#mango ocs

The first thing they taught her was how to stay silent, not out of obedience but survival. Crying earned violence, curiosity earned sedation. Love—if it ever existed in the sterile white hallways where she was born—was monitored, recorded, and corrected.

The young girl was not born into this world but constructed, a consequence of sweet-rotting curiosity wrapped in white coats and rubber gloves. An anomaly the state chose to spare, not out of mercy, but for utility. Her mother never once spoke her name, and her father only touched her through the barrier of latex. She was pale and thin, with eyes too large for her small face. The only world she knew was visible through reinforced windows. She learned to speak by mimicking researchers who never looked her in the eyes.

And by the time she was seven, she understood: her heartbeat, her breath, the warmth of her blood—none of it made her human.

On the morning of her seventh birthday—an age most failed to reach—she was met with the same repeated ritual. A soldier, his old-world rifle slung low, led her through the halls. His footsteps were loud and heavy, a stark contrast to the soft tap tap of her slippers.

Same door. Same groan as it opened. Same room.

She knew the procedures, slipping into the familiar unforgiving chair, its metal frame creaking under her fragile weight. The soldier—his face carved in constant torment—strapped her in. The leather tight against her ankles and wrists. The scientists refused to touch any of their subjects without full restraint. They weren’t like the soldiers—disposable. Their minds were too valuable.

The young girl wasn't shaken as the doctors flooded in, attaching wires to her head and chest, the flimsy hospital gown moved out of their way by scientists' hands, but she didn’t focus on them, rather the smell of the cold metal and antiseptic, harsh fluorescents buzzing overhead. She focused on the dust motes floating lazily through the air. Her hands rested still, palms open, fingers curled like wilted petals. Around each wrist, faint pale scars looped like faded bracelets. The skin there had long since toughened, but when she flexed, she still felt the tension, where her flesh had been rubbed raw from earlier years, when she bit and kicked and screamed. Back when she still believed resistance meant something.

Once, when she was five, she had refused sedation—bit the assistant’s hand hard enough to draw blood. That earned her twelve hours in total isolation. Lights off. No sound.

But in that darkness, she had heard her breath for the first time. It sounded like wind.

She dreamed of mountains she’d never seen. And for a moment, she had almost cried—not from pain, but from the ache of something she didn’t yet understand. A longing for more than survival.

Now she made no sound, watching as Dr Havler injected her in the arm as his assistant turned the analog knobs on the neural response machine beside her. Its boxy frame hissed softly, needle arms twitching across gridded paper that scrolled beneath them like a heart unspooling. She watched as he examined her vitals, waiting for any changes from the unknown crystal blue liquid that pumped through her veins. “Subject Zorja-07,” he announced, “no changes, same as yesterday, baseline emotional readings remain flat. Neural feedback is consistent.” He watched as his assistants jotted down notes before the door swung open. The echo of his boots was loud in the tiled chamber.

“Is she ready?”

She’d heard that voice before.

Dr. Havler smiled—a look that should have unsettled her. His grin was lopsided, revealing a cracked tooth.

“Stable. Functional. Obedient.”

Commander Vos turned his eyes to the girl. Cold, assessing. “Good. Then she’s no longer needed here.”

Her gaze rose slowly. Her green eyes met his without blinking.

“You’re being transferred,” Vos said. “To the Warrior candidate unit. Report for reassignment within the hour.”

Transferred. The word struck harder than any sedative. Her pulse spiked briefly—one of the few vital signs that ever betrayed her. The restraints didn’t loosen.

Warrior candidate.

The words had been spoken before, in hushed tones behind closed doors. Not all test subjects were chosen. Fewer still survived long enough to be considered.

But she was different.

Dr. Havler’s star project—his cold hand grazed her forehead.

“You’re more now, dear. You’re a military asset. You will do as you’re told, and we will watch your progress from afar.”

Afar… realisation hit her, she wasn’t being freed. She was being relocated—to a bigger cage. A cage with new bars, new handlers, and a battlefield instead of a lab.

-

This time, everything was different.

As she made her way back to her room, two guards followed—along with a nurse. The young girl had seen her before. The woman only worked when the sun was low in the sky, her hair pulled back from her ageing face. Each night, she came to wash the girl clean of the day's tests, dress her, and give her the same blue pills.

