(WIP) Ria

..I need answers.

-- Ria Banaag Santos

Ria Banaag Santos, also known as The Idealist, is a former crime syndicate member who resided in Japan. After a series of vengeful actions taken against other crime syndicate members, Ria woke up with recurring lucid dreams. The lucid dreams are violent and aggressive in nature, causing her to fear sleep. Her dreams eventually manifests into her own reality and allows her to interact with it physically to some degree.

She participates in the upcoming Crossroads tournament in pursuit of the prize; a wish. Ria wants to have her recurring lucid dreams to be removed permanently, so that she may sleep peacefully for once.

Personality

Stern and often dismissive, Ria is described as a stoic woman with a hardened exterior. Her facial expression hardly changes, sitting at a constant position with furrowed eyebrows. If not standing in silence, she's easily annoyed over trivial instances. Although not a talkative person outwardly, Ria has internal thoughts that loom her mind everyday; albeit, highly critical thoughts. With certain traditions brought down from her way of life, she always shows a lot of respect towards her adversary.

Ria's cold exterior is cut by her extreme motherly instinct. She has a particular soft spot for individuals much younger than her and bears a strong urge to care for them. In reality, Ria is a very temperamental individual and given the right circumstance, will allow herself to express in front of others.

Backstory

Ria grew up in the city of Manila, Philippines, where she is the eldest of three siblings. She frequently took the role of being the supportive figure in her family and took care of her younger siblings. By shuffling through multiple jobs, her family were able to overcome numerous financial crises. Reaching her early adulthood, one of her jobs left her with an entirely new responsibility.

While throwing away garbage for her one of jobs, Ria encounters a child abandoned nearby. She quickly shelters the child, much to the dismay of her family. Her comprehension grew over time as she realizes that the child was foreign and no adult would pick him up despite her several attempts of contacting the parents. Ria would eventually take in the child as her own, though often kept him away from family due to their disapproval. When asked for a name, the child revealed his name to be Ryu. Ryu was initially not able to communicate well with Ria due to language barriers, however, he would learn to speak her language overtime. 

Eventually, Ria would move out of her household to live in her own separate apartment with Ryu. The two would grow to be extremely close, developing a familial bond over the course of many years. He even refers to her as "Mother" (as "Okaasan" or "お母さん"). Ryu warms up to Ria and grows more accustomed to speaking in her native tongue. However, Ria's comprehension returns once more as she's able to eventually figure out the origin of the boy's parents. He explains that his parents are "criminals," supposedly dumping him in Manila while they were conducting an operation there. Although upset with the truth of what had happened, Ria would be content to simply continue living on normally. She did not want anything to do with criminals.

Their time together would be cut short, as a group of dressed men breaks into their apartment. Ryu would be fatally wounded by the men, only to be discovered by Ria later on. She finds out that the men were dispatched here to finish Ryu off by his parents after they had learned of his location. Due to his connection to their criminal syndicate, Ryu could not be left alive. Absolutely devastated, Ria developed an eternal hatred towards the crime syndicate in Japan. The transgression would ignite her desire for vengeance and her vow to take action against those who had wronged her. 

In a desperate state of mind, Ria spends time researching about the respective crime syndicate and learning of their rival. She gets in contact with one of the members of said rival syndicate, earning their trust by sharing important info. She uses the remainder of her life savings to move to Japan and to properly assimilate into the syndicate. With this new position in her life, she uses it to go on a spree of killing against the members of the organization responsible for Ryu's death. Ria falls into a perpetual cycle of violence, only stopping entirely when the last member had been killed.

After the collapse of the entire organization, Ria feels that she had lost all purpose in her life. The massacre did not fulfill her vengeance nor restore her happiness. The following days, she falls asleep and experiences recurring dreams that simulate all of her past violence, in a dream-like world called Lucidity. She would begin experiencing occurrences where Lucidity crossed into real life, allowing her to perform unnatural abilities - such as summoning weapons.

Lucidity

Lucidity is a dream-like world that bares a slight resemblance to reality, but twisted in a morbid manner. In Ria's case, her dreams are represented as an alternate world with vibrant colors, abandoned buildings, and brutality. They are always occupied with crowds of faceless figures dressed in formal clothing, baring a slight resemblance to the crime syndicate. These figures aggressively pursue Ria to attack her with a variety of guns and melee weapons. In order to escape the dream, Ria must eliminate all of the figures in a given area - resulting in her waking up.

In the strange world of Lucidity, Ria gains an arsenal of abilities such as to manifest weapons, quick reflexes, and full spatial awareness.