Application for The Games

[scoundrelhater]

OUT of CHARACTER
Name: Lampdevil
Other characters: Haruto Soma, Felicity Yoshida

IN CHARACTER
Name: Laia Martinez
Fandom: Phantasy Star Universe
Canon point/AU: Mid-episode 3, shortly after assuming the position of President.
Journal: scoundrelhater
Age: 26
History: Laia's page at PSUPedia

(Note: Due to a lack of English-language information about Laia's pre-game background, I've had to take a best guess at her childhood and early days as a Guardian. In addition, the history information on the wiki is pretty sparse, so I've done up a more informative history here.)

Laia Martinez remembers little about her childhood. Tripartite Government records note that she was an orphan on Moatoob, and that there are several month-long gaps in social worker reports before her eventual adoption by the Guardian Obell Dallgun. Classified GUARDIANS records made by Dallgun fill in those gaps. Laia's parents are unknown, as she was found abandoned on a hospital bench when she was an infant. She was sent to an orphanage, and then was put into a foster home in Dagora City while awaiting possible adoption. The spotty patch on her records is from when she was a bit under 3 years old, where her current foster parents went AWOL, affiliating themselves with a drug smuggling Rogue family. The GUARDIANS were called in to put an end to that family's actions, and Laia was found by the assigned team as they infiltrated the Rogue base. The little girl was obviously ill-treated and underfed. The others on the team were ready to shoo her away to safety, but Dallgun offered her candy, and talked kindly to her. Laia, in return, showed the team a secret passage into the core of the Rogue's hideout.

When the Rogues were cleared out and apprehended, Dallgun trusted the authorities on Moatoob to take proper care of the girl. But when he returned to the Colony satellite and did some research, he saw how poorly children tended to fare in the system. It wrenched at his heart, the thought of that girl finding herself in a situation just as bad as the one he rescued her from. Impulsively, he jumped through the hoops and slashed through the red tape necessary to adopt Laia. He was a high-ranking Guardian, he was rising in the organization and his pay was more than enough to start supporting a family, he could be choosy about his mission scheduling... he was confident that he could make it work.

To his credit, it did more or less work, but not without many tears and much pain. Laia was a difficult child, much more complicated to handle on a long-term basis. She had problems with attachment, and did not truly believe that her new father wouldn't abandon her. She tested him every inch of the way, acting out and being destructive. Dallgun weathered it all, and little by little, they grew closer. Things calmed. They were never perfectly peaceful, but they were better. They became a semi-normal functional family. Laia may have never been fully able to shake the fear that she wasn't as good a daughter as her father deserved, and Dallgun found himself struggling to find the time to be as good a father as he wanted to be. But what's a family without some difficulties?

Laia grew older, Dallgun rose further in rank, and the family expanded. He had found that his daughter brought him joy, and his work continued to bring him into situations where there were other unfortunate children that he could help. Over the years he adopted three more children, one from each of the Gurhal system's sentient races, providing Laia with three younger siblings. This delighted Laia enormously. She was happy to have sibling playmates, and felt proud to be helping them and treating them well, just as her dear father had treated her. She was a loving, stern, protective big sister.

Laia was 9 when her father ascended to the Presidency of the GUARDIANS Security Company. He had earned himself a reputation for wise decisions and cool thinking, and was the sort of progressive, tolerant man that the public wanted at the helm of the organization. His diverse, loving family contributed to that image. Some in the public clucked their tongues. Shame on that man, using those children for the sake of his advancement! Laia overheard such things, and it disgusted her. Father loved them for them, each one of them was adopted because his heart was much too big, not because he wanted to be president. And when her family wasn't being mocked, it was being catered to. They were rich, and comfortable, and had the best of the best of everything. And while it was nice and it was fun...

...was it fair? As a teenager, Laia wasn't sure that it was. She had finished her basic education, and her father was encouraging her to continue on to university... but she balked. She argued, and shouted, and countered that she'd rather be shot out the airlock than have to read more books and write more exams. She was going to do something real, just like him, and join the GUARDIANS. And she was going to do it without him. Without instructors or classmates treating her differently because of her family connections. She wanted to succeed as herself, not ride on his coat tails. After much argument and many hard words said on both sides, he caved. He had already done his best to keep his family out of the media's eye. With a lack of recent images and footage of his daughters, it only took a small amount of record manipulation for Laia to enroll in the GUARDIANS academy with the level of anonymity that she desired.

