Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2013 22:48:23 GMT -6
Name: Lexina.
Species: Cyborg. SHE DID ASK FOR THIS.
Affiliation/Occupation: Mercenary. Ex-Hunter.
Hunter Rank: C.
Physical Description: Tall and curvaceous, Lexina cuts an imposing figure only bolstered by the quiet confidence with which she tends to hold herself; for as much skin as she shows, there is a hard glint to her cooly appraising gaze that does more to engender the hesitant realization that she is far more than a girl playing at being a soldier than the colossal cannon that is her constant companion can suggest. Her practiced poise and casual demeanor alike show a familiarity with her work that only serves to bolster that impression, as out-of-place as it may seem given her unique sense of fashion - the former officer exudes a variety of clashing themes, a curious combination of easily approachable and strangely distant that makes her easy to get along with, but difficult to understand.
Obviously human beneath the more blatant enhancements, even the most cursory of inspections reveals that she is not augmented nearly as much as many cyborgs. Her hard-earned fitness is evidenced by what is on display of her toned body, though that is somewhat of a given considering the weight of the gear she casually lugs around on a regular basis. Aiding in that goal are the kinetic amplifiers and dampeners fitted to each of her limbs, perhaps the closest to actual armor that Lexina wears; while far from able to outmatch strength-oriented reploids and their kin, Lexina is still capable of feats of prodigious strength and limited melee combat - held back by a far weaker general frame, but capable of temporarily holding her own in close quarters combat before falling back to a more advantageous range. Her shield belt is the true protection, though, crackling to life in combat to provide protection for her all-too-human flesh and blood in an understated glow that covers her entire body.
At least as obvious as the metal encasing her limbs are some of the myriad cybernetic augmentations Lexii has opted for in order to aid in the fulfillment of her primary goal - as a reconnaissance officer, occasional force recon expert, and designated squad liaison, an array of targeting, communications, and data arrays alike appear to varying degrees. The integrated headset and microphone are almost omnipresent on her visage, though to its credit the microphone can retract into the headset and the full-on, bulkier form of the headset can flip in on itself to become somewhat less obvious; the almost helmet-esque receiver atop her head is similarly somewhat retractable but far from removable. Additionally, her glasses are encoded with a number of pattern recognition protocols and are capable of filtering information to her similarly-augmented brilliantly lavender eyes; when in use, a constant deluge of symbols and holographic displays reflect off her glasses or in her eyes, hinting at the volume of outwardly-hidden cerebral augmentation she has undergone.
As for the dangly bits issuing from her back - well, they don't really seem to do anything, but Lexina always fields questions about them with a faint, knowing smile and an entirely unhelpful vague response that hints at some unknown function.
Equipment:
"Athena" Particle Projection Cannon
M-6 Carnifex
Skills/Techniques:
+mid-long range combat and target assessment
+versatile - can fight at any range
+hyper mode further amplifies versatility, augmenting melee presence and unlocking additional ranged firepower
-limited melee presence outside of hyper mode
cannon has spread needle/Seventh Scripture function
Hyper Mode: (If your character has a Hyper Mode, describe it here. But it's ability will be locked until they've reach the required level to use it. Every species except normal Humans have Hyper Modes.)
Backstory: Lexina has always had a tendency to involve herself in the affairs of others. From the precocious child who played matchmaker whenever possible to the young teenager standing between a distraught friend and the boys who made the girl uncomfortable, she has consistently made it her personal goal to leap headfirst into situations and do her best to sort them out, in one way or another. Fiercely protective of a growing circle of friends, breezily charismatic and approachable enough to counter the deletrious effects of occasional fights on her reputation, "Lexii" carved her own path through life throughout her school years, to the occasional dismay of her parents, teachers, and anyone else forced to deal with the aftermath of her brash stubbornness and viciously fierce guardianship of her friends.
She had a good life ahead of her; intelligent and driven, Lexina excelled in her studies, always at or near the top of the class. There was some talk of a part-time modeling job as her body matured, while she began to explore a possible career in the field of biosynthetics as her high school years began: while her interest in science was certain, the idea of settling down left her uncomfortable, albeit unable to articulate her weak objections to an excited father and proud mother.
