IO SCORIA

CAPABILITIES

ADDITIONAL SKILLS:

PHYSICAL PROFILE

HEIGHT: 5'7";170cm
WEIGHT: 158lbs; 72kg
BLOOD TYPE: O+

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APPEARANCE:

Typically found wearing their helmet or a dark face mask, Io is a lean individual with a tendency to dress in layers. They hide chipped nails beneath gloves and can often be seen with some form of overcoat, medical or not. While they prefer to keep things obscure, they’re known to have tangled hair (they keep swearing they'll cut it, or dye it, or all manner of things) and pale grey eyes. There's rarely a day when they don't wear their scarf, as ragged as it's gotten over the years.

PERSONALITY

"What we've got right now, this little chance to live? It's enough."

"I saved you a coffee. It's still a little warm, if you want it."

HISTORY

"A rough start is okay. It hasn't ended yet. There's still time."

TW: Death, limb loss, destruction of settlement

TL;DR

Io grew up in a coastal settlement that was destroyed in a Martian attack when they were a teenager. They headed to Salus in the aftermath, eventually working in intel and SAR as they grew up. Io was injured during a scouting mission they aided not long ago, and is now discharged from the infirmary with repaired prosthetics and renewed energy.

"Reporting in. All personnel accounted for. It's time to go home."

Whale bones. Yellowed maps. Thyme and potatoes. Wind-bitten noses and fingertips.
Four different weather stations. Paper flowers, oil-stained at the edges.

These are all things Io would come to remember. Their life began in a settlement almost five miles from the ocean, hidden across mud flats and past the remains of a harbour. Of all the places humans called home, Ossa, with its painted halls, cracked runway, and numerous watchtowers, was as harsh as any.Some one hundred souls lived there, coming and going between the freezes that hit the coastline. Few were long-term inhabitants, and of those few, there were hardly ever civilians. Ossa held an inclination towards ransacking biomes both pre and post exodus. It was not a safe place. Even those within its sheltered underground came to face troubles.

"Watch out!"

When Io was kid, it rained for weeks. Parts of Ossa flooded, walls collapsing in those areas less used, and they just…hadn’t expected it. When they’d been playing tag, and the ceiling gave out above them.They were lucky. Not lucky enough to be okay, but enough that they were alive. They had friends who could sit by their bed, and talk them through everything concerning their new legs (“you need to breathe,” they told them, but they couldn’t because they’d seen that insignia-) and, in time, they were the general description of reckless teenager, always out causing problems that they’d been before the loss.At large, they grew up happy. It wasn’t the overjoyed kind of happy, but it was enough. They painted glass ornaments for the spring equinox, and rushed across the tarmac with almost-forgotten letters to other settlements, and helped break the ice around watchtowers’ stairs. They spent sunsets on nearby cliffs, tangled up with their best friends, trading blankets and snacks. Of the handful of children that lived there, Bay and Halimede (who was always fond of being called Holly) were the ones they stuck by.They were never adopted. The closest they came to it was in the company of those who tried to train them. Or in the distant, friendly voices across a radio, telling them to sleep well from on the other side of the planet.They didn’t have a chance at anything more, before Ossa was gone.Gone was a good way to put it - nicer than “destroyed,” or “terminated,” which were both exactly what it was. Io simply couldn’t face the fact, even when it continued to burn for days after the attack. They were fifteen, heading home from the shore, when the explosion began. Ossa was rubble by the time it was safe to return.Of those that they found, only eight survived in the days following. Io, Halimede, and Bay tried to reach out to other settlements by radio. The contact they received was…minimal. Not for lack of trying, but there was no tower anymore to send their signal afar. So when the last of the survivors left, the three gathered what little they could from the attack, all of Ossa’s surviving data, surviving memories, in hard drives and half-burnt records, and piled it into their truck. Then they left too.Ossa’s history sits in three bright blue cases, somewhere on a shelf Io hasn’t checked in years. They took it to Pax, first, hoping to have a copy somewhere out there, if it was ever lost. But the lure of a quieter settlement was where they stayed.

"Welcome to Salus."

When they are eighteen, Io learns how to work in the laboratory. They dye their hair navy and get used to the feeling of holding a pipette. They never understand why there are so many different sized flasks. They learn they like taking core samples, running a toothpick along the layers like counting rings on a petrified tree. Days come where they can’t manage to do much more than slide around the lab on a rolling chair, but those are still days spent with family. Bay rushes into the scouts, Halimede into nursing. The latter drags them, one morning, into the infirmary. He hands them a first aid kit and tells them “try, even if it’s not enough” and they do.They like the laboratory a lot. It’s their safe space, between the machinery and the samples and the sticky notes that plaster their desk. But they like elsewhere, too. They like climbing the cliffs and diving into unknowns, and the first time they’re asked to help bring someone home safely, if only because they know the route so well, they feel amazing. Worth just a little bit more than they’d been yesterday.So they work in the laboratory, taking water samples and reviewing geologic surveys, and when Salus needs help on the field they work there too, dragging allies to safety. Between it all, they continue to curl up every night with Bay and Halimede, whispers and giggles and all.Bay is gone though, eventually. Not dead, Halimede says, his hands shaking. Not dead. Just gone. Denying this and that until Halimede is the one arranging the memorial and yelling because you didn’t go, why didn’t you go? Why aren’t you grieving? And then Io is alone.Not forever. But long enough. Between frantic apologies, they’re not sure that Halimede (that Holly-) doesn’t still hate them for it.But that was months ago.

“Io lad— are ye okay?”

No, fuck, I’m not going to be okay, is the first thing Io thinks before giving a thumbs up, when the search mission goes wrong. There are too many guards, and a split-second decision to make sure their team gets out leaves them brawling on the floor with a dog that wants them dead. They kick it, it rips the casing off their prosthesis, they kick it off them again, it takes their prosthesis with it…and there's the dawning horror and shock that comes with that. But it's taken care of (Graeme, Graeme took it down, thank god-). They get to come home.They get to sit in the infirmary for weeks while things get fixed. Holly, exasperated, threatens to strangle them for the stress they’ve given him, but in the end sneaks them a canned apple and sits on their bed all night. Io dutifully stays in bed, chattering at friends over comms and whenever they come to visit.When they’ve been fitted with fixed prosthetics, a clean bill of health and energetic as can be, they’re finally discharged. Back to the lab, and the cliffs, and the desert beyond Salus. Back to making coffee runs and half-finished murals, filling storage closets with blankets, and avoiding morning jogs.Back to work.

HANDLER