Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Shoplifter

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The Shoplifter is a Minutemen Survivor infantry. Planned to be voiced by.

Overview
* TBA*

History
"You see, when you take a thousand dollars from a man at once, he will notice it immediately. But if you take just one dollar per day, if you drain it as it comes, you can take a million and they won't even know it."

-Nascha "Nasty" Wauneka, Thief

After the Nuclear exchange destroyed Embry, the Aquilan realized that they had something of a P.R problem on their hands in Embry. Though they didn't order the NCC to launch the nukes they were the ones responsible for convincing the Embry people to fight for them, leading to them fighting the RLU supported by the Voshkod, and had a hand in Embry knowing about the nukes. It did not take a genius to realize that the enthusiastic Embry support for the Aquilan cause would evaporate quickly in the wake of their nations destruction unless the Aquilan could turn things around with the various groups that made up the Embry people, and quickly. Reaching out to one in particular within a week, the basics of the Native American Reform Act were ironed out, and less than two weeks after the war's end, the act was instated.

The N.A.R.A was created to reach out to the Native Americans, especially those still living on reservations within Embry Chronically impoverished and poorly educated, the Native Americans were thought to be the perfect beneficiaries of a great public works campaign. In one of the first great adaptations of wartime S.P.A.M construction methods, the Aquilan deployed construction crews to more than two hundred reservations to construct schools, from preschool age to two-year colleges, and hospitals, staffing them with volunteers from all over the Aquilan sphere of influence. All Native Americans under the age of thirty who did not already possess a college degree were to go to one of the newly constructed schools until they earned a degree. Meanwhile, massive Aquilan subsidies ensured that education would be affordable for all Native Americans.

The second phase of the N.A.R.A then identified and deported all Native Americans under the age of twenty who lived outside the reservations to one of the Reform reservations. Orphans and those whose parents refused to move to a reservation were placed in Allied foster care centers. Within these schools, young Native Americans would receive world-class education in mathematics, science, social studies, and more, then sent on to one of the Reform colleges. Generous loans would provide for the new crop of well-educated Native Americans to seek out productive jobs, in Embry or elsewhere in the Guardians, and hopefully invest back into their reservation communities. The Aquilan dream was to break the cycle of poverty in Native American reservations in one stroke and provide a model of reform for the impoverished native peoples of other Allied Nations.

Things went badly for the Aquilan from the very beginning. The history of relations between Native Americans and the Embry government could generously be called uneasy, but to many Native Americans, the Aquilans were even worse. The model N.A.R.A communities abandoned traditional tribal practices and customs in favor of politically correct modern democracy, and the Native Americans caught more than a hint of condescension from the predominately European teachers towards Native American practices, especially their spiritual beliefs. It was with no small amount of evidence that Native Americans protested the N.A.R.A almost immediately as an act of gross cultural imperialism intended to whitewash the Native Americans and turn them into model Aquilan citizens divorced from their heritage and customs.

More galling still was the second phase of the N.A.R.A. Many of the young men and women removed to the reservations had no desire to receive a Aquilan education or to be removed from the people and places they grew up around. A regrettably large number of such people came from poor backgrounds, whose parents simply couldn't afford to go with their children to a reservation they'd never heard of. Resentment flourished in the Reformed reservations, and more than a few Native Americans began to explore contacts with the Minutemen. Although the Minutemen represented a nation that had a spotty record at best with the Native Americans, many on the reservations nevertheless felt that the Minutemen were increasingly becoming the lesser evil.

The relations between the two groups have thus been rather uneasy, though matters have begun to improve in recent months. The most visible sign of Native American support of the Minutemen has been the enlistment of a number of young men and women in the Minutemen forces. Initially, an all-female gang known as the Coyotes that had been deported en masse by the Aquilan decided to lend their streetwise skills to the wily Minutemen, but a number of other men and women on the reservations have begun to style themselves after the Coyotes, from learning how to use a butterfly knife safely to acquiring a number of covert - or criminal - skills to fight back at the Aquilan. Despite considerable reluctance from the more conservative elements of the Minutemen to allow such young people to ply their skills in combat situations, the Coyotes and their mimics, nicknamed Shoplifters as the first known cases were stealing cash registers, have already begun to prove the value of their highly unconventional range of skills.

The Aquilan, being the Aquilan, of course, have completely failed to make the connection between the Coyotes and the N.A.R.A and assume that the Minutemen have stooped to simply strong-arming local criminals into their organization.