The outbreak of a global war against homicidal "Bio-roids," which were quite clearly NOT as friendly as the Reploids that protected the city, made the question somewhat of a moot point. While their city was spared the initial wave of devastation, the relaxing days of peace were over - stories of the unthinkable devastation these rampaging foes left in their wakes spread quickly, barely even needed the hyperbole of rumors to already seem outlandishly horrifying; murderous automatons who were not Reploids but something more, with abilities beyond what any Reploids could claim to possess. Mavericks were not a new concept, but an entire race of beings that seemed technologically superior was something else entirely. Thoughts of the future evaporated into thoughts of the now, of cowering uselessly inside the protective walls of their city while the Hunters fought and died for them.
She hated it.
Brought up to protect those who could not defend themselves, used to charting her own course, and already chafing under the expectations of those around her, Lexina refused to bow her head and wait while the Maverick Hunters sorted things out for all the weak, useless little humans like her who couldn't even do a thing to protect themselves. It stung to be so helpless, so useless but she spun that frustration and embarassment into drive, as was her wont. A drive to make something more of herself than a worthless damsel in distress, to actually be able to do anything for her friends and family than feeding them useless platitudes about how the good guys would win the day and they could go back to the halcyon days of yore. Hope was well and good, but she was a pragmatist, and while she knew little of military or combat in general, she knew that the fight was anything but a children's cartoon.
Perhaps it was as much an immature attempt at bucking the fate that had seemed to begin to constrict around her future as it was any sort of heroic resolve to protect all those she cared for, or perhaps it was little more than her ornery nature coming to the forefront once again after too long of cowering behind others, but Lexina found herself demanding work from the Hunter's Guild soon enough, and they found her sheer stubbornness and refusal to accede to repeated requests to go home as fearsome as any Bio-roid. The reticence of the Hunters to simply allow one of the humans they were supposed to be protecting into frontline combat proved too much for even her fiery indignation, but moved by her desire to help - or possibly just desperate to shut her up; Lexina doesn't like to consider which is more accurate often - the Hunters eventually found her a non-combat role, one that would in theory allow her to contribute without putting her in serious danger; field reconnaissance, providing an eye on the ground for satellites and Navigator overviews.
With that opportunity came responsibility, though. The Hunters were the first people to expect as much out of her as she expected from herself, to push her beyond what she had dealt with in her previous life; military life was anything but storybook, physical conditioning and constant drills honing her body and mind alike into something more useful than a confused, half-matured girl; she had always been attentive, but the constant tests of her perception and memory went beyond any she had ever conceived of for herself, forcing her to struggle through her own weakness to keep up with the curriculum. While she was not expected to ever need it, hand to hand and firearms training were mixed into more mental pursuits.
Days bled into months as basic training was augmented and eventually entirely replaced by field experience, familiar faces blending together as they too were replaced by others. The sheer magnitude of the war effort engrained the importance of their task in her mind, even as the war itself heated up - she had missed the outbreak of the war, but the brutality of the fighting only escalated as both sides resigned themselves to an extended conflict.
As the ongoing shadow war of information technology and electronic jamming continued beneath the surface of the overt hostilities, the need for reliable surveillance and data only became more pronounced. Independent observers could see what satellite images could not, whether in densely forested areas or spaces in which electromagnetic jamming interfered with drone surveys and space observation, and by the second year of the war Lexina found herself a part of it entirely. Lumped in with an existing recon squad that had recently lost a member, as much an experiment in combined arms as a minor embarassment to those in Hunter Command who felt that humans should be kept out of the war entirely, she was nonetheless expected to keep up with dedicated information retrieval Reploids.
It was the greatest challenge of her life - and Lexina loved it. Finally able to contribute to the war effort directly, even if only as an observer, she eagerly took up whatever tasks she could while ingratiating herself with the members of the squad, her personnable nature and innate charisma forming bonds that went beyond shared goals, helping tie the squad together even closer as time went by. She found herself the unofficial communications expert, helping the leader of the group coordinate the movements and data alike of other members, and often being the one to relay that information back to command or request orders while the Reploids focused on their tasks directly.
