Dominique Aykan [Mermaid Heel]

[Lady Warlock]

Dominique Aykan

Identifying Information:

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Name:	Dominique Aykan: The Silent Knight of Sin
Age:	27
Height:	6'2"
Gender:	Female
Hair Color:	Dark Brown:
Eye Color:	Brown
Race:	Human

I hereby pledge my allegiance to you, my friend. Forever and always I will follow... Dominique Aykan

Guild Information:

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Guild:	Mermaid Heel
Rank:	Guildmaster
Significance:	Former Ace, now guildmaster
Mark:	Over a brand on her right forearm
Tenure:	8 years
Opinion of Guild:	Dominique feels she owes a life debt to the guild as a whole and she will repay it in full.

• Personal Information
• Historical Information
• Magical Information
• Miscellaneous Information

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  Character Strengths:
  
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  Able to Ignore Emotions	At first glance, this may seem like a flaw. However, for someone in Dominique's position, it is actually a valuable asset to have because it allows her to look at a situation objectively rather than be influenced totally by her own emotions.
  Dedicated to Her Guild	Dominique is literally at a point where she would do anything to ensure the well-being of her guild and her guildmates. She is constantly willing to bring new people in, especially if it pulls them out of a difficult life situation. Dominque would quite literally take a bullet for any Mermaid Heel mage.
  Strategic	Given that she was raised in a highly militaristic country, Dominique was raised on combat and raised on strategy. She knows how to think through a situation before barging in and she is always one to insist that a strategy is in place.

  
  
  

  
  
  

  Character Flaws:
  
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  Seemingly Unemotional	Dominique has a lot of trouble actually showing her emotions and how much she actually cares to people. She was raised to suppress her emotions so coming out and showing them contradicts her conditioning. She does try, but she rarely succeeds.
  Blunt	Dominique isn't one to scale down the situation or tell little white lies for the well being of other people. She says things as they are with nothing left out and for some people, this is hard to take.
  Not Open to Others	In her mind, Mermaid Heel is an isolated place where she can be free. Dominique is not very open to people outside of her guild; in fact, she has rarely ever actually spoken to a mage outside of Mermaid Heel.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  Likes:
  
  Animals
  
  Her Mermaid Heel guild mates
  
  Geography
  
  Her guild's reputation
  
  Snow and winter​

  
  
  
  

  
  
  

  Dislikes:
  
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  Interacting with people outside her guild
  
  Oppression of any kind
  
  Killing people
  
  People who try to tell her her debt is fulfilled
  
  Sitting on grass
  
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  Personality:
  
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  Dominique is very open to socialization and fun activities within the confines of her guild when she is surrounded by her guild mates. There is no place she would rather be than home and home is nowhere other than the guild hall. The minute someone joins the guild, they instantly earn Dominique's trust because Dominique trusts Sara Iskaris's judgement. Therefore, while inside the guild hall, Dominique comes off as a very friendly and trusting individual although even her guild mates have to admit that every once in a while she is just a tad bit too serious.
  
  
  Outside of the guild hall, Dominique becomes an entirely different person. She doesn't trust anyone beyond those who bear the mermaid insignia, although that doesn't mean she is hostile. She just isn't overly friendly. Dominique answers questions in the simplest way possible while providing minimal information about herself or her guild because those two things are precious to her and therefore also sacred. It is not her place to share the secrets of her guild and her own secrets are forever destined to remain her own secrets.
  
  
  Despite her lack of trust in other people, Dominique often finds that she is the one to step up into a leadership role in team situations because of her extensive knowledge base in strategy as well as her ability to see in two places at once. It certainly comes in handy. When she steps into a leadership role, Dominique often forgets for a while that she doesn't trust people. This isn't by choice but out of necessity. One cannot assign duties to people the do not trust.
  
  
  Dominique does not take no for an answer and she is not one to easily accept failure. However, she also knows the difference between surrender and a tactical retreat and the former is something she finds is often her best option. Although this is often interpreted as giving up, Dominique always returns and hits hard on the rebound.
  
  
  Despite some of her obvious flaws, Dominique is always trying to do whatever she can to better serve Mermaid Heel and to better meet the obligations that come with belonging. Although she doesn't trust outsiders, she does her best to try to make a team work or to try to get a mission done. Dominique is highly protective of her guild and she is highly assertive on this fact. Everything she does is always "For Mermaid Heel..."
  
  
  There is one final aspect to Dominique's personality and that is Ajax. Ajax is a husky that is Dominique's constant companion and Ajax comes off as friendly to anyone and everyone. He is always open to being pet and loved and tickled and played with. He's always full of energy and he's always very robust. His near constant presence around Dominique really helps to tone down her more serious persona.
  
  
  
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  Biography
  
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  Dominique was born to an impoverished family in the country of Sin during a time of distraught. Her family did not have enough money to raise another child and they did not want to let her go either. Unfortunately, her family did not get time to really deal with this problem before she was stolen from her crib on the night of a full moon. No one from her birth family ever learned what happened to her, where she went, or whether or not she was even alive. All the investigations fell flat and all the leads died or vanished.
  
