Kelly Unit TG1-0634-5 Segal

WARNING! This article contains descriptions of death and abuse. Reader discretion is advised. Kelly Segal is an A-10 thunderbolt with quite the movie-esque life; having been owned by a French collector before the war, being fitted with an AI and activated to fight in WWIII, being shot down in combat and becoming one of the worst crashes of the war to survive, and helping bust a facility using inhumane research methods on their own MAI. ...Don't worry though everyone is vibing now

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

He's got some scuffs here and there, but aside from that, he looks like a relatively new plane. Oh yeah; that, and the evidently replaced wings, tail and landing gear, which is the most obvious product of his crash during WWIII. The paint on his nose is also a bit chipped and has definitely seen better days, but he doesn't plan on touching it up any time soon as it's a quite clear symbol of how much he cares for his spouse, Loon. Along with the common light grey paint job, he has a variety of decals, the most obvious is the pale lavender pair of angel wings stretching across his wings on his underbelly. These are a tribute to his late pilot and sister in law, Miko Segal. Across the elevators on his tail, he has what look like invasion stripes painted on them, and this is in tribute to another friend, an MAI he lost during the war. Behind his wings. along the bottom of his fuselage are 13 black tally marks followed by a peace sign. These tally marks are his kill count in the war and the peace sign obviously signifying the war's end. This is a common practice among MAI with kill tallies. He's not particularly fond of these markings - he despises them, actually, but he keeps them because he feels that to remove them is to deny that they happened, and it would be disrespectful to simply erase a surviving memory of the individuals he took the lives of.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Kelly, like nearly all other True Generation MAI, was brought into the world to fight in the Third World War. Even from the beginning, his circumstances were a bit of an oddity. During the war’s efforts to mobilize as many units as possible as quickly as possible for the Day of Mass Awakening, unit TG1-0634-5 blinks allive. Despite being an American aircraft, this specimen was assigned to a French unit for a lack of time to transfer him anywhere else after the airshow his shell was pulled from. With a CoreAegis ABIP system carefully installed, and some French roundels much… less carefully painted upon his vessel, the odd A-10 was rushed to one of the closest airfields to the frontline. And thus begins the story of, supposedly, one of the most interesting aircraft alive. After mere days of existence – unit TG1-0634-5 was assigned a pilot and head of maintenance - Miko Segal. Freshly enlisted, and just as spry and bright-eyed as her new young AI, the two would quickly form a nigh inseparable bond; a valuable something to have, for what was to come. Their first taste of combat together was sobering – terrifying, confusing, pressure. Pain. Pressure. What is pain to rudimentary sensors, but undesirable pressure? Kelly, as Miko had named him, was quick to learn - and dread - the difference, with no adrenaline to spare him. Years of war trudged through, and there was a gradual, palpable change in the air. Young eyes clouded with innocence, optimism, and the promise of glory blinked clear to see the war as the world-beyond-hell that it was. But what could be done? Show weakness, refuse to act, and your people die, Right? Right? Miko and Kelly, older sister and little brother, fought as one through what they perceived as the only route to peace. From the Day of Mass Awakening, to January 29th, 2000. January 29th, 6:21am. Unit TG1-0634-5 and pilot Miko Segal ascend from a makeshift grass airfield in Northeastern Germany and travel southeast to the frontline. Three armored enemy ground vehicles are disabled. Unit TG1-0634-5 sustains damage to fuselage from enemy AA – inconsequential to ability to fulfill mission. After damaging an enemy light AFV, he turns and prepares to deliver the killing blow, and, - and - …One moment, he was flying. The smoke of hell smoldered below the air that carried his wings and the symphony of death played its score as loud as ever. Miko maneuvered the control stick with skillful precision as they, together, locked onto the enemy tank in the grey sea below of upturned soil and barbed wire and mines and blood. He had no adrenaline, but whatever his mind had at that moment was damn close enough to it to- Pressure. An immense pressure like none he had felt before forced the weight of the world and more upon the root of his left wing, and its optic went blind. Why were they banking? Why did the wind rush about them so much more quickly and violently than it once did? Why did it seem that the ground was rushing to meet them so hastily? He flailed his airfoils in vain. He deployed his two remaining landing gear. His ejection seat wasn’t working. Why was his ejection seat not working? Operator override. Operator override. Operator overri- Struck down by a lucky artillery shot that sheared wing from fuselage, Kelly was somehow able to stabilize himself enough that he landed levelly, but not without catastrophic damage to his frame. Two lives crashed to the earth and one snuffed out, but it was not his. It was not his. May 8th, 2006, a MAISAR aerial scout takes note of a wreck-site not yet documented within their databases, and notifies their team to come investigate. With the absolute state of the vessel, they doubted they’d find any signs of life, but hey – they’d already found some unlikely survivors a few times before. A group of five arrived with some handheld diagnostic equipment, their expectations low, but the first verifiable sign of box activity had them scrambling back into their van and phoning every salvager, technician, and heavy equipment operator on call that day. What do you mean, ‘this one is still alive?’ Only half of them is even here! Recovery began the day of, and even if they were clearly only dealing with half a plane, the effort still took days of continuous day-and-night work.

