Shintoko Akahoshi OOC

<span style="background:Please Note : The following information is OUT OF CHARACTER information, provided for those players who are interested in learning more about Shin. If you would like to find some of this information out ICly, please contact me and we'll talk about it. I'll allow most anyone to dig this up, but I do want to discuss the hows and whys. ;border:1px solid #AAA;padding:1em 1em 2px;line-height:normal"> 

Motivations: I've taken Shin in some odd directions over the years, mainly for OOC reasons. This is an attempt to make IC sense of them. While I'm normally firmly in the camp of "don't explain, let things come out in RP", in this particular case that philosophy basically leaves all of this completely hidden. And I don't want it to be OOCly hidden.

A little history, mainly public: Shin's gene-line are the descendents of subjects of an attempt to modify people to be better suited to life in space - nothing special here, I imagine this is a pretty common story. Their particular project was cut short by the first Gallente-Caldari war, leaving them in a bit of an unfinished state. Fast forward to YC108 and there are a couple dozen of them living in a class III habitat and suffering from a variety of problems related to their unfinished nature. It's getting pretty obvious at this point that they're gradually dying out.

Shin at this point was heavily involved with the freespace movement, and a very capable frigate/interceptor combat pilot. The mad CEO of the formerly Ishukone subsidiary Omerta Syndicate decided to recruit her, and went about it in his usual manner: he got something she wanted (in this case, the facilities and data from Red Star corporation, who created her gene-line), and worked out a deal whereby she'd fly for him in exchange for her gene-line getting access to the data, talent and facilities it needed to ensure it survived. She agreed.

It became clear during her time at Omerta Syndicate that the corporation existed to perform ethically challenging biotech research while providing a layer of plausible deniability to Ishukone. As these things so often go, they became something of an embarassment to their parent megacorp, and were "liquidated", an act of betrayal that left an indelible stamp on Zaitsev. The corporation left the State and continued its research, racking up some interesting enemies along the way. Around YC109, it managed to prosecute its feud against Ishukone, attacking and destroying a number of Ishukone Watch ships, after which it started to collapse in on itself.

Shin at this point, driven by guilt over the nature of the research O-SYN had been doing, left and took up with the Matari freedom fighters Electus Matari. After a brief time, Zaitsev pulled her back by offering to outright give Red Star to her gene line (the carrot), and threatening to block their access to it entirely should she refuse (the stick). She returned and was plunged back into research programs that are, if anything, even less ethical than any that the corporation had done before.

Here's where public knowledge trails off: Around the time Heth came to power, it became obvious that Omerta Syndicate's days as a black medical organization are numbered. At the same time, Zaitsev was becoming more and more unstable. Concerned over the possibilities of what a cornered Zaitsev would be capable of, she approached a branch of the FIO (the Desier Bureau des Services Spéciaux, DBSS) as a "walk-in" and offered to cooperate in bringing down the Omerta Syndicate in exchange for FIO protection for her gene-line. Since she was highly placed in the organization at this point, she was able to provide them with comprehensive data about their capabilities, personnel and research programs.

After Omerta Syndicate's downfall, she left the organization and flew with Electus Matari for a while. As capsuleer assets - especially ones with a history of work within nationalist Caldari organizations - are rare, the DBSS trained her during this time in tradecraft as well as the philosophical techniques it uses in analysing situations. After a time they placed her with Naraka, an empyrean organization loyal to the Angel Cartel. She provided the DBSS with details of this organization, then moved on to do the same while flying with Risen Angels, another Cartel organization.

Around this time she started having problems with an implant, which I won't go into here. DBSS recovered her and attempted to repair the damage during most of YC114. Despite wanting to stop working as a covert asset, her handler convinced her to do one more project. Under DBSS's direction, she joined Pyre Falcon Defense Combine and provided DBSS with data on their capabilities and internal structure. At the end of this, she was retired as a covert asset, though retaining ties with DBSS through her handler Etienne, occasionally acting upon their direction as an agent of provocation.

Post-Colelie she adopted a harsh anti-Republic stance which limited her utility as a covert asset in any of DBSS's intelligence-gathering operations along the Federation-Republic border. Etienne theorized that she was being intentionally vocal in her opposition to the Republic as a way of forcing DBSS to respect her status as retired. In the years following Colelie, complications from both the Omerta implant and the DBSS's attempts at repairing the damage grounded her as a pilot. Unable to return to her gene-lines habitats, she spent her time traveling as a baseliner seeking treatment for her condition. This was successful enough that she was able to return to flight status in YC120.