Laia took to her studies like a fish to water. She was a natural fighter, and was soon practicing with advanced-rank weapons. Her combative attitude didn't win her many friends. Mostly, it earned her disciplinary marks and a reputation as a dangerous woman to cross. But she had an aptitude for leadership and handling difficult on-mission situations. When Laia talked, people listened. She was harsh and demanding, but she demanded what had to be done. When she graduated and became a full-fledged Guardian, she was regularly assigned to lead teams. Her rank advanced, her savings built, her fame (and infamy) grew and grew... life was decent, if not good.

Then came the SEED. On the 100th anniversary of the Tripartite Peace Treaty, all of the planets of the Gurhal system were showered with hostile creatures from the depths of unknown space. They struck like meteorites, then exploded from their pods and began infecting the land and creatures of each impact site. The GUARDIANS, the Alliance Military Forces (AMF), and Communion of Gurhal (COG) forces were all deployed in response, and they slowly began beating the SEED forces back. Laia herself had a large role to play in Operation Firebreak, an effort to put out SEED-fires on multiple planets within the system. As solutions were found and the SEED were apparently sealed, the GUARDIANS could take a breather and lick their wounds. They had lost good men and women to the alien invaders, and their ranks needed to be replenished. New recruits needed to be trained, and new teachers were needed to train them. Laia was offered the job, and she took it gladly.

When training one of her many newly assigned recruits, she stumbled across the first few breadcrumbs of a trail leading towards a dangerous conspiracy. A simple decontamination mission on Neudaiz became a rescue, and then a fight against a notorious Rogue family, and then an encounter with the outlaw (and former Guardian) Ethan Waber. Ethan was wanted for the attempted assassination of Obell Dallgun, and Laia would have been very happy to take Ethan down herself. She chased him from world to world, raging at the apathy that other Guardians showed towards the man's crimes. Ethan wound up being her white rabbit, leading her down the rabbit hole and into the schemes of the Illuminus.

On the surface, the Illuminus were a human supremacist organization. That, in itself, was bad enough. But Laia's journey into conspiracy revealed that the Illuminus were taking measures to weaponize the SEED. She and her companions dug deeper and deeper into the darkness, but they were in over their heads. The Illuminus unleashed a SEED-plague on Moatoob, infecting a significant chunk of the population and transforming them into mindless, rampaging SEED-forms. At the same time they unleashed a SEED-virus on android-controlled Parum, taking over the entire AMF army via corruption of top secret override code. The GUARDIANS Colony was invaded and set to detonate. It was only through the efforts of Laia, her team, and her father Obell that the millions of lives on the Colony were saved and the viral override was brought to a stop. But that victory was at the cost of Obell Dallgun's life, as he chose to remain on the core of the Colony Satellite to perform a manual release to save the residential areas. Laia was there. Laia tried to talk him out of it. Obell was having none of it. His last words to his daughter were his wish that she succeed him in the position of President.

The wake of the Colony Drop was a fiasco. The detached remains fell out of orbit and crashed on Parum, taking out the greater part of Rozenom City. Thousands were killed, and many more were left homeless. Relief efforts were insufficient, as Moatoob had a tragedy of its own to recover from and resources were spread far too thin. System-wide, the GUARDIANS were blamed for all of it. They hadn't prevented it from happening, and their response was absolutely inadequate. They were discredited in the eyes of many, which was certainly one of the Illuminus's goals. Facing this impossible situation alongside the death of her father, Laia couldn't take it. She went AWOL, shirked her duties, and ran to Parum to pick through the Rozenom ruins to try and find some sign Dallgun, dead or alive. She couldn't accept the loss of him, and couldn't bear to step up to take his place.

