Sergeant Grace Gray

Grace Gray is a character in The Grand Mashup

Profile
Grace Gray stands at five foot seven, with dirty blond hair that comes down to just below equally dirty ears. As a sergeant in the Entente Posthuman Training Corps, she is the sort of person who radiates authority, as well as quite a lot of anger. This does not come from her build – she does not cut a very imposing figure – but from her visage, which is often gritted with hatred. Her temperament is antisocial and aggressive – this is in part because she holds a burgeoning hate towards her genetic engineers who deliberately created a female posthuman in the male-dominated world of the Corps, and in part because growing up she sought to emulate the alpha males who sat at the top of the social heap. Thus she often holds herself ramrod-straight as befits a soldier, and has a violent aversion to being helped or being considered ‘dependent’ in any way. She may have a softer side, but if there is she’s not showing it. She tends to divide situations into sides of conflict, like war, and work from there. She wears grey camo (no conscious pun intended) and usually constrains her hair in that camo cloche…thing she’s wearing in the pic.

She usually demands that she be addressed by ‘Sergeant’ or ‘Gray’, never ‘Grace’. The closest anyone gets to a term of endearment with her is the nickname ‘GG’. (GG, short for ‘good game’. Slang derived in a future where FPS games are virtually indistinguishable from real combat. The two are virtually interchangeable, down to the actual deaths in the most extreme FPS games. Of course, Gray is definitely no gametripper. You don’t make sergeant by becoming confused about whether you’re going to wake up in your simulator when the enemy pulls the trigger.)

A point to take note is that by this point in the future, swearing and the expletives involved have changed somewhat. That should probably be taken into account when writing for her. A look at Ashley Hayden over in PS should give you an idea, since Gray originates from the same universe.


 * Fuck = copulate = coplate, plate
 * Fuck = intercourse = incourse, course (more severely expletive than plate)
 * Shit = stercus
 * Bitch = dropped stitch (rhyming slang) = drop, drog
 * Bastard = illegitimate = iljit, jitmit
 * General derogative term = derog = drog (used in the same manner as drog, above), drogtim (distinct from drog, less derogative)
 * Hell = …Hell

Weapons/Abilities:
Gray has been engineered to have superhuman reflexes and reaction time, to the point where she can instinctively react to a stimulus effectively before it happens. This effectively gives her a millisecond-range precognition towards danger or other reflexive stimuli. This is because her entire reflex arc is composed of quantum neurons, a biophysical construct that allows her okay you know what it just does ok? (Just don’t ever intend to startle her from behind). As a genetically engineered human she also possesses superior stamina and energy to a standard Homo sapiens, and works out a lot as befits an alpha soldier. Of course, she can become overconfident because of this, and her reflexes are fallible if she truly doesn’t expect something to happen. In addition to this, if someone violates causality her entire system is thrown and takes crucial seconds to recalibrate. She also carries an ENT-15 Antiplasma Rifle, which she named ‘Talula’. For some reason which is not frantic IRC questioning.

Biography:
Hadrian, fourth planet of the star Aesus, on the fringe of the galactic empire of the Entente, looked like a grey crystal ball from space. Occasionally, the clouds of smoke and fog shrouding the planet’s three continents would part to reveal features on the landmasses. On the largest of the three, lights flared constantly amongst patches of brown vegetation, with patches of green where planetary oxygen production took place. On the other two, featureless blue metal constructs coated the planetary surface, encroaching on the waters and blurring the boundary between land and sea like a grotesque mechanical parody of a cancerous growth. In places, tendrils snaked from the planetary tumor towards the larger continent, spreading the blue on whatever land they reached.

“BLOODY! PLATING! HELL!”

Sergeant Grace Gray stood on a rocky hillock in a wartorn wheatfield. In front of her, trampled stalks of wheat lay at the bottom of a roughly-dug trench. In the trench sat, stood and squatted 14th Entente Squadron Division D (Aesus Front) – a ragtag collection of ages, skills and experiences. Behind her, a grim horizon of blue buildings and spires of smoke rising from behind the dying woods. This was East Perimeter, guarding the command center for the remaining Entente forces on Hadrian.

“You do PLATING realize, all you drogs – that this isn’t plating training anymore?”

Everyone knew better than to nod, or to react at all. GG was not looking for backtalkers, or backblinkers, or for that matter backbreathers. Sergeant Gray held full attention.

“We are the plating Aesus Front! Stercus, do you even know why we were stationed here?”

Silence, of course. There would be crickets chirping, but crickets can’t breathe ash and pollutants.

“This is where SmarT, those…those incoursing jitmits…this is where they dare to plating try and break the ENTENTE TRADE CHAIN! And they-”

She stopped and whirled around as the woods erupted with gunfire. In between the trees, the light from fires and antiplasma gave their own eerie glow as chaos reigned.

“STERCUS! PLATING PLATING STERCUS! READY POSITIONS! READY-”

The soldiers scrambled as the woods burned, and trees fell, and behind them frameworks of blue metal rose-

“Advance team, this is Sergeant Gray! Advance team, come in!”

“Sergeant! We’re being massacred over he-OH PLATE! They’ve breached midperimeter! Repeat, they’ve breachedAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH-”

Hadrian was yet another devastating loss in the SmarT War of 2134. Perhaps it might not have been so if East Perimeter hadn’t fallen. Perhaps it might not have fallen if Sergeant Grace Gray hadn’t vanished inexplicably.

Partnership
Sergeant Grace Gray is partnered with Belgen.