LogFAQs > #968154195

Soon after Aris rescue, we returned to Gotham to alert Vari, and that brought him back to Zonn Zorr, reuniting the family once more. Vari once again got to dote on his daughter with pride, knowing she was destined for greatness, and he have even developed a second fatherly relationship with TNTeena. Everything is coming up Vari, it seems. Meanwhile, for Ari, she has taken up residence in the Zonn Zorr library, reading whatever sci-fi literature she can get her hands on (and perhaps being disgusted or annoyed by Jack Cross attempts at fiction). Its a quiet place (unless Brennus is loudly carousing around with Freddy), and she seems comfortable with the solitude. Heck, by holing up in the library, Ari seems to have even adopted a secondary protector, as Damon Matthews (our librarian) has made it quite clear that he wants no one messing with either Ari OR Freddy; theyre just good kids trying to read and better themselves, and hell not tolerate tomfoolery around them.

All of this is to say that Aris life in Zonn Zorr is pretty solid. Compared to a handful of orphaned kids weve brought back, or those whove had loved ones lost or killed (or gotten shot during one confrontation or another), Ari has not experienced a whole lot of hardship from the events of the campaign. Even when she was under lockdown in Brentwood, it doesnt seem like it was all that traumatic of an experience for her. Shes got a loving dad, and Damon is watching her backeverything seems to be going well. And yet, there are still hints of tension below the surface, and its there that Ari really manages to rise to the occasion and earn her spot in my top five.

One point I skipped over back in my recap of Campaign One was the fact that Ari speaks with a stutter. She tries her best to be clear and concise, but sometimes she just cant get the right words out, and is forced to replace her thoughts. In Campaign One, one of the reasons she got along with Tali (comparatively speaking) was because Tali didnt make light of her speech impediment. Who is Tali to judge, after all? She only just barely learned to speak English a year prior to meeting Ari, so to hear, the stutter didnt stand out in any sort of negative fashion. This stutter didnt go away between the campaigns, and not to make light of speech impediments, but its presence has become far more sinister this time around, than just service as a character trait to an otherwise bratty, teenaged girl.

Because Im me, and I tend to find myself drawn more towards the teenaged characters in these campaigns for one reason or another, Pepper wound up seeking Ari out in the wake of her return to Zonn Zorr. It helped that she took up residence in the library, where Pepper already spent a decent amount of time studying her criminal dossiers next to Freddy. For her part, Pepper has largely ignored Aris stutter, having experienced a somewhat similar issue with her younger sister, Hannah. If anything, she tries to be helpful by offering completions to Aris sentences, so she doesnt get stuck in a rut and frustrated at an inability to get her thoughts out as intended. Plus, Pepper is a bit of a sci-fi fanatic in her own right (albeit more in terms of fangirling over the Space Trek franchise and her first ever celebrity crush: Garfield Logan), so she has found common ground with Ari in that regard.

On paper, Ari is honestly one of the more compatible characters for Pepper in all of Zonn Zorr. I fully acknowledge that a lot of the early Zonn Zitans teenager stuff was largely due to Pepper being desperate for friendship and companionship and normalcy at a point when she felt very isolated and frightened by the post-apocalyptic world around her. But with Ari, there are some genuine connections you can make between the two girls. Both come from very loving families, although for VERY different reasons, theres probably some underlying tensions with their fathers. Both are into sci-fi and are generally more introverted (Peppers outgoing nature is more of a forced faade from years of Mormon communalism). And the biggest one of all is that both girls have extremely gray visions of morality, as Pepper would discover.