"Of course I'll help you. You don't need to ask."

Ariel is an average, sweet girl with a deep passion for engineering and machinery. She wants to live a peaceful life and maybe go into R&D or work as a safety technician and renovate outdated, dangerous infrastructure. Her passions are math and science, and one of her favorite hobbies is drawing up elaborate sketches of machines she would build if she had the time and money. She is polite, responsible, and hardworking, very rarely encountering trouble on her own.

Except, for some reason, various problem children who attract trouble to them like bees to flowers seem to enjoy disrupting her life. Ariel spends much of her time helping them through their issues. She will gripe about everyone's inability to act like mature adults, but she secretly enjoys taking care of others. 

Ariel, stuck as being the straight man to all her friends and both of her whimsical, irreverent parents, is often seen as cynical or pessimistic. However, even if she is known as the down-to-earth member of her group, she can become rather troublesome herself. She is super stubborn, to the point of being immature under certain circumstances. She isn't very confident in her capabilities, either, thinking that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and often getting trapped in her own head and negativity.

Ariel deeply treasures her friends and family, with slight possessiveness coloring her love. She is pragmatic and clever, often thinking of unconventional solutions to problems. Occasionally she becomes so steeped in theory and information that she forgets that human beings are around her, not machines.

Her father owns a small restaurant in the suburbs, and her mother was a mechanical engineer. When Ariel was young, her mother died due to an equipment malfunction while working on a train line. Ariel vowed to follow in her mother's footsteps career-wise, working hard until she was offered an apprenticeship with a colleague of her mother's in the city. While her father was reluctant to let her leave the home at the age of thirteen, Ariel managed quite well on her own. 

She met a boy who seemed lost and confused, with a dangerous and animalistic air about him. After some scuffling, he ended up adopted by her, and the two have been living together since. 

Little did she know, a storm was rapidly approaching.

"I'm in the mood to be spoiled."

Cyril tugged on the back of Ariel’s jacket. “To compensate for making me wait, buy me an éclair.” He gestured towards a bakery across the street. Warm, soft light poured from its front window, making it look all the more inviting. Pedestrians went about their business, utterly oblivious to the hostage situation and gang violence that took place barely a city block away from them.

“Buy it yourself,” she grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Food tastes the best when you’re not the one paying for it,” he said.

“The answer’s still ‘no.’”

“But I had to wait for three hours before you saved me from those guys,” Cyril said. He certainly did not whine, despite the distinctly whiny quality his voice took. Guys like him didn't whine. “They tied me up and hit my face. Look at this bruise.” He pointed at the mottled gray-purple splotch decorating his cheek.

Ariel scoffed. “Please. I’ve read your blog. You probably liked it.”

Damn it. She wasn’t even wrong.

“But it hurts,” he said, and struggled to keep a smile from spreading across his face when he saw her guilty expression. Victory. 

“Ugh. I was craving a latte, anyway,” she muttered. She grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the shop.

“I want strawberry.”

"To me, it's not a question of if I win or not. It's a matter of when."

He can match the physical attributes of the girl to the file he has on her. The striking shock of pink hair, the sky-blue eyes of familiar hue, her taller-than-average height and sweet facial features.

And yet, his brain mind with cognitive dissonance when he tries to overlap the text on the page with the figure sitting before him.

What an exceptional turn of events. Humans have always been pack creatures, working in tandem and making individual sacrifices for the sake of the community as a whole. Even when philosophers argue of individualism and innovation, Rhein cannot think of a single genius able to push the species forward without the support and following of the more mediocre specimens.

He thinks of magnificent libraries burned to the ground and he wonders how many matches she has hidden in her pockets. She is no particular genius. In an utter reversal of events, she's a fairly unexceptional person supported and pushed forward by individuals far more suited to her post than she is. 

Normal humans ought to accept loss in stride, turn to their support systems to grieve in a healthy way, and move on from it.

"I would figure that when your friend left of his own volition to join our organization, with reassurance that he wasn't being coerced to do so, the message would be clear."

Her smile is sweet and objectively quite attractive. He supposes it must be, in order to recruit the caliber of lackeys she has.

"If your closest friend disappeared overnight to an organization that you couldn't find any information on, with no means of contact, without expressing a desire to do so beforehand, would you not be concerned?"

"I would respect his wishes."

"Would you really?"

"You speak as if you have any inkling of what I would do."

Her smile turns apologetic. "You're right. But I do think it's something any person would do. Given the opportunity, wouldn't anyone try to cling onto their loved ones? I've gotten a chance like that. If I had other responsibilities or if I were not physically able, I'd probably let it go."

She speaks as if she opened a door on a whim and found his office through a stroke of serendipity. He wonders why she would put on airs like that when they both know how much blood has been spilled during her journey so far, her own and others'. He knows that two agents have already been lost this evening just so that conversation could take place, soundproof white walls blocking out piercing gunfire.

"Would you really?" he echoes.

"Absolutely not!"

misc

• Ariel has trouble in heels higher than one inch or very revealing clothes. Her alternate outfit "vellum" was the conspiracy of those two little chaos goblins she was foolish enough to call friends - Cyril held her down as Russet put the thigh-high boots on.
• Under extreme stress or sleep deprivation, Ariel becomes significantly more surreal, erratic, and sadistic. Her normal characteristic kindness is gone, and she's much more terrifying and prone to acts of questionable morality. According to her father, she's really her "mother's daughter" during these times.
• The type to stop eating and become hyperfocused while stressed. She chugs down black espresso and energy drinks because she hates her heart.
• She abhors bell peppers, but eats them regularly due to a traumatic childhood experience. 
• Thanks to growing up in a restaurant, she's a strong cook. She's not an adventurous cook, but the things she makes are consistently tasty. She likes comfort foods, her favorite being macaroni and cheese (with many decadent toppings). She LOVES chocolate.
• She is very attached to everything she makes, to the point of giving them nicknames and humanizing traits. She loathes scrapping any projects, preferring to incrementally improve them where she can.
• She keeps her hair long as a reminder of her mother, who complimented it quite a bit when she was alive.
• The blue robot on her belt is representative of Cyril . It's basically a two-way GPS tracker.
• For all Cyril seems like a stereotypical shoujo-manga love interest, they're both reliant on the other, to the point where it borders on codependency. The "responsible and dependable leader" front tends to mask this aspect of her personality, so it looks one-sided to people who do not know the two well.
• That being said, she is not a very selfless or even kind person. While she has compassion for others, at her core, she is someone who would sacrifice many strangers for the sake of a person she cares for... though she feels guilty about it once she realizes it.
• She is not exactly a master manipulator, but she is aware of how she is perceived by others, and will use that to her advantage.
• Her boots and hoodie are super duper comfortable and soft.