Azucena Guerra

**Azucena Guerra** or **Azu** for short, also known as **Higabana** (彼岸花) to various groups in Japantown is a former Cyber MMA fighter currently working as a Solo.

## Biography

### Early Life

Azu was born and raised in Heywood and had a relatively modest and happy home life despite their financial struggles. She was friendly with the neighborhood and even among some of the local gang members (who her mother advised her not too hang around). She received a worldly tutoring on various subjects from her father who was a former nomad turned delivery driver and life lessons from her mother, whose mother was a former member of the yakuza.

Her happy-go-lucky demeanor changed one day however when she got into an accident with a cyberpsycho at the age of 12, crippling and mortally wounding her. Her mother, who was a clinical assistant to a ripperdoc, had rushed her immediately to a hospital where her condition was stabilized. The resulting diagnosis was a loss of her right arm, severe fractures and nerve damage in her left arm and complete paralysis from the waist down.

After she was discharged, her mother immediately brought Azu to her boss where he performed full cyberlimb replacements for all her limbs several internal augmentations. It took her awhile to adjust as she went through several stages of depression and PTSD but when she was pulled out of her rut, she was ready to take on the world.

When she was 13, she started attending a dojo in Westbrook run by Hajime, a relative of her maternal grandmother. He mainly taught her judo and aikido but also some basic kenjutsu. She had also learned some special techniques designed specifically with cyberlimbs in mind from his son Kazuma who was also cyberdized.

### MMA Career

#### Street Brawling Beginnings

By the age of 16, Azu was already participating in underground fighting rings, unbeknownst to her parents who thought she was training too hard. Despite their concerns, Azu felt a strong need to help repay the debt accumulated by her parents for her medical fees, some of which were waived by her mom's boss, though that didn't include the hospitalization fees.

Soon enough, she was let into the "official" matches and quickly rose through the ranks from neighborhood fights to inter-district matches and eventually she was Heywood's top fighter. During her match with Westbrook's top fighter, she garnered the attention of a talent scout for Night City's Cyber MMA league. He offered her deal she couldn't refuse and so, she left the street fighting scene.

#### MMA Champion League

Azu's days were mostly spent training, jogging, exercising and fighting at a local gym where she received tutelage from various other fighters and veterans in Muay Thai and kickboxing. She spent less and less at time at home where her parents, who were although worried, were happy that she could finally apply herself in a career that she enjoyed, with rules of course. She was 18 when she entered her first organized fight and despite all her talents and training, only narrowly won the match. This spurred her to train harder and harder for subsequent matches.

Azu steadily rose through the tiers once again and was making bank. Eventually, she had surpassed the goal of repaying her parent's debts and was supplying them with more money then their income. Questioning her reason for still fighting, she arrived at the conclusion that she simply loved fighting. At this rate, she was sure to represent Heywood in the Intercity Championship. Tragedy struck before she could make it to the big leagues however. The leader of an up and coming poser gang in Westbrook who was part of a betting ring offered a great deal of money to her to throw the next match. Azu, who was no longer in it for the money, turned him down. The amateur gang leader, rather than take a hostage, gunned down her mother and threatened to do the same to her father.

She promptly announced her withdrawal from the league the following day much to the despair and confusion of her fans and colleagues. When night came however, Azu and her father had led a combined force of her neighborhood gang and both sides of her mother's family into the gang's territory. The entire gang was exterminated overnight and Azu earned the name Higabana after the all the death she inflicted and the patterns of blood found on her arms, her clothes and all along the walls and floors of the scene.

Azu knew that she could not longer stay in Night City. Whether it be the police, another gang or a corpo extraction squad, someone would be after her. Her father offered to take her to his nomad family, saying that they'd be gladly welcome. She declined however, and said that she needed to go her own way, and so the two parted ways, leaving the city behind.

### Solo Career

Azu travelled all over the world from Japan to Tibet to Russia. She went on many adventures, working with and for various organizations, fighting alongside and against some of the best solos in Europe, learning from various teachers and even losing her memory and gaining it back.

