Hebi was a girl Mia had met largely in passing. Mia couldn't say she knew her well, but she certainly recognized her, both from the Jeanist Agency and -of course- from the Sports Festival. Hebi had done fairly well, if Mia was perfectly honest. Despite her Metamorphic quirk not looking like too much on paper, she'd had a good run. Under normal circumstance, Mia could have even seen her taking first place... were it not for her streak being brought to a screeching halt by her matchup with Jun.
Beyond that, as a person, if asked, Mia would have had to answer that what she understood of Hebi's personality was mostly speculation. Still, despite doing a bit of "shit-stirring" prior, Hebi's biting words had largely carried an air of rationality that Mia could appreciate. If nothing else, Mia could say with confidence that amongst the class, Hebi at least wasn't in the running for fucking up this situation the worst. Which was why when the greenette medusa spoke up, Mia chose to give her points due consideration.
"I suppose..." Mia's lips pursed in neutral displeasure, even as she continued to favor Rin with a gimlet side-eye. "Believe me, I'd love to be able to just sit back, leave things be and quietly coast along... But are we really supposed to put our health and education in the hands of someone like this?" She snorted. "After that showing?" Her gaze briefly flicked across the classroom's other denizens, a frown twisting her lips at the many intimidated or apathetic demeanors she found.
Despite her words, now that she had the chance to look for it with the immediate "excitement" and danger behind them, she found herself perturbed by the lack of gumption displayed. In the end, as much as she knew her concerns were valid, what could she really do at this stage without more of the class united behind her, without others willing to capitalize on the opening she provided and keep the momentum rolling? She'd expected others to at least take the reckless use a firearm far more seriously, but it seemed as if barely anyone that comprehended the implications of Rin's behavior was willing to seriously oppose her over it.
Regardless, Mia quite firmly disagreed with Hebi's assertion that nothing needed reporting yet. Frankly, Mia was far too familiar with the Hawks Agency to ignore her gut feeling on this. Give them an inch, and they'd take a mile. Rin was dangerous, clearly too used to getting to do whatever she wanted... and that was exactly why she should be opposed without hesitation when she overstepped her boundaries. Frankly, this was a situation that should be nipped in the bud, or they would all likely regret it in the future... But Mia was practical enough to read the writing on the wall. The other loudest voices only seemed interested in de-escalation. And while Mia pegged it for the cowardice or ignorance that it was, she had to acknowledge the reality that without those voices in righteous uproar, she needed to pivot her approach this situation.
Outwardly, Mia scoffed and shoved her hands in her pants' pockets. "But sure, I guess second chances are sort of heroic too, eh? The only reason I even spoke up was concern for our safety, but if none of you really think this is a threat worth mentioning..." Her gaze panned over the classroom. "Fine, call it 'overenthusiasm', a 'bit of nerves' or even just a 'mistake'... Whatever." For now. "Long as she doesn't fuck up like this again, I see little reason to take this further." She flicked her pink-streaked hair and allowed herself to present the words with a certain level of begrudging -but genuine- acceptance, shooting Rin a final half-lidded flat stare, as she clicked her tongue and strode back to her desk, flopping into her seat lazily and returning to looking disinterested with the present events. Adjusting her headphones, she started up the music again and listened with one ear, seemingly appearing "mollified" that her point had been made.
Of course, internally, that was complete bullshit. In a sense, Mia could acknowledge that her reaction would normally be considered disproportionate in a scenario filled with rational actors, assuming good faith from Rin... Perhaps she was jumping the gun; maybe she was judging a book by its cover. Maybe there was context that validated Rin's actions, or maybe Rin wasn't as batshit unstable as she seemed... But Mia had seen far too much of the hero industry's dark underbelly already to be so optimistic. Corruption and nepotism ran rampant these days, and when she took a step back, it was clear as day that "heroes" had a rather concerning number of liberties, legal or otherwise. Mia wasn't much for gambling, and she had no intention of letting this go or staying passive in this status-quo. She'd already decided: Rin Himura was unfit as an instructor and unwelcome as any form of authoritative figure. She had to go. It was just a matter of figuring out how to make it happen. In an ideal world, she could have done this loud and proud. That was something that typically worked out in America, where people often took a particular enthusiasm in ousting corruption when it was brought to light. But right here and now? It seemed that a more subtle approach was warranted, a path of quiet discretion.
Her immediate course acknowledged, Mia leaned back in her seat... and carefully suppressed a satisfied smile at feeling the practically weightless mass of petals in her pockets. Really, it hadn’t been a challenge at all to squirrel those little things away unseen in the chaos, concealed by the petals she’d created when inspecting Yusuke.
Presently transformed into petals, two-dozen anti-quirk bullets were quietly inventoried, all thanks to her “generous” senpai’s reckless behavior, and Mia added yet another precious resource to her available options. Of course, this had all been an unpleasant mess of an ordeal and Rin’s idiocy a pain in the ass, but even now, Mia was more than happy to take advantage of foolishness for unequivocal gain. And something like this, an off the books acquisition of anti-quirk ammunition?
Yeah, I can think of a few ways to put this windfall to use...
Time to get to plotting.
Under her breath, Mia hummed a quiet little tune from an ancient song, whose lyrics only she could hear.
Such was the internal lamentation of one observer of the chaos that had overtaken the 1B classroom. The girl wasn't wearing the Eirei uniform. Or rather, she was wearing the jacket, but it was clearly only a token addition... and was part of the boy's uniform to boot, currently hanging over her shoulders with her arms outside the sleeves like the long-coat of a mafioso. Beyond that, the majority of her clothes were blatantly divergent from the usual dress-code. A fishnet undershirt under a sleeveless black shirt, a studded collar, fishnet, fingerless gloves, small chains and armbands, dangling skulls from a necklace and a pair of headphones propped lazily atop her head, leaving one ear open to half-listen to the ongoing events while her attention apparently remained with whatever she was listening to in her other ear, given the slow bobbing of her head.
A strong aesthetic of black and pink dominated her garb, enhanced further by her long hair, streaked with both colors such that it was hard to tell which was actually her natural hue. All the while, half-lidded pink eyes dully watched the proceedings with a practically palpable disconnection. Sitting at the back of the classroom -though not by the window- with her feet kicked up on her desk and tattoos openly displayed on both one cheek and several points of her exposed arms, she couldn't have possibly been more of a delinquent-looking individual if she tried. This, as many would certainly have known by now, was Mia Mathers. Originally hailing from America -but having moved to Japan around four years ago, she had been one of the runner-up contestants for the Sports Festival, placing second. Yet, she hadn't shown any particular enthusiasm for the achievement... Really, in the moment, she hadn't even looked disappointed to lose to Jun in the final round. If anything, she'd even gone as far as to bow out, claiming she'd been unable to continue after using her quirk heavily across the rest of the tournament.
Some might have had reason to doubt that, however. After all, the punk girl had completely crushed the obstacle course and cavalry sections prior, and she hadn't even done it by putting others down. She'd just made it look easy and quite literally stood above it all by "flying", buoyed by clouds of the petals her quirk was known to create. She'd flown over the entirety of the obstacle course and almost lazily placed second, and in the cavalry battle, she'd largely focused on defense as the head of her team's "horse".
Turning their point-laden headbands into petals and stuffing them in her clothes had functionally made it impossible to steal from her team, and so, the punk girl had lazily coasted through the round, floating about on her petals and letting her own team rampage freely amongst the others. After all, as long as she didn't touch the ground, her team stayed in the running, regardless of if they were carrying her. She would hence only reconvene her teammates to collect any gathered headbands and add them to the tally, and so it went. Yet, having the points of the second-place headband in their possession from the start essentially guaranteed their entry into the final round, whether they took any others or not... especially with Jun depriving the majority of the other teams of what few points they already had in the first place.
Given her performance in the first two segments then, it could perhaps be understood if others looked upon her forfeit just a step from the finish line with some dubiousness. Reading between the lines then, it could perhaps be ascertained by those with the perspective that Mia's failure to give things her all -and deliberately at that- might have contributed to her being shuffled from Hero Course class 1A to 1B... Though the presence of the Sports Festival victor in the same class rather perhaps nixed the idea that the move was a “demotion” of sorts. In the present, a frown slowly stretched across black-painted lips, as Yusuke made himself a public nuisance...
I think I'll call you Shitboot-senpai.
Though she feigned inattention, Mia was -unfortunately, she sometimes thought- burdened with a mind quite capable of multitasking to a hilarious degree. It was a natural benefit of her quirk, a requirement to control the many thousands of petals it created with the precision that she did, and it meant she wasn't really able to ignore the bickering and infighting her new class was engaging in.
Lips pursing, vivid pink irises with paler pink pupils traced across those that were to be her new peers, and she found herself... ultimately ambivalent.
There were some new faces and some irritatingly recognizable, but all it took to make this arrangement... mostly tolerable was to come at it with the perspective of seeing these teens as coworkers. It was only natural that you wouldn't always get to work with people you liked, but part of this job -or any job, really- was learning to make do with what you had. So, she could tolerate the insults, the arrogance and the immature bristling for a fight. Those were all things she knew how to handle, to ignore. As long as they weren't getting in her way, she couldn't have cared less who she had for classmates.
Still... that wasn't the only gripe she had with this situation.
Rin Himura.
Though, she yet failed to voice her own discontent, Mia was far from enthused with the idea of being taught by a glorified mere second year. Yes, she was aware of the program that fast-tracked students into substitute teaching positions… but she still thought it was stupid. That just seemed irresponsible as a concept in this profession... even if Rin wasn't obviously unfit for the position in a personal sense. Yet... Mia could think of ways this could be advantageous. Yes, an incompetent superior could be dangerous in its own way; if could result in subpar training, which could harm all of the class on the long-run. However, having someone inexperienced in that position also meant that those under her were liable to be able to get away with more, having more freedoms. That had its own inherent problems of course, as despite appearances, Mia at least appreciated the concept of order and professionalism. She would prefer her Hero Academia not be outright sabotaged because their teachers were unable to do their fucking jobs.
Which was why her frown continued to grow, as Yusuke was near-unanimously dogpiled by the rest of the class. Mia's lips pinched in disapproval, as insults and at least one literal book flew through the air. And someone even went as far as using their quirk on him. The arrogant boy somehow managed to get under everyone's skin with an ease that took her back to high-school… more accurately the part where everyone was so thin-skinned. She honestly wasn't sure if Yusuke was really that much of an asshole or if he was just trolling. Regardless, the majority of her peers completely took the bait and retaliated like children. Honestly, she hated to agree with Kaiga -that flaming meathead fanboy- on anything, but this reaction wasn't appropriate. Yet, the pyrokinetic’s own attempt at intervention was instantly shot down and berated... with a few insults tossed in for good measure.
Mia's eyes slowly closed, as one hand rose to rub the bridge of her nose in irritation. This... was just disgustingly unprofessional. Were they fucking college students or not? Where the hell did everyone's internship training go? Surely, they could comprehend that this wasn't how people in their position should behave? Actually... how many of them interned somewhere that actually gave a shit about PR? Had anyone else also interned with the likes of Best Jeanist? Mia was glad she had. It had been a welcome breath of fresh air from two years with the Hawks Agency, a counterbalance to learn the ins and outs of managing public perception and being responsibly conscious of heroes' position in society. These were welcome lessons for someone like Mia... but she could see how the average teenager wouldn't appreciate being morally lectured to, compared to the reckless freedom and power offered by interning with the Endeavor or Hawks Agencies.
Mia opened her eyes and twitched, her gaze narrowing at the sight of Yusuke's body beginning to physically warp with several distinctive traits... Subtly tensing, Mia's legs slid off her desk, as she scooted her chair out enough to move quickly and -given the most recent examples from her peers- prepared for someone to do something... immensely stupid. As she did, unseen beneath her skin, her quirk was going to work, and Mia felt a familiar sensorial void suffusing her awareness, even as she remained outwardly unchanged.
So, he's a power copier... Dangerous... especially with that attitude... Thoughts churning, Mia immediately identified the obvious, which potentially answered some questions and brought up just as many to replace them. This now begs the question... what is the catalyst for his copy to trigger? How far can he go? What are the drawbacks? It's quite possible his quirk's mechanics are responsible his behavior, but it's too early to say...
Even so, it was obvious that someone needed to do something about this before things got-
The familiar shape of a firearm gleaming into open air had adrenaline habitually spiking through Mia’s veins, and she acted completely reflexively. Indeed, in a sense, it could be said that after two years with the Hawks Agency and witnessing similar situations, her body simply moved on its own.
-out of hand.
A barking, ringing noise shot through the air, accompanied by Kaiga’s screeching shout, but both noises fell into a muffled state, as Mia’s body peeled apart into a living floral flurry.
Bang! Bang-!
There was a flicker of movement, a burst of petals crossing the room from the back to the front, as the punk girl -if one were inclined to note it- moved much faster than she had bothered to the entire Sports Festival. One moment, Mia was in her seat. The next, she was physically interposing herself between Rin and the collapsing Yusuke, a flat look on her face and a flurry of petals swirling in her wake, as the tail end of the barrage of anti-quirk bullets impacted her body…
-and did exactly fuck all, exploding into small bursts of petals the moment they touched her clothes. A scowl twisted onto Mia’s lips, as she met “Dark Rin’s” eyes fearlessly with righteous indignation on her face, looking unphased by the volume of the gunshots.
”Are you out of your mind?” she hissed, fingers twitching and then balling her hands into fists. She paused there, near-visibly restraining herself from saying more or potentially lunging at Rin, as she quickly turned and crouched down next to the fallen Yusuke, still largely transposing her body between him and Rin.
Rin's subsequent attempt at intimidation only earned an openly derisive sneer. "Are you actually fucking- You know what, fuck off and put that thing away. I'll address you later."
Her head seemed to split at a diagonal angle, a floating “wedge” containing her right eye peeling off to remain narrowed in Rin’s direction and keep a narrowed eye on her, allowing the punk girl to turn the rest of her head and other eye to the prone Yusuke. A practiced motion saw her slide her fingers down his body, strips of his clothes peeling off into a small curtain of petals that preserved his decency while still exposing the bullet impact sites to Mia’s gaze.
The sight of the beginnings of severe bruising earned a scowl from her, as she observed red welts and dribbles of blood from where the apparently “non-lethal” bullets had broken skin, even through Yusuke’s clothes. The trail of impacts led down the power-copier’s torso and legs, but thankfully, none of the shots seemed to have achieved full penetration.
Honestly, Mia didn't too much care if Yusuke got what was coming to him. The little shit had been practically begging for it, and frankly, if that sort of attitude ruined his life or even got him killed down the line, the punk girl wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it... However, the manner in which he got his comeuppance mattered. Mia didn't care if Yusuke brought himself down, but letting the little fuck drag others down with him? Well, now there was where she took umbrage.
It was one thing for a single hero to be a bad apple and be an embarrassment that eventually fell to time and foolishness. However, if his "antics" went so far as to drag others down, to goad her peers into making fools of themselves as well and ruining the reputation of heroes in mass? Well, suddenly, this was a problem that could reflect on her future job security if allowed to fester. After all, she wanted a secure position in the profession of heroism. The industry's success was her success, and so it behooved her not to tolerate imbecility that could bring that industry to ruin and sabotage her future nest egg.
In which case, it was only reasonable then for her to set a heroic example, right? Even though she had never been particularly subtle about her cynical view of what "heroism" had become in today's age, that didn't mean the sheeple masses didn't still largely buy the illusion. Therefore, it was her responsibility to actually play that game, to pretend... and show others how to follow her lead. She may have been a "punk" and a "rebel", but those that knew Mia well would find that she was strangely reliable and no-nonsense in an actual legal capacity.
Her fingers traced over the impact sites, and she found her power taking hold faster than normal due to his unconscious state. Without his “waking will” there, the resistance was functionally nonexistent, as each wound peeled away into petals. It wouldn’t do much other than mute the pain for a time, but it was obviously better than nothing.
She stood from her crouch stiffly, eyeing Kaiga with a rare spark of approval towards the boy she’d been treating as a pest basically since day one in Class 1A. Yet, in this situation, he seemed to be the only one that had bothered speaking out against the class’s misbehavior in any meaningful and untainted manner… Of course, she could respect him choosing to be the only other person thus-far to actually seek to come to Yusuke’s aid after he was dogpiled. Peer pressure could be a hell of a drug.
“Kaiga.” As usual, being a foreigner and an American to boot, Mia’s words tended towards the fairly informal when it came to personal address. “For the pain.” Mia gestured with her head towards the petals currently fluttering around Yusuke. The small floral curtain had mostly reverted from the prior transmutation, leaving his clothes and modesty intact aside from a few holes over the areas he’d been shot. She leaned down and tapped Yusuke’s forehead, causing a petal to peel off and float above her left pointer finger.
A flick of her finger sent the petal floating over to Kaiga. "Grab that -gently- and keep a hold of it while you head down to Dr. Chisaki. I'm staying here, but once you're ready for Shitboot-senpai to be treated, just -gently- pinch that petal into a folded position and release it. That'll be the signal for me to remotely revert the rest of my petals -which will follow you- so that he can be healed by the 'good doctor'."
Right after saying that, however, the cordiality drained from her tone, as she fixed Kazuki with a far less enthused look for his attempt at deflection... before blatantly ignoring the quirkless boy's babbling to keep things on exactly the target that was actually important to address right now. Mia's body turned to face the so-called "Junior Professor", and the floated wedge of the punk girl's head slid back into its proper place, once more fully reforming Mia's body.
"Oh no, we're not brushing this off, I don't think," Mia scowled at Rin. "Where exactly do you get off?" she snapped. "Brandishing firearms on students? Openly threatening violence? Aren't you supposed to be a hero teacher? The fuck kind of example are you trying to set?!" Inclining her chin, her lip curled in defiant distaste. "Regardless, you think a pathetic show of force is going to intimidate me? Bitch please, I'm a licensed hero in training. It is quite literally my fucking job to stand up to people who abuse their power, so explain yourself!" Her eyes narrowed. "With access to those bullets... you obviously interned under Hawks, so I think you'll understand perfectly well that just one would have been enough; to be precise, just one is what is mandated as the appropriate disciplinary response at worst. Yet, you put dozens downrange. Complete unwarranted overkill, an utterly irresponsible use of a firearm to boot. And shooting the ceiling? Are you a dumbass? Who even taught you trigger discipline?"
