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#only settling fully in the 1300s when she goes completely AWOL from the corp along with her brother
actualtirefire · 8 months
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Cougar is the nickname of a Ares Corporation General named Dahon Pampalasa. A native Dekronian with a cougar aspect (also known as a puma or a mountain lion). He's from the Island Nation that threw into the Corporation to help his family financially back home.
His on the shorter side, but compact and powerful of stature. Skin is a dark medium tone and his hair naturally blonde, but he dies it a neon color when it suits him. Last Roka saw him, bright green.
Roka has had a long line of abusers while in the trapped in slavery trafficking, however Cougar was her first while she was a 'freeperson'.
Cougar is a Native with the all too common sentiment that 'mutts' who result from native and non-native relationships are always less deserving of rights than those who aren't. Even going so far as to quietly disdain non-natives no matter the circumstance, feeling that they are invaders taking resources from the original occupants of their world.
Ares Corp does hire without discrimination practices, however, it's not often mixed status people do a lot more than earn a paycheck--sensing a glass wall beyond a certain rank level and not wanting to attract the attention of people like Cougar.
Roka was more...ambitious and eager to test her mettle and fight a system that wanted to crush her. This did not set well with Cougar.
This made Roka became a prime target almost immediately for him to fuck around with. At first it was a kind of power-play bullying. Exerting his influence to harass her in an attempt to scare her off or push her back down into the place he thought she aught to me. That didn't work. Too much endurance and stubborness.
So he turned it physical and finally sexual and physical. Roka did not really understand what her options were to protect herself. Too much earlier trauma made her fall into the idea that she did deserve the treatment for being what she was, that she couldn't go to anyone for help or disciplinary action (as this was obviously not much of an option as a slave-person), and for the fight she put up at first--he was, at that time, able to overpower her physically. And fighting was delegated to 'futile'.
Much to her current shame on that matter, she endured it as a matter of course on her way to continuing to further her career. Convinced if she didn't or said anything to anyone; then Cougar's word against hers--she'd lose everything.
It's wasn't until she met and befriended another higher up in her progression into espionage (and away from ground level battle field engagement) that she found someone to talk to. Maximus eventually sensed something was amiss and did NOT hold the sentiments Cougar did. He eventually, while befriending Roka, got her to open up about what was happening and her fears if she fought back.
It was Max that pointed out to her, slowly and carefully over time, that she did not in fact deserve what Cougar was doing and that she could in fact seek help from the appropriate disciplinary channels in the Corp. That what Cougar was doing was not acceptable. At some point she started to properly digest that and working herself up to do something. Max offered to back her decision if she came forward about the abuse.
Roka intended to go through with it and had regained a spark of herself she wanted to fight for. Something clicking back into place that she wasn't helpless, she wasn't weak, and she was free. She didn't have to keep letting him do what he wanted.
She ran into Cougar first and she ended up confronting him as he attempted to do what he always did, push her around with intention to corner and hurt her in someway. She went off, as she does now, like a loose cannon which started a fight.
Not an uncommon thing and so they exchanged blows on one of the higher floors of the headquarters building in Helios without any interference. No one really knowing what was at the center of the fight. Probably a money debt or some other mundane thing.
She started winning and she started realizing she wasn't actually weaker than him, not anymore. The problem ended up being the location they were duking out in. And the large wall-windows they were near.
Cougar absolutely sensing he wasn't succeeding in his usual method of beating the tar and obedience out of her kicked her out the window.
It's a very long drop and the glass followed. It was Dekronian durability and incredible luck she didn't die on impact or impalement.
It's after this event a ten year magi-medical healing coma, five years in cognitive/physical therapy, another six years reassigned to multi-dimensional agent life with the Corp, and one facial scar later that she comes along to Terran Earth and becomes who she is today.
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