So, this is the first chapter of my first big piece of writing.

As much as I hate to admit it, this chapter is little more than a glorified character bio.

Read, Review, and Enjoy people.

Blaze Setsura, Her "Father", The "Asshole Pilot", and The "Twenty-Worst" Unit © Me

All other characters © Capcom (Please don't sue me.)

Blaze Setsura sat in the empty passenger compartment of the transport, desperately wishing that the lights were actually working. As the sun continued to set on the distant Arctic horizon, the shadow on the floor continued to creep closer and closer to her, and she had to kept inching farther and farther toward the back of the cabin. She also wished that the pilot would let her sit in the cockpit. There was an unoccupied copilot's seat in the cockpit, but the pilot had refused, with an uncivil choice of words, to let her sit in it. Blaze had grudgingly decided to return to the cabin, hoping the trip would be over before the sun disappeared, not to rise again for several weeks at the shortest. As the sun set, however, Blaze found herself wanting to knock on the cockpit door and beg to come in, even if she had to sit on the floor. She had a feeling that the cockpit would be even darker, but it still wouldn't be as bad if she weren't alone…

Even if the company consisted solely of one asshole pilot.

Blaze tried not to think about the darkness, and reflected on how the hell she had gotten herself here. She had been with the Maverick Hunters for years, having joined up just before the Sigma Rebellion. She had earned herself a combat rank of Class A, and recently had been granted the military rank of Commander, and her psyche evaluation described her as intelligent, cautious, quick thinking, and obedient.

Her combat abilities were effective, if not slightly unorthodox. She was a fast runner, almost as fast as the famous Zero. When he had been testing her for a spot in Unit 0, they had raced on foot, and she had trailed behind by only a few meters, though she found herself panting from the exertion. Her strength and endurance were below average, but they got her through most combat situations short of sieges. Her armor and frame were built from a lighter weight alloy than was commonly used for combat reploids, which allowed her to use her great speed and unusual flexibility. The latter in particular proved incredibly useful in hand to hand combat, as she was skilled in several styles of martial arts, some of which a less flexible reploid couldn't handle.

But by far her greatest asset was her advanced neural net, which granted faster reflexes than nearly any other reploid ever built. It also granted her far greater senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and even touch, as well as the ability to maintain equilibrium in any position: she could easily balance on a needle point with one finger. Not that she would, since that would be unpleasant for her finger, even if it didn't puncture her artificial skin.

Her buster weapon took the form of a revolver-style handgun. Many found the revolver appearance oddly archaic, or even laughable, but it allowed Blaze to store and fire six fully charged shots in sequence, although the projectiles covered less area than a typical buster cannon. The smaller shot actually meant the power was far more focused, however, so shot-for-shot she could match most opponents. Blaze had perfected the technique of firing all six shots in the shortest space of time possible, firing what looked like a single segmented beam that could do tremendous damage if it hit. She was highly skilled with the weapon, and was somewhat renowned for trick shots and a fast draw, capable of drawing and aiming the weapon in the same amount of time most reploids with built-in cannons did, which to human eyes seemed instantaneous.

Her most treasured possession, however, was her unique katana, which was always at her side. The weapon was an inheritance from her creator, whose family had had the sword for more generations than anybody could count. It was an unusually sharp blade, made of a strange metal crystal that as of yet nobody have ever successfully identified, and had the unique ability to diffuse plasma energy of almost all types, including that of beam sabers. This gave Blaze a massive advantage in sword fights, and well, ALL fights in which she wielded it. The only exceptions to this effect were the weapons of X and Zero, which had special properties of their own. Still, even without the special blade, Blaze was a fearsome swordfighter, and practiced whenever she could.

All in all, Blaze seemed like an exemplary hunter.

"So why the guai am I being transferred to the 21st Unit?" Blaze asked herself aloud. But she already knew the answer. "Because I'm tian di wu yohn."

Blaze had been a member of nearly every Hunting Unit in the organization. She had even been considered for spots in both The 17th Elite and The 0 Special Ops. She had been shifted between Units so often that the phrase "Blaze sure gets around" had become something of a dirty joke within the less civilized groups of Hunters. The REAL reason for all the transfers was that she had more inner demons than hell, and none of the Unit Leaders wanted to deal with them. Blaze had never met another non-Maverick with even HALF as many emotional and mental problems as she had.

She glanced at the shadow on the floor, and slid a bit farther down the single bench away from it, recalling the first of these problems: an intense fear of darkness. Such an irrational fear was a serious detriment to her capabilities as a Hunter, and the impediment only grew as the list continued.

She also had an extremely low threshold for pain. In an occupation where getting hurt, sometimes critically, was routine, this was unhelpful in the strongest sense. This was an unfortunate side effect of her advanced neural net. With all of her senses so heightened beyond normal levels, she felt pain much more acutely than other reploids. In a best-case scenario, this merely caused disorientation from sensory overload. In a worst-case scenario, she could go into shock from wounds another reploid could shake off. The above-average aversion to pain that had developed as a result didn't help matters, but the physical disadvantage of it was far worse than the mental.

