Fiora Diaz
Fiora Diaz
Title: Cadet
Race: Human
Sex: Female
Occupation: Resistance
Profession: Pilot
Homeworld: Corellia
Organization: Rebel Alliance
Ship: Loth Wolves
Background: While most stories about orphans are sad and tragic, this one is not, or at least, not especially. Fiora Diaz is an orphan, and to the best of her knowledge, she is an only child with no relations to claim, or that were willing to claim her. As a child of no more than seven she was orphaned in a random hover-taxi incident that claimed the lives of her parents, the driver and the occupants of the other vehicle. In the absence of any relatives to claim the child, she was sent to a local orphanage and raised accordingly. Fiora was a handfull as a child with no real ability to control her temper and a general inability to blend in with the herd that comprised her peer group. Her only real friend was the janitor, Adnoh, who looked after the building and handled the day to day maintenance of the facility. Being a loner didn't exactly help her blend in with the rest of the crowd and led to a increasing number of fights until she came perilously close to being remanded to a much worse fate than the one already saddled with. Fortunately for her the only adult who cared enough to speak up for her also stood up for her and took her under his wing. With Adnoh in her life as a guiding force she learned a number of things, the least of which was how to manage her temper. Mastering that was the key to learning a number of other, equally useful, skills such as how to hold her own in a fight. Over the course of her teenage years she learned how to dismantle any sort of machinery, determine what made it tick and how to repair it.
Like most younglings her dreams of the future changed from one year to another. As the orphanage was sponsored, in small part by Cor-Sec, the sector fighter wing would provide a demonstration once every few years, giving the orphans a treat, but the true purpose was to inspire service from these children in the future. And it worked, at least, as far as Fiora was concerned. The idea of being a pilot, of being free, the idea of being able to shake off the dust of this small world where she was a no-one and soar out into the stars and be who ever she wanted to be? That.. that was the ultimate goal.
Learning to be a pilot was not an easy path. Flight school is not cheap. For a kid with no resources, no family, nothing more than the clothes on her back and a graduate of the school of life, there were no 'easy paths'. Lucky for her, when the time came, the only friend she'd had as a child called in a favor and got her a position as an apprentice grease monkey at a local shop. Fiora learned how to work on all kinds of engines, not just fighters, and learned how to drive or pilot anything. Over the span of several years she cobbled together a frankenstein mismash of parts and salvaged engines until making something finally flight worthy. Lets just say that the adage of 'A good landing is any one that you can walk away from' was especially true. Eventually she would 'graduate' from near misses and almost-crater-creating flight plans to working as a local shuttle pilot, working her way up from there to gain more skills and more piloting experience.
Life is made up of countless decisions, most of which are small and inconsequential while others are of the life altering sort. Every single decision has so many possible variables it's nearly impossible to calculate them all in a linear fashion. Diaz's life is as much an example of this as any other life. The variables that led her to that garage and it's crew were tied to her friendship with the janitor and his friendship with the owner of the shop and so on. Those same variables would, over the next few years, turn that grab-bag-mix of pilots, mechanics, techs and grifters into the family she never had. By the time she was old enough, mature enough, to really understand the full scope of the business she was much part of the shop, part of the crew, as all the rest. Low risk smuggling was the bread and butter of the crew, small stuff that brought in just enough extra credits to keep everyone from living on the street and diving into rubbish bins for the next meal. A few big scores, every now and then, were enough to keep the lights turned on, the right people paid, the right contacts cultivated. Diaz's role in the business was to fix that which was broken, pilot what needed to go from Point A to Point B, and do so in as unnoticed a manner as possible. And it was at the end of such a run that her life, and the family that she'd become part of, parted ways in a terminal manner. The risks of smuggling are known, everything from fines to prison to execution. But there's smuggling goods and then there's smuggling intel. Smuggling intel is far more dangerous, and potentially lethal, for all involved. Diaz, by sheer chance or planning on the part of the shop owner, was not on Corellia the day their shop was raided and a fire sale was had. That everyone in the shop died and the whole lot went up in flames was just One Of Those Things. With no where else to turn Diaz became a runner and pilot for a slightly larger, and more criminally minded, organization. The pay was crap, the ships were worse, and only idiots ask questions to which the answer is a blaster bolt betwix the eyes.
Goals: Freedom. Privacy. A ship of her own. Enough credits to ensure she never has to beg for a meal again for the rest of her life. And freedom, always that. One foot out the door, all the exits marked, the lift time of the nearest freighter she can buy her way onto. When the ship lifts, all bill are paid. One way or another. A healthy serving of revenge, though, that would go a long way toward settling some old debts. The FO killed her family. This isn't unique. This isn't special. People die all the time. Death is the end of all men. But she'd lost her family once. Losing it again only fans the flames of her temper, and she isn't the most notable for keeping it on a leash in the first place. Maybe she's just a fight waiting to happen in the right place at the right time. Or, well, the wrong place at the worst time. These things happen.
Prospects: Currently? Well, her most recent employer decided that breathing was no longer in fashion. Or, more accurately, the next bigger fish in the pond decided that breathing was overrated and helped her employer explore new ways to stop using up oxygen. She's a decent pilot, she can land - pilot - and repair just about anything. Mostly older models, but the premise stands. Someone, somewhere, needs a pilot, especially one that doesn't ask questions. Nine times out of ten Diaz will make the right choice. But that tenth time? Step back and watch out, it's going to be one hell of a fireworks show. If there's a worst possible time to lose her temper, she'll find it. If there's a worst possible time to ask questions? That's when she'll do it - the ONE time when no one wants to know what's happening, she'll just have to ask. Let any complex program work on a complex problem for long enough and a solution can invariably be found, and trust Diaz to unplug the machine right before it starts spitting out the answer to life, the universe, and everything, let alone the rational behind '42'.
