Ashley Westbridge

**Ashley Westbridge**GallerySprites

* Illustration
* Sprite

**Ashley Westbridge** is a character featured in the English fangame *Danganronpa: Lapse* created by **Mythridate**.

She is known as the **Ultimate Jockey**.

## Gallery

📷 For more images of Ashley, see Danganronpa: Lapse/Image Gallery and Ashley Westbridge/Sprite Gallery.
## Appearance

Ashley is a 182 cm tall (6'0) young woman with a slim athletic build and very pale grayish-blue eyes. She has sandy blonde hair that falls to her midback, with swooping bangs and layers framing her face. She wears a dark gray button-up shirt cuffed at her elbows. The shirt has gold accents on the collar, which she tucks a gold chain beneath. She wears her shirt tucked into a long, pale yellow skirt with an orange symbol on it. She wears light brown ankle boots. Her horse racing uniform is purple and pale yellow, and she races with the number 63.

## Personality

Ashley is a generally cheerful and positive person, but she is also intensely private. Despite her incredible achievements as a jockey, Ashley does not talk about them with those outside of the horse-racing world or other Ultimate students. This includes her best friend since childhood, Echo, who was under the impression that Ashley was simply a garden variety "horse girl", having no idea that Ashley had had an illustrious professional career in horse racing. She keeps the specifics of her career private from her other friends because, in her words, "I knew a lot of people before you who didn't particularly care for how much time I'd spend at the stables and race track, so I just stopped bringing it up". Despite being very close with both Echo and Silva, she kept her friend groups so separate that neither Echo nor Silva knew of the other. It's likely that due to her past experiences with other people not showing any interest or possibly even belittling her hobbies, she became a private person who keeps her cards close to her chest and thus kept her friend groups separate so that she could wear different "masks" around different people, able to openly discuss her professional achievements with Silva, who understood the pressures of being a pro racer, but just be a normal "horse girl" with Echo.

She is a resilient person; in her words, "I've fallen off my horse more times than I can count, but I just get up and back in the saddle". Of the group, she is among the least openly distressed after the deaths of Pandora and Art, able to emotionally distance herself enough from the situation to realize that "Art just wanted to protect us. It's not his fault Pandora left an incredibly suspicious note. I don't imagine it helped, what with his head being so full of distress".

To her core, Ashley is extremely protective of her friends, to the extent that she immediately ran towards the sound of gunfire that ultimately led to the accidental murder of Cyrus, all in the name of protecting Echo. She signed Silva up for the Preservation Project against his wishes because she felt that it was the only way to keep him safe from the earthquakes, and she isolated herself from Echo when she mistakenly believed that she was responsible for them being in the killing game in the hopes that it would keep them from danger. Even as Eve treated Ashley for near-fatal anaphylaxis, Ashley's only thought was to beg Eve to tell her if Echo was okay. In Eve's words, "She cared for you until her last breath". She is openly demonstrative, happy to hug people she cares for and tell them that she loves them.

## History

### Early Life

Ashley was born and raised in a cottage in Weston-super-Mare, England and attended Terminus International High School. She learned her love of horses from her father, a horse rancher, and she spent a lot of her free time helping to tend to the horses at his stables. She felt an intense connection with one of his horses, Hyperion, and she earned the horse's respect by using all her strength to refuse to be bucked off when she rode him for the first time. Riding Hyperion Ashley became an excellent horse rider, ultimately becoming one of the top riders in the world and earning the title of Ultimate Jockey. Her skill was such that her win percentage in racing was 44% with a top 3 percentage of 84%, which would put her ahead of even the #1 real-world jockey Russell A. Baze whose win percentage was 24% with a top 3 percentage of 57%.

Ashley is a childhood best friend of Echo and a close friend of the Ultimate Racecar Driver, Silva Prower. She seemingly did not intermingle her groups of friends, so Echo and Silva did not know one another.