It took the intervention of her friends to pull her out of her misery. A team consisting of R&Ds Maya Shidow, Ethan Waber's younger sister Lumia, and her former star pupil stormed into the Rozenom wreckage and beat back piles of new SEED-forms. They found her in the midst of it all, convinced her that they and the rest of the Guardians still had faith in her, and brought her home. She took office. She began making announcements. She began to help rebuild. And, armed with the knowledge of what the Illuminus was and what it was capable of, she is helping to prepare the GUARDIANS for a final showdown with the dark forces that have brought the SEED to the system.

Presentation: Laia is stern, no-nonsense, and aggressive. She takes her work seriously, and since she rarely considers herself to be off the job, she comes across as an irritable hardass the great majority of the time. She comes from a military/mercenary sort of background and it colors how she handles the people in her life and the situations she encounters. She expects a certain level of professionalism from those working below her, and an even greater measure of it from those that outrank her. Which is not to say that she's completely unreasonable or entirely impossible to work with. She can be diplomatic in political situations, and has had more reason than ever in recent months to learn to hold her tongue and consider her words. If she's collaborating with others that take their work seriously and have proven their competence, her temper will remain even. When working with civilians and those outside of the whole Guardian/client/target dynamic, she's even capable of being polite and pleasant. It's when conflict arises or things start to get hairy that her personality is at its prickliest.

Laia also has a hair-trigger temper and a very short tolerance for insults, either to herself or those she feels protective of. As a Beast woman in a society that has a whole host of unpleasant stereotypes about them, she's grown tired of having hate and dismissal flung at her. In reaction, she has made it a personal policy to not take poor treatment sitting down. Her sense of justice isn't just limited to defending her own species, however. She was raised to believe in the quality and unity of all the Gurhal system's races, and will speak out against any policy or opinion she sees as running against that.

In the rare moments that she considers to be downtime, her attitude is slightly softer. She likes to share a drink or a meal with friends, likes to take in other people's stories and jokes, and can even exhibit a bit of a sense of humor of her own. She chooses her friends carefully, though, and takes betrayal very personally. She's prone to seeing the world in very black and white terms, and the shady grey middle ground is somewhere that she's not comfortable operating within. You're a friend or you're not. You're competent or you're a liability. You're a true ally or you're a traitor. It takes concentrated effort, both on her part and the part of others, to get her to compromise or reconsider her views once they are formed.

Motivations: Much of Laia's harsh attitude comes from preemptive defensiveness. Between her status as an adoptee, the social perception of Beasts in her society, and her determination to make it on her own merits, Laia perceives just about everything as a possible attack or source of potential problems. In addition, she has never fully gotten past the idea that people will inevitably abandon her. She behaves in a way that keeps others at emotional arm's length for the sake of her safety and their own. Much of her legendary 'strictness' is to ensure that those that work beneath her survive the work. Laia fears failure, and in her line of work, failure often means crippling injury and death. Losin teammates and students has affected her terribly in her time with the GUARDIANS... and losing so many people in the massacre on Moatoob and in the Colony Drop quite simply broke her. Even with the pieces pulled back together, she still irrationally blames herself for how it all turned out. She moves forward with the intention of never letting any such thing happen again on her watch. Others may threaten to abandon her, but she will absolutely not abandon them.

Having gone through such a major life change, Laia's attitude is on the path to a more long-term adjustment. Though she hasn't been operating in her role as president of the GUARDIANS for long, she knows she can't act in the same off the cuff aggressive way that she always had. And in the same way, she's consciously aware that she can't continue to push everyone away. Intellectually, she knows that she needs the help of others to grow into her new political role, and to help set the Gurhal system on the path to peace and safety. Instinctually, change may be slower in coming. She's making a slow shift towards being a person capable of compromise and understanding nuance, but the old Laia is still apt to come springing out to say something sharp and biting when the situation gets rough.

Since losing her father, she's had more reason as of late to turn her thoughts towards matters of family. She had been reconnecting with her siblings, and also giving more consideration to someday starting a family of her own. A partner isn't even strictly necessary, as far as she's concerned. Adopting a child in much the same way that Dallgun adopted her seems appealing. If she's a little softer around children, especially wayward and needy ones, it can be attributed to that.

