Application for neosapien

[carvedintostone]

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Tex
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: Yes.
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: Nope, I'm well over 18!
CONTACT: texside @ Plurk, but I use it less and less. Texside#8159 on Discord
CHARACTERS PLAYED: None at the moment!

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Lora; in the AU, it's Lora Collins.
CANON: Xenoblade Chronicles 2
CANON REFERENCE: She has a wiki page here.
AGE: 27
GENDER: Female
CHARACTER TYPE: Meta-human
APPEARANCE: An image of Lora (and a friend, Haze) can be found here. She does wear more modern clothing in this AU; she is not a quasi-Eastern knightly type. However, it is broadly similar (white shirt, skirt, and armored pauldrons, gloves, and boots). Also, her disaster of a hairstyle. She tells people she has given herself a lot of haircuts and they're like "yeah, I know."

PERSONALITY: Lora is a kind, caring soul who has lived a difficult and lonely life. She does her best to cover this up. This is equal parts feeling that she needs to keep moving, not letting past tragedies and losses drag her down, and equal parts trying to not let herself succumb to depression. She is a very resilient person. This isn't to say that she has internal turmoil, that she privately feels angry at a world that denied her a chance to know her mother and a father figure that tried to murder her, and that she can be in a crowded city and still feel lonely. Lora knows how to push it aside, keep walking, and to be truly grateful for those that she has.

She is pragmatic and serious, because she has spent so much time on her own. Since age ten, Lora had to look out for herself. Her circle of people closest to her -- in canon, this was her Blades, Jin and Haze -- was very small. Lora is a social creature, but hard experience has taught her to not be too quick to trust. She acts calm, composed, and friendly -- but like a consummate professional. Lora is in touch with her emotions, and she knows the proper way to behave.

Which is why it can be a surprise when that breaks down. Lora is passionate, energetic, and outgoing, and she hides it under calm, friendly professionalism. She cares deeply about making a place for herself in the world -- and sharing her life with people she loves. She also wants to make the world a better place; she is a heroic sort, who can't just overlook the suffering of others. She wants to build a community around herself.

She usually keeps a lid on it, but she can get extremely excited and excitable. Lora is not above gushing when something makes her happy. In canon, when she is appointed a knight, she is practically hopping up and down with joy at her new appointment. She is also confident in herself enough to be forward and open with her emotions with those she trusts. We see this when she finds her mother's grave and she doesn't hesitate in hugging Jin, or when she teases him after he says a smooth line. Lora doesn't show this side around strangers, or when she doesn't feel comfortable, but she will with those she trusts.

She is driven to protect those that she sees as abandoned or forgotten. This reminds her of a man who could have been like a father, that instead cast her out and tried to kill her. That experience motivated her to try to take in orphans, lost souls, and others. She can be pushy about this -- sometimes against their wishes, or trying much too hard -- but Lora does care, and genuinely wants to help. Similarly, when people she cares about are threatened, Lora can grow angry.

This includes getting angry at those she cares about, if they're careless or endangering herself. An angry Lora is a scary thing; she is short, incisive, and prone to cutting to the heart of the matter. We see this when Mythra pushes a fight with Brigid; Lora berates her and calls her a "simpleton," much to Mythra's shock. This anger can come as a surprise, given how Lora is often carefully composed.

POWERS & ABILITIES: Lora is a meta-human, who is able to manipulate fire. Unfortunately for Lora, if she does this without focus and design, Lora's fire would be an unfocused burst of flame and heat that would quickly waft away. In an unfocused form, Lora can't light a candle -- because she would likely melt the candle wax away from the wick in so doing. She could light a camp fire, or cause a room's detritus to catch fire, but she cannot really make a beam or ball of fire, then hurl it. Part of her mutation, mercifully, includes a resistance to flame -- so she wouldn't burn her hand or self (though this doesn't include her hair or fingernails).

Lora's strength is when she puts flame into a focused form. With it, she can make and maintain a distinct shape. When she was little, she made a very simple dagger of flame. Now, she can do objects up to the size of a car. The fire can stick around for as long as it has a fuel source, which it burns more slowly than nature would normally suggest. The atmosphere is good enough to maintain a weapon for about an hour; something larger, like a person-sized ball of flame, might only be a few seconds without feeding it something to fuel it.

