shift has started getting worse too. It lasts longer now, and it's starting to go further up my arms, and my legs now too. It's still going away, which is nice. But I feel like it won't always.
Things aren't...they aren't good. And I don't think they will be. But they're at least getting better than they were, I think.
...Not like it could get any worse.
Good bye, I suppose.
Don' ask how I gotthish black eye.
And uhhhh...'m Mia Hartley, 's NEW YEARSH!
But anyway Allie tol' me that I needed t'get tbed, n' I tol' her back that I was gonna have 'nother drink firsht. Then 'Delaide said I gotta sleep'n'I said to fuckoff, so then she PUNCHED me'n the FACE! I tried t'punch her back but I fell down, 'n then she'n Allie picked me up 'n locked me in m'room.
YOU PUNCH HARD, 'DELAAAIIIDE!
I'mna go shleep now. Niiiightt!
... ... ... God. I look and feel like shiiit. ... I don't have anything to do today. ... ... I'm going back to bed.
My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date is February fifteenth, two-six-six-seven. I'm fifteen years old.
We've got a fourth now. Here, this is a picture: Priscilla Lee, probably the best sniper I've ever seen. Came from E-13, just like Addie. Donovan calls her Tisiphone now, callsign Snow Shadow. She's also the cheeriest person I think I've seen since I enlisted.
Seriously, it's...it's almost scary.
She's so cheerful, all the time. It's to the point that I don't know if I can believe her or if she's hiding something really horrible underneath that constant laughing. Either way, she looks at me really weirdly. I'm not scared of people very often, but...yeah, I think I'm scared of her. But at least she seems to get on really well with Addie. They must know each other from E-13 already.
The very tips of my fingers are permanently numb now.
It's been a bad day.
Bye.
My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date is April tenth, two-six-six-seven. I'm fifteen years old.
According to Donovan, Tartarus Squadron is done now, because we have our Megaera. Quiet, personable, okay to talk to, okay with talking to people.
It's nice, it really is.
With Addie's painful acid tongue (she still says she hates me, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't actually, she's just showing an image) and Priss being kind of scary with all the laughing like usual, having someone else other than Allie who I can actually let my guard down a little near is nice.
Ah, right, I almost forgot to show her picture! Check her out, this is Lucy Santiago, callsign Claw Hammer. She's pretty, right? It's almost amazing to me how clean she looks, y'know? I know she's right out in the middle of everything swinging at everything with thermal brass knuckles, but I guess that's just in NC, huh?
Point is, well...I like her. Allie likes her too. Says she actually reminds her of me. Makes me feel kinda nice, I think she's a good person, so having Allie say that makes me feel like she thinks I'm a good person too. I hope she's around for a long while.
So, Tartarus Squadron is all together now. I guess now we just need to figure out how to all work together. Especially me and Addie, because she seems to get on well enough with Allie and Lucy, so apparently it's just me? I need ask her about that and work it out sometimes, we need to trust each other. Donovan says we're gonna go out on more missions, just the squad, so we can figure out how to work together better before we start taking real elite sorties.
It's wild, isn't it?
All five of us. Wow.
Goodbye.
Hey, my name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date is June second, two-six-six-seven. I'm sixteen years old now!
I looked back at the log I made on my fifteenth birthday today. Man, was some sad stuff, huh? I still feel a little of that now and then, I have to admit. As much as I'm so much happier in Tartarus Squadron than Unit 12-F, I just...I...
No. None of that! Today was a good day! I got to spend it with Allie again. I missed her so much. We were only apart for a little while, but it feels like it was centuries. We're in the military, so we obviously don't have the most means at our disposal, but she actually got me a gift. Yeah, it was just that she'd sewn a patch in my favorite shirt to wear during down time. It certainly wasn't anything like the extravagant stuff that I used to get back home. But for some reason it feels so much better anyway.
And you know what? She wasn't the only one!
It had to all be kept on the down-low, of course, because if the higher-ups knew that they were actually daring to give me things on my birthday I think at least one of us would be beaten. Probably all of us. Badly. But hey. What they don't know won't hurt us.
Point is, I got a few things. Little things, obviously. Allie patched my shirt. Lucy gave me a ring. Tiny little thing, see? I think she cut it out of a shell from one of Allie's guns, actually. Girl's really good with stuff like that, good with her hands. It's pretty impressive. Priss somehow fitted a new part into my pods without me noticing. A few rockets on the bottom that I don't guide, she said she couldn't hook it up to the guidance without me there and that would ruin the surprise. I might leave them like this. Might be handy sometime.
And Addie. Oh, Addie.
I didn't think she'd give me anything. And she didn't until just, like, half an hour ago, I think she was hanging out with Priss. But then she knocked on my door and—well, you see how my hands are closed over something?
Look at that! She set her datatool somewhere so she could take a picture of the five of us when we were eating, and then she called in a favor from her old unit to have it printed out! Isn't that just the sweetest—
Whoa! Oh, uh, hey, Addie! How...how long have you been standing there?
Uh oh. She's giving me the Adelaide Glare. I better go.
Good day. Bye!
Name is Mia Ana Hartley, October twenty-fourth two-six-six-seven, sixteen years old, yadda yadda yadda. Not important, cause hooooly shit I saw something wild today, seriously I am just in absolute disbelief. Not 'cause it doesn't make sense cause looking back it totally does, just...whoa!
Last night I couldn't sleep, was heading out to do some maintenance on Absolution, always seems to help when my thoughts keep me up. I think there's...maybe something a little messed up about that. But anyway, the point is, I was halfway through cleaning out scorch marks from the Emperor, right? And then I hear voices. Quiet ones, ones I recognize. And it's hard to see me 'cause I'm half in and out of a big gun, so I just stay quiet. Look, I know I shouldn't eavesdrop but they were talking 'bout some heavy stuff, not depressing heavy but like, sweet heavy, I mean—
Look, I poked my head out and right there next to Snow Shadow, Priss and Addie were making out. And not like hot passion making out, I mean like the kind of tender thing people who are really serious go for, talking in between kisses. Not that I would—never mind, shut up Mia! Point is, if that doesn't describe the kind of sweet heavy I meant, then Iunno. But oh god they're treading a dangerous, dangerous road. I'm not going to turn them in obviously, but if the higher-ups find out, they'll be lucky if their families are threatened. Real lucky.
I'm happy for them, you know? I am, really. But...I don't...
...I hope the two of them are happy. But Fairbanks is...
...Well, I should shut up before one of both of them hear me. So...bye, I guess. Hopefully things don't implode here. For them. For everyone.
Promished myself an' Allie I wouln' get sloshed this year like I did last year. 'N I'm not, 'm jus' normal drunk.
Oh uhhhh...Mia Hartley, 's NEW YEARS AGAIN BABY! 'N I'm still sixteen.
Look, y' can't blame meeee for how Priss suddenly got her hands on thish much vodka! 'N wha' was I s'posed to do, let it all go t' waste? Iiiii dooooon't thiiiiiink sooooooooooo!
Allie called me a stick 'n the mud for going to take my log, but come oonnnnn I do thish every night 'n she knows it. Plush, when I left, 'Delaide and Priss were starting t'make the eyes at each other, I bet there'sh gonnabe somethin' goin on between 'em tonight f'sure ehhheheehh...
SHU'UP, DONO—hic—VAN! 'M NOT GOIN'T'SHLEEP TIL IT'S TWENTY SIX SIXTY EIGHT AN' I'LL TALK INTO MY TOOL AS MUCH 'S I—WHAT?
Fuck, fuck, gotta go, Allie'sh having a Shift 'ttack an' I'm the one with her meds. Gotta—hic— gotta do that, oh fuck.
HOL' ON ALLIE, 'M COMING—
... ...I guess I look a little different, huh. Everything does for me.
Sorry for no log last night. I'll need to make up for it somehow. But I was recovering after...well, yeah.
Op yesterday with the rest of Tartarus. Going behind enemy lines and fucking with supply vehicles so their lives get harder. It was pretty by the books, went well, even had a rapid exfil for if and when shit went downhill. Which is...well, why I'm still alive.
Was taking a last shot at an armored transport, mulching everyone inside. Something feels weird about how clinical I feel. Like I should feel bad about it. But I really don't. Anyway, we were just about to leave when a few NCs came over the ridge across the way, 'cause they'd noticed that something was wrong when they were on patrol in the area. Bad luck. They took some shots at us, but they all deflected 'cause they were far away and we were getting out anyway. But right as we were about to disappear, a shell hit Absolution dead on. Dunno how, maybe one of them had ion tech, but it went right through the shield, then went right through the armor. Didn't hit me dead on; it hit the inside of the cockpit, came apart, and bounced around, is what Adelaide said. And when it was fragmenting like that, one of the fragments, well—
Well, you get it.
I don't know why Donovan had an eyepatch handy for when they got me back to base after I disconnected spontaneously right about as we were getting back over the border of the demilitarized zone. But lucky he did. I don't think I could take looking at that ruined mess that used to be my eye anymore.
...Goddamnit. This really sucks.
Fuck.
Good night.
Name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date is June Second, two-six-six-eight. I'm seventeen today.
Well, it's certainly not as sad as my log two years ago, where I seem to have just given up on life entirely. But today also definitely wasn't a high point like last year's.
The higher-ups are apparently cracking down on frivolous activity, by which of course they mean anything that isn't training or active duty. Like that's all anyone needs to live, apparently. Thank god Donovan has a little wiggle room since our squad's a small independent unit and we've done a lot of pretty hardcore things, or else who knows, they might even take this tool away.
You see this finger? That's about what I think of that.
So the point is, no gifts today. Just caution. Well, Allie gave me a bit from her rations, but...I feel bad about it. She's doing well, but that's not really an excuse for taking her food.
I ate it anyway. Selfish, right?
So, anything else...oh, I'm starting to get more used to the eye thing. It helps that when I get into the NC I get the same kind of full-angle vision I always have, but I mean in waking life, just walking around. Starting to figure out how to work around the depth perception thing and lack of perspective. It took me ages, but I finally started figuring out how to actually hit the target with my gun, finally. I'm not a deadshot like I used to be—that's a joke, I was never a deadshot—but I can at least hit the thing now.
