Young Writers Society

Safi. All of the four team members are rather central to the plot but the main one and possibly the one with the most POV chapters will be Safi.

She's one of the two trainees that have just completed their three year long training in what is effectively superhero university, of course not a public one, but one run specifically by the agency for those that wish to join it as agents. And now at the time of graduation, here she is, one of the youngest ever to do so at 20 years old. (That's not exactly young, but considering the training required for this, that is relatively super young.)

Safi is a little ball of sunshine on most occasions. She always finds something to be happy about even on the worst of days, looking on the bright side in all situations. She's not the most confident person when talking to strangers (and she will fully enter lesbian disaster mode sometimes) but she's usually the kind of person that will wish everyone she sees including the flower she saw on the way to school a good morning. And while she's not the most talkative with strangers, she tends to often talk her friends ears off. The other time she's prone to large amounts of rambling is when she's nervous. She can also be rather passionate about what she believes in and isn't afraid to speak up about it even if she might apologize profusely afterwards for her mini rants. She's not exactly guarded, but she's logical about most things, not taking most advice at face value unless someone properly justifies it to her. She doesn't trust every single person she sees, but she does tend to look for the good in people more than not. She pretty much never loses her temper, always able to keep her feelings in check and mentally sort out what's made her angry. This can be unhealthy at times however because she will internalize a lot of things to remain happy on the outside and try and make everyone else around her happy. She's simply one of the sweetest people your ever going to meet, not just within an agency like that but just in general, and through all that she does still have a pretty decent head on those shoulders when it comes to more serious matters.

Now, onto appearance. Safi is rather short, standing at a hair under five feet. She also looks quite thin at first glance, but don't let underestimate her strength too much. With years of careful training, she's built up quite a bit of power. If that doesn't make a lot of sense, think of someone like Bruce Lee. She's also rather agile and fast as a result of her build not to mention she's built up a lot of stamina over the years. Her skin is a lighter olive color, with the lightest of tans dusting across it. Her eyes are a startling electric blue that are still surprisingly soft mostly because she is almost always smiling. That and the fact that they are hidden behind a pair of glasses. Said smile combines with her unusually bright platinum blond hair that's basically white to create a startling amount of light that surrounds. All around her arms and face run bits of skin that are ever so lighter than the skin surrounding them, weaving across her arms almost like her nervous system was on the outside instead of in. These patches of lighter skin are usually shimmering with a very light shade of blue when she's not actively using her powers. When charged up they lose all hints of blue to shine pure white making it almost blinding to look at her.

She usually keeps her hair loose, and it is fairly short, just around halfway down her neck. She prefers to wear a dress most of the time, although given the combat training she has to go through its often accompanied by a pair of trousers and her favorite pair of combat boots. Despite the combat boots being usually black, most of her other clothing is almost always rather light colored. She also usually wears a long coat over her dresses, given she seems to be perpetually cold. The heat never did bother her.

Onwards to her abilities as an agent. While its not a must, most agents of the MMRC do possess some magical ability and Safi is no different. In fact her entire repertoire is based in magic, which is quite unusual among Earths although this particular Earth has a higher number of people like Safi than most others.

Her main use of just pure magic is in spoken spells. Her eidetic memory and endless patience has led to her mastering many languages allowing her to unlock spells of varying power, giving her fine control over things she wants to do ranging from English based precise incision spells to Ancient Notpyrkian spells known for the sheer power they emit courtesy of the language.

Pure magic however is a more secondary feature of her repertoire, only to be used if specifically required or as a backup. Her main attack relies on the main way her magic manifests itself from her magical core through the conduits that run across her body. This manifestation takes the form of tendrils of arcing and hissing light, light that can even become tangible, burning white hot when it needs. It allows her to channel a seemingly endless array of tentacles or ropes of light from all parts of her body. They are the opposite of stealthy, scything their way through even the darkest of shadows, and when Safi channels her full power through her hands to the two whips she can summon from her palms, she can charge them to that white hot point where they become capable of cutting through most things in the known universe, giving her effectively two infinitely long flexible blades that cannot be stopped very easily.

The tentacles also have the ability to form the words of the spells she uses giving them even more power directly from her own magic to power them up even more if she ever needs to do so.

