Claire Sonozaki | Cyborg

Claire Sonozaki,

We weep for the blood of a bird...

When one first meets Claire is pretty easy to see that she's all business and no play. She's easily rough around the edges, vulgar despite her rather feminine appearance, and a tomboy through and through with an attitude to rival even the saltiest of Hunters'. Under that tough exterior though lay a rather methodical woman who, while fiery, also has a good head on her shoulders and a tough love type of kindness about her. At her core Claire's objective is to be a soldier, a Hunter, and nothing more carrying out her duties as she's told without hesitation like the machine that she is. However, she's not a mindless drone either feeling that she was given this duty and the body that she resides in to change the world with her own hands whereas otherwise she wouldn't have been able to.

That much causes her to often go through stints of existential crisis where she will come to question her state of being and if she is indeed doing the right thing. Although, it also has never stopped her thus far either interestingly enough, but rather it drives her forward to get through the tough parts in order to seek out that long sought after silver lining to it all, whatever that is. Therein lay the conundrum of Claire in that she questions her place in the world but willingly accepts her role to pursue a concept despite her weakened societal position and the obvious. Regardless, she does it suppressing her emotions and steeling herself for the long road to come for whatever goal is on the horizon, if there is any. Where it will lead her, she couldn't say, but that’s also part of the conundrum in that she's sufficed herself to believe that there is a purpose for how things are and that one day she'll find it.

Although, on the other hand that is only a narrow glimpse at who Claire actually is. She's a Hunter and a Cyborg, yes, but she also has a very Human mind with a very Human outlook. When she allows others to get close she worries for their welfare and yearns to care about them despite knowing that she'll only bring them harm when they're around her causing her to be cold and unfeeling towards others for their own welfare. She has wants, desires, and needs like any person does and is no exception to the folly of Humanity. She's curious, she thirsts for knowledge, she has quirks, and she makes very Human decisions like any other biological being would. At the end of the day though she is seen ignorantly as a tool and as a brain in a tin can who's opted out of biology to satiate some need to assimilate herself with technology. This much is a thing that Claire has come to terms with over the many years since her cyberization but one that never stops stinging. It's sobering and punishing at the same time causing her to harden her mechanical heart and focus on her goals so that she can find her place and come to understand state of being. What makes her more than a ghost in a machine and where all of what makes her Claire blends to create a mixture that forms her and gives rise to her own, albeit shred, of humanity.

Then again, that’s probably only a very small slice of what kind of person Claire actually is. She's multifaceted and it simply wouldn't do her justice to try and explain all of those facets. One has to observe them for themselves and see for themselves. A word of advice though; Good luck, you're gonna need it.

Claire is of average height standing at around 172cm (5 feet 7 inches) and weighing in at a relatively light 87.54kg (193 pounds) for a full-body cyborg due to her size and structure. She has a fair complexion to match her platinum, almost white, bob-cut hair and crystalline aquamarine eyes often hidden behind a veil of some sort. Bodily she was modeled after an extrapolated version of what her body would look like as it aged and has undergone several refitting's over the years as she matured lending her own bits of influence here and there as she went. Needless to say, she is attractive and does pride herself in that fact having had a hand in the voluptuous nature of her prosthetic body. However, beyond beauty she has also taken to – within her last refitting – to ensure that her body is a functional toned piece as well spending much time detailing the musculature of its form to mesh with her lifestyle. While it is simply an aesthetic choice this body and its appearance is very much representative of her and the type of person that she envisions herself as mixed in with the natural order of her own development to ensure is realism in contrast to her natural growth as a Human being.





Normally whatever fits what she's doing at that point and time is fine with her. Claire really isn't very picky when it comes to her fashion and has a utilitarian stance on most outfits given the nature of her work. However, she does have her favorites when she has the ability to choose, one of them being the dress she often will be seen wearing. Its risqué boasting a revealing embellishment over her chest, slits up the sides for added range of motion, feather adornments on the mid-drift of the full-length sleeves, and it comes paired with sheer black thigh-high stockings as well as a pair of thigh-high high-heeled boots. If she can get away with it she'll often go for this kind of outfit as her go-to but she's also been seen in tactical gear, more common clothing choices, and even dressed down casually. She does however go for darker clothing choices overall finding that it accentuates her coloring in a flattering way. While it's not a necessity necessarily she does certainly enjoy it when it's an option.

Parents

Mother: Claire knows next to nothing about her biological mother. She was taken away from her early on in life and has never so much as thought to ask who she was, nor what. Claire often does wonder what she's like but has laid to rest any hopes of ever actually knowing.

Father: Again, Claire knows next to nothing about her biological father other than he died protecting her and her sister, whoever that could even be. Her adoptive mother, Maria Sonozaki, knows about as much as she does and she would be the only one who could or would have ever said anything.


