(no subject)

[bladebabysitter]

[OOC]

Your Name: Dragon
Contact: dragonoflife
Are you at least 16 years of age or older?: Yes
Current Characters(s): N/A

[IC]

Is this a re-app?: No.
Character Name: Elma
Journal: bladebabysitter
Canon: Xenoblade Chronicles X
Canon Point: Postgame
Species: Unnamed alien species, but her consciousness currently inhabits a robotic body designed to be as close to a biological human as possible.
Age: Appears 30. Actual age unknown but significantly older.

History: Elma on the wiki. Full plot details.

Personality: Elma is cool, calm, capable, and a leader by nature -- all of that is quickly and immediately obvious. On first rescuing the player character, she's quick to adapt to their amnesiac state and explain the situation, respectful but not condescending. Those she's worked with in the past, like Irin and Gwin, speak of her only in glowing terms; even after they no longer are her subordinates and she no longer is officially a Colonel, they still address her with the title as they believe it's her due. Both BLADE colony leadership recognize her, and her squad, as the ones to be trusted with the heaviest and most important tasks for humanity's survival.

More than just tactically capable, Elma is generally a decent person on an individual level as well. Her relationship with Lin is the clearest sign of this; Elma is somewhere between a mother and a big sister to the girl, protecting her without smothering her, recognizing her abilities at the same time as she recognizes her weakness, and backing her up when she sets herself the challenge of developing a flying module for Skells. She regrets the loss of native life that results from NLA's proximity to large numbers of indigens and is quick to point out that there's a huge difference between self-defense and picking a fight. Even when the team defeats a group of a group of blatantly hostile aliens and has them at gunpoint, Elma simply tells them to go back to their masters and let them know that humanity is willing to negotiate.

And of course, Elma also came to Earth to warn its populace of a war and help the human race survive, without ever giving any sign that this decision came from anything other than altruism. Even though she's singlehandedly responsible for even scraps of humanity making it off the doomed planet, when the subject comes up she's quick to blame herself for not doing more.

On the downside, though, Elma is a calculating pragmatist when it comes to decision-making. Emotions and passion don't factor into her choices. When Lao betrayed humankind and stole the data they needed to survive, Elma intended to shoot him, even at 50-50 odds that she'd destroy that data. The idea that he could be talked down, that he could be brought back from the brink, never occurred to her; it took Lin and the player character standing directly in opposition to her to make her back down. Similarly, Elma knew that the people selected to leave Earth were chosen for reasons of politics or money, not suitability or worth. When called on that, she simply replies that while she didn't agree with a lot of the choices made, the important thing was that humanity survived.

She also has a habit of keeping things private, doubtless stemming from her years of secrecy on Earth and then disguised as a human on the White Whale and in NLA. She deliberately withholds her suspicions of Lao, her own nature, the actual nature of the Lifehold and the fact that no human bodies actually were in it, the true nature of the White Whale's selection process... In general, her motivation seems to be pragmatic once again: revealing any of this ahead of time would accomplish little and only cause problems. 'Trust' and 'honesty' take a distinct back seat to 'the greater good' as Elma sees it. Notably, though, she starts hinting at her own personal secret once she sees that her team accepts and welcomes other xenos -- but again, she doesn't reveal it until she can reveal it all at once with the absolute proof of her own natural body.

The Elma at the end of canon has changed quietly, subtly, but distinctly; her time working with her team, and her experience with Lao's betrayal and redemption, have helped her learn to trust a little more. But maybe only a little. Secrets still come naturally to her, and it takes effort for her to actually open up to a person.

Powers & Abilities: Elma is an extremely competent warrior, using a fighting style that blends the use of two swords and two guns. She has numerous techniques as part of this that inflict damage with her weapons, augment her capabilities to inflict injury, heal her own wounds when inflicting damage, spend her own vitality to power her abilities, and most significantly, avoid the attention of hostile creatures.

Elma is capable of entering a state called Overdrive, which amplifies her damage and the speed at which she can utilize her combat skills.

Her physical body is a human robot called a Mimeosome; it is capable of eating, drinking, breathing, and so forth, and in fact requires these things to function. Its only ability of note is to survive any fall basically unharmed, which is more an issue of construction than an actual power.

Elma is a skilled pilot of mobile exoskeletons (Skells).

She possesses a substantial knowledge of advanced science and technology, having brought these things to Earth in her past.

Misc: Should Elma's real body ever be a thing, it is mechanically identical to her Mimeosome.

Sample:

Elma sat on a collapsed pod, frowning absently down at the piece of jagged metal she held quite carefully in one hand while she wrapped wire around one end. It might give people a bad impression, but she'd fought too many indigens to feel confident wandering around unarmed. Bad enough she lacks firearms or proper tools -- let alone a Skell. For all she knew, the Ganglion were here, or one of their puppet races. The last thing she needed is to run into a Prone warrior or the like with nothing but her hands to fight with.

"I thought our landing on Mira was bad enough," she mused out loud as she worked. "The ship destroyed, the Lifehold lost, not to mention the fact that the Ganglion were still chasing us..." Looking up from her work, she let her eyes canvas the horizon, wide and empty as it was. "And indigens all over. Practically in the gates, those first few days. If you'd told me then I'd miss them, I would have laughed."

Out in the open, the indigens were a threat -- but they were a known threat. Something that could be avoided, left to deal on their own. Here, the threats were hidden. That meant more danger... and more fights that it would have been better to avoid.

Jury-rigged weapon completed, she lifted the steel shard by the wire-wrapped end, turning it left and right before slashing it through the air. A clumsy, unprofessional weapon that she wouldn't trust to take down a Nopon.

Still better than nothing.