Her weapon of choice is a masterpiece of both magic and technology. Its a compound bow, naturally since her shorter stature doesn't let her wield something like a longbow. Its not exactly a weak bow though, the only thing smaller about it is the draw length, the actual draw weight is up among the strongest. There's a small inbuilt sighting system although in the effort to keep the bow's mobility and retractability intact, its a pretty simple set of iron sights as opposed to anything elaborate. The bow also comes with an inbuilt pair of blades on its two arms, allowing it to turn into a deadly staff in the event that Safi runs out of arrows.

Speaking of arrows her bow couples rather well with her quiver which has space for somewhere around 50 arrows, all of which are equipped with various modes that can be switched out with a control panel in the bow itself. These can vary from non lethal concussive arrows to exploding arrows that deliver the force of a few tons of dynamite. This quiver is also magically linked to a locker containing another 50 arrows that naturally fill into the quiver if there's an empty spot in it for longer than 45 minutes. More arrows can be added to the locker, but Safi would have to call someone and get them to haul arrows to it, and they would have to be the arrows specifically designed for the system and not just any random things.

The bow also has the ability to shoot Safi's light tendrils with a neat little trick that she's mastered.

Now how does she prefer to use all of these tricks in battle?

Silently, Quickly and preferably from quite far away. Safi does not like to get up close and personal with her combat, and likes to stay out at range whenever possible. Her weapons and her powers all work very well for this not to mention the magic she tends to use. She also loves to use stealth to her advantage often making sure that the opponent never knew she was even there or at least they didn't know she was there until they were flat on their back and out of the fight.

If she is somehow forced to actually engage someone, she will still do her best to just avoid being hit and scout out her opponent before she goes in for a premeditated knockout punch based on the information she gathered. She's never going to be the first one to make a move in a fight although if her premeditated moves, which are usually effective but not always, fail she does then open herself upto attack a bit because she often doesn't have a plan for what to do next and she isn't the best when it comes to reacting on the spot.

And last but not the least, the history...or at the least the bit that everyone is allowed to know for the moment.

Safiana was born into a fairly wealthy upper middle class family, except it wasn't quite that simple. She was the result of an affair on the part of the patriarch of the family. At first she was kept secret, living alone with her mother Imra Shalanda on the peaceful outskirts of a quiet village consisting of families that tended more to the lower class. The village did for itself however, its people living with satisfaction despite their more meager means. It was a good start to her childhood, with a mother who loved her very much. She had enough to live with even if it wasn't always a lot.

That changed when her mother drowned in an accident she still won't talk about while she was just four. All they know is that she was present when the drowning took place.

Her life thankfully didn't go downhill, her father stepped in despite ignoring her mother for the past four years and in a move that shocked many, her new stepmother accepted even allowing her to take her fathers name and be Safiana Vialena. However, now living as the heiress to a wealthy middle class family with a pretty large reputation as a family of very successful businesspeople was a far cry from her simple life from earlier.

Right from the age of four she was drafted into learning how to manage and run the family's many businesses that varied from enchanted weaponry to cutting edge medical technology. Her half brother, Lyn was very accepting of his new sister and supportive to her while she tried to adapt.

However, because Lyn wasn't the brightest crayon in the box and as a result their parents early on decided to groom Safiana to be the one that would eventually run the show despite being the younger by three years. Safiana, while not a fan of this particular arrangement, preferring to be free to explore her own interests like Lyn, did her best out of a sense of duty to the family. While her parents never pressured her to be anyone but herself, the society they were surrounded kept reminding her of what a sacrifice the Vialena's had made to adopt her despite the scandal and so she learned to think as little of herself as possible, doing something she only taught herself to like and doing her best to appear as happy as she possibly could. Over time when she was entering her teens, even she believed her own act.

Around then her parents decided to let her pursue her love for adventure a little bit by training for a superhero academy after graduation instead of a business one. Her father wasn't retiring for quite some time yet so she had a long time left to attend a proper business school. Once again despite nothing explicit being said, it was quite obvious she was expected to get in and be someone that graduated well enough to ear a chance at actually joining the agency the academy was run by.

She took to all her lessons like a duck to water and it came as no surprise to anyone when she was accepted to the Academy. After three long years, at the age of 20, she did exactly what everyone expected her to, being selected for the program to join the agency proper as an agent on the field. Its now her goal to complete this mission successfully and officially became an agent. She thinks only then will she truly repay all the faith her family put in her and prove herself worthy of being a Vialena.

Serafina. She might go by Fina although that's up for debate. Serafina is the second of our two trainees. She's 21, which is also on the younger side for joining something like this. She did attend the same academy of Safi because of course everyone who joins this agency has to go through the same one, but Safi and Serafina haven't really met before since their classes did differ for pretty much all except one. They're at most acquaintances when the story starts.

