Celes "Zophiria" Kirai

=Pre-Illuminati=

Family Structure
Celes is the first born daughter of Jon and Cyries Kirai.

Jon was a successful self-made millionaire. His businesses ranged from several companies that manufactured computers, video cameras, and various other electronics equipment. With his ties to the electronic industry, he was also able to start his own security firm, providing services in home security, business security, and a host of personal bodyguards.

Cyries Kirai was a dedicated mother and house-wife. She took great care of the family and the home. She was very loving to her husband and daughter. Most days she could be found walking Celes through the park in her stroller or watching her daughter at the playground with the neighborhood children.

Childhood
The first few years of Celes’ life were rather typical. She spent her days at home with her mother while her father worked extra hours trying to build his business. In those first years, Celes grew very close to her mother as they spent time at the parks or outside in the neighborhood.

It was a beautiful life up until her third birthday. Cyries planned to hold the birthday in one of the local parks. Balloons and table décor were set up quite wonderfully and there was even a neighbor capable of making balloon animals for the children. Jon’s business had begun to pick up and he hired a live performer to put on a puppet show. Sometime after the festivities were well underway, a mysterious gentleman made his way to Celes and carried her off, ducking into a blacked out sedan before Jon or Cyries could do anything to stop him. Despite the police’s best efforts, they were unable to find Celes, driving Cyries to take up the life of a private investigator to find her daughter.

=With the Illuminati=

Childhood Continued
As it turns out, the mysterious gentleman was an agent of the Illuminati. His mission was to collect Celes and drop her off at a facility for special training. Divided into teams of five, Celes would spend the rest of her younger years in this controlled setting. Her team would eat together, sleep together, and fight together against other children raised in the facility.

Despite her young age and the rigorously controlled environment, Celes proved to be a natural born leader. She led her team to more victories the most of the other child teams combined. She became revered amongst the children and earned special privileges for those that worked with her. These young years were rough, but pleasant in their own way for Celes.

When Celes turned 15, she and her team were transferred to a new facility. The team was broken up and it became every man for himself. Combat training was brutal and educational studies were rigorous. To earn special favors, the children were played against each other in mind games. Celes found she had a knack for creating the illusion of an alliance, only to crush her former comrades later on.

For the next three years, Celes was trained in this manner, learning to be cunning and manipulative, making alliances with recruits as they filtered in and breaking them when they were no longer beneficial. She was progressing along just as the Illuminati hoped in their early projections for the experiment. Unfortunately, very few of the other candidates were coming along as well. The higher ups decided to scrap the program. For a bit of fun, they would hold a grand melee, a fight to the death.

The night before the grand melee, Celes received a special visitor. A bee slipped into her bunk and wriggled its way into Celes’ mouth. After a night of strange visions, Celes entered the grand melee with the other recruits, confined to a stretch of forest in Upstate New York. After a month of hunting each other down, Celes emerged the victor. The Illuminati had planned to terminate her at the end of the grand melee, but her newfound ability to manifest anima made her more valuable alive.

Agent of the Illuminati
Celes was taken back to Brooklyn and brought to the headquarters of the Illuminati. There she was briefed on her role as an agent. She was given a flat in the area and slowly Celes began to reintegrate with society. She found she could easily size up situations and play the variables to her favor, most times without others even realizing it.

Eventually, Celes was sent on an assignment in Europe. Her mission was to track down a ring involved in human trafficking. If possible, she was to bring the group under the power structure of the Illuminati. If not, the competition was to be eliminated. Celes kept tabs on the trafficking ring, passing up some of the smaller hubs in favor of finding the source. Celes also kept tabs on a private group that was following in her trail.

Ending up in Romania, Celes managed to track the traffickers to their lair, discovering that it was a group of vampires responsible for transporting the victims. Celes noticed that the group tailing her managed to get captured as well. The vampires kept moving their victims from safe house to safe house. It took Celes another three weeks to track them down. When negotiations failed, she began taking out the vampires and releasing the prisoners.

The individuals tailing her turned out to be Celes’ sister, McKayla, and her mother, Cyries. Cyries was terribly wounded in the escape. Celes and McKayla managed to get her to a hospital, where they were joined by their father Jon. Celes spent this time getting to know her family. She learned about her father’s businesses, her mother’s life as an investigator, and her sister’s years growing up. After Cyries’ passing, the family flew to London. Jon began working to expand his business and McKayla started college. After some time, Celes parted with her family, returning to New York ready for her next mission. From that point on though, Celes kept in close contact with her family, keeping tabs on them.

