Post by Ilana Logan on May 6, 2012 20:29:40 GMT -5
First Name: Ilana
Last Name: Logan
Age: 27
Height: 5'2"
Weight: 125 lbs
Appearance: She carries her father’s war rifle, a Lakaron, on a strap wherever its convenient to have it. She carries a blade akin to a katana on her back sometimes. She doesn't always have it with her, though. She also carries an old six-shooter on her right hip that also belonged to her father. She usually wears khaki-colored cotton pants(loose enough for easy movement), but tight enough they don’t get in the way, a plain black leather belt, a variety of brightly colored short-sleeved, button-up shirts, usually unbuttoned,(she favors yellow), and always has a plain white cotton shirt underneath, and black combat style boots. She goes without the button-up sometimes. Usually on hotter days, or during particularly messy jobs. Occasionally, she dresses a little nicer, but as a mechanic, she generally doesn't have to. She’s a slim girl, but a lot stronger than she looks, with a tattoo of a butterfly on her right hand, and a small but visible crescent scar on her forehead.
She has a four-inch blade in a sheath strapped to her left ankle for dire situations, has a clear bite-mark scar on the inside of her left calf, another scar on her right shoulder where a bullet grazed her and another bullet scar on her belly, with a slightly bigger one in the back where the bullet came out the other side, and she wears an old Egyptian cross tucked into her shirt.
Persuasion: Browncoat supporter
Military Service: None
General Skills: She’s very good with just about any type of gun, though she doesn’t know much about them other than cleaning, loading, and aiming. Most guns, she couldn't tell you the name of, but she can shoot them just the same. She’s alright with a blade, namely that big one she carries right on her back, but mainly uses them if or when she runs out of bullets.
Talents: Working on vehicles, fixing ships, basically anything that could go wrong with them, she can fix. She loves to play the guitar, though she isn't the best guitar player, she's decent. She doesn't like to play because she's good at it, just because it has a calming effect on her. She loves to draw whenever she can come across the supplies to do so, and this is something she is really good at, though she doesn't do it often.
Flaws: She’s got a bad habit of getting mouthy with the wrong folks, and tends to end up in fights. S’where a lot of her scars come from. She holds grudges in a bad way, almost to the point of never letting them go. That's not to say she never lets go, it's just a rarity. She doesn't question orders often, when they're given by people of a higher rank than she is. This can be a good thing, which is where loyalty comes into play, but it can be a bad thing too, like when she knows something is wrong and does it anyway simply because a higher up told her to.
Personality Traits: She’s fairly witty, which is part of what gets her into trouble from time to time. She’s loyal though, and she works hard. On the rare occasion that she does question orders, it's usually for a really good reason.
She’s terrified of spiders, and if one ends up on her, she tends to make herself look like an idiot because she freaks out. She doesn't make a habit of lying. That doesn't mean she's never told a lie, but it's a rarity. Because of this, she hates people who lie to her.
History: Ilana was born and raised on Lilac, in a small town called Somerset. Her family lived on the outskirts of town on a small farm. They didn't have much in the way of money, but they got by alright. Her father worked in the mines and her mother worked as a barmaid in a tavern in town, while her and her siblings tended the farm. Her mother always carried a knife in an ankle sheath that her long skirt and short boots always hid. Sometimes, around closing time, one of the off-worlders just didn't know how to take no for an answer. Alessia was a small woman, but she didn't take any gorram thing off of anyone. The hours were late, but she loved her job. It was fun most of the time. Once in a while she had to teach some drunk asshole the 'err of their ways, but most times it was fairly peaceful.
***
Her first clear memory is being about five years old, in the garage with her uncle Malcolm. He worked on engines of all sorts, and she loved to help. At that age, she didn't do much more than hand him tools, but the little he did let her do she loved. This particular day, he had her standing on a couple stacked crates in front of a mule. He had the door to the engine compartment open, fiddling around with something she'd heard him call the cooling center.
"Hold this here wire babygirl, while I rig up one to connect it to," Uncle Malcolm said.
She reached out and took the wire, holding it carefully in her tiny hands. She watched with a mixture of awe and a little fear while he used his cutters and got another piece of wire hooked up to the other side. She was afraid she'd mess up and he'd have to start again. She knew he wouldn't be mad at her if she did. Uncle Malcolm never got mad at her, but she didn't want to make him start over either. He took the wire from her hands and connected the two pieces with a soldering rod and a piece of tape.
He gave her a quick peck on the forehead ruffled her hair and said, "Good job kid!"
She grinned broadly at him, happy she'd done her task right and he picked her up of the crate and set her on her feet on the dirty garage floor. There the memory fades a bit.
***
When Ilana was nine, she was running through the field her family's home sat in and he heard her father call out to her. She ran in the direction of his voice and came tearing around the side of the house covered head to toe in prickles and dirt. "Get washed up right quick and you can go to town on the cart with me."
Her eyes lit up with delight; her father didn't take the kids with him often. She ran inside as fast as her legs would carry her, running past her mother - who shouted at her to stop running in the house as she ran by - and into the small washroom. She washed up, quick as she could, and ran back the way she'd come, earning a scowl from her mother, shouted a quick 'love you' to her mom, and went out the door again. Her father was sitting in the cart waiting on her and she climbed up and sat next to him. He glanced down at her, making sure she'd washed up good enough, then he snapped the reigns and called 'hiya' to the horses.
