Family Background: Urban Homeless, both parents are alive, family status is in danger, family is scattered due to misfortune. Grew up on the heart of the combat zone, she has 6 siblings, 3 younger, 2 older, and a twin, 2 dislike you, 1 likes you, 1 neutral, 2 hate you.
19: Local gang likes you: you can get 1 favor /month, equivalent to a +2 Family roll.
20: Hunted by the Law, by an entire local force.
21: Had a lover who really cared about you.
22: Hunted by A Corp: a small firm.
23: Accident: Hospitalized for 6 months.
24: Hunted by the Law: You were hunted by the entire force.
25: Falsely accused of murder. You plan to make them pay.
26: Hunted by A Corp: It's a big regional corp.
27: Lover Killed: They were murdered by someone you know.
28: Hunted by the Law: You are hunted by the entire force.
29: Mental incapacitation, A major Psychosis. Lost 1 point of COOL.
30: Brother was killed, they died accidentally.
31: Betrayal: You were backstabbed by someone who revealed a secret. You are hunting them down.
32: Hunted by a Corp. it's a larger statewide corp.
33: Powerful Corp exec owes you a favor.
34: False Accusations of theft. Fontes is let out on bail with blood money raised by friends in the gang, but she's still convicted.
35: Debt totaling 558 eddies.
0-20
Ever since she was a girl, death followed Rita around. Bad luck, the Devil, aliens, whatever you believe in, it seemed to take a perverse glee in shoving her face into the trash. Hell, she made it her hobby, growing up dumpster-diving in a combat zone. Back then, she used to be Maria. If you asked her, or her younger brother Renato, what they do for fun, and they'd give you the grand tour of their own little theme park in junkyard central. That is, before Renato fell on a piece of rebar and died with nobody around to save him. Most of her family became distant, blaming her for the death of her brother, most of all her twin sister, Adelaide. Maria swore she would do for others what she failed to do for Renato, and to do that, she needed to get smart. It took her family years to forgive her and move on, but she was able to convince her dad to sit down and give her lessons. Only Luca, the oldest of her brothers, would soften up by the time she was old enough to leave home-sweet-dumpster and start applying for every college grant under the sun. By then, he gained enough street cred to run for president of junkyard central, as the local gang leader. The election was a loud and bloody affair, after which Maria patched him up, using the first-aid skills she was taught in order to survive the dangers of raking through garbage, and Luca was grateful. Maria continued to offer her help in any capacity. Often this meant sowing up small injuries and going with them as an extra gun, and bearing the cold shoulder of Adelaide, who was already treated like one of the gang, but Maria wanted to be more involved. Looking to score significant credit with the gang, she went out to mug a hard mark, picking out some clean-looking man in a suit. She tried to corner him - emphasis on "tried". The mark ended up dead and someone noticed the ruckus, forcing her to bail without the scratch. When she came back to junkyard central, the gang helped her lay low, and Luca sat her down for a lecture about how they really do things:they and the other gangs in the area had a truce with the cops, and gave them a cut from their illicit activities as long as they kept things clean and peaceful in their seedy side of the undermarket. They're not boosters. While still armed and dangerous, and prone to getting on each others' nerves, mostly they prefer not to make a scene.
21-25
Maria continued to lead a double life. On one side, attending college as a "normal girl", even getting friendly with a guy called Abel Correa, a beav and a rival student she shared classes with; on the other, helping the gang operate beneath the radar of the Law. She also dropped her name with Fixers for jobs to earn more eddies to pay off college debt. One job for them, on which she and the team got made, was supposed to be a simple smash and grab. They had to delta 'cause netrunner hit an alarm and got them all made. A few friends from the gang were willing to hit up the firm they pissed off, making enough noise to back them down or distract them. Besides that - and getting her arm mangled in a car crash and replaced with a cyberlimb - and rubbing shoulders with her bitchy twin - things smoothed out and became routine. Just for a little while. In the summer of twenty-ten, what became her last routine smuggle op for the gang went ass-up. Her chooms were impeded by a blockade of police cars, as per usual, and Luca met with the cops to handshake. Almost as if on cue, additonal parties showed up, wearing different uniforms, demanding surrender over loudspeaker. Chaos erupted. Every faction for itself. Luca's gang were forced to shoot their way out through their strange bedfellows, and afterward, Adelaide was nowhere to be found. She had left abruptly beforehand after a pithy remark provoked a spat over Maria's role in the operation, leading to a spat between the two. She'd always been jealous and spiteful, and her disappearance before the chaos and afterward during the fallout confirmed the survivors' suspicions, that she had ratted out the arrangement with the cops to another party. The entire gang laid low. Maria switched to online classes, but got made the next year. When they dragged her in, they gave her the option of conscripting into the army, or jail time. To her, the choice was clear.
