Nimbus

Noble Arms - The ASEAN War [Moved to New Thread]

Callie / Henri / Nil

@Nimbus / @Chiro / @Gerlando

“Sir!” ‘Course I’ll protect her, what kind of a fireteam leader do you think I am?

Such thoughts ran through the back of Callie’s mind. Its front was nearly full to the brim; Charter was a blur of motion to track multiple points on the battlefield at once, her eyes and mind only functioning by innate overclocking and years of practice. One particular sight, of course, was more worrying than the rest… “Enemy fleet under Arm effect, sir - looks like phasing or regen, possibly carrier-centred. Redirected attacks aren’t landing.”

With the realisation that sinking their warships was fruitless, new orders had come up; the group had to find and team up with a Belgian Arms Master with a negation ability. While his name was not given, command had already put them through the comms. Can’t just stop attacking, though - they’ll know something’s up. “Alright,” Callie said, glancing back at Nil, “plan’s changed, going now - target the bridge from above. Ready bombardment!”

“Right away,” Nil responded while creating more copies for the attack, trying to cover as many as possible under the foliage. The enemy carriers were hard to even see at this distance but wouldn’t be a problem if Caroline was going to create a portal.

Meanwhile, Henri was still checking the city for people trapped under the rubble.

“Sgt. Janssens to Search and Rescue base. Sector F3 Clear. Moving on foot to Sector F4”, he messaged and was about to continue his journey, when he got contacted through his comm. “Sgt. Janssens here.”

“Private Lidmann - hope you heard from command, Sergeant.” Still don’t like that I can’t use my actual rank… “If you can get a clear fall from high ground where I can see you, I’ll launch you at the target and catch you when you reach the apex.”

“Roger that, Private,” Henri replied. “Can you see sector F4 from where you are, or should I search for another spot?”

A twitch of Charter. “Sector F4, confirmed…” Callie’s eye caught something - a red-orange glint from… Oh, yeah, ha. That’s an Arm. “Have ‘ya! Get on top of something, Sergeant - ready when you are!”

She allowed herself a smirk. Through a tree’s branches. Damn, I’m good.

Now… Charter back to the ships. Aircraft carrier isolated; bridge identified. A glance to Nil and a hand raised. “Hold!” And focus.

Space bridged. At once, Nil’s staves were only a few dozen metres from the carrier’s command centre - and directly above them.

Fist clenched.

In an instant they flew into the portal and on top of the command tower, pushing air as they bolted to their target, leaving behind a mess of leaves and dirt that had been blown by the air.

Twenty or maybe a bit more were the first to hit, practically demolishing the upper superstructure that once was the carrier’s conning tower, soon after about a dozen followed, this time aimed at the deck and airplanes preparing to take-off.

From a top view the ship was now barely recognisable.

Henri didn’t witness much of it, focused as he was on reaching the roof of the tallest building he found. He caught some breath after reaching the top and then signalled again. “All right, I am in position,” He said, waving his arm “You should be able to see me waving. What’s the next step?”

Callie’s eye was on Charter even as she loosed the connection with Charter, relief suffusing her as the tug of draining energy dissipated. “Sighted. Get edgewise and ready to jump, Sergeant!” ‘Course, some things are more fun as a grunt… “I’ll portal underneath you - only unsheath when you’re through, then stop once that blasted sky orb’s gone!”

“Roger that.” Henri said in confirmation. Then he took a running position, ready to take the leap. Just in case, he pulled his pistol. “Ready to go!”

Another moment gone; Callie removed her eye from her Arm, seeking Nil. “Once more before we reposition - another barrage, pick your targets.” She let out a huff of breath, then shook herself. Focus, Caroline. Just one after another after another now. All of them need to be right. No time for tiredness.

Charter back to Henri - then to the artificial sun, still blazing in the sky, beam scorching the beach and turning sand to glass up to the barrier. Callie forced herself not to squint against the brightness, her mind already working to evaluate the geometry. Beam keeps strafing like that and… Opening in the pattern - there. “Now!”

Now the trickier part - she’d only know where to put the portal on Henri’s end after he jumped. Still, Callie drew the energy, readying herself to direct it. She could hardly stop now.

As he heard the signal, Henri ran toward the edge and jumped. He seriously hoped the teleporter knew what she was doing and he didn’t just end up a pancake.

Next thing Henri knew, he was falling up, or that’s the feeling he could express. He could feel the heat of the light blinding his eyes. Quickly, as planned, he activated Leonidas.

“Fighting in Shade!” he shouted, activating Leonidas’s negation bubble. The light and heat around him dissipated. It seemed the plan had worked.

Not that Callie was anything more than subliminally aware. Just got to give her a whole bunch of shots… You aren’t answering us that easily! “Ready!” She raised her fist again, looked through Charter, chose a new site - Behind them, hit them in the rear.

Portal opened. Fist closed.

Once again blue projectiles fell upon the Chinese fleet, destroying decks and conning towers of destroyers, cruisers and even hitting the central carrier again, just to ensure it properly looked like a rough patch of gravel, plus a spectacular flame on top.

This time, Callie allowed a smile - and not just for herself. “Nicely done!” Now, we move!

But Henri couldn’t celebrate just yet, because the gravity began to pull him again. Quickly he unsheathed Leonidas, hoping it wasn’t too late to be pulled back.

“Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon!”

“Alright, getting clear. Dismiss Arm!” Long jump takes too much time - damn it, won’t be able to shake a lock if they have it. Well! Cursing under her breath, Callie instead focused her power towards her back-up: a secondary hill she’d identified when she first claimed this cover, a click away beneath the same minor ridge. The other end? Just behind Nil, where the underbrush wasn’t. Callie hoped that barrelling directly towards her would be a good enough indication.

