Alyssa Kijo-Taisen

"Wrap this around your pitiful Terran mind, I am a Terran that is capable of handling your best weapon, Eve Ordalani."

-Kijo-Taisen, baiting April during his interrogation.

Kijo-Taisen (or Demoness of Blades) was the end result of an Obsidan Order experiment to make an easily expendable, yet highly proficent operatives that could be disposed of in the event of failure of their mission. Originally named Alyssa, she was one of the post-Empire Terran children.

Captured on one of her first missions, she was brought into the service of the then-Romulan Republic. Fully reprogramed to be a loyal servant of Romulus, her skills gained the eye of the Praetor T'Ulvoiyn. Ultimately she would fall under his auspices as his loyal bodyguard and occasional assassin and personal operative, her face surgically altered to resemble a Romulan. With the exclusion of her eyes, which due to the alterations bestowed upon her, had given them a blood red tinge.

Something that Stephen April would later comment as being wretched due to the similarity to the eyes of Letheans. The alterations primarily done to alleviate the fears and doubts within the senate of possessing a Terran bodyguard, regardless of how well she was programmed.

Her service to the Praetor was fruitful, until one fateful mission where she was targeted by a team of usurpers against the Praetor, surrounded by various collaborators within the Republic Guard and subdued, leaving her in cryostasis where she would remain until the coup was completed--which never happened.

The end result of it was the command ship, a Senator-Class cruiser, upon which she was stored was attacked by the Republic's fleet and it's crew left to die by slow suffocation as punishment for their betrayal. For close to eighty years, Kijo-Taisen remained frozen within the wreckage of the cruiser, until being ventured upon by a team of scavengers, who planned to sell their prize to the new Empire.

Their plan however would ultimately fail as they came across the Arcadia. Being transported aboard following the belief that the vessel she was on was a Romulan infiltration vessel, Kijo-Taisen was prematurely reanimated, the result causing in the violent deaths of the 30 members of the freighter crew that was transporting her, as well as two Assault Troops and two officers of the Imperial flagship.

Following her capture, she would be faced with Eve Ordalani who had been assigned by April to 'beat her into submission'. During this time, she displayed a habit of speaking in the third person, something that would later cause Obrenovic to comment on her being not unlike the M-5 computer. Inspite of her antiquity, she managed to stay on level with Eve before being stunned by the Brig guard, while they both distracted.

Following this, she underwent a rather brutal interrogation and fatal wounds sustained by the hand of Stephen April. This would involving a knife stabbed and later kicked into her groin, a prominent beating on the face and later stabbed a sword resumbling the Imperial Sword.

Kijo-Taisen however, was transported aboard the Romulan Warbird Sarthax moments before being vapourised by April's Varon T disruptor, where under the guidance of the ex-Praetor Commander T'Ulvoiyn. She was rebuilt and furthur enhanced, with the new enhancements came a new program that had seen a direct change in her thought patterns, as she restarted her service to Romulus.

However, following the takeover of Romulus in 2386, her whereabouts were virtually unknown.

Personality
Kijo-Taisen's method of operation was characterized by the cold, brutal efficiency one would expected of a mechanical being rather than a sentient living entity. She conducted her duties in what some would called a scientific approach to problem-solving.

She seemed to have no personal ambitions, and secretly believes that the Empire and the Alliance's all-consuming passion for conquest only hinders their achievement, the strange addition of the new programming however had saw a change in the once mindless machine-like mind. A change that had seen her regain control of her own thoughts, and to some level, her emotions.

Yet inspite of this, she remained a loyal subject of Romulus to the very end, at the same time she harboured an interest in the one known as Stephen April. It was even indicated that she felt an aggrovating sense of desiring justice for the wrong conducted her. Yet it seemed more as though he were a problem to be solved. With this death aboard the ISS Arcadia, it would seem that her questions would never be answered.

Background

 * For those familiar with the game series of | Street Fighter Alpha, Kijo-Taisen can be compared to a 24th century version of | Cammy White. Her mechanised speech patterns and labelling various degrees of power as 'levels' are derived from this. In addition, the various references to herself as 'this unit' are something of a tip of a hat to the Original Series episode "The Ultimate Computer".
 * Unlike most other characters from the Star Trek: New Empire series, Kijo-Taisen's image is based off a three-dimensional render.
 * The character of Kijo-Taisen is revisited in Star Trek: Renegades, where she apparently survives the final invasion of Romulus by the Empire, but finds herself in an parallel reality and kept as the personal assassin to a renegade commander.
 * She was properly referred to as Kijo-Taisen