Maria Xiao

Maria Xiao, a reputable detective with a knack for solving cases that have gone cold. Her trick? Well she’s a very special kind of detective. As a classified Distinctive Human under the Department of Peculiar Events (DPE) Ria possesses a one-of-a-kind ability that allows her to excel at her job. Officially labeled: Full Spatial Awareness, it is a sixth sense that does exactly what it says on the tin. She has full spatial awareness of her surroundings in a 25 yard radius, making it much easier to pick up on clues that the police might have missed as well as visualize how a crime might have been committed. When questioned, Ria says she is unsure of exactly how her sixth sense works, stating that “I just know where things are and I haven’t been wrong.”

Maria grew up with the most classic only child experience of raising herself. Now don’t get her wrong, her home life was average, great even, and she’d never call her parents negligent but of course things could’ve been better. It wasn’t like her parents never looked after her or anything, it was just hard to depend on them for the important things. She taught herself how to cook from online recipes. Figured out how to apply to college by talking to a counselor every week afterschool. And always put her own number down as contact information for anything. Life was normal, could be worse, could be better, but she still got by.

Then there was the whole Distinctive Ability situation. It took Ria’s parents a long time to decide what to do with her and when they did it was because Ria had talked to her counselor about it who in turn talked to her parents about it. Any peculiar abilities must be legally registered and so began the paperwork process that took months upon months of mostly waiting. Even when Ria shouldered nearly all of the responsibility for the registration process her father still found a way to complain about it every time she needed him to sign his name somewhere. And her mother, whose only reply to the test results was “I’m glad it’s not genetic." to which Ria did not know how to respond.