It wasn’t.

The unsuspecting Nil stood confused for a second, slowly looking at Callie dashing out of the blue. Too slow, Callie decided it was faster to tackle Nil, pushing her off her feet and into the portal they were soon on the other side, one of them visibly dazed by the whole manoeuvre.

“Sorry!” Am I really - yes, I - no time for that! Sever flow, now where’s… Oh, God. Henri, as viewed through Charter, was falling. Not entirely slowly either. She could try directing the portal back to them up again, launch him to dissipate the momentum, but that act could easily give away their position…

The smart move would be to do so in midair.

Callie was not thinking about the smart move.

Another sudden change in vision, and Henri found himself back on the ground. The fall on it was painful, but at least Henri would be alive to feel it. He pulled deep breaths, as he looked around, trying to determine where he had been brought into. Some sort of bush, seemingly to break his fall… And beside it, two women - one in combat fatigues, the other fully covered with a dress popping from under the military uniform.

“Welcome to our little fireteam, Sergeant - sorry about the bumpy ride.”

“No problem,” Henri assured, as he rose up and dusted himself off. “Not the toughest I’ve faced so far, and probably in the future.”

Although Henri wasn’t really fond of Arms Masters, something even he admitted was hypocritical, at least this one had proven herself trustworthy.

“Onto the next step, I guess.”

Noble Arms - The ASEAN War [Moved to New Thread]

It has been a long-held principle of warfare that only a desperate or supremely confident army keeps no force in reserve. A reserve sacrifices immediate utility for flexibility that the rest of the army, pinned down in engagements, entirely lacks. Fresh and energetic from anticipation, it can engage to support a battle at its critical point in the moment that that point proves critical, striking an exposed flank or a buckling formation or reinforcing such a weakness in one’s own formation to turn the tide.

Thus, possibly the most crucial aspect of a reserve’s capability is their power to strike at a time and place of their choosing. For such a reason, cavalry and elite medium infantry have often performed this role throughout history. Of course, these are limited in scope; a truly ideal reserve would be unseen by the enemy and so unable to have their responses predicted, while retaining all of the striking power and flexibility of target that more conventional forces are capable of.

Caroline Lidmann fell into her position in a crouch. The warp from her prior location was smooth and practised, dropping her inside a bush on one of the hills to the West of the town of Labrador. After hearing a similar soft thud behind her, she centred herself and lifted her gaze to watch the attack through Charter. Yeah, ‘less they’ve found some way to replicate or project Arm powers, they’re definitely here… Come on, come on! She scanned across the bow, then the bridge of one of the Chinese transport vessels but there was no sign, not yet; nor had she felt the familiar tug of Charter pointing her towards a vital target. All the while, her other senses reached out to her surroundings, a habit she’d picked up after one too many times being outflanked while in this precise state in training – she not only heard but felt the blasts, echoing off the hillside and transmitted through the ground.

Her spare eye flicked sideways for a moment. Her teammate – one ‘Nil’, who she’d only met shortly after teleporting into Lingayen and apparently spoke too little English or Filipino to communicate with beyond very basic small talk and battlefield orders – seemed remarkably calm, almost absurdly so given the context. Callie had seen pre-battle jitters in almost everyone she’d trained alongside – they were nothing to shrug off – but this girl was just sitting there, still and silent… Worse in this moment, her Arm glowed, something not entirely conducive to stealth. Hopefully nothing to worry about, and what she’d heard about it would work extremely well in combination with Charter, but it did put her on edge ever so slightly.

She shook her head, then returned to surveying the area. Those aircraft are tearing into the city… Response seems capable, though. Back to the ships… Still nothing.

Wait, what’s –

The heavens unfurled, and from them speared a beam of brightest light.

Callie acted before conscious thought, not quite screaming into her radio: “Hostile code Glint confirmed, sir – engage?”

She needed to be fast. She’d trained for that.

“Permission gran-”

Let’s see how much you like those ships.

“Okay, we’re doing this!” Callie pointed Charter down to the bay; in an instant, her focus zoned in on one of the warships, isolating. Deck gun fore; VLS fore; VLS aft. The next: Same again. The next: Deck gun fore; ASM mid; SAM mid. Then the next, then the next – for each, distance and angles gauged, instinct granted by years of wielding her Arm; all the while, her other eye squinted against the light of the beam.

Alright. Now.

Energy projected; space warped. Callie felt the familiar pulse sapping her, only barely – she didn’t need a large portal here. Instead, high above the battlefield, a forty centimetre-diameter circle of space right in the path of the beam was suddenly next to one of the Chinese ships on the edge of their formation, as Callie joined near a league in half a tenth of a second. Light lanced out from it, aimed to burn through multiple ships’ armour, the geometry aligning the strike with as close as possible to where she thought each of their magazines were.

Then, as the beam left her first portal behind, she made another.

Then another.

A word back to Nil: “Once the beam stops, I’m opening a shot for you – as many as you’re able to bombard them with.” Awareness open to await that moment.