Most people probably would have thought that ride was boring, but she loved to watch the scenery. She was watching a horse run through the field on her side of the cart a little too closely when the cart hit one of many bumps along the road. This time, she'd been leaning too far over, and when the cart hit the bump, she went over the edge. She felt something that felt like fingertips barely brush her back as her father reached to catch her, and even as she was falling, she heard her father shout 'whoa' as he pulled on the reigns to stop the horses.
CRACK! She landed head first on a jagged metal can at the edge of the road and let out a scream loud enough to make the devil run in fear.
She lay there, shaking with the pain in her forehead, but surprisingly she wasn't crying. Ilana didn't cry often, even when she was hurt, but it was a bad cut. She opened her eyes and everything was tinged red, like looking through a red stained window. She heard footsteps and then her father's voice hissing the word 'shit'. She saw someone kneel in front of her, and after he spoke, she knew it was her father.
"Oh, Nǚ yīng . Come here," he father said softly, as he lifted her off the ground. He put her in the back of the cart and took her to the doctor in town. She ended up with a huge, egg shaped knot on her head, along a disgusting foamy bandage that smelled like tar and pee and vomit all at once. When it had healed, she had a small crescent shaped scar on her forehead. She kept bangs to hide the scar when she was younger, and now it's nearly invisible, though she can see it if she looks for it.
***
Nǚ yīng - means - babygirl
***
Somewhere between nine and ten, she started drawing on the walls of the bedroom she shared with her sisters. She'd take chunks of charcoal and just draw. She was a natural artist and she did portraits of the entire family through the years on those walls. Now, when she was nine, they weren't exact likenesses, but you could tell who it was. At ten, her father started teaching her to shoot a gun. He worked with her for a long time, teaching her how to aim with different types of gun, how to hit your target when it was moving.
When the war broke out in 2506, her father wanted to leave to go fight, but he knew it would be better to prepare his family in case he didn't come back. He wanted to make sure they could make it without him. Natalia and Julia, Ilana's twin sisters, insisted on going with him. He agreed that they could go, so long as they waited to go with him so they could stay together. Uncle Malcolm couldn't fight in the war because he had palsy and wasn't much use to those fighters. He couldn't shoot a gun, he couldn't fly, he sure as hell couldn't be a field medic, and it took him too long to fix shit now to do it for the war effort. So, he stayed behind and continued teaching Ilana and John Jr how to work on vehicles.
When she was sixteen, she knew her father and sisters would be leaving for the war before too long, and she drew a portrait of the whole family together on the wall adjacent to the fireplace. It looked like a black and white photograph, it was that good. Two months later, right after she turned seventeen, her father and sisters left for the war. John Jr, her little brother was twelve. She continued to take care of the farm and her little brother after her father left, and her mother took on more hours at the tavern. By this age, Ilana still worked with Uncle Malcolm on vehicles and ships, but she did more of the work than he did.
***
In 2508, the year Ilana turned 18, both of her sisters and her father were sent home by the browncoats to be buried. She stayed for the rest of that year, until her brother turned fifteen and went to work in the mines. She left home right after the first of the year 2509, which was also right after her nineteenth birthday. She found work on a Jo Lynn that was leaving Lilac. A man named Roman Kline was the captain. He said he was in dire need of a mechanic and she had the skills to do the job.
Ilana worked for Roman for eleven months, fixing things that needed fixed, running errands and whatnot. It turned out that Kate, the medic, had taken classes in sword fighting for fun. She'd done it for a long time, and she was very good. Ilana found her practicing in lounge one day and asked if she'd teach her. She amiably agreed to, and over the course of the seven months Ilana spent there with them, she worked with Ilana, teaching her the finer points of sword fighting.
Finally, in August of 2509, he came to her asking for her help on a job. Before this, she knew his business dealings weren't exactly legit, but she'd never questioned him because she got paid and that's all she needed to know. She balked at what he wanted her to do because while he didn't tell her what he would be doing, he told her she'd have to wear a ball gown and heels. She argued that she wasn't girly enough to do what he was asking, and he told her she was silly. She went with him in the end though, and posed as his wife. He gave her a glass of champagne when she arrived and she didn't remember anything after that when she woke up in the morning. Bits and pieces came back when Roman kissed her after she yanked her panties out of his hand. When it did, she didn't get much, only enough to make her think Roman had drugged her, and taken advantage of her drugged state. She slapped him and he got angry. He didn't hurt her, but to her mind it was touch and go for a minute or two. He got her moving, and they got dressed and got the hell out of there. They were accosted outside by Davide Jacobs and they tried to convince him they were innocent. Since Ilana honestly had no idea what he was talking about, she thought they were in the clear when he let them go. She realized she was wrong when they were chased through the streets by assassins. They barely made it back onto the ship. Once they did, she kissed Roman out of relieve and a million other emotions brought out by their not being dead on the ground. When she pulled back he was grinning. Then she slapped him for basically everything that had happened in the past two days. She'd never slapped anyone before, so twice in one day was something. It made her feel so girly and she never slapped anyone again.
