Match of the Millennium

Leandra Burnier is a brazilian girl who was brought to America by her illegal immigrant parents before she could remember. Likely at or before five. Being illegal immigrants with barelly a dime to their name, the family was always under constant stress: both due to p overtyas well as emotional issues. Her father found work as a janitor for a local university and her mother took to... less legitimate ventures... creating a small income but a giant rift between the pair. This left the young girl basically to herself 80% of the time, and the rest of the time she got to spend with her family was spent enduring the chaos of the household. Because her mother were rarely around, and her only friends were neighborhood boys, she never really developed a sense of feminity or even modesty. She grew to enjoy being rough and tumble from a very young age.


Less than two years after the family's arrival, however, her parents illegal immigrant status was discovered and they were deported. Unfortunately, she managed to escape being deported as well because of her not being present at the time as well as because her parents failed to report her... likely either hoping to be rid of the financial burden or due to a naive hope that she'd still survive and have a better life in America. Regardless of the whys, she soon found herself a homeless girl wandering the streets and doing her best just to survive. 'Surviving' often meant eating from trash bins, food shed find on the ground, and whatever she could manage to steal. Being a fairly intelligent girl, she managed to figure out how to steal to get by fairly well - often using her seemingly innocent appearance to fool targets. Her need for survival also drove her close to Metro City's gangs at a very young age, and she'd often be used for her ability to steal in exchange for being allowed to stay in their 'camps'. Three whole years of her life were spent stealing, aiding in other petty crimes, and sleeping by the oil drum fires of rowdy drunken men. This created a deep-rooted association in her mind, with the criminals she lived with becoming more like family to her than her own slowly being forgotten parents. Her life amidst the mostly male criminal element is where her taste for fighting, and even her style got its start.

Amongst the many filthy men she frequently spent her time with, there was one man who treated her almost like a daughter. he often provided her with food, jobs, and taught her how to fight not only to survive but to make money as well. This man's full name was Kenneth Ross, but he was only ever referred to as 'Bear' in the criminal circles. He fought every bit like his namesake: a blood-thirsty savage animal who often beat his opponents within an inch of their lives. A massive man in comparison to many he fought with, he could take punishment like a steel reinforced door and always dish out more. He taught the girl every facet of his fighting 'style', including how to enjoy pain and turn the damage inflicted by an oppponent into an advantage. He did this, in part, by throwing her into every stilted fight he could and even providing her with beatings when none were available. Though it was a twisted manner in which he expressed his 'love' for her, it was because of this that Leandra came to associate brutality and pain as positive things. It was also under this man's tutelage that she adopted the moniker 'Layla', partly for Bear's taste in music.

One night, however, during a particularly trick raid on a rival gang's territory Layla and several other members of the gang were arrested and she found herself separated from her mentor. Given the choice between Juvenile Detention and staying at a local shelter, she reluctantly chose the shelter. She was then forced, for a time, to live a relatively 'normal' life... including going to school... but it was something she did not take to well. She would get into trouble time and time again over the next eight years she would spend living at the shelter... wearing the staff's patience thin and making the other young people who lived with her and shared a school very uncomfortable.

Sometime during the earlier parts of her stay at the shelter, during her first TV watching experience in a store display window (the shelter didn't keep any, considering it a detriment to young minds) she happened upon a martial arts demonstration wherein a Wushu master was demonstrating chain whip techniques. Admiring the display of grace, agility, speed, and power he made... she decided she wanted to incorporate one into her fighting style. She would not acquire an actual nine section whip for years, until she left the shelter at the age of eighteen, but she would make do with a regular chain or the longest time and her later techniques with a ninesection whip would come to resemble those she learned with a standard chain.

Even whilst staying in the shelter, Layla would engage in frequent fighting either at school or on the streets. She also kept privvy to illegal fighting contests by keeping contact with the criminal element. Even at the age of fourteen she was engaging with, and beating, grown men in dangerous cage matches. During her stay with the shelter, she managed two narrow wins on the circuits and acquired three of her friends and 'gang members' in these places. It was also whilst fighting in the second of these that she caught wind of her mentor's death after an earlier tournament's cage match. A normal person would probably respond to said news with such grief that they'd probably drop out... Layla, on the other hand, was not a normal person. She instead channeled her grief into anger to fuel her fighting spirit and smashed through all of her competition in 'celebration' of Bear''s dying the warrior's death. After she recovered from the brutal poundings she'd taken from that tournament... she proceeded to track down the man who'd defeated bear and kill him in combat. He would be the first, and last person, she'd ever purposefully kill with her own hands. It had little to nothing to do with revenge, she knew her surrogate father had gone out the way he'd want to... it had to do with defeating the man who had defeated her mentor... to honor her father and prove that Bear's style was superior and in the end she accomplished that.

Her slaying of the man, however, once again found the sixteen year old girl in Juvenile. This time for two entire years, the girl escaping murder charges because it was difficult to tell who had started the fight and whether it was an act of self-defense. She ended up being charged with involuntary manslaughter. At the turn of her eighteenth, and coinciding with her release from Juvie, she was released from the shelter's care list. Both because she was now an adult and because she was entirely too much trouble. Once again, she would find herself homeless... and once again she drifted back to the only safe haven she ever known... gangs.

Upon leaving Juvenile Detention, she ran into a stray German Shepherd along the road. She fed the starving dog with what little lunch she had that day, and left the dog behind after stopping for a few minutes to pet him. Or she would have, had he not started following her. Reluctant to keep the dog, as she could barely afford herself, she attempted to lose him the hustle and bustle of the inner city... an attempt that didn't work so very well. Upon arriving at the Metro City trainyards where she knew a small-time gang had taken residence lately... she discovered the dog was still trailing her. Reluctantly, she allowed him to stay... more like /could not get him to go away/... and named him 'Perro'... spanish for Dog... demonstrating her utter simplicity in the process.

It's been two years since then, and Layla still wanders the streets of Metro City... and sometimes othern cities... and engages in fighting tournaments whenever she can afford to. Because she is slowly becoming a more recognizable and respectable fighter in certain circles this has become easier as of late. She still has her dog, and occasionally still engages with her 'gang' of thug buddies... who barely constitute an organized gang at all, more like a ragtag band of slipshod heathens who congregate from time to time... and she's still commiting crimes left and right and starting brawls with anyone who even remotely looks at her funny.