However, doing more than a simple geometric shape requires that Lora do some design work. Objects she forms in a panic are simple; they are visually one piece, usually a ball or a relatively straight line. She needs to focus to give it an edge. What works best for Lora is to really pull out a sketch pad and design schematics. This is how she does her usual array of shapes: she has a book with design drawings of a sword, a braided whip, a staff, and some other common objects (various-sized balls, a simple wall, and spikes), which she studies regularly and commits to memory. The advantage is that this gives them cross guards, visual motifs, and other useful shapes. The disadvantage is that Lora needs to spend time to really make something unique. She cannot (due to a lack of engineering knowledge) make things with complicated moving parts. If she spent a few weeks on it, and consulted with an expert, she might be able to make a crossbow with her power.

Typically, Lora can maintain one weapon and a one medium-sized (with about as much mass as her) or proportionately smaller fire objects at once. Doing more requires active focus, and Lora would have to limit her movement and really focus. She will usually err, in a fight, on the side of making a weapon, and then creating small objects as necessary. Those small objects are usually flat platforms to jump on (to assist with ridiculous aerial acrobatics), and occasionally a ball, a relatively small wall, or other object.

It should be noted that these objects have mass. This is done by condensing the slowly-used fuel behind the flame, making the air more dense. As the fuel burns down, the object will grow more wispy and more indistinct. Parrying with a weapon that is running out of energy might result in the weapon being cut through, and hitting Lora instead.

Lora also has years of experience in fighting. She has worked as a mercenary abroad, away from New Gate City. She is a talented fighter, and she is exceptional (if not superhuman) in terms of her dexterity. Lora is not a big person, and she has trained to be extremely fast and quick on foot. She makes up for her lack of height and build with her gift. To this end, she has trained extensively with using the sword, braided whip, and staff -- and switching between them. She owns physical practice weapons of these, and she keeps a knife on her person.

She also has commissioned fire-proofed gloves and boots, along with some fire-proofing for her clothing. Lora is also trained in survival and tracking skills, which she has used in urban and other environments. She also knows the basics of using technology; she isn't a hacker, but she is reasonably proficient in using computers and vehicles.

AU HISTORY: Lora Collins was born in England, in whatever became of London in the current age. She grew up in the poorer district, raised by a single mother who worked as a domestic worker for a rather nasty, brutish thug named Gort. She never knew her father; he had left by the time she was old enough to notice.

At age ten, though, everything changed. Lora manifested a fiery dagger, which was (literally) rough around the edges. Her mother was shocked. Gort was horrified -- and then furious. He ran a household; he did not have room for a meta-human, and did not want one. So, he grabbed her about the throat and started choking her. Lora, in a panic, made a less rough around the edges dagger of fire. She cut his arm off with it.

She fled into the streets, then. The next few years were hard, but her ability as a meta-human allowed Lora to find work as a mercenary and a hired hand. She kept to herself and she had hard experiences, as one might expect. Lora, however, also met mentors and Metas that guided her. She adjusted to mercenary life; by the time she was in her twenties, the pain of abandonment and betrayal remained, but she had a good head on her shoulders. She did, however, have trouble making money consistently.

She encountered the problems experienced by meta-humans in her mercenary work. She worked for corporations, failing governments, and individuals. She encountered discrimination directly; Lora's human appearance allowed her to hide her true nature, at times, and witness it. When she learned of the Neo Sapien Organization...

It caught her eye. It caught that sense of optimism that Lora had never quite shook. She decided that, maybe, the NSO was a chance to change things. She left for North America when she finished her current contract, then arrived in New Gate City. She sought them out and joined up with them, being reasonably forthright about her past -- though she left out some of the more painful personal details.

Now, Lora works for them, both as security and general assistance; she also helps out in those extra-legal ways. She arrived about a month ago, and is still somewhat new to New Gate City. She does take the occasional side job to earn money.

SAMPLES

Several TDM threads here!