The guards took their posts as they entered the room.

On the bed lay a white uniform: a button-up shirt and long pants. Beside it, a belt. On the floor, a pair of brown boots.

The nurse gently untied the back of the girl’s hospital gown, letting it slip down her narrow shoulders. Her small body was pale and scarred—never once touched by unfiltered sunlight.

Quickly and silently, the nurse dressed her, guiding her arms through the sleeves, fastening the buttons with practiced ease, then tightly lacing her boots.

Her first real clothes—

Not the light blue gown.

Something else. Something meant to last.

Once she was dressed, she was back in the guards’ hands. She walked the familiar white halls one more time—this time, her hands unbound. But the phantom pressure of the restraints still lingered around her wrists like invisible ink. She was still considered dangerous, but her obedience allowed the guards to keep their rifles lazily slung over their shoulders.

She passed rooms she’d never entered, doors she wasn’t allowed to open, each one labelled with numbers and names she couldn’t forget even if she tried. Behind one, someone coughed—a child's cough. Wet. Tired. Familiar.

She didn’t slow her steps. Soon, they reached the elevator—strictly off-limits. She watched as one of the guards stepped forward and turned a key. The gray doors slid open.

She froze, boots glued to the floor, until a gentle nudge pushed her forward—permission.

Inside, she stared at her reflection in the dull metal paneling—a real and foreign sight. Her face looked too smooth, too clean. Her eyes, hollow. She remembered one of the guards saying she looked more doll than child. Like porcelain.

Her braids were neatly tied back—standard procedure—but her bangs had slipped forward, casting shadows over her eyes.

For a moment, the elevator lights flickered. Just once.

And in that flicker, she saw not her reflection, but the chair, the wires, the straps.

She blinked.

Gone.

The elevator lurched to a halt. A hiss of hydraulic pressure, and the doors scraped open.

She followed the guards through a few more halls before reaching a lobby, staff stopping to stare, patients never leave. But the guards pushed foward breaking throught the lobbies doors and…

Sunlight.

Not filtered through glass. Not artificial bulbs buzzing in her skull. Real sunlight. It hit her face like heat from an open flame—blinding, golden, alive.

She squinted, raising a hand to her eyes. Her skin looked different out here—less like glass. Warmer.

The air carried an unfamiliar smell—earthy and strong.

New sounds filled her ears: birds chirping, leaves rustling in the wind.

A transport truck waited on the gravel road ahead, engine rumbling low. The back doors were open. Another guard waved impatiently from the driver’s seat.

“You’ll be briefed on arrival,” one of the escorts said flatly. “No talking. No deviation.”

She nodded and climbed inside.

The truck interior was empty but for a bench and a small crate of standard-issue rations. She sat without a sound, hands folded in her lap. The doors slammed shut behind her.

Through the cracks in the metal siding, she caught glimpses of movement—trees. Fences. Roads. The outside world moved differently. It didn’t hum like the lab. It breathed.

And for the first time in her life, so did she.

Not deeply. Not freely. But enough.

Just enough.

-

The truck came to a rough halt, tires spinning in the gravel, the young girl listened to the slam of the drivers door and the crunching of gravel underneath boots before she was meant with silence.

It was only a few minutes before the back doors few open, flooding her sensitive eyes with light. Her legs were stiff and weak as she tried to move quickly following the instructions of the new soldier in front her with a clipboard.

Her boots hit the dirt, and for the first time in her life, she stood somewhere that wasn’t sterilised tile or steel.The sounds were no longer mechanical instead, her ears were filled with the rhythmic sounds of drill and shouting of not men but young boys, their voices higher and pubescent.

“Don’t just stand there,” the guard gestured sharply.

She followed.

They led her past rows of low, concrete barracks, each one identical: flat roofs, shuttered windows, the Marleyan flag painted in faded reds and blacks on every door. A wire fence coiled around the entire perimeter like a snake. Guard towers watched from the corners, rifles already pointed downward—not at enemies, but at them.

The Warrior candidates.

