Lang, Leila [QUINCY]

feels like all I am now is just a photograph
Age: 21
Height & Weight: 162 cm, 47kg
Eye & Hair Colour: Long black hair and amber eyes
Birthday: August 8th, 1995
Ethnicity: Chinese, specifically from Hong Kong
Loyalties: She'd like to think she can sustain loyalty to only herself...
Snapshots:  Born in Hong Kong (1995), moves to London at the age of four where Quincy powers awaken (1999), witnesses her uncle's murder by her father's hand and returns to Hong Kong two years later (2001), begins to forget her past life and embarks in self-education, including a study abroad in China (2005), accepted into several prestigious universities around Asia eventually seeking emancipation from her family and thrown out onto the streets (2012), after struggling to gain financial independence, resolves to make Japan her next destination (2017)

General Appearance: 
Tall for her native Hong Kong but short to the rest of the world, it feels like Leila is somewhere in the in-between. She is thin, even by East Asian standards, and yet her frame tilts slightly toward lean due to the nature of toiling away at odd jobs day in and day out. More often than not, her messy black hair is tied back into a ponytail for the sake of convenience but doggedly, Leila refuses to get it cut even if it may be more conducive to a labourer such as she. Unkempt bangs dangle over amber eyes across her forehead and ‘choice’ of outfit oft results in the cleanest pair of jeans and plain white t-shirt available to wear. It is the picture of a person who has neither the time nor luxury of keeping prim and proper. Had Leila the available resources, she’d ideally keep her hair down and straight. Every girl wants to feel pretty but this was the life that she chose in exchange for the nice shoes and pretty dresses. Instead, her skin is blemished with oil and dust smudges marking the life of someone who has to work simply to get by.

Beneath the layer of that daily grind, however, is the image of a beautiful girl, elegant and classic. It's just a shame that aesthetics has no place in the struggle to keep afloat. 

Yet despite the burdens of everyday life, Leila still carries herself in a light and lithe manner of speaking. A cheeky smile, a clear laughter, you'd be hard-pressed to pass her off as someone who is unhappy. She hides it well and perhaps, part of her is truly happy. 

Leila is fluent in her native Cantonese but feels that it is crass to the ears. She prefers speaking Mandarin and her British-accented English, both of which she learned by spending time in China and England, respectively. Her voice, like her laughter, is clear but soft, creating a sound that most would say is pleasant to the ear.

Reiatsu: 
It feels warm, like the embrace from sitting in front of a fire place on a cold winter’s night. Leila’s Reiatsu is a light purple that seems to vibrantly dance but the push and pull of emotion dictate the appearance of stability, varying from smooth and silky to jagged and irregular.

feels like the spark is seeping out of my soul
❝I’m someone who has a lot of acquaintances but few friends—well, that’s what I’ve been told at least. I’m not quite sure what that means though.❞

Leila is friendly and cheerful to anyone and everyone. She likes to believe in the practice of giving someone the benefit of the doubt and recognizes the importance of networking, but keeping at an arm’s length away. Are people that untrustworthy or is it her own glaring insecurities? There’s simply no time to let anyone get close, especially with the nature of her erratic work schedule. At a moment’s notice, she must be ready, night or day, to fulfill that which produces a paycheck but that isn’t to say Leila is unfeeling—quite that opposite, actually.

It’s not hard to tell what kind of mood she’s in. Far from the passive-aggressive type needing to be decoded, for better or for worse, she wears her heart on her sleeve. This makes her an atrocious liar and candor is the only way she knows how to speak her mind. Perhaps, however, this reflection of her personality can be attributed to privilege so did nature affect nurture, maybe? Then you may ask, what privilege? After all, isn’t Leila someone who lives paycheck to paycheck? Well, the past never strays too far from its owner.

You see, Leila was born into a wealthy but corrupt family—tenuously linked to the mafia, she’d heard but never verified out of fear. This means she could have been doted upon; she could have had everything she ever wanted on a mere whim, money and people to serve at her beck and call but such was not the life that she chose. Instead, her work ethic is practiced from the instinct to endure, to have a roof over head rather than to live in the streets. But Leila has not truly rejected her family. When allowance comes from her father, she takes it without batting an eye. Leila can feel as guilty as she wants but even that isn’t even to stop her.

Her lineage very obviously hails from Hong Kong, but under British rule until mid-1997 allowed for a large portion of her relatives to have migrated to England. This is where the majority of her clan’s presence resides and as such, is not a point of importance back in the East. Her Quincy heritage was never something ingrained into her education and it’s not as if Leila doesn’t care, she simply doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what she is and a stop of communication between her own family and family in the West means Leila thinks she’s just an ordinary human like any other.

