Paine

Paine is a playable character who first appears in Final Fantasy X-2. She is one of the three playable characters, and is the darkest of the girls. Her past is a mystery for most of the game, and it's up to the player to find out what happened to her two years ago.

Appearance
Paine's manner of dress is completely different from that of other residents of the tropical world of Spira, and the cultural distinction implied by her clothing and appearance are never explained. The only known citizen of Spira who looks or dresses anything like her is Lulu, but no other relation is known between the two.

With short, messed up silver hair she is most commonly seen wearing her black leather ensemble complete with high-heeled boots, elbow-length gloves and a unique top that folds back down to resemble a vest. She also carries a shell-like pendant around her neck, threaded with a barbed wire chain. She has a square-shaped face and red, slender eyes. She is seen to wear eyeliner and dark red lip-gloss and nothing more for cosmetics. Her swords possess a unique emblem at the base of the blade; a skull-like motif with a curved design around it. This motif also appears on the belt buckle of her warrior ensemble.

As mentioned before Paine's swords are unique in her Warrior, Dark Knight, and Samurai dresspheres, while in her White Mage and Dark Mage dresspheres she wields the Malleable Staff and Enchanted Rod respectively. Her deck theme for the Lady Luck dressphere is diamonds and her Mascot dressphere is a Tonberry. All of her footwear is high-heeled as well.

Final Fantasy X-2
Not much is known about Paine's childhood. She grew up during the time of Sin's reign upon the land of Spira in Final Fantasy X. During this time she came to join the Crimson Squad. The Crimson Squad was an elite group of soldiers set up by Yevon. Around the time of Operation Mi'ihen Paine was working in a group as a recorder for three men, named Nooj, Baralai and Gippal. However, when most of the other members of the Crimson Squad are killed in the Den of Woe, the group survives, but were put up for execution soon after, since nobody was supposed to survive in the Den.

Running away, the four of them stayed together for a while, with Paine still recording. It was here that Paine learnt to speak fluent Al Bhed from Gippal. When they all decide to go their separate ways, Nooj betrays them by shooting them in the back. It was the four of them that essentially caused the events of Final Fantasy X-2 to begin. Paine joins the Gullwings two years later, before Yuna, hoping to uncover the truth of what happened that day at the Den of Woe. She jokingly remarks that she "always did want to fly on this thing anyway", referring to the Celsius. The game starts mid-mission in which Paine and Rikku are infiltrating a concert to capture an 'imposter Yuna' who has stolen the Gullwing's Songstress Dressphere. It turns out that the thieves were no other then the LeBlanc Syndicate; rival Sphere Hunters.

With the mission completed the Gullwings returned to the Celsius and continued their business of sphere hunting until they stole a sphere that recorded a mysterious machina. Upon returning the sphere, they discover that the LeBlanc Syndicate had boarded the Celsius and stolen one of their spheres, forcing them to infiltrate the LeBlanc Headquarters in Guadosalam to steal it back. To do so they had to steal Syndicate uniforms by tracking Leblanc groups around Spira and stealing their uniforms. During their tracking they came across the Machine Faction and, specifically, Gippal who acts as though he knew Paine from somewhere. Paine, however, acted as if they had never met before and introduced herself politely as such. Finally obtaining enough uniforms the Gullwings returned to Guadosalam and infiltrated the LeBlanc Headquarters. During this mission they found one of Paine's Crimson Spheres that detailed the events leading up to, during, and after the incident with the Crimson Squad. Nonetheless, Paine remained silent about it's significance, even while they watched it.

Learning that the location of the mysterious machina was underneath Bevelle the Gullwings, with the LeBlanc Syndicate along for the ride, infiltrated the base and fought their way to an empty room where the sphere had originally shown the machina to be. Instead the group fought the leader of New Yevon; Baralai and a Dark Aeon; Bahamut. Returning from the escapade the Gullwings were soon caught fighting fiends and Dark Aeons in the Besaid, Kilika and Djose temples, at the end of which Youth League and Machine Faction leaders Nooj and Gippal gave the Gullwings two more Crimson Spheres. Again Paine said nothing.

Only when pressed later on the Celsius did she finally revealed a little of her past with Nooj, Gippal, Baralai and the Crimson Squad. Telling the girls all about how the four of them dreamed about having an airship, traveling all over Spira. Later she assists with finding Tobli in order to set up Yuna's concert in the Thunder Plains, once again receiving a Crimson Sphere, this time from Leblanc herself.