What else, what else...ah. Right. Shift. Getting into fullsync more often, and so it's gotten worse. Goes all the way up to my shoulders and mid-thigh now. Completely numb elbows and knees down. And the permanent numbness is about halfway up my forearm and shins.
...This is going exactly where I think it is, huh.
Well, it wasn't a bad day or anything. Didn't lose my eye, nothing like that. Just...kind of normal. Adelaide and Priss are spending a lot of time together, like you'd maybe expect. It's kind of sweet, honestly, and it's starting to temper both of them. Priss is a little less...I dunno, laugh-creepy? And Adelaide's actually smiling and junk, even though her Shift is starting to cause more acute pain than before.
That said...it's also more noticeable. I'm worried about them.
Well, Mia Hartley, almost an adult now, out. G'bye.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley...
Feels weird to go back to that, huh?
...and it's July twelfth, two-six-six-eight. I'm seventeen years old.
It's the anniversary today. Like a second birthday. The anniversary of Donovan scouting me, I mean. Pulling me out of actual hell and giving me a slightly nicer hell where I have my own room.
Walked around and thanked everyone today. Priss, Addie, and Lucy looked at me like I was cracked in the head. But Allie gets it. We spent most of today together. I mean, yeah, we were sparring and working out so we had an excuse, but we spent it together anyway.
Oh, right. I split my knuckles bad when we were fighting and didn't even notice until she told me cause of my Shift. I'm not going to be able to do this for much longer am I? God. Well, at least the drugs are still working on Allie's, though she says when I'm not around to give them to her the attacks are getting longer and more intense. Really worried about her. Hope she stays okay.
Anyway, I need to change the bandage on my hand. No pain, but I can see the blood leaking through. I'm gonna go do that. G'night.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley. The date is October fourth, two-six-six-eight. I'm seventeen years old.
Oh god. They're playing a really dangerous game.
Sorry I'm whispering, because I don't want anyone to hear this but me. But I overheard the two of them in Priss' room, and thank god I'm the only one that overheard. Because I think even Donovan would've needed to report hearing two elite pilots discussing desertion.
They know they're not gonna be able to openly be together as long as they're in the military like this, or Fairbanks is going to metaphorically and possibly literally tear them apart. But desertion from Fairbanks is a pretty dangerous thing to discuss. They find you, you're lucky if you get shot.
I'll cover for them if they ask me, obviously. Which...might not go well for me, but I still have my principles, damnation. But...man, I hope they know what they're doing, because if they don't, Tartarus Squadron is fucked.
That's all. Nothing else really important went down today. So, g'bye.
Okay. Okay, today...today Priss was part of a normal op. Totally normal easy stuff, she's done it a thousand times. She was miles away, she shouldn't have been in any—any danger.
Apparently it was a stray shell. A stray FAIRBANKS shell. Priss—our Tisophone...I—fuck, I just...at least they say it was fast, she didn't...didn't suffer. She...
Addie is absolutely beside herself, of course, just about losing her mind. I've never seen her like this. I mean, I've seen her crying, but—but never like—I've never seen her sobbing like this. Wailing. It's like she got her arm cut off. I tried to comfort her, but, what do I even say? I wasn't supposed to know about their relationship, so I obviously can't say anything about that or anything, I just...I can't do anything. She's falling apart.
I guess...I guess one of us had to go. I think maybe I just let myself forget it.
I'm not going to do that again.
Fuck, I—god, I can hear her screaming at Allie. I don't know what's going on, but I should go try and break it up.
I'm sorry, Priscilla. And I'm sorry I was afraid of you at first. You deserved better.
I suppose it's time for me to indulge myself in a great deal of self-pity now, isn't it?
I smiled a lot back then, didn't I? It's...almost hard to look at. Blinding. Like looking at the sun. Painful. I wonder if it's sad that I can say with confidence they were the best two years of my life. Back home? I was...I don't know, coddled. Treated like, well...what did that guy say again? Hold on, let me check the video again.
Ah, there it is. He called me a "filthy spoiled rotten rich sheltered princess bitch." In basic I was...well, you saw the logs, didn't you? You saw that I was really close to...doing something, ehm...something that I would regret, and not be able to take back. But being in Tartarus with with all the first Furies...it was...it was nice.
Bah-ahaha! Listen to how maudlin I've gotten! It's not bad now, with Jackie and Anya and Marina and...well. I suppose that...that we'll need a new Melinoë soon.
...I know you blame yourself for what happened to her, Donovan.
Don't. Please.
...God, I can't believe it's already been ten years. And only three since...well...you remember her.
...It's not fun this year.
I didn't drink. I get the feeling I'd just get sad. Priss is...Priss is dead. Addie isn't falling apart anymore at least, so that's good, but any trace of sympathy for anyone has been burned out of her, like her soul died along with Priss. She's just angry now. Only comes out of her room when she needs to. Lucy's holding it together, but she's clearly upset (obviously), even if she tries not to look it.
And...I don't know how Allie would normally be holding up, but she's really on edge right now. Because we're down a Tisophone, we've all needed to fullsync more, so her Shift's gotten waaaay worse. They won't give us any more medication for her in this hellscape of a military, so we need to ration it out carefully and only use it after a few minutes to make sure that we have enough for the really bad attacks.
Oh, god, yeah, speaking of Shifts, mine's also getting worse. Until now the permanent numbness was just creeping further up my arms and legs—it's starting to move past my elbows and knees now—but everything else was pretty stable. But I got out of the cockpit this morning and my whole chest was half-numb. Like I was pressing on it through, I dunno, a thick layer of cloth or something. It hasn't moved above my legs yet, but...it will. God.
So...yeah. The kind of uneasy stability that we'd found is all but gone now. Donovan said that he's going to find a new Tisiphone soon, scouting for her right now. But man, the look in Addie's eyes when he said that...
...The photo in my cockpit is the best thing that I own now.
Oh, god. I almost forgot, I'm nearly out of storage. I need to find a way to expand it soon. If I need to delete one of these or stop making them, I think I'll come apart at the seams. Just another problem.
Well, at least I always have Allie. G'bye.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley. The date is February tenth, two-six-six-nine. I'm seventeen years old.
Well, we have our new Tisiphone.
Here's a photo. Great sniper, one of the best out there apparently, though she's been in reserve pretty much her whole career, so her Shift hasn't even shown up yet. Cheerful kid, a few years younger than the rest of us. It's nice to have her there; we're all pretty dour right now, so having someone who isn't so upset all the time is kind of a breath of fresh air. Callsign is Moonshot. Big ol' ballistic sniper rifle. Got some ion fire in there too, which is really nice, since it's starting to get more common these days and we really need to have the edge. Her name is Jacqueline Brake.
Things is, though...you remember that "it's a breath of fresh air" thing? Well...I think so. Lucy thinks so. Allie thinks so, I can tell.
Addie...
God. God. I feel so bad for her, I do. But she's...
I used to think Addie hated me, and she even told me she did. But she wasn't really serious about it. She didn't like me, but she didn't have a grudge.
But oh, man, poor Jacqueline.
She's still reeling from Priss being gone. So I think it's 'cause she sees another cheerful sniper girl as Tisiphone as angling to replace Priss, but...she is very vocal about how she really, truly hates Jackqueline, and she's always going to hate her, and she's never going to forgive her. And it makes my heart bleed seeing Jacqueline look so hurt and confused. I can almost hear her thinking, forgive me for what?
God. I don't want to discount Addie's grief, because god knows we're all still upset, and her most of all. But she's just being needlessly cruel.
I might talk to her later. Wish me luck. God, will I need it.
G'bye.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley. The date is June second, two-six-six-nine. I'm seven—eighteen years old.
Hear that? I'm an adult now.
I got a gift today again. Not from Lucy or Allie, and definitely not from the ball of rage that our Addie has become. Nah, I got it from Jackie. Lucy told me in confidence that Jackie'd told her she held me in some kind of awe. Me and Allie, that is, the first two scouted Furies, but it's a little harder to talk to Allie now than it used to be. Not only is she still grieving a little bit over Priss—she always took things like that hard—but her Shift has her really high-strung all the time. So apparently Jackie sees me as kind of a role model.
I think I'm going to be sick. Please, Jackie. I am not a role model you want to follow. Not after I—Jessie—
Never mind. Don't be like me, Jackie. Please. Be like Allie. Better yet, be like Lucy. Hell, even be like Addie. Just as long as you're not like me.
Never mind. Those aren't birthday thoughts. This is supposed to be a good day.
Oh, right, I never actually showed you what Jackie gave me, haha. And that's nuts, cause it's super important. Apparently they pay better in reserve than they do in active duty. For some reason. So she spent a bunch of it a new storage drive for my datatool. I guess Allie told her I needed one.
Thanks, Jackie. I'm trying to keep Addie away from you. I swear.
Happy birthday, Mia.
My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date's September thirtieth, two-six-six-nine. I'm eighteen years old.
That's my fuckin' girl, Allie!
God. God. I know she's older than me, but I feel a little like the older sister recently because of the whole Shift thing, she's a bit of a nervous wreck sometimes and it dependent on me sometimes. So I can't help but just be so proud of her.
Sortie last night. We were pinned down by an absolute hellfire of machine guns, missiles, thermal lances, ion fire...the whole nine yards. I couldn't get the hell out, and my shield was all out of juice. Jackie had been flushed out and needed to scramble, she wasn't going to be in position for another few minutes. Addie's been scratched out, of the fight, NC crippled, barely managed to get Second Sun outta there. Lucy was alone out in the middle of everything. I was pretty sure I was gonna say goodbye to her.
Then my fucking sister hits fullsync, jumps into action, and comes blasting out of the ravine next to me, pulling the last of my big rockets out of the pot as she went. Jesus, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack. Then she pitched the thing. Blackstoners were so surprised they could barely react, couldn't shoot it down in time like the rest of 'em, so she nailed them right in the middle of the line. Huge explosion, blew a cloud of dust into the air two hundred feet up, easy. When it'd cleared, she was back down there with me, and Lucy was with her. I felt like the sun had come out. Then Jackie got into position again, started picking them off, and we circled around under her cover, got into place, and wiped them out.
My big sister is fucking awesome.
