make me believe that I am a fountain

Hello, you've reached Li. I'm unavailable at the moment. Please leave a message, and I will get back to you.

Name: Jean-Set. Or Set, that's also been my nickname for a while IRL.
Over 18? Yes.
Contact: Discord at Jean-Set | Vrai Dragon#4619 or PM me here or Plurk at trash_connoisseur
Current Character: Any other character you have in the game. Just write "N/A" if you don't currently have a character in game.


Name: Xiaohu Pan (birth name) | Ya-Jing Li (alias forcibly given to her) | Yaya (affectionate nickname among her fellow captives)
Canon: Original
Canon Point: November 12th, 2008; two years after she has regained a sense of self, six months after the death of her best friend, a month after the first human-alien hybrid fully broke conditioning and escaped. On a global level, this is ten years before the takeover of Earth by the Inchoate starts in earnest.
Age: 15

Heba or Tian? Heba.
Acquired Ability: Flight. I want Li to eventually get the ability to fly. First this should manifest as mild levitation/hovering, it should probably take a while to get used to it and build up any real speed or duration, but I think flight would be an excellent addition to her life because 1. nothing equivalent to this exists as a power, and I don't want her to have any reference for this and 2. it's useful without being overpowered, something that's important to me (no one likes an overpowered character).

Personality Traits:
Positive:

• Optimistic and hopeful despite an unrelenting horrific life
• Capable of acting despite her fear in almost every situation
• Prioritizes other people over herself and the good of humanity over her disgust for what humans have done to her

Negative:

• Unable to see herself as a person, leading to recklessness, self-endangerment and poor decision making
• Will not hesitate to kill people in a combat situation and struggles with feeling guilt for that due to her training
• Horrible at relating to, empathizing with, and often speaking to other people; can be overly honest and lacking in social graces

History:

• Born in Harbin, Heilongjiang, China. Is one sixty-fourth alien, but her parents are uninvolved in the ongoing Ichoate plan to take over the Earth via systematic assassinations, putting people serving their interests into positions of power, turning humans to their side, etc. Lived the first seven years of her life as a normal girl with a loving family.
• Kidnapped by the Ichoate, an alien species whose empire spans galaxies. They work to conquer planets via strategic assassinations, sewing chaos and strife, destabilizing countries and getting things to the point where when they announce their presence, whole nations willingly join them, making conquering a planet easier. Her heightened strength and agility made her a good candidate for training as an assassin.
• Memories erased, conditioned (read: tortured) into being unable to refuse orders, trained in assassination, made to answer to a new name, used to kill others without hesitation, only allowed to socialize with her small local group of fellow Lis. All assassins of her type are given the surname Li.
• One day, by chance, she walked past a market stall selling statuettes, charms and pendants or various gods and goddesses from Chinese folk religion and Buddhism (which often overlap in China). One of these was of Guanyin, and that set off the first memory of life before she was a weapon. This also snapped her out of combat mode (called Creature mode in-universe), resulting in her being able to make independent decisions. She immediately stole a Guanyin pendant, securing a way to haul herself back to her senses regularly.
• As she has gathered more information on what the Ichoate's plan is, she's begun to realize the only moral thing to do is to try to stop them. This was further solidified when her handler had her kill Li Yunru, her closest friend and the only other Li to break conditioning.
• Li Zhen totally breaks conditioning and kills a handler, something previously thought impossible, then orders Li to find a way to destabilize or defeat the Ichoate from within. Having now seen two people break free, her hope is at an all-time high, even if she's still as unsure as ever how she'll actually do that.
• She is transferred to Suzhou to help aid a human who's working with the Ichoate there, assassinating his political enemies and keeping him safe. Suzhou has a temple to Guanyin, and in the very few moments she can, she slips away to it and finds pieces of her old memories, solidifying her beliefs that humanity is good and worth fighting for. The world is not cruel or deserving of conquering. It is bad actors who make it appear that way.

Canon Abilities/Skills:

• Night Vision/Enhanced Vision: Capable of seeing perfectly even in absolute darkness, and has extremely good eyesight by human standards, which can be a situational advantage.
• Enhanced Reflexes: Further enhanced by her training, she can react faster than a baseline human to stimuli, be it auditory, visual or tactile, and processes what's happening faster. This allows her to duck out of the way of hits, process that she heard a target's movement and shoot, or see that things are out of place quickly, to name a few uses. This is helped by her modified agility.
• Modified Agility: Not superspeed, but she's a lot faster than most humans, on par with a lot of Olympic athletes in terms of sprinting, long jumping and high jumping. She cannot go any faster, higher or longer than a peak human, but since her body's build doesn't suggest her actual athleticism, this means she's got the benefit of being underestimated on a chronic basis.

Suitability: First and foremost, I think this character is a good fit because I cannot fathom anything she would find more abhorrent than the Sylphid. For someone who is actively fighting to prevent the end of the world and who values her freedom and free will so highly, the mere concept of them would have her on her feet and acting. It's always a good sign when the setting motivates the character as much as potential CR would. Additionally, her combat skills make her good for many rebellion related missions, while also making her ill-suited to the others. It's important to me that she have something to do, but also that she not be an ace at all things in the game, as that would defeat my goals for her character. I want her to grow as a person, learn to lean on others, learn to trust, and ideally form some friendships. She has potential to contribute to other character's CR as much as she does to helping the rebellion, even if she's admittedly a bit rough around the edges and still in need of some time to get her footing in life.
Inventory:

