Name: Simoni Qassab.
Nationality: North Canaan of the Ostroman Empire.
Age: Twenty-three.
Rank: Corporal of the Free Jazeera.
Striker Unit: T-72B Main Battle Striker.
Armament:
~ 125mm 2A46M-5 smoothbore main gun.
~ Composite and reactive armor.
~ 9M119 Svir guided missile.
~ AKS-74U.
~ Smoke grenade launchers.
Theme:
Thé à la Menthe by la Caution.
Black Moth by of the Wand and the Moon.
Personality: Thugdere. She acts tough, and she'd have you believe she's some hardened gangbanging gopnik from the ghetto, but she's just a softy at heart. A real sweetie with all the best fake prison tattoos the girl in the other room can give her.
Maybe a bit reclusive in nature, but tries to be outgoing. Sleep deprivation gives her a bit of a manic air often as not and she tries not to let on to why she refuses it. They'll learn how weak she knows she is, and the Lions of Mount Lebanon are not weak. She still has nightmares. She will until the day she dies. She wakes up laughing.
Likes:
- Les Cederes football team. Out of loyalty more than anything.
- Singing folk music.
- Shooting down trees.
- Glaring at tourists. It's not as easy as you'd expect.
- Mint tea. Used to drink it with her friends in her teens.
Dislikes:
- Trees. Plants. They act high and mighty, but all they do is lie.
- Pigs. The noise is too familiar.
- Sleep. It brings disturbing dreams.
- Carnies. They have small hands and smell of cabbage.
Biography: Baby's on fire.
Simoni's family is named of their profession; Qassab, meaning 'butcher'. They owned a butchery and sold meat. She never enjoyed it, as blood and the like were not her particular cup of tea. The town they lived in was one on a soft front of the war, the sounds of combat echoing in the distance being such a constant that people continue about their lives even when the fight bleeds mere blocks away. Dangerous and looming, but always just out of sight.
Her exceptional magical strengths came to light during service in her homeland's mandatory military draft, gaining her a seat in the small nation's Witch unit of roughly five, so far consisting of one fighter and three tankers already deployed. Decidedly underfunded, the members were supplied with outdated strikers from the forties and fifties with shoddy retrofits to offset their lackluster capabilities and were deployed to the lines with minimal training in their abilities, individuals largely relying on the experience of girls in the unit longer than themselves to get by. Despite their means, they were a fierce unit and fought nobly. The people called them the Lions of Mt. Lebanon.
The Lions had been sent forth to investigate rumors of an enemy force near a countryside village and were patrolling through the outskirts of the evacuated residences, an area completely encompassed by massive rolling fields of sunflowers as tall as two men and as dense as a hippy's armpits. Initially their fighter was flying reconnaissance over the area in a futile attempt to gain bearings in the forest of flowers, but was thwarted by the sheer volume, barely able to see even friendly units let alone any hiding guerilla Neuroi. They were traveling along a road in a staggered line separated by twenty or so feet, the most experienced leading the group with Simoni carrying the rear, despite being easily the most naturally gifted.
The tanker was distracted by the lookout scanning overhead when she was hit by a mind-numbingly loud bang and a rain of butchered pork that plopped softly off her instinctively erected shield and reminded her of when she was a child at the family shop. Still fuzzy from the blast, she saw the third position girl to her left, apparently shellshocked and struggling to stand after being thrown ten feet onto her back. She looked forward and saw what appeared to be the second position girl blown nearly clean in half as her upper form, protruding from the striker at the thighs, was ripped away violently. She looked to the front for the captain, but saw only a five foot deep trench spanning the width of the road with some stray bits of twisted metal shavings about it. It took Simoni several minutes to realize that the many chunks she was now suddenly and painfully aware of were all that remained of the squad leader. Those, and a large red stain stretching back from the crater where she stepped on a row of tank mines stacked four deep and into the afterlife before she realized she'd even died.
The horror of what had happened rapidly caught up with her as she witnessed her still dazed companion gurgling loudly, half beheaded by a vaguely humanoid black figure, to which she responded by shooting it square in the face with a 45mm cannon and shrieking into the radio for backup. Or evacuation. Anything really. She could see more distant figures coming through the thicket of sunflowers, likely attracted by the commotion. With no response from the radio and a strong inclination against a bloody death, she came to a swift and matter-of-fact solution.
Numbly, she wandered back to the village HQ, soaked in dirt and spray from the skirmish which had consumed almost all of the Lions. Her mind reeled, her internal frame screaming to the heavens and smashing itself against the inside of her skull, but as she read the report, the officers only experienced the cold, clipped note of shellshock which rolled off her tongue. With only two members left, the rest KIA, the decision was made to dissolve the Lions of Mt. Lebanon, to the chagrin of her inner monologue which railed uselessly against the wall of her apathy.
The two were separated without haste, unable to reconcile what happened in time and to lend shoulders in order to ease the suffering which was yet to come. For Simoni, whose mind was blank in an attempt to stop thinking about anything at all at this point, was somewhat grateful for the reprieve as the pilot disappeared to god-knows-where. Her reassignment was shown to her, and her empty nod confirmed the decision.
Simoni was assigned to the Free Jazeera Joint Strike Coven.
THANKS FOR THE LOVELY EDIT, TONE~
Zeda Ennd · Sat Mar 26, 2016 @ 06:00am · 0 Comments