### Preservation Project

Because of her talent as the Ultimate Jockey, Ashley was among a group of Ultimate Students who were offered to participate in the Preservation Project, a scheme by the government in which students could go to a specially engineered safehouse where they would be protected from a series of Earth-shattering earthquakes that had been tearing through the planet. Ashley was extremely anxious about the earthquakes, which were destroying homes and killing people in nearby towns, but people in her town were not allowed to evacuate. When offered the chance to volunteer for the Preservation Project, she was determined to join and wanted her close friend Silva Prower, the Ultimate Racecar Driver, to join her. Silva, however, was skeptical about whether the earthquakes were real without experiencing them firsthand and distrustful of the government, so he did not want to join the Preservation Project. This disagreement in their ideals led to a serious fracture in their relationship, and they stopped speaking to one another. Against Silva's wishes and in fear for her friend's safety, Ashley signed Silva up for the Preservation Project in secret when submitting her own application. Unbeknownst to the volunteers, instead of volunteering to be protected, they were instead sealed inside a luxurious mansion and forced into a 7-day-long killing game in which students were tasked with murdering one of their fellow students without getting caught. Any student who got away with murder would win an unspecified "Ultimate Prize".

A month after sending in her application, Ashley had dinner with Echo, who drove her home. When she walked up the path to her home, she saw smoke coming from the direction of Echo's car, but before she could react to go and help, she was hit over the head and kidnapped by Cyrus's capture group. Cyrus, the Ultimate Confidential Informant, was working for the Preservation Project, kidnapping students alongside his friend Elara, the Ultimate Paramedic. Elara wanted to join the Preservation Project; however, Cyrus knew the dark secret of what the Project had planned and replaced Elara's place in the Project with Echo, who had no Ultimate Talent but attended the same high school as Elara. Echo was kidnapped and entered the Preservation Project along with Ashley. In a later confession to Ashley, Cyrus admitted to assassinating Silva and five other students who were supposed to be in the same group as Ashley before the killing game began.

### Ultimate levels of trouble

When the group woke up in the mansion, they found that all of their personal belongings had been taken away from them, but Ashley found that Silva's racecar helmet was inexplicably in her room. Exiting her room, Ashley was extremely surprised to find Echo in the Project too, because Echo has no Ultimate talent, but the two were comforted by finding a familiar face. Ashley and Echo were quick to make friends with Pandora, and the three spent leisure time together while getting to know the other students, exploring the mansion, and experimenting with whether Echo has some kind of undiscovered Ultimate talent. By the end of that first day, the group had learned the true horror of their situation, and fear began to set in for Ashley and the other students.

Ashley mistakenly believed that Echo was only involved in the killing game because of their association with her, and she distanced herself from Echo in an attempt to protect them from any more danger because, in her words, "being involved with me only results in ultimate levels of trouble". She was utterly horrified by Art's murder of Pandora, but she helped Echo and the group deduce the culprit during the class trial and witnessed Art's execution. After the execution, Zero implied that Cyrus was not to be trusted. Cyrus had previously believed that as the Preservation Project's informant he had immunity in the killing game, and his previously easy-going demeanor quickly changed to mania. Cyrus revealed that he was responsible for their kidnapping and that he was involved in the killing game.

Echo fainted in the courtroom, so Missy and Ashley took Echo to Ashley's room to recover. When Echo awoke, they questioned why Ashley had a racecar helmet in her room, and she told them the story of her friendship breaking down with Silva. After learning the truth about the Preservation Project and finding Silva's helmet, she was forced to confront the fact that because she had signed Silva up for the Preservation Project against his will, she may have unknowingly fated him to be involved in a killing game like the one they were trapped in and possibly already be dead. The horror of Pandora's and Art's deaths, however, had made her realize that she was foolish for believing that distancing herself from Echo would protect them, and she deeply apologized to them, promising that they would stick together from now on. Ashley, Echo, and Missy went together to investigate the newly opened third floor.

On the third floor, the trio found four new activity amenities that were currently locked, and two personal rooms for students not in their group. One of the door symbols matched the symbol that was on the front of Silva Prower's racecar helmet, and Missy recognized the symbol on the other door. Before they could open the doors, Cyrus interrupted them, revealing that he knew the two other students' names - Silva and Darling. He revealed that as the Ultimate Thief, someone monumentally successful at stealing priceless goods and working in the shadows, he was able to take the next step in thievery - snatching people from their homes. He stated that he was the person responsible for knocking the students out and bringing them to the mansion. Before Cyrus could say anything else, the group was interrupted by the 10pm nighttime announcement, and had to go back to their respective living quarters.