"Honestly, I don't give a flying fuck about your supposed credentials. Actions speak louder than words, and yours already paint you as rather unfit to set an example to aspiring heroes. So, if you do something like that again without actual justification, I promise that you'll regret it." Snorting, she leveled a sneer at the two-faced second-year and crossed her arms. "To be frank, I've more than half a mind to report your actions to the faculty officially. I'm sure the Best Jeanist Agency would be very interested in a matter of the abuse of power from the Acting Teacher of a whole Hero Course class. That would be quite the cause for concern... don't you think?"
Time: September 11, 2127 Location: 1B Dorms, Eirei Academy, Shibuya, Tokyo Prefecture
Mia was fuming.
No, that was unequivocally too light a way to put it.
Mia was seething.
...
She'd already finished moving her effects into her new room.
Relevent Events?:
Danzo wants to see Mia, Rin and Kanako after class. Detention for nearly the whole class for a month. (Empty) threat to hero licenses if defied. Rin to continue as Main Student Advisor. Humiliation attempt of sleeping on House of Hawks Common Room floor with rollable futons except for the ones without detention for the night. Dr. Chisaki orders all Hawks Interns to gather after 2 days, being "sick of their crap".
Born in the southern United States, Mia was raised into a fairly active and outdoorsy lifestyle, leading her to be a highly physically inclined sort and even a dab hand with her father's firearms. She lived rugged, joined the scouts, took martial arts and even went traveling, living a fairly enriched childhood. This lifestyle would be curtailed somewhat, however, when a work promotion led to her family moving into the city. Being a rougher sort, Mia found herself out of place and ended up entering a rebellious stage of her life to compensate. She got into the punk scene and even narrowly avoided falling in with a "bad crowd", her physical prowess and quirk making her an attractive potential recruit for young gangs. Mia saw the underbelly of the world and started to grow disillusioned with the shiny heroics the public largely remained enamored with.
This disillusionment would grow only more pronounced, when another series of promotions led to her family moving overseas to Japan, and Mia became acquainted with the far more unforgiving and (in her opinion) asinine Japanese stance on "defense of self and others", especially when a quirk was involved. Mia had more than one run-in with her share of patronizing officers, before she eventually grew fed up with things and decided to pursue a career in "heroics", not out of any genuine desire to do good or help others... but simply so she could get the license to use her quirk in the way she felt she was already her natural right.
Still, that didn't mean she was going to pretend this was anything but an inconvenient steppingstone. In her heroic high-school years, she rapidly proved to have something of a chip on her shoulder, a cynic with a barbed tongue and a callous, dismissive attitude towards the heroic propaganda the public mindlessly lapped up so often. To her, true heroism was largely dead, and the profession has become little more than a corporate machine. In her mind, being a hero was little different to being a more eccentric police officer. It's a dangerous job and puts food on the table, but little more. So, with that in mind, she'll pursue a cushy paycheck and save up a nest egg that will let her retire in luxurious comfort.
This unchanging stance earned her few friends amongst her more starry-eyed peers even after she was given a Student Recommendation for enrollment at Eirei Academy. Yet, despite her words, she has managed to counterbalance this with demonstrative competence at what she does. In her three years in heroic high school, she has been academically excellent, and despite disliking attention, her own pride often gets in the way of her attempts to sandbag and downplay her talents to ride under the radar. That she even had the presence of mind to be covert about the extent of her abilities and restrained enough to not go out of her way to show off had -ironically- earned her the interest of those that appreciate such a mindset, like the Hawks Agency, whom Mia has begrudgingly interned with twice in the past 3 years -seeking their specialized Black OPS tinted hero license to kill- and with the Best Jeanest Agency the year before the present in appreciation of their public relations and infiltration proficiency.
Mia's outward lack of enthusiasm for heroics has followed her throughout her early Hero Academia. Despite this, to her own chagrin, she's found herself pretty well-suited for the profession and has consistently scored well in most respects, earning her attention she cares little for, given her desire to coast by on the minimum. More recently, the Eirei Sports Festival saw her making it to the final tournament rounds, despite not actually making much of an effort. Irritated by her own success and with no interest in having the eyes of the top Hero Agencies, she eventually threw her match against Jun Mawatari, despite her own power largely hard countering the Rapid Hero's otherwise easy victory strategy. Unfortunately, she's fairly certain that it was too late to dumb herself down by then... again, and that's probably why she's found herself moved from Class 1A to... whatever this 1B thing is supposed to be.
Overall, Mia can come across as callously rational and unrepentantly opinionated. She seems to often speak with words that sound heroic yet lack true conviction. Despite her often-rebellious manner of dress and behavior, she is strangely often the one to advocate for more lawful courses of action... at least in the public eye. Her actions often align with the latter -though not the spirit- of what being a hero is, and though she is the sort of meticulous coworker to cross her t's and dot her i's, there's just something that says she doesn't have her heart in it. Yet, regardless, she showcases a certain prideful tendency towards meeting expectations, and the fact that she is a Recommendation Student says quite a lot about her suitability as a hero, despite appearances.
ᴀʙɪʟɪᴛɪᴇꜱ Martial Arts/Street Fighting High willpower and Pain Tolerance. Firearm Handling Wilderness Survival Driving Polylingual (Japanese, English, Spanish, Sign Language) Perception/Spatial Awareness Stealth Deception Lock-Picking First Aid/Field Medic/Biology. Tech Literate: Perfunctory Eirei student capacity to construct her own Support Tech.
ꜱᴜᴘᴘᴏʀᴛᴇᴍ
A thin, near-skintight bodysuit of insulating material that is subtly integrated amongst and covered by Mia's regular punk costume. It contains a layer of electric signal amplifiers that enhance the responsiveness of her nerves, providing her cat-like reflexes and a minor enough strength boost to take advantage of them. The suit defends against environmental temperatures, and it is waterproof and unbothered by a soaking. Conversely, it is highly resistant to EMPs and strongly insulative against external electrical-based phenomenon, enough to mostly shrug off electrocution. The suit is secured against unauthorized access by a biometric system.
The costume includes an optional lower-face mask that roughly resembles the fashion statements made by Japanese delinquents, fitted with an air filter for breathing in hazardous environments. Paired with this is a set of hazard goggles for when eye protection is similarly necessary.
There is also a compact first-aid kit that contains a variety of medical utilities, such as adhesive tape, bandages, dressings of various sizes and types, antiseptic solution, wipes and ointment to clean and disinfect wounds, anesthetic spray, pain relievers, thermometer, scissors, tweezers, gloves, emergency blanket, eye shield, triangular bandage, elastic wrap bandages for sprains and swelling, and EpiPens.
A pseudo-holographic interface, using Hawkpad tech as a basis, that Mia wears as a pair of vivid pink contact lenses (though the lenses are designed to blend into her naturally pink eyes and so go unnoticed). These "contacts" act as vision enhancers, giving her clarity comparable to an eagle, along with recording everything she sees. They can project a "holographic" interface onto her vision as well, with commands being conveyed either verbally or through a mental interface that interprets brain signals. This allows her to call up criminal profiles and other information on the fly, using the contacts to submit targets to facial recognition.
The contacts themselves are mostly just the interface system, however, and they remotely display the effects of programming that is localized to a compact module for the Reflex Weave bodysuit. The module acts as the actual hardware that does the bulk of the function heavy lifting, while the contact lenses are largely the display. Both the main module and lenses are recharged via the bodysuit, and Mia carries a number of spares lenses that she can resort to if her worn pair are compromised or damaged.
A pair of brutish implements, these black and gold-rimmed weapons are just barely small enough to be considered "her" for the purposes of Mia's self-transmutation. They have been packed with powerful, toggleable tasers that allow Mia to deliver stunning and highly incapacitating blows in melee. The knuckle-dusters can operate independently to an extent and store a charge, but in the field, they are primarily recharged and powered by the Reflex Weave bodysuit.
Qᴜɪʀᴋ Pathos of Sakura – Emulation/Psychokinesis [Awakened] Mia's quirk allows her to temporarily transmute anything she can physically touch (with herself or most things she is wearing) into pink Sakura petals under her telekinetic control and fine awareness; more specifically, she can only change the immediate area of the target she touches, "shaving away" a bit of mass/volume at a time, rather than completely transmuting the whole target with a single touch to one spot. This transformation is not inherently deadly in any manner, even should she completely dismember a living creature, and once reverted, any separated pieces can be put back together like a living puzzle, automatically "sealing" back into place. Transformed targets enter a form of "stasis" that can be used for limited medical utility to delay the effects of deadly wounds, and the reversion process can even be used to repair some injuries if done in a specific way.
Petals will revert to the unchanged/unharmed thing they once were if Mia chooses to, if she sleeps or if she is rendered unconscious. Instead of instantly, the transformation acts more slowly against living creatures other than Mia, taking critical seconds that could allow a target to break away before they start to change. This seemingly has something to do with Mia's own "imposed will" being unconsciously opposed by the other creature's will; though, ultimately, her quirk will win out with prolonged contact in a matter of seconds at best, regardless of the target's willpower, and it is possible to also break through the resistance with consecutive rapid attacks to the same location. Though Mia's power includes a certain level of high multitasking to it, the more petals she creates, the more naturally mentally straining it is due to the sheer amount of information flowing from each petal, earning Mia bouts of disorientation and migraines.
The central ability of Mia's quirk is to transform anything she touches into pink Sakura petals under her telekinetic control. Viable targets for the transformation can be nearly anything with a tangible physical presence, but it is unable to target ethereal, conceptual subjects like "gravity". This transformation is only applicable on direct, immediate physical contact with Mia's body or something she is wearing which she can comfortably subconsciously perceive as "herself". The transformation does not apply to whole targets, but rather "shaves away" the zone of direct contact. Mass is not a factor, merely the amount of space a target occupies. The transformation is very fine in application, able to separate a target into select components or otherwise draw an offending target away from a subject (allowing the extraction of poisons, for example).
As far as what Mia's power considers "herself" for the purposes of "direct contact" in activating a transmutation, her power doesn't play well with too many layers. There seems to be a subconscious perception element to it, but in practice, she can generally use her power on things that touch her clothes. However, it can't extend in cases of "armor" or through an implement she's carrying, like a weapon. Similarly, anything her power considers "her" for this purpose is something she can fully shift at any time as if it were her main body. Beyond that, however, her quirk does not play nice with the vast majority of bulky support gear, limiting her synergy options.
Transformation speed is roughly "instant" in most situations regarding Mia or nonliving targets around her; however, other living creatures are slightly resistant to her power, requiring prolonged contact of roughly 1-2 seconds to transform or consecutive rapid-fire strikes to a single location. The transformation is further inherently temporary and must inevitably revert, either manually at Mia's behest or automatically if she sleeps or is otherwise rendered unconscious. Mia can choose to have petals automatically organize themselves to reconstruct a transformed target. However, if she doesn’t, transformed petals drop exactly where they are on reversion and do not move to reconstruct whatever they once were prior; however, those pieces can still be manually put back together like a puzzle and will then automatically seal back into place. Once reverted, Mia loses any direct awareness of an individual target's exact location beyond what she's bothered to memorize.
The petal transformation is inherently nonlethal in direct function. Transformed or otherwise power-severed body parts do not have any innately deadly effects on a target. A body with a transformed heart can still pump blood, and a transformed lung can still be breathed with, for example. Similarly, a body part reverted at range still functions just fine, still working to the benefit of the owner. However, equally, wounded body parts can still affect the whole at range as well, and a crushed heart (for example) could still pretty certainly kill the owner at range. There is the further caveat that a transformed sensory organ (eye, nose etc) does deny that sense to the owner. A fully transformed body is not affected by the lack of ability to breathe or otherwise sustain itself, entering a form of "stasis" where they remain in complete sensory isolation, alone with their thoughts. Mia, for her own part, remains aware of any petals she controls even in this state, making it less mentally taxing on her compared to those without a similar way to occupy their minds. This "stasis" can apply small scale as well, able to temporarily delay the effects of a transformed wounded site to allow the subject to keep fighting or otherwise survive long enough to seek medical attention.
The reversion of the transformation can also be used in a limited healing capacity, able to transform severed targets, press them together while they are petals and then revert them in a re-fused state. This method cannot truly manifest any lost mass or revert the physical state of mass that was damaged prior to transformation. Therefore, wounds like incineration or burns -for example- are beyond its purview to resolve beyond delaying their effects on the rest of the body. It can, however, be used to fuse mass together even if it didn't used to be connected. As normal, this doesn't inherently seem to have any strictly negative effects. In fact, it even makes it possible for Mia to easily reattach severed body parts or transplant doner organs to a recipient in need if she has access to them. More dangerously, however, this can be used to fuse together things that have no holy right to coexist, the results of which can be unnerving to behold.
Petals created by her quirk are under Mia's perpetual spatial awareness and telekinetic control. This awareness comes with a certain level of multitasking, which helps catalyze more fine control of the thousands of petals the ability is prone to casually generating. However, this multitasking capacity has limits and mentally wears upon Mia to maintain, with the strain naturally accumulating faster the more petals she controls. This is because her power creates a conscious mental link to each individual petal, all of which Mia must manipulate the positioning of independently. Even with multitasking to manage this and even if she has the petals do nothing at all, the mere involuntary subconscious awareness of their positions at all times wears on her.
The petals are largely harmless on their own, no more durable than any normal petal and fairly easily destroyed, by all accounts merely perfect emulations of natural floral sheddings. However, under Mia’s telekinetic hold, the petals are very fast, able to move like a strong wind, about 60 mph. Being levers through which telekinetic force can be exerted, they possess deceptive levels of physical strength, especially in mass, able to carry people and objects, strike with a fair amount of massed force through simple kinetics and restrain targets via coordinated "smothering". If angled right, their edges can even be leveraged enough to make them act like blades that are at least sharp enough to pierce mundane flesh (though rather less reliable against actual supernatural durability).
Though Mia lacks a specific awareness of her petals' surroundings at range, in enough numbers, she is still able to use petals to map her surroundings quite accurately by proxy, as she holds a proprioception-esce awareness of each individual petal's position in space and any touch-based sensations that act upon them. As a result, being that the petals are still inherently fragile constructs at their core outside telekinetic pseudo-hardening, they are sensitive enough to vibrations to act as a form of echolocation. Beyond this, in mass, a cloud of petals can allow the otherwise blind detection of movements through an area or identify oddities within a space. Mia can even roughly identify the distinction between air currents and sound, and she theorizes that she could eventually develop this into a method of remotely spying on spoken conversations.
Mia's ability to manipulate her petals in this manner has caused her to earn comparisons to Hawks's own quirk and may even be part of why she attracted the attention of his agency so early on to begin with.
Super Moves Solitary Confinement: A chilling "move" that occurs when Mia is given the opportunity to fully transform a living target into petals. In doing so, she plunges them into a state of near guaranteed total helplessness and sensory isolation, devoid of the ability to do anything but remain trapped with their thoughts. Unable to touch, taste, hear, smell or see, it is an isolation fit to drive someone to madness. A deafening silence, a darkness deeper than any other, and the sense of lonesomeness incomparable. Mia rarely resorts to this, not only for being impractical in the majority of situations, but also because it is generally an inherently cruel use of her ability and doesn't tend to leave subjects in a good mental state. The following panic many have demonstrated upon release has led her to typically avoid going so far, just for the sake of ensuring criminals enter custody in a calmer, more manageable state.
Spirit of the Sakura Tree: By fully transforming her own body into petals, Mia deliberately subjects herself to her power's Solitary Confinement as a defensive move. Though she is sensorially cut off from the world in this state, she can still navigate to a degree using any existing petals she has created, setting "markers" and using her spatial and fine awareness of her petals to maneuver herself before reverting in whole or part. A side effect of shifting herself is that she generally separates herself from any foreign elements presently acting on her prior to the shift, and perhaps more importantly, by doing this she puts her "brain-meats" in biological stasis, allowing her to control a vastly larger amount of petals without strain than she normally could.
Born in the southern United States, Mia was raised into a fairly active and outdoorsy lifestyle, leading her to be a highly physically inclined sort and even a dab hand with her father's firearms. She lived rugged, joined the scouts, took martial arts and even went traveling, living a fairly enriched childhood. This lifestyle would be curtailed somewhat, however, when a work promotion led to her family moving into the city. Being a rougher sort, Mia found herself out of place and ended up entering a rebellious stage of her life to compensate. She got into the punk scene and even narrowly avoided falling in with a "bad crowd", her physical prowess and quirk making her an attractive potential recruit for young gangs. Mia saw the underbelly of the world and started to grow disillusioned with the shiny heroics the public largely remained enamored with.
This disillusionment would grow only more pronounced, when another series of promotions led to her family moving overseas to Japan, and Mia became acquainted with the far more unforgiving and (in her opinion) asinine Japanese stance on "defense of self and others", especially when a quirk was involved. Mia had more than one run-in with her share of patronizing officers, before she eventually grew fed up with things and decided to pursue a career in "heroics", not out of any genuine desire to do good or help others... but simply so she could get the license to use her quirk in the way she felt she was already her natural right.
Still, that didn't mean she was going to pretend this was anything but an inconvenient steppingstone. In her heroic high-school years, she rapidly proved to have something of a chip on her shoulder, a cynic with a barbed tongue and a callous, dismissive attitude towards the heroic propaganda the public mindlessly lapped up so often. To her, true heroism was largely dead, and the profession has become little more than a corporate machine. In her mind, being a hero was little different to being a more eccentric police officer. It's a dangerous job and puts food on the table, but little more. So, with that in mind, she'll pursue a cushy paycheck and save up a nest egg that will let her retire in luxurious comfort.
