As Quinn leaned in closer to Tillie so she could get a better look at the diagram, there was an almost haunting feeling to looking at the illustration, at the innocuous little object that was the cockpit here. It seemed so...little. So insignificant. Just a blot of ink on a sheet of paper. I sit there, she thought, almost disbelieving. That's where I sit when I connect. Despite the gray matter surrounding her in the cockpit, it was sometimes all too easy to forget that she was inside of, and connecting to, a Modir's brain. Sitting back up, she tapped out on the laptop: I'm a brain drawbridge.
On that note, actually...
"And some people are drawbridges that are wider than others, like me and Dahlia?" she asked, taking out a sheet of paper and trying—with minimal success—to replicate the diagram, "and that's why we phase faster. Is that right?"
It was as she was finishing her rough sketch and labeling the cockpit with 'Drawbridge' that she made a sound of muffled realization: But Roaki doesn't phase even though she can still close the circuit. So...? Curiosity piqued, she tried to work her way around it so she wouldn't need to say straight out that Roaki couldn't phase. It wasn't her place to reveal. "I remember hearing that some people can't phase at all, though, I think? What kind of drawbridge are they?"
The vouivre took a long, LONG breath as the pent-up aggression in her bled off like steam from a pressure cooker. She closed her eyes, rubbing her temples in a vain effort to soothe the headache she knew was coming. Yes, thoughts indeed.
Aoife, the Taran, very much did not like Victorians. They had slaughtered her family, burned her home, and unleashed the distinctly inhumane originium dirty bombs of the County Hillock incident. She honestly wasn't sure how many she'd cared about that had been killed by Victorians, and while she obviously wasn't going to get violent, there was a part of her that was absolutely delighted to see this conceited, condescending Cautus cool his feet in a Sargonian cell for a while.
Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it—while Aoife the Taran wanted to see Warren Irving humiliated, the Rhodes Island Operator Ash Girl couldn't just sink into cathartic spite. Especially not with Polka there; she didn't want the musician to think of her as a brash or angry person.
And so, a moment that felt slightly too long to be comfortable passed before she spoke again.
"As little as I would trust Victoria with an ancient superweapon," a shudder ran up and down her spine, "I trust Leithanien and Columbia working together with it even less. Especially," she grew quiet again, and her voice more sober, "because if it's in service to activating a weapon, I doubt kidnapping would be the worst thing to happen to Nur."
She gave a sharp nod: "I think he might be our best bet."
For the past ten or fifteen minutes, Quinn had alternated sitting on her hands and pacing back and forth across the room at various intervals. She wasn't quite sure why Tillie coming to her room made her as nervous as it did; it wasn't even her real room anyway, right? And yet somehow she found her stomach boiling inside her, and every silent minute that went by made it roil harder and faster. But at the same time, it wasn't a bad nervousness, not really. Quinn wasn't too terribly used to the feeling of 'anticipation.' A pilot's lot was by nature unfriendly, after all, and her decidedly atypical childhood only compounded that. But it was the only word Quinn could think of to describe how she was feeling.
Clothed again in her new dress—who could blame her for wanting to show off to Tillie?—she rechecked for the umpteenth time everything she'd gathered from the workstation that the Casobani had gifted her: pens and notebooks, reams of extra paper both blanked and lined, and of course the laptop computer, which lay plugged in on the new low dresser that now served as a nightstand. After the childhood she'd had, with no contact with anything outside her one small room, she was nothing if not a skilled typist. She'd tried to look up some stuff about modiology on her own so she could impress Tillie when she got here, but she didn't make sense of most of it and so she gave that up before long (not to mention she ran across a few papers with the names Locke and Sansean Loughvein emblazoned on the front, and frankly didn't want to deal with it on her own). Satisfied again for the moment, she sat back down, watching the stars swirling out of her window.
And then jumped a foot in the air with an EEP! as the silence was shattered by a loud and elaborate pattern of knocks, and her heart jumped into her throat.
"C—coming!"
She whacked the button and the door slid open, revealing Tillie, holding an intimidating-looking stack of books. Mouth suddenly dry, she let Tillie in and winced at the sound of that many books being plopped down. Those must be heavy.
