Hazel Ada Stoll
<Les mesures de sécurité sont pour les humains, pas le kaiju.> Hazel a cliqué sa langue deux fois dans la direction de Ryoma, car le scientifique s'était avéré être la seule personne capable de la comprendre systématiquement. C'était suffisant pour qu'elle veuille crier. C'était au-delà de l'inconvénient que le reste ne pouvait pas suivre ses signes, même si elle allait lentement. Pourtant, elle pouvait compter sur quelqu'un au moins pour interpréter pour l'automne. <Nous sommes la mesure de sécurité contre kaiju. Les défenses de la forteresse peuvent aider, mais nous sommes la première ligne de défense. La plupart des mesures de sécurité visent à s'assurer que personne n'entre.>
Elle a négligé d'ajouter le "comme je l'ai fait", mais à au moins quelques-uns d'entre eux, cela serait implicite.
Michel a favorisé avec un petit sourire et un clin d'œil, ce qui a été un grand éloge du pilote notoirement désintéressé Shrike. Il n'a peut-être pas pu la comprendre, mais l'enfant a au moins prêté attention. Cela mérite d'être reconnu. Il vaudrait la peine d'essayer de lui enseigner au moins les bases de l'ASL, aider quelqu'un d'autre à comprendre au moins aussi bien que Victor.
En parlant de ça.
Le pilote portant le béret a été fixé avec un regard de niveau, exaspéré, et la femme muette a sorti le carnet de sa poche avec une lenteur exagérée et le porter au niveau des yeux. Elle l'a agitée une fois avec une touche de poignet, puis pointée vers ses yeux avec le coin. Puis ses yeux avec son doigt.
Les yeux. Ici. Vous ne trompez personne.
Et leur glorieux commandant. Elle pouvait voir les vitesses tourner dans la tête de la femme, la réalisation de la truie. Enfin. Il avait fallu assez de temps pour expliquer qu'elle n'était pas épileptique, une fois qu'elle lâchait sa langue. Et une fois qu'elle a cessé d'avoir la tête arrachée du sol. Cela avait à peine été une morsure avant, mais cela avait justifié une morsure. Une folle. Et elle n'était pas une putain de spaz, c'était le pot qui appelait la bouilloire noire.
Pourtant, la réalisation était délicieuse.
Hazel toussait innocemment, se chamaillait l'oreille en avant comme si elle essayait de mieux entendre. Elle fixa Corinne avec un sourire amusé, qui ne s'élargit que lorsqu'elle entre en contact avec les yeux.
Name: Hazel Ada Stoll
Gender: Female
Age: 21
Job: MAX FIRE First Independent Special Squadron Pilot
Personality: Quiet. Not in the sense of ‘doesn’t talk much’, but in the sense of ‘doesn’t talk at all’. Hazel’s commentary, if she gives it, comes almost entirely in the way of expressions, signs, or typed text. If the option is available. She manages to seem dry and sarcastic anyway. She isn’t particularly unfriendly, just generally disinterested in people. Unless she’s actually doing her job she’s most likely to find a quiet corner somewhere to sit with her laptop, if not retreating to her own quarters entirely. She’ll ‘talk’, if you can understand her and you have something interesting to say, but people just don’t seem to be her priority. Unlike most of MAX FIRE, who seems humanistic in the extreme, one kind of gets the impression that Hazel is just along for the robots.
Her job, however, is where passion and profession intersect. Hazel is absolutely, immeasurably fascinated with her mecha. Not just her mecha, but everyone’s mecha. It’s the one subject that will get her full attention without fail, and the only one that seems to really fire up the relatively lethargic pilot. It was what brought her to MAX FIRE’s attention, after all, when she tried to access files on the machines for her own curiosity. She will converse for hours on end with anyone in the know about them, or even about the fictional machines that inspired them, given the chance. Not everyone welcomes this, and she’ll depart without complaint if she gets the feeling people would prefer to be left alone, but such talks are one of her most humanizing traits.
Even when it comes to her teammates, she seems to prefer people in the abstract sense than the real.
Skills: Significant knowledge of computer systems, as evidenced by her unlawful entry to MAX FIRE’s records. If you were to read her list of charges like a job application it’d showcase technical skill, a preternatural grasp of social engineering (for someone who doesn’t talk), a knack for operational planning, and the ability to improvise when the plan goes awry. Said improvisation included a semi-successful attempted hijacking of one of Prometheus’ components, a big piece of what landed her the gig.
