Zara

Zara is one of Ella's four original adopted orphan wards and a commander within S.I.N. She is a confident and powerful woman who is insecure in her relatively underdeveloped body. Her Marks and mental influencing abilities makes her a very important to Ella's plans and she plays a balancing role between the more assertive wards like Cole and Charlie and passive ones like Shen and Briar. She is a sadistic and amoral woman with little concern for her monster or S.I.N allies.

## Background

### Origins

Christie says that she first saw Cole Yun as a depressed teenager (around 13-14 years old) when visiting Ella's house just after she had turned 18. It seems that Cole, along with with a couple of other kids, were staying with Ella. Ella says that she was taking care of them. Zara is presumably among these children.

At some point before the story begins, Zara was involved in the fight between Valravn and Ella and the rest of her wards. Despite defeating the monster, Cole and Zara were unable to make him compliant so Ella chained him up beneath Mt. Dehaka in the Diamond Mountains, next to where the Goliath lay buried.

Like the other wards, Zara was sent out across the sectors to look for Effigies and returned to the sector a little while after the story began.

### H.E.R.O Arc

After the public unveiling of H.E.R.O., Cole is given the side project of building a public facing superhuman force to counteract H.E.R.O.'s influence. With Langdon Wilson's funding and Ella's help, Cole creates the Superhuman Independence Nation (S.I.N). Cole, **Zara** and Briar crash William Baldwin's talk show while the MC is discussing himself joining H.E.R.O. to announce the creation of S.I.N. **Zara** uses her mark to manipulate William into railing against the MC and superhumans and H.E.R.O. in general. Cole then murders the host in cold blood before decrying H.E.R.O. as frauds, pointing out the various crimes they had committed against humans and superhumans. Cole then allows the crowds in the studio to leave before menacing the MC and Brianna. Zara tries to both calm Cole while casually engaging the MC in conversation. Sheinvited the MC to join S.I.N. When Cole talks about killing Brianna and engaging the MC, Zara points out that the TV cameras are watching him. Then Nico teleports in to help. Nico casually tries to teleport Cole and co. away but is surprised to see her powers have no effect. Cole reveals that they are protected by Hex. Enraged at being thwarted, Nico goes on the offensive but is quickly stymied by Hex. Feeling belligerent, Cole decides to try and kill Nico while she is trying to defeat Hex. The MC has a choice about whether to help Nico by engaging Cole or letting Cole try his luck against Nico.

Regardless of whether the MC engages Cole or not, Zara largely just watches the whole situation. She is minimally inconvenienced by Del's flames (burning her clothes) and gets Hex to evacuate the group after either Nico severely injures Cole and Briar or when she senses H.E.R.O. reinforcements approaching.

### Deryl Arc

Due to the public hubbub created by their antics at William Baldwin's show, Zara and the others have to lie low in Hex's dimension. Cole is especially unhappy with the circumstances, especially since Ella's other orphans are living in extremely posh quarters owned by Langdon Wilson. He is further irritated by Deryl-Rebis's created Chimera wandering the base. When he gets startled by one he furiously marches to Deryl-Rebis and attempts to take his frustrations out on the monster but is stopped by Charlie. Charlie uses her Taboo on Cole, severely hurting him when he attempts to disregard her and attack Deryl-Rebis anyway. Zara tries to reconcile the two, first trying to talk down Cole, before taking his side and trying to get Charlie to back down. Cole gets even angrier and he attacks Charlie, but as he is about to fully exert his powers, Ella arrives. The wards quickly sort themselves out and after taking possession of the artificial Effigy that Deryl-Rebis was building for her, Ella ends the meeting, ordering them all to disperse.

She is later seen during the Battle of Diamonds, appearing after her fellow ward Shen Haoran incapacitates the MC's backup squad. She compliments him on his increased powers, commenting that his opponents were quite strong. She also comments that Cole will probably not be pleased that he's evolved into a level 4 before him. She asks what exactly he swore to Charlie Leicht to evolve but but Shen tells her that it's a secret. Once Zara is done marking the defeated squad, she tells Shen he can allow the squad to wake up and the two superhumans quickly leave the area - not knowing that Michael Carlowe had seen the entire episode.

### Twins Arc

It is not known what Zara's exact work in S.I.N after Ella's death. Like the other wards she is uneasy to not have Ella in charge but she follows along with Langdon and Cole's directions. Zara is next seen during the S.I.N Initiation infiltration. She arrives early to the ceremony along with Briar, Shen, Charlie and a host of other lower ranking members. She looks for Cole but is angry to hear from Briar that he and Jared were busy following around Eisheth. She irritably rails at his immaturity but its clear she is also insecure about her own looks. The MC observes this interaction and uses her form to get information out of Charlie.

Zara observes the tournament without comment and prepares for the actual induction ceremony. As long as the MC isn't caught during his infiltration he is able to observe the entire ceremony. After Langdon congratulates the fighters and welcomes the new members, he invites them on stage for **Zara** and Charlie to induct. Zara's job is to apply the marks on the new members. She starts the ceremony, first welcoming Jack onto the stage and marking him. She then prepares to move on to the MC but he declines to join and asks to leave. Zara tries to coax him into joining but ultimately leaves him for Shen to escort out. Regardless of how the MC handles the end of the ceremony, Zara is presumably evacuated by Hex when Nicolette Heart breaks into the dimension.

## Powers and Abilities

Zara has had her powers since she was quite young. According to Bramon Xanthe children who become superhumans tend to develop quite powerfully and Zara is shown to have precise control of her powers and quite confident in dealing with other superhumans. She is also relatively battle tested, having taken part in many combined assaults with Ella and the other wards.

### Human Abilities

Zara has had many years of experience doing missions for Ella Vulpe. She has also ensured that she trained and developed her powers well.

### General Superhuman Abilities

Zara is a level 3 superhuman with a non physical power type. She is likely less durable than physical superhuman of the same level. It is not known whether her powers give her any defensive benefits. They do however augment her regular senses. She has some awareness of the locations on people she has marked and can possibly hear what they are saying or understand what they are doing.

### Level 3 Abilities

Zara's power manifests itself as different marks that she can apply on objects or people. Some marks can be applied stealthily and painlessly or highly visibly and painfully. These marks manifest different effects. The known marks are documented below:

## Trivia

* It was revealed in version 0.97 that Zara has a crush on Cole Yun.