Character Name: Saraiyu Dreikyyn
Character's Nickname: Sarai
Character's Alias(es): Supernova
Character Age: 14
Character Sex: Female
Initial Personality: Sarai is curious and outgoing, never afraid to talk to someone. She is cautious, though, in trusting people with personal or intimate information. She is compassionate, eager to help people with their problems, and in most any way she can, even if she doesn't know how. Sarai is an energetic and active individual and this can sometimes generate impatience. She finds an outlet, however, in dance and music, and is able to positively release the pent-up energy.
Underlying Personality: Sarai is meticulous in her work, almost overly so for someone her age. She is careful to check every back door and entryway in her work, making sure that it is relatively foolproof. She takes care to make sure that even though she is able to hack the particular system or signal in the Cortex, someone else has a harder time, often closing doors as she backs out of them, though she often leaves a small opening should she have to use the same pathway again.
Intelligent and mature for her age, it is almost difficult to believe that Sarai is fourteen. When one gets to know her, however, she does reveal her more childish and playful self, though it sometimes slips in the presence of strangers.
As a child, Sarai was a bit of a tomboy, and although her entrance into puberty and adolescence has dulled the effects, she still portrays some tomboyish characteristics. Her clothing has evolved to display some feminine characteristics, and she is more comfortable in female-specific clothing, but she gives a large amount of attention to physical activities, instead of devoting her attention to obsessing over clothes and her appearance.
Appearance: 
Sarai is about at average height and weight for her age of fourteen, standing at just over five feet, and weighing just under one hundred pounds. She is small in stature and build, not much for muscle. Her looks are mostly average, but they hint at something greater, further beauty that could be enhanced in the future. Her brown eyes compliment her lightly tanned skin and brown hair, which is sometimes kept in a pony tail, or wrapped in a handkerchief.
Sarai's clothes follow her tomboyish tendencies of childhood, although in the more recent years they have gradually evolved to become more feminine. She likes the comfort of shirts and pants over dresses and skirts, however her choices of the clothing in that variety defines her clearly as a girl. She has a number of outfits, and although she doesn't actively try to fashionably coordinate them, they do end up looking relatively well together. She often dresses simple, a tank top, close-fitting jeans and shoes, with her hair down but her head wrapped in a handkerchief spotted with Chinese characters.
Equipment: -
PDA - Like many citizens of the 'Verse, Sarai carries a PDA. At first glance, it appears no different from any standard device. A small plate, concealed by a thin joint, covers an array of jacks and plugs to insert any number of external devices, located on the PDA's right side panel. The PDA, too, is not like a standard PDA in its workings, but contains an entirely different operating system and a number of programs that work to defeat countermeasures and find weaknesses in signals and computer systems. A small projector on the device can display a holographic version of a desktop-sized keyboard to easily input raw commands to the device.
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Wires and plugs - In order to hack specific systems, be it a door panel or a terminal, Sarai has to link her PDA to it via a wire or plug. She has a few of these with different connection devices to be able to easily access a wide number of systems and devices.
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Lockbreaker - A small device that can attach to a door's lock or panel system and work in a variety of different ways to override the lock. It can employ a magnetic field, a pulse that can reverse the polarity of the lock, or a generator that cycles through possible combinations of codes for the lock until it finds the right one.
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Boombox - As she loves music and dancing, Sarai carries a boombox that allows her to project music through small, but powerful speakers, or configure it to transmit to wireless earbuds that are carried in the boombox' compartment. The device itself is smaller than the antiquated music players of Earth-That-Was, no bigger than a wallet for ease of portability. The device contains its own storage mechanism that can hold music in its own hard drive, instead of relying on external mediums to be inserted, although it does have a rarely-used slot for that.
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Mismatched components - Sarai also carries a few salvaged components from old PDAs and a range of other devices. Individually, they can do nothing, they are broken, but they could be used someday to enhance a device or be built into a new one completely.
Known History: Sarai's parents disappeared when she was three, and from then on she was raised by her uncle and aunt. Her uncle worked for Blue Sun as a member of their research and development team on new security technologies. Sarai achieved good grades in both primary and secondary school, and caused little trouble. Sarai was involved in a group of teenagers, a street gang, that was built on dancing, called b-boying.
Other History: Nobody is quite sure what happened to Saraiyu's parents. Whether they died, abandoned their child or were kidnapped, they disappeared when Sarai was only three. Her uncle and aunt took her in, raising her as their own child, as they had none. For the first several years of her life, things went well. Her uncle worked for Blue Sun as a member of their research and development team that worked on developing new technologies in the field of security. He was able to supply the family with good money, and send Sarai to a well-off school.
Sarai's primary school years went by quickly. She was a good student, she studied hard and got moderately high marks. She made friends with the children at school easily, too. They all got along well and played together on the streets of Ariel. One day, when Sarai was eight, she and some of her friends were wandering along one of the side streets and saw a group of teens dancing. They had music playing that she later learned was an older style, hip hop, that had survived from Earth-That-Was. They called themselves b-boys and their dancing, they called b-boying.