"So! Uhm! Don’t be intimidated by all the material." Quinn's lip quirked into a little half-grin. "I didn’t know what you might be interested in so I just brought a bunch of different stuff. Actually, where did you want to start? You don’t have to know anything specific, but if you have any vague ideas of what you might like to know, it’ll help me sorta, uhm! Steer, y’know?"
Quinn opened her mouth to reply, how does my Savior work? But before any sound came out, Tillie finally seemed to notice what Quinn was wearing, and the half-grin turned into a full bright smile as she gave a gentle twirl. "Isn't it? It just seemed like everyone on the Ange dresses so nice all the time, I wanted to fit in." She paused a moment before adding, "...And I never get to wear anything like this!"
Another moment to bask in the glow of Tillie calling her pretty before she gave her head a little shake and focused back in again, sitting down on her bed and opening up her laptop before turning to ask her first question: "Can you tell me how Ablaze works? How did they turn it from a Modir to a Savior?"
Full Name -藤本 蝶 - Fujimoto Chou Age - 22 Place of Origin - Kanazawa, Japan Occupation - Florist Zodiac Signs - Pisces, Sheep Blood Type - O+
A V A T A R
Character's Name - パピ四 - Papiyon Pathos Affiliation - Drox Role - Evasive melee DPS Profession - Florist Weapon of Choice - Nagamaki Domains - Darkness; Enhancement, Illusion -
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Larkspur The most evident of Chou's character traits, both IRL and in Pariah, is how kind she is. Kind and sweet. Whether it's helping someone find their lost cat, getting a ball from out of a tree for a kid (she loves kids), or patiently talking a friend through a bad breakup, she's a genuinely kind person that only loses her temper once in a few blue moons, and takes a simple joy from watching other people smile.
Heather And she plans to protect those smiles. Perhaps not in a combative way; being the kind of role she is in combat, there's only so much she can really do to protect someone. No, her general protectiveness comes more as a psychological deal. She seems to have some kind of 'upset radar,' she's so apt at telling whether someone is lost, or sad, or angry; and when they are, she'll always do her best to make sure they feel like they're not alone, and they can always talk to her. Perhaps it'll blow up in her face. God knows it's done that before now and then. She's not perfect. But she will keep trying.
Hydrangea But what use is trying that hard to get people to open up if she's not going to respond in kind? Chou is, as a rule, emotionally open to a startling level. Though she's surprisingly good at hiding how she's feeling (it's a talent), she just doesn't. She wears her heart on her sleeve, not by nature but by choice. Just as she's always willing to talk to other people about what's upsetting them, if they want to know how she's feeling, she'll talk about it openly and honestly. After all, what's the point of trying to protect peoples' hearts if they trust you so little, they've closed them off already?
B E N C H M A R K S
Flittering Wing Papiyon's magic is split almost evenly between enhancement and illusion, vanishing in a blur of phantasmal butterflies, appearing behind the assailant, and slashing them with armor-shearing attacks that the eye can't fully follow. She's extremely evasive, able to 'blink' around and relying heavily on that for her combat style. Because she is fully minmaxed into offense. She has no way of sustaining herself, and she wears very light armor to keep her mobility maximized. It's rather hard to hit her; however, if you do hit her, she's going to feel it, and feel it hard.
Whirling Sting But you need to survive her assault first. She is frankly scary with her long-handled nagamaki, dealing enormous burst or sustained damage depending on how she chooses to fight. Though, there is one major pitfall to her combat strategy: because it's almost entirely centered around mobility and her weapon, there's very little she has to deal with multiple enemies. Hence, she tends to leave them be and go for priority targets, which can potentially leave others vulnerable to the crowd.
Dancing Petals As you might guess from her IRL occupation, Chou loves flowers, and this carries quite well over into Papiyon as well. Yeah, the job of a florist in Pariah is less about what's pretty and often much more about what's useful for things such as alchemy. But, she reasons as she arranges the herbs and flowers in her cart, there's no good reason it can't be both.