She came to know them all by name, as comrades and as - friends. Ogma, Seras, Lyra, Eligor, Hex, and others; Reploid or human mattered little when they were united in what they had overcome together, and Lexina came to care for them much as she had her friends in a past that was fast receding from her memories, becoming as much invested in their safety as she had in her classmates as a child. As familiarity grew, so too did the ugly feeling of being unable to protect any of them - never mind that they were Reploids built for war and she an entirely unaugmented human, the ugly little seed of frustration grew once more at her own lack of ability.
The first of them died intercepting a particle beam meant for her. She was barely cognizant of the attack before a corona of blinding light streamed around her, the scything beam's integrity collapsing in on itself as it disintegrated much of Ogma's upper body. The look in his eyes hurt more than the realization of what had happened; he didn't even have the decency to look angry at her for being careless, instead looking - happy. Pleased, almost, that he had protected her even as the light died from his eyes.
The insensate Lexina was dragged into better cover by another member of the squad, and the Bio-roid sniper did not fire again. He didn't have to. She had nearly entirely shut down; even if the opportunistic attack had ostensibly failed, she had never felt as useless as she had then, unable to do anything but stand by as a friend died in front of her. Died saving her, to make it worse - rather than simply failing herself, she had failed him as well. No Reploid could survive having their control chip obliterated, and poor, stupid, brave Ogma hadn't had the time to casually calculate how best to position his body to absorb the brunt of the shot while carefully protecting his own existence as well. Ogma, with eyes that could see through the thickest haze or fiercest storm...
When she returned to the squad a few weeks later, the initial backlash against a human nearly being killed in action dying down quickly in the wake of even fiercer Bioroid incursions, something sparkled behind her brilliant lavender eyes that had not been there before - muted by a hardness to them she had never before known, a part of the her innocence forever dead to make room for a purpose more crystallized than she had ever experienced. She managed to acquire the melted chip, too; without a next of kin it would have simply been recycled or trashed, so getting it from a confused Reploid wasn't too hard.
It was a wake-up call of sorts, a realization that she was still far from where she needed to be. Her augmented vision, while imperfect compared to what Ogma had possessed, still proved useful in her role; now she could observe events with certainty, slightly widening her role even as a replacement for her fallen friend joined the squad. She started carrying a pistol for self-defense, paying attention to her surroundings in ways that basic training had not covered, and trudging onwards through the mounting storm.
Seras was deactivated by an EMP mine, then sawed neatly in half before she located him and the squad leader barked out orders to recover the fallen Reploid's control chip - unharmed, thankfully, but seeing his lifeless body strewn about the clearing from the force of the detonation had shaken her. They were both ready for their next deployment; he with a fresh new body, she with the first of many neural implants. If she could not fight to protect them, she would gather the information to do so.
Days melted into months, which became years - deployment after deployment, sometimes back to back, in increasingly hostile conditions. More of the original squad fell. Sometimes they were back before the next mission. Sometimes there wasn't even enough to scavenge a memento. Sometimes - when the Bioroids were too close, the squad leader would order them to retreat anyways, leaving their fallen comrade regardless of whether or not the control chip might still be safe. Those were the worst missions; no one went home happy, and Lexina knew that she was not alone in feeling as though she had failed them by leaving the - corpses to the ravages of time... and the Bioroids. "Frames," the term was, but she could think of them as nothing but corpses; not even control chips could save a Reploid from eventually meeting their end, and so they lay lifeless on the cold ground much as humans did.
Each time one fell, whether they came back the next mission or not at all, Lexina could feel something inside her cracking, and each time she returned to action anyways with a new addition. Sometimes it was a neural augment, to allow her to better keep track of reams of data. When Lyra - the only female Reploid in the group, and one of the very few Lexina had ever met - was left to rust on some nameless hill, presumably evaporated alongside the earth and rock by some unknown Bioroid weapon, Lexina came back as the official liaison for the group, sporting a permanent headset similar to the integrated receivers that most reploids possessed in place of ears. When Mithos blew himself up to break an ambush and allow the rest of the group to escape, she came back with an amplified transceiver array mounted above the headset, the better to detect future ambushes with.
