[img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/91c0baa4-ad2c-4b38-9fb8-b00d13658ad0.jpg[/img] [hider= Lt. Serena Fatima Lugassi] [b]Name:[/b] Serena Fatima Lugassi [b]Age:[/b] 31 [b]Gender:[/b] Female [b]Appearance:[/b] Dark haired, fairly tall. Fit and athletic. Fairly attractive. [b]Demeanor:[/b] Bon Vivant, Wild Card [b]Education:[/b] West Point (USMA) [b]Foreign Languages:[/b] English and Arabic bi-lingual, (Arabic, Kurdish, some Armenian) [b]Agency/Affiliation:[/b] CIA [b]Rank:[/b] USN Lieutenant, USDoD O-3 (NATO code OF-2) [b]Likes:[/b] Black coffee, cigarettes. Gun oil and loud music. Whiskey. Fast cars and motorcycles, shitty men and abusive relationships. Cheap ethnic food and [i]B-Rated grindhouse[/i] type films. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, [i]"Juicy Fruit"[/i] chewing gum and [i]"Capri Suns"[/i]. [b]Dislikes:[/b] People who talk too much and the smell of [i]Brasso[/i]. Pension checks, recreational therapy. Yoga, [i]pumpkin spice[/i], or anything [i]gluten-free[/i]. Shitty men and abusive relationships ([i]yes I know, its complicated..[/i]) [hider=MILITARY RECORDS:] United States Navy Lieutenant(R) ([i]Honorably discharged due to injuries, Syria 2017[/i]) Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) Syria, Libya Timber Sycamore Battle of Raqqa (2017) [b]Notable Merits/Medals:[/b] Inherent Resolve (2014-2016) Bronze Star (2017) Purple Heart (2017)[/hider] [hider=SKILLS:] [b]Gifted:[/b] Criminology, Field Medic/First Aid (Navy Corpsman) [b]Adept:[/b] Marksmanship-Long guns, Awareness, Persuade [b]Average:[/b] Marksmanship-Handguns, Hand-to-hand, Crafting [b]Novice:[/b] SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape), Forensics, Engine Mechanics, Psychology[/hider] [hider=PERSONAILITY:] Sarcastic, witty, and generally a glowing joy.. at least that was Serena prior to receiving her injury in Syria. Serena is still sarcastic and witty, but she is a bit more cynical. She is seasoned and strong willed, with a cat's curiosity and just a touch of wisdom from her years. She has lost a lot and often struggles with bouts of excessive guilt, the dirty fingerprints left from traumatic experiences in the field. She is a bit of a lush and likes to [i]"have a good time"[/i], perhaps a bit more than is healthy. She has a head built and governed by logic, an equal skeptic for both organized religion and the paranormal. Serena is a chain-smoker, and heavy coffee drinker, alcoholic. She tends to steer clear of coffee shops and hipster kids finding them to be repulsive, and she is easily annoyed. Perturbed by the mundane and remedial, she often loses focus due to boredom or a lack of sufficient stimuli to keep her adequately occupied. Serena is very independent and in no way tries to leverage her injury, and is highly self sufficient. She seems to prefer short flings and one night stands over the long winded false adorations and pretenses of a sustainable relationship. She has terrible taste in men, and her decision-making skills in this area of life are less than desirable. Two abortions, one of which occurred when she was 17 that the family still doesn't talk about, and the other more recently only several months ago. She is a blunt speaker, and more often than not, frank enough to clear a table in remarkable timing. She spends half of her time eating shitty Vietnamese takeout and binge-watching television series on Amazon prime, and the other half in Kickboxing gyms and cheap Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes, but mainly just to keep a taut belly and maintain the shape of her ass. Serena also sees a shrink. A Julia Brown, appointed by the CIA and comes highly recommended for dealing with soldiers who have PTSD whom she talks with on a biweekly basis who also keeps tabs on her and her affinity for hydrocodone medication and alcoholism. Doc can sometimes manage to get her to squeal a bit about her nightmares and some things she had seen in Syria, how often she was having them and that sort of thing. She's been pushing Serena to try some hypnotherapy, but she has been more than reluctant for fear of what might come out in regressions. She also firmly denies having PTSD even though she is well aware that she suffers from it, or at least to some extent. The night terrors, insomnia, depression, guilt. Lots and lots of guilt. She probably wanted to be a corpsman because of her looming guilt from killing a fetus when she was 17, life for life, some real life penance type shit.. She has a small townhome in the Brooklyn