Obscuring Mist I've talked about how she fights with respect to her mobility and heavy emphasis into damage. But we shouldn't forget that illusion affinity as well. Often, the pure mobility might not be enough; in which case, she combines it with a variety of illusions designed to bewilder and distract while she does her work. Perhaps she creates a cloud of illusory butterflies, darting in and out so quickly the foe can't see her, let alone strike her. Perhaps she leaves afterimages behind her, blinking around the target so quickly that by the time the image disappears, she's already striking again. Whatever the technique, it makes her playstyle all the more effective in the end.
Physical Description
Fujimoto Chou doesn't have a ton that sets her apart from any other young Japanese woman. Straight black hair, a slender build, a height of only about 5'1"; if one word could be used to describe her, it would be typical. Perhaps the only thing that really sets her apart is a single wisteria-purple streak that runs top to bottom in her hair, framing her face on the left side. Much of what makes Chou unique isn't her appearance, but her personality, and strange idiosyncrasies, such as her habitual tendency to speak nearly exclusively in extremely polite kenjougo keigo, regardless of the situation. She wears largely typical clothing, though she does have a particular penchant for wearing long coats when it's chilly out.
Papiyon, on the other hand, is very different in appearance, given that as a Pariah avatar, it stands as a manifestation of how Chou wishes she could be; an ideal version of herself. The single streak spread out into flowing pink hair that frames a pair of wide, kind violet eyes. A more buxom build. Significantly increased height: about 5'1" no longer, now reaching upwards of 5'7". Flawless skin. She thinks she looks SO cool. Instead of her skirts, blouses, and coats, she wears a close-fitting white leather-backed vest with gilt fastenings that trails off into long coattails that flow behind her. Enough to deflect a blow or two, though leather can only do so much. And finally, her weapon: a long-handled nagamaki, wrapped in fabric the same color as her hair. The blade is fine steel, and the handguard is fashioned after a butterfly.
...It took her SO long to save up for it.
Character Conceptualization
Fujimoto Chou was never a genius, and she's made her peace with it. That's not to say she's not smart. She knows her fair share of miscellany. But she doesn't need any more than that.
Born to Fujimoto Rikako and Souun, Chou—named after the butterflies her mother loves so much—had a happy childhood and was (and still is) extremely close to Hanako, her elder sister by two years. Mild in temperament and unfailingly polite, Chou was a dream daughter, and her parents were ever so proud of her when she got into a good high school. This is about when she began her habitual use of keigo. When questioned on it, she would simply shrug and smile: "I like being polite."
Her planned life trajectory, though—good high school, good university, good job—was shot in the face in her second year of school, though. Hana was in College Application Hell, and Chou hated seeing it. And she hated even more the idea of being in it. She'd never really figured out what she wanted to study anyway; so, while still attending high school, she began to probe a bit for possible jobs nearby. And a little while into her search, she happened upon a small florist's shop owned by an elderly woman looking for part-time help.
And she fell in love.
Her parents took her assertion she was going to become a florist instead of going to university rather well, actually; she wasn't cut off or anything, though their relationship was a bit frosty for a few months afterwards. But in Chou's eyes, it was so very, very worth it.
Some years passed, and Chou found herself more and more in charge of the shop as the elderly owner aged further. Twenty-two years old now, she has a comfy apartment, a wonderful family, and a job she loves. And having some disposable income now, she decided to try out this new game she's heard about, some wild VRMMO called Pariah Online.
No harm trying it out, right?
Other Information
She is very into astrology, both eastern and western.
蓮花舞 Rengemai Lotus Petal Dance
Chou leverages her Illusion and Enhancement magic both, dashing around the target and striking from unexpected angles as she leaves afterimages in her wake; moving gracefully, like dancing across a pond on water lilies.
蝶靄 Chou-Moya Butterfly Haze
A storm of illusory butterflies appears around Chou, and she vanishes into it, moving unseen and unheard through the obscuring magic.
無痛蝶 Mutsuu-chou Painless Butterfly
The most powerful spell in her arsenal, Painless Butterfly sees her close her eyes and sheath her sword as pink energy builds within. Then, after some seconds, all sound becomes muted and distant to her, and the world slows to a crawl as in one fluid motion, she unleashes a single clean stroke from her sheath, trailing pink light and phantom butterflies as it rends through space and time.