After that, she stayed on with Roman's crew til nearly the end of the year, and kept working with Kate on the sword fighting. When he set down on Persephone to refuel, she left the ship to visit her mother and didn't go back. She sent Roman a wave from her mother's house and told him she wasn't coming back. She didn't tell him why though. She took another job, working maintenance at a docking station. Getting paid to fix ships that landed in need of repairs or just miscellaneous maintenance work. It doesn't happen often, but some crews can't afford a full time mechanic.
***
She worked there for a little more than a year before she decided she wanted to go back out in the black. So she waved Roman in March of 2511 and asked if he needed someone. He told her he was glad to hear from her and he'd be happy to have her back on the ship. He came back to Persephone and picked her up. She was 21 then.
As it turns out, Roman's crew was in the middle of a job when she waved them and he had picked her up on his way out to Whitefall. When they got there, they found the entire town had been attacked by Reavers, and from the look of it, not too long before they showed up. In the mess, they found a guy who had been attacked by Reavers. He wasn’t the only person attacked of course, he was just the only one that survived. It wasn’t because the Reavers were feelin generous either, he just happened to get lucky….if you could call that lucky. Probably better off dead than surviving something like that. Anyway, The Reavers left him, thinking he was dead, and when Ilana’s group showed up, she stepped over him, thinking the same thing. He wasn’t dead of course, and he bit the hell out of her, and left her with that nasty scar on the inside of her left calf.
She stayed with Roman's crew this time for only six months, before her mom waved her. Her brother was off gallivanting the verse, and her mom waved her and told her she was sick and needed help. So, as soon as Roman went back to Persephone, she headed back to help her mom. She took back her old job at the docking station for a while, and worked there when she wasn't helping her mother.
***
She was only there four months when she sent Roman another wave, asking to come back to the ship. He let her. He'd had a soft spot for her since he met her, and was happy to have her waving to come back. He picked her up mid-January of 2512 and she stayed with his crew then, working odd jobs for the next year and a half.
In April of 2512, Roman got an interesting job, and came to her. "I've got a job that I need your help with, Lani."
"Is this job going to require me to wear a dress?" She asked in a slightly mocking tone.
He laughed and said, "No, I don't require your……assets for this job. I need your mechanical expertise."
"Are you going to give me the details before I go in?"
"Of course, if I need you to do this job properly, you have to know what the job is," he said.
Basically, the job was to damage all five hover craft on the Windswept Estates property on St. Albans, steal some priceless artifact that Roman assured her he would take care of getting, and get out. They waited until dark, and made their way to the estates. She took care of the hover crafts by pouring oil in the fuel tank, and removing their power supply, while Roman went after the artifact. Roman caught her attention as she finished the last one and motioned for her to come to him. On her way to him, she noticed he had some sort of satchel over his shoulder. It was relatively small, but she didn't remember him having it when they came in. She was going to ask about it, but just as she reached his side, she heard a blaring alarm from the building behind them. She let out a string of curses just as Roman took her hand.
"Time to run, Lani," he said and took off, once again dragging her behind him.
Halfway to the ship, Ilana stepped in a hole and went down, her hand wrenched away from Roman's, reminding her of the first job she'd done with him. When she went down, she sprained her ankle horribly. She let out a string of curses for the second time that night, and Roman helped her to her feet. When she put weight on it, she hissed and nearly fell again. Roman put an arm around her waist and they made their way back to the ship, her leaning heavily on him to make up for her useless ankle.
They made it to the ship safely, aside from her ankle, and Roman passed her off to Kate and she fixed her up fairly well. She spent a good two weeks on crutches, and another week limping because the ankle was weak.
***
She left again in June of 2513 to go back to Persephone. She always returned there eventually. Her family was there and her mother was starting to get up there in years. She stayed on Persephone this time, working back at the docking station, for almost a year. By the time she waved Roman in March of 2514 she was itching to be back in the black again. He picked her up again and set out as he always did. She stayed on with him for a while this time. They fell back into their routine of working together and "playing" together. Her first night back, they were in his quarters lying in bed after some strenuous activities, and he started going off about some "bitch that called herself Amora." She had robbed him, he said. Ilana told him he was lying to her and he said, "I don't lie when I'm naked, Love." She laughed and told him that he was leaving things out then. He admitted that and told her about the heist he had planned of the imperial dagger they had got in at the museum. He told her about the whole job and how when he got to the room he had found it empty. Ilana had to fight the urge to laugh, because he was so angry with this Amora woman.
She stayed there on the ship with Roman and his crew for a while, working with Kate in her spare time on the sword fighting. In early 2515, Roman came to her asking her to do a job with him. She refused, telling him she wanted to stay behind and guard the ship this time. Since she wouldn't go, he got Amora. They stopped on Bellerephon to pick her up and they went on to Rubicon, where the job was supposed to be.
They weren't gone more than two hours, probably less, but Ilana was nervous the whole time. They way Roman had talked about the woman made Ilana not trust her from the beginning. She found herself wishing she had went with Roman on the job instead of letting this mystery woman who had already screwed Roman over more than once. She was ready to panic by the time they came back to the ship. Admittedly, they weren't in near as much of a rush as she and Roman usually were. They lifted off and Roman made the call saying that they had the item.