  
  Due to this interesting start to her life, it is highly likely that Dominique wasn't even her birth name; however, it is the only name she has ever known.
  
  
  Dominique was stolen from her crib by an organization known as Silence Sin. It was an organization that saw how terrible of a place Sin was becoming and they sought to strengthen it from the inside. While their intentions were great, their methods were questionable. The organization quickly became known for training highly skilled assassins by starting with children, drilling all of the sense of morality and emotion out of them and turning them into beings who would kill without a second thought. Dominique was one of those children.
  
  
  Trained to the point of breaking every single day, Dominique never knew a caring relationship, she never new happiness and she never knew the feeling of going to sleep and waking up having gotten enough of it. She, like the others in the program, was conditioned to obey orders. When she didn't, she was punished harshly; when she did, she was rewarded moderately. The psychology worked.
  
  
  As successful as the program was, it was bound to be envied by those within Sin who sought to tear the country apart even further than it already was. On a new moon, when Dominique was seven, their facility was attacked and everyone was slaughtered brutally - everyone except the assassins in training. Now under new leadership, the children were instantly all tested for physical abilities, mental abilities and obedience. Only those who passed all three were allowed to live and become part of the new program. Once again, Dominique was one of those children.
  
  
  After all the tests, training was over and the newborn assassins were sent on various missions across the country to kill targets of many kinds. Those who sought to free the country from the ensuing tyranny were among the first on many of the lists and Dominique's list was no different.
  
  
  
  Dominique quickly excelled at what she did. Silent as the stars, quick as light, she was often referred to as the Silent Killer of Sin because no one ever saw her and her target always wound up dead on the ground. As her reputation grew, so did the amount of freedom she was given to remain outside of the organizations facility beyond the scopes of her missions. Despite her newfound freedom, the conditioning remained. Whenever she was among people, she was an outcast by her own intention. Time passed. Dominique grew content in her life the way it was.
  
  
  It was then that a name showed up on her list: Sara Iskaris. The name didn't mean anything to Dominique at the time and she approached it like any other name that showed up on her list.
  
  
  Different from all her other targets, Sara fought back and Dominique quickly started to lose. She had been unprepared for such an opponent and never before had she faced anyone who knew how to fight or were aware that she was coming. Sara could've killed Dominique that day, but she didn't. Rather, Sara recognized that Dominique was a slave same as Sara herself had once been and in her sympathy, she spared the assassin.
  
  
  Dominique went downhill from there. She didn't understand the sympathy Sara had displayed and she didn't understand how she had been able to fail on a mission since nothing of the like had ever happened before. This led to a few firsts for Dominique. She didn't return to the facility immediately after a mission. She cried - not out of sadness - but out of confusion. And third, she realized that she was very different from the other people, the people she isolated herself from. She resorted to wandering, weaving her way across the seemingly peaceful countryside of Sin.
  
  
  It was in this time of stress that Dominique met Ajax. He was a stray puppy who likely wouldn't have survived for much longer without her and Dominique approached the animal curiously. Unknown to her, her encounter with Sara Iskaris had activated her own magic and when she knelt down to pet the little pup, Dominique established the permanent connection that would lead her to make her first friend ever.
  
  
  Although Dominique didn't understand it, the puppy proceeded to follow her everywhere and the link also served to open her own mind to the concept of emotions. When she returned to the facility, she experienced a new one: fear. Having been gone for almost a week without providing any report, Dominique knew she would be punished and for the first time, she didn't want to be punished. She didn't want anything to do with it. Because she didn't want anything to do with it, Dominique had nothing to do with it. Upon her entry into the facility, she slaughtered everyone inside - even the people who, like her, had no choice in being there.
  
  
  Numb to the wounds she received in the process, the only thing Dominique remembers after she collapsed was the fact that Ajax came and found her and began licking the blood off of her face.
  
  
  When Dominique woke up, she was in a hospital and Ajax was nowhere to be seen. However, she did find a note sitting on the table next to her bed. "When you wake up, RUN!" was what it said. Her conditioning still in place, Dominique jolted out of the hospital bed and jumped out the window. She didn't know what was beyond the doors of her hospital room and she didn't want to find out. Falling was a much better option.
  
  
  Landing on the ground, something cold brushed against her nose and when Dominique looked up, the little dog was back again. Then something funny happened. An image flashed inside her mind - an image of Sara Iskaris. It was almost as though a part of Dominique's being wanted to find the one who had set her on this path and find out why. Laying there, Dominique remembered her encounter with Sara and one particular quote always stood out in her mind. "You are a slave... just like I was. You ought to be free." Dominique was slowly starting to understand it. The more she understood it, though, the more she realized that she couldn't just go find Sara once more. There was something else she had to do first.
  