By the time Kelly was being hoisted onto the hastily sourced flatbed trailer – with all that was left of him, he fit on just fine – he’d already been woken up. Obviously, it wasn’t ideal to be reactivating a severely injured unit so soon like this, but the sheer improbability of finding him alive at all prompted the crew to get him awake as soon as possible – for the sake of making sure he survived transit. Just like with humans, keeping an MAI awake after injury could be vital, and they didn’t want to risk losing him. “Is my pilot okay? Do you know where my pilot is?” Teammates consulted their records. It took a while for anyone to have the heart to break the news, and it seemed like their hesitation had merit; the MAI’s already pained face contorts to abject horror – then goes dark. Miko had met the ground with him, and although she’d been retrieved from where she lie in the aftermath, Kelly did not follow as they assumed him dead. MAISAR could only continue to work on him and hope for the best. Upon offloading him at the nearest hangar for reconstruction - through funding from the newly formed Livastian Alliance - he continued to hide away within his self-induced shutdown. And hide, he did; although he would occasionally move in cooperation with the maintenance crew, he didn’t say so much as a word to them for months – at least, that’s what they thought. It wasn’t until a Beauregard MBT asked for permission to enter the hangar that anyone had even suspected a thing – according to him, he just wanted to come in and say thank you in person for the reassurance and advice he’d been receiving from the A-10 for the past few weeks since he’d been admitted. Upon some further questions toward him and other MAI that were at and had been at the maintenance facility, Kelly had apparently never actually went quiet at all; he’d simply only spoke to those who needed to hear. “It meant the world to me that anyone else was able to talk to me about the same kind of loss I experienced; I actually had no idea he was being so quiet in person!”, “Even if what we went through wasn’t quite the same, he still seemed to have a way with relating to me and meeting me on my level that had a particular kind of comfort to it.” – Words from a few other MAI that had been in the MAISAR hangar while Kelly was there. It seemed as though, for a while, he just wasn’t ready to interface with the world in full force. After the Beauregard’s visit, however, it seemed to motivate him to begin speaking out loud again and engaging with others. After a year of continuous work on repairs and rebuilding, Kelly was granted his airworthiness again (mind you, his flight surfaces are all there, but he’s bare-faced! No gun!) – and had finally come around to befriending his maintenance team, in the process. After the all the care he had received from these people for how thankless it had been in the beginning, Kelly decided that the best way he could repay such a kindness was to join their ranks and become a volunteer, himself. For a year from then on, Kelly helped fly scouting missions to spot for abandoned units that could be investigated for signs of life. Over the course of this time, he was directly responsible for the discovery of over 25 living units, and assisted in the identifying of over four times that amount of deceased that could be presented to their surviving friends and family. For MAISAR at the time, only one year fulltime was a somewhat short tenure, but Kelly had his reasons for eventually departing from the program. July 26th, 2009, Kelly was among a first responders unit called to aid in the investigation of a newly discovered experimental lab. Clearly, it was a facility created by the Eastern Bloc for the sake of researching their hastily acquired ABIP-adjacent technology, and clearly, it had been just as hastily abandoned upon the war’s end. The reasoning for this became abundantly evident when the building’s main contents had been uncovered; abandoned MAI; the subjects of their studies, and they showed physical signs of abuse. They had to have all been alive while the facility was active, but now, were long since dead – all except one. Even then, ‘living’ was almost an overstatement. Once the hangar door was torn down – yes, torn – and the XM-90 was wheeled from its old resting spot, upon activation, they quickly turned into a terrified mess. Not even other MAI could get too close to them without garnering an extreme stress response, let alone examine them for additional damages.

