Zau Yi

Zau Yi is a native of Hong Kong, and obtained a Suit during the invasion. Patriotic at heart, he quickly signed up as part of Hong Kong's defense forces and achieved amazing feats in a short time, alongside his childhood friend Liu Yan. The two were praised as national heroes by the people of Hong Kong, which saw them targeted for conscription by the PLA. Both Pilots resisted, and their popular support saw them become regarded as a threat by the PLA instead, which issued an arrest order for them. Zau and Liu went underground and remained hidden until the PLA offered to negotiate a deal with the Hong Kong defenders, at which point Zau was put forward as Hong Kong's representative in the new Neo Liberation Army military government as the commander of the NLA's Suit corps, ultimately giving him considerable influence over all NLA military activities.
At some point prior or during this time, Zau had a relationship with a mainland girl named Han Nu, who had also become a Pilot. Nu's membership in the Green Initiative became the foundation of Zau's later faith in the ACC as an organization, which would later prove to be misplaced. Zau was unable to prevent the GI cell from being destroyed during the war due to the situation in Hong Kong at the time, only managing to later venture to Yunnan to defeat the superfort responsible for Han Nu's death.
The now former Grand General of the NLA was noted to be a rather sly and shrewd man, capable of extracting the best value in negotiations and political maneuvers. Often, his actions make him seem evil and manipulative. However, those close to him believe that he's always acted for the benefit and future of the NLA, and not for personal gain. Deep down, he preferred the field work over being Grand General, believing that these were where his true talents lay.
According to older records, Zau's suit, Agneyastra, is focused on melee combat and the use of optical illusions in combat. Nicknamed the "Light of Destruction" once, his proficiency in combat is often surprising to those who only know him as a strategist and negotiator.
==History==
During the ACC's expedition to China following the Great Hibernation, being the senior Pilot of the NLA himself, Zau acted as the NLA's representative for meetings with the Pilots and the Survivalists Coalition from the onset. During the initial summit, Zau opposed the coalition's terms of employing the Iron Army and the ACC as a task force under the coalition and instead suggested that they be considered an independent faction. This was immediately identified as being potentially harmful to the NLA by the ACC and the Iron Army representatives, leading to some confusion over Zau's motives. The Pilots ultimately avoided making a decision on the matter and allowed the Survivalists Coalition to employ them on commission instead. Zau identified Lynn Wong as a person of interest and approached her after the summit, inquiring on her thoughts regarding the state of the Surivalists Coalition and the capabilities of the various military factions, ultimately warning her that An Guo, the Iron Army representative, should not be relied upon by the ACC.
After the meeting, aware of the coalition's war plans and disappointed by the ACC's humility, Zau planted the Imperial Seal inside the mouth of the target superfort, DRAGON. As he had hoped, the seal was discovered by Lyn Wong inside the machine's mouth while she was recovering trophy teeth. Lyn immediately recognized the seal for what it was, but was highly reticent to utilize it. Nonetheless, Zau intended to influence her to eventually compete against the Survivalists Coalition for rulership over the mainland.
Unfortunately, a short time prior to the the wedding celebration for Chang Xing and Che Mu Xin, the NLA encountered a heavily wounded Lenn Lee. Lenn had learned that the Axe Gang Bandits had a plan to strike during the wedding celebration and asked to be brought there immediately. However, they would prove to be too late to prevent the deaths of most of the Chan and Che families, instead arriving as an uninvited guests immediately following the discovery of the poisoning. Having already been identified as a man to be cautious of by the ACC, Pilot Christopher Riley immediately declared Zau a suspect in the murders and called for his arrest. Although Lenn attempted to defend Zau, Zau agreed to cooperate and was taken into custody by Indigo. An Guo was reluctant to bring Zau to Switzerland in chains, but buckled to pressure from Chris, who was certain of the man's guilt. Zau himself secretly suspected the ACC to be behind the murders once it was revealed that polonium had been used.
Worried Zau Yi and Lenn Lee would be buried by Hanse in Switzerland, Lt. Elofsdottir instead had the two imprisoned in Taiwan. Zau wrote letters to Huang He Jun, Luo Bai He, An Guo, and Lyn Wong, then passed them to Keng Si the following day. The letter to Luo contained a warning that the Axe Gang were using Personality Rehabilitation on refugees. The letter to Huang contained a warning that Chang and Beng were plotting against him, and the letter to An Guo was an offer for assistance against the Beng. The letter to Lyn contained an admission that Zau was the one that planted the seal inside the superfort, along with an appeal for Lyn to use the seal to rally the mainland behind whoever she felt best to lead it, even if she decided that person was herself. The day after, Othinus discovered Lenn's mutilation at Lyn's hand and suspected Zau may have somehow been involved. Returning to his cell to immediately interrogate him while waiting for Lyn, she learned of Keng Si's visit from the cell guards and promptly ordered Keng Si's arrest, seizing the letters. Zau would spend the next three weeks in isolation in Taiwan until he was finally released after being pressured by Chris into arranging an alliance with the NLA.
Before returning to Hong Kong after his release, Zau requested a visit to ARHK, which had moved to the Yellow Sea with the launch of ACC's China operation. Meeting with ARHK directors Farkas Horvath and Alexander Kors for a tour, Zau convinced Kors to generously donate the entirety of ARHK's drone forces to the NLA, an incident which later contributed to Kor's directed indefinite unpaid vacation to Zimbabwe. Zau would use the drone army he had been promised as a bargaining chip against the ACC during a televised meeting between the NLA, the Iron Army and the ACC a week later, much to Chris's annoyance. Zau and the ACC established pacts of free trade and mutual defense, and opened up the province of Fujian for the construction of a joint base. The terms of the deal nonetheless still required ARHK to divest the entirety of its existing drone forces and expend a significant amount of resources in delivering the remaining promised amount without any form of compensation aside from Fujian, which had now been promised to be shared jointly with ACC rather than to ARHK alone. When Zau returned to the towers the following week to close the deal, the directors stressed that ACC didn't have the authority to agree to the terms of the deal between ARHK and the NLA, and that it was impossible for ARHK to deliver on the number of drones that had been promised despite Zau pointing out that the deal was the foundation of the NLA-ACC/IA alliance. The terms were eventually renegotiated for a small number of 100 drones and for ARHK to build a factory in Fujian in exchange for superfort salvage. Although Zau relented and agreed to far less demanding terms, the directors nonetheless remained highly wary of Zau and pressured ACC to limit dealing with him.
