Description:
Polar bear. Deep brown fur. Blue line around left front paw at wrist; kept in robot mode. Black eyes that turn white around snow.
Background:
There were once five thief cities on Sahara’s home planet, a desert planet–-places where they could go to hide from the competing laws of the four quadrants, each of which had its own leader. They lay where the four quadrants would’ve intersected, but as the leaders could never decide where the exact borders were, they set a circular boundary at each one as no-man’s-land–-the perfect place for a thief to hide, for no other inhabitant would come near it. The fifth city lay deep inside the core, where only ice elementals such as Sahara’s parents could stand the intense cold. And there she was born. She loved it there, and never wanted to leave. Then, when she was seven, the burners came.
Burners, or fire elementals, who should never have been able to stand the freezing temperatures of the planet’s core, stormed in under the guidance of a single freezer, who was somehow able to keep the cold from touching his soldiers as they melted the planet’s core–-and with it, the city’s homes, built from the ice of the core. Little Sahara couldn’t keep her eyes off of the burners as they destroyed her home, staring in shock even as one of them grabbed her and carried her away with them. As soon as they were out of the cool tunnel that led to the surface of one of the other four thief cities, she passed out from the heat that she had never before felt.
Four months passed before she woke to someone placing cool hands on her arm. A kindly old couple, on friendly terms with the Rogue (or King of Thieves, as he called him), had bought her from the Rogue's slave market and brought her home to be their daughter, the older bot told her gently as he fed her some cool soup. She had been tossing and turning with a high fever for months, and it had only just now broken for the first time. But Sahara didn’t understand their words; she had never heard the kind of language they spoke in all her young life. So she just stared at him with frightened eyes, cautiously tasting the soup he fed her, waiting to see what he would do. Finally he sighed and called to his wife to come sing their new little daughter to sleep. Even though Sahara couldn’t understand the words, she knew the tune: it was one her own mother had sung to her, many a time before, to send her off to sleep. So Sahara sang along in her own language, happy to have something of home with her, and sang herself to sleep.
Years passed, and Sahara’s twelfth birthday was fast approaching. She had learned their language quickly enough-–the result of Lady Idiri’s constant chattering at her until she understood–-and had easily mastered the basic routines necessary to live in such a hot place–-the result of Lord Ukuru’s gentle patience with her many misunderstandings, especially since they used some of the same words she knew, but with very different meanings, such as 'kakuu,' which for her meant ‘to cool’ and for them meant ‘to carry water.’ Now, she was even willing to refer to them as her foster parents, though she had never given up on finding her own someday. For now, though, she was content to stay and help her elderly foster parents as they worked on their little farm in the shadow of a tall mountain.
Then, the day before her twelfth birthday, two important-looking visitors came to their little farm, requesting leave of Ukuru to spend the night in their barn, or so Sahara assumed when she first saw them talking with him. Then she saw her foster father’s face first pale in shock, then flush with anger. The younger of the visitors pulled a gun on Ukuru, pointing it straight at his spark, and continued speaking in what appeared to be a cool, deliberate tone. Sahara then decided that it was a robbery and ran to help her foster father–-but she was too late. Ukuru had evidently refused their demands, for the younger thief shot him through the spark. He was dead before he even hit the sand. Sahara flew at the younger thief, screaming in his ears at the top of her lungs and pounding on him with her small fists. He just chuckled darkly and pulled her off of him, then shoved her into a sack.
Sahara refuses to speak of what happened next, even to Jarience, who is the only one who knows this much about her, and not all of that. She was...forced...by her captors, and had a small daughter by their leader less than a year later. The leader made her watch while he strangled the little girl; midway through it, she could take no more pain, and strangled him with the string he was using on their daughter. She took the little girl, named Alais in honor of the child's grandmother, to a hospital where they could care for her. She left a note with the child, stating who she was and that she was almost strangled to death by her father, and that her mother would try to return for her one day. She waited until she saw the door open and the little girl picked up and taken inside, and then ran to the nearest asylum city, where the victims of such pain as she had endured could find refuge.
Within a month, the city had been burned to the ground. Sahara became convinced that she was the reason, and left the planet on the first ship she could stow away on. In the city where they landed, she soon met with young Jarience and young Spiderbane. She refused to tell them everything that had happened to her, for fear that they would be lost as everyone else she cared for had been–-only that she was on the run, and could not return to her home again, ever. Jarience took her to his parents, and from then on he was like a brother to her. Soon they met Crescent Black, and together they formed their own team, the Blackened Gold, with Spiderbane as the leader. After a little while, however, Spiderbane and Jarience disappeared, and Sahara was sure that it was her fault–again. The arrival of Kalara and Sparkshift a year later, however, dimmed her certainty that she was a source of 'kiinaka,' or bad luck, as did the soon reappearance of Jarience with his three new friends. Now she only hopes that she will not be kiinaka to her friends again.
Bio:
Sahara is the tactician of the Blackened Gold, and its quietest member, after Ravisher (who only speaks to Jarience). She believes firmly that there is nothing she can do for her Alais, who would now be around sixteen years old, but she does hope that one day she will at least get to see her, and know that yes, this is her little daughter. She hopes that Alais has overcome what she calls 'kuuvo,' or 'bad blood,' and will turn out far better than she and Alais’ father did. She also hopes that one day she will find her own parents, for she has not yet given up hope that they’re alive--somewhere.
Sahara's recent battles
MISSION HISTORY
Sahara does not currently have any mission logs available.
ARENA HISTORY
Sahara does not currently have any arena logs available.
[ Incoming message. Source unknown. ]
[ Click to attempt signal recovery... ]
> COMM LINK: ONLINE
> SIGNAL SOURCE: MOON BASE ONE (DARK SIDE)
> ENCRYPTION: AUTOBOT CYBER-LEVEL 4
> TRANSMISSION TYPE: AUDIO-VISUAL
> STATUS: STABLE ☑
> PLAYBACK BEGINNING...
> DECRYPTION KEY: 5 ROBOT POINTS
> MESSAGE: "IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT..."
> RESPONSE: "...AND I FEEL FINE."
[ Click to attempt signal recovery... ]