Hazel isn’t much of a fighter by herself, most of her self defense amounting to pulling every dirty trick in the book and running like hell, but she’s definitely got a knack for operating her machine. What she lacks in formal understanding of tactics seems to be made up for by an understanding of every mecha trope in the book, and the willingness to test things out on the fly. Where others might not succeed, she gets by using an ever-broadening understanding of her machine’s limits and potential.
How well she works in a more cohesive team remains to be seen.
Short Bio: Exactly where Hazel A. Stoll came from is a little unclear, mostly because the girl won’t say much. Records of her attendance at university corroborate her recent history, but only stretching back a few years or two; a fairly unremarkable academic record, but not one that matches up with the intelligence she displays. If anything the school seems mostly to have been a way of accessing better resources. No one that has pressed on the matter has managed to dig much deeper.
What is clear is that she’s very good at finding out things she wants to know, and this trait brought her to MAX FIRE. Whispers about what Higini Somporn was working on reached her ears, enough to make her decide that she had to know. So over the better part of a year she researched MAX FIRE painstakingly, using what networked resources she could access to study her target. Transportation of raw materials, delivery dates, bureaucratic structure, floor plans filed with local government, any little tidbit she could find, coerce, dig up or steal. Everything she found seemed to keep pointing to the same thing, so she made a plan.
Through means not entirely known (Hazel isn’t talking) she breached the Science Fortress’ perimeter under the guise of a contractor, accessed the facility, bypassed the guards on site, the facility’s physical security, and actually gained access to the Prometheus compound.
Buuut skill only gets you so far, especially when you’re dealing with effective security. Caught redhanded Hazel tried to commit grand theft mecha to make good her escape, but was apprehended. Quite stunningly, depending on who you ask, given that it ended in the ISS’ captain dragging her from the cockpit.
Between how she accessed the compound and how she managed to get anywhere trying to steal a mech, MAX FIRE had some questions for her. A long hour ensued before her would-be interrogators figured out that she didn’t speak, not that she refused. Not that she was talkative once they got an interpreter that understood American Sign Language. It’s a little uncertain who pulled what strings, but rather than being tossed to the police for a decades-long-timeout Hazel was given a choice first. Work with MAX FIRE to help keep someone else from doing what she did, and be entered into the candidate pool for pilots or cool her heels in a cell.
Hazel eagerly took the offer.


Promethion Component #3 is referred to in official blueprints as “Aerial Offense Unit”, nothing more. A descriptive name in a technical sense, but one lacking in… Flair. Hazel prefers the name she bestowed upon it; Olympus Shrike. The Shrike is sizable, even considering the scale of Promethion’s components, and packing firepower to match. The Shrike is meant, by itself, to strike fast and strike hard. Its speed and maneuverability are incredible, even if it wouldn’t win a dogfight against a more agile craft. It wouldn’t necessarily need to.
The Shrike is a pretty thick aircraft, with a wingspan as wide as it is long when fully deployed. It expands from a tapered point to a bulky rear section fitted with immense thrusters, thrusters hefty enough to send it rocketing along at high speeds. Both wings and nosecone are hardened for use in combat as either a spear or a blade respectively, turning the Shrike into a melee weapon unto itself. Its wings can partially retract for this very reason to allow it to dive and impale a foe upon its nose more easily. Its two most prominent weapons are tucked under its wings, pulled tight to the fuselage; long barreled cannons connected to rotating cylinders near to the main body. Each one fires a beam, either in short, quick bursts or in a prolonged beam. Each space in the cylinder is in essence a battery, providing a well of energy to draw from. When one is expended, the cylinder rotates to the next until all are depleted. These cannons are positioned over Promethion’s shoulders when combined. Banks of missiles are secreted away in its chassis, to give any enemy kaiju a real bad day. The craft is potent enough to carry any allied component, towards the battle or away, provided sufficient grip but does not do so often.
Though its capabilities are unchanged, the Shrike has undergone certain aesthetic modifications at its pilot’s enthusiastic urging. Bronze highlights for the black machine, a fine-tuning of the cockpit for pilot preference (most importantly the addition of a tapedeck), and a painted girl upon either side of the nose strongly resembling an anthropomorphized Beast Machine God.

(Still in need of some tweaks, but I wanted to get it moved here first)