CHARACTER Madeline "Lena" Bauer / Lace

[Lace]

MADELINE "LENA" BAUER

Birthplace	Night City
Age	16
Lifepath	Fixer (Drug Pusher)
Faction	TBD
Home	Highrise in The Glen Multiplex in Charter Hills
Ethnicity	German-American
Gender	Female
Language(s)	English (native) Spanish (fluent) Japanese (intermediate)
Empathy	6
Humanity	52
Height	169 cm
Weight	59 Kg
Handiness	Right
Eye Color	Hazel
Hair Color	Light brown hair with a green dye highlight.
Skin Color	Fair skin
Face Claim	Carlotta von Falkenhayn

APPEARANCE

Lace is a self-assured teenager, and she carries herself with the kind of confidence and presence to make that public. Her face doesn't often betray her emotions, willing to mask pain as well so that no one else sees. She has light brown hair that she keeps short around her ears, tipped with green dye that marks her individualistic style and matches the green flecks of her hazel eyes. She stands at 5'6½" (169cm) with a slender build that makes her seem taller than she is. She might dress in a uniform for school, or clothes that help her blend in, yet there is little chance that she won't put her own flair on them. Even when clothes and build are all accounted for, nothing on the surface would betray the extensive cybernetic implants that lurk beneath, only a small port for a neural link on her wrist.

PERSONALITY

Lace is a self-relient and intelligent teenager, one of the first to point out when something isn't right. Mired in a world of morally-complex values, her sense of justice threads a narrow path between a growing worldliness and a fading idealism. She likes puzzles and challenges, though sometimes finds herself mired too much in the details to see a bigger picture. She can be naive while still being pragmatic, quickly falling back on a resilience finely-honed from struggles in her early life. Lace can social and is comfortable around others, sometimes in a manner that's a bit too forward, but doesn't tend toward the large emotional displays typical to her age.

BACKGROUND

Family Ranking: Suburban
Parents:

Felix Bauer (42, Father, alive)
Margot Thompson Bauer (37, Mother, alive)​

Childhood Environment: Spent in a safe Corporate Suburbia
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SKILLS

• Logic puzzles and problem-solving
• Martial Arts (particularly Tae-Kwon-Do)
• Netpage navigation, minimal netrunning skills
• An eye for details
• Cyberware Ability: Enhanced strength
• Cyberware Ability: Immune to most toxins

CYBERWARE

• Replitech "TuffBone" - Alpha Level
• Toxin Binders
• Advanced Biomonitor
• Neural Link

GEAR & STYLE

• Compact pistol concealed on her person or in a school bag
• School datapad with a Westbrook Prep sticker on the back
• An older-model cyberdeck
• Her customary outfit in Westbrook would be a school uniform, outside of which she would often don more casual attire with a preppy flair. Her outfits tend to have green somewhere in them, sometimes added as a modification.

BIOGRAPHY

Lena was always an active child, more happy to call the outdoors and large spaces her home. Unlike some other children, she suffered what seemed to be more than her fair share of broken bones as a result. For years, her parents thought it was due to happenstance, then simply a lack of coordination. From an early age Lena participated in dance classes and gymnastics, and though her coordination certainly improved the rash of broken bones only slightly lessened.

It wasn't until, appearing at her dad's corporate party with a cast on, Lena suffered a break in the presence of the company physician that her health was examined more closely. Rather than being coordination or bad luck, the source of Lena's troubles was more insidious. She suffered from a congenital disease that resulted in poor bone density and improper development of the bone structure, the culprit to all of Lena's repeated accidents. Lena's extracurriculars were adjusted, swapping gymnastics for swimming and avoiding activities that often included falls or undue stresses on her body. She started to be monitored regularly by a medical specialist and allowed to go about her childhood otherwise as normal as possible.

Lena grew to despise the restrictions, finding herself the object of teasing in school when activities became too physical for the comfort level of her teachers or parents. It did afford Lena more time to connect with her dad, her mom was always on the move and friction grew between them at the limitations of Lena's activity hampering her own. Her dad, a high-level executive at Dynalar, would go to lengths to entertain Lena even while working. He helped Lena keep her mind active even when her body needed rest and care, challenging her to solve puzzles and interactive story games that fostered her cleverness and skill at problem solving.

By the time she was eight, Lena was barely allowed to do more than walk and sit at school. Her muscle mass was starting to suffer from the disuse and Lena had begun to experience more frequent pain from her condition. When her arm dislocated during a swimming lesson, almost causing her to drown, Lena's parents took a drastic step to help save her childhood. Drawing on their lavish means, specialists and a renowned surgeon were recruited to embark on an ambitious plan, to use cyberware to replace Lena's skeletal structure.

