Rowena Medley

Rowena in her customary outfit

"*It's something of a hobby at this point. Paid hobby. You know how it is.*"
—Rowena, talking about her work.
**Rowena Medley** is a brown feline with a penchant for anything with a motor. As such she works as a mechanic, formerly employed by the Red Scarves and now working with JFG Research and Design.

## Appearance

Rowena is a cat who sports yellow eyes, a bushy tail and medium-length brown fur that makes dark dappled patterns around her face, shoulders, back, and the ends of her arms and legs. She has a fairly average figure, though her profession and her relatively minor, though not insignificant, amount of combat training has given her a little more strength than might be expected from simply looking at her.

Rowena's usual outfit is simple, and rarely changed due to the facts that it's practical, looks good on her, and buying multiple of the same article of clothing makes shopping easier and, occasionally, less expensive. This outfit consists of:

* A tank top, because why not?
* Cargo shorts, because they have pockets.
* A relatively simple set of sleeves with a yellow flames pattern and decorative end cuffs, one being a simple band and the other being fluffed, both to keep her arms warm and to keep her fur protected and out of the way while she's working.

She can often be seen with a thin orange jacket tied around her waist, mostly for decor, and every so often she'll carry a purse when her given pockets simply aren't deep enough; A rare occurrence given that they are in fact deep and that she doesn't tend to carry much in them. While carrying out her Red Scarves activities she'll wear the trademark bandanna, often opting to tie it around her arm or wrist rather than her neck, and usually keeps it stored away in a pocket when it's not needed.

## Personality

As far as felines go, Rowena isn't far from ordinary. A bright and curious nature rules much of her personality, supplemented by a decent supply of enthusiasm and a kind and compassionate heart. A fierce competitive spirit is another element, bringing her to accept most challenges thrown at her and sometimes make a few herself. She is often reserved when it comes to herself and her own life, coming off to an observant watcher as someone with more secrets than is healthy. However, Rowena is the sort of cat who makes friends easily and who cares for them, and for anyone else, a little deeper than she might like to admit, always quick to forgive a transgression or try to comfort someone she sees hurting. She's slow to emotionally open herself to others, however, and is rarely willing to talk about the details of her own life due to a deeply held fear of rejection and mockery. This same fear is another reason she's so fierce at keeping friends.

Her compassion isn't without an opposing side; While Rowena is fast to make friends and eager to hold onto them, she tends to be hard on herself and her own accomplishments. A bad habit of internalizing criticism and mockery, almost invisible to the feline despite being present most of her life, leads to her being quick to anger at perceived slights and slow to let the resentment and regret go even after forgiving the transgressor in question. In fact, she usually apologizes for her aggressive reactions before the other party has a chance to apologize for triggering them, not recognizing the unhealthy cycle of that habit.

Rowena is something of a relentless trickster, and often the first thing she'll do after coming to trust someone as a friend is begin to imagine pranks to pull on them. The feline has a habit of holding just enough respect for higher authorities to keep out of trouble and not a drop more, often because of a lack of evidence that she should respect them rather than the position, and these authority figures may find themselves targets as well, should the fear of retaliation not outweigh her temptation. Most of these japes never see the light of day, either out of nerve or a lack of necessary materials, but so long as her jokes don't cause lasting harm she enjoys the few that do to the fullest.

Curiosity and the desire to learn tend to lead into a clever nature, and when it comes to mechanics and creativity, Rowena is indeed quite clever. The feline always carries a pocket notebook and a pencil with her, ready to write down ideas whenever they come with the intention of expanding on them at a later time. It's a terrible shame to forget a good idea, after all. This habit, however, began simply from the fact that Rowena tends to find herself calmer and more focused when doing something with her hands. For this purpose she also carries a small homemade fidget toy, little more than a metal spinning disk with an interesting flower pattern along the edges, able to be spun in one hand or used like a top. This is often what Rowena plays with when she doesn't have an idea to write or sketch.

When it comes to projects and building, Rowena is rather good at motivating herself. A number of ideas and a love of seeing them become real has fostered the habit, where possible, of beginning a project and almost obsessively working on it until it's been completed. This isn't always healthy, as it often means finding herself losing sleep some nights over spending just a little bit longer to get things done, and other nights having trouble getting to sleep on time because of this habit. Habits, indeed, rule Rowena's time. She studiously keeps a journal, has a simple self-imposed exercise program, and of course keeps up her schedule of work. Sometimes, with how she sleeps, these habits are all that keep her mentally moving forwards. But she'll never admit when she needs a nap.

On a less specific or relevant note, Rowena's personality lends itself well to creative and visual games, those with mechanics in the lieu of Pictionary, Apples to Apples or Once Upon a Time, or to social deduction games like Mafia and Love Letter. Inversely, she's not very good at games that require more strategy, never having been very good at predicting and planning moves multiple turns ahead. Of course, she'd usually be more interested in reading a book or working on a project than sitting down and playing a game.

Rowena is something of a reclusive and bitter drunk, part of the reason you'd be hard pressed to get alcohol into her. The other reason is that it's a terrible idea in the first place.

## Skills

* **Feline Physiology:** Rowena has the attributes of an average feline, such as the reflexes, instincts, claws, and even a sense of curiosity.
* **Mechanical Prodigy:** The result of a lifelong dedication to the study of machines
* **Beginner Fighting Skills:**Having been trained by the Red Scarves, Rowena knows the basics of hand-to-hand combat to the extent of being able to defend herself against an untrained opponent.

## History

### Backstory

Rowena has always been interested in how things work, being the sort of child who took things apart and put them back together just as something fun to do. Her favorite drawer was always the tool drawer, both because it was low enough to reach and because it held the screwdrivers and pliers. This interest in disassembling and examining simple mechanisms lead well into eventually learning mechanics, a choice of profession that the feline came to love learning about and practicing. As such, when she set out on her own Rowena decided to start her own machine repair service. It's nothing fancy, being one a "newspaper classifieds" sort of businesses, and, as she soon found out, when people have more qualified mechanics to choose from those odd jobs often aren't enough.

### Joining the Scarves

Needing a way to stay on her feet, mainly because she was too proud to ask her family for help, Rowena looked into opportunities to use her talents and soon found herself roped into the background of the Red Scarves. What began as a simple maintenance position soon proved itself to be part of something that was clearly much larger than a bunch of motorcycles and a few security measures, but, not seeing a better option, she pressed forwards and soon found herself accepted in the gang.

It didn't last long from then, a period most of the way to two years, and while clues as to the Scarves' less scrupulous activities unavoidably came along and were subsequently picked up on, Rowena kept the part-time job. Despite her suspicions and growing regret as one of the background members of the Red Scarves who take care of the maintenance and repair of the Scarves' systems, she kept ahead of the law simply by staying well out of the spotlight.

### Present day

After a chance meeting with one Jacob Satomi during which the aforementioned dragon quickly worked out the details of her employment through a subtle game of reading their conversation, a vague plan was hatched to get her away from the Scarves' hold. A secret meeting was later arranged between them, Sash Lilac, Carol Tea and Rachell Satomi, and ultimately it was decided that the best solution would be to get in, destroy paperwork linking Rowena to the scarves, and then make sure she was in a safe place until things blew over.

Luckily enough, she already happened to be staying at Kirishima Temple due to an incident with Keith Crimson, and that seems to be a safe enough spot for the time being.

Eventually the plan went through without a hitch, and almost immediately afterwards Rowena found a place with JFG Research and Design through Jackie Fitzgerald, much to her obvious delight.