Then there was her anti-social nature. She didn't like people. In fact, she downright detested them. It wasn't anything personal, usually: She just couldn't stand other people, reploid or human. This had led to some trust problems in previous Units, in both her trust of others and others' trust of her.

This came into direct conflict with another problem: Her susceptibility to intense loneliness. As uncomfortable as she was to be around others, being alone actually frightened her. This constantly threatened her ability to perform solo missions, which was frequently required of her, given her rank and level of combat proficiency.

But none of these phobias and quirks came even close to her greatest weakness: Her uncontrollable fear of dying. As a soldier, this crippled her far more than anything else, in terms of both its effect on her performance as a Hunter and its effect on her body and mind. She lost all ability to reason when faced with death, and could barely function under the stress. Death was the one thing she had a true "phobic" reaction to.

"Which is how and why I, despite an impossibly decent record given my psyche, was given the command of The 21st," Blaze sighed, wondering for a moment who the hell she was talking to.

The Twenty-First Unit of the Maverick Hunters was colloquially known as "The Twenty-Worst", because it was formed entirely of hunters who, for one reason or another, were considered washouts. The Unit was stationed at a base in The Arctic, a fate that not even The 13th Polar Warfare Unit was subject to, though they routinely complained that Antarctica wasn't much better. The 21st routinely had nothing to do, and saw even less action than, again, The 13th, which itself saw so little action that its original leader, Chill Penguin, had joined the Sigma Rebellion just to have something to do.

"… At least Command doesn't think I'm feh wu…" Blaze said softly to herself. She remembered that Signas had looked almost regretful when he had handed her the reassignment papers.

"It's no fault of your own, Commander. And The 21st DOES need a CO."

"I know. Besides you can't exactly afford to let my bad luck keep killing GOOD hunters."

"Blaze, you know that sounds ridiculous, right?"

"Duhn ruhn, Sir. But the fact is, EVERY Unit I've been a part of has required a complete, or at least near-complete, turnover during my time with it. And I've been in every Unit but Units 0, 6, 13, and 17. Sir, I've been in The 7th Air Cavalry, and I can't even FLY."

Of course: She had almost forgotten the jinx. Some way or another, every unit she ended up in needed most or all of its members replaced due to accidents, or just unusually fierce enemy resistance during missions. Blaze herself was not protected from this. While she hadn't yet died from the incidents, she was rarely spared from unpleasant injuries.

In the end, the command post was an acknowledgment of her skills as a Hunter, but the fact that it was The 21st Unit was a way to keep her from getting more hunters killed by preventing her from seeing too much action. Signas and the other higher-ups may not have been a superstitious bunch, but if there was one thing they knew, it was numbers.

Blaze's thoughts were interrupted by the shadow and finally, sick of inching over, she simply stood up and walked all the way down to the far end of the cabin. As she sat down, she turned and looked out the window, and yelped quietly at the sight of two glowing orbs in the window. After a moment, she realized that the two orbs were the reflections her own glowing eyes. Her right eye glimmered a golden amber color, while the left glowed a pale, sickly yellow, the result of a grievous wound that had left its mark, even after being repaired. The cause of the glow was unknown even to her. It was theorized to be a side-effect of her neural network and power systems, which were constructed of strange materials, but Blaze, in her less depressed moments would joke that, with her luck, she was probably leaking radiation.

Naturally, such moments of non-depression didn't usually last long.

Blaze didn't think about her appearance very often, but as she looked at the reflection of her eyes, she took a look at the rest of her face. She was apparently somewhat attractive, at least enough so that she had been hit on more than a few times at the bar BEFORE the beer-goggles were on. She had to admit, at the very least, that she looked unusual. The glowing eyes in particular got a lot of attention. Her hair had drawn a few looks as well: Reaching down to her waist, her straight hair was jet black, which contrasted sharply with her nigh-sickly pale synthetic skin, but had patches and crisscrossing streaks of orange and gold that gave her hair the appearance of magma burning through cracks in cooled lava, a look possibly inspired by her name. Blaze grinned slightly as she thought about the alternate explanation that her HAIR had inspired her name, a theory not entirely unreasonable considering her now-deceased father's… "eccentricities", which was another way of saying that he was fucking loony-toons. She also had, as one Hunter had commented once, a "body to die for". Blaze personally thought that was an exaggeration brought on by, again, alcohol intoxication, but conceded that her slender frame did have a bit of an elfish quality, though elves were usually described in stories as being tall, which she certainly wasn't, standing at a very diminutive five-foot-nothing.