Quinn hadn't known what to expect from the CSC's pilot captain. From what little she'd heard from the Derisas, or the ever-so-brief snippets she'd caught now and then online, she'd thought she was going to be absolutely draconian. A cruel taskmaster, ever-ready to crack the whip out of sadistic glee. Possibly—probably—with horns growing out of her head to boot. And since the first time Cyril had mentioned her...was it at dinner, yesterday? She couldn't quite recall...Quinn had been building her up in her head as a figure of terror.
In reality, though, the truth was...
...weird.
She spoke in such a matter-of-fact way it was throwing Quinn off. And not just her tone of voice: Quinn understood very well that tone of voice didn't necessarily dictate emotion, especially if the person was a good actor. No, what she was saying at its core was extremely level and balanced. Not an admonishment, but a warning. So all she could do—and, she was pretty sure, all she SHOULD do—was nod.
And as Camille strode out of the gym, lift her hand up in a salute that wasn't quite right and say, quietly, "Captain."
She would need to ask Sybil and Cyril for their schedules, she thought as she busied herself putting the pads away and carting the container against the wall. Maybe not now, though. She had a feeling Sybil would punch her in the face if she tried, combat training notwithstanding.
And she also didn't want to see either of them right now, she thought as she finished her work and stared out into space. She barely knew them, so it wasn't like talking about Dahlia. But she still found it difficult to square herself with the idea they might die. Despite being a pilot and thus working closely together with death, and despite the vast exposure to death she'd had on that October night, it was still mostly a stranger to her: something she knew about, she'd seen, but didn't think about, ignored as best she could. But after that conversation, such as it was, she found herself staring the idea in the face, and a well of bottomless anxiety yawned open inside of her as it stared back.
Sober and pensive, she walked over to the door and smacked the switch, then walked back to her room, deep in thought.
...Only to be blindsided by the dresser that was suddenly next to her bed. Right. She'd ordered that. Because she was a pilot.
We’re afforded many things as pilots, but we're never given time.
Well, she had enough time for one thing, at least. Letting the door slide shut behind her, she sat down on the bed, put her head in her hands, and softly cried.
Full Name - Arna Jaeger Callsign - Eagle-1 Age - 26 (b. 2562) Birthplace - Lone Star Pilot Type - Assault -
P S Y C H E
"Never Tell Me The Odds!" Arna is...well. A polite way to phrase it would be "not easily cowed," perhaps? She's an adrenaline junkie with a daredevil streak a mile wide, always at risk of going completely off the rails and ending up in places that she doesn't have any business being, doing things that are really bad ideas.
"You Lookin' For A Fight?" Like, for example, starting fights. Loud, brash, and abrasive, she's one of those people that somehow find a way to get in a fight regardless of whether or not doing so will actually get her anywhere. That's not to say she's overly bellicose or combative; she doesn't intentionally go looking for fights. But because of the kind of person she is, she also won't shrink from them. At ALL.
*Fingerguns* All that being said, though, that completely ignores how much fun she's having. Yes, she's loud, brash, and abrasive; but that also means she's totally unafraid to laugh as long and loud as she wants. Always ready to poke fun—but never out of malice!—both at others and at herself, she's a wild, unconstrained woman who takes an equally wild and unconstrained joy out of life.
Though she is dubiously blessed with an awful sense of humor.
G E A R
Peacekeeper MP1k1 Arna's personal armament, the Lone Star-manufactured Peacekeeper is a compact automatic pistol that she keeps snugly holstered at her side at all times. Matte black with her image—a plane beneath a skull—stenciled on the side, this powerful machine pistol shoots holds up to thirty rounds in its long stick magazine, and fires at a blistering 1100 rounds per minute. She prefers not to use it if possible, but if necessary she's more than capable of defending herself.
