Mila Kawena

Player Info:
Nickname: Jisu
Age: 23
Personal LJ/DW: friendshipbeam
Method of Contact: Plurk - jisusushi, AIM - ColorKidLalaPink
Characters Played: Kiryuu Kaoru, Nanami Lucia

Character Info:
Name: Mila Kawena
Age: 24
Canon: Mirror//Eyes (OC canon)
Pull Point: Before the route split

Background Info:
History: So Mirror//Eyes has a number of different routes and possible endings, and I need to actually make it but Blue Moon comes first. There's a prominent route split after the yellow Core Gem, and because Mila comes just before then, I'll detail all of them. But first, backstory!

Mila's world is an Earth surrounded by a ring-like structure of colonies and machines. She herself came from one of those colonies and was a bright kid, a gymnastics champion, and very good at being where she wasn't supposed to be. It started when she was a child and her older brother kept picking on her; tired of her parents not doing anything about it, she snuck into his room, stole his hidden stash of unsavoury magazines, and blackmailed him for years. This was the beginning of Mila's flagrant disregard for rules and her decision to do things based on two factors: how much of an impression they would make and how fun they would be.

After making the necessary grades for a student exchange, partially because she was smart and partially because she may or may not have broken into a teacher's office or two and copied answer sheets, Mila went to high school on Earth. For the first little while, things were normal. Then she attended a sleepover where one girl was dared to steal a teacher's car and chickened out. Mila got one of her bad ideas. She stole the thing herself a few days later. Not having anything to do with it nor anything against the car's owner, she decided to make some use of the stunt and park the thing on the roof of the school. How? She has a way with these things. The mysterious car on the roof was the talk of the school for months, and Mila was only encouraged to top her last stunt. After all, she wasn't doing anything wrong, right? Right? Of course not.

The ridiculous stunts continued through her post-secondary education, where Mila couldn't stay anonymous for long, and after a few more pranks, her identity was exposed. All she saw from this was the pressure of everybody knowing who she was and being able to look down on her if she messed up, so she became more and more reckless. One day, strapped for cash and really wanting a certain outfit in a store window, she took a bet from a classmate for money and ended up breaking into a condemned building. (Yeah. She does this a lot.) Unfortunately, that was the day of the Black Rivers.

Nobody quite knew where they had come from. That day, colossal monsters -- later called Black Rivers -- rose up from the water and descended upon the Earth. Though the armies managed to fight them off, the cities were in chaos and a lot was destroyed by the time that first small wave was wiped out. The already-trashed building collapsed when a Black River rampaged through the city; Mila was already inside. Discovering a strange red jewel in the trashed, gutted building is the last thing she remembers before the roof collapsed on her. It felt like she was being crushed to death -- except there was a strange glow, and when she lost consciousness, she had a feeling that she wasn't going to die.

Mila was put in the hospital for a long time, and eventually released with many of her bones now mechanically reinforced. After this she stopped taking every stupid challenge that came her way, but certainly not all of them. She ended up graduating late thanks to the hospital stay, but completed her engineering program anyway, and went out searching for something to do with her life.

Thankfully, something fell right into her lap. Mila had emerged from the hospital into a world where Black Rivers were appearing all over the planet, with a lot of people moving either inland from the coasts and islands or off of Earth entirely. Some groups, however, were working to do something about it. From an inland base in the middle of nowhere, Trinity Gift, founded by two researchers named Hope and Logan Yasakani, had developed weapons -- giant robots called Mirror units -- powered by strange jewels they'd uncovered, called Core Gems, which bonded to the units' pilots and also had their own powers aside from operating robots. The red jewel Mila had uncovered in the abandoned building looked just like one.

