stardustish | history

Japanese-American, born and raised in New Lodgins. Sylvia lived with her single mother.
She admired Agents as a little girl and her mom enrolled her in training classes at a young age because it made Sylvia happy. She had a lot of fun training and enjoyed the thrill that came with combat especially. She also enjoyed studying up on the supernatural but had a hard time grasping some concepts.
She met another trainee named Melanie, an empath, who enrolled in the same cardio class as her when she turned 8. They'd been best friends ever since.
Overtime, training became more and more difficult. As a result, Sylvia became a perfectionist and held herself to high standards while training since Agents only take the best of the best. She aimed high and wanted to get accepted into an Elite Agency despite not having any supernatural powers. She started overworking herself as a teenager and her grades in school started slipping. She was more cantankerous and lost friends in the process. She felt her life slowly slipping out of her hands and her motivations for becoming an Agent slightly altered to include wanting a Charm for better luck moving forward.
At the age of 17, right after graduating high school, she and Melanie were pre-screened for the Agent Exams. They were interviewed and after the interview phase, they both qualified for the actual exam. Both of them took the Agent Exam which had a physical test and a “traditional” test, aka pencil and paper. Melanie and Sylvia both took the exam with the intent to be selected by The Tempest, an elite Agency known for known for “taking the city by storm” for having some of the most skilled Agents around. Despite not having any special abilities, Sylvia and Melanie both believed that Sylvia would impress The Tempest enough to get accepted.
While Melanie and Sylvia both passed the exam, only Melanie was selected to become an Agent in The Tempest because Sylvia was an ordinary human. The Tempest hires humans for research and administrative purposes, not as Agents. Sylvia was broken by the rejection (though she claimed she was expecting it) and decided she'd try for a standard Agency. Melanie, furious for her best friend, made a case and argued for Sylvia's acceptance. She believed that Sylvia had more potential than some of the others who applied and actually had powers -- Sylvia's scores were impressive, after all. After some persuasion, The Tempest caved and decided to give Sylvia a chance. Thus, both girls became Agents.
They were both assigned to Squad Epsilon with two other veteran, supernatural members named Cai and Justin. Cai had telepathic powers while Justin had the ability to shapeshift into a bear. Sylvia was the only “ordinary” human on the team. Cai was considered the team leader as she had the most experience.
The four of them got along well and became close with one another. They were a fantastic team that developed a great dynamic and helped many people through various situations throughout the city. Sylvia also reaped the rewards of being an Agent and sent a hefty sum of her earnings to her mother in hopes of showing her thanks to the woman who'd supported her endeavors ever since she was a child.
Their biggest issue with her, however, was that she needed to brush up on her supernatural knowledge a lot. This is because right after the exams ended, a good chunk of the information she studied went out the window. Often times she wouldn't fully remember how to approach different beings and would get chastised by Cai if she screwed up too badly during a mission. Sylvia generally joked around about her shortcomings but would study hard in secret to make up for her lack of retention.
Sylvia also worked herself to the bone because she was aware of how much she was being scrutinized by The Tempest. They took their chances on an ordinary human -- one they considered an underdog because of her lack of special abilities -- and it put a lot of pressure on her to perform well. Still, she tried to use this as motivation to become a solid Agent whom her team could rely on.
Cai became someone Sylvia started to look up to. Sylvia's motivations for wanting to be an Agent weren't as philanthropic in nature as Cai's. Cai truly cared about those who were born with special talents like her and wanted to help them when they needed someone. Cai's kindness inspired Sylvia to become better and put others above her own need to prove herself and feel the excitement that came with being an Agent.
Some of the missions could get pretty dicey, especially when force was necessary. However, Sylvia believed that they were protected by the Charms they were given -- injury was still possible, but lethal hits were out of the question. This was true up until an emergency mission that they went on a year later.
The emergency involved chasing a shapeshifter who could transform into a hawk down. The woman had stolen important documents from The Tempest. Squad Epsilon was on another mission in the area so they were the first to respond to the alert. The shapeshifter flew upwards to the roof of a tall building. All four members of Epsilon were equipped with gear to climb up the side of the building to chase the shapeshifter, though in the midst of the chase, Cai’s gear started to malfunction. She'd been climbing up on the same side as Sylvia when one of the cables that was supposed to act as a safety net broke in half. Sylvia heard Cai cry out, and she turned around to see her leader falling towards the ground. She froze up and could only watch as Cai hit the ground and died instantly.
Needless to say, Sylvia was unsettled for the next few months. Seeing her leader’s death made her afraid of heights. While all three remaining members of Epsilon were devastated, Melanie and Justin wanted to continue being Agents, and Epsilon continued for a little while longer as a team of three in Cai's honor. However, Sylvia's motivations started shifting towards solving the mystery behind Cai's death, as she began questioning the legitimacy of Charms and stopped believing that they would protect them. She then started to worry about the public perception of Charms being a foolproof way to ensure a happy life, and wondered how many more people would fall victim to something that could very well be coincidence instead of magic itself. Furthermore, the guilt she felt over being unable to reach Cai on time also weighed on her conscience and made being an Agent difficult.
Sylvia decided to go on a hiatus to recover from the incident, much to Melanie and Justin's chagrin. Sylvia's decision put a rift between her and her old friends, especially Melanie, as Mel and Justin had to be reassigned to different squads since they could not operate as a two-man team. For the next few weeks, Sylvia spent her time trying to deal with the grief over losing Cai while also simultaneously looking deeper into the inner workings of the Charm industry. She wasn't able to find anything groundbreaking, though.
Now 19 years old, one day, while browsing the internet, she stumbled across an ad for a spirit medium who served as a therapist for those who had passed but couldn’t move on to the afterlife. She hesitated for a few days but eventually made it a point to seek out the medium, Bailey Morello, in hopes that she could send a final message to Cai and apologize for being unable to save her.
Bailey wouldn’t take Sylvia as a client, obviously, but Sylvia still made it a point to hang around in hopes that she’d be able to pass on her message. During the time she spent hanging around Bailey’s office, though, she found herself chatting to them more frequently. Her sunny demeanor slowly began to return just because she found someone she was finally connecting with again. Because of this, Sylvia started to frequent their office despite not being their client. While they weren't seeing any patients, Sylvia would lounge in their office and started opening up about the circumstances surrounding Cai's death.
Bailey grew suspicious around Cai's circumstances as well. The two of them would chat about it frequently, and once Sylvia brought up the Charm, Bailey immediately told Sylvia that the Charm was fake. Of course, Sylvia asked them how they knew that, but Bailey refused to be anything but vague about how they had this information. Sylvia quickly came to the conclusion that Cai was their client, and despite Bailey's attempts to lie and brush this off...well. They're kind of a terrible liar. Sylvia didn't press them about it, though, but realized that Bailey would be a good source of information in solving Cai's case. She also realized that they were stepping into dangerous territory, since they believed the Charm was a fraud. That made things simultaneously more concerning and exciting, and Bailey suggested that they look into it themselves. Sylvia immediately hopped on board.