Hip Flask (Did You Really Expect Anything Else?) On the opposite hip from her pistol is a plain silver hip flask, dented in a number of places. Her initials, A.J., are scratched on to it on the outside by what looks like a knife, along with E-1. On the inside, kept by her side, are the initials J.B., and F-4. It's kept full, usually of either bourbon or vodka.
Worn Photo Kept on her person at all times is a wallet-sized photo of her and a man of similar age, laughing so hard together they look like they can't breathe. One of the few times she cools down instead of being so gunpowder all the time is when she's looking at it, or when she's asked about it.
N E U R A L C O M B A T A N T
Armor Eagle-1 is a superlight assault NC, jet black and accented with lines of bright magenta-red, with her previously mentioned trademark image—the plane and skull—emblazoned on the right shoulder. Her extremely powerful propulsion system means that she's always on the move, so she relies on mobility, not armor, to keep out of harm's way. Thus, she's only very lightly plated, though through the virtue of ceramo-metallic tungsten, it remains durable enough to take one or two shots before she's scratched out of the fight..
Hands And now we get into the meat of what Eagle-1 does, and why it can afford to be so lightly armored. In so many words? It's a walking airstrike. Held in her hands is the Dragon PFC, a custom-tooled firearm brought all the way from the insane minds of Lone Star: a handheld flak cannon. Firing fragmentation shells with a proximity sensor in the noses, it allows her to blanket whole swathes of the battlefield with desolation at a time. One shell individually might not be enough to take an NC out of the fight, but she can put so many of them downrange, and they spread over such a large area, that one of them will EVENTUALLY get there. A surgical strike, she's not.
Back As previously mentioned, mobility is the core of what Arna does, and there's nowhere better to see this than her back. It plays host to a TREMENDOUSLY powerful propulsion system, capable of catapulting her a hundred feet in any direction with frankly concerning speed. Such is the reason she wears the outfit she does: a g-suit from her days as a pilot that serves to lessen the effect of the sudden g-force changes. Overclocking her propulsion at fullsync enables something almost unique to Eagle-1: flight. Limited flight, of course, and only if she's willing to commit: it takes a LOT of her NC's power to maintain it for even the shortest length of time. But she does pull that trigger and cross that threshold, the maneuverability and firepower that comes with it are difficult to overstate.
Right Auxiliary Not merely satisfied with a flak cannon, Arna requires more powerful ordnance on occasion. Such is the reason for her right auxiliary: a rocket pod containing fifteen guided rockets linked to a targeting system in her HUD. Not only that, these aren't ordinary rockets: rather, to fit with her theme of widespread devastation, they are cluster munitions, allowing her to hail down explosions from on high like the hammer of god. These can be fired one at a time, and they usually are to conserve them. But if the situations calls, she can unleash them all in a storm of fire that leaves the ground before her a sea of blasted craters.
Left Auxiliary In a departure from the insanity that are her weapons, her left auxiliary is much more pedestrian. Because of her superlight armor, she sprung for the best projector she could get. She's ABSURDLY vulnerable to ion weaponry: not only does it disable her shields, but it can also short out her propulsion system and leave her little more than a sitting duck. But as long as ion weaponry isn't overly prominent on a particularly battlefield, it makes Eagle-1 much more durable than it may at first appear.
R E L A T I O N S
Jacob Brake The subject of the photo, the other name on the flask. Jacob Brake is the love of Arna's life. Though he remains in Lone Star while she lives now in LH, she still thinks about him often. She can't send him messages or anything; a civilian (these days) line sending messages into the military is a pretty futile idea to think about. So instead every so often—there's no schedule, just when she feels like it—she'll write him an unsent letter and save it for the future, when she can show him all the letters she never sent.
Colonel Andrew Barlowe Arna's loooong-suffering CO in the LSAF, Colonel Barlowe is a straight-laced, no-nonsense officer that expects a certain level of decorum from pilots under his command when addressing him.
You can probably imagine that he and Arna did not, in fact, get along.
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 ◢
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.
Quinn visibly cringed backwards at the first few words of Camille's response, expecting to be met with a reprimand the likes of which had been levied at Sybil. She hadn't really even been fully conscious she was being dishonest.
And so she was rather surprised when she didn't receive a dressing down. More just...a gentle warning. Was this the terrifying trainer that Cyril had been so frightened of? Yes, she seemed very critical about the Derisas. But something about her put Quinn at ease more than anything else, enough that, after another spate of silence while she wrestled with her thoughts, she was able to get herself together and reply, sincerely.
"I think passion is important," she began carefully, "and I don't think someone can be a good pilot without it. But on its own...Mmm. You need passion, but you also need..." Another hesitation, but less trying to avoid speaking. Simply trying to find the right word.
"...Determination. You need determination. You have to train hard for a long time. Being a pilot takes work. And..."
She took a long, deep breath as she imagined herself looking in the mirror back in her room on the Aerie. Camille was still looking at her in that same way. Not unkind, but not particularly kind either. Level. Appraising. Quinn met her eye to eye.
"...sometimes you just get lucky. I didn't work for my phasing speed or weapon. They just...happened."
Another deep breath, then a third, before she finally summed up what she was trying to say: "No. Just passion isn't enough."
Quinn was still rather winded for her part, pulling her hand through her bangs to get some of the sweat off of them. Reaching out for her water, she pulled the cap off again, tried to take a drink, and then remembered that she'd just drained it, and only the finest rivulet of water ran into her mouth. As Cyril began to speak, Quinn gently unplaited her braid. It had gotten messy, and demanded to be tied again. It was something that she'd gotten in the habit of doing after rigorous exercise, lest her hair get kinked. But she'd barely managed to get it down to her neck before the door shot open. Quinn jerked, yanking unpleasantly on the strands of hair she was holding, and turned her head to see...
...The vaunted Camille, wearing quite the uniform, and quite the expression. Quinn could practically smell the ice that she carried in her wake.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cyril...salute? Huh? Was that normal? Should she—
...Well, when in Casoban. After a moment, she lifted her own hand in a clumsy imitation of his salute, cringing internally as the nascent braid unspooled into nothingness with no hands guiding it. She must be an absolute sight. Should she say something now? Address her somehow? Should she call her Captain too?
But for the moment, at least, the question was dodged. Before Quinn could think about saying anything, Camille had started to redress Sybil. Tonight's sims were cancelled? There were sims? There was a schedule to keep? Anxiety shot cold and quick through her blood. Nobody had told her. She was beginning to understand why Cyril had seemed so happy to not exercise with, or even spend time around, this woman. There was something so crushingly intimidating about her.
A few moments later, she dropped the unnatural-feeling salute, and winced as Camille shredded Sybil in the most matter-of-fact way. Almost before she knew it the Derisas were leaving. When Cyril sent her an apologetic glance, Quinn matched it with one of her own. This wouldn't have happened if I hadn't showed up. Sorry.
And then she and the Captain were alone. A silent moment stretched out as Quinn nervously fiddled with the fringe of her unbraided hair.
"So, now you’ve seen them first hand. What do you think of Casoban’s heroes?"
"I—" There was a telltale nervous tremble in her voice, and she took a moment both to crush it down and to collect her thoughts before she continued. Camille seemed like the kind of person who you didn't want mad at you, so she did her best to sum up what she thought as concisely as possible. "...Cyril's fun. People seem to like him. He has to learn to keep his guard up better. Sybil..." God, what was she going to say about Sybil?
"...I didn't talk to her much until now, but..." ...she should be spending more time in here. But her voice caught in her throat before she said that last part. Camille was training them. And she didn't want to make Camille mad at her. So after an awkward moment of silence, "...she keeps trying to fight like Cyril and it's not working." Another silence that stretched out for longer than was strictly comfortable.
Aoife's eyes were at half-mast, still basking in the afterglow of Polka's music. The pain had largely retreated and would be reduced for some time yet. She felt so much more like herself; breathing deeply no longer send a knife of pain to her lungs, and she could stretch her arms above her head without feeling like they were tearing or pulling themselves out of their sockets. So she was sitting in the same chair she'd been in before, though much more comfortably, when Earthspirit arrived.
As a person, she wasn't the most open with her emotions, for a number of reasons. So though the fact that they'd been unable to find Nur rankled at her to a surprising degree, her face was still largely expressionless. Perhaps a little bit more solemn than usual. The only one in the clinic that she tended to share her emotions with to more than the sparsest degree was Polka. And would you look at that: Earthspirit wasn't Polka. So the fact that her brows began to furrow in distant confusion and later anger at the entire field of Sargonology was both indicative of the intensity of her emotions and, to those at all acquainted with her, rather surprising. For a few moments, the clinic was washed with silence, and her face grew only stormier, until...
"So, if I am to understand correctly," She spoke suddenly, shattering that tenuous quiet, "the Victorians are here to plunder from the people and culture here, for the sake of finding a weapon that may exist, but might just be a story?" She made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat, and for the next few words, her voice dripped with scorn. "What a surprise. It makes more sense now why Aisha was so upset with him now, at least." She took a long breath—thankful for her renewed ability to, without causing herself pain—before muttering under her breath: "If she hadn't bashed him then I might've."
Quinn couldn't help but feel a wide grin spreading over her face as Sybil threw another punch at her. Her form was already better. Maybe she wasn't overthinking it so much? Standing at least a little bit side-on instead of uncomfortably stiff full forward. The punch wasn't as wide, and when it cracked into the glove with a sound like a gunshot she was pleasantly surprised: that fist hit a lot harder than she thought it would, though she didn't actually have many benchmarks to measure it against. She couldn't keep the genuine enthusiasm out of her voice as she gushed, "that was a solid hit! Throw me another one!"
By the time Quinn stepped back off the mat again, a good chunk of time had passed. She wasn't quite sure, since she didn't know exactly when she and Sibyl had started; but it was long enough that the palms of her hands were throbbing from repeated hits, and she was sore in a few more places. She grimaced as she rubbed her collarbone where she'd bruised it against the obstacle course yesterday. That was gonna sting for a while.
Still, she was better off than Sibyl was. The girl looked super drained. Quinn couldn't blame her, of course, when she'd started she could barely go for half an hour with Dahlia without taking a break, and she thought it must have been at least three times that. She'd given her some advice on how to throw a solid punch (complete with demonstration on Sibyl's glove), where to keep your hands to make sure you had your guard up, how to stand to make sure you wouldn't get taken aback and overbalance yourself, and so on and so forth. Things like that: stuff that Dahlia had told her those months ago. It was her first foray into being the teacher, and she found it...surprisingly fun, actually.
Shaking out her hands with a hiss, she popped the top on her water bottle again, mildly surprised at how much she'd chugged over the course of only a few drinks. Must've been more dehydrated than she thought. She nearly drained the thing, then she gave a long breath as she looked back at the older girl, organizing her thoughts.
"I think your biggest problem is that you're trying to fight like him. Similar stance and all. Which isn't inherently bad, he is a good fighter." She nodded to Cyril off to the side, somewhat surprised he'd actually stuck around. "But, different people do better with different ways to fight. Like how I use my legs more because my depth perception isn't so great," she tapped her eyepatch lightly, "or how Dahlia—er, St. Senn weaves in and out more than most so she doesn't take unnecessary hits since Dragon is kinda fragile." She gave a little shrug. "I'm not psychic, obviously, but it feels to me like it just doesn't super fit you."
Flexing her fingers—they were a little stiff—and cracking her knuckles, she gave what she hoped was an encouraging smile. "Try something new next time you spar. Not something anyone can really teach you, just gotta figure it out on your own. Might be worse at first, but I'm sure it'll pay off when you find what you're looking for!"
She took another long, deep breath—which, after the day she'd had, transmuted into a yawn—then turned over to Cyril, looking at him a bit apologetically—he'd stuck around this long, he clearly cared and she felt bad for assuming the worst—and finally taking the time to address his own major error. "You probably would've gotten me, honestly. Just got a little too aggressive, and it left you just open enough for me to get a kick in." She leaned against the wall, then slid down to sit on the floor, shucking the gloves off and tossing them over towards the basket. And missing. She'd pick 'em up later. "If you'd kept your hands closer in and your guard up better I'd prob'ly have been on the floor."
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