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Rooting through the Guards car once again in search of that key the Conductor mentioned. Nightfall is soon, and she needs something to make these damn guns run. However, she finds something else while rooting in the very back of an (empty) ammunition case. It's...a hand. Severed neatly by a piercing blow to the wrist, totally bloodless and mechanical in design. To anyone else it would be a little spooky. To Maria...it makes the bile rise in her throat.

Enemy fire fills the air all around them, splashing off of walls and raining dust and hot metal on the squad. Suddenly, the Bloody Mary loses feeling in its right hand - there's no pain, just a simple tug and a damage alert on its retinal HUD. Looking down, it can see it: a severed hand, one that belonged to it. A normal person would be in shock right now, and to its credit the Bloody Mary behaves much the same, calmly picking it up and pushing it into a spare pouch of its chest rig before returning fire with the other hand. The experience was so calm, so matter-of-fact...it made the remaining "human" parts of its mind begin shouting in concern.

She scowls, stuffing the "hand" into a back pocket. It's shadowy now, indistinct; its cool form weighs almost nothing now. Maybe it has a use. Something to do with the magical nature of this place? Maria hopes she doesn't find out.

The war is over. Neurogen and ATLAS have finally come to the negotiation table, after a conflict that scorched half a continent and left millions dead with millions more without a home. In the shaded backrooms, the rest of ABATTOIR curses bitterly and bemoans the end of their "market niche." But one of them is ecstatic. One of them is laughing until it cries, until it pukes, until that secondhand voicebox it chipped finds its upper limit. Maria the Bloody Mary simply cannot contain its joy at hearing that things are *OVER.* 

No more black-bag operations without body cams. No more coming back with most of its body destroyed by enemy fire, only surviving thanks to its brain resting in an oxygenated, heavily-armored box hidden somewhere in its body. For the first time, the haze of warfare clears, revealing a future that doesn't involved being a mad dog for corporate interests. In that moment, Maria the Bloody Mary realizes something: it wants to cancel its contract when it comes up for renewal. There's enough money laid up in its "demilitarization" fund to buy a new body, one not crammed full of perception accelerants and concealed weaponry. And said contract is up in a week's time, too. This is the most perfect act of timing it's ever experienced!

It can be Maria again. It can be called "her" again. It can wake up late, work a normal job, and stop killing its fellow man for a paycheck. This hell it's been through...has finally ended.

But of course it doesn't end there. You only leave ABATTOIR in a body bag, it knows that. The exit strategy is one final hurdle - but just one more challenge is more than worth its freedom.

perchance :>

(that or Misfits due to her self-isolating tendencies)

GIVEN NAME: Maria Reynolds

PRONOUNS: she/her (reflexively responds to it/its, to her chagrin)

CAREER: Nothing special. Remote work, part-time grey collar shit. That's it, promise.

THE EVER-IMPORTANT ONE SECRET: She's hiding from her past in a third body. The organics she was born with have long since been cremated, replaced with bleeding-edge militarized chrome - and that too was discarded for a "civilian" body when she was discharged. Lifelike silicone composite flesh, breathing, digestive functions, the works - anything to look like just another civvie and not a former ABATTOIR operator.

WHY THEY'RE RIDING: To get the fuck away from Terminus City, as fast and far as possible. Destination irrelevant.