Narrator's Best Friend: The Girl With First Mind Eyes

The Narrator's Best Friend Award goes to the character who most players agree consistently added great stuff to the story be it with NPC's or character choices through the entire season. This prestigious award is accompanied not only by the trophy emblem (right), but by 5, count them 5, of the coveted blue Never Gems. For the first time in history we have a draw in the voting, meaning this award will go to two characters. The first of the two honored recipients of the third ever Narrator's Best Friend Award is Rei, the psionic scion.

The red-eyed, leather-clad assassin easily belongs in this category because of the degree to which her backstory has always been out front. From the very first episode of the first season, clashes with Rei's family have provided interest and drama to the storyline, but in this season Rei really popped out. She met her creator, Inase Spark, with whom she'd been interacting via his journal during the second season. Her sister Aimi provided some of the most intense party conflicts of the season, and Rei herself heightened the party drama with her lies to Kiyoshi and eventual apparent betrayal of the party to the First Minds. I was thrilled to get to chat with Rei behind-the-scenes about her effect on the plot.

"I figure that every party has to have its 'troubled' character," she confided to me while sampling some of the vegetarian finger food our caterers provided. "What could be more troubled than a girl with a tenuous psychological hold on her sense of self who was a former assassin with nebulous ties to our enemies? If that isn't bad enough I make a point of defending my family even when they do things that are pretty horrible, and of course there is the fact that I am made with genetic material taken from the cosmic Enemy themselves. You'd have to try pretty hard to come up with someone more messed up than me."

Undoubtedly. But for all her unique qualities Rei can be remarkably humble.

"I don't really like my psychoses, however grand, to take center stage in the campaign too often. I mean, I'm quite happy just to make my amoral judgments in silence and get things done quietly - that's the way we assassins do things."

Unfortunately for Rei, her morality keeps getting dragged out into the spotlight by her party members who seem to think it's a big deal who she does and doesn't kill, and how. Moses in particular makes an issue of it.

"Rei is sometimes too much like her Kyo Tee Shee," he said. "Fortunately she is a little easier to dissuade from doing really horrible things, but you have to keep a lookout."

"Indeed," Kiyoshi readily agreed, "I have been worried for some time now about her reliability. Keibatsu hungers after her like the Enemy, she can teleport like the Hei-Shi, and she apparently is capable of masquerading as a First Mind. There are some heavy questions she will have to answer soon."

It may make some of her friends uncomfortable, but in terms of adding to the excitement of the story there can be no question that the ambiguities surrounding Rei are an asset.

"It's not like she's the only one in our group who has her dark moments," Una said by way of explanation.

I thought that summed it up well. The dark moments are the reason that Rei is one of our Narrator's Best Friends, and why everyone pays attention to the girl with First Mind eyes.