Chantal Ishida is about 20-years old and stands approximately 5-ft tall at approximately 90-pounds. Her appearance is beautifully exotic, reflecting the mixed French-Japanese heritage. At first glance, the oriental is predominant. She wears her hair long enough to sit on and tends to "flash-dress", although she is perfectly content to "wow" wearing "perfectly appropriate" clothing as well - usual Designer Specials.
Her father, Tsuneo Ishida, an engineer-businessman with a knack for always being in the right place at the right time career-wise, is the hands-on partner largely responsible for dragging Chevron International to Jupiter (and thus into becoming Chevron StarCore.)
Among the many activities of Chevron StarCore we might include the attempted (continuing) terra-forming of the Jovian moon Europa which, with its heated core and subsurface sea, offers bothe the energy and most of the elements deemed necessary for (eventually) successful terra-forming. Its location is reasonable too, as a major base in StarCore's mining operations. And, possibly, other things.
Among the various VIP visitors that StarCore has hosted at its base was French Secretary of Commerce, Jennette Chantal, who, in her negotiations with Chevron's local boss, Ishida, found herself in such frequent, intense and bitter conflict (to quote from some other space brat's diary) that she eventually retired from her post and married her sparring partner. It appears to have been a suitable and satisfactory match.
Both Tsuneo and Jennette are "class conscious" and maintain busy professional and social schedules that revolve around the ambitions of Chevron StarCore. Chantal, born a couple years after the marriage and - as yet - an only child, has always felt that they are "too busy" to really "be there" for their daughter. (Her father is toying with the idea of having Chantal accompany him as a translator on his next trip to Earth. Her mother may be considering arranging a Social Debut for her then as well.) Although Tsuneo and Jennette's ambitions include their daughter assuming a significant place in the world of business and politics, they have not really noticed that she has been growing up and, as yet, tend to feel that their ambitions belong to "someday"; she is "not ready" to be taken into the business yet.
They may be right, depending on just what "the business" is.
Her parents' places in Chantal's life were actually filled quite well by the governess-now-housekeeper and the tutor that Jennette selected. Mindful of the richness of Chantal's joint heritage, Jennette brought to Europa another French-Japanese pair: Tsukimi Osogoye and her husband Professor Bernard Pasquier. These two helped organize and run the Ishida household, educated and loved Chantal as their own and provided a great deal of the romantic idealism with which her imagination is stoked. From them came her ideals of the swashbuckling Dumas hero as well as the honour-above-all samurai. These were the interests she took to college when she majored in comparative French and Japanese literature.
Natheless, Chantal still is torn between wanting to reject the parents who have ignored her so long and wanting to impress them. She is frustrated by her parents' view of her as "not an adult yet" and that has led her throughout her teenage years and into the present into the image they so deplore today:
Flashy. Bravado. Risk-taker. She definitely goes for the gusto.
Several years ago she discovered the fun of "slumming," that is, escaping from the "cotton wool" of her family's estate and spending time in Miners Town. She gets a particular kick from going from her "low life friends" in the afternoon and attending one of her mother's hoity-toity diplomatic soirees in the evenings ... and imagining how she'd answer if someone asked what she did with herself all day.
Chantal doesn't like to be told "wait here" or "hold back" and has been known to bribe various of the bodyguards her parents foist off on her. Through them and various of the spacer friends she's made in Miners Town, Chantal first learned she enjoyed "good guns and fast cars." She has, in fact, a strong addiction to speed and has (or claims to) gone joyriding in every type of C.S.C. vehicle there is. [She thinks of herself as a James Bond.]
Unfortunately, one of her spacer friends, Thad "Birdie" Byrd, disappeared not long ago, and, unable to interest her father in the matter, she began poking around. She got a little too close to "Something" and that has led to her recruitment into the G-2. She still wants to find out what happened to Thad.
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