This unchanging stance earned her few friends amongst her more starry-eyed peers even after she was given a Student Recommendation for enrollment at Eirei Academy. Yet, despite her words, she has managed to counterbalance this with demonstrative competence at what she does. In her three years in heroic high school, she has been academically excellent, and despite disliking attention, her own pride often gets in the way of her attempts to sandbag and downplay her talents to ride under the radar. That she even had the presence of mind to be covert about the extent of her abilities and restrained enough to not go out of her way to show off had -ironically- earned her the interest of those that appreciate such a mindset, like the Hawks Agency, whom Mia has begrudgingly interned with twice in the past 3 years -seeking their specialized Black OPS tinted hero license to kill- and with the Best Jeanest Agency the year before the present in appreciation of their public relations and infiltration proficiency.
Mia's outward lack of enthusiasm for heroics has followed her throughout her early Hero Academia. Despite this, to her own chagrin, she's found herself pretty well-suited for the profession and has consistently scored well in most respects, earning her attention she cares little for, given her desire to coast by on the minimum. More recently, the Eirei Sports Festival saw her making it to the final tournament rounds, despite not actually making much of an effort. Irritated by her own success and with no interest in having the eyes of the top Hero Agencies, she eventually threw her match against Jun Mawatari, despite her own power largely hard countering the Rapid Hero's otherwise easy victory strategy. Unfortunately, she's fairly certain that it was too late to dumb herself down by then... again, and that's probably why she's found herself moved from Class 1A to... whatever this 1B thing is supposed to be.
Overall, Mia can come across as callously rational and unrepentantly opinionated. She seems to often speak with words that sound heroic yet lack true conviction. Despite her often-rebellious manner of dress and behavior, she is strangely often the one to advocate for more lawful courses of action... at least in the public eye. Her actions often align with the latter -though not the spirit- of what being a hero is, and though she is the sort of meticulous coworker to cross her t's and dot her i's, there's just something that says she doesn't have her heart in it. Yet, regardless, she showcases a certain prideful tendency towards meeting expectations, and the fact that she is a Recommendation Student says quite a lot about her suitability as a hero, despite appearances.
ᴀʙɪʟɪᴛɪᴇꜱ Martial Arts/Street Fighting High willpower and Pain Tolerance. Firearm Handling Wilderness Survival Driving Polylingual (Japanese, English, Spanish, Sign Language) Perception/Spatial Awareness Stealth Deception Lock-Picking First Aid/Field Medic/Biology. Tech Literate: Perfunctory Eirei student capacity to construct her own Support Tech.
ꜱᴜᴘᴘᴏʀᴛᴇᴍ
A thin, near-skintight bodysuit of insulating material that is subtly integrated amongst and covered by Mia's regular punk costume. It contains a layer of electric signal amplifiers that enhance the responsiveness of her nerves, providing her cat-like reflexes and a minor enough strength boost to take advantage of them. The suit defends against environmental temperatures, and it is waterproof and unbothered by a soaking. Conversely, it is highly resistant to EMPs and strongly insulative against external electrical-based phenomenon, enough to mostly shrug off electrocution. The suit is secured against unauthorized access by a biometric system.
The costume includes an optional lower-face mask that roughly resembles the fashion statements made by Japanese delinquents, fitted with an air filter for breathing in hazardous environments. Paired with this is a set of hazard goggles for when eye protection is similarly necessary.
There is also a compact first-aid kit that contains a variety of medical utilities, such as adhesive tape, bandages, dressings of various sizes and types, antiseptic solution, wipes and ointment to clean and disinfect wounds, anesthetic spray, pain relievers, thermometer, scissors, tweezers, gloves, emergency blanket, eye shield, triangular bandage, elastic wrap bandages for sprains and swelling, and EpiPens.
A pseudo-holographic interface, using Hawkpad tech as a basis, that Mia wears as a pair of vivid pink contact lenses (though the lenses are designed to blend into her naturally pink eyes and so go unnoticed). These "contacts" act as vision enhancers, giving her clarity comparable to an eagle, along with recording everything she sees. They can project a "holographic" interface onto her vision as well, with commands being conveyed either verbally or through a mental interface that interprets brain signals. This allows her to call up criminal profiles and other information on the fly, using the contacts to submit targets to facial recognition.
The contacts themselves are mostly just the interface system, however, and they remotely display the effects of programming that is localized to a compact module for the Reflex Weave bodysuit. The module acts as the actual hardware that does the bulk of the function heavy lifting, while the contact lenses are largely the display. Both the main module and lenses are recharged via the bodysuit, and Mia carries a number of spares lenses that she can resort to if her worn pair are compromised or damaged.
A pair of brutish implements, these black and gold-rimmed weapons are just barely small enough to be considered "her" for the purposes of Mia's self-transmutation. They have been packed with powerful, toggleable tasers that allow Mia to deliver stunning and highly incapacitating blows in melee. The knuckle-dusters can operate independently to an extent and store a charge, but in the field, they are primarily recharged and powered by the Reflex Weave bodysuit.
Qᴜɪʀᴋ Pathos of Sakura – Emulation/Psychokinesis [Awakened] Mia's quirk allows her to temporarily transmute anything she can physically touch (with herself or most things she is wearing) into pink Sakura petals under her telekinetic control and fine awareness; more specifically, she can only change the immediate area of the target she touches, "shaving away" a bit of mass/volume at a time, rather than completely transmuting the whole target with a single touch to one spot. This transformation is not inherently deadly in any manner, even should she completely dismember a living creature, and once reverted, any separated pieces can be put back together like a living puzzle, automatically "sealing" back into place. Transformed targets enter a form of "stasis" that can be used for limited medical utility to delay the effects of deadly wounds, and the reversion process can even be used to repair some injuries if done in a specific way.
Petals will revert to the unchanged/unharmed thing they once were if Mia chooses to, if she sleeps or if she is rendered unconscious. Instead of instantly, the transformation acts more slowly against living creatures other than Mia, taking critical seconds that could allow a target to break away before they start to change. This seemingly has something to do with Mia's own "imposed will" being unconsciously opposed by the other creature's will; though, ultimately, her quirk will win out with prolonged contact in a matter of seconds at best, regardless of the target's willpower, and it is possible to also break through the resistance with consecutive rapid attacks to the same location. Though Mia's power includes a certain level of high multitasking to it, the more petals she creates, the more naturally mentally straining it is due to the sheer amount of information flowing from each petal, earning Mia bouts of disorientation and migraines.
The central ability of Mia's quirk is to transform anything she touches into pink Sakura petals under her telekinetic control. Viable targets for the transformation can be nearly anything with a tangible physical presence, but it is unable to target ethereal, conceptual subjects like "gravity". This transformation is only applicable on direct, immediate physical contact with Mia's body or something she is wearing which she can comfortably subconsciously perceive as "herself". The transformation does not apply to whole targets, but rather "shaves away" the zone of direct contact. Mass is not a factor, merely the amount of space a target occupies. The transformation is very fine in application, able to separate a target into select components or otherwise draw an offending target away from a subject (allowing the extraction of poisons, for example).
As far as what Mia's power considers "herself" for the purposes of "direct contact" in activating a transmutation, her power doesn't play well with too many layers. There seems to be a subconscious perception element to it, but in practice, she can generally use her power on things that touch her clothes. However, it can't extend in cases of "armor" or through an implement she's carrying, like a weapon. Similarly, anything her power considers "her" for this purpose is something she can fully shift at any time as if it were her main body. Beyond that, however, her quirk does not play nice with the vast majority of bulky support gear, limiting her synergy options.
Transformation speed is roughly "instant" in most situations regarding Mia or nonliving targets around her; however, other living creatures are slightly resistant to her power, requiring prolonged contact of roughly 1-2 seconds to transform or consecutive rapid-fire strikes to a single location. The transformation is further inherently temporary and must inevitably revert, either manually at Mia's behest or automatically if she sleeps or is otherwise rendered unconscious. Mia can choose to have petals automatically organize themselves to reconstruct a transformed target. However, if she doesn’t, transformed petals drop exactly where they are on reversion and do not move to reconstruct whatever they once were prior; however, those pieces can still be manually put back together like a puzzle and will then automatically seal back into place. Once reverted, Mia loses any direct awareness of an individual target's exact location beyond what she's bothered to memorize.
The petal transformation is inherently nonlethal in direct function. Transformed or otherwise power-severed body parts do not have any innately deadly effects on a target. A body with a transformed heart can still pump blood, and a transformed lung can still be breathed with, for example. Similarly, a body part reverted at range still functions just fine, still working to the benefit of the owner. However, equally, wounded body parts can still affect the whole at range as well, and a crushed heart (for example) could still pretty certainly kill the owner at range. There is the further caveat that a transformed sensory organ (eye, nose etc) does deny that sense to the owner. A fully transformed body is not affected by the lack of ability to breathe or otherwise sustain itself, entering a form of "stasis" where they remain in complete sensory isolation, alone with their thoughts. Mia, for her own part, remains aware of any petals she controls even in this state, making it less mentally taxing on her compared to those without a similar way to occupy their minds. This "stasis" can apply small scale as well, able to temporarily delay the effects of a transformed wounded site to allow the subject to keep fighting or otherwise survive long enough to seek medical attention.
The reversion of the transformation can also be used in a limited healing capacity, able to transform severed targets, press them together while they are petals and then revert them in a re-fused state. This method cannot truly manifest any lost mass or revert the physical state of mass that was damaged prior to transformation. Therefore, wounds like incineration or burns -for example- are beyond its purview to resolve beyond delaying their effects on the rest of the body. It can, however, be used to fuse mass together even if it didn't used to be connected. As normal, this doesn't inherently seem to have any strictly negative effects. In fact, it even makes it possible for Mia to easily reattach severed body parts or transplant doner organs to a recipient in need if she has access to them. More dangerously, however, this can be used to fuse together things that have no holy right to coexist, the results of which can be unnerving to behold.
Petals created by her quirk are under Mia's perpetual spatial awareness and telekinetic control. This awareness comes with a certain level of multitasking, which helps catalyze more fine control of the thousands of petals the ability is prone to casually generating. However, this multitasking capacity has limits and mentally wears upon Mia to maintain, with the strain naturally accumulating faster the more petals she controls. This is because her power creates a conscious mental link to each individual petal, all of which Mia must manipulate the positioning of independently. Even with multitasking to manage this and even if she has the petals do nothing at all, the mere involuntary subconscious awareness of their positions at all times wears on her.
The petals are largely harmless on their own, no more durable than any normal petal and fairly easily destroyed, by all accounts merely perfect emulations of natural floral sheddings. However, under Mia’s telekinetic hold, the petals are very fast, able to move like a strong wind, about 60 mph. Being levers through which telekinetic force can be exerted, they possess deceptive levels of physical strength, especially in mass, able to carry people and objects, strike with a fair amount of massed force through simple kinetics and restrain targets via coordinated "smothering". If angled right, their edges can even be leveraged enough to make them act like blades that are at least sharp enough to pierce mundane flesh (though rather less reliable against actual supernatural durability).
Though Mia lacks a specific awareness of her petals' surroundings at range, in enough numbers, she is still able to use petals to map her surroundings quite accurately by proxy, as she holds a proprioception-esce awareness of each individual petal's position in space and any touch-based sensations that act upon them. As a result, being that the petals are still inherently fragile constructs at their core outside telekinetic pseudo-hardening, they are sensitive enough to vibrations to act as a form of echolocation. Beyond this, in mass, a cloud of petals can allow the otherwise blind detection of movements through an area or identify oddities within a space. Mia can even roughly identify the distinction between air currents and sound, and she theorizes that she could eventually develop this into a method of remotely spying on spoken conversations.
Mia's ability to manipulate her petals in this manner has caused her to earn comparisons to Hawks's own quirk and may even be part of why she attracted the attention of his agency so early on to begin with.
Super Moves Solitary Confinement: A chilling "move" that occurs when Mia is given the opportunity to fully transform a living target into petals. In doing so, she plunges them into a state of near guaranteed total helplessness and sensory isolation, devoid of the ability to do anything but remain trapped with their thoughts. Unable to touch, taste, hear, smell or see, it is an isolation fit to drive someone to madness. A deafening silence, a darkness deeper than any other, and the sense of lonesomeness incomparable. Mia rarely resorts to this, not only for being impractical in the majority of situations, but also because it is generally an inherently cruel use of her ability and doesn't tend to leave subjects in a good mental state. The following panic many have demonstrated upon release has led her to typically avoid going so far, just for the sake of ensuring criminals enter custody in a calmer, more manageable state.
Spirit of the Sakura Tree: By fully transforming her own body into petals, Mia deliberately subjects herself to her power's Solitary Confinement as a defensive move. Though she is sensorially cut off from the world in this state, she can still navigate to a degree using any existing petals she has created, setting "markers" and using her spatial and fine awareness of her petals to maneuver herself before reverting in whole or part. A side effect of shifting herself is that she generally separates herself from any foreign elements presently acting on her prior to the shift, and perhaps more importantly, by doing this she puts her "brain-meats" in biological stasis, allowing her to control a vastly larger amount of petals without strain than she normally could.
Born in the southern United States, Mia was raised into a fairly active and outdoorsy lifestyle, leading her to be a highly physically inclined sort and even a dab hand with her father's firearms. She lived rugged, joined the scouts, took martial arts and even went traveling, living a fairly enriched childhood. This lifestyle would be curtailed somewhat, however, when a work promotion led to her family moving into the city. Being a rougher sort, Mia found herself out of place and ended up entering a rebellious stage of her life to compensate. She got into the punk scene and even narrowly avoided falling in with a "bad crowd", her physical prowess and quirk making her an attractive potential recruit for young gangs. Mia saw the underbelly of the world and started to grow disillusioned with the shiny heroics of the public largely remained enamored with.
This disillusionment would grow only more pronounced, when another series of promotions led to her family moving overseas to Japan, and Mia became acquainted with the far more unforgiving and (in her opinion) asinine Japanese stance on "defense of self and others", especially when a quirk was involved. Mia had more than one run-in with her share of patronizing officers, before she eventually grew fed up with things and decided to pursue a career in "heroics", not out of any genuine desire to do good or help others... but simply so she could get the license to use her quirk in the way she felt she was already her natural right.
Still, that didn't mean she was going to pretend this was anything but an inconvenient steppingstone. In her heroic high-school years, she rapidly proved to have something of a chip on her shoulder, a cynic with a barbed tongue and a callous, dismissive attitude towards the heroic propaganda the public mindlessly lapped up so often. To her, true heroism was largely dead, and the profession has become little more than a corporate machine. In her mind, being a hero was little different to being a more eccentric police officer. It's a dangerous job and puts food on the table, but little more. So, with that in mind, she'll pursue a cushy paycheck and save up a nest egg that will let her retire in luxurious comfort.
This unchanging stance earned her few friends amongst her more starry-eyed peers even after she was given a Student Recommendation for enrollment at Eirei Academy. Yet, despite her words, she has managed to counterbalance this with demonstrative competence at what she does. In her three years in heroic high school, she has been academically excellent, and despite disliking attention, her own pride often gets in the way of her attempts to sandbag and downplay her talents to ride under the radar. That she even had the presence of mind to be covert about the extent of her abilities and restrained enough to not go out of her way to show off had -ironically- earned her the interest of those that appreciate such a mindset, like the Hawks Agency, whom Mia has begrudgingly interned with twice in the past 3 years -seeking their specialized Black OPS tinted hero license to kill- and with the Best Jeanest Agency the year before the present in appreciation of their public relations and infiltration proficiency.
Mia's outward lack of enthusiasm for heroics has followed her throughout her early Hero Academia. Despite this, to her own chagrin, she's found herself pretty well-suited for the profession and has consistently scored well in most respects, earning her attention she cares little for, given her desire to coast by on the minimum. More recently, the Eirei Sports Festival saw her making it to the final tournament rounds, despite not actually making much of an effort. Irritated by her own success and with no interest in having the eyes of the top Hero Agencies, she eventually threw her match against Jun Mawatari, despite her own power largely hard countering the Rapid Hero's otherwise easy victory strategy. Unfortunately, she's fairly certain that it was too late to dumb herself down by then... again, and that's probably why she's found herself relegated to... whatever this weird 1B thing is supposed to be.
Overall, Mia can come across as callously rational and unrepentantly opinionated. She seems to often speak with words that sound heroic yet lack true conviction. Despite her often-rebellious manner of dress and behavior, she is strangely often the one to advocate for more lawful courses of action... at least in the public eye. Her actions often align with the latter -though not the spirit- of what being a hero is, and though she is the sort of meticulous coworker to cross her t's and dot her i's, there's just something that says she doesn't have her heart in it. Yet, regardless, she showcases a certain prideful tendency towards meeting expectations, and the fact that she is a Recommendation Student says quite a lot about her suitability as a hero, despite appearances.
ᴀʙɪʟɪᴛɪᴇꜱ Martial Arts/Street Fighting High willpower and Pain Tolerance. Firearm Handling Wilderness Survival Driving Polylingual (Japanese, English, Spanish, Sign Language) Perception/Spatial Awareness Stealth Deception Lock-Picking First Aid Tech Literate: Perfunctory Eirei student capacity to construct her own Support Tech.
ꜱᴜᴘᴘᴏʀᴛᴇᴍ
A thin, near-skintight bodysuit of insulating material that is subtly integrated amongst and covered by Mia's regular punk costume. It contains a layer of electric signal amplifiers that enhance the responsiveness of her nerves, providing her cat-like reflexes and a minor enough strength boost to take advantage of them. The suit defends against environmental temperatures, and it is waterproof and unbothered by a soaking. Conversely, it is highly resistant to EMPs and strongly insulative against external electrical-based phenomenon, enough to mostly shrug off electrocution. The suit is secured against unauthorized access by a biometric system.
The costume includes an optional lower-face mask that roughly resembles the fashion statements made by Japanese delinquents, fitted with an air filter for breathing in hazardous environments. Paired with this is a set of hazard goggles for when eye protection is similarly necessary.