  
  Dominique went on a spree. It wasn't a killing spree, though. It was a freedom spree. Dominique hunted down all the slave traders and all the slave owners she could and slaughtered them while simultaneously setting the slaves free. She never stayed long enough for them to say thank you, though. Slowly, her rumors began to change. She was no longer the Silent Killer of Sin; she was the Silent Knight of Sin. She is the secret key to the start of an ongoing civil war that continues to this day.
  
  
  Finally, Ajax jabbed her gently one morning and the image flashed once more in her mind - the image of Sara Iskaris. It became clear that Dominique had done as much as she could in Sin and it was time for her to leave. If she continued to cause chaos, things would never have an opportunity to try and get better.
  
  
  Dominique boarded a ship in secret and vanished forever from the country of Sin.
  
  
  Based on information she had been gathering whenever she could, Dominique learned that Sara had made her way to Fiore and had actually become quite a powerful mage in the process. When Dominique arrived in Fiore, she went straight to Mermaid Heel. Her journey had been long, she had no change of clothes and she was still covered in the blood of those she had killed on her last attack in Sin. At first, the sight of her was so horrifying that she wasn't allowed into the city.
  
  
  However, rumors made it quickly to the guild hall and Sara herself came out to investigate. Immediately, Dominique was recognized and welcomed into the guild hall. It wasn't until they were concealed inside that Dominique shattered. Falling to her knees, she could not hold in the tears. Sara had saved her and in saving her, Sara had saved millions. Dominique was overwhelmed because that was something she could never repay and if the guild took her in, that would only compound her debt.
  
  
  This is the story of how an assassin becomes a hero, how a hero becomes a humble servant, how a humble servant becomes a guild master.
  
  
  
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  Magic Ability #1
  
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  Life Link

  This magic allows the user to establish a permanent connection with one other living being; in Dominique's case, the link is established with a husky. Mages with this magic can use the link to communicate with their linked being and to share some functioning with their linked being. The linked beings are able to see through each other's eyes, draw upon the other's stamina reserves, the mage can cast magic through the body of the linked being, and they can telepathically communicate.

  
  
  

  Advantages:
  
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  • The caster has an additional reserve of stamina and energy they can draw from thus allowing them to last longer in a fight.
    
  • The caster can send their companion with another group and thus know when they are needed to come and help by seeing through the eyes of their companion.
    
  • The mage with this magic can fight on two fronts as they can request their companion to attack while they themselves also attack.
    
  • The caster can send their companions into tight situations where it might be too dangerous for the mage to go or where the companion might be better suited.

  
  
  

  Disadvantages:
  
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  • When the companion gets injured, their healing drains the caster's energy.
    
  • The link between the caster and the companion is merely communicative and energy sharing. The companion is not bound to obey the caster and thus if abused, the link could be useless in many senses.
    
  • The companion, if it is not human, does not automatically gain human intelligence through the link. They have to be trained just as any other animal would be in the case that they are an animal.

  
  
  

  Level of Expertise:
  
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  Dominique found Ajax when she was twelve years old and thus they have spent the past fifteen years together. In such time, Dominique has learned what Ajax is and isn't capable of and he is better trained than any other dog that she has ever encountered.

  
  
  

  
  
  

  Magic Ability #2
  
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  Anesthetic Magic

  This magic works in a very similar manner to that of pain suppression magic. Through physical contact, the caster is able to shut down neurons related to both touch and motor capabilities in a target's body. When used extensively, this can have multiple effects: the user can relieve pain, cause numbness and eventually cause a total paralysis. Of course, the effects of this magic are not permanent; however, they last for long enough to at least lessen their target's physical capabilities.

  
  
  

  Advantages:
  
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  • The caster can use this magic to numb their own body to pain and thus continue fighting long after a normal person would've been unable to continue.
    
  • The caster can continually shut down their opponents body from the outside using constant punches.
    
  • The user is very useful in medical areas in numbing the pain of those who are awaiting treatment or who are dying.

  
  
  

  Disadvantages:
  
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  • The user can only use it when they are in physical contact with their target. The effect does last longer than the contact, but it must be initiated through physical contact.
    
  • When the user is numbing their own pain, that can lead them to sustain extremely serious injuries without even knowing it. This makes treatment and survival afterwards far more difficult.
    
  • This magic could only be applied to one or two people at a time before it lost its long-standing effects.

  
  
  

  Level of Expertise:
  
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  Dominique is still learning the different physiological effects she can create through use of this magic and she has really only scratched the surface of the possibilities it contains. Despite her extensive knowledge of its applications, Dominique is highly skilled at producing effects she is aware of through use of this magic.

• Hobbies:	Playing with Ajax, teaching Ajax new tricks, going to visit places where there is snow, getting to know her guild mates more
  Equipment:	Brass knuckles, a light mace
  Misc. Items:	Ajax (does he count?), rope, a dog whistle, dog treats, a canteen filled with water, a fold-up map of Fiore
  Motivations:	"I am motivated by my guildmates, by my goals, by my desire to never return to the past."
  Aspirations:	"This isn't an aspiration. This isn't a prediction. I will repay my debt to Mermaid Heel and to Sara Iskaris. They saved my life and if I can't repay that, then I will die trying."