area. It is rather bare and she lacks in the decorative department, A good thing really because she has grown a bit untidy in the past year or so. Her refrigerator is also mostly barren, save for an ever-present large jar of pickle spears, mayonnaise, and sixer or twelve pack of domestic beer, and the occasional pack of eggs and no less than two or three takeout containers that she will never eat. Freezer is mostly TV dinners, lots of [i]Marie Calendar's[/i] and Bob Evan's, freezer burnt bags of broccoli and tin foil packs of hamburger meat marked with only the best intentions. Usually a half gallon of whiskey in the cabinets, along with saltines and several boxes of [i]Hamburger Helper[/i] and a few cans of tuna. She also just started making payments on a black 2018 Dodge Charger with two fat red racing stripes. Figured she'd learn to work on it some, kind of like a side project. She hasn't done much with it yet, and probably wont be messing with it any time soon, but she did buy the extensive owner's manual holding down her cocktail table along with a few spent beer bottles. She does choose to smoke outside however, possibly the only sign of decency she has left. She's dependent on alcohol and pain killers, which is definitely not helping her self esteem, or pumping any growth into her social life save for one night stands and there's only one friend whom she see's regularly, and that's because she's probably the only one who is shit-baggy enough to put up with her shit.. The CIA is her last attempt at a normal structured life that will give her any amount of dignity. She's been taking an interest in criminology and the CIA has endorsed her endeavors. Serena has been making great progress and showing a certain prowess in both criminology, as well as psychology, and seems to enjoy both subjects so the learning curve is going well. It usually goes this way for the ones who've taken to self medication.. friends in low places. When she isn't being a total recluse in front of the TV or at the local kickboxing gym she can usually be found with her friend [i]Cindy Grimes[/i], taking full advantage of low effort night life bliss, usually some dive bar shithole dotting a street corner, with cheap drinks, and even cheaper women. Guess it made them both feel better about their selves in some form or other. They both seemed to suffer from the same social afflictions in the relationship department, so you know what they say, "birds of a feather"..[/hider] [hider=FAMILY&FRIENDS:] Serena's parents ([i]Joseph[/i] and [i]Doreen Lugassi[/i]) both still live in a quaint suburb in upstate New York. Her father was a Syrian immigrant who came to the US in the mid seventies, picking up trade work as a jeweler, and went on to own his own store by the mid eighties. He soon married to an attractive American girl from the Bronx. No other immediate family to speak of in America, or Syria. She doesn't have a lot in the way of friends, and her relationships are sporadic, and are usually tragically detrimental. She keeps in contact with maybe 25 of people from West Point, but usually only by social media and that's about it. Some of them are still Army SF, two retired seals ( one of which now builds those unsinkable rescue pods for tanker ships). Two guys who grew up to be extremely liberal (which is unbelievably loathing to the rest of them), several Iranian princes and two guys from Iraq who are now disgustingly rich, and she hates every time they post a picture before getting on a private jet with their extremely hot and completely superficial wives. If you think about it, she was pregnant in high school and went to west point after that. These girls don't make a lot of friends, and they usually sleep around a good bit, lots of triangles ( more like decagons if we're actually counting), not the sort of girls that end up being "besties" for life. Her father and mother are still not on very good terms with her when she almost ruined everything with an unplanned pregnancy back in high school. They call each other a few times a year and it's all very awkward and forced, and then they don't speak for months on end. Cindy Grimes, another local Brooklyn girl would be her only face to face friend. She lived in the same neighborhood and they met at the local kickboxing gym. They go out several nights a week for drinks in local dive bars around the neighborhood, then exchange war stories of their tragically awful one night stands went the next afternoon.. but have no lengthy friendship for having just met within the past 18 months. Serena is not married and doesn't seem to wish to be, nor does she have any desire for children.