At the time, even after CoreAegis’s development of the tech and years of their own research, there was still only a vague understanding of what actually made MAI truly “work” the way they did. Even CoreAegis themselves admitted to the fact that the successful development of the ABIP core was technically a positive freak accident, of sorts. Among the things that even many MAI did not truly comprehend was their level of psychological resilience; as a result of their low-loss memory, many were even convinced that, if exposed to trauma severe enough, it could not be recovered from – ASFD was a prominent example during this time. Because of this, many members of the team onsite had begun to debate if it was worth letting the XM-90 continue suffering through reliving their experiences. Kelly, however, wasn’t quick to take such an answer. While this may have been on a profoundly higher level of severity, had he not just gone through something similar? Pain so debilitating that one could hardly bare to move? To speak? Maybe he didn’t know the first thing about what was going through this unit’s head, but that didn’t mean he was just going to let them succumb to it just as scared and alone as they’d began. For weeks, months, during the further investigations into the derelict experimental facility, Kelly remained on-site and worked tirelessly with the XM-90 that he himself would nickname “Loon.” While his peers had their doubts, he would slowly come to prove them wrong as Loon began to come out of his shell. Years down the line, the two had become inseparable friends - and years after that still, Loon would go on to prove himself of sound mind and independence to turn that relationship into something more. Kelly, at this time, was essentially only working part time for MAISAR, as Loon’s rehabilitation wouldn’t have been possible without their support. Loon’s resiliency, as well, turned out to be almost groundbreaking in the scope of MAI psychology; with Kelly’s memory as a comprehensive documentation of progress, the information learned was incredibly valuable for others studying the effects of trauma on ABIP cores. Kelly’s decision to save Loon, and Loon’s determination to persevere, would go on to directly save the lives of many other MAISAR-recovered MAI that would come after them.

After these events, Kelly was beginning to think that he had found what he wanted to do next, and the opportunity to pursue it presented itself almost perfectly; in the fall of 2016, VCU, a medical college in the United States, became the first college in the world willing to accept MAI into human courses of study. Here, Kelly would study to earn his first doctorate in medicine. After moving to America – Loon opted to stay in France, being still apprehensive about traveling long distances – and beginning his classes, Kelly quickly befriended another MAI in his class named Ripley Moreau. An American F-35, Ripley had a passion and eagerness for the field that nigh matched that of Kelly himself, and the two bonded quickly over their shared fixation on medicine and similar backgrounds. They became such close friends, in fact, that by the time they received their first doctorates in 2024, they’d make an agreement that, after they both made a name for themselves, they would return to France and open their own practice. While Kelly went back to France right away to kick off his career, Ripley stayed back in America to tend to his own matters. A few years after his return, as well, Kelly and Loon eventually tied the knot, and Loon took Kelly’s last name. Eventually, they’d be Dr. and Dr. Segal – fancy that! Not too soon after this, Ripley eventually made the decision to return to France after getting some real experience under his belt – before he made the move, he had become the director of a hospital in the city closest to his pilot’s home town. Kelly, himself, in this time had become a director in a wing of his own respective hospital, and as much as he liked it there, it was never supposed to last. In the fall of 2029, Kelly and Ripley opened the doors of their own medical institute created to work with humans and LAI of all shapes and sizes alike; the Segal-Moreau Mechanical Surgical Institute – yeah, a real mouthful. It wasn’t Kelly’s idea! Even while practicing at his own institution, Kelly continued to return to college again and again to learn even more practices and broaden his understanding of the field. Today, while he does tend to jump around within the facility, his favorites fields are pediatrics and general maintenance in mechanics – he loves being able to watch his patients grow up as they visit, and he finds electrical maintenance almost satisfying in a somewhat morbid manner, relatively speaking. While he doesn’t hold the title for the most accreditations, Kelly is among the most knowledgeable doctors in the alliance since he treats his education as much like a dedicated hobby as he does as an impassioned career choice.