And even as her mind and perception worked furiously, a third of her attention still trying to catch sight of the enemy Arms Masters aboard one of the vessels… Hope that learns you your lesson from… What’s that green –

Right. Good thing we have one on our side…

@Gerlando

Noble Arms - The ASEAN War [Moved to New Thread]

Callie Lidmann

Name: Caroline ‘Callie’ Lidmann

Appearance:

Age: 22
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Bisexual, as far as she is able to tell.
Height: 165 cm
Weight: 63 kg

Nationality: Half-English, half-unknown

Noble Arm Name & Appearance:



‘Charter’
(naval officer’s spyglass)

Noble Arm Rank:

Noble Arm Type, Element, and Range: Support-Ranged/Space/Long-range

Noble Arm Abilities:
Leaguespanner: Wielding Charter allows Callie to realign the fabric of the universe to join one space to another, effectively creating a two-way portal in any shape that she desires. She may only create one such connection at a time and may only do so between places that she is able to see. Seemingly as an inherent safeguard, this portal cannot form inside or otherwise ‘cut’ sentient beings or other Noble Arms, though it can do so for non-sentient life and non-living things. Whenever she does so, Callie must fix both ends of the portal in space in relation to another object; she frequently uses the ground, the Earth as a whole or some part or all of her body for this purpose, though she cannot use any part of another sentient being or Noble Arm.
Creating a connection takes a small amount of energy and time that both scale with the portal’s size and the distance that it bridges; the amount of energy continuously consumed from Callie until she releases it also increases with the portal’s area (see hider).

Charter Calculations

Where Callie’s stamina is represented as 500 of an arbitrary unit…

Portal Creation Time (seconds) = Portal Area^2 (square metres) x Distance Bridged (km)
Stamina Cost upon Portal Creation = Portal Area^2 (square metres) x Distance Bridged (km) + Distance Bridged (km) x 0.1 + 10
Stamina Cost while Portal remains (per second) = Portal Area^2 (square metres) + 1

While Callie can push herself beyond this limit, she risks unconsciousness or death by doing so.

Sight Unbounded: Charter is far more capable than a spyglass of its apparent age or, indeed, any spyglass at all has any right to be: it has the ability to project Callie’s vision, allowing her to bypass non-solid objects. Solid objects inhibit the projection of her vision in this way, while liquids slow the projection depending on its density rather than it being instantaneous.
Commander’s Aim: While looking through Charter and wielding a projectile weapon or in contact with a person who is, Callie can will the spyglass to direct her gaze to the point where the projectile, as the weapon is currently aimed, will land. When she does so, she gains an instinctive sense of this point.
Guidance: Whether a precognitive subpower of Charter itself, a quirk of her hyperactive mind or a combination of both, Callie often finds herself drawn to details that are or will be important for herself and/or her allies when looking through Charter, even if she doesn’t know how they are or will be important yet. This helps Callie both when she is scouting or infiltrating a location or when she’s picking out a target in the chaos of a fight.

Misc. Abilities:
Determined Adaptability: Callie’s open-mindedness and sheer drive allow her to take on problems and learn new skills more capably than most, throwing sufficient energy and ingenuity at difficulties and mental blocks that others would give up on solving.
Trained Operative: With some Arms-tailored military training under her belt, Callie has had the chance to experiment with her Arm in battlefield conditions. As such, she is thoroughly familiar with her Arm’s basic capabilities and has even come up with a few unconventional ‘tricks’ with them, as well as appreciating the basics of tactics and operational warfare. She has also been given a more rapid coaching in the art of covert operations, allowing her to hold her own in a number of tight spots even without her Arm.

Personality: Callie is characterised by drive above all else; she launches herself towards her own and others’ success and even when ‘relaxing’ is constantly looking to find growth in everything she does. Unlike many of this archetype, however, she doesn’t naturally chafe against authority to any great extent, only that with which she disagrees for other reasons; she instead demands that she be accomplishing something in every waking moment, set by others or, if they do not, by herself. This makes her an invaluable asset to any team – focused, unfailingly energetic and downright inspiring, a champion for her allies and a constant harrier against their enemies – but can also come across as brashness, insensitivity and arrogance. She is, needless to say, a little polarising.

Likes: Achieving goals (especially by creatively efficient means), feeling capable, learning, helping others, using her Noble Arm, dogs and cats, Ribena

Dislikes: Helplessness (especially not being able to help others), duplicity among friends and teammates, indecisiveness, overbearing nationalism, excessive reliance on others

Fears: Being powerless, causing harm to those she cares about, becoming an emotionless killer

Bio

Callie Lidmann was born in the UK and lived there for four years or so. That she knows. In truth, her mother has always been cagey about the first few years of her life and, indeed, about Callie’s father, who Callie herself only knows by scattered half-memories. She didn’t especially care, to start with; her mum, Mary, has always been as good a parent as possible to her, as has her aunt Sandra, with whom the two live.

Good intentions or no, Mary’s actions rendered Callie somewhat poorly formed at first. The two only settled down with Sandra six or seven years after arriving in the USA; before then the two lived hand-to-mouth and constantly on the move. Mary took jobs and found schooling for Callie wherever she could but always became more and more alert, cautious, nervous over the months they stayed in a single place and then swept the two away again, as if running from something. By the time they came to live with Sandra, the damage had been done; Callie, despite a natural keenness of mind and a relative affability that let her just about coast through schoolwork and friendships, was behind on more or less every academic metric and had a lack of motivation to match. If, after all, her teachers and schoolmates changed so regularly, any effort she put into making a good impression or form connections would just go to waste. Why make the effort?

That changed a few months after Callie’s thirteenth birthday. Taking a stroll past a lake just outside the town that had – surprisingly to her – been her home for a good length of time now, her ear caught an odd series of sounds accompanied by what resembled an alarmed voice in the distance. Turning to look, she saw a woman thrashing at the water, small rowboat upturned and floating away over the rippling surface. In that instant, Callie reached out to help – and found that there was nothing she could do. For the first time, she fully regretted her indifference; she regretted not having had the presence of mind when walking here before to memorise where any of the lifebuoys were, dotted around the lakeside; she regretted having let learning to swim go by the wayside somewhere in her various relocations; she regretted being sufficiently apathetic as to not bring a phone with her or, indeed, to know what this lake in particular was called so she could guide an emergency responder to it; and she regretted not paying attention to the assembly given by a lifeguard on one day in one particular school whose name she couldn’t remember, that she might have properly known what to do in the first place.