Positive: 
≻Bright
Witty, sarcastic, clever, Leila is quick to pick up on trends, nuances, and moods—a certain awareness that would have made her an excellent socialite. Instead, life has ordained she uses this awareness to pick up skills necessary to meet that standard of living. Read a book, learn how to cook. Watch a video, learn how to pick a lock. She is quick on her feet and nimble in the mind, the only way Leila can live a life as hustled as her own.
≻Cheerful
It wouldn't be hard to believe that Leila would have been popular in high school. Given the chance to lead a normal life would have seen her as not the most popular girl in school but right there with her; the ‘nice’ one amongst the clique. one might observe. You’d never fear her walking down the hallway and she might even make pleasantries with you with a soft smile on her face. Such is Leila’s persistently cheerful nature, opting to try and look at the glass half full instead.
≻Tenacious
Make a choice, stick with it. Leila is stubborn in a way that makes it hard for her to apologize but this is not without thought. Haphazard as it may seem, there is a degree of calculating that goes into what’s best for her in the long run. When a decision is rendered, for better or for worse, there is no turning back. Dogged in her resolution means that Leila is mentally equipped to live with these choices.

Negative: 
≻Spoiled
She’ll throw a temper tantrum if she wants to, if she doesn’t get her way, or even if someone disagrees with her. The scent of privilege is far from washed away clinging to Leila as something fixed from birth. She’s doing everything in her power to live by her own rules and don’t you dare say anything otherwise.
≻Overemotional
You know that saying, ‘when it rains, it pours’? Leila is pretty much the embodiment of that. If you’re going to be dealing with sunflowers and sparkles or a category ten typhoon, Leila will make that very apparent. Just know that the storm will eventually subside but experiencing it will be painful.
≻Insecure
Leila has never had anyone to turn to, nobody in which to confide. This means that deep down, she wavers, questions if her path is the right path. She hates that part of her wants to go running back to mommy and daddy, but it’s a lot easier to be confident when you’re not down to the last dollar in your bank account. After all, doesn’t everyone seek some sort of validation?

Goals: 
It's hard to have goals when you're simply trying to survive the day to day, isn't it? To become truly independent, to actually sever ties with her family, those are scary to think about and yet she has a desire to forge a life ahead in Japan. Such is the twisted logic derived from a twisted childhood. 

feels like the desert wind in my chest
❝My father gave me a locket on my fourth birthday before I went to England. He said it was something I needed to have but now that I think about it, I’m not sure he even knew what that meant.❞

Quincy Cross: 
Leila knows not of the importance about the locket she wears around her neck. Traditionally, the trinket is given at birth but her father, the ‘head’ of the Lang ‘clan’ based in Hong Kong cared little for their Quincy roots. It was only when England’s main branch demanded Leila be educated about their Quincy ways that she even received the locket; however, memories so far repressed, she simply believes that it is a keepsake from her childhood.

Power: 
Leila’s power is not an absolute power of rejection nor is it a model of acceptance, instead her power seems to dance the line in a mixture of the two. Most simply put, her power is that of barriers; however, the effect of said barriers is something she cannot yet control. Emotionally driven, she can either barricade or she can heal but the product is still crude and very weak.

Spirit Weapon: 
Dig far back enough into the memories and Leila would have remembered that, growing up, she enjoyed archery as a hobby. A very posh sort of hobby but given the status of her family, both branches, options were ‘limited’ to horseback riding, fencing, and the like. She could at least feel in control shooting the bow to a bullseye and because of this, her spirit weapon remains a simple bow, sleek in shape and medium-sized.

feels like my conscience drowning me
Origin: 
The number eight is considered an auspicious number in China for a variety of reasons all pertaining to success, wealth, luck, joy, what have you. Born August 8th should have made Leila a prodigal daughter, beautiful, intelligent, all the right ingredients to lead a prosperous life filled with happiness—or so you’d have thought. Superstition, however, never meant too much to the Lang family or at least, it didn’t mean anything at all to Leila’s family and the number eight was exactly that: simply superstition. What powered the world and kept it running was money and power.

Lessons that Leila would come to learn sooner rather than later in life.

She was born into a hospital in Hong Kong, like any other, crying and with a head full of black hair. Her father hadn’t been there to greet her. He had probably been off jet-setting the world doing who-knows-what in illegal activities: killing, torturing, scheming, none of it good. Her mother, too, didn’t even want to see her. She longed only for bedrest and to be pampered after the tiring birth. Looking back, Leila was surprised she simply wasn’t conceived within a test tube, wondered why she was even conceived at all. She was a powerless newborn who never asked to be brought forth into this world. 