While Ilana had refused to go on the job, when it came time for the drop, she refused to stay on the ship. For one thing, that Amora woman didn't know the first thing about using a gun, and Ilana wanted to be there to thelp Roman if things with the drop went south. Most of the crew tagged along, but they made Kate stay behind just in case. The drop went smooth, snarky comments exchanged on both sides, until one of the crew members of the other group explicitly told Ilana how much he'd like to rub certain body parts of his on and around her breasts. Ilana fired back telling him she was gonna shove the barrel of her gun up his arse. He apparently could, as people say, dish it, but he couldn't take it. He drew on her, but he was slow and sloppy. Ilana was fast and smooth as she drew her gun and put a bullet between his eyes.
Pandemonium ensued even as the body was still falling. They took cover and shots were exchanged. They lost Harlan, the cook, which was a shame. He was a good man, plus everyone else on the ship was a lousy cook. Mostly, they were all firing blind, just shooting randomly in the direction the other guys were. It was Harlan that got the bright idea to poke his head up to get a real shot. The other group was watching for exactly that and took his head clean off. One of the other group snuck up around their little hiding spot. He only got one shot off, put a bullet in Ilana’s abdomen, right above the kidney. That one almost killed her. It went right through her though, which Kate said was a good thing. Roman thought she was going to die. Kate saved her, and she spent three months on his ship doing nothing but recovering.
***
She stayed another month after healing, spent some quality time with Roman, learned a little more from Kate about using the sword, and she left. She went back to Persephone, as usual, but she also always returned to Roman eventually. This time, she waited nearly two years before she waved him to pick her up. During that two years, she waved him off and on to chat, and kept up her job at the docking station, but she stayed grounded the entire time. She'd gotten a bit of a scare, nearly dying the way she had, and it took her a while to want to leave the comfort of a regular job, and the much smaller likely hood of being shot. She did wave him though. In December of 2516, she waved him and he picked her up, as he always did. She only stayed with him until the last week of May 2517, working mostly in the engine room of the ship. She only did one outside job with him during that stay, and she was only the "getaway drive" of the mule for that expedition. This time, she broke the normal routine. When she decided it was time to leave, she asked him to drop her on Beaumonde on his way through where she got wind of a guy needing a mechanic.
RP Sample:
Ilana shot to a sitting position with a deep ragged breath. She looked around wildly for a moment, before she realized she'd had a nightmare. She couldn't remember what it was about, she only knew that it had been bad. Her whole body ached and she wanted nothing more than to just lie back down and go to sleep. Then she realized she was lying on the floor in the engine room of a ship she didn't recognize. It sort of looked like the bare peek she'd gotten of the engine room of the Logan. She knew she couldn't be there, because she'd left the Logan months ago.
There was a dull ache in her head, and a more sharp one in her arm, both throbbing in time with her heart. She rubbed at her shoulder and it stung, and left her hand feeling wet and sticky. She jerked her hand away and looked at it. Bright red blood was smeared across her palm and three fingers. She eyed the blood with a sick dread. The worst thing for her in that moment, was having no idea what in the hell had happened.
"What the hell?" She asked to no one in particular.
She lifted the sleeve of her shirt, which was bloody and ragged, and saw an equally ragged wound. Funny, that looks the same way the graze I got back on Whitefall did when it was fresh, she thought.
She got up and walked to through the ship. She couldn't find anyone, and there wasn't a sound aside from the small sounds her bare feet made. She went to the infirmary and wrapped her arm with gauze, and went back through the ship again. When she go back to the engine room, she heard a gunshot, from behind her. She turned and ran in that direction and saw the hall was full of people. She watched in horror as Gale shot Griffin in the head, painting the wall, and people, behind him in a coat of crimson. Katya was lying in a pool of blood at his feet. She raised her gun in both hands and fired off two quick shots at Gale. One got him in the the base of his skull and his head disintegrated in a fine spray of blood and other things.
But the other shot. Oh god, the other shot didn't hit Gale, or wall, or floor, or ceiling. The other shot was a little off, from a tiny twitch in her arm from the throbbing. She watched helplessly as the second bullet slammed into Jay's throat. He made a horrible gurgle and fell to the ground, hands desperately trying to keep the blood in his throat. She started to go to him when pain lanced through her from her hand. She looked around and couldn't find a reason for it. Her gun dropped uselessly to the floor and she screamed wordlessly. She dropped to her knees and heard gunshots from behind her. One took her in her injured arm, and as she looked up, and saw a man stalking toward her, firing shots and her and Marcus.
She fought back the pain and grabbed her gun. Ray came out of the engine room behind the man and shot him in the back of the head. The man's head exploded, sending a blood and brain and skull in every direction. Ray continued to walk forward, his gun thrust out in front of him. Ilana looked at Marcus from her position on the floor. He was on the floor too. He smiled a little sadly and said, "Sorry."