Solomon Island
After being recalled to duty, Celes is assigned to investigate the incident at Solomon Island. Arriving via Agartha, Celes found the island in a state of disarray. A dense fog covered the island, zombies and demons ran rampant, and the few survivors were disorganized for the most part with supplies running thin. Of course, none of this was a concern to Celes. Her mission was simply to investigate the cause of the disturbance and limit any collateral damage to the Illuminati, given their history with the island.

Celes began her investigation by helping the local police and other survivors in the area, interviewing them for further information. This led her to investigate the Lady Margaret, the ship that had until recently been lost at sea. The captain’s log depicted a chilling tale of the crew’s time lost at sea, corroborated by the local doctor’s accounts of the crew’s reactions once they returned to town. Whatever the crew of the Lady Margaret encountered at sea had begun to change them once they returned to land.

Celes followed the breadcrumbs discovering a crew member in the sewers beneath Kingsmouth. The crew member, Roy, explained that they found a mystical sword at sea and brought it back to Kingsmouth and that the sword attracted the fog to town. The siren song of the sword permeated Kingsmouth and Celes followed it until she came across the warlock, Beaumont. Trailing behind him, Celes followed Beaumont to a secret Illuminati archive beneath the Innsmouth Academy campus. Surprisingly, Celes’ younger sister, McKayla, was also on Beaumont’s trail as part of her assignment for the Templars. Together, Celes and McKayla deciphered the key to enter the archive and confronted Beaumont. Using the power of the sword Beaumont was able to escape, leaving the sisters to search for clues to his next move.

Heading into the Blue Mountains, Celes and McKayla followed reports that pointed to the abandoned mines in the area. They descended into the deepest parts of the mines, staving off attacks from the corpses of suffocated miners. In the darkest depths of the mine, Celes and McKayla discovered a Gaia Engine but by opening the path they gave Beaumont exactly what he wanted. Beaumont entered the Gaia Engine and, using the power of the sword, drove Celes and McKayla from the mine.

The sisters needed help if they were to confront Beaumont on equal terms. Meeting with the Wabanaki tribe on Solomon Island, the sisters struck an alliance. Celes and McKayla restored the wards protecting the island. In return, the Wabanaki provided the sisters with the powers of nature, enabling them to confront Beaumont. Returning to the Gaia Engine, the sisters attacked and defeated Beaumont. However, before they could reclaim the sword, the sisters were drawn into another reality through the sudden formation of a vortex.

In this alternate reality, the sisters were confronted by a mysterious presence. This presence claimed to be a friend, explaining that each of the sisters’ unique abilities were only being squandered by loyalty to their respective factions. Finally, the presence offered each of the sisters a gift of true power in return for loyalty to it. McKayla tried to convince Celes to refuse, that the presence couldn’t be trusted, but Celes wanted more. Celes accepted the offer as McKayla refused. The vortex opened once more and returned the sisters to their world. The sisters returned to the mine, searching for the sword, but it was nowhere to be found. Soon after, the sisters parted ways and Celes returned to New York. During her debrief, she learned that another player by the name of Cassie had disappeared with the sword.

Transylvania
Since Solomon Island, Celes has been on multiple assignments throughout various lands, but of particular note was her time in Transylvania. Here she began tracking down information to a super-soldier project by the Red Hand. Officially, she was searching for any information to provide back to the Illuminati. Confidentially, Celes was more interested in what information she could use towards her own ends. Inside a facility, affectionately known as The Slaughterhouse, Celes found the data she wanted. Even better, she found a sample of the formula described. Celes corrupted the data before uploading it back to the Illuminati and then used the sample on herself. The serum altered her body, enhancing her physical abilities as well as her anima based abilities. Unfortunately, there were a few side effects. Celes’ complexion became extremely pale and her light brown eyes turned to an unearthly glowing red.

This development has led to much curiosity by her superiors within the Illuminati. Some have simply suspected her of some kind of strange exposure to the vampyr in Transylvania. Others believe she has stumbled onto something more useful. All testing has come back inconclusive though (somewhat in part to the corrupted data Celes fed back to the Illuminati). For now, Celes keeps her enhanced abilities a secret until she decides on her next move.

=OOC Notes=

1. Celes has taken a particular interest in McKayla, especially now that McKayla is a Templar.

2. Celes also knows that her father’s business grew exponentially after he made a deal with the Illuminati.

3. Celes is currently going through a period of self-discovery. Originally only concerned with her own progression within the Illuminati, some of her missions have caused her to develop a bit of a conscience having seen the suffering of others.