Good day. Real good day! Night!
My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date's January first, two-six-seven-oh. I'm eighteen years old.
I don't think I can ever get drunk on New Years again. Ever. It is just not a good idea.
Additional note, and a reminder for future Mia, because come on, let's be honest, we all know you look back on New Years video logs constantly: whatever you do, never ever let Jackie and a drunk Addie be in the same room again. Holy fffff—
Short log tonight. Because on that note, I need to go get something cold (god, Allie's gonna need to help me, I can't even feel it anymore) to ice Addie's knuckles, and another something cold to put on Jackie's eye. Well, look at it this way: at least Addie's not punching me out this time. Ugh, I can hear Jackie groaning in the next room, and Addie's still frigid. I need to go take care of 'em.
Is this what being a mom is like? Jesus.
Night.
My name is Mia Anastasias Hartley. The date is June second, two-six-seven-oh, and I am officially nineteen years old.
Shit birthday. Shit, shit, shit birthday.
Jackie's Shift manifested today. She joked that now she's a member of the cool kid's club, but she's shaken up, it's really easy to tell. Allie's...well, busy with her own Shift a lot these days. Lucy is trying to not lose herself to this asshole guy named Aldis Follen, the previous pilot of Claw Hammer. And, well...Addie. So it's just me now, who's really present to help her.
Got out of Moonshot after a fullsync, and she was like...dead. Not out of it, I mean, and she didn't fall over or something. But for a minute or two her emotions were just gone.
Screwed up to see her like that. She's always been so cheerful and emotional, having her lock up like that...it hurt. But I talked her through it, talked about Polaris Shifts and stuff. Had her scratch me on the neck, watch me wince. Told her that yeah, it seemed awful, but I'm still not totally numb, and I've been in constant active duty for almost five years, and see? It takes a lot more time than she thinks for the Shift to progress. She seemed better after that. I hope she turns out okay.
Bah. Not what I wanted on my birthday. But hey, that's just how it is, right?
Night.
F—fuck, I—no, no I'm not gonna cry anymore, I..goddamnit, I let myself somehow get lulled into that sense of security again, I, she...
Fuck, no I can't say it, I can't say it. It's too painful, like stabbing myself, I can't...
Fuck, I—I watched it happen, I saw the thermal lance coming, I—I could've—I could've done...done something, I don't know, I saw it punch right, right through Claw Hammer, I dragged it off and opened it to see if she was okay, and she...I just...
..We—we're...we need...we need a new Megaera.
I'm gonna puke. I'm—she didn't—it shouldn't have—
Hurrgghhhhgkkk!
F—fuck, I need to go...I need to go wash my face and clean this—clean this up, I just—
Lucy...I'm sorry—hrrrgkkkkk—
... I don't want to log today.
Mia Hartley. March Thirteenth, two-six-seven-one.
Anita Lawrence. Callsign Megavolt. A ballistic SMG and an ion hand cannon. Vanguard. Our new Megaera.
I'm not getting attached to this one.
She's going to die too.
...I don't want to talk about her.
Mia Ana Hartley. March twenty-first, two-six-seven-one.
I couldn't do it.
I can't—I can't not get invested. Anita is...just...Jackie is withdrawing from her because she's worried about getting Anita too attached and then losing everything. Addie is...well, she's still Addie. I can't...god. It's so sad what happened to her after Priss died. She just can't do human things anymore. I don't know. I just think it's sad to watch Jackie avoid her, and watch Allie avoid her. They used to be such good friends.
The point is, Anita was just...all alone. And it was horrible to watch her avoiding everyone, just going back to her quarters, trying not to make eye contact. So I...
Well, I started talking to her. Apologized for being unfriendly because I'd just said goodbye to a very close friend, but that wasn't her fault, introduced myself, and told her she could come to me no matter what.
She gave me a hug, and cried. Then I started crying too.
Fuck. She's just a kid. And...god, god, I can't help but feel like she's somehow my kid, even though she's only a few years younger than I am. Nobody else is gonna help her.
So...fuck, what was I supposed to do?
Ugh. Bye.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley. The date is June second, two-six-seven-one. Come on, Anita! Get over here!
...Are you sure? You said this was important to—
Yeah, exactly! That's why you're gonna get over here and do it!
I dunno, Mia...
Hey hey, remember! It's my twentieth birthday! Think of it as a birthday gift!
Well, if you're sure, then...yeah!
Hey! Take a look, this is Anita, the little sparkplug!
Hey! Sparkplug? What's that supposed to mean?
Well, you're Megavolt, right? And you're a little firecracker, aren't ya? So you're the sparkplug! Psst! She's not actually a firecracker!
Ughh, come onnn, Mia!
Ha! You hear that! You hear that, Anita? You sound just like me when I was a kid! Ah-ahahah! Come on, Anita! Come baaack!
She's great, isn't she? Ahaha! See ya!
My name is Mia Anastasia—YEAH, SPARKPLUG! MY MIDDLE NAME IS ANASTASIA, WHAT ABOUT IT? CLOSE THE DOOR AND LET ME LOG, KIDDO!
Ahem.
Well, tomorrow's the big day. Training period's just about done, Sparkplug's 'bout to come on her first real Tartarus op! She's...well, she's nervous as all hell, y'know? Obviously, I mean, who wouldn't be? But I think she'll be okay. She's actually really good. And it helps that she's actually got some range, unlike—
...Never mind. Point is, Sparkplug's great, and I'm positive she'll do just as good as any Fury!
Man, I can't remember the last time I've really been excited for one of these ops. Maybe back when Priss—
God. I need to stop thinking about that kind of thing. Those days are over, and they aren't coming back. But...if Sparkplug's around, then things aren't so bad.
Anyway, I'm doing better than I have for a long time. Allie's also starting to warm up to her with me on her side. She agreed that she reminds her of me when I was a kid. Jackie's still holding herself apart, and I don't think Addie's ever going to like anyone ever again. But...well, two out of four isn't bad, right?
Dang, I really like this kid, haha.
I'll see you again after the op with the good news!
My name's Mia Anastasia Hartley, date's October twentieth, two-six-seven-one, twenty years old and stoked as hell!
Sparkplug is an ace. A fuckin' ACE! She crushed it so hard that even ADDIE needed to admit that she did good!
Stealth op deep into Blackstone, puttin' on the Blackstone flag and cracking open a reserve barracks to start turning 'em on themselves. There was retaliation from a few NCs, obviously, we were assaulting a military installation, after all, and WOW, she tore them up! Ion in one hand, high cal SMG in the other, man she was popping 'em like nothing! Knew that training this kid up—
God, sometimes it's weird to realize she's only five years younger than I am. Feels like a bigger gap. Wild, right?
The point is, she absolutely shredded the op. Went like a breeze. This girl's gonna go the distance, I can tell! Man, oh man am I thrilled!
I'm gonna go clap her on the back and maybe punch her in the shoulder. She kicked ASS today! See ya!
M'name's Mia An-Anas-Anstasia Hartley, 's NEW YEARS BITTCHHHH! Gonna be twenny-six-sevenny-two in a few, and I am DRUNK AS FUUUUCK! 'S great, I love't, missed this shit on New Years! Sparkplug somehow managed to get 'er hands'n some gooooOOOood shit, and fuckin...everyone's sloshed, I'm sloshed, Jackie's slooshed, Allie's already fuckin gone, fuck, Addie's here hatin'll of us but she hatesh everyone now, she'sh not the same person I used t'know.
Fuuuckk now I'm sad. I'mna go back out'n hangout with 'em.
'S happy here for once. Nice.
See yaaaa!
My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date's April twenty-second, two-six-seven-two. I'm twenty years old.
I knew it would happen eventually!
I was walking out, and I saw Jackie and Sparkplug talking in the common area. I knew Jackie wouldn't be able to resist her for too long.
Though...that reminds me. Jackie's Shift has started to get a little worse. It's not bad! Nowhere near as progressed as mine. Nothing permanent. But it lasts a lot longer after she fullsyncs. I think it was almost an hour last time. It still only happens after fullsync, but I'm...still worried about her.
Sparkplug still hasn't had any noticeable Shift yet, which is nice to see. I'm worried about what's gonna happen to that kiddo too. I seem to worry about these girls a lot.
But the point is, the two of them are talking now. Jackie's finally, finally stopped holding herself back, maybe after seeing me spending so much time with Sparkplug.
God. More worry. Person I'm worried about the most. Allie is...there's something wrong with her. She's twitchy and paranoid, and never seems to relax unless it's around me. I hope she's dealing with nerves or something. She takes a long, long time to process grief, so maybe she's still upset over...well, yeah. I don't know. I just really hope it's not her Shift starting to go permanent. That would be a nightmare.
Well...that got a little upsetting. But the point is, I'm glad Sparkplug's starting to get along with Jackie. It's nice. I've been worried she hasn't bee talking to enough people other than me.
Gotta go talk to Donovan now, he has a briefing he wants to go over with me. Down to business, huh?
Anyway, see you.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley. The date is June second two-six-seven-two, and today I'm twenty one years old.
Sparkplug asked me some hard questions recently, and they're back on my mind now, since they've all gotta do with my birthday anyway.
She asked me about the ring first. Then I let her see my cockpit, and she noticed the picture. Recognized Allie and Addie. Asked who the other two are.
I've been quiet today. I think she thinks she's done something wrong. I've told her she didn't.
Fuck. I love Sparkplug—er, Anita. I love this kid, and I love Jackie. But...god. God.. I miss...I miss Priss and Lucy so goddamn much. I know I'm a soldier. Death is my business, I kill people, I've killed a lot of people. But...those two have left such a hole in my heart, and I don't think Jackie and Sparkplug can ever fill it.
Allie isn't doing well. And we're running out of medication again.
Haaahh. Happy birthday to Mia, I guess.
... ... ... ... ... ... I... I just...
Fuck. Fuck! How? How? WHY? I don't...I...
sniff Hello...?
Oh. Oh, hey...fuck. Hey, Sparks.
Yes, yes of course I'm crying alone. Hahaha...I've cried—cried alone more than you can imagine, kiddo.
God...why? Why did she have to go like that? She—she was better than that. She didn't—
Fuck. Fuck. Why?
