[list]
[*] Name: Akane Akiyama
[*] Species†: Human
[*] Age: 25
[/list]

[hider=Bio]Hanako Akiyama was a beautiful woman, and her anger was all the harsher for it. On the planet below, evening was just starting to fall, and the station's lighting acquiesced, sending long shadows skittering across the floor and throwing her features into harsh relief. Under the grasping limbs of a tree - an ash tree, cloned from one on Old Earth - her daughter stood her ground.

"[i]That is not what I meant.[/i]" Hanako's voice was an icy whisper in the darkness, barely louder than the simulated nightingale-song on the garden's speakers, yet it drowned out all other sound nonetheless. "[i]Why,[/i] Akane? After everything I've done for you, [i]why?[/i]"

There was genuine pain in her voice, and young Akane had to remind herself not to pay attention - only, she wasn't so young, now. She was old enough to be tried as an adult, if her mother were so inclined, but it was too late to worry about [i]that[/i]. She'd just have to hope she wasn't.

"I did what you said, mother." Akane folded her arms in front of her, defiant even now. She had to look up to meet her eye. "It was [i]you[/i] who impressed on me the importance of precision in speech. Do not fault me for taking your lesson to heart."

The sound of a hard slap echoed throughout the station's garden.

[hr]

Six years ago, when Akane was a child and young in the literal sense of the word, if not personality, her mother's transport exited hyperspace with a blue and purple planet hanging in the viewport like a giant marble. From the copilot's seat, the twelve-year-old girl points ahead, rising in her seat to get a better look. The Akiyama merchant clan was wealthy - not the sort of wealthy that owns their own space stations, but close to it. Visiting planets, where the weather couldn't be so closely optimized for comfort as a station's atmosphere could be, was a rarity.

"I see it, mother!" There's an undercurrent of excitement to Akane's voice. "I did not expect to emerge so close."

Akane's mother looks across the cockpit to her daughter, and the ghost of a smile came over her face. "Akane, you know better than that," she says. While her words are scolding, and Akane tenses up in expectation of a lecture, but one doesn't come. "Check your instruments."

Akane does what she's told, as was her custom at the time. She'd learned to read these before she'd been allowed anywhere near the ship, and they told her what she'd have known, if she'd remembered it. The planet was a gas giant, and its huge size meant it looked much closer than it was. They were, in fact, a safe distance away. Their destination was a small moon in its orbit, where lived one Kiran Holden, who had the sort of wealth that bought those outright. They had a daughter of about Akane's age, and her job was to make a good impression while their parents talked business.

At the time, Akane was more interested in the moon.

[hr]

In the years following their visit to Holden's moon, something of a rebellious spirit came over Akane. She was a clone of her mother, identical at the genetic level, and as a young child, she'd been content to be just that. As she moved into her teenage years, things changed. Her mother, assuming it was simple teenage rebelliousness, sat her down for a talk. "I want you to be whoever you want to be," she'd said, and it rang hollow even before she followed it with a long string of qualifiers, but it stuck with her, anyway.

The truth was more complex than Hanako realized. On that moon, Akane had seen things that troubled her. The coldness between Holden and their daughter was a dark mirror of her mother's relationship with her, and when the other girl had mentioned displacing the moon's native life-forms to build their mansion, she'd actually gasped in shock. If it hadn't been for that trip, Akane might have remained content to follow in her mother's footsteps. Instead, what she saw down there legitimized the vague feelings that had long lurked at the back of her young mind, about the lavish lifestyles of the ultra-rich, and what she really wanted out of her life.

It was Akane's fifteenth birthday, and her present to herself was a simple key-logger, slipped onto her mother's personal computer while she was in the bath.

[hr]

Two days after the fight in the garden, and two days before Akane turned nineteen, tempers had cooled enough for them to have an understanding. Hanako [i]could[/i] have her daughter arrested for hacking and identity theft; she could, probably, even sue the charities Akane had been donating to from her mother's accounts. Doing so would be a bad look, however; it would attract the kind of attention no businessperson wanted. If Akane wanted to make donations on her mother's behalf, she could start with herself.

There was a group out there who called themselves the Children of Umbra. While their leadership operate as a sort of enigmatic mystery cult, their rank-and-file members were most known for their xenoarchaeological expeditions, and for going out of their way to aid to ships in distress. As their official mission statement put it, they aimed to learn of those who came before, and lend aid to those here and now. What Akane's mother proposed was simple. Akane would volunteer, in a highly visible way; in doing so, she'd give the two an acceptable reason to separate.

When Akane landed at their station, with its gleaming shuttles and survey ships, she decided there were worse punishments out there.[/hider]
[hider=Appearance]At 160 centimeters with a gymnast's build, Akane isn't most people's idea of a spacer. Still, years of field work with the Umbrists have given her a spacer's mannerisms. She's precise in her movements, as one has to be navigating a derelict without gravity, and she tends to carefully inspect new areas, looking for possible threats, be they damaged wiring or hostile wildlife. Combined with the cool and refined manner of speaking she's never managed to ditch, Akane often seems out of place.

