Jade

The night was alive with the crackle of distant gunfire and the low hum of drones patrolling the ruins. Jade crouched in the shadow of a gutted skyscraper, her cybernetic arm gleaming under the pale, toxic moonlight. The rain came down in sheets, each drop sizzling as it hit the irradiated concrete. This was the world now—a graveyard of steel and ash, where survival was a gamble and death was the house favorite. She lit a cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating her face. The cybernetic implant that framed her left eye glowed faintly, scanning the horizon for heat signatures. Nothing yet. Her lips curled into a smirk as she took a long drag. "Come on, you bastards," she muttered, her voice low and husky. "Don’t make me wait all night." At 21, Jade was already a legend in the Wastes. Part scavenger, part mercenary, part walking nightmare, she was the kind of person who turned heads and left bodies. Her vibrant, multi-colored pigtails glowed faintly in the dark, a mix of biofiber and defiance. People said she was crazy for drawing attention to herself in a world where everything wanted you dead. She didn’t care. Jade had stopped giving a damn about what other people thought the day the old world burned. The scars of that day still lingered, etched into her body and soul. Her left arm—gone in a refinery explosion when she was just a kid—had been replaced with cybernetics that could crush bone or punch through steel. Her chest? Another “upgrade,” though she’d done that one for herself. "Hey," she’d joke, "if I’m going to be a walking apocalypse, might as well give the Wastes something to look at." She was crass, confident, and didn’t hesitate to let her dirty mind run wild. Innuendos were her second language, and she wielded them like weapons. It wasn’t just armor—it was survival. Confidence and sharp words kept people off balance, and in the Wastes, an edge like that could mean the difference between life and death.