LULIN

Lulin grew up in a small village her entire life, on a less technologically advanced planet. Her life growing up wasn't anything spectacular, doing daily chores like everyone else, mundane moments becoming the most interesting stories to eachother. Though she lived relatively normally in that aspect, Lulin has always struggled with feeling inferior to others around her. Her attempts to mitigate that by always associating with more liked people started young, dawdling around more popular kids in school. But her lack of commitment to people would get in her way as she grew older, refusing to stand by people once it seemed like they would be the 'losing side'. Lulin would swap between people to always stay on top, but this eventually led to most of her town having a lack of trust in her, why would they, when the second things look bleaker she dips out? Having exhausted almost all "social protection" she could have had by doing this, Lulin eventually became an eccentric loner instead, keeping to her house and trying to create whatever came to her mind. Usually just art projects, but occasionally trying to actually invent things.

A year after her 20th birthday, a strange cat-looking person came to their small town, alongside technology that no one had ever seen before on that planet. Nearly the entire town was fascinated by this visitor, Lulin included. He decided to stay and tell his stories to the town, everyone glued to their seats no matter how truly bizarre the stories would get. Eventually the visitor left, and returned with a small spaceship full of new technology that the town was particularly excited for, thrusting them from an average rural town to suddenly being the most technologically advanced place in the planet. These machines were mostly simple things, stuff that was fascinating and useful to them but cheap and mundane to most others. This visitor agreed to keep bringing them technology, but wanted a say in what goes on around the town. Villagers were a bit more wary at this, but agreed, believing this stranger to be well intentioned, just...strange with his methods.

The visitor finally introduces himself properly as "Hale-Bopp", and overtime their little town became more akin to Hale's personal experiments with the behavior of other species societies. Lulin, of course, seeing a new opportunity with a powerful person that didn't already get sick of her, went back to her old ways of sucking up, managing to flatter her way into being Hale's little helper. Hale was, in fact, so enthusiastic about her help that he would frequently shower her with praise, and eventually, by accident, leading Lulin to believe he had feelings for her. Lulin for a long time, had assumed the two were an item in every way except 'officially', looking past the fact that nothing ever really happened between the two of them to really imply such a relationship between them. She believed this so truly, that when Hale eventually got bored of his little experiments and ran off to fuck around with the galaxy again, she stayed heartbroken for a long time, but tried to keep running things in his stead. Without the same strange charisma Hale had, eventually the village began to realize how truly bizarre everything that had been happening under Hale really was, and it led to further negativity toward Lulin. The town had its new technology, and they liked having it, but they would now have to repair the social fabric between eachother that had been so carelessly messed with by this utter stranger, and the young woman who encouraged it all.

Lulin eventually could not stand the isolation from her peers, and with an old spacecraft that Hale had left behind, she taught herself how to work it based on her memories of Hale using it, and left the planet. Eventually, while travelling through space, Lulin caught wind of what Hale had been up to recently, and in pure anger that he would abandon her for something so utterly ridiculous, decided to make it her mission to follow around and ruin Hale's life as best she could. Unaware of the ridiculous challenge this would actually be for someone like him.