There is also a compact first-aid kit that contains a variety of medical utilities, such as adhesive tape, bandages, dressings of various sizes and types, antiseptic solution, wipes and ointment to clean and disinfect wounds, anesthetic spray, pain relievers, thermometer, scissors, tweezers, gloves, emergency blanket, eye shield, triangular bandage, elastic wrap bandages for sprains and swelling, and EpiPens.
A pseudo-holographic interface, using Hawkpad tech as a basis, that Mia wears as a pair of vivid pink contact lenses (though the lenses are designed to blend into her naturally pink eyes and so go unnoticed). These "contacts" act as vision enhancers, giving her clarity comparable to an eagle, along with recording everything she sees. They can project a "holographic" interface onto her vision as well, with commands being conveyed either verbally or through a mental interface that interprets brain signals. This allows her to call up criminal profiles and other information on the fly, using the contacts to submit targets to facial recognition.
The contacts themselves are mostly just the interface system, however, and they remotely display the effects of programming that is localized to a compact module for the Reflex Weave bodysuit. The module acts as the actual hardware that does the bulk of the function heavy lifting, while the contact lenses are largely the display. Both the main module and lenses are recharged via the bodysuit, and Mia carries a number of spares lenses that she can resort to if her worn pair are compromised or damaged.
A pair of brutish implements, these black and gold-rimmed weapons are just barely small enough to be considered "her" for the purposes of Mia's self-transmutation. They have been packed with powerful, toggleable tasers that allow Mia to deliver stunning and highly incapacitating blows in melee. The knuckle-dusters can operate independently to an extent and store a charge, but in the field, they are primarily recharged and powered by the Reflex Weave bodysuit.
Qᴜɪʀᴋ Pathos of Sakura – Emulation/Psychokinesis [Awakened] Mia's quirk allows her to temporarily transmute anything she can physically touch (with herself or most things she is wearing) into pink Sakura petals under her telekinetic control and fine awareness; more specifically, she can only change the immediate area of the target she touches, "shaving away" a bit of mass/volume at a time, rather than completely transmuting the whole target with a single touch to one spot. This transformation is not inherently deadly in any manner, even should she completely dismember a living creature, and once reverted, any separated pieces can be put back together like a living puzzle, automatically "sealing" back into place. Transformed targets enter a form of "stasis" that can be used for limited medical utility to delay the effects of deadly wounds, and the reversion process can even be used to repair some injuries if done in a specific way.
Petals will revert to the unchanged/unharmed thing they once were if Mia chooses to, if she sleeps or if she is rendered unconscious. Instead of instantly, the transformation acts more slowly against living creatures other than Mia, taking critical seconds that could allow a target to break away before they start to change. This seemingly has something to do with Mia's own "imposed will" being unconsciously opposed by the other creature's will; though, ultimately, her quirk will win out with prolonged contact in a matter of seconds at best, regardless of the target's willpower, and it is possible to also break through the resistance with consecutive rapid attacks to the same location. Though Mia's power includes a certain level of high multitasking to it, the more petals she creates, the more naturally mentally straining it is due to the sheer amount of information flowing from each petal, earning Mia bouts of disorientation and migraines.
The central ability of Mia's quirk is to transform anything she touches into pink Sakura petals under her telekinetic control. Viable targets for the transformation can be nearly anything with a tangible physical presence, but it is unable to target ethereal, conceptual subjects like "gravity". This transformation is only applicable on direct, immediate physical contact with Mia's body or something she is wearing which she can comfortably subconsciously perceive as "herself". The transformation does not apply to whole targets, but rather "shaves away" the zone of direct contact. Mass is not a factor, merely the amount of space a target occupies. The transformation is very fine in application, able to separate a target into select components or otherwise draw an offending target away from a subject (allowing the extraction of poisons, for example).
As far as what Mia's power considers "herself" for the purposes of "direct contact" in activating a transmutation, her power doesn't play well with too many layers. There seems to be a subconscious perception element to it, but in practice, she can generally use her power on things that touch her clothes. However, it can't extend in cases of "armor" or through an implement she's carrying, like a weapon. Similarly, anything her power considers "her" for this purpose is something she can fully shift at any time as if it were her main body. Beyond that, however, her quirk does not play nice with the vast majority of bulky support gear, limiting her synergy options.
Transformation speed is roughly "instant" in most situations regarding Mia or nonliving targets around her; however, other living creatures are slightly resistant to her power, requiring prolonged contact of roughly 1-2 seconds to transform or consecutive rapid-fire strikes to a single location. The transformation is further inherently temporary and must inevitably revert, either manually at Mia's behest or automatically if she sleeps or is otherwise rendered unconscious. Transformed petals drop exactly where they are on reversion and do not automatically move to reconstruct whatever they once were prior; however, those pieces can still be manually put back together like a puzzle and will then automatically seal back into place. Once reverted, Mia loses any direct awareness of an individual target's exact location beyond what she's bothered to memorize.
The petal transformation is inherently nonlethal in direct function. Transformed or otherwise power-severed body parts do not have any innately deadly effects on a target. A body with a transformed heart can still pump blood, and a transformed lung can still be breathed with, for example. Similarly, a body part reverted at range still functions just fine, still working to the benefit of the owner. However, equally, wounded body parts can still affect the whole at range as well, and a crushed heart (for example) could still pretty certainly kill the owner at range. There is the further caveat that a transformed sensory organ (eye, nose etc) does deny that sense to the owner. A fully transformed body is not affected by the lack of ability to breathe or otherwise sustain itself, entering a form of "stasis" where they remain in complete sensory isolation, alone with their thoughts. Mia, for her own part, remains aware of any petals she controls even in this state, making it less mentally taxing on her compared to those without a similar way to occupy their minds. This "stasis" can apply small scale as well, able to temporarily delay the effects of a transformed wounded site to allow the subject to keep fighting or otherwise survive long enough to seek medical attention.
The reversion of the transformation can also be used in a limited healing capacity, able to transform severed targets, press them together while they are petals and then revert them in a re-fused state. This method cannot truly manifest any lost mass or revert the physical state of mass that was damaged prior to transformation. Therefore, wounds like incineration or burns -for example- are beyond its purview to resolve beyond delaying their effects on the rest of the body. It can, however, be used to fuse mass together even if it didn't used to be connected. As normal, this doesn't inherently seem to have any strictly negative effects. In fact, it even makes it possible for Mia to easily reattach severed body parts or transplant doner organs to a recipient in need if she has access to them. More dangerously, however, this can be used to fuse together things that have no holy right to coexist, the results of which can be unnerving to behold.
Petals created by her quirk are under Mia's perpetual spatial awareness and telekinetic control. This awareness comes with a certain level of multitasking, which helps catalyze more fine control of the thousands of petals the ability is prone to casually generating. However, this multitasking capacity has limits and mentally wears upon Mia to maintain, with the strain naturally accumulating faster the more petals she controls. This is because her power creates a conscious mental link to each individual petal, all of which Mia must manipulate the positioning of independently. Even with multitasking to manage this and even if she has the petals do nothing at all, the mere involuntary subconscious awareness of their positions at all times wears on her.
The petals are largely harmless on their own, no more durable than any normal petal and fairly easily destroyed, by all accounts merely perfect emulations of natural floral sheddings. However, under Mia’s telekinetic hold, the petals are very fast, able to move like a strong wind, about 60 mph. Being levers through which telekinetic force can be exerted, they possess deceptive levels of physical strength, especially in mass, able to carry people and objects, strike with a fair amount of massed force through simple kinetics and restrain targets via coordinated "smothering". If angled right, their edges can even be leveraged enough to make them act like blades that are at least sharp enough to pierce mundane flesh (though rather less reliable against actual supernatural durability).
Though Mia lacks a specific awareness of her petals' surroundings at range, in enough numbers, she is still able to use petals to map her surroundings quite accurately by proxy, as she holds a proprioception-esce awareness of each individual petal's position in space and any touch-based sensations that act upon them. As a result, being that the petals are still inherently fragile constructs at their core outside telekinetic pseudo-hardening, they are sensitive enough to vibrations to act as a form of echolocation. Beyond this, in mass, a cloud of petals can allow the otherwise blind detection of movements through an area or identify oddities within a space. Mia can even roughly identify the distinction between air currents and sound, and she theorizes that she could eventually develop this into a method of remotely spying on spoken conversations.
Mia's ability to manipulate her petals in this manner has caused her to earn comparisons to Hawks's own quirk and may even be part of why she attracted the attention of his agency so early on to begin with.
Super Moves Solitary Confinement: A chilling "move" that occurs when Mia is given the opportunity to fully transform a living target into petals. In doing so, she plunges them into a state of near guaranteed total helplessness and sensory isolation, devoid of the ability to do anything but remain trapped with their thoughts. Unable to touch, taste, hear, smell or see, it is an isolation fit to drive someone to madness. A deafening silence, a darkness deeper than any other, and the sense of lonesomeness incomparable. Mia rarely resorts to this, not only for being impractical in the majority of situations, but also because it is generally an inherently cruel use of her ability and doesn't tend to leave subjects in a good mental state. The following panic many have demonstrated upon release has led her to typically avoid going so far, just for the sake of ensuring criminals enter custody in a calmer, more manageable state.
Spirit of the Sakura Tree: By fully transforming her own body into petals, Mia deliberately subjects herself to her power's Solitary Confinement as a defensive move. Though she is sensorially cut off from the world in this state, she can still navigate to a degree using any existing petals she has created, setting "markers" and using her spatial and fine awareness of her petals to maneuver herself before reverting in whole or part. A side effect of shifting herself is that she generally separates herself from any foreign elements presently acting on her prior to the shift, and perhaps more importantly, by doing this she puts her "brain-meats" in biological stasis, allowing her to control a vastly larger amount of petals without strain than she normally could.
Lounging on a black and green chair of her own making that was furnished with sinfully comfortable cushions, Qingshe was in a good mood, as she sipped a sweet, cherry-red beverage from a wineglass. In fact, one might even say the Snake was in a better mood than she'd been all year, as she idly swirling the contents of her cup between sips while listening to the briefing being presented by First Lieutenant Alonso.
A lazy smile sat upon her lips, a languid, satiated thing, and golden-green slitted eyes occasionally traced across the crowd that comprised Task Force Obsidian. Her smile widened at the sight of the newcomers, as idle curiosity over what fascinating Noble Arms they might bring to the table swirled through her thoughts. Amusement bubbled within her at the one called "Aoi Mikoto". For senses like hers, it wasn't hard to notice the hostility she felt for the Snake. The sensation of having a silent glare boring into the back of your neck... Ah~, it was like being home again~.
Really, there were quite a few reasons to be happy right now. ASEAN's major leak had -at least ostensibly- been plugged, and while Qingshe really thought the Danggal Clan got off far too lightly for their treason, she acknowledged the certain level of hypocrisy in that stance coming from her. Didn't mean she actually trusted them not to start trouble again later, but for now, she could be satisfied that they were sufficiently cowed and surveilled such that any further disruptions on their end would be noticed and/or swifty dealt with... with far more permanence this time.
In far more unequivocally positive news, however, America's Congressional Midterm results and the impending entry of the United States into the ASEAN theater proper spoke well for the future of the war's conclusion. The mercurial nature of American politics had its ups and downs, but it seemed in this case, things were finally about to go ASEAN's way fully for a change. Already, the mere implications of this inevitable titan entering the field had shifted the priorities of involved parties. And the biggest proof of it all was the now scheduled diplomatic summit and the willingness for the PRC to even entertain it. Some had reasonably raised concerns, but...
"I'm willing to be cautiously optimistic," Qingshe added her two cents to the discourse, grinning widely and shooting a wink to Cristina, who she'd made a point of parking herself beside in seating arrangements. "At this stage in the war, the PRC have few diplomatic cards left in their corner. If even a speck of rationality remains with them, then the idea of attacking this summit should be anathema, purely from any form of forward-thinking perspective."
Honestly, more than anything else, it was the sheer delight~ of having a student again that buoyed her mood so high right now. The past week had been nothing short of invigorating for her, a true callback and something she'd not realized she was missing so much in her present situation. The satisfaction she received from having someone to pass knowledge on to in a meaningful manner was second to none, and Cristina -to her credit- was an earnest and excellent learner. It really said something about her talent how far she'd managed to come in only a week of tutelage.
Proud showman that she was, Qingshe naturally enjoyed tooting her own horn, and so she wouldn't entirely dismiss her own excellence as a teacher. But in the end, the true burden of improvement lay with the student, and Miss Bernardino had shown tangible results in not just improving her Noble Arm but -far more impressively- demonstrating even the basics of Occult Programming Language. What made it all the more appalling and impressive in equal measure was learning that Cristina had never had any formal schooling before the Snake. That she could still grasp such a thing as OPL even then? Extremely impressive. Qingshe was almost tempted to say "genuinely genius", but she didn't want to jump the gun so early. Only time would tell if that supposed talent held true long-term...
Letting out a wry sigh, Qingshe's mouth quirked. "Then again, 'rationality' and the PRC haven't been close bedfellows for a while now, certainly not since they joined hands with the Downward Descent." There was no point in concealing that fact. It wasn't like Superbia had been anything subtle in his attack on Nico. Pretty much everyone in the Task Force had to know by now about the newest global faction to add the unbelievably unlucky Mr. Makri to their personal shit-list. "So, I wouldn't blame anyone for taking precautions... nor generally harboring doubts of the integrity of this venture." Shaking her head, Qingshe clicked her tongue, before smirking and taking another languid sip of her beverage. "Under normal circumstances, I might say the presence of Arms Masters at such an event would be an inflammatory, dangerous thing... but no-one can trust the risk of a rogue actor striking while they are vulnerable, nor that their fellows won't bring their own insurance. Ergo, everyone feels compelled to not risk being the only one 'unarmed' if the worst should happen, and the whole thing becomes a messy western standoff regardless."
Reclining back in her chair and resting her cheek on the knuckles of her free hand, the Snake chuckled. "Of course, even if this looks too good to be true, even if this is all a hoax, the chance that it isn't is too tantalizing to ignore, isn't it? That's the rub of it all. It's bait too good to not bite, and if this is a trap... well, they'll know that as well as we do." Her gaze traced over the assembled members of Task Force Obsidian, her smile growing a touch cold. "Whatever else they might be scheming, one thing is almost certain, the summit is the ideal chance for the PRC to make a diplomatic coup. With the public revelation of Ai Chen's crimes, people are going to be leveling more scrutiny upon them. Before all else, if this is organized with any sort of eye towards China's future, their priority in this summit will be damage control. Shifting blame."
She giggled darkly. "They can't deny the existence of Ai Chen's proven crimes, nor the recorded actions of other malicious actors amongst them. However, they can still feign ignorance, condemn the likes of Ai Chen and claim she was a rogue actor with lacking oversight. They can make empty promises that nonetheless sound convincing, and they will almost certainly do everything in their power to individualize the sins of accusations levied against them. The more they can avoid the PRC as a whole being held responsible for the actions of a select few, the better." At least, that's almost certainly what she would do in their place. Tactically, it just made sense. Admit nothing, deflect and counterstrike. "Let's assume this is legitimate for a moment. If so, then the PRC will be looking to buy time and put their best foot forward."
She snorted. "Let us be unfortunately brutally realistic: in this era of media sensationalism, the public's attention span is short. A truce of several months serves the PRC's interests as well. It will give them time for the public outrage to die down and for them to fully quell any public upset on the home front. By the time this 'truce period' is over, the American public at least will have largely fallen back into their apathetic overseas stupor, and their cries for justice and war will be but a whisper. The PRC is unlikely to stop committing war crimes... They will simply be more careful about hiding them. Still..." She hummed, one finger tapping her wineglass with a quiet tinkling sound. "For this to truly all blow over, the PRC would need to overwrite the public's outrage with a newer, fresher target, so unless Russia decides to do something particularly... sensational soon, there's a good chance of the PRC being unable to shake this. They need a scapegoat and lack for convincing ones... but that doesn't mean they won't be looking."
She was grinning, but there was a glint of seriousness in her eyes. "This is going to be a delicate political situation. It cannot be overstated how important it is to not be seen to 'strike first' should anything... untoward occur. So, dress to impress and bring your best manners, even if Huo Ren himself should stand in front of you. Our actions will reflect on ASEAN and the security of their position at the bargaining table, and if you're feeling trigger happy... Don't. In an ideal world, all we're there for is to look pretty and -at worst- loom with vague menace while the politics happen. Violating a national diplomatic truce would be a disaster for us... Rather, for anyone who is going to be at that table." Shaking her head, she smirked. "Really, this is the sort of thing that shouldn't need to be said, but I realize that not all of you here today may come from backgrounds sufficient to grant you a complete understanding of the stakes at hand... So, I say it anyway."
"Hoh?" Qingshe raised a brow at Cristinia's request, a pleasant surprise. Although the timing could perhaps have been better... Glancing around at how crowded the section of the beach they were in was getting all of a sudden, the Snake had to loose a small chuckle, shaking her head in exasperation.
To Jin Li, she eventually said in Mandarin, "It seems our conveyance is growing less discreet by the moment. Perhaps we should continue this elsewhere another time. Perhaps tomorrow?" For now though...
She addressed Martha in English. "Hah, please excuse my interruption. I'll soon leave you again to your relaxation... this time hopefully more comfortable than before." From beneath her dress hem, her bubbling ooze spread forth, crossing the short distance to Martha and raising up a thin metallic plank from its mass that the ooze then proceeded to largely coat.
"Simply stick any part of yourself that requires treatment into the shadow, and I'll have you fixed right up~. No need for a full dunking... unless you want it, that is~." Giving a small hum, she grinned. "It may take a small while to complete, as I don't believe I've treated you yet. The first time is always the slowest." She didn't elaborate on why.
Finally turning her attention fully back to Cristina, Qingshe chuckled and spoke in Filipino. "I cannot say I was expecting such a request, Miss Bernardino, but regardless... I'd be more than happy to oblige you." Humming lyrically, she tapped her lips and grinned. "Still, such a conversation as I'm sure you'd require may be... sensitive in nature. Let us take our consultation away from prying ears, shall we?"
