Felicita Arlotti

Player Name: Cubey
Personal DW: runners_low
AIM Contact: cubey@aol.pl
Character Name: Felicita Arlotti
Source Canon: Power Trip (OC)
Community Tag: felicita_arlotti

Notes: WARNING! This canon contains mentions of disabilities and (combat) drug use. These are all meant to be fully fictional, not based on anything from real life - but regardless, I will put up a permission post for people who'd rather not be involved, as well as screen posts when appropriate.

Background: Felicita never knew her father. Like so many others, he perished in the post-Impact turmoil. Her mother is a skilled automatics engineer, finally finding herself as a mobile suit designer, and a Federation citizen.

Unfortunately, life wasn't easy for the Arlotti family, even by post-Impact standards. When she was five, Felicita was diagnosed with a rare medical condition, Poulsen Syndrome. It had a debilitating effect on her body, leaving her extremely weak and frail physically, with a life expectation of 30 years at best. Its causes are unknown but believed to be genetic, and it is uncurable. To make matters worse, soon after the discovery, her own mother practically abandoned her, leaving Felicita alone in a (well equipped, small blessing may it be) hospital to fend for herself, with no one but the distant staff and her own loneliness to keep her company. Contact with Colomba, her mother, was not cut off completely, but was limited to rare messages and even rarer physical visits.

This situation continued for painfully long 8 years, but changed three years ago. This is when explanations of this borderline abandonment were finally given to Felicita. Her mother spent all these years working on a contract, having hired herself to Orisini Industries, a Fed corporation, to produce a combat mobile suit. But in actuality, the intent of her research was not to create another tool of war, but a new, fully functional body for her daughter. Only after such a long time did she manage to reach anything resembling this goal - and then, she asked Felicita for forgiveness, offering her the position of the new mobile suit's pilot. With it, they would perform tests, gather motion data, and develop a functional mass-produced unit based on the prototype. When it happens, they would be paid, paid enough to live for the rest of their lives in peace, Felicita enjoying these days inside the strong, giant body of metal.

The daughter agreed. Since then, motion data was collected and many tests were done. It was discovered that chemical substances required to utilise the mobile suit's full potential had unpleasant side effects, but Felicita did not care. The final reward was worth it. Eventually, a second unit was made - PEX-002 Brahma was created thanks to collected research data, and quickly entered testing phase. All that was left is to perform a live presentation, and prove to the sponsors that the designed PEX-001 Deva is worthy of entering mass production...

This is when the story starts, with Felicita being 16 years of age.

Personality: Felicita is a pessimist. She does not believe in fate or any higher power - she tried to talk to God many times but never received anything in return. But she believes the world is dying, signs of its imminent demise present everywhere. Planet Earth is just like her own body, ruined and impossible to heal, its death only a matter of time, although a matter of significantly more years for the former than for the latter.

But it does not mean she has a gloomy or hopeless attitude. Most of all, she seeks happiness, and can find it in many small things. But these things are not what you'd expect of a sickly, bed-bound girl - she truly hates her condition, and feels free and happy only when she can pilot the Deva, its mobile suit body feeling as if it was her own. Only then does she feel like living for real - for her, this is the "true" existence.

Felicita is not a social person. She had limited contact with other people for most of her life and does not know how to act in social situations. She is also very shy and rather untrusting of others, though these barriers may be broken eventually. She is moderately self-centered, putting her own pursuit of happiness as priority, but not to the extent of actively hurting other people. She is however jealous of others, whose position and physical health is not as bad as hers. This is doubly true for gifted individuals, like Newtypes, psychics of all kinds and others granted unique abilities that do not come with significant disadvantages.

Due to not receiving any formal schooling, Felicita is under-educated. Because of that, she feels dumb and is self-conscious, even though she is actually of average intellect. Regardless, one of her few hobbies is reading, as she spent a lot of her vast amounts of free time devouring every single title present in the hospital's database - we are talking virtual copies of books, not physical ones. This gives her a random and eclectic collection of knowledge on various subjects and trivia.

Knowing she cannot afford to screw up, Felicita approaches her missions and combat assignments very seriously. Since bad performance puts her (already time-limited) future at risk, she takes failure very badly and personally. Even relatively small mistakes may cause her to lose her cool and act recklessly, trying to erase them with exceptional accomplishments. Very rarely does she fight without killer intent, knowing full well she cannot afford to try to only neutralize the enemies rather than killing them.

Capabilities and Resources: Felicita does not have any extraordinary skills or capabilities. Due to Poulsen Syndrome, her body is much weaker and prone to injury than that of an ordinary person. She is bed-bound for most of her life, being technically able to walk but doing so only in extraordinary situations, since she can take only a few steps without collapsing. Likewise, carrying anything of significant weight is out. She takes her food in liquid form or as IVs, being unable to consume solid foods without becoming sick. Her resources are in no better condition, the family funds long gone because of the prolonged hospital stay. The Arlotti really need the contract money they'll get if the PEX series enters mass production, otherwise they will find themselves, mother and daughter, without any means of living.