25-31
To say that the army was a change of scenery would be doing a disservice to the displaced soldiers who fought in the Central American Wars, alive or dead, and anyone who'd fought in a war before that, but as far as it concerns our plucky girl, it was just the same paint on a different canvas. She was shellshocked, threatened into a contraband scheme, and framed when it was discovered. All while continuing her med classes online, and in the midst of all of it, her brother died of an aneurysm. Maintaining contact with Abel made the difference. So, this leg of her journey through this hazy, gut-strewn landfill we call life goes as follows. While Maria - the squad took to calling her "Pine" - was serving at the Panama Canal Zone, some "freedom fighters" set off an ambush that froze her while her friends fought it out. Some of them died. She didn't get out unscathed either. Heavy rounds hit her in the face. The medics had to fit her with a replacement for her lower jaw, and after giving her a psyche evaluation, the on-duty shrink put his stamp on a little downtime. Seeing her input from college and confiding in him settled her down some, but they wouldn't get to make plans until after Luca had an aneurysm and flatlined. Then, her CO used her criminal history against her to get her on a small team of officers doing some dirty work for him. This got the attention of a corp with their hand in the base's assets. First, CO sacrificed a couple pawns to fend off their snoops, but couldn't hold them back forever, so he framed Maria and used her as the fall gal. But in between the corpo rats' sniffing, Maria had gained the attention of powerful people, by pulling shrapnel out of some VIP. That VIP promised her she was due a favor, and just a few days into her confinement after being court-martialed for grand larceny, Maria got rang up by some suit calling himself "Percy." She cashed in on that favor. Hours later, the warden opened her cell and the base let her walk out without a word.
32-33
Like it was for every soldier, returning to civilian life was a rocky boat for Maria, but for different reasons. She went back to the dump where she grew up to say hello to the gang. She continued her education and applied for a state license ahead of finishing her degree, while working as an assistant under Abel, who had opened a clinic in a lease just inside the combat zone where Maria used to live. Then, not more than a month and change after settling in, she got arrested for flatlining charges. She was allowed bail, and she and Abel put up the scratch to get her out. The trial was a headache that ate into her time and eddies. It would have ate into her sanity were it not for Abel, the only bastion of comfort during the process. She was acquitted, to everyone's great relief, hers most of all. It appeared that her twin was busy carving a bloody path through Night City, and saw Maria's dishonorable discharge as too good a chance to scapegoat her to pass up. With that dealt with, Maria received her medical degree got her license to practice, and worked alongside her input as a full-fledged surgeon. But don't forget what you heard at the beginning: bad luck, the Devil, aliens, whatever you believe in, it wasn't done with Maria. A man stumbled into Vilela's clinic with a friend in critical condition, but just as Abel's getting a critical patient onto an operating table, the choom who got him to the clinic started shrieking out in the lobby. Both Abel and Maria rushed out to find Adelaide standing over his dead body. Both sides slammed it. When the dust settled, Maria stood over her twin and prepared to blow her brains out. Abel pulled her away and convinced her to stabilize her and drop her off at a general hospital, a decision that they would both pay dearly for twice over. The first consequence was typical cutthroat corpo payback. The corp that the assassin worked for seized the clinic property and assets, just to liquidate them, forcing Abel and Maria to work out of their own home instead of a dedicated lease.
34-35
The second consequence was just overkill. A year later, just weeks after Abel proposed, Maria came home after seeing a patient on the other side of the city, and found Abel tied up in the bedroom, with an assassin from the firefight at the clinic standing over him. The ronin pulled a gun and demanded that Maria lay down hers, and once she was certain that Maria was unarmed, she told her sister under no uncertain terms that she had this coming. Just as Maria realized the home invader was her twin, Adelaide killed Abel in a gory spectacle. Maria couldn't go to work the next day. Or the next. Or the next. Maria's fiancee had just proposed. Now he was dead, and she was teetering on the edge. It took forever for her to find her feet, but she did, and she wasn't going to let this dog lie. That would be mighty preem, if she didn't start off on the wrong side of the road. Nothing came of it, but it probably didn't hurt her to try. See, Maria's option number one was to go the legal route. She went to prosecutor after scummy prosecutor, and each one blanched whiter than a joytoy's bleached bunghole when she dropped the name of the corporation her twin worked for. So, option number two: Maria went to work again. Kept busy. She moved to a cheap condo and visited her gang's ripperdoc to get cybered up, going from one metal arm to four. He took an IOU because she was good for it, and recommended a plastic surgeon when asked, someone who sometimes did work on the sly. She changed her name and handle and ghosted, and started seriously contemplating how to zero Adelaide. And that concludes Maria's prelude to edgerunning full-time. In the system, her name's Rita now. Rita Jorgensen. "Jaws" to you, choombah.