For the first time in her life, Callie wished she might have done things differently.

She wished she could do something now.

And, from within her, something answered.

A brilliant flash of light in her palm, materialising into solid form. Moments later, a pulse in the air beside her; shimmering, marine light on the grass, followed by a deluge that knocked her off her feet and dropped one sopping wet ex-drownee onto the ground beside her. She had tried – and the world had made clear to her that that would make an impact.

How far could she go?

From that point on, Callie’s every action was infused with energy. Between the story being picked up by the local newspaper, the touch of renown that she gained in the community as a result and her generally more pleasant demeanour, she started to make some proper friends (and, of course, some enemies among those whose carefully constructed cliques were disrupted); astute enough to realise that a lot of these relationships were superficial but sufficiently determined and free-thinking enough to decide to forge them into actual bonds, Callie began building a network that not only further propelled her emotional rise but also brought those others with her towards fulfilment, her joyful and determined demeanour infectious. Simultaneously, realising that the key to her future and her growth laid in her new Noble Arm, she began practising with it on her own and doing research and joining several Arms fora online to start investigating its powers.

Eventually that research led her to the US’ Arms Master Cadets programme, in which Callie saw an opportunity to finally use her newfound power for good. Mary saw something else; Callie would often catch sight of her mother watching her out of the corner of her eyes, wringing her hands, muttering, every tic and negative signal of body language multiplied a thousand-fold. Sandra’s stabilising influence helped; Callie, on the other hand, could not decide whether her presence was causing her mother more pain than she would by leaving, even as her past, so long unquestioned, began to bubble in the back of her mind. With her new impetus driving her on, however, doing nothing simply wasn’t an option and, though she had picked up in school, it was clear that academics would be a path of far, far greater resistance given her track record. Her aunt in her corner and covering for her mother’s concerns, Callie eventually signed up for the programme, packed her bags and made her way onwards.

From there, everything accelerated. Entirely separate from the regular JROTC programme, auxiliary to a normal education, the AMC’s work is simply to take young Arms Masters and turn them into soldiers – to explore and actualise the martial potential of each cadet and especially their Arm’s powers and then integrate them as seamlessly as possible into their armed forces, all while securing their loyalty. For Callie, it achieved one of those three very effectively! With experienced Arms Masters and experts in their study helping her and dedicated testing facilities and events to experiment within at her full potential and full of sharpness and conviction, she became a skilled, diligent and distinguished warrior. Once again, her energy was infectious and she quickly made close friends amongst the other young Arms Masters on the programme (not so hard – being the person to near-instantly evacuate you to your team’s medic in a training exercise tends to endear you to them).

As for the other two… As she went on through the programme, Callie began to realise that she was being pushed in a certain direction: that of special and covert operations, reconnaissance, assassination. On a purely strategic and tactical level, she could understand that – information gathering, rapid movement and precision striking power were her Arm’s specialities – but she also wasn’t naïve. Even the brief period of research she’d done before she entered the AMC had told her what the country she and her mother had come to was capable of; while she’d put that to the back of her mind at the time it increasingly weighed on her thoughts as she approached the end of her training, something only reinforced by the patriotic tendencies of her fellows and their superiors.

The war in South-East Asia offered a way out. While the US has so far refused to commit to a full military response to Chinese aggression, for fear of escalation to unrestricted conflict between their Arms Masters with a level of accompanying global devastation unseen since WW2, they were willing to send materiel, military advisors and training and, off the table, covert military support. As a capable fighter who had not yet seen action and so was not identifiable by the enemy, Callie was in an ideal position to take advantage – and she knew it, seizing what she felt was an opportunity to use her training and skills to do something fairly unambiguously good. And so, after intensive training in Filipino and in the Philippines’ culture and geography and picking up some new skills over a period of six months, Caroline Lidmann, officially an unaffiliated Arms Master volunteering with the Philippine Army from abroad, headed for her new posting.

Current Goal: Support the Philippine resistance to Chinese invasion without revealing her true role.

Military or Civilian Rank: As a participant in covert operations, Callie has technically been transferred out of the US Armed Forces to become likely the youngest member of the CIA’s Special Operations Group, though the rapid development of the ASEAN War and the lack of need for much of the usual process (parachute training, for instance, was considered basically irrelevant for her) has left some holes in her preparation for the latter.

Character Theme: “No reason to stop now, not when I can finally do some good in the world. Just try to hold me back!”

Noble Arms - The ASEAN War [Moved to New Thread]

Callie Lidmann

Name: Caroline ‘Callie’ Lidmann

Appearance:

Age: 22
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Bisexual, as far as she is able to tell.
Height: 165 cm
Weight: 63 kg

Nationality: Half-English, half-unknown

Noble Arm Name & Appearance:



‘Charter’
(naval officer’s spyglass)

Noble Arm Rank:

Noble Arm Type, Element, and Range: Support-Ranged/Space/Long-range

Noble Arm Abilities:
Leaguespanner: Wielding Charter allows Callie to realign the fabric of the universe to join one space to another, effectively creating a two-way portal in any shape that she desires. She may only create one such connection at a time and may only do so between places that she is able to see. Seemingly as an inherent safeguard, this portal cannot form inside or otherwise ‘cut’ sentient beings or other Noble Arms, though it can do so for non-sentient life and non-living things. Whenever she does so, Callie must fix both ends of the portal in space in relation to another object; she frequently uses the ground, the Earth as a whole or some part or all of her body for this purpose, though she cannot use any part of another sentient being or Noble Arm.
Creating a connection takes a small amount of energy and time that both scale with the portal’s size and the distance that it bridges; the amount of energy continuously consumed from Callie until she releases it also increases with the portal’s area (see hider).