Then his head exploded, and everything inside his head suddenly became visible on the outside, though definitely not in the original arrangement. She turned to see Ray, his gun aimed at Marcus, a cruel smile on his face. Then he turned the gun on her. She raised her gun, but not fast enough. She saw his hand tighten on the gun, his finger squeezed the trigger. Something punched her in the chest and her body was thrown backward. She tried to breath, but the best she could do was tiny, painful gasps. She felt like she was drowning, and there was blood running out of her mouth. She heard footsteps, but she couldn't move to look. Ray's face came into view, his gun leveled at her face. "Hello," he said. She saw his finger squeeze the trigger again
Do you accept the rules of this site? Of course
Last Name: Logan
Age: 27
Height: 5'2"
Weight: 125 lbs
Appearance: She carries her father’s war rifle, a Lakaron, on a strap wherever its convenient to have it. She carries a blade akin to a katana on her back sometimes. She doesn't always have it with her, though. She also carries an old six-shooter on her right hip that also belonged to her father. She usually wears khaki-colored cotton pants(loose enough for easy movement), but tight enough they don’t get in the way, a plain black leather belt, a variety of brightly colored short-sleeved, button-up shirts, usually unbuttoned,(she favors yellow), and always has a plain white cotton shirt underneath, and black combat style boots. She goes without the button-up sometimes. Usually on hotter days, or during particularly messy jobs. Occasionally, she dresses a little nicer, but as a mechanic, she generally doesn't have to. She’s a slim girl, but a lot stronger than she looks, with a tattoo of a butterfly on her right hand, and a small but visible crescent scar on her forehead.
She has a four-inch blade in a sheath strapped to her left ankle for dire situations, has a clear bite-mark scar on the inside of her left calf, another scar on her right shoulder where a bullet grazed her and another bullet scar on her belly, with a slightly bigger one in the back where the bullet came out the other side, and she wears an old Egyptian cross tucked into her shirt.
Persuasion: Browncoat supporter
Military Service: None
General Skills: She’s very good with just about any type of gun, though she doesn’t know much about them other than cleaning, loading, and aiming. Most guns, she couldn't tell you the name of, but she can shoot them just the same. She’s alright with a blade, namely that big one she carries right on her back, but mainly uses them if or when she runs out of bullets.
Talents: Working on vehicles, fixing ships, basically anything that could go wrong with them, she can fix. She loves to play the guitar, though she isn't the best guitar player, she's decent. She doesn't like to play because she's good at it, just because it has a calming effect on her. She loves to draw whenever she can come across the supplies to do so, and this is something she is really good at, though she doesn't do it often.
Flaws: She’s got a bad habit of getting mouthy with the wrong folks, and tends to end up in fights. S’where a lot of her scars come from. She holds grudges in a bad way, almost to the point of never letting them go. That's not to say she never lets go, it's just a rarity. She doesn't question orders often, when they're given by people of a higher rank than she is. This can be a good thing, which is where loyalty comes into play, but it can be a bad thing too, like when she knows something is wrong and does it anyway simply because a higher up told her to.
Personality Traits: She’s fairly witty, which is part of what gets her into trouble from time to time. She’s loyal though, and she works hard. On the rare occasion that she does question orders, it's usually for a really good reason.
She’s terrified of spiders, and if one ends up on her, she tends to make herself look like an idiot because she freaks out. She doesn't make a habit of lying. That doesn't mean she's never told a lie, but it's a rarity. Because of this, she hates people who lie to her.
History: Ilana was born and raised on Lilac, in a small town called Somerset. Her family lived on the outskirts of town on a small farm. They didn't have much in the way of money, but they got by alright. Her father worked in the mines and her mother worked as a barmaid in a tavern in town, while her and her siblings tended the farm. Her mother always carried a knife in an ankle sheath that her long skirt and short boots always hid. Sometimes, around closing time, one of the off-worlders just didn't know how to take no for an answer. Alessia was a small woman, but she didn't take any gorram thing off of anyone. The hours were late, but she loved her job. It was fun most of the time. Once in a while she had to teach some drunk asshole the 'err of their ways, but most times it was fairly peaceful.
***
Her first clear memory is being about five years old, in the garage with her uncle Malcolm. He worked on engines of all sorts, and she loved to help. At that age, she didn't do much more than hand him tools, but the little he did let her do she loved. This particular day, he had her standing on a couple stacked crates in front of a mule. He had the door to the engine compartment open, fiddling around with something she'd heard him call the cooling center.
"Hold this here wire babygirl, while I rig up one to connect it to," Uncle Malcolm said.
She reached out and took the wire, holding it carefully in her tiny hands. She watched with a mixture of awe and a little fear while he used his cutters and got another piece of wire hooked up to the other side. She was afraid she'd mess up and he'd have to start again. She knew he wouldn't be mad at her if she did. Uncle Malcolm never got mad at her, but she didn't want to make him start over either. He took the wire from her hands and connected the two pieces with a soldering rod and a piece of tape.
He gave her a quick peck on the forehead ruffled her hair and said, "Good job kid!"
She grinned broadly at him, happy she'd done her task right and he picked her up of the crate and set her on her feet on the dirty garage floor. There the memory fades a bit.
***
When Ilana was nine, she was running through the field her family's home sat in and he heard her father call out to her. She ran in the direction of his voice and came tearing around the side of the house covered head to toe in prickles and dirt. "Get washed up right quick and you can go to town on the cart with me."
Her eyes lit up with delight; her father didn't take the kids with him often. She ran inside as fast as her legs would carry her, running past her mother - who shouted at her to stop running in the house as she ran by - and into the small washroom. She washed up, quick as she could, and ran back the way she'd come, earning a scowl from her mother, shouted a quick 'love you' to her mom, and went out the door again. Her father was sitting in the cart waiting on her and she climbed up and sat next to him. He glanced down at her, making sure she'd washed up good enough, then he snapped the reigns and called 'hiya' to the horses.