A tricky proposition for a child, those implants relied on nanotechnology that was designed for an adult's physiology and immune system. Furthermore, Lena's age meant that the implants would need to be activated again repeatedly in the future, building more bone to avoid stunting the rest of her body's natural growth. Her surgeons also planned for a few additional implants to help stabilize her body's reaction to the implants better than medication could handle.

It took more than a year for the cyberware to be ready, and by then Lena was more than ready for it. The initial installation was painful, but then came the weeks of agony as her body's bones were eaten away and replaced by bacterial nanites. If only Lena could be done with it then, but what followed was months of physical therapy to help her regain lost muscle mass and coordination. She rejoined school activities, convincing her parents to add martial arts to her extracurriculars with the advice of her therapist.

For a long time after that, Lena could go back to being a normal child, albeit one imbued with unbreakable bones and more strength than she'd ever had. Martial arts helped her learn to control her newfound power, though Lena also learned to enjoy demonstrating it to classmates when she could. Lena grew happier and more popular than that ridiculed child she had been, adopting the nickname her peers bestowed upon her as the spirit of her renewed sense of self, named for the type of cyberware that supported her every move: Lace.

Life settled into a more normal rhythm for Lena, her struggles and triumphs now focused on school and extracurriculars like anyone else her age. At Westbrook Prep Academy, she excelled in subjects that required sharp problem-solving abilities, Dance, basketball, and track all had their years until she found her place on the cheer team. There, Lace became the literal backbone of the squad, anchoring the team's most daring stunts. Life should have treated her well for the rest of childhood, she had earned it by then.

When she was 12, her dad began to have difficulties at work. Projects that had once seemed effortless for him now faltered under his leadership, and his once-stellar track record suffered. At first he put it down to being in a slump, before troubling signs began to emerge at home as well. Forgetting details in family conversations, tremors in his hands, and odd coloration appearing on the skin around his implants. Even Lena noticed the changes in her dad, once the steadfast source of support in her life, now in need of it himself.

The truth was far worse than any of them could have imagined. The symptoms that Felix Bauer had been experiencing for over a year were indicative of a form of a rare implant failure that was causing the biomaterial degredation. His oldest implants, installed when he was younger and not always able to afford the best equipment or after-car, were starting to break down and leak heavy metals into his bloodstream. The solution was grim: removal of the offending implants, including his cybernetic eye. With any luck, their absence would slow the damage and, with time and therapy, clear up his neurological issues.

Change came to the Bauers, though not change that any of them welcomed. Felix encountered a series of setbacks, his replacement eye also failed and successive replacements were thwarted by the one source the family had always looked to for salvation. The medical insurance provided through his work, instead of offering support and solutions, now rejected his claims and put a stop to meaningful efforts toward recovery. Their justifications cut deep, pointing to the extensive care and costs already expended on Lena's cybernetics, framing her survival as debt the family could never repay. Once a calm-headed man, Felix fought back, persisting through his difficulties with memory and an increasingly-volatile mood. Eventually, he as forced to accept a glass eye, bearing his defeat as mark of personal shame, lashing out instead to the cherished members of his home and work.

Lace saw her family splinter right before her eyes when she was fifteen. Her dad, once so warm and composed, became a tense, unpredictable shadow of himself. His growing dependence on painkillers and mood stabilizers, both prescribed and illicit, only deepened his struggles. It was too much to bear for his wife, who separated from him and took Lace to live with what lodgings she could find in Heywood. While Felix stayed behind to salvage his career, at work he suffered almost as much. Though his colleagues pitied him, the company could neither afford his mistakes. He was demoted in all but name, relegated to mundane assignments and isolated from projects that would bring scrutiny and repercussions to its corporate reputation. When she visited her dad, Lace was often forced to fend for herself while he spent the hours in the haze of drugs.

It's never easy for a teenager to deal with a failing family while trying to succeed at school. Lace fell in her school rankings for a while, becoming more short with her peers and instructors. She knew things were looking grim, her dad moved from their cushy house in North Oaks to a condo in Charter Hills, a definite downgrade, but it wasn't until she was given the news at school that reality really set in for Lace, her parents could no longer afford tuition at her pricey prep school.

Westbrook Prep Academy offered enough in tuition grants to let her finish out the rest of her year there, afterwards she would have to enroll in a public school. Since there were none in Westbrook, her only choice was in Heywood where her mom lived, a prospect that crushed the dreams of the girl who had always wanted to get out of Night City, to rise above its grit and chaos. Now it felt like her future was slipping away.

Desperation forced Lace to confront the harsh realities of her life, to choose who she wanted to become Night City. Fated to stay, it meant facing inevitable changes and daunting challenges. But if anyone could rise to meet them it would be Lena Bauer, aka Lace.

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