The Snake paused at the approach of yet another still, letting out a small chuff at the arrival of Callie. Shaking her head in good humor, Qingshe's lips quirked with a hint of wryness, as she answered the blonde's question. "Ah~, you're not interrupting all that much by now, really~."
Grinning, her slitted golden eyes squinted into smiles. "As it happens, Miss Bernardino and I were just now taking our leave, I believe." She smiled apologetically. "I'd invite you along for what promises to be a fascinating subject of consideration, but well..." She chuckled. "Consider the nuance of the matter something not dissimilar to doctor-patient confidentiality... Unless Miss Bernardino is willing to have you along, of course."
Nervously shook her head, she barely felt safe with what she's doing and would appreciate a company but this is her battle, she needs to face it alone.
"I'm not willing," she answered as she waits for Qingshe's move.
"Lead the way."
Qingshe’s mouth quirked. “Well, there we have it then~.” Sketching a small waggle of her fingers in farewell to the other beachgoers, the greenette practically sauntered away back towards the more industrialized portions of the island. Grinning to Cristina, Qingshe added, “I know just the place~.”
There was no particular rush, and so the pace the Snake led was a languid one. Traversing the streets of the Qing Restoration Society’s present capitol, the pair naturally earned glances everywhere they went. After all, Qingshe alone cut a notable figure even were her position in this nation’s hierarchy not also nothing to sneeze at.
Despite her own apprehension of the tall, unnaturally beautiful woman, if she had a mind to be looking, Cristina would likely notice that Qingshe’s presence seemed to put a pep in the step of many of the civilians. Some smiled. Others even waved. And the Snake sometimes returned those wordless gestures of amiability.
Whatever her past or often uncanny presence, actions in the present spoke louder still. The Zodiac were meant to be symbols of power, of hope and order, showcasing their government’s glorious inevitable victory against those that would oppose them.
For these people, traitors to that tyrannical regime, the fact that their movement had seemingly stolen away one of those beacons of power, those propped up as symbols? It was fortifying, hope granting, and it enhanced the legitimacy of their cause. To have one of the Zodiac take their side made the odds seem just that little bit less long, a welcome morale boost even for the genuine believers. It was, in a sense, a PR coup… one that had only gained even greater momentum after the latest mission had seen the QRS’s Zodiac soundly defeat the CCP's with the death of Ai Chen by Qingshe’s hands.
Qingshe, of course, did not fail to comprehend and bolster this phenomenon. In a sense, it was rather similar to the role she’d once played for the PRC, and it cost her little to form connections with the people of her new faction where she could, to show the flag and keep spirits high.
Not to mention… but there was a certain presence of “humility” one could cultivate by being a powerful figure and yet continuing to interact with everyday folk instead of sitting in an ivory tower.
And so, now, as she had before, Qingshe didn’t waste the opportunity to be seen on the way to her destination, throwing a smile here and a small wave there. A few times, she even addressed someone by name, inquiring after old business and their well being in passing. And the Snake naturally knew that the more she did this, the tighter her coils intertwined within the social structure of the QRS. Soon enough, she was confident her position would be quite secure and irrevocable regardless, provided the aims of the QRS panned out, but it never hurt to lay a firmer foundation for the future.
Not that that would have been too difficult anyway. The residential district the pair of Arms Masters were traveling through was located atop a massive stretch of land around 2 kilometers across that jutted out of the side of the already artificial island.
This “land” was, in fact, rather a series of interconnected concrete blocks, spreading out over the central waters of Mischief Reef’s lagoon. If someone were to have the right power, they might ascertain that the blocks had all been welded together somehow on a molecular level, such that it almost wouldn’t be incorrect to say the structure was simply one large half-circle jutting down southward into the innards of the existing half-moon of the island.
Meanwhile, unseen, beneath that structure, dozens of thick steel alloy pillars acted as supports, punched hundreds of feet into the earth. But perhaps far more interesting was what was built atop it.
A sprawling residential district proudly gleamed under the light. Largely composed of two and three-story buildings, this place was easily the most homely section of the island, home to the many QRS loyalists and many refugees from the PRC’s China. It was here that had quickly become the heart of the island in the past year, thanks in large part to the recruitment of the Snake.
It hadn’t take her long after arrival for Lei Qingshe to make no bones that the living conditions and quality of life were insufficient. To see the citizenry stuck living in meager bungalows wouldn’t be allowed on her watch. Therefore, for once put in a position of true authority, Qingshe had used her power to produce masses of material and oversee a sprawling, expansive construction project to invigorate and modernize the locale, truly turning it into something worth calling a “nation”. And for that, she had determined, they could not remain a mere military base. No, they must be able to support a civilian population.
And the results were clear to see.
The buildings here in large part possessed metallic, armored exteriors, layered with rust-resistant alloy that was often a foot thick or more. The windows similarly were largely constructed with conventionally considered “bulletproof” glass. For, though their defenses were good and the central area not as easily reached, Qingshe hadn’t failed to prepare for the eventuality that the Reef might come under siege. In such a case, the construction here in the heartland would resist splendidly, all but a massive sprawling fortress of a zone.
Despite the militaristic mind taken to the construction, however, aesthetics weren’t sacrificed, and the entire district gave off an air that could only be called “futuristic”. Instead of the “boxy” shape of most modern construction, these buildings had smooth, rounded outsides and sweeping curves. This, of course, was also slightly militantly minded, as curved armored structures would be more difficult to destroy with bombardment, providing angled armor to assaults.
Yet, still, they gleamed with a silvery sheen in many places, their fresh nature apparent. And where they did not shine silver, many other colors had quickly cropped up, as people came to live here and add their own personal touches in the forms of storefronts and homes. Though, most dominantly, there seemed to be a preference for brilliant yellows and vibrant blues, which seemed to be the factional color. Though, secondary still to that, there was a not inconsiderable number of buildings that hewed towards a light-drinking black and bright green, Qingshe’s own aesthetic and likely something many had adopted in acknowledgement of her role in pushing for this place to exist at all.
And all the while, the flag of the Qing Restoration Society flew proudly on practically every street and over many shops and domiciles, displaying a winding blue and white-scaled eastern dragon on a bold yellow background with a red dot in the top-left corner.
Striding along the bustling sidewalks, Qingshe led the way down the main street of this district towards a notably larger structure, positioned roughly dead center of the reef’s lagoon.
One could use several descriptors to encompass the place, but perhaps foremost among them might be “traditional”. The six-story building hearkened back to images of Chinese palaces, standing roughly twice as tall as the average building in the area. It wouldn’t be a long stretch to call the structure a declaration in and of itself of the intent of the QRS, announcing that they treated this palace is as a vision of the future where they had restored their monarchy.
And it was to that place that Qingshe was gradually making her way.
Cristina quietly followed the snake, as she makes her stroll around the capitol. It wasn't as hasty than she would've preferred, but there is no reason to voice her complaints to someone who's lending a hand.
She never felt so small standing next to someone, and she wasn't talking about their heights. The unexpected part was it doesn't felt that's being suffocated.
Admittedly, a huge part of it might be conscious effort, but seeing how she interacts with her own people, to see her talk to them and inspire confidence on them.
She looked like a symbol of hope to them, no she is one.
She snapped out of her thoughts when she saw the residential district of the Reef. It looked more like a resort than a refugee center and judging by how Qingshe looked at it, it seems like she had a hand on its construction.
Compared to little, weak, cowardly her she might as well be a god.
Does she deserve to stand in this ground?
She wasn't a hero, just a girl who wanted her sister back, and said sister hates her.
Qingshe will hear a laugh, a defeated laugh, one that you could hear when someone had enough as they enter the palace.
She might not intend to do it, but she had already beaten Cristina's self-esteem.
At the defeated noise from Cristina, Qingshe nearly paused. Though, being that she was still in public and in a position to be upholding appearances, she didn't allow her smile or confident air to wane, as she shot Cristina a brief look in the corner of her eye, observing the worn quiet the girl was languishing in.
The reasoning for her depressed air wasn't quite clear, but perhaps she was still mulling over the past and the future? The after-action reports regarding the interactions with "Superbia" and the one calling herself Cristina's sister had been... "interesting" to read... at least as far as how ridiculous they were. It all seemed so... absurdly petty to her, but then again, what was she really expecting from the Downward Descent? They were the embodiment of all that was irrational and loathsome.
Tangentially, Qingshe still could not fathom how horrendous Nico's luck was. How did this man somehow unfailingly manage to gather obsessive and powerful stalkers from every antagonistic faction he encountered? This was just ridiculous. So... so stupid. Honestly, it made her wonder if the likes of Huo Ren hadn't gotten such foolishness from the Downward Descent's influence... It was a nice fantasy anyway.
Letting out a hum of consideration, the Snake dragged herself back to the present and took a moment to organize her thoughts, as she and Cristina reached the palace complex and passed through a quick routine security check. As they stepped into a lavishly decorated and expansive foyer area, Qingshe allowed her pace to quicken minutely, heading for a large staircase and shooting some passing staff a nod.
Heading up toward the fourth floor, Qingshe smirked and leaned over slightly to conspiratorially whisper to her fellow Arms Master, "Personally, I'm not much for ostentatious grandeur of this kind, but apparently, there's certain appearances to uphold... or so Ren Zhao would insist." She chuckled at the thought of that silly, jealous man.
"He was the one to greet us on arrival," she elaborated as a reminder, just in case the man had somehow gone overlooked. Which would be markedly funny and true to form, regardless, given that the entire reason for his own defection as far as she was aware was being overlooked for his brother.
Loosing a chuff, as they traversed hallways gilded with traditional Chinese finery, Qingshe added, "Don't get me wrong, I enjoy showing off as much as the next person..." she smirked, "but I prefer to show off things with purpose." She gestured broadly to the halls. "In the end, what is all this but an imitation, filled with impermanence. For all that the QRS is using this as our capitol at present, we know it won't last. This is effectively a loan from the Philippines, given their own territorial claims, and I quite imagine that if we win this war, ceding it to them fully will be part of negotiations to maintain the sanctity of our alliance. Anything we build here is... fleeting, in the end."
Shaking her head, Qingshe chuckled. "But I'm getting away from myself. There's something to be said for putting on a show, but isn't it better to draw admiration for a purpose other than bragging?" She shrugged, grinning. "Grand works should do more than simply put others down or raise yourself up. They should inspire, lead by example. What they should evoke is aspiration, not jealousy. For in the end, one of those encourages others to rise up... while the other only urges them to drag others down."
Tapping her lips with one finger, she chuffed. "Such things are the reason the balance between admiration and spite is so delicate in the end. That's how I feel anyway."
Cupping her chin with one hand, Qingshe's golden, reptilian gaze focused more intently on Cristina, as they neared their destination. "What one should hope to invoke with one's own greatness in others is ambition, the thirst to improve and... evolve for the sake of themselves and others." Her smile was all teeth. "The development of one's Noble Arm most often is rooted in such a genuine desire as well... which leads me to ask..."
The pair arrived at a doorway with keycard scanner and number pad, the light on which flashed green without any movement from Qingshe to interact with it. Perhaps it had been remotely triggered somehow? Regardless, the door swung open to admit the pair into a room that was -though comparable to a luxury apartment- far less ostentatious than the halls outside. These facilities here, rather, seemed to share a greater reminiscence to the futuristic lean of the district outside the palace, and the Snake's black and green aesthetic was heavy here... though largely inverted. The dominant color was greens in the decor with black as an accent, creating a fairly more welcoming and less inherently ominous "vibe" than the owner usually championed.
As soon as the two had stepped inside and the door closed securely behind them, Qingshe finally deigned to finish her prior thought. "...What is it that drives you, Miss Benardino?"
There was a quiet passionate intensity in the Snake's words, as she strode further into her abode towards a small sleek... tea table? It had enough seats around it to easily accommodate them both at least. Qingshe availed herself, at that, and a small wave of her hand beckoned Cristina to make herself comfortable as well.
All the while, Qingshe was still speaking. "And I do not... necessarily mean what drives you in this particular moment." She chuckled, tapping a finger on the table. "I mean what drives you to improve as a concept. I mean as a pattern." Leaning back in her chair, Qingshe tilted her head slightly. "I mean in the sense of what mindset first drove your Noble Arm to awaken at all... and I'm willing to bet strongly that there's a correlation between that moment and many of the future points of... improvement in your capabilities."
Inclining her chin, Qingshe paused, seeming to stare into the distance for a moment, before chuckling and shaking her head. "Though, perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself again." She smirked in a manner that was almost self-depreciating. "Let me ask you then, adjacently, how much do you really know about the nature of Noble Arms?"
Cristina was visibly nervous, as she enters Qingshe's mansion. She'd infiltrated other mansions before, but this the first time she enters one as a guest. It felt wrong if anyone asked her.
"To raise others up? Was it really a good ideal?" she asked. Qingshe after all is not the first person who said those words.
Her sister was the best of them, the only one to unlock her Noble Arms among them. The best fighter, the most clever...
...and the kindest. The most caring.
She wondered what would happen if she just saved herself, she would make a better member of the Obsidian compared to her.
She did her best to keep up with the Serpent's ramblings.
Noble Arms are powered by desire, the will to do 'something' is what makes it powerful.
It needs a 'drive'.
She initially tried to answer money but it wasn't what really drives her. What made her start
"Everything I did was for a small hope that I can save my sister instead what she always do, it wasn't meant to be however." she answered as she looked at a window.
"As for the nature of Noble Arms, I think they are a reflection of what their owners wanted to achieve, some sort of soul manifestation?"
"Naturally, raising others up is a most laudable thing," Qingshe said with a grin, before chuckling. "Though, I find it more sustainable to encourage others to raise themselves up in turn. Rather than doing all the work for them, give others the tools to help themselves." She smiled warmly. "In such a way, they will not be left helpless without you, and you will not find yourself burdened with unnecessary expectations. And those you help raise up can help raise others in turn."
Not making any move to address her guest's nerves verbally, Qingshe chuckled and favored the anxious Cristina with a smile, as a small puddle of her shadow bubbled out from beneath her arm and smoothly ejected a small, pristine glass tea set with two empty cups and a cozy little teapot presently steaming merrily from the spout. A sweet, herbal scent drifted into the air, as Qingshe filled both cups and took one for herself, the other standing in silent offering.
"Though your knowledge is incomplete, you're on the right track," the Snake praised in response.
Taking a slow, comfortable sip, the greenette let out a pleased hum and then placed her cup down upon one of a pair of saucers that had manifested in the interim of her handing it. Her shadow slunk away, disappearing from sight once more.
Licking her lips, Qingshe briefly organized her thoughts, before continuing to address the primary topic of this meeting, "You are correct that Noble Arms have a connection to the soul. Most of them -the naturally born ones- are reflections of their user in some capacity. In fact, one could say a Noble Arm is never more possessed of potential than it is with its creator." Leaning back in her chair, she sighed. "Try as many might, inherited Noble Arms will never truly match up. There will always be some level of... let's call it 'spiritual dissonance' that holds them back."
"Despite the vast majority of Noble Arms not having anything worth referring to as 'sentience', it can't be denied that they possess a certain capacity to reject a user they find unfavorable." Qingshe let out an amused chuff, grinning. "They truly are immensely picky little things, and they exercise stiff favoritism. When it comes to inheritance, a Noble Arm holds all future users to the standard of their first one, and the more precisely alike one is to the original user, the more likely the Noble Arm will bond with them and successfully develop further abilities under their partnership."
Her expression turned a bit more serious. "Of course, because it's simply impossible for two people to have truly identical souls, there's no scenario where an inheritor will truly possess the same potential as the original. Really, it's a stroke of luck for a Noble Arm to allow itself to be inherited at all... never mind operating optimally for another."
Shaking her head, the Snake sighed, a glint of warning and pity in her gaze. "Some have thought it wise to try and force a bond by various means, of course, but the backlash of incompatibility is such cases... Well, let's just say the would-be inheritor usually ends up lucky to survive... or even come away sane..." The Snake let that statement hang ominously, allowing the warning to sink in, before adding grimly. "And still others... the likes of the Downward Descent... They have found... truly unholy ways to manifest success... at the cost of everyone involved. Forcing a Noble Arm to work with a normally incompatible user... Forcing two Noble Arms to coexist under the same host...?"
Closing her eyes, Qingshe let out a sigh of genuine sympathy. "I wasn't there to witness it personally, but I read the after-action reports..." Her golden eyes reopened, half-lidded. "What happened to your sister... The madness, irrationality and unfettered twisted desires... Such things are not unusual consequences of undergoing the Downward Descent's abominable enhancements."
Taking another sip of her tea, the Snake exhaled and tapped the table with one finger rhythmically. "The process of forcibly bonding to an unwilling Noble Arm is a wholly unnatural thing, and for it to result in anything but painful death or the agonizing evisceration of the recipient's soul, it requires both Arm and User to be... twisted to artificially create a commonality between them for the bond to truly take hold..."
Scoffing derisively, the Snake briefly scowled, shaking her head. "Or so I can only strongly theorize. Even under the PRC, that isn't something I've ever attempted." Largely for lack of technical capacity than any moral-based unwillingness at the time, granted, but Cristina didn't need to hear that less flattering tidbit.
"But as for what Noble Arms truly are in more explicit terms... Hmmm, how shall I put this?" Qingshe tapped her lips with one finger. "Tell me, have you heard of the phenomenon succinctly named... 'Occult Programming Language'?"
Cristina took the tea, it did little to calm her nerves but it was enough to make the 'consulation', breathable for the lack of better word. She smiled a little bit at getting the question partially right, making inferences was one of the few things she's good at.
She recoiled in fear as she heard of what Qingshe thought happened to her sister. Everything that happened to her was because she left her alone that time, she should've have stayed with her.
"And what will you do, fight with that piece of metal, please save yourself instead.
The freelancer stayed silent, before asking.
"So in order to free her, we need to undo the enhancements? Their forced bonds?"
The then looked at the teacup before answering the snake's last question.
"I know nothing, but if you ask me about it, it must be something important." she answered looking at her snake-like eyes.