Most people probably would have thought that ride was boring, but she loved to watch the scenery. She was watching a horse run through the field on her side of the cart a little too closely when the cart hit one of many bumps along the road. This time, she'd been leaning too far over, and when the cart hit the bump, she went over the edge. She felt something that felt like fingertips barely brush her back as her father reached to catch her, and even as she was falling, she heard her father shout 'whoa' as he pulled on the reigns to stop the horses.
CRACK! She landed head first on a jagged metal can at the edge of the road and let out a scream loud enough to make the devil run in fear.
She lay there, shaking with the pain in her forehead, but surprisingly she wasn't crying. Ilana didn't cry often, even when she was hurt, but it was a bad cut. She opened her eyes and everything was tinged red, like looking through a red stained window. She heard footsteps and then her father's voice hissing the word 'shit'. She saw someone kneel in front of her, and after he spoke, she knew it was her father.
"Oh, Nǚ yīng . Come here," he father said softly, as he lifted her off the ground. He put her in the back of the cart and took her to the doctor in town. She ended up with a huge, egg shaped knot on her head, along a disgusting foamy bandage that smelled like tar and pee and vomit all at once. When it had healed, she had a small crescent shaped scar on her forehead. She kept bangs to hide the scar when she was younger, and now it's nearly invisible, though she can see it if she looks for it.
***
Nǚ yīng - means - babygirl
***
Somewhere between nine and ten, she started drawing on the walls of the bedroom she shared with her sisters. She'd take chunks of charcoal and just draw. She was a natural artist and she did portraits of the entire family through the years on those walls. Now, when she was nine, they weren't exact likenesses, but you could tell who it was. At ten, her father started teaching her to shoot a gun. He worked with her for a long time, teaching her how to aim with different types of gun, how to hit your target when it was moving.
When the war broke out in 2506, her father wanted to leave to go fight, but he knew it would be better to prepare his family in case he didn't come back. He wanted to make sure they could make it without him. Natalia and Julia, Ilana's twin sisters, insisted on going with him. He agreed that they could go, so long as they waited to go with him so they could stay together. Uncle Malcolm couldn't fight in the war because he had palsy and wasn't much use to those fighters. He couldn't shoot a gun, he couldn't fly, he sure as hell couldn't be a field medic, and it took him too long to fix shit now to do it for the war effort. So, he stayed behind and continued teaching Ilana and John Jr how to work on vehicles.
When she was sixteen, she knew her father and sisters would be leaving for the war before too long, and she drew a portrait of the whole family together on the wall adjacent to the fireplace. It looked like a black and white photograph, it was that good. Two months later, right after she turned seventeen, her father and sisters left for the war. John Jr, her little brother was twelve. She continued to take care of the farm and her little brother after her father left, and her mother took on more hours at the tavern. By this age, Ilana still worked with Uncle Malcolm on vehicles and ships, but she did more of the work than he did.
***
In 2508, the year Ilana turned 18, both of her sisters and her father were sent home by the browncoats to be buried. She stayed for the rest of that year, until her brother turned fifteen and went to work in the mines. She left home right after the first of the year 2509, which was also right after her nineteenth birthday. She found work on a Jo Lynn that was leaving Lilac. A man named Roman Kline was the captain. He said he was in dire need of a mechanic and she had the skills to do the job.
Ilana worked for Roman for eleven months, fixing things that needed fixed, running errands and whatnot. It turned out that Kate, the medic, had taken classes in sword fighting for fun. She'd done it for a long time, and she was very good. Ilana found her practicing in lounge one day and asked if she'd teach her. She amiably agreed to, and over the course of the seven months Ilana spent there with them, she worked with Ilana, teaching her the finer points of sword fighting.
Finally, in August of 2509, he came to her asking for her help on a job. Before this, she knew his business dealings weren't exactly legit, but she'd never questioned him because she got paid and that's all she needed to know. She balked at what he wanted her to do because while he didn't tell her what he would be doing, he told her she'd have to wear a ball gown and heels. She argued that she wasn't girly enough to do what he was asking, and he told her she was silly. She went with him in the end though, and posed as his wife. He gave her a glass of champagne when she arrived and she didn't remember anything after that when she woke up in the morning. Bits and pieces came back when Roman kissed her after she yanked her panties out of his hand. When it did, she didn't get much, only enough to make her think Roman had drugged her, and taken advantage of her drugged state. She slapped him and he got angry. He didn't hurt her, but to her mind it was touch and go for a minute or two. He got her moving, and they got dressed and got the hell out of there. They were accosted outside by Davide Jacobs and they tried to convince him they were innocent. Since Ilana honestly had no idea what he was talking about, she thought they were in the clear when he let them go. She realized she was wrong when they were chased through the streets by assassins. They barely made it back onto the ship. Once they did, she kissed Roman out of relieve and a million other emotions brought out by their not being dead on the ground. When she pulled back he was grinning. Then she slapped him for basically everything that had happened in the past two days. She'd never slapped anyone before, so twice in one day was something. It made her feel so girly and she never slapped anyone again.
