Rose Brass, youth social worker and army officer · 8:52pm Dec 22nd, 2016
- Rose Brass
- Amphorae
- Lectern’s New and Used Books: Fall Semester
- Three-act Play
- Virga
- The Campus (set fifteen years after the end of MLPFIM)
A little menacing and a lot straightforward, but working for the betterment of those in need.
Rose Brass followed in her family’s long and proud tradition of army service by entering the Academy as soon as she was eligible. She did well, graduating in the top third of her class and commissioning as a second lieutenant. Her career moved along smoothly, and she gradually rose to the rank of captain. Her personal life was somewhat rougher; a brief marriage ended in divorce as a result of being posted overseas repeatedly.
It was during the last of these postings that disaster struck. A bloody incident left two of her personnel dead and herself severely injured. Her right arm and left eye were destroyed; a top-of-the-line prosthetic could replace the arm, well enough to let her return to duty, but the loss of the eye in addition forced her into medical retirement.
The board of inquiry ruled she was not at fault, a verdict that was scant comfort, but did mean she was retained on the permanent disability list rather than discharged. With no other direction, she moved back to the city where she grew up. The next few months were something of a bad dream, until an organization dedicated to assisting veterans was able to help her recover well enough to find a new vocation: youth social worker.
Rose has spent the last several years paying forward the debt she owes to the veterans’ aid organization. With her background, she is the best choice available to work with the most difficult and hardened cases. Needless to say, the success rate with such clients is not great, but enough manage to stick it out to keep her coming back to her office every day.
Now she faces the most unusual case of her second career—three teenage girls who used to be powerful magical creatures from another dimension. It’s going to be a roller-coaster ride.
Personality
Rose still uses her army rank, to which she is entitled as a courtesy so long as she does not pass herself off as still active. She is level-headed and businesslike, but compassionate in a tough-love sort of way. Her humor tends to be biting and sardonic, a common trait among company-level military officers, and for that matter among all occupations dealing with the darker side of humanity. She is not at all above trading on her background and physical appearance to get things done. From her perspective, she paid in blood for them, so why not use them?
Overall she is blunt and honest, though not to the point of tactlessness. She holds out no hope of continuing a love life, given her damaged looks, and has invested herself in her work instead. That work, in turn, has inspired her to collect new skills and to maintain old ones. She practices tai chi and pistol shooting for self-defense and keeps herself in taut shape, since some of her clients are genuinely dangerous. She also possesses a so-called CCW permit, and usually carries a small self-loading pistol in a concealed shoulder holster.
Appearance
Rose is roughly six feet tall and built like a track star, even as a woman in her forties. She keeps her platinum-blonde hair in a military buzz cut, and her complexion, which matches her name, darkens to a bronze with tanning. Her good eye is dark and usually somewhat narrowed. She has a glass eye, and does wear it, but uses an eye patch partly to cover some of the keloid scars sprawled across her left cheek and forehead and partly to project an air of toughness. Think of Grace Jones as Zula in Conan the Destroyer, but even more buff and with hair the color and style seen on Annie Lennox.
During office hours she is neat and trim in business wear, usually a simple blouse and slacks in which she can move easily. She may have a matching jacket, but often doesn’t wear it except when she leaves her office for errands, with or without clients. Away from work she tends toward T-shirts and fatigue pants or similarly loose, comfortable clothing. Many of the T-shirts have military themes or artwork.
In Equestria she is a pegasus, as tall as Tempest Shadow and just as athletic, but with a more rangy build. Her facial scars are bare of coat hair, the keloid-ridged skin pink and raw-looking, and her remaining eye is a deep, rich claret. Her missing limb is right wing rather than right arm, replaced with an enchanted mechanical prosthesis as finely crafted as a grandfather clock. Her mark is a budding rose on an orange-bronze heater shield.
