Putana Highball

Putana Highball (プタナ＝ハイボール) is a Faith Organization Elite, piloting the Object Sarasvati.

Etymology
A is a type of cocktail, made from a mix of an alcoholic base spirit and a larger proportion of a non-alcoholic mixer. Popular in Japan, they are often made with Japanese whisky as a haibōru. A Highball is also a often used for mixed cocktails.

Appearance
Putana is a fifteen-year-old girl with brown skin, long black hair tied back behind her head and yellow eyes. As an Elite, she wears their characteristic special skintight suit. Hers is primarily green. The hat on her head and the miniskirt-like design are somehow reminiscent of a nurse’s uniform. The suit is made that way because of her Object's namesake, the goddess Sarasvati, and its function to symbolically heal the Earth.

Personality
Normally Putana acts stoically, with her few displays of emotion being related to the theft of her Object, which she was attached to. She holds a grudge towards everyone involved in the plan, but especially the one who came up with it. She's somewhat sheltered, as she didn't understand when someone was clearly provoking her. Ultimately, she forgives Quenser and the others after both Ayami and him apologize to her and begins considering them trustworthy comrades.

She's a good person, as she clearly saw her and Sarasvati's role as one of healing the damaged Earth and considered Garuda's Elite a disgrace to the Faith Organization for shooting at innocent civilians.

Putana superstitiously prefers outdated models of equipment, like her one-use flare gun.

Background
Putana was examined in the past by a witch doctor because of her scopophobia and ability to sense gazes. In the past her parents, teacher, instructor and priest pushed her to become an Elite, trampling on her childhood dream.

At some point in the past, the Sarasvati began receiving maintenance in the Faith Organization's base in Lost Angels.

Judgement -195℃
Putana ordered all mechanics and soldiers at the Faith Organization's maintenance base to move outside the Great Fence so as to not disturb her meditation. However, her Object was hacked and stolen by the Legitimacy Kingdom while she meditated. When she came out of her meditation at four in the morning and realized the intrusion in her systems it was too late, as she was forced to surrender by the Baby Magnum pointing its cannons at her back.

She was released by the Legitimacy Kingdom, as they were just interested in the Sarasvati's technology, but after she returned to the Faith Organization, they tried to execute her because of her failure. She was saved by Millia Newburg, who recruited her into Azul Hive and the Legitimacy Kingdom's intelligence division. She was assigned as partner to Quenser Barbotage, the previous newbie, so that he would show her the ropes. While they searched for a means of transportation for their mission, Putana questioned Quenser about who had come up with the plan to steal her Object, but Quenser claimed to not know anything about it. The duo stole an off-road motorcycle, which Putana drove with Quenser clinging to her back. Upon encountering Millia, who was carrying Heivia, Putana was challenged to a race by her superior. She fell for Millia's provocations and they began to race while reviewing the mission: supporting the Baby Magnum in its fight with the Garuda in the mountains near Lost Angels.

However the mission was put on hold when the clash between the Baby Magnum and the Garuda was interrupted by the Garuda shooting at a civilian cable car station. When the intelligence division went back to the motel to think of a way to catch up to the Garuda, Putana suggested they use the Capitalist Corporations' smuggling tunnels in the mountains. The group decided to capture the former leader of Mustard Cowboy's George Coral to get info on the tunnels. Putana played a key role during his capture, following him onto a building's scaffolding using her off-road motorcycle.

Putana participated in Quenser's plan to use water to slow down the Garuda so that the Baby Magnum could destroy it, but the battle between the two Objects caused the tunnels to collapse and the water torrent hit the intelligence division team, spreading them around the mountain. Putana ended up down the valley, separated from everyone else. She contacted Heivia's radio to inform Quenser and him that she had found one of the broken cable cars, but no signs of any corpses from the Garuda's attack on civilians. Suddenly, she sensed a gaze sweeping the valley. After taking down the person by blinding them with her flashlight and using it as a bludgeoning weapon, she identified him as a Faith Organization's scout from the city's gang. She checked his phone, but she found the data was encrypted, with one of the filenames sticking out to her: Nataraja. After she, Quenser and Heivia realized the cable car station attack had been done to disguise a case of talent trafficking, Putana announced her intentions of finding the group who had taken the children, asking Quenser to go support the Baby Magnum.

Putana found the kidnappers abandoned trucks. Near them she found Mulqueen Sonora, one of the genius kids that had fled from the kidnappers. The boy told her the other kids had happily gone along the kidnappers to the "Star", but before he could tell her anything else Putana sensed the kidnappers coming. She gave her flare gun up to Mulqueen, instructing him to run and use the flare gun to send a signal to the Clovers and be rescued, while she stayed behind to cover his escape. Putana grabbed a pump-action grenade launcher from one of the trucks before the kidnappers arrived. Millia contacted her, but Putana affirmed she would end it before she and the reinforcements could arrive.

Using her special trait of sensing gazes to dodge gunfire, Putana was able to fight several of the Faith Organization's scouts, but their superior numbers allowed them to score a few hits, which were stopped by her special Elite suit. The appearance of a powered suit turned the tides against her, as her grenade launcher would not be able to destroy a powered suit even with a direct hit. She managed to knock it on its back, but the powered suit abandoned its weapon to rush and grab her. The soldier inside the suit taunted Putana, as he had wanted to become an Elite and had even looked up to her only for her to become a traitor. However, the mud slide caused by Quenser tricking the Garuda swept both of them away, separating them.