Charter Calculations

Where Callie’s stamina is represented as 500 of an arbitrary unit…

Portal Creation Time (seconds) = Portal Area^2 (square metres) x Distance Bridged (km)
Stamina Cost upon Portal Creation = Portal Area^2 (square metres) x Distance Bridged (km) + Distance Bridged (km) x 0.1 + 10
Stamina Cost while Portal remains (per second) = Portal Area^2 (square metres) + 1

While Callie can push herself beyond this limit, she risks unconsciousness or death by doing so.

Sight Unbounded: Charter is far more capable than a spyglass of its apparent age or, indeed, any spyglass at all has any right to be: it has the ability to project Callie’s vision, allowing her to bypass non-solid objects. Solid objects inhibit the projection of her vision in this way, while liquids slow the projection depending on its density rather than it being instantaneous.
Commander’s Aim: While looking through Charter and wielding a projectile weapon or in contact with a person who is, Callie can will the spyglass to direct her gaze to the point where the projectile, as the weapon is currently aimed, will land. When she does so, she gains an instinctive sense of this point.
Guidance: Whether a precognitive subpower of Charter itself, a quirk of her hyperactive mind or a combination of both, Callie often finds herself drawn to details that are or will be important for herself and/or her allies when looking through Charter, even if she doesn’t know how they are or will be important yet. This helps Callie both when she is scouting or infiltrating a location or when she’s picking out a target in the chaos of a fight.

Misc. Abilities:
Determined Adaptability: Callie’s open-mindedness and sheer drive allow her to take on problems and learn new skills more capably than most, throwing sufficient energy and ingenuity at difficulties and mental blocks that others would give up on solving.
Trained Operative: With some Arms-tailored military training under her belt, Callie has had the chance to experiment with her Arm in battlefield conditions. As such, she is thoroughly familiar with her Arm’s basic capabilities and has even come up with a few unconventional ‘tricks’ with them, as well as appreciating the basics of tactics and operational warfare. She has also been given a more rapid coaching in the art of covert operations, allowing her to hold her own in a number of tight spots even without her Arm.

Personality: Callie is characterised by drive above all else; she launches herself towards her own and others’ success and even when ‘relaxing’ is constantly looking to find growth in everything she does. Unlike many of this archetype, however, she doesn’t naturally chafe against authority to any great extent, only that with which she disagrees for other reasons; she instead demands that she be accomplishing something in every waking moment, set by others or, if they do not, by herself. This makes her an invaluable asset to any team – focused, unfailingly energetic and downright inspiring, a champion for her allies and a constant harrier against their enemies – but can also come across as brashness, insensitivity and arrogance. She is, needless to say, a little polarising.

Likes: Achieving goals (especially by creatively efficient means), feeling capable, learning, helping others, using her Noble Arm, dogs and cats, Ribena

Dislikes: Helplessness (especially not being able to help others), duplicity among friends and teammates, indecisiveness, overbearing nationalism

Fears: Being powerless, causing harm to those she cares about, becoming an emotionless killer

Bio

Callie Lidmann was born in the UK and lived there for four years or so. That she knows. In truth, her mother has always been cagey about the first few years of her life and, indeed, about Callie’s father, who Callie herself only knows by scattered half-memories. She didn’t especially care, to start with; her mum, Mary, has always been as good a parent as possible to her, as has her aunt Sandra, with whom the two live.

Good intentions or no, Mary’s actions rendered Callie somewhat poorly formed at first. The two only settled down with Sandra six or seven years after arriving in the USA; before then the two lived hand-to-mouth and constantly on the move. Mary took jobs and found schooling for Callie wherever she could but always became more and more alert, cautious, nervous over the months they stayed in a single place and then swept the two away again, as if running from something. By the time they came to live with Sandra, the damage had been done; Callie, despite a natural keenness of mind and a relative affability that let her just about coast through schoolwork and friendships, was behind on more or less every academic metric and had a lack of motivation to match. If, after all, her teachers and schoolmates changed so regularly, any effort she put into making a good impression or form connections would just go to waste. Why make the effort?

That changed a few months after Callie’s thirteenth birthday. Taking a stroll past a lake just outside the town that had – surprisingly to her – been her home for a good length of time now, her ear caught an odd series of sounds accompanied by what resembled an alarmed voice in the distance. Turning to look, she saw a woman thrashing at the water, small rowboat upturned and floating away over the rippling surface. In that instant, Callie reached out to help – and found that there was nothing she could do. For the first time, she fully regretted her indifference; she regretted not having had the presence of mind when walking here before to memorise where any of the lifebuoys were, dotted around the lakeside; she regretted having let learning to swim go by the wayside somewhere in her various relocations; she regretted being sufficiently apathetic as to not bring a phone with her or, indeed, to know what this lake in particular was called so she could guide an emergency responder to it; and she regretted not paying attention to the assembly given by a lifeguard on one day in one particular school whose name she couldn’t remember, that she might have properly known what to do in the first place.

For the first time in her life, Callie wished she might have done things differently.

She wished she could do something now.

And, from within her, something answered.

