Leela was an orphan. She was also a mutant, a captain, a soldier, a martial arts champion, a division leader, and so many other things, but nothing in her life defined her quite as much as being an orphan had.
She grew up in a ratty orphanage in the slums of Nowhere New York city the actual portion of the city was named Nowhere as it was the biggest gathering place of drug addicts, criminals, and all around villains. The reason it wasn't wiped off the face of the planet by the nypd? It was run by rich businessmen with connections to the black market.
So there was no holding out hope for rescue in the orphanage, plenty of the older kids went out looking for work one day and just never came back. The orphanage didn't hide what happened to them, didn't investigate their disappearance, they just noted down one less mouth to feed and trudged on. Some well liked children got a hasty funeral put together by the friends they had made in the orphanage. Leela knew if she was lost when she went out as she got older she wouldn't even receive that.
So from an early age leela knew what mattered, strength, both physical and in connections, she was too young to form any powerful connections, but what she could do was build a powerful body, so every day she trained, until her knuckles bled, until her bones broke, until her weakness gave in. She started going to the Arcturan Kung Fu dojo. It was offered to all orphans by an old man named snog who grew up in the same orphanage.
She never did get to go to a tournament because of how sexist snog was, but she accepted that with as little burning hatred as she could muster and moved on, as she started getting older and growing into her body she started making more friends outside of the orphanage, despite her one eye a lot of men considered her attractive, and she used that like a weapon.
She got inducted into a gang of street kids, and used her strength and charm to work her way up to the top of the gang, becoming the leader's girlfriend. She was still disgusted to this day about letting that ugly slob use her body, but she got what she needed from him.. protection.
It was with this protection Leela could be a lot more brazen about making connections with the "elders" of this section of the city. The rich people that controlled the slums and had connections to the black market.
It was with these connections Leela made enough money to get a gun and a license to use it. She left the gang after leaving the leader indisposed, got on a ship to titan, and started working as a mercenary.
She couldn't count how many scum bags, drug dealers, and pirates she had killed working for some rich guy and didn't care to. For the time being she was looking out for herself, learning as many skills as she could to make herself more useful, because being more useful means being more valuable. It was during this time she learned to pilot a starship with both antimatter and dark matter.
She even made enough to buy her own ship and have her own crew, taking any jobs if the pay was good enough. For two more years until she was officially 21 she would run her crew of mercenaries tight, guarding drug shipments, fighting pirates, playing privateer in different proxy wars. She did it all. She was one of the most capable women in the mercenary world.
Until the day she lost her crew. It was a normal day. They were doing security for some limp wristed politician who was in over his head, dealing spice in the sarlak system, a system known to be inhabited by pirates. Surprise surprise when they got there they found the clients ship floating dead in space and according to sensors it was already decompressed, no life on board whatsoever.
The mission changed from guarding the shipment to getting the client out alive, after 2 hours of space combat they had done just that. At the cost of the lives of everyone onboard her ship except for her. The first two were dead from a torpedo that hit the aft side causing a power surge that killed them instantly frying their nervous system. That left them down to leela and 2 of her men who were manning the gunnery and torpedo stations, unfortunately the torpedo station was hit next and leela had to watch as one of her men was sucked into space, acting quickly her other crewman sealed the hatch to the torpedo station preventing their oxygen from escaping the new door in the ship.
When they were down to only one pirate ship left things looked to be getting under control again. Until the last pirate ship was destroyed. The client they were escorting was fine, their ship was in perfect shape thanks to leela's ship taking all the fire. That's when they received a transmission they answered the call and it was the same client who looked no worse for wear,
Leela still remembered his words and his face.
"Since we didn't make any money on this run, don't expect any payment from me." that riled leela right up, she argued, yelled and damn near turned her weapons on the merchant ship, but it was all for not, as the merchant ship had already turned their weapons on them.
"Whats the point of paying mercenaries when they're already dead." A torpedo slammed into the ship and hit the engine bay. Everything in the ship started malfunctioning consoles were exploding, fires broke out, and it was only thanks to her last man standing she got to an escape pod, she wanted to save the ship and he dragged her to the pod kicking and screaming, he was about to get in a pod himself when the second torpedo came the pod dislodged from the ship at the exact moment the ship, and her man were turned into space debris.
The pod took her to an uninhabited planet where she had to survive for weeks until a passing sarlak patrol picked her up, she was in prison for a year before she was set free, all she could think of was revenge, until she found out that the politician had tried the same trick on another mercenary team only to be turned to space dust.
Dejected and broken she returned to earth, she received her career chip, thinking surely she would be a captain or at least a pilot. She was let down once more. Career aptitude tester. She got a job at the cryogenics lab giving people that had just come to the future their career chips. She didn't really notice it but the job wore on her for 3 long years.
Until one day a man from the stupid ages changed everything. Philip j fry the man who refused to accept a career chip. She had to chase him all over the city until he finally ran into him in the sewers with a rogue bending unit. It was there that Leela's heart finally started to work again. Breaking through the cold professionalism she had worn like a comforting jacket. Finally realizing there was no need for it anymore.
In that moment she made a decision, one that was shortsighted, foolish, but completely her own for the first time in years. She took out her own career chip.
As the three of them stood around leela came to the conclusion that now they were all technically job deserters. While the line about being fired out of a cannon into the sun was just hyperbole to scare the witless into accepting less than adequate career chips. There were still problems associated with being job deserters. No way to make money, no legal protection, no right to own property.
Leela brought this up and fry was the first to come up with an answer mooching off his long lost relative. Of course it didn't turn out like that. The professor had career chips for all of them so they took them (which was illegal but with enough paperwork hermes could hide that.)
Leela thought this was going to be her new life, delivering packages, and manning a new 3 person crew, but she was wrong, after fry had recovered from alligator pox a harmless illness commonly found in children but deadly to adults who hadn't been vaccinated, he woke up differently.
He tried to hide it but Leela had the senses of a bloodhound from years of doing mercenary work. Fry was smarter, calmer, more prone to planning than his typical act first, shoot faster, and when everything's gone to shit ask a question or two.
He was different but honestly she didn't mind that, she only knew fry for a short time and while she liked who he was before she liked who he became even more, within months he had taken over planet express, made leela and bender primary shareholders in a rapidly expanding corp, finished college courses that would take most years, and revolutionized cybernetics for the whole world.
It was a whirlwind and sometimes it felt like he was dragging the world into the future kicking and screaming, but Leela could honestly say without the red headed psychopath she wouldn't be nearly as content as she was right now.
She had an amazing boyfriend, and great job, and finally thanks to the former red headed psychopath she had found her parents. She wasn't an orphan anymore. In just 6 months she went from a down on her luck ex mercenary, to one of time magazines most inspiring women
Sure things weren't all great, especially when fry airdropped himself onto a hostile planet and deposed a governing body. (That had taken a while to forgive), but honestly she didn't mind how things got crazy sometimes, if she were honest she actually enjoyed it. It reminded her of simpler times.
Leela wasn't sure what her future would turn out to be, but she would be damned if she didn't enjoy the road towards it.