[/hider] [hider=WEAKNESSES, FEARS] Serena has a gunshot wound in her right shoulder which still bothers her at times. An enemy fired a shot that hit Fatima's rifle before the round and a bit of shrapnel tore through her shoulder and doing a bit of damage to her shoulder blade before exiting through her back. Most of the shrapnel was recovered and she has made a near full recovery, but it will most likely bother her for the rest of her life. This also leads to her nonphysical weakness which is to say that she is often on pain medication, and has been prone to self medication via vehement amounts of hard liquor and opioids, and the occasional bit of marijuana. She usually does well as long as she stays busy, but the wagon has always been a rickety rig. Something she has maintained fairly well since her being drafted by the CIA. She is determined and extremely strong willed, so much so that it could be considered to be detrimental at times. [b]Fears:[/b] Not being [i]"good enough"[/i], obsolescence. Serena has always felt like that if she fails it's because she didn't try hard enough, or do enough, and that all fault is always on her shoulders. An unrelenting tug in the back of her mind about what she witnessed in 2017, and an inner fear that it might have been real and not some fraudulent fog conjured from her imagination as a result of being in shock.[/hider] [hider=BACKGROUND:] Serena grew up with her parents in a small apartment in the South Bronx, New York City. She was very active in grade school, running track and playing for both the JV and Varsity Lacrosse teams, which she later continued at West Point. Her father, a jeweler from Syria, worked very hard along with her American mother to provide her with the avenues with which to pursue her interests in a military career. She buckled down and made good grades, and later joined the Navy as a Corpsman fresh out of West Point in 2012. Naturally having a background in languages being a first generation Syrian-American, she was destined to find herself deployed to Syria in 2014 during [i][b]Operation Inherent Resolve[/b][/i], and spent the next 3 years there. She has spent time in several areas including a good bit of time in Aleppo at a medical facility, providing medical support during helo-transports from the city. She was later reassigned to [i][b]Timber Sycamore[/b][/i], a program headed the CIA. It was formed in 2015, and ISIL began to fortify the city and its surrounding areas with bunkers and a network of tunnels. By June 2017, Raqqa remained the only major Syrian city fully under ISIL control and was, therefore, its effective center of operations. With a large number of foreign fighters, Raqqa has been a planning center for terrorist attacks against European cities. The majority of her deployment was with marine units as a corpsman field medic. She lost a lot of good people during this short span of time. Some were the very same she had helped train not even a year and a half prior. Young people, soldiers, girls. She spent a lot of time in LZs providing tourniquets and doing sutures, dispensing adrenaline to those who were worse off. She had seen so much that she had grown distant and passive, but none the less highly efficient in the field. She had seen combat over a half a dozen times by 2017, and she had spent a lot of brass as well. It all became very [i]Cat and Mouse[/i] in her head. Sometimes she could swear that she could see the souls of those that were lost most traumatically, but she would dismiss it as stress or fatigue. The visions of the apparitions either passed or faded over time, but she was always reminded of them for they remained within her dreams. Luckily for her sleep was rarely on the menu while deployed. Yet another possible reasoning for these [i]apparitions[/i]. In 2017 she was injured in the line of duty while deployed with a regiment of the 11th Marines Expeditionary Unit, and received a Bronze Star and Purple Heart as well as an Honorable discharge, ending her military Career. Not wanting to stop there Serena then applied to the [i]Central Intelligence Agency[/i], with whom she had already developed a good report with during her time with Timber Sycamore in Syria. She is an extremely determined and headstrong individual. Her merits and behavior under extreme conditions in combat were weighed and measured and she was accepted shortly after as a para-military operative/field