Name: Charlotte "Charly" Takahashi
Age: 22
Aspects: High Concept: Fix, Shoot, Salvage, Sleep, Repeat, Trouble: Does not take failure well, Heavy Metal Queen, Waste not, Want not, Wrench Turner, Quick Learner, Free Thinker
Skills: Engineering(Mech) (+4); Engineering(Ground) (+3); Gunnery (+3); Pilot (+2); Sensors (+2); Shoot (+2); Athletics (+1); Computers (+1); Stealth (+1); Will (+1)
Stunts: Scrounger, Sharpshooter
Extras:
WSP-1A "Wasp"
===== Histories =====
Early Years: Charly grew up in a hardscrabble system that was constantly passed around like a football between various houses within the Capellan Confederations. Her family was lucky enough to be fairly well off and most of them were engineers and technicians that did the lion's share of maintaining the colony on the moon of the system's one habitable planet. Her childhood was spent learning both the theory and the practice of how to design, build, and maintain complex systems.
Sadly, as the Third Succession War has dragged on, Capella's fortunes have not improved. Riots and revolts were becoming more common in the periphery systems. The system Charly was in was largely ignored, too unimportant to keep proper tabs on, and it slipped through the cracks in the labyrinthine bureaucracy that purportedly controls every aspect of its citizen's lives. In truth, if not in law, Charly's home system was independent, and none of the people who lived there were Capellan citizens. The Capellan bureaucracy withered and was replaced by what the people of the system could put together, focusing on the technical fields needed to keep things running and eschewing the proper political pronouncements that were staples of any good Capellan's education.
When Charly was fourteen, that proved to be fatal to her family and friends who'd spent three generations out from under the Confederation's thumb. The new Diem of the system needed bodies to fill out his forces to put down a rebellion elsewhere. He found that none of the few million people living in the nameless system were citizens and called in the Ministry of Social Education to conduct evaluations. Over a million people were either imprisoned or executed for Social Crimes against the Confederation, including Charly's parents and older siblings.
Charly was put through and abbreviated re-education cycle before being conscripted into the Diem's security forces where she worked as a tech. Her "education" continued when she was not on duty repairing the unending parade of shot-up vehicles, equipment, and 'mechs. Her intelligence and desire to learn about how every system to cross her workbench worked helped her immensely during the next three years. She could spout the party line, and her skills helped keep her out of trouble.
Her obvious intelligence and the questionable loyalties of her family kept her under a cloud, however. Paranoia of those assigned to oversee her would have gotten her killed or imprisoned if not for the fall of the Diem to the internecine combat between the factions within the Capellan Confederation. One of the mercenary units hired by the Diem saw the writing on the wall, and offered Charly a job after kidnapping her during their escape from Capellan space.
Charly agreed, having no home to go to and no chance of rescuing the survivors of her family.
First Combat: Charly's first combat came only four years after leaving Capellan space behind. Her skill in repair, her voracious appetite for knowledge, and a deep understanding of the principles behind many of the technologies gives her an almost preternatural ability to pilot and handle almost any vehicle with minimal training. She often moved vehicles and 'mechs around the repair bays herself rather than wait on their drivers or pilots to come do it.
That skill and experience is probably the only reason she's alive. A nasty band of marauding pirates attacked the base the mercenary company she was with was staying at. She'd just finished repairing and loading up one of the other pilot's 'mechs when the first barrage hit the barracks and killed the mechwarrior who piloted the thing. She finished gearing up to pilot the 'mech even as the barrage petered out.
For the next five hours she played a game of cat and mouse in the rugged terrain surrounding the base. While she hadn't scored any kills, she had damaged the pirates enough to make them easy prey for the relief force and she had managed to stay alive with zero combat training. Her nerves of steel and her touch with the heavy iron of the mercenary trade earned her a new berth with the company that had come to relieve the base, seeing as her old companies command and administration staff had gone up with their mechwarriors.
Of course, Charly did insist that she be properly trained to fight, not wanting to rely on dumb luck again.
First Meeting: One of Charly's first acts in the new company was to start salvage operations. Anything that was not deemed off limits by their employers was swiftly disassembled and separated into useful salvage and slag. She loaded up the dropship to max gross takeoff mass before anyone could tell her no. After all, if anything in her early life had been drilled into her, it was that you never throw anything useful away. Even if you don't have a need for it right this minute, it can be sold, bartered, or even adapted for service.