• Jade Guanyin pendant
• Tranquilizers
• Six knives
• A length of piano wire

What are your character's feelings on freedom? How would they define freedom? How important is it to them? Would they fight for it, or have they fought for it in the past? If they have, how did they go about it?
Li values freedom above (almost) everything else. The desire of the Ichoate to take over the entirety of the Earth and subjugate them, turning them into manipulated semi-willing slave labor, horrifies and disgusts her. The idea of spending her whole life doing as told by whoever happens to control her is horrifying. For her, freedom is defined as the ability to make your own choices, whether it's where to go, what you do, what to say or who you want to be. It is her driving motivation, to not only free herself, but to free her fellow stolen children from the system that they are in. It's worth it to die trying, and she is well aware that the odds of dying are very high for her. She doesn't yet have the complete resistance to her handlers required to make a break for it and fight for her freedom. She is well aware that she has to keep a low profile until she's totally sure she can get away or else she'll just be terminated and the system will continue to perpetuate. But it's something she strives for. It's the most important goal she can imagine.

Describe a formative moment in your character's life, something that changed them and defined who they are as a person.
Snapping out of her handler-induced daze at that market at the sight of a Guanyin pendant was her defining moment as a person, because it was the first time in a very long time that she conceived of herself as a person. A memory returned to her, of being lifted up in the arms of her father to see a Guanyin statue, of being held close and called a name she'd long forgotten. The Ichoate lied when they said she was thrown away by her human-passing parents for her inhuman eyes. They lied when they said no one had ever wanted her. She was never the gutter trash they'd said she was, never tossed aside and left for dead. She was not just another killing machine in a long line of them, not something only useful in that context and only alive to fill that role. There was a time where she was a person, a little girl named Xiaohu, loved and held close and spoken to like a person. And if they lied about that, they could easily be lying about all of the other Lis. What else are they lying about? The world as she knew it shifted for her in that moment. How she saw herself changed, at long last, from discarded and only useful for one thing to seeing herself as a person who could've had a different life. She could've had choices and a family and so much more than this. That realization did more to her than even she recognizes. For the first time in her memory she questioned authority, questioned if this was a fate she deserved, and imagined a life besides what she'd been forced into. This is when the seed of heroism was planted in her. She's not the savior of her world's story yet, but she could be. She could be anything she chose to be. She could choose, period..

Does your character have a favorite person? If so, how would they describe that person? What do they like about that person? What do they dislike? If they don't have a favorite person, what would they look for in a favorite person? What traits would draw them to another person? What traits could they tolerate that others might not be able to?
Li's ideal person would never ask her to do anything she didn't want to do. They would never hurt her, try to force her to do something, refuse to listen to her, or ignore her boundaries. They would ask her what she wants and doesn't want and take those things into account. Her favorite person would be one who let her make her own choices without trying to order her around. She wouldn't mind listening to reasons why she should or shouldn't do something, but she would dislike being told 'do this' with no explanation. Li would look for someone who could both agree that what she's done is wrong while acknowledging it was largely out of her control. She would seek out someone intelligent who was not a part of any kind of power structure but instead acted as a free agent. A very large drawback of this is that her bar for who she views as respecting her or who she views as worth being near is much lower than that of other people's. Even someone who insults her, if they're not ordering her to do anything, is someone she will interpret as worth hanging around. Someone who does not have sympathy or kindness for her who doesn't ask her to do something violent registers as friendly to her. This very low bar to clear could enable her to get into some very bad situations as she interacts with more people.

What has your character's arc been like so far? How have they developed from their first appearance to their canon point?
She has gained a self of sense, broken partially free of self-control, gained enough memories of humanity being kind to want to fight for their continued freedom, lost a friend, rediscovered guilt from being forced to kill her, learned how to think for herself, realized there are possibilities for her outside of violence and is making choices actively instead of being controlled passively.

How would you like to continue your character's arc in the game? How would you like them to develop? What would you like to have them accomplish?

• Full arc from not understanding killing is an extreme act to taking it seriously. Rediscovery and coping with the concept of guilt.
• Learning to make her own decisions without relying on others after a long stretch of life in which she defaulted to relying on others.
• I want her to develop friendships and interpersonal skills even if it's a long, awkward slog for her.
• Have her get to the point where she values herself enough to feel angry at what happened to her instead of only feeling feelings on behalf of others.
• Endgame goal is for Li to go from an uncertain, awkward, emotionally repressed, and lonely person to someone who works with others, has great certainty, self-worth and the ability to understand and parse her emotions and the emotions of others.

Sample One (TDM)
Sample Two (TDM)

As a result of having alien DNA very far back in her bloodline, Xiaohu/Ya-Jing has some fringe benefits, though nothing that makes her invulnerable in a fight, especially as she snaps out of her conditioning and increasingly doesn't want to murder anyone. Please note that while she is trained to kill, I as the player will never kill your character without explicit permission to do so prior.

• Night Vision/Enhanced Vision: Capable of seeing perfectly even in absolute darkness, and has extremely good eyesight by human standards, which can be a situational advantage.
• Enhanced Reflexes: Further enhanced by her training, she can react faster than a baseline human to stimuli, be it auditory, visual or tactile, and processes what's happening faster. This allows her to duck out of the way of hits, process that she heard a target's movement and shoot, or see that things are out of place quickly, to name a few uses. This is helped by her modified agility.
• Modified Agility: Not superspeed, but she's a lot faster than most humans, on par with a lot of Olympic athletes in terms of sprinting, long jumping and high jumping. She cannot go any faster, higher or longer than a peak human, but since her body's build doesn't suggest her actual athleticism, this means she's got the benefit of being underestimated on a chronic basis. That helps a lot in a fight.