Look, kiddo, you...you don't need to stick around me right now. You...you didn't—you didn't know her like I did. She was just...I know she was mean to you and Jackie, but...but you just...you can't understand. She just—she just missed her—Priss—she—hhgghhhh
Why? Why did this—why did she need to go like that? It's just...it's just Allie and I now, there's nobody else...there's...I miss her, I miss her smile, Ighhhh I just miss her so much, she didn't deserve what happened to her, she was just—just lonely, I just... ... ... ... sniff ... Fuck, I—
Do you mind if I—if I tell you about her, Sparks? About...how she used to be?
...Thank you.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley. It's January first, two-six-seven-three.
The other three are drinking right now.
I don't feel like it.
Fuck off, Mia. Don't judge me for smoking. Don't I have enough stress to have earned it?
Fuck. I can't believe—I know I've said it almost every day, but I just...I still can't believe Addie's gone. And she should have gone out better. She earned so much better. We all would've died so many times without her in the field. So what right does some asshole commander have to shoot her in the back of the head because she's taking out her frustration on another unit's NC?
She deserved more. She deserved better than this.
Hello?
Oh. Hey, Allie. Fuck, fuck, sorry, I know I shouldn't be smoking. I just...
...Yeah, I know. They didn't know her like we did, they wouldn't understand. C'mere.
F—fuck. I'm gonna...hggkkh—
...Yeah. I'm...I know.
I know I smell like smoke. But can...can you hug me like you did when we were little, Allie?
Thank you. Thank—thank you.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley. It's May thirty-first, two-six-seven-three.
Alecto #2. Mina.
God. I still feel like my soul got squeezed out like a dishrag. I know I said that I wouldn't get attached to Sparkplug. But this isn't a won't so much as a can't. I don't have the energy anymore. I can't bring myself to care about another girl who isn't—
Never mind.
Sparkplug showed her Shift. It's bad. It's just...it's just psychosis. She starts hallucinating, getting delusions. She's only made one fullsync and episodes are already starting. She said that I was trying to kill her, ran away, and shut herself up for eight hours.
They aren't giving us the drugs for Allie anymore. So now she just has to deal with the panic.
I can't feel my arms and legs at all anymore.
I'm going to cry.
Mia Hartley. June second, two-six-seven-three. Twenty two now.
I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care.
I'm sorry. Sis, Sparkplug, Jackie...even Mina, whoever you are. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. If I was good enough then Priss would still be alive. Addie would still be here and happy. I didn't want—I didn't mean—
I'm sorry.
Fuck. No. Sortie in a few days. Maybe that'll help me out of this funk.
Bye.
I've...
I... ... ... ... I haven't...I haven't held my gun to my head since basic. ... ... ... Sparkplug's—Anita, she's—
...I'm sorry. God, Sparkplug, I'm so—I'm sorry. You trusted me to—to cover your back. But then I, I didn't check all the angles, and I, I, I just—
Fuck. Fuck! FUCK! WHY SHOULD'T I? WHY SHOULD I JUST PULL THE TRIGGER? I COULDN'T—
...Oh god. Allie, I... ... ... ... You're a shit sister, Mia.
...God.
I still feel so bad about Sparkplug. I mean, it was just...it was just my fault. I can't even get around it, I just didn't watch all the angles.
I'll...god. I'll be glad to move on from this topic. Or...well, the next topic isn't much better, is it? As you can probably tell from the section name. And you also probably remember how awful things got around that point. So I'm gonna try and gloss over things. Not going to put in my birthdays, all of the New Years...it's just going to be the highlights of awfulness. So it'll be a bit shorter, since I don't really like rewatching these and don't want to go over them again.
Which ends with...well. You...know where this is going.
My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date is February sixth, two-six-seven-four. I'm twenty two years old.
Siobhan keeps trying to talk to me. Sorry, kid. I mean, I'll talk to her, obviously. I'll be nice, I'll make peace between her and Mina whenever things go wrong, it's basically my job. But I'm not making a real connection with her. I can't. Not again. It hurts too much.
So I've been spending most of what little spare time I have with Allie. Well, and Jackie, but...less so.
God, if Allie saw me now, she'd be pissed. I mean...I know she can smell the smoke, no matter how much I try and hide it. At least I keep it out of the common area, out of the NCs and stuff. I've...I've earned this. It's fine. Fuck everyone else.
...It's so quiet now.
Allie's all quiet now because her Shift has messed her up. Mina and Siobhan are both quiet by nature, even if they get at each others' throats from time to time. Jackie's...well. Her shift has started to get to her a little more. She's still cheerful and stuff, but...less. Her smile isn't as real, I guess, and she keeps to herself more.
Whenever I walk out to the common room I feel like I'm seeing ghosts of the past. Like I can see young me and cheerful Allie, Priss laughing, Addie shaking her head with a smirk on her face, and Lucy smiling as she whittles in the corner. It's just...I don't know.
Is this what it's like to feel old?
Maybe. Who knows. Bye.
My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date is April twenty-eighth. I am twenty two years old.
I'm glad I don't get attached.
It hadn't been a full year, and Mina died. Nameless, faceless. What's the point of it all?
Donovan said he found a new Alecto right away. Her name is Marina Martinez. Mina. Marina. I don't know. Maybe I'll start talking to her more once she makes it a few months. I dunno. At least Siobhan's still alive. I mostly expected her to die right off. Maybe she'll survive another day.
At this point, I only care about Allie and Jackie.
Poor Jackie. She can feel her emotions slipping away permanently, little by little. She's started keeping a journal like me, and the look on her face is just constant anguish. I feel so horrible for her. And Allie. God. Fairbanks. Fucking Fairbanks. I've tried. I've tried so hard. Donovan tried too. But they won't renew her modamerizol. Watching her fall apart in panic more and more often is breaking my heart.
Fuck. Where's my lighter? I need another cig.
My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date is October fourteenth, two-six-seven-four. I'm twenty three years old.
Today, Marina saved Allie's life. Jumped out in front of her and mulched fuckers down while her drones fixed up Blue Sky.
Maybe I'll start being a little more involved with her. At least she deserves thanks for that. Cool shotgun, too.
Allie is really torn up, though. It's bad. Really bad. I need to actually force her into her NC so the higher ups don't come down and, I don't know, use me as leverage on her like they used her once on me. It feels awful. I don't want them doing it to her. So even though I feel like a fuckin' monster, I gotta keep doing it. The panic is getting worse, and the permanent effects are starting to ramp up too.
Speaking of shifts, everything below my shoulders and thighs are permanently numb now. When I come out of the cockpit—doesn't need to be fullsync anymore—the temporary numbness creeps further across me. Last time the only thing that had sensation on my entire body was my sternum.
I'm going to die soon, aren't I?
...I...fuck, I promised Allie I'd try to stop smoking. I can't light up.
I'll try to deal without it.
Good bye.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley. Date is February sixth, two-six-seven-five. I'm twenty three.
Everyone's still alive.
And you know what, I'm starting to get fond of Marina. Bear in mind; not attached. But fond. She's a bit devil-may-care and wild, and it's nice to have someone more excited back around here. I mentioned it already, but...everything's so quiet now. Jackie has to try even harder, and she's slipping. It's horrible. I hate it. So Marina, a fuckin...eighteen year old, I think? Eighteen year old kid with no shift just kinda throwing her weight around...god. It reminds me of...
Well. You know. Before Priss died.
Haaahhhh.
Allie said she wanted to talk to me about something important tonight.
Does it make me a bad sister that I'm terrified?
Well. I should go do that now.
Bye.
My name is...fuck this. Fuck the stupid introduction. I know who I am.
Siobhan's gone. That's three Megaeras down now. I miss Lucy. Got a new kid already again. Revolving door. Angry kid, calls herself Anya. I try to be nice to her, but the world's like a blur.
I've got an intense feeling of dread building, and building, and building. Something's about to go wrong. Something's about to go horribly, horribly wrong.
Fuck.
Bye.
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There's... ... I just...
Why?
Why
Why? Why? Just...
I don't...I don't understand.
We were—so many years. So many years that—
I can't—
How...how do I live now?
I can't...
What do I do without her?
I...
Please.
Please, god, please, please, please, come back, you deserved better, you needed—why couldn't they just—why didn't they—
...Why?
I...
Fuck, it's still so raw.
It's hard for me to write much about that. So I'm just going to try and move on to what happened afterwards. Because while it's not good...at least it's better.
Anything is better than going back there.
...What's the point anymore?
It's like...it's like being cut in half.
Donovan said that he's looking for a new Melinoë now.
OVER MY DEAD BODY.
I...I guess I'm...I'll try to...to keep going.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley. The date is August eighth, two-six-seven-six. I am twenty five years old.
...Look at this.
HEY! COME BACK HERE, FUCKING BRAT!
Look at this. Look at this! This is what they're trying to replace Allie with! This! Fucking...what did you say your name was? HEY! I'M TALKING TO YOU!
Ah...I...I'm...Pl—please—
You see what the fuck I mean? God, it's some cruel fucking JOKE. Sirona. Your name is Sirona!SIRONA! SAY IT!
...p...please...
Fine. Fine! Get the fuck out!
What a fucking joke.
My...my name is—fuck, ow—Mia Ana Hartley. The date is December nineteenth, two-six-seven-six. I am twenty five years old.
Jackie punched me in the face today.
'Course she went for one of the only places left that I've got sensation. Fuck. I was yelling at that little shit that they're trying to replace Allie with, she was being afraid as usual. Fuck, it makes me so MAD! Then Jackie spun me around and punched me in the right cheek. Hard. You can see the bruise already. Told me in her cold voice...god. She used to be so cheerful. Told me that I was acting like Addie when she joined and that I stopped her from picking on Jackie back in the day.
It's not the same! It's NOT! Allie is—was—
FUCK!
I...
I realized something today.
I...My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date is May nineteenth, two-six-seven-seven. I am twenty five years old.
I realized that...
Sirona is terrified of me.
The only one that seems to tolerate her is Jackie. Marina ignores her. Anya screams at her.
So why is she the most scared of me?
...I've done something awful, haven't I?
I...god. Allie...you...you wouldn't want this.