After the mudslide stopped, Putana debated between going back to the Legitimacy Kingdom or escaping from all factions and disappearing, but her musings were interrupted when she was found by Millia, who invited her to the celebration for their second victory over an Object. While they drove away, she listened to the conversation Millia was having with Quenser over her headset, which confirmed her suspicions of Quenser being the person who had come up with the plan to steal her Sarasvati, once more igniting her desire to get revenge.

Some time after, she accompanied Quenser while he bought ingredients to make his own explosives, as he couldn't carry the Legitimacy Kingdom's while undercover in Lost Angels. They later arrived at a car repair workshop on the beach that had been paid by Millia to lend them a workshop. There, Putana pointed a gun at Quenser and revealed to him her knowledge of his role in the plan to steal the Sarasvati, blaming him for the humiliation that she and her Object had received. However, Quenser managed to distract her with an explosive and escaped to the Azul Hive's HQ, where Putana followed, not willing to kill him in front of everyone else.

Once there, Putana and the others were briefed by Millia about their next mission: capturing Mulqueen by attacking the convoy carrying him to the airport in order to investigate the term Nataraja. This plan carried the risk of accidentally killing Mulqueen, so Quenser appealed to Putana's heart and managed to convince her to come with him to Mustard Cowboy's HQ, the Hotel Grand Jackpot, to search info on the term so that the attack would be unnecessary and the operation would be cancelled.

The duo arrived at the Hotel while undercover and sneaked into one of the rooms that had been used by the child geniuses that had disappeared into the 'Star'. There they examined an IP phone and discovered the Nataraja's true nature: an artificial planet the child geniuses wanted to use to abandon Earth and its problems. After dealing with an UAV jamming them, they managed to contact Millia and tell her about their discovery, cancelling the attack on the convoy.

Putana tried to kill Quenser once they managed to save Mulqueen, but he escaped by pure luck. The team regrouped at their HQ in the motel again to be briefed on their next mission: supporting the Baby Magnum in its fight against the Kali, which was approaching the city while emitting powerful microwaves, which could prove lethal to the civilian population if it managed to get close enough. During the journey in the submersibles, Putana rescued Quenser and asked him not to die, as then she wouldn't be able to kill him herself. Then Quenser and her noticed something on the bottom of the ocean near Lost Angels: the Nataraja. Instead of an artificial planet, it was being used to hide in the bottom of the ocean, where the child geniuses would wait out frozen the extinction of humanity before waking up and creating a utopia.

The team returned to the 37th's fleet and talked with Froleytia in the small aircraft carrier she was using. Their discussion was interrupted by the ship being boarded by several amphibious powered suits. Quenser, Heivia and Putana headed to stop the powered suits and met with Ayami, who apologized to Putana for the treatment of her Object. After noticing the Baby Magnum losing against the Kali, Ayami suggested they let Putana use the Sarasvati to support it, suggesting she could sink it and destroy it afterwards as an offering. Before they could do so, one of the powered suits shot at them with a rocket launcher, and Quenser saved Putana from being crushed by the falling wreckage.

When Putana realized what had happened she tried to save Quenser, but he asked her to leave him behind and go use the Sarasvati to help the Baby Magnum. Quenser also apologized for having felt ecstatic about his huge success in stealing her Object without realizing he had also stolen her life. As she ran to her Object, Putana considered her current situation, where the only two people to say sorry to her had been two soldiers from an enemy nation, while everyone else in the Faith Organization had pushed her into becoming an Elite without caring about her feelings. Deciding to protect her current comrades, she entered the Sarasvati's cockpit, preparing for war.

After entering the cockpit, she saved Quenser from a powered suit and also released him from under the wreckage before leaving to support the Baby Magnum. Putana and the Sarasvati were sunk by the Kali, but this allowed her to land on top of the Nataraja by moving her main cannon to control her sinking, immobilizing it. She also shot a laser beam towards the surface to give away the Nataraja's location.

Putana later visited Ayami, telling her she would leave soon, likely for one of the Legitimacy Kingdom's laboratories that deal with Elites, despite Millia wanting to keep her in the intelligence division.

Skills and Abilities
As an Elite, Putana has been modified and trained to pilot an Object, in her case, the Sarasvati. Additionally, Putana has extreme scopophobia, so she can immediately sense whenever someone’s eyes or a camera are looking at her. She can apparently even sense military satellites and differentiate between active and inactive cameras. Nobody has been able to explain the mechanism of Putana's sixth sense, being described as similar but not the same as to how people can sense light across their entire body.

To tune up her mental side as an Elite, she resorts to meditation. When she meditates inside the cockpit of the Sarasvati she eventually "combines" with it. When she achieves that combination, it feels like having her human nerves reach every corner of the machine until she no longer sees any distinction between the two. At that point, it's no longer the “gazes” inside the cockpit that she feels, it's the many “gazes” running rampant through the outside world stabbing into her at once as her senses are artificially enhanced by the Sarasvati's own sensors.

Unlike other Elites, Putana is trained in infantry combat, being able to use weapons effectively. She's capable of using her scopophobia to track the enemy shooters' gazes and dodge gunfire, but there's a limit as to how many enemies she can face using this trick. She can also ride a bike, even up a scaffolding. Despite her looks she's strong enough to easily carry three bags of cement over her shoulder.