Akane is a clone of Hanako Akiyama, matriarch of the Akiyama merchant family, and she's inherited more than her mother's slight stature and speech patterns. She's heterochromatic, with one brown and one blue eye; while this is common in her home system of Gamma Draconis, in the larger galaxy, it's just another way she sticks out. She has her mother's black hair, and wears it long and loose, but is adept at quickly tying it up when she needs it out of the way. She'd tried dyeing her hair blue during her rebellious teenage phase, and while she ultimately decided it was a bit much, she likes it with blue and white streaks. As someone who's constantly on the move, she prefers light, loose clothes; her typical outfit is a plain, simple dress, the kind she can shove in a bag and not worry about. All in all, she's someone you can easily look over in a crowded room, but she has an understated elegance if you pay attention.

All that changes when Akane's on a mission. Her favored outfit then is modified riding gear, reinforced for protection and augmented with thermo-regulation and biometric circuity. With her long hair in a tight bun, an augmented-reality eyepiece, a portable scanner holstered on one hip and a handgun on the other, she starts to look the part. A confident swagger and snarky smirk help sell the act - although it [i]is[/i] an act, and anyone who spends enough time with her will see her real self, one way or another.[/hider]
[hider=Personality]In the galley of a passenger liner, a tall woman with a black hole tattoo happened to see Akane's eyes. Hers were the same, one dark brown and one icy blue, and it was only a moment before she crossed the room to pull up a seat next to her. Surprised, Akane looked up from her book, unsure what to say. Fortunately, she didn't have to.

"Hey, you're from Draconis, aren't you?" The other woman's words, cheerful and eager, brought Akane out of her surprised trance. "Ah, yes, I am," Akane said. She wasn't usually one for small talk, but she did want to be polite. "May I assume you are as well?"

"Sure am," the other woman said, and paused to withdraw a small box from her pocket. "Do you play?"

[hr]

The game was a quirky one, popular in Gamma Draconis but practically unknown elsewhere. The other woman - Sylvie, she'd said it was, which felt right, somehow - had a holographic set, quite unlike the imposing dark wooden figures Akane and her mother had used, but the game was the same, and Akane was easily the better player. She spoke little and moved aggressively, and each time one of her little holographic ships shot down one of Sylvie's, the other woman felt the need to comment on it. It was honestly rather endearing.

When Sylvie's holographic fleet had been routed, she stared down at the board for quite some time, wondering where things had gone wrong. Finally, she offered her hand to Akane and thanked her for the game. "I didn't realize I was challenging a grandmaster," she joked. "I suppose I have a lot to learn..."

Akane accepted the handshake with a rueful smile. "I suppose I could teach you," she said. She surprised herself, at first, but she rationalized it away as being polite. Besides, they were still three days out from their destination - a station from which Akane would join a survey team heading to a nearby gas giant, where a strange metallic object had been detected, [i]probably[/i] a natural formation but [i]possibly[/i] an artifact from some long-lost civilization, and when you're in the business of xenoarchaeology, [i]possibly[/i] is the best you could hope for - and it would help fill the time, at least. Of course, [i]politeness[/i] didn't explain why Akane felt the need to mention she'd just had her twenty-first birthday, nor why she accepted the other woman's invitation to a wild party on the lower decks. No, Akane knew the reason for [i]that[/i], although it would be a long time before she could verbalize it.

[i]I'm coming out of my mother's shadow, and it's up to me to decide what that means.[/i]

She's still not sure.[/hider]
[hider=Goal]Akane came to Tryliin for a simple reason - she's an Umbrist, and she was in range. The violence and corruption endemic to the planet meant it had long been on the radar of the organization's philanthropic wing, and with mysterious ruins opening up on the surface, their scientific wing is now interested, too. Akane happened to be in the right place at the right time, and was ordered to the planet to be the Umbrists' eyes and ears. It's her first solo mission, and she sees it as an opportunity to prove herself as much as an opportunity to do some good.[/hider]
[hider=Equipment]Akane is used to traveling light, and the tools she carries with her are versatile and robust: a multifunction scanning tool, a digital eyepiece PDA, and an energy projector capable of being configured as a pistol or a variety of survival tools. She's still fairly wealthy, and if she needs something, she'll just buy it.[/hider]
[hider=Abilities]Wealth has its perks. As a clone, Akane has her mother's genetically enhanced immune system and fast healing. Both her hands are advanced prosthetics, the originals having been lost in crash landing early in her career. Beyond that, she has quick reflexes, a well-rounded education in the arts and sciences, and practical experience in xenoarcheology and linguistics.[/hider]

† I don't like using "race" here. It's inaccurate and has some surprisingly ugly history to it, too.

† I don't like using "race" here. It's inaccurate and has some surprisingly ugly history to it, too.