analyst for the [b]CIA[/b] on March 23rd, 2018. They were somewhat reluctant, and only her after she had recovered enough from her wounds to begin training again. She is still a fledgling operative, and has a long way to go but she shows a lot of potential. She excels in several areas, language being an obvious given, but she is extremely resourceful, cool headed, and can be persuasive, a trait most likely acquired by trying to chat up the wounded under fire. She has also recently shown to have a general knack for criminology. Side Note: During the mission in which she sustained her injury, she was found to be incoherently mumbling and seemed to be in a severe state of shock. She was reported by a marine, to have mentioned witnessing a shadow-person or figure, or at least in that description, which she referred to as death in Arabic. She also suffered convulsions and seizure activity during this time. This was not mentioned in her military records for fear of mar, feeling it would be unnecessary given her imminent discharge for her injury. Paranormal mentions do not nor have they ever looked good on records. It was however noted later at a base hospital by a medical surgeon, but it was written off as severe shock trauma and managed to remain off of her official records. The manifestation had not ever been present before 2017, and only showed itself briefly, exactly at the point just before her injury. It was a black, veil-like mass, that soon formed a more solid figure. It looked as though it was adorned with small glittering trinkets, gold in nature. It's eyes were also fiery golden in nature, and not a sound could be heard, only intense reverberation as the entire surrounding area seemed to vibrate with resentment. This materialization of a solid figure form was very brief, and dissipated shortly thereafter, resembling a very similar black smoke produced by ordinance. Possibly a Jinn. [b]Jinn[/b] (Arabic: الجن‎, [i]al-jinn[/i]), also Romanized as Djinn or Anglicized as genies (with the more broad meaning of spirits or demons, depending on source), are supernatural creatures in early pre-Islamic Arabian and later Islamic mythology and theology. Since jinn are neither innately evil nor innately good, Islam was able to adapt spirits from other religions during its expansion. Jinn are not a strictly Islamic concept; rather, they may represent pagan beliefs integrated into Islam. Besides the jinn, Islam acknowledges the existence of demons ([i]Shayāṭīn[/i]). The lines between demons and jinn are blurred, since malevolent jinn are also called [i]shayāṭīn[/i]. However both Islam and non-Islamic scholarship generally distinguishes between angels, jinn and demons ([i]shayāṭīn[/i]) as three different types of spiritual entities in Islamic traditions. The jinn are distinguished from demons in that they can be both evil and good, while genuine demons are exclusively evil. Some academic scholars assert that demons are related to monotheistic traditions and jinn to polytheistic traditions. The CIA somehow got word of this despite it not being in her official records. They have taken a quiet interest in Serena, and more importantly her description and what she had seen. They are also privately contacting her doctor Julia Brown, and imploring her to push for hypnosis regression under the guise of therapy. She was being considered for Delta Green, an undisclosed team centered on more paranormal type criteria. They were against popping her cherry with the truth, knowing that she was a very logically minded person, and doing so could mentally break her.[/hider] [hider=EQUIPMENT:] [b]Off-Duty:[/b] Clothing: tight fitting jeans, comfortable shirt. Sunglasses or ballcap, light Jacket or Hoodie when called for. Stylish boots, still of the utility kind. Nylon slimline CC holster, either on hip or back area. [b]Weapons:[/b] [b]CZ 75 P-07 Duty[/b] 40S&W 12RD (issued) X2 12RD magazines [b]Tools/Equipment:[/b] S&W High Carbon Tactical Knife [b]Operational Equipment:[/b] [b]Clothing: [/b] Bulletproof vest, regular clothing. Sunglasses or cap, fatigues, utility harness, or other (if specified) ,tactical boots. [b]Weapons:[/b] [b]CZ 75 P-07 Duty[/b] 40S&W 12RD (issued) X2 12RD Magazines ([b]M4 carbine[/b] or [b]AR- .556[/b] [i]NATO[/i](ACOG, red dot holo-sights), [b]H&K MP5[/b] variants, when issued or specified: certified for [i]fully-automatic fire[/i]) [b]Tools/Equipment:[/b] Field Medic kit (Small) Utility Tool Radio ( with earpiece, or without) S&W High Carbon Tactical Knife [/hider][/hider]