Logan Yasakani had the jewel tested and deemed that it was the red Core Gem of love, but that for some reason, it wasn't working; it had bonded to Mila but appeared to have lost all its power. The official story was that Mila's Core Gem was a decoy and the group was still looking for the real one. Unable to become a pilot, Mila signed on as an engineer developing the Mirror units and working on them when they came in from the field. She did meet up with and sort-of-befriend the two existing pilots, Saph Yasakani (Trinity Gift's heiress, with the indigo Core Gem of kindness) and Brandon Eis (a struggling former farm kid who joined up to pay for his medical bills, with the orange Core Gem of honesty). Then one day, a third pilot showed up -- Elian Verdant, who had walked right into the search for the green Core Gem of courage, ended up carted around by Saph while she fought Black Rivers, and bonded with the thing.

Mila had a direct hand in developing Elian's mech, Mirror Third, to his strengths -- not that even he knew what those were, and at first, his teammates had to keep him from throwing the spiked weapons. They all got to know each other and things were good for a while, but soon a new enemy emerged -- Ghost Seven, a group of humans in machines like the Mirror units who appeared to be siding with the Black Rivers. What was more, they already had a Core Gem. The route split occurs when the two groups clash over another Core Gem in their second meeting.

In Ruby Blue, Saph's route, the yellow Core Gem of joy goes to Trinity Gift, and Mila and the rest of the engineers are put to work designing a weapon to go with it: the White Flame, a giant. freaking. ship. Logan and Hope jointly bond to the gem at the same time so they can both operate the thing, and they set up a plan to move on a structure they've discovered that looks like it has something to do with the Black Rivers' appearance. However, this is cut short when, deprived of the yellow Core Gem, Ghost Seven uncovers the blue one. The blue Core Gem of peace has mind control abilities, and they put it to use to get the guards to let them into Trinity Gift's home base. They steal Mirror First and kidnap Saph, its pilot. The next time anyone sees Saph, she's being made to work for Ghost Seven as their second pilot. Their first pilot, Jarlan Septimus, ragequits and joins Trinity Gift. He explains that Ghost Seven has given up on the Earth and sees the Black Rivers as nature's way of telling its people to get out. Elian figures out that the real Saph is still somewhere in there by the way she's acting and they rescue her, putting her back in her right mind. They then destroy the Black Rivers' genesis structure to prove that it's not worthless to fight back. Mila doesn't have much to do with the plot in this route, aside from getting her closet raided by a brainwashed Saph.

In Joyful Doll, a route centered around a mysterious girl named Serena, Ghost Seven gets the yellow Core Gem. Mila has a little more to do here: she develops upgrades to the Mirrors and figures out that the mysterious new Ghost Seven pilot's abilities mean that the yellow Core Gem heals. This pilot turns out to be Serena, and Elian et al convince her to join Trinity Gift instead. In retaliation, Ghost Seven tries to steal her back, fails, and captures Elian instead. Serena, who's always been hanging in the back as the healstick, goes full-on Combat Medic and busts him out. They wonder if they'll be fighting forever, but the members of Trinity Gift try to reach out to the members of Ghost Seven, saying that the Core Gems chose both groups to defeat the Black Rivers. The leader of Ghost Seven rejects that theory, saying that the Core Gems are just tools, and they must have appeared at the same time as the Black Rivers for no other reason than to help them clear people off the planet. Trinity Gift says that, if that's the case, they'll use them as well to prove which side is right. They fight and, naturally, TG wins. Oh, and there's a bunch of tragic Serena backstory stuff in there, but we need to know about Mila.

She has her own route! In Eyes, naturally, she gets to do a lot more. After Ghost Seven gets the yellow and blue Core Gems, Trinity Gift decides that, instead of attacking mainly Ghost Seven (as in Joyful Doll) or mainly the Black Rivers (as in Ruby Blue), they'll fend off whatever attacks them while trying to look into why things are the way they are. They discover the Black Rivers' genesis structure and destroy it early on, and Ghost Seven is frankly ticked. After a brief period of peace, Black Rivers begin to appear again, stronger this time. Secretly, Mila begins designing another Mirror unit, but this one is meant for herself. She also studies the Core Gems to try and figure out what could have happened to her Core Gem. In a scene that's required to get the good end, Elian discovers her and she admits that her "decoy" Core Gem is indeed genuine, they discover that maybe the energy from the Core Gem is in her, and she starts having Mirror Fourth actually built. As in the other routes, Ghost Seven goes for the blue Core Gem, but this time, Trinity Gift gets it first. Thus, instead of sneaking into their base to kidnap one of their pilots, Ghost Seven storms the Trinity Gift base to take their research and weapons. They're mostly held off, but the research team and all their notes are taken. All, that is, but the hidden stuff Mila left to develop Mirror Fourth.