Siblings

Sister: Claire knows that she has a sister but who that is alludes her entirely. Whether she is alive or dead at this point is beyond her, nor does she much care. If she did somehow meet her however she wouldn't mind it. In other words, she's indifferent to the status as whereabouts her of long lost sibling if what her Maria said was even true.


Extended Family

Adoptive Mother: Maria Sonozaki, Claire's adoptive mother, is the only actual family that Claire has that she knows of even though they're not related biologically. She is certainly alive, but the two of them don't talk much anymore after a falling out that they had years prior. Maria resides in the Cuori Rosa Residences in Felici and still works actively as a researcher and Chief Medical Officer for the Hunter Guild Corps.

Other Family: Chances are Claire has other biological family out there that she doesn't know anything of. Having been pulled away from her family at such a young age makes it possible for her to have Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, and even other Siblings or Grandparents. Whoever might pop out of the woodwork though she most likely would be indifferent to without a reason having had no contact with her biological family in over two decades.



Claire was born to two unnamed parents on May 13, 2569 on a rainy Saturday afternoon at 12:32 PM in Dagos City alongside a presumably twin sister. Almost immediately they notice that there is a problem when they check her eyes and she doesn't begin kicking like most infants do at that age. After a thorough examination it is revealed due to the circumstances of her birth she is completely blind in both eyes and essentially paralyzed from the waist down. The news comes hard to the downtrodden parents but soon falls to the wayside when the orderlies come to remove Claire from their care. Seconds later yelling and protesting would ring out in the small triage center as shots were fired and in eerie unison cries from the twins eked through the fray. Still a newborn, Claire would find herself less than twenty-four hours later in the custody of a state appointed post-natal care facility that doubled as an orphanage called the "Sunlit Copse Nursery" in the capital city of Felici. This is where she would remain for nearly two years of her young life.

Claire's childhood thus far hasn't been a normal one by any means given her unique circumstances. She can crawl, but only with her arms, she often will bump into things and cry because she cannot see her environment leading the staff to need to care for her on a near constant basis. However, she is quite loved amongst the patrons of the orphanage often becoming the center of attention amongst the volunteers and senior staff. Furthermore, during this time the state had begun looking for prospective parents' to place her with to little avail. Most would come on the wings of good intention and leave empty handed feeling that they couldn't provide the care, or didn't want to provide the care, that she'd need to survive. It was sad seeing them come and go but that was also how life went; when things got a little too inconvenient or fell beyond the scope of a persons' intentions they would back off trying to help another.

However, amidst the heels' and cads' of the earth there were a few that were hidden gems, albeit a bit scuffed in comparison to most, but genuinely good people. That much rang true when a young researcher and junior medical officer by the name of Maria Sonozaki contacted the orphanage with her newlywed wife looking to adopt. The couple had married only three months prior and were looking to start a family with their sights set on Claire as a result of her specific needs, feeling that they could provide the best care for her. Maria was a researcher in the Hunter Guild Corps as well as a young Doctor at the time and her wife was a student of the Runic University who had recently come into some acclaim. To that end it was easy to see that both were quite intelligent, both had a sturdy background, and beyond their details and demographics it was clear to see from first glance that they loved Claire and that she loved them. With that in mind, after several hearings and months of signing documents, as well as frequent visits from the health and welfare board to ensure everything was working out Claire would become Claire Sonozaki and legally Maria's daughter.

Needless to say, Claire had a happy home life with her parents and was given just about everything that she'd need in order to survive and feel more than loved. She was either constantly with Marias' wife being cradled around wherever she went as long as she wasn't enveloped in her studies, or with Maria amidst the technology and doting medical staff of the Hunter Guild Corps. It was certainly a good time, but one that wouldn't last for long when news of an accident reached Maria's ears nearly a year and a half after Claire had been adopted. Her wife had suffered a fatal accident at the Runic Academy whose details were shrouded in secrecy much like the Runic practices. It was a hard blow for Maria to take causing her to spiral into a severe depression for a stint. During this time Maria reclused herself in her lab enveloping her life in work and maintaining Claire's state of care. It was only nearly six months later that she finally began perking up finding shreds of joy in the aftermath of her wife's death in the daughter that they loved so much.

Around this time Claire was a little over four years old and had begun to speak and feel around her world learning what shapes were through touch alone and asking questions. It was clear from even this age that Claire was very astute taking in her environment and her situation to formulate an existential need to know why she was the way she was. It brought Maria to have to relay to her some impromptu answers given that she wasn't totally aware herself knowing only that her motor nerves from the waist down and optic nerves simply seemed to be inoperable for whatever reason. According to her records the best answer that she'd gotten medically is that they were dormant or inactive possibly as the result of a chemical or protein imbalance that hadn't quite been figured out yet. It was a curious thing that she even wanted to know about to what end she began spending her days researching it on the side bringing her to several revelations. While Maria never did figure out what caused it, or at least supposedly didn't, she did begin to theorize that direct cerebral-spinal connections could forged with the little girl's brain using cybernetics as a catalyst.

With this theory in mind Maria began preforming small experiments such as using a non-invasive neural adapter used to correct colorblindness to relay signals to Claire's brain projecting colors and simple amorphous shapes onto her neocortex. As she'd suspected it worked out surprisingly well leading Maria to believe that with some finessing her daughter could be cyberized but due to the extent of her nerve degradation she feared that most if not all of her body would need to be. To that end Maria continued the experiments petitioning the Hunter Guild Corps' Chief Staff for a budget to officially research and potentially correct her daughter's condition. After haggling with them over the details and nearly being rejected at first Maria and the higher-ups of the Hunters Guild eventually approved the budget giving her leeway to research it in part with her other duties. However, the deal was that if Maria were to be successful that Claire would be inducted as a Hunter when she came of age to join. It was a morally unfair deal but one that, knowing her daughter's condition, she simply couldn't refuse feeling that despite joining the Guild Claire would have a better life. With that in mind Maria began pouring herself into researching her Daughter's condition and ways to cyberize her finally coming up with a solution nearly four months later that would repair Claire's lost bodily functionality, but in turn would entirely replace her body.

At five and a half years old, after speaking with Claire about it and getting her uneasy approval, Maria scheduled the operation to cyberize Claire on her sixth birthday. As the days counted down Maria often cooped herself up in her lab going over the fine details, perfecting the construction of her little girl's body, and taking into account potential issues they might have along the way. Finally, when the day came six months later Claire was wheeled into surgery and the sixty plus hour operation to transfer her brain into a new mechanical chassis was put underway. The operation, much like Maria had suspected, was fraught with small complications and impromptu revisions on what they knew of Claire's nervous system at the time. However, they would hurdle those obstacles in strides as they arduously worked their way to encasing Claire's brain in a titanium shell using nanomachines to do the heavy lifting and to wire in the relays and synthetic synapses that her brain would need to function. Afterward, nearly thirty-seven hours into the operation, they finally removed Claire's brain from its biological casing using support systems to keep it stabilized as they transferred it to her new cybernetic chassis. Another twenty-some-odd hours later and the operation was over having been completed successfully as they wheeled Claire to post-operative care.

For another twenty-seven hours Claire slept soundly with a charging cable hanging out of a recessed port near her coccyx and with her mother situated in a chair at her bedside, attentively watching her now cybernetic daughter sleep. The next day when Claire finally awoke her eyes flickered open to a blurry face hunched over her watching her with tired eyes and a smile on her lips. It would mark the first time that Claire had ever been actually able to see as well as the first time she'd ever seen her adoptive mothers' face. It hurt at first in a strange way, but upon seeing Maria a smile would haphazardly twist and contort on her synthetic lips and in return on her mother's lip as the woman hugged her and helped her up to begin some preliminary tests to see if everything was in working order. Over the next six and a half months Claire would be confined to the infirmary where she would undergo a stint of rigorous physical therapy with routine checks to ensure her cybernetics were functioning properly. Once she was finally released Claire would return home and over the next several years she would be taught routinely about the fundamentals of her body, how it functioned both mechanically and programmatically, how to spot problems and the like. It was indeed a strange thing to have to learn but one that spurred on a love in her heart for those times she'd had with her mother and by extension technology.

Another year and a half later, at age 8, almost two years after the operation Claires' body is functioning within or above expected parameters and mundanity has begun to set in between her mothers' and her lifestyle. Claire by this time was attending school in the Hunter Guild Corps' K-12 program alongside many of the other children of varied ages whose parents were serving in various parts of the guild to whatever end. It was a relatively peaceful time as she'd remembered it though in reality most of the time Claire was alone and off doing her own thing. Often times she had her nose in an old book or was mulling over whatever tidbit of information she could find on her personal terminal. It seemed that even though she had been given a new lease on life and was now able to walk and see her passions didn't lay in the world around her. Rather they lay with world just beyond her that she'd been exposed to through the process of being cyberized and having to learn about how to care for herself. Subjects like programming, engineering, cybernetics and the like constantly flooded her young mind bringing her to find friends not in her peers but in the researchers who her mother worked with.

Around when Claire was nine or so she'd begun to visit her mothers' laboratory quite frequently. At first she would patiently wait around for Maria to get off of work, then she would come to idle over what the other researchers were doing, and eventually she would begin asking questions. The researchers often would smile to her and pat her on the head telling her that the project they were working on was some super cool gizmo of some sort blowing its use out of proportion for her benefit. For a while it worked and excited her the way any normal child would've been excited but as time went on she began delving further asking more complex questions. Some of the researchers would try to explain in laymen's terms, some would spout out a fantastical tale, but one of them – a programmer by the name of Devan Mendez – did something a little different than the others. Instead of crafting some fantasy for her benefit he offered to teach her what he did coming to spend a couple hours with her every day teaching her the basics of programming through hands-on practice. Over the next year Claire would soak up the details and would come to find herself eventually sitting next to him on a terminal of her own as he instructed her and in return she helped him with whatever task he was working on. The two would forge a close bond over this and eventually would gain her mothers' attention noting how skilled Claire was even at such a young age.

This much would lead to Claire becoming a permanent fixture in the office for most of her preteen life. Working with Dr. Mendez she would come to learn a slew of advance programmatic languages, how to preform technical maintenance on the research departments systems, and would begin independently helping in day to day operations as a civilian volunteer. It was something that she found a great deal of enjoyment in doing often having lengthy conversations with her mother at night about the fun stuff that she did at work. However, at school it was quite a different story in that while she was respected around the office as a part of the team she'd begun to drift away from her peers in a big way. The other kids had begun to think of her as weird and would often gawk when she was around whispering to themselves about how she was always buried in the net and how her body looked fake, almost like it was a doll's body. Claire on the other hand was mostly indifferent to their jeers and insults taking them at stride until one day one of the older boys had stopped her in the hall with two or three of his lackeys.

His name was Aiden Garnette and he was known around the program as a bully having gotten in trouble several times for beating other kids up, theft, and general malicious tomfoolery. He was not the kind of person anyone would have wanted to stare down and that proved even truer when he began hassling Claire calling her all sorts of terrible names. Why he did it, she couldn't quite say even to this day, but he made no qualms in calling out that her body looked fake, calling her a freak, and a brain in a tin can. At first though Claire tried to walk away, to be a bigger person, and to ignore his insults. However, she was stopped in her tracks when he spouted out the "pecking order" of the world to her, telling her that she was nothing more than a tool now. That she was some Human twerp who copped out of life to be cool or cause of her mom's weird techno-fantasy or something, as he put it. The words eked through her mind like a sharp knife causing her brow to furrow and her lip to quiver like she was going to cry, but couldn’t. Her eyes darted around to try and find something to quell herself as another emotion welled up inside of her consciousness like a primal driving force causing her synthetic skin to feel like it was on fire. Another unintelligible insult would belt out of Aiden's mouth causing her to whip around to face him, latching on to his arm with her hand, as she twisted it with a cracking and snapping sound. A bloodcurdling shriek shot through the corridor as Aiden fell to his knees with Claire plopping atop him as she proceeded to wrench at his arm screaming at him to take back what he said.

In the end Claire had twisted and mangled Aiden's arm so badly it looked as if it had been turned into a black and purple corkscrew. It was only when she'd been forcibly pulled off of him and restrained by two of the brawnier security guards that she finally came to her senses and stopped struggling. Looking up to the ceiling that day felt like the longest couple minutes of her life aside from having to go and see her mother and tell her what happened. Of course when she got there she was scolded severely for what she had done despite it being in self-defense in her eyes, but it was the look of disappointment in her mothers' eyes that hurt the most. For the next couple of days Claire would stay home from school and would be confined to her room to work on her studies and think about what she did while Maria schmoosed over things with Aiden's parents using her influence as the Assistant Chief Medical Officer at the time to avoid them pressing charges. It was a close call surely and one that Claire wouldn't soon forget feeling that she'd been wronged and sad that her mother hadn't taken her side. Eventually things would blow over, and nothing like that would happen again while she was in the K-12 program for fear of what had happened to Aiden, but it would have resounding effects as Claire grew.

By the time that Claire was thirteen years old she would undergo her first prosthetic refitting into a more mature teenaged model that had been developed through extrapolating her features by the use of an age progression program. The program took in factors such as her genetics and musculoskeletal structure from past data when she was six years old to form an accurate representation of how she would look at age sixteen in order to allow her to grow into the newest refit. The procedure to swap her over to her new body took hours to complete in stark contrast to the sixty plus hour surgery she'd undergone when she was first cyberized. After that and a couple of days of light rehabilitation to get her acclimated to her new form Claire was released from the hospital to return to her daily routine. However, as most teens often did, she'd discovered new aspects of herself that she had never even taken into account before. She was a woman, or a young woman at least, and had begun to develop – albeit artificially – bringing her to feel a sense of self she'd never quite had before. It was unnerving in some ways because before she never had felt the weight of any sort of gender identity or connotations beyond being the weird little girl who had her nose in a book all the time. Now though it was different and that much brought Claire's mindset to slowly begin to change towards more picturesque tomboyish behavior.

This much was even more so the case when her mother informed her only weeks after her refitting that she'd been selected to join an obligatory Junior Hunter Training Program through the Hunter Guild Corps. Of course she protested making her mother aware that she wasn’t okay with doing it but in the end Maria had a way of convincing her. To that end less than a month after that Claire would find herself amidst fifty or so other kids her age and older from varying walks of life. Each of them looked like they'd been trained and long since prepared for this sort of thing all their life which felt to be a rather confusing far cry from how she was lending her reason to believe her mother may have had a hand in her obligatory summons. However, that much was beside the point and would quickly fall to the wayside when the training program began, the rigorous drills commenced, and they all became – body and soul – the property and personal whipping posts of Overseer Nashandra. Over the next two years all of them – including Claire – would not only be broken in ways the young girl had never thought possible, they would be reforged and tempered into weapons afterward the likes of which would fundamentally alter Claire's life.

Immediately when the program began Claire was skeptical of what she was embarking on often finding herself becoming increasingly frustrated with having to be there. She didn’t like being told what to do or when to do it and often would make mistakes or disregard orders getting her in trouble with Overseer Nashandra in the process. Over time though as she sunk into routine things became more like second nature to her. Performing her assigned tasks in the day, going to drill, showering, sleeping, and repeating all of this over and over again became sort've like a security blanket but also as a way to discipline her and break away the childish views of the world she'd up till then clung onto. To that end, nearly six months into the training program, Claire had slowly but surely carved a place for herself amongst the others and had even begun to receive praise for her work. Throughout all of that Claire was being trained in a myriad of different things from what it meant to be a Hunter and what the hunt actually was, to who Kalidas was and the great many gifts they'd given them, to forms of combat such as with firearms, melee weaponry, hand-to-hand combat, and even through the use of technology by way of cyberwarfare. As Overseer Nashandra put it, the hunt could be sought after on many levels and a Hunter should be prepared to face any challenge big or small, new or old.

This much began resonating in such a way with Claire that her views on the world and her own life steadily began to shift as her demeanor and personality hardened into a tomboyish veneer. No longer was she the quiet bookwormish little girl who spent her days glued to a screen. She had been empowered in such a way that she found herself yearning to be stronger and better at what she did, challenging her peers and viewing them as rivals to her hunt. The more that she did towards this view of the world the more the flames were fanned within her to become the best as an unrivaled warrior one day. A Hunter of great skill and strength whose deeds would help others' and would grab the attention of Kalidas bestowing upon her a divine strength to hunt down the transgressors and bring salvation to the transgressed. It was a sense of duty whose flame burnt bright inside of her and would not be extinguished easily as the training program came to a close just after her fifteenth birthday.

Returning home after being away from her mother for nearly two years was a drastic change for Claire. The structure that she'd gotten used to in the training program had left her yearning to keep the same routine and do the same things day in and day out. Instead though her life had seemed to fall back into mundanity, returning to her studies in the schooling program amidst her former classmates who had grown since she was away but who had virtually remained the same otherwise. It was obvious things had changed outwardly but at the same time they still felt stagnate and lackluster in comparison to what she had been through. For months after Claire would feel this way finding herself trying to maintain that routine and keep her skills honed by practicing what she'd learned where and when she could, but it wasn't the same. Moreover, her mother was so busy after having become the Chief Medical Officer of the research and development department that she barely saw her these days leaving Claire to her own vices in trying to entertain herself. It was only after nearly six months of this finally there was a break in the ebb and flow of life when a letter came in the mail addressed to her.

The letter was from one of the higher-ups' – a woman named Zaera Alshua – who was well known within the Hunter Guild Corps and a person they'd discussed extensively in the introduction class she'd taken on the theory of strategy. She wanted to meet with Claire and had ordered her to report to her office a week from then at the heart of headquarters. The letter was vague at best but exciting in its own regard to have been contacted by such a prolific name. Over the next week Claire nervously and impatiently went through the rigmarole of her daily life finally finding herself at Alshua's office door the day of the meeting. Knocking on it Claire heard a voice in the distance telling her to enter though when she did before she knew it long silver-haired female had rushed her swishing around her back with a knife pressed against one of the very few open spots that could've forced a systemic shutdown of her life-support systems. With bulging eyes and a sinking sensation coming to her, Claire heard a sultry voice from behind her say that her skills weren't bad noting the pocket knife that Claire had in her hand poised against Zaera's lumbar region threatening to pierce her spinal cord. Lowering her knife Zaera kicked her away putting her hands on her hips before bluntly telling her that she'd be her new apprentice without Claire having the option of declining the offer. Before she could even ask questions Zaera welcomed her to the Hunter Guild Corps and told her that she was to report to her at the same time the next morning dismissing her as she went back into her office.

Needless to say Claire was more than a bit dumbfounded by the greeting and what had just happened only finally coming to realize the weight of what Zaera had said to her when she'd gotten back home. That night Claire celebrated the news telling her mother who seemed less than happy about that fact coming to tell her that she feared for her safety. It obviously upset Claire bringing her to question why to what end they'd began arguing with the fact of why she'd been selected in the first place for the training program spilling out amidst it. Furious that it had come to light that her mother had lied to her Claire stormed off into her room that night, quashing whatever excitement she'd had over her good news. In the proceeding weeks the two of them would make up but as it was Claire's trust in her mother had waned causing a rift to build between them over time. During that however Claire kept to her obligations meeting Zaera at her office the next morning to what end she was formally introduced and briefed on what her role would be as Zaera's apprentice. It was mostly what Claire had figured in that she was obligated to uphold Zaera's position, to do what she was told, and to keep up with her but there were other things like the fact that Zaera insisted that she finish her schooling as well and hone herself both mentally as well as physically. Her motto was that a hunter must hunt like most but at the same time she stressed that a hunter must hunt wisely as well.

To that end Claire did her best to keep up with Zaera's demands finding herself training her mind in order to hone her skills with her body while keeping up with her academics and ensuring that she was mentally fit to take on the hunt. After nearly nine months of various hunts guised as on the job training she'd lived up to that and more having felt the scorn of others when Zaera praised her. People would rant and rave about how a cyborg had become Zaera Alshua's apprentice despite the many other seemingly more fit candidates for the job. They called her all sorts of nasty things from a brain in a tin can to a mechanized freak and more as a way of discriminating against her. Though in a way it didn't much bother Claire anymore knowing the kind of mindset behind such grotesque behavior so much so to the point that she began to yearn for their jeers feeding on them like fuel to out-play them. But, in due time, even though the defamatory remarks didn't much get to her anymore something much powerful eventually would when Claire was assigned her next hunt.

In the wake of the chaos that erupted in Dagos City, Zaera and Claire had been assigned to a support mission to assist the Magi Relocation Centers' personnel close to the northern border of the city. To Claire's knowledge they were to go in and take out the radicsalists that were causing the disturbance, and only that. Zaera would go in on foot and Claire would stay behind spotting her to take out any hostiles with a NV-308 .308mm Sniper Rifle .25 clicks out to the east. When they got there though it was unlike anything that Claire had ever seen. The land, the wind, the water, even the molecules in the air itself were all fighting against them as the land was contorted and scorched into an amalgamated mess. Right off Claire picked a Magi radicalist off with a head shot firing several rounds at others before moving to a new location and going at it again, tracking Zaera's movement as she moved through the terrain with grace and speed. Though even then with the extent and scope of the mission ever changing she knew that this was going to get ugly, and quick. Soon shouts would come over the radio with Zaera ordering Claire to move out and that an air strike was headed her way. She was to leave the sniper rifle and travel on foot to rendezvous with her at the eastern gate of the relocation center, taking out hostiles on route. Picking herself up without a question Claire gripped her G-36K fully automatic assault rifle and rushed out of the area she was in at top speed. Every now and again she'd get close to a hostile firing a burst shots of three bullets at the in coordinated intervals to fend them off. Bullets pinged and twanged around her as she made her way through hell dodging fireballs, earth upheavals, statically charged surface areas, and much more.

Finally, after who knows how long she'd been running, Claire made her way to the eastern gate laying down suppressive fire at a group of hostiles as an Earth Magi fended off the bullets using the ground as their shield. The others had begun using their abilities to fire high voltage discharges at her as she swooped around dodging to flank their position, firing from behind the wall of earth as the two air Magi slumped to the ground in a bloodied bullet-filled mess giving her leeway to make a run for it toward the eastern gate. Off in the distance stood Zaera holding what appeared to be a grenade launcher to Claire's surprised as she ran towards her not daring to look back. Moments later a rocket propelled grenade launched in an arc exploding on contact with the earth Magi's shield blowing out shrapnel-like gravel from it and spraying it at a high rate of velocity over the Magi and piercing straight through their body spattering a pool of scarlet onto the ground below behind them. Afterward, upon rendezvousing with Zaera she relayed to Claire that the status of the situation had been upgraded to a Search and Destroy mission. All enemy combatant and non-combatant Magi were to be killed on sight if they didn't surrender immediately or couldn't be taken down with Downers.