I'm sorry. I'll stop smoking. I'll—I'll try to be nice to Sirona. Please. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
My name is Mia Ana Hartley. The date is August fourth, two-six-seven-seven. I am twenty six years old.
That didn't work either.
Sirona is never, ever going to forgive me, is she?
Or, not forgive. That's the wrong word. She's just...always going to be terrified of me. God, Jackie was so right. I'm just...there's no excuse. There really isn't. Sirona, you poor child, I'm sorry.
I gave her something. She looked at me like it was going to explode. It was just one of the shells out of Arbiter that I scratched a pattern in. I guess I channeled my Lucy for a minute, ha ha.
I hope she keeps it.
Sirona, Allie, I'm sorry.
Sirona's dead.
God. I feel sick.
I don't even have much I can say. I never tried to know her. That poor, poor child.
I need to do better next time. Sirona, I'm sorry. I won't do it again.
My name is Mia Anastasia Hartley. The date is September fourth, two-six-seven-eight.
I waited for the emotion to come back into her voice after she got out of the cockpit, but it never did.
Jackie's all gone.
And now I've got nothing left either. There's no feeling. I need to be so careful. I can't do anything. I feel like a doll on a shelf, like if I breathe too hard, I'm going to fall apart.
But...no. I can't.
Donovan's gone AWOL. Nobody really knows why. With him gone, there's no formal commander of Tartarus Squadron anymore. So if it's going to stick around, then it's gonna need someone who can hold it together.
I looked back and my last few logs. Look at me, wallowing in self-pity now that Donovan's gone. Hating myself for the fact that without him, there's no more Melinoë, there's no more Lyssa, there's nothing left. But no. Fuck that. Jackie's right. I've been such a stupid fool.
Tartarus Squadron is my life. If they want to tear it apart, they're gonna need to go through me,
Sorry, Allie. Sorry, Priss. Sorry, Addie. Sorry, Lucy. Sorry, Sparkplug. I'll kick the cigs. I'll stop drinking. I'll get my shit together.
I'll do better next time.
I promise.
Well...I guess that's all.
I doubt this is going to reach you. Donovan. I doubt you're still using this datatool after deserting. But you never know. It could get there. And I think this was maybe more for me anyway.
But if you do get it...thanks, Donovan.
For everything.
Mia A. Hartley (Lyssa), Interim-Commander of Tartarus Squadron
Polaris Shift ◢
Mia's been a pilot for a long, long time, so it's lucky for her that her Shift is pretty mild compared to a lot of others. No debilitating sickness, no mental lapses, no panic attacks or personality bleed. No, her Shift has steadily removed her sense of touch. When she first started, she would just get numb fingers after fullsync, the kind you get in cold weather, that would last for a few hours before sensation would return. But after years and years of rigorous and constant military work, she's reached the point of permanent full-body numbness. She needs to be really careful how she exercises, how she moves; she can't box anymore or anything, and she tries to let other people do the cooking instead of her since she can't feel the burns. But all told, she tells herself, it's not too bad. She's seen worse.
Much, much worse.
Personal Mission ◢
Mia is an old hand at this. She's been though a lot of good times, and a lot of bad times. And much of her life has been spent and devoted to her home, Tartarus Squadron. She's done a lot of bad things, and she knows that very well. But that doesn't mean a damn thing to her. Because all she wants right now is—Commander AWOL, Melinoë unassigned, massive friction between members—is to keep Tartarus Squadron together. Because if she doesn't, she just doesn't know what she's going to do anymore.
Quinnlash's teeth grit together and her offhand clenched into a tight, vicious claw. Then she slammed Undying Light into the stones barrel first with a loud crack, echoed in rapid time by the same from her metaphysical center as the golden flash seared across her chest. Her ember, already a lump of molten steel within her chest, redoubled itself with the familiar white-hot sear that had poured through her veins so many times now. The newborn soulfire within her cannon began to swell with a terrible light, and she growled along with it as her blood began to boil. She faintly heard the other Hunters introduce themselves, and somewhere within her their names registered, but fuck them, she had other things to worry about right now.
"Quinnlash! Quinn! Lash! My name is Quinnlash, maker damn you, and you know it!" Her voice grated like steel on stone as she kicked the massive gun to her shoulder with a practiced twirl and leveled it at Fianna's face, teeth bared in a furious snarl. A moment of quiet passed. The pained grimace turned to a fierce and jagged smile.
"But you know what? If it's a fight that you're offering, then step right up and I'll blow you in half just like last time!"
Time froze for just a moment there as her finger tightened, trembling, on the trigger. It would be just so maker-damned easy to blast her right in her stupid arrogant face. It wouldn't even slow the woman down in the end, she'd just put herself back together like she always had, so what was the damn harm anyway? It's not like she cared about anything anyone in the shit backwater city had to say, right?
I’m sure the Pyromancer-Queen would be disappointed if she heard you talking to me like this.
With a barely suppressed scream of frustration, Quinnlash tore her finger from the trigger. Her eye flashed with a brilliant golden light as the soulfire winked out and rejoined the rest of her soul, and she slung the cannon across her shoulder. Her voice, when she spoke, was husky with anger and pain, and some other emotion buried deep down in there that even she couldn't quite identify, and certainly didn't want to. She forced her boiling blood to still some. "Next time I'll burn you down until there aren't even ashes left. Even you wouldn't be able to put yourself together after that, Freakshow." But the energetic fury had gone, and she was going through the motions for her own sake more than anything else.
She turned away to the Hearthfire tower, unable to even look at the smug expression that was no doubt slithering over the woman's face right now. And unconsciously, her own face was twisted into something that struck between anger and anguish and fear.
"Galiel will be down soon anyway. Wouldn't be any fun."
Full Name - Sirona Laurier Callsign - Surge Tide Age - 16 (b. 2662) Birthplace - Fairbanks Pilot Type - Support (specializing in suppressive fire) -
P S Y C H E
Fraught As a result of her past, Sirona is constantly anxious and on edge. Sleepless nights shivering under her covers unable to go to sleep and afraid to because of recurring nightmares, anxiety attacks that can be severe enough to move past fight or flight and straight into a dead freeze response, an intense and unnecessary fear of anything coming out of related to Fairbanks; she's got them all and more.
Quiet The nail that sticks up gets pounded back down. Sirona has a fear of standing out from others around her, nursing a constant background worry that doing so will lead to...something, she doesn't know what it is but she's afraid anyway. And as a result of this trauma response, she finds herself being a very quiet individual. She much prefers other people talking over her, and when she does talk her voice tends to be soft and perhaps even tremulous.
Delicate Though she's certainly not physically strong, this doesn't really apply to her physically. Rather, there are...fissures, you could call them, running all along her emotional state and mental well-being. And while she's usually stable, at least, if enough pressure is applied to one of those fissures, it cracks open and she finds herself very upset. As a general rule, the easiest way to pry at one of those fractures is to order her—harshly—to do something.
G E A R
Steel Key When she was taken to the laboratory, all of Sirona's things—all the sentimental pieces from home that she'd somehow managed to slip past Fairbanks, the little money she had, everything—were taken from her under the rationalization she would never need them again. So her oldest keepsake is a nondescript metal key: the key to her tiny dog crate of a cage. She keeps it strung around her neck underneath her clothing as a constant reminder that she escaped and nobody can ever put her back there. She can often be seen unconsciously clutching at it wildly during her more severe Shift episodes, but it's always futile in the end.
Bug Out Bag Terrified of being found again and taken back, Sirona got into the habit of having a bag with a few necessities in it near her at all times. The current contents are a lighter, a long length of parachute cord, a spare power cell for a datatool, a few liters of water, some dense nutrient bricks, and a SMALL folding knife (she's very hesitant to carry anything that could meaningfully be a weapon, after she panicked and nearly shot someone during a Polaris shift). She'd like to put other stuff in there too, but the bag is already getting heavy for her weak constitution, and she doesn't have much spare money to get any more.
Shell Casing When she was serving in the military, a friend of hers—or, well, something almost like a friend—gave her the shell of a bullet, etched with swirling patterns cut into the brass and exposing the bright metal underneath. It's tarnished by now, and the patterns are barely visible anymore. But she still carries it in a bag or pocket wherever she goes, and as far as she's concerned, she always will.
N E U R A L C O M B A T A N T
Armor Surge Tide's sleek, aerodynamic armored shell is constructed of a tungsten-nickel-iron alloy ceramo-metallic composite stained a dull slate blue. The joints and other moving parts are shown in a dull matte gray. While durable, it's kept light enough for her to be able to move around the battlefield quickly enough to lay down supporting fire at any angle demanded. It's certainly not heavy enough to resemble a heavy, and not quite enough to look like a vanguard either. Enough to shrug off a few really bad hits, but any more than that is a definite cause for concern. Perhaps the most recognizable part of its silhouette are the specialized external—and internal, really—supports on its arms and shoulder to keep up with constant heavy machine gun fire. There are two rough patches on the shoulders, where she's hacked and ground off both the Fairbanks and Tartarus Squadron insignias.
Hands Surge Tide's principle weapons and the core of Sirona's combat role are a pair of Lone Star-made Godhammer MG2k5 heavy machine cannons, occupying both hands. Chain fed, firing devastating thirty millimeter antimaterial rounds at a blistering twenty five hundred rounds per minute, they are more than capable of shredding anything that stands in front of them for more than half a second. They may not be sniper rifles, they're obviously not the most precise weapons. But you don't need precision when you're putting more lead downrange than you really know what to do with.
Back Sirona's back has been retrofitted with a large power cell surmounted with a magnetic attachment point that serves as a combination charging terminal and landing pad for a small autonomous repair drone that she can dispatch at any time to a target, scanning for damage and repairing it as best and rapidly as it can. It's no substitute for a real hangar, but it can at least get an NC stable so it's no longer an imminent threat to the pilot, and given enough time, patch them up enough to get them back into the fight.
Auxiliaries Those Godhammers don't supply themselves, and 2,500 rounds per minute is a lot to go through. In order to keep using them, both shoulders are occupied with large ammunition bins that feed chains directly into the cannons and allow Sirona, as long as she's not wasting anything, to lay down covering fire for minutes at a time.