A brilliant flash of light in her palm, materialising into solid form. Moments later, a pulse in the air beside her; shimmering, marine light on the grass, followed by a deluge that knocked her off her feet and dropped one sopping wet ex-drownee onto the ground beside her. She had tried – and the world had made clear to her that that would make an impact.

How far could she go?

From that point on, Callie’s every action was infused with energy. Between the story being picked up by the local newspaper, the touch of renown that she gained in the community as a result and her generally more pleasant demeanour, she started to make some proper friends (and, of course, some enemies among those whose carefully constructed cliques were disrupted); astute enough to realise that a lot of these relationships were superficial but sufficiently determined and free-thinking enough to decide to forge them into actual bonds, Callie began building a network that not only further propelled her emotional rise but also brought those others with her towards fulfilment, her joyful and determined demeanour infectious. Simultaneously, realising that the key to her future and her growth laid in her new Noble Arm, she began practising with it on her own and doing research and joining several Arms fora online to start investigating its powers.

Eventually that research led her to the US’ Arms Master Cadets programme, in which Callie saw an opportunity to finally use her newfound power for good. Mary saw something else; Callie would often catch sight of her mother watching her out of the corner of her eyes, wringing her hands, muttering, every tic and negative signal of body language multiplied a thousand-fold. Sandra’s stabilising influence helped; Callie, on the other hand, could not decide whether her presence was causing her mother more pain than she would by leaving, even as her past, so long unquestioned, began to bubble in the back of her mind. With her new impetus driving her on, however, doing nothing simply wasn’t an option and, though she had picked up in school, it was clear that academics would be a path of far, far greater resistance given her track record. Her aunt in her corner and covering for her mother’s concerns, Callie eventually signed up for the programme, packed her bags and made her way onwards.

From there, everything accelerated. Entirely separate from the regular JROTC programme, auxiliary to a normal education, the AMC’s work is simply to take young Arms Masters and turn them into soldiers – to explore and actualise the martial potential of each cadet and especially their Arm’s powers and then integrate them as seamlessly as possible into their armed forces, all while securing their loyalty. For Callie, it achieved one of those three very effectively! With experienced Arms Masters and experts in their study helping her and dedicated testing facilities and events to experiment within at her full potential and full of sharpness and conviction, she became a skilled, diligent and distinguished warrior. Once again, her energy was infectious and she quickly made close friends amongst the other young Arms Masters on the programme (not so hard – being the person to near-instantly evacuate you to your team’s medic in a training exercise tends to endear you to them).

As for the other two… As she went on through the programme, Callie began to realise that she was being pushed in a certain direction: that of special and covert operations, reconnaissance, assassination. On a purely strategic and tactical level, she could understand that – information gathering, rapid movement and precision striking power were her Arm’s specialities – but she also wasn’t naïve. Even the brief period of research she’d done she entered the AMC had told her what the country she and her mother had come to was capable of; while she’d put that to the back of her mind at the time it increasingly weighed on her thoughts as she approached the end of her training, something only reinforced by the patriotic tendencies of her fellows and their superiors.

The war in South-East Asia offered a way out. While the US has so far refused to commit to a full military response to Chinese aggression, for fear of escalation to unrestricted conflict between their Arms Masters with a level of accompanying global devastation unseen since WW2, they were willing to send materiel, military advisors and training and, off the table, covert military support. As capable fighter who had not yet seen action and so was not identifiable by the enemy, Callie was in an ideal position to take advantage – and she knew it, seizing what she felt was an opportunity to use her training and skills to do something fairly unambiguously good. And so, after intensive training in Filipino and in the Philippines’ culture and geography and picking up some new skills over a period of six months (including the memorisation of aerial photographs of key strategic locations for rapid travel), Caroline Lidmann, officially an unaffiliated Arms Master volunteering with the Philippine Army from abroad, headed for her new posting.

The journey took but a moment.

Current Goal: Support the Philippine resistance to Chinese invasion without revealing her true role.

Military or Civilian Rank: As a participant in covert operations, Callie has technically been transferred out of the US Armed Forces to become likely the youngest member of the CIA’s Special Operations Group, though the rapid development of the ASEAN War and the lack of need for much of the usual process (parachute training, for instance, was considered basically irrelevant for her) has left some holes in her preparation for the latter.

Noble Arms - The ASEAN War [Moved to New Thread]

Just putting a marker down here - Caroline Lidmann will soon be joining the fight!

~ Valkyria Chronicles - Changing of the Guard [Pt. 2 - Open] ~

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The smooth, rolling hills and fields of Bihain, occasionally broken by ancient wood or rushing stream, were idyllic and beautiful – and perfect for fox hunts. The equestrian legacy of the family that would become the de Bihains was strong in those lands and the stock of their horses equally vital, and so hunting was a regular pastime that they hosted for the well-to-do of the region, leisure over which connections might be forged with one’s guests, of higher or lower status. Alexandre had ridden since he was a boy and, as the first son of his family, had been obligated to participate in many such events – and yet he was not a keen hunter. He adored the dogs, of course (and so hadn’t been entirely terrified when he finally caught sight of Alex’s new hulking mass of muscle that he hadn’t noticed standing right there the whole time), and the horses were beyond glorious, but the act itself felt meaningless to him. What chance did the foxes have? There was no contest in it, no honour or glory at stake, only an opponent that couldn’t hope to fight back and an act of meaningless death. When he… Before, it had been better – still compelled to plan to take an opponent off guard when one blazed forth against a foe, yes, but an opponent who would have stood a meaningful chance otherwise and could still rally after the moment of the charge.