After that, she stayed on with Roman's crew til nearly the end of the year, and kept working with Kate on the sword fighting. When he set down on Persephone to refuel, she left the ship to visit her mother and didn't go back. She sent Roman a wave from her mother's house and told him she wasn't coming back. She didn't tell him why though. She took another job, working maintenance at a docking station. Getting paid to fix ships that landed in need of repairs or just miscellaneous maintenance work. It doesn't happen often, but some crews can't afford a full time mechanic.
***
She worked there for a little more than a year before she decided she wanted to go back out in the black. So she waved Roman in March of 2511 and asked if he needed someone. He told her he was glad to hear from her and he'd be happy to have her back on the ship. He came back to Persephone and picked her up. She was 21 then.
As it turns out, Roman's crew was in the middle of a job when she waved them and he had picked her up on his way out to Whitefall. When they got there, they found the entire town had been attacked by Reavers, and from the look of it, not too long before they showed up. In the mess, they found a guy who had been attacked by Reavers. He wasn’t the only person attacked of course, he was just the only one that survived. It wasn’t because the Reavers were feelin generous either, he just happened to get lucky….if you could call that lucky. Probably better off dead than surviving something like that. Anyway, The Reavers left him, thinking he was dead, and when Ilana’s group showed up, she stepped over him, thinking the same thing. He wasn’t dead of course, and he bit the hell out of her, and left her with that nasty scar on the inside of her left calf.
She stayed with Roman's crew this time for only six months, before her mom waved her. Her brother was off gallivanting the verse, and her mom waved her and told her she was sick and needed help. So, as soon as Roman went back to Persephone, she headed back to help her mom. She took back her old job at the docking station for a while, and worked there when she wasn't helping her mother.
***
She was only there four months when she sent Roman another wave, asking to come back to the ship. He let her. He'd had a soft spot for her since he met her, and was happy to have her waving to come back. He picked her up mid-January of 2512 and she stayed with his crew then, working odd jobs for the next year and a half.
In April of 2512, Roman got an interesting job, and came to her. "I've got a job that I need your help with, Lani."
"Is this job going to require me to wear a dress?" She asked in a slightly mocking tone.
He laughed and said, "No, I don't require your……assets for this job. I need your mechanical expertise."
"Are you going to give me the details before I go in?"
"Of course, if I need you to do this job properly, you have to know what the job is," he said.
Basically, the job was to damage all five hover craft on the Windswept Estates property on St. Albans, steal some priceless artifact that Roman assured her he would take care of getting, and get out. They waited until dark, and made their way to the estates. She took care of the hover crafts by pouring oil in the fuel tank, and removing their power supply, while Roman went after the artifact. Roman caught her attention as she finished the last one and motioned for her to come to him. On her way to him, she noticed he had some sort of satchel over his shoulder. It was relatively small, but she didn't remember him having it when they came in. She was going to ask about it, but just as she reached his side, she heard a blaring alarm from the building behind them. She let out a string of curses just as Roman took her hand.
"Time to run, Lani," he said and took off, once again dragging her behind him.
Halfway to the ship, Ilana stepped in a hole and went down, her hand wrenched away from Roman's, reminding her of the first job she'd done with him. When she went down, she sprained her ankle horribly. She let out a string of curses for the second time that night, and Roman helped her to her feet. When she put weight on it, she hissed and nearly fell again. Roman put an arm around her waist and they made their way back to the ship, her leaning heavily on him to make up for her useless ankle.
They made it to the ship safely, aside from her ankle, and Roman passed her off to Kate and she fixed her up fairly well. She spent a good two weeks on crutches, and another week limping because the ankle was weak.
***
She left again in June of 2513 to go back to Persephone. She always returned there eventually. Her family was there and her mother was starting to get up there in years. She stayed on Persephone this time, working back at the docking station, for almost a year. By the time she waved Roman in March of 2514 she was itching to be back in the black again. He picked her up again and set out as he always did. She stayed on with him for a while this time. They fell back into their routine of working together and "playing" together. Her first night back, they were in his quarters lying in bed after some strenuous activities, and he started going off about some "bitch that called herself Amora." She had robbed him, he said. Ilana told him he was lying to her and he said, "I don't lie when I'm naked, Love." She laughed and told him that he was leaving things out then. He admitted that and told her about the heist he had planned of the imperial dagger they had got in at the museum. He told her about the whole job and how when he got to the room he had found it empty. Ilana had to fight the urge to laugh, because he was so angry with this Amora woman.
She stayed there on the ship with Roman and his crew for a while, working with Kate in her spare time on the sword fighting. In early 2515, Roman came to her asking her to do a job with him. She refused, telling him she wanted to stay behind and guard the ship this time. Since she wouldn't go, he got Amora. They stopped on Bellerephon to pick her up and they went on to Rubicon, where the job was supposed to be.
They weren't gone more than two hours, probably less, but Ilana was nervous the whole time. They way Roman had talked about the woman made Ilana not trust her from the beginning. She found herself wishing she had went with Roman on the job instead of letting this mystery woman who had already screwed Roman over more than once. She was ready to panic by the time they came back to the ship. Admittedly, they weren't in near as much of a rush as she and Roman usually were. They lifted off and Roman made the call saying that they had the item.