## Skills and Abilities

Azu has a total of four combat-rated cybernetic limbs that replaces each of her arms and legs, including mechatronic muscoloskeletal joint supports and modifications that soften the sound dynamic of movement. Biomechanical connective tissue supports her synthetic leg muscles and her ankle joints reinforced with plastic fibers and nanogel-filled joint capsules that allowed her to jump to an upwards of 5 meters. A ballistic coprocessor with an integrated servomotor system are integrated into both her cyberarms. She also has several internal structural upgrades to her body including a full optical suite including scanners, thermograph vision and threat detectors along with the standard neural processor, interface plugs and chipware sockets necessary for her profession. She has fireproof, ground-plated, supra-subdermal armor with an additional optical camo layer throughout her entire body. Azu's bones were replaced with metal-infused skeletal fullerene lattices capable of withstanding heavy loads, regarded as "tougher than steel", which makes them virtually unbreakable and allows survival in harder impacts. Her marrow was densified, not exceeding 3% total bone mass to avoid significant white blood cell necrosis. Microrotors are microvibration generators are attached at several points to her skeleton.

Azu's heart is implanted with a synthetic, polythread weave which significantly increases its capacity to pump blood and accelerate oxygen supply to her body's cells. Her blood composition is modified to allow for faster clotting and immunity to most toxins. She was also subjected to K5.2 hemoescutcheon, and implanted with circulatory shunts and intelli-fibrin acclimation, likely aiding in the healing of wounds along with an adrenaline booster Helps the body maintain performance when under great strain. An intestinal bioreactor is also implanted, and she was given a gut microbiota refresh. Her bioplastic blood vessels facilitate her body's distribution of blood and blood-borne substances. A metabolic editor designed to assist liver and pancreas function against poisons and detoxifier implants in her body perform blood dialysis. Bioconductors facilitate superconductivity in the circuitry that connects her body's cyberware.

Her nervous system was "super-myelinated" to increase the production of myelin sheaths and, therefore, her reaction time even without her Kerenzikov reflex booster. Nanorelays improve the speed of her nerve impulses. Azu's nervous system was subject to various element treatments, including an increase in cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) responses and the rebuilding of neuroendocrine cells. Virtually all her other organs in the body are either modified in some manner or replaced with several organs being biofabricated, including her lungs. Azu was implanted with Bionic Syn-Lungs that are engineered with both organic and artificial synthetic tissue fibers, designed to increase functional lung tissue surface area and lined with a pulmonary surfactant; a polymer that enhances oxygen intake and allows her to process airborne toxins or foreign gas mixtures.

Azu is a highly skilled practitioner of martial arts, namely judo, aikido, Muay Thai, kickboxing along with several other brawling styles. Along with that, she also is also very knowledgeable in several Kenjutsu and Wudang sword forms, which she became more dedicated to after leaving the MMA scene. She is also trilingual, speaking English, Spanish and Japanese. Aside from her body and mental aptitudes, she is an accomplished fighter with great discipline, judgment and self-control. Even when she loses herself in the moment, her movements are practiced and deliberate. Even though she is blessed with great genetic compatibility with cyberware and is highly resistant to cyberpsychosis, she is constantly teetering on the edge of her sanity due to the extent of her cyberware and is considered a high functioning cyberpsycho. She is typically kept grounded by subjecting herself to sensory deprivation via blinded techgogs and meditation.

She is proficient in the usage of rifles, submachine guns and handguns though isn't a remarkable marksman by any means. She also has moderate hacking and netrunning abilities despite having high processing speeds, preferring intrusion countermeasure electronics system that protects her cybernetic implants from bugs rather than cyberdeck RAM upgrades. She mainly uses it to disorient enemies, breach simple security systems, open doors and information acquisition. Even if she's a force to be reckoned with, Azu isn't invincible and can be scarcely outmatched in different outcomes. Due to her versatile and balanced skillset and cybernetics, she can face difficulty facing more specialized cyborgs that are simply much stronger, much faster or are better netrunners than she is. Though with her superior melee prowess, she tends to have the upper hand in close-quarters combat scenarios.

## Equipment

* Kendachi Mono-Katana
* Arasaka Weeping Reaver Katana
* Jian
* Katana
* Rostović Kleaver
* Arasaka Nowaki
* Arasaka HJSH-18 Masamune
* Militech M221 Saratoga
* Arasaka Shigure
* Arasaka TKI-20 Shingen
* Arasaka JKE-X2 Kenshin