With the final Crimson Sphere obtained, Paine, along with Rikku and Yuna, returned to the Den of Woe and discovered the truth of what happened 2 years ago involving her team and the hatred of Shuyin. Emerging from the Den with renewed purpose Paine was determined to free her friends of Shuyin's influence. Realizing that, when he had shot them, Nooj was possessed by Shuyin and that, during their meeting under Bevelle, Shuyin had moved on to possess Baralai. She asked the Gullwings to help her in facing Baralai and defeating Shuyin once and for all. Finally, the Gullwings entered the Farplane and defeated Shuyin and the machina Vegnagun before it was released upon Spira.

Three months after the events of Final Fantasy X-2, the Gullwings are called back together, to Yadonoki Tower. Here, they travel to the top of the tower, where they find a broken machina. Paine reveals she was the one who brought them back together, to show them that even though they are now apart, they shall always be together.

Personality
Paine has short silver hair and red eyes, making her look similar to Lulu from the previous game, but her personality is like Auron in her cynicism and the way she reveals information only when she needs to. Armed with a one-handed sword and a lukewarm attitude, no one knows much about the secretive Paine except that she is cynical, rather quiet and generally keeps to herself. Paine is extremely tough and loves a good fight, but she is also sensible enough to smell trouble a mile away. If she feels her fellow Gullwings are getting too enthusiastic, she would use sarcastic cracks to jolt them to their senses, and despite Rikku's constant prying she refuses to divulge any information about herself, except that she has always wanted to fly on an airship and hunt for spheres containing records of Spira's past.

Paine in Battle
Before and during battle Paine can change her job class by changing dresspheres. She can become a White Mage, a Samurai, a Berserker, she can use any of the common dresspheres.

Her Special Dressphere is the Full Throttle. Her Mascot Dressphere is the Tonberry.

Den of Woe
Upon entering the Den of Woe the Gullwings encounter fragments of Paine's memories, brought to life by the Pyreflies, and is soon attacked by Shuyin himself.

Revealing that it was he who had turned the Crimson Squad against each other Shuyin proceeded to do the same with the Gullwings. First turning Rikku, and then Paine soon after.

Design
Paine was a newly introduced character, having not appeared previously in Final Fantasy X. As Kazushige Nojima puts it, she is kind of like a female Squall. “With the two (Rikku and Yuna) being a lot more talkative, there had to be someone with a calm, cool demeanor who could put a halt to their excessive chattiness. If it were Lulu in that role, she would have completely shut them down, and the story wouldn’t have advanced at all. But in Paine’s case, she’s someone who can remain neutral, keep the others focused, and help the story carry on together with these two girls.”

Also, in regard to the dress spheres and the Warriors classes in particular only Paine gets to carry a unique sword. “This is her own weapon,” says Alternate Costume Designer Tetsu Tsukamoto. “It doesn’t belong to anyone else.” Keep an eye out for the similar symbol on all three of Paine’s warrior-class swords. It’s only fitting, since Paine doesn’t have a connection to the previous game, and since this is also her default class. From a design standpoint, Paine’s Dark Knight is Tsukamoto’s favorite. “I handled a lot of monster designs prior to working on the costumes for FFX-2,” he says. “It feels like the scales of the monsters apply to this design. That’s why I like it a lot.” He also reveals that each of the girls' head pieces reflect their personalities, with the sharp edges of Paine's head piece to reflect her prickly outlook.
 * Songstress Sphere: The reason why Paine’s costume is so different from the others is because the team couldn’t decide whether she should be rock ’n’ roll or Top 40, so Tsukamoto split the difference.
 * Thief Sphere: Tsukamoto designed Paine and Yuna so they’d have as much sex appeal as Tetsuya Nomura’s original design for Rikku’s default character.
 * Trainer Sphere: Paine was originally supposed to carry a snake, but a programmer put the idea away because he said the animation would be too difficult pull off.

Kingdom Hearts II
Paine appears in Kingdom Hearts II as a chibi fairy version of herself along side similar versions of Yuna and Rikku. Calling themselves 'treasure fanatics" the three Gullwings are mercenaries spying on Leon for Maleficent, though after being left behind by Maleficent and some trickery from Donald involving promised treasure, they join with Leon and help defend Radiant Garden against the army of Heartless.

Later the Gullwings discover Donald's lie but feel sympathetic to Sora's cause. Instead of taking his items they give him the Keychain 'Gullwing'.

Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Special
Paine is a playable character in this special edition of the Monopoly-like video game available only in Japan.

Trivia

 * It has been said that Paine is based upon Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII, though she also has qualities of Auron in her personality.
 * As demonstrated by her ability to play Blitzball Paine can hold her breath for at least 5 minutes.
 * Many of Paine's battle quotes make reference to real-world songs and ad campaigns; such as the quote "Ice, ice baby." which is the title of a song by Vanilla Ice, and "You. It's what's for dinner." a play on an ad campaign for beef.
 * It has been rumored that Paine's parents were killed by Sin in her childhood, and that she raised herself.

Paine