R E L A T I O N S
Doctor Andrea M. Thompson During her time in the laboratory—deeply painful and deeply scarring—Sirona became quite aware of the doctor that was chiefly in charge of her and whatever happened to her: the saccharine and cruel Doctor Thompson. Though Sirona hasn't seen her since she managed to escape, a few years now, she is still a looming specter that continues to hang above Sirona's head and haunt her every nightmare.
Donovan Thatcher The commander of Tartarus Squadron and initially just Sirona's commanding officer, he also became much more than that to her. Now she remembers him...well, not fondly, but as fondly as she can remember anything in Fairbanks, given that he pretty much raised her. In such a brief time, he became almost like a father to her (though not really). Post-desertion, she is...genuinely terrified of ever seeing him again. She knows, deep down, that being told she disappointed him would cut deep.
Bella (Isabella) Laurier Sirona's sister, somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half years younger than she is. The two of them were very close when they were young; Sirona doted on Bella, and Bella looked up to Sirona. But after their parents died and the two of them ended up on the streets, Sirona woke up one day and Isabella wasn't there. She looked frantically for days, but she hasn't seen her since.
Physical Details ◢
Sirona was the runt of the proverbial litter, even before the lab. She started short, and never grew much at any one point. She's only five feet now, and she doesn't seem to be growing much right now. Maybe someday. Not today. Indeed, her build follows suit. At sixteen, she still looks like a thirteen or fourteen year old. Perhaps it's because of persistent malnutrition and poor treatment during her formative years; perhaps it's simply how she is. Her muscle mass is lacking, but it's quite a bit greater now than it was; while she never served as boots-on-the-ground, she was still member of the military, after all. Her skin is ghost-white and lined here and there with extremely fine, almost invisible lines of scar tissue.
A waterfall of dark brown hair cascades down her back. She probably has too much of it, but after it was chopped and kept short for an extended period of time, she's become rather protective of it, and has trouble letting it be cut. She has a round, heart-shaped face, set with chocolate brown eyes that betray both a deep-held sense of fundamental sadness, as well as a constant guarded caution against the world around her, always afraid that her past will come calling again.
And finally, a special mention goes to her grand coping mechanism, what keeps her from totally breaking down: the smile. The small, contented-looking smile that seems as though it's burned into her face. She's worn it for so long, she's almost forgotten how her face feels without it. If it's dropped for any reason, her emotional state is in such disarray that something very, very bad is happening or about to happen.
She has a relatively small wardrobe, but large enough that she can wear something different every day as long as she washes her clothes consistently. Overall, she prefers muted colors over bright ones; blacks, whites, shades of gray, navy blues, and such.
Background Information ◢
Jules and Anita Laurier hadn't had the easiest of lives.
Originally residents of Blackstone in a fairly comfortable section of the city, they had crept across the border in grave danger to be with Anita's ailing parents. But by the time they arrived in the horrifying megacity of Fairbanks, her parents had already passed. The city had repossessed their small apartment and all of their belongings. Penniless and with no way back, the Lauriers had nowhere to go but the slums. And along with them was their tiny daughter, only about a year old. A little child named Sirona.
She didn't start off as afraid as she is now.
Her life was hard, it was true. Her younger sister, born some time after the immigration to Fairbanks, was difficult to take care of for the entire family. Work was hard to come by for people like Jules and Anita, slum rats who didn't even have a resident card. The lowest possible rank on the lowest possible ladder. But despite that, as she aged, she revealed herself to be a bright and cheerful person, or at least as much of one as could be expected. Her life was hard, it was true. But she was at least..at least a little happy.
But in this world, happiness rarely lasts.
Sirona isn't exactly sure what happened to her parents when she was ten years old, at home taking care of her sister. An accident, they said, and that was all she was told. What kind of accident? Where did it happen? Was it really an accident? There were no accidents in this city. Who caused it? Why would they do that? Why? Why? Why?
But regardless how it had happened, the consequences were the same. The Fairbanks tide rolled on. Even the tiny apartment that their parents had managed to find—the only one that was cheap enough for them to afford on their terrible wages and long hours—was closed out, and they were closed out of it. At the behest of Fairbanks, all of their meager belongings, everything they had—keepsakes, credits, anything that wasn't the clothes on their backs—was unceremoniously torn from them and repossessed; Fairbanks already owned them to begin with, after all. And the two of them, small children in the hell of the Fairbanks slums, were kicked out on the street with...nothing.
Nothing.
Sirona, until that point, hadn't appreciated just how empty nothing truly was. Even when her parents had stressed over having nothing, Anita pulling out her hair on the stained table—they still had enough to get by, if only just. Their jobs weren't good, but they were enough to put food on the table and lamps on in the apartment. This was something totally different. And Sirona realized just how much of a luxury it had been to come home to the same four walls and a roof every night. But...there was none of that now. Nothing.
Nothing.
Or, well...nothing Bella. Nothing but each other. And there was some comfort in that. At least she wasn't alone.
It was a hard life. A harder life. She begged for credits, and was laughed at. She panhandled in filthy gutters overflowing with trash and disgusting water, and was spat on. She hoped, and her hope was crushed time and again. And, when it came down to it, she stole. She didn't only need to feed herself, after all. Bella was hungry too. And at only seven years old, she had it far worse than Sirona did in the end. But one night—a faint rain was drizzling down on the box that the two of them crawled into, and the damp clung to their clothes as they curled up together—fate decided that she'd tempted it far too much. Bella vanished. The next morning, Sirona awoke, and...she was alone. Alone. Bella was gone without a trace. She turned the city upside down as best she could, searching, looking desperately for her lost sister. Went to places that she wasn't allowed. Was hurt for her troubles. Anything was worth it, though, if she could find Bella.
But she never saw her again. And once again, she had...nothing. Less than nothing. The last dream she'd had—of the two of them playing together happily—shredded into mist before she could even touch it, and turned to ash.
Just like happiness, in this world, dreams rarely last.
Or, in Sirona's case...they become nightmares.
Sirona was taken one night too, only a few days later. Plucked off the street and stuffed into a van before she could really understand what was happening. She remembers the rough fabric under her knees to this day. A sharp prick. And she had just enough time to wonder why everything was growing fuzzy, blurring together, she felt so slow, so weird, before—nothing.
Doctor A, July 3rd, 2672. Acquisition has been successful. One (1) subject has been acquired from a street corner in city section ██, parents dead through ██████████████ and separated from any other family. No suspicion or loose ends. It has been retrieved and placed in holding, and given the temporary designation of TS-3. Awaiting your go-ahead for initial examination and permanent placement.
The next time she woke, she was in hell. Her own personal hell.
L1, a deniable medical black site funded in secret by the top brass of Fairbanks, was her new home. Her room became a cage—not wire, they weren't that cruel, but the flat metal wasn't comfortable by any stretch—so small she couldn't stand up in it, stacked on top of another cage, this one empty, and flanked with more stacks in various states of being filled. The burning-bright fluorescent lights above the rows of cages illuminated a sterile white room. There were two more walls of cages. She thought maybe she would be sick.
She was.
Her first few days in L1 were a waking nightmare that just. Wouldn't. End. Needles. Scalpels. Cuts, scans, samples. Pain. Pain on a level that she had never, in her short life, experienced. That she never could have imagined.
Doctor β, July 5th, 2762. TS-3 has been given its initial examination. No outstanding conditions. Bill of health is coming up clean. It has shown no immediate adverse reactions to ███████████, █████████████, █████████████████████████ or █████████████████. However, there was immediate and drastic immune system hyperactivity when exposed to ███████████████████████, requiring an immediate system flush and dialysis, so that one is firmly off the table. Additional tests will be performed as needed for any future experiments. It has been given a permanent designation as 11-S, in my section of the laboratory. I will need you to go more into detail on ‘separated from family.’ What remaining family does 11-S have that it has been separated from? Why were they separated? In what circumstances? In future, please deliver all necessary details to me immediately, I shouldn’t need to ask you this.
Her daily routine became cruel experimentation; injections with various neurochemicals and innumerable other horrible concoctions, leaving her lying completely drained of energy on the lab table, weak and frail. Introduction of nanomachines into her bloodstream followed by stimulation via a powerful electrical current that jolted lances of tingling, searing pain through her entire body. Inscrutable machines implanted into her, activated, left to run, then removed just before she was forced on a treadmill, to stumble forward until she collapsed. These and so many more became the order of the day.
And looming above it all was the Doctor. Doctor Andrea. Or just Andrea, as she insisted she be called. She talked so sweet and nice. Like Sirona's mom used to. But after she spoke so nicely, she would inflict the most horrible agony imaginable upon little 11-S. And the whole time, she had that same self-satisfied, catlike smile. Like Sirona hadn't even known she'd been playing the game, and she'd already lost.
Eventually it all started to blur together. Torture, torment, day in, day out, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. She couldn't sleep unless exhausted or sedated. She could barely eat, and combined with the poor foodstuffs she was given, grew malnourished quickly. She had no way to relieve the pain. Any of it. Nothing she could do to stop what was happening. No begging or pleading. Sometimes they even made it worse, drew attention to her, and that was the last thing she wanted. So all Sirona could do was curl up in the corner of her cage, drag the thin blanket over herself like a funeral shroud, stare at the wall, and quietly cry. Until one day, the smile came.
Doctor A, January 11th, 2674. Subject 11-S has begun to exhibit a strange reaction as a result of continued experimentation; it has started smiling, and seems to be unable to stop. It is distinctly possible that continuous intravenous administration of ████ and ███████, as well as implantation of ██████, have begun to have distinct effects on its brain chemistry, as observed both in the constant smile and the █████████████████, ██████, and ███████████. Will continue dosing—carefully—while taking regular scans of brain tissue, as well as thin section brain sample for further examination if its erratic symptoms worsen.
After all, if she was smiling she was happy, right? Mama had always told her that if she smiled when she was in pain then it would feel better. And she was always in pain. And so she always smiled, until the smile became her face.
This went on for nearly three years. Three impossibly agonizing years. Until Sirona—in a rare act of rebellion and defiance against the quiet, quavering thing she'd become—managed to nick the key to her cage from the security guard whose job was to dump her back there after she'd collapsed from pain and strain. She hid it well, betrayed nothing. The guard probably figured he'd just lost it. And she started to plan.
