Maura Alis

Maura's life began like any other. She grew up under her two very strict parents who both just wanted her to grow to become successful. Neither of them were very happy with their own lives, but they shared a love for their daughter and wanted her to have a better life than they did. However, they weren't very good at showing their affections, using almost purely negative attention and reinforcement to keep her on a steady path. For a while, the rules and orders didn't seem to reside with her; she didn't like having to do so much for so little, getting no rewards for her actions, but one day she just.. clicked.. into the personality they set her on: she never interacted with anyone she didn't need to, she never stayed out or went anywhere she didn't have to go, and was constantly under the watchful eye of her parents. Her grades were immaculate all the way through school, never even once falling once she hit her 7th year, and she ended up graduating high school at the age of 16. Her nigh-perfect test scores and GPA got her accepted into the Cyber Initiative's college program, despite being younger than the others. However, the second she was old enough, she left her home and moved on site. She couldn't take it anymore--the helicopter parents and their abusive ways. She couldn't even remember the last time her parents had told her they loved her, but she did remember one thing they used to tell her over and over: "Your future is going to be far greater than ours."

While at the college, Maura began to open up a bit more. She was still very hard-working and overachieving, but she had made a few friends got along with people. She also formed an interest in bionic limbs rather quickly. She looked at all of the simple metal and robotic designs, however, and believed that there could be.. more. They all seemed like unfeeling, cold designs and she wondered how it would feel to lose a limb and have it replaced with metal, false joints, and wires. Unfortunately, she wasn't left wondering for too much longer. One night, walking home with a small group of friends on her 19th birthday, celebrating a year since she'd moved into the college. They'd convinced her to drink with them and, finally deciding that she deserved a break for working so hard, she took the offer. Sure, it wasn't the most legal thing ever, but she wondered how much harm it could really do. Besides, she wasn't under her parent's control anymore, she could finally unwind. Sadly, in a group of drunken teenagers and college students, no one was sober enough to spot the car speeding towards them until it was almost on top of them. Most of them were able to move, but Maura and the girl that had been holding her hand were both hit, not paying enough attention to the world around them to hear their other friends' cries. The last thing she remembered was a sharp, tearing in the middle of her thigh, flaring pain on her face and head, and the strange stare the other girl had as she gazed at nothing. Then, with the sounds of panic and a speeding car, everything went black. 

There were flashes of lights and sounds, sirens and worried chatter. When she finally awoke again, a doctor--one she recognized from the Initiative--explained to her that she had lost her leg. She gave Maura the option for a prosthetic. At first, the teen was mortified and declined the offer immediately. How the hell would she be able to deal with that: lugging around some.. some hunk of plastic or metal on what remained of her leg? While she recovered, Maura remained adamant, not wanting to take back what she said. However, over the next few months, she debated it more heavily. She was learning more and more about these things she didn't feel she needed and came to realize.. she could work with this. She assisted in designing her own prosthetic, her mentor being the one making it. Once it was done and Maura had gotten a feel for how it moved and worked, she became determined to make the limb into something more.. more.. human. For the next three years, though her ideas hadn't yet been put into motion, she'd brought it up to her mentor and Initiative officers and had been doing much extensive research on nerves, muscle, and skin, along with balancing her homework, of course.

Things changed when Maura was suddenly requested by her old mentor to come with him. There had been a girl that was involved in a car accident and Maura was told she was going to need a new leg. Maura was immediately reminded of the trauma of losing her own leg and went in to meet the woman, greeting her with sympathy, something she didn't show to many people. The woman's name was Bianca Alis and Maura actually came to find that, after three years of falling back to reclusion and losing most of her friends, she actually enjoyed talking to Bianca. Maura began asking questions regarding her prosthetic, but somehow the pair would always manage to trail off into other conversations. Though Maura didn't need to, she began to pop in to check on the girl several times a day, making many excuses that she had new questions to ask about the prosthetic. She brought in the leg once or twice, explaining what she was doing to help make Bianca more comfortable with it. She even began to bring flowers after learning her favorite kinds. After a long while, Maura realized she was falling in love again. It had been over three years since the accident had killed her last girlfriend and the thought made her so nervous.. but she refused to let herself dwell on the past, just like with her leg. Her future was going to be great. Working up the courage to ask Bianca out on their next physical therapy meeting, she arrived to find that the shorter woman had the same idea. They began to date, and years later, they were wed.

At the age of 25, Maura had a breakthrough with her work. When testing out her ideas and coding her leg--which she used as a primary tester when she felt she couldn't pull away from her work--she realized she was able to feel pressure occuring to her metal leg. After a lot more testing and adding on new bits and pieces, adding on code with her Cyber Initiative issued tablet and finding a kind of tough jelly that worked very similarly to skin. When requesting to try out her new advancements on any patients that may've needed new limbs or prosthetics, Maura was directed, not towards a person in need, but rather a criminal--a thief--that had been recently arrested and given a new leg and shoulder, but they still needed a hand, as nothing seemed to be doing well. When Maura saw it, she thought she she could do far better, but the other scientists were able to convince her that the test subject didn't deserve a better leg and that she shouldn't waste her time. So, Maura set to work on the new hand, wondering just why the person was even getting a new hand, but not questioning the ability to try out her new ideas. She considered the person lucky, to be trying out her tech before even she got to properly do so. It never dawned on her that the Initiative might've taken their hand just so Maura could try out her new model. Nevertheless, it was a huge success. It wasn't perfect, but the hand worked as any normal one, only glitching and getting stuck occasionally. She further improved the science over the next few years, replacing her leg when she got a good grasp on what she was doing.

A few years later, Maura was invited to enter a new realm of cyberspace the Initiative had been working on. The offer seemed too good to be true. How could she resist? Endless resources in a brand new, simulated world? She could come across another breakthrough- The excitement got to her and she quickly agreed, but she requested, after speaking with Bianca, that her wife come along, too. It never occurred to her until months later that the team--and, really, the Cyber Initiative as a whole--had been very eager to let Bianca go with her as well. In fact, they seemed eager for the only person who had documents and notes piled up on everything she had worked so hard to achieve to leave and enter this new world. If only she had realized sooner, before she realized she was stuck in the Orbis Alius. But, hey, at least she's got her wife and her tablet. In Utopia 1, Maura makes up for what she lost, making the city her home until she can finally return to the real world and get all her shit back.