MARY

Mary never knew her parents when she was younger, as far as she knows she may as well have been born in the orphanage she grew up in. Mary was born on Earth, but at some point ended up on Lynxon, she doesn't really know how, and she doesn't particularly care either, the orphanage was all she knew. On the outside the orphanage seemed fine, whoever was responsible for its public image was great at that.

Unfortunately however, conditions were not as great on the inside. While the place was kept clean to look nice for visitors, the children were often neglected or directly abused, especially Mary. Children there were all 'homeschooled', but none really learned much, often having to seek things out themself if they wanted to learn, which Mary never really did.

Even as a child Mary had a tendency to act up, ostracizing her from both the adults and the other children. Some of the other 'troubled' kids would frequently bully her, both verbally and physically, especially as 12-14 year olds. Mostly picking on her strange mannerisms. In response Mary usually only cemented her behavior further, refusing to conform even if meant further bullying. Around age 6, she had snuck out one night and walked around the nearby area, while that night was mostly uneventful, she did find a lost doll that she kept with her ever since. She can't remember anymore what she used to call the doll by, but it was, for all intents and purposes, her best friend for her entire childhood.

At around age 8 she had one friend at the orphanage, another girl around her age, and the two were great together. A year later another kid would show up, Riley. Riley and Mary would butt heads together often at first, but eventually grew closer with some very simple mediation between them from Mary's other friend. The 3 got along great, but 3 years later, when Mary was 12, her first friend was adopted, and it was just Mary and Riley. With no real way to contact their adopted friend, the orphanage would do their damnedest to not allow letters out and would conviently 'lose' letters headed into the building, the friendship was effectively over.

With just the two of them, Riley and Mary would start butting heads again more often, they were still close, but would argue more often about trivial things. Despite their fighting, when Riley finally got a real glance at how Mary would get bullied, they would do their best to protect her, until the bullies started targeting Riley too, even outside of these incidents of protecting Mary. In an attempt to protect themself though, they ended up ditching Mary and trying to assimilate among the bullies.

At age 14, while still being bullied and teased by other kids, now with Riley included, one of them whispered something into Riley's ear, and shortly after Riley would tear and rip up her doll, and before Mary could get the parts back to try and fix it herself, one of the caretakers finally decided to 'intervene' and stop the conflict, but tossed the doll out back into the garbage. By the time Mary had a chance to try and dumpster-dive for her now only friend, the garbage had already been taken away to a landfill. From that point onward, Mary had finally broke, and stopped talking or interacting with the others at all, not even to act strange or bother them on purpose, and particularly resented Riley for their sudden betrayal after saying they would protect her. Often hiding under her covers all day, only sometimes sneaking out at night to walk the streets. At 15, she went to walk outside one night, to find a parked pickup truck with jugs of gasoline in the back. With no one in sight nearby, she stole and took them inside as everyone slept, pouring out the contents around everything she could reach that wouldn't wake anyone, before lighting it on fire with a match near the entrance and running out. She doesn't remember what was going through her mind that night to come to the conclusion to do that, but she doesn't want to think about it either. In her mind, everyone there was one of two things, either abusive or enablers, people who hurt her and people who did nothing to help, and that's how she's justified it to herself ever since.

Since doing so, Mary began to live on her own, wandering the streets of the city at first, often stealing money or agreeing to spy/tail people for others if they would pay her enough. For a long time Mary lived her life in cheap hotels and motels as a petty thief and spy, until eventually around age 22 she was approached by people who wanted to make use of her particular set of skills. Mary never did learn who they were, but they offered her so much money she couldn't refuse. What started as normal spying and stealing tasks that she was used to doing before eventually began to escalate. After having shot someone to cover her tracks on one of these tasks, they began to press for her to help 'get rid of other problems'. Without any real way to safely say no, Mary ended up being their personal hitman. The feeling of being controlled and pinned down again began to eat at her though, and eventually after a particularly significant mission, she managed to catch her bosses in a room alone, having already been paid for her task, she took advantage of the moment, managing to kill them both and escaping with her money.

Though her new 'job' she'd had with them was unwilling at first, she had grown used to it, and she was good at it, so she continued to do so even after running away. The difference was now it was on her own terms, no loyalties, just jobs for money, small jobs, as to not alert anyone who may have held a grudge for the two powerful men she killed. Despite the money she earned, she never bought a home or anything, instead choosing to spend her days and nights wandering cities and towns, sneaking into places and making her own fun. Around her 30th birthday, Lynxon's space travel began to become more affordable to the general public, and mary decided to start visiting other plants, causing trouble everywhere she went, eventually teaching herself how to fly one herself, only to result her often stealing and ditching personal spaceships she'd come across. At some point during this, her accepted missions began to more and more overwhelmingly become jobs from Nova. Nova's more clever than her previous employers however, better at giving the illusion of freedom, and so Mary continues accepting jobs from her, a part of her subconcious itching that maybe she's just under someone's thumb again, but able to still delude herself into believing she is entirely free

At 36, after 6 years of wandering through space and stealing ships, as well as meeting many different people, Mary eventually encountered an experience she'd never had before; someone else stealing the same ship as her, at the same time. While trying to run from law enforcers on another planet, she had hopped into the first empty ship she saw, managing to start it up and taking off. Very clumsily at that too, as she would soon find out from the complaining cat that wandered out from the back. At first she wasnt sure if he was the owner or not, but eventually found out he wasn't, and he'd been trying to do the same thing she was, but was trying to hide for awhile first. Introducing himself as Puss in Boots, the two eventually agreed to work together, and that began what would eventually grow into a larger group