### The Revolver

On Day 4, Missy woke all the students and encouraged them to join her in the foyer so she could make a personal announcement. Missy, Echo, Ashley, Kanon, and Forte were all in attendance, while Lyle, Cyrus, and Sei were not. Missy revealed to the group that when she arrived at the mansion, she had found a revolver in her room with a note attached, imploring her to play a game of "Reverse Russian Roulette"—load five bullets into the gun, spin the chamber, and fire it at her head. She insisted that she had not attempted the game but wanted to reveal the existence of the gun to the others to prove that she wanted nothing to do with it and that she had no intention to harm anyone. The group thanked Missy for trusting them with information that could have easily made her suspicious if the gun had been discovered in other circumstances. The gun was left in the foyer.

The group were presented with the second Forced Motive Question: "Do you believe your talent can benefit the world?", and then returned to the foyer once more. Missy stalked off to try and reason with Cyrus, and the rest of the group left to investigate the third floor again. They found nothing of note in the art gallery, smokehouse, or casino, but upon entering the car garage, Ashley was horrified to find Silva's race car. Ashley, realizing that this was likely confirmation that Silva had also been trapped in the Preservation Project killing game and was possibly dead, panicked, but Echo tried to comfort her, suggesting that it could simply be the puzzlemaster trying to get a rise out of her by exploiting the knowledge that her friendship with Silva was troubled. Missy returned to the group, having attempted to interrogate Cyrus, and told them that she suspected that Cyrus' facade of being the Ultimate Thief was not genuine. With all this in mind, Ashley and Missy immediately decided to tie Cyrus up for the foreseeable future to keep him from hurting anyone.

### Ultimate Confidential Informant

Ashley and Echo went to retrieve rope from the climbing wall room but were interrupted by the sound of gunshots. They rushed towards the noise, which came from the smokehouse, but before they could enter, Ashley pushed Echo into the Art Gallery to keep them safe and entered alone. After hearing shouting and another shot, Echo scrambled to get out of the art gallery but found themselves locked in; Ashley had sealed the door with rope from outside. Inside the smokehouse, Ashley confronted Cyrus, who threatened to kill her with the gun he had retrieved from the foyer. The pair fought, and Cyrus revealed to Ashley that Silva was dead and that he had killed the six other students who should have attended the killing game before it began. Cyrus attempted to incapacitate Ashley with an alcohol-soaked rag, utilizing prior knowledge of Ashley's alcohol allergy to induce anaphylactic shock. Ashley decided that it would be worth it to die if she could eliminate a threat to the others, especially Echo, and continued to fight Cyrus. She caused him to hit the nearby kiosk and activate the voice-to-text function with his bracelet, just as she swore that "I won't let you kill Echo." This transmitted a message throughout the safehouse that read: "Cyrus says, Kill Echo, from the Smokehouse Lounge".

Cyrus began to reach for the gun, which had fallen to the floor, but Ashley reached it first. In her anaphylactic daze, she accidentally fired it, hitting Cyrus fatally in the chest. With his dying breaths, Cyrus revealed that he was not the Ultimate Charisma or the Ultimate Thief, but the Ultimate Confidential Informant, working as an informant for the Preservation Project. His friend, the Ultimate Paramedic, was meant to participate in the game as well, but to protect her, he abused his position as an informant on the inside to swap her out of the game and put Echo in instead—someone with no talent but who coincidentally attended the same school as his friend and so would arouse no suspicions. As Cyrus lay dying, Ashley tried to apply pressure to stop the bleeding wound, but he ultimately died from blood loss. Soon after, Ashley succumbed to the effects of the anaphylaxis and fell unconscious. Meanwhile, Echo was freed from the art room by Sei. They entered the smokehouse together, where they found Cyrus' corpse and Ashley unconscious in the adjoining Casino. After investigating the crime scene, Forte carried Ashley to the infirmary, which is only accessible via the courtroom.

