Louise (NPC Zeiss)

Louise (ルイーゼ) is an inhabitant of the town of Zeiss.

Background
She's a young woman living next to Tita and Professor Russell in the southern part of town together with her younger sister Yuriel. Louise is a scientist through and through. While many people would have reservations about living next to Professor Russell and being at risk from the occasional explosion from a scientific experiment gone wrong (or in Tita's words: "just a little flying glass"), Louise feels that those kinds of accidents are necessary for the sake of progress. In addition to her tolerance regarding the antics of her eccentric neighbor, Louise is also a dedicated and experienced scientist herself, though it doesn't really appear that way when Estelle and Joshua first arrive in Zeiss.

Around the time Estelle and Joshua arrive in town, Louise is suffering from a severe lack of motivation and satisfaction regarding her work, which involves design work on orbal firearms. The rut she's in is partially caused by having to work with Karl, her superior, who only cares about technical specs and getting the highest amount of energy output out of a firearm as possible, while Louise puts much more value in aspects such as efficiency and user-accessability, but her suggestions are shot down whenever she makes them. The other cause is simply the fact that Louise's interest is centered a lot more around engines and aeronautics than orbal firearms. By the time Estelle and Joshua reach Zeiss, Louise has gotten to the point where she's talking about her work as if it's nothing more than a chore, she's neglecting her health and family despite the efforts of her boyfriend Ursus to support her and she's having spells of absence, like the time she spends half a day searching the bookshelves of her home for a book she borrowed from the archives ("Septium Optic Annals") that she actually left in the design room all along.

All of this changes when Hugo, the person in charge of the orbal engine project for the Arseille, hears about one of their potential team members turning them down. (the engineer, Clive, wanted to stay in Ruan in order to stay with his little brother) With a looming deadline and the project itself at an impasse, Hugo starts looking through Central Factory's staff files and finds out that Louise's initial application mentioned an interest in engine design. Not wasting any time, Hugo immediately approaches Karl and asks his opinion about getting Louise transferred. While Karl rues the idea of letting such a promising engineer go, he admits that she's been struggling remaining motivated and that the Arseilles project would fit her own interests far better. Upon hearing this, Hugo sends the transfer request to the factory chief and the next day, when the smoke caused by the Intelligence Division's attack on the factory has barely been cleared, Hugo invites Louise onto the engine project.

Louise's initial reaction is bewilderment, followed by anxiety as she studies the night away at home as she struggles to come up with ideas to contribute to the project and prove herself. This initially doesn't go well until her boyfriend, who came over to take care of the cooking that she was neglecting, convinced her to at least eat something and try the soup recipe he learned about in the Forgell Bar where he works. Following this meal, Louise has an "Eureka"-moment and the next day she's seen proposing to Hugo to stop focussing on the engine's raw power output and concentrate on making it easily maintainable and letting it make use of its existing power output better, arguing that the central drive orbment that Professor Russell developed for the engine should already provide the ship with enough raw power as it was. This new design philosophy, which Louise already adhered to while working on orbal firearms, but which would consistently get shot down by her technically-minded superior, wins Hugo's approval and becomes a turning point in the project on the whole. Both Louise and her sister Yuriel name Ursus' soup as the factor that made Louise see the light and Louise plays with the thought of simply asking her boyfriend to cook her up more soup whenever she runs out of ideas.

Just before Estelle and Joshua set out to Grancel, Louise can be found at her home in a very good mood, despite her young sister's usual nagging, stating that a productive day at work is just what she needs to sleep well.

Louise has a reputation as an excellent orbal engineer, but her domestic skills leave much to be desired and her home's always a mess, earning her daily scorn from her younger sister Yuriel, who likes to call her lazy. (despite the fact that Yuriel herself seems to be lazier than the hard-working Louise) During her rough time on the job, she's frustrated by her sister's admonishments, calling her sister bratty and wishing she was related to Tita instead. After she gets transferred and her mood picks up, she simply ignores her sister's scoldings.

Louise is dating Ursus, a cook and waiter at the Forgell Bar next door whose domestic abilities make up for Louise's shortcomings in that department.

Relations
Louise is the older sister of Yuriel and the girlfriend of Ursus

She's initially the subordinate of Karl until she gets transferred to the engine project and becomes Hugo's subordinate instead.