Education

I'm gonna be real I don't even know where to begin

Employment

Co-Director of operations at the Segal-Moreau Mechanical Surgical Institute alongside Ripley Moreau.

Mental Trauma

Due to the war, Kelly has a a form of ASFD much like many other MAI. Though not extreme in any way, bringing up certain topics regarding the war will probably prompt him to leave the conversation. He's also occasionally sensitive to specific sounds and sensory events.

Intellectual Characteristics

Intelligence-wise, Kelly excels in reading emotions and acting on them, which lends pretty well to his career choices. If you're having a bad day, he knows exactly what to do to make you feel better and will go out of his way to make sure you do. He's like the kind of friend that'll show up to your house at 2am because you wanted company, and he grabbed your favorite takeout food while he was at it. He also has an odd knack for learning languages, and whenever presented with a new one, he's determined to master it. Real language? Fictional language? Doesn't matter; he's already interested. You can't fool this man, if you speak a language he already knows it

Personality Characteristics

Personality Quirks

Kelly seems to have a certain bounce in his movements, especially when he's talking about something he likes, and its common for him to wag his stabilizers when he's excited.

While far from uncommon, it's worth mentioning that Kelly is among the MAI that are a lot more prone to touching than usual - hand on the shoulder, pat on the back, whatever - its a remnant from their upbringing when human crewmates would be constantly making contact with their MAI for trivial conversational purposes, or leaning on them for the hell of it. Constant physical contact is just par for the course unless you advise againt it - he's also great with boundaries.

He also tends to laugh when he's nervous and lower himself closer to the ground.

Social

Family Ties

Kelly, although obviously unable to be related to anyone by blood, is a legal son of the Segals as per the incessant begging of his late pilot and sister, Miko. Years after his addition to the family as well, his brother in law, Jeremy Segal, named Kelly as his first son Louis's godfather on top of being his uncle.

Speech

Kelly has a very distinct way of speaking that I personally like to call "Kelly Vernacular." He has a somewhat rushed way of speaking where he occasionally puts in - a random pause - as if he needs to stop himself from tripping over his own words, and he also incorporates a lot of slang that lines up with sanitary dad lingo. "Let's blow this popsicle stand!" "Oh, that poor fella really got mollywhopped, huh." Also things like replacing swears with fun words like ice cream flavors - he's not above swearing every now and then, but after almost 80 years he finds it kinda lame and unimaginative. Add all these speaking quirks onto this voice,and you can hear him pretty accurately.

Alignment

Neutral Good

Species

Livastian MAI

Ethnicity

Aviary MAI

Date of Birth

December 31st, 1995

Life

1995 2427 432 years old

Circumstances of Birth

Kelly was activated to take part in the Third World War

Children

Eyes

Kelly has the common yellow eye color of many MAI, and his dominant optic shape is trapezoidal; as is common with most plane LAI.

Height

14'8"/4.42m

Weight

29,150lb/13,222kg

Known Languages

WHERE DO I BEGIN

Kelly Unit TG1-0634-5 Segal