As such, Leila was whisked away by the hospital nurses and then handed over to an army of nannies who raised her instead. What was a mother’s touch or the idea of being a ‘daddy’s girl'? They were all foreign concepts to her. It was, essentially, a sterile environment where family gathered and existed only for appearance.  

❝Before I was even old enough to realize what it was, I watched my mother walk up to another man—that man, not my father—with bosom pressed lasciviously against his chest, kissing and groaning. It was a loveless marriage needless to say, one born only of politic and utility. When I walked up to her to ask what she was doing, mother simply glared at me and slapped me across the face. ‘Don’t ask questions, stupid child,’ she snarled at me and from that day on, I learned to keep my head down.❞

Monetary happiness was supposed to make up for the neglect so this way of life, Leila had taken at face value as normal. It wasn’t until some time in the autumn of 1999 that she began to learn differently. 

Rise to Power: 
Some things, Leila remembered so clearly, like the day of her fourth birthday. She sat wide-eyed across the long table from which her father always conducted his ‘business meetings.’ He looked at her sternly and, with only a grunt, wordlessly motioned for a butler on standby to place a box in front of her. Usually, receiving something like that timeless blue box elicited emotions of joy and excitement and without knowing any better at the time, Leila felt naïve delight. It was the first time she’d seen her father in—well, it’d been so long she couldn’t even recall the last time she saw him. After all, it was her special day. Perhaps he did care!

But expectation soon led to disappointment. Without so much as a happy birthday, he promptly barked at the nearest servant to dismiss Leila from the room. There was no explanation for the locket inside the box and Leila could only surmise that it was indeed a birthday present. She couldn’t have known its significance, that was, until her time in Hong Kong came to a temporary close.

Confused and unhappy but with no choice and little power to protest found Leila on the next plane to England. Her things had already been packed, suitcases left to be attended at the front door of their mansion in Hong Kong. Mother wasn’t present. Father wasn’t there either. It was a trending pattern. There was no one there to say goodbye to her except for a few polite nods from the butlers and maids. Little Leila, biting back her tears, clutched tightly to the locket she’d received wondering where she would be taken to next.

Well, luckily not all of this story is sad.

London welcomed her with open arms. She was greeted at Heathrow Airport by doting relatives she’d learned to simply call ‘auntie’ or ‘uncle.’ Every adult was an ‘auntie’ or ‘uncle’ and their children were all ‘cousins’ to her and that was unquestionably par for the course in this new ‘home’ of hers.

Here, Leila was surrounded by warmth, laughter, and by happiness. Here, she could ask questions and instead of being trapped inside a box, she went to school, explored the outside world, and was taught what it meant to be a ‘Lang.’ It was the first time she’d ever heard the term ‘Quincy’ but Leila was too afraid to disturb the surface that she simply went along with the act. She had a power inside of her, they told Leila, and London, here, was where it was going to be drawn out.

So Leila observed. She watched bright lights dance around her controlled by her own blood and kin. ‘She could do it too,’ they encouraged her. She too could also control what they called ‘Reishi.’ It had never been quite clear to Leila what that really meant. Born to a family that didn’t care about their Quincy roots and too afraid to ask for fear of becoming a burden, Leila simply channeled her feelings into what she thought was right.

Eventually, anger equated into something like rejection, a barrier of sorts, and joy translated into acceptance—in her particular case, healing. Those bright lights, well, she could manipulate those too in the shape of an arrow. Leila simply attributed it to her fondness of archery, one of the few hobbies allowed of the upper echelon that she actually enjoyed. A prodigal daughter, indeed, that Leila was able to progress so quickly in just a few months but even this would soon come to a screeching halt.

❝I stood there drenched in the blood of one of my ‘uncles,’ the head uncle to be exact. It’d only been two years past since I arrived in London. I was now six and had just witnessed my father kill my uncle in cold murder. He walked in, angrier than I’d ever seen him, pulled out a Glock and shot him execution style. To this day, I never understood or learned why father was so angry. I just remembered his grip on my arm as he dragged me away and how much it hurt.❞

“D-daddy, what’s happening?” Leila whimpered quietly from the sight. Her father very roughly cleaned up the blood on her face and ordered her to change into a clean set of clothes.

“None of this fucking Quincy business, not in my family,” was the only thing she heard her father mutter on the matter. It was the first and last time she heard him utter the word ‘family’ and before she knew it, Leila had returned to a life in captivity in Hong Kong.

And that's when she started to forget.

Call to Power: