Laonsina San Balete

**Laonsina San Balete**, also known as "Pusong Bato" or "Stoneheart", is a Balete Tawohan or Retainer, serving the mage-lord of Bakunawa City as a highly skilled agent and assassin, utilizing her abilities to carry out missions around the world for her mistress. Malayari Haliya. True to her alias, Laonsina's body, despite her small frame, has the strength of the earth, and can be quite ruthless with her abilities in a fight. She earned her freedom from slavery, and climbed up the ranks through ambition not unlike that of the Balete magi who rule over her.

## Background

Laonsina was born to a slave girl and a young Balete noble, her mother made to be one of his concubines. When she got pregnant, however, she was quickly tossed aside and returned back to being a housekeeper. Her life would have been a drab existence serving the magi nobility as a house servant or a concubine, but the circumstances of her birth and her body's rare potency for magic made Lady Haliya, the Clan Head of the city, take interest in her and took her in as one of her personal projects. Laonsina's soul was etched with the Essence of Stone itself, the Principle of Earth, and had the potential to be a great weapon, according to Lady Haliya. Trained to be a deadly mage-assassin, Laonsina carried out numerous tasks for her mistress, including killing her enemies or any annoyance to her, or acquiring and stealing artifacts for her lady. She started out as a slave with no name to a proper member of the Balete, complete with the title of "San Balete", or "of the Balete", marking her end of slavery with an honorary surname. She has since sworn fealty to Lady Haliya, and is bound to serve her by oath as a Retainer.

And while she shows unquestionable loyalty to Lady Haliya, she secretly takes advantage of the trust now granted to her by Haliya to explore the world outside of the Border Realm, as well as secretly accumulate wealth for herself. While she has already accumulated enough to free her own mother from slavery and gave her a house to live in within Bakunawa, with amenities both from outside the Border Realm, and what you might find in a minor Balete noble's abode.

She would sometimes be tasked to "slavehunt" by Haliya when she is tasked missions outside of Bakunawa, sailing Earth alone and kidnapping people to become slaves in Bakunawa city, or gathering corpses of people with potent properties in their bodies for her mistresses' experiments. While she personally has no grudge against outsiders, or views them in a xenophobic light (a rarity in Balete), she dismisses her victims as being too weak to fight back, and are more than allowed to escape and earn their freedom if they could evade her. Other than her obligations as a Retainer, she continues to serve Lady Haliya so that she can give her mother a better life, even if it meant risking her life fighting magi for her lady.

## Appearance

Laonsina typically kept her hair long, however after a battle with two Snakes, Stray Cat and Cards, and a detective from New York, she had part of her hair cut off, keeping it uneven. She later cut her hair short to remedy this, but was impressed with how she looked with short hair that she has recently tried to maintain the short length. Lady Haliya also complemented the new look, and she plans on keeping it short for now.

"OH NO! SHE'S HOT!"Eating lobster, Balete styleOutsider casual disguiseRetainer FormalwearSuit disguise
## Personality

A taciturn young woman, Laonsina cares little for conversation, believing that actions speak louder than words. She carries out the tasks and missions given to her by Lady Haliya without questions, as she was once quoted saying "Good Retainers follow orders". Her loyalty to her mistress is unwavering, as she owes Lady Haliya greatly for the opportunity given to her to be able to rise through the hierarchy of the Balete and provide a better future for her mother. Despite her preference of simply acting over speech, she is a cunning agent, pragmatically using everything in her disposal to gain the advantage and complete her mission. This also carries over in combat as well, such as her utilizing the Star-Ring to store and "dematerialize" the ship she was fighting Cards in, which gave her an opening to disengage while he fell to the water. Laonsina has a knack for accumulating several magical items and artifacts to use for her own advantage, from enchanted shoes to hidden weapons useful against different opponents.

She prefers to end fights as soon as possible and is quick to escape fights when she knows she is at a disadvantage. Laonsina takes great pride in the tactical mindset instilled by Lady Haliya, who is a renowned tactician in the Balete. She is a strict follower of her mistress' main tenet of "If your enemy is equal, prepare for them. If greater, elude them. If weaker, crush them."

While her alias of Pusong Bato, or Stoneheart, is an appropriate in combat, she is far from an emotionless weapon of the Balete. She lets her guard down and eases from her normally serious attitude when Lady Haliya personally invites her for an afternoon of tea or food in her tower, or when she takes care of her aging mother. While she shows respect to other Balete retainers and magi, she does not really get along with many, with only Lady Haliya as an exception. Her usual silent and frowning expression is not of disinterest towards people, but because she is maintaining a serious demeanor and to avoid saying anything others might misinterpret. Even with words, she is tactical in use. The fastest way of making her angry is badmouthing and disrespecting her mistress.

She has quite the big appetite, surprising many as they underestimate a woman of her size to effortlessly go through a lot of food. This is due to her magic taking a lot of energy from her body that she needs to eat up a lot to make up for it. While not many Balete are there to see it, she constantly tries out the food of different places she visits outside of the Border Zone.

She is an adamant practitioner of Pagsuki, seeing the 4 Adversaries as the metaphorical source of challenges in her life. And while she is still young, she is determined to transcend further. As she overcame slavery, she plans of conquering more than just the status of a retainer. But the extent of her ambitions remain secret, even to her own mistress.

As Lady Haliya has time and time again tasked her to steal artifacts and riches, Laonsina acts like the typical Balete, and believes that as long as she can get away with it, it is only right to keep what you stole from the person too weak or dumb to keep their belongings safe. Her travels across the word has made her knowledgeable in multiple languages besides her native Balete tongue, The Mask she wears also helps in communicating with outsiders.

## Abilities

As a Retainer and Agent of a Balete Mage-lord, Laonsina was trained to be skilled in deception and avoidance, but trained in self-defense and the use of deadly force. Self-reliant and independent, she can operate alone in hostile land for a long or even indefinite amount of time if given the opportunity. Thanks to her father being a magus, Laonsina developed magical capabilities, but it was only through sheer luck that she was born embodying the Essence of Stone. She was trained since childhood to be a magical agent and weapon for Lady Haliya, le Reinforcement, her most commonly used magic augments her physical capabilities, this also synergizes well with her main ability, the titular "Pusong Bato" or "Stoneheart". She is a deadly combatant at close range, trained in many martial styles used by the Balete, from the highly acrobatic "Lurupadan" or "Soaring Fist", to the explosive short-range and grappling style of "Aluhipan", also known as the Centipede Style. With all of these martial and magical capabilities, it is further enhanced by her Essence of Stone.

### Stoneheart, Pusong Bato

The Essence of Stone in her soul and body allowed for easy experimentation on Lady Haliya's part. Laonsina's body has been transmuted, turning her into a hybrid carbon and silicone-based living being who can freely alter her body into flesh or stone at a mere thought. She can alter her arm into a stone spike for example, and it will become an extremely durable weapon that is weightless to her thanks to the enhanced strength that comes with transmuting her body to stone, as if she has the strength of the earth itself. Since the stone is still part of her body, they can be Reinforced with magic. It also allows her to have excellent physical defense, as hardening her body tough enough to withstand both normal weapons like knives or bullets, and even magically enhanced attacks. Strengthening her legs by transmuting it into stone and combining it with Reinforcment for example allows her to leap extremely high into the air. Wuth the Stoneheart, virtually every part of her body could be turned into a weapon or be covered in hardened armor. Another ability of Pusong Bato allows her to take out a piece of her body while in stone-form and control them from a short range, useful for setting traps. For example, she can fragment a piece of her leg while it is made of stone and place it underneath the deck of her ship, while she is at least within a 10 meter range, she can manipulate that piece of her body, such as transmuting it into a spike that will pierce out of the deck and catching an unsuspecting enemy. She can also move the fragments of her body as if it was with telekinesis and have them return to her main body as long as they are within that 10 meter range. A highly versatile and deadly ability fit for one of Lady Haliya's best agents.

### Equipment

Laonsina has a variety of magical equipment that she uses for her missions, providing a large amount of utility.

**The Blank Visage**

A bone-white mask bereft of any features, even an slits for the wearer to normally see through. The Blank Visage is a magic mask created by a sect of Chakrajan from Southern India before Lady Haliya acquired it and gifted it to Laonsina when she became a retainer. The Blank Visage has two magical enchantments. The first allows the wearer to see as if she wasn't wearing a mask in the first place. The second enchantment is the most important one, at least to the Chakrajan. The Blank Visage creates an aura of uncertainty that only affects Akashics, clouding their normally clairvoyant thoughts and creating moments of weakness and an opening to strike. The Mask was initially made to combat the Akashic enemies of the Chakrajan sect.

**Lubid-Tunok, Thornband**

A Lubid-Tunok, or a Thornband as the Snakes would call them, is an enchanted weapon disguised as a bracelet. It appears to be a green vine-like ornament, but it can be used to launch venom thorns that can knock a target out and leave a lingering debilitation such as a weakened body and consciousness. It is not the most accurate at medium range, so Laonsila utilizes it point-blank, most of the time.

**Bituon**, **the Star-Ring**

The Bituon, or "Star-Ring" is a recently acquired artifact from a Shiai-shi mage whose workshop Laonsila broke into. A rather exquisite magic silver ring adorned by a small moon and a star, the Ring allows the wearer access to a pocket dimension, believed to be in the outer fringes of the Border Realm, and lets them store objects and even people inside at a very fast rate, as long as that person is unconscious. One blast from the light projected by the ring and an entire boat would disappear into the pocket dimension in an instant. This speed also applies when an object is ejected from the the pocket. The extent of the pocket is rather vast, enough to fit a boat. The objects and even the people stored in it will be preserved, as if frozen in time. Keron being kept in the pocket for 3 days is an example of this as the wounds he received before he was stored remained as it was, not even healing or bleeding out further. The enchantment is not difficult to disrupt, however, as a hit from Mao's Snake Key ejected Keron from the pocket realm.