SEPC Employee Records Document...wait, that's not right...
Name: Kira Ashikira
Age: 28
Personality: In the years since Meteorfall and the destruction of Shinra, Kira has changed little, save for gaining some patience. From her days in SOLDIER, she retains her ability to remain calm in a crisis and to take charge in situations that require her. Though the years of leading people and having a family have mostly calmed her impulsive side, she occasionally cuts loose and does something spontaneous, for old times' sake. In battle, Kira is calm and calculating, but always fights with a smile and always enjoys herself.
Due to years of the same routine, Kira dedicates a part of each day to two things: training to stay in shape, despite the lack of any threat to the world for several years, and caring for her chocobos. She also keeps an old Fire materia around, though it has been years since she has used it; in the present day, she substitutes a huge fireplace and candles in her cafe as an alternate to her earlier methods of satisfying her pyromania.
There are a few things that she prefers not to hear, speak, or think about: any mention of her birth name, which very few people know about; Deepground and their attacks on Edge and Kalm; and the husband and child she lost in those attacks. Depending on the situation and the person who said it, she either clams up, refusing contact with people for a while until she calms down, or assumes a fake cheerful personality for the duration of her time interacting with that person. If used to provoke her in battle, she flies into a berserker rage, forgetting her usual strategies in favor of doing everything she can to beat the person into submission.
Kira has a tendency to live in the past; she can often be seen or heard contemplating the days of Midgar, when Shinra was in power, and more than once has commented that she preferred those times.
Strengths: Kira is able to remain calm in a crisis and knows how to lead in a battle situation. She knows how to gather information, though she hasn't used the skill in several years. When she decides to do something, she will stop at nothing to see the issue through. The same dedication applies to an ideology that she truly believes in; she will fight to the death if she believes that it will aid her cause.
Weaknesses: Because of her years of carrying out the orders of others, Kira has trouble working on her own. She has a tendency to become cripplingly dependent on people, devoting her energies to their happiness in return for a little affection, and will take their ideals and beliefs as her own. Despite her working with the WRO for several years, she often questions her choice to remain with them, and is only there out of loyalty to a former Shinra executive. Physically, she has issues with breathing if she fights for too long, as the Geostigma affected her chest along the lines of her old scars from SOLDIER.
History: Kira was born Rain Kalendis, a half-Wutainese girl living in the slums of Midgar. She and her mother endured abuse from her disabled trooper father when Kira was growing up, culminating in the deaths of her parents. After she was apprehended and worked for a couple of years with Shinra psychologists, she requested to join SOLDIER and was reluctantly admitted, going through the cadet program and finally becoming a Third Class in the summer before her 18th birthday, a year before the desertion of Genesis Rhapsodos. On joining SOLDIER, she changed her name to Kira Ashikira, in memory of her mother. On a mission early in her days in SOLDIER, she was seriously injured and nearly killed; she still bears the scars of the fight across her torso and the right side of her face, where she lost her eye. The injuries only served to motivate her to continue on to become stronger and rise through SOLDIER's ranks.
Throughout SOLDIER's troubles with Genesis and the eventual handing over of the department to Heidegger, Kira continued to remain loyal to the ideals taught to them by Angeal Hewley. A Second Class, working to rise to First by that time, she did her best to instill those values in new recruits. It was around that time that she met her future husband, another SOLDIER 2nd by the name of Sanhedrin Shinmari. She became a First soon after AVALANCHE destroyed the No. 1 reactor in Midgar. During Meteorfall, she was injured, and was in Kalm with Sanhedrin when Holy and Meteor clashed over Midgar. Both of them contracted Geostigma as a result.
After Meteorfall, they parted ways for a time, and Kira moved to Wutai to raise chocobos in peace. By the time the remnants were wreaking havoc on Edge, she was nearly dead of the stigma, and only San's intervention in bringing her to the healing water in the Sector Five church saved her. Afterwards, she agreed to marry him, and they took Kira's surname. A little over a year later, they had a child, Amaya Ashikira, and had opened a small cafe in Edge. Despite years having passed since she had taken up a weapon, she and Sanhedrin fought with the World Regenesis Organization after Amaya was kidnapped. She was killed by Deepground in their search for people untainted by Geostigma or Jenova, something they had thought was impossible, and San was killed attempting to rescue her. Kira recovered slowly afterwards, eventually reopening the cafe but keeping her ties to the WRO in case of another emergency.
Roleplaying Samples
First person
You'd think years of fighting like some sort of clockwork soldier for so many different people and causes would make a person want to give up on that life, to give it all up for an easy life. Maybe living out on a farm or something remote, away from people, with all the time in the world to get in touch with one's 'true self'. Most people would give up the bloodshed and the death in a heartbeat.
I must have gone crazy from the mako treatments at some point, because I wouldn't have.
Of course, it's not a bad life, just...different. Even if I rise early in the morning for my daily training, the only place I go to afterwards is the cafe, where I don't have to worry about monster attacks or being called out to be a hero every day. But I miss the old life. Some people might say it's simply a matter of missing the time when I was young and pretty - which is a lie; I don't look much different from back then, I swear! - but it's not that. If I had been sent to a farm to 'discover myself', I would have discovered that the me back then, the fighting, occasionally worried but overall happy me was the real me.
Not that I had a choice when I had to discover it. Still, if dreaming of the old days makes me sound like some old-timer, bring me a rocking chair and a shotgun, I'll have those damn kids off my lawn in no time.
Third person
It was a good day. It was going to continue to be a good day. She repeated her mantra in her head as she led out one of her chocobos. Kaori's golden feathers gleamed in the morning sunlight, and she took her time brushing the gold out before settling the saddle on the bird's back and deftly leaping onto her back. With a happy sound from both rider and chocobo, they set off into the morning sunlight.
Kira urged the chocobo on, into the forests that surrounded Wutai, until the trees passing them were a blur. Kaori loved their morning runs, and she did as well. With the wind whipping around her, throwing her hair all over the place, holding on to the chocobo as tightly as possible, she could forget about what her troubles, past and present, and focus on the joy of riding.
It's going to be a good day...it's going to be a good day...
She coughed, taking one hand from Kaori's neck on reflex to cover her mouth. The bird slowed down as her coughing fit continued, finally coming to a complete stop and craning her neck to look at her stricken passenger. Her chest ached with each laborious breath she managed to draw in, right along the lines of the old scars she carried; she reached to press a hand against the thin marks and brought it away covered in black pus. There was a dark stain spreading across the front of her shirt; the bandages and binding underneath were already soaked through.
Really, she should have seen it coming. The stigma had been claiming more and more lately; it made sense that her time would come as well...
Retching, she coughed up blood that spilled over her hand, falling to the ground by Kaori's foot. The chocobo shifted from foot to foot with a nervous wark, careful to keep her rider on, but Kira was beyond noticing.
Her mako treatments had been over seven years previously, but she still remembered, in sometimes excruciating detail, the sensation of sinking into the Lifestream. No matter how long she lived, she never wanted to experience that loss of self-awareness again...
...of course, the way things looked, she wouldn't live much longer, but there was the principle of the thing.