The shadowy forms of those thoughts passed through Alexandre’s mind as the soldiers of the 15th Atlantic Rifles stormed the trench. The imperials died in an instant, bullet and bayonet ripping at their flesh like metal teeth. With it, what small fire he had stoked through the approach amongst the chilling frost that he had gathered around himself for months was snuffed out. Even as he dropped into the imperial trench and saw the – flesh twisted, crushed, blood seeping into the ground and crows drinking from – he swallowed down the nausea, armouring himself with frigid pragmatism.

Shots taken – there will be reinforcements shortly. Alexandre scanned the field – the Darscen woman leading the path down into the dugout and most of the others piling in. If we all go, we will be pinned down, without question… They would need a rearguard to keep the way back secure – one more sizeable than a single… Marksman or woman? Difficult to tell… Regardless, they had the numbers to use; thus, with a strength belying his wiry form, he crouched down and pulled the body closest to whence they’d come back behind the wall of the trench, out of sight. Sparing a moment to trace the Valkyrur spiral over the man’s chest, he turned to the black-haired… Individual. And that is an Edinburgh accent, no? “I have the right – keep… If you keep the left secure,” he intoned in their native tongue, his mind registering only after a moment that this was an equal rather than inferior. Energy was, after all, racing through long-untrodden paths in his mind, carved at Lanseal in what little they had taught of the actions of individual infantry sections.

He could not see a great deal of the left, admittedly, but it seemed the trench ran straight for a stretch, ideal for a sharpshooter to lock down and pick off their targets at will. The right, on the other hand? Enclosed, the approach defined by a single, short passage. It almost brought back memories.

Alexandre stood, his hand going to his hip. In one motion, the blade was drawn, brought above his head to be blessed by the aurora, then to his lips before coming close to his side as he put the other against the same wall he’d placed the body behind. A single lunging cut would reach the other side of the trench, he knew, before anyone in between had a chance to act. The other hand reached down with it…

The weight.

…and drew his revolver.

And Alexandre centred himself and listened. And his heart quickened in his chest, for his opponents now would be more than foxes.

@Hawthorne

~ Valkyria Chronicles - Changing of the Guard [Pt. 2 - Open] ~

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‘son of Roland-Florence’. The words bit like the cold winds from far to Gallia’s North, sweeping over the frigid mountain lands there to rid them of rain and leave them with frost alone. His gaze now stuck, not on his former friend but against the axe at his hip – its gravity wrenched at him, pulling him towards that awful fire once again, the fire that he had forsworn. Fire that had seemingly died – so why did it still draw him so?

Better the cold. Far better the cold.

“Reassigned?” Alexandre struggled, forcing a quivering smile onto his face, even as the rime gathered in his gut. “Yes… Yes. Of course.” And even with those words, the thought: At least the Che… At least they are safe.

The ones who…

Iron. Flesh. Carrion birds.

‘son of Roland-Florence’.

Do not tell him, his mind pulsed with fear. You cannot. Too different – he would lose all sense of you. And thus you him. Not now. Not with him back.

“I am… I… Cannot be that, any more. That is how. I am…” He closed his eyes; raised his head; opened his eyes to finally meet those of his former friend. “I am still Alexandre, but Alexandre is this now.”

Once more, Alexandre’s eyes were drawn to that terrible, blazing, impossible weight at his side; once more, he pulled them back. A laugh, to ineffectually cover the slip. “And I am here, and can fight. That is the crux of it, no?” The smile felt easier, now, the pattern reasserting itself; he stood straighter, even as he did not move. “And the Valkyrur send me the man I know to be as noble a warrior as they are as my officer. They look on us kindly today.”

@Smike

~ Valkyria Chronicles - Changing of the Guard [Pt. 2 - Open] ~

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That voice.

By the Valkyrur, that voice.

His voice.

Alexandre’s mind plunged into civil war. The sight of… The sight clashed against the walls in his mind, built and fortified by half a year of self-loathing – and made purchase. Memories long kept at bay now tore at their structure with the reinforcement of immediacy. Alex Schäfer had been his deputy and friend, his companion-at-arms. He had valued his sense of honour and calm conscientiousness. Alexandre had found someone in Alex whom he could trust, laugh with, lead beside. A half-dozen days flashed before him, all from Bihain, all so joyous and righteous and –

He was dead.

I led him to it.

Alexandre shut his eyes, exerting his force again on those walls. No. No. This is past. Those are memories and I am now. And, indeed, as his eyes opened again, Alexandre found details. The two were alone, the trench empty where it had been full of soldiers. When he spoke, though he could not make out the words, Alex did so in the same considered tones he had always done when issuing orders. The man was still in the uniform he had worn on that day, now beaten and stained from the horrific fate that he had condemned him to.

Alexandre knew ritual better than he knew theology. Even so, somewhere in the recesses of his mind-fortress, some part of him could still recognise what this was.

The stories of confronting a draugr… They are wrestled to a point of submission, then… Decapitated. The strength of the Valkyrur, followed by the mastery. Steadily, deliberately, the Gallian reached up to his neck, clasping the spiral amulet there, and then raised his other hand.

Every step seemed a league. He fought to keep his gaze locked forwards and his expression held at determination, sallying against the onrushing waves that only grew stronger themselves as he approached, staring at that face, those dark hair and eyes that shouldn’t be familiar but were, oh so much… Feeling his hand trembling, he clutched his spiral and launched himself across the remaining distance.

Though his push was feeble, Alexandre still felt a warmth through the fabric against Alex’s shoulder. Fully shaking now, his hand drew upwards to lie against the other’s face and neck. The heat, the life there pooled against his touch, and yet it was shivers that coursed down Alexandre’s arm, torn away, the man stumbling back until he reached the trench’s edge, the memories surging now to surmount the walls he had so carefully built. He stared downwards; Tue-Tyran felt as the weight of a star at his hip, blinding in its reminder of everything that should have been.

