A09: AMALIA CASSADY

#1

Name: Amalia 'Amy' Cassady
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Hobbies and interests: Hiking, urban exploring, exercising, track team, modding, video games, photography

Appearance: Standing at 5'2'' and weighting 116 lbs., Amy has an athletic build, with slender arms showing lean muscles, a fit torso with the faint outline of abs, an average waist and well toned legs. Her head is heart-shaped, with short black hair in a pixie cut and a few strands of longer hair parted to the sides. She has fair skin, with freckles covering the bridge of her nose and her cheeks; the rest of her face is otherwise clean, as Amy only uses makeup for formal events. She has wide, deep brown eyes, barely distinguishable from her pupils, thin eyebrows, a pointed nose, a thin mouth with equally thin lips and a small chin.

She prefers functional clothing over fashionable ones: cargo pants, sweatshirts and hoodies make up her wardrobe, with a couple dresses reserved for summer. On the day of the attack, she wore a loose zip-up purple hoodie, a black tank top, a smartwatch, tight khaki cargo pants and white sneakers, along with a pair of custom-made polarized flight googles. Her Avatar is slightly more elaborate: her hoodie is sleeveless and also wears black gym gloves and a fanny pack, worn sideways.

Background: Amalia Cassady was born in San Jose on 30th May, 2005 as the only child of Samuel and Dolores Cassady, respectively a freelance programmer and history professor at the local university. They were financially well-off, both having a relatively high wage, and could buy a CRD as soon as they were available to the public. Still, they were able to be present for her daughter; Amy especially bonded with her father, who worked at home but still managed to take care of her during her early life. He remained a main figure in her life, first by helping her acclimating to the CR and later for supporting her with her illness.

As a child, she was excitable and showed an extrovert nature. She easily passed preschool with high grades, and managed to form a little clique of friends. Most of them left Amy in elementary school, however, in part because of different schools and then due to her change of personality.
Her school was one of the first including CRD into their classes. For Amy, it was her first introduction to CR; she felt it was all fake, a though that never really left her until high school. Because of this Amy spent her first year acting rowdy, bullying everyone she could and unwilling to study.

She soon argued with her parents, worried over her behavioral changes in CR. While still finding it alienating, she felt guilty for letting her parents worry about her and stopped picking fights, but remained virtually friendless and her already low grades worsened. Her family, worried about her, tried to push her into sports. Nothing worked, until Amy proposed to hike through the Almaden trails. During the ride the car broke down, though, and so they were forced to return home. Her father, as a way to make up with her, convinced her to give another try to Cyberspace. Once inside it, he brought her to the park; a virtual version of Almaden park, identical to the original one in both wildlife and flora.

To her parents' surprise she loved it, but later insisted on doing in the real world. Such trips, in and out of Cyberspace, became a regular occurrence for them. Meanwhile Amy's mood, and opinion towards the CR, improved, enough to use it outside of school; mainly for traveling around forests and plains, but during high school she also wandered around ghost towns and abandoned buildings.

Her grades improved too, reaching the class's average except in math, IT and PE, where she was the top of the class; this didn't change neither in middle school and high school.

Her life passed uneventfully until she turned 9. While hiking with her family, she suffered a seizure from looking at the sun's reflection on a lake. She soon recovered, but her parents quickly brought her to the closest hospital; she was then diagnosed with photosensitivity epilepsy. She was put on medication almost immediately, and still regularly takes her medicine daily.
She kept attending school, if with the teachers' supervision and remedial classes, but otherwise passed the first months after exclusively at home, both for her worrying parents and own fear of suffering a seizure.

Restless, she took exercising as an hobby, at first by only doing push-ups and squat sets at home and later by making her own training regime; she still adheres to it nowadays. She kept hiking, but only in Cyberspace with appropriate filters; her epilepsia could affect her in CR, and so she did it less frequently in real life. The rest of her spare time was spent by playing video games on her PC; she found a liking for 90's FPS that later in her teens introduced her to the modding community.

She gradually became accustomed to the changes, but her reputation in elementary school remained terrible and was avoided by the whole class. Middle school was a fresh start for her: she joined the track team, quickly becoming one of the best runners and somewhat popular. She and the team started jogging regularly in the early morning, but she kept suffering at times from seizures. Her parents were aware of her discomfort, and gave her as a birthday gift a pair of custom made googles; it quickly became her most prized possession and always wore them.

By the time she joined the Sycamore High, she could feel like she could comfortably walk outside again, albeit while still constantly wearing her googles, both in Cyberspace and real life, and reflexively closing one, or both, her eyes when needed; this became a compulsive act whenever she's hit by bright light, with or without glasses.

Meanwhile she gained a talent for modding. She taught herself with the help of online tutorial and practice, and gradually improved; her first maps, done at the age of 15, were simple, but later turned more complex. At first she released her work with a rather simple nickname, but as she gained notoriety she also added her own Avatar and one of her e-mail addresses. This made her known in school to anyone with an interest in CR modding.

At first she favoured making PC maps for old games like Doom and Quake, but as her skills expanded so did her interests: she started developing minor mods for ego-shooters, but also graphic changes to make games normally unavailable to CR playable without repercussions. Her mods were a minor success, and one of her best was made available to use in CR in the esports, gaining a small following in the community.

Between her hobbies and school, Amy kept hiking in CR, if much less than she used to; she did found, however, a liking for exploring old maintenance tunnels and abandoned locations, and a newfound interest for liminal spaces. She has grown used to record her travels, both for inspiration and for simple pleasure.

After graduation she wants to enroll into the local college, to obtain a major in Software engineering and follow her father's steps; she's unsure about her minor, but she is seriously considering Photography. She also wishes to keep making maps and improve her skills.

Personality: Amy is usually calm and collected, by necessity due to her condition, but is more outspoken and bitter with her friends. To everyone else, both in real life and CR, she is usually cordial, if skittish. She has a preference for people who share her interests and ignores those who don't, but tries to keep an open mind, to mixed results; because of this she has difficulty making friends. She is devoted towards her family, especially to her father, as she looks up to him. Her goggles were a gift from him; she's extremely attached to them, in both realities.

Reputation: She is somewhat reserved, and likes to hang around like-minded people. She is known in class, in part for her glasses and then for her works, but most of them are acquaintances at best. Her teachers have a good opinion of her for her grades and behavior, but Amy has grown to dislike some of them; she perceives that they took pity on her and they favour her because of her illness.

-----

Designated Number: A09

Designated Weapon: W-20 — Pattern 1796 Cavalry Sabre
Designated Utility: U-23 — Reflector Shield

Evaluation: "She has a good head on her shoulders and good skills to survive. I don't think her wallflower nature will help her, but we'll see. She reminds me a bit of me when I was younger, actually. In a good way and a bad way, you know what I mean? By the way, do you think we should take care not to trigger her epilepsy, to be more fair? No flashing lights, etcetera? Or, like, go screw it, she'll die anyways? Because for some reason—wait, is this thing still on? This text-to-speech sucks, damn..." — [EISENHOWER], Medical Specialist