Linnea Fletcher

Born from a painfully average, middle-class family, Linnea had to fight tooth and nail to maintain her spot in one of the most prestigious military academies – something a good portion of the other students you’d see there don’t have to worry about. Often described by her peers as “quiet with a stick up her ass”, she’s…almost exactly that. Minus the stick, probably. Despite her distant (and just a bit odd) nature, she is one of the top students in her class, earning herself a recommendation for test piloting.

Appearance
5’6”. She has thick, black hair that’s usually tied back in some form and sharp red-brown (it's totally red, but au naturale) eyes. Average athletic build with little defined muscle – she doesn’t really do strength training or attempts to build muscle, and instead opts for a more balanced regimen.

She also wears glasses. They’re oval, very librarian-esque glasses with thin plastic and metal rims. She has a second pair that are rimless. Probably has a third pair, too. Mysterious.

Linnea usually just wears clothes to fit the occasion, but when left to her own devices she opts for casual and comfortable: a simple top and tights. She stays away from anything particularly striking or bulky, though – frills and such feel too much and extra layers are restrictive. As for shoes – probably either just sneakers or sandals. A good way to describe her overall style is elegant without being formal.

As for body language: she has really good posture, but always seems tense. Thankfully, she isn’t jumpy unless startled.

Personality & Interests
Quiet, polite, methodical, awkward, inexperienced.

Linnea doesn’t really stand out very much as a person – an unfortunate, but harsh truth. She’s gone through her life just going with the flow whether that flow was where other people wanted her to go or if things just happened and she rolled with it. It isn’t from a lack of will, but a lack of desire.

… of course, when you go through life like that, you end up with… this. An excellent student and worker and a somewhat lacking human, Linnea exceeds in areas where there’s clear goals (ie: getting good grades in school) but fails where there isn’t (socializing). Her relationships have always been shallow – partially due to her lack of initiative with people, partially because of her increasing awkwardness over the years, and partially from her just scaring a good chunk of others away as the archetypal ‘honors student’.

And then there’s now – less emphasis on goals and orders, and more emphasis on… everything else. Having been given the most freedom that she’s had in her life, she struggles to figure out what she’s going to do. And while she isn’t opposed to the idea, forming actual, deep bonds is a daunting and seemingly impossible task – almost enough to drive her to not do it. But hey, if there was anything discernible about her personality, it’s that she’d still try. She just… doesn’t know how to people.

… every other facet of her "true" self, however, is up for debate. She has a long way to go.

Interests
While she’s lacking in a lot of worldly and personal experiences, she has a great knowledge of many things. She’s one of the people who were in a million and a half sports and clubs at school.

As for what she likes, however…

Storytelling. Noted here as a general thing for context. Linnea readily consumes most things fictional and with a plot, from anime to books to cartoons to video games, etc. Despite this, she's a pretty terrible writer with a tendency to heavily borrow things from other sources, kind of life how 50 Shades was a Twilight fanfiction. Of the aforementioned media, she watches anime the most, mainly because she can watch it while doing homework or study at the same time. She has a bias towards anything with a deep, dark plot and excessive political intrigue while being repulsed by anything overtly silly and aimless (ie: slice of life). Anime is one of the few things she has actual (albeit obnoxious) opinions about, and has written several TVTropes articles.

A close second is video games, but by a wide margin. She hasn’t played many because she takes her goddamned time with every game she plays, averaging at about 3-4 playthroughs per game (story run, completionist, newgame+, another story run). Linnea enjoys pretty much any game, preferring strategy and JRPGs the most with fighting games coming in right after. Easily gets into endgame raiding in MMOs.

As for the less geeky interests, she likes to cook. She’s not the best at it – her food’s a little plain and she seems afraid to experiment too much and end up with something catastrophically horrible, but she tries nonetheless. She likes making soups and stews the most – the kind that take all day to make.

Other interests include pretty much any board game or card game. She’s a quick learner (assuming she doesn’t already know it), and can turn most bad situations around. Isn’t very competitive, though. Linnea also practices swordfighting, but it’s not something she has the opportunity to practice often. There’s not enough nerds in the world that know swordfighting. She also likes to garden, a hobby inspired by her mother. It’s definitely one the most grounded of her interests, and not really something she can actively pursue past a few potted plants in her room.

Skills & Abilities

 * Fragile Speedster: While she lacks the strength for hand-to-hand combat, Linnea is fast, making her still somewhat formidable in close combat when she has a weapon on hand. Speaking of weapons, she’s proficient with dueling swords and arming swords specifically. More of a personal skill than a piloting one.
 * Sneaky, sneaky: Scouting, general subterfuge, etc. She’s plain enough that she can blend into most scenarios, keep her cool, and not fuck everything up. Assuming everything goes at least somewhat okay without too much deviance in plan.
 * Battlefield Medicine: She’s a decent medic in a pinch, though she hasn’t really had the practice to know if she can save lives.

The Domed City
Linnea and her older sister, Aine, were the two children of Oliver and Ciara Fletcher, a duo of engineers that lived on the outskirts of one of Mars’s domed cities.

There’s not much to say about her early life, really. Her family hovered evenly at somewhere between middle and upper-middle class so there was never any money trouble, and while her parents were kept busy with their jobs (especially since both were actively helping with the upkeep and maintenance on the domes) they were still there to provide support to their children.

So no, no edgy kids here. Life went by peacefully. Linnea was always a child of little aspirations, naturally gravitating towards being passive while her sister pursued her own dreams. When the time came to choose careers – or at least a path to take in life – Linnea was at a loss. Having no strong feelings towards any particular path, Linnea’s answer was to join the military. Her parents were hesitant; after all, at this point it was a few years after the Six-Month War and things were getting tense, but they decided to support their daughter.

Academy Life
It was her father’s idea to send her to Earth. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it was hard to ignore the acceptance into one of the most prestigious academies.

Alone in an entirely different planet, she faced the threat of being kicked out of the academy and stranded on her own. She certainly struggled at first – the academy was no joke, even for her, and she quickly found that it took all her focus and willpower to get through it. Even more so when she learned she had to work harder to keep up with her peers. It wasn’t because they were necessarily skilled or smarter, but because there was favoritism. It didn’t happen often and usually with the most elite, but it was present – and to a stressed out kid, that was all it needed.

It was a conscious decision to take a step back and focus entirely on her schoolwork. After the initial year and getting used to everything, she really didn’t have to. Linnea was brilliant once she got into the proper mindset, and all she needed to do was ignore the negatives about her situation.

Such things are far easier said than done. She became bitter and wary. She understood that the bias wasn’t that bad, but it made her realize that most of the other students were on a different level than she was – after all, it was basically a rich kids’ school.

And that’s how she dealt with her stress: cutting everything out. It took a dump on most aspects of her ability to socialize, but she clawed her way to being at the top of her class and stayed there.

...and then she immediately got pulled into this hot mess.

Russian Front
((Summary of Chapters 1 - ???))