Cassandra Crosse

Granddaughter of Jeremiah and adopted sibling of Silas Crosse, Cassandra is also the great grandchild of Sorceress Brynhildr and the adopted daughter of the regent of Endosylvania. She is perhaps best known as the mercenary "X", Code X, or Mercen-X.

Story

During the events of Os Fatalis, Cassandra fought alongside Amira and Sebastian to save their world from inter-dimensional creatures and the corrupt authorities who sought their powers to rule over everyone.

Cassandra is better known as the mercenary X. She travels the land, taking odd jobs wherever she can get them.

Backstory

Cassandra was born the daughter of Regis Alustrov and Penelope Albecross in the Anvarian realm of Endosylvania. An Effluvian dignitary, Regis worked as a moderator better known as a Controller or "Blood Knight" until the day the Aetherian military sacked their city's factories using a sortie of experimental Homunculi known as "Flechettes". With her parents thought dead, an Effluvian emissary gave her to the Aetherian appointed as regent with the dictum that he should raise her to atone for massacring her family.

Near to the end of Os Fatalis, Cassandra is apparently killed when she disappears into a spatial distortion. This distortion is a rift in time that delivers her to a past era on Riene. She loses her memories and is inducted into the mercenary group MASQ by Silas LePeche. She fights alongside him in the Summoning Wars wherein he eventually manipulates her into believing he is her brother. However, this ruse is uncovered and abused by a pair of twins working for their enemies and Cassandra finds herself emotionally torn. At the end of the war, Cassandra is back working with MASQ when the super-soldier, Inferno, incites a revolution to free his kin, a race of red-eyed "heathens". Cassandra fights beside Zack Valar and his friends. Eventually, Silas opens a portal which thrusts himself and Cassandra into Anvar, post-"Shadow Crisis".

Relationships

Penumbra Albecross aka Sophia Maxwell is her biological aunt. Amara and Sobek are her grandparents.

Appearance

Initially donning a red and white motorcycle helmet with a black visor, Cassandra is a young blonde woman wearing a black and blue jacket and blue jeans. She also has a broadsword strapped to her back.

Personality

In Os Fatalis, Cassandra is a more or less typical adolescent, going so far as to develop a playful rivalry with Amira over Sebastian's attention.

Cassandra is somewhat isolated, owing as much to how she was raised by Silas Crosse after developing amnesia, having been taught to regard situations with caution and to withhold her opinions until she deemed it necessary to speak them.

Conception

Derived of a character based on an internet identity, the concept arose while playing 'GTA San Andreas. Whilst writing a Final Fantasy VII fanfic, before "Zack" was known as Zack Fair, and playing GTA, the image of Carl "CJ" Johnson wearing a jean jacket and motorcycle helmet inspired the creation of the masked mercenary swordsman. Desiring a thoughtful reveal for X, the creator could not think of anything better than the Rival Schools reveal for Akira Kazama. X was originally named Alexandra "Xandra" Crosse, a female Cloud Strife "mercenary with memory gaps". She had blonde hair and blue eyes and wore her sword on her back. She learns she has siblings, a psychotic brother-sister duo, and that all three of them are members of a kind of gypsy race, powerful and persecuted. Her name was later changed to Cassandra. She was later retconned as being the adopted daughter of "Penumbra" Sophia Albecross.