Almost mechanically without a second thought Claire would nod, not thinking of wat she was agreeing to, nor what it would come to mean when it came right down to it. For the next what felt like an eternity Claire and Zaera would make their way through the Relocation center killing men, women, and even children alike without any regard if they didn't surrender of acted in any hostile manner. Some surrendered immediately, some tried to run, and others tried to fight but regardless of the situation it was a brutal slaughter bringing Claire's mind to nearly ice over and numb itself to what she was doing. Her mind and body had been shifted into her training days where she picked up the gun, centered the reticle, and fired; nothing more, nothing less. However, even in her numbed state nothing could've prepared her for what she was about to witness when she and Zaera happened upon a small child crying amidst the death and carnage. To this day Claire still doesn't quite remember all of the details but for whatever reason she and Zaera moved in despite the obvious to take the child into custody when an explosive device rigged to the child, hidden under their clothing, went off. The resulting aftermath threw Claire and Zaera nearly fifteen feet from the epicenter causing a substantial lapse in time for Claire as the censors in her body rebooted. Checking herself over internally she notably had damage to her left arm, but other than that most of what had happened to her was superficial; parts of her skin had been blown off, her clothing was a tattered mess, and she'd been partly charred by the resulting cinders of the blast. No worse for wear though she motioned herself up from the ground her eyes scanned the horizon finding Zaera in a pool of blood, her arm and leg completely blown from her body, and a man standing over her whose visage looked eerily familiar.

Pushing herself up she called out for him to move away from her putting her right hand that wasn't as damaged on the trigger of the assault rifle that was attached to her vest and pointing it at him. When the smoke cleared and Claire finally got a good look at him her mechanical heart she could've sworn skipped a beat. His face, his snarky smug demeanor, and his cybernetic arm were all indicative of the childhood bully she'd taken down seven years prior; it was Aiden Garnette. Banter would ensue after this revealing that Aiden had enrolled into the training program in a different regiment than hers. He's become a Hunter himself and felt it was his duty to clean up the so-called disgusting heretics that soured their ranks. With that Aiden pointed gun at Zaera's head getting ready to ensure her death if she weren't already. In response Claire fired several rounds into his arm offsetting the gun as she rushed him tackling him to the ground again. Rolling around amidst the dirt, flame, and rubble the two of them went blow for blow as they managed to break off and get up. Claire pulled a knife from her boot and rushed Aiden who proceeded to put up his fists striking her hard in her collarbone with his cybernetic arm. Recovering from it quickly despite the damage Claire swooped and swished around under him cutting at the muscle on his leg as he winced out falling to one knee. Shooting up to her feet she propelled the blade into him through the back and pushing up for a visceral strike. Pulling the knife out once more she flicked it methodically around in her fingers before pulling it up to his neck and sliding it across his jugular as he slumped down gurgling and gagging.

Disregarding Aiden and rushing to Zaera's side Claire radioed for evacuation as she ripped at her pant leg with one hand using the material to tie off the severed limbs where she could mouthing out that she'd be alright as she picked her up on her right arm and put her over her shoulder to make her way towards the northern gate. It was slow going and tense as she tried to mitigate Zaera's blood loss while prioritizing their safety first and foremost. When they finally arrived to the evacuation point an air transport was there ready to air lift them out of there. For Claire the bloody nightmare was over and neither she nor Zaera had come out unscathed. Zaera was rushed into surgery when they hit the ground to stop the bleeding and repair the damaged limbs, though in the end Claire was surprised that her mentor had even survived it at all. Claire on the other hand had been structurally damaged; her left arm was unresponsive entirely, part of her collarbone area had been total caved in, the fingers on her right hand were hanging by literal synthetic threads, her skin weave was trashed, her leg pistons had been nearly disintegrated from the added weight and strain she'd put on them, and her right forearm had buckled due to a missed hit on Aiden which had made contact with a concrete wall instead. Beyond that though was the mental strain she'd endured and while her body could be repaired, that much could not. She'd been part of what would later be called a genocide and in the midst of it had to take down a fellow hunter. It as easy to see how that affected her despite her not showing it outwardly.