As she looked herself over, she examined her armor, which was black with red trim and the same lava-esque streaks of orange that her hair had, a trait that she somewhat resented her father for, because it meant her stealth abilities were highly compromised, despite being an otherwise perfectly suited physically for infiltration and assassination. She never repainted it though, partly in memory of her father, and partly because she had a feeling she'd miss it if she got rid of it. The armor was fairly no frills to keep it lightweight and flexible. The bodysuit beneath the chest plate, gauntlets, shoulder plates, and boots was a jet-black color, instead of the standard gray. She was glad this was the case, since the suit was all that covered her below her chest until the boots, unless one counted the red metal band around her waist that served as a belt. While the exposed suit did allow her a greater range of motion to dodge attacks, it also left her more vulnerable to the strikes she couldn't dodge, and, quite frankly, made her feel a little self-conscious, particularly around men, though the feeling was often buried by all the OTHER reasons she had for being uncomfortable. She knew it would have been worse with a gray suit, which made the curves of the body even more visible than a black one did.

As Blaze finished examining herself, she noticed the cabin was getting darker. It was no longer a matter of "light" and "shadow". Instead, it was simply a matter of how dark it was. Instinctively, Blaze huddled her legs up off the floor. She stared at the short dark passage to the cockpit, watching for signs of movement she knew wouldn't appear. "… Yi chi shen hu xi, Blaze. There aren't any Mavericks in the shadows waiting to… rip you apart…" Blaze shuddered as she said "rip", "… And you KNOW there aren't."

But try as she might, she just couldn't convince herself a Maverick, or worse, couldn't have hidden itself in the shadows. Slowly, Blaze drew her revolver, aimed it at the doorway, then at various small objects in the cabin, calculating her accuracy on the initial aiming motion. She smiled slightly. She knew that she was capable of defending herself, and playing around with her buster gun helped reinforce that knowledge. Even if she couldn't convince herself there wasn't anything hiding in the shadows out to kill her, she COULD convince herself that she could kill it first. Not that she WOULD, but the possibility was comforting enough.

Blaze watched the sun set behind the ice flows. Finally, the last of the sunlight disappeared from the Cabin. All that remained was the silver light of the moon.

"That's it then… No sunlight for a while…"

Blaze sat huddled in the darkness, her revolver returned to the magnetic holster at her right hip. "Gai si budget constraints…" she swore in what she hoped was proper Mandarin Chinese. It was an odd habit her father had worked into her programming, made even odder considering that their family name was Japanese. But then, she had long since stopped trying to find any rhyme or reason in anything her father had ever done, especially given some of the stories she'd heard.

Suddenly, an idea formed in her brain, and she almost slapped herself for not thinking of it sooner. Reaching across to her left hip, she grabbed the metal hilt of her katana with her right hand, and drew it from the simple titanium scabbard that was magnetically fastened to her waist. As she drew the sword, the dull glow of its blade diffused some of the shadows in the room. The blade shone a soft yellow, which occasionally phased to pale purple.

The sword was, by and large, an enigma, even to Blaze herself. Her father probably knew something of its nature, but since he was quite dead, he wouldn't be explaining it any time soon. It was a family heirloom, and she had heard that, despite his desk job, her father frequently carried it with him,which of course unnerved, or even frightened his associates and coworkers. This more than likely contributed to his eventual decision to strike out on his own, performing independent research.

Its combat attributes were infamous amongst the hunters, but there was one property that Blaze kept to herself: Somehow, the sword reacted to her emotions, changing the blade's color. Yellow seemed to indicate joy, while purple indicated fear, as far as Blaze could tell. Other emotions triggered other colors as well, such as rage triggering red, annoyance causing orange, sadness changing the blade blue, envy turning the blade green, etc.

A warning message suddenly went off in Blaze's head. She looked around, growing more nervous by the second, causing the blade to turn progressively more vivid shades of purple, until she realized that the alarm was not an external threat: On her diagnostic display her power gauge was flashing red, with a small "0 Percent" flashing beside it. The blade turned silver as Blaze's mind went blank.

"… Oh, ai yah tien ah…"

The blade suddenly flashed violet angrily as Blaze's terror spiraled out of control. For there was one other thing that Blaze feared: sleep. For all of Blaze's quirks and phobias stemmed from a single experience. And whenever she allowed herself to sleep…

The nightmare was relived as just that: a nightmare.

But unlike human dreams, reploids' dreams were straight simulations generated by an unconscious mind. Thus, all sensory input was intact, whether the dream was purely imagined or from a memory. For Blaze, this specifically meant that any pain she had felt then, she would feel in the dream.

And the pain involved was… considerable.

Blaze felt all of her higher systems shutting down so she could enter recharge mode. Before she slumped to the floor, she pleadingly begged, "Please don't let me dream… Please don't let me dream…"

And then she knew only blackness.

So, there's our heroine, Blaze. Not exactly "mighty warrior" material, eh?

Again, lemme know what-all you think of this.

Thanks in advance.