The other candidates were all young—some older, but not by much. The boys’ faces were smeared with mud, their knuckles bruised and raw. The girls had their hair pulled back so tight it looked as if it might snap, their knees wrapped in rough bandages. Some stared at her with hollow eyes, while most looked away—mind your own business

She was too small to seem a threat. Too quiet to appear new.

They led her to the administrative building—a cold stone structure, its metal shutters shut tight, a single flickering light struggling above the entrance. The air smelled faintly of rust and something sour.

They passed the empty front desk and stopped before a heavy door. A faded sign hung crookedly: Lieutenant Colonel König.

The soldier with the clipboard rapped sharply on the door. A voice from within, low and sharp, granted permission.

The young girl stepped inside, the silence pressing in around her. She stood motionless, barely breathing, until a voice finally broke the stillness.

“You don’t look like much,” the man in front of her said, his tone laced with amusement. “Commander Vos made you sound like such a threat—just to see you here looking like my daughter’s doll.”

He chuckled to himself, a dry, unsettling sound.

“But… Vos is convinced that if we can toughen you up, you could become one of our greatest assets.”

König slid a folder across the table toward her.

“This is everything you need to know about yourself—and the role you must play. Understood?”

“Yessir,” she replied quietly.

It wasn’t large, but it was dense. A tan file stamped with the Marleyan military insignia, the tab marked in bold block letters. One word stood out in red: CLASSIFIED.

She didn’t touch it. Just watched as König opened it.

A name at the top of the first page caught her eye.

Lilika Zorja.

Her name.

The skin at her wrists began to itch—phantom pressure from leather straps long since removed. She scratched absentmindedly as her eyes drifted across the page.

A summarised version of her first seven years in captivity.

“If you have any questions, bring them to my office. You are not to tell anyone why you’re here.”

He closed the folder with a soft thud, the sound somehow final.

“When you leave, Sergeant Krauss will escort you to your barracks. Everything you need will be in your footlocker.”

There was no threat in his voice—none needed. The rules were understood. The consequences, implied.

Lilika Zorja gave a small nod. Her eyes didn’t lift from the folder.

Her name. Her past. Her purpose.

Typed neatly on a page, like it all belonged to someone else.

Sergeant Krauss wasted no time showing her where she belonged. They stepped back outside into the cold, crisp air—the sun already slipping behind the horizon. Zorja followed a few paces behind, silent, her breath ghosting in the evening chill.

The barracks sat across the camp from the administrative building—low, uniform structures with steel doors and narrow windows.

“You’re in Barrack Three. Bottom bunk,” Krauss said without turning. “Accountability at 2000. Lights out at 2100. Fail inspection, and you lose meals. Understand?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” she replied.

When she stepped inside, the heat hit her first—heavy, stifling, full of breath and sweat and damp uniforms. Ten metal bunk beds lined the walls. The floor was cracked concrete, the only light coming from a small, flickering lamp overhead. Footlockers were shoved beneath every bed. Names carved into the steel with pocketknives.

Some of the others looked up. A few stared openly. A tall red headed girl with freckles snorted and muttered something to the girl next to her. While a blonde with piercing blue eyes stared up at her, taking a break from bandaging her leg to stare her down.

Zorja continued walking until she found her name, hastily scribbled beneath Bunk 7. Her eyes flicked to the thin mattress and scratchy-looking blankets—thicker than the ones from the lab, but not thick enough to suffocation.

She slipped onto the bunk, staring straight ahead. Her legs didn’t quite reach the concrete floor. She rested her elbows on her knees, fingers laced together.

No machines here.

No straps.

No rubber gloves.

But the cage was still around her.

It just wore a different name.

Outside, a sharp whistle cut through the air. Twenty hundred, Accountability.

She stood at once, falling into line with the others

Ezra is one of the main characters I will often use in the future because I love their face construction which often confused people a lot of time. Maybe I just love creating things in spite to people that love to look at me funny when I told them that I’m creating a character out of gender norm (I love non-binary characters, deal with it - but also yeah I am super conscious that people tend to bully creators for creating something out of norm?? Like, since when does someone’s way of expressing themselves is a political SJW shit? lmao - nvm I just realised ppl r stupid sometimes n I shouldn’t be so conscious from creating)

all you need to know for now is that, Ezra is an artillery android. A vigilante that surprisingly good with children yet extremely deadly and serious on most of the time