Time and time again her efforts were too little, too late - she could only react, rather than act. For every eventuality Lexina attempted to account for, countless others popped up in its place. The war continued, ratcheting up in intensity as Reploid losses mounted; what had been at first strictly a reconaissance operation slowly evolved into something closer to force recon, alternating traditional observation with skirmishes in broken cities, behind enemy lines. Time marched on, and so did the list of augments; while she was not rated for combat, newer recruits to the force were. She went into the next force recon assignment with trajectory prediction software, and managed to disable a Bioroid of her own. She never told anyone that she had imagined it was the sniper who had killed Ogma, that that was all she had needed to steady her aim and watch the broken wreck without feeling... anything. Maybe if it had been human she would have felt something. Maybe it was good that she did not.
The first squad leader was deactivated by stray buster fire during one mission. He came back in a new body for the next assignment, and was rewarded for his troubles by being atomized by what had supposedly been an unfinished prototype Bioroid weapon. That was an unpleasant surprise, moreso given that she had been half a dozen meters away at the time. Not as much of an unpleasant surprise as finding out that she was in charge of the immediate retreat, or upon her return, that she had been promoted to officer - his replacement.
Part of her wanted to refuse, terrified of the additional responsibility. She accepted anyways. If she could position her squadmates better, perhaps losses could be minimized.
They died anyways.
An experimental shield belt became a shield array, offering protection well beyond what she had ever dreamed of. She flinched anyways the first time a stray round impacted harmlessly on the emerald distortion a few inches from her left eye, and discovered a few months later that being able to survive a direct plasma bolt impact did not equate to being immune to the kinetic force of being struck by one; she went through two trees before the shields finally gave out, and woke up eight hours after hitting the third, being lugged home by her squad like a sack of potatoes. Further adjustment to the shield array; apparently the stress she had put it through was unique enough that the scientist was struck by inspiration after running through the data, coming up with a method to dampen kinetic force by 21% using the theory of... something. She never could remember exactly; the name had been too similar to one of the members of her squad at the time.
She remembered his name when he was cleaved neatly in twain by a beam saber, but forgot the scientist's. Not that forgetting things was much of an issue anymore, given the number of implants she had acquired to allow her to mentally function on a level closer to a Reploid. The kinetic amplification gauntlets she acquired somewhere in the seventh - eighth? - year of the war proved more useful than she or their creator had anticipated, saving her life when a stealth Bioroid struck without warning; the last thing that went through his mind was his face. They weren't enough to save Eligor, but he came back a month later, and persisted for two force recon missions before meeting a more permanent end at the hands of a Bioroid with an esoteric ability to control gravity in the vicinity.
With each augmentation, each refinement, she could feel more of herself being replaced. Each member of her squad that fell left a mark, a scar that would not heal, much as they could not be replaced; she tried to focus on newer recruits, but as the gravity of their missions grew, so too did the lethality among the squad's members.
She remembered each of their names, though.
Through it all, whether because of in in spite of her efforts, they generally found success. It was all that kept her going; as infinitesimally small as their contributions were to the war consuming the world, it felt - good to know that she could be of some help to the people they were fighting to protect, a concept that included the surviving members of her squad. It was the only good thing she could remember feeling anymore, and even then she was not sure she felt much of anything anymore.
She never did find out what happened on that mountain. One moment they were on a force recon mission to investigate a previously-unknown, and well-shielded, Bioroid base occluded by a deciduous forest; by the next, the sky itself seemed to come down on them, a display of sound and light and fury that carved colossal gouges in the earth. Worse, the cascade of energy was accompanied by a secondary massive pulse of energy - whether one created the other or the two phenomena were linked rapidly ceased to become a pressing issue in the wake of a tidal wave of electromagnetic energy that swept through them, frying unprotected communications and assaulting systems.
(cont.)
Personality:
Additional Information: N/A