One out of ordinary item remains in Felicita's possession. It is a small, fist-sized robotic drone - it can levitate and take footage with its main camera, sending it to a screen (which usually rests somewhere near her bed) in real time. That way, the girl can explore the world around her to at least some extent, despite being bed bound. The robot has no weapons or armor, although its metal body provides some protection if anyone wanted to break it. It can be controlled remotely up to a distance of around 100 meters, and its owner can use it as means of remote communication thanks to an installed microphone-and-speaker system. There is an alternative to remote control in that the drone possesses rudimentary AI that may take over and act automatically. The AI is based after the personality of Felicita's mother, Colomba Arlotti.

Robot Name: PEX-001 Deva
Robot Description: At its very core, Deva is a standard mobile suit. It is equipped with a Minovsky reactor and a set of vernier thrusters for space combat performance. This core is however wrapped in a strange body - Deva's legs and torso are long and thin, not unlike that of the Correl or Flag series mobile suits. By contrast, its gorilla-like arms are thick and massive, since they house an additional generator each - not a Minovsky one, but standard generators that provide extra electrical power for all the weapon systems that the arms house. The machine is painted snow white.

Overall, Deva relies on mobility rather than armor, since its plating is very thin. For a mobile suit, it is fast and its movements are graceful and unnervingly human-like. Despite that, it is an inherently flawed design, with a high risk approach to combat that offers proportionally little reward in terms of performance or destructive power.

Feature(s):
Putri System - allows the pilot to operate Deva by reading their neural signals, translating them into actual movement of the mobile suit. There is also feedback - thanks to a set of receptors installed on Deva's armor, the pilot feels it as if it was her own body. Additionally, the system comes equipped with a set of cameras - in addition to the main one, there are sub-cameras, one of them even placed outside the mobile suit and following it like Felicita's drone. All of them offer simultaneous view on the battlefield from multiple POVs, fed directly into a special head set the pilot wears.

The system connects directly and physically with the pilot via cables, so it works only on people who had surgery to have entry ports installed in their bodies. Due to overwhelming input of information, operating Deva unprotected may end with the pilot going insane. To prevent that, the system automatically administers a dose of combat drugs - that enhance some functions of the brain while dampening others. These drugs are violently purged from the pilot's body after their effect wears off (translation: she throws up), and prolonged use results in side effects that include sickness, possibility of heart attacks and other unpleasantries Felicita probably won't live long enough to experience.

The Putri System can enter overdrive mode - it is not automatic, but rather a command manually initialized by the pilot. When it happens, the feedback increases from chosen points on Deva's body to the whole unit, and reaction speed and response increase greatly. Unfortunately, this means the pilot also receives an additional, concentrated dose of the combat drugs, with side effects likewise intensifying.

The whole of Deva's cockpit is designed around the Putri System, but the cockpit block can be replaced with a standard one to allow normal pilots to use the mobile suit, if with a significant decrease in performance.

Weapons:
Beam Cannons - hidden in Deva's palms. They are more destructive than a standard beam rifle, but very inaccurate if fired on the move. The blast is cone-shaped rather than focused in a single beam, covering a larger area but reducing attack effectiveness on very long ranges. Like most mega particle weapons, the beam cannons are not very effective against underwater targets.
Beam Strings - this mid-range weapon is Deva's "default" armament. From a technical point of view, it is a set of very thin, but long and elastic beam saberlike constructs, i-fields with Minovsky particle filling. What it means is that these are cutting beam wires that can be shot out to some distance, whipped or spun around. They have less power individually than a beam saber but there is much more of them - a beam string hidden in each of Deva's fingers, five per hand and ten total.
Beam Stiletto - a short beam saber, designed for stabbing, but with a solid metal core. Its small size makes it quick and handy to use, but range and raw damage suffer. The real use of this weapon is a risky but possibly very damaging maneuvers - a secondary function of the beam stiletto dissipates its blade, leaving only the core, actually a hollow syringe-like pipe, lodged in the enemy's body. Then it proceeds to pump the target full of Minovsky particles, straight from Deva's generator. It is a highly dangerous move as the particles bypass armor and eat straight at the enemy insides, but on the other hand Deva has to hold the weapon and remain still while it performs the attack.
Terrain Stats:
Land: A
Air: B
Sea: B
Space: A

Job: Experimental mobile suit pilot/full-time medical ward patient

Suggested Event List: Locked in a mod-only post. But I'll say this - it's not a long canon.

Sample Post: How about some testrun?