Eyes Bad End: Rocks fall, everyone dies.
Eyes Normal End: Trinity Gift's pilots make it in time to save most of the research team, and it turns out that Ghost Seven was creating new Black Rivers for fear of losing their goal. In what's supposed to only be an attempt to scare them, some of the engineers and scientists are tasered; Mila, being a cyborg, is killed by it. This activates her Core Gem, which, it turns out, had used up its power keeping her alive ever since the building incident. Mirror Third is rebuilt to use both the green and red Core Gems and Elian, supported by Brandon and Saph, defeats Ghost Seven, saying that going along with bad things because you think it's destiny is just being afraid, and what you really need to do is fight to save everyone.
Eyes Good End: Same as above, but Mila gets away and survives; Mirror Fourth is finished, built to work off the energy it gave her, and the four plus others defeat Ghost Seven.

I apologize for making you sit through all that.

Personality: Mila is kind of ridiculous, but not in the sense that someone who wears 80s-style neon sweats, refuses to shower and rants about the end of the world on street corners is. She's more akin to the crazy group of jocks you knew in high school who decided one day that they were going to steal the globe from the library and plant it in the cafeteria just because they could. She's friendly and easy to get along with, but a bit of a jerk, and you'll either see her as the life of the party or the bane of your life. She does crazy things to entertain people and/or to make her life easier. Usually, she comes off as normal (besides the way she dresses), and she sees herself as normal, too.

The thing about her, though, is that she's kind of immature. Maybe very immature. After being crushed by a collapsing building, Mila's better than she used to be, but she hasn't resolved to stop doing crazy things. If anything, she just has metal in her spine and has trouble getting through airport security, but that's not going to stop her from toilet-papering someone's house or installing a working shower on top of a building for the lulz. When someone challenges her for anything, Mila becomes determined (or crazy-obsessed, whichever works) to see things through to the end. If pushed far enough, she'll go berserk and lash out at whoever caused it. Usually, though, when you get her angry, she's just spiteful and no more violent than anybody else.

Mila is creative in some respects, but most of her crazy plans are actually things that someone else did or that she saw in a movie once, with her own input being adapting it to the situation. If someone else did it, it worked and she thought it was cool, expect Mila to try it out next time she gets a chance to do the same thing. (Fear the day she decides to crash someone's concert and steal the mic. She's terrible.) She's more practically intelligent; it's not the dumb ideas that she has that make her what she is, it's the inventive ways that she thinks of pulling them off. She also doesn't seem to take things very seriously, but she's deeper than she appears. She just doesn't want to depress people by existing, but make their lives and her own more entertaining.

She has no sense of taste, pops wasabi peas like popcorn, doesn't appear to have any shame whatsoever, and gives everyone she meets a ridiculous nickname (some more insulting than others). Oh, and white isn't her natural colour. It's pink. She bleaches.

Game-Specific:
Arcana: Judgment
Justification: Judgment reflects Mila's growth throughout her character arc, particularly in Eyes. She's stuck where she is because she's holding herself back, and the thing that's keeping her alive is also the thing that's keeping her from lending her power to the fight in ways other than developing other people's weapons -- though, in the end, she helps in both ways. This is brought on by Mila realizing that she's already helping a lot and that, if she still does want to fight as well as be an engineer, she can if she uses power that is literally in her. She thus avoids both death and the guilt over making a rare Core Gem useless, and she is able to further Trinity Gift's cause.

Samples:
First Person Sample:
Third Person Sample: