Umbra

Umbra is a woman dedicated to the bit. A true actress through and through. Her flair for being dramatic came about from being coddled for most of her life. She loves and is addicted to the spotlight, and as a result has picked up many (subpar) hobbies in order to keep people's attention on her. However, Umbra is rather an untalented person. She envies those with natural talent, preferring to keep them close to her. By surrounding herself with impressive people, she feels impressive herself. As Umbra is a woman who tries not to see the big picture or the small details either, she is often a victim of the consequences of her actions.

As a young'un, Umbra travelled the streets, hopping from boat to boat, island to island, for adventure. With a life like that, one could imagine that she has a poor or unfortunate backstory. Umbra definitely carries herself that way, but rest assured she has a well-off home life. Her family actually owns a chain of semi-widespread hotels and dorms called the Aquaburrow. As their popularity spreads, Umbra can live life "on the streets" because she always has a warm bed waiting for her in all locations.

It's comical from a distance and tragic up close. Those close to her murmur about how she turned out this way, but the fact of the matter is that Umbra simply needs to be knocked down a few pegs. Eventually Umbra realizes that her friend's attention isn't enough. The ones who get the most attention in society are the pirates and thieves of the world. The scallywags of lore who get their names carved into the tablet of history. This urges Umbra to go into a life of crime: not out of necessity or passion, but because she can. Using her connections (mostly using her parent's money) this jerboa is making a name for herself. Her modus operandi is "theft crime" where she simply takes credit for crimes being done. Most thieves are perplexed of her behavior but are willing to turn a blind eye since it gets the Navis off their trail. Meanwhile she doesn't actually have to exert any effort to raise her popularity. She's a prim yet improper princess.

By raising her status as a "phantom thief" into legend, she gets to ready news articles and tabloids talking about her heists. She enjoys them, but now she realizes she wants to be a bit more into the action. Cue her new identity as Millie Etoaste, working journalist for the Scallyrag.

She has an internship (her parents told her she needed a real job if she wasn't going to take a more active role in the family business) for the newspaper while also working underneath Penn Alkali, Ace Detective. She threw some money around to get the position she wanted. Umbra's goal was that she needed an upcoming Detective to have scent trail of the infamous Phantom Thief Umbra. Having someone without a lot of prior fame would ensure they stay hot on her trail as they're invested.

She thought about it before, and she has come to the conclusion that she probably shouldn't have used her actual name as her phantom thief moniker. Alas, it's too late to pay attention to those consequences, so Umbra ignores them. It just makes it more beneficial that she's going by a moniker now. While as Millie Etoaste, she masquerades as a rabbit. She pulls her long tail into her clothes so only the fluffy end is peeking out. She wears a cute brown and toast themed outfit (too on the noise?) and mainly works in sorting Master Alkali's files while she publishes her "findings" on the phantom thief.

Umbra may not have a specific talent but she is definitely a jack of all trades. She's able to research, and even a subpar researcher can notice there's a special double life Detective Alkali is hiding. By sheer coincidence of having very selfish goals, Umbra turns her sights to the detective and their personal life. As Millie she tries to be a dopey, partially clumsy boring assistant, she is also investigating the unknown personal life while dropping clues about the phantom thief Umbra.

As Phantom Thief Umbra, well has everything planned out perfectly. Besides stealing the crimes of others, what else would the attention seeking Umbra do than show up unannounced to events? She plans and stages her appearances, spreading a false terror on boats as a stowaway. When she's in landcities she makes sure they capture her good side when they take their pictures. She uses a self stick for her own pictures to give her alternative identity plausible deniability when they can't explain where she is during Umbra's sudden events.

Or at least, that was the pretty sweet deal Umbra had going until Detective Penn changed their hours. Perhaps the owl detective simply caught on, but before "Millie" had a cozy 10-6 outside office job that included travel perks (no need to stay in her parent's hotels for once). Now the owl is working solely nights, so Umbra had to either change too or simply find another job.So now Umbra rarely sleeps, trying to keep both her lives afloat in order to get the attention she's carefully crafted oh so well.