Marpesia Horsestride

A monster of a woman, Marpesia stands a staggering height of 7'6" and is clearly one of the most heavily muscled women roaming around Balamb Garden. If that wasn't enough to make her stand otu from a crowd of much shorter students and sometimes instructors, Marpesia is also short one eye, her right eye having been stabbed out during an interrogation gone horribly wrong.
"I don't really get why no one wants a hug. It's like they're all caught up in being a bad ass super soldier so much that they can't see how cute and nice everything around them is." ~ Marpesia
== Personality ==
At first glance one would probably be initially intimidated by Marpesia, her stature alone puts her at least a head over most of her peers. Coupled with the fact that she's built like a tank and has a nasty looking eyepatch it would be easy to assume that she has a nasty personality. However this is quite the contrary, Marpesia is a light hearted sort. She's usually the first in any crowd to smile, and she's often not afraid of boundries offering herself up for hugs and other frivalities. Despite her appearance, Marpesia does try to appear as cute as she possibly can with little pink trinkets here and there; though she finds a mental block of sorts as she also realizes that someone her size can't really be cute.
This isn't to say that Marpesia is a pushover, rather that she prefers to have a positive outlook to her life as a soldier and a special operative. When it comes to down to it she can assume a much more serious outlook, becoming cold and calculating when its absolutely necessary. Soldiers in the field have whispered the name of the large one eyed woman who can rend stone with her fist, she inspires fear from them when she feels the need. People around the Garden however fear the bubbly, girly side of Marpesia more than the serious stern side. While not necessarily the smartest person int he world she does present a sort of pragmatic approach to her teaching. In classroom scenarios this comes off with a more matronly attitude, she has been around the Garden for much longer than most people and isn't afraid to use this experience to her advantage.
== Character History ==
Marpesia's early life in Fisherman's horizon wasn't very eventful, her mother died of complications during childbirth and her father was constantly out at sea as a rigger on a fishing vessel. As such she spent a good part of her childhood with a majority of other children who's parents were fishermen, forming something of a gang with them where they would have adventures around the port town. Marpesia was often thought of as an overly cheery girly girl, she was usually the first to laugh and offer hugs or compassion to others and was generally the kind of girl who liked to wear cute things and have tea parties and generally be as cute as possible. Unfortunately for her however she was also bigger than most of the boys her age, and certainly all the girls. In result most of the girls wouldn't let her play with them and she was forced to hang out with the boys and engage in more boyish activities. Very quickly she found she had a knack for fighting, when rough housing with boys she was usually the one who could manhandle them with relative ease.
At the age of eight her father died in a hurricane off the coast of Balamb, oficially orphaned she was given the choice to attend Balamb Garden's military program or attempt to be adopted by another family. Due to feelings of being outcast to others Marpesia decided to enroll at Balamb Garden, after all no one would adopt a girl who couldn't be cute and she certainly wasn't a boy by any measure. After enrollment Marpesia's life once again settled into a normal routine, she was more respected among students due to her physical capability, and she did well enough in her academics not to garner any sort of acclaim or rebuke. As a student she was entirely middle of the road, though she did excel in excercises and practice.
At around the age of fifteen Marpesia started doing SEED examinations, she never really excelled any or passed until she was eighteen years of age. During one particular exam Marpesia was captured by an enemy soldier who stabbed out her right eye with a field knife in an attempt to torture information out of her. The torture continued for a long while until she was rescued by a platoon of fellow students, though the entire ordeal left her mentally incapable of resisting torture from that point. As well she started to exhibit a slight phobia of blades and refused to carry one of her own relying instead on her own body.
At the age of nineteen Marpesia was asked to become an instructor at Balamb, she was originally slated to teach in field assignments but due to her condition of not being able to resist torture she instead settled into the more academic profession of teaching English.
== Relationships ==
As of right now, Marpesia has no close relationships with any students or instructors. That should change in the future however and will be reflected when the time comes.
==Fighting Style==
Whether its due to her general attitude toward others or a way to balance out her higher than average physical strength, Marpesia rarely ever fights to do damage to others. Most would call her a defensive fighter, but that would only be telling half of the story. Marpesia is as has been stated both fast and strong, however she uses this strength and speed for a more indirect style of fighting. Where others would depend on causing damage Marpesia is geared toward disabling her opponents and enabling teammates to make more critical blows. She rarely ever stays in one place for long and usually targets topple points on the opponent. This isn't to say that Marpesia is unable to do damage on her own, when not limiting herself to her style of fighting she can cause a tremendous amount of damage with her fists alone, which is why she doesn't generally wield weapons. Her style of fighting really shines when she's in a group however, especially paired with her preferred magical sub-type applying status effects to her opponents.
====Command List:====
Attack - This is pretty self explanitory, though rarely used.
Magic/Draw - Drawing and using magic where required, Marpesia depends on spells like Haste, and Slow to both buff her allies and debuff her opponents.
Stagger - A special ability that allows Marpesia to target a weak point on a single opponent. This has a chance of either granting allies an opening, or disabling the opponent temporarily.
Gaurd - A good defense keeps you from getting your butt handed to you.
====Limit Break:====
Ten Ton Fist - Unsealing all of her strength and speed, Marpesia delivers a blow of pure momentum and force to either a single opponent or the ground which causes massive damage to all or one of her enemies, generally stunning them for a small amount of time.
==Themes==
thumb|300px|left|General Theme - Alana Grace "Black Rose Red"thumb|300px|right|Battle Theme - Marko Polo "Fighter"
Category:Instructors