Sarai was intrigued, and felt drawn to this type of activity. Her tomboyish instinct took over, and she tried it. It was difficult at first, but she soon got the hang of the toprocks, downrocks, power moves and the freeze, all parts of b-boying, referred to by some as breakdancing. She started to hang around these teens more often, eventually claiming them as her sole friends. Her dancing improved, and she was able to execute some of the more advanced moves, such as a variant of windmills called the Genie. Her personal favorite, however was a type of freeze called an Airbaby.
While she enjoyed hanging out with the teenagers, ten-year-old Sarai was not well included, or respected by the group. They made jokes about her age and wouldn't let her join them in some of their excursions beyond the small little street they gathered to dance on. She was adamant, however, about getting respect, and she was told one day if she could tell them how to break into the door of a local grocery shop, they would look on her in a better manner. Puzzled as to why they would want that, she undertook the task anyways. Being that her uncle worked in the area of security, she asked him about the lock when they visited the store for some products that could not be freshly procured from off-world. He told her that, being an older and cheap model, a simple magnet could wipe the lock system's memory clean and thus would deactivate the lock.
Going back to her friends, she told them that she had found the answer. When they asked for it, she refused to give it up unless they let her go with them. Reluctantly, they agreed, and lead her to the store. It was dark, being after hours, and the store was locked up, the system set to alarm the feds if anyone tried to break in. With the use of the magnet, the lock system's memory was wiped clean, and the door was left unlocked. Immediately, her friends barged in and started to loot the store, taking products off the shelves and overturning stands and displays. Sarai was horrified, she hadn't expected this, but her friends told her that if she alerted the feds or anyone to what had happened, they would turn her in for showing them how to break the lock. She kept quiet under this threat, and tried to put the event out of her mind.
Sarai enjoyed dancing with the group for several more weeks until they were again in need of her services. This time, though, the lock was more complicated. It required a different kind of device, one that would cycle through the possible codes until it found the one that activated the door. Not having anything like that, Sarai again looked discretely to her uncle. He kept a workshop full of parts and devices, most of which she had no knowledge of their use or purpose. She began trying to question him on the devices' purpose and usage, and her uncle answered her in a manner that he thought harmless, as if it was only her curiosity playing up. Eventually, her uncle showed her a device that was able to try to break a lock system a number of different ways, one that was used to test the lock systems that they developed.
Taking the lockbreaker, Sarai once again reported back to her friends. And again she insisted on coming with to perform the function of breaking down the doorway. Not as shocked this time, she was still a bit uncomfortable with the actions that her friends were taking, but her own actions were rewarding her with more respect and less jokes thrown her way. That was more important in her immature mind, and she went along with it for the sake of enjoying the benefits of respect and admiration that the group had begun to give her.
This went on repeatedly over the course of the next several months, as the group ran into tougher and tougher security on different jobs. Sarai eventually learned that there was a man who hired the group to heist products and items from certain shops and he would sell them on the black market. In return, they received a hefty cut of the goods, which was entirely profit since they had to do nothing to obtain the items. When she found out, Sarai immediately demanded to be brought in on the cut, since she deserved it for her part in the work. After she threatened to withdraw her participation, and thus their ability to get into the places they needed, the group relented.
Sarai's curiosity was, in part, true, and her uncle began teaching her more and more about his work. He showed her the ways that they developed lock systems and tested them. She seemed more interested in the testing aspect, as that was how she could break into the lock systems that the group required. Her uncle showed her how to program a PDA to break into a computer terminal in their house, and that's what truly ignited her quest for learning.
Hacking soon became a daily exercise, and soon her uncle joined in, implementing some of Blue Sun's older models into computers and door locks and the like, challenging her to break the lock or hack the system. It worked well, and Sarai's knowledge increased exponentially. Her uncle built her a customized PDA that contained a small panel for connecting to systems and other devices by wires and plugs, and contained a number of programs that could be used to break into systems. With this knowledge and ability, Sarai helped her friends by breaking into more complex locks, and even hacking knowledge out of databases. She was paid well in return, and the money was invested into developing more software and techniques to break further systems.
Along with teaching her the basics of hacking and breaking locks, Sarai's uncle also taught her how to fly a starship. Her uncle and aunt owned one of their own, just a long-range shuttle to make the trip to Blue Sun's headquarters when her uncle was needed there. Sarai learned how to fly on that, becoming a moderately capable pilot for her age. She had nothing bigger to fly, excepting an incident when their shuttle ran out of fuel mid-trip, and a transport picked up their distress signal. The transport was considerably slower, but Sarai was able to use the time to befriend the crew and pilot, who subsequently let her fly the ship a ways, and even begin the landing process until she nearly lost control, forcing the pilot to take over. He thanked her, though, and thought she would make a terrific pilot someday.