Huffing, Qingshe took no pleasure in partially shooting Cristina's idea down. "It may not be so simple. As I said..." As inconvenient as it was... "Dabbling in matters of successful forcible Noble Arm grafting isn't something I can count under my repertoire. I have theories... ones with strong basis, yes, but only theories."
Taking another sip of her tea, Qingshe sighed. "I've inspected those... 'gifted' by the Downward Descent in the past, of course, enough to form the aforementioned conclusions, but I've never tried to revert the process." Not with a living subject to show for it afterwards...
She lifted up a finger, listing off. "The problems are threefold here. One, breaking the bond between the victim and a grafted Noble Arm. Already, that would be an immense feat, to shatter such a normally inviolable bond... and to do so without harming the bonded. This is the first step, because if we tried to return the victim to normal before doing so, even if we succeeded, they would immediately suffer from 'spiritual dissonance' and likely die due to the still bonded and now incompatible Noble Arm."
A second finger rose. "Secondly, there's no guarantee such a separation would inherently revert the victim's mind and soul. I suspect what the Downward Descent does is nothing so flimsy as an 'enchantment', fit to be unraveled wholly by the right hands." Her expression darkened. "What I believe they do is twist the victim's soul irrevocably... like playdough. And like playdough, returning it to its precisely exact former shape is something nearly impossible."
The Snake rubbed her chin, frowning. "No two souls are ever truly alike, and successfully determining the exact nuances of even a single subject enough to restore them? Well... the only one I might succeed in such an endeavor on is myself. There's no-one I know better, after all..." Nor whom she had such in-depth "blueprints" of.
A third finger rose. "And lastly... there is the matter of repairing your sister's Noble Arm itself. In this, at least, I can say I actually have some experience... not the 'repairing' so much as the ability to alter a Noble Arm at all, but... it is a delicate and finicky process with much risk involved. And I still need to know what my final result should be." She tilted her head, a humorless smile on her lips. "I'm sure you can see how that might be an issue, yes? I've never personally met your sister. I don't know her like you. I don't have her... template to restore her from backup."
Snorting, Qingshe paused to down the rest of her tea in one gulp, before moving to pour herself a fresh steaming cup. "As usual, no matter how much I learn, I'm still lagging behind where it matters..." she muttered, before shaking her head and reforming her smile. Though, it didn't fully reach her eyes. "Ah... but the path of science is one without end, and everyone has to start somewhere. Someday, eh?" she mused aloud, before refocusing herself on the matter at hand.
"Of course," she chuckled, "if we were to find that there was a way to institute a process of... 'self-correction', that would remove much of the burden of our side of the restoration. In that case, all we would need to do is remove any grafted Noble Arm your sister might have and start the process, allowing her soul to gradually sort itself out..."
Pursing her lips, Qingshe's brows scrunched in thought. "Either way, we must successfully capture your sister before anything can be attempted. She did show the capacity to teleport through portals, which complicates matters, unfortunately, but... if we can get her inside my shadow... spacetime will not avail her in escaping."
"As for how we might be able to actually do any of that, even with only our present Noble Arms...?" Qingshe chuckled. "Why, we'd attempt to revert the Downward Descent's work with the same thing they used: Occult Programming Language." Having finally pivoted around to addressing a topic she'd expected would be fairly necessary at some point in this meeting, the Snake continued. "I'm not surprised you haven't heard of it. If anything, I'd be shocked if you had. It's a highly classified topic, kept deep in the dark by just about every organized entity large enough to comprehend and utilize it."
Leaning back in her chair, Qingshe cradled her teacup in both hands and took another sip, smiling wryly. "This may sound absurd, so I'd brace myself if I were you. I promise... as much as I wish I were joking, this is no laughing matter," the Snake warned, before forging forward without hesitation. "Occult Programming Language is, to put it bluntly, magic. Very real and very dangerous magic. There's really not a tamer way to say it."
Qingshe leaned forward, placing her cup back on its saucer with a quiet clink. "Occult Programming Language -or as it is most often abbreviated, 'OPL'- is the art of 'programming' -or perhaps hacking- reality itself. It is a freeform, intensely math-based magic that functions by means that have... unfortunate cosmological implications. It treats everything in reality as something based in a form of underlying 'code', which OPL can manipulate."
Qingshe's expression was deadly serious now. "I don't think I can understate how dangerous OPL actually is, just how much unfettered calamity can result from its careless use." Snorting, the Snake's mien was one of bitterness, like she'd swallowed something unpleasant. "As much as I normally abhor the denial of knowledge, this is one such matter where I can at least understand... not going out of one's way to spread it around. There is a very good reason those in the know keep OPL quiet... and jealously hoard any secrets they uncover in how to manipulate it."
The Snake paused for a moment, cocking her head silently, as if she was organizing her thoughts, before adopting a wry expression. "To put into perspective just how existentially dangerous Occult Programming Language truly is... I will finally say it plainly."
Qingshe grinned in a manner that was perhaps unsettling, as an old bout of ire resurfaced within in the same as it did whenever she revisited this absurd bit of history. "Noble Arms are quite simply the completely unintended result of the first successful, fumbled use of Occult Programming Language, the blind shot in the dark of an idiot savant that somehow managed to alter something so utterly fundamental to reality and Humanity as a whole that it would eventually create the world we have today."
Closing her eyes, Qingshe audibly inhaled in frustration. "For good or ill, that is the truth. Noble Arms... were nothing but an accident."
Upon more fully restoring her composure, Qingshe's eyes slipped into a half-lidded expression of distant derision... though not one directed at Cristina, merely a memory. "Noble Arms, in truth, are a form of OPL." Pursing her lips, Qingshe tapped the table with a finger rhythmically. "A... 'preset' form of manipulation, if you will. Freeform OPL is difficult for reasons I won't get into immediately, but for that reason, it is flexible, technically capable of doing anything but generally lagging behind in practice. Noble Arms, by contrast, generally shoulder the burden that makes OPL so difficult, allowing their user to make use of OPL far more easily than a general practitioner... without even really knowing how they are doing anything. As a result, Arms Masters are typically more powerful. They are 'masters of one' compared to 'jacks of all trades'."
Tilting her head, Qingshe chuffed. "Noble Arms are essentially glorified, premade 'casting focuses', only capable of accessing a set series of 'code' that is generally determined on their manifestation. But for all they are generally highly secure and finicky, they are still ultimately expressions of OPL, and because of that... Well, once someone finds a way to cross the threshold of OPL mastery that allows them to manipulate the forces that presently largely shape today's world order?"
Qingshe's expression darkened. "That's when forces like the Seven Virtues..." She sneered. "-The Paragons of Science..." Her lip curled in derision and disappointment. "-and the Downward Descent arise." There was a cold, distant chill in her voice, as she mentioned the last one, before taking a quiet calming breath and smiling once more. "Though they all achieved that pinnacle of understanding in recent years, their machinations can be felt throughout the world. Even this entire war..." the Snake trailed off, before shaking her head.
"Regardless, you understand then?" Qingshe inquired. "If you want to save your sister, more than any amount of personal development of your Noble Arm, you will almost certainly need Occult Programming Language to address what has taken hold of her."
Cristina wasn't sure on what to expect when she asked for the Serpent's help, the most vivid image she could think of was her being strapped to a surgery table like a patient in need of a surgery. The second image was her meditating some form of eldritch knowledge where a single moment of weakness will lead to insanity.
She didn't expect the knowledge to be weirdly comprehendible even if such comprehension shows how impossible saving her sister was.
And yet...
"It was still possible." she muttered, there was a path to save her, it won't be easy and she may die and fail but the path was there.
She owe her sister this much and more.
"I do know that she will go for my head, does that mean that I would to stick with you?" she asked. "Or hope that my own Noble Arm can impede her escape?"
She listened on Qingshe's explanation of the Occult Programming Language. She was right, it was an absurd concept and yet it would explain how these 'magical' items existed.
"Should I really know about this? What was your guarantee that I won't reveal this to the anyone."
She then looked at the table, this Occult Programming Language was a huge thing, so important that no one should knowledge about it.
"It was a lot but how exactly would you use that to make me stronger?"
Leaning back in her chair, Qingshe nodded with a small chuckle. "Not discouraged? Good.Excellent even. Such determination will serve you well going forward." She grinned widely, approvingly. "That sort of attitude is exactly the type that creates great Arms Masters. While one should always be mindful of the odds for the sake of avoiding recklessness and waste, when it comes to your ideal future, never let them stop you from trying."
She chuffed. "You can't succeed without doing at least that much, after all. The fact of the matter is that success is always possible, no matter how daunting the odds. The possibility is there... You just need the tools to make it happen."
Giving a hum of contemplation, Qingshe considered the younger Arms Master's other questions, folding one arm under her chest and cupping her chin with her free hand. "Of course, while I cannot deny that my presence is a fairly secure place to be, generally speaking," she smirked, "there's a chance that your sister, even in madness, at least retains enough of a survival instinct to avoid a confrontation with me." Snorting, the Snake grinned wryly. "While in the past, I went to... great pains to conceal the extent of my strength... until the time was right, those days of obscurity are admittedly long behind me... for better or worse."
Looking morbidly amused, Qingshe's expression was conflicted. "While I have yet to attain Mr. Makri's own particular brand of... popularity... at least in that respect, I hope it's not too bold of me to speculate the reasoning at least stems from my enemies' conception of my threat level... which was perhaps elucidated upon more clearly than ever in my battle with the Rooster." Shaking her head, the Snake clicked her tongue. "That is all to say that I quite suspect my presence will act as a deterrent, even accounting for your sister's twisted state."
Taking her cup, Qingshe hummed and downed another soothing sip of the brew within. "If your sister is to pursue this imagined feud of hers with you further, I predict she will at least attempt to exercise it in situations where she can be confident in absolute victory."
Qingshe frowned. "The Downward Descent are... generally speaking power-mad cowards. They -including your sister now- will likely wish to never invite a situation that makes them look or feel powerless. The only losses they will accept are ones they can somehow justify as being 'planned' by themselves beforehand. They laud nihilistic anarchy and the power of the individual, domination, the exercising of one's own whims above all else. The greatest insult they can suffer is to be forced to submit to the dominance of another absolutely and without recourse... well..." She snorted. "Aside from those that are 'into that shit', as they say..."
"But that aside," the Snake redirected, "your sister will probably try to corner you alone or with limited backup, and with the power to create long-range portals, she likely won't find it all that difficult." Tapping her lips with one finger, Qingshe hummed in thought. "Then, presuming in the worst case that you cannot avoid a fight whose circumstances are dictated by your opponent, your best option is to simply prepare for that eventuality... One where it is quite likely I will be unable to immediately aid you."
At Cristina's words of concern(?) -perhaps mild paranoia(?), Qingshe only chuckled, her gaze half-lidded. "My dear~, I didn't tell this to you with any expectation that you'd remain silent... at least not by any means of my doing." Leaning back in her chair, her lips quirked. "I'll leave it up to the best judgement of your survival instinct, neh~?"
Her tone was laced with amusement as much as warning. "I'm not saying not to share this with other members of the Task Force. My, if anything I'd almost encourage it, especially..." She paused and stared out the window, briefly frowning. "-if I am unable to tell them myself at some point." Golden eyes tracking back to Cristina, she huffed. "Still, always keep in mind, as things stand in the world, there are some very powerful people that are very interested in that information not reaching the public consciousness. If you spread it around too recklessly..." she trailed off leadingly, before shrugging.
"Well, not everyone is as difficult to 'disappear' as I am, after all..."
Qingshe let those words hang in the air ominously for a while, polishing off her cup of tea and pouring a new one in the interim. Finally, after perhaps too long a while, Qingshe chuckled, not a hint of tension left in her mien.
"But onto a more productive subject, I think..." Her golden gaze was half-lidded in contemplation, as the Snake lazily swirled the contents of her cup with one hand.
"How will Occult Programming Language make you stronger, you ask?" Qingshe loosed a chuff. "Ideally, not directly. Though I wouldn't call myself a novice in using it by any means, I am not unaware of its risks and limits."
Rubbing her chin with one finger, Qingshe hummed. "When it comes to granting you the strength to accomplish your goals, we should focus firstly on your capacity to actively improve your Noble Arm's abilities." Grinning now, Qingshe's hand dipped down from her chin underneath the table and returned with several sheets of paper and a pen. "To that end, I have prepared a series of questions for you, ones aimed to identify with certainty your Noble Arm's Value, Element and Growth type."
Placing the papers on the table, she tapped the stack, indicating several large, empty spaces with accompanying questionnaires. "For the sake of security, I ask that you write these things down, rather than explaining it all verbally. This part of the process will require we delve into the functions and limits of what your powers can presently do before we truly explore expanding them. And perhaps it is needless to say, but I quite imagine that in the case we were somehow being spied upon, this should make it a bit more difficult for compromising details about your capabilities to be learned by others."
Pausing, Qingshe chuckled. "Of course, if you desire truly absolute security, we could both dip into my shadow, but I don't think that's quite called for yet, eh?"
"And as for OPL, itself, as an asset in your quest?" Qingshe tilted her head. "Well, I can provide you two main options." She raised one finger. "Firstly, tools of restraint." Her shadow flowed up onto the table, expelling a collar-shaped device. "Like this, an implement to restrict the flow of OPL in a subject that wears it."
She snorted. "In short, it is a tool that could greatly weaken -if not outright seal- a wearer's Noble Arm. As a mercenary who travels around, I imagine you've never had the misfortune to encounter these personally, but some governments -provided they have the means- 'encourage' identified B and A-Rank Arms Masters to wear these out of 'concern for public safety' if they should be of a mind to shun military recruitment. Similarly, they are often used to keep dangerous prisoners manageable by the same entities."
Qingshe's tone was leading. "I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this... I could provide you a few devices of this nature, but it would be up to you to apply them. Of course, there's always the risk of them being used against you, but if ever you are granted the opportunity, these could make the difference in ensuring your sister doesn't evade capture before more secure means of containment are prepared."
Meanwhile, a second finger rose. "Secondly, if you think yourself inclined to the dedication to see the path through..." Qingshe paused, her lips quirking invitingly. "Then I would provide you the means to learn Occult Programming Language." Smirking, Qingshe leaned back in her chair. "Of course, knowing it exists only gets you so far, merely strips the curtain off the stage, but I would offer you the means to pluck the world's strings as well... all for the chance to rip your sister from the tendrils of the Downward Descent."
She let that sink in for a moment, before continuing. "Naturally, you might ask what guarantees I have that you wouldn't misuse that knowledge, and the truth is?" She chuckled. "None of worth. None but my own intuition. Call me reckless if you like, but I've got a good feeling about you, Miss Bernardino. And in the end... can I really call myself someone that leads by example if I don't show others how to follow me? What do I get out of teaching you?"
She paused then, allowing her expression to adopt an edge of forlornness. "I get a legacy... in some form or another. Of course, I would hardly leave such an arrangement exclusive if opportunity provided, but..." Her golden gaze rose to meet Cristina's eyes. "For all that I have learned, the secrets great and terrible I've uncovered, the wonders and horrors I am capable of... What does it matter in the end, unless I can ensure that my knowledge lives on beyond me?"
The Snake glanced out the window, her eyes tracing across the glimmering blue of the horizon, the vibrant ocean waves rippling in the distance. A smile crept across her lips, even as an old, cold fear trickled into her gut. "I've made many enemies in my lifetime... in the frighteningly short amount of time I've been an Arms Master. Looking back on it, in hindsight, it's... almost frightening how things have changed. I've made many sacrifices, more than my share of mistakes, but for all the bounty I've made off with, I can't help but worry it will all be for nought. I've done everything I can to reach the top, but I still can't help but wonder... When the devil comes to collect his due..."
Her gaze flicked back to Cristina. "-will it be enough?" Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "I've been thinking about it for a while... and I've been taking measures, looking for ways to ensure that if the worst should happen, my dream... and the treasure trove of knowledge that was bought at all too dear a price... will outlive me. To make a better world, even if I'm not there to see it."
After a moment, her eyes closed, and she chuckled, shaking her head. "But listen to me ramble on..." She smirked. "I apologize. This is about you, not me, so please excuse my digression." A small laugh escaped the Snake. "Sometimes, I've got more thoughts than I know what to do with, and a few extra slip out."
Tapping the stack of papers on the table, she grinned. "First thing's first. We focus on this and address the most practical means of strengthening you with any immediacy. Beyond that...?" She shrugged. "The offer is on the table. No more. No less. So, don't feel pressured to answer me now. There will be other days, and my door is always open."
In the comfort of her own mind, Cristina felt relieved that she is likely to personally deal with her sister, it was little bit selfish but she still wants to be the one face her. She wants to face her and not run away like a coward.
She just hopes that her sister wasn't into the latter, it would raise some uncomfortable questions.
Cristina raised an eyebrow, she expected her to eventually leak it? That everything is up to her?
"You are too different than what I expected, or maybe you are the same but I'm just knowing why." she laughed as she asked for a refill.
She just sigh as she looked at the stacks of papers, it was more closer on what she expected albeit in a scale she didn't see coming.
Cristina nodded at Qingshe's words, she made a point of taking safer missions perhaps if she had been more daring.
"I could use some of that, if I got overpowered, me having that or not won't change a thing. My teleportation was short ranged after all."
As for Qingshe's second offer, it was a large step probably the largest she would take in her life.
But she had no time for hesitation, it is either she do it now or she wouldn't do it.
"I accept your offer, do whatever it takes to make me stronger.
I can take it." She immediately took the stack of papers and begin answering.
Qingshe's lips quirked into a smile, as she refilled Cristina's cup obligingly. "Different? Yes, I suppose I would be a bit... if all you'd ever heard about me came from curated propaganda... be it positive or negative." Shaking her head, she gave a small laugh. "Although, while some get it all wrong... others barely scratch the surface in how all too right they are..." Whether that was positive or negative... she didn't elaborate.
Returning to the matter of the OPL restraints, Qingshe nodded. "I will provide you a few then. If you have a preferred format or ideas for what shape they should take for best implementation, please don't hesitate to raise the matter." She smirked. "Really, the worst I can do is shoot an idea down, but it never hurts to consider your options." Giving a small hum and waggle of her fingers. "The collar is the most secure generally, of course, but it's more easily identified. I can certainly make it fairly easy to conceal, but once you whip it out, I'm sure your sister might have some conception of what you're attempting... Food for thought."