While Ilana had refused to go on the job, when it came time for the drop, she refused to stay on the ship. For one thing, that Amora woman didn't know the first thing about using a gun, and Ilana wanted to be there to thelp Roman if things with the drop went south. Most of the crew tagged along, but they made Kate stay behind just in case. The drop went smooth, snarky comments exchanged on both sides, until one of the crew members of the other group explicitly told Ilana how much he'd like to rub certain body parts of his on and around her breasts. Ilana fired back telling him she was gonna shove the barrel of her gun up his arse. He apparently could, as people say, dish it, but he couldn't take it. He drew on her, but he was slow and sloppy. Ilana was fast and smooth as she drew her gun and put a bullet between his eyes.
Pandemonium ensued even as the body was still falling. They took cover and shots were exchanged. They lost Harlan, the cook, which was a shame. He was a good man, plus everyone else on the ship was a lousy cook. Mostly, they were all firing blind, just shooting randomly in the direction the other guys were. It was Harlan that got the bright idea to poke his head up to get a real shot. The other group was watching for exactly that and took his head clean off. One of the other group snuck up around their little hiding spot. He only got one shot off, put a bullet in Ilana’s abdomen, right above the kidney. That one almost killed her. It went right through her though, which Kate said was a good thing. Roman thought she was going to die. Kate saved her, and she spent three months on his ship doing nothing but recovering.
***
She stayed another month after healing, spent some quality time with Roman, learned a little more from Kate about using the sword, and she left. She went back to Persephone, as usual, but she also always returned to Roman eventually. This time, she waited nearly two years before she waved him to pick her up. During that two years, she waved him off and on to chat, and kept up her job at the docking station, but she stayed grounded the entire time. She'd gotten a bit of a scare, nearly dying the way she had, and it took her a while to want to leave the comfort of a regular job, and the much smaller likely hood of being shot. She did wave him though. In December of 2516, she waved him and he picked her up, as he always did. She only stayed with him until the last week of May 2517, working mostly in the engine room of the ship. She only did one outside job with him during that stay, and she was only the "getaway drive" of the mule for that expedition. This time, she broke the normal routine. When she decided it was time to leave, she asked him to drop her on Beaumonde on his way through where she got wind of a guy needing a mechanic.
RP Sample:
Ilana shot to a sitting position with a deep ragged breath. She looked around wildly for a moment, before she realized she'd had a nightmare. She couldn't remember what it was about, she only knew that it had been bad. Her whole body ached and she wanted nothing more than to just lie back down and go to sleep. Then she realized she was lying on the floor in the engine room of a ship she didn't recognize. It sort of looked like the bare peek she'd gotten of the engine room of the Logan. She knew she couldn't be there, because she'd left the Logan months ago.
There was a dull ache in her head, and a more sharp one in her arm, both throbbing in time with her heart. She rubbed at her shoulder and it stung, and left her hand feeling wet and sticky. She jerked her hand away and looked at it. Bright red blood was smeared across her palm and three fingers. She eyed the blood with a sick dread. The worst thing for her in that moment, was having no idea what in the hell had happened.
"What the hell?" She asked to no one in particular.
She lifted the sleeve of her shirt, which was bloody and ragged, and saw an equally ragged wound. Funny, that looks the same way the graze I got back on Whitefall did when it was fresh, she thought.
She got up and walked to through the ship. She couldn't find anyone, and there wasn't a sound aside from the small sounds her bare feet made. She went to the infirmary and wrapped her arm with gauze, and went back through the ship again. When she go back to the engine room, she heard a gunshot, from behind her. She turned and ran in that direction and saw the hall was full of people. She watched in horror as Gale shot Griffin in the head, painting the wall, and people, behind him in a coat of crimson. Katya was lying in a pool of blood at his feet. She raised her gun in both hands and fired off two quick shots at Gale. One got him in the the base of his skull and his head disintegrated in a fine spray of blood and other things.
But the other shot. Oh god, the other shot didn't hit Gale, or wall, or floor, or ceiling. The other shot was a little off, from a tiny twitch in her arm from the throbbing. She watched helplessly as the second bullet slammed into Jay's throat. He made a horrible gurgle and fell to the ground, hands desperately trying to keep the blood in his throat. She started to go to him when pain lanced through her from her hand. She looked around and couldn't find a reason for it. Her gun dropped uselessly to the floor and she screamed wordlessly. She dropped to her knees and heard gunshots from behind her. One took her in her injured arm, and as she looked up, and saw a man stalking toward her, firing shots and her and Marcus.
She fought back the pain and grabbed her gun. Ray came out of the engine room behind the man and shot him in the back of the head. The man's head exploded, sending a blood and brain and skull in every direction. Ray continued to walk forward, his gun thrust out in front of him. Ilana looked at Marcus from her position on the floor. He was on the floor too. He smiled a little sadly and said, "Sorry."
Then his head exploded, and everything inside his head suddenly became visible on the outside, though definitely not in the original arrangement. She turned to see Ray, his gun aimed at Marcus, a cruel smile on his face. Then he turned the gun on her. She raised her gun, but not fast enough. She saw his hand tighten on the gun, his finger squeezed the trigger. Something punched her in the chest and her body was thrown backward. She tried to breath, but the best she could do was tiny, painful gasps. She felt like she was drowning, and there was blood running out of her mouth. She heard footsteps, but she couldn't move to look. Ray's face came into view, his gun leveled at her face. "Hello," he said. She saw his finger squeeze the trigger again
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