SETTING
Shuffle Information:

Rebellion Role: Soldier, trainer, possible propaganda icon

Rebellion Motivations: May require forcing at first, but will become inclined to fight for the rebellion once a full perspective on the situation in Panem is made clear to her.

Capitol Role: Soldier, possible propaganda icon

Capitol Motivations: Threats, lack of other options, sufficient misinformation to have her credibly believe that the Capitol is the morally correct side to be on.

Preferred side: OOCly, I'd like Laia to eventually end up with the Rebellion. ICly, she'll be resistant and need some convincing to come to the light once it happens.

SAMPLES
First Person Thread:

For Offworlders: After your first death in battle, you have been chosen to serve as propaganda for the Rebellion or the Capitol. It was violent, messy, and unexpected and just as suddenly, people are asking for you to be their voice.

All you have to do is talk into the device you've been provided to record your feelings and leave your mark in the war. It is quite clear you won't be left alone until you make that recording. Let everyone see what this war really means, they say.

All of Panem is watching.

[Laia sat before the microphone, peering at it through a thin fog of denial. She hadn't died out there. That would have been impossible. She was just gravely wounded, and healed in precisely the nick of time. That wasn't outside the realm of possibility. A chest full of bullets was survivable in her own world, so why not in this one?

She'd just imagined the soldier capping it off with a bullet to her head. That was it.]

...you're serious.

[Composing something sensible and meaningful to say while navigating through that fog is not easy. Laia's mouth flattens into a thin line, and she leans forward, hands templing and elbows resting on the tabletop.]

I hear that we won. I hear that the operation was a success. Is that right? [She pauses, eyes turning towards her escorts, seeking some kind of confirmation.] Then it was worth it. All of it, everything that everyone gave to bring it around. It's not fun and games out there! It's hard, dirty work. And every man and woman that didn't come back? I salute them. And the rest of you had better damn well be saluting them, too.

[That sounded pretty good. Her speechwriters back home would surely be proud. Because that's what they wanted here, she could tell. Laia could smell propaganda brewing, and it faintly turned her stomach. But what else was there to be done? She sits straighter, hands dropping and balling into light fists that rest upon the table. There's more to be said.]

If it keeps up like this? Hah, and I know it'll keep on like this... we're winning this.

[Lies. The kind of lies you tell when you want to inspire.]

Prose:

A bomb has just gone off in the middle of the battlefield. You're blown back by the blast but when you manage to get up, you find you were one of the lucky ones. People have been left dead and injured all around you, some of them Peacekeepers, some of them Districters, some offworlders, each could be on any given side.

You've still got your weapon-- even if it wasn't really a weapon before the bomb found you. It's broken, but the jagged edge of it could still bring about a painful death. You also know where the nearest make-shift hospital happens to be. That's not all though. You also happen to know the bomb that just went off will do so again. And so you've got a choice:

You can save yourself. You can be merciful. Or you can discard mercy all together and attempt to enact vengeance, removing the chance of a quick and painless death.

Your team watches from a distance, too far to do anything but wait and see what you'll do. Even the little things can make a difference in war. What sort of difference do you intend to make?

Laia wastes no time pushing herself to her feet, even if her head is still swimming and everything is still confusion. Though she's not fully upright, still feeling around in the damp grass for her rifle. "Damn it all to..." She does not find her rifle, but does find some shrapnel. And she does not find her allies, but does find a bomb, far too close by and no doubt ready to detonate at any moment. There is not even any time left to swear. The effort of doing so gets caught in her clenched teeth, coming out as an anxious hiss.

And then it dawns on her just why the grass is so wet, why her footing is so uneven. Someone else, someone in a Peacekeeper uniform, had caught the worst of the blast, and there was enough of him broken open and scattered about that he was not going to make it. He's breathing, though. Just barely. And staring at her through his shattered visor, eyes begging for help.

"...I'm sorry." The only help that she can give is a mercy kill, quickly delivered with the sharp edge of her improvised shrapnel weapon. There is no time to mourn or pray or rage or even register nausea at the horror of it all. It will all come later, once she's far from here. Laia's legs move without thinking, stepping over the dead man's body and breaking into a staggering and unsteady run, having no intention of letting the next explosion tear her to bits.