The rest of the group began the necessary Class Trial without Ashley, who was treated by Eve's robotic medical equipment in the infirmary, where, according to Eve, she kept asking Eve, "Is Echo okay? Is Echo okay?". Despite Echo's insistence that Ashley was not capable of murder, the other students ultimately made them realize the truth, and Ashley was correctly identified as Cyrus' murderer. Recovered enough to return to the courtroom, Ashley confessed and revealed Cyrus' dying confession. Ashley was summarily executed, pummeled to death by horseshoes until one snapped her neck.

## Talent

Ashley learned her love of horses from her father, a horse rancher, and spent a lot of her free time helping to tend to the horses at his stables as a child. She felt an intense connection with one of his horses, Hyperion; she earned the horse's respect by using all her strength to refuse being bucked off when she rode him for the first time. Riding Hyperion Ashley became an excellent horse rider, ultimately becoming one of the top riders in the world and earning the title of Ultimate Jockey. Her skill was such that her win percentage in racing was 44% with a top 3 percentage was 84%, which would put her ahead of even the #1 real-world jockey Russell A. Baze whose win percentage was 24% with a top 3 percentage of 57%. She is famous enough that several of the other students had heard of her accomplishment before attending the Preservation Project.

According to creator Mythridate, Ashley's racing statistics are as follows:

 Russell A. Baze

Interestingly, at 6 feet tall Ashley is extraordinarily tall for a jockey, who are normally between 4'10" to 5'6" tall.

## Creation and Development

According to Mythridate: "Ashley Westbridge's roots come from a very old DR roleplay group. Her backstory within the universe of that group was that she was a seemingly plain but pleasant girl from the English countryside who can be indecisive and wishy-washy, wanting to please everyone. However, when it came to winning, she unleashes an aggressive tenacity that blinds her judgement, causing her to focus one thing. Her competitive side got the best of her before a difficult race so she took her foe to the stables and had someone else's horse trample him to death. I ultimately removed her competative side since it didn’t lend itself to the story I wanted to tell in Lapse. In that previous universe, she was motivated by winning, always striving for the "Blue Ribbon". Instead, she cares deeply for her friends and wishes to keep them close. Her visual design has not changed very much from the original as I planned for her to be very plain when dressed outside her jockey uniform (which tend to be very flashy). She has a scar on her right forearm (under her bracelet) from a compound fracture recieved after falling off a horse."

## Trivia

* Creator Mythridate has stated that her imagined voice for Ashley is similar to British singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding.
	+ Chapter 2 "Every Fire is a Lesson Learned", the chapter in which Ashley murders Cyrus, is named for a lyric originating from the song Guns and Horses by Goulding.
* Creator Mythridate has assigned a Pokémon type to each of the Lapse characters, and Ash's type is ground type.
	+ Ash's school, Terminus International, is based on the Pokemon in-game location Terminus Cave, home of Zygarde, a ground type.
* Ashley is fluent in French due to her high school curriculum including French as a foreign language.
* In her Free Time Event in Chapter 1, Ashley is reading about a painter called Marcel Osterzone. This is a reference to *Hotel Dusk: Room 215*. Osterzone was a fictional renaissance painter created by the character Robert Evans in order to scam people into paying huge sums for artworks.
* Ashley's horse, Hyperion, is most likely named for the Greek mythological Titan Hyperion. He shares his name with the real-world horse Hyperion, a British thoroughbred and dual classic winner who was the most successful British-bred sire of the 20th century, siring the winners of 752 races, including 53 stakes winners that had 84 stakes wins.
* Each member of the Danganronpa: Lapse cast has an associated flower, Ashley's being a white carnation, which is said to represent pure love and faithfulness, which is likely in reference to the devotion Ashley exhibits towards her friends, particularly Echo.
* Ashley is a demiromantic asexual.

## References

1. ↑ **Mythridate's Website**: Character short stories (Ashley, Missy) (January 12, 2020)
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 **Mythridate's Website**: Chapter 2 additional reading (December 31, 2019)
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 **Mythridate's Website**: Extra Character Info (October 18, 2019)
4. ↑ **Mythridate's Website**: Post-Chapter 1, Pre-Chapter 2 Q&A (December 22, 2019)