Then, a few days later—a Saturday night, when people were lazy and wanted off work—she made her move, quietly slipping out of the tiny cage that had become her home and, wearing only a hospital gown, weaving between the cages, finding the entrance against all odds, and disappearing off into the night of the megacity.
Doctor β, March 21st, 2675. Subject 11-S is not in its cage, and the door is hanging open. It has escaped.
Is this what happens when I leave for two days to attend to something? We have never had a breach. Ever. When—not if, WHEN—you locate and retrieve 11-S, we are going to have a long, long talk about your continued employment at ███████████████. You cannot afford to be sloppy in this line of work. I expect better of my staff.
At thirteen she became a street rat again. Just like old times: begging, panhandling, stealing when she needed to, running when she had to. But it was hollow now, without Isabella. Hollow, and alone. And unlike before, she could absolutely never sleep in the same place twice. After all, she was always desperately afraid that Doctor Andrea would find her again. Would pull her back into the lab. Stick her back into #11. Have it all start over. And early on, she saw the staff now and then; combing the streets, looking for something as she shrank away into the shadows.
It was an entirely new variety of hellish existence, and though it certainly wasn't as bad as being back in the laboratory, it wasn't comfortable by any stretch. And then roundabout her fourteenth birthday, she considered something: if she joined the military, they'd never be able to get to her even if they did find her. Right? Well. It was pure luck for her that she had the necessary neuromarkers to pilot an NC. Because if not, then Fairbanks would have sent her right back.
Doctor β, General Γ, September 17th, 2676. Subject 11-S—the escapee—has shown itself, applying to join the military. We could retrieve it at any time. However, it has displayed the requisite neuromarkers for piloting an NC. Therefore, issued request to General Γ from ███████████████: put 11-S under observation, but take no action. Retrieval will only be undertaken on the occasion it leaves the military.
The military was...it was an interesting experience for her. That's not to say she liked it. No, no no no, not at all. She was not a fan. But what she was, was very good at it. Suffice to say, she was a natural. With a pair of Tsaritsa TMG-3 thermal cannons, she distinguished herself on the battlefield with Blackstone more than she really had any right to, as young and inexperienced as she was. And so she caught the attention of the higher-ups, and was shifted into the elite task force of Tartarus Squadron.
Liaison Δ, November 21st, 2676. Subject 11-S has distinguished itself on the field of battle as an extremely effective pilot. This makes retrieval, should we feel it is necessary, extremely difficult. As such, we have devised a strategy to make this easier on all of us. Subject 11-S will be transferred into ███████████████████, under the command of █████████████. This serves a double purpose of honing its skill, as well as making retrieval much easier, should the situation call for it. Paperwork is already in the system, it just needs you to sign off.
And in Tartarus Squadron, she met the only person since Isabella to give her even the faintest hint of affection: Donovan Thatcher, the CO and founder of the group.
Those fucks at ██. I swear they're just insulting me now.
We got the new transfer to replace Aimes as Melinoë. Would've been nice if they'd sent us someone decent who know how things worked instead of shoehorning this joke of a kid into fucking Tartarus Squadron just because they want me to keep an eye on her.
Mia is fucking furious with me. She took Alice's death really hard; she's the last member of the original Furies left now. I obviously can't tell them why this rookie who's only been in the game two months, and a freaked out kid who can barely even meet anyone's eyes at that, is now a member of one of the most elite squads in Fairbanks. So I need to defend Doctor ████████'s dumbfuck decision. I mean, ███'s not wrong. The kid really is pretty good, not sure if I'd call her an ace but if not it's close.
But that's not the point. The point is the people in Tartarus need to work really closely alongside each other, so they need to trust each other. As far as I can tell, Jacqueline is the only one that can tolerate her, or even really look at her. Mia's fuming that this is what replaced her last old squadmate, Marina's rapidly getting sick of how scared she looks at everything no matter what, and Anya can't even be in the same room without screaming at her for getting preferential treatment or some shit.
So somehow I need to not only turn this stupid pathetic child into a Fury, I also need to convince the rest that they shouldn't just shoot her in the back as soon as they go out on an op.
Fucking wonderful. Thanks a lot, Doctor ████████. Like I needed more work.
Though he started out skeptical of her consistency and trustworthiness if not her skill and was initially hesitant to send her out—not the least because some of the other members certainly didn't trust her—she rapidly proved them wrong with a standout performance on her first operation. Though the rest of the Furies never grew to like her at all and their relationship was always cold, clinical and professional if not outright hostile, Donovan became almost like a kind of father to her soon afterwards. And while of course he could never be like her real father or really even come near that realm, they still grew close. She was even given a new name, a code name as part of Tartarus. Though she still took part in normal military operations and remained Surge Tide, whenever Tartarus started an op, she was Melinoë.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
██'s still breathing down my neck, won't leave me alone. Still wants me to keep an eye on her. Fuck. Bastards are all crazy, but Doctor ████████ is the worst of the lot by a mile. What a sadistic fuck. Yeah, she does her job, as she's so happy to remind everyone, but she doesn't need to enjoy it so much.
The kid. Okay. She's doing alright. Jacqueline is still the only one that can tolerate her, but they're at the very least starting to trust her now. She's surprisingly impressive. I didn't need to really do as much as I thought I'd have to to turn a dumb scared child into something like a Fury.
The worst part is that she's actually starting to open up to me of her own volition. God knows I wouldn't have asked her to, I don't need to hear firsthand. Won't tell me exactly what happened, obviously—not that she needs to, mind you—but at least that something real bad happened to her when she was a little kid and it scarred her for life. I more or less expected that. Anybody spends more than an hour in there and they're not coming out the same, let alone three years.
What I didn't expect was for her to tell me that the worst part was she never knew what happened to her sister. Didn't talk much about her, she never talks much about anything really. But...god. Fuck. I can't tell her. Jesus Christ, I absolutely cannot tell her, she can't know no matter what. The look in her eyes when she hits her Shift, fuck, if I told her it would destroy her. Something would come out on the other side of it, I'm not sure what. But it damn sure wouldn't be her. Really hope I never have to make the call to send her back there. Would not be proud of that one. I—
Shit, Mia and Anya are yelling at her again and Jacqueline isn't there. Should probably go tell them to shut the fuck up or else she'll be out of commission for a while, and—I know I'm her CO and it's not really my responsibility, but I'd rather not see that look on her face again, even through the smile. Makes my blood run cold.
Fuck. Okay. I'm done. ANYA, MIA, WHAT DO YOU—
Time passed. She and Donovan grew closer. Tisiphone—Jacqueline Brake, the sniper of the squad—was the only member of Tartarus that even really tolerated her, and even then only just. The others—the support Marina "Alecto" Quince, the heavy Mia "Lyssa" Hartley, and the vanguard Anya "Megaera" Sykes—all looked on her with scorn, disappointment, or annoyance, and any combination thereof. Her thermal cannons were still a thing to behold.
But five months into her fifteenth year, she...wanted to leave the military. A part of her, some sixth sense of paranoia, didn't feel safe here, in a way that wasn't just a soldier's concern. And she didn't feel like she would be safe, could get away forever, as long as she stayed in Fairbanks. But she would need to say goodbye to her new "father," and Fairbanks didn't take kindly to deserters. She would have exactly one chance. And she knew where she'd be going if she failed.
After a sortie with Blackstone that went south—general military, she never would've been able to cut it with Tartarus—she made her move. Faking damage to her NC, she lagged behind. Lagged far enough behind in evac that, in their rush to escape, the rest lost sight of her. Then she bunkered down and hoped desperately that Blackstone wouldn't sweep over her.
And for once in her life, her luck held.
Then, with no equipment or really any training, she dug into the guts of Surge Tide. She knew what she was looking for. She knew what the tracker looked like. Wires tore at her, gouging scratches into the skin as she plunged ever deeper. More than once, she was only an inch or two from a sudden death with no warning, scraping her hands along past electrical cables that carried absolutely staggering amounts of current.
Minutes passed. Hours. Still she dug, working her way around the entire slate-blue chassis. Twice she received a nasty shock. But finally, she finally managed to find it, set deep, deep down against the core. And she pulled it out, threw it to the ground, and crushed it under her boot with a sudden and foreign violent fury that faded just as quickly as it had arose.
NC Pilot Sirona "Melinoë" Laurier: KIA.
Doctor β, April 11th, 2678. Report to Doctor ████████. SiSubject 11-S has been killed in action.
God—
Godfuck—fucking—fucking god damnit. God fucking damn it all.
She just...god. I can't believe it. I just can't. She was so good, how did a basic sortie with Blackstone—fuck, the commander on that mission should be dragged into the street and shot for what he did. She should have been with the rest of the Furies. They wouldn't have left her. I wouldn't have left her.
Well...at least ██ can't ever have her back. That's a mercy, I guess. I get the feeling she would've preferred this anyway.
Despite the massive tectonic shift it is whenever a Fury burns out, it's mostly just...business as usual around here, somehow. Anya's bad tempered, yelling at everyone as usual. Marina is telling her to go fuck herself. Mia is trying to get them to chill out, even though anyone can see she's pretty upset, and Jacqueline is rolling her eyes in the background while she cleans her gun. All looks the same. Still. Something's different. Feels like everyone's just going through the motions. Maybe I'm just projecting, need to do my job still, be the same kind of man and CO that I've been to these women for a pretty long time now.
I've seen a lot of Furies burn out. The first Melinoë, the last couple Alectos, there have been a lot of Megaeras, and this Tisiphone seems to know that she's still obviously got big shoes to fill in the first and only Lyssa's eyes. This shouldn't be a new thing to me. It isn't a new thing to me.
Goddamnit, it's all fucking ██████'s fault, throwing that pathetic little kid my way. What else was I supposed to do with a traumatized child? This is a small, tight-knit squad by necessity, of course she was going to latch on to me. I know the nickname and reputation and they're pretty useful, but I'm not actually a demon you fucks, she acted like I was her fucking dad or something and even though I obviously wasn't I was still going to get attached. I just fucking...can't believe she burned out like that, she's—she was Melinoë goddamnit, she's—WAS supposed to be better than that, I thought I trained her up better, I...