She's somewhat guarded. Having spent the better part of her teens on the streets she's learnt the hard way to be weary of people, especially ones that appear to be friendly. She's not necessarily standoffish or rude, just very neutral in her interactions with everyone until they earn her trust. Not having too many friends though she does tend to care quite a lot about the ones that do prove themselves to her. She also tends to think a lot and sometimes even talk to herself out loud, a habit of being alone a lot. This does sometimes lead to a bit of overthinking too to things that should otherwise be simple. This can be especially bad in high intensity battles like the ones she is expected to be taking part in.

Moving onto appearance Serafina is fairly tall, coming in just around six feet. She's rather thin. In fact when she joined the academy she was a little malnourished, not having had quite enough to eat and even now when it is provided for her, she has a hard time eating more than the bare minimum which doesn't help. Despite that she's still stronger than she looks, although naturally she isn't that strong. She is pretty fast however. She's got fairly long midnight black hair, which has a slight natural curl to it. Her eyes are a vivid emerald green. Her clothes are quite often a rather simple blouse and some form of trousers, most of the time they look quite worn out and maybe a size or two off from what she should be wearing.

Moving on to her abilities in battle, she has a rather unique ability. She can link lifeforms to one another. It can either be an invisible connection or sometimes when its channeling a lot of magic it lights up in this vibrant neon green color, showing up as these ropes wrapping around the center of the lifeforms. Now also no matter how many she links, they all ultimately link back to her as well.

What these links allows her to do is make a change to one of the lifeforms it could be something as simple as a tickle to actually killing one of them, and everyone connected in the chain will experience that exact sensation. Because of it all linking back to her, Serafina used to see her powers as a curse, as a thing that could never be useful, that was until she made it into the academy as she learnt to use her power to strengthen her teammates or get enemies to miss their targets.

She combines rather effectively with her rather impressive potion brewing skills where she's concocted a variety of things that heal as well as provide other quick advantages in battle.

Serafina's weapon of choice is a long staff. She chose a blunt weapon explicitly to avoid accidentally cutting herself in a place she shouldn't while attacking a linked person by accident. The staff which was actually given to her by the agency, a custom version of their standard issue equipment is able to help her channel magic around her when she needs to link a particularly large number of people. Besides its ability, which is focused through seven crystals set into the center of it, its a fairly normal staff, made of a genetically modified extra strength version of ironwood. Its rather simple in design besides the crystals, the only notable element of it besides smooth wood being two leather grips for her hands when she wants to hold the staff stationary and have it not slip out of her grip, especially on occasions like using it to channel magic.

Serafina is naturally a very defensive fighter, preferring to stay back and analyze a situation and manipulate it all from behind. She works best with a team since she's a lot more of a supporting person than someone who'd be on the front lines. Of course naturally if she must fight, she is quite good at swinging that staff around. Her up close combat style is a slightly gritty style that was born from her childhood and rather than graceful movements she's a little heavy handed, using brute force and power. It doesn't always work well given she doesn't have the most force, but it can be effective especially if she charges in and takes someone by surprise.

And last but not the least, for history. Serafina grew up in a fairly poor family on the outskirts of a town. Her life was a pretty simple one up until she was around thirteen. She and her little sister didn't have a lot, but it was a happy childhood and they learnt to do a lot with the little they had.

Just about two months after her thirteenth birthday their house burnt down. Serafina was outside when it happened with her father. Her father immediately ran in to save her sister and mother. He managed to bring her sister out but neither he nor her mother ever made it out.

Since then, they've had to make do with what they can. Their relatives gave what they could, but it wasn't like too many of them were that much better of than they were. With her sister proving to be a rather powerful budding mage, Serafina set about working on the streets, doing what she could here and there, sometimes dipping into things that were of questionable legality all so she could get enough to add to what she got from her relatives to send her sister through a decent school while she had to pretty much teach herself everything she knew.

The one thing she allowed for herself was to get into some sort of job where she could earn something relatively stable and afford to put her sister through a good school. Luckily for her, because of her prowess in the streets and the connections she'd made, she got a scholarship to the academy and then now she's graduated, and ready to take part in this mission. Completing this means she can be officially employed as an agent and finally have the kind of cash she needs to put her sister into the college she wants to go. She might not have been able to earn fast enough to put her sister to the school she wanted, but she will not allow her sister to give up her dream college too.