Zen



Saya Masayo is a member of G.I. Joe who specializes in the designing and building of weapons and equipment for Alpha Team. She is one of the non-combat personnel, working mainly in her workshop.

Appearance
She is rather small, standing at 5'4'' and 120 lbs. She has long black hair, usually worn in a ponytail while on duty. She wears glasses (never contacts) and has a simple fashion sense, usually consisting of a screenprint shirt or tank and cargo pants. She does however have a love of strange or vibrant and colorful underwear.

Personality
Saya is generally a very happy individual and she personally believes she gets along with people very well, but she can come off as loud, talkative, sometimes mildly inappropriate, and more than just a little bit crazy.

Relationships
She has unfortunately been deemed socially awkward ever since a young age. She has always been very close to her father and uncle, but her and her mother are on shaky ground at best. She gets along well with her older brother most of the time, but were much closer when she was younger and became a little distant as time passed.

Saya enjoys socializing, but she did not have many good friends in her early life. Any friends from elementary lost contact, and high school was extremely competitive. She became extremely close to several people at MIT including her previous boyfriend, Kyle Abbott, though they broke up in her junior year. She kept in touch with her MIT acqaintances until joining G.I. Joe, and now only contacts them on rare occasions.

Once joining G.I. Joe Saya became immediate friends with Michael DeLisle aka Synth. It was not long after that she developed an interest in Snake Eyes. While Saya and Michael quickly became best friends, things were very uncertain between her and Snake Eyes for a long time.

[write up: in-depth analysis of relationship w/ Snake]

Family
Saya was born to Tameko Uetsu and Kaji Masayo in Sendai, Japan. Ever since infancy she has been the closest to her father (and her father's favorite, or so she says). At age 6 her family moved to Akayu in Nanyo, Yamagata Prefecture, near to Kaji's brother Kenta, whom Saya would be very close to from then on. It was Kenta who taught Saya everything he could about mechanics, and she became fascinated.

Education
She excelled in school, but Japanese restrictions in the education system disallowed her to skip grades and so she was home-schooled by her mother until age 14, where she was accepted to Gyoshu High in Okanomiya, Shizuoka. She graduated high school at age 17 and on her 18th birthday she moved to America and began to study at MIT.

[write up: circumstances under which she joined GI Joe]

Artist's Notes
Face Model: Yui Aragaki

RGB values:
 * Hair: (33, 33, 33)
 * Eyes: (33, 29, 27)
 * Skin: (242, 209, 161) ??? (need to confirm)