Two days later, Lyn Wong made a televised public address in which she expressed her concerns regarding Zau in light of the new alliance between ACC and the NLA, the letters he had written while imprisoned, revealing her possession of the Imperial Seal, and sharing Zau's personal interest in fostering heroes from the conflict that could lead the country. Although Lyn affirmed that the ACC believed Zau's intentions were pure, her words of caution and labeling the man as a sly manipulator ultimately damaged his reputation enough for the NLA Council to launch an inquiry. Zau, feeling his main goal of securing the alliance with the ACC had been accomplished, decided to instead immediately resign as Grand General and go back to doing field work independently, now with a bounty on his head. Meeting with his old friend Liu Yan in his home, Zau entrusted Liu with his two cats and shared his intention of focusing on fighting against the bandits by trying to locate Che En Lin. Although the two friends promised to celebrate their victory after the war, it would prove to be the last time they ever met. Zau disappeared into Bandit territory, with Chris and Indigo soon after leaving as well to hunt the man's trail.
A month later, in mid-January 2020, a rougher Zau would meet Jeanne in the Luo camp, sardonically congratulating her on gaining control of the Luo faction. Zau had arrived in the hopes of rescuing the Luo faction's independence in light of the deteriorating relationship between  the Iron Army without involving the NLA, and proposed that the Luo needed to dissuade the Iron Army from attacking them by recapturing their missing strategist, Lun Meng Di. Zau provided Jeanne the location of the plant Lun Meng Di was being kept at and instructed her to a bring a team to him in order for an operation to be launched to rescue the man. However, Jeanne, finding herself unable to call upon any allies and distraught at Luo's seemingly inevitable demise, attempted to defect to the European Federation, only to instead be kidnapped by her own AI instead and brought to New Zealand. With no one arriving at the appointed time, Zau angrily determined that he could not enact the rescue on his own, and the Iron Army launched their attack against the Luo faction, with the ACC in tow. By this point, Zau had lost all faith in the ACC and resolved to continue his war against the bandits on his own, ultimately searching for a way to get in touch with the Revenant woman claiming to be Han Nu.
Zau remained in Yunnan for the next month, piecing together the true origins of the Revenants. When the ACC returned to China under the guise of the GIMD group Task Force RETRY in March, Zau intervened in their battle against the "Graverobber", saving Andrew Rendell and Syrene. Zau later met RETRY at the old GI base to inquire why they had bothered to come back. He expressed disappointment that the Pilots seemed to have no clear goals beyond fighting and never had any truly good intentions for the mainland, but admitted he was pleased that Syrene at least seemed to still have the heroic qualities he had been hoping to find in the other Pilots. Before departing, he let Syrene know that he was heading north to investigate rumours of reactivating superforts.
For the next four months, Zau operated in Huang He Jun's territory, cooperating with the warlord to continue his investigations into the Revenants' increasingly esoteric activities. He managed to locate a dying Han Nu, her connection to Shi-er severed, and was convinced by her to try and rescue the other remaining Revenants as well, helping found a secret village of relapsed Revenants. When RETRY finally met with Huang in July, Zau was able to report his discovery of the Gigafort Long Shadow to everyone present. The Pilots attempted to use Zau as an in to convince the NLA to aid in the coming battle, but Zau was reluctant, pointing out that he was still banned from stepping foot in Hong Kong. He instead gave Henry Locke and Damien August an SOS beacon he had been keeping for such an occasion, though with a word of warning that Liu Xiao Jiu would be immensely disappointed to discover it was being used to summon her to the two Pilots and not Zau himself. Zau also revealed the existence of the ex-Revenant village to Locke and Damien before letting them know he was going to head east to investigate the Japanese expeditionary forces. While Locke and Damien attempted to contact the NLA and the Iron Army, Zau returned to the Revenant village and worked out a plan to deceive the Japanese with Han Nu. Meeting with Major Takamitsu Nakagawa, Locke, Damien and Nichole Quadros, Zau offered control over the remaining Revenants, using Han Nu as an example, and pledged his support to Japan in exchange for being made Hong Kong's governor. Locke covertly recorded Zau's proposal before leaving the meeting in disgust with the rest of the Pilots, ending the meeting before any agreements could be reached. In doing so, Zau avoided the ACC Pilots being forced to choose murdering the NLA's leadership at the cost of all of his credibility with any of the Chinese factions. Nonetheless, Zau considered his duty fulfilled and refrained from participating in the battle against the Long Shadow. Zau instead accompanied Han Nu halfway back to the Revenant village, suggesting he might travel north to Russia now that his role in the war was over. Han Nu begged him to come back with her, but Zau refused, finding the Revenant Han Nu's resemblance to the original an uncomfortable reminder of his past failure.
Zau would later become involved in an incident in the Arctic Circle, which would put him in the sights of his long-time nemesis Isabella Ritter. Although Indigo believes Zau to have finally been vanquished, the man's slippery nature leaves some to believe he may yet turn up again somewhere he's least expected.
Category:PACYOA: TE
Category:China
Category:Neo Liberation Army