This continued on until Sarai was twelve. The man who orchestrated the group's jobs came upon a huge job, one that required hacking into the Cortex itself. It wasn't an easy feat to muster, nor could it be done without caution, as the Alliance was constantly scoping the Cortex for hacking attempts. Sarai convinced the group to take it on, however, and duped her uncle into training her against up-to-date Blue Sun systems to get a feel for the type of security the Cortex employed.
It took a year and a half to find an opening in the Cortex' systems to exploit and tunnel into. And more weeks of navigating the outer edges of the system to find the access portal that would allow Sarai to log into the Cortex' inner systems. Once there, she had to backtrack through its roots to find the access key that would enable her to determine how the access code and password were generated. This, too, took time, and once she was able to determine the key, the scope of the problem became clear. The Cortex used the most up-to-date systems, ahead of even Blue Sun. The access keys contained alphanumerical characters of both the Latin and Chinese alphabets, and rotated on a thirty-second cycle. Once input or generated, the same string of characters could never be used again.
After months of work, Sarai finally perfected the generator to the best of her abilities, and set on the task of planning out the hack. She would go through the opening she had found, rerouting her access through computers on Ariel and other Core worlds to make her signal's origin lost to the Alliance counter-hackers. She would use other methods to cover her tracks as well, making it nearly impossible for anyone find her at all. Once inside, she would use the generator to type in the access code and password and get in, retrieve the data, and get out. Before shutting it down, she would leave a small trojan in the network, afterwards she would shut the opening she had found, the trojan making sure that she could access the Cortex again if she ever needed to.
It was foolproof, and nothing could possibly go wrong, or so she thought. A few weeks before her fourteenth birthday, she made her attempt. Everything went well in the beginning, until she came to the login screen. She typed in the code and password necessary, and took a few seconds too long, using a seconds-obsolete password. Her login failed and she triggered an internal alert that sent her scrambling to cover her tracks. She routed her access to several networks and shut down her own access, hoping the Alliance would be too confused to find the right path.
She waited a few weeks, and nothing happened. On the eve of her fourteenth birthday, Sarai tried again. This time, it worked perfectly, the access code and password granting her the access she needed. Taking the information her group's contact required, she paused before shutting down. Instead, she went on a small mission of destruction, planting in a program she had written. It overrode every Cortex feed with a visual of a red supergiant star imploding on itself until it reached the very center of its core, then exploding outwards in a wave of sound and light. When the wake cleared, the emboldened letters SUPERNOVA, the codename she had chosen for herself, would appear on the screen, and the sequence would repeat. Inserting her program, she ran through her shutdown sequence, and got out.
The program, unfortunately, didn't work quite as planned. Instead of overriding every cortex feed, it seems that some fail-safe program Sarai had been unaware of had shut it down before it could break out of Ariel's planetary Cortex network. The damage did extend to the entire planet, however, and for the few seconds that it ran, every Cortex feed on Ariel displayed the exact same visual display.
Thinking the Alliance would try to cover up the incident, Sarai was surprised to find the opposite reaction. The news feeds had picked up the story, talk show hosts were discussing it, and even shows that had nothing to do with current events made references to Supernova. Her hacker persona was profiled by many different groups. Some said it was a former Browncoat who sought revenge on the Alliance. Others thought it was Mr. Universe, assuming a different persona, but he denied it at once. No one seemed to suspect that it was a fourteen-year-old girl who had brought down Ariel's planetary Cortex network.
A few days after the hacking incident, however, her uncle lost his job. Unaware if the Alliance had discovered her in the hacking incident, suspected her uncle, or if he was a victim of the wave of layoffs that had occurred in major corporations that supplied the Cortex with components and materials. Not willing to take chances, Sarai went to her friends and begged them to help. They refused, as did their contact who organized their heists. Angry, but too scared to do anything about it, Sarai packed up her things and took everything she thought might implicate her uncle in her actions. Catching a shuttle to a border world, Sarai looked for a transport, hoping to find a ship to utilize her skills on, perhaps even train her piloting skill, while she waited for the escapade to die down.
Skills and Training: (Before you ask how she got them, read the bio.)-Experienced Hacker - Sarai has great experience with hacking lock systems and computer systems. She once hacked into and overrode the entire planetary Cortex network of Ariel.
-B-girl/breakdancer - Sarai enjoys and is very skilled at b-girling/b-boying, or breakdancing.
-Basic Pilot - Sarai is a basic pilot, she can fly a shuttle with no problem, but she has trouble handling a larger vessel, such as a freighter or transport. She seems to have a naturally talent for this, and her potential might come to fruition someday.
Weaknesses: -Impatience - Sarai has little use for waiting around, she wants to be doing something or watching something get done.
-Attention to detail - Although this is generally considered a strength, it can also prove to be a weakness for Sarai, and leads to others' dislike of her for pointing out the little mistakes and things they do wrong.
I HAVE READ AND UNDERSTAND THE RULES: [YES]
Topic: Saraiyu Dreikyyn :: Lost in Serenity (Read 5997 times)
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