SPECTRE, anastasia lumière

anastasia lumière

I USED TO TRUST THE MEDIA TO TELL ME THE TRUTH

Anastasia was not the first lively child to be born into the Lumière family, rather, she was second to their son- a boy four years older than herself and just as fiery. Such personality was rejoiced within the family though. They'd all been within the military for ages, and it was expected that this animated behavior would serve them well during their service. That is, if their name alone didn't. The Lumière family was well known within Valedge, namely for the fact that Ana's mother was the cousin of the reigning noble there at the time, and her father was a well-respected captain of the Valedge troops. Ana herself would grow up in Bellfield though, where her mother ran the household while her father was away more often than he wasn't, serving his region proudly.

Every time her father was around though? He made sure that his children monopolized his waking hours, trying to be as active in their lives as physically possible. It wasn't uncommon for him to take them out to teach them how to shoot after they were old enough to handle guns in his eyes. Another one of these interesting events would be her receiving a flaafy of her own at age ten- battle-bred from the family's own stock. Her father's own ampharos had sired him, and his father's before him had mothered his own- it was tradition. Her brother had received his own mareep four years earlier, and Ana had always eyed them with envy- unable to wait for her tenth birthday when she'd finally be gifted her own.

Technology was always common in her household. Living in a rather upper-class household tended to allow that to someone, though. The computers available to her were constantly on Ana's mind, and from the second she was allowed to handle them, she found her attention entirely devoured by them and the secrets that they held. School work seemed to come second to her technological discoveries on all accounts, and while this tended to affect her grades, it was never enough for her parents to truly worry. She was still a good student, besides, she was supposed to enlist, wasn't she? After all, when her brother hit sixteen- when Ana was twelve- he enlisted. It would only make sense that she would as well.

While the siblings had argued and fought as siblings inevitably would, they had been incredibly close growing up, and her brother had always been something of her rock. With both him and her father away with at the Empire's orders, the house was quiet. Sure, Anastasia's mother was still there, sure, but that didn't mean much. Her mother raised her. They weren't close, nor were they friends. Her mother was merely the controlling figure in her life- the one who paid the bills and made sure dinner was on the table every night. She cooked and cleaned and made the house, all of which were good things, but she was never someone that Ana could turn to for comfort or support. She was a mouth that nagged Ana to also enlist; she was the Empire's propaganda sitting across the table from her, telling her how honorable it was to enlist.

It drove Ana nuts- the constant pressure- it was eating her away at the inside. There were other options in this world- so many of them- and all that she could turn to, becoming a soldier just didn't seem like one that was her. She began to avoid her mother as much as possible, revolving instead around her electronics, locking herself in her room and only leaving late at night after her mother had already gone to sleep, or early in the morning to leave for school, quickly retreating back to her room in the afternoons when she got back.

While attempts to draw Anastasia out of her room were made, rarely were successful, and then they were, generally it was only the presence of her father or the occasional visit from her brother that managed to do it. Even so, it was rare that the conversation steered clear of the empire and Ana enlisting for long, and slowly, she'd find herself escaping back into her room, where she spent most of her time was spent browsing social media, eventually falling into a pit of discontent among Loros citizens, mainly caused by the brutal punishments used against civilians by the military. Color her curious. Ana would spend the next few years entirely consumed by the political issues in Loros, constantly trying to find information on what was going on before the government managed to lock her out by banning sites and taking down articles. The economy was trashed, the people were unhappy and oppressed, and the fact that she had to fight for any sort of information proved to be increasingly more frustrating as time went on. And even worse? Nothing could ever be referenced- it was always taken down far too quickly.

Drawing near her fifteenth birthday, more and more attempts were made to draw her from her room- to speak to her about the wonders of enlisting, and in attempts to get her to promise to join the empire's army- the army that she had grown to hate so very deeply. It wouldn't be until several weeks after said birthday that it came to a close. Cornered when trying to do laundry to lug back up to her room, and forced to "talk" about enlisting, she snapped, yelling at her parents that she'd never help such a lecherous government. Her parents were silenced. Her brother seemed furious. She was allowed to escape back to her room with no repercussions however, and her family acted as though they'd never heard her blasphemous words. What were they going to do, after all? Turn in their own daughter as an enemy of the state? Never.

The conversations would change though, instead to nice young soldiers and cadets her brother was meeting during his time in the army and how she'd just love to meet them. If she wouldn't enlist in the ranks herself, they'd decided, then she would marry into them. The issue was, Ana had no interest in such things. She had better things to do than be set up to marry a complacent young man, so fond of eating up the government's propaganda. She wouldn't be pushed from making one life-changing decision, straight into another. Stubborn until the end, her blatant rejects began to get quite out. Tension broke out in the households and fights became a daily thing, with Anastasia still refusing to cooperate. Instead, her time and energy would be put into teaching herself programming, learning about basic proxies, get saving up to get a server which she could save the various instances of the Empire's cruelty that she'd found- her entire life's work- to. With this new-found anonymity, Ana would give herself an alias for use online: Sekhmet, one that she still uses to this day.