I just—I can't believe it.
I can't believe that she's—that Melinoë is dead.
Or...she's not Melinoë anymore, huh. Fuck, just...
...Rest well, Sirona.
You were a hell of a Fury.
For some months afterwards she roamed on her own, unaware that Fairbanks wouldn't be put off for long. And if they found her again, the laboratory staff was free to take her back and do whatever they wanted. All she knew was that she needed to go west. Due west. She needed to go as far west as she possibly could, because no matter how far she went she could never run away from Andrea, she would always look for her, and if she stayed in the east, she would eventually find her.
With only that to guide her, Sirona kept wandering. Until at last, finally all the way near the west coast...she came to Last Hope. A place where, maybe, just maybe...she could be safe.
MESSAGE TO EXIGENT DOCTOR β 11-S status has been updated from KIA to AWOL. Reconnaissance and retrieval are being prepared. Check and clear #11, make sure it is ready to accept occupant.
MESSAGE END MESSAGE END MESSAGE END
Polaris Shift ◢
Sirona already has trouble with terrible memories coming up at random, and her Polaris Shift does not help. It afflicts her with a kind of...temporal dissociation. Her awareness of time slips briefly, and memories blur together like smearing paint, sending her into a state of confusion and often panic as pieces of her past start to overlap both each other and her waking life. Memories that relate with strong emotional states are very much the most common to come back to her, and so a great majority of these moments are memories of pain and fear from her time in the laboratory. This has grown steadily worse; now instead of just isolated moments commonly occurring as a response to trauma triggers, she also occasionally has full-blown episodes that can last anywhere from five minutes to half an hour spent in absolute panic, sending her into long strings of begging and pleading to people that simply are not there.
Personal Mission ◢
Above all else, Sirona wants desperately to be safe.
Trapped for so long in so many ways, literally or figuratively, Sirona feels constantly exposed. Like she's always being watched, always been watched, and always deeply unsafe. Her past is full of shadows—the doctors from L1, the military of Fairbanks, the last look that she took at her sleeping sister—that loom over her like so many swords of Damocles. So her ultimate goal, even if she doesn't quite know it, is to lift those swords away, one by one. She may never be able to rid herself of them all. She may never feel completely comfortable. The past may always haunt her through her nightmares.
There was no better word for Quinnlash's voice than crowing, and a massive smile cracked across her face. Without any apparent effort, she hefted the massive metal bulk of Undying Light off the stone of the keep and back onto her shoulder, letting it rest there instead of throwing it back into the sling, carrying it like a particularly massive greatsword. Absent of any soul flames within it, it sat still and quiet, the blazing heat that so often suffused it replaced with the ubiquitous chill of Uhladein.
Then she ambled over to where the other Hunters were gathered. Her eye flickered and flashed like an ember itself as most of the torn-away fragments of her soul mended themselves one after another, and she couldn't help but let out a quiet relieved sigh. There was no way to properly explain what it was like having your soul fragmented. Which also meant there was no way to explain how good it felt when it reformed (at least as far as anything could really feel good at all). Which, of course, she needed to follow up with,
"And that means she died first this time! 'Bout time she got what she fuckin' deserved!" A few more moments, and she skidded to a stop at the gathering point. And the first thing she did upon arrival was...
...To snap out a fist quick as a blink and clock Fianna right in the jaw. Hard. There were twin violent cracking sounds of bones splintering under an impact: one from Fianna's face where there was now a noticeable crater, and one from Quinnlash's own hand, which she shook out as the light of her embersoul gleamed over it and shoved the blood and bone of the multiple compound fractures back under the skin. The other Midnosian Hunter, on the other hand, went down like a ton of bricks. She hit the ground like a rock and didn't get up again. There was a faint, almost musical tinkling as half a dozen teeth knocked free from her face bounced to the stones.
"Don't think I didn't fucking notice what you called me up on the wall, Freakshow!" She spat violently on the flagstones in the general direction of the crumpled form of the Hunter in question, saliva still stained blackish. The taste of blood, ash and charcoal in her mouth was the strongest thing she'd tasted in a long time. "You know damn well what my name is!"
That done, she turned her attention away from the momentarily immobile ghost-pale figure, snapping her attention to the other three. Her eye roved over them quickly: the Prentisian ice queen, the crazy pink girl who'd jumped in front of a fucking ogre strike—seriously, what?—and then of course, the melter. Who, out of everyone, Quinnlash finally saw fit to talk to. She couldn't help it, really. Just the presence of a melter usually presaged their inevitable burnout and ashing. And yet somehow this one had not only survived, but seemed to have come out of it mostly okay. In no small part thanks to me, of course. She wasn't really sure how it'd happened. But it was kind of neat that it had.
"Goddamn, melter, but you showed some fuckin' mettle out there, didn't ya?" She reached out the still slightly broken hand and punched the girl on the shoulder. Gently, this time. Or. Well, gentler, at least, than what she'd done to Fianna. Decidedly not gentle. "Figured you'd be a fine pile of soot on the ground right about now. Good shit."
She pulled back slightly from the melter to address all the Hunters as a collective, as Fianna started to lurch upright in that creepy fucking way she always did``. "Name's Quinnlash Loughvein, coming out of Midnos. Stay outta my way, don't fuck up, and we won't have any trouble, got it?" She turned to the pink haired hunter, smiling the jagged smile of a wild animal. "Beer's shit. Can't taste it anyway. Might as well get something that'll get the job done."
Wow, was this girl ever fishy. Not suspicious, but literally fishy. Like a fish.
Kayo hadn't realized it when she'd just caught a quick glimpse of her through the pushy crowd, but looking at her up close? Scales, weird looking eyes, sharp teeth, frills on her neck, those catfish whisker thingies, plus everything was GLOWING—she really was the whole nine yards for someone who didn't look it at a distance. Though, she seemed not to understand why Kayo was talking to her. Just...overall confused. Which fit perfectly with Kayo's picture of her; she would be confused over something simple, wouldn't she?
"I'm a first year too, though?"
Kayo twitched. Just a little bit. The faintest movement in her right eyebrow.
For just a moment, the crowd all around them faded into the background as her mind played catch-up. The fish girl was in her class year? Her class year. Really. And in assuming she was an upperclassman because of her height, she'd—actually, you know what? No, she hadn't made a mistake, obviously. It still worked out just fine the end. Though she'd gone into things thinking that she was making nice with an upperclassman, that might even work in her favor. The sweet pitched-up voice, the perfect smile on her face; the cute image that she'd become so practiced at swaddling herself in was starting to weave itself together now, and having this girl be witness to such a 'mistake' from Kayo would only make things smoother.
Opening her mouth to form a faux apology—and to ask the silly fish girl to introduce herself, seriously, what?—Kayo was interrupted and blindsided by what had to be one of the most ridiculous things she'd ever seen. What kind of lunatic introduced himself by jumping off a building? Still. As much as she absolutely gawked for the first moment, she'd pulled herself together enough by the time he landed—nearly running into her, good lord—she mustered up an excited, if quiet, clap. "That was amazing!"
Then this ridiculous flashlight of a person introduced himself, and it took a great deal of her considerable well of patience and tolerance not to burst out in mean-spirited laughter. Justice? He's calling himself JUSTICE? What kind of moron—how did he even get into this school like that? None of it showed on her face, of course. She was about to respond when she realized he wasn't finished yet, and had asked a question of them. And for just a moment she felt her heart sink. He's in MY CLASS?
Immediately followed up, of course, with a happy smile and an "Oh wow, we're in the same class!" Didn't quite manage to call him by that name. It'd take a minute for her to work up to actually calling someone Justice. What a joke.
Memories still too close, still just beneath the surface of her mind, Quinnlash felt them surging back, along with an intense and personal anger. A furious noise halfway between a cough and a choke came out of Quinnlash's mouth. Her eye widened. Her muscles tightened. Before she could stop herself, she'd taken a half-step towards Galiel and her hand strayed reflexively back to rest on her cannon. And her clenched fist glowed suddenly, for just a moment, with a light like the sun before she snuffed the light out. The caldera of anger that lived at her core, burning just as bright as her ember, began to quake. How dare he. How dare he. How dare he?
"Don't you say a goddamnthing about her!"
The words came out of her without warning, a strangled and aborted half-yell chopping and mangling her voice nearly to the point of incomprehensibility, and she needed to fight to stop herself from lunging forward and punching him out. She clenched her hands into tight fists at her sides, digging her fingernails into her palm to try and focus on something other than his stupid smug face. Deep down, deeper down than she could even recognize, a part of her—a part both fearful and fragile, one that she'd managed to convince herself was long, long gone—was absolutely terrified of Ezlineia—of mama—being disappointed in her. And that blade of fear axed through her, cutting straight into her seething, searing heart before she managed to rip it out and crush it down again.
So, she turned her back to Galiel, facing the crystal of the Hearthfire and walking forward as she reached behind herself and hacked her hair into something resembling her trademark braid. Was a bit messy, but it was at least recognizable, and it'd keep her hair out of her face, so all told, it was doing its job. Mission accomplished. Whipping it back behind her, she looked around between the young pyromancers, meeting their eyes in turn (though one wouldn't even look her in the eye at all, the spineless fucking coward). And then finally, voice dripping with scorn only barely restrained, "Do better next time."
Then once more, foregoing the elevator—why even bother with it at this point—she reloaded her cannon and leapt into the shaft. She'd done her duty as a pyromancer. Protected them. Been the final line. Now that the nagging memory was silent, she couldn't care less what they did or what happened to them. Wasn't her job anymore, and she certainly wasn't going to spend more time around that fucker Galiel out of the kindness of her heart.
As she plummeted, the floor beneath her came into focus. The other Hunters would be back here soon. Good. People she could take it out on if she wanted. Maybe she could convince Freakshow to fight her. That might be fun.
One last billowing blaze from her cannon's maw, one last burst of pyromancy just to make sure she didn't break something on landing, and she was on solid ground again. Facing the door, she planted Undying Light into the ground barrel end down and rested her elbow on it casually, waiting. Boiling inside that she'd need to see Galiel again to get their orders. Be a good girl.Ugh. Was enough to make her sick.
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