Lisza Quorys

Lisza's grandfather, the head of a large activist group of essence-users specialized in weather manipulation, had always felt larger-than-life to everybody around him. Ever since he was a young adult, he'd been working closely with other powerful essence-users in order to detect, prevent, and warn people about storms and natural disasters, giving them ample time to evacuate and helping them minimize the damage that resulted from these events. He spent hours out in the crop fields outside of Atriven City, ensuring that local farmers had enough water for their crops, generating rain whenever the summer was too dry or the winter was too crisp. He was hardly ever at home, spending most of his time either training other volunteers or doing valuable work of his own -- but his son always knew that he'd be expected to one day follow in his father's footsteps, taking over the organization as the natural successor to his grandfather's success. Still young, impulsive, and wanting a life for himself, he would eventually convince his father that the life of an activist leader wasn't the life that he wanted to lead. He and his wife would live outside of his father's influence, doing odd jobs and enjoying the time they had together as a carefree couple.

When Lisza was born, however, her grandfather would worm his way back into the family's life, insisting that Lisza be given into his custody for training. Lisza was a natural hydra esper, after all, the same way that her grandfather was. She was clearly very powerful, even from a young age, having inherited the same weather manipulation specialty that ran in the family. And, her grandfather insisted, her father had run away from his responsibilities for long enough. Somebody would have to inherit his position, and Lisza was the natural next choice -- given that her father didn't want to step up to the plate.

As such, ever since she was three years old, Lisza lived entirely under the watchful eye of her grandfather. She was strictly educated and trained when she was a child, being largely homeschooled so that her grandfather could take her on trips and introduce her to the job that she was already being raised to perform. When her powers started manifesting, her grandfather was the one guiding her practice: she had to be just as powerful as he was, after all, if she was meant to command respect. Her grandfather was even the one who encouraged her to apply for college, picking out exactly where she was to send her applications and telling her exactly how she was to write her application essays.

Lisza was naturally smart; she never found the work she was assigned to be particularly difficult. The older she got, though, the "lazier" she seemed to be -- often disappointing her grandfather, given how she would always lock herself away in her room, refusing to do things until the last minute and even outright rejecting his invitations to go "out to work" with him. The fact that her father was nothing more than a distant figure in her life, sending her letters and sometimes showing up to Christmas dinner, after having put so much responsibility on her shoulders... It made Lisza almost envious, at times, how much freedom she felt like she was missing out on. She didn't want to be a great activist leader at all, but she'd been signed up for it before she was born.

Actually moving out to college was a relief, no matter how scared Lisza was that she wouldn't make friends or how worried she was about having to interact with other students for the first time. In comparison to the constant pressure that her grandfather was putting on her to succeed, to use her "natural potential," to stop "wasting her time" and take up the role that she was meant to fulfill... well, any class lecture would be better than that. This was where she would meet her first friend group: Dioe, her favorite person to text for class notes; Yumeno, who always offers to watch movies and anime with her whenever they're free from studying; Celeuxe, who's super cool but also super intimidating in the scariest way possible; and Jaime, who's super cool and super intimidating in the most awe-inspiring way possible. When Jaime brought up the idea of joining the Virion Project, Lisza would hesitantly agree -- half because she didn't want to be separated from her friends, half out of the hope that it would finally make her grandfather happy with her, for once.

Even though Lisza's intimidated by literally everybody that she sees (they're either really old, really smart, really accomplished, or just straight-up scary), she's happier than she expected to be, working at the Virion Project. Even though she was worried about the fact that she wouldn't be in the same Division as the rest of her friends, she has to admit that the transition's been smoother than she imagined. The work is interesting to her and she wants to impress the people that she's working with -- but she has to admit that sometimes she gets a bit too lazy to do things when they're assigned to her, leading to her having to balance her schoolwork and studies and time with her grandfather on top of the research memos and projects that her higher-ups have told her to finish by Friday.

The fact that her grandfather's starting to release some of the pressure that he used to put on her -- now that she's actually making something of her life, she thinks -- is the cherry on top, though. At her core, it's not like she wanted to do nothing with herself; she just wasn't interested in doing what her dad had signed her up to do when she was a toddler. The fact that the other members of the Research Division seem almost like they're getting... anxious, however, certainly does a number on her already-exhausted nerves. Aren't the adults around her the ones that should know what's going on? Forget the fact that she's an adult. They're the ones responsible for her, aren't they?