At Cristina's unhesitating acceptance, Qingshe cocked a single brow highly and then grinned widely, chuckling, as her shadow bubbled atop the table and with a static-like crackle deposited an inch-thick book atop the surface with a pitch-black cover and raised, golden text across the front cover, reading: "Collective High Codic Conversion - A Primer to Occult Programming Language, by Lei Qingshe".
"This," the Snake replied, "will be your gateway into the art, and this-" She flicked one hand closed, a puddle of her humming ooze suddenly bubbling up from beneath her fingers, before she opened her palm to reveal a black USB-drive with glowing green lines crawling down the sides as per usual of Qingshe's cyberpunk aesthetic. "-will be your alternative." The ooze disappeared from her hand, as she held the drive out to Cristina. "Should your physical copy be stolen." She smirked cheekily. "I wouldn't worry too much about the digital copy being stolen. I've packed some... fairly nasty surprises into this little cutie for those that dabble in unauthorized access."
"I give these to you as aids for self-learning, but I will find whatever free time I can to tutor you personally." Chuckling, she added, "And even if I don't necessarily find time for us alone, I do consider myself quite the accomplished multitasker when needs must. Rest assured, you will not lack for my input should you have questions." Grinning, her fingers flicked in a show of sleight of hand, and a card slid across the table. "My personal contact details, to more easily keep in touch."
That said, Qingshe lapsed into quiet, avoiding giving Cristina distractions from filling out the stack of questionnaires. If ever she had questions or need of clarification, only then did Qingshe speak up, otherwise keeping to herself until there was nothing left to cover.
The forms themselves, if not for the context of the situation, might have read as much like a personality test as any actual power analysis. The questions covered a fairly wide spectrum and often touched upon moral quandaries and other if/then situational inquiries. Much of this, according to Qingshe, was meant-
"-to narrow down your most defining characteristics as a person... particularly those with a high chance of being what your Noble Arm "values" most in a User, the defining trait upon which hangs the crux of the reason it chose to appear in your hands."
Other questions, aside from the actual capabilities of her Noble Arm (in as fine detail as she could manage) included what she thought was her weapon's "element".
"Noble Arms typically have a centralized... Hmm, I don't know if you play video games, but I suppose 'skill tree' wouldn't be a poor comparison. It's under the umbrella of whatever theme your Noble Arm is rooted in that largely determines what sort of abilities it's most likely to develop."
And lastly...
"Based on what I've seen of the field reports, I already have some suspicions, but I won't openly speculate yet. Even so, we should confirm for sure what manner of Growth your Noble Arm is inclined to. Generally speaking, Noble Arms fall under 'breadth' or 'depth'. To use the skill tree comparison again, a depth type invests all their power into a singular tree or specialty... or perhaps specific series of 'programs', as it were. By doing so, they become a 'master of one' and are vastly more powerful in their area of expertise... This type, in my experience, breeds higher -if not top- tier Noble Arms on average. Conversely, breadth-types do not typically constrain themselves to a single skill tree. They branch out to others and gain a certain level of unpredictability to them, a flexibility under which radically opposite elements can coexist. They are jacks of many trades... and accordingly, they cannot approach the greatness of a specialist in any of them. And then, there's the fairly common middle ground type..."
All in all, reading between the lines, the Snake seemed rather... excited to have someone to actually say all this to. If one didn't know any better, they might think she was a bit pent up. Though she seemingly made an effort to keep herself on-task, once she got going, the words and knowledge flowed like water from her. For every question, she seemed to have both an actual answer and at least a couple speculations to share as a bonus.
"Then give me the strongest variant." Cristina answered before giving the idea a few more thought. "Can also make something into the form of a extendable handcuff, in the off chance I could catch her off guard." she added.
Cristina took a look at the book and the hard drive, here it is the secret that everyone will kill for to know literally in the palm of her hands. "I will make sure that it won't ever happen in the first place." she promised.
She also took the card and add her number on her phone, to confuse anyone who will try to get access into it she didn't use Qingshe's name or serpent on the number.
No one in the right mind will call her Linlin, she's pretty sure of that.
The questionnaire however proves to be little tougher than she expected until she realized that the only way to answer it was through sheer instinct and honestly.
My Noble Arm, I think it values my resolve specifically the resolve to keep finding my sister. I cannot think of any other trait.
As for element, it would be Space as most of my abilities themed around making use of portals to move around or limit my enemies. Weirdly enough, I felt that it was an incomplete descriptor. Mainly because it doesn't explain my ability to create orbs of fire, normally I would think of it as a bizarre off-shoot but given everything I hear now, it could likely as huge of a part of my space abilities, considering I recently learned how to light Sinagtala on the fire of said orbs.
As for last question...
Most of the time, it was 'depth' considering that my 'abilities' are derived from other abilities but...
My trump card, Mirage Space seems to have the ability to induce my growth through 'breadth' considering that being inside it grants me the power to fly, shoot sword beams and even teleport as long as I'm inside.
After answering the questions, she passed the paper to Qingshe.
Come to think of it, she never went to an actual school. That would mean that Qingshe is her first teacher.
That was weird, but it wasn't that bad.
She smiled a little as Qingshe was checking her papers.
Chuckling, Qingshe nodded at the custom request for the restraint. “Well… as long as you’re confident in your aim~.” Smirking, she nodded again and made a note, as somewhere deep in her shadow, her power processed and went about churning out an answer to the request. “I’ll provide you a collar and a pair of bracers with a detachable set of chain-links. Individually, they should be able to greatly weaken a wearer, and all together…”
She frowned and hummed in thought. “Well, they should probably be capable of rendering your sister incapable of doing much other than summoning her Noble Arm. Given how powerful her portal-making Noble Arm appears to be, I doubt it will do more than that, and if she has more than one Noble Arm now… it might be even less effective, being that there will be approximately twice as much energy that needs to be suppressed.”
Shaking her head, Qingshe smiled reassuringly. “Be cautious is all I am saying. Even if she appears to be completely at your mercy… don’t count her out. A single slip-up could mean her escape.”
She chuckled at Cristina’s promise and simply smiled in wait while the space-manipulator added the Snake’s number to her phone contacts. She continued to wait patiently while the forms were filled out and then received and reviewed them quietly, making small noises of acknowledgement.
Once she was done taking it all in and letting the details percolate, Qingshe nodded and set the papers down into a navy-blue binder she produced for that purpose, closing it and securing the contents from any prying eyes.
“On the matter of your Noble Arms’ value… I would speculate it has little to nothing to with your sister. Such a thing would be… how shall I say this… too specific?” She shook her head. “Not that it’s impossible per-say, but the ‘value’ of a Noble Arm is usually far more general. For example, the Love of Family as a whole wouldn’t be unexpected… but something relating to a specific individual?”
She frowned. “Now, that would be very unlucky in a long-term sense. Let us hope the actuality is far more practical, like general Resolve or Determination. Those would be more reliable. Still… whatever the case, given that you wield a natural Noble Arm, I’m sure any Value it has will be well-suited to your desires.”
“As for your Element… Hmm… Space makes sense, and as it does, I’m inclined to wonder about some of your conclusions. There’s your flight, which sounds less like a separate tree delve and more like you are simply altering your position in space… which has some interesting implications. Similarly, your “homing” shots are most likely warping space to course correct. Your teleportation? Also space warping, of course. I am curious about the explosive orbs, but I have to wonder if space warping isn’t somehow responsible for them as well, perhaps by combusting matter with compression? Of course, we should test this, but…”
Qingshe paused, and a glimmer entered her eyes. “Alternatively, these ‘fire orbs’ might be an expression of ‘Space’ in the galactic sense; that is, it could be an element drawn from the concept of stars shooting through space. If that is the case, it means your Element is one with a generous interpretation indeed~.”
Leaning back in her chair, Qingshe giggled merrily, a grin on her lips. “And assuming that either of my suppositions are correct, I would indeed classify your [Sinagtala] as a Depth-type, if not a Composite-type.” Humming, she tilted her head in thought. “The best way to confirm one way or the other though… Well, we’ll need to test just how much of your powers are actually, in fact, entirely centered around your so-called ‘trump card’. If I’m not incorrect, then I suspect that everything you do is actually drawn from that as the root ability, which you are only able to exercise to its fullest in a limited capacity. And if we were to pursue full mastery of that aspect, well…”
Chuckling again, Qingshe’s golden eyes glimmered with anticipation, a wide smile on her face.
“…I’m truly excited to find out what would happen.”
Cristina quickly took the collar and the bracers, she would need to adjust her pants to keep these items on her. A pouch or something will solve the storage issue.
She grimaced at Qingshe's words about her sister. She got it wrong? But she cannot think of any other words that felt right?
Hopefully it won't be a problem right?
"It might a very generous interpretation." she agreed noting how she acquired the Noble Arm.
[If searching for her sister meanings finding a needle in a star-filled night, then she will find her or die trying.
She clenched her fist as she listen to to her teacher's explanation, she could see her vision and it makes her excited for some reason.
For once, she felt like she was actually closing the gap.
"When will we start?" she asked.
Seeing Cristina’s grimace, Qingshe smiled reassuringly at her. “Don’t be disheartened. Even if we cannot identify your Noble Arm’s precise Value, just being true to yourself is often enough to align with it regardless.” She chuckled. “Speaking of, the very reason identifying your weapon’s Value is important is that the more your actions and desires align with that Valued Trait, the more easily your Noble Arm will be inclined to develop and improve your abilities.”
Leaning back in her chair, Qingshe sighed. “In a sense, your Value is a measure of your core self, and your Noble Arm recognizes that. It was made to fulfill that attribute. Therefore, you are rewarded for essentially… simply being you, really and truly, not allowing yourself to be fettered by restraints or the opinions of others. Arms Masters are, in a sense, empowered by doing whatever the hell they truly like, growing more powerful than their peers… which, as you might imagine, then conversely contributes to the reputation of powerful Arms Masters being unstable or forces of anarchy and disorder.” She snorted. “Which then creates fear that encourages others to try and regulate them harder, only for them to buckle back harder in return… A vicious cycle.”
Shaking her head, the Snake grinned wryly. “But I digress.” She chuckled at Cristina’s question. “When shall we start? Hah, well, though I expect we shan’t have much time for this leave, what with the diplomatic event encroaching so soon… If we want to make progress in a timeframe enough to be relevant…”
She grinned widely. “…When better than now~?”
“My God,” Callie pronounced to the empty room. Her portal had closed a few seconds ago; no danger of any complications now.
That’s about right… Spindle’s thought, tinged with uncharacteristic shock, echoed across her own. She’d tugged at the thread in her mind just about as soon as she’d managed to return to the barracks she’d found. The things she had been hearing at the time seemed important.
“I –” Callie took a breath, closed her eyes, let the wave of fatigue from keeping distant space connected for so long wash over her as she recentered herself. The biggest societal shift since industrialization was an accident caused by one guy playing with eldritch physics. Sure. Yep. That’s not disturbing.
Listening in on Qingshe and Cristina’s conversation hadn’t been especially difficult. Mischief Reef’s wide open sands and utilitarian grid layout made for some long sightlines; she’d been able to introduce herself eloquently to the young Emperor (Difficult to get a read – that theatricality both very clearly is and very clearly isn’t a mask…) over the course of a few minutes while comfortably keeping half an eye on the departing figures (and compartmentalizing the base part of herself that floated somewhere between maximizing the opportunity to appreciate one of them and being stunned by said appreciation). After politely excusing herself (“I think I’ll take a walk, get a sense of the place – yes, I saw it on the news a couple of times when I was younger, it looks so much better now the QRS has made it into a home and a haven as much as a base… Oh, no, thank you so much for offering, your Majesty, but I like getting to know somewhere by experiencing it myself, you know?), it had been similarly trivial for her to follow the pair at a distance of several hundred meters, relying on her usual combination of experience, over-tuned instinct and Charter’s vision to keep a bead on them while remaining beyond notice.
All that preparation had been in aid of a single portal, less than a centimeter wide, placed on the wall of the tread of Cristina’s left boot – barely visible even if you could get the angle to see it and only audible on the other side from the rush of blood through the inside of Callie’s ear. Granted, feeling the throb of the air in that ear each time the boot hammered on the ground hadn’t made for a pleasant jog back to the barrack block – nor had the guilt she’d felt over entirely violating Cristina’s personal boundaries, if she was being honest – but the intel had been…
Well. ‘worth it’ was perhaps the wrong way of looking at things.
‘earth-shattering’ might be a better fit.
So magic runs on code and Charter is a glorified programme. I mean, sure, but… Why tools of war? Are people just that prone to violence? I mean… Callie furrowed her brow. Then she sat up, blinking. Wait – how does all of this square with the whole ‘human potential’ aspect? Either humans are just innately, metaphysically special or he rewrote the codebase of the universe to treat them as special, and Hell would either of those be something! Sure, the ‘NA proves the soul’ argument’s been done to death on every NA forum and chatroom but… Did people even have souls before the 1940s? God… She covered her mouth, holding in a disbelieving laugh. Not that that concept means much anymore if one man could have changed humanity’s foundational metaphysics by accident!
Callie did laugh, now; the sound in the empty room and the whirl of her mind covered Spindle’s silence. By accident… And, if what she said was right, it’s a wonder that it hasn’t happened again. Or maybe it has! Maybe the stories of wizards and magic swords are true and every one is a precursor to this! And as more people find out, the likelihood of a rogue actor or an idealist doing something like it again grows… Her mind stopped dead. That amount of power being apparently in reach of those who could tap into OPL… Suddenly, granting magical powers almost at random to individuals dotted across the world seemed positively benign. If, instead of building something new within the universe’s nature, that first great act had been to undermine it…
The higher-ups have to know about all of this, right? Callie asked suddenly. They have to. I know we’ve got – I mean, I don’t know but we have to have people embedded in the Big Three, even if we didn’t know before then, right? If… For the second time in a minute, her mind screeched to a halt. If they had that kind of power, there was the potential to rewrite geopolitics in a truly literal sense. Would the CIA not use that power? Would not every organization in the world that got its hands on it? But they clearly haven’t, they clearly haven’t, so what’s going on? What made that first act special? Callie shook her head. And –
Augur.Spindle. Their thoughts clear and controlled.I’ve just received a directive from the very top of command. You’ve done well to secure the information you did and you will be briefed on its implications. Was that a hint of dread? Would have made sense, given what they’d both heard… For now, you’re exhausted from using your Noble Arm for such a period of time – you need to sleep, to recover so that you will be at maximum effectiveness for Obsidian’s next deployment.
I… She felt it, the growing weight of her shoulders, the fuzziness in her mind even as her thought jabbed at it, some new revelation waiting to pierce through. You aren’t wrong… I just don’t know how well I’ll be able to rest with so much –
Sleep.
Tiredness crashed over her. Sure, sure… Sluggish, weighty, Callie clambered onto the bunk. Her head dropped back against the pillow; her eyes fell shut.
As she slipped away, the last thing she felt in the midst of the haze was a thread pulling in her mind.
Just a little something I felt like cooking up... a sheet for one of the present reoccurring antagonists, who may just be getting more limelight soon.
"Good grief, can't a guy build a tidy nest egg securely these days?" Appearance: A man of fairly average height and an unimposing presence, Cao Bao exudes the aura of a slacker, messy brown hair, hands often stuffed in his dark long coat's pockets, a slouch in his shoulders, as he sits on whatever's available with an ever-burning cigarette lazily hanging from his lips. His sharp brown eyes nonetheless indicate a keen awareness of his surroundings that belies his air of nonchalance, and the presence of his Noble Arm is rarely found absent from the sheathe at his hip, no matter the setting. As far as Arms Masters go, his garb is not particularly loud, even if it isn't really any sort of military standard. Cao Bao's appearance doesn't tend to draw much attention in a room filled with his peers except, perhaps, in the capacity that looking less eccentric among those that are ironically makes him stick out like a sore thumb by comparison. Height: 5'8" Weight: 145 lbs. Build: Lean and somewhat muscular.
Name: Cao Bao (That Camping Bastard, The Unseen Shadow, Zodiac Candidate) Age: 25 Nationality: Chinese
Noble Arm Name & Appearance: [Blueblood], an almost innocuous scimitar with a dark, navy-blue hilt and general lack of adornment. There is something nearly sinister about the humble appearance of this weapon.
Warning: Intelligence suggests that the only reason Cao Bao has not been officially classified as an A-Rank Arms Master by the PRC is a, quote: "lack of motivation and merit". The limited nature of sightings of him and -at present- unconfirmed rumors of his capabilities leave his threat level in flux. Regardless, a confrontation with Cao Bao should be treated as nothing less than an A-Rank threat in practice, especially in the understanding that he is usually paired as a supporting unit for another powerful Arms Master.
Noble Arm Rank: B
Power: A- Speed: A- Range: F+ (Summon Range & Destructive Projection) Persistence: B Precision: C- Potential: D+ (Pending motivation)
Noble Arm Characteristics:
Value: Self-Interest.
Element: [Greed]
Growth: Depth
Type: Support
Range: "Mid"
Savescum: While the Noble Arm is summoned, he passively “marks” anything he touches (including himself), saving a mental “blueprint”. His power will automatically “overwrite” a preexisting blueprint with an updated version if he contacts something again for longer than 1-2 seconds (or if he actively wishes to overwrite it). At any time or place thereafter, he can "reapply" a blueprint and transfer the existing mass back into the state it was when he last "scanned" it. He deconstructs, transfers and reconstructs the matter in what appears to be an instant through open space from one place to another, sliding the subatomic particles through just about any obstacle to reach a point within 100 feet of him. Of note, an object larger than his summon radius will still transfer in full. Objects he transfers retain all traits they had when scanned, including preexisting damage, inertia and more, letting him fire hails of ammunition and weaponry he has “tagged” midair/flight. It should be noted, this only affects targets physically. For whatever reason, things like memories will never degrade under this effect, nor could he resurrect someone that has already died, their soul long gone. In a similar vein to not being able to affect souls, he cannot “mark” other Noble Arms. “Marks” on living beings wear off after a few days, but nonliving targets permanently become his "property".
