Name: Alexa Winters
Age: 29
Apparent age: 9
Birthdate: January 5, UC 0050
Height: 125 cm (roughly 49")
Weight: 25 kg (roughly 55 lbs)
Rank: O-1 Ensign
Alexa is not a very content woman. Born on Side 3, she had a fairly normal childhood; her father was in charge of the solid/liquid waste treatment and recycling center on Manipur, a fairly distinguished job. Her parents were a little concerned, since she didn't even speak until she was 4, but when she finally did, she spoke in complete sentences, having skipped baby-talk completely. As it turned out, she already knew how to read.
For the next 6 years, Alexa was somewhat introverted, but managed to keep a fairly stable life. She had a few friends, her family was caring, society was normal, though distinct anti-Federation sentiments were rising sharply against the background of Daikun's Contolism philosophy.
Always on the short side, she got used to being a little smaller than everyone else. When she was 11, however, she noticed that almost everyone was at least 6 inches taller.
At 12, she noticed she'd been wearing the same size clothes for a few years, yet everyone was taller, and most of her friends were wearing bras. (Some of them even needed them, which didn't make Alexa any happier) Mr. and Mrs. Winters assured their daughter she was a late bloomer.
In the end, at almost 14 years of age, Alexa's parents brought her to the central colony hospital. Alexa suffered numerous embarrassments and indignities, and countless little pricks, blood draws, CAT scans, MRIs, more blood draws, and more curtained examinations by pediatricians, gynecologists, and several endocrinologists flew in from all over the Sides to look at her over the next 3 months, and of course, each specialist wanted to run their own battery of tests on her.
After weeks of debate, however, they threw up their hands and admitted they didn't really know the exact cause. It didn't match up with any case on record, aside from a dubious, unreliable report that was 300 years old. They didn't know, but what they
did know is that it involved a severe problem in both her thyroid and pituitary glands that caused several critical hormones involved in puberty to be deficient. The cause was hypothesized to be the combination of a recessive genetic disorder, and a chance mutation.
Unfortunately, spacenoidism in Side 3 was growing rampantly by then, and "genetic disorder" was a condemning word in the minds of those who considered spacenoids to be the next step in mankind. More unfortunately still, these people were just becoming the dominant faction in Side 3. Perhaps the worst of all was the implication that she was "mutated," and her social status changed rather sharply over the next 6 months. People who didn't know her treated her normally as long as they didn't know her true age, but teachers and some of her friends began to avoid her.
Doctors told her treatment was, as far as they could see, more dangerous than the "disease," for the mechanisms of hormones in child development were complex and still not understood well enough to try to induce puberty artificially. She was informed the had no idea how long she would live, for her body was perfectly healthy for a 9 year old. In fact, she retained the quick healing body and highly reactive immune system of a child, further puzzling researchers.
By the age of 16, life was hell for Alexa. All but her best friend, Marina, had drifted away, and even her best friend was less and less accessible. The fault didn't lie wholly on her friend's part; Alexa felt a knot inside her whenever Marina talked about her boyfriend, or the fact they had slept together, and Alexa found herself avoiding Marina more and more.
Instead, Alexa sought refuge in computers, who didn't care how old you looked. Her small fingers and dexterity came in handy here; Alexa's speed climbed up to 200 wpm. Her brain, perpetually in a development stage, found languages, both linguistic and programming, easy to pick up, and she became a competent programmer. She was also pleased at the anonymity of the internet, where her sharp thinking, unmuddled by teenage hormones, made her appear
older than her true age for once in her life. By the time she was 18, her handle, brassTax, was somewhat notorious in hacking circles and regarded as the top hacker of the L2-Luna network region, though she avoided doing anything outright illegal.
Even her cyberlife wasn't enough of an escape, however; though she managed to suffer through high school, she left almost immediately after. After she noticed Zabi-linked research facilities taking a significant interest in her file, and after Alexa covertly took a look at their database, she found they were evaluating the costs of studying Alexa as a possible fountain of youth. That pretty much told Alexa she better pack the hell up, and so, with the help of her parents, took the next flight out to Earth.
For a few years, she settled in Africa, moving every few months when people started asking questions about the girl who didn't seem to be growing, or the fact they've never seen the parents she claimed to live with. She lived on a combination of what money her parents could spare her, sent to discreet bank accounts she'd set up, and her income as a cyber-investigator. As time went on, she began taking on more and more jobs of questionable morality and legality.
But as history has shown, change is the only constant, and when she was 22, she slipped up on a particularly delicate job to sabotage some of Anaheim Electronics' databases, and was caught and arrested by the Federation's International Cyber Crimes Unit. Not exactly wanting to risk being a 9 year old girl in an adult woman's prison, she quickly agreed to the plea bargain offer. 3 years on parole, and to work for the Federation.
Alexa was actually fairly content with her work; not many questions were asked, she was paid well, and she got to do what she was good at. She performed marvelously for the Earth Federation, counter-hacking, coding, and data probing.
2 years later, in 0074, rumors of a child hacker employed by the EF reached the ears of one up-and-coming Jamitov Heiman, who had her flown to Jaburo to meet with him.
Heiman, his name always reminding Alexa of her forced chastity, gave her a general outline. He was proposing she transfer to the EFF R&D division, both as a programmer, and as a test pilot. He pointed out that her high reflexes, childlike healing factor, high dexterity, astonishingly quick learning ability, and a logical mind less hampered by hormones would be a superb fighter, as long as the controls were refitted for her small stature and weak physical ability. Alexa, excited for actually having a definite advantage for once in her cursed life, accepted. Alexa joined the EFSF R&D team, almost immediately being put to work as a test pilot for the newly developed FF-X7 (what would soon be named the "Core Fighter"). It was found that Alexa could take higher G-forces than the average person, so her future assignments tended to be higher mobility units.
In 0075 she worked on the OS of the Guntank, only to be pulled off fairly early in 0076 as part of the VX-76 Ball prototype. She was both one of the lead coders, and the test pilot. The simple vernier system was found to be far too powerful and advanced, and though its evasion and maneuverability were top notch, on par with Zeon's MS, it was found to have a very high strain on the pilot, so the parameters were reduced on the subsequent RB-79.
Finally, in 0078, she moved along with the rest of EFSF R&D to Side 7, to begin work under Tem Ray's V Project in coding the most sophisticated mobile suit computer system yet: the RX-78 Gundam's learning computer, which would then be installed on the corefighters of the finished Guntank and half-finished Guncannon as well. The process took a year and a half, and the outbreak of the war only caused Dr. Ray to drive them harder, but at the end, they had something as close to artificial intelligence as anyone had seen. Jamitov then took the V project programmers and reassigned them to project Phantom. Alexa, however, was transferred to Luna II, where she did the flight testing of the Saberfish II.
Now that the Saberfish II has concluded testing, Alexa has been ordered to remain on standby, as good pilots become harder and harder to find. Alexa has requested the VX-76 be taken out of storage, but her requests have not been acknowledged.
Personality: Despite her small stature, Alexa is bitter. Angry, bitter, and willing to lash out describes her well. Long treated as a child, she resents that, and hates anyone trying to exploit her. She's also very bitter about love, because she feels she is forever excluded from it. She's had her share of crushes, but they always treated her as a girl. Worse were the ones that offered to take her on a date; it was pretty obvious they were pedophiles. Add in the fact she could never have children, have sex (at least without nothing but pain), or even drink alcohol, and you have one bitter woman. Inside, she genuinely wants to be loved for who she is, and treated as a person of her age, but has learned never to let her guard down.
In short, the term "tsundere" helps describe her.
