Oser
C'était sympa. D'une certaine manière, elle a rappelé à Izumi les quelques fois où elle et sa mère avaient été en vacances sur FH-K4, un planétoïde qui avait été cultivé par un culte hippie de retour à la nature pour leurs propres fins. Bien sûr, un culte avec des membres de plusieurs systèmes solaires, mais un culte hippy néanmoins. Bien sûr, comme la plupart des cultes, au moment où les autorités menaçaient leur mode de vie après que le chef eut couché avec trop de mineurs, elles avaient, comme sa mère l'avait dit, "Drank the Kool-Aid". Apparemment, c'était une sorte d'euphémisme de la fin du XXe siècle pour suicide par empoisonnement de masse. A part cela, Izumi avait aimé la petite cabane qu'ils avaient louée, et jouer dans la forêt de conifères autour de lui et le lac; puis encore une fois, tout le planétoïde était couvert de forêts de conifères, de sorte que cela n'aurait pas eu d'importance si elle avait été la même cabane ou non.
Une fois que le grand patron a fait son introduction et a dit au groupe d'être confortable, Dare s'est retrouvée dériver dans un coin par elle-même. Elle n'avait pas soif (le moins du monde pour l'alcool; la première fois qu'elle avait bu de l'alcool, elle avait fini par coucher avec sa colocataire. Laissez à une fille de savoir comment faire pour qu'une fille se sente bien. Elle s'est donc contentée d'examiner le groupe à travers sa visière, en envoyant leurs visages à la mémoire. Elle n'avait jamais été bonne avec les noms, donc elle les a compris plus tard. La dame qui les avait menés ici avait l'air si viking-ish que c'était effrayant. En toute honnêteté, si elle n'avait pas été aussi poitrineuse, Dare aurait juré qu'elle était un homme.
La prochaine chose qu'elle a notée était une vue très curieuse: un droïde/robot et une fée (très littérale). Elle avait vu beaucoup de la première dans sa vie, mais la dernière qu'elle n'avait vu que dans les livres et les films. Puis encore une fois, nous vivons dans un putain de grand univers, pensait Dare. Les fées qui courent avec des gardes du corps robotisés ne sont pas aussi pointues que les chats de l'espace parlant, les aspirateurs robotisés ou les gorilles qui pilotent des vaisseaux spatiaux en forme de tête de Lady Liberty.
Izumi a décalé son regard vers la gauche... et a presque chié des briques. Certes, le gars qu'elle regardait était plutôt beau, mais ce qui l'a le plus attirée, c'était la géante araignée qui le suivait comme un chien de compagnie. Son premier instinct était d'enlever son fusil et de faire sauter le mouchard, comme ce Klendathan Arachnid qu'elle avait croisé sur un cargo. Cependant, elle l'a gardée cool. Mais si ce bestiole s'approchait d'elle, il y aurait des ennuis.
Name: Izumi M. Dare ("It's pronounced 'Dah-RAY'!")
Species: Human
Age: 25
Gender: Female
Height: 5'10" (177.7 cm)
Weight: 114 lbs (51.7 kg) ("You NEVER ask a woman that! What are you, a moron!?")
Personality: Izumi is, for lack of a better term, a tsundere. She dislikes interacting with people, but this is because she feels awkward and uncomfortable around those she's not familiar with. She covers up this fact by acting cold, snarky, and aggressive towards others. Having been raised by a single mother for the majority of her life, Dare can take care of herself quite well. In an interesting quirk, she is quite fond of animals, particularly cute ones; in fact, she's been known to go out of her way on a hunt to get a cute/young creature out of harm's way (whatever you do, NEVER bring up the "Horned Lemur Incident" when she's around; she's still so embarrassed about the incident that she's been known to thrash those who even mention Horned Lemurs in everyday conversation). Izumi is more than a bit of a gun nut, and on her time off she can often be found in her workshop, repairing and modifying weapons and armor brought to her. She's so much of a gun nut that she's been known to ask if she could "tweak" a teammate's weapons or armor in the middle of a fight. If you want to see her excited about anything, just bring up guns when talking to her... assuming you have more than an hour to kill.
History: Twenty-six years ago the CEO and owner of DareTek-- one of the largest interstellar defense contractors this side of the Milky Way-- had an affair with his secretary. As with many tales like this, said secretary discovered she was pregnant, and was subsequently fired when she told her boss. In exchange for her silence, Mr. Dare agreed to financially support her until her daughter was an adult. While it was never an extravagant amount of money, it was enough to let Izumi live a somewhat normal life. Well, almost; while other little girls asked for dolls and birthday parties, Izumi asked for combat mecha and trips to firing ranges. Unfortunately, that changed when she turned sixteen, when her mother died during a pandemic on her home planet. Before she died, however, she revealed that Izumi was the illegitimate child of one William Dare... and, therefor, an heiress (technically speaking, anyway). Through a series of misadventures, she met her father. In an interesting twist, Dare confessed to his wife that he'd had an affair; what followed was nothing short of the most spectacularly messy divorce seen in the (very) long history of Dare family divorces. Afterwards, Dare even thanked Izumi ("She always was a drama queen," he told her), and said that if she ever needed anything to ask. Her favor? Pull a few strings with his connections at GAHL, and provide training and weaponry (however she still has to pay him back for the weapons and armor). Now, at twenty-five, she's finished training, and is ready for a real hunt.
Weapons/Supplies: A set of semi-powered armor (semi-powered in the sense that it uses just enough energy to move as if she isn't wearing armor); she has four guns, but only ever takes two at once on a mission at a time-- a custom assault rifle (5.45x39mm HEIAP rounds; 30-round box magazine; safe, semi-auto, & 3-round burst-fire; "In my defense, we go after some damn big critters. I'd rather blow money on overkill than wind up as a snack."); a custom-made shotgun (12-gauge; seven-round stacked-projectile tube magazine, with both lethal and LTL rounds; semi-automatic, and both barrels can be fired at once if needed; "I'm not saying this is for zombies, but this would be GREAT to have if we run into some."; a custom-made submachine gun (9mm subsonic ammunition; 30-round box magazine; equipped with integral suppressor; "Nothing makes me feel better than the sound of automatic gunfire, but sometimes you have to get shit done quietly. God, I hate jobs like that."); a directed energy pistol ("Don't ask whose body I got this off of. Seriously, don't."); and a combat knife, which she keeps on her person at all times.
Misc: - Despite her love of animals, Izumi HATES bugs. Really, anything that could be classified as a "Bug-type" in Pokemon, she hates, and tends to go overkill when dealing with extremely large ones (and, by "overkill," absolutely NO weapon is out of the question when killing large bugs, including high-explosives).
- Touching anything in her workshop without express permission is forbidden; the last person who touched a grav-wrench got whacked so hard with it he forgot his own name.
- With the computer built into her helmet, she can track a target that she's hit with her energy pistol ("The bolts give off a unique radiation signature. Want to see if I can track you with it? I'll give you a ten-minute head start.")
- Dare has a rather strange, dark sense of humor; for example, when screwed over by a partner/boyfriend she once had, she shaved him bald in his sleep, and super-glued a dead bird to his butt.
- Because of the above, Izumi may or may not have sworn off getting romantically involved with men.