[Application - Smash Academy]

[nottheproblem]

Out-of-Character Information

Name: Prince Potato
Are you over 15?: Unfortunately.
Time Zone: GMT-8
Personal Journal: esotericrequiem
Reliable Method of Contact: You have this.
Other characters in the game:
♦ Caim ♦ Eirika ♦ Nabooru ♦ Snake ♦ Soryk ♦ Voile ♦
Link to slot request if 6th, 7th slot: 7^th

Tegaki: You have this.
Anything Else?: Beep boop. Makotron.

In-Character Information

Name: Kaniehtí:io - But you can call her Ziio.
Game/Series: Assassin's Creed III
Teacher/Student/Other: Other [Staff]
Canon Point: 1760 - Prior to Washington's orders to raze Kanatahséton
Age: 28
Grade Level/Class Taught/Job: Guidance Counselor
Dorm or Living Arrangement: I secretly want to have a lot of forest kids. They'll be like the Lost Boys from Peter Pan, or something.

Ziio would be a lot more comfortable making a tent out in the woods, hunting the game, making fires at night, and generally having a non-technological existence away from the academy's immediate vicinity. At least for the time being.


Personality:
She stands tall and proud. She is the woman who walks with her chin lifted and her gait with intention. Determination strikes her features and Ziio becomes more than merely woman. She is an eagle, clever and witty. She is a bear, strong and protective. She is a wolf, courageous and intimidating. Ziio is more than beauty. She is a being of the land. She breathes the earth's winds and listens to the songs of the rains. A free spirit, some might think, but also a victim of an unfortunate time period. Yet rather than to surrender to hardship, Ziio would sooner fight, even against a losing battle.

A first stroke on the canvas might paint her stoic. And if not stoic, then suspicious. Wary. With Ziio, trust is a concept that should be coveted, honoured, and treasured. It is a gift and a boon to be rewarded to those who have earned it. Not something to be bestowed freely, but granted when appropriate. To break it seems an unforgivable gesture. The foundation of honesty is something not convenient to create. It requires time, circumstance, and understanding - ideals that Ziio would consider of value.

Much of Ziio's belief system is based on cultural tradition. Originally to be Clan Mother of Kanatahséton, she had a vast understanding of obligation and leadership to her people. As a young woman with promise and evident influence, there came a fated pathway to meet expectations - others' and her own. Yet never buckling beneath such weight, Ziio consistently displays a calm and composed outlook when faced with most situations. She has a rationale that puts her in a good position of delegating responsibility and direction - in addition to taking action. In combination with her knowledge of the land and assault strategy, her assets make her a rather formidable opponent.

Positive traits aside, she is not so invincible. Her conception of Ratonhnhaké:ton (Connor) instilled within her fear. Fear of rejection, of abandonment, of a life lost, and of a future destroyed. It's far more likely that Ziio's fear was less for herself and more for Connor's benefit. Knowing the limitations of her own strength and certainly aware that she alone could not provide a comfortable life for him, she was granted compassion. By recognising her own faults - shortcomings - she was able to secure a fulfilled existence for him, despite the idea that she could not be freed of her own history and less-than-wise motions made on her part.

(Yet the heart desires what the heart desires and not even Ziio had the ability to sway her feelings from where they fell.)

Ziio's primary focus lies with her people, a trait that her son inherits via unfortunate circumstance. (It's improbable that even without the unfortunate - Ziio's death, that he would have been too different.) It is the impending threat of colonists' expansion that stirs her to passionate action, despite that the village has vowed their lack of involvement in such matters. Although groomed to have originally been the leader (a term I use loosely) of her people, Ziio doesn't appear to know the reason why Kanatahséton stays out of conflict, implying that her drive to protect her family is done on something akin to a 'mother bird' motive.


"And you. Who do you stand for?"
"Myself."


Words of conviction and a solid direction. A lack of hesitance. Feet that run and do not stop to turn back. Ziio's sights are forward to the present and the future. Yet they are not blind to the moment and there is no shame in initiative. She is accompanied by confidence, wearing it as if it were as natural as her native garb. It never parts from her, even into motherhood, and instead, it propels her into places that most would flee from.


"And though she is long gone from the physical world - her eyes still watch over us. Her ears still hear our words. Her hands still guide us. And her love still gives us strength."


Although she can often portray herself as coarse and rough about the edges, Ziio is not without her own form of mercy. Ziio frequently appears as hard as stone, with glimpses of softer looks and features. As if sometimes words can only be words. She couldn't be considered a particularly long-winded being. She is far more a woman of action. She is a woman who understands the value of wisdom and charisma. She is cunning and oddly charming, not a soft 'flower' by any means. She is not a leaf, but rather a sturdy tree of many branches.

And yet all the same, Ziio has many sides to her that make her a bit of an enigma.

What is she truly? Proof that even the most unmovable rock can be weathered over time. Proof that a concise and curt woman has more to her than blatant words. Proof that a predominantly ambitious creature can be driven by an aching existence and still fall victim to love and regret. Human, some would say it simply, but to label her any one word alone would be too convenient and hardly worthy of her essence.