As her interest in computers grew, and nearing reaching an end to her high school studies, Ana would begin to look into computer science programs. At the very least, her parents were supportive of her going into some sort of career program, rather than just living off of the wealth that they'd managed to accumulate over the years. As a result, she would be able to both apply to and afford her dream program at a university in the capital. On top of that, as a high school graduation gift, Anastasia would be given a pet license in order to be able to keep her family-bred ampharos, something none of them imagined she'd ever need.

Extremely talented with programming and software already, one of Ana's professors took an interest in her from the start, offering her a paid internship part time to help him with the servers. A mix of hardware and software work, it'd give her field experience that she wouldn't learn about for several semesters into her education. Of course she accepted, regardless of the fact that she didn't need the money. It was nice to earn her own keep for once, instead of surviving entirely off of the trust fund that her parents had put together for her. When she wasn't doing classwork, working at her internship, or partying- something she did quite brutally, quickly making herself known as an awful binge-drinker- Ana would find herself still working with her own private servers, and some that she'd leased online in other areas under different names, setting up a virtual private network in order to maximize her anonymity online.

As civilian mistrust begins to crop up more and more frequently as the government became more brutal, Ana was the first on the case, collecting every report that she could as quickly as possible and trying to keep the information posted as long as possible to ensure that others could stay in the loop. A good deal of her time was spent trying to share streams of the event. The Newhaven riots became an obsession of her's. With her not in the middle of it, it just felt like the reports she'd read and watched in all other accounts- right up until it actually effected her. About a week into the riots, Ana would get a call from her parents, saying that her brother had gotten terribly hurt trying to subdue civilians, and that he was in the valedge hospital. By the end of the day, her stuff had been packed up, her professors had been emailed, and she was ready to spend a few days with the brother she'd been missing for so many years.

The first day was spent in awkward silence, avoiding their parents and sitting next to him, a certain coolness between them. The second day was when the tension broke out. At the mention of him possibly resigning- this couldn't truly be worth it, could it?- an argument broke out, and inevitably, Ana was told to leave by a sibling she'd spent so many years missing. The two had grown too far apart and the empire had driven a wedge between them.

She would return to Citadel once more, a heavy weight upon her heart. Even so, Ana's obsession with the riots wouldn't waver. These people believed in the same things as her, and she wished to help them. When they named themselves Spectre, she began to follow their movements, and eventually came to the realization that they'd centered in Redwell. Half way into her degree, Ana would drop out and head to Redwell city to be among her people.

It would take months before she was officially allowed into the group. An amazing amount of time was spent proving that her servers were safe, showing them her archives, and generally working around the city in order to try and persuade them that she, and her networks could be trusted. But when she managed? Ana was gifted with a Murkrow stolen during one of their raids, marking her as one of them. Briefly after that, it was realized how very useful Anastasia's bloodlines made her. It wasn't exactly unusual to find the children of rich military families around the Empire's various events, and as a result, Ana could seamlessly blend among the people, using her connections to retrieve information, and send it back to Redwell with the pokemon gifted to her.

While she's spent most of the past year in the field, Ana still keeps a small house in Redwell, and though she does have her trust fund- with her monthly limit generally deducted from it and processed through various accounts to keep it from being traced to her- when she is home, it isn't uncommon for her to be doing odd jobs around town, or to do on-commission tech jobs in order to try and stand on her own two feet.



Name Ace
Species Ampharos
Gender Male
Ability Static
Moveset Zap Cannon | Thunder Wave | Charge | Discharge
Origin Given to her by her parents, under the impression that she would one day enlist.
Personality Having been with Ana since she was ten years old, Ace has grown to be quite fond of her. Extraordinarily protective, he's hyper aware of her surroundings and constantly anxious. Untrusting of others and quick to anger, it's rare that she brings him out in public. Even so, around those he's grown to trust, it's obvious just how gentle and laid-back he is. Fond of children, he's quite content to hang out with them. He tends to also still view Ana as a kid and desires nothing but to take care of her.


Name Hex
Species Murkrow
Gender Male
Ability Insomnia
Moveset Peck | Pursuit | Wing Attack | Substitute
Origin Given to her by Spectre after proving her loyalty.
Personality A skittish little beast, Hex is prone to lashing out when frightened... which is almost always. Flighty and jumpy, he can rather stressful to be around. Even so, he does his job of delivering messages back to Spectre when Ana's out quite well. Extremely defensive of his letters, it can be difficult to get them back off of him once he's gotten back to Redwall, however. Hex is also rather magpie-like in his actions towards all things shiny and quite prone to stealing and hoarding them. Still getting used to Ana, he's no where near as fond of her as Ace is, but he's grown somewhat accustomed to her in the time that they've been together.

[b]HOMESTUCK, roxy lalonde[/b] as [i]anastasia lumière[/i]