The last holdouts in his mind pushed him to look back, then stand to face the man before him. Struggling for anything coherent, Alexandre brought forth the only expression of his mental state that he was barely able, intoned with a mote of strength behind it: “How.”

@Smike

~ Valkyria Chronicles - Changing of the Guard [Pt. 2 - Open] ~

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With a smart salute to the departing sergeant, Alexandre answered with a nod of his own and a wan smile with it. “Thank you, Private Britta, and may I extend the same wish. You have been most kind; if all here are like you, I am sure I… I will be welcome. Fare you well.”

‘Welcome’… It is enough for now, perhaps. Not too much.

He steeled himself, closing his eyes for that moment before memory could take hold and snatching a breath as he walked away, back down the tangled paths towards the assault trench. The alienness of it all still stuck out. Before had been all open space, the gentle sounds of nickering and heavy hooves thumping against the ground, lively chatter, so akin to… Before before. Now, as he descended, all was close, oppressive, grave. The men and women of the Valois trenches didn’t carry themselves like the… Like they might have – they huddled close together, murmuring and glancing up as he passed. The smile on his face was hard to maintain.

Well, he thought, considering Britta again, not all. But many. Alexandre sighed. Ignoble. Everything is so utterly ignoble. There is no spirit or hope, not in any of it.

He screwed his eyes shut. No. No, no. This is where you are, now. This is where you must fight. Such is your duty, and you must…

Without stimulus, his senses had returned to that day, to that moment – the near-taste of iron and offal in the air, the sight of –.

Alexandre stumbled, eyes snapping open again to note that he had, in fact, wandered directly into a soldier sitting on one side of the trench. Offering a murmured apology, he pressed on, shaking his head for a moment to clear it. Too much thought. I must remember my mistakes to learn from them, not to…

His mind settled on something. Letting go of his new carbine with one hand, he grasped his amulet, fingers running along the long-polished grooves of the spiral. The chant, practised day after day for years, came to him as naturally as breathing.

“Wake, O Valkyrur; I call thee now,
Strong of shield-wall, sun-ray wielders,
Harden to fear thine hersir in faith
Healed of doubt to do thine will.”

The rhythm of the words was, as ever, as calming and focussing as their meaning. Thus it was with a dedicated mind that Alexandre began the final approach to the assault trench where they would be meeting, the remaining time spent refamiliarising himself with the mechanisms of his Federation carbine, adjusting the height that his scabbard sat on his belt, testing the weight of Tue-Tyran against his arm, as he retraced the steps he had taken only a few dozen minutes beforehand. Prepared, he reached, then rounded the corner into the assault trench proper.

“Sir, Private Blanc, repor-”

No preparation, of course, could have readied him for that sight. Alexandre stood frozen, eyes wide, struck silent, first unable and then unwilling to comprehend the immediate familiarity of the man before him. It could not be. It simply could not be.

For all his desire to act in the present, the past did not seem to want to release its hold.

@Smike

~ Valkyria Chronicles - Changing of the Guard [Pt. 2 - Open] ~

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Alexandre blinked. He hadn’t even considered a footlocker – it simply hadn’t occurred to him. Of course, he knew such things existed – he had inspected them regularly, after all, when he was… Before. Before. But throughout that before he had always had his personal quarters or tent, and his personal storage with them; footlockers were not the things foremost in his mind when he thought on sequestering or safekeeping. That… One ought to be assigned to me eventually, no? I am hardly the most aware of typical infantry procedure. Am I to ask? Would that be impertinent?

Is there paperwork?

For a brief bit of time he gave himself to that consideration before lifting his gaze to meet Britta’s eyes; she bore a joyous, somehow unfettered expression and with it Alexandre felt himself untensing, just a touch, as a half-remembered part of him resonated. “That would be a possibility were I to have one as yet; as yet, however, I do not. Even then, I fear I would be asking you regardless; this is of some significance, and I understand that you and your beau –” (Alexandre gave himself the slightest mental congratulation at having found a term that was both accurate and inoffensive in the instant before the sentence reached the point at which it was required) – “are well-respected here.”

Of course, it would also be ideal to keep the carbine tucked away in a more familiarly unusual space where fewer people would notice its exotic construction, as compared to the theoretical storage of a private who had been admitted to the unit only a few days ago and present in these constricting trenches for a shorter time than that. It would be distinctly non-ideal for it to be taken away for, say, reverse engineering or to be gifted to a Valois commander. No, far better out of sight, hidden among other oddities.

Alexandre turned the carbine over in his hands, letting its blue sheen catch the sunlight, looking over its polished form for the last time in a while. “As to what… An old weapon and but a few clips of compatible ammunition. It will hopefully be unnecessary, for the foreseeable future.” His expression flickered, turning downcast for a short second, before his smile reasserted itself to rejoin Britta’s. And, now I consider it… It is not as if I… “And, actually, perhaps this case too, if it would not be a bother,” he added, extending the arm upon which it hangs. “I will not be needing it either.”

There is already much to remind me, he thought, feeling the ever-growing weight of the axe at his hip.

“But, of course,” Alexandre concluded, “that will be later, will it not? You have your station here.” He looked about himself. “I do not suppose that you are one for company? I would not wish to distract you from your duties, of course; it is only that I have not been added to the rotations yet, and I…”

Alexandre, for a moment, froze.

Just a moment.

“…am aware of the benefits of camaraderie in a unit such as ours.”

@FalloutJack