After finally making it back to headquarters and being transferred into a temporary generic prosthesis for nearly a month Claire's new body was ready. She'd overseen its design and specifications from start to finish to ensure that it was a higher performance model and that, at least ideally, it'd be the last time that she'd needed to swap bodies for a while. Instead of fitting it with just the data they'd taken from her natural body development years ago though, this time Claire made a few choice tweaks in its design to both aide in performance and as an aesthetic choice. The finished result was something that she was proud of but not something her mother exactly approved of feeling that it was too mature for a then seventeen year old to be walking around in. Explaining her reasoning though Maria finally would agree to it given the circumstances surrounding its design and knowing that psychologically it had taken Claire's mind off of what she'd been through recently. After a quick chassis swap and the mandatory physical acclamation period afterward Claire would be released for duty again to what end she'd find herself in front of a board higher ranking Hunters in the Hunter Guild Corps. Given the circumstances as she put it the hearing was an inquiry of sorts to find out what really happened surrounding both Zaera's injuries and the claim she'd made about killing the now missing Aiden Garnette. When explaining it Claire didn't leave out any of the details that she could remember to what end the board seemed satisfied enough to dismiss her to return to her duties effective immediately.

Nearly three years after that day Claire would find herself shuffled around where she was needed honing her skills as she went through hard earned experience. After a while Claire had gotten a name for herself to a degree for the tactics that she employed during the hunt and the efficiency that she exhibited regularly when taking down targets. Many described her as a machine – in a good way – with how she handled herself on the battlefield and were impressed with methodology behind why she wore a blindfold through most of it. She saw the hunt as a thing to be respected noting that one could only be truly unbiased and hunt with the utmost fairness in their tactics when their vision and preconceptions didn't cloud their judgement. So, when she had the opportunity to, she veiled her misleading eyes using only her artificial senses and instinct as her guide when taking down her targets. It was certainly a different way of looking at it but one that most came to respect for the most part aside from the cybernetically biased among them who didn't believe in her altruistic nonsense, at least as they called it. On the other hand, when she was off-duty, Claire would regularly visit her former mentor in the hospital where Zaera laid comatose since the skirmish. Her arm and leg had been replaced with cybernetics but they said she'd suffered a severe cranial contusion and massive blood loss prior to her arrival so there was no telling if she'd never come out of it. Given the brain's complexities there was only a fifteen percent chance that she'd ever recover, though in the end Claire knew even bad odds were still odds nonetheless. It was hope enough for her and something that put her frayed mind at least in just knowing that she still was alive fighting the good fight to survive like a true Hunter should.

Despite all that happened in the battle between the Hunters and the Magi Claire didn't hold any ill-will against them feeling that both sides had done their fair share of killing. In the end it didn't matter who started it to what end Claire, unlike most, was happy to see that things turned out in a somewhat peaceful manner. There were still tensions, still biased people, but the Magi had been freed and those who hadn't committed any treasonous acts had been released. In a way that was the only win that Claire could extrapolate from back then as she dealt with her own issues since that point still trying to come to terms with it all. Eventually after a while she would even distance herself from other Hunters as a result preferring to work solo on hunts rather than with someone else if she could have it her way. In her eyes the less people who were involved with her the better since then she could ice over her heart and wouldn't have to worry about losing people she cared, nor being betrayed like she had so utterly been.

To that end in the preceding years after that Claire had developed into her own as a fairly respected Hunter by those who can look past her cybernetic shell. Amidst that she'd also moved out of her mother's place and into a small apartment downtown where partly resides when she's not enveloped in work. She's done what she could to move on from the memories long since passed and that seem to still haunt her as well as the questions that still beg answers. At the end of the day though for her the battle is over but the war has far from been won, bringing her to contemplate her place amidst it all, and ponder idly in her spare time the meaning to her existence and why things happened the way they had among other things. As a result of that yearning and quest for answers Claire has taken to the net once again and through her training in cyberwarfare has begun using her skills to dig up information both on her current targets as well as information on the Magi genocide event. However, that is where her story begins, at age 24, and as a Hunter and a person sworn to their duties but bound by an existential longing larger than she is. The secrets that she uncovers though, if there are any left to uncover, as a result might be best left unknown. Only time with a bit of luck for good measure will tell…

Recharge Upgrade: The amount of time needed to recharge does not have to be the rough estimate of time needed for humans to sleep (≈ 8 hours per 24 hours). A three to four hour charge will suffice.

Melee I (Starter): Can accomplish fundamental and basic feats with melee weapons. (Examples: Knife, Sword, Sai, Hammer, Axe, Whip, Lance, Chainsaw, etc.)

Firearm I (Starter): Can accomplish fundamental and basic feats with firearm weapons. (Examples: Pistol, Revolver, Shot Gun, Sub-Machine Gun, Sniper Rifle, Flame Thrower, etc.)



Advanced Synthskin: Your synthetic skin, hair, etc. is extremely convincing. You look like a human to even a trained eye, or fellow androids. This advanced skin will even bruise, scar, and up to a degree, bleed (fake blood). Only advanced detection, like x-rays, could discover the difference.





Not Applicable: Nothing has been purchased yet.

[b]NieR: Automata, YoRHa No.2 Type B[/b] as [i]Claire Sonozaki[/i]