Intelligent: Just because Cao Bao is lazy doesn't mean he isn't smart. He simply tries to do things in the most efficient way possible, expending the least amount of effort. His mind is a cold, razor-sharp machine, capable of feats that exemplify a genuinely high natural IQ, some of which are his extensive library of learned languages and his capacity to do advanced mathematic calculations mentally. Observant: Cao Bao maintains an incredibly high -and incredibly paranoid- awareness of his surroundings, especially in potential combat situations. Very little escapes his awareness, as he tactically assesses his situation, continually mentally marking the positions of assets and hazards, along with potential escape routes. Pain Tolerance: After... extensive and often ruthless testing of his ability in the past, combined with no small number of combat situations where he accrued injury, Cao Bao is fairly inured to the concept of pain. He dislikes and avoids it, of course, but he is no civilian that's liable to go into shock or be disabled by suffering a little agony. Polylingual: Can fluently speak, read and write Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Filipino and English. Soldier: Though he lazes about wherever he can, it's more a demonstration of a lack of will than any capability to be disciplined. Cao Bao has nonetheless gone through militant training in the past and is an acceptable hand at CQC, swordplay, gun handling, survival skills and a bevy of necessary standardized skills. Occult Programming Language V1: Unconfirmed, but there are suggestions that pursuing the OPL arts is something a man of Cao Bao's intellect and academic excellence might be inclined to pursue in his downtime. It has certainly not been ruled beyond his capabilities were he to be motivated.
Cao Bao is a lazy coward. That is what many would like to say. The man himself would protest that he simply has a highly developed sense of self-preservation and common sense. Cao Bao is a cautious and paranoid man, more aware than anyone else that all it would take to end him is one sufficiently lucky critical shot. As such, despite being fairly unrepentantly crass and apathetic, he is far from overconfident. He fights like a cornered animal, ruthless and efficient, carefully analyzing troublesome elements of opposition and removing them first, one step at a time. He favors one-on-one fights, ambushes, hit and runs and kiting retreats, preferring to scatter his foes and pick them off individually. Cao Bao views himself in all situations as an unlucky underdog fighting against people out of his league, even when he clearly overpowers them, and this lends him to being particularly dangerous to even those that see him as powerful, as his attitude is at odds with what is expected.
Cao Bao values nothing more than the pursuit of a quiet and secure retirement, and his sole motivation to comply with China’s war can be summarized as "that's a lot of zeroes"... and, of course, the fact that safely leaving the military in the current "climate" is easier said than done. He is a rational and practical thinker, who possesses a fairly notable lack of malicious scumbaggery compared to many of his comrades. He is someone who could almost be called a fairly decent guy if not for his allegiances and willingness to comply with even the most morally bankrupt orders to keep his position secure (though he may violate the spirit of those orders if left wiggle room). He is not cruel for cruelty’s sake, but he is still perfectly willing to engage in cruelty and dirty tactics for a strategic advantage. And when evil is committed in front of him, he is typically too selfishly apathetic to bother opposing it if it would compromise the integrity of his goals. Outside that, when he has the “luxury”, he can almost be called altruistic.
He is someone that religiously avoids risks unless specifically ordered to take them and will quickly retreat if he is not absolutely assured of his victory, unless he has no other reasonable course of action. He is also prone to summoning allies to him for aid if he feels outnumbered or outgunned and can’t afford to retreat. Indeed, it can be said that his sharp mind and proclivity for "choosing life" make Cao Bao an immensely dangerous foe in combination with the skillful use of his power. On which note, it can also be said that the only reason his power has not evolved further up till now is his sedentary and unambitious mindset. Were he to ever exhibit a genuine proclivity to improve himself for the sake of his ambitions, his power would only grow more dangerous still and truly push him into the realm of his A-Rank peers.
Likes: Lazing about, relaxing, cigarettes, a good book, peace and quiet, money, acquiring things.
Dislikes: Foolishness, pointless maliciousness, danger, exerting more effort than something is worth, wasting time (on work).
Fears: Death. Losing everything he's worked for.
Cao Bao's rise to prominence is a thing regarded as dangerously innocuous, much like the man himself. What intelligence can be gathered about his origins paint him in a light that suggests his calculating, careful nature has been with him even in his youth. Public schooling records draw increasingly clear lines to indicate a brilliant, dangerous mind lurking behind his image of a slacker, grades reflecting a calculated campaign of doing the absolute minimum to get exactly what he wanted from his future. Before joining the military, he was on track to find a lucrative position in banking, a path paved in part by the comparatively abnormal effort put into mathematics and economic adjacent schooling.
It is unknown exactly when he first awakened his Noble Arm, but it is suspected to have been within the period of 2014-2016 at approximately age 17, during and after which he -according to indications of his self-preserving nature- lay low and used his powers solely for personal gain. It is unlikely that his entry into the Chinese military was a decision made of his own motivation, much like many Arms Masters recruited at veritable gunpoint. It is suspected that in the course of experimenting with the convenience of his new abilities over the years he went unknown that enough indications of an Arms Master's presence were eventually raised by carelessness or public incident reports to see him outed and recruited in 2017. This, however, is merely speculation.
What can be seen of his abrupt change in career to the military thereafter shows no signs of duress or rebellion. By all accounts, his recruitment and integration into the PLA's forces was a flawless operation, to which he displayed none of the typical indicators of dissatisfaction or mutiny, falling in line without hesitation and becoming a loyal asset to the CCP's agenda.
In the years that followed, his records of service paint him as a contrastingly exemplary and unremarkable unit. Though he always accomplished his duties to the letter, records show that it was always to the absolute minimum, never once going above and beyond the call of duty. What "incidents" can be found tend to be those he escaped on technicalities and a keen awareness and manipulation of the rules. Comparing records to service peers, he demonstrates exceptionally lower cases of sustaining injury or being subjected to disciplinary measures, and those times he was disciplined were never incidents severe enough to impact his career trajectory.
Taken together, he can be viewed as a ruthless and subtle ladder climber, never overtly pursuing promotion but accepting and adjusting to them without complaint when granted. It is this very capacity to adjust to new roles and responsibilities so easily that belies his scheming, self-serving nature, that of a man who will always do the absolute minimum to maintain the security of his position, yet performing that same "minimum" to excellence. The apparent acknowledgement of this tendency by his own superiors is what is suspected to have led to the bulk of his promotions, acting as effective gradual probes of his competence and true value as an asset, and Cao Bao has yet to truly disappoint.
In this way, Cao Bao has somehow remained a figure of outwardly unremarkable nature, presenting himself as an underachiever, yet having climbed the ranks of the PLA in sinister silence, always lurking in the background of his flashier and more famous allies, downplaying his own competence and capabilities and using his allies as effective meat shields against renown. Cao Bao is truly the shadow of China's ace Arms Masters, and one shudders to imagine what he might be capable of if forced into the limelight in his own right.
Current Goal: Short Term: To survive... by any means necessary. Long term: To retire from the military and enjoy a quiet, sedentary civilian life, untroubled by enemies and safety risks.
"Miss PMC" wasn't clicking for me, so here's a different WIP, which I seem to have gotten a lot more successful momentum for.
"Good grief, what's the point of being a rebel if you're going to fall in with the military. Ah well... Let's just get this over with. Never saw myself in the mercenary business, but needs must. I'll make those guys pay for ruining my vacation." Appearance: A young woman not far into adulthood with a clear punk aesthetic, Mia has long black hair streaked heavily with pink, black-painted lips and nails and pale skin, onto which is tattooed a red heart on her left forearm and a black spade under her left eye. She appears to be wearing pink contacts that turn even her pupils a pale shade; though there is a nonzero chance these are -in fact- not contacts at all, given her status as an Arms Master (she never clarifies). She wears an eclectic combination of things, among which is a fishnet undershirt, a sleeveless black top, a studded collar, fingerless fishnet gloves faux(?)-ripped black jeans, metal-studded black combat boots, and a collection of necklaces, bracelets and bangles. Overall, she very much carries herself with the air of a rebel, often wearing a deadpan stare or frown. It's not unusual for her to be wearing earpods or headphones, usually blaring something loud enough to drown out anyone talking to her but usually quiet enough to keep her musical preferences private. Height: 5'7" Weight: 130 lbs. Build: Fit and athletic.
Name: Mia Mathers (Croc Puncher; Tokay Witch) Age: 20 Nationality: Floridian American (Mercenary)
Noble Arm Name & Appearance: [Senbonzakura], a pair of gold and green twinned "brass" knuckles made of some form of far more durable metal. The grips of the knuckles each have a pair of golden skulls decaled.
Noble Arm Rank: B
Power: B Speed: A- (Other living creatures using her body) Range: F+ (Petal control range) Persistence: C Precision: B Potential: D
Noble Arm Type, Element, and Range: Melee Transmutation Support-type.
Sakura Transmutation: The primary ability of the Noble Arm is to transform anything either it or its user touches into pink Sakura petals under the user's telekinetic control. Viable targets for the transformation can be nearly anything with a tangible capacity to act on the world; it is unable to target conceptual subjects like "gravity", and though it is unable to transform other Noble Arms, it has an enhanced capacity to damage them. This transformation is only applicable on direct, immediate physical contact with either the Noble Arm or Mia's body while it's manifested. The transformation does not apply to whole targets, but rather "shaves away" the zone of direct contact. Mass is not a factor, merely the amount of space a target occupies. The transformation is very fine in application, able to separate a target into select components or otherwise draw an offending target away from a subject (allowing the extraction of poisons, for example).
Transformation speed is roughly "instant" in most situations regarding Mia, the Noble Arm itself or nonliving targets around her; however, other living creatures are slightly resistant to her power, requiring prolonged contact of roughly 1-2 seconds to transform unless it is with direct contact from her Noble Arm (and not Mia's body). The transformation is further inherently temporary and must inevitably revert, either manually at Mia's behest or automatically after a 24 hour period. Transformed petals drop exactly where they are on reversion and do not automatically move to reconstruct whatever they once were. Once reverted, Mia loses any awareness of an individual target's exact location beyond what she's bothered to memorize.
The petal transformation is inherently nonlethal in direct function. Transformed or otherwise power-severed body parts do not have any innately deadly effects on a target. A body with a transformed heart can still pump blood, and a transformed lung can still be breathed with, for example. Similarly, a body part reverted at range still functions just fine, still working to the benefit of the owner. However, equally, wounded body parts can still affect the whole at range as well, and a crushed heart (for example) could still pretty certainly kill the owner at range. There is the further caveat that a transformed sensory organ (eye, nose etc) does deny that sense to the owner. A fully transformed body is not affected by the lack of ability to breathe or otherwise sustain itself, entering an unconscious form of "stasis"; Mia is the only creature that naturally retains consciousness in this state. This "stasis" can apply small scale as well, able to temporarily delay the effects of a transformed wounded site to allow the subject to keep fighting or otherwise survive long enough to seek medical attention.
The reversion of the transformation can also be used in a limited healing capacity, able to transform severed targets, press them together and then revert them in a re-fused state. This method cannot truly manifest any lost mass or revert the physical state of mass that was damaged prior to transformation. Therefore, wounds like incineration or burns -for example- are beyond its purview to resolve beyond delaying their effects on the rest of the body. It can, however, be used to fuse mass together even if it didn't used to be connected. As normal, this doesn't inherently seem to have any strictly negative effects. In fact, it even makes it possible for Mia to easily transplant doner organs to a recipient in need if she has access to them. More dangerously, however, this can be used to fuse together things that have no holy right to coexist, the results of which can be unnerving to behold.
Petals created by this power are under the user's complete awareness and telekinetic control. This is packaged with an high multitasking capacity that continually scales to the number of petals currently created, allowing the individual manipulation of all of them at once.
Polylingual: Can fluently speak, read and write English, Filipino and Japanese. Street Fighter: Though she has some grounding in actual martial arts taken to ostensibly "burn off her aggression" in her youth (it failed), Mia can be primarily said to be a savvy practitioner of dirty street fighting, making her a fairly brutal combatant with an eye for improvised weapons and possessed of a pretty strong pain tolerance. This is packaged with a fairly keen awareness of her surroundings, and she often makes intuitive use of her environment. Straight A's: Say what you will about her attitude or griping, but Mia scored well in school nonetheless. Very well. It's not unusual for her to whip out some obscure science factoid to exert to her advantage. She's an able (and dangerous) chemist, provided the materials, and her knowledge of biology and nature makes her a surprisingly capable ad-hoc medic or surgeon. She's definitely the sort of person you'd want to get lost in the woods with. Lock Picking: Mia first got into lock-picking to get into places at school she wasn't allowed for both the forbidden thrill of it and in seeking quiet places to be left alone. She later took up lock-picking as a hobby, ordering all sorts of locks off the internet to pick and eventually becoming a rather dab hand at it.
A bit of a loner and a punk, Mia has a sharp, acerbic tongue and an air of intuitive ruthlessness to her. She values her personal space and is slow to make friends, being the sort of person to spend social gatherings glued to her phone and only speaking if spoken to, even drowning out such potential "riveting" conversation partners with headphones/earbuds if she can get away with it. Though she isn't a malicious person by nature and does carry a sense of justice, she is fairly self-interested, the sort of person who gets annoyed about advertisements asking for donations to starving people in other countries. As long as something doesn't immediately affect her, she is usually perfectly happy to turn a blind eye and not waste her time investing emotions in something beyond her reach. This can potentially make her come across as callous or even cruel, but ultimately, this is truly a sign that she secretly has a bleeding heart. She simply chooses to look the other way to spare herself feeling compelled to do something.
Once so compelled, however... Well, Mia has a shockingly opinionated and ruthless sense of justice, having gotten into no small amount of fistfights in her youth. Becoming an Arms Master did very little to curb such incidents. She has a vindictive side to her, quite willing to go out of her way to make those that earn her ire suffer if she can, and between her intellect and flexible power, she is quite capable of being... creative. Beyond that, though she is slow to befriend, she is very loyal once her trust is earned. Yet, conversely, she is quick to take offense at perceived betrayals, expecting equal loyalty to what she gives others. She can be glib and acerbic in turns, yet buried beneath all her thorns and neuroses, she is at heart a girl that just wants to live a peaceful, quiet life... Were but reality so kind.
Likes: Independence. Sabaton, along with a wide variety of other music. Sweet and spicy food. Personal space. Reading and writing. Peace and quiet. Taking out her anger on deserving targets. Learning. Outwitting someone. Winning games (she's competitive).
Dislikes: Authority exerted towards her. Idiots. Pointless cruelty. Musicals (they always destroy her SOD). War. Risking her life. Losing in a battle of intellect. Losing games (she's very competitive).
Fears: Death. Threats to her free will.
Born in Florida in the United States, even from her youth, Mia has been a girl that seemed "done" with everything. She grew up active, adventurous and opinionated, a headstrong girl that was often liable to mess with things she shouldn't, which -given the wildlife of her home state- was often a problem. Her overly honest nature, however, led to her having trouble connecting with her peers, and her school years came with the misfortune of a protracted series of bullying events that led to her becoming more withdrawn, jaded and aggressive, becoming known as a punk and troublemaker, starting fights and making sure no-one thought that they could hide behind silly things like "social standards" if they earned her ire. Insults were returned with punches, and she came close to being expelled many times before she both tempered herself and earned enough of a reputation to ward off many from trying their luck.
Yet, for all that, she cared little. She made her stance clear, proved she wasn't going to be trod on without reprisal. She was going to make her way in the world how she saw fit, and screw whoever told her otherwise. She was supposed to change for the world? Nonsense. She'd make the world change for her. And it was this daring "my way or the highway" attitude that eventually drove her to manifest her Noble Arm, granting her a power that would, indeed, allow her to rather literally change anyone and anything that might get in her way. This, of course, served merely to reinforce that her way of living was correct; though, she did not advertise her status as an Arms Master and openly abuse her power. By the time she awakened her Noble Arm at age 18, she was in college and had learned to (mostly) temper her impulses. The (relative) rationality of young adulthood led her to seek a quiet, undisturbed life, unconcerned with anything but bettering herself and securing a comfortable future, no matter how mad the world was going in the background.
Having always been something of an adventurous sort as much as she was often a homebody, in her young adulthood, Mia began taking trips away from home between college classes. Finding academics a drag and the lauding of their importance to "ever get anywhere in life" overblown, Mia started taking her education a little slower, taking her time to "enjoy the ride", as it were. In the meanwhile, she got into traveling and studying other cultures, taking her classes online and going from merely bilingual to polylingual. Her first overseas trip was to Japan, where she soon came to agree with the adage that it was "nice to visit but perhaps not to live there", at least by her American cultural sensibilities.
More recently, however, this adventurous spirit found Mia in a bind.
Leaving her pet tokay gecko, Princess, back home with a "lucky" pet-sitter, Mia was on vacation, visiting a pen-pal in the Philippines shortly before the rebellion in Bagulo kicked off destructively. In the chaos of that event, Mia's pen-pal was killed, and the place she was staying in with them burned down, resulting in the destruction of much of her personal property, including her travel visas and much of her local currency, leaving her stuck without a way to return home legally.
More than a little furious with the situation, not more than a day later, Mia had eventually resigned herself to make contact with PGNS loyalists and strike up a deal to acquire new travel documentation in addition to the monetary compensation for acting as "hired help" to resolve this rebellion crisis. So, it would be that Mia found herself joining arms with the military, an institution the rebellious girl would normally passionately hate working with, in pursuit of financial stability... and the extraction of justice upon the traitorous Danggal Family, whose actions resulted in the death of her friend and ruination of her vacation.
Current Goal: Short Term: Survive and complete this mission. Long term: Exact justice and escape this war alive.
Military or Civilian Rank: Civilian "Mercenary" Volunteer
xVampire3go
esqueleto
Guardian Angel Haruki
Neziul
Dane
Auz
Dark Cloud
