Personality
Hello, Angry Young White Girl! Confident!: resourceful, clever, and very cunning, Amy is a stubborn girl, through and through. Although far from spoiled, she is determined to get her way, and not afraid of annoying people. At the start of her appearance, Amy Shai is more-or-less resigned to the life of a Cetra’s daughter and social reject. Her overall attitude is “an eye for an eye”, if you do evil unto her, she will do worse until you. She could give a damn what almost anyone at school thinks about her, speaks her mind to any fellow student, and even comes close to rejecting a friendly “eat with me at lunch” overture from a new kid.
Her lack of enthusiasm about class is similar; although she doesn’t give authority lip, she also is known to sleep in class — but is more than brilliant enough to get away with it, as she still scores in the top 5 students in school, taking Calculus as a Junior as well as other high-end studies.
Overall, she has a definite world-weary attitude that would do Sam Spade proud. It’s a brittle shell, though, one built rapidly to protect her from a world that turned tragically upside-down in mere weeks. She is still, at heart, a nice and pleasant girl, mature beyond her years.
She believes in justice, but would never say such a clichéd thing. She’ll go to bat to defend the downtrodden, and has a soft spot for the hard-luck cases, be they rich or poor. She’ll easily, and happily, verbally attack or dress down people who pick on the innocent, an act that has only reinforced her isolation in school. To Amy, now, such acts are as instinctive as breathing; she’s one of the good guys, in the end game.
She’s also, however, given to a very tunnel-vision version of the world, one where there are good guys, and bad guys, and the moral qualms of good vs. evil acts can be messy, at times. She can still be surprised by people turning on her, but such people are quickly put in their place, sometimes in ways that are less-than-legal. For example, she will happily manufacture evidence of wrongdoing for “those who deserve it”.
Such acts are rare; more usual is her use of her wit and charm to beguile people into doing “favors” for her; Jenn is the more extreme example of this, but she’s developed a very Shadow-like network of friends and informants. Amy does, however, have a conscience and a heart, and will eventually realize that she’s once again gone too far. She’s also slowly developing a sense of doing things for friends, as opposed to merely hanging out with them and asking for favors.
Her greatest drive, and weakness, is with regard to her two irrational attractions. Although any normal case is pretty much a minor irrational attraction in terms of her devotion to solving a mystery, many of her most self-serving and manipulative aspects come roaring to the fore when it involves either protecting the planet. As a Cetra, she feels responsible to protect the planet, and will take any risk to save it when a great threat emerges. She grows to like Walker, and feels some envy for the close relationship he shares with his friends.
These two cases are tied, strongly, to Amy’s sense of innocence lost. Whenever she deals with them, you can expect her to be even more forceful than usual, compensating, to some extent, for the hole those people left in her life.
Most importantly, she’s still young, and although very smart, is inexperienced. Most plans that she puts into place are very sound, but she hasn’t learned how to plan around emergencies, nor the complexities of human emotional responses. She is still hunted by corporations, who prefer to wait and bide their time with her. Her nature and powers had also garnered the attention of the Nameless Namek, who believes her to be a threat to his plans.
Quote: “Walker.. I'm not as strong as you may have pictured me to be...”
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