Ziio is youth. Ziio is a lover. Ziio is a mother. A woman of many talents, easily underestimated, and undoubtedly a wild and untamed force.


Backstory:
♦ Ziio's Backstory

There are some holes left open in Ziio's history. The details about how she became involved with the Brotherhood aren't actually touched on and the most known seems to be that she learned English through them and was considered to be an 'ally.' At least according to Achilles in one of the deleted dialogues from the game.

There's a rather large gap between her separation from Haytham and early life with Connor. The space between there isn't given great detail either, but it could be assumed that she likely put her plans to impede colonist expansion on hold, so she could fulfill her role as a mother. (Likely she may have felt disgraced enough to the point that it left her a bit more humbled. Not that she hadn't been humble to begin with.)

It's implied that she informed Connor of who his father was, and may have even mentioned why Haytham was not a part of their life. But the past was left in the past, so chances were that Ziio had very little desire to vocally dwell upon what could have been and would never be.

---

On the fated day that Ziio found Ratonhnhaké:ton with his face in a book, she permitted him to play with the other children in the forest - under the strict reminder not to leave the valley. It was after he left that she reached for the book that he'd left behind, his attempt of hiding it poor and not having gone unnoticed.

Opening it with reverence, it also opened the pathway to a new world and served as a 'gateway' of sorts between the world that she knew and that of a most peculiar and filled library. Smash Academy's library to be more precise. With book in hand and unable to return in the same manner, it was the only step she had been given to discover what her 'true' pathway was.

The pathway she hoped would lead her back to her son.


Anything Else?:
♦ In contrast with her son, while English may be her second language, Ziio doesn't speak as properly. She still uses contractions, which may very well imply that her speaking tutelage from the Assassins involved teaching her how to sound a little more natural. If she taught Connor how to speak English, maybe she did so with a little more propriety in mind.

♦ Going in hand with the above, her primary language - we'll call it Iroquoian, I suppose - is quite possibly preferred, however she's got no qualms with speaking English. And she'll do it quite well, too.

♦ She's not bad with a knife. Really. She didn't have a lot of trouble keeping Washington down when she told Haytham to go after Braddock. Ziio may look a little small (and she likely is), but she definitely knows what she has to do to take down her opposition.

♦ The previously mentioned knife is something she'll be bringing with her. As is her native garb including all varieties of jewelry, hair ties, and other embellishments of her apparel. (She, admittedly, looks a little fanciful.)

♦ Ziio's lived most of her life on the land, but she's neither naive nor ill-informed. While she may be more accustomed to a life of simplicity and nature, the luxuries of the colonists (and consequently British) isn't entirely lost on her. But the technology at Smash Academy is not something she'll be aptly prepared for.

♦ Considering her habitat in the woods, she won't feel she needs access to the school's network. To make up for the lack thereof in her more 'natural' residence, she will make good use of the library and probably the computer laboratories. Provided she ever learns how to make use of such a contraption. (She'll probably be in the library anyway as she tries to find whatever portal it is to return to Kanatahséton.)


In-Character 1st person sample:
My greatest trial is the one before me.

[Ziio looks contemplative. Beneath it is something else, however. Wistfulness? It's not the word she'd use, but nostalgic is a fair comparison.]

A crossroad of a future and days that passed before. I won't forget. He won't forget. We stand here then and go nowhere, he thinks.

[With a harder stare, it seems she attempts to strengthen her resolve.]

I'll be the one to walk away. He'll be the one to stay behind. 'Yet I remain,' he once said. And still he remains.

[A pause.]

What more could he want.


In-Character 3rd person sample:
She stood and stared, unmoving, unfathomable. Her expression both in all of its array of sensations and at the same time, held beneath a composure of dark furrowed eyebrows and a jaw that seemed ready to set. Ziio had not been stirred to anger. Not yet, at any rate. She had tolerated what she felt she had to. A mere conversation being enough to stir dormant memories she had locked far in the depths of her that she thought eventually darkness would swallow them. But they were words that needed to be exchanged.

'Needed.' A bitterly amusing concept. She had wanted to stand aside with the blatant notion that she had no need to form some kind of closure with a treasonous piece of her history. Treasonous. As if the crime itself of deceit had no hope of obtaining her forgiveness. Had she wanted to forgive?

As she eyed the lake before her and took in the very silence, she admitted that she did. Slightly. That she still idly thought of what life could have been like. Of how it had turned. The motions were not abrupt, but they could have been prevented. Perhaps she could have done something, but that thought was foolish. That power was not hers to have and it had not been in her path to hold onto that happiness.

So in its stead, she was given her son, a concept she wouldn't have bartered for any value. He was irreplaceable.

"Standing here accomplishes nothing," Ziio said to no one in particular. "Those days are former. Now that I'm here, it is a future I must build."

A future for herself. A future for her son. The future that had been stripped of them in his childhood. The academy had given her no warm feelings upon her arrival, and yet as the days dwindled on, she found practicality in regaining the time that had been taken from her. And what she chose to do with it in all of its abundance was slightly beyond her. Creating a new existence, perhaps. Finding a new passion. And thinking fondly of the village and her people that she had left behind.


Additional Sample:
In the event of some further voice grasping, I tinkered on Dear Mun as well.